{"id":128672,"date":"2026-05-28T02:59:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T02:59:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2026\/05\/28\/nomad-foods-cmo-justin-billingsley-on-why-hes-back-on-the-client-side\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T03:00:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T03:00:24","slug":"nomad-foods-cmo-justin-billingsley-on-why-hes-back-on-the-client-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2026\/05\/28\/nomad-foods-cmo-justin-billingsley-on-why-hes-back-on-the-client-side\/","title":{"rendered":"Nomad Foods\u2019 CMO Justin Billingsley on why he\u2019s back on the client side"},"content":{"rendered":"

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After greater than a decade in senior company management roles, the previous Publicis exec has picked a stunning second to turn out to be CMO of Europe\u2019s largest frozen meals firm.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nomad Meals is in a important transition 12 months. These aren\u2019t the phrases of traders, analysts or commerce press, however new chief government Dominic Brisby, who has been laying the groundwork to overtake the enterprise since he took the highest job final October. Justin Billingsley is one in every of his first main hires.<\/p>\n

Because the proprietor of Birds Eye, Findus, Iglo, Ledo and Frikom, Nomad is one in every of Europe\u2019s main frozen meals corporations. But it surely has not been proof against the geopolitical turmoil and financial pressures plaguing manufacturers worldwide. In 2025, Nomad\u2019s income fell 2.2% to \u20ac3bn, natural income declined 1.9% and volumes had been down 1.4%, with the enterprise citing provide chain inflation as a key strain on gross margin. Its steerage for 2026 can also be cautious: natural income is anticipated to proceed to say no 2% to five%.<\/p>\n

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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: \u201cProper manufacturers, proper chief, proper problem.\u201d 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 \u201cexactly the function\u201d to tempt him again to the new seat. Its portfolio is stuffed with iconic manufacturers which can be \u201cunder-leveraged,\u201d he says, including that reviving icons is the place he believes he performs finest.<\/p>\n

\u201cDominic can also be new, very spectacular and pushed with a transparent mission for what we have to obtain collectively,\u201d he tells The Drum. \u201cTo have these elements in place on the identical time made the choice to hitch simple.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u201ctranslating client actuality into enterprise selections,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen this from either side,\u201d he says. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Nomad, he\u2019ll 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 \u201ccapital M advertising.\u201d He needs to shift Nomad\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Beneath his guidance, the Nomad Meals workforce will sit upstream of the decision-making course of. \u201cWill probably be smaller, smarter and extra deeply embedded within the enterprise than most advertising departments presently are.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe trendy advertising division must be comfy being the patron\u2019s voice in rooms the place advertising was excluded. Finance conferences. Product growth periods. Provide chain selections. The patron\u2019s perspective ought to inform each enterprise resolution. Advertising\u2019s job is to place it there and to be credible sufficient in that room that individuals hear.\u201d<\/p>\n

His expectations of companies observe from that. Havas presently handles its \u20ac75m pan-European inventive account whereas Publicis manages the \u20ac100m+ media account. Having spent years on the company facet, he says he’ll search for companions that deliver \u201coptions quite than choices,\u201d perceive the enterprise quite than simply the temporary and problem the consumer when the temporary is incorrect.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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\u2019s rarer than it must be.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Need to go deeper? Ask The Drum<\/h4>\n


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A rising tide<\/h2>\n

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\u2019s place, he thinks success lies in increasing the class as an entire.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAt 15% of the Western European frozen meals market, Nomad\u2019s development ceiling is considerably decided by the well being of the class. If frozen meals grows, Nomad Meals grows,\u201d he says. \u201cIf 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem is within the notion of frozen meals. As a class, he says it has spent a very long time in a \u201cdefensive crouch\u201d and explaining what it isn\u2019t. The class\u2019s promoting has largely ended up celebrating frozen as acceptable quite than claiming it as superior.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe work I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

After three years, he needs Nomad\u2019s advertising and R&D operate to be generally known as \u201ccommercially courageous,\u201d prepared to make assertive claims, focus funding, kill what isn’t working and arrange measurement that exposes failure as readily as success.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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\u2019t working quite than letting it drift. They arrange a measurement that may reveal failure as simply because it reveals success.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 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 \u2013 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\u2019ll have accomplished one thing value doing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n