Pandora has appointed a marketer as its new CEO to drive its branding as it seeks to achieve an ambitious two-year transformation plan.
The Danish jeweller has chosen Alexander Lacik, a veteran of Procter & Gamble and ex-CEO of child safety product company Britax, to lead Programme Now, which seeks to cut costs while expanding the company’s brand presence.
The Chairman of the Pandora Board of Directors said Lacik was a “strong match” for the new strategic direction, which consists of four key pillars. Two of these ambitions focus on the product, with the first being to create new lines of affordable jewellery and the second being to find more agile ways of manufacturing.
The third pillar is creating a “digitalised brand experience”, which essentially means using data to recognise customers and provide them with tailored product recommendations and marketing. Pandora also said it would focus on developing an omnichannel experience, despite it expecting offline to be its primary channel.
However, Lacik seems to have been chosen primarily for his experience as a marketer rather than in the digital field, perhaps giving an indication of the jeweller’s priorities.
The chairman of the company’s board of directors Peder Tuborgh talked him up as a “brilliant marketer” and said his skills and experience would be key to “revitalising the Pandora brand.” In a statement the company credited Lacik with improving the brand position of his previous employer health, hygiene and home company Reckitt Benckiser.
The company has said the company lacks a clear brand identity despite high awareness and has failed to seed demand for its core products. Pandora also believes its brand equity has been diluted due to overuse of promotional activity.
Alongside marketing initiatives the company wants to reduce costs by DKK1.2 billion.
The company is seeking to recover from a series of disappointing results. Pandora is forecasting sales to slump by three to seven per cent this year following a move to cut promotional activities.
According to Technavio, the global online jewellery market is set to grow at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 16% from 2018 to 2022.
In the text accompanying the report, Technavio said companies were moving towards an omnichannel model to meet customer shopping patterns, especially amongst millennials.
