James Kotecki (00:06):
This is ÓÀÐǶij¡ Tech Talk. I'm James Kotecki with another conversation that I recorded live at ÓÀÐǶij¡ 2025 in the C Space Studio. You can watch every interview from that series on the ÓÀÐǶij¡ YouTube channel, but this one is a favorite and we wanted to share it right here in your podcast feed. Enjoy.
(00:26):
Hey, welcome back. This is the C Space Studio here at ÓÀÐǶij¡ 2025. I'm James Kotecki, and I'm about to do the only thing I ever want to do, which is talk about delicious candy and snacks with Gülen Bengi, lead chief marketing officer at Mars and global chief growth officer Mars Snacking. We're so grateful that you could join us here in Space Studio.
Gülen Bengi (00:44):
Thank you for having me.
James Kotecki (00:45):
And I'm serious. I was really excited about this conversation and maybe I could first just get your scope of responsibilities within Mars and maybe just... I mean, people understand Mars has a lot of different components to it, but what your piece of the puzzle is?
Gülen Bengi (00:58):
Of course. Of course. Mars basically has three big businesses. One is snacking, the other one is pet care, and the other one is food, food and nutrition. I'm the lead chief marketing officer for the enterprise, and I also lead growth for the snacking business. And that means I and my brilliant team takes care of brands, our consumers, and our customers.
James Kotecki (01:22):
So we are at the C Space Studio always talking about brands. Mars is obviously a collection of very strong, very well-known, very storied brands. So how do you philosophically think about your brands and how that relates to business impact?
Gülen Bengi (01:35):
Yeah, first of all, we stand on the shoulders of giants, we say, because we have had generations of fantastic marketers who built our iconic brands. We have more than 10 over billion dollar brands. People love, as you were talking about, need and want.
James Kotecki (01:53):
I love M&M's, for example.
Gülen Bengi (01:55):
For example, right? So we talk about building brands for creating growth and creating value for our consumers and communities. And that has two components. One is timeless. So a brand needs to know what it stands for. It needs to be distinct. It needs to be consistent. Its true value to the world should be very clear. And now, with the changing context of our lives, we're evolving the way we build our brands, which means that today brands do not just stand for the products or services they provide, but they gather around their meaning or purpose. Then provide two-way engagements or experiences with their
fans and communities or consumers, asking them, inviting them to co-create their brand worlds with them. So therefore, creating personalized experiences that have no dead ends. And no dead ends is an interesting concept. It's basically each experience is relevant to the touch point the consumer is living in, and we provide the right engagement at the right time, the right offer at every relevant touchpoint for everyone.
James Kotecki (03:07):
Can you say more about what you mean by co-creation and how that manifests?
Gülen Bengi (03:10):
Yeah. Co-creation is basically, we think about our brands as an experience, as a brand world, and we are inviting our consumers. For example, it can be in many things. We have our iconic Snickers brands, and you would know you're not you and you're hungry. So everybody makes hungry mistakes, and that has been the premise of Snickers for over a decade, that Snickers satisfies. Now, the co-creation, for example, one of the edge cases that we just did is first of its kind using generative AI. This summer, we asked a very famous European soccer coach, Jose Mourinho. We partnered with him to create his generative AI likeness and enabled the soccer fans and Snicker fans to banter with their friends. So if, for example, James, you have a horrible hungry mistake, I would put in WhatsApp actually to Jose Mourinho AI, "Hey, James did this because he was hungry," and he would create a fully personalized roasting for you.
James Kotecki (04:16):
Oh, great.
Gülen Bengi (04:16):
And then I would send it to you. And that's a connection that we use and that's a co-creation in engagement that is between fans.
(04:25):
Another type of co-creation is actually in product. We are just launching this month actually our first ever gaming brand, which is called the Respawn together joint venture with the famous gaming lifestyle brand Razor. And we, in fact, that brand and its products are created by gamers for gamers. So what we do is we invite gamers into an arena and our R&D team is there with the products and packaging. So while they game, while they play, they show or they taste and they say, "Oh, this is too small, too big. It's sticky. I can't open it with one hand, or it's distracting," everything that they talk about. And we iterate the products and we launch the co-created product. Of course, the community, the gaming community loves it because it's by them, for them with the deep insights that they have.
James Kotecki (05:18):
And that's totally different than just getting some gamers, but sitting them around some nondescript conference room table and just asking them for their opinions in that's static environment.
Gülen Bengi (05:26):
Absolutely, absolutely. And the small insights are so important. When you're gaming, what do you think about focus or energy, right? You'll be in the game. But in fact, one of the insights was the gamers, after three, four hours of gaming, they couldn't really wind down and go to sleep. So that made us add an
offer to our portfolio that has relaxing and unwinding. It's a brilliant mint. And that in the moment insights make the brand rich and authentic.
James Kotecki (05:56):
And have found that leveraging AI in the way that you're talking about and leveraging these cutting edge technologies, are you finding that you need to tread carefully? Are customers really embracing these things, and how do you make sure that you're kind of doing it in the right way?
Gülen Bengi (06:11):
Yeah, it depends on how you use it, right? So the Snickers example, for instance, when we look at the generative AI edge case, which is first of its kind, you have to be, first of all, understand what is the problem you're trying to solve. And this one was the connection and fan co-creation or human co-creation and connection. Then we ask ourselves, can we do it? Can we do it safely? And does it work? Is it better than the common or the proven methods? So in this case, the answers are absolutely yes to all three. I mean, this engagement is about four times better. The sales outperformed the category like 350 basis points, but it takes a village and a different way of building a brand team. So the usual suspects, the creatives, marketers, and sales are there, but now we have our data analytics teams, digital technologies team and AI, responsible AI governance teams as part of that team. And to bring it to life with zero safety incidents, we had eight AI filters and human oversight where AI filters enabled the volume, but human oversight enables the nuance. So we are very careful to make sure that we bridge the potential of the technology to real life at scale safely.
James Kotecki (07:39):
Consumers keep evolving in their demands. Technology keeps evolving. How do you see the role of the CMO, or whatever the chief marketing leader is called, evolving as we head into 20, 25 and beyond?
Gülen Bengi (07:49):
Yeah, we are talking about growth, right? So we built iconic brands for creating growth and value creation. So we think about the CMOs and the growth office as serving the consumer across all touch points. So consumers have changed their way of life. Of course, they go back on and off online, offline, back and forth between discovery to sales. The buy button appears everywhere. The checkout becomes seamless. They want faster delivery every day. We live that life. To be able to connect that consumer journey and provide the right engagement and offer at every relevant touch point, we bring in across our functions together. So a growth officer has marketing, brand building, sales, digital commerce, innovation, human intelligence and data analytics to provide that seamless experience.
James Kotecki (08:49):
It doesn't seem like it's ever going to get much easier, does it? It seems like it's just going to keep you any more complicated and challenging to play these roles.
Gülen Bengi (08:55):
It actually gets a lot of fun. I really enjoy the technology aspect of it. Not technology for technology's sake, but what it enables to be able to understand it enough, learn it enough so that you bring the possibilities, shape the choices, and make them work at scale.
James Kotecki (09:15):
Obviously you want to drive growth and you want people to buy and consume your products. How are you doing that in a sustainable way? And thinking about that in the context of climate change. I mean, Mars obviously famously associated with chocolate, cacao, one of those plants that's under threat because of climate change potentially. So tell me about how you thinking about marketing and growth in that context.
Gülen Bengi (09:34):
Mars just announced its carbon net-zero roadmap a year ago. In fact, we were able to decouple our carbon from volume growth. So since 2015, we grew about 60% while decreasing our carbon footprint about 15%. I mean, it's enabled by science and technology, obviously, but we also believe in using the power of our partnerships. So we use, of course, science and technology. We use utilize the suppliers, but also, we now started a new initiative called Unreasonable Food Initiative, where we have the key climate or sustainability challenges we have and the Unreasonable Group, our partner in this initiative, scours the world for entrepreneurs who have breakthrough technology, in technology or in business model that solves these that are beyond proof of concept and are looking for support and mentoring to scale their technologies. So that we just announced our first 14 inaugural cohorts, and every year, we introduce another about 10 entrepreneurs, which will help us get to carbon net-zero by 2050, which will contribute to helping us.
James Kotecki (10:56):
When we get to that goal, I'm sure you'll be celebrating with a snack. What's your favorite snack?
Gülen Bengi (11:00):
Oh, I can't pick among my children, but I do love chocolate.
James Kotecki (11:06):
Well, it's been fantastic catching up with you, Gülen Bengi of Mars, Mars Snacking. Thank you so much for joining us.
Gülen Bengi (11:10):
Thank you.
James Kotecki (11:11):
And thank you so much for watching. This is the C Space Studio. It's ÓÀÐǶij¡ 2025, and I'm James Kotecki coming at you with more great conversations just ahead. Stay with us.
(11:21):
Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation from ÓÀÐǶij¡ 2025. That is our show for now, but there's always more tech to talk about. So if you're on YouTube, please subscribe and leave a comment. If you're listening on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartMedia, or wherever you get your podcasts, hit that follow button and let's give the algorithms what they want. You can get even more ÓÀÐǶij¡ at ces.tech. That's C-E-S.T-E-C-H. Our show produced by Nicole Vidovich and Paige Morris. Our C Space Studio episodes are produced and edited by Cramer. I'm James Kotecki talking tech on ÓÀÐǶij¡ Tech Talk.
