Globally Mondelez, the FMCG company that owns Cadbury, Philadelphia and Oreo, has set a target to spend 10% of its total media and marketing on mobile. In Australian market that figure is likely to rise to up to 20%, according to Mondelez managing director of snacks Amanda Banfield.
The increase in budget is a knock on from the Mobile Futures scheme it put in place last year.
It is unlikely to re-run Mobile Futures in the same way this year, but is using it as a jump off for how it accelerates the adoption of mobile throughout the business. Towards the end of last year Mondelez unveiled some early findings from those pilot schemes, with some seeing conversion rates up to 50%.
Speaking to AdNews at the culmination of its Mobile Futures 90-day programme, former marketer Banfield said: “Globally, we’ve said that the percentage of our total media spend will be 10% in the mobile digital space and that’s a very deliberate strategy and actually if we’re going to come out and say that’s we’ve got to do and we’re doing it. In the case of Australia and New Zealand, we’ll probably spend about 20% of all media if not a bit more actually, so going into next year the digital space is a significant proportion of our spend.”
“We’re able to do that and confident that we’re going to get an ROI on that. And that’s really because what we are in the game of is having lots of connection, a lot of the time. So it will cost but it can also allow us to be a bit more immediate and have those kind of ongoing connections. We absolutely see that it’s a really big space for us and there is a return in that. I would expect that as we get better at it, that return will increase as well. And I think that’s the key thing that we’re learning how to kind of work most effectively in that place as well.”
While it is increasing investment in mobile, it’s not turning its back on traditional marketing – not by a long shot.
“In the end, we’re a mainstream mass manufacturing market so we are not going to be destroying everything to use mobile to express ourselves. But we need to be happy enough and educated enough and up to date enough frankly. We need to partner with the best people and challenge them and work frantically with them in a way that we take this forward together. It’s just about getting ahead of the curve to be able to do that,” she said.
Read more about what Mondelez learned from its Mobile Futures program in the next print issue of AdNews – out 6 . February. Subscribe in print here. You can also buy individual issues on iPad
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