Nestlé reassesses its approach to creativity

“Creativity can be more effective,” argues Nestlé’s global chief marketing and digital officer at DMEXCO – putting a particular emphasis on the words “can be”.

Why creativity matters

Speaking at the conference, Aude Gandon added: “It can be more diverse, it can be more responsive, it can be more valuable, and it can be more effective – but it can only be [those things] if we know how to leverage these [digital] tools, if we know how to handle the opportunities that we have ahead of us.”

It’s significant that she refers to digital tools, noting that effective content around the world – and she cited the WARC Effective 100 in support of her contention – often does not include a TV ad anymore. 

Takeaways

• “Don’t get too enamoured by the plumbing” is effectively Gandon’s version of not being distracted by the latest shiny new thing. Tech is the foundation of marketing, not the end product, she said: success is about pairing your existing expertise in the fundamentals of marketing – which have never changed – and amplifying that with the tools of the time.
• For example, Nestlé’s Creative X tool, powered by AI, has freed up teams from a digital checklist and enabled a 66% increase in ROMI on Meta platforms.
• In one territory, Nestlé Content Studios was able to produce 5,000 different, personalised assets for a variety of platforms from seven master assets.
• “There’s no room for lazy marketing” in an era of ad blockers and ad-free subscriptions, argued Gandon: the bar for creativity and value is getting higher.
• Upskilling at scale is essential (and Nestlé is doing just that with its 12,000 marketers around the world) to enable proper use of AI and other digital tools in order to “unleash a whole new era of creativity”. 

Key quote

“Creativity is not dead. Creativity is being reinvented and it looks pretty exciting to me” – Aude Gandon, Global Chief Marketing and Digital Officer at Nestlé.

BEC

[Image: Nestlé]