Mars CMO says entertainment, not data, wins in marketing

Mars chief brand officer Rankin Carroll has a warning for an industry obsessed with precision targeting and personalization: you forgot to make anything people actually want to watch.

Carroll, who oversees M&M's, Skittles, and Twix, told Business Insider that marketers chasing AI tools and measurement dashboards have lost sight of a basic consumer need. "I think what's critical to cut through is it's still a game of compelling stories," he said. "People are still looking for content that captures their attention."

The comment lands as Mars shifts toward more personalized, data-driven advertising. Carroll argues those tools only matter if they help brands create entertainment consumers choose to spend time with.

Mars tested the idea with two recent campaigns. A Snickers activation during the UEFA Euro 2024 soccer tournament let fans send personalized messages to friends using an AI-powered version of manager José Mourinho. Users typed in mistakes their friends had made, and the system generated custom responses in Mourinho's voice. The campaign partnered directly with Meta and WhatsApp, bypassing the typical agency-of-record structure.

"We know the behavior around the Euros around football is banter," Carroll said. "You want to banter with your mates."

The result, he said, "just exploded." Mars has not disclosed cost-per-engagement or sales lift figures.

A second tool, the "Twix Harmonizer," let users send voice notes to friends that softened bad news through AI-generated audio. Again, the appeal was not the technology itself but giving people something entertaining to do.

"You cut through by creating an experience that they can actually participate in," Carroll said.

The approach runs counter to the ad-tech narrative that precision targeting drives efficiency. Mars is betting that waste – content some people ignore – pays off when the content resonates enough to spread organically. Carroll said marketers sometimes focus too heavily on data and optimization while overlooking the importance of creating something people genuinely enjoy. "I think that's the word that we've slightly forgotten about. Entertainment," he said.

Younger consumers now expect personalization, Carroll acknowledged. He argued that expectation alone is not differentiation. They also expect permission to interact, remix, and share. The technology – AI, data signals, personalization engines – is an enabler, not the product itself.

For investors tracking marketing spend efficiency, the question is whether interactive, participatory campaigns lift sales velocity or inflate production costs. Mars declined to disclose specific returns. If the Snickers template scales across the brand's portfolio, the economics could shift for the entire CPG advertising sector. If it proves too expensive to replicate, the industry defaults back to the data-led playbook.

Carroll's view also carries implications for holding companies like Omnicom and WPP. The Snickers campaign bypassed the typical agency structure by partnering directly with Meta and WhatsApp. Carroll said the insight came from understanding consumer behavior – banter among soccer fans – not from a media brief. Major clients replicating that direct partnership would cut the intermediary share.

"We can get caught up in the data, we can get caught up in all the technology side of this," Carroll said. "At the end of the day, it's compelling stories well told in engaging ways that they can participate in."