Walmart’s Quinn named ‘top global CMO’

Walmart’s Stephen Quinn is the top CMO in the world, according to a ranking of the top 500 global marketing executives.

Stephen Quinn Walmart

Quinn has held the role of executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Walmart US since 2007 and is responsible for all aspects of marketing including customer research, marketing and business strategy, private brand and customer communications.

He has also served as CMO of Frito-Lay North America, a $10bn division of PepsiCo.

Quinn beat high profile marketers such as Apple’s Phillip Schiller (3), Nike’s Trevor Edwards (4) and Coca-Cola’s Joseph Tripodi (8) to ExecRank’s 2012 top spot.

The top 500 list is largely dominated by US marketers – which may be due to the fact that ExecRank is a US-based company – but notable British entries include Nigel Burton, CMO at Colgate Palmolive (23), Phil McAveety, executive vice president and chief brand officer at Starwood Hotels (91) and Nigel Gilbert, CMO of Virgin Media (383).

The ExecRank algorithm calculated each marketer’s position for 24 key categories, including: experience in the role, business results during tenure, published thought leadership, technology adoption, education, reputation and peer recommendations. It also called on a series of evaluation committees made up of the world’s “most renowned” business leaders.

The company screened and evaluated more than 15,000 marketing executives to compile the top 500.

ExecRank says 2012 has seen a heavy focus on social media marketing and strategic partnerships and many marketing executives releasing their own books with top tier publishers.

Top 10 global CMOs

Source: ExecRank

  1. Stephen Quinn, Walmart
  2. Nicholas Utton, E*Trade Financial Corporation
  3. Phillip Schiller, Apple
  4. Trevor Edwards, Nike
  5. Albert Pimentel, Seagate Technology
  6. John Costello, Dunkin’ Brands
  7. Darryl McDonald, Terradata Corporation
  8. Joseph Tripodi, Coca-Cola
  9. Robert Medrano, SOA Software
  10. David Roman, Lenovo

Read the full list here

Recommended