Compound Growth: How U.S. Bank uses AI to drive revenue and results

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1:17Blowing ad budget on metrics that look great till the CFO sees them. That's bull spend. And marketers are calling it out in Dashboard Confessions. I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow. Yeah, it wasn't. Cut the bull spend. LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title, and more. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend$250 on your first campaign and get a$250 credit. Go to linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. What I'm seeing right now is a couple of things. First is in terms of where it's driving the most value for us is in the use of tools and techniques like synthetic audiences to be able to develop the strategies really quickly and develop creative ideas really quickly.

2:02We use that first with our brand campaign, The Power of Us, that launched in 2024. And it shaved the total cycle time development of the campaign in half from, say, six and a half months to about three months. To thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape, brands must move at an ever increasing pace. I'm Matt Britton, founder and CEO of Suzy. Join me and key industry leaders as we dive deep into the shifting consumer trends within their industry, why it matters now, and how you can keep up. Welcome to the Speed of Culture.

2:36Up today on the Speed of Culture podcast, we are thrilled to welcome Michael Lacarraza, the Chief Marketing Officer at U.S. Bank. Michael is a transformational marketing leader who operates at the intersection of storytelling, technology, data science, and customer experience. Michael, thanks so much for taking the time here at CES to talk with us today. Thanks for having me today. Absolutely. So it's interesting, you know, I've been coming to CES for the last 25 years. And when I started, it was truly just consumer electronics companies. You had companies that made TVs and dishwashers and, you know, MP3s.

3:05And now you have U.S. Bank here. Why is CES an important place for you as a CMO of U.S. Bank to start the year off? CES has become like a lot of other high profile events where the attendees live at the intersection of our world. A lot of marketers are here, brands, agencies, media companies, technology companies. So it becomes a place where we can actually accomplish quite a lot on the relationship building and the learning side in terms of getting outside input and outside thinking and fresh thinking. So that's what it's become for us. And it's amazing to see this year in particular how that leg of it has expanded so much.

3:44Yeah, it's crazy to think about. I mean, I think that what you find at events like this is that no matter what industry you're in, people kind of share the same problems, the same challenges, same opportunities. Obviously, AI is something that goes across every category. And just curious, what are your overall thoughts on AI's impact, both on your role as a CMO and U.S. Bank's overall product and how it touches and drives great experiences with your customers. Right. Well, that's a pretty big meta question. Yeah. And I think maybe like a lot of other companies, we're on this journey to figure out how this is going to work for us and to plug in.

4:21And we have use cases in projects that are at various stages of development, some of which have been incredibly effective and promising, and some of which we just learned and said, oh, well, maybe that's not the right place to insert this. What I'm seeing right now is a couple of things. First is in terms of where it's driving the most value for us is in the use of tools and techniques like synthetic audiences to be able to develop the strategies really quickly and develop creative ideas really quickly. We developed that. We used that first with our brand campaign, The Power of Us, that launched in 2024, and it shaved the total cycle time development of the campaign in half from, say, six and a half months to about.

5:00So you're creating synthetic audiences. And who's the audience who doesn't know what a synthetic audience is? It's essentially an audience that's modeled after a real audience that you would test advertising with. And it's made up of AI agents, essentially, who are answering in a simulated form, like real consumers. And you're confident enough in that feedback that you're willing to use it as a key signal. As a guide, for sure. And when we were first experimenting with this technology, we also ran human sort of parallel groups, answering some of the same questions. And with some refinement, we found, you know, it probably correlates like 95 % of the time for what we're trying to do.

5:33So that's been really successful for us in terms of speed to market, getting insights quickly, executing research. The other place that we're finding some success is in the growth space, which I find to be most exciting because the use cases for cost savings are more obvious in terms of automating processes and those types of things. But from my perspective, the real unluck is how do you leverage technology to drive growth? So for us, number one is how are we using it to improve the actual customer experience, which then translates into higher satisfaction, which then translates into higher loyalty and retention, which has massive economic upside.

6:10And one example is we can feed data, behavioral data of our customers. Say they go on to one of our digital platforms and they get stuck somewhere. They're trying to move money or they're trying to do something and something's not working for them. Well, if they decide to call our call center, we can feed in insights that this customer got stuck here. And the call center rep banker can maybe intuit what the customer actually needs in a sense when the call begins. Right. And so it leads to faster problem resolution. Better customer experience. Better customer experience. Yeah. And then, of course, you want to have a situation where you never have any sort of problem whatsoever in your digital channels.

6:48But it's just not, you know, it's not feasible. Like, it's technology. sometimes things aren't going to work quite right for a variety of reasons. But so when we incorporate those kinds of, and AI plays a heavy role in being able to synthesize this information and deliver it right through our CRM. The third way we're getting a lot of value, and it's already now in the tens of millions of dollars, is through personalization. So it's, as you can imagine, a company like ours, we have a tremendous amount of data on our clients, all permissioned, all transparent for how we use the data, and a very high expectation from our clients to say, hey, you know me, you should be like getting the advice and guidance.

7:26Talk to me as an audience of many, talk to me as an audience of one. Right, right, to the extent that's possible. So for us to be able to personalize content, advice, product suggestions, offers, and so forth that will resonate on a more one-to-one basis with people, we find that they respond by wanting to do more business with us. Yeah, you talk about it almost like so matter-of-factly and those examples are all really impressive for a company your size. that you're actually putting it to work because many people I talk to on this podcast talk about what they're gonna do. You're talking about things that you're doing, which is a big distinction.

7:57How have you been able to drive that transformation so quickly in your organization to give people confidence in synthetic audiences or confidence in using AI for personalization or customer experience? It's not easy because in doing so, you have to change the way that many people work and get them to work together on that new way of working. That's a great framing of it, right? So it's, the journey is, it requires huge commitments from cross-functional partners to enable this, right? So I would say are quite fortuitous to have a risk partnership and a legal partnership that's focused. You still kill it.

8:34If you don't have the right legal game, you're dead in the water, right? And the mental model is like, how can we help make the customer experience better? How can we help the business grow? I don't want the same thing. Versus just saying, oh, that's too risky. It's a no. It's more like, okay, well, it's how do we get to a yes? what considerations, what changes do we need to make? And that's been a really big unlock to have that sort of advocacy to make things possible. I would say the second thing is that for all the success or sort of opportunities that we've been able to unlock so far, we also know there's way more that we don't know than we know.

9:03So keeping a dose of humility and always being in learning mode is what makes it possible to move forward. I have to find and I've experienced this in my own organization, when you roll out something new, there's people that feel threatened. There's people that feel threatened because they think it's going to eliminate their job. There's people that feel threatened because they don't understand it. And in order for you to deploy something new with AI, you do need feedback from the organization. Because even with synthetic, you said you tested it, but you don't really know how to build the right synthetic audience.

9:32And the first time, it might be completely off. And over time, you trust the technology and you get there. Same with AI Power Creative. and I find that it's hard sometimes to get people to go along with you on the journey because they're so quick to say, see, I told you it doesn't work. And those who know AI know that today's the worst it's ever gonna be. And if it can do something just okay today, it's gonna do that way in a mind-blowing form a year from now. And you have to build your business to where the world's headed, not to where it was. That's a great point. Yeah. That's a fantastic point.

10:03I think you said it well. Right, yeah. But what do you do? I guess my question is, have you encountered that? You know, have you encountered people that in your organization that aren't willing to embrace change? And how do you deal with that when you do? Well, a couple of ways. I think what I've learned in the course of my career, having been at the nexus of many different change initiatives, is number one, you have to have a clear vision and a sense of where you're going and bring people along with it and bring people in to be a part of co-creating it and crafting it. Make them feel like they have a vested interest.

10:37Absolutely. You know, getting a sense of excitement about what the future brings, it's maybe with the implementation of AI and so forth, because it's potentially such a massively disrupted technology. You've heard it compared to Industrial Revolution and, you know, these kinds of things. But, you know, just because we got email and laptops doesn't mean that the world got decimated. Right. We used to have to handwrite letters and send faxes. Like, we don't really have to do that anymore. So it's number one, bringing people on the journey for the vision that you have. and certainly there are going to be moments in time where you have to make some tough calls on do you have the right people and skills and leaders and mindset around you and you might have to make some changes.

11:15Right. But from my perspective, if you can find that sort of formula where there's this inspirational tone and leadership and optimism about where it's taking you, it does help unlock it. And I would say that the last thing is that just being open and honest and transparent in acknowledging the anxiety that might exist. Say, look, I know, I understand that there's potentially a fear about where this could go and what this could mean. And we know that that's a real fear. But we have no choice but to move forward. This is what we have to do. It's a meta question, essentially, for the future of the business and of many businesses.

11:51Because people adopt us and you think about the various stakeholders that we support in terms of shareholders and employees and communities and so forth. I think in the board and so forth that's helping guide us, you know, the expectation is that we're going to figure this out. Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about creativity for a second, because that's one area, especially here at CES this year, that a lot of people are questioning, what is the future of creativity? We just had the CMO of Adobe here, and we're talking with her. I love her. She's great. Yeah. And talking about what creativity looks like in an AI-powered world.

12:22How do you look at AI's role in creativity today? and how does that change the role of the creative and how you're able to build effective stories for the brand? Yeah, well, in the current state, and I mentioned the synthetic audiences, it's more of like a tool to help you get insights and reactions. Sure. And then for us, we also have some AI generation tool, creative work that we use for our in-house teams that help us render images and so forth and do some things at scale that can be done maybe more quickly and efficiently than that if we had to do everything through a live view. Especially if you're trying to do personalization.

12:56Yeah, especially if you're trying to do personalization. At the same time, it's a very human business and there are humans predominantly making the content that we produce. And there are humans that have to make the decisions and be accountable for what those outcomes are. So to my knowledge, the machines haven't really figured out how to take over everything that we do and what we bring to the table yet. And that may be further off than some people think for all the hype around it. I mean, I'll give you one example. Please. think about all of us that use various large language models, how you get hallucinations and you get wrong answers.

13:30So on Monday, I'm a huge NFL fan. Yeah, as am I. What's your team? 49ers. I'm the Eagles. I don't know if we should be having this conversation. Yeah. But if Sanja's podcast comes out, one of us is going to be happier set. For sure. Right. Well, this is perfect then, right? Right. And we didn't plan this, by the way. No. But I asked ChatGPT on Monday after all the games were complete, show me what the NFC matchups are. Right. What were the seedings of the NFC? And I said, 49ers are playing the Carolina Panthers. And I went, I don't think so. I said, hey, the Carolina, 49ers are playing the Eagles.

14:00Right. And they were like, the device said, oh yeah, good catch human. You know, you're right. I've seen that before, right. Pat me on the back. Right, right. And I said, okay, so tell me more about the matches. We have some more dialogue. I said, okay, so now summarize again, what are the matchups? Right. For the NFC? Because I just wanted to see like the correct list that I could just capture, it played back the false one again. Wow. So I just use that as one small little analog because if the large language model who is using massive amounts of compute power to even answer simple questions, can't get the simple questions right.

14:31Imagine when you extrapolate - Yeah, multiple data points. Or complex things. It's just not weird. You wish they were playing the pantheist. Much easier matchup. When I first saw that, I was like, oh, that would be amazing. Exactly, right, right. No, that's not true, right? Right, right. So in any case, I guess a long answer to a short question, I think humans have to be very involved in the creative process and the decision making. And we're ultimately accountable for the outcomes, not the machines, at least not right now. So I'm glad you mentioned sports because I know that U.S. Bank has been leaning in heavily into sports to build its brand.

15:03And passion points, obviously, are incredibly important. And we all know live sports is the last passion of kind of live TV viewing at scale and to bring people together. It's one of the few things actually in America right now where you bring people together and all cheering for the same thing as well. Yeah. Right. So, you know, what is your strategy around sports, culture and passion plays in general in terms of building the brand? Yeah. And it predated my arrival two years ago at U.S. Bank. There was actually a pretty substantial investment in sports with various teams and so forth that we've been involved with.

15:34And when we do that sort of work, we're not only sponsors of the Vikings and the 49ers and the Timberwolves and the Clippers. we're their bank. So we're doing business with them and we're supporting them. But I think because of what you just mentioned, which is the change in consumer behavior, especially for the younger generations for how they're using social platforms and short form videos and doom scrolling and so forth, as well as the impact that streaming has had on consumption patterns and everything is sort of a la carte. You watch it when you watch it and you're not doing it collectively.

16:06Sports is one of the last communal-based experiences that you can have. And even then, for the younger generations, they're getting a lot of their sports through clips. They're not necessarily watching. They're consuming the songs, not the albums. Yeah, yeah. It's still... Fantasy, gambling, it's like endless different, you know... Absolutely. It points away, points of entry into sports. Absolutely. And I have a teenage son, and something that we do together, we love to watch sports of all different kinds. We have teams, we debate, we love these moments. But he'll sometimes send me a clip, and I'm like, oh, did you see that game?

16:37He's like, no. But it was like he did because he got to consume like the little piece of the game or pieces of the game that were the highlights. And they feel like they're a part of it, even though they weren't actually part of the total experience. So the net of it is like, we're going deeper in that space. We're leaning into that as a major point of culture and cultural relevance. And we have what I think is a really authentic history and heritage to connect us with sports fans and our audience profiles align with those platforms really well. And so that's something that our teams will be going deeper in this year.

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18:58No spreadsheet in sight. What a life. Do right by yourself and your business and search X-E-R-O for your free trial. Conditions apply. This is Nick and Jack from The Best One Yet, and we are excited to tell you about Walmart Business. Staying ahead of business trends means moving fast and adapting quickly. Walmart Business helps you simplify operations so you can focus on building the next big thing. Find exactly what your organization needs with their ever-expanding business assortment and everyday low prices. Keep your momentum going fast with reliable shipping and fulfillment. Eligible organizations can take advantage of tax-free shopping, both in-store and online, saving you more while getting you everything you need.

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19:45Let's talk for a second about the business of U.S. Bank and the banking business. What are some changes you're seeing with your customer, your consumer, that is causing you to drive transformation in terms of your product offering, in terms of what consumers want in 2026? Yeah. Well, one observation is that we're finding that oftentimes financial services companies will tend to approach the customer relationship on an individual product at a time. And we're going to do a checking account and then we're going to do a credit card and we're going to do this and we're going to do that. And what we're finding is that the needs are more complex and there are these windows of decision making that customers have around their finances.

20:29And what they don't want you to do is to say, OK, now I have a checking account. And then for the next 90 days, you're going to pound them to try and sell them up. Sell them basically. Yeah. They're making this decision. They're switching banks. Cover the needs that I have when I'm in the mindset of making this decision. And so what that's led to for us is a bundling of products together. So we have this smart lease suite in our consumer franchise, which is a combination of a checking account, a credit card and a savings account. And the more business that you do with us, the higher the interest rates that you learn on your savings and also the higher the rewards are for the cashback card, which is two to four percent, depending on the balances that you keep.

21:06And what we're finding, we rolled this out last year is a couple of things. One, the sizes of the relationship that are coming in are larger. They're more loyal and stickier. And those customers are more satisfied to get a more complete solution right from the beginning. And so we've launched something really similar in the small business space where we have your money management, your day-to-day checking, but also you can accept payments like merchant processing. Right. So all in one. And so that's what's changed the nature of how we're kind of organizing our product set. Yeah. I think as you look at also the customer, I would imagine they want to have new, easier ways to interact with the data behind their money, like chat based.

21:47How much money do I have in my checking account? Did this check clear? I would imagine over time that is going to be part of your product roadmap in terms of how consumers interact with their banking data. Yeah, that's a great point. And so that goes back to what we're talking about around personalization, just how do you unlock insights for spending patterns, for things that are happening in their financial lives, credit scores, et cetera, and then feed those into the digital experiences along the way. Because you can benchmark and do all sorts of things to allow people. I mean, one of the big unlocks of AI is just in data-driven insights, right?

22:20In the way that matters to you, but it's delivered in a conversational format. So you have all this data on a customer in terms of how they're spending their money, where they're spending their money, how that compares against other people like them, or maybe a year ago. And that information can help guide their decisions in ways that are pretty meaningful. So now you're not just a functional offering, but you're an offering that can help them improve their life, improve their financial picture. Absolutely. Yeah. Here's one really minor example where you can add value just by mining the customer data.

22:50So in our mobile app, customers can give access to all the accounts that they have from other institutions, credit cards, accounts, whatever, and organize it. But then they can look at and see all the subscriptions that they have on all of their accounts, not just ours, if they don't work with us exclusively. Sure, they can connect their other credit cards. Yeah, they can connect it. And then we have like a function that says, like, here are your subscription services. Right. So how many times do you want to pull up, I don't know, at least once a year and say, God, what did I sign up for? I do it all the time, yeah.

23:19It just creeps in. Yeah, and you see the bill come through sometimes and the charger, oh, I'll get to that, I'll get to that. And you never do. And then six months later, you've spent like$500 on subscriptions. Right, right. So that's just a really small example of how we're using data in a personalized way that's adding value in the customer experience. And it's also, I think, a roadmap for a lot of companies, regardless of the industry, that one of the moats in the era of AI is data. If everyone has access to large language models, what's going to differentiate you is data. And the more customer data you can get, the more value you can offer, and the stickier you're going to become.

23:51Absolutely. Yes, that's sort of. Yeah, and the key for us on that is, I think the trust in the data sits at the center of it with the customer. So being really crystal clear about what's being permissioned, what you're opting into, what's the value exchange that you get in return for that. And then also responding to what they expect us to be able to deliver, having access to their data. Absolutely. So shifting gears as we wrap up here, Michael, this has been such a great conversation. We'd love to hear a little bit about you and your career journey. More specifically, when you look back at your career, what are some of the things that you think you did right along the way to put yourself in the CMO seat?

24:27We have a lot of listeners to podcasts that are in earlier stages of their career that want to be a CMO one day and any wisdom you can impart on your journey. And obviously, we don't always make the right decision. So if you want to talk about maybe some things you wish you did, but just any learnings from your journey. Yeah. Well, so if I were to summarize my journey so far, I've had the privilege of working across a number of different categories. So I started in automotive. I worked in hospitality at Marriott. I worked in real estate. I worked in the agency side. Then I went to financial services.

24:56And in between Wells Fargo, where I spent about a decade and where I am now at U.S. Bank, I was the CEO of a consumer technology company. So really kind of varied experience. And the value of that, of just learning new businesses and learning new categories, is the way it kind of expands your thinking and keeps you fresh, but also keeps you challenged. Yeah, sure. Because I had a great career when I was at Lexus and Toyota. I loved that company. But I took that risk to go work at Marriott and move across the country. And if I'd stayed in the automotive business, I'd probably still be doing that.

25:29And I would be in a place where that's what I would be seen as only qualified to do. And so if you get more variability in terms of the businesses that you get exposure to, it gives you more options. Yeah. How do you want to operate later in your career? And that's how I've constructed it. The second thing is a number of the decisions that I made in career choices were not linear ascension growth choices. Right. So when I decided to go work on the agency side of the business, it was because I felt like I needed to have that sort of experience in making the sausage for clients, be on the service side, and also to accelerate my own immersion in the digital tools and experiences because this was 2005, right?

26:10So 20 years ago, it was like two years before the iPhone. Yeah. Google. Facebook. It just launched. Yeah. So Facebook just launched. They were still basically in colleges until like 2007. so it was like hey I'm going to take either a lateral or maybe even kind of a step back in terms of compensation and title and so forth but I'm going to learn a lot and so not being afraid to make those choices that aren't always up and up and up is one of the hardest things to do but it's one of the most valuable choices that I yeah and then like how do you gain the conviction to make the leap so you're at Lexus and you're like are those hard decisions and how do you know when it's right?

26:47That's a great question. Well, I think it's easier to do when you're earlier in your career because there's less to lose. You have less to lose. You might still be single. You probably don't have a family yet. You don't have as many kind of connection points that might anchor you or might introduce risk for change into the process. So it's much easier to do then. And I would say take advantage of that, you know, not be like a hopper, but get fresh opportunities. And then I'd say the next thing is being really honest about what you know about yourself and what is it that you need and what is it that you desire and where you want to go.

27:23And when you understand that, then it's not that difficult ultimately to put together the matrix of what the pros and cons are. And then once you make that decision, just commit and go. Yeah. And just don't look back. It doesn't mean if you made a bad decision, you can do something else. Like this is a great country. Like you have opportunities to make adjustments. It's just not, nothing's set in stone. That's right. I think that's great advice. To wrap here, we often have to ask our guests if there's a saying or a mantra to help sort of encapsulate their career journey. And you've been to so many great places.

27:54What comes to mind for you? Two things. And one, I just wanted to wrap up this last section as like a piece of career advice, which I think is maybe even more important than what I said, which is learn the business. Understand how your customers make decisions. Understand how the P &L works. understand what the levers are, what the drivers are, the competitive landscape. When you know the business, it makes you so much more competent to make decisions in your function, but also gives you that credibility with your business partners to sit toe to toe and be able to speak their language. If you come in, if I came in with my CEO and started talking about impressions and clicks, you'd be like, what?

28:35Yeah, because that's not what she cares about. That's not our metric. Right. Our metric is growth. Wall Street doesn't care about that. So if I didn't have some semblance of how the P &L works, I wouldn't be able to have intelligent conversations. Same with ad agencies. Ad agencies sometimes lose sight of the business they're working for and what their client really cares about. And they focus on winning a can-lion or impressions. It's like that's not going to move the needle on the business. That's not going to drive shareholder return. Like that's where you need to focus. It's a great point.

29:06And they're even one more step removed from it, which makes it even harder because they don't necessarily have access to the information. internal insight. Although those, but that data is more easy to get your finger on never before in the age of AI. Yeah. So that's what I just, my point is just learn the business. And especially as you become more senior role, that, that expectation that you're going to learn it is really important. And it is something that you do every day. You don't come in, like, you know, even having worked decades or decade, whatever, you never know everything, right? It's always something more to learn, always something more to go deep on.

29:37And I think for me, it's been really helpful and it's given me a lot of confidence in what I'm doing now. Yeah, I think that's awesome. I'm glad you added that because I think a lot of people do lose sight of that in the midst of them just trying to deliver whatever the test is. It's hard because like, hey, this is what I'm accountable for, right? Yeah, like this is what I've got to do. But at the end of the day, if growth is the metric, then what are you doing to drive growth and how are you measuring that and how are you demonstrating the value? Yeah, absolutely. So going back to my question earlier, Is there a saying or mantra that comes to mind?

30:07So I have one that it may be completely off. There's no wrong answer, my friend. But so for me, my mantra is find gratitude in life every single day, especially when you're under great stress and adversity. Pressure is a privilege, right? Pressure is a privilege, but all of us will go through moments in time where we have disruption in our families, tragedies, setbacks at work, setbacks in companies, health, etc. And every day that you can find just a little bit of gratitude in your heart, it will help propel you forward. I know that sounds like a group answer, but - It's really true. And I think I take a lot of things for granted in life.

30:48And any moment where you would take a step back and you love what you do and you're surrounded by those that you like working with or your family, so many people in this world would kill for a situation like that, right? So just be happy with where you are. For sure. And nothing's ever perfect, right? No, it's not. Yeah. Well, I have a lot of gratitude for you taking the time today to take some time out of your busy CES schedule and share your story and your insights with us. I think our audience is going to be a lot of value. So thank you so much, Michael. Thanks for having me. Awesome. On behalf of Susie and I, we team.

31:15Thanks again to Michael.Carraza. the chief marketing officer of US Bank, for joining us here live at CES in Las Vegas today. Be sure to subscribe and review the Speed of Culture podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Until next time, see you soon, everyone. Bye-bye.

31:30The Speed of Culture is brought to you by Suzy as part of the Adweek Podcast Network and Agass Creator Network. You can listen and subscribe to all Adweek's podcasts by visiting adweek.com slash podcasts. To find out more about Suzy, head to suzy.com. and make sure to search for The Speed of Culture in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else podcasts are found. Click follow so you don't miss out on any future episodes. On behalf of the team here at Susie, thanks for listening.

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