Olga Osminkina-Jones, Danone Waters of America

Vice President, Marketing

If you spent part of August in New York, you may have experienced #Evianbottleservice, Evian’s first-ever, real-time marketing project to deliver water to thirsty New Yorkers via a Twitter-enabled service.  Consumers just had to use the hashtag to tweet Evian a message with their current location to trigger a team of bicycling brand ambassadors to hand-deliver a bottle of water within five to seven minutes. Even tennis great Maria Sharapova took part—no doubt on her way to the Billie Jean King Tennis Center in Queens.  Evian was also a sponsor of the U.S. Open.

The engagement on Twitter exceeded the benchmark for Consumer Packaged Goods /CPG brands by 80 percent.  And now Evian is testing similar real-world digital activations in London and in Paris. The program occurred, though, just five months after Olga Osminkina-Jones took on her new role as Vice President of Marketing at Danone Waters of America, the North American bottled water division of Danone.

The program is part of a long-term commitment to infuse brand activations with real-time social media engagement.  Ms. Osminkina-Jones is responsible for leading marketing strategy and execution across Danone’s three water brands in the region, Evian, Badoit and Volvic.  With a strong reputation for creativity and passion, as well as a track record for results, her goal is make all three of these premium brands more visible and relevant, while driving growth.  And she’s well on her way with a very fast start.  In addition to bolstering Evian’s leadership position among both consumers and influencers, she’s also developing new positioning and go-to-market strategy for Badoit, a sparkling water brand popular in France that is quickly growing in the US.  She reports directly to President Danone Waters of America, Eric O’Toole.

Olga Osminkina-Jones is a well-traveled internationalist who speaks English and Russian, as well as French and Italian.  She has over 15 years of experience in marketing and business development in the consumer packaged goods and retail sectors, and has lived in and worked in Western Europe and Central & Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, as well as the United States.  Prior to Danone, she served as Senior Brand Director for Heineken, where she was responsible for the overall strategy and sustained development of their flagship brand in the US. 

Her earlier roles included Global Executive Director at Estee Lauder, with responsibility for creating expansion strategy and development of new-to-the-world brands, propositions and service models, and Senior Group Brand Manager at Procter &