Kraft Heinz Names Todd Kaplan as Chief Marketing Officer of North America
Todd Kaplan is joining Kraft Heinz as the chief marketing officer of North America where he will help lead the marketing function across Kraft Heinz’s $22BN food and beverage portfolio in North America. The portfolio includes over 50 brands that span 40 different categories, including iconic brands like Heinz, Kraft Mac & Cheese, Oscar Mayer, Velveeta, Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Lunchables, Ore-Ida, Capri-Sun, Jell-O, Kool-Aid, Maxwell House, Grey Poupon, and Cool Whip among many others.
In his new role, Todd has been tasked to unleash the potential of Kraft Heinz’s brands through elevated creativity, a deeper connection to culture, and building modern marketing capabilities that can accelerate the business and fuel Kraft Heinz’s next wave of growth. In addition to elevating the creative, strategic, and innovation agendas across the brands, Todd will help guide the North American growth office inclusive of all media, digital, and Kraft Heinz’s award- winning in-house content studio, 'The Kitchen,' and help oversee Kraft Heinz’s strategic joint ventures with NotCo and Just Spices.
Prior to joining Kraft Heinz, most recently Todd was chief marketing officer - Pepsi, where he led all marketing for the Pepsi brand and PepsiCo’s sparkling water business in North America. During his tenure, Todd was instrumental in re-energizing the Pepsi brand and is widely credited with bringing the brand back into the cultural zeitgeist – from reinvigorating the Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime Show platform, to developing disruptive new product innovations like Nitro Pepsi and Pepsi x Peeps, to putting out some of the boldest, most talked about, and most globally awarded creative the brand has seen. Most notably, he initiated and led the creation of an entirely new Pepsi logo and visual identity system for the brand – rolling it out across the brand’s 10 billion consumer touchpoints in the United States and around the world.
Todd’s impact has been widely recognised and well regarded within the marketing community and beyond. He was recognised as a top CMO by Forbes on their 'Entrepreneurial CMO Top 50' list and by Business Insider as one of the 'Top 25 Most Innovative CMOs in the World'. His work has been awarded numerous Cannes Lions, and he has been honoured with the UJA’s 'Industry Visionary Award' and by The Wall Street Journal as an inaugural honouree in MTM’s 'Visionaries' platform. He has been featured by Rolling Stone as one of 20 'Marketing Rockstars' and selected as one of the country’s 'Top 50 Marketers in North America' multiple times by OnCon Icon Awards, while leading the charge at PepsiCo to be named as Marketing Dive’s 'Marketer of the Year'.
Todd is an executive supporter of the AdWeek DEI Council’s 'Executive Mentor Program' and gives back his time to students through the ANA Educational Foundation and speaking at institutions such as Yale, Duke, and Stanford. He is a champion of DEI&B, and advocates for building diverse and high performing teams. He has also served as a juror for industry leading awards ranging from the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity to The Effies to The One Club for Creativity.
He currently sits on the Board of Advisors for the Yale University Centre for Customer Insights, the OAAA Brand Council, and the North America Board of Directors for the Ad Council and the International Advertising Association, and holds a BA in Economics from Northwestern University, and an MBA from Yale University.
