Seamless Omnichannel Digital Customer Experiences with Schnuck's Cristina Preston

Summary

Podcast Summary: The CPG Guys - "Seamless Omnichannel Digital Customer Experiences with Schnuck's Cristina Preston"

Introduction

In the June 25, 2025 episode of The CPG Guys, hosts Peter V.S. Bond and Shree Rajagopalan engage in a compelling discussion with Christina Preston, the Director of Digital Marketing at Schnuck Markets. Recorded live at the 2025 Digital Food and Beverage Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida, amidst the bustling environment of an active restaurant, this episode delves deep into the strategies and insights behind creating seamless omnichannel digital customer experiences in the competitive grocery retail sector.

Background and Setting

The episode opens with a brief introduction by Shree Rajagopalan, highlighting Christina Preston's role at Schnuck Markets—a prominent regional grocery retailer based in St. Louis, Missouri. Christina brings a wealth of experience in digital marketing, focusing on how her team at Schnuck navigates the evolving digital landscape to engage consumers both online and offline.

Personalization in Digital Campaigns and Privacy Concerns

A significant portion of the conversation centers around the role of personalization in digital marketing campaigns and how Schnuck balances this with privacy concerns.

[04:42] Christina Preston: "We have a really great robust loyalty program. All of our first-party data comes from our loyalty program. Customers are opting in, so there are no privacy concerns."

Christina emphasizes the importance of leveraging first-party data ethically, ensuring customers have control over their information. She highlights that personalization is essential for delivering relevant content without crossing into the realm of being intrusive.

[06:04] Peter V.S. Bond: "Consumers understand that they're willing to forego a measure of privacy if it means they're going to get relevant messages and relevant offers."

This sentiment underscores the delicate balance between personalization and privacy, with an emphasis on providing genuine value to customers.

Measuring Success: Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

The discussion transitions to how Schnuck Measures the success of their digital initiatives. Christina identifies Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) as a critical KPI, alongside driving sales both online and offline.

[07:44] Christina Preston: "For us, pretty much across the board, it's cost per acquisition. We're driving sales whether it's online or offline."

She further explains the importance of internal benchmarks that surpass industry standards, ensuring that Schnuck remains competitive and effective in their marketing efforts.

Customer Acquisition and Long-Term Value

Christina touches upon the challenge of appealing to emerging generations whose shopping behaviors differ from their predecessors. She discusses the importance of fostering long-term customer relationships through personalized marketing and strategic partnerships.

[09:22] Christina Preston: "We're tracking to make sure that we're speaking to those customers in a personalized way that speaks to them."

Schnuck’s new partnership with DoorDash exemplifies their strategy to engage younger demographics through convenient digital avenues.

Creating a Seamless Omnichannel Experience

A core theme of the episode is the seamless integration of online and in-store experiences. Christina shares insights into how Schnuck utilizes technology to enhance the customer journey.

[20:06] Christina Preston: "We've got some great features within our app where that's item locators within the aisle. We also have digital shelf tags that help customers find items easily."

She emphasizes the use of geofencing and digital tools to assist customers in-store, ensuring that their digital experience complements their physical shopping.

Fostering a Culture of Continual Learning and Adaptability

With the rapid advancements in digital marketing technologies, fostering a culture of continuous learning within the team is paramount.

[12:33] Christina Preston: "We partner with our web dev team, have conversations about new AI capabilities, and encourage the team to try new things even if they might fail."

Christina highlights the importance of collaboration and experimentation, allowing the team to stay ahead of technological trends and adapt swiftly to changes.

Emerging Trends in Digital Marketing

Looking ahead, Christina identifies several emerging trends that are poised to impact the grocery industry significantly:

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI) Integration: Moving beyond traditional SEO to incorporate AI-generated content and smarter search functionalities.
2. Social Commerce: Leveraging platforms like TikTok and Instagram for shorter, more engaging advertising formats.
3. Relational Marketing: Shifting from sales-focused messaging to emotionally driven, relational communications.

[21:42] Christina Preston: "AI is a given. Ensuring that your SEO is in tip-top shape is crucial, but now you've got to go a level deeper to appear in AI results."

Partnerships and Collaborations

Christina discusses the strategic importance of partnerships in expanding digital reach and enhancing marketing capabilities without overcomplicating their tech stack.

[24:11] Christina Preston: "Instead of onboarding new vendors, we grow with our existing partners, leveraging their enhancements to stay ahead."

This approach allows Schnuck to maintain a streamlined operations model while continuously upgrading their technological capabilities.

Evolving Role of Digital Marketing

The role of digital marketing at Schnuck is evolving towards more dynamic and emotionally resonant strategies. Christina anticipates a shift towards less traditional, more media-savvy approaches that align with how younger generations consume information.

[27:14] Christina Preston: "We're moving towards more media, social commerce, and relational marketing, speaking to customers based on their emotions and what they believe."

Conclusion

The episode wraps up with heartfelt thanks exchanged between Peter and Christina, acknowledging the insightful conversation and wishing her success in her upcoming panel at the summit. The discussion provides valuable takeaways for professionals in the CPG and FMCG sectors, emphasizing the importance of personalization, seamless omnichannel experiences, continuous learning, and strategic partnerships in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

Notable Quotes

• [04:42] Christina Preston: "Personalization is key... we provide value for our customers and how they shop."
• [12:33] Christina Preston: "We're not afraid to try something new and if it fails, it fails. That's okay."
• [20:06] Christina Preston: "These digital tools aren't just another app; they're assistants to help our customers."
• [27:14] Christina Preston: "We're focusing more on relational marketing, speaking to customers based on their emotions and beliefs."

Final Thoughts

This episode of The CPG Guys offers an in-depth look into the strategies employed by Schnuck Markets to deliver exceptional digital customer experiences. Christina Preston’s insights reveal a thoughtful approach to balancing personalization with privacy, leveraging technology for seamless omnichannel integration, and adapting to emerging digital trends. For anyone interested in the intersection of digital marketing and grocery retail, this episode serves as a valuable resource.

Transcript

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Make sure to check out our 500th episode, which was recorded in Cannes, France at the 2025 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Our very special guest for this episode, Tanner Eldon, Vice President, US Advertising Sales at Amazon. You don't hear from Tanner very much other than on Amazon official events. So this is a rare glimpse and a conversation into what's going on Amazon at the preeminent retail media platform. It's available on all platforms, Apple, Spotify, wherever you choose to find your podcasts to hear. Thank you.

[Christina Preston]

This is Christina Preston with Schnooks and you're listening to the CPG Guys Podcast.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Your hosts, Shree Rajagopalan and Peter V. S Bond explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in an increasingly digitally driven world. And now, Here are the CPG guys. Today's episode was recorded at the 2025 Digital Food and Beverage Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida. It was recorded inside of an active restaurant, which accounts for some of the background noise. We hope you enjoy this conversation with Christina Preston, the Director of Digital Marketing at Snook Markets.

[Tanner Eldon]

Hello and welcome to the CPGuys podcast. Today we're coming to you from not so sunny West Palm Beach, Florida, where the 2025 Digital Food and Beverage Summit is taking place. I'm pleased today to be joined by a terrific guest steeped in the disciplines of digital marketing. She's appearing on stage at the Summit representing her employer, Schnooks, a super regional grocery retailer based out of St. Louis, Missouri. If you're a frequent listeners podcast, you know that my family hails from Mount Vernon, Illinois, just across the river from St. Louis. So this is a hometown kind of conversation for me to some degree. I never grew up there, but I spent a good chunk of my my youth in, in that neck of the woods. Please help me welcome director of Digital Marketing at Chinooks, Christina Preston. Hey Christina, welcome to the podcast.

[Christina Preston]

I'm super happy to be here. I did not know that you were from your family's from Mount Vernon.

[Peter V. S Bond]

My family is from Mount Vernon and there was an old department store there years ago called the Mammoth. And that was my family's department store. And I knew about it growing up because boxes would just appear on my doorstep with clothing in them. As a kid I always like people said, where do you shop? I was living up in Canada at the time and I've never seen those, those clothes in stores now. They all come from the Mammoth.

[Christina Preston]

E Commerce. Before E Commerce was a big deal.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Exactly. Just pick up the Phone call the person in the department say, just put a bunch of clothing size X in the box and ship it to this address. That was, that was the. That was E commerce 0 0.1 way.

[Christina Preston]

Before digital was available.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Exactly. Exactly. Hey, before I get to the questions I've prepared for this episode, it would be great if you could share with our audience what you're going to be talking about during your appearance here at Digital Food and Beverage.

[Christina Preston]

Yeah, so I'm on a really awesome panel tomorrow and we're talking about like growing relevancy within our brands. So how to stay relevant, especially with, you know, the landscape of digital ever changing. It seems like, you know, every time we come to conferences like this, there's a something new. Sometimes it's rmn, sometimes it's AI, sometimes it's personalization, whatever that is. And so, yeah, so tomorrow I'll be talking with a few other co panelists and just keeping that relevancy alive with your brand.

[Peter V. S Bond]

That is great. To our audience. If you want to learn more about Christina and the work she does in the digital show notes of this episode, you'll find a link to her LinkedIn profile and Snook's LinkedIn page and their corporate website. So we can all multitask as we're going along, as we are want to do. I can't tell you how many people I get messages all the time. People who are out for a morning run. They're listening to the podcast and they have a question and they just start texting me as they're doing it and they're reading something. I'm on their site and listening to this. Yeah, that's how we all operate in this day and age. Right? It's kind of crazy. All right, Christina, so let's get to the questions that I prepared for today's conversation. I'd love to hear your perspective on what role personalization plays in digital campaigns and how are you thinking about as representing digital marketing for major grocery retailers? How does that balance with privacy concerns?

[Christina Preston]

Yeah, so we have a really great robust loyalty program. So all of our first party data. Right. Comes from our loyalty program. So the beautiful thing is customers are opting in there. There are no privacy concerns. You can opt out, you know, at any point. We can delete your data if, you know, we follow all of the laws for all of that. Also, I think not even just like privacy. I think it's the perception of the big brother. Right. So even though you're following the rules, you're compliant, you're doing all the things that you're allowed to do, I think that could be a tough balance. So for us, personalization is key because, you know, we want to. And I'm sure a lot of retailers and brands are like this too. We want to present content to a customer that is relevant to how they shop, but not seem like we're being that overly creepy retailer. Right. That's taking a look at everything that they're doing. But we figured out kind of that right balance where customers actually come back. And we've done focus groups, we've done customer surveys where they actually enjoy that personalization. So I think we've found, like, that sweet spot between perception and being overbearing and actually providing value for our customers and how they shop. It's not just noise. It's like, actually, like amplifying their shopping experience. So somewhere in the middle is a good place to be, I think.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yeah. I think we're in an era where most consumers, the lion's share of consumers, understand that they're willing to forego a measure of privacy if it means they're going to get relevant messages and relevant offers to them. And so, yeah, they understand that. And to your point, it's opt in. If you don't like it, you don't have to be a part of it. But it's, it's. It's come a long way from my days in retail 15 years ago where there were certain categories we didn't even talk about in terms of personalization, as I'm sure there are today. They're always concerned about, you want to delight the customer, you don't want to offend the customer.

[Christina Preston]

Yeah. And I think too, it's, what's the purpose behind it? If it's to offer like a value option for customers and sales and deals and coupons, I think our customers are like, yes, please sign me up this product quick, as quick as we can. Right. Because we're all trying to save money, whether it's in grocery or otherwise. So I think to your point, like, that's a really valid justification for. It's not just the convenience factor or awareness. It's, hey, I'm willing to provide my personal information to you so that you can help me save money.

[Peter V. S Bond]

It's worth it. Yeah. And I think it's also a bit about value is in the eye of the beholder. For some people, value is saving money. For other people, it's the quality of the product or the convenience. So it's, it's about getting all the signals and learning about who your consumers are and then delighting them with what they determine its value. Right. So I think that's critically important. So I'd love to know from your perspective how you are measuring the success of digital initiatives and what key performance indicators for you are most critical for your team to say. Yeah, we're actually achieving the outcomes that we set out to achieve.

[Christina Preston]

Yeah. So I think two things. So I think overall, when you're looking at KPIs, whatever KPIs you're tracking, I think it's important and I'm sure a lot of the listeners understand this concept is we have industry benchmarks and then we have internal benchmarks. So we can say that yes, we're succeeding in all of these KPIs well over industry benchmarks. But if our internal benchmark is higher than the industry, like that's what we should be measuring against. Right. And so for us, pretty much across the board, it's cost per acquisition. You know, we're driving sales whether it's, you know, online or offline. That's one of our big cpm, of course, is always large. And I think too, you know, it's. I think the industry has changed. You know, in my previous life, before I came to grocery, it was all about like impressions and clips and rates.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yeah, sure. But I think we've gotten beyond that with the level of data and sophistication we have at our disposal. Particularly for a retailer that's capturing and associating transactions with households, you can get much beyond.

[Christina Preston]

Absolutely. And I will say the one place where we do still very much take a look at analytics behind like engagement is like engagement within like certain features within our app features on our website. Right. When we've got a B testing that's going on, that's a little heavier with just impressions and engagement.

[Peter V. S Bond]

But cpa, yeah, that's good for me. It's just, it's customer acquisition costs and I understand that. Do you think about measuring customer long term value? We do. As you think about who you're trying to acquire.

[Christina Preston]

Yeah, and that's a very good point. You know, our business has been around for 85 years. You know, last year we celebrated 85 years. We're still family owned and operated. We have very loyal customers. They have been loyal forever. But even what we've talked about, actually one of the sessions this morning here is that the younger generation isn't shopping where their parents shop. You know, I'm a millennial. I shopped where my parents shop. We shopped at Chinooks I'm going to shop at shops. And so it's, they're, they're shopping a little bit differently. So that is the challenge with wanting to grow loyalty with these emerging generations, that their behaviors are changing versus their parents. So yeah, that's definitely something that we're tracking to make sure that we're speaking to those customers in a personalized way that speaks to them. Onboarding new partnerships. Right. We just launched our partnership with DoorDash. That's a much younger demographic. So maybe some of those shoppers aren't coming in as immediate, loyal shoppers, but maybe we can hook them the other way through DoorDash, where they can experience the quality and freshness and new products in a different avenue in the digital space.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yeah, it's a different consumer both in terms of what they're buying and oftentimes what their daypart consumption activities are. Right. They're going to skew a little bit later in the evening. I think there are some other platforms that have found, you know, they do an enormous amount of business for those that are open that late, you know, after 10pm at night, between 10 and 4. It's kind of crazy how we think about serving different communities with the solutions we have.

[Christina Preston]

And I think too it's, I think about, you know, growing up and even in my early years of my career, it's the drive time shop. It's you get off work at five o' clock and you're shopping at five thirty and you're home by six. Well now I'm putting a curbside order in at eight in the morning or I'm doing a delivery order at 8 in the morning. So the times that I'm shopping are much different. So it's most convenient for me. So you've got to adjust to find where's the key way to find loyalty in those customers because they're shopping different.

[Peter V. S Bond]

I think also your customers are relying much more now than in the past on you helping them decide what they're going to buy through recipes, through other offers and other inspirations that you're becoming much more integral to how they plan their family, their family meals.

[Christina Preston]

Oh 100 and we've seen that a lot where it's meal solutions. Yeah, it's not just a grocery store anymore. It's meal solutions and it's the digital shelf. It's the merchandising products together. It's how it's presented in a package. So it's easy to navigate.

[Peter V. S Bond]

I'm gonna ask you a little bit about The Omnichannel experience. But let me first start about. Obviously in digital, it is a very transforming space. It's quite innovative. How are you fostering a culture of continual learning? You've got so many things going on, AI driven chatbots and AI infused search activities. How do you foster within your team a culture of learning and adaptability with all of these changing capabilities?

[Christina Preston]

Yeah, that's a great question. First and foremost, we have a really, for us being a smaller regional brochure, we have a very tech forward leadership team and it trickles down, which is just really cool to experience in a corporate space. Right. However, what I encourage my team to do, and they do a great job of that, is we partner with our web dev team. We partner with the teams that are rolling out AI capabilities, sit down, have conversations with them. Right.

[Peter V. S Bond]

And not just can't be silent.

[Christina Preston]

No, not just like a standing one on one. Like if you go to a conference or see an article, like shoot it over to, you know, this guy and let's have a conversation and is this something that we could do? Another really great thing that we do on our team is we're not afraid to try something new and if it fails, it fails. And that's okay, you know, and so I think that encourages the whole team, myself included, that I can come to leadership and say, hey, like I've seen this, I want to try this, give it a go. And then if it totally fails, at.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Least we learned failures are steps on the path to success 100%.

[Christina Preston]

There's been things that we've tried that didn't pan out as well as we wanted. So then we learn. Yeah, we learn and grow. So yeah, always encouraging, like coming from curious. Also, we approach everything with a keen sense of curiosity, like, hey, is this something that we could do? And then leaning into some of our customer insights and surveys. And are customers talking about this? Have we seen this conversation starting elsewhere within our customer base? And if we have, it's okay. There could be a there, there.

[Peter V. S Bond]

You know, you referenced this when you mentioned technical capabilities of your app and your site. But I'd love to hear how you are formally leveraging customer feedback to inform your digital marketing decisions. Like what goes into helping you decide where you're going to place your best.

[Christina Preston]

Sure, a few different ways. So we've got a really great customer insights team and we run quarterly focus groups. Right. We've really upped that over the course of the last several years and they are very quick to say what works and what doesn't in the digital space. Right. And if they've seen some of our ads and if they think they're relevant or not to them, we ask those questions. Same thing with even within the app. Right. We've got surveys that go out within the. The app as well. And another thing that we recently started doing too is we run, you know, customer feedback surveys on the UX experience, walk through our app, try to clip coupons, add items to cart, and then we can hear vocally as they're doing these, you know, these actions, what, what pain points are they hitting along the way? We're all a little too close to it. You know, we live and breathe this, this life every single day. So it can be challenging to think like, is this just me that thinks this menu option should change or our customers really having a challenging time with it? And so we really listen to our customers.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yeah, that's critically important, the customer experience. You know, one of the things I find that regional and super regional grocers do very well is have a real heartbeat connection to what's going on with their community that big national retailers oftentimes overlook and are more focused on trying to be homogeneous in terms of their approach. And you can really deliver a very personalized experience.

[Christina Preston]

Yeah, it's interesting because especially in the St. Louis market, it does expand out. But, you know, we've got heavy concentration in St. Louis. And if you meet someone, even when I was here, I met someone from St. Louis who was sitting next to me in one of the sessions. And the first thing they say, what schnooks do you shop at?

[Peter V. S Bond]

I love that.

[Christina Preston]

And so we go, oh, I shop at Hampton Village or I shop at Richmond Center. Everybody has like their store. When I'm speaking just in the wild in my community, it's like, oh, let me tell you about my Snook store. And you know, Tess, who works at the front desk, who's amazing that we have that community feel. So the wonderful thing is that customers feel like they do have a voice because they feel invested because we're literally in their community.

[Peter V. S Bond]

I think next to probably a coffee shop that is probably the most frequent number of visits per week for, for an average consumer, the grocery store is a core component. They're in. You know, your most loyal shoppers are probably in your store three, four, maybe even five times a week, finding exactly what. What they want. That's great. I want to remind our audience today I have the pleasure speaking with Christina Preston. She's the director of digital marketing at Schnooks. So Christina what challenges have you faced in creating a seamless omnichannel experience? We talk about, it's not about the consumer just shopping online or just shopping in a store. There's a huge blend that's going on there.

[Christina Preston]

So.

[Peter V. S Bond]

How are you addressing making the omnichannel experience as seamless as possible for Snooks consumers?

[Christina Preston]

Yeah. So I think first and foremost it's going back to talking to the customers, having them walk through and experience a test, a dev environment first. Right. Does this make sense? Does the journey make sense? And if we're talking about like pain points or struggles that we have had, and I think honestly a lot of other retailers, smaller retailers, regional retailers have this struggle. It's just onboarding new tech and getting new data connections that have never existed before, that's probably been the most difficult thing. But at the same time, I think when it comes to connecting and making sure they have a good journey across the board, as we take ourselves out of thinking inside the box, we think outside the box and think about the journey ourselves. One of our values at Snooks is we're putting the customer first. Right. A customer first mindset. So we try to walk through that journey as many ways, A, B, C, D, 1, 2, 3, to ensure that the journey is right. And then I also think it's developing an optimized way to communicate to customers that again, speaks to them. Right. Preferences. If someone is more engaged with the app versus an email. Well, maybe we don't keep sending them emails and clogging their inbox, you know, like that's not how they want to be communicated.

[Peter V. S Bond]

The last thing you want them to do is opt out because then you've lost them.

[Christina Preston]

Right?

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yeah.

[Christina Preston]

Yep.

[Peter V. S Bond]

That makes a lot of sense. I think about the customer journey and I think about 90% of grocery purchases still occurring in a physical store. Sometimes we forget or we don't think enough about the fact that everybody in this day and age walks into a store with a very powerful device called their smartphone. And one of the things I loved about shopping online was I could learn so much about the product before I bought it. I could see how. I could see images of how it's used. I could understand food items that comply to the food lifestyle that I'm trying to live. How do you think about making sure that the in store experience from a digital perspective is as powerful as them sitting outside the store and making sure that there are. There's connectivity so that they. The last thing you want is them opening up somebody else's app while they're in your physical store? And they will, they will. I have many stories about this, but how do you think about making sure that they have everything they need so that, yeah, they're in your store but they're still going to use their phone and they're still going to start looking for recipes and ask questions about products and stuff like that?

[Christina Preston]

Yes. I think first and foremost geofencing is a beautiful thing. I think we've all seen it in our own personal lives as well. So geofencing, getting in front of the customer as soon as they walk in the door, door to know like, hey, we're here to help you. You can utilize the digital space and the in store experience all at the same time. We've got some great features within our app where that's item locators within the aisle. Right. We've also, across all of our stores now we've got digital shelf tags. So within the app, if you're in an aisle and you're like, oh my goodness, I'm looking for this one item that I only buy one or two times a year for special meal occasions and I don't know where it is, tap a little button on the app and it, it'll light up in aisle so you know where to find the item.

[Peter V. S Bond]

That is when I'm looking for that tiny little bottle of anchovy paste and I can't figure out where the heck it is, that's going to come in very handy.

[Christina Preston]

Yeah. And I think, and it also helps, honestly, some of our digitally adverse customers are the ones that are a little more apprehensive that, hey, this isn't just another app. This isn't just a way for us to stay in your pocket. It's literally, it's another like assistant to help you.

[Peter V. S Bond]

It's an assistant. It's there to help you. I love that. That's great. What emerging trends as you sit in your role and you say you're dealing with all these new tech vendors and capabilities that are kind of coming at you like a fire hose shooting the water out, what emerging trends in digital marketing do you think will have pretty significant impact on the grocery industry in general and schnooks in particular over, you know, the next couple of years?

[Christina Preston]

Yeah. Well, I think AI is a given. There's a lot of conversations happening. Right. I think for a long time it was SEO, SEO, SEO and now GEO or AIO or whatever the new acronym is for AI Generated content because it's an ad free space. Right. It is What Google used to be. And so that I think is going to be the next challenge for, for brands, for retailers, ensuring that your, yes, your SEO is in tip top shape, but now you've got to go a level deeper so that you appear in, you know, AI results now.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yeah, I think one of the reasons traditional search is really not effective for stock up trips in particular is because I've heard, I've heard traditional search referred to as spearfishing. You go to a search engine, you type in what you're looking for and it gives you exactly what you're looking for. But there's a reason we don't go shopping for Thanksgiving online, because the amount of effort it takes to spearfish for everything you need to put together for a, for a big holiday party or fourth of July or whatever can be challenging. Whereas when I walk into a physical store, everything's kind of all set up as a big fourth of July. There's a big bank. So I think that's, I think that's where AI and moving search from, being more vertically focused, being more horizontally focused is really going to help. And I think to some degree things like smart recipe solutions allow everything to be added to basket or you can opt out of certain items because you've already got them in your cupboard. There's so much we can do to make the shopping experience more attuned to the needs of consumers. And we're not spending all our time, we're using these smart capabilities to save us time so we can get back to what we want to do for the rest of our lives.

[Christina Preston]

Yeah, because we're busier now than we ever have been. So. And how do we make that most efficient, effective and convenient for our customer?

[Peter V. S Bond]

How? You made a reference to partnership, the internal improvement of other departments. But I'd love to know what role partnerships and collaborations, maybe externally as well play in expanding your digital reach to consumers. What are you doing to really amplify and get the word out with all the capabilities that you're bringing to bear?

[Christina Preston]

Yeah. So I think if I understand the question correctly, we've onboarded several really great vendors, really great third party partners that for example, we've got a really great partner we work with for SEO. Well, they also do now more than SEO. Right. You know, we had a conversation with them. We need to overhaul and really take a look at our SEO strategy. And then now as the trends are shifting, like I just said to, you know, generative AI and AI results, it's oh, these partners are already so far ahead we didn't even need a lot of the capabilities that they offered in the beginning, but now we've already have a great partnership with them, so we're able to kind of tag on all of the enhancements. Instead of onboarding new vendors, we, instead of having to do something in house, we can actually take our partnerships and these contracts we have and just keep adding on to the already really great relationships we have. We love our tech stack. Built it very well. Do I really need to add another vendor to my tech stack? Another partner? Not necessarily. All of our partners are growing and growing and growing. Let's grow with them.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yeah, I guess that gets, gets to the heart of the concern of do you buy or do you build? And you have to make judicious decisions with the resources that you have at your disposal. I think you understand that you can't build everything as much as you might like to have it, but then you don't get the benefit. I found, having worked at a retailer myself a decade ago, that the problem with building internally is that your IT department oftentimes thinks of it as a project and not a product that is to be maintained. And you have to think as a, as a digital product marketer, I need something that is going to be sustainable all the time. So that, that really comes down to if I build it myself, do I feel that we have internally the commitment to keep that, to support that? Not just, hey, I've, I've built it. Here you go. I'll see you later.

[Christina Preston]

Right? You have to keep building it.

[Peter V. S Bond]

You have to keep doing that. Because I walked into one company I was working on, they built an insights platform 10 years beforehand and they put nothing into it over 10 years. So it was kind of like I was, I, I was selling a tool that was like a 2004 Honda and everybody else was selling like a 2014 Toyota, you know, all the, all the bells and whistles of new cars. So, you know, you do have to think about that very seriously. It is as much as you want to control and want to customize, sometimes configuration with an outsourced partner can really extend that out. I'd love to know as you, as you think about what you've been doing the last couple of years in digital marketing, how do you see the role of digital marketing evolving in terms of what you'll be focused on doing in the near future.

[Christina Preston]

Yeah, it's hard because I feel like it's changing all of the time.

[Peter V. S Bond]

You don't know what you don't know.

[Christina Preston]

Right. And I feel like if you would have asked me that three years ago, I wouldn't have told you anything that we're working on, working on right now. But I think it is, I think some of the trends are moving towards a little less traditional, even digital marketing. It's a lot of like media, social, social commerce and like shopping versus just awareness play to an extent. Also something that I'm seeing right now and I think is going to move that way is a little less probably speaking out of both sides of my mouth now, but a little less salesy and more relational, speaking to a customer based on their emotions and what they believe.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Like that's at the heart of social commerce if you think about it. I mean the newest generation, few, if any of them get their news, get their information from the sources that you and I probably grew up on. And so figuring out how you integrate your messaging into how they absorb information dune scrolling on TikTok and Instagram and how do you break through the clutter there? And to your point, influencers, micro influencers, it's not the big famous basketball player. It's the person who gets their attention with some funny little or some intriguing little video that hits through there as they're scrolling through. And it's in. The bytes are measured in seconds. Like eight seconds is a luxury in this day and age. Whereas you and I grew up on 30 seconds.

[Christina Preston]

Yeah, 15 was really short.

[Peter V. S Bond]

15'S like that's too short now it's like we can't go over eight. We'll lose them. We'll lose them.

[Christina Preston]

And I think too, you know where. I don't think we've completely crossed over this line yet. But you know, you can take your traditional broadcast media and clip it down and I think that will slowly go away.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Well, if I think about what we do in this podcast, we record a long form conversation and then we clip it down. We post that on social media and hopefully it's, it's an intriguing enough, enough bit that will, will entice the, the viewer to click and listen to the full episode.

[Christina Preston]

Right. And, but I think that from a like traditional broadcast commercial. Right?

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yeah.

[Christina Preston]

If you clip that down, it still looks like a highly produced piece of content. And I think, I don't think we're, like I said, I don't think we're completely away from that yet. But I could see, see that trend slowly going the way of less produced.

[Peter V. S Bond]

It's amazing. Well, Christina, thank you for taking time out of the digital food and beverage summit to speak with me. I really appreciate it. Wishing you the best of luck on stage tomorrow. I've got two panels I'm moderating. I just have to ask questions. You have to answer them like you did for me. So I really appreciate it. Thank you very much.

[Christina Preston]

Glad to be here. Thanks.

[CPG Guys LLC]

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