If you looked into your crystal ball,
what changes do you see coming over the next year?
So, I think it's going to be a doubling
down on that idea of purpose and foundation.
So, really clarifying your value to your customer base.
How do you as a brand change the world?
Hey, I'm Sarah Franklin and welcome to Connections.
of headlines about uncertain economic times
and you've probably read some of them on Bloomberg.
So, I'm here in New York City to talk
with their CMO, Anne Kawalerski
about the state of the economy and what marketers can do
Is this the time to be innovating?
It is the time and it's the time to take risks.
And I think that's what's so exciting
about sort of the times we're in.
I think you can think about this negatively
or you can think about this
as a significant opportunity for marketing
and I'm sort of jumping in that second camp head first.
So, I think we've created six new products
So, it's something that we have the metabolism for.
about how to get smarter with leaner budgets,
how to do things that matter more to our audience,
how do we deliver new sources of utility?
That's a big theme for us
and something that we think really matters
in order to break through today.
We think we need to be helpful.
We need to provide a solution, we need to educate.
We need to go above and beyond brand storytelling
to really do something more.
So, how do we innovate to do that?
Is that a new partnership?
Is that a new engagement on a different platform?
But really thinking about innovation deeply.
Are you finding that you need to do more
with less with your marketing budget today?
But I don't think that's pulling back
and I think that's a big distinction, right?
So, I think that means ruthless prioritization.
You do literally have to do more with less.
So, what are you not going to do?
I think we all grew up, let's create a marketing campaign
for a bottom of funnel, for mid-funnel, for top of funnel.
And when you have the resources, that's great.
I think the reality today is you probably
are doing one thing that has to stretch
up and has to stretch down, right?
So, just being much smarter about what you're doing there.
And then, I think it's about getting creative
in your brand with not literally investing dollars?
So, one thing that we're thinking a lot about is community.
How do we get people to be our brand evangelist?
How do we get people to be sticky
with our products and services and our brand
that doesn't necessarily require marketing spend?
And so, what does that look like?
And that's a focus on our events business.
On one hand, it's also thinking about communities
for our advertising partners around specific themes.
So we have the Bloomberg Green brand
which is a brand that's focused
on climate change and sustainability.
And we've created the Bloomberg Green Council
which brings together our editorial team
and our advertising partners.
You are big on learning from your audience.
You recently conducted a huge audience survey.
Systematizing audience data is critical for us.
So, what we did a couple years ago for the first time
was this report that we called Change The World.
And it was really about to get a sense
of our modern leader audience, their ambitions,
their desires, their motivations.
We know that they're successful in and out of the office,
but we didn't know what they cared about, why.
And some interesting findings came out of that.
So, first and foremost, not only do they want to succeed,
they actually want to change the world.
And so, how do we as sort of a content news,
insight provider, feed them and empower them to do that?
And when you think about what that means for campaign work
or messaging work, it's very, very different
than if it's just about success, for example.
But the commonality across all segments was data.
How we use this research and how we use the data.
It was then focusing on, okay, that is sort of our USP
and how do we double click on data as sort of being that
idea of utility and being that idea
of how we actually empower that modern leader
to not only succeed but to change the world.
When you're changing the world,
are you also making your products better with the data?
Absolutely. And we're also creating products
that matter relative to the notion of changing the world.
Changing the world today means social justice.
It means climate justice.
to the specific products that we have innovated.
How do you measure the ROI?
One thing that we did was we really carried that
the insight around changing the world, the insight
of empowerment through the full funnel execution.
So, this was our first ever brand campaign
We had never advertised ever before.
So, this was sort of a big moment for us.
We saw that folks that were exposed
to the campaign were 80% more likely to subscribe
to Bloomberg than those who weren't.
Just a huge testament to just awareness
that idea of affinity and hopefully that idea of conversion.
What trends are you noticing with your advertisers?
So, I think ESG is not a new trend
but has continued to be really big
for us and big among our advertisers.
of the studies that we've done a 1500% increase
in media coverage of ESG since 2017.
But I think what's interesting about that is it's not equal
across the E, the S and the G.
So, what we're seeing is overwhelmingly the content
and campaigns are focusing on the E in fact, 40%
of all branded content this past year focused on E.
So, there's a huge opportunity for the S and the G.
And I'm curious and I'm intrigued to see
The other side of this equation is, I think with more
and more regulation around ESG, you are at risk of sort
of greenwashing and purpose washing.
So, I'm interested to see if marketers are going to pull back.
So, I think there's been an increase
and I'm wondering if we're at this impetus
where people are going to start to pull back a little bit.
Or is it a time where maybe they lean
in because of the hyper relevance of the content?
Exactly. And we know that audiences care.
So, it's about figuring out how to do so
in sort of a safe, trusted, effective manner.
If you looked into your crystal ball,
what changes do you see coming over the next year?
I think it's going to be a doubling down on that idea
of purpose and foundation.
So, really clarifying your value to your customer base.
How do you as a brand change the world?
And I think when people are being incredibly discerning
about spend, that's going to set you apart.
I also think there's obviously tremendous shift
So, I think thinking about where and how you're reaching
your audience, experimenting, getting more
creative, whether that be through new platforms
but really making sure that you're staying
on top of that and you're trying new things.
So, have you've been seeing the role of the CMO change
and what skills would you tell marketers
to learn to keep up with the changing world today?
So, I think the CMO is sort of a misnomer today.
I think the CMO has to be an expert across revenue,
across operations, across sustainability, across HR.
If we think about the things that we've had to deal with
around return to office, yes, around COVID,
around economic uncertainty, it's forced us
to be sort of experts in all of those areas.
And I think double clicking that a little bit more,
I think just being responsible for revenue is also
So, I think sort of gone are the days of here are
my soft metrics on marketing and sort of we are increasingly
going to have to show tangible hard metrics
that correlate marketing spend with revenue growth.
And so, that idea of partnering with the CFO
or partnering with your revenue
and finance office is going to become increasingly important.
And then, I think we've also talked a lot
I see innovation almost being a hub within marketing.
Because thinking outside the box, like new ideas,
it's a job as a marketer to do that.
And so, being able to do that
as it applies to revenue is so important.
So important I think to the point on data too
not losing sight of that side of your brain
and that side of the job too, of the really the mix
of the rigor and the data with the creativity
and sort of the inspiring part of what we do.
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