Christophe Langlois
CIMB is one of the most active banking group on social media in Asia Pacific with their flag ship facebook page, CIMB Malaysia which now counts over 365,000 likes. And you can add another 323k likes from their CIMB Indonesia, Thai, Singapore, Asia Pacific Classic Malaysia, and Group pages. On twitter, the bank adopted a customer support angle with @CIMB_Assists which counts close to 8,000 followers.
In the last six months, the Malaysian bank has released a number of successful facebook apps targeted to the youth such as ‘the battle of the bands‘ and ‘CIMB YOUth‘ which I confidently called ‘the most viral application for the youth on facebook’ (from a bank).
Yesterday evening, I arrived in Kuala Lumpur to deliver my next two-day social media in financial services workshop. I look forward to spending the next couple of days with participants from 8 banks and 4 countries.
This morning, I was making the most of the beautiful Malaysian weather whend I came across this full-page ad in the Sunday Star.
On November 9th, CIMB announced the launch of its new debit card on its facebook wall.
CIMB dedicated a tab to its new debit card. You can register your card by filling in a short form including the last four digits of your cards and your customer number. You will then receive a text including your verification number.
My take
I’ve always insisted on the importance of promoting your social media activity (like BNP Paribas with its recent TV campaign ‘open your bank account with one tweet‘ or BBVA Compass in the US which invites austin residents to friend it on facebook…), and of all asian banks it didn’t come as a surprise to find this move from CIMB.
This campaign should drive a lot of interest on to CIMB’s facebook page:the Star’s estimated circulation and readership are about respectively 300,000 and 900,000, so expect its size to quickly grow and come closer to the 500,000-like mark.
Here, the ‘call to action’, another critical element of a successful social media strategy – and to that respect any good content strategy -, is to like the bank on facebook and follow it on twitter to be kept informed of the latest promotions.
If facebook makes sense due to its penetration in Malaysia (#17 country in the world with close to 18m users and 70% of online population), and the bank’s overall investment in this social destination, I don’t necessarily understand the follow on twitter.
Indeed, CIMB’s twitter account is mainly focused on customer support, so even though the bank plans to start sending a few tweets a day dedicated to promotions and special deals, they will surely go un-noticed due to the high volume of customer queries and responses… It might well be the right time to launch a twitter account for anything but customer support.
So far on facebook, except for the dedicated tab, I haven’t seen much activity on the wall just as yet.
I’m confident CIMB will do a better job linking its debit cards with their owners via facebook than Chase did with their late Chase +1 pproject. I will be following closely CIMB progress with its initiative.
As a matter of fact, I’m keen to quickly get hold of more info on this campaign. A few days ago, I reconnected with my contacts in the media relations department of the bank to schedule a video interview on Wednesday with Effendy Shahul Hamid – Head of Group Marketing and Communications, CIMB Group. I’m hoping to get that meeting and publish our video interview in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned!
So, has your financial institution started to promote its social media presence on traditional media like TV or press? If the answer is yes, please leave a comment and flag those ads here.
Working Together
We at Visible Banking would be delighted to help you and your team better UNDERSTAND and LEVERAGE social media in a strategic yet pragmatic way. So please don’t hesitate to call me, send me an email or DM me (@Visible_Banking) to book a meeting and talk about twitter, facebook,crowdsourcing, customer reviews, social media & social commerce in banking, financial services and insurance.
