McDonald's USA CMO Exits as Domestic Comps Slip 0.2%

McDonald's USA will lose its chief marketing and customer experience officer next month, one day after the chain reported a 0.2% decline in U.S. comparable sales for Q3 2026. Alyssa Buetikofer, a 15-year company veteran, will leave to spend more time with her family, according to an internal note obtained by Marketing Dive. She'd held the top U.S. marketing job for less than two years, taking it when Tariq Hassan stepped down.

The timing is awkward but the global picture isn't dire: worldwide comparable sales rose 1.5% in the quarter, and McDonald's beat Wall Street expectations. The problem is domestic traffic momentum, and marketing sits squarely inside the fix.

Who runs marketing while the search runs?

Two insiders split the duties. Global CMO and Head of New Business Ventures Morgan Flatley adds interim chief creative officer to her title. Charlie Newberger, a 17-plus-year veteran who most recently served as corporate vice president and global category head for beverages and desserts, becomes interim senior vice president, U.S. chief marketing and commercial officer. In that role he'll run marketing operations and translate strategy into commercial execution across the U.S. business.

Buetikofer stays through Dec. 18 to support the handover. The internal note credits her with the return of Snack Wraps and Monopoly, the launch of a new beverage platform, and a Grinch collaboration that performed well. Those are the menu-engineering and promotional levers a U.S. CMO actually controls — limited-time offers, gamified value programs and licensed tie-ins that pull traffic without permanent price cuts.

Flatley is no placeholder. She ran U.S. marketing and digital customer experience from 2017 to 2021 before moving to the global role, and the note calls her the driving force behind the "Fan Truths" strategy and the "Famous Orders" platform. "In today's environment, creativity is the difference maker for brands, and Morgan's leadership puts us in a strong position to develop big ideas that build the brand and accelerate growth," the note reads.

What does this change for the growth plan?

In the near term, likely very little — and that's the point of the interim structure. The bigger context is the strategic plan McDonald's unveiled in June and detailed at a September investor day. Marketing anchors its consumer-focused pillar, which calls for brand-led content and co-creation with fans to reach consumers in personalized ways. Whoever wins the permanent CMO seat inherits that mandate plus a domestic comp number moving the wrong direction.

There's also a sponsorship gap to manage. McDonald's stepped away from the FIFA World Cup last month, a pullback that could reshape the QSR sports sponsorship space and free up budget the next CMO will help allocate.

The search itself signals how McDonald's is weighing the role: commercial execution now sits beside creative brand-building in Newberger's interim title, a hint that the permanent job may be structured more tightly around sales conversion than pure marketing.