Browsing Twitter this morning, all to make the most of my 600 tweets, I was greeted by the sight of early morning Wimbledon, the time-honoured sporting event that for me at least evokes being near the start of the school summer holidays.
Of course being the first week, it will of course rain, and by Friday all the talk will be about just how we will be able to recover the timetable. There will be pictures of centre court being deluged with torrential downpours, with people in ponchos stoically eating strawberries and cream.
Next week it will be of course be a heat wave… phew what a scorcher… and all will be forgotten… hosepipe bans around the corner.
Each year, all of this transports me back to my school days.
Bjorn again fans
For two weeks each year, we would all suddenly become massive tennis enthusiasts… exams over, lounging around on tennis courts and just waiting for the summer school holidays to arrive.
The media of course had a profound impact on this collective interest in the game.
With only 3 TV channels at the time, 2 of them seemed to be completely dedicated to tennis.
We were all either Bjorn Borg or John McEnroe fans… and that is about as divided as society seemed to be those days.
Have I been assimilated?
Today of course it is all different. We have hundreds of channels on TV, streaming content on tap and social channels such as YouTube, Instagram or TikTok now ubiquitous.
Even I have noticed how my content is increasingly coming from social channels… rather than traditional mainstream media…. so what does this all mean.
As a result this weekend I so found myself exploring TikTok.
It is a platform teeming with energy. Beyond inane videos of people falling over, dog and eating contests, there is a whole stream of content around credit, loans, what to do in collections and debt advice.
For all us middle-agers, this never hits LinkedIn, yet it is something we clearly need to be more aware of…. I have added a sample here… take a look.
Bite-sized content pieces are capturing the attention, and much like the case with tennis now hugely influential.
Hyper personalisation around the corner?
In financial services we tend to veer towards, information-rich, often written forms of communication with customers.
These after all can be reviewed, quality checked, compliance checked and audited…
However, we are also competing for attention and engagement from time poor, busy customers on the go…. short, sweet and visually grabbing really helps to start the conversation…
Video teasers and messages are already starting to appear, and as you will see here… it really feels that video personalisation is about to go mainstream….
Imagine this with your name and some account specifics… will this beat automated voicemail in generating engagement?
Something to think about as a new week starts…
