WORD OF MOUTH
WoM
the publication for financial SERVICES and communication professionals
Page 03
To Tweet or Not to Tweet?
Leveraging the Power of Social Media
Also in this issue: 01 Cognito Expands US Presence 02 Raising Media Awareness of TradeTech USA 2009 05 ISITC Explains the Cognito Difference: Understanding Both Finance and PR 06 Calypso: PR Across Three Continents 07 Journalist Q&A with InvestmentNews
Issue 15 | Q1 2010
News
New hires, new offices
Welcome Tom Coombes, CEO COGNITO SAN FRANCISCO – Cognito has opened an office in downtown San
Francisco, in the heart of the financial district. Located in the landmark 101 California building, the office will cater to clients across the West Coast and significantly strengthens Cognito’s presence in the US market.The office will be run by Deborah Eisenberg who has relocated to California from Cognito’s office in New York.
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a n n i V e r S a rY
Welcome to 2010 The financial crisis has tested many businesses to breaking point. Reputations have been materially damaged. A mood of uncertainty still prevails, thanks in part to the backdrop of extensive regulatory reform. Still, there seems to be growing confidence in several areas of the financial sector; some large institutions are profitable again and their success is inevitably contagious. Corporate profile and reputation management are more prominent in boardroom dialogue than ever. Integrity, diligence and prudence are cornerstones of the language that has to be used across the industry. The role of the firm’s communicators is paramount. The recession has driven fast and widespread change across the marketing and communication business. Social media has given us all a newswire. Technological advances mean we can measure, analyze and improve our practices. Interestingly, the internet and changing media mean that old-fashioned PR principles of good stories and press relationships have never been so important. Cognito celebrates its tenth birthday this year. Our business is expanding not only in terms of geographical reach (with a new office in San Francisco) but also with the introduction of powerful analytics and new social media services. Beneath all of these developments is a continual focus on delivering first class PR counsel to our clients. We look forward to helping drive our clients’ businesses throughout 2010.
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Damon Leavell (US)
Ali Wells (US)
Cognito New York continues to grow, bolstering its team of talented PR and marketing professionals with multiple new hires. Damon Leavell joins as Senior Account Manager from McGraw-Hill, where he ran crisis communications for S&P and brings 15 years of experience in financial services and financial technology. Cognito’s marketing department is also expanding, hiring Graphic Designer Ali Wells, whose previous clients include RIM, Accenture and Canadian Business Magazine. Caitlin Mitchell also joins the NY office as an Account Executive, bringing experience with Franklin Templeton, Genworth Financial and Jeffries. Jessica Kleinman also joins the team as an Assistant Account Executive.
Martin Matthews (UK) Stuart Macaulay (UK)
Cognito also expands its London team. Martin Matthews was appointed Cognito Chairman to help the firm continue its rapid expansion and grow profitably through the next stage of its development. Stuart Macaulay joined as the Deputy Managing Director and has been supporting Rod de St. Croix in the areas of new business and client management. In addition, Paul Bowhay joined as an Account Manager, while Charlie Morrow and Claudia Coleman have joined as Account Executives. Finally, Sarah Nadif joined as a Sales Executive. Their contribution will ensure that the office is balanced for sustained client management and growth in 2010.
TradeTech West In September, Cognito teamed up with Worldwide Business Research to provide media relations services to its TradeTech West 2009 show, which was held in San Francisco. Responsibilities included actively helping to raise awareness of the event, managing press, distributing press releases and live blogging directly from the show. Cognito looks forward to continuing the commitment to this dynamic relationship by once again partnering with WBR for their upcoming New York conference, TradeTech USA, which will take place in February 2010.
EuroFinance 2009 EuroFinance Conferences, part of The Economist Group, partnered with Cognito to market its 18th Cash and Treasury Management Conference in Copenhagen this October. The remit was to promote the event, raise media attendance and manage the press office. Global, national and broadcast media covered the event, with over 20 journalists and analysts in attendance. Based on this success, EuroFinance will be working with Cognito to promote its Miami event in May 2010. Next year’s European conference will be in Geneva. Word of Mouth | Issue 15
case study
Event Marketing: Cognito Raises Media Awareness of TradeTech USA 2009 In January 2009, Worldwide Business Research (WBR), the world’s foremost large-scale conference company, decided to work with Cognito to help raise the media profile of one of its flagship events, TradeTech USA, which took place at the beginning of March in New York City.
TradeTech USA 2009 Cognito was asked to raise the profile of TradeTech USA in the media and strengthen press coverage pre- and post-event. Amol Tembe, Deputy Marketing Director of WBR, comments, “We had been in discussions with Cognito about the possibility of working together, and I knew the time was right to bring on Cognito to help increase media awareness of TradeTech USA in New York. We were confident that efforts like these would help us raise our awareness with our attendees.”
Cognito enhanced our relationship with the media and turned media attendance into a real selling point for our exhibitors.
Cognito leveraged the uncertainty of market conditions and focused media outreach around the opportunity to hear from industry experts on topics such as upcoming financial regulation and the impact of new trading technologies. With former SEC Chairman and current member of President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, William Donaldson in attendance, Cognito was also able to draw reporters from The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Barron’s for a private lunch. “Cognito enhanced our relationship with the media and turned media attendance into a real selling point for our exhibitors. Both press attendance and coverage of the event were improved, and having members of Cognito on-site to manage press activities was a huge benefit,” Tembe remarked.
In total, 25 reporters attended, including reporters from Dow Jones and Traders Magazine, a two-fold increase from 2008. Cognito produced and distributed a high-level survey, detailing the interests, opinions and concerns of 50 head buy-side traders on the industry’s most pressing issues. Cognito also capitalized on the interest in the results post-event by distributing a follow-up press release from a live, on-site survey of over 100 buy- and sell-side traders. Coverage resulted in publications ranging from Forbes and Financial News to key trades like Wall Street Letter and Traders Magazine. With a record number of attendees, journalists and pieces of coverage this year, exhibitors and attendees saw and felt the value of their investment at TradeTech USA. On the value of PR at the show, Amol Tembe comments, “Though we still mainly focus on direct sales, we had pre-event coverage, which we have never had before, and this is thanks to Cognito. I believe the real benefit will be on subsequent events. We’re going to distribute the press coverage on TradeTech to our audience so they can see how mainstream the event really is.”
Looking Forward Despite 2009 being a tough year for conferences, Amol Tembe is confident about TradeTech’s future: “People have a fundamental desire and an essential need to connect in person. As we become ever more reliant on technology to handle our social needs, e.g. LinkedIn, Facebook, etc., I am as confident as ever that there is truly no replacement for face-to-face meetings. Moving forward, we anticipate additional international expansion and a broader product portfolio, and Cognito will be a big part of promoting this growth to the media.” n
Former SEC Chairman William Donaldson speaks with repor ters at TradeTech USA 2009
About TradeTech Established in 2001, TradeTech is a global conference series with major events in New York, Paris, Tokyo, Toronto, San Francisco, Mumbai and other cities around the world. Word of Mouth | Issue 15
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COVER STORY
To Tweet or Not to Tweet? Ten years ago, AOL Time Warner was the world’s largest online media company and Google was still in its infancy. Five years ago, MySpace was the lone social networking site, while Facebook was an information sharing website for Harvard students. And three years ago, only birds tweeted. Social media, like the internet that spawned it, can be as fickle as it is fast moving. The only constant appears to be the pace of change. According to a recent survey1, adoption of social media is soaring. Today, one third (35%) of American adult internet users have created a profile on an online social network, four times as many as three years ago. But these numbers are deceptive. While three quarters of adults aged 18-24 have a profile on social networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn, the numbers are reversed in adults over 35. Only 19% of adults over 45 and just 10% of adults over 55 ever visit social networks. The median age for an S&P 500 CEO in 2007 was 55. For professional communicators, harnessing the power of social media is difficult enough when the message is aimed at the youth market. B2B marketers, whose audience tends to be older, have a considerably tougher time deciding which social media tools to use and what size of budget, if any, to allocate. This challenge is compounded by the lack of clarity around how social media is defined and the explosion of social media forms, from micro-blogging to social bookmarking. It is hardly surprising therefore, that the business community has shied away from engaging in this form of communication. However, this has recently begun to change. Increasingly, B2B firms are using the new digital platforms, many of them with varied return on investment and success.
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Pew Internet & American Life Project
Understanding Social Media The words social media conjure up a range of platforms: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube, you name it. For many, the first reaction is confusion. Every day we are bombarded with stories about social media, its merits and its importance. Once you delve into the online space, the number of stories and conversations on social media increases exponentially, and the majority of these discussions are conflicting. For all the jargon and hype, there are a few simple ways to think about social media and some pretty straightforward rules of engagement. Social media was born out of advances in online self-publishing technology. In placing the power to publish, share and edit in everybody’s hands, social media has transformed online users from passive recipients of content to active producers and reproducers
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COVER STORY
of information and opinions. Whereas ‘old’ media, including traditional online media, might be thought of as a one-to-many monologue, social media has created a many-to-many dialogue between highly active participants. The key to social media’s success has been its seemingly low cost of entry. It requires little technical expertise, time or money to establish a Facebook page, a LinkedIn group or a Twitter handle. But, for marketers, this simplicity does not mean that social media is a free marketing tool. In many ways social media has replaced ‘old’ costs such as direct marketing and technology infrastructure with ‘new’ costs: in particular, those related to creativity and time. According to a March survey by the Social Media Examiner, 72% of marketers polled have only just begun to use social media in 2009. Yet nearly 40% of them already spend 10 or more hours a week on social media. Incredibly, 10% invest over 20 hours, or more than half their working week, on social media where they may have spent no time at all 12 months ago. This suggests that marketers are already recognizing the importance of spending adequate amounts of time on social media programs. Equally, just because marketers have a new set of marketing tools, it doesn’t mean that tried and tested marketing principles should be ignored or abandoned.
Social media marketing requires significant investment of time and creative resources and is here to stay. The Fundamentals Still Apply The rapid commercialization of typewriters in the early 1900s did not create a generation of better writers, just as the wide availability of cheap, portable cameras in the 1950s did not produce better photographers. In the same way, the growth of social media has neither made marketing any easier nor poor marketers any better. In fact, as we move in to what many social media experts are calling ‘the attention age,’ in which customer attention is the new commodity, the need for quality content has increased, not decreased. Like writing and photography, anyone can tweet, but harnessing any of these mediums to maximize
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the impact of your message requires a truly professional approach. Equally, the exponential growth of available social media channels has done nothing to diminish the need for and value of high quality content. Unfortunately, the inherent ‘social’ element of social media blinds many marketers to these facts. Because networks, groups and feeds rapidly attract passive ‘friends,’ ‘members’ and ‘followers,’ it is easy to believe that your message is making an impact and creating a ‘buzz.’ In fact, this is just the low cost of entry in action once again. It costs a follower nothing to join a group but infinitely more to engage with it, which is why smart marketers judge blogs by the number of comments, not the number of subscribers or posts. Know Your Audience The key to any communications campaign is understanding your audience, and more importantly, knowing their behavioral patterns. Recently, it took a 15-year old Morgan Stanley intern carrying out a media research project on the habits of teenagers to take the shine off Twitter. He concluded that teenagers don’t tweet because most of his friends had pay-as-you-go cell phones and few were willing to use their valuable credit on tweets, especially with no one following their profiles. Before you start engaging with new digital platforms, first find out if your key audiences are using them. There may be a large amount of anecdotal and published evidence showing strong return on investment for those using these platforms, but success is contingent on reaching the right audience, not using the platform with the most headlines. Resource It Properly As with all communications campaigns, adequate resources are critical to success. Setting up a social media dialogue with your key audiences and failing to engage regularly with them could have a negative impact on your reputation. Prioritize your efforts and commit to allocating the necessary resources to ensure that the campaign succeeds in its aims. If you find that you do not have enough resources, then consider cutting down on the social media platforms that you plan to engage with. You will achieve far better results by using one platform effectively than many platforms inefficiently. Be Flexible In the fast-moving digital world, new communica-
tions platforms seem to spring up on an almost weekly basis, whilst other platforms seem to disappear, or go out of fashion in equal regularity. As already discussed, knowing your audience, recognizing when they change platforms and following them will help. However, don’t get too focused on the platform; rather, remain focused on your audience’s needs, and be flexible in your approach so you are prepared to redeploy resources quickly in line with the audience requirements. So Where to Focus? As with pre-internet marketing, the quality of content and the quality of engagement with the right audience remain paramount. The combination of these factors will create a new and exciting corollary to your communications campaign. Social media marketing requires significant investment of time and creative resources and is here to stay. It is however evolving continuously and rapidly, so at a minimum it requires continued observation. What is clear is that if you ignore it, you do so at your peril. n
Cognito’s Social Media Program Social media is transforming business communication. Good stories can now drive enough traffic to your site to crash your servers. Twitter can generate real business leads. Your LinkedIn group can help build your community. But, now that everyone can send out news and messages quickly and economically, a crowded industry is in danger of becoming bewilderingly noisy. Your message risks getting lost. Social media presents a huge opportunity and should be embraced. As the tools have become ubiquitous, good stories and differentiated positioning have become increasingly important. Managers and directors need to spend more time helping identify and define the corporate message. The quality of the organization’s message and narrative is essential. Cognito integrates social media into the heart of our PR service to help clients harness the power of the new tools, thinking and practices, while focusing on traditional imperatives. For further information please contact:
ipr@cognitomedia.com
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case study
CALYPSO: PR ACROSS THREE CONTINENTS Calypso is a global application software provider that delivers an integrated suite of trading and risk applications to the capital markets function within banks and other companies participating in the world’s financial markets. Calypso and Cognito have had a longstanding PR relationship, which started back in 2005 when Calypso appointed Cognito to manage its media strategy in Europe. Cognito now delivers media relations for Calypso on a global level across Europe, the US and Asia-Pacific.
WoM caught up with Gordon Chan, Manager of Corporate Marketing at Calypso, to gain a better understanding of why working with one agency across three continents has clear benefits.
Cognito supports Calypso in a media relations capacity across three continents - what is Cognito’s exact remit? The original remit back in 2005 focused on three core activities: thought leadership, analyst outreach and creating awareness and buzz in our space. Today the remit is the same but with a greater focus on thought leadership initiatives. Cognito now advises us on what our remit should be. We’ve grown to a point in our relationship where ‘Team Cognito’ is an integral part of our marketing communications team - we have a very frank and open relationship. These are exciting times for the financial industry, and Cognito helps to ensure we have active voices in the media covering this piece of history.
What impact does PR have on Calypso’s business? The obvious impact is that when we walk into a sales situation, the prospect has a good idea of our key differentiators and our successes in
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the marketplace. The other major impact, less mentioned, is that good PR helps to motivate employees and reinforces customers that they made the right decision. Many companies push out 10-20 press releases a year and consider that to be their PR program. To be effective users of PR, organizations need to employ a multi-faceted program with messages that are consistent yet adaptable to multiple venues and forums. Cognito’s knowledge of our space is critical to developing a multi-pronged program that touches events, analyst relations, press relations, placed features and of course press releases. Cognito focuses on this for us across the three major continents in which we are very active.
What are the benefits of having one agency across three continents? The most important benefit is alignment and consistent messaging. Calypso has 12 offices around the world and, in addition to myself, marketing managers in EMEA and APAC.
Cognito helps us to ensure that we effectively communicate on a global basis.
What key highlights have you seen since working with Cognito? Cognito has been able to achieve high-level coverage in the outlets we care about most, on topics that are crucial to our business. Although we are a private company, Cognito is able to consistently help us pack a bigger punch, landing us coverage in places like the Financial Times, Bloomberg and Dow Jones. Cognito also helps us raise our profile in very specific, targeted areas in an effort to help us ultimately grow our business. The team is very quick to act - if a story breaks in the news and it’s something we can comment on, they immediately get on the case to try to get us involved in the story. With so much going on in the financial markets, this has been truly valuable for us in raising our reputation as thought leaders, speaking beyond just topics related to financial technology. n
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The Journalist Perspective: Q&A with Evan Cooper, InvestmentNews When and why did you get into journalism? My first job was covering the floor covering industry for Home Furnishings Daily, a sister publication to Women’s Wear Daily. Talk about starting on the ground floor. I went to another trade paper and then to the Miami Herald in Florida as a business reporter. At the time, the Herald’s business section consisted of the business editor, the assistant business editor, who did the page layout, and me, the sole business reporter. Wanting to earn more money, I then went into PR, and moved back to New York to work as news bureau manager at the New York Stock Exchange and as the SVP of communications at the Securities Industry Association, Wall Street’s major trade group at the time. From there I went to Drexel Burnham Lambert, at the time the fifth largest investment bank in the nation. I was there when the firm was being investigated by the SEC and was going down in flames. Talk about crisis PR! After that, I did a couple of other PR and financial journalism things, including stints as editor of Securities Industry News, On Wall Street and at Institutional Investor. I joined InvestmentNews in April 2007 as Senior Managing Editor and was named a Deputy Editor last year.
What do you think are the primary ways in which journalism has evolved over the last few years? Not to be glib, but the biggest change has been shrinkage – in the number of publications, reporters and editors. This has come about, of course, as a result of the rise of the internet and the decline of display advertising. B2B publications may be suffering to a lesser degree than newspapers and general magazines, but everyone is feeling the pain. Whoever is left must do more work, faster – for both print and online – which increasingly means doing audio and video as well as writing. The reporters and editors who remain will have to be skilled at everything. If not, there will be dozens ready to replace them.
How has social media affected your role as a journalist? I bet tech publications and those closest to social media were the first to deal with this, but now we are all being affected by LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media. At InvestmentNews, I ran a webcast for financial advisers about how social media can be used; it attracted 1,250 attendees. Some of our reporters use social media to find sources and to keep in touch with them. We’ve also set up an InvestmentNews Twitter account so we can Tweet news items to an ever-growing number of advisers who use that tool.
This seems to be an evolving frontier, so we’ll have to see where it goes.
Do you think financial services firms should be utilizing social media? I’m sure social media will prove useful to financial services firms. The big question is how, and that will require knowledgeable, creative and clever people at financial services firms (what an opportunity for PR people!) to come up with new solutions. The big stumbling block at securities firms, mutual fund companies, banks and advisory firms is regulation. All aspects of the financial services business are so heavily regulated and so carefully overseen by compliance officials (except, it seems, when something horrible happens that costs ordinary investors their life savings) that tweeting and blogging becomes like getting a short-wave radio message out from behind the Iron Curtain.
What do you enjoy most about your job? I still think there’s something magical about seeing the stories I worked on transformed into the InvestmentNews edition that lands on my desk Monday morning. Being on a team that creates our print, online and other products and taps all the bits and pieces of financial/economic and other information that I’ve acquired over the years is very satisfying. n
ABOUT COGNITO Founded in 1999, with offices in London, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco and clients across every time zone, Cognito is a full service, results-focused communications agency working exclusively for finance and financial technology companies.Whether delivering retained PR or innovative design and marketing projects, Cognito’s clients benefit from creative and strategic thinking, professional delivery and a commitment to exceeding expectations. From global institutions to niche players, Cognito’s experience has been gained through working with many of the leading players in the financial sector. WoM is written and designed by Cognito. Web: www.cognitomedia.com | Blog: www.marcoms.cognitomedia.com/blog | Twitter: www.twitter.com/cognitopr London, UK: +44 (0)20 7438 110 0 | New York: +1 646 395 6300 | Los Angeles: +1 310 246 9530 | San Francisco: +1 415 946 8820 | Email: info@cognitomedia.com