Here are the brands starting 2023 with new CMOs

In C-suite land, it seems like many marketing execs have chosen to start 2023 with a clean slate, aka a new job. There’s been a flurry of CMO moves in the past few weeks. To recap:

• Michelle Crossan-Matos left her marketing role at Samsung Electronics America to join Ulta as its CMO.
• Leslie Berland, Twitter’s former marketing lead, was named CMO of Peloton.
• Sherri Landry will soon become CMO and SVP at Denny’s after leading marketing at CEC Entertainment, which owns Chuck E. Cheese.
• Pat O’Toole, who previously served as Mountain Dew’s CMO, will soon take on the same role at Burger King in the US and Canada.
• Sadé Muhammad left Forbes to become the CMO of Time.

Heading out: Adobe’s longtime CMO hung up her hat after a 16-year run this week, and R/GA’s CMO is leaving the agency for a new role, according to Ad Age.

Zooming out: “While new CMOs taking the helm at the beginning of the year is nothing earth-shattering, brands will quickly scoop up heavy hitters who have extensive depth and breadth of experience in leading transformative growth amidst challenging environments,” Sally Witzky, senior director and analyst at Gartner, told us.

Plus, she said “more key talent is available” right now as layoffs occur across brands and agencies occur. “Another way to say that is that the marketing executive talent pool is richer for the moment. But as they land jobs like these, we would expect fewer to be as available again. This would include both CMO-level executives and key direct reports they wish to recruit to help them implement the transformations they need to lead.”—MS