Girl Guides: Mondelez CMO Dana Anderson on how to be fearless

In her new role of chief marketing officer, Dana Anderson oversees Mondelez’s global portfolio of advertising, media and marketing – the conduit between internal brand teams and agencies as they shape the public image of brands including Cadbury, Oreo and Toblerone. As part of The Drum’s series championing female role models, she tells Jen Faull why the agency/client relationship is like a Shakespearean play with lots of misunderstanding, which both sides can overcome with bravery and honesty.

“Have you heard of George Meyer?” asks Dana Anderson, chief marketing officer at Mondelez. “He’s a writer, and for 10 years didn’t take a writing credit on The Simpsons.”

An odd reference, made as Anderson discusses the kind of marketer she believes herself to be. She explains that it comes from Adam Grant, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who suggests that there are three types of people: takers who will get as much as they can from others without returning the favour; matchers who expect something in return; and givers who will help and support others without hope of receiving anything in return.

Anderson says that she, like Meyer, is a giver.

“What if marketers quit being nasty and actually started being generous? Because generous people are at the very tip top of the success ladder and have learned how to be influential and connect people while still doing what they have to do. So when I’m not sure what to do, I think, what is the generous thing to do?”

One thing Anderson is certainly generous with is her time as she speaks to The Drum during a brief break in her hectic schedule at Advertising Week New York.

Anderson flew in from Chicago to present on three different panels a mere week after taking on the new role of chief marketing officer – having previously served as senior vice-president of marketing strategy and communications.

The promotion came as part of a complete C-level reorganisation at the confectionary giant to encourage a more “integrated” approach to marketing across its brand categories. Now, category partners such as biscuits report directly to Anderson, and in turn she oversees and supports their growth in key markets.

“I know it sounds really basic and simple, but it’s the first time we’ve ever worked this way,” she says.

Anderson joined the company three years before it split from Kraft, having spent 25 years agency-side, working for the likes of Y&R, JWT, FCB and DDB Chicago – where she was president and chief executive.

This background has proved invaluable in her current remit and she says that learning about the client and agency relationship is one of the things she has found most interesting over the years.

“I have to think of my job like a midwife. I’m not taking the baby home,” she laughs.

“My job is to make that agency and that client come together successfully. And I’m there to talk to each one and help them both towards a good outcome.”

When she was working for agencies, she “really thought she understood it”. But now, looking from the other side, she realises that the agency/client relationship “is like a Shakespearean play” with a lot of miscommunication and misunderstanding.

This has led Anderson to help set up the ‘Getting Great to Good’ initiative at Mondelez, a programme designed to regularly bring agencies in to help them understand what clients want and, by the same token, help marketers get to grips with the inner workings of an agency.

“We have ‘Fearless Fridays’ in the office and have people in to talk about how to be fearless. Because it’s almost like you have to ask it, you have to ask people to be fearless. So class marketers learn about what turns an agency on and what makes creative people tick,” she says.

Her biggest lesson from the years she spent agency-side, and one she’s brought into Mondelez, is that selling work because you’re on deadline, and not because it’s 100 per cent right, erodes the trust between agency and client.

“At the end of a tight deadline you bring what you have. Is it the best? Well you’re past that because you have a deadline and are just selling, selling, selling what you’ve got. It’s much better for an agency to just say ‘we’re not there yet’. Otherwise the client’s trust in you is affected,” she explains.

It’s helping people come over obstacles like this, helping them to be brave and find their dream, that Anderson has found most rewarding over the course of her career. “To help people fall in love with their jobs is a great thing.”

But loving your job alone isn’t going to fulfil most people, and she’s grateful for the support of her family – her daughter, Grace, and husband.

“Work is enjoyable. But it will never love you like family. And that is the touchstone, the grounding place. If everything else went away, they’re still there to love you. I’m lucky because I like my work and it’s really energising.”

It’s evident this energy is what drives Anderson’s drive to continue learning – something she advises anyone entering the industry to never stop doing.

“In the business we’re in you’ll always learn, change and grow. If you draw a line and say I’m done learning, I’m just going to work, then it’s limiting in the saddest way. The most interesting people I know can’t get enough – can’t read enough, see enough or share enough.”

And of course, share what you learn with everyone else around you.