CMO Accelerator Programme

Since 2013, over 450 alumni from 50 countries have attended the Accelerator. Some of the world's largest brands have taken a seat in the classroom for two days of thought leadership, inspiration and networking.

The CMO Accelerator Programme offers full-week access to the Festival, as well as a highly customised two-day Festival itinerary that helps senior marketing leaders to deliver better brand value than ever before.

Registration confirms your place in the 2025 classroom and includes:

• A full-week delegate pass to Cannes Lions
• Gold+ pass benefits include access to 4 star hotels (cost not included)
• Welcome event Monday 16 June 2025
• Official CMO Accelerator Dinner Wednesday 18 June 2025
• Optional post-event breakfast on Saturday 21 June 2025
• First refusal to book your space on the CMO Accelerator Programme 2026
• Pre-Festival and post-Festival calls hosted by Jim Stengel and LIONS
• Invitation to join the CMO Accelerator LinkedIn Group

The ideal candidate will be a senior marketing leader with responsibility for building brand-building capabilities in their organisation. They may have this responsibility in addition to leading a business or they may solely own the strategy and capability of the marketing function.

They will have a personal passion for brand-building and have demonstrated leadership by advancing brand-building approaches in their businesses. Their peers will likely look to them as brand-building thought leaders with an interest in the newest and most innovative ways to approach the work of building the business through the lens of the brand.

The candidate will either be a C-Suite member (with a title like CMO, Chief Brand Officer, or Chief Growth Officer) or aspiring to be in that role within a few years. The candidate will have 15 years of experience building brands across any industry within B2C or B2B organisations.

You will have business responsibility for a business, brand or group of brands and/or responsibility for brand-building capability within the organisation - either within the division/category or across the company. The ideal candidate should be accountable for some, if not all, of the marketing/brand-building strategy and capability within your organisation.

You are likely Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Brand Officer, Chief Growth Officer, Chief Experience Officer, and more. You could also be VP, or Senior VP of Marketing or Brand Building or of a business division. All attendees will likely have 15+ years of tenure.

Company Profiles:

• CMO or other equivalent C-Suite title, of a mid-size and/or private company (revenues up to $1.5BN
• VP/Senior VP of a larger company, most likely public, $1.5BN and above
• Ideally multinational companies
• All industries, B2B and B2C

If you’d like to discuss your place on the CMO Accelerator Programme 2025, please email stevelatham@canneslions.com

The CMO Accelerator takes place on the final two days of the Festival in a 5-star hotel in Cannes. So before we gather, you're free to enjoy all the Festival has to offer. Attend client meetings, watch content and celebrate at the Awards shows before we get together and focus on you.

We kick off with a welcome event on Monday 16 June hosted by Jim Stengel, LIONS and our partners. This informal get together is the perfect networking opportunity to meet the class of 2025 before two full days of learning.

Pre-event, we connect with attendees and gather individual ‘burning issues’ to help map out a targeted programme. Jim will evaluate and explore these topics in a series of roundtable sessions, ensuring each issue is addressed by the end of the week. Guest speakers will join us, presenting and taking questions. Is there anything more powerful than peer-to-peer learning designed to help you tackle your business problems?

The programme is built around three pillars:

Creative excellence | How to lead your teams and partners to unlock creativity that moves your business and society forward

Future-facing brand building | Exposure to cutting-edge thinking and approaches to help keep you current in the fast-moving marketing ecosystem

Leading with creativity | Unlocking your potential in the C-suite with a powerful set of tools across emotional, physical and professional aspects of managing a very demanding role

Led by Jim Stengel, CMO whisperer and former Global Marketing Officer of Procter & Gamble, this uniquely personal learning experience is the perfect opportunity to set up the second half of your year.

Attending The CMO Accelerator connects you with peers from across the world who are going through the very same struggles. For two days you can network, learn from global experts and gain mentorship from Jim while you learn about the latest best practices and newest ideas. It’s all about you.

Jim Stengel is President/CEO of The Jim Stengel Company. A prolific writer, thought leader and advisor, Jim is the author of Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World’s Greatest Companies, and Unleashing the Innovators: How Mature Companies Find New Life with Startups. He is also host of the highly acclaimed The CMO Podcast, an Adjunct Professor at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and an investor and Board member at BERA.

Jim is widely known for his leadership in the brand purpose movement and for his commitment to building leading-edge marketing capabilities.n 2011, he was selected for the first-ever Fortune® Executive Dream Team. He has been named multiple times by Ad Age as the number one ‘Power Player’ in marketing and is a 2017 AMA Marketing Hall of Fame inductee. Jim served as Dean of the Young Marketers Academy at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity from 2011 to 2020 and in 2013 pioneered the CMO Accelerator programme at the Cannes Lions Festival. Jim is the former Global Marketing Officer of Procter & Gamble and a former member of the Board of Directors for AOL and Motorola.

Jim grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA. He holds a BA from Franklin & Marshall College, and an MBA from The Pennsylvania State University, Smeal School of Business. Jim and his wife Kathleen have two children and split their time between Cincinnati, Ohio, and Coronado, California, USA.

Suzanne Tosolini is a Brand Strategy Consultant with over 30 years’ experience. She started her career in brand management at P&G, where she worked for 20 years running businesses locally and globally in Western Europe, North America, Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East. She led brand strategy and communication best practices for the company globally and then left in 2009 to join Jim Stengel as a consultant. She now consults with some of the biggest companies in the world across industries as varied as consumer packaged goods insurance, high-tech, pharmaceutical, prestige beauty, telecom and luxury goods.

Suzanne has partnered with Jim to co-lead and tutor the Cannes Lions CMO Accelerator and the Brand Marketer Academy at Cannes Lions since 2011. She is on the strategic advisory board of a US-based ad agency and volunteers her time and passion for strategy as a mentor for a large start-up incubator. Suzanne holds a degree in Business and Social Studies from Trinity College in Ireland, where she grew up within an Irish/German household. She currently resides in Cincinnati, Ohio, with her Italian husband and has two sons in college in the US.