CMO Spotlight | Linda Bethea - Danone
Setup CEO, Joe Koufman, virtually sat down with Linda Bethea, the Head of Marketing at Danone. In the interview, Bethea shares about her incredible career path in the Food and Beverage industry, how her action-driven approach helps her accomplish goals, and the New England Patriots influence on her career.
“Stay curious, ask the tough questions, and keep learning throughout your career.”
WATCH THE INTERVIEW + READ THE RECAP BELOW
Q1 | Tell us about your career path.
Bethea always knew she wanted to go into food marketing. As soon as she received her MBA from The Kellogg School at Northwestern, she joined Frito-Lay and worked in multiple marketing roles from perfecting the Lay’s Potato Chip to innovating new brands within the company. After five years, she moved on to work on Category Management and Field Marketing at the Frito-Lay field office in New Jersey. After some time, she moved to the beverage side of the business and “had a great experience working in PepsiCo's joint venture with Unilever on the ice tea portfolio.” Bethea expanded that from a North American joint venture to a global joint venture - a proud moment for her.
Within PepsiCo, she helped to launch LIFEWTR Premium Water, Bubly Flavored Water, and others.
After ten years with PepsiCo, she made the difficult decision to leave PepsiCo to move to a large beverage company called Diageo. From there, she transferred to Danone to continue her career in the Food and Beverage industry, and work with a company aligned with her values and purpose.
Q2 | What is your superpower?
“I’m known as the go-to person. If you want to get something done, come to me and I’ll make it happen.”
Bethea’s drive to take action is reflected in her personal life as well as her professional life, making up a big part of her personality.
Q3 | What’s your biggest challenge?
“You have to constantly evolve to keep up with the changing landscape.”
Bethea’s biggest challenge is also one of her biggest driving forces. She explained that staying up to date and “keeping her finger on the pulse of a fastly evolving consumer sentiment, media landscape, marketing landscape” is extremely important to her. She added that this is what makes her job so interesting because every day brings a new insight.
Q4 | Where do you find inspiration?
“We stay inspired as marketers and focus on external inspiration.”
Bethea encourages everybody to look outward for inspiration then share findings with the team. “What you might find inspiring, somebody else may not and vice versa. It's really good to go out to get inspired, but then share that and build off each other's ideas.”
Collaboration can bring the best ideas to the table and lead to new innovations and breakthroughs.
Q5 | What values are important to you?
Bethea believes that, as a marketer, it’s crucial to not only understand your consumer, but empathize with them in order to “connect with them and deliver the right brand products and brand messaging.”
Valuing her team and truly getting to know them is also incredibly important to her. “They're bringing their whole selves to work. They're carving time out of their day to give it their all, so you owe it to them to understand who they are as a person, and what they care about so you can make that time as fulfilling as possible.”
For more marketing leadership advice, and a view into the mindset of marketing executives in various industries, be sure to watch the full interview with Linda Bethea, and keep an eye out for more thought leadership from our CMO Spotlights.
Watch the full interview to the right.
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