Providing financial opportunities that empower individuals is one of the most rewarding aspects of working in banking. It’s a reciprocal relationship built on mutual benefit—the bank offers products and services that help customers achieve their financial goals, while customers, in turn, contribute to the bank’s success and allow it to reinvest in the community.

There’s something deeply fulfilling about playing a role in helping people buy their first home, start a business, fund an education, or plan for retirement. More than just financial transactions, these are life-changing milestones that require trusted guidance and support.

For Kristen Bowdoin, the Chief Marketing Officer of Business Banking at Chase, a career in financial services was an obvious choice driven by a profound understanding of the sector’s impact on individuals’ lives. With nearly her entire professional journey dedicated to this field, she has witnessed firsthand the transformative power of financial instruments and the critical role they play in creating opportunities.

“It’s rewarding to help create financial opportunities for individuals,” Kristen shares. “I’ve always valued being part of that and love the reciprocal relationship between bank and customer—each derives value from the other, driving success and fulfilling dreams.”

This philosophy has been the driving force behind her achievements, fueling her passion for developing innovative solutions that cater to the diverse needs of Chase’s business banking customers. Her strategic approach combines deep market insights with a customer-centric mindset, ensuring that the bank’s offerings resonate with entrepreneurs and business owners alike.

Under Kristen’s leadership, Chase’s Business Banking division has consistently pushed boundaries, introducing futuristic digital tools, tailored advisory services, and flexible financing options that empower businesses to thrive in a progressing economic landscape. Her ability to anticipate market trends and adapt marketing strategies accordingly has solidified Chase’s position as a trusted partner for businesses of all sizes.

Kristen’s impact extends beyond the realm of business banking. She is an active advocate for financial literacy and education, recognizing the vital role these play in nurturing economic empowerment and sustainable growth. Through her initiatives, she has helped countless individuals and businesses navigate the complexities of financial management, equipping them with the knowledge and resources needed to make informed decisions.

Below are the interview highlights:

Could you please give a brief introduction to your company and its inception story?

While the history of JPMorgan Chase is vast, what’s interesting to me has been the transformation of Chase Business Banking from a services-based model to something more akin to a partnership. When viewing the business through a marketing lens, naming and framing it as ‘Chase for Business,’ and considering how we could add more value and commit to providing meaningful resources, We leaned into the idea of optimism and doing everything we could to help foster the growth and success of the customers and business owners we support.

How do you approach aligning marketing strategies with overall business goals as a Chief Marketing Officer?

I’m an outcomes-based marketer, so my focus is to deliver measurable impact for Chase for Business and JPMC. Every marketing solution starts with an unmet customer need and a desired outcome. The customer remains top of mind throughout the development of our marketing strategies, and our approaches are then generated with those goals in mind.

I’m most interested in the intersection between those needs and our goals—that’s where we uncover actionable insights that lay the groundwork for our marketing strategies. We’re always looking to uncover white space to ensure our efforts will be differentiated and ownable.

Can you share a successful campaign you led as a CMO and the key factors that contributed to its success?

As CMO, I’ve led the creation of our advertising strategies and campaigns. Chase banks all sizes of businesses, but small business owners are unique—both in terms of their banking needs and who they are as people. At the heart of our current campaign are real stories told by real business owners. We’ve found that real, relatable small business owners are the most effective voice for demonstrating the difference Chase for Business can make. The underpinnings of the strategy are relatability and credibility.

Getting to relatability is no easy task—we need real stories that resonate broadly and break through. Our approach has been to identify small businesses that represent our client base, reflecting a diversity of business type, business ownership, growth stage, and geographical area.

By focusing on our customers and their stories, we make them the heroes, not Chase. And they are heroic! It takes incredible grit to start a business—and even more to keep it going and growing. This is a population that is unique in their makeup, and they truly love nothing more than hearing from others walking that same path—to share stories, successes, and key learnings along the way.

Recently, we featured a business out of Miami, Girls Who Do Interiors—the owners are three women who, coming out of design school, turned a passion into a thriving business. Showing how Chase supported their growth through storytelling gives our products and services a human context, allowing us to bring meaning and connection to our marketing.

Showcasing real businesses in real communities humanizes Chase for Business, making us more accessible and approachable. The winning combination for our customers, and for us, is to demonstrate how Chase works at the local level while providing the strength and resources of a large bank.

How do you stay updated on emerging marketing trends and technologies to drive innovation in your role?

I’m lucky to work for Chase because the firm as a whole places emphasis on tracking trends that impact our world and, most importantly, our customers. From a personal perspective, though, I’m very intentional about reading, listening to podcasts, and soliciting new ideas from my team and agency partners. I also keep an eye on competitors and new disruptors coming into the financial services realm.

And lastly, and likely most importantly, I stay close to the customer by reviewing monthly feedback via forums that we interact with on an ongoing basis.

What strategies do you employ to foster collaboration between marketing and other departments within an organization?

Collaboration has to be at the heart of an organization’s culture for it to actually happen—it’s got to be embedded as a company value and supported. That means breaking down internal silos and working as integrated teams—something we do both internally and with our external agency partners.

When we all share the same true north, that helps foster amplification strategies across all disciplines.

How do you measure the effectiveness of marketing initiatives and adjust strategies accordingly as a CMO?

Remaining focused on solutions and outcomes by identifying and framing KPIs for any (and all) initiatives. While no two projects are the same, our organization has identified key measures on both macro and micro levels.

Whether it’s PR, an ad campaign, or a podcast, we’re looking to impact the brand, but notably, those will each likely have different measures. Being nimble, and having nimble partners, is key to adjusting where and when it’s called for.

Can you discuss a challenging situation you faced as a CMO and how you navigated through it to achieve positive outcomes?

Small Business Week is extremely important to us, to our customers, and to our prospects. It’s also an area that, I think everyone would agree, is a very crowded space. So while it was critical that we make an impact, we needed an effort that could truly offer value—you don’t want to launch a marketing effort in celebration of small business owners that are just serving your brand rather than these incredible business owners.

It took an enormous effort with all our partners to create a meaningful activation. But I’m so proud of what we’ve done, and it was so enormously successful in every measure that we are continuing to grow it, and its impact, year over year.

How do you prioritize and allocate resources effectively to maximize ROI in your marketing efforts?

I like to prioritize marketing efforts into three categories: what must we do, what can we do, and what would we like to do? Another way of thinking about this is now, next, and future. There are so many terrific ideas, but you can’t implement all of them.

So maximizing ROI is an important part of how we prioritize, but it’s not the only factor. Some marketing efforts may have other objectives that go beyond ROI. Any major initiative we plan is looked at holistically, and we use data and modeling to determine the likely ROI.

As you can imagine, resourcing at a corporation the size of Chase has its challenges. There are many competing for resources within the organization, so developing compelling business cases for the “must-do” initiatives is key. Another way we prioritize is through advance planning and doubling down on winners.

Getting ahead of what we might need from a resource perspective is necessary in order to know that we can fully execute our ideas and bring them to market on time. The other is rapid measurement of results, so we know quickly when we’ve achieved success and should continue to fund the most effective initiatives.

What role do data and analytics play in your decision-making process as a Chief Marketing Officer?

Data and analytics are incredibly important in my decision-making process—it’s all about generating actionable insights. Knowing inputs and outputs is critical to my investment decisions and how I prioritize our efforts. As an example, a huge part of our marketing process is to identify small business owners and the signals that indicate the right moment in time for targeting to bring them into the fold.

Most of our customers start out with Chase on a personal level, and it’s the data that helps us determine who is ready to make that transition.

How do you ensure brand consistency and messaging across various marketing channels and touchpoints?

Consistency is dependent on the north star of your brand and your campaign. Being disciplined about the components of your brand identity and having those well-articulated in guidelines, is critical. But you have to make sure it all shows up throughout the ecosystem of your marketing. Not just at the top of the funnel but all the way through. The same is true for your campaign.

You need the strategic underpinnings and the executional elements to show up everywhere your brand is showing up. And to do that, you need strong internal and external partners who can both come up with a strong idea that is differentiating, and also implement that idea throughout all their work.

How do you approach building and leading a high-performing marketing team to drive organizational success?

Of course, you need a team with a strong foundation in the tenets of marketing—and that’s a complex web of skills, from marketing to media to data and analytics, and much more. But none of that is enough to succeed as a team—you also need people with soft skills.

Strong communication skills, an ability to manage and provide feedback, and an orientation towards constant improvement and growth—these are the qualities you’ll see in highly functional and successful teams. My magic trifecta when hiring is to find those people who are smart, who work hard, and who care.