You focus on building strategies that start with understanding the consumer. How has putting the consumer at the center of your decisions shaped your most successful digital initiatives?<br>Brands today operate across retail, pure-play eCommerce, and DTC channels. What are the biggest challenges in creating a seamless experience, and how do you approach solving them?<br>With your experience in performance marketing and advanced measurement, how do you blend data insights with creative strategy to drive meaningful growth?<br>From launching high-converting storefronts to testing new digital platforms, what have been the most important lessons in scaling digital initiatives effectively?<br>If viewers remember one key insight or piece of advice from this conversation, what would you want it to be?

Cutting Through the Noise: The Consumer-Centric Commerce Playbook (Matthew Zielinski, Chief Digital Officer at Citizens Pet Products) 

The CPG View

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** The CPG View

## Participants

- **Matt Zielinski** (Citizens Pet Products)

## Transcript

Welcome to this week's episode of the CPG View, the number one CPG information source for global omni-channel leaders. Matt, thank you so much for joining this week's episode of the CPG View. So glad to have you on. I know you've been a club member here for a few months now. I've seen you in club meetings. I'm so happy we were able to get you on to the podcast. Thank you so much. Before we get started, would you mind introducing yourself? Yeah, I'm Matt Zielinski. I'm working on other projects now. Excited to talk to you today. Awesome.

Hey, I wanted to ask you, you know, I've known each other for a bit now and I know you do focus on building strategies to start with the understanding of the consumer. We've actually talked about that a few times. Yeah. How does putting the consumer at the center of your decision help to shape some successful digital initiatives that you've worked on? Yeah, it's funny. So my background is I started out in brand management at Nestlé and I think that indoctrinated consumer centricity into my brain.

Every meeting was started with discussing the consumer. And it served me well as I went through channel strategy roles and I really found myself in the e-com and then found myself into digital advertising and then DTC and built this entire digital ecosystem around me.

The one thing that's remained consistent is consumer. It's the one trend that if you understand your consumer, you can understand that all the different components of e-com or digital and how they all interact. It's fine. Like looking back, we used to call it path to purchase. It's really no different. People talk about consumer journey maps and all these things and performance, but it's just path to purchase. It hasn't changed. Right. If you're old enough to remember path to purchase, it's the same thing. It's just in the digital age.

But it serves you everywhere, right? It serves you in how do you develop your content for Amazon, understanding the consumer and how they operate in Amazon and how it's different than Chewy or different than Target or different than TikTok or different than Facebook. And so you're keeping your brand consistent, but you're changing nuances to fit that channel and how the consumer shops.

It's as important as understanding that I had to explain to CEOs seven, eight years ago that there's eight out of 10 households that are private account managers, private, private account owners. And that's 76% of them were picking up their phone and researching your product as they're sitting at the shelf on Amazon, right? If you go into things, I think with just a performance mindset, that's only 50% of the pie.

There is a whole behavioral component and consumer centricity component that I think a lot of people miss. And not to go off on tangent, but I think COVID and the rise of DTC brands really was like a catalys...

Cutting Through the Noise: The Consumer-Centric Commerce Playbook (Matthew Zielinski, Chief Digital Officer at Citizens Pet Products)

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.

Cutting Through the Noise: The Consumer-Centric Commerce Playbook (Matthew Zielinski, Chief Digital Officer at Citizens Pet Products)

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.