Inside the CMO Mind: A Conversation with Nate Challen, Ex-Deputy CMO of Sanofi

By Ivan Fernandes and Nate Challen

Welcome to the first edition of Inside the CMO Mind, a Q&A series where I speak with global marketing leaders to explore the evolving role of marketing, agency relationships, brand strategy, and the impact of technology, AI, and data on marketing.

Today, as the industry undergoes rapid transformation, this series seeks to uncover how CMOs are navigating new challenges, driving business growth, and rethinking the future of marketing.

I’m joined by Nate Challen, Ex-Deputy CMO of Sanofi, for our second interview.

• Nate Challen Challen is a seasoned marketing executive with over two decades of experience driving growth and innovation across consumer packaged goods, healthcare, and eCommerce sectors.

• His career includes leadership roles at industry giants such as Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi Consumer Health, and Ancestry.com.

• At Sanofi, Nate led a €5 billion global business unit, establishing worldwide standards and transforming digital marketing practices across 85 markets. This resulted in six consecutive quarters of market share growth.

• He also revitalised brands like Aveeno and Gold Bond, elevating their market positions through distinct brand architectures and innovative product lines.

• Nate's strategic acumen and human-centric approach have consistently delivered exceptional results, making him a respected leader in the marketing field.

In this conversation, we’ll discuss:

• How the role of the CMO is evolving across industries, from CPG to healthcare and eCommerce

• The shifting dynamics of agency relationships and how brands can create more effective partnerships

• The impact of AI and technology on marketing strategy, eCommerce, and digital transformation

• The challenges of brand-building in a highly competitive and rapidly changing global market

Nate brings deep insights into scaling brands globally, driving digital innovation, and transforming marketing models to unlock growth. His experience leading marketing teams in complex, matrixed organisations while navigating high-growth startup environments fills this conversation with tangible, actionable takeaways.

I’m excited to hear his perspectives on being a successful CMO in 2025 and beyond.

Let’s get started. Nate, welcome to the series!

1. CMO's Role & Business Priorities

1.1 You've led marketing across different industries, from CPG to healthcare and eCommerce. How has your marketing approach evolved across these sectors?

Nate Challen: It's fascinating that while each industry required different applications of marketing principles, my approach's most significant evolution came not from industry differences but from the fundamental shifts in consumer behaviour driven by digital technology. Let me break down the unique challenges and lessons from each sector.

We operated in a world of complex products and customized sales cycles in software. Our marketing mix heavily emphasized events, outbound calls, and trade publications – very much a B2B playbook. Moving to CPG at J&J was a complete shift to mass-market thinking – everything had to work at scale, from consumer insights to product development to advertising channels. In skincare, we mainly had the advantage of low-cost product launches and multiple levers for differentiation through aesthetics, packaging, and claims. This was during the early days of digital marketing and eCommerce before YouTube and OTT streaming became mainstream media options, so we were learning and optimizing in real time.

Healthcare presented unique challenges, including longer innovation cycles due to regulatory requirements. Substantial R&D investments and extended development timelines meant we had to excel at marketing levers beyond product features to drive growth. Competition was particularly intense since most products delivered similar functional results. This is where Byron Sharp's principles from "How Brands Grow" became especially relevant, focusing on mental and physical availability rather than just functional differentiation.

The core fundamentals remained constant throughout all these transitions: understand your customers deeply, develop products that address their needs, and determine the most effective ways to communicate with them. However, how we execute these fundamentals in an increasingly fragmented media landscape has changed dramatically with social media's growing influence and the rise of eCommerce as both a sales and marketing channel.

1.2 You built a new global unit at Sanofi and transformed marketing practices across 85 markets. What were the biggest challenges in establishing a unified growth model?

The greatest challenge wasn't developing the model but securing genuine leadership commitment. Leaders typically reach their positions through successful past practices, sometimes making them resistant to change. While organizational efficiency improves when everyone uses the same terminology and follows the same playbook, change creates personal inefficiency and risk.

The key is identifying early who is capable and willing to change. Leaders magnify good and bad practices, so their buy-in is crucial for any transformation to succeed. When selecting new team members, I also learned to prioritize adaptability as much as past success.

1.3 What's your first focus when turning around a struggling business or brand?

In struggling businesses, you need to quickly identify and address active fires while building toward long-term solutions. I've found meeting with people two and three levels down in the organization particularly valuable for spotting trends and understanding where you'll have natural buy-in versus resistance.

As you mobilize the team to address immediate issues, you accomplish multiple objectives: solving critical problems, aligning people on priorities, and creating short-term wins that build credibility for longer-term changes. These early successes buy you the time and support needed to implement more fundamental transformations.

1.4 What are the most significant shifts you've seen in the CMO role over the last few years, and what do you think will define the CMO of the future?

The most profound change during my career has been integrating digital technology into every aspect of marketing - from product development to learning to media. While I still see briefs requesting "digital-first" CMOs, this shouldn't longer be a discussion point. Any marketing leader who hasn't made this leap by now is already behind.

The most significant recent shift has been toward CMOs, who can make brands culturally relevant in real-time. This requires a fundamental change in how marketing teams operate. 

Your teams need to stay on top of trends weekly, not quarterly. They need to understand your brand DNA deeply enough to know when to join conversations and, more importantly, when to stay silent. You need processes that enable decisive action within 24 hours when the right opportunity emerges – something traditional marketing structures weren't built for.

We're also seeing this cultural relevance play out through brand collaborations, like Coca-Cola x Oreos, which create momentum through unexpected partnerships. These aren't just tactical plays - they're strategic moves that require CMOs to think differently about brand building and competitive dynamics.

Looking forward, AI will be a defining factor for CMO success, but not in the way many expect. The key questions aren't just about implementation but about leadership:

• Can CMOs understand AI deeply enough to make themselves more effective?

• Can they embed it into their teams, tools, and customer experiences while maintaining strategic clarity?

2. Agency Partnerships & Expectations

2.1 You developed a new agency model at Sanofi. What was missing in the previous approach, and how did your new model drive better results?

We were solving two key challenges: First, we needed partners who could both push and pull us through our digital transformation - agencies that would provide healthy challenges based on their experience guiding other clients through similar journeys. Second, we wanted to move away from a monopoly with one holding company and introduce productive competition into our model.

While we still assigned brands to specific agencies rather than pitching each project, having multiple partners helped us better differentiate between internal and agency-side issues. If something wasn't working with either partner, we knew the problem lay with us; if it only failed with one partner, that pointed to agency issues. This approach also doubled our learning opportunities.

This multi-agency approach requires a specific scale to be effective – you need enough business to make it worthwhile for multiple partners to invest in dedicated teams. While having a single agency partner might seem more efficient on paper, we found the benefits of managed competition – better insights, clearer problem diagnosis, increased innovation – delivered more value in practice. The key is maintaining consistent team relationships at the brand level while creating healthy competition at the portfolio level.

2.2 What's the most common friction between brands and agencies, and how can both sides work more effectively together?

We often discuss "brands versus agencies," but ultimately, it's about people working together effectively. An agency isn't a vending machine where you input a brief and some cash and receive a perfect solution. Brand teams that struggle with their agencies often don't understand this dynamic – they might complain about needing "better talent." Still, top talent chooses who they work with based on multiple factors: creative bravery, pleasant collaboration, interesting projects, award potential, and compensation.

On the agency side, success requires aligning internal incentives with client objectives. Too often, agencies pitch integrated global solutions while operating with fragmented P&Ls and competing local incentives. When a global team promises seamless collaboration but local offices are compensated primarily on their revenue targets, it creates hidden friction that undermines the partnership. The best agency relationships I've seen pair unified client commitments with aligned internal reward systems.

2.3 When expanding into new markets, how do you assess whether to work with global agency partners versus local agencies?

This decision depends heavily on your brand-building model and priority markets/tactics. It is essential to recognize that global agencies are typically collections of local agencies, with capabilities varying significantly across markets. While the theory behind global partnerships is to support brand consistency and reduce redundant work, this isn't automatic.

In Canada, I implemented a hybrid approach: we leveraged our global partner's local affiliate for most work, benefiting from preferred pricing and access to global assets. This relationship also provided escalation paths when needed. However, we found local agencies were essential for PR and micro-influencer work, particularly given Quebec's unique French dialect requirements.

2.4 What are agencies' biggest mistakes when working with large, matrixed organisations like Sanofi or J&J?

Two critical mistakes stand out:

1. Failing to say no when appropriate. Agencies shouldn't propose pricing to win pitches they can't profitably deliver against, nor accept unprofitable partnerships hoping to transform them later.

2. Not pushing clients to confirm decision-making processes upfront. I've seen countless great work diluted by too many stakeholders or derailed by key decision-makers who weren't involved throughout the process but appeared periodically with significant changes.

3. Brand & Marketing Strategy

3.1 You've revitalized major brands like Aveeno and Gold Bond. What's the key to repositioning a brand in a crowded market?

Success comes down to having defendable differentiation from competition. This difference must be something competitors either can't or won't replicate, whether due to capability, investment levels, or strategic choice. The key is distilling this difference into a clear statement that serves as a filter for all decisions – both what to do and, often more importantly, what not to do.

When revitalizing established brands, it's crucial to remember they became great for a reason – you need to preserve their core while evolving around it. 

With Aveeno, we built everything around three pillars: natural hero ingredients, clinical proof, and professional recommendation. These pillars created a powerful framework for expansion – we could enter Skin Care, Sun Care, Anti-aging, Hair Care, and beyond while maintaining the brand's essence.  Aveeno is amazingly extendable, so the difference between success and failure was our ability to adapt our tactical approach for each new category. 

For Gold Bond, our focus was solving skin care problems – if there wasn't a problem to solve, it wasn't for Gold Bond. This clarity became our decision filter, explaining why products like Eczema Care and Crepe Skin Corrector succeeded while Pure Moisture failed to gain traction despite being in a larger market.

3.2 You've worked in markets with vastly different consumer behaviours. How do you balance global brand consistency with local market adaptation?

As Ogilvy famously said, "Give me the freedom of a tight brief." The tighter your brand positioning, the more successfully it can be translated consistently across markets.

Consumer behaviors are surprisingly similar across markets in many categories, especially healthcare. What varies more significantly are category development, retail environments, regulations, and competitive contexts. 

I approach this through market clustering, grouping similar markets based on retail structure, category maturity, and cultural context. While perfect matches are rare, this segmentation helps develop strategies that work across multiple markets. I prefer having one big global idea – like Omo's "Dirt is Good" or Colgate Optic White's "Teeth are a Beauty Feature" – but then let one market per cluster drive creative campaign development within that framework.

This approach allows for innovation while maintaining consistency. McDonald's sonic logo "I'm loving it" originated in Germany before going global, while Coca-Cola's named bottles started in Australia. They were successful because they allowed local innovation within the framework of a strong brand positioning. When they found local success in a creative idea, they could scale everywhere the equity was already embedded.  Even in those cases, they were further localized for language and names.

3.3 How do you ensure that brand architecture and innovation strategies don't just look good on paper but translate into real growth?

You never know with absolute certainty until you execute, but you must ensure the execution truly matches the strategy. I've seen many situations where the final product bears little resemblance to the original strategic intent – death by a thousand cuts through compromises on claims, input costs, packaging, launch investment, or distribution. When you make too many compromises to "just get it done," you often end up with something that neither delivers on the strategy nor meets the market needs.

That said, I'm a strong advocate for what I call "planning to fail" – not trying to fail, but rather preserving the ability to pivot based on learnings that will inevitably emerge when you go live. I can only say with 100% confidence about the future that we'll learn something we don't know now. We just had the Super Bowl. An NFL team typically scripts the first 15 plays of the game but winning requires adapting to what you learn from those initial plays. No team wins championships by rigidly sticking to a pre-game script – they win by having a clear strategy and the flexibility to adjust their execution based on real-time feedback. The same principle applies in business. The best innovation strategies combine clear strategic guardrails with the operational flexibility to adapt based on market response.

3.4 What's your take on the growing shift toward purpose-driven brands? How do you balance purpose with commercial success?

Every brand has a purpose, but sometimes that purpose is simply delivering a product benefit to users and profit to the company. I think the brands you’re talking about seek to deliver a higher purpose – or mission.  Their mission is embedded so deeply in successful cases that it becomes a lens for ALL decision-making. When done right, the mission drives commercial success, and commercial success advances the mission. Brands like Patagonia, Ben & Jerry's, and Happy Coffee exemplify this symbiotic relationship.

It is possible to evolve toward being more purpose-centered – Dove's transformation to celebrate beauty in all women is a prime example. Complementary causes easily connected to the brand or its assets can also work well, like Pringles' support of Movember's prostate cancer awareness.

A problem often arises when brands try to retrofit a mission onto an established brand or mistake cause marketing for brand purposes. When purpose isn't central to the brand, business imperatives will always trump cause support. Just look at how differently companies responded to pressure on DEI programs – Costco doubled down because diversity was central to its success. In contrast, others retreated, revealing their commitment was more trend-following than fundamental.

4. Technology, AI & Data

4.1 How did digital transformation play a role in optimising the €500MM advertising spend at Sanofi?

The impact was substantial. Initially, we were behind the industry and consumer behaviour, with 75% of our investments in television. Much of our transformation involved education – team members and their approving managers were comfortable with traditional media and saw digital as risky.

The transformation extended beyond the media mix to revolutionize our approach to analytics, eCommerce growth, and content development. While we sometimes needed direct measures like spending targets and leadership mandates, teams began favouring digital media as they saw more direct connections to sales.

Ultimately, we were able to hold our overall spending while successfully driving growth and market share across the business through the transformed approach.

Interestingly, when I moved to Canada, I found the team had shifted too far toward digital, requiring us to reintegrate mass awareness approaches to maintain brand strategy.

4.2 AI is changing marketing rapidly. Where do you see the most significant opportunities, and where do you think marketers need to be cautious?

I'm optimistic about AI becoming as transformative as the internet, GPS, and smartphones in making people more efficient and improving customer experiences. For marketing, I see particular potential in customer service, where many companies have already reduced call centre staff, but current digital operators and chatbots often create frustrating experiences which AI can substantially improve.

On an individual level, marketers need to experiment with and upskill GenAI tools to stay competitive. However, human oversight remains crucial for monitoring and auditing outputs – there's immense value in combining human judgment with AI efficiency. We also need to guard against skill atrophy. If you delegate your output entirely to AI, you risk making yourself redundant.

4.3 You doubled Amazon sales in Canada. What's your approach to integrating eCommerce into a broader marketing strategy?

Success in eCommerce demands true cross-functional integration. In Canada, our small team size naturally encouraged integration, which proved crucial for Amazon growth. We needed:

- Sales and supply chain to understand ordering patterns and prevent stock-outs that could devastate search performance

- Regulatory teams to expedite product listing approval

- Marketing teams to optimize platform content and drive traffic from external sources

- Finance to analyze true ROI for investment optimization

- Innovation teams to consider different packaging approaches

This level of partnership benefits the entire business but is make-or-break in eCommerce. In many ways, our eCommerce success taught us how to run a more integrated business overall.

Importantly, eCommerce isn't just a sales channel – it's a marketing platform and insights engine. Many consumer journeys interact with eCommerce platforms, even for offline purchases, whether checking reviews, comparing prices, or seeking alternatives. Understanding these blended shopping realities helps justify broader eCommerce investments.

4.4 With increasing concerns around data privacy, What's your approach to balancing personalisation with consumer trust?

While compliance, permission, and data security are non-negotiable, I firmly believe people will share their data when offered sufficient value. Privacy concerns vary significantly by generation – those who grew up with social media have different perspectives than older consumers.

Consider TikTok – despite debates about data access and content influence, users embrace its algorithm because it delivers exceptional personalization. Similarly, people readily share data with supermarkets in exchange for discounts and relevant offers.

The challenge comes when brands ask for personal information before delivering value, like DTC brands requesting phone numbers before browsing. Poor execution, such as repeatedly sending irrelevant promotional messages, damages rather than builds brand relationships. One online shoe retailer constantly sends me women's shoe promotions despite my never having purchased women's shoes – this kind of impersonal "personalization" detracts from the brand experience.

Closing Remarks: Key takeaways from my conversation with Nate Challen

As we wrap up this insightful conversation with Nate Challen, it’s clear that the role of the Chief Marketing Officer is undergoing a fundamental transformation.

Nate’s journey across CPG, healthcare, and eCommerce showcases the breadth of expertise required to thrive as a modern marketing leader – balancing business strategy, digital transformation, AI adoption, and global team leadership while navigating market complexities.

His perspective reinforced several key themes:

1) Marketing fundamentals haven’t changed but execution has

While every industry has unique challenges, consumer behaviour, media fragmentation, and the rise of eCommerce have fundamentally changed how marketing is executed.

The principles remain the same: deep consumer understanding, strong brand positioning, and compelling storytelling, but the methods have evolved.

2) Digital transformation is critical, but leadership buy-in is the true barrier

At Sanofi, Nate led a €5B global business unit across 85 markets, optimising €500MM in ad spend and driving market share growth. Yet, he highlighted that the biggest challenge wasn’t developing the right strategy, for Nate it was securing leadership commitment to change.

True transformation requires organisational alignment, adaptability, and long-term investment.

3) Agencies must be strategic partners, not just service providers

Marketing leaders are moving away from single-agency models and fostering healthy competition among multiple partners.

Brands need agencies that challenge them, bring forward new ideas, and have aligned incentives. Not just vendors that execute campaigns.

4) AI will define the next generation of CMOs

AI is set to reshape marketing, but not in the way many expect.

The real competitive advantage will not just come from using AI but from understanding how to lead with it. CMOs must embed AI into their teams, tools, and decision-making processes while ensuring it strengthens, not replaces, the human touch in marketing.

5) eCommerce is no longer just a sales channel. It’s a Brand-Building Platform

Nate’s experience doubling Amazon sales in Canada reinforces the importance of cross-functional collaboration in eCommerce.

Success requires seamless integration across marketing, sales, supply chain, and finance, as well as the use of digital platforms as commerce and consumer insight engines.

My final thought

This conversation with Nate highlights the expanding role of the CMO from brand strategist to technology leader, from agency manager to cultural curator.

As AI, digital transformation, and new media platforms reshape the industry, the most successful CMOs will be those who stay agile, lead change, and build strong, purpose-driven brands.

I want to thank Nate for sharing his candid insights and lessons learned from leading marketing at some of the world’s top brands. His approach to team leadership, brand growth, and digital evolution provides a roadmap for future marketing leaders.

____________________

Ivan Fernandes

Marketing Management | M&A Advisor

Stay Connected

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If you found this conversation valuable, drop a comment or share your thoughts regarding what insights resonated most with you?

Stay tuned for the next edition!

1st edition: Inside the CMO Mind: A Conversation with Elisa Riboldi ★ i, CMO of Nestlé Iberia

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/inside-cmo-mind-conversation-elisa-riboldi-nestl%C3%A9-iberia-fernandes-brizf

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