Maarten Albarda Bio

Maarten brings over 25 years of marketing leadership and integrated communications experience from across the globe. He started his career working at leading advertising agencies: JWT Amsterdam, Leo Burnett Amsterdam and London regional headquarters, and McCann-Erickson London regional headquarters and New York global headquarters. 

Ten years later, he moved to the marketing side, working for The Coca-Cola Company, first in Japan, followed by Germany and eventually at Coca-Cola’s global headquarters in Atlanta. In his global role at The Coca-Cola Company he led the development and roll out of the first iteration of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC), which is to this day the operating model for the company. He also developed a new agency remuneration model and was the IMC lead for the launch of Coca-Cola Zero and various World Cup and Olympic campaigns.

In 2009, he was asked to join AB-InBev’ NY based global headquarters as the global VP of Integrated Marketing. In this role, he steered the development and roll out of a consistent approach to Integrated Marketing, something that AB-InBev did not have following the various mergers and acquisitions that led to the creation of the company. He managed the 2010 World Cup activation globally, and helped re-shape the marketing departments in the US, China and Europe.

Since 2013, he is a C-Suite consultant on topics such as Marketing Operations, Agency Resource Utilization and Optimization, Marketing Capabilities, In-housing and more. He is a co-founder and share-holder of Flock Associates USA Inc, the US arm of the internationally recognized Integrated Marketing Transformation consultancy. He has worked with clients such as McDonald’s, J&J, Chubb Insurance, Shell and many others.

He is a recognized industry leader, who has worked closely with the World Federation of Advertisers as well as the ANA on topics relevant to the industry as a whole (Better Briefings, Agency Remuneration, Digital Trust, etc.).

He is a published author: the book “ZERO, zero paid media as the new marketing model” (Wiley 2013) was listed as a CMO must-read, and he writes bi-weekly on Mediapost.com. 

Maarten lives with wife, son and dog just outside Charlotte, NC.