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Millennial, Digital Opps: Hickory Farms promotes head marketer to CEO (Score 36)

was the marketing VP of Redbox prior to that. While CMO, Ransford was responsible for rebranding the company to help it reach younger consumers and growing its online business. The incumbent CEO, Diane Pearse, held the role for six years. I am not sure about the company's plans to fill the now vacant CMO spot. I predict Ransford will remain heavily involved in the marketing strategy. 

Per Pathmatics, HF earned 10.2m impressions YTD through Facebook ads (62%) and Instagram ads (38%). It placed 100% of these ads site direct onto facebook.com and instagram.com. It spent around $87.5k on digital display ads YTD, a big jump from $33.2k spent in this channel during the same time period of 2021. Full-year spend increased by 88% from $583.7k in 2020 to $1.1m in 2021. 

According to iSpot, HF has not invested in national TV ads since spending $318.4m in 2020 during programming such as "CNN Tonight With Don Lemon," "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year," "The Christmas House," "CNN Newsroom With Brooke Baldwin" and "Fox News at Night With Shannon Bream." 

Sellers-- HF mainly targets millennial women through digital display ads. The company used to target Gen-Xers, but under Ransford's leadership, it started targeting younger consumers. I do not expect to see any radical changes to HF's strategy even once it finds a new CMO because Ransford will likely keep a close eye on marketing. The company ramped spend up significantly in 2021, which I predict it will continue to do throughout 2022. Reach out to offer digital ad space. 

Agency & martech readers-- Ransford's promotion to CEO could give you an opportunity to pick up some of HF's business. Start preparing your pitches so that you can reach out once it finds a new CMO. I believe the only agency that you will face competition from is digital shop Lyons Consulting Group.