Lions Roar

Food Lion LLC (Salisbury, N.C.) has named advertising veteran Ken Mills vp, sales and marketing.

He will report to Mike Haaf, senior vp, sales, marketing and business strategy.

The company also announced that Haaf was named Supermarket News marketer of the year at the Food Marketing Institute's mid-winter executive conference held recently in Grand Lakes, Fla.

The supermarket retailer said Mills will drive the overall marketing strategy, build a marketing team and execute the marketing programs, necessary to drive profitable growth and strategic change. Mills was formerly vp, marketing, for the Red Lobster division of Darden Restaurants (Orlando) and previously served as senior vp, advertising, for Universal Studios Escape in Orlando and group manager, U.S. consumer marketing communications, for Polaroid Corp. (Cambridge, Mass.).

Haaf was honored “for visionary and leading-edge marketing work he has led in customer segmentation and store clustering. Under Haaf's leadership and direction, Food Lion has developed new store concepts and built differentiated brand strategies based on customers' needs and preferences.”

Food Lion's segmentation and clustering work is being used to choose the best places to locate Bloom, Bottom Dollar Food and Food Lion stores with customized internal branding. All three brands are operating in the Washington, D.C., region, and all three will be part of Food Lion's Hampton Roads Market Renewal project.

“The segmentation and clustering work permits us to get closer to our customer by gaining a better understanding of what our shoppers want and need, and it helps us to make strategic business decisions that have very positive financial impact,” said Food Lion president and ceo Rick Anicetti. “Mike's sophisticated 'test and control' methodology also enables us to test initiatives to predict the level of success before rolling out a program. The result? We are able to select and prioritize initiatives, giving us the best possible return on investment.”

“By bringing this [segmentation and clustering] work to life in a very systematic and actionable manner, Food Lion is able to make its brands more relevant to each of the individual communities we serve. We view this as a tremendous competitive advantage,” said chief operating officer Cathy Green.

Haaf joined Food Lion in 2003 and directs all of the company's marketing and business strategy endeavors, including advertising, marketing research, business analysis, sponsorships, corporate communications, the MVP customer loyalty card program and customer segmentation and store clustering analysis.

Food Lion LLC, a subsidiary of Delhaize Group (Brussels, Belgium), operates more than 1200 supermarkets under the Food Lion, Bloom, Bottom Dollar Food, Harveys and Reid's nameplates in 11 Southeast and Mid-Atlantic states.