Maltesers’ brand boss on the power of consistency in a volatile world

As a 90-year-old brand, Maltesers has operated through many changes. Brand consistency has been a crucial ingredient to the chocolate giant’s success over the decades, a value instilled by parent company Mars.

Looking to the future, that consistency will continue to play a pivotal role. However, the way Mars continues to build the brand, as well as others in its portfolio, is evolving rapidly, explains chief brand officer Rankin Carroll.

The media mix has, for example, “literally turned upside down”, he notes. The business is engaging differently with consumers and looking to capture the impact of meaningful brand growth in new ways.

Carroll says now is “the most exciting time” in his career and indeed for anyone building brands given the pace of change. Those changes include how consumers interact with brands, use media and the rapid adoption of AI tools.

[Lightness is] really a core value of the brand that has been at the heart of the brand story for years, for decades.

Rankin Carroll, Mars

In this environment “consistency is incredibly important”, says Carroll. Whereas under a primarily linear media model companies had fairly tight control over their own messaging, the increased use creator marketing means brand positioning is increasingly in the hands of others.

“The chances of them [influencers] keeping relevant and within the bounds of what you’re positioning are, we believe, much greater if you’ve been consistent over the years, which we have on Snickers or Maltesers or other brands that we have,” he says.

For Maltesers, consistency starts with the product itself, with the “lightness” of its platform coming from the lightness of the bite-sized chocolates.

“It’s not really just a campaign theme that we’ve built on over the years,” Carroll says. “It’s really a core value of the brand that has been at the heart of the brand story for years, for decades.”

Over the last decade or so the brand has also been focused on “celebrating women”, which is the theme of its new advert in the ‘Look on the Light Side’ series also marking 90 years of Maltesers.

All change

Mars is exploring different forms of paid media, such as greater use of YouTube and social versus linear TV. In addition, there is a lot more work through earned media and interaction with the brand.

“What we didn’t have five or 10 years ago is the trove of other things you’ll see coming from social content, from engagement, the two-way dialogue content that we play out,” Carroll says.

That involves influencers and creators being much more part of the mix than previously, as well as using “co-creation” and personalised experiences to connect with consumers.

“The Mars way of brand building has changed utterly,” Carroll says. “We’ve gone through a transformation.”

Changing rules of engagement: Is effectiveness shifting?

Last year, Mars launched what it termed “a new agency ecosystem”, moving its media business from WPP to Publicis. Carroll calls this move “a transformational step” for brand building at the business.

“Really what we’re wired to do is to bring the right engagement at the right time with the right offer at every relevant touchpoint for everyone, literally. As simple as that is, that really is what guides us as we make choices about how to invest,” he explains.

While this principle of meeting consumers where they are at the right touchpoint is hardly new for Mars, what that means in practice has evolved.

“If you look at our media mix, it’s literally turned upside down even versus five years ago,” he says. “It’s lot more digital content and now we’re going beyond just ‘digital’ into earned. Specifically creators, specifically social and owned properties are taking up much more of our investment.”

Earning attention

One of the first examples of this co-creation was on the Snickers brand in 2024, where Mars allowed consumers to create their own personalised videos featuring an AI-powered version of football manager José Mourinho. 

“That was really nerve wracking, right?” says Carroll. “Like we’re putting it out there, we’re putting [consumers] in control. We’re going to let them create content and we’re letting go.”

Since then Mars has been amping up its use of digital experiences, for example creating an AI-powered WhatsApp tool allowing users to send voice notes in a harmony by doubling their voice to celebrate Twix’s dual bars.

People still want to be entertained by clever, compelling content that gets them to feel something.

Rankin Carroll, Mars

With more media competing for consumers’ attention, Mars’ digital experiences face tough competition.

“You’re not just competing with other confectionery companies. You’re not just competing with other snacking companies. You’re competing with everything that commands their attention,” Carroll says.

Whether a product, ad, or AI feature on WhatsApp, it’s incumbent on the teams at Mars to earn that investment from the consumer, whether that be attention or money. In the case of advertising and communications, that value exchange comes through entertainment, he states.

“What I still believe, no matter what media you’re in, no matter how the world changes, people still want to be entertained by clever, compelling content that gets them to feel something. Moves them, entertains, that makes them laugh, makes them cry, whatever the length, whatever the interface is,” says Carroll.

Capturing the impact of the work

Whether its Maltesers’ 90th anniversary campaign, or any other platform across the business, Mars always looks for the impact on tangible business measures.

“We will always go to the top level of our business outcomes in anything we do. We’re looking to build penetration, household penetration of our brand, volume growth and building our brand power,” he explains.

The company also measures “in-flight” to analyse the response to the work it puts out. However, while there are well-established ways to capture the impact of linear and traditional advertising, it can be harder to track earned work in particular.

The idea of measuring impressions is, frankly, irrelevant.

Rankin Carroll, Mars

“It’s great to talk about wanting to be in an earned-first world, but what’s that actually worth to the business?” Carroll asks.

“The idea of measuring impressions is, frankly, irrelevant.”

He explains an event like the Super Bowl for M&M’s has in the past generated literally billions of impressions, but the business value is “very hard to make any sense of”.

With business growth obviously the priority for Mars, the company is working with tech entrepreneurs and providers to understand the true impact of this work. For example, the business works with AI-powered analytics platform Alembic.

Those tools start to understand “sequences of events that are linked” through AI, which can in turn start to “turn that into a value equation that brings you back to sales and growth”, Carroll notes.

While Mars is investing in new tools, capturing the impact of earned work is still difficult. However, while leadership is always keen to see rigour in how marketing spend is invested, there is an element of trust within the family-owned company, Carroll says.

“One of the things I love about working for this company is there is a belief at a very basic level, a core level, from our board, our family members, that brands are valuable, that building brands and investing in building brands drives value in the business,” he says.

Looking to the future

Over its 90 years, Maltesers has been fuelled by Mars’ belief in consistently investing behind brands, as well as consistent platforms.

The new ad celebrating the anniversary touches on that theme of consistency around lightness and focusing on women. The creative centres on insight that the world is often not built for women, with long queues for female toilets, public spaces not made for buggies and “manspreading” often an unfortunate fact of life.

The ad is designed to show shared moments of lightness between women that help these frustrations feel somewhat better. The ad shows women “looking on the light side”, backed by a choir rendition of ‘Put on a Happy Face’.

While the ad is designed to highlight how women find humour in these situations, Maltesers has come in for some criticism. Some commenters on LinkedIn have questioned whether the ad makes light of all too real situations.

The advert was named Campaign’s ‘Turkey of the Week’, on the basis that “there is a danger that the audience is more likely to feel patronised than find joy in the everyday frustrations depicted”.

The ad was tested “rigorously” with consumers ahead of time and was well-received in that testing, says Carroll.

“We know that anything that goes out creatively is going to create conversations that may create different opinions and we welcome that, because that’s what a healthy world looks like,” he states.

Brands don’t need to choose between playfulness and purpose – they can do both

The ad is in keeping with what Maltesers has been doing as a brand, building a platform that combines supporting women with a degree of “lightness”, he states. The creative recognises and reflects that “the world is maybe not always made for [women]”, he adds.

“If we can bring a little lightness of touch to that, create some entertaining content, we think that’s the way we should do things and that’s what we’ve done in the brand […] for years,” Carroll states.

While celebrating an anniversary means looking back, it also involves looking to the future. When it comes to what will drive success, Carroll is clear.

“For Maltesers, I don’t want to be a broken record, but remaining consistent and doing what we’ve done in a world where everything will change, and everything will change again,” he adds.