He cites two reasons for his departure. One: "I felt that the I Am Canadian franchise and marketing campaign still had legs. ... The CEO had a different point of view." Two: "It was a real tough time on my family." The hours were crushing. He recalls a holiday in Disney World when his youngest son appeared at his bedroom door and asked, "Why are you still here?"
Nevertheless, the years at Molson were intensely instructive.
"I really learned sponsorship," he says of the beer company's backing of auto racing and such. "And I learned how to do marketing really big." The marketing budget at Molson ran to the hundreds of millions of dollars. A single Molson Canadian spot cost, on average, about $2-million, and $3-million was not unheard of. "It was enormous," he says of the marketing muscle. "It was like being an American marketer at home."
The sponsorship experience will now come in handy. Two weeks ago Mr. Barrett was tapped by LG HQ to lead the company's just-announced global sponsorship for Formula 1 racing.
"There's a social style, a social status, a premium-ness that sits around F1," he says, expressing how he believes the style-technology harmony of the racing circuit makes a perfect match for the style-technology focus of LG. Think Monte Carlo and yachts and celebrities and cerulean vistas. "We think we're the Monte Carlo of consumer electronics," he says.
The job grows bigger. Any day now the company will announce a broadening of Mr. Barrett's marketing responsibilities to encompass what he will define only as a "significant portion of the world's geography," reporting to the chief marketing officer for LG worldwide.
"To be successful on a global basis there are half a dozen or eight major markets in the world that brands must be very successful in," he says. Brazil. China. India. He won't say which countries will fall under his domain.
Meantime he has just four months before the first Formula 1 race of the year, set for Melbourne in March. "Most companies have eight to 10 months [to prepare]," he says. But he admits the shortened time frame suits him just fine. "I do like the sense of urgency," he says.
"It really focuses your attention."
