Marketing leaders at consumer packaged goods firms are facing fundamental shifts in the global commercial environment. To meet these challenges, they have an opportunity to accelerate their adoption of digital-and rethink both their marketing models and their routes to consumer engagement.

Remember when e-commerce was exclusively reserved for purchasing electronics? Well, thanks to mobile phones and tablets, consumers have quickly come to rely on the internet for everything from apparel to jewelry to personalized gifts.

2014 has seen the battle between Axe and Old Spice take on an unpredicted turn. While Axe aspired to the noble and cinematic, Old Spice seemingly borrowed from Axe's playbook to portray itself as guys' best wingman. The difference is that the Old Spice "guys" this year are looking like hunted momma's boys or wretched, barely functional androids.

CPG brand marketers are all too aware that brand loyalty is on the decline. A new survey shows brand loyalty has dropped for a third year in a row. Deloitte's annual American Pantry study shows nearly nine in ten consumers are substituting private-label, or store brands for the national brand they've regularly bought in the past. This shift is quite concerning for national CPG brand manufactures.

The leaves don't change colors in all regions of the United States, but autumn does bring with it some certainties: cooler weather, football and going back to school. In recent years, we've come to associate autumn with another phenomenon: pumpkin spice products. Consumer interest in all things pumpkin has reached new heights. Nielsen reports that pumpkin-flavored products accounted for $308 million in food and beverage sales in 2013, up 13.5% from the year before. That's a strong performance for a food and beverage trend that is considered seasonal.

Social media has grown in importance to CPG brands and, as a result, is now gaining significant support in the form of larger budgets. In fact, companies like Mondelez are increasingly moving their media budgets to digital channels as they look to connect engaged social media consumers with their growing house-files. Illustrating the degree to which this transition is happening, it was recently reported that Mondelez, a $35 billion company, will spend 50% of its ad dollars on digital.

At the Natural Products Expo West six months ago, the marketing question on every up-and-coming food and beverage brand's lips was, "What's happened to my [organic Facebook] reach?" Every marketer wanted to know if their brand's crashing social reach numbers were the result of something they were doing wrong, or if others were experiencing the same plummet. Since then, they've mostly all come to understand - if not appreciate - that the price of Facebook going public is that Facebook now has to show increasing ad revenues to shareholders. The free ride was over. Kaput. Kablooey.

It's widely believed that social channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have substantial influence on what people buy. However, the ability to link these channels to sales, especially among CPG brands, has to date been somewhat elusive. With the arrival of in-stream purchases like Facebook's Buy Now, new tracking enabled by things like Twitter's acquisition of CardSpring and services like Like2Buy making Instagram shoppable, it's safe to say that that has changed.

It wasn't too long ago when most people associated the term "digital natives" with kids. But these early "natives," those who were born in 1985, are approaching 30 and are already a significant consumer segment for CPG products.