What does it take to turn a simple drink into a global cultural phenomenon?

This week Jim welcomes Allison Varone, the Head of Marketing at Campari America, to unpack the strategy behind one of the most impressive modern brand growth stories. From the rise of Aperol Spritz to the expansion of non-alcoholic options, the Campari Group has become one of the world’s leading spirits companies, with a portfolio of more than 50 premium and super-premium brands, from aperitifs, tequila, whiskey, rum, to cognac. Campari has grown into a $9 billion global player, built on a portfolio of premium brands that have become part of many people’s everyday rituals and celebrations.  

Allison leads marketing for the entire U.S. portfolio, including overseeing brand strategy, consumer engagement, innovation, and integrated campaigns across Campari’s range of brands. She’s also deeply involved in shaping how these brands show up in culture, from major moments like Coachella and the U.S. Open,  to celebrating the everyday ritual of the aperitivo hour.

Alison joined Campari in 2024, after nearly 12 years at LVMH, where she led marketing across some of the most admired luxury brands in the world, including Hennessy, Moët & Chandon, and Belvedere.  Before that, she spent an eventful six years in the early 2000s at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

Tune in for a conversation with a marketing leader who showcases how she balances heritage with innovation, through shaping the future of cocktail culture, consumer connection, and brand storytelling.

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Long before our guest this week became the CMO of Levi’s, he was rocking the brand as a kid, breakdancing with his brother in shell-toe Adidas and Levi’s denim. Fast forward a few decades, and he’s now leading one of the most admired brands in the world.

This week Jim welcomes Kenny Mitchell, SVP and Chief Marketing Officer of the Levi’s brand at Levi Strauss & Co. The legacy brand was founded in 1853 by Bavarian immigrant Levi Strauss during the California Gold Rush. Originally designed as durable workwear for laborers, now 173 years later, it is the market leader in denim apparel, generating more than $6 billion in annual revenue.

Kenny joined Levi’s in 2023 after serving as CMO of Snap Inc., bringing with him a track record of driving growth and cultural relevance. Since joining, he’s been focused on creating “modern-day moments” for the brand, connecting Levi’s legacy to today’s culture, from high-impact partnerships to the brand’s return to the Super Bowl with its “Behind Every Original” campaign. Previously, he has held senior marketing roles at McDonald’s U.S., Gatorade, and NASCAR. 

Tune in for a conversation about growth, culture, and leadership, and what it really takes to move a brand, and an organization, forward.

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If the role of a CMO is to make a brand interesting, why does so much marketing today feel anything but?

This week Jim sits down with Nick Law, Creative Strategy & Experience Lead of Accenture Song, the $20 billion creative services division of Accenture, to explore what’s gone wrong in modern marketing, and what leaders need to do to fix it. In 2019,  Accenture Song (then called Accenture Interactive) purchased the highly awarded and fast-growing creative agency droga 5. Teaser alert: its founder, David Droga, is a big reason Nick is now at Accenture Song. 

Nick’s journey is anything but traditional. He began his career in trade school in Randwick, Australia, before rising through the creative ranks, where he spent 17+ years at R/GA during its most innovative era, a stint at Apple as VP of Marketing Integration, and now helping shape one of the most expansive creative organizations in the world. Today, at Accenture Song, he works across marketing, design, commerce, and customer experience, bringing together systems and storytelling at scale.

Tune in for a conversation about creativity, leadership, and the evolving role of marketing in an increasingly complex world, and what it really takes to build brands that people care about.

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If you think the biggest growth opportunity in marketing is Gen Z, Millennials, or Gen Alpha, this episode may change your mind. We kick off a special monthly series focused on how marketers approach different generations, starting with Gen X and Baby Boomers.

To explore the 50+ audience, Jim welcomes Brent Rivard, CEO and co-founder of Geezer Creative, an agency built around one bold premise: the marketing industry has been ignoring consumers who represent an $8 trillion opportunity.

Gen X and Boomers control roughly 70% of disposable income in the U.S., yet most brands remain obsessively focused on youth. Gen X alone outspends Gen Z by multiples in categories like alcohol, while affluent 50+ consumers are driving massive growth in travel, wellness, longevity, and lifestyle spending.

Brent studied at the Ivey Business School in Ontario and went on to spend two decades at top agencies, including BBDO, Anomaly, Doner, and Lowe Roche. After a stint as a CMO, he founded Geezer Creative in 2024 to help brands reposition themselves for what he believes is the most overlooked and fastest-growing audience in North America.

Tune in for a conversation with an advocate fighting for smarter audience choices in advertising.

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More and more CMOs are ascending to the CEO role. Starbucks, Hinge, Revlon, Avon, and Brinker International are all companies that have elevated former CMOs to CEO.

Joining Jim this week is a guest who joins that group. Diana Haussling is the Chief Executive Officer of hello, the bold, happy, design-forward oral care brand. Founded in 2012 by Craig Dubitsky with the goal of being a “friendly” alternative in the market, hello was acquired by Colgate in early 2020 for a reported $351 million. Today, hello products are found in over 55,000 retail stores across the U.S.

Before stepping into the CEO role, Diana served for four years as Chief Marketing Officer for North America at Colgate, where she led Marketing, Digital Commerce, and Direct-to-Consumer. Her career also includes roles at three other Fortune 500 companies: Campbell’s, General Mills, and The Hershey Company.

Tune in for a conversation with a leader who speaks candidly about insecurity, ambition, and why learning to talk about your strengths isn’t bragging, but necessary.

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What does it take to build a brand that cuts through the noise in a world where most people are trying to ignore you?

Jim’s guest this week is Kofi Amoo-Gottfried, Chief Marketing Officer at DoorDash, who has spent the last seven years helping transform the company from a restaurant delivery app into a multi-category commerce platform with over $14 billion in revenue and more than 3.2 billion orders in 2025. Today, DoorDash is one of the most recognizable brands in tech, with ambitions to become a “24/7 life assistant” for its customers.

Kofi joined DoorDash in 2019 as VP of Marketing before being promoted to the company’s first Chief Marketing Officer in 2022. In this role, he oversees marketing across consumers, merchants, and Dashers. Born in Ghana, Kofi came to the U.S. for college in Minnesota, where, as he says, he stumbled into marketing. He began his career at Leo Burnett, then worked at Wieden+Kennedy and Publicis, before moving to the brand side with Bacardi and Facebook.

After the recording, Kofi announced that he will be stepping down from his role at DoorDash in May, marking the end of an impactful chapter helping shape one of the most recognizable brands in tech and commerce.

Tune in for a conversation on risk, leadership, and building work that actually gets noticed.

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If culture moves at the speed of TikTok, then today’s CMO has to move just as fast. 

This week, Jim is joined by Sofia Hernandez, Global Head of Business Marketing and Commercial Partnerships at TikTok. Since launching in the U.S. in 2018, TikTok has reshaped culture, content, and marketing. And its mission, to inspire creativity and bring joy, has fueled extraordinary growth, even as the company has navigated controversy and major shifts, including the recent acquisition of TikTok U.S. by a consortium of investors including Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX. The platform now reaches more than one billion users globally and has grown into a multi-billion-dollar advertising business, generating an estimated $33 billion in ad revenue in 2025.

Sofia has spent the past six years helping build TikTok’s business during one of the most dynamic growth periods in tech. In her role, she helps brands around the world show up effectively on one of the most culturally influential platforms in the world. Before TikTok, Sofia served as Chief Client Officer at the consumer insights platform Suzy and began her career in advertising at Publicis, later spending five years at BBDO. An activist at her core, Sofia also speaks openly about representation in tech, where Latinas hold roughly 1% of executive roles, and she is deeply committed to fostering inclusion across the industry.

Tune in for a conversation with a leader who believes today's CMOs must evolve into enterprise leaders who connect culture, creativity, and business results.

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To kick off Women’s History Month, Jim welcomes Lara Balazs, the Chief Marketing Officer and EVP of Global Marketing at Adobe. A company at the center of creativity, transformation and technology. Founded in 1982, Adobe is a software company that is famous for its creativity, innovation, and strong employee and customer-centric culture. Their purpose is to change the world through personalized digital experiences, and their offerings include the Creative Cloud, Document Cloud, Experience Cloud, and Adobe Express.

Lara is an experienced CMO. Before Adobe, Lara was the CMO at Intuit for six years, and oversaw a strong run, tripling revenue during her tenure. Over the course of her career, Lara has worked at Visa,  Nike, Amazon, and Gap. At Adobe, Lara is leading the charge to help shape the iconic company into its next era of growth. Just one year into the role, she’s already refreshed the company’s mission to “empower everyone to create” and is leading one of the most ambitious AI-enabled marketing transformations in the industry.

Tune in for a conversation with a leader who believes we are entering the golden age of creativity…

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What does it take to revitalize a 150-year-old company? Jim’s guest this week, Conny Kalcher, has done it twice. First at LEGO during its historic turnaround, and now at Zurich Insurance as their Group Chief Customer Officer, where she’s proving that empathy is not a soft skill but a strategic advantage. 

Conny spent 33 years at LEGO, where she helped navigate one of the most dramatic brand turnarounds in modern business history. Then in 2019, she joined Zurich Insurance, a company with over 200-country reach and a $100 billion market capitalization, to lead global customer loyalty and advocacy at a time when trust and humanity matter more than ever. And since joining, Conny has helped drive millions of new customers, a 35% increase in brand value, and measurable improvements in satisfaction and retention.

This is a conversation about renewing legacy brands, leading cultural transformation, and proving that empathy is not just good for people, it’s good for business.

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This week we return with one of our most anticipated episodes of the year…the 8th annual Super Bowl Advertiser Roundtable. As is tradition, Jim is joined by Gary Vaynerchuk to welcome a collection of marketing leaders behind this year’s most talked-about Super Bowl campaigns. 

Our Featured Guests are…

• Ahmed “Meddy” Iqbal, the Chief Marketing Officer of the Cadillac F1 Team
• Gail Horwood, the Chief Marketing Officer & Chief Experience Officer of Novartis
• Luis Garcia, the Chief Marketing Officer of Naterra International (Tree Hut)
• Steven Saenen, the President of Savory Brands & Crackers Portfolio for Mondelez (Ritz Crackers)
• Soyoung Kang, President of eos

Recorded live on the Monday after the game, in partnership with VaynerMedia’s Marketing for the Now, this conversation goes beyond the ads to explore how today’s CMOs think about boldness, experiential strategy, culture, and what it really takes to turn Super Bowl attention into long-term brand impact.

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We’re living through one of the biggest shifts in the internet since it began: a move from building content for people to building content for machines, on behalf of people. On this week’s episode, Jim Stengel is joined by James Cadwallader, Co-Founder and CEO of Profound, and Daniel Shin Un Kang, Head of Organic and Agentic Search at Expedia, for a thoughtful, practical conversation about AI search, answer engines, and what this shift means for the future of marketing.

James founded Profound in 2024, raising $60 million and earning recognition from Redpoint Ventures as one of the most promising private AI companies shaping applied artificial intelligence. Today, Profound works with brands like US Bank, Chime, Expedia, and DocuSign to help them navigate the transition from traditional search to a world of answer engines, agents, and AI-led experiences.

After building companies and investing in high-growth technology businesses, Daniel moved from the venture world into operating at global scale. He now leads Organic and Agentic Search at Expedia, where he’s helping redefine how one of the world’s largest travel platforms shows up in AI-powered search and discovery.

Together, James and Daniel unpack how brands actually appear inside AI systems like ChatGPT and Gemini, why traditional SEO metrics no longer tell the whole story, and how CMOs should rethink visibility, content, and measurement in an AI-driven world.

This episode offers a rare look at AI search from both sides of the table: the platform builder shaping the category and the operator putting it to work inside a performance-driven global brand. If you’re a CMO wondering what to focus on now, this conversation is a strong place to start.

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