Behind Valta, Martín Bellocq
- UaláCMO · Executive Committee · 8 yrs
- GoogleDigital business · 5 yrs · LatAm
- American ExpressPlanning
- DeloitteAudit
- U. of BarcelonaEconomics & Business
- UdeSAMaster's in Finance
I'm Martín Bellocq. I've spent over a decade driving growth for tech and fintech companies across Latin America.
I joined Ualá, the Argentine digital bank, in 2017, before launch, when fintech in the region was still an idea few understood and fewer trusted. I was its CMO for eight years and part of the Executive Committee. Over that period the company went from 14 people to 1,400, from a seed round to a Series E, and from zero to more than ten million users across three countries.
Before that, five years at Google working with hundreds of companies, SMBs and large accounts, from Mexico to Argentina. My job was to understand each one's business and how it competed, and how it could grow in digital through brand and performance work. I went through nearly every industry: insurance, retail, ecommerce, telecommunications, automotive.
The foundation is numeric: Economics and Business Administration at the University of Barcelona, a master's in finance at San Andrés, and my first professional steps in Audit at Deloitte and Planning at American Express. That's where the weight I give the numbers comes from: ROI, CAC, LTV, payback. Measuring, analyzing and understanding a business from the inside, not just by its marketing.
What drives me is growing businesses: understanding the user, finding what makes them choose a product, and bringing the value proposition to the front with the right message, to the right person, at the right moment.
And building relationships that last: being a partner to the companies I work with, incentives on the same side of the table.
Seven teams, one objective.
I co-owned the business targets of the company's four units: Lending, Investments, Payments and Merchant Acquiring. Not a marketing version of those targets, but the same numbers: originate more loans, get more users investing and investing more, get the card used more and in more stores, get more merchants collecting through Ualá.
The marketing organization was the instrument to move them: user acquisition, activation and retention were how those commercial targets translated into the team's work, never a separate end. Seven teams on different horizons, some short-term and some long, all answering to those same numbers. None had its own metrics competing with the rest.
Brand
The creative direction of the brand. It defined what Ualá said and how it said it at every touchpoint, from television and out-of-home to social, email and push notifications.
Performance
The allocation of the media budget, across third-party and owned channels, digital and traditional. It included the direct-contact channels with the user: email, push and in-app content.
Partnerships
Commercial agreements that strengthened the value proposition through benefits and promotions, and the stewardship of the loyalty program.
Spotify · Netflix · Rappi · PlayStationCommunications
The relationship with media and journalists, and internal communications for a company of 1,400 people.
Public affairs
The institutional relationship with government bodies, regulators and industry associations.
Growth
The design and execution of growth initiatives, and the coordination with each business unit and each country.
Marketing analytics
Reading business and marketing data to support decisions. It built the lifetime value models together with the data team and managed the budget together with finance.
Mass-market brand and institutional communications, external and internal. Media in every form: third-party, from television to digital, and owned. All of it prioritized and orchestrated under a growth logic, with data supporting the decision of where to put the effort.
Each of those fronts usually lives in a separate area, with its own success metric and its own fight for budget. The difference wasn't having them all: it was that they answered to a single question, where is the next point of growth, and in every launch they moved as one structure.
Three markets, three different challenges.
Building the category
Neither the brand nor the category existed. For a significant share of the public, it was their first experience managing money from an app. The work was to educate before selling, and to build trust in a new brand on ground where trust is the condition of entry, because what is at stake is people's money.
Entering without being able to enter
The launch was in September, with the pandemic declared in February and no way to travel to the market. Unlike Argentina, the category already existed and there were established competitors, on an economy still heavily reliant on cash. The user's question was no longer what is this, but why this and not what is already available.
Entering with method
The third market was approached with two entries' worth of accumulated learning. What had proven to work in Argentina and Mexico was replicated, and what hadn't was discarded upfront. The advantage was not in the strategy but in the judgment: knowing what to test and what to skip.
In each market the team was assembled by combining local talent with people from Argentina who already carried the track record of what worked and what didn't. The underlying decision was architectural: what to localize and what to centralize. Local for what requires context and relationships specific to the market: brand, press and partnerships. Centralized for what gains from scale and comparability: performance, analytics and growth.
Execution relied on a regional agency that already knew the brand and had its own operation in each country.
Public conversations.
Launching a brand from zero, scaling a team and leading the shift to digital banking. In Spanish.
Milestones and lessons from scaling a company: scalability and organizational culture. In Spanish.
Building an ecosystem that integrates payments, credit and investment under banking licenses. In Spanish.
On campaign strategy, ambassadors and financial inclusion in Mexico. In Spanish.
Why and how an established brand renewed its visual identity. In Spanish.
If growth is the priority, let's start the conversation.