What would you like the power to do?

Last night, Bank of America launched a campaign that echoes our purpose: helping improve financial lives for our customers, clients, employees and communities through the power of every connection. The campaign defines the next chapter for our company.

It highlights the incredible impact our clients, communities and employees can make when they have the power to achieve their goals, and reflects our role as a partner invested in their success. And so we ask the question directly: What would you like the power to do? It is how we understand what is important to them, what they are striving to achieve and how we can help.

The Power to Make a Difference

We are launching this during the holiday season by sharing the inspiring stories of some of our long-standing partners in the non-profit world. Individuals and teams of people, some whose work affects millions of others.

We begin by hearing from our CEO, Brian Moynihan, who outlines the focus of our company, reiterates our purpose, and celebrates the hard work of our customers, communities and employees.

You will see and hear from Matt Damon, co-founder of Water.Org; Ken Burns, founder of Florentine Films; Tory Burch highlighting our partnership with The Tory Burch Foundation; Sal Khan and our collaboration to enhance financial know-how through Better Money Habits; and our work with (RED) in its fight to eradicate HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis.

And you’ll hear from Tim Shriver representing the Special Olympics movement to include and respect individuals with intellectual disabilities. He appears alongside two of our own employees – Erin Bailey and Tyler Kennedy, both medal winners in the 2018 Special Olympics USA Games and members of our Support Services division which provides warehousing fulfillment and print services for the company.  

The work also features Marc Morial both in his role as President of The National Urban League and as a representative of Bank of America’s National Community Advisory Council, a diverse group of 30 leading organizations that provides counsel to our company on issues of civil rights, consumer advocacy, community development and environmental sustainability.

These partners represent only a small sample of the work we do with partners and clients in local markets across the globe to address issues of economic mobility, inclusion, equality, affordable housing, climate change and access to capital.

In the months ahead, we will focus this integrated campaign on the stories of our clients and what they have achieved in their lives and businesses. We will also draw attention to investments in innovation and what they have enabled. And we’ll look at thriving communities helping to move the world forward. These are all designed to show the impact each of us can make when we have the power to achieve our goals.

The Anatomy of a Repositioning

The task of repositioning a brand has become more complicated and profoundly more interesting in the past few years. Rapidly changing media habits have resulted in the decline of traditional television viewership and the rise of on-demand media. Readership of the physical, print newspaper is falling off and becoming virtually non-existent for the all-important millennial. So the task of communicating a value proposition that resonates across a broad spectrum of demographics and geographies now requires brands to rethink that whole process. 

And never has it been more important to not just tell but to demonstrate, with tangible examples and results, what we can do to help customers and communities deliver on their goals. We have worked to continuously improve our products, services, and delivery channels to better meet the needs of individuals and businesses.

We also rely on innovative technology and advanced data and analytics to make sure we interact with consumers and businesses, in the places they are today. So many people are avoiding traditional advertising through ad-blocking, streaming and premium channels that it requires brands like ours to more effectively use all forms of media. That means social media, digital advertising, physical ads in stadiums and train stations- in addition to broadcast channels -- and more focus on all the ways our clients interact with us at our ATM’s, in our financial centers, and through digital and mobile banking. Throughout all of this, you will also see an updated brand identity program – to underscore a company moving forward. 

And perhaps more importantly when we think of communicating the story of our company, we also look well beyond advertising and marketing to communicate and engage. We are making a commitment to all our constituents to continually improve the value we offer through our leadership in environmental, social and governance, our focus on deploying capital for sustainable growth, the impact we can make in our local communities, and our efforts to be a great place for people to work. You can read more about our expanded commitments in each of these areas.

So as we look forward, it is probably worth a quick look back at how we got here.

Advancing our purpose

Our history has been well documented: it is a journey that began more than 240 years ago. More recently, particularly around the financial crisis and its aftermath, we saw trust in our institution erode and had to take a hard look at our company, what we stood for, and how we operated.

In 2009, after two well-publicized acquisitions - Countrywide and Merrill Lynch, Brian Moynihan was named CEO with the clear task, along with our management team, of rethinking the company. Early on, he set the course by laying out a specific purpose: to help make financial lives better through the power of every connection. 

Brian sharpened our company’s focus on our customers, built around an approach we call responsible growth: transparent, sustainable growth that is eyes-wide-open. This has guided everything that has come after it. Rebuilding the company has taken time, energy, partnerships and dramatic changes to some things as well as constant attention to every detail on others.

In 2012, two reporters, from The New York Times asked me what it would take for our brand to recover. My answer then was the same as it would be today:

“Our brand will improve again as the economy shows improvement, and as we continue to engage with our customers and communities through national and local outreach, by listening and by delivering on what we do well and fixing what we don’t have right.”

Their skeptical response was captured in the final line in the article:

“Ms. Finucane may be right. But it is also possible that this time, customers know what they want better than the company and its marketers.”

Turns out we were both right. By any measure, we transformed the company, successfully navigated the head winds of the financial crisis, and are seeing some lift from an improved economy. We did this through a lot of hard work on our operations and by really listening to all of our constituents – clients, employees, and those in our communities.

We listened to what employees tell us what kind of company they wanted to work for and how they thought we were doing. From this we sharpened our focus on diversity and inclusion and strengthened our employee benefits -- increased maternity and bereavement leaves and ensured our minimum hourly wage generally exceeded market rates, among other updates.

We listened to local leaders on how we could best support thriving communities. Our public policy team and our Market President in each of our 95 U.S. communities and Country Heads around the world met with mayors, appointed and elected officials, non-profits, and other leaders on the ground to hear how we could improve our support. From this we rethought our corporate philanthropy strategy, expanded our outreach programs aimed at addressing economic mobility, and became much more deliberate in how we deploy capital to meaningfully address global challenges.

And we listened to our clients on what we did well and the areas where they felt we had fallen short. We shed non-core assets to focus on eight lines of business, changed our fee structure -- including eliminating overdraft at point-of-sale -- and invested in technology in every business to create industry-leading products, services and tools that make banking, investing and cash management easier, and more convenient.

It was a humbling process, with setbacks along the way, but one that ultimately produced a stronger company better able to serve all of our constituents. And now we are on the other side as a company with strong financial results, strong employee and brand satisfaction, and a focus on innovation. And we are honored others have also taken note. In the last year, we have been recognized as World’s Best Bank by Euromoney and as #1 global financial institution, #3 overall, on Fortune’s annual Change the World list.

We recognize how far we’ve come and that we only got here by listening to the answer to that all important question we put to our employees, our clients, and our communities: What would you like the power to do?