Old Brands, New Tricks: Inside Mars’ Digital Marketing Playbook

Mars has some of the world’s most popular brands under its umbrella—including sweet favorites Snickers, Twix, M&Ms and Skittles; as well as pet care giants Royal Canin, Whiskas and Banfield Pet Hospital. They’re iconic brands that many consumers know and love, attracting a large following of loyal customers for generations.

But that doesn’t mean Mars simply relies on the brands’ reputation to increase sales. Gülen Bengi, lead global CMO for Mars, Incorporated, has been leaning hard into technology and social media to continue building the company’s iconic brands and increase engagement. Bengi told me that we’re at a generational inflection point with all of the possibilities of technology for marketing. Today’s edition of the Forbes CMO newsletter focuses on how Bengi has used technology to build brands and amp up engagement with its consumer base.

“It’s a responsibility and a privilege, and I personally believe that the future will be shaped with people, creativity and technology working together—and in that order,” she said.

Until next time.

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A NEW LOOK AT BRAND BUILDING

While it can be argued that Mars’ brands need no work—everyone knows at this point what M&Ms, Kind and Whiskas stand for—Bengi doesn’t take that approach. She’s been architecting a new way to build on those brands since she came to Mars in 2022. The fundamentals of brand building don’t change, she says. Brands need to stand for something, and their meaning and purpose are consistent over time.

What isn’t consistent over time, she said, is the consumer. And while consumers will always want treats and nutrition for themselves and their pets, changes in society necessitate changes in strategy.

“This generation requires a different way of engagement,” Bengi said. “They don’t want to be a passenger. They don’t want to be talked at or innovated at. They want a say in the conversation. That’s why we’re now moving to building relationships that have no dead ends.”

Technology and digital connection can create this enhanced relationship, Bengi said. Mars looks for opportunities for fans of their products to co-create brand experiences. These involve memes, social media experiences, and physical events that bring the brands to the customers. These generate engagement, fun brand association, and sometimes viral sharing experiences for the consumer. To Mars, Bengi said, the digital space brings a wealth of ways to truly measure the impact—and connect with the consumer, bringing both more data to Mars and new ways to personalize marketing in the future.

CREATIVE ENGAGEMENT

In the recent past, Mars has tapped into the intersection of what their brands represent and the social media zeitgeist to produce memorable engagement-driven campaigns.

Last year, Twix—with its trademark two candy bars in one wrapper—launched a “Harmoniser” campaign in Europe. In addition to videos showing that even bad news sounds nice when it’s sung as a harmonized duet, Mars partnered with Meta’s WhatsApp on an AI tool that would let users create that harmony with their own messages. Bengi said the campaign helped Twix stay atop both sales and social feeds, and was a key example of community co-creation.

Another viral social campaign in Europe came around the Euro 2024 soccer tournament. Mars worked with legendary—and often fiery—Portuguese soccer coach José Mourinho for its Snickers brand. The candy bar’s overarching brand campaign has been “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry,” highlighting that people make mistakes when they need a snack. Mars created an AI avatar of Mourinho, letting users create their own Mourinho videos to roast their contacts’ mistakes.

But it’s not just digital experiences. In conjunction with this year’s Super Bowl, a Skittles commercial starring actor Elijah Wood as an odd candy-delivering creature was performed live in a contest-winner’s front yard. The campaign was a partnership with delivery company GoPuff, which had a Skittles Big Game Bundle available during Super Bowl LX.

“We saw incredible fan and community engagement, … a great surge in sales, new users to the brand,” Bengi said. “Some brands benefit from community co-creation in a fun environment. And in this one, this happened even without an actual spot in the Super Bowl [broadcast]. It’s the power of community and fan base, and having experiences that are fun.”

RESPECTING GUARDRAILS

While all of this is fun, both social media and AI have the potential to get out of hand quickly. Bengi said it’s important that Mars keeps its activations from going awry. The company is a part of the Responsible AI Institute, a membership organization that works to ensure the best AI guardrails and controls are in place.

And Bengi said Mars really makes the effort to keep things where the company wants them to be—even when the campaign is based on AI. For the José Mourinho campaign, a lot of work took place behind the scenes to make sure the AI avatar of the often-salty coach didn’t say or do anything regrettable. There were seven layers of AI filters scanning the coach’s videos, Bengi said, and then there was also a human board overseeing the trickiest issues.

The board, which met every day at 9 a.m. to discuss and decide on escalated issues, did make some critical decisions, she said. One of the AI filters was to stop Mourinho from personally insulting any soccer teams. A woman named Chelsea complained to Mars: She wasn’t allowed to make any Mourinho videos because her name is the same as one of the U.K.’s professional soccer teams.

“They had a good laugh and let it go, of course,” Bengi said.

And while the method of brand-building is changing and the tools are evolving, Bengi said that Mars’ marketing values stay the same. She said that the company and its technology partners are all learning as they go.

“We are doing this so that it is fun or value added for the communities, and they respect that,” she said. “We are trusting our brands with their creativity, and they respect that.”

DATA OPPORTUNITIES

While Bengi spends her time with creation, she said measurement is her hobby and passion. Digital engagement creates a wealth of data—a welcome change, she said, since about half of brand building currently comes from non-measured channels. Bengi said Mars is working with a startup to create better measurement tools for the entirety of social and digital marketing: What starts conversations, what enhances or detracts from them, and how they add to actual sales results.

Bengi said they’ve been able to learn a lot from piloting this measurement tool. For example, Mars pinpointed a viral conversation that started with a TikTok video of singer Justin Timberlake eating a Snickers Ice Cream Bar. Olympic legend Michael Phelps responded, and Bengi said the entire sports community took the discussion from there. While it’s apparent without digging into data that this is a good marketing opportunity, Bengi said they now have a much clearer picture of how much it actually impacted sales.

“The more we learn, the more predicted we can get, and we discern the value of some sponsorships, the value of some sort of conversations,” she said.

GETTING MORE INTERACTIVE

With digital technology and user interaction, Bengi said CMOs today have the opportunity to shape brands and conversations.

“And to do that, first, we need to be open, curious and learning,” she said. “So we need to learn—not just read about it, but learn with hands-on experience, with experimentation, and make sure that we shape the context for their relevant category or brand or company, where it will add value.”

She had the following advice for CMOs who also want to use technology to shape their brand for the future.

• Make sure that when we build a tool, it is valuable for the business, the consumer and [the] customer.
• This is here to stay. This is an inflection point: lean in, learn, be curious.
• Users are our powerhouses, so they may make or break [the campaign]. And when you see actual users tell their story and how their life improved, then it spreads like wildfire.

COMINGS + GOINGS

• Personal care and home fragrance retailer Bath & Body Works appointed Veronique Gabai-Pinsky as its first chief brand & product officer, effective May 18. Gabai-Pinsky joins the company after founding her namesake brand, and also worked in leadership at Vera Wang and Estée Lauder prior to that.
• Logistics provider Frontier Scientific Solutions hired Michelle D’Angelo to be its chief commercial officer. D’Angelo joins the firm after more than 25 years in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology CDMO sector.
• HVAC component distributor Heritage Distribution Holdings selected Doug Reichert for its chief commercial officer role, effective May 5. Reichert most recently worked as region president at Carrier Enterprise, and he also worked with Ferguson prior to that.

STRATEGIES + ADVICE

Communities are great marketing tools, but there’s one important thing to remember before you try to leverage them: The strongest communities are not created by brands, but by customers.

As a leader, it’s important to give your team feedback. However, in order to see action, you need to make sure what you say is precise—not overly vague.

QUIZ

President Donald Trump went on a posting spree last Friday night, putting several images—many of them AI generated—on his Truth Social account. Which of these images was not included?

A. Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other cabinet members in swimsuits, lounging in the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool

B. Trump standing next to First Lady Melania Trump as she accepts an Academy Award

C. Trump standing in front of Mount Rushmore, with his face to the right of Abraham Lincoln’s

D. Trump holding a hand of wild cards from Uno, with a caption of, “I have all the cards”

See if you got it right here.