Entries are now open for the 2027 ADWEEK Marketing Vanguard Awards, presented by Brand Finance.

The best CMOs exceed not only their board’s expectations, but their customers’. Weaving brand building with the demand for results is a tricky balance that many fail to master—but there are visionaries who truly use marketing to change the trajectory of their brands and businesses.

They are the Marketing Vanguard, and as part of ADWEEK’s Marketing Vanguard program, we’re proud to open entries for the 5th annual Marketing Vanguard Awards.

Who Is Eligible 

This award is reserved for CMOs of brands. Executives from agencies, consultancies, and tech are not eligible. 

ADWEEK will also consider CEOs who rose from the CMO seat—chief executives who, having once owned the marketing remit themselves, now understand, champion, and drive the marketing agenda across their companies.

What We’re Looking For

CMOs often make key decisions that alter the trajectory of the business—we want to hear about those moments. Along with those decisions and results, submissions should demonstrate that the nominee consistently does the following:

• Champions the marketing discipline
• Positions marketing as a driver of organizational growth
• Quantifies marketing’s value to the organization

Backed By Data

New this year, this award will have a 2-step entry process. After all entries have been reviewed, the finalists will be asked to submit financial and brand awareness data, which will be used to calculate a Brand Strength score in partnership with Brand Finance, the official research partner of the Marketing Vanguard Awards. The score gives judges a consistent, data-backed measurement of each marketer’s impact. 

Brand Finance is a leading brand valuation consultancy that helps thousands of companies understand the financial value of their brands and use that information to drive strategic decision making. Their database of metrics is used by financial institutions, non-governmental agencies, and academics. 

Note: The brand value calculations for this award are Brand Finance’s and are for general information only. They should not be used as investment, financial or legal advice.

Key Dates

The final deadline to submit is Friday, January 29, 2027. 

Winners will be published in the May issue of ADWEEK in print and online.  

There is no entry fee. 

To enter, please use the submission form below, and reach out to awards@adweek.com for any questions.

Two broadcast executives are now thinking outside the TV box.

Following Clear Channel Outdoor Holding’s recently completed $6.2 billion acquisition by Mubadala Capital, the company is adding two veteran TV executives in key C-suite positions.

Wade Davis, current vice chair of Univision and the company’s former CEO, is joining as CEO and executive chairman of the board, and John Halley, Paramount’s former ads leader, is joining as chief commercial officer. As the deal closes, the current CEO, Scott Wells, is exiting the company.

Davis spearheaded the acquisition deal with Mubadala Capital, which takes Clear Channel, one of the largest out-of-home companies with more than 70,000 outdoor and airport displays, private. The move will allow the company to be agile without the constraints of quarterly benchmarks, as Davis and Halley utilize their TV expertise to revamp and modernize out-of-home, looking to make it easier to buy and moving beyond exposures to outcomes.

“There are two things that really excite me. The first is the strength of the medium, and the second one is really around the opportunity to help it realize its potential,” Halley said on making the jump from TV to out-of-home.

Halley, who exited as Paramount ads leader earlier this year, previously worked with Davis when the executive was CFO of Viacom prior to the CBS merger. In his new role, Halley will work with Clear Channel leadership, including Bob McCuin, evp and chief revenue officer; Erika Goldberg, evp and chief of business operations and president of markets; and Dan Levi, evp and chief marketing officer, to focus on key areas such as media revenue, product, marketing, and measurement.

“We’re investing in a tech roadmap to make the business operate better, internally and externally,” Halley said. “There are a lot of interesting developments, particularly in the ways of programmatic and data, which will make the digital footprint look a lot more like things that people have seen before and are familiar with.”

Halley noted that out-of-home is already a proven addition to a marketing mix and, unlike TV’s current struggles with fragmented audiences, it has guaranteed exposures and credibility. The exec noted that Clear Channel’s massive footprint already makes other investments work harder across channels such as social and digital, and there’s opportunity to prove that value.

“Out-of-home, in its current state, influences consumer behavior. What’s changing is our ability to prove it, to optimize it, and to connect it to outcomes,” Halley said.

According to Halley, out-of-home can be challenging to buy and is “effectively unmeasured,” but advances in currency, measurement, standardization, and digitization can transform the medium, making it a modern, data-driven channel.

“This notion of making out-of-home more intelligent and easier to buy is a separate but related thing: better audience data, more sophisticated planning tools, greater digital inventory, programmatic capabilities—all those things allow advertisers to deploy out of home with more precision and flexibility,” Halley said.

As former president of Paramount Advertising and former chairman of OpenAP, an advanced activation platform for the convergent video marketplace enabling new currencies, Halley has a long history navigating the world of advertising measurement. The executive noted that a major goal will be connecting exposures to outcomes.

“We’re building the measurement structure to understand not just how many people saw an ad, but how that exposure contributes to things like store visits and customer acquisition, and ultimately ROI,” Halley said. “I think, importantly, that involves connecting out-of-home to the same marketing mix models and measurement frameworks that advertisers use to evaluate their other media investments.”

Halley said, though there are all sizes of players in the out-of-home marketplace, none have a stranglehold nationally, and he and Davis will look to create a better unified platform where advertisers can focus on the audiences they want to reach and buy the combination of assets that help them do that.

“These things don’t happen tomorrow. They’re going to require investment. But the opportunity is making this thing look and work within an omnichannel media strategy, and we have a very good idea of what that requires, given our histories in television,” Halley said.

On the heels of declaring CEO Brian Niccol’s “Back to Starbucks” turnaround strategy a success, Starbucks has reportedly considered purchasing fast-casual Mexican chain Chipotle.

The deal seems to be just a kicking of the tires at this point, with the Financial Times reporting that the coffee giant has “explored a takeover” and also “worked with advisors in recent months on a takeover proposal.”

While Chipotle shares leapt at the news, the coffee’s chain’s stock price stumbled. Investors are purportedly worried that taking over a fast-casual food chain with a $39 billion market cap and north of 4,200 locations would be too big an operational burden, especially with Starbucks’ turnaround not yet complete.

Two years into Niccol’s plan—which aims to improve customer service and return many of its 41,000 locations back into the welcoming respites they were in the 1990s—he declared to employees that “Starbucks is back.”

But in an exclusive interview with ADWEEK earlier this month, he conceded that the turnaround isn’t quite complete.

“I probably underestimated the scale of the business that Starbucks is,” Niccol said. “I wish we were going a little bit faster with digital. I wish we were going a little bit faster with the menu. But culturally, we are so much better because we’re now focused on owning outcomes, not celebrating activity.”

If an acquisition of Chipotle goes through, there’d be much more to focus on than that.

Chipotle finished Q2 strong, with total revenues up 9.3% to $3.3 billion and comp sales up by 2.2%. But the chain continues to battle the perception that its prices are too high, especially as many consumers are thinking about how to pay for gas that’s crept north of $4 a gallon.

If Starbucks is serious about buying Chipotle, the merger will require regulatory approval (though President Trump’s administration has shown itself to be M&A friendly.)

Barring that, the combined brands would create a $50 billion behemoth with two concepts that lack a lot of operational overlap. Chipotle serves no coffee, and Starbucks, at least to date, does not serve burritos. (Though there’s an avocado spread on the fall menu.)

Even so, operational efficiencies are possible, said David Mayer, senior partner and director of marketing and customer strategy at Lippincott, as are “cross-selling opportunities, and, longer term, the potential to add more brands to the portfolio.”

On the flip side, Chipotle can offer growth opportunities that Starbucks itself cannot.

“If that’s the case,” Mayer said, “the diversion of management attention, combined with weakening brands, may risk creating a combined entity that continues to decline and is even harder to turn around.”

If nothing else, a merger would theoretically return Niccol to the executive suite of Chipotle, where he served as CEO from March of 2018 until August of 2024. Chipotle’s size doubled during Niccol’s time in the corner office—no small part of why Starbucks poached him.

The Crypt Keeper is back, but to resurrect the Tales From the Crypt icon, AMC had to find a partner with the right… spirit.

That’s right, boys and ghouls. After a 30-year absence, the Crypt Keeper, along with his original voice artist, John Kassir, has returned to host AMC’s 30th anniversary of FearFest, and spirits company Bacardí helped make it happen.

Over the course of FearFest and its 650 hours of horror content in October, AMC and Bacardí will release five vignettes featuring the Crypt Keeper across linear and social. And for those who want even more Crypt Keeper, all seven seasons of Tales From the Crypt are now streaming on AMC+ and Shudder for the first time. See the latest vignette, “Better With a Beat,” exclusively on ADWEEK below:

“The idea of bringing [the Crypt Keeper] back for the first time, resurrecting him from the crypt, if you will, just seemed so fun and on brand,” Lisa Pfenning, VP for Bacardí Rum in North America, told ADWEEK. “We share a lot of the same values, the Crypt Keeper and Bacardí.”

Those values include self-expression and good humor—yes, the Crypt Keeper’s signature puns are back. And with the added bonus of Halloween themes and ’90s nostalgia, Pfenning called the stunt a natural partnership.

But bringing the Crypt Keeper back after three decades wasn’t just some easy hocus pocus. According to Bacardí and AMC, the companies spent months bringing the character to life.

A tale about the Crypt

Bacardí had previously teamed up with AMC for FearFest in 2025, and coming into this year, the brand wanted to make an even bigger splash to own Halloween. To get things started quickly, conversations kicked off in early 2026, according to Mike DiGiacomo, head of integrated marketing and Content Room, AMC Global Media.

At the time of those initial conversations, AMC didn’t have the streaming rights to Tales From the Crypt, but as the months went on and the licensing deal was finalized, the idea of bringing back the Crypt Keeper for original content began to catch on.

“We were like, ‘This could be something,’” DiGiacomo said, adding, “When we first presented the idea of partnering with the Crypt Keeper to Bacardí, their eyes lit up. All we had to say was ‘Crypt Keeper,’ and we hit the ground running.”

The team got to work on multiple rounds of creative, integrating the Crypt Keeper into Bacardí’s music-inspired campaign, “Better With a Beat”; recruiting horror effects master and Walking Dead director Greg Nicotero to update the Crypt Keeper’s look and direct the Crypt Keeper content, which included Kassir as the voice; and weaving in Bacardí throughout the process.

“Our whole thing is authenticity. We know that there is a very dedicated audience behind this franchise, so if we’re going to do it, if we’re going to bring Crypt Keeper back, we want to do it right,” DiGiacomo said.

Crypt Keeper is known for showing up in different sketch situations, such as taking on the role of a creepy Santa Claus or acting like a barber with towels hot enough to melt someone’s face off. This time, Crypt Keeper is coming back as a cocktail-loving DJ to work within the Bacardí theme, and you may even see some of the signature Bacardí “Spookito” cocktails on display, which are a mojito with a bloody grenadine twist.

AMC also noted that utmost care was taken with his look and in walking the line so the content didn’t feel too commercial.

“If I’m a fan and I’m watching Tales From the Crypt on Shudder, and I get fed this content, am I going to call that out as an ad, or am I going to actually take that as real content?” DiGiacomo said. “Across the board, no matter who the advertiser is, no matter what the platform or the IP is, that’s first and foremost when it comes to partnerships.”

Regarding Crypt Keeper’s slightly updated look and attire, DiGiacomo noted it came down to relying on experts like Nicotero and the creative team being fans themselves.

“One of the secret sauces we have and something that we talk to brands about a lot is that we’re all fans too, which really makes a difference,” DiGiacomo said. “The people on my team who are working on this project are fully leaned in, and are fans of the genre and the series itself.”

Cryptic future ahead?

Fans can obviously be opinionated around iconic IP, and though there are detractors about the Crypt Keeper’s updated look, there are also plenty of supporters. And AMC and Bacardí noted that there’s been positive feedback both internally and externally.

“Consumer feedback has been great. We’ve been watching the comments. People are excited to bring him back. They’re excited that the show is being rerun,” Pfenning said.

So what happens next? Will the Crypt Keeper return? Could there be more Tales From the Crypt episodes in the future?

“Yet to be seen if the Crypt Keeper makes a comeback next Halloween,” Pfenning said. “But we will continue to nurture our relationship with AMC for sure.”

On specific future plans, Bacardí is as silent as the grave. But it is a spirits brand, so there’s always a… shot.