Exploring AI-Driven Customer Engagement in CPG
Dive into an enlightening discussion that unveils the synergy between Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Customer Experience (CX) in the realm of Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) sector. With Nate Rosen, the insightful mind behind the newsletter Express Checkout, as our guide, we will talk through how AI can craft customer journeys. The session promises a thorough exploration of real-world instances, innovative AI-centric strategies, and a foresight into how authentic consumer experiences can be nurtured in digital commerce. Attendees will garner a deeper understanding of personalized consumer interactions, the impact of AI on consumer insights, and leveraging AI for fostering brand loyalty amidst a fiercely competitive market landscape.
(upbeat music)
And welcome back to our next session
with our very own Nate Rosen.
Nate, how are you doing today?
- Doing great, how are you?
- Nice, I'm doing well, I'm doing well.
But I wanna put more of the attention on yourself.
We tell them to deflect here.
So let's start off a little bit.
Give the audience a little bit about your background
and what you're doing right now, Nate.
- Yeah, so I've been the CPG consumer brand space
for a while, worked at brands, worked at FinTech companies,
worked in advertising.
Now I am, let's say independent.
I am working on my newsletter,
it's called Express Checkout,
covers the weekly news and the world of commerce.
So CPG consumer news, retail news, fly chain news,
e-comm news, funding news, trends and reports,
a little bit of everything.
And I'm also working on a new CPG brand with a friend.
It's in the coffee space,
it's a nice light product, it's not coffee,
but it's good we're raising right now,
building out our e-comm site, it's exciting.
- That's awesome.
And you've been doing the newsletter for how long now?
- Today's issue that's going out will be issue 50,
so almost a year.
- Congrats, that's awesome.
And I will say it for the audience,
like there's a ton of information on there.
So, I mean, first and foremost,
I think if you are any sort of CPG brand fan,
like please subscribe.
And that's how you started, right Nate?
Like it was primarily based on CPG
and then you've kind of expanded a little bit
to supply chains and.
- Yeah, so originally it was actually,
like my original thesis was,
I'm just gonna do CPG news.
And then I was like,
I have some other people doing CPG news already,
I like what they're doing,
but I also like blockchain news and e-commerce news.
And like I just liked all this other stuff
'cause I was seeing it all the time.
And, you know, sort of came to this conclusion
that I didn't feel like a lot of people
were talking about it really as this like ecosystem
and connecting all the dots.
From the news perspective,
I think future commerce is a really good job
at talking about this as an ecosystem
and putting together really interesting thought pieces
and deep dives and podcasts about it.
But I think from the,
just like straight what's happening in a week piece,
I felt like there was,
there's some room to play there.
So that's sort of like where I positioned myself also
because I wanted to keep up to date with everything.
And this is the only way that I would
keep myself accountable.
- There you go.
Well, that's great.
So again, I will say to everyone like,
please subscribe, subscribe to Express Checkout.
There's a lot of good information in there.
So let's kind of keep this information focused
and sorry, the session focused more on CPG.
I guess the first question I want to ask Nate is,
you know, how do you see consumer interactions
kind of making an impact?
And how is that kind of evolving
in the last few years in CPG?
- Yeah.
It's been interesting,
especially with the pandemic where it's gone from,
you know, we were a little bit offline,
but there was a lot of this interactions,
especially within like just from ads.
And then we went fully online
and, you know, the really strong emphasis on subscribers
and CS and we saw a lot more people just talking about CX.
I mean, Eli, Jess and they like really doubled down
on, sorry, CX, not CS.
- That's right.
- If you're working CS, so that's why.
(laughing)
CX and, you know, now I think it's still really important,
but now I think it's even,
it's transitioned more in person,
at least for specifically like who to be at CPG.
You know, there's, you need sampling,
you need in-person activations,
you need somebody getting their hands on the product
and that in-person CX is like a lot more.
And then that in-person relationship
is a lot more impactful and important.
But you know, online is still vital too,
but it's usually through different channels now
rather than like potentially just on the side.
So maybe on like interactions through TikTok
or through social media.
- And I guess I'll probably process
which the answer could be no,
but like is there personalization in-person activities
and those touch points?
- Yeah, for sure.
I mean, one, it's a lot easier
'cause you're talking to these people
and it's easier to have a conversation
when you like are talking them face to face
and you can see their reactions.
You can understand their emotions
and how they're sort of reacting to.
I mean, even on TikTok,
there's a lot of brands that are now recording their sampling
and even they're obviously they're live,
you know, they're in-person activations,
whether it's like they're putting their product out
in an event or something like that.
You know, I see that a lot of industry events
where people bring products at events I host,
I get people's products to be served and to be sampled out.
Usually, you know, somebody from the team can come
and talk to everyone and really get that feedback.
There's this a Saki company that goes on TikTok
that records all of their customer interactions
at the liquor stores.
Very fun to watch 'cause you can see him like
basically doing crowd work and figuring out like,
okay, how am I gonna miss this person to at least take a sip?
Without being able to do it to which product
would like to kind of understand, you know,
for this relatively new and unheard of product
to a lot of, you know, an American consumer base,
what can I do to engage with them,
to get them to participate in something
that I think they would like
and then also buy it and probably buy it again
and again and tell their friends and build in that loop.
I was gonna ask you and you would feed me to it
like any specific examples.
But I guess going off of that, like,
I love that example of taking something and offline
and then showcasing that and then kind of amplifying
that online.
When it comes to just offline,
do you know of anything offhand that's like different way
of making that experience a little more memorable
outside of just who try it,
like trying the product and the products of things
that is different.
- Yeah, that's a really good question.
I think I'm like a smaller scale companies
like Velocity by Visor and Isle,
where they enable sampling.
Like you can go in with Isle, you know, for example,
you get an ad for half day tees.
It says, "T on us, you go to Target, you buy the tees
"and then you send Isle the receipts, they then mail you."
And then obviously Isle gets that very interesting
shopper data and then you get a free drink.
And the brand also gets to say,
somebody went into Target and paid full price
for my beverage and it moved.
I think that's like a fun way, you know,
to get someone to try and try the products.
And then there's this company that I used to interact
with at my first job called Fuji, F-O-O-K-I.
It's an experiential marketing company
that they basically do these drops.
Usually it's around some sort of IP,
so like movie releasing or something like that,
but oftentimes brands are participating in that drop.
So maybe it's, you know,
Shang-Chi came out and Sanzo did that collaborative drink,
that partnership on their cans.
So you'd like tweet at Fuji at a certain time
and then somebody would like deliver you a little kit.
I remember I got a t-shirt once for some Marvel,
some other Marvel movie.
Another one that I often think is really good
also in this experiential marketing space is Coffee & Clothes.
They help put on experiential marketing activations
from like a big tank array bus that has a bar inside
to like a beach party, a pool in Beverly Hills
for Celsius, making something up here.
But I think that's also like a fun way
to interact with the brand,
this like experiential marketing scenario
where it's like, it's an activity to be with the brand.
- And in your opinion, how important is that
in a marketing strategy for specifically CPG brands?
- I think it's important.
I think, you know, it depends.
- Is it a necessity?
Is it a necessity or no?
- I think it's a necessity,
but I think you can get that experiential marketing benefit
from doing something like scrapier, leaner,
rotten snacks did something like this.
They went to the Venice boardwalk
and they were handing out candy and they were filming it
and they were talking to people
and just having really fun.
They just have like a fold out table,
a bunch of their products and just interacting with folks.
But it was more than just like a sampling opportunity.
This was like, they were creating content,
they were creating an activity.
I recently saw Emmy Eats also was doing this
in like Washington Square Park.
They have somebody dressed up in an Emmy,
Ramen Noodle, it means a Ramen Noodle company
and they're dressed up in the,
they're dressed up looking like an Emmy Noodle package
and they were asking people like life questions.
They weren't even asking them about brand stuff.
They were like, what is the meaning of life?
And getting like honestly very beautiful responses
and all these videos have hundreds of thousands of likes,
tens of thousands of comments.
There's like other ways for the brands to connect
with consumers and sort of do this,
these brand building activities
that might not have an explicit ROI
in more creative ways that might even be more impactful
than some experiential marketing activations.
The experiential marketing activations are great
if you have a lot of money to spend
and like you're just really just focused on brand building
and like that, like for 10K a rate, that's great.
They just need to continue to exist.
They don't really need to act as an explicit ROI
of what that return on that campaign would be.
But for Emmy, like they need to do something
that doesn't cost a lot of money
but has a really high impact.
- Yeah.
And kind of let me stop you on that note
because I think when I'm hearing about this
experiential marketing, like my point of view, it is,
or I'm sorry, like the in-person events,
it is on the marketing side.
And it's like, okay, we're gonna do this in-person events
and then how can we amplify it across
a whole bunch of different channels to like make it from,
hey, we're talking to five people,
now we're talking to five million people
by amplifying this situation.
Is there also a component of there's doing this for the,
the ability to collect really important data
to learn more about your product?
And I assume yes, but like,
can you talk through that a little bit with us?
And what sort of data would a brand be interested in,
interested in collecting, if it were like that?
- Yeah, I mean, you know, it's really important
for a brand to understand who their customers are
and who their customers aren't.
You know, as I'm building my own brand,
like I want to know who's, like for me, like on the site,
for example, like I would love to know
who's coming to the site, where are they spending time?
What are they looking at?
What are they curious about?
And then also where do they go across the web?
What are they searching?
What other websites are they going to?
Trying to understand this full picture
of who might be the most interested audience.
And in general, like I wanna know what other types
of products are they consuming?
What price point of products?
What category of products?
'Cause, you know, if somebody's buying maybe,
and you can build these customer profiles around
what people are looking at.
You know, I think there's a lot of companies out there
that are pulling search data, and that's very high-intent data.
And for me, like that is the type of data
that I would wanna be looking at,
that's like, you know, third party not own data
to understand sort of where trends are going
and what people are sort of, what they have the appetite for.
You know, it's that kind of actionable data
that can be really helpful.
- Yeah, well, that's great because, at least,
I've been in several conversations now
throughout this entire conference,
and it is about collecting as much data
about the consumer as possible.
And I was curious on like, if it really, you know,
how it changes when it's in person versus online.
- Yeah, yeah, I mean, in person like that anecdotal feedback
and that like emotional feedback,
and that emotional, I guess, eta, in this case,
is really impactful 'cause I think one for just like
the founder and the person,
if this is still a founder led company,
that like, you get that emotional kickback.
You get that added benefit of interacting lives
with these customers.
And I think you can sometimes get them to open up
a little bit more when you're in person
and get like real insights into what they're buying,
why they're buying it, what they sort of like about the pitch.
If this is that just, you know, out in the Venice beach,
I'm in the Venice Boardwalk.
And then also like, I think the content side of things too,
you sort of get a lot of data from that.
You can understand even looking at people,
some of your demographics of sort of who's engaging with you most.
- Let's move on to like brand campaigns and AI.
So I love that Nate has no idea what I'm gonna ask.
So let's see how this goes, Nate.
But since you've seen a lot of the progress
of CPG brands and the shift,
or maybe there wasn't any shift,
but I guess my question to you is,
when you look at marketing strategies,
brand campaigns in the last 12 months or so,
have you noticed anything different
when it comes to utilizing AI across the space?
- Yeah.
You know, in terms of just like,
through the newsletter and you know,
understanding sort of like the more the news landscape,
not necessarily what people are actually using,
there's a lot of AI tools coming out.
And you know, a lot of the big, you know,
ad tech companies and the big companies,
the big guys like Google, Amazon, Pinterest,
they're all coming out with generative AI tools
to improve product photography
and create different variations,
to improve copy on site,
and also to just like to, what's the word?
To enhance the product pages on, you know,
Google shopping or more importantly on Amazon.
And then I've seen a lot of AI tools coming to,
actually the space that you play into
and to the CX world,
I know Sienna just raised,
I think that's, let's say around $5 million I think.
I've seen a lot of brands starting to use that
and finding that really helpful.
You know, I've also seen just a lot of AI,
on the back end too,
supporting, you know, the supply chain distribution
inside of the CPG world where it's, you know,
improving logistical challenge,
fixing logistical challenges in, you know,
distribution centers, for example.
- You mentioned basically AI helping out with top of the funnel
in the marketing brandy campaigns,
AI helping out with CX and the customer support teams
as well as AI helping out with supply chain and logistics.
So yeah, since making an impact all over.
- It's making its impact for sure.
And I think now there's like,
I think when it first sort of was coming out,
people were seeing it as this like,
oh, this is just fixed everything,
but it's, you know, it's a tool that we will use
that we need to input our own thoughts
and additional context into alongside like whatever it thinks
is right because, you know, I use chat GBT as an aid sometimes
just to flesh out an idea or sort of pull out context
from a news article.
Like I use a arc browser and they built in chat GBT
into the sort of find search bar.
So if you press command F,
I can be like, what are the key points on this page?
Just like help you move a bit faster.
But then also like there's certain things that just,
it makes sense that it's doing.
You input a lot of data and say, here's some context.
Tell me what you see.
And maybe for like econ data in particular,
it'll say something like these, you know,
this cohort of customers by this thing the most.
So we think this cohort of customers will buy this the most.
So you should A/B test a email campaign
and running this promotion to this cohort.
Whatever it like, whatever it may be.
There's countless opportunities for A/B supportive
and in the first party data that any brand might have.
- There really are.
Although I'll say on the supply logistics side,
can you talk to us a little bit about that?
Only because I don't know as much
and I'm gonna make it something that the audience
would like to learn a little bit more
because that's something you don't read too much about
at least of how AI is making an impact in supply chain.
What have you read or what have you seen
that is developing around that?
- Yes, I'll say my knowledge is still pretty surface level,
maybe a little bit deeper just that like,
I know it's happening.
But you know, I've seen it a lot on the tools
that help manage supply chain logistics
for like a FlexPort or UPS or, you know,
a shipping, just a shipping company,
but also on the side of, you know, different 3PLs
and managing, even managing like the robots
in these distribution centers.
So I'm pretty sure Amazon had an article recently
about, you know, one, these two new sets of robots
that are coming in and how they're also, you know,
basically operating on what they're calling AI.
They didn't really go into much detail on what that means,
but being able to, you know,
manage a lot more on their own and make decisions
might be a strong, it's not Terminator,
but make more nuanced choices.
- No, you're right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, I think it's a, I think,
I don't know, like, there's so many decisions made
on the inside there, but maybe that's a conversation
with like ShipBob or something like that.
But I know actually, I was talking to them recently
and they were really, yeah, they're really investing heavily,
you know, into a space.
Yeah.
- I mean, it makes sense 'cause it's a lot of like,
this goes here, that goes there.
There's nuances that you can throw in,
but generally speaking, I'm sure it's like the perfect tool
for that sector more than anything.
But I've also seen like, you know,
AI being trained to visually identify, you know,
bad produce in stores and help, you know,
move products faster, like, you know, it's all over.
And it's just, and as we feed it more data
and as, you know, as the tool sets become stronger,
it's just gonna be in every, every section.
- Yeah.
I wanna ask you a little bit about influencer marketing,
especially with CPG brands.
I think this is super interesting because,
personally, I'm starting to see it all over the place now
and I finally think that CPG brands are really starting to,
this is number one or number two marketing strategy
kind of moving forward.
I guess from your purview, is that correct?
Like, do you think that you see all the CPG brands
really trying to utilize as much as they can
about influencer marketing?
And what's the, kind of, what's the future there
in your opinion?
- Yeah.
I mean, I think generally speaking, I think we're moving away
and this has been happening for a while,
but we're moving away from like sending product
and engaging with some of the bigger names
and going more towards these micro influencers,
whether or not they're, you can like explicitly
related to your product, you know,
'cause let's say you're doing a hydration powder,
you can kind of work with a lot of different people
'cause everyone drinks and you can kind of just incorporate
into a lot of people's lives.
Maybe they're doing dancing TikToks.
They're gonna drink or they're doing commentary YouTube video.
Well, an ad role for them, they're gonna some waters.
Like, that makes sense or if it's just in the background.
Like, I think, you know, some of this could be ads.
Like, this is, there, it's a couple of coffee.
It's a, a remote kappa.
You know, I think like that type of influencing
is also happening.
I've noticed that a lot in, along the YouTube video,
youtubers I watch, even some of the like more lifestyle
TikTok videos that come through, you just,
it's more naturally integrated into a lot of creators
'cause now there's so many more creators
and so much content being put out that, you know,
it's easy to find someone who has a small audience
but a big reach and a great and like a better return
than going to a Kim Kardashian, for example.
- I think, you know.
- Yeah.
- I was just gonna stop it there, Nate,
because I think what comes up and what I've heard
and love your opinion on is that,
I guess the way that it's been talked about is like,
you have, let's actually talk about retention really quick.
So you have brand and I think there was the subject of,
okay, you outsource your support,
you outsource your even customer experience.
And then it was like, well, if we do all that,
we're kind of getting away from our brand
and it's really hard to bring those together.
And so now you're seeing a lot of brands trying to figure out,
okay, how can you utilize outsourcing
or how can you utilize this team
and be very brand-centric?
And I bring that up because I wanna talk now
about the influencer marketing,
which you were just talking about,
which is that, is it hard to control then the branding element
when you have all these influencers
that don't really know much about your brand,
but you are paying them to talk about it
and that control is left out.
Do you hear from CPG brand?
Is that a problem?
Is that a challenge or is that not even talked about now?
- It's definitely a challenge.
I don't think it's talked about as much anymore.
I think everyone's focused on raising money.
But I mean, honestly, like,
I've had a sponsor recently and it's this week's sponsors
from Mini Social.
You know, I think this is not,
this is like a very natural plug actually.
But I think there's like a lot of platforms
like Mini Social that basically help these companies manage
this UGC and manage this pool of talent,
this big pool of talent.
And sort of 'cause you've been in all, you know,
this one unified place rather than keeping it
like a spreadsheet and trying to interact with all these people
'cause there's so many micro-infancers
and there's, you kind of, you know,
I'm not gonna claim to be the most knowledgeable
that influencer marketing.
I'd say like friend, Kendall or this Eric Gross
would be a lot, you know,
they know influencer marketing.
But for what I've seen, like it's, you know,
you can work with a lot of smaller influencers,
but that means a lot of managing
and you could lose, you know, your brand in the process.
And I think like a tool like Mini Social makes a lot of sense
'cause you can, it's a lot easier to sort of spray across
a wider net, but still manage that brand,
your brand image and manage it
across all those influencers.
- Yeah, yeah.
I think I've got it.
I just, I bring that up to kind of bring together
the customer experience because again, like,
well, one of the challenges that brands have faced
in the last few years is to like make sure
that the entire customer experiences,
it just flows really well together.
And you go back and you're like,
okay, we got this Mini Influencers
and it's all about top of funnel and getting eyeballs
and then you kind of get away from the branding element
of it, which is fine.
And in my mind, it's a similar challenge,
a problem with the back end of like,
okay, customer service.
All right, we just have to, you know,
answer the questions.
We're gonna do that off, offline here.
And it's really interesting, like,
to see how it's going to change, I think,
in the next six, 12 months.
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people are also like,
very quick to drop an influencer if it doesn't make sense.
So, Shouni, you work with so many,
you always have options.
And really the key for a lot of these influencers,
or for the key for a lot of these brands
using these influencers is user-generated content.
They want things that look real,
that look like a person using it
and who is excited to use it.
- I think the last thing I wanna ask you about
before we end here, Nate,
is more or less your thoughts on, you know,
what's to come for CPG brands.
There's a lot going on when we're talking about AI,
customer experience, the marketing campaigns, investing.
I guess in your opinion, what's the biggest challenge
that CPG brands face now, I think,
in the next year or two years?
- Yeah, I mean, look, I think they're facing
a lot of issues, a lot of issues.
I think a lot of brands are having a hard time scaling
and scaling efficiently,
'cause for the past couple of years,
they didn't really have to, or they probably should have,
but they didn't, they were told otherwise,
and there was an environment where funds were easy to come by
and pools were relatively cheap,
and it was a little bit easier,
but now there's a lot of competition,
consumers are watching their wallet,
they're reducing spending.
And I think right now, it's like,
for some of these brands, it's just a waiting game
until either they sundown, get acquired,
when that acquisition's probably just done shutting down,
I think right now it's,
I think the issue is how can these brands grow and scale,
most efficiently as they possibly can?
- Yeah.
- Burning too much money without giving up too much equity,
without losing their brand in the process,
and also not getting lost in just branding,
and just pretty vacaging, and these shiny object syndrome,
but actually focused on what is making them money,
pivoting when they need to pay it in.
It's hard stuff, especially when funds are tight.
- And, sorry, the answer doesn't have to be customer experience,
'cause I don't want, I want it to be truthful here.
It, like, where do you then really think about,
like what do you think about then,
if you're a CPG brand when it's about scaling efficiently?
Like, again, it's not,
you can't just put money into Facebook right now,
and like, that's the answer.
So is it like, okay, how do you,
you know, you have certain customers,
how do you like, actually, you know, retain them,
or is it more on like,
really understanding the customer touch points,
and like, making it,
we were talking about experimental marketing before,
is it making it so different that it's like,
that's how you're capturing the attention?
Is that, it's just a process, or?
- It's a whole process.
I mean, it depends on the size of your brand,
it depends on your products.
If your, you know, some brands have it a little bit easier,
where it's sort of built into their product type,
that it, you know, retention is more of that bigger thing,
like with, I'm looking at a taste salued packet,
hydration packet, that's kind of built,
like, you want that consumer to buy that very consistently,
you want that on subscription,
you want to keep them in your brand ecosystem.
With beverages, a little bit harder D2C,
it's expensive, you want to sort of push them into retail,
harder to have them buy bulk, bigger,
bigger quantities of that product.
So, you know, it's hard, it's very hard.
But luckily I think there's a lot of different ways
that these brands can grow efficiently.
It just depends on who they are.
Unfortunately, there's not like, you know,
I think one solid answer.
But I will say in terms of the retention piece,
which I do think is really important,
you know, your best customers when you already have,
both in terms of brand advocacy,
you know, I tell people about brands all the time,
obviously it's partially my job,
but the brands I really, really like,
I don't let them forget that I really, really like them,
and they will buy them, and then they really, really like them.
And they tell me that they like them,
they tell somebody else that they like them,
like there's, that's my retaining,
your customers, ends up being, you know,
such a huge value add,
they're your biggest advocates,
the people who are buying from you already,
and who another can glue buy from you as well.
And you know, that takes a lot of different touch points,
that takes touch points on social media indirectly,
that takes direct touch points through email,
through SMS, through live chat,
through route, and then through sampling as well.
And then through the, you know,
different forms of marketing,
from the marketing activations,
where you're just, again,
you're just trying to remember that brand,
or the brands trying to make sure you remember them,
and then also like, you know,
flying the product again and again.
- Yeah, well, there we have it.
Nate, thank you so much for the time
that you've given us today.
And for those listening again, Nate, Nate,
it's express checkout.co, right?
Do I have the right?
- Yes, that's CO, couldn't get.com.
- There we go.
Hey, the truth comes out.
Again, thanks for the time, sign up for that newsletter,
especially if you're a CPG brand,
and again, Nate, we'll talk to you later.
Thanks.
- Thanks.
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