food & drink
Matt
Barwell
Chief marketing officer, Britvic
Matt Barwell is responsible for all aspects of Britvic’s global brand strategy and execution, innovation, corporate affairs and the company’s sustainability agenda.
Having led the company’s charge to reduce sugar, Britvic surpassed its 2020 goal to reduce average calories per serve by 20% a year early, and has set a new 2020 target of at least 73% of drinks volume sold being low/no-calorie drinks. To support this, it launched three sugar-free flavours of Tango in 2019 and became the first company to introduce colour-coded nutrition labelling.
Britvic started 2020 well. Fruit Shoot sales had been increasing prior to Covid-19, following its ‘Fruit Shoot for the Moon’ campaign and its Christmas-limited edition flavour, Merrylicious. In March 2020, Fruit Shoot also launched a £1m media campaign to educate parents and consumers about the product’s real fruit content and no added sugar.
Last year, Britvic won the Grand Prix at the Marketing Week Masters Awards following the successful revitalisation of its Robinsons brand, work that Barwell said grew the category and boosted brand penetration.■
Chief marketing officer, Diageo
Stepping into the shoes of a chief marketing officer who has 35 years of experience in marketing, has spent 21 years at the company and has bagged a CBE in the Queen’s 2020 Honours List can be daunting, but Cristina Diezhandino seems unfazed.
Formerly global category director for Scotch and managing director for Reserve, Diageo’s luxury brands business, Diezhandino is taking over the top role at a difficult time for the alcohol industry as it grapples with the fallout from coronavirus. The company paused marketing during the pandemic, saying it was ineffective, but is now preparing to increase it again as demand recovers.
Under Diezhandino’s leadership, Diageo’s Reserve brands division rose from third to first in luxury market share. She has also overseen Diageo’s biggest single investment in Scotch whisky tourism, including the creation of a state-of-the-art immersive Johnnie Walker visitor experience in Edinburgh, now due to open in 2021, as well as the transformation of its visitor centres across Scotland. She aims to continue what she describes as Syl Saller’s “tremendous legacy”.■
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Cristina Diezhandino
Yilmaz
Erceyes
Chief marketing officer, Premier Foods
A marketer with 18 years’ experience in FMCG, Yilmaz Erceyes was appointed CMO of Premier Foods in November 2019, after the business decided to eliminate the role of managing director in favour of a CMO and chief customer officer.
Erceyes’ promotion from marketing director was a statement of intent from Premier Foods, which elevated marketing to the executive leadership team in a bid to turbocharge growth. The restructure was implemented after the company notched up nine consecutive quarters of growth.
As CMO, Erceyes has responsibility for marketing, consumer insights, R&D and analytics, as well as international marketing. His strategy is focused on “innovation, brand building and brilliant in-store execution”. Erceyes, for example, oversaw the relaunch of the Mr Kipling brand, a product line which has grown by 22% over the past two years.
During the first quarter of 2020, Premier Foods’ UK sales of branded products increased by 28% and online sales grew 115%. The company credited its success with the decision to ramp up TV advertising during lockdown, with Mr Kipling alone being supported by eight weeks of airtime for its ‘Little Thief’ ad.■
UK marketing director, Heineken
Michael Gillane was promoted to UK marketing director at Heineken at the start of 2020, charged with developing a no/low-alcohol portfolio and driving its digital transformation.
Gillane says Heineken is “leading the way” in the first, using its James Bond tie-up to push its zero alcohol beer Heineken 0.0%. It is launching new low-alcohol options, including Old Mout Alchohol-Free and Birra Moretti Zero, as well as Strongbow Dark Fruit Ultra Low Alcohol cider.
Heineken is also looking to grow its Strongbow and Red Stripe brands through a sponsorship of the BRIT Awards and repositioning of Red Stripe around a new brand platform ‘Good Things To Come’ that aims to champion cultural diversity.
Gillane leads a team of more than 100 marketers covering consumer brands marketing, media, innovation and insights, as well as category strategy and channel activation. He is responsible for brands including Strongbow, Foster’s, Birra Moretti and, of course, Heineken.■
Michael Gillane
Sarah Koppens
Marketing director, Birds Eye UK & IE
It has been a baptism of fire for Sarah Koppens, who joined Birds Eye in January 2020, having previously worked at Coca-Cola and Cadbury before taking a career break. Tasked with sustaining three successful years of growth for the brand, Koppens said she looked forward to continuing the progression “with some fantastic initiatives and products”.
She wasn’t cowed by the global pandemic that took hold in March 2020. Rather than choosing to freeze its marketing activity, Birds Eye launched its ‘What’s for Tea?’ campaign in early April. Turned around in just 18 days, the TV adverts featured snapshots of consumers living in lockdown. Koppens said she wanted to tell consumers: “You’re there for each other, we’re here for you.”
While Birds Eye has made moves to keep up with new trends, in particular with its launch of vegetarian range Green Cuisine, it has also been focused on its classics. The ‘Birds Eye Butties 2020’ activity invited people to make their own fish-finger sandwich and upload a recipe to social channels. More recently, it has run a competition to find a new Captain Birds Eye to appear on limited-edition packs, picking 24-year-old Charlotte Carter-Dunn – the first time the captain has been a woman.■
Chief marketing officer, Intercarabao
After time in the marketing teams of Coca-Cola and Time Out, John Luck joined energy drinks company Intercarabao in 2016, tasked with launching the brand in the UK market. In mid-2019, it was the seventh biggest energy drinks company in Britain and Luck is aiming to make Carabao the market leader, as it is in its native Thailand.
Sports sponsorship has played an important role, with Carabao announcing a two-year extension of its partnership with the English Football League (EFL) Cup last year. This means the brand will continue as the title sponsor of the competition for the 2020/21 and 2021/22 seasons. The deal marks the biggest-ever commercial sponsorship of the Cup.
It is familiar territory – Carabao has sponsored several football clubs including Chelsea FC and Chelsea Women. Luck said “football remains an important asset to help us achieve our growth plans”.
On Luck’s watch Carabao went live with a ‘for everyone’ positioning to drive category growth and launched its ‘Half the sugar of Red Bull’ campaign in a bid to challenge consumer perceptions of energy drinks.■
John
Luck
Sophie
More
Marketing director, BrewDog
Sophie More joined what is now the largest craft brewer in Europe as marketing director in August 2017, having previously working for brands including Jack Daniel’s and Red Bull.
She has continued BrewDog’s irreverent advertising, launching a campaign for its non-alcoholic Punk AF beer with text that read: “Sober as a motherfu”. The Advertising Standards Authority duly banned the outdoor ad for alluding to a swear word.
However, BrewDog has found renewed purpose during coronavirus and was one of the first brewers to open its distilleries to make hand sanitiser, which was given away for free by charities to those in need. In May, it launched a kickstart collective, supporting independent bars, pubs and bottle shops with both financial and operational aid including £250 to restock, online training and guidance on reopening.
But it would not be BrewDog without some irreverence and so, in May, it launched a limited edition ‘Barnard Castle eye test’ beer, following the Dominic Cummings controversy. Profits went towards funding free hand sanitiser for the NHS
and healthcare charities.■
Vice-president, marketing, Carlsberg Group
Liam Newton was at the forefront of last April’s relaunch of Carlsberg Group’s eponymous beer. The brand was upgraded through the launch of its “most ambitious and honest” marketing campaign ever, where it admitted it was “probably not the best beer in the world”.
The launch was backed by an integrated communications campaign and included a social media push called ‘Mean Tweets’, which reached 6 million people in the UK. The campaign won Marketing Week’s Campaign of the Year 2019,
and the activity prompted a “significant” uptick in sales in bars and pubs, although off-trade sales still need some work.
In March 2020, the second-phase of its reinvention launched across TV, social, broadcast, out-of-home and digital, this time promoting ‘Keen Tweets’. Videos showed employees guessing the missing words, such as: “The new Carlsberg is a******* c****” (‘actually class’). Newton says keeping the “honesty” of the original campaign is key to the new work.
Following the outbreak of Covid-19, it launched a free digital platform, ‘Love My Local’, enabling pubs, bars, restaurants and cafes to safely sell takeaway and delivery food and drink.■
Liam
Newton
Michele
Oliver
Global corporate brand and purpose director, Mars
Michele Oliver heads the department responsible for Mars’ marketing mix budget. She also has global brand responsibilities and leads the board’s focus on diversity and inclusion.
She has been central to setting the strategic direction of the business, with the past two years seeing strong financial results and exceeding targets, at both the top and bottom line.
Last year, the company rolled out its global rebrand and purpose statement, with Oliver stating that it is more important than ever for brands to stand for something and urging marketers to act as cheerleaders for creativity. Mars created the tagline ‘The world we want tomorrow starts with how we do business today’, a commitment to do business in a way that positively contributes to society.
Oliver won The Marketing Society’s Bravest Marketing Leader of 2019 for her “socially conscious, taboo-busting and yet funny” campaigns, producing advertising that tackles issues such as sexuality, disability, race, age and gender.■
Managing director of brands and chief marketing officer, Kerry Foods
Nick Robinson joined Kerry Group’s consumer foods division, Kerry Foods, as chief marketing officer in 2017, before becoming managing director of brands and CMO in January 2019.
In September 2019, Kerry Foods worked with Accenture Interactive on a £2.5m campaign for Strings & Things. The master brand includes the range of Cheestrings and other shaped children’s cheese products. The work included two TV adverts – based on the power of Cheestrings to fire a child’s imagination, seeing them glide across a fantastical computer-generated universe – and radio content.
The growing flexitarian sector has also presented an opportunity for Kerry Foods. It has launched a meat-free brand called Naked Glory – which includes meat-free quarter pounders, sausages, ‘no-meat balls’ and mince – appointing The&Partnership as creative agency of record. Social and digital work launched in phases from October 2019, with a £2.5m budget planned for 2020 campaign work.
In July, Robinson was named CEO of Kerry Foods. He is transitioning into the role and will take it up fully this month.■
Nick Robinson
Financial services
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Has the pandemic accelerated a digital shift, or is it a temporary blip?
Why marketing transformation is taking on new urgency
Unified data: the key to understanding post-lockdown consumer trends
Has the pandemic accelerated a digital shift, or is it a temporary blip?
Why marketing transformation is taking on new urgency
Unified data: the key to understanding post-lockdown consumer trends
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