Haleon’s CMO Tamara Rogers is departing the business, with the organisation introducing a chief growth officer role, which will encompass marketing and commercial.

The consumer healthcare business, which owns brands including Sensodyne, Panadol and Voltaren, is creating the position to promote “end-to-end, joined-up thinking” across the company, says Rogers.

The role will be taken on by the current president for the EMEA and LATAM regions Filippo Lanzi. It encompasses leadership of the teams previously under the CMO remit, as well as commercial excellence functions, including customer and category management.

Rogers leaves Haleon after almost seven years leading marketing across its consumer healthcare brands, first as global CMO of the consumer healthcare business at former parent company GSK, and then at Haleon after it was spun off to become a standalone company in 2022.

Speaking to Marketing Week, Rogers says Haleon is entering a “new chapter”, one that she has been a “key architect” of, but she explains it is time for her to depart the business to pursue new “adventures”.

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“The pace of change now, the changing trends of the consumer, the changing trends in business, is such that you need to be running, holding hands,” she says, referring to the importance of integrated thinking.

Lanzi, who is taking on the chief growth officer role, joined GSK’s consumer healthcare business in 2015. He has held general management roles at the business, and as part of GSK across the last 10 years.

Prior to that he worked at Johnson & Johnson, first in sales roles and then in general management positions. For nine years prior to that he worked at Nestlé, during which time he spent two years as a marketing director for the business’s chilled dairy category in Italy.

‘Comfortable’ with marketing’s role

The creation of Haleon as a standalone consumer goods company, moving away from being under the GSK banner has given marketing the chance to play a more substantial role within the business.

“When I reflect on the journey that we’ve gone on, the shift has been phenomenal around being a division of the company, to a portfolio of really incredible brands that from the leadership table down, people understand the power and the role that marketing plays,” Rogers says.

She states that the role marketing plays in driving growth has much stronger recognition, and is clear that the lack of a nominal top marketer role in Haleon’s next chapter is not going to change that.

“I know there’s a lot of chatter about the role of the marketing function, has marketing lost its way?” Rogers says. “And I am so comfortable with where we are.”

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Haleon is a company with a portfolio where people understand the role of brand. She says that bringing the marketing function together with others under the chief growth role is actually an opportunity to extend the reach of marketing “even further”. She also cites the fact Lanzi has marketing experience – along with CEO Brian McNamara (who held marketing roles at P&G) – as evidence that marketing will continue to be valued by the business’s leadership.

The chief growth officer title is becoming increasingly common in organisations. Last month, fast-food chain Wingstop UK created two new roles to lead marketing – a chief growth and chief brand officer, having previously had a CMO.

Haleon’s decision to introduce a chief growth officer also comes as it changes its organisational structure, from three regions to six operating units. Those new units are designed to connect even more with the consumer and inform strategy with “what’s happening in the real world”.