For most marketers who started new jobs remotely in the past 18 months, the onboarding process can be very daunting without an in-person glimpse of company culture or the chance to meet new colleagues face-to-face.

When Gayle Troberman first joined iHeartMedia in 2014 as chief marketing officer, the role appealed to one of her core interests – listening. Not just to music or news, the two main draws for iHeart’s 850+ global broadcast stations, but to the people who actually consume the products she promotes. 

In her previous role as VP-Growth Marketing at Hulu, Valerie Kaplan oversaw several years of transformative subscription increases at the streaming video service, including a 27% year-over-year spike during the height of COVID-19 lockdowns in spring 2020. 

When Doug Zarkin joined Luxottica’s Pearle Vision brand nine years ago his first initiative was to clarify the brand’s position in a hyper-commoditized category. 

For most U.S.-based CMOs, joining the C-suite at the start of the pandemic was challenging enough to onboard a new role while pivoting all messaging and operations for one market. 

“As a marketer, I get pretty excited about this,” John Sheldon, chief marketing officer of SmileDirectClub, says of his latest campaign “Direct,” which takes on the seven-year-old teeth-straightening brand’s market-leading competitor Invisalign head-on in a series of spots that debuted in July. “There’s not a lot of times you can do a direct competitive campaign, but this was a case where we felt it was really appropriate."