Chief marketing officer, Britvic
Soft drinks giant Britvic has secured some big wins across its brands over the past year. Not least the ongoing thirst for Robinsons, which CMO Matt Barwell said continues to hold onto a 39% share of the squash category. The popularity of Robinsons helped to drive 12.8% revenue growth in 2020, as consumers adapted their routines, swapping soft drinks on the move for those already sat in their cupboard.
Crucially, Barwell is enthusiastic about holding onto this momentum. In May, he confirmed his plan to spend £5m to £6m on media over the summer, as part of the brand’s biggest ever omnichannel campaign. Spanning TV, outdoor, social and digital radio, the ‘Let There Be Fruit’ campaign was designed to “keep the brand top of minds”.
It’s just one example of how Barwell, who has been in his role at Britvic for more than seven years, having joined from Diageo in 2014, is looking to drive growth. It’s the job of marketers to do so, he said, using a mix of solid consumer understanding and insight to fuel innovation and creativity. “What we can do is learn fast, fail quickly, pivot and go again,” Barwell said.■
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Matt Barwell
Chief marketing officer, Diageo
Cristina Diezhandino stepped into big shoes when she assumed the role of CMO at Diageo in July 2020. Her predecessor Syl Saller had spent two decades at the drinks giant before announcing her retirement, credited with driving forward the company's gender diversity agenda, alongside many other achievements.
Diezhandino brings huge experience of her own to the position, however, having worked at Diageo for the past 15 years across a number of senior roles, including in Africa, the US and the Netherlands. She led the Johnnie Walker brand team in Amsterdam and later became brand director for the company’s full portfolio of whiskies and gins, before heading up its luxury Reserve brands and scotch. There, the Spanish-born Diezhandino led Diageo’s single biggest investment in scotch whisky tourism, with the establishment of its immersive Johnnie Walker Experience in Edinburgh.
As CMO she has already put that experience to good use, helping to drive forward a good pandemic recovery for Diageo. Rising confidence in the effectiveness of its output encouraged the company to ramp up its marketing budget by 23% in the year to 30 June, with CEO Ivan Menezes highlighting the improved quality of Diageo's marketing.■
Cristina Diezhandino
food & drink
Chief marketing officer, Premier Foods
As interest in home cooking soared amid the UK lockdown, Premier Foods CMO Yilmaz Erceyes wasted no time in making the most of the opportunity. The company attracted 4.5 million new customers under lockdown across its portfolio of brands, including Sharwood’s, Oxo and Mr Kipling.
While others froze spend, the manufacturer ramped up marketing investment to capitalise on the pandemic-driven shift to cooking at home. Five of its biggest brands launched TV ads over Christmas, while a digital content series for Oxo in November 2020 attempted to show the versatility of the product to a younger cohort of cooks.
This faith in the power of marketing has paid dividends. Group sales were up by 9% in the three months to December 2020, rising by 12.1% across branded sales.
Erceyes, who is one of the leaders selected for the 2021 Marketing Academy EMEA Fellowship Programme, has no intention of letting up on this momentum. The company has already committed to increase its investment in brand advertising and new product development during the fourth quarter of 2021, with Erceyes confident this is the right formula to unlock future growth.■
Yilmaz Erceyes
Marketing director, Little Moons
Every marketer wants to send their brand viral but few manage it, which makes Ross Farquhar’s achievement on TikTok with Japanese mochi brand Little Moons all the more impressive. The success wasn’t overnight. The brand first started gaining traction on the social media platform in 2020, when a graduate working under Farquhar began experimenting with it, sharing short videos. By January 2021, interest had exploded. There were 15,000 Little Moons-themed videos shared by users, with 500 million views and – most importantly – a 2,000% increase in sales of its ice cream.
Much to Farquhar’s credit, he harnessed this interest, turning a quick viral storm into a prolonged marketing opportunity. With a modest media buy on the channel, he built up the momentum before journalists were contacted and invited to write about the developing phenomenon. Capturing this moment, the marketing director then headed out to retailers to convert likes into listings.
Though luck and timing may have played into the original traction on TikTok, Farquhar demonstrated agility and strategic thinking to turn 15 minutes of social media fame into a genuine opportunity to grow sales and secure new customers in the long term.■
Ross Farquhar
Marketing vice-president for Europe, Turkey and CIS, Mars Wrigley
Despite being a 20-year veteran of marketing at confectioner Mars Wrigley, the majority of which has been spent in roles in Australia, Matt Graham said the unknown of the pandemic left him feeling like a beginner. Facing the huge shocks rippling through the sector, Graham and his team quickly adapted to a test-and-learn approach.
Major campaigns pinned to sporting events were halted and – thanks to Graham’s skill and agility – pivoted to reflect the new normal. A makeshift campaign for M&Ms focused on support for health services, for instance, drawing a 10% increase in click-throughs on Facebook, 26% higher than any other campaign at the time. For Maltesers too, the company produced a broadcast ad in just two weeks, showing an impressive level of nimbleness.
Perhaps Graham’s biggest achievement was ecommerce. His efforts in upgrading the channel have taken it from a tiny part of the business to 5% of sales in markets under his charge, with ambitions to grow that to 15% in the next five years. Not bad for a “beginner”.■
Matthew Graham
Group marketing director, Innocent Drinks
It can’t be easy joining one of the most iconic food and drink companies in the UK just as a global pandemic reaches British shores. But marketing director Kirsty Hunter did just that. She was appointed group marketing director at Innocent Drinks in March 2020, bringing with her more than a decade of drinks industry experience from Britvic, Magners and AB InBev.
In the same month she joined, the company launched fruit and vegetable shots targeted at on-the-go consumers, cementing the company’s stake in a small but growing category of functional drinks.
A year later, Hunter unveiled ‘Little Drinks, Big Dreams,’ a major new marketing campaign that not only showcased a whole new visual identity for the brand, but also solidifies the B Corp’s focus on sustainability. The campaign targets a new generation of “drinkers and thinkers”, said Hunter, who consciously selects brands to work for based on their ethics and believe their decisions can make a real difference to the world.■
Kirsty Hunter
UK and Ireland marketing director, Birds Eye
With a career spanning Procter & Gamble, L’Oréal, Coca-Cola, Cadbury and now Birds Eye, Sarah Koppens has years of experience and insight into managing the emotional connection between household brands and consumers. Which is why when other brands went dark at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Koppens kept Birds Eye’s frozen food brands firmly in view with the empathetic ‘So, what’s for tea?’ campaign in April 2020. It showed consumers managing under lockdown restrictions, and wasn’t about pushing sales but providing reassurance, Koppens said.
The marketing boss also oversaw the significant acceleration in ecommerce for the brand, which doubled during lockdown. This adaptiveness under Koppens helped Birds Eye capitalise on the boom in frozen foods sales. Some 2.4 million extra people bought into the Birds Eye brand during the first four weeks of the spring 2020 lockdown, with the company picking up close to 1 million new customers for its pea products alone.
Looking to grow its plant protein Green Cuisine range, in July Birds Eye partnered with Team GB for a £2.7m “big summer push” ahead of the Tokyo Olympic Games, aimed at democratising meat-free meals.■
Sarah Koppens
Marketing director, Quorn Foods
Meat-free brand Quorn kicked off 2021 with a major marketing push under the leadership of marketing director Gill Riley. The multimillion-pound ‘Helping the Planet One Bite at a Time’ campaign spanned video-on-demand, social media, PR, out-of-home and in-store activity, as well as a TV ad with the tagline ‘More to Life than Meat’.
As if that wasn’t enough, the brand also rolled out a brand-new, brighter pack design to improve shopability.
It was a bold move by Riley to re-establish Quorn as a thought leader in the plant-based arena, following years of fierce competition from new, outspoken startups clamouring for share of voice. The strategy also capitalised on a surge in interest in meat alternatives during the pandemic, pushing up sales of frozen Quorn products by 60% at some points. To cater to this increasing conscious consumerism, the brand has even bigger ambitions to have a net-positive impact on the planet and serve 8 billion meals by 2030.
Quorn says it wants 2021 to be the ‘year of solutions’. And Riley has more than proven why marketing will play an integral role within that.■
Gill
Riley
Marketing director, Europe, global brands, AB InBev
Rowan Chidgey has enjoyed no fewer than two big promotions in less than a year at brewer AB InBev. In December 2019, she was made marketing director for the UK and Ireland, overseeing marketing, comms and budgets for Stella Artois, Corona, Budweiser, Bud Light, Michelob Ultra and Becks. The role saw her head up a 23-strong marketing team overseeing product launches, sponsorship deals and campaigns. Then, only nine months later, Chidgey was made marketing director for the portfolio of global brands across the whole of Europe.
In the last year, the company has scrapped campaigns that no longer felt relevant in light of the pandemic and quickly developed suitable replacements. Chidgey herself has highlighted the Budweiser ‘Messi 644’ campaign as a great example of socially relevant marketing, created at speed. For this campaign, Budweiser created a custom bottle for each of Barcelona hero Lionel Messi’s 644 goals and sent them to the 160 goalkeepers he scored against in his career.
This sense of agility is supported by the company's decision to establish its ‘Ideas for Good’ taskforce, harnessing creativity and insights from different segments of the business in order to stay one step ahead.■
Rowan Chidgey
UK marketing director, Heineken
It’s been a tough year at Heineken. In February, the brewer announced it would be cutting 8,000 jobs as part of a plan to slash costs by €2bn (£1.7bn) and kickstart growth in the wake of the pandemic. But despite that backdrop, UK marketing director Michael Gillane has infused the company's marketing and innovation strategies with a sense of optimism.
In April, Heineken's latest TV push ‘We’ll Meet Again’ championed resilience and nostalgia for nights out, showing a smarter, softer side to the brand, and one with its finger on the pulse.
Gillane has consistently proven himself a marketing director with an eye on what consumers want. Promoted to the role in February 2020 after eight years at the brewer, Gillane has focused on driving forward the company’s ‘no and low’ alcohol portfolio, capitalising on a thirst for premiumisation and digital transformation.
Recent innovation coming out of Heineken reflects its focus on the latest trends too, with the launch in March of hard seltzer brand Pure Piraña in Europe, backed by an influencer strategy designed to reach new demographics and a targeted rollout relying on word of mouth via social media.■
Michael Gillane
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