The Consumer Analyst Group of New York (CAGNY) Conference, which took place from February 16-20 in Orlando, hosted leaders from brands like PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz, and Unilever, spoke about their successes in the past year and their strategies for the next.
Here are some of the themes and topics that came up again and again during the event.
Social-first
One of the clearest themes at this year’s CAGNY conference was the rise of a ‘social-first’ marketing model. Clorox shared details of its ‘high-efficiency content hub’, which now acts as its primary marketing engine, enabling real-time, digital-led personalisation. E.l.f. Beauty also emphasised the importance of operating natively within the social ecosystem.
But the main evangelist for the model was Unilever CEO Fernando Fernandez. Since taking the top job, he has been explicit about his ambition to increase social media spend from 30% to 50%. Fernandez barely touched on the topic during last week’s earnings call, which led some to wonder whether his enthusiasm had cooled. But his appearance at CAGNY quickly dispelled that notion.
‘I’m absolutely convinced that the times of big corporate big brand messages are gone,’ he said, lending weight to the idea that brands today must be built with ‘lots of littles’. ‘You need an army of people talking for your brands today, and you need your brands to keep contemporary. And this is really, really tough with the kind of media fragmentation that we are seeing.’
Fernandez shared fresh detail on Unilever’s social-first demand model. The company now works with 180,000 content creators in its Beauty & Wellbeing division, and nearly 300,000 across the whole group. He said the adoption of AI has enabled creators to double posting frequency, dramatically increasing both volume and speed.
‘The time of lazy marketing, a couple of ads a year for a couple of innovations are gone’, he said. ‘Marketing today is hard work, and we are ensuring that in every single corner of Unilever, we are adopting this model at scale — variety of creators, volume of content, velocity of posting.’
President of Unilever USA Herrish Patel outlined how this plays out on one of its flagship brands, Dove. Content volume has tripled over the past two years, as has the number of creators it works with in the US. The ‘future of marketing is many to many, community to community,’ Patel said.
‘There’s a new marketing model… we seed, we ignite and we scale. We seed through Reddit and create a bit of fandom. We then ignite on TikTok and then we scale by owning physical and digital availability.’
AI shopping and discovery
Talk was inevitably also dominated by AI — specifically, agentic shopping and discovery, and how widespread use will impact the consumer journey.
Using AI for personalisation was a common thread, with speakers for General Mills, McCormick, and E.l.f. all referencing the development of ‘digital personas’ or AI personalisation tools.
‘AI has been transformational,’ said Colgate chairman, president, and CEO Noel Wallace. He acknowledged that brands have been talking about the power of AI for ‘a couple of years’ now, but insisted that the use of Agentic for strategy and AI for development was ‘at the forefront’ of technology.
General Mills chairman and CEO Jeff Harmening said: ‘AI is reshaping product discovery through agentic commerce’. McCormick’s president and chief executive, Brendan Foley, added that the company is also using AI agents to ‘refine’ personalisation and targeting, allowing it to reach more consumers faster. Celsius, too, announced that it is using AI to scale up field execution and ‘ensuring reps arrive with the right message’ for different locations.
Hyper-localisation
Another recurring theme across the four-day conference was hyper-localisation — the idea that advances in data and generative AI now allow brands to combine global scale with highly specific targeting.
Coca-Cola COO and CEO-elect Henrique Braun laid out this shift in detail. The company, he said, can now engage consumers at a global level ‘without losing the opportunity to have more hyper-personalised engagement with the consumers at the local level.’
He used the upcoming World Cup to illustrate the change. Before the campaign would have been ‘plug-in-and-play’ across different countries, whereas now the ad can be personalised based on each market. He used an example of the differences between marketing football in New York and Houston and how this new model allows a much more agile campaign. ‘In New York, it’s gonna be more about the European influence… and in Houston, more with the Latin American influence.’
Others echoed the theme. General Mills has shifted to an ‘audience-first’ model, using data and AI to determine which brands and messages reach which households, driving a 40% improvement in incremental household acquisition costs. Kraft Heinz described how social analytics in China revealed a pain point in making tomato scrambled eggs, enabling Heinz to position ketchup as a reliable alternative ingredient.
GLP-1
Of course, it’s impossible to look at current trends without acknowledging the biggest one in food and health companies’ playbook, which is the rise of GLP-1 and the corresponding growth in protein and fibre products.
Kerry Foods shared a statistic that 27% of people are currently limiting ingredients that are believed to be bad for them, and the company has invested in boosting the protein content of health and exercise beverages by as much as 50% in response.
‘We expect GLP-1 and other anti-obesity medications to have a lasting influence on the food and nutrition landscape,’ explained Harmening during General Mills’ talk. He predicted that consumers would drift towards smaller portions of ‘more nutrient-dense protein and fibre-forward’ food.
Utz, Hormel, and Kerry all highlighted new, protein-rich lines, and soft drinks companies like Vita Coco and PepsiCo highlighted the success of soft drink options for health-conscious consumers.
According to PepsiCo chairman and CEO Ramon Laguarta, ‘functionality’ remains a priority for consumers when buying food and drinks, with reduced sodium and low sugar remaining key drivers for shoppers as well as foods created with ‘alternative cooking oils’ like olive and avocado oil.
It’s not just human food, though. According to Harmening, even pet food is being swept up in the health trends, with ‘pet parents’ seeking human-quality food for cats and dogs they perceive as members of the family.