Packaged goods firms must ramp up their customer data strategies to transact with consumers direct after losing ground to retailers, according to Kellogg’s head of digital marketing.
Speaking at the Social Media World Forum, Kellogg’s European digital director Matthew Pritchard said the FMCG sector “needs to play catch-up” when it comes to leveraging consumer data, and must mirror the financial services and travel industries.
Over the past decade retailers have “owned” the data-gathering process through their loyalty schemes, he maintained.
“We have allowed retailers to own data through their loyalty schemes but as FMCG companies we have to work towards a single view of our customer, shopper and consumer…we have to treat it as a way to engage with individuals and importantly interact and transact with them to shake up the model.
“We must learn from the retailers’ loyalty bases. Our challenge is – how do we learn from them how can we plug into their data sources and make them our own.
“It will be very difficult to convince consumers in the UK and France in particular, where loyalty schemes are the most advanced, to start collecting points directly with the manufacturer as they are used to doing it with their retailers. So it’s the start of this journey,” he said.
Kellogg will kick off this strategy with its brand My Special K, which Pritchard claims is the most advanced in terms of data gathering. “With My Special K we offer a free weight-loss programme which is calorie controlled and not linked to the product in terms of purchase. That data given by those women, for example what they are trying to gain and where they are on their journey is used for the purpose of being an all-day partner with them on their shape management journey throughout the year.”
One of the major barriers to gathering data is the lack of a co-ordinated approach to mobile couponing. Kellogg is trying to address this by working with Google and other partners to lobby the big supermarket groups to accept the technology instore, although Pritchard recognises this will not be easy.
He added: “The biggest challenge is each retailer has a different EPOS system so there’s a challenge in the physical hardware cost to make those units work.”
