Today, chief marketing officers play a far more active role in the C-suite than ever before.

They don business hats in the boardroom, chart out innovation strategies and ways to integrate technology at scale, and drive measurable results.

With marketers emerging as stewards who steer organizations forward at a time of great disruption, Business Insider is celebrating the global marketers rising to the occasion.

Here we present the third installment of our annual ranking of the world’s most innovative CMOs. The list is a little different from last year’s as we have 25 honorees this time instead of 50.

Scroll on to see the marketers who made the cut.

Methodology

We relied on our reporting but also solicited nominations from readers. We tapped an advisory council for their suggestions too.

We then put the names up to a vote, with the council giving each nominee a rank between 1 and 25. We based the final rankings on the average scores.

We tried to cast our net wider than most other similar lists, acknowledging leaders from emerging companies as well as countries outside the US, for instance, whose brands have made a global mark.

Our advisory council of independent experts comprises Vivaldi Group CMO Agathe Blanchon-Ehrsam, former 360i executive chairman and comScore CEO Bryan Wiener, Deep Focus founder Ian Shafer, and R3 cofounder and principal Shufen Goh.

CMOs were ranked based on a number of attributes, including:

  • How effectively they have married art, science, and technology in their campaigns.
  • How they’re taking their marketing efforts in a different direction than their peers.
  • Whether they have mastered the art of storytelling across platforms.
  • How they have demonstrated that they can disrupt their industries.

Other factors were the size of the executive’s brand and how much the brand’s footprint has grown over the past year, the extent of their role and responsibilities, their influence in the marketing and advertising industry beyond their own brand, and whether their marketing efforts have driven their company’s performance.

25. Fiona Carter, Chief Brand Officer, AT&T Communications

Marketers have had an awakening when it comes to digital media. They are increasingly more aware that it’s really messy and not always safe for brands.

Giant ad spenders like AT&T are grappling with how best to use technology, spending clout, and powerful voices to effect change. Carter has been a leader on all fronts, such as calling out YouTube for its response to advertisers ending up next to hate videos while pushing Facebook to improve its metrics and ad products.

Besides showcasing tough negotiating tactics aimed at moving the overall industry forward, Carter is also using AT&T’s clout to better society. The executive this year helped steer AT&T’s participation in the Association of National Advertisers’ #SeeHer campaign, which aspires to improve the portrayal of women in the media.

24. Ukonwa Ojo, Senior Vice President, CoverGirl

Former Unilever executive Ojo has played a significant role in architecting CoverGirl’s biggest makeover to date, leading its rebranding effort late last year. She has transformed it from a makeup brand highlighting cosmetics to one that sees itself as a tool for self-expression and transformation.

She has also prompted CoverGirl to revamp its products to be more inclusive of racially diverse skin tones, and even appoint its first male brand ambassador. The legacy mass makeup brand is set to go premium, too, with its own flagship store launching in Times Square in New York City this fall.

23. Blair Rich, President, Worldwide Marketing, Warner Bros. Pictures Group and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment

Rich faced several unique challenges over the past year. For one, how do you market a movie that’s essentially about virtual reality — a concept still fuzzy to many — and do it globally? And how do you overcome lousy buzz for the DC hero fest “Justice League,” which suffers from comparisons to Marvel’s “The Avengers” series?

In the case of “Ready Player One,” the Steven Spielberg-directed movie popped in China and crossed the $500 million, helped along by memorable experiential marketing campaign at South by Southwest. “Justice League” had a tougher go of it, but that was surely offset by huge openings for Stephen King’s “It” (driven by a massively popular web trailer) and “Annabelle Creation.” Overall, 2017 was a $5 billion box office year for Warner, according to Variety.

22. Antonio Lucio, Global Chief Marketing and Communication Officer, HP Inc.

Lucio has been on the frontlines of calling for change in the ad business, particularly around the issue of diversity. After demanding that its agencies move the needle on diversity in the teams servicing the brand, HP sponsored Free the Bid. The nonprofit initiative asks agencies, brands, and production companies to include a female director on every project.

And in April, the brand joined hands with Cannes Lions to launch the program #MoreLikeMe, a pilot mentorship program designed to promote diverse creative talent.

21. Shoumyan Biswas, VP of Marketing, Flipkart

You can’t give Biswas all the credit for the massive interest in Flipkart from suitors like Amazon and eventually victor Walmart, but the marketing efforts for this red-hot Indian e-commerce giant surely helped. Consider the recent #penguindad social-media campaign, which urged Indian dads to break traditional parenting roles. Or an innovative partnership with the tech company AdGreetz, which resulted in 100,000 unique commercials distributed via social media.

Flipkart has made it a mission to bring a “progressive” vision of India to the world, all while building a $20 billion company. The next step, according to Biswas, is to broaden Flipkart’s appeal to Indians who don’t live in huge cities. Walmart’s expertise should surely help.

20. Miguel Patricio, Chief Marketing Officer, AB InBev

With “Dilly Dilly,” AB InBev again managed to turn a nonsensical phrase into a cultural hit for Bud Light (remember “Wassup,” anyone?). But it wasn’t all fun and games: The company used the Super Bowl Stage to air a touching ad highlighting Budweiser’s charitable contributions during major natural disasters in 2017 set to “Stand by Me.”

And now the brewer is plotting to make itself as popular as its brands, Marketing Week reports. The plan is in early days, but it will rely prominently on the ambitious new sustainability goals the company has set for itself.

19. Deborah Yeh, SVP of Marketing, Sephora

Sephora is the kind of retail brand that other retail brands want to be like. The beauty-focused packaged-goods upstart is known for pushing inspirational marketing messages through digital and social channels and using data to sell directly to consumers, including a subscription beauty-box service. Under Yeh, Sephora’s marketing has included apps that help people “try on” makeup digitally to live social events with brand founders like Vicki Tsai from Tatcha, Forbes reports.

The company is typically first to experiment with digital tactics, such as Facebook chat bots and augmented reality. Meanwhile, in the real world, Sephora has even taken to giving customers free facials, has featured its store associates as models and has pushed for more “experiential retail.”

18. Keith Weed, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Unilever

Brands continue to demand more proof from their agencies and partners that their digital advertising works, and Weed is one of a handful of CMOs pushing for better standards across the industry.

Weed has focused on transparency, measurement, and viewability. Over the past year, Weed has tested new viewability standards with WPP’s GroupM while also cutting back on the number of agencies that the brand works with. Signs of Weed’s work to become a more efficient, savvy marketer are already showing up: Unilever claims that shedding its roster of agencies saved the brand about 30% in agency fees in 2017.

17. Ann Lewnes, EVP and Chief Marketing Officer, Adobe

As a marketer, Lewnes has a challenging story to tell. Adobe’s roots are in software for digital creators, but more recently its focus has been acquisitions designed to build a suite of services for big marketers, such as the marketing cloud. To help extol the complex attributes of this cloud Lewnes and her team have embraced a robust digital-content initiative while helping make Adobe’s annual summit a highly anticipated industry event.

In addition Adobe looks to bring its brand to life with unexpected marketing for an enterprise company, such as hosting events for filmmakers at Sundance and partnering with the band Imagine Dragons on a creativity contest. Her team even helped students from Texas to restore family photos following Hurricane Harvey.

16. Leslie Berland, Chief Marketing Officer and Head of People, Twitter

Berland is on a mission to clean up Twitter and prove it’s more than a platform for trolls and bots to spread misinformation and abuse.

Over the past year, she’s used Twitter’s marketing to champion women in leadership roles and highlighted the platform’s diverse variety of opinions through campaigns like #SeeEverySide, which starred Chance the Rapper and generated 18 million viewsfrom a single tweet.

She also pulls double duty as Twitter’s CMO and head of people, and she brought together a group of female leaders for an event called #HereWeAre at CES after realizing that the conference lacked female speakers. A livestream of the event collected 6 million views and led Berland to create a TV campaign that aired during the Oscars that featured Issa Rae and Ava DuVernay.

15. Raja Rajamannar, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Mastercard

From exploring the future of virtual reality with an app that lets consumers buy Swarovski-designed home décor to Facebook Messenger chat bots, Rajamannar has tried to keep Mastercard up to speed on technology. He’s also evolved Mastercard’s ongoing Priceless campaign to focus on social change and telling stories about people’s passions and purposes.

That’s not to say that it’s been an easy year for Mastercard. Rajamannar recently pulleda charity-focused effort in Latin America after facing social-media backlash. But, overall, Mastercard’s marketing has been a win for the credit-card giant.

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