More than 1,600 industry leaders and practitioners grabbed a seat at the May 2021 Power of 1 Virtual Summit. The two-day event showcased endless, valuable success stories and lessons learned from brands and retailers around brand guidelines and consistency, influencers, omnichannel consumer experiences, Master Data Management (MDM), GDSN and industry standards, rich product page content, and more.
Here is a look at 9 sound bites reflecting industry changes of the last 12-24 months, how leading organizations adapted to new opportunities critical to their future business and what actions can help shape the future of global commerce.
Sony redoubles digital efforts
With brick-and-mortar shops shutting down, Sony heavily invested in digital shelf and content execution, leveraging the expertise of their retail team members to recreate the in-store experience through YouTube, according to John Randant of Sony Electronics’ corporate marketing team.
“We really focused on supporting high-touch, high-consideration products such as our TVs, that consumers tended to research online and then go buy in store.”
JOHN RANDANT, CORPORATE MARKETING, SONY ELECTRONICS
Randant also discussed how today’s consumers are traversing multiple digital platforms. One of Sony’s strategies for maintaining consistent content across their major retailers is its use of 1WorldSync ContentCast, which enables real-time rich content syndication.
Colgate-Palmolive balances brand consistency and product innovation
As a company that has been around for 200-plus years, Colgate-Palmolive’s move into e-commerce was a shift that required focus on their content business model and profitability, according to Lou Farina, Worldwide Director, Global Data Management for the organization.
“We’re balancing consistency in terms of what the consumer is used to seeing when they go in the store versus how that is now going to look online with new innovative products that are coming out. Everybody is used to the big red Colgate colors—now, we’re working to use more modern colors on our toothpastes and toothbrushes versus some of the traditional colors that we’ve used in the past.”
LOU FARINA, WORLDWIDE DIRECTOR, GLOBAL DATA MANAGEMENT, COLGATE-PALMOLIVE CO.
Mars Wrigley provides accurate, great quality data for customers, partners and consumers
For Mars Wrigley Confectionery, leveraging the GDSN ensures that they’re providing a single source of truth to customers and consumers, confirmed Joyce Ann Rosenfield, GDSN Functional Expert for the company.
“Leveraging the GDSN really takes the gray area out of the standards in a lot of ways because it allows us to make decisions that are mutually beneficial not just for us but our customers and consumers.”
JOYCE ANN ROSENFIELD, GDSN FUNCTIONAL EXPERT, MARS WRIGLEY CONFECTIONERY
Nutritional product consistency and accuracy is key for Purely Elizabeth
Victoria Vanderyken, Sales Assistant Manager for Purely Elizabeth agreed, referencing the importance of the standards. Because the all-natural and organic food company works with so many groups that are just now entering into e-commerce, standards serve an important basic category to provide them with support.
“If we can get more consistency in ingredients and nutrients as to what consumers want to see, it would be huge. We have organic ingredients in our products, so FDA requirements are very important regarding nutritional product consistency and accurate display of that across our packaging.”
VICTORIA VANDERYKEN, SALES ASSISTANT MANAGER, PURELY ELIZABETH
Simple Mills revamps content for greater consumer connection
Positively strict’ guidelines help shape company standards for Simple Mills, a company that works with various agency partners to create their content. According to Todd Hassenfelt, Senior Director of E-Commerce for the company, those guidelines contribute to their consumers ability to discern a Simple Mills piece of content from any other.
“During the pandemic, we were getting so much traffic coming to our product detail pages. We really had to revamp the content fast to make sure it wasn’t just a rotation of a product, but instead about communicating and connecting with the consumer using features and benefits like lifestyle images that showed when, how and why the product should be used.”
TODD HASSENFELT, SENIOR DIRECTOR OF E-COMMERCE, SIMPLE MILLS
GTIN helps drive digital content strategy for Mondelez International
For Mondelez’s Leslie Henderson, GTIN as the unique identifier helps the company not only share very standardized information with its consumers and retailers but also provide compelling information that grabs the consumer and influences them to purchase a product.
“The variation of the GTIN and understanding time sensitivity for that GTIN in the market is one of the key drivers where we want to put our digital content—visual, audio and video—with the right item at the right location at the right time.”
LESLIE HENDERSON, IS LEAD – GLOBAL SOLUTION OWNER PRODUCT INFORMATION, MONDELEZ INTERNATIONAL
Industry aligns in efforts toward a standardized global data model
Industry advancements toward the global data model will contribute toward simplicity in many stakeholders and organizations meeting standard requirements, added Rosenfield.
“There is a lot of work put in by many retailers, manufacturers and folks from GS1 to really come up with an updated subset of minimum requirements for data synchronization.”
JOYCE ANN ROSENFIELD, GDSN FUNCTIONAL EXPERT, MARS WRIGLEY CONFECTIONERY
Seaboard Foods’ customers help drive product attributes to the next level
Leah Saragusa, Labeling Compliance & Digital Content Manager for Seaboard Foods echoed the need for consistent levels of information across every product, citing their customers contributions to the level of attribution the company is driving toward providing long-term.
“It’s about meeting our customers and consumers where they are—to give them information that is easily accessible and understandable and provides what they need, when they need it.”
LEAH SARAGUSA, LABELING COMPLIANCE & DIGITAL CONTENT MANAGER, SEABOARD FOOD
Reimaging consumer shopping experiences with Microsoft
Ram Iyer, Global Leader of Digital Strategy & E-Commerce for Microsoft, summed up the past year’s effect on product content strategy the best.
“In many ways, COVID-19 was the Chief Innovation Officer that made us all pivot to digital.”
RAM IYER, GLOBAL LEADER, DIGITAL STRATEGY & E-COMMERCE, MICROSOFT
And while the customer journey as a result of the pandemic is no longer linear, Iyer sees is it as a great opportunity to ‘reimagine’ the digital experience across all touchpoints – from the search bar to the product detail page.
For more event takeaways, make sure to access all on-demand materials here to stay informed around global commerce industry insights you won’t find elsewhere.
Congratulations to Nicole Schnabel, Senior Global Product Analyst at Johnson & Johnson, for winning the Confident Commerce contest during 1WorldSync’s May 2021 Power of 1 Virtual Summit! Her engagement in the different virtual areas throughout the event—from the auditorium sessions to the roundtables, exhibit hall and more—earned her top-ranking contest leaderboard points and the Apple HomePod Mini grand prize. Congratulations Nicole!
Note: speaker sound bites were captured during industry panels held on May 18-19, 2021 at the 1WorldSync Power of 1 Virtual Summit. To access the panel discussion recordings in full, register or login for the complete discussions.
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