Rob Kleiman

• Written by Rob Kleiman

From Invisible to On the List: Repositioning Capital One for Developers

When I joined Capital One, the brief was simple: raise awareness of the engineering programs. But talking to developers, auditing the competitive landscape and reviewing our messaging showed a bigger problem. The developer community wasn’t ignoring Capital One because it disliked it. Capital One was invisible.

The challenge

I proposed reframing the brief: not just promoting engineering programs, but repositioning Capital One from a bank with good tech to a technology company that happens to be in banking. That meant organizational buy-in and an overhaul of the marketing approach.

What I did

  • Started with the customer. An ideal customer profile, a messaging analysis and a voice-of-the-customer foundation came before any creative.
  • Built reasons to believe. For the “That’s Technology at Capital One” platform, I translated proof points like a serverless-first architecture across thousands of applications, automated failover and far fewer critical-severity events into claims developers would believe.
  • Got the story through the building. I worked with engineering leaders, subject-matter experts, legal and AWS on what could be said externally without losing the edge.
  • Borrowed a bigger stage. I partnered with AWS on co-published case studies, reaching developers Capital One couldn’t reach on its own.
  • Showed up everywhere developers were. Blog content, AWS case studies, re:Invent sessions, SEO and the company’s first developer-focused outdoor campaign, with billboards in Las Vegas and San Francisco around major tech events.
  • Listened in real time. I ran 70+ customer interviews at re:Invent to test messaging and feed media decisions.

What changed

The program reached developers at scale, with third-party proof points from AWS that Capital One had never had in the developer market. More importantly, Capital One started appearing alongside major tech companies in developer conversations about innovative places to work.

What I took away

Sometimes the most valuable thing you can do with a brief is question it.