“You’ve got to step up.”
That’s what Matthew Quale, chief marketing officer of life insurance firm Brighthouse Financial, said at the Financial Communications Society’s May 1 luncheon, hosted by the Union League Club of Chicago.
The quote originated with Quale’s grandfather. It was a call for the former Princeton University student to “step up” his pitiful bowling game during an outing with his grandfather many years ago.
But to the FCS members in attendance at the luncheon, the line—and bowling story—sent a different message:
In today’s hypercompetitive marketing landscape, where financial services firms are struggling to tell truly differentiated stories, financial marketers need to step up their game.
A little more than a year ago, Brighthouse Financial didn’t exist as a stand-alone entity; it was a unit of insurance giant MetLife Inc. Quale was the vice president of retail marketing for MetLife, responsible for the firm’s individual annuity, life, and disability businesses.
On June 30, 2017, MetLife’s board of directors approved a plan to spin off Brighthouse. The board set July 19, 2017, as the effective date for the spinoff; shares began trading in August.
Quale became the stand-alone company’s chief marketing officer, leading a team with the mission of fully establishing Brighthouse’s stand-alone brand.
As part of his talk to FCS members, Quale presented the top 10 lessons he gained from leading Brighthouse’s effort to launch and establish its brand in a hypercompetitive marketplace.
Here are three of the biggest lessons that we learned about branding from Quale’s presentation.
A brand has its own personality
As a consumer, it’s often hard to describe in tangible terms what a company’s brand is. Often, it’s just a feeling you get when you buy a company’s products or services, consume its content, or interact with representatives from the company.
But for financial marketers building and establishing a brand for their firm, it’s extremely important for them to think about the specific type of “brand personality” that they want those interactions to evoke, Quale said. Additionally, narrowing the brand’s core identity and focus makes it easier to establish a creative vision down the road.
“Once you put these building blocks in place,” Quale said, “you’re creating a bit of a sandbox for your agency, and what that sandbox does is really let your agency go deep into creative spaces instead of going incredibly wide.”
For Brighthouse, Quale said the brand’s personality was “to educate and inspire.” But other brands might decide to create something different. Financial marketers need to first understand their aspirational brand’s core promise and personality before they can begin the process of establishing creative elements like its logo or visual identity and strategic marketing plan.
Branding is designed to influence customers and insiders
Most people think of branding as a tool to influence consumer behavior—and that’s true. But as Quale told the FCS luncheon, branding is also a powerful way to rally the rest of employees inside a company.
“You can galvanize an entire organization,” Quale said, adding that, as marketers, branding is an opportunity to showcase their value and inspire employees to go above and beyond in their role with the company.
Quale said marketers should use companywide town hall meetings to mobilize the organization and explain what marketing is doing. “As much as they can see what everyone is working on, the more they’re going to be excited to help you,” he said.
Value metrics and measurement—but sometimes do stuff that’s bigger and “breakthrough”
Today’s marketers must be metric and analytic wonks. Hardly any branding or marketing initiative is approved without a hard-and-fast way to measure its effectiveness or cost-efficiency.
Still, while it’s important to heed to this philosophy most of the time, Quale said that sometimes financial marketers need to take some shots at ideas that are bigger and “breakthrough,” even if the “math doesn’t add up,” in terms of audience targeting or other key metrics.
For Brighthouse, this big “breakthrough” moment came when it decided to run sponsored spots during the television broadcasts of the 2017 World Series between the Houston Astros and the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Quale showed FCS members a video of Fox announcer Joe Buck saying that a pitching change in the middle of one of the World Series games was “sponsored by Brighthouse Financial” as the pitcher took the mound.
Even though the demographic of people who watch the World Series wasn’t exactly aligned with the most-efficient media buying metrics for the brand, Quale said the spots provided the brand with a big breakthrough moment.
“We got more feedback about the World Series ads than anything else we did,” he said.
What’s more, the spots ended up being a huge boon to the Brighthouse sales team, who were able to reference the World Series spots in calls with prospective financial advisor clients.
“Your ability to activate your salesforce is often about your ability to find those big, breakthrough moments,” Quale said.
…
Quale concluded by saying that he eventually turned his bowling game around that day with his grandfather. He stepped up his game.
As financial marketers, Quale’s talk serves as a reminder that our role can be bigger and more impactful than many initially expect—so long as we step up our game, too.
In the meantime, check out WFC’s complete guide to writing quarterly investor letters.
About the Author
Frank Kalman is the chief operations officer at Wentworth Financial Communications. Frank and the team of writers and editors at WFC help professionals across the financial services industry build their brands by creating investment-grade white papers, bylined articles, newsletters, blogs, social media posts, and other forms of content marketing.