After spending 20 years in marketing and communications, Andrew Bowins, now senior vice president of corporate & digital communications at MasterCard, was recruited from Nokia two and a half years ago. He found, buried in MasterCard’s Purchase headquarters, what he calls a communications “deli counter” (I’ll take two press releases, one case of exec briefings, and a quarter pound of events), and a downtrodden culture to match.
Rebecca Kaufman, an associate analyst who works under Bowins, describes him as a “change agent.” To that effect, he commissioned a state-of-the-art social-media command center—a cloud-based system that combines people, software, and data into one visualization “environment” (think people clustered around big screens displaying social media analytics in real time) where the communications team can listen to 43 markets in 26 languages across social, traditional, and digital media to understand what’s being said about the company and how it compares to the competition. These types of changes have built an entirely new sense of purpose among his reports. Says Bowins, applying digital innovations to corporate communications elevated the department to its current status as “a consultative, trusted partner that enables the [greater MasterCard] team as a result of our expertise.” It is a welcome departure from the I’ll-take-that-press-release-typed-and-size-12 deli days.
“He encourages his staff to be trendsetters and has the ear of senior management to advocate for his team,” says Kaufman. “He supports employees on their ideas and shamelessly promotes all the great work his team completes.”
Today, it’s not unusual for Kaufman to find herself doing the Harlem Shake in costume at an annual corporate gathering. And in case there were any doubts that this is no longer your grandpa’s communications team, Bowins was decked out in a bunny suit to lead the dance.
