Head of marketing, Europe, Apple
Apple marked another milestone this year after becoming the world’s first trillion-dollar brand, according to Kantar’s 2024 global BrandZ ranking. The brand's value increased by 15% compared to last year, helping it secure the top spot for the third year in a row.
In Europe, responsibility for maintaining that lofty position is Katrien Bouwman, who joined as its head of marketing for the region in 2019 following more than a decade at Nike, where she was most recently senior brand director for Nike Direct, the brand’s direct to consumer venture.
Known for its unparalleled pipeline of innovation, in the last year alone Bouwman and her team will have overseen the launch of the iPhone 16, the unveiling of the iPad Pro and the redesigned iPad Air, as well as accompanying accessories and a smattering of new apps.
In July, after much hype, its first AR and VR headset Apple Vision Pro also launched in Europe. Though the device has been dogged by concerns around its high price point, the launch has reportedly seen Apple already take more than half the total market by value.■
CMO Europe, Samsung Electronics
Benjamin Braun is a passionate advocate for innovation and change within the marketing sector.
In the last few months alone, the Samsung Electronics CMO has spoken about the power of AI to improve accessibility, the ways in which the multibillion-pound creator economy has "transformed the way we think about content and marketing" and how his own experience with dyslexia has inspired him to champion inclusivity and neurodiversity within the industry.
He’s channelled this mindset into helping to drive impressive growth at Samsung since taking on the top marketing job in 2019. He’s dialled up investment in experiential marketing, extended its ident and product placement package with Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch to market its home appliances range and in January launched a new brand platform – ‘A New Era’ – for its latest range of flagship Galaxy phones. The two-pronged campaign celebrates the brand’s heritage while also satisfying Braun’s appetite for innovation, placing the brand at the centre of the AI-powered revolution.
It seems to be working. The company recently posted its fastest pace for both sales and profit growth in years, with a 15-fold surge in operating profit to 10.4 trillion won ($7.5bn).■
Consumer tech, manufacturing, property and automotive
Benjamin Braun
Katrien Bouwman
Vice-president of marketing EMEA, SharkNinja
Susie Donaldson has two decades of experience in consumer tech that she’ll use to her advantage in her new role as vice-president of marketing for the EMEA region at appliance company SharkNinja.
Donaldson has spent the last 16 years in various roles at Canon, most recently as its European marketing director, where she was responsible for a team of 40 overseeing everything from marketing planning to performance marketing, content, CX, retail experience and the management of its ambassador programme. Prior to that she spent three years at Samsung Mobile.
At SharkNinja, Donaldson will need to use all that experience to keep up the rapid growth the brand has enjoyed since the pandemic. The company grew net sales by 31.4% to $1.2bn (£897m) in the second quarter of 2024, while adjusted EBITDA rose 47.6% to $167m (£125m), predominantly due to the performance of its Shark vacuum cleaners, which now challenge Dyson for supremacy in the UK, and the social media-inspired boom in sales of its Ninja air fryers.
With an entrepreneurial mindset at its core, the brand believes there’s plenty more untapped opportunity for Donaldson to unlock throughout the rest of 2024 and beyond.■
Global chief customer and marketing officer, Carwow
Under the stewardship of its chief customer and marketing officer Ben Carter, online car marketplace Carwow has adopted a challenger mindset when it comes to getting its message across.
From inception, the brand was designed to disrupt the category, removing the smoke and mirrors typically associated with buying cars and bypassing dealers to make it a less intimidating process, and Carter has worked to embed that role as disruptor at each touchpoint.
That has included its approach to creative. In 2023, he and the team rolled out a tongue-in-cheek social campaign highlighting the "less than wow" experiences that customers have had exchanging their car via other platforms, and in February unveiled ‘The Breakup,’ a Valentine’s Day-themed campaign showcasing humorous reasons why people might want to part with an old car.
Expansion is also on the agenda, with Carwow acquiring motoring publisher Autovia in February. Carter's first job was to refresh the Auto Express brand, which hadn't been touched in 36 years.
Last year, nearly £3bn worth of cars were bought via the platform, with £1.8bn listed for sale on Sell My Car.■
Ben Carter
Susie Donaldson
EVP chief brand officer, Mattel
Lisa McKnight became EVP chief brand officer at US toy brand Mattel in the same month that Barbie, the movie, hit cinema screens. It broke numerous box office records, becoming the highest grossing film of the year and reinvigorating the Barbie brand on a global scale. It was a masterclass in IP strategy, of which McKnight - as global head of the Barbie and dolls portfolio prior to her current role - would have been an instrumental figure.
McKnight was central to refreshing the Barbie brand for modern audiences ahead of the film’s release, creating dolls that better reflect different races, abilities and body shapes, as well as inking deals for more than 100 brand collaborations in the lead up to the release. She also set up partnerships with shorter-term promotional partners to maximise the opportunity and worked closely with filmmakers to provide them with full immersion into the brand and its history.
And though it wasn’t enough to completely offset a challenging year for the toy maker - which ended 2023 with full-year net sales down 1% - it did provide a very welcome $150m ‘Barbie’ bump.■
Director of European digital marketing, Enterprise Mobility
Having worked at Facebook, Rackspace and agency side at Digitas prior to joining Enterprise in 2018, it’s perhaps no surprise that Charles Dodd has developed a penchant for data-driven marketing.
Dodd has a keen focus on using data and insights to adapt products and user experience at the car rental business to create value for the company and says he uses rigorous AB testing of all of its digital marketing channels to constantly evolve and expand the company’s marketing mix in line with demand.
In the past 12 months, that insight has underpinned the brand’s ninth year of partnering with UEFA to sponsor the UEFA Europa League (UEL) and latterly the UEFA Conference League (UECL) competitions, with an ambition to build awareness in the 13 European markets under Dodd’s remit and showcase its vehicles via the ‘All Roads Lead to Thursday’ campaign.
Watched by millions of football fans, the campaign’s films increased awareness of the company’s sponsorship by an average of 8%, according to a Nielsen study, reaching 21.4 million unique fans and being viewed over 10 million times across social media.■
Charles
Dodd
Lisa McKnight
CMO, McArthurGlen Group
Designer outlet shopping has enjoyed a buoyant few years since the pandemic, as shoppers flock back to destinations that combine retail and leisure.
McArthurGlen Group, which owns and runs 24 outlet villages in eight countries, has seen its centres thrive as a result. In its most recent results published in November, the company announced a 14% year-to-date rise in total revenues from its portfolio, driven by an 11% rise in footfall.
CMO Nathalie Pomroy has been instrumental in that performance. Pomroy joined in January 2020 - only weeks prior to the first UK national lockdown - having spent four years at hospitality giant Whitbread, where she was CMO for its Premier Inn brand and portfolio of restaurants.
At McArthurGlen she has overseen two major openings, with a new £160m shopping centre unveiled in the West Midlands in 2021 and in Paris, just 45 minutes from the Arc de Triomphe, last year. In 2022, she also spearheaded the multimedia ‘This is my kind of extraordinary’ campaign. ■
CMO EMEA, Microsoft
After less than two years as Microsoft’s UK CMO Bonnie Pelosi was promoted in June and now oversees marketing for the whole EMEA region at the tech giant.
As UK CMO, Pelosi led all marketing and brand strategy for Microsoft at a time when the company was looking to position itself as a frontrunner in artificial intelligence. That’s included its hefty £13bn reported partnership with ChatGPT owner OpenAI as well as the wider rollout of Microsoft 365 Copilot in 2023, which uses next-gen AI to increase productivity across its apps.
To showcase the advantages of the new technology, Microsoft unveiled the ‘Watch Me’ campaign in February, designed to tap into growing curiosity among consumers about how AI can transform everyday tasks.
Pelosi first joined Microsoft in September 2022 from IT services firm Wipro where she was Europe CMO. Prior to that, she worked at professional services firm EY for nearly a decade, culminating in her role as CMO for UK and Ireland. ■
Bonnie Pelosi
Nathalie Pomroy
Director of marketing, Ford Europe
Peter Zillig joined Ford Europe as its first brand and marketing director in 2020 at a pivotal time for the car giant. As car marques jostled to prepare for an EV future, the group needed a marketer to cement its brand positioning, building on its new ‘Bring on Tomorrow’ tagline. Zillig was recruited from agency Cheil UK to take on the newly-created role.
Under Zillig’s stewardship, the company has doubled down on its EV innovation pipeline - more than 80% of the customers who bought its Mustang Mach-E launched in 2019 were new to the brand. It also signed up to become the title partner of RideLondon until 2025 to amplify messaging around its switch to EVs and net zero targets.
Elsewhere, Ford has been investing in more connected customer experiences, an improved ecommerce offer and additional added value services.
It hasn’t neglected its non-electric range completely, however. Last year, Zillig and team partnered with creative agency AMV BBDO to launch a pan-European campaign to promote its all-new 2023 Ranger pickup truck. ■
CMO, Motorway
After six years at female-first dating app Bumble, Naomi Walkland made the move to become CMO of online used car marketplace Motorway in May.
In her previous role as vice-president of marketing for the EMEA and APAC regions at Bumble, Walkland was instrumental in helping to build up the app’s userbase to 58 million active users as of 2023, helping to launch the tech into a raft of new international markets and diversifying its product portfolio. That included the rollout of ‘Bumble for Friends,’ its standalone BFF service designed to connect users looking for platonic relationships.
In taking on the new role at Motorway earlier this year, Walkland told Marketing Week she was "excited" at the growth potential of the business and the opportunity to build on its success so far. The used car platform saw its sales more than double year on year in 2022, from £841m in 2021 to £1.7bn.
"I really wanted to take my experience of scaling and building relevant and iconic brands to Motorway where there’s an opportunity to continue to do that," she told Marketing Week on joining the business.■
Naomi Walkland
Peter Zillig
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