Todd Kaplan is Pepsi’s Chief Marketing Officer, overseeing marketing for the Pepsi brand in North America, where he is responsible for all creative communications, brand strategy, product innovation, and commercial execution across the entire Pepsi trademark.
Recognized by Business Insider as one of the “Top 25 Most Innovative CMOs in the World”, Todd has brought a disruptive, unapologetic, and culture-forward perspective to Pepsi that has been foundational to re-energizing the brand. Since Fall of 2018, he has infused a challenger mindset into Pepsi and has brought the brand back into the cultural zeitgeist – from reinvigorating the Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime Show platform with historic performances from JLo & Shakira, Dr Dre, Snoop, Eminem, The Weeknd and many more, to developing disruptive new products like Nitro Pepsi, to putting out some of the boldest and most talked about brand creative the Pepsi brand has ever seen. Todd has also been instrumental in establishing Pepsi as an industry leader around the development of new content models, pushing the brand into new spaces including the creation of multiple television shows, long form films, and NFT projects.
Kaplan’s impact has been broadly felt across both the business and the brand. Under Todd’s leadership, Pepsi has experienced its first positive sales growth in well over 15+ years, including 16 consecutive quarters of positive sales growth. Simultaneously, Pepsi has seen increases across all core brand equity measures (including an +11pt improvement in brand consideration) while achieving all-time highs in earned media, social conversation, and creative effectiveness.
Prior to this assignment, Kaplan has spent the past 15 years at PepsiCo, where he has consistently brought his creativity, strategic thinking, and passion to each of his roles. Most recently, he led and transformed PepsiCo’s multi-billion-dollar U.S. Water Business by creating and launching two new brands - LIFEWTR (premium water) and BUBLY (sparkling water). These two brands quickly became the biggest new product launches in PepsiCo history, delivering close to $500MM in sales in their first two years alone, catapulting PepsiCo to become the #1 driver of growth in the entire U.S. water category. Over the years, Kaplan has consistently made an impact within a variety of different roles at PepsiCo, whether it was leading marketing for Mountain Dew, overseeing Pepsi’s vast roster of Sports Marketing partnerships, or leading Consumer Insights and creating disruptive new Beverage Innovation products for PepsiCo’s foodservice division. Prior to joining PepsiCo, he worked for Millsport LLC, a sports marketing consultancy, where he oversaw the VISA International business.
Kaplan’s efforts have been widely recognized and well regarded within the marketing community and beyond, as his work has been awarded numerous Cannes Lions, and he has been featured in The Wall Street Journal as an inaugural honoree of MTM’s “Visionaries” award and was named as one of the country’s “Top 50 Marketers in North America” by OnCon Icon Awards. Todd played a critical role in PepsiCo being named as Marketing Dive’s “Marketer of the Year” in 2019, and was previously recognized as one of the “40 Most Innovative Marketers under 40” by Brand Innovators. He regularly gives his time back to organizations within the marketing community, where he has served as a juror for industry leading awards ranging from the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity to The Effies, and has been a key executive supporter of the AdWeek DEI Council’s “Executive Mentor Program”. Todd is a thought leader within the marketing industry, recognized as one of the “30 Most Influential Marketers” on LinkedIn and one of the “Top 30 CMOs to Follow” on social media, and he has keynoted at a range of events from the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity to South by Southwest to NY Advertising Week. He sits on the Board of Advisors for the Yale University Center for Customer Insights and the North America Board of Directors for the International Advertising Association, and holds a BA in Economics from Northwestern University, and an MBA from Yale University.