Global food and beverage company Danone is best known for its dairy-based products, including Oikos, Activia, Silk and International Delight, and keeping those long–trusted brands relevant in an increasingly competitive marketplace is no small task.
Danone North America VP of Media and Digital Arthur Sylvestre said the multibillion-dollar food giant has spent much of the last half-century adapting its strategies to remain visible across digital channels.
Gregor Murray, co-founder of digital marketing consultancy Digital Commerce Global, discussed the topic with Sylvestre and other panelists at Groceryshop in September.
Danone’s most important technical capabilities in digital sales include digital retail media, digital shelf technology and artificial intelligence, Sylvestre explained. Setting a clear vision for the future internally, however, is the company’s biggest win over the past couple of years, he added.
“We want to be trusted by machines and desired by humans,” he said of the new era of agentic-powered commerce. “Just getting there as a team was a long process, but now that everybody is aligned, it’s much easier to move much faster and do a better job in the market.”
Realigning digital at Danone
Sylvestre discussed breaking down silos at Danone that had not yet adapted to the digital world.
“We have to rebuild every day the processes and the ecosystems that are going to allow us to build consistency,” he said.
Gaining the “trust of machines” – the artificial intelligence agents that are increasingly shopping for consumers – was challenging because the teams managing Danone’s online portal were separate from those handling digital shipments.
That created discrepancies between consumers shopping on a traditional search engine versus those using AI tools. “Without any consistency, you’re actually decreasing the level of authority that you’re going to get on Google or on ChatGPT,” he said.
Breaking down silos
The key to breaking down silos is communication, Sylvestre explained, noting that “it’s not easy because [executives] aren’t always speaking the same language.”
Sylvestre, who has a thick French accent, said the audience could hear him because he speaks English with a French accent, but if he spoke French with an English accent, few people in the English-speaking audience would understand.
“We have to speak business with a digital accent if we are on the digital team, because otherwise nobody else understands, and the business people need to understand the digital accent,” he said. “As leaders, I think we have to constantly provocate this in the organization. Otherwise, we’re not going to be successful.”
Embracing change at Danone
Sylvestre made the point that rapid change is the only constant in the food and beverage industry and urged marketers to stay focused on consumers.
That means understanding customers’ needs and finding solutions. He likened the current state of marketing to a children’s soccer game.
“I don’t know if you’ve seen young kids playing soccer; it’s quite fun,” he said. “The ball goes to the left, and everybody goes to the left. The ball goes to the right, and everybody goes to the right. There’s no strategy.”
He said marketing teams often take a similar approach by chasing the newest tech fads on the market.
“I think to keep going after those shiny objects, whatever is the next new tech, you’re going to fail because it’s not strategic,” he said.
