Nestlé’s brand-building strategy and growth model: Overview
- Nestlé prioritises fewer, bigger brands to maximise marketing returns
- Paid media support fell from 350 brands to 150
- Global campaigns replace local initiatives, delivering scale, efficiency and reach
- Innovation focuses on scalable opportunities, including fast-growing cold coffee
- Nestlé aims to train 50,000 employees in brand building
Not only is Nestlé the world’s biggest CPG, it’s also home to some of food and beverage’s most powerful brands.
From Nescafé, Nesquik and Nespresso to SMA, Smarties, Shreddies, KitKat and Crunch, the company’s vast and highly successful portfolio gives it enormous influence over consumer tastes, industry trends and ingredient innovation.
So what’s the secret to the Swiss giant’s brand-building success?
According to Nestlé’s executive vice president, David Rennie, it’s not about being the biggest name, it’s about meeting the biggest needs.
Building a Nestlé brand
“Being known doesn’t get a brand chosen,” says Rennie. “Being the ‘must have’ choice does.”
Brand strength, he explains, is earned when superior products, innovation, value, visibility and communication all work together to create consumer preference in the marketplace, and, over time, growth.
What’s more, brand power is something the food and beverage giant actively works to protect.
“We have one of the strongest portfolios in the industry,” he says. “But in a world of more choice, more channels and faster-changing consumer expectations, that strength must be built every day.”
In fact, brand building is at the heart of Nestlé’s growth strategy as the business becomes more selective about where it invests, prioritising its biggest commercial opportunities while raising the standard of both innovation and execution.
Alongside this, it’s investing in capabilities designed to improve performance across every consumer touchpoint, from product development and marketing to retail and e-commerce.
The goal? To create a more agile organisation capable of delivering sustainable growth in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
Marketing priorities
Nestlé’s becoming far more selective about how it allocates its marketing budget.
It’s reduced the number of brands receiving paid media support from 350 in 2023 to 150 in 2026, with almost all investment directed towards its top 100.
The thinking behind this being that concentrating spend on the biggest growth opportunities will generate greater returns than dispersing investment across a broader portfolio.
This approach is also changing how Nestlé executes marketing campaigns.
Rather than running multiple local initiatives, the business is increasingly building globally scalable platforms that can be activated across markets for longer periods.
“The shift from independently run local partnerships to a single global platform, such as our partnership with NBA for Milo, Nescau and Nesquik, our largest international brand collaboration to date, shows how that discipline plays out at the brand level, giving one campaign global reach rather than fragmenting spend market by market,” says Rennie.
Though he stresses that a more disciplined approach does not come at the expense of agility and flexibility.
While long-term brand-building remains the priority, the company continues to capitalise on unexpected cultural moments when opportunities arise.
Rennie pointed to the widely publicised theft of 12 tonnes of KitKat bars ahead of Easter, which the company transformed into a marketing opportunity through its playful “Stolen KitKat” tracker. The campaign generated substantial social media engagement and earned media coverage, demonstrating how fast-moving, reactive marketing can complement larger global brand strategies and help maintain relevance with consumers.
Beyond these attention-grabbing campaigns, visibility remains a core priority for the business. As shopping habits evolve, Nestlé is increasingly focused on ensuring its brands stand out wherever consumers choose to browse and buy, whether that’s in a physical store or online.
The importance of innovation
Nestlé’s also applying the “fewer, bigger” philosophy to its innovation strategy, concentrating resources behind platforms where it sees the greatest potential for growth.
One category benefiting from this is cold coffee, which Nestlé views as a significant long-term opportunity.
Rather than pursuing incremental line extensions across multiple brands, it’s focusing investment on formats and occasions that align with consumer needs.
“By combining science, technology and consumer insights, we are creating new formats such as coffee concentrates under Nescafé and Starbucks to meet evolving habits and occasions,” explains Rennie.
The move reflects the multinational’s efforts to identify high-potential consumption trends and scale them globally through its largest brands.
Coffee concentrates, for example, tap into demand for convenience, customisation and at-home café-style experiences, creating new occasions for consumption while expanding the reach of established brands.
The business is also seeking to amplify the impact of its innovation through high-profile, creative marketing campaigns, using globally recognised sports teams, celebrities and content creators to extend brand relevance and reach.
Examples include KitKat x Formula 1, Purina Pro Plan x ATP Tour and Nescafé Espresso Concentrate x Zach King.
Investing in talent
Nestlé believes stronger brands are built by stronger teams and, as a result, it’s making significant investments in people and technologies.
“Strengthening our brand-building capabilities means investing in both our people and the tools they need to succeed,” he explains.
To support this, the industry major has rolled out what Rennie describes as “a powerful new suite of solutions” spanning advanced analytics, agentic AI and a global network of content studios.
These tools, Rennie says, are designed to “accelerate insight, creativity and campaign execution,” helping teams respond faster to changing consumer preferences while delivering more effective campaigns at scale. Though he stresses technology alone is not enough.
As a result, Nestlé’s investing heavily in workforce development to ensure employees can make the most of these new capabilities.
An extensive upskilling programme is already underway, aimed at embedding brand-building expertise across the organisation and equipping teams with the skills needed for the next era of growth. And, by the end of 2026, it expects 50,000 employees to have completed brand-building training.
Brand Building the Nestlé Way
Underpinning everything is what the company calls Brand Building the Nestlé Way (BBNW), an end-to-end framework designed to help teams create stronger brands, improve execution and accelerate growth.
Rather than functioning solely as a marketing model, BBNW is intended to guide decision-making across the organisation, from product innovation and pricing to communication and retail execution.
At the centre of the framework are what Nestlé calls the ‘4Us’, a set of principles designed to ensure brands consistently meet consumer expectations while building competitive advantage over time:
- Unrivalled superiority: Products must win on taste, quality and nutrition, and on pack design and functionality
- Unbeatable value: Earning shoppers’ everyday preference through best-value experiences
- Unmissable visibility: Showing up powerfully wherever consumers shop, in-store or online
- Unforgettable communication: Creating campaigns with winning ideas that cut through culture.
Together, these principles underpin Nestlé’s broader growth playbook. Whether investing in fewer, bigger brands, developing scalable innovation platforms, embracing AI-powered tools or training thousands of employees in brand building, the company is pursuing a common objective – creating brands that consumers actively choose time and time again.
