TOP CMO: Francesco Lagutaine, M&T Bank - 'Building Trust: Marketing Through Community Connections'

Francesco  0:00  

The currency of banking is trust and that ability to understand cultural values and to speak the same language and therefore have a deeper level of understanding is incredibly meaningful to a bank, but it needs to be authentic.

Ben Kaplan  0:13  

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This is top cmo with me, Ben Kaplan. Today we're chatting with Francesco Lagutaine, the Chief Marketing Communications and Digital Officer at m&t Bank, one of the nation's regional super banks. m&t Bank is the 11th largest bank in the US with 200 billion in assets and a network of more than 1100 branches in 12 states from Maine to Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Francesco is a brand forward cmo who has seen the financial services sector from multiple global viewpoints, including his work with city in New York and Singapore, and Manulife in Hong Kong. But Francesca's passion for marketing goes beyond just growing businesses. He's a champion for community based and purpose driven marketing. community doesn't just mean sharing a geography. Francesco is leading mnts groundbreaking effort to authentically engage with multicultural and ethnic communities to so how does a brand combine its own values with the rituals and values of the communities they serve? Let's find out with Francesco like

Francesco, a starting off point is one we're here in your office in Buffalo, you're Italian by background, you've done various banking roles at a lot of different levels all over the world. So how is it to go from Hong Kong, other places in the world to now be here in Buffalo in the CMO role? How do you sort of think about being in a community and your role as CMO?

Francesco  2:07  

So first of all, Ben, thank you for being here. This is also meant I know there's there's been a lot of more worthy people in me coming at coming into this show. So thank you for the invite. And it's a great question. And in a way, my career has been a career of destiny. I always talk about my career as being the Forrest Gump approach to economic prosperity. I was in London in 95, in the golden age of London, I was in California for the first.com Boom, in New York in 2005. And finance, when that was the big, you know, when the finance sector was probably the largest in the US. And then I moved to Asia for the Asia's golden decade. And the fact that I ended up in in Buffalo, it's actually, for me a sign of sort of my belief that it's really truly the moment of communities in a significant way on a on a social and political element. I think communities as still a human size group, where people can connect is where I think the country will solve a lot of its problems. And it's that human connection that happens still in a very relatable way, that creates a lot of the good that that is happening in the economy, in society, etc, etc. And so for me, it's been great to be able to join the MMT family and join a bank that is truly profoundly committed to sustaining the communities we work and we live in. And so that's sort of like really unites my kind of like belief of where the world is going with the mission of our organization,

Ben Kaplan  3:40  

m&t Bank, now 11th largest bank in the US. So that's pretty big. Right? You're You're right on the cusp of the top 10. You might crack the top 10 soon. And the challenge is there's this huge if for those listeners who don't know a lot about the banking industry, there's this huge banks that are they're large, and they're everywhere. And then there's these also small and local banks, but m&t Bank has bridged the divide. And now, it's pretty much a pretty big bank. So how do you think about this marketing change this brand change? Do you have to evolve? When you're not, you know, just the bank in Buffalo and maybe 10 or 15 or 20 other markets, you're have a much bigger footprint, how do you think about the change in terms of marketing and brand?

Francesco  4:19  

So I'll start by talking about the enterprise strategy. We are at heart, the community bank, and we believe that the country needs community banks, they need banks that are profoundly committed to improving communities they do business in large banks have a greater accountability to shareholders and therefore are often making decisions that sort of privileges to shareholder to the actual community. Beauty of community banks is that they're kind of like really dedicated to one geographic areas. The challenge in banking is that the way the industry is evolving and the reliance on technology to provide products and services on technology and Another capabilities to provide safety against cybercrime and other types of, you know, identity theft. And all of these things mean that traditional community banks are struggling to meet increasingly sophisticated demand of customers. And so most customers end up having a difficult decision between going to a community bank where they get the empathy they want, but not necessarily the service they need. And vice versa, a big bank would m&t, we believe that we have an opportunity to create a community bank at scale. And that's why we've built our scale to the 11th largest bank in the country. Because we need to create scale and be able to build some of those products, some of the services, some of those capabilities that go across that can actually provide to our customers, the services and the products they want. But at the same time, our soul is still firmly based on living within in our communities. And so providing the empathy and providing that connectivity to a geographic place and or even broader to a community to a group of individuals that is typical of a community back. And so in a way, this presents a challenge and an opportunity for marketing, right. And for us, it's been an incredibly exciting journey where as you grow, marketing tends to be tends to sort of like, go higher, right. And so you get more into your economies of scale, or about, you know, reaching more people with the same production elements, we've taken different tack, we've actually hyper localized our marketing. And we've been helped by a couple of things. One is as a benefit of scale, I have an amazing group of individuals in my team that do a fantastic work, we have the ability to engage some great partners such as yourselves in helping us do that, but but also the way the world is going to hold ethos of storytelling means that the relevance of the stories we tell has a premium. And so one of the things that we realize is that we need to tell more and more stories that are more and more relevant to local communities. And we've changed our mix. And we've changed some of our production techniques, we've changed some of the things that we do to tell the stories to make sure that we could afford to sell panics that stories that we told before so that we can be relevant to all of our communities, we do business, we like to say we do business in 35 communities. And so now we have to have at least one or two stories from each community. And so we've gone from from telling six stories a year

Ben Kaplan  7:20  

that some of them are based here in Buffalo, because she does here.

Francesco  7:23  

But when six stories a year, we might have two from Buffalo, one from Baltimore. And so everywhere else is like, Oh, that's a story from somewhere else to telling hundreds of stories. So every community has stories that are rooted in that community. And once you hear, Oh, that's a story about supporting a business here. And in business that where I get my coffee every day or a walk by every day, all of a sudden stories from our communities become more relevant. But we found that deep relevance to be important. The second part that you probably hear me say over and over again, is our marketing mantra is becoming part of community rituals. And that is because that's the signal that we give to the communities that we understand how communities feel.

Ben Kaplan  8:05  

We've talked about the community, why is the ritual part important? What do you think is the power in a ritual, which is something by definition, it's not one and done, it repeats? It's a habit, it's somehow ingrained? What is the power in community rituals,

Francesco  8:18  

there's a couple of things there's the power of community rituals is one, it's not a one done, it's a recurring memorable circumstance event, it happens to the rituals are part of those significant moments in time where the community gets together to do something they see value it, be it supporting a football team, be it participating in an art festival, be it reacting to something that has happened, be it celebrating the first day of summer, it's moments are different community by community, but are those meaningful moments the community has to come together and participate? And so showing that we understand where those rituals are, and having an active participation, not as a sponsor, but as a community member, is what sends the signal that we actually live, where we do business, and we take part in what the community goes through?

Ben Kaplan  9:10  

And how do you think about the tension between if you want to be community made based marketing, you have to have you can't dictate it from the top down. You have to have people there in the community? Who knows like, oh, yeah, that's not important ritual. This is the important ritual, you might not know if you're an outsider, but yet at the top, or at least the central organization, you've got to set some guidelines. But how do you think about the tension between allowing some autonomy and some democracy in the messaging, but also being able to communicate what you need to do so you're not just a collection of individual branches? You're m&t Bank?

Francesco  9:41  

This is a fantastic question. And in my mind, the answer is relatively simple but quite profound. A strong brand is like a set of values. If you share a set of values, whatever decision you make, wherever you make it, that decision is going to be consistent with the result that you want to have. Because we're all talking about this In a set of values, if you build a brand that has a deeply held set of values that is defined by deeply set of values, it doesn't matter who uses that brand, they're going to use it right?

Ben Kaplan  10:12  

So what is the backbone of your brand? Is it the colors? Is it the look and feel? Is it the brand's voice? All of those things are important. But brands are built on something even deeper, a set of core values. those core values serve as a Northstar. To help a brand navigate challenging times. When you don't know what to do, what to say, or what campaign you should run, you can always go back to your core values, if this is what we believe, what should we do.

Francesco  10:56  

So what we wanted to do is get to the soul of the organization, our brand is our DNA. And so everybody in the organization can make a statement. And he's going to be consistent with the brand because it encapsulates a sense of feeling deeply held. The second part was we whilst being bold in it, we dramatically simplified the graphic treatment of the brand. And we have color and the ampersand. And we have sort of like a relatively fluid palette so that we allow freedom. And I've worked in the past with organizations where when you had to use the brand, you had a book this thick, like it's going to be three inches. Okay, so right. And for us, it's like we've created a more fluid system where you can put all our stuff, you know, the famous wall test, you can put our stuff in the wall, it all looks not just similar, but profoundly us. But at the same time, it's all different. And to me, that's the output of a really strong brand.

Ben Kaplan  11:45  

I mean, obviously m&t Bank, it's in your your name. But then how do you think about that? On a local level? It hasn't been some like, Okay, I see an ampersand I see an ampersand around how do you give that meaning give it purpose or aligned to your values, when you have to be in Buffalo, but you have to be in many other markets to

Francesco  12:04  

when I joined them and T. Everywhere I went, I got this incredible, strong sense of the brand. And the brand is the expression of the company, which is just leaning into communities. But bringing communities together to solve common problems. We like to be catalysts of conversations in our communities to solve common problems. And as I was hearing this incredible, strong sense of bringing people together, looking at the logo, I thought we have an incredible gift in that ampersand we're doing the M entity, because the ampersand for us does two things. One is it allows us graphically to differentiate from many other green banks. Okay, right. And serene is,

Ben Kaplan  12:42  

is the color of money, it makes sense. For that I hear you want to be decisive, and many brands

Francesco  12:46  

are green, we are the ampersand bank. So we're green and we got the ampersand. And that ampersand is very distinctive graphically. And so it really helps us stand out graphically. But what makes it really special, it's that you couldn't think of a better symbol for the DNA of the organization. So the m&t is about bringing people together is about bringing companies and customers together, it's about bringing the employees and communities together. So that notion of connecting people and connecting things is very much at the soul of organization. And that's why it became it was, you know, when we started using it and liberating so another one of those things is my team was like, oh my god, we have to write the rules of how to have Yes, and we can use it as as this. I said, no people will get, you know, it's such a powerful symbol. And it's so consistent with our set of beliefs that people will use it right. And now it's been used almost everywhere you go in our footprint, the ampersand is used as a proud symbol of who we are. And you'll never find a used in a way that is not appropriate. So for example, used instead of a letter in a sentence, right? It's always used to be a symbol of that connection that we have with our communities.

Ben Kaplan  13:56  

In the era we're in with marketing. He used to be like, if you had a brand, it was sort of about command and control, right? It was like, Okay, here's what I want it to be a stands for, you know, if someone used it wrong, you send a cease and desist letter, you do something else, and it's about like preserving what it means. But now it's the era of TiC tock. It's the era of other things, people can do whatever they want, they can do it however they want. And so suddenly, a brand doesn't have as much maybe control that can be worrisome and daunting. And you're in banking, it's a conservative industry. You don't like risk? Yes, but people and some of how you get the amplification or reach, you know, very common thing for a lot of banks. The challenge is like, we got Boomer audiences, and we need to attract millennial audiences or younger audiences. How do you think about letting people like, express their own personal brand, be the hero of their story, but do it through your content or your symbol or your sponsorship of an NFL football game or whatever it might be? How do you think about that? Do you worry about that? And how do you get people to legal and compliance to say it's okay, we can we can let this go?

Francesco  14:53  

Well, I'm going to first of all start with a plug to my legal and compliance.

Ben Kaplan  14:57  

Those smarts which is always smart. That's always Smart.

Francesco  15:00  

Are you gonna help me with that? Yeah, yes. But no, they're actually great group of people that sit with us to solve problems with us. And therefore they tend I always sometimes joke and I say that you're the Department of No, our legal and compliance that definitely the Department of how the Department of No, okay, but I go back to Bordeaux same before, it's like, if your brand is somewhat artificial, even though very clever set of components, then it becomes very, very important to, to protect it and to regulate it. If your brand is an expression of profoundly held beliefs, then you don't worry about others using it, because they'll use it if they buy in into that set of belief. And so just like uncomfortable for our employees to use it, because I believe that they deeply understand what we stand for, and how and therefore how to use it. The same thing happened with our partners and with some of our communities. Now, what we teach is actually from marketing perspective, is more how can we stand out more is the techniques of marketing, we don't need to be as protective about the branding, it's about the techniques of marketing, it's a little, it's a little bit like teaching someone who's talented, but a little rough how to project their voice and singing, or in public speaking. So that person knows how to sing, they just need to learn how to project and so that's how I see our role in marketing, the brand exists before marketing, we just help people understand how to best project it.

Ben Kaplan  16:33  

The power of multicultural marketing is that you give your customers a voice, and it's through your brand. your boss's staff, when is the most suave, she'll rub rub hot. Everyone wants to be heard to be understood. If people see themselves reflected in the brands they buy and interact with, they know that the products and services they buy are more likely to be tailored to their specific needs. That's why in our multicultural marketing agency top community, we believe that more than just a marketing exercise, multicultural marketing forces you to truly understand your audience. Multicultural marketing is powered by data at its best. And your next campaign won't be as effective as it could be without deep consumer or customer insights.

Francesco  17:44  

So that deep connection with cultures and a set of cultural values and even more strongly language, I sort of English is not my first language, I moved to Germany without speaking German. And I remember I had to work in German. And I remember I used to joke and say I have a brain, the size of the planet, and the language of a three year old. And so understanding the frustrations of people who are trying to express what they know really well, but they don't have that language capabilities. And so those are things that we use to create deeper connections with our communities, they're incredibly important. And the currency of banking is trust. And that ability to understand cultural values and to speak the same language and therefore have a deeper level of understanding is incredibly meaningful to a bank. And so that's number one that's important, then you come to the point of these communities exist within communities, there are sub communities of smaller communities. And actually, when you go back to community bank at scale, the fact that we've scaled has allowed us to be more sensitive to these communities. Because if you are only a community bank, in one community, it's harder to create some of the things that you need to serve different communities within that community. So think about creating programs to certify people in certain languages, creating marketing material in different languages. If you're only using it in three branches in one community, it becomes a very complicated proposition. We're able to serve multicultural communities across many of our communities and therefore create a scale in the ability to provide marketing material and marketing support and, and even some, you know, forms of business to board this communities. But the secret which is back to the point it needs to be authentic, and the way it's authentic is similar in what we do. When you go to an m&t in Buffalo. You will be served by people who have lived in Buffalo their lives, their managers have lived in Buffalo or their lives or new Buffalo News. You go to Baltimore, the same will happen in Baltimore and therefore, when you go to our multicultural branches, you will find people that are native in those cultures. And now, my good friend David, Femi created his fantastic program, which is our multicultural Acting Program. I'm particularly proud of it because it's a grassroot activity where we actually leveraged the talent that we already had, we didn't build it, we just amplify it help people project it. And so we went out and looked for people that were from those communities to self identify, we recognize that we pay them more for their abilities to speak a language, they proudly wear a badge that says what languages needs language. And then we promote them. And we started with one branch, and we now have, I believe, 122 branches, we have 400 people that are certified in in being able to provide banking services in their native language, and we provide services across 20 languages. So that has created us because of our scale, to provide in every community a very relevant service to multicultural communities.

Ben Kaplan  20:48  

And how do you think about goals, aspirations, beliefs in different communities? differently? Ie What do you aspire to be in some communities, that personal expression of aspiration, right? In some communities, it's a family expression, it's me and my family, and others, it transcends generations, it's like, the aspiration isn't just for financial wellbeing for myself, for my immediate family, it's for generations to come. And so when you sort of say, like, you know, we're there to support your aspirations, it means different things to different people. So how do you start, you know, making your marketing and making it reflect what is true and authentic, when even the same word we might use? We might even just say the word together, you had together like me and my banker together, me and my kids, my my grandparents? How do you start thinking about even just language choices could mean different things.

Francesco  21:35  

And you go to Spanish, and there is a one that language is yeah, the Spanish language is is there are countries that use Spanish? So that's a really difficult question to not answer, but to fulfill. And I go back to that notion of we've used our scale to allow us to, as opposed to create efficiency in circulation to multiply our outputs, we're just on a journey, but are leaning into multicultural communities is directed to actually listening, understanding and engaging accordingly. And so we are on a journey where our production of content actually is tailored. Whilst it's all about connections. It is tailored for what connections means in that culture. And the way we get there, back to the point of marketing, the brand isn't property of the marketing department, the brand is all of us, we just amplify it, we are actually more actively engaging our frontliners we're engaging people that are meeting those customers from those cultures in helping us understand how to best direct the conversation that we're having with those communities. And then the beauty of multicultural is that he travels across, right? So when we found that insights about family connections, we find insights about about how things work, we can scale it across all of our communities. I'll give an example, which is a small example. But having come from Asia is particularly sort of dear and recent for me is we have a strong service in the Korean community, Korean struggle is in learning language is a very difficult language to understand for someone who's grown up with Korean language. And so having people from Korea is particularly important, our recruiters are American. And so we realized that there was a whole group of really bright Koreans that we were excluding, because in Korea, the culture says that you are different to someone who's high in rank than you. And when you're different, you don't look them in the eye. So

Ben Kaplan  23:38  

you're not gonna even in a job interview, you're it's gonna, it's gonna be different, you're gonna be different, will generally

Francesco  23:42  

be different. And our American recruiters took that as lack of confidence. And that was, you know, so if you're recruiting an American and a person refuses to make eye contact and makes really just brief eye contact, and then speaks to the table.

Ben Kaplan  23:55  

You're not confident they they're hiding something. Can you deny? Yes, all

Francesco  24:00  

right, yeah. But in Korea, that's absolutely appropriate. And so becoming culturally fluent, not just in the expression of the brand, but in the expression of the brand is the entire expression of the organization and being able to sort of learn and teach those cultural nuances across every step of the engagement of the brand slash company is absolutely essential.

Ben Kaplan  24:20  

What are some of the assets that you leverage in local communities? How do you start thinking about leveraging those and knowing that a lot of other banks like to be active to they want to have tie ins to local sports teams, they generally show up at the local Chamber of Commerce or Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, how do you start thinking about those as assets to meet meet your message and also a competitive set where lots of other banks are trying to be all over to

Francesco  24:41  

I go back to the source of creation and liberating the the the creative resources in the creation of content and go back to becoming parts rituals of community but you have to be authentic. So the way we we created believe or flock together is by empowering people from On buffalo that shared that passion for the football team in our in our part of the community to create what actually sort of like rallies their community, the same thing for Baltimore, the same thing, if we have to engage Vermont, or whether we have to engage the Hispanic population in Baltimore, is going there listening, reaching out to those member of those communities in our footprint and listening and letting them participate and drive in many cases, that creative process.

Ben Kaplan  25:29  

And what other opportunities do you look to outside of NFL to have that moment of connection? Where it's a great example? Because it's like that aha moment? It's just like, I was thinking that that's actually spoke to me. That's exactly what it was like, thank you. Someone finally said it. Are there opportunities to do that outside of NFL or outside of sports? And then how do you think about finding this?

Francesco  25:54  

Actually, we just finished experimenting, and we were surprised by success. That was the same question I had is like the sports, there's such a passion, at least with some teams and such connections, sports that that seems easy to identify. But we started thinking where can we find rituals that are maybe more mundane, but they'd still unite communities. And we experiment in Baltimore, in the journey to the beach. And we realize the community of Baltimore in the summer has sort of like this almost like migration ritual on the weekend to go to the beach. And we started putting out of home, all along the way to the beach that was about the journey to the beach. So you'd go and put gas in your car. And that would be an empty sign that says Don't forget sunscreen, we had a boat on the beach side that says aloe, aloe, aloe, and we had other messages about you know, the journey to the beach will be stuck in traffic to the beach. And we we felt let's see if we can connect to this sort of excitement of this journey to the beach. What we found is we looked at people who had seen and engaged with our sports ads, either ravens or bills, and their increased likelihood to do business with us that scored at a really impressive 33%. They said 33%

Ben Kaplan  27:07  

of people who were more more likely to do business after they've seen you have a presence with the builder, the Ravens aged one out of three people are more likely to want to become an m&t customer, okay,

Francesco  27:17  

the people that engaged and so our beach journey narrative, we're 46% more likely to do so it was again, one of those where it seemed over, but it was again, it was people in the community that revealed to us that this is a thing for us. And so believe in your people go with it. And that's how we unveil that insight.

Ben Kaplan  27:45  

Everyone knows that trust is critical with your customers. But how do you get there? Sometimes it's just about paying attention to the details. from a customer's perspective. If you can prove to me that you can get this one little detail, right, that I can assume that you probably understand a lot of other details about me that I don't have to spell out for you. Welcome to m&t Bank, my name is Natalie. How can I help you today? That's the seeds of trust. So as marketers, sometimes our best campaigns are just about paying attention to the little things. And if we could find those details that our competitors ignore, that's even better.

Why? Why would someone be more than likely, okay, you feel the pain of getting stuck in traffic, you have to fill up your gas. Why? And it's interesting to think about, but it's also maybe comes back to what you said about trust and being trusted. Because it's nothing magical that yeah, my bank knows that I go on this journey. But it's a shorthand for everything else. Because if you get this, and this is one detail, then you probably get a lot of stuff about me that I don't have to like spell out for you a whole bunch. Maybe you've designed a system that's more suitable for me. So it starts to build that trust. And as marketers, we never have enough time to build trust, right? Like, yes, if I could sit you down, I like you. And I want to sit you down for 12 hours and explain everything that maybe we could do. But we might have eight seconds here or we might have three seconds there. And we might have just a glance here. So I think it becomes important because it starts to facilitate trust if we can make connection.

Francesco  29:26  

Absolutely. And one of the things I learned over the years sort of working in the wealth management space in particular, is that often bankers feel that the measure of their trust comes from their ability to explain their expertise. And so bankers tend to talk a lot and explain very complex things that demo per second nature. And they feel like if I tell people just to how how much of an expert I am, they will trust me because of that. I've learned that the best relationship managers in those areas Listen, way, way, way more than they talk because trust comes from the feeling that you understand me, and that you understand what's important to me. And then if I have a feeling that you understand what's important to me what you tell me, I'm going to believe it's right. But if you don't listen, and you've don't spend any time understanding, you're just saying something. And then I need to do the work to believe in you. And that's tiring, because I'm not as fluent in what you're saying. And so that's the same thing, when we can create that connection of, we feel the same things you feel, whether it's about the bills, or the ravens, or the beach, then people believe that we feel the way they feel

Ben Kaplan  30:33  

what you just said, reminds me of actually a political example, when talking about two very successful American politicians, one being Bill Clinton, and one being Al Gore that reached kind of the highest level politics and they would describe them. The difference was in Bill Clinton was I was also known for being kind of a master politician. And the difference was people described them in a room was that Al Gore would go into a room and would sign a projector or want everyone to know, or just have the sort of the positioning of like, I'm really smart. Yes. And I know a lot. I'm really smart. I know a lot about a lot of things. Bill Clinton would go into a room and he would say, I understand you, I get you. And that was the difference between the two similar political bent, similar approach to things they were the president and vice president the same, you know, administration, but that sense of understanding and the importance of it, that it wasn't just being polite. And if you

Francesco  31:25  

think about Al Gore lost to a person who was best described and someone I would have a beer with. And so if you think about it, that's how the electorate made a decision is like, Is this someone I would hang out with? And Al Gore, I don't think anybody doubted He's intelligent. He's one of the brightest people we have. But he's not someone he's not someone that I can relate to. He's too smart. He talks about stuff that don't mean nothing to me. And so I leave the help. And then so he doesn't get what means to me, right? And so I don't trust that. Whereas Bush was I got a beer when he must, he must know where I come from, even though he was another billionaire from

Ben Kaplan  32:02  

Texas. And how do you put all of this together? And think about? What is the future direction that you go as you continue to grow? Is it more of the same? Or let's say you crack the top eight? Top six? You know, what, if you continue on your growth path? Is it the same? Or do you think more about even just from your organization, your marketing organization? How does it have to scale? How does it have to change? How do you have to bring down silos? How do you continue to do this at greater scale as you continue to succeed?

Francesco  32:32  

That's a very significant question that I don't think it has an answer. But I would say it goes back though the brand is a manifestation of the enterprise. And as long as an enterprise, we believe in what we believe right now. And we continue to be able to do business in the same way to the business right now. So if we can take the community bank at scale from 200 billion to 400 billion to 600 billion to a trillion, and we're able to manage our business to see still be true to the communities we do business in, then I believe our marketing can scale, we found a formula that allows us to scale beyond by leveraging talent and ingenuity, there's outside the marketing team. So we don't have to, you know, if we grow three times, you don't have to build three times the number of people, the biggest challenge that we'll have as an organization is, you know, at what point the Community Bank is scale is too big. Now, if we look at some of our competitors, there are some competitors out there in different geographies that have a similar approach. So I do feel that we can we can still grow significantly. But you know, at one point, having worked in a large national bank reengineering that the re engineering community bank at scale and larger national bank would be hard. I believe in hope that growing organically or growing or even inorganic bank by growing from our roots can allow us to scale further and yet remain a community

Ben Kaplan  33:57  

and what can other marketers and other CMOS learn from banking, industry, financial services that are applicable to them? For some of the issues you face me, you're dealing with competitors, some with very deep pockets, deeper pockets in yours, you're dealing with a commoditized industry where it's difficult to differentiate, you're dealing with an industry with, you know, a high amount of compliance and legal issues, generally lower risk tolerance. Those are things that are distinct with banking, but what does that teach other marketers and others? What can they kind of pull from that experience?

Francesco  34:31  

I don't know that we can teach anything generally the financial service in in marketing is seen as a little bit of a laggard, I think we are at least at par with the best in the industry. And so I would say at least our lessons would resonate with their their own learnings is connecting on a human level with your customer is more important than anything. I think I thought it even in some of the product categories that may be even a little less undifferentiated and And commoditize, as banking is product sophistication is becoming such that sure product differentiation starts becoming marginally less relevant to people. And so that's profound human connection. And people are attracted to brands that say something about them, but actually in a better way to say they're attracted to brands that project what they want to say about them.

Ben Kaplan  35:24  

And he talked about the power of listening to analyze listening for protection, but also then that means if it's listening through your marketing insights, or the things we shorten that time cycle, can we do it faster. So it's if we're sharing something that's relevant to our community. Now, we don't have to wait till next year's annual marketing plan to implement, maybe we can do something quicker, maybe like the example of the sign that capture what Bills fans were feeling, we can do something we can shorten that time. And usually, the way we can do that it's easier said than done. But is that if we have a really strong understanding of what what our brand is, but to we are connected to our community, then we're very confident, you know, Oh, are we going out on a limb? By taking the statement? Do we see this, we know it because we know it intrinsically to be true, that lets us respond faster.

Francesco  36:07  

And you know, I'll give you another reason why that quick reaction is important is because the big issues that we have as marketers is that there's way more information, anyone has the ability to process. And so everyone out there, including us is always pushing information away. It's like it's too much so you only let in some information that you feel is relevant to you. And there's kind of like the self protection involvement. So the ability to actually hit a chord that is relevant. So the ability to talk about something that made an impact very recently will make you notice something, right, if we went out with Hey, Kitty kitty, three days later, even if we'd won, they wouldn't be able to but at that moment is hitting the mood of the street diamond. So accelerating that cycle of reaction is incredibly important.

Ben Kaplan  37:00  

For Francesco Lagutaine marketing is a journey and a journey for the curious, humble and brave, know your own values and listen to the values of your audience. If marketing is a Venn diagram, look for the overlap and what you believe and what the beliefs are of each community you need to reach know your DNA. Say it, repeat it. Make sure everyone from the boardroom to the frontline can say it too, if you can turn it into a single symbol, like m&t bank's ampersand sign, all the better. Pay attention to the details, build trust, don't just mark it to a community become a part of it. Find ways to authentically Connect. Trust doesn't just come from your ability to explain your expertise. It also comes from shared passion for sports team, a community ritual, or just the shared experience of sitting in traffic together. For top CMO, I'm Ben Kaplan.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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