Streamlining and Optimizing the Content Supply Chain, with Gloria DeCoste, Director of Omni-channel Marketing at Nestle USA

Peter Crosby:

Welcome to unpacking the digital shelf where we explore brand manufacturing in the digital age. Hey everyone. Peter Crosby here from the Digital Shelf Institute, from her perch. As director of Omnichannel marketing at Nestle, USA, Gloria DeCoste leads a small but mighty team managing over 300 channels in the daily battle to win the digital shelf. Gloria joins the podcast to describe the mindset process and in intense cross-functional collaboration required to get baby SKUs to market and make 'em fly. So, Gloria, welcome to the podcast. We are so grateful for you being here today. Thank you so much.

Gloria DeCoste :

Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Peter Crosby:

In all your years in digital, you have experienced firsthand the growing demand for really more digital product content across every touchpoint, driven by the needs of consumers, and of course, the requirements of your retail partners. You fearlessly lead a very agile team that is responsible for wait for it, everyone at home, 300 over 300 channels. First of all, are you exhausted? And second of all, what is your secret and what are the strategies that you've been using to balance that demand for scale against the resources you have available?

Gloria DeCoste :

Yeah, well, first of all, I can't take credit for all the 300 channels, channels, nor can I bear all of the exhaustion. So we do have a team that manages all of the channels and helps put those together. We actually find that sometimes making more channels actually makes our lives easier in the end.

Peter Crosby:

Really. Tell me, I need to know more about that before you move on. Sure,

Gloria DeCoste :

Sure. If it's a difference of a team manually getting information and assets to a retailer versus setting up a channel where it can be automated, we are on the side of automation.

Peter Crosby:

That makes perfect sense. So yeah, back to how you think about this task that's in front of you. How have you been thinking about it?

Gloria DeCoste :

Sure. Yeah. We try to think about the digital shelf, and if I back up, we would think about the digital shelf of the past is just getting assets to the retailer, checking the box of what a retailer needs. And today what we really think about is assets and content more like our supply chain. So if we think about, and we actually call it content supply chain, at least that's what we're trying to get in the lexicon of our work. And that's because when we are getting any product to a retailer today in our typical supply chain, we make sure that we have our substrates ordered, we have our caps for our bottles ready, all of those pieces are ready at any of our manufacturing plants. And then we have transportation that picks everything up on time. Loads of trucks are in full, and we get our products out to the retailer. And now as we think around e-commerce, we're trying to think about our information and assets as going to the retailers with that much discipline so that we are getting things to the retailers first time right on time and in full. If you'll,

Lauren Livak Gilbert:

And when you think about it as content supply chain from an e-commerce perspective, how many functions would you say are involved in that content supply chain? If you could just think about from start to finish, I think it's just helpful to paint the picture because I think that's a great way of encompassing it into a story for the organization. But who does that involve from a function standpoint?

Gloria DeCoste :

Sure. Yeah. I mean, it runs pretty deep in an organization. You have to really think from the time that a skew, I call it a little baby skew, is born at any brand.

Peter Crosby:

Oh, they're so adorable when they start out,

Gloria DeCoste :

They, they're so cute. They're so cute. In the beginning, we have such high dreams and ambitions, but they're really born and they become authentic in a master data solution, which is pretty typical of any CPG. And then along the way, as that skew continues to, we'll keep along the theme, be nourished and grows, then we are gaining universal truths about our products. So as we think through, well, what is in this product? What's the final set of ingredients for the products? What is the final nutrition label? How do we talk about it? How do we bring that to life? And so with each step along the way, those products are gaining, I am making this up now. It's like their DNA along the way that becomes the universal truth of that product, and that becomes our content. Now, as an organization in the past, CPG would be getting that ready.

Gloria DeCoste :

Their final date was the package date when they would have to ship to a retailer. And now we have other dates along the way where we have to get these universal truths to retailers. Now your question was around how many different people does that involve? It depends at any given organization, but certainly a brand team that is creating the vision for a product they want to bring to life. It starts with them and then all of the supporting parties along the way from master data to product information to labels, to designers of packaging along the way. All of these teams touch it and help that come to life and adding in that DNA along the way. But really there are so many teams that touch it. And then in the end, we have account teams and customer teams who have special information that they want to add. We call that topping off data for a specific retailer. So you can imagine now across the organization how many people and groups have put their fingerprint on that product along the way. So it's multifaceted. And at a big company like Nestle, ours, it's quite large, the amount of people and big the amount of teams.

Peter Crosby:

So this baby exits the content supply chain then is out into the world, the wild world of the digital shelf. And it's a rough and tumble world out there to compete and be seen and stand out because the digital shelf is resetting all the time. Is that something that you confront and take on?

Gloria DeCoste :

Yeah, yeah. I mean, when you think about anyone in CPG who's trying to win and the digital shelf, it means their skews are fighting for position. Everyone has to fight to win position within their categories. And the amount of, let me rephrase that. The way that you have to win on the digital shelf is really different from a physical shelf. The physical shelf. We do a lot of work within the organization to say, okay, how will we get a really good position on the shelf? That can include category work, that can include negotiations, that can include a lot of research on planograms. How do we get that right pog together and our category story. Now, the premise or the strategy is the same for a digital shelf. You want to win position, you want to have really good position because if something is out of position, people won't notice it and we'll be less likely to pick it up and purchase it.

Gloria DeCoste :

So at a very high level, our concepts are the same. Now, how do we make that happen in the digital shelf? It's really different. We asked ourselves, okay, how many times does a digital shelf reset versus in a traditional shelf, we may have one to two category shelf resets at any given retailer. So you add up all the retailers, it's still a lot of work. There's a lot that goes in and entails. It's not easy. But if you go onto any e-commerce site right now, target, Walmart, Instacart, and you type in and you search for a term, you type in coffee creamer, you type in a frozen pizza. If you go and research that or research that, search it a second time, 10 minutes later or so, you'll actually get a different array. And you probably know this from your regular day. You research, you book a little bit later. You actually get a different set, even if you're queuing in the same word. So let's say we take that, we say, okay, every 10 minutes or so, if you qualify for thousands of keywords, you can easily be looking at millions of shelf resets because this is happening for every keyword at every retailer, for every product that you have. And so when you're starting to look at thousands if not millions of shelf resets on a regular basis, that is the challenge that I think any digital shelf manager has today.

Lauren Livak Gilbert:

When you think about that challenge and the team that you have, the nimble agile team that you have, how do you work within those millions of shelf resets with a small team? What strategies do you have in place? Does it include AI to help with automation? We'd love to hear some of those focus areas for you with that team size.

Gloria DeCoste :

Yeah, I think it depends on a company. Now, how a company wants to set up a team to successfully do this is really important. If you have a company that really thinks, okay, we want to have centers of execution, we want to be able to hand off this work and have a team that is going and helping us manage the positions of our products on any given shelf, I would call that a team of execution. And there are some companies that are set up like that where they say, okay, great. We have specialists who are dedicated to each retailer and a special focus of let's say search others would be a center of excellence. It's saying this is the best practice, but if we don't increase the size of the team and the work still has to get done, how do we do that?

Gloria DeCoste :

I believe that that automation is absolutely critical. Automation has grown leaps and bounds over the past couple of years enabling us to finally do what we dreamed of five or six years ago saying if then creating scenarios that can get decision making to the right people and it's getting better, but always taking the action, right? 90% of the time or a hundred percent of the time we're saying, yes, this is true. Go do this. Can we automate that? Yes. So automation has come a long way. But the other part is I think it's critical, and this is just my belief, there are probably others in the industry who look at this a little bit differently, but it's my belief that we all need to own, all of us need to collectively own e-commerce, right? We may have heard the word e-commerce, right? This is about all of us coming into this commerce space and owning it together because if I'm the account manager at Safeway, for example, I would want to know when, let's say somehow images get reverted, and we have an image from five years ago that that popped up, which happens, this kind of stuff happens all the time in the digital shelf.

Gloria DeCoste :

We want that Safeway team to be empowered to learn how to make that change themselves. So we believe in decentralizing some of the work so that really all of our teams understand what does it take to be in and win in e-commerce.

Lauren Livak Gilbert:

And that's really truly the only way that you can be an omnichannel organization if you're enabling every function, every person in your organization that you partner with to understand how this impacts them, where the information's coming from, why it's important, how to change it. And that is really how you focus more on what the shopper wants and how you're getting that message to them. Because they don't look at it the way we do internally. They're not like, Hey, supply chain over there is doing this. Right? So I think I love that point you just made because everyone needs to be enabled, have the understanding, have the context around e-commerce digital in order to really run an omnichannel strategy. And even before you shared that with the cross-functional efforts, that is a critical piece in order for any of your strategies to be successful. Would you agree?

Gloria DeCoste :

I do. I absolutely do. I think that there's a difference in thinking of that as a fundamental truth versus making it happen. So it's hard whenever we have any company that has legacy behaviors, it takes a while for, first of all, everyone to say, yes, I agree that that's how we should do it. Number two, getting the answers. If you're managing an account, and in some cases it may be that nobody knows yet, well, how does that get, what tools do they use? How does this customer or how this retailer get product onto their digital shelf? And so in many cases, everybody's learning together. There are certainly syndication tools that are used, but then in many cases, some retailers that have a very manual process. So when we say, this is what we want our organization to do, bringing that to life really is almost on a case by case basis as we all learn together, together, whether we're on account team or we're in a centralized center of excellence or in a category team. So I think this is about us all kind of learning how to make it happen

Peter Crosby:

Together. Yeah, hearing you talk about, it's a two-sided thing that I'm thinking about. One is your concepts of center of excellence, not necessarily versus centers of execution. It sounds like in some ways you may have a center of excellence, but then that execution has to be able to decentralize at a company, I would imagine, of Nestle's scale to be able to get what you were describing earlier about getting the decisions where they need to be. Because otherwise you're just going to slow down. And I was wondering, everyone's beginning, if not already hating this acronym of ai, but I'm going to throw it out there just because it does feel like if you look at the difference between, for me at least, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. The difference between automation and AI is that automation is really, the capabilities sort of speed these processes up and connect 'em to the human beings at the right moment. Whereas AI is hopefully bringing the analysis of data to inform that decision making and make it happen at a scale and a reach that we just haven't been able to conceive before. And I was wondering, where are you all in sort of that A, does all that make sense? I know there's a lot there. And then if so, where are you at in the sort of AI hype versus AI reality? And are there betts that you're making a little bit in this next year that you could share?

Gloria DeCoste :

Yeah, sure. Oh wow. So ai, if we think about the digital shelf in three pieces, one is the development. We talked about this a little bit earlier, all the pieces and components that go into making a PDP, and then we think about syndication, how does it get there? And then the third part is measurement and optimization and ai. I'm going to sound trite or I'm going to sound like everyone else. And now because ai, we're just scratching the surface. It's just beginning. But I think it plays a role in all three of those pieces, certainly in development, every agency you talk to today is like, we can use AI to create content. So as you're, as you are making content, we can use AI to write copy, we can use AI to build images and videos and all of the stuff that goes to the retailers that makes up the pdp. We can then use intelligence as we're getting our information to the retailers. And then it parlays right into measurement where we can say, can we use AI to live, write, live test, and help measure performance and hopefully improve performance? I don't want to get too much into what we're doing, but I will say that we're super excited by what we think AI can do. And so we are diving in and we're very excited about it.

Peter Crosby:

So if you were talking earlier about the need to bring so many other teams into the content supply chain, and I would imagine even into the measurement and optimization piece of it, and I was just wondering, how do you work with other teams to make that collaboration happen? I imagine it's a very complex thing to drive

Gloria DeCoste :

In a company like ours where we literally have thousands of SKUs and we have dozens of brands, and we're across eight different, nine different divisions. At Nestle USA, we are a big, very, very matrixed organization. So the cross-functional teams are many. But I think if we go back to what we said when we're first having a baby skew, our skew is born, we like to think all the way from the time we have an idea of a product. And so we're thinking three to five years out or two to four years out, what are the products, what we want to launch actually using e-commerce as inform for that process. So examples of that could naming conventions, are we going to show up better in search results? Could also be image development. Can we actually make your product stand out on a shelf when we literally have the size of your pinky nail on your finger to stand out in a mobile environment? And all those things play a factor in e-commerce.

Gloria DeCoste :

We know that that is a critical space. It's still growing. E-commerce is still growing very significantly. If we look at future focused areas of the world in China, 50% of produce is purchased online there. So we can only imagine it's continuing to grow for the United States, which is lagging behind the Asian markets. So we can look to those spaces and say confidently to our brands, we have to keep this in consideration because it is our space where it's continuing to grow. And obviously you want to be a front leader where the growth is. So back to your initial question, it really is starting from that very beginning. I think that is the critical step. And if we can get our teams from the time we're starting, from the time we build a brief to the time we are envisioning our products, our agencies are part of that, our supply chain teams are part of that, our research teams are part of that. And I think I'm proud of Nestle for this because the teams have done such a fantastic job at Nestle leaning into e-commerce, being curious about e-commerce and being open to understanding how e-commerce plays in their world, even though they might not have e-commerce direct in their title.

Lauren Livak Gilbert:

And when you talk about some of these functions kind of informing or some of the discovery you have informing future product development, do you work with, I'm not sure if you have a customer care center or a phone number on the back of your products that people can call, or do you use ratings and reviews to get that insight? What are some of the areas where it might not be very upfront and it might not be like, oh, well, that's a way I can get an insight about a product that maybe you've learned from working so cross-functionally that you can tap into say, Hey, what should I do from an innovation standpoint in the next three years based on what I've learned

Gloria DeCoste :

In the, yeah, our marketing teams are really brilliant. We work with some great minds, I'll say in marketing, and they do a wonderful job making sure that they use all information that they can. And so in marketing, obviously we do traditional research, we do market studies, but we also spend a lot of time understanding what is being said about us in the marketplace, not only for future products, but even about our products as they stand today. And so the digital shelf can play a big role in that, especially in understanding ratings and reviews, but also in understanding search terms. I always think that think that of search terms as a live focus group, people are typing in what they're looking for, they're saying exactly what they want. So it's like a live demand landscape in that perspective. So there are so many places where we can go for information and where that live information is literally being keyed in on a daily basis. That's exciting.

Lauren Livak Gilbert:

And I'm sure this was a journey. I know probably when you started in this role, it might've been an area where you had to educate people in different functions about this, and you had to go on this journey to get to where you are today. But when we think about education, whether it's a formal program or something that you did as a roadshow, how did educating each functions or helping your team to go into the organization and educate on the importance of digital, how did that play into your overall strategy and success?

Gloria DeCoste :

Yeah, I mean, I'm sighing because with fondness, with good memories, education is really, really critical. And I think of education in two ways. There's a high level education of this is how things work. And then you have to quickly jump in to some really almost tactical education. And I'm going to tell you why. So from a high level, we might share the example that we just talked about, right? Search terms can be a demand landscape, being able to go in and understand that. And so it is an assumption because we work in a digital space that we just push a button and everything will just show up. It'll be there for us. It'll be perfectly modeled. But anyone who has worked in this space in the past, even two to five years knows it's not like that at all. Right? And so we have to jump into, get your hands dirty, get into tools, understand how these tools work, and understand what they can and cannot do.

Gloria DeCoste :

That's really been my big learning, where you can work with executive teams, and often you have to go in and actually show a real tool or show some real examples to say, but it's not that easy. Otherwise, it's so easy for one to think that, yeah, we just push this button, everything will work. If we use a syndication tool, for example, our syndication tool needs to be loaded, it needs to be set up properly, it needs to have a special channel. All of those things are really critical for us to get it right. So it's really interesting because we say often we're building these strategies, but as we execute, the tactics themselves can often become an informant to a new strategy. And I don't know if that makes sense, but we often will find, oh my gosh, we just saw this new thing work, and it was a tactical execution, and then it can become a, oh, yeah, let's do this more often. Because taking that tactic actually can help us deliver that strategy of winning or an opportune moment at the digital shelf.

Lauren Livak Gilbert:

Lori, I'm having so many flashbacks to my old brand days because I remember when preparing executive presentations, I would always be like, okay, I need to make sure it's high level and it's all the key topics. And then you'd get in the room and you'd be like, but I have to get a little tactical for you to understand the complexity of this. And so it was a very, I often say that in order to understand, you need to be able to ladder between tactics and strategy because there's just a lack of understanding in terms of what hands-on keyboard clicks need to happen in order to make that really beautiful strategy come to life. So I was just having many flashbacks where I'm sure everyone listening is aware of this too, but when you're sharing this with your digital leaders, you have to, in the simplest way possible, whether it's through numbers or just some sort of context, explain that it takes X number of clicks, X number of time to do this work, because there just isn't the awareness of that. And in order for something to click, they need to understand that. Absolutely. And I just remember making all those presentations and saying, this is not going to go over well, and it went over so well, because you need to add that tactical component in order for

Gloria DeCoste :

Understanding. Yeah, I think you've said it much more eloquently than I did, but you're absolutely right. In order for people to understand the strategy, they've got to get those, understand the tactics that make it up. And I've personally gotten in the habit of framing up like, here's the strategy and then giving two to three examples to show tactically, let me show you a couple examples that somebody can easily repeat, right? Can they easily repeat what that tactical example was? Because if they can share that with others, then we can spread the news through understandable soundbites. And so yeah, that part of this education is, again, what you were saying, you got to understand how it works at a high level, but without some of those hands-on keyboard tactical examples to show we don't move as fast otherwise.

Lauren Livak Gilbert:

I have a short plug for a new DSI research that just came out called Defining Content Effectiveness. We partnered with profitero, Mike Black, and I did some research, and I'm bringing it up because one of the leaders shared when they present to their executives, they anchor on search equals your product gets found. And that is the example that they use to anchor to everything because their leadership team didn't have clear understanding of what e-commerce was. So they chose search and they said, okay, if you do not focus on search, you will not be found. You will not sell products. What is that simple sentence that you can share that is the overarching theme to anchor your executive leadership team on? And then I love that, share specific examples about how you make that come to life. So just a quick plug about some of our research that everyone should check out.

Gloria DeCoste :

I love it. And it's so true. Peter reminds me of your question earlier, what you were asking about how fledgling little baby skew get out of the nest and go fight in the world. How does it defend itself? And that's hard. I think as marketers, we tend to think, well, okay, traditionally we can throw money at something, right? We're going to put dollars and investment behind it, and that's how we make it happen. The digital shelf, it doesn't work that way. So that young SKU has to find its way through the digital shelf, and it doesn't start at a high number. I mean, Walmart doesn't even let you put paid search against a SKU until it gets to a certain level. I think that was 1 28 the last time I saw it, but it could have changed since then. But you have to be ranked at a certain position in order to even be eligible for paid search. And so we have to come at these in different ways. So I even say that search means finding the skew, but we even have to delineate organic from paid for that. And sometimes the retail marketing in general, we might have to, especially if we think of a proven tried and true skew versus a brand new skew. There are so many different ways you can go at it or have to go at it in order to give it a fight chance.

Peter Crosby:

Well, that's why one of the things you said much earlier was you think about your content supply chain as first time right on time and in full. That is the sort of organic muscle that allows that baby to stand up and be seen on the digital shelf from the beginning. And then, as you said, as it nurtures and starts growing and growing, then you can put even more resources behind sending that child to college. All right, I'm done. But one of the things that really stands out to me here, Gloria, and has throughout our conversation, is that so much of being a digital leader at small, medium, or large organizations is really being a great storyteller. I mean, it's really important to being a marketer, but it's also super important to being an advocate and an educator around the importance of e-commerce in your omnichannel success. And you're a wonderful storyteller. The way you think about it, I can tell you think about what is it that's going to make this stick and that discipline, that ability is really, really profound and important in the job that you're doing. I'm so grateful that you've come on to share it with the DSI audience. We're really grateful.

Gloria DeCoste :

Well, thanks for having me. I think that being a storyteller is a journey I'm still on for sure, and that we continue to push ourselves as a team at Nestle u usa, and we will continue to do so. Yeah, I mean, I think that I've appreciated all the time that I've been given in my career to become a storyteller. I think that's been a journey in and of itself.

Lauren Livak Gilbert:

And Gloria, we'll also be speaking at the Digital Shelf Summit in April in Nashville, if anyone wants to come and see her, talk about agility in the digital shelf organization. So I really encourage everyone to sign up for the Digital Shelf Summit to come see Gloria speak

Peter Crosby:

Digital shelf summit.com. Gloria, we will see you there. Thank you so much.

Gloria DeCoste :

Thank you. Really appreciate you having me.

Lauren Livak Gilbert:

Thanks, Gloria.

Gloria DeCoste :

Thank you.

Peter Crosby:

Thanks again to Gloria for sharing her digital shelf journey with us. If you're looking for that defining content effectiveness report from the DSI and PROFITERO that Lauren mentioned, go to digital shelf institute.org and you'll find it in the resources section. Become a member. While you're there, thanks for being part of our community.