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- [00:00]
Rankin Carol
Foreign.
- [00:06]
John Evans
Ladies 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 confectionary 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 Carol. He is their chief brand officer. He, 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? How 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.
- [00:51]
Rankin Carol
Amazing. Amazing to be here, John.
- [00:53]
John Evans
Well, I'd love to, I'd love to know how did you end up at Mars? What's been your journey to Mars? And then. Yeah, yeah. What got you here?
- [00:59]
Rankin Carol
I started my career, I'm Canadian. I started in marketing actually I started in banking technically, but that was, 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 and I worked in the Pizza Hut business in product, product marketing. And that was great. And I learned so much in that role and really the culture of a company like Pepsi, which is, which is, it 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, that was a great place to start and during that time obviously 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, etc. And 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. 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 I 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 and 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 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. You 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, they're quite exotic slough here in the uk, in that case, Bolton, outside of Toronto. Anyway, long story short, I went there and that's, that was the. 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. So I was in Toronto working on Mars on the snack business, on candy brands. 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, 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 lovely woman, my good friend Jane Wakely, 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. I'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 pick up products.
- [04:22]
John Evans
That's like a dream role.
- [04:23]
Rankin Carol
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 know, 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 so I've been in business unit head, cmo and now in the role I'm in, which I've been in the last four and a half thereabouts years, is really building mars 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 to how we build brands and really changing how we build brands. Yeah, so that's been sort of what we've been up to for the last really three years in earnest, I'd say. Took us a couple years to get it together and we really run a central branding organization, but, but we're embedded in our region. So just without getting into too much of the, the organizational knitting, I have teams that sit in the us, in Europe, in China and also managing emerging markets and they bring, you know, 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, improved outcomes.
- [05:50]
John Evans
Because 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 the CMO manage the brand or how do those things kind of work together?
- [06:05]
Rankin Carol
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. So 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 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. So we have a regional CMO in the US who is Making choices about priorities, which brands, because know she's got, I think it's 40 something brands that she could choose from in our, in our, 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.
- [07:38]
John Evans
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% of all. Well, a protecting brand investment at 16% of revenue, which I thought is, I mean, I guess they're famously, you know, famously brand led, aren't they? But the interesting thing below that was to shift to social and within that 20% growth. Well, no, sorry, 20 times increase in influencers, which really stood out as a bit of a statement of intent. What's been your kind of journey in terms of where you're investing your mix?
- [08:09]
Rankin Carol
Yeah, I love reading that. I thought it was super interesting. Fundamentally we've made shifts. Number one, in terms of media spending. 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. That'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 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. Because 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 a 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. Orchestrating that in an FMCG world is not simple. Getting the data you need to do that out of the systems, out of the walled gardens, etc. 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 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. But 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 Barn Sharpe and all, 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 and 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 late. So yeah, so 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. And you know, 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 that 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, are we efficient? And by the way, you have this conversation about performance versus equity. Well, it's both. And so I think we probably overcorrected for a while. Everything was getting quite transactional and can I get you to conversion? And I think that's the watch out 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, don't work, we're, we're in trouble.
- [12:55]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [12:56]
Rankin Carol
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, from, from inspiration to conversion data that we can get our hands on getting into. And this is where the real rub is the, the attribution piece across levers. All of that to me is what's in play.
- [13:24]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [13:24]
Rankin Carol
So it's, it's, it leads to some really interesting times.
- [13:28]
John Evans
It does, it really does actually. I mean we did a system one actually we took part in a kind of cross company study with walk, so WALK Analytic Partners System one bearer AI and we were trying to look at, trying to. The performance versus brand debate. That is like one of those perennial debates, isn't it? Is how do you get the right mix and it's really, I mean the, you know, to cut to the answer, of course, as you said it in what you're just saying, there is both obviously but it's really fascinating. So performance only difference in 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 longer term brand building. But of course if you get both right and what we found as well in the study, this is kind of using some of our System 1 data, is the long drives the short, but the short doesn't drive the long. And this is also something I think people forget is that there is performance marketing even within your equity building campaigns. Yes. That have this kind of Halo benefit 100%.
- [14:31]
Rankin Carol
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, I mean, those are probably our two most consistent, most famous. And the value I believe that 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.
- [15:14]
John Evans
Well, you've hit on something there actually. Because 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, 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. And 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. Is 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?
- [15:57]
Rankin Carol
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 MM's and the legendary advertising was made and really ramped up probably in the early noughties, as we say. But that brand and that history and that consistency recognition, amazing place to start. Yes, you're not you and you're hungry's 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, you know, Dave Lubars, Peter Kane and John Carlo 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. So 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. I think we caught ourselves in time and we kind of came back to the core in the story. So, so, so I guess the point of that is that we really have learned by making mistakes and putting. Well, making mistakes and, and 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. I mean, these are their. You think about assets, right? You think about any asset you have in your life. Will these brands, that's their family's asset. And so they are rightly, incredibly careful. They take them, they're jewels and their crown. And 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, to a marketer in Mars's 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. So 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. 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 know that's very clear. But that's sort of my, my, my experience of it.
- [19:08]
John Evans
No, I totally think, I think this is something that in marketing what we were 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. And 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 run the short period. And I think there's a lot for businesses to learn, you know, the power of respecting what's beat, what's gone before, taking decisions over longer term, being consistent. I mean we did a, 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. And the gap between consistent brands, inconsistent brands just grew over time. So it's competitive advantage. I think having that it is because.
- [20:02]
Rankin Carol
You'Re not having to reeducate and spend money to, to just, you know, 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. So and by the way, not just long term partnerships with the, 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 now. 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, you know, 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, 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. And we do that because we don't want to fall into the trap of the new brand manager syndrome. So rocks up and say I want to do something new, I want to Change this. I want to. Why? Let's see the business. So let's start with the evidence. What's the evidence? And 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 foundations of the brand or 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 what helps that is partners on both sides who have the experience. Now 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?
- [22:18]
John Evans
Well, that's a great question. Maybe I'll put it back to you. How do you do that? Because I think, I think you're right. Is, 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 it than the new brand marketing director that's turned up. And 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, 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?
- [22:52]
Rankin Carol
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. So you don't have sort of unfrozen cave sort of here's the social because it used to be, you know, here's the paid stuff, the, the, 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 like, come on. Yeah, 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, 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. And now our brand PR agency. Right now those are different shops and that's, that makes it super interesting, super complex. So we're working through those things. But it 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, with I think the right talent, the right capabilities. We spend a lot of time talking about the capability agenda.
- [24:42]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [24:43]
Rankin Carol
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 make a lot of mistakes and waste a lot of time and money. So I think that's been part of it.
- [24:57]
John Evans
It's funny, we were chatting over at Coffee, weren't we before about in praise of the suit. I mean you had your stint, didn't you, as you, as you described it on the suit side of things. But 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. I mean, one of the, one of my favorite episodes I've ever done was Clean de Courcy, who was hugely awarded at Wiseman 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 goes, 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.
- [26:14]
Rankin Carol
Absolutely. And 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, you know, and my, my great, great friend Ari Weiss, who sadly passed on, we did stuff that I never would have imagined we would do and was about his imagination unlocking and me going, I think that sounds really cool and really interesting and, and, and, 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, but it's going to be big, trust me. And here's how it's going to work. And that was a great meeting, was one of the ones I'll never forget. But to your point, all the orchestration within her organization was less about me than it was about the suit. Rich Guest, 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 in the 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 are always pretty famous for taking a position and holding fast to that position. Rich had to navigate those things.
- [27:56]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [27:56]
Rankin Carol
Between us, for us. And without him, I'm quite convinced we would not have been. We got, not got the result. We got to. So you're absolutely right. I think I just used that example to make the point that it's about navigating the personalities, but deeply understanding the forces and the motivations of each of the players and using that in his 4D chess game to keep people motivated, to keep people talking, to find a solution where there apparently isn't one. By the way, they understand the legal components. By the way, they understand our responsible marketing. So in Mars, if you talk about our level of responsibility and the principles that we adhere to. We've got a whole other set of parameters that not all marketers, many marketers do. But it's a complex game to land something that feels provocative, that puts you in what feels like a risk position. And what's the risk? Mitigation. So all of those things are the stuff that make famous headline winning campaigns. And in a family owned business, as we talked about before, no one person can navigate that. So if you don't have a partner who understands that, you'll either go much slower or you'll get a diluted outcome, or you'll get what you want, but it'll take forever and by the time, you know, it'll be past its due date sort of thing. So. But yes, it's a long way of saying I completely agree that and I was talking to my friends at BBDO about this the other day. We could have the best creativity, the best creative teams and the best planners in the world. If the suit can't bring it together and navigate it both internally as well as with us, it will go nowhere and we will waste a lot of really precious resource.
- [29:34]
John Evans
That's so true. I had a very, very brief stint actually between jobs doing kind of freelancing for a number of agencies, helping with business development mainly. So I wrote this little presentation called 10 things you never knew about a CMO. And I think the number one. I have to go and look. I think the number one point I started with is your customer has a customer. Understand them is the secret to the whole relationship. So you know, treating you as the customer is one thing, but actually who are your customers? Your customer might be Tesco, your customer might be the CEO, your customer might be the sales team, Your customer might be regional CMOs who have all got their own P and L and brand and objectives sort of thing. And I think a lot of this starts in going beyond the transactional immediate relationship and understanding you and what you have to deal with on the other side of the decision.
- [30:19]
Rankin Carol
Well, that's so right. And I, you know, I have lots of stories of being taken by sales teams into customers like Walmart.
- [30:25]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [30:26]
Rankin Carol
And you know, there's a famous one, I was still in Canada, we went to visit Walmart and honestly. And this guy was a mate of mine. So we got on, but he brought me in and I think the opening question was would you rather make a fast nickel or a slow dimension? I'm like from the question. Yeah, but there's no right answer. Yeah, there's no wrong, there's no right. And that was the opener and the sales guy's just looking at me going, off you go.
- [30:53]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [30:54]
Rankin Carol
And that became a 20 minute conversation with this Walmart customer and it was bonkers, honestly. But he was just having a go and seeing what he made of a little bit and then we got to the real conversation. Anyway, it's an anecdote to say that's a world that if you don't understand what they deal with every day. And again, back to our structure in Mars. Yes, we have a specialist center of excellence on creativity, but it also requires that I partner with the regional CMO in the US or Europe to say, we do have to make this work in activation at your biggest. Sorry, I'm getting too far from the mic. We do have to make this work in activation at our biggest customers and they have to be as excited about you're not you and you're hungry or you know, taste the rainbow as we are and as the consumer is. And they've got to see a route through to the consumer's excitement coming through their channel.
- [31:46]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [31:46]
Rankin Carol
And so what is that activation plan? How do you make it live and work in there, whether it's physical or digital environments in a way that they can get behind and get super excited about? And I think that becomes that's the everyday reality for a reason.
- [32:00]
John Evans
You've given me so many flashbacks to my client side. That is where I'll be in the creative meeting going, I love this idea. What am I going to tell Tesco tomorrow when I'm doing my annual negotiation? Yeah, and you got to think like that, which is, it's just incredible pivoting a little bit. So I jumped on the System one database just to look at, you know, how are your campaigns done over the last five years, UK and us? Start with the uk because this was a real fun one for me. But I noticed that your Twix campaign came out top, which, which I thought was brilliantly funny. You know, the kind of left and right with the bears. Yeah, that was hilarious. So. But Twix isn't a brand that I've heard as much from as some of the others in your portfolio. So what was the thinking behind that campaign and where are you taking the Twix brand?
- [32:40]
Rankin Carol
Yeah, listen, Twix is an amazing brand and it's, it's surprising to most people who come into our business both from the outside or it's, it's a billion dollar brand, it's just quietly become a massive brand. And part of that is the nature of the product. It's quite unique in many ways. It sort of stands out. If you're thinking about your favorite snacks, it's quite different. It's got a fan base, but it's got a lot of people come in and try it and have a go and maybe stick with it. So I guess it kind of crept up on us in the sense of we've got a jewel here that we are underworking now. We've always told stories about, quite famously, the Left and Right campaign. I think the Bears are one of my favorite executions of it. But I think what we determined was that is rooted in this idea of you're always choosing between one or the other. And we looked at culture and we started to listen, look at consumer behavior. Not just attitudes, but more. More importantly, behavior. What we saw, you know, percolating was this idea of abundance, idea of maximalism, idea of, I don't want to choose because life's a bit rubbish and things are hard and everything that you see in. In the world is. Is what it is. I just want to feel a sense of a little bit about control, a little bit about, I can be very happy, I don't have to choose. And so maximalism became sort of this conversation we started having with the team at Adam and Eve. And then we started saying, well, actually, Twix as an experience is chocolate and biscuits and caramel twice, simply. But we all know that. But it's one of those. It's so simple that you could kind of miss it. So we came back to. And it's one of the things that differentiates us as well in the category were two bars and really making that the story. But it's not about choosing one versus the other. It's about two.
- [34:27]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [34:27]
Rankin Carol
And we landed on this idea of, okay, stupid, two is more than One. Which when. When Rick Brim, who worked on. Presented it was brilliant because he said. And some mad genius came up with this great concept, Two Is More Than One. And that just led the creator. And that's one of those briefs that when you put it on the table. And I love listening to Ant and Mike and Rick at Adam and Eve talk about this, because when you put that brief in the middle of the room, the creatives are just like hounds. They're just jumping on it, going, I could work that all day. That has led to our new campaign, Two Is More Than One, which. Which has just launched. And we're excited about that. And it actually. It's why we're excited beyond the idea and beyond giving Twix a Little another kick is it's rooted in culture, but it's also, we're really majoring on paid earned, shared, owned. So thinking a lot more about aso, as we call it, earned, shared owned and how do we generate headlines, how do we generate co creation opportunities? And so a lot of the media choices we're making are really different for the brand. So what's interesting is we sort of soft launched it in the US actually around super bowl. And we created, the team created this idea of second screen stare down. So during the super bowl, the data says, I think it's like 60% of people are second screening for good or for bad, for society. That's what's happening. So we said, well, that's something. Two screens. Okay, great. Two bars, that's interesting. So the game was. You downloaded the game. I went to the site and the game was. It's a stare down. So when the commercial goes on, you click on and you stare and your eyes have to stay on the phone and there's two Twix bars looking at you with two funny eyes. And then anyway, we got hundreds of thousands of people staying staring at their bloody screen for 40 minutes during the super bowl. Again, for good or for bad. But it was kind of a nice way into two is more than one. And I think they won a couple of gold bars. It was good fun. But that was a pure earned idea. We juiced it with a little bit of paid at the end, but it was really owned on like our own channels and our earned channels and we got tremendous traction. That was a huge learning for us around experiments in this new world because we know 50% of media is consumed outside of paid creators, social, et cetera. So how do we build brands with meaning so that every touch point is rich? I think that's the other big shift back to our point about performance versus equity. I think we used to live in a world where traditional channels, we'd have great content. The other channel were a bit rubbish. We couldn't get great quality experiences for the brand. And I think that has been proved to be untrue. And so the challenge is now how do we get every touch point working in isolation for its own sake, for itself, if you will. Because I think it used to be. Well, because the world is not. You don't see one thing in paid and then move the next. There's a great piece about this idea of mosaic and brands are built in mosaics. But every touch point has got to resonate and stand on its own. And by the way when they come together, it's in multiplier. But the idea that you go from one to the next in a linear journey is just crazy.
- [37:35]
John Evans
I like that idea. It has to work on its own and it has to work together. And when you see the both you get.
- [37:41]
Rankin Carol
It multiplies.
- [37:41]
John Evans
That's.
- [37:42]
Rankin Carol
And I think that's been. That's been motivating us to say it's an experience by itself.
- [37:47]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [37:47]
Rankin Carol
So the second screen stared at. It's this crazy idea. But when you start to see it in the context of a bigger campaign, it's like, oh yeah, really makes sense.
- [37:54]
John Evans
So the thing I love about the story as you told there is the power of simplicity, that the idea is very simple, the execution is very simple. It's amazing how hard it is to come up with something so simple, isn't it?
- [38:05]
Rankin Carol
And we're doing another one, which is. It's a voice note. Voice notes is a thing. So I've learned. And if I want to, I can go into this machine we've created with a really interesting company. You can send your mate a voice note, but it's amplified and it's harmonized. So you send them whatever the voice note is some bad news. But we bring together your voice with multiple harmonies. So again, two is more than one. So it's two voices, not one. Anyway, but this is just trying things, little things, small things, but they line up strategically and hopefully the consumer gets that connectivity and that multiplier.
- [38:44]
John Evans
Well, ton of simple things and personalizing. I did love your own goal.
- [38:48]
Rankin Carol
Yeah.
- [38:48]
John Evans
You created on Snickers is a really. Just explain that for anyone listening. That's not come across it. It's very clever. But it's a good example of this idea of a simple idea using AI to.
- [38:59]
Rankin Carol
Yeah. So we. We became really interested in the application of AI in our creative, creative production. And we just started looking at different use cases and we were sponsoring and involved in the Euros in 2024 and we said, how could we bring just let's go have a go. And what would that look like? And the team came back, the guys at T and P M came back. This idea where in the world of you're not you and you're hungry, you make mistakes. So when you're hungry, sometimes you make a mistake. Well, in a Euro context, what's an own goal? So when you make an own goal, what do we do with that idea? And then Snickers is a brand of banter. Snickers a brand about your mates. And then we said, okay, let's give consumers an opportunity to create some banter in a branded way, delivered in a really powerful way, if you're a football fan. So simply said, you go on WhatsApp and say it was like the simple prompt. What's your, what's your, what's your mate's name? John. What's his own goal? He, you know, he ate garlic before the big meeting. Whatever, whatever. That's, that's one of the bad ones. And then that would go into the Jose Mourinho 2000 machine and within two to three minutes you'd get a video of Jose AI generated, obviously sending your mate a little bit of stick and then you could send it to him. And it was that simple. So the cool thing was the interface was dead simple. It was completely on brand. It was about co creating. So we talk a lot about co creation and personalization at scale. So through WhatsApp, I can send you a bit of banter from a legendary coach in the context of the Euros. Yeah, it's so snickers. It's super fun.
- [40:45]
John Evans
That's simple, funny, memorable. I mean, it just, it just works, doesn't it? Now, if I Look at my System 1 data on the US, one of your brands in your portfolio dominates our scoring. In fact, I had to scroll a long way to find anything not related this year.
- [41:02]
Rankin Carol
Which brand I'm talking about Skittles or M M's.
- [41:07]
John Evans
M M's.
- [41:08]
Rankin Carol
M M's.
- [41:08]
John Evans
Yeah. Yeah. It's just incredible. In fact, I, I wasn't expecting it to be quite as dominated as it was, which was interesting. But a lot of the super bowl content, in fact, we've been measuring super bowl for about 10 years.
- [41:20]
Rankin Carol
Yeah.
- [41:20]
John Evans
And actually M&M's is one of the most consistent performers. Always in this kind of top five or 10, always scoring high, four or five star results. It's amazing. But I think it's one of, one of the things I love about what you do on M and Ms. Is just the, I mean, back to Ehrenberg Bass, you talked about being kind of partners with them earlier. It's just a masterclass in kind of distinctive brand assets, isn't it? And how to use them and bringing them to life with humor and memorability. It just really. Because, I mean, well, going back to your Mosaic point actually, about the individual and the collective is, the great thing about the characters is it does join up all those things in a beautiful way, doesn't it?
- [41:54]
Rankin Carol
It does. So you've got this remarkable asset that's survived you know, decades. And then there's. The trick is how do you make it relevant in culture? And if you go back through the reel of M and Ms. Over the last 30 years, we've been pretty successful at doing that. Whether it's through musical music tie ins, whether it's through celebrity tie ins, whether it's through linkage to major set piece events like the Super Bowl. We've been pretty effective at tapping into culture and bringing the characters into what that ever scenarios. And then we had this experience where we went down the road of inclusiveness and we're still there, by the way, happily still there, where we opened up the brand and said we're going to make it more inclusive because we believe that's, that's principally right. And then the execution became that we're changing the characters a bit and we're expanding the crew to bring in a bit more balance. And that got some reaction. And navigating through that was back to dealing with assets that people own. They go, that's my brand, don't forget that. Navigating through that. Now the success of that. Because in the end I think the measurement on that will be. Will be very strong and was certainly effective in market. But it was tapping into culture. It hit a nerve. It got massive headlines as, as you'll remember. But then we, but we, we didn't ever get too serious about that because some of those headlines could have been taken very seriously and it could have. We could have been drawn into something that would have been really unpleasant. And I think we navigated as the brand we are. We kept it light, we kept it humorous, we didn't take the bait. In fact, we fed it a little bit and we had some fun. Like we canceled the characters, but we didn't really.
- [43:27]
John Evans
That was, that was genius. I remember that we'd gone too far.
- [43:30]
Rankin Carol
All this stuff and that provoked the debate again. But I think we remained who we are and at the end we let the air out of it. Although people really didn't thought we were serious. It was wild. But anyway, yeah, and then we let the air out of it during the game and I think that experience was at times super challenging and quite, quite scary, I would say at times because you realize the magnitude and. But we had risk mitigation. But I think we stayed true to the brand was. And we never kind of, as I say, took the bait and that was a fascinating experience. But all the while the assets, the distinctive assets, the characters remained intact, remained who they were and we rode on their back. You know, and we continue to do so. So it's a brilliant brand and it's just, how do we keep playing with the characters and culture in ways that are engaging and interesting and endearing? Because that's the other thing about people love them.
- [44:22]
John Evans
They do. They do. I mean, the moment you said you're taking them away from super bowl, you know, all hell breaks loose, doesn't it?
- [44:28]
Rankin Carol
And like, it was a serious conversation.
- [44:30]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [44:30]
Rankin Carol
And it's just funny. Even as you're working. Content is when all else fails. Just get the characters in there.
- [44:38]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [44:40]
Rankin Carol
Hopefully there's some craft and some good writing that goes with it, but they're very powerful.
- [44:44]
John Evans
Hugely powerful. In fact, I can give a tiny data point on this, actually. We looked at the average score for every ad with a celebrity in the average score with every ad without celebrity, and the average score for every ad with system, when we call it fluent device. It's something that comes to mind quickly when you think about the brand, which this is a brilliant case of. The average celebrity ad was exactly the same as the average ad. 2.7 versus 2.7 with fluent devices. M&M's being probably the best example of that. 3.8. It literally was worth an entire star. So those characters that have been built up for many years, great personality association of the brand, are outperforming pretty much every celebrity you can think of in a Super Bowl. I mean, they are celebrities in their own right in a way, but I think they're not particularly in fashion. I mean, this is something, I think if I was starting out in a new brand role, I'll be straight in on this and going, well, what character can we create? We can associate the brand over time. It's probably one of the biggest hacks that marketers overlook.
- [45:45]
Rankin Carol
Yeah. Well, it's literally a distinctive asset. It's not a saying, it's not a tagline, it's not a strap line, it's not a graphic. It's a living personality.
- [45:56]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [45:56]
Rankin Carol
That becomes. And funny. Fans know them. Yeah, Fans talk about them. They know their backstory. They make up their backstory. It's wild.
- [46:05]
John Evans
It's also. It's also fascinating how far they travel. So, like the Kate Spade collaboration you did, for example, is a great example of like, can you imagine, like partnering your brand? You know, a candy brand, if you use the American phrase, a candy brand's character can partner with a sort of high end fashion designer. I mean, that's wild when you think about it. And it works.
- [46:22]
Rankin Carol
It is. And the collabs that we're entertaining, you know, whether it's Adidas or Kate Spade or others that are coming. You're right. It's fascinating how. Because sometimes you kind of go, really? No. The answer is yes. Really? Why? Because they are iconic brands and the characters people have grown up with and they just. They just don't let go. So they become adults and they're still got an affinity and an affinity, I guess, for the characters, and they still find them entertaining.
- [46:53]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [46:54]
Rankin Carol
Now, the. The trick is, how do you a maintain their voice, which change creative teams, you know, so again, back to longtime partners. You've got to understand their voice, you've got to understand their backstory, because if you play with that, it will be inauthentic and the fans will go, what's going on? And they do. When we get it wrong, hopefully we don't do that too often, but. Yeah, so, so. So just understanding the characters, maintaining that the assets as they are and what their strengths are. But then the other thing we're really having fun with is bringing them together. That's been. That's at the heart of our whole emphasis on the brand is it's more fun together.
- [47:33]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [47:33]
Rankin Carol
So how do you get interactions between brands? Red and yellow were the. Were the. You know, the setup man and the punchline. But now we've got green coming in a lot more than we used to. We've introduced purple, browns, you know, so an orange is hilarious. Sort of this nervous, you know, nervous Nelly character. But the other thing is they're all. They're all human traits that people relate to.
- [47:55]
John Evans
So, anyway, yeah, and it makes it universal, doesn't it? Because it's not a person, it's character. Everybody can relate.
- [48:01]
Rankin Carol
Yeah.
- [48:02]
John Evans
It makes the universe.
- [48:03]
Rankin Carol
The question we ask ourselves, are they famous or are they delicious? The answer is they're both.
- [48:07]
John Evans
Exactly. Well, maybe to round up, then, because, by the way, I could talk about this for a long time because you've got so many kind of gems in your portfolio. Quite a tricky question, but, you know, looking back on your career, because, you know, you've got 20 years at Mars, you're in a great role as Chief Brand Officer, what would be the bit of advice you might have given your younger self? Starting out, or anyone listening today is thinking, I like the sound of Rankin's role. You know, what advice would you give somebody wanting to do the kind of role that you do that may surprise them to know?
- [48:36]
Rankin Carol
I'd probably sort of start from what I think has been the heart of whatever success I'VE had. And what I look for as we're building organizations and bringing people in, curiosity. And I mean that curiosity about consumers, consumer behavior that's fundamental and curiosity about culture, curiosity about competition, because there's a lot to be learned from who we're trying to beat on the daily. And curiosity about technology. Now I think that's been the big shift for us is are you curious about what's available? Are you curious about the capability that can be brought to your brand? Are you curious about measurement and how do we improve the effectiveness, the efficiency, et cetera? So it's curiosity in every respect of that, I think. Creating a culture. So are you creating a culture of creativity, of wonder? Are you creating a culture where the best people in the agency world would kill to work on your brands? And that to me is basic. And back to when the folks at Adam and Eve talk about when we put the brief in the middle of the room, people are jumping to work on it because the idea and the brief is so clear, by the way, it's on a great brand called Twix. Important. But the brief is, is, is the thing. So are you attracting the best talent in the world both to, to your own marketing team, but also to, to your agency partners? And I go to partners. I, I think and this is about the human interactions, trusted partners in every respect. So whether it's because all the things I've described, whether it's skittles, whether it's the AI thing, all of that is an outcome of a trusted creative partner, a trusted legal partner, a trusted brand PR partner, trusting and supporting the ambition of the best people in your organization and getting behind them and letting them know that you've got their back. But equally when you're into the heady stuff and sort of the stuff that feels risky, the stuff that feels career threatening, to be honest, you know that you got someone with you, you know, whether it's a creative partner or otherwise. So I think we throw around trust a lot, but I might. No one person does anything that matters in this business. You've got to have a group of willing, trusted leaders who are coming together to drive something through, to try different things and to take some risks. And then I think the last piece, and this has been again been emphasized certainly across marketing and is relentless measurement. And we are evidence based and we always have told that story. And but I think it's shifting so quickly now back to curiosity about technology. The world of understanding attribution across multiple levers is upon us. It's doable AI is powering it. And we are starting to get very intentional about what that looks like, how it works and trying to scale it. And we spend a lot of time on that subject. And then the last thing I'd say is how do you create space to do the technical and leave space for this wonder and creativity? Because I think that's the other thing in the pivot we've made the last few years and all of us in the industry have made and we talked about overcorrecting. We became obsessed with tech. We became obsessed with the application of tech to audience measurement and data, to audience identification, measurement and activation optimum. So it became all about the how and we sort of didn't put as much time into what.
- [52:08]
John Evans
It's totally great. Yeah.
- [52:09]
Rankin Carol
Right. So let's, let's get, let's get back to balance and, and come back to investing in the, the magic and the wonder of our brands because people love these brands and we need to make more people love them and, and drive penetration and get to business outcomes. So I think that's this balancing act and making sure we don't forget it's all about, well, the why, the what and of course, the how will take.
- [52:32]
John Evans
Care of us later. Yeah, that's top advice by Orankin. Thank you. That's an amazing summary.
- [52:37]
Rankin Carol
Cool.
- [52:38]
John Evans
You've just given us there. So thank you very much. Thank you for taking the time to come and talk to us about these brands. And yeah, I know everyone's going to get a lot out of this. There's some absolute gold in there. So thank you very much.
- [52:47]
Rankin Carol
Perfect.
- [52:48]
John Evans
Great. Thank you very much for listening or watching uncensored cmo. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'd also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show. So please do leave a review wherever you get your podcast. If you want to contact me, you can do I'm over on XcensorCMO or on LinkedIn where I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next.