Unilever has appointed Leandro Barreto as its chief marketing officer (CMO). His appointment marks a strategic pivot for the company as he will continue his current responsibilities as CMO of the beauty and wellbeing business group alongside the enterprise-wide marketing agenda. This consolidation aims to bridge the gap between high-level strategy and category-specific execution.
The leadership change comes as Unilever CEO Fernando Fernández aims to solve the crisis in consumer trust. Fernández has previously noted that “brands are by default suspicious,” acknowledging that traditional corporate messaging often falls flat with modern audiences.
To combat this, Barreto will oversee a shift towards creator and influencer marketing. Unilever has committed to increasing the total number of influencers in its partner network, allocating a higher percentage of its global ad spend to creator-led content and focusing on “disruptive creativity” to bypass consumer scepticism.
Barreto succeeds Esi Eggleston Bracey, who is departing the fast-moving consumer goods giant after an influential eight-year tenure. Since joining Unilever in 2018, Eggleston Bracey has been the architect of Unilever’s “marketing for a digital revolution”. She is credited with revitalising Unilever’s beauty and personal care portfolio, modernising legacy brands like Dove and Marmite through data-driven creativity and redefining how the company builds demand at scale during a period of massive consumer shifts.
Unilever’s latest restructuring is its next step in a plan designed to drive faster execution and higher impact as Fernández looks to turn Unilever into a marketing and sales machine.
By embedding global capabilities directly into the business groups, Fernández aims to ensure that Unilever reacts faster to market trends while maintaining the long-term brand equity that defines its “power brands” portfolio.
Barreto’s appointment signals a return to a traditional “CMO” title, reflecting Fernández’s desire for structural simplicity. This follows a period of broader functional titles held by his predecessors. Eggleston Bracey, for example, was chief growth and marketing officer, while her predecessor, Conny Braams, was chief digital and commercial officer.
After a decade of companies experimenting with expansive titles, Unilever’s decision to revert to a straightforward CMO title suggests a shift in how the world’s largest advertisers value the marketing function. Reverting to “CMO” recentres the role on brand equity and consumer desire, which are seen as the true engines of long-term volume growth.
Unilever is not alone in reinstating the CMO role: other brands, including home improvement retailer Lowe’s and fast-food giant McDonald’s, previously eliminated the CMO role, only to reinstate it after realising that without a dedicated brand steward, the soul of the company’s messaging becomes fragmented.
The big take-out: Unilever’s decision to revert to a straightforward CMO title suggests a shift in how the world’s largest advertisers value the marketing function.
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