CMO Moves End Jan Update

Welcome to CMO Moves, where we track the career trajectories of the most influential decision-makers in marketing.

The second half of January was a bit quiet. A total of 8 brands, including two Canadian and two European companies, announced new CMOs:

• 2 women vs. 6 men;

• 1 internal promotion vs. 7 external hires;

• 4 seasoned CMOs vs. 4 first-time CMOs;

• 2 remote, 1 hybrid, 5 on-site;

• 6 hired from competitors, and 2 from beyond the brand’s industry.

Paid subscribers get to access the full list of 24 CMOs that were announced in January, including the ones we’ve reported in our last edition of CMO Ladder.

The most prominent moves happened at Intel and an Italian luxury car manufacturer, Maserati.

Intel

Intel, once the biggest chipmaker globally, has fallen behind its competitors in recent years. When CEO Pat Gelsinger came on board in early 2021, he outlined a four-year comeback plan to accelerate the company’s process node roadmap and restore its leadership in advanced chip manufacturing.

As part of the transformation, the company made appointments for a few critical roles earlier this month. And the new CMO Brett Hannath, was among them.

Brett has over 20 years of experience in marketing for B2B technology companies. Adaptability and resilience are the hallmarks of his career.

He held various senior marketing positions at the cybersecurity company McAfee when it was owned by Intel. When McAfee filed for IPO in 2020, he was appointed as the interim CMO. Two years later, McAfee sold its Enterprise business to a private equity firm STG, and Brett became the CMO of the newco. Seven months afterward, the business merged with FireEye, and he took on the role of Chief Marketing Officer for the new brand Trellix. There, he successfully grew the business, established the brand, and secured its position as a trusted market leader within just two years.

Originally from Australia, Brett previously worked for Intel in the Australia-New Zealand enterprise market segment for around six years before joining TIBCO, another enterprise software company.

Brett is joining Intel at a time when the semiconductor giant just launched Core Ultra “Meteor Lake” processors for PCs with advanced AI capabilities. The race for AI dominance in the CPU world has officially begun. Intel is aiming to ship 40 million "AI PCs" in 2024 and achieve a 5X increase in AI performance in the coming years.

With the US government committing billions of dollars in chip grants by the end of March to boost domestic production, companies like Intel are expected to receive a significant boost. We look forward to seeing ground-breaking work from Brett and his team!

Maserati

Maserati, the Italian Luxury car maker, has appointed Giovanni Perosino its new global Chief Marketing Officer.

Giovanni has more than 20 years of experience in global automotive and luxury marketing. His career in advertising started at the agency side when he joined DMB&B in Milan in 1991 and then moved on to the Bacardi-Martini group, doing international marketing for Europe. 2001 marked the beginning of his journey in luxury automotive marketing when he was hired by FIAT group as Lancia Communications Director.

Between 2010 and 2019, he worked for Volkswagen Group and Audi, holding leadership roles in marketing and contributing significantly to the growth of the two companies. At the end of 2019, he was named Chief Commercial Officer of Lamborghini, leading an international team of more than two hundred Sales & Marketing professionals to work on all aspect of global business development.

The last two years saw Giovanni as Chief Marketing Officer at ITA Airways before taking the reins of CMO at Maserati.

As the majority of the automotive market strides to reinvent itself as EV-centric, Maserati is going through similar transformations. CEO Davide Grasso announced early 2022, that Maserati will make an electric version of all of its models by 2025, and phase out all of its internal combustion engine vehicles to offer only BEVs [battery electric vehicles] by 2030.

But the plans are facing obstacles and have shifted lately.

The brand’s first EV GranTurismo Folgore was originally expected in 2023 but is now scheduled for release later this year. Other models in the EV lineup have also seen setbacks with release dates pushed further back, some even to the year of 2028.  

Navigating these uncertainties will be a key focus for Giovanni Perosino as he assumes the role of CMO. With his wealth of experience, Giovanni is poised to play a crucial role in steering the brand through the dynamic changes and ensuring Maserati's continued success in the ever-evolving landscape of luxury automotive and electric mobility.

Become a paying subscriber of Premium to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content.

Already a paying subscriber? Sign In.

A subscription gets you:

• • Access to all the movers in a downloadable format
• • Hand picked curated listings of $200K jobs in marketing
• • No annoying ads