Why Curation and Cultural Relevance Convert Premium Consumers: Chase Media’s Sam Palmer
CANNES, France – Premium brands can’t convert consumers through culture simply by buying their way into the right event. They must understand why people care about it, offer something meaningful and appear at precisely the right moment.
That’s the formula outlined by Sam Palmer, president of Chase Media Solutions at J.P. Morgan Chase, during a conversation with Zach Rodgers, principal at Sensical Consulting, at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
For Palmer, culture-led commerce isn’t merely about assembling an audience segment and directing advertising toward it. It combines context, meaning and timing to make consumers feel that a brand understands them.
Culture comes before conversion
Palmer previously served as general manager of Chase Sapphire, giving him a close view of how an aspirational brand can produce measurable commercial results.
“The transactional part and the aspirational part go very much hand in hand,” he said.
Sapphire’s brand promise needed to reflect the lives of its customers. That shaped everything from its card design and unboxing experience to its airport lounges, events and rewards.
The harder benefits were equally important. Sapphire Reserve offers more than $3,000 in potential value, Palmer said, including hotel and dining credits tailored to customers who travel and eat out frequently. Ideally, someplace nicer than the airport food court.
Culture helps connect those benefits to a broader sense of identity.
“Culture means different things to different people, so it’s about showing up in a very truthful way to a particular individual or particular segment,” Palmer said.
If a brand does that well, consumers don’t evaluate every feature as if they’re conducting a forensic audit of a credit-card statement. They already want to participate.
Experiences provide the meaning
Chase has built cultural relevance through experiences that can’t easily be purchased elsewhere.
At Art Basel Miami Beach, the company partnered with artist and stage designer Es Devlin and hospitality brand Faena to create a rotating library on the beach. It also worked with DJ Black Coffee to connect with electronic-music fans.
At Madison Square Garden, Chase organized a dinner on the Knicks’ basketball court. Even wealthy consumers accustomed to premium access can’t simply order that experience from a menu.
Through carefully selected events, Palmer said, Chase sends a message to current and prospective customers: “Oh, they get me. This is relevant. I wanna be part of it.”
“And that’s when the funnel collapses,” he added.
The conversion doesn’t begin with a sales pitch. It begins when consumers see a brand participating credibly in something they value.
Curation beats a mountain of offers
Chase Media Solutions is taking a deliberately selective approach to advertising inside the bank’s channels. Palmer rejected the assumption that more merchants and more offers automatically create a better experience.
AI will make personalization and targeting widely available, he said. Nearly every platform will eventually be able to deliver the supposedly perfect message at the supposedly perfect time. That makes the harder job deciding which messages consumers shouldn’t see.
“In a world of overabundant choice, [what customers want] is curation and is removing of the noise,” Palmer said.
Chase customers usually open its app to check their accounts, review statements or perform other banking tasks. They aren’t necessarily hoping to discover that a mattress company has been following them across the internet.
Bombarding them with promotions could hurt both conversion and the institution’s more important relationship with its customers.
“Just because I can doesn’t mean that I should,” Palmer said.
That restraint also benefits participating merchants. When Chase selects a brand for presentation, the company can receive what Palmer described as a transfer of trust from the bank.
Transactions provide the proof
Palmer said Chase Media Solutions doesn’t lead its sales pitch with reach, even though Chase has about 90 million customers. Reach can be purchased from many sources and isn’t particularly distinctive.
The company’s advantage is its first-party transaction data. It allows Chase to determine whether an exposed customer completed a purchase and whether that purchase was incremental.
“For years, we’ve been used to what I call vanity metrics,” Palmer said. Those measures may look impressive in a spending report, he added, but don’t necessarily demonstrate an incremental business result.
Chase can instead help merchants assess whether a campaign generated customers and spending they wouldn’t have received otherwise.
That makes the transaction more than the end of the purchase journey. It becomes the evidence that cultural relevance produced action rather than applause, selfies and an expense report from Cannes.
Commerce becomes an ecosystem
Chase also wants to reach consumers earlier in their decision-making journey. Its acquisition of restaurant-recommendation platform The Infatuation gives the company a credible role in dining discovery. Its travel acquisitions have helped make Chase the country’s third-largest travel agency, Palmer said.
Those capabilities allow the company to make recommendations, arrange trips and participate well before a cardholder completes a purchase.
“When we build that ecosystem and we build that trust and we’re able to capture your attention way earlier, the transaction itself is just an outcome,” Palmer said. “It’s a commodity, and we play in the human engagement space.”
Chase Media Solutions plans to expand its data collaboration with merchant partners while opening more of Chase’s surfaces to a select group of brands. Those touchpoints could include offers in the mobile app, messages shown when a customer logs in, ATMs, bank branches and Chase billboards in Times Square and Madison Square Garden.
The opportunity is substantial, but so is the risk of turning a trusted banking relationship into a blinking bazaar. Palmer’s approach is to curate brands, protect the customer experience and use transaction data to determine whether cultural relevance actually produced a sale.
In other words, culture-led commerce needs more than the right audience. It needs a meaningful context, privileged access and impeccable timing. Then it needs a receipt.
You’re watching The Beet.TV Leadership Sessions at Cannes Lions 2026, presented by Chase Media Solutions. For more videos from this series, please visit this page. You can find all of our coverage from Cannes Lions 2026 here.
CANNES, France – Premium brands can’t convert consumers through culture simply by buying their way into the right event. They must understand why people care about it, offer something meaningful and appear at precisely the right moment.
That’s the formula outlined by Sam Palmer, president of Chase Media Solutions at J.P. Morgan Chase, during a conversation with Zach Rodgers, principal at Sensical Consulting, at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
For Palmer, culture-led commerce isn’t merely about assembling an audience segment and directing advertising toward it. It combines context, meaning and timing to make consumers feel that a brand understands them.
Culture comes before conversion
Palmer previously served as general manager of Chase Sapphire, giving him a close view of how an aspirational brand can produce measurable commercial results.
“The transactional part and the aspirational part go very much hand in hand,” he said.
Sapphire’s brand promise needed to reflect the lives of its customers. That shaped everything from its card design and unboxing experience to its airport lounges, events and rewards.
The harder benefits were equally important. Sapphire Reserve offers more than $3,000 in potential value, Palmer said, including hotel and dining credits tailored to customers who travel and eat out frequently. Ideally, someplace nicer than the airport food court.
Culture helps connect those benefits to a broader sense of identity.
“Culture means different things to different people, so it’s about showing up in a very truthful way to a particular individual or particular segment,” Palmer said.
If a brand does that well, consumers don’t evaluate every feature as if they’re conducting a forensic audit of a credit-card statement. They already want to participate.
Experiences provide the meaning
Chase has built cultural relevance through experiences that can’t easily be purchased elsewhere.
At Art Basel Miami Beach, the company partnered with artist and stage designer Es Devlin and hospitality brand Faena to create a rotating library on the beach. It also worked with DJ Black Coffee to connect with electronic-music fans.
At Madison Square Garden, Chase organized a dinner on the Knicks’ basketball court. Even wealthy consumers accustomed to premium access can’t simply order that experience from a menu.
Through carefully selected events, Palmer said, Chase sends a message to current and prospective customers: “Oh, they get me. This is relevant. I wanna be part of it.”
“And that’s when the funnel collapses,” he added.
The conversion doesn’t begin with a sales pitch. It begins when consumers see a brand participating credibly in something they value.
Curation beats a mountain of offers
Chase Media Solutions is taking a deliberately selective approach to advertising inside the bank’s channels. Palmer rejected the assumption that more merchants and more offers automatically create a better experience.
AI will make personalization and targeting widely available, he said. Nearly every platform will eventually be able to deliver the supposedly perfect message at the supposedly perfect time. That makes the harder job deciding which messages consumers shouldn’t see.
“In a world of overabundant choice, [what customers want] is curation and is removing of the noise,” Palmer said.
Chase customers usually open its app to check their accounts, review statements or perform other banking tasks. They aren’t necessarily hoping to discover that a mattress company has been following them across the internet.
Bombarding them with promotions could hurt both conversion and the institution’s more important relationship with its customers.
“Just because I can doesn’t mean that I should,” Palmer said.
That restraint also benefits participating merchants. When Chase selects a brand for presentation, the company can receive what Palmer described as a transfer of trust from the bank.
Transactions provide the proof
Palmer said Chase Media Solutions doesn’t lead its sales pitch with reach, even though Chase has about 90 million customers. Reach can be purchased from many sources and isn’t particularly distinctive.
The company’s advantage is its first-party transaction data. It allows Chase to determine whether an exposed customer completed a purchase and whether that purchase was incremental.
“For years, we’ve been used to what I call vanity metrics,” Palmer said. Those measures may look impressive in a spending report, he added, but don’t necessarily demonstrate an incremental business result.
Chase can instead help merchants assess whether a campaign generated customers and spending they wouldn’t have received otherwise.
That makes the transaction more than the end of the purchase journey. It becomes the evidence that cultural relevance produced action rather than applause, selfies and an expense report from Cannes.
Commerce becomes an ecosystem
Chase also wants to reach consumers earlier in their decision-making journey. Its acquisition of restaurant-recommendation platform The Infatuation gives the company a credible role in dining discovery. Its travel acquisitions have helped make Chase the country’s third-largest travel agency, Palmer said.
Those capabilities allow the company to make recommendations, arrange trips and participate well before a cardholder completes a purchase.
“When we build that ecosystem and we build that trust and we’re able to capture your attention way earlier, the transaction itself is just an outcome,” Palmer said. “It’s a commodity, and we play in the human engagement space.”
Chase Media Solutions plans to expand its data collaboration with merchant partners while opening more of Chase’s surfaces to a select group of brands. Those touchpoints could include offers in the mobile app, messages shown when a customer logs in, ATMs, bank branches and Chase billboards in Times Square and Madison Square Garden.
The opportunity is substantial, but so is the risk of turning a trusted banking relationship into a blinking bazaar. Palmer’s approach is to curate brands, protect the customer experience and use transaction data to determine whether cultural relevance actually produced a sale.
In other words, culture-led commerce needs more than the right audience. It needs a meaningful context, privileged access and impeccable timing. Then it needs a receipt.
You’re watching The Beet.TV Leadership Sessions at Cannes Lions 2026, presented by Chase Media Solutions. For more videos from this series, please visit this page. You can find all of our coverage from Cannes Lions 2026 here.
