CMO Journeys
Neville Billimoria, CMO of Mission Fed: Brand as Culture, Not Just Marketing
Neville Billimoria is Chief Marketing Officer of Mission Fed Credit Union, a member-owned, not-for-profit financial cooperative serving San Diego County. He built and sold his own agency before joining Mission Fed, so he sees marketing from both sides of the table. He also holds a firm belief that culture is the one advantage competitors can't copy. What the Conversation Covers How he talked his way into an agency that had turned him down, created a biotech marketing category, and later sold his own agency to Saatchi & Saatchi Why the first half of his career was brand as marketing, and the second half has been brand as culture How Mission Fed competes with fintechs and challenger brands by using technology to personalize while keeping people at the center, and why it put its brand behind a persona named Ed How martial arts shaped his view that leaders should coach, not manage, and why he makes room for well-meant risks that fail How he ran a nationwide agency search, what "show me you know me" means in a pitch, and why he respects agencies that skip an RFP Guest Bio Neville Billimoria is Chief Marketing Officer at Mission Fed Credit Union. He leads marketing and works with a roster of media, print and digital, PR, and creative agency partners. At Mission Fed he has led many of the credit union's outward-facing functions. Before that, he founded and ran his own agency, which he sold to Saatchi & Saatchi. About the Podcast CMO Journeys is a podcast from NextBigWin hosted by Christian Banach. The series features conversations with marketing leaders about the path to the C-suite, the challenges they are tackling inside their organizations, and how they evaluate agencies and strategic partners.
