Kraft Heinz Canada promotes Dana Somerville to CMO

Dana Somerville has been promoted to the role of chief marketing officer at Kraft Heinz Canada.

Somerville joined Kraft in 1997 and most recently held the role of vice-president and head of brand build, innovation and R&D.

She’s modernized several Kraft Heinz brands by creating breakthrough campaigns including Cracker Barrel’s “Now This is Cheese” campaign and Kraft Peanut Butter’s “Stick Together” brand platform. In 2018, she led her team on product innovations such as Crave Frozen Meals and Max Boost, a coffee boasting 1.5 times more naturally occurring caffeine than other leading brands. These are among the reasons Canadian Grocer chose Somerville as one of its 2018 Star Women Award winners.

At the time of her Star Women win, Somerville told Canadian Grocer one of her proudest career accomplishments was her pivotal role in the launch of McCafé coffee into the grocery channel in 2014.

“It was recognized with multiple awards both internally by Kraft and McDonalds, and externally,” she said. Somerville is always willing to roll up her sleeves to help her team, “but I also think it’s really important to empower people and give them opportunities, so I coach and push my team to bring out their best.”