Steve Kalifkowitz from Crypto.com, Ludivine Ponte from Balenciaga and Kenny Mitchell from Snap Inc. Illustration by Alexander Wells.
Recognizing 50 Of The Most Entrepreneurial CMOs In Marketing Today
What makes an Entrepreneurial CMO? It begins with their mindset and method. The Entrepreneurial CMO is one who acknowledges that the best threat typically lies in not taking one. They are beholden neither to the established order nor to disrupting it for disruption’s sake. They are resilient, adapting to vary and driving it, fueled by curiosity, creativity and a capability to check, be taught and join dots in actual time.
For this inaugural Forbes Entrepreneurial CMO listing, we acknowledge 50 advertising chiefs—chosen based mostly on qualitative evaluation and consideration from advertising business leaders and Forbes editors, who reviewed lots of of nominations—whose entrepreneurial spirt and actions are serving to remodel not solely their manufacturers however advertising, commerce and, typically instances, tradition itself.
Some work with century-old icons whereas others are at two-year-old startups. They are constructing manufacturers and companies throughout industries, classes and the globe. Their ranks embody entrepreneurs from B2B, B2C and direct-to-consumer manufacturers, from corporations massive and small, and from sectors experiena time of unfettered acceleration to stifling deceleration and stagnation.
Their entrepreneurial spirit apart, what you’ll see within the mixture is an appreciation for the facility of the three Cs which might be neighborhood, creators and tradition, which they deploy as strategic levers in service of the fourth C that’s commerce. At a time when the most important risk going through most manufacturers is irrelevancy, these entrepreneurs are combating for model relevancy and enterprise development with an unwavering dedication to creating certain their advertising issues extra.
For 105 years, Forbes has championed entrepreneurial capitalism and those that drive it. Today, we invite you to get to know the 50 CMOs acknowledged on this inaugural Forbes Entrepreneurial CMO listing. Join us as we increase a proverbial glass to those advertising risk-takers and impact-makers whose work evokes us to suppose and do in another way because the artwork and science of selling evolves.
-Seth Matlins, managing director, Forbes CMO Network
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Wheels Up
Lee Applbaum
Position: CMO
Company: Wheels Up
Because Applbaum brings the mindset of a client marketer to the world of personal aviation. The former CMO of David’s Bridal, RadioShack, Bacardi and medical marijuana firm Surterra Wellness, Applbaum has piloted pop-ups at occasions such because the Masters, Art Basel and the Super Bowl, and partnerships with American Express and Porsche, amongst different manufacturers. By rising and diversifying the corporate’s prospects and pilots, he’s sought to make sure Wheels Up does for flying what Uber and Airbnb did for ride- and home-sharing.
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Cameo
Emily Boschwitz
Position: SVP Marketing
Company: Cameo
Because constructing a model that evokes folks to speak, have a good time and provides context to cultural moments in another way than earlier than means advertising in another way than earlier than. Boschwitz embraces variations, from harnessing the facility of her personal dyslexia to treating Cameo prospects like companions in the case of thought creation and expertise identification. By engineering Cameo’s product-market match on the fly, she has remodeled the platform from being a website the place celebrities promote personalised movies to followers, to at least one the place customers capitalize on moments to construct relationships.
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NTWRK
Jason Brown
Position: CMO
Company: NTWRK
Because he’s utilizing live-streaming to drive commerce—one thing few manufacturers have executed efficiently within the U.S. When it involves partaking with NTWRK’s various and rising world neighborhood of followers, artists and types, Brown takes an entrepreneurial-minded method to listening, testing and studying, which inform how this curator-brand and firm identifies, productizes and markets partnerships with creators reminiscent of Takashi Murakami, Faze Clan, Ben Baller, Lebron James and Billie Eilish.
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goop
Noora Raj Brown
Position: SVP of Communications and Brand Marketing
Company: goop
Because she’s advertising like she’s at a startup, testing and bringing concepts and merchandise to life throughout a number of platforms, from pop-ups to podcasts to long-form programming. Brown’s entrepreneurial method to advertising hasn’t simply expanded goop’s model, however by urging her group to deal with service-focused campaigns, she’s serving to destigmatize girls’s sexual pleasure, and has led the model’s advertising push for sexual and reproductive freedom, forging a partnership with Planned Parenthood and making a “Hands Off My Vagina” candle, constructing on a much-talked about candle predecessor. With a branded actuality present on Netflix, Sex, Love & goop, the model appears to be like to develop into a catalyst in sparking new conversations about gender, intercourse and emotional intimacy.
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Two Dudes Photo
Matt Carrington
Position: CMO
Company: Athletic Greens
Because he markets this fast-growing DTC model with a POV that pushing daring model messages, empowering creators to be true influencers, and listening relentlessly to your viewers is the one method a model can keep related and drive differentiation in as we speak’s panorama. Whether it’s an AG branded pop-up at Art Basel, or partnering with loyal model followers like Dr. Andrew Huberman, the creator and host of the Huberman Lab podcast, Matt and his group, reject the established order in search of what is going to drive the enterprise subsequent.
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Coursera
Kim Caldbeck
Position: CMO
Company: Coursera
Because as rising tuition prices have turned faculty into an more and more unaffordable luxurious, Caldbeck’s work has ensured high quality training is universally accessible. Coursera’s learner-acquisition mannequin—powered by free high quality content material, world partnerships, website positioning experience, word-of-mouth referrals, PR and a worthwhile internet affiliate marketing channel—has helped the model obtain exponential development in simply three years. Amid the pandemic, she and her group offered universities and governments world wide with free entry to Coursera’s catalog, permitting tens of hundreds of thousands of scholars and unemployed staff to continue learning.
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Crocs
Heidi Cooley
Position: SVP & CMO
Company: Crocs
Because Cooley’s entrepreneurial mindset has led the model to experiment with, amongst different issues, platforms and companions, rising applied sciences together with augmented actuality, NFTs and model integrations within video games like Minecraft and NBA2K. She’s helped the 20 year-old clog-maker suppose in another way about its future, main advertising that embraces relatively than shies from its polarizing status to drive cultural relevance and, in flip, commerce via dozens of collaborations with celebrities and types as various as Bad Bunny, Justin Bieber, Vera Bradley and KFC. Read extra about Cooley and the way her entrepreneurial method to advertising helps remodel the Crocs model.
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TopGolf Entertainment Group
Geoff Cottrill
Position: CMO
Company: Topgolf Entertainment Group
Because he’s pondering in another way about the right way to construct a model and enterprise, and the right way to remodel the sport of golf, making use of classes discovered as a top-marketer at corporations reminiscent of Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Nike. Since becoming a member of TopGolf final 12 months, Cottrill has reorganized the advertising group whereas additionally showcasing the know-how and buyer choices that set aside the corporate and its 75 venues. In constructing the its identification and diversifying its buyer base, he’s establishing non-traditional partnerships with manufacturers like Malbon and StockX, and this 12 months increasing into China and Scotland.
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New Balance
Chris Davis
Position: CMO & SVP of Merchandising
Company: New Balance
Because Davis’ purpose for New Balance is to make it the third-largest model in its business—by advertising, in his phrases, like a “116-year-old startup.” That means making a tradition of calculated threat excellence, utilizing 30% of the model’s demand-creation {dollars} to check techniques from different industries, spending one other 20% of its price range on experimental initiatives with “a excessive likelihood of failure.” So far, it’s pushed materials will increase on the underside line over 5 years. In a land of giants, and in 132-plus nations, this challenger model stands tall.
Clinique
Carolyn Dawkins
Position: Global CMO and SVP Analytics
Company: Clinique
Because she is aware of defending an iconic model requires creating change, not ready for it. She’s deployed this entrepreneurial mindset to speed up improvements throughout product, digital content material, experiences and e-commerce as she drives the model’s mission to “be of service to all pores and skin.” Clinique was one of many first magnificence manufacturers to launch an NFT, leverage TikTookay (with its #ZitHappens marketing campaign) and react to speedy shifts in client behaviors with social-first responses.
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National Football League
Tim Ellis
Position: CMO & EVP
Company: National Football League
Because for one of many few remaining “mass market” properties, Tim and his group are modernizing a model and ushering in a brand new technology of followers by advertising on to traditionally underrepresented communities. Through racial justice, LGBTQ+ and psychological well being applications, he’s serving to join followers previous and new to the people contained in the helmets, and is rewriting the standard sports activities advertising playbook for others as he goes.
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Headspace Health
Christine Hsu Evans
Position: Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer
Company: Headspace Health
Because there isn’t any advertising playbook for destigmatizing psychological well being and advertising it to the lots. The merger of teletherapy startup Ginger and mindfulness app Headspace required Evans to mix the manufacturers for each enterprise and particular person markets in ways in which add “cultural relevance and resonance.” She’s pondering in another way about how the mixed providing, now valued at over $3 billion, goes to market, creating Headspace’s first Super Bowl advert starring John Legend.
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F-J
Liquid Death
Greg Fass
Position: VP/Head of Marketing
Company: Liquid Death
Because his advertising subverts water class conventions with one thing nearer to canned dying steel. Instead of asking model ambassador Tony Hawk for social media posts, Fass and his group requested for his blood and used it to color and market a restricted collection of skateboards, main the model to development on Twitter for per week. They adopted that up by recruiting adult-film stars for an SFW name to say no to plastics. Without massive budgets or conventional promoting, he’s constructing a model, creating and co-opting cultural traits, occasions and information to maximise attain—advertising a basic supply of life, water, as dying.
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Encantos
Julie Fleischer
Position: Chief Growth Officer
Company: Encantos
Because reinventing how two billion youngsters be taught, and creators world wide construct, personal and monetize their content material, means launching this “story-teaching platform” with minimal viable merchandise and communities, and making a model able to evolving because the market does. To construct a storytelling platform on which children see characters who appear like them, she’s gone to market with two separate approaches, utilizing conventional and non-traditional paid, owned and earned media to drive cost-efficient attain, efficiency media to drive downloads and trial, whereas additionally constructing a community of creators who use their platforms to construct consciousness, trial, engagement and advocacy effectively.
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Salesforce
Sarah Franklin
Position: President and CMO
Company: Salesforce
Because over the previous 12 months, she’s needed to reimagine and remodel how Salesforce goes to market. Despite being a B2B cloud behemoth, Franklin and her advertising group are taking an entrepreneurial method to driving model and enterprise development, embracing a hear, be taught and apply method to creating advertising applications that encourage dialog, neighborhood, co-creation and open thought alternate. It appears to be working as Salesforce has seen its model valuation enhance almost 40% over the previous 12 months.
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Adidas
Vicky Free
Position: Head of Global Marketing
Company: Adidas
Because by pondering and doing in another way she has led the 75-year-old model into the Web3 period and additional expanded Adidas’ method to variety in world advertising. Under Free’s entrepreneurially-minded advertising management, Adidas has additionally been an early mover within the metaverse with NFTs and a pilot inside crypto-enabled platform The Sandbox. In the previous 12 months, she’s built-in the corporate’s advertising underneath a single group, launched an inclusive new bra assortment celebrating various physique sorts and dedicated to investing extra in girls and LGBTQ+ athletes world wide with Adidas’ “Impossible Is Nothing” marketing campaign.
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Drone Racing League
Anne Marie Gianutsos
Position: CMO
Company: Drone Racing League
Because bringing a distinct segment sport into the mainstream has required a really totally different advertising flight sample. Gianutsos has helped determine what she defines because the “tech-setters”—a gaggle of 800 million folks ages 16 to 34 at intersection of gaming, sports activities, tech and leisure. Working throughout DRL’s tech, advertising and design groups, Gianutsos has created new methods for drone pilots and followers to expertise a brand new form of competitors. Real-life occasions, expanded broadcast and social partnerships and STEM curriculum developed with tech leaders like Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak have all helped DRL quadruple its world fanbase in a 12 months to 200 million. The momentum has led to new crypto, 5G and AI partnerships with sponsors together with Algorand, T-Mobile, Draftkings and the U.S. Air Force.
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Cadillac
Melissa Grady Dias
Position: Global CMO
Company: Cadillac
Because there aren’t many 120-year-old manufacturers nonetheless standing, and even fewer which have needed to reinvent themselves twice in lower than 10 years, a problem for which there’s neither roadmap nor precedent. As Cadillac strives to go all-electric by the tip of the last decade, her advertising is opening minds to what the legacy model stands for, explaining the electrical car transition to nonetheless unsure shoppers and differentiating the model in a market that now consists of electric-native manufacturers.
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Whalar
Jamie Gutfreund
Position: Global CMO
Company: Whalar
Because her advertising helps change how others market, as her work at this creator-marketing company helps manufacturers like Google, Amazon and Spotify supply content material and concepts immediately from the varied voices and communities they wish to attain. At a time when many legacy companies are struggling to achieve, recruit and retain youthful shoppers and staff, Gutfreund and her group are paving the best way for a brand new mannequin of content material creation, profession constructing and cookie free media, and proving “Everything is Better with Creators.”
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Forbes
Natalie Guzman
Position: Co-President & CMO
Company: Savage x Fenty
Because when your founder is Rihanna, a world icon who stays Savage x Fenty’s CEO and artistic catalyst, the eyes of the world are on you, watching to see in the event you’ll fall or fail. These are lower than ideally suited circumstances for a marketer to really feel they’ve the permission to take entrepreneurial dangers, however Guzman takes them routinely on behalf of a model that was actually and figuratively designed to disrupt the established order and a quickly scaling, more and more worldwide neighborhood of individuals “who’ve been marginalized, ignored and underrepresented for too lengthy.” Natalie’s story is a wealthy one. Read extra in our function right here.
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Ipsy
Jenna Habayeb
Position: Chief Brand Officer
Company: Ipsy/BFA
Because she’s advertising on the intersection of magnificence and know-how, marrying machine studying and neighborhood constructing—investing virtually $45 million in Black and LatinX owned magnificence manufacturers—to drive this direct-to-consumer magnificence model’s outcomes. By pondering and doing in another way, she and her group grew to become the third largest magnificence model on TikTookay and succeeded in driving year-over-year development on Instagram at a time when many magnificence manufacturers declined.
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McDonald’s
Tariq Hassan
Position: Chief Marketing & Digital Officer, U.S.
Company: McDonald’s
Because Hassan is overhauling how the enduring model thinks about buyer expertise, incorporating new and totally different advertising approaches. The former marketer at PetCo, Bank of America and HP helps rethink and remodel McDonald’s loyalty program and, in lower than a 12 months, has pushed over 21 million folks to affix it. He’s additionally embracing new applied sciences and platforms to have interaction audiences, launching McDonald’s first NFT—celebrating cult favourite the McRib—and tapping into TikTookay to carry audience-driven “Menu Hacks” to life.
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Hobley
Melissa Hobley
Position: Global CMO
Company: OK Cupid
Because she reversed years of brand name decline by taking dangers and pondering in another way about “what issues” in the case of matching. Hobley’s led Ok Cupid to be the one relationship app that encourages customers to carry their social and political opinions to the fore. Her inclusive advertising technique has gone the place few different manufacturers have dared to go, and has led to the creation of a pro-choice filter and profile badge, conversations with people who determine as non-binary, pansexual and different identifies and relationship constructs, and a “DTF” initiative. Hobley and her group embrace no matter helps their viewers discover what and who they’re on the lookout for. The model’s downloads, share of voice and income development counsel she’s making the matching occur.
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National Basketball Association
Kate Jhaveri
Position: EVP and CMO
Company: National Basketball Association
Because regardless of the league’s world footprint and cultural significance, Jhaveri markets with a “scrappy mindset.” She and her group are utilizing the NBA’s seventy fifth anniversary to usher in new audiences. Looking to her personal previous at Twitch, Twitter and Meta informs how she drives the league’s use of tech improvements to construct fan relationships, main the NBA to develop into a pacesetter in experimenting with and monetizing new applied sciences like NFTs and in next-gen collaborations throughout the metaverse.
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Okay-O
Crypto.com
Steve Kalifowitz
Position: CMO
Company: Crypto.com
Because, when your model defines each an organization and a brand new class, the duty to distinguish the previous whereas serving the latter is advanced. Driving consciousness, understanding and belief all of sudden is difficult, and requires pondering massive, small and quick. Building a advertising group from scratch, Steve’s group is utilizing previous playbooks to construct one thing new, launching unique partnerships with 15 of the world’s most influential sports activities and leisure organizations.
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AT&T
Kellyn Smith Kenny
Position: Chief Marketing & Growth Officer
Company: AT&T
Because she has helped redirect and redefine the AT&T model, remodeling the telecom large because it readies to spin off WarnerMedia into a brand new firm merged with Discovery. She’s additionally shifted AT&T’s focus again to its core enterprise, advertising its 5G and fiber web capabilities. (The transformation has helped the corporate add 3.2 million prospects in 2021—the corporate’s highest annual development in a decade.) Smith Kenny additionally took a threat resurrecting AT&T’s “Lily” character for the Super Bowl—a star-studded advert that includes Milana Vayntrub, Zooey Deschanel, Rosario Dawson and Kumail Nanjiani.
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Canva
Zach Kitschke
Position: Global CMO
Company: Canva
Because hyper-growth has its personal advertising challenges, and since empowering the world to design requires reinventing the established order on the every day. With 80 million customers globally—however “just one% of the best way there”—Zach’s constructed a advertising engine to feed word-of-mouth; an in-house inventive company to make sure the tempo of marketing campaign growth sustains the corporate’s torrid development, and a neighborhood that brings Canva’s merchandise to the folks and encourages the folks to carry the merchandise ahead from there.
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Skullcandy
Jessica Klodniki
Position: CMO
Company: Skullcandy
Because being a challenger model has led Klodniki to instill a mindset of the “relentless underdog” into Skullcandy’s advertising group—which additionally occurs to be the title of a brand new marketing campaign. She’s broadening Skullcandy’s enchantment and clarifying its identification to distinguish the model from Apple and its Beats subsidiary, taking dangers via quirky headphones collaborations. So far this 12 months, she’s led advertising round a limited-edition set of headphones with Budweiser, one other ear bud line with the Nineteen Nineties sunglass model Pit Viper and a 4/20-themed pair co-branded with Doritos. Other efforts embody new partnerships with athletes and organizations targeted on psychological well being and environmental sustainability.
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Medly
Chirag Kulkarni
Position: Cofounder and CMO
Company: Medly
Because he’s redefining what a pharmacy is, enhancing affected person outcomes by partnering with each stakeholder in a affected person’s well being journey. Doctors, insurers, hospitals, well being programs and drug producers would all develop into model evangelists for this digital pharmacy—a cornerstone of the entrepreneurial technique that Kulkarni crafted to show limited-resource constraints into model and enterprise alternative. Entrepreneurial pondering can also be driving how he is constructing a advertising group that companions throughout the corporate to “kickstart the flywheel impact and drive all indicators.”
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Seven Bucks Companies/Teremana Tequila
Maya Lasry
Position: CMO
Company: Seven Bucks Companies/Teremana Tequila
Because she’s the driving advertising pressure behind the quickest rising spirits model in historical past. Because she’s subverting how celeb expertise—on this case, Dwayne Johnson—is activated and deployed, and as a substitute of constructing the Teremana model as simply one other celebrity-backed Tequila, she’s taking a human-centric, fan-driven advertising method, evolving shoppers’ natural content material creation from a social-media tactic to finally branding Teremana because the “People’s Tequila.” That’s no small feat when the the Rock is the face of it.
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OLIPOP
David Lester
Position: Cofounder & President
Company: OLIPOP
Because as a substitute of selling Olipop as a pure model and a class disruptor—each of which this soda model is—Lester determined to lean into and never away from the class’s status-quo conventions, a advertising threat some buyers advised them can be “a dying sentence.” Sometimes being a challenger model finds you difficult not only a who—legacy manufacturers—however a what, on this case the notion that soda can’t be wholesome. Olipop not too long ago raised a $30 million Series B funding spherical from buyers together with singer Camila Cabello and former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, and is now doubling down on constructing the brand new and totally different on a advertising basis of nostalgia and the emotional connections it creates.
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Roblox
Barbara Messing
Position: Chief Marketing & People Experience Officer
Company: Roblox
Because she’s on the forefront of selling the metaverse to each shoppers and types proper because the class comes into the highlight. Though Roblox was based on the daybreak of social media, Messing—the previous Walmart CMO—helps the model quickly take the lead as some of the widespread digital worlds. Under her entrepreneurial advertising management, Roblox is discovering methods to remain forward of traits, serving to big-name musicians discover new methods of performing and main manufacturers create and experiment with their first forays into digital worlds. More than 50 million customers from 180 nations are actually on Roblox day by day—a rise of 33% from only a 12 months in the past—attracting a large community of companions starting from The Grammys and Gucci to Nike and the NFL.
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Snap
Kenny Mitchell
Position: CMO
Company: Snap Inc
Because Mitchell’s totally different advertising method has made the social media large a pacesetter in augmented actuality, e-commerce and community-driven content material. Last fall, Snap’s “Open Your Snapchat” marketing campaign featured out-of-home adverts that unlocked secret messages in varied cities, whereas an Oscars marketing campaign celebrated the deaf neighborhood forward of CODA massive wins. In addition to specializing in creators and Gen-Z shoppers, Snap partnered with WPP final 12 months on an augmented actuality lab with a deal with evolving e-commerce.
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P-T
Balenciaga
Ludivine Pont
Position: CMO
Company: Balenciaga
Because Balenciaga’s advertising is redefining the model, luxurious and luxurious advertising itself. In a world the place capturing attentions after which changing them is tougher than ever earlier than, Pont and her group are doing each. She deleted the model’s Instagram previous to create a retail window current, utilizing influencers in another way and brilliantly, and is now serving to meme advertising and super-chunky soles to have cultural moments of their very own. Marketing via non-traditional partnerships with the likes of Adidas, Gucci and YZY, she’s created repeated and built-in moments of cultural resonance, every constructing on the following and broadening the model’s relevance.
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Color Of Change
Kelle Rozell
Position: Chief Marketing & Storytelling Officer
Company: Color Of Change
Because by definition her job at this non-profit, civil rights advocacy group is about disrupting the status-quo. She’s creating new racial-justice narratives and options throughout the movie, tv, music and style industries, and considers clever naiveté an engine for innovation. Rozell created The Black Dollar Index to assist shoppers maintain companies accountable for his or her commitments to Black America, scoring them based mostly on information transparency, only one step in her work guaranteeing decision-makers act to create enduring systemic change for Black communities nationwide.
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Disney
Shannon Ryan
Position: President Of Content Marketing
Company: Hulu/Disney General Entertainment
Because with a mixture of “scrappiness and innovation,” Ryan has contemporized the Hulu model and pushed viewers development. Across Disney and its subsidiaries, she’s re-introduced experiential advertising as a strategic lever for capturing consideration and driving viewership: For Only Murders In The Building, Hulu despatched tie-died guys roaming New York spreading clues concerning the hit present. For Black-ish, the broadcaster collaborated on an artwork exhibition with the African American History & Culture Museum and Howard University’s Afro-Blue A Capella group. For The Wonder Years, she helped create a retro expertise inviting the viewers in, and for The Kardashians, she created a pop-up that recreates the well-known household’s iconic rooms.
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Klarna
David Sandström
Position: CMO
Company: Klarna
Because Sandström’s entrepreneurial method to Klarna’s advertising has remodeled how folks store—and particularly how they pay. While increasing the “purchase now, pay later” firm from B2B to DTC, Sandström led the creation of Klarna’s first Super Bowl advert in 2021 starring Maya Rudolph. To assist the Swedish firm’s providers go extra mainstream, Sandström spearheaded partnerships with main celebrities like A$AP Rocky, Lady Gaga and Snoop Dogg in addition to groups just like the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Angel City Football Club. He’s additionally led advertising for brand spanking new merchandise for retailers reminiscent of immediately stoppable content material and digital buying and now greater than 140 million folks use Klarna.
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AgileBits/1PW
Raj Sarkar
Position: CMO
Company: 1Password/AgileBits
Because Sarkar thinks enterprise tech must be extra “human.” He’s used humor to market one thing critical—the corporate’s first main advert marketing campaign options Ryan Reynolds and his Welsh soccer group, Wrexham A.F.C.—and has taken a product-led development technique as a substitute of the everyday sales-led method. Since becoming a member of 1Password as its first CMO lower than a 12 months in the past, he’s utilized classes discovered at Google, Atlassian and Cisco all of the whereas making “outbound fury” his mantra.
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Volkswagen
Jochen Sengpiehl
Position: CMO
Company: Volkswagen AG
Because driving the way forward for electrical automobiles has led Sengpiehl to suppose in another way and overhaul every part underneath the hood of Volkswagen’s advertising division. Describing VW’s new period of electrification because the “third epic interval” of the model, Sengpiehl’s entrepreneurial mindset has led him to make massive bets in inexperienced automobiles, which he may account for 60% and 80% of its media and advertising budgets over the following a number of years. (VW’s flagship ID collection has develop into one of many high promoting EVs in Europe.) He’s additionally helped the corporate evolve from a dealer-driven advertising to a extra holistic method via a brand new data-driven on-line platform.
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GoFundMe
Musa Tariq
Position: CMO
Company: GoFundMe
Because he sees advertising like constructing product, prototype, take a look at, be taught and optimize. On a mission to construct a model that’s “the world’s most useful place,” he sees the chance of failure as de minimus in the event you be taught from it. He’s remodeling the model right into a cultural mainstay, destigmatizing the worry of asking for assist, and championing those that are prepared to offer. Tariq sees the platform’s product as inextricably linked to its advertising, and insists that the model market—as with their first metropolis marketing campaign “New York State of Kind”—with the identical “empathy” they’re making an attempt to create extra of on this planet. Read extra on Musa’s entrepreneurial method to advertising right here.
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Artsy
Everette Taylor
Position: CMO
Company: Artsy
Because Taylor’s mission to disrupt, democratize and diversify the artwork business via extra clear pricing and extra entry to various artists is altering how folks purchase artwork and the way artists promote it. He thinks and markets just like the entrepreneur he’s been and this mindset and app0roach to advertising has led Artsy to experiment with NFTs, present extra clear information about markets and pricing to patrons and sellers, increase hundreds of thousands of {dollars} for charitable causes to deal with mass incarceration, helped women be taught to code and constructed help for Ukraine in the course of the Russian invasion. Looks prefer it’s working as Artsy’s gross sales grew 150% in the course of the pandemic whereas the platform’s most in-demand artists are actually 65% Black, 75% folks of coloration and 45% girls.
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EA
David Tinson
Position: CMO
Company: Electronic Arts
Because he’s put “community-driven advertising” on the forefront of EA’s advertising technique. Along with creating the Creator Network—a community of content material creators that features greater than 2,000 screenshot artists, filmmakers, writers, in-game creators and others throughout almost 100 nations. Tinson has created EA’s first DTC advertising channel to have interaction greater than 540 million energetic customers throughout varied video games, e-sports leagues, occasions and different content material. He’s additionally sought to deal with vital and delicate subjects like model security via an “Internet Matters” marketing campaign to advertise parenting controls in the course of the holidays in addition to DE&I points via a brand new Marketing DE&I Council.
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Robert Triefus
Position: EVP & Corporate CMO
Company: Gucci
Because he’s eschewed historic notions of luxurious’s exclusivity, and is utilizing inclusivity to construct model fairness, engagement and impression inviting new audiences into the model. He sees Gucci not simply as an icon however as an “always-on writer,” utilizing storytelling throughout codecs each to maintain and refresh model picture and identification. A pioneer of utilizing AR to carry the in-store expertise to those that aren’t, and leaning into partnerships as various as The North Face, sister-brand Balenciaga and Okay-Pop star Kai, he’s ensuring Gucci is all the time within the cultural dialog.
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Peloton
Dara Treseder
Position: SVP, Global Head of Marketing, Communications & Membership
Company: Peloton
Because few billion-dollar manufacturers have needed to market with extra of a cultural call-and- response than Treseder and Peloton, challenged to construct a model and enterprise within the face of a persistently destructive information cycle, and wild macro-economic rollercoaster. Within 48 hours of Peloton’s bike being was misused on HBO’s And Just Like That, Treseder and her group have been in market with a inventive response that went viral, first for a way good it was after which for causes having nothing to do with them, and she or he was pressured to pivot once more. Because whereas there’s no playbook for what she has needed to market with and round, she’s creating one for manufacturers that liv both cultural zeitgeist—whether or not they imply to or not.
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U-Z
Alo Yoga
Angelic Vendette
Position: VP & Global Head of Marketing
Company: Alo Yoga
Because Vendette is constructing a differentiated model and direct-to-consumer enterprise in a crowded wellness market. Her entrepreneurial mindset and method leads Vendette to pondering content material must be well timed and proper, not good, and so concepts born within the morning may be reside and on-line by the afternoon. Her group then analyzes, optimizes and adjusts in actual time, so what comes subsequent works tougher than what got here earlier than. She’s utilizing the metaverse to create the Alo Sanctuary: a meditation and yoga studio inside Roblox the place customers can interact with the model and its merchandise.
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Spectrum Labs
Tiffany Xingyu Wang
Position: Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer
Company: Spectrum Labs
Because in an business constructed to mitigate company threat, Wang markets “belief and security” as a development technique, an entire inversion of the norm. On a mission to make the web a safer and extra useful place for all, she’s pondering and doing in another way, constructing coalitions and consensus throughout business to do it. Her work to determine and popularize new digital sustainability fashions for a Web 3.0 world has helped shift the narrative round metaverse from an over-hyped fad to a strategic asset.
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UPS
Kevin Warren
Position: EVP & CMO
Company: UPS
Because coming right into a 115-year-old firm as an business outsider, Kevin needed to do issues in another way to remodel the model. He noticed that worthwhile development may come by exhibiting up in another way and for various audiences—small enterprise homeowners, communities of coloration and the corporate’s drivers, particularly, and has deployed each out there asset to modernize the united statesbrand, advertising that’s contributed to a fabric share turnaround with small companies.
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Clubhouse
Maya Watson
Position: Head of Global Marketing
Company: Clubhouse
Because Watson helped model and market the social audio platform from scratch whereas creating a wholly new class—one thing that Twitter and Facebook, amongst others, have tried to duplicate to various levels of success. Although Clubhouse has struggled extra not too long ago to keep up momentum, she’s assist scale past the app’s invite-only mannequin—which solely opened to the general public in July 2021 and grew to comprise greater than 700,000 chat rooms. To deal with the inflow of customers, Watson set her sights on hiring various expertise that’s garnered partnerships with the NFL, TED, Netflix and extra.
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Square
Lauren Weinberg
Position: Global Head of Marketing and Communications
Company: Square
Because Weinberg’s entrepreneurial pondering and method have helped remodel Square from being a funds platform to a world model that solves ache factors for small companies, all whereas main a advertising group that created greater than a dozen consciousness campaigns to assist corporations undertake in-store and e-commerce choices. Along with overseeing U.S. operations, she’s additionally main advertising efforts to increase in Asia and Europe—taking a startup method to the model’s enlargement into new nations after changing into a pacesetter again dwelling.
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Sephora
Deborah Yeh
Position: EVP, Global Chief Purpose Officer & Chief Marketing Officer, NA
Company: Sephora
Because few entrepreneurs have activated a extra full-throated allyship with BIPOC communities than Yeh, regardless of what many manufacturers have appeared to understand because the dangers of doing so at such scale. Under Yeh, Sephora has develop into one of many first and largest manufacturers to affix the 15% Pledge, via which the corporate has devoted 15% of its shelf area to showcasing Black-owned manufacturers. She’s additionally spearheaded the Racial Bias in Retail Study, helped revise Google search outcomes for the “Black magnificence” search question and created behavioral tips guaranteeing the model’s social channels are welcoming and inclusive. Yeh has turned a model dedication to “champion all magnificence fearlessly” into advertising, utilizing Sephora’s platforms and world omni-retail footprint as catalysts for change.
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