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Transforming TIAA

How and why marketing overhauled a nearly 100-year-old icon

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Courtesy of TIAA

 

TIAA was founded nearly 100 years ago by Andrew Carnegie with a simple purpose: to provide for the financial security of university professors, who at that time were a poorly paid and un-pensioned class of professionals. A gift of $10 million from Carnegie set into motion a new pension model to help educators retire with financial security after a lifetime of service.

TIAA (formerly TIAA-CREF) grew to become the leading provider of financial services for nonprofit employees in the U.S., and now manages nearly $1 trillion in assets. Not surprisingly, growth brought about complexity. Competition grew stronger. Our array of financial offers expanded rapidly. And our customers no longer fit into a one-size-fits-all category. Five generations of clients, each with different financial priorities and communication preferences, strained our capacity to customize for countless distinct needs.

While the business continued to keep pace with the industry, our efforts to modernize were out of our customers' field of vision. We never lost their trust, but we saw a steady erosion of awareness, relevance, and above all, emotional connection. We knew we had to change course to sustain our customer relationships for another hundred years.

So five years ago, to meet our challenges head on, we set out to relaunch the TIAA brand.We pursued a comprehensive reinvention, with a heavy emphasis on digital innovation. We were not after just a name change, but a true game change.

The reinvention, culminating in the brand's evolution from TIAA-CREF to TIAA, has led to dramatic improvements in brand awareness, digital engagement, and business results.

 

Customers First

The needs and goals of our customers have morphed from simple to complex. We had an idea of how they viewed their finances, particularly on the heels of the Great Recession, but we needed more data to shape our new brand.

So we went to the people. We sat down in the homes of hundreds of customers and prospects across the country. From St. Louis to Salt Lake City to Cincinnati, we ventured into diverse communities and uncovered a disturbing truth: people felt insecure about talking to their financial advisors.

Though the industry as a whole was struggling to meet customers' financial and emotional needs at that time, only 30 percent of our customers had a high awareness of our brand, according to surveys. However, those same surveys also found that customers who did know us, trusted us. That finding proved our case for increasing awareness.

 

Radically Simple

Throughout the TIAA transformation, we kept things radically simple. For example, when our customers informed us that the content on tiaa.org was too dense and holding us back from building relationships, we erased 2,500 pages from the website. When our customers told us our TV advertisements were irrelevant and out of touch, we pulled every commercial. These steps were necessary to begin the journey of reinvention.

Another seemingly easy step, though it required much research, was shortening the company's name to TIAA. It was a slight change to the eye, but a monumental one to our brand and customers. Simple, accessible, and easy to understand, the new name reflects the feelings our brand seeks to evoke.

The reinvention ... has led to dramatic improvements in brand awareness, digital engagement, and business results.

 

Customer Engagement

TIAA's website is a key vehicle for customer engagement. To drive transformation in this area, we transitioned from a complex content infrastructure to a mobile-friendly user experience.

The entire website has been reimagined to improve engagement. There are more graphics, fewer words, and more calls to action, making the site less intimidating.

 

The Results

The reinvention process was both comprehensive and extensive. It led to a three-tiered business approach that we strive to follow in every decision:

  • Put the customer first by understanding their emotions, behaviors, and expectations of the brand.
  • Be radically simple in every way.
  • Prize authenticity by using real employees, real customers, and real experiences in marketing whenever possible.

Delivering on these three core principles wouldn't have been possible without an inside-out approach. I like to tell my team and customers that branding starts at home. From our phone centers and salesforce to our IT personnel and product leads, our employees need to have a deep understanding of our brand and what it represents. Our efforts are working; an internal survey found that 96 percent of our employees now say they understand the TIAA brand and what we stand for.

Other key results from the brand transformation include:

  • Unaided brand awareness increased more than 18 points — well above expectations — in the first nine months of measurement.
  • Consumer awareness of nearly every key brand attribute — not just who we are, but what we stand for — is up, including the most important one for a financial services brand: trust.
  • Website traffic has increased 60 percent since the relaunch.
  • The time users spend on the website has doubled.

We have come a long way, but as we continue our work, we know there will be course corrections and lessons learned. We will remain hungry, tenacious, and courageous.

As Andrew Carnegie said, "No man can become rich without himself enriching others." At TIAA, we are back to enriching, empowering, and enlightening our customer base one person at a time.

 


Connie Weaver is TIAA's senior EVP and CMO. In April, she will step down from her post to work as an independent consultant.


 

 


 

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