Here is a transcript generated by otter.ai of The Content Mix podcast interview with Erika Bianco, on business-to-human marketing:

Carlota Pico 0:12
Hi everyone, and welcome back to The Content Mix. I’m Carlota Pico, your host for today’s show, and I’m excited to introduce Erika Bianco, who is senior Marketing and Communications Manager at MarketAxess for Europe and Asia, and she’s also training to become a certified life coach with a focus on woman empowerment. Welcome, Erika, and thank you so much for joining us today on The Content Mix.

Erika Bianco 0:39
Good morning, everybody. And thanks for having me today.

Carlota Pico 0:42
It’s our pleasure, Erika. Okay. So tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you get to where you are today?

Erika Bianco 0:48
That’s a big question. I’ll try to answer it very quickly. So I’m originally Italian, from a beautiful region in the south of Italy called Puglia. So I really grew up there. But since I was very young, actually 11 years old, my family always would send me to send me away every summer to summer camps to learn English and really to get that international experience. I think they figured out very early that I would have left home earlier than expected. So I did that really for most of my teenage years. And then when I turned 18, I moved to Milan and I studied there, language and businesses at university, Cattolica Università. So I studied there for three years and every year I was trying really to spend half a year in Milan and then half a year somewhere else in Europe or outside Europe to really build my international profile as a person and as a marketing and comms professional. So the first year, I managed to move to Berlin. I was studying German at that point as well. So it definitely helped me polish the language and improve my language skills. The second year, I moved to Copenhagen and then the third year, I moved half a year to Asia, specifically South Korea, which was definitely one of the most amazing experience of my life. And after South Korea, I moved to London. So I applied for business school here at Regent’s University, and I studied management intrapreneurship here in London. And after that I got into the tech and FinTech world.

Carlota Pico 2:24
How exciting! What an international background from Italy to Germany to Copenhagen to South Korea, now in London in the UK. Wow. Okay, yeah. So, tell us about some of your proudest marketing moments to date.

Erika Bianco 2:37
Wow. So I was thinking about that quite a lot. And I have quite a long list. But I have three specifically, that really stick into my into my head that I managed to get during my 10+, 10 years in London. One is when I was working for a content marketing agency called Velocity. They’re amazing. They’re, for me, they’re still the best content marketing strategies. And there, I was working as an account manager. And I had Kimberly Clark as one of my accounts. And one of the projects that they gave us was really to launch a content marketing campaign for engineers, aerospace engineers. So obviously, you know, for me specifically, that was like, I didn’t even know where to start. So I remember we had to study, you know, as marketing people, we had to study the business to really understand what that entailed, you know, entailed and really talk even to the to the engineers themselves, really to understand what what were the pain points, what exactly we had to display in this kind of content content marketing campaign. So for me, that was that was one of my marketing highlights in my career, because we managed to put together an amazing content marketing campaign globally, that got translated also in different languages around the world. It looked amazing, very slick. And honestly, the challenge there was how do you say something so complicated? Have do you communicate something so complicated for simple visual, marketing, marketing comms campaign globally? Also, keeping in mind that it will be translated in different languages. So for me that’s one of the highlights of my career, this aerospace space Kimberly Clark compaign.

Carlota Pico 4:20
Right, Erika, so how do you do that? So how do you take these complex issues and make it really simple for everybody to understand?

Erika Bianco 4:27
I think that’s the key question and also part of the advice that I would give to the new generation or people that are considering a marketing/comms career and I think the key thing is–apart from knowing your audience, which I’m sure everybody has heard over and over again–it’s also knowing the business and really get your skin get, you know, get under the skin of the business, really get a real accurate understanding of what what the business is about, because that will, only the only that will allow you to be a good marketing comms person, I believe. So whether that’s in my case, aerospace, which I had no clue about, or anything else I think that it’s important to take time to study the business before thinking about how to do marketing and comms for it.

Carlota Pico 5:09
Okay, and on that note, what role do you think sales plays in marketing? Do marketing professionals need to know about sales?

Erika Bianco 5:15
I think 100%. because I think you need to know what sales is. And in theory, marketing/comms people should be also fairly good salespeople, because you do need to be able to communicate properly with your customers, or your the sales people customers, and you do need to understand what the pain points of the of the customers are to be able to craft and push the right message. So 100%, I think marketing/comms people that are complete today, they have to have sales skills, as well.

Carlota Pico 5:42
So on that note, Erika, how do you sell your ideas to upper management?

Erika Bianco 5:56
You know, that’s a very good question. And I do think it’s still a challenge for a lot of marketers, right? Maybe in the early stage of their careers. Personally is the favorite part of my job. I think I like I strive in situations like that where you need to convince in a way people that don’t necessarily understand what you do. Luckily I don’t have that problem at MarketAxess–I’m very proud of that MarketAxess has marketing, part of their lifeblood really, but I was in a situation in other companies, where the situations were different, you know, where you really need to convince hard, you know, the top management team. Now, there are challenges in every job even now for me, but it’s more about, I think it goes back to make marketing measurable, make marketing easy to understand–not only for the creative part of it, which is obviously the fun part of you know, marketing as a discipline, but also prove that what you’re saying and what you’re selling to, you know, to this team is actually… that you will be able to measure and report back on. I think that’s still a challenge for a lot of teams, and obviously, there are different ways to tackle that. But for me, that’s the trick when I pitch to a management team, be creative, explain why I think we should be created or bolder, sometimes a bit a bit, you know, outside specific lines, and explain how you’re going to report back on it and be real impact on the business of that specific marketing initiative. Okay, excellent.

Carlota Pico 7:26
So basically measure according to company business objectives.

Erika Bianco 7:31
Correct, yes. So start a marketing and comms campaign, always with one to three max objectives in mind and make sure that you build the campaign in a way that allows you to report back on those three objectives at the end, because that will build your credibility as a marketer, but will also allow you to keep on track with what you’re doing.

Carlota Pico 7:52
Excellent. Okay. Well, could you tell me a little bit about MarketAxess? What is it in a thirty second elevator pitch?

Erika Bianco 7:57
Yes. So I like to define MarketAxess as the Netflix of bonds, which is how we’ve been defined by key target media during the the COVID, you know, during COVID, and the volatility crisis that followed COVID. And what we are really, we are a global fixed income marketplace, and also an S&P 500 firm that offers a trading platform for a fixed income, and on top of that, we also have a data offering and a post-trade offering, which really makes the full trading experience easier, cheaper, and more profitable.

Carlota Pico 8:36
Okay, very interesting. And now moving into COVID-19. It’s a word that we all hate, it’s affected companies, from all industries all around the world and people as well. Could you talk to me about how COVID-19 has impacted your marketing department?

Erika Bianco 8:52
I think COVID-19 has pushed marketing to a different level–or marketers to different leve–because I’m sure I talk for a lot of people as well, but we had a very busy couple of months. Why? Because obviously we were on one side where we wanted to stay creative and relevant and you know, continue with our campaigns as usual, but with obviously business targets in mind, but at the same time, we want to help sales, you know, really continue to deliver that experience with the clients–like the sales couldn’t meet clients in person, so obviously marketing would come in there to figure out ways to keep the that interview interaction going, right? So I think was very how firms handled the COVID-19, I’ll call it “crisis” or period was really different between b2c and b2b as well. Because I think for a while for b2c was about being creative and finding the creative idea of the year I think, for b2b and at least for our business for what we do was very much around keeping, it iwas very much about keeping relevant. How do we relevant? And how do we stay connected and present with our clients? How do we make sure that they have everything they need to trade in this case while working from home, so for us it was very much around staying relevant. And we did it in different ways. But the first one I would highlight, which was the key one for us, we decided to look at what were really our USPs. Right, what were the two, you know, what was our competitive advantage in that moment, and we had two main things at MarketAxess, one was open trading, which is our old overall marketplace. And the second one was data, our data offering. So what we did is we took these USPs, and we really made sure to push the message consistently throughout that period of volatility across different channels. So I think the first one was very much about that. So stay relevant by providing the customers only with the information that they really needed. And the second one obviously that we thought about it from a creative perspective is, you know, how do we make sure that our clients understand that we appreciate the situation, and we know, things are tough for everybody around the world? So how can we make our interactions more more fun? So we looked at, you know, virtual magic shows kind of event, you know, things that we wouldn’t necessarily have stored in a different situation, right? So we did that we started doing internally as well, pub quiz. A lot of, you know, we also try to customize the experience to find, for example, when we would do a webinar, we would also try to create an experience for them outside the webinar. So we would deliver a nice lunch with a personal note by our CEO, for example. You know, so we tried, really, to, you know, we tried to be creative in our, you know, in our own way, but I would say by by being more human. You know, like, really showing customers, we are there. And we want to make sure that they have everything you need from a trading perspective, because you know, you need to keep trading and delivering for your jobs. But at the same time, we want to let you know that we feel you, we feel where you’re going to where you want to make it fun for you and want to make sure that, you know, we can give you part of that, you know, face to face interaction, that experience that we can give you right now.

Carlota Pico 12:21
Right. Absolutely. The art of business to human marketing.

Erika Bianco 12:24
Exactly.

Carlota Pico 12:25
How did you address the different timelines that every person was going through? So for example, when COVID hit and hit first in Asia, and then it hit in Europe, and then afterwards it hidden in the US, right? And, of course, in Latin America, etc. And since you’re responsible for both Europe and Asia, how did you address the different troubles that your audience was going through at different times?

Erika Bianco 12:49
Well, to your point, Asia was the first one that got hit. So definitely, that gave us the chance to test quite a lot of things in region first, you know, in Asia first and before bringing it to Europe. So in Asia, we did a lot of, you know, we had a lot of initiatives that we are now bringing there a bit more to Europe in the US. So I didn’t, we didn’t necessarily time it. But we were in constant communication with our clients to understand what they were going through. So for example, I can give an example now in Asia, we know that not only they, they work already, beyond specific working hours to be able to trade US credit. But they’re still not particularly keen to join, you know, webinars, for example, standard virtual events. So for us for marketing and comms perspective, the challenge was, how can we make that different? So how can we get, you know, how can we engage them and really market this webinar, not like a normal webinar or something that had been more fun for them. So what we did, just to give you an example, we are now considering doing–we have an event scheduled in October–which is what MarketAxess open forums, and we’re going to take the two hours lunch break of our clients. So we’re not asking them to commit to, you know, doing outside of work kind of hours and then we’re going to make the experience a little bit more fun. So again, we’re going to give them a very nice, we’re going to deliver a very nice lunch to their place. We’re going to give them a couple of personalized items. And we’re also bringing a bit of a star speaker to to the mixer. So we’re going to talk about trading, but we’re going to also talk about how we just went through in terms of the remote working kind of lifestyle and workstyle how we can draw parallels with other industries for example, space. So what is the parallel there between what we just went through the financial markets and how that links to other industries. So I cannot say more because it’s a surprise for our clients but that’s what’s going on. So again, it’s just trying to make more, you know, specific events, more interesting and inspirational you know, so the client wants to join it only to hear about us in our products, but also to get something more out of it.

Carlota Pico 15:11
Erika, it sounds like so much fun. Can I join?

Erika Bianco 15:13
Yes, you can!

Carlota Pico 15:16
Sounds like a fantastic way to have lunch. Okay, I’m going to read off a quote by the CEO of Walt Disney, he said, “The heart and soul of a company is creativity and innovation.” Since you’ve already demonstrated in what ways your company has been innovative and creative this year, I’d like to ask you about other campaigns that you think are a great example of brands have just really been able to resonate with their audience during COVID-19 times.

Erika Bianco 15:47
Yeah. So it’s, I have to be honest, I think that the funniest and more compelling kind of campaigns I’ve seen during COVID were in b2c. So that’s a shame, we can do better in b2b! But I do think that the from a b2c perspective, the one that definitely caught my attention was the recent one that Nike did, the “Play Inside, Play for the World” campaign. And it was very much they produced, obviously, one of their amazing ads. And then the objective, I guess, of their full campaign was to stress the need for social distancing during COVID. So they did the ads, and they amplified everything on social media, involving also some of their athletes, like Ronaldo to reach the, you know, the millennials, and also the more adult audience. So I think that was one that definitely got my attention. I find it very creative, and very human. But again, Nike is very good at that. So that definitely resonated. If I looked into b2b, I noticed an increase usage across different brands of LinkedIn Live, and also the poll, the LinkedIn polling functionality. LinkedIn Live, the reason why I think a lot of brands use LinkedIn Live, is because LinkedIn Live is pretty much the video functionality of LinkedIn that allows you to stream so in real time, so I think was very appealing in the b2b space, because would position b2b brands as more human, because they will literally stream an event, instead of doing all the planning and all the you know, signups or, you know, anything, everything that really is behind a usual event, and they will just stream a specific conversation, and I saw different brands using their C-suite, you know, people from the C-suite, and obviously, that is a huge impact right on how a specific brand is perceived. So I noticed that and I also, you know, reading, obviously, I’m a big fan of LinkedIn as a social media channel, as you can see, but I know that those live, those LinkedIn Live videos actually perform much better than not live videos. So they got–if I’m not mistaken–seven times more reactions, for example, and 24 times more comments. So it’s a pretty big impact on, you know, for business. So I noticed that for sure. And the polling one is the second thing I noticed. I’m sure you notticed too as too, as everybody–well, a lot of people–was using the polling functionality on LinkedIn, I think that was also pretty interesting to see. Because I think what people were trying to do is they, they wanted to produce content, you know, relevant content in a timely manner, during a time where everybody was trying to push content to probably to the same audience as well, in a lot of cases. So the polling really allowed people to gather enough insights to produce content in a very quick and in a very short timeframe.

Carlota Pico 18:41
Okay, very interesting spinning off of that response. Why do you think brands are humanizing their company? So b2b brands.

Erika Bianco 18:51
You know, I think there is a bigger answer to that. From my side, I saw the full COVID timeframe, during the true COVID timeframe. I noticed in three different stages for b2b specifically. At the beginning, everybody was reacting, because obviously, nobody expected such a big impact. So everybody rushed into we need to do something right now, whatever that looks like. So the first I saw it happening as there was a first stage that I’ll call “reaction,” then the second stage was during the “relativity,” people kind of stopped and said, okay, we’re cannot just spam our clients, we’re going to just go there, you know, and push content, we need to stop and figure it out, figure out how to engage them. So figure out how we can give them useful information and what they need to know right now and make sure that they come back. So the reaction phase I think, was followed by the engagement phase. And then after that phase, I think there was the humanization. So brands realized that clients definitely needed the product information, you know, the other information to get going with their work, with their day to day work, but at the same time, they wanted to know what brands are doing, from a human perspective. So how… are you doing anything as a brand about what’s happening in the world right now? And I think that that was the shift. So a lot of firms, including MarketAxess, we really stopped and thought about, you know, doing so many great things in the background from a philanthropic perspective, really, to help, you know, the COVID situation in Asia. You know, we did some donation to different charities in the US in the UK. We provided food. So we there’s so many things and we stopped them and said, you know, our clients want to know what we’re doing as well from a human perspective, not only from a business perspective, so we had a bit of a shift there for marketing comms strategy as well. We started mixing a bit of this content really pushing on the product/content mix which could humanized content, and even focus on our employees, what they were doing in their small world for to help the situation. And I think that that’s very important, because it really gives you an idea of what the brand stands for.

Carlota Pico 21:08
Okay, some people call it business to people, other people call it business to humans. I personally like b2h. What are other b2h marketing ideas that our audience can incorporate into their own strategies?

Erika Bianco 21:21
I would say, remember that the clients and the people that you’re trying to target with your marketing/comms plans are humans themselves. So I think that now more than ever, we need to keep that in mind with because everything we do from a marketing comms perspective. So think about, for example, as I was saying before, if you have a philanthropic program going on within your company, think about how you can use that to partner with your clients even more. And that’s something that we did, for example, in market access, and is being very fun and great. Because while you know, you feel like you’re coming together in during this challenging times for the role to really help help the situation apart from instead of going ahead, you know, with just for the business as usual. And the second thing I’d say is to keep that in mind also when you when you talk to your clients, whether that’s on social, whether it’s an email, try to review the tone of voice and how you write specific content, so that it comes across more empathetic for people right now. Don’t just push your content, your product content, aggressively forgetting what people are going through, and also forgetting the fact that everybody’s still working from home. And they will read and perceive their content little bit differently compared to when they are in the office.

Carlota Pico 22:39
Okay, Erika, you also mentioned that you’re sending right now to become a life coach with a focus on women empowerment. How are you going to link that all up to your current job at MarketAxess?

Erika Bianco 22:49
Yeah, actually, it’s a is turned to be easier than I thought because I joined MarketAxess, and now I am meeting some women initiatives in MarketAxess across Europe and Asia, that are part of our diversity and inclusion program. So doing that already, as part of my job, really linked in nicely with my personal, you know, passion, which is really helping women today become more confident, healthier and stronger in their lives and in the workplace. So I just thought that I’m becoming a professional life coach, as well on top of my current job, but would allow me to make a bigger impact on a one to one basis.

Carlota Pico 23:29
Okay, beautiful. And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice about pursuing a career in marketing, what would that be?

Erika Bianco 23:38
I’d say be curious all the time. Never settle for a job–mainly at the beginning of your career–and don’t settle for a job that pays you well, the bigger job that pays you well. Look at what the job really gives you from a learning perspective. So make sure that you go into roles that really help you gain a 360 degree preparation as a marketing and comms professional because that will pay back later in your career.

Carlota Pico 24:09
Okay. And last but not least, before we move into our rapid fire set of questions, Erika, if you could do anything in this world, besides marketing, what would that be?

Erika Bianco 24:21
I would be either a yoga teacher or a sommelier. Because I love food and wine as good Italian.

Carlota Pico 24:31
But who does it better: Italy or Spain? Because we’re big competitors.

Erika Bianco 24:36
Exactly. Well, Erika, let’s move into a set of rapid fire questions which are basically your recommendations for our audience. To get the sections right, I’d like to ask you about your source of inspiration. So professional role model or an influencer that you just really admire?

I would say Bill Gates, Michelle Obama, Steve Jobs and Ann Lee from a content perspective. It’s a long list! I’d say, so you can start with those.

Carlota Pico 25:10
Wow, talk about powerful role models! Okay. What about a book, an event, a community or group that you’d like to recommend?

Erika Bianco 25:22
I’d say there is a book, really an author, that I’m following quite a lot recently he’s called Jonah Berger. He’s also a university teacher, a university professor, and he has written, he wrote a lot of books around the power of communication, how to make a message stick. And I’m currently reading one of these books called “Contagious” which I find very fascinating. So yeah, that would be my recommendation from a book perspective.

Carlota Pico 25:56
Funny enough, my guest yesterday, also recommended “Contagious.”

Erika Bianco 26:01
It’s very good, I think from marketing/comms people, it’s a must-read. And it really makes you think about what you need to keep in mind when you write your content. You know, if you want that to to stick with your audience, so…

Carlota Pico 26:14
Definitely. It’s also a movie though. But the movie’s about a virus, so we probably want to stay away from that during COVID times.

Erika Bianco 26:19
It’s very different from that! It’s not related to any virus or anything. No.

Carlota Pico 26:25
Okay, and last but not least, what’s your favorite app at the moment and why?

Erika Bianco 26:30
No doubt, I’d say Slack. It’s just… why? Because it allows you to be in touch with with people communicate with your team, colleagues, 24/7 very easily and even in a more human way. Because you can you can add stickers and GIFs and things like that. So I’d say Slack because it’s a key communication channel for us right now.

Carlota Pico 26:55
Emoticons! Who doesn’t love a nice smiley face, right? Well, Erika, thank you so much for joining us today on The Content Mix. It was awesome to meet you and to learn about your background experience.

Erika Bianco 27:07
My pleasure. Thank you very much, everybody. And thank you, Carlota.

Carlota Pico 27:11
It was my pleasure, and everybody listening in today. Thanks for joining us on The Content Mix. For more perspectives on the content marketing industry in Europe, check out The Content Mix. We’ll be releasing interviews just like this one every day, so keep on tuning in. Thanks again, have a fabulous day, and see you next time. Bye!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai