Executive Perspective on Career in Marketing: Interview with Melissa Lowry, Chief Marketing Officer for Zelle

As the Chief Marketing Officer for the Zelle brand, Melissa leads their marketing and communications strategy, execution, and results and manages a world-class marketing organization responsible for functions including brand strategy, B2B marketing, internal and external communications, digital operations, and integrated consumer-facing campaigns. On this episode of the Marketing Insights Podcast Series, Dr. Shane Hunt of Idaho State University visits with Melissa about her career, the rapidly changing world of marketing and the advice she has for current students.

Podcast Transcript

Transcript

Shane Hunt:

Hello everyone, and welcome to this edition of the Marketing Insights Podcast. I'm Shane Hunt, Dean of the College of Business and Michael C. Ruettgers Professor of Marketing at Idaho State University. And I am thrilled today to be joined by one of the best marketers that I know, Melissa Lowry. Melissa, welcome to the show.

Melissa Lowry:

That is an incredible introduction, but thank you so much for having me.

Shane Hunt:

Well, and Melissa is one of the Executive Perspectives profiled in our new Fourth Edition Principles of Marketing Textbook, and somebody that I really wanted students across the country to be able to listen to it. And Melissa, just to start, tell us a little bit about your career in marketing.

Melissa Lowry:

Oh, gosh. Yeah. So I always like to say I didn't have maybe a traditional path in marketing, but the more I talk to folks about that, I don't think most people do have a traditional path in marketing. It's not like you just have a marketing major and you go to a marketing manager role. There are so many different ways to get there. And so, I guess for my unique journey, I was actually a Finance major at Idaho State, got an incredible finance education, which I think maybe not so surprisingly, has actually served me really, really well as a marketer. It helped me get really deep in the weeds of understanding of finance, starting to think more about how to manage the budget, how to dig into the numbers, what would a finance leader, a CFO, care about. And that relationship between CFO and CMMO is really, really-

Shane Hunt:

Critical.

Melissa Lowry:

... important. Yeah. So I think that actually starting off on the finance side was a really good foundation for ultimately moving into marketing. So I left Idaho State, went to Lehman Brothers, an investment bank that is no longer in existence. But went and I was an investment banker for a few years before I then moved and got my MBA, then moved into a strategy role, product roles, and eventually found myself having a marketing opportunity.

And again, I think the fact that I'd been in all those different functional roles actually made me an even better marketer, because I knew how to get deep into the numbers from my finance experience. I felt very comfortable with that and with data and analyzing that. By being on the strategy side, I'd learned a lot about how to think about the broader market and our competitors and where there was white space opportunity. Then being on the product side, really getting into the weeds of product and thinking about features and releases and roadmap. And what underpins all of that is the customer, always thinking about the customer. So bringing all of that into them, and I ultimately became a VP of Marketing for what is now Zelle.

Shane Hunt:

Yes.

Melissa Lowry:

I was able to leverage all of that to help inform what I did in that role. So it was actually a really great journey and on-the-job education that I think served me really well.

Shane Hunt:

And I love it, Melissa. And one of the reasons why, for those of you students that are listening that have used our textbook, all of the Executive Perspectives are people who majored in something besides marketing, because Principles of Marketing is something every business major in America has to take if they're accounting, if they're finance, if they're economics, if they're management. And what I love about your story, and I think the students that read the book love, is just your journey from finance. And so, even for finance majors who are listening to this, you don't know when one day you're going to wake up and be a VP of marketing or chief marketing officer.

You mentioned Zelle, Melissa, and some of the brands that you've worked for. Can you talk a little bit about how marketing and branding has been so critical to the growth of those organizations?

Melissa Lowry:

Yeah, absolutely. So I actually currently work for a company called Early Warning, which is the operator behind Zelle. So you probably have heard about Zelle, but you probably have not heard about Early Warning. And really, that was intentional. So with Early Warning, it was a B2B brand that's really about leveraging data from all these different financial institutions to help make risk decisions. We really didn't want that to be a consumer-facing brand or really, it could make us a target for bad things to happen because of the data that we had. So we were intentionally behind the scenes with banks.

But then, as we were developing Zelle, and that's really when I joined the company on the product side before switching to brand and marketing, we knew we needed to have a consumer-facing name and brand to really... Especially because if you know Zelle, it's offered by thousands of banks, so we don't have control, not direct control of the experience. So having a strong brand that everyone could market against so it felt consistent against every touchpoint was absolutely critical. We needed to have that consistent brand promise, the value propositions. How do we talk about it? How did it feel whether you heard about it from an email from Bank of America or you saw one of our TV commercials? And with so many different partners involved, having that really strong brand, really strong brand guidelines was absolutely key. And then, that enabled us to really grow.

It's also about... You can't grow with a strong brand and a crappy experience, so we had to do both things and having a strong product and a strong brand. But for us, you couldn't just have a strong product experience without a strong brand. We really needed both of those things because it was really built on a two-sided market that, "Hey, Shane. I want to send you money with Zelle."

Shane Hunt:

Yep.

Melissa Lowry:

Shane has to say, "Yeah. I use Zelle and I want it." So we needed to have that language that consumers were familiar with around the brand.

Shane Hunt:

Melissa, and you deal with this. And Melissa is headquartered in California, and you see this, I'm sure with companies. We see this in Idaho and in different states where I work with businesses. You said those two parts, and what I really see today is a lot of companies who are doing well on the product side, have a really great product in whatever industry they're in, but they for some reason are struggling to build that brand. Do you see that? And if so, why do you think that there's that disconnect? Because I think I see it more today than I did a decade ago.

Melissa Lowry:

Yeah. No, I definitely do see that. And I think part of the struggle, especially maybe in the last few years, was just some of the economic uncertainty, is that it's really easy to forego that long-term brand building.

Shane Hunt:

Yeah.

Melissa Lowry:

Those are dollars that are hard to show the ROI on, even though they're absolutely critical. And so, it feels easier from that ROI/finance perspective to just focus on short-term performance where you can be like, "Yep. I spent this dollar and I generated this revenue." But you have to have that longer term piece. So I think as we... It's interesting, it's almost this paradox of as we get more and more data that people want to see that really clear connection between the dollar spent and what you got for it. And that's still really difficult to show for that longer term brand building, that, "What does driving awareness get me?" But there's that, I think, heightened expectation of, "We've got all this data, you get all this real-time performance data. If you can't show me what increased awareness gets me, I don't want to invest in it." So that's my hypothesis.

Shane Hunt:

Yeah.

Melissa Lowry:

And so, it's something we've actually continued to try to focus on is, "How can we show a better, a stronger long-term impact around having that strong brand?"

Shane Hunt:

No, and I think that's a great challenge for marketers, for CMOs anywhere in the world. And I always like to finish with this, Melissa, we thank you so much for joining us. There are students who are listening to this podcast right now who would tell you that one day they want to be a VP or chief marketing officer at a great company as you are. And so, what advice would you have for them?

Melissa Lowry:

I think it's such a great question. So one, I wouldn't try to plan the whole thing out, because you don't know what doors are going to open. I never would have thought as I left ISU to go pursue a role in investment banking that that would lead me to being a CMO. But each of those roles were stepping stones. So I'd say as you think about the next job you want to do, I do think you need to ask yourself a few questions of, "Is this going to... Am I going to continue to learn in this role? Am I going to learn new things? And am I going to be challenged? And am I going to like my manager and the place, the company that I'm at?" I don't think you have to necessarily be like, "Oh, I'm absolutely passionate about this company." But is it something that you can get excited about? And you might get excited about it because you're learning something new. So if you're not learning something new and you don't like the people you're going to be working with, then that's not a good opportunity.

But I would just say don't try to overly plan. Make sure each role feels like a stepping stone in the right direction. "I'm learning something new: a new function, a new product, a new industry," and be open to those new opportunities because they can come in unexpected places.

Shane Hunt:

They can come in unexpected places. And I tell college students today, "You picked the best time to be a college student in the history of the world. There is so much opportunity." You said one last thing I want to ask about.

Melissa Lowry:

Yeah.

Shane Hunt:

You made such a great point, and I hope students rewind and listen to that, but you mentioned something about always be learning something new. Can you just talk briefly about that? Because I think that is such great advice. I think a lot of times, and I probably thought this as a first-generation college student when I came out, "Okay, I got my degree. That learning part is over," when the truth is, it's just beginning.

Melissa Lowry:

Yeah. I still, as a CMO, and I've been in my CMO role for over a year and a half, and it's been for a product that I helped develop, I still feel like I'm learning every day, which I love. I love that. And it's not always big things. It could be part of just interpersonal dynamics with, "Okay, how do we help work through this and this challenge?" It could be, gosh, in the last year I've learned a lot about crisis comms. We had a lot of crises going around with Zelle and managing through that.

So I'd say in any situation, it's reframing I think sometimes the mindset, that something could feel like a challenge, and, "Oh, no. I don't know where to begin." But just thinking, "No, this is an opportunity to learn."

Shane Hunt:

Yeah.

Melissa Lowry:

And whether you figure it out on your own or you find someone to ask questions about to help you through that, there's always an opportunity to learn, I think, which, like I said, excites me. If I no longer feel like I'm learning in my role, then I'm not opening my eyes enough or it's time to move on.

Shane Hunt:

Yeah. No, that's such great advice. Melissa, thank you for sharing. Thank you for joining us today on the Marketing Insights Podcast.

Melissa Lowry:

Well, thank you so much for having me. It's always a pleasure chatting with you.

Shane Hunt:

Thank you all for joining us today. I hope everybody has a great season. And for all of our folks graduating this semester, congratulations to all of our graduates, and we look forward to visiting again soon on the Marketing Insights Podcast.