Digital
Why OpenAI is hiring 100 ex-bankers: Inside the ChatGPT-maker's secret project to automate Wall Street's grunt work
Why Unilever won’t replace its chief marketing and growth officer
Unilever’s decision to retire the CMGO role reflects a broader shift toward category-led growth, faster execution and tighter accountability amid investor pressure.
Unilever’s decision not to replace its Chief Marketing & Growth Officer when Esi Eggleston Bracey exits in early 2026 marks a consequential shift in how the consumer goods group wants growth to be driven. Rather than signalling a diminished role for marketing, the move highlights a broader restructuring push: pulling decision-making closer to business groups, simplifying leadership layers and tightening accountability at a time when the company is under pressure to deliver faster results.
The Anglo-Dutch group has confirmed that Bracey’s responsibilities will be absorbed into a revised structure, with expanded enterprise-wide duties for Leandro Barreto, currently head of marketing for Beauty & Wellbeing, while keeping him rooted within a business group role. The CMGO title itself will be retired.
The change reflects Unilever’s view that the transformation phase that justified a powerful, centralised marketing-and-growth role has largely run its course. Over recent years, the company invested heavily in modernising marketing — from digital-first brand building and data-driven media buying to tighter integration with commerce. Management has now indicated that the next leg of growth depends less on central orchestration and more on execution speed within categories.
That logic mirrors Unilever’s wider organisational direction. The group has been moving away from a complex matrix towards clearer business group ownership, with marketing, innovation and pricing decisions increasingly anchored to category presidents who carry profit-and-loss responsibility. In that context, a global CMGO, by definition operating above the businesses, risked cutting across the very accountability the company is trying to reinforce.
The timing also matters. Unilever is in the middle of reshaping itself following leadership changes in 2025 and the planned separation of its ice cream business. Reporting by the Financial Times and Reuters has pointed to investor impatience with the pace of delivery, pushing the company towards simpler structures and more direct lines of control. Removing a horizontal C-suite role fits that imperative.
There is also a symbolic dimension. Adding “growth” to senior marketing titles has become common across global consumer companies grappling with the collision of brand building and performance marketing. By reverting to a more traditional CMO framing — while still expanding the role’s enterprise influence — Unilever appears to be signalling that growth accountability should sit structurally with business leaders, not be concentrated in a single corporate title.
For investors, the significance lies less in nomenclature than in execution. The key questions now are whether Unilever’s business groups can convert greater autonomy into faster innovation, sharper brand investment and more consistent volume growth — and whether the streamlined structure delivers clearer accountability as the company enters its next phase post–ice cream separation.
SPOTLIGHT
From purpose-driven work and narrative-rich brand films to AI-enabled ideas and creator-led collaborations, the awards reflect the full spectrum of modern creativity.
Read More“Two drunks leaning on a lamppost”: Sir Martin Sorrell on the Omnicom–IPG merger and the turbulence ahead
In a wide-ranging interview with Storyboard18, Sorrell delivers his frankest assessment yet of how the deal will redefine creativity, media, and talent across markets.