Unilever’s most senior marketer Conny Braams has introduced plans to step down after greater than 33 years with the enterprise.
Braams was appointed to the newly-created place of chief advertising and marketing and digital officer (CMDO) in 2019 following the departure of veteran model boss Keith Weed. By 2022, she had taken a barely completely different position as chief digital and industrial officer (CDCO) to mirror the “blurring strains” between digital advertising and marketing and commerce.
Braams will go away in August. She is already primed to talk on the flagship stage at Cannes Lions in June 2023 and host press on the competition.
Adweek understands the CDCO position get replaced instantly with a successor as a consequence of be introduced as shortly as potential.
The marketer’s shock exit comes amid a time of change for Unilever, which is about to welcome a brand new chief govt (CEO) in July when present boss Alan Jope retires.
Hein Schumacher, who’s at the moment CEO of Dutch dairy enterprise FrieslandCampina, has been lined up for the highest job in an appointment welcomed by traders. The brand new CEO arrives because the enterprise is confronted with battling price pressures that proceed to spill over from 2023’s financial downturn and rampant improve in gas and uncooked materials prices.
Jope mentioned he was “very grateful” for Braam’s “glorious management” of Unilever’s advertising and marketing and industrial agenda over the past 4 years, “and for her spectacular contribution to Unilever over three many years.”
He added: “As CDCO she has helped to rework our firm right into a future-fit, totally digitized group.”
A digital legacy
Braams joined Unilever in 1990 as challenge supervisor for Cup-a-Soup and shortly rose by means of the ranks.
Previous to main Unilever’s advertising and marketing throughout its 400-strong model roster, she held a number of senior positions together with SVP for Asia, Africa and the Center East in addition to EVP for Center Europe.
In her three-year tenure she has overhauled the construction of Unilever’s advertising and marketing division, putting in 5 new class advertising and marketing leaders throughout divisions together with magnificence and wellbeing, private care, dwelling care, diet and ice-cream, who reported into her.
With ecommerce rising as a rising channel for the Ben & Jerry’s proprietor (Unilever’s digital revenues grew by 23% in 2022 accounting for 15% of all turnover) Braams was additionally laser targeted on boosting the CPG’s inside digital capabilities.
