When Chad Stubbs joined Ferrero as chief marketing officer North America last year, he was drawn to the challenge: “How do we make Ferrero brands truly part of American culture?”
Stubbs has been answering the call ever since. Six months after he joined, the company revealed plans to spend a landmark $100 million across the Super Bowl and the World Cup – the company’s largest ever global marketing investment. The goal behind this push was to establish deeper connections between the company’s portfolio and American consumers.
“A brand that isn’t embedded in moments that matter or isn’t part of the social conversation just won’t have long-term equity,” explains Stubbs.
The Ferrero portfolio includes global brands Nutella, Kinder, Tic Tac and Ferrero Rocher, as well as American brands Butterfinger, Crunch, Keebler, Mother’s Cookies and Famous Amos – many of which the company acquired in recent years.
For the Super Bowl, the brand leaned into a new brand platform for Kinder Bueno. The “Yes Bueno” messaging positioned the brand as the antidote to everyday disappointments. For the World Cup, Brady starred as soccer’s biggest new fan in a multi-brand campaign for Ferrero which includes: Nutella, Butterfinger and Tic Tac. The cross channel effort includes a number of prizes and giveaways including the chance to win $1 million.
“In marketing we are in the emotions business,” says Stubbs. “This World Cup moment became the clearest expression of a moment we could make some impact.”
Brand Innovators caught up with Stubbs from his office in New York to discuss these tentpole moments, social-first marketing and why working with Tom Brady set the perfect tone. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you talk about how your brands are showing up in cultural moments like the World Cup and the Super Bowl?
When we made some announcements about these particular moments, people in the industry misread that we were getting into sports in a big way. This is one part of a strategy of ‘let’s be in moments that matter.’ As we know in the U.S., live sporting events are where you can hit a message and get the emotional connection at scale. Another part of is that watching sports brings people together in snacking moments. Nine out of 10 World Cup viewers watch with family or friends. And 96 percent buy snacks. We play in the top snacking categories like chocolate, candy, cookies. That matchup was pretty obvious. Both Super Bowl and World Cup are different executions of basically the same brief. There are fewer moments bigger than these for our brands. To build them at scale, we want Ferrero in the middle of these events.
How do you get attention in today’s landscape?
These are obviously very noisy times, when a lot of brands are playing. Breaking through is reached on a multitude of levels. Of course, the creative has to work. At the Super Bowl, we knew it needed to be a moment that was amplified for Kinder Bueno. This was new for the company. We were used to doing very product-centric ads that had an emotional connection, but it was a little bit softer. It was created to be played out over time. You can see that with our execution of breaking into culture with the “No Bueno, Yes Bueno” ad.
For the World Cup, we went down some obvious routes of soccer players and then we went to some unobvious ones and that’s what actually led us to Tom Brady. It was like, “okay, wait a minute. This would not be immediately obvious yet.” He is this American football legend and he is an ultimate soccer fan. Then when you combine the fact that what he stands for is quality, excellence, passion, that 100 percent ties with us. It is moments with partners like that help us amplify and break through.
How are you thinking about media beyond the TV broadcast for these tentpole events?
We are definitely social first. We know that that’s where culture lives and that’s where we can intercept a message to stimulate conversation. We also know that social alone doesn’t break through at scale. We need to grow fast household penetration. Those larger moments are when we can then amplify the message. For the World Cup, it’s the Fox Sports broadcast. We have placements in all of the major games, then the promotional packaging, sweepstakes and social ensures that we’re meeting fans where they’re engaging across the landscape and across the tournament.
We had never had a promotion across our entire portfolio before. This is our largest investment we’ve ever made to date as a company in a single moment. In the U.S. some consumers and even our own retailers didn’t know that Ferrero also had Tic-Tac, that Butterfinger, Baby Ruth, Keebler, Famous Amos. We decided that this was our moment to bring that all together. Luckily we have someone as both striking and breakthrough as Tom Brady to help us lead that message. Let’s help consumers and retailers understand what’s in the Ferrero portfolio. For the promotion, you had to buy any two products and enter for the chance to win. We’ve seen some incredible combinations that didn’t ever originally come together in basket analysis before. People are co-buying Kinder Joy and Nutella, as well as some of our ice creams.
Are you doing any co-merchandising at retail?
Depending on the retailer, we’re testing a bunch of combinations of having the cookies together with Nutella, having Tic Tac mixed with Kinder Joy and Bueno. We are testing displays that have the entire portfolio and in places like Kroger and Albertsons. We have a test-and-learn plan from each one of those to see what works and what are the interesting combinations that we can leverage for the future.
Can you talk about what the ROI looks like, how you’re thinking about measuring this and success looks like?
The ROI will be measured in a couple of ways. The biggest mission for a marketer in doing this perfect 360. There’s some brand equity piece that’s measured that you have to find a platform that works across all the brands. The World Cup is one of those examples. There’ll be a study on what this does for brand equity across the brands, as well as individually. And then, of course, we’ll look at the participation of the promotion from what we gather from the consumer learnings there, who participated, where are they located? And then finally, of course, sales. Did we outperform the category? Did we outperform our previous year? It’ll be all of that wrapped into one.
Can you talk about your background at Pepsi, LVMH and other brands that have helped shape your perspective in this role?
I was at Pepsi for 20 years and that was because I just kept learning. PepsiCo also taught me portfolio thinking. It was a nice place to learn the power of one, which is bringing everything together under one voice when it makes sense. The all-in promotion that we’re doing with Tom Brady is one example of that coming to life. We’re driving basket affinity across the brands. The best portfolio marketers do it that way.
From LVMH, I learned that brand equity is built over time. Ferrero is the youngest company I’ve ever worked with and it is 80 years old. LVMH was founded in the 1700s. It taught me that long term view that you’re building desire over time and building that emotional connection over time. Ferrero already thinks that way. It also could be because we are a European company versus an American company, but we’re not thinking in just quarters. We’re thinking about bringing the best marketing for the brands that earn their place in culture.
