Heineken appoints new Chief Commercial Officer
James Thompson (pictured right), Heineken’s Chief Commercial Officer, will leave the company on 31 December 2023.
After turning 60 earlier this year, Thompson has decided now is the time to retire from full-time executive work.
His last day as Chief Commercial Officer will be 31 August 2023, and he will stay on through the transition period as an advisor to the Executive Board until the end of the year.
Bram Westenbrink (pictured above) will succeed Thompson in the Executive Team as Heineken's new Chief Commercial Officer from 1 September 2023, reporting to Dolf van den Brink, CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board.
Thompson joined Heineken in early 2021: bringing considerable external experience and expertise from a nearly forty-year commercial career.
“Under his leadership, we launched our refreshed consumer demand spaces framework to become more consumer centric, which is now embedded across the business,” notes Heineken. “He has reignited creativity in our brand building to accelerate brand power and kicked-off the first Innovation hubs in Singapore, the USA, Mexico, the Netherlands, and South Africa to build strong expansive innovation pipelines, which will be critical to drive the change in scale and shape of our innovation for delivering our EverGreen dream.
"He also kick-started a common approach to data-based marketing and sales, including a leading-edge ROI platform.
“In this period Heineken was the most-awarded alcohol brand at Cannes Lions 2023, premium beer grew 15% and we launched eazle - our global eB2B platform growing from €2bn to €10bn gross merchandise value.”
Before joining Heineken, Thompson held several senior international leadership roles: including at Avon, Diageo (Chief Marketing and Innovation Officer in North America; Chief Marketing and Innovation Officer in Asia Pacific; and Managing Director, Global Reserve) and Unilever.
Incoming CCO Bram Westenbrink has been with Heineken since 2003 and has been Senior Director Global Heineken and Amstel Brands since July 2020.
“Heineken is a 55 million hectolitre brand and #1 global beer brand by value,” notes the company. “Under Bram’s leadership the Heineken brand has grown 32%, with more than 50 markets growing double-digit in 2022. Heineken 0.0 is now launched in more than 110 markets and Heineken Silver more than doubled its volume in 2022 and will be rolled-out to 42 markets across Asia, Europe, and the Americas regions by the end of the year. Heineken was recognised with 20 Cannes Lions awards this year and extended its sponsorship of Formula 1 until 2027. At the same time there has been real velocity behind the Amstel brand which also grew volume double-digit in more than 15 markets.”
Between 2017 and 2020, Bram was Senior Marketing Director of Heineken Brazil: credited with playing an important role in the integration of the Kirin Brazil.
After joining the Heineken Netherlands business as a trainee, he took his next assignment in Singapore as a business analyst, before returning to the Netherlands taking on a number of increasingly senior brand marketing roles. He then moved into a senior sales role as Regional Director for On-trade and Wholesale, where he restructured the business by creating regional teams organised around customers resulting in significant improved performance.
He was appointed as Marketing Director of Heineken Hungary in 2010 and subsequently returned to Heineken Netherlands as Marketing Director in 2013.