Nespresso’s marketing and sustainability maven on her dual role

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Nespresso’s marketing and sustainability maven on her dual role

NEW YORK — Environmental, social and governance (ESG) programs are at an inflection point as brands come under pressure from activists to keep out of increasingly politicized areas. Nespresso USA, the Nestlé-owned coffee machine marketer, has stayed the course on making sustainability a core part of its positioning despite the brewing backlash. Last year, the company promoted brand and communications director Jessica Padula to the dual role of vice president of marketing and head of sustainability, a job with duties that can sometimes seem at odds.

“You want to force everything into a marketing campaign when, in fact, it really shouldn’t be. Part of my job is actually saying yes or no,” said Padula. “There are things we’re going to communicate and there are some that we’re just going to do and we don’t need to get credit for it right now.”

Nespresso, which has not been immune to criticisms over its use of disposable coffee pods, is placing renewed focus on materials in its marketing. A campaign launched during Climate Week NYC in September spotlights Nespresso’s decades-long history of using aluminum packaging, a material that is easier to recycle than plastic but can be energy intensive to produce. 

The company on Thursday also announced a partnership with Vital Proteins, another B Corp-certified brand, to launch a wellness pack that is being promoted with fitness expert Rad Lopez and Drew Barrymore, who will feature the product on her talk show. Marketing Dive sat down with Padula during Advertising Week New York, at Nespresso’s New York headquarters, to dig deeper on fostering loyalty and navigating the complexity of sustainability in 2024. 

The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

MARKETING DIVE: I couldn’t make your Advertising Week panel. Tell me about what you were discussing with the Female Quotient. 

JESSICA PADULA: The topic was about building a brand customers love, which for Nespresso is near and dear to our hearts. I was on a panel with Samsung and Snapchat, well-known consumer-facing brands. I think Nespresso and maybe coffee, as a category, is particularly unique because it’s an everyday consumption moment. If we’re doing it right, we’re being a part of every single day, which is maybe likened to your phone and unlike many other CPG or even FMCG categories. 

Nespresso marketer Jessica Padula wearing a black shirt

Nespresso VP of marketing and head of sustainability Jessica Padula

Permission granted by Nespresso USA

 

The other piece of Female Quotient that’s really important to us is they’re focused on empowerment and equity. That’s something that, as a purpose-driven brand, we want to over-index in and talk from that lens — not just about our case studies as a business. Consumers don’t always know [about that] and I think that’s a bit of a harder story for us to tell.

What do you view as important to maintaining loyalty that’s different from when you started?

I’ve been at Nespresso almost nine years, but it has changed significantly. One of the things that’s true — and this actually came up on the panel yesterday — is we’ve always been a direct-to-consumer brand and we’ve always done it in a way that’s high touch, similar to a luxury brand, even though we sell a commodity product. In the past five to 10 years, the capabilities you have with digital, CRM and sophisticated personalization continue to deliver on that luxury expectation. 

As a DTC brand, we have the benefit of having so much consumer data about what they’re buying, sometimes what they’re consuming if they have a Bluetooth-connected machine, we’re able to start to talk to them as real human beings, not just as a number in our database. We’ve never really sold through third-party retail and trade where there’s this intermediary between you and your end consumer. We’ve always had that one-to-one [relationship], which fundamentally changes our approach to business. 

What are some of your takeaways from Climate Week this year? Because the conversation around sustainability in marketing has changed quite a bit compared to a couple of years ago. 

It’s funny because it happened at Climate Week and at Adweek’s Brandweek, the same exact conversation around DEI and ESG and how it integrates with marketing strategy. My role continues to be pretty unique in that I lead both marketing and sustainability for the brand. When we talk about sustainability, it’s not like something we just did in the past five years. It’s fundamentally 30 years in the making. We’re working with not just ourselves to try to be sustainable, but a ton of nonprofit partners and NGOs who know how to do things better than we do. We are not farmers, but we need to support farms to make sure that we protect the land and can continue to grow and sell coffee in the future. They go so hand-in-hand, it’s not altruistic.

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