BRAND STRATEGY

Morning Brew Inc.

How can a role be crucial and yet not necessary full-time?

Six in 10 respondents to a recent Marketing Brew survey agreed with the statement that the role has become more important than it was five years ago, and 3 in 4 agreed with the statement that marketing “has a strong voice in shaping my company’s overall business strategy.” But just 17% said they believe every company needs a full-time CMO.

For the survey, we asked a segment of our audience about the future of the CMO role, the biggest pressures practitioners are facing, and how AI is changing the conversation. More than 450 Marketing Brew newsletter readers participated in a custom survey, which was fielded July 13 through July 31.

Call these first findings the CMO conundrum. The role may be one of the most questioned in the C-suite, with lingering reputational baggage as a cost center that often makes CMOs feel pressure to prove their worth to the rest of the C-suite and beyond.

At the same time, the remit of the role has expanded, with CMOs telling Marketing Brew that they’ve had new responsibilities added to their plate. Two-thirds (65%) said AI strategy and governance duties have been added, while nearly half (48%) said they’re now taking on PR/external communications duties. A similarly high number of respondents (46%) said entertainment/culture/partnership strategies have been added to their purview.

That could help explain why many CMO roles have gone through a refresh. Titles like chief customer and marketing officer, chief marketing and communications officer, and chief marketing and transformation officer are reflecting the new, expanded reality of the role. Meanwhile, some companies have dropped top marketing titles altogether, opting to have chief growth officers oversee the duties a CMO may have previously handled.

Those title shifts are quite common now, according to Nick Primola, group EVP at the Association of National Advertisers and head of the organization’s Global CMO Growth Council. A clean CMO title, he told us, is becoming increasingly “rare,” and that “even if it is a clean CMO [title], the role underneath it has expanded.”

Read more from our State of the CMO report here.—KM

      

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SPORTS MARKETING

New York Liberty

While the top eight teams compete for the championship during the WNBA playoffs, behind the scenes, their marketing and PR departments are helping players compete for other prizes: the end-of-season awards.

It’s become tradition for some teams to send themed gift packages to members of the media who vote on the awards, including MVP and Rookie of the Year, with products designed to make the case for certain players.

The team’s marketers have historically embraced food-and-beverage-themed awards campaigns—a fitting choice for a city known for its eats.

This year’s boxes follow that tradition, with a wine-and-cheese motif, but the campaign is a little bigger than usual, as the Liberty—and the league—wrap up their 30th anniversary season.

This season “feels different marketing-wise,” Chief Brand Officer Shana Stephenson told Marketing Brew. “We are only one of three original teams remaining, so we feel really special, and really don’t take that for granted at all…We wanted our fans to really celebrate with us.”

Read more here.—AM

      

Sponsored By impact.com

Holiday shoppers are playing hard to get: Consumers are being pickier with where they spend their money—so it’s time for you to change up your strategy. We teamed with impact.com to dig into their 2026 Mid-Year Industry Report to see how you can catch the eyes of picky shoppers during the holiday season.

PODCAST

Brand mascots are having a moment, and some of them are puppets.

On this episode of Marketing Brew Weekly, Jennimai Nguyen and Katie Hicks rank 12 company mascots on a tier list, from Quaker Oats’s Quaker Man, first introduced in 1877, to Liberty Mutual’s brand-new Liberty Biberty. Along the way, they get into why mascot marketing has outlasted every trend, what a mascot can do that a celebrity can’t, and which characters deserve a spot at the top of the pyramid.

• Mascots beat celebrities on staying power. Research from System1 found mascots can outperform celebrities over time, since they stay on brand, don’t split their attention across sponsors, and never go off-script.
• Patience pays. It takes about three years for a mascot to build real recognition and emotional connection, so brands trying to speed-run it are working against the clock.
• Craft is the new edge. In the age of AI, hands-on mascots like Liberty Biberty (made with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop) tap into audience appetite for something real, even if not everyone loves the result.
• The best mascots know their job. New York Liberty’s Ellie the Elephant tops the list for going beyond the court with her own brand deals, while Smokey Bear and an oft-sacrificed Pop-Tart earn A’s for a clear purpose and a tight tie to the brand.

Listen to the episode here.

      

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There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Posting time: Tips for the Instagram algorithm straight from Adam Mosseri.

Sizing up: How to learn from brand peers with a competitive analysis.

Ask the chat: A guide to preparing for a holiday shopping season with AI agents.

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The flagship IRL event lands at NYC’s Times Center — a full day of marketing leaders talking brand strategy, social, and where ad budgets are actually going next year.

METRICS AND MEDIA

Stat: 18%. That’s the percentage of marketing leaders who report having eliminated certain functional roles at their organizations because of automation, according to a new report from Gartner.

Quote: “In the world we live in, you can no longer say, ‘Oh, that won’t happen to me.’”—Rodney Rambo, former Converse CMO, speaking to Adweek about death threats and false accusations he received off the back of the brand’s recent controversial campaign

Read: “From brand deals to equity deals: creators want a stake, not just a fee” (Digiday)