The City's leading marketers gather for candid discussion at Bloomberg HQ

“No financial services will be marketed today – Because you’re all here” - the words with which Christoph Woermann, Managing Director and Global Head of Corporate Bank Marketing at Deutsche Bank, welcomed a room full of peers: The City’s leading marketers representing institutions from BNY Mellon to HSBC, Franklin Templeton to Pimco and Silicon Valley Bank to PensionBee.

The room in question? A slick auditorium at the heart of Bloomberg’s impressive new London HQ – host to the inaugural CIM Financial Services Marketing Leaders’ Summit supported by the World Media Group and EI Advisory.

The summit was conceived of in the heat of a very hot moment when Deutsche Bank, The Economist and EI Advisory took to the stage together to win the 2019 World Media Award for Financial Services.… And in the space of six short months the seeds sewn bore fruit to deliver a brilliant programme drawing London’s leading FS Marketers in serious, candid and at times passionate, strategic discussion. “This is clearly an event that was needed in our space, we’ve had a fantastic response and many are saying that this is now an important event in the annual calendar”, said Jacob Howard, Chair of the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s Financial Services Group.

Giving his opening remarks, Parry Ravindranathan, President and MD – International for Bloomberg Media Group, reflected on the volatile global landscape in which business media professionals must operate today. And as a Hong Kong resident he would certainly know: he spoke about the myriad geopolitical challenges and pressures felt by those buying and selling, crafting and consuming business media across the world. But these challenges are only compounded by a list of many others particularly around digital disruption. Ultimately, Ravindranathan was keen to emphasise the vital importance of “collaboration to drive performance and efficiency” in challenging times such as these.

It was an apt opening for a day built on collaboration: both between peers within FS marketing as well as across the media-agency/advisory- corporate ecosystem.

A peer-led day of very interactive panels and roundtables, the conversation didn’t falter in its flow, though it travelled far and wide in its range. Attendees had a palpable appetite to air their challenges, exchange ideas and run with innovative thought experiments. And the impetus to do so was apparent. Grabbing the marketing industry’s existential foibles by its horns, delegates wrangled with some tough questions:

- What is modern B2B marketing and (how) can digital transformation be achieved at great scale in a big financial institution?

- Is Big Data as promising a boon to B2B financial services marketers as it is for others – or not?

- How – and how radically – is the role of the marketer and CMO changing?

- What are the benefits of media partnership in targeting, and maintaining engagement, with niche audiences?

In a series of blog posts, EI delves into the nuances of these questions as they were discussed on the day, lifting the lid on some of the most interesting comments and ideas shared on and off the stage, with a clear-eyed focus on what lies ahead for FS marketers in 2020.