Welcome! I’m Simi Shah, and every other week, I dive deep into the journey of a South Asian trailblazer. If you enjoy this issue, please share with friends and follow us.
📢 We got featured in Forbes! We’re so honored, and we share in this moment with supporters like you who made this possible. Thank you for joining us on this journey. We’re so excited to wrap up this season and jumpstart Season 3 this Summer!
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Season 2 Finale 🎙️ Ann Mukherjee: CEO and Chairman of Pernod Ricard North America
For our Season 2 finale, I welcomed Ann Mukherjee, CEO and Chairman of Pernod Ricard North America.
Ann is a marketing maven turned rebel executive who’s traversed household consumer companies: Pernod Ricard, Kraft Foods, and Pepsi. As Chairman and CEO of Pernod Ricard North America, she heads up hallmark brands in the spirits industry: Absolut, Jameson, Kahlúa, and others. Unafraid to center cultural issues, she led the Absolut team in taking a stand on consent; rallied the company’s manufacturing facilities to produce hand sanitizer in support of FEMA’s response to COVID-19; and she’s currently calling on brands to stop hate speech online.
Ann joined Pernod Ricard from S.C. Johnson, where she broke ground as their first-ever Global Chief Marketing Officer and, later, ascended to the role of Global Chief Commercial Officer — overseeing a $12 billion business division in 90+ markets. She previously made a decade-long impact at PepsiCo, most recently as President of Global Snacks and PepsiCo Global Insights, and as Chief Marketing Officer for Frito-Lay North America. She similarly transformed brands at Kraft Foods Group for over a decade, after starting her career at Citibank Diners Club.
You’re known for some of the most innovative marketing campaigns — from “Crash the Superbowl” which introduced fan-made ads as a first in the industry to the “Sex Responsibly” campaign for Absolut Vodka. Do you have any memorable anecdotes as to how you ideated these campaigns?
I'll go back to “Crash Super Bowl.” Picture this. It's 2006. I had just come into Frito-Lay. Nobody knows me. There's this business that I've been given called Doritos which has been declining year upon year. It's a multibillion-dollar brand in massive trouble.
This was a brand that had been inconsistent for years. But a couple of brave people that said, ‘You know what, this could be a career limiter, but I'm gonna sign up for this brand. Give us two months. Let’s figure this out.’ So they did. Not only did they figure out the right strategy, they also created this incredible enclave of out-of-the-box thinkers. At my first meeting on Doritos, they say, ‘We want to make a Superbowl ad, so we're gonna need $2 - $3 million. And by the way, a consumer is going to make it.’
I sat there and said, ‘What did you just say to me?’ Here's the thing: I was back to no rulebook, nothing to lose. I had never done a Superbowl ad before, so I didn't know that if we failed, it would be a big deal. So I said, ‘Well, okay, let's try it.’ So I convinced our CEO, and I started setting up the whole thing. And the idea was brilliant. This thing just blew the doors off — it ran for 10 years and dethroned Budweiser as the number one Superbowl advertiser. So when you know a great idea, you just go after it.
You’re not afraid to get political. A lot of companies have shied away from this. Most recently, Coinbase and Basecamp basically told their employees not to get political in the building. How have you stood by this in your decision making as a CEO and as a marketing leader?
As leaders, we have to remember two things. One, we now live in an age where your consumers don't just want to buy brands, they want to buy into them. They want to know what you stand for and what you stand against.
That goes back to the timeless story.
The reason we could do ‘Sex Responsibly’ with Absolut is because the timeless story of Absolut has always been being a provocative brand. They believe in the power of inclusion — they were talking about Gay Rights back in the 70s, before anyone was willing to talk about it. So it authentically can talk about consent, the contemporary today being the #MeToo movement.
Number two, as a CEO, and I implore all CEOs to remember this: our companies are a microcosm of the country. I have lots of employees who are conservative and lots who are liberal. We are a divided America. To me, it isn't about being partisan, it's about helping both sides be together because they have to work together. CEOs have to understand how do to bring people together and be inclusive of all sides. That's what you've got to do for your company. That's what you have to do with your brands — each of your brands stand for something different.
