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Bank of America cuts through dilution with contextual conversations

NEW YORK ? A Bank of America executive at the MMA Mobile Marketing Leadership Forum described how the company saw a 47 percent lift in brand sentiment following a social media campaign during the World Economic Forum that brought at-home consumers into the conversation. 

During the session, Bank of America Focuses on Building Relationships with Mobile, the executive explained that through a campaign largely based on Twitter with polls and call-to-action posts, Bank of America was able to connect with consumers at home by becoming a content publisher, reflective of a media brand. The idea is to scale back on less interruptive advertising while leveraging mobile for marketing moments and discussions that allow brands to create a strong long-term relationship with consumers through the use of relative content paired with programmatic data. 

"In order to be relevant in mobile, you have to be relevant in culture," said Lou Paskalis, senior vice president, enterprise media executive at Bank of America. "You have to connect with what is happening in culture in a way that is meaningful and add to it. 

"Advertising is about disrupting a thought; I think marketing on mobile is about joining a thought," he said. "It is about understanding the experience that people are going through and saying 'hey I can relate to that, I can add value to that, I can enhance your experience and I'm listening. 

"This is dialogue."

Banking on mobile

Marketers should ask themselves ?will consumers care and will they share,? before sharing content on social media. The idea of interruptive advertising is quickly diminishing and instead of thinking in terms of how to start a conversation, marketers should think of how to add value to a discussion already in place. 

Programmatic on mobile
The use of programmatic is a great method in targeting the right consumers with the right message in the right context, which is key. But the programmatic data needs to change from the hands of the transactors to the marketers, meaning instead of using it to sell something right then, it should be used to create a longer more substantial conversation over time. 
While the return on investment does not appear for a longer amount of time in this type of strategy, marketers eventually see substantial results. 

"The bottom line here is that this is doable, it is not impossible," Mr. Paskalis said. "The ROI is really clear when you understand the relationships that you can cultivate with this very influential audiences and not only that but this fairly small audience globally. 

"We were able to dramatically move the sentiment for the bank, and that is always an issue in the financial services category on whether or not you can make a financial service brand beloved," he said. "I would argue that you can."