The Secret Behind Wall Street’s Biggest Brands

My name is Jen Proak. Proak Partners is known as an integrated marketing communications firm.

Yeah.

It's a lot of money. I started the business in my 20s and I had this crazy idea that the finance world would care about brand in an offense way. I had this cockamamie idea that we were going to be the firm that did that. We were selling something no one wanted to buy for years, and then the financial crisis came and Goldman famously had the vampire squid, and many, many other firms were damaged. So famously, the Goldmans of the world decided this is not a defense game, it's an offense game. They went to the market and said, 'Who does this?' And we were like, 'We've been talking about this for years.'

Thanks for having me.

Well, it's kind of what makes any brand great, but I think first it has a distinctive narrative. We always tell clients before you get out there and say anything, you need to nail the narrative. You have to figure out what is it that is distinctive and interesting and exciting so that when you say it and all your people say it, there is some positive effect, right? Brands typically are somewhat emotional. They're aspirational. So all of that is built into nailing the narrative. But I think great brands are a—you know, the word authentic is always used, but it is true. They're authentic. They have some sort of purpose, they have some sort of reason for being, some right to win. And I think brands are aspirational and emotional. You want to feel as the customer of a brand that you are part of it and that it represents you.

It's a lot of money.

Yeah.

Well, it's undeniable that the obvious ones have done a good job, right? And by the way, they started incredibly early, but Blackstone, Goldman, J.P. Morgan, I mean, these are the obvious players. There are some, I think, financial brands that are newer that were born only a few years ago that are excellent brands. One is Arctos. I don't know if you know them, but they just got bought by KKR. I think they have an exceptional brand. So, I've been at this a very long time. I started the business in my 20s, and I had this crazy idea that the finance world would care about brand in an offense way. There was offense and defense. The only dollar spent in the entire industry is if you got in trouble, you would call a crisis firm, or maybe if you did an M&A transaction, but there was no offense game. And I thought, thank God I was young and silly. But I had this idea that, you know, what if all these investors changed their stance and went on the offense and cared about brand building? There's really no firm in the space that does that. And I had this cockamamie idea that we were going to be the firm that did that, and we were selling something no one wanted to buy for years. I would sort of get the door slammed in my face like, 'We're under the radar. We don't engage with stakeholders outside of our investors. Go away.' And then the financial crisis came, and Goldman famously had the vampire squid, and many, many other firms were damaged. I mean, Lehman went away, Bear Stearns went away, and the whole ecosystem knew that they had brand damage. I mean, regular people on Main Street hated finance. So famously, the Goldmans of the world decided, you know, this is not a defense game, it's an offense game. And they hired—they went to the market and said, 'Who does this?' And we were like, 'We've been talking about this for years.' So we kind of had our magic moment in the GFC. And then we made a big bet on private markets—VC, PE, credit—and our competition thought we were crazy. Like, they're like, 'Why are you hanging around with those weird, squirrely founder people who don't spend money?' And they didn't at the time, but we made a long-term bet, which super paid off.

So, you know, thank you for all those accolades, but I just want the audience to know we started at zero. We started small and ugly with a crazy idea, and we're lucky it hit.

Yeah, I would say if you're under two billion of AUM, your spend is probably $250,000 or less. I would say the more complex, the more global, the more multi-product you are, and also if you're retail and institutional, if you're public, if you start to sort of get complicated, your budgets are probably half a million dollars to four million dollars—a huge range. It depends. I mean, you see for the first time the publicly traded private markets firms doing F1 sponsorships and US Open sponsorships. That's to get to the retail audience, right? That's driven a lot of interest in brand, but it's driven a lot of spend. So you could just imagine the budgets could be $10 million if you're getting into that kind of marketing.

Definitely. Um, so let's start with a rubric I call. So when a founder is skeptical about the business impact of brand—because people often, the old-schoolers often felt that brand, oh, that's this fluffy, intangible thing that doesn't deliver ROI—we sort of easily change a founder's mind when we talk about talent, deals, and capital. That's the rubric: we're going to make people want to work for you because you're a brand instead of you begging them. We're going to help you with deal sourcing. You're going to get better deals. You're going to compete better for deals because people are going to want to be with your firm. And then we're going to make fundraising more efficient and effective. And that's the phone call we get the most, honestly, is like, fundraising is torturous right now. So the idea that what we do can create efficiency and effectiveness and preference in a fundraiser is really attractive. So that's kind of the speech that founders start to say, 'Okay, maybe I do need to experiment with some of this stuff.'

Yeah, it depends where you are in the journey, but typically speaking in this world, you know, whether you're—J.P. Morgan has it pretty much down, but whether you're a large global financial institution, a technology company, or a startup, it kind of starts with like, where are you on the journey? And we need to nail the narrative. Most financial firms would say we're not good at explaining what we do quickly, easily, with intention and excitement, right? That's kind of where we start is like, how do we figure out that narrative? And that's sort of an internal and external research exercise. And at the end of it, we basically tell clients, if we were you, this is how we would—this is what we would say, how we would say it, and how we would amplify it. And then you get to the work of amplification of your story and brand, right? And there's lots of choices there, and some of the choices are based on what your culture is like, but most of the choices should be about what are your business goals, right? So, should I be doing media? Should I be doing thought leadership and speaking, digital, social? Um, should I stay quiet? So, you know, I think even the most conservative brands are doing some version of all of this—sort of like media, thought leadership, digital, and of course, fixing crises. Um, but that's kind of the way we look at it.

Yes.

I would just say content matters, and you have to figure out what's the kind of content that's going to turn your audience on, right? And what content are you naturally good at? So a podcast internally is a really—I think—uphill battle for most companies because you need distribution, you need audience. If you're reaching five people, it's not worth doing. Um, I'm a huge fan. It's one of the reasons I wanted to get to know you, of the podcast, because it is a long-form asset. I always say to clients, this is not a one-and-done interview. This is an asset. If you do this well, you can advance this piece to an investor, a new recruit, a customer, and if they even listen to half of it—again, that efficiency and effectiveness. They sit down, they're ready to do business. They might even prefer to work with you. It's hard to get the story and the perspective of the person without that long-form interview. And people love audio, right? Even investors: 'Don't give me your deck. I'd rather listen while I'm on the treadmill.' People like the portability of audio. So I'm a big fan. But so I wouldn't say the blog is in or the blog is out, or, you know, I know this—your audience hates LinkedIn. I write a LinkedIn newsletter. It's one of my top three most effective things I do. Yeah. Because if I got a hundred thousand views overnight on my piece, I kind of know I'm reaching people, and I know that message is something I should continue with, not abandon. If I get ten thousand, I know, eh, that's kind of a stinker. So, like, the market research I get from social platforms is just really amazing. So I would say I don't discriminate against any of it, and I'm a big proponent of experimenting. I tell my clients, let's try these things because we're going to get a feel of like, where are we moving hearts and minds, where are we hitting our audience, where is this becoming a commercial impact, and then stop doing certain things and double down on the others. Um, so I have things that I do for my firm that I have top three things I do to build my brand and the firm's brand, you know, for commercial reasons, and they might not be someone else's top three.

I'm up to $17 million in fees on one podcast.

Yes.

Yes. And I'll give him a shout. It's the Ted Seides Capital Allocators podcast, because Ted created an institutional investor marketplace. LPs and founder GPs, they listen, and that's a very powerful combination—decision makers, very senior. And I guess I did the podcast when people were just really starting to think about marketing, but I still get calls from it. And I think it was seven years ago.

It was—it was outside, the sun was out. It was great. It was beautiful, beautiful weather all the time.

Yes. No, you can go to Spotify. It's like up there. Like it's replayed like seven times. It's incredible. So, like that's when you know you have like a hit piece. For me, it's like a goal. Like I want to be able to create evergreen content that you can replay every year, and it's still a banger. But like you clearly—that's the thing: people who love your podcast will go back to the library and be like, 'I didn't watch this one. I'm going to watch this one.' So the shelf life is actually quite long.

So there's this sort of like overall brand health you should have, right? It doesn't have to be very complicated, but you should be monitoring what does my brand look like and feel like to the outside. And by the way, in the world of LLMs, this happened yesterday. I talked to a $10 billion manager, and I almost didn't take the call because it was like they look kind of puny on LLMs, and there wasn't a lot of this and that, and I'm like, do I need to take this call? Maybe someone else should take this call. And I get on the phone and, oh my gosh, what a dynamic, incredible fund. Young founder, up to $9 billion, has, by the way, done none of this stuff.

Um, but like everything was inaccurate online, really. And I'm like, 'Dude, you've got to fix this.' And the way to fix it in good times is to feed the machine, right? If you don't feed the machine positive content about you and your brand—what I call it, momentum content—the machine just grabs what's available, it could be old, it could be wrong. So outside of bad times, in a crisis, you can somewhat manage what the machine's going to say about you. I always say even on your personal brand—like I literally did a word cloud of the words I want people to associate with me: entrepreneur, connector, this, that, the other. Those words come up in my profile if you look; those words are coming back, being spit back about me when you ask about me online. So I think there's just a certain amount of—and it doesn't have to be fancy or complicated—but if you're not feeding the machine a little, you're not controlling anything. So if something bad happens, what's out there? Only the bad stuff. So offense is a good defense. So I would say like the sort of build the muscle of good positive content. Obviously, and people know this, the third-party media ranks higher, whether it's Google or the LLMs. So, if the media said something nice about you or you're quoted about something important and it's the New York Times or the FT or the Wall Street Journal or your podcast, if it's ranked highly, those things will show up more and be more powerful. So, I always say to everyone, do just a little bit of hygiene, right?

But in terms of like when to speak, when not to speak—if you're in a crisis, this is one of the hardest things, by the way. This is why you need someone who's done this for 20 years by your side if you end up in a crisis, because these chess moves are so important, and they take a massive amount of judgment, and there's no playbook for 'you always do this, you always do that.' So, but in general, I would say—I'll pick a couple always-dos. If there's a negative story about your firm, you have to assess: will speaking, or participating, or putting out a statement add fuel, add oxygen to the story? So, you are causing the next news cycle, or not? And I generally say to clients, like, let's take a deep breath and not react too early. See where the news cycle is going. The news cycle might just pass you by like a wave, and then you do nothing, right? But in a situation where the news cycle is inaccurate, or the news cycle is going in a direction that's going to really damage your reputation and it's wrong, you have to participate. And most journalists, um, who are worth their salt, you know, will go off the record or on background and let you explain the context of what's going on, and that will shape whatever story is happening. So I think—but I would never, ever—here's a never-never—allow a like negative reputation that is untrue to calcify around you. A fun example—not so fun for her and him. Remember the Coldplay concert?

Okay. I think that was viewed 8 billion times around the world. It became this crazy sensation. But you didn't hear from those people, right? I mean, you were just—the news cycle was just everyone online talking about this, right? And the narrative that calcified was basically very negative around her, because you know people weren't sure, is she divorced, is she single, is she this—there was a lot of narrative around who was the home wrecker, who was the this and who was the that. Well, guess what—she finally came out, I think nine months later, and did one podcast with Oprah Winfrey.

And it turned out she was separated from her husband, he was at the concert, so he knew she wasn't cheating, she wasn't whatever. Anyway, she told her first side of the story. She said on the podcast she received death threats. You know, what was said about her was horrific, and she said it was mostly women, but it was a very sad story in my view. She was obviously given the PR advice to sort of stay low, and that was probably right in the beginning, but I believe she should have come out swinging at a certain point, because this narrative calcified around her, and unless you listen to that Oprah Winfrey podcast many moons later, you still have the old reputation in your head.

Well, anytime something's untrue, I think you have to participate. Whether you put out a statement, you go off the record with a reporter—you've got to not let that calcify. Untrue has to be corrected. And by the way, if the media writes an untrue story and you can prove that it's untrue, most of the time they will change certain parts of it, right? And because stories live online forever, that's very useful, because what's living in the digital world matters. So the beauty is it can be changed, right? Um, so I'm a big fan of coming out fighting when it's not true. I mean, you know, we've worked with Ray Dalio for 18 years. He was the master of this back in the day when he was running Bridgewater. I mean, he would run full-page ads that said this is not true. I mean, he was extremely aggressive. But I think he started to teach the market that you don't have to stay quiet. And he had so many friends and fans on LinkedIn—if he speaks directly to his audience on social channels, it's so effective. It's like, 'This is happening to me in the media.' Guess what? It's not true. Oh, my fans and followers. So that's the beautiful thing about having your own social channels, right? I mean, this is what you see on X or what have you. Like, you can speak directly to your people. And Donald Trump figured that one out.

Very.

Yes. Yeah. So, I would say that part of that brand hygiene thing is pick a few reporters to get to know, because it's a very simple thing. Relationships matter. If I've met you a bunch of times and you have an impression of me that is good, and we're in a bad situation, you're more likely just to talk to me off the record like, you know me. I want to tell you what's happening. So having relationships matters, whether it's a relationship for access or it's a relationship to be able to tell your side of the story. I'm a big fan—I know it takes time—of getting to know a certain amount of reasonable journalists, right? There's always the unreasonable journalists, but most of them I find are actually relatively reasonable, and most of them really want to learn about the business. You know, think also like you get people who are on the retail beat going to the credit beat, the credit beat going to the this—like they don't always have the backstory of everything going on. So I think like the education and relationship of your business and industry and the relationships definitely helps.

Yeah. So I think—and we work with some data center builders—the reality that is, I believe that, I think Silicon Valley likes to speak to itself, and that's a very tight circle. I always say there are very tight ecosystems, right? There's Silicon Valley, there's Wall Street, there's Hollywood, whatever you want to pick. And very seldom do the people in those ecosystems really mix and talk to the people in others. Politics—another ecosystem, right? The problem, I think, began when AI was speaking to its ecosystem about truths that don't appeal to maybe the political ecosystem or the Main Street ecosystem, right? So I will tell you: I went to an amazing AI founder conference, and the narrative was, 'You are a great CEO if you cut your teams and increase your profits.' Duh. That's what you're supposed to be doing. But the reality is there are societal impacts of that, etc., etc. So I think that this narrative grew, and then it started to leak outside of Silicon Valley. And actually, it didn't leak—the CEOs of Silicon Valley started to say everyone's going to lose their job. Not everyone, but you know, it's like everyone, you know, so they created this narrative, right? So what happened all of a sudden is Main Street cares. Eric Schmidt gets booed at his convocation speech, or whatever it was, graduation speech. My daughter just started college Sunday. The minute AI came in, all the students booed. So you got to look at that and say, 'Ooh, we've kind of stubbed our toe with students, with regular Main Street people.'

So I think there's always been what we call NIMBY, not in my backyard. Like people don't want to necessarily have construction in their backyard. But I think the bigger deal is like this out-of-control narrative on the evils of AI. Totally. And I would say, you know, I've got to give Jensen Huang some props. He's been on a road show. He's broken out of Silicon Valley, and he's talking to Wall Street, he's talking to Washington, he's talking to Europe, he's talking to the UK, he's talking to Asia. He has become somewhat of an ambassador for like why AI actually could be good for you. And I think that's the most important thing right now: is figuring out how does the narrative shift into, I think, people get American competitiveness, good job creation, like you know things that are positive around AI. So I think that's just the shift that needs to happen.

Yes, they're very competitive, and they all probably have the same components and characteristics of one another, but they are viewed differently externally. So, take Jensen as an example. Like, he's adored. People love him. Meanwhile, Elon, they just immediately say he's evil, even though he's creating all these like sustainable companies and has a huge pure mission and all that kind of stuff.

Well, I think Jensen's been a bit more gentle with his commentary and his messaging. I mean, Elon goes on X and just sort of says what's on his mind, which we all—I mean, I'm super entertained by, by the way. I admire Elon Musk so much. I think every entrepreneur does. I think he's the greatest engineer of all time, maybe, but I think his execution is rough sometimes. And I think that matters—that sticks in people's heads.

sometimes.

I think it means being the truth-teller at the table. It means sitting beside your very powerful client and pointing out like if you say this, it may be translated like that—I would do this this way. Um, I had to tell a client, a founder—I do these salon dinners for founders, and I moderate the table—and he was so—he's so smart, but he was so domineering at the table. It was terrible. I mean, he just wouldn't let anyone speak. So after, I had to call him, and I told him—I said, 'You are brilliant, and I can make you a star, but you cannot dominate like you did at that table because I got all this feedback.' So telling the truth sometimes is really hard, but you know it is true—and I worry about this with myself—the higher you go up the food chain, the less people are telling you the truth. So you need somebody to not tell you, 'Oh, you're amazing, you were so great, your speech was awesome.' I mean, you need the person that kind of tells you what you need to improve. Um, and I think the chief EQ officer just means we all are living in our bubble, and it's our job sometimes to look beyond the bubble and translate what's happening and how that client can actually really function at their highest level in every ecosystem there is.

Oh. Um, well, one—and I should say this—you need to think about your employees a lot. Your employees are your ambassadors. And I would say more than 50%, probably more than 75% of negative stories start by employees leaking information. So they can help you out in bad times or bury you. Um, so you know, that's not why you should be great to your employees—be great to your employees because they're so incredibly vital to the lifeblood of your firm. But I think sometimes the internal communications and employee communications is not as highly ranked, right, as investor communications or whatever. So I think you know one low EQ move is just not being sort of present when you're speaking to employees and…

And understanding that as a leader, every move you make is watched, right? So that seems very obvious, but I see that a lot.

Yeah. I mean, I think emotions run high when risk goes up and there's, you know, attention. So I think, you know, making calm, smart decisions.

Not often, to say. No, I mean, well, I choose my spots, you know, like everybody else. But yeah, sure. I think especially in a crisis, there's often pressure to like act or react. Also, if you're not organized before a crisis happens, you have too many advisors, too much of a mess going on, and mistakes can happen. So yeah, it happens.

So I've thought about this. I think Meta is such a fascinating case study because there's kind of like three brand and reputation things happening at once. There's the product level. If you love Instagram, you love Instagram. I don't want to say you don't care about Meta, but there's a product level reputation and brand. There's a corporate level reputation and brand. That's Meta. And then there's a Zuckerberg reputation and brand. I think they're all at different levels. I think at the product level, again, it was like Uber. If you loved Uber and it really made your life better, you really didn't care what was going on with Travis Kalanick at the moment, right? You wanted to take Uber. Now, some people care about that, but a lot of people only care, do I like the product? So I think they're doing pretty well on the product side. On the corporate side, I think they made this settlement smart and...

Yeah, so obviously they settled for billions of dollars, these lawsuits, and obviously it's all about, you know, whether social media harms children, right? But they are making amends, and what they're doing with the amends, meaning like we're shutting down likes and for this long, and I don't know all the details, but the amends they're making now, they're asking the entire industry, like if we've got to make amends, it's an industry problem. You've got to make amends, Snapchat or whoever. So I think they're doing a really... they're running full-page ads basically saying it's an industry problem, not a Meta problem. So everyone should get on board. So some of the heat is now going on the competition because it's like we care about children and we're doing these things. Are you doing these things? So I think that has been masterfully done. Honestly...

That's right. And I think as a corporate and institutional brand, they are creating their sort of right to survive by doing this. Right. But then there's the Zuckerberg brand, which I think we could all agree started in The Social Network. Then there's Cambridge Analytica. Then there's the trials. Then there's like just hit after hit after hit. But the question is, and this is a question I always ask myself, can Meta survive like Zuckerberg going away? I would say yeah.

I think so. But this is me. This is a debate. This is always a debate. You know, can the firm survive the big founder? I think they've turned into an institutional corporate in my mind that can probably survive, and they're making the right institutional corporate moves.

Yeah, I think he has had a difficult personal brand since the beginning, and that has not changed. And the only way that that would change is, you know, consistent different actions over a long period of time.

Yeah.

That's right. He should be loved in your community.

Yes.