Mediaboss Marketing

by Martha Bartlett Piland

Dont make the mistake of trying to shoehorn this audience into current product offerings, visuals and messaging. It wont appeal and it wont work. Millennials (born between 1980-1996) have very different attitudes about your banks offeringsif theyre even aware of them at all.

Add that to the growth of online-only banks, DIY online tools and a post-COVID world, bankers must innovate to capture a share of this highly important audience and the newfound wealth they will need help managing.

This generation is hungry for education. Many think wealth management is out of reach. Their relationships and values matter. And they ask their parents for advice.

Lets look at what each of these means when it comes to wealth management:

Theyre hungry for education. Millennials want to be more prepared for their financial futures, but many are only partially managing their current financial conditions. Theyre looking for ways to save money, pay off debts and get ahead, but theyre not well equipped for making decisions or being proactive about long term planning.

Many feel like theyre going it alone. Theyre hungry for education around their current financial statelet alone the future. They scour social media for intel and look to strangers for information. They are also acutely aware that they need to know more. A recurring theme is that they dont want to be judged for not knowing things.

James Notzon, global wealth SVP and director of wealth management in the Texas border region for BBVA, says his bank is very aware that millennials will inherit a lot of wealth and they need to know much more about how to handle it. Millennials have more access to information than I ever did at their age, he says Theyre attuned to how much theyre saving. Theyre informed on that.

While millennials know what theyre saving, Notzon says most are not fully financially literate. He says they are constantly on social media looking for information and like to DIY it, trying to make value judgments. The mix of options available to them is huge. More options take more time and experience to research and understand. Its overwhelming and can result in reckless gambles.

The takeaways: Providing valuable information and building trusted relationships means positioning the bank as a valued authority as customers needs and assets grow. There is value in providing educational workshops and events, regular digital delivery of advice and frequent social media posts on these topics to position the bank as a welcoming, non-judgmental resource. Building a community of millennial investors who feel smart, included and valued is essential. Your bank will be stickier and grow as customers bring their friends.

Many millennials think professional wealth management help would be valuable, but think its out of reach, or for other people, not for me. They say they should get around to it and would like to have it, yet many think its too expensive.

Notzon says many millennials are investing more than banker peers may realize because its so easy to open a self-serve investment account online. Traditional banks are often not even on their radar as a place to go for advice and investing.

These perceptions should come as no surprise to marketers. Many bank websites and in-lobby communications perpetuate this mindset with language like high-net-worth individuals and showing gray-haired clients taking cruises and riding motorcycles across the country. Thats not what they are. (Yet.)

High-net-worth clients have the assets that pay for the service your institution provides. Customers in a lower bracket can seem expensive to attract and serve. But there is value in the long view: The value of the client over time will far outweigh the initial acquisition and early-stage costs.

The takeaways: First, get on their radar. They need to be aware your bank offers wealth management for them. Next, develop marketing messages, graphics and digital communications channels that are relevant to the millennial audience.

Products, servicessolutions, reallyshould also be suited to them. Technology makes it easy to showcase wealth management offerings designed for them. The offerings their parents and grandparents embrace probably dont resonate with millennials.

Many country clubs and philanthropic leadership circles offer a junior membership to people under 40 with special benefits. Innovate your offerings with inspiration from other sectors that are successful in captivating this audience.

Relationships and values matter. Online self-service investment products and apps cant compete with a personal relationship. Millennials want advisors who share their values or who understand their life goals and experiences. Doing business with bankers who get them will engender trust and solidify these budding relationships.

I specifically signed up with my advisor because she was clear that she prioritized teaching financial wellness to single women, says a member of the Banktastic National Millennial Advisory Board in a recent study. Others mentioned experience with trusts for disabled dependents, understanding LGBTQ and environmental views as very important.

Another board member says: I enjoy talking with my financial adviser, who has similar interests. They are helpful in bouncing ideas and strategies to get to me where I want to be.

What does the wealth management team look like in your bank? Diversity of age, gender and ethnicity makes a difference, too. Recruiting and retaining people relatable to the desired millennial audiences will also make your offerings more attractive.

The takeaways: Professional training and growth for your more seasoned wealth management and trust officers will be essential. They need to be ready to answer millennial customer concerns about matters very different than those of previous generations. Hiring and mentoring younger advisors who are relatable and proficient also sets you up for success.

Be ready to showcase your investment advisers and trust officers with these areas of interest and expertise in your banks advertising, website and social media. Make sure these personnel are also networkingboth in person and on social mediain the places where they can talk to people about this important work. Social word of mouth will be powerful marketing.

They ask their parents for advice. Parents and grandparents have enjoyed longtime trusted relationships with their banks wealth management and trust departments. Those same parents probably have not yet shared much information with their children about these matters. From a marketing perspective, this should be viewed as a built-in referral source. Engaging their offspring sooner lessens the likelihood of losing the relationships when wealth transfers happen.

Notzon recommends getting families in the same room and discussing their wishes together. In my space, its not just the relationship with those who control the wealth, he says. We like to have at least one family meeting per year with all the family together. Notzon says its important to ensure parents wishes and goals are met, while giving sound education and informationbut only as much as the parents want to share.

He also cautions that family meetings will require diplomacy and care. There are many more blended families these days, so family meetings can be tricky to navigate. But with this added nuance, the meetings are even more important.

Key takeaways: Creating family-related referral outreach, seminars, marketing pieces and educational web and social media content gives your bank the opportunity to build awareness and interest from millennials. Generating family-centered conversations about wealth management and trust services could also spur additional needs from parents and grandparents. Crafted carefully, its win-win-win.

The time is now. In less than 10 years, your most valuable audiences will look very different than they do today. To be well positioned for this seismic shift, its essential to start evolving and marketing to this generation immediately.

Martha Bartlett Piland is president and CEO of Banktastic, a branding firm that helps financial organizations build love and loyalty, and offers a special focus on millennial customers.Her second book, Beyond Sticky, is available at all major booksellers.

Read this article:
The Millennial Wealth Management Key: The Value of Relationships | ABA Banking Journal - ABA Banking Journal

Reddit's volunteer moderators have shared an open letter demanding the company ban subreddits dedicated to spreading COVID-19 misinformation. In response, Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman released the tech bro statement equivalent of a shrug emoji.

Posted Wednesday on subreddit r/vaxxhappened, the moderators' open letter calls Reddit out for allowing dangerous COVID-19 misinformation to thrive on its platform largely unchecked.

"It is clear that even after promising to tackle the problem of misinformation on this site, nothing of substance has been done aside from quarantining a medium sized subreddit, which barely reduces traffic and does little to stop misinformation," the post read (emphasis in the original).

Among the signatories are the moderators for subreddits r/aww, r/dataisbeautiful, r/EarthPorn, r/Futurology, r/lifeprotips, r/pics, r/showerthoughts, r/tifu, and r/UpliftingNews, all of which have over 10 million subscribers each.

Reputable health officials have continually stressed the importance of wearing a face mask amidst the coronavirus pandemic, as well as maintaining a safe distance from others and getting vaccinated as soon as possible. These are all scientifically proven strategies that literally save lives. Unfortunately, social networking platforms such as Reddit continue to host rhetoric rejecting such measures, allowing coronavirus misinformation to spread, multiply, and actively endanger people.

"The main problem with a concerted disinformation campaign is that such a message attains an air of legitimacy through sheer volume of repetition," read the moderators' letter. "There can be no room for leniency when people are dying as a result of misinformation on this platform. Reddit as a global platform needs to take responsibility here.

"We are calling on the admins to take ownership of their website, and remove dangerous medical disinformation that is endangering lives and contributing to the existence of this ongoing pandemic. Subreddits which exist solely to spread medical disinformation and undermine efforts to combat the global pandemic should be banned."

It's an understandable request. If people are spreading falsehoods that are proven to directly result in serious illness and death, and you could limit their reach, basic decency demands that you'd do everything in your power to do so.

So, of course, Reddit has shrugged and declared the whole thing not their problem, because self-regulation has worked out so well thus far.

"While we appreciate the sentiment of those demanding that we ban more communities that challenge consensus views on the pandemic, we continue to believe in the good of our communities and hope that we collectively approach the challenges of the pandemic with empathy, compassion, and a willingness to understand what others are going through, even when their viewpoint on the pandemic is different from yours," wrote the company's CEO Huffman in Reddit's r/announcements subreddit.

Apparently, as someone choosing to "continue to believe in the good of our communities," Huffman appears to have never used the internet.

Huffman blamed evolving CDC advice for Reddit's lacklustre policy, as though the contested content were just confusion-fuelled debates on what type of mask we should wear rather than rejection of masks altogether. He also stated that Reddit will take action against communities that violate the website's rules such as "encouraging harm (e.g. consuming bleach)," and offered the consolation that they'll continue quarantining subreddits.

Quarantined subreddits have warnings that they could contain misinformation, are excluded from search results, and don't appear in non-subscription feeds such as Reddit's Popular posts. But Reddit has already been doing that for months the whole point of the moderators' open letter is that it simply isn't enough.

Spreading anti-mask, anti-vaccination rhetoric actively encourages harm, especially considering COVID-19 is still killing thousands of people every day in the U.S. alone. But it seems Reddit believes this harm isn't serious enough to warrant harsher action.

Reddit's empty platitudes and clear abdication of responsibility are disappointing, but not all that surprising. After all, it's much easier to step back and pretend you and your $10 billion company have absolutely no culpability in the 625,000 people in the U.S. who have died from COVID-19 to date.

When reached by Mashable for comment, a Reddit spokesperson reiterated that its self-regulation policy is a good thing, actually.

"Reddit is a place for open and authentic discussion and debate," said the spokesperson. "This includes conversations that question or disagree with popular consensus. We provide users with authoritative resources when viewing communities that may warrant additional scrutiny, and continue to action content and users that violate our policies.

"Throughout the pandemic, we have also provided COVID-related resources to support our volunteer moderators, users, and communities, including a dedicated AMA series connecting users with authoritative experts on coronavirus and vaccines, as well as deploying homepage and search page banners directing users to the CDC and r/Coronavirus."

Reddit declined to answer whether it considers anti-mask and anti-vaccine rhetoric amidst a deadly pandemic to be encouraging harm. On an entirely unrelated note, I'm starting a subreddit dedicated to telling people seatbelts and speed limits are a violation of their civil liberties, because apparently I can.

UPDATE: Aug. 26, 2021, 11:27 p.m. AEST This article has been updated to include Reddit's statement.

See the original post here:
Reddit rejects moderators' call for harsher measures against COVID-19 misinformation - Mashable

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Ajith's 'Valimai' to Vijay's 'Master': Check out the most-tweeted hashtags of 2021 in India - The New Indian Express

Published on August 11, 2021

~Redefines the consumer experience by ensuring no ads on the app

~ Crafts an interesting Direct to consumer experience by empowering the creator community with the freedom to choose their content formats at no extra commissions

Bangalore: Bangalore-based Multi-Verse Technologies Pvt Ltd., has launched MYn, an indigenous application that is geared to reimagine the current/ contemporary social media landscape. MYn is a committed endeavour to elevate a consumers social media experience. Consumers can now discover, create, connect and communicate on a secure end-to-end encrypted system. Further, the app commits to create a no advertisement environment reinvigorating the social media experience with irrelevant interruption. The app has been founded with the philosophy of enabling decentralized one to one conversations/ communication sans the share of vital personal information thereby ensuring/ establishing personal privacy remains at the heart of the development. Promising digital safety, the company has also put into action a 247 content & application monitoring and incident response team, one which has already effectively and efficiently protected many organizations in India.

The contemporary social media milieu offers a singular/ undifferentiated social networking experience. It fails to recognize that each consumer conversation/ interactions are unique to the social environment they operate in. Eg: Conversations in the personal & professional space need to be addressed on differentiated systems. MYn app thus enables multiple segregated personas in one social media application. The application enables alliances of like-minded users across various select personas created to ensure complete user control over information shared, managed from one primary account.

The Persona feature (patent pending) is unique to MYn app as it helps citizens to create multiple profiles under one authenticated user. Each persona allows consumers to create as well as personalize content and communication relevant to these specific groups, like a Public persona for general use, multiple Personal personas for friends and family, Work persona for professional peers. The Live-Local feature, a geo-local profile aspires to engage and collaborate with local businesses and stores. The savvy UI is easy to use and supports seamless, secure data sharing within personas with in-app integrations of multi-media support that include video and voice data.

To further strengthen the social media experience in the country, MYn endeavours to empower the social content creating community. MYn will engage and enable the content creating community by providing them with a no commission system allowing them to post their content as per the format of their choice. The app aspires to provide a direct to consumer approach benefitting the content creator by enabling them to own their content in its entirety and also the commercials/ revenue attached to the content.

Speaking on its launch, Mr. A.S. Rajgopal, Founder & Managing Director Multi-Verse Technologies said, The social media environment of the country has dampened over the time due to various significant vectors like irrelevant information, barrage of advertisements and unappealing content which has limited appeal. With MYn, we present to the country a refreshing opportunity to socialize and network in a cohesive manner while maintaining complete data privacy. We look forward to an encouraging consumer response by promising, creating and providing a non -intrusive space for social interactions & content creation, online.

MYn App is available for download on App Store and Google Play and also offers a secure, internal communication and collaboration system for enterprises and businesses.

Read more:
MYn App launched in India to disrupt the future of social networking - APN News

Nearly half of all countries that have restricted social media access since 2015 are African, making the continent the least tolerant of social media globally, a new tracker says.

Thirty African countries have restricted social media access in this period, out of a total of 66 globally, according to the cybersecurity company Surfshark, which describes Africa as a volatile environment for social media.

Surfshark analyzed social media restrictions in 180 countries from 2015. It collected data through open-source information from Freedom House, which is a nonprofit that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights; Netblocks, which is a watchdog organization that monitors cybersecurity and internet governance; and news reports.

The tracker considers social media as social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, and communication apps including Skype, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Viber.

Social media restriction is one tool that African governments use to stop dissent, with another being complete internet shutdowns. They typically do these during elections and protests.

The practice of limiting social media access is usually the product of anti-democraticgovernments seeking to suppress citizens freedom, the tracker says.

The results are far-reaching, as these actions conceal human rights violations, restrict access to information and negatively impact businesses.

According to the Surfshark tracker, at least 16 African countries have restricted social media access in the past due to elections and at least seven have done so due to protests and demonstrations.

This year alone, at least four African countriesUganda, Senegal, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congohave restricted social media access.

Globally, about one third of countries have restricted social media since 2015. The tracker notes that restriction of social media access is particularly prevalent in countries where state authorities own or control the internet infrastructure.

Sign up to the Quartz Africa Weekly Brief here for news and analysis on African business, tech, and innovation in your inbox.

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African countries that have restricted social media access - Quartz Africa