In this episode of the Financial Marketing Insights podcast, we interviewed Amie Stankiste, CMO at LSEG on her career and the launch of the LSEG brand campaign.

Amie Stankiste is the Chief Marketing Officer of LSEG, the London Stock Exchange Group. LSEG is a leading global infrastructure and data provider, generating around eight billion pounds in revenue. This significant group of businesses offers financial data, analysis, news, clearing of trades, and index products, supporting customers across the full trade lifecycle: pre-trade, at-trade, and post-trade. Serving approximately 40,000 customers in around 170 countries, LSEG is a vital entity within the financial ecosystem, catering to sell-side, buy-side, private equity, wealth managers, asset owners, central banks, and more.

Amie leads a centralized team of around 200 marketers, covering all aspects of driving the brand, brand building, brand awareness, and the value of the brand across the digital space. The team owns the full digital ecosystem of all LSEG websites and the customer journey across the digital infrastructure. Each division within LSEG is supported in terms of driving revenue, creating customer engagement, retaining customers, and building relationships worldwide to drive progress and create sustainable growth.

With over 20 years of experience in marketing and financial services, Amie reflects on a growth journey that began in Yorkshire and led to London after graduating from university, where she started in a PR and Marketing agency.

“It was very different in terms of what I do now, in terms of industries. So that agency supported everything from health and beauty, entertainment, sports, consumer, you name it. We helped support them from a PR and marketing perspective. So I got to do all kinds of weird and wonderful things as the new grad joining. I would just dive into anything, any challenge that anybody wanted to give me. I was there for the experience. So I was cold calling journalists pretty early, which was pretty daunting, I can tell you. I also helped with the full range of magazine production, which is great for honing project management skills.”

Amie then worked for a number of companies including SEI Investments and BNY Mellon, gaining experience on both the asset management and banking sides. In the last decade, her focus has shifted more towards data and financial infrastructure working for Thomson Reuters, S&P and Ion. She thoroughly enjoys working at LSEG, describing it as being at the centre of the financial ecosystem. Understanding customers’ needs, helping them achieve their goals, and navigating their journeys is a privilege. Working in large companies that serve a wide range of customers is fascinating, especially in a constantly changing world.

“You never know really what's around the corner. And so we've got to keep evolving, we've got to stay really flexible, really agile, and being able to think on your feet, but also have that long-term strategy in mind as well and balance the two sides. It's really, genuinely quite exciting.”

Amie spends her days focusing on various aspects of the business, ensuring the right amount of attention is given across the group and its divisions. Like many companies, it’s crucial to keep an eye on the long-term strategy, understanding the group’s goals and keeping them as the ‘North Star’. Working with each division and their P&L owners, she understands their yearly and long-term objectives, building a team that supports these goals.

She shapes the team with the right skillsets to align with these objectives and challenges them to understand the division, products, customers, and internal teams. The marketing function sits centrally, partnering with everyone internally, ensuring a balance between the bigger picture and tailored goals for the short and medium term.

Amie has a passion for building and leading teams, finding joy in team success.

“I guess a lot of my leadership comes from how in the past I played a lot of sports. It's thinking about how you come together as a team to achieve a goal. And it's as simple as roles and responsibilities, respect for each other, empathy, and understanding everybody's a different human, has a unique perspective, has unique ideas. And actually we're here as a team to support each other and to back each other up - to have each other's backs essentially. And so I will always drive that real team spirit. And I hope my teams would say that as well, but I spend quite a lot of time with my teams, making sure that those relationships are healthy, there's healthy challenge, you know, every day there is a new challenge to address.”

Amie emphasizes the importance of living and breathing the great values at LSEG, both as a company and as individuals. She believes in being a good human and teammate, supporting each other through challenges and celebrating successes together.

The LSEG Brand Campaign

Having been at LSEG for just over 18 months, Amie is proud of the achievements made during this time. One significant challenge and favourite project involved simplifying the brand architecture.

Over the last three to five years, LSEG experienced substantial growth, partly through acquisitions, resulting in a disjointed brand presence with over 20 different brands. The task was to simplify the brand and create a cohesive brand architecture.

They established one parent brand, LSEG, with six sub-brands, making it easier for customers and investors to navigate and understand the group. This simplification helped articulate who LSEG is, what they do, and how they serve their customers and manage the business. The next step was rebranding the entire group and its divisions to present a unified family under the LSEG parent brand and launching this new brand into the market.

Amie led the effort to take LSEG as a brand to market in September 2023.

“It's the hardest, but best thing I've ever done, I think, in my career. And the job was to take LSEG to market, but we wanted to do it in a really different way and in a relatively surprising way, because I think people would expect same old, same old, B2B financial services approach. Sometimes we can all look and feel the same. So we took a few risks with the creative, actually. We wanted to build a sense of personality, a bit of warmth to the campaign, and also a bit of wit and humour, which was a bit of a risk at the time because you never know with humour, especially with a global campaign.”

Working closely with the CEO and Exco, and in partnership with a global agency, Amie and her team ensured the campaign resonated across different cultures. They created a hero film and various creative assets for the launch. The internal launch, called a “Super Stream,” involved all 25,000 employees tuning in from around the world, creating a buzz and turning employees into brand champions.

The following day, the campaign went live globally across 15 markets, including New York, London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Singapore. This marked a significant milestone for LSEG, showcasing the brand in a cohesive and engaging manner - launching in five languages and utilizing various channels such as TV, trams in Hong Kong, taxis in London, train stations, airports, and sponsoring major events.

“It was an enormous team effort and just an incredible achievement. The few months leading up to it were somewhat stressful so Summer wasn't as much fun, but it was worth it. It was absolutely incredible when it went to market. And we had incredible qualitative feedback. We had our customers contacting the CEO. We had investors commenting, which is amazing, really positive feedback saying, ‘this is great, it's great to see us out in the market’. And then from a quant perspective, we have like brand monitor measures around awareness, familiarity, and favourability - and we hit or beat all of our targets. So in terms of measurement, we hit the mark as well.”

Amie emphasizes the importance of avoiding a “big reveal” approach in marketing, advocating for regular check-ins and buy-in at every stage. Creative work is subjective, and getting consensus can be challenging, but it’s crucial for success. From the outset, the project had regular check-ins, clear milestones, and a detailed plan covering all aspects of the rebrand, from product interfaces to operational elements like billing and invoices. This comprehensive approach ensured transparency, built trust, and kept the project on track and within budget.

Amie believes in the mantra of “no surprises,” ensuring that the senior team is always informed and aligned with the project’s progress and expectations. This approach, while challenging, is essential for successful and responsible project management.

As LSEG went to market with the brand campaign, the focus was on identifying the key objectives. Short-term metrics, such as reach and awareness, were important for gauging initial engagement. These metrics, while sometimes seen as vanity metrics, were crucial for understanding the campaign’s impact and ensuring it reached the right audiences. Digital tracking provided detailed insights, although out-of-home (OOH) elements were harder to measure. Website traffic on launch days in specific markets offered additional data points.

The campaign’s success was also measured through the annual brand survey, which assessed brand awareness, familiarity, favourability, and purchase intent among customers and prospects in various markets. One key question was how likely respondents were to do business with ‘X business unit, given that they are part of LSEG’. This helped gauge whether the brand felt cohesive and understandable.

Despite the ambitious targets, the campaign met or exceeded expectations, which was a significant achievement. Keeping an eye on competitors and understanding market trends was also important, though differentiation remained a priority. Qualitative research provided valuable insights into LSEG’s position within the competitive landscape, ensuring the brand continued to stand out.

Financial Services Marketing Challenges

Amie identifies two main strategic marketing challenges.

The first is balancing short-term versus long-term investment. This involves determining the proportion of budget and resources dedicated to short-term goals versus long-term goals. The balance can vary depending on the company’s objectives. In financial services, the focus can differ significantly, especially with the rise of private equity, which often has shorter-term goals compared to long-established, family-owned companies.

“I actually think as marketers, we need to be much more tuned in to the board and Exco and understanding what the goals are. And it might be there’s an element of growth, obviously, but there's also efficiencies that we're trying to drive. There's technology transformation that's trying to be achieved. There's margins that you need to achieve. So I think marketing can get a little bit caught up in the one sided view of ‘I want to build brand long term’ or ‘I want to drive sales revenue for this division’ and how you balance those two things. But it's not just as simple as that. There are many factors you've got to understand, the financials of the company and what those financial goals are. So it’s really about tuning in, and really listening.”

The second challenge is staying connected to changing business goals based on market conditions. This includes geopolitical challenges, macroeconomic changes, interest rate fluctuations, and inflation. Global businesses must understand regional dynamics and adapt their marketing approaches accordingly. Having a global mindset while tailoring strategies to local environments is essential. Marketers need to be sensitive to the specific challenges customers face in different regions, whether it’s high inflation, geopolitical instability, or other issues. As a global organization, LSEG must understand and support customers through these challenges.

In terms of personal inspiration, Amie gets a lot of energy from being outside exercising and also from interacting with her team.

“I get a lot of personal motivation and joy and happiness just from being around other people. And you come away from it sort of ready to face the next challenge or grab the next opportunity.”