As part of a mini series, I am looking at communicating complex topics, and I am starting with a book I read recently on holiday, recommneded by my 80 year old dad who provided IT systems for banks for many, many years. I’ve been reading Banking on It by Anne Boden, the founder of Starling Bank.
It’s the story of building a completely new bank from scratch – taking on an established industry, raising the money, securing a banking licence, building the technology and, ultimately, persuading people to trust a bank they’d never heard of with their money. Oh, and she’s also a women in finance.
But I found myself reading it less as a book about banking and female founders, and more as a book about innovation, customer behaviour and communications.
Because a lot of the challenges Boden describes are familiar to anyone trying to introduce something genuinely new.
You can believe passionately in the idea. You can have significant investment behind it. You can have brilliant technical people and a product you genuinely think is better.
But ultimately, you still have to persuade somebody to do something differently.
And that brought me back to something I’ve been talking about recently: when you’re communicating innovation, there’s a journey from awareness, to understanding, to confidence, and finally to action.
So rather than review the book chapter by chapter, there are three questions it left me thinking about.
So, let’s dive in!
FULL TRANSCRIPT (UNEDITED)
1. How much interest do you really need before launch?
One of the things that struck me about Starling was the difference between the scale of the ambition and the relatively small numbers of people initially moving through the customer funnel.
They had funding. Experienced bankers. Publicity. An interested customer list. And still, when launch came, adoption had to be built customer by customer.
I think that’s a useful reality check for anyone working with innovation.
We can become very excited about registrations of interest, website visits, email open rates and people telling us they like an idea.
All of those things matter.
But interest isn’t the same as action.
And perhaps we need to be more realistic about what early adoption looks like.
The innovators and early adopters will move first. Others need to see evidence that something works. They may need reassurance. They may need to see other people doing it first.
So perhaps the question isn’t simply, how many people are interested?
It’s: do we have enough of the right people interested to learn what happens next?
2. What is stopping interested people from taking action?
This is where I think communications becomes particularly interesting.
If you’ve created awareness and people understand broadly what you’re offering, but they’re not taking the next step, it’s very easy to conclude that you need more marketing.
More content. More advertising. More emails. More explanation.
But perhaps that’s the wrong diagnosis.
The barrier could be within the proposition itself.
Maybe the process feels complicated. Maybe there are too many decisions. Maybe the customer doesn’t understand what happens next. Maybe you’re asking them to commit before they have enough certainty.
That’s why customer testing matters so much.
And not simply testing whether people like the communications, but stress-testing the proposition itself.
In our own engagement work, we’ve seen that the questions people ask about unfamiliar infrastructure often concern practical things such as cost, eligibility, disruption, implementation and delivery.
Those questions tell you something.
Communications isn’t simply broadcasting the proposition. It’s also a feedback mechanism that helps you identify where the friction is.
3. What are you actually making simpler for the customer?
This is probably the question from Banking on It that has stayed with me most.
Starling wasn’t really selling banking technology.
For the customer, the proposition was much simpler: banking could be easier.
And there’s a lesson there for anyone communicating a complex innovation.
When you’re close to something, you naturally become fascinated by what it can do. Every feature feels important. Every additional benefit feels like another reason someone should want it.
But from the customer’s perspective, every extra feature can also become another thing they have to understand.
That’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently.
Are we adding value – or are we adding complexity?
If we’re positioning something as a challenger to the traditional way of doing things, there should surely be a very simple answer to:
What are we making easier or better for the customer?
That’s why I’ve increasingly come back to the idea that people don’t buy technology; they buy what it makes possible.
The clever stuff can sit underneath. The customer proposition sitting on top needs to be incredibly clear.
Three things to think about
So, three things Banking on It has left me thinking about – and perhaps they’re useful questions for anyone communicating something new.
First: don’t confuse interest with readiness. Someone can like your idea and still not be ready to act. Think about what needs to happen between those two points.
Second: when people aren’t converting, don’t automatically reach for more marketing. Look for friction. Test the proposition, the process and the customer journey, not just the messaging.
Third: simplify before you amplify. Before the big campaign, the advertising or the launch push, make sure you can answer one very basic question: what are we making simpler for the customer?
Because one of the biggest lessons I’m taking from Banking on It is that launching an innovation isn’t really the finish line.
It’s the point at which you discover whether all that belief, investment, technology and communications actually makes sense to the person you’re asking to use it.
And that’s when the really interesting work starts.