Puma’s Brand Shake-Up: What Founders and CMOs Must Learn

The Situation

Puma has appointed Nadia Kokni as vice president, global brand marketing, making her the company’s most senior global marketing leader, effective January 1, 2026.[3][5] She reports directly to Chief Brand Officer Maria Valdes, reflecting a deliberate move to centralize and elevate brand leadership.[3][5]

This move follows a major internal reorganization in which Puma combined brand marketing, product, creative direction, innovation and go-to-market into a single global organization under Valdes.[3][5] Kokni replaces long-time executive Richard Teyssier, who is leaving the company after more than 14 years.[3][4]

Strategically, the shake-up comes as Puma is in a “reset phase” aiming to re-establish itself as a top-three global sports brand after a 10.4% year-over-year sales decline in Q3, largely tied to its ongoing strategic overhaul.[3] New CEO Arthur Hoeld has criticized the brand for becoming “too commercial” in distribution, pricing and promotion, and has set 2027 as the target for returning to healthy growth.[3]

Kokni arrives from Hugo Boss, where she led global marketing and communications and was responsible for large-scale brand transformation and digital acceleration.[3][4][5] Her track record also spans Adidas, JD Sports, Tommy Hilfiger and H&M, giving her deep experience at the intersection of sport, fashion and lifestyle.[3][4][5]

The Breakdown

What Puma is really doing

Beneath the headline hire, Puma is executing a structural bet on brand-led growth:

Uniting product and brand in one power center
Puma has collapsed brand marketing, product, creative direction, innovation and go-to-market into one global organization under a Chief Brand Officer, with Kokni as the top operational marketing leader.[3][5]
This is a shift away from siloed decision-making toward single-threaded ownership of the brand promise, product roadmap and market execution.
Installing a transformation specialist, not just a campaign leader
Kokni is not just a creative marketer; she led brand transformation and digital acceleration at Hugo Boss and has repeatedly worked on reshaping global brands.[1][3][4][5]
For Puma, this signals a priority on system-level change—portfolio, positioning, channels and experience—not just better ads.
Linking storytelling directly to product icons and innovation
Puma explicitly frames her mandate around "sharpening storytelling around its product icons and innovation pipeline" and bringing product creation and storytelling even closer together.[1][3][5]
The goal: translate R&D and design into clear, differentiated narratives that drive demand, pricing power and brand heat.
Course-correcting from over-commercialization
CEO Arthur Hoeld has stated that Puma became too commercial in distribution, pricing and promotion.[3]
Consolidating brand and product under one leadership structure—and adding a leader with cultural and lifestyle experience—is an attempt to rebuild desirability, not just volume.

Context: campaigns, performance and timeline

In 2024, Puma launched its largest global campaign to date, "Go Wild", focused on the emotional "runner's high" with humorous, mass-appeal storytelling.[3]
Despite this, Puma’s Q3 sales declined 10.4% year over year, as the company entered a self-described reset phase.[3]
Management is signaling that this is a multi-year turnaround, with 2027 as the target to restore sustainable growth.[3]

In other words, Puma is acknowledging that campaigns alone can’t fix structural brand drift. The reorganization and Kokni’s appointment are about aligning strategy, product and narrative over several years.

Why This Matters

For founders, CMOs and growth leaders, Puma’s moves highlight several strategic truths:

Brand fragmentation kills momentum
When product, brand, innovation and go-to-market live in different silos, you end up with incoherent positioning, scattered campaigns and weak pricing power. Puma’s choice to centralize these under one organization is a strong signal that brand is an operating system, not a department.[3][5]
Desirability is a KPI, not a byproduct
Hoeld’s critique that Puma became "too commercial" exposes a trap: chasing volume through aggressive distribution and discounting can erode aspiration and long-term equity.[3]
Puma is now explicitly investing in brand heat, storytelling and icons—exactly the levers that allow premium pricing and stickiness.[1][3][5]
Transformation competence beats campaign fame
Kokni’s resume is heavy on turnaround and transformation (Hugo Boss brand reset, digital acceleration) across sport, fashion and lifestyle.[1][3][4][5]
For any scaling company, the leaders you need are not just people who can "make things look good," but operators who know how to re-architect positioning, portfolios and digital ecosystems.
Turnarounds are multi-year, not quarterly
With a 2027 horizon for recovery, Puma is planning over a 3–4 year arc rather than expecting instant impact from a single hire or campaign.[3]
Growth-minded entrepreneurs should take note: category re-positioning and brand premiumization take cycles, not sprints.
Brand and performance marketing must converge
Puma’s integrated structure recognizes that upper-funnel storytelling and lower-funnel performance must be orchestrated from one worldview. The same team defining the brand narrative is responsible for how it shows up, where and to whom.

Action Plan

Here are concrete steps founders and marketing leaders can take, inspired by Puma’s playbook:

Audit your org structure for brand–product misalignment
- Map who owns brand strategy, product roadmap, creative, innovation and go-to-market in your company.
- Identify conflicting incentives or decision bottlenecks.
- Consider creating a single accountable owner (not necessarily a CBO, but at least a cross-functional leadership pod) for brand and product coherence.
Define (or refresh) your core brand narrative around product "icons"
- List your top 3–5 hero products or services.
- For each, craft a simple, repeatable story: who it is for, what unique outcome it delivers, and why it’s different.
- Build campaigns around these icons instead of spreading budget thin across everything.
Rebalance away from "too commercial" tactics
- Review discounts, promotions and channel partners from the last 12 months.
- Flag areas where deep discounting or over-distribution might be weakening your positioning.
- Design a 6–12 month plan to tighten distribution, improve merchandising and elevate creative in your highest-value channels.
Install transformation talent, not just channel specialists
- For your next senior marketing or growth hire, prioritize candidates who have led cross-functional change (repositioning, new category entries, digital overhaul).
- Give them an explicit mandate to align brand, product and revenue strategy, not just "run marketing".
Set a realistic horizon for brand-led growth
- For any major repositioning, define 12-, 24-, and 36-month milestones (awareness, consideration, pricing power, mix of full-price sales).
- Communicate internally that brand investments compound and should be evaluated with different yardsticks than short-term promotions.

Toolkit Recommendation

If Puma’s reset shows anything, it is that guessing where demand will come from is too expensive.

Instead of relying on gut feel or copying competitors, use tools that quantify opportunity before you commit resources.

A tool like Micro Niche Finder can:

Analyze real market signals so you stop guessing which niches work.
Help you identify underserved, high-intent segments where your brand can realistically create Puma-style "icons"—but on a smaller, more focused scale.
Validate positioning angles and sub-niches in seconds, so your brand narrative, product roadmap and acquisition strategy are built on data, not hunches.

As you rethink your own brand architecture, use Micro Niche Finder to stress-test markets and messages before you reorganize teams, launch new lines or double down on a segment. That way, your version of a "Puma reset" is aimed squarely at profitable, validated demand rather than hope-driven experimentation.

Sources

[1] https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260108099913/en/PUMA-Appoints-Nadia-Kokni-as-Vice-President-Global-Brand-Marketing
[2] https://www.streetinsider.com/Management+Changes/PUMA+names+Nadia+Kokni+as+vice+president+global+brand+marketing/25824956.html
[3] https://www.marketingdive.com/news/puma-names-new-senior-global-brand-marketer-following-reorganization/809192/
[4] https://us.fashionnetwork.com/news/Puma-appoints-nadia-kokni-as-vice-president-global-brand-marketing,1796342.html
[5] https://about.puma.com/en/newsroom/corporate-news/2026/08-01-2026-puma-appoints-nadia-kokni-vice-president-global-brand
[6] https://about.puma.com/sites/default/files/media/media-download/files/2026-1-8-brandmarketing-eng.pdf
[7] https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/marketers-on-the-move-hires-and-exits-at-nvidia-pinterest-puma-and-more/

This article was assisted by Smart Hustler AI research technologies.

Puma’s Brand Shake-Up: Lessons for Growth-Minded CEOs