It started so well. Last month, McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski posted a video of his first chance to try the company’s new flagship burger, the Big Arch, which debuts across the U.S. on March 3.

It lined up as the perfect marketing moment. The boss, front and center, celebrating his new creation. And he was effusive as he opened the box. It was “so good.” It was “unique.” “So much going on”. 

Kempczinski is a P&G grad. This was the textbook windup from the Big Boss.

Then he took the bite.

The bite itself—like a man defusing something—was not a bite at all. It was a clip of the outer edge, while he disconcertingly talked about it as the “product.” Then “this thing.” 

What happened next, or rather what didn’t, sealed the video’s fate. It ends with 2.3% of the burger consumed and Kempczinski wafting the rest of his Big Arch around like a flag of surrender. He promises to enjoy it off-camera.

The video has been picked apart across social, and musician Garron Noone delivered the line that will follow Kempczinski to his grave: “This man does not eat McDonald’s.”

Kempczinski is, by all accounts, an excellent CEO. 

Harvard MBA, Duke undergrad, 25 years in blue-chip consumer companies. He claims to eat at McDonald’s several times a week. 

McDonald’s has performed strongly on his watch. He knows the P&L, the franchisee economics, the supply chain, the digital strategy. 

What he also knows, and what the video made obvious to several million people simultaneously, is that the Big Arch contains enough calories to power a small Zamboni.

This is the central tension of the modern CEO. The higher you rise, the further you get from the thing you sell. You earn $20 million a year, for selling a combo meal that costs nine bucks.  

The contradiction is as gigantic as it is intractable. You become a manager of managers, a master of the universe, a special visitor to conquered foreign lands. You know your product intimately as a concept—its market share, brand equity, net promoter score—but you stop knowing it as a thing you shove in your mouth on Tuesday when you’re shitfaced. 

Warren Buffett drinks five cans of Coke a day, not as a brand exercise, but because at the age of eight, he tried his first Coke and never really stopped thinking about it. He declared Cherry Coke the official drink of the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. Berkshire owns 400 million Coca-Cola shares worth north of $20 billion. None of it feels like strategy. It feels like a man who loves his product and has never once had to pretend.

Buffett works as a brand ambassador for the same reason Kempczinski does not: his consumption is entirely unconditional. 

He doesn’t drink Coke because he owns shares. He owns shares because he drinks Coke.

Akio Toyoda didn’t just drive his own product—he raced it. Every summer, he would disappear to the Nürburgring and compete in the 24-hour endurance race as “Morizo,” because Toyota’s leadership considered the whole enterprise an embarrassing distraction. 

There was no factory support, and no official entry. He sourced a second-hand Toyota Altezza, modified it himself, and lined up against development cars from Porsche and BMW. He was overtaken by all of them, repeatedly. Later, he described the humiliation of competitors screaming past him as a defining experience in his leadership journey, and the start of the re-invention of Toyota’s performance division.

Contrast that with Mark Zuckerberg. In 2016, a photo of his MacBook emerged showing his laptop camera and microphone jack sealed with masking tape. This is the CEO of a company that built its entire business model on the premise that sharing your life with the world is natural—a company that faced congressional hearings over surveillance concerns. 

Those little slices of black tape said everything that Zuck’s testimony didn’t. What Zuckerberg the CEO does at work differs from what Mark gets up to when he heads home. 

There’s a simple brief to any CEO suddenly confronted with that most dangerous of things: their own product. Consume it. 

Not once a quarter for a comms team. Regularly, privately, like a normal human being. Eat the burger. Drink that soda. Drive the car. Because in that moment, your product isn’t telling you something about your company. It’s saying something about you. 

Buffett and Toyoda built great companies partly because they closed the distance between their lives and their products. It made them better leaders. 

Let’s rewind the tape. Same burger. Same CEO. Different version. 

Kempczinski opens the box. He doesn’t describe it. He doesn’t call it a product. He says three or four lines. Then he picks it up with both hands—because that’s what you do with a Big Arch—leans forward slightly so the sauce doesn’t hit his shirt, and takes a proper, committed, three-inch bite. He chews. He doesn’t perform the chewing. He just chews.

Maybe he says something, maybe he doesn’t. He doesn’t wave it around. He doesn’t talk about “this thing” like he’s handling evidence. The video ends with him nodding, half the burger still in his hand. It’s the kind of nod that says this is good. That this is all getting eaten. That he wants to be nowhere else than right here, right now. Running McDonald’s, eating McDonald’s. CEO and product in perfect harmony all from one single bite.

Most mornings this year started the same way: an early workout before the house woke up, the chaos of getting kids out the door, a quiet walk before I officially started my day. 

Coffee in hand, I’d run through the decisions waiting for me: Questions about where to take the business, how fast to move, and how much change people could absorb at once. 

Those walks became a moment to prepare myself to lead with both conviction and care before stepping into another day of leading a major transformation. 

After 20 years in this industry and more than a decade in executive leadership, I thought I understood change. I’d helped global brands navigate disruption, led through integrations and restructures. But stepping into the CEO seat at AnswerLab was different. This wasn’t about advising transformation; it was about owning it. 

Here are 7 core lessons I learned from leading through transformation as a first-time CEO.

1. Transformation is emotional 

I knew we needed to pivot. What I didn’t fully anticipate was how deeply that shift would affect the people who had built the business we were evolving. 

AnswerLab had deep roots and a strong sense of identity. My job was to guide it into a new era without losing what made it special. That meant learning where the heartbeat of the company was strongest, what needed to evolve, and what absolutely needed to be protected. It also meant making decisions that prioritized the long-term health of the business, even if they created short-term discomfort. 

I understood the transformation intellectually. What I didn’t anticipate was how exposed it would make me as a leader — how often I’d have to say, “I don’t know yet,” while still asking people to trust where we were headed. That tension defined my first year.

2. Transformation is non-linear 

Transformation is messy, but leading through it isn’t about slowing down; it’s about maintaining pace while becoming more intentional. 

To keep us moving forward without burning people out, we treated it more like an enterprise digital transformation than a traditional organizational change. We shifted to operating in sprints, revisiting priorities every two weeks and stepping back quarterly to assess what was working, what wasn’t, and where we needed to adapt. 

That rhythm allowed us to keep momentum while creating space to listen, learn, and course-correct. It taught me that transformation isn’t linear. It requires resilience, clarity, and a steady hand when things feel unsettled. 

3. Bringing people along is harder than being right 

One of the hardest lessons I learned was that being right about what needs to change doesn’t mean you’ve gotten how to change it right. There were moments when I underestimated the intention behind past decisions, even if they no longer served where we needed to go. 

That forced me to slow down in a different way—by asking better questions. By bringing in advisors. By taking the time to understand not just the strategy, but the emotional connection people had to it. 

There were moments when the most important thing I could do wasn’t explain the strategy, but acknowledge the uncertainty. Naming what I didn’t have fully figured out created space for others to contribute what they saw. Vulnerability didn’t slow us down — it sharpened us. 

And humility didn’t weaken my leadership. It strengthened it. 

4. Leadership sits at the intersection of clarity and connection 

A quarter into the year, we were building our annual plan, and the urgency was real. I took control to create clarity, but I didn’t explain why that was necessary at that moment. For a team used to building things together, it felt abrupt. 

Once I articulated my intention, everything shifted. People understood the need for speed. Trust deepened. Clarity builds connection faster than control or consensus ever could. 

That shift also required rethinking hierarchy—not by removing accountability, but unnecessary barriers to insight. When people felt safe challenging ideas, better thinking surfaced faster. The best signals often came from the people closest to the work. 

Great leaders know when to step in and when to step back. Connection and clarity aren’t opposites. They’re partners. 

5. Letting go doesn’t mean losing accountability 

As your scope of responsibility grows as CEO, so does what you have to let go of. Leading at this level required trusting my team, their teams, and the systems we were putting in place. 

That didn’t mean relinquishing accountability, but evolving how I defined control. I don’t need to hold every lever. I’ve learned to be more discerning about where my presence creates momentum and where it might unintentionally slow things down. 

Leadership at scale isn’t about holding tighter. It’s about trusting deeper. 

6. A curious culture leads to better ideas

If there’s one constant that carried me through this year, it was curiosity. Surrounding myself with people whose strengths outpace my own has been one of the most important decisions I’ve made as CEO. It sharpened the work and raised the bar for all of us. 

Curiosity isn’t passive. It’s the willingness to engage, challenge, and contribute, even when it feels uncomfortable. 

7. Leading doesn’t mean having all of the answers

Clarity doesn’t come from having all the answers, but from creating the conditions where the best answers can surface. My first year as CEO was a master class in courage, clarity, and connection. It deepened my belief that leadership isn’t about control, but trust; it isn’t about perfection, but presence. 

In a time of rapid change, empathy and understanding aren’t just strategic advantages; they allow progress to endure. 

Leadership isn’t about knowing every step of the road ahead. It’s about building a community willing to move forward with intention—one decision, one conversation, and one morning walk at a time.

Live from the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, Karin Timpone, founder and CEO of ClearPrompt, unpacks how to implement AI with focused, phased approaches rather than sweeping transformations and keeping the focus on business strategy. 

What you’ll learn:

• Why CMOs are perfectly positioned to lead AI strategy across organizations
• How to break down AI implementation into focused, phased pilots instead of betting the entire farm
• The difference between technology adoption and strategic impact
• How to build cross-functional alignment in the C-suite around technology and strategy
• Pick one lane and go deep rather than trying to master all of AI
• Why it’s important to lean into industry moments that connect you with peers facing similar challenges

Karin Timpone is the founder and CEO of ClearPrompt, an AI-powered business strategy platform designed for marketing leaders. With extensive experience as chief marketing officer at MLB and Marriott, Karin brings deep expertise in technology adoption, digital transformation, and strategic marketing innovation. 

Her work has helped leading brands like Disney and Marriott integrate emerging technologies into core business operations, making her insights and expertise essential for marketing executives seeking to position themselves as true business strategists.

Introducing: Frontier CMO

In an era where the marketing playbook is being rewritten daily, how can brands stay ahead? Joshua Spanier, Google’s VP of AI and Marketing Strategy, pulls back the curtain in Frontier CMO, his new podcast and weekly insights letter featuring the marketers, thought leaders, and industry pioneers who are reinventing marketing.

Josh previews the tough questions and unfiltered conversations featured on Frontier CMO, including:

• AI as a leadership test: exploring the “human” side of the AI revolution. As technology and tools advance the challenge becomes equipping marketing teams to leverage these technologies
• Brand relevance and connection: writing the next playbook for brand relevance by showing up as a main character in the places and spaces that connect with your audience
• Agentic Commerce: understanding the transition from “speed vs. certainty” to a world where shopping is fast and smart
• The new marketing organization: knowing where AI makes work faster and smarter and restructuring teams to keep up. Redefining agency partnerships to elevate insights and creativity in real time

Each episode of Frontier CMO features tactical, practical steps all leaders can take to navigate the future of marketing. Find it wherever you get your podcasts: YouTube | Apple | Spotify

Episode Highlights: 

[8:00] Create AI Tools That Unite C-Suite Alignment Around Business Strategy — Karin’s innovation with ClearPrompt was building an AI platform that bridges the critical gap between human strategic thinking and technology acceleration by converting business strategy intake into instant, collaborative drafts the entire C-suite can understand. The unlock isn’t creating better marketing plans faster; it’s creating a shared strategic foundation where finance, operations, creative and marketing teams all interpret the four Ps, growth template, brand positioning, and message hierarchy identically. Rather than marketing departments using AI to produce outputs in isolation, this approach positions the CMO as the orchestrator of enterprise strategy, using AI to accelerate consensus-building across functional areas. 

[11:10] Position AI as a Means to Better Execution, Not the Goal Itself — Karin reinforces that technology—whether AI, blockchain, or video—has always served as a tool to connect more authentically with customers, never as an end in itself. The mistake many leaders make is treating AI adoption as the objective when the actual objective is driving growth, deepening customer relationships, and improving brand reputation. This distinction matters because it shifts conversations from “Should we use AI?” to “What business problem are we solving, and does AI accelerate our solution?” Your foundation in communications, authenticity, and storytelling remains non-negotiable; AI simply amplifies these capabilities by processing data faster and personalizing narratives at scale. 

[13:38] Tie Every AI Initiative Directly to Strategic Business Outcomes — Karin emphasizes that introducing AI systems without connecting them to explicit business strategy and measurable outcomes creates costly misalignment across creative, analytical and platform teams. The critical move for CMOs is to orchestrate simultaneous conversations across creative, analytics, and customer platform teams using an agile framework that asks: “In Phase One, what specific business outcome are we testing?” Every AI project must ladder up to growth, competitive differentiation, or customer lifetime value. This specificity transforms AI from a vague tech initiative into a concrete business lever that your entire C-suite understands and can rally around. 

[16:17] Pick a Lane Instead of Boiling the Ocean with AI — Karin advises CMOs to avoid trying to master all AI applications simultaneously, since the technology is constantly evolving and expanding. Rather than becoming an expert in every AI facet, Karin recommends that CMOs identify one strategic priority that aligns with their existing initiatives, such as storytelling, data analysis, customer insights, or speed-to-market. By selecting a focused lane, you can build credibility and momentum with your team, making AI adoption feel natural rather than forced or intimidating. Bonus: you leave associated analysis paralysis behind, too. 

Retail media platform Zitcha has appointed Steve Biddle as its chief commercial officer, the company told ADWEEK exclusively.

Biddle was most recently director of retail media at Meta, where he spent 14 years. Prior to Meta, Biddle led advertising for Walmart U.S., following nearly a decade on the agency side at Leo Burnett and The Richards Group.

He joined Australia-based Zitcha in late 2025 after leaving Meta in September. Biddle heads up Zitcha’s global marketing and helps the platform navigate AI disruption as well as the quickly changing retail media landscape, he said.

From his vantage point at Meta, Biddle was able to see how retail media networks struggle to simultaneously deliver for advertisers and fulfill retailers’ own goals.

“Our hypothesis is that it is possible to do both—that you’re able to drive performance, and you’re also able to continue to get your own revenue and margin growth goals,” Biddle said.

Priming retailers for growth

Before leaving Meta, Biddle oversaw a routine review of third-party adtech partners, which showed how different tech enablers were supporting retailers on the platform. Zitcha stood out, he said, in the ways that it was able to support retail media networks to scale in an environment when many are trying and failing to do so.

Currently, Zitcha operates as an orchestration layer for retail media networks—helping retail media networks set up the necessary infrastructure to get an ads business off the ground or running smoothly.

The landscape of retail adtech companies is complex. Many offer overlapping services in a way that could mean they’re competing for the same RFP from one retailer, and then integrating into the same stack for another one simultaneously.

Moving forward, Biddle seems to want Zitcha to take on a more central role for retailers, helping to navigate their tech stack, revenue goals, and performance while helping to ensure the ad business is aligning on overarching business goals.

“Zitcha is in a really strong position to address these bigger, emerging challenges that retail media networks have,” he said. “There are a lot of wonderful tech companies doing everything from data storage to audience building to ad serving to measurement. Over time the stack gets pretty full.”

That’s where retailers often lose sight of the broader goals, or struggle to align the goals between advertising and retail.

“You have to be able to demonstrate not only parity capabilities for everything you need to run a retail media network,” he explained. “You need to be able to answer the most relevant questions: How do you continue to grow?”

Founded in 2022, Zitcha raised $10 million in funding in late 2024 to set up a hub in the U.S. The tech company’s current clients include Baby Bunting, Coles Liquor, Cotswolds Outdoor, Frasers Group, The Hut Group, Leroy Merlin, Ocado, Priceline Pharmacy, Village Cinemas, and The Warehouse Group.

“Steve has seen retail media from every angle, as an agency leader, a retailer, and a platform operator,” Zitcha CEO Troy Townsend said in a statement. “He understands what retailers and brands need to succeed, and he understands the technology required to support that at scale.”

From $0 confidence to CEO of one of the most well-known brands in the world, Build-A-Bear CEO Sharon Price John’s story is nothing short of inspiring.

In this episode of Marketing Vanguard, recorded on the Brandweek 2025 stage in Atlanta, Sharon reveals her unconventional career journey and how that evolution directly shaped the turnaround and reimagining of an iconic experiential brand.

What you’ll learn:

• How to transition from functional expertise to CEO-level thinking
• Why CMOs must adopt a “business-first” mindset to advance
• The confidence gap that holds high-potential women back from applying for stretch roles
• How to unlock brand equity by understanding feeling over function
• The critical role of authentic leadership in driving organizational transformation
• How to pivot a single-location retail concept into an IP-driven, multi-vertical business

Sharon Price John is the President and CEO of Build-A-Bear Workshop, bringing over three decades of experience in brand building, business transformation, and experiential retail. With a background spanning advertising (DDB Needham), product management (Mattel’s Barbie division), toy industry leadership (Hasbro), and vertical retail (Stride Rite), Sharon has developed a distinctive expertise in turning around underperforming brands and businesses while scaling profitable growth. 

At Build-A-Bear, she has transformed the iconic 30-year-old company from a struggling mall-based retailer into a diversified intellectual property enterprise, expanding digital commerce to 40% of sales and positioning the brand for global expansion. 

Her insights on authentic leadership, business strategy, and the emotional core of brand equity make her an invaluable voice for CMOs and executives seeking to balance heart-centered brand building with rigorous business fundamentals.

Introducing: Frontier CMO

In an era where the marketing playbook is being rewritten daily, how can brands stay ahead? Joshua Spanier, Google’s VP of AI and Marketing Strategy, pulls back the curtain in Frontier CMO, his new podcast and weekly insights letter featuring the marketers, thought leaders, and industry pioneers who are reinventing marketing.

Josh previews the tough questions and unfiltered conversations featured on Frontier CMO, including:

• AI as a leadership test: exploring the “human” side of the AI revolution. As technology and tools advance the challenge becomes equipping marketing teams to leverage these technologies
• Brand relevance and connection: writing the next playbook for brand relevance by showing up as a main character in the places and spaces that connect with your audience
• Agentic Commerce: understanding the transition from “speed vs. certainty” to a world where shopping is fast and smart
• The new marketing organization: knowing where AI makes work faster and smarter and restructuring teams to keep up. Redefining agency partnerships to elevate insights and creativity in real time

Each episode of Frontier CMO features tactical, practical steps all leaders can take to navigate the future of marketing. Find it wherever you get your podcasts: YouTube | Apple | Spotify

Episode Highlights: 

[07:51] Business Acumen > Marketing Expertise in the Race to the C-Suite — Sharon emphasizes that aspiring CMOs and marketing leaders must intentionally build quantitative and financial skills to become credible C-suite executives, not just marketing specialists. She deliberately pursued an MBA from a quantitative school rather than a marketing-focused program, forcing herself to master accounting, finance and business operations alongside her marketing expertise. This challenge is essential because CEOs expect executives at the leadership table to think in terms of profitable growth and business problem-solving, not campaign management—an evolution that is essential to compete for CEO roles.

[08:52] Reframe Self-Limiting Beliefs into Learning Opportunities — Sharon addresses a critical confidence gap, particularly among women in business, noting that many professionals won’t apply for leadership roles unless they meet 90-100% of stated qualifications, while male counterparts apply at 50-60% match rates. She learned from a 360 review that she had already exceeded CEO performance metrics on every measure, despite never having intended to pursue that role. The key insight here is that CEO positions require leading unfamiliar functional areas. You cannot and should not expect to be an expert in everything before applying. Instead of viewing gaps as disqualifications, reframe them as opportunities to demonstrate learning agility and problem-solving capability. 

[13:32] Vulnerability and Authentic Heart are Key for Transformation — Sharon reveals a counterintuitive leadership insight: Turning around struggling brands and organizations requires softness, emotional authenticity and vulnerability rather than command-and-control authority or projecting invulnerability. She describes her personal journey of letting down her guard—moving away from the defensive guardedness that often accompanies being the only female energy in leadership spaces—to create genuine trust with teams during difficult turnarounds. This authenticity is non-negotiable for consumer-facing brands because employees intuitively sense whether leadership is truly aligned with the brand promise from the inside out. 

[20:32] Your Brand’s Emotional Core Is the Only Thing That Drives Sustainable Growth — Sharon articulates a critical distinction: Successful brands are defined by feelings, not products, and this emotional foundation unlocks unlimited expansion potential across categories and demographics. She emphasizes that Build-A-Bear is not fundamentally about teddy bears—it’s about creating memories, expressing creativity, and experiencing family connection, which enabled expansion into adults, teens, multiple product categories and international markets without brand dilution. For CMOs, the immediate action is to move beyond product specifications and push past obvious emotional benefits until identifying the deepest, most universal feeling your brand creates.

The social influence publisher ATTN: appointed former BuzzFeed and Complex Networks executive Edgar Hernandez as its first chief commercial officer.

Hernandez, who started Feb. 17, will oversee the company’s sales organization and lead its go-to-market strategy across branded content, agency services, intellectual property, and social media partnerships. The hire comes as the media company and creative agency looks to accelerate growth following its recent return to independent ownership.

“A lot of publishers have tried to transition into a social and creative agency and failed,” Hernandez told ADWEEK. “It’s very hard to be in the publisher business—at ATTN:, the creative work and the audience strategy really sit together.”

The role is new for ATTN:. Earlier this year, the company was sold by Candle Media back to co-founders Matthew Segal and Jarrett Moreno, alongside a new investor group.

The next phase

Hernandez joins ATTN: after senior revenue roles at BuzzFeed and Complex Networks, where he helped scale franchises including Hot Ones, Sneaker Shopping, and ComplexCon and managed global revenue operations, generating more than $300 million annually at BuzzFeed.

Most recently, he served as the chief strategy officer of My Code, a multicultural agency and media company whose editorial outlets include Remezcla. 

Hernandez identified three primary growth areas: Expanding branded IP, scaling brand campaign work, and deepening agency-of-record relationships with marketers including Google, TikTok, and Mattel.

On the IP side, the company is developing short-form branded formats such as microdramas. One recent example, Truth or Putt partnered with Dunkin’ and comedian Druski to attract younger audiences to golf. Another upcoming initiative with the U.S. Soccer Foundation aims to recruit new youth coaches.

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The hire reflects ATTN:’s broader evolution from a social publisher into a hybrid business centered on branded content and agency services.

The company’s combined branded content and agency services are now its largest business, according to CEO and cofounder Matthew Segel. While its media business is not its economic engine, the skill sets it requires give ATTN: a competitive advantage when it comes to brand storytelling, Segal said.

“Being able to take the learnings we have as a publisher and apply those to the world—both from a technique perspective and a worldview perspective—is a hugely competitively advantaged lane for us,” Segal said.

That positioning is becoming more relevant as brands navigate a complex cultural and political environment, he added.

“Brands need to stand for something—not necessarily something political—but they have to articulate the value they provide in society,” Segal said. “Helping them distill complex issues into something simple and understandable is what we’ve always done.”

Public affairs and niche media

As part of its next phase, ATTN: plans to invest more heavily in public affairs work, targeting clients such as universities, trade associations, government agencies, and healthcare systems seeking help with narrative-building on social platforms. The company already counts the state of California among its clients for mental health storytelling.

ATTN: is also incubating new niche social brands and exploring the launch of additional owned-and-operated media properties, while continuing to produce original content for brand and streaming partners.

For Hernandez, the current market environment, marked by geopolitical tensions and brand caution, creates an opportunity rather than a constraint.

“A lot of brands are running away from complexity,” he said. “ATTN: has been able to turn that into a tailwind by helping them communicate in ways that actually resonate.”