Hi @bailey, long post incoming, based on thoughts I’ve had for a while. I might be reading too much into things, I’m probably not an average user (although I am a very active and early user and an “investor”).
Basically my thoughts come down to 2 main points:
- I think the medium and method speak to the seriousness and therefore trustworthiness of a business.
- I think the medium speak to the priorities of the business.
Long version…
(1) If YPlan started advertising or communicating through Snapchat I’d think that was a pretty good idea. They are an events booking/deals app, and position themselves as kind of your ‘cool’ friend who knows what’s going on tonight that you could go to. They are definitely “fun” and cheery in their communication, and that fits with the Snapchat platform really well. Using Snapchat, for me, would increase my trust in YPlan because it’s what that ‘cool’ friend would be using.
An example at the other end of the spectrum, the government communicates a lot on articles on https://gov.uk. The writing is some of the clearest and most concise I’ve read, with very clear visualisations. Lots of thought has been put into the accessibility not just in terms of the platform (just the web, not a closed system), but also in terms of the design and access for assistive devices like screen readers. All of this thought and effort increases my trust in the information, and my ability to rely on it.
For me, a bank is very core to my life. While Mondo isn’t literally my bank at the moment I pretty much treat it as one, putting all of my spending apart from rent and bills through it. Because of this, I would rather the communication was that which evoked reliability, and accessibility, more than being fun/cool. I’d like it to be friendly, and I don’t need or want to be called “Mr Palmer” in communication, but I would expect official communication to be open-first, and in reliable and accessible formats, rather than in closed networks. By all means echo communication/notifications to other networks, but a blog post or email newsletter seems like a much better canonical form of communication with customers.
On a slightly related note, Mondo’s goal appears to be to become essentially a ‘banking platform’ (given APIs, integrations, etc), that can power a variety of accounts. I’m not sure I could see a company using Mondo (for example) as a provider/manager for their expense accounts if the personality of the company was like that of YPlan.
(2) This might be reading far too much into it, but to me, Snapchat feels very much like a PR/user acquisition focused platform to be using for brand communication. I realise that Mondo has got to continue to bring on more users, but in my selfish view as an existing user, that’s nowhere near as important as effective communication towards me.
This feeling isn’t helped by the fact that Mondo’s focus seems to be very much on growing, rather than iterating the product and improving it for existing users. (I do realise that this might not be Mondo’s priority, might not be right for the business, might be hindered by the lack of banking licence, etc, just speaking from my own viewpoint).
Sorry for the brain dump, I hope it helps in some way. I’d be interested to hear more thoughts from other users, and would love to know what the basis for Mondo’s current brand voice is (down to use of emoji everywhere, Snapchat as a communication medium, etc).