Coca-Cola, Colgate-Palmolive Appoint New Customer Leaders Amid Tech and Pricing Shifts
The Coca‑Cola Co. and Colgate-Palmolive have made leadership changes within their customer and commercial teams.
Coca‑Cola announced that Roberto Mercadé will transition to the role of chief customer and commercial officer beginning on Nov. 1.
Additionally, the company will need to fill the role of chief customer officer of retail for Coca-Cola's North America operating unit as Pamela Stewart takes on Mercadé's previous position overseeing The McDonald's division. Stewart spearheaded the retail customer organization comprising all mass, grocery, drug, value, convenience retail, discount supermarkets, club, military and natural channels, including digital, pure-play customers, retail industry affairs and all routes to market, according to her LinkedIn.
Mercadé will now report to Manolo Arroyo, global chief marketing and customer commercial officer, taking over for Jorge Garduño, who stepped down in August after a 34-year career with the company.
Since 1992, Mercadé has built an extensive global leadership career at Coca-Cola, progressing from a production services manager in Puerto Rico to senior franchise and regional general manager roles across Venezuela, South Africa, Australia and Latin America. He subsequently served as Mexico zone president before advancing to president of The McDonald’s Division in 2023.
Colgate's New Customer Leader
At Colgate-Palmolive, Mike Pierson recently joined the organization as EVP, customer development for the U.S. market.
Over the course of more than two decades in the consumer packaged goods industry, Pierson has built an extensive track record of commercial leadership, trade marketing and strategic sales management. His early career foundation included a decade-long tenure at PepsiCo, where he steadily advanced through key sales strategy and account management roles across major divisions like Quaker Tropicana Gatorade and Gatorade U.S.
He also led sales strategy at Pepperidge Farm as vice president, served as SVP of sales and partner at Hello Delicious! Brands, and managed national sales execution as chief customer officer at Materne North America (GoGo squeeZ) from 2017 to 2019.
Most recently, he spent seven years at The Campbell's Co. in high-level executive roles. During this period, he served as chief customer officer for the U.S. meals and beverages division before transitioning to chief customer officer for the snacks category, where he oversaw commercial strategy and customer operations for five years until August 2026.
Driving Customer Growth With Tech Development
As the companies contend with shifting consumer priorities and price sensitivity, these new customer leaders will need to work closely with retail partners to create interest and maintain category momentum using data-driven and tech-enabled practices.
During the recent Barclays Global Consumer Staples Conference, the CEO of Coca-Cola Henrique Braun said the company relies on its RGM capabilities to provide affordability options for low-income consumers facing inflation while also driving premiumization through mini-can multipacks, Core Power and high-margin packaging for less price-sensitive consumers.
Mercadé will need to help the company navigate this balance, working with retail and foodservice partners to structure localized price-pack architecture, promotional trade spend and margin alignment that delivers on both goals.
Also: Coca-Cola Taps Former Exec to Head Up Global Core Tech and Enterprise Architecture
The CEO of Colgate-Palmolive, Noel Wallace, recently expressed dissatisfaction with North America's second-quarter performance, pointing to price gap issues in certain channels and aiming to be more surgical with its price-pack architectures, promotions and coupons to remain competitive without "chasing the bottom."
Pierson will likely play a significant role in this as he manages commercial relationships with key retailers. As the company continues to invest in its Promo AI tool and upskilling, Pierson's team may be tasked with working alongside retail partners to deploy data-driven pricing, packaging and promotional structures effectively to optimize trade spend ROI.
Wallace said the organization has already trained about 70% of its workforce on AI at the VP level as part of the company's goal to ensure it can enable its data to move agentically quickly.
"We're redesigning some of our manual processes that are quite complex today with agents embedded into those to take work out, to take time and get faster at what we do," said Wallace. "So, we're spending our time really on the high-value process changes that we need to execute across the company."
