5 top CMOs dish on 2025, how they’re preparing for 2026

Never before has the CMO position been more complex—or more essential to driving business results. The mark of success for any chief marketing officer is their impact on the long-term trajectory of a beloved brand.

So, what does that look like in a year as chaotic as 2025, where there’s been on-again, off-again tariffs, massive holding company mergers, and the continued rise of AI across the board? 

I reached out to CMOs from Hinge, McDonald’s, Crayola, State Farm, and Kraft Heinz, five marketing leaders operating at the top of their game, navigating the chaos, and getting results. We talked about what lessons they’ve learned from the past year, issues they’ll be facing in the coming year, and what they expect to be the biggest shift marketers and brands can expect in 2026.

Here’s what they had to say…

What was your most important lesson or insight of 2025?

“Invest in listening and learning! Remarkable strategy and creative work are always grounded in true insight and original ideas. Hearing your core audience, and their needs, must be central to how you do the work. Knowing which audiences are the most important to center, and learn from, is also important. Having a diverse, empowered team is a short cut here, for sure. At Hinge, our employee base mimics our user base. That is a powerful advantage.” —Hinge CMO (now CEO) Jackie Jantos

“The pace of change is overwhelming for everyone (both our fans and our teams). Our most important job is to maintain human connections and be a place of joy for our fans.”—Morgan Flatley, McDonald’s Global Chief Marketing Officer & Head of New Business Ventures

“The best brand moments can’t always be planned. They come from teams that stay agile, take smart swings and can move in real time. Our decision to release our Batman vs. Bateman spot in March was carefully considered. We could’ve launched it anywhere, but the alignment with college basketball—where our brand is strong and the audience overlap is real—made the story land bigger. We kept our Super Bowl-level tactics across the entire campaign—including cross-channel build-up and sneak previews, fan giveaways, top-tier talent, and it became one of March Madness’ top-performing campaigns. It’s important to build the muscle to move with audiences, show up with authenticity and add value in real time.” —State Farm CMO Kristyn Cook

“2025 has been a whirlwind. Consumers and companies across the world have seen a lot of challenges and uncertainty. In these moments, I have learned it is more important than ever to focus on what is within your control. Focusing on brand superiority, the role our brands need to play in their respective categories and the joy they bring to consumers. It is not the time to sit back; it is the time to focus, invest in brands, and execute flawlessly.” —Kraft Heinz chief growth officer Diana Frost

“The most important lesson this year, again, is that brands can’t just show up in culture, they need to create and contribute to it in ways that feel authentic and connect people. For Crayola, that meant adopting a more expansive brand narrative that reinforces our deep cultural roots and underscores our purpose: championing creativity as a lifelong skill. It’s not only about products, experiences, and content that bring creativity to life, it’s about being recognized as an advocate for creativity as essential to growth and wellbeing.” —Crayola CMO Victoria Lozano

How did the role of marketing change the most in 2025?

“Marketers have a lot to contribute across the whole business. They should influence growth and business strategy, product development, and guide organizational culture. Hinge’s goal is to get daters off the app and into great dates. Delivering on this deeply human mission requires deep and nuanced understanding of core audiences and their relationship needs—and a lot of imagination around which challenges we can take on, and how we can be in service of people. This is where marketing’s contribution can be profound.” Hinge CMO (now CEO) Jackie Jantos

“Marketing is central to our business growth, and this year we made some big bets that paid off. Take a look at Minecraft, where we brought together two iconic worlds that invited fans of all ages to play, eat, and build together. We proved that when we combine genuine passion for an idea, the power of our brand voice, and a killer fan truth, we can do incredible things for the business. This partnership increased traffic to our restaurants, fan excitement across nearly 100 markets, and success for the movie at the box office, too.

We’ve also gotten much better as a system in sharing and scaling great ideas. Campaigns like The Grinch Meal and Menu Heist are examples of how fan-centered ideas can cross borders while adapting to local nuances and flavors. Often, the most powerful brand asset you have is your product.”— Morgan Flatley, McDonald’s Global Chief Marketing Officer & Head of New Business Ventures

“Every company is exploring how AI can sharpen their marketing. While AI is boosting the scientific side of marketing, the true strength comes from balancing science with ‘art’—instinct, human connection, and, most importantly, creativity. Creativity remains the ultimate differentiator for brands—it’s the force multiplier that enables everything else. If your creativity doesn’t grab attention or stop the scroll, none of it matters.” —State Farm CMO Kristyn Cook

What will be the biggest difference between 2025 and 2026?

“Getting people off the app and into great dates remains core to everything we do at Hinge. When daters have better outcomes their trust in Hinge grows, as does our business—organically. But many emerging tools and technologies aren’t built with long-term user outcomes in mind. In 2026, we’ll see an even sharper divide between brands that use technology guided by a set of values—that put people’s needs and wellbeing first—and those that don’t. And young people will notice and care. Purposeful technology will increasingly become a differentiator.” —Hinge CMO (now CEO) Jackie Jantos

“While the pace of change feels faster than ever, the fundamentals won’t shift as much as we think they will. Technology and media are evolving, but the power of storytelling, killer creativity, and human connection remain constant. I read a striking thing at the start of this year: that TV is the most popular device for watching YouTube on, more than a cellphone or desktop. So, when people talk about the ‘death of TV,’ it’s not the death of watching things on a TV, in your living room, often with friends and family. It’s just where that content came from and how it was served to you. That’s an important distinction. Our job is to navigate through the change, while not forgetting what’s most important and meaningful to our brand and our fans.”—Morgan Flatley, McDonald’s Global Chief Marketing Officer & Head of New Business Ventures

“It is my belief that 2026 will have a lot of continued themes from 2025. That said, the pace of AI-powered marketing will continue to accelerate. AI-powered marketing will allow marketers to have a faster path than ever before to insights and analytics, brand co-pilots, innovation, content and recipe formulation. That said, it will never replace human curiosity, connection, and brand authenticity. Marketers require the ability to balance AI scale with human credibility.”—Kraft Heinz chief growth officer Diana Frost

What will be the most significant shift or issue for marketers in 2026?

“We’re entering a moment where technology and AI can meaningfully add value, but can also convincingly mimic empathy and smooth the friction that actually helps us grow as humans. That creates a new responsibility and accountability for marketers. Human relationships are complex, imperfect, and deeply important, and the products and messages we introduce into the world shape how people connect.

So the key question for marketers in 2026 will be: Who is our work truly serving? What are we contributing to culture and community? To stay relevant and build trust, brands will need to build with intention and continuously design for more positive human connection.”—Hinge CMO (now CEO) Jackie Jantos

“Building the foundation with Gen Alpha. The entire brand economy has been focused on Gen Z. We’re looking at what’s next; how we earn a place in the world of our future customers so when they’re ready, we already feel familiar and trusted. They aren’t ‘younger Gen Z.’ Gen Z grew up digital, and Gen Alpha is growing up algorithmic. They expect content to know them, adapt to them and evolve with them in real time. We are doing our homework now—studying how they stream, the platforms they are native to and how they want to engage with brands.

Platforms like Twitch and the streamers leading the conversation are shaping Gen Alpha’s taste. Community is very important – niche fandoms, creator-led ecosystems, gaming environments will all matter more than broad channel reach. We need to build trust early on with moments and experiences they truly want, and create a world where content is hyper-personal, participatory, and always evolving.” —State Farm CMO Kristyn Cook

“Marketing is evolving from omni-channel storytelling to connected ecosystems in an AI-mediated world. But in a world of big data and advanced language models, the most powerful insights still come from real, human experiences. What scales isn’t the broadest message—it’s the most authentic one. Listening to customers matters more than ever; the role of influencer content to drive preference is growing. In a landscape chasing ‘perfect’ information, creativity, empathy, and humanity aren’t just nice-to-haves—they’re what set brands apart. The future of marketing isn’t about chasing every channel. It’s about the small, personal observations—the little details about how people actually live and behave—and creating connected experiences that feel seamless, even when the ecosystem isn’t. Consumers expect brands to meet them in these micro-moments with relevance and purpose, not noise.”—Crayola CMO Victoria Lozano

“Our role as marketers is to understand consumer behavior and use those insights to move people to engage with our brands. It is an art and science and there are key skills and capabilities required to do that now and in the future. As marketers, creativity and innovation are critical in this moment. AI supercharges conventional wisdom; creative problem solvers are the present and future of marketing. It has never been more important to be data proficient. We have more data than ever at our fingertips but using it to power insights and execution is key. How consumers discover, connect and transact with brands continues to evolve. Those who can best understand and breakthrough in the new consumer journey will win.“ —Kraft Heinz chief growth officer Diana Frost

source https://www.fastcompany.com/91462245/top-cmos-dish-on-2025-how-theyre-preparing-for-2026