Ivan Pollard is Global Chief Marketing Officer for General Mills and is responsible for the marketing philosophies and practices of GMI that bring their powerful portfolio of brands to life in the modern world through what we call Remarkably Modern Magical Marketing. He leads a team focused on advancing Capabilities, Community and Creativity for the 1,000+ marketers working around the globe.

Pollard is responsible for representing the business impact of marketing; inspiring General Mills’ marketers to boldly build their brands, try new things and do the old things better than ever; and also gives voice to the Marketers of Mills in the outside world.

He was shortlisted for the World Federation of Advertisers’ “Marketer of the Year” in 2021 (but did not win :(

Pollard was most recently Senior Vice President, Strategic Marketing for Coca-Cola North America. During his time at Coca-Cola, Pollard was responsible for developing strategies to more effectively deploy over $2 billion media spend around the world.

Prior to joining Coca-Cola, Pollard was a Global Partner in Naked Communications, the world’s largest connections planning company, and had leading roles in global agencies such as BMP [now DDB Needham], and Wieden+Kennedy. Pollard was a founding partner of Unity that started the discipline of “Connections Planning”.

Originally from England, Pollard holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from the University of Nottingham.

Ivan, his wife and three kinetically challenging kids live in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.