CONNECTIONS Ezine: Issue No. 78

In this issue:

• In Our Opinion: Be Positive and Refire
• Special Announcements:
  • Allison Landers, VP, Digital and Customer Experience – Prudential Financial
• Career Opportunities:
  • Social Senior Manager and Account Lead – Social – Global Consulting Firm
  • Manager, Social Media – Global Consulting Firm
  • Director, Insights and Strategy – Marketing & Sales

In Our Opinion by Jeff Gundersen & Lola White

Be Positive and Refire

In our conversations with clients and business friends, we are constantly asked how we are seeing economic trends as related to companies hiring. While economic growth slowed significantly in 2014 in certain global markets (Europe, Japan, China), the U.S. economy outperformed expectations and economists including Gary Thayer (Chief Macro Strategist at Wells Fargo) forecast U.S. 2015 economic growth of 2.8%. With consumer confidence rising, and with the benefit of lower energy prices spawning higher consumer spending, 2015 is a market in which to BE POSITIVE AND REFIRE.

Part of the growth and activity we continue to see is related to marketing shifting onto a mobile- and digital-first axis. The top global advertisers are being driven by this rapidly shifting marketing transformation to invest in new marketing technologies, and to create new customer engagement and experience processes, in order to adapt to the needs of serving customers and prospects on a real-time, omni- channel basis. Chief Customer Officer, Chief Digital Officers, and Heads of Digital Customer Experience, are among the new high priority roles being identified and filled by many companies. In this month’s e-zine, we highlight Allison Landers, recently hired by Prudential Financial for this type of new digital experience role.

For many legacy sectors, companies and brands, 2015 is a time to “REFIRE” as Ken Blanchard says in his latest book, “Refire, Don’t Retire!” While Blanchard’s book is aimed at Boomers planning a next career after retiring or leaving full-time employment, his themes are applicable for all of us in this period of rapid marketing transformation. I took part in a recent webinar sponsored by The Ken Blanchard Companies and heard Ken outline four key areas of refiring in 2015:

1. Refire Intellectually – Be open to learning, take a class, be a reader, a teacher, be courageously persistent.
2. Refire Emotionally – Love Is key (love what you do, who you are with, love yourself), build relationships.
3. Refire Physically – Create a healthy body and well-being, improve strength, flexibility, balance, diet/nutrition, sleep.
4. Refire Spiritually – Move beyond focus on self, be forgiving, grateful, accepting, and humble.

These principles can help us all open new pathways to seeing things differently, learning new skills, driving innovation by thinking outside the box, strengthening our physical core and stamina, and improving our emotional intelligence to enhance our company’s culture and grow/develop everyone’s individual and collective performance.

We trust you are off to a positive start in 2015 and we look forward to hearing from you with stories of how you are personally REFIRING in order to drive POSITIVE outcomes in 2015!

As always, we welcome your comments and input.

Jeff and Lola

Special Announcements

Allison Landers, VP, Digital and Customer Experience – Prudential Financial Group

We are delighted to announce that Allison Paine Landers has recently joined Prudential Financial’s Group Insurance division as VP, Digital and Customer Experience, reporting to Michelle Crecca, Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer.

In this new role, Allison will design and execute a comprehensive digital strategy for PRU-GI and will partner with corporate centers across the enterprise to implement a common Prudential digital experience. Allison will also be responsible for PRU-GI’s customer experience strategy, and customer experience research and benchmarking, to enable PRU-GI to have a more comprehensive view of customer insights.

Allison has significant experience in digital and omni-channel product marketing, with proven success in leveraging distribution and technology to acquire, retain, and serve customers. She joins PRU-GI from TD Bank, where she most recently served as the head of online and tablet banking. During her tenure with the bank, Allison led a program to move three million U.S. retail and small business customers onto a single digital platform. She also launched a program to provide 700,000 U.S. and Canadian customers with a single online banking experience.

Prior to TD Bank, Allison spent seven years at KeyBank in Cleveland, Ohio, first as VP, Marketing and later as SVP, Online and Mobile channels. Among her many responsibilities there, Allison led efforts to enhance the online banking platform experience, which enabled the bank with its client retention efforts, and to achieve significant revenue and cost savings. She began her career with America Online, where she spent the first 5 years of her career.

Allison earned a BA in Journalism from Indiana University, and an MBA in marketing from Marymount University. In addition to being a frequent industry speaker, she served as the current Chair of the Consumer Bankers Association Digital Channels Committee.

Executive Connections LLC handled this executive search assignment on an exclusive basis for PRU-GI continuing a long-term partnership with Michelle Crecca and Prudential Financial.

Career Opportunities

Two new opportunities in the Global Social Media Practice of a leading digital consulting firm:

• Social Senior Manager and Account Lead – Global Consulting Firm – NEW
• Manager, Social Media – Global Consulting Firm – NEW

Our third new opportunity is for a global consulting client which is a leader in Talent, Health, Retirement, and Investments.

• Director, Insights and Strategy – Marketing & Sales – NEW

Learn more…