How Insights Drive Disruption with Vineet Mehra

[00:00:00] Vineet Mehra: Our brand personality is this idea of being a citizen trailblazer. We’re next to our members as citizens. And we’ll trailblazing a path to help them make financial progress by building products that really help them and are not punitive to them. And all of this comes from our insights team. 

[00:00:16] MRII Announcer: Welcome Tori’s Insights and Innovators podcast, where we talk to top market research professionals to get their inside stories about innovative and enduring best practices.

[00:00:26] MRII Announcer: Now here’s your host for today’s episode. 

[00:00:29] Nick Graham: Hi, and welcome to today’s episode, how Insights Drive Disruption. I’m your host, Nick Graham, and today we’re joined by one of the most forward-thinking marketing leaders in business today. Nik Mera, the CMO at Chime Financial. Uh, Veit has a remarkable career spanning healthcare as president of j and j BabyCare, retail as the Global Chief Customer and Marketing officer at Walgreens Boot Alliance, as well as Tech, CBG, and now financial services.

[00:00:56] Nick Graham: I’m really excited to have Veit today as a guest. Brings a truly unique perspective, I [00:01:00] think, on how insights and analytics can fuel breakthrough strategy, creativity, and innovation. So in today’s conversation we’ll explore what the C-Suite really values from insights teams, when our work truly makes a difference and when it doesn’t, and what the disruptive impact of AI holds for insights teams and their roles in organization.

[00:01:21] Nick Graham: So with all of that, welcome to the podcast, Veit. Thanks for joining us. 

[00:01:25] Vineet Mehra: Thanks for having me, Nick. It’s, uh, great to be here with you and I look forward, uh, to the discussion. 

[00:01:30] Nick Graham: Excellent. Um, so before we dive into the role of insights and analytics, I’d like to zoom out for a minute, and obviously you are leading marketing in an era when media, technology, consumer expectations are all being reinvented at once.

[00:01:44] Nick Graham: So I think for our audience, we’d love to hear what’s the hardest thing and the most exciting thing about being a CMO in today’s environment. 

[00:01:53] Vineet Mehra: Yeah, I mean, I’d, I’d almost, I’d like to reframe like you just did that word hard to exciting. I think there’s [00:02:00] never been a better time to be a marketer. I think we are in a new golden age of marketing and, um, so much is changing around us.

[00:02:09] Vineet Mehra: Um, you know, we’ve gone through multiple platform shifts, right? If you go back to kind of, uh, maybe 10, 15, maybe 15 years ago, 20 years ago, the era of where CPG was. The dominant marketer on the planet. Um, you know, that was a, that was a moment that lasted for a long time, and now these shifts are moving more quickly and quickly.

[00:02:30] Vineet Mehra: Right after that CPG shift, we went to this rise of performance marketing and the mm-hmm. Advent of the Googles and the metas of the world. We then went into this ad tech, sort of MarTech revolution that, uh, meant that all of us had to figure out new ways to build the systems architecture to support the outcomes we wanted.

[00:02:50] Vineet Mehra: And now we’re entering this era of automation and AI and autonomous agents. Um, I, I, I [00:03:00] feel like if you dream it now, you can create it. If you think it, you can vibe, code a product. Um, I think it’s a really exciting moment. And I think for marketers and just leaders in general, no matter what function you’re in, that are curious, humble, and hungry, um.

[00:03:19] Vineet Mehra: There is so much to learn, so much to do, and I’m sure we can go deep into all of these areas, but I actually think this is the most best time ever to be a marketer, and I think we’re entering a new golden age here. 

[00:03:30] Nick Graham: That’s awesome. That’s a great start point. I love that. And I think you’re right. If you are curious, humble, and hungry, and lean into change and disruption as opposed to running from it, there’s a, this is a great opportunity and I think you’re right.

[00:03:42] Nick Graham: There’s a, we’ll get into it as we go through our conversation, but I think a lot of, we can do so much more with the tools and the capabilities that we have at our disposal. So we’ll get into this, I guess as we talk through today, before we talk about the impact of ai, it’s gonna be hard to avoid it, but.

[00:03:59] Nick Graham: [00:04:00] Stepping back for a second. When you think about insights and analytics teams, which is me, many of our listeners, many of our viewers as a CMO, and through your career, what do you see as the value that those teams bring to your organizations? What is, what is it that they, they’re helping you do? 

[00:04:16] Vineet Mehra: Well, look, um, you know, I’ve had the great fortune of leading some, uh, amazing insights organizations in my career, and it’s one of the areas, even at Chime when I got here that I.

[00:04:26] Vineet Mehra: Focused out on, built out pretty quickly, um, here at Chime. And the reason is simple. The value that the best insights professionals bring to a business is enormous. Um, you know, the irony is in an era of AI where all of us are gonna have the same machines, the same media optimization tools, the same creative tools, the thing that’s still going to separate, uh, brands and businesses.

[00:04:53] Vineet Mehra: Is the ability to, uh, find mind and heart opening, [00:05:00] um mm-hmm insights that truly allow you to connect your product value proposition to a consumer’s needs in the most compelling way. Um, and you know, in an era where software will be vibe coded and commoditized, it’s how you connect. Your, your brand and your product to a consumer, that’s always gonna be number one.

[00:05:24] Vineet Mehra: So to answer your question, I mean the value comes in not just reporting, which is a deep frustration of mine, but actually synthesizing and finding those golden nuggets from a combination of qualitative, quantitative, competitive data, whatever sources, they are the best insights teams are able to. Blend all of that and distill it down to something that truly opens a consumer’s mind to your brand, your product, and your value proposition.

[00:05:57] Nick Graham: Yeah. I think you’re, you’re so right. I mean, I think, as you say, [00:06:00] despite all the talk of technology, we still live in a world where. The people buying our product services subscribing to, to, to our services are human beings still. Right? And so understanding deeply how to connect with those people, how to earn their loyalty, how to earn their share of wallet, whatever it is that we’re trying to, trying to do is still the goal of all marketers.

[00:06:23] Nick Graham: Right. On all insights people. Yeah. And I think, you know, we’ll touch as we, as we talk about ai, but I think. It is very true and I think a lot of our audience will know. A lot of what insights teams are doing and have done in the past is very lots of heavy lifting reporting, running analysis, running research, but I think you really hit on it.

[00:06:41] Nick Graham: There’s that finding those golden nuggets that’s the bit that least right now isn’t automated, right? That is the bit where insights or insights professionals can really add value 

[00:06:53] Vineet Mehra: a hundred percent. 

[00:06:55] Nick Graham: And so let’s talk about, uh, chime. Obviously Chime has hugely shaken up, [00:07:00] um, the financial services, uh, industry.

[00:07:02] Nick Graham: What role have, has data insights played in enabling that disruption in, in helping you take a, a different path from the sort of legacy, uh, incumbent, um, financial services partners? 

[00:07:15] Vineet Mehra: Yeah. Well, j just for context, I mean we are a, uh, now a. 11 or 12-year-old, um, uh, you know, financial services, financial technology startup that, uh.

[00:07:29] Vineet Mehra: That is going up against a hundred year old brands, right? Yeah. Brands like a span of America. Wells Fargo was there at the founding of America, you know, and so there’s, these are deeply rooted brands and in the fourth quarter of last year, we opened up more accounts than anyone in America. Including those, um, those large, those large banks.

[00:07:49] Vineet Mehra: So, you know, clearly we’re onto something and insights have played a critical role in that. Um, it starts by understanding those. [00:08:00] Core functional needs that our target audience, um, require. So one of the first things that, you know, I did when we got here in partnership with our insights team was, um, we built a, you know, this is old school, but it still works as segmentation.

[00:08:16] Vineet Mehra: Uh, that sort of laid. Not just the needs, but sort of it was a multi-variant sort of segmentation that sort of laid out the needs, wants and desires of, um, everyday people in America. People earning up to a hundred thousand dollars, which is 200 million people in America, a huge tam. 

[00:08:37] Nick Graham: Yeah, 

[00:08:37] Vineet Mehra: and when you have a tam of that size, you really have to break out the segments and understand the mindset and the needs of each of these groups.

[00:08:44] Vineet Mehra: So this segmentation actually became the core foundation by which we operate our product roadmap as well. And so, you know, insights first started by deeply understanding the consumer and the different segments. We then work with insights to uncover the actual [00:09:00] core needs, and there’s three or four core needs that this consumer segment has.

[00:09:04] Vineet Mehra: And then we define our jobs to be done right, and we build products mm-hmm. That are so tailored to this audience that the product market fit is undeniable. And so that’s the product side of it. And then we’ve gotta figure out how to position it and communicate it. Yeah. And you know, um, we live on a brand platform called Feels Like Progress, and we’ve un uncovered this core idea that.

[00:09:29] Vineet Mehra: You know, all everyday Americans want is to make financial progress in their lives, and they want an ally in their corner. They want a financial brand that has their back. 

[00:09:41] MRII Announcer: Mm-hmm. 

[00:09:42] Vineet Mehra: That doesn’t talk to them as a number or a customer, but as a friend, as a member. Um, so our brand personality is this idea of being a citizen trailblazer.

[00:09:51] Vineet Mehra: We’re next to our members as citizens. And we’ll trailblazing a path to help them make financial progress by building products that really [00:10:00] help them and are not punitive to them. And all of this comes from our insights team. It comes from deep ethnographic research that’s never going away. It comes from all of the quantum qual that we do.

[00:10:11] Vineet Mehra: And it’s this idea of feels like progress, which is our brand platform has been our kind of communications. Kind of rock. Yeah. And then we’ve got the needs-based, uh, kind of segmentation ideas that help us develop the features and benefits that feed into that platform that really work. And it’s been a really big unlock for us over the last four or five years.

[00:10:32] Nick Graham: That’s awesome. And I think particularly for a, obviously a technology led company, it’s fantastic to see the power of really deeply understanding the customer and what their needs and wants and jobs to be done and all of that are. Um, you talked before about. These golden nuggets. Do you have an example of something in your, you know, a memory of a really powerful golden nugget that came from some of that work, something you can share that was like a jumping off point for a, a product [00:11:00] service, A positioning.

[00:11:00] Nick Graham: Just an example to give the teams to see 

[00:11:03] Vineet Mehra: Yeah, 

[00:11:03] Nick Graham: like how it translates. 

[00:11:05] Vineet Mehra: I mean, yeah. It goes back to this idea of progress. You know, uh, we actually, um, adjusted, which is not easy in a founder led company, the mission of our company about four or five years ago. Mm-hmm. Which is not an easy thing to do. And the mission used to be about this idea of financial peace of mind, which is mm-hmm.

[00:11:25] Vineet Mehra: Which is the, the company was built on this idea of giving people peace of mind, but actually as we went out into consumer’s homes and really spent time. Um, you know, and that’s, that’s again, never going away. No matter how much synthetic stuff happens, you still gotta spend time with your consumer. And, uh, what we really discovered was, um, it’s not enough to just give financial peace of mind.

[00:11:48] Vineet Mehra: You know, financial peace of mind somehow implies that like, I am where I am and mm-hmm I just want peace with my situation. 

[00:11:56] Nick Graham: Right? 

[00:11:57] Vineet Mehra: That’s actually not true. [00:12:00] The vast majority of our target audience, which is 70%, 80% of America, um, are looking to make it. They’re looking, they’re, they’re ambitious in their own way.

[00:12:09] Vineet Mehra: They, yeah, they want progress in their lives for their families, and not just for their families, but for their communities and, and for their. For their, for their entire sort of ecosystem around them. And so it sounds like a small shift, but this idea of peace of mind to optimism, progress and ambition is something that’s been a huge unlock for our brand storytelling and it’s really positioned us in a new way.

[00:12:35] Nick Graham: That’s an, that’s a great example. And, uh, as you say, I think an example of how it, it, it can feel like, like just small tweaks in language, but as you say, that’s a fundamental shift in a need, right? From something that’s a bit more reassurance and confidence to something that’s a bit more about success and achievement even.

[00:12:53] Nick Graham: However that’s framed for, for consumers. Right. That’s a fantastic example. 

[00:12:57] Vineet Mehra: What it’s done is it’s actually changed the [00:13:00] stories we tell, right? Yeah. Uh, we have obviously a very sophisticated marketing engine with multiple channels, but in some channels we, we share stories of progress, we call it in other channels, we, you know, are very functional with the need-based sort of just.

[00:13:15] Vineet Mehra: Hard hitting, kind of almost direct response style. 

[00:13:18] Nick Graham: Yeah. 

[00:13:18] Vineet Mehra: Uh, benefits we’re gonna give you, but when you wrap all this up on this idea feels like progress. Right. It’s been a, a really powerful unlock for us and something that, um, I think has been a big driver of our growth over the last, uh, four or five years.

[00:13:32] Nick Graham: That’s awesome. And I think can, can be a great, we often talk about, you know, finding that human-centric rallying cry, right? Something that can then go across, you know, not just communication, but how it shows up when people call customer service, like all of the different touch points of the brand. I think that’s a, a really great example of how a golden nug nugget of a human insight can translate into how a company shows up across all of those, all of those touch points.

[00:13:59] Nick Graham: [00:14:00] I’d like to pivot for a second and talk about, um, you’ve had an amazing cross category, cross industry career. You know, you’ve obviously led brands across JJ Walgreens, boots, Alliance, ancestry. Now Chime. What’s, I’d love to hear your perspective about the value of a cross industry career and what sort of skills and lessons you found have been transferable across categories and sectors.

[00:14:26] Vineet Mehra: Well look, um, whenever I give people career advice, I, I suggest two things. Mm-hmm. The first thing I suggest is Chase experiences, not titles and pay. Um, good, good advice. I probably had, uh, two pay cuts, no three pay cuts in my life, um, along my journey, and those are very intentional. Um, I always knew what my ambition was, uh, which was to get to the top of companies, but I also knew.

[00:14:52] Vineet Mehra: That I would be much more effective in those roles, the more experiences that I had. And so I’d always say yes to that international [00:15:00] assignment that no one else did. I think my wife and I have been married 19 years, lived in 17 houses, 17 seven countries. You know, it’s, I would always just say yes to an experience that I thought would enrich me.

[00:15:11] Vineet Mehra: Um mm-hmm. And so a lot of my cross category moves come from this curiosity and this desire to. Uh, build as much experiential capital, um, as possible. And on the second side, it’s um, you know, I, I talk a lot about, I don’t think this is a world of career ladders anymore. I call Career Jungle Gym. And, um, this idea of sort of moving from like one kind of a role to another, you know, marketing is a function that back in the CPG days, I think was a very generalist sort of function.

[00:15:45] Vineet Mehra: Yeah. Today look at my organization structure. It’s a function of specialists. Mm-hmm. Deep specialists, right? And, um, to lead an organization of specialists, you have to be dangerous enough at all of those areas so you know the right [00:16:00] questions to ask. Yes. And so there’s experiences kind of macro and then there’s thinking about your career as a jungle gym.

[00:16:08] Vineet Mehra: So you kind of get dangerous at different areas, whether that’s performance, marketing, consumer insights. Uh, brand building, creative, and I think you’ve gotta more and more look at your career as these sets of experiences and, um, you know, depth in multiple specialist areas to really win. Um, and so that’s kind of how I’ve kind of choreographed.

[00:16:34] Vineet Mehra: To the best of my ability, um, my career. And, uh, I really do give that advice to a lot of people that in the end, in the end it might, it, it’ll really pay off dividends, um, when you’re sitting in that, in that top seat. 

[00:16:47] Nick Graham: And how do you think it, because I think as you said, there’s um, different, you can do different experiences within a company or within a category, and then there’s different experiences across categories.

[00:16:57] Nick Graham: So how would you, how would you give advice [00:17:00] about, you know, should you stick in one company or one category and sort of build depth of expertise, even if you have a variety of experiences within that? Or, and, or like, what’s the value of doing? I think what you’ve done really well is moving across different categories as well.

[00:17:14] Nick Graham: So you also had another. Layer of, um, kind of vertical expertise, right? I guess, or, or, uh, horizontal expertise or I 

[00:17:22] Vineet Mehra: guess, yeah. I mean, you kind of says it typically staying at the same company. Well, first, you know, first things first. I always say to people, bloom where you’re planted. Right? So first things first, deliver impact wherever you are, no matter what the job is.

[00:17:33] Vineet Mehra: That’s the ultimate thing that opens things up. Yeah, if you’re able to deliver that impact within the same company, you know, I was at p and g for 10 years, you know, it’s within the same company. What can happen is you can develop a set of horizontal experience because it’s usually easier to move into sort of adjacent functions in the same company than it is outside of companies.

[00:17:55] Vineet Mehra: Right. So how do you think about the company you’re in today? [00:18:00] And create sort of, kind of adjacent depth in your experiences. Mm-hmm. I’m talking about like maybe you are a brand marketer and you’re gonna move to performance marketing, or maybe you are a performance marketer and you’re gonna move to lifecycle marketing.

[00:18:13] Vineet Mehra: Right. If you’re someone who creates a lot of impact in your company, you’re likely going to be given those kinds of opportunities. So that’s what working in the same company can do for you. But what working in the same company for a long time can’t do for you is give you. Um, new category perspectives where you can take best practices from like, I don’t know, a retail business and bring it to a CCP G business or a best practice from a, uh, uh, a direct to consumer business and bring it to a retail business, right?

[00:18:42] Nick Graham: Yeah. 

[00:18:42] Vineet Mehra: Those are the things that you may have to lift and shift for, right? Mm-hmm. And, and frankly, sometimes you may need to leave a company to, um, to accelerate your career and, and get that. Um, to get that kind of next stepping stone. So I think both are valuable. I think you just [00:19:00] have to know what you’re optimizing for at that moment in your career and activate it accordingly.

[00:19:05] Nick Graham: Yeah. Good. Great. Very good advice. And, uh, and as you say, I think there’s, there’s no wrong or right, but it’s about what’s right at that moment in time, right. For you. Um, circling back to ai, because we can’t possibly have, uh, a podcast conversation without at least talking about AI 400 times. AI is going to be, as you said at the beginning, right?

[00:19:24] Nick Graham: It’s a hugely disruptive force, not just in insights and analytics, not even just in marketing, right? But across our entire business landscape. So I’d love to hear your advice for today’s Aspiring Insights leaders on what does it mean for them? What should they be thinking about doing more of, less of?

[00:19:43] Nick Graham: What skills should they be building as they think about their future careers? 

[00:19:48] Vineet Mehra: Well look, I mean, we’ve gotta talk real about this, right? Uh, I think the insights, uh, the, the value of finding that nugget, as we talked about, is never going to go away. Mm-hmm. We, that, that idea of a, [00:20:00] a deeply human truth that you can translate into a, a brand’s platform, and I mean platform with a capital pe not just communications, I mean product comms, everything.

[00:20:10] Vineet Mehra: Culture is a powerful idea and that’s never going to go away. But the how. Is completely changing. And if I was an insights professional today, I mean, think of what’s in front of you. Um, you, we’ve, we’ve got agents that are doing the deep dive analytics across multiple, you know, studies both qualitative and quantitatively that can output synthesis and sort of reports.

[00:20:37] Vineet Mehra: Infractions of a second, right? Um, yeah, that could have taken someone weeks in the past. Right? So embrace that. You’ve got the rise of synthetic, um, research, right? Synthetic consumer panels and frankly synthetically moderated, um, you know, even groups, right? Like, uh, yeah, yeah. It, it’s, [00:21:00] it’s rise of synthetic.

[00:21:01] Vineet Mehra: Everything is happening and, um, it’s almost like agentic. Consumers. Right. Um, which is a really powerful idea that should be embraced was because it shrinks the learning cycle dramatically. Um, and then you’ve got, uh, the ability to sort of, you know, think of like what so much, so many insights analytics folks spend their time on, which is designing surveys and research design and learning plans like that is also very, um, very trainable and something that.

[00:21:31] Vineet Mehra: Actually a lot of these tools are very, very good at already. So, um, you know, you go to creative testing even that’s all real time and getting automated. Totally. So literally every part of the insights and analytics role is becoming, um. GenFi, right and automated and moving at a speed that is infinitely faster than it used to, and any insights and analytics professional, at least in my organization, that is [00:22:00] not moving at that speed by leveraging these tools.

[00:22:04] Vineet Mehra: To be honest, it’s not gonna be around a long time. Right? So the base expectation now is that these tools are embraced. There’s a lot of curiosity and that we really get after it. That being said, I think the people who do that part of the job really well are now freed up to add value, um, in ways that.

[00:22:25] Vineet Mehra: Really can be a multiplier effect for a company, right? If, if a lot of that work I just talked about is done more quickly and in a more autonomous way, the best insights and analytics professionals then are coming to the leadership table with me and giving me recommendations that, um, on how to position the brand moving forward.

[00:22:46] Vineet Mehra: A, a insight that I never thought of, right? Or no one could have ever thought of, or they’re giving me sort of, um. You know, suggestions on go to market principles that, uh, that they just have more [00:23:00] time to think about because they’re not doing all the sort of day-to-day work. So, um, I, I can’t say it enough.

[00:23:08] Vineet Mehra: I, I actually think the insights and analytics profession is probably gonna be one of the quickest disrupted, and I mean that in a positive way on the stuff that is highly repeatable and highly trainable. And I strongly encourage your listeners and everyone who’s in that world to embrace these. Get up to speed as quickly as possible, try as many tools as possible.

[00:23:30] Vineet Mehra: ’cause uh, we’re in the early innings of all of this. And I always say to people, today is the worst AI we’ll ever be. Um, right. And if exactly you think about that, imagine what it’s gonna be like in a year from now. And I think being AI native in every job, but especially this world of insights and analytics is gonna be.

[00:23:47] Vineet Mehra: Absolutely critical and will be a force multiplier to the value that could be created by the function in the years ahead. 

[00:23:54] Nick Graham: And I think going back to where you started being curious, hungry and humble about the role of ai, [00:24:00] right. And actually recognizing that yes, even if it’s not perfect right now, it is only the beginning.

[00:24:05] Nick Graham: It’s pretty darn good at lots of things. And inclusion, as you say, survey design, even doing qualitative research, it can, it can do a pretty, pretty good job already and it will only get better. And so to your point, think, be think. Accepting that, embracing it, and saying, so then how can I focus my time and my skills?

[00:24:23] Nick Graham: And I agree with you. Think about the bits then that it can’t do necessarily as well. Can it sit in a room and advise you on where to go next to connect the dots on how does this connect to the business and where should you position the brand using ai? But the bits, that sort of human advisory capacity could still play a very, very important role and still extracting some of those golden nuggets, right?

[00:24:46] Nick Graham: Using AI as a tool 

[00:24:49] Vineet Mehra: could not agree more. 

[00:24:51] Nick Graham: Well, thanks, Veit. I think that’s all we have time for today, but I wanna say huge thank you for such a, an honest and thought provoking conversation. Um, think you’ve given our, [00:25:00] our listeners a great window into what, what the C-Suite really values, how insights can be a true engine of disruption when it’s applied, uh, properly, and how the skills and insights are gonna need to change.

[00:25:10] Nick Graham: Um. In this, uh, jungle gym that we are about to enter into, or we’re in the middle already entering into. Right. Um, with ai. So a huge thank you to you. Huge thank you to our listeners for tuning in, and we’ll see you all on the next episode of the Insights and Innovators podcast. Until then, I’m Nick Graham.

[00:25:28] MRII Announcer: Thanks for joining the Insights and Innovators podcast for Market Research Institute International. Click subscribe to never miss an episode and visit us@rii.org for more market research insights.