Building Better CMOs and Marketing Leaders

Marketing leaders are facing constant new challenges. If you want to stay ahead of the curve, listen to Building Better CMOs, from the nonprofit thinktank MMA Global. It's a podcast about the future of marketing and how marketers can get smarter & stronger, hosted by MMA CEO Greg Stuart. Greg interviews some of the wisest and most successful CMOs in the business, who share crucial insights about what their industry gets wrong, how to get to the C-Suite, and how to unlock the true power of marketing. You'll gain a deeper understanding of the evolving purpose of marketing leaders, and learn actionable strategies to overcome obstacles. Produced by LightningPod.fm. For transcripts and more, visit bettercmos.com

Episodes

Doug Martin, CMO of General Mills: Emotional Connections Matter

May 28, 2025 • 55 mins

Watch this interview on YouTube⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Full transcript⁠⁠ — "Who is this person that I am trying to get to change in behavior? Do I really understand them?" asks Doug Martin, CMO of General Mills. Understanding consumers deeply, he believes, is an essential skill in the ever-evolving world of marketing, and it's one that General Mills uses constantly to drive brand management and create emotional connections. Doug recommends devel...

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Charlotte Blank, U.S. CMO of Jaguar Land Rover NA: Lead Like a Scientist

May 14, 2025 • 46 mins

Watch this interview on YouTube⁠ ⁠Full transcript⁠ — "I've always sort of been in marketing, but by way of psychology," says Charlotte Blank, the U.S. CMO of Jaguar Land Rover North America. Only by applying concepts from neuroscience and behavioral science, she says, can we truly understand what consumers want & how they think. "The whole creative process is inherently scientific," Charlotte says. "And any creative will tell...

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Bob Sherwin, CMO of Zoe: Navigating Media Shifts

April 30, 2025 • 51 mins

Watch this interview on YouTube Full transcript — Media consumption habits are changing rapidly, which means marketers have to thread the needle between "chasing the shiny new object" and embracing emerging platforms strategically. For Bob Sherwin, the chief marketing & commercial officer of Zoe, the solution is to frame new media initiatives as a test. "The test is that you're going to either win and find something new...

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Welcome to Building Better CMOs

April 8, 2025 • 3 mins

Marketing is not really a profession. There is no one body of knowledge that CMOs and other marketing leaders all share. We can’t even agree on what the role of a CMO is. On Building Better CMOs, MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart speaks with the very best marketing leaders about what CMOs get wrong and how they overcome the challenges they face. Plus: How are they responding to the evolution of AI? Where do they stand on the brand vs. p...

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Alex Craddock, CMO of Citi: Own Your Career & Know Your Motivation

April 2, 2025 • 59 mins

Watch this interview on YouTube Full transcript — "If you want to get to the next level, you need to understand what motivates you," says Alex Craddock, Chief Marketing and Content Officer at Citi. "As you get more senior ... your role does change. And if you want to continue to grow, you need to be able to find a reward in it beyond just the joy that you have in marketing as a discipline." Today on Building Better CMOs, Alex t...

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Micky Onvural, CMO of TIAA: The Power of Vulnerability

March 5, 2025 • 62 mins

Watch this interview on YouTube Full transcript — "As marketers, we can't just respond to the bottom line," says TIAA CMO Micky Onvural. "We can't just say, 'Well give me a million dollars and I will give you this many customers or this many clicks, and if I do the right kind of mathematics, I'll give you this kind of lifetime value that's going to deliver you this to the bottom line.' I think you actually have to connect further u...

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Brian Irving, CMO of Lyft: The Future of Rideshare

February 19, 2025 • 50 mins

Watch this interview on YouTube Full transcript — "Business and humanity can actually not only live together, but I think that they can thrive together," says Brian Irving, CMO of Lyft. That sort of philosophy has informed his work at companies like Apple, Airbnb, and the agency Rapp, and today at Lyft he's applying it to everything from autonomous vehicles to city bikes. Today on Building Better CMOs, Brian discusses how marketing...

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Ravi Kandikonda, SVP of Marketing at Zillow: Customer Experience First

February 5, 2025 • 53 mins

Watch this interview on YouTube Full transcript — "Our grand purpose is to make home a reality for more and more people," says Ravi Kandikonda, SVP of Marketing at Zillow. Today on Building Better CMOs, he and Greg Stuart discuss the significance of empathy in brand messaging, and the importance of integrating product knowledge, customer experience, and business outcomes to effectively connect with audiences. Ravi emphasizes that m...

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Michelle Barbeau, CRO of eHealth Insurance: Comfortable with Discomfort

December 4, 2024 • 64 mins

Full transcript Getting the right health insurance is serious business; it's the number one reason for bankruptcy in America, says eHealth Insurance CRO Michelle Barbeau. But when she joined eHealth — which helps consumers compare and select providers — she realized that scaring people into action was not a winning strategy. "What we found was, it's all about transparency," says Michelle, who initially served as eHealth's CMO, and ...

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Carolyn Pollock, CMO of Tailored Brands: Don't Believe Your Hype

November 13, 2024 • 63 mins

Full transcript Marketing measurement is a complex puzzle—especially when it comes to balancing long-term brand-building efforts with short-term performance metrics that will please stakeholders. Tailored Brands CMO Carolyn Pollock acknowledges that CFOs may be skeptical of matched market testing and other tools for measuring brand-building impact, but that long-term may have an edge. "The consistency and the continuity of showing ...

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Ariel Kelman, CMO of Salesforce: AI Agents in Action

October 30, 2024 • 45 mins

Full transcript It's easy to say you want your decisions to be data-driven. But as Salesforce CMO Ariel Kelman has learned, hard data doesn't tell the full story. Often, you also need to consider the qualitative. "Let's say you go and do some executive event series, where you have 30 people come to each event," he says. "It's not like if we want to go draw conclusions from, let's say, Dreamforce, we had 45,000 people. You've got a ...

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Allyson Witherspoon, Global CMO of Nissan: Creativity is Queen

October 16, 2024 • 51 mins

Full transcript Automotive marketing is fiercely competitive, and even though she's excited about the potential of AI, Nissan's Global CMO Allyson Witherspoon says an over-reliance on technology could be dangerous. She believes the safer bet is to continue to embrace creativity and a strong brand identity, even in an era dominated by AI and data-driven tools. "If everyone is using AI and the data set is the same for everyone, then ...

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Manolo Arroyo, Global CMO of Coca-Cola: What Kind of Leader Are You?

October 2, 2024 • 62 mins

Full transcript Manolo Arroyo, EVP and global CMO of the Coca-Cola Company, believes there are three types of leaders: One type lacks confidence in themselves and frequently changes the strategy; another buys time for themselves by changing the team around them; and the third decides to commit to the strategy and the team and get the work done. "[They] roll up their sleeves, having the confidence that the strategy is the right one,...

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Andy Rebhun, Chief Experience Officer of Cava: Bring the Weather

June 12, 2024 • 59 mins

Full transcript Today on Building Better CMOs: Andy Rebhun, the chief experience officer at the fast-casual Mediterranean restaurant chain Cava, talks with MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart about the importance of consistent authenticity, how to thrive in the C-Suite, and "bringing the weather" for everyone — including Uber Eats drivers. "We welcome everyone to our table," he says. "It should never be that DoorDash or Uber Eats driver is ...

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Linda Boff, Global CMO at GE: Servant of Purpose

May 15, 2024 • 54 mins

Full transcript GE has changed a whole lot since Global CMO Linda Boff started working there, more than 20 years ago. It was once a sprawling portfolio company that made everything from microwaves to television shows; recently, it spun off its healthcare, energy, and aerospace divisions into three distinct public companies, and executives like Linda take these core areas of focus very seriously. "We are a company, I like to say a c...

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Charisse Hughes, Chief Growth Officer at Kellanova: Evolution of the CMO

May 1, 2024 • 48 mins

Full transcript It doesn't matter how good your marketing is if you can't communicate its impact to the larger organization, says Charisse Hughes, senior vice president and Chief Growth Officer of Kellanova. Her firm spun off of the Kellogg Company last year to manage iconic brands like Pringles, Cheez-It, Pop-Tarts, Rice Krispies Treats, as well as breakfast cereal outside of the U.S. Those have been household names for a long tim...

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Michelle Crossan-Matos, CMO of Ulta Beauty: Visionary and Operator

April 26, 2024 • 34 mins

Full transcript Some marketers think of themselves as operators and some see themselves as visionaries. But only the great ones, says Ulta Beauty CMO Michelle Crossan-Matos, understand that they have to be both. Just before the POSSIBLE conference in Miami, where she spoke to MMA CEO Greg Stuart, she was in Orlando, working to inspire 3000 leaders from Ulta's massive retail operations. "But when I get in the office tomorrow, it is ...

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Andrea Zaretsky, CMO of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management and E*TRADE: Can You Measure Customer Experience?

March 6, 2024 • 60 mins

Full transcript Marketing is both an art and a science, but unless the science is sound, the rest of the company won't believe that you're driving results. So says Morgan Stanley Wealth Management CMO Andrea Zaretsky, who has devoted her entire marketing career — starting at American Express in 2003, with stops at Sephora and Toys-R-Us in between — to improving measurement. "From the beginning, it's been really important for me to ...

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Leslie Sims, CMO of Impossible Foods: Remember the Human

February 21, 2024 • 60 mins

Full transcript "At the end of the day," says Impossible Foods CMO and Chief Creative Officer Leslie Sims, "we're helping save the planet, we're helping the environment, but people don't necessarily want to hear that when they're eating a cheeseburger." The arrival of the plant-based meat industry came in the form of a scientific breakthrough: Foods made from plants that behave like meat when cooked, which have been steadily added ...

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Nudge Theory with Rory Sutherland on "Stories and Strategies"

February 7, 2024 • 28 mins

If you like Building Better CMOs, we think you'll also like "Stories and Strategies For Public Relations and Marketing," hosted by Doug Downs. In this episode, originally released in May 2021, Doug interviews Ogilvy UK vice chairman Rory Sutherland about nudge theory — the behavioral science concept popularized by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler's book "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness." We'll be back...

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