Mondelēz scraps European CMO role

Mondelēz has scrapped its European CMO role and instead appointed a vice-president of marketing and strategy, the final step in undoing its decision to restructure with four regional CMOs and a global CMO two years ago.

Mondelēz veteran Peter Seymour is now heading up European marketing and will lead on both marketing and corporate strategy.

He will be responsible for building brands including Oreo, Milka, TUC and Belvita, as well as creating business strategy and innovation programmes across the European business. Alongside this, Seymour will head up the marketing function, which includes consumer insights and brand building capabilities.

He replaces Deobora Koyama who joined Mondelēz as European CMO just over two years ago from beer giant AB InBev. Her arrival was part of a restructuring of the marketing department that saw the FMCG giant create four regional chief marketing officers under one global CMO in 2018. The move was aimed at elevating the role of marketing, improving understanding of local markets better and building faster innovation.

Each CMO was responsible for one of five objectives to ensure Mondelēz was fit for purpose as a modern business. These objectives were capabilities (its digital transformation); community (strengthening its marketing community); celebration (talking about what it is doing best); complexity (simplifying the business and becoming more agile); and careers – which was Koyama’s area.

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However, Mondelēz reversed its restructure later that year, with Koyama the only regional CMO remaining.

The CMO for Asia, the Middle East and Africa, Mie-Leng Wong, has since taken on a role as head of global brands for Cadbury, Halls & Tang, while its North American CMO Jason Levine took on a role as global head of marketing transformation and excellence but has since joined hummus maker Sabra as CMO.

Latin American CMO Maria Mujica is now director of ecommerce and marketing transformation in the region. Martin Renaud remains as global CMO.

Marketing Week understands Koyama is now at Unilever as its global growth operations officer.

Seymour has spent 20 years with Mondelēz and was previously director of marketing for the European Chocolate business, leading the equity and innovation on the Cadbury, Milka and Cote D’Or brands. Prior to taking on his new role, he led the UK, Ireland and Nordics coffee business driving the transformation of the Kenco brand and the development of on-demand coffee with Tassimo.