Citi's Bob O'Leary on the drive for effectiveness

Marketing hasn’t always had a seat at the top table. Now that it does, Bob O’Leary, the global head of Citi and jury president of this year’s Asian Marketing Effectiveness Festival, is determined to keep it.

At a time when restoring consumer trust and rebuilding brand image is of critical importance for financial-services marketers, O’Leary is under pressure to prove the effectiveness of every marketing dollar spent to Citi’s executive board in New York, its CFO and the wider organisation.

It’s not simply about how well his agency’s ads and campaigns are performing and whether consumers are choosing Citi for a new credit card or mortgage. It’s ensuring that marketing is driving the business forward - and using creativity to get there.

Atifa Silk What’s the biggest challenge in persuading consumers to choose your brand?

Bob O’Leary Having come out of the crisis, there’s a lot of repair work that needs to be done for the brand. We went through a difficult period, as did many of the other financial services companies. We weren’t always seen as the trusted partner.

Our number one priority globally is to convince people to reconsider Citibank as a trusted, authentic, and modern bank. We need to be communicating to our customers and potential customers the role of the bank and what the brand stands for. We need to convince them through our behaviour that we understand who they are, how they live, their values, and what they are looking for in a banking relationship.

If we can’t demonstrate that in the products and services that we provide and in the experiences that we create - whether they’re online or in a branch - then people aren’t going to consider us. People are choosing the brands they engage with because there’s a shared value system. As a bank it can be hard to convince people that we’re not just in it for the money and that we’re actually in it for the customer, and that we want to develop an experience that is rooted in their needs and wants - not in ours.

At the end of the day, it is a business and everybody has to make money but we want our customers to feel like we are treating them in an authentic, relevant and respectful way, and that we are being as transparent as we can be moving forward so that there is a regaining of trust and relevancy.

Catch the full article in the upcoming June issue of Campaign Asia-Pacific available to subscribers  online from the 1st.