CMO Moves 2023 Recap

2023 was a big year for the revolving doors at the world’s biggest advertisers.

In total, 214 CMOs changed jobs. The busiest months turned out to be November, December, May and August.

Among these CMOs, 129 were women, 84 men, and 1 identifying as non- binary.

The vast majority were external hires, only 13% were internal promotions.

The states that hired the most CMOs in the US are California (56), New York (22), Texas (14), Georgia (8) and Massachusetts (8).

The CMO roles concentrate heavily in tech sectors including Software Development (58), IT Services and IT Consulting (25), Computer and Network Security (9). Other industries that hire the most CMOs include Retail (25), Restaurants (12), Financial Services, Banking, and Insurance (19 combined).

What’s interesting is that 21% of these CMOs are fully remote (according to their LinkedIn profiles), and 15% said they get to work in a hybrid mode. CMO Ladder celebrates this promising trend in marketing!

UNILEVER

We start with Esi Eggleston Bracey, promoted to the top marketing spot at Unilever in October as part of a broader leadership shake-up. We were captivated by this move because of her unique job title “Chief Growth and Marketing Officer” a title that only 143 people around the world actually share.

We were also curious about which companies employ a CG&MO, and through a bit of research, we found them employed at telecoms giant AT&T, WPP’s creative powerhouse Ogilvy, mattress distributor Casper, and Sweetgreen, who connect people with healthy foods.

The sheer scale of her responsibility is another captivating factor. In her new role, Esi oversees one of the world’s biggest advertising budgets. Unilever spent about $8.3 billion, on branding and marketing investments last year, according to its annual report.

Industry watchers are predicting an even sharper focus on advertising for Unilever this year. Bracey’s appointment comes as new Unilever CEO Hein Schumacher outlined the changes he wants to make at the consumer goods giant. In the announcement released to investors on 26 October, he said he intends to create a “performance culture” at the business, with “a renewed team leading the change”.

CMO Ladder loves that Esi, a 5-year veteran of Unilever, is a promotion from within, something which we know is rare indeed, comprising just 13% of the moves we monitored in 2023.

MICROSOFT

Another move that excited us, was Takeshi Numoto being promoted from his position at Microsoft to the top slot, and he replaced a person with a 32-year tenure, Chris Capossela!

CEO Satya Nadella wrote in a memo to staff that you can read in full here.

Nadella described Numoto as “a fantastic systems thinker who works end-to-end across all functions from engineering to finance to operations to sales.”

Capossela joined Microsoft in 1991, serving as a Marketing Manager, Product Manager, General Manager, and Vice President on a variety of businesses, most notably Microsoft Office, and working for more than two years as a speechwriter for Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. He has served twice as CMO, stretching back more than a decade. When you consider the famously short tenure of CMOs, a 30-plus-year run is quite the journey!

We also love that this huge move was another internal promotion, recognizing the achievements that Takeshi has made at mighty Microsoft during his own 26-year tenure.

GENERAL MOTORS

Norm de Greve made a huge move mid-year when he left the CMO seat at CVS for GM - this move surprised many because Norm hasn’t worked directly for an automaker before, although he served GM as a client during his agency days.

With that said, this extends a trend that we have seen among automakers, namely poaching marketing talent from the likes of Google - Nelly Kennedy is ex-Google and started in Jan as Global CMO of VW, for example.

Norm is also noteworthy because he's got 14 years in an ad agency, Digitas, which is surprisingly uncommon for CMOs who mostly move between brands.

The question of advertising on Elon Musk’s X Twitter, has been a hot debate lately, and GM were one of the first major brands to pull their budgets from the platform.

When Norm was hired mid-year, there was speculation that GM would return to paying for space on the platform. Although there’s been no formal announcement from Norm or GM on this topic, it’s telling that he hasn’t used the platform formerly known as Twitter for personal use or updates since reposting a Simon Sinek tweet in August of 2023, nor has he updated his profile to reflect that he’s left CVS.

SEPHORA

In a move announced in October, Deborah Yeh was elevated to Sephora CMO having joined 11 years ago, initially leaving Gap taking on the role of VP of marketing, North America in 2012.

From here, Deborah was promoted to CMO for the Americas region in 2015, before becoming the LVMH-owned retailer's global chief purpose officer in 2021, a role she held for two years.

Amidst her many achievements, Deborah Initiated #OpentoAll in 2022, and introduced the Mitigate Racial Bias in Retail Charter, which aims to bring retailers together to implement tactics and actions that can mitigate racial biases from the shopper experience and create more welcoming retail environments for all.

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