How TIAA’s CMO Rejuvenated the 100-Yr-Outdated B2B Model with Award-Successful Content material

Almost three years ago, Micky Onvural made a surprising gesture. She left her role as CEO of a B2C fashion brand, Bonobos, to become CMO of TIAA, a century-old B2B brand focused on retirement plans.

“It was a whole new ball of wax for me,” says Micky, who has also held marketing-related roles at B2C brands eBay and L’Oréal.

This new perspective is exactly what TIAA wanted. Micky was hired as director of marketing and communications shortly after CEO Thashunda Brown Duckett took the helm.

TIAA knew it needed to break free from the perception that it was a “stuffy, old, white man brand” because of its heritage in higher education and nonprofit insurance. Instead, he wanted to be known for his modern, fast-paced, dynamic work.

Micky Onvural, marketing director of TIAA
B2B Content Marketer of the Year 2024

A rebrand like that is already an ambitious goal, but another major hurdle made it worse. TIAA never really had a marketing strategy. For its first 95 or so years, its market dominance was sufficient. When Micky joined the company, TIAA needed to raise awareness and break into a crowded market in a way that would grab people’s attention.

“I was incredibly lucky to have a virtually blank slate,” says Micky.

To tell a new TIAA story, Micky and the team turned to two pillars of B2B content marketing: an event and a publication, both called TMRW.

In 2024, TMRW (the publication) won the award for Best B2B Branded Content Campaign at Content Marketing Pricing. And Micky, who championed and led the work, won the title of 2024 B2B Content Marketer of the Year.

An event from TED and Coachella

TIAA’s reinvention began with an existing annual conference for its primary customer base: retirement plan sponsors. Traditionally, participants spent a day and a half earning continuing education credits in their industry while TIAA promoted its products.

Micky wanted to turn the event into something she had conceived as a child of TED and Coachella. His team looked into the idea.

They named the “baby” TIAA TMRW and planned content to help retirement plan sponsors do their jobs better and better understand the retirement challenges higher education employees face.

The transformation worked. “We’ve seen people’s perceptions of the brand change dramatically and quickly,” says Micky. “I think it’s because of things I call ‘revaluation symbols.’ There are times when you’re like, “Oh, that’s not what I expected.”

Evaluations showed that more than 80% of attendees at their first TIAA TMRW event positively changed their perception of the brand. “It has become an unmissable event, because who doesn’t want to improve at their job and get involved with their community,” explains Micky.

The incredibly successful event inspired the TIAA team to expand its education-focused marketing strategy to include a full-fledged content brand.

Expansion of the TMRW content brand

TMRW now encompasses a digital content center and a print publication in addition to the event.

The editorial team, led by former journalist Beverly Goodman, tackles dense topics (like the retirement crisis and financial literacy) without the jargon typically associated with corporate thought leadership in the financial services space.

Using conversational language and a human element, TMRW falls apart complex concepts in relevant terms.

TIAA launched TMRW online in June 2023 and followed with the first edition of a 30-page print magazine. The second edition from October 2023 totaled 34 pages and was posted as an insert in the PLANSPONSOR magazine.

The team created more than 300 digital assets to support the first issues, including webinars, social media posts, promotions on online trade publications, and internal automated marketing sequences.

TMRW articles are also cataloged in the TIAA Content Library (on the Seismic platform). Sales and distribution teams, some of whom provide feedback during editorial planning meetings, can “buy” the content they need.

TMRW results exceeded all criteria set by TIAA to increase awareness and improve perception of TIAA as a opinion leader.

In the digital domain, in less than three months, TIAA received 764 online subscription lead registrations (a subscription rate of 2.6%). Of these, 625 were new leads, resulting in 2.1% lead generation, which was better than expected.

The second edition produced even better results. 365 additional subscribers contributed to a 176% increase in web traffic.

TIAA also added TMRW webinars to the content distribution model, which generated more leads.

While demonstrating that TIAA TMRW was good for business, the metrics also helped guide editorial planning. Pageviews, average time on page, email, and A/B testing across social media and digital advertising provide critical feedback. For example, the team hypothesized that customers wanted more regulatory information, but that legislative updates received the least engagement.

Further proof that the future of TIAA TMRW is bright: a specialist publication has published one of his articles. And relationship managers (sales team members) continue to receive positive feedback.

One customer even took the time to write and say, “Thank you for sharing this new post with the Retiree Roundtable! I have subscribed and look forward to reading each of the segments.

Commit to print

Printing (yes, printing) is essential to TMRW’s strategy. TIAA offers its readers beautifully designed issues that feel like a high-end consumer magazine.

Designed by partner agency Transportation, TMRW is a literal manifestation of TIAA’s reinvention.

“I don’t think our first edition would have had the same impact of awareness and attention without the physicality of a printed edition,” says Micky. “(It’s) quite unexpected for us as a brand and for the [financial services] industry.”

TIAA publishes two issues of TMRW per year: a February/March issue for plan sponsors and an October issue for consultants. Although the issues differ slightly in content and tone, Micky says they both build the TMRW franchise and “the perception of who we are as a more forward-thinking organization.”

Printing also allows the TIAA team to offer a multitude of content with different information and points of view (internal and external) in one package. TIAA representative teams bring copies of the magazine to events they host or exhibit and to customer and prospect meetings.

Micky says that print magazines generally don’t work well in B2C marketing. However, they can work well for B2B brands with limited audiences. And TIAA has that in its institutional plan sponsors and financial consultants.

The print also has the “passable” factor, as Micky calls it. A human resources manager will give it to the CFO of their institution and say, “You should take a look at this.”

Looking to the future of TMRW

The TIAA team is not resting on TMRW’s laurels. Micky says they plan to evolve the digital experience to include more video and other elements. “We’ve been playing with some of these on a smaller scale and we’ll continue to work on them through 2025.”

Continuing to demonstrate the impact of TMRW is essential to its sustainability. But the results are not just about numbers.

“What’s exciting is seeing people engage with us differently because they see us differently,” says Micky.

Employees, including those who distribute the magazine at events and customer meetings, have more positive experiences because they are involved in something new and exciting within the 116-year-old brand.

And now TMRW stories fill Micky’s once-blank list.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute