Western Union at 169: Cross-Functional Team Informs the World about its Payments Platform

Not all our readers’ companies are as old and well known as Western Union. Having an iconic brand can be a double-edged sword, though. Some people assume that a brand nearing its 200 birthday must be conservative and reluctant to change. In some cases, they’re right.

This is not so with Western Union, its new chief corporate affairs and communications officer Nicole Vogrin tells us.

First, the 10-year veteran refers to the company as being “169 years young.” As for its reluctance to change, she reminds us morphing is nothing new at Western Union. “We began delivering telegrams, remember.” It stopped doing that in 2006. Seriously, Vogrin says, “Innovation and transformation are in our DNA.”

WU now is in the payments-delivery business. Considering the scope of global commerce—most of us think nothing of buying goods from overseas vendors, via Amazon or another commerce site—it’s a very good business. Behind Amazon and other global companies’ transaction is Western Union’s platform. “We think we’re the most well-run and versatile payment engine on the globe,” Vogrin says.

Thanks to digital technology and a healthy market, fees for transferring money between borders have fallen fast. In developed countries fees are barely 2 percent. As fees continue to fall, the $2 trillion that traversed the globe in 2019 is expected to grow, per The Economist.

An exception to the inexpensive movement of money is remittances, or the practice of workers sending money home to relatives. Fees here are more than three times the cost of global payments, hovering around 7 percent.

And the amounts are mighty. Nearly 300 million migrants regularly send funds home. They sent an estimated $550 billion to relatives last year, The Economist says. “We must really communicate and educate around our new businesses, particularly our remittance business,” Vogrin says. It boasts 550,000 global locations. That’s more than McDonald’s, Starbucks and Walmart combined.

Below are edited excerpts from our interview with Vogrin.

PRNEWS: What communications tactics and strategies are you using to educate the public about the new Western Union?

Nicole Vogrin: We have a roughly 90 percent global brand awareness rate. Finding ourselves in this enviable position after reinventing our business model multiple times, is indeed a good place to begin.

Western Union has built its global brand by keeping a relentless focus on its customers and their evolving needs. While Western Union is known for its cash remittance business, it is a profoundly digital company, operating the world’s largest digital remittance platform.

Shifting some of the outdated perceptions about Western Union...is not a task the communications function could do alone. We developed a corporate affairs working group from communications, marketing and brand, public policy and the WU Foundation, among other functions. We brought this cross-functional team together in 2018. To ground our strategy, we conducted a stakeholder perception audit...with the Reputation Institute.

The working group has been a key force driving common positioning goals. It also led to the development of our inaugural Environment, Social and Governance report.

PRN: How have you raised awareness of your digital platform, which powers Apple Pay and some Amazon transactions?

Vogrin: Most recently, we’ve expanded our offerings by opening our global, cross-border, cross-currency platform...to partners including banks, governments and other businesses.

One example of such partnerships is our collaboration with Amazon. Amazon PayCode enables its customers in 20 countries (and counting) to access the global marketplace and purchase goods online and pay for them with local payment methods and in local currency.

Implementing the strategy of opening our cross-border platform required a carefully orchestrated internal and external communications approach. As a result, I spend a meaningful amount of time to cascade and discuss strategy with my leadership team.

One tactic we used was our September 2019 Investor Day, where we outlined...how we intend to drive long-term incremental growth....We also shared a three-year financial outlook.

Our communications, corporate brand and marketing teams are working closely with our business development and sales teams to flush out communications plans supporting the go-to-market strategy for our platform solutions. Thought leadership will play a key role in these plans and serve as tools to reach and engage future platform partners.

PRNEWS: What about internally?

Vogrin: Internally, we started to prepare our broader employee base for this journey months before Investor Day. To engrain Western Union’s strategy we’re using visualization tools, such as strategy placemats. With so much change, it is essential to allow for a continuous dialogue. The communications team partners with HR and we leverage tools like Glint surveys to hear from our employees on a monthly basis to learn what we can do better.