← BRAVE COMMERCE
BRAVE COMMERCE
Perfetti Van Melle’s Sylvia Buxton on Reinventing Impulse Marketing for the Digital Age
00:24:34
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- [00:01]
Acast
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- [00:40]
Sylvia Buxton
Daniel I can't tell you how integrated into my life Taylor Swift is. I use all too well as my 10 minute timer. When I drive into New York, I listen to welcome to New York.
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Rachel Tippograph
I mean, she just has a song for everything.
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Sylvia Buxton
It kind of fits into every part of our lives. Yes, and that premise is the basis.
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Sarah Hofstadter
Of our podcast, let's Ask Taylor Swift.
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Rachel Tippograph
We are going to ask Taylor Swift.
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Sylvia Buxton
To speak to our lives.
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Rachel Tippograph
Every episode we're going to be choosing a Taylor Swift song and bringing a question to it. Questions like how do we want our.
- [01:13]
Sylvia Buxton
Exes to remember us? Or do we believe in love at first sight? So join us for our new show.
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Rachel Tippograph
Let'S Ask Taylor Swift. And make sure to subscribe so you.
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Sylvia Buxton
Never miss an episode.
- [01:26]
Acast
Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.
- [01:37]
Sylvia Buxton
Lines have blurred now, right? So we do have the opportunity to take some of that spending that would have been the old style trade spending and putting that towards more point of purchase media support. And that could be everything from retailer media to digital coupons, as well as apps that are shopping based. And there are actually a lot of shopping based apps that give consumers points towards future purchases. So, you know, there are a lot of really new ways to be top of mind. Not only at the top of the funnel, which is just sort of your basic brand awareness, but also being top of mind when you're at that store shelf, whether that's virtual or in the real world.
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Sarah Hofstadter
Welcome to today's episode of Brave Commerce.
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Rachel Tippograph
I'm Rachel Tippograph, the founder and CEO of Mic Mac.
- [02:22]
Sarah Hofstadter
I'm Sarah Hofstadter, president of Profitero and.
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Rachel Tippograph
This is a show that talks about what's relevant in E commerce for the world's biggest brands. Sarah, I think you and I have recorded what, close to 300 episodes already?
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Sarah Hofstadter
Gosh, I lost count. Sorry.
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Sylvia Buxton
Me too.
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Sarah Hofstadter
It could be we're gonna have to.
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Rachel Tippograph
Go fact check that after this, but around 300 guests, I think you and I have gotten a pretty good pulse. Check on senior executives who go deep and wide versus senior executives who can just go wide.
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Sarah Hofstadter
Yeah, it's interesting because you would think that it's a self selecting group. If you've opted to come onto if we've invited you and you've opted to come on to Brave Commerce, there's a pretty good chance you can go deep. I think the ones that go wide and don't go deep we don't get that much of. And so when we have CEOs on the podcast, it's because they're passionate about it. It's because they understand it. They understand that 8 out of 10 products are purchased based on digital influence. They understand what trade down to private label looks like as a result of E commerce. They understand what omnichannel really means in action, not just in investor speak. You know what I'm saying?
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Rachel Tippograph
And you can tell that they do ride alongs with their team. What CEO of a major consumer product company should know the ins and outs of the Amazon algorithm or how to optimize meta media. But the ones that we get on the show seem to know, or they.
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Sarah Hofstadter
Know enough to ask the right questions and click a little bit deeper. And when you see the ones that are clicking a little bit deeper, whether or not they know the algorithm them is almost like irrelevant. They know that it exists and they know that it's not as simple as whatever it is, that they're curious, that they stay curious, that they could be in the CPG space for decades and their curiosity is what got them there, not tenure.
- [04:30]
Rachel Tippograph
So you're all in for a real treat, pun intended, because waka waka, this portfolio is full of treats, especially treats that I grew up with as a kid of the 80s and 90s. And what you're going to see from Sylvia, who is the CEO and president of the Americas for Profet Event MAU, is that she goes deep and wide. And you should listen to this episode multiple times because at certain points she's giving a master class on media. She's giving a master class on P and L within cpg. She's giving a masterclass on consumer behavior. Listen to this a few times. There is so much goodness within this episode. We are very lucky to have Sylvia Buxton, the president and CEO of Profetti Van Mel Business Unit Americas onto the show. Hello Sylvia.
- [05:22]
Sylvia Buxton
Hey ladies. Great to be with you today. How are you?
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Rachel Tippograph
We're good, we're good. I feel like we get to kick off spring with you.
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Sylvia Buxton
Yeah, you know, we were just talking about this the other day we're now in that horrible springtime where one day it's winter and the next day it's summer. So. So hopefully we'll move on to real summer soon for sure.
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Rachel Tippograph
And which is obviously good for your business because within your portfolio you have the great brands like Airheads and Mentos. And it's interesting, I personally feel like I grew up alongside those brands. And to this day I can recall the Mentos commercial and jingle. I can literally see it in my head. And I feel like you're probably coming up on 40 years with these brands. Is that right?
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Sylvia Buxton
Yeah. The brand Airheads actually was invented in Cincinnati, Ohio area, actually in Northern Kentucky, where our facility still remains here. And almost 40 years ago, the Airheads brand was created by one of the wonderful scientists at the Van Mel Company at the time. And here we are. I jokingly say that the Earheads brand is almost going to be a 40 under 40, which is really amazing.
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Sarah Hofstadter
I love that.
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Rachel Tippograph
40 years from your perspective, you know what's stayed the same and what's completely different.
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Sylvia Buxton
Yeah, for sure. My personal career has spanned multiple decades and despite these changes, I have to say that great marketing is still based on the same core principles. Right. You know, you need to have a differentiated and motivating brand promise and you need to move consumers through the purchase funnel, all the way from awareness through to purchase. So that really hasn't changed. Right. The strategy remains the same, but how we get there is a lot different. I think the main change is trying to reach consumers during that path to purchase is a lot different. So I think back to beginning of my marketing career and Learning Media Planning 101 and there were very few choices at that time. It was television, radio, outdoor print. Those were the main things that you focused on and you got really broad reach with those few media choices. Now, however, there's this explosion of different vehicles to reach consumers and. And the digital revolution has really changed the game. You think about now, TV almost is non existent. Sure there are outdoor billboards, but generally speaking, those are not something that we focus on a lot. So it's become both easier and harder to reach our consumer. Easier in that you can really specifically target consumers in the digital space and on any number of attributes ranging from the basic demographics to how they shop and what they do with their lives. But it's harder in that because of that fragmented media landscape, it's really hard and much more complicated to figure out how to apply all your media dollars against the right approach. So media definitely is one of those things that has changed a lot over the last few decades, for sure.
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Sarah Hofstadter
I remember about 10 years ago, I was giving a presentation to a large group of confectionery executives and I said, candy crush is crushing candy sales. And they looked at me like I had three heads. I said, you know, it's interesting, you know, the checkout used to be the ultimate mechanism to convert impulse purchases. Of course, that was back when TV Guide was also the mechanism for you to find out what was on tv. But you look back and you say, okay, this whole impulse category is about the idea of you're about to complete your shopping and then you've got this new opportunity. And so the question is, how do you make sure that can't your. Your, your head buried in your phone actually is not a vulnerability, but an asset. So as you think about not just the evolution of digital, but particularly E commerce, where that last step before you check out digitally, whether you're going to be fulfilling that in store or whether or not you're using that to guide your shopping process, how do you now think about the role that more brands play with those changes in behavior?
- [09:23]
Sylvia Buxton
Yeah, that's a great question. You know, when e commerce first started to grow in prominence, it was really concerning for those of us that really market in this impulse space. And I think of the old adage, you know, stack them high and watch them fly. What is the digital version of that? Right. We had to figure out what is the future of impulse marketing, not only also in the E commerce space, but also in the brick and mortar space where self checkouts and shopping in different ways have definitely evolved over time. So the good news is that luckily our fears have been unfounded. If you were to ask me this question about 10 years ago, I would have said, oh my gosh, impulse is going to just disappear. It's going to be really hard. The category is going to soften. We're going to really be in a major issue. And now we've been able to innovate around marketing techniques in this digital space to have the virtual equivalent of in store merchandising. Getting on that virtual shopping list is really, really critical. So for the shopper that is either doing the click and collect or the click and ship, you just have to get on that shopping list. And so you have to have the virtual equivalent of merchandising in the digital space in order to do that. This is, this is really, really important though, in the confectionery space, because I like to say that our confectionery consumers, unlike the monogamous consumers that might be in the space, like laundry detergent, where you have just one brand that you buy all the time. I like to think of our confectionery consumers as promiscuous. They have a range of brands within their consideration set and so you have to be top of mind awareness. You need to be meeting them at every step along the way in their purchase journey. Actually, I'd like to give a good example of how we're really reaching consumers in a unique way. We just announced at the beginning of last week a new digital campaign for our Mentos brand. And if you think back to the old 90s, there was this thing called Mentos and Cola, the Mentos and Cola experiment where science enthusiasts all over the world have put those two things together to have a lot of fun. And in fact, we just took that into the digital space with Fortnite where there is a thing called a Mentos fazooka. Unfortunately, there are only 30 actual fazookas in creation right now, but there are millions of digital versions of them available on three different maps in the Fortnite game for two weeks only. Consumers are going to be deliciously fizzing their way through the constructs of their competitors within the game and having a lot of fun with Amentos brand. So these are just kind of the examples of ways that you can engage in the digital space, get to that top of mind awareness and then so when you get to the point where you are shopping either in the E commerce space or in the real world, you can have that brand top of mind.
- [12:13]
Sarah Hofstadter
I love it.
- [12:14]
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- [12:43]
Sarah Hofstadter
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- [13:51]
Sylvia Buxton
I guess the good news is that we've got two big spending buckets available to us. Not only is it the traditional media and marketing spending bucket, but also the trade spending bucket, which now has become even more like pseudo marketing than it ever was in the past. So the old version of trade spend was you essentially would have spending that would go towards cents off on the shelf or to buy a display in the store, and that was pretty much it. Maybe it also would pay for you to get actual physical distribution either on the front checkout or in the main aisle. And then of course, marketing was your basic spending around generating insights, creating awesome advertising, and then putting it on air in whatever media you were selecting. But the lines are blurred now, right? So we do have the opportunity to take some of that spending that would have been the old style trade spending and putting that towards more point of purchase media support. And that could be everything from retailer media to digital coupons, as well as apps that are shopping based. And there are actually a lot of shopping based apps that give consumers points towards future purchases. So, you know, there are a lot of really new ways to be top of mind, not only at the top of the funnel, which is just sort of your basic brand awareness, but also being top of mind when you're at that store shelf, whether that's virtual or in the real world.
- [15:14]
Rachel Tippograph
So here you are as the full P and L owner and you were just talking about trade spend and the diversification of media options. We hear a lot about trade and accounting. And where should it sit in the P and L? Where should retail media sit in the P and L. As the P and L owner, what's your perspective?
- [15:34]
Sylvia Buxton
Yeah, also great question. As we said, there's a lot of blurring of lines between those two spend lines. Just to put it in the basics, right, Trade spend takes you from your gross sales to your net sales, and then your marketing spend takes you from your gross margin down to your contribution margin. From a brand perspective, honestly, there's kind of no real right answer in terms of where you put it. The way that we've been thinking about it at Profetti is two ways. First of all, how do you link it to the customer so that we can also have a Customer P and L. So that's important to make sure that we're understanding is this specifically based on a customer plan or is it more broad based? And then in addition, is it really more of a program that's designed to incent short term purchase or more long term purchases? And I think that's kind of what we've been looking at in terms of where we place the money in the certain buckets. So Amazon, for example, they were the first big digital company to have retail media. Now virtually every customer of ours has their version of retail media. One could argue that if you're doing broad based top of funnel spending on that media platform, then probably it should go into the marketing line. If you're doing more specific tactics that are designed to be closer to the point of purchase or to incent individual purchases, then probably it fits more within the trade line. Like I said, no right or wrong answer is probably the most important thing from the finance people's perspective is just to be consistent and to figure out the rules of the game and then follow them.
- [17:05]
Rachel Tippograph
And internally, does that change the behaviors of employees?
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Sylvia Buxton
I guess the only behaviors that change are not only does the spending become more gray and the lines blurred, but also the responsibility lines become more blurred. So the ownership, in air quotes, let's say, of the dollars is usually where the responsibility lies. And so I think it's just really, really important as we think about how we structure our teams, is that we're really clear on the races, right? Who's the responsible, who's the accountable that's making the decision, who's the budget owner and how are we going to collectively build the brands in the most effective and efficient way. So it really does require a ton of communication and a ton of collaboration between the various teams to make sure that we're not stepping all over each other, but instead we're being synergistic in how we spend the dollars.
- [18:02]
Rachel Tippograph
You know, we have a lot of people on the show where either retail media and national digital media sit under two different leaders. And then we're also seeing a trend where it's being consolidated and it's sitting under one leader. Do you have a perspective on where it all ends up?
- [18:18]
Sylvia Buxton
We actually have consolidated under one leader. So we have one commercial lead that's responsible for U.S. and Canada. And underneath that person we have the basic pillars of marketing as well as sales. But then we have, let's call it the tweener group that we call commercial excellence. And commercial excellence has a lot of responsibilities around the insight Space and also trade planning, customer planning and so on. So that group or those three groups together have the responsibility to spend the money in the, in the best way to grow the business.
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Rachel Tippograph
Got it. So enormous amount of change, channel distribution, media diversification. And then we also have this added nuance of changing consumer taste preferences. I think probably six months ago, Walmart came out with some data on how GLP1 was already changing behaviors that they were seeing at point of sale. As someone who oversees a portfolio that is in the confectionery space and you think about where consumer taste preferences are heading, do you see this as a headwind or a tailwind?
- [19:23]
Sylvia Buxton
Yeah. You know, this is an interesting one, especially for somebody like myself who's in the confectionery business in one way, shape or form for quite a few decades. And if you look back at the food industry over the last few decades and think about healthy trends. Right. We've been talking about healthy trends now for a long time. Might have started with the low fat craze, then it maybe went on to the low carb craze. There was the Zone diet, there were a pile of other diet schemes and yeah, absolutely. Now there is this most recent phenomenon of the GLP1, weight loss drugs. And certainly over that time period, while consumer tastes and behaviors have shifted, there's been a lot of predictions about how behaviors are going to change so dramatically and everyone's going to move to much more healthy lifestyles and certain category sales are just going to dry up and disappear. It's really interesting. There's been a study done by a gentleman named Hank Cardillo and he's with Georgetown University and he looked at confectionery category compared to other indulgent food categories and how consumers interact with those categories, how their perceptions about them, how they purchase them. Looking at that on a range of different types of segments of consumers ranging from the eat, drink and be merry. So those that really don't really care and they do whatever they want, they're not so health conscious all the way to the super healthies on the other side. And you know, the interesting thing is that while some categories behaviors are very different regarding the healthiness of that segment, the confection category is actually pretty consistent across all of them. So overall, consumers I think get the fact that, go figure, candy has sugar.
- [21:05]
Rachel Tippograph
Wait, what?
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Sylvia Buxton
Yeah, right. It's not trying to hide itself from anybody. As opposed to maybe other categories where consumers might think that they're healthy, but in fact they actually still are very high in calories and fat. And so on. So that's a good thing that's going for the confectionery business is that we're not masquerading as something that we're not. And regardless of consumers health perceptions, they basically interact with the categories pretty much the same. But anyway, getting Back to the GLP1 impact on consumption, I've actually read a study the other day by Circana saying about 6% of the US population is currently on GLP1s, although interestingly that's down from 12%. So for whatever reason some of the consumers have come off the drugs. That could be maybe because of some of the side effects. The cost obviously is well known. And then as well there are some, of course I would imagine some of the consumers have maybe gone off them if they've gotten to a weight loss goal that they were going after. But in any case, the study that Circana did was quite interesting in that you're absolutely right, per what you were saying before, that especially within the first three months that people are on these drugs, they greatly modify their behaviors. They pick up purchases of more healthy categories like fiber rich foods, better fats, et cetera, and they reduce consumption and purchasing of what they would consider to be lower nutrition value categories. So maybe things that are higher in calories but not as worthwhile from a, from a food perspective. Although interestingly one of the positives though potentially especially for the part of confectionery that Proffetti Van Mel focuses on. And we don't have anything within the chocolate segment, but we obviously have great brands within the non chocolate category like Airheads and Extremes and Chupa Chups from a lollipop point of view. And then we also have of course our Mentos refreshing brands, our gum brands like Trident Dentine and Bubblicious. And one of the side effects of taking these GLP drugs is a dry mouth. And so therefore the purchase habits of things like gum and mints actually are on the rise as a result from some of those consumers that are experiencing those side effects. So you know, I guess in every cloud maybe there's a silver lining.
- [23:15]
Sarah Hofstadter
I was just going to go with that. Yeah, that's exactly right. It's like how do you take a perceived vulnerability and make it an asset? You just mentioned chocolate and I was thinking about all these external changes that have been happening colored over the past 12 to 24 months. GLP1, rising cost of cacao lately, tariffs, private label pressure, and in most of these cases, depending on how you take it, you're very immune, which is pretty incredible in the food space because if you look at the Cagney presentations from a couple months ago, everybody was like, the sky is falling. I listen to you and I'm like, it's a lot of reason for.
- [23:52]
Sylvia Buxton
Oh yeah, I guess maybe I'm a glass half full person.
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Sarah Hofstadter
I love it. On it. Ray Day, you are a ray of sunshine.
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Sylvia Buxton
Yeah. Not to say that there won't certainly be some impacts, but I guess the point is that's why we are all innovative and creative marketers and business people. We have to think about new ways to get around some of these challenges and maybe turn the headwinds into tailwinds if we can.
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Rachel Tippograph
Well, Sylvia, Sarah and I would pick your brain all day. Honestly, it's been so informational. But we gotta ask you our famous last question, which is, what's the bravest thing you've ever done?
- [24:24]
Sylvia Buxton
Wow. I guess I would have to say that despite the fact that I am a competitive swimmer and maybe swimming a 200 meter butterfly is either super brave or super stupid, I wanted to answer the question more from a professional standpoint. So one of the bravest things that I personally have done is move from Canada to the U.S. i was working at Hershey at the time and I had the opportunity to move from Toronto in Canada, a city of millions, down to Hershey, Pennsylvania, town of thousands. My husband and I and our two and a half year old and eight month old packed up all of our stuff, hopped into the cars and drove down to Hershey, Pennsylvania. And there we had to set up shop and create a whole new network of friends, create a network of support where we didn't have family, and then also, certainly from a business standpoint, learn a new business. Even though I was working for the same company and working on a lot of the same brands, I had to learn about all the new retail landscape, the whole culture and differences of the US and it was an amazing and outstanding experience to just learn new things and to have new opportunities. So while it sometimes seemed really hard, ultimately it really opened up great personal and professional opportunities for me. So I was able to travel all over the world. I'm now responsible for over 2,400 employees across Canada, U.S. mexico and Latin America. And I'm able to help those team members build amazing and powerful brands. So I guess I've learned over the years, don't let fear get in the way. I think especially for women, and we're the three women here, sometimes we can let fear get in the way and we can let it hold ourselves back. So one thing I like to say to everyone that I meet is dare to succeed.
- [26:05]
Rachel Tippograph
Sylvia. You're a living manifestation of it. Somehow we've convinced you to stay in America, though at other times your home country might be a better place. We appreciate you sharing all of your insights.
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Sylvia Buxton
Thanks so much ladies. It's been great talking to you today too.
- [26:21]
Rachel Tippograph
If you like what you heard and you want to hear from other great CEO operators that we've had on the show, you can go check out the episode we did with the CEO of Olipop. Ben, you can go check out the episode we did with the CEO PIM Brands, Michael Rosenberg. By the way, Ben and Michael are also both founders. Or you can go check out an episode we did around the holidays with the CEO Greg of dhl. If you like what you heard, tell a friend, Write a Review Share in LinkedIn thanks for listening.
- [27:13]
Acast
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- [28:05]
Jackie Cooper
Hi, I'm Jackie Cooper, Global Chief Brand Officer at Edelman and the host of Touch of Truth, a new podcast launching on the Adweek Podcast Network. My dad gave me this incredibly smart piece of advice. Meet everyone once. As a result, I've met some of the most fascinating and inspiring people on the planet. Now on Touch of Truth, we're coming center stage and sharing the mic to to experience stories of truth, insights and visions for the future that will challenge your way of thinking. Touch of Truth is available wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes come out every Tuesday. I do hope to see you there.