Gerard Vicente (JPMorgan) - Tailored Messages and Tailored Ads
Speaker 1: Maybe big data has gotten too big. Whether you're a B2B marketer or a consumer brand, your data needs to be viable, relevant, and accessible so that Stirista can help you retain customers, acquire customers and make it personal.
Vin: Welcome to the Marketing Stir podcast by Stirista, probably the most entertaining marketing podcast you're going to put in your ear. I'm Vin, the associate producer here at Stirista. The goal of this podcast is to chat with industry leaders and get their take on current challenges of the market, and we'll have a little fun along the way. In today's episode, Vincent and Ajay chat with Gerard Vicente, VP of marketing at JPMorgan Chase. He talks about how what it all comes down to as a marketer, is understanding your audience and how they think. Vincent celebrates three years at Stirista and Ajay is the Spyder Pong champion of the office. Give it a listen.
Vincent Pietrafesa: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of Stirista's the Marketing Stir. Its beautiful weather out, which is why I've got my short sleeves on today. Ladies and gentlemen, it's so good to be back here. For those of you who don't know me, just listening for the first time I am Vincent Pietrafesa, vice president of B2B products and partnerships here at Stirista and one of your cohosts. Ladies and gentlemen, Stirista, who are we? Let's pause and talk about Stirista for just 12 seconds, that's the only time we talk about the company. We are a marketing technology company, we own our own data, business to business, business to consumer. We help companies access that data to help them get new customers. We have our own DSP called AdStir. We can help execute, display, OTT, connect the TV. Email me, vincent @ stirista. com. That is how confident I am in our solutions, I just gave thousands and thousands of listeners my email address. The other thing I'm confident in and I say it every single episode and it still rings true, after three years here at Stirista, I just celebrated my anniversary. My co- host, the CEO, Mr. Ajay Gupta. What's going on Ajay?
Ajay Gupta: Hey Vincent. I got to show you something, I got a Stirista Spyder Pong championship.
Vincent Pietrafesa: Yeah, you won it? Or you bought it and you didn't give it out yet?
Ajay Gupta: No, no, I earned it. I beat Hunter Snell who has had it for way too long.
Vincent Pietrafesa: Wow.
Ajay Gupta: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he went down fighting.
Vincent Pietrafesa: That's awesome, that's awesome.
Ajay Gupta: It's been a good day already.
Vincent Pietrafesa: That's a great day. You got a new belt. I want my own belt. I've got one of those reversible dad belts. If I want black pop, if I want brown pop, that's just what dads do, is we get those reversible belts, but that's awesome. I saw you guys had the scavenger hunt today at the office and just doing fun things in the headquarters there in San Antonio.
Ajay Gupta: Yeah, definitely. I think we got about a 98% participation rate. So even our accountant Mumdo participated, it's hard to get him to participate.
Vincent Pietrafesa: It's hard to get Mumdo to do that, but I'm glad he did. And yeah, I've being getting a lot of love today, Ajay, from people. Three years here at Stirista, three years, I've known the company and I've known you for 11 years. But can you believe it? Does it feel like it's been forever or has time flown by?
Ajay Gupta: Yeah, no. I remember when you were young, so I can tell the difference now.
Vincent Pietrafesa: I know. No grays yet.
Ajay Gupta: No, you've got the same hairstyle. I must congratulate you on not changing your haircut one bit.
Vincent Pietrafesa: Yeah. Well, I get a haircut every 10 days out there, ladies and gentlemen and I had the same haircut, since I've been in college, so that's about 25 years. It's like a classic recipe, don't mess with it, don't hit me with some fusion type stuff, just let's have some fun. And we've got a fun one today, because it's rare you meet people, that it's like," Oh, we used to work with Stirista." I never met this young man. He's younger than us, Ajay. Clearly, this is a young man, he's doing great things though regardless. And he worked with us in the past, but he is new to the podcast. We have never met him, but we are excited to have him aboard, here today for the Marketing Stir. Ladies and gentlemen, please a very warm welcome to the vice president of marketing at JPMorgan Chase, Gerard Vicente. What's going on Gerard?
Gerard Vicente: Hey guys. Thank you so much for having me. Longtime listener, first time participant, I suppose. Vince, congrats on the anniversary. I know we've been tangentially connected through different ways, but so glad to meet both of you formally and looking forward to really exciting conversation.
Vincent Pietrafesa: Absolutely. Yeah, it's a pleasure to finally meet you Gerard, you're probably one of those people we've probably been at conferences together.
Gerard Vicente: A hundred percent.
Vincent Pietrafesa: We probably have been right there together and we didn't know each other. But for those of you who are listening and maybe not watching, Gerard has his Golden State Warriors sweatshirt on, ladies and gentlemen. I said," Gerard, you live in New York City. Wait a minute, well, how do you like these buddies from the Bay Area originally, born and raised." And so he's celebrating the Warrior's fourth championship. Shout out to the Warriors and shout out to Steve Kerr, I'm a Chicago Bulls fan-
Gerard Vicente: There you go.
Vincent Pietrafesa: As a native New Yorker. But Steve Kerr, former champion with us that makes nine for Steve Kerr, congratulations on that, Gerard. And congrats on this role, man, you're doing some great things here.
Gerard Vicente: Yeah. Thank you.
Vincent Pietrafesa: So far. So talk to us about your role within JP Morgan Chase. Come on, I mean, everyone's heard of that.
Gerard Vicente: Yeah.
Vincent Pietrafesa: Love to talk to you about that and what your day to day is there.
Gerard Vicente: For sure. Yeah. I took a winding path to JP Morgan Chase, I'm sure we'll dig into it a little bit deeper from the different marketing experiences I've had up until this point. But currently, I am, as you mentioned, Vincent, the vice president of marketing here, specifically handling partner marketing, which is a really fascinating intersection between our internal teams, but also our external partners. And so specifically within JP Morgan Chase, I work on the WePay side and so WePay is our financial type arm. And with WePay, we enable payment processing across different B2B organizations. So an example I like to use is, when you use Uber or Seamless or GrubHub, you obviously have to make payments through those different platforms and through those apps, well, surprise, Uber is not a financial institution, surprise, seamless is not a financial institution. So they look for folks like a WePay who is now backed by JP Morgan Chase to help power the financial transaction between consumer and organization. And so within my own day to day, a lot of what I'm doing is building marketing relationships and partnerships with a lot of large scale platforms, who use payments as a feature within their software. So I would say technically what that looks like is, sales enablement, it's creating go to market strategies on how we present ourselves in market as a joint solution. It's going to events, now that's slowly becoming a thing again, it's brand awareness. It's going to, well, I mentioned conferences, but it's participating in webinars, making sure that people know that WePay is not only just a financial tech platform, but is now part of the larger JP Morgan Chase umbrella. And so a lot of what I'm doing is, sales enablement, brand awareness, go to marketplace to make sure that we are a voice in market now.
Vincent Pietrafesa: That's awesome, yeah. And that's one of those areas you don't know about, at least under the JP Morgan Chase umbrella, but extremely important is WePay. That's awesome, thanks for sharing that, Gerard.
Gerard Vicente: Yeah.
Vincent Pietrafesa: A question we always like to get into, because the answer differs from every guest, how did you get into marketing?
Gerard Vicente: Yeah, that's a great question. And I have been doing some reflection, especially now that I'm in this really pivotal point in my career. I've asked myself that, even outside of this podcast," Why is it that I do what I do again? How did I get here?" And similar to my path to JP Morgan Chase, it was a winding route. What I will say, is that I feel like I am a bit of an outlier, because I did study marketing in school, my first internship was in marketing, so I did gain my passion within the academic sense. But from the jump, from when I was in high school, leading into college, I wanted to get into athletic training, I was an athlete growing up. I figured," Well, I'm not going to become an athlete myself." You might not be able to see it on screen and certainly not on air, but I'm not a big guy by any means. And so I was like," Okay, I'm going to pivot a little bit. I can't be the guy on the field, but maybe I could be the support guy off the field." And what I realized in my academic studies, was that I'm not good at biology or science, which is a pretty meaningful prerequisite that you need to have, if you're going to be in athletic training. So I pivoted away from athletic training into psychology. And what I realized in psychology was, going the clinical route was not necessarily aligned with my passions or interests at that point, because the bookwork and the academic work was a bit challenging. And so I took what I loved from psychology and what I knew that I loved about business and I found that overlap to be marketing. Because at the end of the day, what is marketing? Marketing is identifying consumer behavior to make sure that they are aware of your product or service, right? And so when I found and realized that was an overlap of multiple interests, being business and psychology, it was a no brainer for me. And so I was able to follow that passion up and through school, through my internships, through my time at LiveRamp and GroundTruth and Comedy Central and now here at JP Morgan Chase.
Ajay Gupta: Great. Jared, I don't know if you know this, but actually I grew up in the Bay Area.
Gerard Vicente: There we go.
Ajay Gupta: So I appreciate your shirt. So yeah, San Francisco.
Gerard Vicente: That's awesome.
Ajay Gupta: Yeah, I would love to know about some of the channels and strategies in marketing that are working for you and some that might not be.
Gerard Vicente: Yeah, that's a great question, Ajay. And what I will say as a precursor to this discussion, is that the team that I've just joined, we're a brand new team, we've built this new organization within obviously, the JP Morgan Chase umbrella in support of small businesses, in support of WePay. But the reality is, a year ago today, this team didn't exist. Marketing was supported from disparate places, from different teams. And so through the leader of team, our CMO, she was able to bring all of that in house. And so I say that, because we're very much at the nascent stages of really building that marketing machine. And so really, a lot of the things that are working are the obvious things, right? So things like email, running paid media, our acquisition efforts are going really well. But really the mandate that our leader has given us as an organization, is test and learn. We haven't done a lot of stuff, we don't have a whole lot of historical context on, we know this works for sure, or we know that works or that doesn't work. And so a lot of the things that we're doing, is we're dipping our toes in the water to see what lands and what sticks with our end customers and with our users, right? And so that for me, as a marketer is very, very exciting, because we have the opportunity to try so many different things. And given my background from so many different places, be it adtech or entertainment, I have the opportunity to leverage a lot of that experience to influence the team to try new things. And so in the coming quarters, we're trying social media, we're doing print ads, we're testing, direct mail, a lot of those things. So I'm really interested to see how that actually resonates with our consumers and looking at the data, to see what is working.
Ajay Gupta: When we started this podcast, it was actually during the first month of the pandemic and so we were hoping it would've been over by now. But this week itself, we've had a couple of cases at the office, so it's obviously continuing. But what are some of the lessons that you've learned coming out of the pandemic?
Gerard Vicente: Yeah, I mean, at the risk of being a dead horse at this point, since I know all the thought pieces and articles have certainly commented on this as well, but I think the ability just to collaborate wherever you are, across time zones, across physical locations. I mean, you'll see here, I mean, none of us are in the same physical location. And I think that there is something to be said about being able to be part of a team that is high performing, dynamic, able to take on change and still be delivering impact regardless of where you are, I think is super, super important. And honestly, very possible despite the impacts of what occurred during the pandemic. So the virtual collaboration for sure, I would double down on that. And I think, what I would also say, is from a marketing perspective, I might have an unpopular opinion on this, excuse me, but I think people are willing to listen to marketing messages, to listen to ads, or be more receptive to being targeted by things that they have interests in. I think the reality of what we just went through over the last two years, is that we had a lot of downtime. We were at home, a lot of the things that we loved about going out, going to restaurants, being in New York City and experiencing the life here. We were shut down for quite some time and I think because of that, we were open to messages that were tailored to us. And I think that will continue to be a thing moving forward. And I think just the pandemic expedited the reception of consumers to tailored messaging and tailored ads.
Vincent Pietrafesa: Gerard, you had mentioned it before some of the companies that you've been at, LiveRamps and other technology companies in between. Can you talk a little bit about some of the similarities in marketing, some of the different ways that you've marketed there? I'd love to learn a little bit about that.
Gerard Vicente: Yeah, for sure. And I think that's a great question. I think what I'll say to that, at least as a starting off point, is that at the end of the day, it's about knowing your customer, right? So regardless if that's trying to promote the newest season of South Park to a frat boy or trying to promote the LiveRamp identity graph to B2B organizations. Currently at WePay, if it's trying to target SMBs, I think at the end of the day, it's understanding who is your customer and how do they operate and how do they think, right? And so for me as a marketer, as I've gone through these different organizations, that's something that I bring with me, is just a hyper focus on understanding who that is and challenging my team and my adjacent teammates to really think that way as well. In terms of just channels and tactics, I think it goes without saying, working at Comedy Central, TV was obviously a big, big deal for us. I mean, we have our network, we have our sibling channels that we could run all of our different ads on, so certainly TV was a big thing. But you move into tech and some of the things that we're doing here at JP Morgan Chase and WePay, a lot of the things that we're doing are digitally driven, paid media, paid search, SEO, a lot of these things that I was exposed to early on in my ad agency days, in digital media, a lot of those are coming into play again. And so what I would say is, despite having experiences across different organizations, I think it's about knowing your customer, where are they? So obviously from a TV perspective, we know that our Comedy Central audience is watching TV, so why not hit them with messaging there. But from a tech perspective, I think that has taken a more digitally forward approach.
Vincent Pietrafesa: Yeah, no, and it's so different, like you just described, it's like, all right, you're talking about South Park, and then you're talking about identity graph and you're talking about WePay and how... But I want to stay on something you said there, because WePay, being able to use the example of GrubHub powering that, I feel like a lot of organizations realized over the pandemic that," Hey, we have to become more digital. We have to have our customers be able to transact and we need someone to fuel that. We need a payment solution."
Gerard Vicente: Yeah.
Vincent Pietrafesa: So I would imagine that the business or people... Maybe an uptick is the right word to just people reaching out to WePay over that, because I think digital transformation, electronic payments, all of that, a payment backbone, if you will, was something that became very important to these businesses. They're like," Oh, no, people will just come to one of my restaurants." No, they don't, not anymore. So I wanted to stay on that, where the parallels between FinTech-
Gerard Vicente: Yeah.
Vincent Pietrafesa: And adtech, you mentioned a few different things. So I'd love to talk about that area.
Gerard Vicente: Yeah, I think there are a lot of parallels and I will fully confess I am no FinTech or adtech expert at this point. I mean, I've been in my current role for a little bit less than a year, so I would be disingenuous to say if I was a thought leader in this space. But obviously, coming in with fresh eyes, I am seeing a lot of parallels from what I experienced on the adtech side. I think one of those things that I am noticing is that everyone wants and wants in. You think about adtech, there's so many players, there's a lot of competitors. You think about the Leaderscape, if I'm even remembering that correctly, there's just so many different organizations cropping up across the different areas that you can play in, whether that's data, whether that's DSPs, SSPs, all of that, right? And I'm honestly seeing the same within the FinTech world, right? So it's not just payment processing, it's other features within the payments landscape that I think other competitors are starting to get into. So to summarize that point, I think it is a little bit of a wild, wild west element, where people are seeing the opportunity within FinTech and people are jumping on board, whether it's payment processing, buy now pay later, people are starting to become their own PayFac, there is a lot to be done and a lot to compete in this space. And people are seeing that and are actively jumping in, so that is very exciting. And I think another thing that I've noticed, in terms of the parallels is that it's becoming more of a consumer facing brand, right? You think about other players in the space, and this is something that we as an organization are having an eye towards is, at least within my small group, we are B2B2C, you think about a Square, you think about a PayPal, a Venmo, a Braintree, a lot of those guys, you know as a consumer. However, maybe us at JP Morgan Chase, you might not necessarily think of us as that payments processor or someone that powers a lot of that experience within some of those software platforms. And so that's something that we're looking at, really doubling down on as well, is how do we make our brand as synonymous with some of those other players within the FinTech space? Because as a big bank you know us, but as a FinTech, you might not necessarily. And so those are attitudes that we're trying to shift as well.
Ajay Gupta: Gerard, you have written extensively about mobile location and location intelligence in general. Would love to hear a little bit more about your thoughts on this?
Gerard Vicente: Yeah, that's a great question. So during my time at GroundTruth, I was the marketing lead for channel partnerships. And so what that means in layman's terms, and I will say, I left GroundTruth three or four years ago, so I'm sure the way that they talk about themselves and the narrative may have been adjusted or changed since then. But our channel partnerships group sold our mobile location technology and our data to media organizations, so that they could package it up as their own white labeled solution to their end customers and so again, a B2B2C model there. And so one of my biggest responsibilities as the marketing lead there, was honestly just brand awareness. How do people think of mobile location as a viable part of their media and marketing mix? And so a lot of the thought leadership that I wrote during that time, was really introducing location as a category. I mean, one of the things that we were trumpeting around that time was, GroundTruth to location as Facebook is to social, as Google is to search, so that was a thing that we really wanted to at attach ourselves to. And so creating location as a category was very much a focus of ours from a thought leadership perspective. And also, it bled into our marketing tactics, where it was very much brand awareness, big splashy events at Cannes, big billboards, prints, buys, big, digital media buys, things of that nature. And so my thought leadership really fed into that strategy.
Ajay Gupta: Awesome. Yeah, we've been trying to do the same with CTB at Stirista, so totally get it. So one of the questions we ask all the guests, is regarding LinkedIn. So given your title and your background, I'm sure you get a lot of unsolicited LinkedIn messages. So we would love to know about one that gets your attention and one that really annoys you.
Gerard Vicente: Yeah, unfortunately, and I'm sure you guys can relate as well, it's more frequently errors on the side of annoying messages versus actual cool or interesting messages. So I'll start there, probably one of the more annoying messages I get, is from expert organizations or consultation organizations, where they'll hit me with a seemingly canned email saying," Oh, Gerard, it looks like you are an expert in fill in the blank thing. Would you happen to have the time to hop on a one hour call where we will compensate you, which is fair." But it turns out I am not at all an expert in retail packaging. So I have no idea at what point anything on my LinkedIn would suggest that I am an expert at retail packaging. And so I think it's less about the extension to consult on a given topic, but it's just the miss on what those topics they think I would be an expert for, right? So that is one of the things that always annoys me. It's like," Oh, wow, cool. I can get paid or I can get a cool recommendation on LinkedIn if I participate in this call." But it turns out I know nothing about this call, so what is the purpose or what is the point? So I get a few of those a week and sometimes at this point I just shrug my shoulders and I just chuckle. But some of the most memorable messages that I've gotten, was just the personal tie. So I went to a smaller school in Los Angeles, Loyola Marymount, go Lions, and someone just said," Hey, it looks like you went to LMU around this date range, I was also there. And I'm pretty sure that we shared a class." Or just really name dropped something very specific about Loyola Marymount. And I didn't take this person up on their offer for a demo or anything, but I did stay in contact with that person. I actually did an informational interview with that person. So I think it just goes a long way and I'm probably stating the obvious, just to have really tailored personal messages, especially if it's one on one, right? If you're going to reach out to someone on LinkedIn cold, do your homework, make sure you have a personal tie, make it personal, make it custom. And I think, that means a lot, that goes a long way. I mean, it just certainly cuts through the clutter and pierces through the noise.
Vincent Pietrafesa: I wonder if those personal expert things, they actually do compensate? I wonder if they do. Have you ever been on one of those Ajay?
Ajay Gupta: I've never actually responded, but I do get some interesting ones. But I will say there was one that wanted to give an iPad and I thought it was a joke, so I gave it to Aaron Raynor and he ended up getting a brand new iPad for one hour of his time, so yeah.
Gerard Vicente: Wow.
Vincent Pietrafesa: Oh, wow.
Gerard Vicente: So they're legit?
Vincent Pietrafesa: So yeah, it is just based on... But they're like,"Oh, I see you're an in knitting." I'm like," I've never knit in my life, where do you get that from?"
Gerard Vicente: Right.
Vincent Pietrafesa: But Gerard, I want to talk to you about this, only because we were talking about it earlier. I was talking about how today at Stirista, they did a scavenger hunt, they were doing activities. We do a lot for company and company culture and I feel a part of that too, even though I'm remote, because we do virtual stuff. But how much does company culture play into how you select a company? Some of your past experiences and now.
Gerard Vicente: Yeah, I would say it's at the top, it's right at the top next to who I would be reporting into, quite honestly. And again, where it's between those two things, you can probably get a better read of your manager, his or her working style, their expectations throughout the interview process, or whenever it is you're looking to make a move or work for an organization. Whereas company culture might be a little bit more difficult to discern, especially in these more virtual remote times, right? And so I think, company culture, especially from a marketing perspective has a huge impact on how I do my job, right? And one of the things that I mentioned earlier, which I love so much about my team and quite honestly, a lot of the organizations I worked for, is a willingness to test and learn, right? Because marketing is such a dynamic discipline, what worked yesterday, isn't going to dictate what works tomorrow, right? So you have to have a team that is supportive if not encouraging of testing and learning, right? Because if you're doing the same things over and over again, what's innovative about that? What's creative about that? Honestly, what's interesting about that, right? And so when I'm looking to work with or work for a new organization, one of the things that I ask, whether it's as a candidate or as a potential vendor or partner is," Tell me about the most innovative thing that you've done recently." And while that's not necessarily a scientific question, the way that I unpack that, really leads me to believe or gives me the confidence in," You know what? This is an organization that I think I can be creative at." Or," This is a partner, where I think I could bring creative ideas forward to." And so that's the way that I think about it as it relates to company culture, just the appetite to do something different, to test and learn, to fail and fail fast. All of those startupy things that people say, I think has gotten watered down over the years, but I still think that there is a level of truth in that, especially from a marketing perspective, when you do want to be at the cutting edge, otherwise quite honestly, you'll fall behind. And so there is a very real tie between company culture and marketing, that I think shouldn't be lost on people as they look towards their marketing approaches or hiring their own marketing teams.
Vincent Pietrafesa: I love that. And what really resonated with me there as well is, that I haven't even thought of is, well, also the person that I'm reporting in to, knowing that and saying," Can I work with this person? What are they about? What are their..."
Gerard Vicente: Yeah.
Vincent Pietrafesa: Wow, that's interesting. Gerard, before we get a closing thought from you, personal side, you're from the Bay Area originally, you're now in my city, ladies and gentlemen, New York City, as you know, Warriors fan. But tell me, what brought you to New York City? What are your hobbies? What do you like doing?
Gerard Vicente: Yeah, no, that's a great question. And honestly, I mean, I could probably talk about this for hours, but I'll save you guys all of that boring stuff. But what brought me to New York, I mean, I guess tackle that first. Honestly, it was the job, it was the job at Comedy Central and to work at Viacom. Prior to that, I was doing the ad agency in Los Angeles, loved it, liked it, but I thought that moving to the brand side, moving to the client side as they say, would just open up doors for me that I feel like may have been left shut, had I not made that move. And so when the opportunity came up to go to such a known brand like Viacom and Comedy Central and to move to New York, it was a no brainer. At that point, I was in my mid twenties and to be in New York, single in your mid twenties, my gosh, it was a good time.
Vincent Pietrafesa: Yeah.
Gerard Vicente: In terms of hobbies, man, so obviously big sports fan, I pull for everything Bay Area sports. I'd be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to the soccer community out here in New York City. So I'm a big soccer player, that's what I played-
Vincent Pietrafesa: Nice.
Gerard Vicente: Growing up, still continue to play. And there was such a dynamic and very close knit soccer community out here in New York. Both as a player and as a volunteer coach, I've really embraced it as my own and so I play Thursday nights, I used to volunteer coach up in the Bronx on Saturday mornings. And that's just something that has been such a part of my experience here in New York and wherever life takes me, I think will continue to be a thing. And so hobby wise, it's sports and then something that I'm trying out, is yoga. I think, especially with the pandemic, with everything that was going on, I just needed an activity to really ground myself and be with my thoughts, as scary as that is. And yoga was that outlet for me, where it was being introspective, moving. I am an active person, so that was something that I picked up during the pandemic and have continued to do moving forward and I love it. So it's a little bit of something about me.
Vincent Pietrafesa: That's amazing. Yeah, no, thanks. That's cool. I'll talk to you about soccer too. Are you a Galaxy fan? Is that who you rooted for when you were in that area?
Gerard Vicente: I was an Earthquakes fan-
Vincent Pietrafesa: Oh, okay.
Gerard Vicente: Which is even more rare, I feel like to inaudible the Earthquakes.
Vincent Pietrafesa: Yeah, that is rare. Yeah, wow. Okay, I was going to say my buddy played for the Galaxy, Edson Buddle, shout out to-
Gerard Vicente: That's awesome.
Vincent Pietrafesa: Number 14, Portchester New York and the US national team. So Gerard, just a final thought, a closing thought to leave us with about reflection of your career thus far. Just anything in the market.
Gerard Vicente: Yeah, yeah. I think something that I'll leave you guys and the listeners with, and this is not meant to be preachy, but something that I was reflecting on the other day as I was having one on ones with my team. And it's the thought about having marketing range and marketing diversity. And I don't mean diversity as from like a DNI perspective, which is obviously very important, but we'll put that conversation aside for a second. But what I mean by marketing range is just having broad experiences across your marketing experience, right? So whether that is in partner marketing, in brand marketing, product, sales enablement, just collecting all of those experiences, I would make the argument will make you a more powerful and impactful marketer. Because at the end of the day, again, I think I said it earlier, what worked yesterday may not necessarily work tomorrow. And so when I'm looking to work with marketers and when I'm looking to either be part of a team or hire a team, I'm looking for generalists, I'm looking for people who have a broad array of experiences that they can pull from. Because again, not every day is going to be the same. And so whether our partner is looking for you to help with their acquisition efforts or all of a sudden, you're pivoting from a brand awareness campaign to a direct response campaign, those will pull on different marketing skill sets. So I think that from a marketing perspective, having diversity and range that spans the different marketing disciplines, is something that will be very important moving forward. And I say that because I feel like there has been such a narrative on," Okay, you're a digital marketing guy, you should only be a digital marketing guy." Or," You worked at Comedy Central? Okay, you're just going to be an entertainment marketing guy." And I would make the argument that I think you can have elements of both or all, right? Because that just primes you to jump into that marketing range and I think that's going to be very important.
Vincent Pietrafesa: I love that thought. And dare I say, you're a testament to that, just due the various backgrounds you've had in different companies, so I love that you practice what you preach, so that's great. Gerard, thank you. This has been an awesome time, we really enjoy talking to you. Ladies and gentlemen, that's Gerard Vicente, VP marketing at JP Morgan Chase. Go check out WePay, wepay. com. This has been another episode of the Marketing Stir, that's Gerard, I'm Vincent, that's Ajay. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you soon.
Vin: Thanks for listening to the Marketing Stir podcast by Stirista, please like, rate and subscribe. If you're interested in being a guest on the podcast, please email us at themarketingstir @ stirista. com. And thanks for listening.
DESCRIPTION
Vincent and Ajay chat with Gerard Vicente, VP of Marketing at JPMorgan, Chase. He talks about how what it all comes down to as a marketer is understanding your audience and how they think. Vincent celebrates 3 years at Stirista, and Ajay is the Spider Pong champion of the office.