Eat In or Dine Out: Kelly Fredrickson Invests in Brand at T. Rowe Price

 
In this episode of Eat In or Dine Out, HATCH CEO Jennifer Harrington welcomes Kelly Frederickson, Global Head of Brand & PR at T. Rowe Price, to discuss what it takes to evolve a century-old financial brand while maintaining trust. Kelly shares how curiosity became the foundation of T. Rowe Price’s latest brand platform, why strong agency relationships start with asking the right questions, and how she’s empowering both internal teams and external partners to think bigger.

 

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From “Rebranding” to Re-Expressing the Brand

Jen: T. Rowe Price recently launched a refreshed brand platform. What was that process like?

Kelly: We already had an incredible foundation with our long-standing promise, Invest with Confidence. The opportunity was figuring out how to express that promise in a way that feels relevant today.

The result was The Power of Curiosity. It came directly from who we already are as a company. Curiosity is what ultimately gives investors the confidence to make informed decisions.

Jen: Why is that important from a business perspective?

Kelly: Brand creates mental availability. People aren’t shopping for an asset manager every day. In fact, they’re only actively looking a very small percentage of the time. Our job is to build awareness so that when they are ready, T. Rowe Price is already top of mind.

 

Why Great Agency Partnerships Start with the Right Question

Jen: You partnered with an external agency throughout the brand work. What made that relationship successful?

Kelly: Digitas helped us define our brand promise and ultimately bring The Power of Curiosity to life creatively. Later, we also moved our media business to them because I strongly believe in media-led creative thinking.

Today, you can’t create a campaign and then figure out where to put it. Media strategy and creative thinking have to work together from the beginning.

One lesson I’ve carried from spending time on both the agency and client side is that agencies are incredible problem solvers—but only if they’re solving the right problem.

Agency teams don’t stop until they’ve found an answer. If the client asks the wrong question, they’ll still solve it brilliantly… it just may not be the problem that actually needed solving.

 

Bold Ideas Inspire Teams—Inside and Outside the Organization

Jen: What’s an example of that collaboration in action?

Kelly: We recently launched a campaign for our ETFs that completely flipped expectations.

Working with Digitas and Bloomberg, we literally turned a Bloomberg broadcast upside down, flipped magazine layouts, and even installed an upside-down newsstand in New York’s Oculus as a metaphor for today’s changing markets.

It wasn’t just effective externally—it energized our internal team. Seeing an idea come to life at that scale reminds everyone why they love marketing.

 

Building an Internal Team That Dreams Bigger

Jen: You also lead a large internal organization. How do you encourage creativity there?

Kelly: One of the greatest joys of joining T. Rowe Price has been working alongside people who’ve spent 20 or even 30 years with the company.

Sometimes all they needed was permission to think differently.

One of my favorite examples came from our partnership with the ACC. My team pitched creating a playful bobblehead version of our logo for social media—something T. Rowe Price never would have done in the past.

It only took a few hours to produce, but it generated enormous excitement because the team owned the idea from beginning to end.

No matter how long you’ve been in this business, seeing your work out in the world never gets old.

 

Breaking Down Silos Between Internal and External Teams

Jen: How do you think about bringing agency partners and internal teams together?

Kelly: It’s something we’re actively working on.

We’re bringing together our internal marketing leaders and our agency partners for a workshop focused on Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned media.

The goal is simple: give everyone greater access to one another.

Our agencies become stronger when they understand our internal experts, and our internal teams become stronger when they’re exposed to agency thinking. The best work happens when those lines disappear.

Jen: Sometimes the brand experience inside your digital ecosystem is even more important than the biggest campaign you launch.

Kelly: Exactly. That’s such an important point.

 

The Three Principles That Guide Every Decision

Jen: How do you evaluate success?

Kelly: I lead with three principles.

First: Breakthrough creative. Not because creative is the goal, but because memorable creative drives recall—and recall builds awareness.

Second: Outsmart, don’t outspend. We’re an investment company, not a marketing company. We have to be smarter with every dollar we invest.

Third: Measure everything.

Building a brand reminds me of planting flower bulbs in the fall. You don’t dig them up every month to see if they’re growing. You trust the process.

Marketing requires that same patience. Eventually, the work starts to bloom—but only if you give it time.

 

Staying Curious About AI

Jen: AI is impossible to ignore right now. How are you thinking about it?

Kelly: Curiosity is essential.

You don’t have to know everything, but you do have to be willing to learn. AI literacy is becoming part of every marketer’s job.

At T. Rowe Price, we’re committed to being AI-forward. Even as a highly regulated company, we can’t afford to wait because our customers expect us to evolve alongside the technology.

 

A Personal Passion Project

At the end of every episode, Jen asks guests to share a shameless plug.

Kelly used the opportunity to hold herself accountable to a project that’s deeply personal.

After navigating menopause twice—once naturally and once during breast cancer treatment—she’s creating a curated “advent calendar” of products, resources, and recommendations that helped her through the experience.

By sharing it publicly, she’s giving herself one more reason to make it happen.

Kelly’s approach to marketing is rooted in curiosity, collaboration, and patience. Whether she’s guiding a legacy financial brand through its next chapter, empowering long-time employees to think bigger, or building stronger partnerships with agencies, her philosophy remains consistent: ask better questions, trust the process, and never stop learning.

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