Read Part A, the situation, before the solo round: about five minutes. Open the Part B reference cards while you plan, at the moment you are about to pick a tool.
BOTG teams run manned activations. There is no IQOS Partners network in Genovia: the only touchpoints that can run a Guided Trial are Brand Retail and the manned activations. iqos.com is live and converts well, but only for users it already knows.
Portfolio: P1 (IQOS ILUMA) is the core, consumables nationwide through IR. P4 (VEEV) launched last year, still small. P5 is not present.
Genovia carries two business challenges on the same market. The facilitator selects one per workshop; the market, the hard lines and the reference cards are identical for both.
Leadership has set the 2027 priority: quality acquisition. Build quality awareness, generate quality leads, and convert them to trial and purchase. Last year Genovia generated a record number of leads and almost none of it converted: leads went cold, trials reached the wrong people, and every channel ran its own plan with its own KPI. Channel by channel, never with one voice.
Genovia is losing users it never sees leaving. Of about 84k LAU, only 38% are fully converted: around 30k still run IQOS and cigarettes in parallel, and about 12k lapsed back to cigarettes last year, almost none contacted before or after they left.
The driver is availability. Most users buy their consumables anonymously at IR, and on 1 visit in 5 their usual store is out of their variant. Out of stock means a pack of cigarettes instead; repeat that a few times and the user is gone. And because IR purchases are anonymous, your systems cannot tell a user who is slipping away from one who simply bought offline that week. The signal sits at the shelf, the identification needs data, the save needs the right offer. Today the three never meet, and RIVA is waiting.
| Layer | Live | Switched off / missing | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|---|
| B2C platform (DCX) | CIAM (registration and login), CRM on Marketing Cloud, the CDP, iqos.com, BR360 and FC360 clienteling, PIM | The CRM's Next Best Action area never activated; no AI audience segmentation | Campaigns can send, but nothing decides who should get what, when |
| B2B platform (REEV) | DTE (retailer portal: tasking, education, remuneration), B2B Customer Care, FFOne (visit execution, manual route planning), CCB2B eOrdering, basic trade segmentation | No AI layer: no Top-Down Route Planning, no REEV Planning, no e-Order Suggestion, no FF Vision app (Computer Vision), no DTA video (no Synthesia licence). PICOS on paper: KPIs not configured, no shelf images | The field force visits on a fixed schedule, orders are manual guesses, nobody sees the shelf |
| Consumer data | The CDP receives Brand Retail and iqos.com; the CRM holds about 50k registered LAU | About 60% of purchase signals never reach the CDP (IR purchases are anonymous); the prospect database holds about 15k opted-in leads | Any tool that must pick the right consumer has almost nobody to pick from, until the capture gap closes |
| Consent (CIAM) | Captured at Brand Retail and on iqos.com, including QR scans that route to the iqos.com form | Nothing captured at IR; at activations, only the consumers who complete the .com form after scanning are covered | Meeting a consumer face to face does not mean you have permission to ever talk to them again |
| B2B data (Snowflake) | Sales and targets mapped; IR sell-out aggregated, monthly | No out-of-stock tracking per SKU per retailer; POS master data incomplete (opening hours, visit attributes, account types) | You cannot see which store is out of stock, and you do not know enough about your own outlets to plan around them |
| AIRD (AI-Ready Data assessment) | Not yet run | Every consumer AI bet gates on it | Running the AIRD is a move your plan can make: name an owner and start it early |
| Customer care (CSC) | Phone, chat and email, with case management | Interactions not recorded or analysed (no voice-to-text); an old scripted bot; service knowledge in agent scripts and a wiki nobody owns | Thousands of conversations every month, and nothing is learned from them |
| Search, web and content | iqos.com live, basic SEO. A content audit was completed last quarter; the fix is scoped at about four weeks | Content not yet structured for AI-powered search; campaign adaptation manual, about 3 weeks each; First Pass not requested for Genovia (about a couple of months to stand up) | A near-term win once the four-week fix lands and someone owns it; First Pass is the long pole for one-voice content |
| Paid media and third-party data | Nothing: paid prospecting of non-users is banned (hard line 2) | Local privacy law prohibits third-party audience data (3PD); no compliant paid surface and no 3PD source exists | Some tools have nothing legal to run on in Genovia. Not every bet is for every market, and recognising that is part of the job |
| Age verification | Manual ID checks at POS. Regional legal and privacy clearance for AI-assisted age estimation is already granted for Genovia | Deployment never scheduled | A ready-to-activate move at the only moment you are legally allowed to win a new consumer |
Risk-reduction driven, wary of bad press; need credible proof.
The most reachable group; too few chances to try, and RIVA is courting them.
The largest group; price- and habit-bound, trust only what they can touch.
Any play that must pick the right consumer should be able to say which of the three it is picking.
Last year's leak (illustrative): about 120k leads captured, but only 9% ever reached a Guided Trial and 4% bought. The lead is generated in one channel, never handed to a channel that can run the trial, and the consumer restarts the conversation at every touchpoint. The LAU base is about 84k, of which about 50k are registered in the CRM. This funnel is your baseline: your plan is judged on how it moves quality, not volume.
| Touchpoint | CC (reference) | HnB device | HnB consumables | E-vapor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OOH | Banned | Restricted | Banned | Banned |
| Paid digital and social to non-users (prospecting) | Banned | Banned | Banned | Banned |
| Owned content, .com and SEO (age-gated) | Banned | Allowed | Allowed | Allowed |
| eCRM to opted-in adults | Allowed | Allowed | Allowed | Allowed |
| POS communication and POSM | Restricted | Allowed | Restricted | Restricted |
| Guided Trial at licensed touchpoints | N/A | Allowed | Allowed | Allowed |
| Events and brand activations (age-verified entry) | Banned | Allowed | Allowed | Restricted |
| E-commerce | Banned | Allowed (registered) | Allowed (registered) | Restricted |