How Land O’Lakes Saw Success With Data Innovation

The modern consumer is constantly evolving, especially during these uncertain times. For example, right now they’re trying to figure out how to raise chickens.

At the early onset of the pandemic, Purina Mills saw that people were panic buying, among toilet paper and other essentials, chickens. The agricultural subsidiary tested some ebook content, which saw visits to its site jump.

This shift in strategy and marketing dollars was only possible because of real-time insights and an integrated data tech stack, according to Cal Gibbons, marketing technology specialist at Land O’Lakes, which runs Purina Mills. Gibbons took part in a recent Adweek Webinar on the subject of marketing agility.

Prior to the Covid-19 crisis, the farmer-owned co-op held a KPI day with its leaders and marketers across teams. They looked at their tech stack and started to switch to more holistic omnichannel reporting, prioritized real-time data to drive content, directed their strategy and intent toward analysis, and sought better information on impressions to turn into insights and implement automation to save time. AI from Salesforce’s Datorama proved a useful tool to optimize performance and save hours of data input.

“Marketers struggle with a lack of alignment across data,” explained Emily Hoffman, product marketing manager at Salesforce. “You want to make sure you’re aligned with customers and values and vocalize that alignment.”

This recent data-driven decision helped bolster Land O’Lakes’ farm-to-fork business model, where enterprise data helped frame crucial, early conversations. Gibbons did note that changing his team’s larger framework from the ground up did take time.

“The biggest key in shifting that mindset is constantly talking about analytics and how our performance indicators are doing so those things become standard and common practice,” he said.