David Sandstrom is the CMO of Klarna, the fintech company founded in Sweden in 2005. Klarna offers products and services to consumers and retailers in payments, social shopping, and personal finance. In 17 short years, Klarna has become Europe’s highest valued private fintech company, with an estimated valuation of about $45 billion. Klarna has 100 million active users, 250,000 merchants on its platform, and processes about 2 million transactions a day.
David has been CMO since 2017, where he led the company through an extensive brand transformation. He took it from one of many financial institutions that held a “trustworthy blue” look and feel to a consumer lifestyle brand and shopping platform meld with a fully licensed bank—all with a hot pink edge. During his time at Klarna, David has overseen several pioneering marketing campaigns, inserting the brand into pop culture discussions and garnering international attention.
In this conversation, we’ll discuss why David doesn’t have a lot of love for the traditional banking and credit-card industry, creating PR driven marketing, time management, and how having a diverse staff leads to better problem solving.
CMOs often hold one of the most innovative and challenging roles in business today. Those who excel can operate at the highest level to drive growth and create value for their organizations. To learn more how Deloitte helps bolster the value CMOs deliver, visit www.cmo.deloitte.com.
