PepsiCo’s move from using data for broader efforts like getting products into big box stores or through major events like the Super Bowl Half Time Show and focusing more on less demographic and more contextual, psychographic marketing helped the conglomerate optimize its offerings in different parts of the world while building trust and transparency.
Leaders of PepsiCo’s Data and Analytics team Shyam Venugopal and Mark Risis took us through their journey to build progressive, privacy-compliant insight data collaborations for a new era during Adweek’s Mediaweek.
Introducing the first-party flywheel
As advertisers get ready to kiss the third-party cookie goodbye, they’re ushering in a new, more respectful form of connecting with their customers: first-party data. In 2021, PepsiCo started leveraging learned behaviors from first-party data to get a crisper idea of how to best engage with consumers.
“Once people started to understand that this is an asset you can invest in, that we can collect, retain, and utilize many times over across multiple use cases — in fact, there’s a flywheel effect in which the more you acquire, the more you can exchange with the consumer, the more you can ask the consumer in terms of the rights to reuse that to deliver more value back. So, this positive flywheel effect is something we had to introduce,” Risis explained.
Just like a flywheel, the duo agrees that learning and optimizing first-party data will be a continuous undertaking.
“The more I know the space, the less I know the space. That’s why it’s important to keep learning,” Venugopal said. “For us, it started a few years back when we started looking at the marketplace and saw all of the signs: cookies we’re going to get deprecated, third-party data premiums were going up, which all meant that PepsiCo had to take more ownership of data and it predominantly started as a journey in getting better at consumer-centricity and really understanding who our consumers are.”
Connecting the dots to success
PepsiCo has been investing in foundational capabilities to take the more direct first-party signal and supplement a lot of the second and third-party data they relied on to build consumer profiles, drive segmentation, power measurement, and outcomes, and evolve the way PepsiCo allocates media and thinks about long-term value from a consumer perspective.
“The initial results are really promising, we’re starting to accelerate the volume, the quality, and the richness of first-party consumer data that we’re acquiring,” Risis explained. “We’ve frankly had many opportunities in the past, but there was no way to systematically translate what we were acquiring through our loyalty programs, promotions, and other opportunities with our partners to bring it in-house.”
Respect and first-party data
In order to successfully collect and use first-party data, the team said it’s important to treat it with the respect such a valuable asset deserves.
“Nothing is more sacred than consumer data,” Venugopal said. “The types of interactions we are trying to have are focused on the right value exchange. Whether it’s access to new flavors, access to exclusive content, the underpinning of these programs is treating the data with respect.”
Venugopal said it also means having the right type of governance models and technology in place to ensure PepsiCo is not leveraging consumer data for other purposes other than providing direct value to consumers.
