Q&A: Marc Jacobs, Domino Foods

Marc Jacobs
VP-Sales and Marketing, Consumer Division, Domino Foods

Vital Statistics:
Age: 49
Lives in: Mendham, New Jersey
Office based in: Iselin, New Jersey
Tenure at Domino Foods, Inc.: One and one-half years
Size of team: Three

How is your approach to marketing evolving?
We’re trying to better understand our core consumer and figure out what marketing vehicles they’d prefer us to use to communicate with them. And the big evolution for us is figuring out how to attract a younger consumer. Our core consumer is 45 or 50-plus, and has grown up with our brands. That core consumer is getting older. If we want to sustain our business long-term, we’ve got to become more relevant with the younger consumers, too.

The challenge we have with that younger consumer is that he or she is someone who grew up during the “sugar is bad for you” phase of our category. During the heyday of the Atkins diet—late in the ‘90s and the earlier part of this century—sugar really had a bad name. It was linked to childhood obesity and fat in general.

We’ve weathered that storm as those types of problems are now being linked to high fructose corn syrup. People are beginning to understand how naturally occurring sugar is and view sugar in moderation as part of a healthy diet and lifestyle. We want to build on that.

The younger consumers aren’t people that look at the Sunday newspaper and clip coupons. They’re not consumers who walk up and down aisles of grocery stores. In some cases, they don’t even shop in a traditional grocery store. So we’ve got to figure out where to find those consumers, what their shopping habits are and utilize the communication vehicles that have efficacy with them.

How does your role differ from the same role five years ago?
Historically, we’ve taken a traditional approach to marketing our products—very tactical, very trade-driven, and very much coupon-driven. We’d have a set FSI (free standing insert) schedule where we’d run four or five FSIs during the year around the traditional consumption periods. The sales force then pursued feature ad and display activity at those times.

We are now broadening our approaches to drive awareness and loyalty, and communicate with consumers at the point where they’re making their brand decision—whether that is in or out-of-store.

What’s your definition of experiential marketing?
It’s really what we’ve always done—engage consumers with our brands. What’s evolved and changed is the type of marketing vehicles that we use. It’s what I talked about a little bit earlier in terms of the generation change. As new consumers come into the marketplace, we have to utilize marketing vehicles that are relevant to them.

How does event marketing fit into that overall mix?
Event marketing is a tactic of experience. It’s reaching consumers where they’re open to your message.

One example is what we do with Share Our Strength through The Great American Bake Sale. Share Our Strength is working to end childhood hunger, and we’ve partnered with them to encourage people to hold bake sales in their communities to raise money for the cause. This works on two levels. First, the Great American Bake Sale platform drives incremental consumption of sugar by tying in with groups of people who are baking to raise money for Share our Strength. On the second level it raises money for and promotes a great cause.

The next step for this program is to integrate it with the retailer trade; get retailers excited about what we’re doing to drive in-store merchandising. The program benefits the retailer because [when a shopper goes] into the center store, they typically shop in multiple aisles and increase their total spending. So the retailer has the opportunity to convert that consumer [to a larger number of purchases] by promoting the event which drives them into the center of the store to buy sugar. And by promoting the event, retailers get positive public relations because they’re raising money to fight childhood hunger.

What are the challenges of managing a brand that has two separate identities?
Both C&H and Domino have very high awareness, loyalty and equity in the marketplace. The real challenge is the tactical execution of national marketing. If we run national TV, radio or an FSI, the complexity is in understanding the [differences in the] markets where Domino and C&H are sold. It’s not something we can’t overcome—we’ve been doing it for years.

How do you keep everything coordinated so that the various media and approaches stay integrated?
That starts up front with our planning process. It’s understanding who our core consumers are for each of these brands—what message we want to communicate to them, and what the different tactical vehicles we want to use to reach them . We’re in an evolving process in terms of how we go to market. I’m a big believer in testing and learning—sitting down and asking, “What are the types of things we want to try?” Then we put some money aside and take an area of the country or a retailer and go test and learn. [That’s what we did with] The Great American Bake Sale, which has proven to be a long term sustainable platform for us.

We also have an opportunity to improve in-store execution. So as we look into 2009, we want to link our consumer efforts with one or more retailers. Everybody has their own cause marketing and social sustainability efforts, but there might be one or two retailers that we can get excited. If we can put some promotion together with them, we can drive business for both the retailer and us.

What sort of activities and hobbies do you participate in during your free time?
I have two boys, 14 and 12 years old, who are very active. They’re big into sports and through out their lives, I’ve helped coach their sports teams. Through that I’ve gotten closer to them and also made wonderful friends in the community. My family is very, very important to me. I think that makes me a better employee; more well-rounded.

I’m also a huge reader. I read a lot of history and historical biography. And when I come to work I like to laugh a lot and have a great time—because I do spend a lot of time here at work.