Jill Cress joined H&R Block as chief marketing officer in April. Ever since, her mission has been to turn a brand that is a one-time a year engagement brand to a brand that is always-on for consumers throughout the year.
“It’s much more than taxes,” explains Cress. “We really want to help build financial confidence in Americans. We want to be an always-on brand. We’re excited to really bring our holistic product experience to life in a fun and energizing way. You’ll see much more energy coming out of the work that we’ll put into the world over the next year.”
To accomplish this goal there is a lot of focus on the end-to-end customer experience. Their idea is to meet customers with “ease and simplicity,” whether they are coming into one of the company’s 10,000+ offices around the US, Canada and Australia, doing their taxes online, using a virtual pro or using the company’s DIY tools. Additionally, H&R Block is providing financial services to consumers and small business owners all year round through its Spruce mobile app and Spruce debit card.
Under the leadership of H&R Block CEO Jeff Jones, the brand is working towards a set of strategies called Block Horizons 2025. These foundational initiatives, which launched in April 2021, aligns three strategic imperatives – small business, financial services and global consumer tax services.
“It is just a really exciting opportunity to transform an iconic legacy American brand and really to increase H&R Block’s relevance for the next generation of consumers,” says Cress. “We’ve got a real opportunity to win with Gen Z. The gig economy is the backdrop in the landscape of people’s relationship with money. We have an opportunity to provide tax solutions, as well as becoming a year-round brand.”
To take advantage of this opportunity, the company is leaning on storytelling with a focus on its legacy of expertise in a new and modern way. “What’s exciting about what we’re doing this year is really telling that story and leveraging the legacy of expertise and care that we have through human interaction in our offices and really bringing that to the next generation of use cases where that can happen digitally as well,” explains Cress. “We are telling digital stories to attract younger audiences. So changing how we tell our story and the jobs that we can do for our clients is kind of the sweet spot to attract new clients and change perceptions in a pretty ambitious way.
Prior to joining H&R Block, Cress has held senior marketing roles at PayPal, National Geographic and Mastercard. Brand Innovators caught up with Cress from a shoot in Los Angeles to discuss the new role, brand transformation and building financial confidence in Americans. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What are you hoping to accomplish in the role?
One of the things that we really want to do is to put a little bit more energy into H&R Block. We’ve got incredible levels of trust. People trust us with their most intimate financial data. We have a real opportunity to put more heart into the brand. It’s really putting the energy and harkening back to what H&R Block has always done.
The legacy of the Bloch Brothers is to help people with their tax moment. Sixty percent of Americans actually get a refund nowadays. It’s a significant financial moment for them. It’s to provide help and inspire confidence.
How are you helping in this tax moment?
We have over 10,000 office locations around the US where clients and prospects can experience the expertise and care of a real human. We also have incredible digital solutions. We’re focusing our storytelling on the great experience you can have with digital tools. You can file yourself just like you can do with TurboTax. We’ve got an awareness gap there, so we are really driving home that message that we can do the same thing. If you want to file your taxes yourself, we’ve got an amazing digital experience. You can do it online. If you want to meet with a tax professional and you don’t want to go into an office, you can do that virtually with H&R Block. From a product experience standpoint, there are a lot of options.
How has your experience at other brands like Mastercard, National Geographic PayPal, helped shape your point of view in your current role?
I love the opportunity to build and transform brands. I looked at this opportunity as being able to bring three really iconic brands to bear. Mastercard’s Priceless platform is a brand that is really connected with consumers. I learned a lot about just the role of brand and driving human interactions with brands and that is a really exciting opportunity that we have at H&R Block.
National Geographic was about changing perceptions surrounding a print publication seeking to become more relevant and telling those stories but in ways that were relevant to a new audience. One of the things that we really focused on was just the power of the content specific to platforms. We learned a lot about platform specificity. So how do you take a long form piece of content and publish it across Snap, Instagram and YouTube. That idea of pervasive storytelling and that you can meet audiences where they are in new ways was really exciting.
PayPal was really such an incredible platform for driving direct-to-consumer acquisition and engagement at a massive scale. When I started at PayPal, we had 300 million client relationships around the world, when I left it was more than 400 million. What I learned there was the importance of performance marketing at scale and making them more relevant to a new and younger audience.
That strong financial services and brand orientation from Mastercard, a journey of transformation at National Geographic and taking a great legacy brand and making it more relevant. Then that muscle of what it means to do performance marketing in a modern way, were the trifecta of brand experiences to bring to what we’re trying to do at H&R Block. The foray into financial services, and looking for ways to drive growth with new audiences are really connected to the work that I’ve done in the past.
Can you discuss these brand experiences that you are trying to build at H&R Block?
We are helping people to be better with money all year round. At H&R Block the opportunity to move from a one-time a year engagement brand to a brand that’s always-on by providing helpful solutions to anticipate the tax season, but also in actually providing financial services to them through what we’re doing with our Spruce mobile app and Spruce debit card, really taking a new audience and helping them to be better with money all year round, providing them cashback is a great foray into driving acquisition for that card. We are finding ways to be there for our clients on a year round basis. It’s a really exciting time to transform an iconic brand that really stands for something very powerful, to bring a little bit more energy to that.
What channels are you using to connect with Gen Z?
We’ve done a lot of work on TikTok. We did a lot of testing last year, and we’re really excited about the role that TikTok will play in our plans next year to engage with that audience. We’re also doing more in online TV. YouTube is a big focus. We’re still, of course, with traditional linear channels, but also excited to be working with some of the platforms to do branded content.
The company just brought on the agency Ogilvy and also works with media agency GALE. Can you talk about these partnerships?
One of the things about transforming a legacy brand is working with a partner that will challenge you to be a little bit uncomfortable. It’s been really fun to be uncomfortable with how we might change the way we show up and how we might tell our story. Ogilvy and GALE are both so incredible.
We’ve had a good track record with GALE in our media strategy, really helping us to push into new formats with the work that we’ve done on TikTok to promote our consumer tax product. We’ve also done really fun work on TikTok to promote our Block Advisors brand, which is a brand that is there to support small businesses, and we’ve done work on TikTok to support Spruce our debit card. GALE has been a great partner in challenging us to think about new formats and where to find audiences. The power of this relationship that is coming together between H&R Block, Ogilvy and GALE is really set up for doing things in a way that’s going to be bold, ambitious and different.
Will we see you at the Super Bowl next year?
Watch this space. We’ll let you know.
