DEERFIELD, Ill. -- Snack and candy maker Mondelēz International Inc. has renewed its global strategic partnership with Facebook. The companies will work together to “leverage and innovate” around consumer insights and Messenger to create mobile-first experiences between people and brands, they said.
The deal follows the company’s launch earlier this month of a new media monetization model that will include a suite of branded games with the aim of making them commercially viable. Also, in 2015, it launched the Shopper Futures innovation initiative, which brought together retailers, technology startups and its brands to collaborate with the goal of transforming the consumer retail experience. Convenience-store chains QuickChek, Mac's, Kum & Go and 7-Eleven have created promotions with Mondelēz.
"Mobile is the most profound disruption we've ever seen in business," said Bonin Bough, chief media and e-commerce officer for Mondelēz. "People are living their lives on mobile. It has changed the way we discover, experience and share. It has also changing the advertising industry, and messaging will have an even greater impact on how brands engage with consumers than social media has. Continuing to invest in a large-scale media partnership with Facebook will help us connect our brands with our consumers while fueling growth."
For consumer insights, Mondelēz is an early partner using Facebook's newly announced Audience Insights API, a way for brands to better understand and leverage information about their consumers to create meaningful marketing campaigns. Mondelēz piloted this new platform for its Cadbury brand's latest campaign in the U.K. By being a part of the Facebook Audience Insights API beta in partnership with three agencies, Carat, Elvis and Fallon, the brand team gained better and deeper insights into what content really matters to people and how to deliver more engaging and efficient creative materials.
"Our Cadbury ‘taste like this feels' campaign has demonstrated that scaled, personalized, mobile-first advertising creative is incredibly impactful," said Gerry D'Angelo, media director for Europe for Mondelēz. "Facebook's Audience Insights API helped us better understand the ways in which our consumers think about chocolate and how those feelings change depending on the day of the week. As a result, we were able to deliver a more meaningful campaign, achieving unprecedented campaign awareness among our audiences."
On messaging, Mondelēz and Facebook will work together to experiment on the Messenger platform, including newly launched bots for the Messenger platform. The objective is to pilot ways for consumers to interact in real time with Mondelez brands and consumer services globally through the power of Messenger threads.
"With 900 million people using Messenger every month, this platform offers a great way to interact with our consumers in real time. This could potentially be a new channel for us for commerce and consumer support," said D'Angelo.
"Our partners at Mondelēz International understand that mobile presents an opportunity to bring their brands closer to consumers than ever before," said Will Platt Higgins, vice president of global accounts for Facebook. "When you have products that are as beloved as those created by Mondelēz International, it only makes sense to give them even more of a voice and new ways to interact with the people that love them."
Brokered in conjunction with Carat, the agreement covers 52 countries, including Brazil, France, India, Indonesia, the U.K., the United States and the Gulf States.
Deerfield, Ill.-based Mondelēz International is a global snacking company with 2015 net revenues of approximately $30 billion. It is a world leader in biscuits, chocolate, gum, candy and powdered beverages, with billion-dollar brands such as Oreo, LU and Nabisco biscuits; Cadbury, Cadbury Dairy Milk and Milka chocolate; and Trident gum.
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