EXCLUSIVE: The Chief Digital Officer at GSK tells us how traditional FMCG companies are adapting to a digitally evolving consumer base

At a time when proliferation in internet connectivity and growing use of smartphones has led to a massive increase in digital media consumption, companies worldwide are compelled to rethink their marketing strategies and devise ways to include digital in their overall agenda. It's become almost imperative for businesses to consider that consumers today are consuming content on varied platforms and on various devices and therefore, a one-size-fits-all campaign will no longer work. True for all, the shift in the marketing strategies of FMCG companies has also been prompted by this dramatic change.

While everyone is in the race to nail their digital strategies, it is proving to be a bigger challenge for traditional industries like FMCG to adapt to these changing needs than others. We spoke to Marc Speichert, the Global Chief Digital Officer at GSK Consumer Healthcare, to understand how GSK which is one of the leading companies in the FMCG space, approaching the need to adapt to digital amid the growing competition.

"We see Digital medium a catalyst for marketing transformation. It offers a huge opportunity to become a growth driver for the organisation, especially in terms of how you can drive traffic to brick and mortar stores, how you can embrace new channels like e-commerce, and how it can help you in creating e-business models," says Speichert.

Speaking on GSK's digital strategy for India, Speichert says – “there is a lot of focus on how we are activating our marketing. We keep in mind how the brand is across markets and what the consumer expects, and devise our strategies accordingly.”

He agrees that having a “single-pronged marketing approach in this diverse country is not going to work anymore”.

While it has become imminent for FMCG companies to make disruptive moves to succeed in the digital race, here are four key things that Speichert says GSK is focusing on in terms of how they want to approach digital:

How to nail the basics:
Sometimes we get tempted with the shiny objects which distracts you from really nailing the basics. We want to first get our fundamentals right before moving ahead.

How to scale experimentation
At times, people drive experimentation but they do not have the ability to scale it. We are focused on how our experimentation agenda can help fuel back into the fundamentals, once we have our proof of concept nailed. There are lot of things we have done here in India from the experimentation perspective, which are quite interesting and that we can do probably do faster than other markets.

Measurement
We are obsessed with measurement. We really measure everything that we do, even if it's a small pilot. The bottom line is you shouldn't scale something unless you have the data to indicate you should be scaling.

Building capability
How do you assess the Digital IQ of the organization as a true KPI. We have a baseline score. The question always is how to improve it and track it overtime, so that we are not talking about digitalisation in vacuum.