Meet the 10 visionary CMOs shaping their brands’ roles in business and culture

Chief marketing officers have always played a critical role in the success of the brands we love. But as media fragmentation has completely upended the traditional access to our attention, the role of CMO has become infinitely more complicated and a crucial linchpin to commercial growth and success.

The honorees on our inaugural CMOs of the year list have all shown an impressive ability to seamlessly straddle a variety of media, platforms, and initiatives to elevate their brands’ cultural resonance, connection to audiences, and crucial role in their overall company’s success.

Candidates were evaluated on the scale, complexity, creativity, and results of their brand’s work over the course of the past year. Without further ado, meet Fast Company’s inaugural crop of Brands That Matter CMOs of the year.

Kofi Amoo-Gottfried, DoorDash

“We want to make things that people will talk about,” says DoorDash CMO Kofi Amoo-Gottfried. “That requires being able to push the edges to find interesting things that people aren’t talking about.” Read more about how his ambitious Super Bowl ad succeeded at sparking conversation about the delivery company.

Asad Ayaz, Disney

Over the past year, Disney’s chief brand officer Asad Ayaz has overseen the marketing and brand strategy for a wildly diverse collection of projects and entertainment properties across theme parks, movies, TV, and more. Read about how he tore up Disney’s marketing blueprint to turn Deadpool & Wolverine into a box-office hit.

Andrea Brimmer, Ally Financial

Back in 2022, Andrea Brimmer helped change the game on how brands work with sports sponsorships by introducing the 50/50 pledge, a commitment to gender equity in sports media by 2027. Since then, she’s taken an action-over-words approach to her own work. In February 2024, she signed Ally to a new multiyear corporate partnership with the United States Golf Association. As a result, the USGA increased the purse for the 2024 U.S. Women’s Open to $12 million, making it the highest in all of women’s golf. Since Ally launched its Women’s Sports Club in 2023—bringing together brands and media to improve advertising options for women’s sports—it has expanded to include more than 300 members, including Allstate, Google, Meta, Puma, State Farm, Coca-Cola, Delta, and more. It also launched 40 new sponsorship opportunities and innovated more than five women’s sports media deals. Brimmer’s work with Ally on the issue of equity in women’s sports business and media has boosted not only her own brand but sports culture overall.

Tim Ellis, National Football League

The most popular league in sports could rest on its laurels, but Tim Ellis has worked to continually push the NFL into new areas and toward new audiences. His work started in 2023, when the league doubled down on its first-ever flag football participation initiative, releasing the Emmy-winning Super Bowl ad “Run With It,” featuring flag football star Diana Flores. The CMO also led the league’s expansion of its kid-focused alt-casts with ESPN and Disney to fully animate the Falcons vs. Jaguars game in Toy Story’s iconic style, making it the most-watched live event on Disney+. Overall, Ellis’s work drove results that included a 27% increase in kickoff viewership, a 45% increase in kids interested in flag football, and a 92% increase in NFL perception among parents.

Kory Marchisotto, E.l.f. Cosmetics

Kory Marchisotto was the driving force behind E.l.f.’s most surprising, and successful, brand campaign of the year. In partnership with CEO Tarang Amin, Marchisotto wanted to make a statement around the lack of diversity on corporate boards and beyond. “Change the Board Game” was the perfect splash. Its “So Many Dicks” ad—pointing out that across more than 4,400 public companies, men named Richard, Rick, or Dick serving on boards outnumber all women and diverse groups—went viral. Social posts on this work nearly tripled average engagement and impressions on Kory’s LinkedIn as well as E.l.f. Beauty’s. In spring 2024, E.l.f. Cosmetics partnered with Liquid Death on a collaboration—a concept inspired directly by Kory, called Corpse Paint. The limited-edition, coffin-shaped makeup kit sold out in under 45 minutes, setting a record for the beauty brand and amassing more than 12 billion impressions within two weeks of launch.

Michael Moses, Universal Pictures

The business of getting people to pay to watch movies at the movie theater has become a blood sport over the past decade. But CMO Michael Moses has led Universal to use pop culture and social media in unique ways to drive major box office success. This year, the studio reprised its double-feature blockbuster release (which led to the “Barbenheimer” trend of seeing Barbie and Oppenheimer back to back) with the theatrical overlap of Wicked and Gladiator II—aptly dubbed “Glicked.” Wicked alone had 400 brand partners, including Wicked-themed Starbucks drinks. Those big movies capped off a year of successful marketing—from animated sequels Minions 4 and Kung Fu Panda 4 to live-action sequels like Twisters—that capitalized on organic fan interest to turn film releases into cultural moments.

Julie Nollet, Hennessy

Leading the charge on a holistic assessment of the storied cognac brand’s perception, Hennessy’s Julie Nollet asked the hard questions and enlisted a global study to assess how consumers were connecting with the brand—then took quick action to help Hennessy shed its stuffy image while remaining relevant to its global audience. She refreshed the brand identity and kept momentum to ensure those choices materialized within a year. The refresh included a new brand platform, “Made for More,” with Teyana Taylor starring in ads that positioned the brand more as a fun, creative cocktail drink than a centuries-old sip made for a mansion’s oak-paneled study. Nollet also tapped the brand’s NBA partnership to expand with a Mitchell & Ness collection, as well as custom LeBron James-designed bottles.

Nicole Parlapiano, Tubi

Nicole Parlapiano knows the key to Tubi’s success as a brand in an ultra-competitive market like streaming is to cater to fans in unique ways. Over the past year, the CMO led a deep dive into the free streamer’s many audience communities online—from Reddit horror threads to TikTokers engaged with Black Cinema—to develop a rich sense of what the brand means to its fans. Her insight was that Tubi offers each and every viewer a personalized content journey—and she turned that insight into award-winning campaigns that have helped make Tubi the most-watched free streaming service in the United States. The social listening that she has made central to Tubi’s brand positioning has paid off—when Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter was released, Tubi used fan interest in her country album to surface a curated collection of Black westerns. That country enthusiasm also extended to Tubi’s teaser campaign for Wynonna Earp, which garnered more than 1.3 million impressions and nearly 600 million video views in 24 hours.

Raja Rajamannar, Mastercard

Longtime CMO Rajamannar has always found a balance between putting the brand’s own spin on more traditional marketing and pushing into unexpected areas. In January, Mastercard launched AI tool Mastercard Small Business AI, designed to deliver customized assistance and personalized guidance via a conversational Generative AI interface. The brand worked with a global media coalition that included Blavity Media Group, Group Black, Newsweek, and TelevisaUnivision to reduce the exclusion of underserved communities and empower them to succeed. Since last November, a Mastercard Impact Fund’s $9 million grant has funded Strive Women—a program designed to strengthen the financial health and resilience of women-led small businesses in Pakistan, Peru, and Vietnam, carried out by humanitarian organization CARE.

Elizabeth Rutledge, American Express

Under CMO Elizabeth Rutledge, American Express has been positioning its Gold and Platinum credit card as passports to a richer cultural life—and younger consumers are buying in. Read more about how Rutledge has made Amex cards a must-have for travelers, foodies, and sports fans alike.

This story is part of Fast Company’s 2024 Brands That Matter. Explore the full list of honorees that have demonstrated a commitment to their brand’s purpose and cultural relevance to their audience. Read more about the methodology behind the selection process.