The company, which owns Mr Kipling, Bisto and Ambrosia, says it is currently recruiting for Yilmaz Erceyes’ replacement.
Premier Foods chief marketing officer Yilmaz Erceyes has left the business after over five years of leading the company’s brands, which include Mr Kipling, Bisto and Ambrosia.
Erceyes spent more than 10 years at the food business, joining in 2015 as a marketing director for its cooking sauces, accompaniments and kits category. He held the category marketing director role across two other Premier Foods segments before being promoted to marketing director for the UK in 2018 and to CMO in 2019.
Premier Foods is yet to appoint Yilmaz’s successor as CMO, but says the recruitment process is underway.
Writing in a LinkedIn post announcing his departure, Erceyes said he had “exciting new ventures in the works”, but did not share details.
Before joining the Mr Kipling owner, Erceyes was a marketer at P&G, having joined the company as a process engineer in 2002, before becoming an assistant brand manager in 2004.
During his tenure as CMO of Premier Foods, the company has faced a number of challenges brought about by the pandemic, inflation and the subsequent cost of living crisis. In response to the latter, Premier Foods doubled down on its brands’ roles as “meal makers”, releasing the ‘Best Restaurant in Town’ campaign, which positioned meals made with the likes of Sharwood’s and Loyd Grossman sauces as affordable alternatives to eating out or takeaways.
Premier Foods has also seen success in fending off competitors through offering what CEO Alex Whitehouse termed “genuinely superior” products.
Premier Foods: ‘Genuinely superior’ products are driving growth
While brands like Oxo and Mr Kipling have long-running associations for British consumers, Premier Foods has also been successful in pushing into new spaces, both through innovation and the acquisition and growth of new brands. NPD examples like Mr Kipling Angel Delight ice cream have allowed the company to push into new categories, and have been a solid “source of growth” for the business.
Meanwhile, the company acquired new brands like The Spice Tailor in 2022 and FUEL10K in 2023. It has taken its ‘branded growth model’ and applied this to these new brands.
The branded growth model is a strategy for driving growth by focusing on market-leading brands through a combination of innovation, impactful marketing, and strong retailer partnerships.
Premier Foods says Erceyes’ has played a “key role… in turning [the] business into the successful organisation it is today through the application of [its] branded growth model”.
The success of the model has shown up in the company’s financial results, as Erceyes noted in his LinkedIn post. He cited that Premier Foods has “delivered 6.3% CAGR revenue growth” and “grown pre-tax profit at 12.6% CAGR”.
The company’s brands now reach over 90% of UK households, he said, attributing this to “the brilliant people we have in Premier Foods and the way [it] operates”.
