Mills in the Media
General Mills had an abrupt change in leadership. Steve Sanger stepped down as CEO but will remain on as chairman. Kendall J. Powell will replace Sanger as the new CEO. Powell has been with the company for 28 years has worked in the Yoplait and Big G divisions. Powell is also a director with Medtronic Inc. but financial sites do not indicate if he sits on their board. Even though this news was unexpected, the board said it has been in the works for a while.
During Sanger’s tenure, the company sold off Olive Garden and acquired Pillsbury from Diageo. Also under Sanger, sales more than doubled to over $12 billion in the latest fiscal year. It will be interesting to see which direction Powell takes the company with regard to operations and innovation, especially the GCOM Group and their digital platform branding initiatives. In a recent WSJ article, entitled Marketers Get Creative To Stave Off Ad Fatigue. Executives Seek Ways To Vary Spots, Venues; Analyzing ‘Wear-Out‘ Mark Addicks, CMO who oversees the GCOM Group was quoted,
You can use the same piece of creative work in so many different ways. When we sought maximum impact from a Cheerios ad showing two newly adopted children and their new parents, we aired one version on television, a longer version in movie theaters and a third version on the Internet. That variety helped General Mills reach a bigger, more diverse audience without taxing viewers’ patience.
Along with the Internet, General Mills will be investing heavily into virtual shopping aisles to help them better understand consumer behavior through precision testing.
The efforts go well beyond the usual cardboard displays and sample handouts. Last week, a group including manufacturers Procter & Gamble Co., Coca-Cola Co. and General Mills Inc., and retailers Kroger Co. and Wal-Mart announced the results of a test that tracked shoppers’ movement in stores using a combination of infrared beams and human observation. Next year, Nielsen Co. plans to syndicate such data and sell it to clients, much as it does with television ratings.
The digital strategies on the Internet and within the stores with the virtual shopping aisles will be interesting to watch and also how these new media tactics are supported by the new command.
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