How Equifax is educating and empowering Aussie consumers
In this episode of The CMO Show we welcome Roni Millard, CMO at Equifax — a company becoming more visible at a time when we really need them to be.
It’s a world of big data, machine learning and lots and lots of numbers, but it’s storytelling and authentic human connections that are taking Equifax to another level. Hit play below to hear Mark’s conversation with Roni.
Going to the dentist, clearing out the gutters, telling the kids about the birds and the bees... There's a lot of things we humans know we should do but tend to avoid given the opportunity.
So, when you’re a marketing leader of an organisation that’s actively asking people to engage with some uncomfortable truths, what’s your approach?
For this episode of The CMO Show we’re pleased to welcome Roni Millard, CMO at Equifax.
The global credit bureau was once considered a somewhat faceless organisation, however Roni and her team are determined to change that. They’re working hard to build stronger connections with everyday consumers and empower them to adopt healthy financial behaviours.
“There are all those inside jokes that occur about marketing being the colouring-in department or the fluffy department but my team at Equifax takes pride that we are not that,” says Roni.
“You come to us if you have a story and you need it translated into something that when it goes out to the consumer or the business, it's actually going to be purposeful. It's going to change their lives in some way because it will benefit them.”
The education campaign is important. Research by Equifax shows 50% of Australians don’t know how to access their credit report, with many more unaware of the information it contains. Roni says that in some cases, this lack of awareness can lead people to be financially excluded.
“We are in a world where you've got to take ownership, you've got to understand how the system works so that you can take part and be empowered,” she says.
“That goes back to our mission, which is allowing people to live their financial best, because you can only do that if you know what information is there about you.
Keen to hear more about how Equifax is helping Australian consumers and businesses live their financial best? Hit play on the player above to hear Mark’s conversation with Roni.
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Credits
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The CMO Show production team
Producer – Rian Newman
Audio Engineers – Ed Cheng & Daniel Marr
Got an idea for an upcoming episode or want to be a guest on The CMO Show? We’d love to hear from you: cmoshow@filteredmedia.com.au
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Transcript
Participants:
Host: Mark Jones
Guest: Roni Millard
Going to the dentist, clearing out the gutters, telling the kids about the birds and the bees. There are a lot of things we humans know we should do, but tend to avoid given the opportunity. Sometimes it’s because they hurt, they’re hard work, and other times, well, they're just plain awkward.
So when you're the marketing leader of an organisation that's actively seeking people to engage with some uncomfortable truths, what's your approach?
***
Welcome back to The CMO Show. I'm Mark Jones, and my guest today is Roni Millard. She is CMO at Equifax. Now let's talk about Equifax. You could be one of two people here. The first is what's Equifax and why should I care? And the second is, you know full well what they are. And learning about a credit bureau isn't high on your list of priorities.
Well, I want you to hold those thoughts because this turned out to be a very illuminating conversation. Roni and her team are working hard to build stronger connections with everyday consumers and empowering them to build healthy financial behaviors and improve their credit scores.
This is the world of big data, machine learning, and lots and lots of numbers. But it's also a story about storytelling and authentic human connections that are taking Equifax to another level. And you're going to hear that come through as we talk about the marketing activities and also through Roni herself, who has a great story of her own. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Roni Millard.
Mark Jones
Roni Thanks for joining us.
Roni Millard
Thank you for having me, Mark.
Mark Jones
Now I want to just tap into a bit of energy and vibes that I'm picking up here because it says in your buyer that you are energetic and charismatic and we only just met, but I'm picking that up already. What is it that makes you tick?
Roni Millard
Good question. My whole life, I have had enormous amounts of energy where I haven't known what to do with it. I thought, "Okay. Let's put it into storytelling." Storytelling is something that if told well will resonate, and that's where you will start to build relationships and have a very fruitful and interesting life.
That life is ... If I take you back just a little bit, I am of Egyptian heritage. I was born in Egypt to two Egyptian parents. We immigrated to England when I was two, and then from there I lived a couple of decades in England and fell in love with an English man.
That English man decided that we should travel the world and make our way over to Australia for life down under where we thought we could build our family. Twelve, 13 years later, we have three children. They are 11, 8, and 4. We have a dog and life is absolutely insane and you need energy to keep up with that.
Obviously, I'm working at Equifax. But before then I dabbled in all sorts. I've had a consultancy business. I have done all sorts of wonderful things across my lifetime. Feeling very blessed. But yes, that energy is still very much over-spilling every day.
Mark Jones
Well look, as a father of four, I can empathise with the energy that's required and I salute you for how much energy you're retaining. It's fantastic. I want to know before we get into the Equifax story, I always really feel encouraged when I meet marketers who love marketing.
Now I know I don't want that to sound pandering. But there is something about it that you love and I have a suspicion that there might be something there that's encouraging or interesting for people.
Roni Millard
Yeah. Absolutely. I think for me, marketing has certainly changed over the decades and I always look and have always looked at it as storytelling. I know storytelling as a term has only come to life in the past few years. But for me, if you have the responsibility or you have the power to try to resonate with somebody, it's just the 1-0-1 in terms of chemistry and rapport.
You need to make sure that who you are talking to, A, you understand that audience and what they're about and what interests them. Then from a marketing perspective, you try to put together pieces of a story that will resonate. It's the 1-0-1 things that you learnt, if you studied marketing, it's the "what's in it for me?" What are you telling them that will actually make sense and have them hooked and have them engaged.
We know about story brand as a framework now has become a thing, which is when you tell a story, you are not the hero, it's the recipient that's the hero. Again, how do you talk to them in a way that will have them appreciate that what you are saying will benefit them in the long run?
That is what marketing essentially is for me. There are all those jokes that occur. It's colouring in department and it's the fluffy department. For me, certainly at Equifax, I take pride as do my team that we are not that. Don't come to us if you want a banner ad on the website or you want a bit of copy changed on X collateral.
You come to us if you have a story and you need it translated into something that when it goes out to market, when it goes out to the consumer or the business, it's actually going to be purposeful. It's going to change their lives in some way because it will benefit them. That is what I love and I feel very blessed to work at Equifax because what we do is purposeful marketing. It actually changes lives as the game changer.
Mark Jones
You touched on something that I think is quite relevant for any CMO, which is that this concept of making the customer the focus of your activities in market as well as an organisation is, I'd suspect, or in fact I know is an ongoing issue. It's a tension.
From a C-suite perspective, we're in it to make money. We've got a purpose. Yes. But we also have a mission and there's this tension between what we are doing and what we need to do and how we're going to bring these people along, sell to them. Selling is about me in terms of what I can get out of it.
I'm generalising grossly here, but what's your take on how you change the hearts and minds of leaders to embrace the idea of customer that you just spoke about?
Roni Millard
Yeah. I love that question. God, where do I start? That's a very layered response. You are right, obviously, it's about the revenue. Whatever company you work for, it's privately owned or listed. It's about shareholders. It's about making money. Investors, obviously, return on investment and getting bang for buck.
But in doing that, it means that you have to be really clear about the product and the service and then making sure that your communications count. If I take it back to Equifax, the way that we have positioned marketing as a function is critical for me to be able to do what I need to do, which is to capture the hearts and minds of the people we're trying to influence and engage with and make money from, but also to do that in a genuine and authentic way.
How I have always done that is to first define, okay, what is marketing as a function? What's our north star? Why do we wake up in the morning as marketing professionals? What we did was we went through our positioning statement. Nothing to do with the brand, but just marketing as a function. What's our mission and what's our vision?
Then once you get the buy-in from the marketing team, then you're able to align everyone so that when you set your KPIs and the metrics and all the things that are going to help move the needle in the company, everything should be much more slick. That the next part of that was, "Okay, marketing as a function, I've got product on one side of the assembly line, imagine, and I've got sales on the other side."
What we did as a team was we said, "Okay. Product are all about obviously the product, the features, the benefits, the longevity of what we try trying to sell." They give us the facts, they give us the content. Then it's marketing's job to take that and translate it into authentic communications, into the "what's in it for me," into the narrative that is actually going to inspire and engage.
Then we take that with a view to giving it to sales. Because from sales perspective, my view is that marketing are equal partners with those two functions. But ultimately sales wants to take what marketing have given them and turn them into conversation starters. Sales need to be able to obviously have a rapport, build up that chemistry, people buy from people that they like.
Mark Jones
Can we jump from that to Equifax and how you approach your job, how you apply those ideas? First question of course is what is Equifax?
Roni Millard
Sure. Equifax, the old school term is credit bureau, but we are breaking down those shackles. We are far more than a credit bureau. We are a data and analytics and tech company. Essentially because of all of the data that we have that we sit on, we're able to turn that into wonderful insights, information that will then help consumers and businesses and government agencies alike to make better informed decisions essentially.
That's what we do and that's our mission, that's our north star, is that we want to help people live their financial best. It's because of that data and that insight and our fabulous tech that we've got, that we are able to make that mission come true, helping people live their financial best.
Mark Jones
I'm picking up a bit of a purpose statement in there. You are one of quite a few highly regulated, as you say, legacy, known as legacy credit bureaus, these data organisations. You sell both to businesses that want the data that obviously are in the process of making loans, and consumers who can get their credit score, right?
Roni Millard
Yep.
Mark Jones
What makes you different though? What's the secret sauce for Equifax?
Roni Millard
Yeah. Great question. I mean, the data that we have is unmatched and unrivalled. No one has the amount of data that we have and nobody has the richness. We've been around for 60 plus years. When you tie that in with also the tech, and that's why when you asked about who we were and I said it's a data and analytics, but also a tech company.
The AI explainable machinery that we have, the modernised version of that tech that we hold that enables us to make such decisions that are so much more predictive than ever before. That is our unique value proposition is it's just unrivalled.
The fact that we can offer both information on the commercial side and the consumer side makes us ubiquitous. The way that I look at it is that we are part of the Australian economy. If you were to take out, when I tell friends, what do you do when you have that barbecue question?
It's like, "Well, if Equifax wasn't here anymore, actually it would make a huge impact on the Australian economy because we have the depth and breadth of the companies that rely on us and the consumers that rely on us to make their financial decisions." If we were not here tomorrow, there'd be a massive impact to the Australian economy.
Mark Jones
Can you give us a couple of quick examples? Obviously I'm thinking about home loan approvals and credit card approvals. What else?
Roni Millard
Yeah. If you think about those audiences, those personas that don't have a credit file or have a thin credit file. At the moment there are about 2.8 million Australians who have either thin or no credit file. That means in terms of their financial footprint, there isn't one.
For them to be able to access credit and live their financial best becomes quite challenging for them. Now, those types of people could be students. You're coming out of uni, you're starting your life difficult to get a home loan because the banks, the financial institutions have no idea who you are.
They can't vouch for you paying them back their money if they hand you a loan because they've got no footprint. If you think about people who may have taken a break from life, they may have come back from a long illness, they may have come out of the marriage breakup and divorce, which can obviously get quite murky, again, they need to start again.
How does that happen? Or even a migrant, like myself coming to Australia 12 years ago, I had no financial footprint, so how was I going to get a loan for a car, let alone a house? When you think about those consumers, what Equifax does is we help you regain or help you get back some credibility so that you can live your financial best and get that car and be part of life's moment.
Mark Jones
This is getting to the heart of why I wanted to speak to you, in addition to your inspiring enthusiasm for the field of marketing.
This conversation, I think for many people is deeply uncomfortable. Anything that's uncomfortable and awkward, I want to know about it. It could just be my perverse sense of humour. But if you say to anybody in Australia, how's your credit score? I reckon 99% of people won't know.
Secondly, many people won't know what you're talking about. Now, if I compare the credit landscape in Australia to the US and I think also Europe, I suspect a higher degree of literacy or at least a better understanding as to why some of these things we're talking about actually matters.
Then just to build on that, again, the other reason for having this conversation is that to be talking to the head of marketing at Equifax really does beg the question, why?
Now this is a company that's historically been invisible to most people. Why now become visible? Why start really more intentionally building awareness? Why start educating people and why should people approach it with a degree of openness and interest versus basically fear, if I could put an emotion on it?
Because if you guys don't say yes, I don't get a loan. That's the bottom line here. That whole dynamic to me is fascinating. I'd love you to ... We got a couple of layers here to build on. But I'd love to get your thoughts about how you're seeing all of these intersecting dynamics.
Roni Millard
God. Okay. Where do I start?
Mark Jones
I did give you a seven-part question there. But I thought it'd probably better to get it all out and then we'll see where we go.
Roni Millard
No. Good. Okay. Let me try and tackle it in bite size chunks. You are right, of course, that different types of people will ... When they're talking about financial affairs, will have different viewpoints. Some might be anxious and fearful, some might be like, "This is too much and overwhelming," and some might be obviously very savvy and be able to navigate their way through the system.
One point that you picked up on, and I can quote some figures here, is that we did some recent research called the Equifax Australian Credit Scorecard, which we do regularly. The research that came out most recently, showed that 50% of Australians know how to access their credit report, only 50%. Then another 70% of those Aussies aren't actually aware of all the information that's in their credit report.
Now, the reason why it's important, and trying to join the dots with some of your questions, the reason why it's important for you as a consumer to understand what your credit report says about you is because if you're not financially literate, it will go against you.
It's not about Equifax saying yes or no, we’re the bridge, we're part of the credit cycle, of course we are, and we provide that information and that insight. But ultimately it's the lender or the financial institution that will use our data and say, "Okay. I'm not going to give this loan to Mark because it could be, okay, whether he's a student or a migrant, we've covered that. He might have a thin or no credit file."
But actually maybe Mark hasn't paid his bill, his Optus bill over the last few months. Maybe he's got a default. Maybe he's been insolvent in the past. All of the things that you have done in your history will be shown on your credit report.
Mark Jones
Yes.
Roni Millard
If you don't know what that is saying about you, then when you go for the loan and you go in all kind of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, "Yep, I'm going to get this wonderful house with my fiance or my partner, or whatever," and you get the "no" and you have no idea why. That is you being financially excluded.
Mark Jones
Yes.
Roni Millard
That to some extent is on you. Because now we are in a world where you've got to take ownership, you've got to understand how the system works so that you can take part and be empowered. That goes back to our mission, which is allowing people to live their financial best, because you can only do that if you know what information is there about you.
Mark Jones
Yes. I got to say, there is a cultural attitude here where in Australia, we think a lot about creating an asset like a home where I'm storing value, and hopefully that value increases. But we don't think about this story to your point where I know that I could go and challenge that Optus bill ... Just even when you said that I felt uncomfortable.
I'm not with Optus, but I've always paid my bills. But I don't know that people can actually go and challenge it. Is that part of the story?
Roni Millard
You can. That's the other point. If there is something on your report, and if you go to the Equifax website, you can actually get your credit report for free. You can get your report every month for three months for free.
Go and just go and look at what's out there. Then if there is some information on there that may be in your perspective incorrect, yes, you can challenge it. Absolutely.
Mark Jones
Yeah.
Roni Millard
You can challenge it. Also, I should say, with all of the frauds that's occurring, and that becoming a story in itself, you need to be even more alert as a consumer as to is somebody taking out a loan in my name? I know of many stories where they go in to get the loan, and then it's like, "No, you can't get the loan."
That is because somebody has taken a loan out in your name and it's been going on for months, for years. But again, because you are not in the driving seat, you don't know and you would never know. That's another reason why you've really got to just take control and be empowered. Be empowered.
****
Mark Jones
If I think about your CMO, marketing, comms, peers might be listening and thinking, "This is actually a really interesting story. It's also a necessarily complicated story. It's an emotional story. How do I do that?" How do I move people along a journey of understanding of financial literacy and maturity? What's your take here?
Roni Millard
From a marketing perspective, I'm going to go into a little bit about the culture, because I think it's very important to your question is. For me to do my job properly, I have to have the right people in my team. Over the last 18 months, I'm really proud to say I have the most amazing high performance team.
They are not passengers. They are professional experts. They are weapons in their own right. The people that I've bought onto the Equifax marketing bus, we all share the same passion for storytelling. We all share the same principles, which is that we want to come in and make a difference, and we're proud to be part of this purposeful marketing.
What we do is we have some amazing tech. We have marketing automation platform tools. We have great content writers, and basically we've got these intelligent minds, marketers who understand how to position communications, how to make them genuine, how to make them non-clinical, and how to go above and beyond.
As a brand, we want to be seen as humanistic. We want to be seen as engageable. We want to be seen as making things easy and not that kind of clinical old school kind of faceless people. Me doing this podcast with you is one of those opportunities. You've given me this wonderful opportunity to share our story. That's just an example of why I pounced on it.
Mark Jones
Yeah. Absolutely. People will pick it up. I have heard, if I can borrow from parallel universe's insurance, superannuation, I've been the MC and a speaker at conferences in those areas, related financial services areas, and they face a similar thing.
I just love the dentist analogy. You know you got to go. You don't really look forward to it. You know what? I can't wait till I go to the dentist next week. That's just my simplistic bucket. Don't really want to do it. Probably have to. Fine. You're going to make it easy. Fine. You might smile at me. Okay. Good. I might come back because of that.
I'm well oversimplifying it. But there is a bucket of financial services that this broadly fits into. I think what I'm hearing you say is that we've got to be creative, we've got to bring the right heart to this, and we've got to think of it from multiple angles. Is that a fair summary?
Roni Millard
Yeah. No. I love that summary. Actually as you were talking, it's something that I say to my kids, because I took my kids to the dentist during the school holidays and they were the same. I didn't want to go. Have I brushed my teeth enough? All these old school.
Mark Jones
Speaking of fear.
Roni Millard
... exceptions. But the way that I talk to my children, my husband and I talk to my children is it's the lens. The perspective that you look at things through is critical. Actually the way we positioned it was the dentist is actually going to make sure that your teeth are healthy. If there is something, it's better to know now than leave it for a long time where things might get even worse.
Then it's very difficult to come back from that. …
Consumers now are absolutely turning to credit more to help them with the cost of living. We know that with all the interest rate rises, it's just an extremely challenging time, not just for the consumer, but for the business owner. Business owners are dipping into their personal savings to help keep their businesses afloat.
It's such a difficult time for the country. I think that fear, you need to turn it into ... Feel the fear. Feel the fear, because it's there, embrace it, understand it, and then think, "Okay. What am I going to do about it?" That goes back to the mission statement. It goes back to helping people live their financial best.
It means we want to empower you. There is no way that you'll be able to navigate well and effectively. Again, as I said before, if you don't understand what information is ... what your information says about you, but also that will then trigger the right conversations that you should be having.
Mark Jones
What's on your dashboard then as a marketing team? What are the levers that you're looking to pull and what do you hope you'll get? Brand awareness is one. Reach, I'm sure. Other things. How are you translating this back to some meaningful metrics that will give you a sense of progress within the organisation?
Roni Millard
Yeah. Good question. Share a voice, making sure that in the media, we are sharing good insight from executives and other people from across Equifax. It goes back to my point. We want to show that we are a multitude of personalities and personas. We are humanistic and who we are. It's not just that faceless brand.
Share a voice and talking to journalists, having journalists be proactive and come to us. If there's something that's occurred in the media, we want them to be able to come to us proactively and ask for our opinion and our sentiment. I think from a sales perspective, it's a key metric for us.
I sit in on many sales meetings to understand how they are, to be able to empathise with their own challenges. But a key metric is to be able to see which clients are in their pipeline and what conversations they're having. The salespeople are the eyes and ears of the industry. What are the challenges that the clients are having, be they banks or sole traders? Where are they?
Obviously from a B2C side, the consumers, where are they struggling? Those are metrics where we understand what's happening, and then we bring them back and say, "Okay. How can we help? What communications do we need to push out? What events do we need to be at?" Events is another key metric for us.
We're very vocal in various flagship events. We're partnered up with the Institute of Credit Managers. They're a key audience for us. How do we make their lives better so that they can help their clients? Those metrics are obviously key for us. But also it's about the engagement rates with us.
How many people are coming to our podcast? How many people are opening our emails? What is that translating to in terms of revenue? Because if the revenue comes in, which goes back to my initial point, it's because we've done a good job. The attrition, if people are coming on, but then leaving us after a year or two, what's that gap telling us?
Mark Jones
Sorry. Who are the people that are leaving? Credit managers, for example, if they're ...
Roni Millard
Oh, no. Sorry. Sorry.
Mark Jones
... buying your data or ...
Roni Millard
Yeah. With regards to your question about the metrics, one of our metrics is keeping our attrition rates low so that our customers stick with us for the long term because they're using our services. They're finding our data critical and useful. We send out ...
Mark Jones
Send banks, for example?
Roni Millard
Yeah. Banks, financial institutions, yeah, sole traders.
Mark Jones
Got it.
Roni Millard
There are myths out there that we only deal with the banks that at the top of the tree, but it's not the case. We are ubiquitous. We are for everybody across that spectrum.
Mark Jones
Tell me about the risk side of the business, data protection, data breaches, security, privacy. Your technical team obviously looks after that. But what have you done to consider the risk of future breaches and how that impacts the brand perception and the trust that's associated with the brand?
Roni Millard
I think over the last few years, Equifax has made a significant investment both locally and globally to protect the data that's entrusted to us. We take that very, very seriously. In the last three years, we've actually overhauled our cybersecurity solutions and out measures that we deploy.
What that's meant is it's inspired a full company commitment to becoming a data security leader by embedding the security into everything we do. From product development, to partnership strategies, to our own culture, including transparency with our customers as we continue our journey.
We have various courses that we have to take as a culture on security. We have phishing emails that come as tests to make sure that every Equifax employees is looking out and making sure that they're very much aware of what's happening and just got their tentacles out there and just making sure that they're fully aware.
It is part of our culture now. It is in our DNA. That is something that every Equifax employee has to live and breathe every day as part of the Equifax culture.
Mark Jones
I imagine over time that the concept of a reputation strategy is part of how you think about marketing. Making sure that people understand those investments, telling that story when it's appropriate. I'm sure that's top of mind for you.
Roni Millard
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Mark Jones
Well, Roni, thanks for being so honest with your response there. I know that's a particularly tricky area to go. Lot of things that we've really taken away from our conversation, or at least that I'm reflecting on is at a high level, how many different things you got to deal with, how many different stakeholders clearly are part of the ecosystem in which you're operating?
There's also a great reminder here about the importance of customer first and that broader storytelling thing, which of course is one of my favourite things in the whole world too. Roni, you seem like the right person at the right time in the right seat. It's been a pleasure to get to know you. Thanks for sharing your insights on the CMO Show. I hope to talk to you again.
Roni Millard
Oh, thank you, Mark. Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure to talk to you as well. You made it very easy. I was happy to be paired up with you and no one else.
Mark Jones
That's very kind. That's very kind. Well, look, all the best with work and life and family and all those fun things that fill our lives these days. Yeah. We'll talk soon.
Roni Millard
Thank you. You too. Take care.
So how about that? A big thanks to Roni for taking the time to chat with me. I don't know about you, but I'm walking away a little more enlightened about a company that's becoming more visible at a time when we really need them to be.
And it's a classic behavior change marketing story. I love that we got to go deep and explore it in a way that unearthed the human side to a traditionally faceless organisation. And also remember, financial literacy is also really important. It's something that we all need to develop, regardless of how uncomfortable a subject like this might make us.
You know, as Roni says, like, going to the dentist, if there's something wrong, it's better to know now than leave it for a long time when things might get even worse. So that's a wrap for today. Thanks for listening. We'll be back soon with another episode of The CMO Show. Bye for now.