CMO Unplugged: The Art and Science of Marketing in the Future

Jim Marous (00:12):

So, this is actually what happens when you have a financial marketing kind of themed event, and even at the last show of the day, we're getting a pretty close look forward, so I appreciate that. I'm Jim Marous. I'm co-publisher of The Financial Brand, owner of the Digital Banking Report and host of the Banking Transformed Podcast.

Jim Marous (00:32):

We're trying something at this year's event that we've never done before, and I've never done one before anywhere else, and that is having a recorded podcast in front of a live audience. We've found that it's worked quite well.

Jim Marous (00:43):

We've had a lot of engagement between the audience and the guests. It's also an energy lifter. I think you can attest to the fact that when you know you have an audience you're preaching and you're talking, you're sharing ideas more than just in front of screen.

Jim Marous (00:59):

And at home, the way I record podcasts usually is in a oversized closet with padded walls, which there's many people think I should spend much more time there. So, my guest today is Melissa Stevens from Fifth Third Bank in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Jim Marous (01:13):

Melissa has a very long history of different careers and a pathway that is not necessarily traditional. And even though knowing Fifth Third Bank the way I do, even the lending’s on the Fifth Third Bank is somewhat untraditional.

Jim Marous (01:25):

So, Melissa, can you share with me and with the audience your career path? How did you get to where you are today?

Melissa Stevens (01:34):

Well, in a very typical way, I have a bachelor's of arts degree from a liberal arts college in English literature. So, incredibly typical to get into technology banking and as well as end up as a chief marketing officer.

Melissa Stevens (01:49):

But my path really was, my father actually told me that I needed to major in something with English, and we only had English lit, so that I was a good communicator and that was smart. But I was passionate about Psychology and actually threaded throughout all of my degrees.

Melissa Stevens (02:02):

Even when I got my MBA in operations and finance, it was always about the connection to culture, the connection to people, and the way that you could actually bring things to life. And so, that education part of it really then kind of spawned me into what I did.

Melissa Stevens (02:17):

And as I got into banking — frankly, I got into it because I was really curious about the idea that you could enable other people's lives. And when I first started at Citigroup, I really wanted to work overseas in the first two years of my career, and they guaranteed it in the program I got into.

Melissa Stevens (02:31):

And a funny thing happened along the way. I just kept asking, really, sometimes what people would consider stupid questions because I was curious. And then when people asked who did something, I just said I did and figured it out.

Melissa Stevens (02:42):

And over time, things just kind of continued to snowball and work into themselves. So, that's roughly my past.

Jim Marous (02:48):

It's interesting because we've had a previous podcast with her, and that inquisitiveness is so key. I referenced the fact that very proudly, I'm not the smartest person in any room I'm in, but I like to be surrounded by smart people that I can learn from and while I talk for a living and they're beyond that, I try to always listen to other people's perspectives because it makes you a better marketer.

Jim Marous (03:11):

I mean, my career right here is learning every single day, sharing it, and having to learn and fill that bucket again, which is very, very inspiring when you set a path for yourself 15 years ago that said, "I do not want to become irrelevant in the industry that I've been in my whole career."

Jim Marous (03:27):

And it's not about me, but I'm also a marketer by trade. And to be a marketer, you almost have to be a multitasker because you can't stay ahead of what's going on in marketing today. So, to that end, the tools of marketers have expanded tremendously.

Jim Marous (03:43):

In one of the classes I had this week or a podcast, I said, "If you're a marketer that's been in marketing more than five years out of school, you have more to learn today than you learned in your entire college career even if you went to the master's program."

Jim Marous (03:56):

How do you, in your role at Fifth Third Bank, stay on top of what's important and actually expand your learnings as a chief marketing officer?

Melissa Stevens (04:05):

Thanks for asking. I actually ask that question to people often to find out what are they listening to, what are they doing, et cetera. I'm huge into — I'm turning 50 this year, so I recognize I'm not at the end of my life to be clear. It's just a new chapter, new quarter.

Melissa Stevens (04:23):

But I spend a lot of time thinking, "How do I ask people who might be more on the cutting edge and how do I get reverse mentorship, if you will?" I read a lot. I look at things. The other thing is I try to experiment with things myself. So, I haven’t posted on TikTok, but I watch a lot of stuff on there.

Melissa Stevens (04:37):

But a few years ago, much like when you started this podcast, I stepped back and I thought, "Ooh, I got to personally get better at video content." And I kept having talks with people. Especially, I get invited to a lot of groups to talk about, "How did you make a career in banking? When you first started, there were mostly men at the top. Or how did you do this? Or how do you work and be married and have a family?"

Melissa Stevens (04:57):

And people kept saying, "Do you have somewhere where you wrote that down? Can I have that as a follow-up?" And so, I thought, "Well, I'm going to start some video content." So, I started doing little bits of video and I found my way through kind of like you in the padded closet with a ring light. And was it, “We having a good hair day or not?”

Melissa Stevens (05:13):

And so, I'll video something and throw it on LinkedIn, but part of it is, to that point, just experimentation, I'm not afraid to try. When my team started in social media, into TikTok, we didn't really know exactly what we were doing. We've sort of asked some agencies and got going.

Melissa Stevens (05:26):

But I think there's a combo of learning from others, asking others, finding where your consumers especially are, and then just experimenting with things in safe ways. I mean, I do work in banking, but finding little ways to get started and then see if it can have a snowball effect.

Jim Marous (05:40):

So, to your point, how many of you have played with, touched, or interacted with ChatGPT? Raise your hand. Oh, well, I'm going to get a picture of this because why I asked that question is so reinforcing.

Jim Marous (05:53):

Because if I asked that question six months ago, we'd maybe have half the room, even with a group of marketers. If I asked that question a year ago, I'd have a less than a quarter of the room. It is ramped up so quickly and in a regular audience, it started about that.

Jim Marous (06:09):

Because in November 2022, when it first came on board, it was the most amazing platform because overall it's the fastest evolving platform. The fastest used platform, more than the iPhone was in technology history.

Jim Marous (06:22):

What we find is, you've all found is certain key elements. Number one, I will guarantee you there's no better learning tool out there than ChatGPT, Claude.ai, whatever process you want to learn. Because you can always customize questions to get an answer that can help you do your work.

Jim Marous (06:39):

Number two, you find out very quickly that the future of marketing, future of communication, future of learning is going to be based on the questions you ask, not the answers you have. Because we all know, we start off with saying, "Oh, ChatGPT's dumb as hell." And then we realized, “No, it was our questions that were dumb as hell,” and then you evolve this process.

Jim Marous (06:59):

I can say for this podcast, and Melissa I think knows this, I give ChatGPT a prompt that says, "I'm interviewing Melissa Steven for Fifth Third Bank. We're going to be talking about the evolving CMO and what their roles are, how they've changed. Give me five headlines, give me an intro, give me an outro, give me 10 questions."

Jim Marous (07:17):

Now, it doesn't get me to the finish line, but it saves two hours of every single podcast I do because it opens my mind to something. Another gentleman I interviewed on a podcast, wrote a book, I think it was 19 chapters, 19 different chapters, written by 19 different people.

Jim Marous (07:32):

Instead of asking, "How can I make each one of these chapters better?" He asked ChatGPT, “You just gave a one star to each one of these chapters. Why do you give it a one-star instead of a five-star?” Which was a complete reversal, what you would normally think was a good way to ask that.

Jim Marous (07:47):

You have to do that every day. You have to do that. Let's get back a little bit. What roles do you fill at ... let's see if we have enough time to cover it. What roles do you have at Fifth Third Bank beyond what we'll call traditional marketing if there is such a thing?

Melissa Stevens (08:02):

Sure. Well, to your question, and for those that whether you're in a company, in an agency, in a partner, I think it's incredibly important to constantly look at what's going on. So, we have every role that everybody would imagine.

Melissa Stevens (08:18):

I like when people get in the AI space because I was in a conversation earlier today saying, "Traditionally, AI's been around for quite a while. Machine learning has been around and many of us have been doing things in it, but everyone wasn't talking about it like that.

Melissa Stevens (08:30):

And so, I've been rooting a lot, our marketers in, "Hey, you've been doing this, we've been using models. We have ways that we've been doing this and now how do we evolve from there?” But we've got a lot more, I'd say content, a lot more copywriting, a lot more creative juice these days.

Melissa Stevens (08:47):

It used to be for flash and now it actually is part of the way you optimize a lot more people that are data analysts. The conversation we have in our company, especially in the marketing tables, is the skills that people need now to be a marketer, you have to be a baseline data analyst. You don't need to be a decision sciences, but you need to understand data. Everything is about data.

Melissa Stevens (09:07):

The second thing is you've got to understand social media. You've got to understand how it works, what's going on, what platforms you should use for what type of things you're doing. And the third is what you just hit on. Whether you've done it yet over the next 18 months, you've got to be teaching prompt engineering.

Melissa Stevens (09:21):

Prompt engineering is a key skillset for people because the better we get at prompt engineering, the more productivity gains we can get.

Jim Marous (09:31):

So, it's interesting because marketing has changed so much and continues to change. New book today, I believe it was released today with Gary Vaynerchuk, what's attention hacking and his concept is the thing we're trying to do as marketers and get the attention of the people we're trying to reach.

Jim Marous (09:47):

What are some of the more unique ways that you get attention of the people you're trying to meet as customers and prospects of Fifth Third Bank?

Melissa Stevens (09:56):

Well, it's funny, I heard somebody say this in another session earlier as they asked a question in the conference that we're at right now. I will say that in general, in social media, babies and puppies play. People pay attention to you whether you like it or not.

Melissa Stevens (10:09):

But the reality is, I think experiences make the big difference. So, one, what is the experience you can give somebody that is unique and different. Two, actually people seeing your name makes a huge difference. There's a whole debate over a long time.

Melissa Stevens (10:22):

All the time I've been in digital banking that says, "Ooh, our branch is going away, do you need physical anymore?" The answer is yes, you need physical. And the company I'm in since 2018, we've built more than a hundred branches in the southeast and they've overperformed on every single goal we set for them, and we continue to build them. Over the next several years, we’ll get 50/50 between the Midwest and the Southeast in terms of our presence.

Melissa Stevens (10:44):

If you're a marketer, it's my dream, it's a billboard. I've got this huge, beautiful place, it's right in the heart of where you want to be. I've got a huge sign on it, and then I've got glass everywhere and I can put a lot there. And so, that's not unique. It's actually in some ways old school and retro but what works is to actually be present for people.

Melissa Stevens (11:03):

And then the third thing is, is we focus a lot on what is the job to be done. What am I solving for you? I mean, I don't know about you, but in my entire life, and I've been in banking for more than 25 years, I never woke up and thought, "Man, I really need a savings account today." That's not what I thought.

Melissa Stevens (11:16):

I thought, "Geez, I've got kids in high school. If I saved enough money for college, what do I do? Or my gosh, I'd really like to go on a great family vacation before I send my first off to college. How do I have enough money for that and not go in debt when it happens?" That's the problem you're solving.

Melissa Stevens (11:31):

So, that's how we look to how do I bring that to life for you? How do I get something that's very nebulous, that feels very, I don't know, like it's just a thing, it's a transaction into how am I solving a problem for you?

Melissa Stevens (11:42):

So, that might be the dream of college, the dream of a vacation, the dream of not being in credit card debt, and how do I bring that to life in an experiential way that you go, "Oh, this is different. What is this?"

Melissa Stevens (11:52):

The other thing at the company I work at, I am huge into what I call embrace the quirk. Fifth Third Bank, when I took a job there, I remember I called my parents, I said, "I'm taking this new job. Our family's moving from Manhattan to Cincinnati, Ohio. Never been there, I'm sure it'll be great." And I said, "I wonder where this weird name came from."

Melissa Stevens (12:09):

And my father said, "I'm sure it's because the first branch was at the intersection of fifth and third." So, I went to Cincinnati, there's no intersection of fifth and third. That's not how it happened. It really was a merger of companies.

Melissa Stevens (12:20):

And if you look back over time, there's so many, so many banks that had first, fifth, third, all these things. We named it that way. But before a few of us got there several years ago, everyone kept coming up with a brand campaign that never said who we were.

Melissa Stevens (12:36):

And in 2017, 2018, we just embraced it. We said five divided by three is 167%, that's a Fifth Third better. And we just leaned weight into it and just started getting quirky with it. And that's how you get noticed.

Jim Marous (12:47):

Third better as opposed to combination of the fifth avenue and third avenue in Cincinnati.

Melissa Stevens (12:52):

Exactly. We're just the fifth third better. And it turns out actually, that's how you get noticed because you actually put the name of your company into the things that you do.

Jim Marous (12:58):

So, one thing that has always impressed me about you is that at Fifth Third, it's not been a traditional marketing organization, they have not embraced marketing. They have hardly embraced anything outside of what they've done in the past.

Jim Marous (13:11):

As legacy can be in the city that doesn't normally embrace change either. So, it wasn't a bad organization in the city. However, you took this role as CMO and you actually took it after being the digital officer, if I'm not mistaken.

Jim Marous (13:25):

So, you already were in the digital space. You didn't let go of that digital space, you became the marketing and digital officer. You have since taken over some elements of branching, if I’m not mistaken.

Jim Marous (13:36):

You basically keep on doubling down on being involved in every area that you need to do your job better. You break through walls with lack of any other way. You find a problem and you make it difficult to not take advantage or to answer that problem.

Jim Marous (13:55):

We have had discussions in social media recently around the fact that most CMOs do not have a good place at the table, let alone in the organization as a whole. You have a very prominent role in your organization. I know that wasn't there when you got there. So, how did you get a place at the table?

Melissa Stevens (14:16):

One, we have an incredibly supportive CEO and our prior CEO before he retired really embraced the idea of transformation. So, back to your point about the path that I came in on, and I'd say, people often say, "Well, how do you start change? Well, you tin cup it for a while.

Melissa Stevens (14:33):

But I was hired with the promise that people believed. I came and said, "You might've believed, but it costs a lot more money than you think." So, we started painting a vision, and to me it's always big. Whether you're talking about employee change, client change, whatever it is, you got to paint the picture for people. You got to get them excited, you got to get them to experience it.

Melissa Stevens (14:51):

We started doing a lot of shows and tell showcases, a lot of demos, and we started inviting people in. And then to the question, “Well, how to get there?” We showed it in our results. So, people often want to talk about marketing's fluff. How many times I've been told, "We just cut the budget. I mean, it's just advertising. Does it matter?"

Melissa Stevens (15:08):

And so, the conversation we have at our team is we bring the cash register for the bank people. We bring in significant deposits, significant checking accounts, so let's look at what the return on investment is.

Melissa Stevens (15:19):

And one of the things that we all talk about in marketing is return on marketing investment, ROMI. It's a calculation that's we talk about. Well, here's the reality, ROMI's a great calculation, but I don't know how it works in most of your companies.

Melissa Stevens (15:31):

We use the term internal rate of return. And there's a hurdle rate that you need to make for every initiative you want to do whatever the initiative is. So, why are we going in and explaining to people what the ROMI is and how that relates to IRR? Let's just use IRR. I mean, it's very simple to switch the calculation.

Melissa Stevens (15:46):

So, we started actually having conversations that said, "What is the measure for anything we want to do? And now is ours better or worse than what that internal return is?" And so, the data led the way, but it was the way to have the conversation.

Melissa Stevens (15:59):

And the other thing is, as much as it's great to show, and we do so many awesome and fun things, I mean really super fun. And when I talked to our summer interns this week and someone said, "What's the elevator pitch of your job?" Of course I said, we sponsor the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and this is so fun, and this is what we do.

Melissa Stevens (16:15):

And we just had Fifth Third Day and we gave away $1,053 every baby that was born in these hospitals in Cleveland and all these things because that's the fun in the sizzle. But I tried to make sure as we were having true business conversations with the business leaders, that I wasn't focusing on the pictures and the fun and the frivolous because that's important.

Melissa Stevens (16:33):

But what's important is the bottom-line results and what are the things we need to do there. And so, that's been a big way, is to focus more on that. And then my whole thing is I'm never trying to be the person that everybody sees, I'm trying to enable.

Melissa Stevens (16:46):

So, if the business leader can say, "These are the three things we're trying to do," I'll say, "We'll come back to you with three strategies." And every time I will find a way to do it with what we have before we ask you to invest more. And that's a different look.

Melissa Stevens (16:57):

A lot of marketers, and it's not because anyone was trying to think bad, you came with an idea. And we would say, much like when I used to work in technology, "Well that will be X amount of money and Y amount of time more than you gave me."

Melissa Stevens (17:09):

That isn't usually the way to get more of a seat at the table. The way to do it is to say, "Great, let me come up with an idea. Let me figure out how to do it and bootstrap it together. And then when you see how successful it is, feel free to invest more in it."

Melissa Stevens (17:20):

And so, that's been a lot of how to get there is speak the language of the business. Don't try to make people meet you in the language of marketing.

Jim Marous (17:28):

I would also suggest right or wrong, you can tell me if I'm wrong, that when you came on the organization, marketing had a role that was very different than what you have today. That you spend a lot of time making marketing important, not by saying it's important, by actually performing to a degree they'd never seen before.

Jim Marous (17:47):

I would imagine also just by knowing you for the short amount of time I've known you, that there are people within your organization say, "If I want to get something done, I'm going to find a way to give it to Melissa. She'll find a way to get it done. Even if it's way outside of the normal realm, she'll find a way to make it happen."

Jim Marous (18:01):

Because if it's a problem, there's parts of the organization that are always going to have trouble because of management level, whatever it is to get something done, you'll fix it. Some things we ask marketers to fix and people, again, I apologize, you've heard me 18 times this week, say this to fix a new account opening experience.

Jim Marous (18:19):

Because if you are a marketer and you're trying to generate new accounts and we have a 15-minute process, we basically are wasting our money. We should not spend $1 in marketing until you bring it to a point where a customer can do everything they want digitally without any friction.

Jim Marous (18:32):

That creates some stir in the organization, within the brand system at times, but more importantly, that's not an easy task to take care of. It takes a lot of different elements of the organization. Number one, how big of a priority was it at Fifth Third?

Jim Marous (18:45):

And number two, when a person's opening a new account digitally, they're not going into the branch, which brings on a disadvantage in that I don't have this face-to-face engagement, the thing that gets you to cross sells much better than does digitally.

Jim Marous (19:00):

So, it's a multi-part question. Number one, how do you implement the faster, the better digital experience on the front end. And just as importantly, how have you now integrated the human aspect of Fifth Third to be able to take to the back end of cross-selling and upselling and relationships?

Melissa Stevens (19:19):

The multi-part is a good definition there. So, a couple of things there. One, when I came in and was leading in digital, the first thing I did is look at what is the portfolio of things we're doing and how are they going to deliver value? And then I started building the bridge with the team of how can we drive the transformation.

Melissa Stevens (19:35):

And the first three things we looked at are our mobile app needed massive work. The tech stack needed massive work. I often say I tap dance for two years to those above including the board of directors because I was redoing all the pipes underneath and nobody cared about it.

Melissa Stevens (19:49):

And it was like an HGTV moment because you would open something up and all of a sudden there was mold, and the wiring was wrong, and everything was wrong. So, we prioritized the mobile app. We prioritized, as you said, digital account opening, and I'll talk about that, and we prioritized getting to asynchronous messaging and we partner with LivePerson for that.

Melissa Stevens (20:09):

We're one of their 18,000 clients. And they recently issued in their internal testing and said that we have the most accurate of all their 18,000 clients of the accuracy of the way that we respond and the clarity of what we have. And that's because we've built a bunch of algorithms behind the scenes for it.

Melissa Stevens (20:25):

But those were the priorities I looked at. And from a digital account opening standpoint, I did something that most people found was surprising when your title is Chief Digital Officer. One, I asked my team to make sure they were in the branches and on the phones and understanding what was going on, and many of them hadn't been there.

Melissa Stevens (20:41):

Because we're digital, why would we go to anything physical? But if you don't understand the pain points clients are coming with and you don't understand what those employees are dealing with, you can't be helpful to them.

Melissa Stevens (20:52):

Then once we did that, the second thing that I said is we were having some issues, and we couldn't figure out what they were. Is it fraud? Is it this, is it the wrong people that we're attracting from marketing, et cetera. So, we literally just turned off our digital account opening many, many years ago now.

Melissa Stevens (21:08):

And everyone said, "How could you possibly do that?" And I said, "Well, we can't have agreement." We have risk people saying that it's not safe. We have the finance people saying, "Melissa, you're losing money." We've got the marketers trying to pour more into our funnel, this doesn't make sense. So, time out, let's actually pull back and see what's going on and then we rebuilt the whole thing. So, at this point, that was a priority.

Melissa Stevens (21:26):

And I said, "We shouldn't spend any more money pushing people in acquisitions to digital account opening until we actually have that fixed." That took us about a year, and we've continued to enhance it over time.

Melissa Stevens (21:40):

So, what we did is even our digital marketing, like you've got us on paid search, it told you to go to the branch, you could go to digital, but we told you to go there. It was an opposite strategy of where most people are going digital, digital, digital. Because if you don't have the foundation right, you're just wasting money. And so, that's the way we did it.

Melissa Stevens (21:56):

Our digital account opening is under five minutes. If you're a brand-new customer, we tell you right up front, there's three things that you need to have. You need to know your social security number. Not everybody has it memorized. You need to have a state ID handy, and you need to have a mobile phone that has a camera.

Melissa Stevens (22:11):

Once you do that, all you have to do is enter your email address and your zip code and an offer code if you have one, and then the next thing you do is scan your ID and the rest takes care of itself with a few clicks or toggles or things like that. If you’re an existing customer, you can probably do it in two minutes.

Melissa Stevens (22:26):

But if we didn't have that right, I didn't think it was worth pushing more into the funnel. And I think that's the mistake. We try to get people to come, and I was told recently, I already shared my age that my analogies don't work. And so, I gave an assignment in my organization because I kept saying, this is not the field of dreams. If you build it, they don't come.

Melissa Stevens (22:44):

And finally, and someone was brave enough to tell me, "We don't know what you're talking about when you say that." And so, I said, "I will adjust to the times on certain things like saying rizz, but I will not adjust on that. And so, everybody needs to go home on the weekend. And if you're under a certain age where you haven't seen that, just go on YouTube and watch this part of the clip so that I can keep using the analogy I want." And I think like two of them did it, but they at least now know what it means.

Jim Marous (23:08):

Well, it's interesting because if you build it, they won't come is so key. I have some organizations have done amazing things in the digital world, make everything easier, faster, and everything. And they've done a terrible job marketing that to the marketplace.

Jim Marous (23:22):

Therefore, they haven't gotten the results that are possible when they realize that everyone around them, every organization around them is not anywhere near as seamless, as efficient as good at doing what's going on. So, I'm going to do a quick poll, some of you have already done it.

Jim Marous (23:34):

Raise your hands if you've closed a primary financial institution relationship within the last five years, primary. Right around the same note, two to three. How many of you in the last two years have opened up a relationship outside your primary financial institution with a Chime, with a SoFi, with a PayPal, with an Acorns, Ally, any non-primary financial, raise your hand.

Jim Marous (24:00):

Okay. Keep your hands raised. It's about everybody almost. You look around and that is what's called silent attrition. Guess what's happening to everyone, you work in the bank and you're going outside the bank. There's reasons why you're going outside that bank, it maybe is there's an easier option. Maybe they're higher rate, maybe it's a car loan that you wanted to have, and everybody contact you except your primary financial institution.

Jim Marous (24:24):

It may be a mortgage rate, could be a number of things. If you're not looking at your flow of funds, you're losing out on the ability to find out who you target. That final attrition, it's a major big deal whether or not marketers want to relate to it or not. How do you work to reduce your silent attrition.

Melissa Stevens (24:49):

Like anyone that's trying to drive growth, and in our company last year as we published, we grew our household growth by 3%year over year, which is very strong in the banking category that we're in. But if you could actually just stop the attrition, you would do much, much better.

Melissa Stevens (25:04):

And so, the thing that we do is we focus a lot and it's going to come back to human beings. I mean, I worked in digital banking for a long time, even at large banks, and I worked in areas that we're starting up trying to compete in the bricks and clicks world. And actually, I think it’s the marriage of the two that matter.

Melissa Stevens (25:20):

And so, while people are opening accounts in those places, it's a little bit like customer service and some of the digital only companies that we use outside of banking, you can't find a human at the moment you need them and that is not what we want to do.

Melissa Stevens (25:32):

So, we will be in the channel you want to be, but you will always, always be able to get to one of thousands and thousands of humans that can help you with whatever you need. Whether it's a basic customer service or it's a massive life transition or paying for college or financing a home or things like that.

Melissa Stevens (25:47):

And the other thing is you have the safety and security of a bank. There is a reason why the banking system exists, why regulations exist. We like to complain about them sometimes in banks, but the reality is, it's the entire basis of how the financial services, institutions work around the world. And there's a lot of positivity in that.

Melissa Stevens (26:05):

But what we do is we focus a lot on that relationship we flipped many years ago, and this is how we got away from that. "Oh, did they open in digital? Did they open in the branch?" Or what if somebody walked in and they were like, "Hey, I was having an issue, can you help me to open this on my mobile phone?" “Well, I shouldn’t do that for you here because I’ll get credit.

Melissa Stevens (26:22):

And so, we just went away from all of it, and we moved to a book of business. Any one of our bankers in a branch probably have about 1,100 branches, they probably have about 800 relationships in their book of business. So, it's not like they're talking to everybody every day. That's a lot.

Melissa Stevens (26:36):

And then we developed a proprietary portal, we call it my day. And we have hundreds of algorithms that run every single night overnight, and then it feeds into an optimization engine. So, if I am a banker in the branch, I come in every day and I know the 15 things that are the most optimal for me to do that day.

Melissa Stevens (26:54):

It might be to call a client that got assigned to my book of business who opened online or opened on the mobile app, and I'm not calling to sell them anything. I'm calling to thank them for their business.

Jim Marous (27:05):

You could do it right after you've-

Melissa Stevens (27:08):

Right off the bat. So, if you open it in the branch, we probably give you a couple weeks, you don't need to talk to us two days later. But if you open in digital, the expectation is that you get in contact. Now, you might just leave a voicemail, and most of us don't pick up our phones. And even if it says who they are, but we get a lot of hits. And since we launched that many years ago, our bankers have seen roughly a 25% increase in their book of business in terms of the depth of relationship.

Melissa Stevens (27:32):

So, coming all the way back to your point about silent attrition, when someone just calls to check on you or you open the account in the branch, or you had a conversation on the phone and you said, "Hey, I'm thinking about renovating my kids' bathroom later this year, I don't even know how, I don't have time to think about this."

Melissa Stevens (27:49):

They make a note and then they call you back a few months later and say, "Hey, the rates have changed, or the rates haven't changed as we've seen this year. And so, I'm not sure how urgent this is for you, but I would wait a little bit longer. I'll get in touch with you when rates change and see if you maybe want to talk about a home equity line."

Melissa Stevens (28:05):

But listening to people, connecting with human beings makes a big difference. Now, I'm not claiming that we've got stem and attrition solved, but it really is about the depth. And what that also did is we went to a relationship health score. And when you look at the relationships as marketers, what did we always say forever?

Melissa Stevens (28:22):

If you have one account, I should call you every single time. And if you have five, I should never call you because you're already here with us. You already married us; we don't need you. It's actually usually the opposite. The data will show you the opposite.

Melissa Stevens (28:34):

Jim is much more likely to take that next thing because he's already in love with us than the person that only has one. And so, flipping the script, but again, using data to inform that, it's made a huge difference. And you know what else it does? We gamify.

Melissa Stevens (28:49):

So, if I'm in the branch and I've got my day, it, I get little stars as I complete my things for the day. And that sounds really silly, but it makes a big difference. And then guess what? Anybody in here working in sales, scorecards work. So, we publish who's doing the best and who's not doing as well.

Melissa Stevens (29:02):

And then we partner people-

Jim Marous (29:03):

Nobody wants to be on the bottom.

Melissa Stevens (29:05):

Nobody wants to be on the bottom. And we partner people, who's doing really well, go help these people that aren't doing well and let's figure out how those branches can get better. And so, it's really about that one team model.

Jim Marous (29:15):

What's your biggest challenge? Not everything goes according to plan. What's your biggest challenge in your role today at Fifth Third Bank?

Melissa Stevens (29:25):

This will sound really weird, but as you said, I also have responsibility for branches and facilities and workplace, and I said we're growing and we're building a lot in a variety of places in the southeast. And it's less a marketing challenge, but if anybody's ever done construction commercially or personally, it turns out permitting can take longer than you want.

Melissa Stevens (29:44):

The inspector usually finds something that wasn't actually in the regulation you thought you had to follow. You get where I'm going, I'm seeing head nods. And so, you say you're going to deliver the branch to the retail team so they can start opening and then you go, "Well, just kidding, the inspection found something so now we have to do this or now we have to do that.

Melissa Stevens (30:00):

During COVID and just shortly after the pandemic, it was a supply chain crisis. We came through that and now it's just how can you better manage what felt uncontrollable? So, we're spending a lot of time in my team talking about we can't control all of that.

Melissa Stevens (30:15):

But I even challenged the team couple weeks ago, how much would it cost to just fly somebody every time that we're having one of these stops? Would that be cheaper than the delay to the opening? So, it's less a marketing thing, but it's a holistic way of looking.

Melissa Stevens (30:27):

Because I just said, it's a beautiful billboard, it's a beautiful branch and we need people in it so we can actually grow our relationships. From a holistic marketing and communication standpoint, I think the biggest thing is activating our employee base.

Melissa Stevens (30:41):

And what I mean by that is it's important to have your brand out there, social media and otherwise, but most people aren't interacting with a brand. And so, the challenge is how do you get the influencers out there and inside your company to activating against others and to actually be touting the great things you're doing so that your brand reputation gets stronger and stronger.

Melissa Stevens (31:01):

And teaching people how to do that, everybody doesn't spend their time in that every day. So, that's a big challenge because it's about activating tens of thousands of people.

Jim Marous (31:10):

We forget about that. I've said that a couple times that the employee experience now has become so important. So, the democratization of data given the tools to the people on the front-line making heroes out of everyone around you.

Jim Marous (31:22):

So, you started about your personal journey. What's the biggest challenge to you as a person right now in balancing everything you're doing? That was not on the list, I know. I threw a curve ball.

Melissa Stevens (31:37):

I like to oversubscribe in my life and so I am just completing the end of my personal which was I somehow accidentally when the coaches here, she won't realize this. I accidentally volunteered to be the track mom for almost 60 kids when I have a first-year high school student, which you're apparently not supposed to do, which has involved a lot of extra work like snacks and things like that.

Melissa Stevens (31:59):

And so, my biggest personal challenge is balancing the, hey, spending time with your family and being there for all your kids’ events and I have three of them and they're very active like most people's are. Doesn't mean you need to volunteer to do the extra stuff for the team, you can just go and be in the stands and that might be good enough.

Jim Marous (32:18):

But you don't go halfway into anything, so-

Melissa Stevens (32:20):

Well, I work in a company that has a concierge service available to all 19,000 employees and they run errands for you, and you just pay for the gas and mileage and obviously the purchase of your goods. And so, my best kept secret is that people think I'm able to accomplish a lot, but I use our free benefit, which is this thing Best Upon Request concierge.

Melissa Stevens (32:39):

And they handle, like, I'll say, "Hey, I volunteered to run senior night. I need food for a hundred people. I need this, I need tableware, I need that." And then they get it, I card it out to my car and then I show up and I look like, “Just how does she do all of that?” It's like, “I have help, I have help.”

Jim Marous (32:55):

Questions from the audience, we're running kind of tight on time. Any questions? Oh, come on. We have room for more, don't be shy. You haven't been shy to this point.

Melissa Stevens (33:10):

That is the right question.

Jim Marous (33:11):

For those who did not hear it because you're on camera. What's the name of the concierge service?

Melissa Stevens (33:17):

It's a company called Best Upon Request, and you can find them in digitally. We've been in partnership with them for a long time and we actually co-created with them a maternity concierge in addition to the regular concierge. They're in many hospitals, they're not just in Ohio. They're in many places and they continue to grow their business.

Melissa Stevens (33:35):

And I will tell you, aside from obviously having your healthcare, which is an incredibly expensive proposition, it is probably one of the best benefits I've had. And one of the things I often discuss was new people started our company. I start talking about it and we offer it virtually too.

Melissa Stevens (33:50):

And people will say, "But I don't have kids." And I'll say, "Hmm, do you ever have to get your oil changed in your car?" And they're like, "Yeah." I'm like, "Well, they will make the appointment, you'll park your car, they will take it there and you can actually continue focusing on what you need to."

Melissa Stevens (34:03):

Or you say, “Do you have a grandma that you need to send a birthday card to?" You can actually put that in your profile. They'll remind you a week before that it's your grandma's birthday and they'll offer to get the card.

Melissa Stevens (34:12):

Now, funnily enough, I've had some colleague’s spouses tell me that, “Now that you introduced this, I feel like it's inauthentic and my spouse isn't buying my stuff.” And I said, "Well, who cares? You're getting it right."

Melissa Stevens (34:23):

I mean, I don't care who's getting my stuff. My husband's stuff often comes from there, but I get the things that he wants. Isn't that the goal? I was thoughtful. I don't have physically do the labor, but it's all over the place. They help a hospital system in California.

Melissa Stevens (34:38):

But I will tell you back to data, the way that we continue to justify offering it to all of our employees. And it also can be discounts to the movies or discounts to the zoo, or it's time to order your hams and turkeys for people that do that for certain holidays, and they'll get discounts for that and handle it. So, it's everything all over the board.

Melissa Stevens (34:55):

But the way that we know it's providing value is there is a survey sent every time they complete it, and we really encourage our employees to actually complete it. And it asks questions like, "Does this make you feel more valued? How much productivity do you think that ... how much time did you save?"

Melissa Stevens (35:09):

And we have figured out for the average errand that people save almost an hour, but more than that, they save the mental capacity because we're all running to-do lists in our lives. We're all running it right now and trying to multitask and trying to do all these things.

Melissa Stevens (35:23):

And when you can assign something to somebody else and you know they'll get it done, it frees you up to do the creative productive things you need to do in your day. And you feel less guilty about that balance. You don't have to be a parent; you don't have to be a woman. It's like the dry cleaning can get taken care of, this can get taken care of. It makes a really, really big difference.

Melissa Stevens (35:40):

So, Best Upon Request, I love those guys over there. It was female founded, awesome male CEO whose name is also Jim or Bill right now. But I just think these are benefits we often don't think about because we think it's a nice to have. Are we profitable enough for that? Am I big enough for that?

Melissa Stevens (35:57):

But the reality is the one thing that working Americans continuously say if they can handle food, water, shelter, and safety, the number one thing you hear from people after those four basic Maslow's hierarchy is, "I need more time."

Melissa Stevens (36:11):

And I don't know about you, but even with all the tech and innovation, no one has found more than 24 hours in a day. And so, these are the things that as employers we have to look at and as employees we have to ask for, but we have to actually be willing to participate in the surveys. So, the data justifies it continuing.

Jim Marous (36:27):

Final thing I want to cover-

Melissa Stevens (36:28):

I came here and plugged another company, but whatever.

Jim Marous (36:31):

The invisible thing that I haven't mentioned, you spend a lot of time giving back to the community. You're really focused on doing good. One of the ways you've done it are the custom kicks. Can you explain that a little bit?

[Music Playing]

Melissa Stevens (36:42):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, this came as an idea. It was not mine, but it came. There are plenty of artists all over the place and we have a awesome non-profit in Cincinnati called Black Art Speaks. It's a support for a bunch of black artists. And so, we were preparing for Fifth Third Day, which is a big deal to us, five/three.

Melissa Stevens (37:00):

And so, we actually commissioned them. We bought some blank white, plain white Air Force Ones and then you could actually buy them. And then we donated the money back to the local arts and we donated the money to Feeding America to fight food insecurity. And so, we sold them to our employees.

Melissa Stevens (37:16):

This was a test, and we actually were so over the top that we started to worry that maybe the people painting were working day and night and that wasn't really positive. But the first time we did it, we had to shut down the store. We sold like 160 pairs, and we were running out of inventory.

Melissa Stevens (37:31):

And so, we're going to do it a little bit better when we bring it back in the fall. We're going to bring a … but it's kind of fun. It's cool. It allows employees to wear our brand, generates conversation. My kid’s kind of think I'm cool, so it just adds that too.

Jim Marous (37:45):

It works in — I gave my son and my wife both felt like, calm down, and basically every box comes out. I'm trying to have it come in different side boxes. They won't do that at Amazon, but I have so many fricking shoes. But thank you so much.

Melissa Stevens (38:01):

Thanks for having me. Thank you, guys for being here on the last day. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.