Danone’s Ayla Ziz on Growth, AI, and the Hard Tradeoffs Behind Retail Transformation

What does it take to modernize a company with a 100-year legacy and still keep pace with the speed of consumer change?

At Shoptalk Europe, Ayla Ziz, SVP Global Sales and Chief Customer Officer at Danone, shared a detailed look at how the food and health giant is evolving its operations, AI strategy, workforce, and sustainability investments, all while staying grounded in its original mission: improving lives through food.

A brand born from medical need

Ziz opened the session by tracing Danone’s founding story. In 1919, Isaac Carasso created the company in Barcelona after trying to help his sick son by applying Nobel Prize research into fermented dairy and gut health. The brand’s first product was a medical treatment.

“Immunity has always been at the heart of our DNA,” Ziz said. “And it still is.”

That medical foundation still guides Danone’s science-first innovation. The company employs 1,700 researchers and produces more than 1,500 scientific publications annually. Many mass-market products today, like Danone’s high-protein yogurts, trace back to medical nutrition originally developed for oncology patients and elderly care.

Fewer categories, deeper conviction

Ziz emphasized that Danone has deliberately exited entire product segments over the years from beer and biscuits to tomato paste in order to focus on health and the planet.

The catalyst? A strategic pivot in 1994 when the company’s leadership committed to building a portfolio aligned with long-term wellness outcomes.

“It took time,” she noted. “But we knew we couldn’t continue without anchoring everything to that purpose.”

Sustainability without performance is wishful thinking

Ziz was blunt about the tradeoffs all CPGs face: growth, margin, and environmental commitments don’t always align.

“Consumers say they want sustainability,” she said, “but they’re not yet ready to pay more for it. That’s the reality.”

Still, Danone has stayed the course achieving 16 consecutive quarters of growth while maintaining its ESG goals.

She cited an example from Poland: when Danone ran a water campaign promoting purity alongside its commitment to recover 100% of bottles, the result wasn’t just good PR. It translated into the highest market share in four years.

“When the brand is visibly committed, consumers respond,” Ziz said.

AI in execution not just strategy decks

Danone’s AI investments are deeply embedded in frontline workflows. Ziz introduced SEED, the company’s new Sales Excellence Execution platform, designed to give 4,000+ field reps across Europe a full digital toolkit.

It includes:

• Pre-visit planning (knowing which products to prioritize at each store)

• Image recognition to assess shelf stock in real time

• Post-visit prompts to optimize follow-ups and ordering

But tech alone isn’t enough.

“We’re overwhelmed with data sell-in, sell-out, warehouse stock, category data,” Ziz explained. “The real challenge is integrating that into a meaningful view that drives pricing, promotions, and shelf execution.”

She gave a simple example: spotting irrelevant in-store promotions, like bulk laundry gel being sold at airports. “We’re not there yet. But we’re building the systems to stop that kind of mismatch.”

200+ AI-driven campaigns with Tesco and Sainsbury’s

Beyond field ops, Danone is also using AI to improve shopper marketing. Ziz shared how the company partnered with Tesco and Sainsbury’s in the UK to map customer journeys across social, e-commerce, and physical store touchpoints.

Using generative AI, they created over 200 unique media campaigns, each tailored to a specific shopper profile or behavioral path.

“This is only possible with AI,” she said. “It helped us increase brand penetration and understand what messaging works at the individual level.”

Training 50,000 employees to think differently

Ziz noted that 50% of the roles Danone will need in five years don’t exist yet. That insight is driving a company-wide training initiative in partnership with Microsoft, aiming to reskill half of its global workforce, 50,000 people, by year’s end.

But skills alone aren’t enough.

She’s pushing the company to restructure how projects run: every new initiative must now be multifunctional, cutting across sales, marketing, supply chain, and product.

“We have to kill the pilot-silo model,” she said. “If we want transformation to happen, we need to stop optimizing in isolation.”

Her closing advice to future leaders?

Ziz shared the same three lessons she gives her own children:

• Stay curious: no matter who approaches you, listen and learn

• Be an agent of change: you have to both deliver and transform

• Don’t fear small pilots: but scale them quickly if they work

Independently Created. Not affiliated with Shoptalk.

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