Mondelez International has named senior marketer Laura Henderson its first global head of content and media monetisation as part of its wider efforts to use both to move audiences along the path to purchase and beyond.
Laura Henderson reports to the snack maker’s chief media and ecommerce officer Bonin Bough who is tasked with bringing media and commerce together in order to unearth new revenue opportunities. Prior to her promotion, Henderson was head of media and communications planning for Mondelez in North America for two years.
Her role follows on from the arrival of Mondelez’s first global head of ecommerce Cindy Chen at the turn of the year, with both hires spotlighting the company’s hope to bet bigger on ecommerce in the future.
The Oreo maker wants ecommerce sales to hit the £1bn by 2020 and so has experimented with a number of models already this year in order to carve out a long-term plan.
From its recent tie-up with Facebook to prospective deals with media platforms like Zefr, Bough has stressed the need for branded content to not only sell its products but also be good enough to make money. He is a great admirer of the Buzzfeed model and wants the snack maker’s marketers to focus on quality of content rather than its reach.
Mondelez was unable to detail how Laura Henderson would further this objective by the time this article was published. However, it is likely she will adopt a more hands on role in bringing these ideas to market across its brands.
It all feeds into Mondelez’s need for its media to not just work the margins. It wants to make smarter spending choices not cuts at a time when tougher cost-control measures internally mean its marketers have to respond to shifting content consumption habits in a more calculated manner.
This thinking in part spurred it to kick off a global review of its media planning and buying business. It told The Drum at the time that the review will streamline its agencies from four to two that will focus on growing its capabilities, particularly in the areas of content and content monetisation.
Mondelez isn’t the only FMCG brand looking to make headway in bridging the gap between content and sales. Unilever, Diageo, Mars and AB inBev are cautiously circling an area that could upset their relationships with retailers if not handled properly.
