How Chime is redefining marketing through AI
TL;DR: Chime’s CMO Vineet Mehra argues marketing is entering a “golden era” through the “Agentification of Marketing”—AI agents operating as brand extensions that adapt in real-time, personalise at scale, and optimise spend with unprecedented precision. Chime uses ChatGPT across all departments, deploying custom GPTs like Chime Content GPT to accelerate creative velocity whilst maintaining brand integrity.
The agentification of marketing paradigm shift
Vineet Mehra, Chief Marketing Officer at Chime, the leading financial technology company serving millions of everyday people, identifies a fundamental transformation in marketing: the shift from campaign-centric structures to agentic models where AI agents operate as extensions of the brand.
“AI is not just another tool—it’s redefining the marketing operating model,” Mehra explains. “The traditional campaign-centric structure is giving way to an agentic model, where AI agents operate as an extension of the brand—adapting in real time, personalizing at scale, and optimizing spend with unprecedented precision.”
This transformation fundamentally reshapes how marketing organisations are designed, shifting from static teams built around execution to dynamic teams orchestrating AI-driven systems that continuously learn and improve. Mehra argues this positions CMOs better than ever to fulfil their core mandate: allocating capital to maximise efficient growth.
However, he emphasises the urgency: “The challenge now is speed—CMOs must rapidly adapt their organizations, capabilities, and decision-making to fully leverage this new paradigm. The future belongs to those who can make the shift—fast.”
The golden era of marketing: Breaking down silos
Contrary to narratives positioning AI as a threat to marketing leadership, Mehra contends that “we are now entering the golden age of marketing. More than ever, CMOs have the opportunity to drive profitable growth with greater efficiency than at any point in history.”
AI is breaking down traditional silos between brand, performance, and lifecycle marketing, creating a more connected, adaptive marketing model. Personalisation at scale—long considered an aspiration—is becoming operational reality through reinforcement learning that dramatically accelerates experimentation velocity.
“Marketers can now test, learn, and optimize in real time—compressing what once took months into days—allowing us to get to impact and outcomes faster than ever,” Mehra notes. Simultaneously, AI-powered agents handle routine optimisations, surface insights, and automate execution, enabling teams to focus on highest-value strategic and creative work.
Three-pillar AI adoption framework
Mehra recommends a structured framework ensuring AI becomes an integrated system rather than disconnected tools:
1. Champion AI from the top
“AI adoption isn’t just a technology decision—it’s a business transformation,” Mehra emphasises. CMOs must own the shift by driving the strategic roadmap, ensuring teams understand AI’s potential, and setting the vision for how AI fuels both creativity and growth.
2. Start small, scale fast
One of the biggest barriers to AI adoption is attempting immediate transformation. Mehra advocates learning through hands-on experimentation: “We started with AI for simple tasks like copy refinement, then expanded into AI-assisted creative production, SEO, and real-time media optimization.”
Every AI deployment should drive measurable impact, whether in efficiency gains, content velocity, or higher conversion rates. Quick wins build momentum, drive confidence, and fuel faster scaling.
3. AI is only as good as the inputs it gets
“AI doesn’t just work on its own—it’s only as effective as the data and parameters it’s given,” Mehra cautions. Early in Chime’s AI journey, personalisation models and predictive value bidding struggled until data inputs were refined.
Similarly, AI-driven content creation became more successful once Chime built a custom GPT trained on Chime’s best-performing content rather than relying on off-the-shelf models. CMOs must prioritise data quality and model training as they scale AI, ensuring alignment with business goals rather than merely automating tasks.
Three operational transformation areas at Chime
AI has reshaped Chime’s marketing organisation across three key domains:
Creative and content velocity
AI accelerates content creation without sacrificing quality or brand integrity. From AI-assisted storyboarding and video generation to automated content development, Chime has reduced reliance on external agencies and built in-house AI capabilities that increase creative output whilst reducing costs.
“AI-powered workflows now allow us to develop and deploy assets more quickly, giving us more agility in-market,” Mehra explains.
Real-time optimisation in media and lifecycle marketing
AI enables movement from manual testing to real-time, automated decision-making. Tools like PMAX and OfferFit dynamically adjust media spend, messaging, and customer touchpoints based on live performance signals.
“Instead of relying on set-it-and-forget-it campaigns, AI enables us to constantly refine and improve marketing performance in the moment,” Mehra notes.
Faster, smarter customer insights
AI reshapes how Chime understands and responds to customers. AI-powered trend spotting and sentiment analysis process vast amounts of customer feedback in real time.
Chime’s AI-driven voice of customer analysis generates weekly insights that directly inform product and marketing strategy. Additionally, the research team created a custom GPT serving as an interactive database where users can query responses from synthetic personas representing key customer segments.
Custom GPT: Maintaining brand voice at scale
The biggest lesson from Chime’s AI implementation: AI is only as good as the inputs it receives. When personalisation models and predictive value bidding underperformed, Chime refined the data quality feeding these systems.
This led to building Chime Content GPT, a custom AI model trained on Chime’s best-performing content, ensuring every AI-generated output maintains the company’s brand voice, quality, and credibility.
Mehra emphasises thoughtful implementation: “We’ve laid out a framework for marketing AI that’s horizontal, but also allows each specialist to have tooling that enables them to do their job better. I think that’s really important.”
Organisational adoption: Curiosity over technical skill
Chime uses ChatGPT across its entire organisation in every department, including operations, marketing, engineering, product, and analytics. The introduction of custom GPTs served as a gateway to broader adoption.
“These tools are only as good as a person’s ability to get the most out of them,” Mehra reflects. “That’s why we introduced GPTs—it was a small win to get people used to it. Little by little, as they become more comfortable, they start to say, ‘Wow, I can do this—what else can I do?’”
The most important skill isn’t AI technical expertise—it’s curiosity. “AI isn’t here to replace you, but if you don’t evolve, someone who understands how to harness it will,” Mehra warns. “The best marketers will be the ones who stay ahead, keep learning, and move fast.”
Moving fast in an evolving landscape
AI evolves rapidly, and no single playbook guarantees success. Mehra advises staying adaptable, experimenting quickly, and learning from both successes and failures.
“The companies that move fastest—while ensuring AI is thoughtfully trained and integrated—will be the ones best positioned to drive growth in this new era,” he concludes.
The fundamental question for marketing leaders isn’t whether AI will change marketing—it’s whether they’re ready to change with it.
Source: OpenAI Original Article: How Chime is redefining marketing through AI Published: 5 November 2025