Roman Reichelt
101 Great Minds on Music Brands and Behavior
Roman Reichelt, Global Chief Marketing Officer, Credit Suisse
Roman Reichelt is the Global CMO, and a member of the Extended Executive Board of Credit Suisse (Switzerland) Ltd. Roman oversees all Marketing activities of the bank in 52 countries.
Before Credit Suisse, he spent nine years of his career with Switzerland’s leading retail & FMCG company, Migros, in leadership positions, including the role of the CMO. Mr. Reichelt holds degrees from the French Insead, IMD Lausanne, and the Harvard Business School, in addition to a master's degree in media management from the University of Siegen.
As a teenager, Roman's dream jobs included journalist, theatre director, or stand-up comedian - he just loved when he had an impact on people's emotions, beliefs, and, ultimately, behavior. Also, as a marketer, Reichelt influenced client behavior well; thus, he has garnered more than 20 marketing honors, including eight “Effies” for effective marketing and two Swiss “Marketing Oscars," now called Excellence Awards.
“Internal presentations aren’t based on sound and animations; we're using PowerPoint, spreadsheets, and PDFs. It’s easier in the corporate world to present a new logo than it is to present a new sound.”
— ROMAN REICHELT, GLOBAL CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER, CREDIT SUISSE
Uli Reese: What is your position at Credit Suisse, and can you offer any advice to someone starting their career?
Roman Reichelt: I’m the Global Chief Marketing Officer at Credit Suisse, covering all client groups and businesses, from investment banking to wealth management to retail banking. That includes domestic markets [Switzerland] to 52 countries in the world in which we are either wealth advisors, wealth managers, or investment advisors in terms of IPOs and Mergers Acquisitions. I lead several verticals; one is strategy brand and advertising, then data and digital capability unit, and also content and production. Then there are sponsorships and partnerships, client research, and events. On career advice, I've always listened to my gut feeling regarding who will be my boss. Do I want this person to be successful because I like their values? That's how I pick, and I think that’s a positive.
Reese: Today, a brand has no choice but to show up sonically, but many are lagging when it comes to creating a strategy. What are your thoughts?
Reichelt: Sonic is underdeveloped because humans are visual animals which means what we don't see, we don't believe.
It’s problematic because internal presentations aren’t based on sound and animation; we're using PowerPoint, spreadsheets, and PDFs. It’s easier in the corporate world to present a new logo than it is to present a new sound.
That’s a shortcoming of how we communicate internally. As we know: Human-beings react to sound; I read a study on blind dates that said first impressions change if we hear the other person before seeing her. So in marketing, we need to challenge the way we make decisions and the way we present our work to each other.
Reese: Most CMOs recognize that they have amazing opportunities to reach consumers today in a way that didn’t exist 30 years ago, but they feel ambushed by sonic. Does Credit Suisse face the same issues?
Reichelt: I don’t think the new touchpoints and multi-facades of modern-day devices should change how we think about sound. For me, they just make obvious what we know since the eighties. If I ask people, can you remember advertising from your youth, they will start humming the McDonald's song or whistle the Allianz melody. We just have to go back to what we found fascinating when we were younger because that's when we weren’t biased. On the question of strategy, we didn’t have a sonic identity; we had a mixture of beliefs. In the private banking business, some are saying let's just fit in. The sound of the piano in a hotel lobby, for example, feels very much like the good cliché of private conversations. But what helps us fit in will not help us stand out. For that, you need experts who can give you a language to speak about sonic. Most people, myself included, lack the language to express what they want.
Reese: Exactly. You can ask people whether they like Frank Sinatra or Michael Jackson, and they will talk about the way Sinatra sings and moves, and all of a sudden, you realize it doesn't matter what song they sing; it's the sonic vocabulary they connect to. Do you agree?
Reichelt: I agree that it helps. Human beings have a control bias. We don't like that we have a subconscious decision-making process, so we rationalize everything ex-post. But our brain usually has never been rationalizing why we like music. If I’ve never been asked why exactly I like Sinatra or Michael Jackson, my brain might be overwhelmed and starts improvising when you want my rationale: Is it because it’s in minor, the lyrics, the sound of the voice, the speed, or instruments? That’s why there can be misunderstandings when asking clients about this. If a client says, ’I like the voice,' do we mean any kind of voice that sounds like Frank Sinatra, or does he like every low voice? Or does he like the crispy tone in his voice, or did he actually mean the melody the voice was singing? If I talk to a client, both of us lack the language, and that makes it extremely hard to understand. Hence my approach was to test it, test it, test it.
Reese: In that case, is data and measurement important to you?
Reichelt: If I go to Paris, I speak French; if I go to London, I speak English; and if I go to the board, I speak numbers. Not personal taste. Don’t use data just to prove your own personal taste is right. You should always take yourself out of the equation and be able to say: 85% of clients associate this sound with Credit Suisse Period. For instance, why would you be presenting a sonic identity to the board? It's my job to maximize the commercial advantage we get out of our branding, and if we think that a sonic identity is doing that job better than other investments, that should be my risk to take. So, why do some still go to top boards and ask for opinions on details? Chief Financial Officers are smart and sharp in their area but weren’t hired to make an educated decision about sound logo effects on clients. So why do you present it to him? I assume it's pride. Proudly present, look at the creative stuff I’ve done. A CMO should rather present investments & results and be accountable for that.
Reese: You can make a decision and say it’s good in terms of economics, longevity, building brand, etc. And if it doesn't fly, you own it…
Reichelt: I'm trying to compare it to other areas that I don't have enough knowledge about but that I would have an opinion on. For instance, if the facility management decides that all elevators should go five percent slower to save energy, why ask me or go to the board on such a detail? I would trust them to own the trade-off decision in order to fulfill their mandate to run buildings efficiently.
Reese: That's a great point. Can you leave us with your final thoughts?
Reichelt: Marketing and brand management are about loving and respecting people. And if you love and respect people, be it your fellow colleagues, employees, or clients, you care about why, how, and when they decide things. Sometimes they make decisions based on a gut feeling, and sometimes they make them based on identifying themselves with a brand or not. Sometimes it’s because of a good price. So, in the end, if you love and respect people and want to understand their decisions, it will eventually come to the point where you find that your sonic identity becomes part of that subconscious decision-making process. So if your clients are responsive to music and sound, then turn that into an asset.
Note: The interview took place in Zurich, Switzerland on the 8th of November 2022.
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