By Will Novosedlik

In this series, we ask top industry execs and marketers across the country about their biggest fears and concerns. What are the things of marketing nightmares? This week, we catch up with with Emma Eriksson, VP of global cereal at Kellanova, about the biggest problems she faces. 

In October of 2023, Kellogg Company spun off its North American cereal business and named it WK Kellogg Company. The rest of the businesses and brands, including Pringles, Cheez-It, Pop-Tarts and its plant-based meat business MorningStar Farms now operate under the Kellanova banner. Kellanova also oversees international cereal brands including Frosties, Zucaritas and Miel Pops. Cereal brands account for about 20% of Kellanova’s business. Previously, Eriksson performed various senior marketing roles at Kellogg Company, including VP of marketing and wellbeing, as well as at General Mills.

What’s keeping you up at night?

Marketing transformation. We need it in order to fully take advantage of the value of the data that advanced analytics and AI will bring. There’s an intoxicating future ahead in terms of getting to faster, cheaper, better insights. And that can lead us to sharper strategy for our consumers and for our brands. It can deliver more cost effective, less resource intense and more customized creative. And then more customized, more effective, more real-time-optimized media deployment, which should translate into higher ROI.

It requires rewiring our investment in tech. Measurement needs to be standardized. Data strategy needs to be devised and new ways of working with it need to be invested in. We need to upscale our marketing talent. There are new roles to fill that have never been necessary before. Finding the right external partners to work with and help navigate this new world is also a big challenge. We’re a CPG, which means we’re not at the cutting edge of all of this stuff. We’re not a retailer or an e-commerce player with our own outlets and access to first party data. We’re playing catch-up. And it’s a big sell for an organization like ours to take on this project in terms of the scale of the investment and the talent needed overall. It’s going to be a journey for the next few years for us to make the right choices, bring the organization along and settle into a new way of working that leverages data analytics and AI to their fullest potential.

Are you talking strictly about a digital transformation of the marketing function, or are you talking across all the functions?

I’m focusing on marketing. But when it comes to generative AI and advanced analytics, what happens in marketing is going to impact every part of the company. As marketers, we are more connected to foresight and to consumer trends. The culture is trying to innovate. We call ourselves the “growth organization.” It’s all about finding that next growth engine. So, I think it’s just natural that we jump into these things first and test drive them.

What else is interrupting your sleep?

I think the next big area of concern is about finding balance. It’s so easy to get completely wrapped up in that world of data and analytics. Everything is powered by data and analytics. But you have to balance that with a more human way of inspiring creativity. I think that in order to solve a problem and to get to the next level on a new strategy we still need that old school way of spending time with consumers, getting to empathy, immersing yourself into culture and being able to use your intuition to generate creativity. It’s a balance between science and art. You need both.

There’s also the balance within your organization and its culture. Marketers need to balance getting an emotional connection within the brand experience with functional lower funnel messaging. It’s about knowing when to apply more of that emotional approach versus something more functional.

Then there’s the balance between global and local. I can definitely see the benefits of standardization, consistency, scale and synergy. But as someone who has worked most of my life in Canada, it’s about giving the local team autonomy to adapt the product, the approach, the brand assets and the packaging to the local consumer. Considering the market dynamics, the nuances and culture, the competitive context. Within Kellanova, for example, our biggest individual brand is Pringles. And it was built in a very global way. It’s very similar across the world, and there’s a lot of synergy and standardization that goes along with that. The cereal category was built in a very decentralized, localized way. Every day I think about which brands we are going to get more standardized so we can leverage our scale? We are the number one player in the world outside of North America, and we want to leverage that. The Kellogg brand is one of the most iconic food brands in the world, so I want to make sure that there is a consistency and aligned purpose and expression of that across the world.

What about category pressures? Correct me if I’m wrong, but cereal is not a growing category. It’s more or less stable, or maybe even shrinking.

Obviously, I’m nervous about a category like cereal. It’s a big category, and it’s been boosted for the last few years by price inflation. So, we have been able to raise prices, and we are growing dollars. Category revenue is growing at around three or four percent, but kilograms are not growing, they’re contracting. The biggest challenge is… ensuring that this category stays relevant. I think people love this category, especially in developed markets. They love what it brings in terms of taste. It has a lot of nostalgia, and a lot of trust and enjoyment that comes from it, but we need to make sure that the next generation builds that connection with the category. That’s my number one challenge when it comes to the category.

How is cereal performing with the Gen Z crowd? This is your next demographic frontier, isn’t it?

Cereal’s sweet spot within the Canadian market is boomers and families. The entry points are always kids. Even when we enter into emerging markets, we always bring the message that starting off with a nutritious breakfast is going to set your children up for a great day. It’s convenient, tasty, customizable, quick and affordable. So I think that it’s critical for us to make sure the next generation of families feel the same way about cereal.

Is supply chain still a big worry?

We saw unprecedented cost inflation as a result of multiple issues, including the war in Ukraine. There are also long-term concerns about how climate change is affecting crop yields. This is pressuring us to ensure that we have enough diversity in our portfolio to evolve with the times. I don’t think that we’re going to be able to put that much more inflation into the market in order to keep up with the cost. So we need to find other ways to make the business model work.

With regards to climate, when we talk to consumers about their expectations of us, sustainability has certainly become a front burner topic. They are counting on us to bring out more sustainable packaging, to help improve farming practices and reduce the impacts of distribution. These issues are becoming much more well understood from a systems perspective, especially by the new generation. Gen Zers are definitely more educated and care much more about these issues. And that’s something that we’re going to have to do too in order to stay relevant.