• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, January 2, 2024

Listening to Executive Vice President and CMO of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company Ramon Jones describe business, one might think that collaboration will become this year's mighty buzzword.

Since Jones takes every opportunity to learn and share his knowledge, he took a seat on the board of PubMatic, an ad-technology company. Its executives will also learn from Jones' more than three decades of marketing and business operations in a mutual company.

Jones “grew up” at Nationwide, devoting 24 years at the company.

PubMatic is publicly traded, but Nationwide is not, so he viewed the board seat as an opportunity to learn more of how a public company operates.

Meeting the leadership team and working with “really smart minds in the digital space” clinched the deal. He also sits on the boards of nonprofit Columbus Regional Airport Authority, and healthcare organization Mount Carmel Health Systems.

As executive vice president and CMO, his responsibilities include influencing where advertising investments go. Although he declined to share the amount invested annually, he did say the number is tied to the company's business strategy. Nationwide uses television and social media as well as search.

“About one of every five TV ads is an insurance commercial,” he said, referring to a recent industry statistic. “It gives you the sense of the importance of maintaining brand awareness in the broadcast space.”

Using streaming television, Nationwide leaned more toward digital advertising, he said, with search and social media platforms including LinkedIn.

“I’m going to lean a little bit more into the space with the assets to focus on the return on investments for every advertising dollar wherever I can measure,” he said.

Nationwide also sponsors the Walter Payton NFL Man of the year award, along with the Nationwide Children’s Hospital, but when Jones mentioned a TikTok pilot, Data & Programmatic Insider had to ask how the company looks past all the bad publicity and U.S. government bans.

“My obligation is to maintain brand safety guidelines,” he said. “We built a favorable brand that I don’t want to risk, cause damage or harm. It’s not limited to TikTok. Every platform has its challenges.”

There is also potential for challenges when relying too much on a particular tool, he added, referring to artificial intelligence. Jones said AI can help accelerate strategic thinking, so people do not start with a blank piece of paper, but it’s only as good as the data fed into the large language models to train it. If the data resource information with bias, so will the output.

Jones slipped in a few financial services industry predictions based on the two businesses Nationwide focus on -- property casualty such as homes and cars and financial services, such as life insurance, annuities, retirement plans and investments.

“The property casualty industry has been hammered with inflation and other challenges for the past several years and it has put pressure on operating results, but I think we’ll come out of that this year,” he said. “I’m not an economist, but I do predict a turnaround because the industry has been battered for the past several years, putting pressure on pricing and analytical capabilities.”

The financial-services side is heavily influenced by the economy and performance of the stock market. Short of a recession, which many have been predicting, it should be a healthy business in 2024.

“But again, I’m a marketer, not an economist,” he said.