Cannes, France — June 2026. At Cannes Lions, three leading marketing executives from Sephora US, Heineken Mexico and Hinge came together for a candid conversation on what it takes to build brands that last in a marketplace where trust is harder to earn, easier to lose and increasingly shaped by culture, community and technology.
Moderated by Jeanine Poggi, Editor-in-Chief of Ad Age, the session “CMOs in the Spotlight: Heineken, Hinge, Sephora” featured Zena Arnold, CMO of Sephora US, Marta García Alonso, VP Marketing at Heineken Mexico, and Tamika Young, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer at Hinge. Together, they explored how the role of the CMO is evolving beyond advertising into a broader mandate: building emotional connection, protecting brand equity, proving business impact and helping organizations respond to cultural change with speed and purpose.
The conversation opened with a shared challenge across three very different categories: beauty, beer and dating. Each brand operates in a space where consumers do not simply buy a product or use a platform; they form an emotional relationship with the brand. For today’s CMO, that creates pressure, but also a privilege: the opportunity to make people feel seen, understood and valued.
Arnold illustrated this through Sephora’s mission of welcoming everyone to the world of beauty. She shared the story of a trans woman who visited Sephora after her transition and wrote to say that she felt seen, supported and able to express who she really was. For Arnold, that moment captured the real power of brand experience. Sephora is not only selling beauty products; it is creating an environment where identity, self-expression and belonging can come to life.
Young described Hinge’s mission in similarly human terms. The brand’s purpose is to create a less lonely world, which means trust is not an abstract metric but the foundation of the business. In dating, the product sits at one of the most emotional parts of people’s lives: finding connection. That makes consumer trust central to everything Hinge does, from product development to communications, storytelling and community engagement.
For García Alonso, Heineken operates in a category deeply tied to culture, social moments and shared experiences. Beer is a category of choice, connection and enjoyment, but she argued that the way brands show up is changing fast. As conversations increasingly happen across platforms, communities, AI systems and emerging digital ecosystems, brands must protect long-term equity while also accepting that more brand meaning is being shaped in conversation.
That tension between long-term consistency and cultural responsiveness became one of the strongest themes of the panel. García Alonso noted that brands need to protect what they stand for over time, but they also need to understand how large language models, digital communities and new conversation spaces will influence how brands are discovered, interpreted and recommended.
CANNES, FRANCE – JUNE 24: Marta García Alonso, Tamika Young, Zena Arnold and Jeanine Poggi speak onstage during ‘CMOs in the Spotlight: Heineken, Hinge, Sephora’ on Day 3 of Cannes Lions 2026 on June 24, 2026 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Xavi Torrent/Getty Images for Cannes Lions)
Sephora’s approach to cultural relevance offered one example. Arnold explained that the brand has intentionally shown up beyond traditional beauty spaces, including sports, gaming and other cultural environments where consumers are spending time. The goal is not to appear everywhere, but to meet people in places where beauty, identity and self-expression are already part of the conversation.
The panel also placed creators at the center of modern brand building. Young explained that creators are foundational to Hinge’s marketing approach because Hinge does not operate a traditional social media presence. Instead, the brand relies on people who have their own dating journeys, their own communities and their own credibility to speak in more authentic ways.
For Hinge, creators are not limited to TikTok or Instagram personalities. Young pointed to writers, authors and platforms such as Substack as important spaces for storytelling. In the brand’s “No Ordinary Love” campaign, Hinge worked with writers to tell real stories of how people met and found their partners. The lesson was clear: creator strategy is no longer just influencer amplification; it is a way to build trust through more credible forms of storytelling.
García Alonso connected creators to Heineken’s experiential strategy. Brand experiences and sponsorships have long been central to beer marketing, but she argued that experiences alone are no longer enough. Creators act as media channels, audience builders and trust multipliers. They bring angles and interpretations that brands may not have imagined, helping live experiences travel further and feel more relevant to different communities.
Arnold added that creator partnerships only work when brands give creators the space to do what they do best. Consumers can quickly detect content that feels overly controlled or overly branded. Authenticity comes from co-creation, not dictation.
That belief shapes Sephora’s own creator ecosystem, including the Sephora Squad and Sephora’s creator storefronts. Arnold explained that creators are selected, educated and supported, but they are also trusted to speak in their own voice. Sephora’s storefront model allows creators to curate recommendations and earn affiliate commissions, making the relationship more mutually beneficial and commercially sustainable.
AI was another unavoidable topic, but the CMOs resisted simplistic narratives. Young argued that AI can create efficiencies, but it cannot automate human creativity or human storytelling. For Hinge, that distinction is essential because the brand is built around human connection. AI may help the organization work smarter, but it cannot replace the emotional intelligence required to speak credibly about relationships.
CANNES, FRANCE – JUNE 24: Zena Arnold speaks onstage during ‘CMOs in the Spotlight: Heineken, Hinge, Sephora’ on Day 3 of Cannes Lions 2026 on June 24, 2026 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Xavi Torrent/Getty Images for Cannes Lions)
CANNES, FRANCE – JUNE 24: Tamika Young speaks onstage during ‘CMOs in the Spotlight: Heineken, Hinge, Sephora’ on Day 3 of Cannes Lions 2026 on June 24, 2026 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Xavi Torrent/Getty Images for Cannes Lions)
Arnold offered a powerful example of AI as a tool rather than a strategy. She referenced small food vendors using AI-generated signage to create more expressive, personalized visuals. The businesses that saw results were not simply using AI because it was available; they were using it to communicate personality, familiarity and human truth. Her point was that AI will produce more images, copy and content, but success will still depend on insight.
García Alonso emphasized a different part of the process. For her, AI is especially exciting at the beginning of marketing work, where it can help teams identify insights, understand audiences and process data at a scale human teams could not manage alone. She sees AI as a way to elevate strategic thinking and multiply campaign impact, especially when used to uncover audience opportunities before creative execution begins.
Together, the panel landed on a nuanced position: AI can accelerate marketing, but trust, community and storytelling remain human advantages. The most effective marketers will not use AI to replace creativity. They will use it to sharpen insights, improve decisions and free teams to focus on higher-value brand thinking.
Community building emerged as another critical discipline for CMOs. Arnold said Sephora’s mission requires letting go of some control and allowing creators and communities to interpret the brand in their own voices. That loss of control is not a weakness; it is part of how trust is built.
Young highlighted Hinge’s social impact program One More Hour, created to encourage people to spend more time connecting in person. The program funds Gen Z-founded groups and community initiatives, from chess clubs to reading gatherings, helping people become more comfortable with real-world connection. Hinge launched the program after research showed that people are spending significantly less time connecting in person than previous generations.
For Hinge, community is not only a marketing tactic. It is connected to the brand’s broader mission of reducing loneliness and making dating feel less intimidating. By supporting communities beyond the app, Hinge reinforces a belief that stronger offline connection can improve the dating experience itself.
García Alonso framed community as the place where long-term consistency and cultural participation can meet. Heineken must remain consistent as a brand, but it also needs to engage with culture through passion points and communities. For her, the future of brand building depends on long-term commitment to conversations where the brand and culture intersect naturally.
CANNES, FRANCE – JUNE 24: Marta García Alonso, Tamika Young, Zena Arnold and Jeanine Poggi speak onstage during ‘CMOs in the Spotlight: Heineken, Hinge, Sephora’ on Day 3 of Cannes Lions 2026 on June 24, 2026 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Xavi Torrent/Getty Images for Cannes Lions)
The discussion then shifted to the evolving role of the CMO inside the business. Young noted that she oversees both marketing and communications at Hinge, a structure that reflects how consumers experience brands today. People do not separate marketing campaigns from communications campaigns. They simply see one brand. That means communications must be at the strategy table early, not brought in after decisions are already made.
Young argued that when communications and marketing work together, brands are better connected to the consumer. At Hinge, data, insights, cultural listening and product storytelling all inform one another. The team monitors conversations around dating as well as broader macro forces that affect how people show up on the platform.
Measurement was another major theme, particularly the relationship between CMOs and CFOs. Arnold described Sephora’s strong partnership with finance, built around an in-house market mix modeling system developed collaboratively with financial leadership. Because finance helped build the attribution model, the organization trusts the connection between marketing investment and business growth.
That trust proved valuable when the business faced pressure. Arnold recalled a moment when leadership needed to cut costs, but marketing was protected because it was understood to be driving growth. The broader lesson for CMOs: marketing earns internal credibility when measurement is built with finance, not merely presented to finance.
García Alonso addressed the complexity of KPIs in modern marketing. With hundreds of metrics across channels, platforms and experiments, she argued that CMOs must protect intermediate KPIs when testing innovative media or breakthrough ideas. Not every new approach can be immediately linked to sales or long-term brand power, but if marketers only optimize for the most direct short-term metrics, they will stop innovating.
Her point was especially relevant in times of budget pressure. When asked what happens if budgets are cut, García Alonso described Heineken’s use of AI and predictive tools to evaluate return on investment by touchpoint. The goal is to reduce emotional decision-making and use data to understand where cuts can be made when the company requires short-term results.
The panel ultimately painted a realistic picture of the modern CMO role: part brand builder, part cultural strategist, part data translator, part community architect and part internal business leader. Today’s marketing leaders must defend long-term brand investment while proving short-term impact. They must embrace AI without losing human judgment. They must collaborate with creators without over-controlling them. And they must build trust in a consumer environment where authenticity is constantly tested.
At Cannes Lions, Heineken, Hinge and Sephora showed that the future of marketing will not be won by brands that simply produce more content, chase every platform or automate every interaction. It will be won by brands that understand people deeply, show up consistently, give communities a real voice and use technology to make human connection stronger rather than weaker.
The clearest takeaway from the session was this: trust is now the CMO’s most valuable currency. For Sephora, it is built through belonging and self-expression. For Hinge, through emotional honesty and real-world connection. For Heineken, through cultural participation and shared experiences. Across all three, the mandate is the same: build brands that people do not just recognize, but genuinely believe in.