The Keys to Effective, Purpose-Driven Marketing
A true, purpose-driven brand doesn’t happen overnight. What it really takes is a goal, specific actions, and at times, a bit of sacrifice. For Bank of the West, their mission meant, in the short-term, potentially leaving money on the table in the name of responsible investment of customers’ money, and transparency as to what that money was doing. That initial cost was worth it, as the long-term benefits, like new customers, talent attraction, and differentiation, outweighed any money lost. Now, when high-profile job candidates ask, “Why should I join you? How are you helping the world?” Bank of the West has a great an answer—they’re one of very few banks that has restrictive financing policies on things like coal, fracking, and arctic drilling.
On this episode of RTU, learn how CMO Ben Stuart and his team helped shape this relatively small financial institution to become a competitive, purpose-driven company with marketing that doesn’t feel like an uninvited guest. The discussion touches on crafting a tight strategy, gaining internal buy-in, data analytics, the keys to differentiation, and more on how to craft brilliant marketing.
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Full Transcript: Drew Neisser in conversation with Ben Stuart
Drew Neisser: Hey, it’s Drew, with another exciting episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite. We’re at the world headquarters of Bank of the West, and we’re trying to record this with a GoPro, and it seems to be a participant in this episode. Anyway, Ben, first of all, welcome to the show. It’s exciting to be here in San Francisco talking about purpose, branding. It’s funny—as I was coming over here, I thought this might as well be an ad for Simon Sinek’s Start With Why because that’s really what some of the things that you’ve accomplished here are about. Welcome to the show—but before we get into your business and your brand, I couldn’t help but notice that you spent some time in Prague.
Ben Stuart: Yes, many years, many years. Prague, and working on Pepsi for BBDO.
Drew Neisser: Connect the dots for us—University Kansas to Prague.
Ben Stuart: Oh wow. It’s a pretty good story. I’m not sure we have enough time for it today but one of my great grade school and ultimately high school friends, his father was sentenced to death by the Communists after they took over Czechoslovakia, and after the Wall fell, his father asked him to go back to Czechoslovakia and repatriate his family’s land and everything. He said, “Do you want to come with me? There are ad agencies opening up every single day,” and I bought a one-way ticket on Air France, I strapped $5,000 in $5 bills to my chest, and bought a Panasonic fax machine and moved over there.
Drew Neisser: That’s awesome. Well, that must have been an interesting experience and I’m going to fast forward because there’s a lot of meat here but I did notice that on your resumé you have the “Talk to Chuck” campaign from Charles Schwab. I remember, when that campaign launched, it was visually different, it was attitudinally different, and it was really transformative for Schwab in that, up until that point, that was a discount broker. That was the discount brand—at least that was my perception.
I’m curious—as you look back on that campaign, what resonates with you? It seems that it’s one of those campaigns that really stands the test of time.
Ben Stuart: Well I think one of the things that stands out is just the importance of differentiation. The important thing to note about Charles Schwab when that campaign came out is that the brand suffered a 60% or 70% decrease in brand differentiation because you had E-Trade, Scottrade, Ameritrade. When I look back on that, there’s obviously a purpose-driven aspect of it in terms of making sure that US investors get a fair shake from Wall Street, but at the end of the day, from an executional perspective, it was absolutely about standing apart and differentiating yourselves from a very, very crowded field of competitors.
Drew Neisser: It’s funny—I was reading an article today and I made a note. It was something like, “experience is the new marketing,” and my reaction to that was an article that I will be writing soon—old marketing is the new marketing. I say that because differentiation has always been a goal of marketing. Yet, in the last few years, particularly in the B2B world, the emphasis has been on marketing technology and so forth. I’m so glad you brought that up, and that’s probably a pretty good segue into the journey that you went through to differentiate Bank of the West.
Ben Stuart: For sure and I’ll just comment a little bit on experiential marketing, and how marketing is really responsible for driving the customer experience. I think marketing is responsible for informing the customer experience but there are very few companies I know of where the CMO is in charge of the call centers, the retail experience, the web experience, and so I think it’s really important that the CMO represents the customer and brings the outside into an organization. But I think when push comes to shove, oftentimes the customer experience is actually delivered through other organizations. It’s a CMO’s job to influence it, not actually deliver on it.
Drew Neisser: Interesting, and I agree with you because one of the things that I’ve observed over the last few years is how the CMO keeps getting things added to their job, and eventually you’re just the CEO. It’s a problem.
Ben Stuart: Yeah. From the chair that I sit in, the last few CMO roles that I’ve had, the closest partner I’ve had hasn’t been the Chief Experience Officer, it hasn’t been the Chief Technology Officer or Chief Information Officer, it’s actually been the head of HR. I think that the culture that you build internally enables you to deliver on the promise that you promote externally and there’s the old Peter Drucker quote that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”.
Drew Neisser: Well, you’re singing in my music that is for sure, and I believe strongly that a lot of CMOs ignore employees in favor of prospects and customers and, again, this is particularly true in the B2B marketplace. Let’s talk about that in your relationship with HR. What kinds of things can you do to help in this area of employees? As the marketer, what are those conversations like? What are you trying to accomplish?
Ben Stuart: Well if you go back to Simon Sinek as an example, a lot of the organizations I’ve worked with have gone through the golden circle process, but that is a process that the entire executive team and the entire management team needs to sign up for. They need to sign up for a common vision of what is our “why” and what I found is that that conversation can’t really happen without partnering with the head of HR.
The other thing that comes up quite a bit is around behaviors. What behaviors do you recruit for, what behaviors do you reward? I’m saying behavior specifically because I think a lot of times we talk about “values,” but values are only helpful and useful if they result in the right behavior, so I tend to talk more about behaviors than I do about values. And again, when we’re talking about recruiting for talent and rewarding talent, you can’t really have those conversations without the head of HR.
Drew Neisser: I think we can get more specific on that as we get more specific to what Bank of the West was before you got to your new campaign. What was the situation that there was a need for a new position, if you will, a new purpose?
Ben Stuart: For the most part, I think the Bank was really just a utility bank. It was a bank that existed largely in the background to serve the needs of small business owners, customers, retail customers, wealth customers, and commercial clients. But that’s really what it was. It was viewed as a commodity in the background. There wasn’t a well-defined brand position. I would say most of the marketing mix was dedicated towards traditional direct response either digital or mail and it really didn’t have a traditional point of view.
Drew Neisser: Tell me—what was the process that you went through in order to get to your purpose?
Ben Stuart: We started, again, as our bank is a relatively small bank and in the scheme of the US—we’re the 30th largest bank in the US, we’re the 6th largest bank in California— but in any case, whether we’re the 6th largest bank or the 30th largest bank, we consider ourselves a challenger brand.
We modeled our positioning exercise off the book Eat Big Fish which was just—how do you go and treat yourself like the challenger and how do you come up with various challenger positions to go because our source of growth is and always will be taking the customers from the larger banks. There’s a big myth that smaller regional banks compete with other smaller regional banks. No, they don’t. They compete with Wells and Chase and all the other big brand banks that you hear about every day.
Drew Neisser: And that, by the way, is consistent. I find I’m mentioning Byron Sharp and how brands grow in almost every episode, but that’s exactly what he says. Your direct competitors are usually the ones that have the largest share in almost any category, which is interesting. Okay, so you look at the larger banks and you see what they’re saying, and you go through this exercise of “the big fish.” What specifically are we talking about? Quantitative, qualitative, what kind of research are we doing?
Ben Stuart: Well, I would say we did a couple of different types of research. It was primarily almost all quantitative although we did some one-on-one interviews. We did a purchase intercept study which actually got people at the point of purchase and did some research there. But then we also did research in our major metro areas and we did most of the research with younger customers. They were younger customers that we asked two questions. We asked them: Were they comfortable with technology? And did other people come to them for their advice?
That was a way for us to come up with a very strong acid test of—if we could win over younger urban customers who were techno-savvy and opinion leaders in their circle, then that would be a great acid test for other concentric circles around that audience. Essentially what we did is we did four different cells of 200 respondents in four different cities across our footprint, and we ended up testing initially a range of six positionings down to three positionings and then there was a clear winner.
Drew Neisser: Okay, so this was positioning testing. You get this positioning, you know what it is, now what?
Ben Stuart: Well, the positioning was part of it. The second part of it was bringing it to life. In my experience, it’s difficult for an executive team or even a leadership team to get behind just a strategy. I think you really have to bring it to life for them, so a big part of the selling was actually executing the work. I would say there were a couple of key stakeholders that had to buy into the research, and they bought into the research and the findings without the benefit of creative. But when we really wanted to go through and get widespread support for it, we brought it to life with creative.
Drew Neisser: We’re going to take a break and then we’re going to come back and we’re going to dive into how you launched this, what the creator was like, and so forth. We’ll be right back.
BREAK
Drew Neisser: We’re back, and my guest is Ben Stuart, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Bank of the West. We’ve been talking about strategy and positioning testing, now it’s time for the big launch. What is the language? What’s the campaign idea?
Ben Stuart: I think that at its core the campaign idea is that your money has agency. Your money doesn’t just sit in a bank, it actually goes out in the world and does things, and you can either be happy with those things that your money does or not. But most people don’t realize that when they put their money in their checking account it doesn’t just sit there and go nowhere and gets deposited in the Federal Reserve. It actually gets loaned out again to other businesses. You should have a say as to where that money goes and what it finances and what it doesn’t finance.
Drew Neisser: How do we articulate that in language? What’s that look like? What’s that sound like? Is there a tagline that summarizes all of that?
Ben Stuart: Oh, I don’t know if there’s a tagline. The tagline that we use is “a bank for a changing world” and that’s fundamentally based on how society is changing, entrepreneurship is changing, the face of youth is changing, the face of leadership is changing, energy is changing, the environment is changing, and you need a bank to keep up with the pace of change for a planet that’s in a constant state of change.
Drew Neisser: What were some of the things that you did to execute this thing? You’re going to be a purpose-driven brand. How do you show people that this is a real thing and a real commitment?
Ben Stuart: Well, I think one of the things you do is you talk about specifics. I think one of my big learnings in this campaign is that we actually took some competitive advertising and we jumbled the logos at the end of the TV commercials just to prove how interchangeable the claims were from various banks, particularly in relation to things like investment in the community, investment in renewable energy, and investment in diversity.
What we found is that most of the language is bankrupt just like the language around fee-free ATMs is bankrupt, the language around customer service and banking is bankrupt. Then we found that a lot of the language around sustainability is also quite bankrupt and overused. We spent quite a bit of our energy talking about the very specific things that set us apart from other banks. Our policies are fundamentally different from our competition.
Drew Neisser: In a lot of the things that I’ve seen, I remember talking to Daniel Lobetsky of KIND Snacks. It was very much a brand purpose-driven brand. He wanted to bring kindness to the world and be kind to your body and be kind of humanity, but he often said that if our product wasn’t really good, no one would buy it. How do these things—which feel like value statements and this is what we’re doing with our money—how do these things end up translating into messages where someone will say, “Okay I’m going to change my bank because…”
Ben Stuart: Well there are quite a few brands that have gone before us that said, “Look I’m going to change brands, because of how it acts,” so if you look at Toms Shoes—not exactly a good looking shoe, not exactly a durable shoe, not exactly a comfortable shoe in the early days, yet people bought them because of the impact it was having in the world. There are similar categories.
If you look at the Toyota Prius—not a high-performance car, not exactly a good looking car, not exactly a luxurious car, not exactly a quick car—on many of the traditional dimensions in which you would know historically compete in the automotive space you had somebody come in and say, “Actually, I’m going to buy this car because of the amount of carbon that emits into the atmosphere.”
I think that at its very core was our strategy—how do we redraw the lines on the playing field in a way that advantages us and is true to the business practices that we had, but didn’t play by the traditional rules of the banking category—and again if you go back to Eat Big Fish and being a challenger brand, if we play by the rules that in a category that has established, particularly juggernaut competitors—if you play by the rules that they lay out for you, well, it’s a predetermined fact that you’ll lose by those rules.
Drew Neisser: Right. Because they’ve been winning by those rules.
Ben Stuart: Exactly. We wanted to play by slightly different rules and we wanted to play by rules that were, at our core, true to us. It’s not as if every single bank in the US doesn’t finance fracking and doesn’t finance tar sands and doesn’t finance tobacco and doesn’t finance arctic drilling. That’s actually not common. It’s actually wildly uncommon.
Drew Neisser: I had Stephen Tisdalle of State Street Global on the show and it was a really interesting conversation. He remembers the day before putting that little girl statue—The Fearless Girl—out there, and their biggest fear did not come to pass. But there was a fear that the scrutiny on their business because they’re making this big stand on International Women’s Day that they’re not just supporting putting women on boards, but they had evidence that putting women on boards actually increased the value of those companies. There was a lot of fear, it didn’t happen, but they did get some people putting them under the microscope and saying, “Well, who are you?”
Did you have to really take a hard look at what you were doing internally to make sure that you could a whole uphold standards? We’re talking about a changing world and there are a lot of values that you’re putting forth.
Ben Stuart: In some ways yes, in some ways no. I think we needed to more internally steel ourselves—were we ready to go out with this message and were we prepared to stand behind it? The investment policies and financing policies that the Bank has had have been around in some cases a year, but in some cases five years, so we felt pretty good. Quite honestly, the company overall took a revenue hit. It wasn’t like we did this and we didn’t say goodbye to any clients, we actually took a revenue hit. I would say the most difficult step is actually writing down the revenue and being able to put your money where your mouth is.
That was probably the biggest decision. When you sign up for investment policies that actually exclude you from financing certain industries in banking, that’s a big decision. I would say that was the biggest decision, but because the policies had been in place and we’ve got a great team that ensures that the policies are adhered to and that the deals that we sign up for—we have very strict know your customer rule—it allowed us to do so with a high degree of confidence.
Drew Neisser: One of the things that we had talked about in a pre-call—did you see an increase in opportunities with industries that you did believe in and that you were supporting?
Ben Stuart: I don’t know if we have the industry-level data, but definitely from a geography perspective, we’re seeing a significant difference in Los Angeles and San Francisco as an example. A good chunk of our business is in California, so we definitely saw a disproportionate increase in the large California markets.
Drew Neisser: Makes sense. All right. We’re going to take a quick break and we’ll be right back.
BREAK
Drew Neisser: We’re back with Ben Stuart of Bank of the West, and we’ve been talking about the power of making a strong statement in the marketplace, taking a stand, which means that sometimes you’re gonna be on the wrong side of a deal with someone that you’ve lost some business for. But there’s always the upside. Let’s talk about how this campaign that you’ve orchestrated over the last year has impacted the business. Have you seen any impact on recruiting, retention, and some other areas? Talk about the success without necessarily giving us the detailed numbers.
Ben Stuart: Well, I think that was one of the biggest surprises—to talk about recruiting for a second—because the campaign at its core was designed to generate new customers, and to generate new customers in the very unique footprint of California and the surrounding west coast. The biggest surprise was right after we launched. We actually had a couple of high-profile hires that came to us because they saw some of the work and they said, “Wow, there’s something going on there” and we did get some direct feedback from the HR department that our callback rates of candidates increased. We had, you know, candidly a couple of high-profile hires. In San Francisco, a lot of the candidates ask, “Why should I work for you? What are you doing that’s helping the world out?” We had solidified an answer, a good answer to that question whereas before it was “We’re a bank.”
When you’re not the largest bank and you’re not necessarily the bank that pays the higher salaries or has the best benefits or has the slickest offices, having a great answer to that question really helps in talent acquisition. The war for talent in California, but particularly in San Francisco, is tough. I would say one of the biggest surprises was the effect that the campaign had on HR. From a customer perspective, we’ve looked at the data through three different lenses. We’ve looked at our own data, we’ve looked at model-based data, and we’ve looked at some industry analyst data. All signs point to that this campaign is having a significant dramatic effect on customer acquisition.
Drew Neisser: Speaking of customer acquisition, a lot of the listeners are B2B. This campaign could feel very B2C—retail banking and so forth. Talk about how you’re able to use this and translate this and how this campaign has worked for you in B2B.
Ben Stuart: It’s been enough that we’ve started a renewable energy vertical on the tail end of this campaign. But I think it’s really important to just look at the dynamics of B2B. I just shared some of this information at a leadership meeting in Los Angeles a few weeks ago, but BlackRock, the largest asset manager on the planet, took all of the earnings calls from 2006 to 2018, I believe, and they put them all through character recognition, they keyed for 40 words related to sustainability. When you look at it in the financial services sector, there’s been an 86% increase in the mentions, and in analyst calls, and keep in mind, who’s on an analyst call? Your CEO, your CFO, your investor relations, and stock analysts. There’s been an 86% increase in the mentions of words relating to sustainability.
S&P overall, I think, is up 67%. This may look and feel like “Oh, it’s a consumer campaign,” but it’s absolutely working for B2B. I won’t be able to mention names here, but I’ll tell you an example—there is a very large technology company, a very large search company, here in the Bay Area.
Drew Neisser: Hmm let me ponder who that could be.
Ben Stuart: They were looking for a new coffee supplier and there was a local coffee supplier here in San Francisco that said “We’re a shoo-in. We’re going to go down there, pitch our great coffee. We’ve got a good funky brand. We’ve got trucks all over town.” They went down there to go pitch their wares and the conversation was around the sustainability of their supply chain, the fair-trade aspect of where they’re sourcing their beans, and they got sent packing. That was something that they weren’t expecting to happen. On the B2B side, particularly with the entrepreneurial revolution, when you ask how many founders, how many entrepreneurs are purpose-driven, and how many of them are very tuned into sustainability, and the impact of their business on the world around them, it’s dramatic.
We see that with small-medium enterprises, we see it with our commercial clients, and we see it with our largest corporate clients. It works with consumers there’s no doubt, we’ve got tons of data to indicate that, but it absolutely is an issue that is incredibly important to entrepreneurs particularly in the California region. But also, going back to the BlackRock data, it’s important across healthcare, financial services, and the S&P 500 overall.
Drew Neisser: One of the things he said mentioned earlier, you mentioned Prius, and I recall that when Toyota was threatening to change the look of the thing, people bought it because you could call it beautifully ugly and it was so distinctive. Everybody knew that you were a goody-two-shoes if you were driving a Prius. It was a statement and, you know, movie stars bought them. It speaks to the power of design and that connection of the form and function. It didn’t have to look like that. They just made it look clunky, but it was good for the planet. What have you done in that area? Did this force you in some ways of design distinction? Are you ready to be the Prius of banks?
Ben Stuart: Well, I don’t know if I want to be clunky and inelegant, but I will say that there’s another really important aspect of what we’re doing with the brand. We are introducing a new logo, so it was a rebrand creatively or executionally, but it was also a rebrand strategically, so a big centerpiece of the work that we do is the green logo, the stars that turn into swallows, because that’s now front and center. It’s a part of our logo, it’s part of our parent company’s logo, and so the green box and our logo play a central role in it. Luckily for us, most of the banks that we compete with are red, white, and blue or orange or yellow, so it’s a distinctive color that helps us separate at least on the West Coast.
Drew Neisser: And it’s your message. So, there it is. That makes sense. I just didn’t put that together, so we will include the logo in the show notes because I missed both of those things in my research. Shame on me.
You’re in this journey, you’re six months in—as you said, first step—what were some of the things that you think about that were critical to getting this far?
Ben Stuart: I’ve spent a lot of time in financial services, and I’ve learned that what brings people along in financial services is good solid data. That’s unassailable, so I think one of the most important things we’ve done has been pretty buttoned-up with our data hygiene and making sure that it’s not an opinion fest of “Well the CMO really thinks this is a great idea” as opposed to “Here’s the data among this constituent. We recruited this way. Here’s a statistical significance”
I would also say, the other thing is having a tightly defined strategy. We did not focus on brand consideration, we did not focus on brand awareness because we just simply didn’t have the budget. We focused on driving brand distinctiveness and being single-minded in showing the relationship of brand distinctiveness. It’s one of the first criteria that emerging brands demonstrate on their way up and it’s one of the first criteria that failing brands start to lose on their way down. Again, there’s data that we brought to bear from Brand Asset Valuator from Y&R, or WPP now, I think. We brought data to bear there and we brought our own primary data. I think that’s really what brings people along. I believe that you use data extensively in the development of your strategy and then you walk away from data and you just execute brilliantly.
Drew Neisser: What’s “brilliant?”
Ben Stuart: Marketing that is adding something to your day versus being visual pollution or audio pollution. Somebody once described advertising as an uninvited guest into your life and I think that you’ve got to design your marketing and your advertising in a way that makes it invited, as opposed to uninvited.
Drew Neisser: What are some of the things that we could expect? What haven’t you been able to do so far that you’re really excited about?
Ben Stuart: We’re beginning on the social front, so we just are in the middle of one of the largest Instagram photo competitions ever, called Capture the Change, where we’ve enlisted photographers from all over the world to go out and capture change that they’re seeing in society and technology and the environment. We’ve had an incredible response and we’ve had award-winning National Geographic photographers submit a photograph, so I think we’re just starting that journey. The journey looks good, but there’s a lot more work that we’ve got to do.
I’ve got a great new Head of Earned Media on my team who is shaking things up and I would say that’s an area where we have more work to do. Then I would say the next area is just changing the way we work to a more agile methodology or at least a more agile mindset and away from a traditional corporate approach.
Drew Neisser: You’re going to have to hire some of those folks in Silicon Valley who are all about agile. Well, I did go to the Instagram feed, and God bless you for the feed, because I follow lots of photographers, and to me, that’s the greatest part about it. Just for fun, I looked at one of the largest banks to see what was in their feed and it was all sorts of different things. It’s kids and moms and babies and picnics and so forth, and all I saw on your feed was beautiful images. And I went, “Thank you!” because that’s what I want from Instagram. Now, that’s me.
Ben Stuart: Exactly. It was developed for photographers, by photographers, and that’s our plan— to use Instagram for what it’s best at—and that’s photography.
Drew Neisser: It is. So, more social, faster acting. I can’t help but notice that you guys have won lots of interesting awards for best place to work related to LGBT, you have a CEO who is a woman, you’ve got a lot of things that are also distinctive about the brand, that are completely consistent where you could be the brand that you are. Was that there before?
Ben Stuart: It was there when I got here, and I think there are a couple of things that make this bank relatively distinct from its competitors. I think having an incredibly diverse leadership team, having a female CEO, having an executive team that 1/3 women, having an overall senior management team that is incredibly diverse—this company feels incredibly diverse. We have people from all over the world. We’re lucky, we have a couple of great operations here in the US, in New York and San Francisco, where people from all over the network want to come and work. I think diversity is a huge advantage.
The other part is that we’re a truly global company. We are part of a massive global network of banks and financial institutions that operate in 72 countries around the world and, despite our size here in the US, globally our size is formidable. We’re one of the top 10 largest banks on the planet collectively, and this gives us unique capabilities when it comes to things around wealth, when it comes to commercial finance, when it comes to developing programs for entrepreneurs. I would say a second thing that makes us fundamentally distinct is our global credentials, and then finally what we’ve talked about so far, which is a very unique approach to leveraging our deposits from an investment policy perspective or financing policy perspective.
Drew Neisser: To me, as I think about it, nobody has talked about what they do with the money. They just talk about “you can trust us; we’ll take care of it.” That is a really interesting point of distinction.
Ben Stuart: That’s been a big epiphany of mine. What I know from experience is that the narrative is really powerful. I was at an offsite with some high powered marketing and media types down in Ohio a few months ago and I sat down at the table pretty sheepishly with some folks—the founder of Snapchat, some bigwigs from WPP—and somebody sat down and goes, “Bank of the West? What do you guys do? Why are you even at this conference?”
I said, “Well, we’re one of very few banks in the country that has very strict financing policies on things like coal, coal-fired power plants, fracking, tar sands exploration, Arctic drilling, palm oil production, tobacco, even types of fishing nets.” I finish and the guy’s jaw is on his chest and he goes, “How can I move my money to you?” He wasn’t speaking as a consumer; he was speaking as the CEO of a very large marketing and media firm. That’s a long-winded way of saying that the narrative has incredible power and incredible persuasion and you can probably imagine what that conversation would have been like if I would have said, “Well, we’ve got convenient branch location and we’ve got ATMs and we’ve got fee-free checking.” He probably would have rolled his eyes and gotten a coffee and walked away from the table.
We know that the narrative is powerful. We know that it’s motivating. We’re just early in the process and I think the more equivalence of conversations that we can have like that in social, in paid advertising, and in real life is really going to be how we move forward.
Back to your previous question—we haven’t lit this thing completely on fire yet. We’re just beginning, and while it’s nice that you investigate it and you understand a lot about the campaign, we still have a lot of work to do. Most people don’t know the story. If they’ve heard the story, they’ve probably forgotten it. You know, advertising and marketing, in many ways, is a tonnage business. It’s a repetition business and we still need some reach, we still need some frequency, we’re still doing our job. I’m as much concerned about finishing the first step of the journey than I am about going on to the next thing.
Drew Neisser: I’m going to wrap this up. I have a zillion more questions, but the good news is we’re gonna get a chance to talk again because you and I are going to be in Chicago on May 15th. We’re gonna be talking at a McGuffin breakfast and then we’re going to be at an ANA conference, so we’ll definitely continue this. Thank you for being a great show.
Ben Stuart: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
I really enjoyed it. For the listeners, I think you need to learn about this campaign, and you need to research it and really get to understand what it means to build a purpose-driven brand. It doesn’t happen overnight. It has to be real and come from the inside of the organization. You can’t put it on the outside, call it a coat of paint. It has to be real. The change of the logo is a wonderful representation of the idea, but there’s some heavy lifting as we talked about to make it real.
Ben Stuart: BankoftheWest.com/change. That’s not asking you to open an account, that’s asking you to just go find out more.
Drew Neisser: There it is. BankoftheWest.com/change. All right. Until next week, keep those Renegade Thinking Caps on and strong.