Chief advertising officers ought to consider and synthesize success tales to be taught from previous advertising efforts, establish repeatable methods, and show the return on funding (ROI) of their work to stakeholders.
In the end, this may also help to drive higher future campaigns and enterprise outcomes.
As Steve Jobs as soon as noticed, “Essentially the most highly effective particular person on this planet is the storyteller. The storyteller units the imaginative and prescient, values, and agenda of a whole era that’s to return.”
Telling Tales To Handle Change And Uncertainty
Storytelling is essential as a result of it’s a elementary means that people join, share experiences, and be taught.
It fosters empathy, creativity, and emotional intelligence whereas additionally serving to to construct relationships, convey advanced concepts, and encourage motion.
Mondelēz Worldwide, a Fortune 500 firm in over 150 nations, generated round $36 billion in web income in 2024.
Its well-known worldwide and native manufacturers embrace Oreo, Ritz, and Tate’s Bake Store cookies and baked items, together with chocolate favorites like Cadbury Dairy Milk and Toblerone.
(Disclosure: I used to be a member of a crew of material specialists who taught a bespoke digital advertising coaching program for tons of of entrepreneurs at Mondelēz Worldwide. I can share its story now with out violating my non-disclosure settlement as a result of it has since made this data public.)
Mondelēz Worldwide’s Journey To Buyer-Centric Development
The problem for any Fortune 500 CMO is navigating the ever-evolving client habits and technological developments.
Mondelēz Worldwide, a world snack large, presents a compelling blueprint for not solely reacting to alter, but in addition proactively shaping it.
Its journey, spanning a number of years, highlights the crucial parts of foresight, collaboration, and a deep dedication to understanding the client.
Embracing Empathy At Scale
Again in 2019, Mondelēz acknowledged a elementary shift in client expectations. The will for generic model messaging was waning, changed by a yearning for familiarity and personalization.
This perception spurred a strategic pivot, transferring the corporate from a margin-focused strategy to at least one centered on development, fueled by elevated advertising funding and an idea it termed “empathy at scale.”
This wasn’t nearly gathering knowledge; it was about establishing the suitable reference to the suitable buyer on the proper time.
The early days of the pandemic underscored the knowledge of this shift.
Whereas client habits was in flux, Mondelēz’s prior funding in digital maturity and suppleness supplied the agility wanted to adapt.
The bedrock of this technique was a profound understanding of its customers, permitting it to create real worth, a precept that continues to be timeless within the face of uncertainty.
Mondelez India’s Automation-Pushed Success
Mondelez India has achieved outstanding success via automation, significantly within the numerous Indian market.
Its revolutionary strategy to advert personalization has demonstrated the transformative energy of selling automation and machine studying in creating deep buyer connections and driving important gross sales.
In the course of the Diwali festive season, Mondelez India acknowledged the immense worth of native relevance for its Cadbury Celebrations reward containers.
It ingeniously leveraged voice AI and ML to create adverts that includes megastar Shah Rukh Khan, through which he personally named native shops promoting their merchandise.
This expertise enabled the environment friendly era of a staggering 130,000 movies, every tailor-made to a selected retailer.
Utilizing YouTube’s superior contextual concentrating on, the marketing campaign matched advert variations with the suitable viewers primarily based on their proximity to native shops.
This hyper-local strategy resonated strongly, leading to a 60% enhance in YouTube engagement, 42% development in gross sales at native shops, and 33 million reward containers bought in the course of the festive season. The marketing campaign underscored the ability of constructing customers really feel instantly seen and acknowledged inside their native context.
Mondelez India additional pushed the boundaries of advert personalization with its marketing campaign for Perk, a chocolate model common amongst youth.
Recognizing the cultural phenomenon of “cancel tradition,” the model aimed to inject humor and encourage levity.
Utilizing AI to establish 2.5 million of probably the most searched movies, it created {custom} disclaimers that playfully warned viewers of potential “triggers” inside the content material, equivalent to a carrot being aggressively chopped in a cooking video.
These brief, pre-roll adverts had been seamlessly built-in into every of the thousands and thousands of trending movies utilizing Google’s custom-built API and Director Combine expertise.
The marketing campaign’s intelligent and extremely contextualized strategy resonated with viewers, bringing in a formidable 84 million views, 635 million impressions, and a 20% spike in gross sales.
It demonstrated how injecting well timed cultural relevance, powered by automation, can seize consideration and drive enterprise outcomes.
Bridging The Artwork And Science Of Advertising
The execution of “empathy at scale” demanded a elementary transformation in how Mondelēz operated. It wasn’t sufficient to have insightful knowledge; the model wanted to activate it successfully.
This required a robust synergy between the “artwork” of selling and the “science” of information.
A pivotal component was the sturdy partnership between the chief advertising and gross sales officer and the architect of their knowledge infrastructure. This collaboration was the engine driving their digital transformation.
Recognizing the necessity for sturdy knowledge administration, Mondelēz partnered with Google Cloud to construct regional knowledge hubs for first-party knowledge.
Critically, it additionally invested in coaching its groups to leverage these new capabilities. This wasn’t nearly expertise adoption; it was about empowering its folks to harness the ability of information.
This strategic overhaul yielded spectacular outcomes. By integrating beforehand siloed knowledge, Mondelēz gained a holistic view of its customers, enabling it to ship customized content material that reduce via the noise.
This human-driven strategic shift, augmented by expertise, resulted in important ROI will increase globally and within the U.S., laying a stable basis for sustained development.
Leveraging AI To Scale Personalization And Attain New Audiences
The advertising panorama continues to evolve, with viewers fragmentation throughout media platforms turning into a big problem.
For manufacturers with deep heritage, like Cadbury, the added complexity lies in extending their attain past conventional channels to have interaction new generations.
The story of Cadbury’s Creme Egg presents a robust illustration of find out how to navigate this problem.
Confronted with elevated competitors and cost-of-living pressures impacting client spending, Cadbury acknowledged the necessity to join with Gen Z and Millennials, who had been much less engaged with conventional TV promoting.
Constructing on its present digital presence, significantly on YouTube, the model explored the potential of AI-powered video promoting. Initially, adapting its present TV advert for digital appeared like probably the most cost-effective strategy.
Nonetheless, it found that YouTube’s AI advert codecs, particularly Video Attain Campaigns, required a various vary of inventive belongings constructed from the bottom up. This realization highlighted the significance of platform-specific inventive methods.
By means of a collaboration with Google’s Inventive Works crew and its inventive company VCCP, Cadbury embraced this problem. It developed a sequence of belongings for an AI-driven marketing campaign centered round its iconic “How do you eat yours?” slogan.
Leveraging client analysis, it highlighted completely different consuming kinds, creating quirky and interesting video statements in varied codecs, from six-second bumpers to longer adverts with compelling story arcs.
By offering a various content material ecosystem, Cadbury empowered YouTube’s AI to successfully match the suitable Creme Egg message with the suitable viewer on the proper time.
This strategy, managed via a single marketing campaign, allowed the AI to optimize advert supply primarily based on enterprise objectives and viewers alerts way more successfully than guide changes.
Regardless of financial pressures, the success of this AI-powered marketing campaign, which targeted on maximizing distinctive attain, led to elevated funding in each manufacturing and media, demonstrating the ability of AI to reinforce campaigns whereas underscoring the enduring significance of human creativity.
Key Takeaways For CMOs
This sequence of Mondelēz Worldwide case research presents invaluable insights for CMOs searching for to navigate the complexities of contemporary advertising and foster customer-centric development.
A number of key takeaways emerge from these examples.
1. Buyer Empathy Serves As The Foundational Aspect For Sustainable Development
Mondelēz’s early recognition of the need to prioritize understanding its clients over solely specializing in margin proved pivotal.
This “empathy at scale” strategy grew to become the cornerstone of its subsequent achievements.
This goes past mere knowledge assortment; true empathy entails using these insights to generate real worth for the client by deeply understanding their wants and wishes.
The resilience of this customer-centric technique was significantly evident in the course of the pandemic, enabling Mondelēz to adapt swiftly attributable to its preexisting sturdy understanding of its customers.
2. Hyper-Personalization Carried out At Scale Drives Important Outcomes
The success of Mondelez India with campaigns for Cadbury Celebrations and Perk illustrates the transformative potential of selling automation and machine studying in delivering customized experiences on a big scale.
The Cadbury Celebrations marketing campaign brilliantly demonstrated the impression of hyper-local personalization, making customers really feel instantly seen and acknowledged inside their very own communities.
Moreover, the Perk marketing campaign highlighted the effectiveness of incorporating well timed cultural relevance, powered by AI, to chop via the noise and resonate successfully with audiences.
3. Bridging The Hole Between The Artwork And Science Of Advertising Is Important For Success
Efficient advertising in at present’s panorama calls for a powerful synergy between the inventive elements of selling and the analytical energy of information.
Attaining this requires crucial cross-functional collaboration, significantly a powerful working relationship between the CMO/CSO and the info infrastructure architect to drive digital transformation.
Investing in sturdy knowledge infrastructure is barely a part of the equation; CMOs should additionally prioritize coaching their groups to successfully make the most of these new capabilities.
In the end, integrating siloed knowledge to achieve a holistic view of the client permits simpler personalization and improves general return on funding.
Abstract
Whereas AI is a robust device for scaling personalization and reaching new audiences, it necessitates a strategic strategy.
AI can help manufacturers in overcoming the problem of reaching more and more fragmented audiences throughout quite a few platforms.
Nonetheless, it’s essential to acknowledge that platform-specific inventive is commonly crucial, as merely repurposing conventional inventive for digital platforms is probably not optimum.
AI-powered advert codecs usually require tailor-made inventive methods developed from the outset.
Regardless of the capabilities of AI, human creativity stays important. Compelling and interesting inventive, pushed by human insights, remains to be elementary to marketing campaign success.
Even in periods of financial strain, investing in AI-powered campaigns targeted on maximizing distinctive attain can yield important outcomes and justify additional funding on this expertise.
The Mondelēz journey underscores the significance of a elementary shift in the direction of customer-centricity, enabled by strategic investments in expertise, knowledge, and expertise.
By embracing these rules, CMOs can equip their Fortune 500 firms to not solely climate the storms of change and uncertainty, but in addition to emerge stronger and extra related with their clients.
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