In his first interview since becoming chief commercial officer of InterContinental Hotels Group, Keith Barr talks about rebuilding the business around customers, the significance of data and analytics and being both a global and a local brand. Sitting in the lounge of the £12,000-a-night Royal Suite at the InterContinental Park Lane hotel is the hotel group’s chief commercial officer Keith Barr. He could not have come further from his early adult years spent working as a chef at nights and weekends to pay for his degree in hotel administration from Cornell University. “I’ve worked my way up to this role and truthfully, by my CV, you can look at it and say I’m not the logical choice to be the CCO for this company. I’m not a classically trained brand marketer, a distribution individual or brand builder,” says Barr. Starting out as a chef while still in high school and continuing throughout university gave Barr his work ethic and early understanding of business, spurring a career at IHG that has spanned 23 years in various roles, from sales and marketing to management (see CV, below)[1] .“I’ve built the brand in China, I’ve worked in the US, emerging markets, Australia and the Pacific,” says Barr, “so that perspective makes me well suited to the role because I can have intelligent conversations strategically with almost any part of the business.”Barr says he has a supportive board that helps him to be “better at the job” as well as a team of subject matter experts. For instance, IHG has just hired former British Airways head of global brand and marketing Jayne O’Brien as senior vice-president of global brands.A focus on customersSince becoming CCO in May 2013, Barr’s focus has been on building a ‘consumer-centric’ view of the world. With nine brands, including Holiday…

Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey - dubbed the MINT countries - have been identified as the next crucial locations on the global map for brand expansion. What potential does each have to offer and what is the passport to achieving success? Above: Aimia, owner of Nectar in the UK, has recently bought a stake in AeroMexico’s Club Premier loyalty scheme. It believes that while the country’s retail environment is less developed than in western economies it is growing, offering the business a promising futureMexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey have been singled out by economists as future economic powerhouses of the world, predicted to grow exponentially in terms of wealth and population over the next few decades, and this has caught the attention of some of the western world’s biggest brands. And while marketers and investors are not taking their eyes off the previous big four growth prospects of Brazil[1] , Russia[2] , India and China[3] – known collectively as the BRIC countries after economist Jim O’Neill coined the term – they are now looking for fresh opportunities in the MINT nations, also an acronym of O’Neill’s.Explore the map below to find out key stats about the MINT countries: Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey. Click the icon in the top right-hand corner to view full page“MINT countries offer interesting growth prospects for Mondelēz International,” says Valerie Moens, associate director of corporate external communications for the Cadbury owner. “They have attractive demographics and are largely untapped in many of our categories, so we’re investing in these countries to fuel growth.”The confectionery giant is investing $350m (£213m) in a new biscuit factory in Monterrey, Mexico, for example, which is due to open in the second half of 2014. It is designed to support the brand’s growth in the biscuit market across the Americas…

Five months into the chief marketer job and Raja Rajamannar’s PricelessSurprises upgrade on MasterCard’s Priceless campaign is paying dividends – despite the Brits PR blip last week. But how will he fare tackling the rapid evolution of payment technologies, the surge in competition and the barriers to a ‘cashless society’? MasterCard’s Raja Rajamannar is a firm believer in the element of surprise. The Indian global chief marketing officer, who joined the payment network five months ago, is responsible for rolling out Priceless Surprises, the latest phase of the brand’s long-running Priceless campaign. The idea is to leverage MasterCard’s many sponsorship assets, including the recently held Brit Awards ceremony, to surprise its cardholders with exclusive rewards and content.Not all surprises are necessarily welcome, however. On the morning of the Brits last week (19 February), MasterCard was confronted with a surprise of its own when a number of unflattering media reports emerged about its PR tactics for the event[1]. Marketing Week was certainly surprised by the furore, having interviewed Rajamannar the previous day when all appeared calm at MasterCard HQ.The reports focused on an email sent to Telegraph journalist Tim Walker by MasterCard’s PR agency House PR, in which he was offered entrance to the Brits on condition he tweeted a number of pre-prepared messages that promoted MasterCard and the #PricelessSurprises hashtag. Enraged by this apparent attempt to dictate terms, Walker sent the email to Press Gazette and the story was picked up by other news outlets, including Channel 4 News and The Guardian.The Priceless Surprises campaign quickly became the subject of ridicule across Twitter. “Good press coverage is hard to bribe. For everything else there’s Mastercard #PricelessSurprises,” tweeted The Independent’s Felicity Morse, for example.Rajamannar was unavailable for further comment beyond the statement released by MasterCard which distanced the brand from the…