Lesley Everett

Is Nespresso the Apple of the coffee? What can we learn from Nespresso?

Setting the scene. Nespresso, part of the Nestlé Global Group based in Switzerland, is by far my favourite coffee brand. I enjoy four of them every day.

Like many industries, the coffee industry has changed over the last years. Single-cup coffee brewing is on the rise, and Nestlé holds almost 30% of the global brewing market systems. Nespresso was founded in 1987, is present in more than sixty-four countries, employs 12,000 people, has annual revenue of four billion dollars, more than 450 boutiques in premier locations, five million Facebook fans, and 340,000 unique online customers every day. Since 2012 they sold close to 28 billion aluminum capsules.

What happened? Nespresso transformed coffee from a simple product to a sophisticated coffee drinking experience by enabling personalised and engaging connections, blending the physical with the digital to act as one. The company wants to deliver the perfect coffee experience, while you take your time to enjoy the moment. It has a very clear why: ‘Coffee is at the heart of all we do. Yet consumer pleasure is why we do it.’ And through this shaping the global coffee culture.

Nespresso surrounded the coffee brand with machines, capsules, accessories, online/ offline shops, smart distribution, great design, premium boutiques and a Nespresso Club. When you order capsules, they are delivered within two days to your front door. The company leverages all its digital channels to release specific content, reinforcing its brand perfectly. Hiring George Clooney as high profile brand ambassador for its commercial, ‘Nespresso, what else?’, filled with subtle humour was a master move. 

Nespresso has created a single efficient view of its customers across all channels and systems, leveraging the power of the Cloud with its modern customer engagement platform. It handles the complete customer journey, connecting all its internal data with all its external data across every touch. According to the Digitalist Magazine, ‘It encompasses customers who engage via the website, via mobile, at an airport vending machine, or those who plan to meet George Clooney in a flagship store’. And it is into big data, personalising and enabling real insights about its customer behaviour and intentions. They managed to create an emotional connection with their customers and everyone can now serve a premium coffee at home. They are the Apple of the coffee.

They are working hard, as part of their sustainability efforts, on limiting the impact of its aluminum capsules through recycling, to source aluminum in a responsible way and to enable fair trade.

And they state ‘Our people represent the heart and soul of our success story’ and this powered by more than 90 different nationalities. They foster values like Integrity, honesty, respect, fair dealing and full compliance with the law.

Outcomes. Nespresso was able to win new customers, increase sales, understand its customers in-depth, deliver a personalised customer journey and shorten innovation cycles to less than four weeks. And while the competition is not standing still, Nespresso continues to grow and break new frontiers on what an end-to-end coffee experience means. It is balancing between healthy and mature, a Dualarity hero with the customer at its heart and digital as its oxygen.

Moving forward. They had an average 30% growth since 2000 but some recent estimates show that this might be slowing down. The competition in coffee pods – Starbucks, Senseo or Nestlé’s cheaper internal brand Dolce Gusto – has grown since Nestlé introduced Nespresso in 1986 so they will need to re-invent themselves and continue to innovate to stay ahead and avoid any complacency.

A new branding angle?

Creating an authentic personality to your corporate brand may not be something that has been top priority in your organisation to date. However, in today’s highly competitive and trust-seeking business world, it is perhaps quite simply your biggest differentiator.

Your company brand is created and projected most powerfully by your people and the experience your clients and customers have as a result of an interaction. This is the brand they talk about and it therefore starts to become the major brand perception that is shared on social media and goes global instantly. Of course this can be both positive and negative and you could be, without knowing it, severely diluting your corporate brand and wasting brand investment.

On the positive side, if you can provide your employees with a simple tool that very effectively helps them to progress their careers, be heard and be visible, and feel valued and respected, then you could very well effect an internal culture that truly and authentically supports your corporate values. Personal branding could be the answer to aligning your people behaviours with corporate messages and provide a double business benefit for brand investment and people development.

In addition, with the right personal branding tools, global leaders are getting on platforms that they would never have traditionally been invited onto, because of their powerful personal brands and proven expertise in a specialist field, providing the perfect authentic PR for your company.

With an ever-increasing Millennial client and employee base in particular, having an ‘advert’ for your company from the human brand within is crucial. Your leaders are the best PR you could have for creating a trusted and human element to your corporate brand.

In order to get ahead of the competition, you need to get onto this new wave of branding that is ‘leader visibility’ and enable your managers and leaders to create their personal brand in a way that truly interprets and personifies your corporate brand on the external stage.

I always say to my clients that “world class means having a strong personality that is known over and above your individual products and services”. Your people provide this personality.

Lesley Everett
Speaker and Author
Creator of Walking TALL

Interview with Lesley Everett

What is the feeling you would like people to take away?

Motivated to be who they really are as an authentic brand, knowing they have the tools and the positivity to put actions in place to make this happen.

How do you prepare for speaking engagements?

It is important to me to speak directly with the meeting planner or event organizer so I can fully understand the objectives for the event from their point of view. Often by speaking voice to voice, or face to face if possible, I can uncover a hidden desire that might make all the difference to the content. I will then spend some time understanding the client’s culture and values so that this part of my presentation is fully congruent with their way of thinking and they can relate to it.

Once the preparation work has been put in I can feel fully confident and excited about the delivery and it hitting the mark.

In terms of my personal preparation before getting on stage, having spent sometime in the audience and meeting the client, I like to spend a few minutes on my own, engaging my head and going over the first few words and sentences. When this is done, then I’m ready….

What do you gain personally from being a public speaker?

I love the sense that the years of experience of working in my field of personal branding, I can now share in it’s richest form to many people and hopefully provide the motivation for them to make a difference to their confidence, careers, businesses and lives in general.

I can’t deny either, that I love to get up on a stage or integrate with an audience and enjoy! Something most of my friends and family outside the speaking world just cannot comprehend!

How much does humor factor into your keynotes and other speaking engagements?

I believe humour is highly important for the audience to fully engage with me and my content. My humour will come in the form of experiences and hopefully things people can relate to easily and will reinforce a point I want to make.

Can you explain the importance of personal branding?

Others will give you a brand anyway, so why not take control and make sure yours is defined in the way you want it to be! Our good brand reputation is everything in business and our careers today – without it we will struggle to stand out, be noticed and memorable. However it is important we are authentic – this is what personal branding is all about, not just having a great image.

How are your keynote presentations unique?

Walking TALL is the methodology I have personally developed, and I use personal stories and anecdotes to illustrate points. I will also build in something that the client or the audience can familiarise with, either the location, personalities in the business or perhaps something unique that I have experienced with their brand.

Do you have any unique memorable moments in your speaking career?

The first time I stood out in front of a 2000 strong audience at an event that I had been dreaming of speaking at for years was an incredible feeling of achievement and pride!

Not quite so positively, I remember falling off the stage (luckily at the end of a presentation) ending up in a heap on the floor with a broken stiletto heel! Then having to hobble through the 350 strong audience in the hotel foyer having just spoken to them about the importance of image!  Now that has become a story of course….

I always love it when people take the time to email me with their success stories after having heard me speak – that’s always the thing that makes me smile the most.

Could you provide some tips for improving your personal brand?

That is a whole presentation or workshop of course! However my 5 top tips would be:

• Be yourself – discover what it is you want to be ‘famous’ for, what legacy you’d like and what you bring to the table.
• Write your own brand statement that sums you up in a few sentences. If you’re clear about who you are then you can more easily reinforce this when you communicate and ’sell’ yourself
• Perceptions are your brand – get feedback from others on the perceptions they have of you – ask them for 3 words only and see how these compare with your view of yourself.
• Consider the packaging of your brand – your appearance, the way you verbally and non-verbally communicate, how you present, and even the people who represent you. These are all elements of your brand and can reinforce messages or weaken and dilute them.
• Be consistent – being clear about who you really are will help you to be consistent with the way you communicate every time. If you are one person one day, and another the next, you will send out confusing messages about your brand and others will not view you as authentic and genuine. Could be dangerous in business today.