The question is not brand or performance. It is how to run both inside one growth system. That was the core argument from Nick Fairbairn, SVP of Growth at Chime, on the Marketing Vanguard stage at Brandweek 2026 in Atlanta, in conversation with Jenny Rooney.
For growth teams, the session hit a familiar tension: brand is often measured on reach and sentiment while performance is measured on conversions and cost. Fairbairn’s case is that this split makes brand spend look unaccountable and performance spend look short-term.
Give brand dollars performance discipline
Fairbairn said he has held television to performance-style standards for years. Instead of stopping at awareness, his team watches traffic spikes, enrollment and real-time signals.
At Dollar Shave Club, he used a full-funnel model to make the case for a Super Bowl investment: start with the unaware audience, estimate how many people move into consideration, then capture that demand through direct response. Brand investment and measurement, he argued, do not have to sit apart.
AI tools don’t transform teams
Fairbairn was candid about a mistake many marketers will recognize. He has bought software out of the box and assumed it would change results. It didn’t.
“Adoption is the actual job,” Fairbairn said.
What works instead is less glamorous: choose a use case, understand the product, design the workflow, and get people to change how they work. Active leadership is the unlock, not another license.
Creative: drop the polish assumption
His Brandweek 2026 hot take was that marketers may be overestimating how polished brand creative needs to be. Chime has seen testimonial-style work move consideration and brand-love measures as well as, and sometimes better than, bigger production.
Premium creative is not dead. Gloss is simply not the same as brand impact.
Creators as infrastructure, not a line item
Fairbairn sees creator marketing outgrowing its own budget line. Creator-led thinking should be stitched across the full media and creative mix, eventually accounting for a meaningful share of every channel. Top-down brand stories still matter, but the center of gravity is shifting.
What to run with this week
- Track brand channels on traffic spikes, enrollment and real-time signals, not just awareness.
- Model big brand bets full-funnel: unaware audience, consideration, direct response.
- Replace tool-first AI rollouts with use-case tests, workflow design and adoption ownership.
- Test testimonial-style creative against cinematic work on consideration and brand love.
- Give creator-led thinking a share of every channel instead of a standalone budget.
The Super Bowl model is the framework to copy. It turns a defensive budget conversation into a revenue story: awareness earns the right to convert, but only if you can show the bridge.
Source: Adweek
