David Hawkins resides at the intersection of the 19th and 21st centuries, pondering how the eras of horse-drawn carriages and custom-made Web-enabled remote video streams fit together in a bank branch that successfully connects to new digital-friendly consumers while maintaining Huntington's century-old ties to generations of Ohioans.
"I'm in a building right now that sits over a branch that's 150 years old," says Hawkins, senior vice president of customer experience at Huntington, speaking of a marble-heavy, 5,000-square-foot banking center in Columbus that dates to the time of Ulysses Grant. "It's gorgeous, but it's gorgeous in a banking museum context. Bringing it up to date is not something that you take lightly. You want to be aware of the responsibility for the authenticity that each branch represents."
Giving existing bank branches the "Apple Store" treatment won't work here. Melding each branch's unique past, customer profile, neighborhood location and relationship with nearby merchants to the bank's high-tech future is a big part of the job for Hawkins, who in the fall of 2010 joined Huntington from Umpqua to help drive a modernization of the Ohio bank's retail operation. At Huntington, Hawkins will help lead a locally focused branch renovation that will use lots of video and digital signage capabilities to deliver rapidly updated information and services on-screen, customized by each location's needs.
The $70 million project is renovating about 100 of the bank's 600 branches in its five-state retail network each quarter, and it's expected to be complete by 2012. These branches were accumulated through decades of acquisitions and organic growth, and represent everything from ubiquitous suburban shopping center branches to the gilded-age banking palace in Columbus.
Hawkins' project team of a half-dozen staffers are working on the upgrade, along with information technology, marketing and other departments in the bank. Other participants include external partners such as Arnold Worldwide, an ad agency, and Stratacache, a digital content distributor.
Digital signage is the catalyst. Branches will be outfitted with multiple 40-inch flat screen panels in which tailored content can be quickly uploaded to each location, controlled by remote personal computers. Stratacache will provide a Web-based product that will allow the bank to create, schedule, manage and monitor messaging in the branches from the marketing office. The product will deliver to the bank's branch network a content playlist containing both promotional messages as well as customized local content.
"Only recently has [retail branch] video become more sophisticated," says Steve Tom, vice president and associate creative director at Arnold, who says the tailored video content aims to take the consumer outside of "just the banking world," making the branch experience a component of an engagement with a larger community that includes the bank branch, local businesses and neighborhood news and events. "Once we connect with the consumer, it's a little easier to start a product conversation," Tom says.
The type of video content used in the future will be driven by internal Huntington research as well as external metrics provided by "voice of the customer" analysis to determine what kinds of content should be delivered to each location.
The use of video for marketing is not brand new for bank branches, but the near real-time posting of branch-specific content is. "We are at the beginning of a new focus on video in branches," says Alex Hesse, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, who says banks have used basic video screens to present basic information for years, but new Web-enabled customization and delivery of video streams is allowing for more dynamic information and visuals to be distributed, quickly and with a deeper dive.
Hawkins' team and the ad agency Arnold are developing message packages and templates for each branch to enable customization based on geography or local demographics. Staff and local businesses in each area will be able to provide content that can be shown on the video screens — the split between sales-driven and local business and community content will be about 75-25. Local businesses will be able to leverage the Arnold template structure to post video in branches, a service that the bank will provide for free. "We understand the nature of small business, and how hard it is for small-business owners to spend on marketing," Hawkins says, adding that the value proposition for Huntington in allowing free merchant ads is relationship-building with small businesses.
For the future, Hawkins says that the bank is also exploring ways to let branches share success stories and tips using the digital signage network and HD video cameras like the Flip. The branches will film their tip or topic, upload a finished file and the network will deliver it at a preopening time each morning for viewing across the footprint.
Marc DeCastro, IDC Financial Insights, says the captive audience that's waiting in line at a retail center is a good target for tailored video marketing. "I was filling my gas tank recently, and there were video screens above each pump. It really caught my attention," he says.
