NICOLE GARRISON

BLURRED LINES, BANKING, AND BRAND MARKETING

NICOLE GARRISON IS THE SENIOR DIRECTOR of employer brand and workplace marketing at the Royal Bank of Canada.

Beginning during her time in Murphy Hall, Garrison has worked across journalism, public relations, marketing and advertising. She credits her versatile Hubbard degree, and a healthy amount of persistence and resilience, as key reasons she’s been able to seamlessly move between industries.

Garrison knew she wanted to be a writer of some sort in fourth grade. She came to the Hubbard School to pursue a journalism degree, and took courses ranging from Arts Reporting and Reviewing at the Jungle Theater in Minneapolis to Media Law with Jane Kirtley–a course that prepared her to understand reputational risk and to thrive in her roles in the PR sector.

Persistence paid off in landing her first internship at her hometown newspaper, and perseverance carried her through. After completing an internship at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Garrison launched her career at the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal where she initially covered marketing, advertising and PR. When Garrison’s editor asked her to take on banking and finance, she was certain she would fail because she was “bad at math.” Ironically, this beat is the one that ended up setting the trajectory for a majority of her career to date.

Garrison continued building her resume back at the Pioneer Press in 2006, where she helped cover the housing market crash and recession. There were approximately 175 journalists in the Pioneer Press newsroom—with 21 at the business desk—when she first walked into the newsroom back in 2001. By the time she left in 2009, there were only seven reporters left at the business desk.

Garrison pivoted to a communications director role at the Minnesota Department of Commerce in 2009 before moving on to a senior leadership position with U.S. Bank. Garrison noted that “trouble seemed to follow her” as her time in corporate public relations at U.S. Bank overlapped with the height of the Occupy Wall Street movement. She used connections and partnerships with senior leaders and lessons learned about reputational management at the School to help U.S. Bank stand out as a good player in the banking industry during a tumultuous time.

Garrison looks back on the various challenges she’s faced throughout her career as opportunities to build her confidence and expand her skillset.

Garrison accepted a role at Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) in 2014, where she currently serves as the senior director of employer brand and workplace marketing. In her role with RBC, Garrison brings her journalistic skills with her to work every day to write, edit and produce content for internal and external audiences.

“One of the hardest things I’ve ever done was to give up my career as a journalist,” Garrison said. “I remember talking to some of my newsroom friends, crying, and saying: ‘I’ll never love a career as much as I love this one.’ But that wasn’t true. My role now is a perfect combination of journalism, strategic communication, advertising and marketing. It’s an exciting field, and I’m having as much fun, if not more, than that now.”

In her current role at RBC, Garrison led the team that built RBC’s very first employer brand from scratch. She spends a majority of her time telling RBC’s story through long form content, sponsored content, strategic communication, advertising and creative imagery.

“This whole notion that you need a separate brand to attract and retain talent is fairly new. But the discipline is about more than pretty ads, it’s rooted in storytelling, just like my journalism degree is,” Garrison said. “In employer branding, we seek to make an emotional connection with current and prospective talent, to tell the company’s story. It’s advertising, but it’s storytelling, too—even ads need to tell a story with a motive.”