Sachs in sheep’s clothing: Goldman wants to win over the masses

Goldman Sachs, has been working on revamping their image to attract a younger, cooler clientele, with their 1-year-old online lending company, Marcus.

Everyone’s favorite 148-year-old Wall Street dinosaur, Goldman Sachs, has been working on revamping their image to attract a younger, cooler clientele, with their 1-year-old online lending company, Marcus.

Sachs in sheep’s clothing: Goldman wants to win over the masses

Named after one of the firm’s founders, Marcus Goldman, the business is their first attempt to enter the mass market, focusing on getting regular consumers to borrow large sums of money (up to $30k).

So why now?

The company took a huge hit during the ‘08 financial crisis (mainly for its part in causing the financial crisis) and has since been forced to turn itself into a bank holding company in order to keep the lights on.

So far, it’s working: recently, Marcus passed $1B worth of loan originations, and according to Quartz, they believe they’ll create an extra $1B in revenue for Goldman over the next 3 years, plus $2B in additional loan sales.

Sooooo cool

Goldman’s looking at Marcus to be the laid back money-maker on their $930B balance sheet. There have even been reports of Marcus’s CMO, Omer Ismail, wearing blue jeans in interviews promoting their new TV ad, which explains fixed interest rates with a hip pizza metaphor.

And that’s not all, Goldman Sachs is so desperate to relate to “the people,” their CEO Lloyd Blankfein has started cold calling customers (or at least that’s the story their PR team is telling) to ask them about their experience.

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