Stephanie McCarty has always been a storyteller and becoming a chief marketing officer was never quite on her radar.
With a natural instinct for finding and telling a good story, McCarty went to school for journalism. Starting from a place of curiosity, she spent the beginning of her career in media relations and executive communications helping organizations tell the right stories to employees, shareholders, investors, analysts, the media, and the public.
That background prepared her for the much larger story she’d eventually tell at Taylor Morrison, No. 6 on the 2026 Builder 100. At a pivotal point in Taylor Morrison’s growth, McCarty joined the company to head up communications. The home builder was bringing together teams and brands through acquisitions, creating a need for clearer internal identity and shared direction.
“I came to Taylor Morrison as the head of communications and started building the brand on the inside. Establishing ‘Who are we? Who do we want to be?” she reflects. “In the telling of those great stories it opened up the door where I started influencing marketing without having direct ownership.”
As McCarty’s influence expanded, so did the scope of her work. While she was already communicating with nearly every major stakeholder group, the missing audience for McCarty was prospective home buyers, which were arguably the most important part.
McCarty creating that internal North Star prompted CEO Sheryl Palmer to promote her to the company’s first ever chief marketing officer. Palmer gave her full rein to define the role for the company and build a team. “This has been the greatest undertaking, challenge, reward, and most fulfilling part of my career,” McCarty says.
Building Function From Within
Stepping into the new role, McCarty’s transformation started with listening. She began identifying what the company did well and strategizing how to connect efficiency and effectiveness.
By centralizing key functions, her department’s strategy and marketing disciplines moved in-house so that the team could become more fully invested in the company’s success. That shift nearly eight years ago has helped Taylor Morrison to develop a more distinctive identity, while strengthening marketing’s credibility.
McCarty has also worked to redefine where marketing belongs in the home building company. Her view is that marketing should not enter the process until after a product has been designed or community is ready to open. Marketing’s customer knowledge should inform much earlier decisions.
“When a home builder starts talking about what customer we’re serving and what product we’re offering, marketing should be in the room,” she says.
That principle has guided her effort to give marketing a more strategic seat at the table. The team is expected to challenge assumptions, identify market needs, and help determine how Taylor Morrison should position itself against those needs. The work requires discipline, especially at Taylor Morrison’s scale, while also understanding individual markets that demand consistency and flexibility.
McCarty sees marketing as the intersection of brand, revenue, and product, and at the center of those disciplines is a detailed understanding of the customer. The more a home builder’s decisions depend on that knowledge, she says, the more valuable an upstream marketing organization becomes.
Rethinking the Digital Home-Buying Journey
The shift toward digital home shopping gave McCarty and her team an opportunity to challenge some of the industry’s longstanding assumptions. Early in the transformation, it was assumed that customers would not buy homes online.
Instead of accepting that assumption, McCarty challenged it and began building online tools that allowed shoppers to engage with the process on their own terms. The digital products have now become the company website’s highest converting opportunity, and has simplified the new-construction journey.
Grounded in optionality, McCarty believes that no two buyers are going to have the same path. By allowing buyers to research independently, explore choices, and understand costs before initiating a conversation, Taylor Morrison can accommodate a wider range of preferences.
This, of course, means replacing mystery with transparency. From structural options down to taxes and insurance costs, shoppers can see it all. McCarty says they have even added the cardinal direction a home faces, a detail important to some buyers.
Although that level of transparency initially generated internal pushback, McCarty’s position was straightforward. “Customers will ultimately make decisions based on what matters to them, so giving them the information earlier saves time for both the buyer and the builder.”
Her digital philosophy is also built around reducing customer effort. She and her team aim to remove the internal seams and organizational complications that have no importance to shoppers while using artificial intelligence to help visitors find homes and communities more quickly.
Defending Distinctiveness
For all her emphasis on technology, McCarty is equally clear about what should remain human.
She sees practical applications for AI in improving productivity, accelerating routine work, and personalizing customer experiences. An AI tool might help draft community descriptions, for example, but she believes human marketers still need to shape the final product and ensure it reflects the brand.
What she will not outsource is the company’s point of view. “I’ll never outsource human creativity,” she says. “I’m never going to outsource my point of view and my voice.”
That belief extends beyond how Taylor Morrison uses technology. It also shapes how the company builds its brand.
Throughout her tenure, McCarty has argued that home builders too often underestimate the value of distinctive branding, especially during difficult market conditions. When sales slow, builders frequently respond by increasing promotions and lower-funnel marketing efforts. But more advertising does not necessarily create more demand, she points out.
“What’s undervalued is having a genuine, distinctive brand that you have spent and invested real energy into building,” she says. “In this market right now, all you can buy is mindshare and mental availability.”
This idea has led Taylor Morrison to pursue marketing initiatives that look very different from traditional home builder campaigns.
Courtesy Taylor Morrison
One of the most visible examples being this year, when the company partnered with Liquid Death on the tongue-in-cheek “Killer House” promotion. The campaign imagined a Taylor Morrison home where Liquid Death soda-flavored sparkling water flowed from every faucet, showerhead and hose, all tied to a sweepstakes for a move-in-ready home.
The concept was intentionally unexpected, designed to generate conversation far beyond the typical home buying audience. In announcing the partnership, McCarty summed up her approach to marketing: “Consumers don’t respond to flat marketing, or flat soda for that matter. This partnership is unexpected by design.”
The campaign perfectly illustrated her larger belief that builders cannot win simply by blending in. Creating memorable moments, challenging category norms, and earning consumer attention are vital in a crowded marketplace.
The partnership also reflected a hallmark of McCarty’s leadership: a willingness to borrow ideas from outside the home building industry. Rather than looking solely at what competing builders are doing, she encourages her teams to study brands across consumer products, retail, and entertainment, searching for new ways to engage audiences and create emotional connections.
It has helped Taylor Morrison build a more recognizable brand while demonstrating that home builder marketing can be just as creative, culturally relevant, and conversation worthy as campaigns in any other industry.
“What I appreciate most about Stephanie is that her influence goes well beyond her own company. She consistently shines a spotlight on home building as an industry, brings fresh ideas and conversations to the forefront, and helps make what we do more relevant and engaging to consumers,” says Karyn Bonder, senior vice president of business development at Zonda.
Leading With Courage
To lead a campaign like the ‘Killer House’ it takes boldness—an element of marketing McCarty hopes to instill in her team.
Marketing, she believes, should not feel overly safe or familiar. Raising the standard for the home building industry requires marketers who are willing to question conventional practices and defend new ideas even when the environment makes it difficult, McCarty says.
That courage to develop a record of pushing the envelope is why McCarty has been named BUILDER’s inaugural CMO of the Year.
“I’m thrilled to have Stephanie recognized as CMO of the Year because she isn’t afraid to shake things up. She brings creativity, energy, and a sense of fun to an industry that can sometimes take itself a little too seriously, while still delivering meaningful impact for Taylor Morrison,” adds Bonder. “She challenges the status quo, leads with authenticity, and reminds all of us that great marketing can be both strategic and fun and that’s what makes her so deserving of this recognition.”
As the home builder’s first CMO, she has defined a position that previously did not exist, given marketing a voice in customer and product strategy, built strong in-house disciplines, and a memorable brand, while also staying true to her storytelling instincts that launched her career. And that in itself is a brand.
McCarty will be recognized at Accelerate Summit by NewHomeSource on Monday, Oct. 12.
