How CMOs Can Tell Stories To Manage Change [Case Study]

Chief advertising and marketing officers ought to consider and synthesize success tales to study from previous advertising and marketing efforts, determine repeatable methods, and reveal the return on funding (ROI) of their work to stakeholders.

Finally, this will 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 technology that’s to return.”

Telling Tales To Handle Change And Uncertainty

Storytelling is essential as a result of it’s a elementary 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 nations, generated round $36 billion in internet 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 staff of subject material consultants who taught a bespoke digital advertising and marketing coaching program for a whole lot 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 Development

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 additionally proactively shaping it.

Its journey, spanning a number of years, highlights the vital components of foresight, collaboration, and a deep dedication to understanding the shopper.

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 longing for familiarity and personalization.

This perception spurred a strategic pivot, shifting the corporate from a margin-focused strategy to at least one centered on development, fueled by elevated advertising and marketing funding and an idea it termed “empathy at scale.”

This wasn’t nearly gathering knowledge; 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 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 exceptional success by 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 present 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 technology 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 fitting viewers based mostly on their proximity to native shops.

This hyper-local strategy resonated strongly, leading to a 60% improve in YouTube engagement, 42% development in gross sales at native shops, and 33 million present containers offered through the festive season. The marketing campaign underscored the facility of creating customers 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 in style 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 essentially 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 tens of millions 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 factor was the sturdy partnership between the chief advertising and marketing and gross sales officer and the architect of their knowledge infrastructure. This collaboration was the engine driving their digital transformation.

Recognizing the necessity for strong 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 facility 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 lower by the noise.

This human-driven strategic shift, augmented by expertise, resulted in important ROI will increase globally and within the U.S., laying a strong basis for sustained development.

Leveraging AI To Scale Personalization And Attain New Audiences

The advertising and marketing panorama continues to evolve, with viewers fragmentation throughout media platforms changing 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 learn 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 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 essentially the most cost-effective strategy.

Nonetheless, 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 Inventive Works staff 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 completely different consuming kinds, creating quirky and interesting 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 strategy, managed by a single marketing campaign, allowed the AI to optimize advert supply based mostly on enterprise objectives and viewers alerts way more successfully than handbook changes.

Regardless of financial pressures, the success of this AI-powered marketing campaign, which centered 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 beneficial insights for CMOs looking for to navigate the complexities of contemporary advertising and marketing and foster customer-centric development.

A number of key takeaways emerge from these examples.

1. Buyer Empathy Serves As The Foundational Factor 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 turned the cornerstone of its subsequent achievements.

This goes past mere knowledge assortment; true empathy includes using these insights to generate real worth for the shopper by deeply understanding their wants and needs.

The resilience of this customer-centric technique was significantly evident through the pandemic, enabling Mondelēz to adapt swiftly because of its preexisting sturdy understanding of its customers.

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 influence of hyper-local personalization, making customers 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 by the noise and resonate successfully with audiences.

3. Bridging The Hole Between The Artwork And Science Of Advertising Is Important For Success

Efficient advertising and marketing in immediately’s panorama calls for a robust synergy between the artistic facets of selling and the analytical energy of information.

Reaching this requires vital cross-functional collaboration, significantly a robust working relationship between the CMO/CSO and the information infrastructure architect to drive digital transformation.

Investing in strong knowledge infrastructure is just a part of the equation; CMOs should additionally prioritize coaching their groups to successfully make the most of these new capabilities.

Finally, integrating siloed knowledge to achieve a holistic view of the shopper permits simpler personalization and improves general return on funding.

Abstract

Whereas AI is a robust software 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 artistic is usually obligatory, as merely repurposing conventional artistic for digital platforms might not be optimum.

AI-powered advert codecs usually require tailor-made artistic methods developed from the outset.

Regardless of the capabilities of AI, human creativity stays important. Compelling and interesting artistic, pushed by human insights, continues to be elementary to marketing campaign success.

Even during times of financial stress, investing in AI-powered campaigns centered 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 direction of customer-centricity, enabled by strategic investments in expertise, knowledge, and expertise.

By embracing these ideas, CMOs can equip their Fortune 500 corporations to not solely climate the storms of change and uncertainty, but additionally to emerge stronger and extra related with their clients.

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