A brand refresh often searches for a new story, but the strongest one may already exist in what customers trust and employees deliver every day.
Eighty-eight percent of consumers say trusting a brand is an important or critical purchase factor, according to Edelman’s 2026 Trust Barometer Special Report.
For marketing leaders, one question follows:
How do you build a brand people genuinely believe?
In the latest DesignRush Podcast, I spoke with b1BANK Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer Senna Bayasgalan, about finding the story already inside a business and building campaigns around real customer experiences.
“I would say really don’t rush to make your mark before you’ve taken the time to understand everyone else’s.
"Because when you inherit an organization or department, you’re also inheriting years of decisions, relationships, institutional knowledge,” Bayasgalan tells DesignRush.
In Episode 147 of the DesignRush Podcast, Bayasgalan explains how leaders can learn what customers already trust before making changes.
She also shares how employee insight and shared language can strengthen how a company communicates its value.
Watch the full episode now on YouTube or listen on Spotify.
Who Is Senna Bayasgalan?
Senna Bayasgalan is b1BANK’s Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer and the first CMO in the bank’s history. She leads brand strategy, communications, marketing technology, and growth initiatives, drawing on 17 years of experience across financial services, private capital, technology, media, and nonprofit leadership.
1. How New CMOs Can Build Initial Credibility
A new CMO can feel pressure to make an immediate impact.
That usually means new messaging, a new campaign, or a new brand direction.
Bayasgalan chose a different starting point.
She learned why the business worked before deciding what to change.
“It’s easy to assume something should change because it looks outdated from the outside. But often there’s a reason it exists.”
Her advice applies across industries.
A company carries years of customer relationships and internal knowledge, so moving too quickly can remove the qualities clients already value.
That is why Bayasgalan spent her first months visiting b1BANK markets across Louisiana and Texas. She spoke with employees, clients, and community members before developing a new campaign.
"I spent my first months just traveling throughout our markets across Louisiana and Texas, asking questions instead of offering answers."
Those conversations focused on four simple questions:
- Where are we strongest?
- What do customers value?
- What are we already doing well?
- Why has that mattered to people?
"Where are we strongest, right? What do our clients consistently value? What are we already doing exceptionally well that we're simply just not articulating?"
The answers showed her where the company’s story already lived.
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2. What Drives Customer Brand Loyalty Beyond Price
Think about the last company that earned your trust. Chances are the product was only part of the reason.
Marketing teams can spend months refining product messaging, only for customers to remember something else.
They remember how a company solved a problem. They remember who picked up the phone. They remember whether someone understood what they were trying to achieve.
Bayasgalan noticed this during her listening tour.
"What impressed me most when I first joined, (...) spending my time listening and doing the listening tour really wasn't any product or service.
"Because you know in banking, the product you offer, the services you offer are very similar, right?" Bayasgalan says.
The same lesson applies across other industries.
Products and services may look similar. The customer experience gives people a reason to choose one provider and return to it.
"You can get a checking account from us or from somebody else. It was actually the combination of the sophisticated capabilities and the deeply relationship-driven culture."
Customer interviews help uncover those reasons.
They show what people valued during the experience and what they remember afterward. Those answers can support future marketing with evidence from real interactions.
Bayasgalan says some of the qualities that influence customer decisions never appear in reports.
"Some of the most important information about these businesses never appears on a balance sheet.
“You can't see that person's hustle. You can't see that person's vision, the founder's vision, the resilience they had to demonstrate, and the reputation they really built in their community."
Those conversations revealed something financial data could not.
A credible brand story often begins there.
DesignRush’s guide to brand identity offers more on building a distinctive brand.
3. How to Get Employees to Embrace Your Brand
Bayasgalan’s team found the story through interviews.
The next step was to give that story a clear form.
Ignite Ambition became b1BANK’s internal brand platform. It gave employees a simple way to describe how their work helped clients move toward a business or personal goal.
“We didn’t really discover a new story when we did this listening tour. We actually uncovered one that was already there,” she says.
“Marketing’s role wasn’t to create a new identity. It was to give our people a more shared language that really reflected the impact they were already making every single day.”
The bank introduced the idea to employees before promoting it publicly.
That helped bankers use the language in client conversations. It also helped support teams see how their work connected to each customer’s next goal.
The same thinking guided Hall of Ambition, a campaign featuring former NFL quarterback Drew Brees alongside real b1BANK clients.
Brees brought attention to the campaign. The client stories gave people a reason to remember it.
“Drew really helped us help people to discover the campaign. But our clients’ stories really gave those people who came to the campaign a reason to remember it.”
The lesson for CMOs is to speak with employees, ask clients what earned their trust, and find the stories people already remember.
Then give the business words it can use with confidence.
DesignRush’s guide to brand awareness strategies offers more context on building recognition around a clear company story.
Key Takeaways for Marketing Leaders
Bayasgalan's advice starts with a simple idea.
Listen before you change anything.
Talk to the people who know the business best. Ask customers why they trust you. Ask employees what they hear every day. Look for the stories that appear again and again.
"The best way to find out what your clients need is to ask them. You just simply ask them," Bayasgalan says.
Those conversations can reveal what no dashboard or quarterly report will show.
They can also help teams write messages that employees recognize from their own work.
"(A) successful brand refresh shouldn't feel like a reinvention. It should feel like a greater clarity about who you already are, what your brand already is, and where you're going."
For Bayasgalan, marketing helps a company understand and express the purpose it already has.
"I don't really think a great brand creates purpose. I think it really reveals that purpose that you already have."
Start with the conversations taking place inside the business. The story worth telling may already be there.
