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- [00:00]
A
Hey, I'm Shelly Zalas, the CEO of the Female Quotient, otherwise known as Chief Troublemaker, and I am excited to be on CPG Guys Podcast.
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B
Hello, and welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast.
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C
Set at the intersection of commerce and tech. Your hosts, Sree Rajagopalan and Peter V. S. Vaughn, explore how brands and retailers
- [00:23]
B
engage consumers in a digitally driven world.
- [00:26]
C
And now, here are the CPG Guys. Hello, and welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast. I am your adorable co host, pvsp. I also moonlight as head of industry and client engagement at Flywheel, the commerce acceleration division of Omnicom. My co host, he's the father of pop stars Rhea Raj and Cat's Eyes Lara. Raj fans call him, of course, Papa Raj. He's also the chief revenue officer at Think Blue Consulting. SRI can't join us today because he's out helping his daughter Rhea with some urgent business imperatives. But fear not, dear listeners, I have a blast from the past for your enjoyment. She's appeared as a guest host on our podcast several times, and along with our friend Christina Marinucci, is the co founder and co host of the brand new and quite trending SheCommerce podcast. She's also a colleague of mine in my avatar at Flywheel. Please join me in welcoming my sister from another, Mr. Jackie Danowski. Jax, how you doing, man?
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A
What's going on? Pretty good.
- [01:23]
D
You're still my brother from another mother, Peter. Super excited, super excited to be back on the CPG Guys soil. It's like nostalgia and energy together, right?
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C
And I will say that when I asked you to for this particular episode and our guest, who we're going to introduce in a second, you. You had a definite fangirl moment and did a big, big scream. To say that you screamed out loud would be an understatement. Jackie, before we get to that, remind our audience what. What she Commerce is all about.
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D
Well, she Commerce is technically it's a podcast, but really what we're doing, Peter, Christina and I, we're creating a community and using podcasts as the medium it's around. Yes, we're talking about cpg. We're talking about retail media. We're talking about, you know, what's happening. We're celebrating women, we're celebrating leaders, but really, it's about bringing this community together to talk to the female leaders, to talk to allies, to look at what it takes for women to go from point A to point B to point to point Z. And what the blueprints are creating that sense of community, fostering that spirit between, between the CPG leaders and upcoming coming folks on the trail. And it's really around that supportive sisterhood and real talk. You know, we talk about what's going on in media, but we also talk about how menopause affects it, how how pregnancy affects that and everything in between.
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C
That is great, Jackie. I especially like when you spill the tea. That's my favorite part of the episode.
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A
But I like when you. I'm like, yeah.
- [03:03]
C
Yep. And that's what we love here. Anyone listening to this episode, go to the digital Show Notes. There is a permanent link in all of our episodes to SheCommerce podcast. It is one of our sister podcast. We are so honored to have been part of the creation of this and you're part of our podcast family. And let me remind our audience, please follow us on your favorite podcast platform, be it Apple, Spotify, YouTube, whatever. And if you're on Apple or Spotify, particularly while you're there, give us a rating. Our favorite number is five, but that's up to you. Doing so helps our podcast become more findable by industry contemporaries who are looking to be both educated and entertained by the content we are producing. All right, enough of that. Let's get to our guest. We have someone joining us today who has spent decades doing something most people in this industry only talk about, actually moving the needle on equity in the workplace. She built a global movement out of a simple but radical idea that when women are in the room, business gets better. She's the founder and CEO of the Female Quotient, an organization that has become the go to destination for companies serious about equality as a business strategy, not just a talking point. From Davos to CES to Cannes, the FQ's equality lounges have become iconic gathering spaces where real conversations happen, real commitments get made. And she brings that same energy to every boardroom, every stage. And we are thrilled to say to the CPG Guys podcast today, she's a researcher, a disruptor, an advocate, and frankly, one of the most energizing people in our industry. Shelley Zalas, welcome to the podcast. How you doing?
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A
Wow, what a phenomenal welcome. And you are adorable, Peter. So I'm happy that you know that you are. I will confirm. And Jackie's so excited that you have joined us as well. So let's go.
- [04:56]
C
I'm going up to see my mom in Halifax next week. She'll be happy to know that I am still adorable. This will be some, some good news. Some good, some good news to her, to our audience, please again, check out the digital show notes to this episode. You're going to find hyperlinks to Shelly's LinkedIn profile, the funeral quotients website, all that as we carry on this conversation. That way you can multitask. I know you're. You're out for a jog in the morning. You want to open up, you want. Who is this Shelly?
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A
I want to check.
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C
Check out what she's all about. You can all do that as you're listening to our melodic, dulcet tones going on with this conversation. All right, I'm going to kick it off, Shelley. And this is really around the, you know, the business case for equality. The female quotient operates on the premise that when you add women to any equation, the equation gets better. What's the most compelling ROI data you've seen from particularly CPG companies that have actually closed their internal gender gaps? And what is it that they're doing differently?
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A
Well, first, let's just talk big picture. Over 85% of purchase decisions are made by women. I think that's a good starting point. So if you start with that and then you think about why is diversity so important? It isn't about diversity of race, age, gender, religion. It's about diversity of lived experience. And to me, that translates to representation. If you don't have representation on the inside, you cannot reflect the consumer, the customer, the society, the purchasers, the decision maker on the outside. So it's kind of obvious, in my opinion. And when you look at any product that just doesn't work for everyone, you know, that it wasn't designed intentionally for everyone. I mean, even an escalator, I don't know, you might not be to have had this experience because your shoes are flat and ugly, but ours are high with high little heels. When you go on an escalator, I can guarantee you your heel gets stuck in that escalator. You know how dangerous that is? If it's a pump, you can leave your shoe. If it's a tie or a buckle or whatever, your foot is caught in that escalator. And so just the most basic examples, you know, if you think about why representation matters for everything we do, everything we say, everything we create, that's a business case.
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C
I remember when Indra nui became the CEO of PepsiCo. Anyone who worked at PepsiCo headquarters like I did wrote, remembers the horrible cobblestone pathways at the entrance. First thing she did when she got there, she cleared out a very flat, smooth surface of stones to make it easier for women to walk into the building from the parking lot.
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A
But until you've been there, done that, you don't know you need to do it. You know, it has to be designed with intentionality, but it's based on experience.
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D
Jackie, I absolutely love that. And I 100% agree. Yes, those, those escalators are death traps. If you're in heels right
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A
at the seatbelt. The seatbelt. They're not comfortable on your boobs.
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D
Oh, my God.
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A
I mean, technically, it just like, you know, we could.
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C
Preach, woman, preach. I feel your pain,
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A
Shelly.
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D
You said that 85%. And you know, rightly so. You said that 85% of the purchasers purchase power comes from women, and they are still severely, severely underrepresented in senior commercial roles in literally all of these companies. How big is that disconnect? And what's the cost to brand relevance when leadership doesn't reflect the person going out there and buying your product?
- [08:54]
A
Everything. I mean, you know, when you think about, I mean, the pipeline starts at 50. 50, that's not really the problem. It's as we're rising the ranks to senior leadership positions. And if you actually look at where the problems arise, we actually could create the solutions for change. There are two places that the problems kick in. One is caregiving. Caregiving, Caregiving, caregiving. We lose most of our best leaders to caregiving, and caregiving is still predominantly a female issue. And so, you know, and that's in the messy middle. You know, that's in middle management where we have this big problem. And if you actually break down the caregiving problem when you have a child, the biggest problem is from 0 to 1 years of age because there is no school or not many places to put your kids. So it really does become a challenge. And maternity leave, Most women take it paternity leave when it's elective. Most men don't because it either shows a sign of weakness or, you know, so until we have either mandatory parental leave or, you know, some kind of systems put in place where companies take responsibility for caregiving, which I have solutions for that too. We're still going to have that problem losing our best leaders to caregiving. The second thing where it kicks in is at the first promotion, men ask for it and they'll negotiate their salaries. Women in general won't. And so if you actually know where the gaps start, we actually can fix it because there are amazing solutions. Also, when women take maternity leave, they miss that promotion and they miss the raise and they never catch up. So that's where we see a big problem happening.
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D
It's when you go on that matlave and you know, I've been there, when you come back, you're not going. It's not that next step. You've just gone two steps back and you're now running to keep up, to go up to the next step that you would have ordinarily taken if you hadn't have had that break.
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A
Right. Well, and also, why are women in general paid 80 cents on the dollar, black women 64 cents on the dollar, Latinas 53 cents on the dollar, if especially in today's day and age, we have the data. So when people say, oh, it's unconscious bias. If you use the word unconscious, you're conscious. You have a choice. Do something or don't. So you can close the gap. You can, it will cost you money. Ouch. Pull off the band aid. It will hurt. But once you do, you put the process, the policies in place to ensure that equal pay for equal work, whatever the job is, everyone should be getting paid the same range. It's not a complicated conversation.
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C
Michelle, you co founded See her which was designed to eliminate gender bias in advertising from your estimations. How have CPG companies, historically some of the biggest advertisers in the world, performed on the gender Quality Measure score? And where's the big gap they still need to fill?
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A
You know, you treasure what you measure and as a researcher of 40 something years, a really long time, you know,
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C
started at age five. That's great. That's pretty good.
- [12:21]
A
Shelby, tell your mother how much I love you. You know, it really is is true. And we've measured, you know, in advertising, persuasion and relevance and we added likability when online started, you know, emerging and all of a sudden, you know, we've never measured gender representation and perception becomes reality. So when you always are seeing, you know, the mom getting in her big van, taking kids to school in her housecoat and backing up and hitting the dog or the cat, like really, that's how we're being portrayed. Like, that is the silliest thing in the universe. And so, you know, we co founded Gail, Patty and I the see her movement and brought it to the ana, the association of National Advertisers to get all of us. It's the collective we. If one company alone does it, it might be invisible. If collectively we march forward in a new way to measure what matters, which is gender representation for reflection and creating an accurate and realistic portrayal of girls and women in media and entertainment, we can make a difference as a community, as an industry. And so that's what happened. We created the gender equality measure. And when we called it gender equality measure, I looked at, I'm like, oh my God, that's gem. That's a gem. This is a gem. And it's the first new measure we, we launched and since likeability in a very long time. And so it really is just measuring what matters. And when I started doing boot camps with all of the marketers, not research officers, chief marketing officers sitting around saying, let me just dissect this for you. Your scores are so so. But here's how you can make it so much better. And I showed them an ad that they tried very hard, but it was a little nuance that went a long way. I showed them that they had a husband, wife, pair, partner, pair, both working parents. Check. That's great. And then they both come home, the kids are waiting for them. The dad goes outside and rides on the bicycles with the kid. That's great. The woman goes into the kitchen to put dinner on the table. Fine. But then she comes out to call everybody for dinner in an apron and it's like back to stereotyping, you know, and it was fine that she was in the kitchen, but. And they were both co parenting and sharing their responsibility. It was a little thing. And when I pointed that out to the marketer, they're like, oh my God. So that's such an easy fix. We fixed it. Their scores went through the roof. And you don't even realize how the nuance matters. Or we had a boardroom with men and women in the boardroom. It was great. And equal. Male, female in charge, you know, leading the way. And the woman is racing to get to the elevator. Her team is coming to ask her a question. And in the middle of her answering the question, the elevator door closes on her. Like in the middle of her conversation. Interruption bus, simple leave. Leave the elevator open until she finishes her sentence. You know, like, little things like that go such a long way, but we don't really pay attention to it. So just make.
- [15:40]
C
I would encourage our listeners go back and listen to our previous episode involving Lori Tauber, Marcus and C. Nicholson, part of a group of women former PepsiCo executives called the Band of Sisters, who wrote a phenomenal book called you should smile more. I hand it out to everybody on my team whenever I can. It really talks about this bias in the workplace. But Jackie, over to you.
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D
Shelley, you talked about just a little while ago, you talked about how pay equity is so prevalent and even within the pay at the, the disparity, there's Disparity within the disparity. Right. We're seeing some major CPG players walk back their DEI commitments in response to political pressure. As someone who's been in the equality business for a while, how do you counsel companies that are getting squeamish? And what do you say to those who argue that pulling back is. Is a business neutral decision?
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A
Okay, well, pulling back. So when I started the female quotient, it was before DE and I. It was before women. It was before me too. It was before time's up. It was before any of those things. And I have never been in the business of women or in the business of equity or the business of diversity or inclusion. I'm in the business of opportunity. You know, that's really what it's all about. And any company that is dropping their initiatives in DE and I, it really wasn't something that is part of your strategy and DNA, which it really needs to be. It's about opportunity, it's about growth, it's about scale, it's about innovation. And we all need to be present in that equation if we truly want that. And we don't want to be obsolete as a business. And so, you know, when you think about language, language matters a lot. And you know, any company that dropped it, it was a quota or it was. It wasn't done for the right reasons. And so we really have spent a lot of time with our partners in forcing, instilling why representation and reflection matter. Call it what you wish. It cannot be in an HR bucket. It has to be part of the company's DNA, the company's purpose, the company's strategy. And if it is, it's not going anywhere. And if it does go somewhere, you will be obsolete. Like some of those companies we know so well that just were not relevant and did not have modern workplace rules that everyone could thrive in. Everyone could be seen, everyone could be heard, and everyone could feel included. So, you know, we just have, you know, we just use the language that is real and not just create perception that becomes reality and put the icing on the cake. Because you, you just like the taste of the icing. It has to be intrinsic to the values and core of who the company is and wants to stand for. And the why. It's the why.
- [18:44]
C
Shel, I've heard you speak about AI's potential to democratize opportunity, but there's also significant concern that AI that's trained on biased data will replicate or frank, even amplify existing inequities for consumer goods. Companies deploying AI in marketing, hiring consumer insights. What are the guardrails that you think they should be building in to keep this from happening?
- [19:11]
A
There is a lot of bias right now in the data. So junk in, junk out. And because AI pulls from historical data and then, you know, creates future roadmapping, the intrinsic value and cleanliness and reflection of the data is incredibly important. It's just. Just an interesting little thing that no one thought about until now. We're thinking about it. Imagine historical data. First of all, women's health, clinical trials. Women weren't in clinical trials until 1993. So if you're just even thinking about women's health and why the misdiagnosis is so prevalent, it's because we don't have the same amount of case studies and data. So unless we're pulling everything 1993 on, we're not going to have that same. The X chromosome, the extra X chromosome is missing. I actually just wrote an article with a girlfriend of mine, Sharon, which was called Mice don't Menstruate. And imagine that implication. I don't know if it impacts the results, but lab rats are lab rats that are used in all of our trials, and yet they don't menstruate. So, you know, these are really important things to think about or even when you think about your last name. Men in general don't take their partner's name when they get married, but women most of the time take their partner's name in AI up until now, AI was not connecting the dots. So my married name is Shelley Fleshner. I go by Shelly Zalas. But if I started going by Shelley Fleshner, all my historical data would be lost. Like, that's crazy. And so these are the. Or even this one shocked authorship in general, women co author and we always put our names last. AI only picks up the first name in a paper. So think about the implications of AI. And it's new and it's. Well, it's not new. It's been around for a long time, but it's growing. So we just have to be thinking about how to ensure clean data and give it check marks of some sort to say, trusted source, and that it has, you know, dotted itself and it's ethical and it's responsible AI.
- [21:38]
D
We're going to pivot for right now, Shelly, to what you've done with the Quality Lounge. You started with 50 women at CES, and Christina and I were at the lounge earlier this year at ces. Loved it. And you're now at Cannes lion in Davos. In south by Southwest. How are you seeing CPG executives use those spaces differently than other industries? You know, what are the conversations that you're hearing most from in terms of the women in retail media in that ecosystem?
- [22:13]
A
Thank you. First of all, we're probably hosting over 80 in real life experiences a year now across every industry. So we do have the largest global community of women in business. I'm over seven and a half million women across 30 industries, 100 countries. And, you know, we are not about women. We are about creating the changes that we all want to see, rewriting the rules in the workplace. So we have leaders. Imagine the best leaders. I don't care if you're a man or if you're a woman. It's about using your position, your power to bring everyone up. And that's what's happening. And in our lounges, we have, you know, it was designed by women for everyone. Where women feel comfortable, they feel seen. Power of the pack. A woman loan is power. Collectively, we have impact. We're all supporting each other. You walk in, you get a hug hello and a yes. You're not wearing a badge, so it's not like someone's coming to talk to you because you're this title or at this company. They're going to say hello and get to know who you are. And then when you walk on the quasit, you're like, hey, hey, hey, hey. And someone that might have felt invisible is now like a power player because he or she has this amazing, collaborative, collected, connected community of people that are just people. And, you know, this year in Cannes, we are expanding exponentially. We have the Martinez penthouse, which we've had for over 11 years now. We're now also expanding to Martinez Beach. So community will be where our beach and our programming is, and our penthouse will be for our partners. We are so fortunate and so grateful to have, you know, the most amazing partners that have stayed with us from day one and continue to grow, understanding why we do what we do collectively. And then we're also launching a camp at can for everyone to bring their families like you can do it all your way. We have one life with different dimensions. It's not an either or. It's bring your family. We are going to have this amazing space brought to you by Lowe's. So thank you. You know, with that, that is, you know, space for our future builders. And we are really excited about this. So, you know, our. Our partners have been amazing. We don't talk about male allies. We talk about leadership allies. We talk about conscious leadership. We talk about the power of collaboration, not just having conversation, but leading to intentional action for change. And it's just a great space of everyone getting, you know, getting to know each other. And we are the official partners of can, obviously, but we're unbadged and we'll always be unbadged so that it democratizes the system and everyone can participate together.
- [24:56]
C
I love that there's a big deal about people who are on the north side of the quasit. Badging means a restriction. It's not democratized. So I feel, I feel like I'm at a bit of a disadvantage. Like the CPG guys are doing our first residents at Cannes this year, and I think we're going to have to take some, some cues from the FQ and how, how we're doing our activation.
- [25:19]
A
Come activate with us.
- [25:22]
C
I love it. We'll, we'll talk about this after the podcast. At the CPG guys. We're excited to partner with today's sponsor, Confido. Think about how many different workflows your team is managing right now. Your sales team is planning promotions in a spreadsheet. Your finance team is manually managing deductions from a dozen different retailer portals. Your ops team is building forecasts in a totally separate tool. When something changes, a promotion shifts. A big deduction comes in. Nobody finds out until it's already a problem. Most CPG brands are running these processes in silos. And the cost isn't just time. It's the decisions that don't get made or get made on bad information. Confido is the end to end platform for CPG operations, built specifically for brands to run, all of it in one place. Trade promotion, management, deductions, disputes, sales forecasting, demand planning, and retail analytics. When your trade events are connected to your forecasts and your deductions are automatically matched to your promotions, your whole team is finally working from the same picture. Over 200 CPG brands, including Olipop, Bear Bells and Simple Mills, already use it. Go to confidotech.com cpguys to learn more. That's confidotech.com cpg Guys, let me remind our audience that we're speaking with the indefatigable Shelley Zalas, founder and CEO of the Female Quotient. All right, you've written about the care gap, the disproportionate burden of caregiving that falls on women and derails careers. Glad to hear you're trying to address that in at Cannes this year in cpg, where field sales, trade roles and supply Chain jobs often require significant travel and irregular hours. How do you think companies should redesign work structures to stop losing women mid career?
- [27:31]
A
Well, first of all, it starts at the top with not rewarding how much time you actually spend in an office. It's what your performance, how well you do it really is beyond profit. It's also purpose and having a reset of expectation. And then you won't lose as many people if you are rewarding for what really matters, which is, you know, driving the growth and the innovation and the success and not just ticking the box of, you know, how many hours you're sitting at your desk. Because most, by the way, most of the time, most people just sitting at their desk are not doing what you think they're doing anyways. So, like, let's get over that about ticking, you know, ticking the clock and figuring that out. And so I think that's a big issue. I also really do think that retaining our best talent is a company's responsibility. And yet we're losing our best talent. You know, when you look at talk about bring your human to the table and compassion, empathy and collaboration, contextualization, that's the feminine, not the female. It is the feminine. Those are qualities of caregiving. And yet we're losing our greatest leaders to caregiving. It's an oxymoron. It just like makes no sense to me. And so if you think of the benefits that companies offer their employees, most of those benefits employees don't know about or care about. So what if you just took that money, redirected it into a care wallet, and let everyone individually use that money as they wish every year based on their life stages, whether it's from self care. If you don't have children or children that need, you know, care at home or child care or elderly care, I mean, it's going to cover everyone at that point. And to me, you will not only attract the best talent, you will retain the best talent. Like, it's easy adjustments. We just need to think about possibility and not just about performance. What we've been doing, status quo. There are so many new opportunities to create a modern workforce and a modern workplace that will work for everyone if we intentionally design it that way. And if you intentionally design it for the lowest common denominator or actually the most common, which is caregiver, it's going to work for the current majority. It'll be easier for the current majority. Wow. But you got to give everyone the same threshold. And you know, I started rewriting something called the rose gold rule when you Think about the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule. Do unto others as you'd want done to yourself. But what might work for you, Peter, might not work for Jackie. So then everyone created the Platinum Rule. Do unto others as they'd want done to themselves. But not everyone is in the same life stage at the same time. So the Rose Gold Rule. Do unto the workplace what the collective requires. And so if you don't have the lived experience of a caregiver, how are you going to really be able to create the new rules of the workplace if you don't understand really the challenges because you haven't gone through it, or accessibility or, you know, coming from a neighborhood that you might not be able to afford, you know, Uber, and you have to take the buses, and you're depending on the bus schedule or the train schedule. Like, we have to think about the collective. We. If we truly want to create a culture of inclusivity where we all can rise and shine based on who we are, where we come from and what we need, and not be the exception. I want the exceptions to become the new norm. I want to create for the exceptions and make that the new norm.
- [31:19]
D
I love that. I love that so much. To pivot slightly on that, you've been very, very deliberate about including men in the equality conversation, rather than, as you've mentioned before, framing it as a women's issue. What does it look like when a male CPG CEO truly leads on this versus when it's performative? And how can listeners of this podcast who are male executives actually show up differently, starting Monday morning or in London, because we have Easter Monday, Tuesday morning,
- [31:52]
A
You know, it's all about the conversation that's no longer taboo. I mean, when you're sitting around, I don't care if you're a man or a woman, if you're a leader at the table and having your team there, ask everyone, how are you? You know, what do you need to do today to ensure you're coming in as your full self? Go pick up your kids. I'm going. If I'm a man, I can also say I'm going to pick up my kids at the soccer game or take them to the doctor. Make it normalize the conversation. Brought up menopause before. Like, menopause isn't an illness. It's called life. Men have menopause. We just never talk about it. Men start losing testosterone at the age of 30. I mean, who cares? It's called life. And, you know, we. We don't have a life that compartmentalizes as this is my life and this is my work. You have one life with five dimensions. Your career, your family, your community, your friends. And the last one that we always forget about is ourselves. And at every stage of life, they're not equal slices of the pie. It's based on your life stage, and you might have to adjust accordingly. But if we want everyone to be able to show up fully, don't hide the pictures of your family. Like, who said we have to? We think there's a playbook, but it's. There's no playbook. We think we're supposed to stand till midnight doing nothing. Who said that? You know, it's like, break a pattern and start a new one and then share it and get everyone to go with you. And then that new trend will become a new habit, and it's actually not complicated. So, you know, even on panels, when I have men and women, I'll say, who's got kids? And, you know, people will raise her. I say, well, how do you do it all? And the women will actually start talking about, oh, my God, it's so complicated. Work, life, balance. I have imposter syndrome. I think I'm going to fail. And men are like, what are you talking about? I don't get asked that question. So, like, I ask it just to normalize it so that it's not something that we think should be a secret. It's not a secret. And then once you talk about it, everyone starts talking about it. Or, oh, gosh, Peter, who's your shirt made by? Like, good for you. But, you know, it's like, no one asks what you're wearing, who's the designer? Or if. Ask it to me. Ask it to everyone.
- [34:13]
C
By the way, last night, after I cooked dinner for the family, I was up till midnight making slime for my daughter's school fundraiser today. That's a whole nother story.
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A
What color was slime?
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C
It would have been a lot easier if my daughter was okay with me making one color of slime. No, no, she needed nine different colors of slime.
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A
Oh, Daddy.
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C
Nine. No, nine. And of course, her mother is like, where her mother said, no, no, we're going to make nine different colors. We'll do that for you, dear. Okay. Anyhow, enough of that. The Equality Lounge. It's coming up again at Cannes. You've had a strong presence, as you mentioned, at Cannes Lions for years. We're going to be there, too, as I mentioned, with our own activation. What do you see as being the unique opportunity that Cannes Lions creates for Driving meaningful equality commitments from chief marketing officers and brand leaders versus it just being another wonderful, you know, rose on the quas conversation that doesn't get back to the office. Yes, exactly.
- [35:13]
A
You know, we have evolved from girls lounge, you know, where I wanted to just sensationalize the space. You know, the boys club opposite a boys girl opposite a club is lounge. There's a boys club, there's a girl's lounge. Once we had women supporting women, we then evolved to a quality lounge to ensure that everyone comes. And because this space was designed by women, and I keep making the space bigger and bigger so women will bring their meetings and their meetings happen to be men. Stephen Quinn was actually one of the first men in our lounge. It, it, it really started, you know, just really opening it up to saying everyone is welcome here to now being the FQ lounge. And it is, you know, powered by all of our partners. And so in can, you'll see we have such a great group of powerful partners that all activate. If they see garbage on the floor, they pick it up, they pick up the mic. We all, it's not mine, it's not yours. It is ours collectively. And it's the same thing with, you know, ensuring that we all create the table that we want to sit on and that everyone is included. It isn't about a pledge. I can't stand when I hear people say, oh, we're making a pledge. A pledge is just words. It's about activating the solutions for change. So what do you want to do? And lately I've made it about legacy. In the lifetime of your leadership, like, I ain't going anywhere until we close the gaps that need to be closed, which is creating a modern workforce, a modern workplace where we can all thrive. Why should it take 132 more years? According to World Economic Forum? That is dumb. We think we can fix climate in 50 years. Climate is something that collectively we have to do. But what we can truly activate individually is make the decision the choice to close the gaps in our companies. They are achievable. And it's the only global goal actually that we can achieve as an individual in the lifetime of our leadership.
- [37:14]
D
So to build on that, Shelley, you've developed tools and research frameworks to help companies measure equality outcomes. What are the two or three metrics that CBG companies should be tracking internally that most currently aren't? And how would you hold leadership accountable when the numbers don't move?
- [37:38]
A
Well, you know, I think we're probably measuring the wrong things because it isn't just about putting placeholders in place. It is about hiring the best talent and creating fair opportunity. So, you know, I think it is about fair opportunity and then choose the best. And so it is about representation and ensuring that your products are relevant for today, for tomorrow, for the future, future proofing them. And I think it's looking at a double roi, not just a single, you know, it's not just return on investment, which is short term number based financial, but it's also about return on impact. And when you look at the double ROI and Mark Pritchard says it all the time, you could do good and do well at the same time. When you look at a double roi, you will also start hiring different kind of people that bring those talents to the table and not just look at potential but also look at performance and think about things very differently and hire the best and you will see that your net will be cast wider and that your talent will be elevated.
- [38:47]
C
Wow, Shelley, what a fantastic conversation. We are so greatly appreciative that you took time out of your day to speak with us. We look forward to seeing you at Cannes later this summer. Thank you. Let's go to our audience, this community, it doesn't exist without all of you. You engage with us all year long. We are so grateful to have you as our audience and our partners. And thank you in particular to the 44,000 plus followers on LinkedIn who trust us to both educate and entertain them. Please follow us on all our social media platforms beyond LinkedIn including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Jackie, what a great conversation with Shelley. What's your big takeaway?
- [39:30]
D
Still fangirling. So give me a moment. I have to say that there are two things. One, that took me away, that took, that I took away. And you know, I love the words, right. Where Shelley said companies should stop being an oxymoron. I love the word oxymoron. Right. And loved that she had solutions around how you can fight against that, how you can, how you can work against that, improve. And the other one was measuring double roi, return on investment, that we all know, a return on impact. You can do good and you can do well. I, I mean that's a T shirt. That there is a T shirt, Peter. Double roi. You can do good and you can do well. And I just, I mean, I love that. And how much more, how much better, how much more progress, how much better is your bottom line going to be when you get all those different perspectives from your customer, your consumer base, on your board?
- [40:37]
C
Yeah. You know The CPG guys love a good quote T shirt, so expect to see that happen. But for me, it was, you know, the question you asked about men as allies. You can't be a man and just sit back and think that this is a women's issue. It's not. And to your point, the point she made about it's just not 85% of the of the purchase decisions for CPG manufacturers in particular are being made by women. You're just stupid if you don't have women at the table. Their contributions, their leadership, all of that. It's something that we've been advocating on the CPG guys here for quite a long time. I would not be my mother's son if this wasn't a very important cause for me. I know Sheree feels the same way. Jackie, really grateful that you took time. Really great. Really grateful that you took time out of your Late in the day in London. You dropped everything when I called you. I don't know if it would have been for anyone else. You certainly did it for when I told you it was Shelly. But I'm really grateful that you did. I know when Christina finds out that I asked you instead of her, she's going to probably hunt me down like a rabid dog. She would have driven up here and kicked me out of the chair to do it with you. That's what she would have done.
- [42:03]
D
That is actual facts. Peter will always, always have a window in my diary when you call. You know this.
- [42:12]
C
I know. I know. Direct. I've direct Connect to Jax. All right, thanks again to our audience again. We really appreciate you listening to us week in and week out, and we look forward to speaking with you on the next episode of. Wait for it. The CPG Guys Podcast. Goodbye.
- [42:46]
B
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