Widen Provides Foundational Support for Sargento's Connected Commerce Experience

Challenges

With over 2,000 employees and more than $1 billion in annual net sales, Sargento is one of the country's largest retail cheese companies. Their marketing team produces an enormous amount of content to ensure their product packaging is current and to support their e-commerce business.

A Widen customer since 2016, Sargento’s digital asset management (DAM) system has long been the central source of truth for their final brand, marketing, and product content — and a key tool in their marketing technology (martech) stack.

But with the pandemic-induced shift to online shopping, Sargento had to adjust the size and shape of their martech landscape. Their current stack, pictured above, is a winning entry in the 2022 Stackie Awards.* 

Cami Schenck, Director of Integrated Marketing Communications at Sargento, shared, “The explosion of growth within online grocery has really required us to add new technologies and new integrations.” 

Their customer experience now spans an ever-increasing number of touch points — and their product content needs to be consistent and accurate across them all. 

This includes digital shelves in online marketplaces like Walmart and Amazon, as well as social channels — such as social feeds like Pinterest, and video streamlining sites like YouTube — where customers can add their product to a shopping cart at their preferred retailer with just one click. 

Throughout this rapid change, Widen DAM has played a foundational role in their technology ecosystem. It allows Sargento to scale a unified brand experience across their digital business — now, and for many years to come.

Objectives

Centralized content distribution
With a single source of truth for all approved assets

Create trustworthy digital experiences
By maintaining accuracy and consistency

Plan for growth
By leveraging tightly-integrated technology

Solution

Integration with Salsify
The success of Sargento’s connected commerce experience hinges on seamless integrations between platforms. And the integration between Widen and Salsify — Sargento’s product information management (PIM) system — is particularly critical because it allows them to control the distribution of brand and product content across their e-commerce business.

When assets in the DAM system are marked as complete, they are automatically pushed to Salsify, eliminating the need to manually download files from one system and upload them to another. This is especially valuable in expediting their packaging content workflows.

From there, assets from Widen are enriched with other content, such as nutritional information, dimensions, and marketing copy. And then, thanks to integrations between Salsify and additional platforms — including Syndigo and Brand Bank — this content is syndicated across a multitude of digital destinations.

With this strategic set of connected tools, Sargento extends the approved brand and product content stored in Widen across their e-commerce experience. “Widen is the foundation for how we show up on the digital shelf,” Cami said. 

Workflow for content review and approvals 
Widen’s Workflow app is another DAM feature that Sargento uses to build a consistent and accurate brand experience. “We use Workflow to manage the creative approval process for all of our packaging,” Cami explained. “It seamlessly routes files across creative, brand, and legal teams — and once files are final they are stored in the DAM system so they can be syndicated across other platforms.” 

With the volume of content being created, the Workflow app provides invaluable efficiencies — and guardrails. “Packaging updates are constantly happening, everything from nutritional information to look and feel,” Cami shared. And by using Workflow to guide their review and approval process across teams and stakeholders, they ensure each piece of product content has the accuracy needed to build consumer trust — and drive sales.

“Widen is the foundation for how we show up on the digital shelf.”

Cami Schenck,
Director of Integrated Marketing Communications at Sargento Foods

Benefits

Streamline content operations
With Widen, Sargento is able to refine and optimize their content workflows to scale their digital reach. “We are definitely expanding the amount of content that we create and the relevance of the content we deliver to consumers, and our business is growing,” Cami shared. By leveraging Widen’s Workflow app — along with technology integrations —  Sargento’s marketing team eliminates manual steps and creates time-saving efficiencies, positioning them to keep pace with this continual growth.

Launch products faster
Sargento launches new products on a continual basis. And with Widen as the central source of truth for their brand, marketing, and product content, they simplify content distribution and accelerate their time to market. Teams and retail partners are able to access the content they need to market and sell Sargento products — as soon as it’s available in the DAM system.

Expand into new e-commerce channels
Although the change across the grocery industry in recent years has been nothing short of transformative, Cami doesn’t think it will slow down anytime soon. “The channels are just going to keep expanding. And they're going to be additive — it's not like something goes away!” 

And as Sargento grows their digital business, they know that they can syndicate at scale with Widen as the foundation of their connected commerce experience. By delivering accurate and consistent content-driven shopping experiences, they can meet and exceed their customers’ expectations, “whether it’s in-store, buying online and picking it up at the curb, or purchasing it for delivery,” said Cami.