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The CPG Guys
Building Iconic Brands in the Age of Influencers with Georgia-Pacific's Laura Knebusch
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- [00:00]
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B
Friday Hi, I'm Laura Nebush, I'm the Senior Vice President of CPG Marketing at Georgia Pacific and you are listening to the CPG Guys Podcast.
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A
Welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast. Your hosts, Sree Rajagopalan and Peter V. S Bond explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in an increasingly digitally driven world. And now, here are the CPG Guys.
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C
Hello and welcome to this episode of the CPG Guys. I'm of course Sree, your co host and also CRO and co founder of Think Blue Consulting, your trusted partner in your omnichannel development journey. Get in touch with me at SRI thinkblueconsulting Co. That's co, not co. And please do listen to my older daughter's music at www.rearaj.com and follow Lara Raj. My younger daughter is a member of the world's fastest growing global girl group Cat's Eye, who are nominated for two VMAs. At the time of this release, we'll know if they won or not. In any event, they are performing, so hopefully I'll check that out on CBS Live as MTV broadcast the VMA Video Music Awards. Unable to join me today is my co host and co founder Peter Vs Bond, who also moonlights as Head of Industry and Client Engagement at Flywheel, the commerce acceleration division of Omnicom. Make sure you're subscribing to our podcast on your preferred listening platform where you can get our latest episodes or even go back to consume some of the 500 plus episodes we've already published. Published. With that in mind, today's episode is with iconic brand that I'm convinced you've been using in your household forever. I certainly have. Join us in Welcoming to the podcast Laura Nebush, SVP CPG Marketing Consumer experience at Georgia Pacific Laura is an experienced marketer with a proven track record of building brands and delivering results through agile leadership, innovative strategies, strong team development and passion for excellence. As SVP in a current role, Laura is responsible for transforming consumers relationships with Georgia Pacific brands like Angel Soft, Dixie, Quilted Northern and Bronnie. I didn't mention they're probably in your household. By leveraging the power of purpose, data and technology. Laura, welcome to the CPG guys. How you doing?
- [03:15]
B
I am good. I'm excited to be here. This is one of my favorite podcasts. So thrilled to be on it today.
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C
We're excited to have you as well. Of course we'll include in the digital show notes of this episode, links to your LinkedIn profile and that of your company. So I'm going to jump right in and I'm going to start with simple one, but one which you're grounded on your career, which is CPG hasn't always been known for being data or tech forward, but you've made AI and data central to your team's approach. Why did you make that decision? Especially AI said? So much is still unknown about AI and for the large part it feels like a buzzword. Peter and I were at Cagney. Every CEO said it's a mandate, but everyone said my CTO is going to tell us what it is. So why did you do it and how's it paying off for Georgia Pacific?
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B
Absolutely. I mean, we have leaned in to data and technology because it's a business imperative today. I mean, I took on this role basically in the middle of COVID where everything was changing, step changes and omnichannel shopping and digital acceleration and consumer expectations of brands and you were no longer going to be able to be success with kind of the playbook that I grew up with and brand marketing, you know, 20 years ago because that's not what consumers expected anymore. And so at the time I rebranded this capability from brand building.
- [04:32]
C
Wait, wait, Laura, are you saying Philip Gotler's book MBA 5104, the four Ps that I got in my hand 30 years ago, that's no longer applicable?
- [04:43]
B
I'm saying it's an and not an or. It's not enough. I think today to break through in today's environment with consumers, you have to have the four P's you have to have the strategy, you have to have the foundation. But if you don't have the tools to accelerate on top of that, you are going to fall behind because others are going to use them. And so I think that's been the biggest kind of build for us is it's not just we're not just building brands, we're creating consumer experiences and we rebranded this organization. My capability to be consumer experience, to drive the mindset that, you know, every time a consumer interacts with the brand, they have an experience. And that experience can either build a brand or take away from it. And the only way to do that well is through technology and then leveraging data on the back end to measure, improve, optimize. So that's kind of why data and technology and why I think it's so important whether you're a CPG or clearly obviously a service or a technology company. AI for me has been to me it's just, it's another accelerator, it's another enabler. These are things that I think are going to change how we work every day. And if we're not leaning in and testing and experimenting that I think we're going to lose out versus our alternatives. And it can drive efficiency, it can drive effectiveness. We don't know what all AI is today or what all it can do, but it's definitely going to help us do more than we could do yesterday.
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C
So a lot of folks mistake machine learning as AI. You know, when we speak AI, they commonly tell us with processing all this data in the record time, real time campaign optimization, that's ML at the end of the day. Now do you see a divergence there any difference when you say AI?
- [06:22]
B
You know, I do. It is good to specify which one I'm talking about. And I see opportunities for both. Certainly machine learning from the sheer ability to get through so much more data and get to succinct solutions and summarize data in a very quick manner. Certainly generative AI I think is what takes this to the next level by adding in not just kind of what's the summary of the data, but really into what's that next step that we should take or what's the strategic recommendation. So it is good to specify to make sure we're being clear about the role it's playing and how we expect it deliver that value.
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C
And then just on that angle, Laura, the industry is in the middle of a volume crisis, has been stuck there for a good two plus years at this point. I still distinctly Remember that in March 17, 2023 when SNAP EBT started drying up, the government assistance check started drying up and then needless to say, surprise, surprise, volume got challenged. Are you using AI in any way to be able to predict when there'll be a, I shouldn't say a fix to this, but a way out of this where volume will become healthy again.
- [07:28]
B
We are not using it at that level I would say right now. I mean we're using it more to understand against help us understand what's happening with the consumer, potentially think through different scenarios that could happen with the consumer based on some different factors. So we're using it, I would say in that way as you think about really, you know, how are consumers going to react to different factors. But then we're using that a lot internally to help us work differently, help us connect to our consumers better, help us make sure that the content we're putting out there is better, help us focus on bigger strategic things because we're getting some of the maybe lower kind of value work done in a different way.
- [08:07]
C
So let's jump to the content piece next. You know what's clear is any form of content optimization, AI can actually a pretty decent job at this point. Every agency is talking about it. All the hold goes are definitely talking about it. So you look at human creativity which has largely been the factor behind creating content so far with a bunch of software. Now you look at AI driven automation. While the human eye can still spot a marginal difference, it's very marginal in nature. It's not huge, especially in areas like what I just mentioned, campaign optimization, creative development. So what's your long term thoughts on that balance between hey, we've always had that human override on everything. Now AI can think about 1 million, literally 1 million times faster and generate all kinds of personalized content in ways we've never seen before.
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B
My personal point of view today, and I think it will be for the foreseeable future, is that AI and human collaboration together is what's going to deliver the breakthrough. I think AI can enable our strategic leaders, our creative leaders and helping to do their job better by getting them to some ideas faster, by helping again take some of the lower value work off their plate. But I do believe the empathy and the creativity from a human. I don't know that we're going to see, I don't know that I've seen that truly that an AI can deliver breakthrough creative. I think it can deliver creative, I think it can optimize creative. But can it deliver the breakthrough that's really going to connect with consumers? I haven't seen it to this date. It may get there but in my mind this is an and again versus an or I think we're always going to want these things together. I think one of my biggest concerns with AI is that it's always going to solve to the mean versus solve to the different and to the breakthrough. And I think that's where the human AI collaboration can really play a role.
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C
Yeah, AI today is getting a lot of bad rep as well. As much as, you know, those of us in the industry that are practitioners like you and me, we know the value of it and we're actually harnessing the true value out of it. But it's getting a pretty bad rep right now for deep fakes and takeaway jobs, yada yada yada. A lot of just people with random predictions as opposed to accuracy. When you hear that, how do you react? I for one thing the CPG guys are very clear. AI is not negotiable. If you aren't catching up with the times and you aren't learning what AI is and you aren't planning no matter what level, you may be a CEO if you don't embrace AI, good luck in three years from now. And it's not a 10 year journey, it's two to three years from now.
- [10:44]
B
Yeah, to me it's not if you use it, it's how you use it and where it's going to create value for you versus is there risk out there? Absolutely. And so knowing your guardrails around the risk, you know, we've done a lot of, I would say call it like test and learn again. We've kind of got a place we think we want to be in a few years. But like how do we test and learn our way there? So it's not just we're fundamentally changing how we work every day. It's a change management process just to get the organization, you know, on board and engaged and kind of leveraging it in the way that we want. But I agree this is another one that if, if we're not using it, I think we're going to be at a disadvantage and delivering our consumers, you know, to our consumers the way we would want to.
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C
Now for our favorite topic on the CPG guys and your favorite topic as well, or at least from what we've trolled you and looked at what's publicly available with what you've said on the publicly media. And of course media habits over Covid have completely changed from a consumer perspective and your media strategy seems to have evolved. You've shifted from what used to be a TV heavy media mix like most other large CPGs, but you've gone very digitally centric and a very digital to the point where I'll say digital first strategy. What were those signals that you saw that said, hey, this is the way it should be, this is the right way, because the shopper is largely omnichannel and digital or what was it that, what was it thinking?
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B
You know, this goes back to again taking over this role a few years ago. And if data and technology was one of my pillars, modernizing our media mix was a second. And it all came down to being audience first. We needed to be where our audience was and we were lagging in that. You know, we had a very heavier linear mix. And that's because that is what had worked for us in the past. So it was really, we needed to look more to the future, the now and the future than we did to kind of what worked in the past. And so we at the time started working with a new media agency, omd, and we really, really leaned in with them and their Omni model, which really helped us, you know, connect our target, what we knew about our target, to their kind of data driven media insights and really start to lay out what the future should look like. But then we also knew we weren't going to make huge shifts just year over year. So again we laid out a roadmap of like, how do we get from 80, 80% video to under 50% video and what does that look like? The other thing we did, which I think was really helpful is we, we brought in house our marketing mix modeling. And so we were able to do that more frequently. And that way again it became that cycle of testing, learning, scaling, optimizing. And by doing so we were, you know, felt very good and that the decisions we were making, you know, are increasing effectiveness and increasing efficiency. And we brought kind of the organization along with us.
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C
Wait, did I hear you say you in house, your marketing mix model? Well, big congratulations. Not a lot of people. Now I think PepsiCo might be the only other one that I've talked to in the recent past where that is where I've heard that that's a big deal. I can't just let that, you know, this wasn't part of what we prepped in advance. But when you in house, mm, you learn so much more than you do with an agency because you touch probably many more disparate data sets. You have access to retailer data. What's been the biggest change in housing? How hard has it been?
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B
It's definitely been hard. I mean actually, and it's less about even the modeling Itself is what we had to do is create kind of our data foundation or our data lake. We had to connect 70 different sources of information. So getting the information, getting it in the right format, getting into harmonizing that was absolutely, you know, it took 18 months. But once we had it, it changed the game again and our ability to make better decisions. You know, we used to do MMM every couple years. It was costing us a lot of money and now we can do it more frequently. We're trying to kind of move even faster than annually trying to do it, you know, biannually or twice a year, semi annually. And, and it's the transparency and the credibility it has within an organization has also increased because it does, it does not feel like a black box. It feels more like a continuous conversation than I'm just going to see some.
- [14:56]
C
I got to imagine you're looking at AI to help you in the future here.
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B
Yes, we are. We've not created the solution yet, but we are. That would absolutely be my golden future state is really moving that into more of a predictive or a tool that can help us. Not just so when you talk to.
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C
Practitioners is what happens beyond just your everyday podcast. Like I'm really intrigued that you've in house marketing mix model, but the mind is just starting to think about the real time applicability of and the ability to update that marketing mix model with a much higher frequency now that it's in house with AI in the future. Is that kind of the plan here?
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B
Yes, I mean we would love to be able to kind of increase the frequency and you know, it's, it's mmm is still not a real time by any means model, but it is one of the ones that we've seen.
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C
I didn't actually mean real life. That was a silly word. I mean, forgive that, right?
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B
But it's, it's still looking backwards for a year and we would love to be able to shorten the time that it's looking backwards so you can feel even more confident in the data you're getting and how that can help you think about your future plans.
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C
To me, where that gets transformational is a my. Which is going to be my next question. But retailers, traditionally merchants never ask about the media plans. They just say, hey, do you have a media plan? And the sales team says yes and they move on. But if you've got better marketing mixed models, maybe this is an opening for you guys when you come up with innovation to drive home why it needs to be all first at the shelf. That said, with this sort of a focus in an in house. Mmm. Are there particular emerging channels? Gaming, retail media, the Metaverse, and of course your favorite podcast, the CPG guys. Like, like those. Where do you see the biggest growth opportunity for cb CPG to invest in media?
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B
Yes, as I think about cpg, I mean, one of the things we're always trying to balance is normally CPG brands, these are high penetration brands, like a lot of people are using them. So continuing to get the reach is important. But in today's world, I think it's not just reach, it's where consumers are engaged and where they're going to listen and where they are. They want to be part of those media experiences or they want to, you know, they're excited for you to be relevant and resonant in those experiences. And so the ones that we've seen probably emerge most and we've seen the most growth in the last two to three years. I will say retail media, even though I don't, I don't even know that we can call it emerging anymore. I feel like it's here and it's a behemoth, but it is continuing to evolve every day as the different partners develop new capabilities and the role it can play. So certainly continuing to experiment and learn social, no surprise there. But particularly for us influencers and leaning in much more.
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C
So you start to get into TikTok.
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B
Yes.
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C
Instagram Reels.
- [17:40]
B
Yes.
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C
Paparaj has 60,000 followers on TikTok.
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B
Now all of a sudden, all right, I hear it. And then outside of influencers, the third area that we've found a lot of potential is streaming audio and podcasts. Again, because these are places that people are very engaged, they're listening. You know, podcasters are like influencers, as you know. I mean, they, you know, people are become very loyal and very engaged.
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C
I can recommend a very good podcast.
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B
Yeah. So those are the channels that I say we see the most growth. I mean, we continue to test and learn a little bit in gaming, you know, and, and some other areas, you know, we don't do a lot in activations or sponsorships. That's another area that we continue to kind of learn in. But we continue to see the digital channels as our most, you know, some of our most effective and honestly more efficient channels as well.
- [18:30]
C
How awesome. Are there any ones I should have asked you and I didn't hear in terms of what's new and emerging? Like retail media is hot, hot, hot, but it's not new anymore at this point. It's like par for the Course. And if folks are not in retail media, they're kind of missing the bus. But is there anything I should have asked you, did I miss anything here? Influencers?
- [18:50]
B
Yeah, I would say influencers, influencers, podcasters, we talked retail media, a little bit of gaming. You know, I think these, all these places themselves are constantly evolving. So even once you learn and get some information, you're still continuing to inform your strategy. I mean for us, influencers went from hey, we want to be on TikTok to we've got five different tiers of influencers and the role they can play. And we need to be a lot more thoughtful about the strategy we have with them. So even that is kind of that where we're getting a lot more mature and how we work with them to, to be most effective with it.
- [19:24]
C
How awesome. So as you start looking at these new emerging channels, how do you make sure, like I can't imagine a campaign made for a particular channel works perfectly on another channel. Maybe it does. I'd love for you to school me. How do you make sure those media messages that you're curating really resonate beyond just price promo? With so many touch points, 70 data points, how do you actually measure what's really working across platforms? Because attribution doesn't work anymore.
- [19:53]
B
I would say there's the pre and the post. So it starts with kind of the third, my third pillar or my third priority for our brand has been being just consumer experience, living your brand, being crystal clear on your consumer, being clear on what your brand brings to that consumer that no other brand can and then being consistent about that know where we are no matter where they show up. And so that means having a strong brand strategy, strong brand campaign and strong brand guidelines. So that's to me as like a non negotiable for any of the businesses. But then the work we do, we did consumer journey work a few years ago and we continue to inform that, to help us really think about kind of the role of different messages and how we bring that to life at different points across the consumer journey. Where are there pain points or friction that we can help address based or where are they, you know, in different points of their decision making. And so that's helped us inform strategy. And then we use a combination of pre testing, everything from, we still use traditional copy testing for kind of for video. We are leveraging some AI tools for some really rapid digital testing before we, before we activate it and then afterwards, you know, using both real time metrics and then. Mmm. So it's a combination, you know, it's, I would say data is kind of at, at the heart and start of everything we do, but it's, you know, no one data source is perfect. So it's a constant taking the different sources, understanding the signals and then making the pivots or optimizations based on that.
- [21:22]
C
Listen, when you told me of in house. Mmm, you've already had me. Hello. A long time back. We get more and more fun. So let me remind our listeners that we're speaking with Lauren Ebush, SVP at Georgia Pacific. All right, you mentioned social influencers, so I'm sorry, I have to go there. Especially since Papa Rogers. 60,000 followers now. Social and influencers have become a big part of your playbook. Tell us more. How do you get involved? How do you find the right influencer? I mean, you have iconic brands again, your household penetration must be in the high 90s, close to 100. What are these people doing for you?
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B
Sure. So one, we have to be clear on our brand stories. And I think that's why something we needed to do first was make sure our brand narratives and our brand stories are very clear. Because I think influencers can only help you if you find that right partnership of where your kind of brand narrative fits with their narrative and their audience. And so that has been a lot of what we've learned over the last few years is what's our narrative? You know, how do we find the partners who can help tell that narrative and then what's the best way to build kind of relationships with them? So we started out and we were doing just more one off relationships. And we've really found with some of our brands we've created brand ambassadors who can really tell our brand stories over time. And then some of them are more, you know, we bring them on for events like the super bowl, who can really talk to kind of audiences around the Super Bowl. So it is, you know, brand narrative being very strategic about the role you want influencers to play and then finding those right influencers. And we're still using different partners to help us find, to find the influencers. But the big thing change for us this year has been really trying to develop, you know, more relationships with them and build kind of that ambassador type program.
- [23:07]
C
And as you do this, do you find there's a difference in the audience profile between say an Instagram and a tick tock? And I'm curious if you even use Meta or Facebook anymore.
- [23:18]
B
We do, we use Instagram. I would say Instagram and TikTok are the are the top two that. We've also been testing YouTube shorts this year as well. I mean, that also has a pretty large audience and so that was a new area we wanted to explore. And yes, I think there's some. You know, we usually have a strategy that includes both because we see kind of the reach and potential connection. It can be a little bit different across, across the two and certainly the content may look different. So based on the brand and the objective, we think through the right kind of social influencer strategy to deliver on that.
- [23:50]
C
Awesome. So you've had bold campaigns this year across three of your brands. So how have they performed? What has been the audience response and how's it paid back for you?
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B
Yeah, it's been a really, it's pretty fun year for Georgia Pacific.
- [24:07]
C
Campaigns. Let me not assume they know it.
- [24:08]
B
Okay, sure. So I'll start with angelsoft. We did our. Georgia Pacific, did our first ever super bowl ad this year with angelsoft all around an activation and idea called Potty Tunities. And if you know anything about angelsoft, angelsoft is all about not having to make trade offs between softness or strength. You get everything you need. It's one simple choice. And for those at the super bowl, we wanted to make sure they also didn't have to make any trade offs between watching commercials, watching the game and watching halftime. So we used our super bowl ad to tell people to go to the bathroom. So it was a lot of fun just because it was pretty different for a Super bowl ad. So it, it kind of challenged the norms of super bowl ads. But we also made it into a 360 activation. Kicking off with Julian Edelman with Fox Sports, who did a teaser for us, you know, bringing it to life across a number of different influencers and then really bringing it home at retail. If you went on Amazon.com or walmart.com, you found you saw the same view and feeling of angelsoft from the entire campaign. And for us, this was about driving Greater awareness of AngelSoft and greater awareness of our brand mascot, Angel. And so we had a great response to the awareness lift from that was met and kind of actually exceeded expectations. Plus we saw a great engagement from an earned media standpoint. I think just because it was a very different twist on how people do super bowl. You know, we were able to get a lot of good engagement and, you know, consumers appreciated the, the free 30 seconds. So. So that was one where we tried to. We connected with culture in a bold move and a very big way. The second one that I think is a lot of fun is our Brawny brand, our paper towel brand launched the only 3 ply paper towel on the market this year. Strongest and most absorbent paper towel out there and you know, which can pretty much clean up any, almost any mess, you know, and definitely the message you would never expect a paper towel to clean up. So in addition to all the great kind of traditional launch in store and media, we've also really leaned in to influencers and collaborations on a social standpoint to have our iconic mascot, the Brawny man, show up in some unexpected places. And that included a collab with Rachel Kirkconnell, who is a former Bachelor contestant after a tough breakup, as well as Ciara from Summer House. So really having the Brawny man show up in their homes to kind of clean up some messy situations. And we have just seen a tremendous amount of positive consumer engagement because these are people that, you know, they've got great followers who are really engaged and passionate about their stories. And the Brawny man was showing up in a very fun but, but kind of engaging way that fit with, with what he stood for.
- [26:59]
C
You know, I was going to ask you about modernizing house, you know, household staple brands, but you kind of just answered how you're actually going about it. Was there another one?
- [27:08]
B
Oh, I was just going to mention Quilted Northern is the third one where we launched a campaign with a really fun take on, on the song We Built the City, which we rewrote to We Quilt the City and brought forward the Quilted Queens, who again are just, it's a, you know, it's in our video advertising. But they themselves are very talkable and are driving a lot of fun with the music. It's driving a lot of fun and engagement. And that's, that's basically what we're trying to do. Like we're again, making sure we're sticking true to the story and sticking true to what makes these brands special and distinct, but then finding ways where that story authentically can come to life and culture. And the more unexpected, obviously, I think the more people enjoy it and the more response we get.
- [27:52]
C
And so one of the things, Laura, I'd love to learn is how do you communicate value in these ads? In this, in these messages, you're dropping out to consumers because there's the whole captivating nature of the ads, which clearly you guys are right on top of. All the way, if I go back to the super bowl ad. But how are you also communicating that value message?
- [28:10]
B
Yeah, this is price.
- [28:12]
C
Price is just one component and that's.
- [28:14]
B
What I was gonna say. I mean, my definition of value is it's gotta be the whole proposition, right? It's, it's what you're offering for the price, you know, that you're offering it and where they can buy it. So, you know, when we offer value, we believe if we're driving home why our brand is different, if we're building that and when they get to shelf and the price is right, like you have to have your pricing has to be, you know, in line with what you think your proposition kind of can, should be priced for. But if you are driving that benefit and then they see the price. That's right. You're going to drive the value message. And we've actually seen that in our equity track. I mean, we have got brands who I would call more mainstream. Yeah, more mainstream brands where we don't actually talk value. Maybe we do at the, you know, maybe when you're getting into shopper marketing, we might talk a little bit more about it when you're getting closer to purchase or you have incentives. But. And usually on our broader advertising, we're not talking value there because we're talking about what's. What they're going to connect with the most, which is why it matters to them.
- [29:12]
C
Awesome. So, you know, I kind of mentioned they've been bold and playful lately. But you can't do that unless there's a culture with you as the captain here, SVP or marketing, where you let your teams feel comfortable taking creative risks. How do you guys go about doing that? Like how. What's the process that allows somebody to come to you and says, hey, I've got an idea?
- [29:35]
B
Yes. I mean, it starts with, we're trying to bring inspiration from the outside in, so we know that we clearly don't know it all internally. And so we want to hear the stories, we want to hear the case studies that are going to challenge the way we think. We always, after super bowl, we always get together and talk about what we saw and what we liked. After Cannes lion, we talk about who won it. We do a summit every year where we bring in external speakers and we bring them not just to my team, but to our broader organization. So others hear kind of those who are taking risks and what it takes to be successful, you know, with these risks. And I think that helps set a stage of, you know, what, what could be and what it looks like. And, and then, you know, for each case we talk through what's the benefit versus the risk and what would we have to believe to be true for us to feel good about it and then, you know, we make our decisions collectively. So. But I think the inspiration really helps open people's minds so to what could.
- [30:29]
C
Be but leading one of the most, what I would call ambitious CPG marketing transformations the country. I think of the old school world of advertising where you guys are in a category that might not always be very exciting, but you've rejuvenated and made it exciting. What were the kind of mindset shifts you have to inculcate through the organization? There's of course the brand teams, but there's also the sales teams which generally work on the basis of relationship. I come from that world and I'm very rigid about what they want to see in the marketplace. So how did you go about with the mindset shift?
- [31:01]
B
First, again, we had to bring in some external perspective of, you know, I would say around Covid our brands were doing okay, but they weren't, they weren't thriving in market. And so we knew that we couldn't just act the way we always acted and expect results to. To get to a better place. We wanted our brands to be winning brands in market and so bringing external point of views on how to do that. We created basically a culture internally that we call living our brands, which is that every single person in this organization, whether you are in marketing or category or sales or you work in the facility, you know who our target is and you know what our brand stands for and why it matters that we deliver the brands and that gives everyone a sense of ownership of, you know, in connection to the strategy and why they make. We make the decisions we do. So I think that was a big piece of it, painting a credible picture about why it mattered and how it was going to create value. And then we didn't just jump into anything. We really, you know, did try to create a roadmap test and learn. It's. We did things that didn't work and we didn't move forward with them. So we, we drove credibility in the organization that we're not just here to kind of do wild things. We're going to learn and get better every day. Being able to measure it with mmm was very important. And then finally we celebrated when good work was happening. We were celebrating it. And I think everybody wants to be part of that kind of celebration. It feels, everyone feels good when the brands are winning. That's a lot of fun to see it out in the market.
- [32:25]
C
Awesome. Wouldn't have expected anything less from you, Laura. Just following you publicly and So I have to ask, what sort of skills do you think the next generation of CPG marketers will need that maybe weren't as critical at the top of COVID with an omnichannel shopper now who's 24 7, engaged on a mobile device or does shopping browsing online, even if not completing their transaction necessarily online, what does the CPG marketer of 2030 look like? And that's a scary five years only away.
- [32:59]
B
It is. And I think about this question a lot because this to me really is the future of where I need to take our organization. You know, the fundamentals of when I started it was you need to be strategic and you need to be creative and you need to under kind of get people to get deep into that kind of brand strategy today. In addition to that, you need to be digitally savvy, you need to be analytical and you need to be able to take all those things together to make to be even more creative. So, you know, it's. We really are looking for. The marketers in the future are going to have to do a lot and that's where I can hopefully help play a little bit of a role. It can do some of that for them. But you know, we need people who are agile. We need people who are lifelong learners because things are going to constantly change and you need people who are on top of that and aren't telling you they need to change. And. And you need people who can pivot from platform to platform, you know, really quickly and kind of quickly get up to speed and understand what's going on. So to me, it is a different skill set and there's a lot of, you know, a lot of it's on the job learning. You know, it's less about finding the perfect person who has all the skills and more about finding that person who's agile and digitally savvy and an entrepreneur. Because I think those are the people who are going to thrive in a.
- [34:10]
C
Changing environment that does come. Does that come together in one word as curiosity?
- [34:15]
B
I think you're already see it. Curiosity is a big piece of it. Yes.
- [34:18]
C
And so they always want to know they're not afraid to learn. Like I won't speak for you, but me with 30 years of CPG behind me, often I've been, I've had roadblocks in front of my eyes to want to learn, saying, hey, I've done it this way and I just want to anniversary events, which I'm sure as a CPG brand marketer is the death knoll. Of dragging a brand to the ground. So I felt curiosity is one of those things, like no matter what someone's background is, no matter what job they're in, how senior they are, if you're curious, you're always going to build your brand for the future. Fair assessment.
- [34:52]
B
Yes. I like it.
- [34:53]
C
All right, our last question. No surprise whatsoever. As you look forward, what is the most significant trend you are following these days? For me it's AI, no debate. But you guys are already in the middle of AI. Is there something else you are already following or is AI pretty much the, at this point, right front and center of everything you're thinking about as you build?
- [35:17]
B
Yeah, I would say AI is what we're talking about the most just because it can impact so many parts of both how we work and how we bring our brands to life. It's so pervasive across all of those. So as we look to learn, I think that's the single biggest area. We just need to continue to learn because it continues to evolve. I mean, the other area we're watching closely, you mentioned it earlier, is just what's happening with the consumer and how they're dealing with all the change that's happening to them right now and economic pressures and other and other pressures they may have and just how that's going to continue to evolve their expectations of brands over time.
- [35:50]
C
Do you see the, what's going on with the consumer today? Arguably shaped over two years, but it's also largely shaped the previous three years with inflation, etc. Do you see this more as a longer term pain point for the consumer or do you see this all flipping in the next two to three years? Or who knows, you know, it feels.
- [36:07]
B
Like we've settled into what I would call almost a new normal where we've seen behavior shift because of inflation or other economic pressures or other uncertainty. And they've, they've made changes in their behavior where they're buying, how they're buying, how often they're buying. And even with, you know, continued uncertainty, I'm not seeing another shift yet, but I'm certainly not seeing. It's almost like they're comfortable now with the level of uncertainty they have. But I'm not seeing a world where they're getting more confident, at least not in the next, you know, 12 to 18 months, hopefully in the next three years.
- [36:41]
C
And because there's still so much uncertainty left in the ecosystem. What's the best mechanism you're using for learning? Mine is I surf LinkedIn a lot and I find A lot of articles. There's so much hidden articles in LinkedIn. If people take the time I listen to podcasts, what's the best way you're learning and what do you, what do you want to share to others listening on the show? What's the best way they can learn?
- [37:02]
B
I think, I mean, we need to be taking in listening to every. Listen to as many people as possible and definitely people who don't have your opinion because you can't just learn around what you think, but you need to be understanding how other people are thinking as well. So, you know, personally, it's that, it's how. What are the different sources of information and then how do you make, how do I make sure I'm challenging my personal thinking? And then from a consumer standpoint, I mean, I will always say, and it can happen in many different ways today, but continuing to listen directly to the consumer, whether that's through reviews, whether that's through social or whether that's actually kind of in person, I think the good news is there's multiple ways you can hear what they're saying, but having a clear strategy of how you're going to do that as well.
- [37:45]
C
Awesome. Thank you for this terrific conversation. Let me thank our audience for listening to this wonderful episode. Do leave us a rating and review on Apple podcasts, Spotify or your favorite listening platform. It actually informs us how we're doing as well as if we're having the right conversations. Starting two Tuesdays ago or so, we started a new podcast. It's a videocast, 10 minutes. It's also on LinkedIn, YouTube. It's called the Commerce Rift with the CPG guys, Peter and Sri. We did that by analyzing four newsworthy articles from the previous week. And we give Peter and my take on what matters and doesn't matter to let us know how we're doing at the time of this recording. We got episode one in and you guys have voted with a yes we should continues. So I can't thank you enough to all of you. Thank you from Peter and me, deeply from our art. You make the show happen to all our sponsors, whether this podcast, our parties, events, hosted dinners, having us at panels. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You know, we have so much fun doing this podcast, but we always end by what's the one big takeaway in this conversation. And that's a tough one for me to give one big takeaway with Laura. And the reason being Laura is a today's marketer who's with the times. So for me, the things that stand out the most is the amount of time we spend today on the new world of marketing. Social Influencer tells me you guys are ready for the future. You're ready for today, and you're ready for today, but also built sustainably for the future. And the other one is once you've started to own the marketing mix model, I think I've said it enough times on this episode, you're going to be the boss of how you actually do your campaign strategies and how you choose to invest your media money. That's my big aha. Follow what Laura's Laura is doing. As we mentioned, it'll be in the digital line and also this episode. Laura, thank you for joining us on the CPG Guys. This was a pleasure to have you and have this awesome modern marketing conversation.
- [39:36]
B
Thank you. It was great to be here.
- [39:38]
C
Thank you, Laura. And that's a wrap of this episode of the CPG Guide.
- [39:52]
A
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