In early August, Goldman Sachs rolled out a fresh look.
The redesign was subtle.
Outside Wall Street, it barely registered.
Inside the halls of Goldman Sachs, however, some people were perplexed.
The rebranding effort has spotlighted the executive who spearheaded it: Fiona Carter, the chief marketing officer.
Some of these people were granted anonymity since they were not authorized to discuss company matters.
Carter did not respond to a request for comment.
“Our head count and spending are a small fraction of our peers.
It’s not remotely close.
Goldman never had a chief marketing officer before Carter.
In 2020, however, Solomon aspired tomake Goldman a household name.
She was praised in on-camera interviews and in the press for initiatives to advance women’s equity in advertising.
Carter joined the firm in September 2020 as a member of the bank’s vaunted partnership.
In a break from tradition, she did not report to the head of that division, John Rogers.
She reported instead to his boss, Waldron, the COO.
“He didn’t like it,” said a former executive in the department who worked with Rogers.
“He lost something, and that had never happened in any significant way.”
Fratto said that Rogers “was the one who recommended that marketing report to John Waldron.
He supported that structure and still does.”
Carter quickly set out to reorganize and grow Goldman’s marketing operation.
Carter set out to eliminate these issues and streamline Goldman’s look and messaging.
Carter hired aggressively, and Goldman’s marketing operation soon swelled.
“They’re like: ‘Our budget is never-ending.
We just added another team.
We added another 20 people in a night,'” one former executive-office staffer said.
“It was crazy.”
Goldman insiders told BI it was unusual for executives other than the CEO to have such a staffer.
Dal Pan, who left Goldman in 2023 after little more than a year, declined to comment.
Carter erected new teams, including an internal ad-buying team.
Carter used cliches that puzzled some colleagues, according to a former senior-level marketing executive.
In meetings, she often name-dropped Waldron when discussing her game plan, two senior executives said.
The project was scrapped as performance slumped amid a tenuous dealmaking environment that wasfollowed by layoffs.
“We all live with scarce resources, so I can’t do all of that overnight.
“She has upgraded our capabilities monumentally,” he added.
“Our events and branding are materially better under her leadership.
In recent weeks, Goldman’s marketing team has suffered more departures.
Goldman plans to replace him, a person familiar with the matter said.
There’s been no shortage of internal speculation that the marketing team could be pared down further.
Emmalyse Brownstein contributed reporting.
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