Why the Wall Is Crumbling Between Sales, Marketing
As VP of e-commerce, digital and data for Unilever North America, Doug Straton has done deals with grocery service Instacart where Unilever pays the $5.99 to $7.99 delivery tab or provides discounts when people buy its products. Recently, he’s used an Instacart “hero images” program that optimizes Unilever content for mobile advertising.
Mr. Straton is happy with immediate results, but the longer-term effect may be much broader. He’s doing work that would have been divided among two or three marketing functions in the old, offline marketplace: the sales department handling store promotions, a consumer promotion manager for coupons and a brand manager signing off on ad content.
As with similar jobs at other packaged-goods players, consumer marketing is fully baked into Mr. Straton’s e-commerce role. But he doesn’t believe those divisions will last much longer in the brick-and-mortar, analog world either.
