Brand Marketer
Brand Marketer
Brand Manager, CAO Cigars
2017 - 2019
CAO is a premium cigar brand founded by Cano Aret Ozgener in 1977. Although originally a pipe company, CAO entered the premium cigar market in the early ‘90s. Ozgener created a cigar brand built on innovation, continuously searching the world for the best tobacco blends for CAO cigars and putting them together to create one cigar (during a time when it was more popular to make “puro” cigars, where all of the tobacco comes from a single country.) CAO Cigars was acquired by Scandinavian Tobacco Group (STG) in 2006, and consumers were concerned about losing the quality and authenticity that came with the family-owned brand.
After an initial decline, my predecessor at General Cigar Company (subsidiary of STG) brought the brand back to life with fresh new cigars. It was my job when I joined as brand manager in 2017 to keep the innovation and momentum strong for CAO. During my time there, I traveled to our factories in Nicaragua, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic, working with the team to develop blends for four new CAO cigars: CAO Zocalo, CAO Session, CAO Flathead V19, and CAO Orrellana. I developed names, pricing, promotion strategies and volume forecasts; managed the packaging design process with our creative agency and box makers; and optimized the marketing budget to maintain healthy profit margins for the CAO portfolio. By all measures, these four cigar launches were a success: all three of the limited-quantity releases sold out and the full-time release contributed to the overall CAO portfolio growth vs. the previous year.
The world of premium cigars is a fascinating, fast-moving category — one where a new product can go from an idea in your head to a final product on store shelves in a matter of months. As a brand manager, it was a challenging, yet exciting and fulfilling role.
P+L Management: Ran P+L for CAO premium cigar brand and the price-value cigar brands portfolio, optimizing COGS and marketing spend in order to maintain product margin and marketing contribution targets
New Product Development + Launches: Planned and executed successful launches of four new cigars, which included blend research and selection, packaging, sub-brand name, design development, pricing and go-to-market strategy, while managing costs and promotions to achieve target margins and sales goals; two launches received 90+ point cigar ratings
Brand Strategy + Planning: Developed and presented annual marketing plans and strategies, including forecasting, market development, sampling, sales promotion, advertising and pricing strategies
People Management: Managed an internal brand ambassador responsible for events and promoting CAO cigars
Agency Management: Worked closely with creative agency to execute product launches (direct mail and email campaigns, CRM, consumer promotions, website, POS signs, etc.), ensuring that designs and messages met brand and regulatory guidelines
Quantitative Analysis + Reporting: Prepared month-end business review and commentary to upper management