The Arnott’s Group CMO, Jenni Dill, knows a thing or two about driving marketing that delivers measurable, meaningful impact to the business. The recipe for success? Truly classic, all-4P marketing.

Through her five-year tenure at the iconic FMCG business, Dill has been instrumental in building out new product lines (Arnott’s gluten-free and reduced sugar ranges), expanding ecommerce opportunities, opening up direct consumer engagement and new retail placements, and lifting masterbrand value and equity, leading to more commercial value.

To make it all happen, Dill says she’s needed to be a CMO who’s an instinctive-innovator, problem-solver and team-builder. Which is why she firmly believes all modern marketers need to find both resiliency and adaptability in the job today.

“It’s the resilience and tenacity to work through setbacks and around obstacles to deliver what is needed. In the absence of a crystal ball, shaping the future certainly requires it,” she comments.

Business influence

Arnott’s marketing, under Dill’s leadership, has evolved into a core driver of the company’s broader strategic and long-term growth agenda, shaping key business initiatives beyond traditional advertising, integrating with innovation, sustainability, and commercial teams to drive brand and business outcomes.

Just a few of the business-grade initiatives she can point to are:

• Health & Wellness Expansion: Partnering with R&D to create gluten-free and reduced-sugar product lines, backed by big business investment of $30 million in production capabilities, capturing new growth in health-conscious segments. To date, health-focused product launches contributed to a 15 per cent lift in sales among health-conscious consumers.
• E-commerce, website and new channel expansion: Partnering with sales, Dill’s team has helped more than double ecommerce though a mix of dedicated joint business plans with key retailers, while exploring new channels including Amazon and Quick Commerce. The Arnott’s website has also gained D2C campaign capability, supported by a CDP to enable personalised, one-to-one communication.
• Sustainability Integration: Marketing has collaborated with R&D and supply chain to launch recyclable packaging, reinforcing Arnott’s commitment to environmental responsibility while enhancing brand equity.
• International Expansion: Marketing’s support for the launch of Arnott’s Tim Tams in the UK with major supermarkets, Waitrose and Tesco placements. Tim Tam unit sales per store per week are now at similar levels to Australia after less than 12 months.

“Through these initiatives, marketing has become a strategic driver of growth, delivering measurable ROI and positioning Arnott’s for long-term success, both in Australia and overseas,” Dill comments.

Effective marketing strategy

At a functional marketing level, getting to this point has meant undertaking a transformational journey. This has been driven by relentless focus on what matters most, reflected in Dill’s three foundational strategic priorities: Reinvigorate the core; build a scale better-for-you biscuits business; and win in premium indulgence.

At the heart of this – and the external manifestation of this ambition – is the 'Life's Little Moments' Masterbrand campaign, designed to reignite consumer love for the brand while driving significant business impact. Dill describes the results as a true group effort across marketing and cross-functional teams, agency partner, Publicis, and broader industry partners.

The Masterbrand campaign platform was built on data-driven insights, which allowed Arnott’s to optimise creative, media and investment strategies. By applying rigorous marketing mix modelling, Arnott’s isolated the direct impact of advertising on sales, proving marketing was a substantial driver of business growth, with a contribution to sales rising five-fold over three years (as measured by Analytic Partners).

In the four years it’s been in play, Arnott’s masterbrand work has also seen creative effectiveness scores increase to all-time highs and the best pre-tested campaign in 160-year history. In 2023 and 2024, Arnott’s received industry recognition at an Australian (Grand Effie + four Gold/Silver Effies) and international level (WARC Awards).

To make marketing investments work harder, Arnott’s transformed its marketing operating model by restructuring teams, refining processes, and applying data-led decision-making. Among these were creation of cross-functional business teams bringing together marketing, R&D, category, finance, and supply chain. This enables agile decision-making aligned with top and bottom-line results.

An overhauled campaign process was also realised, which simplified what had been a traditional 12-month, seven-step planning model into a three-step, three-month process, reducing inefficiencies and enabling more responsive marketing. A KPI-based incentive structure for agency partners was also introduced to reward strong creative, media efficiency and ROI performance.

ROI on advertising investments has more than doubled, with a Gross Profit ROI almost 5 times the FMCG benchmark. Media efficiency improved dramatically, equally reducing cost of reach and increasing weeks on air and monthly reach without additional budget. Among strong brand metrics over the last 12 months are a +3pt life in usage and +1 gain in preference.

Investment in marketing effectiveness tools were also made: Engaging Analytic Partners, Mad Clarity, Luma Research, for example – and social and PR capability was built in-house.

It’s all led Arnott’s to double short-term (1 year) and long-term (3 year) ROI on advertising investments, with a Gross Profit ROI almost 5 times the FMCG benchmark. This is in the top 5 per cent of global FMCG ROI results.

Discerning decision making

Tough decision making has never far away for this CMO. Faced with rising supply chain costs, for example, Arnott’s had to make strategic choices about where to allocate marketing investments without compromising growth.

Rather than cut spend, Dill and her team optimised media efficiency and reinvested savings into high-impact areas to drive growth. Notable decisions included reducing non-working investments, such as research, packaging, and POS materials, to free up an additional media investments withing same budget.

A focus on fewer, high-impact campaigns, increasing media weight and weeks on air, was another win, while bringing social and PR in-house delivered 10x more content, across 6x more brands and 3x more channels.

“These strategic decisions ensured continued sales and brand growth despite a constrained budget,” comments Dill. “Advertising has become an increasing accelerator of sales, proving that smart, precise marketing investment decisions yield tangible business results.”

Data-driven decision making

Through of this, data-driven decision making is paramount to drive more effective marketing, enhance consumer engagement, and inform product innovation. Strategic and systematic investments have seen MMM rolled out with the help of Analytics Partners, contributing significant sales uplift over three years.

More recent innovations include AI-Driven Audience Segmentation, which has increased digital campaign engagement by 12 per cent through highly targeted messaging. In addition, retail and shopper data analytics has helped optimise ecom promotions with Coles and Woolworths, improving sales efficiency by 21 per cent.

At a more tactical level, social listening enables the team to capitalise on trends with fast reactive content that drives real engagement. For instance, in-house social teasers often test consumer appeal for actual product launches.

“The Tim Tam x Jatz April Fools stunt is now one of our best-selling products on shelves across Australia, and about to be launched internationally,” says Dill.

Consumer-first thinking

Strategic consumer insight-led innovation is most evidently seen in the launch of Arnott’s gluten-free and reduced-sugar ranges, driving a 15 per cent increase in sales from health-conscious consumers.

But in-housing social and PR teams to build more content and more engagement across more of the portfolio throughout the year is also powered by everyday consumer-first insights. “With the inclusion of our in-house Chef and our R&D teams, we now ideate, create and drive amplification of our initiatives all year round,” says Dill.

An example is 'Recipe Hacks'. While approximately 10 per cent of consumers bake with Arnott’s biscuits, many more use them in simple, often bake-free hacks to create impressive, sweet treats. Trending recipes featuring Arnott’s biccies include Scotch Finger Rocky Road, Malt-o-Milk Ice Cream Sandwiches, Choc Ripple Cakes and Salada 'Crack’.  A recent success garnering over 15 million impressions in December 2024 was similar Christmas Hacks.

Third-party product partnerships are also increasingly on Dill’s radar. An example is the Shapes XBOX Controller. “Through social listening on gamers channels, we knew of their love for Shapes and understood their one-handed munching habits while gaming,” she says.

As well as an on-pack promotion giving away hundreds of XBOXes on Shapes, rapid ideation with R&D saw Arnott’s create XBOX Controller Shape prototypes in less than a week.

“The team loved it, so we decided to make 100 packs [by hand] and give them away on social media. Within 24 hours, gamers and gamers publications jumped on board, generating coverage around the world of 25M social and PR impressions with a media value equivalent of around $9m,” says Dill. “Coles then placed a muti-million-dollar sales order as a job lot and we found ourselves on shelf nationally.”

An opportunistic cultural win, meanwhile, was TayTams. National Tim Tam Day, February 16, coincided with the first date of Taylor Swifts groundbreaking Eras tour.

“Instead of trying to fight for airtime, we jumped on the bandwagon and drove it like we stole it,” says Dill. “We leveraged Taylor’s love for the ‘life-changing’ Chewy Caramel variety and renamed them TayTams in celebration of her arrival Down Under.”

100,000 packs were handed out to fans at concerts around the country, creating a frenzy and a highly collectible souvenir, generating a total owned and earned media value of $16M.

Commercial delivery

All of this had ensured marketing has been a core business growth driver, contributing directly to financial success. Transformative levels of sales growth since 2020 is one result, thanks to a doubling of media ROI, delivering short-term Gross Profit ROI of almost five times the FMCG benchmark.

In-house content and social investments have also seen $100M+ PR Media value equivalent delivered each year and over half of total media impressions.

“By embedding data-driven decision-making, fostering innovation, and optimising media spend, marketing at Arnott’s has delivered short-term commercial impact and positioned the brand for sustainable, long-term growth,” add Dill.

People leadership

Such results don’t come without cultivating a culture of continuous improvement, embedding effectiveness and a creative mindset in the team. Supporting this is a firm test-and-learn approach, where Arnott’s allocates 10 per cent of budget to innovation pilots.

“This leadership approach has enabled marketing to operate with agility and drive sustained growth,” Dill says.

Staff progression as ensued, including promotions for two of Dill’s key direct reports in the last 12 months to the executive leadership team as chief transformation officer and general manager of the meals & beverages division for Australia & New Zealand.

Beyond her Arnott’s CMO role, Dill has long been a driving force in the Australian marketing industry, bringing her expertise and leadership to multiple key industry bodies. As a board member of the Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA), she has been instrumental in supporting advertising industry self-regulation and raising advertising standards. Now, as Chair of the AANA, she is poised to shape the future of a trusted and sustainable marketing industry in Australia.