Addressing CPG content challenges with personalized shopper journeys

According to the Consumer Brand Association, the average person uses 42 consumer packaged goods (CPG) products per day. While we use many of these items without a second thought, deeming them a necessity (I mean, who can wake up without coffee?), we still have to decide which brand to go with when it comes time to restock (Starbucks? Folgers? A local small-batch roaster?). At scale this translates to an incredibly competitive CPG marketplace and the subsequent launch of strategies to grab customer attention. 

The CPG Guys Podcast offers brands a fresh perspective on CPG industry trends and strategies tied to better understanding and engaging customers. With content at the heart of so many brand experiences, Contentful was recently invited to join not one but three episodes of the podcast hosted by CPG icon Sri Rajagopalan and consumer loyalty expert Peter V.S. Bond.

For the first episode, Contentful Chief Evangelist Nicole France was joined by VML Global Vertical Lead for CPG Yann Gautier to discuss the challenges CPG brands experience with content today plus how to develop personalized content for engaging customer experiences. Continue reading for some curated sound bites on key topics from the podcast or listen to the full episode.

What is the biggest content challenge for brands in this market?

Nicole France: Content is everything — it’s not limited to a particular format or media type. It really is something that encompasses everything from ideas to elements and assets. It’s ultimately the substance of the interactions we have with customers. And those aren't always just transactions. It’s a medium through which we build relationships and engagements.

But there's a tremendous amount of friction when it comes to working with content in CPG. At one end of the spectrum, you want to create structure and consistency internally to keep things simple and straightforward — from your tech stack to your bill of materials. On the other end, you want some amount of flexibility to bring individual brands to life in unique, distinctive ways to attract customers. This is something we’ve been able to work through with companies like Kraft Heinz, P&G, and Clorox. Framing this challenge is really the first step to solving it.

Sri Rajagopalan: Building off of that, there are two other challenges. First, content isn’t prioritized by technology owners within the company, and second, most CPG content is static. Teams in the industry tend to “set it and forget it,” with changes only happening months later when there’s a complaint or someone finally decides newer content is needed.

CPG makes up more than half of our portfolio globally and it's really rewarding to help these companies navigate the evolving digital landscape and connect with consumers in meaningful ways.

How do Contentful and VML impact the way CPG and other brands build content-forward digital experiences? 

Nicole: The Contentful Composable Content Platform was originally pioneered with the idea of separating content from where it gets displayed — the front ends, channels, and endpoints with the aim of democratizing content creation and solving the workload and content management issues that many development teams struggle with.

Contentful changes the way the teams work with content by making it very easy and intuitive for content and marketing folks to create engaging experiences in an interface that makes sense and allows them to collaborate easily. With guardrails in place, they can work independently and autonomously, removing the codependence that existed between Marketing teams and developers. It gets rid of the vicious cycle where developers face a backlog of content changes and marketing struggles to get great ideas to market quickly.

Yann Gautier: You can then think of VML, which is part of the WPP group, as the bridge between innovative technology like Contentful and the creative execution that brings impactful CPG experiences to life, providing digital transformation guidance and support. CPG makes up more than half of our portfolio globally and it's really rewarding to help these companies navigate the evolving digital landscape and connect with consumers in meaningful ways.

When you look at CPG marketing 20 years ago and today, what’s changed?

Sri: The reason so much CPG content is static is that there is a belief that consumers are only engaging in that content when it's on the bottle of the item they're using — whether it's in their kitchen pantry, their medicine chest, or elsewhere. Brands still make the assumption that once an innovation is in the marketplace, they don't need to update the content until there's a change in that product or packaging. But this isn’t the right mindset. So much brand discovery happens via TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube  — which often have millions of views each. Covid-19 also changed the shopper’s journey.

At this point, I'm convinced that brand discovery is 100% digital. No one cares about an end cap in a supermarket. I asked my kids if they knew what an end cap was and realized they hadn't been to a store outside of a few favorite clothing boutiques. Everything happens online and via apps. 

What is the key to converting CPG prospects into consumers?

Yann: Staying ahead of market trends means addressing evolving consumer behaviors and emerging technologies like AI. It's a little bit like trying to predict which artisanal food will be the next big thing. Matcha pancakes? Or a new variety of olives? To do this effectively, you need to connect the dots.

How should CPG brands approach rising digital trends like personalization?

Yann: Digital transformation over the last few years — it’s been like cruising down a highway with no exit whatsoever. One of the biggest changes is the expectation for personalization. It’s not just about knowing people’s names anymore, consumers want brands to understand their unique tastes and preferences. Another shift is the hunger for authenticity. With so much information and data at our fingertips, consumers have gotten really good at identifying marketing fluff. They’re ignoring that stuff and looking for brands that aren't just selling products but are sharing stories and being real. I think leveraging the right content at the right time helps brands make good on those values and those principles.

Nicole: We’re in a moment of massive experimentation and exploration, but I’ve often felt like there tends to be an overrotation of the basics — like product recommendations — when we talk about personalization. Those things are important, but there's an element here that I think is absolutely essential but is too often missing, and it goes back to what Jan said about authentic, engaging content. But interestingly, that is often not explicitly in internal conversations about launching personalized experiences. 

Ninetailed is highly complementary to Contentful’s pre-existing core capabilities. And the beauty of it is that you don't have to be a developer to do this testing and personalization.

How does Contentful support personalization? 

Nicole: First, Contentful is API-first, which gives customers a ton of flexibility for integrating custom-built or third-party tools to support this. Second, we recently acquired Ninetailed — which I am very excited about. It focuses entirely on personalization and testing. 

You can create and manage audience segments and determine which variables dictate which content is served to them. You can also do A/B testing. For example, you can do variant testing across an entire audience or a subsegment. As you can imagine, Ninetailed is highly complementary to Contentful’s pre-existing core capabilities. And again, the beauty of it is that you don't have to be a developer to do this testing and personalization.

How is artificial intelligence impacting the CPG market and the overarching consumer experience?

Yann: AI solutions supercharge existing tools and platforms. They offer better insight and streamline content production. With consumers constantly on the move, hopping between devices and platforms, brands need agile, omnichannel strategies, and AI is the key to unlocking this. You can automate content adaptation and deliver it across multiple channels for a seamless, consistent experience across touchpoints. AI can also be used to uncover subtle patterns and insights that would otherwise remain hidden, allowing us to anticipate trends, understand audiences, leverage new audiences with unprecedented depth, and continuously optimize content strategies to stay ahead of the curve.

Nicole: Scaling can be difficult to do manually, so I think AI can play a very significant role there — which is really fun to think about. However, to counter some early uses of AI, I actually think that the most creative ideas are still going to come from people. Where I think we're going to see the two come together is by leaning into what generative AI is good at: creating derivatives. For example, AI could help us produce variants for a marketing campaign from a set of core assets that encapsulate cool ideas and great imagery. I think these are the things that are actually going to prove incredibly powerful. 

Let me give you a few other examples of creative AI applications from Contentful customers. Ruggable is experimenting with an AI-powered design assistant. Customers upload a photo of the room that they need a rug for and AI picks up on things like the color palette or the room’s design style and recommends rugs that will complement that.

Another is Klarna. They've used customer support content stored in Contentful to train a customer service bot to better support customer requests. It's dramatically reduced the time to resolution and call volume. Plus, it’s giving them another avenue to build customer engagement.

Looking for more CPG insights from Yann and Nicole? 

Listen to the full CPG guy podcast episode, which is now streaming. 

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