DIGIDAY 2, JANUARY 2025

CMOs prepare for a Trump presidency in 2025 — which will be a different kind of CMO from his first term

There was a time, not too long ago, when CMOs started to sound a lot more political. They made statements about brand purpose. They pulled funding from fake news. They held advertiser boycotts — more than once. They were operating, it seemed during Donald Trump’s first presidency, from a position of power in which what they said and how they spent their ad dollars could help shape the cultural climate.

This may not be the case Trump’s second time around. The cultural landscape has shifted. Marketers have watched major brands — not just Bud Light, but McDonald’s, Planet Fitness and others — grapple with boycotts of their own. They’ve seen the likes of Harley Davidson and John Deere about-face on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives amid pressure from activist investor Robby Starbuck. They’ve dealt with legal action questioning brand safety and pushing back against their ability to boycott a platform. They’ve seen GARM shuttered. And they’re currently in wait-and-see mode with Meta to understand how its position on censorship will affect them.

The CMO during a Trump presidency in 2025 won’t be the same as in 2017. It’s unlikely that CMOs will be seen making statements about marketing as a force for good or announcing they’re pulling funding from a platform or making any moves that could be seen as overtly political. (Though, arguably, not doing so could also be considered its own political move.) This time around, while of course it will vary from one CMO to another, it seems that CMOs in general will focus on getting back to the basics of marketing and focus intently on their own customers rather than making any big statements.

“The CMO’s main job is to protect the company’s brand assets,” said Allen Adamson, brand consultant and co-founder of brand consultancy Metaforce. “The job has gotten trickier and trickier because connecting with consumers is harder, more complicated and more complex. It gets even trickier because the country is also incredibly polarized and fragmented so the one-size-fits-all approach no longer fits.”

“CMOs will be in service of the consumer,” said Stephanie Hanley, chief brand officer at ad agency EP+Co. “They’ll return to consumer-obsession. Talking with them. Innovating for them. Inviting them to co-create for the brand’s community, not just for the platform or the brand. CMOs will use their scrappy mentality to find new channels to build consumer relationship, looking more closely at the full journey to find pockets for impact that may have been overlooked over the last five years.”

With that being the case, marketers are spending time once again on their brand purpose — not to figure out a way to take a stand as they had in the past — but to understand how they should talk to their customers now.

“CMOs, especially at the enterprise level, have really new challenges,” like the changing media and political landscapes, among other “disruptive factors in business” that have made it so CMOs are not in “a very empowered position” at the moment, said Dory Ellis Garfinkle, chief marketing officer of brand consultancy Siegel+Gale. The firm is working with brands on brand purpose and brand building initiatives to help them navigate those challenges.

Marketers will continue to get back to basics, in a sense, going into this new Trump administration to find ways to connect with customers again and avoid polarization. While that could be seen as a move of fear — due to the worry that brands could get caught in something damaging and acting accordingly — some see it as a move that could ultimately help marketers find their way back to making meaningful work.

Recently, marketers have taken an always-on approach required for brands to market successfully on major platforms. That has led to a “sea of sameness as all our lives become influenced by tech controlled algorithms,” said Leila Fataar, founder of creative marketing and communications company Platform13.

“Leaning so heavily on the scale and efficiency of online platforms to create always-on content has sacrificed the creativity and cultural nuance needed to build enduring brands,” said Fataar. “It’s time for CMOs to stop playing by Big Tech’s rules and start creating new ones based on the principles of cultural relevance, creativity and authenticity. While the tools have changed, the CMOs role hasn’t. Those who do, can regain their power beyond brokers of media to become builders of meaningful audience relationships.”

Fataar isn’t alone in her assessment that zeroing in on cultural relevance as a top metric over mastering the latest trend on a social platform will help brands in the long run.

“We all know old adland is dead but the art of brand building is definitely alive and will be for some time to come,” said James Kirkham, CEO of brand consultancy Iconic.

Rather than zeroing in on the minutiae of the latest changes on tech platforms and how to best respond to them, Kirkham said he sees the potential for marketers to get back to the big ideas that help them truly resonate with their customers.

“For a long time we needed to stop thinking about advertising as this thing we push out on some latest tech platform and start thinking about it as moments we pull people into,” said Kirkham. “So the best CMOs stopped interrupting what people were already interested in, and created brand work which became what they were interested in.”

“Just like filmmakers, artists, authors, writers of a Netflix series — this is an experience you want to find, discover, consume and share like any of the best entertainment” he continued. “Irrespective of Meta, X or any other Big Tech shift and a new president influence. Most of the best are realizing culturally relevant work is a mandatory not a nice-to-have, and in this seismic AI shift, the one remaining advantage humans have is emotive storytelling.”

“As brand people, we need to drive cultural relevance,” said Fataar.