What AB InBev wants from its marketers | WARC | The Feed

What AB InBev wants from its marketers

Anheuser-Busch InBev, the brewer, wants its marketing teams to be human-centric, growth-orientated and to reflect the diverse communities served by the company’s brands.

Marcel Marcondes, AB InBev's global chief marketing officer, discussed this subject in a LIONS Marketers Series event held by LIONS, which, like WARC, is owned by Ascential.

Why it matters

Marketers are facing a complex environment, from rapidly-developing new technologies to disruption in consumer spending as a result of inflation and the vicissitudes of the on-going COVID-19 pandemic. Guiding principles can help brand teams focus on what really matters.

Takeaways

For Marcondes, there are three “big dimensions” that should be vital considerations for marketing practitioners:

• Human-centric: “I think it's so easy, in our teams, for us to talk to ourselves, and to start everything we do by [thinking about]: What do we need as a company?” he said. “And we need to change the focus from us to consumers, and then they should be the starting point for everything. So we need people that are human-centric.”
• Diversity: “For me, our success is directly connected to the ability that we have, inside our offices, to have the same representation as we have in real life with our consumers. And this is how we establish rapport with them.”
• Growth-orientated: “The big risk of marketing over time is to be seen as an expense,” he continued. “But marketing, now, more than ever, is in the best position ever to be seen as the most important area in terms of growth creation.”

The big idea

“To connect that humanity with growth creation, and then via creativity, data analytics and all those skills is what really needs to be done in the marketing of the future.” – Marcel Marcondes, global chief marketing officer, AB InBev.

Sourced from LIONS