Coca-Cola delivers a refreshing D2C approach across Mexico to win Experience Maker of the Year

   

“Keep connected, keep energized, and keep human.” – Enrique Negrete, direct to consumer services LATAM senior director, Coca-Cola

During a time when stay-at-home orders and lockdown restrictions were widespread, Coca-Cola launched a direct-to-consumer (D2C) digital experience that helped meet the rising demand for water and other beverages across Mexico.

This program, Coca-Cola en tu Hogar (“Coca-Cola in Your Home”), was revitalized as a fast-growing eCommerce business that provides a best-in-class customer experience.

Learn his mantras for success and details of this digital transformation in the conversation that follows with Enrique Negrete, direct to consumer services LATAM senior director at Coca-Cola and winner of the 2021 Experience Maker of the Year award for the Americas.

A bold challenge to the status quo

“Sometimes, big companies like Coca-Cola are used to going the way we’ve been over the last 100 years. Challenging the status quo for me is a very important ingredient for success.”

– Enrique Negrete

Coca-Cola en tu Hogar (CCETH) offered customers in Mexico at-home delivery with no minimum purchase amount, but the team needed to refresh its cumbersome, 10-year-old processes for order taking and fulfillment. The legacy program relied on call center and walk-up orders, lacking precise order capture or centralized, organized customer data for marketing and retention.

Along with their partners at Bounteous, Negrete’s team digitally transformed the D2C experience while streamlining the order management system with Adobe Experience Platform and Adobe Commerce. Future enhancements are planned to leverage Adobe Target and Adobe Analytics.

Negrete explained his mantra for embracing changes of this magnitude: “I’m pushing for progress, not perfection. For me, the progress is more important than perfection.”

Bolstering social good with consumer analytics

Tap water is not safe to drink in most Latin America (LATAM) countries, so one of Coca-Cola’s goals was to ensure citizens in Mexico have an easy and efficient way to purchase bottled drinking water on a regular basis.

Thanks to greater consumer insights from Adobe Commerce, the team was able to identify a number of consumers located within “unserviceable” zones. Rather than turn away buyers, the team saw an opportunity to make both operational and technical shifts, adding enhancements to their geofencing module that enabled Coca-Cola to service customers in more rural areas.

“Whatever you do has to be linked to your purpose,” said Negrete.

Transitioning Coca-Cola en tu Hogar to a digital experience positioned Coca-Cola and its brands such as Ciel water and Santa Clara milk as key players during a critical time when customers were required to shelter-in-place during the pandemic.

A moonshot within reach

Under Negrete’s leadership, Coca-Cola Mexico not only made weekly supplies of drinking water and other beverages easier and more accessible for local communities, CCETH has become a fast-growing online business with an increase in average order value of 18 percent, triple digit growth in overall website traffic, and a 45 percent increase in new accounts within just 12 months.

This D2C website has also set new standards internally for the brand, becoming the global platform that Coca-Cola will replicate across other major cities in LATAM.

Despite these achievements, Negrete’s focus remains on the people most impacted by his digital experience strategy – the customer.

“This is my moonshot,” he said, “I want to be relevant in a personalized way for each consumer in Latin America.”

Coca-Cola was nominated by their solutions partner Bounteous. Learn more about the Adobe Experience Maker Awards.