Hasta La Creative!

General Mills still isn’t as far as Chief Marketing Officer Mark Addicks would like in its journey from TV dependency to content focus, but in a keynote speech at the Ad Age Digital Conference today he said that about 50% of marketing executives’ time at General Mills is spent creating content.

Not surprisingly, what anchors all that activity is “brand purpose,” the topic of the decade at marketing conferences. But while purpose serves as the anchor keeping General Mills brands from getting lost in the currents of the digital age, Mr. Addicks said the company is also making waves in other ways. He cited a Lucky Charms collaboration with YouTube’s Machinima channel that produced a mashup of classic TV ads and a 42% sales lift in a week; and digital recipe collaborations with consumers that have helped raise sales for Pillsbury Grands by 9% the past year.

“We used to think we were great at TV,” Mr. Addicks said. “We’re going to have to be great at content.”

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