Raising the Brand with Christine Anderson, Global Head of Corporate Affairs at Blackstone, and Catherine McNulty, Global Head of Marketing at Blackstone

Welcome to Private Equity Marketeer’s Raising the Brand, where we delve into the stories and strategies behind the leading brand builders & capital raisers in private markets. In this series, we highlight the creative minds and strategic thinkers who are redefining how private market firms connect with their audiences, build trust, and tell their stories.

Blackstone is a masterclass in communications and brand-building in private markets. The firm’s ability to marry data-driven strategies with authentic storytelling has positioned it as a leader, not just in the alternatives space, but in how investment firms overall approach brand building.

Today, we’re joined by Christine Anderson, Global Head of Corporate Affairs, and Catherine McNulty, Global Head of Marketing, who have been pivotal to the effort of crafting and amplifying Blackstone's voice. In this interview, they share insights and perspectives on how Blackstone raises its brand, builds lasting value, and sustains growth.

• About Christine Anderson

  Christine Anderson serves as Global Head of Corporate Affairs, overseeing Public Affairs, Marketing, and Sustainability functions. She serves as the primary spokesperson for the firm, advising Blackstone’s senior leaders and business groups, as well as companies across Blackstone’s portfolio on communications strategy. She oversees the firm’s global marketing function, including its extensive private wealth marketing platform to engage individual investors. She also leads Blackstone’s sustainability efforts.

  Before joining Blackstone in 2009, Ms. Anderson served as Communications Director and Director of Marketing to the former Governor of New York as well as Communications Director on the 2006 gubernatorial campaign. Before working in state government, Ms. Anderson was an Associate Director of Corporate Communications at UBS AG supporting U.S. media relations and serving as a spokesperson for the company’s Wealth Management division. During the 2004 U.S. Presidential election cycle, she served as a Deputy Press Secretary on the Kerry-Edwards campaign. Ms. Anderson also previously worked as an Account Director at the public relations firm Brunswick and as a Segment Producer for ABC News’ “Good Morning America” after starting her career in the Press Office of the Clinton White House.

  Ms. Anderson received a BA from The College of the Holy Cross. She serves on the board of Diligent Corp. and the boards of several non-profits including: the Blackstone Charitable Foundation, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the GO Project and the Nature Conservancy’s Impact Finance & Markets advisory board.

• About Catherine McNulty

  Catherine McNulty is the Global Head of Marketing at Blackstone. Before joining Blackstone, Catherine was a Managing Director, Global Head of Marketing and Product Management for Morgan Stanley Investment Management. In this role, she was responsible for driving the marketing strategy for the firm’s traditional and alternative platforms across institutional and retail client segments. Before that she worked at Deutsche Bank, now DWS, and Legg Mason in channel marketing roles.

  Catherine received a BS from Skidmore College and an MBA from Fordham University.

Elevating the Firm’s Leadership Voice

Blackstone is undoubtedly one of the most prominent and authoritative voices in private markets discourse today. What role have communications and marketing played in positioning Blackstone as an industry leader in this space?

Christine: As our business has grown, communications and marketing have come to play an increasingly important role in how we engage with our rapidly broadening investor base. Our efforts have been grounded in driving awareness of our business as well as the opportunities presented by private markets.

Over time, we’ve also taken a more active role in communicating our point of view on markets and the economy. It’s a client service as well as helping provide a more accurate picture of what’s happening. We’ve found that not communicating leaves a vacuum and/or allows inaccurate narratives to permeate. It’s important to be selective and weigh in on topics where we have expertise, proprietary insights, or a strong point of view. There is so much content and noise these days that you need to offer something thoughtful and differentiated if you want to break through. Sharing insights has also helped us demonstrate the power of the Blackstone platform, where scale affords us unique data points and perspectives. 

Catherine: We’ve deployed a variety of new tactics across the firm in recent years related to social media, video, email, events, and advertising. How we approach each of these elements is grounded in measurement and data in order to continually position ourselves as an industry leader. We constantly look at engagement metrics and viewership to tailor our content to what our audiences want most on each platform. That way, we continue to develop and push content that the industry craves.

An example of our industry leading content is our Market Views video series in which our President Jon Gray shares his outlook on the markets at large. We roll these out each quarter in long form, as well as shorter clips for organic and paid channels. Through reviewing viewership for each iteration, we have been able to learn which themes our audiences love most (e.g., real estate updates), which formats they find most engaging (e.g., leading with market insights vs. company updates), and how to employ visuals and graphics to maintain attention. We then adapt to continue to deliver content best suited to the industry’s needs.

Leadership Lessons in Marketing and Communications

Both of you have held leadership roles that require navigating the complexities of a global organization. What are the essential qualities for leading high-performing teams in marketing and communications? How do you ensure the culture fosters both innovation and accountability?

Christine: It’s all about constructing a high caliber team and then creating the structure to support innovation, accountability, and execution. This gets increasingly important as you scale. In the beginning, you hire strong generalists, and, over time, you have the luxury of adding specialists. But, at whatever phase, your people need to function as a team of modern communicators. Whether an individual is doing PR, hosting an event, producing a video, or crafting a social media post, they need to understand it’s all in service to the same objective – to advance the brand and safeguard reputation. The best communications and marketing leaders break down silos and approach each communications challenge or opportunity as a multidisciplinary exercise.  

Additionally, as you scale, you have to maintain discipline. The demands on a team will multiply, and you have to perpetually stop to evaluate how various content or tactics are performing and supporting key business objectives. You also need to ensure that individuals aren’t simply drinking out of a firehose but given the headspace to think and innovate. Building a thriving culture based on innovation is challenging, particularly when you are just starting out or flexing within an environment that’s traditionally applied more conservative communications tactics. Sometimes it takes a little time to build buy-in for new approaches. We started small, took some risks, and then built upon those successes.

Catherine: One thing that’s been hugely helpful is bringing our teams together earlier on projects so that they are partnered with the business leaders as plans are being developed. We think about communications and marketing needs early in the lifecycle of a product or strategy. This provides tremendous learning opportunities for our people and also helps build cross-team collaboration.

Leading a team of creatives within a financial organization requires effort to ensure that they ideate to their full ability without compromising the precision needed in the financial sector. That is why integrating this creative thinking early in a project is a crucial, as well as unifying force, creating one Blackstone voice from strategy inception to client delivery.

Diversified Investor Base

Over the past decade or so, private markets players have broadened their appeal beyond institutional investors and into the private wealth space, a development pioneered in the industry by Blackstone. How does your marketing and communications approach develop alongside this evolution?

Christine: The firm has grown dramatically over its 40-year history. Historically, we invested on behalf of large institutions. These were close relationships built on trust and consistent performance over many cycles. Reaching these clients meant getting on planes or picking up the phone/emailing — in other words, one-on-one contact. As we’ve built our private wealth business over the last decade, we’ve had to build a modern communications operation that can reach a much wider audience through new channels, formats, and strategies, which has been a game changer. We had to rethink how we communicate, pilot new initiatives, and test and learn from many new tactics.  

This has all been happening while the media landscape has been rapidly evolving. As a result, we’ve had to adapt our approach. We can no longer rely upon traditional tactics to reach clients.

Catherine: One of our big focus areas is education. We support financial advisers and individual investors as they build confidence in and understanding of private markets, chiefly through our flagship Blackstone University program. This program, led by our senior investment professionals, works to impart our best thinking about private markets, how these investments can fit into investor portfolios, and how they have performed over time in changing market environments. Since launch, over 15K advisors have participated in the program.

Engaging the Next Generation of Investors

As younger investors grow more influential, how does Blackstone adapt its messaging and outreach to connect with this demographic authentically?

Christine: When you think about audience cultivation, you want to play the long game. The goal is to be as targeted and efficient as possible, while also thinking about your client pipeline.

Each channel, be it Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube, typically has a different user base, so utilizing multiple platforms and adapting communication styles is key to connecting with audiences and meeting them where they are. Authenticity is crucial. We’ve spent a lot of time on this particular topic. The goal has been to avoid the formality or the “sea of sameness” that we sometimes see in the financial industry and elsewhere. We try to think: “What can we say that’s unique to Blackstone? What perspectives do we have? And, how can we communicate that in a way that’s simple, clear, and human?”

We’ve explored a lot of new tactics, such as Jon Gray’s running videos, which have become a viral sensation on LinkedIn. They are not slick, corporate videos. Instead, he films them on a cell phone. You get a sense for his travels, insights, and also, a sense for him as a person. Investing is about trust. So, getting to see the people behind the investments is a way of understanding our values and culture. These running videos are one way people get to know Jon on this level.  

Catherine: Digital media and the way audiences consume information is rapidly evolving, and it’s our job to keep up. Jon’s videos are not only a way to get to know him better but are also a reflection of the firm adapting with the changing digital landscape. And to keep up with audience evolution, our Marketing team conducts monthly brainstorms in which they review top- and bottom- performing organic social media content and use these results to drive which type of content to lean into further and to steer away from. This exercise has led us to double down on social-first content and helped make the business case for building out top-engaging series like Between Two Meetings and Ask Our SMDs. 

Leveraging Data for Storytelling

How does data inform your team’s marketing decisions? Can you share examples where data insights directly influenced a successful campaign or initiative?

Catherine: Data informs everything we do at Blackstone. On the Marketing team, we aim to regularly keep ourselves honest with consistent measurement check-ins. Our teams meet bi-weekly to review marketing performance across all of our owned channels and to assess content performance.

One example of data use is in our email communications. Our digital team analyzes the performance of each email we send to tailor communications and create touchpoints that are most value-add to our audiences. By tracking each email against benchmarks and A/B testing different elements, they are able to hone the format and offer content that is most engaging to our audiences. Over time, that approach evolves and leads to the best outcome. In a recent A/B test, for example, we learned that a simple change would allow us to double the rate of email subscriptions.

Defining Moments of Innovation

What have been some of the most innovative corporate communications campaigns under your leadership? How do these moments tie back to Blackstone’s values and mission?

Christine: Our most innovative advertising campaign is our most recent, entitled, “Making the Connection.” Not every firm would have chosen a fish for the hero of its ad campaign, but we were looking for something that would stand out. We used the simple metaphor of a fish outgrowing its bowl to communicate that the wider world of private markets is now available to individuals.

We are not afraid to take risks with our creative concepts, but the “North Star” is always – is it clear and concise? Are we saying something that only we can say? Expect to see even more humor and creativity in the next installment coming this year.

Catherine: We’ve also taken an innovative approach with our Japan campaign, showcasing that we can use advertising to target specific regions and client segments to drive broad awareness and understanding of our firm. Driven by a larger media presence and the introduction of new events, we’re working to further solidify ourselves as a trusted presence in the country. By generating region-specific content, engaging with notable publications in the locale, and hosting in-person firm events, we’re aiming to deliver more on the Blackstone brand in 2025 and beyond.

It's our firm’s 40th anniversary this year, so look out for content about that coming up in Japan and around the globe!

The Art of the Holiday Video

As it’s still fresh on our minds, we would love to learn a bit more about the annual holiday video. Blackstone’s annual holiday video has become a celebrated tradition, resonating far beyond the walls of financial services. What is the philosophy behind creating these campaigns, and how does the team ensure they capture the firm’s culture while appealing to such a wide audience?

Christine: The holiday video is my favorite Blackstone tradition. If you could only see behind the scenes when we are filming – we laugh so hard. I particularly loved watching our people riding a mechanical bull (or trying to) and two-stepping this year. 

The tradition started in 2018 as a way to communicate to employees that the annual holiday party was cancelled. As you referenced, however, in recent years, the video has taken on a life of its own. What once was an internal culture initiative is now something eagerly anticipated by clients and the broader community. We’ve leaned into it, had some fun, and perpetually live in fear of how we’ll top the previous year’s.

 I think the video serves as a helpful reminder that corporate communications doesn’t always have to be so formal. The more authentic you are, the better your content resonates, and the more your brand stands out. Plus, you have to be willing to take some risks.

Internal Marketing

Lastly, internal communications can be as vital as external campaigns. How do you ensure your colleagues feel connected to the brand and aligned with its mission?

Christine: Internal communications is crucial to firm culture. We are hyper-focused on keeping employees informed about our business, engaged with our culture, and connected across teams and regions alike. Central to this effort is BXTV, our firmwide Monday morning meeting that convenes all employees globally. We cover recent transactions, news, and personnel updates mixed with a lot of photos, human interest components, and bad jokes.  

Beyond BXTV, we also lean on our company intranet and external social channels to recognize our people, celebrate milestones, and give a glimpse into what it's like to work at Blackstone.

Bonus question

Thinking beyond the private markets, what is your all time favorite brand and why?

Christine: A recent favorite is Oura, the company behind the fitness tracking smart rings. The brand's “form meets function" ethos and elegant, user-friendly interface have helped them make serious inroads among the wellness minded. I particularly like their education content, which serves to keep customers engaged and retained. 

Catherine: Nike is my favorite brand because it combines innovation with style, delivering high-quality products that resonate across generations. My boys love it just as much as I do, and its "Just Do It" message is simple and memorable, empowering its customers to embrace their potential.