Using competitive research to cut through the noise Financial services has a volume problem: too many messages, not enough meaning. It’s why the category is rife with creative that is virtually indistinguishable from one brand to another. That’s exactly why you need to start by doing competitive research. It’s an opening move—not a rescue mission—that …

Financial‑services marketing is crowded with trends, inherited wisdom, and pressure to “do what everyone else is doing.” The result? Campaigns that look alike, sound alike, and fail to move the metrics that actually matter. The antidote is simple but demanding: ruthlessly challenge assumptions, and do it at the beginning of the work. Why assumptions creep …

Speed still matters, but it no longer wins the day on its own. Today’s benchmark is helpfulness—the feeling that an experience understands what you’re trying to do and clears a straight path to getting it done. Our way of finding that path is something we call digital‑expectation research: a ruthlessly focused look at how real people glide …

Big initiatives stall for simple reasons: unclear goals, competing priorities, and unspoken assumptions that turn a straight sprint into a maze of detours. That’s why, early in every engagement, we schedule ruthlessly focused stakeholder interviews—one‑on‑one conversations designed to surface nuance, encourage candor, and align decision‑makers before any heavy lifting begins. Why big projects stumble Even the …

Most engagements start with a traditional creative brief from the Client. Too often it’s a sprawling PDF stuffed with legacy slides, buried KPIs, and five different “number‑one” objectives. Helpful intent—bloated execution. Why it matters: According to our 2024 Finsights study, 75% of consumers say they’re dissatisfied with their current financial‑services provider—a clear warning that indifference …

Three concise “reasons why this works” for every idea. That’s what we come prepared with when we present thinking to our Clients—clear, focused statements that anchor the conversation around why we believe a concept works. Not three customer‑facing claims—three internal reasons why we believe the idea earns its place in the room. It’s a forcing …

Clickthrough rates aren’t meaningless. But they’re wildly overvalued. We see it all the time in financial services: Clients show us a piece of creative that performs well because it “gets clicks”—even if those clicks come from the wrong audience, lead nowhere meaningful, or fade out before anyone takes real action. It’s the illusion of effectiveness. …

At Shiny, creative reviews aren’t a solo exercise. We meet live, as a team, because strategy-driven creative work demands more than just feedback—it demands discussion. We don’t just review each other’s work. We challenge it. We ask better questions. We wordsmith together. We interrogate assumptions. We ruthlessly obsess over clarity, tone, and the ‘why’ behind …

In financial services, the appetite for bold ideas often gets filtered through layers of risk, compliance, and caution. The result? Work that’s well-executed but safe. Familiar. Expected. We’ve seen how hard it can be for even the most ambitious Clients to break free from what they’ve always done. That’s why we use a concepting framework …

Competitive research gets a bad rap in financial services. It’s often treated like a benchmarking exercise. Something you do to validate where you are—or to get permission to play catch-up. But the point of competitive research isn’t to be the best of the banks. Competitive research isn’t about catching up. It’s about seeing what’s coming. …