An award-winning marketer, I've spent a career in and advising the C-suite of dozens of the 100 most valuable brands globally. Now, as Managing Director of the Forbes CMO Network, I oversee Forbes' annual World's Most Influential CMOs List, the Entrepreneurial CMO 50 List, the Forbes CMO Summit, and our expanding marketing content portfolio.
The entrepreneurial approach to driving business growth and strategic advantage that these marketing leaders take is beholden to neither the status quo nor disrupting it for disruption’s sake.A great CMO focuses on what matters most, on what creates and captures demand, and on how to best allocate limited resources to unlimited opportunities so the business grows. They think strategically and execute creatively.
All CMOs today must influence that which is in their control while contending with and adapting to circumstances far beyond it. They must decide on should-they-or-shouldn’t-they questions about countless opportunities and obstacles, often in real time.
The long-time fashion and luxury category marketer and one-time CBO at both Banana Republic and Rebecca Minkoff, Andjelic approaches ESPRIT’s rebrand and revitalization with a sociologist’s training and POV. In just the past year, she has built the fashion brand’s marketing, creative and design organization from one person to over 50, globally.
Four years into her role as CMO, Blackstone is removing these obstacles, guiding, and building a team adept at navigating changes across the company’s brand, organization, and product. She and her team are leading a brand positioning shift from a service business to a true SaaS company, in order to differentiate from their competitive sets in the 112 countries in which the company sells.
Over the past 5 years, GE has transformed itself operationally, financially, and culturally, in what has been called “a legendary turnaround.” As of April 10th, the company’s stock was up over 107% YoY. Brandt’s entrepreneurial approach to marketing seems to be working. As of April 10th, Chipotle’s stock was up over 76% YoY.Because being an entrepreneurial marketer sometimes requires disrupting internal operations and behaviors.
Cheever’s remit includes oversight of an annual budget measured in billions of dollars, media planning, buying, insights, measurement, an in-house creative team, external agency relationships, brand identity and design, and a global hub designed to scale marketing models and excellence. CMO of this financial services behemoth since May of 2022, Cooper is intent, as he told Forbes, on “improving people’s lives around the complexities and opportunities of our relationship with money.” For Visa’s marketing, this is more than a mission, it’s the strategic fulcrum around which he’s leading a marketing organization overseeing the company’s consumer, B2B, product marketing, and marketing services in 200 territories, globally.
Corsi’s focus on creativity in a category not known for it, is working. In the past year, Bayer Consumer Health has won four Cannes Lions, one Clio, and multiple awards for creative effectiveness.Because Cress is “pushing the boundaries of our marketing output and customer experience” by reinventing what has been done with an unwavering entrepreneurial eye on what could be possible.
With an acute understanding of what she told Forbes is “the profound impact beauty holds in people's lives,” Crossan-Matos and her team are reimagining not just how their brand interacts with and engages its guests but how the 600+ brands on their shelves do too. Thinking disruptively and bucking category trends is central to how Crossan-Matos and her team identify new ways to show up for beauty enthusiasts.
Dizaj has oversight of the luxe brand’s global brand marketing and strategy, which has begun expanding from its DTC roots to a wholesale model and is now expanding geographically into North America.Because Eggleston Bracey sees breaking barriers, disrupting “group think,” and avoiding blind spots as essential parts of her role at this FMCG multinational giant.
With integrated oversight of marketing, product development, and Lego’s in-house creative studio, Goldin has re-organized the company’s product development process, focusing on audience passions and not, as has long been the category status-quo, gender. Since coming to Colgate-Palmolive from Campbell’s, Haussling has fundamentally redefined marketing within the organization. Haussling has brought revenue, data, and analytics under the same umbrella as her media, social, digital commerce, and creative functions. She tells Forbes that this new structure and approach allows her team to more effectively and efficiently identify and market on an integrated basis across every touchpoint, from design to pricing to use.
To these ends, Hiranaga redesigned Cotopaxi’s marketing capability and culture, and has transformed its product launch model from seasonal drops to full-scale campaigns in new product and usage categories. He and his team have led Cotopaxi’s expansion into new media channels, video formats, and dozens of partnerships with “same-DNA” brands, allowing Cotopaxi’s smaller budgets expanded reach and impact.
Operating as an independent subsidiary of Target, which acquired Shipt in 2017, Kemet’s marketing has fully embraced the company’s challenger brand status, as it competes with bigger and better-known brands. Responsible for Shipt’s brand and creative, production, advertising, consumer and experience strategy, membership, loyalty and promotions teams, Kemet’s marketing approach is not just entrepreneurial but also human and values-centric.
As Kiman and his team work to “launch the next chapter of Gucci and support our creative director,” they face many of the same headwinds affecting the luxury category broadly, which are reflected in recent sales numbers. But, as he told Forbes, “the customer will be the ultimate judge, we are already seeing very positive early signals.
After seven-years as Head of Marketing and Mobility at Uber, Lewis told Forbes she came to The Knot “to be a change agent...making bold bets, embracing ambiguity, and not shying away from the unknown but, rather, embracing it as an opportunity.” She did.
He and his team did this with the launch of their “#NoFilterJustMilani” campaign, which was both brand and product-driven, as well as their “Chef’s Kiss” campaign, which leveraged food-culture on TikTok , and brought together TikTok chefs, mixologists, and beauty creators, to drive reach and engagement for this mass-market brand and product portfolio.
Changing alcohol and beer consumption behaviors among Gen Z in particular, creates category headwinds and challenges. But with oversight for all marketing and internal creative across the company’s brand portfolio, which includes Sam Adams, Twisted Tea, Angry Orchard, and Modelo, Lysyj is undaunted and tells Forbes that “Twisted and Modelo are the only two brands seeing any significant growth in the entire category.”Because Mack is helping build this U.K.
Increasing brand value and creating new avenues of disruptive growth for the 150 brands he oversees across the company’s portfolio, requires disrupting internal processes as much as external outputs. “Ways of working are not often sexy stories,” Martin shared, “but in a big company they can be some of the most critical, and through some bumps and learnings, we’ve built a team and process that is more cross functional, iterative, and closer to the consumer's responses to our work.
In a footwear industry that is no longer seeing the YoY growth that has defined its trajectory for some time, MCrae and her team approach marketing as if at a “200-year-old start up.” In this challenging environment, she takes a status-quo eschewing approach to reinvigorating Clark’s brand and business. She is moving fast, iterating, and optimizing, including overhauling the entirety of the company’s tech stack to better meet marketing’s evolving needs and approach.
His entrepreneurial approach to building a brand-driven engine of growth, his allergy to the status-quo, and “audacious goal setting,” are paying dividends with members and prospective members alike. Mehra reports that the private company’s customer referral rate is 5x the national average, and 1.5x higher than its fintech competitors.Because Moin brings a make-big-bets mindset to one of the world’s best-known portfolios of brands.
With a portfolio of responsibilities far broader than that of a traditional CBO, Neuburger leads the company’s marketing as well as its Sustainability and Social Impact Portfolio across North America, APAC, EMEA, and China. As consumer expectations of brands have evolved, Neuburger has adjusted performance metrics for the brand to better align with the company’s values and is prioritizing long-term community relationships and value over short-term gains.
Stewarding Duolingo’s mission to expand access to quality education, Orssaud and his team are “throwing out the traditional marketing playbook and building our own, our way to a new and more complex understanding of what a brand can be.” Panayiotou’s remit is global, with oversight of all marketing activities across all of Pfizer’s markets and products. He and his team are redefining who Pfizer is and how the brand presents itself, with a deep “conviction that creativity has the power to transform society.”Because Ranese is building a marketing organization that’s challenging CPG category conventions to “drive outsized engagement and brand relevance while letting us minimize traditional advertising spend.
Rubin and his team are quick to adapt and iterate, both leading and responding to shifting cultural perceptions about journalism, and the brand.As the notion of “truth”—long core toBecause inside United, Schmerin is building a culture and marketing approach “challenging the status quo and throwing out the textbook on what ‘advertising’ is supposed to be.”
As Chief Advertising Officer, Schmerin leads marketing efforts globally. The company reports that for the quarter ending December 23, revenue was up nearly 10% YoY.Because in a relatively new category, and a landscape that expands and shifts as more states legalize sports betting, driving growth requires Sherman evolve DraftKings’ marketing to new markets and consumer behaviors, in real-time.
Slagen credits being quick to adopt AI, with giving his small team the tools to “push the limits” of what they could do. “We’ve applied AI to our content, video, events, PR, lead generation, product marketing, sales enablement...improving productivity 30% or more in some areas, while increasing lead generation 50%, and being ROI-positive on marketing.”
Fiona Carter Frank Coooper Tara Mcrae Fanatics Rare Beauty Vineet Mehra Barbie Gucci Alicia Tillman
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Nominations are open for Forbes and Know Your Value's 2024 '50 over 50' listForbes and Know Your Value are officially looking for its next class of women who are proving that success has no age limit.
Read more »
Forbes Releases Annual World's Billionaires ListForbes has released its annual World's Billionaires List, revealing a record-breaking number of billionaires and an increase in their collective wealth. The United States has the highest number of billionaires on the list, with a total of 813. The world's billionaires are now worth $14.2 trillion, up by $2 trillion from the previous year.
Read more »
Forbes’ billionaires list 2024: More of them than ever, and US has the mostForbes’ billionaires list 2024 includes several famous faces from the United States.
Read more »
U.S. Billionaire Class Reaches New Heights on Forbes Billionaires ListThe U.S. billionaire class has reached a new milestone, with 813 ten-figure oligarchs holding $5.7 trillion in their possession, according to Forbes Magazine's World Billionaires List. This represents a $1.2 trillion increase compared to the previous year, bringing total billionaire gains since mid-March 2020 to $2.7 trillion. The surge in billionaire wealth highlights the inequality in our economy and the concentration of wealth among the richest Americans.
Read more »
Forbes Announces New Billionaires List 2024The Forbes list of New Billionaires 2024 was published, revealing a record number of 2,781 billionaires worldwide. Most of them are from the United States. The list includes notable individuals such as Shunsaku Sagami and Livia Voigt.
Read more »
Taylor Swift cracks Forbes’ 2024 list of celebrity billionairesTaylor Swift doesn't just raise her voice to sing: The singer is calling on her Instagram followers to vote. A big step for her and possibly for the US election.
Read more »