CMOs have a tricky job.
They’ve to point out enterprise outcomes by capitalizing on developments and reaching new audiences like Gen Z, whereas harnessing knowledge and rising tech like generative AI responsibly. They usually should do all of it whereas navigating an more and more polarized political panorama.
Enterprise Insider’s annual record of the “Most Modern CMOs,” in its tenth 12 months, spotlights the highest entrepreneurs rising to those challenges. This 12 months’s 25 CMOs got here from 117 nominations from their friends and different trade insiders.
The CMOs characterize massive manufacturers like Walmart and the NFL, challengers like Milani Cosmetics, and tech firms like Lenovo.
There’s Klarna’s David Sandström, who bucked controversy and doubled down on utilizing AI to enhance effectivity, reducing prices by $10 million a 12 months. Then there’s Jennie Platt of TD, who leaned into DEI-themed messaging to rebuild the financial institution’s repute whereas another firms backed away, serving to enhance the financial institution’s consciousness by 20%.
Listed below are Enterprise Insider’s 2025 “Most Modern CMOs,” listed in alphabetical order by final title.
Brad Audet, Mazda’s chief advertising and marketing officer for North American operations
In September, Audet led the relaunch of Mazda’s model platform, which carries the tagline “Transfer and Be Moved.”
The brand new platform anchors Mazda’s advertising and marketing across the position the model performs in folks’s lives. One instance of the model platform in motion included the discharge of the “First to the End” Amazon Prime Authentic sequence, which spotlights girls in motorsports. Season 2 is in manufacturing, and Mazda stated the present is already changing curiosity into gross sales.
Final 12 months, Mazda solid a partnership with Tribeca Movie Pageant to champion up-and-coming filmmakers, constructing a competition throughout the competition to showcase seven shortlisted however neglected movies. Retaining with the film theme, Mazda ran a TV advert in the course of the Oscars that confirmed on a regular basis folks giving due to necessary folks of their lives. Mazda stated the marketing campaign led to the best spike in new web site visits it had recorded all 12 months.
Mazda ran analysis research that discovered the general model platform relaunch has led to a 15% enhance in model consideration, a 20% raise in buy intent, and an increase in shopper notion that Mazda “was the model for them.”
Priscilla Barolo, Neat’s VP of selling
Barolo joined Norway-based Neat, which makes software program and gadgets for videoconferencing, in 2023 to reposition the corporate as many employers name workers again to the workplace. Since then, she’s doubled Neat’s advertising and marketing and enterprise improvement staff head depend. Below her management, advertising and marketing contributed to over 40% progress in gross sales from October to December 2024.
Barolo, a 10-year Zoom veteran, did it partially by launching sponsorships with the Components 1 Oracle Purple Bull Racing staff and the Los Angeles Clippers. These went past the same old partnerships and had been geared towards the relationship-building important for enterprise gross sales. Along with having its emblem displayed on race automobiles and within the Clippers’ house area, Neat had its merchandise utilized by each groups’ staffs and of their hospitality suites in order that Neat may invite prospects to sporting occasions.
Taking a web page from how firms construct relationships with influencers, Barolo additionally spearheaded a buyer advisory board initiative, the place Neat’s largest clients collect as soon as 1 / 4 to share insights and evaluation Neat’s highway map. The initiative is already beginning to bear fruit: Neat plans to launch its first product later this 12 months created in partnership with the advisory board.
Leslie Berland, Verizon’s chief advertising and marketing officer and govt vp
Berland joined Verizon in January 2024 and 6 months later spearheaded the corporate’s first model refresh in virtually a decade. She labored on a plan to embed a message amongst customers that Verizon powers their lives.
The work included the introduction of the Verizon Entry loyalty program, tying Verizon extra carefully to leisure by providing members entry to stay occasions just like the Tremendous Bowl and Reside Nation festivals.
Connecting manufacturers to tradition is Berland’s specialty. After seeing the rise of TikTok magnificence creator Jools Lebron, Berland’s staff moved rapidly and in three days had tapped up the “very demure, very aware” meme for a Verizon-sponsored video.
“I feel if we had even misplaced a day, it will have been too late; there is no room for committees and critiques upon critiques or hierarchy,” Berland stated in an interview earlier this 12 months.
Berland additionally solid a partnership between Verizon House web and Mattel to create the “Barbie Streamhouse” vacation attraction in New York Metropolis.
Berland flipped the swap on the Tremendous Bowl this 12 months, leaning extra into native advertising and marketing efforts. Reasonably than shopping for a 30-second spot like many manufacturers, Verizon as an alternative delivered the Tremendous Bowl FanFest watch events at stadiums and different venues in 30 cities throughout the US, providing stay music and celeb meet-and-greets.
“Leslie relaunched our model and that is gone very properly,” Sowmyanarayan Sampath, CEO of Verizon’s shopper unit, stated onstage final month on the Bernstein Strategic Choices convention. “It is given us extra traction in social. We’re getting picked up in social much more, and we’re a part of on a regular basis life.”
Chris Brandt, Chipotle’s chief model officer
Brandt’s advertising and marketing mantra is, “Concepts all the time win.” This fuels his mission to remodel Chipotle into a life-style model, shifting the restaurant chain into sudden venues, from magnificence to popular culture.
This previous summer season, Chipotle teamed up with Gen Z magnificence favourite Wonderskin to create a “burrito-proof,” guacamole-inspired metallic inexperienced peel-off masks that exposed a nude-pink lip stain. It constructed on a well-liked TikTok development and aimed to resolve a key frustration: lipstick leaving smudges on meals.
Not solely did “Lipotle” promote out virtually immediately, but it surely generated a whole bunch of headlines and movies created by social media customers, incomes 1.2 billion world press impressions.
Later within the 12 months, Chipotle constructed on the social media development of customers creating their very own Halloween costumes utilizing the recognizable Spirit Halloween costume bag. Chipotle partnered with Spirit Halloween to show the memes — like “Chipotle Fork” and “Chipotle Serviette” — into actual Halloween outfits. The stunt earned greater than 13 billion press impressions, boosted weekly gross sales, and drove signups to the Chipotle Rewards loyalty program.
Chipotle grew income by 14.6% and widened its revenue margins final 12 months. Digital gross sales now account for greater than a 3rd of whole transactions, and the corporate’s return on advert spend has grown to greater than 35%.
In 2025, Brandt goals to proceed his culture-first advertising and marketing method and assist broaden Chipotle’s footprint in bodily places and digital channels, whereas constructing extra shopper love for the model.
Phil Prepare dinner, WNBA’s chief advertising and marketing officer
The WNBA had a transformative 12 months in 2024, with attendance up almost 50% and record-breaking viewership and merchandise gross sales. Prepare dinner, a Nike vet who turned the league’s first CMO in 2020, has been serving to construct the model across the W. Prepare dinner’s 2024 marketing campaign, “Welcome to the W,” by longtime Nike company Wieden+Kennedy, launched the league to new followers with humorous spots that poked enjoyable at rookies. He adopted that up with “Viewer Discretion,” a sequence of vignettes to kick off the 2025 season that spotlight the highest stars like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese and their key attributes.
Prepare dinner has additionally labored to maintain the WNBA, which is majority owned by the NBA, prime of thoughts all year long and on social media. Gamers seem at cultural occasions past sports activities, just like the Met Gala. At this 12 months’s draft, athletes donned Coach and different high-fashion manufacturers, turning heads on the orange carpet. All of the whereas, Prepare dinner’s social staff makes certain to seize all of it: The league garnered almost 2 billion views throughout platforms in its 2024 common season, greater than 4 occasions the 12 months earlier than.
Kristen D’Arcy, True Faith’s chief advertising and marketing officer
D’Arcy turned True Faith’s first chief advertising and marketing officer in 2023. She set about reworking the attire firm right into a primarily digital model. E-commerce now accounts for 50% of the corporate’s whole income, up from 35% three years in the past.
True Faith has elevated its advertising and marketing funds from 3% to 10% of its whole income since D’Arcy joined, a sign of confidence in her technique. The corporate is forecasting gross sales of $450 million in 2025 — double that of 2021 — and has set its sights on hitting a $1 billion income goal within the subsequent three to 5 years.
D’Arcy has helped the model keep true to its hip-hop and streetwear roots whereas introducing it to a brand new cohort of consumers, advertising and marketing on the intersections of vogue, music, sports activities, and leisure.
Her staff launched the “Personal Your True” model platform and advert marketing campaign throughout Tremendous Bowl week this 12 months, that includes the Brazilian pop star Anitta and an occasion in New Orleans cohosted by Sports activities Illustrated that was attended by 4,000 folks.
“Personal Your True” prolonged by way of Coachella with its “Buddhafest” activation, which contained a True-Faith-branded Ford Mustang. On-site gross sales at Buddhafest this 12 months had been 65% up on the earlier competition. True Faith additionally created customized seems to be for Megan Thee Stallion and her dancers for his or her headline present, and partnered together with her tequila model, Chicas Divertidas, to present out samples to festivalgoers.
In November, D’Arcy revamped True Faith’s loyalty program, boosting it with in-person experiences and different rewards designed to really feel much less automated than the earlier model. True Faith is concentrating on 40% annual progress in its membership numbers this 12 months.
Esi Eggleston Bracey, Unilever’s chief progress and advertising and marketing officer
The buyer packaged items trade has been navigating uncertainty in current months amid world commerce wars that affect a number of provide chains. Unilever stated in April that it is contemplating value will increase, which is able to imply the corporate shall be trying to Eggleston Bracey to have constructed a robust basis for the power of its manufacturers to make sure that customers do not select cheaper choices.
Regardless of the chaos, Unilever began the 12 months properly, reporting underlying gross sales progress of three%, which the corporate attributed to the sturdy funding in its manufacturers and the standard of its product innovation.
Eggleston Bracey took Unilever’s Dove and Hellmann’s manufacturers to the Tremendous Bowl this 12 months with two memorable spots. The “It Hits the Spot” advert for Hellmann’s featured Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan humorously recreating their traditional deli scene from “When Harry Met Sally.” Dove had a social media-first marketing campaign that sparked a dialog about how ladies are spoken to forward of its “#KeepHerConfident” game-day advert.
Eggleston Bracey led a 4% enhance in Unilever’s social media spending final 12 months, and an additional 4% enhance is deliberate for 2025. She’s additionally been investing in new knowledge analytics and different instruments that higher allow the advertising and marketing staff to optimize campaigns for the very best efficiency.
AI has been one other key focus for Eggleston Bracey. Unilever has been integrating AI tech like Nvidia Omniverse to chop down the time it takes to do product shoots, leading to 55% price financial savings and a 65% quicker turnaround time for its magnificence and well-being manufacturers. What’s extra, early outcomes present these photos maintain folks’s consideration for 3 times longer than the earlier belongings, Unilever stated.
Tim Ellis, the NFL’s chief advertising and marketing officer
The NFL is larger than ever, and its repute has gone up as Ellis has pushed a message emphasizing its humanity and connection to tradition. The league has been working to broaden its viewers, an effort that accelerated final 12 months when Taylor Swift turned its latest fan, bringing girls and younger viewers into the fold. The NFL rapidly seized the second, selling her on its social channels and dealing with manufacturers to advertise product tie-ins. Ellis continued to press the inclusion message with 2025’s Tremendous Bowl advert, “I Am Any person,” which positioned fifth in USA Right now’s Advert Meter for 2025.
Below Ellis’ management, NFL viewership continues to dominate the media panorama, with 72 of the 100 most-watched broadcasts in 2024. The league additionally claims its most numerous fan base ever, with progress pushed by youngsters, girls, and the Latino neighborhood. As of 2024, the NFL ranks because the No. 1 sports activities league within the US for model sentiment, per YouGov’s Model Index.
Ellis joined the NFL in 2018 from Activision Blizzard. Earlier, he labored at Volvo and Volkswagen, the place he created “The Pressure,” which Time referred to as “the advert that modified the Tremendous Bowl ceaselessly.”
George Felix, Chili’s chief advertising and marketing officer
Informal eating chain Chili’s is having a second, and there was an unlikely set off: inflation.
As eating out at fast-food eating places turned costlier in current months, Chili’s started selling the worth of fare like its “3 for Me” meal deal — and the very fact you get served at a desk, with cutlery — in direct distinction to that of McDonald’s. The “Chili’s Higher Than Quick Meals” marketing campaign is continuous this 12 months.
For a model that lately marked its fiftieth anniversary, Felix has helped Chili’s keep recent and fashionable on social media, notably TikTok, the place customers typically take to vent in regards to the rising price of meals. Movies the place creators showcase their finest “cheese pulls” whereas consuming Chili’s fried mozzarella have garnered greater than 200 million views.
The model has additionally tapped into nostalgia in its advertising and marketing. This 12 months, it opened its first restaurant in Scranton, Pennsylvania, which is themed on “The Workplace.” It enlisted stars from the sitcom to function in a marketing campaign for the Scranton Department’s opening, notching up greater than 9 million impressions.
Elsewhere, it partnered with Lifetime Tv to create a 15-minute rom-com movie starring Maria Menounos and Taye Diggs to have a good time Nationwide Margarita Day in February. The identical month, it created a rustic music monitor and video, “Experience the Dente,” to courtroom NASCAR followers. And it created its personal on-line model of the ’80s arcade sport “BurgerTime,” the place gamers competed to win a lifetime of burgers.
The efforts have resulted in a giant comeback from the model, driving visits to Chili’s eating places. Mother or father firm Brinker stated in April that top-line gross sales progress was up 31.6% 12 months over 12 months in its fiscal third quarter, with visitors up 20.9%, all amid a turbulent interval for the broader restaurant trade.
Carla Hassan, JPMorganChase’s world chief advertising and marketing officer
Manufacturers are more and more bringing their advertising and marketing operations in-house, which could be onerous to do properly even for small and mid-sized firms. One in all Hassan’s greatest strikes has been to carry JPMorganChase’s media work in-house. That is no small feat for one of many world’s largest advertising and marketing organizations. 70% of the financial institution’s paid media is now dealt with internally, which has lowered prices and helped the corporate transfer quicker whereas assembly its requirements for model security.
Hassan has additionally made Chase’s advertising and marketing extra environment friendly, decreasing its message supply time by virtually 50% and utilizing generative AI instruments to chop the content material briefing course of time by 70%.
Hassan, who’s in her fourth 12 months within the position, spearheaded a brand new world slogan, “Make goals potential for everybody, all over the place, day by day.” It was underpinned by a brand new advert marketing campaign, “Make Occur,” that confirmed how Chase is enabling folks in underserved communities in cities from Detroit to Paris to result in constructive financial change.
Hassan has additionally launched a sequence of academic classes referred to as “Advertising and marketing Mixes,” the place entrepreneurs find out about matters like income technology, and created the position of CMO for worker expertise to enhance inner communication and culture-building.
Laura Jones, Instacart’s chief advertising and marketing officer
Jones has had a busy 12 months serving to Instacart keep within the dialog by leveraging massive media partnerships and iconic manufacturers, and it reveals: Instacart’s consciousness has elevated over 140% and its consideration by 66% beneath her management. Jones’ staff labored with The New York Instances to make its well-liked recipes shoppable and launched NBCUniversal’s “digital concessions” function that inspired TV viewers to order snacks from their TV screens whereas watching the Summer season Olympics.
She additionally led Instacart’s first Olympics advert purchase. Based mostly on its success, Instacart aired its first Tremendous Bowl advert in a well-liked spot that starred mascots from 11 manufacturers like Mr. Clear and the Jolly Inexperienced Big. (That permit Instacart save on actors’ charges however nonetheless required getting permission from all these manufacturers.) New person visitors to Instacart soared 72% after the advert aired, and it was one of many firm’s greatest press drivers in its historical past. It simply adopted that up with a brand new advert that nods to 90s nostalgia by that includes manufacturers like Capri Solar and Bagel Bites.
Jones additionally carried out greater than 70 co-marketing campaigns with grocery firms, together with Kraft Heinz and PepsiCo, contributing a key supply of advert income for the corporate in 2024.
At a politically polarized time, Jones has emphasised Instacart’s mission of offering meals to all. When wildfires devastated Los Angeles, she helped Instacart ship 45,000 gadgets to assist these affected by the fires and create a faculty donation program, Classroom Carts.
Emily Ketchen, Lenovo’s SVP and chief advertising and marketing officer of Clever Units Group and Worldwide Markets
Synthetic intelligence options are coming to non-public computer systems, and Ketchen helped Lenovo beat its gross sales expectations within the nascent class with the launch of its first AI PCs. Ketchen took a multipronged method to the rollout, serving to Lenovo seize 20% of the worldwide market.
She spearheaded “AI for You,” a marketing campaign that promoted Lenovo’s PCs as a pure extension of individuals’s lives moderately than an unwelcome tech intrusion. She additionally leveraged trade occasions equivalent to IFA, CES, and Cell World Congress, and influencers to drive demand for AI PCs.
Ketchen additionally used partnerships with Components 1 and FIFA to point out the real-world worth of its merchandise — testing its AI PCs on the Chinese language Grand Prix, for instance. The corporate credit the F1 partnership with a 31% year-over-year enhance in whole media worth, 88% year-over-year progress in digital and social engagement, and a rise in model favorability amongst F1 followers.
Subsequent, Lenovo plans to combine its gadgets, IT providers, and extra on the FIFA World Cup in 2026 and the FIFA Ladies’s World Cup in 2027 to enhance the fan expertise and make knowledge extra accessible to followers and groups.
Jeremy Lowenstein, Milani Cosmetics’ chief advertising and marketing officer
To develop Milani Cosmetics, an impartial model in a class dominated by massive, public firms, Lowenstein has needed to undertake a challenger mindset.
To bolster Milani’s positioning as status but inexpensive, he tapped into the recognition of girls’s sports activities, enlisting 4 prime feminine athletes, together with Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles and the WNBA’s Sabrina Ionescu. The “Face Set. Thoughts Set.” marketing campaign helped enhance gross sales of Milani’s Make it Final setting spray by almost 20% in 2024, based on Nielsen, and acquired widespread media protection.
Lowenstein adopted that up with America’s Subsequent Prime Primer, a marketing campaign impressed by the nostalgia for 2000s actuality TV (additionally the period of Milani’s founding) that pitted primers in opposition to one another for the highest title. Lowenstein drafted Molly Mitchell, a former author of “The Late Late Present with James Corden,” to put in writing the script, then pulled collectively a various solid of entertainers, together with Zainab Johnson and Ele Woods to play the “host,” “contestants,” and “judges.” The marketing campaign generated greater than 30 articles and helped make Milani one of many fastest-growing manufacturers in face primers, per Nielsen.
Don McGuire, Qualcomm’s chief advertising and marketing officer
McGuire has been instrumental in serving to chip maker Qualcomm broaden past its business-to-business roots into two distinct manufacturers: the Dragonwing industrial-focused portfolio and Snapdragon, its shopper providing.
2024 was a giant 12 months for the Snapdragon model, which launched its Snapdragon X sequence chips for the PC market. McGuire and the staff helped enhance consciousness of Snapdragon by way of partnerships, principally its sponsorship of the Manchester United soccer staff. It pulled out all of the stops to advertise its front-of-shirt sponsorship, with the launch attaining greater than 3 billion model exposures for Snapdragon. It additionally turned the membership’s first-ever back-of-shirt sponsor. Greater than 80% of Man U followers “deeply belief and love” the Snapdragon model, whereas 91% see Snapdragon as a pacesetter in smartphone processors, Qualcomm stated.
McGuire additionally led Snapdragon’s sponsorship of the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Group, introduced final September. And he is been instrumental in serving to the Snapdragon Insiders program — which provides members entry to competitions, giveaways, and occasions — develop to 18 million members.
Nicole Parlapiano, Tubi’s chief advertising and marketing officer
Parlapiano’s unconventional method to advertising and marketing has helped give Fox’s Tubi free streaming legitimacy — and put extra established gamers to the take a look at.
As paid TV streamers have hiked their costs, Tubi, free and with a large library of films and reveals, has been having a second, together with different free options. Final 12 months, it turned the fastest-growing streamer in TV viewership, up 60% 12 months on 12 months, based on Nielsen.
Parlapiano has made certain folks know what Tubi is, with a stunty method to advertising and marketing, beginning with a 2023 Tremendous Bowl advert that made many individuals suppose that somebody had sat on the distant. She turned viewers into promoters, with Stubios, a platform she spearheaded that makes use of followers to assist choose filmmakers, and a gifting program that surprises followers on social media with tokens of appreciation like popcorn makers. As Hollywood tries to determine find out how to compete with YouTube, she’s additionally been a champion of social-born creators, getting influencer Noah Beck solid within the young-adult film “Sidelined: The QB and Me.” The movie ranks as Tubi’s most-watched authentic.
When Tubi simulcast the Tremendous Bowl LIX alongside Fox this 12 months, Parlapiano seized the second to spice up its consciousness and credibility. This time, with a much less stunty (however nonetheless memorable) marketing campaign, Tubi ran an advert to advertise its library and new licensed choices like “Dune” and originals like “The Z Suite.” It additionally ran shoulder programming to usher in those that weren’t sports activities followers. Together with serving to push the sport to a brand new document of 127.7 million common viewers, Tubi signed up 8 million new registered viewers to its personal platform. And after the sport, folks had been extra more likely to have heard of Tubi when requested to establish it amongst streamers, with a 36% raise in consciousness with viewers ages 18 to 34, per new stats Tubi shared with Enterprise Insider, citing YouGov.
Jennie Platt, TD Financial institution’s chief advertising and marketing officer
TD Financial institution wanted a repute repair after a cash laundering scandal in 2024. Platt swung into motion with a brand new advertising and marketing and communications blitz to point out how TD was there for patrons.
As a lot of company America backed away from DEI, TD leaned in, hitting on 4 areas: TD’s assist of Black-owned and -led companies; entry to inexpensive housing; digital instruments just like the TD Accessibility Adapter, which lets clients customise their on-line expertise; and welcoming of LGBTQ+ clients. Below Platt, who’s lively in TD’s efforts to assist the LGBTQ+ neighborhood, the financial institution launched a Chosen First Identify function in 2024, which lets folks select a reputation aside from their authorized or given title on their accounts or playing cards. Total, the technique helped folks develop into extra conscious of and more likely to think about TD for his or her banking, with a 20% raise in consciousness when persons are prompted to establish it.
Platt additionally elevated marketing-driven gross sales by way of a variety of initiatives, together with sending clients money incentives, monetary recommendation, and personalised communications. Consequently, marketing-driven gross sales doubled from 2022 to 2024, and advertising and marketing’s contribution to gross sales roughly doubled, to about 19%, in the identical time interval.
John Rudaizky, EY’s world chief model and advertising and marketing officer
Rudaizky is making use of the B2C method to B2B advertising and marketing, harnessing strategies like inventive campaigns, hero movies, and advertising and marketing designed to make folks truly really feel one thing. Often known as Ernst & Younger till a rebrand in 2013, EY is among the “massive 4” accounting companies and in addition affords different skilled providers like consulting. Not too long ago, it launched EY Studio+, a brand new design, advertising and marketing, buyer expertise, and gross sales providing that particularly targets entrepreneurs.
Rudaizky was influential within the July launch of EY’s new world technique, dubbed “All In” — the corporate’s equal of Nike’s “Simply Do It” tagline. The plan is to place the corporate, which has doubled in measurement within the final decade to succeed in annual income of $50 billion, to seek out its subsequent $50 billion alternatives in areas like transformation, managed providers, and sustainability.
The brand new technique was supported by three massive campaigns.
EY’s model refresh, “Form the long run with confidence,” was its greatest in additional than a decade.
“Transformations” nodded to the worldwide financial uncertainty available in the market by tapping into real-world, high-stakes decision-making moments. The multi-pronged marketing campaign reached 15 million folks in airports, 5 million impressions on digital billboards, and three million viewers on digital and TV.
Lastly, “Generations,” a movie that debuted on the World Financial Discussion board in Davos, used the voices of youngsters from numerous backgrounds to induce enterprise leaders to think about the lasting affect of their choices. The corporate stated the marketing campaign drove a seven-point uplift in model favorability amongst C-suite audiences and an 83% enhance in its content material being shared on social media platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram.
The corporate stated the affect of all this work is that EY is acknowledged as one of many prime 25 manufacturers on the earth, per Model Finance, and the strongest model within the UK.
David Sandström, Klarna’s chief advertising and marketing officer
Klarna has sparked fervent trade conversations about the way it’s utilizing AI to make its advertising and marketing extra environment friendly. Sandström has doubled down on integrating instruments like Midjourney, Firefly, and DALL-E throughout its advertising and marketing operation. The expertise has reduce Klarna’s inventive manufacturing prices by $10 million yearly and its general gross sales and advertising and marketing spend by 11%, the corporate stated.
One in all Sandström’s massive achievements final 12 months was creating Klarna’s AI purchasing feed, an effort that spanned the corporate’s advertising and marketing, product, and engineering groups. He is been vocal on trade podcasts and at occasions about Klarna’s flat construction and on matters like AI ethics.
Sandström enlisted Shaquille O’Neal for its most up-to-date vacation marketing campaign — renaming him “Shaquille O Deal” — as a part of his efforts to distinguish the model within the crowded US buy-now-pay-later market. Sandström has additionally performed a pivotal position in inking partnerships with massive platforms like Apple Pay, Uber, Walmart, Airbnb, and eBay — strikes that intention to make Klarna extra accessible.
Efforts like these helped Klarna develop to greater than 100 million lively customers and 724,000 service provider companions, as of Might this 12 months.
Jennifer Storms, NBCUniversal Tv & Streaming’s chief advertising and marketing officer
Storms, who goes by Jenny, makes use of NBCUniversal’s sprawling TV and streaming belongings to get NBCUniversal’s well-known sports activities and leisure properties the largest audiences potential.
Working together with her counterparts at Common Movie, she helped make “Depraved” a streaming occasion with a advertising and marketing marketing campaign that included partnerships with NBCU’s leisure properties, stunts, and buzzy social initiatives. “Depraved” wound up being Peacock’s greatest movie within the Pay 1 window, the primary interval following its theatrical run, within the streamer’s historical past, with near 1 billion minutes considered in its first week.
She tapped creators and celebrities to advertise the Paris Olympics, serving to rating a 77% enhance in viewership over the Tokyo Video games and a large quantity of social media impressions. Now, Storms is making ready for 2026, when NBCU will host a trifecta of well-known sporting occasions within the Tremendous Bowl, NBC All-Star Sport, and Winter Olympics.
Storms, who was promoted to her position in January, has additionally put a giant deal with fan engagement by leaning into real-life experiences. For “Saturday Evening Reside’s” fiftieth anniversary particular, her staff orchestrated “Reside from New York: The SNL Expertise,” a four-day pop-up that recreated this system’s iconic studio and drew over 1,000 followers every day. For the twenty fifth anniversary of “Regulation & Order: SVU,” she created activations in New York and Boston that permit followers have a good time the enduring crime present.
Doug Sweeny, Oura’s chief advertising and marketing officer
Sweeny joined the corporate in 2022 at a time when demand for wearable gadgets like Oura was slowing. He revamped Oura’s advertising and marketing, reducing buyer acquisition prices by greater than half and launching Oura in over 6,000 retail places and increasing to 32 new markets.
Sweeny made Oura a part of the cultural dialog, leaning into the nationwide election when different manufacturers shied away by sponsoring CNN’s Magic Wall of election outcomes. Sweeny’s staff additionally led partnerships with “Mission: Unattainable,” utilizing Tom Cruise to point out off Oura’s stress-monitoring function, and with England Soccer within the World Cup. He led the worldwide marketing campaign for Oura Ring 4, which included takeovers in New York, London, and Los Angeles, and expanded the model to incorporate girls’s well being options.
The proof is within the numbers: Folks’s consciousness of Oura once they’re prompted to establish it has grown greater than fivefold within the US throughout his tenure, based on the corporate, citing YouGov. Income has doubled for 2 years in a row, and the corporate reached profitability a 12 months forward of schedule. This heightened consciousness and progress helped the corporate elevate $200 million in funding in December, which valued it at $5.2 billion.
Up subsequent, Sweeny seems to be to maintain increasing consciousness and distribution whereas keeping track of financial uncertainty attributable to tariffs, serving to decrease their price and affect on the corporate’s provide chain.
Dara Treseder, Autodesk’s chief advertising and marketing officer
In her three-year tenure as Autodesk’s advertising and marketing chief, Treseder has been propelling the expertise firm into the mainstream by way of sensible partnerships and activations that carry the aim of its software program to life. Autodesk makes software program merchandise used throughout industries like development, engineering, movie, and structure.
For Might the Fourth — Star Wars Day — Autodesk invited Star Wars followers to enter a droid-maker contest utilizing its software program, forward of the launch of the brand new Disney+ sequence “The Acolyte.” The competitors and a TV business that aired in the course of the present’s premiere showcased how Autodesk performed a task in designing characters from “The Acolyte,” like Pip.
This previous summer season, Autodesk turned a supporting accomplice of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, its first-ever Olympics sponsorship and a big new enterprise alternative. Autodesk’s software program is getting used to assist adapt venues and design momentary buildings for the LA28 Video games. Treseder and staff additionally ran an enormous push later within the 12 months to focus on how Autodesk’s expertise performed a giant position in restoring the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, after the landmark was broken by fireplace in 2019.
This 12 months, having appointed Big Spoon as its first-ever inventive company, Autodesk ran its greatest marketing campaign thus far. The marketing campaign featured the actor and comic Tony Hale taking part in God. His position was a play on a quote from Autodesk’s former CEO Carol Bartz: “If it wasn’t made by God, it was made by an Autodesk buyer.”
Autodesk stated Treseder’s advertising and marketing efforts have helped the corporate obtain a 25% raise in annual income by way of its direct digital channels. Treseder has additionally helped Autodesk fulfill its dedication to organize younger folks for the world of labor. Greater than 100 million college students and educators accessed the free model of its software program in 2024, a utilization determine that was up 18% 12 months over 12 months.
Sherry Weiss, Dow Jones and The Wall Road Journal’s chief advertising and marketing officer
It is debatable how a lot legacy information retailers, particularly iconic ones like The Wall Road Journal, can shift notion and broaden their audiences. That makes Weiss’ accomplishments all of the extra notable. Final 12 months, she led the hassle with “It is Your Enterprise,” the paper’s first main advertising and marketing marketing campaign in a number of years, to develop its readership past its finance base to succeed in youthful, extra numerous readers. The marketing campaign included out-of-home adverts in key markets like New York, Miami, and Dallas.
In live performance with the Emma Tucker-led newsroom’s work to make protection extra vigorous and enterprising, the marketing campaign drove extra website visitors in 9 out of 10 markets, elevated folks’s chance to advocate the Journal to others by 19%, and boosted folks’s chance to subscribe, particularly girls ages 35 to 44, based on the corporate, citing exterior analysis. Complete subscriptions to The Wall Road Journal grew 3% 12 months over 12 months within the quarter ended March 31, to over 4.3 million on common; digital subs represented 90% of these and grew 5% within the quarter, to over 3.9 million on common.
Working with the newsroom, Weiss additionally helped draw consideration to the plight of Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. One putting marketing campaign, “Lacking Articles,” featured clean entrance web page areas of the Journal to indicate the place Gershkovich’s reporting would have appeared had he been free, topped with headlines like “His Story Ought to Be Right here.” Gershkovich was launched in August after a 12 months and a half in Russian detention.
William White, Walmart’s SVP and chief advertising and marketing officer
White has helped hold Walmart a step forward of rivals with campaigns that affiliate the retail large with cultural touchstones, not simply low costs.
For its final vacation marketing campaign, “Items that Present You Get Them,” the retailer featured solid members from well-liked sequence like “Gilmore Women” and “SpongeBob SquarePants” giving items to their family members. It adopted Walmart’s Black Friday marketing campaign “Offers of Want,” a 10-part sequence starring actors like Walton Goggins and TikToker Jake Shane that spoofed well-liked TV reveals like “Bridgerton” and “Yellowstone.” (Goggins additionally stars in Walmart’s newest marketing campaign, tagline “Walmart: Who Knew?”, which drafted a bunch of celebrities to point out that the retailer sells extra issues than folks may need thought.)
As retailers attempt to crack the code on shoppable TV, White and his staff have been daring about attempting new approaches. Of their newest effort, Walmart sponsored its first feature-length vacation movie, Roku Authentic “Jingle Bell Love,” that prompted viewers to purchase gadgets related to the movie throughout shoppable breaks.
At a time when CMOs are being required to do extra with much less, White’s means to show advertising and marketing’s monetary worth has enabled him to broaden his funds as Walmart has outperformed rivals like Goal and Costco.
Subsequent up, search for him to broaden Walmart’s three-year-old Creator Platform and use AI to personalize advertising and marketing messages to clients.
Katie Williams, Haleon’s US chief advertising and marketing officer
Williams has seized on IRL experiences, magnificence, and inclusivity developments to drive enterprise for Haleon, the buyer healthcare firm that accommodates family manufacturers like Advil, Tums, and Sensodyne.
To launch Emergen-C Immune+ Crystals, she created a marketing campaign that included a product giveaway and a pop-up at JFK airport. The pop-up gave cold-susceptible vacationers a sensory expertise that mimicked the impact of the complement. The marketing campaign exceeded Haleon’s product distribution objectives by 114%. She additionally launched Sensodyne Scientific White, a tooth whitening paste aimed toward magnificence customers, which Haleon credited with serving to develop gross sales income of the Sensodyne portfolio by 14%.
With concern about pretend adverts on the rise, Williams adopted a digital watermarking system to make sure the authenticity of Haleon’s adverts.
Williams has additionally embraced the brand-supported leisure development. She helped develop a feature-length documentary referred to as “Sensory Overload” in regards to the wants of neurodivergent and sensory-sensitive folks in locations just like the dentist’s workplace. The documentary is on the market to stream on Hulu as paid content material.
Mike Zeman, Life360’s chief advertising and marketing officer
Zeman has been working onerous to make sure Life360, a household security app, can earn the belief of Gen Z, and never simply their mother and father.
TikTok has develop into a breakout channel for Life360, which has greater than 1.5 million followers on the app. Reasonably than being overly promotional, the model will get sassy within the remark sections and repeatedly posts memes. The method helps construct the legitimacy of the model by leaning into developments like teenagers utilizing the app to observe their mother and father across the map whereas they’re out of the home.
Zeman has additionally utilized the edgy TikTok power to Life360’s adverts. Its “Again to College” spot makes use of UGC-style movies and humor to emulate the chaos households typically expertise in the course of the back-to-school interval. Its “Household-Proof Your Household” sequence of adverts makes use of humorous examples of exaggerated household miscommunications to convey the message that Life360’s lately acquired Tile model can forestall small misunderstandings from changing into main issues.
Below Zeman’s management, Life360 has reached about 80 million month-to-month lively customers, together with 2.3 million paying Circles — the personal teams the place members share their places and chat with one another. Zeman plans to scale his staff’s advertising and marketing efforts in 2025 as Life360 launches new product classes like pet monitoring.
Supply: Business Insider
