Wesabe is one of the few finance-related companies which seems to truly understand the role of social media marketing to building a brand. Which is why I asked Wesabe VP of marketing Gabriel Griego to speak at last month's Innovative Marketing of Financial Services forum.
Gabe was kind enough to Skype in for questions after the presentation. No mean feat, given he was on holidays in Nicaragua at the time.
It turns out Gabe simply believes in using new media techniques to conduct traditional marketing, as you'll see from this 15 minute video.
Wesabe makes a genuine effort to engage with bloggers, uses Twitter to announce and get feedback on upgrades to its service and, as James Gardner put it so aptly, engages in "community management" rather than PR.
If it sounds like I've drunk the Kool-Aid, it's because I find this quite rare. As an Australian-based journalist covering banking innovation I spend most of my time seeking innovation, searching for examples that stand out, and then trying to convince those involved to speak about it.
Perhaps it's because bankers generally fear failure that they are hesitant to promote new things before they're cemented in the day-to-day. Or maybe they define innovation differently to me.
At last month's innovative marketing forum we had an interesting panel discussion about innovation. Commonwealth Bank GM of digital marketing Trent Moy made the point that people looking at innovation often get caught up in the "shiny new things" as opposed to structural or systems innovation that can actually deliver better results to the bottom line.
This is true, but equally damaging is a hesitance to even consider a new thing before three of your competitors are using it and customers are asking why you're not there yet.
