‘An engine of growth, not a cost’: Carlsberg’s CMO on marketing’s imperative to drive growth

Carlsberg’s new CMO is on a mission to transform the business’s marketing from being “OK” to “exceptionally good”, as he seeks to position the function as a growth driver for the company.

Yves Briantais first joined the company, which owns brands such as Tuborg and Brooklyn Brewery, as well as Carlsberg itself, in August 2024. Speaking to Marketing Week, he is crystal clear on his overarching objective as he approaches one year in role.

“The entire discussion we have at Carlsberg is all about growth and how we accelerate growth,” Briantais says.

That growth mindset was something that was evident from his first meeting with the group’s CEO Jacob Aarup-Anderson and, as CMO, he sees marketing as having an absolutely crucial role to play in the brewer’s mission to drive growth across its brands.

“Marketing is an engine of growth. It’s a growth driver, not a cost centre,” he asserts.

The ‘why’ in marketing is not to deliver communication, that’s a ‘what’. The why is growth.

Yves Briantais, Carlsberg

But that growth won’t come easy. Carlsberg is blessed with an “incredible” portfolio, he says, with “jewels” such as its namesake and brands with “great potential” like Tuborg. But today’s environment and the challenging beer category means growth isn’t always straightforward.

As an engine of growth in the business, it is marketing’s responsibility to work as effectively as possible to meet this challenge.

“Now, our marketing is OK,” says Briantais. “But that’s not enough in this world. We need to make it exceptionally good.”

As CMO, he is on a mission to drive that exceptional quality across the marketing function. That includes team and talent, commercial acumen, innovation and creative effectiveness.Why Carlsberg’s CMO is doubling down on ‘Probably the best’

On the latter, Briantais has big ambitions for Carlsberg. Speaking against the backdrop of Cannes Lions last month, he told Marketing Week that he wants the business to be among the best of the best.

“We want to be Marketer of the Year,” he asserts, referring to the Cannes Lions’ Creative Marketer of the Year accolade, which was this year won by Apple.

“Give us four or five years,” Briantais says of Carlsberg, confident that it has the “cornerstones” in place to drive success.

Marketing is “not a fluffy concept”

Carlsberg is undergoing a transformation designed to improve its marketing and drive growth across the business. But the first stone to be laid on this path is ensuring that everyone in the organisation is on the same page when it comes to the role of marketing within the business.

Briantais says that building an understanding of marketing as an engine of growth was his first priority when he joined the organisation last August.

This is an understanding that any marketer would aspire to have in his or her business, but one that many fall short of achieving.

Coming into Carlsberg, Briantais says he drove this understanding by leaning on data, for example, to illustrate the relationship between creative excellence and commercial results.

If a marketer thinks profitability is not his or her job, there’s an issue.

Yves Briantais, Carlsberg

“It’s not just me saying it. It’s not a fluffy concept,” he states, adding there is plenty of data to illustrate the relationship between marketing and growth. “It’s not about saying it, it’s about showing it.”

Additionally, marketers themselves must work to play a part in driving business objectives, he notes. He tells his team that they must take on the role of “CEO of their own brand”, and take responsibility for the outcomes they drive.

There is a danger that marketers can become fixated on the advertising aspect of the role and, in turn, forget that this exists as a means to an end. Marketing Week’s recent Career & Salary Survey found that most marketers see their roles confined to promotion or communications, and have little to no influence over pricing, distribution and product.

Briantais says he tells his team to think about the “what, why and how” of marketing.

Most marketers don’t have influence over the 4Ps excluding promotion

“The ‘why’ in marketing is not to deliver communication, that’s a ‘what’. The why is growth. Growth has to come from many places, and you, as a marketer, you need to understand your P&L, and not one line of the P&L only,” he asserts.

That means an understanding of the bottom line as well as the top, says Briantais, meaning marketers should understand profit as well as revenue.

“If a marketer thinks profitability is not his or her job, there’s an issue,” he says.

The level of investment a business is able to make is determined by the net income or profit it is able to generate, he adds.

Making brand a priority for everyone

Brand “generalists”, as Briantais terms them, should be “obsessed” with their brand’s growth as if they’re its own CEO, he says. They ought to be interested in investing in whatever levers necessary, be that communications or new product or new pack innovation, to drive that growth.

However, Briantais is not a believer that everyone within the business needs to be a jack of all trades. Indeed, the Carlsberg Group has been increasingly focused on hiring specialists in areas like creativity, digital, media and analytics as part of its goal to transform its marketing function. The idea being to harness these individuals’ “superpowers” and use them to best effect in the organisation.

As well as hiring new specialists, the CMO is focused on upskilling the business, and is introducing a marketing academy to the organisation to help with this.

I want more people than marketing to understand marketing. I believe marketing should not be the job of the marketing function only.

Yves Briantais, Carlsberg

With generative AI becoming more and more commonplace in working processes, Briantais is keen to encourage his marketers to maintain their critical thinking skills.

“I want people to think. That’s the danger of AI, the danger of data, the danger of algorithms, is that we expect machines to do the thinking instead of us,” he says, adding that it is those that work with AI, rather than expecting it to work for them, who will succeed in the future.

The Carlsberg Group is aiming to upskill its marketing workforce to drive growth for its brands. But it is also looking to talent across the whole organisation.Marketing leaders on tackling the upskilling imperative

“I want more people than marketing to understand marketing,” Briantais says. “I believe marketing should not be the job of the marketing function only.”

Carlsberg is a brand-led organisation, and so Briantais would like to get to the stage where everyone in the business sees it as their responsibility to “fight” for the future of the company’s portfolios of brands and protect their future.

His “dream” is that Carlsberg could get to a stage where ideas that traditionally would come from marketing could come from anywhere in the organisation, with everyone in the business bought into the goal of driving brand equity with the end result of growth.

“Agnostic” view of growth

In the same way Briantais is open to ideas coming from anywhere in the organisation, so too is he “agnostic” with where growth could come from in the Carlsberg Group portfolio.

With this year’s acquisition of British soft drinks maker Britvic, the business has moved from being largely focused on beer, to having a much broader range of beverage brands in its portfolio.

The beer category remains “challenging” but far from doomed, says Briantais, adding that one of Carlsberg’s central missions is asking itself, “what do we need to do to reimagine the beer category?”

If you start with the goal of getting consumers to drink more beverages from [Carlsberg], you will not be wedded to one category or another.

Yves Briantais, Carlsberg

That means driving excitement back to the category, he says, and not being bound to its traditional boundaries. For example, challenging itself on the taste profile of beer by introducing more “fun” flavours.

But the business is taking a further step back as it looks at the big picture for driving growth.

“And I will even say further, how do we reimagine the beverage category?” adds Briantais. “Because now we have the luxury of being a one-stop beverage company.”

With soft drinks as well as alcohol brands in its portfolio, Carlsberg now sees itself as more of a rounded beverage business, rather than a brewer. For his part, Briantais says he is “super agnostic” about where future growth comes from.

The overarching way to grow is simply to get more consumers to buy more beverages from the business, he says.Positioning brands as a ‘powerhouse’ of growth: How marketing at Britvic secured 30% more investment

“If you start with the goal of getting consumers to drink more beverages from [Carlsberg], you will not be wedded to one category or another,” he says.

Taking this agnostic viewpoint means Carlsberg doesn’t necessarily see itself as simply being constrained to grow in line with the beer or soft drink category, for example, rather it opens up an extremely broad set of opportunities across all beverages, where it has miles of headroom to grow.

Britvic and Carlsberg are no longer two organisations, but one, and avoiding silos between the teams and brands is the best way to drive growth, asserts Briantais.

“Inch by inch”

Having been founded in 1847, the Carlsberg Group is a business that believes in the power of the long-term. This mindset is something that Briantais says the CEO and board have spoken to him about since he began conversations for the job.

He is also someone who believes in the long-term mindset, choosing to build categories, rather than compete for short-term market share gains.

However, he also acknowledges that investment for the long-term requires businesses to deliver in the short-term. He quotes the speech delivered by Al Pacino in the film ‘Any Given Sunday’, where he plays an American football coach.

Sometimes there is the ideal vision of where you want to go, and there is the reality of how you get there.

Yves Briantais, Carlsberg

The coach tells the team to approach their mission “inch by inch”, something that Briantais sees as applicable to the long-term growth plan at Carlsberg. The business will approach its long-term vision gradually, but it’s overall vision doesn’t change.

“Sometimes there is the ideal vision of where you want to go, and there is the reality of how you get there,” Briantais says. “We will not get there in a straight line. Sometimes we have to compromise a little bit […] but the vision will not change.”

The team is focused on asking itself, “how do we get to the endgame without compromising the short-term”, he says.

Carlsberg’s mission to deliver truly “exceptional” marketing will take time, but it is time worth spending to transform the business.