00:00:02
Speaker 1: Marketing today is much broader and deeper. And so that means you need folks who are, I call them lifelong learners or continuous learners, those who are eager to learn because we need people who aren't as good at what they're doing today, but who can be good at what's going to come tomorrow. They need to be adaptable and agile, digitally savvy, willing to take risks. Some of that still comes from MBA programs. A lot of it's coming from undergrad. So we're actually looking a lot more towards undergrad, just as I think about digitally native and adaptable and agile and kind of today's environment. It's a little bit less about where they're coming from and more about kind of thinking about those attributes in addition to some of the kind of core attributes that we would always look for in a strong marketer.
00:00:41
Speaker 2: Welcome to today's episode of Brave Commerce.
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Speaker 3: 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 3: And this is a show that talks about what's relevant in e-commerce for the world's biggest brands. Sarah, when did you start going to Walmart as a shopper?
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Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I was in summer camp. Growing up in the New York area, not a lot of Walmarts. Actually, I live near the Walmart where Greeter got killed like a million years ago, like that Walmart. So didn't really grow up going to Walmart, but I was in summer camp. And like when we had a free day, they would take us to Walmart. And it was like the most extraordinary experience. Like, Coming from, you know, a small town on Long Island, like the biggest store I'd ever been to maybe was Walt Downs, if that like rings a bell.
00:01:35
Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: But yeah, you hear about it, but you have no idea what it is, which is crazy because like what, like 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of a Walmart.
00:01:43
Speaker 1: I don't know. How about you?
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Speaker 3: You're not going to be surprised by this story. First time I went to Walmart was summer camp in Augusta, Maine.
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Speaker 1: Oh, man.
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Speaker 2: That's awesome. Were you equally blown away?
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Speaker 1: A hundred percent.
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Speaker 3: First of all, I'm like, wait, I can buy my groceries. I can buy toys. I can get a haircut all in the same place. This is amazing.
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Speaker 2: It really is extraordinary. You can get your tires changed.
00:02:08
Speaker 1: Yes.
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Speaker 2: And then when I got my house upstate, I'm sure you see this too in Accord, the Monticello Walmart is amazing.
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Speaker 1: Extraordinary.
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Speaker 2: One thing I had realized when I was running 360i, which was a digital agency, was the interconnectivity between the in-store activities or the lack of connectivity. between what was happening in store from a marketing perspective and all the work that we were doing from a consumer perspective, whether that was TV or digital. And I was in such a digital world that I was not even thinking about the in-store experience. I just wanted to make sure that I was complimenting the consumer experience out of the store that you walk into the store and it's totally different owned by completely different budgets. And I realized like, I need to learn more about this thing called shopper marketing. So this was like 2011, something like that. So I hired a consultant to teach me because I didn't know anything. I studied extensively. And then I said, you know what? We're going to take our creative strategy and planning teams and social teams, and we're going to take them to their first Walmart, their first Target, and give them assignments as if they are primary household shopper. So you have these like hipsters from Fidei getting them to, we took them on a school bus out to Jersey and we're like, okay, you're the dad of two little kids. You've got to put dinner on the table. You got to pick up a birthday gift for little Johnny's friend because he's going to a party and don't forget the fertilizer. And here's your budget and you've got 20 minutes.
00:03:42
Speaker 1: Oh my God.
00:03:43
Speaker 2: So it was kind of like, it was really walking a mile in your consumer shoes. And yet fast forward today, how much is different?
00:03:51
Speaker 3: If I had to think about structurally how many people think the way that you described versus do not in silos, I want to say that we got 60% thinking the way that you're talking.
00:04:04
Speaker 2: And how many are organizing and they're internally behaving different?
00:04:09
Speaker 3: I would say 25%. I'd say 75%. are still operating in silos.
00:04:15
Speaker 2: Right. So now, think 10 years ago, who was really walking the talk?
00:04:19
Speaker 3: 10 years ago, I think back to when I started Micmac 10 years ago, I can't even name an organization.
00:04:26
Speaker 2: Which is what makes it so crazy that Georgia Pacific's been doing this for 10 years now, right?
00:04:32
Speaker 1: I know.
00:04:32
Speaker 3: Georgia Pacific, where were you when I started Micmac?
00:04:37
Speaker 2: Well, we sure learned a lot from Laura today, huh?
00:04:40
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Well, you're about to hear from Laura, who is leading marketing and honestly, much more when you hear on the show at Georgia Pacific. And let's hear how she's conquering the customer as well as the retailer, as well as the brand experience. Today, we got a very big portfolio onto the show. And we have Laura Niebusch, the SVP of CPG Marketing and CX at Georgia Pacific.
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Speaker 1: Hello, Laura. Hello, everyone. Excited to be here.
00:05:11
Speaker 3: You are now officially a part of the Brave Commerce alumni crew. And I have to tell you, a few of our other guests also started their career at Procter & Gamble. which I know you did, and then you've now spent nearly 15 years plus at Georgia Pacific. I have a feeling the world has changed since you started your career, but how do you feel brand building has shifted from when you started to where we are today?
00:05:35
Speaker 1: Sure, absolutely. There are a few of us P & G alumni kind of wandering around the marketing world, and I feel very grateful to be one of them. Coming out of business school, you know, I cut my teeth at P & G. I learned brand building and what good looked like and from some of the greatest brand builders in the world. And I think the fundamentals of what I learned at P & G are still the same. Understanding your consumer, understanding how your product or your brand can provide a unique functional and or emotional value to that consumer. And then being consistent with that over and over again, that I don't think has changed. But I do believe over the last 15, 20 years, where and how you connect with consumers, their expectations of us, that has changed wildly. So when I took on this role four years ago, taking on the leadership of our marketing capability, we were a pretty traditional brand building, brand marketing capability. And at the time, the world was changing. It was COVID. And so part of what I really wanted to come in and do was just reimagine what that looked like. And really better make sure our brands were set up not to just tell their stories, but to deliver really strong experiences every time a consumer interacted and experiences that tied back to that, you know, what made those brands different and why they were better than alternatives. So that's why at the time we evolved the name to be Consumer Experience to recognize that it wasn't just about kind of the national media or the promotions we'd been in. We had to think about all aspects of meeting the consumer where they were and and understanding their pain points and how we could help uniquely deliver on that. And that meant a more full funnel approach. And so we really had three kind of key pillars, one of them was brand building, because again, it all still starts from that foundation, but then really bringing in a pillar to modernize our media mix and think about where and how we were reaching consumers and should reach consumers in the future. And then the third one was just around having a much clearer roadmap around data and technology.
00:07:29
Speaker 2: Sounds very smart in retrospect, right? We look back and we say, okay, well, COVID, if it was anything, it was a wake-up call to say, what got you here won't get you there. And so the pivot to consumer makes all the sense in the world. How does that change as you think about what talent do you need in order to make those pivots and how do you find them?
00:07:53
Speaker 1: Yes. Another great question that has evolved a lot. You know, I think a lot of us, again, when I was coming out, I was the MBA grad from Duke coming to P & G. I think that was a pretty traditional kind of path for the folks entering brand building. And it was about being strategic and creative and being able to strategically and creatively tell your brand stories. And today you have to be all of that and more. You have to be strategic and creative, but analytical, and then also be digitally savvy. And so the skill sets needed to for marketing today is much broader and deeper. And so that means you need folks who are, I would call them lifelong learners or continuous learners, those who are eager to learn because things are changing and we need people who aren't as good at what they're doing today, but who can be good at what's going to come tomorrow. That means they need to be adaptable and agile, digitally savvy, and kind of willing to take risks because that's the environment we're in. So Some of that still comes from MBA programs. A lot of it's coming from undergrad. So we're actually looking a lot more towards undergrad, just as I think about digitally native and adaptable and agile and kind of today's environment. But it's a little bit less about where they're coming from and more about kind of thinking about those attributes in addition to some of the kind of core attributes that we would always look for in a strong marketer.
00:09:07
Speaker 2: It's interesting you keep referencing specific academic backgrounds. Obviously, you have a tremendous pedigree and you're looking for people with a similar pedigree. I didn't think I was going to be asking this question, but as you're talking, I'm thinking to myself, what do you think is different about today's curriculum that makes the talent better or stronger as an MBA grad or even as an undergrad? Or do you just believe that there is just this, the digital native stuff of a younger audience allows them, just gives them a more innate way of being agile because they just don't know any better? Yes.
00:09:41
Speaker 1: Both colleges and MBA programs are trying to make sure their curriculums are catching up with the times and bringing in programs around social and data and analytics that definitely were not there 20 years ago when I was getting my MBA. But to me, it is more about those who are digitally native, who have just grown up in this environment and are so used to how quickly digital moves and kind of what's new and are able to kind of make that quick change to kind of understand what's next. So I think some of it is education. Some of it is just kind of mindset and a little bit of the times.
00:10:09
Speaker 3: You know, since you took over leading the marketing organization since the pandemic, I have to imagine maybe not everyone within the company was digitally native.
00:10:18
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:10:19
Speaker 3: So talk to us about the change management aspect around all this.
00:10:22
Speaker 1: Yes, that has been fun. It's actually been great. For many folks, we had to build the case. So part of it was just the fact that even from a marketing standpoint, we were very heavy in video. I mean, we are national CPG paper products. We were probably 70 or 80% of our investment was in pretty traditional video. And so we put out a roadmap over three years of where we wanted to get our investments and where we thought we needed to be to appropriately kind of reach our consumers and engage with them in the right areas. But then we needed to build to that by investing, learning, testing, kind of proving out investments and then continuing to scale that. And so we have now kind of exceeded where we wanted to be right now. And I think we've been able to bring the organization along in a way that they are very confident that we are helping them put their dollars in the right places. We have built out digital capabilities, greater digital capabilities on my team with an in-house programmatic team, search experts, social experts. So I feel like we've got the people internally to help us make the right decisions. And then we continue to try and bring in external inspiration just so they can hear it from others, not just us. And bring in whether it's other brands or other experts at various inspiration sessions throughout the year to help inspire and show kind of what can be out in the world.
00:11:31
Speaker 3: So you brought up sales and marketing. That's often a hot topic on this show because something that comes up, even though we sometimes even try to avoid it and it comes up, is the hot button of retail media. And I know that retail media sits with you, which isn't always the case in a lot of organizations. Sometimes retail media sits within the sales organization. Can you talk to us about the business case around that and why it sits within the marketing organization? And I'm sure you still have to work with your sales counterparts. How does that work?
00:12:02
Speaker 1: Yes. The age-old question of should shoppers sit in sales or in marketing? Yes. It has been both at Georgia Pacific over my time there. We brought it into the marketing organization almost 10 years ago. And that was even before retail media was even much of a thing. But at the time, it was the recognition that we could create more value for our brands if we were better connecting our brand objectives to our retailer objectives and better telling that story and create those right experiences in-store or online. So that happened years ago. The key thing has been, no matter where it sits, is you have to be integrated. So while shopper marketing and retail media sits in my team, my shopper managers are pointed to different customers. And so they are experts on that customer. They are sitting or connected with those retail teams. And we have to have really good communication across all the investments to make sure we're making the right decisions. But I do believe having it on my team has allowed us to scale investments with retail media in a way that I think we are making, you know, we feel good about the value we're creating. It does not just feel like it's a tax or something we're having to do because it's a sales request. We've been able to lean in and test and learn and measure, really identify who we want to be strategic partners with, and also identify where we don't and we need to make harder choices. And with that, we've created a maturity assessment that we Our team uses, we use it with our sales teams to really kind of look at the things that we would want in a strategic partner, what would need to be true for us to invest more, especially versus other alternatives versus where we might, you know, want to take a more cautious approach. So my shopper managers sit next to my national media managers who sit next to search, who has both retail and national search and social and my in-house programmatic team who's buying a lot of it. And so that has allowed us just to, I think, make smarter decisions and optimize faster, and I think get even greater value out of the investments we're making. Again, super prescient.
00:13:56
Speaker 2: In retrospect, I'm curious, this obviously predates you, but when the organization did this 10 years ago, that must have been quite the mental, like, oh my gosh, sales teams really got to get their heads around it. I mean, I know you weren't there, but that must have required a lot of brain cell, you know, stretching, if you will.
00:14:17
Speaker 1: And coincidentally, I was actually the new shopper director at the time. So I wasn't very involved when it came in the first time. And it was. It requires trust within the organization. It requires really, really strong integrated teamwork and listening to what the needs were from kind of both the brand and category teams and the sales team, and then having a really strong team that could ladder both. So it's definitely been an evolution over time, you know, and I think Overall, everyone feels good. Like I said, I think as long as the integrated teamwork is there, as long as, you know, we've got the right people at the table at the right time and everyone feels like their needs are getting heard, you know, we can work through it. I do believe our organization, both kind of the brand and the sales teams recognize that we have been able to kind of create more value out of our retail media investments and really trying to think about that more as full funnel investments than we would have if we'd been separate.
00:15:07
Speaker 2: I really appreciate it because if you look at it, it was almost 15 years ago, I was running a digital agency and I brought shopper marketing capabilities into the agency. I feel like you're bringing shopper capabilities into a digital agency. And I held up, you know, my iPhone 1.0 or whatever it was at the time. And I was like, this is the thing that bridges the consumer and shopper experience. So if you're making your shopping list on your phone and then you're going into a store, what's consumer and what's shopper? And again, they looked at me like I had three heads. And then I realized that my digital team, most of them were in New York and never even been to a Walmart. They grew up in D'Agostino. And so we really had to do a lot to educate, like how do people buy orange shoes, toilet paper, paper towels, whatever it is, and reverse engineer success from the perspective of the human being, not the consumer or the shopper. So I was with you back then, but I felt like I was definitely, people thought I was probably taking some drugs that I probably should have been taking, but that's a whole other story. On a pivot level within that, as we look at like the big, big, big tent poles, I can tell you my family was watching the Super Bowl together and we were really into it. you're what you guys did for angel soft. Like that was utility. It was breakthrough. It was simple, but what wasn't as obvious maybe to everybody that might've been in market was that you really had this unified consumer experience with Amazon. How did you measure the efficacy? Sure.
00:16:40
Speaker 1: Well, one, thank you. We were very excited about the Super Bowl, the whole activation. It was the first time we ever did one for Georgia Pacific and definitely the first time for AngelSoft. And the original objective for this was more about awareness than necessarily kind of immediate sales. So it was about kind of creating awareness of AngelSoft as the brand. And we had a brand icon we'd introduced two years ago, Angel, and she was really, you know, kind of front and center in the ad and the activation. And so we had added, we put her on packaging last year and Super Bowl was a chance to kind of share her with the entire world. But with that, we still wanted to make sure that it was that unified experience and that if you saw Angel and AngelSoft, you would connect that the dots if you were either in store or online. So leading up to the Super Bowl, it was still very much Angel and AngelSoft, but it was more about getting ready for the big game, kind of stocking up for the big game. So kind of leading up into kind of a key stock up period. But then once we started teasing the idea, which was pottytunities and making sure folks had a chance to go to the bathroom during the Super Bowl, we then made sure that, again, the look and feel and the messaging was all consistent with kind of the pottytunities activation. So if you saw it online, if you went to search, whether it was Amazon.com, Walmart.com, or in-store, you got that unified experience. You saw Angel, you heard the message, and could then very easily put an item into your cart. So I think that's been really important to us to kind of make sure that was consistent with we were delivering this kind of ubiquitous message and kind of ubiquitous icon no matter where you were looking for Angelsoft. So we've been very happy. Our awareness increased for both the brand and Angel. We saw a really nice lift in impressions. Our searches for the brand increased. And over time, we believe we're going to see the long-term value from that investment.
00:18:25
Speaker 3: And the fact that you also brought your MMM in-house, I imagine... you have this analytics engine that's humming along so you can really understand what is the total impact of investing in the Super Bowl.
00:18:38
Speaker 1: Yes, and that's one of the benefits. So we've got certainly our immediate kind of measures around awareness and impressions, but we'll be looking to measure the whole thing in-house with the MMM. And that has been a huge enabler for us, even going back to your question around kind of building confidence in digital by building out the capabilities, bringing in marketing measurement in-house. We've been able to measure more frequently in a very consistent way Again, there's one source of truth. We all know M & M isn't perfect, but it is a way for us to measure across digital, across retail media, across video, across promotions, and have at least a consistent way to look across all of those and then feed that back. So we're feeding it internally to my team to help make the optimizations as well as back to the brand teams so they can feel good about where their investments are and where they want to invest more or invest less.
00:19:24
Speaker 3: And so along with in-housing analytics, advanced analytics is a practice. You also have made additional investments in other aspects of MarTech, I think like a CDP. And so just tell us more about this MarTech roadmap and how you view technology as an enabler for the business.
00:19:42
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:19:42
Speaker 1: I mean, this was, you know, data and technology was kind of my third pillar when I was coming on board of if we were going to deliver consumer experience, we had to have a way to measure.
00:19:50
Speaker 2: It.
00:19:50
Speaker 1: We had to have a way to deliver it, measure it, and then optimize and kind of improve based on it. And an MMM every two years was certainly not going to cut it. And some of the ways we were delivering kind of our content and media was not going to cut it. And so I The key thing we did that enabled the MMM, but many other use cases, was really building out the data strategy and the data foundation. I always joke, it's not that we didn't have data. We had like 40 plus sources of data, but no one could have named them all for you. And they sat in Excel spreadsheets and in silos and sometimes agencies have them. And certainly to take two sources and put them together was like a week's long process. And so we created... kind of our data foundation, which we call Data Cloud. We connected all sources of marketing data. We harmonized it. You can now go in and pull from any of that into one report. We put it into an easier to use accessible system. We train the organization. Marketing mixed modeling was the first use case, but then we're using it for media optimization, promotion optimization. And we've got kind of a pretty disciplined list of where else we think we can create value with it and how do we make sure we build towards that. So that was probably one of the biggest things we accomplished. But the other thing we have been doing over this time is building our first-party database. So again, making sure we have the right technology to do that. That was another priority, both from, you know, at the time what was happening with Google and potentially the cookie deprecation, but certainly privacy. I wanted to make sure that we had a more direct relationship with our consumers where possible. And so we built up kind of the MarTech behind that and been able to increase our first-party database capacity. 200 times in that period. And so it's something we can substantially activate against both from a media and from more of a direct kind of interaction standpoint. I think marketing technology, like many things, there's a lot of shiny objects out there. So for me, it's important to know kind of where the biggest opportunities are and really think about the value you can create and also the change management required. One thing someone told me when I first started was so many people aren't even getting the amount of value they can out of the technology you have. So before you start jumping into something new, make sure you have more of mind what you're doing and are getting the usage out of it and getting those values and kind of making sure there's use cases. And I've really taken that to heart to make sure we're not just jumping to cool things that I think can help us, but making sure we're getting the value and the change management needed to do that.
00:22:11
Speaker 3: How do you incentivize folks within your organization to adopt new technology?
00:22:15
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:22:16
Speaker 1: Well, we've been trying to do a lot of training and a lot of hands-on training, whether that's data cloud or AI. We're trying to do that pretty frequently to make sure that folks feel like it's not just someone speaking to them, but like, let's look at use cases. Let's get in there, bring your computer, let's try it out. I found that's been really important. People seeing leadership do it is really, particularly as I think about AI, knowing that we're using it and we're putting that expectation out there with our teams, that this is part of This is part of how we think you're going to create value in your role. And if you're not using it, then that means you're not creating all the value you can. And so really making sure people are motivated and understand that it's there. I mean, this is all about helping them do their jobs better and getting rid of a lot of things that honestly people don't want to do. It's a lot of times the work that's more monotonous or certainly less exciting and hopefully giving them the ability to work on the things where they can create more value and are more fulfilled.
00:23:05
Speaker 2: It goes back to what you were saying about curiosity and agility. Yeah. And also just frankly, resourcefulness. Like you said, there are so many different sources of data that you have across your organization. You can even put it all in your CDP and have a beautiful environment of your data foundation, which is great. But if that's just sitting off to the side and people don't have the natural curiosity to say, Hey, I wonder if I could triangulate three different things to solve this particular problem. If they don't even know what's available to them, how the hell are they going to get to the.
00:23:37
Speaker 1: Point of doing anything about it?
00:23:39
Speaker 2: So the whole idea of top-down using it, but bottom-up almost being the catalyst for it is a balance that I suppose you become the conductor of that orchestra, right? Yes.
00:23:51
Speaker 1: Now, I absolutely agree with what you just said. resourcefulness is a great word because there's a lot we don't know. And if you're not curious and trying to learn, then yeah, we're not going to make progress. You know, I want people to want to dig in and understand how it can create that value. And people have to have that entrepreneurship and they want to, you know, have to want to learn. And so I think recognizing, again, inspiring, recognizing, giving them the tools to do it, and then hopefully, you know, inspiring by seeing what we're doing can help them achieve that.
00:24:17
Speaker 3: Well, Laura, we got to ask you our famous last question, which is what's the bravest thing you've ever done? Yes, this is a great question. I'll give two very brief ones. One is professional and one is personal. Professionally, this role was actually one of the bravest things I've done. You know, I had been at Georgia Pacific 15 years or 15 years now, and I some in the capability, but mostly in the business.
00:24:38
Speaker 1: So I had been our general manager of our talent napkin, which was one of our largest businesses for about two years. when this role opened up. And it was April of 2020. So it was the start of COVID. And so it was kind of moving out what I would say was a very established kind of career path for me and stepping into something more unknown, which I knew was going to require a lot of work and kind of vision, I think, to make it what we wanted it to be. But I am passionate about this space. Hopefully you've seen that. And I felt like I was the right person in the organization to be able to do that. So Stepping into it, it was a scary time to make a change, but I've been in this role four years now, and I've loved every minute of it. So that is certainly from a professional standpoint. From a personal one, I am actually a two-time cancer survivor. I had Hodgkin's disease when I was a teenager and was in remission for many, many years, and then unfortunately was diagnosed with breast cancer a few years ago. And so the first time, I don't think I really even understood... how bad it could be. But the second time you have a much better idea. I had a family and a young daughter and it's just a much scarier situation. And so that's where I think about being brave and kind of facing that with optimism and determination and certainly a whole lot of support from a lot of people around me. That's certainly kind of my more recent example. And hopefully I was a good role model for my daughter and very happy to say I'm kind of three years cancer free again.
00:26:02
Speaker 3: Tremendous. And thank you so much for sharing being vulnerable. It's surprising to hear with everything that you just shared with us. So it's amazing to see what you've accomplished.
00:26:11
Speaker 1: Thank you.
00:26:12
Speaker 3: Everyone, go check out the great brands of Georgia Pacific. Follow Laura on LinkedIn so you can be a part of this change journey that she has been leading. If you like what you heard and you want more episodes that talk about where should essentially shopper and retail media sit within the organization, is it marketing or sales?
00:26:33
Speaker 1: Well, guess what?
00:26:34
Speaker 3: We've talked about this quite recently. It must be a hot topic. Go check out an episode we did with Ferrero's Danielle Sporkin or Molson Core's Brad Feinberg. If you like what you heard, tell a friend, write a review. Thanks for listening.
00:27:02
Speaker 2: 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.
00:27:20
Speaker 3: Now on Touch of Truth, we're coming centre stage and sharing the mic to experience stories of truth.
00:27:26
Speaker 2: 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: Marketing today is much broader and deeper. And so that means you need folks who are, I call them lifelong learners or continuous learners, those who are eager to learn because we need people who aren't as good at what they're doing today, but who can be good at what's going to come tomorrow. They need to be adaptable and agile, digitally savvy, willing to take risks. Some of that still comes from MBA programs. A lot of it's coming from undergrad. So we're actually looking a lot more towards undergrad, just as I think about digitally native and adaptable and agile and kind of today's environment. It's a little bit less about where they're coming from and more about kind of thinking about those attributes in addition to some of the kind of core attributes that we would always look for in a strong marketer.
00:00:41
Speaker 2: Welcome to today's episode of Brave Commerce.
00:00:44
Speaker 3: I'm Rachel Tippegraph, the founder and CEO of Micmac.
00:00:47
Speaker 2: I'm Sarah Hofstetter, president of Profitero.
00:00:50
Speaker 3: And this is a show that talks about what's relevant in e-commerce for the world's biggest brands. Sarah, when did you start going to Walmart as a shopper?
00:01:05
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I was in summer camp. Growing up in the New York area, not a lot of Walmarts. Actually, I live near the Walmart where Greeter got killed like a million years ago, like that Walmart. So didn't really grow up going to Walmart, but I was in summer camp. And like when we had a free day, they would take us to Walmart. And it was like the most extraordinary experience. Like, Coming from, you know, a small town on Long Island, like the biggest store I'd ever been to maybe was Walt Downs, if that like rings a bell.
00:01:35
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:01:35
Speaker 2: But yeah, you hear about it, but you have no idea what it is, which is crazy because like what, like 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of a Walmart.
00:01:43
Speaker 1: I don't know. How about you?
00:01:45
Speaker 3: You're not going to be surprised by this story. First time I went to Walmart was summer camp in Augusta, Maine.
00:01:52
Speaker 1: Oh, man.
00:01:53
Speaker 2: That's awesome. Were you equally blown away?
00:01:55
Speaker 1: A hundred percent.
00:01:56
Speaker 3: First of all, I'm like, wait, I can buy my groceries. I can buy toys. I can get a haircut all in the same place. This is amazing.
00:02:05
Speaker 2: It really is extraordinary. You can get your tires changed.
00:02:08
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:02:08
Speaker 2: And then when I got my house upstate, I'm sure you see this too in Accord, the Monticello Walmart is amazing.
00:02:15
Speaker 1: Extraordinary.
00:02:15
Speaker 2: One thing I had realized when I was running 360i, which was a digital agency, was the interconnectivity between the in-store activities or the lack of connectivity. between what was happening in store from a marketing perspective and all the work that we were doing from a consumer perspective, whether that was TV or digital. And I was in such a digital world that I was not even thinking about the in-store experience. I just wanted to make sure that I was complimenting the consumer experience out of the store that you walk into the store and it's totally different owned by completely different budgets. And I realized like, I need to learn more about this thing called shopper marketing. So this was like 2011, something like that. So I hired a consultant to teach me because I didn't know anything. I studied extensively. And then I said, you know what? We're going to take our creative strategy and planning teams and social teams, and we're going to take them to their first Walmart, their first Target, and give them assignments as if they are primary household shopper. So you have these like hipsters from Fidei getting them to, we took them on a school bus out to Jersey and we're like, okay, you're the dad of two little kids. You've got to put dinner on the table. You got to pick up a birthday gift for little Johnny's friend because he's going to a party and don't forget the fertilizer. And here's your budget and you've got 20 minutes.
00:03:42
Speaker 1: Oh my God.
00:03:43
Speaker 2: So it was kind of like, it was really walking a mile in your consumer shoes. And yet fast forward today, how much is different?
00:03:51
Speaker 3: If I had to think about structurally how many people think the way that you described versus do not in silos, I want to say that we got 60% thinking the way that you're talking.
00:04:04
Speaker 2: And how many are organizing and they're internally behaving different?
00:04:09
Speaker 3: I would say 25%. I'd say 75%. are still operating in silos.
00:04:15
Speaker 2: Right. So now, think 10 years ago, who was really walking the talk?
00:04:19
Speaker 3: 10 years ago, I think back to when I started Micmac 10 years ago, I can't even name an organization.
00:04:26
Speaker 2: Which is what makes it so crazy that Georgia Pacific's been doing this for 10 years now, right?
00:04:32
Speaker 1: I know.
00:04:32
Speaker 3: Georgia Pacific, where were you when I started Micmac?
00:04:37
Speaker 2: Well, we sure learned a lot from Laura today, huh?
00:04:40
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Well, you're about to hear from Laura, who is leading marketing and honestly, much more when you hear on the show at Georgia Pacific. And let's hear how she's conquering the customer as well as the retailer, as well as the brand experience. Today, we got a very big portfolio onto the show. And we have Laura Niebusch, the SVP of CPG Marketing and CX at Georgia Pacific.
00:05:08
Speaker 1: Hello, Laura. Hello, everyone. Excited to be here.
00:05:11
Speaker 3: You are now officially a part of the Brave Commerce alumni crew. And I have to tell you, a few of our other guests also started their career at Procter & Gamble. which I know you did, and then you've now spent nearly 15 years plus at Georgia Pacific. I have a feeling the world has changed since you started your career, but how do you feel brand building has shifted from when you started to where we are today?
00:05:35
Speaker 1: Sure, absolutely. There are a few of us P & G alumni kind of wandering around the marketing world, and I feel very grateful to be one of them. Coming out of business school, you know, I cut my teeth at P & G. I learned brand building and what good looked like and from some of the greatest brand builders in the world. And I think the fundamentals of what I learned at P & G are still the same. Understanding your consumer, understanding how your product or your brand can provide a unique functional and or emotional value to that consumer. And then being consistent with that over and over again, that I don't think has changed. But I do believe over the last 15, 20 years, where and how you connect with consumers, their expectations of us, that has changed wildly. So when I took on this role four years ago, taking on the leadership of our marketing capability, we were a pretty traditional brand building, brand marketing capability. And at the time, the world was changing. It was COVID. And so part of what I really wanted to come in and do was just reimagine what that looked like. And really better make sure our brands were set up not to just tell their stories, but to deliver really strong experiences every time a consumer interacted and experiences that tied back to that, you know, what made those brands different and why they were better than alternatives. So that's why at the time we evolved the name to be Consumer Experience to recognize that it wasn't just about kind of the national media or the promotions we'd been in. We had to think about all aspects of meeting the consumer where they were and and understanding their pain points and how we could help uniquely deliver on that. And that meant a more full funnel approach. And so we really had three kind of key pillars, one of them was brand building, because again, it all still starts from that foundation, but then really bringing in a pillar to modernize our media mix and think about where and how we were reaching consumers and should reach consumers in the future. And then the third one was just around having a much clearer roadmap around data and technology.
00:07:29
Speaker 2: Sounds very smart in retrospect, right? We look back and we say, okay, well, COVID, if it was anything, it was a wake-up call to say, what got you here won't get you there. And so the pivot to consumer makes all the sense in the world. How does that change as you think about what talent do you need in order to make those pivots and how do you find them?
00:07:53
Speaker 1: Yes. Another great question that has evolved a lot. You know, I think a lot of us, again, when I was coming out, I was the MBA grad from Duke coming to P & G. I think that was a pretty traditional kind of path for the folks entering brand building. And it was about being strategic and creative and being able to strategically and creatively tell your brand stories. And today you have to be all of that and more. You have to be strategic and creative, but analytical, and then also be digitally savvy. And so the skill sets needed to for marketing today is much broader and deeper. And so that means you need folks who are, I would call them lifelong learners or continuous learners, those who are eager to learn because things are changing and we need people who aren't as good at what they're doing today, but who can be good at what's going to come tomorrow. That means they need to be adaptable and agile, digitally savvy, and kind of willing to take risks because that's the environment we're in. So Some of that still comes from MBA programs. A lot of it's coming from undergrad. So we're actually looking a lot more towards undergrad, just as I think about digitally native and adaptable and agile and kind of today's environment. But it's a little bit less about where they're coming from and more about kind of thinking about those attributes in addition to some of the kind of core attributes that we would always look for in a strong marketer.
00:09:07
Speaker 2: It's interesting you keep referencing specific academic backgrounds. Obviously, you have a tremendous pedigree and you're looking for people with a similar pedigree. I didn't think I was going to be asking this question, but as you're talking, I'm thinking to myself, what do you think is different about today's curriculum that makes the talent better or stronger as an MBA grad or even as an undergrad? Or do you just believe that there is just this, the digital native stuff of a younger audience allows them, just gives them a more innate way of being agile because they just don't know any better? Yes.
00:09:41
Speaker 1: Both colleges and MBA programs are trying to make sure their curriculums are catching up with the times and bringing in programs around social and data and analytics that definitely were not there 20 years ago when I was getting my MBA. But to me, it is more about those who are digitally native, who have just grown up in this environment and are so used to how quickly digital moves and kind of what's new and are able to kind of make that quick change to kind of understand what's next. So I think some of it is education. Some of it is just kind of mindset and a little bit of the times.
00:10:09
Speaker 3: You know, since you took over leading the marketing organization since the pandemic, I have to imagine maybe not everyone within the company was digitally native.
00:10:18
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:10:19
Speaker 3: So talk to us about the change management aspect around all this.
00:10:22
Speaker 1: Yes, that has been fun. It's actually been great. For many folks, we had to build the case. So part of it was just the fact that even from a marketing standpoint, we were very heavy in video. I mean, we are national CPG paper products. We were probably 70 or 80% of our investment was in pretty traditional video. And so we put out a roadmap over three years of where we wanted to get our investments and where we thought we needed to be to appropriately kind of reach our consumers and engage with them in the right areas. But then we needed to build to that by investing, learning, testing, kind of proving out investments and then continuing to scale that. And so we have now kind of exceeded where we wanted to be right now. And I think we've been able to bring the organization along in a way that they are very confident that we are helping them put their dollars in the right places. We have built out digital capabilities, greater digital capabilities on my team with an in-house programmatic team, search experts, social experts. So I feel like we've got the people internally to help us make the right decisions. And then we continue to try and bring in external inspiration just so they can hear it from others, not just us. And bring in whether it's other brands or other experts at various inspiration sessions throughout the year to help inspire and show kind of what can be out in the world.
00:11:31
Speaker 3: So you brought up sales and marketing. That's often a hot topic on this show because something that comes up, even though we sometimes even try to avoid it and it comes up, is the hot button of retail media. And I know that retail media sits with you, which isn't always the case in a lot of organizations. Sometimes retail media sits within the sales organization. Can you talk to us about the business case around that and why it sits within the marketing organization? And I'm sure you still have to work with your sales counterparts. How does that work?
00:12:02
Speaker 1: Yes. The age-old question of should shoppers sit in sales or in marketing? Yes. It has been both at Georgia Pacific over my time there. We brought it into the marketing organization almost 10 years ago. And that was even before retail media was even much of a thing. But at the time, it was the recognition that we could create more value for our brands if we were better connecting our brand objectives to our retailer objectives and better telling that story and create those right experiences in-store or online. So that happened years ago. The key thing has been, no matter where it sits, is you have to be integrated. So while shopper marketing and retail media sits in my team, my shopper managers are pointed to different customers. And so they are experts on that customer. They are sitting or connected with those retail teams. And we have to have really good communication across all the investments to make sure we're making the right decisions. But I do believe having it on my team has allowed us to scale investments with retail media in a way that I think we are making, you know, we feel good about the value we're creating. It does not just feel like it's a tax or something we're having to do because it's a sales request. We've been able to lean in and test and learn and measure, really identify who we want to be strategic partners with, and also identify where we don't and we need to make harder choices. And with that, we've created a maturity assessment that we Our team uses, we use it with our sales teams to really kind of look at the things that we would want in a strategic partner, what would need to be true for us to invest more, especially versus other alternatives versus where we might, you know, want to take a more cautious approach. So my shopper managers sit next to my national media managers who sit next to search, who has both retail and national search and social and my in-house programmatic team who's buying a lot of it. And so that has allowed us just to, I think, make smarter decisions and optimize faster, and I think get even greater value out of the investments we're making. Again, super prescient.
00:13:56
Speaker 2: In retrospect, I'm curious, this obviously predates you, but when the organization did this 10 years ago, that must have been quite the mental, like, oh my gosh, sales teams really got to get their heads around it. I mean, I know you weren't there, but that must have required a lot of brain cell, you know, stretching, if you will.
00:14:17
Speaker 1: And coincidentally, I was actually the new shopper director at the time. So I wasn't very involved when it came in the first time. And it was. It requires trust within the organization. It requires really, really strong integrated teamwork and listening to what the needs were from kind of both the brand and category teams and the sales team, and then having a really strong team that could ladder both. So it's definitely been an evolution over time, you know, and I think Overall, everyone feels good. Like I said, I think as long as the integrated teamwork is there, as long as, you know, we've got the right people at the table at the right time and everyone feels like their needs are getting heard, you know, we can work through it. I do believe our organization, both kind of the brand and the sales teams recognize that we have been able to kind of create more value out of our retail media investments and really trying to think about that more as full funnel investments than we would have if we'd been separate.
00:15:07
Speaker 2: I really appreciate it because if you look at it, it was almost 15 years ago, I was running a digital agency and I brought shopper marketing capabilities into the agency. I feel like you're bringing shopper capabilities into a digital agency. And I held up, you know, my iPhone 1.0 or whatever it was at the time. And I was like, this is the thing that bridges the consumer and shopper experience. So if you're making your shopping list on your phone and then you're going into a store, what's consumer and what's shopper? And again, they looked at me like I had three heads. And then I realized that my digital team, most of them were in New York and never even been to a Walmart. They grew up in D'Agostino. And so we really had to do a lot to educate, like how do people buy orange shoes, toilet paper, paper towels, whatever it is, and reverse engineer success from the perspective of the human being, not the consumer or the shopper. So I was with you back then, but I felt like I was definitely, people thought I was probably taking some drugs that I probably should have been taking, but that's a whole other story. On a pivot level within that, as we look at like the big, big, big tent poles, I can tell you my family was watching the Super Bowl together and we were really into it. you're what you guys did for angel soft. Like that was utility. It was breakthrough. It was simple, but what wasn't as obvious maybe to everybody that might've been in market was that you really had this unified consumer experience with Amazon. How did you measure the efficacy? Sure.
00:16:40
Speaker 1: Well, one, thank you. We were very excited about the Super Bowl, the whole activation. It was the first time we ever did one for Georgia Pacific and definitely the first time for AngelSoft. And the original objective for this was more about awareness than necessarily kind of immediate sales. So it was about kind of creating awareness of AngelSoft as the brand. And we had a brand icon we'd introduced two years ago, Angel, and she was really, you know, kind of front and center in the ad and the activation. And so we had added, we put her on packaging last year and Super Bowl was a chance to kind of share her with the entire world. But with that, we still wanted to make sure that it was that unified experience and that if you saw Angel and AngelSoft, you would connect that the dots if you were either in store or online. So leading up to the Super Bowl, it was still very much Angel and AngelSoft, but it was more about getting ready for the big game, kind of stocking up for the big game. So kind of leading up into kind of a key stock up period. But then once we started teasing the idea, which was pottytunities and making sure folks had a chance to go to the bathroom during the Super Bowl, we then made sure that, again, the look and feel and the messaging was all consistent with kind of the pottytunities activation. So if you saw it online, if you went to search, whether it was Amazon.com, Walmart.com, or in-store, you got that unified experience. You saw Angel, you heard the message, and could then very easily put an item into your cart. So I think that's been really important to us to kind of make sure that was consistent with we were delivering this kind of ubiquitous message and kind of ubiquitous icon no matter where you were looking for Angelsoft. So we've been very happy. Our awareness increased for both the brand and Angel. We saw a really nice lift in impressions. Our searches for the brand increased. And over time, we believe we're going to see the long-term value from that investment.
00:18:25
Speaker 3: And the fact that you also brought your MMM in-house, I imagine... you have this analytics engine that's humming along so you can really understand what is the total impact of investing in the Super Bowl.
00:18:38
Speaker 1: Yes, and that's one of the benefits. So we've got certainly our immediate kind of measures around awareness and impressions, but we'll be looking to measure the whole thing in-house with the MMM. And that has been a huge enabler for us, even going back to your question around kind of building confidence in digital by building out the capabilities, bringing in marketing measurement in-house. We've been able to measure more frequently in a very consistent way Again, there's one source of truth. We all know M & M isn't perfect, but it is a way for us to measure across digital, across retail media, across video, across promotions, and have at least a consistent way to look across all of those and then feed that back. So we're feeding it internally to my team to help make the optimizations as well as back to the brand teams so they can feel good about where their investments are and where they want to invest more or invest less.
00:19:24
Speaker 3: And so along with in-housing analytics, advanced analytics is a practice. You also have made additional investments in other aspects of MarTech, I think like a CDP. And so just tell us more about this MarTech roadmap and how you view technology as an enabler for the business.
00:19:42
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:19:42
Speaker 1: I mean, this was, you know, data and technology was kind of my third pillar when I was coming on board of if we were going to deliver consumer experience, we had to have a way to measure.
00:19:50
Speaker 2: It.
00:19:50
Speaker 1: We had to have a way to deliver it, measure it, and then optimize and kind of improve based on it. And an MMM every two years was certainly not going to cut it. And some of the ways we were delivering kind of our content and media was not going to cut it. And so I The key thing we did that enabled the MMM, but many other use cases, was really building out the data strategy and the data foundation. I always joke, it's not that we didn't have data. We had like 40 plus sources of data, but no one could have named them all for you. And they sat in Excel spreadsheets and in silos and sometimes agencies have them. And certainly to take two sources and put them together was like a week's long process. And so we created... kind of our data foundation, which we call Data Cloud. We connected all sources of marketing data. We harmonized it. You can now go in and pull from any of that into one report. We put it into an easier to use accessible system. We train the organization. Marketing mixed modeling was the first use case, but then we're using it for media optimization, promotion optimization. And we've got kind of a pretty disciplined list of where else we think we can create value with it and how do we make sure we build towards that. So that was probably one of the biggest things we accomplished. But the other thing we have been doing over this time is building our first-party database. So again, making sure we have the right technology to do that. That was another priority, both from, you know, at the time what was happening with Google and potentially the cookie deprecation, but certainly privacy. I wanted to make sure that we had a more direct relationship with our consumers where possible. And so we built up kind of the MarTech behind that and been able to increase our first-party database capacity. 200 times in that period. And so it's something we can substantially activate against both from a media and from more of a direct kind of interaction standpoint. I think marketing technology, like many things, there's a lot of shiny objects out there. So for me, it's important to know kind of where the biggest opportunities are and really think about the value you can create and also the change management required. One thing someone told me when I first started was so many people aren't even getting the amount of value they can out of the technology you have. So before you start jumping into something new, make sure you have more of mind what you're doing and are getting the usage out of it and getting those values and kind of making sure there's use cases. And I've really taken that to heart to make sure we're not just jumping to cool things that I think can help us, but making sure we're getting the value and the change management needed to do that.
00:22:11
Speaker 3: How do you incentivize folks within your organization to adopt new technology?
00:22:15
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:22:16
Speaker 1: Well, we've been trying to do a lot of training and a lot of hands-on training, whether that's data cloud or AI. We're trying to do that pretty frequently to make sure that folks feel like it's not just someone speaking to them, but like, let's look at use cases. Let's get in there, bring your computer, let's try it out. I found that's been really important. People seeing leadership do it is really, particularly as I think about AI, knowing that we're using it and we're putting that expectation out there with our teams, that this is part of This is part of how we think you're going to create value in your role. And if you're not using it, then that means you're not creating all the value you can. And so really making sure people are motivated and understand that it's there. I mean, this is all about helping them do their jobs better and getting rid of a lot of things that honestly people don't want to do. It's a lot of times the work that's more monotonous or certainly less exciting and hopefully giving them the ability to work on the things where they can create more value and are more fulfilled.
00:23:05
Speaker 2: It goes back to what you were saying about curiosity and agility. Yeah. And also just frankly, resourcefulness. Like you said, there are so many different sources of data that you have across your organization. You can even put it all in your CDP and have a beautiful environment of your data foundation, which is great. But if that's just sitting off to the side and people don't have the natural curiosity to say, Hey, I wonder if I could triangulate three different things to solve this particular problem. If they don't even know what's available to them, how the hell are they going to get to the.
00:23:37
Speaker 1: Point of doing anything about it?
00:23:39
Speaker 2: So the whole idea of top-down using it, but bottom-up almost being the catalyst for it is a balance that I suppose you become the conductor of that orchestra, right? Yes.
00:23:51
Speaker 1: Now, I absolutely agree with what you just said. resourcefulness is a great word because there's a lot we don't know. And if you're not curious and trying to learn, then yeah, we're not going to make progress. You know, I want people to want to dig in and understand how it can create that value. And people have to have that entrepreneurship and they want to, you know, have to want to learn. And so I think recognizing, again, inspiring, recognizing, giving them the tools to do it, and then hopefully, you know, inspiring by seeing what we're doing can help them achieve that.
00:24:17
Speaker 3: Well, Laura, we got to ask you our famous last question, which is what's the bravest thing you've ever done? Yes, this is a great question. I'll give two very brief ones. One is professional and one is personal. Professionally, this role was actually one of the bravest things I've done. You know, I had been at Georgia Pacific 15 years or 15 years now, and I some in the capability, but mostly in the business.
00:24:38
Speaker 1: So I had been our general manager of our talent napkin, which was one of our largest businesses for about two years. when this role opened up. And it was April of 2020. So it was the start of COVID. And so it was kind of moving out what I would say was a very established kind of career path for me and stepping into something more unknown, which I knew was going to require a lot of work and kind of vision, I think, to make it what we wanted it to be. But I am passionate about this space. Hopefully you've seen that. And I felt like I was the right person in the organization to be able to do that. So Stepping into it, it was a scary time to make a change, but I've been in this role four years now, and I've loved every minute of it. So that is certainly from a professional standpoint. From a personal one, I am actually a two-time cancer survivor. I had Hodgkin's disease when I was a teenager and was in remission for many, many years, and then unfortunately was diagnosed with breast cancer a few years ago. And so the first time, I don't think I really even understood... how bad it could be. But the second time you have a much better idea. I had a family and a young daughter and it's just a much scarier situation. And so that's where I think about being brave and kind of facing that with optimism and determination and certainly a whole lot of support from a lot of people around me. That's certainly kind of my more recent example. And hopefully I was a good role model for my daughter and very happy to say I'm kind of three years cancer free again.
00:26:02
Speaker 3: Tremendous. And thank you so much for sharing being vulnerable. It's surprising to hear with everything that you just shared with us. So it's amazing to see what you've accomplished.
00:26:11
Speaker 1: Thank you.
00:26:12
Speaker 3: Everyone, go check out the great brands of Georgia Pacific. Follow Laura on LinkedIn so you can be a part of this change journey that she has been leading. If you like what you heard and you want more episodes that talk about where should essentially shopper and retail media sit within the organization, is it marketing or sales?
00:26:33
Speaker 1: Well, guess what?
00:26:34
Speaker 3: We've talked about this quite recently. It must be a hot topic. Go check out an episode we did with Ferrero's Danielle Sporkin or Molson Core's Brad Feinberg. If you like what you heard, tell a friend, write a review. Thanks for listening.
00:27:02
Speaker 2: 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.
00:27:20
Speaker 3: Now on Touch of Truth, we're coming centre stage and sharing the mic to experience stories of truth.
00:27:26
Speaker 2: 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.
