CMOs share biggest lessons of 2025

Multinational companies are having to deal with a more uncertain world than ever before, driven by uncertain geopolitics and economies but also seismic changes to the marketing ecosystem and the need for new skills, according to interviews conducted in partnership with The Drum in Cannes last month.

“Nothing feels predictable anymore. I think we've moved from a VUCA world to a TUNA world; it's turbulent, it's uncertain, it's novel - and the biggest is ambiguous,” said Rupen Desai, CMO and venture partner, Una Terra.

For Microsoft’s consumer chief marketing officer, Yusuf Mehdi, the most important lesson is “just the art and craft of marketing is changing, it's not just the advent of AI but the introduction of creators and the proliferation of media has really sort of changed how you go out and reach customers and I think there's more unknown now than ever before.”

For some the answer is to double down on creativity, with AXA’s global media and marketing effectiveness director Jérôme Amouyal, whose team won multiple Grand Prix at Cannes with Three Words, saying: “The key lesson I've learned is that boldness space when you are able to do the right thing and when you are creative in the way you show up on the market.”

Others have targeted sport as a unifying global passion. “All of our research tells us that sports is the great unifier and so we have spent quite a bit of time thinking about how to bring that into our marketing and we currently have a partnership with the F1 and a partnership with FIFA, two of the world's undoubtedly most popular and well known sports,” said Emily Ketchen, SVP and CMO, Intelligent Devices Group and International Markets at Lenovo.

A common theme is that with so much change, marketing organisations need to equip their people with the new skills needed to deliver. “When there is such a huge amount of change and when there are so many factors that are really challenging usual way of doing things, go back to your own people to equip them and guide them, anchor them so that they don't get lost in the sea of stimuli that they get, so that they don't get distracted with many of the shiny objects that are out there,” said Taide Guajardo, Chief Brand Officer and SVP brand – Europe at Procter & Gamble.

But fundamentally many also know that brands need to deliver for business and marketing sits at the heart of making that possible.

“No matter what kind of long-term transformation you are going through your performance will be judged based on the business performance of the next three months, so this is the learning and for the rest of the year we have two quarters ahead. So let's do it,” said Leyal Eskin Yilmaz, CMO Europe, UKI, ANZ & Head of Global Brands at Unilever.

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