WARC, 28 February 2014
BARCELONA: Nestlé, the food and beverage business, is
looking at how it can exploit the spread of wearable devices to the benefit of
its portfolio of brands, a leading executive has said.
"There will be some unique opportunities around taking
wearable or sensor-based data and turning it into next-gen solutions for
brands, whether it's recipes, meal prep, pet services," Pete Blackshaw,
Nestle's chief digital officer, told The Drum.
"There are lot of ways you can leverage those types of
data streams, and we are just in the early stages of figuring those out,"
he added.
He also enthused about the internet of things.
"Connected devices are measuring up to the hype, they have come of
age," he declared. "We have been talking about it for years – the
connected fridges and cars – but it's real now."
The speed of the change currently taking place in the
digital world has led Nestlé to change its whole approach to this area.
"To keep up with today's consumer realities we have to
think discontinuously in terms of how do we keep pace with consumer
expectations and gain competitive advantage in this space," Blackshaw
explained, adding: "I'm not even sure it's a choice anymore."
The other step it has taken is to establish a presence in
California's Silicon Valley to ensure it stays on top of all the developments
there, especially those from start-ups.
Blackshaw said that technology was now "the price of
entry" for anyone aspiring to be a chief marketing officer but warned that
balance was needed. This echoed remarks he made to Warc last year when he
argued that marketers rushing to new platforms were in danger of losing sight
of the fundamentals of their trade.
It is an area explored further in Warc's Toolkit 2014, which
found that major brand owners were reappraising their approach to digital, no
longer regarding it as a separate discipline and instead focusing their
attention on longer-term brand-building programmes.
Data sourced from The Drum; additional content by Warc staff
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