- 7 minutes ago
Lara O'Reilly speaks with Rankin Carroll about Mars Snacking’s $36 billion acquisition of Kellanova, covering the decisions, challenges, insights that have shaped his career, and his view of where marketing is heading next.
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00:00We used to talk a lot about, everyone talked about how many impressions.
00:03When we fired the spokescandies a few Super Bowls ago, it was 25 billion impressions.
00:07So it's like three times the global population.
00:11He's like, what does that even mean?
00:12And so you would be quoting these numbers and thinking, I don't know what that means
00:15for the business.
00:16And those days are over.
00:19This is CMO Insider, where you'll get candid takes on the marketing power players and power
00:23moves.
00:24My name's Lara O'Reilly.
00:26I'm a senior correspondent at Business Insider.
00:28I'm joined today by Rankin Carroll.
00:31Rankin is Chief Brand Officer of Mars Snacking.
00:34Rankin, thanks so much for joining us.
00:35Thanks, Lara.
00:36Great to be here.
00:37Thank you so much.
00:37So you look after lots of really exciting brands at Mars.
00:40You've been there for, what, 23 years, 24 years?
00:44So Skittles, Cheez-Its, Kellogg's, Pringles.
00:47And a lot of those brands only just recently came under your remit.
00:51You recently went through a very big acquisition, Kelanova, something like $36 billion coming
00:56into the fold.
00:57Can you talk to me about what it's like looking after a big acquisition like that?
01:03We've got, you know, strong founder cultures at both Kelanova, formerly Kellogg's, W.K.
01:08Kellogg, the founder, and that whole story, 100-year-old, 100-plus-year-old company, combining
01:13with Mars, also over a century old, and a family-owned business, the Mars family.
01:17And I think the thing, you've got to honor the past.
01:19You've got brilliant brands that are, they've built themselves as icons.
01:23Pringles or Cheez-It or Pop-Tarts, personal favorite.
01:28Respecting that culture, respecting that, you know, brand archaeology, what made these brands
01:32the icons they are, and never forgetting that.
01:34And then remaining consistent, because the worst thing that can happen is you get, you
01:37know, what we call the new brand manager syndrome is, I'm going to come in and change things.
01:42Well, that would be a fatal error.
01:44How do you take the brilliance that you've been gifted and work with it, and then build
01:49it into some of the systems that have helped us build success at Mars to help further them
01:53and further them for growth going forward?
01:55Can you give an example of how that comes to life?
01:57It's kind of hard to comprehend how that then translates into someone picking up this candy
02:02bar from the shelf versus another.
02:04We believe this truly getting data at the heart of what we do, starting with the consumer,
02:11and then multiplying that and enhancing that through technology is a game changer for how
02:17we think about brand growth.
02:20So once you accept that, but how we reach consumers versus big vehicles, big buys that
02:26we used to do, we're now breaking that up into multiple, a multiplicity of reach vehicles.
02:31So you would do a big TV buy?
02:33Yeah, formerly would have done one thing, one channel, big reach, and hope for the best.
02:39Do it for three months and then move on to the next thing.
02:4170%, you know, two plus reach.
02:43I think what we're now doing is finding still large, but more precision around groups of
02:49audiences.
02:49So we're talking to multiple groups of audiences and able to customize and personalize, if you
02:55will, our content for those audiences.
02:57And that means that our consumer's experience of that will be, depending on who you are,
03:03what your motivations are, what your passion points are, you will see one message coming
03:08from, say, Snickers.
03:09But if you're in a different group, that message would be served to you, possibly, certainly
03:13in a different channel, in a different media, and shaped differently.
03:18So might something like Snickers be an example of this?
03:21I remember the campaign that you did around the Euros, the soccer tournament with Jose Mourinho.
03:29We obviously want to build brands with meaning, as we always have.
03:32So great brands that are consistently delivered with distinctive brand propositions.
03:37That will never change.
03:38That is the bedrock of our success as a company.
03:41The bedrock, by the way, of Kelanova's success as a company, and now combined.
03:44But then, I think the big difference is now we need to personalize at scale.
03:48Today's consumers expect to be able to get involved with a brand, co-create, have a voice,
03:53participate.
03:54Not all of them, but a good portion of them.
03:56If you take those principles into how we work and reply them to the Snickers example you
04:00raised.
04:01Yeah, can you take us there?
04:02Yeah, that was fundamentally starting from a Snickers play and the fandom.
04:08So we know the behavior around the Euros, around football, is banter.
04:12So essentially, we cloned Jose, you know, in partnership with Jose.
04:19The concept was own goal.
04:20So what own goal?
04:21What error have you made because you're hungry?
04:23Snickers.
04:25And he would just give a very special one bit of banter back to you.
04:28And then, by the way, you could send that to your friend.
04:30They could send it on.
04:31And it just exploded.
04:32So that experience was something we would never would have done before.
04:35But we had the data.
04:36We had the access.
04:37We had the technology capability.
04:38And by the way, that whole experience in terms of governance for a company like ours
04:43was quite a journey.
04:44You can imagine what would go in.
04:46Yeah, user-generated content can go wrong very quickly.
04:49Yeah, it can go really wrong.
04:49So it was remarkable.
04:51So it was a big step for us because it got us over the governance and started to trust
04:55ourselves, trust the technology to take care of things and probably convince the organization
05:00that we could enter into these spaces.
05:02So talk me through when you're in the room with whoever it was, the CFO, the legal team,
05:08and you're saying, trust me, this will be fine.
05:12We sat with lawyers, with our brand safety team, with our security team, with the brand
05:19team, with the agency team, and brought that group together from the beginning.
05:23Everything we're talking about really is about bringing people together from the beginning
05:26so everyone understands.
05:28Because you don't show up and sort of, it's a big reveal, ta-da, and having 14 people go,
05:32no, you don't.
05:33Like, are you crazy?
05:34It's not like the Don Draper doing a presentation.
05:37Yeah, that's just not real anymore.
05:39So I think you've got to bring them along.
05:40Why?
05:41Not just to get over the line, because they will contribute.
05:43Because we were entering into territories and it was like the jungle.
05:46And so how do we enter the jungle safely?
05:48Well, you bring experts with you who know what they're doing.
05:50And so I think this was one of our earliest pilots.
05:53The great news is we have scaled that.
05:54We took it into other countries.
05:55We've also scaled it in other brands.
05:57We did another treatment with WhatsApp and Meta on Twix, which was the Twix harmonizer,
06:02which again was you could read in things and it would send messages to your friends,
06:06but harmonize the bad news on a voice note.
06:09So it just was the beginning of us trying different technologies,
06:16different ways of entertaining consumers and getting them involved so they could co-create.
06:21And how do you go about measuring that?
06:23With something like a TV campaign, there's years worth of research and GRPs and media mix modeling
06:29and all of that that goes into measuring whether a campaign was seen by the people you wanted it to
06:33be seen by.
06:34When it's something like that, where there isn't necessarily even clicks perhaps,
06:39how do you go about working out whether that was a success or not?
06:42We used to talk a lot about, everyone talked about how many impressions you landed.
06:45Literally, I think we did an M&M's when we fired the spokescandies a few Super Bowls ago.
06:50It was 25 billion impressions.
06:52So it's like three times the global population.
06:55He's like, what does that even mean?
06:57And so you would be quoting these numbers and thinking,
06:59I don't know what that means for the business.
07:01And those days are over.
07:02And I think impressions or views, impressions, it's hard to quantify the impact of that.
07:08So what we're working on now, we have a development partnership with, for instance, a company called Alembic.
07:13So we're talking about practically, what does that mean?
07:16Snickers has a partnership with, say, WWE Wrestling in the US.
07:21That has a broadcast.
07:23On that broadcast, the announcer happens to talk about Snickers.
07:26Snickers, that moment gets talked about in a podcast later on.
07:30That leads to a sale in Texas.
07:33Their LLM can actually get a hold of that chain of events and start to attribute value to it.
07:40Just to give you a simple example.
07:41There's data science behind this.
07:43We've had experts check it.
07:44So I was about to say, you must have to audit that.
07:46Yeah, of course.
07:47But don't trust me.
07:50Trust the expert.
07:50But the point is, we're exploring that at scale now and trying to push into new ways to get a
07:58hold of truly measuring the business value created by earned.
08:02So we are working through connecting all those systems to try to understand that.
08:06And that is a journey.
08:09And by the way, that's what makes this job so amazing is we are in a new age of learning.
08:15We are in a new age of developing our skills.
08:17So if you're curious, if you have, you know, a bias for learning, it couldn't be a better time to
08:23do what we're doing.
08:24And now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn Ads, to talk about how to cut the bull spend from your
08:29marketing budget.
08:31Marketing leaders today are under more pressure than ever to prove real impact and concrete business outcomes.
08:37I'm joined by Keith Browning, Director of Global Brand Marketing at LinkedIn, to learn more.
08:43What makes LinkedIn uniquely suited to deliver measurable business outcomes, especially in B2B?
08:49LinkedIn is the largest professional network in the world.
08:51So we're built for this.
08:53We're built for B2B.
08:54So that means, firstly, being able to find the right people.
08:56So, you know, you can target by job title or seniority company, etc.
09:01But there's also the professional context component as well.
09:04So people come to LinkedIn to learn, to evaluate potential solutions, and certainly to make buying decisions as well.
09:12I wanted to talk about, you mentioned M&M's and firing your spokescandies.
09:17And I wanted to talk about some of the times when you've taken maybe a bit of a risk creatively
09:21as a marketer.
09:22So a couple of years ago, M&M's kind of lent into the more kind of like diverse side of
09:30its brand.
09:32And it touched a nerve in the US.
09:34And there was a backlash.
09:35Can you talk me through that story, but also how you reacted?
09:41Or maybe actually to the contrary, when you decided not to react and not to immediately pull or immediately back
09:49down?
09:50First of all, we are custodians of iconic brands.
09:53And they're, by the way, owned by a family business.
09:55So you are very conscious of your responsibility in that regard.
09:59So risk-taking, it's easy to talk about risk.
10:02But these are assets in someone's family assets.
10:06And so when you enter into things like this, you want to be resonant in culture and possibly a little
10:12bit provocative.
10:13But provocation in the context of who you are as a brand.
10:16And I think where brands get into trouble is when they step out of their lane.
10:19They step into areas where, why are you even in this conversation?
10:24Versus, in that example, when we fired the spokescandies.
10:30And there was a reaction to that.
10:33I think we could have taken ourselves a bit seriously and taken it more seriously than an M&M's character
10:40ever would.
10:41And reacted in a certain way.
10:43But I think what we did instead was we had fun with it.
10:46And we responded with Green tweeting, did my shoes just break the internet?
10:52Yeah.
10:53Instead of saying, getting a little bit on our soapbox, et cetera.
10:56So I think we reacted in a way that M&M's would.
10:58I think also in politically charged times and when consumers are feeling the hit on their wallet, sometimes marketers can
11:08opt to play it safe and not want to take risks.
11:12And so it seemed like you kind of digged where others zagged at that point.
11:18Listen, I think we, I come back to, I think we tried to do what the brand would do naturally
11:23and stay in character and stay in voice.
11:25The same thing is true of, if I look at Skittles and the support for LGBTQ, we've been doing that
11:30for going on 10 years.
11:32Doing what comes naturally, continuing a behavior you've established over time.
11:37You know, you've built the expectation.
11:39You've built who you, it's part of who you are as a brand.
11:41So, because I think sometimes brands would launch into things for maybe good reasons, but not have done the scoping
11:49of what could, how could this play out?
11:53Because you don't want to be there kind of holding the bag going, where are we going now?
11:57Because that's the worst place to be, obviously.
11:59Right.
12:00And then it's the apology tweets and the ending the campaign or whatever.
12:04And nobody ends up looking good.
12:05So I just don't think we've entered into areas that are high risk.
12:09Because it's easy to say take risks as a brand leader.
12:12Well, what does that really mean?
12:14A lot of marketers that I speak to at the moment are talking about how difficult it has become to
12:19cut through on digital, particularly on social media.
12:23I think what's critical to cut through is it's still a game of compelling stories.
12:29So whatever media, whatever social platform you're in, if you are not creating experiences that are compelling, enjoyable, entertaining,
12:39I think that's the word that we've slightly forgotten about.
12:42Entertainment.
12:43People are still looking for content that takes their, you know, captures their attention.
12:49I don't want to steal their attention.
12:50Right.
12:51Because that's their attention.
12:52And you have fun brands, right?
12:53You've got a portfolio of really fun brands that you can play around with.
12:56You know, whether it's, you know, whether it's what we do on Skittles, whether we are making a, giving you
13:02the opportunity to win the experience of having a commercial made in your front yard.
13:06Well, that's a bit of fun.
13:08Or we are, as I say, creating an experience for you to send some banter to your mates around football.
13:14So it's going into their passion points.
13:16It's going into their lives and saying, we can bring something to you.
13:20I bet that's a big move for a company like ours.
13:22You have to let go.
13:23But we're getting more confident in doing that.
13:25So I think it's building a culture that is okay with that, creating the guidelines and the guardrails to protect
13:31your brand as you do that, but then being bold and being ambitious and piloting your way into things that
13:38you can actually scale.
13:38And talking about kind of loosening the leash around the brand a little bit, how does that fit into things
13:43like your influencer marketing strategy?
13:45How are you building a program around that?
13:48It took a while for us to go professional.
13:51Influencers aren't just, it's not just the Wild West.
13:53I think it started a bit like the Wild West.
13:55Right, you're not just DMing people and saying, yeah, hold on.
13:56Yeah, and just saying, hey, have a go.
13:58So they're professional, they're contracted, and they're starting to be represented by, you know, they're getting consolidating, bringing together in
14:07different organizations, including our agency partners.
14:10So they're becoming another channel, another way to engage with the consumer.
14:14And we know, fortunately or unfortunately, consumers trust influencers more than they trust brands.
14:20So if we are working with them, and they authentically believe in what the brand's doing, what the brand's saying,
14:27they become advocates for us.
14:29So understanding those relationships, and finding ways to work with them, and giving them the ability to open up and
14:36co-create and create things that are relevant for their channels in their own voice.
14:40What does that look like?
14:41And how are we building?
14:42So we did a thing in Germany with an influencer there that actually launched a song that was in the
14:46top 10 in Spotify, linked to Extra Gum, which is remarkable.
14:51But so that's just one simple example of going through a new media, if you will, through an influencer in
14:59a way that was relevant for her audience.
15:01That really was a very positive thing for our brand.
15:05And now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn Ads, to talk about how to cut the bull spend from your
15:09marketing budget.
15:11LinkedIn's Cut the Bull Spend campaign urges marketers to rethink how they evaluate performance and where their budgets actually drive
15:18impact.
15:19I'm here with Keith Browning, Director of Global Brand Marketing at LinkedIn, to learn more.
15:24How do you define bull spend in practical terms?
15:27So I'd say bull spend is really wasted advertising spend.
15:31It's any investment that leads to a great looking dashboard.
15:34So the numbers look good, the arrows are going in the right direction.
15:37But really, it's not actually doing anything to drive the business forward.
15:40So it doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
15:42How does LinkedIn help marketers reduce waste and increase efficiency in real terms?
15:48At LinkedIn, you don't have to pay for attention from people who are never going to buy from you.
15:53A mass reach works great if you're selling breakfast cereal, not so much if you're selling CRMs.
15:58That's really where LinkedIn is different.
16:00We've touched upon AI a little bit in our conversation so far, but I'm interested, Franklin, in how you're using
16:05AI day-to-day.
16:06Are you vibe coding?
16:09No, I'm not.
16:14No, listen, we are using it quite actively.
16:17It's easy to get caught up in a shiny new toy and run there with abandon.
16:21It's exciting, but it's very dangerous.
16:23So we have to be careful.
16:26So I just stress that.
16:27So we're not sort of with, you know, it's not reckless.
16:31That said, I would say that we're applying it probably in three ways.
16:34In how we manage and meet consumers where they are.
16:38Then to the making, the making of the content.
16:41AI is starting to have immense impact.
16:43Our creativity starts with human beings and it always will.
16:46And I still, I'm convinced that so far, AI isn't originating anything.
16:52It's replicating what's come in the past and it does a brilliant job.
16:55And then the last thing, as I mentioned earlier, it's coming into measurement.
16:58So how we are able to measure, that is a mind-opening space around measuring the impact of what we
17:05do.
17:05So in those areas, it, you know, the media, the making and the measurement, huge impact.
17:15And AI in advertising and marketing brings all of those opportunities that you just mentioned.
17:22But also there's a lot of anxiousness about kind of things like job losses and what's that going to mean
17:26for people in their early stage of their careers.
17:28How are you thinking about building your teams and nurture the next generation of marketing talent?
17:34Yeah, it's an immense responsibility.
17:36Because I think the simple equation is you take out the work while you take out the people.
17:39I don't buy that.
17:40I think you take out the work that drags people down and elevate and give them an opportunity to do
17:45much more interesting and creative things.
17:47So I think the potential is to elevate what everyone's doing and push everyone up a level by taking out
17:51stuff that takes up your time.
17:53And allowing you to focus on strategic thinking, on creativity, on getting to fresh, brilliant ideas that will engage consumers
18:01and learning how to use AI.
18:04So more time to learn, more time to understand how to use the tools at your disposal.
18:08I do think the other side of this, though, is there's a risk and the backlash has already started.
18:12So I think if we start overplaying our AI hands, that could result in consumers pushing back.
18:22Now, I don't pretend to have a crystal ball and how that's going to play out.
18:25But in 10 years, a marketing role and what we do as CMOs will have changed utterly.
18:31There's huge advantages.
18:33There's risks that go with it.
18:34And I think we have to learn our way through it.
18:36But is it changing, for example, the types of people that you hire or are you – I mean, for
18:41example, you said that you wanted to kind of do away with some of the drudgery and open people up
18:46to doing the more exciting work.
18:47Does that kind of change the mix, how ideas get presented, how the work gets kind of farmed out?
18:53I think what's changed is I spend a lot of time with our digital technology partners.
18:58So the CMO and the CDO partnering together, I think that age is upon us.
19:04And I think you're seeing people merging those jobs together and you're seeing CDOs become CMOs and vice versa.
19:09I do think also that young people coming up through the company are much more data savvy, more data capable,
19:18more tech capable.
19:20And, you know, reverse mentoring, all those things, that's working to help us stay on top of things.
19:26So they have a big role in that regard.
19:28So actually, the reverse is true.
19:30They're not being pushed out or pushed down.
19:32They're actually coming up and getting more connectivity.
19:34So it's an opportunity to get FaceTime with someone like you.
19:37And what's your advice for kind of early stage marketers?
19:40There's so someone entering the profession right now.
19:44Like what would your advice be about what they should focus on and why they should be so excited about
19:48the kind of marketing profession in 2026 and beyond?
19:52What are we looking for?
19:53We're looking for people who are curious.
19:54So how are you as a young marketer demonstrating and leveraging your curiosity?
20:01Having the ambition to try things and bring them forward in the world because people want it.
20:06You know, you talk to young marketers like, why would anyone want to talk to me?
20:10It's like, well, because you're working on really important brands.
20:13We're working on our precious assets because you are seeing and experiencing things both as a consumer and as a
20:19marketer that we're not.
20:20So bring that into the conversation.
20:22And in a sentence, Rankin, what's the thing you're working on right now that you're most excited about?
20:28Measurement.
20:30Honestly, working on how we measure the impact.
20:34We have a new media mix.
20:36We have new technology coming to play, as we've talked about.
20:39We are, you know, exploring, experimenting and piloting new things.
20:43If we get measurement right, then we can scale with much more confidence and much more effectiveness.
20:50Great.
20:51Let's get measuring.
20:51Rankin, thank you so much for joining us.
20:54Appreciate it.
20:55And thank you for joining us.
20:57If you enjoyed this kind of content, please like and subscribe to our channel.
21:00We also have lots more CMO interviews, analysis, news, scoops, all the rest of it at businessinsider.com.
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