Mondelēz International CMO Martin Renaud: A marketer’s biggest challenge is making choices

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As the chief marketer of Mondelēz International, the parent company to household brands like Oreo, Ritz, Chips Ahoy!, Cadbury and Triscuit, Martin Renaud sits atop several dozen brands with enviable name recognition. 

But being at the center of an $83 billion global enterprise with brands at all different stages of maturity is a tricky job. It’s not enough to rest on the laurels of brands like Cadbury, which was founded in 1824, or Oreo, which first hit the shelves in 1912. It requires constant innovation -- a loaded word, albeit one the brand must embrace when it launches newer brands like NoCoé and reimagines its portfolio with personalized Sour Patch Kids and a direct-to-consumer site where you can customize your beloved Oreos.

It all comes down to making choices, which Renaud says is the marketer’s biggest challenge today.

“How do you make the right choices and stay simple and consistent over time?” 

Within his massive purview, he challenges his team to think locally and is hyper-focused on simplicity: “We need to keep marketing simple.” 

Simplicity means clearing out the clutter. So in a world where everyone is encouraged to do everything and be everywhere, a huge part of Renaud's job is deciding what not to do. "In this complex and changing world, you need to have a very clear lighthouse,” he explains. “Not trying to do it all is important. I think there's often not a bad choice, but the worst is not to make any choice.”

Mondelēz is having a good year with profit on pace to exceed 2019 earnings. The company benefited financially in the U.S. from stay-at-home orders that left us seeking comfort in cookies and snacks, and the pandemic accelerated Mondelēz’s ecommerce business with sales surging 78% year-over-year. 

The company sparked conversation recently when it introduced the term “humaning,” as its new approach to marketing noting, “We are no longer marketing to consumers, but creating connections with humans.” (The industry had thoughts on that, which you can read here and here.) It also made news when it said it will have spent more on digital advertising than TV commercials in 2020 -- a first in its history.

A key part of what’s informed his perspective as a marketer, he says, is his experience working in both emerging and developed markets in Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific, and North America. Prior to joining Mondelēz, he was President, Fresh Dairy Europe at Danone, where he worked for nearly 20 years. Below he shares more of his story. 

1. What has had the most impact on your perspective as a marketer?

My life experiences: living with different consumers and different business situations. And discovering that all is quite connected; it's all about being in a fast-changing world. What is critical for brands, and for a company, is to stay relevant with consumers. So for me, it’s staying constantly agile, and being able to see where the consumers are today and where they're going.

I am naturally a very curious person. I have been blessed with the experiences that have been offered through my career. And it was not planned at all, but the wind was pushing me in various directions and then at some point you take a look back and say, "Oh my gosh. Look what I did."

I’ve been able to experience a diversity of cultures along the way, very often not my own culture. Being tasked with understanding what’s behind words and feelings is a challenge and if you’re not a local, you can't always understand different consumption habits right away and instantly realize, "Okay, this country consumes my product at the end of lunch. And here it’s being consumed as a snack." This is obviously very important when building marketing strategies.

Some of these are countries in crisis, countries booming economically, emerging markets with all kinds of consumers – some of them very poor countries where food is important, but people can’t afford a lot of things. I’ve worked with business units that were small and growing very quickly, and big businesses trying to find a way to gain share, and experiencing more difficulty. All of these experiences were an amazing school to shape my perspective as a marketer.

 2. What’s changed the most about your job as a marketer over the course of your career?

Marketing is more complex than it has ever been. The brands are bigger and sometimes global. Media is much more complex. Often, we were advertising the same ways we had been in the past. When I started, we were doing TV, and sometimes a billboard, and then we were done for the year. And now, you need to adapt to all different platforms because people don’t communicate in the same way anymore and you need to personalize much more.

This of course makes it all much more complex. At the same time, consumers are more demanding. They want it all. They want sustainability. They want well-being. They want the right price. They want to be able to buy on every channel. But I think it's exciting and there is a lot of opportunity in the space.

3. What is the hardest part of a marketer's job today? 

Making choices and prioritizing. At Mondelēz International, we are blessed because we are in categories where you can do a lot of things. We have lots of brands, and we would like to do everything. But at some point, you have some resource constraints. So making choices and prioritizing is always one of the hardest parts. Even starting from a brand’s positioning: positioning a brand is making choices. The consumer tells you they want that, but you want to be clear. And for me, that's the most difficult thing: how do you make the right choices and stay simple and consistent over time? In this complex and changing world, you need to have a very clear lighthouse.

4. Tell us about the marketing campaign you're most proud of working on in your career?

One campaign I'm very proud of, which has been ingrained on me, is the “Roller Babies” campaign for Evian Baby with the babies roller skating. It had a huge impact on the brand. At the time, the brand was stable, but we were in a category (bottled water) which was not the easiest, and we were the most expensive water.

We worked very hard in a small team to try to make a breakthrough while still going back to the heart of what the brand was and trying to have a consistent message globally. In the US, it’s a premium bottled water as we know it, but in France it's the water for babies and families. That's complicated. And we didn't have a lot of money for a global brand. So we did these baby rollers, which was just taking what was the best expression of the water that Evian is, which is the purest water for babies, and elevating it to something super aspirational.

The results were very good in terms of the impact on consumers. It was the beginning of social media. But most importantly, the level of engagement with customers was amazing. At that time, it was a very bold idea and the engagement we saw in social media all over the world was amazing for what was, frankly, not a huge budget. So I'm super proud of that one.

Another one I really like is more recent, and I'm super proud of it: Proud Parents for OREO. I think OREO is an amazing brand overall. It's growing double digits across the world. We have a very simple story, which is a playful cookie that helps you connect. I think the US team is doing an outstanding job in that sense. They have always been very committed to the LGBTQ+ community. It's not new, but I think they are embracing it even more. And I think what they have done is very bold. Each year they are trying to be really understanding of the needs of that community, and be relevant at that time. If you see the evolution over time, it's very interesting. And the craft they have put into that piece of work is amazing. I really wanted to cry by the end of that film.

I interviewed somebody the other day for a job, and he told me, "I want to work with you just based on that creative." And that's nice. That's about connecting.

5. What is the marketing campaign you wish you'd thought of, and why?

I'm jealous of campaigns daily. I forward them to my team and say, "Look how good this is." And they hate that. There is one brand I respect a lot, and that’s the work around the Dove brand. I think they were very early to Purpose. I think their craft and consistency over time is amazing. I'm very inspired by Dove.

 6. What is your must read, watch, or listen for all marketers?

I believe more in living brands and experience than books. I think you need to live things to understand them, and you also learn from coaching teams. But then, personally, I'm a believer of How Brands Grow and the Laws of Growth from Byron Sharp. I believe in that. I think it's a foundational piece, and we are committed to it at Mondelēz International. I think we need to evolve it with digital, but that's a good one.

Another thing is just spending time watching the shelf, watching the social media comments, experiencing the products. That's where you understand the real life of our brands, and of our consumers. So I love spending – and sometimes it can get addictive – hours watching comments from consumers.

And going shopping with me is not very fun because I stop so often at the shelf, and then they say, "Hey, we need to move on." But that's where real life is.

 7. What's an under-the-radar brand you're watching, and why?

I think there is an inspiration in big brands and in small brands. But I would say very often I like to watch insurgent brands, smaller brands. They have no barriers to what they can do. And I think they do a great job of coming with a very simple message, translated very nicely and actively, in social media. All these brands that are born through social media are a great inspiration for our marketers. They have freedom and an ability to craft that spontaneity that I fear sometimes we could lose in big companies. It's all about individual leadership. So usually I use these examples to show it's not about big money. It's about keeping it simple and following a clear direction.

I think Tate's Bake Shop is an amazing story. The consistency of the brand, the understanding that they have of the quality of their product, the bakery, which is so iconic. This is so simple. I think they're on a great journey.

 8. Name a product you can't live without (that doesn't connect you to the internet) and tell us why?

I cannot live without biscuits and chocolate, but I'm not telling you that because I'm the CMO of Mondelēz International. It's true. And that's why when I had the opportunity to take this role, I jumped in. I didn't think too much. It's as simple as that, frankly. But really, I love food. It’s a basic need. And it's so rich.

9. Finish this sentence. "If I weren't a marketer, I would be..."

This one I can answer very quickly because I always wanted to be an architect. I like architecture, I like design. I am very impressed by what some big architects have done in the past and more recently. At the end of the day, I like building. I’m building a farm that I have and now, recently, building a family. But more so I like building brands. I really believe what is driving me is always projecting a future and try to build it.

 10. Finish this sentence, "The marketer I most want to see do this questionnaire is..."

One group of people I would like to acknowledge is creative directors. My best successes have been when I've bonded with them as a brand manager or marketing director, and now, as a CMO. Having a person with whom you can partner, who understands your business issues, but stretches you to do something more unique, something that will last is so important. 

The best marketers are those who can bond with other people who are stronger than them in certain aspects. And for me, very often, those have been very strong creative directors. We were speaking about Evian earlier. That work was done with BETC in France. And I think on Evian, they did an amazing job at that time. Remi Babinet was the creative director. It was not easy. We had fights several times, but he was right. 

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