The growth and popularity of Formula 1 racing is one of the great marketing stories of the past five years, and on this week's episode Jim is going behind the scenes to understand why. His guest this week on The CMO Podcast is Louise McEwen, the Chief Marketing Officer of McLaren Racing, the global leader in high-performance supercar production, and elite motorsports. Founded in 1963 by racer, engineer and entrepreneur Bruce McLaren, the company is formed of McLaren Automotive, which hand-builds lightweight supercars; and a majority stake in McLaren Racing which competes in the Formula 1 World Championship and INDYCAR in the US. McLaren is based in the UK, and is one of the top independent companies in the world. The McLaren team is currently in first place in the 2024 Formula 1 series.

Louise has known for a long time that she wanted a career in sports & entertainment; Louise studied Sports Science and Social Science at Loughborough University in the UK, before joining sports marketing firm Octagon in 1999. Following Octagon, Louise spent nine years at Vodafone, where she worked with McLaren, before eventually joining the racing company in 2017. Louise was appointed CMO in March 2024. As the racing world eagerly anticipates the Las Vegas Grand Prix on November 23rd, Louise welcomes Jim on the track to talk about how storytelling can reshape a brand.

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This week Jim is joined on The CMO Podcast by Greg Lyons, the Chief Marketing Officer for Pepsico Beverages North America. Greg looks over about $28 billion in revenue, with 10 Billion dollar brands, including Pepsi-Cola, Gatorade, Mountain Dew and Bubly. PepsiCo Beverages North America is part of PepsiCo, a $91 billion food and beverage global powerhouse.

Greg has been with PepsiCo for over 25 years, and CMO since 2017. He was a guest on the show in May 2020–in the early days of the pandemic. Still, to this day, almost five years later, that episode is one of Jim's absolute favorites. In this episode, they return to many of the themes from that recording, and hear Greg’s perspective on empathy, kindness and having fun.

Listen to Greg previous episode from May 2020: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/greg-lyons-pepsico-serving-empathy-at-pepsico/id1460604334?i=1000475927049

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With the holidays nearly upon us, this episode of The CMO Podcast offers some insight and perspective on this year’s holiday season. Joining Jim this week is Claudine Cheever, the VP and Global Head of Brand and Marketing at Amazon. Since its founding in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, Amazon has profoundly changed life and business. Thirty years later–Amazon’s revenue is nearly $600 billion, with a market cap of about $2 trillion. It's among the few brands that people just cannot imagine living without.

Claudine forged an unlikely path to becoming the Head of Global Brand and Marketing at Amazon. She earned a Bachelors Degree at Colorado State University in Liberal Arts, and later acquired a Masters Degree from the University of North Carolina in American Studies. Claudine started her career as an editor at a publishing company, and eventually had a 20-year run at some of the most famous ad agencies in the world–including McCann, Saatchi & Saatchi, and Ogilvy. About eight years ago, Claudine went from agency to client and joined Amazon. Tune in for a conversation with a leader who joined a brand for the opportunity, but stayed for the creativity and culture.

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It’s election season in the U.S., with some brands taking on a special responsibility and role at this time. Among them is The Wall Street Journal, and this week Jim speaks to Sherry Weiss, the Chief Marketing Officer of Dow Jones–the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, MarketWatch, Investor’s Business Daily, and a portfolio of business intelligence assets, including Factiva. 

Sherry has worked as CMO of Dow Jones for about two years, following a career path seemingly built for her current role. With a double degree from Georgetown University, a Bachelors in Foreign Affairs, and a Masters in Business, Sherry worked at Citi at two different times in her career, for a total of about 12 years. With just two weeks until the United States Presidential election, tune in for a conversation with a leader who is ready to lead her team through and beyond.

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It's the spookiest time of the year! For this Halloween-themed episode of The CMO Podcast, Jim welcomes Gabrielle Dallas Wesley, the Chief Marketing Officer of Mars Wrigley North America. Privately held since its founding in 1911, Mars Wrigley is a giant in the consumer goods industry. The company boasts about $50 billion in sales and includes famous brands like M&Ms, Snickers, Orbit, Pedigree, Whiskas, Ben’s Original, and MasterFoods. In August 2024, Mars Wrigley announced the purchase of Kellanova–the Kellogg’s spinoff–with brands such as Pringles, Pop Tarts, and Nutrigrain.

Gabrielle has worked with Mars Wrigley for about seven years and stepped into the North America CMO role about fifteen months ago. Before Mars Wrigley, Gabrielle worked at Conagra for three years, and General Mills for eleven years. Before she became a food and snack marketer, she spent eight years in financial services before jumping to CPG, using her MBA from Michigan Ross. Tune in for Jim's Halloween Trick or Treat chat with a CMO who is all about a united team!

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This week's guest on The CMO Podcast is one of the foremost experts in the world of Artificial Intelligence and marketing, Professor Jim Lecinski. Jim is the Clinical Associate Professor of Marketing at Northwestern Kellogg. We use the term “Renaissance man or woman” too loosely these days, but in this case it's an appropriate moniker. Consider these highlights from Professor Lecinski's curriculum vitae:

• Studied German and Government at Notre Dame, MBA from Illinois.
• Teaches seminars and blogs about Jazz for newcomers.
• Has written for The Journal of the International Association of Jazz Record Collectors.
• Twelve years at Google, left as a VP.
• Literally wrote the book on marketing and AI, back in 2021 before it was the “in thing.”
• Awarded Professor of the Year at Northwestern Kellogg in 2022.

It's a double-Jim conversation, as the two dive into the hottest topic in marketing...AI.

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Learn more about AI:

Marketing AI Institute: https://www.marketingaiinstitute.com/

Andrew Ng's Courses on Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/instructor/andrewng

Keynotes to Watch:

Agentforce Keynote: Build the Future with AI Agents: https://www.salesforce.com/plus/experience/dreamforce_2024/series/agentforce_&_data_cloud_at_dreamforce_2024/episode/episode-s1e27

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian'a Keynote: https://cloud.withgoogle.com/next

And pickup Jim and Raj Venkatesan's book - The AI Marketing Canvas: A Five-Stage Road Map to Implementing Artificial Intelligence in Marketing: https://a.co/d/9osop0B

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Today's guest on The CMO Podcast is Emily Silver, the SVP and Chief Marketing & Athlete Experience Officer at Dick’s Sporting Goods, the $13 billion-by-revenue retailer. Dick’s was founded by Dick Stack in 1948 with his first product line, a bait and tackle. Today, Pittsburgh-based Dick’s Sporting Goods has more than 850 stores and a variety of other experience centers and platforms, all focused on sports. Think Golf Galaxy, Public Lands, Moosejaw, and others.

Emily has worked at Dick’s for about 18 months, after spending over 16 years at PepsiCo, in about nine different roles. This is Emily’s first CMO role; her CEO, Lauren Hobart, was appointed Dick’s CMO in 2011 and previously held that role for a few years. Emily graduated from Brandeis University with an MBA from Yale, before starting her career working on political campaigns. On this episode, she speaks to the incredible lessons from those early experiences and much more. Tune in for a conversation with a CMO that believes in the athlete in all of us!

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The guest today on The CMO Podcast is Emily Ketchen, the Chief Marketing Officer and VP of Intelligent Devices Group and International Markets for Lenovo. The Intelligent Devices Group–as you might expect–is Lenovo’s division with Personal Computers, Smartphones, and AR/VR solutions. Lenovo is a $57 billion global technology company–the largest PC company–with business in 180 countries. It also markets infrastructure, software, solutions and services. 

Emily has worked at Lenovo since September 2020. She joined Lenovo after nearly 11 years at HP, in a variety of roles in the Americas and Asia. Emily has forged an unusual path to CMO; she spent about 14 years of her career on the ad agency side, with storied agencies like Publicis, Grey, and McCann Erikson.

Emily is indeed a global citizen; she spent part of her childhood in Europe, speaks Spanish and French fluently, studied at Pitzer College in California and two universities in France, and has just returned from a lovely family holiday in Scotland. Tune in for an interview with a CMO who believes kindness in the business world is a win-win.

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Fall means it's time for your annual flu and Covid shots! So, this week on The CMO Podcast, Jim welcomes Kate Cronin, the Chief Brand Officer for Moderna, the 14-year-old pioneering biotech company. Moderna achieved nearly instant awareness and fame in 2020, when it received the CDC recommendation for its COVID-19 vaccine. Moderna’s name combines the words "modified" and "RNA" to signal the core essence of the company: to introduce a new category of medicines using messenger RNA, “the software of life.” Moderna has a market cap of about $25 billion, with projected revenue in 2024 in the range of $3 to $3.5 billion.

Kate has combined her passion for science and marketing into a career path that bridges the two. She graduated from Smith College with a degree in biology, and started her career as a research associate at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. A few years later she jumped into the marketing world and has never left. Kate worked with healthcare clients at agencies Porter Novelli and Ogilvy for nearly 30 years; she left her position as CEO of Ogilvy Health about three years ago to become Chief Brand Officer at Moderna. As you look to book your own vaccine appointment, listen in for a conversation with a pioneering Chief Brand Officer–who likes to fix up old homes in her spare time!

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This week on The CMO Podcast, Jim welcomes Ramon Soto, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Northwell Health, Based in New York, Northwell Health is one of the largest health-care providers in the US, with 21 hospitals, 900 outpatient facilities, 12,000 affiliated physicians, 87,000 employees, and 2 million patients a year. The Wall Street Journal recently featured the nonprofit company for its radically different approach to marketing their brand. Spoiler alert: it includes partnerships with Netflix, HBO and Hulu.

Ramon has held his role for nearly 10 years–about triple the tenure of an average CMO. Ramon tried a variety of roles earlier in his career at ad agencies, a home-improvement retailer, and at GE. He landed at Aetna–now owned by CVS–in 2002 and has largely remained in health-care roles since then. Tune in for a conversation with a healthcare CMO who gleans a lot of inspiration from the Marvel Cinematic Universe!

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