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He’s the man who’s beefing up gold-plated Goldman Sachs’ once-flabby p.r. muscles.
Richard “Jake” Siewert — a former press secretary for President Bill Clinton in 2001 — is putting the once-guarded, 144-year-old partnership through its paces as he works to buff up the firm’s tattered image.
The game plan of the 48-year-old Siewert includes pushing Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein and other executives, testing his belief that Blankfein has the “Everyman” touch to click with Main Street.
In his first 100-plus days, Siewert has convinced Blankfein to schedule more public interviews and pushed the bank honcho to display for the media more of what Siewert feels is an affability and wit usually displayed only when Blankfein is with his peers.
In the spring, with just several weeks at Goldman under his belt, Siewert’s strategy bore fruit.
Blankfein stunned Wall Street by sitting with CNBC and Bloomberg — his first extended public chats in some two years. The interviews were seen both inside and outside Goldman as successes.
“Shame on us in a way for not anticipating how important that would be,” Blankfein said later on Bloomberg TV, about Goldman not being more open in its dealings.
After the interview, sources said, Blankfein, jesting with Siewert asked: “How many more of these [interviews] am I going to have to do?”
Goldman’s new media glasnost is similar to what the firm originally tried while it was being pilloried in the aftermath of the financial crisis — a dressing down capped by Rolling Stone magazine referring to the bank as a “vampire squid.”
In Goldman’s earlier p.r. play book, it was too often too buttoned down and overly combative with the media.
Under Siewert, the bank has scheduled weekly roundtable meetings between the media and executives including Goldman President Gary Cohn and CFO David Viniar.
In one of those meetings yesterday, rising-star Treasurer Elizabeth “Liz” Beshel Robinson met the press for the first time.
Not everyone’s keen on the changes.
Goldman’s financial rock star Viniar, sources said, has sworn off appearing on TV.
Still, the body of work Siewert has pressed for appears to be paying off, p.r. experts claim.
“It’s remarkable how much better things are from a p.r. standpoint,” said Paul Argenti, professor of Corporate Communications at Dartmouth University.
“Goldman Sachs has suffered from burying its head in the sand for too long and not communicating and I think they’re realizing that,” he added.
Executives at rival Wall Street firms have begrudgingly acknowledged that they, too, see a improvement in Goldman’s image under Siewert.
To be sure, the gold-plated bank is also benefitting from a series of missteps by its peers — stumbles that in the past seemed to be reserved solely for Goldman.
For example, JPMorgan Chase’s $5.8 billion trading fiasco with its London Whale and the more recent Libor bid-rigging scandal.
All the while, comfortably out of the headline, Blankfein continues to carry out Siewert’s charm offensive.
At one recent media roundtable with Viniar, Blankfein popped his head into the room and jokingly feigned surprise at seeing the media and his finance maven.
“What’s going on in here?” Blankfein said, smiling broadly.