Better Product Managers, and Product Management

Strength, Safety, Stability, Security – these should be old news, not new trend

February 22nd, 2009

In advertising, many financial institutions are racing to reassure consumers with soothing messages — that focus on important “S” words: strength, safety, stability, security.  (Ads That Soothe when Banks are Failing, NYTimes)

Well, better late than never, I guess.  But this shouldn’t be a new trend.  It’s a long overdue step.  I’ve worked with consumers on financial applications since 2002, and one thing remains constant in that time: people are nervous about their money.

Whether someone is a paycheck-to-paycheck or a high net worth consumer, they feel a lot of anxiety around whether their money is safe, will their bills be paid on time, is their credit rating okay, are they saving more than spending, are they safe from identity theft.

And for the most part, banks have done a really crummy job of reassuring them.

Recently, threatened by drops in deposits and rises in withdrawals, banks have finally been forced to be a little bit more “human”.

A little humor:

“We love Chase,” reads the headline of an ad for Washington Mutual. “And not just because they have a trillion dollars.”

Or honesty:

“The current environment for investors is in many ways unprecedented and clearly unsettling,” the text of the letter begins on the Web site schwab.com.
“Is it a tough environment? Yes,” the letter continues. “Is it a time to be rash? No.”

Well, it’s good to see some effort applied to financial marketing, at least.

But the next step – and it’s a big one – will be to apply these same principles of strength, safety, stability, and security to financial institutions’ online experiences.  A soothing ad is one thing, but where is that concern when a first-time online banking customer is trying to understand the difference between current balance and projected balance?  When a customer can’t figure out when to schedule an online bill payment to arrive on time?

There’s still a long ways to go.

Please comment:

Who’s doing a good job of this? Financial institutions OR other product companies? Who is doing a good job with reassuring and making you feel like they respect your investment of time and money into their product? Comment away.

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  • Trevor Rotzien

    Agree with your observation, and I think it is extensible to other services that are not necessarily financial.

    For example, any business that captures PII (Personally Identifiable Information), even if that business presents itself with a friendly and casual persona (such as a social network like Facebook), needs to convince us that it will demonstrate those characteristics in dealing with our data, financial or not.

  • Cindy

    I’m often surprised by the number of registration pages online that don’t have even a cursory “we won’t spam you” line of text.

    And while people love to say “users don’t read”, I’ve seen hundreds of user testing subjects who scan for the “the little lock icon” (meaning https secure server) or the presence of a privacy policy link, BEFORE they decide to continue signing up.

    A little reassurance goes a long way.

  • Cindy

    I'm often surprised by the number of registration pages online that don't have even a cursory “we won't spam you” line of text.

    And while people love to say “users don't read”, I've seen hundreds of user testing subjects who scan for the “the little lock icon” (meaning https secure server) or the presence of a privacy policy link, BEFORE they decide to continue signing up.

    A little reassurance goes a long way.

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