Unlocking Consumer Trust and Business Impact Through Culturally Relevant Storytelling
Eric Wilson, CMO of CrossCountry Mortgage, opens up about experiential marketing, leading with a brand-first mindset, and tapping into culturally relevant moments to fuel long-term business growth
Eric Wilson is an award-winning brand leader who has been helping brands define their voice for over two decades. Our world is consistently changing, but his love for creativity and problem-solving hasn't. He is an analytical big-picture thinker who navigates complex organizations and specializes in creating and inspiring world-class teams. His teams have been awarded the most prestigious industry honors, including multiple awards from each of the following shows: Cannes Lions (including a Grand Prix), ADDY, Clio, Webby, and One Show awards. Additionally, he has won one Emmy.
He is currently the Chief Marketing Officer at the nation's number one retail mortgage lender, CrossCountry Mortgage. Eric leads the company’s national marketing efforts, fueling brand growth, customer engagement, and business expansion. Under his leadership, CCM has created a dynamic, digitally driven marketing strategy.
Before joining CCM, Eric held leadership roles at iconic brands such as Time Magazine, Volkswagen, and Samsung, as well as consulting engagements and board service across multiple industries. His career is defined by a passion for transformation, a deep understanding of culture, and a relentless drive to build what’s next.
The Continuum sat down with Eric to talk about a career across well-known agencies and brands, the importance of brands tapping into cultural moments, and the balance between brand and demand.
What attracted you to marketing and advertising as a profession, and how did you get your first role?
I had a lot of internships when I was in school at Pepperdine University. They ran the gamut from finance to production studios; it was L.A., after all. Then I landed at Chiat/Day, and it instantly hit the spot for me. Just being around the energy and people with so much drive—these people were 24/7. Building brands and businesses was just fun and fulfilling.
They didn’t have a job for me when I graduated, so I took one with another agency. However, I ended up coming back to Chiat. Nissan was moving to Nashville, and I was asked to go as part of the team. I was in my 20s and living in L.A.; I didn’t really want to move to Tennessee. But I looked around and all the best people were going to Nashville. There were six people moving, and they were all the heads of the business who had the respect of the clients. I realized that if I wanted to learn and grow, these were the people I needed to be around.
It was great. Being there meant I had way more access to senior leaders and clients than I would if I’d stayed in California. I was really young and just starting, but I was in every meeting. It opened my world. This is where I learned to say ‘yes’ and started my journey of moving all around the nation for many different opportunities to work with some amazing teams.
You stayed with automotives for a long time, but your next move was actually in-house at Volkswagen. How different was that?
I think as soon as you go in-house, you realize that on the agency side, you’re so focused on the brief and the task in front of you that you’re only seeing 10% of the business and 10% of the problems. On the client side, you have to do the brand work, but you also have to deal with operations, procurement, legal, demand gen, and all the other parts of the business.
I loved being involved with a little bit of everything because I’m the type who tends to run toward a fire. I don't like staying in my lane. I’m not a jerk, I promise, I just like to be part of it all.
What kind of marketing campaigns and programs did you work on while at Volkswagen?
I worked on the launch of a new Beetle, and we had a huge partnership with Oprah. On her last “favorite things ever” episode, she gave away Beetles to everyone in the audience. The whole thing came about because I’d worked with producers on her show before. We wanted to do something for the launch and approached them to see if they wanted to partner. They wanted to do something big for the end of an era. And it turned out to be a natural fit because Oprah owned a Beetle and talked about it on the show.
So much of this career is about relationships, and that’s the part that is most interesting to me. Let’s just have a conversation and see what sparks come from it. It was so much better for our brand and Oprah’s for her to give away the cars than for us to just drop a pile of advertising money. The question was really how we could put ourselves in the culture with our key demo.
“I think as soon as you go in-house, you realize that on the agency side, you’re so focused on the brief and the task in front of you that you’re only seeing 10% of the business and 10% of the problems.”
That would be hard to top, but what other campaigns did you work on during your time at Volkswagen?
We created numerous Super Bowl ads. There was one year when we did two ads. One was for the Beetle. It was called Black Betty, and we created a CGI version of the Beetle. This was in the early days of CGI, and using it for ads was a relatively new concept. As part of the campaign, we teamed up with Google. If you searched for Volkswagen Beetle, a car would crash through the Google page and break the page apart. Again, no one was doing things like that back then. We were sure this was going to get a lot of attention and break through with a younger audience.
But there was another Volkswagen ad that year—the one where the little kid in the Darth Vader mask tries to start the car.
Funny, that ad just came up in our interview with Matt Miller of AICP. He said it had millions of hits before it even aired at the Super Bowl.
It did. People loved it. We knew it was culturally relevant, but we had no idea that people would be talking about it decades later. In contrast, nobody remembers the Black Betty ad. It probably only ran twice.
“So much of this career is about relationships, and that’s the part that is most interesting to me. Let’s just have a conversation and see what sparks come from it.”
When you left Volkswagen, you went back to agency life at CAA, but your work was more experiential, which people weren’t really talking about yet. Can you tell us about some of the stuff you did there?
I loved that role because I was really interested in the intersection of brands and culture, which was a new thing back then. I was hired to work on the Chipotle account, which was all about changing food culture, not just by serving fresher food, but by going against “the man,” or in this case, industrial food and GMOs.
That’s when we did the Scarecrow campaign. He was supposed to be scary, and the story was that he worked at the industrial factory. We worked with Moonbot Studios, and we made what was really a beautiful film. It won everything, including a Grand Prix and an Emmy. We also worked with Fiona Apple on “Pure Imagination,” which was a cover version of the song from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory.
That’s a funny story. We were going to work with another artist. We had the studio all set and were about to go into production when he backed out and refused to return the check. Fiona Apple stepped in because, as a vegan, she was supportive of what Chipotle was doing and enjoyed their food. If you listen to the song, her voice sounds a little shaky, which creates the perfect vibe. Apparently, she jumped into an ice-cold pool just before recording because she wanted to sound that way.
There was also a video game and music festivals as part of that campaign. We looked for up-and-coming talent. We had Group Love and Charli XCX. This was like 12 years ago, and now she’s headlining a global tour.
We did a lot with music when I was at CAA. There was a campaign for Old Navy where we worked with Pasek and Paul to create an original song. They’re the writing duo behind LaLa Land and The Greatest Showman and have done lots of Broadway. We created a spot about the anxiety kids feel going back to school. There was a YouTube video and a song that you could download from Spotify. The download cost money, but we did a partnership with Boys and Girls Club so they received all the proceeds. It was a real cultural moment.
I still listen to that song sometimes. It’s very moving and motivating.
“It was a great challenge to think of how to modernize a brand while also ensuring it stays true to its authentic self.”
Can you tell us about your work at Time Magazine? Magazine publishing has been struggling in our digital age and has had to reinvent itself many times.
I was brought in by the publisher, who was someone I’d met at Volkswagen, to help shake things up. The marketing team is really there to support the sales team. Sales needs to place ads online, in book, and at events. So, we had to come up with new things we could build around that a brand would want to be a part of – that they’d throw some money at.
I revamped that entire team, and we did a lot of content creation for brands. We actually built a whole studio and an in-house creative team. We rebuilt the website, which was basically held together by bubble gum and toothpicks at that point. We didn't have places we could put ads or video content, but the team revamped that site to futureproof the business.
We also brought in more culturally relevant and modern advertisers to the publication. It was a bit stodgy. The demographic of readers was a bit older, and the brands that advertised were totally expected. We tried to shift that a little bit and be more aligned with newer, smaller brands. It was a great challenge to think of how to modernize a brand while also ensuring it stays true to its authentic self.
We did this with a lot of spirit brands. We basically would create all the content for them as part of their ad buy. We did a lot of storytelling and would give the origin story of how a brand came from humble beginnings. We did some experiential stuff too, like tasting experiences.
“I believe the two go hand-in-hand; you have to always make certain that any brand building or any marketing is always helping fill the demand that the company needs.”
Speaking of experiential, you were a consultant for a number of years after that and worked on some really cool activations with Airbnb and TikTok. Can you please tell us about those?
I worked with a firm called We’re Magnetic. They were really good at thinking about the art of the possible and executing big activations that broke through the clutter and created PR-worthy moments. I worked on landing the Airbnb, TikTok, and SAP business. One of the experiences we created for Airbnb was called “The Last Blockbuster Sleepover.” There is still one Blockbuster video store left in this country. It’s in Bend, Oregon. Blockbuster allows the manager to keep running it with their name, and it still looks exactly like you’d imagine it to look. So, we went to Oregon and staged a typical 1990s sleepover, complete with a rented video and pizza, where Airbnb guests could stay. We actually had to build a bathroom with a shower in order for that space to be ready for a guest.
We had a great follow-up idea planned for Airbnb; we were going to recreate "Goodnight Moon” at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and the ‘Fresh Prince of Bel Air’ home in Los Angeles. But then COVID happened.
For TikTok, we created an event that was similar to some of the activations that you may see at Coachella. This was the early days of the app, and people still thought it was just teens and tweens doing dumb dances. The event was for brands and advertisers. We brought the stories and TikTok memes to life, allowing them to see what TikTok could be and how they could utilize it for advertising. Because of COVID, we quickly had to pivot all ideas to an online format. Not as impactful, but still helped move the needle.
You’re currently the CMO for CrossCountry Mortgage. How did you get that role, and what are you working on?
I was brought in by someone I worked with at Volkswagen. She is the Chief Brand Officer, and we really approach everything together. In some ways, we started from scratch with basic brand building. The company didn’t have an established vision, mission, or values. We created a brand and a toolkit for all our branches and loan officers. We also rebuilt all marketing and our websites. I remember when I came on, I’d read things on our website and wouldn’t understand what it meant. Mortgages are complicated, but we need to explain them in simple human language.
I think I’m most proud of having revamped our team. I would say that the team consisted of many marketing generalists when I joined. Now we have experts. We have a digital team, a social team, and a creative team. I’d say 90% of what we produce is internal.
Mortgages are complex, and most people prefer not to think about them. How do you market a product like that? And how was this career switch for you, coming from the world of cars and music festivals?
It's not sexy at all. And it's fascinating. Most people view a mortgage as a significant hassle. Our job is to take care of the customer and make them feel secure. This is the biggest purchase they'll ever make in their entire life. For us, it's all about building trust. We’re in almost every community that we serve, so one thing we do is help our loan officers be a part of that community. The majority of this business is referral-based, usually by a realtor. If one of their homebuyers has gone through the process and had a good experience, they’re likely to pass on a recommendation.
As for my career, I was intrigued by the organizational challenges. When I got here, marketing was run like a mom-and-pop shop. That wasn’t unusual for the mortgage industry, as a whole, the industry is about 10 years behind other industries in terms of innovation. The brand needed to mature and think about things in a process-oriented way. We’ve completely evolved in the last four years. We've implemented numerous digital innovations, developed a range of tools, and have our team continually thinking about innovation. I think this company is on par with other industries now, and I’m really proud of that.
Quigley-Simpson frequently discusses brand and demand. Much of your career has been focused on the brand side, but some of the innovation you’ve done here sounds like demand generation. Can you explain that and tell us how you balance the two?
I believe the two go hand-in-hand; you have to always make certain that any brand building or any marketing is always helping fill the demand that the company needs. With today’s innovations, we have to make sure we continue to think outside the box and continue to push ourselves and our teams to do better. Over the years, I have done a lot of work with personas to understand and anticipate exactly how our messages in every channel will resonate with our customers. With our model at CrossCountry Mortgage, we make certain we are applying that same rigidity to our team.
We know a lot about our potential consumers and our current customers, which lets us target them wisely rather than spamming them with mail they don’t want. For example, we receive an alert if one of our customers makes a $2,000 purchase, such as a refrigerator. That sends a trigger to the loan officer, who might say, “It looks like you’re doing some renovations. Do you want to pull out equity from your home?” Our Loan Officers can be a little resistant to this strategy, but we’ve ensured that our communications are designed for the consumer’s time and place and backed by market research to help find tailored solutions specific to their individual scenario.
May 22, 2025
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