TRANSCRIPT
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Robert Berkeley [00:00]
Hello once again.
Robert Berkeley [00:05]
And welcome to Inside Jobs, the podcast where we explore the inner workings of in-house agencies and the creative geniuses behind them. And I think we’ve got one today as well. Inside Jobs is proudly presented by IHAF, the In-House Agency Forum, which is the trade association for in-house agencies, and EKCS, the experts in content production. We take on that work so you creatives can focus on what you do best.
I’m thrilled to welcome Ekaterina Bueva, the Head of Marketing Services International at Kraft Heinz. Originally from Russia, now based in Amsterdam, Ekaterina has a fascinating story of innovation and leadership in what we all know is a very fast-paced world of international marketing. Ekaterina, welcome to Inside Jobs.
Ekaterina Bueva [00:49]
Wow. Thank you, Robert. It’s exciting to be here and talk to you and to the community who are thinking about in-house.
Robert Berkeley [00:56]
I think people will learn a lot of lessons from you and your experience. Quickly, before we start, can you just describe where your role is right now and what you’re responsible for?
Ekaterina Bueva [01:04]
Yeah. I have been with Kraft Heinz for eight years now. My current role is Head of Marketing Services. I’m responsible for our agency ecosystem, which includes our external agency partners such as creative, digital, PR, and packaging design agencies. It also includes our in-house agency, The Kitchen, which I think we will deep dive into a little more today. And it also encompasses our marketing technology infrastructure—tools and tech that our external agency partners and in-house agency use in their day-to-day jobs.
I’m covering our markets outside the U.S. and Canada—we call them, in Kraft Heinz, Developed and Emerging Markets. And I’m part of our Global Marketing Excellence team based out of the lovely city of Amsterdam.
Robert Berkeley [01:47]
Wow. Okay, so just how many countries are you operating in?
Ekaterina Bueva [01:51]
More than 30 markets and more than 100 brands that we support outside the U.S. and Canada.
Robert Berkeley [01:56]
We’re going to learn a lot more about that. But this sounds like a big task for one person. I presume there are some other people around you who assist you in this, correct?
Ekaterina Bueva [02:05]
Yes. There’s always a great team—not behind, but at the forefront.
Robert Berkeley [02:12]
Let’s start at the beginning, though. Ekaterina, you’re in Amsterdam, but you’re not actually Dutch, as I mentioned before. Take us back in time. I’d love to know about your background, the environment you grew up in, and what led you to working in marketing—because I don’t think that was your first choice.
Ekaterina Bueva [02:29]
No, actually. I grew up in the central part of Russia, in a small city about 500 kilometers from Moscow. My initial focus was different—I graduated from university studying English and French literature. By education, I’m an interpreter and teacher of foreign languages.
Robert Berkeley [02:49]
Interesting. So you studied at a university 500 kilometers from Moscow?
Ekaterina Bueva [02:55]
Yes, in my hometown. When I graduated, it was during the collapse of the USSR—a time of great change. I was looking for a job and moved to Moscow because it was the city of opportunity. By chance, I was invited to interview at an advertising agency, despite knowing nothing about advertising.
Robert Berkeley [03:20]
What was the “chance” part of it?
Ekaterina Bueva [03:22]
It’s funny—they were looking for a receptionist who spoke English.
Robert Berkeley [03:26]
Okay, well, you ticked that box!
Ekaterina Bueva [03:28]
Yes. But after speaking with me, they said, “You sound more qualified than just a receptionist—maybe you can do more.” The next day, I started as an account executive at the advertising agency and began learning about advertising and marketing on the job.
Robert Berkeley [03:47]
In post-Perestroika Russia, what was known about advertising and marketing? After decades of communism, I imagine not much.
Ekaterina Bueva [03:57]
Exactly. We grew up with monobrand companies and government-owned private labels. Then suddenly, brands like Kraft Heinz, Nestlé, and Procter & Gamble entered the market. At that time, marketing and advertising education was only available in English—there were no Russian translations yet. My language skills helped me read, educate myself, and communicate with clients while developing campaigns, often with the help of books like Kotler on Marketing.
Robert Berkeley [04:32]
That was my next question—how did you figure it all out? Growing up in the West, we take marketing for granted—it’s everywhere. But you were essentially creating and learning as you went.
Ekaterina Bueva [04:50]
Yes. I had to learn what an advertising campaign was, what a consumer was, and what a brand meant—all from scratch. For us, it was the opposite of the usual approach: we practiced first and learned through doing, then read the theory and thought, “Oh, that’s what this is!”
Robert Berkeley [05:17]
Do you think this gave you a different perspective compared to colleagues who grew up in an environment saturated with marketing and advertising?
Ekaterina Bueva [05:29]
Perhaps. I can’t compare directly since I haven’t experienced their journey. But learning through practice taught me how things really work—not just in theory, but on the ground.
Robert Berkeley [05:49]
That makes sense. I’d love to hear more about life in Moscow’s advertising world during that time—so much was happening, with new businesses and Western influence. But for now, let’s move forward. You eventually transitioned from the agency side to working for a brand, didn’t you?
I actually spent quite some time on the advertising agency side. About seven or eight years, I've been on the advertising agency side. I literally built my career from account executive to group client service director. After that, I wanted to try working on the client side, and this is when I moved from the agency side to Mars.
Robert Berkeley [06:34]
Was it a role that you applied for, or did they come and find you? I mean, how did that come about?
Ekaterina Bueva [06:38]
They actually found me because they were searching for a person with an agency background and good business acumen. The role wasn’t pure brand marketing; it was in the commercial department, which is, in our current language, something between marketing, procurement, and commercial. This was interesting for me because I hadn't done this before, and I think my previous background really helped.
Robert Berkeley [07:02]
This is becoming evident, Ekaterina. The lack of fear is definitely a theme here. So, you knew the role would involve procurement, which was sort of the opposite of what you'd been doing. I suppose as an agency account director, you'd been monetizing and commercializing what you were doing as a creative service. Then you moved to the other side where you were buying.
Ekaterina Bueva [07:20]
Yeah, but it's all about relationships—relationships with your consumer, your client, and your suppliers—in order to deliver the best for your client and consumer. When you're moving to the commercial side, be it marketing or marketing procurement, it is still about relationships. It’s more commercial, but it is very much relationship-driven.
Robert Berkeley [07:38]
You were at Mars when you were in Moscow, right?
Ekaterina Bueva [07:40]
Yes.
Robert Berkeley [07:41]
How did the move happen then, out of Russia?
Ekaterina Bueva [07:43]
The move happened a little bit later. After Mars, I worked at LG Electronics and in a telecommunications company. The move actually happened when I was working for the telecommunications company back in Russia. They had opened a headquarters in Amsterdam. This is where the new head of category invited me to join his team in Amsterdam and to start working not just over Russia but over Europe as well as emerging markets. The footprint was quite peculiar for the company because the company is called Veon. They grew through acquisition. So they had a portfolio of different brands, present in Europe, Canada, Russia, CIS countries, as well as in Bangladesh, Algeria, and Pakistan. Quite an interesting footprint with totally different brands.
Robert Berkeley [08:28]
You were there for about five years, and then in 2016, you wound up at Kraft Heinz. How did that come about?
Ekaterina Bueva [08:35]
In 2016, I had some years behind me when I realized, okay, I can work in the market, I can work with markets in a group of different companies, but I had never worked with North America. I had never worked with one of the top five global FMCG companies in a global or international role. And this is when Kraft Heinz approached me. Being one of the top five companies in the world, I was really curious and interested in joining the team.
Robert Berkeley [09:04]
What was the role they offered you?
Ekaterina Bueva [09:06]
Originally, it was still a role in marketing procurement, being responsible for media buying and the relationship with creative and market research agencies. This is when I joined the team.
Robert Berkeley [09:18]
Okay, and you'd worked at Mars; you'd worked with an American company before. Did it feel similar? This is another American company?
Ekaterina Bueva [09:27]
Yes and no. The companies are different. Mars is a private company, so it has a slightly different philosophy and internal culture. Kraft Heinz is a public company with a history of mergers and acquisitions. It has very well-known and iconic brands. What I found fascinating about Kraft Heinz is that outside of North America, 50% of our business is Heinz, our iconic brand. But the other 50% comprises what we call local jewels—local brands that are very strong and fascinating in their own right. For example, in China, we have a soy sauce master that everyone knows. In Indonesia, there’s ABC, which everyone knows as well. It’s great to see these local jewels grow.
Robert Berkeley [10:23]
You were in procurement, you're not in procurement now. How did that journey happen? And let's start to touch on what your role is right now.
Ekaterina Bueva [10:29]
Correct. So how it all started four years ago, back in 2020, our Global Center of Excellence started to kind of appear in the organization of Kraft Heinz. I was already based in Amsterdam, and the role of Head of Marketing Services popped up. Our leadership team had set an agenda for the creative transformation journey in front of the marketing people as well as the overall organization.
We started to ask ourselves questions: how can we transform how we work with our external agency partners? Being part of procurement, I had been working with them a lot, just from the commercial side. We also identified the opportunity to build an in-house agency. With my agency background, combined with business acumen, I understood how to build the agency, how to create the business case, and what the scope of the agency should be. I think this was a great opportunity and a great match for my background and skill set, leading to the role of Head of Marketing Services in the Global Marketing Excellence organization.
Robert Berkeley [11:30]
The need, the aim, the goal to have an in-house agency came from the United States, from senior marketers in the United States?
Ekaterina Bueva [11:37]
It came from the creative transformation objective. I would say it was inspired by the leadership team—challenging us as an organization to determine what we needed to transform the company to be more creative. An in-house agency came as one of the answers.
Robert Berkeley [11:54]
And you happened to be the right person in the right place at the right time, with your agency experience, sitting here in Europe, understanding the marketing function within Kraft Heinz. To some extent, yes, this landed you in a good place, right? Well, you clearly were the right person because you're still there and you're still doing it. Can you explain what the in-house function at Kraft Heinz is, how it works, and how it delivers to its market?
Ekaterina Bueva [12:17]
Yeah, as I mentioned, our in-house agency is called The Kitchen. We have two branches: one is The Kitchen North America, led by my counterpart in the U.S. and Canada. I'm responsible for The Kitchen International, which covers our emerging and developed markets.
We developed The Kitchen, the in-house model for Kraft Heinz, back in 2020. It started with a focus on three strategic priorities. First, we wanted creativity at the speed of culture, with a focus on social media. Second, we wanted personalization at scale, which is very much about content production, scaling, asset adaptations, and IT production. Third, we aimed for full-funnel marketing, ensuring we worked through the line (using old-school marketing language) to reach our consumers.
Our model is based on four pillars, three of which we run centrally from our Center of Excellence—my team is responsible for these. The first is data: how we collect, use, and leverage data in our communication. The second is analytics: pre-campaign and post-campaign analysis, determining what success looks like. The third is technology: the tools we use to ensure efficiency and effectiveness in our daily work.
The fourth pillar, which is managed locally by our kitchen teams in the markets with our consultation, is content. This pillar involves defining the scope of the local kitchens, the team composition, and the required skill sets to meet the identified needs.
Robert Berkeley [14:05]
You're suggesting that each of the kitchens around the world might have a different focus?
Ekaterina Bueva [14:10]
I'm not suggesting—I’m saying that, yes, we do have different scopes. Currently, within The Kitchen Internationalnetwork, we have 10 kitchens worldwide. While the strategic priorities remain the same, some kitchens focus more on full-funnel marketing, while others emphasize creativity at the speed of culture. The setup of local teams is based on the specific business objectives and identified gaps or opportunities within each market.
Robert Berkeley [14:43]
So the kitchen in one country might have one focus, while another might have a different focus and responsibility. This is agreed upon between you, and any gaps are presumably filled by working with local agencies as well. I know you have a number of local agencies on the roster who dovetail with your in-house creatives. Correct?
Ekaterina Bueva [15:00]
Correct. That’s why we always talk about the agency ecosystem and collaboration. Our external agency partners work hand-in-hand with the kitchens. We clearly define the responsibilities of our agencies while identifying opportunities for our in-house agency to step in. By doing this, we establish the scope for the kitchens and set up the teams accordingly.
Robert Berkeley 15:29
So you see your role as a sort of ringmaster who enables the various talents around the world to focus—focus on what they want to be famous for and what they want to do best. Your job is to load balance that and make sure that all services are provided to everybody, whether it's in-house or not. Is that kind of where you see yourself from a strategic point of view?
Ekaterina Bueva 15:48
To some extent, I would say so. With the agencies that are already our external agency partners, the relationship is already established. It's about being clear on how we measure success in our relationship. With the kitchens, it's about helping local teams see whether they need a kitchen, what an in-house agency does and doesn't do, and how its scope differs from our external agency partners. It's about how they complement each other. So, maybe not a ringmaster, but more like orchestrating the right relationship between our external agency partners, our in-house agency team, and our marketing teams.
Robert Berkeley 16:27
How on earth do you do that? You've got a team of people in Amsterdam or in London, I think.
Ekaterina Bueva 16:32
Yes. We have a team partially based in London and partially based in Amsterdam. It's just how the company is structured—we're dual-headquartered between London and Amsterdam in this part of the world. And yes, we also have teams in the markets. We don’t consider them “not our team.” We have teams in Melbourne, Jakarta, Shanghai, London, and Amsterdam.
Robert Berkeley 16:55
But nevertheless, you're working across many different cultures. I would hope maybe part of that is corporate culture, but there must also be cultural differences with a capital "C" that you’re navigating. Is there an approach you take to that?
Ekaterina Bueva 17:09
I would say being a very good listener and making sure you understand why priorities are what they are. Quite often, local markets know better. I mentioned that 50% of our portfolio consists of local brands. Who knows better how to talk to consumers about a local brand in Indonesia?
Robert Berkeley 17:30
So you must trust them, and they have to trust you. Trust isn’t something you can just tell someone to have.
Ekaterina Bueva 17:35
Definitely, you build trust. When you have cultural differences, you need to be conscious that emotions might arise. One principle we use across our team is: "Be intentional, not emotional." This helps because, every time you understand the intention from both sides, you can find common ground and build trust. When disagreements happen, you return to that common ground and reaffirm intentions.
Robert Berkeley 18:09
And how do you do this? Hypothetically, in the real world, how do you see trust breaking down? What would you look for, and what would you do to fix it?
Ekaterina Bueva 18:22
In practical terms, we have multiple conversations.
Robert Berkeley 18:24
So talking conversations, not email or messaging?
Ekaterina Bueva 18:28
Yes. We want to know who people are. We participate in joint calls. Every quarter, for example, we have joint calls. These might focus on operations, creative excellence, or challenges.
Robert Berkeley 18:44
So your aim is to get everyone to know each other, feel each other's strengths, and you facilitate this?
Ekaterina Bueva 18:50
Yes. My team ensures that every month we showcase the best of the best from every kitchen. Even if a kitchen isn’t ready, we make sure to highlight what they’ve achieved—like when we launched a kitchen in Warsaw. People start feeling part of the family and proud of their work because they receive reassurance from us and curiosity and interest from others. Then we share campaigns, and despite cultural differences, some consumer insights from one country may work very well in another. People often forget this because they’re in their own bubble, so we make sure these bubbles grow bigger every day.
Robert Berkeley 19:41
Live communication is clearly a very important part of that. But when you’re working across multiple time zones, it’s all too easy to fire off a message and wait until morning for a reply. Does that mean you have pretty long days sometimes?
Ekaterina Bueva 19:55
You might have long days if you don’t manage them well. We used to, but now my team and I know how to handle it. We’ve established rituals and routines. Every year, we pre-agree on public holidays in every country—like when Admiral happens, Ramadan, or Chinese New Year. For example, in August, we know not to call Europe because everyone’s on vacation. We’ve introduced routines like half-hour monthly calls. This doesn’t mean we don’t communicate outside of those times—there’s always WhatsApp, Teams, and email. But everyone knows that we’ll have dedicated time every month, a bigger roundup every quarter, and ideally, a physical get-together once a year. These rules help the team stay connected despite time differences. For instance, in Melbourne, it’s already tomorrow for me while others are still in yesterday.
Robert Berkeley 21:01
Using your analogy of the orchestration of this, it sounds like you really need to understand how a violinist thinks and how a flautist thinks and how a percussionist thinks. All of these people in different places doing their own thing, but you kind of got them working together. You've also got your external agencies. Then the whole thing that you're doing this global operation for, it really, really is that has to be technically coordinated. You can't have people going their own way and doing their own things one way. Because at the end of the day, as you say, you're charged with gathering the data and analyzing the data and sending it back, I presume, in a way that they can understand and use and harness to improve the creative in whichever channels they're working. How does that work? Because you also look after that, right?
Ekaterina Bueva 21:40
Yeah. So as I mentioned, marketing technology, we call it tech and tools. Inside kitchen is one of our cornerstones and the cornerstones of our model. And we run it centrally, also with intention. It is part of our framework. We use different tools for project management and briefing. When I say different, it means that it is the same tool, the same platform, which is available for all our kitchens and they can plug in into it and just off they go. So we centrally define our marketing technology roadmap. We of course do it in collaboration with our kitchens because we so to say do the bottom-up needs collection. Once we identified all the needs we know. Okay, so this is probably the list of tools that we need for project briefing and management. This is the list of tools that we need for assets adaptations and this is what we need for assets exchange and this is how, this is where we actually also collaborate with legal with IT in order to introduce those tools inside the organization. It helps us when we do it central, it helps us to avoid duplication of efforts. Because it's not that that every kitchen locally is searching for a tool to do briefing with their marketing teams. No, we do it once and well, we provide it centrally, we do all the trainings and then they can use it and fill in the user feedback. So here they are our customers and we are their kind of like support service leading them on the journey.
Robert Berkeley 23:04
How do you ensure that people aren't signing up with their credit card for some new third-party online software as a service gadget that takes their fancy? How do you keep people engaged? How do you get them to continue to get benefit and use the systems that you deploy?
Ekaterina Bueva 23:20
I think with clarity they know. So first of all, with our kitchen model, what helps is we're clear about who is doing what, who is responsible for what on the global level and on the local level. Why I mentioned that we do bottom up. So we collect the needs of the markets. They know, we hear them, we know, we talk to them. So we will not buy the tool, which is, which will not be useful for them. And they also know that they can benefit from scale. So if a tool is used in one kitchen which is more advanced, it is easier for them to learn from them to use this very tool rather than doing something on their own and support the tool on their own. And then another thing which I believe very strongly is you need to follow the principle people process platform. Start with people, what they need, why they need the tool. Then design the process so that the process is designed incorporating the platform, incorporating the tool, but not that it is an addition or you know, something which disrupts the process. And then look at the platform, whether it is suitable or not. Talk to the provider what is what they are going kind of like to do about the tool in the future? It may be a great tool for now, but in a couple of years if they don't have a plan, it will be outdated and you will have to retire the tool. It will not be helpful anymore. So people process platform in this particular order. And then another, I don't know, piece of advice is please differentiate introduction and adoption. Two different things to launch a tool and to adopt a tool. Two different work streams, two different KPIs, two different kind of like success stories. You can launch the tool, very successful. No one uses it.
Robert Berkeley 25:00
It seems to me you have an enormous job, Ekaterina, and yet you always seem so calm about it all. I don't know if that's how you feel inside, but to an outsider listening to this, there are so many bits and pie. How many people have you got, by the way, supporting your central team? I didn't ask you that question.
Ekaterina Bueva 25:17
I have a team of six.
Robert Berkeley 25:18
Six?
Ekaterina Bueva 25:19
Yes, a team of six. And if we're talking about our 10 kitchens, so our 10 kitchens, we now have more than 80 people.
Robert Berkeley 25:28
Wow. That's not including North America.
Ekaterina Bueva 25:30
No, that's not including North America. That's our developed and emerging markets.
Robert Berkeley 25:34
And you also have obviously some agencies that help you along the way as well, right? With the central support I'm talking about.
Ekaterina Bueva 25:42
Oh, yes, definitely. Kind of like. So with our agencies, I said we call them agency partners in total honesty. It's not just agencies and they're not just support. We collaborate. And actually, by the way, this year, for example, was one of the successful years for Kraft Heinz. We got our first Cannes Lions for creative effectiveness with one of our agency partners, Rethink. So, yeah, and we have agencies, as I said, kind of working very, very closely with kitchens. So they do lead. They kind of like they lead our global brands. They lead creative work and strategy and kitchens work with very much focus on social media and on adaptations of the creative campaigns.
Robert Berkeley 26:30
I'm curious to just perhaps look into the crystal ball a little bit in terms of where you see things heading at the minute. Obviously, everyone's talking about AI, but there is more to the world than AI. Do you have a sense of what the trends are? Kraft Heinz has really led the way in terms of regionalization, localization, personalization. Are some of these new tools going to help with that? Are they hindering with that? Are they hindering with you trying to run this framework for people to have freedom within?
Ekaterina Bueva 27:02
Well, I would start. First of all, I do believe that we're working with a very interesting thing within housing as a territory, as an area. It's really interesting. I do believe that in-house is here to stay in-house agencies. And if they don't yet have a proper seat at the table, maybe in some instances they will. I also believe that in-house agencies will be working more and more closely with the creative agency partners. They will not substitute. They will complement each other as well as technology and tools. They will not substitute us, but they will complement us. They will help us to get better, to take away some of the routine, some of the mundane tasks and automate that and yeah, kind of like they will create that very framework where we'll have the freedom to be creative.
Robert Berkeley 27:53
This sentiment will obviously be much applauded. In fact, I think I can hear a ripple of applause from our listeners as you say that in-house agencies are here to stay and of course, yes, working with external partners who can plug the gaps, carry out the work that the in-house agency does not feel it needs to be famous for. Absolutely. Thank you very much for being on Inside Jobs.
Ekaterina Bueva 28:15
Thank you, Robert, for inviting and for having me and thank you for an interesting conversation and I hope it will inspire some of the best of the minds in our industry to join our in-house league.
Robert Berkeley 28:26
Absolutely. If anyone wants to contact you and ask you any questions, they can reach out on LinkedIn, I guess.
Ekaterina Bueva 28:31
LinkedIn, yeah.
Robert Berkeley 28:32
I want to thank IHAF and EKCS. Without them, I wouldn't get the chance to do these deep dives with people like you, Ekaterina. You can go onto ijpodcast.com and check out 54 or five or six different episodes all with their own story. Like Ekaterina, they've all got something unique to say, but until then, keep pushing the boundaries of creativity and innovation. I'm Robert Berkeley signing off for Inside Jobs. Thank you for listening.