At the 2026 POSSIBLE conference, Chief Marketer sat down with Chief Marketing and Growth Officer Esi Eggleston Bracey, formerly of Unilever, to discuss her session at the show, her forthcoming Marketer of the Year Award from AMA, her thoughts on marketing leadership and much more.
Transcript:
Kaylee Hultgren:
Hello everyone. I’m Kaylee Hultgren, Content Director for Chief Marketer Network. We are here at Possible 2026 in Miami Beach. I am here with Esi Eggleston Bracey, Chief Growth and Marketing Officer. I’m just gonna go through some of the amazing things that you have accomplished. You were named 2024 and 2025 World’s Most Influential CMO by Forbes. You made that list. You led marketing at Unilever. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of Unilever got 41 Lions at Cannes which was a record for Unilever, Unilever itself, and I think it was a record at Can. Yeah,
Esi Eggleston Bracey:
It was the top most company awarded that year. So yes, very proud of that.
Kaylee Hultgren: So that’s amazing. You spent eight years there at Unilever and before that, you were also at p and g for 25 years, I believe. One more amazing award, that you got recently, the AFS Advertising Hall of Fame, which is peer voted. So that’s an amazing honor as well. So thank you so much for chatting with us. Thank you. One more award, award very soon, to be awarded. You are going to be inducted into the American Marketing Association, of New York’s Marketing Hall of Fame, and you’re gonna be honored as a culture vanguard. So, I wanna talk a little bit about what that honor means to you and how you feel like your career, what aspects of your career had exemplified that?
Esi Eggleston Bracey:
I’m really honored and proud to be inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame. And in particular as a cultural vanguard. For me, culture is everything. The way we connect with people today is not transactional. We don’t push content out. We can’t push our agenda out. Instead we have to pull it. And how we pull it is connecting with culture, shaping culture, making culture. And I’m excited that I’ve had the opportunity to work with brands that have done that from many, many years ago, the covergirl brand, and being connected to what people really wanted from beauty, which was to see themselves . And bringing a Queen Latifah or a pink a Drew Barrymore to the face when there used to be like stick figure models. That’s culture. And then with Dove and championing the Crown Act, which, you know, makes a difference for people by making sure we get to wear our hair naturally by eliminating race-based hair discrimination, that’s culture. . And so I, it means the world to me to be, inducted in as a cultural vanguard because it shows how important culture is, and then vanguard, what it means to innovate in culture. .
Kaylee Hultgren:
Speaking of innovation, you have worked at very large organizations, led huge marketing organizations. Could you talk a little bit about how, how that might be challenging to find those little pockets of growth, and really kind of create that culture when you’re at a large organization that you know, often requires approval? So how do you do it quick enough to, to be on peace with culture?
Esi Eggleston Bracey:
Yeah, there are a number of reflections I have about that large organizations like a Proctor Gamble or a Unilever, but usually many organizations within a new organization. . So from the outside you see this big behemoth . But inside you find your pockets, you find your pockets of influence.
Esi Eggleston Bracey:
That that means there could be multiple pockets or groups that you have to influence, but it all starts with creating inspiration . That others can see based on an opportunity, creating clarity against what that opportunity is, and then helping people contribute to it. . And that has been how I’ve led in larger organizations, if they’re matrixed or not, people can buy into opportunity if you inspire them. And I think that’s true of any size of organization. Just the depth, the degree of the dive can be greater because you have more constituents and stakeholders potentially being on the scale to get that inspiration, to get that buy-in and to create clarity in mind. So that’s how I think about it.
Kaylee Hultgren:
How do you personally keep up with marketing trends and create culture? The way you’re talking about, and you’re such a, a busy, person. I mean, you’re leading these gigantic organizations and I, I know we just discussed how there’s, you know, pockets, but at the same time, your responsibilities are are large. So how do you personally keep up with everything?
Esi Eggleston Bracey:
So first is to prioritize it. You know, when you spend years in the industry, for me, I’ve been in the industry 35 years now, you can get misled sometimes that your job is inside, that it’s bureaucratic, that it’s administrative, when it’s absolutely not. Your job is to create what’s next. That level of inspiration to guide the company to growth. . If you’re focused inside, you’ll miss that. I’m not saying inside is not at all important, but it’s less important because you bring the outside in and then the in as you get people lined up behind the vision. So first it’s prioritizing it, and in prioritizing it, it’s making time for it. So people that I work with would characterize me as making time for outside. Once you make time for that, there’s so many different ways to be inspired by culture and trends. It’s watching people, it’s listening to people, it’s going to fashion shows, it’s going to concerts, it’s reading, it’s scrolling, it’s reflecting. It’s sometimes time in the shower to make connections.
Esi Eggleston Bracey:
It’s spending time with my children. I have a 20-year-old and a 16-year-old. It’s spending time with my friends’ kids who are even younger. So all of that are examples of observing and then making connections. And then sometimes it’s just actively talking to people, not just observing. That you create in your role opportunities to connect with people. So Unilever is in, you know, 190 markets around the world, and I was running the global cosmetics business for p and g was in a hundred markets. So whenever I’m in a market, I make time to see local people, local consumers, go to their festivals, go in their homes in the Middle East, watch women talk about makeup and how important it is to them. . So not only is it through your own observations, it’s structuring observations so that you can hear what’s going on. And when I say make time to, to engage with them, it’s not just a focus group, it’s observing what’s happening in their homes. It’s bringing friend groups together to watch how they engage. So there little, there’s so much in the world to be inspired by.
Kaylee Hultgren:
Absolutely. I saw you speak at possible last year and you mentioned some campaigns you were working on., you talked a little bit about, dove., I know that is one that, that you’re proud of., you also mentioned AI and marketing and how it was very useful for, personalization and you know, a year later it’s really changed. That’s still happening. But I, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what you think has changed and your perspective on using AI for, efficiencies and then also, possibly in creative. Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah.
Esi Eggleston Bracey:
First of all, this is a hyperdynamic time. So every day there’s something new being born and to navigate in that hyperdynamic time, I think about everything and yet nothing has changed. The nothings are the role of marketing. The role of marketing is to make your brand matter and then to make that brand matter. You drive, reach, conviction and conversion that you translate into commerce and that you understand people deeply. . What we need, what we want, what we desire, and then we address that, you know, across the six Ps of marketing, positioning, product packaging, that those things don’t change. But everything else is changing. How we do that changes. And that’s where the role of AI comes in. When I think about the role of ai, I think about it as the back office where humanity is in the front office. You have to be crystal clear on what your brand stands for, who you are authentically, what is your distinctive point of view, and where do you uniquely add value.
Esi Eggleston Bracey:
And that is often a human thing that you address. And you create content around that through creating a big idea through human creativity, what AI does is it helps with that. Nothing that changes, which is you drive, reach, engagement and conversion around that human idea. It’s in the back office, the back office. So you asked about personalization at scale. Once you have that idea that is uniquely you, you can tailor that idea using AI to different communities . To be a part of different conversations. You can use AI to listen to what’s resonating, what’s not. You can use AI to optimize where something is really sticking that you can amplify. So AI I think is super powerful, but it’s most powerful when it’s used to amplify humanity, creativity, strategy. . And that’s how that, I don’t know that that has changed from my last talk, but it’s certainly clear that those things have to happen together.
Esi Eggleston Bracey:
So then your other question was how do you use AI for creativity? Again, I think it is a creative enhancer. So if a creative has a vision to go to the moon, instead of shooting and going to the moon, you can take that vision and perhaps create the moon, but not necessarily . But one can use it for that. I think actually AI is best used again to scale that creativity and instead of to produce it . But we would be remiss if we didn’t drive production efficiencies by taking the creative concept and using AI to bring that to light. So I embrace ai, but not instead of the raw strategy and humanity that makes us all tick. And by the way, is trust is getting replaced with skepticism. The, you know, the data shows that people’s desire for AI content is declining . And it’s declined in the past three years quite significantly. So we are rewarding that human creativity, that taste factor, the level of quality and we can quickly now sniff out when something is a proverbial AI slop.
Kaylee Hultgren:
You have a session later today., you’re speaking about, the ad agencies of the future. So talk a little bit about what your session is going to be about and how you envision ad ad agencies evolving., for a number of reasons, AI is one of them, but, what, tell us a little bit about your talk.
Esi Eggleston Bracey:
You know, as I mentioned this time is hyper dynamic. Is it brand or performance marketing? What, political challenge might we have from one day to the other cost challenges that we have? And then of course, the way AI is disrupting the talk is all about in this new hyperdynamic world are agencies as we know it dead. Exactly. And what I’m doing is facilitating a conversation around CMOs against the, the topic. Correct., so it’s kind of an off the record conversation to discuss that. And I will not lead with my view of what that is. What I do believe though is that in this hyperdynamic time, it’s not about doing more of the same or minor improvements, it’s about taking a blank piece of paper and reimagining what’s possible with all the different tools we have and what the needs are. . And I think you talked about big companies, a lot of companies, we use agencies out of the habit and legacy of how we’ve used them.
Esi Eggleston Bracey:
And we haven’t stepped back to ask ourselves what is the irreplaceable value of the agency in today’s world? Where do they uniquely add value? In my experience, the irreplaceable value comes in a couple of areas. One is in this raw human creativity, the kind of talent that we bring in-house because of the range of things that our talent are doing to drive the business, don’t always have that raw creative instinct of a creative agency. So I really value the agencies that come up with the campaign for real beauty. They come up with Vaseline verified, which is truth, not height. The idea of looking at all the uses of Vaseline and creating an idea behind that. That’s creativity that I value agencies for. The other thing that agencies can supplement any, I will call that skill gaps or execution needs that your team might have. So if you’re using talent to create content, then use the agency to help execute a content deal maybe with the creator If that makes sense. So I think the idea is to step back and say where, where, what’s the need? Where do you have internal resources today or where can you create those internal resources to deliver? And the next, where can’t you or will you not invest in that the agencies can add their irreplaceable value.
Kaylee Hultgren:
That sounds like an excellent conversation. I might eaves drop <laugh>. A couple questions about marketing leadership. I would love to hear from you., if you could talk to your younger self now before starting out in marketing, all these 35 years. Right., what would you say to her? What advice would you give her?
Esi Eggleston Bracey:
I have five leadership principles that I’ve developed over decades and I would share those things with myself earlier. One of them is do you, it’s your superpower. I started out trying to fit in, you know, I came from undergrad and I approached work, like school study to get the grade . And I thought the work environment was the same way. Look at the suits around me model and mimic to get the grade. And it was after a couple years that I realized that was sameness. Not because I was trying to do well, but more I saw that there were so many different people in the organization that were all copying each other, that we were missing the insight from the breadth of what people could provide. So sooner do you, it’s your superpower. It took me maybe five years to get to that point, and when I did, I felt freer and that’s when my career started to accelerate because I brought more of myself.
Esi Eggleston Bracey:
And some bigger things happened on the business, like creating a breeze and, impacting what beauty looks like. So I would say that, and there, there range of others. One is manager your energy, not your time. I grew up learning about time management and time is finite. Energy isn’t, it can grow. And it took me a while, probably 10 years, maybe even longer, to realize where I source my energy from so that I could do more of those things. I have energy domains,, ula la which are sensational experiences that I’ll invest in, more and adore close, connected relationships with people that I, that I love or like, and invest in those passion, power, accomplishing goals and areas I’m passionate about. So as I spend my time in those, my energy grows. It allows your impact to grow. So I tell my younger self that
Kaylee Hultgren:
<laugh>, that’s, that’s wonderful. Oh, I have one more question for you. Okay., what would be your advice to aspiring CMOs? What do you think that they should know?, how are they, how can they get the job of their dreams?
Esi Eggleston Bracey:
Yeah., the first thing that comes to mind is agility. The CMO role changes from year to year, month to month, day to day. And there’s no to the same CMO roles. So agility. The other thing I would say is intentionality. That like, why would you wanna be a CMO, I would say, so that you could make a big difference in how brands connect with people and make a big difference in how business can benefit from that. So coming up with your why is what I mean by intentionality. Why your why is going to motivate you for whatever that is. And it might be that you turns out you really wanna be a CEO . Or it might be that you absolutely wanna be a super CMO. So I’d give that advice. Know your why. Yes. Be flexible because the job changes you think you know, but you don’t know. And then third, I think about the CMO as change management officer For today. That it’s not just about marketing, which as we talked is about seeing people, but it’s also about working with other people to see the opportunity and bring the change to life.
Kaylee Hultgren:
Well thank you so much. Really appreciate you taking the time. I know you’re so busy and we just really love having you here and, giving all this wonderful advice. So thank you.
Esi Eggleston Bracey:
Thank you for having me and for the conversation.