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BRAVE COMMERCE
Scotts Miracle-Gro’s Matt Taylor on Navigating AI Search, Retail Media, and Real-Time Data
00:22:50
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- [00:00]
A
Hi, I'm Darina, co founder of Quo. You might know us as openphone. My dad is a business owner and growing up he always kept his ringtone super loud so he'd never miss a customer call. That stuck with me. When we started Quo, our mission was to help businesses not just stay in touch, but make every customer feel valued no matter when they might call. Quo gives your team business phone numbers to call and text on your phone or computer. Your calls, messages and contacts live in one workspace so your team can stay fully aligned and reply faster. And with our AI agent answering 24. Seven, you'll really never miss a customer. Over 90,000 businesses use Quo. Get 20% off@quo.com tech that's Q U O.com tech and we can port your existing numbers over for free. Quo no missed calls, no missed customers.
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B
How does F1 turn data into insights at 200 mph? AWS is how fans get inside the strategy.
- [01:06]
C
AWS powers next level innovation for millions of businesses.
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D
Finding the right audience shouldn't feel like doom scrolling with Experian. It doesn't. Experian syndicated audiences help you reach holiday shoppers, car buyers and more across over 200 top platforms with over 2,400 pre built audiences. There's no more doom scrolling. It's audience targeting you can trust. Made simple. Learn more at experian.com adweek that's E-P-E-R-A-N.com adweek.
- [01:46]
E
We'Ve always kind of looked at like sales numbers and you would look at what kind of media you had running, we would get input from our field sales team. But a couple years ago we started to build this model out to really kind of help us in season be able to go and optimize our media plans. Right. And so to be able to have a predictive model that's going to let us know where we can maybe ride the most emphasis has been pretty amazing. And it's not like something that just happened overnight either. It took a good 24 months to get where we're at today and the model is significantly better and more helpful than it was when we started to be able to have that as a constant access has been really, really helpful.
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B
Welcome to Brave Commerce.
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C
I'm Rachel Tippograph, the founder and CEO of Micmac.
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B
And I'm Sarah Hofstadter, chairwoman of Profitero plus.
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C
And this is a show that talks about what's relevant in commerce for the world's biggest br. Sarah, are you a chatgpt girly Or Perplexity Girly or Claude or Gemini, like who's your best friend?
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B
I am very promiscuous. Oh, I don't have a personal favorite. I feel like I have different things for different use cases. I've been really getting into Gemini in Google Sheets. Believe it or not, I'm not a math native language. That's more of a foreign language to me still. And the Gemini function within Google Docs lately has been really interesting to me, helping me do better analysis. ChatGPT makes me sound like less of an asshole, which I like. But you know, I think it's different Claude for different things. And I've been using the AI functionality within so many my day to day tools, whether that's, you know, even Sparky on Walmart or Rufus on Amazon. I think it's been a little bit more how it gets integrated into my daily use. Who's your you sounds a little bit more loyal than my promiscuity.
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C
Well, I have paid for my friendship and that is ChatGPT Pro.
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B
Oh, I pay.
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C
So you pay for all of these services?
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B
No, but I do pay for ChatGPT Pro. Okay, that I will say I pay for. I also pay for Microsoft Copilot. Oh, I also pay for my friendships.
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C
Oh, yeah.
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B
Okay, I'm sounding very desperate right now.
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C
Yeah, you are. But no, it's interesting. I've gone so in on chat that I just have this rich history. So even what you're describing with Google Sheets, I'm like literally looking at my browser right now. I got chat and Google Sheets open and I was doing math and chat, even though I know I could be doing it in Gemini because I've just gone all in there. The point that we're both demonstrating is that these LLMs are starting to become super apps and we're using them for multiple purposes, personally and professionally, every single day, including commerce, most certainly.
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B
And also in that decision tree, if you've got chat open on the regular, you're probably asking it questions you might have been previously Googling.
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C
Oh, I've stopped using Google. I'll put it out there. I was at Alphabet's office last week and I told them that point blank.
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B
Listen, I will say Chad's ability to whip up recipes for me based on what I've got in my kitchen. Not bad.
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C
Yeah, no, it's amazing.
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E
Not bad.
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B
So if that's the case, then depending on what brand ends up servicing up, that would make me more likely to purchase that brand. And I still don't know how they've determined that that is the appropriate brand for me, but I don't want to squirt my recipe.
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C
Yeah, well, you know, at Mic Mac, we've seen a 250% increase in just our commerce loads within an environment like ChatGPT. And the only way that we get discovered there is through our brand customers. So there's an absolute shift from that's happening right now in search and a category that's feeling it faster than many is lawn and garden. And Matt, who leads commerce for Scott's Miracle Gro, is at the helm of seeing this overnight change in the customer journey. So let's bring Matt onto the show today. We are very excited to have Matt Taylor, the vice president of digital at Scott Scott's Miracle Grow. Hello, Matt.
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E
Hi. How are you both doing?
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C
Good. Excited to have you. You know, we don't use video when we publish, but I wish everyone could see the different plant garden you have in your office. We don't always get to see that. Scott's is such an interesting category to do e commerce in because obviously it's not the easiest products to ship and it's also not an impulse buy. So it's pretty well suited for E commerce. We're currently living at this wild time, which is the year 2025, where consumer behavior is shifting in real time. And I imagine for a category like yours that's often heavily researched, the power of search, moving from traditional search to generative search, like, you probably have a front row seat more than anyone else. So what are you seeing and feeling in 2025 that you think might change the business?
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E
Yeah, I mean, definitely Lawn and Garden is not something where you just kind of walk into a store and all of a sudden, like, decide that you're going to build a raised garden bed. Right. Like, you're going to go and you're going to do some research around kind of where you're going to put it and how you're going to grow it. And being the leader in lawn and garden, that really our kind of main focus is helping people find more ways to grow, making them successful. And so AI search is really interesting. I think it's going to be an amazing tool for our consumers to be able to understand how to do projects in a really simple way. But it definitely changes the ecosystem. Right. Like, quite a bit. And so now you're looking at having to be able to understand, like, how our content actually shows up in these searches Right. Where you need to have partnerships. So your content can also show up in these search engines and then figuring out how you're going to be able to kind of monitor those. And so it's a very, very different dynamic. I also think it's a very elevated experience for consumers. And so now you have to think about when you're developing your own digital experiences, what the expectation is now that you can get these really amazing, simplified answers. And then what we need to do as a kind of branded company to be able to kind of provide an elevated experience as well, which we're very focused on at the moment.
- [08:03]
B
For what it's worth, on Mother's Day, my kids, they got me a bunch of seeds and I was like, that's stellar, but we don't have a garden. And we actually ended up walking into Home Depot, getting the equipment, getting all the stuff and, and basically a pallet full of Scott's Miracle Gro to throw into the planter, the raised bed planter that we made and of course realized like within five minutes that we did not buy enough soil. So did the E commerce thing. And that worked out pretty well. But I don't see myself as the typical in that regard. That being said, I immediately consulted AI for like, what are the next best things I need to do. So how do you see that kind of coming into play as you think about the new consumer experience and the new path to purchase, if you will?
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E
Yeah, it's moving so quickly. I mean, I do think there's going to be the starting point, right, where understanding what those top searches are and making sure that we have content that's showing up very frequently into the searches. Right. And they're not going to be just getting it from us, it's just how we kind of partner with influencers and other people creating third party content and understanding how those algorithms kind of prioritize those types of content going into it and then knowing that they're going to be coming to us from some of those links, also looking at what are they coming directly to our sites to versus where they're going from these generative search engines and making sure we're really making sure we're providing a personalized, stellar experience for those people for the types of use experiences that they're kind of coming to us for. And again, like you guys mentioned earlier, like it's been changing so fast. You look at some of these news publications and just how quickly their traffic went away and it's almost overnight. And the way the speed in which people are kind of adopting it is pretty amazing. And so I think we're looking at it now very differently than we did nine months ago. And we might be looking at it very differently six months from now. But I think as we're kind of paying very closely attention to it, but I think it's going to be great for consumers.
- [10:09]
B
What was that tipping point that said, okay, we better pay attention? Like, was it the news type? Was it somebody in the like C suite that says, what is that point where you're like, okay, it's time for us to take this seriously.
- [10:21]
E
We have quite a bit of marketers on our board. So like soon as we started hearing like inklings, right, of AI and AI search, right, We've had lots of different questions kind of coming in and so we've been paying a lot of attention to it. But I just think the integration into like every single app and search engine and into your phones and how frequently it's getting used and I think the quality of answers that are coming back now make you pay attention. I mean like just even like personally, right? Like everyone's using it. It's not like you have to be like some big tech maven that's like ahead of the curve using AI search. Almost everyone you know is using it in some regard at this point. And so it's amazing the adoption rate. And so I think we kind of started early and looking at it. But even just from personal experiences and just knowing people and talking with consumers and just talking with friends, like you see how quickly it's been adopted and just knowing the impact it's having.
- [11:15]
D
Finding the right audience shouldn't feel like doom scrolling with Experian. It doesn't. Experian syndicated audiences help you reach holiday shoppers, car buyers and more across over 200 top platforms with over 2,400 pre built audiences. There's no more doom scrolling. It's audience targeting you can trust. Made simple. Learn more at experian.com adweek that's E-P-E-R-I-A N.com adweek.
- [11:49]
B
How does F1 turn data into insights at 200 mph? AWS is how fans get inside the strategy.
- [11:58]
C
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- [12:06]
F
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- [12:34]
B
It's interesting that you mentioned that the board was asking questions about that. Rachel and I are good friends with a gentleman who runs the Alpha Council, this guy Stephen Wal Ferreira. And a big part of what he's doing is specifically around raising awareness within boardsmat the world that AI needs to play both in the boardroom and then with the companies you oversee. And I think it speaks to a, a contemporary nature of your board. Specifically around that. Does that happen frequently where they're the ones who are pushing you guys to say, you know what, I think you guys should like, have you looked into xyz? Like when E commerce started getting bigger, were they like, hey, can we make money on selling our products on E Commerce or is it just not conducive?
- [13:21]
E
It kind of goes back and forth, but I would definitely say we've been blessed with having a lot of really smart marketers on our board. It's a company that was kind of founded by advertisers and marketers. Right. Like our person who started Miracle Grow was Hars Hagedorn, that was a Madison Avenue like advertising person. So like in general, like, that's kind of like the roots of the company that we're very much ingrained into like advertising and marketing. And so with that our board kind of represents it. And so we do have some really good forward thinking people that are pretty connected. And so as we look at different technology and things start to come out, we definitely have some great resources that also make good connections for us as well, some good industry leaders. And so I think it's been super helpful. There has been also been a board that's wanting to be more forward thinking as well. Right. So it's not a very like wait and see. It's not super conservative. It's kind of like what is coming out and making sure we're not kind of getting caught flat footed here, which is again tend to be a little more of a tidal wave here, like how AI is kind of coming through.
- [14:19]
C
I imagine one of the things that didn't come from your board was the organizational consolidation of digital and retail media. Living under one person, which in many companies still is separate. So as you think about all the disciplines that are organized underneath you, like tell us more about what is that scope and how did that come to be within the organization?
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E
Yeah, the way that we got in pretty early when it came down to retail media and mostly a lot of Times because the way that we kind of approached it early on was we saw the halo effect that a lot of retail media actually has on the rest of the business. Right. It wasn't just for that particular retailer. And then in addition to that, one of the things that we did know is some of the retail media networks, as you can imagine, are very tied to sales, merchants and things like that. And so once you start adding budgets to those, those are not as flexible as maybe like traditional media budgets were. And so we wanted to make sure very early on that we are managing those in a very data driven way of making sure that we're investing the right amount in the right platforms, because that justified it. But then in addition to that, we've had some really great partnerships with these retail medias where it's not just right, like lower conversion media, it is kind of full funnel between the Thursday Night Footballs on Amazon or a great partnership we had in March Madness with Home Depot. And so you have a full portfolio of media assets that you can use these partners. And so for us to consolidate it, it was really the fact that based on the brand's objectives and the business objectives, that might be the right tool for the job. And so I don't want to go and plan a full media plan. And then, oh, after the fact, we now have to go plan this retail media, maybe it'd be the main tool for that job that brand needs to do. And so planning it all together and having that as part of one team has been super helpful. And I think also from a measurement perspective, it's been great because we're kind of able to get ahead and making sure all that data is coming through and seeing the total impact on the business. And I think the only kind of like hard part about it really, and why probably a lot of people don't do it, is the lot of collaboration that is kind of required to do that. Right. And so you no longer have brand objectives and you have brand media and you have sales objectives between our retailers and our sales team. And like that media, like you have to reconcile those, right? And so now you're trying to reconcile across those kind of three key stakeholders. But all in all, I think our organization finds is like well worth it and I think credit to the media team that here that kind of puts in the extra work to kind of make that happen.
- [16:54]
B
I've seen you guys go through various iterations over the course of the past five and a half years that we've been working together. I think you said it Right. Just in terms of the mindset of what needs to be true. And if collaboration is the biggest problem, that shouldn't be the biggest problem. So very sensible approach, but also understanding what needs to be true in order for you to get there. But the underpinning of so much of that that gets you there is data. And you've helped architect a model built on machine learning where you figure out how you invest the next dollar. So it kind of takes the emotional bias out of it, if you will help us understand that without giving away your state secrets.
- [17:29]
E
Yeah, we've had a very data driven approach, as you've mentioned over the years. And as you can imagine, we're a very seasonal business. In addition to that, weather has a big factor. Right. Because if it's raining out, there's not a good chance that you're going to take on that project of getting those flowers into your beds. And so with that, we've always kind of looked at like sales numbers and you would look at what kind of media we had running. We would get input from our field sales team. But a couple years ago we started to build this model out and what it allows to do is take really granular weather data, macroeconomics, our current support programs, as well as other kind of key variables to really kind of help us in season be able to go and optimize our media plans. Right. And so you're going to have what I kind of call the skeleton of the plan. So you have your things that you're just going to have to build like general impressions on. But to be able to have a predictive model that's going to let us know where we can maybe ride the most emphasis, where we want to drive action that weekend and where the best opportunity to add dollars throughout that season has been pretty amazing. And it's not like something that just happened overnight either. It took a good 24 months to get where we're at today. And the model is significantly better and more helpful than it was when we started to be able to have that as a constant access to both be able to kind of see where we're at as a business and have a good thorough understanding what's happening. But to be able to kind of predict the bets over that kind of next two weeks has been really, really helpful for us as a whole.
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C
It sounds like you have your hands on real time weather data. You have your hands on real time media data. Do you also have your hands on real time like POS data?
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E
We do, yeah. So we were able to Kind of pull that in as well as other things that are kind of just being tracked that we kind of found are good inputs. Right. And so that's kind of like the big piece of building these models is getting some data sets with some pretty large length of time that you can kind of get into them, but then also finding the gaps for your own particular business that like start taking out some like unnecessary variability. Right. And so it's been kind of neat to like play around with it. We've had hypothesis and then you put it in, you test it and does it work or does it not work? And then where we have it today, it is pretty cool to be able to kind of see and play around with it. And the stories that like you can pull out that are pretty clear of what, what's happening in a lot of regards.
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C
How have the retailers and the media channels reacted to this model?
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E
It's actually been really helpful. I mean I had a good example where a main retailer merchant was saying like, hey, our holistic, like the retail was looking to kind of pull back on our category, move into another one just being seasonal. And we said no, no, like actually the data we have is saying like you should stay in it and like we can actually provide the data. We actually were able to pull in all the information kind of showing what was going to be in season, what was going to be left for the remaining of the season. And they were able to actually use that to kind of sell in and kind of continue to support a category, continue to order inventory. And I thought that was extremely helpful. And it was like a good kind of proof point of like the power of having that type of data.
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C
That's awesome. There's talks within a lot of the operators that we bring onto the show of them wanting to build this type of discipline and model. And so if an organization is trying to get real time data science off the ground, what are some of the things that you think they need to consider?
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E
Making sure you have some really good, smart kind of internal resources and data scientists, I think having some good external partners as well to be able to help you to do this. And then I think kind of the biggest thing that really made us successful is level setting with executives and the people that it's not going to be perfect to start off with. And so you're not going to be able to just take it from the first month and be like, this is what's happening and we know exactly what's going to be happening in the future. It's not a Crystal ball. And it's not going to be perfect, but they just knew that it was going to be a work in progress. And being patient is going to take time to make it better and better because you need to find out where are these anomalies that are happening and then be able to address those anomalies and what additional variables should we be adding to make this even better. And so it is a work in progress and kind of like level setting with internal stakeholders that this is not going to be like perfect overnight, but it is something that's going to be worth doing in the end I think is probably like one of the biggest kind of insights that we had or learnings that we had kind of going through this.
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B
Rachel mentioned your aerogarden that's sitting in your office. What are you excited the most about planting right now for the fall?
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E
I mean, typically we'll do a lot of different cold season plants and stuff like that in the garden. So we'll kind of pull in some like kale and some other things like that. If you have an air garden you can grow year round. So that's, that's just an easy one. So just constantly kind of turning that thing out and seeing what else we can grow.
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B
I've been a big fan of a garden for, I don't know, 12, 15 years, something like that. When I first got exposed to it. We've got some green thumbs and some black thumbs around, around our listenership. So any advice you have, you've given some great advice on how you've organized all that other stuff. But if all we want to do is just make things grow, I would.
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E
Definitely say like air garden is a great start because I mean you just kind of add water, you put in the pods, it tells you when to add water, it tells you when to feed. And I actually gave my mother in law one who claims she also has a black thumb and even she is having to be able to kind of grow lettuce inside of her kitchen. So she's super excited because she's not had historically had a lot of success in that area. And so I think you can always start with a aerogarden and then obviously like once you kind of get there, a little bit of success can always kind of go outside as well.
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B
It's interesting. Is black thumb one of those words that you use in your search strategy?
- [23:04]
E
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We should be able to hopefully help all of them.
- [23:08]
C
Well, Matt, we could pick your brain about gardening and commerce all day, but we got to ask you our famous Last question, which is, what's the bravest thing you've ever done?
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E
Yeah, I was thinking about this. I think the one thing I'll go back is probably earlier in my career. And so when I graduated as an undergrad, it was probably the worst time ever to get a job. So I knew I wanted to be in marketing. There was literally no marketing jobs available. And so I took an inside sales role at a little startup company. And about after a year and a half, two years, I was pretty good at it. But I kind of knew I needed some different experience if I wanted to take a marketing role, because there wasn't one available in the company or really anywhere else at that time. And so one of the things I did was I looked at. There was an operations role that came available, and so obviously not marketing. But I kind of saw that it got to work very closely with the CEO. It was able to take on some more strategic projects. I was going to be able to work with some external partners and manage them, but it was going to be like a 30% pay decrease. And so, like, being early in my career and living on my own in, like, a city, like, taking a 30% pay decrease was, like, not, like, ideal. But I always kind of look at, like, careers. It's a little bit like rock climbing. Like, sometimes you go sideways, sometimes you have to go sideways and down to go back up to get where you want to go. And so I took that role. And that was kind of like the first time I think I was, like, making a bet on myself and, like, intuition where I think I can deal with it. And within 18 months, I actually was able to develop a marketing role at that company with the CEO that ended up coming into an entire department. And then I've done that, I think, multiple times kind of since then in my career, and it's always kind of paid off, but it's a little bit of, kind of seeing what you kind of intuitively think might be the right next step and making that happen and kind of making it and then believing it'll happen and then making the work happen. So that was probably one good example. Kind of just professionally just being a little more brave. And I think it's worked out and good muscle memory.
- [25:03]
C
I love this analogy of rock climbing. It's awesome that you took a bet on yourself that you continued to bet on yourself. And I think that's a lesson a lot of people will carry with them.
- [25:11]
E
Awesome. Well, thank you.
- [25:15]
C
If you like what you heard and you want to keep listening to operators talk about how they're operationalizing AI. Go check out an episode that was from Brave Commerce Live that we published in February of this year with Meta, Nestle and Circana. If you like what you heard, tell a friend. Write a review. Thanks for listening.
- [25:52]
D
Finding the right audience shouldn't feel like doom scrolling with Experian. It doesn't. Experian syndicated audiences help you reach holiday shoppers, car buyers and more across over 200 top platforms with over 2,400 pre built audiences. There's no more doom scrolling. It's audience targeting you can trust. Made simple. Learn more at experian.com adweek that's E-P-E-R-I-A-N.com adweek.
- [26:26]
F
How do more than 100 million Fortnite players join the battle without lag? AWS is how epic games scales up to keep them in the action, AWS powers next level innovation for millions of businesses.
- [26:42]
G
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