Starbucks drops global CMO title: How the role is evolving in 2024 and beyond

Starbucks is getting rid of its global CMO role as it promotes its Brady Brewer to the role of CEO, Starbucks International. In his new role, he will oversee teams across Asia Pacific, EMEA, Japan and LAC, as well as the company’s international licensed partners. 

While the company will not replace the global chief marketing position most recently occupied by Brewer, the leadership restructure will also see regional chief executive officers take charge of the business in each market, working alongside regional marketers.  

This aims to create a clear geographic leadership structure, supported by global functions with deep functional expertise and the ability to drive impact on a global scale. These changes will go into effect on 1 April. 

“We are making strong progress against our Triple Shot with Two Pumps Reinvention plan,” Laxman Narasimhan, Starbucks chief executive officer. “To further accelerate progress, consistent with our ambitions, we are realigning the organisation to balance clear geographical focus with investing in functional capabilities to scale around the world, generating productivity and reinvigorating our partner culture.”  

On the other hand, Lyne Castonguay will join Starbucks in the newly created position of evp, chief merchant and product officer, reporting to Narasimhan. Starbucks also intends to soon appoint a global brand creative leader, reporting to Narasimhan. 

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE has reached out to Starbucks for more information.

Industry players' reactions

While Starbucks' move can be seen as a tactic to better balance the clear geographical focus of a brand, industry players MARKETING-INTERACTIVE spoke to believed that the move can be attributed to several factors.   

Shufen Goh, co-founder and principal of R3, said it would seem like a sharpening of the global CMO role to be focused on creative aspect of brand marketing with Starbucks' appointment of creative brand leader.  

“This could solve the problem of many global CMOs not having clear business targets and therefore not having a global budget to deploy marketing,” she added. 

Starbucks’ decision to drop the global CMO role also aligns with the “think global, act local” mantra which has been around for ages, according to Jimmy Yar, chief detective at The Talent Detective. 

“With high growth regions such as APAC where countries are far less homogenous than North America and Europe, the decentralisastion to regional marketing to help drive growth becomes the order of the day,” he added.  

Organisations are increasingly reframing the definition of marketing to a broader term- Growth, he said. “Though they might have shelve the global CMO role, they elevated Brewer to the international CEO role, putting him in the driver's seat to help pursue growth and get him closer to the P&L.”  

Meanwhile, Ruben Schreurs, chief strategy officer, Ebiquity said the role of a "global CMO" for such a widespread operation can lead to a rather myopic and often US-centric strategy, where different regions and large markets require a tailored approach.

I expect the global brand creative leader will be heavily focused on brand governance, ensuring some level of global coherence and preventing potentially damaging deviations.

How will the role of CMO evolve in 2024 and beyond? 

In fact, Starbucks isn’t the first global brand to eliminate its global CMO role. Huge brands such as Coca-Cola dropped their global chief marketing officer function back in 2017 by merging it with 'customer and commercial leadership as well as strategy' to create a new 'chief growth officer' role.  

Mike Proulx, VP and research director at Forrester, said when big brands eliminate the CMO role, several reverse course – including Coca Cola and McDonalds – when business growth is at stake.  

The good news for Brewer, who has served as Starbucks' CMO since 2020, is he’s been promoted to CEO of Starbucks International – further underscoring the notion that CMOs who act as broad business leaders have a path to the CEO job, he added. 

In general, the remit of the CMO continues to expand as marketing becomes more complex. Proulx added that changes in the media and technology landscape outpace the ability to stay ahead of the curve. "And with the feverish onset of generative AI, marketing (and thus the CMO role) is being disrupted once again."

Apart from the possibility of stepping up as the company CEO, the role of the CMOs is rapidly evolving and will encompass more areas of responsibilities to help their organisation achieve a growth mindset and be customer-centric, said The Talent Detective’s Yar.  

Many organisations are still figuring out the wider scope that the marketing lead should own and it is still taking shape, he said. 

Hence, we are experiencing a proliferation of titles and dual titles beyond the typical CMO title convention; chief customer and marketing officer, chief marketing and digital officer, chief growth officer.

Nonetheless, a redefined remit is needed for CMOs as company CEOs are searching for new avenues for growth amid a challenging macroeconomic environment.

According to a 2023 McKinsey survey on “How the CEO–CMO relationship can drive outsize growth”, nine in ten surveyed CEOs said they believe that marketing’s remit is well defined. However, only 22% of marketing chiefs say their jobs are well-defined and understood by other C-suite executives, down from 31% in 2019.  

That could mean marketing or marketing-adjacent leaders can struggle to deliver when they are not part of the strategic conversation and may not have the opportunity to influence important decisions. 

As such, R3’s Goh said the CMO role will need to evolve from being an influencer in the organisation to being key decision maker of budgets, and anything that concerns the customer.  

This requires the CMO to have real power to influence everything from product development to customer experience. Otherwise the role would just be perceived as an internal facilitator or glorified campaign manager.

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