Nestlé’s portfolio touches millions of consumers daily, selling over $91.4 billion in products every year. But behind this heritage lies a modern data and AI transformation that has reshaped how marketing decisions are made. Through its Marketing Data Foundation and Analytics (MDFA) initiative, Nestlé has embedded AI-enabled decision-making into every stage of marketing planning and execution. For this achievement, it has been named Data-Driven and AI-Enabled Brand of the Year at the 2025 DataIQ Awards.
This award recognises organisations that fully integrate data and AI into their brand experience, decision-making, and operations. The judges praised Nestlé’s shift from a fragmented model to an intelligent ecosystem, where AI empowers marketers at every level.
“Nestlé has shown what it truly means to operationalise AI at scale. From global data foundations to self-serve econometrics, and a strong investment in data culture, the company has built an intelligent marketing system that learns, adapts, and drives measurable value across every brand and market.” – Judges’ comments.
Building the Intelligent Brand
At the core of Nestlé’s transformation is MDFA, a global initiative that rebuilt the company’s marketing data architecture from the ground up. By unifying 11,000 ad accounts across 21 data sources and implementing a consistent campaign ID system, Nestlé created a single, trusted view of marketing performance across 185 countries.
This foundation underpins every AI and analytics use case within the organisation, enabling advanced reporting, predictive modelling, and self-serve insight generation at scale.
AI-Powered Decision-Making
Nestlé’s generative BI dashboards exemplify how AI is being used to empower people, not replace them. With 3,300 global users, marketers can now query data in natural language—asking questions such as “show me my spend for Kit Kat over time” or “list all active campaigns”—and receive instant, tailored visualisations. This innovation has cut post-campaign analysis time by a factor of 14, transforming how teams learn and act on insights.
Meanwhile, Plan IQ, Nestlé’s self-serve marketing mix modelling tool (MMM), allows marketers to simulate and optimise campaigns in real time. By following AI-driven recommendations, pilots have achieved a 10% increase in marketing ROI and generated $2.5 billion in incremental revenue over three years.
Embedding a Data-Driven Culture
Nestlé has invested heavily in data literacy and accountability, with mandatory training for agencies and marketers and AI agents that maintain data hygiene automatically. The result: 96% of all data now meets the standards required for advanced analytics, up from just 20% in 2022.
This culture of shared responsibility ensures that every decision, from creative development to media planning, is grounded in consistent, trusted data.
Looking Ahead
Nestlé’s transformation shows what it means to be a truly data-driven and AI-enabled brand. By embedding intelligence into every layer of marketing—from foundation to forecast—it has created a model that is both scalable and sustainable. The result is a business that moves faster, learns continuously, and treats data not as a by-product, but as the engine of brand growth.
