The role of marketer has changed so much
as consumer behavior has changed
and the way that consumers consume media has changed,
so how, what are the biggest changes that you've seen?
Wow yeah, there's so many great changes
that are happening and so much disruption
and I think some of the bigger ones that we've seen,
you know, General Mills being in the food industry
and being in the food industry for a long time, 150 years.
I think the amount of change
that's happened within food trends the last decade
have been pretty monumental.
So natural organic has obviously started as a niche trend
and now that's a mainstream thing,
that's a huge part of our business now
and a decade ago it was a very small part.
I think on the other end of the spectrum
you have value brands that, you know,
private label was kind of a nonentity
in terms of what it stands for,
now private-label brands are becoming large.
So those are two things that are really, I think,
changing the dynamic
of how we think about our brands and shoppers
and then technology of course is a huge shift.
And so just how people are getting their food.
You know through things like Amazon and Walmart
and the push that people are wanting their food
like not a week ahead,
but like right when I want it immediately
and so we're having to think about
how to set up to take advantage of that new behavior.
And how,
it seems so much more integrated than it used to be,
how did those initiatives come?
Do they come from marketing?
Do they come from conversations with the consumer
and then get prioritized in other parts of the company,
has that relationship changed?
Yeah, you know, so with our company
and being in the CPG space for a long time
it's always really been marketing driven,
and the consumer is at the heart of that,
so we try to stay as far ahead as we can
with consumers and understand those trends
and bring them back in and then really relying on marketing
to figure out like where are the markets going to be
and how they're going to exist.
And so marketing kind of plays the hub
and then the other functions really cue off that
to be able to support it.
So what kind of products we need to be making with R&D,
how we need to set up our relationships
with customers and sales,
and then my group which leads all like the brand experience,
how do we set up soap,
every interaction the consumer has with us
is additive and solving a problem.
So it really is kind of pushing us into,
like where are gonna go next?
Marketers have to lead that because they're really,
in our company at least, and I think many others,
like seeing where the future is
and also having to make it happen
like in the current, present day to drive results.
And how do you look forward
and what are you looking to do,
you are the head of marketing for a very
established older company.
How do you keep it young and fresh
for the next generation?
Well, I think it's things like coming to Cannes
and being able to get inspired by other people
and things that other companies are doing.
You know it's easy for us to look in our own industry
and say, okay, great other competitors
are doing these things,
or customers are doing those things,
but I like to look at other industries
so technology is really great.
So we spend time in the Bay Area quite a bit
to understand what are new start-ups in technology,
what are new start-ups in food,
why are they existing, what's happening there?
Coming to places like this which is all about creativity,
or going to CES that's about technology.
And so I think getting out to different places
and bringing leadership out to experience it
is really important.
And so you know on this trip we brought
a couple pretty senior leaders
so they can experience it too,
because when they see the changes that are happening,
getting them back into building,
it allows us to just like use their momentum
to create that kind of change.
And then the other thing I would say,
the last thing I would say,
is we're also trying to really cross pollinate
different levels of people within our own company.
So if you've been around a company for 20 years
you're gonna have one perspective,
but then having people that are just out of college
coming in and talking about how they use media,
how they're connected with their networks,
what things they're passionate about,
it just creates a lot of different ideas
about where you should be doing marketing.
And for somebody
that's interesting in marketing
I presume that this skills that you're looking for
in people that you're hiring today,
is different than the skills that you were looking for
when you first started?
Totally.
And so what is the best advice
you could give somebody who's looking
to get into marketing?
So I had a marketing mentor that told me this quote,
and I think it's always stuck with me
it's like marketing is about creating markets.
And so, I think that's exactly true
and a lot of times it can be seen as,
oh, I'm just creating advertising,
but marketing is much broader then that.
So there's so many places
that you can show up as a marketer.
I think that there's two things to really focus on.
I think one side you wanna understand
what drives a business
and that's kind of the fundamentals of –
understand how P&L works,
understand how forecasting works,
those are basic things.
But then, I also think you need to think about creativity
and imagining what things, products and brands, can solve.
And really think about the bigger picture
kind of put together with the smaller
kind of more every day tactical executional ones
I think makes the best marketers.
We call them "and" people, at General Mills,
that can do the big and the small,
can think right brain and left brain,
and those people I think
are really adept at any situation in presenting
a clear picture of the future,
but also making it really attainable
for their current employees.
And from a tangible perspective
what is the goal that you're working on
right now at General Mills?
Yeah, it was funny,
I was going to answer that differently,
because you said tangible,
and this feels a little broader.
So I think one of the big things that we're working on now
is a five-year facing plan of how we're gonna grow
our North American business
which is about 70% of our current,
kind of mix, 70% of current sales at General Mills.
For me that is really focus on the trajectory
of where the food industry,
where our businesses and brands are gonna go,
and really thinking about our brands
and all the great things they do.
You know we have Cheerios, Yoplait, and Nature Valley,
individually they're awesome,
but we haven't necessarily thought about
how to create portfolio solutions at a level
that can really make people lives better
and solve bigger problems
using the whole portfolio in new ways.
And so I'm really focused on that
because that's gonna probably require
different organization structures,
different incentives, different culture,
and our brands are always gonna be
like the most important asset,
but I think how we serve them up,
based off technology and consumer changes,
it's gonna look different
and so I'm really, really focused on that.
That's so interesting
because I was just gonna ask, does it matter if Cheerios,
the branding for that is in line
with the other brands messaging?
And how do you do what you just said,
how do you make it serve the consumer
to be loyal to all of your brands?
Yeah, and it's hard because –
Two totally different questions.
No that's really good,
no it's awesome.
I think it's actually a really great question
because we, as a company at General Mills,
haven't really, we don't market General Mills as a company
it's kind of more of a broad umbrella
across many different food brands.
And if you think about a couple brands,
just for example, like in our portfolio
you have like Pillsbury on one side,
which has been around forever,
is about kind of Americana, about coming home
and has these great products
that are in the refrigerated dough section
which is seen as kind of like old fashioned a little bit
and that's a brand that's really based on
like traditional American values,
it was really strong in the Midwest and the South.
And then we have other branks like Annie's
which is an amazing newer brand
that's born out of Berkeley, California,
and has, you know, different kind of views on the world.
And so as a marketer you might have to work
on both those brands and they're in different life stages,
they have different points of view,
they're purposes are way different
and so it's really important I think, first and foremost,
is to know that brand and where's it's coming from
and know the consumer.
And we have to be adept at doing different things.
I mean working for one brand, and one company,
sometimes I'm like, oh,
I wish I could just work for one brand,
it's so much easier.
But then you just get a lot more creativity and excitement
by moving people around at different challenges
and so I like it a lot.
It keeps I think a lot more agile
in terms of being able to respond
to different opportunities as they present themselves.
And you have to take risks
in marketing it seems to really make waves sometimes.
Is there a risk that you've taken
that totally paid off?
Yeah, well this one quote that I love
that we say in our company,
is like if you've got an idea
that you think you might get fired for
it's probably like a really good one.
And one that comes to mind a couple years ago
that was pretty against what I think
we'd be comfortable doing at General Mills is,
and this is before where we are today,
but Denver had just,
Colorado had just legalized marijuana
and we thought, you know what,
our Totino's Pizza Roll business
is super compatible with that particular product
and so we didn't obviously wanna like
encourage people to take part in marijuana,
but it was such a newsworthy thing in Denver
that we did a really smart, specific marketing plan,
that was very strategically targeted
towards people of the appropriate age and disposition,
and it was outdoor, and it was social, and experiential,
a very different kind of plan that we'd made.
And we had this idea that was about, live free couch hard,
which is what Totino's is about,
and the specific idea was
called, better when baked.
And it was about baking the pizza rolls
so that they're better in the oven
than the microwave
and we launched that.
And that was a big risk for our leaders to take
to do something like that at the time
but they leaned into it
because we kind of had done
the work ahead of time
and the market results were
that we grew that market in Denver about 20%
on a shoestring marketing budget.
And so it's things like that
when you know they're right for the consumer,
and they're right for the brand,
that they're worth the risk
because they can kind of payoff with business results
and it's propelled that brand
to be kind of a cool lifestyle brand
that it was not before.
And is there a risk you can think of
that didn't pay off quite as much
that you learned something from?
Yeah, you know, I would say,
similarly on that business,
one of the brands that we have is also Totino's Pizza
and it's been around forever.
It's like literally a value pizza for a dollar
which is a huge great value.
We changed the packaging of that
to not actually come in a box,
but actually come in more of a sleeve.
And we did all of this consumer testing,
we thought we got it totally right,
and when we launched it
the sales like fell pretty precipitously
for the first couple months.
And there was some very obvious like things
that we hadn't done
that as a human empathy type of thing
we should've done
because we were doing more kind of standard research
and it taught me the research and the data is important,
but also the consumer gut.
We're selling consumer food products
like trust your gut.
And so that for me was like a step back.
Like that was not a great plan,
but we quickly then adjusted and figured out
what did we miss and relaunched it that way
and the business has gotten back actually to growth,
but it was a good lesson in humility and like,
really like we're here for the consumer first
if we're going to change something they value
like we better have a good reason for it.
There's been a big shift to privacy
in the tech space and I don't know how much
this affects your business, but I am interested,
how do you think that that will affect
the advertising as we move forward?
I think it's huge.
I mean we work with all the major platforms
and so we have a really high standard
for our brands and our consumers
and making sure that they're always,
our advertising shows up in safe environments,
that our consumers information is treated really fairly
and in the right kinds of ways.
And so I think our kind of expectation of those partners
is they make sure that they're doing
what they need to solve problems
to make sure that their consumer data
is handled the right way for their platforms.
And so we've really expressed that.
We meet with them a lot
because we are a big spender with them
and I think we're gonna be, obviously,
staying close to that to make sure
that their expectations keep up with ours.
And so I think it's important for us to know too.
You know we rely on working through customers
to like learn about our consumers
and so it's not necessarily as front and center for us,
but because of our partners it's an issue
that we have to like stay on top of.
And I'm asking everybody this.
Is there a campaign that somebody else created
that when you saw it, it was so brilliant
that you felt like, man, I wish I had created that campaign?
It doesn't have to be this year.
Wow, there's lots of stuff that I love.
I mean this year's one that I'll say first,
and then I'll give you a followup answer.
Is I think every marketer here
will probably say the same thing around Nike,
and I'm a huge fan of Nike.
And so the way that they did the Kaepernick,
kind of as a spokesperson and really taking chances.
Like just represented
like I think a pretty crucial moment in marketing
for brands taking a stand.
Because I think all brands want to take a stand,
but when push comes to shove
it's easy to kind of fall back into the middle.
And so, I admire the courage for that
and I'm glad that the brand
and the business results have really paid off.
I would say from a broader perspective
a brand that I have like a marketer crush on
and have for a long time, is Red Bull.
I love Red Bull's marketing
because it's not about campaigns specifically,
but it's about how they take a brand,
and passion points,
and create new things around it
in a way that's about like giving you the courage
to do whatever you want.
And starting as like a energy drink
and moving into basically being like
a media creative entertainment entity
is like a total reframe of the market.
And I think brands have the ability
to play in a small box, or a big one,
and they've said,
we're gonna play in the biggest box possible.
And so as a marketer like that's super cool
to see how that they've blown that out
to a total new level.
Your portfolio of brands
has been around for a long time,
many of them have existed for a very long time,
how do you modernize some of those brands?
What campaigns are you working on?
You know it's funny because a lot of folks
that now are in positions in companies
and around different industries Iike grew up with,
like a lot of the brands in their houses.
So there is a strong affinity
that we're really tapping into people
who are highly influential in different industries.
And so, you know, we've been actually starting to work
with the entertainment industry a little bit
and in the fall of last year we came out to Hollywood
with a couple of our brands and said,
do you wanna work with Franken Berry or Lucky Charms?
And it was amazing to see people come out of the woodwork
and say like, I grew up with those brands, I love them,
like I would want to do a movie with Count Chocula.
And so we have the opportunity
to work with partners in new ways
and I think it's probably showed up the best way,
over the last couple years,
in the partnership that we've created
with Ellen Degeneres and with Cheerios.
And so Cheerios has been this brand
that's been around for a long time, built on positivity,
and it's like, oats give you great energy in the morning
so they're good for you, they make you feel good,
they make you do good things
and they create this virtual cycle of goodness.
And so we really tapped into that
and found partners like Ellen
who also believe in kindness and positivity
and try to combine our ecosystems together
to do bigger things.
And when we came to her the first thing she said is,
I think we should do One Million Acts of Good together,
and we're like, that's exactly what we want to do.
And so we took our brand
and polled it in all these different places
and so people would come on her show,
or people would show up with our customers,
and we would have little micro campaigns
that would do acts of good.
One of the families that she brought to us
was a family that was struggling financially.
They had three boys,
but they would always do good things for other people,
so we decided to give them a million dollars from Cheerios.
$500,000 went to them for themselves
and $500,000 was for them to give to other people.
And to capture the things, and the moments,
and the experience that people have
when they are able to give something
back, is like the true definition of, good goes around.
And so it's been really cool to see.
And partnerships with the right kinds of people,
and the right kinds of other companies,
I think are how brands are modernizing themselves
and so I only see us doing more of that
and Cheerios has been an amazing example
because people see the brand and they're happy
and we wanna translate that into something bigger,
especially with the context of the current world
and so it's fun to work on a brand that's doing that.
And Cheerios is one of the brands
that I associate
with diversity and using diversity early
and I don't know if that's true.
Again, I'm not a marketing expert,
but it certainly for me is one of the brands
that has been dealing with that early.
Do you think other, that any of the brands,
or anyone who is doing enough in diversity
and how we show people in media?
I think some brands are getting started on it
and I think there's a ton of opportunity.
I think part of that is how brands
show up in the market place with,
with things like advertising
and casting has been like a good starting point
over the years for brands that showed different people,
but it actually starts at the insight
on different cultures and what people believe.
And if you do that the right way
and then that carries through to the end point,
then that actually will make
something that's really useful for people.
What also happens is that we hire
more diversity and inclusion whether it's gender,
or sex, or gender, or affinity,
or demographics of any sort at General Mills.
When people see themselves represented in creative work
it makes them feel more proud about the company
and we actually use their insights to build our brands
and build our business.
And so I think it's a flywheel
that is actually really important,
not because only it's the right thing to do,
but also because it's good for business
and good for the employees.
And so we're doing a lot of that stuff.
I know other people are starting to do more of it,
but there's a lot of opportunity to do even more in the future.
If and how should brands
get involved in political and social conversations?
Yeah, I think the brand,
this goes back to the brand really knowing what it's for
and what it's about.
And I think sometimes brands can make the mistake
of trying to take a stance on a bunch of different things
that, you know, at some point you're like,
well, do I really care
what a toilet paper brand thinks about, you know,
this specific issue, maybe I do, but maybe I don't.
But I think are certain things that brands
have to fundamentally believe in
and they have to take a stand on it
if it's important for them.
You know we have a brand, Betty Crocker,
that's been around for almost a hundred years
and was built in a totally different time,
but it's a brand about
creating — all being equal and helpful for all families,
and so a few years ago it took a stance on
gay marriage,
and for us that was a huge deal
because that was like a big thing to say,
but it was the right thing for that brand at the moment
and the right thing for our consumers
and so we leaned in more on an issue
than we might have in other places.
And so brands can have a huge impact
when they do it the right way.
And that's the Nike example again,
I think that's really great to see a big brand do that,
but I also think they have to decide
where they wanna play and where not to,
and also be careful not to play in a place
where they get caught up in a swirl
where they're not actually running their business either.