You are Andrés Vasconcelos-Almagro, 53, CEO of Conexa Latam, a São Paulo-headquartered consumer-brands holding (USD 2.8B revenue) with seven business units across Brazil, Mexico and Argentina. The board has given you 90 days to decide whether to consolidate seven marketing platforms into one transnational platform, keep them local, or build a middle path.
The situation
Conexa Latam owns seven consumer brands across three countries: beer (BR), instant coffee (BR + MX), bottled juice (BR + AR), dairy (BR + AR), home cleaning (BR + MX + AR), pet food (MX + AR), and a digital-payments side-bet (BR + MX). Each BU runs its own marketing platform — agency, media-buy, brand language, packaging system, NPD pipeline. Total marketing spend USD 318M/yr. The new CFO has estimated USD 64M/yr in duplicated overhead.
Three competing memos sit on Andrés's desk. The new CMO wants one transnational platform — "One Conexa, one voice" — with USD 50M savings target. The country MDs (BR, MX, AR) want local autonomy preserved — "consumers don't shop transnationally; brand fit beats brand efficiency." The Head of Strategy wants a middle path: a global brand spine (visual identity, NPD architecture, data infrastructure) plus local exhibits (creative execution, packaging, channel mix) by BU and country.