Prabha Parameswaran, Colgate-Palmolive | SparkOptimus CEO stories | Full interview

Thank you, Alexandra. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to share that. The whole journey that we went through in Europe, you know, it was a little over five years ago and that feels like such a long time ago. At that time, digital commerce was really small in Europe and digital media was more expensive than traditional, so there really wasn't a case for change. But if we looked to other markets and other industries, you knew that digital was the future. So our thinking was, why wait for it to happen to you? Why not get ahead of it? So we went to the experts, which were Spark Optimus, and we had your team help us with external benchmarking, do a capability assessment of where we were from a digital maturity standpoint, and also to look at how other companies had organized to unlock digital. So from an organizational standpoint, we stood up a small group we call the Online Acceleration Center, and we brought in our digital marketing talent and our e-commerce talent and we co-located them. Then based on the gaps that we saw, we added experts in areas like search, content, analytics. And we also at that time upskilled our marketing and sales organization. We co-located some of them with this Online Acceleration Center so that they could work seamlessly and each one could build on the other's expertise. And in a very short period of time, I'm really pleased to say, we made great acceleration in Europe.

So that's a great point because one of the things that this team did, having this small group, is in certain areas they ran test and learns, experimenting on new areas which we hadn't explored before. So we teamed up either with a customer or with a partner like Google to really test certain hypotheses, and then having got the results, we then began to scale it. And you know, you've been in this area for a very long time, and you know that when you're experimenting, when you're in a new space, you really have to do some things, learn from it, and keep iterating and learning. And that really was what we did in Europe before we scaled it.

Yes, so there were certain things, some really simple things like packaging, your product pages, what content you put on those product pages. They all seem so simplistic today, but at that time, as part of the learning, what's above the fold, what's below the fold – they were all important. And we learned to do A/B testing to see what's working, what's not, make a quick switch, again see if that worked, and if it did, then that's what we took forward.

So as I mentioned, we created this dedicated organization. We hired specialists where we needed it. We also put talent into the key countries so that they could execute, but equally importantly, they could be advocates for digital. So at Colgate, we talk about '4Ps': people, process, platform, and partners. And partners, you know, in the European case, the partners were people like Spark Optimus, Google, and many others that we partnered with. So the first P is people. Nothing can be achieved without people. And it was not just about digital talent; you need all people in the organization to believe in digital and to become digital. So as they say, it takes a village to raise a child.

Yes, as I said, some of the early successes were redesigning our product images on the product pages so that we could win in search. That was number one. The second piece that the team really went after was developing content. And those days, dynamic content was still new, so they did a lot of experiments around that area, and we got unprecedented brand lifts on Colgate whitening, on Sanics, on our kids bundle. And the other piece of it was e-commerce. Our e-commerce shares tracked consistently higher than brick-and-mortar shares, and brick-and-mortar shares are pretty high. And all this really helped build that momentum in the organization. It helped people understand the importance and the impact digital can have. So having these early successes got general managers on the ground, the key stakeholders around the division, to really embrace digital.

Yes, I really think that it's critical, and again something that I'm sure I'm preaching to the converted. Transformations have to start from the top. As leaders of the transformation, we need to model that behavior. We have to be learners. We really need to be humble about not knowing what we don't know, and be prepared to learn from the experts. You have to walk the talk. You have to be able to change, to experiment and fail sometimes. And that's what I feel role modeling of a leader needs to be.

So back to the four Ps: people, process, platform, and partners. And so again, we made operating model changes. Digital marketing used to report to marketing, and e-commerce used to report to sales, and we brought the two organizations together so that it could be as seamless as a consumer journey is. And then we brought talent with expertise in those areas: search, content, analytics. We now have a Chief Digital Officer who manages all areas under digital end to end. We also stood up an advanced analytics team. We have a Chief Data Analytics Officer; we hire people under her to enable us to really harness all that rich consumer and customer data, so that we could be much more effective and efficient in the way we engage with our consumers and really create those experiences that are memorable for our brands. I also wanted to share, staying with people because that was so important, because now it's not doing it at a division level, doing it at an enterprise level. So what we did is really invest in upskilling the organization. In two years, 16,000 Colgate people have completed digital training and 14,000 completed data literacy training.

And what was really one thing was we encouraged people to post their badges. So if you complete the entire training, you get a badge, and we encourage people to post their badge on LinkedIn, and it created this wonderful movement. Many of our employees have been proudly posting that they earned a badge on digital and they earned this analytics badge. So it's not just about getting internal recognition, but now they really had bragging rights with their peers.

A lot of work around mining the data that we get, both behavioral as well as intentional data, to plot people journeys. What you call customers, we call people. Consumer journeys, as you know, have now become so complicated. So plotting it, understanding it, and then determining which of the crucial touch points where we could influence their decision, either to create awareness for the brand, or conversion, or persuasion. So we have a whole model around awareness, conversion, persuasion, loyalty. And as we have used data to construct the people journey, we also use the data to understand the touch points, the stimulus that we provide, and how people are responding to it. And back to the model: if it's worked, scale; if there's more work to be done, iterate, again learn, and then scale.

It's a really data-driven marketing. I would say it's a journey. We've been getting better and better, but as you know, it's a journey that doesn't end. You just have to keep on upskilling because technology and the consumers themselves are evolving so fast. And just another piece: it was not just the center where we added people. We have now experts, senior experts in all our regional centers, in all our top markets, that are driving the transformation, both the digital transformation and the analytic transformation, but importantly against one enterprise strategy. So it's all in cohesion to that one strategy with clear KPIs and goals. So we've laid out a roadmap of what needs to get done over the next three to five years, and obviously as things evolve in the world around us, we keep updating those goals and the metrics to achieve it.

Well, we have what we call the Colgate 2025 plan, in which digital and data is one of our growth catalysts. Against that, what we laid way back in 2019 is what's a North Star. Coming out of the benchmark study that I mentioned to you, we did a benchmark study in early 2020, and based on where we were compared to our industry peers, we laid down the key things that we needed to conquer. And we have a whole roadmap to get to that North Star, broken up by function, by country, by brand. And we have clear metrics and measurement methods. And the team has done a wonderful job of also building scorecards in conjunction with our IT. There are clear scorecards so that the teams can see: are they making progress? Where they're not making progress, what action needs to be taken? And we as a team, the divisional leadership team, has visibility to what's happening. We at an enterprise level can see the progress that we are making. And just hot off the press, I have to share with you that we did another survey with a leading consulting company. So we did this early as I said in 2020, and at the end of 2022 we repeated the survey to understand, again, are we making progress? And the great news is that according to this, the consulting company that did the survey for us, in the past two years Colgate has moved faster and more consistently across all the measures of digital and data-driven marketing compared to industry peers. So it's really helped the organization embrace experimentation, not getting things right every time, but keep striving to get even better. So it's been really transformational, not just in the digital area, but digital scorecards led the way to changing the cultural mindset.

Absolutely, and especially for us, we are a fairly decentralized organization. We have six divisions. Balancing empowerment with flexibility and having scale is really critical. So the way we did it was clearly articulating the strategy, clearly articulating what the choices were, what the priorities are, and what the KPIs would be to measure progress. And equally, we did a fair bit of work clarifying who does what, who has the decision rights, what are the guardrails. Once that is done, you can unlock creativity and entrepreneurship amongst your team. At Colgate, we call it the power of 'we'. But still, in terms of empowerment, how does that work if I'm in a country and I think whatever they think of in the head office, they don't know how my market looks like? But on the other hand, you also want return on investment for the digital capabilities that you need, and they are quite scarce, so you can't put all digital capabilities in every country. How can you balance that? So we defined the North Star, we defined six priorities at an enterprise level. We double-clicked: what does that mean in a division? What does that mean for principal markets? We broke that down into the top markets based on where they are from a digital maturity standpoint and how important they are from a business standpoint. Then the next level was those markets which may not be the top markets from a digital maturity standpoint, but we would want them to start laying the groundwork for when the market gets more mature. So we did archetypes: mature, most sophisticated markets and businesses; those that were in the middle; and the third was emerging markets. For each of these, we co-created depending on their market needs what needed to get done, both from a talent perspective. Not everywhere do you need the full ecosystem of talent; you would need that in the sophisticated markets. In the emerging markets, there were certain principal capabilities that needed to be there. So we did a very granular breakdown. It requires a ton of work and a ton of patience.

So you know, from my standpoint there are four Cs: curiosity, clarity, courage, and connectedness. Curiosity is all about learning, continuously learning new things, not being afraid to say I don't know, and being super comfortable being uncomfortable. Digital really tests that curiosity because things are constantly changing. I don't think you can ever score yourself an 8 out of 10; I'm always hovering around the twos and threes because when I think I have sort of got to understand something, there's something new to learn. So curiosity is really critical. The second is clarity. In the world we live in today with so much uncertainty and unpredictability, particularly with digital, being clear about the goals and deliverables is really important so you don't get distracted by every shiny object and fragment resources. At Colgate, we are very focused on things we can scale and that deliver the highest return on investment. The third is courage. With digital changing so rapidly, you can be armed with good data but you still need to take bold bets, and that requires courage. It also requires courage to hire people smarter than you, which we did in digital and analytics. The fourth is connectedness. Digital requires us to desilo the organization because the interdependencies are huge. Defining roles, responsibilities, decision rights, and forums where teams come together is absolutely essential to deliver connectedness and the growth we need from digital commerce.

Absolutely, absolutely. I would just say that transformation is not for the faint-hearted. It does require perseverance and continuing to push at it because you know there are hurdles that come your way. But having been clear about where you want to get to is really important.

Yeah, I can only share our experiences at Colgate. I think it starts with a strategy. You have to be clear about the choices you're making, and those need to be linked with the company purpose and the financial aspiration. Then get the right people: people who understand digital, experts who understand the business, functional experts. You have to lead from the top, declare your expectations and deliverables, and enable it by creating an environment where you connect people, where it's safe to experiment and try new things, and actively sponsor digital. And then, of course, have clear measurements. As you measure, you need to reward and recognize people for progress. Given the change you have to bring about in the culture, recognition and reward become really important for the people driving the change on the front line.

I would say this would be a topic for a full podcast. It's the war for talent in digital, data, analytics, IT. How have we been doing it? It starts with our purpose. Our purpose is that Colgate is a caring, innovation, growth company that is reimagining a healthier future for all people, their pets, and their planet. Our purpose combined with the fact that we are in more homes than any other brand is truly inspiring for talent. So we bring that upfront. Then back to clarity: giving people a clear vision of the future of the company but also their future within the company. Clear career paths in terms of where they could get to with certain competencies and deliverables. Laying out that career path is really important. Then growth for them personally: what's in it for them, how could they grow? People ask, can I grow to senior leadership positions? Can I grow to be the head of a division? And it's possible, so we lay that out. It's also being able to walk the talk. If you look at our board of directors, we have directors with deep expertise in digital and data. Our senior leadership now has a Chief Digital Officer, Chief Analytics Officer, and IT organization with senior people in those roles. So they can see that the organization actually values that talent. The last thing is creating an inclusive environment where everybody feels they belong and can bring their authentic self. In the context of digital, inclusiveness is important because people need a safe environment to experiment, because the nature of experimentation is that you will fail. Creating that safe environment where it's okay to fail as long as you learn has been really important.

So again, guided by our purpose. Our purpose is all about creating that healthier future for all people, their pets, and the planet. Each of those words was chosen with great deliberateness. The healthier future is about the categories we participate in: oral health, pet health through nutrition, skin health. We work with deep science and the profession. In oral care we work with the dentist, in pet with vets, in skin with dermatologists, estheticians, pharmacists. Between science and the profession, that's a commitment to health. But equally, healthier future underlines our whole ESG approach. It's about protecting the environment. We have declared our goals for 2025, 2030, zero carbon by 2040, all with roadmaps. I assume you know we were the first company to launch a recycled tube in toothpaste. As the category leader, our product comes in plastic toothpaste tubes that were not recyclable, so we made that switch. We've made that technology available to our competitors because we need more people to adopt recyclable tubes to make recycling happen. That's a piece on environment and climate. But we're also committed to the social piece of sustainability. We have a program called Bright Smiles, Bright Futures where we educate children on oral health and hygiene. As of 2022, we have reached 1.6 billion children. The program teaches children to brush their teeth, wash their hands, and the importance of nutrition. It's run primarily in underserved communities and markets where penetration of oral care and general hygiene is lower. We found that children are great change agents; they take that messaging back to their homes and families. We've seen this program driving better penetration of oral care and better hygiene adopted by the entire family and sometimes the entire community. So along with our environmental programs, we are very invested in social programs like Bright Smiles, Bright Futures.

Thank you so much for your kind words. Great talking to you.