Dan Marks / First Tennessee Bank

Podcast Transcript

Steven Hello everyone, and welcome to this podcast on the ROI of Social Media. This is Steven Groves
Groves with SocialMarketingConversations.com and Guy Powell or Marketing-Calculator.com, both
welcoming you to this episode in the ROI of Social Media Podcast Series, hosted at
SocialMarketingConversations.com, Facebook and elsewhere around the web.
In this series, were interviewing businesses and users of social media marketing and exploring the
ROI models that are being developed and used by businesses all around the world.
Lets welcome Guy Powell into the conversation. Guy, how are you today?
Guy Very good, Steve, thank you and great to be here. Im looking forward to our talk with Dan Mark of
Powell First Tennessee Bank. He and I met out at the recent MeasureUp Conference in Chicago. He had a
clear grasp in his organization on ROI for marketing in general and then also had some great work
done for an ROI in social media. Looking forward to the conversation.
SG Absolutely. When we talked earlier with Dan about what he was doing at the bank, I was really
taken by #1, the grasp that hes got of social media and #2, the fact that hes implementing it in the
financial services realm, which I think is going to be one of the industries that really benefits and
prospers around the use of social media.
So, lets welcome Dan into the call. Dan is responsible for all marketing channels for the bank. He
is the Chief Marketing Officer at First Tennessee Bank. As Guy said, he was a presenter at the 2010
Measure Up Conference in Chicago earlier this year, on the topic of The Power of Profit in
Raising Your Profile.
So, Dan is responsible for everything at the bank when it comes to marketing; brand management
and all of the integrated marketing components that include things like email, ecommerce, website,
online, TV, print, direct mail and all of the sponsorships. Under his leadership, they have
successfully executed several product launches and a company rebranding initiative, along with a
recent website upgrade that has begun generating a double digit increase in organic search traffic.
He and his team have won awards from JD Power and Associates, and several local and regional
awards for all of their marketing efforts. Dan is a recognized thought leader in creating and
optimizing marketing programs based on measurable ROI and each program is managed with a
consistent ROI target and the entire portfolio is optimized on a systematic and ongoing basis. So,
welcome to the call Dan.
Dan Thanks Steve.
Marks
SG So, Dan, as we get going here, tell the people who are listening a little bit about First Tennessee
Bank and what is your actually doing with Social Media.
DM Certainly. So, First Tennessee is the leading bank in a tight continuous footprint, primarily
Tennessee, but some Southeast locations. As the market leader, we are very much focused on, and
sort of staying in tune with our customers and communicating with them in a way thats relevant.
So, since at least 11% of our target audience, and our target audience is a little bit more affluent and
older, is involved in the social media space, we think its very important to evolve our marketing mix
to sort of stay current. And so, you know, this year, right now, were in an experimental phase and
have done some exciting things. We think with the momentum, it will certainly continue to be

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Steven Groves / SocialMarketingConversations.com Podcast recorded
Guy Powell / DemandROMI.com April 23, 2010
Dan Marks / First Tennessee Bank
Podcast Transcript

important.
GP Yes, Dan, thats a very good point and certainly when youre customer base overlaps with the social
media, kind of activities, then it really makes a lot of sense to use social media, and certainly in the
financial space, theres a lot of opportunity to gather messages and build conversations with your
customers. But, what have you seen then as the biggest obstacles to growth in the use of social
media for the brand at First Tennessee Bank?
DM Well, banking tends to be conservative and for a very good reason, right? We are custodians of your
money and business money, and banking is also a business where you cant make too many bad
decisions or youre out of business. So, theres that culture of conservatism and being very
cognizant of risk, which is important. You know, I think everybody who has money at the bank
appreciates that. So, you know, in our sense, we just want to be sort of, very, very careful of we
understand the risks were taking and I think among some of our you know, my peers and other
executives at the bank, theres a hesitancy just since its newer and its sort of perceived by some at
least, as something that just young people do. So, I think theres the real, sort of, concern about
security and safety and soundness. Then, theres perhaps a more perceived, sort of, barrier as,
perhaps trivial.
SG So, thats a good point that you bring up Dan about the risk adverse cultural of the financial
institutions and the perception that a lot of executives still have about this being some what trivial or
something that only kids do. The demographics #1, are just not showing it and, #2, is we really are
seeing the adoption of the technology as a real change in the way things get marketed, so I appreciate
your challenges. One of the things that weve found and probably one of the things you find that
really helps support your case is being able to provide metrics and information back to the executive
board. What do you think are the key metrics that are important to driving value, and if not value of
your brand to your community, value to the board around your social media activities? What are you
finding are really important in terms of being able to communicate?
DM Well, you heard in the intro that I place a huge value in understanding the ROI of our marketing
programs. So, thats ultimately the most important metric on a longer term basis. I think where we
are in the evolution of social media in particular, in financial services, its more important to look at,
just sort of, that adoption and growth. So, I referenced that we figured out that we have about 11%
of our target customers already active on Facebook and so, those statistics were what I focused on to
set up the agenda that we should just experiment. So, the way were taking the approach is, we have
a small amount of money, relative to our overall spend, devoted to a series of experiments in the
social media space where were frankly not really expecting an ROI, but its OK given the small
level and the huge growth and usage in adoption. I think longer term, we will look to construct an
ROI model, you know, for social media just like everything else we do and, you know, some of the
measurability is very intriguing. So, for instance, one of the theories might be if youre running
advertising, on say the Facebook platform, our assumption is at some point youll get a better ROI
for advertisers that are able to be at sort of endorsed by your fans or those who like your brand, and
you should be able to see a difference versus sort of un-endorsed ads. So, thats one example that we
would look at, you know, in the future.
GP Yeah, thats interesting to, and also to do some testing there to see whether the ads in Facebook
would be better than better or different then just a straight display ad on some other site, and
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Podcast Transcript

actually, that was kind of a follow up question I had for you was have you been able to see any
cross-pollination between your traditional media and your social media, so that your traditional
advertising, whatever that is, in terms of you know, radio and print and what have you, driving
incremental conversation or value in the social media space.
DM Yeah, let me tell you about one experiment we did in the first quarter, where we actually leveraged
testimonials that we collected through our listening post and social media outlets, to build proof
points in our traditional advertising. We ran print ads that ran real customer quotes,that were
unsolicited that we selected that highlighted in our customers words, why they think we provide a
superior experience. So, thats a very encouraging sign. And, we also gave sort of the, opportunity
for customers who saw the ads to also join the conversation. And, we didnt ignore the negative
comments, right? We used that as a valuable learning opportunity as well to engage and to learn
what our customers thought and to respond to issues and therefore strength loyalty.
SG So, Dan, I really like that youve got this tactic of merging the two, where youre taking the online
conversation and comments, encouraging people to participate in the discussion and likewise pulling
some of that into offline and using it as part of your branding and some of your work there. What do
you see are really key tactics to designing a successful social media strategy campaign that maybe
includes some of those kinds of features?
DM This is not necessarily a tactic as much as an approach. What we there was a debate among our
agencies and our marketing teams about, just the approach and sort of the I would call it the
tension between the plan forever, make sure you get it right, versus the more nimble approach. So,
the approach weve taken is that you have to be smart. And so, the things that are less proven, were
taking this experimental approach. So, were doing things that may fail completely or may have a
negative outcome, but were doing it on a small enough scale where if it does happen, its not
harmful. You know, its not meaningful on a money wasted or on a reputation basis. So, it allows
us to sort of learn very quickly by trying a number of things. In the areas where its integrated we do
have to be more careful. So, thats where we are able to use the learnings from the small
experiments to feed into those larger cross marketing approaches, but at the end of the day, some of
the same rules from sales and marketing apply. You have to understand your customers. You have
to communicate in ways that are relevant to them with messages that are authentic and, you have to
execute well. But, the one thing that we think is different is the ability to recover much faster, right.
So, if we do post something that ends up being you know, post something on our Facebook page
that ends up not having the effect that we wanted, or ended up having unintended consequences, we
can adjust it or pull it down or apologize or you know, much faster in a traditional way and,
conversely, for things that do work we can leverage it and scale it up much more quickly. So, thats
one of the things that is exciting about just the tactic and approach.
GP Well, you know, thats fascinating and, I think you probably remember Avinash Kaushik from
Google, and his presentation; I still remember, you know, how lively a presenter he was and one of
the things though that he said was exactly that was you know, experiment fast, learn fast, make
mistakes fast so that you quickly get up to making things and doing things right, and it sounds like
youre already doing exactly that.
What do you see as the things though for social media and social media ROI, what kinds of issues, or
is there one issue that keeps you up at night?
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Dan Marks / First Tennessee Bank
Podcast Transcript

DM You know, Im not sure if there is one. I think the biggest thing that keeps me up at night is if we
miss something that ends up being really big. But, even that concern is mitigated by just the ability
to adjust very quickly, right. So, one example is we ran a campaign on a particular social media site
that I wont name, but its useful in job hunting, that didnt perform well. So, we were able to pull it
and you know, we learned we realized okay, this is a social media site, but if its mostly used for
job hunting, that may not be the best place to advertise, you know, banking products and services
because people arent in the right mindset. So, thats the example of where theres an unknown. If
you did it on a huge scale, it would be dangerous and would keep you up at night. But, because you
can start small and fail quickly and change you havent locked in a media buy, or you havent, you
know, dropped a million pieces of direct mail, thats sort of how you help manage the risk. So, I
think, you know, perhaps the longer term concern, and some people have mentioned this, if social
media ends up being a primarily recreational activity, where people are actually opposed to
advertising, or actively sort of resenting it I mean, if that really does happen, then that could be a
problem for all of us. But, Im not sure, based on our early results that that really will play out.
SG I agree. The idea that social marketing, which is in our phraseology, the social marketing is kind of
the application of social marketing for business. Its designed to get your brand out there where your
consumers are. Obviously thats what media has been used for decades. But, what do you see as the
future for social media, for you there at the bank, and in general, where do you see social media
going? Youve raised some interesting points there about whether or not it might just be a more
personal and never really tied to business.
DM Well, this week was Facebooks announcement of the evolution of you know, their fan approach, the
sort of like approach. So, I think thats a very interesting evolution that points towards the future.
I think in the future, the distinction between social media and media will really disappear and its
social will end up being a category or a feature in what might become Web 3.0. Right? And, it ends
up being much more it ends up merging with mobile content. So, youre starting to see things
where on the X-Box or other gaming consoles, you can connect to your Facebook or youre Last FM
account. So, and at the same time, youve got the application on your mobile phone. So, youre
going to be able to interact in a social manner with media and content across devices and that
integration and that customization will be powerful. And also, I think the biggest thing for marketers
and brands to consider is it ends up tying back to the one of the original premises of advertising is
that, you know, advertising ends up being a leverage point. If youve got a good product or service,
more people will know about it. If youve got a bad product or service, more people will know about
it. So, social ends up having the same effect as word-of-mouth. A quality experience, an authentic
experience and a good product will get a lot more play and, conversely, if youve got product flaws
or youve got executional flaws, they will show up in social. How you react to that will define you
as a brand and define you in your reputation and ultimately have an impact on ROI. So, you know,
hiding from the conversation is quickly going to become not feasible. You will be part of the
conversation in whether or not you participate and how you respond will have a profound impact on
ROI and brand reputation.
GP Yeah, that is certainly the case and there are certainly a couple of really good examples just recently
even with the Nestle use of palm oil in Kit Kats and how they responded as opposed to how Unilever
responded to the use of palm oil in their hand and body lotion. So, you are absolutely right. If the
conversation and the operational stuff is going on whether you make mistakes or not, they are
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Steven Groves / SocialMarketingConversations.com Podcast recorded
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Podcast Transcript

certainly going to be found out.

Well, were about ready to wrap up and if Dan, I wanted to ask you is there anything else youd like
to say to the audience before we wrap up?
DM Yeah, I think the encouragement is just to not be afraid to experiment, right? You know. I think
theres a lot of debate about what our strategy was and I said look, this is still too new. Our
strategy should be to experiment and to learn. So, you know, dont be afraid to make that your
strategy statement but make sure you have the capabilities to sort of assess and to adjust based on
those insights. So, I think for the traditional marketer, its just the reminder to get started, but get
started in a small way, dont repeat some of the errors of the Dot Com world and, you know,
experiment large and end up costing yourself a lot of money.
GP Exactly, and then also being able to have the metrics in place to be able to realize hey this is
working and this is great, lets invest more right away; where, that wasnt working, lets turn it off
right away and think of something else to do. No, absolutely.
DM Thats right.
GP Steve, how about you, any other thought or questions for Dan?
SG Well, just real quick Dan, if people wanted to get a hold of you at First Tennessee Bank, what would
they do?
DM They can email me, and Im also on Linkedin with a profile there.
GP Great, well, let me say thanks to our guest today. Dan Marks of First Tennessee Bank, its been a
great episode, and thank you everyone for listening in and joining us to today for this episode of the
ROI of Social Media. This has been Steven Groves and Guy Powell of the ROI of Social Media
with our guest, Dan Marks of the First Tennessee Bank.
You can find us in various social networks around the web including Twitter at ROISocialMedia. In
Facebook at Facebook.com/ROIofSocialMedia and, at LinkedIn by using the URL of the
ROIofSocialMedia.com.
Well see you all on the next episode of the ROI of Social Media podcast series.

About the Podcast and Credit For Where Credit is Due This transcript was developed from a live
interview on Friday April 23, 2010 between Dan Marks, Guy Powell and Steven Groves, captured in a
recording on FreeConferenceCall.com.
The podcast interview was downloaded and processes in Audacity, which is available from SourceForge.com,
and with 4toFloor.wav music loop from member Rooks and posted at SoundSnap.com.
The initial transcript was sponsored by Social Marketing Conversations, LLC and introduction voice talent is
Ms. Cynthia Propst.

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Steven Groves / SocialMarketingConversations.com Podcast recorded
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