In 2004, the Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. (“Schwab”) was beginning to lose their clients and their position within the brokerage industry. Both the CEO and the Chief Marketing Officer were trying to create a marketing campaign in an effort to restore their brand and market share to what it was in the previous years. This case study discusses the process the company went through to create their marketing campaign, which was appropriately named “Talk to Chuck”, and the results of the marketing campaign.
History of the Company to 2004
Schwab is a brokerage and banking firm that was founded in 1971 by Charles Schwab. The company has always been an industry leader in the area of innovation. The company launched the first self-service brokerage that provided quality service at reasonable prices. They offered seminars to clients to help them better understand what was happening with their investments. In 1983 Schwab was purchased by Bank of America; however, Charles Schwab bought the company back in 1987 and decided to take it public.
With the internet era beginning, Schwab launched its on-line trading website in 1996. It went on offer new products and services to different client segments. The client segments they were catering to included individual investors, independent advisors, and company plan sponsors.
The company reached $1 trillion in assets by 2000 and had over 200 branch offices in 43 states by 2004. In 2003, the company launched the Charles Schwab Bank. Charles Schwab resigned as the CEO of Schwab that same year, only to return a year later. During 2003, the company faced a drop in profit and a decline in revenue from customer stock trading. Schwab’s competitors, Ameritrade and E*Trade, were moving past t...
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The customer support and customer service functions are more than departments; they are part of an essential strategy for growing your business. In the modern business climate, customers expect answers to their questions immediately. When the right information is available anytime, from anywhere in the world, customers are more likely to have a positive experience, thus customer loyalty will be increased. It is a known fact that the cost to obtain a customer is ten times higher than to maintain and keep existing customers. (Gouran, Dennis, W.E. Wiethoff, & J.A. Doelger. (1994). Mastering communication. 2nd ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.) Not in Reference Pg.
In light of an evolving market, faced with new competitors, and after a careful analysis of their current customers, the Vanguard Group (hereinafter referred to as “Vanguard”) realizes it must rethink its entire marketing strategy. However, in order to protect and leverage their competitive advantage, which is their low management fees, and to optimize the loyalty that their customers continuously demonstrate toward their organization, they must now target the most profitable segment for them, and develop the best way to serve and delight these customers.
In 1850, the Lehman bros. and Richard s. fuld jr. started their business of small buying and selling cotton shop. With the pace of time their business and their ambitions grew up, and opened the Futures trading venture in US. With efforts the firm moved to dealing of commodities with merchant banking. The success of bank was up to at mark.
Charles Keating exceeded Mr. Lindner’s expectations, which persuaded Mr. Lindner to extend an offer to the forty-eight year-old lawyer a position with American Financial in 1972 as the executive vice-president. Under Lindner’s supervision at American Financial in the mid-1970’s, Keating found a resourceful strategy to raise money from the public without the interference of the Wall Street underwriters. The success of this strategy resulted from sharp decline in profits that Lindner’s company was experiencing. Keating’s success revolved around him raising fifty million dollars for American Financial from the public without using an underwriting syndicate.
Before being cultivated with cocaine and hookers as the key to success in Wall Street, Jordan Belfort demonstrated the incontrovertible advantages of positive business communications. One of which pertains to the effectiveness of corresponding with customers over the telephone. Especially for stockbrokers, having a conversation over the phone is pivotal when trying to sell a stock to a potential investor. Jordan Belfort began his process with a potential client by stating his name, where he was from, and what he had to offer. This was a method of gaining the trust of a customer that he did not know. Furthermore, he engaged the customer with an optimistic attitude and stated how the stock could affect him or her in the best way possible. Jordan coul...
Lamb, C. W., Hair, J. F., McDaniel, C. D., & Wardlow, D. L. (2009). Essentials of marketing (6th ed.). Cincinnati, Ohio: South-Western College Pub..
Citigroup ' was founded as City Bank of New York in 1812 and remained a large regional bank until October 1998. Sandy Weill, then CEO of The Travelers Group an insurance company announced a $76 billion agreement to merge with Citigroup to form a new financial services conglomerate. It took only two years for the merger to pass federal law since the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act prevented banking and insurance companies from ever becoming one entity. As the new CEO of Citigroup, Sandy Weill was now at the helm of one of largest banking institutions in the world with over 300,000 employees and operations in over 120 countries. Popular brand names included CitiCards, CitiFinancial, CitiMortgage, Primerica, Salomon Brothers, Smith Barney, Diners Club and CitiCapital. Citigroup became the world’s first global financial supermarket where banking, brokerage and insurance were all held under the control of one organization. Citigroup is organized into four major segments; Consumer Banking, Global Cards, Institutional Client Group, and Global Wealth Management. Citigroup offers a wide range of products from retail banking, credit card services, and mortgage loans to global transaction services, M&A financing, and corporate lending. Citigroup is currently the largest bank in the United States with over US$600 billion in deposits and assets under management of over US$1.2 trillion.
The history of Lehman Brothers (LBs) is dated back to 1844 when Henry Lehman and his two brothers established a small shop in Alabama (United States) to sell groceries and other commodities (Geisst, 2001). In the early 1900’s, they formed to a greater business company trading on the New York exchange market and the Cotton Exchange, which successfully promoted the family business to the retail giants with a partnership with Goldman and Sachs (Geisst, 2001; Wechsberg, 1966). Subsequently, the further opportunity raised in collaboration with some firms in the railway industry such as the Baltimore and Ohio railways, Chicago railways and others (Harward Business School, 2012). In 1975, the company achieved its success when it became the 4th largest investment bank in the US by merging with Kuhn, Loeb and Company, which boosted their financial activities in the financial market (Sloane, 1977). In the new line of business by diversifying their operations from a small shop via investments in the industry sectors, eventually they transformed to the company operating in the banking and brokerage (Geisst, 2001). Although LBs experienced remarkable successes and achievements, the housing market bubble in USA led to their collapse causing that in September 2008 the company filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy petitions that triggered a negative flow of consequences (Caplan et al., 2010).
During the 1920s, approximately 20 million Americans took advantage of post-war prosperity by purchasing shares of stock in various securities exchanges. When the stock market crashed in 1929, the fortunes of many investors were lost. In addition, banks lost great sums of money in the Crash because they had invested heavily in the markets. When people feared their banks might not be able to pay back the money that depositors had in their accounts, a “run” on the banking system caused many bank failures. After the crash, public confidence in the market and the economy fell sharply. In response, Congress held hearings to identify the problems and look for solutions; the answer was found in the new SEC. The Commission was established in 1934 to enforce new securities laws that were passed with the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The two new laws stated that “Companies publicly offering securities must tell the public the truth about their businesses, the securities they are selling and the risks involved in the investing.” Secondly, “People who sell and trade securities must treat investors fairly and honestly, putting investors’ interests first.”2
Before being cultivated with cocaine and hookers as the key to success in Wall Street, Jordan Belfort demonstrated the incontrovertible advantages of positive business communications. One of which pertains to the effectiveness of corresponding with customers over the telephone. Especially for stockbrokers, having a conversation over the phone is pivotal when trying to sell a stock to a potential investor. Jordan Belfort begins his process with a potential client by stating his name, where he was from, and what he had to offer. This is a method of gaining the trust of a customer that he does not know. Furthermore, he engaged the customer with an optimistic attitude and stated how the stock could affect him or her in the best way possible. By providing the customer with onl...
Advertising generally tries to sell the things that consumers want even if they should not wish for them. Adverting things that consumers do not yearn for is not effective use of the advertiser’s money. A majority of what advertisers sell consists of customer items like food, clothing, cars and services-- things that people desire to have. On the other hand it is believed by some advertising experts that the greatest influence in advertising happens in choosing a brand at the point of sale.
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