CPG/FMCG Brands and Cheetah Experiences w/ Diva Renton-Roderix

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This is a podcast episode titled, CPG/FMCG Brands and Cheetah Experiences w/ Diva Renton-Roderix. The summary for this episode is: <p>Over the past few years CPG brands big and small have had to embrace new ways of doing business with their customers. With the number of ways in which products could be purchased online exploding, it has become even more important for digital marketers here to develop strategies for acquisition, engagement, and loyalty. If these challenges weren’t complex enough the Coronavirus crisis needs to be navigated too. Diva Renton-Roderix, Lead Customer Success Manager at Cheetah Digital, talks Kayla and Julian through all this. </p>
How CPG brands are using Cheetah Experiences to prepare for the post-cookie world
02:14 MIN

Clip: [Joe Exotic - I Saw A Tiger 00:00:00]

Julian Bracey-Davis: This show, we're very lucky to be joined by Diva Renton- Roderix, an English woman in New York and our lead customer success manager for Cheetah Digital. Over the past few years, CPG brands, big and small, have had to embrace new ways of doing business with their customers. These challenges weren't complex enough, but coronavirus crisis, every time, needs to be navigated.

Kayla: I feel like this is the time that brands have to reach their audience through new digital channels and start kind of going where the people are. So what are some ways that they can be using experiences to engage with their community while maintaining, or even building, new emotional loyalty?

Diva Renton-Roderix: Yeah. You're right, Kayla. And I think people are definitely taking note of how brands are communicating at this time. And we've definitely seen a shift with that CPG brands that we work with more are focused on community and that corporate social responsibility. We actually have Kellogg's who are allowing people to donate their loyalty points to feed the communities in need. So points that they might build up over time with our experiences, they can actually donate rather than using themselves. That's a really nice initiative that we've seen. This week alone, we've seen full projects come from AB InBev team, one of these being a commencement ceremony. Universities have shutdown so how can we still allow those people to have that moment, the students, right?

Kayla: Yeah.

Diva Renton-Roderix: So, they're actually going to have the chance for the names to be read during the ceremony. So that's a simple form. Also, going to have a meme generator so that they can have their little cap, which everyone likes to have. That's a great way to bring that engagement online.

Julian Bracey-Davis: Right in the air.

Diva Renton-Roderix: You've got to throw it.

Kayla: Yup. Digitally though, now.

Diva Renton-Roderix: Yes, exactly. We've seen a corona cleanup activity. Again, helping communities in Canada.

Julian Bracey-Davis: With the customer success team and the all that you're apart of, you were often brought in quite early to talk about these ideas, have the conversations developed?

Diva Renton-Roderix: Yeah. Well, we've also been kind of reaching out more than usual to see if anyone needs support, and really we've just been available kind of taking those calls. I know that the clients have been particularly busy having internal regroups and then thinking," How can the overall objectives tie in and where can experiences fit into that?" So I know that they're doing a lot more planning sessions themselves and then kind of reaching out and having calls and emails with us and putting some of these things live within the week. We're all for that. We're here to turn these things around quickly. So, this is definitely a time that we can assist. And yeah, as I said, within the week, that's actually quite normal that we're having maybe three or four things launching because there is that time pressure from the client as well. We can do things quickly, but the decisions aren't always made that quickly, whereas this is actually forcing brands to kind of take an action more quickly than they might normally and speed up that approval process. It's on from Bud Light, we provide this solution. They wanted to be able to have people enter in their zip code and see what local places they could still get that product. So, very simple.

Julian Bracey-Davis: I love it when we end up with something that's crossing verticals and crossing industries. And we all know how hard it is been for restaurants and restaurant shares, which are a big set of our own customer base. And it actually is doing a bit of a double thing of helping Bud Light to promote people where they can get their products from, but also places where people can order take out, which will help out business. So definitely you'd say that one of the trends that you've seen from the CPGs that you're working with is the investment in time. Other ways that they can do these more giving back and helping the community experiences. Is there any others that you've seen or off top of mind that aren't in development yet that you just think are worth a mention even anonymously?

Diva Renton-Roderix: My other second favorite example will be the little pop quiz example because that's, again, that kind of community feeling. And I've seen a few of these kind of pop quizzes online. I've been invited to a few, fortunately my friends in the UK, I'm still working when they invite me to it. The award kind of given back to the consumer there, because it's difficult to obviously have signed products right now, is actually you get a follow back from the brand, which I think is great. Because if there's a brand you really like, to win a follow back is like a pretty cool incentive. So I think that was really inventive.

Julian Bracey-Davis: A pop quiz is Brilliant. I love that. It's such a good response to it.

Diva Renton-Roderix: Yeah, right?

Julian Bracey-Davis: If you can't go to do the quiz, we'll bring the quiz and then we'll have to have our beer at home. And actually you probably should suggest that's Anheuser- Busch to use. That sounds pretty perfect now, doesn't it?

Diva Renton-Roderix: Yeah I know it, definitely.

Kayla: That is really good.

Julian Bracey-Davis: We like to ask our guests to sort of share a little bit of what they're either watching, listening, or reading. It's especially relevant these days because we are all indoors self isolating. So what have you got for us first, Diva?

Diva Renton-Roderix: I might just go in with what I'm watching because I started it last night, and I am hooked. Tiger King.

Kayla: Yes.

Julian Bracey-Davis: Tiger king.

Diva Renton-Roderix: Oh, it's on brand.

Kayla: We just started last night too.

Diva Renton-Roderix: It was free.

Julian Bracey-Davis: Courageous. Very good. For us, cheetahs as well.

Diva Renton-Roderix: I know, take notes.

Julian Bracey-Davis: Take notes. I mean, how would you describe it really? Diva. What's the rollercoaster you're feeling so far?

Diva Renton-Roderix: You just can't make it up. It's crazy. It's such a... You didn't really think about this world existed, but it does. And people make out they're doing things for good reasons and they're not and it's so fascinating.

Joe Exotic: If you fall for that, ladies and gentlemen, you're worse than a bunch of nuts in a squirrel tree.

Julian Bracey-Davis: Right. Well, moving on to our second section then. Kayla, take it away.

Kayla: Yeah. So we're going to move away from the current situation to kind of a more forward- looking landscape. So there has been a ton of information around the cookie right now, it's dying. You have roughly two years to build out your own database. You can't be relying on third- party data sources anymore. Something that we're interested in is understanding what are some ways that brands can start using experiences to be able to build their own database with a zero party data for preferences and permissions, and just have an actual audience that they can communicate to and not have to rely on that cookie in a few years.

Diva Renton-Roderix: Yeah. There's a number of different ways. And we have quite a few CPG clients that are primarily working with us for this reason, for the acquisition use case. And we have clients at different stages along the journey. So one example from the acquisition and using things like sweepstakes and Instagram, which is really just about getting the volume of the data in first. Clients like Reckitt Benckiser, they actually had to cleanse out a lot of their database and they're kind of starting from scratch when GDPR came in. So we've been working with them and their data acquisition teams to actually build back up the database for those brands. We also have some clients who are a little bit further along the zero party data maturity module. And they're really looking at how do we really engage your audience? How do we get those brand advocates? You know, telling the story for us. Brands like AB inBev, some things like instant win, some social campaigns. Those are the kinds of campaigns that we would recommend more in that phase. And then we also have clients like Kellogg's who are really trying to understand their existing audience. Their challenge was actually kind of the opposite, they had a large database of people that they hadn't engaged with for quite a few years. And people change, their family grows, their preferences change. They need a way to engage with them in a fun way. And to actually understand where they're currently at. And for that we'd recommend things like real- time polls and quizzes, so that you can ask some fun questions and starts really build out that profile.

Julian Bracey-Davis: The need for CPG brands to know who the people who are interested in their products and purchasing their products. So we've got the initial phase, you sort of call it the acquisition phase where you're looking at the turning the unknown into known. So you come up with different ways and different incentives to get people to sort of share willingly different parts of information. Then the second section, now you said was the engagement and re- engagement of those people.

Diva Renton-Roderix: Yeah. And advocacy around that is how they're kind of turn the brand story for you.

Julian Bracey-Davis: Yeah. And I suppose that would also could count people who were already part of the database before CPG brands really did step up and did even more with interaction with the databases. And the final bit was the loyalty section, sort of the free jumps of them. Once you've got your.. Where you aware of and you know you've established the ones that are really, really keen and they should be treated differently because they are the ones who will be there with you during the good times and the bad, as long as we're finding out now is everything slows down. How have you found different brands coping with the different phases they're in, would you say that the industry trend is sort of, this is the new normal for them, and they're just different parts on the journey as you sort of mentioned?

Diva Renton-Roderix: Yeah. There's some that are definitely further ahead than others and the best strategy some of our clients have is obviously to be doing the acquisition, continuing to do that while also on the loyalty part, because you still need to be acquiring new people, but also understanding the people that you have as well. So I wouldn't... Apart from people who are completely starting out and we're looking just at acquisition, I would say that there should be activity happening throughout the year, that is along those stages. Definitely a mixture of people that are in that first stage and then people that are really in that loyalty space.

Julian Bracey-Davis: Are they having to... Obviously to have a central repository where they're starting to make smarter and more interesting and informed decisions on all the information that they're bringing in from these different phases and these different mechanisms.

Diva Renton-Roderix: Yeah. And that's definitely been a challenge for some of the CPGs that we've seen globally. They don't have that consistent central repository. So they're doing acquisition activity and then maybe they don't actually have the setup to have that feeding through anywhere to make informed decisions later. So that's where obviously we can make some recommendations as well.

Julian Bracey-Davis: The challenge of, even just taking America as example, of collecting information in a consistent way regionally and having it feed in the same way when you've got lots of different partners and lots of different agencies sometimes, or all sort of contributing ways to fulfill the goals of that region. Bringing it in century to do stuff with it is challenging. And that's the same goes for Europe as well, actually. Of course.

Kayla: As we're talking about this, one big thing that we like to hit home on is observing and impacting the customer journey. And so as you've been talking about the different stages that businesses are in, I think that it's important that we also mentioned the idea of leveraging experiences at different parts of the consumer journey too. And there's a lot of businesses out there that say like," Okay, I already have like a huge database. I don't need more people. I don't really need this kind of thing." And I think for them, what are some pieces of advice in terms of you can use this for acquisition, you can also use this to like at different stages, depending on the person that you're talking to. What's kind of your advice for that?

Diva Renton-Roderix: Even within the same client, as you say, there's different people on different stages. So I might not know about the brand, whereas you might have been with them for five years. So they definitely do need a mixture of that activity. So, don't stop those sweepstakes and those high volume data capture pieces. But then also, you should be doing like your watching wins your quizzes and those things that actually build up the preferences. So yeah, there should absolutely be a mix. And I think that's how clients would be the most successful using experiences in different ways rather than just kind of sticking to one phase.

Julian Bracey-Davis: If you're not doing it, someone else will be. And if they're not engaging with your brand, they will be engaging with another. And with some nice campaigns, which are timely and topical and entertaining and actually provide that value exchange, plus actually quite a good product because that's the old trick that if they got a good product and they're engaging of you, you're in trouble if you're not doing the same. People will sort of go elsewhere. You've got to be reactive and even keeping people engaged to where you're at. Yes. Top of mind, that's the one. We're going to hit number two, for of your show and tell.

Diva Renton-Roderix: Okay, I'm going to go music. And it is The Cure that I've been listening to. I've got to keep it classic, guys.

Julian Bracey-Davis: Very nice.

Diva Renton-Roderix: And Disintegration, nothing to do with my Headspace, but that album I'm listening to it the whole way through like, just have a little moment, close your eyes, just let it roll over. Highly recommend that.

Julian Bracey-Davis: Listen to it as intended, and start from one. And go...

Diva Renton-Roderix: Really. This is one you don't want to put on shuffle, I'd be upset.

Julian Bracey-Davis: There's not one that if you play backwards it will have like hidden messages or anything like that, no cult meetings?

Diva Renton-Roderix: As far as I know, but if you've got of time in your hands, you could check that out, right?

Julian Bracey-Davis: Yeah I'll just have to do it with a CD. I mean, do people even use CDs anymore? I mean, God, I've aged. How many times do you reckon you've listened to that album?

Diva Renton-Roderix: Oh, I mean, I've listened to it since I was about eight years old. My parents used to play it a lot. So we used to listen to it and it was like one of these CD players, it was an alarm clock. So it would actually wake me up in the morning. So, yeah. There you go. That's another album.

Clip: [The Cure - Disintegration 00:14:57]

Julian Bracey-Davis: Full act free. We've already sort of suggested there's going to be some... This is what people were doing, but what else can we expect here?

Kayla: So it'd be great to see some of these examples of how not only are we able to effect the impact for the life cycle, but also how quickly.

Diva Renton-Roderix: I'm going to start with the first kind of phases we talked about this or the acquisition, really building the database and things, simple giveaways at sweepstakes, instant wins are great for this, with the prize front and center. And just ask them for some simple data capture. These are, what are simplest to set up? These could be set up cloned, reused, really just make sure you've got some nice assets and some copy. You can have one of these up in a few days. Like it's really, really simple.

Julian Bracey-Davis: These are the types of things as well from my memory, from the customer success days, they're the ones that can be very easily translated for different regions in different countries.

Diva Renton-Roderix: Yes.

Julian Bracey-Davis: And you get old America, okay, all three of us are based. Different rules in different states. They will have different settings and different copy and different prizes sometimes depending on what can be fulfilled there.

Diva Renton-Roderix: Durex for example, will have things that they've cloned and launched across 25 markets and all done with an outcome in a matter of hours. So you can really have that brand consistency globally, which is another benefit.

Julian Bracey-Davis: They practice safe campaigns, don't they?

Diva Renton-Roderix: There you go. So onto my second phase, which is really advocacy and engagement there. So, you might have a new product, which is in this case, I mentioned the inaudible it is one of my favorites. So you've watched that lovely little video, you know you need to get your vitamins. A form appeared afterwards. It is magic, the platform is magic. You could ask a school- based question here, so you might want to actually make sure they've paid attention. In this case, because it's a new product. They wanted to actually see what do people take away from that video, do they take away that it's a Coke product or is it to do with the vitamins or was it like the tagline about how the taste is? And they use this as a watch to trial. So, they had a product launching. We had a call with the client and made this recommendation and they had three cities they deliver them to. So anyone that's fills this out in one of these cities would actually get the product straight to their door. This was a solution that was ready and together in a couple of weeks. And it's not just, you said, it's not just about that acquiring data capture. It's what else can we learn. One question or two there, people were definitely happy to answer. So staying in that kind of advocacy and engaging space from AB InBev, we have that Team ULTRA. So this is really encouraging people to advocate about the brand, asking them to post. So, posting on Instagram. A chance to win some beers, get involved in the cheers, very simple form, but having people also get engaged on social and have the chance to actually advocate for your brand on their channels. I think that's an awesome idea. Great launch from them.

Julian Bracey-Davis: Because this is about running, isn't it, Diva? This is about joining Team ULTRA, it is a sort of almost like their own running club. Like a sponsorship.

Diva Renton-Roderix: Yeah. The beer was the reward after you exercise, I think is the kind of idea. Yeah.

Julian Bracey-Davis: So they knew that a lot of people would be filling this out almost instantly on the go. So they really, really emphasizing that. You did a very good job, a nice example, actually, of a CPG brand plus their agency plus technology we can provide or coming together.

Diva Renton-Roderix: So, my last example, before we get to...

Julian Bracey-Davis: And to help sign posts that you took us from acquisition to sort of engagement and re- engagement, and now we're into the loyalty phase with how you set up earlier.

Diva Renton-Roderix: We are. So knowing our loyalty and really understanding that existing audience that's engaged with us. And this example is from Kellogg's and this was sent to their existing database. And as I mentioned earlier and engaged 65% of their database. So it's what kind of snacker are you? Nice image based questions and some fun questions, what kind of snacks you're going to be choosing. And a very important zero policy data question which is about how many mouths you're feeding at home. This was really a key question that they wanted to ask to understand about their audience and then yeah, you get your results. So that's the value exchange there is that I've earned some loyalty points and I've also understood which products that I should be trying out.

Julian Bracey-Davis: And that's probably one of the better examples we've seen when it comes to getting to know your audience. With Kellogg's here, this isn't just them understanding their existing broad audience and engagement in the past, and the database that they've got. This is actually tied to their loyalty members. The people that they know already reached that level because they've opted in to be loyalty members. And now they're really trying to understand them better, which provides a good bit of feedback loop because the better they understand the people who love that brand the best, the more that they'll be able to deliver Great experiences and offers and products. So it's sort of a two- way and we like those.

Kayla: Yeah. I like how this is like actually embracing the whole customer versus consumer point where you have like, I'm a mom. So I'm the customer. A lot of the times when it comes to a lot of these snacks, right? Like I'm the one purchasing, my three year old and seven year olds don't have a debit card. But they're the ones who are eating it, right? And I think that it's valuable for retailers right now to be able to personalize and say like," Okay, you're buying this, but you're actually feeding your kids. So let me kind of give you some more family- based content and something that can get your kids excited and want to ask you for these more."

Diva Renton-Roderix: In terms of the question earlier, Kayla, and the turnaround for this, once this is set up, this is something that they've cloned changed from the questions around. They've done one that's about what kind of shopper are you as well, like where do you prefer to purchase? So they're really gathering lots of insight on their audience from a quiz mechanic that has been kind of claimed and reused. And as you mentioned it, it is aimed at non- technical marketers. We have mechanics, slightly instant win, where we have the meters rewards built in. So you can really go in and edit that as much as you need to, you have total control of that.

Julian Bracey-Davis: So that's, just to confirm, that's almost tearing people off in terms of price categories, and maybe it's random or is random, but people will get different experiences and different coupons from this or whatever the instant win is. Which actually is great, because it might keep people coming back or it just adds that sort of a surprise and delight, which we know is very effective.

Diva Renton-Roderix: Do you have a sweet tooth or savories chips and dips versus the candy bar? That's to do with the scoring. We can also just say everyone wins so that if you might not get something based on your score, you're still going to get a small token off so that it just kind of encourages you to come back. Can obviously set the name. We can set the amount. So you don't need to worry that you're going to run out with that amounts of rewards. If a lot of uptake happens, you can set this on odds. You might want to actually have it been daily and everyone wins. I mentioned the score range, which is a newer kind of part to this. So yes, it's still based on odds, but I'm only going to receive this one if I answered in a certain way. And then looking at the types of rules that we can offer, of course there's the offline prices, which would be fulfilled after the effect. But we can also do coupons. So you might want to have a list that the client has provided and uploaded. We can generate a unique code. So there are different ways that we can work there. And we have the validity dates and imagery and everything that we can add here. So there is so much control here within them rewards area. And this is one that I definitely see people reengaging and getting people to come back because there's a higher chance to win. There are more prices. I think it's a great one for acquisition.

Julian Bracey-Davis: Because the prizes are daily. Would this potentially be a good candidate for progressive data capture...

Diva Renton-Roderix: Yes.

Julian Bracey-Davis: Where we set up a series of questions slash hidden questions in advance. And so, as long as we can establish that this person's a consistent person, normally by their email address, we can actually serve up different questions to them. So at the end of this, on a month long campaign, we solely asked them different things each time and acquired quite a bit of information willingly on how well their preferences are.

Diva Renton-Roderix: Yes, no, it definitely is. It's definitely a good use case for that because we need to encourage people to come back daily for that. And you can absolutely do that with these different prizes. So we can start to understand a bit more about them. That's kind of the value exchange, right? We understand a bit more about you, you have the chance of winning some more. What's also great with the instant win is you can select to show all the prizes rather than just today's prize. So if I come back over a week, I can actually see all of my coupon codes that I can redeem I've won in the past.

Julian Bracey-Davis: And what else you got for us?

Diva Renton-Roderix: I have got a real time poll for you

Julian Bracey-Davis: A real time. Poll a Jack Bauer special for any 24 fans, showing my age again.

Clip: The following takes place between 11:06 AM and 12: 00 PM. Events occur in real time.

Julian Bracey-Davis: Should Jack Baur eat a treat? He never eats.

Diva Renton-Roderix: He doesn't eat, he's just running on adrenaline.

Julian Bracey-Davis: Just torturing people.

Diva Renton-Roderix: Should be the fourth option. So this is a relatively new functionality that we have, and this offers real time feedback on how the community is voting.

Julian Bracey-Davis: These are designed for either to be embedded on our web pages or at the bottom of blogs or on social sites, or as part of a micro experience, which is something that would possibly be put in something like Instagram, for example, in a social story.

Diva Renton-Roderix: Typically, as you said, yes, that's good for a school space editorial and just capturing data there...

Kayla: Julian, I'll ask you a question. So you used to be in experiences. Well, obviously you still are, but you used to be in customer success over there. I think it's easy to get tunnel vision when you're in marketing and you don't have a partner that can challenge you. Are there ways that people can see what options there even are when it comes to experiences, like a library or examples anywhere that they can look at?

Julian Bracey-Davis: Yeah, I would always preach this and Diva would be the same. We have some excellent minds in customer success org, and they are people who are not just helping with the accounts, they are people who are strategizing and working with the best brains on the brand side. And what we always do, is we always try to interpret and translate what's in the platform with the ideas that people have and they want to create on a daily basis. So to answer your question, the best first port of call is to ask your CSM and they will share all of the campaigns they can, and there are thousands upon thousands of them, all different types and different relevancies, in different verticals. But really at the very base, just ask if in doubt ask and we will showcase it and things. But I went on this at any period of time. There are hundreds of different experiences live across the web in different countries and we always have something that we're willing to showcase and share from years of experience. Experience, experience. All right, well, Diva, thank you so much. Not only have you informed us on many, many wise matters relating to CPG, but actually showing us what's behind the curtain, both what people were running and how they're creating it. So, yeah. Thank you. And we'll see you again soon.

Diva Renton-Roderix: Thank you for having me.

DESCRIPTION

Over the past few years CPG brands big and small have had to embrace new ways of doing business with their customers. With the number of ways in which products could be purchased online exploding, it has become even more important for digital marketers here to develop strategies for acquisition, engagement, and loyalty. If these challenges weren’t complex enough the Coronavirus crisis needs to be navigated too. Diva Renton-Roderix, Lead Customer Success Manager at Cheetah Digital, talks Kayla and Julian through all this.