Marketing Vanguard

In the 15 years that Rebecca Minkoff has been building the Rebecca Minkoff fashion brand, she has worn many hats, including acting CMO until such a time where she decided it was critical to hire a CMO to lead her brand, her name, her products that she built by hand, literally. Find out what her tipping point was and what this busy mom of three is up to now with The Female Founder Collective, a Sup...

What better role than Chief Brand Officer for someone who's "in love with brands?" Brad Hiranaga and I sat down in Cannes to talk about what he’s up to at General Mills in his role as North America Chief Brand Officer and where his love for brands has taken on a higher meaning. In this episode, we dive into the difference between the CMO and CBO role, connecting purpose and culture across 30,000 e...

One of the first things that attracted Kelly Campbell to the role of Hulu CMO was the opportunity to drive growth. And that’s precisely what she’s done with subscribers up 60% within the past 18 months, going from 17 million to more than 28 million. Kelly first started her career in finance before spending 12 years at Google (one of which was in Japan), sharpening her leadership skills and falling...

As Tim Ellis, CMO of the NFL, and I were sitting in Cannes just recently, we turned the mic on and embarked on an incredible journey together. This podcast really should be two separate ones but they come from one fantastical person, Tim. The first would be a podcast about a curious and adventurous young man who went from learning how to fence in Paris, to working in a Kibbutz in Israel milking co...

Marisa Thalberg, Global Chief Brand Officer of Taco Bell, knows what’s like to juggle career and life better than most. As a first-time mom and an accomplished marketing leader of multiple brands, from Luxury to QSR, Marisa also balanced a full-time second career, Executive Moms. Marisa founded Executive Moms in 2000 to help debunk the negative mythology that still exists in popular culture about...

Introducing a whole new mini-series as part of CMO Moves....Duos! After I released my 70th episode, I thought to myself, “hmmm, I have a lot of incredible new guests coming up, but I also miss hearing from the first 70!” As you know, time flies and my prior guests have been super busy doing all kinds of new and wonderful things. Since I already interviewed them, I thought we'd turn the tables for...

Lara Hood Balazs, CMO of Intuit, has worked for several of the world’s top companies: Amazon, Visa, Nike, Gap Inc., General Mills and now, Intuit. What does this serial B2C marketing leader take with her in every role? Scrappiness. Something she learned when she first graduated with honors and couldn’t find a job. Instead of being dismayed, Lara designed her own job where she pushed herself to try...

Tariq Hassan, CMO of Petco, is a true “champion” of transformation in every sense of the word. Not only is he championing change within Petco in the name of pet parents everywhere, but he’s also fueling his organization with new thinking and lifting up diverse talent to be part of ongoing solutions. In fact, he was just celebrated at Adweek’s Champions’ event, as part of our inaugural class of tho...

Janey Whiteside, Chief Customer Officer of Walmart, is modeling a new role to evolve the customer experience of Walmart, bringing together what once used to be disparate functions together under one roof.  In Janey’s role, she is responsible for four critical pillars: customer, product, marketing, and Jet. Tune in to hear her deep dive into all four! Also, don’t miss her exceptional career advice...

With a string of exciting career moves, from launching his own boutique to Gucci to Barneys, CMO of Sotheby's International Realty Kevin Thompson has very quickly become a mastermind at luxury brand reinvention. This global luxury real estate brand associated with the iconic 275-year-old Sotheby's auction house, went from $4 billion in sales in 2014 to $112 billion in 2018, serving 72 countries wi...

Digital and Diversity. These are the top two trends of the 21st century according to media-tech maven Steven Wolfe Pereira. And he's building direct-to-consumer brands with exactly that at the heart of it all with his new venture Encantos. After a fascinating career in tech, telecommunications, finance and media, Steven is focused on building direct-to-consumer brands that truly represent the mode...

Valerie Hernando Presse, Global CMO of Danone, has been on a mission for the past 18 months with Danone’s 2000 global marketers to reimagine marketing.  As the first Global CMO of Danone, Valerie’s prior role in Strategy and Corporate Affairs (along with some candid family feedback) inspired her to take this course to better connect marketing, business and purpose by putting people in the center o...

Simon Lowden, President of Global Foods at PepsiCo, loves his new role in building the PepsiCo foods portfolio from indulgence through to nutritional. After 22 years and a number of roles at PepsiCo, including his latest role as CMO, Simon’s move to President is, by design, to keep him from getting too comfortable with what he knows and continuously pushing him into new territory. Now, his mission...

"I have a really weird background for a marketer..." As I sat with Ty Shay, hearing about his career path—from Wall Street to P&G to launching Hotwire.com to now, Global CMO for one of the largest Cybersecurity companies in the world—I was reminded that sometimes taking the not-so-obvious path gets you to exactly where you should be. On this episode, Ty and I discuss the challenge of balancing the...

Gail Tifford, Chief Brand Officer of WW International, formerly known as Weight Watchers, has had a very exciting and unusual career! From lawyer to assistant brand manager on Q-Tips (her parents “loved” that moved) to leading global brands at Unilever and now Chief Brand Officer of WW – but wait, there's more. While at Unilever, Gail co-founded #SeeHer with Shelley Zalis, CEO & Founder of The Fem...

Heidi Browning, CMO of the National Hockey League (NHL), first inspired me to launch the Gen ZEO series after talking with her last year on all the cool ways she was enrolling Gen Z into her brand formula, taking the NHL from the first 100 years into the next 100 years. A lot has happened since that pivotal conversation, including today’s announcement that the NHL officially launched their Power P...

Emily Culp, President of Cover FX Skincare knows what it takes to move from CMO to President. From starting her career on the agency side with Digitas and Ogilvy, to leading digital and omni-channel marketing for brands like Clinique, Unilever and Rebecca Minkoff to the CMO of Keds, Emily is not one to shy away from stretch-opportunities. On this episode, Emily talks about the importance of findin...

When Seth Freeman, CMO of Buffalo Wild Wings, reached out and asked if I wanted to talk Sports, Bars, Wings and Beer, I mean come on, how could I resist? His ferocious excitement around how he was rejuvenating the Buffalo Wild Wings brand to become the Great American Sports Bar had me completely intrigued. The former Wall Street darling brand seemed to have lost its way and Seth is on a mission to...

“There's something very special about working in a category that has so much impact on people's lives.” Meredith Verdone, CMO of Bank of America, unequivocally loves her job. And with 20 years of experience with the bank, Meredith has not only seen growth in her role – now taking on all brand, media and creative strategy for the enterprise – but also in the way the brand connects with consumers on...

Debra Bass, Global CMO and US President of Nuvo is not only an authority on village movements, she’s led and been supported by villages of all kinds in her unconventional career. Growing her marketing expertise through AT&T, Procter & Gamble, Bristol Myers Squibb, Panasonic, followed by 15 years at Johnson & Johnson, Debra is now making another unconventional move to lead Nuvo, a radical new techn...

Cynthia Chen, CEO of General Mills China, is on the cutting edge of all things “China fast” and radically different marketing approaches to grow a global brand. In a world where Häagen-Dazs, owned by General Mills in China, is considered a lifestyle brand that earns 2.4B impressions in a single event, and where red pleather pants and dumpling-decorated red hats are co-created with General Mills an...

Maria Menounos is a celebrity, a host, an author, a podcaster, a wrestler and the CEO of a revolutionary new type of network, AfterBuzz TV, which produces more than 150 hours of programming each week and develops the careers of hundreds of new hosts each year which has earned billions of downloads all over the globe. Beyond her success from Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood, The Today Show,...

Today is a fun day. It’s #BacktotheBar day which means that more than 7,000 Bacardi employees across 130 global cities will storm 1000+ bars during a sixteen-hour period. I had the great honor of chatting with John Burke, who is the CMO of Bacardi and also the President of Bacardi Global Brands in preparation for this beloved day. With honor, I share his incredible story of how he is leading the B...

Chris Brandt, CMO of Chipotle, is on a mission to help make Chipotle a lifestyle brand versus just a food brand, which means creating emotional connections with consumers who buy into the brand, not just buy it. In this episode, Chris dives deep into the critical marketing skills required - storytelling, innovation and collaboration - to deliver exciting new ways to engage consumers every day. Chr...

Julian Duncan, CMO of the NFL Jacksonville Jaguars, is one inspirational guy. From the first moment we started talking, I was blown away by his humble and joyous demeanor. This is someone who grew up without many role models for where he is today and managed to play professional football and create his own roadmap to CMO just by being himself, funko pop addiction and all. Tune in to hear more from...