Brand or performance? That’s the wrong question for marketers to ask, according to Nick Fairbairn.
Live from the Marketing Vanguard stage at Brandweek 2026 in Atlanta, Jenny Rooney sits down with Chime SVP of Growth Nick Fairbairn to unpack why brand lift and direct-response accountability belong in the same system.
They also discuss why buying an AI tool does not amount to AI transformation, and why scrappy creative may do more brand-building work than marketers want to admit.
Nick also gets into TV’s messy shift from linear to streaming, executive conversations around brand investment and why creators should perhaps be a part of every channel.
What you’ll learn:
- Why AI adoption needs active leadership instead of waiting for teams to figure it out themselves
- Why buying another AI tool rarely changes how a marketing organization actually works
- How Nick measures TV with the rigor of a performance channel
- Why brand lift and direct-response accountability should sit in the same conversation
- How data can turn a defensive budget discussion into a stronger case for brand investment
- Why lower-production testimonial creative can still move brand equity and consideration
- Why Nick thinks creators should eventually become part of every marketing channel
- This episode is part of a special vidcast series that was recorded live during Brandweek 2026 and presented in partnership with Tatari.
About our guest:
Nick Fairbairn is senior vice president of growth at Chime, where he leads a broad growth organization spanning paid media, organic growth, go-to-market, lifecycle, product, engineering and onboarding.
His career started in media buying, including television and radio, before he moved into agency entrepreneurship and then brand-side marketing. Along the way, he’s worked at ProFlowers, helped build acquisition at Dollar Shave Club during the DTC era, led startup growth and later joined Chime to build its product marketing capabilities before moving into his current growth role.
Episode highlights:
[08:49] Buying an AI Tool Is Not Transformation — Nick is candid about getting AI wrong. He says he has made the mistake of buying tools out of the box and assuming they would work, only to discover that software alone changes very little. Real transformation takes use-case testing, product understanding, intentional workflow design and people willing to change how they work. The purchase is the easy part. Adoption is the actual job.
[09:15] Treat TV Like a Performance Channel — Nick has treated television with performance-style accountability for years. That means looking at traffic spikes, enrollment and real-time signals rather than stopping at awareness. At Dollar Shave Club, he used a full-funnel model to make the case for a Super Bowl investment: map the unaware audience, estimate movement into consideration, then capture that demand through direct response. His point: brand investment does not have to mean abandoning measurement.
[14:22] Scrappy Creative Can Still Build Brand — Nick’s Brandweek 2026 hot take: marketers may be overestimating how much polish is required to build brand equity. Chime has seen testimonial-style creative move consideration and brand-love measures alongside (and sometimes better than) more cinematic work. His argument is not that premium creative is dead, rather that production value should not be confused with brand impact.
[15:15] Creators Should Become Part of Every Channel — Nick sees creator marketing evolving beyond its own budget line or channel. The bigger shift, in his view, is weaving creator-led thinking across the broader media and creative mix. Top-down brand storytelling will still matter, but the balance is changing. His provocative shorthand: creators should eventually account for a significant share of every channel, rather than being treated as a separate tactic sitting off to the side.
