Kraft appoints European chief
Kraft Foods Europe has appointed Silvia Bagliani as European marketing chief for the Philadelphia cheese brand. She replaces Paul Watmore, who was promoted to marketing director for Australia and New Zealand last summer (MW August 14, 2003).
Bagliani, who will be based in Milan, will take over as director of business development for Philadelphia on February 16. She will head the new product development programme and be responsible for extending Philadelphia into new markets. She will report to Nick Shepherd, vice-president for category development cheese and grocery, Europe.
Bagliani joins from Kraft Foods Australia where she was category marketing manager for cheese as well as being responsible for a range of new products. She joined Kraft in 1997 and worked in a variety of sales and marketing roles in its Italian division before moving to Australia.
Her appointment follows a recent global marketing restructure at Kraft in which joint chief executive Betsy Holden was made president of global marketing and category development. It also involved Kraft North America merging its marketing activities into Kraft International, although it did not affect local marketing teams.
Last week, Kraft announced that it was cutting 6,000 jobs across all levels of its global business. It is not known how this will affect the global marketing team.
