Mondelēz International’s Rachel Lawson on brand marketing, retail media and the importance of diversity

For Rachel Lawson, brand marketing is a labor of love. With almost 12 years of experience at Mondelēz International, she’s seen the rapid rise of e-commerce and now — as the director of shopper marketing — is on the front lines of another evolution: retail media.

Lawson joined Editor-in-Chief Stephanie Paterik in The Current studio at Advertising Week New York in October. There, she shared her insights on the power of retail data, which is not only enhancing brand campaigns with more targeted media but also opening up new channels of communication between the marketers and sales teams.

What has surprised you most this year? Is there a trend, a news story, an insight that has changed your own personal call to action and how you’re going to go into 2025?

As a marketer, I grew up being very precious with my brand, and very precious with the role I had. What I recognized this year is we all love marketing.

We all really want to drive the best results we can get. And once we start really teaching each other and talking to each other, it’s really made our marketing campaigns stronger. I don’t want to sound cynical, but the surprise was how easy it was to actually collaborate with better communication.

That seems like a more recent unlock across the board. And sets up 2025 to be a different kind of year.

It does. Right now, we’re planning for 2025, and I approached the planning season totally different.

What do you think the shift has been?

Retail media. We’re all excited about the fact that we can get more data, that we can get data that’s more believable because this is the shopper. You can literally say, this many shoppers, this customer, saw this piece of content and acted this way. So having that information created a new opportunity for us.

And then also a lot of our retailers have gone out of their way to really stay at the forefront of advertising. This is a huge shift for them. There are lots of opportunities to test and to learn. And that’s one thing that Mondelēz absolutely loves to do and I do as well — try to figure out how we can push content and media to the next level.

And it is no secret that retail media and retail data have really taken the industry by storm. What do you see as the greatest promise of retail media?

Two things: One, I see the collaboration that I have as a marketer with the trade team, with my sales team and with the retailer that we didn’t really have before.

That’s what excites me the most about retail media. It’s really up to our education on both sides in terms of the role that media plays in influencing, communicating with the shopper.

And then the more obvious answer is the targeting. We really are able to target consumers. I love the fact that I’m able to make sure that I’m talking to people who I know are interested in my products. Or people I know have never purchased my products at that retailer. So, the targeting as well as a collaboration have really opened up the doors in terms of making my job more efficient and more effective.

Retail media is expected to grow a lot in the next couple of years, catching up to social media in terms of spend. What challenges do you see, if any, to that growth?

Resources. I think the biggest one is that that’s kind of the pull we’re in right now, in terms of [the fact that] budgets really aren’t getting bigger. For the most part, they’re not getting bigger.

So it’s really kind of, how do we make sure we’re being as clear to our goals as possible, continu[ing] to redefine the roles of different levers that we have and having strong analysis?

What is your hot take on advertising?

My hot take is — I think we all know this — but we sometimes forget how important it is to have diversity. Not just of thought, but actually of background and experience in advertising. That was really kind of popular to kind of buzzy a couple of years ago. And the buzz is kind of worn down, but it’s still really important to have empathy with our consumers and recognize how diverse our consumers are. And we need to make sure that we’re continuing to ensure that we have diversity throughout the advertising cycle.

Yes, diversity cannot be a trend that comes and goes.

Exactly.

How are you approaching your work or your team in a way that brings that to the fore

In a couple of ways. One, being more collaborative. So I’ve offered up to my teammates and to others that I can always be a sounding board. If you are communicating something or going after a target and you might want a Black woman’s perspective, I can provide that, and I try to seek that out as well.

I also provide my comments and thoughts openly with my advertising teams to make sure they understand and are hearing my point of view. And I do ask questions in terms of who’s working on this content.

I do remind people that it is important for my own team — but for other teams, it’s really important that we do have a huge variety of voices at the table.