Phygital Commerce Media with Liquid Death's Benoit Vatere

Summary

The CPG Guys Podcast: "Phygital Commerce Media with Liquid Death's Benoit Vatere" — April 18, 2026

Host: Sri Rajagopalan & Peter V.S. Bond
Guest: Benoit Vatere, Chief Media Officer, Liquid Death
Setting: Recorded at Shop Talk, Las Vegas

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into Liquid Death’s rise as a disruptive, cult-like brand in the beverage world, unpacking the company's bold marketing strategy at the crossover of entertainment and commerce. Sri and Peter explore with Benoit Vatere how Liquid Death defies CPG conventions — merging creative unpredictability, phygital (physical/digital) shelf approaches, data-driven media investment, and the future of retail media and brand building. Notably, the conversation features candid insights into how to foster fanatic consumer loyalty and where retail media should live within organizations.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Building a Cult Brand Through Entertainment

• Entertainment > Commodity: Benoit sees Liquid Death first as an entertainment company that monetizes through water, shaking up how CPG thinks about brand-building.
  • “Entertainment is the top of the funnel. This is what gets the attention in a very, very busy feed driven consumption...” (Benoit, 05:15)
• Unpredictability is Key: The brand deliberately avoids consumer expectations, always aiming to surprise and provoke conversation.
  • “If you’re expecting us to do it, that’s the reason we should not do it.” (Benoit, 06:05)
• Community and Loyalty: The brand resonates so much that consumers are fans, some getting Liquid Death tattoos, with the product as a social statement.
  • “It’s more than a brand. It’s a statement. ... It’s cool.” (Benoit, 09:36)
• Virality Origins: Liquid Death was born natively on social, building momentum from a single viral Facebook page. Bold, often irreverent content is core to their ethos.

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2. The Brand’s Creative & Media Strategy

• Anti-Marketing Playbook: Liquid Death rejects safe, playbook-driven approaches common in CPG, preferring boldness over comfort.
• No “Spray-and-Pray” Creative: Benoit rails against mass-producing creatives for the sake of it, advocating for meaningful, strategic audacity over volume and full-funnel messaging in a single ad.
  • “The idea that you can have a full funnel in one ad on social is ... the worst ever.” (Benoit, 21:18)
• Creator Partnerships: Essential for middle-funnel consideration; creators add authenticity and relatability.
  • “For me, they are the best because people understand, know the brand, ... they see someone in a very unique setup ... At this point they are like, okay, I should probably try it out.” (Benoit, 23:37)

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3. Retail Media: Not Just Conversion, but Brand Building

• Full Funnel Focus: Benoit is a staunch advocate for retail media — not just for search/conversion but as a robust tool for awareness and upper funnel impact, leveraging retailers’ first-party data.
  • “For me, you give me that signal, now I can be efficient with my dollars.” (Benoit, 25:16)
• Media Budget Shift: Advises that up to half of media spend for fast-growing beverage brands should go to retail media — a view almost unheard of in the category.
  • “A good half, if not half…” (Benoit, 26:52)
• Retail Media Must Be Media: Retail media investment and execution should sit with the CMO, not in customer/shopper teams.
  • “It has to be sitting under the CMO for sure... This is a media buy.” (Benoit, 38:19)
• Self-Service, Real Time Optimization: Liquid Death pursues in-house, self-service digital media buying for rapid optimization, treating retail media like digital performance.
  • “We created that. We look at it as performance. We have dashboards that are refreshing on a daily basis.” (Benoit, 39:10)
• Measurement and Clean Rooms: Benoit insists on independently measuring retail media effectiveness, building and leveraging his own clean room/data lake for attribution.
  • “I get the data. I’m getting the scan sales data ... I’m doing my own now… Is that matching? Great.” (Benoit, 32:36)

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4. Brand Expansion & Consumer Behavior

• Expanding into New Categories: All growth must anchor on the brand’s platform — “healthy beverage” — never sacrificing nutritional principles for volume.
  • “We will never touch something that is not healthy.” (Benoit, 17:37)
• Consumers Buy Portfolios: Loyalty isn’t exclusive in today’s CPG; consumers rotate among a repertoire of strong brands, so saliency and presence at point of purchase outperform strict loyalty programs.

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5. Data, Tech & Human Capital

• Data Drives Decisions: Performance success comes from data fluency; future CMOs need to “live in the data lab,” not just the creative room.
  • “In the data. 100% in the data. Because that's how you're going to drive performance and success.” (Benoit, 56:18)
• Death Machine — Internal Creative Team: Liquid Death’s creative department is modeled on an SNL writer’s room — Thursday morning comedy pit sessions generate offbeat, high-energy ideas with hired comedians, not standard marketers.
  • “We have a team that is called Death Machine, which is the creative machine. ... It’s all internal. We don’t have agency for creative.” (Benoit, 53:12)

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6. The Phygital & Future Commerce Journey

• From Sofa to Fridge — Phygital Path: CTV (connected TV) holds growing significance, especially since Walmart’s acquisition of Vizio/Clearplay. Liquid Death stands out because of its visual loudness and distinctiveness, less noise, and focused attention.
  • “For us, it’s so good because of the brand we are. First, there’s a lot less noise on the big screen.” (Benoit, 45:44)
• Social Commerce & TikTok: Although not pursuing DTC due to unfavorable unit economics, the brand uses TikTok for viral traffic and directs to retail partners for fulfillment.

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7. Collaboration and Co-Creation

• Unexpected Brand Partnerships: The collaboration with e.l.f. Beauty exemplifies Liquid Death’s affinity for combining unexpected audiences, examining overlap, and leveraging combined virality.
• Product Team Engagement: Benoit engages directly with retailers’ product/tech teams, not just merchants, influencing the RMN product roadmap to better serve brands and consumers.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “If you’re expecting us to do it, that’s why we should not do it.” (Benoit, 06:05)
• “It’s not about being safe, it’s about being remembered.” (Benoit paraphrased, various)
• “Retail media is every day. ... You put your end cap with retail media. You put your end cap in front of the right shopper when he’s ready to convert.” (Benoit, 25:58)
• “Retail media is media. It’s not customer sales.” (Benoit, 38:19)
• “You need to have the sales data, you need to have your media dollars at a very granular level ... most of the incrementality models are open source.” (Benoit, 34:15)
• “We are the creative; it's run as an SNL skit. ... We have comedians.” (Benoit, 52:55)
• “You need to be in the data — that’s how you’re going to drive performance and success.” (Benoit, 56:20)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Intro / Brand Philosophy — 03:57–09:30
• Creative Approach / Virality — 05:15–21:24
• Brand Loyalty & Statement — 09:32–12:00
• Retail Media Deep Dive — 24:18–29:39
• Measurement, Data, Clean Rooms — 32:00–35:00
• Brand Expansion — 17:07–19:10
• Creators & Local Influence — 23:37–24:18
• Retailer Partnership, Product Influence — 42:01–44:36
• CTV & Phygital Commerce — 45:13–47:51
• Human Capital / Death Machine — 52:16–55:39
• Advice for Future CMOs — 55:54–57:03

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Takeaways for Listeners

• Creativity Must Be Unexpected: Success is found not in comfort or playing it safe, but in producing memorable moments and statements beyond functional benefit.
• Retail Media is Core Media: For modern, digitally native brands, retail media spends can and should rival or surpass “traditional” core brand spending.
• Own Your Data / Measurement: Effective marketing in this era requires hands-on, independent measurement and the technical infrastructure to do it (clean rooms, data lakes, etc.).
• Build Internal Creativity: Outsourcing creative isn’t always the answer — great brands can and should develop their own voice with an in-house “machine.”
• Real Partnerships with Retailers: Engage with retailer product teams, not just merchants, to drive co-creation and faster innovation across RMNs.
• Future CMOs: Data First: Don’t just “think creative.” Think data, analytics, tech. Brand legends must master both.

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Closing Thoughts

Benoit Vatere’s approach — balancing data and creativity, breaking every “rule” of safe, consensus-driven CPG, and embracing the full-funnel power of phygital media — provides a provocative blueprint for brand leaders in 2026 and beyond.

For more insights or to continue the discussion, visit cpgguys.com or connect with the hosts and guest on LinkedIn.

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Transcript

[A]

Hi, I'm Bernard Vater, Chief media officer at Liquid Death and you are listening to the CPG Guys podcast.

[B]

Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys podcast. Set at the intersection of commerce and tech, your hosts Sri Raja Goplan and Peter Vs Bond explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in a digitally driven world. And now, here are the CPG Guys.

[C]

Hello folks and welcome to this episode of the CPG Guys. We're of course live at Shop Talk in Las Vegas. Of course, Peter. We're actually in our usual suite. We've had this suite for how many years now?

[B]

Let me just tell you that serve a residency, Peter. I think we do based upon like Ms. Celine Dion.

[C]

And we're doing our usual favorite stuff between meetings, planning for Cannes which is a big activation for us this year.

[B]

Cannes is going to be huge.

[C]

CPT guys actually have their own residence in Cannes right opposite the Palais this year. And of course we're making podcasts. And that's what we're about to do now with industry's key leaders. I'm Sree co host, 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 listen to my older daughter's music at www.rhea rajakam. We're about to go to India for NBA and Budweiser. Follow Lara Raj. My younger daughter is a member of the world's fastest growing global girls group. Katsai just came back from Lollapalooza South America. We're headed to Coachella. I'm joined today by my best friend, co host Mr. PVSB who also moonlights the head of industry and client engagement with Flywheel, the commerce acceleration division of Omnicom. How you doing man? I know this is a sad moment because this is our last recording of

[B]

the whole it is the week and

[C]

that you're headed back tonight.

[B]

Well, I've got a couple of tasks before I head back. Obviously the last thing I have to do is dinner with the women in commerce media. That's a big event for us. We're going to see our friend. It'll be great. Great.

[C]

Wait for that one.

[B]

But before that, I have very explicit instructions from my 7 year old daughter Nadia. I must stop by the hello Kitt cafe and bring her back merchandise.

[C]

So yes, she uses the word merchant.

[B]

She goes, dad, I want stuff. Hello kitty stuff.

[C]

So the day she starts saying merch, we're in trouble.

[B]

When she says merch, we're in trouble. We are absolutely too much into this. So I will, I will go up to the Aria where we're having dinner. I'll check, check my luggage with the concierge so I can leave right after dinner and then I will walk over to the park mgm, go to the hello Kitty Cafe, buy lots of stuff, and then go enjoy dinner.

[C]

You missed one other important thing we have to do right before you go to the hello Kitty Cafe or after you go to the.

[B]

Before dinner, we're going to go make sure with the Easter Bunny. The Easter Bunny is holding court at the Crystal Shop Palace. Crystal Palace Shops. And you and I are going to go take a picture with the Easter Bunny because that's what the CPG guys do.

[C]

Awesome. All right, so make sure you're subscribing to our podcast folks on your preferred listening platform where you can get our latest episodes. Go back and consume some of the 580 plus episodes we published. Let me jump to our guest today because this is going to be a fun fire.

[B]

We talk about our guest and his brand in particular, we numerous times.

[C]

Look what's in the room. What are we drinking?

[B]

We're, we're drinking the best beverage there is on the market.

[C]

My house is stacked up a bottle.

[B]

You got, you got a lot liquid

[C]

that liquid that liquid that liquid that, this flavor. That flavor. So give away a guest name.

[B]

So it's, it's the kind of beverage where you want the actual product on the table when you drink it. It's not like you pour it into another receptacle and then you can. No, no.

[C]

And we're going to talk about all this. How the heck has he built a cultish brand like out of a commodity product, out of a commodity water product? We're going to get to that. But today we're going to dive into the intersection of creativity. And of course, we have to touch retail media because Benoit and I started talking about it on LinkedIn. It's public now, so we got to close the dialogue. So who do we have? Ben Vo Vater, CMO Chief Media Officer of none other than our favorite beverage, Liquid Death.

[A]

Thank you, guys. That's a lot of love. Appreciate it.

[B]

We are in awe of what you have done. We are so excited to talk to you about how you and your colleagues have built this brand. Building brands is not an easy task in this day and age.

[C]

So while the industry knows the brand for its viral, don't blink, creative who Mr. Benoit himself actually gets going in the industry. He's built a sophisticated media engine that is Winning across the digital and physical shelf. At a time when everyone's talking about the death of traditional search, Benoit is leading a brand that thrives on discovery community, breaking the silos between brand awareness and conversion. We're going to talk about the liquid death X factor and what the future of agent E commerce looks like for a brand built on human impulse. In the digital liner notes of this episode, of course we'll include links to his profile, the company's profile, the company's website for listeners to access while on the go. So I'm going to get it started and obviously the first question, I'm going straight to a quote of yours, Benoit. You famously said liquid Death is an entertainment company that happens also to sell water by accident. Maybe you didn't say accident.

[A]

I didn't say accident, but yeah.

[C]

So how do you maintain that kind of, no pun intended, unfiltered creative edge while managing the rigid P and L distribution requirements, all this stuff of a cpg.

[A]

That's a very good question. And yeah, we are entertainment company and I think and we monetize through water. That's the quote. And, and how we, why we do that is because entertainment is the top of the funnel. This is what gets the attention in a very, very busy feed driven consumptions. There's a lot of noise. You need to stand out and in order to stand out you need to pick a lane and we pick the entertainment committee lane and we stick with it. And that works well because that's what gets the attention and from the attention you can build the brand, you can build the awareness. Now you cannot just stay at the awareness level. But we've been really good because we've been working with that lane. We've been working with what we call like the unexpected. If you're expecting us to do it, that's the reason why we should not do it. So we work with an expectation.

[C]

What a great comment. So if you're expecting a brand to do it, you should not do it.

[B]

Correct.

[C]

Meanwhile, every other brand wants to do exactly what the consumer expects them to do. Off a playbook.

[A]

Correct.

[C]

A very like hundred.

[B]

And because that gets them the, the moderate results that they get, highly riskable,

[A]

it's safe and it's to be fair, I think very annoying to the consumer. The consumer sees we would agree on the CPG guys. Yeah, Same thing again and again, again and again.

[C]

So I have to ask you then. Yeah. 54 ads on super bowl, how are they? What do you think? Safe or you actually like some?

[A]

I like some. And I won't tell you which one. I like ours a lot.

[C]

You obviously like State Farm because Cat's eye was in it.

[A]

That. That's the one.

[B]

That one you will own up to.

[C]

Like.

[A]

That's true. That one. I can call it out. And it was Jake. Yeah, exactly.

[B]

From State Farm.

[A]

Yeah. I think it was a lot of very safe and it was also a lot of like, let me buy 60 second so I can get a lot of. A lot of eyeballs and let's get attention by staying on the screen for a long period of time and burn cash metric. Exactly. And I think that's what the play was this year is like, let's. I've seen. I don't think I've ever seen that many 60 seconds.

[B]

A lot of them.

[A]

And that's. I think that was the play there. Obviously you need to afford that and it's a different ballgame. But I don't think that was interesting that like I watch it. Nothing really caught my attention.

[B]

It was interesting how those 60 second ads.

[C]

No, no, State Farm did.

[A]

Yes. No, not State Farm. Your daughter did.

[C]

Oh, thank you.

[B]

But what I noticed was they were 60 second ads on the super bowl. But when they replayed after the super bowl, they were all cut down to 30 seconds. So they took out so much of the content.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Well, they're just so used to. We are only going to get 30 seconds of attention. But I want to follow up.

[C]

Hold on, hold on. Before you go there. Oh, you have a follow up on the question.

[B]

I do.

[C]

Go for it.

[B]

And it's. This is that you talked a lot about the. The entertainment aspect because it gets attention, but it does more than that. Right. You have built such a loyalty, so much so that your consumers will actually ink your logo on their bodies. Like, what is it that creates that sense of community, that sense of loyalty? What did you tap into?

[C]

Watch his hand.

[B]

I know, that's what I'm asking.

[C]

Where is the Liquid Death logo?

[A]

Not yet. Here. I mean you cannot see it.

[C]

What is this here? Let's run the story. What is this?

[A]

What is this? It's actually my. So first, I love art. This is Japanese tattoo and those are the four elements. So you have the, you have the wing here. The wing started because also of the wing, the American flag with the, with the eagle. Because I'm an immigrant and I'm very grateful for this country. And then it goes into all the other elements that I have.

[B]

Do you know that all three of us are immigrants?

[A]

I didn't. I mean, I Assume.

[C]

But I didn't know I'm Canadian.

[A]

You are?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Well, here we go. We don't have an in America born here.

[C]

No. I have my family. I've got the om sign, I've got my pets, all four of them. And then Habibi. But I won't solve the mystery why I have Habibi.

[B]

Should I show, should I show him my tramp stamp?

[A]

Okay.

[C]

No, no, no, no.

[B]

We're not joining. We don't have to put it on the video.

[C]

But Benoit, let's get back to the question.

[A]

Yeah. What was the question?

[B]

The question was about you've not only drawn attention with your brain, you've built fanatic loyalty. What is, what is it that you tapped in to really cultivate that?

[A]

It's because it's a statement. It's when you, when you're Brand is

[B]

more than a brand.

[A]

It is, it's more than a brand.

[B]

You.

[A]

It's a statement. It's cool. It's like I'm, I'm drinking here, but I'm. It's not a beer, it's a water. People recognize that it is something that you can like remember. It's. It's the same thing as what it is in mental availability in media. It's like, it's something that people's like, oh, wow, that's cool. That's not something I've seen before.

[B]

So I think about. So I have a lot of friends who are, are high end chefs in major cities. And I remember about 20, 25 years ago, Coca Cola reintroduced their little eight ounce glass bottles. And for the first time I saw in the, what I would call the, you know, the two star, three star Michelin restaurant, instead of it coming out in a glass, they had no problem putting that iconic glass bottle. And when I think about what you've done with Liquid Death, you are the next brand that I have seen to come along that actually people want to put that on the table. There is, to your point, a statement. A statement that's being made about the consumer that's consuming it.

[A]

And to be honest, on the table, it creates, triggers, discussions. Of course, what is it? And the same thing. I mean we're pretty. A lot of people know we have been at all the different festivals and, and, and concert venues and with our partnership with Lamination and because of that, a lot of people have seen us in those environment that are actually making memories. And you see that can, it's like, what is that can? Yeah. And he was like, oh, that's. It's Not a beer, it's water. What?

[B]

I know when I first thought, I'm like, it has to be a, a beer. It has to be a hard seltzer. It has to be something else.

[A]

Like.

[B]

No, no, it's water.

[A]

It's water. And again, that creates even more discussions.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

Talking about unexpected. You don't expect to have water in that can.

[B]

And I think, like, I'll give you an example why that's important to me. So I don't drink alcohol. I haven't, I haven't had anything in five years. You know what I love to drink when I'm out with friends drinking Liquid death.

[C]

He wants to look cool.

[B]

And I try, I'm trying. I'm trying desperately because those are cool. I'm going to get.

[A]

But that's true. That's what happens. And then there's also another thing that happens a lot with the moms.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That want to give healthy beverage to their kids. But the kids love holding and so now they drink. The mom feels good because it's a healthy beverage. The kid feels cool because it's everybody. Exactly.

[B]

That's brilliant.

[C]

Now, I think you wanted to ask something on AI.

[B]

No. Oh, well, in terms of any. So, so. Well, AI is the big word around everything. Everybody's got to be in it. But I have to imagine that how you're thinking about it, particularly in terms of a tool for engaging your audience, is probably very much top of mind. So how are you thinking about employing AI in the customer journey for liquid death?

[A]

That's a very difficult question to answer because it's moving so fast. There's so many things that I want to do, but he hasn't been at the top of the list because we are a fast growing brand with a lot of priorities. The priorities right now to move the product off the shelf and the AI.

[B]

Is distribution still the biggest opportunity for you?

[A]

Yeah. Getting more doors. But we already have now a lot of doors.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So now it's how do we get more space on the shelf?

[B]

More skus, more.

[A]

Exactly. And then it's always velocity by. Actually we're probably going to get into media, but we have a massive awareness. So now do we get into consideration and conversion? So the velocity increase of the shelf. So that's where it's at for us. But going back to your AI question for, for us we have a very unique voice. Right. When we talk to the consumer, the shopper, the drinker. So trying to trust AI. We are not there yet. From a communication standpoint. Actually on the show here I was talking to some companies are trying to sell us about managing our DMS through AI. We are not yet trusting enough. Do you have AI and all the communication.

[B]

Are you finding that your brand resonates so much with consumers that when we move to this concern around Ajanta Commerce that people are asking for. For Liquid Death specifically. Much like people say I want some Kleenex, I don't want.

[A]

So that's a very. For us that's a different question is how do we show up in the results which is the new search.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Right now people are obviously people are not going on or some still do going on Google and searching. Most people are interacting with agents to ask and like hey I just started that diet. I need to have a better beverage for me. What do you recommend? Right.

[B]

Well, but I'm thinking of things like I'm throwing a New Year's Eve party. Get me all the products I need.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

Liquid death should be part of that. How do you make sure that you're part of that equation?

[A]

Part of that equation. And so that part of the equation. But is the part of the equation because the. The LLM, the agent knows us or is that because of Part of the equation because they know the retailer and they find those different SKUs at the retail level.

[B]

So it's. It's feeding off retailers classify and we

[A]

need to do both. And I was having a discussion yesterday around that is like we need to feed all those agents directly with our catalog of products.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then so. So that means that the agent looks at that first and then can recommend places to buy from rather than getting all this insight from the retailer itself. Which is great. Like again we need the retailer. But I want to have the retailer being picked by the consumer and not picked by the agent.

[B]

You want the agent to understand Liquid death through you before it goes to find Liquid death.

[A]

Exactly. Like get the story first and then give options of retailer and best retailer wins.

[C]

Okay. So I got a question for you then. April 5th is my older daughter's birthday. There'll be a big party at home. It'll be all musicians the industry. Right.

[A]

Give me the address.

[C]

So should Liquid Debt be the only water? No. Aquafina? No, I got everything.

[A]

What is Aquafina?

[C]

No, I've never heard of that. Excellent answer. So I'm hearing Liquid Duck is the brand.

[A]

It should be. No, I also mixers. That too. We mix really well with our flavor. Sparkling water. That's what I meant a lot. So that too but for me actually you're bringing a good point. I don't think and that may not. That may trigger some. A lot of questions or discussions here. I don't think people are loyal in the CPG world. Consumers.

[C]

No, no. We we. Today's day and age after Covid and pricing of 30% that CPG took loyalty's gone out the window.

[A]

That means though But I think they're buying what I call they're buying in the repertoire of brands. So they are bouncing between three or four brands.

[B]

They will accept.

[A]

That is true. They will accept.

[C]

So whoever's got better pricing in a

[A]

given week, better pricing top of mind because of when that happens display in the store or if we go to retail. E Retail. Are you in front of them at the time of. Exactly at the time of conversion. So that means that for me do I care if at the party there is another brand? Not really. Because I would you care if the

[C]

consumption is liquid Duck.

[A]

Correct. And I can't on the picture repeatedly

[B]

can't so clearly establishing that that loyal connection to the consumer that that statement that they're making is important. So then how do you think about taking that brand and expanding it outside core category that you started with water and start for instance you've recently moved into energy drinks. How do you start thinking about that is the right category where our brand can resonate very easily. What are the conditions that you start to consider?

[A]

Well, for us the platform is healthy beverage.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So that's. That's what we're going after is to turn a category that is not healthy or don't. Doesn't have healthy beverages. Generally beverages.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We're sticking with beverage.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

I'm not saying in 10 years maybe right now this is a lot to do with beverage. Now we started with water with the

[C]

mineral water 140 calorie beverages with like 26 grams of sugar.

[A]

No, never ever. Right. It's. It's always.

[B]

That's antithetical to your mission.

[A]

Yeah. No, we will never touch something that is not healthy. Right. And so when we go from water, what is the next category? Obviously soda is a big category. Well how can we make a soda healthy? Well flavor sparkling water with the right ingredients. Now there's a lot of flavor sparkling water out there, but the flavor is not there. It's very light and a lot of

[C]

that Peter and she agree that liquid that.

[A]

And so for us that's why we went with big flavor but still remain healthy. So now you feel better about drinking it than drinking a soda. But you still get the Same flavor profile. Now tea is the same thing. Tea is like, if you look at all the tea on the shelves, they have an amount of sugar that is just insane.

[B]

It's astronomically.

[A]

It's crazy. It's like it should not be allowed

[C]

40 grams of sugar.

[A]

Exactly. So for us, that was a good next one. Now energy is also the next obvious one because of the brand. And like, what is crazy is that before we even were even in the energy category, a large portion of our audience thought we were in an energy.

[B]

They were. Oh, they assumed.

[A]

We assume we weren't in energy category.

[C]

I was one of those.

[A]

Exactly. So for us, it made so much sense to go into energy for that reason. But also energy was moving into a better for you energy, an easy to drink. Like, we're, we're not talking about the better for you easy to drink. Like, it's not like a 300 milligram of caffeine that you jump off the wall after you drink it. How can you drink it? That it picks you up. But it's healthy. Right. So that's how we went into energy. And obviously after that, from an economic standpoint, economical sample. Like, it's a huge category. Like, it's massive. It is growing fast.

[C]

So I'm going to jump now into what I call the anti marketing playbook.

[A]

Let's go.

[C]

You know, we talked about how most CMOs are playing it safe.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Right. It's basically risk aversion.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Another pet peeve here on the CPT guys is most CMOs of large brands, they do not understand social conversations. They do not understand social commerce.

[B]

Forget about them. Post. Forget of them even posting on.

[C]

They don't have accounts.

[B]

They don't even have accounts on their, on the, on their phones.

[A]

So that's not.

[C]

They're not going into TikTok, they're not going into Instagram.

[B]

They're not native at all.

[A]

No.

[C]

And even when we have conversations with them, they'll say, my daughter told me, blah, blah, blah. Is the trend.

[A]

That's not great.

[C]

Is that a problem?

[B]

That's a big problem.

[C]

So talk to us about that Sephora.

[B]

Is that malfeasance as a CMO, should

[C]

they even have that job as a CMO? If you don't have a TikTok in

[A]

today's economy, you cannot. Yeah, you should not. You should not.

[C]

That's our percent.

[A]

And you don't need to have your personal account. You can create an account and make it. Exactly.

[B]

You just have to see what's happening

[A]

in terms of trend. In terms of content, it's consuming about how you can share the content or comments are working. Our interactions are happening.

[B]

So.

[A]

So yes, but for us, we were born in social. Right. That the first thing that existed for Liquidus was this Facebook page that Mike Silo built. Right. To test the concept and he got a lot of momentum and videos were going viral. So for us, we are native social and that's how we were able to build virality. We probably have been the best at creating content that goes viral and gets attention.

[C]

So if I were to ask you, think of all the marketing quote unquote rules that have existed.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

What is one in 2026 that you think of and you throw up as a rule? Yeah. We think this whole notion of not being on social is a problem.

[A]

For me, the rule that has to freaking go fast is that you need to throw as many creative as you can on a meta platform to try to win.

[C]

So say more like. That's Instagram.

[A]

The Instagram. The idea that in order to win you need to create a thousand creatives a week to get people to click and consume. The idea that you can have a full funnel in one ad on social is.

[B]

And be the worst ever.

[C]

So flood the creative, flood content and.

[B]

And that creative it. You neither have the capacity nor the. Nor necessarily all the visibility to conceive of that on your own. You need. You need creators to help you in that process.

[A]

Exactly. Let the creators, let the humans create that. Let's. But that's where we need to back up a little bit. A lot of people think in social they can do awareness, consideration, conversions all in one.

[B]

It's just a straight.

[A]

And it's not that for me we have our organic that plays the upper funnel in the virality. But then I leverage the creators and our own static consistent assets at consideration. And then I leverage retargeting campaigns for conversions, picking up the signals from the retailer. So each. You can do a lot, but not on a single ad.

[B]

No silver bullet to get done from exposure and awareness all the way to

[A]

conversion and meta wants makes you to believe that. And that's not true, right? That's not true.

[B]

So they're. They're trying to sell brands. Anyone who's trying to sell you on full conversion through discovery in one click, they're selling you a bill of goods. It's not happening.

[A]

It's not happening. And this idea is like the funnel doesn't exist anymore. The funnel is compressed that it's the stupidest thing ever.

[C]

We get annoyed when someone Says the funnel is dead.

[A]

Exactly. This isn't just. This is just wrong. It may have changed. He may be shorter, it may be longer, it may be non linear new

[C]

little pieces to it. But it's still the fun.

[A]

But you still need to get to understand the brand. You still need to understand the benefits of the brand and you still need to try the brand.

[B]

So that tells me that measuring multi touch attribution is very important.

[A]

Very important. And I don't call that multi touch attribution because there's so much noise around that people's like that doesn't exist. I'm calling that path to purchase.

[B]

Okay, fair enough.

[A]

And I think path to purchase can be figured out through attribution, through touch points. But yes, you're right though. That's how you need to understand what it is. And they are not. There's not a single one. And there are some that are working really well, but not scalable.

[C]

Before I give him a favorite question of the day, which comes in from a LinkedIn banter, which would be on retail media, I do have a follow up on the social piece.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

That is. How important are creators in that social piece?

[A]

Very. For me they are the consideration point. They could be the awareness point. We don't play that game because we have our creative engine that does the awareness. For me they are the best because people understand, know the brand, they know our brand. But now they see someone in a very unique setup that they can relate to trying the product. At this point they are like, okay, I should probably try it out.

[C]

Are you using more local creators? Smaller scale? Are you using budget ones? Small, local, influential in a community.

[A]

Correct. Or. Or even good content creation because then I can use media engine to amplify what resonates. Exactly.

[B]

All right, So I want to dig into retail media because that's a big part of what we talk about here on the cpu. Apparently my favorite topic most. Most consumer. I would argue that most consumer brands, particularly in beverage, are more focused on the components of retail media that are mid to lower funnel, owned and operated search. Right. They're trying to drive those conversions. How do you think of retail media and what intrigues you about it from the full funnel aspects? Correct.

[A]

I'm a huge fan of retail media. Let's put it out there and here's why. First search. Of course, this is the conversion, the most lower point of the funnel. But there's so much more to retail media and here is why. It's going to take me a little bit. First, the audience, they have the best audience, first party retail data. They know that that shopper bought in that category that many times that.

[B]

So it's all the signals and the

[C]

measurements either bought yesterday, bough, buying today or buying tomorrow.

[A]

Exactly. So for me, you give me that signal now I can be efficient with my dollars. That is.

[C]

Would you advocate therefore for a larger portion of the media mix to be on retail media?

[A]

Yes. Okay.

[C]

You are the first person to come on the CPG guys and say that.

[A]

Well, and then I can explain out

[C]

of 580 episodes of what, Peter? 150 on retail media.

[A]

And here is why. Because also as you probably when you talk to retailer, the volume of digital sales happening at retail is growing very really fast. So the conversion happens on digital. On digital. Guess what? You don't have end cap. You don't have shelves.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You need to create your end caps. You need to create your shelves. How do you do that? Guess what? Retail media. Retail media is every day. Exactly. And you put your end cap with retail media. You put your end cap in front of the right shopper when he's ready to convert.

[C]

There's nothing when they come with intent.

[A]

Exactly. And you put an end cap in front of them.

[C]

So let's ask you a numerical question. I'm not asking you what liquid debt does, but what would you advise other companies in terms of the marketing mix? What percent beverage category should be on retail media? What percent of their marketing mix? 30, 40, 50 range, however you feel comfortable with.

[A]

I mean it would depends also the size of the brand. But I see on the, on the, on the emerging brands, I'm not talking about the Coke and Pepsi of the world because I don't know that space well. But on the fast growing, a good half, if not half half.

[B]

Almost a lot.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And to follow up on that, this

[C]

is music to like Ryan Maywards years right now.

[B]

It really is. 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/cpp. Guys, there are so many places you can invest against retail media. When we talk to brands in terms of their ability to manage that, they end up saying, I'm going to go where the scale is and I'm going to go where the measurement is. What else do you consider when you think about investing against retail media?

[A]

Well, yeah, the scale. But also we need to be clear, when we talk retail media, it's not just the dot com, it's the audience off site. That's retail.

[B]

So it's off site.

[C]

So that would include like ctv, MSNBC and Big.

[A]

Yeah, and all the offsets where you bring the retailer audience there. Right. You're targeting people that are shopping at Target on the big screen and now you follow that shopper. When they show up at Target, the same audience, you get in front of them with your digital end cap.

[B]

So then do you have a clean room strategy?

[A]

Yes, I do.

[B]

Big. Okay. How long have you been developing that? A year. That's good because we still talk to a lot of brands today that are.1%

[C]

of brands actually have a clean room.

[B]

They just. They're not there.

[C]

Oh yeah, for me, they don't understand clean room.

[B]

They have it, but they're like sree. They think it's where you keep your Windex and your.

[C]

Yeah, they keep the Windex and all the floor.

[B]

The floor polish.

[A]

I mean, for me it's critical because the broom. The broom too. But the movement of audience is critical. You cannot win if you cannot move your audience around from one place to another. So if you don't have a clean room, and a clean room could be a scary word. There are a lot of platforms out there that always use a beautiful word.

[C]

How can it be scary? Because you've bleached it.

[A]

Exactly. It's clean. But people are like, oh, it's tech. You know, it's tech. I'm worried. Right.

[C]

That's usually the CIO getting in the side. No offense, but it. People getting in the way.

[A]

And then putting my background. I have a tech background, so that helps me to jump into that very quickly. So that may be a little bit unfair, but that's why I love this because I think it's critical to success.

[C]

So back on RMNs though.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

We are in a messy world of 200 plus RMNs today.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

So you scale Amazon, maybe Instacart and Walmart. No one else really has scale. Maybe Kroger. Kroger may target.

[A]

Look at Jenny now.

[B]

Jenny hollering is a good friend.

[C]

Ms. Jenny Hollerand.

[A]

She's gonna change the call out on

[C]

the CPG guys yet again. 20th time.

[A]

I mean, for good reason. She did big things at Kroger. She's about to do and already did.

[B]

She has the best shoe collection in the industry.

[A]

Here we go.

[C]

Don't give me that plot.

[B]

Yeah, it's true.

[A]

That's.

[B]

She'll own that. She will totally own.

[A]

She will for sure.

[C]

But we actually met Jenny here. Of course. We know Jenny for a long time. Her first day on the job at Roundale. Roundell.

[B]

CES.

[A]

At CES. That's awesome. Yes. But to your question, that's why Roundell is going to get big. Because also Roundale has such a core audience, especially for us with the moms. The moms shop at Target.

[C]

Moms for kids.

[B]

That's why Liquid Death plays very well to the target audience. Because of who this core business solved

[A]

the very, very well.

[B]

So they go there for statement brands, but they also want healthy products for their families.

[C]

But Benoit, my question was still. You're still talking about scaling. So you own. All you did was you added Roundel to the other three. Amazon card and Walmart. What about like 80 USA media? Because Bobby's about to come next.

[B]

Wegmans, Meyer, all those others.

[C]

Yeah. Albertson's media collective.

[A]

I talked Albertson quite a bit and

[B]

I spent time there.

[A]

But it's.

[B]

But what would you need to be able to touch those? Is it about a consult? Is it about them creating an alliance and the consolidation the single point of entry? What is.

[A]

So it's basic features that are needed to execute measurement.

[B]

All right.

[A]

Measurement is one for sure.

[B]

But less about their scale and it's more about the capability.

[A]

Correct. For me, it's all capabilities.

[B]

Ah, okay. So it's about the products that can touch the full funnel.

[A]

Correct. Is the ability to create a funnel. That's. You touch it. Is the ability to create a funnel. Can you create a funnel or not?

[C]

I'm so surprised you haven't Asked him about measurement.

[B]

No. Well, let's talk about measurement. So too often there are RMNs that are going to present you with the black box. Don't worry. Here's what your incrementality number is. How much are you asking them? I need you to open up the hood so I can look at your engine.

[A]

I don't ask. I get the data. I'm getting the scan sales data.

[B]

Okay, so you're getting that, you're getting.

[A]

I'm getting the scan sales data.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I'm getting the media dollars.

[C]

Figuring out yourself.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And so I'm exactly, I'm doing my own now. If the retail media network tells me this is what I read, I was like, okay, take, give it to me. Now I'm going to also look at it myself. Is that matching? Great Trust A lot.

[C]

A lot here.

[A]

A lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

Yeah. I don't think, again, I don't think we need to look at the retailers as our partners. Yeah, they are not here because if they win, we win. If we win, they win. So I don't, I don't think there's anybody malicious there. So yes, of course, everybody wants to try to show that what they do

[C]

is on the cpg. Guys, we're big. The whole industry knows we're big fans of retail media. We've been the champions for like since we started the show. And I think knows that like many retail media networks will acknowledge we were part of that journey of growth from day one. Like Walmart Connect. We've been, we've been advocates for why this must happen. Because of the lower funnel piece.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And also because of the declining value that linear television presents outside of the Super Bowl. Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The rest of the year, the question becomes, I can't measure it. People are cutting the cord. I mean, the fact that Walmart's in store, or pardon me, it's in store, but people are still shopping in store. Right. You just need to reach them. And retail media networks allow you to do what print media and linear television no longer lets you do.

[A]

And the people that says I cannot measure. Again, you don't do social. Or you say that cannot measure. You should not have the job. Like you. You can measure is you. If you.

[C]

That's 95 of CMOs today.

[A]

But it's ridiculous. In order to measure, you need to have the sales data which is available. You may have to pay for it, but it's available. You need to have your media dollars at a very granular level which is available.

[C]

And if you know Yourself, your media,

[A]

it needs to be in a data lake, which is not rocket science to build. And then you need to have a model which most of the incrementality model are all open source. Right. So you can start simple and have very strong signal on what works or what doesn't work.

[C]

Who builds your model for you? Incrementality model, you're building it yourself.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So the one follow up I have for you, which is does marketing mix modeling play a role in the work you do and if it does, MMMs historically undervalue retail media. How do you address all that?

[A]

So I address that by first, I'm not doing full mmm. I do what I call agile. Mmm.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Meanings I run it fast every month.

[B]

So you're doing in. So you updates, you're not waiting six months.

[A]

No, every month. So that's why I call them agile. And I know that agile means not perfect. I don't need perfect.

[C]

You don't need. You need a hard square of 0.85.

[A]

Correct. Because even if it was a signal

[C]

for me, it's not a Wall street report.

[A]

Exactly. It's a signal for me. Is it going in the right direction or not? And when you do it that way, guess what? Retail media is needed. But retail media is needed with a full path to purchase. So if you look just at retail media on its own, it's not necessarily great, but if you look at CTV on its own, it's terrible. Now you put them to beginner. It's fucking amazing.

[C]

Yes, we couldn't agree more.

[B]

That is absolutely true. So before we got started, we made mention of the fact that you've done some. You did a absolutely outstanding partnership with Elf Beauty.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

How do you think about partnering the brand that you've created with another brand that they, they complement each other and they accelerate each other.

[A]

Yeah. So it goes back to the first thing that we said. He has to be unexpected.

[B]

Yeah, I didn't expect that.

[A]

Exactly. Nobody would have expected liquid death with Elf.

[B]

No.

[A]

And it happened and just that created a lot of noise and a lot of momentum. Why do we think also about health? First we have to get along well with the brand, which the health marketing brand marketing team is awesome.

[B]

They are tremendous.

[A]

But after that also is that how much overlap and non overlap there is in terms of audience?

[B]

Okay, so that's what we have from

[C]

Elf Beauty last year.

[B]

Well, we had, we had a couple people.

[C]

Was it the cmo?

[B]

No, it was Chief Growth Officer. I'll have to correct that on the rebound. But yes, we met with their chief growth officer at can. We also had previously had Ektachopra, their digital chief digital officer on our podcast. But that is a very interesting brand and I agree with you, it was not expected. But when you say we need to see about the audiences and can we grow it, that's where data becomes very important.

[A]

Very important.

[B]

Understanding who their consumers are, who yours are, do they should they naturally appreciate each other's brands and will that expand the brand?

[A]

And it does, right. When you think about with buying health, it's actually the mom for the kids a lot, right? There's a lot of and they have

[C]

their own viral and they are super viral.

[A]

And also the thing is a lot of people want to have what we call the liquid death treatment, meaning they want to partner with liquid death because they want to have a viral. But not everybody is ready for it though because we are definitely pushing liquid debt regimen.

[C]

Like having beauty, morning, morning beverage, afternoon beverage, light beverage maybe, maybe to calm down.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

Lori Lamb. Lori Lamb.

[C]

Lori Lamb.

[B]

That's the one that we met with.

[C]

So I got a trick question coming up for you. So the way retail media started, it was started by customer sales teams, Walmart team, Kroger team, yada yada yada, Amazon team, et cetera. We've said for a long time retail media is media. It needs to be taken into consideration of the full marketing mix. It needs to sit under the CMO's budget. Where does it sit in liquid death? What is your advocacy for the industry?

[A]

It has to be sitting under the CMO for sure.

[C]

And so that means all the execution should also be under the CMO as a media vehicle.

[A]

100% this is a media buy. This is not sitting on the sell side. It's just sitting on the media side.

[C]

If you across the table though, that's not what the RMNs are used to. They used to a customer team and a shopper marketing team. So do you have a shopper marketing team or are you just operating as

[A]

we do have a shopper marketing team that works into the self team in the customer team, but they are mostly taking care of in store.

[C]

So all displays, all the backgrounds.

[A]

Correct.

[C]

All of that stuff.

[A]

Correct. Not touching retail media at all.

[C]

Does that mean your performance optimization since it's within the media team, it is near real time.

[A]

It is, it is. And we created that one.

[C]

Talk to us about real time retail media. Are you able to course correct midway through if you want to all the time.

[A]

That's why I'm Pushing also all the retail media networks to push self service because I want to be able to do it yourself. We are trying to do everything ourselves in terms of optimization. We look at it as performance. We have dashboards that are refreshing on a daily basis.

[B]

How do you build that skill set within your marketing team?

[A]

It's. It's performance media buyers.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

That's what it is. That's my DNA.

[C]

So you're treating retail media like we treat a meta performance media?

[A]

Yes and no. For the Google, for, for the bottom of the funnel. Yes. But when I start thinking audience and upper funnel, I treat them as an audience player.

[C]

You get a better quality audience actually because of it.

[A]

Much better audience. And so now you need to look at the search is very much performance. The display is very much engagement because you need to be people to click on display to get to the pdp. And then from an upper funnel is how do I take that audience? That is just so good. Put it off site. So from the off site I can get awareness against the right audience and bring it on site?

[C]

Absolutely. 100%.

[A]

We're all in alignment. CPG.

[C]

You're talking CPG. Guys, language.

[B]

So let's talk about breaking down the silos of traditional CPG brands. How do you interact most with your counterparts on the customer side, the sales organization and then retail media is very dependent upon. If the retailer doesn't have the product in stock and you've just invested in retail media, that's a wasted dollar. How do you deal with your supply chain logistics, your sales organization, to make sure your investments are done in harmony and ultimately leads to the outcome you want, which is a sale of your product.

[A]

Communication and data. Okay, so first communication is talking to the sales team, to the key, you know, leaders on the, on the customer side, on what are the priorities? I cannot support every single thing at every single retailer. So what is going to move?

[C]

But I'm sure you're asked to.

[A]

Of course. But now for us it's, you know,

[C]

including the $5,000 check for the heart association foundation.

[A]

That one included a golf tournament. Correct.

[C]

My favorite bet.

[B]

Not the rubber chicken dinner.

[C]

Rubber chicken dinner. You know what the rubber chicken dinner is? You should explain it to yourself.

[B]

So a retailer would invite you. They're saying, we're having a charity event. We expect you to buy a table of 10 people and the waiter, thousand dollars and he puts down the piece of chicken that basically when you cut into it tastes like rubber. That's the rubber chicken.

[A]

That's. That's it. Okay, so that one too.

[C]

No, no offense to. Because I've worked with merchants all my life because I come from the sales side of some of the largest brands.

[B]

Right.

[C]

But I got to admit, we wrote a lot of checks for a lot

[B]

of checks and that was a cost. That was a cost to doing business.

[C]

That's what we convinced ourselves.

[A]

No, right. That was. Okay, that makes sense.

[B]

But have you noticed in the era of retail media that the dynamic of the relationship between the brand and the retailer is moving away from the retailer holding all the cards because they held distribution and they wrote the checks to now their publishers trying to sell to you and they're trying to fill out their marketplace. Do you feel like you're moving away from what we call joint business planning to actually value creation for both the brand and the retail? Where are we?

[A]

I never played. The JBPs for me have always been a way to, if we hit that numbers, we get added value, but it never been critical to what we do. What we do is that is creating value. And for like the last three years, at least with the retailers, it is moving into what can we build together? What can we do that works? And I'm pushing them to build things that I need and they are receptive, they are listening because it makes sense and they see that if it works for me, it will probably work for others. So the discussion that I have with all the names that you mentioned before are about how can we build that funnel? There's this breaking point in that funnel. How can we create the bridge? What is needed in terms of tech? Well, we have those discussion now. I'm talking to the product team at all the retailers, I'm talking to all of them says what the. Because the sales guy is like, oh, he's asking for something. Can you talk? And they are bringing those folks and those shows are perfect for that. All those folks are coming in. We're talking about what is missing and it happens. That's the thing that is. And I think because CMOs or folks aren't again, are not thinking that way. They are not product people. They are not builders. I'm a startup guy. I built my entire life. I go to the retailer. This is what I need. And by the way, this is how it can be built. You talk to the product guys like, oh yeah, I'll put that on the roadmap.

[B]

They're looking for that kind of inspiration. They do, aren't they?

[A]

They do. And they put it on the roadmap and they get it done.

[B]

The message I, I, I'M hearing from Benoit is if you're a brand, there are different constituencies within the retailer. There's obviously the merchant. Right. There's the retail media network. But from a. From a product development standpoint, they are looking for inspiration. It is beholden on you as a partner to bring inspiration to them on what they should be doing from a product standpoint.

[A]

Exactly. And I think a lot of people, maybe a lot of brands, like, oh, they will never listen to us, or they don't even think that it could bring things up. I do.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they listen and they build.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I think if you.

[B]

If you think about a relationship with the retailer as purely transactional, I'm selling them this product. Here's my price. Instead of, you're looking for this, but I'm looking for this. Now let's figure out how we all get all the things we want and get a better outcome across the board.

[A]

Because at the end, it creates velocities, velocity. And when velocity is here, they are happy. We are happy. Everything is great.

[C]

Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

[B]

Yeah, sure does.

[C]

Great. Unicorns. One more. You got to buy a unicorn as well and take it back.

[B]

I'll work on the unicorns.

[C]

So, ctv. I want to go back to C. I love that.

[A]

My favorite topic.

[C]

So you're allowed part of a loud brand, Liquid Death. We also sense impulse, rebellion, all of it in liquid death. Hence the love for the can, as you mentioned, the brand and the actual. The imprint on the can itself. Ctv. Walmart just acquired Vizio clearplay on ctv. So how are you thinking about a visually loud brand like Liquid Death in winning that journey from the living room sofa all the way to the kitchen fridge?

[A]

It's. I love it. And here is why I love the big screen. Because the big screen for two reasons. For us, it's so good because of the brand we are. First, there's a lot less noise on the big screen. When you're on a feed on Social. It's 2, 300 pieces of content that you scroll through and it's 2 seconds when you're on the big screen.

[B]

They're not scrolling the big screen.

[A]

Yeah, I'm not scrolling the big screen. They may skip, but at most you have four in a pod. On ctv, you may have one in a pod. You may just be alone. But also. So that's the first part. What I like it is you have the attention and you have. Don't have 300 people around that are trying to talk to that same person. The second thing is most of the TV ads are boring.

[B]

Yes, you can. You have.

[A]

So when we talked about.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

When we pop in the middle of this. Oh my gosh. We get attention. So this is great for us. Like it is less noise, more attention. Because also people around us are just boring.

[B]

Brilliant.

[A]

So this is. And while third point. I can layer data on top of CTV so I can bring the retailer data on the CTV journey.

[C]

So you can hyper target.

[A]

Exactly.

[C]

By household.

[A]

Correct.

[B]

And that's fundamentally different than doing linear television advertising where it's just a one way communication method.

[A]

That's why the only linear that I do is the Super Bowl. Because the super bowl hits the entire.

[B]

It's a cultural moment.

[C]

You don't want to do the 9pm news.

[A]

I may. If the right person is there. Right. I may.

[B]

What are you saying about the super bowl is. It is a single point where all of us largely have a common point of reference. That's why you're there.

[A]

And also the super bowl is the only show on TV that you're watching the ads. You go to watch the super bowl because you want to watch the ads.

[B]

We devote an entire episode here.

[A]

I know.

[B]

To review.

[C]

We evaluated all 54 ads.

[A]

I know. I listened to the episode. I listened to one. Last year you didn't like us as much this year. I know. That's all good. But the thing is this is the one where people are in front of the tv. I'm waiting for the ad break.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

There's no other thing like that on tv. So that's why we buy in the Super Bowl.

[B]

But also amazing. They'll go to the bathroom during the game.

[A]

Exactly. They come back to watch the TV to the ads.

[B]

Exactly.

[C]

How do you like the halftime show?

[A]

Okay. The. The real take on that. I. Coming into it, I was like, I don't think I like that guy. But I didn't know him. But for me it was very much like more like a female artist. I didn't listen to this music and I got into the show and I was surprised how good it was.

[C]

Bad Bunny was theater. The whole show was.

[B]

It was great. It was such. It was pageantry in Miami.

[C]

People didn't leave their sofa.

[B]

No. They watched.

[A]

And I think it was good. But I thought that get me to discover the guy and realize that actually I like his music now.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That get me teased by his. By my kids who are like, where you've been? Bad Bunny.

[C]

How old are the kids?

[A]

18 and 16.

[C]

Yeah, 18 and 16. They are gonna write two boys.

[A]

They are not gonna Tell me that it's right to listen to Bad Bunny. Yeah, yeah.

[C]

I listen to Bad Bunny all the time. So I want to dtc.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

Why do you not have ddc?

[A]

Try to ship beverage and make money.

[B]

It's all free. It's the free. We knew. That's why it was.

[C]

I knew that'll be the answer you give me that. It's.

[B]

It's just not economic, not fun. But that being said, are there thinking about TikTok shop, are there reasons you would want to use that channel? No, let's not.

[A]

I'll tell you. So I'm, I'm going to give you a big answer. I, I love social Commerce.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

But TikTok is not equipped to ship beverage. So I will lose.

[B]

You'd have to ship it yourself in exactly in quantity. So the question would you think about it, say for launching a very. Try and create some buzz to launch a very unique flavor in a single serve can.

[A]

No, no. Because here is. I'm going to tell you why TikTok is an amazing platform.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because actually when you start measuring incrementality. He has a ton of incrementality on any retail dot com. Right.

[B]

So you want to measure the performance it delivers.

[A]

So I measure and it works really well. And I invest a lot on TikTok.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

Content creation and media. Now what I do is all those TikTok creators don't. Thank you TikTok shop because again I will lose money. But I send those folks to all the retailers. I point straight into Target.com, straight into Amazon.com straight into Walmart.com.

[B]

brilliant.

[C]

So paparazzi make content. Now that I have 165,000.

[A]

Please do.

[C]

Finally.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Nothing like the 8 million my kids have.

[A]

But, but, but actually maybe better tell your daughter actually you're more influenced because your content may be better. And I will put me.

[C]

Okay, Laura, you heard it. The same influential.

[A]

That's right.

[C]

This part I will cut the cl. Show it to my kids.

[A]

Great.

[C]

All right. So, so I'm. You know what, Peter, I'm going to toss the next one over to you.

[B]

Well, we talked a little bit about, about obviously about AI. But your, your creative is very nuanced. Right. Is that how much of that is and where do you use AI to build out that nuanced creative? Is it, is it. The concept comes from human and AI helps scale it for the right, the right marketplace. Like where does it play a role?

[A]

It doesn't play a role pretty much at all on the creative side.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

We made Fun of it in a creative that we never posted anywhere but only played during the Olympics. So if you have a chance, you can look it up. It's always somewhere. We make fun of AI and made people think that we created an AI with AI and it was really weird and really good.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So you should look it up. But that's the only place where we actually made fun and used AI for an ad on TV.

[C]

And it was 70. I had Super bowl, by the way. Seven.

[A]

Seven. Okay, nice. But I use AI on the media buying side.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

A lot.

[B]

Of course. Because that's optimization. Yeah.

[A]

Reporting optimization.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

It's not the sexy stuff, but it's the. It's the important stuff to get you to the measurement of the outcomes.

[C]

What about the building your mix?

[A]

That's it.

[C]

So it's all the. It's the analytical components.

[A]

You talk about the clean room. I also build a full on data lake with, you know, gcp. Put all my data in there. And now I can plug a lot of instances like I play with cloud. Plug clothes on top, build cloud apps on top and start analyzing. Start strategic planning on top. All of it.

[C]

I know he's been waiting to ask you about human capital. So go for it.

[B]

No, I mean that's. That that's really the big thing and we kind of touched on it earlier is like how do you. How do you inspire and cultivate the human capital to then be able to do the creative stuff that you need?

[C]

Brand managers.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's all humans in the brand management team. For us we have actually comedians say more. Yeah. So the way Mike says Irene talks a lot. Yes. Probably a lot of places where you can listen to him talking about it. Mike Serbin or our founder and CEO. Yeah. And in order to be in our lane about committee, we need to have a marketer. Is not funny. Let's just be clear. Right. So we actually have.

[C]

You guys are funny.

[A]

That's true.

[C]

Could we. Could we.

[B]

We're funny.

[A]

Come in.

[B]

We're funny. Look.

[A]

Come in.

[B]

Fun.

[C]

We have podcast faces.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

We have faces.

[C]

We do.

[B]

That's why.

[A]

No, we're funny. See, I'm laughing, guys. You're funny.

[B]

But.

[A]

But back to that is while running the. The creative. We have a team that is called Death Machine, which is the creative machine.

[B]

I love that the name.

[A]

That's Death Machine. It's all internal. We don't have agency for creative. So Def Machine is our internal agency.

[B]

Do you use an agency for anything?

[A]

Some like Death Machine is the agency Correct. No, I don't.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Yeah, I do. I think.

[B]

I think about the classic model of the global advertising holding company. I'm part of one.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that has. That doesn't fit into your overall strategy.

[A]

No.

[B]

Wow. That is phenomenal.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And truly counterculture.

[A]

Trying. But I think that's how we get efficiency and agility and. And move fast. And we're not afraid of a clean room.

[C]

Okay. Not afraid of that.

[A]

No. Not as we think it's good. So. So. Yeah. But the. You back to that. We are the creative is run as SNL skit. It's a room with.

[C]

Do you practice that now?

[A]

Every Thursday morning we have it.

[C]

So every Thursday morning you have this mock schedule crap.

[A]

And if the skip works, it's ideas being thrown out there. It's. And it's all.

[C]

Don't give away the plot, man. People are listening to the show and we have a big old industry listening.

[A]

It's been talked, like, a lot, actually. Mike has been talking a lot about this, but it's not easy to replicate. And also, you need to have 100 markets. Yeah. That's the right people.

[B]

But it gets everybody engaged. I have to imagine that has to be something that is very high energy.

[A]

Very high energy. And a lot of ideas that don't seem. That don't see, like, the real world for two years. Like our super bowl ad last year, the drink on the job was an idea, I think that came out out of this Thursday morning session two years before.

[C]

And so when you're trying to hire somebody to be in brand management, what. What qualities are you looking for?

[B]

What.

[C]

What are you looking for other than a podcast face? What are you looking for?

[A]

Comic. Funny. Like comedian. True comedian.

[C]

Because being funny, how do you know somebody's funny?

[B]

That's the core of what you're doing.

[A]

That's. That's. That's difficult. And there are very few of them. And this is. They're true comedians.

[C]

They're walking in the young. You know, maybe it's their first job, second job, third job, maybe seven years in, five years in. Because no one stays beyond two, three years these days.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

They're sitting in front of the CMO of Liquid Debt. They're pretty intimidated when they come in front of you. So how do they get their comic relief out?

[A]

I mean, that will go in front of the death machine now. I wouldn't even talk to that.

[C]

Oh, so it'll go to the death

[A]

machine to talk to.

[C]

And they know what to do, Correct? That's what I assume.

[A]

Yeah. That's correct. That's how they take you off. Yeah. And that team is not recruiting ever. I think, like, we have this core team forever.

[B]

First time I've heard.

[C]

So I'm going to close it out for this episode. Yeah, carefully. Say this episode.

[B]

Oh, he's coming back.

[C]

You're coming back. We have a full episode on retail media.

[A]

Let's do that.

[B]

So.

[C]

So let's talk what happens a few years out. 2030 legacy.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

And it's not too far. We're talking four years. 2030 is nothing. It's next for us.

[A]

It's a long time. But yeah.

[C]

If you are advising a brand, this brand management team today, who wants to be CMO by 20, 35 years from now.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Should they spend more time in a data lab knowing their numbers inside out, including media mix, everything we've discussed so far, or in the comedy club that you just said the death machine.

[A]

In the data.

[C]

In the data.

[A]

100% in the data. Because that's how you're going to drive performance and success.

[C]

So that. So. So the success of a brand largely lives within the team.

[A]

No, you need to have the brand, but the brand for me is a completely different set of people.

[B]

And it's a death machine.

[A]

It's a death machine.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And that you need to create a brand. It's very difficult to create a brand.

[C]

So. So do you let the debt machine independently come up with the ideation outside of the data?

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[C]

And then you feed the data.

[A]

My, my, my. For upper funnel. I don't even give data. Nothing. They just.

[C]

You let them create it.

[A]

Create. There's no input from data. There's strategy.

[C]

So the only way you use that data with that creative is to.

[A]

Is for middle, lower funnel.

[C]

After that, middle and lower funnel.

[B]

Ah, brilliant.

[C]

We don't have time to get into the depth of that today.

[B]

We're going to talk more about this. We'll talk more about this at the residence in Cannes this summer.

[A]

Let's do that.

[B]

We're going to do that.

[A]

On my way. I'll be there.

[C]

So why don't we have you on a panelist speaking in front of an audience about this very topic?

[B]

I'd love to do that.

[A]

And let's take questions.

[C]

Because the CPG guys has. Yeah, let's take questions.

[B]

That also tells history. We're going to have to have liquid death and copious stock at the residence.

[A]

We should.

[C]

That's a given at this point.

[A]

That's a given.

[C]

Are you already in distribution at France?

[A]

No, we're not.

[C]

How do we make that happen?

[B]

We're going to have to bring big suitcases or even ship.

[C]

Here's what we're going to do, Ben. Well, we're going to have you. This is what I'm envisioning. And tell me how this works. Peter, we should have you at a breakfast session and we should have you at a happier session. Please, two different conversations. We'll talk about detail media in breakfast session. And let's get brand marketing in brand building. A happy hour session.

[A]

I'm all for it. I'm passionate about this. It's my job. But it's my passion so I can talk about it morning.

[C]

Have a residence account this time.

[A]

That's right.

[C]

Content programming. These are important topics that need to be up in the industry. So let me wrap this up by reminding our listeners you can find all of our content by simply going to a web browser. Type cpguys.com on the URL.

[B]

That easy.

[C]

If you know someone who has something to contribute on this ongoing discussion on the CPG guys, send us an [e-mail] or like Ben Wadded, talk to us on LinkedIn. What a good strategy.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

To our audience, thank you for the clicks, likes, comments, DMs, meeting us at trade shows, coming to our events, recording episodes with us, and to our sponsors, always grateful for you. The show doesn't exist without all of you. You work with us all year. Peter and I, from the bottom of our heart, are grateful for you that you've help build such an ecosystem. Thank you, thank you. Thank you, Peter. Always fun doing this with you, especially from Las Vegas. Already a third visit. Second. My third visit for the year already and five more to go for the balance of this year. Oh, my God, give me that big takeaway today.

[B]

Yeah, I want to find out how I get tickets to the Thursday comedy session. I want to see how this brand is built. Like, oh, he's from the ground up.

[C]

Invite the CPG guys.

[B]

You're a little bit closer to where it's happening than I am on the east coast. But to me it's no, it's la.

[C]

It'll still take me two hours to get.

[B]

Actually, you know, it might take maybe

[A]

if I set your flight to lax.

[B]

For me, that as much as it's about building brands, that creates a statement. The data is what's going to drive your decisions and how you invest the actual where you put your money on the roulette table and get the outcomes that you're looking for. Data is critically important and understanding clean rooms, tracking social media, understanding how while TikTok Shop may not be the right platform for commerce, TikTok itself and the creators will drive commerce in places where their product is selling. That just that connectivity of the data, following the data, so critically important.

[C]

Mine is going to be a very unpopular opinion for the industry. But he agrees with us. That's why I'm going to put it out there.

[B]

Go ahead.

[C]

It's the triple confirmation that retail media belongs in media.

[B]

Yeah, I agree with you on that one.

[C]

No debate. Like we need to push for that even faster, heavier, better, more so that it's integrated into the market.

[B]

There are a lot of brands out there that are still leaving it to their customer teams. That's got to stop.

[A]

Got us.

[C]

So, Benoit, thank you for joining us in Las Vegas here on the CPG Guys. You're always welcome back anytime. We're going to get you a can. We're going to find a way.

[B]

I will be there. We need to get liquid death cans at Cannes.

[A]

Here you go.

[C]

Do that on its way. How to do that.

[A]

Thanks for having me, guys.

[C]

Thank you for joining us.

[A]

Thank you. Appreciate it.

[C]

That's a wrap of this episode of the CPG Guys.

[B]

The content in this podcast episode is provided for general informational purposes only. By listening to our episode, you understand that no information contained in this episode should be construed as advice from CPG Guys LLC where the individual author, hosts or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for research on any subject matter. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by CPGuys LLC. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. The views expressed by CPTGuys LLC do not represent the views of their employers or the entity they represent. CPT Guys LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual's use of, reference to, or inability to use this podcast or the information we present in this podcast.