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Its all fun and games, until there are billions of dollars involved. But these Brands That Matter honorees manage to tap into our love for sports and entertainment in ways that only help boost that passion. BritBox Read about how BritBox’s first major brand campaign showcased the craftsmanship of British TV. NBA Read about how the NBA made its app a destination for fans by building a network of creators it equipped with editing tools and 25,000 hours of game footage. State Farm As crazy as it sounds, this is an insurance company steeped in culture. This past year, State Farm pushed its Super Bowl ad to March Madness, due to sensitivity around the L.A. wildfires, but it still landed a hit. Creator star Kai Cenat broke the news on Jimmy Fallons show, and the hilarious spot starred Jason Bateman attempting to save the day rather than Americas favorite Caped Crusader. It led to a total of 358 traditional and earned social media placements, resulting in 2.5B earned media impressions. The brand also continued its popular reality game show called The Gamerhood. These campaigns and others leveraged the pervasive pop culture power of Jake from State Farm, driving more than 1 million new policies in 2024, and raising preference among ages 26 to 39 (millennials) by 4.5 percentage points and ages 18 to 25 (Gen Z) by 6.8 percentage points compared to a 2022 baseline. Togethxr Read about how the media and merch brand’s Nike partnership and growing slate of podcasts and shows is manifesting its motto, Everyone Watches Women’s Sports Uno Read about how the card game used TikTok and pop-up Uno parlors to bring fresh interest to the 52-year-old brand. Netflix It was a massive year for Netflix hits, with highly anticipated seasons for homegrown hits like Squid Game, Wednesday, and Stranger Things. Each of these is a cultural phenomenon in its own right, boosted by Netflixs strategic brand partnerships strategy, elevating product collabs into fan moments themselves. From Duolingo for a Learn Korean or Else campaign, to Cheetos teaming with Wednesdays Thing, and Stranger Things infiltrating everything from Nike to Williams Sonoma to Eggos, Netflix managed to bring each show to life in unique ways. For the award-winning show Adolescence, Netflix worked with charities in various countries to develop educational materials to help advocate for the growing movement to make schools phone-free zones. This story is part of Fast Companys 2025 Brands That Matter. Explore the full list of honorees that have demonstrated a commitment to their brands purpose and cultural relevance to their audience. Read more about the methodology behind the selection process.
Category:
E-Commerce
Consumer products is perhaps one of the broadest, most competitive arenas for marketers, always facing the constant question: Why should anyone care or pay attention? These Brands That Matter honorees are answering that question. Brawny To launch its new three-ply paper towels, the brand decided to breathe new life into its lumberjack mascot, to help the Brawny Man stand out on store shelves and in culture. The brand puts its new heartthrob mascot into a partnership with Bachelor Nation‘s Rachael Kirkconnell to tap into a real-life messy momenther high-profile breakupand flip it into a story of strength and humor. In a video posted to TikTok and Instagram, Rachael references the chaos of her past relationship as pizza sauce spills across the counter. Enter the Brawny Man, who cleans up the messboth literal and metaphorical. The wink to pop culture and strong visual tie to product benefit generated 4.3 million-plus organic views and a 5.5% lift in purchase intent. Engagement soared across platforms (14% on TikTok and 5.7% on Instagram, well above industry benchmarks), while earned media drove more than 269 million impressions in The Wall Street Journal and on E!, TMZ, and more. @brawny Depend on us for all life’s messes @rachael original sound – brawny Crayola In 2024, Crayola launched its Campaign for Creativity with the goal of shifting parents’ understanding and behaviors around childhood creativity. Brand research, conducted with the Ad Council Research Institute, found that parents value creativity but don’t fully understand the profound role it plays in their children’s growth and development. Crayola started collecting childrens artwork in the 1980s, and this year it unlocked its time capsule and began reuniting adults across the U.S. with the artwork they had created when they were kids. The brand created a series of short films, titled #StayCreative, featuring the stories of three adults who participated in a Crayola art program as kids and are reunited with their childhood artwork. Now the adults reflect on how creativity impacted their lives and the importance of nurturing creativity in their own children. This year, the campaign delivered 4.7 billion impressions, with more than 85% earned, for an estimated media value of over $100 million. Hot Wheels Hot Wheels is successfully tapping into the adult audience while maintaining its core appeal to children, creating a unique ecosystem where parents and kids share play and collecting experiences together. Under Mattel chief brand officer Lisa McKnight (who departed the company this fall), the brand has expanded its cultural footprint through premium collector lines using authentic details from partners like Formula 1, Ferrari, Mercedez-Benz, and much more. Beyond toys, adults can now engage with Hot Wheels via fashion collaborations like Wrangler and Maje. The brand also helps nurture community through its global Hot Wheels Legends Tour, where car culture fans come together to celebrate their love of cars. Starting in 2018, the annual events saw record-number attendees at each stop worldwidemore than 700,000 across 16 countriesincluding more than 18,000 attendees at the final stop in El Segundo, California. View this post on Instagram JLab Read more about how JLab is turning to college athleteswith followings of all sizesto gain ground on TikTok and among Gen Z. Squishmallows In the past year, Squishmallows collaborated with a range of best-in-class brands for product collaborations, including McDonalds, Kelloggs, Puma, Baked by Melissa, Crocs, H&M, Sees Candies, and others. Squishmallows was also tapped as a must-have partner by the worlds biggest IPs, bringing fans lovable Squishmallows plush based on some of their favorite properties, from Harry Potter and Disney to Stranger Things and The Lord of the Rings. Through Jazwares Cares, Jazwaress philanthropic arm, Squishmallows partnered with Make-A-Wish to help fulfill 11-year-old Olives dream of designing a Squishmallows. She spent a day at Jazwares in 2024, designing a character inspired by her beloved dog Liberty, and earlier this year, the final product was revealed, with hundreds of the Liberty plush donated to children who are receiving treatment at local childrens hospitals. View this post on Instagram Timex For a watch brand, Timex has become nearly timeless, but it isn’t resting on its laurels. It continues to expand its Analog Life: Make Time Yours campaign, which aims to celebrate the power of simplicity, urging people to take control of their time to focus on what truly matters. The brand turned its organic inclusion in the HBO hit The White Lotus into social moments that helped see a direct increase in the Q Timex watchand that was just a piece of the more than 50 billion earned media impressions it had in 2024. That was alongside a push on TikTok that helped more than double its followers on the platform and ongoing promotion of its Timex ReWound takeback/resale platform that has processed more than 16,000 watches in 18 months. View this post on Instagram Owala Late last year, a new coffee shop appeared up on Los Angeless Sunset Boulevard, but it was only temporary. Owala opened a pop-up called The Drip Stop to celebrate the launch of the Owala SmoothSip Slider coffee cup. The shop had more than 3,500 visitors over two days and featured giveaways, games, and a 1.5-mile-long line lasting up to five hours. This is what brand fandom looks like. Outside its pop-ups, Owala keeps its fans on the hook with limited-edition colors and retailer-exclusive designsand is seemingly omnipresent on social media. Over the past year, the brands social following increased 250%, with more than 384 million Instagram impression and about 70 million video views on TikTok. This story is part of Fast Companys 2025 Brands That Matter. Explore the full list of honorees that have demonstrated a commitment to their brands purpose and cultural relevance to their audience. Read more about the methodology behind the selection process.
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E-Commerce
Marketing leaders have always been vital to the long-term success of beloved brands. But never before has the CMO position been more complexand more essential to driving business results. This year’s honorees come from a wide variety of product categoriesfrom toys and games to media, beauty, and foodbut all demonstrate remarkable skill in navigating a diverse media landscape with platforms and campaigns that deepen their brands’ cultural impact, strengthen audience relationships, and achieve meaningful business outcomes. These leaders were selected based on the ambition, sophistication, innovation, and performance of their brand initiatives throughout the year. Here are Fast Company’s 2025 Brands That Matter CMOs of the year. Kristyn Cook, State Farm One of State Farms best brand insights is that nobody cares about insurance until they need it. So CMO Kristyn Cook and her team help people care by creating advertising that is as entertaining as possible. Cook is strategic and ambitious. That means creating a hilarious tie-in with Apples hit show Severance, enlisting Jason Bateman to be his own, less-than-ideal version of Batman for March Madness, and pitting gaming creators like Kai Cenat, Ludwig, Mark Phillips, and Berleezy against each other in a combination of gaming and IRL challenges for Gamerhood. The shows third season from last summer attracted more than 23 million views, and in September, season four landed on Prime Video after getting more than 27 million views on YouTube and Twitch. As she told us back in March, We like to move at the pace of culture. George Felix, Chili’s Read about how CMO George Felix has helped make the restaurant chain relevant again through a combination of viral moments and marketing that emphasizes value. Tamera Ferro, Sol de Janeiro Tamera Ferro may have departed her role as chief marketing and growth officer at skincare and fragrance brand Sol de Janeiro in September 2025. But her work during her six-year tenurein which she helped Sol de Janeiro grow from $38 million in sales to more than $1 billionearned her a spot as a CMO of the year. Her success at the helm of the brand was due largely to Ferro and her team’s ability to identify the best places to reach its fans. While those places include TikTok and Instagramwhere the brand has 6 million collective followersFerro also worked to expand the platforms where fans could encounter the brand, from Roblox to Coachella. Her approach to social media turned the brand into one of the internet’s buzziest, driving a 94% increase in social conversation and generating more than $330 million in earned media value. In May, Ferro oversaw the global Sephora launch of Body Badalada, Sol de Janeiro’s vitamin-infused lotion designed to cater to Gen Z by offering scent and hydration. The product campaign included a spot starring model Juliana Nalú; an original “Badalada Anthem” from producer Honey Dijon; and a traveling Brazilian street fairinspired celebration called the Badalada Bloco. It was a campaign that distilled Ferro’s philosophy for reaching people, as she summed it up to TikTok in June: “Stop chasing trends and just start liking people. Figure out what they want, what you can do for them, and how to talk to them.” Morgan Flatley, McDonald’s Morgan Flatley has revolutionized how the worlds most famous fast-food brand shows up in culture, starting way back in 2020 with Travis Scotts Famous Order. Over this past year, Flatley has taken her fan-led approach around the world. The Chicken Big Mac campaign featuring Kai Cenat on Twitch was McDonalds first completely unscripted campaign and saw fans tune in for 3.5 hours of brand content. With 30 million streams and 500 million views, it was Twitchs most successful QSR campaign ever, generating 35 billion earned impressions. The brands Minecraft Movie Meal, featuring both kid and adult happy meals, dropped in March 2025, and its 36 million collectibles sold out in nearly all 100 markets within two weeks. In France, a collab with Hot Ones brought the iconic YouTube shows spicy sauces to the country, selling more than 6 million sauces and boosting sales by more than 80%. Diana Frost, Kraft Heinz Read about the Kraft Heinz chief growth officer’s work putting the company’s flagship condiment brand at the center of cultural conversationsand courting fans internationally. Jackie Jantos, Hinge Read about how Hinge president and CMO Jackie Jantos is centering real-life success stories to court new users for the dating app. Marian Lee, Netflix Read about how CMO Marian Lee is taking Netflix’s most popular shows into the world to meet fans beyond the binge. Victoria Lozano, Crayola As someone who’s been at Crayola since 2009 in various marketing capcities, CMO Victoria Lozano knows what the core of the 122-year-old brand is and has made it her job to find organic ways to grow its presence in people’s lives. That has meant finding areas for the brand to be more than just about art supplies and about fostering creativity among childrenwhether digitally through the brand’s top-downloaded Crayola Create and Play app or IRL in the libraries of elementary schools during Crayola Creativity Week. In 2025, Lozano more than doubled the number of children reached by Crayola Creativity Week, reaching students in more than 120 countries. She also grew the brand’s app to more than 3 million monthly active users. Lozano has expanded the company’s activations, generating $100 million in earned media value and 11.4 billion impressions. Her work is proof that established brands can innovate on their central product to meet the timeswhile still excelling on product. Crayola’s Marker Airbrush, introduced in February 2025, is a 2026 Toy of the Year Awards finalist in the Creative Toy of the Year category. Marcel Marcondes, AB InBev As the global chief marketing officer for AB InBev, Marcel Marcondes oversees more than 500 beer brands around the world, and Corona is arguably the companys most famous. This past year was the brands 100th anniversary, and it was celebrated in style. For the Paris Games, nonalcoholic Corona Cero became the lead brand for AB InBevs first-ever global beer sponsor of the Olympic Games. Corona also launched the Beach 100, a guide of the top 100 beaches in the world, and a multiyear sponsorship of a renowned concert at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro. This year it was headlined by Lady Gaga and gathered more than 2 million people, becoming among the top five most-attended concerts ever. And in September, Marcondes struck an unprecedented, wide-ranging partnership deal with Netflix, getting Corona and its other brands front and center in Netflixs push into live sports, as well as early access to placement and integration into other Netflix programming, such as shows and movies. Lisa McKnight, Mattel It’s one thing for a person’s brand work to become standard for a single brand, but Lisa McKnight’s work for Barbiewhich doubled its sales between 2016 and 2021, helped along by a hit moviehas become the playbook for every brand at Mattel, where McKnight wrapped her 27-year tenure this fall. In the past year, McKnight and her team put that playbook to work on Uno and Hot Wheels, both of which are 2025 Brands That Matter honorees. With Uno, McKnight and her team positioned the decades-old card game as a social media star, partnering with content creator Legendary Jay for a series of TikToks and opening pop-up Uno Social Clubs throughout the U.S. to underscore the IRL appeal of the game. It even appeared at Pharrell Williams’s postMet Gala party and got a special-edition makeover from pop star and Uno fan Billie Eilish, showing that even the cool kids are not immune to the joys of a well-played reverse card. Hot Wheels, meanwhile, became a brand canvas for the likes of Gucci, MSCHF, and Daniel Arsham. The brand also showed up in fans’ towns via the Hot Wheels Legends Tour, which broke records in 2024 and sold more than 60,000 of the brand’s die-cast cars. McKnight’s Hot Wheels work put the brand in a position of strength for its forthcoming film adaptation, which brought on Wicked‘s Jon M. Chu as its director over the summer. This story is part of Fast Companys 2025 Brands That Matter. Explore the full list of honorees that have demonstrated a commitment to their brands purpose and cultural relevance to their audience. Read more about the methodology behind the selection process.
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E-Commerce
The 2025 Brands That Matter United States honorees aren’t just united by their shared geographythey are all identifying their target audience and meeting them exactly where they need to. Whether solving a uniquely American problem, as GoodRx does in addressing the cost of prescription drugs, or pioneering innovation that can help people globally like Owlet, these companies are showing how American brands can step up in authentic and impactful ways. GoodRx GoodRx has built its brand equity by being present where its customers need itthe pharmacy counter. Over the past year, the prescription savings platform introduced a feature that gets users to engage with it even earlier, offering an e-commerce portal for pharmacies that allows patients to validate their prescription and pay the discounted GoodRx price online before picking up their medication IRL. As it built consumer trustand users documented their savings with social media postsGoodRx this fall rolled out a new brand campaign. The ad push, which stars a character called the Savings Wrangler, capitalizes on growing interest in Westerns to highlight the platform’s ability to save people money. Owlet After becoming the first brand to launch an FDA-cleared, over-the-counter pulse oximeter for infantsits Dream Sock baby monitorin 2024, Owlet took its messaging to parents. The brand garnered 42 million impressions by using a network of parent influencers sharing real-life stories of how the connected sock, which works as a baby monitor with a base station and app, gives them piece of mind. It drove an additional 202 million social impressions with its content on Instagram and TikTok, including 115 million organic video views. Texas A&M University Under CMO R. Ethan Braden, since fall 2024, Texas A&M has emphasized its commitment to serving its communityand the breadth of what it offers. With a constantly growing slate of YouTube videos, the university has become the most watched university online, racking up millions of views on videos about its commitment to veterans’ healthcare access, marine ecosystems research, and Alzheimer’s breakthroughs. It has paired content with community engagement, training first responders, educating Texans about hurricane season, and focusing on disaster preparedness. Understood.org The nonprofit focused on destigmatizing neurodiversity like ADHD, dyslexia, and learning disabilities leaned into being a resource for women with ADHD. Its MissUnderstood podcast network introduced ADHD AHA, which grew its audience via both audio and video. Over the course of the year, Understood.org and its podcasts reached nearly 11 million users through a revamped YouTube strategy. It turned that engagement into a study with Torrens University Australia that identified a positive correlation between people listening to the podcasts and having a better outlook on their ADHD diagnoses and self-esteem. https://open.spotify.com/show/6zHwhg9tavgvhlBKhHaEa3 This story is part of Fast Companys 2025 Brands That Matter. Explore the full list of honorees that have demonstrated a commitment to their brands purpose and cultural relevance to their audience. Read more about the methodology behind the selection process.
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E-Commerce
A brand that isn’t thinking globally is limiting its reach. The four 2025 Brands That Matter global honorees know that and have worked hard to make their messaging reach beyond their home countries. All based outside the United States, these brands demonstrated that good messaging and authentic connection have no nationality. 1Password People don’t like to think about their digital security, so Toronto-based 1Password has become an expert at making it fun, and doing so using sports as the backdrop. The brand used its sponsorship of the Presidents Cup golf tournament in fall 2024 to debut its “What Not to Do” campaign. With more than 12 million impressions, the spot drove a 14% increase in account creation during the tournament. Elsewhere, in 2025, the brand has partnered with Oracle Red Bull Racing’s F1 team, designing a custom car wrap for driver Alisha Palmowski, which debuted at the 2025 Canadian Grand Prix in June. Babbel Berlin-based language learning company Babbel has been focused on meeting its userswho now include over 1 million Ukrainian refugees, connected with the brand via more than 70 NGOswhere they are. Babbel used Telegram to connect with 22,000-plus language learners via Welcome Alliance Germany, helping them practice their burgeoning skills. In 2025, the company also partnered with Major League Soccer team Inter Miami CF, which began using its Babbel for Business offering for its players, coaches, and front office. The team became an early adopter of the brand’s AI-powered Babbel Speak tool, which debuted in September. Dreame Suzhou, China-based smart vacuum maker Dreames culturally attuned product strategy helped it capture up to 43% of the robotic vacuum market in Germany and Italy, with 2024 sales reaching 3.96 million unitsa 60% year-over-year increase. By designing tech like eco-conscious smart lawnmowers for Europe and robotic vacuums with mop-detachment for cleanliness-focused markets, Dreame fused cultural insight with innovation. Campaigns such as Reclaim Time for Family and localized Amazon Prime Day activations fueled $9.05 million gross merchandise value in North America and a 540% surge in overseas direct sales. Marina Bay Sands In the past year, Singapore’s five-star resort Marina Bay Sands has undertaken a big transformation. As it fully renovated its lodgings, it also debuted its “Above Beyond” brand transformation. Initial response in fall 2024 included a 2.61% increase in brand equity, and average stay lengths have increased from 1.5 to 4 nights. That’s been helped by initiatives that include a cinematic campaign by filmmaker Celine Song and content featuring global brand ambassador David Beckham, which helped the brand reposition itself from a stopover to a destination. This story is part of Fast Companys 2025 Brands That Matter. Explore the full list of honorees that have demonstrated a commitment to their brands purpose and cultural relevance to their audience. Read more about the methodology behind the selection process.
Category:
E-Commerce
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