JP Morgan Asset & Wealth Management's CMO, Rosa Rita

0:00It has never been a better time to be a marketer and that's because we're about to unleash this world where a marketer can really talk to a segment of one and that we have never been able to do. What AI is unleashing is this entire new ecosystem where marketers can really get down to a really microsegmented level and that's going to change the game. Marketing matters. Marketing is absolutely critical. You can have the greatest product in the world. If no one knows about it, it just doesn't matter. People think out of the box it's going to make you more creative but sometimes when you're in a constrained situation that's when a lot of creativity blooms. Barbara, you use Uber Eases, don't you? My husband does. I don't believe in the internet. I didn't know that the internet was faith-based. I'll tell you, you could just buy the car we buck. We have a hybrid. What you buy? I don't know it's that. My husband. The power of brands, ladies and gentlemen. This is Marketing Matters on the Wharton Podcast Network.

1:00Hello and welcome. You're listening to Marketing Matters on the Wharton Podcast Network. This is our weekly podcast where we analyze the latest in advertising, marketing, customer behavior, new product launches, branding, retailing, everything marketing. I'm Barbara Conn, the petty and J.H. Baker Professor of Marketing. And I'm joined by my co-host, America's Feed, the Whitney M. Young Jr. Professor of Marketing and a brand identity theorist. And today, we're going to go into the very interesting world of asset and wealth management. And we're going to speak with Rosa Rita, who is the global Chief Marketing Officer for J.P. Morgan. Welcome, Rosa. Hi, Rosa. Thank you for hiring me. So, this is a very interesting time, I believe, from talking to you in the idea of what financial industry, what a big company like J.P. Morgan is doing in asset and wealth management.

2:00And I know that you have a very interesting job, but there you're the global Chief Marketing Officer. And so what that means is I guess you provide all the marketing information going out for your financial advisors, et cetera. And typically, tell us what typically marketing meant in this world. And then you can tell us what you're doing now. But typically, what was your job? Yeah, sure. I mean, if I looked back 10 years ago, marketing was very reactive in this industry, in this particular world of asset and wealth management. It was a much more sophisticated and then balanced paradigm on the consumer side. So if you think about 10 years ago, it would be very reactive in terms of, I need this to get in front of a client. Or I need to tell a client about a new product, or I need to really put together a pitch book to introduce a new client. I need to video a thought leader because we have a view of the world or what's happening from a macroeconomic perspective. And now 10 years later, that entire

3:01paradigm is shifted in terms of marketing being a partner and a voice that actually can introduce new clients to the world of asset and wealth management. You don't have to just rely on the advisor to build that relationship. We're very much building that relationship with our target audiences as well, which is really exciting. That's a real big shift to be able to come in. And not just react to that kind of thing. So that's a big shift right there. And what I know, you're a leader in and maybe the industry leader in. I don't know, but possibly on the use of AI in this. Because everybody's talking about this. You cannot have a conversation in marketing without somebody mentioning what's the role of AI. But the idea of using AI initiatives in this particular industry in asset management and private banking business. I'm not even sure what that could possibly mean. So what does it mean to use these AI to build initiatives for

4:04your marketing programs? Let me take a step back before you even get into the world of AI. Before you even get into the world of AI, I mean, just understanding these audiences and using data in a way to arm marketers and arm the team with the science behind who are we talking to and like what is so important about this audience, right? I think that the challenge we have or the opportunity that we have in asset and wealth management is these are very finite audiences. And the consumer universe, I'm not talking to 50 million people. I'm talking very finite audience. And I'm either going to like get get the attention or they're going to believe or they are going to resonate with what we're saying or they're not. So there's a great responsibility. I mean, you could pretty much screw the whole thing up very quickly. Yeah, I imagine to write and you're not really understanding the data behind what will really resonate with what what I bring to pay for this audience will allow them to like think about JP Morgan in a different

5:07way. Like how can I actually serve like how can we be advisors, right? In the same tone in terms of all of the care that it bought if an advisor was sitting here with you, it would know who you are that would know what's important to you. How can marketing it's like if it starts with the data. And I think that it's like such an it like before we get to AI just understanding that piece and piecing together the data to really understand like the psychology and the behavior and how we can be helpful is the first key. I want to continue to unpack this historical context that Barbara opened up here. And I want you to comment on this Rosa because you said something that was interesting resonating with this consumer who was now out there. It's a finite consumer. Talk a little bit about because the consumer, there was at some point the internet came online and now you could get all kinds of information about assets and things that you can learn about financially on your own. Talk as was there. So when the consumer suddenly had this aperture open up, what was that? What was that impact? Did they are they mislearning things? Are you having to go in like help help them learn sort of

6:09unlearn the wrong things that they were. Let me ask you a question. I thought you were saying what I was going to ask but sounds like you say you're indifferent. You're looking at what the consumers looking at. Not the information that's available about the consumers. That what your question is. So now I'm more or less trying to understand when consumers came online. And now it's not reactive. They have something that they can respond to or they have when you tell them something to resonate with them. They can check it against something that they think they've learned because the information is now out there to go and learn on these things on the internet and stuff like that. So I'm just wondering did that complicate things that the consumer decision making process get screwed up? Oh, so how did they use that information to make their decisions? Yes. And did you have to correct them? Do they have to unlearn stuff? I mean, what was what was that process like? Totally not my question. Well, Barbara, we'll get to your question. Just one second. The question in terms of this democratization of being able to find information anywhere and

7:16hear here from different people. I mean, think about social media and like just hearing about influencers there and who do you listen to? I actually think that's what made our jobs easier on on the JP Morgan side only because we already had this grant that is known for being a steady place to go. I mean, over 200 years going through all sorts of cycles, market cycles, ups, downs, sideways. And then also like we're here. You know we've been here and being a fiduciary I think helps that. The brand helps us. Oh, in that case, right? I feel that that was like a great moment for us because yes, there's all this information out there. I mean, you're probably wondering is this right? Is it wrong? Can I trust the source? So from that perspective, I felt like that was a great thing for us because it allowed us to use the power of the brand and translate it into a place you can trust, right? But then the second piece was a place you

8:16can trust. But now, how am I not just giving you commoditized stuff? Yeah, so that's where I'm going to get anywhere. So let me then we filled in on America's question now to understand it. And because what I was asking was like, what information do you fund out about the customers that then you can use the tailor to the marketing? So he was asking like, what the marketers are looking at and you were in a good place for that. But then you're going to look at their reaction or what behaviors they do and build you and marketing materials on them. So like, what are the behave? What are the, what are the kind of things you looked at in customer behavior once you could access that data? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, like, that's where the partnership with the, with our advisors really comes into play. So not only doing, like, not only can we watch and see if you're engaging in certain thought leadership, if you happen to be reading something that you're very interested in on our website, if you happen to be signing up and registering for events on certain topics, you've actually come and then being able to combine the, the importance and

9:23really rich conversation people are having from our CRM system. He's a really incredible picture and allows jobs so much better than what we've been doing. Of course, that makes perfect sense. I mean, I know in the parallel industry, like healthcare, like as a patient, you go there and you know, you got this weird ache and you're like looking up all information about the weird ache, apparently from what you're saying, I don't do this, but other people must do this, like that they look up all this information. They're worried about investment or they're worrying about this or that. They're trying to teach themselves to America's point. So they've become smarter on this stuff and you can see what they're interested in and where their vulnerabilities are and things like that. And then you can build marketing that addresses the needs that they have. And can you tie that behavior to demographics? Like, do you know those people like who's wealthy and who's not or who lives in the market you want to serve or whatever? Yeah, so I mean, like that's

10:24the beauty of being like, I can't do that everywhere across the globe, but in the US, we can do that quite readily because we know we have all of this information on demographics to understand where are target audience. So when I mentioned, yeah, we're in a position where we're really serving on the private bank business, we're serving a very finite audience, right? And we want to make sure our message is getting to that audience, right? There are other places within JP Morgan that serve other audiences as well. So like, there's a home for everyone here, but like the home that I'm focused on is this finite, right? So and, and you know, the the the audience, right, is so much more sophisticated. So like commoditized or generic kind of advice isn't going to cut it, right? Like the educational stuff just isn't going to cut it. It's really about understanding who these individuals are, who the families are, and really saying something smarter, giving a piece of advice that perhaps didn't hear somewhere else, right? That's the art and science piece

11:25of it in terms of like, what can you put together in terms of I'm telling you something that's like maybe someone else didn't tell you or maybe the way that we're looking at it or maybe this is what we're talking to five other clients about today. Interesting. That we want to make sure you know about. Interesting. Let me ask a quick, I'm going to ask a real quick question on this building on this point. So as colleagues at JP Morgan are undertaking an understanding of being proactive about helping consumers understand how the JP Morgan brand will take them into a very positive financial future. How does this play out? By the way, I'm doing marketing for you right now, Rosa. So JP Morgan, I love the brand. Well, I'm curious because like when something, let's say, I just give this, I don't know if to the extent you can talk about this, but something happens, let's say, new in the market like crypto. And so people show up and they're like trying to understand what is this thing? I have no idea. JP Morgan is a thought leader in helping us be and being basically a trusted advisor and helping us understand more about this potentially new investment class,

12:31let's say, talk us through that as you are guiding consumers. Visa Vita JP Morgan brand. How do you walk that line of, you know, staying as an top of thought leadership, but also providing the type of value and important, you know, risk information that they need to know to be able to make really good decisions under the sort of the ear mark of the JP Morgan brand. I think in the conversation around crypto, like one of the places we would start is like what hype not to believe and like what can, like what not to trust and like where things could go wrong. So I think it actually started with that lens in terms of crypto, in terms of you're all the things that people are telling you that you should really take a step back and really analyze, right? In that particular instance. And then it was thoughtfully like what's our reaction to this? Like what will we build or what we will think about within the JP Morgan like ecosystem that will be like the opposite of all those bad things that we call you about, right? Sometimes we're not first to the market in it because

13:37we're kind of stepping back and thinking about like what should we be really doing like thinking about the consumer, right? So sometimes like it's being first to market to say, hey wait a minute, you're the things we're worried about. You're the things we're seeing. Here's why this might not be trustworthy. And then in other moments, why I thought you were going to go is like there are just moments that happen, right? In terms of like all of a sudden the market is super volatile. What is that? I know kidding. Like almost every day. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Now what is it when the price of oil is like over a hundred dollars a hour? What is this right? That's actually where I feel that we have the most like personalized kind of advice because we're not that's what we're speaking about in these old walls. And really what our jobs are here in marketing is to kind of let you into that. Like let the consumer into that. Like here's what it means. Here's what we're thinking about. Here's what's happening in terms of market volatility and then its speed being their first, right within a. And mobile. So so you to your point and why you stop

14:43the conversation, you could do all of this in some sense before AI. Like you were doing this for a while just having the data. And that was very different from the way you described the history 10 years ago. Having the data allows you to be more proactive, immediate, like you said. Now we know people are scared about this. I can get to you right away with exactly what's on your mind. So you already had that. Like so what does AI? What does AI buy you? I mean, well, I'd have to say like it's never been a better time to be a marketer. So anyone who's I'm sorry, Rose, Rose, I'm sorry. Can you just repeat that? I want my, I don't want to get this out. I want to make sure this is on the record for all my students. I'm doing your marketing now. It has never been a better time to be a marketer. And that's because like what I've just described, yes, it's really good, right? And we could talk to people in like using segmentation like and put people into segment. But we're about to unleash this world where I like a marketer can really talk to a segment of one. And that we have never been able to do. So we've been able to test

15:46like ABC testing, do different versions of things personalized based on segments. But what AI is unleashing is this entire new ecosystem where marketers can really get down to like a really, really, really microsegmented level. And I would think at some points, like a very personal segment of one. And that's going to change the game. And why can AI do that in a way your day to didn't wasn't able to do it before? I mean, if you go into code code or you go into code and just see what it can do today, think about that from like a platform that we can now build for marketers to actually do their work differently and think about their work differently. And now if I have this data and I know Barbara, this is like everything that I think you're worried about or things that you've been engaging with, right? Wow, what's my, what am I going to do for you? What kind of advice am I going to give you personally? Because I have now this platform and I have AI

16:47that's going to help me generate all of this like very quickly and get it to you. And I can do let me ask you a question. Then this goes back to America's is original question, which I finally understood. But if AI can do that, why do I need JP Morgan? Like, why can't I just do it myself? Yes, because it's going back to this commoditized generic advice. So like the human in the loop still has a brain and the human in the loop still has advice to give you. The way we're thinking about AI is it's being able to get you that very personalized advice within a marketing ecosystem. So imagine a world where like when an advisor talks to you, but you might not talk to that advisor, you're busy, you're going about your life, but you go to a website. And really, what is a website anymore? Like it can be dynamic and it's based on or I know you. Here's what I like here is that here's what your top article looks like. Here are the things that I'm positioning for you.

17:48And then you might get an email or a newsletter. Again, it's highly personalized based on what matters to you. Right? You might be a media ad. Again, it's on something that matters to you. And now you're in this entire ecosystem as you go about your life, but now you're getting very relevant personalized advice. Like from the best thinking that we have here, we're letting you in on it versus what I used to do in the past. Yeah, let me build on that point Rose. I love that point. I love this because to your point, Barbara, what I'm seeing is a proliferation of lots of platforms that are showing up that can do AI related sorts of things. And the question becomes to Barbara's point, why would you not do this yourself? And part of the answer is I don't have time unless I'm and unless I'm personally invested in like financial topics and that's my jam, you know, there's a million other things that I and that's where the GP Morgan brand comes in because that trusted brand now steps in and unleashes agentate power to automate more things and to create more opportunities

18:51to to personalize really important, powerful financial advice and things like that. And to me, that opens up the entire world in the sense of now, you know, I don't have to try to do everything even though I can because the trusted advisors are there to help me and do it for me essentially, which is a to Barbara's point, you know, the reason why I would stay out of this because I just don't have time to do all these things by myself, no matter how great cloud is I need someone to come in and sort of get that efficiency. I mean, is that part of the the value proposition that you yeah, the other thing that we're finding, which is interesting and I don't know if you're seeing this as like even with these agentic and AI tools, like the creative people here are always using it the best way like the creative people using the creative tools the best here. Okay, like I could go in there and play around with it, but like you really want this thing to like take off, give it to a create, give it to a top notch for you to person. In that same banging, right, you want some of these financial tools to really talk take off the advice, give it to like your best advisor in terms of the one that right. So those tools are like those tools are still we're

19:58finding the best in the hands of the people who know the craft. No, that makes sense, that makes sense. So now, and I like that idea, it goes back to the idea of marketing, it's not, you know, going to be replaced by AI, it's going to be enhanced by AI. One of the things just historically, was a really big issue with financial advisors is this area of trust. I mean, you hear all these stories about birdie made-offs and all these other things. I mean, this is an area where you've got to do trust. So, I mean, I have to trust my advisor, but now that you get the AI in there, how does that, how does trust work in a world that's mediated by AI? Yeah, it's a, it's a compliment, right? So we're not trying, like that trust, right, primary is still from the advisor. I don't see those relationships, like especially with something like related to your money, your future, your family, your goals, right? It should, it should be primarily with the advisor, right? We're trying to compliment the advisor. We're trying to take the best of what the advisor is saying, the best of what our economists are saying, the best of

21:04like the inside baseball, the things that we're talking about here when something important happens, and AI allows us to get that to you quickly, whereas in the past, right, the day would go on, how would I even get that to you? We've already had the meetings, we've already had the discussions, right? In the moment, we can take that and like let you in on it, right? While it's happening, and that's the difference. We're not trying to replace the advisor or replace the advice, we're trying to get you like the inside view of what's really happening when something really goes wrong or goes wonderfully in JP Morgan, like how do we mobilize? What are we talking about at how do I share that with you? So that's one of the questions I had. Whenever you see, especially in financial industries, I've watched financial industries, you know, go across the last 25 years. There have been a lot of changes. First, when data came in and now AI, and there was two issues that I thought were interesting. One, the customer trust issue, which is a really big issue in financial services, because I'm trusting you with my fortune. I do not want you to do something,

22:07but the other side of that is to get the agents or the salespeople or whatever the advisors, I guess you call them the advisors, to trust you and AI. And like typically, the advisors don't trust technology because they're afraid they're going to be replaced. I mean, and you're not talking like that. You're talking about it as an enhancement, but I could imagine some resistance on the side of the advisors, like, I don't think this is a good road to go down because I want to make sure my relationships are mine and they're personal and that's always been a fight with JP Morgan and the advisors who owns the customer. And I think the more the advisor invests in these AI solutions, they may feel insecure. And you've got to counter that. I mean, a lot of the folks we're talking about here are to enhance the advisor and enhance the efficiency per se. So like, imagine world-ramin advisor and I'm spending all this time trying

23:07to schedule a meeting with you or I'm traveling to meet you or I have to like download my thoughts and like put my notes into a system. Right. A map to a world where like that's all taken away, that means I have more time for you. Oh, that's a great challenge to do the really high value stuff and not all other stuff that was dating up like that. And I think that's why I think that's a really powerful way to work in part. Absolutely. I didn't know you could do that. So the AI helps save the advisor time too. Sure. We do things they don't want to do and let them do what they want to do. I think I just had a meeting with you now in the in the old world. I'd have to like take notes and then put them into a system or like, God, I would do them into a system so I wouldn't remember. But now that happens on the fly, I could take my phone and just like with your shin like half notes. And then I could also give you like if we talked about five things. And you said, oh, I'd really be interested in these five things. I can get them to you right and in there. Yeah. AI is this together and saying, you're the barber needs. Yeah. I love that point. It's

24:13an interesting. I was listening to an example discussed by an economist, his name is Justin Wolffers. And he was saying that he was making the point. This is your point, Rosa. He was making the point about technology. And he was pointing out that it was very interesting that when the technology changed where we could actually have ATMs outside counting the money and giving money that the interesting thing that happened was that the number of bank tellers actually went up. And the point was this is man, if the technology is managed correctly, which is what you're saying, Rosa. And what will happen is that the human talent can become, can get better at what it really needs to, this barber's point as well, focus on that relationship building part and all this other stuff, which is kind of the work that needs to get done to sort of, you know, be a pillar for that relationship that could get automated and like be part of an ecosystem where everyone's learning information. Is that a fair, more than just intelligence. It's also efficiency. It's also efficiency as well. Well, it's all the note we call the no joy worm. You'd have to, yes. By the way, Rosa, I have a lot of no joy work in my life. I'm just going to tell you that

25:16someone showed this to the dean. So Rosa, we only have a couple minutes left, but I'm really curious. You've been in this business for two decades. You've seen a lot of changes. What kind of conclusions are you reaching about all this and what do you see for the future? I mean, I can't like, I mean, what a time to be alive. Like if all the times in the world are like this to happen now, I really see a world where the impact of marketers is going to rise exponentially. I love it. So I feel like we had a lot of what I'm going to call like logistical or no joy work that we'd have to do like in terms of workflows and processes to just be able to create things and now that entire paradigm is shifting. I love that. So that's what I'm most excited about. Yes. The paradigm is shifting, paradigm is shifting and the worth of a marketer is increasing exponentially. So that's why I'd say it's never been a better time to be a marketer.

26:17Love that. And by the way, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Barbara. I swear to goodness. I'm the first day of class where I speak to all of my Wharton MBAs, Rosa, who come into my class, they're all finance people and they're like, oh my god, here's America. It's talking about marketing. I'm going to say, don't listen to me. Listen to what JP Morgan said. Yeah. Well, that's our marketing. And I want to play this clip. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's very, very cool. Yeah. Very cool. So when this is a new platform, when are you releasing this new platform? It's some of this AI generated stuff. It's actually brand new, right? Yes. Yeah. I mean, like what's great about JP Morgan is like at the corporate level, we've already released across across the firm, like an LLM suite. So already that efficiency is already in play. We're in the works on, you know, building our platform. It'll be out within the next quarter. So look for our press release. Oh, that's exciting. Yeah. Well, Rosa Rita, thank you so much for joining us. Rosa Rita, who's the global chief marketing

27:22officer at JP Morgan. And if people are interested in learning more about this, where can they go to find that out? Well, we have, that's a bluntness, but we have this great Harvard Business School case that talks about everything that we're doing. Oh, that's cool. And JP Morgan. Yeah. So you could go, you could go read that. And you'll really get an insider's view of everything that's interesting about from the advisor plan, from the marketing lens and the sales ones. Yeah, we're going to get, we're going to get on that in America's. Anyway, thank you very much. And thank you all for joining us today. That's all we have time to for. We'd like to thank our producers, Deanne Simpkins, Aaron Trin and Marissa Rina. And thank you all for listening. We'll be back next week. Until then, this has been Marketing Matters on the Wharton Podcast Network on Barbacan here with America's Read. Thank you for joining us on Marketing Matters, a podcast from the Wharton School. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe,

28:22rate, share and leave a review. Until next time, keep innovating, stay inspired and join us again. Have a great week. This has been a Wharton Podcast Network production.