2014 Awards Winners: CMO of the Year

New in 2014, this award honors the Chief Marketing Officer who has made the largest demonstrable impact on his or her consumer goods organization through the implementation and successful use of new marketing strategies, technologies and/or processes.

WINNER
Clive Sirkin
Kimberly-Clark Corporation
A forward-thinking, technology-savvy Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is critical to the competitive consumer goods company, particularly over the last few years as new technologies have changed the game.

To honor the changing role of the CMO, CGT introduced its first-ever CMO of the Year award on June 10th at the 2014 Consumer Goods Sales & Marketing Summit in New York City. The deserving recipient was Clive Sirkin, Chief Marketing Officer for Kimberly-Clark Corporation.

“We selected Clive Sirkin as the 2014 CMO of the Year because of his continuing work to transform Kimberly-Clark and its 57,000 employees around the world into agile brand builders capable of winning in a digital world,” said Albert Guffanti, Publisher, CGT.

Sirkin is only the second CMO in Kimberly-Clark’s storied history.  He joined the company in 2007 as Vice President of Integrated Marketing, reporting to the first-ever CMO, Tony Palmer, who was hired just a year earlier.  Together, they built the capabilities of the organization into an integrated marketing model that centers on ideas that solve business problems versus starting with the idea for a television ad or billboard.

Since taking on the role at the start of 2012, Sirkin has championed the intersection of marketing and technology. He launched the K-C Trading Desk, a breakthrough in the use of data and technology for advanced targeting and real-time optimization. He also leads the effort to drive innovation across channels, products and media through the creation of a digital innovation lab. Now, Kimberly-Clark thinks about consumer goods and modern marketing as a holistic strategic capability that knocks down the conventional silos of marketing and technology.

Additionally, Sirkin partnered with Kimberly-Clark Chief Information Officer Jennifer Sepull to implement global marketing technology capabilities, which enabled the development of a data-driving marketing planning framework, improvements in the company’s customer relationship management capability, and a steadily growing e-commerce business.

“We don’t do digital marketing, we build brands in a digital world because that’s where our consumer is,” said Sirkin. “The pace of innovation in technology has empowered our consumer, given her complete control and choice and has brought her right at the center of the ecosystem. To engage with her at a point and time of her choice, we need technology to become the new interface of marketing, and we are enabling that by driving convergence across the isolated worlds of marketing and technology. That’s the journey I have embarked on at Kimberly-Clark together with my Global CIO, Jennifer Sepull. I share this award with her.”

FINALISTS

Douwe Bergsma
Chief Marketing Officer, Georgia-Pacific
Douwe Bergsma joined Georgia-Pacific as the first Chief Marketing Officer for consumer products in 2011. Today, he leads the brand-building capabilities for iconic brands like Dixie, Vanity Fair, Angel Soft, Quilted Northern, Sparkle, Brawny and several private-label brands. To that end, Georgia-Pacific hired four new agencies to infuse core brands with a fresh approach to marketing. The first ads from the new agencies — Droga5, Deutsch LA, The Martin Agency and Cutwater — are expected next year. Bergsma is also passionate about the Brawny brand’s partnership with the Wounded Warrior Project which helps support and raise awareness of the needs of injured service members and their families across the nation.



Joel Warady
Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, Enjoy Life Foods
Joel Warady spearheaded the implementation of advanced Internet and mobile technology — or Shopper Technology — to drive consumers to Enjoy Life Foods’ products online as well as on supermarket shelves.  The company has more than 43 SKUs in its product portfolio and an estimated 14,000 stores carrying the brand nationally and internationally. The success of this on-going project is demonstrated by Enjoy Life Foods’ steady growth.  After having experienced a 41 percent growth in sales in 2012, the company came back with a 40% growth in 2013, resulting in a gross sales figure slightly north of $33 million. The company saw tremendous growth in online sales in 2013, driven significantly by 115 percent growth at Amazon.com. Overall growth in online sales was just under 300 percent in 2013 with this channel representing over $1.7 million in brand sales in 2013.