Where most financial marketing leans on features, rates or seasonal spikes, Monzo chose a bigger ambition – make money knowledge accessible to everyone. Published with Penguin, The Book of Money is a real personal finance handbook designed for people who would never normally pick one up. It is warm, practical and jargon free, shaped by insights from millions of Monzo customers.

The work started with a bold insight. Monzo’s research found that 51 percent of Brits feel they aren’t reaching their financial potential due to lack of money knowledge, and 72 percent of under 34s feel financially held back. That problem became the backbone of the creative idea.

To launch the book, Monzo opened The Book Nook, a hot coral pop up bookstore in Soho. Visitors completed a money goals quiz and walked out with a personalised book cover, one of more than 800 titles generated from 8,000 ideas. It was a simple but powerful way of making money feel human, relatable and personal.

The campaign then scaled nationally through retailers, social content, OOH and a five part video series, “Lessons from the Book of Money”, fronted by creator Shu Lin. The series has already generated over seven million views, turning book chapters into everyday money lessons delivered in under 60 seconds.

Most importantly, Monzo is donating its share of book royalties to Money Ready, a financial education charity supporting around 50,000 people a year.

AJ Coyne, VP Marketing & Growth at Monzo, described the intent clearly:

Congrats Maja Bayyoud Writing Lead, Monzo and your brilliant all-female team and Coral Garvey Creative Director, Monzo, on bringing to life such a wonderful, personal finance guide for people who’d never normally read one!!

Why we love it…

Monzo’s campaign is everything modern financial marketing should be:
• research led
• culturally relevant
• values driven
• creative at scale
• anchored in real human need

Tristan Fawley Executive Creative Director, The Dubs Agency said

It’s a campaign that educates, inspires and elevates the category and a deserving winner of Financial Marketer’s Campaign of the Year 2025.

Congratulations Monzo on a great campaign!

The post ‘Monzo’ wins Financial Marketer 2025 Campaign of the Year appeared first on Financial Marketer.

As we approach 2026, the financial marketing landscape is poised for dramatic transformation. The Dubs Agency reveals six key trends that will reshape how financial brands connect with professional audiences, from the rise of Meta as a B2B powerhouse to the ethical deployment of AI-generated content.

Meta emerges as a serious B2B player

For years, LinkedIn has dominated the conversation around professional audience targeting. But 2026 will mark a turning point as Meta platforms establish themselves as credible alternatives for reaching institutional investors and financial decision-makers.

The data tells a compelling story. According to Brunswick Group’s Digital Investor Survey, 75% of professionals now use secondary social media platforms alongside LinkedIn. These sophisticated investors aren’t limiting themselves to a single channel, they’re consuming content across multiple touch points throughout their research and evaluation process.

Meta’s targeting capabilities have evolved to match this opportunity. Financial marketers can now reach users by job title, target competitors’ audiences, upload matched audience lists, and track conversions with precision that rivals LinkedIn’s offering. Early adopters are already seeing the results, with The Dubs Agency reporting highly cost-effective on-site conversions from professional audiences reached through Meta platforms.

The implication for 2026 is clear: successful financial marketers will need to develop sophisticated multi-platform strategies rather than putting all their eggs in the LinkedIn basket.

Video dominates the content mix

If 2025 was the year video became important, 2026 will be the year it becomes indispensable. Video uploads on LinkedIn have surged 45% year-on-year, and the platform projects an additional 65% growth by 2025, setting the stage for video-first strategies in the year ahead.

This shift reflects changing consumption patterns among financial professionals who increasingly prefer dynamic, visual content over static text. Financial marketers who have been slow to embrace video production will find themselves at a significant competitive disadvantage.

The key will be developing scalable video content strategies that balance production quality with volume. Financial brands should expect to produce regular video content across educational pieces, thought leadership interviews, product explainers, and market commentary to maintain visibility in increasingly video-saturated feeds.

Connected TV reaches critical mass

Connected TV advertising has crossed the threshold from experimental channel to mainstream media buy. CTV refers to television content streamed over the internet through smart TVs, devices like Roku and Apple TV, or streaming services like Hulu and YouTube, rather than traditional cable or broadcast signals.

The contrast with traditional linear TV buying is stark. Legacy television means purchasing dayparts and hoping your target audience is watching, with minimal targeting precision and limited measurement. You’re paying for broad reach during commercial breaks that viewers routinely ignore or skip.

CTV transforms this equation entirely. Financial marketers can now target households based on demographics, job titles, and viewing behaviour – reaching CFOs, wealth advisors, or institutional investors with precision impossible in traditional TV. Ads appear within streaming content in non-skippable formats, and detailed attribution shows which households viewed and what actions they took afterward.

The numbers reflect this shift, eMarketer reports in 2025, CTV ad spend in the United States is projected to reach US$33.3 billion, representing nearly 10% of total digital advertising expenditure. Statistic data shows these ads deliver a 95% completion rate, dramatically outperforming traditional video advertising. Most tellingly, 98% of LinkedIn users now watch connected TV, substantially higher than the 83% who watch linear television.

Professional audiences have migrated to streaming platforms, yet many financial brands continue allocating significant budgets to traditional TV based on legacy buying patterns. The question for 2026 is no longer whether to invest in CTV, but how quickly you can shift budget from outdated linear approaches that are delivering diminishing returns.

Immersive storytelling transforms long-form content

The traditional PDF report is facing extinction. In its place, financial marketers are embracing immersive, interactive digital experiences that drive dramatically higher engagement.

Nuveen’s Equilibrium Institutional Investor report exemplifies this evolution. Built using no-code responsive page development tools, the report features interactive infographics, dynamic charting, and multi-chapter navigation that guides readers through complex investment themes. The content is available in multiple languages including English, German, and Japanese, extending its reach across global markets. And won a Gramercy Financial Content Award, Gramercy Asset Management Content Marketing Award and was shortlisted for the 
Financial Services Forum Marketing Effectiveness Awards.

As Flourish reports, the results speak for themselves interactive reports generate 73% more read time compared to traditional PDFs. For financial marketers struggling to capture attention for lengthy thought leadership pieces, this format provides a path to making substantial content feel approachable and engaging.

In 2026, expect to see interactive annual reports, market outlook pieces, investment strategy guides, and ESG reports that leverage these tools to transform static content into immersive experiences.

AI-Powered podcasts scale audio content

Audio content has long promised efficiency for time-pressed financial professionals, but production barriers have limited its adoption. AI-powered podcast creation tools are removing these obstacles, enabling financial marketers to atomise written editorial content into conversational audio formats at scale.

These platforms can transform blog posts, research reports, and articles into natural-sounding podcast conversations. They offer the ability to incorporate recorded stakeholder voices, adjust scripts for compliance approval, and publish directly to platforms like Spotify.

The Financial Marketer podcast demonstrates this capability in practice, showing how AI can elevate editorial content without requiring extensive audio production resources. For financial brands with substantial written content libraries, this technology offers an efficient path to reaching audiences who prefer audio consumption.

Multilingual video becomes accessible

Global financial brands have long struggled with the cost and complexity of producing video content for multiple regional markets. AI avatar technology is dramatically reducing these barriers, making multilingual video strategies accessible to organisations of all sizes.

These tools can take existing video content and rapidly generate versions with AI avatars speaking in different languages while maintaining consistent messaging and visual quality. The technology has matured to the point where the output appears natural and professional, suitable for external communications rather than just internal use.

For financial marketers operating across multiple geographies, this capability enables truly localised video strategies without multiplying production budgets. Expect to see increased use of this technology for everything from CEO communications to product explainers to educational content throughout 2026.

Josh Frith, Founder The Dubs Agency – AI Avatar speaking in Spanish and Mandarin.

Preparing for 2026

These six trends collectively point toward a financial marketing landscape that is more visual, more automated, and more distributed across channels than ever before. Success in 2026 will require financial marketers to embrace new platforms, invest in video capabilities, experiment with AI tools, and develop truly multi-channel strategies that meet professional audiences wherever they consume content.

The organisations that thrive will be those that view these changes not as threats to traditional approaches but as opportunities to achieve greater reach, engagement, and impact with the audiences that matter most to their business.

If you enjoyed this article and would like to know more contact The Dubs Agency we’d love to help.

[For full disclosure: The author used Claude to research this article while the podcast was created using ElevenLabs]

The post 2026 financial marketing predictions that will transform the industry appeared first on Financial Marketer.

Campaign overview

Airwallex’s new platform launched with a dramatic visual metaphor, six films show outdated banking systems being smashed, crushed or flattened, a wrecking ball tearing down a bank, a steamroller obliterating a payments screen, a wrench destroying a smartphone delayed by account opening.

The narration reframes business finance – no longer slow, clunky and hidden behind opaque fees, but modern, AI-powered, globally connected, and designed for business growth. The suite of offerings includes faster foreign-exchange transfers, international A-accounts opened within minutes, AI-enabled spend management and lower-fee payments.

The media rollout spanned digital screens (BVOD, SVOD, YouTube), social platforms (TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn), office and transit out-of-home placements (airports, train stations, major city hubs) to ensure broad business-decision-maker reach.

Why it works

• It overturns convention: business-finance marketing often speaks in cautious, feature-led language. This campaign uses high-impact metaphors to dramatise disruption.

• It links brand to commercial purpose: the visual destruction isn’t for spectacle, it symbolises the replacement of legacy systems with Airwallex’s next-gen platform.

• It targets decision-makers and influencers across touchpoints, not just users: the media strategy ensures the message hits both C-suite and operator audiences.

• It brings strong momentum: Airwallex is delivering scale, as VP of Marketing APAC Andrew Balint notes in Campaign Brief

  “ $900 million annualised revenue, $200 billion in transaction volume, and 13,000+ new customers in Q2 2025 alone.”

And the campaign was built on real customer insights, Andrew, VP of Marketing says

Airwallex’s campaign sets a strong benchmark for the Financial Marketer Monthly Awards – it is visually striking, strategically grounded, globally scalable and commercially aligned. For November’s win, it ticks every box and in doing so, it signals that finance brand marketing can be bold, clear and disruptive while remaining on message and on purpose.

Congratulations Airwallex on a great campaign!!

The post ‘Airwallex’ wins Financial Marketer’s November Campaign of the Month appeared first on Financial Marketer.

In today’s fast‑moving financial marketing world, AI tools are making powerful capabilities accessible to all: content generation, data analysis, localisation at scale, automation. With widespread adoption, Gartner explored how AI has democratised access to productivity and insight across firms, countries, and roles. But that’s precisely why human creativity now matters more than ever.

AI boosts human creativity, but doesn’t replace it

A new arXiv meta‑analysis of 28 studies and over 8,000 participants found:

• GenAI alone performs about the same as humans on creative tasks (g = −0.05).
• Humans using GenAI significantly outperform individuals working solo (g = +0.27).
• However, idea diversity falls when relying on AI alone (g = −0.86).

In plain terms: AI acts like a creativity amplifier but diversity, nuance and originality still come from humans.

Industry leaders say: AI empowers, doesn’t replace

Stephan Pretorius (WPP CTO), in the The Australian advocates for democratised AI access, saying

How this plays out in finance marketing

DO: Use AI to handle scale, speed, and structure

• Batch‑generate multilingual summaries, content variations, compliance safe drafts.
• Automate data pulls, campaign segmentation, A/B tests, and optimisation.

DO: Lean into human strengths

• Focus on deep insights, storytelling, brand tone, ethics, and creative concepting.
• Use AI‑powered ideation but retain human judgment for final messaging and strategy.

DON’T: Assume tools equal creativity

• Don’t let AI default to lazy repetition or template driven thinking. Diverse, bold ideas still require human curiosity.
• Avoid substituting human review with unchecked AI output, especially in regulated finance contexts.

AI & creative agency brainstorming

WPP explains in The Times, half of the agency’s 96,000 employees now use its internal AI platform (“WPP Open”) generating campaign slogans, video concepts, “shower‑thought” prompts, and synthetic focus‑group testing. But WPP’s CTO emphasises that

Tools equalise, creativity differentiates

AI tools have made capabilities once reserved for large budgets available to many. That means the next frontier for differentiation is not speed or volume—but the quality, originality, and authenticity of human-generated ideas.

Final thoughts & best practices

1. Build a solid foundation first: strategy, brand values, audience insight, AI amplifies what already exists, it can’t invent it.
2. Apply guardrails and review: ensure compliance, ethical standards, and tone consistency across AI‑generated content TechRadar.
3. Use AI for ideation not final drafts: let humans curate, remix, elevate raw AI output into stories with meaning.
4. Measure beyond quantity: track creative impact, engagement lift, share of voice, brand sentiment, not just output volume.

AI makes capabilities accessible but human creativity remains the ultimate competitive edge in financial marketing.

If you liked this article and want to know more contact The Dubs Agency we’d love to help.

The post Why AI levels the playing field, but creativity still wins the day appeared first on Financial Marketer.

Traditionally, firms have relied on subtitled videos or regional spokespeople. But that approach has clear downsides: subtitles reduce impact, and different presenters dilute the authority of the original speaker. Enter AI avatars and voice cloning – tools that allow asset managers and banks to replicate a real executive’s image and voice in multiple languages, without requiring extra filming time.

The implications for regional engagement, speed and cost-efficiency are significant – and early adopters in UK and European finance are already exploring the potential.

The language barrier in financial marketing

It’s no secret that multilingual communication is essential in global asset management. Yet creating high-quality video in several languages has long been expensive and logistically complex. Each new version meant studio time, re-recordings and executive availability – resources that are scarce in any financial firm.

As a result, videos are typically released in English, with subtitles added for international markets. But the data shows this is far from ideal. According to CSA Research, 72% of consumers spend most or all of their time on websites in their own language, and 76% are more likely to engage with content that speaks directly to them. This applies just as much to institutional investors and intermediaries as it does to retail consumers.

In finance, where clarity and credibility are crucial, relying on subtitles can undercut the emotional weight of the message. A CIO’s macro outlook or a fund manager’s strategy pitch is far more compelling in a viewer’s native language – delivered by the actual person, not a dubbed-over substitute.

How AI avatars close the gap

AI avatars offer a new solution. Using just one original recording, AI tools can now generate lifelike video of the same speaker delivering the same message – but in different languages, using synthesised versions of their own voice.

This means that a one-off video from your CEO can be instantly localised for markets in Germany, Spain or Japan – all without a single extra shoot. The voice maintains tone and emotion, and the on-screen avatar mirrors lip-sync and facial expressions to match.

Joshua Xu, co-founder of AI video platform HeyGen, calls it a game-changer for cost and speed:

“ Gone are the days of spending $5–10K and waiting weeks to localise a single video ”

He estimates firms can now generate translated versions in minutes, for as little as $500 per video, reducing turnaround time by over 90%.

“ We’ve seen companies go from taking three weeks to localise a video to doing it in a day – and doing it for a fraction of the cost”

The strategic advantage of multilingual video

The real value of this tech lies in engagement and scale. A fund manager can now explain their latest strategy in native German, French or Japanese – without actually speaking those languages. The emotional nuance, the personal delivery, and the clarity of message are preserved, but suddenly accessible to every client.

A study by Wyzowl found that captioned videos generate 12% more views, while native-language narration drives even higher retention and engagement. And with regional investors increasingly expecting tailored content, firms that produce truly localised video messaging are likely to gain both attention and trust.

We’re already seeing movement. Bloomberg, for instance, has partnered with London-based startup Papercup to publish up to 10 AI-translated Spanish-language videos per day, enabling the brand to expand its reach without overhauling its editorial workflow. Their CEO described the shift as an opportunity to connect in a way that “doesn’t feel like an outsider assuming the audience speaks English.”

Early signals from the industry

Some large financial institutions are laying the groundwork. At Schroders, Michelle Han, Global Head of Growth and Marketing, has spoken publicly about automating content translation to scale communications more effectively. While her remarks focus on written content, it reflects a broader strategy of applying AI to unlock speed and scale in investor engagement.

Other major players, including Amundi and BNP Paribas Asset Management, have all made digital innovation a core part of their marketing strategies. While most remain tight-lipped on AI avatar adoption, the pieces are in place: high video output, global client bases, and growing interest in personalisation.

A word on risk and compliance

Of course, financial institutions must approach AI video carefully. Authenticity and compliance are paramount – a mistranslated message or uncanny AI delivery could undermine hard-won client trust.

The current best practice is to keep humans in the loop – whether that’s editors vetting scripts, compliance teams signing off on voice cloning use, or translators reviewing AI-generated voiceovers.

AI tools, when used responsibly, should augment human efforts, not replace them. As Xu from HeyGen puts it:

“ The technology is there to help marketers do more with less – not to replace your experts, but to let their expertise scale”

Conclusion: From time-poor to time-efficient

For marketing teams in finance, AI avatars offer a unique opportunity: the ability to amplify your most credible voices – CEO, CIO, fund manager – across geographies and languages, without tying up their calendars.

Instead of choosing between English-only content or expensive reshoots, you can now create scalable, high-impact, native-language video that meets clients where they are – linguistically and emotionally.

In an industry built on trust, clarity and credibility, firms that speak their clients’ language – literally – will be the ones to lead the conversation.

The post Breaking the language barrier: How AI avatars are transforming financial video marketing appeared first on Financial Marketer.

In financial services, every word you publish is a liability – until proven otherwise. Brand isn’t built by storytelling. It’s built by surviving scrutiny. Your message is only as strong as your last audit, your last filing, your last client call. So when you bring AI into the mix, don’t chase transformation. Demand utility.

Forget flashy demos. Forget buzzwords. Innovation in this industry means doing boring things brilliantly – again and again, without fail, without hallucination, without dragging compliance into a fire drill.

AI that works in finance does four things. Nothing more. Nothing less.

1. Automates the repetitive, obeys the rules

If the tool can’t format a fact sheet, update a quarterly stat, or check a disclosure without freelancing, it doesn’t belong here. Period. Financial content is not creative writing. It’s executable code – one bad output and you’re radioactive.

2. Reduces friction, not just headcount

If your team needs to spend a quarter learning the new “AI platform,” you’ve added overhead, not capability. The right system vanishes into the workflow. It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t ask for a parade. It gets the damn brochure out the door.

3. Produces outputs you can defend in front of legal

If you can’t trace where a line came from – what data informed it, who approved it, when it changed – it doesn’t matter how fast it was generated. You just added a risk multiplier to your process. In this industry, “explainability” isn’t nice to have. It’s table stakes.

4. Understands context—or gets shut down

Financial content isn’t general-purpose. It’s contextual, regulated, and often jurisdiction-specific. If your AI doesn’t know the difference between yield and return, or between “view” and “recommendation,” it’s not just inaccurate – it’s noncompliant.

Behind-the-scenes tech, frontline impact

The best AI in financial marketing isn’t visible. It doesn’t pitch ideas. It handles the plumbing:

• Operational Capacity Planning: Whether it’s quarter-end or a campaign launch, AI helps route work where there’s bandwidth, predicting spikes, reallocating resources, and keeping SLAs intact.
• Client Sentiment and Relationship Insights: You don’t need a focus group. AI can parse emails, calls, and surveys to surface what clients are actually feeling, so relationship teams stay ahead of churn instead of cleaning up after it.
  
• Data-to-Content Engines: Performance data can feed directly into pre-approved templates, reducing delays and human error.
• Advisor-Facing Tools: AI-driven knowledge systems can surface only approved language and disclosures for use in advisor presentations and client emails.

How you vet AI in this space

You’re not just buying a tool; you’re buying liability. So ask the only questions that matter: Can it cut time-to-market without cutting corners? Can it meet compliance standards without triggering ten rounds of human cleanup? Can every line it generates be explained to regulators, clients, and your own risk team? Does it reinforce brand integrity, or does it bleed it out, line by line? And when your business doubles in size, does the system scale, or does it snap? If the answer to any of these is no, then what you’re looking at isn’t a solution. It’s a side project in disguise.

Final word: Innovation isn’t the show. It’s the system.

AI in financial marketing isn’t a strategy. It’s a supply chain. And it needs to be as reliable, regulated, and boring as a payroll run. If it’s working right, no one should be talking about it; they should be moving faster, with fewer errors and less drama.

The firms that win this next round won’t be the ones shouting “AI” the loudest. They’ll be the ones whose AI keeps their engine running clean, quietly, consistently, and without ever missing a beat.

If you enjoyed this article and would like to know more contact The Dubs Agency we’d love to help.

[**Full disclosure: The views and opinion expressed in this publication are those of the author. They do not reflect the views or opinions of any organisation or entity.]

The post Forget the hype. This is how AI actually works in financial marketing. appeared first on Financial Marketer.

It’s no secret that a quality user experience (UX) plays a significant role in generating leads and building positive interactions between finance brands and clients. The valuation of UX through ROI can be useful as a quantitative measure of success, helping to attract buy-ins for enhancements, or to justify choices to management and clients. However, a recent trend of decreasing UX ROI suggests that having a quality user experience has become the norm, and is no longer a strong source of competitive advantage. 

Return on investment of user experience 

Calculating the ROI of your finance brand’s UX involves calculating the revenue generated by UX enhancements, and comparing it with the cost of producing these enhancements. It’s a monetary valuation of the effectiveness of elevating UX, and is a powerful tool when performing cost-benefit analysis. A finance brand’s user experience (UX) covers every interaction a customer has with its digital presence – from website usability to how intuitive a platform or app feels. It includes the clarity of content, ease of navigation, checkout or sign-up flows, customer support accessibility, and overall consistency across touchpoints. Good UX ensures that every step of the customer journey is smooth, effective, and aligned with the brand’s promise. 

Understanding the ROI of the UX across your brand’s website and channels is beneficial to highlight how innovation and risk-taking in upgrading user experience can translate to profits, which can appeal to investors, management, and potential clients.It can be a simple way for marketers to evaluate the planned vs. actual results of their marketing strategy and continue a cycle of continuous quality improvement in regards to UX. 

UX standardisation and implications

Gone are the days when having quality UX design offered finance brands significant differentiation from competitors. A standardised approach to good UX practices means users now expect quality interactions with finance brands, meaning brands which have effective UX systems are just meeting customer expectations rather than what was once considered exceeding them. 

This standardisation has a number of implications, the largest of them being a decline in UX ROI, though this decline can also be partly attributed to saturation in the UX design field. While there haven’t been alternative results to an investigation by Forrester in 2019 suggesting that every dollar invested in UX design yielded a $100 return, many believe this to be outdated and not in keeping with the rapid developments of the digital world, including the sudden boom in AI development. 

Jakob Nielson of UX Tigers explains that the decline in UX ROI “doesn’t mean UX research lacks value; it simply means the value is lower than before.”, before emphasising that UX efforts shouldn’t be forgotten or left stagnant, as

“ other companies are still improving their design and thus raising the bar that must be met to retain potential customers. ”

Ultimately, finance brands should aim for high-quality UX as a strategy to increase financial gain. Good user interface and UX systems can assist in instilling confidence in a brand’s ability to professionally and expertly manage finances, whether that be in banking where customers want to feel their assets are safe, insurance companies where straightforward navigation can reduce bounce rate, or asset management where effective design can convey expertise and trustworthiness.

The impact of AI on UX

With the recent boom in AI development, brands can expect changes in the UX design and processes. Its ability to enhance user personalisation and design for a fraction of the cost means brands that are able to use AI to improve their UX overall will have the opportunity to be leaders in cost and innovation. 

The increasing accessibility of AI-driven personalisation – where AI algorithms are able to collect, process, and analyse user data rapidly to customise user experience – has revolutionised a brand’s ability to engage and convert users. 

For example, Personetics is a cognitive banking company that leverages financial data intelligence and predictive data analysis to help banks and other financial institutions tailor their financial services to the individual level, demonstrating how AI-driven personalisation of UX can increase user engagement by up to 30%. 

Though AI has the potential to revolutionise the UX design field and increase UX ROI, as AI technologies become more widespread and common across businesses, it’s likely to then once again become a matured and saturated practice. 

In a nutshell

UX ROI calculations are a worthwhile resource for financial marketers as a simple and effective communication of cost-benefit evaluations of UX enhancements. Though it’s seen a decline in recent years, AI has the potential to create a spike in UX ROI (though likely only briefly) before practices return to a matured state and ROI declines again. Finance brands who harness AI to customise the UX of their digital experiences have the opportunity to be industry leaders and optimise conversions and revenue, driving positive brand sentiment and the conversion of new clients.

If you’d like to know more contact The Dubs Agency we’d love to help.

The post The declining ROI of UX design: what happens now? appeared first on Financial Marketer.

The Dubs has been nominated for Creative Agency of the Year in the Financial Standard MAX Awards.

We’d love your vote to help us take out the win! Voting closes May 2.

Vote for us here.

The post We’re finalists for “Creative Agency of the Year” in the MAXAwards from Financial Standard appeared first on Financial Marketer.

And now? Comics. 

This simple yet ingenious tool does all the things finance content marketers dream of doing — in one fell swoop. 

Comics put the fun in finance content marketing

As any finance content marketer will tell you, one of the biggest barriers to customer engagement is customer apathy. And that’s because people tend to think of finance as dry and boring.

Comics have quite the opposite reputation. Comics mean a fun and relaxing break from adulting.

One bank that’s already onto the power of comic books in finance content marketing is the Bank of Uganda. Through a series of adventures, superhero Mani teaches the Moni kids financial literacy — from learning what the Bank of Uganda does and how it works, to finding out about the regulations that protect accounts. The comics are in the form of four downloadable ebooks, housed on the bank’s website.

Comics put the simple in finance content marketing

Another obstacle to customer engagement in finance content marketing is the perception that money is too complex to comprehend. ‘We all fear what we don’t understand,’ writes author Dan Brown in The Lost Symbol.

That’s why techniques that simplify and clarify — like listicles — get such a warm response. And comics are on the same track, with their commitment to replacing technical information with straight-forward stories.

[dianomi]

For inspiration, check out the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s graphic novel, The Story of The Federal Reserve System. This clever content takes a subject to which entire tomes are dedicated, and transforms it into an easy-to-read tale, narrated in the second person (‘you’) to create a sense of intimacy, and dotted with familiar references, such as ‘perhaps someone in your family has recently taken out a loan at a bank — to buy a car, for example’. 

Comics put the storytelling in finance content marketing

A stack of research has proven there are neuroscientific reasons why we all love a good story, including the fact that identifying with characters boosts oxytocin, a hormone that motivates empathy and trust. And trust, is, of course, vital to successful relationships between finance brands and customers. 

For that reason, South-East Asia-based DBS Bank enlisted a marketoonist to help them transform their culture, from that of a traditional big bank to a ’27,000-employee startup’. 

And the UK’s NatWest Bank is going even further, by turning the customer into a character with its new educational video, ‘Island Saver’, which aims to teach children about responsible money management — and adds an interactive element that helps with long-term relationship building.

As finance content specialists we can help you illustrate the stories your brand needs to tell.  Get in touch.

The post Comics and cartoons: the latest in finance content marketing appeared first on Financial Marketer.