Going Social With Your Brand

Session Description:

In today's Web 2.0 world of social media, how should financial marketers react and participate? This new "online all the time" world is changing the rules about how to talk and listen to customers and prospects. From blogs, RSS feeds and Podcasts to YouTube and Facebook, we'll explore how some financial services institutions (as well as some companies outside the vertical) are using social media tools to listen and engage with their customers.

Social networks are growing at a fast pace and advertisers have spent more than $1 billion advertising online in these networks in 2007, and that is expected to continue to grow at a speedy pace. As reaching your target becomes ever more challenging, marketers are realizing opportunities to reach their consumers in the long tail, which can certainly be accomplished via social networks.

The challenge and concern for many in the realm of social media, especially in financial services, is lack of control with user-generated content and the potential for brand association with questionable content. For those that take the plunge and experiment, they first need to make sure there's a solid strategy in place and a mechanism for determining success. The metrics we're used to looking at in online marketing aren't comprehensive enough in the social media world where brand engagement can also be a positive result.

Playing in the social media space may not be for everyone, but it is certainly something everyone should consider...and at the very least, everyone should be listening to what people are saying about you.

This session is appropriate for senior financial services executives with responsibility for Online Banking, Channel Management, Marketing, Market Research and Strategy Teams.


About Gary Jackson:
Gary Jackson leads Google's Financial Services Partnership Team in Atlanta. His team works with some of the nation's most recognized brands and advertising agencies supporting them with strategic planning, sales consulting and account management. Gary joined Google from SunTrust Bank where he was Group Vice President holding positions leading Brand Marketing and Strategy as well as Interactive Marketing. Prior to that, Gary held positions at Wachovia, Equifax and Bank of America.

Gary has a bachelor's degree in Advertising from San Jose State University, a master's degree in Marketing from Georgia State University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.


About Google:
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

As a first step to fulfilling that mission, Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed a new approach to online search that took root in a Stanford University dorm room and quickly spread to information seekers around the globe. Google is now widely recognized as the world's largest search engine -- an easy-to-use free service that usually returns relevant results in a fraction of a second.

When you visit www.google.com or one of the dozens of other Google domains, you'll be able to find information in many different languages; check stock quotes, maps, and news headlines; lookup phonebook listings for every city in the United States; search billions of images and peruse the world's largest archive of Usenet messages -- more than 1 billion posts dating back to 1981.

We also provide ways to access all this information without making a special trip to the Google homepage. The Google Toolbar enables you to conduct a Google search from anywhere on the web. And for those times when you're away from your PC altogether, Google can be used from a number of wireless platforms including WAP and i-mode phones.


www.google.com