hired Pete Blackshaw, an early word-of-mouth pioneer to be its global head of digital marketing and social media. Pete established DAT, the Digital Acceleration Team, as a centre of excellence, a catalyst for change, and, most importantly in Pete’s mind, a vehicle to promote rapid scaling. An outpost in Silicon Valley provides a point of external focus; it monitors and interacts with the interesting innovators there. But the whole remit of DAT is very practical, very down-to-earth. It reflects Pete’s belief in fundamentals – “fundamentals remain fundamental”. Digital is seen as something which should exist at the heart of Nestlé’s approach to “brand building the Nestlé way”. It’s not an adjunct, or a silo apart, or an execution facility: it’s Mission Control. A good example of pioneering digital transformation at a brand level is Nescafé. When Sean Murphy, the indefatigable global brand champion came to the coffee SBU, it was not in any way a cool brand, albeit a critical one in the portfolio, and one that Nestlé was determined (in the word they chose carefully) to invigorate. As Sean puts it, “the brand that had been waking up the world needed to wake itself up”. So it should reach out to Millennials – or they would pass it by. It must also look the part.