Hi, I'm Lisa Johnston, editor-in-chief of CGT, and welcome to our Fireside Chats. Every episode, we talk with an industry expert about some trends we're seeing. In this episode, I'm talking to Liz Papasakolarou of Publisys Sapiens for some 2023 predictions. Now, it's been another busy, challenging year for the consumer goods industry, and so we're going to have to take some high-level guesses about what we think might be happening next year. So, Liz, welcome.
Thank you, thank you. Thank you for having me.
Oh, it's great to have you here. Get us started. Tell us just a little bit about yourself and your role at Publisys.
Wonderful. Well, very nice to meet you, Lisa. So, yes, my role at Publisys is a North America lead for all consumer products, so I lead the full vertical here. And I think I've been in the CPG world almost all my life, ranging from brand marketing to technology to consulting. So, I love, I think I have CPG in the veins, I would say.
So, again, another challenging year for the consumer goods landscape. Get us started. Let's talk a little bit about getting a sense of what the priorities are for today's consumer products executives. You know, whether it was inflation or the supply chain, there was a number of different challenges that they had to navigate. So, what's your sense on what's top of mind for executives right now?
Well, I'll tell you, top of mind this morning is the almost seven dollar price of gallon of gas in California. So, I think that's top of mind for many people. And for CPGs, I think it continues to think about what is that? What do we need to prepare for? What's the preparation for short and long term gain? Right. So, how do they react to short term pressures while still building the competencies for the long term? We can all agree that COVID exposed how unprepared they were for this confluence of a rapidly evolving technologies, consumer demographic changes and changing consumer behaviors. So, for the short term, talking about price, they need to prepare for a rise of pricing sensitivity. Many CPGs have been taking pricing throughout the year, once, twice, several times. And I think at the beginning, consumers were, OK, we expected supply chain issues, inflation we hear in the news. But the more and more prices increase, consumers are becoming wary. Right. So perhaps think about using your data to game out different pricing scenarios to understand consumer thresholds. The other thing to consider in the short term is a shift to the value perception. The tastes are going to change. Value experiences are going to be expected. Personalization, you're going to hear personalization as a key theme throughout our conversation today. It is what are you what are you doing for me specifically, especially if I'm spending more money? And how do you start to build that community around those brand believers? Those will be key. The short term and that's the short term. Right. And in the long term, definitely you will continue up to optimize supply chains. That is that is something that's going to continue to be top of mind, especially as ingredients become hard to find or or or products. Right. So the other one is finding growth through innovation and experimentation. The only way to really keep up right for these like short term changes that continue to happen is to prepare with the right tools, services and features that will determine how you can react to those short term trends. But you need to set those foundations in order. And lastly, I think I can say this till, you know, I'm green in the face or whatever that expression may be. It's you need to break down those organizational silos. That is a long term. I think it's something that CPG companies are are beginning to understand that it's necessary. Right. So if you want to live this omni channel dream that we're going to be talking a little bit about omni channel being able to buy shop from anywhere, you need to think about how you break down those silos and improve decision making across multiple business units. It's really thinking about that shared ecosystem versus those individual functions within your organization.
So I'm glad you did bring up omni channel because I do want to talk about the commerce landscape. We see it's continuing to shift in part because of consumer behavior changes. So what kind of commerce shifts do you see ahead, especially when it comes to those CPG and consumer relationships?
Absolutely. And, you know, we're like, oh, the rise of e-commerce. No, there's no rise. There's no change. It is here. Right. Those covid pivots that we all talked about the new norm are the mainstays. It is here to stay and it will continue to to be a prevalent way of of shopping. Right. So I like to say it's more about next gen commerce. Every moment is shoppable. And so consumers think about think about it frictionless. They don't they don't they want to be able to make it easy for me. Right. So as I'm searching for something, as I'm looking, as I'm purchasing my checkout to the time it's been delivered, I want it to be seamless. It is the new normal and it's all about on demand. And when I think about on demand, it's important that you think about content that you put out there. Every piece of content, whether it's about brand building, new innovation price, it is imperative that you think about it as a consumption moment for your consumer. Social, for example, we talk about social social commerce. It's here to stay. What did I think I read the other day that TikTok now is becoming the new search engine. Right. So social social commerce is is beyond discovery. It's a shopping destination and it will continue to be a main tool for our CPG. You have to think about that. I think we also will see a rise and continual growth in live streaming and conversational commerce. As more consumers are going to the retailers and continue to shop online, this is a way to really converge the two worlds together. And it's a great way to offer kind of that what we're saying as a 3D commerce and where you can get that feedback, live feedback with your consumer, with the retailer, with your influencer that's showing you that product. And you can actually get some real time learning of how consumers are thinking about your product. So it's a great way also to to have a partnership with your retailers. I'm seeing a lot of shopping events via live streaming happening that are becoming more and more popular. And there is a whole list of best practices of how you could do live streaming correctly. And of course, we can't talk about commerce and not think about the metaverse. Right. And so now when making predictions. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And so AR tech, immersive virtual experiences and how we think about where how we can shop, I think, are still being discovered on how a CPG can use the metaverse in the right way. What I do think is consumers are keen on acquiring digital assets. Right. Especially as we think about supply chain challenges and not being able to get some of the products that you want. Perhaps they're able to get it in a digital asset form. So this could be interesting for fashion brands, for looks. It's a different way to consume that is not in that physical space. So it's quite interesting. I think another thing of a prediction and I'm seeing a lot of evolving behavior is with COVID, all the conversation was around direct to consumer own channels, DTC. Everyone needed to stand up a DTC and some did it really well and some are like perhaps reconsidering what that channel means to them. And so I think we're seeing that this channel is less about driving the revenue and it's more about learning, learning about your consumers, again, building that data. We're talking about the pricing thresholds. We're talking about consumable content. And in here, it's that building that data, your insights that perhaps helps the CPGs think about what different businesses can we be in or what kind of product innovation should I be exploring?
So let's dig a little bit more into data, especially with the disappearance of the cookie and as consumer goods companies try to figure out how DTC makes the most sense for them, as you've mentioned, so that they can learn more about their consumers. What do you recommend for how do you recommend consumer goods companies can use data to their advantage?
Absolutely. OK, data, data, data, data is an imperative. We're hearing a lot of terms such as predictive analytics, hyper segmentation, and at the core, we're even hearing personalization. At the core, it's data, right? Are you setting up the right strategies in place to not only collect the data, but also use the data correctly, right? We're hearing that one of the top challenges that CPGs are facing is that they haven't really clearly articulated what that strategy could be. So if you think about it, how are you set up? Do you have the right staff? Are you upskilling your people in the right way? Do you have the right partner? Are you able to integrate data from multiple sources so that you can get that optimum learning, right? So really setting up your company, because as I'm saying, how are you collecting that data? If your consumer is spending the time to give you their information, whether it's a simple email or a lot more, they're going to expect something in return. So that's not just about your data intake, but how you use it. What are you going to give them after they've spent time with you? And what's the right service, like really get to know them. Again, give them that personalized experience, right? And so along with that, as you're setting up your strategies, do you have the right cloud infrastructure in place that will house all this data that you collect? You know, you don't want to build, it's like, what is that car that