NO SMALL CHANGE

Jo Kelly hasn’t only challenged the status quo when it comes to financial services marketing, she has also pushed boundaries throughout her own career. Taking on a range of different roles in her home country of New Zealand before moving to Australia in 2015, she has experience working in the technical side of banking, HR management and also agency-side. Kelly entered the advertising industry at 35 and has used the late beginning and her breadth of experience to her advantage, applying a fresh perspective to all facets of the business. “You start to figure out what suits your value set, what suits your personality, what suits your aspiration for making a difference and disrupting sectors… Particularly financial services – for me I think the industry is ripe for disruption.” She not only intuitively knows how to put the customer first, she’s continually improving how to operate as a marketing department and how to work with agencies.

Kelly has always had a passion for brands, which helped to shape her initial interest in advertising. At BNZ (Bank of New Zealand), she led a major rebrand of the 160-year-old heritage company, which hadn’t been updated in 25 years. She talks about what it was like to take on such a mammoth