Elevator Pitch

So tell us, Kev, what would Don Draper do to sell financial advice?

Kev - One of the things that the character understood was the science of advertising and how to sell anything. And that's to understand that you're talking to people, not consumers and that advertising is about getting people to feel something. The most famous scene in the show, apart from when that bloke ran over someone's foot with a ride-on lawnmower, was the bit when he was selling the Kodak carousel, and he realised it wasn't a wheel. It was a carousel. He took them on a wonderful storytelling journey for about 2 minutes, and at the end, most of the room was crying. I've seen that happen in advertising pitches. One of the biggest mistakes people make in financial services is forgetting the first rule of advertising, which is emotion first, logic second.

You’ve said that financial services are among the hardest things to market. Why is that?

Kev - The first problem is that it's really, really boring. So as a category, it has that to overcome. The second thing is, it's really, really scary. The future's scary. It's all tied up in things like death - the biggest taboo. Money is scary. Numbers are scary. So it’s that combination of the fear of the future, the boring nature of numbers and the taboo around discussions of financial services.

How can the industry get over that challenge?

Kev - You've got to make it interesting. It's got to be simple. Most financial services people overcomplicate what they say. A great example is ‘Our new rate is 3.04% AER’. What? Why have you started quoting percentages to two decimal places? What’s AER? No one knows what it is, and frankly, no one gives a shit. And so I think if you're going to get noticed, you've got to be simple. You've got to be different. You've got to be brilliant. They are the absolute table stakes in the modern world.

What’s the best piece of advice you have for financial services marketers?

Kev - You might be thinking, ‘Oh, my God, we're a bit doomed. We can't solve this problem. People think we're boring. People are scared of us. People don't like us.’ But it's perfectly possible to solve this. All categories face challenges. The favourite thing I ever heard on this was something Michael Caine was taught by one of his first directors. He was walking on stage, and as he opened the door, there was a chair in the way, and he stopped. And the director's like, ‘Why have you stopped?’ And he's going, ‘But there's a chair in the way’. He can't get through. ‘Use the difficulty’, his director said. ‘If this was a comedy, fall over. If this was a kitchen sink drama, pick it up and throw the bloody thing. Just don't stop. Use the difficulty’. And I think that's a really good lesson in life or marketing. If people think you're boring, think you're all the same, and think you're scary, you use that difficulty to do something different. Don't fall into the trap of doing what everyone else is doing. You'll just be ignored like that. Do something new, original, interesting, imaginative, or innovative

Do you think it’s appropriate for financial services to be more creative and ‘out there’?

Kev - No one buys from a clown. I don't want to turn up at my bank and find them in a <makes comedy honking noise> nose. Doing something creative had come to mean doing something weird and wacky - Meerkats and drumming gorillas and whatever. It isn’t - creative means doing something new and different. Moneysupermarket did this great thing. (I mean, can you think of a more boring topic than an algorithmically based insurance supermarket price comparison site?) All they had to say was that they’ll save you money on your insurance. But they asked themselves, ‘How do you feel when you save money?’ Well, feel good, right? So there are two ways you can play that. You can do it straight and say it'll make you feel good. Or you can hyperbolize it: How did it make you feel? He felt epic. What happened next? An advert with a businessman walking down the street in a pair of denim hot pants twerking to the Pussycat Dolls. Now you're telling me this is insurance, my friend? This is serious. This is about getting paid back when my house burns down or floods. No, it's not. It’s about getting people to remember your name. In 99.99% of cases for advertisers or marketers, you haven't an unlimited budget. So as the physicist Ernest Rutherford said, we haven't the money, so we'll have to think.

What’s your advice to financial services businesses who might feel they have to play it safe?

Kev - There’s a chapter in my book (The Creative Nudge) called What Would Gaga Do? Whatever you're doing today, just ask yourself, ‘What would Lady Gaga do here?’ And then Gaga it. So if you were going out tonight and you were told the dress code was white. If you went wearing black, you'd think you were being really brave. Now remember when Lady Gaga went out that one night to the red carpet? She went wearing a dress made of raw meat with a little meat hat to go with it. Suddenly, you standing next to her in black at a party where everyone's wearing white doesn't look particularly brave. So if you've got an idea you want to do or try out, work out ‘What's the most Gaga version of this I could possibly do?’ And then the version you were going to do that you're scared of doesn't seem so scary.