PepsiCo is in the process of creating a Center of Excellence to handle key areas of media and marketing procurement and embrace a more global approach.
In an internal memo obtained by Ad Age, Grace Puma, senior-VP and chief procurement officer, detailed changes within PepsiCo’s advertising and marketing sourcing team, and highlighted the creation of a Center of Excellence (COE) for advertising and marketing.
“With this new operating model, the Advertising and Marketing COE will be well positioned to operate globally and create a more consistent and rigorous platform around key marketing spend categories in support of strategic business needs,” said Ms. Puma.
Already there is a COE for media and for creative agencies. Those were established to “leverage a global approach with two key categories in our international markets,” Ms. Puma said.
Richard Bellas will oversee all of those groups in his role as the leader of the COE for Global Marketing Services and will report to both Ms. Puma and Salman Amin, exec VP global marketing at PepsiCo.
Tom Cratty, COE international team lead for media, is being charged with driving the global sourcing and “expertise agenda” for media. Prateek Sood is taking on the role of director-COE international team lead for creative agencies. He will be charged with establishing a common global platform for PepsiCo’s creative agencies. Messrs. Cratty and Sood will both report to Mr. Bellas.
Anthony Moon, senior director-advertising and marketing, will continue in his current role and will continue reporting to Mr. Bellas. Ms. Puma said in the memo that Mr. Moon will lead his team to “drive strategic advantage in PepsiCo’s critical North American market.”
“The creation of the COE for Global Marketing Services is the latest way in which the company is driving against its Power of One strategic imperative,” added a Pepsi spokeswoman. “Power of One” is a strategy that entails making the company’s myriad businesses more cohesive.
Last year, PepsiCo and Anheuser-Busch InBev — which together spend more than $1.15 billion on U.S. measured media – teamed up in an effort to wring savings out of media companies. That arrangement was an evolution of a “joint-purchasing agreement” the two marketers signed in 2009.