b. Structured budget and planning. Involving finance in annual or quarterly marketing budgeting processes ensures that allocation decisions are aligned with business priorities and provides more credibility for marketing plans. On the flip side, involving CMOs in strategic-planning processes helps to ensure customer centricity and help marketing align itself with the company goals. c. Custody of the customer. In today’s world of fragmented customer journeys, organizations need a single leader to act as a chief advocate for customers, removing friction from their journeys by aligning all business functions. With their deep customer insights, marketing leaders are uniquely positioned to take on this role and assume custody of the customer. 3. Discipline in spending to justify resilient budgets, emphasizing: a. Prioritizing measurable impact. Investments toward initiatives with clear, demonstrable outcomes for greater efficiency or effectiveness, such as concrete gen AI use cases, rather than those with uncertain or speculative returns. b. Building on proven success. Using approaches and channels with a track record of effectiveness, ensuring resources are concentrated where they can deliver sustainable growth. c. Betting on scalability. Verification of scalability and potential for large-scale impact when pursuing new endeavors rather than over indexing on one-off projects for small sections of the company. Interview: How Lindt & Sprüngli is spending smartly to build the most valuable chocolate brand Lindt has been an icon since 1899, when the Sprüngli family’s solid chocolate company joined with Rodolphe Lindt’s unique conching process to create the famous brand we know today. In this interview, Lindt & Sprüngli’s Ricardo Azenha, the global head of marketing, and Daniel Studer, a member of group management responsible for global marketing and development of specific markets, discuss how the brand’s marketing is evolving in a challenging global marketplace. Their comments have been edited for clarity and length. McKinsey: What have been the most recent highlights for the Lindt brand? Ricardo Azenha: This year, we were recognized as the most valuable chocolate brand, and ranked eighth across food and beverage, globally, in 2025 by Kantar BrandZ. It’s a testament to our focus on brand equity, which we strive to improve every year. Another highlight is how our brand strength has helped us navigate rising cocoa prices. Despite these pressures, we’ve maintained strong performance, which reflects the trust consumers place in us. Daniel Studer: Another highlight is the success of our Dubai-style chocolate. We managed to quickly seize on the trend thanks to our flexibility and hand-produced it for our retail stores. Demand was so high that people lined up overnight. In some US retailers, it even became the bestselling product across all brands. This success not only drove sales but also strengthened our brand’s image as innovative and appealing to younger consumers. 35 State of Marketing Europe 2026