2011 is Finsia’s 125-year anniversary. The peak body - which represents professionals across the entire financial services industry in Australia and New Zealand - sought a way to celebrate this milestone, while achieving some key business objectives at the same time.

Finsia engaged Bienalto to devise a digital platform for the 125 year anniversary, centred around the inaugural Finsia Pinnacle Awards. Using LinkedIn as a key mechanism in the campaign, Finsia achieved its goal of reaching a wider audience and engaging successfully with the industry.

There are more than 200,000 people employed in financial services in Australia and New Zealand, of which around 16,000 are members of Finsia. Leveraging the 125-year anniversary, there was a strong opportunity for Finsia to build on its membership numbers, better engage with its existing members and raise its profile within the industry.

To celebrate 125 years of service and to meet business objectives, Finsia implemented the inaugural Finsia Pinnacle Awards. These awards would engage with all people in the financial services industry from Australia and New Zealand - not just Finsia members - by identifying outstanding individuals and recognising their contributions to the industry and the community at large.

Bienalto was charged with building a website and implementing a digital marketing campaign to promote and manage the Awards.

A key challenge was to figure out a practical and cost effective way of reaching an audience beyond Finsia’s membership and to engage them with the program. Following our research - which revealed that of 1 million LinkedIn users in Australia and New Zealand, 180,000 users work in finance - LinkedIn emerged as the hero.

We thus built www.finsia125.com to integrate completely with LinkedIn. This would maximise Finsia’s exposure of the Awards and minimise the hassle involved in nominating peers.

"On social networks, people have established connections. Being able to use these connections in useful ways provides a richer, more meaningful experience. It also gives us control over the nomination functionality and the general look and feel of the Awards website,"

Hurol Inan, Managing Director, Bienalto

How did this integration work? From the Finsia Pinnacle Awards website, users could login to LinkedIn and give authorisation for all of their LinkedIn connections to be brought across to the website. Then, it became a quick and simple process to browse their connections within the industry and nominate them for one of the Awards.

When the nominations were made, they were saved into Salesforce.com - giving Finsia instantaneous access to nomination data.

Social media also played a key role in the endorsement phase of the Awards. Once a person was nominated, they could easily promote or share their nomination and encourage other people to endorse it.

"This endorsement mechanism was a very cost-effective and wide-reaching way to get people involved in promoting themselves, which in turn reduced the need for Finsia to inundate people’s inboxes," said Inan.

Once the nominations closed, stage two of the campaign involved a Members’ Choice Award, whereby Finsia members could visit the website to view the shortlist of winners, and have their say about who should win. This proved a very effective way to boost member involvement in the campaign.

The winners were announced at a Gala Dinner in Sydney on 25 October 2011, and the Awards website amended to reflect the final results.

As part of the campaign - but with long-term benefit - a new group was created on LinkedIn called FSNetwork. Open to all financial services professionals, its ongoing objective is to become a forum for all financial services professionals and a valuable link between Finsia and the industry. "The FSNetwork will be a lasting legacy of the campaign, giving us something to build on long after the Awards have been announced," said Blum.