Teachers don’t always get the credit they deserve. Yes, their job is to educate children, but they also often introduce career paths to young, impressionable minds, and that’s what happened to Vineet Mehra.
During his junior year in high school, Mehra took, as he called it, “a random marketing elective,” taught by a former Procter & Gamble employee, Mr. Zully, who quickly took a liking to young Mehra. Could it have been the A+ he earned? It didn’t hurt, but Mr. Zully saw something in him so undeniable that he went into his pocket and gave the student $50 to “start a business and learn marketing that way.’“
Mehra took that money, which at the time felt like 1 million dollars to the first-generation immigrant, and went to a local candy convention in Toronto. He bought a handful of lollipops and, right after the holiday break, returned to school to launch his own candy stand. Mehra didn’t disclose the profit amount, but did reveal it was then that he caught the marketing bug. Now, with a few fancy titles under his resume, Mehra can reflect on the moments that helped shape him as a marketer, and offer insight on where the field is headed.
Complex sat down with the now-Chief Marketing Officer of Chime to discuss how he took the once little-known FinTech company to a household name among Gen Z.
Complex: You're at Chime now. What opportunities for growth excited you most?
Vineet Mehra: Our brand, while we had been successful, needed to move from a niche FinTech player to a mainstream financial banking solution for the American people. I saw that as a movement we could create. There's a massive gap in the market; most everyday Americans feel taken advantage of by the big banks. If you don't have a minimum balance you can keep in your account, they charge you a fee. You get into a little bit of trouble that week before your paycheck comes in; you have to go into overdraft, and they charge you a fee. This whole idea of waiting for two to four weeks for your paycheck; that doesn't work for everyone because some people run out of money before they're paid.
Complex: That’s a very real thing.
Vineet Mehra: We're now America's number one choice for banking. We open more accounts than Chase, Wells Fargo, and even something called Bank of America. From a brand love perspective, we've taken a financial brand and put it in the same cultural zeitgeist and relevancy as other major brands.
Complex: Tell me about Chime Prime.
Vineet Mehra: Chime Prime is our next iteration of the value we want to offer to everyday Americans by banking with us. Chime Prime is unique in that it brings 5% cash back rewards with no fees. And by the way, cashback rewards- the whole idea has usually been for the rich, right? Like, if you can pay $800 for an Amex Platinum or $400 a year for a Chase Sapphire Reserve, you get access to rewards, but everyday people end up paying high interest rates and getting no rewards. So we took out all the fees, and if you direct deposit your paycheck with us, you get 5% cashback rewards on a category of your choice, which is amazing.
Complex: Something else I've noticed about Chime—and we're gonna have to plug Complex here —is that there's a real storytelling approach to banking that's not traditional. There was the Mama, I Made It series we partnered on and most recently Ball On a Budget. What was the thinking behind that
Vineet Mehra: The ultimate currency today is attention. If you're a marketer and you don't know how to win attention, there's no way your brand's going to stand out, and where is attention nowadays? It's in these subcultures.
We basically built our brand through social media and getting attention through these subcultures. With Mama I Made It, our brand's mission and purpose was this idea of unlocking financial progress for everyday Americans. So telling stories of progress is important to us.
It's an episodic social series that takes people from all aspects of entertainment and their mom and tells a story of how they grew up and what their progress story was. And one of the things we loved about what Complex does is you guys have an amazing ability to distribute content and connect subcultural talent to content that people care about. It was a really great partnership, leveraging our strengths, knowing this consumer, knowing the insight, and having this great social media muscle that we have.
Complex: What are your thoughts on AI and how are you incorporating it into your business?
Vineet Mehra: If you think about how much power AI is giving our teams, we're using AI across our entire marketing. It's unbelievable. I mean, from customer acquisition to conversion funnels to doing synthetic consumer research. A couple of months ago, we ran our first consumer research group moderated by an AI.
We're using it in customer support. Seventy percent of our calls are now run by AI agents. We no longer have a creative agency on retainer. Our in- house team has the tools to do everything they need in ways that we've never been able to before. If you really think about what's happening in the world, I can think of an idea and build it the next day. So there's only upside from here.
Complex: What are some of the things your parents instilled in you that, on the surface, have nothing to do with marketing or your work ethic but have greatly impacted your marketing and your work ethic?
Vineet Mehra: I still have the picture of when my parents moved to Canada with me from India. They had a suitcase that's smaller than a laptop bag with me in their hands. I mean, they came here with nothing. And when you have that experience in your DNA, you quickly realize that you can't let them down. The sacrifices that were made give you a work ethic that comes from the love and respect you have for your parents. I don't know how to replicate that with my son, right? Laughs. I think that's where it all begins. You have this respect and almost reverence for what your family did, and really they did it for me.
Complex: Very dope. We all know about Ancestry now, but in the late 2010s, this was new territory. As the global CMO, how do you begin strategizing how to make DNA and family history interesting, and a necessity, much less cool?
Vineet Mehra: Talk about marketing challenges. Getting someone to spit in a tube, put it in a FedEx box, and mail it to a company is a lot of friction in the consumer experience. For a couple of years, we were the best-selling product on Amazon not called Alexa during Black Friday.
I'll never forget that we started this movement with a very simple seed of an insight and then a bit of activation. I think it was the beginning of a DACA scandal; the KKK was marching again in Charlottesville. It was a crazy moment in America. We had this insight that if we all knew where we were actually from, we would realize that we're all much more similar than we are different. It was a powerful idea, and that's exactly what happened. We took out a 60-second spot during the Oscars to launch this insight. We recreated the Founding Fathers signing the Declaration of Independence, and instead of a bunch of old white men reading the document, we took their actual genetic ancestors. From there, we exploded. It was this amazing moment.
Complex: You were at the helm of Walgreens during the COVID-19 pandemic. This was a real test of leadership in ways other CMOs I’ve interviewed hadn’t faced. What's the first thing you say to yourself in that moment? And how did you lead your team forward?
Vineet Mehra: The first thing is—and people don't talk about this much— you've got to manage yourself, or you can’t lead. The first thing I had to acknowledge was that we were sending our pharmacists to the front line. We kept stores open, or at least many of them, because we were such a critical service during this time. I had to reconcile with the fact that the first job of leadership in a moment like that is not to ask people to do things you're not willing to do yourself. And that's a really important lesson I learned through all of that. I was running Walgreens and had boots on the ground in the UK, so I was on a plane constantly during this time. When you work for purpose, it really changes how you approach leadership when it's not a transactional job you're in.
Then, as we went through the pandemic and the vaccines started to roll out, we started to realize that minority groups were skeptical of this government vaccine program and pharmacy deserts. This is where the power of marketing comes in, and I don't mean that frivolously; I mean that in a way that communicates to people. We worked with John Legend and got him to create a song called This Is Your Shot, and it went everywhere. We were genuinely trying to encourage people to be safe, to protect themselves. And that's essentially what got that movement sparked: working with trusted, credible members of different communities and getting them to take care of themselves and protect themselves.
Complex: You said you had to manage yourself first. What were some anxieties you had during that time?
Vineet Mehra: But in terms of managing myself, I mean, look, I'm a dad and husband; I've got a family to raise and go back to. I felt like if I went to the office and was with other people, I'd bring it home and infect my family. When you have a duty at home, and you have a duty as a leader, how do you blend those things? And, you know, that was the first time in my life where I was put in this sort of moment where I really had to reconcile with myself these two duties and how I was going to manage them both and, and give it my all on both fronts. That was, that was a hard leadership lesson, and I'd never faced that.
Complex: You bounced around a lot. You were at Walgreens, Ancestry, and now you're at Chime. Is there ever any trepidation going from one field to the next?
Vineet Mehra: In terms of moving industry to industry, I wouldn't have it any other way. I think I'd get really, really bored. So one thing I would say to people is chase experiences, not titles, not pay; chase as many experiences, as much horizontal breadth as you can get, whether that be industries, the types of leaders you work for, and the cultures you work in, because eventually when you get to the top of an organization, you're ultimately going to draw on experiences.
My belief has always been the more breadth of experiences you have, the better. To give you context, I also live my personal life that way. I've been married 20 years, but I have lived in 17 houses, on three continents, and in seven countries. It's something that I've always believed. And it might be this first-generation immigrant in me where I felt so confined. And when I finally could say, yes, I couldn't wait to see the world and experience things. I think that's really how this manifested itself.
Complex: What was your favorite city that you and your wife lived in?
Vineet Mehra: We've lived in Singapore, Toronto, Geneva, Bombay, all over the world, but because I'm so into the power of the word yes when it comes to experiences, wherever we went, we made the most of it. When I was in Singapore, I was a single dude; I met my wife there, actually. We got engaged, and I made the most of that. We went to Geneva and lived there. We had our son, who was born there, and it was an amazing place to have a baby; and what a beautiful environment for a kid. Over time, I discovered Silicon Valley and decided that Palo Alto was where I belonged.
