Feature
The Gist
- AI drives reinvention. Silicon Valley Bank is leveraging artificial intelligence to rebuild trust, scale operations and enhance marketing efficiency.
- Content creation leads the charge. AI tools are cutting content production costs and reducing reliance on agencies.
- Caution shapes adoption. Strict AI policies ensure compliance and security, focusing on safe scalable pilots in a regulated environment.
SAN ANTONIO — Remember March 2023 and Silicon Valley Bank's downfall? It was the US's second largest bank collapse.
Gaita Marie Mompoint certainly remembers. She was the director of marketing technology at Silicon Valley Bank during the historic collapse and still is today.
Mompoint's company that month was seized by the state of California then acquired by First Citizen's Bank. Two months later, layoffs affected 500 employees, or about 3% of the workforce.
Here we are today, 18 months later, and Mompoint's mission remains: deliver the best marketing technology experience for her organization, empower marketers to tell great stories and ultimately win back the trust of customers, who she calls “partners,” all with leaner teams.
Artificial Intelligence's Role Digging out of Crisis Mode
Can artificial intelligence be a savior for Silicon Valley Bank marketers and technologists? Mompoint sure thinks so. They're “all in.” Making major martech investments in AI in the arenas of content creation and marketing data analytics, banking on not only great experiences for partners but also internal marketers and technologists.
A serious business imperative — and not a one-off experiment. It's a different tale from what we've heard at digital experience roadshows throughout the year, starting at the Adobe Summit in March and ending with Optimizely's show here in San Antonio this week: tales of AI excitement but reluctance to dive in head first.
Silicon Valley Bank, meanwhile, contracted with two major AI providers — Pulze.ai and Jasper AI — set policies and standards around AI use and expects to see efficiency gains in content creation and output by around 50%.
“We're all in because we believe it's going to be a game changer,” Mompoint shared with CMSWire in an exclusive interview at the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort & Spa here in San Antonio at Optimizely's Opticon. Mompoint's teams use Optmizely's DXP, CMS and experimentation software, and she serves on the company's customer advisory board. “And again, there's the tagline: we're the bank of the innovation economy, and I want to live by that.”
The Quest to Win Back Customers
AI's innovative. But, surely, it can't fully enable Silicon Valley Bank's comeback story. Even ChatGPT doesn't have the be-all, end-all game plan for that prompt.
Mompoint knows this, too. She recognizes the gravity of the company's immense challenges the last year and a half, adding, “We went under, and we were acquired,” she said.
“Most of the Silicon Valley companies,” she added, “have a relationship in some way or fashion, to SVB. We do a lot of the funding. … That's why people stepped in to make sure that we survive.”
But to survive, it had to win back clients. Build trust back. Tell a story to make investors confident. The parent company has had a strong 2024 financial tale.
“So how do we do that?” Mompoint said of building back trust. “And the point is, the way you've got to do it is one, with the brand,” Mompoint added. “The communication about the brand. …And then we had to execute and be able to provide information on a daily basis so people could start to feel more comfortable.”
The reality? Martech and marketing teams had to do more with less after the massive company transformation post-March 2023.
And here's where AI really began to enter the mix.
“My CMO …she was the one who said, 'Gaita, I want to build back some excitement and joy.' And we thought, (AI) is a hot new thing. Let's introduce it."
Related Article: Investing in AI Marketing Technology? 3 Areas With the Biggest Returns
AI-Driven Reinvention: A Deep Dive Into Martech Transformation
And so for marketing and martech teams within the bank, it was Game On. They started to double down on AI last December, kicking off what Mompoint called an “AI initiative.”
It now embraces artificial intelligence as a pillar of its marketing and marketing technology operations. AI's role in SVB's reinvention goes beyond efficiency gains — it's about redefining trust, scaling operations with leaner teams and rekindling its reputation as the "bank of the innovation economy." Truly, a practice-what-you-preach kinda deal.
Building a Framework for AI Adoption
Yet still, under leadership like Mompoint's, the bank is forging a cautious yet ambitious path. Launching AI at a major financial institution requires more than just flipping a switch. It demands a meticulous approach to governance, compliance and education.
“Of course, there are some concerns, but I think we're making the right steps, which is through approaching it very cautiously with less riskier moves,” Mompoint said.
The bank's focusing at first on publicly available content for generative AI pilots. The key? Ensuring AI efforts are secure, compliant and scalable within the regulated environment.
SVB's martech and marketing teams partnered with IT and security teams to craft an AI policy addressing privacy, security and ethical concerns. This included restricting AI tools from handling personally identifiable information (PII) or sensitive internal data during pilot phases.
Related Article: 6 Considerations for an AI Governance Strategy
AI Use Case: Content Creation
The marketing and martech teams zeroed in on content creation as their first AI application. Tools like Jasper and Pulze AI enable content marketers and product managers to generate drafts, refine messaging and iterate faster. The hypothesis? A 50% reduction in time and cost for creating high-quality content. Mompoint's monitoring those efficiency gains closely.
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Instead of spending $30,000 to $50,000 on a series of content pieces with agencies, for example, AI lets teams ideate and iterate in-house, significantly reducing costs and improving speed.
They're not just using it for blog posts but also for social media content and omnichannel campaigns. This type of scale and efficiency resonates with technology leaders in the marketing space.
“I think there are a couple of areas in 2025 that AI is going to really make an impact. I think scaling is one of them,” Patrick Perrone, chief technology officer for Optimizely partner Arke, told CMSWire at Opticon. “We've got to be able to do our jobs, execute more efficiently, more rapidly, and I think AI is very well-positioned to take advantage of that. I think another area that AI is going to heavily influence is how we create our websites, and the sort of experiences that AI will enable on those websites.”
AI Use Case: Marketing Data Analytics
Beyond content, SVB is leveraging AI for data analytics. By integrating AI with marketing data workflows, teams aim to uncover insights that inform marketing strategies, campaign performance and customer behavior trends.
“How does it process data? How do you see the data?" Mompoint asked. "How do you get inferences and insights? Because that's another thing that becomes challenging. …How do you get the AI platform to ingest that data?”
Building an AI Roadmap
The last piece is that martech and marketing teams constantly want to learn and build up their AI roadmap. Silicon Valley Bank is constantly learning about AI. And AI is constantly learning about Silicon Valley Bank.
“What does that look like?” Mompoint asked. “Before we started the whole pilot, we did some basic use cases, as well as gathering requirements and all of that. But those are just sometimes a shot in the dark, per se, until you get your hands into the platform and you start to look at some other potential use cases. So we don't believe we have all of them. The thing we want to show this year is to demonstrate the value of it.”
AI's Role in Addressing Workforce Challenges
The Silicon Valley Bank collapse and subsequent acquisition by First Citizens Bank resulted in the aforementioned significant personnel losses. According to Mompoint, AI is part of the solution to doing more with fewer resources.
This strategic focus ensures that AI isn't just about automation but also about augmentation, enabling employees to tackle high-value work and remain innovative under challenging circumstances.
“We lost a lot of people, and we're looking to see, how do we augment the team with AI?” she said. “And then what is the total cost of ownership? Meaning that people are being asked to do more with less. So basically, instead of having what typically would be three resources, we have one. But if we're able to leverage AI in some of those key use cases that could potentially work."
Managing Risks and Challenges With AI
Despite the excitement, Mompoint remains vigilant about potential pitfalls. Their main concern is security and protecting client data. That's why they're starting small and building from there in a controlled environment.
Generative AI's well-known issues with “hallucinations” and inaccurate data are also under scrutiny. Human intervention is essential to SVB's AI strategy, with every piece of AI-generated content undergoing thorough compliance reviews and edits.
“I am excited, however cautiously, because we are a regulated environment and the key focus is the client,” she said. “It's about protecting the client. …That is a big concern. The key thing we want to look at is if we're trying to do some internal analysis ...can somebody else get it if they go to a ChatGPT? My understanding now is that when you stand up an instance, it's going to be secure in our firewall."
Reinvention Through Innovation
As Silicon Valley Bank continues its journey of reinvention, AI serves as both a symbol and a tool for innovation. The initiative aligns with the bank's mission of empowering startups and fueling the innovation economy, Mompoint says.
Next steps? Continue to push for training, education and adaptation on how to effectively use AI tools. Where teams have already seen the potential of AI to enhance marketing and content creation processes, they plan to continue exploring AI's capabilities and integrating it into their workflows.
“One of the key things is as you experience [AI] in real time, you start to understand that doing a 30- or 60-day pilot is not enough time,” Mompoint said. “Because it has to learn about you to start to deliver value.”
