Christina Vail (3:12)

Thank you. I'm personally just thrilled I don't have to answer. What is the bravest thing I've ever done just being a host and not a guest.

Sarah Hofstadter (3:17)

There you go. Well, well, I actually am going to start this episode by asking you a question because you've got a really interesting career arc of your own. Help us understand a little bit about where you started because you're the COO of Profitera, but before you got here more than five years ago, there's something that got you to here. Tell us a little bit about that.

Christina Vail (3:37)

Totally. One of the things that we're going to hear Neil talk about is being externally focused and meaning keeping the customer first. I joke, but it's completely true. I started building Gatorade displays in Walmart stores and Jewel Osco stores in the greater Chicagoland area. I was in a rotational program with PepsiCo and the whole point of that was to keep the customer at the center, the customer being the retailer and how do we actually sell products. The true north is growing sales and share. And so for me, the through line of the different steps that I've taken is always keeping customer first and understanding what is the ultimate job to be done that we're here to do, which is sell more product. I started in the field, moved into headquarter roles and was then able to make the jump to digital. So I was selling granola bars on the chewy desk at Amazon back when food and beverage e commerce was really early days and learning what does it mean to grow and accelerate a digital team in the context of CPG. After five years at PepsiCo, I went on to management consulting and there I was able to I talk a lot about building your toolkit. I was able to really grow my strategic skills. And so I went from being an operator and understanding the tactical of operating within a CPG to actually understanding the strategic strategic side, both kind of from a private equity and corporate standpoint. And I needed to try on Everything, I guess I should have started in that I kind of grew up in grocery. I have some family immersion in grocery and I joke that I went to my childhood was spent at grocery store openings and that's real. There's photos to prove it. And I have this love affair with cpg and me going into management consulting was pressure testing that love and making sure that's where I wanted to be. And it is. I'm obsessed with brands and obsessed with grocery stores. Sarah, you and I have this in common. When we travel, one of the first things we do is find a local grocery store and really feel kind of part of what is true of that country. So all that to say that's, that's been the through line. And now five and a half years at Profiteero, I spend the vast majority of my time with our customers and the real empathy because I've been in their shoes has been a skill that's enabled me to kind of coach our teams and partner with clients to drive better outcomes.

Sarah Hofstadter (5:38)

And yet when you're looking back on your career, you can sit there and say, you can't actually sit there and say, oh yeah. When I was building displays at Jewel Osco, this is where I thought it was going to be.

Christina Vail (5:48)

No. One of the funny things is when I was first out of college, I think like most kids, there was the text thread of everyone who, like all my close friends, they graduated.

Sarah Hofstadter (5:56)

We had no texting when I got out of college. Thanks, Christina.

Christina Vail (5:59)

For some of our listeners, you'll understand how phones work. So we, we had this text thread and I why do I keep getting.

Sarah Hofstadter (6:05)

All these young co hosts?

Christina Vail (6:06)

I vividly remember sending a text, like, what was my economics degree for? Like, I am literally crawling through a Walmart looking for a box of Captain Crunch. And that's real, that's a real text that I sent when I graduated school and I didn't get it. Like I couldn't see the forest for the trees. I was so stuck in the tre. But now I can look back and there's this great Steve Jobs point of looking back and you can connect all the dots. It's like clear as day for me now.

Sarah Hofstadter (6:29)

Another great story behind that is today's guest, Neal Reynolds, who is global Chief Commercial Officer and global head of Digital Commerce at Mars Wrigley. And when you think through all of the components of where you started and where you ended up and what the things you picked up along the way, it's not the obvious stuff, it's the hidden obvious. The things that Maybe that crawling gave you a greater degree of resilience, but maybe reverse engineering things from the perspective of the customer was the thing. But ultimately what that does is it teaches you a little bit more about the power of curiosity and what needs to be true for you to learn and grow whatever it is that's happening. So on that note, let's have Neil onto the show.

Christina Vail (7:14)

Let's do it.

Sarah Hofstadter (7:16)

Today we have someone that I have been yearning to get on the podcast. Neal Reynolds, Global Chief customer and Digital Commerce officer at Mars Snacking. Neil, I think the first time we met was here in Las Vegas in this echo chamber called the Mandalay Bay. Thank you so much for finally joining us. We're so thrilled to have you today.

Neal Reynolds (7:43)

Oh, it's great to be with you. And I'm so pleased that we finally got the time to get a date in the diary and do it. You're right, Sarah. I think it was shop talk in 2023. Right. So two and a half years ago that we first met. So there you go. Diaries have finally aligned. Here we are in beautiful sunny Vegas today.

Sarah Hofstadter (7:58)

Yes. Well, I wouldn't know if it's sunny. I don't know if you would know either. I've not been outdoors and probably won't be. We'll be just sniffing this casino air, keeping us awake. Christina and I were out last night. She and I are. We're not late night party animals. And we were marveling at how awake we were. It dawned on me around midnight last night.

Christina Vail (8:18)

It dawned on me as well.

Sarah Hofstadter (8:19)

Oh, yeah.

Christina Vail (8:19)

I want to know what dawned on you and if it was the same.

Sarah Hofstadter (8:21)

Thing that it was. The casino era that was keeping me awake. Exactly. Yeah. I was like, oh my God, why am I so awake? Yeah. Well, anyway, enough about Vegas. I know all of you guys are having serious FOMO here, so first things first. I just hyped you up. I'm saying that you're like this awesome get but like help everybody understand what your role is because now they're going to understand the awesomeness of why you're here and then the rest of the episode will just continue to build off there. You will not disappoint.

Neal Reynolds (8:50)

You are sure building me up. So I'm privileged to be the global chief customer and digital commerce officer for mild snacking. So think they're amazing billion dollar plus brands like M&M's like Skittles, like Snickers, and I'm privileged to lead the global customer capabilities and the digital commerce team. So I mean, our role is pretty broad, pretty diverse. But ultimately we are building the capabilities which will enable us to win with our customers, build better partnerships and build those new frontier capabilities which will secure our growth for next time. Lots of stuff sits in there. It's from some of the core capabilities like category leadership, like customer shopper marketing, like perfect store. So how do we win in legacy and traditional retail? My role and my team's role is really to power up those capabilities and to do it hand in hand in partnership with all of our great sales leaders, our one demand leaders in all of the regions and all of the markets around the world. So what we need to do is find, you know, those critical areas where we see mutual value and collaboration, really get the right brains on the right topics and then power up how we scale them all together. It's the whole thing.

Sarah Hofstadter (9:55)

It's the whole thing, yeah.

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Sarah Hofstadter (10:31)

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Christina Vail (10:38)

To keep them in the action.

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Neal Reynolds (11:27)

Yeah, absolutely. So I think, you know, if there was one phrase that we use a lot, right, it's how do we win across every stage of the consumer journey. And when you say where it begins and ends, right, it doesn't just begin and end in sales. So I sit in the global growth leadership team. So my peers, for example, are the chief brand and content officer. So we need to think about how do we really lean into driving growth in this New world where there isn't a silo of marketing, a silo of sales. There is just one well oiled machine or getting over time better oiled machine which takes us in that direction.

Christina Vail (11:58)

So Neil, as you just articulated, you have this kind of monster role, right? You cover many different bases and I know myself and many others who listen to of the podcast came up in a career through E commerce and it can be very fruitful. I'm curious for your experience, what have been some of your learnings as you've navigated your career in the space and what are some things you might want to share with listeners in the context of building their career in the digital space?

Neal Reynolds (12:21)

One of the most exciting but also scariest moments you have is thinking about what role you go into next. We're human beings, many of us are ambitious and we're always trying to get onto the next thing. I ask myself three questions, right? And when everyone asks me for career advice, I try and anchor back to those three questions and they are what energizes you, like what gets you out of bed in the morning and what makes you want to give your best for however many hours you are at work that day? The second one is what is it you want to learn, right? So what is it you feel like in your experiences you've had or in the roles you've done is something that you haven't quite tackled yet, right? So what's a brand new experience you want to step into? And then thirdly, and also most importantly, I think what are you going to bring to that role? So what's the capabilities, what's the skill set, what's the experiences you've got that will enable you to step into that role and deliver from day one, right? Not just come in and think about, okay, what do I learn, but also I'm bringing this. So therefore I'll step into this space. So when I think about it, I always think about what did I get from my early career experiences which equipped me to be successful today? And my early career was all around customer leadership. It was all around leading customers, channels and ultimately business units. So what did that give me? That gave me great external orientation, which is that's why I'm here today, right? I'm here to listen, to learn and to hear what others have got to talk about in this fascinating world that we have in CPG and retail and how do we all step into that space together. So that sort of external orientation, I think is something that is at my core and energizes Me, you know, my early experiences taught me how to run a business and talk about the levers that you would pull to ultimately unlock growth for a total P and L. What's top line? Right. What's the cost base? What's the cash that's coming through? And how do I now apply those learnings to the way that I operate through my team? And the third one is around how do you create like a compelling vision and a compelling purpose that people want to follow? And I think some of my early experiences really sort of helped me build out that skill set. So I think about those three things. I guess where I get to is and to answer your question on advice, I think it's a fascinating tightrope to walk around. How do you be intentional about crafting and owning your own career, but not fixated on one role or one particular area? And I think one of the unlocking thoughts for me has been maybe quite often my next best role isn't invented yet. Right. So if you're fixated on one area or one job or one particular line manager, hey, you're missing a whole world of stuff that's going to come. So how can you be open minded but intentional at the same time?

Christina Vail (14:46)

Totally resonates. I think Sarah and I talk a lot about this concept of what fills your cup, and you started with the same idea, what's energizing 100% and you have to fill your toolkit. I started my career at PepsiCo and a lot of leaders there. We would talk a lot about, think about your toolbox. And you spend a lot of years adding tools to that toolbox and then figuring out how to deploy them. You don't always know how you're going to deploy them. I think it's so key to kind of keep those two things in play 100%.

Sarah Hofstadter (15:07)

We had a guest here a couple of years ago, AC Eggleston Bracey, who is the chief something or other at Unilever. And she said something that was so good that I wrote it down and it's a sticky on my monitor at home. And it's what makes you tick and what ticks you off. And I was like that. It's the filling your cup. It's the whole idea of what gives you fuel and also what takes fuel. I'd love to pick a little bit at your point on jobs that haven't been invented yet, because if I think about myself as probably the senior statesman on this podcast, anything that is involved in the job that I do right now did not exist. 30 years ago when I started. And yet the skills that I use, those soft skills that I used in the beginning of my career, whether that's storytelling or understanding, reverse engineering, success, those are things that you still learn. So as you think about the combination of the jobs that haven't been invented yet, but the second part of what you were saying about what are the things that you don't necessarily have yet in your toolkit that you need to add as you're looking at your next generation of talent that's going to be working at Mars Snacking, what are those things that you're looking for that maybe are not so hard skill, but they might be more soft skill?

Neal Reynolds (16:33)

It's a great question, Sarah. What I feel proud about from working at Mars is that we're an organization which I think truly invests in lifelong learning. Right? And lifelong learning can take many different paths. Becoming a great leader, however you define leadership, is the way that we would think about building capabilities for the future. So we think about it through how can we continue to build the characteristics in our future talent which will enable them to thrive in whatever the environment is? So that may well be some of the things you referenced, right? Which is how do you engage others? And when we talk about engaging others, we think about how do you lead a team, which might be your direct reports, how do you engage your peers, but also, most importantly at the moment, how do you inspire leadership in terms of the big topics that we need to get after? So engaging others is one critical competency that we would think about investing in. We would think about also, how do we drive clarity and how do we have crucial conversations in the right way?

Sarah Hofstadter (17:29)

Oh, could we talk about that?

Neal Reynolds (17:30)

Yeah, yeah, of course.

Sarah Hofstadter (17:31)

Okay. Sorry. You're picking on something that is one of the most critical things that I think is required for anybody who wants to, I guess, feel good about their job. Let's just kind of put it out there. If you feel like you are not on the receiving end of crucial conversations or feel psychological safety to deliver or instigate crucial conversations, that's what makes a company political, right? So people talk about, like, all the different training that they have at their companies. Like, you get all of your either hard skills training or soft skills training. You get all of the HR stuff. You probably have 17 different classes on how to use AI. But ultimately something like having crucial conversations becomes. So that's either an enabler or a blocker to success. You're in a global role. As you think about having crucial conversations. There's so many Cultural nuances that go into that. How have you learned to navigate that?

Neal Reynolds (18:27)

You triggered a thought for me. Right. So through one of the last strategic transformations we've been through as a business, we reaffirmed the behaviors, the leadership behaviors that we wanted people to step into. And we had one which, you know, we're now on the next stage of our evolution, but it was called confront reality. So that's how I think about it, which is quite often in a conversation, there may well be reluctance to step into the hard nuance, the hard center of the debate. Right. But if you do it as. Okay, it's our role here to confront reality together. You do it through facts, you do it through data, you do it through information. And it's not about the person or their attempts to try and move something further forward. So we would anchor back to. And I would quite often start a conversation with my team if, you know, if we're having one of those around the edges where everyone's politely dancing around the edge of the issue, I would go, okay, timeout now. Let's just confront reality. Right. And that just creates, I think, an environment where people go. That's a really good point, actually. Sales have been going down for the last five months. Why is that? And really trying to use that mindset and trigger that sort of change in direction, which I think is really powerful, particularly when you've got a group of leaders who might come from different geographies. So you start to play into different cultural nuances as you referenced, different levels of seniority, different levels of knowledge and experience. I think it just is a nice level set. So that's the way that I would try and trigger it.

Sarah Hofstadter (19:41)

Love that.

Christina Vail (19:41)

Yeah, same. She has a phrase for it, but it's not podcast appropriate. We'll cut that. So, Neil, we've talked about soft skills and the criticality of honing those to make sure that you're going to get the most out of yourself and out of your teams. We're at Grocery shop and it's 2025, and we're recording a podcast. So I have to ask you about AI. It's required. How do you think about practical ways that Mars can deploy AI, whether it's personalization, supply chain, how can it be deployed in a practical sense to best influence customers and outcomes, both in store, in retail, and online?

Neal Reynolds (20:15)

I mean, that is the $64,000 question. Right. I went to some of the content yesterday, and I'll be in lots more today. And I think everyone's wrestling with the same question. Everyone's wrestling with the huge promise, the fantastic future, but actually the multiple steps and probably missteps we're all going to have to go through to get there. So the way we think about it is how could AI start to transform how we work and the jobs which people are doing now, which might be the low value added jobs, right? They're the toy jobs. They're the jobs where, you know, someone goes, oh my God, I've just got to get my head in that spreadsheet and try and get to this number. How might AI be a solve to get to those insights more quickly? So transforming some of the jobs which are probably pretty ingrained, right in our sales and our demand teams and have been forever, we specifically think about how could AI help us get to clarity around our next best action more quickly, more concisely, with more granularity. So how can we go from trying to trawl through data to try and work out what's the next best opportunity on the digital shelf, for example, or what's the next best opportunity in this fragmented trade outlet in ex market through to here's some clarity around five things that you should do at this moment in time to drive the highest value and putting some science behind that. So we think about it through that way. We also think about it from how can we fuel and unlock capacity in areas where we've been capacity constrained? So creating content for the digital shelf. We have people who are manually creating content for digital shelf locked in rooms in word and then manually syndicating onto retailer platforms. How might AI be an opportunity to step change and fast forward there? So we're really excited about getting to insight, really excited around how do we create capacity for better execution. And the final one is, and we've just begun this conversation, right? How can we use AI to build capabilities in different ways? And we have a Mars university sales college which runs a range of various different program from how to negotiate the Mars way through to category category leadership, the miles way. They tend to be programs which are two, three days, right? Either virtual or physical location ones. And the learning journey is fantastic, right? It truly is, but it's not powered by AI. So how might we create, for example sales coaching agents, how might we think about building category knowledge and expertise in different ways through AI? We see tons of opportunities. Our challenge is to go from 100 ideas to three or four use cases and really move those forward and then get to scale at pace.

Christina Vail (22:40)

Makes a ton of sense. We spend a lot of time at Proftero making sure we're anchored in the business problem because it can be quite tempting to get, like, distracted by the shiny object. It's like, oh, we could. We could do AI for that or for this. But anchoring on what do we need to accomplish as a business and for us both kind of from a ways of working standpoint and for our customers to get to that next best action, how do we make AI, that solution, to get from problem to outcome in a faster, more efficient way? So makes a ton of sense, it says.

Sarah Hofstadter (23:05)

And I think one of the things, though, if we talk about confronting reality, I think Christina and I are totally sealing that with attribution. Of course, when we think about confronting reality, I think it's one of those things where if we talk about it in a way that says we're not looking to replace your jobs, we're actually looking to save you from having to go into that spreadsheet. We're trying to figure out how to elevate the kind of work that you do and use your brain, not your fingers on your keyboard, to help you advance. And it's not just about the positioning. It's about confronting reality. If I look back to again, before I even started working, when people were doing slides on transparencies, and when there was an error, you had to start writing those transparencies all over again. Did people lose their jobs? No, they just learned PowerPoint and they became better at their jobs. So we have to look at that whole idea of confronting reality and say, okay, well, now what needs to be true? What are the skills I need to have for my job in order to make that successful? So it requires a tremendous amount of. This is probably the worst segue I could come up with, but it requires a lot of bravery.

Christina Vail (24:09)

Seamless.

Sarah Hofstadter (24:10)

Oh, yeah. In order to connect those dots is to say, yes, there is this thing called AI. Yes, people are either running to it or running from it. But it requires a lot of bravery for leaders to say, this is very important, and we are going to be very thoughtful about it. What's the bravest thing you've ever done?

Neal Reynolds (24:29)

Seamless segue. Sarah, hold on.

Sarah Hofstadter (24:31)

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. This is why Rachel always asks the last question.

Christina Vail (24:36)

This is pretty direct. We're just gonna get right to it.

Sarah Hofstadter (24:38)

Yes.

Neal Reynolds (24:39)

Okay. So. So I did think about this right ahead of our conversation today. I assume you mean other than doing this podcast, because that's a pretty brave thing.

Sarah Hofstadter (24:46)

Oh, we are scary people.

Neal Reynolds (24:48)

You are very scary.

Sarah Hofstadter (24:49)

We are very scared people. Not remotely approachable.

Neal Reynolds (24:51)

Cool. So when I was thinking about this on the way over, right. There's quite a few functional examples I could pick up around, you know, technology choices we've made or customer investment strategies, but probably reflecting on it. Right, let's go back to the conversation we had earlier around career choices. And if I think back to probably around about six years or so ago, I was faced a bit of a crossroads in terms of the next best move for me. And I was offered two opportunities. One was to pretty much carry on down the same path I was, which was running a business, running a local business in a market, running an established operating model in, I guess, a playing field which felt very familiar. Bigger scale, bigger numbers, more people, more nsv, but not really new and not really different. And I was offered a second opportunity, which was actually when I rejoined Mars back in 2019, and I still talk about this now, which was it was a brave move because it was so, so different in three different ways. The first one was I'd only ever done local market roles before. I'd only ever worked in markets, leading customers, leading businesses. This role was a global role, right? Suddenly with global perspective, having never really played on the global playing field before. The second one was I'd always run operations. And the brief here was to come and create from zero, a global portfolio transformation initiative, which, quite frankly, there was varying different levels of energy and engagement around the organization in. So how do you really marshal a ton of people and the great power of Mars behind this initiative? And the third one was I'd only ever been a demand guy, right? I'd worked in sales, I'd worked a bit in marketing, I'd worked in strategic sales. This role was to come and sit in the global supply chain leadership team. So when I look at that, it was really different on those three lenses. And I remember, right, my wife was telling me the other day, she says, when you told me that that's the role you wanted to do six years ago, she said, I went, not so sure about that, right? But actually, how much have you learned from it? So I think that dimension of taking a big, bold leap through those three lenses, but also at the same time, right, thinking about what I could bring to it, I think hopefully has really powered me on. And genuinely, I look back every day and I'm thankful that I made that call.

Sarah Hofstadter (26:52)

Well, I think Mars is super thankful that they made you that offer. Because if we look at what's happened since 2019, there could not have been somebody more well suited for a role like that that ultimately has led to at least the more recent evolution of your career. I mean, who else would be better to be in this kind of a role and advancing the way that you have been advancing than somebody who comes with those ingredients. Mars saw the perfect recipe and that was right before COVID hit.

Neal Reynolds (27:22)

Thank you. You say the nicest thing, Sarah.

Sarah Hofstadter (27:24)

I really don't.

Neal Reynolds (27:27)

We'll confront reality later.

Sarah Hofstadter (27:31)

Neil, thank you much so so much for joining us today on Brave Commerce. Live from Grocery Shop, this is Sarah Hofstadter and Christina Vail.

Neal Reynolds (27:39)

Thank you.

Sarah Hofstadter (27:41)

Well, that sure was something. We sure learned a lot. Not just about career arcs, but obviously the criticality of crucial conversations and so much more. If you liked what you heard, there are actually a number of phenomenal guests that we've had from Mars, Inc. Whether that was Gabrielle, Dallas Wesley or JP in Pet Care or Matt Graham and Morris Food, Anton Vincent. So many that you can listen to, as well as a number of other folks who have grown up in different parts of the CPG world and are now sitting in the C Suite. If you like this episode, please share liberally, tell a friend and please leave us a review. We'd love to know what you think. Thanks for listening.

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Christina Vail (29:54)

Hi, I'm Jackie Cooper, Global Chief Brand Officer at Edelman and the host of.

Sarah Hofstadter (29:59)

Touch of Truth, a new podcast launching on the Adweek Podcast Network.

Christina Vail (30:03)

My dad gave me this incredibly smart piece of advice.

Sarah Hofstadter (30:06)

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