Chief advertising and marketing officers ought to consider and synthesize success tales to study from previous advertising and marketing efforts, determine repeatable methods, and exhibit the return on funding (ROI) of their work to stakeholders.
Finally, this might help to drive higher future campaigns and enterprise outcomes.
As Steve Jobs as soon as noticed, “Essentially the most highly effective particular person on the planet is the storyteller. The storyteller units the imaginative and prescient, values, and agenda of a complete era that’s to come back.”
Telling Tales To Handle Change And Uncertainty
Storytelling is vital as a result of it’s a basic approach that people join, share experiences, and study.
It fosters empathy, creativity, and emotional intelligence whereas additionally serving to to construct relationships, convey complicated concepts, and encourage motion.
Mondelēz Worldwide, a Fortune 500 firm in over 150 international locations, generated round $36 billion in web income in 2024.
Its well-known worldwide and native manufacturers embody 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 subject material specialists who taught a bespoke digital advertising and marketing coaching program for a whole bunch 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 info public.)
Mondelēz Worldwide’s Journey To Buyer-Centric Progress
The problem for any Fortune 500 CMO is navigating the ever-evolving client habits and technological developments.
Mondelēz Worldwide, a world snack big, provides a compelling blueprint for not solely reacting to alter, but in addition proactively shaping it.
Its journey, spanning a number of years, highlights the important components of foresight, collaboration, and a deep dedication to understanding the client.
Embracing Empathy At Scale
Again in 2019, Mondelēz acknowledged a basic shift in client expectations. The need for generic model messaging was waning, changed by a longing for familiarity and personalization.
This perception spurred a strategic pivot, transferring the corporate from a margin-focused method to at least one centered on progress, fueled by elevated advertising and marketing funding and an idea it termed “empathy at scale.”
This wasn’t nearly gathering information; it was about establishing the fitting reference to the fitting 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 offered the agility wanted to adapt.
The bedrock of this technique was a profound understanding of its shoppers, permitting it to create real worth, a precept that is still 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 method to advert personalization has demonstrated the transformative energy of selling automation and machine studying in creating deep buyer connections and driving vital gross sales.
Through the Diwali festive season, Mondelez India acknowledged the immense worth of native relevance for its Cadbury Celebrations present containers.
It ingeniously leveraged voice AI and ML to create adverts that includes megastar Shah Rukh Khan, by 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 particular retailer.
Utilizing YouTube’s superior contextual focusing on, the marketing campaign matched advert variations with the fitting viewers primarily based on their proximity to native shops.
This hyper-local method resonated strongly, leading to a 60% improve in YouTube engagement, 42% progress in gross sales at native shops, and 33 million present containers bought in the course of the festive season. The marketing campaign underscored the facility of creating shoppers really feel straight 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 well-liked amongst youth.
Recognizing the cultural phenomenon of “cancel tradition,” the model aimed to inject humor and encourage levity.
Utilizing AI to determine 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 hundreds of thousands of trending movies utilizing Google’s custom-built API and Director Combine expertise.
The marketing campaign’s intelligent and extremely contextualized method resonated with viewers, bringing in a powerful 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 and marketing
The execution of “empathy at scale” demanded a basic transformation in how Mondelēz operated. It wasn’t sufficient to have insightful information; the model wanted to activate it successfully.
This required a robust synergy between the “artwork” of selling and the “science” of information.
A pivotal factor was the robust partnership between the chief advertising and marketing and gross sales officer and the architect of their information infrastructure. This collaboration was the engine driving their digital transformation.
Recognizing the necessity for sturdy information administration, Mondelēz partnered with Google Cloud to construct regional information hubs for first-party information.
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 facility of information.
This strategic overhaul yielded spectacular outcomes. By integrating beforehand siloed information, Mondelēz gained a holistic view of its shoppers, enabling it to ship customized content material that lower via the noise.
This human-driven strategic shift, augmented by expertise, resulted in vital ROI will increase globally and within the U.S., laying a strong basis for sustained progress.
Leveraging AI To Scale Personalization And Attain New Audiences
The advertising and marketing panorama continues to evolve, with viewers fragmentation throughout media platforms turning into a major 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 provides a robust illustration of 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 current digital presence, significantly on YouTube, the model explored the potential of AI-powered video promoting. Initially, adapting its current TV advert for digital appeared like probably the most cost-effective method.
Nevertheless, it found that YouTube’s AI advert codecs, particularly Video Attain Campaigns, required a various vary of artistic property constructed from the bottom up. This realization highlighted the significance of platform-specific artistic methods.
Via a collaboration with Google’s Artistic Works crew and its artistic company VCCP, Cadbury embraced this problem. It developed a collection of property for an AI-driven marketing campaign centered round its iconic “How do you eat yours?” slogan.
Leveraging client analysis, it highlighted totally different consuming kinds, creating quirky and fascinating video statements in numerous 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 fitting Creme Egg message with the fitting viewer on the proper time.
This method, managed via a single marketing campaign, allowed the AI to optimize advert supply primarily based on enterprise targets and viewers alerts much 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 facility of AI to reinforce campaigns whereas underscoring the enduring significance of human creativity.
Key Takeaways For CMOs
This collection of Mondelēz Worldwide case research provides precious insights for CMOs searching for to navigate the complexities of recent advertising and marketing and foster customer-centric progress.
A number of key takeaways emerge from these examples.
1. Buyer Empathy Serves As The Foundational Ingredient For Sustainable Progress
Mondelēz’s early recognition of the need to prioritize understanding its clients over solely specializing in margin proved pivotal.
This “empathy at scale” method grew to become the cornerstone of its subsequent achievements.
This goes past mere information assortment; true empathy includes 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 because of its preexisting robust understanding of its shoppers.
2. Hyper-Personalization Carried out At Scale Drives Vital 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 affect of hyper-local personalization, making shoppers really feel straight 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 and marketing Is Important For Success
Efficient advertising and marketing in right now’s panorama calls for a powerful synergy between the artistic elements of selling and the analytical energy of information.
Reaching this requires important cross-functional collaboration, significantly a powerful working relationship between the CMO/CSO and the information infrastructure architect to drive digital transformation.
Investing in sturdy information infrastructure is barely a part of the equation; CMOs should additionally prioritize coaching their groups to successfully make the most of these new capabilities.
Finally, integrating siloed information to achieve a holistic view of the client permits more practical personalization and improves total return on funding.
Abstract
Whereas AI is a robust instrument for scaling personalization and reaching new audiences, it necessitates a strategic method.
AI can help manufacturers in overcoming the problem of reaching more and more fragmented audiences throughout quite a few platforms.
Nevertheless, it’s essential to acknowledge that platform-specific artistic is usually mandatory, as merely repurposing conventional artistic for digital platforms might not be optimum.
AI-powered advert codecs typically require tailor-made artistic methods developed from the outset.
Regardless of the capabilities of AI, human creativity stays important. Compelling and fascinating artistic, pushed by human insights, continues to be basic to marketing campaign success.
Even during times of financial stress, investing in AI-powered campaigns targeted on maximizing distinctive attain can yield vital outcomes and justify additional funding on this expertise.
The Mondelēz journey underscores the significance of a basic shift in direction of customer-centricity, enabled by strategic investments in expertise, information, and expertise.
By embracing these ideas, CMOs can equip their Fortune 500 corporations to not solely climate the storms of change and uncertainty, but in addition to emerge stronger and extra linked with their clients.
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