Renee Amor on keeping a brand’s promise at BPAY

The 2018 Accenture Strategy global survey revealed that 66% of consumers are attracted to buy from a certain brand over others (beyond price and quality) if it “has a great culture—it does what it says it will do and delivers on its promises.

With this dynamic in mind, are you delivering on your brand promise?

Renee Amor, General Manager Marketing and Communications at BPAY, believes in garnering a 360 degree understanding of a brand’s ecosystem in order to keep its brand promise.

“We continue to ask businesses, financial institutions, and consumers, what they need. What stays the same is that we continue to promise that it will be simple to work with us. And it will be simple to get control of our products, of your own money,” Renee says. 

“It's understanding the customers. It's understanding employees. It's understanding the market, and keeping a really simple approach to making sure that the win-win comes through for all of them.”

Renee encourages marketers to invest time in fostering relationships, as good marketing practice combines truth, authenticity, and effective storytelling.

“One of the greatest challenges for the marketer, is making something interesting, right? And telling a story or having a narrative that helps to influence people when it's a really mundane task. Who wants to pay a bill?” says Renee. 

“If it's about trying to make payments exciting, I'm not sure we're ever going to win that battle. But if it's trying to make sure that payments meet your needs, and it actually has a way to enable your life without necessarily getting in the way of it, that's an easy story to tell.”

BPAY’s 2020 campaigns centred on giving back to the community in a variety of creative ways.

From an online exhibition about Australian drought stories encouraging visitors to donate to Rural Aid using BPAY (with all proceeds directly donated to the charity), to partnering with a drag artist to raise funds for the First Nations Foundation with BPAY donating $1 per unique view of a bill-paying tutorial video featuring Mann - BPAY’s approach to storytelling is distinctly purpose-driven and attuned to what will genuinely resonate with customers, staff and the wider community.

“My logic has always been, if you can do good with your marketing initiatives, then you should... Telling a genuine story, finding the win-win, trying to do good while at the same time, hitting a business objective, really paid off in this case,” says Renee. 

To learn more from Renee and find out how marketers can communicate a brand’s honest truth through storytelling, tune into this episode of The CMO Show. 

Resources

• Drag artist Leasa Mann fronts BPAY's campaign to help people in need 
• BPAY appeals to Australians to help pay the bills of drought-affected farmers 
• BPAY presents Australian drought stories in online art exhibition via BMF 

You might also like…

• Amy Smith on brand purpose at T2 Tea
• Ryan Barlow on brand responsibility at McGrath Foundation 
• Suzana Ristevski on simplifying complexity at NAB

####

The CMO Show production team

Producers – Charlotte Goodwin & Stephanie Woo

Audio Engineers – Tom Henderson & 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.

####

Transcript

Host: Mark Jones

Guest: Renee Amor

Mark Jones:
A brand promise can be defined as the value a customer can expect to receive from an organisation. But it can be empty promise if not built on trust and integrity. So a brand promise, when authentically lived out can help a brand thrive in the marketplace. It should influence your customer experience, your values, offerings, and communications - in fact, everything that makes up your brand presence. So as a marketer, how do you use storytelling to keep your promise?

Mark Jones:
Hello friends! Mark Jones here. How are you? It’s great to have you with us again on The CMO Show as we continue to share stories about purpose-driven brands. My guest today is Renee Amor. She is the General Manager, Marketing and Communications at BPAY - so caveat right out of the gate, this is actually one of our clients. We are going to talk today about the role of trust and loyalty in brand communication, how we value simplicity, and how marketers can communicate a brand’s honest truth through storytelling. So let’s go to my conversation with Renee.

Mark Jones:
Great to have you with us, Renee.

Renee Amor:
Nice to be here. Thanks, Mark.

Mark Jones:
I'm interested to hear what's it like working in the payment sector - we'll talk to you about your career in a second - but the payment sector itself is fascinating at the moment because of the amount of change that's going on. Tell me what it's like from your perspective.

Renee Amor:
There's so much potential for where the industry is going to head over the coming decade - even a couple of decades - with what's underway at the moment in the review of payments, in particular in Australia. And it's really setting up payments in Australia to take on the world. So it's likely to bring together the entities that are most important to payments in Australia today, to create a stronger force together. And should that not progress, we've learned so much along the way around how we could work better together to streamline what we take to the Australian market.

Mark Jones:
If you think about the big picture from a payments perspective, what are the biggest customer issues that the payments industry is trying to solve at the moment?

Renee Amor:
Our customer matrix includes financial institutions, it includes big businesses, small businesses, micro businesses and right through to average Australians who are just trying to move money around. And so trying to find solutions that create the win-win across that matrix of customers is the strongest and biggest of challenges. When you take that on - in conjunction with thinking about what's happening in technology and platforms across the world - what we're really facing is how we build the strongest, safest, most secure environments for people to be able to move money around; while ensuring that we still keep things fast. We still keep money moving at a pace at which we expect it to today - you know, not snail mail of 10 years ago - and definitely not cheques. We're trying to move things into a faster pace while keeping everything safe and secure.

Mark Jones:
I'm fascinated by this because the old good, fast, cheap model - you can pick two and not three. I think about it all the time but in regards to this, you want to be good - so secure. Fast - obviously. And good is actually a quality metric in terms of a user experience - make it easy. Really, maybe that's one of the biggest complexities that's going on here, is you're actually trying to be all three. And it's not that the payments industry itself maybe is pushing that, it is very much a consumer demand, right?

Renee Amor:
Most definitely. And there are so many bodies involved in that. So the consumer experience - very much from a payments view - is often in a digital banking environment where the banks compete on what that experience might be. So quite often, what we're doing from a payments platforming perspective, is to enable banks and other businesses to build on top of the simplicity we've created, in order to build an experience that sets them apart at the front line within the bank itself. A hundred percent it's consumer demand. But in saying that, there's not one size fit all for all consumers. And so having that range of experiences is vital.

Mark Jones:
Tell me about BPAY itself. We've been talking about the market from a big picture perspective. One of the fun things for me, I believe this goes back into the 60s and the 70s with Bankcard? I remember growing up and learning about Bankcard. My mother was a big fan of using Bankcard all the time, right? I'm getting a bit retro here, but BPAY as a brand or as an organisation has been around for a really long time. And it's got that legacy. How do you interpret and understand the story of BPAY?

Renee Amor:
Well, it is an interesting story. BPAY group has been around for a very long time. And what it's proven, is this organisation has been able to adapt, and adjust, and to reinvent as the generations change. Bankcard is no longer relevant today. And there is a good reason for that. BPAY as a product is still relevant today, but we continue to optimise it. And since BPAY, we've launched Osko as a peer-to-peer payment method. And so that continual reinvention to keep up with the market, to keep up with what consumers, business and banks need, is what BPAY group is really good at. So it's about finding out what people need, reinventing what we offer and not being scared to shut things down when they're no longer relevant. That's the legacy of BPAY group in many ways.

Mark Jones:
That's actually a really key insight. How do you have an organisation with that sort of mindset? It's not actually easy. Everyone talks about transforming, and moving with the times - and that's how you create storied organisations. But it's easier said than done. So what does it take?

Renee Amor:
I've been with BPAY for now four years. And I have to say, it comes from the top. And it comes from having leadership from either a board or a CEO that really drives transformation and innovation. What has happened during my time, is we've had a strong strategic intent to reinvent the values, and the behaviours, and the culture of the organisation to help it to keep up. And so in four years it's been phenomenal. We've had an average employee engagement go to award-winning, and a leading organisation in terms of people transformation. We've had a business strategy that has gone from, "Let's make sure that BPAY continues to work," to "Let's make sure BPAY thrives, and enables and work with FinTechs instead of being scared of FinTechs."

Renee Amor:
And it's a complete organisational shift. It's understanding the customers. It's understanding employees. It's understanding the market, and keeping a really simple approach to making sure that the win-win comes through for all of them. Recently, we re-built our purpose for the organisation and as an organisation, every single employee was involved in delivering and building what that purpose would be. And we've come up with ensuring that we make life simpler. And as we do any product innovation, any marketing initiative, any even financial record or any type of work, we're striving to make sure it makes life simpler for us and for everybody else.

Mark Jones:
How do you think about that with this background of technology disruption? Banks in my view, are tech companies with a banking licence. How do you see yourselves as a payment company? Is it the same?

Renee Amor:
Interesting you should say that. I think where we're particularly strong, is understanding the needs of financial institutions and what they are building and fitting in with them. So a good example more recently is we uncovered a need in some financial institutions to move a lot more rapidly. So instead of offering a standard approach to BPAY products, we've launched a series of APIs, and we’re continuing to build those because it helps those companies that are more technology-led - FinTechs in particular but also the big banks, where we're working with them to provide solutions that help them to build on top of the technology platforms they have.

Renee Amor:
And that's been the way that BPAY's worked for a long time. Often, the BPAY group builds on top of the infrastructure of the industry and supplements the gaps with the products that we build. But we definitely work with a whole suite of different technology-type background companies. Whether they see themselves as technology first or not, ultimately the way your products implement has a technology side to it. So we have a very expert technology team. In fact, our CIO has just been in the top 50 for the country.

Mark Jones:
Congratulations. That's fantastic. I think that's the part of this business that a lot of people don't see when we get below the campaigns and all the work that goes on in the background to make the financial platforms work. Once you start, you can never stop. Now, I understand there's the proposed merger of Eftpos, NPP Australia and BPAY. What's going on there, and how does that play into all of this change and transformation discussion?

Renee Amor:
Yeah. Look, there is a proposed merger going through. It's actually the consolidation of the governance of those three organisations, with a view that each of the three companies would retain the way that they work today in terms of the way they work their products, with room for optimisation of the alignment of product new development over time. That is a proposal. That is going through the motions. The next step is that the ACCC would review that. And a decision is yet to be made. We do see that there is definite upside from a national perspective. So if we could see an improved coordination across those three companies, in terms of how we work together to build payment innovation in particular, that's only going to work for consumers and businesses over time.

Mark Jones:
So the interesting thing is connecting that into our conversation about the change that's going on. Let's get a lot closer to your role. And when you span this marketing and comms function, how do you tell a story when these things are changing so fast? Do you have this sense of like, "I'm just going to have to be running with whatever's going this week?" Or how far down the line can you go with your strategic planning?

Renee Amor:
If you start with the truth, the truth doesn't change. And that genuine nugget that sits behind any storytelling, isn't going to shift. In our case, with BPAY group, we start our core, which is we are really good at business transformation. We're really good at leadership. We're really good, and we're proven in terms of the culture that we've created, in being award winning. Those things don't shift. And those things will only be an asset to an organisation that might have this merged governance or not, if that doesn't go ahead. Our strategy, from a marketing communications perspective, is to start with the genuine truth and tell it. And there's no doubt that in storytelling, you're really tapping into that emotive and the functional needs of an organisation, plus trying to gel that with the customers you're talking to. So, you start with the nuggets of truth and you share them. There's nothing that can shift that in the change that's happening around us.

Mark Jones:
Well, let's get specific and talk about a fun example. In 2020, you partnered with Rural Aid and a drag artist, Leasa Mann, right? That was a bit of fun. Tell me about what was going on with that campaign and why it was so successful.

Renee Amor:
98% of all Australians over 18 know BPAY as a brand. They're aware of BPAY.

Renee Amor:
70% of people consider it, and a high proportion use it. What we have a challenge of doing in marketing, is ensure that people remember that BPAY is there for the right reasons.

Mark Jones:
Yeah.

Renee Amor:
In the case of the Leasa Mann campaign, I remember coming across a tweet she made. And it was talking about how she was offering to pay the bills of people using BPAY because it's anonymous, and because it does enable her to pay bills without asking for bank account details. I remember her saying, "I remember what it was like to be sleeping on the floor, and there's got to be people doing it tough through COVID right now. I really want to help you pay bills and I'll help you do that with BPAY, if you just send me a copy of the bill. Send me that little biller box at the bottom."

Renee Amor:
And I thought, "Wow."

Renee Amor:
One, I got goosebumps reading the story. I heard her story, and I heard her genuine want to help. Two, I couldn't pay for somebody to have come up with that idea. Why wouldn't we want to further that for her?

Mark Jones:
Yeah.

Renee Amor:
To help Leasa to help more people, while telling this honest truth about the BPAY product, which is it's anonymous, it's secure. You don't have to give out your bank account details, and we can pay your bill with it.

Mark Jones:
Yeah.

Renee Amor:
And it came together when we approached Leasa. What was really challenging is Leasa was based in Melbourne and we were based in Sydney, and we wanted to film a TV commercial with somebody who was now in lockdown. That's where the challenge actually came because the beautiful story behind Leasa Mann and what she was genuinely doing to help, was a no brainer to ask if we would help her to do more with it.

Renee Amor:
My logic has always been, if you can do good with your marketing initiatives, then you should. And this was a clear and an easy example to be able to do that.

Mark Jones:
Yeah. It's one of those rare things that you almost dare not to dream about, is something like that dropping into your lap effectively, right.

Mark Jones:
And then it becomes a question of, how can we work with this in the most authentic way possible? How did you get the balance right? You can see the opportunity to get this out there, to get some really - some scale behind the message, but you also don't want to undermine it by being too pushy.

Renee Amor:
That's it. And we didn't want to be cheesy. So what we did do is work on what it was we needed to achieve, which was genuine as well. And that was to help educate people of the benefits of BPAY. It's not necessarily going to make us a lot of money to do that. This is going to help people to pay their bills in a way that they're in control. There's a definite win-win in there. And we worked with Leasa to find out exactly what it was that she saw as valuable in the first place. We built that story, with knowing that we could educate some people to do things better and rewarded people for doing that. So for every video that was watched, we made a donation to help fund people who couldn't pay their own bills anymore.

Mark Jones:
What impact did it have? What lasting impact has it had on the brand, on the story in the way that the communities think about BPAY now?

Renee Amor:
We definitely had a lot of really positive feedbacks throughout the campaign. A lot of the financial institutions we work with continued the message into their customer base because it resonated for them as well, to be able to help others. And we saw that the things that we've been looking at around consideration and usage, continue to improve from where they've been before. So telling a genuine story, finding the win-win, trying to do good while at the same time, hitting a business objective, really paid off in this case.

Mark Jones:
The next stage of this was an online art exhibit and looking at how you could get some awareness through that, and looking at photography and other ways of connecting people to the story of people in drought. What were the challenges you faced in that context?

Renee Amor:
That was actually an earlier campaign. We had started on a journey of BPAY helping others in need, at the right time earlier in the year. And it was right through the period of drought in rural Australia. We partnered with Rural Aid so that we could help pay the bills of farmers who were in need, who couldn't pay the bills in drought. At the point COVID hit, we'd started that campaign and we'd raised a lot of money to help these farmers, who graciously would provide access to their farms so that we could take beautiful photos to help raise even more money. And the team had secured a location in Sydney, a gallery to present these photos and share the stories of these beautiful homes. 

Renee Amor:
COVID hit and the gallery had to shut. I could not be more proud of my team. They just jumped in an agile way, changed things up and turned it into a virtual exhibition where they raised money by selling these images. And it was just amazing. And the reach of moving into a virtual gallery was so much further reaching than just a single face-to-face exhibition. 

Mark Jones:
And a good chance in being able to adjust on the fly, which is what we all do these days right. It sounds like you've been practising that for a little while.

Mark Jones:
The interesting thing about BPAY too of course, is when we look at payments and where most of us see that brand - speaking personally - it's on a bill, right? It's not the most fun environment.

Mark Jones:
And to some extent, we know why we're using BPAY, because it's safe, it's secure. I can get it done easily. There's all of the quality issues that we've just discussed, but I think these two campaigns we've talked about are kind of interesting and fun, but what does it take to get there because really, it's not a fun idea. 

Mark Jones:
You're not standing around a barbecue talking about payments necessarily. On the category of fun things, payments is not up there, right? 

Renee Amor:
One of the greatest challenges for the marketer, is making something interesting, right? And telling a story or having a narrative that helps to influence people when it's a really mundane task. Who wants to pay a bill? I don't wake up and think, "I must pay my Telstra bill today or any other type of bill."

Mark Jones:
Yeah.

Renee Amor:
Or actually, maybe sometimes I'll wake up with a nightmare, thinking, "Oh, I forgot that bill."

Renee Amor:
But where it comes to BPAY, there are so many positives. There's an iconic brand that has been around for 20 years but looking on the bright side, there's a lot of opportunity. And sometimes it comes down to the mindset you go into a marketing or a communications issue with. If it's about trying to make payments exciting, I'm not sure we're ever going to win that battle. If it's trying to make sure that payments meet your needs, and it actually has a way to enable your life without necessarily getting in the way of it, that's an easy story to tell. And it's an easy way to influence somebody for the better. I can not sing the praises enough of BPAY. It makes life easier for people. I wouldn't have thought that maybe 10 years ago, when I saw it on my bill - but now I'm convinced. And if I'm convinced, I can tell that story easy enough.

Mark Jones:
Yeah. And I think one of the things too, from a storytelling perspective, is understanding what's the emotion that I'm seeking to foster? It's one thing to focus on behaviour change, and getting people to use the platform more, and creating incentives and so on. But it seems to me like one of the objectives here from an emotive, emotional connection point of view, would be a sense of satisfaction. it's the idea that it works, and I can use it and it's okay, right. There's a reassurance type idea. Again, we're not trying to sell rollercoaster, but you are trying to build, foster that sense of trust and loyalty. Is that a fair summary of the way that you think about the strategy behind it?

Renee Amor:
I think the only other word I'd add, is control. It's satisfaction somewhat, but being in control of my own money is really important, in a day when more and more money is just taken out of your account, or money is just moved around on your behalf, or you might not get as much money as you would like. That sense of control with, "I've worked hard for this, and I can do what I like with this and still get in front of my bills."

Renee Amor:
That's the almost functional and emotive together.

Renee Amor:
And that's true for multiple payment methods, but nonetheless than at a time in history when it's more important to be in control of money that sits in a bank. Through the pandemic, we've seen that greater divide start to occur, where there are people who just have less money and they're struggling. So anything we can do that can either help them get on top, or at least control when that money is going to move, it's only going to help them. And it's a genuine help.

Mark Jones:
That's a neat segue because I wanted to ask you about education as an idea, as a concept that you infuse into marketing and comms activities. Because if we think about people in their 20s and 30s, there are a large proportion of people who are either undereducated - for want of a better term - or just simply don't know the best ways to pay a bill. That's one component. Then you've got this other idea, there's actually very, very well educated, leading edge young people who understand all the alternatives, right? And they'll go actively looking for the lowest cost alternative ways of making a payment. So you're bridging a couple of different options there. How do you think about how you speak into that space as a thought leader?

Renee Amor:
I think we work more so with financial institutions when it comes to how financial literacy might be educated more broadly, because there's a role for payments within broader financial literacy. It's not a standalone education topic. In saying that, if there are people out there who need education because they're not sure how something functionally works, we have that content available. And we have that available either white labelled and rebranded through financial institution websites, or in our own assets. Education does become a very important topic. We definitely partner with the types of environments where people who are less than educated normally might go. And particularly for those younger segments - range of podcasts, a range of key talent partnerships and a range of assets that we make available just in public environments, to help people to self-educate where they need to - on those things that are simple enough - and to push them back to their financial institution where they need to be educated by an expert.

Mark Jones:
And what are you learning about what's working of all the different channels and the options that you've got? What's working versus not these days?

Renee Amor:
Obviously, it's different by market. Because we do have this really complex customer market, you can not exclude the value of a face-to-face relationship - even though it's virtual, with financial institutions, with businesses and we're available to do that on a regular basis. And we will make sure the narratives that we have in advertising, which might be hitting a mass consumer, is also flowing through and shared back into the one-on-one relationships. We're definitely seeing as we look into LinkedIn, there's great engagement there for those people who are - let's face it, payments nerds. They know to come there because they're likely to be in the industry. And that's where we're going to share that type of content.

Renee Amor:
If you talk about the younger generation, of course we're in social media environments and of course, we're in podcasts and of course, we're sharing through their parents to reach them where we need to.

Mark Jones:
That connects with this idea that we have to personalise a brand in some way. You don't have branches in the traditional sense, right? How do you put a face to the BPAY name?

Renee Amor:
In very many cases, you experience BPAY because you're working with a particular bank or you choose to bank with a particular bank.

Mark Jones:
Right.

Renee Amor:
We a hundred percent have set up our brand strategy, and our brand so that it can work in a tailored sense, with financial institutions, so that it works with what they need to tell their customers at that point in time. And our marketing strategy has multiple layers you can imagine but within financial institutions, we've worked with them one-on-one to develop strategies to ensure that that brand works within their environments. We're very conscious that it's not a standalone brand. It can be on a bill, but it's still always sitting with the bill owner. 

Renee Amor:
We a hundred percent also provide all those billers with everything they need to share education of BPAY as they require it. Might be email templates. Might be anything. We provide all of that material and we tailor it with them. It's a very interesting B2B2C marketing strategy as we look at the BPAY brand and the Osko brand because we're one end and the customer is the other end. And there's always a very important business right in the middle. If we're doing an advertising campaign, we're conscious of, how do we make sure that that business in the middle - whether it's a bank or a biller  -is supported with what we're doing?

Mark Jones:
As you were explaining that, my brain was almost hurting, trying to do a quick mind map of which is the primary brand and the sub brand? And I can only just imagine the complexity of how do you get that strategy right so that you are supporting the ecosystem. You want to get your own brand to be seen as - if you like, a master brand in its own right. And yet, it's still a supporting player in the bigger act, which is the financial institutions that own that more prominent role with the customer, right?

Renee Amor:
It's so unique. It's so exciting. It's so challenging for a marketer.

Mark Jones:
Yeah.

Renee Amor:
It's why you always have to come back to that truth, and that genuine nugget that doesn't change. Regardless of if it's B2C or B2B2C, there's always a single trick that's underpinning it. Whether it's the control story or the security story that they want to leverage, it's still the same truth that another dealer or another bank might want to build upon as well in terms of their story.

Mark Jones:
Yes, I see.

Renee Amor:
You have to get back to that true north, which is “what’s in it or the ultimate customer?

Mark Jones:
Yeah. It's the customer centric story. But at the same time internally, I'm sure when it comes to attribution modelling and budgets and all that stuff, you must have the most enormous white boards with connections and who knows. I'd love to know how you get your head around that because to arrive at that truth and that simplicity, you can't ignore the insights that you would get from doing the hard work of mapping it all out too, right?

Renee Amor:
Hundred percent. And it's so complicated to get to simple.

Renee Amor:
Can you imagine how complicated it is when you add those multiple layers of customers? The complication to get to simple, and the layers to get to simple - I don't think people fully understand. They just go, "Wow, BPAY is so easy."

Renee Amor:
And it is. It is simple. It is easy. It's really an ultimate product but the work that goes behind the scenes is phenomenal to make sure that people do see it that way.

Mark Jones:
Looking ahead, what's some of the priorities? I liked the comment you made earlier about really understanding your purpose to make things easy. And then from a responsible business perspective, that's another thing that a lot of organisations are looking at. So what's the way that you're navigating, or planning to navigate through that, and build on the easy message with the impact that ultimately, easy delivers?

Renee Amor:
So I look at it - again, in a simple way. I look at everything as an onion. You start at the centre, who needs to know what and who needs to know everything at the centre. And it's usually your employees and the board likely. There's another layer that's around that. And it's the people with a vested interest. It might be industry. It might be key partners. It might be the media. And then on the outside, you might have customers who need to know what's important to them but you don't need to get too much in their face. I start with that onion and I start with, "Well, what's going to make things easiest for the middle to understand?"

Renee Amor:
And they're going to need to know more, but they're going to need to know it in a very simplistic way. We talk about, "Well, let's talk about what's happening at BPAY group core. Let's talk about our business strategy. Let's talk about where the products are headed, how we're innovating on them and what might happen in the future."

Renee Amor:
That story is like the crux of what everybody else will know. We simplify that as we move out a layer, and simplify it again to just the product context most likely for the outer ring. And that's what we're doing now is we think through, "Well, what might change over the coming 18 months? What might not? How are we going to handle that change?"

Renee Amor:
The truth that underpins it all is that our brands have a story that's not going to shift. It still meets the same needs. We still have to meet the needs of this B2B2C model. We still need to continue to ask businesses, financial institutions, consumers, what they need on going and what stays the same, is that we continue to promise that it will be simple to work with us. And it will be simple to get control of our products, of your own money.

Mark Jones:
Yeah, I like that. It's a really nice way of framing your whole approach. 

Mark Jones:
If you think more broadly about how you continue to grow and develop as a professional, are there other brands or stories out there that have inspired you as you're working on these plans?

Renee Amor:
The thing that's really interesting is that we're looking at a lot of organisations at the moment because we, like every organisation, we're looking at how do we create even greater connection in this new way of working with people either internally or externally, or with customers. And so I've been looking at the likes of Google and Atlassian and some of those other companies that are starting to look at connection between the business in a different way. Our own Head of People and Culture has just educated me around how can we use rituals instead of meetings for example, to really create connections with people at work. And I'm starting to look at brands that look at creating rituals and connection in a different way from traditional ways. I know that's not necessarily saying, "Here's the brands I'm chasing after" - because I've not seen that in any brands yet but that's what I'm starting to search for just in the last couple of weeks. I'm looking for those brands who are looking at creating connections with people - because that's ultimately in all we do - in ways that adapt to the new ways of working and the new ways of engaging with people.

Mark Jones:
What do you mean by ritual?

Renee Amor:
Yeah. It's by creating an emotional connection primarily. And might be, if you think about a work setting, not going to default to, "Let's have a meeting to talk about something that would connect us."

Renee Amor:
It might instead be, "Let's have that Zoom O’clock wine and just chat.

Mark Jones:
Okay.

Renee Amor:
It might be, "Let's go for a walk and have a phone call."

Renee Amor:
Instead of sitting down face-to-face. It might be, "Let's literally go for a walk while we're in the office together, instead of sitting in a meeting room."

Renee Amor:
Because it's creating a different sense of emotional connection in a way that creates trust. So for a brand dealing with a customer, a ritual might be, "Let's look at those experience points that might work with BPAY and think about, is there a separate way to embed that emotional connection, that sense of control?"

Renee Amor:
And it might be that we're telling you about it, that we're sharing the awards we’ve won, that we're looking at how to improve that in a digital banking sense, but there are other things that we could do that would help you trust us more. Can we do more to help people who can't pay their bills?

Mark Jones:
Props to you for leading the charge on all of that. And I have got a lot of great, creative ideas out of our conversation today. I hope you've enjoyed the experience. Renee Amor, Thank you so much for being our guest today on the CMO Show.

Renee Amor:
Thank you, Mark. It's been a pleasure.

Mark Jones:   
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Renee Amor. It was really good to talk with her about the way BPAY uses its drive for transformation and innovation as this authentic lens for its messaging and its marketing efforts. And I really loved her advice to CMOs and senior executives on how to simplify complex messages with creativity, and how taking a simple approach to understanding customers, employees and the market presents a unique opportunity for marketers to ‘do good’ through their work by championing their truth.

Mark Jones:   
Finally, a quick reminder, if you haven’t already, please subscribe to The CMO Show. You can find us on your favourite podcast app, so you never miss an episode. And if you want more of The CMO Show, you can head over to thecmoshow.filteredmedia.com.au and check out the back catalogue of more than 130 episodes - there’s something for every marketer in our amazing collection of stories! There it is for this episode, thank you so much for joining us. And as always, it’s been a pleasure to have you with us on this podcast and part of this conversation about purpose-driven brands. Until next time.