Kraft Foods Group faced several marketing challenges in 2010, and wasn’t set up to solve them, said Julie Fleischer, a Kraft executive, in a presentation at the 4A’s Data Summit on Tuesday.
The company was wedded to a TV-centric model, wasn’t committed to measurement, and thought of media buying as the last step in a marketing plan. It also had a “do what worked last year mentality,” which led Kraft to plan for trends that were likely already outdated in the fast-moving digital world.
When forming a reinvention plan about two years ago, Fleischer said the company told itself internally to expect that change will only get faster — there will never be a lull in which you can catch up.
The Kraft strategy can be expressed by three pillars:
1. Data — Fleischer said first-party data represents Kraft’s “unfair advantage,” that knowledge of the consumer will be the only way to separate your company.
2. Infrastructure — This means having the tools to reach the right customers, and backing that up with analytics to show that marketing is driving attitude as well as behavior.
3. Content — As Kraft’s insight into consumers grew, the company realized that it needed to get more specific with its content in order to get their targets to engage.
“We’ve seen double-digit gains in digital ROI,” Fleischer said. “… We’re feeling very confident that this data infrastructure and organization that we put together is on the right track.”
