Tara Mathew Sahu
“As marketers, we have an extraordinary responsibility to not only drive business, but also to drive culture. The most successful brands do both.”
Marketing exists at the intersection of art and commerce. It is as much about business growth as it is about creativity. When people ask marketing leader and Trove partner Tara if she is left- or right-brained, her answer is an emphatic “both”. Time and again, she has seen that creativity can solve even the most intractable problems. Twenty-five years into an impressive career that spans many industries, this conviction continues to drive her, with each new opportunity to apply this blend of art and science accompanied by a feeling of energy and anticipation that’s difficult even for her to articulate.
Tara has spent her career building and reinventing some of the world’s most admired brands, starting with Motorola, which she joined in the early 2000s when mobile phones were becoming ubiquitous. The race to innovate and capture market share was intense and as a member of the global advertising group, Tara helped launch some of Motorola’s greatest innovations, including the Razr phone, around the world. Every market had unique, distinct needs and Tara was laser-focused on nurturing strong relationships and open dialogues with regional marketing directors to ensure that each locale had access to context-appropriate campaigns. As Razr became one of the trendiest, most widely used mobile phones in the world, Tara followed a similar blueprint to drive the global adoption of other new technologies, such as high speed cellular networks and bluetooth. Her experience at Motorola cemented her love of marketing and gave her confidence that she was born for that work.
After five years at Motorola, Tara joined Leo Burnett, the ad agency responsible for creating some of the world’s most iconic brands. Overseeing the Samsung account, she gained new perspectives and became a more seasoned, well-rounded marketer. Five years after that, she had the opportunity to join perhaps the world’s most iconic brand: Coca-Cola. As marketing leader for the brand’s flagship brand, original Coca-Cola, Tara oversaw campaigns for the holidays, Super Bowl, and Olympics, as well as the Share a Coke campaign, which boosted margins and set revenue records. As a result of this work, Tara was tapped to launch Coke Zero Sugar, the fastest growing zero sugar product in the Coca-Cola portfolio. She had end-to-end responsibilities, including collaborating with product development on the new formulation, developing branding and packaging, and retail strategy. She spent her final few years at Coca-Cola leading marketing for Diet Coke. First launched in 1982, the brand had been in decline for eight years and it was time to introduce it to a new generation of consumers. Tara spearheaded a makeover of the Diet Coke portfolio, flavors, and packaging, and modernized its brand, turning it around. While advertising represented the most salient output of her efforts at Coca-Cola, she’s equally proud of her less conspicuous work in areas such as product portfolio strategy, shopper marketing, and social media strategy.
As she continued to experience professional success at Coca-Cola, Tara became increasingly concerned about social issues, including voter suppression, which she experienced personally in 2020 when she waited in line for seven hours to cast her ballot in Atlanta. When Georgia’s Senate race went to a run-off in 2021, she couldn’t stand by idly. As world-class creatives and marketers, she and her colleagues at Coca-Cola knew they could make a difference. They reached out to the run-off candidates and the Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, offering to help with content creation and social strategy to drive voter turnout. Their offer was immediately accepted and their efforts helped get people to the polls, which Tara found immensely rewarding.
Shortly thereafter, she decided it was time for her to get out of her comfort zone professionally. Reflecting that she had only worked for established brands and never for a brand in its infancy, she accepted a leadership role at early-stage fintech called Varo. Its mission to drive financial inclusion and opportunity for the millions of unbanked and underbanked people. Digital banking resonated with her, as did the opportunity to go deep into digital and full-funnel marketing. For two years, Tara played an instrumental role in building and activating the Varo brand before accepting a role on McDonald’s Global Brand Team as Head of Global Strategic Alliances. In her return to her roots as a marketing leader at an iconic, globally recognized brand, she is responsible for driving brand relevance for McDonald's through culturally-leading partnerships and campaigns across music, film, gaming, sport, fashion, and lifestyle -- including whom McDonald’s partners with for Happy Meals around the world.
Tara’s most underrated quality is her ability to bring the right people together to create an inclusive and productive environment. An ardent believer in the power of collaborative teams with diverse perspectives to produce great work, she constantly strives to ensure that her colleagues and team members feel inspired, challenged, and supported. For Tara, this sense of belonging and empowerment is a prerequisite for producing work that drives maximum business impact and her exceptional track record certainly validates this approach.
Contact Tara
LinkedIn Website (please email for access) Email: tara (dot) mathew (at) gmail.com
Email hello@trovecommunity.com or contact us for an introduction.
