Why Bank CMOs Believe They Must Act Boldly And Confidently

(By Thomas Barta | Twitter | Facebook). This is an excerpt from my longer Forbes column.

What’s on the mind of top bank CMOs? I had the opportunity to find out by joining many of them at their spring Corporate Financial Group (CFG)* meeting.

Panelists included Aniko DeLaney, Global Head of Corporate Marketing at BNY Mellon; Nancy Brennan, Global Head of Marketing at Bank of America Merrill Lynch; and Christine Maloblocki, Head of Marketing at Capital One Commercial Bank.

The debate kicked off with a frank view on marketing’s role in top banks. “Marketing is changing for the better,” said Pat Scanlon, President of the Corporate Financial Group. “Marketing for impact is the mandate now as chief marketers accelerate their contribution to the growth of their companies,” said Scanlon. The CMOs in the room made it clear that despite the challenges of their closely regulated industry, they aren’t playing by the old rules. Instead, they are elevating — and redefining — marketing’s role inside the top U.S. banks.

The CMOs in the room made it clear that despite the challenges of their closely regulated industry, they aren’t playing by the old rules. Instead, they are elevating — and redefining — marketing’s role inside the top U.S. banks.

Aniko DeLaney: The focus on digital has moved marketing into a more critical role than ever. The first step toward success is when marketing is invited to the leadership table to help a company drive growth. At BNY Mellon, we are responsible for understanding and tracking the voices of our clients and high-level digital and social insights. This allows us to make actionable recommendations that help businesses enhance the client experience.

Nancy Brennan: We live in an exciting time — with the pace of change leading all of us to rethink everything about the way we live and work. This is true for our clients, our business partners, and certainly for us as marketers. The reality is that the proliferation of options available to us today to engage the client makes our jobs both easier and harder. We have amazing choices that help us achieve more with less. But staying on top of this ever-expanding toolkit can challenge any marketing organization. And the margin for error is thinner, so it’s never been more important to organize for impact around a well-defined strategy.

Christine Maloblocki: We are redefining and transforming marketing as we build a competitive brand in the commercial banking space. We needed to change the company’s perception of marketing. So now our conversations are about where marketing dollars can make a difference. I know we’re successful when our business partners say, “I want to be a part of this. I see how this can impact me. I want to be part of the conversation.”

Like all marketers, bank CMOs must do more and more things — with lower and lower budgets. While technology is useful, it also creates an expectation to get more “bang for the buck.” But the real challenge, it seems, can be to get the organization to focus — and to cut down on proliferation.

Brennan: At large, distributed organizations, it takes commitment and focus to shift direction. Even in the face of declining budgets, there can be pressure to make adjustments just at the edge of “business as usual.” And, let’s be honest, we are marketers because we like to create — it’s not as much fun to eliminate. So it’s important to keep the energy of the marketing team up because true transformation takes persistence, repetition, and time.

Becoming true customer advocates is also high in the CMOs’ agendas. While not a new idea, the leaders agreed that much more can be done to raise marketers’ customer voice internally.

Brennan: As organizations drive towards a consistent and integrated client experience, the potential divide between sales and service/fulfillment and marketing touch-points becomes more apparent. It’s particularly interesting for us, as a client-managed business, because digital pre-, concurrent-, and post-sale brand touch-points are on the rise. Marketing can play a role in helping the larger organization understand the client — and their digital behavior signals — essentially becoming their internal advocate. It’s a great opportunity — because in the end, success still comes down to one thing: putting the client first.

DeLaney: Evolving our client experience is an exciting yet daunting challenge. At BNY Mellon, we’ve established nine innovation centers around the globe to facilitate culture change, capitalize on emerging opportunities, and drive business transformation. Each of our nine innovation centers has a distinct area of focus, from FinTech collaboration and blockchain to robotics and machine learning. And in marketing, we emphasize innovation and continually challenge ourselves to consider ideas from outside our industry as we contemplate the future of our business.

Senior bank marketing executives, it seems, are leading the effort to break the mold and try new and innovative techniques to modernize marketing in today’s banks. Throughout the conference, CFG’s CMOs told an audience of peers to be confident and fearless in what they want to do. As one CMO put it: “Take a flyer occasionally. Challenge people’s views of how marketing should be done, but stay on strategy."

* The Corporate Financial Group (CFG) is a membership organization for financial services marketing professionals.

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Thomas Barta doesn’t write about marketing—he writes about leadership for marketers. Invite Thomas to speak at your next meeting or conference. Read his and Patrick Barwise's leadership book The 12 Powers of a Marketing Leader. Or follow his posts on LinkedIn and Twitter.