Bond Ricardo Prieto-Ortiz, Omnichannel Brand director at Nestlé Purina PetCare Europe, has immersed himself in behavioral science so that he can design far more effective marketing strategies. We spoke to him to find out more, and to discover how AI is making his work easier both now and in the future. BUILDING OUR WITH PETS
Interview: Ricardo Prieto-Ortiz
Can you give us an overview of your priorities at Nestlé Purina PetCare Europe? Our number one priority is to strengthen the bond that people have with their pets. We try to do this in many ways – with our products, through education and by partnering with other relevant organizations in this area. How important is behavioral science in achieving your objectives, and can you give examples of this in practice? Behavioral science is hugely important. In fact, it’s one of the reasons we chose to work with Fractal. With the help of behavioral science, we can overcome many of the challenges that we face in terms of our processes, our thinking and our people. It gives us a great opportunity to become much more persuasive in what we do. For example, one of the biggest challenges we face is in getting people with senior pets to choose products that are better suited for them. Because of the work we have done with Fractal, we have established that this isn’t a product
innovation problem, it is fundamentally a behavioral problem. Hence, having that understanding helps us tackle our challenges a bit differently. It means we can better deliver on our mission to bring better products to pets to help them through their life journey and, as a result, enrich the bond between pets and their owners. Can you tell us a bit about this work you are doing with Fractal and the value you hope to realize as a result? Fractal has made the process of applying behavioral economics to our work very easy to grasp. Just being able to bring it into our organization and make it easy for all relevant employees to understand is a major win. There’s a famous quote that ‘ 90% of solutions can be found by clearly defining the problem statement’. At a large organization like Nestlé Purina, it takes a lot of time to align stakeholders on our strategies. Fractal’s work has really helped us to get that alignment so that we all agree where the problem lies – as I mentioned before, we
are working on a behavioral problem rather than a product problem. Now we have a general acknowledgement of what needs to be done. And so that is already a huge milestone. Next, we can get into the execution part based on our learnings. Watch this space! Where does AI come in, and how does this add value to the business? AI is present throughout the full cycle of activities that we carry out, so the value we can get from it takes many different shapes and forms. It helps us identify ideas and improve the efficiency of our processes. It gives the ability to make faster and better decisions. It can also help validate specific perceptions fundamentally transform how we conduct our research in the future. The notion of synthetic personas, for example [virtual models that mimic a real person’s characteristics and behaviors] can have a huge impact on our work. This is an opportunity that we are exploring currently. of marketing concepts. For example, I think AI will
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Volume 10 ai:sight by Fractal
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