Javier Benito: the think tank of hospitality

Latino Leaders: The National Magazine of the Successful American Latino, June-July, 2006 by Wendy Pedrero

When Javier Benito left Coca Cola last year to try his luck at Starwood Hotels, the challenges he faced in his new endeavor were, by many a standard, uncharted territory for the young executive. Saddled with the responsibility of revamping Starwood's whole marketing strategy, Benito faced new tasks in an unfamiliar industry. Yet, a short year later, Benito stands comfortably atop the cloud of success that his global expertise has brought to Starwood, and at the forefront of a revolutionary, groundbreaking approach to the hospitality business that will turn the entire industry upside down.

On May of this year, Starwood Hotels announced a series of new initiatives to address the public and make the chain's seven different brands more popular and profitable. Along with a series of new ad campaigns aimed at eliciting a more emotional, loyal response from its customers, the company will introduce a whole new approach to making reservations: when a customer calls Starwood, rather than book a room at a specific hotel, they will be 'fitted' in a specific property based on their needs, lifestyle and desires. This is a revolutionary approach to the business, and Javier Benito is betting high that it will be a complete success.

At first glance, Benito's background may have not been a good fit for the task at hand. A Mexico City-born executive who worked for Procter & Gamble on marketing campaigns for products including Tide and Mr. Clean, Javier joined The Coca-Cola Company in 1994. There, he held a variety of key positions at a global level, including Division Marketing Director for East Central Europe, Vice President for Marketing & Operations in Brazil and various other posts before rising to the rank of President of the U.S. Retail Division and Chief Marketing Officer of Coca-Cola North America; a quite stellar career in the beverage business indeed, but a far cry from his job at Starwood. It didn't take very long, however, for Benito to prove that he is more than capable of handling the new business.

Speaking of his decision to leave Coca-Cola to delve into hotel management, Benito candidly attributes a part of his decision to leave the beverage icon to his loyalty towards his mentor, Starwood's CEO Steven Heyer, who is the former CEO of Coca-Cola.

"There were two important factors involved in that decision" says Benito. "One of them is obviously the connection with Steve, who invited me here to participate in what he wanted to do. He is a person that I admire very much, a man who believes in change, which is what he came to do here. The second, which is very important, is that you must always do things that will help you grow and develop your human capital, and I had never worked in a service industry, so I thought it was an ideal situation, where I could apply the principles that I had learned before to a different industry."

On his new job at Starwood, Javier was assigned an impressive $100 million budget to device a marketing strategy that would create an emotional bond between Starwood's customers and the company's different brands. The task, which has been traditionally difficult to achieve for the industry in general, did not intimidate Benito, who was teamed up with talent mogul Creative Artists Agency and Scott Bedbury, a consultant from Starbucks and Nike, to develop the new strategy.

Of his lack of experience in the industry, Benito offers a simple reflection. "I don't really feel like a rookie, because I think that many of the principles that we've applied in the past are the same that we can apply here. When the company hired me they took that into consideration, and yes, there may have been, perhaps, a higher risk, but if you know finances, 'the higher the risk, the higher the dividends', so I think that in that sense it has been good for everyone ... and for me, it's been a great learning experience."

Benito's strongest talent lies in his ability to reach his target audience successfully by customizing his marketing approach to fit the complete cultural context and specific needs of that particular audience. While at Coca-Cola, for example, Javier faced a tough challenge when he had to tackle a very low sales index in Turkey. The country, which is deeply religious, is very big on fasting and was not consuming enough sodas. Undaunted, Benito developed an ad campaign that intertwined major religious celebrations and other cultural traditions with the consumption of sodas. The approached proved successful, and Benito was able to finally make the sale of the product profitable in that country.

Back in the U.S., after his time oversees, however, he found himself shocked at how low the level of customer service and care had declined. "Here was this country that for me has always been a key market and an example to follow, and all of a sudden it would take you 20 minutes of different menus before you could reach someone to talk to on the phone ... or an airline would cancel a flight and not even notify you, and that was a real shock, because I think that in the past it was all very different."