Banks were really hit by the CARD ACt. If you watched your TV News streams last month, the CARD Act results borne out with BofA publishing its new card statements to the press. These statement show now that for an average $3000 balance outstanding on your cardd, the minimum revolver payment will take you 10 years to repay. Similarily another box shows that if you wanted it repaid in 3 years you have to shell out $300 or some such helluva number right there on the statement.

The banks have ofcourse used the sobering effect on consumers to mop up $38 million in overdraft fees from the consumers BofA customers have been complaining all year and Wells Fargo, an old hand would be still going on with its old ways. For a global traveler used to simpler processes that deny your transaction and let you check your balance without too many charges, this comes as a rude shock as well. I commiserate with the americans that need these banks and their retail accounts. Here is the European Banking Industry’s expansionory diversion that was temporarili put on hold in 2008/ 2009.

ING Direct is now being touted as

..the Southwest Airlines of the banking industry. It’s got low fees, dynamic employees who tweet often, thousands of devoted fans on Facebook and cool places to hang out. And it’s zigging in another area where other banks are now zagging: overdraft coverage

The Deutsche Bank / Bankers Trust combine failed where ING much like a TESCO, caused marketing and banking visionaries like us to put Retail Financial Supermarkets and Direct online banks with no offline real offices and branches into the picture of the future of banking.

The ING Direct model does offer hope to those who want to live without the clutter of paper, but is inherently a direct target for the FED or any other Oversight Council that might supercede its powers and FDIC gets an easy target. But, ING has worked hard with the setting up and with the regulators positioning it alongside other online offerings like Air tickets, Groceries, UPS and books..can I also get a driving licence online

ING, however, sees the transition and customer confusion as an opportunity to market its terms. “We think that with the new regulations and things like banks pressuring customers to opt-in for overdraft coverage, that the market is really coming to us,” said Todd Sandler, ING Direct head of product strategy. “We’ve seen a real shift, even in just in the past 45 to 60 days … our business is up 70% to 80%.”

Related Reading:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• Share/Bookmark on Linked in

Tags: Banking, Banks, CARD, ING Direct, Overdrafts, retail-lifestyle

India’s Investment rate is a piggish 36% . People seem to have an innate strength from having put their money in a FD. While HSBC Canara’s new dimpled cheeks shone in the baby showers on OOH Media, ( new ad speak /for bored upwardl y mobile salaried Twenty-somethings and senior bystanders watching Flat panel screens across Cafes, theaters and Super Malls ) Religare also launched a $25 million ad budget , covering its own brands at Religare Enterprises, Religare Life, Religare AMC and lately its Macquaries run Wealth Management venture

Religare Macquarie Pvt Wealth

The education whim is likely to continue to be the winning motif in all such publicity campaigns, leavin room to defend marketing expenses for insurance fund administration or advisor fees on your portfolio and looping all possible positioning and targeting ambitions into an endless market development broadcast rather like a new age Aldous Huxley or George Orwell government tellng its citizens about good governance.

Religare already has 452 towns in its umbrella, even the $1 million budget Macquarie getting nine offices in cities like Coimbatore and Guwahati. Will we have enough cash currency to fill the airtime for such dollops of marketing thru educative print and cost of retirement ads?

Related Reading:

From highly woven storylines for Max New York Life Insurance, to the overarching philosophical muse in ING’s ‘paisa sirf paisa nahin hai’, Indian Financial Services customers have seen a highly variable range of service delivery and brand communications for Indian Banking. In that the suddenly functional campaigns of HDFC Bank that advertise the one button withdrawal, is a disruptive change of the desi variety. The other extreme is the HSBC OBC Canara Bank JV without a single advert because of pre launch post launch issues, and even they are doing more than 2000 Crores in Premium

This disruptive change may not redefine much for the market but may not turn away obdurate customers from the banks’ new business offerings. While ICICI Bank keeps losing one mini mandate each day after its last innovations in I-Direct and Direct Insurance and Mutual Funds, HDFC Bank has timed the innovation well to take up that space at the front of the bus reserved for the innovator we will follow.

The campaign lacks finesse and even the sadly monotonous Traderacer campaign from ICICI bank may win one or two face-offs with HDFC Bank. If the ING Vysya campaign comes back, Aditya Puri and Keki Mitstry are in fact as good as lost. But then, this ATM advert is not the only one HDFC Bank is doing. Their reputation is safe and even vibrant among shopkeepers and small business as they try ingenious ways to remain in local touch.

This campaign could do with some good WOM. Esp, as Cashcow.in tells us, we are also sitting on new Cashbacks at retailers, millions of new POS machines and online micropayments need a leg up. Mobile Banking is coming with RBI approval soon, and among Indian owned banks, ( not the other 75% FDI, the soul is Indian ;lol) with a rural reach to boot (small towns with money)  HDFC Bank just has to pip ICICI Bank. Standard Life Insurance venture is also doing well in the market place, presumably cost control cutting out any flashy advertiing. But having messed up the Credit Cards dream with false lists and unseen craters of human depth, they better man that counter and the call center desk responsibly.

As the local MF market also showed us, there is a lot of money out there that can come through and go back with a single good idea. India’s GDP could well nigh triple with the amounts we have in the shadow economy. In parity terms we do double the size of US economy, but we don’t advertise that either.

However, HDFC Bank/HDFC as a brand are mroe wedded to the idea of Projects and POP promotions esp with pricing offers and tie-ins. That part may earn them first look customers, but the marketplace is competitive with other private sector players and they may need to move the focus to more brand facing advertising campaigns and even participation in Sport

Also, it is time HDFC adopts a regional strategy as is the wont of the teens ( 2010-19) .  Also apart from JPM that is likely on top of such trend making innovation, any functional campaign would have to reach the high levels of the Citi and HSBC WOM , e.g. the contactless payments exercise floated by Citi India which has ten times the word of mouth and really good scaling up for the bank despite its global troubles.

Related Reading:

Choice of Subscriptions Advantage Brands site review Personal Branding on unit Social Account Personal Branding over 5-6 multiple networks RFP for customized options

Wishing everyone around the world, esp our readers from the United States, Russia, India and China

Please support us:

Don't forget our O'nomics Blog that whispers the answers for the Big 4 and the banks in the US for US Markets and their own trajectory

Related Reading:

Please note thtat of the three mentioned here, NY Times makes most of its available content accessible for distribution and is coming out in the Top few, while WSJ and FT have gone into an exclusive ‘club’ of wanting to lose more and shut down the business for a stupid argument, but that’s just not the argument. Also, WSJ’s teasers may soon be well in the same league as Advantage zyaada, Drudge Report and the Huffington Affair..:)

Paying for Online Content

Google had recently reached an agreement with the newspapers to provide limited access after a fixed number of searches. And the music companies are inventing pricing models and new partnerships every day. But more about pricing music later.. The one we are saying is tough for the media giants to survive is the one where they have to choose what to charge for their web edition.

I think it was more productive when it was a lower all you can eat charge and common sense dictates that this price be the same across all web channels. But WSJ and NYT are hell bent on creating a bad taste in the readers’ mouth with separate charges when you try to use your Kindle then iPhone and even for e-readers.

None of us finally minds paying for online content. For those that need it, there are student subscriptions, library subscriptions and corporate subscriptions. But paying for the same thing twice is kind of a revenue dampener. And invasive online advertising isn’t going to pay either. The customer will never get used to this new model. The Advertiser might but he should not be confused as the reader. The advertiser is getting a different segment on the e-readers and the Kindles if it makes any sense for him to go there. But the reader is the same And this serious business reader is powerful to stop you in your tracks by removing his credit card information despite your efforts at scamming him or her into giving away all control of his paying activity. These practices will be heavily penalised on this new continent and the Googles are much ahead in making sure they provide all content in web searches to give access.

Creating a brand online is not going to be easy, but you cannot break down your readership with challenges like these. You have

I will pay for your content, once

| Rafes Radar

I consider it a professional courtesy to pay, even handsomely, for excellent work. What I wont do is pay for twice. Unfortunately, thats what the WSJ wants me to do:I recently downloaded the iPhone app for the WSJ, and discovered that getting access to the stories that Im paying for already on the Web was going to cost me another $52 a year. And thats the discounted rate for existing subscribers. iPhone and BlackBerry app access is $78 a year if you dont already have either a Web or print subscription. Its only if you subscribe to both the Web and print editions of the WSJ that you get iPhone app access for “free.”No, I dont think so.Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNETThis is madness. Im paying for online access to the stories. Why on earth should the publication charge me for it twice, or differently, just because I want to view that content, sometimes, on another connected device?

via Dear newspapers: I will pay for your content, once | Rafes Radar – CNET News.

Some of our regulars would feel a little disoriented by this extract, if only because the web has seemed so mature an d in tune with the print editions as far as the newspapers are concerned. The truth is the web editions and now the Kindle and the iPhone editions are being touted as different channels by most places, with the Kindle even charging without any recourse to another edition be it print or web. The NYTimes even charges separately for e-readers and Kindle

The Financial Times has had a much more robust pricing model for all its electronic editions. These simple things have distinguished its prominent position from the academic positions for Euromoney and WSJ publications and the same case study does hold true even now.

Even as Brian Moynihan takes over at BofA under Walter Massey, Kenneth Lewis’ impact is still likely material in Bank Am’s social world. And even if less people Google for Bank of America today or for any other bank for that matter, the social media might easily keep BofA alive and winning because in its social practices its just noe that ‘vitriolic’ that the mdeia would try to make it out to be. And you can’t force the social media participant to ignore social opinion. The BofA brand will survive and grow stronger as long as it is feeding the social groups in a consistent manner Similarily the press and the networks would have to adopt the social way to win hearts. Shouting from the rooftops and relying on the price message will also accelerate the negative impact of such foolhardy decisions.

Wishing all our readers from around the world a very happy new year for 2010. Esp our readers fom Russia, Eastern Europe, China, India, the Philipines and Australia

Please note however, just because premium pricing succeeds, does not mean I can force it down on everyone. Unless it is ongoing engagement, there is very little in it for you.

Update of Jan 5, 2010:

Is the Business media losing relevance? Well, the N Y Times is holding the Top 100 as pricing models do not ban readers , while WSJ and Pear-son’s FT are falling fast! But this is a small crisis of Christmas …Read on for the hottest drop of 2010. We changed our tastes online. We decide who reads what.

Funnily, Google lost it’s talk about relevance too..so that is not the answer!

Related Reading:

This article in today’s N Y Times

As with Facebook, D.S.T. will invest directly in Zynga while also buying stock from shareholders, including the company’s employees. The move is aimed at giving employees and shareholders of the prominent start-up a way to cash out before an initial public offering.

Tiger Global, a New York hedge fund, and the venture capital firms Institutional Venture Partners and Andreessen Horowitz also invested. Zynga had previously raised $39 million. The companies did not disclose Zynga’s valuation as a result of the new capital, but the game company’s annual revenue has been reported to be around $250 million and growing quickly.

Two experts in Internet company finance said it would be reasonable for Zynga to command a valuation of two and a half to six times its annual revenue. That could put the value of the two-year-old Zynga at $1.5 billion; one industry insider believes the value could be as much as $3 billion.

With the investment, D.S.T. is doubling down on its billion-dollar bet on social networks and online games, which draw people who do not normally play video games into virtual simulations that they can play with friends.

Players might spend only a few minutes each day in the game, and are persuaded to pay real money to buy virtual goods, like bales of hay and gasoline for their tractors in FarmVille, a game in which players run a farm. D.S.T. began investing in 2005, mostly in Internet firms based in Russia and Eastern Europe, where, as in Asia, people have adopted social games and virtual goods marketplaces faster than in the United States.

“People did not believe that this Chinese model of micropayments and social games was real,” said Yuri Milner, D.S.T.’s chief executive. “I am pretty convinced this market will have tremendous pick-up on the Western side of the world.”

With DST having picked up a stake in both Facebook and zynga, Farmville and Mafia Wars would be part of more daily lives.
Here are some recent Facebook and Twitter stories defining their early impact. Twitter has started testing its contributor feature to allow brands and businesses to set aside a permanent budget for Twitter and Facebook in their business. It will take a lot of business to keep steering this network esp as not just Asia and Eastern Europe is taking more to these networks but also because it is intuitively appealing to all age groups and takes a considerable bit of your time in the ‘daily diet’.

You can also expect some daily ‘interference’ from Fans on the more discernible social media than they could on Radio and TV. Scott Tozer of DST Technologies is himself listed on Facebook. Also see some recent ‘hits’

This just might be Russia’s next ticket after Gas/Oil without Ukraine. Seemingly the Chinese are still counted as the largest population on the internet despite that most social sites are banned in countries like China and Vietnam

Our estimate of the valuation of zynga conventionally as not exceeding $1 billion but  wih hypergrowth, even $3 billion is cheap. Amazon started the same way and survived the bubble and the credit crisis.

Related Reading:

We cooked all this, right about now so you could help us cook more..

Try Postrank Banking to find out how well we do in Banking

Wow, talk about taking Banking by storm, We have 7 research/news review sites in the Postrank Banking top 20 http://bit.ly/prbanking - 4 minutes ago from Splitweet

Another $85 billion for infrastructure from ‘Obama’s pocket’ A new strategic climate fund « O’nomics.. not Oprah) http://bit.ly/7PqPRB - 1 hour ago fromHootSuite

RT @mynazis RT @mashable Get a Mac Named Ad Campaign of the Decade -http://bit.ly/806l5D, look out for the Apple campaigns with us in ‘10 - 2 hours agofrom HootSuite

RT @mynazis A new strategic climate fund for clean energy = a neat $350 billion, $85 O’nomics http://tr.im/caulkers - 2 hours ago from HootSuite

A great bangalore launch by uninor 29p/min great campaign launch RT@zyaada Telenor’s 3750 crore (EUR 54 m) ..may add EUR 10-12 m in UniNor -2 hours ago from Splitweet

And the last month of ‘09 started with “Fun with Elie and Golf” when the lady was just helping Tiger up from sleep http://ow.ly/LPVf - 8 hours ago from HootSuite

Gregory Zuckermann represents some important sources of the 2008 crisis ..How you can make $20 bn | The investment blog http://bit.ly/53reCx - 9 hours ago from HootSuite

Don’t miss the retail chutzpah again Can retail businesses get some help from Financial pariahs http://ow.ly/LPTL << Notes from Channel ‘O’ - 8 hours ago fromHootSuite

Related Reading:

FACEBOOK vs. TWITTER series 18/800

The Brits are at it again, looking at their tea cup and making up the stats..

zyakaira notes: USA, India and Brazil remain the largest and most active twitter users, high mobile and broadband penetration remain bullwarks of the Chinese and Indian economies growth, but I guess the British must also get ahead

London is staking its claim as the Twitter capital of the world as a flock of local start-ups ride the communications network’s huge wave of growth.

While Twitter is the toast of its native Silicon Valley in California, London boasts more users than any other city in the world. Twitter allows its 40m users to post 140 character updates or “tweets” on the web or via mobile phones.

Even though Twitter itself is yet to generate any revenue, early-stage investors are pouring millions of pounds into small companies in the Twitter “ecosystem” in the London area.

London has produced the most popular of the many third-party tools used to post to Twitter, called Tweetdeck. Reading’s Tweetmeme, which tracks the most popular news stories discussed on Twitter, is attracting millions of visitors a month while Twitterfeed, based in Tooting, is used by thousands of publishers to post their latest headlines on to the site.

“In the UK we’ve got a real phenomenon going on,” says John Borthwick, the British-born chief executive of Betaworks, a New York company that has invested in Tweetdeck, Twitterfeed and Twitter itself. Just as Scandinavia took an early lead in mobile technology, “the UK has become fast-forward in terms of social”, thanks to high broadband penetration.

via FT.com / Media – Twitter branches out as London’s ‘ecosystem’ flies.

Related Reading: