The Exchanges

Q But that wasn't what, what was resonating with, with parents?

A We spent a lot of time with parents, a lot of time with parents, and about what's important to them, it's the same as the Jif peanut butter lesson, and obviously what's important to a parent is their physical, social, psychological development of their babies. So we said, what if we can be a help to that? Because by the way, we had people in almost every hospital in the world sampling Pampers when the baby is born. Often it was the mother's first conversation, which was with one of our samplers. We were doing nothing with that. So we said, what if we could be the parent's advocate for baby's development, and we could stand for that. And what happened is, I mean, to make a very long story short, that idea caught fire around the world. We united the Pampers global team, and within about 12 years, this was a big brand when we started, P&G's biggest brand. We tripled our revenue. And improve the profitability, and set an example, frankly, for P&G corporately.

AI assessment note: “obviously what's important to a parent is their physical, social, psychological development of their babies”

Q studies, all the results of real like ground research, right? And so now let's bring it to the present day and the present moment, right? We are in an era of massive data and it's just growing. I mean, you can measure everything now and increasingly everything more. In your view, do you feel like brands today rely too much on statistics and not enough on ground truth fact finding?

A It's an and guy. I mean, honestly, there's a lot of talk here in can this week about this. Um, I was, uh, in fact, I had a nickname when I was an assistant brand manager, Jeff of data, man. So I spent my time in the brand group, just scouring the data about the brand, the competitive set distribution, what's happening. And I would spend a lot of immersion time In stores, with mothers, with parents, you've got to do them both, because insights will pop out when you're using both sides of your brain. So I'm an advocate for both, but if you do one without the other, you will not be a world-class marketer or a world-class brand builder.

AI assessment note: “It's an and guy... you've got to do them both, because insights will pop out”

Q and one of the panelists said, um, it was a, a younger content creator, and, and this person said, look, I think that the future of advertising is not gonna be mass market TV type spots. That's dead. It's gonna be niche marketing. It's gonna be influencer marketing. And I wonder what your take on that is. I mean, do you, do you think there's some credence to that idea?

A Um, I mean, Gary Vaynerchuk talks a lot about brands starting on social. That's largely right. I agree with that. Uh, that's where the energy is. That's where the people are. Uh, so the companies that are adjusting how they have, not their strategy, but how the strategy comes to life are the ones that I think are building big brands that are relevant. We talked about Kraft Heinz a minute ago. Those are big brands. They're in many ways mundane brands, but they are being talked about on social. They're doing things that gets attention. And gets engagement. Getting attention today, you can't buy it anymore. You have to earn it. And earning it's a lot more challenging and takes a different kind of team and a different kind of work than in the old days when I was young where you could spend sixty million dollars and pretty much get 90% awareness. It's a different world now, and the companies that realize that and are acting on it, and thankfully a lot are, are, are winning.

AI assessment note: “Gary Vaynerchuk talks a lot about brands starting on social. That's largely right.”

Q climate, sometimes driven by employees at the companies. Um, in some, or even many cases, it has backfired. Um, now you are seeing more and more brands just say, you know, look, Our job is to provide the best possible product and experience to consumers. We're gonna stay away from issues or politics. But that can also be a challenge. That can also be problematic. How do you navigate that?

A I think you have to keep your employees involved, and I think those people who make decisions without consulting deeply and frequently with their employees make bad calls. You have to stay, it gets back to our immersion research comment, you have to stay close to your customers. What's important to them? What do they value? I mean, many big brands appeal to all sorts of people, and you can't forget that. And so, what you choose to get involved with needs to be a strategic choice, In terms of what your employees and, and, and, and customers care about, and then stay with it, guys. Stay with it for years, and don't wobble. I mean, we, um, we talked about Pampers earlier. They had a program to get rid of tetanus in developing markets by partnering with UNICEF. The partnership went, like, 20 years. And it was fabulous for the brand, fabulous for the world, and I think they made the decisions against using the right criteria, and it was, it worked very well.

AI assessment note: “what you choose to get involved with needs to be a strategic choice”

Q You've got a rescue, a task to rescue Pampers to figure out what's going on. Huggies is just in the ascendant, and, and Pampers is, is in the decline. What did you, what did you start to do? How did you start to learn about what you needed to do?

A Well, Guy, I was working in the Czech Republic at the time, and my boss's boss called me one day at work and said, I want you to be at the Lufthansa Lounge in the Frankfurt Airport that night. So I met him in the Lufthansa Lounge about nine o'clock at night, and he said, Pampers is a bit of a shit show, and I'd like you to leave the Czech Republic and come here sort of immediately, and I want you to unite our team internally. Because Western Europe and North America were fighting each other, and I'd like you to unite the team and figure out a way to stand for something more meaningful for our, for parents, and to try to reinvigorate this brand. By the way, Huggies had just entered Europe, and we're getting, we're, we're getting a lot of market share, and that was just not acceptable.

AI assessment note: “I'd like you to unite the team and figure out a way to stand”

Q Whole Foods? So weird. That you're, you're compelled to pick it up, but for, for a variety of reasons, big brands Weren't or aren't doing that. And it's not that they can't do that. So why, you know, what is your, when you, when you talk to big, big brands and, and they want to be scrappy, but they can't, how do you advise them to think about taking risks?

A Well, I think what Mike shared yesterday was it's about entertainment, right? And that's a different process than the kind of advertising. So he's nailed that. I mean, there are brands like High Noon, Which went from nothing to the leading brand in canned alcoholic beverages. You know, they're a gigantic brand, and they, and they have a great product, interesting packaging, great distribution, so they just did the fundamentals extremely well with a pretty simple insight. People want something that tastes really great, that's light, that's a daytime drink. And, um, but, but I think with Liquid Death, one thing I would add to that, we don't maybe talk about this enough. They came out with a can because they're anti-plastic, so that was a big point of difference, and they came out with, uh, They want water, which is healthy, and they want to take business from the sugared sodas. So they had, you know, PNG-like points of difference in their brand, and, and I think that's, that's a really big reason why he's been successful.

AI assessment note: “Well, I think what Mike shared yesterday was it's about entertainment, right?”