The US project was wide-ranging, also including an element to incubate start-ups internally, but Bough has started exporting the program to other markets, adapting it to suit the maturity of the local internet landscape, as well as Mondelez’s on-ground sales. Brazil was next, followed late last year by a partnership with the Asia-Pacific branch of ad agency network, Ogilvy and Mather. Mondelez imported its Latin American digital incubator, Fly Garage, to become the cornerstone partner for Ogilvy’s K1nd initiative, a recently hatched technology and design-oriented brand development unit. The partnership is being piloted in Australia and Southeast Asia.

China, with its own lively and quite distinct mobile ecosystem, could be next for a localized collaborative push. It’s a critical battleground that also doubles up as a classroom for the future of global marketing. “This market not only has ambition but also a level of innovation and pace of change that we are not seeing any other place in the world,” Bough says. “Let’s be brutally honest,” he adds. “It also has a totally different ecosystem of media partners on the digital and mobile front, which are taking lessons from the US and leapfrogging them. There is a lot to learn here. I firmly believe in a China-Out strategy. I see this continuing to be the marketing powerhouse for the future.”