Fifth Third Succeeds Through Empowered Employees

Jim Marous (0:01)

Your employees are your brand, not your logo, not your ad campaign, your people. That's how Melissa Stevens, the Chief Marketing Officer of Fifth Third, runs one of the fastest rising brands in banking. And she means it literally. Fifth Third lets its employees post about the bank on social media and doesn't fully control what they say.

In one of the most regulated industries on earth, Melissa doesn't call that a risk, she calls it the magic. Because customers don't experience a bank as a marketing campaign. They experience it as the colleague who answers the question and solves the problem.

Banking is personal because money is personal. But this isn't a story about feelings, it's about growth. And in the next few minutes, Melissa gets very specific in a way most bank leaders never will. She explains how Fifth Third spots the moment a customer starts to quietly bank somewhere else and what a banker actually says to win that customer back. She reveals why a top 10 bank deliberately refused to put generative AI in front of the customers while everyone else raced to do that. And she shares the one thing she still gives herself a C minus on while she's running all of this. If you want to know how a bank grows relationships in a marketplace where every customer is being pulled in 10 directions, this is the conversation you have to watch.

So it's been way too long to have Melissa on this show. I think the last time we did something was at the Financial Bank Forum two years ago. We were thinking about the fact that it couldn't have been that long. But what's interesting is how much has happened since the last time we met. So, Melissa, getting right into it. I think one element of Fifth Third Bank that really seems to stand out right now is that you're involving your employees on a lot of levels and humanizing the Fifth Third brand in the midst of a lot of other things happening at Fifth Third. So you like to say that your employees are the brand. What do you mean by that?

Melissa Stevens (2:06)

Yeah, thanks for saying that, Jim, and it's great to be back. Here's the thing.

I spent my whole life in banking, and I'd love to believe people think about it all the time. But people don't think about banks very often, right? You think about it when life changes, you think about it when you have an uncertain event going on, fraud on your account, or you're not sure what to do for financial planning, when a decision feels super emotional, right? That's when the bank shows up. In those moments, that human connection really has to be the hero of the story.

I say our employees are a brand, because customers don't experience Fifth Third as a marketing campaign, as a strategy that we put out with investors, or as the Fifth Third logo, right? They experience it as the colleague who answers the question, who solves the problem, who helps them through a moment that feels emotional or uncertain. Banking is personal because money is personal. So our people, we have to believe that our people know what we're doing, want to believe in what we're doing, and actually, truly trust us. Because if they don't feel like that, then the customer is going to feel it, and they're not going to trust them, they're not going to believe in them. So when I say we need to activate our employees as part of our brand and they are the brand, it's because that human connection that the employee creates is truly the brand of the company for me.

Jim Marous (3:24)

Well, you know, it's interesting why your title leans toward your marketing role, that you're head of marketing at Fifth Third Bank or EVP, but your job continues to expand. We kid about it sometimes that you're taking over the world. But basically, you manage marketing, design, the branches, even to a degree, the workplace and the digital engagement.

How does this all falling under you, help build the Fifth Third brand as it is today?

Melissa Stevens (3:54)

Yeah, it's a great question. I finally have come to a reasonable term, which I call the Experience Engine. So with my division and as we talk across the company, I say, I lead the Experience Engine at Fifth Third. It's really about one very simple idea. We design how the company shows up.

That's the brand voice, that's storytelling, that's the design of the mobile app, that's the design and the construction build of the branches. That's the negotiating for the purchase of the physical structure that we're going to have, or leasing of the land so we can build a ground up. And it's also the design of our offices, whether it's mine right here or the entire floors that we do for our teams.