Costa Coffee has recruited a new global chief marketing officer as part of the company’s plans to ramp up its customer experience and expand into new markets.
Cecile Angrand joins the Coca-Cola-owned business from The Bel Group, the €3.6bn French-owned business behind brands including The Laughing Cow, Kiri, Babybel and Boursin, where she has been chief growth officer since May 2022.
Prior to that, the French national had two spells at Mars, including seven years as global CMO of catfood brands. She also spent four years as head of innovation, strategy and insights at Nestlé Nespresso and has held senior roles at Kraft Foods and Cadbury.
In her new role, Angrand will lead the coffee chain’s brand, digital, loyalty, product innovation, insights and corporate affairs marketing teams.
Reporting to both Costa Coffee CEO Philippe Schaillee and Coca-Cola Company global CMO Manuel Arroyo, Angrand will sit on Costa Coffee’s global executive team and Coca-Cola’s global marketing executive team.
She said: “I’m thrilled to be joining Costa Coffee as its new CMO. I’m looking forward to working for an amazing brand, reinforcing the consumer brand experience and helping expand to new consumer, platform and geographies. All the while embracing Costa Coffee’s values and leveraging synergies with the Coca-Cola Company.”
Founded in London in 1971 by two brothers Bruno and Sergio Costa as a wholesale operation supplying roasted coffee to caterers and specialist Italian coffee shops, the business is headquartered in Bedfordshire, and operates over 4,000 stores across 45 markets. It was acquired by Coca-Cola for £3.9bn ($5.4bn) in 2018.
In 2021, Costa Coffee appointed its first ever global head of consumer data and digital analytics, handing the role to Ed Child, the former Asda and Walmart insight and analytics chief.
The Costa Coffee Club loyalty app, which has been downloaded over 5 million times from the Google App Store, sits at the heart of the firm’s data strategy.
The company’s marketing and advertising account has been handled by VML (formerly Wunderman Thompson) since September 2022. The agency, which took over from BBH London, runs the business out of its UK office and works alongside M&C Saatchi and Pablo, which handle the loyalty scheme.
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