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Jeff Jacobs

PartnerChicago

Drives growth through superior brand insights, bold commercial ideas, data-driven marketing performance, and collaborative capability building; serves many of the leading consumer-packaged-goods, retail, and tech companies.

Jeff has been one of the foremost marketing leaders, driving growth and bottom-line performance for some of the most iconic brands. At McKinsey, he leads our category strategy and marketing performance work, helping companies define their growth strategies in the digital age, develop breakthrough ideas and stories to achieve it, and help them plan and design the optimal level, allocation, and mix of marketing resources and operating model. Additionally, he has deep experience in innovation strategy, marketing efficiency, and agency-ecosystem development and management. Over the last few years, he has focused a lot of his time helping consumer companies adopt a far more agile, data-driven marketing approach to build brands and drive consumer conversion.

Examples of Jeff’s recent work include the following:

  • Working with a leading global beverage company to develop the growth strategies across all major categories and the funding requirements to fulfill their goals
  • Transforming marketing at a consumer-packaged-goods company, including helping identify distinct pockets of growth, setting up agile marketing war rooms and scrum teams, driving greater marketing effectiveness and efficiency, all while building capabilities across the organization
  • Identifying over $100 million of marketing inefficiency that was redeployed to fuel more marketing-driven growth
  • Running one of the largest creative and media-agency pitches, helping the client achieve far better capabilities, better rates, and an improved way of working with their agency partners
  • Driving a marketing efficiency program with one of the world’s largest retailers

Jeff continues to push McKinsey’s knowledge around all marketing topics, and he was one of the creators of the Consumer Decision Journey. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences, including the Association of National Advertisers, Dreamforce, Gartner, Kellogg CMO Leadership Conference, and he also frequently guest lectures at Kellogg School of Management.

Prior to joining McKinsey, Jeff was a global brand director at Gatorade and for the V8 business and worked with one of the early-stage voice-commerce companies.

Published work

Connecting for growth: A makeover for your marketing operating model,” McKinsey & Company, October 2024

Pivot to growth Top marketing spend efficiency levers to unlock growth,” McKinsey & Company, August 2023

Winning with commercial excellence: Ten lessons for consumer goods,” McKinsey & Company, June 2022

The new marketing model for growth: How CPGs can crack the code,” McKinsey & Company, September 2021

Five questions to answer before you finalize your media plan,” McKinsey & Company, November 2020

US consumer-packaged-goods advertising in the next normal,” McKinsey & Company, October 2020

An essential marketing tool in a downturn: Spend management,” McKinsey & Company, May 2020

Zero-based productivity—Marketing: Measure, allocate, and invest marketing dollars more effectively,” McKinsey & Company, August 2018

How to get the most from your agency relationships in 2017,” McKinsey & Company, February 2017

“What’s your sponsorship worth?” Economist Group, January 2014

Presentation: Marketers, make procurement your friend,” ANA conference 2013, McKinsey on Marketing & Sales slideshare

Past experience

Campbell’s V8
Business director, innovation and strategy

Aon Corporation
Chief marketing officer and senior vice president

Gatorade
Global brand equity director

Education

Kellogg School of Management
MBA

Northwestern University
BA, Political science