For the 30th episode of our RetailCraft podcast, which focuses on those behind scenes of multichannel retail, we spoke to Ali Holmes of Pepsico Europe, and Megan Ludlow of Marks & Spencer.
From Dorito advent calendars, ‘metaversal’ strategies and Vodafone adverts starring David Beckham, through to innovation hubs and Colin the Caterpillar – there certainly weren’t any dull moments…
Digital Editor, Scarlette Isaac, picks out some of the best bits from part one with Ali Holmes, senior ecommerce director at Pepsico Europe. For a full transcript of the conversation, click here.
What is PepsiCo?
“Obviously, PepsiCo is Pepsi beverages, so we have the famous Pepsi brand and everything associated with that – Pepsi Max, Mountain Dew, Gatorade and so on…
“We also have a SodaStream as part of a recent acquisition in our beverages portfolio. That’s obviously a huge focus. And then we have a snacks portfolio, which is globally, largely Lays, but in the UK, you will know us as Walkers, almost the fabric brand of Britain.
“PepsiCo has an appetite for learning, pivoting and being a bit different.”
On data sharing
“I think any business now that wants to remain competitive has to have an element of data.. There is work that goes on in sharing data, obviously, where laws and dark rooms etc all exist. But some of what we’re dealing with isn’t necessarily down at the identifiable consumer or shopper or customer level.
“A lot of it is macro trends. So clearly the stuff that we would work on with our retail partners would be shared directly with the retail partner. There will be complimentary products that we will work with, there is a, as I often joke in our European teams, a British obsession with a packet of crisps with your lunch.
“Last year, we did a fantastic “#crispIN or crispOUT” campaign about do you have your crisp in the sandwich or crisp out? And it turns out it’s quite polarising.”
Where next?
“I think we’re progressing. I think we’re hungry to learn. We are a business that doesn’t have direct-to-consumer operations at scale that some other big CPGs have either developed or acquired.
“So we may not have a D2C business the size of Nespresso, but we have certainly
got operations that are telling us learnings that can then help us have a conversation with a leading retailer because we’ve got that first-party retail knowledge to a certain extent from some of the things that we do.”
To find out more, listen to the full podcast on Apple Music or Spotify now.
For a full transcript of episode 30, complete with glossary definitions, fact packs and useful links, click here.
