Nature’s Path Marketing Evolution: First-Ever CMO Introduces AI, Analytics, Resilience

Data Science-Enabled Marketing to Build Growth

While the business was thriving with developed market share and strong shelf presence in Canada, where the company was founded (headquartered in Vancouver), Nature’s Path didn’t have as strong a marketing strategy for its U.S. segment. 

“Our market share isn't as strong. And if you look at other CPG food companies, for them, the U.S. is significantly larger than Canada. That’s not the case for us,” he tells CGT. “So there's definitely a huge opportunity for us to drive growth.”

The primary task at hand then was to grow household penetration, which has remained flat in the U.S.

“We're a 40-year-old company and the largest organic breakfast food company in North America,” says Joshi of a legacy that has helped establish organic standards since the year 2000, but hasn’t held traction with significant growth in the U.S. over the past six or seven years.

The company does have what it calls “dark-green” consumers: those who know and love the brand and purchase many of its products; however, to drive increased market penetration, Nature’s Path is primarily focused on growing a new subset of shoppers.

“The opportunity is to bring in what we are calling ‘light-green’ consumers: people who are open to organic but may not be buying us as much,” he says. “My role is to say, ‘How do we talk to the next generation of organic consumers and then bring them into our brand?’”

From a marketing standpoint, it means shifting the conversation and getting more targeted via an analytics-enabled approach. Joshi has led a science-focused transformation that builds in capabilities around marketing mix analytics to give employees more confidence in the decisions they make. 

On top of this, over the last year, Nature’s Path has been embedding artificial intelligence into the function with tools such as Microsoft’s Copilot, using it to automate tasks around innovation and new product development, including image generation for packaging and concept writing for campaigns. 

These upgrades have been helpful in keeping up with the evolution of consumer needs and behavior. For example, protein has now gained importance with consumers, says Joshi, and seedless oils are now in the spotlight. The business can better adjust in real-time to respond to trends by rethinking marketing messaging and SKU optimization. 

Building Brother Nature

The company’s biggest new campaign is titled “Brother Nature.” It seeks to make the brand more accessible, relatable and approachable. In essence, while “Mother Nature” grows things organically, “Brother Nature” makes things taste great for the brand.

“We're trying to come up with a unifying brand message, and to do that, we're leveraging the character to deliver the message around the brand being not only organic, but great tasting, fun and relatable.” 

The activation includes a pop-up event in New York with a digital push that includes online video streaming.

Battling External Disruption

Various external factors stand to delay growth efforts. Much like other CPGs, Nature’s Path has found itself in the crossfire of ongoing volatility in the market, including from the tariff war. 

“Since we operate in both Canada and the U.S., we’re having to figure out how we adjust for the cost increase and how we think about pricing," says Joshi. 

However, other policy-driven changes that stand to impact other CPGs, such as the shift away from artificial flavoring and colors, haven’t hit Nature’s Path. In fact, they've often been helpful to develop differentiated value. 

“Because we're organic, that area has actually helped us from a macro standpoint,” he adds.

Long-Term Modernization

While the business is managing these short-term challenges as they come up, a big focus is continuing to react to the changing marketplace with long-term strategy. As Nature’s Path brings in new consumers, it is expanding its portfolio from baby products all the way to adults to better meet their needs. 

For example, Que Pasa, a snack brand from Canada, is coming to the U.S., and the company has launched organic baby food brand Love Child Organics in the country. 

“It's a combination of making sure our marketing, our branding is working really well, and also expanding our portfolio and making sure that more people of different ages have access to organic products,” says Joshi.

To support this portfolio modernization, Nature’s Path is developing a packaging refresh that is due to launch in the next four to five months. 

“We'll be doing some consumer testing because it's fairly major. It's going to impact all of our packaging, but it is partly to elevate the role of the brand,” he says.

What the company is trying to do is maintain its brand uniqueness while bolstering it with strong communication and messaging and bringing personality through the new look. 

While big, established players in CPG, such as Kellanova and General Mills, are quickly evolving to meet consumer and market shifts, Joshi says he is most fascinated by the number of small players that are “moving really, really fast.”

“I didn't expect to be spending so much time looking at the smaller players versus the bigger players in terms of our competitive set,” he says. “But there's also the ability to take risks that in a big company you wouldn't be able to.”