Cmo Moves

If you’re wondering why your good ol’ marketing playbook no longer works, the answer probably lies in the funnel you’re targeting. Turns out, the buyer changed the route.Recorded live at Advertising Week New York, this episode of Marketing Vanguard features Jenny Rooney in conversation with Salesforce CMO Erin Oles to unpack what happens when customer behavior moves faster than the funnel marketers built around it. Erin gets into why traditional attribution assumptions are starting to crack, why marketers need to understand how their brand appears inside LLMs and why AI should be given real problems instead of vague “use cases.”Erin Oles is Chief Marketing Officer at Salesforce.Her path into marketing began in sales, an experience she credits with teaching her how quickly you can tell whether a message actually resonates with a real person. Today, her approach to AI is similarly practical. Rather than treating new technology as something marketers need to master in theory, Erin argues for learning by doing, s

AI gives every marketer access to similar tools. So, how’s that going to help your brand stand out? Live from the Marketing Vanguard stage at Brandweek 2026, Jenny Rooney sits down with MasterCard’s Executive Vice President of Global Brand Strategy and Innovation, Cheryl Guerin, to talk about how brands can differentiate themselves when technology becomes table stakes. Cheryl gets into how MasterCard uses AI to eliminate routine brand work and free its people for higher-order thinking, why Priceless has survived nearly three decades of cultural change, and why real agility sometimes looks like saying no.Cheryl Guerin is Executive Vice President, Global Brand Strategy and Innovation at MasterCard.She has spent nearly 26 years at the company across a wide range of roles, including regional marketing leadership, products and services, P&L responsibility and global credit before returning to the area she describes as her heart: marketing.Over that time, Cheryl has helped evolve the Priceless platform through

Marketers love acquisition. But Doug Zarkin thinks that obsession is helping brands ignore the much more expensive problem sitting underneath it: retention (or the lack of it). Live from the Marketing Vanguard stage at Brandweek 2026, Jenny Rooney sits down with the CMO and author of “Moving Your Brand Out of the Friend Zone” to unpack why being liked is not the same as being loved, why retention deserves the same energy as acquisition and why some of the problems blamed on marketing actually belong to the entire business. Plus, a breakdown of his “Think Human” philosophy and the leadership lesson he has landed on after decades in the business: being effective matters a lot more than being the smartest person in the room. Doug Zarkin is CMO and author of “Moving Your Brand Out of the Friend Zone”.His career has taken him from the agency world into brand leadership across Avon, Victoria’s Secret and Pearle Vision, where he spent more than 11 years leading marketing. This decade-long role gave him the opportuni

The fastest way to shrink marketing’s influence is to treat it like it’s just another department. In this episode of Marketing Vanguard, Jenny Rooney sits down with Kellyn Smith Kenny, Chief Marketing and Growth Officer at AT&T, for a sharp conversation about what the CMO job actually demands.Kellyn argues that marketing should operate as an engine for growth, gets into why leaders are responsible for raising the bar, why conviction without patience can backfire and a foundational mistake marketers risk making with AI. Kellyn Smith Kenny is Chief Marketing and Growth Officer at AT&T. Here, she brings marketing and growth together - a combination reflected in how she thinks about the CMO role itself.Her career has taken her across major brands and very different stages of company growth, including Capital One, Uber, Hilton and AT&T, giving her a broad view of what marketing leadership looks like inside both established organizations and businesses undergoing major change.Her approach is simple: mar

Every industry, marketing included, is battling one affliction: sameness. Live from the Marketing Vanguard stage at Brandweek 2026, Jenny Rooney sits down with Jason Pirock, Former Vice President of Global Brand Marketing at Outrigger Resorts and Hotels, to discuss why differentiation may be one of marketing's most underhyped priorities right now. Jason also challenges the industry’s fixation on ROAS, reveals why CXO titles don’t matter as much as you’d think, and what creator partnerships should really look like. Jason Pirock is the Former Vice President of Global Brand Marketing at Outrigger Resorts and Hotels, with nearly 20 years of experience across retail, commercial real estate, and hospitality. His career has spanned work across Hyatt, Aparium Hotel Group, Springboard, and Outrigger.Across those roles, Jason has consistently gravitated toward building and rebuilding, from rethinking an early business at Target to putting content creators into local markets before “creator” became standard marketin

The old sponsorship model was simple: buy the assets, activate around the big moment, and move on.Jessica Goldstein thinks that model is already outdated.Live from the Marketing Vanguard stage at Brandweek 2026, Jenny Rooney sits down with Jessica, the NWSL’s Vice President of Partnerships and Marketing Solutions, to unpack why modern sports partnerships need to behave more like platforms, built around athlete storytelling, fan behavior, consistent presence, and a role the audience can actually recognize.Jessica Goldstein is Vice President of Partnerships and Marketing Solutions at the NWSL, where she leads partnership strategy and marketing solutions for the league. Her work here primarily focuses on combining both sides of that experience: helping partners build stronger roles inside the league while using athlete storytelling, cultural crossover, and long-term consistency to grow fandom around women’s soccer.She has spent more than 20 years in sports, beginning at the NBA in production and entertainment be

Audience targeting may have gotten easier, but getting people to truly care has not. Live from the Marketing Vanguard stage at Brandweek 2026, Jenny Rooney sits down with Dan Moriarty, CMO of Chicago Fire FC, to unpack why the marketing pendulum is swinging back toward creative, what makes live sports such a powerful attention engine and why brands should think harder about the emotion behind what they sell.Plus, the inside scoop on why he left the Chicago Bulls for a growth-stage MLS club and the difficult people decisions that have helped reshape his marketing organization.Dan Moriarty is Chief Marketing Officer of Chicago Fire FC, where he leads marketing for Chicago’s Major League Soccer club.Originally from England, Dan began his career agency-side before moving into brand roles at Hyatt. He later spent around eight years with the Chicago Bulls before joining Chicago Fire FC.At the Fire, he has been part of a period of significant investment and change across the club, from its on-field ambitions and dow

Brand or performance? That’s the wrong question for marketers to ask, according to Nick Fairbairn.Live from the Marketing Vanguard stage at Brandweek 2026, Jenny Rooney sits down with Chime’s SVP of Growth to unpack why brand lift and direct-response accountability belong in the same system, why buying an AI tool does not amount to AI transformation and why scrappy creative may do more brand-building work than marketers want to admit.Nick also gets into TV’s messy shift from linear to streaming, executive conversations around brand investment and why creators should perhaps be a part of every channel. Nick Fairbairn is Senior Vice President of Growth at Chime, where he leads a broad growth organization spanning paid media, organic growth, go-to-market, lifecycle, product, engineering and onboarding.His career started in media buying, including television and radio, before he moved into agency entrepreneurship and then brand-side marketing. Along the way, he’s worked at ProFlowers, helped build acquisition at

When every company starts looking like a tech company, a media company and an entertainment company at the same time, brand clarity becomes mission critical. In this episode of Marketing Vanguard, host Jenny Rooney sits down with Grace Kao, CMO of Snap, to talk about what it takes to build a brand people actually understand and want to spend time with. Plus: a breakdown of Snap’s push toward chat, real-world connection and why marketers should be asking the question, “How do we actually add something?” Grace Kao is Chief Marketing Officer of Snap, where she leads marketing across Snapchat and the company’s broader brand portfolio.Her career began almost by accident after she stepped away from graduate school and joined BBDO as an executive assistant on the Apple account. From there, she built a career across agency and brand roles spanning PlayStation, Yahoo, Pandora, Instagram, Spotify, and Snap.Across those chapters, Grace has consistently gravitated toward brands with strong identities, youth audiences, an

CMOs are being asked to do something increasingly absurd: deliver more growth, with less budget, while marketing gets more complex and more expensive.In this episode of Marketing Vanguard, host Jenny Rooney sits down with Jessica Apotheker, CMO of Boston Consulting Group, to unpack what it actually takes to survive and matter in the modern C-suite.Jessica Apotheker is Chief Marketing Officer of Boston Consulting Group, where she leads the BCG brand while continuing to work directly with clients on marketing, digital transformation, and growth. Before joining BCG, Jessica worked in product marketing at L’Oréal. Her approach is grounded in one principle: strategy only matters if it survives execution. Whether she is advising clients or leading BCG’s own marketing agenda, Jessica focuses on measurable impact, stronger capabilities, and making sure marketing earns its place as a growth driver.What You'll Learn:Why granular execution is what turns strategy into actual impactHow to think about marketing through

Mary Yee, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Sony Interactive Entertainment, started her career in accounting, not marketing. And, yet here she is. In this episode of Marketing Vanguard, host Jenny Rooney sits down with Mary to unpack how a career that moved from finance to Clorox to PlayStation to the CEO seat at Tatcha (and back to PlayStation) shaped her view of what great brand building actually requires.Mary Yee is Senior Vice President of Marketing at Sony Interactive Entertainment, where she oversees the PlayStation brand globally across hardware, peripherals, network services, subscriptions, digital retail, and games.Her career began in public accounting before she moved into brand marketing at Clorox. She later joined PlayStation during the PS4 era, helping build the brand through a major period of category growth and digital transformation. In 2021, she became CEO of Tatcha, where she helped expand the luxury skincare brand across channels and into 34 countries before returning to Sony Interactive

What happens when consumers love the idea of your product but freeze when it is time to choose?In this episode of Marketing Vanguard, host Jenny Rooney sits down with Andy Lopez, CMO of Behr Paint, to unpack how Behr is turning consumer friction into brand opportunity. Andy shares why “color paralysis” is one of the biggest pain points in the paint journey, how Behr uses insight to build confidence at the point of decision and why the strongest marketing ideas start by solving something real.Sparks President and Chief Client Officer Melissa Levy also joins Jenny for a mid-episode sidebar discussion on trust, measurement, and the future of experiential marketing. Sponsored by Sparks.Andy Lopez is Chief Marketing Officer of Behr Paint, where he leads an integrated marketing organization spanning brand, product marketing and commercialization. He began his career agency-side, including at Saatchi in Los Angeles working on Toyota, before moving to Behr more than nine years ago.At Behr, Andy has expanded across br

What do agency leaders need right now? According to Ross Martin, maybe “a sanity check and a lobotomy.” Funny, yes. Also not entirely wrong.In this special episode of Marketing Vanguard, host Jenny Rooney spotlights the launch of Adweek’s Agencies Vanguard program with three founding members: Jessica Henrichs, CEO of DonerColle Partners; Ross Martin, President of Known; and Chioma Aduba, President of Droga5. Together, they unpack why agency leadership has become one of the most complex jobs in business, why competitors need spaces for radical honesty, and why the future of agencies cannot be solved in isolation.Jessica Henrichs is the CEO of DonerColle Partners and one of the founding members of Adweek’s Agencies Vanguard program. In this episode, she brings a clear perspective on adaptive leadership, the value of peer support and why agency leaders need to build belief through change rather than pretend they have every answer.Ross Martin is the President of Known and a founding member of Agencies Vanguard. K

Some of the biggest opportunities for marketing leaders exist in industries where marketing has historically had the least influence. In this episode of Marketing Vanguard, host Jenny Rooney sits down with Danielle Wuschke Paige, Chief Marketing and Growth Officer at Nixon Peabody, to explore what it takes to modernize marketing in a complex, relationship-driven industry. Danielle shares how her B2B and agency background prepared her for legal marketing, why trust and content matter more than flashy creative, and how she is evolving the function through stronger business strategy, thought leadership, and AI adoption.Danielle Wuschke Paige is the Chief Marketing and Growth Officer at Nixon Peabody, an Am Law 100 firm with offices across the United States and internationally. She leads the firm’s marketing and business development organization, with responsibility spanning brand strategy, communications, client engagement, strategic pursuits, digital, design, industry marketing, and practice growth.Danielle beg

What’s it going to take to build relevance in a brutal attention economy? In this episode of Marketing Vanguard, host Jennifer Rooney sits down with Jennifer Storms, Chief Marketing Officer of NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, to break it down. Jennifer traces her path from Olympic dreams to sports marketing to PepsiCo to NBCUniversal, sharing how NBCUniversal thinks about brand salience across NBC, Peacock, Bravo and NBC Sports, why the Olympics needed to be rebuilt as a year-round franchise and how Legendary February turned three separate live events into one unified cultural moment.Jennifer Storms is Chief Marketing Officer of NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, where she leads brand strategy, integrated marketing, media and consumer engagement across NBC, Peacock, Bravo and NBC Sports. Her career spans the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, Turner Broadcasting, PepsiCo and NBCUniversal, giving her a rare perspective across sports, media, entertainment and consumer brands. At NBCU

The best journeys have the most unexpected turns. That’s Sam Allen’s story, and he’s sharing it in this episode of Marketing Vanguard. Tune in as host Jenny Rooney welcomes Sam, CEO of Iterable, to explore how AI is reshaping marketing technology, the future of the CMO role, and why strategic focus beats market-wide expansion for high-growth companies navigating unprecedented transformation.Sam Allen is the Chief Executive Officer of Iterable, a leading customer engagement platform transforming how enterprises leverage AI-driven personalization at scale. With nearly three decades of experience in technology, including prominent roles at Salesforce, where he managed a $100 million marketing technology budget and served as COO of the global marketing organization, Sam brings deep expertise in enterprise operations, marketing technology infrastructure, and strategic growth. His perspective on balancing human expertise with AI capabilities makes him a valuable figure in the marketing space, especially for senior

Marketing Vanguard continues live from Cannes as Jenny Rooney hosts a special Adweek House conversation with Mainardo de Nardis, Global President and COO of Edelman and Rani Al Hajji, Chief Growth and Transformation Officer, Personal Care at Unilever.This conversation cuts straight into one of marketing’s biggest modern problems: everyone has infinite opportunities, infinite channels and infinite reasons to do more. But the best marketers are not winning by doing more. They are winning by making sharper bets and doing less for more. Mainardo de Nardis is Global President and Chief Operating Officer of Edelman, with deep experience across full-service marketing, PR, digital, media, startups, AdTech, MarTech and global agency leadership. His perspective centers on how brands earn relevance and trust in a world where attention cannot simply be bought.Rani Al Hajji is Chief Growth and Transformation Officer, Personal Care at Unilever. With more than 25 years in marketing and consumer goods, including roles a

Are marketers making a fatal mistake by treating AI as just a cost-cutting tool? The Marketing Vanguard Cannes series continues as host Jenny Rooney sits down with Jonathan Adashek, SVP, Marketing and Communications at IBM, to unpack how marketers should be treating AI, today. He breaks down how at IBM, it is becoming a way to rethink processes and drive measurable growth, their “client zero” approach, $4.5 billion in savings over three years and why the company now does half the number of events it did two years ago.Jonathan Adashek is SVP, Marketing and Communications at IBM, where he leads marketing, communications, and CSR. He joined IBM in January 2020 as Chief Communications Officer and took on the marketing portfolio in January 2022. In his role, Jonathan helps shape IBM’s global narrative as the company sharpens its focus around hybrid cloud, AI and open technology. His background in communications and politics gives him a distinct view of marketing: build a clear story, bring people on the journ

Marketing Vanguard continues live from Cannes. Host Jenny Rooney sits down with Mark Kirkham, Chief Marketing Officer at PepsiCo Beverages US, to break down why Cannes only works when CMOs show up with clear intention. Mark explains how AI has moved from tech hype to operational reality, why disruption cycles collapsed from five years to five months, and why honest peer debate is the only way marketing leaders stay ahead.Mark Kirkham is Chief Marketing Officer of PepsiCo Beverages US, where he leads brand, category, and marketing programs across Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Starry, Bubly, and Mug. A 15-year PepsiCo veteran, Mark has held global and regional marketing leadership roles including Chief Marketing Officer, International Beverages, VP of Global Sports, Juice and Energy, and Head of Marketing & Innovation for Western Europe. His work has included Pepsi’s UEFA Champions League partnership, the global Pepsi Taste Challenge, expansion of Gatorade and Mountain Dew across international markets, and award-win

The Marketing Vanguard Cannes series continues as host Jenny Rooney sits down with Lara Balazs, Chief Marketing Officer and EVP of Global Marketing at Adobe. In this episode, Lara breaks down why enterprise AI adoption is shifting toward tangible workflow wins. She highlights how heavyweights like the NFL, Disney and L’Oréal deploy Adobe Firefly to automate manual asset scaling while protecting proprietary IP. Learn why human empathy, brand trust and strategic judgment remain irreplaceable in the age of generative AI.Lara Balazs is Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President, Global Marketing at Adobe, where she leads global marketing and communications, drives profitable growth and helps build Adobe’s brand in the AI era. Before joining Adobe in 2024, Lara was Chief Marketing Officer and General Manager, Strategic Partner Group at Intuit, where she led marketing and communications across the company’s brands and also served as general manager of Intuit’s ProTax group. She has also held marketing lea