Marcus Field is head of digital for evolution media, a specialist financial services strategy and communications agency. Field devises marketing strategies for financial services clients and recently completed work on a digital TV platform for ANZ.
Tell me about your career to date.
In a nutshell, I'd describe it as very diverse. I have somehow managed to fit in a Masters of Marketing and the beginnings of a Diploma of Financial Planning during my 10 years as a trade and consumer marketer. That experience has extended across the tourism, professional services and financial services industries, culminating in my current position at evolution media as head of digital and senior marketing manager.
With such a diverse background of industries, it has been interesting to see many of the same paradigms playing out wherever I go. Customer engagement, and the ensuing channel conflict, is definitely one of those issues, and is one of the biggest focuses for many of our clients.
What does a typical day look like for you?
It is enormously varied. We work with clients right the way through the financial services distribution chain, and each has different strategic challenges. My role is split between client service and product development and on an average day my client-focused work can range from marketing and digital strategies right through to overseeing digital TV production.
At the same time I will be working with project teams to constantly improve our digital product offerings, particularly our rich media platform development, which is a huge focus for us at the moment. But we're very tight as a team, and our ethos is one of integrated marketing, so there is a huge amount of collaboration with our heads of strategy, communications and creative on all the work we do.
How is digital technology shaping financial services?
As an industry, we face greater conversion challenges than other industries, not the least of which is our relative complexity - one of the biggest barriers to understanding purchase decisions. And publishing brochureware online clearly isn't the solution. People are simply swamped by the volume and inflexibility of that style of content.
Technology development to date has been heavily focused on transaction and administration, which is still relevant and important. However, the development focus is shifting to engagement and value-add for clients, both end consumer and distribution, over and above base functionality. Web-based technologies are making this far more accessible.
Take what we developed for ANZ Digital TV for instance. Consumers today are vastly more active in researching financial services purchase decisions, and the Internet is one of the biggest sources of information and influence. But they are also time poor and have many more media options competing for their interest.
So Digital TV, which uses technology to take the complexity out of wealth communications and presents the content in an entertaining way, has proven very successful in engaging potential customers. Technology is not a replacement for the personal relationships that are so important in the wealth sector, but it is a powerful enabler, both in customer acquisition and retention.
As a marketer, what would be your message to financial planners wanting to communicate what their business is about?
Consumers are looking for four main things from their financial services relationships: simplicity - make my life easier, benevolence - act in my best interests, transparency - performance, fees and rates, and trustworthiness - do what is right without me having to tell you. It is marketing 101, but you have to build your service offering to address these fundamental needs every time. At the end of the day, marketing really is just business, so you can't have a marketing communications strategy in isolation of solid business strategy. And now more so than ever, you can't forget you are but one of many vying for people's time and attention.
Engaging, entertaining communications are crucial to capturing their interest. Technology - and particularly web technologies - have the potential to help in these areas. Once you've nailed the business offering, a smart web-based acquisition strategy, scaled to your business, and media engagement plan will really see your business grow.
Have you witnessed any marketing disasters?
The biggest marketing disaster for mine of late has been that of the likes of Westpoint and others: aggressive marketing communications strategies promising the world, but built on a foundation of sand, and providing proper transparency of the risks involved. I have seen classic examples of over-promise and under-deliver, and disastrous demonstrations that no amount of clever marketing can compensate for a flawed business strategy.
What's next in store for evolution media?
Series 2 of our Mastermind Series has just launched, and we are heavily into pre-production for Series 3 at the moment. Our branded content division is expanding further to support growth in demand for targeted content, such as slivercasts and the Inspired magazine that we recently published for ANZ Financial Planning.
And we've also been busy developing a range of rich media - video and interactive - platforms to provide clients with a suite of ready-made tools to engage customers, so we will be rolling these out over the coming months. And somewhere in there, hopefully we'll find time for a bit of a Christmas break.
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