Chiara Molena

Champion Petfoods is an established player in the pet food industry in the US and Canada. I was recruited as a marketing director to open the EMEA business in 2020 when they decided to expand their regional strategy.

After an effective and fast situation analysis, I relaunched a growth strategy for the region with an increased focus on high-potential markets boosting their eCommerce channel. During the 18-month growth phase, I:

• Launched consumer marketing across social media channels, reaching over five million relevant shoppers monthly with a targeted advertising strategy.
• Created in-language websites for key markets and accelerated eCommerce players through targeted campaigns by over 100% across all key markets.
• Generated first-ever insights into European consumers utilizing growth marketing techniques and sentiment analysis.
• Launched a digitization project for e-training that was later adopted globally through the Miyagi platform.

The region grew successfully with a CAGR of 25-27%, outperforming the market by 20%. In October 2022, the company was acquired by a global giant, Mars.

Bravo Savings Network is one of the fastest-growing affiliate marketing companies in Europe. It caters to customers shopping for deals across multiple categories and over 6,000 brands.

The client’s goal was to accelerate organic search traffic by boosting their backlink profile with high-quality earned links. The brief asked to ideate and execute a relevant and effective international news-led content marketing campaign across the UK, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Poland, and the US.

My objective was to create impactful pan-European and US campaigns to drive high-value editorial links and traffic. Working with digital marketers from Digital Trails, I led a communication and messaging strategy in a creative phase, ensuring international reach for the campaign and driving maximum impact with locally relevant messages.

Champion Petfoods, acquired by Mars in 2022, established a business unit in EMEA in 2020, where I was one of the four startup directors leading marketing.

To further the creation of the business unit and redefine the strategy, I identified a white space opportunity in key markets in a segment previously untapped by the company – wet cat food. The team I led to conduct the consumer and competitive research seized a revenue opportunity, built the P&L, and finally developed, positioned, and localized the product and product launch for the key markets.

Within the year of launch (2022) across 13 key markets, the product added several million incremental sales to the region. It supported the ‘cat’ segment’s overall growth, increasing consumers’ awareness in the UK, France, Italy, Sweden, Germany, and Poland, among others.