4

Marie Jackson and rebirth of Renfield farms

Marie Jackson was born and raised in a small town in Georgia. She began her career as a
marketing analyst at Procter & Gamble. She earned her MBA at university of Virginias Darden
School of Business. She became an assistant branch manager of Coca Cola and worked her way
up to global brand manager, then marketing director and then senior vice president of integrated
marketing communication and capabilities.

In the year 2006, Jackson was named chief executive officer of Crivelli. During her tenure at
Crivelli Jackson earned a reputation for rapid response to market trends. She was known for her
exuberance and brilliant marketing strategies.

Later Marie Jackson was appointed as chief executive officer of Renfield farms in 2013. Her
previous experience involved brand marketing, integrated marketing communications. She was
known for developing strong relationships with trade partners and was an early adopter of social
media marketing.

Jackson leadership style and action quickly grabbed the attention of her employees throughout
Renfield. She was determined in formulating Renfields`new direction. For this she tried to
diagnose the problems prevailing in the company. To make progress in the company Jackson
showed two very important traits of leadership. First one can be said to be transactional
leadership. The example of this leadership can be very clearly seen in Jackson dismissing a
senior brand manager who resisted change. They also lost several talented colleagues but it was
surprising to see that Jacksons decisions brought positive energy back at the company.

The next trait of her leadership can be said to be of transformational leadership .In order to bring
tandem to the organization she invited a group of 12 influential managers asking to join her in a
weekend meeting in Sea Island, Georgia. The purpose of this meeting was to generate spirited,
constructive debate and provide clear priorities for change and because of this strong opinion on
the process and priorities for change immediately surfaced.

Mary Jackson realized Renfield traditional values were important for the employees but she also
realized that they need to bring change in market place. Therefore she constructed 3 strategic
priorities.

1. Win back customers: Recapture and nurture relationships of passionate consumers through
multiple networks, harnessing the power of social media and other digital platforms.

2. Keep things fresh: Reestablish continuous product- development process. Capture and
leverage customer insight to guide R & D and reduce time for new products through internal co-
operation.

3. Optimize the resource: Leverage the cost structure and allocate the resource more effectively.
To implement her plan, Jackson developed a communication plan that incorporated the use of
social media.

For internal stakeholders, such as employees, she communicated by

1. Creating an internal blog.

2. Podcast.

3. Use of customized screen savers to motivate the employees.

With external stakeholders, such as customers, she communicated by:

1. Redesigned the company website and a Facebook page.

2. Introduced a Twitter presence with a character named Farmer Renfield.

3. Created a corporate department for monitoring and analysis.

New Product Launch

Jackson then launched a product known as Hale Fresh, a Greek yogurt. She utilized their recently
adopted social media tools and developed the following:

1. A breakfast challenge and snack challenge on social media sites to find fast, fun serving
ideas for Hale Refresh.

2. An app that let consumers drag different toppings to find the right combination of
nutrients based on daily activities.

3. A new company blog that shared ideas for easy, portable, healthy breakfast and snack
ideas for school-aged kids.

4. Celebrity posted Instagram photos of their favorite yogurt smoothie.

This was a huge success. The internal and external strategies supported the company vision that
collaboration is at the heart of all our activities.