AT&T’s CMO tied ‘brand love’ to the numbers CEOs care about. Customers are 3 times less likely to leave and much cheaper to acquire

When Kellyn Smith Kenny joined AT&T as CMO in November 2020, she joined a company whose identity was about to change dramatically.

AT&T had spent years expanding into entertainment, including its $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner, and owned satellite television provider DirecTV. By the time Kenny arrived, that strategy was giving way to a retrenchment that would return AT&T’s focus to its telecommunications business. The company would separate DirecTV and eventually spin off WarnerMedia, while directing more capital toward 5G and fiber and reducing debt.

Kenny saw an iconic company that, in her words, had “lost its way a bit” and needed to find its “swagger again.” That complexity was part of the attraction. Kenny, whose career had taken her through Microsoft, Capital One, Uber, and Hilton, wanted her next job to be at a company where marketing would play a central role in its transformation.

“I’m only going to go to a company where, for that company to truly reach its full potential, marketing has to be a key ingredient,” Kenny recalls of her thinking at the time.

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