Nestlé's Quick

GRAHAM TROTT FOR TIME
Brabeck voted the best-looking Swiss manager by Cash magazine readers at his headquarters in Vevey

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Back in Austria, he abandoned plans to earn a doctorate, joined Findus and was soon posted to Chile. President Salvador Allende was then in power trying to implement his "Chilean road to socialism," and Brabeck recalls spending much of his time trying to dissuade government officials from nationalizing milk production. He also had to deal with militant labor officials on the factory floor who could bring operations to a standstill.

One of the highlights of his posting was the day Fidel Castro introduced him to cigars. It was in September 1972, he recalls, at a trade fair in Santiago. The Cuban exhibitors needed refrigerators for their shrimp. Brabeck lent them some. When the fair opened, Castro came over with a box of smokes to say thank you. But the Cuban leader's biggest gift, Brabeck says, was to warn Allende of the problems Cuba had encountered when it nationalized milk. That gave Nestlé valuable breathing space.

Brabeck was called back to Switzerland in 1975, and after the turbulence he had just lived through, "Vevey seemed as boring as hell," he recalls. Within three months, barely enough time to hang the curtains and find a school for the eldest of his three children, he was on a plane back to Chile along with his family, this time as Nestlé's local marketing director. Three other executives had turned down the job, nervous about the political turmoil. Brabeck jumped at it.

Something similar happened five years later. Brabeck returned to Switzerland as deputy head of the Latin American division, expecting to settle down in Vevey for three to five years. But within weeks, there was a management crisis in Ecuador, and he was parachuted in to become the new general manager. This time his Chilean-born wife refused to go with him. She stayed in Switzerland with the children, and she and Brabeck divorced. But there too Brabeck showed his famous persistence. Ten years later, on his 50th birthday, the couple remarried.

By then he was back in Switzerland, in charge of marketing. When CEO Helmut Maucher began redefining Nestlé's product and branding strategy, he leaned increasingly on Brabeck. He even took to calling Brabeck Suslov, a joking reference to Mikhail Suslov, notorious chief ideologist of the Soviet Communist Party. The new product strategy involved grouping all Nestlé products under six global brands, including Nescafe, Nestea and Nestlé itself. Once it was launched, Brabeck grew restless and asked to be sent back into the field. Maucher was then in his mid-60s and close to retirement. Brabeck technically reported to the chief operating officer, who was widely expected to become the new CEO. Maucher asked Brabeck bluntly, "What is it you truly want?" Brabeck's reply: "The chair you're sitting in." Several months later, Maucher announced that Brabeck would succeed him.

To understand Brabeck's strategy of cost-efficient global growth, unwrap a Kit Kat. Nestlé acquired the chocolate-covered wafer bar in 1988 when it bought Britain's Rowntree. Today it's a $1 billion business, says Patrice Bula, head of the chocolate division at Nestlé headquarters, and the company is pushing Kit Kat as its answer to the Mars bar, the world's most popular candy. Last year Nestlé started producing Kit Kats in Russia and Bulgaria for Eastern Europe. A Latin American launch is slated this year. Kit Kat is already selling briskly in Japan, Australia and India, and a relaunch is under way in Thailand.

Unlike Coca-Cola's, Kit Kat's formula is different almost everywhere. A Russian Kit Kat is a fraction of an ounce smaller than a Bulgarian one, and the chocolate is coarser and not as sweet as that in a German Kit Kat. In Japan, strawberry-flavored Kit Kat is all the rage. Each of these product variations is the result of thorough market research on local tastes. "There is no global consumer for the food-and-beverage business. This is a deep belief we have," Brabeck says.

But there is a gaping hole in this global strategy: Nestlé doesn't control Kit Kat in the biggest chocolate market of them all, the U.S. Back in 1970, Rowntree licensed the brand in perpetuity to Hershey. The only way for Nestlé to get it back would be a change of heart or a change of control at Hershey. So when the Hershey Trust put the company up for sale last year, Nestlé saw a ripe opportunity. Brabeck made an agreement with Britain's Cadbury Schweppes under which it would return Kit Kat and another brand, Rolo, to Nestlé if Cadbury made the winning bid for Hershey. In the end, the Hershey Trust dropped its sale plans, but Nestlé has not given up hope. Brabeck says he's "willing to go a long way" to get the brands back "because they belong to our family."