ORLANDO\u2014Speed and innovation have become the main ingredients for success in the beverage industry, including such staples as beer. But it all starts with listening to consumers first.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like to think about the CMO as actually the chief consumer officer. So I guess marketing people should always be the people with the best knowledge about consumers,\u201d says Marcel Marcondes, U.S. CMO, Anheuser-Busch. \u201cMarketing needs to deliver on creativity on advertising and everything. But if you really want to drive growth, we must lead the conversation on innovation as well. Because this is how we fulfill their needs through our products.\u201d<\/p>\n
In this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Masters of Marketing<\/a> conference, Marcondes explains A-B\u2019s quest for agility and why it\u2019s no longer enough to simply steal market share from competitors.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst and foremost, we\u2019re radically changing the way we do innovation. We\u2019re reducing lead times by half so we can really bring great beers and great products to life in a much faster way,\u201d says Marcondes<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019re really trying to bring more people to the category\u201d in order to expand the category, he adds, citing health and wellness beverages. \u201cAnd we\u2019re developing new kinds of beers that can really address that in a very effective way.\u201d<\/p>\n Whereas beer brands are used to planning and delivering \u201cwhatever we want to do\u201d to drive business, that strategy has gone flat, according to Marcondes. \u201cNow it\u2019s all about listening to consumers first. So it\u2019s harder to plan. You must pay attention on a daily basis to what\u2019s going on out there, what\u2019s relevant in culture, what people are talking about. This is really time sensitive.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked about A-B\u2019s longtime use of brand-building television advertising, Marcondes says TV still occupies an important place in the company\u2019s communications. \u201cI still believe in TV to support innovation. It\u2019s all about driving fast awareness. This is exactly what you need when you\u2019re launching something new to the market.<\/p>\n \u201cNowadays, that\u2019s the beginning of the conversation. We need to have TV and we need to go way beyond that because either we are part of the conversation or we\u2019re irrelevant. I cannot allow this to happen to our brands or to our categories.\u201d<\/p>\n