Always on the Cutting Edge:
Andrea Trachtenberg, A Marketing Trailblazer

In the past 25 years, the financial services industry has changed dramatically with new products and new services. During that time, Andrea Trachtenberg has shown a remarkable knack for finding the cutting edge. From the marketing and sales rollout of Merrill Lynch’s ground-breaking CMA product in the early 1980s to building one of the nation’s most trusted wealth management brands at Neuberger Berman, Andrea has broken ground with visionary ideas and adroit orchestration.

Uncharted Waters

Andrea has always been comfortable in uncharted waters and the dynamic new frontier she sees. Formerly with Lehman Brothers, where she headed marketing for its $200 billion in assets Investment Management Division, she founded the Ivory River Group in 2006 to serve as a marketing guru for financial companies that are in the process of rethinking their core strategies, product lines, distribution channels and brand value.

Andrea started her trail-blazing career at E.F. Hutton, where she worked on the introduction of one of the very first money market funds, coordinating in-the-field promotions and sales efforts. That’s where she learned that marketing is more than selling to the end-client; it’s also about selling to sales people and influencers.

She moved to Merrill Lynch in the early 1980s, where she was given key responsibilities in the creation and launching of several start-ups, including Merrill’s entry into the world of mutual funds under its own name. Her big break came with her soup-to-nuts marketing role in the launch of the Cash Management Account (CMA), which revolutionized personal finance. Her knowledge and creative instincts helped make the CMA one of Merrill Lynch’s great success stories. Andrea also pioneered and introduced the concept and discipline of marketing to the more traditional institutional and capital markets arena at Merrill Lynch.

These groundbreaking experiences solidified her thinking about the absolute importance of marrying free-wheeling creativity with precision on-the-ground execution.

Andrea notes. “I thrive in the formative, creative, strategic stages of product marketing. But at the same time, I understand that marketing must be grounded and committed to delivering realistic, actionable results.”

Great Firm, No Visibility

In the late 1980s, Andrea took on her biggest challenge, joining a firm that had a great reputation among its clients but almost no visibility. Joining Neuberger Berman, which had less than $1 billion in mutual fund assets under management at the time, she began to build a mutual fund marketing department from scratch. “There was no cohesion, no plan, no strategic thrust. In fact, none of their mutual funds even had ‘Neuberger Berman’ in their names. As a brand, the firm virtually didn’t exist.”

She built a database of marketing information, shaped the firm’s hodge-podge of mutual fund offerings into a coherent Family of Funds, and revamped its entire communications system and content. “Those early days,” Andrea remembers, “were just blood, sweat and tears. Trying to get Neuberger noticed was almost impossible.”

That changed almost overnight when Andrea’s groundwork and some clever diplomacy got one of Neuberger’s cornerstone funds on the cover of Money magazine. The portfolio’s assets quickly went from less than $1 billion to nearly $6 billion in assets. Neuberger Berman was getting noticed.

Andrea then tackled the marketing of Neuberger’s high-net-worth business, which for 60 years had found new clients primarily by word of mouth. She did her homework on the wealthy, discovering their needs and wants, and learning how to speak to them.

With a limited advertising budget, Andrea created a wide range of relationship-marketing programs, or “experience events” for wealthy people and influencers. She partnered the firm with other high-end luxury companies that had similar brand values. “This was not something generally done at that time,” Andrea says. “The industry didn’t clearly understand the many variations in the millionaire market. Each segment has distinct sensitivities that must be accommodated.”

Turning Point

By segmenting the market and applying creative marketing ideas with solid execution, Neuberger Berman enjoyed tremendous success, enabling it to go public in 1998 and to become a key acquisition for Lehman Brothers in 2003.  In 2005 Neuberger’s assets under management passed the $100 billion mark, quite a climb from those days when it was “Neuberger Berman who?”

When Neuberger Berman was combined with several other recent Lehman Brothers money management acquisitions, Andrea spearheaded a comprehensive branding campaign for introducing Lehman’s newly formed Investment Management Division—to the outside world as well as to all the other divisions within Lehman. With the Investment Management Division now successfully positioned, Andrea has once again set her sights on the next horizon. “What I see out there is a new market that needs my attention. And I see great opportunities to apply my expertise in a new way.”