Podcast Summary: The CMO Podcast

Episode: The Consumer Insights Revolution with PepsiCo and Zappi | How to Turn Data Into Advantage
Date: January 28, 2026
Host: Jim Stengel
Guests: Steve Phillips (Zappi), Natalie Kelly (Zappi), Catherine Melchior Ray (Brand Strategist), Stefan Ganz (PepsiCo)

Overview

This episode gathers leading voices at the intersection of marketing, insights, and technology to discuss the new book The Consumer Insights Revolution: Transforming Market Research for Competitive Advantage. The conversation is centered on a multi-year transformation at PepsiCo—how they turned fragmented data and outdated research approaches into a competitive business advantage, largely through cultural change, technology adoption, and a deep focus on consumer centricity. The guests reflect on global brand relevance, the evolution from "testing" to "learning," and how marketers everywhere can use connected insights and AI to drive smarter decisions, but also warn that human understanding and empathy remain irreplaceable.

Key Discussion Points

Personal Stories: Foundations of Consumer Understanding

[04:29]–[11:13]

• Natalie Kelly shares how her early career as a Spanish interpreter taught her that communication challenges are more about culture and context than language alone.
  • “Most of our communication challenges are not just about language. It’s about culture, it’s about context, and it’s about what someone wants to do, their motivation.” [04:44]
• Steve Phillips describes his entrepreneurial path and the “aha moment” that led to founding Zappi—automating consumer insight to shrink timelines and costs from weeks and tens of thousands to hours and thousands.
  • “I wanted to take an industry where a typical project would take four weeks and cost $20,000 and make that four hours and $2,000.” [06:30]
• Stefan Ganz recalls PepsiCo’s decision to hire for connectivity and change leadership, not just technical insight expertise; his consultancy and Unilever experience shaped his ability to galvanize teams across a federated company.
  • “Most companies think it’s smart to promote the best surgeon to head of surgery. PepsiCo thought that was probably not the smartest move.” [08:16]
• Catherine Melchior Ray shares her formative years in Japan and how “listening with her eyes,” reading nonverbal cues, and understanding kūki o yomu (“reading the room”) shaped her approach to global branding and insights.
  • “Consumer Insights is kind of that way too: you have to learn to really develop your instinct and see what consumers are telling you, even if they don’t know themselves.” [10:45]

Building Empathetic, Insight-Led Culture

[11:13]–[14:05]

• The panel discusses how to foster a company culture where reading the “room”—including nonverbal cues—helps drive insight.
  • Steve explains Zappi's use of silent meeting techniques to ensure both introverts and extroverts contribute, inspired by Amazon’s practice: “We ended up starting to have initially silent meetings … so you would listen to all of your colleagues effectively through your eyes rather than your ears and the loudest person in the room.” [12:03]
  • Natalie addresses being an introvert in marketing and stresses the importance of intentional use of in-person time and continual adaptation in communication to ensure all voices are heard.

Motivation Behind Recent Books

[15:44]–[19:58]

• Stefan began documenting PepsiCo’s journey because of growing industry interest and the repeated need to share their story of transformation:
  • “Insights functions … often very underutilized, under leveraged. … There’s a lot of energy for people to drive progress. They want to have impact and learn.” [16:04]
• Steve admits he underestimated technology’s role, realizing the bigger challenge was behavior change and workflow around insight adoption. The journey finished by laying foundations for AI to leverage the connected data.
  • “It’s not about adopting a new technology, it’s about changing a workflow … maximizing the benefit of the insight and the data that you have.” [17:40]
• Catherine and Natalie explain their book is about the challenge of maintaining global consistency while achieving deep local relevance for brands. Culture is key to manifesting human values brand-wide.

Best-in-Class Brands for Global-Local Balance

[19:58]–[24:29]

• Stefan: Lego, Pepsi, Lays exemplify local relevance powered by global platforms.
  • “Finding … global might for the local fight and vice versa is incredibly powerful.” [20:38]
• Natalie: Apple does this well; strong B2C focus, more complex in B2B for reasons of buyer committees and multiplied personas.
• Steve: Dove and (surprisingly) Singer Sewing Machines, citing instant emotional brand connection in research globally.
• Catherine: KitKat’s hundreds of Japanese flavors as “freedom within a frame” shows letting local teams innovate around core brand equities.

What’s Broken in Insights?

[25:08]–[30:09]

• Natalie: Data fragmentation is the top barrier—brands sit on “gold mines” locked in silos across business units and countries, blocking potential. AI effectiveness requires unified, de-fragmented data.
  • “If we don’t get that data homogenized … we won’t be able to make the best use of it.” [25:52]
• Stefan: Centralizing and digitalizing data lets PepsiCo make “meta learning” possible—every market’s test makes the whole organization smarter.
• Catherine: Many still don’t see insights/marketing as core to product creation. She redefines marketing as “interpreting the consumer.”

The PepsiCo Journey: From Silos to Learning Organization

[31:27]–[40:17]

• Stefan recaps shaping a global team by identifying five main capability gaps, then rolling out new “connected insights” platforms (like ADA) through cross-functional alliances and partnerships. The cultural shift required dedicated training—“the PepsiCo way”—moving insights professionals from order-takers to business partners.
  • “I naively thought, you give someone a better tool … and then they’ll magically change. … Obviously, that’s not the case.” [33:21]
• Success measured not just by creative effectiveness (up 30%) but by internal customer survey scores—showing new respect for insights as business partners.
• Steve: True change required shared vision and long-term commitment from both PepsiCo and Zappi; not only tech overhaul but radical behavior changes.
• Natalie: Zappi’s “maturity model” for companies helps benchmark their progress; validates that connected insights drive more harmonious, effective relationships (within teams and between marketers and insight leads).

Real-World Application: Nike’s Story

[40:29]–[44:06]

• Catherine details Nike’s women’s footwear journey—moving from “pink it and shrink it” to innovating around real consumer issues (like knee injuries). Unexpected insights came from simply watching how women shop: they viewed shoes from above, not the side. This prompted both product and visual merchandising innovations.
  • “We learned that not only do we have to turn the inside of the shoe differently, but … design the outside from a different design angle.” [43:00]
• Key: at Nike, consumer insights were highly prioritized and celebrated internally, driving organization-wide adoption of learning.

From Testing to Learning (PepsiCo’s Core Transformation)

[44:26]–[47:11]

• Stefan: Deciding to focus on innovation and advertising was natural. The big shift was from “testing”—expensive, slow, and political—to “learning”—fast, iterative, and low-threshold.
  • “We needed it to transform our ways of working from testing to learning.” [44:55]
• Steve: Old model had insight teams slowing creatives down, which led to workarounds. The new system enables creators: lots of small, rapid feedback loops without bureaucratic bottlenecks, aiming to make “creators love consumer insight.”

The Future: AI, Analytics, and Human-Centricity

[48:33]–[51:57]

• Stefan: Predicts that the split between insights and marketing will disappear. Data analytics is now core to everyone’s job, and the coming “agentic era” will have many marketing/insights tasks handled by AI agents—except for “reading the tea leaves.” Human sensemaking around culture will only grow in importance.
  • “The areas where humans continue to add phenomenal value … is in really understanding, for lack of a better way of saying it, in reading the tea leaves.” [49:25]
• Catherine: Emphasizes the irreplaceability of cultural understanding and human empathy. “Culture is [AI’s] Achilles’ heel.” [57:50]

Pragmatic Advice for Becoming More Consumer-Centric

[51:57]–[56:23]

• Natalie: Build relationships between marketers and insight teams—make them your closest allies. Draw out the quieter, brains in the room by intentional engagement.
• Steve: Start with a data audit—find, map, and connect your data. Unified data is the foundation for leveraging AI and driving growth.
  • “In the age of AI, your data is your competitive advantage.” [58:34] (as quoted by Jim in takeaways)
• Catherine: “Walk the market.” Get out, observe consumers directly, and challenge assumptions. Share your field discoveries with teammates for multiple perspectives.
• Stefan: Push business to look beyond the “rear-view mirror” of recent sales. Insights teams can drive value by pushing predictive indicators (like household penetration) to steer future-focused decisions.

Panel’s 2026 Resolutions

[56:23]–[58:18]

• Steve: Excited about synthetic data and AI making insights available to anyone, anywhere, anytime.
• Natalie: Bring the fun back to marketing—after years of upheaval, brands need to inject positivity and energy.
• Stefan: Infuse optimism—brands can and should be a source of hope and positivity.
• Catherine: Emphasize empathy—technology is important, but authenticity, connection, and nonverbal cultural understanding are what only humans can provide.

Highlighted Quotes & Timestamps

• Natalie Kelly:
  “Most of our communication challenges are not just about language. It's about culture, it's about context, and it's about what someone wants to do, their motivation.” (04:44)
• Steve Phillips:
  “I wanted to take an industry ... and make [market research] four hours and $2,000.” (06:30)
  “In the age of AI, your data is your competitive advantage.” (58:34)
• Stefan Ganz:
  “Most companies think that it's smart to promote the best surgeon to head of surgery. PepsiCo thought that was probably not the smartest move.” (08:16)
  “What we needed was to transform our ways of working from testing to learning.” (44:55)
  “Insights leaders in companies can make a huge contribution by showing the company that everybody is spending too much time looking at their rearview mirrors ... Look at predictive indicators.” (55:39)
• Catherine Melchior Ray:
  “There’s an expression in Japanese called kukiyo yomu—it’s loosely translated as reading the room. ... Consumer Insights is kind of that way too.” (10:45)
  “Culture is [AI’s] Achilles’ heel. The more we learn to embrace technology, the more we also have to embrace our humanity.” (57:50)

Segment Timestamps

• [04:29] Early career stories & learning to listen
• [11:13] Building empathetic, insight-driven cultures
• [15:44] Why write books on insights & branding?
• [19:58] Global vs. local brand balance
• [25:08] What’s broken (data fragmentation), need for connected insights
• [31:27] PepsiCo’s internal journey (“ADA,” shifting roles, KPIs)
• [40:29] From shoes to culture: Application at Nike
• [44:26] Moving from testing to learning
• [48:33] Insights, analytics, and the future with AI
• [51:57] Panel’s advice for new year’s resolutions
• [56:23] 2026 resolutions: Data, fun, optimism, empathy

Tone & Themes

The episode is candid, story-rich, and blends pragmatic advice with aspirational themes. There’s both optimism about technology’s potential (especially AI and connected data) and a persistent reminder that cultural empathy and human discernment remain essential. The tone is collegial, reflective, and directly addresses listeners who want to make meaningful change in both their companies and themselves.

Key Takeaways

• True consumer centricity depends on connected data, behavioral change, and organizational empathy—not just new tech.
• The best brands blend global consistency with local relevance, driven by deep cultural listening.
• Moving from “research as report card” to “insights as daily learning” is the next competitive leap.
• In the age of AI, human skills in culture, empathy, and reading between the lines gain even more value.
• Pragmatic steps: audit and connect your data, foster relationships between marketing and insights, get out into the market, and focus on forward-looking indicators.
• Fun, optimism, and empathy—paired with intelligent data practices—form the new agenda for marketing leaders.