speaker-0: This is Speak Easy, the podcast where I talk to our guests about their beverage of choice and lessons learned from lives lived in the marketing trenches. I'm Doug Staley-Hunt, founder of Catalysus, a digital marketing agency here in Seattle, and your host and bartender here in the cloakroom, the hidden bar in the basement of our home in a hundred-year-old former church. In this episode, we're here with Amy Johnson, who really loves a spicy whiskey sour. I'm intentionally burying the lead by glossing over what she's learned during her amazing career, from chasing student debt at Sallie Mae to leading innovation at Starbucks. and finally becoming the CMO of a $13 billion company at Zillow. There's so much to discuss. So let's go learn something. We're here with Amy Johnson, an old friend and one of the smartest people I know. She's been working for quite a long time in marketing, but before that she started her career as a, ⁓ help me out here, a service rep for Sally Mae and then moved quickly to programming. working with people on their default loans, their student loan defaults. And then ⁓ she went as a brand to as a moved to become a brand manager at Campbell Soup and then the head of innovation at Starbucks.
speaker-1: So then coffee and tea and then beverage.
speaker-0: All right, and yes, and then from there she became the CMO of Zillow. And I wanted to have her in because she's got lot of experience. And first we're going to talk about her beverage of choice. So what's your beverage of choice? Okay, the whiskey sour. Now let's talk about that. Why? What are the ingredients? Let's see, we have right here, I'll make it. Why the rye?
speaker-1: Whiskey Sal. It's warm. It's like a, well, and this is my drink of choice for the season that we're sitting in, which is fall and winter time. And so I like something warm. It's like chilly of the liquor world.
speaker-0: Mmm, I love that. And then after the rye, lemon juice.
speaker-1: A little pucker. A little pucker. A little pucker. That's it a little bit. That's nice.
speaker-0: And simple syrup.
speaker-1: It's always good to have something sweet.
speaker-0: I'm with you. And then finally, well two finales, have it right here, Egg White.
speaker-1: Yes, that's actually the reason why I ordered the string. It adds like that nice fluffy texture, unexpected fluffy texture.
speaker-0: for the egg whites. Okay, and protein. We're just gonna protein obsess, we're like-
speaker-1: I'm not drinking it with protein, but I'll take the extra gram.
speaker-0: All right, so then you shake it because you want to flip up the egg whites. The fancy vodka is... Do kind of... I can't do that. It's... I'm not good enough. I'm not an experienced enough... I'm an experienced drinker, but I'm not an experienced... Let's see. Let's hope it has... There we go. We're doing one each, but it is morning when we're recording. This is... We're putting out a little bit of... There we go. And then the final, some spicy bitters. Too much, but you know what?
speaker-1: with. nights.
speaker-0: in a garnish.
speaker-1: Spicy is good. like the spice add. I used to just get a whiskey sour without the spice included. it was good. It was a nice refreshing drink with the citrus and then like, you know, a nice like textural top. But the kick is just the added, I don't know, it's like a little bit of joy in your cup.
speaker-0: And it reminds you it's still there after the drink is over, right? Cheers. ⁓ What a way to start the day. Thank you. You were surprised I was going to mess it up? Okay, thank you. All right.
speaker-1: You couldn't flip it behind your back, I wasn't sure.
speaker-0: So let's talk about lessons learned in marketing. When we were talking before this, ⁓ as prep, I was, wanted you to talk about all your failures. said, there's so much learning and failure. don't expect anybody to make the same mistake twice, which I think is a really important lesson for anybody. It displays a growth mindset. You said something very different and I thought it was really interesting. Do remember what you said?
speaker-1: I think it might've been you can learn from your failures, but you also learn from your successes. When you were successful, you also have failures and successes within there too.
speaker-0: Yeah, and I think you said that really beautifully. said, can't you learn from your successes? And I thought, wow, okay, that's true, because you've had a lot of successes, but let's talk about... No, there's two. You're fair enough.
speaker-1: to, but he seems to be focusing on the value part. Yeah. And I think it's an and, not an or. So I think I've learned a lot from both, I would say.
speaker-0: When you started, I guess, let's talk first about you were in customer service at a loan. Yeah, no, it's hell you may, but you were talking to people about their defaulted student loans.
speaker-1: So my dad, I just got out of college, graduated from Virginia Tech with a degree in marketing and a minor in English. And back then they didn't have a lot of people that go to campuses and recruit and stuff, so I go back home and my dad's like, so you have like three months to find a job and I love him for this. And this is not a, but I had to find a job. And so you'd look at the newspaper, is that's the way it was back then? And there weren't lot of jobs because when I came out in the 90s, there was a recession going on. So I had a couple choices. could have gone to Richmond, Virginia and done overnight trucking. I could have worked in Loudoun County at a magazine called Duns and Ammo, so ad space.
speaker-0: I actually know that mix. Okay, yes, selling it.
speaker-1: Or I could have been a customer service rep in Herndon, Virginia for Sallie Bay. And that one was the closest to where I was living in New York. ⁓ And I was like, okay, customer service. could do customer service. So, but I didn't really understand what being a customer service rep for getting defaulted loans repaid would be.
speaker-0: Which is why you quickly pivoted from misery to programming.
speaker-1: So six months, I was there for six months, and I think I was going home crying like every day. Because it was super sad because there were kids my age or a little older that misplaced one loan and now they were in default or you had to talk to them. it was just, I learned a lot. You have to be empathetic when you listen to this on the phone. You know, they're going to be yelling, but it's not necessarily you. Like there's a lot of stuff I... Yes. And I also learned I didn't like being put in that position, per se.
speaker-0: I think I learned a lot about psychology as well.
speaker-1: So I learned my dad and my sister both in tech and we had computers all growing up. And so the company was fine. I wanted us to work for the company, but they needed SAS SQL programmers. So I learned how to, I already knew basic at the time, but I already knew some programming. So I learned that.
speaker-0: ⁓ we both went to Virginia schools. remember Fortran, Rutaise, Cobol. anyway. Okay, so then now you're over in programming and then you decided to leave.
speaker-1: So I did that for a couple years and I, you know, I always wanted to be doing something marketing. My uncle was in advertising. I just, my cousins were all in some such fields like that. And I just enjoyed it. I liked working in washing commercials. I like making things for customers. Like I thought it was fun. And I wasn't going to do that at Sallie Mae. So I went back and I got my graduate degree at George Washington University. And I took my classes there. And then I got a job at Campbell's in Canada, Jersey, outside Philadelphia.
speaker-0: Okay, let's talk about your favorite success there.
speaker-1: My favorite success there. I think the funnest thing I worked on that also happened to be successful was when I ran Prago. Prago Pasta. Right. And when I got to run the brand, it was like, let's do a rebrand. What's working, what's not, what's missing. And I got, the most fantastic ⁓ market research person, Monica. She was like my partner in crime operations.
speaker-0: So market research, foundational for you?
speaker-1: Yes, 100%. Okay. finance too. my finance person and like creative. in the studio. So I had a group of core people and you you go out and you sit and you listen to customers and do your ethnographic research, figure out what your point of difference is and you do all that awesome stuff. And then you have to, after you learn and listen, have to know what to do and you have to be able to fund it. You have to know there's people that are going to use it. You have to know you can get distribution like all that.
speaker-0: That's all the basics, but listen, a lot of people don't know that. mean, let me get this away. ⁓ That over there. A lot of people don't know that. And these are part of what I think we want to have these conversations about is, or for, is what are the fundaments? Because right there you have a brand issue and brand is part of marketing along with other, you know, demand gen and other sales pipeline components. But brand is a big one. So you were working on Prago brand. You had all of these components.
speaker-1: Like the thing I'm hearing now, is really, I don't know, maybe it's new school versus old school, is in brand marketing, like you're responsible for, is Doug gonna eat it? Are there enough Dougs that are gonna want it? Is the distribution turn's gonna be there? Can I get it profitably there or back? Like it's the gestalt of it. Is it price the same? Who's the competitor? So you have to look holistically at what it is the offering is. You have to work with the sales team to get stuff in. have to... where now I hear the word brand and people are like, it's this thing. The brand is really the promise you're gonna make to the customer. So when you hear the word Prego or when you hear the word Nike, whatever the word is, you're expecting something, a relationship with that brand in a certain way. And that's when you say brand. Then the question is, who within the organization is responsible for which parts of that? And who's defining what those things should be to keep sacred? Disney does a...
speaker-0: So, like Disney is a great job I love brand dropping here because we're gonna name them we're gonna hit them and like you said Nike too I think in that sense then where did you discover? Conflict within the organization that you had to muscle through or you had to navigate that taught you to really own the brand for prego ⁓ Were there some ugly ugly face to faces where there were different understandings of what the brand should be?
speaker-1: for prego. Rago was more convincing the organization that it needed to have a strong enough identity with the customer to have a fast recall that is different than Rago. And that meant it tastes different. My family will love me differently because of it. I can prepare it faster and more consistently, like whatever those things are that it did for. Right, could still exist as the base for your, but we're not gonna try to own that. So you have to make sure the brand stands for something for itself, not just for some tradition, but that you're loud enough and people hear it enough.
speaker-0: So where was the conflict you had to negotiate?
speaker-1: Well, do you really need to go that far with it? Do you really need to spend whatever in advertising? still you need to get that type of awareness. Won't they know already? Don't they know already? That's what it is. So there's a lot of, which I didn't feel like it was, I would say that's more like everyday brand marketing, you know, to justify your marketing spending kind of thing. But the conflict was in at the time, if you have like the red and white soup, the condensed line.
speaker-0: cause.
speaker-1: And you spend a dollar, you make back a dollar 25. And in most CPG companies, at least at the time, you were not even making your dollar. So it's, I put a dollar here or do I put a dollar with you? And then what does it mean? And what does the stamp without a company, the greater good of the organization? So I think that was most of where the conversation was. Some of it also was in, you, we had to look at the bottle and we looked at the label because we had to self fund some things. So some of it was,
speaker-0: Right.
speaker-1: Do you need a, you know, six color label? Can you do the same thing in a four color label and get a couple million? Or can you have a lid closure on a bottle, that more generic bottle that the label can make it look more upscale, but you can...
speaker-0: one. So did you leave?
speaker-1: It was a repeat, rinse and repeat. And it wasn't necessarily innovation. And I love animation. I love seeing new ideas.
speaker-0: Yeah, you got bored. So innovation for you is the egg white or the spicy bitters?
speaker-1: Yeah, you're taking something that someone loves and you're making it better. Although innovation, I don't know, that's a really good question because it depends on from where you're starting. It could have been the egg white if they never put egg whites in one of these before. you have, ⁓
speaker-0: Right. That's true, then. It was a big surprise. So that gets you to innovation at Starbucks. Did see what I did there?
speaker-1: I ran a small little amazing company with it called Tazo Tea.
speaker-0: T-von. Otaza, which is still out there, but T-von has been...
speaker-1: they, yeah, there's something they would say.
speaker-0: acquisition of Tazo. So did they spin Tazo off?
speaker-1: So in 1999, Starbucks bought Tazo. Steve Smith was the owner. Fantastic, amazing individual. He created, I believe, three different tea brands. So he had Smith Tea after this. That's what I see. He does. He passed away.
speaker-0: He likes tea. Oh, liked tea. Sorry.
speaker-1: a fantastic individual, very passionate about his tea. And then I joined Starbucks in 2004 and my job was to integrate the Portland Tazo tea into Starbucks. ⁓ And it was super fascinating for me because I was excited to be part of Starbucks wasn't yet in every stays, like it wasn't the size it is, was very, know, and there were coffee. ⁓
speaker-0: and they were quasi.
speaker-1: But I love tea. It turns out at least half the people in the company include the baristas like tea too. So if you find your audience here. But I learned a lot there because talk about failures. You walk in and you your boss gives you a task. Okay, you need to integrate this business into our business. Here's what we think it is, da da da. And you hear that as your mandate and your charge. So you're like, I'm going to go down into this company and I have a mandate and a charge. And you don't like ask the person.
speaker-0: Okay, find your audience.
speaker-1: Did you tell them that that was my mandate? Or do they have a joint understanding of what this mandate looks like?
speaker-0: And they're already scared probably, or are they scared or grateful because they've been bought by Starbucks? They're grateful for the money, but they're nervous about what's going
speaker-1: They're nervous, were a little autonomous t-r-a-b-n-e run by an independent individual and Tal was the other gentleman that... So now it's part of Starbucks and somebody's coming down that wasn't even part of Starbucks before to help them.
speaker-0: help them. Right. Yeah, okay. Integrate. what did you do on the brand side to square that circle? Because it still is Tazo-T. Yeah. And Starbucks has had other forays into T. Yes. So what happened?
speaker-1: Okay. So it actually did very well. ⁓ really created, Tazo had to have an identity to itself to bring credibility into Starbucks because Starbucks tea, at the time, didn't have the same type of credibility entity, even though it started as Starbucks coffee tea and spice. So Starbucks coffee, and then people are like, is it coffee tea? You know, like they couldn't understand really when we did customer research about it.
speaker-0: Alright, yeah.
speaker-1: ⁓ So we had Tazo tea, it's like, ⁓ Tazo tea, like it's Tazo tea from Starbucks. So you think about it, there is a complication, because we were the first ones in the United States to bring in the matcha green tea frappuccino. I did that in, I would say it was 2005. ⁓ So in pan they were already making it.
speaker-0: But 2005, like that's 20 years ago. And it just seems so new and fresh. Everybody loves them.
speaker-1: It's getting matcha from Japan here and you have to have a certain amount of sweetener in it otherwise it gets stale because it's an actual like food livorado. There's a whole other learning about production and distribution. But yeah, so we brought it over. So you have Tazo, you have Starbucks and have Frappuccino. Like what the heck am I going to put on the menu board? So you really had to figure out. what are you trying to get across in the second the person's looking or if you're going to communicate it to someone, what's going come out of the briefs' mouth, what's going to be the key for them to hit.
speaker-0: And what's the drinking experience? Like, how do you communicate that from a mental?
speaker-1: Is Forward? it Macho Forward? Is it so... That was a really awesome kind of problem to work with. And this lady, Kim Malik, who worked for me in Tazo, who now runs Salt and Straw, she's a fantastic person. Salt and Straw. Helped to figure out and get this thing through the system, as Starbucks ended up in running into her. So a lot of complexity there. But at first, when I was going down to Tazo... You know, I came from Campbell's, which is a big corporate, it's like a machine that does things the same way. Blank. we're going out to tea and going to this little awesome place that smelled amazing. You can imagine, like, you smell like you're going to a spa every day. And I'd walk the halls and I would be thinking about something and I'd just walk past people. And then about a month in, there was like, I think an Amy intervention. We're like, we have to talk. Cause if you're going to be coming down here helping us.
speaker-0: Like P &G.
speaker-1: you're not doing it in a very personable way. I was like, what? Because I'm like, I've already been told I'm a personable person. So we decided that we would do something Starbucket called assimilation. It's when there's a group of people and a facilitator and they talk to the people, the facilitator, and you're in there, here's what I want to do, here's my goals, and you leave. And then they talk and you come back and it's not one person that says something, but it's a here's things we love from you, right? So it feels actually
speaker-0: real.
speaker-1: I've been through a couple in my time there and was great. It's actually super helpful as a leader.
speaker-0: From a branding perspective, it sounds like the Borg. Hey, you're gonna be assimilated ⁓
speaker-1: It's a little harsher than it is. actually more, it's a quick way to get up to speed on what your team's are. They're like, you don't even look at us. Okay, so the thing is, you're not coming across personally. You want to ⁓ integrate us back into this huge company. Switch again, the time wasn't big. ⁓ It feels, lot of feeling worlds. It feels like you don't really care about us. It feels like, who are you to come in? And some of the examples they gave were you walk.
speaker-0: So what did they say about...
speaker-1: right past this other lady, Amy, walk right past her in the hall and you didn't even look up and say hi. You were going to the refrigerator to get your lunch and there was a group of people sitting at the lunchroom table or at the area there and you didn't stop to see how people were doing. It was a very, because the place had grown up though. So I clearly was not paying attention to the cues of their culture. I was listening to what my boss had told me to do. the culture of that higher man. ⁓ so that was an interesting like, listen.
speaker-0: So in talking about the innovation that you've done with ⁓ Viya when you were at Starbucks moving on innovation with ⁓ online order, the whole rewards program, the digital communication program, ⁓ instant coffee, like I'll ask you about ⁓ the people you've left in your wake and what would they say about you, the angry and bitter people?
speaker-1: Well, starting from when I was in customer service and then through this example I just gave you and jobs I've had, you really want to try to not leave people in your wake. You want to make sure that you can bring people along with you as much as possible, at least so they feel like they're heard on the other side. It doesn't mean you're going to agree with everything everybody's saying.
speaker-0: And everybody who works with you isn't going be promoted along with you necessarily. They may do different things. They may leave, have a baby.
speaker-1: as if like, you you want to listen as if you want to be heard yourself. Like you want to, and it isn't to say I didn't argue with people and there's people today that if you like dial them up, like, I can't believe I'm eating, she was sitting in, I didn't hear it. The intent is to bring in as many people as you can and help make smart decisions because I have my one brain from my one point of view and the next brain I bring in somehow is going to be additive some way either. If you don't know the business I'm working on, may know the people I need to talk to, or you may have a life skill or an experience that I don't.
speaker-0: So yes, think, yeah, in creating those relationships with people, sometimes they pay off in ways you don't think about. Any examples of that?
speaker-1: Sure, so, and this maybe is a thank you in case Mary's out. can make this any day. Yes, thank you, Mary Wagner. So I was in one of my first meetings. I was responsible for launching the Instinct Coffee from Starbucks, which we hadn't named yet and we're sitting in a board meeting ⁓ and you can imagine the board table's fairly large and Howard Schultz was on one end and Cliff and Mary. A bunch of people were in there that were business unit owners and the head of operations was there, et cetera.
speaker-0: Thank you.
speaker-1: And I was the director, so was lowest level of room. And I'm listening as hard as I can, like I'm listening. And it was one of the first times I'd ever been in one of these environments where you have the person in charge of the whole organization is debating with others that are much higher level than you. And I am running it. So I have to figure out how do I listen to it? How do I understand where we want to go? How do I... shape the conversation in way we can make the decisions we want to make, but that we could move on. ⁓ And Mary pulls me aside after, this might have been maybe the third one of these meetings I had, and she says, hey, and I hadn't worked with her that much. She ran R &D for Starbucks. She says, hey, you know, I've just noticed something. She goes, I don't think you're stupid. And I was like, well, I don't know where this is going. She goes, but I think you have a hearing problem. And I was like, what? And she said, Yeah, you keep like answering the questions just wrong. ⁓ Or you're making a comment on something just kind of wrong. Like it's not what they asked or what they said. She goes, think you should get your hearing checked. So I'm like, okay, thanks. I'll do that. So I went and got hearing checked and I always knew kind of it. I had to look at you. And it turns out that I had degenerative hearing loss. And at the time, so this was...
speaker-0: Sorry
speaker-1: almost 20 years ago, I had the hearing of a 65 year old. Wow. So, and the specific tones that I couldn't hear were the same tones as many of the men.
speaker-0: Including Howard Schultz. ⁓
speaker-1: I will forever be grateful for Mary for even saying that because she could have not said anything.
speaker-0: Yeah, and them fail. it's about the relationships. I think that's important. And I think this is something that, I mean, in these conversations, I'm talking to different people. And I think a lot of what you're talking about, caring about the people you're with, benefiting from them, creating those relationships, having empathy, are very, they're generally associated as feminine qualities.
speaker-1: Now.
speaker-0: But I think they're universal qualities that benefit a lot of people that I talk to and being able to listen to ⁓ other people and incorporate their point of views or respectfully object and try and convince. And if you can't convince, then object and say, well, these are what I stand for and we'll have to make a decision based on that. Let's move on to ⁓ your biggest thing at Starbucks, I think was rolling out. online ordering and how did that start and it is now responsible for what 20 % of Starbucks revenue or 30 % okay so that's still significant 33 % of Starbucks revenue came from something that began with your initiative. We can say so. I know it's exciting and here you sit in my our humble little speakeasy here's to here's to success
speaker-1: and
speaker-0: So how did that come about?
speaker-1: So I was running the loyalty program and a woman that worked for me ended up sharing some technology that we had. So she's like, you know, there's a way because we have an ecosystem that has, you can store payment. The point of sale had a way to scan the payment and the payment system is connected. looser than we originally thought when we put this idea to inventory and products consumed.
speaker-0: but still miles ahead of where most companies were at the time.
speaker-1: So she's like, you know, this exists, we could do something with it. And ⁓ I went around to different people. I went around this person that ran digital payments for me. was like, do we want to use this for anything? And he's like, no, I don't really see any need for it. like, okay. ⁓ I went to different groups just within the organization. Be like, is anybody using this? Like, no. I was like, huh. So I was looking more and more into it and I asked her to help write a business case. Like what is the technology? What can it be used for? Why is it important? So put that here. So at the same time, I would happen to be sitting in business meetings where we were hearing that between 6.30 and 9.30 in the morning, so during rush in the busier stores, ninth person or more standing in line fails on the line. So they leave the store. So if you're in New York, it was fine. You just go maybe three blocks down, but you lose that sale if the next Starbucks isn't between you. And so that you, didn't get that revenue back necessarily. So that I, in my head, I had that as a business problem. At the same time, I also knew about the Disney FastPass, which were, if you're not familiar with FastPass, at the time, it was you go, ⁓ Buzz Lightyear, you go and you say, want to come back later. You get a little piece of paper and you go, I wrote a like. So I was like, huh, well, we have this problem where we need to get more people through the line. Disney's kind of figured out how to.
speaker-0: and I'm back.
speaker-1: do that with FastPass. And we have this technology because we have this ecosystem put together. So we worked on a presentation or conversation about how this could help us. And I also happened to reach out to the folks that were creating the wristbands for the Disney FastPass. They happened to be at Seattle. So I like, tell me about that experience. What do you know about that? What's working, what's not, what's missing? And so I learned a little bit about their experiences because it was important. And folks brought this up when I talked about it. Might not remember, but at the time when people jumped the line at Disney, they're like, dad would fight another dad because he Oh, we that in Star Wars. That's not good. know what? Yeah.
speaker-0: Over coffee. coffee. Over Buzz Lightyear maybe, but not over... Not in front of the kids.
speaker-1: Either way. ⁓ I know. right. if there's no coffee in your system, you might fight more. ⁓ So I presented to like all the heads of state, right? The head of operations, the head of finance, the head of strategy, the head.
speaker-0: And they said, yes, let's green light this. No. What are they, stupid?
speaker-1: Please, last questions. So what I really wanted to do is I wanted to go right to testing out of store ordering. OK. Because I'm like, that's the thing we're looking to solve for. If you want somebody to be able to order out of store. And the argument, there was a lot of arguments for why not just jump to that, right? well, we're a democratic line system, right? You get it first in, first out. And I even have, still have a piece of paper. Where they get That one of those gentlemen wrote to me what a. democratic line looks like, circles and squares and arrows and that kind of thing. And I keep it always to look at to be like, listen and come back and things can be done. So, ⁓ so then what I did is I ended up talking to the folks that made the wristbands and we created some like testing to do. And I think I want to say 10 or 11 different ideas for tests, just to see which of these ideas may be viable. And I listened to what they said, like, okay, let's make the thing trigger when you come in the store. Let's make the thing ⁓ trigger at the scan so that the drink you want follows you to your phone. And the last one was order from out. And it used to, when we first started, it was called remote order. ended up being mobile. And so the tests, a handful of the tests got greenlit and remote.
speaker-0: and naturally rebel or anything like that. And you knew that. And did you find in that or in any other work that you did at Starbucks where you had a big learning because you didn't incorporate other people?
speaker-1: And that's the one that guess.
speaker-0: Tell me about it.
speaker-1: Little one then a big one. So I had a little one because I think it's good for folks to... This one's interesting. ⁓ Back at Campbell's Soup. So I was running red or white eating soups, so the condensed soup. And I happen to have the kids' brand. So those are the ones with the pasta shape. Disney shapes or whatever they are. And I had the thorn berries.
speaker-0: little stars and fish. I remember. Different shapes. See, I'm too old for that. For me, it was chicken and stars. That was the big deal.
speaker-1: This is the skew that changed. The skew stayed the same on the shelf, but you got to change the pastas. So you need to change the label. So you can't have Blue's Clues label if it's a Thornberry Dugger order or something, right? Probably just crust generations. So Mary Chin was my partner in the design center, and she's awesome, super creative. And of course, I walked in. It was my first one. said, literally, here's what I want drawn. on the label. And she's like, well, they don't think that's really what should be on there. Like she's the person that creates the light. So I'm in there, here's what you should do. I you never done it before. I don't know you want that. I say, no, no, no, I do. You creatives not listening to what I'm saying I need, right? Because I own this business. People throw around that a lot. And she's like, fine. I'll do that. Fine, fine, fine. And the meeting was contentious. It wasn't great. And became great friends with her.
speaker-0: Yeah. Marketing masters. She's like what?
speaker-1: So then she comes back to the table and she shows me the thing I wanted, which was crap. Like it was not good. It was too cluttery. Lots of things went wrong with it. And then I said, ⁓ man, wow, you're right. was like, here's what. And I was like, that's awesome. I never questioned you again. So, you know, after that, she's like, here's what works with us.
speaker-0: I would recommend it. So trust people who have an expertise.
speaker-1: Well, and give your expertise to them, So what's the customer want? So if you give your part to somebody who can then hand off.
speaker-0: Let them do it. then give feedback. And that's something that I learned long ago as a theater major is critique is a gift. And giving somebody feedback, it's a gift. And so if they're doing something and you do it in the right way, you're saying, this doesn't make sense to me. Well, if it doesn't make sense to you, it might not make sense to 40 % of your market share. No, I think it's a gift. I'm saying it's a gift. Always. OK, so that's the...
speaker-1: be good too. I have. Now another one, because I don't know, I can't help myself when I get all excited about the possibility of something happens. And again, I got trapped in this hole. There's a new thing, let's green light. So the clover machine.
speaker-0: What was it? And for everybody who doesn't know, the Clover machine is this very high end coffee machine that allowed, that's when I first actually met Amy, we was working on coffee innovation for Starbucks and reclaiming Starbucks coffee authority is I think how you phrased the brief. And the Clover machine gives you the ability to make an unbelievably delicious cup of coffee that small mom and pop coffee shops were charging higher prices for ⁓ a cup of coffee that You can taste the terroir, like a fine wine of the beans and where they were grown, et cetera, et cetera. And it is delicious, I gotta say.
speaker-1: So the problem ⁓ with any retail establishment that has any type of speed or efficiency required from it is everybody is trained to do a repeatable routine in a certain way. every time you put a new type of machinery in, there is an entire process that has to go through to make sure that the customer's expectations are not ⁓ unmet. that the person who is making the thing for the customer is, I don't want to say happy in their job, but hopefully happy in their job, but at least knows what they're doing and can do it well. it can be communicated easily to the customer.
speaker-0: And the machine is repairable and clean.
speaker-1: which is there's a whole thing about machines. Then is the point of difference big enough that all that's going to matter? I get a store, Howard's like, make this happen, like great, I'll make this happen. We get a store that we could put it into and we put in the store and I talk to the store manager and I'm thinking I'm doing my due diligence because I got right to it. I saw the potential of maybe in a second store. So, okay, so I'll manage that. I'll talk to the ⁓ district manager who had the two stores. But I didn't really reach out to the person in charge of the whole Pacific Northwest to make sure that that person understood.
speaker-0: This might roll out everywhere.
speaker-1: Right, because I was so excited. was thinking, it's a tongue-in-cheek cup of coffee. This could be really awesome. So it was not a mal-intent that I didn't reach out. thought I was reaching out. This was one of those I didn't know when I didn't know things. And it turns out that that was not a great move on my part. So we ended up working very well together on the project moving forward.
speaker-0: So, how did you, did Howard make you apologize or did you?
speaker-1: Well, he didn't make us apologize, but he pulled the two of us together and was like, the way this is working right now is not going to satisfy the customers or employees. So we needed to figure out a solution. They're daddy's on it as a kid. we're going to.
speaker-0: If I were he, I were head of operations, I'd be ticked off at you because you're introducing something from corporate. mean, it's like that you needed to do ⁓ an assimilation.
speaker-1: Yes, in my brain I was thinking like, it's a little test. I don't even know if I need to bother this person because this is just like a little test for me. But every year took me because I was in packaged goods and financial services. I hadn't really been in retail that long. ⁓
speaker-0: Yeah, everything. If you had one piece of advice, I've tried to isolate a few of your pieces of advice about working with people, bringing them along with you, ⁓ not running through things like a bull in a china shop and actually think about what other options are there, listening to people's expertise and bringing your own feedback, but letting them do what they're good at and not trying to be good at what everybody else is doing. That's a lot of learning from this conversation. ⁓ What else? Anything else?
speaker-1: ⁓ I guess maybe two more things. One of the things I did learn at Zilla, which was interesting, was, ⁓ they are a site that, you know, you go to and you look for, ⁓ homes. Or you'd be like, ⁓ my God, I want to be fantastic if I did this house in this place.
speaker-0: How much is your home worth? It's the Sears Wishbook, remember every year? Totally.
speaker-1: And they wanted to do something new. They wanted to be able to buy and sell homes. Now you have to think this all the way down to the person that's starting to execute is, is the engineer, is the product manager, are the people that have hands on the creation of the product in a space culturally and ⁓ knowledge wise and other things where that pivot of going from something like they were a marketplace to an individual stall, which is much different, is are the people that need to execute that going with you on the journey from this huge culture change? And it was a little bit, saw that when I was in tea and had to talk to a coffee company. And in Mold, Border and Pay, you had to be like, well, we're not just in store, we can be out of store.
speaker-0: Yeah. need. We're on your device.
speaker-1: There is a mind shift that has to happen in people you work with, I think, to be successful and then planting the seeds and growing the innovation you want to see. ⁓ Because if the folks doing the job don't really understand what the customer benefit is, what the company benefit is, what the job is now, has it changed or not, are you running a relay still by yourself programming or? Sorry, are you running a sprint by yourself programming or is it relay? Before and after. Like all that. So I think that's something to really pay attention to and for innovation and thinking about how to do something different, your ability to see around corners and strategize and visualize all the way down to being able to execute it doesn't mean...
speaker-0: 300 Nights. Hood to Ghost.
speaker-1: the people around you that have to do it are. And you have to figure out your way around, I get it. And their brains are so scared to say, I don't, but I'm the only one in this room who doesn't get it.
speaker-0: I don't want to feel stupid. And then that's where the ball gets dropped. Low back. How do you create what that is?
speaker-1: And some of it is, you what I've learned is some of it is the layers. So depending on where you are in the organization, if you're a senior leader, then who are you influencing in the organization that you know that has the legs to get it over? And I think some people call that politics and they have a sour face. I think politics can be just communication throughout an organization in an orderly way. You have an end result.
speaker-0: Yeah, I think part of that is hubris too. think as a leader, a lot of times I've seen, ⁓ I've thought, well, anybody can come talk to me. We're not a big company and we're all approachable. And what you realize is there are some people that either they don't have the comfort or the hierarchy and the power balance is so skewed that they really can't. And I was in ⁓ a panel and I realized ⁓ as sort of the... ⁓ the agency owner that was being discussed at this panel, how to bring something to the table that the other people couldn't talk about. And this was it. It was, said, you know, I realized I have had to cultivate relationships with people who do have a similarity to the people that I can't break through to in communication and make it very clear that they can approach people. Here's my credit card, go take someone for coffee or lunch. and dig into why this isn't working or what they feel about that. And then let them know that I'm in their court, but it's okay to pass this information through you and you're going to put it in the right fashion to be heard by me.
speaker-1: And that's, so one of the only, I think one of the reasons why the loyalty program still exists at Starbucks is there was a point with the loyalty program that if you just looked at the numbers, if you were to manage the store, you'd see this big negative dollar amount taken out to pay for the list. Being the one running it, you're kind of like the, was it Fox watching the handheld? We're believing it, that money's really going towards something. ⁓ But I had to work with Rob and Mark.
speaker-0: program.
speaker-1: both my finance connections to come up with a P &L that was like, that's not me. They're kind of auditing like, okay, so how much incrementality are you getting from that? I partnered with them to have credibility in this way that made it authentically be the reason why this program is working or not.
speaker-0: And I think you also sort of created, you haven't given yourself credit, you created a sort of early gamification of the retail experience on a device because that idea of, it's double point stars Wednesday or whatever it was and buy this and get extra points for this or buy this and that.
speaker-1: sorry we did stars. Yeah. Cause I was doing point. I decided to keep the stars cause the star didn't mean anything.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, Yeah, yeah, like more like airline, you know, points. And I think the stars were amazing because it does, it did change behaviors based on your interaction with the application, you know, yeah. Somebody else did.
speaker-1: I didn't create it. I love getting credit. You did credit, but... We played with them. did the personalization stuff, and then we brought it to the forefront and those kind of things, but that was a brain challenge.
speaker-0: Nobody was a platform that could expand into that. And I think that is a fundamental openness that I think is part of its success. So, congratulations. Thank you. So thank you for your time. Cheers. It's like I haven't drinking more than you.
speaker-1: Mm.
speaker-0: Of course, just so everybody knows, it's like 11 o'clock in the morning, maybe 11 or 12. Okay, so we're drinking before you we'll pretend we're in New York and have an afternoon cocktail. And this evening. anyway, we look forward to having you back here. we'll post on our site page lots of links to the name brands that we've dropped and ⁓ more information about Amy's bio and anything else. So thank you.
speaker-1: actually London. Yes.
speaker-0: Thanks for listening to this episode of Speak Easy. I hope you enjoyed our conversation or learned something from it. And I have a favor to ask. Please share us, like us, leave your comments. You know the game. And most of all, if you have any guests you'd like to suggest, please let us know. The full transcript and show notes are available at catalysis.com slash speak easy. Keep asking, keep listening, and most of all, keep learning.
speaker-1: So then coffee and tea and then beverage.
speaker-0: All right, and yes, and then from there she became the CMO of Zillow. And I wanted to have her in because she's got lot of experience. And first we're going to talk about her beverage of choice. So what's your beverage of choice? Okay, the whiskey sour. Now let's talk about that. Why? What are the ingredients? Let's see, we have right here, I'll make it. Why the rye?
speaker-1: Whiskey Sal. It's warm. It's like a, well, and this is my drink of choice for the season that we're sitting in, which is fall and winter time. And so I like something warm. It's like chilly of the liquor world.
speaker-0: Mmm, I love that. And then after the rye, lemon juice.
speaker-1: A little pucker. A little pucker. A little pucker. That's it a little bit. That's nice.
speaker-0: And simple syrup.
speaker-1: It's always good to have something sweet.
speaker-0: I'm with you. And then finally, well two finales, have it right here, Egg White.
speaker-1: Yes, that's actually the reason why I ordered the string. It adds like that nice fluffy texture, unexpected fluffy texture.
speaker-0: for the egg whites. Okay, and protein. We're just gonna protein obsess, we're like-
speaker-1: I'm not drinking it with protein, but I'll take the extra gram.
speaker-0: All right, so then you shake it because you want to flip up the egg whites. The fancy vodka is... Do kind of... I can't do that. It's... I'm not good enough. I'm not an experienced enough... I'm an experienced drinker, but I'm not an experienced... Let's see. Let's hope it has... There we go. We're doing one each, but it is morning when we're recording. This is... We're putting out a little bit of... There we go. And then the final, some spicy bitters. Too much, but you know what?
speaker-1: with. nights.
speaker-0: in a garnish.
speaker-1: Spicy is good. like the spice add. I used to just get a whiskey sour without the spice included. it was good. It was a nice refreshing drink with the citrus and then like, you know, a nice like textural top. But the kick is just the added, I don't know, it's like a little bit of joy in your cup.
speaker-0: And it reminds you it's still there after the drink is over, right? Cheers. ⁓ What a way to start the day. Thank you. You were surprised I was going to mess it up? Okay, thank you. All right.
speaker-1: You couldn't flip it behind your back, I wasn't sure.
speaker-0: So let's talk about lessons learned in marketing. When we were talking before this, ⁓ as prep, I was, wanted you to talk about all your failures. said, there's so much learning and failure. don't expect anybody to make the same mistake twice, which I think is a really important lesson for anybody. It displays a growth mindset. You said something very different and I thought it was really interesting. Do remember what you said?
speaker-1: I think it might've been you can learn from your failures, but you also learn from your successes. When you were successful, you also have failures and successes within there too.
speaker-0: Yeah, and I think you said that really beautifully. said, can't you learn from your successes? And I thought, wow, okay, that's true, because you've had a lot of successes, but let's talk about... No, there's two. You're fair enough.
speaker-1: to, but he seems to be focusing on the value part. Yeah. And I think it's an and, not an or. So I think I've learned a lot from both, I would say.
speaker-0: When you started, I guess, let's talk first about you were in customer service at a loan. Yeah, no, it's hell you may, but you were talking to people about their defaulted student loans.
speaker-1: So my dad, I just got out of college, graduated from Virginia Tech with a degree in marketing and a minor in English. And back then they didn't have a lot of people that go to campuses and recruit and stuff, so I go back home and my dad's like, so you have like three months to find a job and I love him for this. And this is not a, but I had to find a job. And so you'd look at the newspaper, is that's the way it was back then? And there weren't lot of jobs because when I came out in the 90s, there was a recession going on. So I had a couple choices. could have gone to Richmond, Virginia and done overnight trucking. I could have worked in Loudoun County at a magazine called Duns and Ammo, so ad space.
speaker-0: I actually know that mix. Okay, yes, selling it.
speaker-1: Or I could have been a customer service rep in Herndon, Virginia for Sallie Bay. And that one was the closest to where I was living in New York. ⁓ And I was like, okay, customer service. could do customer service. So, but I didn't really understand what being a customer service rep for getting defaulted loans repaid would be.
speaker-0: Which is why you quickly pivoted from misery to programming.
speaker-1: So six months, I was there for six months, and I think I was going home crying like every day. Because it was super sad because there were kids my age or a little older that misplaced one loan and now they were in default or you had to talk to them. it was just, I learned a lot. You have to be empathetic when you listen to this on the phone. You know, they're going to be yelling, but it's not necessarily you. Like there's a lot of stuff I... Yes. And I also learned I didn't like being put in that position, per se.
speaker-0: I think I learned a lot about psychology as well.
speaker-1: So I learned my dad and my sister both in tech and we had computers all growing up. And so the company was fine. I wanted us to work for the company, but they needed SAS SQL programmers. So I learned how to, I already knew basic at the time, but I already knew some programming. So I learned that.
speaker-0: ⁓ we both went to Virginia schools. remember Fortran, Rutaise, Cobol. anyway. Okay, so then now you're over in programming and then you decided to leave.
speaker-1: So I did that for a couple years and I, you know, I always wanted to be doing something marketing. My uncle was in advertising. I just, my cousins were all in some such fields like that. And I just enjoyed it. I liked working in washing commercials. I like making things for customers. Like I thought it was fun. And I wasn't going to do that at Sallie Mae. So I went back and I got my graduate degree at George Washington University. And I took my classes there. And then I got a job at Campbell's in Canada, Jersey, outside Philadelphia.
speaker-0: Okay, let's talk about your favorite success there.
speaker-1: My favorite success there. I think the funnest thing I worked on that also happened to be successful was when I ran Prago. Prago Pasta. Right. And when I got to run the brand, it was like, let's do a rebrand. What's working, what's not, what's missing. And I got, the most fantastic ⁓ market research person, Monica. She was like my partner in crime operations.
speaker-0: So market research, foundational for you?
speaker-1: Yes, 100%. Okay. finance too. my finance person and like creative. in the studio. So I had a group of core people and you you go out and you sit and you listen to customers and do your ethnographic research, figure out what your point of difference is and you do all that awesome stuff. And then you have to, after you learn and listen, have to know what to do and you have to be able to fund it. You have to know there's people that are going to use it. You have to know you can get distribution like all that.
speaker-0: That's all the basics, but listen, a lot of people don't know that. mean, let me get this away. ⁓ That over there. A lot of people don't know that. And these are part of what I think we want to have these conversations about is, or for, is what are the fundaments? Because right there you have a brand issue and brand is part of marketing along with other, you know, demand gen and other sales pipeline components. But brand is a big one. So you were working on Prago brand. You had all of these components.
speaker-1: Like the thing I'm hearing now, is really, I don't know, maybe it's new school versus old school, is in brand marketing, like you're responsible for, is Doug gonna eat it? Are there enough Dougs that are gonna want it? Is the distribution turn's gonna be there? Can I get it profitably there or back? Like it's the gestalt of it. Is it price the same? Who's the competitor? So you have to look holistically at what it is the offering is. You have to work with the sales team to get stuff in. have to... where now I hear the word brand and people are like, it's this thing. The brand is really the promise you're gonna make to the customer. So when you hear the word Prego or when you hear the word Nike, whatever the word is, you're expecting something, a relationship with that brand in a certain way. And that's when you say brand. Then the question is, who within the organization is responsible for which parts of that? And who's defining what those things should be to keep sacred? Disney does a...
speaker-0: So, like Disney is a great job I love brand dropping here because we're gonna name them we're gonna hit them and like you said Nike too I think in that sense then where did you discover? Conflict within the organization that you had to muscle through or you had to navigate that taught you to really own the brand for prego ⁓ Were there some ugly ugly face to faces where there were different understandings of what the brand should be?
speaker-1: for prego. Rago was more convincing the organization that it needed to have a strong enough identity with the customer to have a fast recall that is different than Rago. And that meant it tastes different. My family will love me differently because of it. I can prepare it faster and more consistently, like whatever those things are that it did for. Right, could still exist as the base for your, but we're not gonna try to own that. So you have to make sure the brand stands for something for itself, not just for some tradition, but that you're loud enough and people hear it enough.
speaker-0: So where was the conflict you had to negotiate?
speaker-1: Well, do you really need to go that far with it? Do you really need to spend whatever in advertising? still you need to get that type of awareness. Won't they know already? Don't they know already? That's what it is. So there's a lot of, which I didn't feel like it was, I would say that's more like everyday brand marketing, you know, to justify your marketing spending kind of thing. But the conflict was in at the time, if you have like the red and white soup, the condensed line.
speaker-0: cause.
speaker-1: And you spend a dollar, you make back a dollar 25. And in most CPG companies, at least at the time, you were not even making your dollar. So it's, I put a dollar here or do I put a dollar with you? And then what does it mean? And what does the stamp without a company, the greater good of the organization? So I think that was most of where the conversation was. Some of it also was in, you, we had to look at the bottle and we looked at the label because we had to self fund some things. So some of it was,
speaker-0: Right.
speaker-1: Do you need a, you know, six color label? Can you do the same thing in a four color label and get a couple million? Or can you have a lid closure on a bottle, that more generic bottle that the label can make it look more upscale, but you can...
speaker-0: one. So did you leave?
speaker-1: It was a repeat, rinse and repeat. And it wasn't necessarily innovation. And I love animation. I love seeing new ideas.
speaker-0: Yeah, you got bored. So innovation for you is the egg white or the spicy bitters?
speaker-1: Yeah, you're taking something that someone loves and you're making it better. Although innovation, I don't know, that's a really good question because it depends on from where you're starting. It could have been the egg white if they never put egg whites in one of these before. you have, ⁓
speaker-0: Right. That's true, then. It was a big surprise. So that gets you to innovation at Starbucks. Did see what I did there?
speaker-1: I ran a small little amazing company with it called Tazo Tea.
speaker-0: T-von. Otaza, which is still out there, but T-von has been...
speaker-1: they, yeah, there's something they would say.
speaker-0: acquisition of Tazo. So did they spin Tazo off?
speaker-1: So in 1999, Starbucks bought Tazo. Steve Smith was the owner. Fantastic, amazing individual. He created, I believe, three different tea brands. So he had Smith Tea after this. That's what I see. He does. He passed away.
speaker-0: He likes tea. Oh, liked tea. Sorry.
speaker-1: a fantastic individual, very passionate about his tea. And then I joined Starbucks in 2004 and my job was to integrate the Portland Tazo tea into Starbucks. ⁓ And it was super fascinating for me because I was excited to be part of Starbucks wasn't yet in every stays, like it wasn't the size it is, was very, know, and there were coffee. ⁓
speaker-0: and they were quasi.
speaker-1: But I love tea. It turns out at least half the people in the company include the baristas like tea too. So if you find your audience here. But I learned a lot there because talk about failures. You walk in and you your boss gives you a task. Okay, you need to integrate this business into our business. Here's what we think it is, da da da. And you hear that as your mandate and your charge. So you're like, I'm going to go down into this company and I have a mandate and a charge. And you don't like ask the person.
speaker-0: Okay, find your audience.
speaker-1: Did you tell them that that was my mandate? Or do they have a joint understanding of what this mandate looks like?
speaker-0: And they're already scared probably, or are they scared or grateful because they've been bought by Starbucks? They're grateful for the money, but they're nervous about what's going
speaker-1: They're nervous, were a little autonomous t-r-a-b-n-e run by an independent individual and Tal was the other gentleman that... So now it's part of Starbucks and somebody's coming down that wasn't even part of Starbucks before to help them.
speaker-0: help them. Right. Yeah, okay. Integrate. what did you do on the brand side to square that circle? Because it still is Tazo-T. Yeah. And Starbucks has had other forays into T. Yes. So what happened?
speaker-1: Okay. So it actually did very well. ⁓ really created, Tazo had to have an identity to itself to bring credibility into Starbucks because Starbucks tea, at the time, didn't have the same type of credibility entity, even though it started as Starbucks coffee tea and spice. So Starbucks coffee, and then people are like, is it coffee tea? You know, like they couldn't understand really when we did customer research about it.
speaker-0: Alright, yeah.
speaker-1: ⁓ So we had Tazo tea, it's like, ⁓ Tazo tea, like it's Tazo tea from Starbucks. So you think about it, there is a complication, because we were the first ones in the United States to bring in the matcha green tea frappuccino. I did that in, I would say it was 2005. ⁓ So in pan they were already making it.
speaker-0: But 2005, like that's 20 years ago. And it just seems so new and fresh. Everybody loves them.
speaker-1: It's getting matcha from Japan here and you have to have a certain amount of sweetener in it otherwise it gets stale because it's an actual like food livorado. There's a whole other learning about production and distribution. But yeah, so we brought it over. So you have Tazo, you have Starbucks and have Frappuccino. Like what the heck am I going to put on the menu board? So you really had to figure out. what are you trying to get across in the second the person's looking or if you're going to communicate it to someone, what's going come out of the briefs' mouth, what's going to be the key for them to hit.
speaker-0: And what's the drinking experience? Like, how do you communicate that from a mental?
speaker-1: Is Forward? it Macho Forward? Is it so... That was a really awesome kind of problem to work with. And this lady, Kim Malik, who worked for me in Tazo, who now runs Salt and Straw, she's a fantastic person. Salt and Straw. Helped to figure out and get this thing through the system, as Starbucks ended up in running into her. So a lot of complexity there. But at first, when I was going down to Tazo... You know, I came from Campbell's, which is a big corporate, it's like a machine that does things the same way. Blank. we're going out to tea and going to this little awesome place that smelled amazing. You can imagine, like, you smell like you're going to a spa every day. And I'd walk the halls and I would be thinking about something and I'd just walk past people. And then about a month in, there was like, I think an Amy intervention. We're like, we have to talk. Cause if you're going to be coming down here helping us.
speaker-0: Like P &G.
speaker-1: you're not doing it in a very personable way. I was like, what? Because I'm like, I've already been told I'm a personable person. So we decided that we would do something Starbucket called assimilation. It's when there's a group of people and a facilitator and they talk to the people, the facilitator, and you're in there, here's what I want to do, here's my goals, and you leave. And then they talk and you come back and it's not one person that says something, but it's a here's things we love from you, right? So it feels actually
speaker-0: real.
speaker-1: I've been through a couple in my time there and was great. It's actually super helpful as a leader.
speaker-0: From a branding perspective, it sounds like the Borg. Hey, you're gonna be assimilated ⁓
speaker-1: It's a little harsher than it is. actually more, it's a quick way to get up to speed on what your team's are. They're like, you don't even look at us. Okay, so the thing is, you're not coming across personally. You want to ⁓ integrate us back into this huge company. Switch again, the time wasn't big. ⁓ It feels, lot of feeling worlds. It feels like you don't really care about us. It feels like, who are you to come in? And some of the examples they gave were you walk.
speaker-0: So what did they say about...
speaker-1: right past this other lady, Amy, walk right past her in the hall and you didn't even look up and say hi. You were going to the refrigerator to get your lunch and there was a group of people sitting at the lunchroom table or at the area there and you didn't stop to see how people were doing. It was a very, because the place had grown up though. So I clearly was not paying attention to the cues of their culture. I was listening to what my boss had told me to do. the culture of that higher man. ⁓ so that was an interesting like, listen.
speaker-0: So in talking about the innovation that you've done with ⁓ Viya when you were at Starbucks moving on innovation with ⁓ online order, the whole rewards program, the digital communication program, ⁓ instant coffee, like I'll ask you about ⁓ the people you've left in your wake and what would they say about you, the angry and bitter people?
speaker-1: Well, starting from when I was in customer service and then through this example I just gave you and jobs I've had, you really want to try to not leave people in your wake. You want to make sure that you can bring people along with you as much as possible, at least so they feel like they're heard on the other side. It doesn't mean you're going to agree with everything everybody's saying.
speaker-0: And everybody who works with you isn't going be promoted along with you necessarily. They may do different things. They may leave, have a baby.
speaker-1: as if like, you you want to listen as if you want to be heard yourself. Like you want to, and it isn't to say I didn't argue with people and there's people today that if you like dial them up, like, I can't believe I'm eating, she was sitting in, I didn't hear it. The intent is to bring in as many people as you can and help make smart decisions because I have my one brain from my one point of view and the next brain I bring in somehow is going to be additive some way either. If you don't know the business I'm working on, may know the people I need to talk to, or you may have a life skill or an experience that I don't.
speaker-0: So yes, think, yeah, in creating those relationships with people, sometimes they pay off in ways you don't think about. Any examples of that?
speaker-1: Sure, so, and this maybe is a thank you in case Mary's out. can make this any day. Yes, thank you, Mary Wagner. So I was in one of my first meetings. I was responsible for launching the Instinct Coffee from Starbucks, which we hadn't named yet and we're sitting in a board meeting ⁓ and you can imagine the board table's fairly large and Howard Schultz was on one end and Cliff and Mary. A bunch of people were in there that were business unit owners and the head of operations was there, et cetera.
speaker-0: Thank you.
speaker-1: And I was the director, so was lowest level of room. And I'm listening as hard as I can, like I'm listening. And it was one of the first times I'd ever been in one of these environments where you have the person in charge of the whole organization is debating with others that are much higher level than you. And I am running it. So I have to figure out how do I listen to it? How do I understand where we want to go? How do I... shape the conversation in way we can make the decisions we want to make, but that we could move on. ⁓ And Mary pulls me aside after, this might have been maybe the third one of these meetings I had, and she says, hey, and I hadn't worked with her that much. She ran R &D for Starbucks. She says, hey, you know, I've just noticed something. She goes, I don't think you're stupid. And I was like, well, I don't know where this is going. She goes, but I think you have a hearing problem. And I was like, what? And she said, Yeah, you keep like answering the questions just wrong. ⁓ Or you're making a comment on something just kind of wrong. Like it's not what they asked or what they said. She goes, think you should get your hearing checked. So I'm like, okay, thanks. I'll do that. So I went and got hearing checked and I always knew kind of it. I had to look at you. And it turns out that I had degenerative hearing loss. And at the time, so this was...
speaker-0: Sorry
speaker-1: almost 20 years ago, I had the hearing of a 65 year old. Wow. So, and the specific tones that I couldn't hear were the same tones as many of the men.
speaker-0: Including Howard Schultz. ⁓
speaker-1: I will forever be grateful for Mary for even saying that because she could have not said anything.
speaker-0: Yeah, and them fail. it's about the relationships. I think that's important. And I think this is something that, I mean, in these conversations, I'm talking to different people. And I think a lot of what you're talking about, caring about the people you're with, benefiting from them, creating those relationships, having empathy, are very, they're generally associated as feminine qualities.
speaker-1: Now.
speaker-0: But I think they're universal qualities that benefit a lot of people that I talk to and being able to listen to ⁓ other people and incorporate their point of views or respectfully object and try and convince. And if you can't convince, then object and say, well, these are what I stand for and we'll have to make a decision based on that. Let's move on to ⁓ your biggest thing at Starbucks, I think was rolling out. online ordering and how did that start and it is now responsible for what 20 % of Starbucks revenue or 30 % okay so that's still significant 33 % of Starbucks revenue came from something that began with your initiative. We can say so. I know it's exciting and here you sit in my our humble little speakeasy here's to here's to success
speaker-1: and
speaker-0: So how did that come about?
speaker-1: So I was running the loyalty program and a woman that worked for me ended up sharing some technology that we had. So she's like, you know, there's a way because we have an ecosystem that has, you can store payment. The point of sale had a way to scan the payment and the payment system is connected. looser than we originally thought when we put this idea to inventory and products consumed.
speaker-0: but still miles ahead of where most companies were at the time.
speaker-1: So she's like, you know, this exists, we could do something with it. And ⁓ I went around to different people. I went around this person that ran digital payments for me. was like, do we want to use this for anything? And he's like, no, I don't really see any need for it. like, okay. ⁓ I went to different groups just within the organization. Be like, is anybody using this? Like, no. I was like, huh. So I was looking more and more into it and I asked her to help write a business case. Like what is the technology? What can it be used for? Why is it important? So put that here. So at the same time, I would happen to be sitting in business meetings where we were hearing that between 6.30 and 9.30 in the morning, so during rush in the busier stores, ninth person or more standing in line fails on the line. So they leave the store. So if you're in New York, it was fine. You just go maybe three blocks down, but you lose that sale if the next Starbucks isn't between you. And so that you, didn't get that revenue back necessarily. So that I, in my head, I had that as a business problem. At the same time, I also knew about the Disney FastPass, which were, if you're not familiar with FastPass, at the time, it was you go, ⁓ Buzz Lightyear, you go and you say, want to come back later. You get a little piece of paper and you go, I wrote a like. So I was like, huh, well, we have this problem where we need to get more people through the line. Disney's kind of figured out how to.
speaker-0: and I'm back.
speaker-1: do that with FastPass. And we have this technology because we have this ecosystem put together. So we worked on a presentation or conversation about how this could help us. And I also happened to reach out to the folks that were creating the wristbands for the Disney FastPass. They happened to be at Seattle. So I like, tell me about that experience. What do you know about that? What's working, what's not, what's missing? And so I learned a little bit about their experiences because it was important. And folks brought this up when I talked about it. Might not remember, but at the time when people jumped the line at Disney, they're like, dad would fight another dad because he Oh, we that in Star Wars. That's not good. know what? Yeah.
speaker-0: Over coffee. coffee. Over Buzz Lightyear maybe, but not over... Not in front of the kids.
speaker-1: Either way. ⁓ I know. right. if there's no coffee in your system, you might fight more. ⁓ So I presented to like all the heads of state, right? The head of operations, the head of finance, the head of strategy, the head.
speaker-0: And they said, yes, let's green light this. No. What are they, stupid?
speaker-1: Please, last questions. So what I really wanted to do is I wanted to go right to testing out of store ordering. OK. Because I'm like, that's the thing we're looking to solve for. If you want somebody to be able to order out of store. And the argument, there was a lot of arguments for why not just jump to that, right? well, we're a democratic line system, right? You get it first in, first out. And I even have, still have a piece of paper. Where they get That one of those gentlemen wrote to me what a. democratic line looks like, circles and squares and arrows and that kind of thing. And I keep it always to look at to be like, listen and come back and things can be done. So, ⁓ so then what I did is I ended up talking to the folks that made the wristbands and we created some like testing to do. And I think I want to say 10 or 11 different ideas for tests, just to see which of these ideas may be viable. And I listened to what they said, like, okay, let's make the thing trigger when you come in the store. Let's make the thing ⁓ trigger at the scan so that the drink you want follows you to your phone. And the last one was order from out. And it used to, when we first started, it was called remote order. ended up being mobile. And so the tests, a handful of the tests got greenlit and remote.
speaker-0: and naturally rebel or anything like that. And you knew that. And did you find in that or in any other work that you did at Starbucks where you had a big learning because you didn't incorporate other people?
speaker-1: And that's the one that guess.
speaker-0: Tell me about it.
speaker-1: Little one then a big one. So I had a little one because I think it's good for folks to... This one's interesting. ⁓ Back at Campbell's Soup. So I was running red or white eating soups, so the condensed soup. And I happen to have the kids' brand. So those are the ones with the pasta shape. Disney shapes or whatever they are. And I had the thorn berries.
speaker-0: little stars and fish. I remember. Different shapes. See, I'm too old for that. For me, it was chicken and stars. That was the big deal.
speaker-1: This is the skew that changed. The skew stayed the same on the shelf, but you got to change the pastas. So you need to change the label. So you can't have Blue's Clues label if it's a Thornberry Dugger order or something, right? Probably just crust generations. So Mary Chin was my partner in the design center, and she's awesome, super creative. And of course, I walked in. It was my first one. said, literally, here's what I want drawn. on the label. And she's like, well, they don't think that's really what should be on there. Like she's the person that creates the light. So I'm in there, here's what you should do. I you never done it before. I don't know you want that. I say, no, no, no, I do. You creatives not listening to what I'm saying I need, right? Because I own this business. People throw around that a lot. And she's like, fine. I'll do that. Fine, fine, fine. And the meeting was contentious. It wasn't great. And became great friends with her.
speaker-0: Yeah. Marketing masters. She's like what?
speaker-1: So then she comes back to the table and she shows me the thing I wanted, which was crap. Like it was not good. It was too cluttery. Lots of things went wrong with it. And then I said, ⁓ man, wow, you're right. was like, here's what. And I was like, that's awesome. I never questioned you again. So, you know, after that, she's like, here's what works with us.
speaker-0: I would recommend it. So trust people who have an expertise.
speaker-1: Well, and give your expertise to them, So what's the customer want? So if you give your part to somebody who can then hand off.
speaker-0: Let them do it. then give feedback. And that's something that I learned long ago as a theater major is critique is a gift. And giving somebody feedback, it's a gift. And so if they're doing something and you do it in the right way, you're saying, this doesn't make sense to me. Well, if it doesn't make sense to you, it might not make sense to 40 % of your market share. No, I think it's a gift. I'm saying it's a gift. Always. OK, so that's the...
speaker-1: be good too. I have. Now another one, because I don't know, I can't help myself when I get all excited about the possibility of something happens. And again, I got trapped in this hole. There's a new thing, let's green light. So the clover machine.
speaker-0: What was it? And for everybody who doesn't know, the Clover machine is this very high end coffee machine that allowed, that's when I first actually met Amy, we was working on coffee innovation for Starbucks and reclaiming Starbucks coffee authority is I think how you phrased the brief. And the Clover machine gives you the ability to make an unbelievably delicious cup of coffee that small mom and pop coffee shops were charging higher prices for ⁓ a cup of coffee that You can taste the terroir, like a fine wine of the beans and where they were grown, et cetera, et cetera. And it is delicious, I gotta say.
speaker-1: So the problem ⁓ with any retail establishment that has any type of speed or efficiency required from it is everybody is trained to do a repeatable routine in a certain way. every time you put a new type of machinery in, there is an entire process that has to go through to make sure that the customer's expectations are not ⁓ unmet. that the person who is making the thing for the customer is, I don't want to say happy in their job, but hopefully happy in their job, but at least knows what they're doing and can do it well. it can be communicated easily to the customer.
speaker-0: And the machine is repairable and clean.
speaker-1: which is there's a whole thing about machines. Then is the point of difference big enough that all that's going to matter? I get a store, Howard's like, make this happen, like great, I'll make this happen. We get a store that we could put it into and we put in the store and I talk to the store manager and I'm thinking I'm doing my due diligence because I got right to it. I saw the potential of maybe in a second store. So, okay, so I'll manage that. I'll talk to the ⁓ district manager who had the two stores. But I didn't really reach out to the person in charge of the whole Pacific Northwest to make sure that that person understood.
speaker-0: This might roll out everywhere.
speaker-1: Right, because I was so excited. was thinking, it's a tongue-in-cheek cup of coffee. This could be really awesome. So it was not a mal-intent that I didn't reach out. thought I was reaching out. This was one of those I didn't know when I didn't know things. And it turns out that that was not a great move on my part. So we ended up working very well together on the project moving forward.
speaker-0: So, how did you, did Howard make you apologize or did you?
speaker-1: Well, he didn't make us apologize, but he pulled the two of us together and was like, the way this is working right now is not going to satisfy the customers or employees. So we needed to figure out a solution. They're daddy's on it as a kid. we're going to.
speaker-0: If I were he, I were head of operations, I'd be ticked off at you because you're introducing something from corporate. mean, it's like that you needed to do ⁓ an assimilation.
speaker-1: Yes, in my brain I was thinking like, it's a little test. I don't even know if I need to bother this person because this is just like a little test for me. But every year took me because I was in packaged goods and financial services. I hadn't really been in retail that long. ⁓
speaker-0: Yeah, everything. If you had one piece of advice, I've tried to isolate a few of your pieces of advice about working with people, bringing them along with you, ⁓ not running through things like a bull in a china shop and actually think about what other options are there, listening to people's expertise and bringing your own feedback, but letting them do what they're good at and not trying to be good at what everybody else is doing. That's a lot of learning from this conversation. ⁓ What else? Anything else?
speaker-1: ⁓ I guess maybe two more things. One of the things I did learn at Zilla, which was interesting, was, ⁓ they are a site that, you know, you go to and you look for, ⁓ homes. Or you'd be like, ⁓ my God, I want to be fantastic if I did this house in this place.
speaker-0: How much is your home worth? It's the Sears Wishbook, remember every year? Totally.
speaker-1: And they wanted to do something new. They wanted to be able to buy and sell homes. Now you have to think this all the way down to the person that's starting to execute is, is the engineer, is the product manager, are the people that have hands on the creation of the product in a space culturally and ⁓ knowledge wise and other things where that pivot of going from something like they were a marketplace to an individual stall, which is much different, is are the people that need to execute that going with you on the journey from this huge culture change? And it was a little bit, saw that when I was in tea and had to talk to a coffee company. And in Mold, Border and Pay, you had to be like, well, we're not just in store, we can be out of store.
speaker-0: Yeah. need. We're on your device.
speaker-1: There is a mind shift that has to happen in people you work with, I think, to be successful and then planting the seeds and growing the innovation you want to see. ⁓ Because if the folks doing the job don't really understand what the customer benefit is, what the company benefit is, what the job is now, has it changed or not, are you running a relay still by yourself programming or? Sorry, are you running a sprint by yourself programming or is it relay? Before and after. Like all that. So I think that's something to really pay attention to and for innovation and thinking about how to do something different, your ability to see around corners and strategize and visualize all the way down to being able to execute it doesn't mean...
speaker-0: 300 Nights. Hood to Ghost.
speaker-1: the people around you that have to do it are. And you have to figure out your way around, I get it. And their brains are so scared to say, I don't, but I'm the only one in this room who doesn't get it.
speaker-0: I don't want to feel stupid. And then that's where the ball gets dropped. Low back. How do you create what that is?
speaker-1: And some of it is, you what I've learned is some of it is the layers. So depending on where you are in the organization, if you're a senior leader, then who are you influencing in the organization that you know that has the legs to get it over? And I think some people call that politics and they have a sour face. I think politics can be just communication throughout an organization in an orderly way. You have an end result.
speaker-0: Yeah, I think part of that is hubris too. think as a leader, a lot of times I've seen, ⁓ I've thought, well, anybody can come talk to me. We're not a big company and we're all approachable. And what you realize is there are some people that either they don't have the comfort or the hierarchy and the power balance is so skewed that they really can't. And I was in ⁓ a panel and I realized ⁓ as sort of the... ⁓ the agency owner that was being discussed at this panel, how to bring something to the table that the other people couldn't talk about. And this was it. It was, said, you know, I realized I have had to cultivate relationships with people who do have a similarity to the people that I can't break through to in communication and make it very clear that they can approach people. Here's my credit card, go take someone for coffee or lunch. and dig into why this isn't working or what they feel about that. And then let them know that I'm in their court, but it's okay to pass this information through you and you're going to put it in the right fashion to be heard by me.
speaker-1: And that's, so one of the only, I think one of the reasons why the loyalty program still exists at Starbucks is there was a point with the loyalty program that if you just looked at the numbers, if you were to manage the store, you'd see this big negative dollar amount taken out to pay for the list. Being the one running it, you're kind of like the, was it Fox watching the handheld? We're believing it, that money's really going towards something. ⁓ But I had to work with Rob and Mark.
speaker-0: program.
speaker-1: both my finance connections to come up with a P &L that was like, that's not me. They're kind of auditing like, okay, so how much incrementality are you getting from that? I partnered with them to have credibility in this way that made it authentically be the reason why this program is working or not.
speaker-0: And I think you also sort of created, you haven't given yourself credit, you created a sort of early gamification of the retail experience on a device because that idea of, it's double point stars Wednesday or whatever it was and buy this and get extra points for this or buy this and that.
speaker-1: sorry we did stars. Yeah. Cause I was doing point. I decided to keep the stars cause the star didn't mean anything.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, Yeah, yeah, like more like airline, you know, points. And I think the stars were amazing because it does, it did change behaviors based on your interaction with the application, you know, yeah. Somebody else did.
speaker-1: I didn't create it. I love getting credit. You did credit, but... We played with them. did the personalization stuff, and then we brought it to the forefront and those kind of things, but that was a brain challenge.
speaker-0: Nobody was a platform that could expand into that. And I think that is a fundamental openness that I think is part of its success. So, congratulations. Thank you. So thank you for your time. Cheers. It's like I haven't drinking more than you.
speaker-1: Mm.
speaker-0: Of course, just so everybody knows, it's like 11 o'clock in the morning, maybe 11 or 12. Okay, so we're drinking before you we'll pretend we're in New York and have an afternoon cocktail. And this evening. anyway, we look forward to having you back here. we'll post on our site page lots of links to the name brands that we've dropped and ⁓ more information about Amy's bio and anything else. So thank you.
speaker-1: actually London. Yes.
speaker-0: Thanks for listening to this episode of Speak Easy. I hope you enjoyed our conversation or learned something from it. And I have a favor to ask. Please share us, like us, leave your comments. You know the game. And most of all, if you have any guests you'd like to suggest, please let us know. The full transcript and show notes are available at catalysis.com slash speak easy. Keep asking, keep listening, and most of all, keep learning.
