Case Study Of Trade Marketing At Coca-Cola
I am currently the Trade Marketing Manager for Middle East at Almarai, the largest dairy company in the region. I hold BSc and MSc degrees in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA degree from the best business school in Pakistan, LUMS.
One of the best decisions of my professional life has been to hire Ahmed Salman Tariq at Coca-Cola Pakistan.
When I took over the role of Head of Trade Marketing at Coca-Cola in 2014, I realized that in order to benchmark Coca-Cola with other established companies of Pakistan, I needed to bring in vibrant professionals who would have exceptional business knowledge and a fresh perspective of the industry. I remember that our Marketing Director, Mariam Khan, did a thorough industry research and asked me to interview …show more content…
He was able to develop the ‘Trade Marketing Vision 2020’ which benchmarked Coca-Cola Pakistan with other Coca-Cola companies around the world and then proposed a comprehensive set of initiatives to help the business grow. I was pleasantly surprised with the level of in-depth understanding Ahmed inculcated in this plan. He clearly leveraged the complete set of information and the knowledge from his previous experiences and understood the financials and investment opportunities. Later, Ahmed introduced the first-ever channel activation program which successfully enhanced Coca-Cola’s in-store visibility and curtailed trade discounts to increase profitability by USD$200k.
When Coca-Cola restructured the trade marketing department to adopt the ‘brand’ angle, I gave Ahmed the role of Shopper Marketing Manager for Coca-Cola. As Coca-Cola is the biggest brand of the company, I was confident that only Ahmed would be able to drive this crucial portfolio. Ahmed proved to be an extremely fast learner and I was pleased to see how quickly Ahmed learnt about the history and values of such a valuable brand. Ahmed re-oriented himself to drive the business through a completely fresh …show more content…
Ahmed has excellent quantitative and problem-solving skills and over time, he has mastered the skill of articulating his ideas to his audience.
A wonderful example of this strength would be his contribution in executing 2016’s Coke Studio campaign. Ahmed was able to develop innovative in-store shopper communication tools through a deep understanding of shopper insights. He was able to execute innovative merchandising for hypermarkets, jukeboxes for upscale restaurants and ‘Dhamaals’ (concerts) for the mass-scale traditional trade. I cannot recall any other individual in the team who would have such insightful knowledge of Pakistan’s retail market.
The plan Ahmed developed set new benchmarks of execution for Coca-Cola Pakistan and was even recognized at the global level. Brand Coca-Cola grew by 32% in value during the campaign duration, in line with global agenda to grow value ahead of volume, and helped Coca-Cola gain significant market share over Pepsi. Our Chief Commercial Officer nominated Ahmed to present the key learnings of the plan to the regional teams at Coca-Cola Dubai office, an achievement which clearly differentiates Ahmed from his
One of the best decisions of my professional life has been to hire Ahmed Salman Tariq at Coca-Cola Pakistan.
When I took over the role of Head of Trade Marketing at Coca-Cola in 2014, I realized that in order to benchmark Coca-Cola with other established companies of Pakistan, I needed to bring in vibrant professionals who would have exceptional business knowledge and a fresh perspective of the industry. I remember that our Marketing Director, Mariam Khan, did a thorough industry research and asked me to interview …show more content…
He was able to develop the ‘Trade Marketing Vision 2020’ which benchmarked Coca-Cola Pakistan with other Coca-Cola companies around the world and then proposed a comprehensive set of initiatives to help the business grow. I was pleasantly surprised with the level of in-depth understanding Ahmed inculcated in this plan. He clearly leveraged the complete set of information and the knowledge from his previous experiences and understood the financials and investment opportunities. Later, Ahmed introduced the first-ever channel activation program which successfully enhanced Coca-Cola’s in-store visibility and curtailed trade discounts to increase profitability by USD$200k.
When Coca-Cola restructured the trade marketing department to adopt the ‘brand’ angle, I gave Ahmed the role of Shopper Marketing Manager for Coca-Cola. As Coca-Cola is the biggest brand of the company, I was confident that only Ahmed would be able to drive this crucial portfolio. Ahmed proved to be an extremely fast learner and I was pleased to see how quickly Ahmed learnt about the history and values of such a valuable brand. Ahmed re-oriented himself to drive the business through a completely fresh …show more content…
Ahmed has excellent quantitative and problem-solving skills and over time, he has mastered the skill of articulating his ideas to his audience.
A wonderful example of this strength would be his contribution in executing 2016’s Coke Studio campaign. Ahmed was able to develop innovative in-store shopper communication tools through a deep understanding of shopper insights. He was able to execute innovative merchandising for hypermarkets, jukeboxes for upscale restaurants and ‘Dhamaals’ (concerts) for the mass-scale traditional trade. I cannot recall any other individual in the team who would have such insightful knowledge of Pakistan’s retail market.
The plan Ahmed developed set new benchmarks of execution for Coca-Cola Pakistan and was even recognized at the global level. Brand Coca-Cola grew by 32% in value during the campaign duration, in line with global agenda to grow value ahead of volume, and helped Coca-Cola gain significant market share over Pepsi. Our Chief Commercial Officer nominated Ahmed to present the key learnings of the plan to the regional teams at Coca-Cola Dubai office, an achievement which clearly differentiates Ahmed from his