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For Vineet Mehra, CMO of the financial technology company Chime, today is “the true golden era of marketing.” “We have more tools, more data, more reach, and more creative possibilities than ever,” Mehra says. We asked Mehra to look into the future to talk about what skills the CMO of 2035 will need to be positioned for success. Mehra identifies five critical roles CMOs must master in the coming decade:
1. Financial Strategist
2. AI Conductor
3. Talent Multiplier
4. Community Architect
5. Cultural Decoder
This is the foundation on which Mehra has built Chime’s marketing operations, and it can serve as a road map for CMOs ready to redefine the role for continued success.
1. The Financial Strategist: Quantifying magic and allocating capital
For the CMO of 2035, the mandate to drive efficient growth will still be paramount. This requires managing marketing budgets, not as an operating expense but as an exercise in capital allocation. As Mehra says, “The CMO often controls one of the company’s largest spend lines. So I am very close with my CFO, and we align on the payback periods and return on investment on those dollars.”
Rather than treating brand building and direct response as competing factions, the financial strategist views them as a unified investment portfolio. In this model, brand spend creates future intent and then direct response captures it, ensuring that every dollar is deployed with a committed financial outcome agreed upon by the C-suite.
The key is to have measurement models to understand the half-life of your brand investment and how that impacts your direct response.
This rigorous approach protects companies from the “CAC valley of death,” where neglecting brand causes customer acquisition costs (CAC) to spiral as the pool of interested customers dries up. To avoid this, Mehra employs what he calls “performance storytelling,” which considers brand building and direct response as inseparable components required for efficient, long-term growth. “The key is to have measurement models to understand the half-life of your brand investment and how that impacts your direct response. And use it to ensure you’re feeding the direct response engine with brand interest efficiently.”
This performance storytelling approach has been a key growth driver, leading the 13-year old fintech startup to go public in 2025. The results speak for themselves: Chime’s direct response engine is highly efficient, and its brand is beloved by users, earning it a perfect score and a “best brand” ranking from Time magazine.
2. The AI Conductor: Orchestrating talent and technology
Looking toward 2035, Mehra sees the CMO evolving into a chief orchestrator of a unified ecosystem that combines creative talent with intelligent automation. In this model, advanced tools streamline complex workflows, from creative iteration and media optimization to compliance and customer service, allowing the marketing organization to deliver a seamless brand narrative at scale.
This approach is already delivering meaningful results at Chime. AI-powered systems now manage more than 70% of customer support interactions across chat and voice, doubling support satisfaction while keeping accuracy and tone consistent with the brand. Chime also uses reinforcement learning to move beyond traditional A/B testing, dramatically increasing the speed and scale of experimentation across onboarding and conversion funnels. Together, these capabilities allow the team to learn faster and ship improvements in a fraction of the time.
“A modern CMO has to conduct a truly integrated orchestra,” Mehra says. “The real work is deciding where human judgment creates the most value, where an AI agent can accelerate execution, and how to blend the two so the whole system operates at its highest potential. At Chime, AI accelerates the work, but humans still drive the judgment, creativity, and trust that matter most.”
3. The Talent Multiplier: Scaling impact with adaptable storytelling
The CMO of 2035 must build a team of “ambidextrous” marketers who combine math and magic. Because AI agents will soon handle the heavy lifting of execution, every team member needs to be skilled in technically directing the AI and emotionally telling the brand story. The CMO’s role is to ensure that even as automation scales, the brand’s voice remains distinct and human, Mehra says.
It’s the role of the CMO to build communities of belonging, to tell stories rooted in the communities brands serve.
With AI tools rapidly evolving, rigid departments must give way to flexible, cross-functional pods. Mehra notes that as foundational AI capabilities become widely accessible, the real advantage shifts to how quickly an organization can apply them, combining proprietary data, strong governance, and distinct creative judgment. In that world, human creativity becomes the ultimate differentiator, and the CMO’s role as a “talent multiplier” is indispensable.
4. Community Architect: Putting customers in the spotlight
Building human connections will be all the more important in 2035. “It’s the irony of this AI age, where technology will take over so much of the execution work, that humanity and community are going to matter more than ever,” Mehra predicts. It’s the role of the CMO to build communities and ecosystems of belonging, to tell stories rooted deeply in the communities brands serve.
For Chime, this commitment to community drives its relentless focus on its members. AI also helps Chime surface emerging needs and patterns from millions of interactions, giving its creative team deeper insight into the real experiences of the communities it serves. And it is reflected in Chime’s creative strategy. As a rule, Chime uses real customers, not actors, in testimonial ads to ensure authenticity. When Chime puts out a casting call for members to share their stories, thousands of responses pour in, showcasing an “unheard of fandom” in the financial services industry, Mehra says. From artistic digital nomads to wellness entrepreneurs, Chime’s members are the brand’s best spokespeople.
This is the golden age of marketing. Anyone with an idea now has the tools to create it, code it, and push it out into the world.
5. Cultural Decoder: Keeping your brand differentiated and relevant
To stay relevant and in touch with customers, CMOs need to understand shifting cultural trends. This is nothing new, but the speed with which trends rise and fall means CMOs need to be experts at recognizing weak signals and translating them into competitive advantage. This doesn’t mean chasing every fad but, instead, building a brand that is responsive and flexible.
Looking to the marketers of 2035
To achieve the marketing organization of the future, Mehra says leaders must operate with smart, reasonable constraints that focus on the fundamentals while embracing the acceleration AI provides. He believes this next era will belong to marketers who pair creativity with responsible AI, using automation to move faster while keeping transparency, consent, and trust at the center. But Mehra is relentlessly, and personally, optimistic about what comes next. “Someone asked me, ‘Should my kid become a marketer?’ I said, ‘There’s not a better job. This is the golden age of marketing. Anyone with an idea now has the tools to create it, code it, and push it out into the world.’”
