Finding differentiation for any financial services brand has never been easy. When that brand is digital in nature, it gets even tougher. So included in online brokerage TD Ameritrade’s marketing war chest are both NFL and U.S. Olympic Committee sponsorships, along with a hefty media budget. At the recent Association of National Advertisers conference in Orlando, company CMO Denise Karkos discussed the state of both mainstream and sports marketing.
“
If you haven’t nailed the art of connecting to consumers with a branding effort, then your ability to reach them won’t matter, because you haven’t connected with them emotionally. So we’re spending as much time on brand health as anything.”
 |
Photo by: CLARION PICTURES
|
On consumers’ changing media habits: Our biggest challenge is adapting to, measuring and even creating content for a consumer who’s increasingly shifting from one device to another or even using two or three devices at once. We need to be savvy enough to know when a customer is doing that. Then we could sequence messages and get much more personalized. But I don’t think anyone has those capabilities yet.
Assessing the NFL sponsorship after a year: It’s our audience … [but] we signed on six days before the Ray Rice video was released, and the emails I was getting went from “Congrats” to “What are you doing?” But the NFL proved to be resilient and a powerful marketing tool. Since we signed [in September 2014], we have seen our brand consideration move up one spot in a category of five. I can’t isolate that to the NFL, but it’s been a big factor in our positive category movement.
The challenges of mobile marketing: Mobile is both enabling and frustrating for us. Around 40 percent of our new clients last month came in through mobile and only use our mobile products. The fact we can’t create and establish a relationship as an advertiser with them on those mobile devices is very frustrating. Our dollars are not following all those eyeballs onto mobile, but we definitely want them to eventually. The ad units aren’t great, and the challenge of creating great content that fits different-sized screens is real.
Online vs. traditional: It’s generally assumed now by marketers that you can build a brand entirely online. We’re about a 65/35 split between digital and traditional media. With online video and all the cross-device usage, I really believe you can connect there, but for our category, we still need traditional media also. Our competitors are there, and consumers are still engaging, especially when it comes to live sports.
The “new” consumer: Consumers’ wants are demanding: a more intellectual, deeper and more functional relationship with their brands. They want more utility and information, and content is the way to meet that demand. It’s definitely a higher-value form of consumer communication, but it’s still advertising to me.
