ASB opens first Facebook bank branch in the world

Three weeks ago ASB in New Zealand opened the doors (or whatever you term the online equivalent, launched I guess) to Facebook's first online bank branch. On my company site I blogged some months back about the potential for Facebook to become a major player in banking services and what ASB have done is recognise that potential and faced it head on, moving their services on to the social network. It's a brave move in the FS industry, but one that was inevitable.

Last week I tried the branch out. It's a very simple service. At its heart it's an online chat interface built directly into Facebook. There are a selection of advisers to choose to talk to, all of whom are named and photographed individuals, to increase the person to person appeal that is the hallmark of social networking and you are able to choose from those available to chat.

I spoke to Elysse to find out how the launch was going? She was friendly, personable and very knowledgable and stated there had been considerable interest in the service. Although ASB are at present unable to offer services to those overseas, she said they had had considerable contact from New Zealand travellers who were able to sort out their issues quickly and easily through Facebook.

I then went on to have a brief Twitter chat with Anna Curzon the General Manager, Internet Banking for ASB who confirmed the interest




That second statement really underlines the point of introducing this branch concept in to Facebook. In a time impoverished and globalised environment brands need to be in the places their customers are. Financial services brands are definitely behind the curve in following that trend, but ASB has made a huge step forward.

While the services through the ASB Facebook branch are currently limited the mere fact that they are there speaks volumes for their foresight and ambition. This is a bold first move and we’re sure it will be the first of many. I'm keping a firm eye on whether ASB benefits from first mover advantage.

The dangers of putting all your eggs in the Facebook basket

A couple of months ago Loic Le Meur posted a tweet. The founder of Le Web's assertion was that 10 years ago brands’ presence on the web was all about their websites, 5 years ago it was about Google and today it was about Twitter and Facebook. Our response was that we felt that today a brand's web footprint needed to be far wider than just Facebook and Twitter. We didn't get a reply, but as a digital heavyweight I doubt that Le Meur's thought was as narrow as the literal tweet suggested.

However it does highlight an issue that has become a serious concern in the past month, as the Facebook privacy row has exploded all over the web. There are plenty of brands who have ploughed a lot of resource into a very narrow Facebook channel, building huge (successful) presence and even changing their digital calls to action to point into Facebook and adopting Facebook Connect as the route to login. Given the growth of names around Facebook in the past 18 months on the face of it this make sense, however building such strong presence in one place is not necessarily about becoming more social, but actually about an extension of destination thinking that started with every brand on the planet rushing to open up shop on the web in the mid 90s.

There is a real danger in putting so much resource into one channel that is completely out of your control. The fact that people become fans on your Facebook page is great, but their interaction is still independent of your brand and entirely dictated by the terms of the channel in which you've chosen to exist, a fact that has been brought in to sharp relief with the Facebook privacy issue.

Now all of the above has to be taken with a pinch off salt against a backdrop of numbers that suggested last week that, a) the number of Facebook names had reached almost 500 million b) that visits to the site were up by 2% c) that the dwell time on the site was up 1.2%, a number that is already 4 times that of Google it's nearest rival in terms of daily visitors.

However, Facebook isn't the social web. It's a very big social media channel which requires it's own processes, governance, guidelines and forms of accountability. However brands must break out of extended destination thinking and go to where customers are, not rely on them to come to them. As we replied to Le Meur brand footprints need to be wide, it's important that you surf in many channels, test in many channels and be aware that at any time one channel could suddenly become irrelevant. After all remember Friends Reunited and Friendster.

Remember - Do cool stuff - 5 of the best

I had a fantastically refreshing chat with a client yesterday. We were talking about the development of their online social strategy, the integration with their B2C strategy and the dovetailing of their CRM process. All good business-focused conversation, but I tacked on at the end 'We shouldn't forget to do the cool stuff'. To which they said 'oh yeah we're definitely not going to forget the cool stuff'.

There's a lot of talk at the moment about how social media strategies are often nothing more than a bunch of tactics thrown together willy-nilly and in many cases of course that is absolutely true. There is a poor integration of online social planning into overall business models - something which I plan to write about more over the coming weeks - but in the rush to create more social businesses we need to remember the great tactical stuff as well and shouldn't become too earnest in our pursuit of connectivity.

After all it's the really cool stuff which actually becomes unforgettable.

Here are 5 of my favs:

ASOS dashboard
My current fav. It's effectively a great big curation exercise, but ASOS and their partners Adaptivelab have created something really engaging.


















Zappos shoe map
From last year the Zappos shoe map is a really simple mash-up of their real-time sales data and the Google API. Really simple, really engaging and endlessly fascinating as a small anthropological window on the shoe buying habits of the US public.














Uniqlo Try
An enduring classic. How do you make a survey about bra tops interesteing? Turn it into a giant swirling, music and video driven infographic.
















Qashqui Car Games - Spanner league
More of a campaign this, but the Nissan Qashqui Spanner League was a great spoof of a global petrolheads competition that caught the imagination of thousands and spawned 100s of copycat UGC videos.














Sony Bravia: Balls
I know, I know it was a mistake, but when Fallon happened to shoot their Sony Bravia commercial in blogger central San Fran the buzz about the 1000s of balls that swept through the city prior to the final ad. being released was phenomenal. It actually became the template for pre-ad buzz for ad agencies all over the world and soon got tumbled as just that by every savvy blogger out there (so be wary).



Now oddly enough (or not) many of these are tactics are employed by organisations that have the makings of very strong social strategies, which I guess is the point, get the strategy right and you can do as much cool stuff as you like.