Starling Bank’s first CMO on tapping into popular culture to become ‘people’s favourite bank’

When Michele Rousseau joined Starling Bank at the end of last year, she joined a brand on a mission.

As the bank’s first CMO, she is focused on taking Starling to its “next phase” of growth, based around a “sharper” internal positioning of “pioneering banking for enterprising people”.

“If we want to be people’s favourite bank, we have to get into popular culture. We’ve got to be relevant,” she tells Marketing Week, adding that she believes “there’s so much that can be done for the financial industry”.

Acknowledging people’s changing “wealth journey” and the fact many are struggling to get mortgages and hit financial goals, Starling is adapting its customer approach to encourage people to be enterprising and savvy, while tackling their spending habits.

“People need to have their side-hustle and side-company there. They need to have an enterprising mindset. And so, we think we’re genuinely leaning into something that is really culturally relevant. You see it in things like Dragons’ Den. You see it in the huge TikTok entrepreneurial community,” says Rousseau.

Rousseau’s new strategy will be brought to life through a rebrand taking place later this year. She credits “collaboration across the company”, not just the marketing team, for allowing for an efficient marketing operation to run.

“It’s not just a project over in marketing that isn’t being used by the whole company. We did it together as a team,” she says, adding that the company’s CIO, CFO and CEO were all onboard with a new direction for the brand.

While “pioneering banking for enterprising people” is the bank’s internal position, ‘Good with money’ is the brand’s consumer-facing platform, which supports its mission that everyone will have a healthy relationship with their money.

“I love it because Starling’s also good with money. We were the first profitable retail fintech bank and we want our customers to be good with money. We want them to be good with money through these effortless everyday habits,” says Rousseau.

It’s super important there’s a CMO to make sure that people trust your brand, understand your brand.

Michele Rousseau, Starling

As part of the brand platform, it has released in-app tools to manage money, including its AI Spending Intelligence platform, which lets customers ask questions about their spending habits.

Rousseau sees its discussion about “habits” as setting Starling apart in the category, as well as the fact its “product backs this up” with tools such as Spending Intelligence.

Starling is currently working with The Sunshine Company on a number of creative executions for Good with money, while it is working with Wolff Olins to refresh its visual identity with an updated logo, colour palette and app design. A new website and social channels are also in the works, and it will announce the appointment of a media agency later in the summer.

Rousseau notes that the upcoming rebrand won’t be a “complete massive revolution of visual identity”, but “there’s definitely a need to have a new look and feel that supports our brand positioning”.

The CMO credits Starling’s previous brand platform, ‘The bank built for you’ put in place by its former brand and marketing director Rachel Kerrone, as being “at the heart of everything that we’ve done”, but says it’s now time for “something wider”, “more operational” and “in line with where we want to go now”.

“We have this whole philosophy around active relationships with money and I believe that pioneering banking for enterprising people has the longevity and it’s something that can last over time,” says Rousseau.

The customer experience is also built to be “seamless” for both B2B and B2C customers, according to the marketer, with her looking to bring together B2B and B2C activity.

“A female entrepreneur who banks with Starling also has a retail account with us, also has a kids account with Kite, also has a joint account. There’s a really lovely ecosystem,” she explains, citing the brand’s partnership with Small Business Britain and that over 500,000 of its account holders are SMEs.

Customer-first thinking

Rousseau is no stranger to working in senior marketing positions at big brands, with a CV boasting eight years at Microsoft, 12 years at Apple and three at Expedia.

She says she’s bringing brand experience from Apple and “performance, digital ad-based marketing” from Expedia, and was ultimately drawn to Starling because of its female-founder story and the way it “puts customers at the heart of everything” it does.

“I know loads of companies say that, but we genuinely do,” she says on the bank’s customer focus, giving the example of Starling not charging users for its service, its fraud prevention methods, and its team answering customer phone calls on average within 14 seconds.

Pioneering banking for enterprising people has the longevity and it’s something that can last over time.

Michele Rousseau, Starling Bank

Last year, the bank said its focus on “great experiences” was leading to profitable growth, with profits before tax growing 54.7% year-over-year to £301.1m.

When it comes to marketing, Rousseau says the company “genuinely wants to help, inspire and motivate” its 4.6 million customers rather than “push or sell”.

“It’s obviously joyous as a marketer to be able to market a product that’s so good and wins so many awards, that’s really helpful. I haven’t always had that,” she says, pointing to the fact Starling has maintained its status as a Which? recommended provider for the last six years.

Though Rousseau didn’t think she’d ever work at a bank, she says she takes pride in her role of bringing consumer trust into a category where consumers may be guarded or sceptical.

“We want to talk about creativity, we want to inspire our customers, and we also have to make sure there’s a level of trust. It’s super important there’s a CMO to make sure people trust your brand, understand your brand,” she shares.

To build on this, Rousseau is strengthening Starling’s marketing team with the hire of four new senior marketers to develop areas she felt needed more attention. She says this has been made possible as Starling’s CEO, Raman Bhatia, “understands brand and marketing” and the “value and power” of what it is able to achieve.

Indiana Matine joins as brand strategy director, John Harrison takes on the newly-created brand and product marketing director role, and Neil Cooper and Rachel Sullivan join as executive creative directors, leading visual identity and written content, respectively. Between them, they bring experience from Expedia Group, BBH, Wieden+Kennedy, Wolff Olins and Condé Nast.

“What I’ve really enjoyed is watching the marriage of people who’ve been at Starling a long time, and have this brilliant experience, and the new people, and how they gel together,” says the CMO.

Measuring success

With Rousseau claiming to be “obsessed with measurement”, success and effectiveness of the rebrand and the brand platform will be assessed through “classic funnel metrics” including awareness, consideration, customer growth in the short term, with a long-term goal to “establish a brand”, “connect with culture” and “connect with people emotionally” overtime.

The marketer says its partnerships will be key to relate to culture, as well as thinking carefully about what goes into social through platform-specific content. She gives the example of the bank’s Facebook content highlighting its anti-fraud initiatives as more fraud happens on that platform.

She also shares that the company vets any influencers it works with to ensure they comply with FCA guidelines.

Given its focus on culture, Rousseau doesn’t see other finance brands as competitors, instead highlighting “lifestyle brands” as being the ones to watch.

“I always say to the marketing team we’re competing with who’s playing at Wimbledon tomorrow, who’s playing on the Pyramid Stage [at Glastonbury] on Saturday night. Whatever else is in popular culture, that’s who we compete with,” she concludes.