Quietly assertive, she avoids marketing jargon and comes across more as a strategy consultant with strong ideas about the direction the company needs to move in and a clear appreciation of the levers of power needed to make things happen.
But transforming a venerable company such as Coke was never going to be easy and, with her reputation for abrasiveness, she made enemies in the company. In the race to become president and chief operating officer, she was beaten by another rising star.
In her first interview since leaving Coke, Ms Minnick admits she can be impatient, but is unrepentant. "Change is uncomfortable, just as a human characteristic and for organisations as a whole. It's challenging, it's complicated and it doesn't always make people comfortable."
During an earlier stint in the marketing department in the early 1990s, Ms Minnick had developed drinks to compete with the likes of Snapple, only to be thwarted by executives who sawthem as a diversion from selling cola.
"Senior level managers said: 'Every time I put a case of your stuff on the truck, I have to take Coke off, and that's not something I'm willing to do,' " she recalls.
This time Ms Minnick went in with a full agenda to reshape the company. It included creating a new products department, which produced some quick launches such as coffee-flavoured Coca-Cola Blak and Enviga, a "fat-burning" sparkling green tea. Other products in the pipeline included "adjacent businesses" outside the normal soft drinks business, such as a premium brewed coffee.
She also rebuilt the marketing department, restoring the company's reputation for advertising with a new campaign using the slogan "The Coke side of life".
"Our recent SuperBowl campaign had the best test scores in 15 years, was much applauded for its sophistication and creativity, and was seen as the best advertising for years," she says.
Ms Minnick refocused research and development, bringing in new skills such as ingredient specialists and flavour scientists. And she started a series of "wellness" projects to bring through drinks with health benefits.
One model was Danone, the French food and water company that makes yog-hurts and other dairy drinks that it claims enhance health. Another, bought by Coke in 2001, was Odwalla, which blends soy milk, natural juices, berries and alfalfa sprouts into smoothie drinks sold through supermarket chill cabinets.
"All the work we did suggested that consumers are using beverages in dramatically different ways, ranging from disease prevention to hydration, to weight reduction, to relaxation, to relieving stress and to fortification of nutrition," she says.
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Soft drink survivor with no bitter aftertaste
By John Willman
Published: February 26 2007 02:00 | Last updated: February 26 2007 02:00
After Mary Minnick, Coca-Cola's marketing chief, was passed over for the number two job late last year, she decided to leave the soft drinks giant and move to Britain.
In 20 months as president of marketing, strategy and innovation, Coke's most senior female executive had created a new products department, introduced drinks with health benefits and reinvigorated the company's advertising.
But transforming a venerable company such as Coke was never going to be easy and, with her reputation for abrasiveness, she made enemies in the company. In the race to become president and chief operating officer, she was beaten by another rising star.
In her first interview since leaving Coke, Ms Minnick admits she can be impatient, but is unrepentant. "Change is uncomfortable, just as a human characteristic and for organisations as a whole. It's challenging, it's complicated and it doesn't always make people comfortable."
Ms Minnick, 47, is a Coke lifer who grew up in small-town Ohio and joined the company on leaving college in 1984. Quietly assertive, she avoids marketing jargon and comes across more as a strategy consultant with strong ideas about the direction the company needs to move in and a clear appreciation of the levers of power needed to make things happen.
She honed her operational skills in Asia, appointed in 1997 to run the South Pacific region which includes Australia and Indonesia. In 2000 she became head of the Japanese division, where most of the profits come from canned coffees and drinks that offer health benefits. Under Ms Minnick, growth picked up as she overhauled marketing and launched dozens of new products.
She was subsequently promoted to head of Asia operations before being brought back to Atlanta - reluctantly - in 2005 by Neville Isdell, chief executive, to run a new division charged with transforming marketing.
Few could deny that Coca-Cola was in need of radical transformation. For the better part of a decade, the Atlanta-based beverages group appeared to have lost momentum.
Its strategy of rolling out its trademark fizzy drink round the world to slake the thirst of upwardly mobile consumers in emerging markets had run out of steam. Their appetite for cola proved much smaller than that of Americans - who, meanwhile, were switching from sweet carbonated drinks to healthy fruit juices and alternative products such as Snapple and Red Bull.
Rivals such as PepsiCo - whose Pepsi-Cola is still outsold by Coke - had diversified much more into alternative drinks, such as Tropicana fruit juices, and snack foods, which now provide more than half its revenues.
During an earlier stint in the marketing department in the early 1990s, Ms Minnick had developed drinks to compete with the likes of Snapple, only to be thwarted by executives who sawthem as a diversion from selling cola.
"Senior level managers said: 'Every time I put a case of your stuff on the truck, I have to take Coke off, and that's not something I'm willing to do,' " she recalls.
This time Ms Minnick went in with a full agenda to reshape the company. It included creating a new products department, which produced some quick launches such as coffee-flavoured Coca-Cola Blak and Enviga, a "fat-burning" sparkling green tea. Other products in the pipeline included "adjacent businesses" outside the normal soft drinks business, such as a premium brewed coffee.
She also rebuilt the marketing department, restoring the company's reputation for advertising with a new campaign using the slogan "The Coke side of life".
"Our recent SuperBowl campaign had the best test scores in 15 years, was much applauded for its sophistication and creativity, and was seen as the best advertising for years," she says.
Ms Minnick refocused research and development, bringing in new skills such as ingredient specialists and flavour scientists. And she started a series of "wellness" projects to bring through drinks with health benefits.
One model was Danone, the French food and water company that makes yog-hurts and other dairy drinks that it claims enhance health. Another, bought by Coke in 2001, was Odwalla, which blends soy milk, natural juices, berries and alfalfa sprouts into smoothie drinks sold through supermarket chill cabinets.
"All the work we did suggested that consumers are using beverages in dramatically different ways, ranging from disease prevention to hydration, to weight reduction, to relaxation, to relieving stress and to fortification of nutrition," she says.
"That opens up huge opportunities for the Cokes and Pepsis of the world. I believe getting aggressive to capitalise on such opportunities makes infinite sense."
Her departure came unexpectedly after Coke named Muhtar Kent as chief operating officer - which made him favourite to succeed Mr Isdell as chief executive.
Ms Minnick says the succession is still to be played out, but she was not prepared to wait.
"In the long term I believe there was still a rewarding career for me at the company but I had to look at the total situation, which was that the CEO succession plan was years off.
"It was time for me to get on with my personal life and to take my career to the next level rather than wait and place bets for another few years."
Getting on with the personal life means permanently settling with her British partner, Simon Cooper, whose business running fly-fishing breaks in the UK had forced the couple to rely on long-distance commuting.
As for her career, John Sicher, editor of Beverage Digest and a veteran Coke watcher, says she made a terrific contribution to the company and to its advertising. "She is an extraordinary talent."
Now she is looking for opportunities at the highest level of British business.
"My first choice would be a full-time operating position, a role where I can work with a team of people to make a difference," she says. "I would really love a company that wants transformational change to take the business to the next level."
Ms Minnick says she has parted from Coca-Cola with respect on both sides. She wishes she had been able to stay to see the long-term projects she launched come to fruition, but she believes the changes she intro-duced will not be reversed.
"I've moved on and I haven't delved into the whys and the whats . . . I'm not bitter. How can you be bitter about 23 years of seeing the world, rising to the ranks where you were a legitimate contender for the number two job, you weren't ruled out for the number one job, and that provided me with limitless opportunities for a brand that most people in the world love?
"It doesn't get any better than that."
Better for boards to spurn 'the safe bet' and pick a woman
If Mary Minnick ends up running a large British business, she will be in very select company. Among the FTSE 100 companies, there are female chief executives only at Drax Power, Pearson (owner of the Financial Times) and - from March 1 - Anglo American, the mining group.
Ms Minnick says it is hardly surprising women remain under-represented in the boardroom.
"The average age of a CEO is 54, and the people who hold those jobs mostly offer 30 years of uninterrupted experience. Boards like uninterrupted experience.
"But in the last 30 years, more women have been coming out of the business schools, and there are now lots of talented women in the roles that are the entry level for the top jobs."
Too often, she says, those who make the top appointments will reject a woman candidate, saying that she is "not quite ready".
Sometimes there is a style issue that makes the decision-makers uncomfortable, but usually it is simply that they are asking the wrong questions.
"Boards are often looking for a candidate who is a 90 per cent known quantity, when they should be ready to invest in a woman who hits 70 per cent of the targets. They might see that as a risk, but I regard that candidate as offering 30 per cent of upside, while the safe bet may have no further to go."
In such cases, she admits, there is a hump to get over: "Someone needs to give you a break."
Once over that hump, other appointments quickly follow. Soon after moving into the top marketing job at Coca-Cola, Ms Minnick joined the board of Target, the US retailer.
For now, she says, she is delighted at the number of inquiries she has received since expressing an interest in taking on board positions with a view to familiarising herself with the UK business scene.
"The interest may be gender-related, but I don't mind."
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
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