How Did the Rise of Technology Innovation Benefit Marketing Communication - Essay Example

1. Introduction In the so-called "Information Society" or in the also well-worn "Knowledge Economy" it appears to be no room more than for those whoare really up to the newest technologies. It has been proved that we are moving towards an increasing specialised world, and this specially affects marketing and sales communication, since companies -no matter if private or public ones - have to address each customer or at least really delimited targets in order to success with their messages or desired goals. Attempting to control selling costs while maintaining the personal touch, sellers are embracing technology-mediated sales communication tools such as videoconferencing systems, cellular phones, web sites, and electronic data interchange (EDI) systems, as McDonald and Kirk (McDonald et al. 2003)state in their analysis of the impact of technology-mediated sales on the customer behaviour. According to them, the adoption of technology-mediated communication on channel partner relationships really influences the customer satisfaction since this technology is found to have significant, positive, direct effects on future intentions. In order to illustrate the above stated as well as the power on technological innovation applied to marketing, this paper will focus on the HSBC bank latest marketing and communication campaigns, offering a brief but comprehensive review on the achievements of this marketing initiative, as well as the coherence and accordance of their strategic marketing campaign, the use of new technologies and HSBC core values. Bearing in mind HSBCs motto "We are the world's local bank", it is easy to understand the banks effort to address and reach every one of their potential customers. Headquartered in London, HSBC is one of the largest banking and financial services organisations in the world, with an international network that comprises over 10,000 offices in 83 countries and territories in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, the Americas, the Middle East and Africa. With listings on the London, Hong Kong, New York, Paris and Bermuda stock exchanges, shares in HSBC Holdings plc are held by around 200,000 shareholders in some 100 countries and territories. The shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange in the form of American Depositary Receipts. Through an international network linked by advanced technology, including a rapidly growing e-commerce capability, HSBC provides a comprehensive range of financial services: personal financial services; commercial banking; corporate, investment banking and markets; private banking; and other activities1. It appears to be logical that such an international and new technology-oriented company seek for the perfect marketing strategy within the newest communication tools. This corporate features have led the Hong Kong Bank to put in practice one of the most comprehensive and celebrated Marketing Communication Campaign in the past couple of years. It happened to be not only logical but also coherent and even expected that a company that always proudly offers the latest and trendiest way of financial services as commercial banking; corporate, investment banking and markets; or private banking, resort also to the most innovative manner to present them to the customer. In the last two years, HSBC Marketing and Communication responsible have turned to Mail-listing, Bluetooth, You Tube, Facebook or Google to advertise its services, in a wise attempt to touch their clients wherever they are, following their corporative slogan. 2. Technological Innovation, a Marketing approach Technology innovation has always been a hot issue as it is continuously attracting the attention of trend setters or new markets discoverers, boosted for a increasingly competitive market with limited customers. Even thought, many of the inventions we take for granted today lay unused and unappreciated for years before they finally made it to the marketplace. For example, it was just in the 1980's when Steve Jobs2 took a 1960's invention (the computer mouse) and revolutionized the computer industry. In the same line, it should be mentioned the BT re-discovery in 2000 of their patented hypertext linking which allows us to navigate the Internet, developed in 1980s. Recent History shows the gap between the market and technology (sometimes called the innovation gap) is not just an episodic one but a really common issue. The high technology sector is a dynamic, fast-changing and highly competitive environment and bringing these technologies to the marketplace requires marketers who can move at the same pace. This has been well understood by some of the leader companies of any industry such as Youtube, which last update of its already acclaimed features has make it easier to its millions users to upload, view, and share video clips on a regular basis by sharing this website. One of the most popular novelties is the Real Simple Syndication (RSS) to subscribe to content feeds. RSS is an XML based format used for content distribution and syndication. Subscribing to RSS Feeds allows users the convenience of receiving custom, up-to-date videos without having to regularly check the site for updates. RSS takes an innovative approach to YouTube marketing technology by allowing users the chance to customize the videos they choose and the convenience of being alerted when new videos have been added without the hassle of having to browse millions of videos. YouTube offers several RSS feeds for categorized groups of videos such as: recently uploaded, top viewed, etc. as well as customized feeds for users and tags. YouTubes avant-garde approach of incorporating RSS will forever change the way we view videos, one video at a time. But lets focus on HSBC and its use of technology innovation to improve its marketing communication strategy. At the end of 2003, the bank launched 'Managing for Growth', a strategic plan that provides HSBC with a blueprint for growth and development during the period to 2008. Quoting the responsible of this campaign, "the strategy is evolutionary, not revolutionary. It builds on HSBC's strengths and it addresses the areas where further improvement is considered both desirable and attainable" (HSBC Strategic Plan 2003).3 Management's vision for this financial group should be sum up as an aim to be the world's leading financial services company. In this context, 'leading' means preferred, admired and dynamic, and "being recognized for giving the customer a fair deal". HSBC will strive to secure and maintain a leading position within each of its customer groups in selected markets, to bring its motto into the real field by acting as 'the world local bank'. In order to achieve the challenge of being the world bank while remaining local, HSBC serves itself with the ultimate technology, conducting comprehensive researches to explore the factors and considerations which give rise to local strategies development in marketing communications, or in HSBC language: 'Think Global, Art Local'. These investigations revealed that it is critically important to have knowledge of local cultures and customs when entering in such a global business as financial services are. The most relevant finding was that a general service like banking can also be moulded for customers in such a way that they will give preference to a service which cares about their local values (Golik-Klanac 2005). International banks are following the money being invested in emerging markets, and they are implementing strategies to help them acclimate to the local culture. HSBC and its campaign of "The World's Local Bank" as a good example of the marriage between a consistent, ubiquitous brand identity combined with a communication strategy that very much plays upon regional and local references emerging economy consumers can relate to. The global brand message HSBC once adopted regardless of the market is now reserved for its business strategy-not the brand communication strategy, which needs to be customized to particular markets by people who understand both the brand and specific cultures. Following both its core values and strategic goals, HSBC is continuously looking for those communication and marketing tools that allow them to approach their target in the most appealing and effective way. Basing this studio on the well known and proved actual tough competence within the banks and financial entities scope, HSBC has opted for addressing its customers, whether actual or potential ones, through relationship marketing means, looking for the desire of being at the same time the local -referring to familiar, close, easy to find and to use, comfortable, known, etc. - and world-recalling attributes as cosmopolite, comprehensive, international, broad and complete- bank. By 'relationship marketing' we refer to the conscious use of communication through a customer base, aimed to develop and manage long-term and trusting relationships by obtaining the customer endorsement or loyalty. HSBC has shown itself as a pioneer not only with its way of doing business but also with means used to communicate and advertise the first. It is well known than is advertising, as in any other business, the important is to be remembered, and one of the most successful strategies to achieve it is by being the first is doing something new. This philosophy has led to the creation of new marketing and advertising tools and channels, as well as to the development of new technologies to be utilized as advertising media, helping thus to the develop of the so-called new generation of marketing and advertising. Proximity Marketing and Bluetooth The new mobile advances allow us to communicate and interact with the user and the environment in millions of different ways. Through the Bluetooth, it is posible to send content and to make people to actively participate with their environment, or even among them thanks to multi-player games or the presence detectors. This is achieved by the setting Bluetooth antennas that permit to know when a cell mobile enters into the area of action. The real capability of the target to use their cell mobiles whenever and whatever they are make it possible to carry out proximity marketing campaigns at the streets or even within the venue we want to promote. In October 2007, HSBC dropped its plans to use Bluetooth to send ads to the mobile phones of people passing the branches, trend which trial started earlier on 2006 in London. By using the standard Bluetooth advertising technique, that means to send people a message asking if they want to receive a promotional message from the bank (a practice often referred to as Bluespamming4). It doesn't seem to have worked though, as a spokesperson for HSBC declared at silicon.com: "We did look at the results and it is not being taken forward. It didn't prove commercially viable. (McCue 2007) One of the main points in the debate on the functionality and real use range of this channel is that even if the medium is useful from a marketing perspective, is it really a way companies want to present themselves and their brands" There is broad scope for Bluetooth marketing and promise in the technology, but not if it sends out messages to everyone who walks past with their Bluetooth turned on. Apparently, Bluetooth marketing, otherwise known as "Proximity Marketing" is only suited to certain situations to take of in a way that will benefit the end user. Banking is not an exciting medium for mobile, as there are few application usages currently for banking using mobile services. Setmeblue! Setmeblue is the first social network that permits free log in from both a website and a mobile phone thanks to the Bluetooth technology. User are able -if they are near to the network access points- to Chat and know each other, in addition to send pictures from their mobile terminals o their Internet profiles just with a clic. This social network has become the first platform for non intrusive proximity marketing since are the users who choose what kind of promotion they want to receive. Blogs If planned, maintained and manager properly, a corporative blog can come out into a brilliant and innovative marketing tool. It is not just an open window to the world, but also an authentic communication department that make it possible to show the company's point of view, the companies opinions or the last press releases and news published. This is undoubtedly a magnificent tool to reach the youngest target. Within the campaign 'Your Point of View', a new blog on each topic discussed was started to fire the discussion on the given issue. To HSBC, "In an increasingly uniformed world, we think it is important to value the different points of view and that it should be some place where everybody would able to publish his opinions and know about the others". Nevertheless, the practical implementation of corporate blogging can also present many problems. Adopting an open dialogue and putting a human face on communication are magnificent assets, but difficult to guarantee consistently. Internal and external rules get in the path, particularly in heavily regulated industries. This is the case when a crisis has to be faced and that "open dialogue" and "human face" become a liability more than an positive advantage. Withdrawing access risks undoing all the goodwill created by a blog, while continuing the same level of accessibility becomes undesirable - or dangerous - due to a lack of control (Benady, D. 1996). David Benady throws the card on the table wondering if the corporations should have a blog. To him, ass long as they differentiate between the concept of blogging as medium or message, between having a blog and "being a blogger", then it can be a valuable marketing tool. This responds as when acting as a medium, blogs are fast, cheap and easy to use; a relatively small amount of effort is needed to make blog content visible to a large potential audience. Consequently, in and end the use of this tool depends on whether the blog audiences have significant overlap with a key market or not. Most of big businesses have little to gain and much to lose by exposing themselves in this way, as the main advantages of this format - known as speed, ease and immediacy of use; the ability to enter in detailed discussions about posts - are negated by both internal and external regulations, threat that can be worsened being the company forced to climb down from open dialogue with stakeholders in the face of a crisis. Successful blogging is an outcome of good integrated marketing, and HSBC has proved to have understand it pretty well, as its campaign Your voice said. One of the most interesting aspects of this campaign is that through different open chat rooms and blogging discussions, they have increased the public traffic in the bank corporate Web and sites, by the time they have collected important data about their actual and potential customers and their tastes, necessities, etc. to be used in future products and new services. To launch a website it is necessary to have design and programming notions, as well as knowledge about how the tools to be used by the user to find that site work. Usability is a key factor in the websites. If anybody does not find what I looking for in less than 4 seconds, he or she will abandon this site and will go to another one. Content updating is also critical to maintain the web for a certain period of time without getting obsolete. This has been clearly understood by HSBC as one of its last campaigns reflects: "Your point of view". The last responds to an online survey to know the opinion of potential customers on a varied sort of actuality topics, such as the climate change, tattoos, clean energies, sushi, TV realities, risk sportsAll they are those recurrent topics in a distended chat. Given terms are proposed to be selected by the client as his choice. It is also possible to know the out comes regarding the geographical location, discovering, for example, how the Chinese love tattoos that Mexicans hate. These results are published at the mini-site of the campaigns, directly linked to the HSBC corporate Web, what increases this site traffic by the time it attract some "curious" Internet surfers that would have never enter this site if there would have not existed these polls. According to the Malaysian Star report on the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank's new brand launch5 - Worldwide consumer research found that while people appreciated the value of international organisations and services, they questioned the prevailing 'One size fits all' global model... Consumers wanted to be treated as individuals and to feel that the companies cared about them, recognised their needs and understood what makes their community unique. The power of the global brand is beyond question, but some researches have shown an increasing disaffection for "things global", in various manifestations and particularly in Asia (Mahdavi, I. 2006). The reactionary flee to launching or re-launching local brands as somehow "global" or "world class" has delivered painful looses to many international firms, who fail to recognize the intelligence of local consumers. The reaction against local brands "dressed up" as international has been in at least 2 or 3 cases severe. In those cases, local brands which continue to stress their local flavour have captured market share. Facebook Originally created by a group of Harvard students, Facebook has become into the largest social network in the Internet, with more than 47 million of members. It is open to whoever that has an email account and that subscribe to this web of social networks. Thanks to its immediately success among the world youth, Facebook has achieved the status of "network among networks", taking the first place in the top ten world commercial placements. Facebook is without any doubt one of the most visited sites in the Net6. In terms of advertising and marketing communication, this tool allows the announcers to install their ads or products and services within the daily conversations of the Facebok members, seducing the potential clients during their private conversations. As it is done in Google, the ads are located in concrete spaces, mixed up with users posts, announcements, newsDespite being highly visible, these do not interrupt the user activities within the network. While post, the announcer would receive the performance diagrams. However, the relation between HSBC and Facebook has not been always friendly. Since a student campaign using the social networking website Facebook forced the multinational bank into a U-turn over charges and to abandon plans to scrap interest-free overdrafts for students leaving university last year in the summer, the rope was tightened. After thousands of students on Facebook threatened to boycott the bank, complaining about an unfulfilled promise of the bank -many students joined this bank in the belief that they could take advantage of such a free overdraft to tide them over between leaving university and starting work- the first HSBC respond was that "it was not too big to listen to its customers". This did no other thing than spurring on the online student movement. Finally, both parties reached an agreement, freezing HSBC the interest rates for these students. This case shows once more how this bank pays attention to its target until such an extent of withdrawing from its first position and even daring to take the risk of facing a massive social movement against its interests. This would have never been possible some years ago, when nobody had even thought of a network with such a power. At this point, it has been inquired if this is a sign of things to come or just the result of the frenzy around the known as social media. HSBC claim it shows "they are not too big to listen to the needs of customers." It may point out how the medium of social networking can be used to add weight to a grievance and force action (O'Hear 2007).Regarding the outcomes of this movement for the bank, HSBC has strengthened its public image for listening to the "little people", bringing into action its motto by converting "to local" in this occasion. Conclusions After examining the theoretical concepts of innovation technology, relationship marketing, new communication and information tools, globalization and global strategy, and the impact of this upon the strategy of HSBC, it is possible to conclude that HSBC current strategy, despite being known as 'The worlds local bank' is not exclusively global. HSBC, as an example of a highly successful financial institution operating in a competitive market place, provides us with a relevant and complex case study to assess the impact of innovation technology, new marketing and communication techniques and globalization upon financial institutions, which themselves only represent one market sector but illustrate profoundly the effects of globalization upon modern business. Concerning the innovation technology, when looking to the future the temptation is to seek out something new, sine, as far as brands are concerned, new is synonymous with innovation, meaning this success. However, for some scholars, an obsession with innovation may swift into another facet of short-term thinking, bring us then into the question of how to you use brand strategy to exploit that innovation and not just make it a temporary, "feudal" thing (Aaker )7. In this sense, one solution to avoid jumping on the wrong bandwagon is to let consumers do the hard work for you. Eric von Hippel, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology8 points out that this is nothing new, since consumers have been altering and improving upon providers' visions for some time now. Von Hippel states in his Democratizing Innovation that "Traditional market researchers tend to ignore lead users. They think 'we can't sell many products to them; they're not our target market'. What they need to learn is that many of the new products lead users develop today will be wanted by the target market of tomorrow." However, this does not mean that the customer has to be completely ignored, but maximized. This can mean from using consumer-generated websites to generate new ideas and follow up on product modifications, to address them directly to know what they want fro very first hand. Nevertheless, this doesn't work in all industries and it can turn into dangerous to leave the nature of the company product or service up to the customer mood or feelings. At this point, it can be certainly affirmed that a thorough understanding of the impact of the Internet on industrial purchase decisions is of critical importance for industrial marketers seeking to incorporate the Internet in their overall communication strategy. Accordingly, it is necessary to go in depth into the degree to which HSBC purchasing professionals perceive the Internet as useful, as well as examining how them are using the Internet for communication activities, how the Internet compares to other promotional tools in influencing buyers' purchase decisions, and whether differences among buyers can be identified relative to the perceived influence of HSBC website and other suppliers ones. Going back to the relationship marketing, within highly developer business environments, a scientific management of the relations with clients is fundamental to build successful and long lasting ties. They have been examined the key strategic drivers of HSBC reviewing the bank's history, highlighting their success factors, i.e. the advancement of information technology, outsourcing of jobs to developing countries, etc., and discussing HSBC approaches to global economy. This is also linked to the role played by relationship marketing (RM) in customer retention in the banking industry providing, as well as in the issues of customer loyalty (as for example in the data gathering through online surveys on the users tastes and preferences on a varied sort of topics that have little to do with financial services.) Following David Payne, any company attempting to go further in this direction, should start with an identification of those customers worthy of establishing long-term relations with. It is interesting to go on to cover the importance of relationship marketing in the modern business environment and the impact of loyalty. The issues discussed in this paper suggest the possibility of a paradigm shift away from the traditional marketing mix towards a relationship-orientated approach to marketing theory, concluding that these concepts can be integrated to some extent (Facebook users "riot" due to HSBC un- fulfillment of some contracts clauses-announced at Facebook-). What appears to be clear is that without effective use of technology, relationship marketing is not an effective strategy. Hence, relationship marketing, based on technological advances, can be considered as a new paradigm. It is demonstrated that everything companies do to build consumer loyalty is affected by technology. It is shown that traditional, relationship, and technologicalship marketing are fundamentally different. The technologicalship marketing allows for different types of synergy effects, solutions, different customers, and different types of interactions and relationships. About the proliferation of Internet influenced the balance of power between consumers and companies, all from the perspective of the innovation technology and marketing tool, the discussion will remark the causes of the increase of consumer power in certain sectors. At the same time, on the example of certain service industry companies it will show that the market power shift did not affect all the industries in the equal way. The review of database marketing capabilities will show the way companies can collect information about customers and use it to increase their bargaining power. This would be the case of the before explained case of the change carried out towards the current motto of HSBC: "Think Global, Act Local" or the still ongoing campaign to check the customer interests and tastes out. Bibliography AAKER, D. A. & JOACHIMSTHALER, E. Brand Leadership 2000. Free Press. New York. USA. BENADY, D. Using the Power of Public Opinion. 1996. Marketing Week. UK. Pages 28-30. 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The Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 17, 2/3, 151-166. RAO, S., PERRY, C. & FRAZER, L. The Impact of Internet Use on Inter-Firm Relationships in Australian Service Industries. 2003. Australasian Marketing Journal11 (2), 10-21 TURNBULL, P.W., (1990) Roles of Personal Contacts in Industrial Marketing, in Understanding Business Markets: Interaction, Relationships and Networks, ed. Ford, D., Academic Press, London, 78-87. VON HIPPEL, E. Democratizing Innovation. 2005. Technological Innovations. MIT Press. Boston, Massachusetts. ZINELDIN, M. Beyond relationship marketing: technological marketing. 2000. Marketing Intelligence & Planning. Vol.8 Issue 1. Page 9-23. HSBC Corporate Website www.hsbc.com www.yourvoice.com Steve Jobs Bio http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/jobs.htm 1. Introduction 1 2. Technological Innovation, a Marketing approach 4 Proximity Marketing and Bluetooth 7 Setmeblue! 9 Blogs 9 Facebook 13 Conclusions 15 Bibliography 20 Read More