New Coca-Cola CMO Brings Global Experience To Top Marketing Post

Marcos de Quinto has been at Coca-Cola Co. since 1982, working in several marketing roles, and in his current role as president of the Iberia Business Unit and VP, Europe Group, since 2000. The company veteran, whose experience includes building the Iberian Business Unit into “one of our best marketing centers of excellence worldwide,” according to Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent in a statement, now will pull from that experience as he succeeds retiring CMO Joe Tripodi.

Tripodi assumed the top marketing spot in 2007 after serving as CMO of Allstate Insurance Co., and before that, in CMO roles at The Bank of New York, Seagram Spirits & Wine and MasterCard International.

“We need to be on the leading edge of the new frontier,” Tripodi had told me in an interview at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity two years ago.

Referencing the company’s global efforts, including the well-regarded “Open Happiness” campaign launched under his watch, Tripodi said, “Our role is, how do you preserve that local genius with some kind of global overlay of what the brand stands for?”

Tripodi's retirement and de Quinto's appointment, effective Jan. 1, follow the beverage company's most recent report of lower quarterly profit on slowed sales.