Acquisitive Minds

Engaging on multiple fronts, webcasting incorporates streaming broadcasts with an array of multimedia downloads, interactive features and on-demand availability. “We can directly tie ROI to many of our webcasts by tracking participants through the webcasts and associated websites,” she adds. “This has generated numerous business inquiries and has produced new clients or 
additional engagements from current clients. Digital media such as webcasting has become an integral part of any marketing campaign.”

Engaging On Multiple Fronts

For now at least, social media, or at least a strategy with a social theme, remains a leading trend, especially where retail banking is concerned. In a May 2009 report, Gartner defined emergent “social banking” as “an approach to retail banking that makes depositing, lending and the connections between depositors, borrowers and financial institutions transparent.”¹⁸

Calling on retail banks to plan for “the emergence of this new financial services environment,”
Gartner recommends they pay attention to changing customer ways: “Currently many traditional bankers tend to reject the concept of social 
banking as a fad while others refuse to recognize or accept any degree of threat posed by such new phenomena,“ said Alistair Newton, research vice president at Gartner. “Although bankers may see current low usage by consumers as a permanent source of safety, this disregard for changing consumer behavior with social networking generally may mean that they miss the possibility of fast, viral uptake of social banking.“¹⁹

In a November 2009 interview with the 
Wharton School of Business, Marc Rowan, founding
partner of global private equity investment leader Apollo Management, noted that, “the best returns follow chaos.”²⁰ In the recession’s aftermath, the chaotic entanglements of the financial crisis are becoming new lines of communication between financial institutions and their customers—with better returns certain to follow.