00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to today's episode of Brave Commerce. I'm Rachel Tippegraph, the founder and CEO of Micmac.
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Speaker 2: I'm Sarah Hofstetter, president of Profitero.
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Speaker 1: And this is a show that talks about what's relevant in e-commerce for the world's biggest brands. Sarah, I can guess what you're probably eating for Halloween, but what.
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Speaker 3: Are you actually doing for Halloween?
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Speaker 2: You know, I'm not a big Halloween person. I'm more of a perm kind of a girl, but I always make sure to stock up for those who are visiting. But given probably not too many visitors, I get to eat the chocolate myself. How about you?
00:00:39
Speaker 1: Well, I'm in the process of buying a house in the Catskills, so hopefully I close and I can do Halloween there.
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Speaker 2: That's pretty incredible. Do you think you'll have visitors?
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Speaker 1: I hope I have visitors. I don't really know what the vibe is going to be this Halloween, but I'm pretty excited to just be in the foliage.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, that's actually a very good point. The pumpkin looks a little more appropriate there than it does in your apartment in Manhattan.
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Speaker 3: A hundred percent.
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Speaker 1: And we're lucky to have such a dear friend, Doug Stratton from Hershey, be able to tell us what's actually going to be happening this Halloween season. And I think one of the most interesting things that Doug brings up is how they look to Easter to really figure out from a packaging, fulfillment, consumer demand standpoint, what Halloween's going to look like.
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Speaker 4: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: I mean, there's so little that we as Plebeian consumers think about when it comes to ordering things like chocolate online, chocolate melts. Can't just deliver that stuff in cardboard and leave it on somebody's doorstep and expect people to be thrilled with what they're getting. And so there's so much that goes into the behind the scenes in order to get it the way you want it. And I got to tell you, I'll eat a melted Reese's peanut butter cup any day of the week because I'll eat anything related to Reese's peanut butter.
00:01:56
Speaker 3: While they're coming out with the pretzel one and.
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Speaker 2: The cake one. It's like they just they just keep over delivering for me. And hence, we end up with the COVID-19. But that's a.
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Speaker 3: Whole different story. You say that while I stare at my Peloton.
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Speaker 1: But with that, let's bring on Doug Stratton, chief digital officer of the Hershey Company.
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Speaker 4: Hey, Doug. Hi, Rachel. Hi, Sarah.
00:02:19
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. I wish everyone could actually see what's happening in your office right now.
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Speaker 3: You have a giant dog behind you.
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Speaker 4: That's right. I do. I have my giant dog, Zelda, our French bulldog, a six-foot version of her right behind me, which I use in all my video calls.
00:02:34
Speaker 1: So Doug, it's been a while since I can obviously see you in person. I've always had so much admiration for your career because you've been doing CPG and e-comm much longer.
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Speaker 3: Than most people.
00:02:46
Speaker 1: You've spent the last 16 years in leadership roles at major CPG companies. How is this year, 2020, different than the 15 years prior?
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Speaker 4: The last time I can think about this type of disruption that was like really reality distorting and game-changing was 9-11. I lived in New York City, watched out my window what was going on. I was on 5th Avenue. And, you know, the ramifications of that actually were really dramatic. And at this point, you know, a lot of people forget because that's almost 20 years ago now, but it was really profound. This has also been profound, albeit for different reasons. I think the first thing is, you know, the extended isolation. Obviously, it's hard to have your informal relationships, not only with your coworkers, but even with your family. Those formal touch bases or, you know, quick meeting over a drink or a dinner, you know, those things have really disappeared. And I think from a relationship building perspective, that's been difficult. And Rachel and Sarah, you and I just talked about this just a little bit ago. I think from a business perspective, some relationships have gotten tighter through the pandemic. The folks that you typically rely on, those relationships get tighter. But some of the other relationships that you need to really drive your business over the long term are fraying a little bit. So there's a lot of thinking and proactive doing of correction of that kind of trend. The other thing is the utter reliance on technology. Typically in our kinds of roles, we think about digital commerce and we think about that commercial aspect of technology and how to apply it. But this is the application of technology to live your life and to run your business. And that's radically different And if you think about the national availability of online grocery really only happened the last three or four years. What would have happened in the U.S. if a pandemic would have hit five years ago? It would have been more chaotic. So that's kind of like if I think about it from the digital commerce perspective as it relates to my category. But just in general, video and team collaboration software like Teams or Slack, even Zoom, those technologies were really not up to snuff five years ago. as well as the speed of the networks to enable everybody to be doing this type of thing all at the same time.
00:05:08
Speaker 2: That's a great point. Well, we're talking about the importance of personal proximity, and yet we are just weeks away from Halloween, a holiday that really has been built on human interaction. And Hershey is a brand that has been at the epicenter of Halloween.
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Speaker 4: It's a mainstay.
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Speaker 2: So how are you thinking about Halloween in this new environment?
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Speaker 4: Yeah, Halloween, we consider our Super Bowl. So my first day on the job was October 30th, 2017 at Hershey. And so it was the day before Halloween. And like the inside of the Hershey office building was like Halloween come to life, right? It was really like staggering experience. And so it is very, very important. And I think our brands play an outside role in consumers' lives. You know, the Reese's, Hershey's, Twizzlers, a number of other brands are iconic. And so, you know, a lot of memories of Halloween, at least in my own life, are literally tied to. I can remember opening, you know, being four or five years old, you know, a mini Hershey's chocolate bar as a result of Halloween, right? it's embedded in the culture of the US, these big Hershey brands and the memories associated with them. In terms of how we're going to market this year, in terms of pandemic, in many ways, no differently than we typically do. I think we made that early on in the year that Halloween was going to be celebrated. We thought that the celebrations might take a different form, obviously, because of the pandemic. But in essence, we just thought, There's actually, in some ways, there's more reason for people to celebrate. People want the ability and an excuse to actually socialize, whether it's through video or in person, right? So we think that Halloween will be, it will be celebrated just differently. There's a lot of really good videos, actually, that our chief sales officer, Phil Stanley, has recorded and been, you know, through the network, I think CNBC and a few others, you know, where he talks about that. But we've been gaining share all year. by playing to win. We leaned into Halloween when a lot of our competitors were not leaning in because of the pandemic. So we think we're going to win disproportionately, albeit we did de-risk certain things. So we think that there'll be more interaction with our take-home sizes, which are everyday items, rather than some of the very bespoke kind of product pack sizes. And so we've changed our mix to reflect what we think will really happen. as a result of the pandemic and a slight difference in consumer behavior.
00:07:50
Speaker 2: Follow-up question, given your role as chief digital officer, what do you think moves online? What do you think stays offline? And where does commerce, given the name of this podcast, is brave commerce after all?
00:08:03
Speaker 4: Yeah, we learned a lot from Easter. And I think the shocking from Easter was, and it wasn't across all retailers, but a couple big retailers, we saw massive amounts of that holiday business move online. Of course, I can't divulge, but there was one retailer where 42% or 43% of their confection business with Hershey was being transacted online. So it might have been through pickup that they were getting it or delivery, but the transactions themselves and the shop themselves were happening online. And that was just really striking.
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Speaker 3: And Doug, years prior, was that more like 3%? Yeah, exactly. Crazy.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, it kind of mirrored the overall e-commerce business. So it was absolutely crazy. Now, it was also the height of the pandemic. So of course, you have to take that with a grain of salt. And overall, it didn't end up at 43% on average over the course of the season. It was more like around the 20% range for the top retailer. But that's massive.
00:09:09
Speaker 3: No, that's crazy.
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Speaker 5: Yeah.
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Speaker 4: So there's a couple of things happening. And the way we approached it was we had actually already experimented with what we'd call like a fully omnichannel execution of Halloween last year where we had movie tie-ins. We had partnerships with Ruby's Costumes. We had, of course, our own portfolio and a couple of other elements. And we were really making a play for these categories. that have affinities during Halloween, but you can't merchandise in a physical sense very easily without a lot of labor and effort and time and whatnot, but you can do really well through digital. You know, it's unique to digital that you can actually put these things together and package them in a way that's really comprehensive and cohesive. And thank gosh that we did that last year and had built up some muscle because we redeployed some of those principles during Easter in the middle of the pandemic and, you know, when gangbusters. So, those types of things that we learned last Halloween, coupled with the insights of how people are comfortable with buying their holiday items online, we're using all of that and we built out a full-blown kind of Halloween activation around Omnichannel across retailers.
00:10:16
Speaker 1: Speaking of retailers and packaging, We're hearing through the grapevine that retailers are putting new demands on brands in terms of how you're shipping products to them, packaging. What do you feel is going to become table stakes in 2021 for CP brands that are trying to sell at major retailers?
00:10:37
Speaker 4: So I'm glad you kind of caveat that a little bit. Those demands actually aren't new. You know, I can remember five years ago, a key retailer saying, hey, you know, this has to ship in its own box or, you know, frustration-free packaging was a buzzword. And then there was other adaptations we needed to do to case packs to allow the receiving and the shipping of those goods to be as effective and efficient as possible. So none of those things are new. And to the degree that we've needed to build those into the processes, we've already built those into the processes. I think the really interesting thing is if you think about, for example, a digital ready portfolio, There's always been a sound like, okay, what's the pack size and price point that's going to work for a certain model, like what we would call a ship-to-home model or an Amazon-type model. The unit economics, the way they look at their business, is very different from a lot of the other retailers. So there's always been that element from a proposition pack format-type perspective. And we've been working on that for years. I think the difference is, as you've gone from 3% to... six, 7% e-commerce to nine to 10 to 11 to 12. And the fulfillment model mix changes and that penetration of broader digital commerce into, you know, quote unquote, the physical world. So in other words, the store footprint is changing, you know, so like what's going to happen to the actual traffic shelf space that consumers go through versus what's going to happen from a micro fulfillment perspective in the back room of a store or a dark store or whatever all these other mutations is. Does the pickup format versus the store-only format, do they need slightly different packs that would only really be in the back room and would really only be for pickup or for delivery, but not necessarily something you'd ever want to put out on a shelf? Do you need those types of things? So thinking about that as things have accelerated so much, I think is kind of the next wave of work that some people will be doing.
00:12:42
Speaker 1: Doug, for our listeners that are not as familiar with different types of fulfillment, can you just give a high level overview?
00:12:50
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:12:51
Speaker 4: So the way we think about it and the way we break down even internally so that we understand how to invest and how to play e-commerce in general is broken it down into ship to home. Ship to home would typically be thought of as it comes in a brown box a lot of time with the Amazon logo, but certainly from Walmart.coms and the Target.coms. And it gets delivered through a third delivery service typically to your home. That's distinct from pickup where you transact online, but then you go and you pick up the goods, typically in some sort of staging area versus delivery where goods are packed and they're delivered to you by the retailer themselves or a service provider that they use. versus what we typically call on-demand, which is the type of fulfillment where you're going to get the product in between probably an hour or less, and then D to C.
00:13:47
Speaker 3: And are there different levels of profitability?
00:13:49
Speaker 4: Oh, certainly. In those months? Yeah, certainly. Different levels of profitability, totally different mixes. So our category, chocolate, melts. So as you can imagine, if you're shipping through a UPS or whoever it be, That's difficult and expensive, and so you have to design your portfolio to incur maybe some additional cost that relates to logistics, but still allow enough room for profit for both yourself and for your retailer. So that's different from delivery or pickup, where typically the products are being sourced, at least currently, through the stores themselves.
00:14:24
Speaker 2: That is why everyone must eat Twizzlers.
00:14:28
Speaker 4: That's right. So yeah, so there's a different profile for that, obviously, because the portfolio is different. And even the mix of products is different. So obviously, I talked about melting chocolate, but in our category, sweets and refreshments of gum and mints, far, far, far over indexes in the online world, at least through that model than it does in offline where chocolate is predominant. Yeah, there's all sorts of different ways you have to look at the business, both from the economic profile and how the retailer would look at it and understanding the impacts of their overall P & L. And then how do you adapt your portfolio to make sure that they can make money, but that you can make money as well?
00:15:06
Speaker 2: The idea of what's an impulse buy now versus what was an impulse buy before, I think has changed a lot. You referenced governments. I certainly always cared about having fresh breath, but never more so than when I'm smelling it on myself when I'm wearing a mask for multiple hours at a time.
00:15:21
Speaker 4: Yes. Mask breath.
00:15:23
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:15:24
Speaker 2: It's a thing.
00:15:25
Speaker 4: It's real.
00:15:26
Speaker 2: Yeah. And try doing it with the K95s. Those are the worst. You're way better off wearing a cloth mask. I'm definitely getting into the TMI space for sure. How have you been thinking about even your marketing mix based on that? People aren't necessarily picking up those purchases if they're shopping more online, but people are having certain thoughts that are more top of mind for them as a result. How do you think about that mix?
00:15:49
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:15:50
Speaker 4: Well, the mask breath is an interesting one because that was in a very early insight. And we actually created some ads around that and just broader, more traditional creative around that. But again, I think it really boils down to at a very... It's going to sound like such a simple answer and you guys are going to want me to say something sexy, but it's just understanding that the consumer's behavior is different. It's related, but different to the offline shop. And so impulse... and I have talked to Rachel about this and I've been vocal about it in other forums and media channels, that impulse still exists, it just exists in a different way. So an impulse purchase in the confection category is something that typically gets consumed very quickly. So there's impulse purchase behavior, but there's also like instant consumption. In fact, we call those pack formats instant consumption.
00:16:40
Speaker 2: So you're talking about like when I go to CVS to get something completely different and then.
00:16:44
Speaker 4: I walk out with- And you get a peanut butter cup.
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Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:16:48
Speaker 2: Yes. And I think you're like stocking my seven foot long receipt, but yes.
00:16:53
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:16:53
Speaker 2: Or also you happen to know that Reese's peanut butter cups are my favorite.
00:16:56
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:16:56
Speaker 4: Those are treats for yourself, right? And those types of purchases, each person will do X amount of those over a course of a year.
00:17:04
Speaker 2: X is a very nice number.
00:17:05
Speaker 4: I didn't want to throw it out there. It's more than you would expect.
00:17:08
Speaker 2: I don't know about that, but.
00:17:11
Speaker 4: But again, those are things that can happen in a natural kind of interruption, disruption environment where you're going through checkout or you're running to an end cap or you're running to some other kind of merchandising display. And it's kind of there and you're like, oh, yeah, I want one of those. And you grab it and you take it home with you or you probably eat it on the way home. That's very different in an e-commerce sense. And there's a lot of nervousness around that. But listening to the behavior of the consumer and studying the behavior of the consumer from an online perspective through click screen or other types of research. It's just super important. And what we've decided to do in that case is, you know, reinvent the way we think about impulse. And so instead of just around impulse purchase, we think about impulse consumption. So if we can take those same pack types that people love in a checkout and move a multi-pack of those into people's pantries, and then, you know, the sea candy, they buy candy, eat candy. Well, you kind of just got the buy because it's already happened and that's just sea candy, eat candy. So it's an expandable category. In other words, the more it's in front of you, the more you will eat. And so using algorithms and using kind of the individual digital behaviors that are unique to digital, not necessarily analogous to how we would run our business and are really good at running our business in an offline sense, are the things that we're focused in on. In certain models, if you have huge baskets, the smaller price point items you know, are less of an issue than they would be with, say, a ship-to-home model, like an Amazon model, where you're going to want to sell multi-packs because just economic thresholds don't favor the individuals. Stores, it's a little different. But again, through digital, you're seeing kind of a migration into slightly different mix in terms of pack formats. So more of our take-home formats really dominate in some of those fulfillment models versus the instant consumable, the things you would expect to see at a checkout. Understanding all those puts and takes, the different models, The mixed dynamics, the consumer behaviors, et cetera, et cetera, allows you to map out how you approach those things so that you can drive profitability more comprehensively.
00:19:14
Speaker 1: Doug, one of my favorite things that I learned from you early in the pandemic was how you were using e-commerce data as a leading indicator for what was going to happen to the rest of the business. You know, you talked about looking at Easter to understand what was going on on Halloween.
00:19:30
Speaker 3: You alluded to mask breath.
00:19:33
Speaker 1: And I remember when we spoke earlier in the pandemic, you were looking at e-com data and saying, hmm, people aren't really buying gum and mints right now. How is Hershey's organizing itself around the data that your team is seeing to have omni-channel outcomes?
00:19:48
Speaker 4: So I wouldn't say organized. around e-commerce data. I would say we're better organizing for our data and then our access to data. For us, this means a better overall inventorying of all the different data types that we have within Hershey, whether it's consumer, customer, or or our own internal data that we might not be leveraging in ways that could help the overall business. So having an inventory of all of that, and I think this is just foundational, but a lot of companies don't do this really, really well. Having that inventory and then giving that inventory transparency to the broader organization so that they can understand what we're either buying, storing, using, or not buying, storing, and using is super important because it allows you when you do that and you think about it from an end-to-end enterprise perspective to see where things maybe could be tied together to get broader insights. So digital commerce data or e-commerce data, in that sense, in terms of like trend spotting, You know, that can be combined with social listening, which is also designed to do some trend spottings. And then other things that you might be seeing in terms of any information that your customers might be feeding back to you from the physical store environment. So it takes all of those things working together to really think about, you know, then how do you organize once you've gotten those things together that naturally need to put together. And that's just good thinking around basic data governance, you know, who's owning the data. Who's managing the data and keeping it secure? And then who's actually building the systems that store the data? All those things have to be thought of as a whole to really think about how you organize your teams around the data and the access to data. So it's not just about e-commerce. It's about broadly.
00:21:31
Speaker 3: Data governance.
00:21:32
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:21:32
Speaker 4: Yeah. Broadly organizing around data and how do you leverage it? And again, not for reasons that were with malintent, but Most companies have some version of a silo system that they have to work through. And so elevating the governance to be cross-functional and doing those inventories and getting the transparency is really, really key. That's something that I kicked off a couple of years ago at Hershey. And originally it was designed to talk about the inventory of technological platforms that could be connected, used for broader commercial use. The next level of that is like, okay, data needs to be treated the same way and governed the same way or through the same body, I should say.
00:22:12
Speaker 2: You know, you talk about data governance, but you also talk about the importance of data getting into the right hands of the people and bringing down silos. To me, I look at it and it's like the way data gets distributed is more like a whatchamacallit. And maybe it just needs to have, maybe we need to have ingredients parsed out and given to the right people in the right way.
00:22:32
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:22:32
Speaker 2: There's just so much of it and just being able to get it in the right hands of the right people at the right time.
00:22:37
Speaker 4: The thing is, when you provide that transparency and people can see what other teams are doing, whether it's with different analytical platforms or different types of data, it really opens up people's eyes to go, oh, my God, I could actually use that over here. And we've got a number of examples of that, whether it's broader content analysis. Collection, curation, management, and syndication and distribution, which Sarah, obviously your company and ours work on. Then also how we think about helping our retailers with managing their on-shelf inventory to keep that at a maximum, particularly as things are moving into fulfillment through store from an e-commerce perspective. That's a confluence of a lot of pieces and parts of data that we actually already had and have had for years. It took putting them all together and looking at them and going, Is there a new way we can use this to actually pull more value out of what we have?
00:23:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why I think education is so key. We're going to move on to the rapid fire questions. Yeah, okay.
00:23:39
Speaker 5: Okay.
00:23:39
Speaker 2: These are going to be very brief and very important.
00:23:42
Speaker 4: Oh, okay. I'm ready. Bring it on.
00:23:45
Speaker 2: Rachel mocks me. All right. Question number one. What is your favorite Hershey product?
00:23:49
Speaker 4: Reese's peanut butter cups. Damn you. Yeah, my second favorite would be the new Jolly Rancher Gummies, which we reintroduced at the beginning of this year. They're delicious, particularly the sour versions.
00:24:02
Speaker 2: You're killing me, Smalls.
00:24:03
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's good stuff.
00:24:05
Speaker 2: Last thing you bought online?
00:24:06
Speaker 4: The last thing I bought online was a pair of shoes.
00:24:11
Speaker 2: Why would anybody wear shoes? I'm very confused about this. Please explain this to this plebeian over here.
00:24:17
Speaker 4: Yeah, wasn't a pair of shoes, come to think of it? I take that back. It was an additional webcam.
00:24:21
Speaker 2: Okay, now you see they're talking about actual utility here.
00:24:24
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. It was an actual webcam. So I take that back.
00:24:27
Speaker 2: All right, Rachel, what's your favorite Hershey's product? Reese's.
00:24:30
Speaker 1: I have such a deep-seated place in my heart for peanut butter.
00:24:34
Speaker 2: Oh, I love peanut butter. Sorry, I'm going to get up. I'm so torn between my favorite chocolate and my favorite candy and my favorite chocolate being Reese's peanut butter. I'm so excited for pretzels and Twizzler Bites. People who know me deeply don't know which to get. Back in the day that we had workspace, people would show up at my desk with both. They knew this is a way to my heart. You don't have to kiss my butt. You just have to bring me these goodies.
00:24:58
Speaker 4: You were talking about Fresh from the Factory Twizzlers before the podcast. And I actually live just like a mile and a half from the Twizzlers factory. And when you drive by, you can smell that. But if you're a big Reese's fan, you can also get Fresh from the Factory Reese's. And that is also incredible.
00:25:15
Speaker 2: You can smell it. When you're driving into Hershey, Pennsylvania, you can smell it. And then like, if you stay at the Hershey hotel and you get one of the cocktails that has like the, the, like this, Oh my God, the cocktails, they infuse all the Hershey goodness. Okay. I'm totally getting like into.
00:25:31
Speaker 4: That's okay. We love it.
00:25:34
Speaker 2: A personal advocate.
00:25:34
Speaker 3: I just love how you remember every detail about your Hershey vacation.
00:25:38
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh.
00:25:39
Speaker 2: I'm going to like follow up with an album. I'm going to follow up with an album of every single year we went to Hershey Park. And then one time I actually got to go to a business conference at the Hershey Hotel, which was like the coolest thing in the world. But anyway, I digress because we have a very important question to ask you.
00:25:55
Speaker 4: All right. Rachel?
00:25:56
Speaker 3: The most important question. Doug, are you ready for it?
00:26:00
Speaker 4: I'm ready.
00:26:01
Speaker 3: What is the bravest thing that you've ever done? It can be personal or professional.
00:26:06
Speaker 4: That's an easy one. September 11th, 2001. I was one year into my marriage with my wife. And in fact, today is my anniversary. So happy anniversary, Michelle. Congrats. And 20 years to us.
00:26:16
Speaker 2: And spending it with us.
00:26:17
Speaker 4: And spending it with you guys.
00:26:19
Speaker 2: That's a sign of a good 20-year marriage.
00:26:22
Speaker 4: That's right. It's solid. So one year into a marriage. We're living in New York City, September 11th. What it really did for me was allow me to reflect on how I was feeling about the job I had, the company that I worked for, and what was really important to me. And I've always been very focused in terms of career, probably to the detriment of some of the things in my personal life. And this was something where my wife will probably kill me for being this frank, but we were one year into our marriage and it was difficult, right? So we had gotten married. My company had been bought. I'd been put in a new job. We'd moved in New York City. you know, all in like 90 days. I wasn't really enjoying, nor did I have really full respect for the company I was working for. And it was coming home with me and it was really having an effect on my relationship with Michelle. And I had to come to the realization that it was either Michelle or the job. And that really, really was amplified after September 11th, where I think a lot of people were thinking about like what's really important to them, particularly when you're there watching it out your window. And so about a month after it was mid-October, I quit my job with no job in place. And that was brave, you know, and not a lot of jobs to be had. Right. So that's the bravest thing I ever did. And I applied myself. I negotiated with the company that I was working for, kind of like a off ramp. And within one week of the off ramp, which was in December of 2001, I had a new job with a new company and I kind of started things afresh. Right. And that helped save, you know, my relationship with my wife. made me a happier person, but it only would have happened because there was something that really tragic that forced me to evaluate what was really important to me and to do something about it. So that's the bravest thing I've ever done.
00:28:12
Speaker 2: We kind of got the spoiler alert when you said you were in your 20th anniversary. So we kind of knew how the story ended. We were very excited by how the story ended in advance. I was like, what's he going to do?
00:28:24
Speaker 4: You chose Michelle. She's an amazing person on many, many levels.
00:28:29
Speaker 1: I freaking love that question because we just got to know you in a whole new way. Doug, you're always a wealth of knowledge. I think the audience just learned a tremendous amount around fulfillment, data governance, what it means to be on the offense of e-commerce. And it's just put you and Hershey's in such a tremendous position this year. So thank you for spending an hour with us. I know you have a lot of important things to do.
00:28:51
Speaker 4: Oh, absolutely.
00:28:53
Speaker 2: And happy anniversary.
00:28:54
Speaker 4: Thank you so much.
00:28:56
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.
00:28:57
Speaker 3: Please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.
00:29:00
Speaker 2: Follow us on Spotify and Google Podcasts. And don't forget to share this link with a friend.
00:29:10
Speaker 5: Hi, I'm Jackie Cooper, Global Chief Brand Officer at Edelman and the host of Touch of Truth, a new podcast launching on the Adweek Podcast Network. My dad gave me this incredibly smart piece of advice, meet everyone once. As a result, I've met some of the most fascinating and inspiring people on the planet. Now on Touch of Truth, we're coming center stage and sharing the mic to experience stories of truth, insights, and visions for the future that will challenge your way of thinking. Touch of Truth is available wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes come out every Tuesday. I do hope to see you there.
Speaker 1: Welcome to today's episode of Brave Commerce. I'm Rachel Tippegraph, the founder and CEO of Micmac.
00:00:06
Speaker 2: I'm Sarah Hofstetter, president of Profitero.
00:00:09
Speaker 1: And this is a show that talks about what's relevant in e-commerce for the world's biggest brands. Sarah, I can guess what you're probably eating for Halloween, but what.
00:00:25
Speaker 3: Are you actually doing for Halloween?
00:00:27
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not a big Halloween person. I'm more of a perm kind of a girl, but I always make sure to stock up for those who are visiting. But given probably not too many visitors, I get to eat the chocolate myself. How about you?
00:00:39
Speaker 1: Well, I'm in the process of buying a house in the Catskills, so hopefully I close and I can do Halloween there.
00:00:46
Speaker 2: That's pretty incredible. Do you think you'll have visitors?
00:00:48
Speaker 1: I hope I have visitors. I don't really know what the vibe is going to be this Halloween, but I'm pretty excited to just be in the foliage.
00:00:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, that's actually a very good point. The pumpkin looks a little more appropriate there than it does in your apartment in Manhattan.
00:01:02
Speaker 3: A hundred percent.
00:01:04
Speaker 1: And we're lucky to have such a dear friend, Doug Stratton from Hershey, be able to tell us what's actually going to be happening this Halloween season. And I think one of the most interesting things that Doug brings up is how they look to Easter to really figure out from a packaging, fulfillment, consumer demand standpoint, what Halloween's going to look like.
00:01:26
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:01:26
Speaker 2: I mean, there's so little that we as Plebeian consumers think about when it comes to ordering things like chocolate online, chocolate melts. Can't just deliver that stuff in cardboard and leave it on somebody's doorstep and expect people to be thrilled with what they're getting. And so there's so much that goes into the behind the scenes in order to get it the way you want it. And I got to tell you, I'll eat a melted Reese's peanut butter cup any day of the week because I'll eat anything related to Reese's peanut butter.
00:01:56
Speaker 3: While they're coming out with the pretzel one and.
00:01:58
Speaker 2: The cake one. It's like they just they just keep over delivering for me. And hence, we end up with the COVID-19. But that's a.
00:02:07
Speaker 3: Whole different story. You say that while I stare at my Peloton.
00:02:11
Speaker 1: But with that, let's bring on Doug Stratton, chief digital officer of the Hershey Company.
00:02:17
Speaker 4: Hey, Doug. Hi, Rachel. Hi, Sarah.
00:02:19
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. I wish everyone could actually see what's happening in your office right now.
00:02:25
Speaker 3: You have a giant dog behind you.
00:02:26
Speaker 4: That's right. I do. I have my giant dog, Zelda, our French bulldog, a six-foot version of her right behind me, which I use in all my video calls.
00:02:34
Speaker 1: So Doug, it's been a while since I can obviously see you in person. I've always had so much admiration for your career because you've been doing CPG and e-comm much longer.
00:02:45
Speaker 3: Than most people.
00:02:46
Speaker 1: You've spent the last 16 years in leadership roles at major CPG companies. How is this year, 2020, different than the 15 years prior?
00:02:55
Speaker 4: The last time I can think about this type of disruption that was like really reality distorting and game-changing was 9-11. I lived in New York City, watched out my window what was going on. I was on 5th Avenue. And, you know, the ramifications of that actually were really dramatic. And at this point, you know, a lot of people forget because that's almost 20 years ago now, but it was really profound. This has also been profound, albeit for different reasons. I think the first thing is, you know, the extended isolation. Obviously, it's hard to have your informal relationships, not only with your coworkers, but even with your family. Those formal touch bases or, you know, quick meeting over a drink or a dinner, you know, those things have really disappeared. And I think from a relationship building perspective, that's been difficult. And Rachel and Sarah, you and I just talked about this just a little bit ago. I think from a business perspective, some relationships have gotten tighter through the pandemic. The folks that you typically rely on, those relationships get tighter. But some of the other relationships that you need to really drive your business over the long term are fraying a little bit. So there's a lot of thinking and proactive doing of correction of that kind of trend. The other thing is the utter reliance on technology. Typically in our kinds of roles, we think about digital commerce and we think about that commercial aspect of technology and how to apply it. But this is the application of technology to live your life and to run your business. And that's radically different And if you think about the national availability of online grocery really only happened the last three or four years. What would have happened in the U.S. if a pandemic would have hit five years ago? It would have been more chaotic. So that's kind of like if I think about it from the digital commerce perspective as it relates to my category. But just in general, video and team collaboration software like Teams or Slack, even Zoom, those technologies were really not up to snuff five years ago. as well as the speed of the networks to enable everybody to be doing this type of thing all at the same time.
00:05:08
Speaker 2: That's a great point. Well, we're talking about the importance of personal proximity, and yet we are just weeks away from Halloween, a holiday that really has been built on human interaction. And Hershey is a brand that has been at the epicenter of Halloween.
00:05:29
Speaker 4: It's a mainstay.
00:05:31
Speaker 2: So how are you thinking about Halloween in this new environment?
00:05:36
Speaker 4: Yeah, Halloween, we consider our Super Bowl. So my first day on the job was October 30th, 2017 at Hershey. And so it was the day before Halloween. And like the inside of the Hershey office building was like Halloween come to life, right? It was really like staggering experience. And so it is very, very important. And I think our brands play an outside role in consumers' lives. You know, the Reese's, Hershey's, Twizzlers, a number of other brands are iconic. And so, you know, a lot of memories of Halloween, at least in my own life, are literally tied to. I can remember opening, you know, being four or five years old, you know, a mini Hershey's chocolate bar as a result of Halloween, right? it's embedded in the culture of the US, these big Hershey brands and the memories associated with them. In terms of how we're going to market this year, in terms of pandemic, in many ways, no differently than we typically do. I think we made that early on in the year that Halloween was going to be celebrated. We thought that the celebrations might take a different form, obviously, because of the pandemic. But in essence, we just thought, There's actually, in some ways, there's more reason for people to celebrate. People want the ability and an excuse to actually socialize, whether it's through video or in person, right? So we think that Halloween will be, it will be celebrated just differently. There's a lot of really good videos, actually, that our chief sales officer, Phil Stanley, has recorded and been, you know, through the network, I think CNBC and a few others, you know, where he talks about that. But we've been gaining share all year. by playing to win. We leaned into Halloween when a lot of our competitors were not leaning in because of the pandemic. So we think we're going to win disproportionately, albeit we did de-risk certain things. So we think that there'll be more interaction with our take-home sizes, which are everyday items, rather than some of the very bespoke kind of product pack sizes. And so we've changed our mix to reflect what we think will really happen. as a result of the pandemic and a slight difference in consumer behavior.
00:07:50
Speaker 2: Follow-up question, given your role as chief digital officer, what do you think moves online? What do you think stays offline? And where does commerce, given the name of this podcast, is brave commerce after all?
00:08:03
Speaker 4: Yeah, we learned a lot from Easter. And I think the shocking from Easter was, and it wasn't across all retailers, but a couple big retailers, we saw massive amounts of that holiday business move online. Of course, I can't divulge, but there was one retailer where 42% or 43% of their confection business with Hershey was being transacted online. So it might have been through pickup that they were getting it or delivery, but the transactions themselves and the shop themselves were happening online. And that was just really striking.
00:08:44
Speaker 3: And Doug, years prior, was that more like 3%? Yeah, exactly. Crazy.
00:08:49
Speaker 4: Yeah, it kind of mirrored the overall e-commerce business. So it was absolutely crazy. Now, it was also the height of the pandemic. So of course, you have to take that with a grain of salt. And overall, it didn't end up at 43% on average over the course of the season. It was more like around the 20% range for the top retailer. But that's massive.
00:09:09
Speaker 3: No, that's crazy.
00:09:10
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:09:11
Speaker 4: So there's a couple of things happening. And the way we approached it was we had actually already experimented with what we'd call like a fully omnichannel execution of Halloween last year where we had movie tie-ins. We had partnerships with Ruby's Costumes. We had, of course, our own portfolio and a couple of other elements. And we were really making a play for these categories. that have affinities during Halloween, but you can't merchandise in a physical sense very easily without a lot of labor and effort and time and whatnot, but you can do really well through digital. You know, it's unique to digital that you can actually put these things together and package them in a way that's really comprehensive and cohesive. And thank gosh that we did that last year and had built up some muscle because we redeployed some of those principles during Easter in the middle of the pandemic and, you know, when gangbusters. So, those types of things that we learned last Halloween, coupled with the insights of how people are comfortable with buying their holiday items online, we're using all of that and we built out a full-blown kind of Halloween activation around Omnichannel across retailers.
00:10:16
Speaker 1: Speaking of retailers and packaging, We're hearing through the grapevine that retailers are putting new demands on brands in terms of how you're shipping products to them, packaging. What do you feel is going to become table stakes in 2021 for CP brands that are trying to sell at major retailers?
00:10:37
Speaker 4: So I'm glad you kind of caveat that a little bit. Those demands actually aren't new. You know, I can remember five years ago, a key retailer saying, hey, you know, this has to ship in its own box or, you know, frustration-free packaging was a buzzword. And then there was other adaptations we needed to do to case packs to allow the receiving and the shipping of those goods to be as effective and efficient as possible. So none of those things are new. And to the degree that we've needed to build those into the processes, we've already built those into the processes. I think the really interesting thing is if you think about, for example, a digital ready portfolio, There's always been a sound like, okay, what's the pack size and price point that's going to work for a certain model, like what we would call a ship-to-home model or an Amazon-type model. The unit economics, the way they look at their business, is very different from a lot of the other retailers. So there's always been that element from a proposition pack format-type perspective. And we've been working on that for years. I think the difference is, as you've gone from 3% to... six, 7% e-commerce to nine to 10 to 11 to 12. And the fulfillment model mix changes and that penetration of broader digital commerce into, you know, quote unquote, the physical world. So in other words, the store footprint is changing, you know, so like what's going to happen to the actual traffic shelf space that consumers go through versus what's going to happen from a micro fulfillment perspective in the back room of a store or a dark store or whatever all these other mutations is. Does the pickup format versus the store-only format, do they need slightly different packs that would only really be in the back room and would really only be for pickup or for delivery, but not necessarily something you'd ever want to put out on a shelf? Do you need those types of things? So thinking about that as things have accelerated so much, I think is kind of the next wave of work that some people will be doing.
00:12:42
Speaker 1: Doug, for our listeners that are not as familiar with different types of fulfillment, can you just give a high level overview?
00:12:50
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:12:51
Speaker 4: So the way we think about it and the way we break down even internally so that we understand how to invest and how to play e-commerce in general is broken it down into ship to home. Ship to home would typically be thought of as it comes in a brown box a lot of time with the Amazon logo, but certainly from Walmart.coms and the Target.coms. And it gets delivered through a third delivery service typically to your home. That's distinct from pickup where you transact online, but then you go and you pick up the goods, typically in some sort of staging area versus delivery where goods are packed and they're delivered to you by the retailer themselves or a service provider that they use. versus what we typically call on-demand, which is the type of fulfillment where you're going to get the product in between probably an hour or less, and then D to C.
00:13:47
Speaker 3: And are there different levels of profitability?
00:13:49
Speaker 4: Oh, certainly. In those months? Yeah, certainly. Different levels of profitability, totally different mixes. So our category, chocolate, melts. So as you can imagine, if you're shipping through a UPS or whoever it be, That's difficult and expensive, and so you have to design your portfolio to incur maybe some additional cost that relates to logistics, but still allow enough room for profit for both yourself and for your retailer. So that's different from delivery or pickup, where typically the products are being sourced, at least currently, through the stores themselves.
00:14:24
Speaker 2: That is why everyone must eat Twizzlers.
00:14:28
Speaker 4: That's right. So yeah, so there's a different profile for that, obviously, because the portfolio is different. And even the mix of products is different. So obviously, I talked about melting chocolate, but in our category, sweets and refreshments of gum and mints, far, far, far over indexes in the online world, at least through that model than it does in offline where chocolate is predominant. Yeah, there's all sorts of different ways you have to look at the business, both from the economic profile and how the retailer would look at it and understanding the impacts of their overall P & L. And then how do you adapt your portfolio to make sure that they can make money, but that you can make money as well?
00:15:06
Speaker 2: The idea of what's an impulse buy now versus what was an impulse buy before, I think has changed a lot. You referenced governments. I certainly always cared about having fresh breath, but never more so than when I'm smelling it on myself when I'm wearing a mask for multiple hours at a time.
00:15:21
Speaker 4: Yes. Mask breath.
00:15:23
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:15:24
Speaker 2: It's a thing.
00:15:25
Speaker 4: It's real.
00:15:26
Speaker 2: Yeah. And try doing it with the K95s. Those are the worst. You're way better off wearing a cloth mask. I'm definitely getting into the TMI space for sure. How have you been thinking about even your marketing mix based on that? People aren't necessarily picking up those purchases if they're shopping more online, but people are having certain thoughts that are more top of mind for them as a result. How do you think about that mix?
00:15:49
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:15:50
Speaker 4: Well, the mask breath is an interesting one because that was in a very early insight. And we actually created some ads around that and just broader, more traditional creative around that. But again, I think it really boils down to at a very... It's going to sound like such a simple answer and you guys are going to want me to say something sexy, but it's just understanding that the consumer's behavior is different. It's related, but different to the offline shop. And so impulse... and I have talked to Rachel about this and I've been vocal about it in other forums and media channels, that impulse still exists, it just exists in a different way. So an impulse purchase in the confection category is something that typically gets consumed very quickly. So there's impulse purchase behavior, but there's also like instant consumption. In fact, we call those pack formats instant consumption.
00:16:40
Speaker 2: So you're talking about like when I go to CVS to get something completely different and then.
00:16:44
Speaker 4: I walk out with- And you get a peanut butter cup.
00:16:47
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:16:48
Speaker 2: Yes. And I think you're like stocking my seven foot long receipt, but yes.
00:16:53
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:16:53
Speaker 2: Or also you happen to know that Reese's peanut butter cups are my favorite.
00:16:56
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:16:56
Speaker 4: Those are treats for yourself, right? And those types of purchases, each person will do X amount of those over a course of a year.
00:17:04
Speaker 2: X is a very nice number.
00:17:05
Speaker 4: I didn't want to throw it out there. It's more than you would expect.
00:17:08
Speaker 2: I don't know about that, but.
00:17:11
Speaker 4: But again, those are things that can happen in a natural kind of interruption, disruption environment where you're going through checkout or you're running to an end cap or you're running to some other kind of merchandising display. And it's kind of there and you're like, oh, yeah, I want one of those. And you grab it and you take it home with you or you probably eat it on the way home. That's very different in an e-commerce sense. And there's a lot of nervousness around that. But listening to the behavior of the consumer and studying the behavior of the consumer from an online perspective through click screen or other types of research. It's just super important. And what we've decided to do in that case is, you know, reinvent the way we think about impulse. And so instead of just around impulse purchase, we think about impulse consumption. So if we can take those same pack types that people love in a checkout and move a multi-pack of those into people's pantries, and then, you know, the sea candy, they buy candy, eat candy. Well, you kind of just got the buy because it's already happened and that's just sea candy, eat candy. So it's an expandable category. In other words, the more it's in front of you, the more you will eat. And so using algorithms and using kind of the individual digital behaviors that are unique to digital, not necessarily analogous to how we would run our business and are really good at running our business in an offline sense, are the things that we're focused in on. In certain models, if you have huge baskets, the smaller price point items you know, are less of an issue than they would be with, say, a ship-to-home model, like an Amazon model, where you're going to want to sell multi-packs because just economic thresholds don't favor the individuals. Stores, it's a little different. But again, through digital, you're seeing kind of a migration into slightly different mix in terms of pack formats. So more of our take-home formats really dominate in some of those fulfillment models versus the instant consumable, the things you would expect to see at a checkout. Understanding all those puts and takes, the different models, The mixed dynamics, the consumer behaviors, et cetera, et cetera, allows you to map out how you approach those things so that you can drive profitability more comprehensively.
00:19:14
Speaker 1: Doug, one of my favorite things that I learned from you early in the pandemic was how you were using e-commerce data as a leading indicator for what was going to happen to the rest of the business. You know, you talked about looking at Easter to understand what was going on on Halloween.
00:19:30
Speaker 3: You alluded to mask breath.
00:19:33
Speaker 1: And I remember when we spoke earlier in the pandemic, you were looking at e-com data and saying, hmm, people aren't really buying gum and mints right now. How is Hershey's organizing itself around the data that your team is seeing to have omni-channel outcomes?
00:19:48
Speaker 4: So I wouldn't say organized. around e-commerce data. I would say we're better organizing for our data and then our access to data. For us, this means a better overall inventorying of all the different data types that we have within Hershey, whether it's consumer, customer, or or our own internal data that we might not be leveraging in ways that could help the overall business. So having an inventory of all of that, and I think this is just foundational, but a lot of companies don't do this really, really well. Having that inventory and then giving that inventory transparency to the broader organization so that they can understand what we're either buying, storing, using, or not buying, storing, and using is super important because it allows you when you do that and you think about it from an end-to-end enterprise perspective to see where things maybe could be tied together to get broader insights. So digital commerce data or e-commerce data, in that sense, in terms of like trend spotting, You know, that can be combined with social listening, which is also designed to do some trend spottings. And then other things that you might be seeing in terms of any information that your customers might be feeding back to you from the physical store environment. So it takes all of those things working together to really think about, you know, then how do you organize once you've gotten those things together that naturally need to put together. And that's just good thinking around basic data governance, you know, who's owning the data. Who's managing the data and keeping it secure? And then who's actually building the systems that store the data? All those things have to be thought of as a whole to really think about how you organize your teams around the data and the access to data. So it's not just about e-commerce. It's about broadly.
00:21:31
Speaker 3: Data governance.
00:21:32
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:21:32
Speaker 4: Yeah. Broadly organizing around data and how do you leverage it? And again, not for reasons that were with malintent, but Most companies have some version of a silo system that they have to work through. And so elevating the governance to be cross-functional and doing those inventories and getting the transparency is really, really key. That's something that I kicked off a couple of years ago at Hershey. And originally it was designed to talk about the inventory of technological platforms that could be connected, used for broader commercial use. The next level of that is like, okay, data needs to be treated the same way and governed the same way or through the same body, I should say.
00:22:12
Speaker 2: You know, you talk about data governance, but you also talk about the importance of data getting into the right hands of the people and bringing down silos. To me, I look at it and it's like the way data gets distributed is more like a whatchamacallit. And maybe it just needs to have, maybe we need to have ingredients parsed out and given to the right people in the right way.
00:22:32
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:22:32
Speaker 2: There's just so much of it and just being able to get it in the right hands of the right people at the right time.
00:22:37
Speaker 4: The thing is, when you provide that transparency and people can see what other teams are doing, whether it's with different analytical platforms or different types of data, it really opens up people's eyes to go, oh, my God, I could actually use that over here. And we've got a number of examples of that, whether it's broader content analysis. Collection, curation, management, and syndication and distribution, which Sarah, obviously your company and ours work on. Then also how we think about helping our retailers with managing their on-shelf inventory to keep that at a maximum, particularly as things are moving into fulfillment through store from an e-commerce perspective. That's a confluence of a lot of pieces and parts of data that we actually already had and have had for years. It took putting them all together and looking at them and going, Is there a new way we can use this to actually pull more value out of what we have?
00:23:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why I think education is so key. We're going to move on to the rapid fire questions. Yeah, okay.
00:23:39
Speaker 5: Okay.
00:23:39
Speaker 2: These are going to be very brief and very important.
00:23:42
Speaker 4: Oh, okay. I'm ready. Bring it on.
00:23:45
Speaker 2: Rachel mocks me. All right. Question number one. What is your favorite Hershey product?
00:23:49
Speaker 4: Reese's peanut butter cups. Damn you. Yeah, my second favorite would be the new Jolly Rancher Gummies, which we reintroduced at the beginning of this year. They're delicious, particularly the sour versions.
00:24:02
Speaker 2: You're killing me, Smalls.
00:24:03
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's good stuff.
00:24:05
Speaker 2: Last thing you bought online?
00:24:06
Speaker 4: The last thing I bought online was a pair of shoes.
00:24:11
Speaker 2: Why would anybody wear shoes? I'm very confused about this. Please explain this to this plebeian over here.
00:24:17
Speaker 4: Yeah, wasn't a pair of shoes, come to think of it? I take that back. It was an additional webcam.
00:24:21
Speaker 2: Okay, now you see they're talking about actual utility here.
00:24:24
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. It was an actual webcam. So I take that back.
00:24:27
Speaker 2: All right, Rachel, what's your favorite Hershey's product? Reese's.
00:24:30
Speaker 1: I have such a deep-seated place in my heart for peanut butter.
00:24:34
Speaker 2: Oh, I love peanut butter. Sorry, I'm going to get up. I'm so torn between my favorite chocolate and my favorite candy and my favorite chocolate being Reese's peanut butter. I'm so excited for pretzels and Twizzler Bites. People who know me deeply don't know which to get. Back in the day that we had workspace, people would show up at my desk with both. They knew this is a way to my heart. You don't have to kiss my butt. You just have to bring me these goodies.
00:24:58
Speaker 4: You were talking about Fresh from the Factory Twizzlers before the podcast. And I actually live just like a mile and a half from the Twizzlers factory. And when you drive by, you can smell that. But if you're a big Reese's fan, you can also get Fresh from the Factory Reese's. And that is also incredible.
00:25:15
Speaker 2: You can smell it. When you're driving into Hershey, Pennsylvania, you can smell it. And then like, if you stay at the Hershey hotel and you get one of the cocktails that has like the, the, like this, Oh my God, the cocktails, they infuse all the Hershey goodness. Okay. I'm totally getting like into.
00:25:31
Speaker 4: That's okay. We love it.
00:25:34
Speaker 2: A personal advocate.
00:25:34
Speaker 3: I just love how you remember every detail about your Hershey vacation.
00:25:38
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh.
00:25:39
Speaker 2: I'm going to like follow up with an album. I'm going to follow up with an album of every single year we went to Hershey Park. And then one time I actually got to go to a business conference at the Hershey Hotel, which was like the coolest thing in the world. But anyway, I digress because we have a very important question to ask you.
00:25:55
Speaker 4: All right. Rachel?
00:25:56
Speaker 3: The most important question. Doug, are you ready for it?
00:26:00
Speaker 4: I'm ready.
00:26:01
Speaker 3: What is the bravest thing that you've ever done? It can be personal or professional.
00:26:06
Speaker 4: That's an easy one. September 11th, 2001. I was one year into my marriage with my wife. And in fact, today is my anniversary. So happy anniversary, Michelle. Congrats. And 20 years to us.
00:26:16
Speaker 2: And spending it with us.
00:26:17
Speaker 4: And spending it with you guys.
00:26:19
Speaker 2: That's a sign of a good 20-year marriage.
00:26:22
Speaker 4: That's right. It's solid. So one year into a marriage. We're living in New York City, September 11th. What it really did for me was allow me to reflect on how I was feeling about the job I had, the company that I worked for, and what was really important to me. And I've always been very focused in terms of career, probably to the detriment of some of the things in my personal life. And this was something where my wife will probably kill me for being this frank, but we were one year into our marriage and it was difficult, right? So we had gotten married. My company had been bought. I'd been put in a new job. We'd moved in New York City. you know, all in like 90 days. I wasn't really enjoying, nor did I have really full respect for the company I was working for. And it was coming home with me and it was really having an effect on my relationship with Michelle. And I had to come to the realization that it was either Michelle or the job. And that really, really was amplified after September 11th, where I think a lot of people were thinking about like what's really important to them, particularly when you're there watching it out your window. And so about a month after it was mid-October, I quit my job with no job in place. And that was brave, you know, and not a lot of jobs to be had. Right. So that's the bravest thing I ever did. And I applied myself. I negotiated with the company that I was working for, kind of like a off ramp. And within one week of the off ramp, which was in December of 2001, I had a new job with a new company and I kind of started things afresh. Right. And that helped save, you know, my relationship with my wife. made me a happier person, but it only would have happened because there was something that really tragic that forced me to evaluate what was really important to me and to do something about it. So that's the bravest thing I've ever done.
00:28:12
Speaker 2: We kind of got the spoiler alert when you said you were in your 20th anniversary. So we kind of knew how the story ended. We were very excited by how the story ended in advance. I was like, what's he going to do?
00:28:24
Speaker 4: You chose Michelle. She's an amazing person on many, many levels.
00:28:29
Speaker 1: I freaking love that question because we just got to know you in a whole new way. Doug, you're always a wealth of knowledge. I think the audience just learned a tremendous amount around fulfillment, data governance, what it means to be on the offense of e-commerce. And it's just put you and Hershey's in such a tremendous position this year. So thank you for spending an hour with us. I know you have a lot of important things to do.
00:28:51
Speaker 4: Oh, absolutely.
00:28:53
Speaker 2: And happy anniversary.
00:28:54
Speaker 4: Thank you so much.
00:28:56
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.
00:28:57
Speaker 3: Please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.
00:29:00
Speaker 2: Follow us on Spotify and Google Podcasts. And don't forget to share this link with a friend.
00:29:10
Speaker 5: Hi, I'm Jackie Cooper, Global Chief Brand Officer at Edelman and the host of Touch of Truth, a new podcast launching on the Adweek Podcast Network. My dad gave me this incredibly smart piece of advice, meet everyone once. As a result, I've met some of the most fascinating and inspiring people on the planet. Now on Touch of Truth, we're coming center stage and sharing the mic to experience stories of truth, insights, and visions for the future that will challenge your way of thinking. Touch of Truth is available wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes come out every Tuesday. I do hope to see you there.
