Google is establishing a food-and-beverage team in Chicago to link with advertisers and marketers including Northfield-based Kraft and Purchase, N.Y.-based PepsiCo. Karen Sauder, who recently resigned from her position as managing director at DraftFCB Chicago, will become Industry Director for Food and Beverages at Google.
In the new role, Sauder is expected to build a Chicago-based team, focusing on Google’s efforts to build its advertising and marketing business in the food and beverage industries for the first time, according to a Google spokesman.
Sauder will take on the role as early as Jan. 31.
In an interview, Sauder described “untapped potential” in the digital world for food and beverage advertisers, and Google’s ability to work with them, based on proprietary analytics that map out consumer behavior. For Google, this means providing clients information more in depth than, say, number of searches for “30 minute meals,” or “easy lasagna.”
“I think there are a lot of people who understand search at a very basic level,” Sauder said, underscoring that Google’s services will have to go deeper. Some of the larger opportunities for her team, she said, are “around some of the new location-based services and mobile technology that’s really untapped at this point.”
Sauder worked her way up through the sales ranks of Anheuser Busch, and later at Frito Lay. She moved to the marketing and promotions side in the late 1990s and was named managing director of the newly merged DraftFCB in 2005.
Sauder’s departure takes place during a tumultuous time for the agency. In August, three top executives, including North American president Mark Modesto, departed abruptly. Since then, Draft has lost several Kraft accounts, including Cool Whip and Jell-O. The agency’s prize S.C. Johnson business is also up in the air, according to Advertising Age. In a recent article, the magazine estimated S.C. Johnson’s total advertising and marketing budget in excess of $1 billion. Draft handles global creative duties for the consumer products company. Other functions, such as promotions, media buying, and digital advertising, are handled by other agencies.
In a statement, DraftFCB confirmed Sauder’s departure, “effective immediately,” and thanked her for “her many contributions to the Chicago agency since being named our managing director.”
