BOSTON — Having spent over eight months as the corporate senior vice president and president, North America operating unit for the Coca-Cola Co., Jennifer K. Mann has formed ideas for growing the business. They include expansion in energy drinks and soft drink packaging sizes that appeal to cost-conscious consumers.
Ms. Mann said she began her new role with a “tremendous amount of listening, both internally and externally.”
“And the feedback I got from everybody was very consistent, which is our (organizational) structure was very complex,” she said in a Sept. 7 presentation at the Barclays Global Consumer Staples Conference in Boston. “We were spreading ourselves across way too many priorities, and so I really focused in a few areas this year since I’ve taken over the role.”
Coca-Cola has reallocated resources to more frontline marketing and more frontline customer and sales teams, she said.
“I’m not happy with where we are on BodyArmor,” Ms. Mann said. “There is a lot of work to do, but we’ve got a very focused action plan with better marketing, more innovation and better execution in the marketplace. We’re starting to see some progress against that action plan.”
BodyArmor Sports Nutrition this year launched BodyArmor Flash I.V., a “rapid rehydration” beverage, and the sports drink brand will expand into Canada and Mexico in 2024.
In soft drinks, sales of the Coke brand have grown in the high single-digit percentages this year with Diet Coke, Fanta and Coke Zero Sugar sales growing by double-digit percentages.
“We’re also staying very focused on our algorithm, which is to continue to drive revenue ahead of transactions, ahead of volume,” Ms. Mann said. “And we’ve got a lot of new packages that are underway as well with the 1.25-liter, our 16-oz cans that are really meeting the consumers where they are in terms of some of the lower price points and more affordable options.”
Ms. Mann began working at Coca-Cola in 1997, rising to corporate senior vice president and president of global. She took over her current position from Alfredo Rivera on Jan. 1 of this year.
