The Central Bank has Entered the Chat
An Interview with Tony Morrison, Communications Director of Bank of Jamaica
Central banks are the last place you’d expect to find music, art and humour, but the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) is dispensing all three and getting the world’s attention. I chatted with Tony Morrison, BOJ’s Communications Director, whose digital marketing strategies led BOJ to win the international Best Communication Initiative Award. He shared a few takeaways on engaging their audience in these changing times.
This interview is part of #MissionDigital2020, a series featuring over 20 takeaways from 20 pioneering marketers who are shaping the digital culture of organizations they serve. You can join other creative and curious marketing enthusiasts who get this series by email by subscribing here. Listen to the full conversation here, or read part 1 below!
Do you consider yourself a marketer? Is that the title that you use to describe yourself?
“I’m not going to be dishonest and portray myself as some marketing expert. I’m not.”
I don’t identify as a marketer. I think marketing is something that I can do, but strictly speaking, it’s not something that I’ve been trained in. I started my career in tourism, although I’m a trained teacher, and ended up being a journalist by accident. But all of those experiences helped me to do what I do now as a corporate communications specialist.
However, I am from the school of thought that says the master of all these disciplines is communication. And so in my ideal corporate structure, marketing and advertising would report to communication.
And if you’re a good communicator who has some natural talents and who is prepared to also be a student of the game you’re in, then it means that you can manage all the facets of communication.
So I’m a communicator who can do marketing and advertising.
So what best prepared you for this role?
Mostly, my experience and expertise as a journalist. I was initially hired to concentrate on media management and media relations, and then started to expand my role to give broader strategic communication advice.
The tourism experience didn’t play a large part initially, but in executing campaigns and dealing with the public through social media, it kicks in now more than before.
You have changed the game in terms of how people see the BOJ. How do you come up with your ideas? What is your process?
(This is the second time I’m laughing. I laughed when first I read the question and I’m laughing again). You know, I wish I knew how I come up with my ideas because if I could dispense it down to a formula, I’d probably just retire and make a living selling it.
There’s no method. The ideas just come. For some strange reason, they tend to come mostly when I’m in the shower. Maybe it’s because I am doing something that my body can do on autopilot. Then that’s an opportunity for my brain to wander since I don’t need to concentrate on bathing myself.
So we all need to bathe more frequently to get good ideas?
(Laugh) The only thing I can actually point to is maybe why I am like this, in terms of where it probably started. I used to read a lot when I was a child. I didn’t have computers and I spent a lot of time reading which means I spent a lot of time in my head. I think this gives rise to a very fertile imagination.
So I suppose if I never had jobs that gave me an outlet to release some of this creativity, the ideas in my head would probably have driven me mad by now.
What is your decision making process for selecting the idea or the version of the idea that you actually go live with?
”A large part of my job is to break down and translate complex ideas into catchy vehicles.”
Well, sometimes an idea comes before I check whether or not it can actually work in line with what the organization is doing. But if I’m on the job, when something clicks, it’s usually within the parameters of what I’m doing. There’s an ‘aha’ moment. And I say, okay, that fits right here. I could use this.
So I’ll give you an example. We have a video that’s now going viral and has over 500,000 views (on Twitter), in a couple of weeks. We have been sitting on this video for a while because… it’s very joyous. It was done before Covid and it features a lot of music and dancing.
Prior to Covid it wouldn’t matter when that video was released, because Jamaica is a land of parties every day. However, I felt that it was inappropriate to release a video like that in the context of a serious pandemic, when nobody’s partying, or shouldn’t be.
Then came the election season. Even though we try to stay far away from politics, it presented an opportunity because all of a sudden, everybody was talking about dub plates and dropping dub plates left, right and center. It didn’t hit right away.
But maybe three or so days into the whole dub plate frenzy one morning, I thought wait a minute, we have a dub plate! Here is our window! And it worked.
But the bottom line is that these ideas first have to meet my standards, and I’m a very hard judge and hard on myself. Plus, I usually run them by members of my Department staff, first, and I don’t hire people who are afraid of me or afraid to tell me if I’m wrong. So if they like it, I know I’m on to something.
So sometimes you re-examine what you already have. But how do you think of what to launch in the first place?
“I want this to look like a Sean Paul video.”
In my current job, a large part of what I do is to look for ways to break down and translate very complex ideas into simpler, more catchy vehicles. And with that mindset I tend to be on the lookout for anything that I think I can use or remodel to make an analogy, make a reference with something familiar or fun, and relate it to the serious subjects I work with to explain something, in a simpler more attractive way.
What body of work or specific campaign are you most proud of?
“Low and stable inflation is to the economy what the baseline is to reggae music.”
I’ll give you a secret. That same video that went viral had one specific reference to the producer; I told him I wanted it to look like a Sean Paul video — just not as sexy. And we had a good laugh because we both know what a music video costs in real life, and how little money we are working with compared to that. But nonetheless, to some extent I think he delivered and it’s been hugely successful, as have been a few of the other videos and other initiatives.
But that’s not it, and this one might surprise you because it’s not the most talked about, nor has it gotten the most response or visibility. But everything comes back to that. It’s the very first advertisement; a print ad with the bass guitar that I think said ‘low and stable inflation is to the economy what the baseline is to reggae music.’
I think that analogy remains the heart of the campaign and it has been the secret weapon to appeal to a Jamaican audience, because we all know what reggae means to us.
It’s one thing to use a reggae medium to convey a message otherwise. But to actually translate the economics directly to reggae music in a meaningful way, I think, well, some might say it’s the most brilliant thing that I ever came up with for this campaign. I don’t know about brilliant, but I think I was very, very lucky to have that idea.
[End of part 1]
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