For the second in our series with Superbrands, which looks at companies that have made this year’s CoolBrands list, we talked to Amanda Brown, PR Manager at first direct.

The social media and digital space has been inherently linked with the bank’s name of late. It was one of the first to put its reputation of the hands of its users, using Twitter to aggregate public opinion and hosting it all on the first direct live website (just a few days after parent-company HSBC saw HSBCreviews.com launch, a fake site set up by a web design agency to do the same thing).

Brown insists it was simply a coincidence, but stresses how important first direct’s official site has been in gathering feedback. As such, the brand has this week launched functionality that allows first direct to not only post questions and track the online space for mentions of the bank, but also respond. “At the moment we can put up articles or ask questions in an editorial fashion, people come back with comments that are shown in conversation threads. Now, we can reply in kind, directly on the site,” said Brown.

Though there’s no integration with social media channels yet (it would be good to see the responses tweeted for instance), it’s good to see a two-way conversation emerging. It also seems to reflect first direct’s approach to the online space as just under 60% of its customer base use the internet as their main banking channel, and only 40% stick to the telephone. “Digital is a way of life at first direct – nearly 80% of our customers bank online, they’re technology savvy people and early adopters of new technologies such as the iPhone. This is reflected in how we communicate with customers and place digital channels at the core of our communications strategy,” continued Brown.

It will be interesting to see how the information gathered from the ‘live’ project is fed into the business as it becomes more comprehensive. Brown also noted that feedback from the campaign is currently being discussed within the relevant areas of the business, and that a programme of actions is being drafted as well as responses to specific themes.

“We’ve also worked hard to develop our firstdirect.com site to be so much more than ‘where I do my banking’. Our customers often express being with first direct as feeling like they are part of a club. By introducing interactive content such as our award winning ‘Little Black Book’, energy site, podcasts and ‘Live’ customers can feel that we provide more of a service than being ‘just a bank’,” she added.

Regardless of how this works itself out, the bank takes a smart approach to ownership of this kind of activity, beliving that customers and non-customers are talking about first direct online, so in order to engage with them that’s where it needs to be. “There are different elements to our digital strategy – we use it for brand and acquisition, PR and with the advent of social media it’s becoming more important to integrate it into our digital strategies,” said Brown. The strategy is led by the brand team, but because it touches so many areas of first direct, it’s implemented across all of them.