The communications landscape has changed drastically over the past few years, even more so for Goldman Sachs. What was once a firm that was quiet and reticent to communicate with the outside world is now raising the bar for B2B companies and their approach to integrated marketing and communications. As a B2B firm, Goldman never felt the need to engage with the public, particularly through any formalized, external marketing and communications strategy.

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Most entrepreneurs learn the 5 Ps of Marketing early in the game: Product, Price, Place, Promotion and People. We are told that these are the five marketing levers that satisfy customers and build market share.
What competitors can’t copy is a company’s Perspective. Perspective (or issues ownership) becomes important in a commoditized industry where it may be difficult to differentiate your company from competitors. Perspective is the sixth marketing P.

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Many financial communications professionals continue to try and wrap their arms around social media and the relevance to the financial services industry. Many retail banks have been able to use Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other social media venues as customer service tools to both aggregate and respond to customer complaints. Some have done this phenomenally well and been able to improve their customer service model because of this “real time” customer feedback– like Wells Fargo and USAA, for example (see below for examples). But what about the institutional side of banking – is there an opportunity for social media there? The short answer is yes.

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Over the past several months, we’ve received great feedback on our weekly news summaries, including a few suggestions on how these posts can be more helpful to our readers. We’ve taken this feedback to heart, and have decided to change our “weekly news roundup” feature to focus on major stories breaking in the financial services industry. Moving forward, Our Two Cents will be authored by members of BlissPR’s Financial Services Practice Group.

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Ok, we get it. The media landscape is changing. So much so that the Twitter handle @themediaisdying has almost 22,000 followers and has tweeted over 3,500 updates since the account launched on November 18, 2008. While “dying” might be a bit of a dramatization, the media is without a doubt evolving – and doing so at warp speed. So why do public relations professionals continue to pitch the media as if it was circa 2002? Good question – and kudos to the Publicity Club of New York for more tactfully addressing this very question.

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Last night at the Grammy’s all eyes were on big winners like Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Kings of Leon and Lady Gaga. This week in business news, B2B PR professionals at BlissPR have nominated Obama’s budget, Real Estate and Retail as the areas to watch.

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New legislation currently in the Senate creates a new agency that will police mortgages, credit cards, personal loans and home appraisals resulting in significant new liabilities for credit card and other consumer lending marketers— and their communications firms could be put in the line of fire, too.

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Breaking out of your Thanksgiving-induced tryptophan coma yet? If not, we are confident that this morning’s exciting news headlines will! It’s Monday – “Cyber Monday” in fact, for those in the Retail sector – so it’s time again for our weekly preview of this week’s headlines in the B2B sectors we work in the most. Last week we focused on banking, healthcare and markets; this week we’re going to several other corners of the business world: management, real estate and of course – retail.

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It’s Monday, so it’s time again for our weekly preview of this week’s headlines in the B2B sectors we work in the most.  Last week we focused on banking, insurance, and real estate; this week we’re going to several other corners of the business world. We found some interesting nuggets today from three different sectors: [...]

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