ANZ appoints Kjetil Undhjem as head of marketing and brand strategy
Kjetil Undhjem has been appointed as head of marketing and brand strategy at ANZ.
Undhjem replaces Carolyn Bendall, who departed ANZ in February after 20 years to become CMO of Swinburne University.
Undhjem will be leading ANZ’s Marketing Centre of Excellence as well as driving marketing for the retail and commercial arms of the business.
Undhjem joins from Mondelez International
Undhjem joins from Mondelez International. He joined the FMCG business in 2011 as category director for Nordic Chocolate in Zurich, then moved to Melbourne in 2014 to become category director of chocolate for Australia and New Zealand. In 2018, Undhjem moved back to Europe as senior category director of Western Europe Chocolate.
Undhjem has also spent time at Statoil and Kraft Foods Group.
Undhjem said his FMCG background will help him drive a sense of customer obsession in the banking sector.
“I’m excited to be heading up the passionate and proud marketing and brand strategy team for Australia. I look forward to the challenge of navigating the changes occurring in the financial services sector – particularly technology disruption and new competitors,” Undhjem said.
“The competitiveness and customer obsession I’ve experienced in consumer goods will form a solid platform for the changes ANZ is working through.”
ANZ’s chief marketing officer, Sweta Mehra, said: “After undertaking an extensive recruitment process, we were impressed with Kjetil’s rich background and experience across industries.
“I have no doubt his broad skill set will be a welcome addition to our Australia business and build a new chapter of marketing excellence and commercial acumen.”
More FMCG expertise at ANZ. These guys are fast losing the plot on what makes banking special (hint: it’s not getting consumers to buy more of what they don’t need).
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It’s baffling why ANZ keeps hiring people with FMCG backgrounds into these services / financial marketing roles. Absolute chalk and cheese. Totally different strategies, totally different go-to-market, totally different emphasis on customer and brand. Mostly though, FMCG people generally have zero understanding and experience of digital and data.
Is it because Maile and Sweta are Proctor & Gamble to their bones and don’t want to hire others who DO have category expertise?
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I think that is harsh.
Just because they have experience in FMCG, doesn’t mean they are so insulated or un-aware of how consumers behave in other parts of their lives.
Consideration levels/periods may be different by carteorgy but marketing is common in its role to drive behaviour – be it drive preference for chocolate, washing powder or finance for homes/cars or credit cards.
Besides, its been pretty clear that relying on “experienced” finance category marketers to manage comms and customer experience hasn’t really been their strong point (have you heard about the small enquiry into the banks practices recently – I think they called it a ROYAL COMMISSION)
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