The rise and fall and rise again… of white men in finance ads
At Mumbrella’s Finance Marketing Summit 2019, Getty Images’ Kate Rourke unveiled the surprising results of research into the visual trends in the sector – and how companies can ensure they are relevant and trustworthy.
Getty Images coined a term for the resurgence of caucasian, middle-aged males dominating banking ads during the 2008 financial crash. “We call him Guru Joe,” explains Kate Rourke, the photo giant’s senior manager of creative insights.
Guru Joe’s return from outdated irrelevance wasn’t as illogical as you’d think. In the years prior, the industry was shuffling towards modernising its communications to reflect the lives its customers actually led. But when the world economy fell off a cliff in 2008, marketers and agencies decided the public secretly yearned for a return to the safe familiarity of what came before. “The message was ‘Don’t worry, we’ve been through this,’” says Rourke. “Unfortunately, it didn’t resonate.”
Rourke’s job is to oversee research into the kinds of images that appear on its clients’ adverts and decipher what that tells us about the society we live in. It’s an investment-driven by business as much as intrigue: the more Getty Images knows about the images users are requesting, the more resources it can divert into shooting and sourcing relevant content. Getty Images’ advantage here is the enormous pool of information it can tap into.
For this financial services study, they interviewed senior marketers at some of the world’s biggest financial services brands and looked at their visual strategy, conducted third-party research here in Australia – and topped it off with an analysis of top-selling images and search data stemming from millions of searches and downloads on Getty Images’ sites. Rourke’s team was also able to include external sources such as social media feeds, OOH billboards and websites to track cultural shifts and advertising trends.
After 2010, financial institutions finally learned their lesson. There was a rise in ordinary people dominating adverts, often called out by their real names – signalling personalisation, says Rourke. “And in 2011, photography became much more observational. The whole messaging was ‘We’re here for you’ and ‘Whatever matters to you, matters to us.’” Today, authenticity is king.
The first major trend Getty Images noticed is financial institutions placing humans – or rather, customers – front and centre of their communications. The second was those adverts showing people collectively together. “It’s about being part of something bigger now – being your individual self but within a community. In fact, ‘belonging’ as a search term went up by almost 3,400% globally.”
This honest approach has extended to reflect the more liberal and progressive world we live in. We’re seeing gay couples with children, seniors being active and travelling, genuine body sizes, non-Caucasians, men as caregivers and women doing STEM. But we also have a way to go on with some issues. While 10% of parents are single, just 1% are shown like this in advertising; 15% live with a disability, compared to 2% on marketing; and not even 1% came from the LGBT community. “We found 76% of Australians think brands need to do more.”
The full results are published in Getty Images’ Financial Services Visual Trends Report whitepaper, which you can download here. But perhaps the crux of these shifts are driven because consumers expect more of all businesses and, crucially, are proactive in holding them to account. This was reflected two years ago on the Edelman Trust Barometer among Gen Z, who admitted social and political stances affected their buying habits. “But today this is now all consumers across all age groups, income levels and socioeconomic levels. Short-term campaigns no longer resonate. If you want to be sustainable, say, just putting plants everywhere isn’t enough.
“It’s something you have to show through everything you do.”