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AUGUST 8, 2011
Could Kraft split be a
Marketer-led reviews
have shops crying foul blueprint for blue chips?

For agencies feeling put-upon by procurement,
suddenly search consultants don’t seem so bad
Its soon-to-be-separate companies offer up case study
on why some brands go global—and others don’t

■ BY RUPAL PAREKH rparekh@adage.com

■ BY E.J. SCHULTZ eschultz@adage.com

SINCE TAKING THE helm at Kraft Foods five years ago, CEO Irene Rosenfeld has overseen an aggressive marketing makeover, making ad agency changes at a breakneck pace, hiking spending across several of Kraft’s iconic brands and driving a gutsy move last year to acquire candy giant Cadbury.

But Kraft’s plan to split the compa-
ny, announced last week, appears to be
an acknowledgement that the transfor-
mation will never click on all cylinders
unless a radical new operational struc-
ture is in place. The plan, which would
create a $32 billion international snacks
business, including Cadbury, Oreo and
Trident brands, and a $16 billion North
American grocery business, which will
include Kraft Macaroni and Cheese,
Oscar Mayer, Philadelphia, Maxwell
House, Jell-O and other non-snack
brands, seems to be a financial move,
designed in part to please activist
investors who have called for the com-
pany to separate its high-growth global
snack brands from its slower-growing,
more mature grocery brands. But it also
holds lessons for multinational mar-

The Kraft CEO has overseen an aggressive marketing makeover.

See KRAF T on Page 25

ON JUNE 29, the head of new business
at DDB North America, Brandon
Snow, fired off this tweet: “Gotta love
this biz. RFI shows up today, for a
response by July 6th. I truly believe
clients think agencies don’t need holi-
day time off.”
Ill-advised as it may be to bemoan a
chance to pitch a new account, Mr.
Snow’s hardly the only exec frustrated
by the agency review process these
days. A few of the complaints on the
list: hyper-condensed timelines; unfair
requests by marketers to own specula-
tive creative or strategic work; a lack of
transparency about the size of the ulti-
mate prize; and inadequate or no com-
pensation to offset the costs of pitching.
One new-business leader at a U.S.
agency told Ad Age that of the seven
pitches her shop is currently involved
in, it’s only being compensated for one.