Karsten Kühn is Germany's "CMO of the Year 2018". Last night, the Chief Marketing Officer at Hornbach Baumarkt AG was honoured with the coveted award at the CMO Award Night in Munich. The trophy was presented by Hans-Christian Schwingen, Brand Manager at Deutsche Telekom and "CMO of the Year 2016".

Munich, 27 September 2018 — A DIY store is not, in itself, a unique product. Hornbach is refreshingly different in this respect; Karsten Kühn has succeeded in reinventing the company so that it is in a category of its own. This was part of the rationale behind the decision of the "CMO of the Year" jury to award the coveted title to Karsten Kühn, Chief Marketing Officer at Hornbach Baumarkt AG, this year. Mr Kühn succeeds Dr Ian Robertson (BMW), Godo Röben (Rügenwalder Mühle), Hans-Christian Schwingen (Deutsche Telekom) and Eric Liedtke (adidas).

Capital Editor-in-Chief and jury spokesperson Horst von Buttlar says: “Hornbach's campaigns have come to be synonymous with DIY advertising. They are intelligent, entertaining, and unmistakable, with slogans that keep finding their way into everyday usage. Since 2014, Karsten Kühn has been one of the driving forces behind this marketing approach, which amounts to far more than just a single successful campaign: with good storytelling and content marketing, as demonstrated most recently in its ‘Sweat it Out’ campaign, Hornbach continues to cause a stir within a competitive market as a top creative performer. It also enjoys great success with its customers, who demonstrate great satisfaction with Hornbach, and for whom the campaigns are proving their success all the way to the checkout.”

Reflecting on the award and the top-class expert jury, award-winner Karsten Kühn explained: “I'm pleased to have received this recognition from my colleagues, and also see this award as an acknowledgement of the great work produced by the entire Hornbach team. Together we are working on further strengthening Hornbach's position as a DIY centre - consistently, but always with a twinkle in our eye.”

Karsten Kühn had been the Media Markt Managing Director for international brand management at Munich-based redblue Marketing GmbH, the in-house marketing agency for the Media-Saturn Group, for many years before he was appointed to the Management Board at Hornbach in 2014.

About the "CMO of the Year" award

The Innovation Day partners launched the CMO of the Year award in 2014 to focus attention on the importance of marketing and the role of the CMO in Germany. In line with the motto "by CMOs for CMOs", the 10 finalists for the award are entirely selected by Chief Marketing Officers from the "CMO of the Year" council. These are then discussed by the 21 members of the CMO of the Year jury at a meeting which lasts for several hours; the winner is chosen during the CMO Award Night ceremony.

Following on from Dr Ian Robertson, Director of Sales and Marketing at BMW, the coveted title was subsequently awarded to Godo Röben, Director of Marketing & PR and R&D at Rügenwalder Mühle in 2015, Hans-Christian Schwingen, Brand Manager at Deutsche Telekom in 2016, and Eric Liedtke, Executive Board Member Global Brands at adidas in 2017.

You can find all the information about the CMO of the Year award, including the assessment criteria and the procedure followed by the jury, at innovationstag.de/en/cmo-of-the-year.