No Small Change: Why Financial Services Needs A New Kind of Marketing

A 13-point manifesto for a new financial services marketing model

Anthony Thomson knows a thing or two about new and disruptive financial services, having co-founded and chaired first the ground-breaking Metro Bank and then the purely digital, app-based Atom Bank.  And as a financial services marketing specialist for over 30 years, Lucian Camp has helped develop more new and innovative financial services propositions than anyone.

Now they’ve put their heads together to write No Small Change, a passionate, opinionated and practical manifesto arguing that the fast-changing financial services world urgently needs to rethink the whole of its approach to marketing. 

Most of all, they propose that an increasingly digital, fintech-driven industry needs not just more marketing, but also better marketing to make sure it’s successfully identifying consumers’ real needs, and finding powerful and successful ways to engage with them.

After detailing the forces of change that demand a new approach, the book then examines in 13 chapters what the key components of that new approach should look like.  It takes a broad and multi-faceted perspective, exploring areas as diverse as the crisis of consumer trust, the ever-growing power of Big Data, the importance of leadership and corporate culture and the rapid advance in thinking based on Behavioural Economics.

In developing these themes, the authors don’t pull their punches.  The book is fiercely critical of some of the industry’s long-established marketing habits, providing compelling reasons why it’s time to abandon the practices that have given it a bad name.  

Marketers will applaud, but the book is also intended for a broader audience.  Thomson and Camp challenge senior management in financial firms to appreciate the real value that marketers can bring to shaping the business agenda at the highest level, and not just to label marketing with that tired old phrase “the colouring-in department.”

Rich in anecdotes, comments from leading industry figures, personal experiences on the part of both authors and findings from original research, No Small Change is an entertaining and rewarding read – and, at this point in the development of financial services, a timely and important one.