AT&T’s Kellyn Smith Kenny Rewrites Marketing’s Role from Cost Center to Growth Engine

AT&T’s CMO is aligning creativity with finance to drive growth, increase customer loyalty, and deliver measurable business results.

Kellyn Smith Kenny, AT&T's top marketing and growth officer, is advocating for a strategic reevaluation of marketing's role in major companies, firmly establishing it as a growth engine and revenue contributor rather than a cost center. Her words coincide with a larger push at AT&T to match marketing goals with enterprise wide financial objectives. She claims that this partnership has been essential to the telecom giant's most recent customer-focused initiatives.

Kellyn Smith, who answers directly to CEO John Stankey, stated that her marketing strategy is based on quantifiable financial results in addition to branding and engagement. She told Fortune, "I'm always thinking about how any marketing investment will drive the company's financial performance. It's in my bones and in my DNA." She claimed that this way of thinking had assisted in bridging the long-standing gaps between financial discipline and creativity.

Kenny worked in executive marketing positions at Microsoft, Hilton, Uber and Capital One before joining AT&T in 2020. AT&T's finance leadership has praised her for striking a balance between aggressive customer-experience efforts and stringent financial management. The company's marketing and finance teams are working more closely together recognitions in large part to Kenny's ability to deliver results under budget, according to CFO Pascal Desroches.

Shared performance measures, which clearly link marketing initiatives to business results, are a key component of this partnership. Under Kenny's direction, AT&T has combined conventional marketing metrics with financial metrics, including customer lifetime value; net promoter scores (NPS) and churn rate. Initiatives like the AT&T Guarantee, a service quality program that combines financial accountability with customer experience guarantees, have been directed by those shared KPIs, resulting in higher satisfaction ratings and fewer service credits than expected.

Kenny also emphasized the advantages of bringing marketing and finance together around customer insights, which impact the creation of new goods and services.