Dive Brief:

• JPMorgan Chase has named VaynerMedia its agency of record for voice marketing, as the major financial services agency plans to grow its strategy surrounding the growing voice technology, AdAge reports. 
• JPMorgan has worked with VaynerMedia since 2016 on it social strategy. The new partnership will allow the financial giant to develop its own voice strategy, including the development of briefings and complicated skills. For personalized banking questions, like account balances, VaynerMedia will figure out data security and privacy issues. The voice activations may be released later this year. 
• VaynerMedia began developing its voice capabilities, including building Amazon Alexa skills and briefings, and hiring specialists under its VaynerSmart offering about a year ago. The organization has created Alexa skills for GE, Johnnie Walker, Ellen’s Heads Up, the Amazon original series “The Tick” and Wine Library. 

Dive Insight:

With its own voice-specific strategy, JPMorgan Chase is hoping to create branded skills and briefings that could put it ahead of other financial organizations and position it as an early disruptor in voice marketing.  

"I feel like a lot of brands were playing catchup on Facebook and Snap, and consumers are always a little ahead of brands, so it would be nice to be ahead on voice," JPMorgan Chase Chief Marketing Officer Kristin Lemkau told AdAge.

The news is the latest example of how JPMorgan Chase is taking a leadership role in digital marketing. Last year, the company took a proactive stance on programmatic buying issues, reducing the number of sites where its ads appeared without negatively impacting results. More recently, it developed an algorithm in-house meant to ensure ads on YouTube don't appear next to certain content not brand safe. 

As voice assistant and artificial intelligence technology space become a more prominent feature of consumers’ everyday lives and as new skills are developed that make daily life easier, other companies and brands could follow JPMorgan Chase's move with their own voice-specific strategies instead of treating voice activations as a test or one-off deployment.  Consumers use voice-activated assistants to access news and weather reports or to listen to music. Banking is an important everyday task and one where consumers have already responded well to streamlining via mobile banking. For a successful voice strategy, JPMorgan Chase will need to iron out privacy issues to assure consumers that their financial data is secure.

“What's my balance?” “How long would it take for me to save for this house?” “What can I spend on my summer vacation?” These are questions that most consumers now answer by logging into their online bank accounts or creating detailed spreadsheets that could be answered by simply asking a question of a smart speaker or other voice-enabled device. 

For now, JPMorgan Chase is focusing on all voice platforms, according to the AdAge report. Alexa-powered Amazon Echo devices are still the market leader, but the competition is growing. Google Home sales have been growing, commanding 40% of the Q4 market share, a new Consumer Intelligence Research Partners study found. There are currently 31 million Amazon Echo devices installed in the U.S., compared to 14 million Google Home units.