Episode 53: John Oxford

Jack Hubbard  00:01

I've had the privilege of being in and around banking for more than 50 years. Lots of changes during that time. We've gone from Ledger's to laptops, typewriters to technology. One thing, however, remains the same. Banking is a people business. And I'll be talking with those people that make banking great here on Jack Rants With Modern bankers. Welcome to Jack Rants With Modern Bankers brought to you by RelPro, and Vertical IQ. Each week I feature top voices in financial services from bankers and consultants, to best selling authors and many more. The goal of this program is simple, to provide insights, success practices and to bring new ideas to the table that you can use to maximize your results.

I have some trivia questions for you. Which CMO was a speechwriter for an American president? Interesting. What CMO in Mississippi was a taste tester for Nutter Butters and Oreos. Which CMO has the top podcast in bank marketing today and boasts a best selling book too? Well, those honors all belong to my guest today, John Oxford Chief Marketing Officer at Renaissance Bank. 

John was a student of mine at Bank Marketing School at Northwestern University way back in 2006. He's gone on to great success as a banker, a husband, a father, and a true true professional. His book no more next time marketing in the age of distraction. We're gonna talk about that today. It tops the Amazon list. When he wrote his marketing money podcast with his co host, Josh Mavis gets 1000s of listens whenever it's on. 

I'm so thrilled and really honored to welcome one of the great marketing minds and professionals in banking. today. It's John Oxford, on Jack rants with modern bankers. Here we go. So as I mentioned, I met John, Gosh, 25 years ago, maybe maybe not quite that long. And his partner in the podcasts that he does, we're going to talk about I've had Josh on my show before. John, great to have you with us, we really appreciate it.

John Oxford  02:32

I'm glad to be here. This is kind of a homecoming getting to talk to you. So this is great. 

Jack Hubbard  02:37

It is. And I'm really looking forward to this program and to talk about marketing. And as we roll into 2024. This program is being taped in December, but we're going to talk about it probably going to be on late in January. And we're going to talk about marketing and what's happening in bank marketing. But first, as you know, John, I always like to start by saying, Tell me something good. What's good in your life?

John Oxford  03:04

Well, I'll tell you what's good about talking to you today. And I know that sounds a little cliche. But here's why 2006 A young John Oxford, who was in his 20s took a class at ABA bank marketing school with a guy named Jack Hubbard, and 2006. And man, it was great. And I didn't know where my career would go. And you're one of those people that really had a part in deciding where my career went. And you're one of the best teachers at the school. And I don't say that just because I'm on the show, I tell people that don't ever listen, like listen to Jack Hubbard. He knows the font fundamentals and the foundations. And we can talk about digital and AI and chat and all that stuff. But if you don't have the foundation you teach, you can't go anywhere. 

And so the good thing is that you're here and we're talking and it's kind of a real homecoming, but I mean, 2006 What, 1617 years ago, I want to do the math. I was sitting in a classroom and Northwestern up in Chicago and Northwestern Yeah, whichever one it is, whatever school it is, and, and he taught me and so now I'm CMO of a $17 billion company at the time, I was just a little marketing assistant for a $2 billion bank. So he's talking about a career trajectory. And now I'm talking to you so if anything's good is that is what you've given back to the banking community is sitting right in front of you today. This is great.

Jack Hubbard  04:21

That's very kind John. And, you know, I did 32 years at the bank Marketing School and, and people like Lance Kessler, and, and Jon Kabat Pasto. And the people at ABA are just wonderful people. So thank you for that. Well, sure that that's kind of you to say that I helped you to kind of launch but you've done it, and you've done you've had a great career. And I want to start by talking about your book. No more next time. I think you published it in 2020. And it's no longer marketing in this age. Oh, there you go. John, in the age of distraction. So you wrote it. you published it right when the pandemic was going on. And, now here we are, 2020 for four years doesn't sound like a long time. But in marketing agents, it's forever. Talk about the book, what you saw in the book and what's changed in 2024? If you're going to write it again, what would you add?

John Oxford  05:17

I would probably add a chat. So I talked about the four C's in the book, which is content connection, conversion, and campaigns, I would probably add another see, of context, I think where we are in the world Now things get taken out of context, the cancellation of celebrities and marketing and mistakes people make, you can go back and look at case studies of Bud Light, and Pepsi and Toyota and look at all these companies and what they've done and how they've pivoted. And so I would talk a little bit more about context and how context matters, especially in the world of social media, I would probably add a little about AI and artificial intelligence that wasn't really chatGPT wasn't really a thing in 2019 yet. 

So I'd probably add something about usage of it, and maybe the overhyped of it at this point, it may become something amazing and that you have to have, but right now, I don't think it's taking jobs for marketers, but you definitely need to understand it and keep an eye on it. At this point, it does help with some efficiency, so I'll probably add a chapter about that. But I think still the four C's, I transitioned from the four Ps of marketing to the four C's in the book. And anyway, I still think they're very relevant. It's easy to start a marketing campaign, if you look at your content, how it connects, then how you convert it. Because as you know, being a salesperson, if you can't convert it, what's the point of doing all this stuff, you're not going to be around a long time, if you can't convert your marketing, and then you bundle that in a campaign. So the four C's still work, but I would probably add something about AI, and something about context, in the way things are delivered to your audience.

Jack Hubbard  06:48

I want to come back to campaigns in a second. But content is so important. And as you, you're on LinkedIn quite a lot. I'm obsessed with LinkedIn, and I do a lot of content there. But one of the things that you did really smart, and I don't know how long you've been doing this in terms of yours, but you've had 160 episodes, the marketing money podcast with Josh Mavis, the Mavis agency, Josh, you, I've listened to your programs, John, they're amazing. They're so much fun. But they're also a practical approach to this. Talk about the show, how it got started and why you did it. 

John Oxford  07:29

Oh, I was on Spring Break in 2017 16, or something like that. And I was listening to Freakonomics Radio, which is one of my favorite podcasts. And I love their stuff. And I was like, you know, maybe we could do something like this about bank marketing. And at the time, there were a couple out there and now there's 100,000 podcasts and get on marketing whenever there weren't as many then there were still some and anyway, Josh, one of my best friends as far as colleagues, and we're super close. So anyway, we talked and I said, Well, I think we can do this. 

And he has the staff, and he and I had the time to, you know, grab a cup of coffee every couple of weeks and put a couple episodes together. And we started honestly, I think it was just kind of like the maybe embarrassing thought of what are my friends gonna think? Are they gonna think I'm an idiot hearing me talk just, you know, out loud, just unfiltered. And we filtered a little bit. But anyway, all sudden, I had friends that were like, man, Alyssa was an ex coming out. And then my mom listens to everyone and gives me feedback. And also, I was like, Okay, people really like it. And then it kind of led to a couple of speaking engagements and some other stuff. 

So the auxiliary stuff that happened around it was really cool. But yeah, so we started that a few years ago, and we've gotten a few lists, I think we have 30 to 40,000 listens. Overall, it's about a couple 1000 per episode. And because it's a pretty tailored podcast, it's not broad, and neither is one of the celebrities. So you know, you got to take down the you hear these people to get millions of listens? Well, there's a reason why RS is that we've got a lot of CMOs and marketing directors, sales directors, revenue officers, those types that listen to it when we look at the data. So it's been a labor of love, but it's pretty fun to get out there and preach a little bit to the choir every once in a while. Yeah, and

Jack Hubbard  09:10

you mentioned CMOS. I'm curious, John, if Why aren't more community bankers? And I don't know if it's a marketing director that is on the podcast, or if it's a marketing director that starts it, and then has guests like the bank president and head of business and things like that. Why aren't more community bankers taking this up and doing podcasts?

John Oxford  09:32

I think time talent is vulnerable, I think people are scared to get out there. I guess it's public speaking. And it is and it's one of the what is it? It's like death, taxes, public speaking like things people hate, you know. And so I think people were scared of it. I think they're too vulnerable. They're afraid I'll say something, they'll want to like it. And then I'll make a huge app expression or I'll do something out of compliance. So there's that fear and the risk, time and talent. Most community bankers have about 18 different hats they have to wear Some of them are HR. Some of them are our sales compliance, they do treasury management, some of them are lenders, and marketing. So the smaller the bank, the less time you have to divide up your day for a podcast, and then talent. 

I mean, it does take a little bit of talent to be able to talk on a podcast. And we're like you teaching a class, it takes talent to get up in front of a group and do it. In another life, I taught a couple universities and I still teach a couple banging schools. On the marketing front, I teach a lot of classes when I teach public speaking, because that was one of the courses I taught was you can be the best engineer, you can be the best doctor, you can be the best, whatever. But if you can't publicly speak and pass that job interview, or get in the door, to communicate, those tactical talents don't matter. And I think there's a lot of tactical talent gap in community banking, with CMOs, I think they can, you know, turn in a report, or they can look at a CRM, or they can run a sales contest, whatever in their bank, or campaign. 

But a lot of times being able to get up and be the one that does it themselves, is tricky. I used to also work at the White House for a little bit in the speech writing area. And they would often try to get the speech writers to go give speeches, you know, you're these guys that write for the President and the Cabinet and the secretaries. But when did they actually go out and actually deliver speeches. And that was a challenge that I had, because all of them were really good writers, but put them in front of 500 people, and they would melt. And so I think that's a big thing, kind of like the podcast. Are you good at doing that? And can you do it? I think that's where a lot of the fear and vulnerability comes in?

Jack Hubbard  11:31

Well, I can't let this go. Now. You mentioned the White House, which President?  

John Oxford 11:42

George W. Bush, so 50% of people hate me and 50% of people like me.

John Oxford  11:45

Well, talk about the experience. What was it like?

Jack Hubbard 11:45

It was great. I was a junior staffer. I was right out of a campaign. It was 2001 to 2003. Biggest day was 911. Obviously, I was in the White House. Interesting story. When the planes hit the Pentagon, and then the plane hit the Pentagon, two planes hit the towers. We were in a meeting discussing stem cell communication, because the President George Bush was going to make a decision on stem cells and how it would work as opposed to different medical conditions and how they could use it and draw the cells and we were working on it. And also when the Secret Service came in they swatted the secretary of the secretary, who was Tommy Thompson, Health and Human Services, they swept a bunch of other people out and said “Go, Go get them out.” And they looked at me and said, Do you have a family? Are you married? I said no, no, because I was single out of school. And they said you're staying behind. 

So I became the essential employee that ran the Department of Health and Human Services as a 24 year old kid out of school. And so I sat there and took phone calls from CNBC and MSNBC and talked about what the response was going to be to cleaning up in New York. I knew nothing. I was just passing along messages that I was getting. And then I walked home that night down DC in the dark. While there were no cabs, there's no trains running, now I walked about a mile to my house. And it was just an eerie night. The weather was perfect, September you remember, everyone remembers that day. It was perfect weather. But yeah, I was labeled essential because I basically had no family or, or kids. So they said you can stay behind and work in the office. So it's a crazy day. crazy day.

Jack Hubbard  13:15

That's amazing. And John, I was going to ask you about writing another marketing book. You could write a book about what your experience was that day and the experience in the White House?

John Oxford  13:26

Yeah. You know, I've got a small mention in Karl Rove's book, the former adviser to the President. I drove him in the ice one time and our car spun around, and we thought we were going to crash. So almost the presidency ended. So you might have liked me if that I am because I was his driver for like a day or two when he needed someone to drive around before we had secret service. So I got lots of cool stories from that. It was another lifestyle, another lifetime. But I learned a lot about people and kind of how our government works or doesn't work in some ways. So I take credit with the criticism of working for that President. And I kind of watch how the others work these days, too. So it was a fun experience.

Jack Hubbard  14:03

What a great, what a great experience. Well, experiences are something I want to talk about as well. You've mentioned campaigns a couple of times. And I'm curious, one of the things I see as a huge deficit in marketing and sales, marketing, is marketing. We'll put a campaign together about whatever. But they fail to connect it to the sales process. They fail to put questions together, talking points, objection handling, meetings, let's have a roleplay around all this. You've got a $17 billion bag and a pretty big footprint. Would you do a campaign talk about how you try to connect marketing and sales together.

John Oxford  14:49

So full disclosure, that's probably one of the weakest things I do. Honestly. We're really good at branding. We're really good at Creative. I mean a warm My Jersey today for Renaissance with our soccer team that we sponsor in Nashville to typically try to wear it when I do marketing stuff, because it's one of the biggest investments we've done as a marketing team. And it's fun. And I don't have to wear a tie or a jacket when I wear it. So it's kind of fun. But to that point, it's probably one of the weakest things we do full vulnerable here is, you know, we roll out a campaign with curb curb Street, our spokesperson or community development campaign or something we do in the market, and getting it to our not only frontline to second line, because the frontline, your tellers, your CSR is your front, folks within the second line of those commercial lenders, those treasury management specialists, investment advisors, you know, all that mortgage originators all that second tier, that kind of the next level you meet, a lot of times we kind of forget, hey, we need to tell them this is going on, we need to say, hey, when Kurt talks about rewards, checking, he's talking about how you can get these benefits for doing the checking. 

And sometimes that's kind of where we rush it to the marketplace, because we're so excited to get this new campaign out. And we've got the creative, and the social and the tactics and the communication, and it's Web and Digital and geo fenced. And then it's got a call center ready for it, because we've communicated with them that they may get calls. And then all sudden, we kind of forget that when the customer calls their banker, they need to know too. And sometimes the banker is like, Yeah, I saw it on LinkedIn, or I saw it on social, but we try to put out a an email about every other Friday, I do I call it the for for Friday, and I put it out within our bank, and it has four points of what's going on this week in marketing, or within two weeks. 

So I tried to make it fun. It's very unfiltered. I type up a little story about something going on and in the marketplace or in the world almost like SNL, trying not to get myself in trouble. Because in this world today you can with context, as I said, but yeah, that's huge. And I think it's a place where a lot of people miss. And that's where you'll see the disconnect between sales and marketing. When you have a branding campaign going, for instance, everyone wants funding right now. So we're trying to raise deposits to possibly a commercial lender. Generally, you know, they're compensated off their lungs. And so when they're out there, they're that they've got to fund their loans. And so it helps them get it through credit, etc, etc. And so if they're not hooked up to your deposit campaign, whether it be something as simple as CDs, or something as robust as growing internal with a CRM and go into different, you know, whatever personas of people to get them into the bank, or have your scoring your customer, they need to know what the campaign is going to be. Because if they don't, it can be very odd when they talk to customers and see marketing yet the person in the bank hasn't. So yeah, I think that's probably what I would say one of my weaknesses is really, it's not communication. It's making sure they've gotten the message internally before it goes externally. 

Jack Hubbard 17:42

Yeah, no, that's a really good point. And I love what you said about Friday for the four bullet points. That is so easy to do. And that's what I like about doing this show. And I know you do, too, finding practical nuggets that people would say, you know, I could do that. And it's absolutely pretty easy to do. You talked about CRM, I want to talk about tools. We have two great sponsors, Vertical IQ and RelPro, both absolutely amazing tools. You mentioned CRM, what are some of the other tools that your folks in marketing are using to help you become more efficient and effective? 

John Oxford  18:21

Yeah, so I don't want to necessarily mean something against your sponsors or your show. But it just got to be full disclosure that we use Salesforce bank, so we use a lot of Salesforce. Then we have our own internal system we built called Share wallet. And we've got some guys internally that run that and it's our own, I guess it's proprietary. It's our own deal that we use, we merge those together. And then we also have our core with FIS, so we use some of their tools. 

So you've got your core, you've got Salesforce, you've got our own share of wallet, and then we use Pardot. And we use what used to be a social studio, but now we've moved that to some different social solutions with Ben Panchen and his group. So we've got, we've got a bunch of different groups out there. And partners that we combined use all of them. But Salesforce is our key one with our share wallet, internal system, and we combine those and we go to town and we look, you know, pull your mortgage customers, see which ones don't have deposits, but your deposit customers, see which ones don't have savings accounts, and then just start marketing back and forth to those groups time together, and then put them in the automation loop and they get an email every 14 to 21 days. And then we monitor that. And you do your opt outs. And so anyway, any marketer worth their salt will know how to do these things. That's pretty fundamental now, but you have to have the money in the investment in the tech to do it. 

Jack Hubbard 19:41

And you talked about money, which is the next logical thing to talk about, which is budgets. Where are you seeing marketing budgets in 2024? And how are you seeing budgets compiled in community banks? 

John Oxford  19:55

So my ratio is always a million dollars in marketing for every bank. and assets. So I always say that so whatever size you are, that's where I think your benchmark should be. A lot of banks won't give you that much money, some will. But then they'll consider marketing, investing in technology or something else, which really isn't marketing or sales. So let's ask for a million dollars for every billion in assets, and then chop your pie up. 

And the second thing I think banks don't do well, or community banks emit is measure your marketing dollars that are seen by the public, you can spend a lot on creative, you can have $100,000 commercials. But if you only have $25,000, to put it in the marketplace, you've really skewed yourself. But also make sure you're investing in the creative because I don't want to see something made with an iPhone that gets on television, because then it's running up against national companies and makes you look cheap. So you've got to balance that. But you still want the majority of your dollars going to public eyes, or public sales, from marketing. So you can, you know, don't go spend a million dollars on Salesforce, if that's going to rob your budget of any ability to deliver a message to the audience. 

So that's where I would say when you look at your budget, 70% of it goes in public facing 30% Being your internal creative, your internal buying your internal, whatever tactical vendors, you want to use whatever you want to use. If you're going to do social insurance to do your social, or if you're going to do whatever marquee or whatever it is make sure that the money you're spending on that is not detracting or taking away from the money that's going to be going to public facing marketing campaigns. 

Jack Hubbard 21:35

That's fascinating. So marketing, people do wear a lot of hats. And one of those hats is digital. And that is so encompassing digital cloud, you know, obviously advertising, but it also does get into social channels, to questions. How, how has your bank gone digital? And what are some social channels that you're using?

John Oxford  22:03

So let me give you a disclaimer, I tend to call digital, the fascinating distraction. I think it's fascinating as digital is fascinating. But it's also a distraction from the fundamentals of how you convert a customer and how you grow your wallet, your share wallet, which is what you teach is going down the line and really digging deep on what the customer needs and then adding to that share wallet but as far as digital goes. I think social media is way underutilized by banks. I think it's one of the most underutilized tactical things we have. It's not free, but it's a free channel. 

So TV is not a free channel. Direct mail is not a free channel, it costs money to get a stamp, it costs money to put a television on during an add on during the Superbowl, it costs a lot of money doesn't cost any money to use Twitter acts as we call it now or use Facebook or use LinkedIn. And so I think the channel reduction allows you to spend more on creative to try to get that morality or viral ad or viral whatever we SEC shorts is one we use every Monday, we do a video about what went on the SEC football during the weekend, we get 100 million views on that. We can't buy a television commercial other than the Super Bowl that would ever get that many views and we don't buy national and because we're not National Bank. 

So it's important to realize that that channel is there. And I think as far as your second part of what social media, I love Facebook, because sell CDs, you can sell CDs really well. And Facebook, I think is good for the community posting pictures of your bank out in the community doing good works. Twitter is good for information. It's more like a news station so you can promote it. LinkedIn is great for recruitment. I mean, recruiting people, finding people getting premium and going in and looking at their resume. I mean, you don't have to make a resume anymore. Just go to LinkedIn and look at it so it's a great recruiting tool. 

I think it's a good sales tool for the right market. I don't think you're gonna run a bunch of retail deposits off LinkedIn. You may differ, but I think he can do I think he can do some commercials. I think he can do some Treasury sales. You gotta know how to mine it properly. But I think it's good for a certain market with LinkedIn and Instagram matches up with Facebook just a little younger demo. So we're really on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and x. We don't really toy with many others unless you consider YouTube a social media channel. We love YouTube but it's a little less social and a little more just content consuming. So that would be my five areas that I look at with social media. 

Jack Hubbard 24:30

So we've thrown around some numbers, million dollars, you know, Kirk as your spokesperson, social, et cetera. What am I really good friends in the industry and I'm sure you know him as Tom Hershberger and Tom has taught with me for many years at various schools. One of the things Tom teaches is marketing ROI. So I'm sure that if there was a marketing person out watching and they could raise their hand say I have a question for John. It would be, how Do you measure ROI with all of the budgets that you put together and all the media that you use? 

John Oxford  25:08

Yeah, so yeah, I hate the answer. It depends, because there's no silver bullet. But if it's a deposit campaign, it's obviously how much did you spend? What's the deposit valued? How many did you open, subtract the spent the spend, and then you got your ROI on deposit campaign gets a little trickier on events, like if Kirk speaks at an event for us and we invite 100 people, you know, you want to invite we usually tell our, our bankers to invite two three people try to invite some current customers and some non current customers. And then we you know, get a guest list, we can put it in our share wallet system or Salesforce, you can look at, you know, score, how valuable they are, to the bank with the products, they have tried to add products, try to match them, the people that that don't have the product to look like them, twin them up, this business has this product, this one doesn't. Can we sell to them? Weirdly enough, our bank does factoring if you're, and we also, we also if you've 2.5 million, we have a hedging area in the bank where we can help large businesses hedge their interest rates. 

So, you know, how do you sell? Well, you look for someone that has over 2.5 million with your bank, and you look at that customer, and try to introduce them to that line of business. So I think the ROI is different for everything you do, but you need to have it, I would say television is the hardest ROI we have for banks, because we don't have restaurants where people can go two to three times a day, we don't sell shoes, so we don't put a Nike ad up, and then watch us sell LeBron shoes and count the number of shoes over the ad by and figure out the ROI. It's really hard to do that with bank marketing because we don't have inventory. Our inventory is people and interest rates. So it's a hard, hard ROI on TV. But especially if you put a campaign out there, you know, add up the products that come through it and then try to measure it. Roi is really hard for marketing. And Tom is good at talking about that. 

He has a great radio voice by the way, Tom has a good voice. It's kind of soothing. You sit in the class, if you had the afternoon classes you might go to sleep after lunch because he's a soothing speaker. That's not a knock at his, uh, his ability to deliver. He's a good speaker. But yeah, he does teach well on ROI. But I think you know, it just depends if you give me a specific thing dry can usually figure it out TV's hard. Things like branding over social media is hard. Every few years, maybe do a branding survey. Find out your ad awareness, unaided awareness, or no awareness that three awarenesses if you're aided, someone tells you the name, they say yeah, I've heard of it if they're unaided, they tell you they've heard of without you asking, and no awareness means they've never heard of you. So you want to be in that aided or awareness category versus non awareness. That's where branding comes in. So there's ways to measure it. But it was hard for marketers in banking, because there's not a there's not a physical inventory product. 

Jack Hubbard 27:50

Yeah, it's tough. Couple more questions. One is that here's the frustration. When I teach it, banking schools, and this has been a forever issue. I'm a community bank marketing professional. And you mentioned you kind of started in a $2 billion bank, I'm going to a $2 billion bank on the CMO. I am not in the executive suite, I don't get to sit at the big kids table. What do I need to do to John to be able to prove that I'm worthy of sitting at the big kids table? 

John Oxford  28:24

Few things, I think one is asked to be on Alko and asked to be on the Alko committee because you can listen. And I wouldn't hop in there and start giving a bunch of opinions because at the time you're the marketer there, they think of you as you know, marketing is really taking art and creating commerce out of it. And that's what marketing is, is taking art and making commerce with it through content, but um, get on Ouko. Learn how the bank makes money, understand non-interest, income, interest, income and securities at a high level, so you know how the bank makes money, and then start making an impact with your marketing campaigns that show that you're being a value to the bank in the Alko Committee.So I think that's one. 

Secondly, get to know your CEO really well, and start doing extra things for his or her speech writing. Give them information before meeting that they might not get from somebody else. Don't be afraid to raise your hand and meetings. Know what you're going to say, don't just raise your butt. I mean, know what you're going to say. So you're obviously providing some value. So I think those three things will get you going pretty well. I get to know your board while this committee has boards, get to know your board really well and help them. I can't tell sometimes I've done a marketing project for a board member that has nothing to do with the bank. They want to help them with their business. 

So do that to get to know your board really well. And then a lot of it with committee banking is just longevity, you have to outlive some people. I hate to say that but community banks a lot of times they're very family oriented. And so you've got to get in with the family or the ownership of the bank really well. If they're publicly traded in a smaller bank, again, get to know your board. work there for a while, you know, you don't move to the C suite the day one unless you're moving from a bank to a C suite. So it takes a little patience, and a little time of really proving your value and your worth. 

Jack Hubbard 30:07

Outstanding. Two more questions. What if you look in your crystal ball? And you said, All right, there's one thing I see for 2024. That's so important for bank marketing professionals and community banks. It is X, what's X.

Vertical IQ 30:26

Made by bankers, for bankers. Vertical IQ is your trusted source for reliable, convenient and focused industry intelligence, helping your team save time, boost sales and gain a competitive edge, Learn more at verticaliq.com.

John Oxford  30:42

X for me would be this, this is gonna sound pretty cheesy, but don't forget the fundamentals. I'm telling you, we're getting into this fascinating distraction world where everyone's AI chatbot artificial intelligence, what do you do and then you forget, your customer just wants to cash a check on Friday afternoon. And you're over here worried about all this other stuff, and your bank doesn't have Mobile deposit yet, or the customer is in line, and someone's talking to them about, you know, adding a product. And we forget as marketers, because we're out here worried about what way we can, you know, artificially write content for a content article to create an SEO Post that drives people to our website, to get them on to this and all this all sudden, you're forgetting that that customer just wants the cup of coffee, and the quick conversation and to cash a check or to open a bank account for their kid going to college in the fall. 

And we forget the fundamentals of the human experience. And the connection, like you said earlier of the marketing campaign, combining with the sales to know what we're delivering at the right time at the right moment for that customer. So if I'm really crisp, I'm saying don't forget the fundamentals of the customer. Don't forget the fundamentals of the customer, because I think we're getting way, way too distracted and fascinated with things that the customer honestly doesn't care about. So let's stick to fundamentals and 2024. 

Jack Hubbard 32:28

Well, John, you have 1000s of followers, and rightly so. But I'm sure as a well read individual, and someone who wakes up in the morning and wants to learn more. You probably follow some people as well. Authors, podcast blogs, what do you do who you follow?

John Oxford  32:28

So I follow Skeletor. He's evil and evil. diabolical. So I tried to think of what Skeletor would do every time I made a decision. No, I'm just kidding. But I did love some old man cartoons when I was a kid. I like Tom Goodwin on LinkedIn. I think he's kind of a contrarian. So I like his voice. I like Gary Vaynerchuk. I know some people have some opinions on him. He's kind of hot, hot and cold on stuff but whatever I like I kind of like different opinions. Still like Gary, I like Tom, I like Brent Gleason. He's a former Navy SEAL. And he writes about going into battle. He has a book called Taking point which is about leadership. So like him, I'm trying to think of some others. I'm a big Freakonomics guy, DUBNER and Levitt and all that type of stuff. I love those kinds of socio economic books. So I'm into a bunch of those and digital darwinism was Tom government's book about the digitalization of the world and it's, it's repetitive, but it's a good book from you know, the Ubers and the usage of apps and planes and tickets to concerts and how that impacts the world we live in. And so I love socioeconomic books. I'm not a I'm not a big nonfiction guy. I love movies, but I don't read a lot of nonfiction. I read a lot of practical solution books and Army military stuff in that area. So that's where my interests lie. Probably need to get a little bit weird that I consider myself creative but I'm not really into science fiction, but all the people I work with are a lot of nerds. So it's kind of cool to do. I think I bring a lot of levity to our conversations with the Star Wars and Star Trek ease that I work with. 

Vertical IQ 34:06

made by bankers, for bankers, vertical IQ is your trusted source for reliable, convenient and focused industry intelligence, helping your team save time, boost sales and gain a competitive edge, Learn more at verticaliq.com

John Oxford  34:21

Well, you bring a lot to the banking world and in the conversations we need to be having about bank marketing and sales and things like that, how to talk about how I can sign up for your podcast, how I can get your book, and how I can get a hold of you, John, if if, if I want to talk more. Sure. 

John Oxford 34:41

So podcast is Marketing Money Podcast, marketingmoneypodcast.com. It's on iTunes and on any of the little podcasts, apps, whatever you use, there's 100 of them that you get a podcast but it's pretty much easy to find just Google or type in your browser marketing money. podcast.com and it's there I usually do one every couple of weeks. Just timing wise it's hard to get one in. Every couple of weeks we release the books on Amazon. If you just type in no more next time John Oxford, let me get on the screen there get into more next time John Oxford, you get that on the screen, you get it down and $19. But it's like $1 on the audio, not audio, but the E version is like $1. So it's pretty, pretty easy to get. And if you want to get me just go on LinkedIn, LinkedIn is probably the easiest way. But if you Google me I'm on every press release for Amazon as the CMO because we're publicly traded. I do a lot of our Investor Relations work as well as our political work too. So I don't just do marketing. So you may see me out there and some other areas. But yeah, I'm easy to find because I'm on all the bank comms and I'm on LinkedIn. It's a really easy way to find me so yeah, I'm easy to get man I don't hide in a cave.

Jack Hubbard  35:53

And you're easy to talk to John, we could go for hours. I'm sure thank you so much for sharing your time and your expertise with us today.

John Oxford 35:59

Absolutely appreciate you having me on Jack and Merry Christmas to you.

John Oxford  36:04

Thanks for listening to this episode of Jack Rants with Modern Bankers with John Oxford. This and every program is brought to you by our friends at RelPro and Vertical IQ. Join us next time for more special guests bringing you marketing sales and leadership insights, as well as lots of ideas that will provide your bank or credit union that competitive edge you need to succeed. 

This LinkedIn live show is also a podcast. Subscribe to get the latest Jack Rants With Modern Bankers and leave a review as well. We're on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, i-Heart and many others. Visit our website, the modernbanker.com and don't forget about, themodernbanker.com/publiclibrary. This public library is free, it has tremendous resources and you can get there at themodernbanker.com/publiclibrary. As I always say, a