In early 2015, Nestlé’s Purina pet food operation undertook an assessment of its digital footprint across Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMENA). The results revealed that Purina had more than 500 websites across 15 food brands. Site development and refreshes were costly in both financial and time resources. While the sites were driving traffic, only a handful were generating what was considered to be a satisfactory level of monthly traffic. Many master websites were being strongly adapted locally and this added to the complexity. Standardization was needed to reduce time and resources, ensuring good value. Standardization was, however, a minefield with creative control being one of the last bastions of local marketing autonomy. This case describes how the standardization challenge was met and handled resulting in a successful roll out.
