Mars is looking to optimise its commercial effectiveness of marketing by amalgamating its marketing and sales team through a “chief demand officer”.
Mars Food’s global chief marketing and customer officer Clarence Mak spoke to Marketing Week, and he said the that it is important that marketing is not a “standalone” consideration - but should be something that is factored into every decision.
“That is why my role is essentially a chief demand officer, or at Coke, there is a chief growth officer,” he told Marketing Week.
Driving Growth
“It is not just about marketing but also sales; how do we make sure these two are linked so when we drive our brands we are also driving category growth. Retailers want to grow the category using the powerful brands we have.
“There is a slow change, that is accelerating – the need to make sure marketing is not a standalone consideration.”
Mars has a separate customer market insight team that works with research agencies to develop tools that measure how its marketing is driving sales. In doing so, the brand can choose where to allocate its budget based on investment priorities and brand focus.
Mak’s role is to ensure that marketing and sales are linked and able to drive and sales and category growth. He admits the challenge lies in the fact that every team has its own agenda, and said that they have to set the record straight from the top down.
Marketing With Purpose
“We don’t want to just talk about the brand, we want to talk about how our retailers should be powered. Our retailers care a lot about what we do with our brands and how they connect with consumers to drive categories,” he says.
Mak wants to establish a purpose to its campaigns, for any given idea to address a need or a noticeable absence in the market. He drew comparisons to Uncle Ben's in the US, who launched a marketing campaign encouraging young kids to learn how to cook - addressing the lack of younger people with the interest and know-how to cook.
He believes that addressing this insight into the market gives the campaign a bigger impact. However, he admits that Mars has not yet found a way to measure the impact of purpose, but he doesn’t believe that should prevent the company from trying to have an impact.
“We don’t think there is a perfect measurement yet but that shouldn’t stop us from doing it. If it feels right we should do it, learn how to measure it, and we are connecting with some of our peer companies and they have been very generous sharing their approach because everyone believes it is the right thing to do,” she said.
© 2018 Checkout – your source for the latest Irish retail news. Article by Aidan O’Sullivan. Click subscribe to sign up for the Checkout print edition.
