As a former chorister, Chris Wermann knows the importance of singing from the same hymn sheet. Kellogg’s regional director of corporate affairs, Europe, is now corralling the food and drink industry to speak with a concerted voice. Neil Gibbons reports

Photographs by Sam Friedrich

Forget the bright, friendly packaging. Forget the cuddly cartoon characters used to promote the brands. Forget the child-friendly yumminess. Kellogg’s has a determined edge – and Chris Wermann is its living embodiment.

On joining the global cereal manufacturer in 2004, the regional director of corporate affairs Europe was presented with a daunting in-tray. Jolted by a World Health Organisation report on obesity, up before a House of Commons select committee along with other leading food and drink brands, and the subject of tabloid stories, Kellogg’s had to address the concerns of stakeholders, and reassert its healthy, responsible credentials.

Six years later, Chris has helped to mount a healthy living campaign and create an environmental code of conduct by persuading the industry to present a united front. No small achievement given the fierce competition in the sector. More so, given that corporate communications hadn’t been his first career choice.

As a pupil at Trinity School in Croydon, Chris had been encouraged to develop creatively. The school had a particularly good reputation for music, and Chris played lead trumpet and sang for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 at the Albert Hall.

Inspired by that, Chris headed to the University of Bath to study music, art and drama.

His intention was to perform music professionally. And after three years in Bath, he was playing in the Bath Symphony Orchestra, for pop groups, for a dance band as well as a sideline in busking. Yet the chances of a fulfilling career in music were dwindling.

Many of the BBC’s orchestras and military orchestras were closing, and although a lot of pop music was using horns, longer-term prospects were looking bleak.

Chris recalls: “My trumpet teacher number one trumpet with the Royal Philharmonic. He said, ‘I’m a top performer but even I need to supplement my income with teaching.”

So Chris began to look elsewhere. Production work with the BBC appealed but his partial colour blindness put paid to that. In the end, he reasoned that, with a degree to fall back on, he could look for work away from the arts. Which is how he came to work for the Woolwich Building Society. “It was most unlike me,” says Chris. “Maths was never my thing.”

But Chris found the job allowed him to make use of his confidence and ability to communicate. “I was at the frontline in branches, selling mortgages and life insurance. I enjoyed it. Mine was one of the top performing branches, so I became known quite quickly.”

Around this time, the Woolwich had been looking to create and sell trust funds, and Chris was asked to work on creating a product that would appeal to customers. And it was this that first drew him to the world of comms. “The director of communications said, ‘You know a lot about these trusts. Why not work on the launch in the press office?’”

Chris loved it. “It was hard-nosed,” he recalls. “I’d arrive in the morning and do press cuttings for the board, so there was plenty of senior interaction. I loved the fact it gave me a helicopter view of how the business ran.”

As much as he was enjoying the role, advice from the director of communications gave him pause for thought. “He said, ‘If you want my job in future, you need strings to your bow. Media relations will always be the most high profile part of communications. But you have that in the bag. For your career path, you need your employee comms, corporate responsibility, city communications, IR, public affairs.’ It really struck me as a good way as good way to develop my career.”

And so, although the Woolwich had asked him to become head of current accounts, he’s decided he needed to garner more experience elsewhere.

He joined Abbey National as head of PR. It had just become a PLC so Chris found himself propelled into a city environment. “We were about 12th in the FTSE. Abbey was a big company at the time, and growing. It got me involved in big ticket city stuff – engaging with city editors and the board.”

Based in the firm’s Baker Street headquarters, his role had a lighter side. “One of my roles was to oversee our Sherlock Holmes correspondence. Because we shared Holmes’ address, we received letters from all over the world from who thought that Sherlock Holmes was not only still alive but not even fictional.”

Aside from that, Chris enjoyed the job. “It was really good profile, and really fast-paced. Abbey was Britain’s biggest mortgage lender.”

But soon another opportunity came begging. Chris had contacts at PR firm Financial Dynamics, after it had been brought in to assist on one of Abbey’s many acquisitions.

“They asked if I wanted to go in and develop my corporate experience,” he says. “It was great experience for me. It was the first time I’d worked with PR professionals across the disciplines. I found I could soak up the knowledge of other professionals, rather than learning by trial and error.”

Back then, FD was a relatively small operation but was growing quickly. Working under MD Nick Miles and Julia Hanson-Smith from offices in Furnival Street, Chris found himself part of a 50-strong team taking on a growing roster of corporate work.

That was until the head of corporate affairs at Direct Line called. He said he was leaving but knew Chris and asked if he was interested in going back into the corporate world, in a role that meant taking on employee communications too. “It just ticked the boxes,” says Chris. “It was a big challenger brand. It had exposure to media and key opinion formers. And there was also the excitement of taking on the government.”

Having recruited a public affairs manager, Chris frequently went with him to see politicians on behalf of consumers. For example, they set up a programme centred on victim support – a campaign that was obviously relevant to the home insurance market but which allowed Direct Line to prominently champion consumers’ interests while fostering brand reputation.

This was in marked contrast to the strategy Chris found when he joined the firm. “When I arrived, Direct Line sponsored the Eastbourne tennis tournament. When I asked why, I was told, ‘The chairman liked it’. ‘But he’s gone,’ I said. So we just took that money and put into victim support.”

Although Chris describes this as “really good grounding”, his time there was brief. Direct Line was part of RBS Group – very successful at the time and in the process of taking over NatWest.

“The director of communication at RBS said, ‘This is a biggie.’ He wanted me as his deputy. When I told him I was happy where I was, he told me he’s already discussed it with my CEO. I joined the next Monday.”

Chris ran the department while the director of communication “ran the CEO”. He also took charge of internal comms for the vast group. It was, says Chris, “big ticket stuff”.

But something didn’t sit well. “The culture and environment wasn’t right for me,” says Chris. “It was very autocratic. As a result, I felt the organisation was constrained – certainly in regard to what advice could be given to a CEO who wasn’t willing to accept it. So my time there was useful, but it wasn’t a great place to work.”

He asked himself what was missing from his CV and realised there was a hole where investor relations should be. That was remedied when he was offered the new role of director of communications for Avis Europe, listed in London and New York. Chris was in charge of IR for Europe and the rest of the world and threw himself into understanding city communications, developing relationships with investment houses and banks and running roadshows alongside the CEO and finance director. “Maths was still not my strong point but this was more about strategy – where the business is going. I was in charge of that story.

“Facing forward is a big part of how I think. And it’s the key part of the corporate affairs role. It’s about looking at what the milestones are and communicating how you’re mapping against them. Ticking, ticking, ticking, so people see that you’re on the path you said you’d be. It doesn’t matter which audience you’re talking to – they all want to know that.”

The role gave Chris new, very real clout. “I was once in a conversation with Shroder and Fidelity, two aggressive investment houses. They said to me, “What are you doing on the environment? You’ve got 250,000 cars. You must be doing something.’ I thought on the spot, made up some stuff then went back and set up a policy.”

It was, he says, “stuff we should have been doing”, but both doubled as a marketing opportunity and saved money by restricting water and soap useage during car washing.

By the time Chris left, Avis Europe had signed a three-year deal with GM, which included a responsibility to make environmentallyfriendly cars. The firm also planted trees around Europe and included in its rental sales the option to off-set emissions.

“That all came from the conversation I’d had with Shroder and Fidelity,” he says. “The role has moved from ‘tell the story’ to ‘make the story’.”

It was in 2004 that he took on his current role, as director of corporate affairs for Kellogg’s, a firm somewhat on the backfoot. It had just been up in front of health select committee alongside Cadburys, McDonald’s and Pepsi after a WHO report on obesity.

“Partly because it’s a big US company and partly because of its communications, it hadn’t focused on that kind of area and the emphasis on vitamins and minerals had been lost.”

Chris began to ask difficult questions: Why was the media giving Kellogg’s hard time? (‘Cereal killers’ screamed one memorable headline). How could it rebuild trust and empathy? And how could it do this while getting on top of Draconian regulations?

“A big part of my role was to encourage the food industry, not just Kellogg’s, to take up these challenges. It was facing something new. There had been food scares in the past, such as BSE, but not from a nutritional perspective. We needed to address that. I think the industry has come a long way from 2004.”

It’s certainly not been easy. In fact, it has required Chris to look beyond the walls of Kellogg’s and work hard to chivvy other companies along - and it hasn’t gone unnoticed. “Chris is truly a top bloke,” says Julian Hunt, director of comunications for the Food and Drink Federation. “He is very engaged in our work and very generous in terms of his support, feedback and input. But he is also prepared to challenge what we are doing – in a constructive way – which helps me ensure that we are delivering in a way that our members want.”

Within the firm, Chris enjoys plenty of influence, and is part of the Global Communications Leadership Team. “It’s important to have that global view,” he says. “Kellogs is a global brand. Say something here and it goes round the world, as quick as it would in the UK. So by the nature of the role, you can’t confine yourself to the UK. You have to consider global implications.”

Chris is determined to make ‘Change for Life’ a reality, and one that can be emulated in other markets. “We’re hoping to create a unified model which works.”

As with the industry’s environmental responsibility, the ‘Change for Life’ campaign calls for real leadership. Chris quotes Tesco CEO Sir Terry Leahy’s view that companies can’t wait for consumers to want to change, they need to make them do it. “So we need to pull together where the court of public opinion is on the environment and embed them in the way we do business.” 

Curriculum Vitae: Chris Wermann

Mar 2004 – present Director of corporate affairs Europe, Kellogg’s

2002 – 2004 Director of Communications EMEA, Avis Europe

2000 – 2002 Deputy director, group communications, Royal Bank of Scotland Group

1999 – 2000 Head of corporate affairs, Direct Line Insurance

1997 – 1999 Consultant, Financial Dynamics

1994 – 1997 Head of public relations, Abbey National

1991 – 1994 Media relations manager, Woolwich Building Society

1987 – 1991 Manager, Woolwich Building Society

Education: BA (Hons) Bath University.

Interests: Music, sport, socialising and family