Danone’s Arthur Sylvestre on Media Digital Strategy and the Future of Grocery | Groceryshop 2026

Hello, everyone.

This is omnitalk retail.

I am Ben Miller, host of grocertalk, and I'm coming to you live from Las Vegas from the Fusion podcast studio booth 913 at grocery shop.

Joining me now is Arthur Sylvester, VP media and digital at Danone North America.

Arthur, welcome to omnitalk.

Thank you, Ben.

Thank you for having me.

And nice to see you today in beautiful Las Vegas.

The irony is already high.

Okay, let's do this.

Danone's U.S. digital performance.

You're in a category that's got a level of tailwind going.

Digital is going really well.

So what are you seeing?

What behaviors are you seeing in your category?

What's the drivers?

It's a very interesting time for our categories.

I mean, you said it.

We're in very, very dynamic categories.

Selling, of course, healthy food to as many people as possible.

And the health categories are growing a lot right now.

You're seeing a lot of consumers being more and more interested in those categories.

And because they are more interested in those categories, they do more research online.

You're going to have people looking for the benefits of protein, the benefits of probiotics, and naturally, it drives a lot of traffic to the online environment.

And with traffic comes conversion and comes growth.

We're seeing a significant increase in E commerce sales, of course, and for us, it's a great opportunity to grow the business in a way that's relevant for us, for the customers and for the consumers.

Okay, let's start digging into that because you just hit on a number of the really big trends, one of which is discoverability.

So more people are wicked trends are trying to find the products in the categories that you're doing as a cpg.

What are you doing to make your products more discoverable in that environment?

It's a great question.

I don't have all of the answers, but I think, you know, we should not be reinventing the wheel.

And we have to get the fundamentals right.

People will be looking for product attributes, images, understand the occasions, understand the benefits.

And you know, as a digital manager for Danone, this is my job to make sure that the structure, the content, the catalog, everything is perfectly accurate, perfectly available, and ultimately shows up in the right way in the online environment so you can think about attributes, benefits, ingredients.

That's the fundamentals that you need to get right and that you need to get perfect across the entire ecosystem.

And then once the house is clean, you can start putting furniture with advertising, omnichannel strategy, awareness strategies, and ultimately try and engage the consumers.

Where they are.

Okay.

A lot of what you talked about was on site and that's a lot of the foundations.

Talk to me about off site.

What do you need to be doing to be discovered away from your core assets these days?

I think you know, it's marketing in an online environment.

So if you want to be discovered online, you have to be super clear about who your consumer is, where does he or she shop, what does he or she is interested in and build the consumer journey and brand activation plan according to those insights.

And so if I'm trying to sell you Ben high protein Greek yogurt, I need to understand what type of tool you use to research, where do you spend time online, what type of content you're going to watch, what's interesting, interesting for you.

And I'm going to build, we're going to build with the agency partners, with the customers, the right digital ecosystems to reach you, be interesting for you and at the end of the day try and convince you that you absolutely need to try that new high protein Greek yogurt.

Okay, okay.

Let's change tact and let's talk a little bit about channel dynamics and sort of for your customer landscape.

Where are you seeing growth, where you seeing change?

What's interesting for you in terms of your distribution?

I think what's interesting and you know you are very familiar with the space and I'm sure the audience of the podcast as well, but you're seeing online acceleration across the board.

So big retailers are big online, they have great strategies to keep growing online in the online space.

And so you're seeing online acceleration across the board.

So for us traditional CPG companies selling mostly refrigerated product, you see a lot of traffic coming from Walmart, Kroger, Target, Amazon, all of the usual suspects.

We have to build the right plans with them.

And they are part of the ecosystem and they will remain a very, very important part of the ecosystem.

Now you're seeing very, very interesting pockets of growth across the online environment with specific usages and specific insights.

Think about Instacart, Doordash.

Those partners did not exist 15 years ago, 20 years ago, but today they play a very, very big role in the consumer journeys and in the role they play for us and for the brand.

So you're seeing growth across the board and you're seeing pockets of growth with specific partners that again play a specific role for the consumers.

Okay.

And look, you look after digital and media, so how does that impact your go to market plans?

I mean it sounds like a lot of fragmentation but what do you need to do differently?

I think again, it's a great question.

The answer is you have to do basic marketing in an online environment.

So it always goes back to the consumer.

What does the consumer do?

What is the consumer looking for?

And we build the plan with digital mindset from the get go.

So it used to be very linear in the past.

You know, the consumer journeys in the past were much more straightforward.

Now it's fragmented, as you say.

But in reality, it's still up to us.

It's still up to us as companies to identify the key places where we can show up with relevance and reach the consumers in this online environment.

So to answer your question without being so complicated, I think yes, there is a lot more complexity, but it's our job as marketers to keep it simple and select the right channels and the right tactics to reach the consumers.

Okay, changing tact impact of GLP1s.

You are what's considered a tailwind category.

What have you seen how that has impacted how your products are searched and used?

I think it has a big impact.

You know, GLP1 on the, on the US market dynamics.

You're seeing the rise of high protein, low fat offers that are, we know, the most important products to consume if you're on a GLP1 diet.

And so for us it's been positive.

And like you say, I think it's a big tailwind for the protein space at large.

I think you're seeing a lot of evolution in terms of what people search for.

Okay, give me some examples.

Well, you're going to have a ton of people going to ChatGPT, Claude Gemini asking for the best GLP1 diet.

And so the type of question they ask to those search engines and search bar is going from, you know, very straightforward question like what is the best yogurt or what is the best way to get protein?

To more elaborated type of questions.

How can you help me build a GLP1 diet?

What should I do in order to feel better?

And so for us and for companies in our categories, it's a big opportunity to again understand the consumer needs, understand what type of problem we can solve with our products and then build the right ecosystem of communication, innovation, partnership in order to help the consumer in that, in that important journey for them.

One last thing before we get you out of here.

Busy trade show.

We've been here for three days.

Lots of retail media activations, lots of announcements from retail media partners networks.

Is there anything that's really caught your eye?

Anything new that's Excited you in the world of retail media this week?

I think what's.

What's very, very exciting for me is the world keeps evolving at a very, very high pace.

And we've heard a few friends saying that the only constant right now is insanely rapid change.

However, I think it's getting together in terms of the right strategies that we need to have in partnership with the customers.

And everything is getting more complex.

But I think the vision we have for the space and how we should do things is getting more simple.

So we are past the wave of complexity.

And I think right now it's getting clearer and clearer.

At least for us, it's getting clearer what we need to do in order to be relevant and in order to win.

So, yeah, give us an example of that.

That's really interesting, Alpha.

I think, you know, we're at this trade show and right now we can see, like, lots of suppliers, lots of customers, lots of brands.

Everything doesn't have to be complex.

And, you know, at some point in the past, it was like everybody had to try and catch the last shiny object and the last AI tool or the last tech that's available.

But right now it's getting simpler in terms of, okay, we have to fix the fundamentals.

The fundamentals is I need a very clean AI readable digital shelf.

I need a good activation strategy.

I need the right partners.

And so as companies, I think we realize that if we do those fundamentals right, we're going to get to a good place and we're going to get to be winners in the marketplace.

And again, I love seeing all of those innovations, all of those companies, but I realized over the past couple years, okay, what does Danone needs to win?

And I'm very clear now that, you know, what we need for Danone is to be trusted by machines and desired by humans.

Love that.

To be trusted by machines.

There are two, three things we need to do right, and that's it.

To be desired by humans, there are two, three things we need to do right, and that's it.

And we have to focus on those things without, you know, getting lost in the complexity of what's available out there.

I think that's a perfect note to end on.

Arthur, thank you for joining us.

Thank you for sharing that.

And thank you to the teams at Fusion and Grocery Shop for making all of our coverage of this conference possible.

Stay tuned for more.

Thank you so much, Ben.

Thanks.