For Steve Presley and Nestlé, 2024 is about getting back to innovation.

As CEO of Nestlé's Zone North America, he sees 2024 as a year to get back to basics. The past three years have been focused on COVID, supply-chain issues, and inflation — it's prevented the company from making strides on innovation and doing as much around marketing, and promotions, he told Business Insider.

"During COVID and during the supply crisis, you really saw this kind of at-home revolution where you saw a lot of occasions move in home," Presley said. "That evolution and the impact of that across eating and drinking occasions, has come across the last two to three years."

Nestlé's brands include Blue Bottle Coffee, Carnation, Nescafé, Gerber, and several pet food products. Presley said though the company sees generational differences among consumers, it's "how you connect with consumers in generations in terms of social media" that matters, he explained. "It really changes the way we have to market to different generations, versus more traditional, more senior generations."

"It's all about influence, it's all about recommendations and ratings. Where we really see the generational differences is how they attach to the brands and how they actually get to their purchase decisions," he said.

Presley, whose favorite Nestlé products include Coffee mate creamer and Purina for his two dogs, offered insights as part of Business Insider's year-end leadership package, "Looking Ahead 2024," which digs into vision, strategy, and challenges across corporate America.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What are you looking forward to most for 2024?

I'm actually excited to return to what we do every day for the last 150 years: generating demand to drive value for our customers.

Part of that is when innovation comes back, and marketing — in the sense of heavier marketing investment to communicate with consumers in different ways and promotions to actually provide more value to the consumer. We weren't promoting as heavily in the past because you didn't have enough stock.

So, the traditional way of demand generation and winning categories with consumers, and creating value for consumers is really what I'm excited about for 2024. Because we're in a stable supply environment, you know, inflation is slowing — it's still significantly above previous levels — but at least it's not still climbing. So it looks like we're in a stable inflationary environment — or more stable — and we're in a stable supply environment, now we get back to serving households better.

What are you most concerned about for 2024?

Obviously the overall health of the consumer. It is a volatile time in the world, not just in the country. I think we've got two conflicts in the world that put pressure on supply complexes. Obviously, we have an election in 2024 that will be in the mindset of the consumer. You still have a very difficult basket for their wallets — inflation across all of their things, whether it's housing, or technology, or food and beverage.

What I worry about the most is the health of the consumer and everything we can do from a country standpoint, from a business standpoint, and from our brands. It's "how do we provide more value for them in 2024 and help them through this difficult phase?" Because it is difficult for consumers right now, when every single thing in our basket is up.

What's one thing you got right in 2023?

We continue to put our people first at Nestlé, and the reason that's so important — a lot of people say that but for us we everything we do is centered around trying to make our people and our culture our competitive advantages. I've been in this role for nearly six years now. From day one, it was like, "Look, if we're going to turn around in this company, we've got to build a culture that's performance-driven, that focuses on our people, and focus on building future-forward capabilities for the organization."

What I'm most proud of is that we continue to do that. I'm really happy with the progress of our culture and our performance that's driven the organization. We don't waver in the face of whatever the crisis of the year is.

What's one thing you think you got wrong in 2023?

The biggest challenge was the steepness of inflation and the impact. I don't know if it's we got it wrong, but the impact to our consumers of inflation across everything in their wallet. It wasn't [only] food inflation, or fuel inflation, or housing inflation. It was everything. Understanding and managing through the impact to our consumer. We are in 97% of the households in the US. For us, it's about really focusing on the middle-class American, hard-working consumers that are the most impacted by this inflation.

So we've really gotten back to a stable supply, and gotten back to advertising and all the things we need to do to drive value in our products. And I think the impact of that inflation across every part of the consumer wallet, not so much [we got it] wrong, but understanding and seeing the impact of that to consumers has been a challenge.