Profile: Jaime Martin, Creative Activation Manager, Coca-Cola Co.

Jaime Martin knows she’s at her best when she’s learning and pushing to better herself. So when she sees an opportunity for her team to be more efficient and effective in the way they work, she’s “all in” for the challenge of making the change possible.Martin is Coca-Cola’s creative activation manager for Kroger, a position she has held since 2016. During her tenure, she feels she’s helped evolve the way both the shopper marketing team and the Kroger national retail sales team collaborate with this key retailer.“Some of the changes I’ve spearheaded have varying degrees of impact, but in totality have propelled our team forward,” she says. The efforts have included implementing a cloud-based team space that automatically overlays planning stages and gates and accommodates iCloud photo sharing as well. She sees reward in the unplanned positive impacts these changes bring. “The team cloud sharing space had the greatest positive impact on the way we organize and share out information with our bottling community,” she notes.With a degree in graphic design from the University of Dayton and an MBA in marketing from Northern Kentucky University, Martin started her career at LPK as a project coordinator. She moved to Northlich five years later and, after a short stint there, joined Geometry Global as a senior account executive on the Kimberly-Clark/Kroger team. She was there for three and a half years before moving to the CPG side of the industry at Coca-Cola.Martin takes pride in proactively managing programs, from planning out timing before kickoff through sending reminders for execution. “Being proactive enables me to manage the work instead of letting it manage me,” she says. “I like to use the approach that 80% of my week should be planned needs while only 20% or less should be unplanned, affording me the adaptability to shift quickly when last-minute challenges do arise.”She points to a display called “Boomeracks” for the company’s immediate consumption business as a recent highlight. This semi-permanent sustainable concept proposed by the commercial team for use in 2020 was out of the norm in terms of the types of merchandising tools the bottler typically executes at Kroger.Martin saw the Boomerack as a solution for immediate-consumption merchandising and a way to bridge long gaps between launch and shelf resets, she notes, adding that typical corrugate shippers only last for four weeks while bridge gaps sometimes span more than 10 weeks. “Not only was the Boomerack sustainable but it was also more cost-efficient on our total POS budget.”The Boomerack project evolved into an always-on, yearlong display, marking the first time Coke gained 52 weeks of continuous off-shelf display for its immediate-consumption business. Martin spearheaded the execution and was “the person continuously looking forward, mapping out the next wave needs and proactively managing these executions.”From this program, she says, Coke Energy delivered $1.3 million in retail sales through its first eight weeks in market with the off-shelf display only, while the 20-ounce immediate-consumption cherry vanilla product became the No. 1 flavored single-serve item in its first four weeks and immediate-consumption display orders increased by 1.8 times over the prior year.

Profile: Jaime Martin, Creative Activation Manager, Coca-Cola Co.

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