Nomad Foods’ CMO Justin Billingsley on why he’s back on the client side

That’s the enterprise context into which Billingsley steps within the CMO function. Regardless of the headwinds, he says his attraction to Nomad might be summed up in three issues: “Proper manufacturers, proper chief, proper problem.” He started his profession as a consumer, together with an eight-year stint at Coca-Cola and 7 years at tech corporations, earlier than transferring agency-side. After a decade in senior company management positions, together with at Publicis and Monks, he says the CMO job at Nomad was “exactly the function” to tempt him again to the new seat. Its portfolio is stuffed with iconic manufacturers which can be “under-leveraged,” he says, including that reviving icons is the place he believes he performs finest.

“Dominic can also be new, very spectacular and pushed with a transparent mission for what we have to obtain collectively,” he tells The Drum. “To have these elements in place on the identical time made the choice to hitch simple.”

There are just a few causes he took this function, however chief amongst them is that he knew it went past model promotion. Over the previous couple of years, he has witnessed entrepreneurs drifting away from their central function. As an alternative of “translating client actuality into enterprise selections,” he says, too many have merely turn out to be directors of promoting know-how. They handle methods, distributors and complexity, whereas the deeper questions on truly construct manufacturers folks truly need are being crowded out.

“I’ve seen this from either side,” he says. “I spent almost 20 years as a consumer earlier than transferring agency-side. The businesses the place advertising had real affect had been those the place the CMO was within the room when enterprise technique was being set and never simply when communications technique was being signed off.”

At Nomad, he’ll sit on the chief board, report on to the CEO and take management of product growth, pricing, distribution, innovation and industrial technique. He calls this “capital M advertising.” He needs to shift Nomad’s advertising division from one which asks talk what has already been made to 1 that asks what must be made, for whom, and what story that product has the suitable to inform.

Beneath his guidance, the Nomad Meals workforce will sit upstream of the decision-making course of. “Will probably be smaller, smarter and extra deeply embedded within the enterprise than most advertising departments presently are.

“The trendy advertising division must be comfy being the patron’s voice in rooms the place advertising was excluded. Finance conferences. Product growth periods. Provide chain selections. The patron’s perspective ought to inform each enterprise resolution. Advertising’s job is to place it there and to be credible sufficient in that room that individuals hear.”

His expectations of companies observe from that. Havas presently handles its €75m pan-European inventive account whereas Publicis manages the €100m+ media account. Having spent years on the company facet, he says he’ll search for companions that deliver “options quite than choices,” perceive the enterprise quite than simply the temporary and problem the consumer when the temporary is incorrect.

“The companies I’ll work with most intently would be the ones that make themselves indispensable by lowering complexity quite than including to it. Each interplay ought to depart me with extra readability, no more to consider. That’s rarer than it must be.”

A rising tide

Nomad Meals could be on the mercy of wider geopolitical headwinds, however Billingsley nonetheless sees alternatives for important development. Reasonably than focusing solely on rising Nomad’s place, he thinks success lies in increasing the class as an entire. 

“At 15% of the Western European frozen meals market, Nomad’s development ceiling is considerably decided by the well being of the class. If frozen meals grows, Nomad Meals grows,” he says. “If the class continues to lose shelf house and client events to chilled, ambient and meals supply options, Nomad can’t compete its approach out of that structural strain.”

The problem is within the notion of frozen meals. As a class, he says it has spent a very long time in a “defensive crouch” and explaining what it isn’t. The class’s promoting has largely ended up celebrating frozen as acceptable quite than claiming it as superior.

“The work I’m centered on is constructing the arrogance and the platforms to start out proudly owning what’s factually true however commercially underused: that frozen locks in vitamin on the level of peak harvest, usually delivering extra nutritional vitamins than produce that has spent days in transit and on cabinets. That frozen generates considerably much less carbon than chilled or ambient options. That the know-how skilled kitchens depend on is identical know-how shoppers have at dwelling.

“The biggest single development alternative is, due to this fact, a class one: making the affirmative case for frozen meals and its dietary integrity, its sustainability credentials, its function in lowering family meals waste in a approach that shifts the cultural dialog quite than collaborating in it defensively. That could be a class funding as a lot as a model one. And it’s precisely the sort of funding that solely the market chief has the size and incentive to make and one of the best declare to seize the return on.”

A profitable first 12 months, Billingsley says, can be cultural quite than beauty. He needs folks within the advertising workforce to explain their jobs when it comes to what they’re rising and what industrial consequence they’re accountable for, not merely the campaigns they’ve made or the media plans they’ve authorized.

After three years, he needs Nomad’s advertising and R&D operate to be generally known as “commercially courageous,” prepared to make assertive claims, focus funding, kill what isn’t working and arrange measurement that exposes failure as readily as success.

“The advertising organizations I’ve most admired throughout my profession are those which have handled industrial braveness as knowledgeable commonplace, not an occasional act. They temporary for what’s true quite than what’s comfy. They kill what isn’t working quite than letting it drift. They arrange a measurement that may reveal failure as simply because it reveals success.

“In three years, I would really like the Nomad advertising and R&D operate to be acknowledged because the group that shifted frozen meals from a defensive class to an offensive one – not via a marketing campaign, however via a sustained act of economic conviction. If somebody within the trade is asking how that occurred and if the reply begins with what advertising selected to say and selected to not say, then we’ll have accomplished one thing value doing.”