• by Christine Bittar , December 14, 2006

Avon Products is cutting and adding simultaneously with a goal of beefing up marketing, sales and net income. The company expects to cut 100 jobs globally from its current workforce of 45,000 as part of a restructuring due for completion by 2009, but has added two senior marketing executives to grow global business and unify the Avon brand image.

New Executive Director, Global Media Donna Campanella joined the company in November. Her responsibilities include overseeing media planning and global media buying. She and Avon's regional media planning managers will oversee relationships with Avon's media agencies and alliance partnerships globally to secure media innovation and ensure consistency in advertising placement and practices. Campanella comes from Pfizer, where she oversaw pharmaceutical advertising in the U.S. and globally.

Joe Feczko, a former executive vice president and chief creative officer at Federated, joined Avon in September as Group Vice President, Global Design. Feczko will be responsible for Avon's global image--from corporate identity to package design to creative development of the Avon brochure. With the exception of special projects, Avon's ad creative is handled internally.

Judging by recent activity, Avon is already on the way to boosting ad spends. For example, within the packaged goods/health and beauty sector, Avon and Energizer increased their ad spends the most in the third quarter, reported Citigroup analyst Wendy Nicholson's most recent Advertising Spending Analysis.

In her report, Nicholson says that although Avon's media increase comes after past ad cuts in the third quarter of 2005, the "significant step up in ad activity is meant to drive top line growth."

As part of Avon's restructuring, the 100 staff cuts will come through an outsourcing agreement with IBM. Areas to be farmed out include many administrative and service-type functions like human resources, payroll and benefits. The main goal is to funnel more internal resources to money-making areas such as sales and marketing.

Avon also said its partnership with IBM will allow it to focus on implementing its strategic talent management and organization development initiatives.