Nelson has been in the digital space for 20+ years and joined Publicis Sapient 13+ years ago. He currently serves as the Group Vice President and business lead for Transportation and Mobility focusing on leading client partnerships along with various business verticals across Canada and the US. Nelson is located in Toronto, Canada. 

One of the biggest trends we have seen emerge is companies trying to figure out how to sell remotely and create a stronger online presence. These discussions have been on the table for quite some time, however, COVID was a catalyst for companies to look a little deeper and accelerate their investment. If you go back a year, online retailing was not necessary, but due to changing restrictions, a market opportunity has opened up and companies are now rushing to capture it.

There has also been a shift in the engineering and service components of many of these businesses. From an engineering standpoint, we have seen a transformation in how they are operating from an agile perspective and retooling their existing capabilities. Service, on the other hand, provides its own unique set of challenges. We no longer encourage people to congregate in a single space and many businesses are focusing on low contact to contactless interactions. Dealers need to figure out how to engage with a customer so they come back to the dealership and not lose upselling opportunities.

One thing that stands out is that Salesforce’s proven commerce capabilities lead clients to success— in an industry traditionally set up for in-person engagement. Also heavily leveraged in the Salesforce toolkit is Marketing Cloud. Marketing Cloud, in combination with the launching of their Customer Data Platform, highlights a major opportunity in interacting with a customer on what feels like a 1:1 engagement. These capabilities allow for the opportunity to identify unique customers and their general behaviors that could be a unique solution for OEMS. The more that companies are able to create these unique and individual engagements, the more likely they will be able to continue to capture the upsell activities that were previously done on site.

We have been working with one of the top 10 largest auto makers in the world across multiple business lines and Geos, currently doing all of their site work. Within Publicis Groupe, we have had opportunities to work across teams to create strategies from media, to site, to social, to CRM. Social has been taking a larger place on the priorities list as events are on pause and other channels have revealed their own challenges.

This client recently invested in Marketing Cloud, where we are surrounding the Salesforce team in order to integrate this new investment back into their larger tech stack.

By leveraging Marketing Cloud that can integrate back into their CRM, they have an opportunity to connect with their customers in non-traditional spaces.

We know from experience that when we act as one team we can win as one team. There are opportunities that if we align with Salesforce early and often, we can provide the best support to that client and meet their goals. We also hope to look to our counterparts in other parts of the world to uncover use cases that they have solved for and bring them back to the US and other regions. When we are able to align with the capabilities Salesforce is best suited to support, we are able to create a winning strategy and success plan for the client.

One thing that stands out to me about the Salesforce Ohana was when I recently walked into the Salesforce Office in New York City. From the minute I arrived until the minute I left, I felt like a true valued partner. They keep it fun through the entire process and it feels like a community through and through.