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- [00:00]
Peter V.S. Bond
Retail media is rapidly becoming the go to channel for brands, aiming to engage consumers with measurable performance along the path to purchase. Retailers are increasingly empowering brands to accurately target meaningful audiences based on their longitudinal purchasing behaviors and execute media impressions across on site, off site and in store channels throughout the entire marketing funnel. For brand marketers, effectively incorporating retail media into their marketing budgets is essential for growth in today's omnichannel landscape. To address this critical need, Cornell University has partnered with the CPG Guys, along with leading industry executives and visionaries from around the world to launch the first ever retail Media Strategy Executive Education program. This immersive four day program at Cornell Tech May 5th to the 8th, 2025 brings together industry thought leaders and renowned faculty to share best practices for building compelling retail media platforms. You'll discover how to collaborate on creating best in class tech stacks, measure performance to ensure brands Access the necessary KPIs based on Campaign objectives and establish strong partnerships between brands and retailers. In addition, the program covers optimizing brand strategies using AI driven campaign design at scale to achieve marketing goals. By the end of the Retail Media Strategy program, you'll have gained a deep understanding of the retail media ecosystem and how both brands and retailers can accelerate organizational transformation to thrive in the future of performance marketing. See the link in the digital liner note to this episode to learn more about the Retail Media Strategy Executive Education Program at Cornell Tech May 5th through the 8th, 2025.
- [01:40]
Erin Price
Hi, I'm Erin Price with Sargento and you are listening to the CPG Guys Podcast.
- [01:48]
Peter V.S. Bond
Welcome to the CPGuys podcast. Your host Shree Rajagop Peter VS Bond explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in an increasingly digitally driven world. And now, here are the CPG Guys. Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast. I'm PVSB Co host and co Founder. I also serve as Head of Industry and Client Engagement at Flywheel, the E Commerce accelerator division of Omnicom. Joining me in the hosting duties for today's episode, as always, is my co founder of this growing media platform. He is the Chief revenue officer at ThinkBlue Consulting. He's also patriarch of the Raj family media empire. If you don't follow his daughters Lara and Rhea and their their pop star careers, you really should be they're getting quite explosive. Most recently he served as the Chief Customer Officer at General Mills. He's the man known as Sri Sri. We're back from Orlando. We were at Cagney. It was great to spend a couple days with you. I know we got our bags stuffed with all Sorts of merchandise, the craziness. I think the Wall Street Journal actually wrote an article about the frenzy around all the food tables for the giveaways. But what were your thoughts on Orlando?
- [03:07]
Shree Rajagopalan
It was arguably your second time, so you knew what to anticipate. I was a little surprised by just human behavior at a candy table that you can get access to at any grocery store. I'd never seen a mad dash like that. It felt like Coachella all over again. But, but, but onto business, Peter. For me, Cagney was underwhelming, not the conference of the host. Wall street does a terrific job of hosting this and getting the right people to the forum to chat. So kudos to Wall street as always for doing that. All our friends, the analysts. Also, I want to say thank you to the Cagni Group for inviting you and me. You know, we were one of maybe six reporters and media that was invited to this event, you know, with the likes of New York Times, etc. So we're very thankful that we got that chance. But the presentations themselves, I would say majority of them were underwhelming because having been a practitioner 30 years and the likes of PepsiCo, J&J, most recently genomics, as you said, I think the industry's lost for growth. And the industry is not really identifying clearly where it's going to go for growth other than a bunch of arrogant statements. My brand equity is so strong, it's going to come back. Like, where's it going to come back from? Without strategies that connect the brand equity to outcomes. What do you think?
- [04:34]
Peter V.S. Bond
You know, I think there were, in talking to the analysts, the message they gave was they were underwhelmed. I don't think they dealt quite as much with some of the topics that are really top of mind. How do you respond to GLP1? How do you deal with volume declines? So if you're not going to deal with that, one company came and didn't even give guidance on their numbers in the face of volume decline. So yeah, it was definitely a different temper. But we heard our friend Nick Modi at RBC Capital say, you know, we should probably, they should probably take a step back and stop trying to deliver the quarter right now and just prepare themselves for a growth phase, which is probably a year or so down the line.
- [05:17]
Shree Rajagopalan
Yeah. So the GLP1 is a very tricky one, Peter, because companies have been mentioning it to Wall street as a reason for the growth slowdown. And here you come to this premier forum and you don't have a strategy when quarter over quarter you've been discussing GLP as one of the reasons. That's why I think GLP was a miss. Otherwise I wouldn't have even bought it out.
- [05:38]
Peter V.S. Bond
Well, sree, we'll get, we're, we're going to get that into, we'll get all into this in another episode that we're going to record and release. Yeah, we will. Hey Shree, thanks for, thanks for joining. As always, before we introduce our guest just a little housekeeping to our audience, please make sure you're subscribing to our podcast on your favorite platform by clicking the Follow option particular on Apple and Spotify. And if you're on there, scroll down to the area where they have ratings and give us a star rating. Our favorite number is 5. It's entirely up to you, but giving us great ratings helps make our podcast more findable by the algorithm to industry luminaries like yourselves who, who can learn and, and be entertained by this podcast. So please, please do that. So let's get on to our special guest today. Perishable foods are arguably the final frontier in the world of digital commerce. You know, household penetration in Digital accelerated in 2020 with the onset of the pandemic, but most volume occurs in physical retail due to the impact on overall product condition and last mile delivery. We're pleased to have an e commerce practitioner in the space joining us today among among a great deal of her very varied experience. Sargento Foods is a family owned manufacturer of quality cheese products for over 70 years. Last summer our guest was named a General Manager of Consumer Products at Sargento. In this new role, she and her team will be responsible for the next phase of consumer products growth. Previously she served as Senior Vice President of marketing. During her 17 years at Sargento, she led the company's food service and ingredients division, refined the company's strategic planning process, launched an e commerce strategy that'll be great to talk about and its first integrated marketing communications department. So please join SRI and me in welcoming to the podcast Aaron Price. Aaron, good day. How are you?
- [07:39]
Erin Price
I am wonderful. Thank you for having me.
- [07:41]
Peter V.S. Bond
Well, we are very excited to have you. As I mentioned before you joined, we don't often have people on the podcast since we tend to be a little more digitally focused that come from the perishable foods area of consumer goods. So we are just so incredibly happy to have you join us. Before we get to the questions we prepared, I mean I gave a very brief introduction. If you could share with our audience an overview of Sargento Foods and what your role is. There Now?
- [08:12]
Erin Price
Yeah, absolutely. Well, as you said, Sargento, we are a third generation family owned company. The family still is very involved in the day to day operations. Louis Gentine, our third generation, generation CEO just down the hall, he's here every day. He's definitely very engaged in the business. And so we really see our role as to bring exactly what you said, high quality premium cheese innovations to the consumer, understand deeply consumer insights and what they're looking for in the dairy category and make sure that we're partnering with our retail partners to help encourage that growth whether it is in store or through the E commerce channels. We really are trying to focus on growing the category for the long term so that all stakeholders can benefit.
- [08:57]
Peter V.S. Bond
Thank you for that, Aaron. We're going to direct our audience to the digital liner notes of this episode. They can find links to Aaron's profile on LinkedIn and Sargento's LinkedIn page and their corporate website. So as you're listening to this conversation, as you want to do, you can multitask, read a little bit, learn a little bit, listen, be entertained, all of the above. That's what we're going to do. So thank you for that. Why don't we get to our conversation. So I'm going to start off Aaron and I would love to hear about what you consider to be pivotal points in your journey to get to you where you are in your role as general manager of consumer products at Sargento Foods.
- [09:44]
Erin Price
Yeah, absolutely. Well, the first thing, I have been working in CPG my entire career. So right out of college I actually worked for both General Mills and Johnson and Johnson. So a couple companies in commentary and really have always enjoyed the consumer insights and serving the consumer and CPG especially perishables, there's such an immediacy to it. I find that really, really fun. And so that's been my whole career path. About 17 years ago I found Sargento and you know, never intended to be at a single company for 17 years. It's been, you know, I look back now and feel like I can't believe that it's been that long. But the reason that I stayed is actually a couple things that you said in the introduction to this episode. At Sargento, because we are family owned, we really have the luxury of taking the long term view. It's not about, you know, making cuts or doing things that aren't right for the consumer to make a short term or a quarterly number or you know, to satisfy an analyst community. We are always focused on the long term, building stakeholder value for our Employees for our consumers, for our customers, our retail partners, our communities. And it really is so much fun to have the ability to impact consumers, build a brand for the long term, invest in the right things. And so I'm so grateful to the Sargento family because they've really given me an amazing career here over 17 years.
- [11:23]
Shree Rajagopalan
First of all, I'm going to congratulate you on all the success, both for the brand as well as your own career, moving up the ladder, you know, starting in brand management, all the way to being the general manager today. What I'd love to, and I think our audience would love to learn from someone like you who has been climbing up the marketing ladder onto brand leadership, period, is what are some of those leadership anchors that you've kind of held onto as clutch in your own life as you've kind of moved up in the ladder and leading a brand today for in a very important dairy category as well as if somebody listened to this episode and they're like, hey, I want to be the next Erin Price. What advice would you give them?
- [12:07]
Erin Price
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely been a journey and one that, you know, there were plenty of mistakes made along the way, trust me. But there's a couple things that I think I've learned along the way. And the first is really just, it's all about the people. I think earlier in my career as a brand manager and then a director. I think, you know, when you're younger in your career, you tend to be very task focused and I have to achieve this task and I have to do this project. And the further you go in your career, the more you realize that really isn't what's important. What's important is mentoring and nurturing the people who work for you, the people who work around you, building strong cross functional relationships to make sure that you can impact things across the organization, having strong communication. And so the earlier, I would always tell people, the earlier in your career that you can pivot from being task focused to being people focused, the better leader that you're going to be. And the second thing that I have learned, and I talk about this a lot with my team, is as a leader, you have to be very, very focused on, are you working on the big rocks? You know, sort of the Stephen Covey that. The big rocks and the sand and all of that sort of metaphor. There are limited hours in the day, you know, and everyone has a limitation. There are so many minutes that you can be doing things. And for most of us, we also want to have families and lives outside of work. And so you have to be really choiceful where you put your time and your energy. And if you're not focusing on those big rocks, you really have to sort of reevaluate what you're doing during a day. It's, you have to do as the leader. You have to do what matters most so that you are delivering the most for the company and maximizing the time that you're there. And then hopefully you can go off and enjoy your family and enjoy your personal life and have hobbies and have a rich and fulfilling life outside of work as well.
- [14:08]
Shree Rajagopalan
You bet. One of the follow ups to Erin, I'd love to ask you on that is the role of mentors in your own career. And then today, you know, one of the things that I've benefited from, Peter, both of us CPG guys have benefited from is a lot of reverse mentorship on subject matters which were newer to us, especially in the technology space. AI is one of them. We'd love to hear, the audience would love to hear what was the role of mentors in your career. And then do you believe in reverse mentorship? And are you getting reverse mentorship today?
- [14:40]
Erin Price
Absolutely. To both of those. My experience with mentors have been, and I always give these people this advice when they're looking for mentors here at Sargento is you can't rush a mentor relationship. A lot of times companies will try to, oh, put this person with this person in here, have a mentor relationship. And it doesn't work like that. You have to find someone that you have a genuine trust and a genuine connection with. And so my advice to people looking for more senior mentors is just spend the time getting to know the senior leaders as people and understand them and watch their philosophy and watch how they operate and then find someone that you might have a genuine connection with. That's how you're going to get a great mentor relationship. Just picking someone in the directory because they have a more senior title than you. You're wasting your time and their time. So really try to find that connection before you establish that relationship. And the second part of your comment about reverse mentorship, 100%, you know, in my bio, one of the things that we did at Sargento is we really built an integrated marketing communications team that functions sort of as our internal agency. And they have so much deep expertise in things like social media and AI and analytics and E commerce. And in all of those spaces, I have identified an informal, I don't think we call them a reverse mentor, but they are my reverse mentors, where I can call them and say, you know, a couple years ago, I did this. All right, TikTok, walk me through it, guys. What am I looking at? How does the algorithm work? Why are people spending so much time on this? And they do, and they can just walk me through it. And it's great that we have those relationships on my team that, you know, sometimes the more junior team members, they really get a kick out of, I think, you know, being the one to explain because they're the ones with the expertise, they're the ones with the pulse on, you know, what Gen Z is into and what they're thinking and how they're reacting. And so I have no shame whatsoever. I will pull someone into my office and say, hey, show me, show me this app. Show me that app. How are you using this? What is new in your world? Because you have to stay really close to what the consumer is doing, and it's so easy to get stuck in your own ways and not continue learning throughout your career.
- [17:07]
Peter V.S. Bond
Aaron, you just made Sree incredibly happy. Because if there's one thing I hear him crowing about in terms of brand leaders and CMOs is the fact that if you don't understand these social media platforms and you're not asking the people around you, you shouldn't be in that role 100%. Yeah.
- [17:30]
Erin Price
The traditional media world is gone. Long gone, in fact. And that's not how you're going to reach consumers. That's not how you're going to communicate anymore. You have to understand where they are so you can reach them.
- [17:44]
Peter V.S. Bond
So let's talk about those big rocks you mentioned. Would love to hear about the key strategic initiatives that you're kind of focused on in your role.
- [17:53]
Erin Price
Yeah, absolutely. Right now, for this year specifically, we are very focused on innovations. We have a lot of really big product innovations that we're launching in 2025. We have a few more confidential ones that we are readying for 2026. But, you know, to the discussion of, I think CPG in general and perishables maybe specifically, a lot of people are struggling for growth and struggling to connect with consumers. And at Sargento, one of the things that we know consumers are seeking right now is value. But value does not just mean price. It does not just mean going down to the cheapest item, to private label only. I'm never going to look at anything else. I mean, it also just doesn't mean just equity, as you were talking about. You can't just rest on your laurels and Say, well, I've got this great equity built up, they'll come back eventually. You have to give consumers something to bring them back to the shelf, to bring them back and give them something that really adds something to their life and in our case, how they eat. And so for us, focusing on really consumer driven, insight driven innovation that solves consumers problems and meets their needs, that is how we are most focused on driving the value for the consumer that hopefully is going to bring growth not just to Sargento but but to the dairy category as a whole moving forward.
- [19:19]
Peter V.S. Bond
And if I could ask a follow up to that. As you're building innovation, how, how much are you taking into consideration some of your key retail customers in terms of I'm designing something that might be appropriate for their consumer base or they've come to you with some insights and that is shaping how you're going to market. Would love to understand, I guess, how partnerships with key retailers influence what you're doing from a brand perspective.
- [19:47]
Erin Price
Absolutely. That is something that at Sargento we spend a lot of time focusing on. We love being able to partner with our customers, with our retail partners and getting their insights and what are they seeing with their consumers. And so we want to know, you know, we love it when they share their insights. They have tons of shopper data, they all have shopper cart data. They know what their customers are buying and what they're not buying and who's online and who's doing pickup and who's coming into the store. And the more that they are able to share those insights with CPG manufacturers, the better products we're going to develop, the better communications we're going to develop, the better programs we're going to put together with them. So it's a big focus for us, not only in kind of the omni space with communications and marketing plans and you know, all of those pieces, but translating that and funneling it to the innovations as well. And then we also, when we develop these innovations, we also, when we test them with consumers, we will do subsections and subcuts of channel specific consumers. So what does the club consumer think of this? What does the Walmart consumer think of this? What does the insert, you know, retailer X, Kroger, Albertsons, whoever it is, we're looking at that to see if there are differences and to see if there are things that we need to do to pump up the value or change the way we're communicating or suggest different shelf placement at these different retailers. And so it becomes kind of a big puzzle and of course, you can't be everything to everybody. There are choices and trade offs we have to make, but we definitely want to make sure that we are connecting with what our retailers need for their consumers as well as just sort of the broad national view.
- [21:40]
Shree Rajagopalan
One of those areas on value, Erin, that worries me. For the industry, it's not a one brand, individual brand issue is, you know, when we say value, we tend to look at the entire portfolio and we get carried away with. We have to have create value across the board. You know, there's a club strategy already existing for that. I worry more about opening price points even if it means a price pack architecture strategy. Would love to get your viewpoint and just coaching to the industry in general. Is a brand better off focused on opening price points versus trying to attack the whole portfolio which could take years to deliver anything for the consumer?
- [22:25]
Erin Price
I think that's a really tough question that I do think a lot of us are wrestling with right now because I do see there as being a huge role for price pack architecture, especially for, you know, one of the things that my team is talking about right now is are there core items where the normal price pack is? You know, that's tried and true. Do you need to go to more of an opening price point or a smaller pack or a trial size for some of these innovations? Specifically where, hey, this might be a little bit of a risk for a consumer to spend 3, 4, 5 dollars on a pack? You know, do they need something where it's just a few items, you can just try it. And what role does that play? I think another complicating factor with that though is, you know, a lot of customers are looking at their sales trends. They want to be driving dollars in their category and they look at a smaller pack size and they say, oh my gosh, are we going to be trading people down? Are we going to trade people out of the standard size into an opening price point? We're going to be taking dollars out of the category. It takes a big risk. And so I think this is just my opinion here. I think it's really going to take a retailer and a manufacturer partnering together to take a little bit of a risk here. You know, say, hey, we're going to try this. We're going to test it in one division or a handful of stores. How can we work together to maybe untangle this a little bit? And hey, look, maybe it's not going to work. Maybe my theory is totally wrong. But yeah, I agree with you. I think it would be great if somebody could test this out a little bit and see if maybe that theory holds.
- [24:08]
Shree Rajagopalan
The one thing on that one, Erin, I'd like to just ask you a follow up is on innovation, not value, which is we are in a world today with innovation where the consumer may encounter an innovation. 365, 247 in any channel, any format, are you guys generally creating 360 omnichannel plans for innovation? Are you more focused on, hey, if I got to release it, I got to be in store first, on the shelf before I. Or is it always a surround 360 plan?
- [24:41]
Erin Price
We always do 360 plans. We really don't think that. Again, where I went earlier, I'm not sure. The old traditional model of wait till you get 90% ACV, turn the TV support on, wait until 80% of the country has seen the commercial three times and then you launch the coupon. Like I don't think that exists anymore. And so we are very focused on, we have shopper and Omni support that turns on, I mean really as soon as the shelves are set, you know, and different retailers take different amounts of time to get all of their stores set. And of course, course we understand that, but we are very focused on for our large retail partners that thankfully have wonderful Omni capabilities that we get to tap into and partner with them to create these support plans in store, on their website, on site, off site media, within their whole E commerce and Omni universe. That's how you're going to be successful with innovations is because as soon as it's on shelf, you need those customers who are walking into those stores to notice it, to try it, to understand it. You can't wait for national communications anymore. Those days are just gone.
- [25:56]
Shree Rajagopalan
We could not agree more with you. But on the same angle, right, as you mentioned, you built a career at Sargento and how do you envision the Sargento brand actually evolving under your leadership over the course of time? A lot of this you've kind of already hinted at.
- [26:13]
Erin Price
Yeah, yeah. I mean I think that my team is. We're always going to be focused on delivering that consumer value. We take it very seriously. You know, we call it our Sargento family promise that, you know, we are dedicated to providing a quality premium experience, bringing them something that meets their needs, bringing them innovation, new things, new ways to enjoy real natural cheese. New way. And so I see it as a continuation and I think it is more about just staying true to that core of who we are and who we always have been. But recognizing that the consumer is consuming media in different places, and they are looking for value in different ways that might be totally different than what consumers were saying they wanted 10, 15 years ago. And so it's really important to stay very close to the consumer. We stay very tight with them. We're always doing, you know, even just the foundational research, not just about a specific project here or there, but talking to the younger generation, Gen Z millennials, trying to understand how they're different, what they're looking for, how are they consuming cheese so that we're able to continue to tailor our messaging to all people and to all consumers who are looking for, again, that premium brand experience.
- [27:37]
Peter V.S. Bond
Let me remind our audience that today we are speaking with Aaron Price. She's the general manager of consumer products at Sargento Foods. So back to the innovation track. Aaron, would love to hear any recent innovations that have been particularly impactful from your perspective or of which you're particularly proud as. As an example of where this brand is going.
- [28:03]
Erin Price
Absolutely. We are right in the middle of rolling out our 2025 innovations right now, and I am so proud of the team because they really knocked it out of the park this year. We have three massive innovations that we're launching all at the same time. The first is we are actually launching Sargento Natural American Cheese Slices. So up until this point, American cheese has only been able to be processed cheese. You have not been able to replicate that classic American melt and flavor and texture with a natural cheese until now. So we are so excited to be launching this. This makes the best grilled cheese you have ever had in your entire life. And so we're super excited about that one. We're also launching Sargento Season Shreds. We partnered with the flavor experts at McCormick to use Frank's Redhot Cholula hot sauce and also their McCormick Red Pepper Seasoning. And we put them in blends of shredded cheese so that the consumer can have a bold and spicy experience on whatever recipe they choose. We have suggestions, but they're welcome to use them, however. And then the third one is a snack item, Sargento Shareables, which is a hearty portion of cheese slices and mandolin crackers put together. There's about three or four servings in a tray so that you can have a shareable snack with someone that you care about. So three huge innovations rolling out right now. I'm so excited. I could talk about these.
- [29:39]
Peter V.S. Bond
Yeah, I'll say. Sree, I know you'll probably comment, but the talk of Cagny was these partnerships and flavor in particular, flavor was what we heard time and time again as where most of food companies are focusing their innovation. So you're definitely on trend.
- [29:57]
Shree Rajagopalan
Sree, I'm going to comment about the innovation in a second. But first for our audience. Erin, where can our audience expect to find these innovations? Can they walk in store? Can they find it on your website? Can they find it on Amazon?
- [30:12]
Erin Price
Yep, absolutely. You can Definitely go to Sargento.com to learn more and you know, see the packaging of all these great innovations. We are in process right now of rolling them out across the country. So they will be in stores nationwide. It's an ongoing process, but you should be able to find them in retailers and in E commerce. Another good point. Over the next few weeks here, of.
- [30:36]
Shree Rajagopalan
Course, what's the first thing Peter and I are going to do and be distracted for the rest of this episode? Anybody want to guess? We're going to be going to sargento.com and looking at the innovation. But hey, you couldn't have picked a better partner in McCormick. I think they were the best of the best as it stood out at Cagney. Really love what they're doing from a spice standpoint and their absolute dominance of spice in store and on the shelf. And that grilled cheese, can't wait for it.
- [31:03]
Erin Price
It's truly, truly amazing. I mean talking just about the natural American slices for a minute, it's been an ongoing trend for a long time. But consumers continually tell us they want more real natural offerings. They don't want to eat processed food. But again, the one thing that they could never, never quite walk away from was that true American cheese. Taste and experience and grilled cheese. So you know, it took our R and D folks several years actually to create this patent protected process of how do you create a sliced natural American cheese? And the initial consumer response has been phenomenal. And it's wonderful. It's absolutely wonderful.
- [31:52]
Shree Rajagopalan
No surprise. The CPG guys will definitely taste test it and we'll do it right here during one of the episodes. So more to come on that one when it's released in the marketplace. But I'd love to you know earlier in this episode you mentioned you are an insights driven company anchored on the consumer. It's kind of the Sargento family's promise to the industry. Right. And to consumers. Would love to learn the thinking behind do you leverage consumer insights? Do you do shop alongs? Are you doing your own panel research? Is it informing R and D? And then I believe sampling is back in a big way. Are you engaged in sampling and getting Feedback, like if you could give us a summary of how all that is done and how it feeds the innovation as well as, you know, keeping stuff in the portfolio or just continuing it for that matter.
- [32:38]
Erin Price
Absolutely, yeah. I mean, all of the above. You know, we have an absolutely phenomenal new platform development team that is supported with absolute experts in insights and they use all of those tactics. You will find them, you know, in shop alongs doing in store observations in home with the consumer watching them, how they create a lot of these different meals and where their pain points are and what they're looking for. And it's really interesting for me personally to see the evolution which really sort of accelerated after the pandemic of how you can do so much of this research digitally now. And so we are doing a lot of zoom focus groups and zoom in stores and zoom in homes where consumers are recording themselves for the natural American slices. We actually at one of the early prototypes, we sent it to consumers homes and we said, okay, set up your camera or your iPad or whatever you use, and we want you to film yourself making a grilled cheese with this and walk us through the whole process. Tell us where you're satisfied, where you're dissatisfied, what's in your head. Just keep your train of thought going. And it was fascinating to watch them because they were alone in their kitchen and they sort of forgot that the camera was there. And they just walked us through where, oh, I can't believe that melt or oh, that's a little drippy over here. Maybe they need to work on that. It's wonderful to see. And my view is always the closer you can get to the consumer, the better the end product is going to be. And so whatever form that takes, whether it is in person or digitally or studying data, we have our own consumer panel that we have stood up where we have thousands of consumers that we can very quickly get a survey out to them or send them a concept photo and say, hey, what do you think of this, this or this? And so we're just constantly getting that feedback that we can use to deliver these great innovations.
- [34:43]
Shree Rajagopalan
The panel that you referred to, Erin, I'm assuming it's not a static panel that it continuously changes because the industry is full dynamic. Consumerism is dynamic at this point, right?
- [34:54]
Erin Price
Absolutely. Yeah. There are certain, there's an algorithm to that too, how long people can be in when they flow in and out. We're constantly rebalancing it, you know, to have the right demographic mix and geographic mix and I mean, all of those wonderful things. Again, we have an excellent insights team that spends a lot of time managing and nurturing our panel so that it's ready and ready to go when we need it.
- [35:19]
Shree Rajagopalan
Now, this wasn't part of the script, but listening to you, I think I know how your answer is going to be. I got to imagine AI is central to a lot of stuff you guys are doing in marketing. Is that reasonable?
- [35:31]
Erin Price
It is. We are taking a very thoughtful, I think, test and learn approach into AI. And so, you know, starting off a couple years ago, just looking at, hey, how can AI help us take the data that we already have? All of these consumer studies, they're all in various PowerPoint decks and binders and Excel tabulations. The data is all over the place and we have the most rich consumer data. But a lot of times, if you want to say, hey, how did Millennials react to concept XYZ, okay, you're relying on somebody to remember what PowerPoint presentation that was in what year, what folder, who had it, how do you find that piece of data? So just starting with tools that can really very quickly ingest all of our consumer learning and you can use like a real language model to ask it questions and it can spit back to you, hey, in 2018, millennials said XYZ, great. That's an awesome use of AI that just saves us time and makes sure that we're not wasting all these insights that we have.
- [36:44]
Shree Rajagopalan
It is heartwarming to hear a general manager of a brand actually discussing a real AI model because that's what inspires the troops and then inspires retail and then inspires the industry. Really well done.
- [36:58]
Erin Price
Absolutely. Thank you. I'm passionate about, again, it gets back to my big rocks. Do I want all the resources and the might of Sargento focused on searching for pieces of data, or do I want them figuring out, hey, how do I take this insight and turn it into a great new product?
- [37:16]
Peter V.S. Bond
So, Aaron, how do you see Sargento differentiating itself from the competitive market in terms you gave some great examples in the partnership you're doing with McCormick on its products, but even beyond products, just like the services and capabilities you bring to the trade to really differentiate you as the preeminent player in the dairy category?
- [37:43]
Erin Price
Absolutely. And I'll go back to again, I think a lot of our advantages come from being family owned and being able to focus on the long term benefit of all of our stakeholders. So, you know, talking about working with our retail partners, we are so, so proud. We had, you know, even through the pandemic, we had fill rates of 98%. So we really focus on, again, we are creating and giving best in class customer service and support to all of our retail customers. You know, so save a couple hiccups, obviously, kind of during the worst of it. You know, we're really, really proud that that is something that we focus on. And we get a lot of questions about, well, gosh, there's got to be a cost, you know, to serving at that high of a level. But it's so important to our family, to our culture, to who we are, that we are going to support our partners in that way. So that's just another example of same thing with our Omni support. You know, we were a very early supporter of Omni and working with these retail media networks and figuring out with our retail partners, hey, seems like there's something here. Seems like there's a new way that we can be engaging our customers and our consumers jointly. And we're thinking this E Commerce thing, we know perishable is a little late to the party, but it's catching up rapidly. And how do we take advantage of that and how do we help our partners take advantage of that as well? It goes up and down our supply chain. We want to make sure that our suppliers, you know, our patron farms, we want to make sure that they are doing well also so that they're not under too much pressure and that they're able to support their families and their growth aspirations. It really does all come down to we're family owned. We focus on doing what's right for all of our stakeholders, and it's as simple as that.
- [39:37]
Peter V.S. Bond
Aaron, a quick follow up before SRI closes this out with you. You made mention of retail media. It seems every week, maybe every day, a new retail media network or offering appears. I'm sure you're getting inundated with requests for investment.
- [39:56]
Erin Price
Mm.
- [39:57]
Peter V.S. Bond
How do you, how do you approach that? Is it a trade issue? Is it a national brand issue? Is it a. Is it a partnership of the two? Like what, what makes you really think about how you're going to be very strategic in, in this new growing channel for communications, which is really, I mean, it's really powerful, right? It's got performance marketing that linear television could never achieve. But I'm just kind of curious how you think about this.
- [40:25]
Erin Price
You know, it's been an interesting ride the last few years as we've really gone deep in that. And the word that I keep coming back to in my head to answer that question is it's a balance. I think that you have to be very careful to create that right balance. Because we saw kind of with the first launch of these retail media networks, there's a lot of folks went really deep into that and really pulled a lot of their equity spending, upper funnel, spending away. They really got seduced by the performance media. It's immediate, you can see it. I turned a product, right now I have a ROAS of $26, whatever these amazing numbers were. And you just keep pumping more and more and more and more into that. The problem is, and that's great, I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing, it's amazing and the tools and the tactics and what we can do is unbelievable and so exciting. But you have to balance that with. You also have to make sure that you're telling consumers who maybe aren't in your categories or not in your categories now, who are you? What do you stand for? Sargento is a family owned company. We believe in innovation. Those are important messages that have to get out there also that you're not going to get in performance media. So I guess, I mean my overall take is all of those things have a role trade, very important, national media, upper funnel, equity driving, very important, performance media, super important and probably becoming even more important all the time. But it's balancing all of those pieces and then as a general manager, making sure at the end of the day that you have a P and L that works, that delivers value for the retail partners, value to the consumer and then also drives your family stakeholder value also.
- [42:16]
Shree Rajagopalan
You said it right up front, right? If you create value for consumers, stakeholders, the family, consumers, you can't lose. So let me wrap it up with this last question. Of course, we're in a changing dynamic world today, but what emerging market trends do you believe will influence the cheese industry in the coming years? We've already discussed AI, but specifically the industry.
- [42:42]
Erin Price
Yeah, I think you talked about a little bit at your beginning. But the GLP1 is really interesting to me because we know that there is a small number of consumers right now who are on a GLP1 drug specifically. However, I think it is influencing overall how people eat and how people think about what they should be eating. It's Almost like these GLP1 friendly foods are sort of a little of a shortcut or a signal for what people should be focusing on. And we know that getting prioritizing their protein intake is really, really important. So that's something that we're looking into too because we know that dairy is one of the easiest and most delicious ways to get more protein either into your meals, into your snacks. And we have real natural varieties of slices and shreds and snacks. There's everything in between that offers these protein, adding either ingredients to a meal or a snack on the go. So we're really seeing that that's where we need to go.
- [43:45]
Peter V.S. Bond
We saw a lot of brands starting to talk about packaging and leaning into high protein or even saying GLP1 friendly diet strategy. So I think we're going to see more of that in the coming year. But Aaron, Shereen and I really want to thank you for joining us today and sharing your insights about how Sargento is positioned to really thrive in today's omnichannel world. We really appreciate you joining us. Thank you.
- [44:17]
Erin Price
Thank you so much for having me.
- [44:18]
Peter V.S. Bond
It was a lot of fun, Sree. That was a fascinating episode. So great to have someone from a perishable background to talk about how. Talk about it. You know, we think about cheese and dairy as one of those categories where innovation hasn't happened in a long time. And she just flipped it on its head and she took advantage of a lot of the trends we saw at Cagney around flavor and saying we're going to lean into that. We're going to introduce new products through partnerships. What a great strategy.
- [44:51]
Shree Rajagopalan
First of all, I gotta say, what a great human being in general. Right? Answers were amazing. She talked about stakeholders, the consumer, brand pride, you know, the family. She started by thanking the family for a career at sargemto. She's open to reverse mentoring and learning every day. She's with the times in terms of artificial intelligence, how she thinks about media. You know what, folks that work for her at Sargento, you're lucky to have her as a leader because you're learning and you're growing every day with her. Then the actual innovation portfolio, I'm going to go gaga Google over the grilled cheese. What about you?
- [45:31]
Peter V.S. Bond
I can't agree more, Sree. I know Nadia is going to love that. I know Zara is going to be excited about the fact that it is natural cheese product that we're putting in front of her. So looking forward to receiving that. I think there's so much more that's coming out of the perishable food category. She said it's a little late to the game in. In omnichannel commerce, but I think that we're going to see a lot of innovation in this area. More so than others in the store.
- [46:05]
Shree Rajagopalan
No doubt. No. No doubt about that one. Peter, the other one I was thinking of is we were recently at Cagney, we heard about collaborations. The McCormick one should be simply brilliant. I'll be looking forward to that one.
- [46:16]
Peter V.S. Bond
That's a good one. So Cherie, as always, thank you for joining us to our audience. First of all, don't forget, follow us on Apple, Spotify, whatever your platform is, and if you're on there, give us a rating. We greatly appreciate it. We appreciate the 35,000 plus followers of the CPG guys on LinkedIn that you trust us to both educate and entertain you. And we look forward to speaking with you on the next episode of the CPTGuys podcast. Goodbye.
- [46:54]
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