Unilever Won’t Replace the CMGO Title as Esi Eggleston Bracey Exits

Esi Eggleston Bracey, Unilever’s chief advertising and development officer (CMGO), is about to depart in January 2026 after simply over two years within the function and eight years with the enterprise.The CMGO place is not going to get replaced like-for-like, Unilever confirmed to ADWEEK. As a substitute, Leandro Barreto, chief advertising officer, Unilever Magnificence and Wellbeing, will lengthen his remit to incorporate Unilever’s enterprise advertising agenda. The transfer displays what Unilever describes as the subsequent section of its advertising transformation, which can carry international advertising capabilities nearer to its enterprise teams, leading to quicker execution and affect.Bracey will keep on by January to help Barreto within the transition. A brand new advertising eraIn 2023, Unilever (which owns over 400 manufacturers) restructured its enterprise round 5 key teams: private care; magnificence and well-being; diet; dwelling care; and ice cream, which was spun off in December 2025 because the Magnum Ice Cream firm Because the restructuring took maintain, Eggleston Bracey was appointed as CMGO to steer the crew of entrepreneurs overseeing these divisions. She additionally took duty for Unilever’s community of digital advertising, media, and commerce hubs, which pool expertise from throughout the enterprise to ship “seamless shopper experiences” throughout platforms.Bracey joined Unilever in 2018 as evp and chief working officer overseeing its private care division in North America.Throughout that point, she pioneered the corporate’s then purpose-driven advertising method. She additionally spearheaded Dove’s efforts to again the Crown Act, a proposed federal ban on office discrimination based mostly on coiffure or texture. In her two years as CMGO, Bracey has been credited with main Unilever into its digital advertising period, putting an emphasis on driving model relevance at scale throughout manufacturers, together with Dove, Hellmann’s, and Persil. She’s additionally pioneered AI experiments to drive advertising and content material efficiencies. Barreto, a 23-year Unilever vet, will now be tasked with bridging Unilever’s long-term development ambitions with enterprise group-level execution.A ‘gross sales and advertising’ machineSince taking the reins in March 2025, CEO Fernando Fernandez has been growing Unilever’s advertising funds to construct a “advertising and gross sales machine” in an surroundings ripe with challengers and the place customers are slicing discretionary spend. To date, his technique has included a pledge to speculate 30 to 50% of its $8 billion annual advert spend to “social-first” campaigns, and work with 20-times extra influencers within the course of. Magnificence and wellbeing, for which Barreto oversees advertising, have been central to pushing up Unilever’s earnings, which elevated 3.9% year-on-year to achieve $17.2 million in October.