Welcome back to Grow Your Business with Microsoft 365 Copilot, your ultimate guide for actionable insights on leveraging AI in small and medium-sized businesses.
As we talk with customers, we hear how Copilot helps them work with improved speed, efficiency, and creativity. By enabling businesses to achieve more, Copilot can create a competitive edge and level the playing field with larger organizations. In this blog, we’ll spotlight Newman’s Own, a perfect example of a small company that’s able to do big things with the right people and the right tools.
We’ll also introduce our latest WorkLab report, Agents of Change, and new Copilot capabilities in PowerPoint, Word, and Excel.
And with that, let’s dive in!
How a small company uses Copilot to make a big impact
Newman’s Own offers great tasting, high quality food and beverage products for people and pets.Newman's Own has built an incredibly valuable brand by leveraging a unique and purpose-driven business model. Founded by actor Paul Newman in 1982, the company donates 100% of its after-tax profits to charity, primarily supporting programs that nourish and transform the lives of children who face adversity – over $600 million has been donated to good causes since 1982. This commitment to philanthropy has resonated deeply with consumers, enhancing the brand's reputation and loyalty.
And while you might be familiar with their mission, as well as the quality food, beverages, snacks, and pet treats they produce, there’s something about Newman’s Own that may surprise you. Compared to the much larger consumer brands it competes with, this big brand with even bigger ideas is run by a small but mighty team. “We’re 50 people running a very big business,” says David Best, the company’s CEO. “Copilot helps us compete with multinational conglomerates in a much more effective way.”
Being resourceful is part of Newman’s Own’s culture. Finding ways to make a large impact without large teams and budgets. Microsoft 365 Copilot has enabled the company to thoughtfully use AI to do more, with increased speed and flexibility, from Marketing and Operations, to Finance and HR. Each department refers to Copilot as their new associate, helping them save time and money.
"Our job is to make sure we're giving the best tools to our people, our most important asset, so they can be as successful as possible."
Bruce Wallace
Chief People Officer, Newman's Own
Copilot saves hours by streamlining writing tasks
Riley McCarthy, Social Media Manager at Newman’s Own, shared how she uses Copilot Chat to grow the company’s social presence while finding creative opportunities to connect with customers.
Before using Copilot, much of McCarthy’s days were spent writing tailored briefs for influencers and answering emails. With Copilot, tasks that used to take hours can now be completed in a fraction of the time, allowing McCarthy to focus more on content creation, which is her superpower and favorite part of the job.
Use Copilot Chat to brainstorm creative ideas for your next marketing campaign.
AI assistance to help manage complex workflows
Delivering a successful social strategy requires managing involved and time sensitive workflows. Copilot has been instrumental in helping Newman’s Own launch social media campaigns, organizing and planning months ahead, creating posts, captions and hashtags, and analyzing campaign performance. Copilot has enabled Newman’s Own to triple the number of campaigns it runs in a month. With so many moving parts and important details, McCarthy values having an AI assistant nearby to help keep track of it all.
Pushing creative boundaries and enhancing productivity
McCarthy acknowledges she’s just scratched the surface of how to use Copilot in her job. She’s starting to use it more for brainstorming and creative ideation, as well as being more efficient within Microsoft 365 productivity solutions such as Excel and PowerPoint.
Use Copilot in Excel to analyze campaign data to look for performance patterns and recommendations for optimal days, times, and frequency. (Figures shown do not represent actual campaign data)
"It's not just marketing. We have our legal team using (Copilot). We have our HR using it, finance is using it, our CEO is using it. It's not just one department that is using it, it really is company wide."
Riley McCarthy
Social Media Manager, Newman's Own
Support from leadership is key
McCarthy credits the leadership team at Newman’s Own for seeing the potential in Copilot. Best has been a champion of Copilot, encouraging its use in daily workflows during town halls. It was this top-down support that facilitated Copilot’s integration into the operations across the company.
" Using Copilot and AI to its fullest potential so we can be smarter than our competition is key piece of our recipe for success.”
David Best
Chief Executive Officer, Newman's Own
Copilot has made Newman's Own's small team feel much larger by enhancing efficiency, fostering creativity, and saving valuable time, so employees across the organization can deliver even more delicious, quality products, and help children in need across the globe.
Check out our latest WorkLab report, Agents of Change, to learn more about Newman’s Own and how other forward-thinking companies such as Burke, Inc., Crestar Fans, and ICG are using Copilot and agents to drive ROI.
Take action
Learn more about using Copilot to transform your business, sign up for a trial, or contact our team for a personalized demo.
Try out some of the ways Newman’s Own uses Copilot
- Catch up on meetings and tasks with Copilot in Teams
- Draft and edit content, briefs and more with Copilot in Word
- Analyze blog performance with Copilot in Excel
Become a Copilot power user!
- Try proven Copilot productivity tips to get time back for more important work
- Get your one-stop guide to successfully deploy Copilot with the Copilot Success Kit
- Join the SMB Copilot Community to learn directly from Microsoft experts and your peers
Here's the latest news on how Microsoft 365 Copilot can accelerate your business
Copilot in PowerPoint can now translate your entire presentation into one of 40 languages while maintaining the structure and design of each slide. Translate text within text boxes, shapes, tables, charts, speaker notes, and smart art!
We also announced a slate of enhancements to Copilot in Word, including the ability for Copilot to summarize significantly larger documents (up to 3000 pages) in the summary box. Additionally, we’ve enhanced Copilot’s ability to coach writing, going beyond grammar and spelling, to provide suggestions on additions, style and tone, and more.
Lastly, we’ve added Graph-grounding to Copilot in Excel, so you can reference your work files and content beyond what is in the open spreadsheet, and Copilot can respond with greater context from meetings, chats, and other documents. We’ve also added language support for Copilot in Excel with Python to include Simplified Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish in Excel for Windows.
If your company has used Microsoft 365 Copilot to grow and you’d like to share your story, we’d love to feature you. Comment below and a member from our team will get in touch!
Angela Byers
Microsoft
Senior Director, Copilot & Growth Marketing for SMB
Let's connect on LinkedIn
Meet the team
The monthly series, Grow Your Business with Microsoft 365 Copilot, is brought to you by the SMB Copilot marketing team at Microsoft. From entrepreneurs to coffee connoisseurs, they work passionately behind the scenes, sharing the magic of Copilot products with small and medium businesses everywhere. Always ready with a smile, a helping hand, and a clever campaign, they're passionate about helping YOUR business grow!
Angela Byers, Mariana Prudencio, Elif Algedik, Kayla Patterson, Briana Taylor, and Gabe Ho
About the blog
The Grow Your Business with Microsoft 365 Copilot blog aims to inspire and delight you with insights and stories on how AI is changing the game for business. This monthly series is designed to empower small and mid-sized businesses to harness the power of AI at work. Each month, we feature scenarios where an SMB is using AI to transform, scale, and grow.
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