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Supermarket giant Woolworths has promoted its director of marketing for food and supermarkets to be the first chief marketing officer of the overall group. The move follows rival Coles

appointing its first CMO – lauded Tourism Australia marketer Lisa Ronson. Hicks joined the Woolworths group in 2008 Woolworths said the promotion was recognition of Hicks’ great work,

including in his former roles as national marketing manager of Dan Murphy’s, and general manager of marketing of the Woolworths Liquor Group. ADVERTISEMENT “Given Andrew’s marketing

experience across many aspects of our group over the last few years, he is well placed to drive the next horizon of our brand and marketing agenda. This appointment is in some ways a formal

recognition of some of the great work Andrew is already doing behind the scenes to deliver a more cohesive brand for the group,” said Woolworths Group CEO Brad Banducci. Hicks will now be

charged with bringing the brand and marketing expertise across the business together to ultimately drive a better customer experience. “The ways our customers interact with us is rapidly

evolving,” Banducci added. “Our customers are becoming more digitally enabled and increasingly interact with our brands across multiple touchpoints – be it through our mobile app, website,

Woolworths Rewards, catalogue, in-store or via social media.” Hicks said he was excited by this next chapter. “With our customers’ needs continuing to evolve at a rapid pace, we have a

responsibility to ensure they have a consistent brand experience across every touchpoint they have with us. This is critical to our future success and I look forward to working even closer

with the great team of marketers and communications specialists we ave across the Group to help achieve this.” Woolworths currently works with creative agency M&C Saatchi, with its media

buying coming out of a bespoke Dentsu Aegis Network agency, Woolworths@DAN. The company did however recently launch a stand-alone media business with former Adshel CEO Mike Tyquin at the

helm. Cartology will “progressively replace the existing media selling model and arrangement” currently used by the brand for its owned media assets. The move, it said, will “ensure supplier

partners are able to better communicate and engage with customers along the path to purchase”.