Claire Canty, National Account ManagerWeetabix Food Co

In November 2015, Claire took a big leap out of the familiar world of marketing and moved into the sales team as National Account Manager for Waitrose, Co-op & Ocado at the Weetabix Food Company. A role which she has taken on in order to strengthen her commercial experience and gain a broader business view to fuel her longer term career ambitions and passion for marketing. Prior to this brave cross-functional move, Claire has had a very successful 2 1/2 years at Weetabix within the marketing team, most recently as Senior Brand Manager for Weetabix, the Nation’s No.1 Breakfast cereal, where she was responsible for the full marketing mix.

In just 12 months she turned around its declining position to achieve its highest value share in 5 years, and returned the brand to MAT penetration growth and volume growth for the first time in 2 years through leading the Weetabuddies campaign (shortlisted in the Masters of Marketing awards) as well as a major brand re-launch this year – our Incredible Inside campaign. Both of which surpassed our expectations to significantly turn around penetration and base sales, with the brand now outperforming the category.

Prior to Weetabix, Claire worked at Nestle UK, where she joined on the Marketing Graduate Scheme before taking on the role of Brand Manager on Yorkie and the Chocolate Gems, a £90m portfolio. In this role she developed and executed a multi-media re-launch plan for Yorkie that step changed its stagnating performance. It included a new TV campaign, ‘Shopping Bags’, which was the highest scoring advert in Nestle confectionery history, and resulted in her being promoted off the graduate scheme several months early.