In March this year Beste Ermaner stepped into the leadership role of Philip Morris International (PMI)’s key travel retail business as PMI Duty Free Vice President, replacing Edvinas Katilius.
At the recent TFWA World Exhibition in Cannes, she spoke to The Moodie Davitt Report Founder & Chairman Martin Moodie in a wide-ranging discussion centered on PMI’s journey towards what it calls a Smoke-Free Future.
Remarkably, PMI’s flagship Reduced Risk Product IQOS overtook Marlboro in terms of net revenues for the first time in the company’s Q4 2023 results – extraordinary progress in a decade since launch.
“This is a tremendous milestone in our history of smoke-free products, which actually is a testament to the fact that our progress is real and measurable,” Ermaner says.
“IQOS today has 30.8 million users worldwide already. And what is more impressive is that 72% of those IQOS users have completely stopped smoking and switched to IQOS completely.”
Overall smoke-free business accounted for 38.1% of total net revenues in Q2 – interestingly up by 2.7pp year-on-year, which indicates tremendous traction.
“Our ambition is actually to deliver at least two-thirds of our net revenues from smoke-free products by 2030,” says Ermaner, as she talks insightfully about the smoke-free sojourn to date and the path that lies ahead.
She also underlines the critical role travel retail plays in delivering PMI’s global mission, highlighting some of the exciting recent airport store openings in locations such as Dubai, Narita, Osaka and Geneva. Click on the YouTube icon to view the full, fascinating interview. ✈
A career of commitmentBeste Ermaner is a youthful veteran of PMI, having joined the company back in 2001 in her native Türkiye. During a stellar career since, she has carried out key assignments in Türkiye, Russia and the company’s Operations Center, working across consumer insights, marketing, sales, global brand-building innovation and reduced-risk products (RRP). In 2015, Ermaner progressed within RRP and assumed the role of Global Marketing Director in the Operations Center. This was followed by the Director RRP role at Philip Morris Türkiye, where she led the end-to-end commercialisation of flagship PMI RRP IQOS in Northern Cyprus.  Ermaner moved back to the Operations Center in 2020 as Global Head Portfolio Strategy in Smoke-Free Products (SFP). She led the development of the company’s strategic portfolio and pricing vision across SFP categories. In her most recent role as Vice President Smoke-Free Products Multi-Category, Ermaner led strategy, the Project Management Office, commercial deployment planning, regional omnichannel hubs and governance pillars for all SFP categories (Heat not Burn, eVapor, Oral Products). She played a key part in shaping the integrated SFP strategy, focused on optimising the value of that portfolio through effective multi-category execution. |
