How to build a disruptive brand and win over the CFO - Vineet Mehra, Chime

Jon Evans (0:00)

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All right, without further ado, let's go on with the show.

Vineet Mehra (0:40)

The job of a CMO is to drive growth. Ultimately, if you are not driving growth, you're not going to be very long in this industry. Think as an industry, we have to hold ourselves to a much higher bar. If you're not careful, this can quickly become a giant art contest. And that's the exact opposite of what we need to do. We now have more capabilities as marketers than ever. And look, the tools are not perfect, but either are the tools from 20 years ago. I feel like our industry is just at the precipice of what we're going to look back on and say this was the best time ever to be a marketer. I can go back to every mistake or every failure I've had in my career. It came down to me not having the right person in the job.

Jon Evans (1:19)

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Uncensored CMO. In this episode, we're going to be talking all about banking with Time Magazine's number one bank in the US, Chime Bank, and I'm here joined by their CMO, Vineet Mehra. Welcome to the show.

Vineet Mehra (1:32)

Hi, Jon. Thanks for having me, and thanks for making the trip all the way from London.

Jon Evans (1:35)

Well, you've honored us with your brand new office, first podcast in your new office. I think that's a pretty good way to start.

Vineet Mehra (1:43)

Yeah. You may be our very first outside guest in this office, and I'm glad we were able to make a work while I was here in New York.

Jon Evans (1:50)

Well, big props to you because it's a beautiful office. We're in a lovely location just off Fifth Avenue, so what's not to like?

Vineet Mehra (1:58)

Well, let's do this, man, and thanks for being here.

Jon Evans (2:00)

Man, it's an absolute pleasure. Well, for anyone who doesn't know about you, give us a little sense of your career, and I'd love to know the reasons behind some of the moves you've made to get you to this point.

Vineet Mehra (2:10)

So look, I've been doing this for almost 25, 30 years now. It's been a long career, and back when I started my career in the late 90s, putting some age on me here, the place to start was consumer packaged goods, and if you can get into proctor and gamble back then, that was like the job, right? That's what you did. So that was my goal, and we ended up doing that. Late 90s, I started my career in P&G. I actually didn't start as a marketer. P&G, a lot of us started on the road as sales reps. I still remember going store to store, building cardboard, crest displays, and selling in new products to store managers before all the retail centralization happened, and many of you will remember those days where like store managers still had say in what went on their shelves, and it was just an amazing way to learn how brands actually come to life, where the consumer makes their decision. P&G was an amazing school, right? To this day, a lot of the brand building frameworks, how to communicate effectively, how to write strategy clearly and concisely, all of that came from that training.

I had the great pleasure of seeing the world in my CPG career. Started in Canada, so born in India, but raised in Canada. Did an assignment with P&G in Canada, sorry, in India. Lived in Bombay for a little while, launching some of our Pantene products there. In southern India, actually, which is very different than the north. Lived in Singapore and ran beauty care businesses across Asia. So CPG was where I started my career. My last job in CPG was actually, I ran worldwide marketing at J&J, and then became the president of our baby care division there. That was about maybe 12, 13 years ago. And I'll never forget, I was like maybe 29 or 30 years old. I was a president at J&J, and I was like, I thought I'd made it. I was like, yeah, I'm the man. I've like made it. I've been moving fast through my career. It was this goal I had always had. And then I got my first headhunter call from Silicon Valley.