The Marketer Supercharging Müller’s Swagger

Müller is back in a big way. After returning to profit last year, the dairy giant is once again finding its stride - and helping to give its brands a renewed sense of personality, momentum and playfulness is Talar El Asswad, strategy and marketing director for Yogurt & Desserts. Working with VCCP, El Asswad is turning up the heat in the fridge.

El Asswad brings to Müller more than two decades of experience across food and drink, much of it built at Jacobs Douwe Egberts, and a marketer’s instinct shaped as much by commercial discipline as creative ambition. Her career began not in brand-land but in pricing, promotion and category management - a grounding she believes has proved invaluable. It gave her, she says, a forensic understanding of return on investment, profitability and, crucially, what really drives consumer behaviour.

That commercial fluency now runs through the creative work she oversees. For El Asswad, brand-building is not about choosing between data and imagination, but about making the two work harder together.

A tasty career

After earning a Bachelor’s degree in marketing, business and French at Kingston University - including a year at ESC Rouen, now Rouen Business School, in France - El Asswad threw herself into the job market, taking on all manner of interviews before landing her first role as a junior buyer at Safeway.

It was there, in the fast-moving and high-pressure bakery category, that she learned quickly how the grocery world really works. It also marked the beginning of a career-long affinity with food and drink.

When Safeway merged with Morrisons and her team was asked to relocate, El Asswad chose instead to re-enter the job market. Her next move took her, as she puts it, to the “dark side” of manufacturing, joining Hillshire Brands in category management within the sales team.

From there, she progressed rapidly: first managing smaller accounts, then leading on Tesco and Sainsbury’s, before moving into global price and promotion strategy. It was a highly analytical role, but one that also brought her into close contact with senior marketers across different markets.

“Ooh, I like this… this is the other side of the coin,” she remembers thinking, as she saw how data, commercial insight and consumer behaviour could come together to shape brands.

So she did what ambitious people often do: she made the move happen herself. El Asswad contacted the UK marketing director directly and, two weeks later, became a brand manager - taking a step back in grade in order to switch disciplines. Within a year, she had become a senior brand manager, rapidly absorbing the marketing fundamentals she had missed by not coming up through the traditional graduate route.

A self‑described “strategy nerd through and through”, she finally “found her home” in marketing, a place where insight, trends, data and commercial performance all come together.

From there she moved to Jacobs Douwe Edgberts taking on various marketing roles, eventually leading marketing for single serve at coffee machine brand Tassimo. Then, in 2022, she was lured by dairy giant Müller to become one of its senior marketers for the UK and Ireland.

“Food has always been a conscious choice,” El Asswad admits of her career focus. “It's something that, I'm quite passionate about. I'm bit of a foodie myself and just knowing that it's such an integral part of day-to-day life and the brands are really loved brands, particularly a brand like Müller. I mean, it's a hugely loved brand. I have thought about moving into other industries but keep coming back to food.”

Rice rice baby

In her three-and-a-half-years at the business, she has seen it turn itself around, leading to a return to profit in 2024 of £34.3m following pre-tax losses of £65.3m just the year before.

This coincided with her move into the marketing director role at the end of 2024 when she admits to seeing “a very different side” of business in general, including oversight of its finances - a perspective that marketers in segmented roles do not have access to.

“Being able to see the full P&L and being able to see how many levers there are further to pull - when it comes to production of this scale, it's been really a cross business, whether it's our MMI business, which is where the milk is produced and comes from, and the ingredients, it's procurement, it's sales, commercial excellence, it's marketing excellence, it's operational excellence. There are so many tiers to what's driven some of the profit growth that we've seen,” she explains.

El Asswad adds that the role marketing has played has been to give “clarity” and “vision” to the brands which have driven confidence and belief for the business since its numbers began to decline. She talks about rebuilding the swagger within Müller through its creative output, beginning with a clear strategic direction across the marketing team as well as around the roles for the brands.

“Internally, that confidence and belief started to erode. Being able to demonstrate this is the vision, this is the role we're playing, this is the marketing we're going to be doing, and then launching a few things - I’m a big believer in momentum drives momentum and that the second you start to see, ‘Oh, we've done this, it's driven growth’ and think that metrics start to turn green again, the brand starts to go back into growth. You've got penetration growth again. That's the role, I think we've driven - building that confidence.”

Demonstrating that the communications output was working and driving the Muller momentum curve has also given the team more confidence as well, she believes.

This, in part, is down to the successful partnership with England and Arsenal midfielder Declan Rice and the launch his very own limited-edition Müller Rice flavour: Raspberry and White Chocolate last summer. The campaign was created by VCCP Blue which also involved a café activation featuring the player and supported through social content, out of home, and point of sale.

It saw the brand grow its penetration rate by four per cent, El Asswad reveals, with the platform ‘Rice Rice Baby’ providing a quick and distinctive brand asset as well as an ear worm that stuck with audiences. It was even shared by another footballing brand and midfield maestro, Sir David Beckham.

“It’s something I'm really proud of from my time at Müller. Sometimes you need a bit of bravery. It's not the most logical thing when you look at it on paper, but then you say, ‘why not?’”

Despite her positivity on the performance of the partnership, she refuses to be drawn on whether Rice will return ahead of the World Cup this summer where he is expected to feature as part of the participating England squad.

Everyone has a Müller Corner eating ritual

‘You Know How You Like It’ is the latest campaign from the company as it places a spotlight on Müller Corner and the various ways people eat from its distinctive packaging design.

Once again created by VCCP, it centres on the personalised rituals that consumers have when eating their Müller Corner of choice and follows on from 2023’s ‘Love Every Bit’ spot featuring a self-conscious teacher pausing before licking the lid of her desert in front of her pupils at lunchtime, before shrugging and doing it anyway.

This campaign follows internal recognition that Corner had long been "the hero" of the Müller masterbrand’s advertising, but that it lacked its own distinct brand platform. With the portfolio expanding — from MyProtein collaborations to Müller Rice and Bliss — it needed "a coherent, repeatable idea" that would let Corner stand alone.

El Asswad explains that consumer research kept pointing to one universal truth: everyone has their own personalised ritual for eating a Corner. That insight became the foundation for building a dedicated brand platform celebrating the product in its own right.

“Watching people and how meticulously they would create their own ritual, we were like: ‘This is Corner. This is what makes it special’. 'Personalised Rituals' is like gold dust for a marketeer with such a breadth of rituals we can lean into,” she explains.

On working with VCCP, which now has a three-year brief to build this new platform, she adds: “There is a lot of trust there because we feel comfortable and there's that relationship to challenge each other. For me, a key agency partner is one where we can strategically have those discussions. Planners are my best friends at VCCP. We're on speed dial to each other talking over a brief and being clear on the strategy, being clear on the intent, being able to articulate that clearly. That's something we get through the planners' relationship at VCCP.”

She also cites the agency’s creative bravery and creative excellence – testing a lot of work from the partnership through System1 and receiving “strong results” in return.

“We know they have the creative power at VCCP, and they understand the brand It's a long-term agency partner, so that trust has been built over time. They know what hasn't worked. They know what has worked. And we're not afraid to get in a room and battle things out together and really challenge each other both ways.”

More on the world of marketing according to Talar El Asswad

Creative Salon: What excites you most about the future of marketing?

El Asswad: I see a growing need for marketers to be more strategic. We’re overloaded with data, and the real skill now is turning it into actions that drive change and growth. Consumers are more savvy too, so the fundamentals — be noticed, be understood, be remembered — matter more than ever. The “be noticed” part is the hardest, with fragmented media and dual — or even triple‑screening making cut‑through increasingly difficult.

That’s why we use System1 to assess the passive elements of our comms. If your work is passive, you have almost no chance of cutting through in such a busy environment. Creative excellence will only become more important as the need to stand out intensifies.

Strategically, brands and retailers are being squeezed, and categories are getting more crowded. We’ll need to get even smarter in how we manage our portfolios — almost a return to hero SKUs. Marketing is evolving constantly, and that’s what makes it exciting. The need to stay one step ahead is real, and it keeps us on our toes.

How do you keep on top of new trends and tech in your role?

It all comes down to choices — prioritisation and focus. With so much happening in dairy, the most dynamic category I’ve ever worked in, we constantly have to decide what will genuinely make the boat go faster. The category shifts fast: Greek yoghurt, for example, has exploded in the time I’ve been here. So we need strategic rigour to stay in our lane, keep reviewing whether our priorities are still right, and adjust as the category evolves.

At the same time, we have to protect the team from burnout. We’re proud to sell yoghurt and the energy on the marketing floor is incredible, but you can’t be creative when you’re exhausted. I talk a lot about being “full on and full off” — taking proper time out so we can come back energised. That’s why prioritisation matters internally too. There’s double the amount of work we could be doing, but we have to focus on what truly moves us forward.

Do you have a favourite campaign you’ve worked on in your career?

There are a few, but if I had to choose one, it would be bringing back Mississippi Mud Pie at Müller. For years, consumers had been asking on social for its return, and we finally decided to do it. We brought it back in its original 90s packaging and leaned fully into nostalgia, because the audience we’d lost over time was my own demographic — the kids who grew up eating Corner in the 90s. Mississippi Mud Pie and Strawberry Chocolate Balls were two of the most‑loved flavours from that era.

We launched with a full 90s theme. We replied to every social comment with a Magic Eye image that revealed the launch date once you solved it, and people went wild trying to decode it. We plastered Magic Eye posters across London and Manchester, and as launch approached, they shifted to “It’s back”. When we announced it was in Asda, it sold out in two days. People were buying cases and posting them everywhere. It was so much fun to work on, and completely anchored in the data showing we’d lost that core audience and needed to tap back into that moment in time.

We even created a retro pop‑up shop with Game Boys, Atari consoles — basically my 90s bedroom recreated. The whole nostalgia trend was huge culturally, and the reaction during the tease phase and launch made it my favourite campaign. Not every campaign delivers sales like that, which is why I say there are many I could choose from. But for me, if the work makes me smile, it usually makes someone else smile too — and that’s generally a good sign it will perform.

What do you look for in an agency partner when appointing one? 

It comes down to creative rigour. When you step back and look at VCCP’s portfolio — from the meerkats to Cadbury, Walkers, the London Underground work and the National Lottery — it’s incredibly impressive. There’s a consistent level of performance, underpinned by real creative bravery.

I often say to them: you’re my right hand. The relationship matters. Those tissue sessions are essential for making sure we have the right personalities, the right push‑and‑pull, and the ability to hold tension while still operating as one team. Without that collaboration, everything becomes much harder.

What frustrates you currently about marketing? 

The thing I love most about my role is nurturing brands. My only measure is whether I leave a brand in a better place than I found it. That often means strengthening its positioning, clarifying what it stands for and keeping it relevant — and that doesn’t happen overnight. Some shifts take a year or two before the metrics move. But because businesses want immediate results, there’s a short‑term focus on uplift, and long‑term brand building can be cut off just as it’s about to have an impact.

We’ve tried to introduce a clearer balance between short‑term impact and long‑term growth. Some initiatives are designed for the short term, but a campaign like Corner is long‑term brand building. We need to keep that language alive with stakeholders, so they understand what’s short term and what’s long term. The short term often wins out because of business priorities, and that’s frustrating.