Where expertise meets a point of view.
These are EMI’s perspectives on marketing, grounded in practice not observation. The earned convictions of people who have spent their careers inside the work and inside the industry. Ideas offered to demonstrate what we believe, build the kind of trust that precedes a real engagement, and contribute something worth arguing about.
How marketing can turn market uncertainty and volatility into a competitive advantage.
Financial services marketing is engineered for stability: campaigns planned in quarters, approved in committees, polished until the edge is gone. Markets don’t move on that schedule. The institutions that understand this are winning market mindshare while their competitors aren’t watching.
Financial services marketing is engineered for stability: campaigns planned in quarters, approved in committees, polished until the edge is gone. Markets don't move on that schedule. The institutions that understand this are winning market mindshare while their competitors aren’t watching.
In an environment like the current one, in which the future is unclear and markets react quickly to geopolitical and economic news, well-prepared marketers have a potential advantage. Capturing this advantage involves creating communications in anticipation of potential market-moving events so that they can be deployed immediately once the event occurs.
There is a structural irony at the center of financial services marketing. The industry exists to help clients navigate uncertainty, yet its marketing apparatus is almost entirely designed for certainty. Campaign calendars locked six months out. Compliance review cycles measured in weeks or more. Brand language refined until it offends no one and moves no one. The machine runs well when nothing happens. It stalls precisely when the market needs it most.
When volatility hits – a rate decision that surprises, a geopolitical event that reprices risk, a regulatory shift that changes the competitive landscape – there is a narrow window of 48 to 72 hours during which clients and prospects are actively looking for a perspective worth listening to. They are not looking for the brand campaign. They are looking for an institution that understands what just happened and has something useful to say about it. Most firms cannot respond in that window. Their competitors know this, and mostly don't take advantage of it either, which is the more remarkable fact.
The firms for which we’ve built rapid response communications infrastructure – pre-approved message frameworks build on smart scenario planning, creative assets honed on the shelf , analyst-ready commentary templates, and distribution protocols that don't require four rounds of legal – arrive in that window when others are still drafting. A single well-positioned response to a market event drives engagement multiples that planned campaigns rarely match. Not just because the content is thoughtful and strong, but because the timing signals something the audience values more than polish: that the institution was paying attention.
This is not a creative problem. It is an infrastructure problem. The institutions that solve it will not do so by hiring faster writers, using AI or loosening compliance. They will do so by investing in preparation – the marketing dry powder of an editorial calendar built around the economic calendar, the pre-cleared messaging architecture, the internal alignment that makes fast possible – that turn market moments into communication advantages. The window is there. It opens every time the market moves. The only question is whether you've built anything capable of walking through it.
Fintech won its first lap based on product. The next leg of the race is marketing-led.
The first phase of fintech disruption had a clear playbook. Build a better product and experience than the incumbents. Reduce friction to near zero. Acquire customers at scale through performance marketing and referral economics. The playbook worked because the incumbents were slow, the product gap was real, and customer tolerance for legacy banking experiences had reached its limit.
That race is largely over. Product parity has arrived faster than most fintechs anticipated. The incumbents invested, modernized, acquired and closed the gap on the experiences that once made fintech feel like a category entirely different from the rest. Acquisition channels that once delivered growth at a manageable cost are saturated. And the enterprise buyers that represent the next tier of fintech revenue – the CFOs, treasury officers, and institutional decision-makers evaluating fintech partnerships at scale – are applying a different standard than the one upon which early growth was built.
What partners and prospects are looking for is not a better product demonstration. They have seen dozens. What they demand is a strong, consultative sales conversation demonstrating a brand that understands their world, speaks their language, and has built the kind of credibility that survives a procurement process, a legal review, and conversations with the executive committee and the board. That is a marketing and positioning problem. It is also one that most fintechs have not yet solves, because in phase one, the product did the selling.
The fintechs that will define the next decade are not the ones that simply believe they have the best solution – or the giants that acquire all the better mousetraps. Several of their competitors are likely to have equivalent technology. Rather, they will be the ones that build the strategic marketing infrastructure – the brand architecture, the disciplined targeting, the content focus and precise customization by audience, the agile sales enablement – that turns product capability into market leadership.
That type of pivot requires a different kind of partner than the growth agencies and performance marketers who drove phase one. It will require the combination of strategic rigor and executional depth that has historically been the advantage of the best firms in financial services marketing.
