Transforming Multichannel Marketing Collaboration for Retailers and CPG Brands
Marketing teams can overcome collaboration challenges, ensuring consistent messaging and accelerating campaign time-to-market.
Retailers and consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers have a shared, singular goal—to sell more of what people need in the most efficient way possible. They are natural allies; you would think that collaboration is a given. However, true retail/CPG collaboration is extraordinarily difficult today, thanks to the complex realities of multichannel marketing. From CMOs to their creative services and production managers, marketing teams struggle to bridge the gap.
Of course, the foremost challenge is the maddening complexity of today’s media landscape. Maintaining just a print presence—signage, packaging, promotional flyers, and catalogs—and the occasional radio or TV ads is no longer sufficient.
Retail/CPG collaboration is extraordinarily difficult in today’s multichannel world.
Now, there’s a growing galaxy of online messaging channels for marketing directors to manage while keeping the traditional ones relevant and effective.
Custom versions of print catalogs are just as vital as your mobile presence.
Unfortunately, it gets worse from there. For marketing teams, switching from print to online is not a simple matter. Contrary to popular opinion, print is not fading; it’s getting more complex! Custom versions of catalogs and flyers are just as vital as your presence on mobile apps and e‑commerce sites.
Now more than ever, this complexity demands better alignment between retailers and CPG brands.
It’s All About the Data
Both CPG manufacturers and their retail partners subsist on enormous volumes of data. Much of it is highly structured product information, images, descriptions, and individualized purchase histories. It also includes masses of unstructured data in the form of customer testimonials, videos, social media posts, and more. Even when unstructured content authors use hashtags and other handy identifiers, marketers are still drowning in a chaotic ocean of information.
One of the root causes of the gap between retailers and CPG brands is the “silo effect.” Critical data are kept in separate and disconnected databases—a practice often inherited from simpler times and the use of proprietary, legacy systems.
The gap between retailers and CPG brands is caused by the “silo effect”—where data are stored in separate, disconnected databases.
Here’s the problem. Specifics about individual products are traditionally stored in a product information management (PIM) system, formerly on-site but increasingly in the cloud. These databases can be enormous; each product record can have scores of individually labeled fields. In addition, product images, videos, and related descriptions are stored in an equally complex digital asset management (DAM) system. To make things even more “interesting,” there are often other, separate databases for inventory, pricing, logistics, and sales history.
Siloed data is a serious issue for any company, but the problem is magnified when retailers and CPG manufacturers each have their own PIM and DAM systems, each with its own data labels and even missing data for some products. This is why one of the first steps for Comosoft’s systems integration teams is to ensure that product data from the manufacturer is compatible with the retailer’s PIM and DAM systems.
To create agile campaigns, designers and production teams need a way to avoid sleuthing through all that data.
But even if the data are consistently labeled, siloed data presents a monumental challenge for retailers. To create complex, agile campaigns for multiple products, designers and production teams need a way to avoid spending hours sleuthing through PIM, DAM, and other data sources to find the most current
information for each page or screen of the promotion, sending it out for review and approval, and hoping that a last-minute change in the data won’t undermine it.
Fortunately, the Comosoft LAGO system was designed to automate those very steps, creating a centralized, multichannel production tool. Starting with the planning stage, LAGO can find all the current data for each product, including its availability, sales history, and profitability. It then gives the production designer a head start, providing all the tools needed
LAGO was designed to automate all the steps in creating customized multi-channel retail campaigns.
for creating, and getting rapid review and approval, for effective, customized retail campaigns. And, thanks to its digital production capabilities, such campaigns can be truly multichannel in nature.
Making Data Work for Everyone
Without question, retailers and CPG brands can only benefit from a unified approach to data. By creating consistent product messaging across many channels, marketing campaigns can reach the consumer anywhere, on an increasingly personalized level. However, we are only beginning to see the potential of emerging data sources. In 2024, a case study on AI-driven automation found that purchase behavior data can reveal patterns and trends that, when used in marketing promotions, lead to increased sales. As with every other human endeavor in this century, retail sales of CPG brands will benefit from the wise use of big data and artificial intelligence.
If we bridge the gap between the different data sources, retail sales of CPG brands will benefit from the wise use of data.
As individual consumers, manufacturers, and retailers continue to create new data, the opportunities to create effective, personalized messaging will grow exponentially. To do so, however, all parties must collaborate, bridging the gaps between multiple data sources and agreeing to use the data for everyone’s benefit.
The customer journey has become increasingly complex, requiring retailers and CPG brands to work together closely in order to thrive. Comosoft’s LAGO system is an essential means of achieving such collaboration. By breaking down data silos and their attendant risks, LAGO provides the integrated management of data and assets, as well as the centralized multichannel production and insights essential for true collaboration.
Discover how Comosoft LAGO can revolutionize your multichannel collaboration efforts. Book a demo today to see it for yourself.
