Laxton joins Ronson at Coles

Michael Laxton is joining the Coles marketing team as general manager of brand and media, starting next week, according to a statement from the supermarket giant.

The news comes after the announcement that Tourism Australia’s Lisa Ronson will take up the reigns at Coles as chief marketing officer as of 1 May.

Ronson will report directly to Coles CEO, Steve Cain, sitting on the executive leadership team and is the first dedicated CMO at Coles for some time. Over the past year, marketing has been overseen by chief operating officer, Greg Davis, who remains in charge of the merchandise business unit, store development and the Coles brand teams.

"Every marketer gets out of bed to create authentic, memorable experiences for customers, and being able to do this for one of Australia’s biggest brands and the millions of customers that interact with Coles every day is a huge privilege," Laxton told CMO.

"Throughout my career I’ve always been passionate about understanding the hearts and minds of customers, and Coles is dedicated to helping make their customers’ lives easier. Coles is therefore a perfect fit for me. Plus my dad worked in supermarkets for over 25 years and it was also my first job whilst at school, so you could kind of say it’s in my DNA!" 

Laxton was the CMO of Fairfax Media for more than 18 months before resigning the role in September amid the shuffle following the Fairfax and Nine merger.

In a personal statement, Laxton said he was proud of his achievements at Fairfax and said it was time to move to the next challenge.

"Public good journalism has always been a passion of mine and I was proud to reestablish Fairfax’s iconic brands as editorial-first, customer-centric platforms that leveraged innovative marketing practices and put digital at the heart of everything we did," he stated.

Last year, Laxton was 22 on the 2018 edition of the CMO50, and was number 25 in 2016.

Follow CMO on Twitter: @CMOAustralia, take part in the CMO conversation on LinkedIn: CMO ANZ, join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CMOAustralia, or check us out on Google+: google.com/+CmoAu