Mondelez InternationalIt is Embracing technology means increasing “analytical rigor” and investing in tools to optimize promotions and pricing, improve sales productivity, and elevate in-store execution. At its heart is artificial intelligence.
As the company leverages four key pillars to accelerate its growth in 2024 and beyond, focusing on RGM, channel expansion, digital transformation and deep marketing, its investment in digital, with AI as a major influence, is affecting enterprise-wide efforts.
Their digital strategy revolves around three key areas: “The first is consumer engagement, which allows us to better personalize our brand’s engagement with consumers. The second is customer engagement, which is a multi-year digital sales transformation aimed at delivering best-in-class revenue management and sales execution. “, declared Luca Zaramella, CFO, during the Consumer Analyst Group of New York (CAGNY) Investor Conference last week. “And third, end-to-end execution excellence, which aims to increase efficiency and effectiveness in all aspects of our business operations. »
AI Insights Power RGM Practices
First, when it comes to RGM, AI helps support the company’s sales approach by leveraging third-party data to improve business decisions and sales execution. This information includes point-of-sale promotions, distributor data and loyalty card data.
“AI also provides better insights to drive sales execution and excellence through guided selling for personalized recommendations, suggested order to simplify order taking, recommended actions to drive upselling, and tracking business performance through data, analytics and insights,” Zaramella said.
Taking a holistic RGM approach, which can include smart pricing, optimized assortment and modeling for promotional strategies, can better enable sales, working with other pillars to create value, she said.
Gustavo Valle, the company’s president of North America, emphasized that RGM is not just a broad, short-term “downsizing” solution, but a targeted and strategic approach to creating “the right packaging for the right consumer at the right time.
“This will help us proactively engage with our customers as category captains,” he said.
Marketing gets a brain boost from AI
Technology has also permeated marketing efforts. Mondelez expects genAIin particular, to drive value in sales and marketing by accelerating the creation of creative content to improve quality through increased personalization.
“Ultimately, our approach to AI in marketing should generate significantly higher returns on marketing investment at a fraction of the cost of traditional creative,” she said. “We are also developing capabilities with AI models to act as brains and transform and adjust our marketing more broadly across various dimensions. »
The brains she referred to use major language models in order to generate and optimize assets, with the audience’s brains focusing on messages and content to anticipate a reaction. During this time, brand masterminds align with brand purpose and design standards, whether through large-scale text, images, or videos.
High-performance masterminds, she added, “understand the content and recommend changes to improve effectiveness.” And channel masterminds understand variations between channels to optimize assets. We already have pilots in place with brands such as Milka and plan to roll out more later this year.
Valle said the company has also invested in pilot projects based on the technology in other markets around the world.
“(They) show great promise and we are excited about the opportunity to apply this knowledge in the United States,” Valle said.
