Mars Brand Building Masterclass with Rankin Carroll

0:06Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Uncensored CMO. Now, in this episode, we're talking about one of the world's greatest brand-led organizations, Mars. They own some of the most amazing confectionery brands that you'll have heard of, like Mars, Snickers, Twix, Skittles, M &Ms, to name just a few. Now, I'm joined by Rankin Carroll. He is their chief brand officer. He's been at the organization for over 20 years and really knows a thing or two. Now, in this episode, we want to get into what makes great brands that are built over many years, but how do you modernize them and make sure they appeal to today's audience?

0:38How do you take advantage of modern retail and media choices? And how do you stay up with trends and culture? This is a great conversation. Rankin has got loads of experience and expertise. I know you'll enjoy this one. Here it is. Rankin, welcome to the show. Amazing. Amazing to be here, John. Well, I'd love to know, how did you end up at Mars? What's been your journey to Mars? And then what got you here? I started my career. I'm Canadian. I started in marketing. Actually, I started in banking, technically. But I was going to be Master of the Universe. I decided that wasn't for me. And my first job was actually at what was, before there was Yum, there was Tricon.

1:12And I worked in the Pizza Hut business in product marketing. And that was great. And I learned so much in that role. And really the culture of a company like Pepsi, which was an offshoot of that, was a fascinating place to kind of grow up and learn about fact-based marketing, about evidence-based marketing, and learn about big brands and big propositions. So that was a great place to start. And during that time, obviously, I got connected in the advertising world and really started to appreciate creativity, how great work got made, what it took to get to quality of brief, to get to the right people on the team, et cetera.

1:50And that sort of led me into the world of advertising where I went next. And I was less than super effective suit, but I did enough to get by. And I learned a lot about creativity and working with creatives and how to get the most out of them. And we talked about that a bit earlier, actually, around what does it take? It takes a great account person to, and I'm not saying that was great, but you learn about what's required to unlock the power of that team, the relationship with the client, et cetera, and get to ultimately clean briefs that unlock the creative forces. And that was a really powerful part of my learning journey.

2:24And I really fell in love with it, I would say. And from there, I moved to Molson and really proudly, especially in the context of what's going on today, to get behind a thing called I Am Canadian, a really famous and highly awarded campaign. But again, that was kind of, you had all the marketing levers there. So that was the first time I had, in a traditional sense, all of the levers at the disposal to really build a brand, in that case, Molson Canadian. And that experience really opened up possibility, opened up the understanding at that time of what was earned, shared, paid, owned in those contexts.

2:57You know, that's before social, et cetera. But we were trying things. We were trying viral experiments. So it was really interesting. Anyway, from there, I followed a fellow that I worked with there, Richard Kellum. He went to Mars and he worked for about a year to convince me because Mars has a tradition of having factory-based locations. So they're quite exotic. Slough. Slough. You're in the UK. In that case, Bolton, outside of Toronto. Anyway, long story short, I went there. I didn't think I'd stay anywhere for where I stayed, which is nearly 20 years now, or actually more than 20 years. I've been nearly 20 years in the UK.

3:30So I was in Toronto working on Mars on the snack business on candy brands. We did that for about three and a half years. And then the last year I was there, the pipeline was kind of dry for content. And we made with BBDO in Toronto ads for Mars Bar and for Twix and actually for Snickers as well. But the Mars ad and the Twix content got picked up and went global and was very successful. And so that led to conversations with a lovely woman, my good friend Jane Wakeley, who was leading the European marketing function at Mars then. And she encouraged me to come on over. So I came to the UK and I've been in roles, regional leadership roles, global leadership roles.

4:15I've been a general manager as well. So I ran our ice cream business, which meant I had an ice cream factory and I could make up products. That's like a dream role. Honestly, it was one of the most fun times ever. I mean, the reason I didn't sort of stay in that stream a little bit was mobility, you know, in our culture, general managers, you're moving on a constant basis. So that just wasn't set up for me personally, effectively, or my family. So I came back to what I love, which is marketing and marketing leadership. And sort of I've been in business unit, I had CMO, and now in the role I'm in, which I've been in the last four and a half or about years, is really building, more snacking, marketing and transforming to become in line with where consumers are going to digitalize our marketing efforts to become much more data driven, bringing in technology, learning about it, being curious about it, and then embedding it into how we build brands and really changing how we build brands.

5:09Yeah. So that's been sort of what we've been up to for the last really three years in earnest. I'd say it took us a couple of years to get it together. And we really run a central branding organization, but we're embedded in our region. So just without getting into too much of the organizational knitting, I have teams that sit in the US, in Europe, in China, and also managing emerging markets. And they bring center of excellence and expertise and creativity and content, working with agencies, obviously. And we really believe that by focusing on expertise versus generalists who do a bit of everything, we've seen really improved outcomes.

5:49Because I was curious, because you're a chief brand officer. So how does that role differ for the chief marketing officer? And are they separate in the organization? Are you providing the kind of intercompany expertise and approaches? And does Does the CMO manage the brand? Or how do those things kind of work together? We run a growth office, so we call it. And within the growth office is what we call brand stewardship. And that's my group, the brand office, if you will. The brand office within the growth office. There's an innovation leadership team. There is data and analytics. And then there's the strategic component, and that's the business strategy.

6:23So what are the issues we're facing into where to play, how to win? whereas our team is really about brand foundations brand compasses brand keys what's the meaning what's the story what's the archetypal you know foundation of the brand and then the content that supports that and modernizing and digitalizing that effort across all levers and adapting it for local relevance yeah so it's it's it's but it's really a dedicated team that's focused just on that. And we leave some of the other parts of the marketing mix, innovation, for example, to other people. And then the last piece of the puzzle is within the regions.

7:03So we have a regional CMO in the US who is making choices about priorities, which brands, because she's got, I think it's 40 something brands that she could choose from just in our snacking portfolio. So she's making choices around that, how to deploy her team's efforts, and really making sure that the briefs we're getting are grounded in business insight and grounding and what are the problems we're trying to solve what are the pain points we're trying to solve for and our job is to make sure is the brief high quality can we work with it and is it going to meet their needs and then we take that away and we come back with solutions you're talking about modern marketing there as well which I thought was quite interesting because I don't know if you saw the Unilever announcement recently where they're shifting I think 50 percent of all well a protecting brand investments at 16 percent of revenue which I thought is I mean I guess they're famously you know famously brand lead aren't they but the interesting thing below that was to shift to social and within that 20 % well no sorry 20 times increase in influencers which really stood out as a bit of a statement of intent um what what's what's been your kind of journey in terms of you know where you're investing your your mix yeah i i was i love i love breeding that i thought it was i thought it was super interesting fundamentally we've made shifts number one in terms of media spending you know you would have looked at our media spend in 2019 and you would have seen us 60 % dedicated to really linear vehicles and sort of 30, 40 % digital.

8:32That's pretty much flipped. So we've moved into, and it's not just online video, it's into digital display, et cetera, et cetera. So we've made the move to digital. Our linear spend is in the US 25 % and in China, it's actually much less. so that shift has been made but then you have to follow that on to say okay how do we get value out of those choices so we had a big move to drive addressability you know you have more and more the ability to personalize personalize both your targeting of where you put the work but also targeting and optimizing the work and you know increasingly in real time now we're getting there so i think the shift has been one the media choice and then two the content to actually unlock?

9:17Because it's one thing to place addressable media. It's another thing to bring the content that actually delivers. So I think that's been the shift. And now I think the big shift that we're driving for now is what does personalization at scale actually mean? How do we unlock co-creation with our fans? And that could be, and I really, to do those things and to talk, we talk about no dead end relationships. So if I interact with you once, if I build a brand world and I invite you into the brand world. Well, that can be a one-off transaction or it can lead to something else, can lead to something else.

9:49Orchestrating that in an FMCG world is not simple. Getting the data you need to do that out of the systems, out of the wall of gardens, et cetera, is not simple. So we're on a journey to unlock that. And that's been super fascinating and continues to be challenging, but it's exciting. And it requires massive curiosity and massive, we don't know the answer and to live in a world where you're continuously asking and remaining curious about consumer behavior, remaining curious about culture and competition, for that matter, and remaining curious about technology. So all those forces are coming into play about what we're doing.

10:24But I come back to this personalization at scale and co-creation. That's opening our minds to what the Unilever CEO is talking about, which is in a world where we still believe reach, we're advocates for EBI and Byron Sharp and all those, that wisdom, we still are building big brands that require access to billions of consumers. But how we access them and how we reach them has changed utterly. And now I'm in conversations about could I run an earned plan only, but that drives reach? What does that look like? What is the mixture and combination of creators or influencers that I would have to leverage distributed against my audiences?

11:11And could you run that? So that's kind of the provocation to say, work back from that. Now, the answer is that's probably not the right answer. But if we don't go there and explore that and be committed to that and not say, yeah, but it's an adjunct to paid. We'll do the big paid play that we always have and then come in later. So yeah. So look, Look, I think it's a world of trying new things. It's a world of we probably don't know the answer, but if we don't try and we don't measure, and I think that's the last piece of this puzzle is. The other thing that's changing, and I think it was touched on as well in the article, was how we measure is changing utterly.

11:48And as long as I think we're wired to what are the business outcomes that both ourselves and our agency partners not only understand, but possibly get rewarded and remunerated on. So changing the nature of that relationship is really important because that makes everyone take it very seriously, obviously. But then high-level output metrics, but then what are the few critical input metrics across the various levers? What are the input metrics, obviously, for media? What are the input metrics for brand PR? What are the input metrics for what we call connected commerce? To understand, are we effective?

12:23Are we efficient? And by the way, we have this conversation about performance versus equity. Well, it's both. And so I think we probably overcorrected for a while and leaned. Everything was getting quite transactional. And can I get you to conversion? And I think that's the watchout I've had personally to say we had to overcorrect to push people there. And now I think we're sort of rowing back to say, look, if we are driving ROIs in the short term, but over time our equities, Like if the long and the short don't work, we're in trouble. So I think that's been a really powerful conversation to balance, yes, the modern approach to marketing, taking advantage of the tools and the data and the audience information we have, taking advantage of more and more closed loop, you know, from inspiration to conversion, data that we can get our hands on.

13:14Getting into, and this is where the real rub is, the attribution piece across levers. All of that, to me, is what's in play. So it leads to some really interesting times. It does. It really does, actually. I mean, we did a – well, at System 1, actually, we took part in a kind of cross-company study with Walk. So Walk Analytic Partners, System 1, Bearer AI. And we were trying to look at – trying to work out the performance versus brand debate. It's like one of those perennial debates, isn't it? It's how do you get the right mix. and it's really i mean the you know it's cut to the answer of course as you said in in what you're just saying there is is both obviously but it's really fascinating so performance only difference between performance only and brand only brand only was outperforming an roi sense by performance only by about 90 and then if you do both you get another you know 10 or 20 on top of that sort of thing so with so many brands going down performance only they're just missing this huge impact for you know longer term brand building but of course if you get both right um and what we found as well in the study, this is kind of using some of our system one data is the long drives the short, but the short doesn't drive the long.

14:21And this is also something I think people forget is that there is performance marketing, even within your equity building campaigns that have this kind of halo benefits. A hundred percent. And I think that's where we got to, because you started to get into some slightly simplistic statements like, well, if it doesn't work in the short term, it doesn't matter what it does in the long term. And that's not wrong, but that's not the whole answer. And you've got to be building meaningful brands that are recognizable and distinctive and consistent. You know, the power of consistency for us, and if I just look at, you know, you're not you and you're hungry as one example or things on Skittles.

14:56I mean, those are probably our two most consistent, most famous. And the value, I believe, we believe in, you know, there's tangible business value in those assets because they are assets in our business and you know we change them we adjust them at our peril i think we've hit on something there actually because if if if i was to put one word to mars if i was to say what one word describes mars i'd say consistency because i can think of um you know you know a mars a day work rest and play or you're not you and you're hungry or snickers you know or the rainbow with skittles i can easily call to my mind the pack imagery the strap lines, the campaign, quite easily.

15:38And, you know, I've got a lot of things going on in my head, but I can access those. But they've been built up over many, many years. I was wondering, actually, obviously Mars is a privately owned organization versus public. What's driving that consistency? Is it a cultural thing? Is it a strategic choice? Is it an ownership? You know, I start from, you know, we stand on the shoulders of giants, right? So what we've been gifted with some of these brands is incredible. You think about the history of a brand like M &M's and the legendary advertising that was made and really ramped up probably in the early noughties, as we say.

16:16But that brand and that history and that consistency recognition, amazing place to start. Yes, you're not you and your hungry is famous. But if you actually go back even into the 80s, we were kind of going in that direction. So we were always building well before I arrived, to be clear. But there was a thread of consistency already in the brand story. And then some brilliant folks at BBDO, Dave Lubars, Peter Kane, and Giancarlo unlocked it. And they just said, here's the way to say this that is deeply relevant every day to every human being on the face of the earth. And we can make it incredibly entertaining.

16:52So that was just a moment that we've not looked back from. Now, interestingly, we've played a bit. I talked about people, and we got into for business reasons I won't bore you with, oh, we're missing an opportunity. Very simplistic terms, there's sort of energy and sort of, let's call it recharge, thank you. There are recharge moments that you turn to a Snickers bar for. But there's also this space called reward. And we start, and that's more mellow, that's more taste notes, that's more experiential. And we got a little bit lost of trying to be both. And we made some work that was not very good because it was not focused and it was not single-minded.

17:33I think we caught ourselves in time and we kind of came back to the core in the story. So I guess the point of that is that we really have learned by making mistakes and putting – well, making mistakes and, of course, correcting. But back to the nature of your question, which is the family ownership. We stand on the shoulders of giants. We're given these brands and we are stewards. we are custodians. And it's interesting to be in a company where there's people walking around who are named Mars. And they're actually incredibly generous, incredibly accessible. They're tough customers as well, and they should be.

18:11I mean, these are their, you think about assets, right? Think about any asset you have in your life. Well, these brands, that's their family's asset. And so they are rightly incredibly careful. They take them, they're jewels in their crown. And I I think once you understand that, that you're not just here experimenting, this is someone's livelihood and asset base. That adds a level of care and consideration because they're personal somehow to a marketer in Mars' experience. But also there's a deep understanding of the brands like in people's bones over decades. And they've been passed along in a family.

18:52So it's an interesting dynamic that's just a different part of the conversation. when I worked in public companies, it was not part of the dynamic. Of course, brands are precious. Of course, they are the jewels and the crown of the organization. But somehow when it's personal, it's different. I don't know if that's very clear, but that's sort of my experience of it. No, I totally think, I think this is something that in marketing, what we, we're so much on the hamster wheel and people change roles all the time, people change companies all the time. But most people I've met who work at Mars have been there a bit like yourself, 10, 15, 20 years.

19:23And the institutional knowledge and expertise that is kept within the organization and the belief in the long term as well, making decisions over a longer period around the short period. And I think there's a lot for businesses to learn, you know, the power of respecting what's gone before, taking decisions over a longer term, being consistent. I mean, we did a report recently called Compound Creativity. And what it demonstrated, we only looked over five years. I mean, if we looked over 10 or 20, it would have been even more. But we just, those that were consistent not only had a better return, but the return got better.

19:53And the gap between consistent brands as inconsistent brands just grew over time. So it's a competitive advantage, I think, having that long-term view, isn't it? It is because you're not having to re-educate and spend money to just start again, if you will. But I'll come back to the key theme that I don't want to miss here is partnership. We have long-term partnerships with the BBDOs and the DDBs of the world. That is critical to everything we've just talked about. And by the way, not just long-term partnerships with the company, but with people. We've had, for good or for bad, the same people working on our brands at BBDO for a long time.

20:32Now, of course, people change, but there's been a few key players, both in the creative side. And there are people I've literally worked with for over 15 years, for good or for bad, but the consistency and the understanding of why and a shared understanding of why. And we worked on what we'd call them creating strategies of desire, And that really starts from, you know, Ehrenberg-Bass kind of thinking, seeking distinction, distinctiveness, and building on that. But we built that together. We built that understanding and built that into the archetypal and the brand keys or what we call the brand compass, which we also take very seriously.

21:09And we do that because we don't want to fall into the trap of the new brand manager syndrome. So it rocks up and say, oh, I want to do something new. I want to change this. Why? Let's see the business. So let's start with the evidence. What's the evidence? and there's there's that doesn't mean we're static and it doesn't mean we're complacent it just means whatever you're going to change we're going to have to understand why exactly and is it about the brand fundamentally is it about the the foundations of the brand or it actually is it something tactical in the short term that's really about execution and being super clear on that conversation i think is incredibly helpful and it what helps that is partners on both sides who have the experience.

21:47Now, the risk of that, obviously, is people get long in the tooth, people get overconfident in the history, and they stop being curious. And I think that's the tension. How do you maintain consistency? How do you maintain what's powerful and foundational, but remain open-minded, remain curious, and understand that you've got to shift probably more the tactics to remain relevant than necessarily the foundational stuff. Well, that's a great question. Maybe I'll put it back to you. How do you do that? Because I think you're right. I mean, often some of the best relationships I've seen at play, I'd almost argue the agency sometimes has more institutional knowledge of the brand than the new brand marketing director that's turned up.

22:32And you can just see that, the respect for the brand and the idea, the positioning where it's come, all that sort of stuff. It's amazing. But you're absolutely right. there comes a point where you lose that freshness, you lose that momentum. So how do you keep that kind of energy, momentum, creativity alive while also respecting the longevity? And I think it's true on both our side of the table as well as the agency side of the table. There's a few, I'm going to call them foundational players who remain consistent, but you need to change the cast around them and bring in whether it's creative teams who understand deeply how to work with creators or how to be social first in an effective way, not just to show off for company because you're supposed to, but because actually the best route on this consumer journey to access the consumer and be convincing is that, and you have expertise governed and guided by the wisdom of, so I think it's really about maintaining a few central players, if you can, hopefully, on both sides of the table, but refreshing that with the right talent, with the right updated expertise who understand what the hell they're talking about.

23:42So you don't have sort of unfrozen cavemen. Sort of here's the social, because it used to be, you know, here's the paid stuff, the traditional TV like we've always done, and here's some social and some Twitter and this and that. And it was just rubbish. It was just like, come on. Who are we kidding? That is a throwaway to just get through the presentation, really. And we'd execute it. Nothing much would happen. I mean, I'm being a bit extreme, but now we are starting audience first. We're bringing in depth of expertise and also the relationship between our media and our creative agency, critical to success.

24:17And now our brand PR agency. Right now, those are different shops and that makes it super interesting and super complex. So we're working through those things. But back to relationships, back to trust, back to do you have a team that is like aces in their places, if you will, and you're refreshing with, I think, the right talent, the right capabilities. We spend a lot of time talking about the capability agenda, especially internally. Because if you don't understand how things are measured, if you don't understand how the mechanics work with the consumer, you will make a lot of mistakes and waste a lot of time and money.

24:54So I think that's been part of it. it's funny we were chatting over a coffee weren't we before about in praise of the suit i mean you had you had your stint didn't you as you as you described it on the suit side of things but i i think that's an under recognized role so often in these things again if i look back at my own experience the best things i've been involved in obviously you've got great creative ideas obviously you've got super sharp clarity coming from your strategy but it's often those account handlers that are brilliant at getting the best out of people that are brilliant understanding the complexity of the client side.

25:27I mean, one of my favorite episodes I've ever done was Cleen de Corsi, who was hugely awarded at Wisen and Kennedy, you know, ran Nike account for 10 years. And then she became a client herself over at Snap. And she describes it as like, suddenly her world, you know, her eyes were opened up to what she calls 4D chess. She says, I couldn't believe the complexity and agendas I was then suddenly having to kind of shuffle around. It wasn't just about pitching the idea. you know i had to kind of you know balance all these agendas and i think the the brilliant role that the best suits but if we call them suits but the best kind of account handlers play is they really understand the business need the you know the challenges the agenda how you execute but they also know how to get the most out of the kind of creative teams and you know bring bring the best ideas and get them through sort of thing absolutely and i i you know if i think about some of the the most challenging provocative stuff i've been involved with certainly on a brand like say skittles And my great, great friend Ari Weiss, who sadly passed on, we did stuff that I never would have imagined we would do.

26:31And it was about his imagination unlocking and me going, I think that sounds really cool and really interesting and interesting because the consumer and culture will grab it and run with it and will be engaged by that headline. So creative concept, solid. But we were coming into a former CFO, now a CEO of an American part of the American division of Mars and saying, so here's the thing. We want to launch a Broadway show for Skittles on Super Bowl Sunday. And we're not going to buy an ad, but it's going to be big. Trust me. And here's how it's going to work. And, you know, that was a great meeting, was one of the ones I'll never forget.

27:16But to your point, all the orchestration within her organization was less about me than it was about the suit, Rich Gast, who was the account guy. And his role was understanding the business realities, the business needs, why this crazy idea actually. And it wasn't just coming through me. It was coming through him and his connectivity organization, one. Two, you know, going through those processes, as you would know, you go back and forth with your creative partner. And we got to some pretty tough places. And Ari was pretty famous for taking a position and holding fast to that position. Rich had to navigate those things.