Dive Brief:
- General Mills' first Chief Creative Officer Michael Fanuele is leaving the company with no planned successor, according to an internal company memo reported on by Ad Age. Fanuele had held the role since September 2014.
- At General Mills, Fanuele spearheaded a newfangled agency review process along with former CMO Ann Simonds, who left the company at the end of last year. Their work shifted the brand's agencies relationships and required shops to meet certain diversity thresholds, including staffing 50% women and 20% people of color.
- After Simonds left General Mills, the company made changes to its global structure, including naming four group presidents and cutting hundreds of positions. In his note, Fanuele wrote that a new global CMO would be joining General Mills "soon enough," according to Ad Age.
Dive Insight:
Given that General Mills hasn’t replaced Simonds as CMO, and that Fanuele is now leaving without a replacement, there appears to be a leadership gap growing at the company for branding direction and advertising spending. Simonds' departure last year came as a bit surprising, given how much attention her and Fanuele's call to action for more agency diversity drew at the time.
The agency space has long been criticized for coming up short when it comes to diversity, which can foster a lack of perspective and cultural attunement in marketing efforts. Last fall the 4A's released a report stating 74% of its members found diversity hiring practices "mediocre or worse."
Simonds and Fanuele's initiative showed a brand taking a bold stance on a prickly subject, and it was one that wasn't free from criticism. In his parting statement, Fanuele referenced the effort to shift the diversity balance as well as the agency compensation model in the industry, two areas that have been big topics among insiders for the last couple of years.
Overall, the marketing space has seen major executive shakeups recently. CMOs at big-name brands including Coca-Cola, McDonald's and, most recently, Mondelez have all departed in the past month or so, keeping in line with an industry trend of shorter tenures for those in the role.