Companies with conservative cultures should approach social media cautiously and in small steps. But they should definitely approach it. That was the key message from Tim Collins, senior vice president of experiential marketing with Wells Fargo & Company, brought to CMA’s National Convention this week.
With 100 million people watching YouTube daily, and tens of millions on sites like Facebook and conversion in their own blogs, your brands are inevitably going to get mentioned, so you need to be there to at the very least “listen and learn,” Collins said. “People are talking about you online, as the folks at Tim Hortons learned last week.”
Wells Fargo is one of North America’s oldest (established: 1852) and most trusted brands, and as a bank it is a very conservative business, Collins said. Yet, it has been something of a cutting edged innovator online, becoming the first U.S. bank to start blogging, the first brand period to set up a presence in Second Life and becoming one of the first companies to actively use YouTube.
Collins says the bank stuck to the marketing fundamentals in edging into the Web 2.0 space, approaching everything with the traditional goals of connecting with consumers and driving business results.
Collins urged companies to start “small and safe” when entering the space. And he advised being sure to integrate whatever is done with offline marketing. Companies should look to leverage their existing assets. “No matter what your company is, you have assets,” he said.
In Wells Fargo’s case, it played up its heritage and history in the development of the American west in its first president’s blog. When it debuted in early 2006, the blog focused on the 100th anniversary of the great San Francisco earth quake of 1906 and how the company helped its home city to recover. Subsequent blogs dealt with other aspects of the company’s history.
When looking at what to do on YouTube, the bank observed that most video posts from financial services companies are boring and don’t have many views. But, in an example of an asset the bank wasn’t even conscious it had, Wells Fargo also found that people were posting clips of “The Wells Fargo Wagon” song that had been featured in the 1950s Broadway musical, and subsequent movie, The Music Man. Collins noted that regional theatre and school productions of the show are still common in the U.S. Midwest –Well’s Fargo’s home turf- and people were frequently posting versions of the song featuring friends and family on YouTube.
So instead of doing it’s own video, the company created a contest, and invited people to vote on the best performances filmed by other people. The CGC contest was “silly and safe” Collins says, but it gave the company an opportunity to learn about what works and doesn’t work with video online.
Wells Fargo took a similar “watch, listen and learn” approach to its Second Life initiative, stagecoachisland.com, begun in 2005. Citizens of the island can interact and play all kinds of Second Life games, including some smart money management quizzes. As well, citizens can get paid virtual money for doing virtual jobs and even take out virtual mortgages (no subprime mortgages, however) But the only overt Wells Fargo created branding on the island are ATMS with the bank’s name. It hasn’t been necessary to force the conversation, Collins said, noting that visitors have even taken to creating bank branches on their own accord.
Originally written for and posted on In:fluencia Digital, a beta site created with Editions Infopresse to serve the Canadian online and interactive marketing, communications and media communities. The site’s development is in hiatus.
