First Interstate Bank

First Interstate Bank's acquisition of Great Western Bank expanded the brand into 8 new states and more than 20 markets. The business needed a consistent parent brand while entering communities with very different demographics, competitive environments, and customer needs.

Consistency does not require sameness. The brand could remain recognizable while the emphasis, products, channels, and creative reflected the people in each market.

Build a market-level intelligence system that made localization scalable instead of rebuilding the strategy market by market.

As Account Supervisor at Grady Britton, I led the agency relationship for First Interstate Bank, the agency's highest-billing client, and directed integrated strategy and execution across creative, digital, media, and production.

I built a demographics database covering the acquired markets and used it to identify dominant and priority audiences, including tribal reservation communities and markets with large Hispanic populations. We matched creative and messaging to those audiences and created a messaging matrix that helped multiple financial products enter new markets without fragmenting the parent brand.

The system supported the launch of First Interstate Bank across 8 new states and 20+ markets and gave the team a repeatable way to balance enterprise brand consistency with local relevance.