Campaign Imminent: Sallie Mae taps creative AOR after hiring CMO, increasing ad spend (Score 71)

Education-focused financial services company Sallie Mae (SM) named GYK Antler as its creative AOR; keep an eye out for new campaign work.

This shift closely follows the company's appointment (April 2020) of CEO Jonathan Witter, who previously served as Hilton's chief customer officer. Additionally, SM promoted Donna Vieira, its EVP and CMO for a year and a half, to EVP and chief commercial officer (September 2020); her responsibilities now include top line revenue growth along with products, sales, marketing, customer and digital experience and brand.

According to iSpot, the only commercials the company has aired recently were online-only (example in video above).

Adbeat estimates SM's digital display ad spend picked up in August 2020 for the first time since July 2019; out of the roughly $635.3k allocated toward this channel from September 2018-2020, 65% ($411.3k) was allocated from March-September 2020. Most of this recent spend went toward programmatic ads placed via either Google DV360 ($211.7k) or Google Display Network ($148.4k). Google DV360 placed ads onto sites such as reddit.com ($35.1k), yahoo.com, pch.com, fanfiction.net and quizlet.com; Google Display Networks's top site destinations included xfinity.com ($20.9k), reddit.com, gmatclub.com, zillow.com and fanfiction.net.

Additionally, Pathmatics reports the company invests in Facebook and Instagram ads.

SM tends to target parents in search of education for whom financial aid and other resources are not enough; its sharply increased digital display ad spend and usage of paid social signal it's especially targeting Gen-Z and millennials. To reach this relatively young audiences, the company likely also invests in OTT.

Agency & martech readers - With expanded responsibilities, SM's former CMO could now seek to outsource more work; as reviews tend to follow one another anyway, get on the company's radar soon for potential media, digital analytics and/or social media management work.