A little over a year ago, my bank account got hacked. It sucked and the phone support at Citibank couldn’t help me out. So out of frustration, I turned to the best place I know to get help – Twitter. After some back and forth over the phone, their social media team had me fixed up right. Ever since then, I thought they had the social game right and would use it to help repair their image post-bailout era in a similar fashion to the auto industry.
Image: Wikipedia
Well, that was until today when I read this article on the Street noting that CEO Vikram Pandit launched his own fan page on Facebook to help bolster the brand image. He was the first major bank CEO to do so. I have to admit, reading the intro and opening quotes from their PR man Paul Butcher had me on board saying, hey this is cool, but shortly after that, I came to this paragraph that knocked me off the gravy train:
Although Pandit has a Facebook page he does not post or update the page himself, so you won’t see any personal status updates, friend requests or be able to poke him, Butcher explains. “He doesn’t update the page personally, but he thinks social media is very important,” he says.
To me this is just Citibank talking out of both sides of their mouth while also screaming at the top of their lungs that they were the first to market with a CEO fan page. That screaming and lack of usage by the CEO is plain vanity and poor taste – it is also is the antithesis of what a company should be doing to engage their customer base.
Having a page run by a social or communications team is one thing for a brand; it is completely inauthentic when done for an individual as a “ghost” fan page. Hopefully the team over there gets their act together and pulls down this act of hubris and focuses on the corporate brand instead of feeding an ego.
Hopefully other banks do not follow this lead.
What do you think about this account? What would you do if you were in Citi’s shoes?
As a former Citi employer (not a banker, just worked for a bank) I enjoyed this post. I must say one thing that jumps out at me is - don't forget Citi handled the hacked account issue. This is important to remember as Apple, Google and others seem to be staking out a position to handle our money, banks suck on many levels, but they do know how to handle money. On the social front, it is funny to think Citi used to (they still might) run every single tweet past a lawyer before posting. Yup, real-time is a relative term. As for the faux Facebook page, that is disappointing but not surprising. My time at Citi was filled with great moments, but I was always shocked how rarely talk of customers entered the discussions. They are trying to partner with companies like Apple and hopefully they can learn to engage customers on the customer's terms. Time will tell if banks remain relevant to the upcoming millennial customer base.
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