Name
Marina Di Migueli
Age
36
Job title
Global marketing director – starches, proteins and mouthfeel
Company and location
Tate & Lyle, London UK
Education
MBA in marketing (ESPM Brazil)/specialist in sustainability marketing (Cambridge University, UK)
Favourite food/drink?
Sushi. As snack, protein bars. I love to have them with a cup of coffee mid-afternoon. They are my choice as they deliver a mix of indulgence and nutrition, and how they have evolved over the years and now deliver incredible textures and layer combinations, keeping the category interesting.
What inspired you to enter F&B?
The exciting innovation scene! There is a lot of space for a marketer in the B2B side to tap into their creativity and strategy when partnering with customers to develop new products.
Tell us about your role
I am currently double hatting: supporting the growth of our starches and proteins through marketing. But I am also responsible for growing the ‘mouthfeel’ solutions space at Tate & Lyle, so it’s a mix of business strategy, brand building, PR and global media strategy.
In my capacity as head of marketing for starches and proteins, I need to ensure that Tate & Lyle will successfully launch and grow new products in my product lines. This includes working alongside innovation in ideating new products and, when the innovations are coming out of the pipeline, launching and scaling them successfully. This involves understanding the market and customer needs and enabling our commercial teams continuously to sell our products.
What does a typical day look like?
My days normally revolve around initiatives for the medium and long term, working with both internal and external stakeholders. In some days I will spend time in innovation-led meetings thinking about the longer-term future of the product line. In others, I will be in the weeds with our partner agencies thinking about how to deliver the year KPIs of our campaigns.
I also spend a lot of time engaging internally with teams in all regions- in a global position we need to work as a team with the regional teams to be able to make an impact, so I spend a good time building those relationships and working in partnership.
How did you get to where you are today?
I had several different roles in marketing, but always in B2B (before the food industry, I spent six years in the healthcare industry at Philips). I had positions in marcomms, product, consumer insights. When I became a manager, I had regional roles in two different regions (Latam and Europe). And when I moved to the global side of the organisation, I worked on two different product platforms, fibres and now starches and proteins.
I believe that having this breadth of experiences in marketing specialty areas, regions and product lines is what prepared me to be where I am: a global position where I need to get my impact delivered through others through influence.
Having been in my stakeholders’ shoes allows me to have empathy and to find the best ways of working according to their situation.
When you’re having a bad day, what cheers you up?
A good chat with a friend who can help me change my perspective.
What’s your favourite part about the food sector?
The positive impact we can have in people’s lives through healthier food.
What’s next for you/what’s the dream?
There’s still a lot of work to develop where I am today! So I suppose the next step is to keep really well attuned to our customers, the industry, the consumers…to be able to keep building the solutions needed for future times.
When we think about mouthfeel, we think about how to retain ‘taste’ in any reformulation scenario. And let’s face it, the current market environment is challenging, with different pressures for food formulators; the cost of living crisis, new regulations, and consumer demands for foods that are healthier and cleaner label, convenient, affordable and tasty! So as a marketer my job is to distil the key challenges our customers are going through, so we can continue to deliver ingredients and solutions to deliver healthier food that tastes really great, so I’ll be very focused on this mission.
