New Zealand Marketing magazine

Top of her field

Originally published in NZ Marketing November-December 2009, page 18

Gillian Munnik takes top honours

When you hear about Fonterra in the news, think of Gilliam Munnik.

She’s the one charged with smoothing the relationships between New Zealand’s largest company and the country’s largest and hardest-to-please and slowest-to-act shareholder group: dairy farmers.

What makes it especially hard is that her owners are also her customers. Farmers who supply milk to Fonterra typically have a $500,000 investment in the co-op. If they choose to leave, Fonterra not only loses milk but is also required to pay them the value of their shareholding.

Better keep ‘em happy, then.

Munnik does such a good job she’s been awarded the New Zealand Post Marketer of the Year.

Her rise through Fonterra has been meteoric and looks likely to continue. She joined Fonterra from the BNZ in 2006, was promoted twice and now heads a team of about 20 marketing and operations staff.

Along the way she has won RSVP and ECHO awards including RSVP Special Honours awards for ‘most innovative campaign’ and ‘most cost-effective campaign’ and the ECHO Gold mailbox award.

She oversaw the redevelopment and launch of ‘New Fencepost’, the electronic channel that allows farmers to see the amount of milk collected by the daily milk tanker, and to analyse a host of metrics specific to their farm including milk quality, production levels, payments and income flows.

The project was complex, with legacy problems, high customer expectations and a development team of 40, including staff and contractors from 12 onshore and offshore vendors. A key achievement was integrating Fencepost with all of Fonterra’s other farmer-facing systems including a CRM system that is heavily used by Fonterra’s field, services, environmental and milk quality teams.

Thanks to the changes, Fonterra can now use Fencepost to communicate directly to farmers on a host of co-op matters before they reach the media. It has become the primary channel between farm and headquarters.

Munnik has also been responsible for growing the supply of colostrum, the milk from the first four milkings after calving. Demand for this healthy, valuable product continues to grow, but supply is limited by farmers’ willingness to change practices in early spring. Munnik’s team developed an innovative colostrum marketing campaign, including a number of integrated marketing and sales elements and field team activity. The campaign resulted in a 20 percent increase in colostrum supply this spring and a strong pipeline of interest for next season.

Organics has been another growth area. Again the demand significantly outstrips supply. However, converting a farm is a major exercise taking at least three years. Munnik’s team gained a very sound understanding of the barriers and developed a marketing and promotional strategy, with a strong emphasis on the commercial viability and a hands-on field team.

Again, the promotional objectives (awareness and consideration) have been exceeded and once fully converted, the new suppliers joining the programme will double supply.

Gillian Munnik is a major influence in one of New Zealand’s most important export-driven businesses. She epitomises the new direction for marketing, where operations, internal buy-in and network marketing are combining with the more classical marketing approaches, to ensure that all areas of influence synergistically achieve overall business objectives.

A quiet achiever with a steely determination to grow New Zealand Inc, Munnik is a worthy winner of marketing’s top honour.