Currently Shopper Marketing departments straddle between sales and marketing securing funding and reporting to both or either. To support ACDOCOSA’s differentiated positioning the Shopper Marketing department has taken the lead with consumer marketing and brand sales falling under Herscovitz.

“Traditionally where boards or senior leadership teams were led by sales and/or marketing, ACDOCOSA’s front-end leadership team comprises of Shopper, Customer and Merchandising heads, no traditional sales or marketing representation on the top-level,” explains Herscovitz, who previously spearheaded the marketing for brands such as Paul Mitchell, Canderel, Duracell, Old Spice and more in South Africa.

“My transition to a shopper-centric marketing approach started over seven years ago. With the majority of brand decisions being influenced at store, our portfolios consistently outperformed the market and respective categories both locally and internationally. It was never an easy or time efficient journey to get marketing and sales shopper alignment but the effort mostly always delivered unparalleled dividends.”

Herscovitz confirms that better alignment and processes could have reduced turnaround times thus opening more opportunities for even more growth. It was from this experience that she helped set the new operating strategy where the customer, shopper and merchandising and trade marketing heads pool in-market investment and have to jointly agree on all initiatives.

“This approach offers consumer, shopper and channel congruency in addition to superior in-store compliance, reduced wastage and much higher returns versus the industry average,” she explains.

Chairperson of ACDOCOSA’s holding company in the United Kingdom, Brandon Pilling concludes, “Kim brings a wealth of experience having worked on many leading multi-national brands, but key is her depth of experience and knowledge on the shopper marketing side which continues to be a revered skill set both locally and internationally.”