Swiss Financial Institutions & Social Media Presence

Digital Marketing Strategy
in the
Financial Sector

1

Digital Marketing Strategy in the Financial Sector
A work elaborated by;
- Altendorfer Siegmund
- Boltryk Natalia
- Fumagalli Riccardo
- Furrer Stefan
- Giannini Chiara
- Grosso Rita
- Kessel Ronnie
- Prada Simon
- Riendeau Kelly
- Schugg Silvia
- Zekany Örs
An analysis for the Master lecture of Digital Marketing, from the Professor Andreina Mandelli.
2

Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................ 4
Methodology .......................................................................................................................................................... 4
What was looked at? ........................................................................................................................................... 4
What social media channels were measured? .................................................................................................... 4
What social network variables were used? ......................................................................................................... 5
Credit Suisse ........................................................................................................................................................... 7
Overall ................................................................................................................................................................. 9
UBS ........................................................................................................................................................................ 10
Overall ............................................................................................................................................................... 11
Zurich Financial Services ....................................................................................................................................... 12
Overall ............................................................................................................................................................... 13
Julius Bär ............................................................................................................................................................... 14
Overall ............................................................................................................................................................... 15
Raiffeisen Switzerland .......................................................................................................................................... 16
Overall ............................................................................................................................................................... 17
Vontobel Bank ...................................................................................................................................................... 18
Overall ............................................................................................................................................................... 19
Whole financial sector analysis ............................................................................................................................ 20
Presence of the banks on the different social media ........................................................................................ 20
Contents: activity and members subscribed ..................................................................................................... 21
Participation: posts from the bank .................................................................................................................... 23
Non-‐official participation .................................................................................................................................. 24
Key Findings and Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 25
References: ........................................................................................................................................................... 27
3

Introduction

The Financial sector in Switzerland is one of great importance to the country and population at large
but also to all investors, customers, clients and stakeholders involved. With the current strong
emphasis on corporate participation in social media channels, it is important to analyze just how
important media presence is in different industries. This industry report aims to shed light on the
current social media participation and practices of 6 major financial institutions in Switzerland; Credit
Suisse, UBS, Zurich, Julius Bar, Raiffeisen and Vontobel. The report focuses on main social media
channels and links the participation of each financial institution based on social network variables. A
look into the methodology behind the industry analysis, key findings and recommendations for future
actions are included.
Methodology

What was looked at?

Part of the analysis are six of the largest financial banking institutions in Switzerland; Credit Suisse,
UBS, Zurich, Julius Bär, Raiffeisen and Vontobel. A short introduction and description of each bank is
given, then the details of the company’s presence on certain media channels is described and finally
weighted out with social media variables.
What social media channels were measured?

The social media channels chosen to base the financial institutions presence on, were narrowed down
by research geared towards both popularity and suitability for the industry.
The following networks were looked at:
• Youtube: Video sharing platform

• LinkedIn: Corporate social network
• Facebook: Interactive social network
4

• Flickr : Picture sharing network
• Twitter: Micro-‐blogging platform
Each company’s main webpage was used as a basis to discover which pages and or network
memberships were both official and unofficial. Additional data such as RSS feeds, Podcasts and
mobile phone applications are also listed in order to better understand each institutions online
involvement. When looking at individual networks, different measures were used to calculate
If a company did not participate nor had presence what so ever on a network then the network was
omitted from the analysis.

What social network variables were used?

When looking at all the individual networks, different measures were used to calculate the financial
institutions’ participation or involvement or popularity on the platform. The following variables for
calculating social media presence were looked at:

Dialog: The brands presence on both official and non-‐official sites, the number of “likes” and
“dislikes” posted in reference to the brand and the number of “views” or memberships associated
with each brand.
Advocacy: Brand advocacy was measured based on the negative and or positive messages relating to
the brand found on any platform.
Support: Support was measured by researching any kind of customer feedback given on official sites
Innovation: was measured by looking at methods the company’s had available where users could
partake in co-‐creation opportunities.
Brand Engagement: engagement was measured by the social media presence of each brand and the
number of channels it was present in.
Leadership: was measured if any of the brands showed presence of moderators on the social
networking platforms or showed the direct management of brand communities.
5

Each individual financial brand was researched and all obtainable variables were measured based on
each brands online presence. Conclusions and recommendations were made based on the
comparison of all 6 brands’ overall ranking in regards to the variables listed above.
6

Credit Suisse

“Credit Suisse Group is a world-‐leading financial services company, advising clients in all aspects of
finance, around the world, around the clock.”
The bank, headquartered in Zürich, was founded in 1856 by Alfed Escher with the main purpose to
finance the railroad network and the industrialization in Switzerland. Today it is a leading global
financial services company, operating in over 50 countries and employing more than 48,000 people.
The main products of Credit Suisse are clients, financial advice in private banking, investment banking
and asset management. In 2009 the company recorded revenue for 33.29 billion CHF and in the same
year it was recognized as the “Bank of the Year” by the International Financing Review (IFR), a leading
investment banking magazine.
Credit Suisse provides current information via several social media services:
YouTube: the official YouTube channel of Credit Suisse reports on current topics of different areas
such as those of business, finance, sport and the arts. In this platform consumers can find expert
advice, analysis, interviews and feature articles. The channel has more than 10,000 views, with 148
subscribers and a total of 31 uploaded videos which are all posted by the bank itself under six
different sections: “Economy”, “Sponsorship”, “Management in a Nutshell”, “The Daily Beast and
Credit Suisse Series”, “Asian Investment Conference 2010”, and “Brady Dougan”. For these videos
there are 2,989 likes, mainly expressed in the sponsorship-‐section videos featuring tennis player
Roger Federer, and 25 dislikes. However, there are many other videos posted on non-‐official
channels. The channel does not permit people to engage in the creation and sharing of videos, the
only things that they can do is to send messages and express their favorability to the posted videos.
Facebook: Credit Suisse's Facebook page features current news, selected videos from YouTube and
information about the bank’s activities regarding Sponsorship and Corporate Citizenship. All this
material is posted by the bank itself.
The channel presents 41 posts, the oldest one is dated 17 December 2009, this could make believe
that Credit Suisse opened the channel very recently and as such the dialogue with users is in an initial
stage. Here people can express their opinions only by leaving comments and saying if they like or
7

dislike the posted material, because there is no way to write on the wall of the company (this fact is
also highlighted by a subscriber, which in date 21 November 2010 left the following comment: “just
tried to post the statement on your wall. Unavailable, it seems”1). The only possible dialogue is
through posting comments. Thus, there is a Facebook page, but it does not seem to be a “real” profile
where users can dialogue with Credit Suisse, be active or engage. The only use of this social media
seems to be just another way for the bank to spread information.
Facebook reaches 3,600 people that expressed their favorability toward the company (“likes”). Of the
41 messages, 35 users expressed their opinions by leaving a comment or by conveying their
favorability: 45% of the comments were quite positive, 20% were negative and 35% were neutral. On
Facebook it is possible to find more than 200 unofficial groups created by employees, ex-‐employees,
fans, etc.
Linkedin: Credit Suisse has a company profile on this platform, which provides information about the
company history, offerings, number and composition of staff, among others. However, there is no
way to interact neither with the company nor with other users.
Flickr: Credit Suiss has no official group on Flickr, however it is possible to find some pictures related
to the bank posted by other users. The name of the bank is tagged in 1,377 pictures, representing
corporate buildings, sponsored events, conferences, etc.
Twitter: Credit Suisse has a Twitter profile, through people can get short and timely messages from
the bank. The platform counts 1,643 followers and 742 tweets.

The official website of the bank also offers 21 RSS feeds, divided in different topics such as “latest
news”, “speech and interviews”, “financial news”, “investor presentations”, and many others. In
addition to this, it is also possible to have access to four Credit Suisse podcast channels: “Credit Suisse
TV”, “Economy & Business”, “Our Commitment”, and “Global Investor”, which let users automatically
pick up the latest items on their cell phone, MP3 player, or iPad.

1
http://www.Facebook.com/home.php?#!/creditsuisse
8

Credit Suisse provides three applications for iPhones: “Credit Suisse Currency Converter”, “Credit
Suisse Locator”, and “Research by Credit Suisse”. All the three applications are free of charge,
however, the third one need the creation of an account to be accessible.

Overall
Credit Suisse does partake in brand engagement online; it has company owned channels in which it is
present, with being able to communicate leadership presence with users and Support. Credit Suisse’
Dialog is quite strong in that sense as it is present on many social networking platforms and monitors
them at a corporate level.

9

UBS

UBS is a global firm, headquartered in Switzerland offering wealth management, investment banking
and asset management for personal and corporate clients at an international level. The firm is present
in over 50 countries and manages over 2.2 trillion assets. UBS being a financial institution has a fairly
limited presence in social media channels. The firm is primarily focused on a targeted audience,
composed of business professionals; both clients and current and potential employees along with
corporate customers. UBS is currently present in the following social media channels:
Youtube: UBS has some presence on Youtube but it is not a controlled presence operated by the firm
itself. Two dominant commercials are present on the media site which have over 60,000 views,
The commercial titled ``you and us `` has over 51,000 views and the commercial
``We will not rest`` has over 7000 views, both commercials are marked by viewers as being
predominantly liked with only a few dislikes. There are also news broadcasts relating to UBS that
have been posted on Youtube have over 800 views.
LinkedIn: UBS has a company profile page on LinkedIn but does not have a number of followers
associated to it but the social network itself has over 80 million members who have access to the
company`s profile. The webpage posts job offers, and UBS employee profiles who are LinkedIn
members. There is no interactive content available on the site.
Facebook: The company has a facebook page that was created by an outside source and the main
content is linked to Wikipedia. The page has very few comments and there are 1200 facebook
members who ``like`` the page.
Flickr: UBS has no official membership profile on Flickr but is tagged in two groups ``Switzerland``
which has 5789 members and under ``buildings and Architecture`` which has 23,854 members. Most
of the pictures associated to the company are architecture related not company focused or focusing
on protests outside the company buildings and are negatively associated to the company.
10

The company`s website currently offers 10 different RSS feeds concerning such topics as; corporate
responsibility news, company news, investor releases, etc. The website also has links to
Podcasts: both video and audio podcasts are available on the site or through iTunes, and an
Iphone application is available for download on the site which helps clients locate UBS locations
worldwide.
Overall
Dialog: Youtube; 22 likes, 10 dislikes. Toatal number of official pages: 2. The dialog communicated via
social media channels is very limited, and there is no available data indicating levels of engagement.
Advocacy: There is no data available on the company that indicates the number of brand advocates
associated to the brand.
Brand engagement: UBS is present in 5 main social media channels, only two being opffically linked to
the company itself.
Support: UBS does not manage any brand communities on social networks but does offer free
content in the form of Podcasts and RSS feeds.
Innovation: There is no evidence that UBS has participated in co-‐creation of value with its customers
via the web.

11

Zurich Financial Services

Zurich Financial Services AG is a group based in Zürich, Switzerland. Zurich is one of the world's largest
insurance groups, and one of the few to operate on a truly global basis. With 60,000 employees
serving customers in more than 170 countries, the business is concentrated in three core segments:
General Insurance, Global Life, and Farmers.
Zurich Financial Services Bank has a moderate presence in social media channels. The strenghts of the
bank are: in-‐depth customer knowledge, powerful global network coupled with local expertise, high-‐
quality services with talented employees.
Currently, Zurich is using the following social media channels:

Facebook: Zurich has at least three different unofficial pages on Facebook. However, these pages
were not created by the company itself: the most important one has been created for people that
have at some point or are still employed by Zurich. The page has many comments on the wall, 14
discussions and 1’130 members.
YouTube: Since 2009 Zurich has his own YouTube channel: ZurichCommunications. The channel
counts 53 videos and 133 members. The channel has over 8’741 views, and the uploaded videos
count over 62’498 total views. However, the presence on YouTube is not only operated by the
company itself. There are many related videos about Zurich uploaded by private users. The possibility
to add comments has been disabled for the videos of the official channel.
Flickr: Zurich has no corporate profile on Flickr but there are many pictures of the Zurich
Development Center and some employees. In total the page counts 32 pictures and about 417 views.
LinkedIn: Zurich has a company profile on LinkedIn. There are the basic information about the
company and also a curios list of the hiring.

12

The company offers RSS feeds, email newsletter (news releases, annual report, insights magazine,
quarterly results), and an iPhone application called the accident assistant available in the
Applicationstore).
There is an official website (http://www.zurich.com/main/home/welcome.htm).

Overall
Zurich has an inadequate presence on social media channels, its brand engagement is low. The
dialogs in the social media channels seem to be very limited. In general it is very difficult to find the
appropriate data. There is just little data in relation to the YouTube channel.
Zurich does not directly manage official brand communities in social media. The different social
media channels are not connected, therefore it is impossible to create any type of synergies.

13

Julius Bär

The Julius Baer Group is a leading Swiss private banking group, focusing on servicing and advizing
private clients. Julius Baer is a renowned Swiss private bank with origins dating back to 1890. The bank
Julius Baer is the principal operating company of Julius Baer Group.
Bank Julius Baer is not presented very well in social media channels. Having a long tradition, Julius
Baer concentrates on providing clients with investment advice and diversified wealth management
solutions. For this service it does not use social media platforms to ensure high qualitative service.
Currently, Julius Baer is using the following social media channels:

Facebook: Julius Baer has a page on Facebook. However, this page was not created by the company
itself but is the text of Wikipedia. There is only one post on the page, not in English. The page has 51
fans.
YouTube: Julius Baer has no own YouTube channel. However, its presence on YouTube is not
operated by the bank itself. There are 95 related videos mostly about the Julius Baer challenge, some
about art exhibitions of Julius Baer and some TV news about the company. There are no commercials
about the bank. The videos all have very few to none comments.
Flickr: Julius Baer has no corporate profile on Flickr but there are many pictures of the Julius Baer
Challenge. Most of these pictures were uploaded by the challenge sponsor “Alinghi”. There are 408
results for photos of Julius Baer related pictures. There are no pictures which show directly the
company’s business or can be associated with it.
LinkedIn: Julius Baer has a company profile on LinkedIn but it only has one contact. The basic
information about company size and number of employees etc. is available but there is no interactive
content.

The bank currently offers no RSS feeds, no podcasts and no iPhone applications. There is a web
portal called ebaer and a research portal called JBresearch that are only accessible with a password.

14

Overall
One can say that Julius Baer has a very limited presence on social media channels. More confidential
or selected knowledge is stored in an area protected by a password. The few dialogs taking place in
the social media channels seems not to be very active. Members or users do not engage much in
discussions about the brand. There is no data for either negative or positive feedback. Also, there is
no data about the number of brand advocates associated with the brand. As far as the innovation
goes, it can be concluded that there is no data about users providing service improvements. So there
is no co-‐creation of value of Julius Baer with its clients. Concerning the brand management, Julius
Baer is currently present in four social media channels, of which one of them (LinkedIn) is no real
social media channel in the original sense, because users cannot publicly interact with the company.
Julius Baer does not directly manage proprietary brand communities in social media. It offers some
free content, more general informative content on its website. The various social media channels are
not linked in any way.

15

Raiffeisen Switzerland

Raiffeisen Switzerland is the third largest banking group in Switzerland. Raiffeisen Switzerland has a
cooperatively structured group and is one of Switzerland's leading retail banks. Today, Raiffeisen has
3.2 million Swiss citizens as clients. Of these, 1.5 million are cooperative members of the Raiffeisen
Bank. They appreciate the crucial advantages of Raiffeisen: customer focus, support, reliability and
the exclusive benefits for cooperative members. The customer focus is also one of the main reasons for
the success of Raiffeisen. Represented in 1151 locations in Switzerland, Raiffeisen has made the most
extensive branch network. It is not surprising that the Raiffeisen employees know their customers
personally.

Currently, Raiffeisen is using the following social media channels:

Facebook: Raiffeisen hasn’t an official page on Facebook. The unofficial page has no posts, so there is
no possibility to interact. There is only a Wikipedia page describing the business of the Raiffeisen
Schweiz Bank. There are 106 people who like it.
YouTube: Raiffeisen has a few TV Spots on YouTube, but most of them are for Romania or Hungary
and not for Switzerland. There are currently three videos in Swiss-‐German and they are not posted by
Raiffeisen itself and have no comments. There are about 3500 views.
Twitter: Raiffeisen is present on Twitter, but there are no tweets, just 14 following and 208 followers.
So there is no information concerning Raiffeisen.
LinkedIn: Raiffeisen Switzerland is present on LinkedIn, however there is just basic information about
the bank and some statistics about the employees.
Flickr: Raiffeisen has not a official group, however it has a few picture showing the brand name as
sponsor in sport competitions and some branch offices.

16

Mobile phone Applications: Raiffeisen has an iPhone application allowing to find the nearest ATM
and branch office.

Raiffeisen.ch: on the official webpage we can find financial news, RSS feeds, Podcasts, Newsletters, a
tool to search for the nearest branch office, E-‐Banking and all other information about the bank.

Overall
One can say that Raiffeisen has a very limited presence on social media channels. It’s not easy to find
information if you don’t know German, French or Italian because it is concentrated only in
Switzerland. That could be the reason on the small presence on the social media like on Facebook that
has only a few fans and because they know the clients personally (Switzerland is a very small country).
Raiffeisen is mostly present as a sponsor for events. Raiffeisen should post more information on social
media in order to inform about events where the company is present.

17

Vontobel Bank

Vontobel Holding AG was founded in 1936 in Zürich, as a private bank. Vontobel becomes in time one
of the biggest Swiss players in the world finance industry. This bank, with more than 1400 employees
worldwide, is mainly focused on: Private Banking, Investment Banking and Asset Management.
As we will see more in detail in the following “box”, the bank doesn’t make a huge use of digital
marketing channels. This could be explained in the way that they try to keep an image of professional
discretion, in order to match the expectations that customers have from financial actors.

Facebook: The main use of Facebook is oriented to the employees therefore there is no official
company page. There is a member group of 24 people on it (0 Like). There is no real interaction on
this social platform (no comments or other content).

LinkedIn: The main use of this social platform is the knowledge sharing with experts, job
opportunities and interaction with others. Vontobel also use this platform for general information
regarding mainly the Human Resources.
YouTube: Vontobel does not have an official You Tube Channel. The numbers of members are 212 of
which 191 are employees.
They provide four movies which explain the company and (ex: story, what they do, …) advertise it.
There are also employees who explain and analyze some sectors of their bank.
There are 3 official commercial videos: “Performance Creates Trust” has 357 views (1 Likes) the
German version has 299 views (2 Like), “Bank Vontobel” has 554 views.

CFO Forum Schweiz: The bank uses this platform in order to share knowledge between all members
of this forum. BUT; in this forum only CFO’s of any company can participate.

18

Overall
One can clearly observe that Vontobel Holding AG does not make a broad use of digital marketing
channels. The main purpose of these channels is the knowledge sharing between business actors (Ex:
CFO forum Schweiz). They don’t feed much the open communication with the internet users (“with
everybody”), so they don’t provide for internal information, information regarding the whole
company and others. This strategy is explainable by looking to the main characteristics of the financial
sector: privacy. Then, Vontobel AG tries to maintain a high level of privacy and be perceived by other
as a serious and discrete Bank.
In general we can say that Vontobel AG make use of 4 different digital channels in which they don’t
offer free content and free entertainment. But we observed that there are always links on the social
channels that connect directly to their web page.

19

Whole financial sector analysis
Presence of the banks on the different social media

Social Credit UBS Zurich Julius Bär Raiffeisen Vontobel

media Suisse Financial Switzerland Bank
Services
YouTube X -‐ X -‐ -‐ -‐

Facebook X -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ X
Twitter X -‐ -‐ -‐ X -‐
LinkedIn X X X X X X
Flickr -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐
RSS X X X -‐ X -‐
Podcast X X -‐ -‐ X -‐
Apps X X X -‐ X -‐

“-‐“ denotes no official presence on the channel

20

Social media presence

6
5 Vontobel Bank
4 Raiffeisen Switzerland
3
Julius Bär
2
1
UBS
0
Credit Suisse
From this chart we can see that the most used social media is LinkedIn, followed by FSS and Apps. It is also
possible to see that Credit Suisse is the bank with the highest presence.

Services
YouTube 148 -‐ 133 -‐ -‐ -‐

Facebook 3,600 -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ 24
Twitter 1,643 -‐ -‐ -‐ 209 -‐

21

Contents: activity and members subscribed

This table is about the subscribers of the different social media channels.
Number of subscribers

4000
3600
3500
3000 Credit Suisse
2500 UBS

2000 1643
Julius Bär
1500
Raiffeisen Switzerland
1000 Vontobel Bank
500 148 133 209

0 0 0 0 0 0 24 0 0 0
0
YouTube Facebook Twiuer

From this chart, we can see the numbers of subscribers on the different social media channels, also in that we
can see that Credit Suisse has the major number of subscribers.
22

Participation: posts from the bank


Services
YouTube 31 -‐ 53 -‐ -‐ -‐

Facebook 41 -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ 0
Twitter 742 -‐ -‐ -‐ 0 -‐
LinkedIn X X X X X X
Flickr -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐ -‐
Apps 3 1 1 -‐ 1 -‐
This table is about the content provided by the banks (posts, uploaded videos, application provided, etc.)
“-‐“ denotes no official presence on the channel

“X” denotes no data available without registration

ParZcipaZon of the banks

800 742
700
Credit Suisse
600
UBS
500
400
300 Julius Bär

100 31 53 41 Vontobel Bank
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 1 1
0
YouTube Facebook Twiuer Flickr Apps

From this chart we can see that the banks are not very involved in the posting of content on YouTube,
Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, or providing applications. Only Credit Suisse seems to be active in that.
23

Non-‐official participation


Services
YouTube 1,290 5,120 162 25 676 23

Facebook 200 40 20 3 60 6
Flickr 1,377 5,434 2 93 169 0

This table is about the number of non-‐official groups (Facebook), uploaded videos (YouTube), and pictures
(Flickr) concerning the analyzed banks. The videos and the pictures refers to those who are tagged with the
name of the banks and that appears by typing the name of them.

Non-‐official parZcipaZon
6000 5434
5120
Credit Suisse
5000
UBS
4000
3000
Julius Bär
2000 1290 1377
1000 200 40 20 3 60 6
162 25 23 2 93 169 0 Vontobel Bank
0
YouTube Facebook Flickr

Here, we can see that there is participation of users with non-‐official groups, videos and pictures and we can
see that users prefer YouTube and Flickr. All these activities create buzz around the companies, which can be
good if they are positive or dangerous if they are negative; in this industry this seems to be more present on
YouTube and Flickr. Credit Suisse and UBS are the banks that produce the highest level of participation.

24

Key Findings and Conclusion

In summary, one can say that most of the banks have a very limited presence on social media
channels. Whereas Zurich, Julius Bär, Vontobel, Raiffeisen and UBS are rarely engaging in social media
marketing, only Credit Suisse is much more active.

Zurich does not directly manage official brand communities in social media. The different social media
channels are not connected; therefore it is impossible to create any type of synergies. This is also valid
for Julius Bär. Julius Bär rather stores more confidential or selected knowledge in a password
protected area than offering information on various social media channels. It offers some free
content, more general informative content on its website. Also the communication of UBS via social
media channels is very limited. There is no data available indicating the level of engagement on social
media channels. It does not manage any brand communities on social networks and the free content
they offer is only in form of Podcasts and RSS feeds. Raiffeisen’s presence on social media channels is
limited as well as it rather focuses on the personal contact to its clients. Getting further information is
rather difficult if you do not speak German, French or Italian because it is only concentrated on
Switzerland. As Raiffeisen is mostly present as a sponsor for events, it should post more information
on social media in order to inform about the events where the company is present. Concerning
Vontobel Holding AG it does not use digital marketing channels very much. The main purpose of
Vontobel using these channels is to share knowledge with business actors. In general, Vontobel does
not offer free content and free entertainment. Its main aim is to maintain a high level of privacy and
be perceived as a serious and discrete bank.

The strategy most of the banks are following can be explained by focusing on the main characteristics
of the financial sector. The primary characteristic is clearly privacy. These banks highly value their
confidentiality, the high quality and secrecy of their banking services. Being a bank offering wealth
management in the first place for its demanding clients requires other superior services than the
presence on social media channels. These clients value a different kind of exclusive service and
knowledge. They want to receive information first hand from their personal bank advisor and not by
interacting with other wealthy clients on social media channels. Therefore, most of the banks as seen
25

for Julius Bär, Zurich, Vontobel and Raiffeisen focus on this kind of strategy. UBS is also not using the
social media channels that actively. However, it is not a bank focusing on wealth management service
for its clients. Therefore, UBS should probably consider improving its engagement on social media
channels and follow the example of Credit Suisse.

In fact, for Credit Suisse the case is different. Credits Suisse is very active on various social media
platforms but the engagement of users is rather poor. One problem is that they often cannot take
part in the creation of content but only express their favorability or comment on uploaded
information. Hence, the use of this social media channel seems to be just another way for the bank to
spread information. Credit Suisse seems to follow a multi-‐social media strategy, since it is present in
more than one social network. It uses social media as a complementary channel to provide further
information about its activities. On each platform the company provides a brief history of itself and
the link to access its official website (www.credit-‐suisse.com); sometimes the links of its social media
spaces are also present. Although, Credit Suisse is a good example for UBS to follow there is still room
for improvement for it as it did not exploit all potential of using social media. Especially, the
interaction with clients is still weak.

26

References:

http://www.facebook.com/
https://www.credit-suisse.com/who_we_are/en/
https://www.credit-suisse.com/news/en/social_media.jsp
https://www.credit-suisse.com/investors/doc/ar09/csg_ar_2009_en.pdf
https://www.credit-suisse.com/news/en/media_release.jsp?ns=41390
http://www.vontobel.com/en/home/
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vontobel
http://www.cfos.ch/mitgliedschaft/mitglieder/portrait_bank_vontobel_ag_corporate_finance/?no_cache=1&s
word_list[]=Vontobel
http://www.123people.ch/s/bank+vontobel
http://www.linkedin.com/
http://www.juliusbaer.ch/htm/986/en_CH/Homepage.htm
http://www.linkedin.com/companies/ubs
www.youtube.com
www.Flickr.com
www.facebook.com
27

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Digital Marketing Strategy

A work elaborated by;

What was looked at? ........................................................................................................................................... 4

What social media channels were measured? .................................................................................................... 4

What social network variables were used? ......................................................................................................... 5

Credit Suisse ........................................................................................................................................................... 7

UBS ........................................................................................................................................................................ 10

Overall ............................................................................................................................................................... 11

Zurich Financial Services ....................................................................................................................................... 12

Overall ............................................................................................................................................................... 13

Julius Bär ............................................................................................................................................................... 14

Overall ............................................................................................................................................................... 15

Raiffeisen Switzerland .......................................................................................................................................... 16

Overall ............................................................................................................................................................... 17

Vontobel Bank ...................................................................................................................................................... 18

Overall ............................................................................................................................................................... 19

Whole financial sector analysis ............................................................................................................................ 20

Contents: activity and members subscribed ..................................................................................................... 21

Participation: posts from the bank .................................................................................................................... 23

Non-­‐official participation .................................................................................................................................. 24

Key Findings and Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 25

References: ........................................................................................................................................................... 27

What was looked at?

What social media channels were measured?

• Youtube: Video sharing platform

Zurich Financial Services

Presence of the banks on the different social media

Social Credit UBS Zurich Julius Bär Raiffeisen Vontobel

YouTube X -­‐ X -­‐ -­‐ -­‐

Social media presence

Social Credit UBS Zurich Julius Bär Raiffeisen Vontobel

YouTube 148 -­‐ 133 -­‐ -­‐ -­‐

Number of subscribers

3000 Credit Suisse

Zurich Financial Services

500 148 133 209

Social Credit UBS Zurich Julius Bär Raiffeisen Vontobel

YouTube 31 -­‐ 53 -­‐ -­‐ -­‐

“-­‐“ denotes no official presence on the channel

ParZcipaZon of the banks

200 Raiﬀeisen Switzerland

Social Credit UBS Zurich Julius Bär Raiffeisen Vontobel

YouTube 1,290 5,120 162 25 676 23

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Swiss Financial Institutions & Social Media Presence

Swiss Financial Institutions & Social Media Presence

Non-‐official participation .................................................................................................................................. 24

YouTube X -‐ X -‐ -‐ -‐

YouTube 148 -‐ 133 -‐ -‐ -‐

YouTube 31 -‐ 53 -‐ -‐ -‐

“-‐“ denotes no official presence on the channel