Mars, Incorporated: Honoring Tradition While Leading the Way in Commerce

JJ Schmidt, director of digital demand content at Mars, poses an important question for brands: How do you successfully recreate engaging in-store brand and product experiences for the digital shelf?

This was a driving question for Schmidt and his team, leading Mars to work with Salsify to develop a central source of truth for product content that could be leveraged across the organization to help drive efficiencies, ecommerce growth, and excellent digital shopping experiences.

"To be able to give our customers the best experience in the digital world was the most important thing, and that was the shift that enabled us to be successful. And that's why we work with Salsify,” Schmidt says.

Watch our latest case study with Mars to learn how they continue to honor tradition while leading the way in commerce.

Mars Drives Ecommerce Growth Globally

Mars, Incorporated was founded over a century ago and has evolved into a global, multi-billion-dollar organization behind some of the world's most well-loved confectionery, food, and pet care brands, including M&Ms, Skittles, Royal Canin, and others.

Its sheer size and global footprint created unique challenges for the brand.

"We knew we needed to make a shift to do a next-generation technology that was more focused on working within those challenges and being flexible enough to receive content in a more traditional way — but then translate that in a way for e-retailers," Schmidt says.

Before creating a central source of truth for product information, the Mars team struggled with disparate data storage.

Even something as straightforward as a new product launch required the team to look through five or six different documents to pull the correct information, notes Lucy Hutchinson, global content acceleration manager at Mars.

"From my point of view — trying to manage that process — I was just like: 'Where do you even start?'" Hutchinson says.

60,000 Hours in Time Saved

Making this process smooth, centralized, and adaptable was a primary focus for Mars, says Balakrishnan Subramanian, vice president of digital demand at Mars, especially as the organization and the industry continue to evolve.

Another pressing question for Subramanian: "How do we make sure that multiple markets, multiple geographies, can use the same platform?"

Mars worked with Salsify to gain efficiencies and a new way to scale its ecommerce program.

"The great thing about Salsify is it's as easy as a spreadsheet, but it's 10 times more powerful," Schmidt says. "We've estimated that we've saved about 60,000 hours worth of time spent managing content over the last year for the organization [with Salsify]."

"Solutions like Salsify are quite critical because they build the master foundations of our digital experience transformation," Subramanian says.

Read the complete case study to learn more about how Mars works with Salsify to build a central source of truth to increase ecommerce growth and streamline efficiency.