(This article originally released on Marketwire) Burlington, Vermont - Given recent economic events in the banking industry, more community banks are taking a closer look at how current and effective their brand message is within their marketplace. Although negative press for big banks has opened the door for community banks to reach out with themes of "strength and stability," community banks are beginning to consider that the "safety" message may be running its course. It should not overwhelm a community bank's messaging, but rather be part of the bank's overall marketing mix. At Shark Communications, a Burlington, Vermont-based community bank marketing agency, we have found that bank customers can conceptually move quickly past the idea that a bank is solid. It's a position that doesn't necessarily reward the bank's marketing efforts with a lot of brand differentiation. Customers may be far more interested in how a community bank can deliver the products, service - and the ideas that will help its customers more successfully manage their finances.
A case in point, new branding and marketing recently developed by my marketing agency, Shark Communications, for Brookline Bank in Brookline, Massachusetts, was designed to shift the focus away from the bank as simply a safe place for savings, and towards a more enduring and valuable perception of the bank as an important partner to its customers' financial lives. The new bank marketing campaign features customer profiles in contemporary lifestyle situations commenting on the bank's responsiveness, flexibility, and ability to "go the distance." With a new, contemporary graphic interface deployed across the bank website and marketing, a new sense of excellence and customer-focused energy has invigorated the bank's marketing and provided the starting point for creating strong brand differentiation in the marketplace.
With an updated brand image, community banks can then reap further rewards by taking advantage of a wide variety of highly effective online marketing techniques including developing bank product landing pages, community bank blogs, and integrating search engine marketing along with the many free and popular social media websites and services that are available to everyone.
Shark Communications, and Strategic/Creative Director Peter Jacobs, offer nearly two decades of creative excellence and deep, strategic knowledge of community bank marketing. Shark's marketing solutions include bank branding, advertising, web development for community banks, social media and search engine marketing, and more. Shark's portfolio of case histories includes the agency serving the growth of a $700 million community bank into a $9 billion financial services company.
Enhanced Business Blog For Burlington,Vermont Law Firm, Dinse/Knapp/ McAndrew.
Burlington, Vermont attorney Leigh Cole writes a great blog on small business, higher education, taxes, immigration, the green economy and more. Leigh is a shareholder and director of Dinse, Knapp & McAndrew, PC, and manages the firm's well-regarded, national immigration law practice. She will soon be joined by David Gurtman who advises individuals, businesses and non-profit organizations in both real estate and business transactions.
A Redesigned Website for The Woodstock Inn & Resort in Vermont.
The new Woodstockinn.com is now live, with a "Big Visual, Get to the point" development strategy behind it. The Preferred Hotels booking engine has been embedded to follow visitors throughout the site, and pages are easily managed for search engine optimization.
An Adrian Award coming our way for Shark's hotel and hospitality marketing.
Recent direct mail work for Meetings in New England a.k.a. The Woodstock Inn's group sales business will get a trophy at the upcoming HSMAI ceremony in New York City. Here's the trophy ( I think) and a link to the new website will be up soon - following the launch of a new website for the Inn & Resort itself!
Branding a bank: Shark gets a nice plug from Thefinancialbrand.com
If you're connected to the world of bank and financial services marketing and branding, then you've probably connected with Jeffry Pilcher's blog thefinancialbrand.com. It's a great resource for all things happening in bank branding.The presentation is smart, and the site gets visited by bank marketers, executive management, and agencies from around the world. So we're pleased to get a plug from Jeffrey - go ahead and view us in the creative showcase, and were just as happy to send people back his way!
New bank ads from Shark for Brookline Bank (BRKL) starts with launch of bank brand image ads.
Bank advertising for Brookline Bank from began with this series of brand ads. Each bank ad will appear in both online and traditional media. View more bank ads and to find out more about how Shark's bank marketing experience could go to work for you visit the agency's main website. It was a long week of presentations and meetings but a fresh new approach for Brookline Bank's identity and marketing will soon be coming online. Brookline is a very good and very successful bank, that with Shark's help will carve out far more visibility in the marketplace. The bank's new ceo, Paul Perrault is once again steering the ship with a sense of class, values, transparency and "contemporary energy" that characterizes his work - and ours.
Successful Hotel Marketing - once again from Shark Communications.
Yup, sex sells but this ad is only one component of a complete, integrated marketing communications program for the Woodstock Inn & Resort. More abou our social media marketing for hotels and resorts is here.
New creative bank ads for Brookline Bank - ticker: BRKL
The rebranding of a Boston bank continues, with a small, online Home Equity marketing campaign. Shark's SEM program centers around a new well-optimized landing page and a balanced mix of image and text ads. View more bank ads for BRKL and more creative bank marketing by visiting the agency's main website.
Alex Makes the Free Press.
Shark makes a mint! New, "A Little Financial EmpowerMint" campaign for Boston bank.
Shark Communications Receives 2009 Best of Burlington Award
U.S. Commerce Association’s Award Plaque Honors the Achievement
WASHINGTON D.C., June 8, 2009 -- Shark Communications has been selected for the 2009 Best of Burlington Award in the Advertising Agencies category by the U.S. Commerce Association (USCA).
The USCA "Best of Local Business" Award Program recognizes outstanding local businesses throughout the country. Each year, the USCA identifies companies that they believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and community.
New Choose2bGreen website
Here's a glimplse of an overhaul in progress for Choose2bgreen.com, Shark's much-featured (One Of the Best Micro-sites by the Power Industry) website for Green Mountain Power. We're integrateing Twitter feeds, and creating a new interface that may set the table for a new interface and navigation system for the corporate site.
Success with Social Media
Hats off to Erika White and Eva Sollberger who helped Shark produce a spiffy little video on GEM cars (electric) for our client Green Mountain Power - check it here. We then posted it on various social media and video sharing sites and Chrysler tracked us down and wants to feature it on their web site. It helped the client understand the value of social media, especially as search engines turn their periscopes to the content on popular networks.
Yes, we took the header and turned it into an ad.
State of Vermont Captive Insurance Web Development
Vermont is a leader in captive insurance. We rebranded the division's marketing several years ago, confimed it's industry-leading position with a "Gold Standard" campaign, and just relaunced the web site. We'll be expanding online marketing and adding some SEO-friendly, syndicated Public Relations.
Hard Hats in elevators.
The Spa continues to be headed for a 2010 launch. Elegant, cool, hey, just like our work!
Should I send customers to Facebook or my own branded community?
As the social media manager at Shark, I'm starting to realize that people don’t just use social networks - they use us - or at least they want to. When I fool around on Facebook or Twitter, I am adding value to their network. Facebook serves up ads and Twitter is still searching for a way to provide some kind of revenue model. Funny thing is, the ads aren’t selling on the major platforms. It seems that the experience is different from search where the ad click-thru is much much more productive. But the whole thing has gotten me more concerned with the idea of just putting up Facebook pages and leaving potential customers in their hands. So, migrating them into private, branded networks, where we control the links, the look and feel, the ads - everything looks more like the future to me. Alex. Check it out, it's in development.
Some more noise, now with Orchids for Architect Peter Guzy.
We're still organizing the in-house communications for architect Peter Guzy's new spa for The Woodstock Inn & Resort. Construction is underway with a summer 2010 opening.
Spa marketing or the Yin and Yang of calming the customers.
One of our clients just broke ground on the development of a new spa. Luxurious and green retreat. At the moment, however, bulldozers and hardhats aren't helping to promote much tranquility so we're launching a new in-house campaign.
Branded Social Communities 'R Us.
On May 1 we launch a new branded social network for The Woodstock Inn and "environs" (That's french for the area). It integrates a variety of new media with a focus on migrating people off of popular media into a community that has more potential to prevent customer loss to extraneous advertising - sometimes the case on Facebook, and more power to develop customer loyalty. It integrates lots of video (Alex's push) and live Twitter feeds.