There was an interesting interview with Antonio Sciuto CMO at Nestle Waters recently (source: Marketing Land). We thought it would be good to share some of the bits we thought were most compelling.



How does Nestlé Waters define the customer journey?

“Today people expect a seamless experience from brands across all touch-points, online and offline. This approach transcends multi-channel retailing, evolving into a consumer journey that aims to connect the web, mobile, and brick-and-mortar channels into a personalized experience.”

So true, this is exactly what consumers/customers expect from brands today and it’s great to hear C-level execs at major brands acknowledge this. There is,of course, a big follow on question, which is how capable are most brands today, to be able to deliver that seamless experience. A largely unscientific, back of the envelope answer to that would be that most companies still operate with a channel focused, siloed approach which makes this a very complex and expensive proposition to deliver.

How do you use social to reach your audience and, in turn, create loyal customers?

“At Nestle Waters North America, we listen [to] our consumers on social platforms to understand: conversation topics, share of conversation by social platform, tone, consumer sentiment, roles and consumer engagement rules by media touch-point. This understanding is enabling us to define the right opportunities to engage consumers with content and the right calls to action by online and offline touch-points. Our whole consumer journey is managed by leveraging… marketing cloud solutions that allow us to listen, analyze, and engage consumer[s] by automating consumer interactions.”

“Our mission is to build communities around our brands and content based on the real needs of our audience, offering them a truly personalized omnichannel experience to deepen their engagement with our brands. Success to be measured in market share and loyalty to our brands.”

Antonio Sciuto touches on some really critical thinking here. Listen, analyze and engage with content that is valuable and relevant (because it’s personalized), and seamless (consistent) through omnichannel delivery capabilities. This is one of the most clearly articulated requirements we’ve seen in the market.

As a CMO for a major consumer brand, what social marketing trends do you believe will have the biggest impact the customer journey in the coming year?

“Predictive analytics and full fledge[d] marketing cloud software platforms are now allowing to scale creation of compelling new content engineered by data, effectively enabling the personalized consumer experience.In this new reality the challenge for marketers will be to not over-complicate marketing and focus on what really matters: our consumer audience and a seamless online experience to build engaged communities.Over the next years, we’re likely to see also an acceleration of the integration of the online experience driven by the development of the Internet of Things (IOT). The opportunity is to leverage these enriched touch-points to create new consumer experience.”

Well, as a marketing cloud software platform, Knexus isn’t going to argue with this prognosis. The reference to the Internet of Things is timely, because it highlights the acceleration in touchpoints and channels that brands will have to engage their audiences through moving forward. So moving to an omnichannel model for content and engagement is critical. We also share the sentiment that this is a journey for brands, rather than a project, that will take a few years. But as Nestle Waters have clearly highlighted, the sooner a company starts that journey, the better if it wants to remain competitive and relevant..