PARSIPPANY, NJ: After 19 years at food giant Mondelez and its predecessor, Stephen Chriss has joined Pinnacle Foods as VP of marketing activation.
He is reporting to Mark Schiller, chief commercial officer. Chriss will lead Pinnacle’s marketing services group, which is responsible for agency management, consumer and customer insights, graphic design, and shopper marketing.
Chriss wrote in a LinkedIn post that his experience at Mondelez has been "a great and amazing run," but he "decided to move on to a new and exciting opportunity at Pinnacle Foods." Chriss joined the company this month, according to LinkedIn.
He was most recently head of North America marketing services, activation, and strategic partnerships at Mondelez, leading a team of 50 employees across 20 brands in the cookie, cracker, candy, and chocolate categories. Chriss said he led the largest marketing campaign in the company’s history: Nabisco’s 115 Moments of Joy, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Chriss joined Mondelez, then Kraft Foods, in 1999, as senior promotion manager of its condiments division.
He is departing the company at the same time as Irene Rosenfeld, the chief executive of Mondelez International, who stepped down this week after 11 years leading Mondelez and its predecessor. She took over as chief executive of Kraft Foods in 2006, acquired Cadbury in 2010, and split the company in October 2012, creating snack-focused Mondelez and Kraft Foods Group. Kraft later merged with Heinz.
Mondelez’s third-quarter earnings and revenue beat analyst expectations, with the company reporting a profit of $992 million on revenue of $6.5 billion, which was up 2.1% from the year prior, according to MarketWatch.
