John Chacko
CMO at Proton
Location
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Industry
Automotive
Previous Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, Pampas Frozen Foods
Education Bachelor of Business Management, Marketing and Business Strategy Management. at University of Waikato
Senior Marketing and Commercial Leader with 25+ years global experience in multinational FMCG companies across Australia, NZ, Africa, Middle East, Latin America and Asia.
Consumer and customer marketing experience with global brands- Rothmans, Pampas, Kraft, Coca-Cola, Schweppes and McDonald’s.
Strengths include vision & strategic thinking, operationalizing & executing strategy, building sustainable strategic alliances internally & externally for mutual value creation and collaborative team approach.
Specialties
Brand turnarounds, integration of new and acquired businesses, successful incident & crisis management, national product recall and successful re-introduction, integrated marketing & creative excellence with world class regional and local advertising/communications development and building marketing capability.
Experience
CMO Proton Privately Held; 10,001+ employees; Automotive industry
August 2011 – Present (1 year 2 months) Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Responsible for Global Marketing, Branding and Motor sports. Integrate marketing, motor sports, F1 and Lotus to strategically build Brand Proton
Marketing Director Asia Pacific Coca-Cola Public Company; 10,001+ employees; KO; Food & Beverages industry
March 1998 – February 2011 (13 years)
I have been in various Division Marketing Director roles in the Coca-Cola Company across Africa, Middle East, Latin America and Asia. These included: Deputy Marketing Director for the Middle East and North Africa Division based in London and later Division Marketing Director for the same division based in Morocco and Egypt with responsibility for 43 markets, Division Marketing Director for the Venezuela/ Colombia division based in Venezeula, Division Marketing Director for South East and West Asia Division based in Bangkok with marketing responsibility for countries including Thailand,Malaysia,Brunei,Singapore,Vietnam,Cambodia,Loas,India,Pakistan, Bangladesh,Sri Lanka and Nepal.
I am currently Group Marketing Director Asia Pacifc for the McDonald's Division of the Coca-Cola Company based in Hong Kong responsible for all markets in Asia Pacific.
John has 19 recommendations (7 reports, 8 co-workers, 4 partners) including:
3rd Abraham N., Director, Marketing, Coca-Cola Nigeria Limited (North & West Africa Division)
3rd Daniel B., EVP Worldwide Account Director, McCann Worldgroup
Marketing Director Kraft Foods Public Company; 10,001+ employees; KFT; Food Production industry
1992 – 1998 (6 years)
I started in Kraft as Marketing Manager grocery in 1992 and was appointed as Marketing Director Australia in 1993 responsible for the total company portfolio. I was responsible for providing the strategic direction, achieving volume, share and profit objectives and restructuring and building the category management teams into marketing. I was also responsible for the development of the Kraft Corporate Image strategy. Brands included Vegemite, Kraft- Peanut Butter, Salad Dressing,Mayonnaise, Singles, ETA, Philadelphia cream Cheese and ETA peanut butter.
John has 1 recommendation (1 partner) including:
3rd Ed D., COO Australasia, JWT
National Sales and Marketing Manager Pampas Frozen Foods
1990 – 1992 (2 years)
Sales and Marketing Manager for the Frozen Foods division of Goodman Fielder Watties Ltd. I was responsible for strategic business and brand planning, sales strategy development and execution, delivery of volume, share and EBIT targets, development and of sales, account management and marketing team while also being a key member of the Pampas MRP11 steering committee and management group. Brands included Pampas Puff Pastry, Filo Pastry, Block Pastry, Watties frozen vegetables, Tip Top ice cream and later Buttercup Bakery brands.
Skills & Expertise
Strategic Partnerships Marketing Strategy Brand Equity Education
University of Waikato Bachelor of Business Management, Marketing and Business Strategy Management.
1977 – 1982
Activities and Societies: University Tennis and SquashTeam.
Overseas Student Council
Taylor's College VHSC, VHSC
1976 – 1977
Recommendations For John
Marketing Director Asia Pacific Coca-Cola “Prior to John Chacko moving as Marketing Director, Asia Pacific at Coca-Cola, I worked for John when he was Head of Marketing for Coca-Cola North & West Africa Division (initially based out of Casablanca, Morocco and later in Cairo, Egypt).
He is the only person I know who has had the incredibly rich experience and opportunity of having worked in five continents (Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia). That breadth of experience gathered from having lived and worked in numerous countries in each of those continents has been enriched by extensive travels to numerous markets as well in each of those continents.
As a result, he evaluates business opportunities and challenges with a seasoned eye and perspective. He is able to decipher common threads in business challenges across markets and distills difficult business issues into a strategic framework that then enables the development and execution of targeted strategies and initiatives.
He provided strong strategic marketing leadership to his marketing team. He helped provide some much needed strategic guidelines on marketing spending allocation between brand marketing, support marketing and promotional marketing investments.
John also provided direction to the Division marketing team and my Nigeria Region marketing team that managed the development of the Coca-Cola Make It Real communication campaign, produced by STB McCann (McCann Erickson's then affiliate in Nigeria) in late 2003 - early 2004. The campaign was subsequently adapted and used in several English and French speaking sub-Saharan African countries.
He understood our franchise bottling system well and was grounded in the realities of operating in diverse and difficult operating environments, having worked for several years in our Company. He had a solid commercial and financial understanding of the drivers of and levers in our business and the imperative to deliver volume, brand contribution, market share and operating income.
He was a firm believer in the primacy of consumer marketing leadership as an engine for growth and the role it had to play in our larger business enterprise. He nurtured and developed marketing talent and had the ability to recognize good talent. He was tough in his expectations of our marketing partners and his team and did not hesitate in having tough conversations. He remained a consistently good listener, open in his thinking to new marketing ideas and a collaborative and affable colleague.
I enjoyed working with him and his team and benefited from the opportunity of his marketing thought leadership and believed that he provided strong marketing leadership in the Division.” July 12, 2011
3rd Abraham N., Director, Marketing, Coca-Cola Nigeria Limited (North & West Africa Division)
reported to John at Coca-Cola
“I had the good fortune to have John as my client when I was at McCann and he was running the Middle East and North West Africa Division of Coke. He is a true integrated marketing specialist who can draw on extensive global experience to solve problems. He helped to turn around Coke's core brands in Africa through a passion for advertising and by understanding the need to create advertising hubs across the region. He is a brave marketer never scared to pioneer the new - he developed the first ever major celebrity campaign for Coke in the Middle East and North Africa which is still in use 7 years later. He built a truly respectful and collaborative relationships with his agency partners and always managed to get the absolute best from them. A great inspirational thinker who was a pleasure to work with.” June 8, 2011
3rd Daniel B., EVP Worldwide Account Director, McCann Worldgroup
was with another company when working with John at Coca-Cola
“I have worked with John on 2 very important and successful growth strategy projects in China and Japan.
John is clearly a strong leader with unique abilities to drive senior and multifunctional teams towards:
- Business, market and consumer insight focus.
- High value strategic orientations.
- Straight to the point commercial orientations.
Our job has especially been facilitated by his strong drive for building internal and external partnerships, his passion and hard work, as well as his great talents in understanding and motivating people.” June 8, 2011
3rd Eric J., Managing Partner, Numsight
was a consultant or contractor to John at Coca-Cola
“I personally had the pleasure of working with John for almost five years, when I was the Senior Director and team leader, for McDonald’s Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa Region [APMEA] Menu Solutions Department.
Although working for different organizations, we regularly shared information / strategy and product driven best practices, in regards to beverage, so as to leverage our combined resources and meet the needs of our stakeholders within both McDonald’s and Coca Cola.
John is a naturally cheerful individual and a highly skilled marketer who understands how to build and run businesses profitably, combined with a truly global perspective he performs at the highest level, demonstrating strategic leadership and the ability to deliver against shared goals.
I can, without reservation, recommend John to anyone whom might benefit from his advice and counsel in building a successful and sustainable business.” April 3, 2011
3rd Leslie B., Senior Director, Menu Solutions, McDonald's Corporation
was with another company when working with John at Coca-Cola
“While I was Asia Pacific Trademark Counsel for The Coca-Cola Company, I had the distinct opportunity to assist John on legal trademark matters while he was acting as Asia Pacific Marketing Director. John demonstrated outstanding leadership skills by always providing clear instructions and objectives for the many projects he led. In addition, John had a strong understanding of trademark legal matters and challenges and was able to find winning business solutions for all of his projects that had trademark legal challenges. John is one of the most professional, focused, and talented marketing managers with which I have worked and I have worked with many over more than 25 years. Finally, John is a personable individual that knows how to motivate people through positive motivation leading to outstanding results by his team members. I give John the highest of recommendations.” March 29, 2011
3rd Daniel G., Trademark Counsel, The Coca-Cola Company
worked with John at Coca-Cola
“Working with John is fantastic experience. I always enjoyed working with him since he always inspired me with his plenty of experience in marketing and he always treat me fair. I have never met such a marketing executive who has amazing balance of ability of visionary, strategic thinking capability and the executing the project seemlessly with his experienced hands-on skills and the excellent collabotive team approach and people skills. I would not rather call his people skill as " skill" ,since his way of treating people is not based on the theory but seems like a born leader. While having solid consumer, customer based marketing attitude, he is always accessible and reliable business leader and menthor whom all those who work with him are willing to communicate on honest base . Being working in the big company and managing the world biggest account , a leadership, abilily to influence the system internally and externally with a WIN WIN approach to create mutaul value internal are essential. John's extraodinally balanced set of capability and skills always made it possible to accomplish the engagements with the company and customer even though subjects are sometimes very tough.e.g. Deployment of Asia Pacific region wide consumer promotion managing managing procurement, marketing ,communication,terms etc.” September 5, 2010
3rd Tatsuo K., Marketing Manager The McDonald's Division Asia Pacific, Coca-Cola Asia
reported to John at Coca-Cola
“John and I worked together on the Olympic and FIFA World Cup Coca-Cola glass campaigns for McDonalds. John is strategically minded and can make things happen such that both projects moved with ease.
He is the kind of "client" whom advertising agencies cherish as he is respectful of people's expertise and is a master collaborator. I found that he takes the time to seek to understand recommendations fully which is vastly critical in a multi-cultural and often multi-lingual situation.
His biggest strength lies in relationship building within the company and externally. People genuinely enjoy working with John and because of this he is able to get the best result for the project at hand.
John has been wonderful to work with. The resulting McDonalds glass campaigns were highly regarded with the glasses completely selling out! I wish John every success!” September 4, 2010
3rd Linda K., Regional Creative Director, Asia Pacific, The Coca-Cola Company
worked with John at Coca-Cola
“John is a passionate people champion. He manages the challenges of the business without losing sight of its most important assets. He has never sacrificed effort and investments in building capabilities. As a result, his team was ahead of the curve in terms of marketing expertise in the organization and became an exporter of talent to other parts of the business. Working with John has been a true inspiration.” September 3, 2010
3rd Radi A., Human Resources Director, North and West Africa Division
worked indirectly for John at Coca-Cola
“John is a strategically minded boss with the strength of focusing on the immediate objectives without losing sight of the long-term vision. John is a great leader with the ability in building a strong team and motivating his subordinates to excel. Never short on humour and a pun, John is a fun and entertaining boss.
His global experience with Coke across so many continents and regions positon him to be a first class marketer with wide spectrum of knowledge base.” August 27, 2010
3rd Karen C., Marketing Director - Asia Pacific, Domino's Pizza
reported to John at Coca-Cola
“I have worked with John continually since 2006 on a variety of strategically-led branding initiatives for his group, across a range of disciplines, from environmental branding to communications presence. The iconic glass program we first worked on together in 2008 has been a big win for McDonald's and Coca-Cola, growing each year in customer take-up and consumer demand. John's customer focus is unrivaled, and results in win-win situations that deliver mutual value. Our collaborations have been rewarding - efficient, effective and resonant with customers and consumers. John inspires his teams (external and internal teams) to higher heights, by challenging us to always reach for more. He does this by being an exceptional leader with insight, but also by being a true partner, nurturing relationships and motivating all those around him.” August 25, 2010
3rd Craig B., Managing Director, Asia, Brandimage Desgrippes & Laga
was a consultant or contractor to John at Coca-Cola
“John is an accomplished marketing leader with great people leadership skills and a calm demeanor that allows him to engage with diverse stakeholders. He is a great asset to any organization seeking to leverage his vast multi geographic experience with a leading Fortune 500 Company to build vision, strategy and a strong marketing team of empowered professionals. Associates that worked under John have great feedback on his ability to build and empower a diverse tightly knit team and have high respect of him as a professional and for making their career development and engagement a priority.” August 25, 2010
3rd James S., Executive Assistant to Division President, The Coca-Cola Company
worked directly with John at Coca-Cola
“John supported my Israeli & Palestinian Marketing team whilst he worked for Coca-Cola Middle East. His insight and input was always welcome adding considerable value and strategic breadth to our analysis. John fitted well into the matrix organisation, maintaining a clear focus on the Division agenda whilst weaving this into the Country team plans. I enjoyed working with John and hope to have the opportunity to do so again at some point in the future.” August 24, 2010
3rd Ian S., Region Manager - Israel & Palestinian Authority., The Coca-Cola Company
worked directly with John at Coca-Cola
“I worked with John while he was the Marketing Director for the South East and West Asia division of Coca-cola based in Bangkok. During this time, John established the marketing department with diverse and experienced talent who are now in senior roles across the company. John's strengths are his visionary & strategic thinking, ability to operationalize & execute strategy, build sustainable strategic alliances and his collaborative team approach.
Since then John has moved into senior global marketing roles.” August 23, 2010
3rd Petrina C., Global VP HR, The Coca Cola Company
worked directly with John at Coca-Cola
“As Global Marketing Director of The McDonald's Divsion I have had the privledge of working closely with John on many innovative initiatives ranging for The Beijing Olympics, to global Coca-Cola promotions with McDonald's. John has done a terrific job setting up and empowering the TMD Asia Pacific Marketing Team calling on McDonald's Asia Pacific Middle East and Africa.
In addition, John has diligently ensured that our TMD Atlanta marketing community has stayed close to his team so we can consistently provide John with learning from around the world, and gather his teams work as best in class examples as well.
John has a passion for the business and a knack for cultivating relationships to assist in helping build long term value for both the McDonald's and Coca-Cola systems. John knows the importance of keeping up with consumer trends and marrying those insights to real world beverage solutions that can help both brands reach their objectives. I have enjoyed working with John on this fast paced dynamic business.
David Goerke” August 23, 2010
3rd David G., Marketing Director, Coca-Cola
worked directly with John at Coca-Cola
“John is an experienced marketer who understands how to partner with agencies and customers to drive sales and profits for all parties. John can both effectively develop a business/marketing strategy as well as lead a team to operationalize that strategy and bring results. His international experience will be an asset for any CPG or Foodservice organization.” August 23, 2010
3rd Peter K., Senior Manager, Global Innovation Marketing, Coca-Cola Company
reported to John at Coca-Cola
“John is a great manager to work for , encourages independent working and invites ideas and value addition from his direct reports.” August 23, 2010
3rd Ramachandran 'Ram' K., Group Director, Corporate Marketing Strategy & Insights, The Coca-Cola Company
reported to John at Coca-Cola
“I worked with John from a distance when he oversaw the Nigerian operation as Division Marketing Director and later reported directly to him in the same role overseeing 28 countries in the North West Africa Division. John is a calm, detail-oriented Marketing professional and a great manager of people. John created a work environment that was result-oriented yet accommodating of different individual nuances, capabilities and cultures. John provided strategic marketing direction and leadership to both Anglophone and Francophone African countries and easily won the respect of his team and the country managers he supervised. John’s global experience and solid marketing pedigree shows though in his strategic thinking and his knack for operationalizing strategy to deliver market place results, even in very tough environments, like he did in Africa.” August 23, 2010
3rd Oare O., Division Brand Manager - Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola North and West Africa Division
reported to John at Coca-Cola
“I have worked closely with John for almost 2 years when I was Country manager Algeria and he was ME Marketing Manager.During this period John has contributed a lot in the outstanding success of Coke in Algeria through his talented marketing skills and consumer insights knowledge.He has a firm but pleasant personality.All of that has played a big role in his career progress with the Coca-Cola Company.” August 21, 2010
3rd Rafik E., Middle-East Business Unit President, The Coca-Cola Company
worked directly with John at Coca-Cola
“I worked for John both in Morocco an Egypt between 2003 and 2005 when he was Division Marketing Diector for North & West Africa. John is a great people manager with robust leadership and strategic thinking skills.
His amazing experience accross different geographies and roles helps him grab the local cultural sensitivities and get the most out of his people. He has an empathic style that enables him to harness the collective genius and make the right business decisions. He also empowers his people to lead while being there to coach and make strategic decisions when needed. To finish, John is a disciplined and thorough leader able to put in place the right organization, people and routines to successfully manage a business.” August 16, 2010
3rd Jawad B., Division Senior Brand Manager, The Coca-Cola Company
reported to John at Coca-Cola
Marketing Director Kraft Foods “Whilst heading up JWT, I worked closely with John, and can thoroughly recommend him for his experience, expertise and professionalism. He is a collaborative, creative thinker, who is strategically orientated with a high level of commercial savvy which makes him very results focused. A team player with all stakeholders, at Kraft he reorganized marketing, sales and operations into category management teams, successfully creating a cross functional approach to delivering sustainable volume, share and profit growth. John is also good fun to be around, and I’d be happy to talk more about him to anyone at anytime.” June 9, 2011
3rd Ed D., COO Australasia, JWT
was with another company when working with John at Kraft Foods
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