AI and critical thinking: The crossroads of CPG customer engagement

As a consumer packaged goods (CPG) brand, you’re used to catering to different customer tastes and preferences. It’s why you launch new lines of hair care products, release new flavors of sinfully salty snacks, and provide dish soap in seven different scents. But, what about where content is concerned? Are you providing enough differentiation in this sense? 

As Senior Manager of Solution Engineering at Contentful, Jonathan Phillips (also known as JP) shared during a recent episode of The CPG Guys podcast, there’s probably room for improvement. And making said improvement often means taking a step back to think critically about — and then amend — your content strategy.

Continue reading to learn what CPG brands and other companies should consider as they address this influx of demand for high-quality, varied content — plus tips on how brands can use AI to build content for (and trust with) their customers. 

How has modern technology changed the content landscape?

Jonathan Phillips: Content isn’t new. It’s been around for as long as humans have roamed the earth and anyone can create it. What’s changed is how quickly we can develop it and how far we can ship it. 

Today, you can make hundreds of variations of the same starting content and deliver those content experiences to millions of customers worldwide. 

To do this well, you need a flexible, composable architecture. If you try to scale without it, the result is a disconnected experience. 

How has modern technology changed the way and medium in which customers and brands interact? 

JP: How customers browse, where they browse, and how they discover products and brands has already changed. The pandemic sort of initiated it. We had no choice but to replace physical discovery with online discovery because we couldn’t go into our favorite store or restaurant anymore. 

To keep customers informed and engaged in the conversation, brands stood up these digital content experiences — but it wasn't happening on corporate websites. Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok were where a lot of information was being shared. They were (and still are) engaging with viral video posts, creating this shift where content has become the central experience. 

The brands experiencing success right now are the ones realizing that customers want to participate and engage rather than focus on transactions. 

What should businesses prioritize when building content-first experiences?

JP: If you think about what you need to succeed, two things come to mind. One, you have to have a content strategy — there has to be a reason for the customer to engage with your brand, and it's got to be obvious why that content is important to them. Fundamentally, this starts with understanding their needs across the entire customer journey and making sure that those are fulfilled by the different mediums of content you create. 

Second, you need to connect your content so it’s all in one place. We call this content orchestration. If you’re a restaurant with a digital menu board, there's a good chance that content isn’t stored in the same system as the content existing on your website or mobile app. For a long time, this wasn’t possible. 

But this describes one of the key value props of Contentful. It knocks down those content silos. The legacy content world tried to do that, and it's very problematic for multiple reasons. But what has been the predominant thought recently is that you have to connect this content together. So, unlock the silos, enabling you to effectively spread content across digital experiences with no restriction to the final touchpoints.

What else should CPG brands consider when developing content for the modern customer?

JP: You have to create different types of content for the different appetites that people have. There’s this concept of the digital diet. People are often binging or browsing (akin to grazing). Their approach will dictate how they engage with the brand. Are they going to go look up all the recipes related to your product? Are you going to buy that new flavor you’re selling? Or maybe they’re just flitting through what you’ve created. 

Continuing with this sensory analogy, most people have refined content palettes. The longer they’ve consumed digital content, the more aware they are of what type of content they have a taste for. Some are looking for something informational and inspirational, which is pretty standard. Others want to see content displayed in a space where they can engage with it. 

This modern customer demand is pushing a new trend, one where you bring the customer into the content creation experience in a way where you aren’t just sharing things with them, but you’re having a rich, two-way conversation.

Why is an architecture that supports omnichannel delivery so important for CPG brands and those in other verticals?

JP: CPG and retail brands in particular have to deal with the problem above — unifying content across different channels — because most have digital and in-store experiences as elements of their marketing. 

Oftentimes, these experiences feel disconnected — and that’s because they're treated as two separate experiences. At Contentful, we sometimes see retail and digital teams working on either side of the same project without ever talking — which is sort of crazy when you’re trying to create a cohesive brand experience. We think there is a better way. 

Does Contentful offer any services to help brands orchestrate their content and get it in the right place to scale effectively?

JP: We have a variety of Professional Service offerings to help our customers understand orchestration and their governance needs as they scale the platform. For many, this is the first time they’ve asked such large questions about their approach to content management. They’re trying to decide what’s right for them. 

How do they balance locking down more critical pieces of content vs. having flexibility for different brands and regions to change content? We help our customers reason through these questions. We also have a very rich network of partners — like our friends at VML who were featured in another episode of your podcast, which can support this change management.

What technologies do companies need to support and drive these customer engagements? 

JP: There are multiple solutions that come together to build experiences that connect you to customers but I like to organize them into three buckets. 

First, there are the essentials. These are the things that you need to be able to build your “base-level” digital experience. A content platform like Contentful fits into this bucket. If you're in retail or CPG, an ecommerce platform will fit there as well. And, depending on your needs, this can encompass tools that address deployment and delivery, translation, and localization. These all fuel the customer experience from the content, commerce, product, and brand perspectives. 

Then, you have the second bucket, which is the “nice to haves.” These tools are adopted by more sophisticated teams to increase operational efficiency within the organization. They might streamline collaboration or assess the quality and accuracy of the content itself. 

The final bucket of tools features transformative technologies. These are the tools and platforms that help your brand to stand out — like AI and personalization tools. They allow you to go above and beyond to provide a brand experience that really stands out. 

Our personalization platform, Ninetailed by Contentful is a great example. It allows you to develop personalized experiences by leveraging data and insight — ultimately leading to a richer interaction with your customers. 

Speaking of AI, what advice do you have for CPG brands looking to use these tools for content creation specifically?

JP: AI isn’t new, it came from the deep learning realm — which uses data programmatically to solve problems. Siri uses it and that’s been around for more than 13 years. Giants like Amazon and Netflix have also been using AI for some time. People are no longer shocked about it existing, they’re concerned that it is everywhere — which leads them to question whether something is real or not. 

For brands using AI today, there has to be trust and transparency with AI content. If that doesn’t exist, it’s probably just treated as clickbait content. And because most customers won’t trust a brand that churns that out, they probably won’t share data with them. They might not even feel comfortable using their credit card to make a purchase. 

The brands that leverage AI well, ensure the customer understands where the content they're consuming came from. Even better, they use a combination of AI and humans to create that content. In the future, I think we’ll see some sort of semantics or rating system that tells you how much of the content you see is human-generated or not and that will probably influence which brands customers decide to engage with. 

Where do you think there is untapped potential for AI in content? 

JP: There’s a plethora of things AI is being used for. Most companies are using it to scale their content — whether that be across new audiences or new markets. They’re also using it to build customer profiles and develop personalization. 

I think those are great use cases but there are a few areas where it can be really helpful that are often ignored because they might be considered more “boring.” One is automating SEO data. When you ask a marketer what they want to do with their day, that is never going to be at the top of their list — but it is important. 

Another is translation. AI agents are really, really good at natural language. They were trained on public web content so they can predict and plan for what's next in the conversation. This leads to the final application I’d recommend: AI agents. They can do a lot of the heavy lifting in helping customers find the information and support they need without so much digging — which can really improve the customer experience.

Wrapping up

These nuggets of content management wisdom are just a sampling of what JP shared during his time on the CPG guy’s podcast. Listen to the full episode to learn how JP fell into the world of digital strategy, plus more tips and tricks on building an experience that grabs customer attention by leveraging today’s content and technology trends.

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