Gen-Z, Millennial Male Media Opps: Santander Bank taps CMO amid advertising spend decreases (Score 52)

Santander named Jennifer Mathissen CMO, effective November 2nd, 2020. Mathissen has held several marketing roles in her career, most recently serving as customer insights and experience VP of CVS Health. She will be responsible for helping the grow the business, improving customer loyalty and in addition to marketing duties she will manage the customer experience team. Mathissen is replacing Barbarar Glasser who served as CMO for just over a year. We will likely see changes to the marketing strategy as well as a potential agency review. 

**Mathissen does not start her new role until November 2nd (Editor's note: incidentally, that's my birthday!) ; therefore, we are unable to confirm her email address at this time.**

According to iSpot's estimates, Santander spent around $191.4k on national TV ads YTD, just 16% of the $1.2m it spent in this channel during the same time period of 2019. The banks TV spend has been sporadic considering full-year spend jumped to $1.3m in 2019 after only spending $152.3k in 2018. This year, it placed ads during programming such as "Fatbol UEFA Liga Campeones," "UEFA Champions League Soccer," "Futbol Central," "Mision Europa" and "PBR Bull Riding." 

Per Pathmatics, earned 329.3m impressions through Facebook ads (43%), desktop video ads (32%), desktop display ads (21%), mobile video ads (3%) and mobile display ads (1%). It placed the majority of these ads site direct (76%) onto sites such as facebook.com, youtube.com, hulu.com, yahoo.co and cnn.com. It placed the remainder indirectly through Display & Video 360 and Tribal Fusion onto sites such as reddit.com, news.yahoo.com, yahoo.com, cnn.com and realtor.com. It spent $2.2m in this channel over the last 365 days, about half (49%) of the $4.5m it spent over the 365 days prior. 

Sellers-- Santander seems to mainly target Gen-Z and millennials with a Hispanic skew. It reaches these demographics primarily through digital display and national TV ads, but it has decreased spend in both of these channels over the last year. The new CMO will probably ramp spending up as she begins to implement her own strategy, so look out for dollars in early 2021. It also invests in print and radio ads, per Kantar. Sellers should reach out offering relevant ad space. 

Agency & martech readers-- As you know, new CMO hires will often review their new company's agency roster as well as hiring additional shops. Start reaching out after Mathissen starts in November in order to be top-of-mind. We believe the only agency you will face competition from is creative AOR Arnold Worldwide.