Navigating Media and Branding in a Digital Age with Greta Wilson

Talk about your time at Bloomberg.

I worked actually. So Bloomberg, you would know them for the media properties, but they obviously have their financial solution that they sell to the financial... the terminal, exactly, which is like a horrible name for something, but that's what it is. And it's the bread and butter, it's the whole point of that company. And they have a media property. I ran marketing for all their media properties, so their television, their radio, the magazines, the website, the mobile. So yeah, that was a great... I always said it was in the city, New York City. I live out in Connecticut. If it was in Connecticut, they would have had to pry me off the walls to get me out of there. But eventually I did leave Bloomberg for Pitney Bowes.

So do you listen to Bloomberg Radio? Do you listen to Tom Keene?

Yeah, Tom Keene was my buddy when I was there. He would do a lot of analysis on ratings and viewership, and so he was always wanting to understand that and trying to help shape the direction of what we were doing. So I was mentioning that they are known for their main product, the financial terminal, and they would speak about it. When I was there, Michael Bloomberg was the mayor of New York City, so he wasn't involved. And Dan Doctoroff was the CEO, excellent CEO. And so the way it was spoken about is the terminal is the sun, and the other businesses that Bloomberg had were like the planets that got their energy from the sun and were there to make sure the sun was healthy and strong. So I worked in the media businesses. You really understand your role depending on which business you're in and who the focus is. But the media side of the business is super interesting because when it originally started, it was about the terminal because they wanted to get news and break it on the terminal to have market-moving information, right? What could help financial people with what they're doing? If you learn about something, get the first chip, you've got an advantage. So they had Bloomberg News and they would write articles basically, and then they would get interviews. Then they decided to start other media properties like the television, and so it was more around, at the time, this is before me, like a marketing channel for them. Well, media properties to get the name out more. And then they bought BusinessWeek, again a long time ago now, called Bloomberg Businessweek. And the reason they bought BusinessWeek, they weren't always getting... like at the time, Jeff Bezos was kind of hot on the scene and doing Amazon, and it'd be hard to get an interview. Bloomberg would have a hard time getting an interview because why should I tell my story to you? I could talk to CNBC or the Journal or whatever, who already had a lot of audience and credentials. So BusinessWeek was a way to get to more of the mass business audience, and then it became more attractive for people to come do interviews with Bloomberg reporters. And then again, they get the interview, the story would kind of break first on the terminal to give the sun its energy, and then like six seconds later or something, it could break online through the media properties. But those advantages mattered, and they still matter in the financial world. So when I worked at Bloomberg in the media side, I started out running marketing for television. That was really exciting. I worked for Andy Lack, who's a pretty big known guy. He used to be the president of NBC News, and he was a very connected person. Learned a lot from him. And then I ended up heading up marketing for all the media properties. But we weren't a media organization, so it wasn't like we had big budgets. And we did want to grow listeners, viewers, because ultimately the media properties made their money on ad revenue. We would sell advertising space. So I did a lot of super cool creative things because I really did not have much money, but I had an amazing asset in all these media properties. So I would get barter arrangements with, like, the World Business Forum, I think that's what it was called, big event that brought all these business executives in. Or I would go to financial ones and say, hey, and I'd have to manage church and state because you can't really blend editorial and paid and all that. But I would ask the TV producers, hey, there's this great event, they have amazing speakers, world leaders, business leaders, politicians. Maybe we could get them as guests to be on the show. What if I can get us a presence and work out like we get first dibs on reaching out? And they're like, love it, love it. So I would contact the event, and I wanted to access all the people to showcase all of our media properties. I said, listen, I'll do an arrangement, a barter. Let me be your premier sponsor without a money exchange. I'll give you remnant assets to advertise and promote your event, and we're going to bring our TV studio and our TV team's going to look to try to interview some of your guests. So it was a win-win-win. It was great exposure for us, it was a great way for us to get our TV talent in front of a very influential audience, which was always the goal. So that was just one example, but I would do a lot of those kind of creative fun things and try to figure out ways to get us more exposure without having to, other than working hard and figuring out deals that benefited both sides.

Why did you move to Pitney Bowes and what's your role there?

So I will tell you that every job move I made since my IBM days was because of people who moved to other companies, and I was lucky enough to come join them, and always in a marketing function. So that's sort of how I made each of my moves. And I've been mostly in B2B, even though when I was at Bloomberg it was in the media properties, that arguably is a consumer offering, but it's in the lens of business. So that would be my only kind of B2C-like experience, but otherwise B2B. So I went from Bloomberg to Pitney Bowes because it was a great job opportunity, which was to completely rebrand the company that had been around for almost a hundred years. I think it was like 94 years when I first joined, or 92, I can't remember. So they were looking to reposition themselves for the future. Had always been in mailing, and mail was on the decline with or without Pitney Bowes. And so I had the opportunity to come in and rethink the rebrand and then actually apply an entirely new brand to the organization to guide with the CEO. You would always say, I never really appreciated how a brand's direction could so strongly help create clarity and drive decisions, whether it be divestitures or acquisitions, to where we need to go. So it was an amazing experience, and I'm still there because we're still kind of transforming and there's more work to be done.

How are you evolving the brand positioning of Pitney Bowes?

So we've been forever in the mailing space, right? So we started with the invention of the postage meter back in 1920, and that was where it began. And then we had amazing success not just off that but off of related things. Got into fax machines, photocopy machines, you name it. And it was a pretty significant business, particularly in the Stamford, Connecticut area. Pretty well known, but among an older group. So we'd been around since 1920 with the postage meter. But yes, with or without us, mailing has been declining. And so about 15 years before I joined, there was a series of acquisitions that were done in related and unrelated spaces. A lot of software was acquired. So when I came, they had a bunch of things, capabilities. And the most common question that I would come across, first of all, was, when are we going to have a corporate capabilities presentation? That was the number one question I would get asked. I was the brand head, joined to do that. And they were just hungry, the people that work there. Like, what do we do? How do we describe this stuff? So that was really the starting point. How do we talk about all this stuff? So found a way to thread it all together with an umbrella that connected it all. And then we did a lot of work, a big piece of work, to figure out what our positioning was going to be. And we did a lot of research to understand what the different buyers that we were going after, which were also varied, what they cared about when they were thinking about a partner for the things that we did, and trying to find commonality. But we did a really, really great job. I will say it's probably one of the pieces of work I'm most proud of, the brand work that we did. We then went on and developed an advertising campaign, the strategic brand advertising campaign, where we ran TV commercials. We hadn't done that in over 20 years. And it was really good work. But that stuff just costs a lot of money, and we just weren't yet, we were still trying to figure out the next thing. And we were starting to move towards shipping, which is really where we are going into now, because that's a nice, healthy growth market. So we are starting to go in there, but we still had some of these other businesses that didn't quite fit. So we kind of put ourselves on the umbrella of enabling transactions in commerce, which I like, it worked, but you could drive a truck through it. It was still very big and large. So it's maybe a head scratcher, like, well, what do you do? I don't totally understand. But the positioning we ended up coming up with was all around delivering accuracy and precision for meaningful impact, which basically then drove the whole visual direction of the logo. We ended up doing a whole new logo, a new design system, new tone of voice. And then we came up with this line, working with Olby, there were our agency partner, the Craftsman of Commerce. Which was so beautiful because it was kind of, let's say it was what was the year, 2015. Everything was like digital, getting so automated. Everyone was like, where's the human touch anymore, right? So because we found this sweet spot in accuracy and precision, something we were really good at and was desired by all these different buyers we were going after, this idea of a craftsman sort of played nicely to that. And then the assimilation with commerce just became a really nice line, right? The Craftsman of Commerce. And we had these are the hands that sow the seeds of business growth. We had all these little lines and beautiful work. I mean, Olby was an awesome partner. I'd worked with them at IBM, which they have a longstanding relationship there. So we did some really, really beautiful, great work that helped us in such a big way internally. It helped us in spades. People loved it. They were so proud. But then, if you can, I mean, you won't be surprised now, I guess, but it was like the word Craftsman became a problem. And it's not like you have crafts people, you know, because it leaned a little heavy on the male side. But it was very interesting because I was a female, the CMO at the time was a woman, the creative director at Olby who we worked with on this was a woman. It didn't cross our... not that it didn't, we did research on it, we crossed our minds, but we were like, proud, we're like, it's Craftsman, that's just the word, you know, like sportsman. I don't know, it just... but it eventually we had to move away from it. And if you remember, there were those issues that emerged publicly with all these different talents doing things like Harvey Weinstein, the whole thing. It really exploded. I mean, that again, it's been many years now, but that just ended up being sort of the sunset of that line. But we've done a lot of great things since, and we still do. Like I said, we haven't been investing in that kind of bigger broad-base awareness, which is challenging because we're still so heavily known as a mailing company, but we do so much in shipping. And we'll get there.

Is there still a space for mailing in the digital era?

You know, as a marketer at large, when you think about mail as an industry, right? Like people, banks, no one wants to send you your statement physically anymore because it's very expensive when they can send it to you digitally. So the total volume of mail has gone down. And we play, like a bank would be a huge client of ours, a customer, which they still are, but their mail's going down. But yes, from a marketing standpoint, I always say that it's the rising tide that raises all boats. Direct mail, you'll see your search go, everything starts to go up. They may not all act on your mail, which is why you really have to look at all the channels and how they all start to improve. But the mail breaks through because people don't do it, or hadn't maybe for as much for a while. But we all go through our mail. Email is a problem, right? I mean, that's the one thing I don't open much of anymore unless I know who it's from. The phone calls, I never answer. I don't even, my work phone, I haven't answered in three years. It's only people selling me stuff. It drives me nuts.

How is Pitney Bowes transitioning its messaging to support this new brand strategy?

Yeah, so we are now a global shipping and mailing company. And I think in due time we'll be a global shipping company. But the difference is, and we did have, we recently sold a business, a big business that we called Global E-commerce internally, that was our internal name, and they did the logistics. So we don't drive trucks and fly planes and deliver packages. We're not that kind of shipping company. But we're the shipping technology company that enables others who do that to do it with great already-negotiated rates with the major carriers, with lots of carrier opportunities, with integrations with all the marketplaces. Think Etsy, Amazon. If you're a retailer and you're selling on all those, it'll just bring in all those orders for you and make it easy for you to choose your best carrier option, get everything shipped, track it, manage receiving, returns, all that with technology. So we enable all these folks to do the shipping. But yeah, so simply said, like I said, we used to kind of talk about ourselves as that driving transactions in commerce. Now we're a global shipping and mailing company. It's pretty clear what we do, although again I always have to describe the not driving trucks and flying planes, but enabling with amazing and innovative technology others to manage the shipping and mailing they do. But I think down the road, a long way down the road, we still get a line share of our revenue from mailing, but a long way down the road, we will be a leading global shipping company.

How do you justify the cost of a rebrand to your higher-ups?

So that is a really important question that I think every marketer struggles with or stumbles on or has to deal with. And it's hard. And I have not been successful because, like I said, we're not spending as much on brand advertising now that we did in the past, or I should say against and for the brand overall. Everything you do, though, is for the brand. And that's always the struggle you'll get from your non-marketing folks. Well, everything we do, like all the other marketing you're doing for the other solutions, everything at the business level is still for the brand. Yes, of course. Everything we all do, every interview somebody does, every touch point we have with a client, every interaction we have with our colleagues, they're all brand moments, right? So what I would say is, the time we did the rebrand, it was the... our CEO at that time knew he wanted the brand to be ahead of where we were, and he wanted it to help pull everyone along in the direction of where we were going. And I think that is often the case. A rebrand or a brand effort, you don't usually have it all, everything else all in place, and solutions in place, and the answers in place, and all the capabilities of what this new brand is going to stand for in place, because that takes a lot of time. So you kind of lead with the brand and get perceptions to start to shift and see you in a different way. So I think at the time, because we were just starting on a transformation, the sell was a little easy. And I didn't sell it at that time. I joined to do it. It was already a decision made. But that one is, listen, we need to get perceptions to shift. We look in the market and we're seen as a mailing company. Mailing is declining. We need to get into a growth market. How do we shift perceptions that we do more than this, that we're in these growth spaces? So that one is, you know, track your perceptions. Perceptions be reality all the time. So you may tell and try to tell everyone we do this, we do this, but if you're not perceived that way, that's all that matters, right? I would say once where we are now, measuring the return on that is definitely a trickier one because awareness and consideration metrics are only going to get you so far. People want to see the revenue attribution to the investment, for sure. So if you look at brand investment alone, you're going to be hard pressed to make a total connection there. But what we measure very closely with a strong ROI is all the marketing programs we do. Like I said, we don't have a separate isolated brand investment at the time, but we delivered 12% of our company's revenue directly from marketing, with seller on top of that. We drive a lot of leads to seller. So by that I mean we're doing everything digitally and getting clients to transact with us digitally online for solutions that we do offer that you could go ahead and start using online. We cross-sell things. We have a very strong... that's what I also do love about Pitney Bowes. Our marketing is pretty world-class, I think. I've worked at a bunch of places. We're always using the coolest, most interesting technology to do things. I think the teams are like a step ahead of what's happening in the world of marketing and always pushing for us to do it. So I've learned a ton on the job from the team and have been wildly impressed.

If you were given another $5 million to deploy, how would you deploy it?

So I will tell you what I would do because sadly that doesn't go very far in the world. I mean, does it go far? It goes far, of course, yes. You can target your audience and do a lot of digital and get a lot of clicks and get tons of impressions. But I feel like we have a good handle on that just with the stuff that works, like more kind of further down the funnel stuff that we have going on. I would focus on, and maybe this comes from that Bloomberg experience I was talking to you about with my barters and such, but I really think that event venues and certain ones, and IBM is a great example of this too because I know this from having been there and know how they still are. They focus, they kind of surround live sporting events. Their advertising investments are only going to be in live programming, whether it be news or sporting events, and they bring their technology to those sporting events. So they walk the talk. So when you go there, if you're hosted by them to join them in a suite, now you're getting these great client interactions with your highest valued client set. They're telling you how the technology is used at that very venue to do pretty cool stuff that you're observing firsthand. That's impressive, right? On top of that, they're getting the TV opportunity through these very highly visible, highly watched events. To me, you can get those in small buckets. So you could do sponsorships to a team or a venue, and if you have a concentration of clients and opportunities in particular markets, that's a brilliant way to have a brand moment because you do get a lot of awareness, you get client interaction, you get walk-the-talk examples of see how our solution is used in this particular situation. So that is probably what I would push for as a let's start here. Let's not try to boil the national ocean and try to reach everyone that we're interested in because our dollars wouldn't go far enough to be effective. And get the most set of activities and touch points and interactions through a more focused kind of sports marketing venue sponsorship activity.