LONDON, July 29th – Ian Rogers was previously responsible for digital strategy for luxury fashion group LVMH. Now he has a new mission: to give the French cryptocurrency company Ledger some ambitious shine.
Rogers’ new role in turning Ledger into a consumer brand with viral potential shows how young consumer finance firms not only leverage the latest social media channels, but also select executives and marketing strategies more commonly associated with lifestyle brands.
“The Ledger product is well designed: it offers the best, most thought-out security,” said Rogers, who began his career as a webmaster for the Beastie Boys website and later became CEO of headphone company Beats.
“What it doesn’t have is a go-to-market approach that feels like it’s made by Nike or Apple. That’s what we have to do.”
Fintechs use prominent investors, social media influencers and eye-catching campaigns to make online checking accounts and loans a little more glamorous and to attract potential customers.
“If Nike releases a new sneaker or Spotify launches a new product, that’s interesting, but if we add an alternative payment method that is not of interest to consumers,” said David Sandstrom, chief marketing officer at Klarna, based in Stockholm.
“If we can work with strong influencers, we can get the attention of the audience, whose attention is very difficult to pin down.”
The buy-now-pay-later company Klarna, which has just bought the influencer marketing software company APPRL, was one of the most prominent pioneers of this strategy.
It launched campaigns with hip-hop star Snoop Dogg and most recently partnered with rapper A $ AP Rocky, who became a shareholder and “CEO for a day”.
In a June advertisement with 4.8 million YouTube views, A $ AP Rocky roams the streets in a purple robe and slippers until he finds a phone with the Klarna app and uses it to buy clothes to get his “pre-lockdown” – regain look.
Irresponsible?
But it’s difficult to go viral in financial products in a highly regulated industry.
In December, the British advertising watchdog banned an Instagram influencer campaign by Klarna to “irresponsibly” encourage customers to use “buy now, pay later” services.
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“Brands need to remember that the financial industry is a regulated industry. Therefore, they need to go beyond the essentials, z Advice 11: FS.
Klarna’s Sandstrom said the company is working to provide financial and advertising regulators with more detailed information about its products and services.
In June, Klarna and a group of influencer marketing and psychology experts published a whitepaper outlining best practices for influencers and brands to advertise responsibly online.
Some social media companies have also become stricter about what financial products can be advertised on their platforms and how. In May, TikTok updated its branded content policy to ban influencers from advertising financial services and products worldwide.
