Digital innovation, customer obsession, and purpose-based marketing are core to leading brands this year, according to executives from these brands that spoke on the first day of Brand Innovators’ inaugural 2021 Kickoff event.
When Alicia Enciso, CMO of Nestlé USA joined the company eight years ago, they were investing less than 10% in digital. Today, digital represents more than 50% of their budget and pretty soon it will be 70% of their spend. The brand has evolved from developing great TV ads to building an in-house content studio to help adapt to the changing needs of the brand.
“The role of a brand is much bigger than it was back a few years ago. Great innovation and product performance is always at the core, but so much more is demanded of brands today,” Enciso said at the livecast. “There has been a very strong revolution into values. We are shopping brands that are consistent with our values. We are looking for brands that have a point of view in terms of society and current events that they are working with their communities. I think that has really changed in terms of what brands need to stand for today.”
Nestlé USA has been accelerating their ecommerce demands over the past couple of years, which helped prepare them for pandemic spikes in online grocery shopping. Sales went from $250 in 2019 to $650 million in 2020 and they are expecting $1 billion in 2021.
This growth in ecommerce is only speeding up an already shifting trend. “I don’t think the pandemic caused any of the changing we’re seeing, but just accelerated changes that were already happening,” said Joseph Luchs, AWS Data Exchange at Amazon Web Services. “Things like ecommerce, distributed work, gaming, growth in delivery services were all in motion, but the pandemic fast-forwarded these all by 10x. As we see our customers changing data needs, it’s really in the context of a lot of those macro changes happening across broader consumer behavior.”
Digital experiences play a core role for Petco as well, which relies on data and analytics to help serve personalized experiences to consumers that make them feel heard and known.
“Our company’s north star is that what’s best for pets is best for pet parents and is always best for Petco,” said Jay Altschuler, VP Media Transformation at Petco. “We call that purpose-driven performance and what underpins that is strong data and analytics and our approach to data, with respect to privacy. We’ve built a Petco responsibility framework, with trust and transparency at the heart of that.”
Connecting with consumers is no longer about a big ad message, but instead is about focusing on the customer experience throughout a consumer’s experience with a brand. For Verizon, this means focusing on the customer journey.
“When I think about media at its core, it’s one of the ways we’re connecting consumers with the right message, content and experiences,” said Karna Crawford, Head of Consumer Media & Activation Strategy at Verizon. “As an experience brand, every touch is a unique brand experience, but they need to be woven together. We need to really elevate that end to end customer experience journey, and approach it from a holistic angle. It’s really about unifying data, adapting our processes, and increasing the expectations of collaboration across different parts of the business so we’re not siloed in the marketing department.”
For QSR brand Sweetgreen, focusing on its customers and communities and offering smooth digital experiences has been at the center of the brand’s marketing over the last year. “Sweetgreen has a single purpose: to connect people and inspire communities with real food,” said Meenakshi Nagarajan, VP, Head of Marketing, sweetgreen. “It’s been the mission of the company since its inception. It drives every decision we make. As we grow, we want to get better and we strive for intimacy at scale. We want to connect to communities, establish relationships with growers, learn about the local folks. We want our store designs to reflect all of that. Those connections are how we build brand advocacy.”
Community at Domino’s is stronger than ever, with 90% of franchisees having started out as drivers or CSRs answering the phones in store. By building this culture of growth and progression after hard work, the brand is focused on creating “those deeper human connections, leading to more trust and more creativity in your work,” said Kate Trumbull, Vice President of Advertising & Hispanic Marketing, Domino’s.
To help communities during COVID, Domino’s launched a “Feed the Need” program to leverage their franchisees and their local communities. The company gave away 10 million slices of pizza to frontline workers and donated food to schools to help feed hungry kids.
“It was a balance of how Domino’s could leverage our resources to help, through donations and serving the community, but also through day-to-day getting food to people,” Trumbull said. “Doing the right thing and putting people first are our top two priorities.”
