If you’d been lucky enough to catch Bill Gates on the talk circuit in the 1990s, you might also have noticed a fresh-faced assistant at his side, often carrying a canvas bag stuffed with books about everything from China to the U.S. military to how to improve your bridge game. That tenderfoot was Chris Capossela, just a few years out of Harvard, and working “the first job I’ve ever had outside of my family’s restaurant,” as he recalled.
Was there coding? Yeah. Program management? That too. But it’s that heavy bag of books Capossela remembers the most. Gates’ “curiosity to learn and understand the world around him was a mind-blowing revelation to me,” Capossela said. “It made me say, ‘Wow, I should be more curious to learn about systems I know nothing about.’”
And you might say that Capossela’s Microsoft career—all 32 years of it—has been an exercise in exactly that: getting up to speed on a lot of new things, and quickly.
“I’ve gotten to have a front-row seat at Microsoft reinventing itself for past technology revolutions,” Capossela said, explaining how his uncommonly long tenure has given him skills that other CMOs—whose average tenure with a given company now hovers around three years—rarely get time to develop.
The internet and the cloud were both technologies that required rapid adaptation, a skill he’s utilizing again now that AI is bearing down fast.
“I’ve seen the movie before,” Capossela said. “I understand how disruptive it’s going to be. And that makes me a better leader.”
It’s no accident that you haven’t heard this CMO talk much about specific, high-profile ad spots: “bright, shiny objects,” he calls them. Part of the reason why is structural.
The ad is just a small part of the overall story.
Chris Capossela
The $2.5 trillion Microsoft relies on a lower tier of CMOs to oversee consumer, commercial and gaming products. These executives report to Capossela, who’s known to select one piece of the marketing mix—events, say—and “go deep” on it for an entire year to refine and improve it.
But the other piece here is philosophical. When Satya Nadella took the CEO post in 2014, Capossela remembers, “he came up with the notion of empowering every person in every organization”—Microsoft included.
It’s a mandate that the CMO has taken seriously and literally. When asked to name his biggest marketing accomplishments, Capossela says: “talent development” and “building systems that will outlast me and other people will build on top of. Those feel far more meaningful.”
Modesty aside, Capossela has in fact presided over some culturally significant moments that, in turn, became notable marketing wins.
There was the early commitment to accessibility with the Xbox Adaptive Controller in 2018, for example. And while the corresponding Super Bowl ad won plenty of awards and plaudits, Capossela cares most about the commitment behind it. “The ad is just a small part of the overall story,” he said.
There’s also Microsoft’s TikTok account, packed with genuinely funny clips (overseen by director of consumer social Kelley Myers) that have racked up 2.7 million likes.
Value Add
Microsoft is the fourth most valuable brand in the world, according to Brand Finance, trailing only Amazon, Apple and Google. Microsoft’s 2023 brand value—the present value of earnings specifically related to the brand—is a staggering $191.6 billion, a seismic 136% increase from 2018.
Capossela’s tenure also runs parallel to consistent growth for the company, whose revenues grew in 2019, 2020 and 2021 by 14%, 18% and 18%, respectively.
Thirty-two years later, Capossela is glad he listened to his friends who’d gushed about their internships at Microsoft. “Seattle is just a beautiful place,” they told him. “And there’s this crazy guy named Bill Gates.”
This story is part of Adweek’s Brand Genius 2023 honors, recognizing the top marketers who have delivered long-term success for some of the world’s leading brands.
This story first appeared in the July 2023 issue of Adweek magazine. Click here to subscribe.
