[00:00:00] Welcome to Unpacking the Digital Shelf, where we explore brand manufacturing in the digital age.
[00:00:16] Hey everyone, Peter Crosby here from the Digital Shelf Institute. As we shift from stopping climate
[00:00:21] change to mitigation and adaptation, retailers and brands are increasingly making net zero
[00:00:26] commitments and digging into the practical ways they can have an impact. And it turns out that
[00:00:32] those who do are enjoying the side impacts of lower costs and higher search views and conversion.
[00:00:39] A win-win-win, Keith Anderson, founder and principal analyst at decarbonize.co,
[00:00:44] joined Lauren Liefack-Gilbert and me to shine a solar powered light on the ways that brands are
[00:00:49] organized around turning their commitments into action and positive outcomes for all.
[00:00:55] Welcome to the podcast, Keith. We are so looking forward to diving into a topic
[00:01:00] that we haven't covered a lot in the podcast but it's on the mind of a lot of brands and
[00:01:04] citizens of planet earth these days and that's sustainability. So thank you so much for coming
[00:01:09] on to speak about it. Thanks for having me, Peter. Great to be with you and have been a fan of the
[00:01:15] show for a long time and excited to join you. Oh my gosh, you're the one. Thank you.
[00:01:21] So specifically we want to talk about sustainability and what it means for
[00:01:26] brands. It has an impact on shipping and packaging strategies as well as
[00:01:31] new product innovation. It's been bubbling around for a while now and but it does seem like
[00:01:39] consumers, regulators and retailers and suppliers are now really bringing it to the forefront
[00:01:45] and I want to know is that what you were seeing and sort of what's top of mind for you in
[00:01:51] the sustainability movement right now? Yeah, I spent my entire career in retail and CPG
[00:01:59] about two-thirds of it in industry analysis and consulting, about a third of it in house
[00:02:06] in strategy product and partnership roles at an e-commerce analytics company.
[00:02:13] And when I exited the company 18 months ago or so, I was sort of plotting my next adventure
[00:02:24] and went back to my industry analysis roots and was looking at what are some of the forces of change
[00:02:29] in the industry that are high impact, you know, increasingly high velocity. And of course,
[00:02:38] things like AI and retail media sort of bubbled to the surface but the one that jumped out at me
[00:02:45] as having implications really across the business that I didn't see, you know, getting the level of
[00:02:56] focus that I think it's going to merit over the coming three to five years was sustainability
[00:03:03] broadly and maybe even more narrowly. Not that I think you ought to have tunnel vision on this
[00:03:10] aspect of it but, you know, a lot of companies are setting net zero targets that, you know,
[00:03:17] really are guiding them to make decisions to draw down their emissions over time.
[00:03:24] And so, you know, what I started to see was number one, there was a sort of exponential
[00:03:32] trajectory of both retailers and brands making science-based target initiative commitments
[00:03:39] 2030, 2040, 2050 net zero commitments and they almost always have interim milestones that are
[00:03:50] closer in. And of course the commitment doesn't mean you're doing anything differently necessarily but,
[00:03:57] you know, I can point to companies like Mars who's senior climate manager. I recently had on
[00:04:03] my podcast, they're deploying a billion dollars over the next three years to accelerate their
[00:04:09] plan. So, you know, you are really starting to see Walmart as just another example.
[00:04:16] I think it was six years ahead of their target as part of Project Gigaton which is their initiative
[00:04:21] to work with suppliers to eliminate a gigaton of emissions from their value chain. So there
[00:04:29] is some really material change happening in the industry that, you know, I hadn't been looking
[00:04:35] for it and I didn't see it but when I went looking for it, I started to see it.
[00:04:41] And when you see that happening, you know, I wanted to be for, you know, the let's save the planet
[00:04:50] together but I also know that there must be business drivers behind it. What do you think
[00:04:55] are the things that are shifting that are causing? Because I would also think right now
[00:05:01] where, you know, money's no longer free and people are sort of often drawing back on kind of
[00:05:10] the experiments and I'm not saying say the climate is an experiment but I think you know
[00:05:15] where I'm getting at like what are what are sort of the top three reasons that
[00:05:20] that brands in the in this expensive times are still continuing to take the leap towards
[00:05:25] these kind of commitments. Totally. So when you're thinking of climate specifically, there's two
[00:05:34] vocabulary words that I think everybody is going to internalize over the next few years,
[00:05:39] one of which is mitigation and the other is adaptation. Mitigation means things that we do
[00:05:44] to reduce emissions and make the problem smaller over time. Adaptation means things that we
[00:05:52] do to adapt to the changing conditions and I think the first driver candidly is adaptation.
[00:06:01] You know, when you listen to for example, Walmart's head of sustainability, she spoke
[00:06:07] at Goldman Sachs Global Sustainability Conference last fall and talked about the impacts they're
[00:06:15] already seeing on their supply chain in terms of surety of supply and quality of yield,
[00:06:21] particularly in food, but you know with some of the issues at ports it can impact any category.
[00:06:28] And so one of the drivers is simply, you know, if we want business continuity and predictability
[00:06:36] over what we're going to be able to produce and supply to retailers and customers,
[00:06:42] we need better intelligence, we may need to adapt our production approaches and those
[00:06:48] kind of things. I think, you know, the second big force that you increasingly hear is the consumer
[00:06:58] and I think that's one that's actually evolving at the moment and it reminds me of the conversation
[00:07:04] we used to have, I don't know, 15 years ago when e-commerce and online grocery were in their
[00:07:09] nascent stage in the industry because we would talk about these millennials who, you know, were
[00:07:16] going to begin forming households and entering their high consumption life stage and they were
[00:07:23] digital natives. And so as they, you know, rotated into the segment of the population that had a
[00:07:33] growing concentration of discretionary income, they were going to drive an industry shift to
[00:07:41] e-commerce and omnichannel as we've seen. And I think, you know, you're seeing something similar,
[00:07:46] as you said upfront for decades there's been a niche of consumers that are
[00:07:55] sort of conscious and, you know, or maybe more willing to pay a premium or might be willing to
[00:08:02] compromise but I think what's happening now is the mainstream is increasingly aware of some
[00:08:09] of the issues whether it's, you know, ingredients, whether it's emissions, you name it, plastic waste
[00:08:19] but they're not necessarily willing to compromise and so I do think there's a
[00:08:26] interest among mainstream consumers but I think what you're seeing increasingly from the brand
[00:08:34] is a focus on product superiority and to your point economic viability. So,
[00:08:42] you know, we're not necessarily presenting products to the consumer that are at a premium
[00:08:50] or, you know, I spoke to somebody yesterday whose product upfront is actually priced at a
[00:08:56] premium versus some of its alternatives. It's an electric toothbrush but the lifetime cost of
[00:09:04] using it is actually lower because it's repairable and the replacement heads are a lower cost than
[00:09:09] some of the alternatives so I do think, you know, the value proposition to the consumer is evolving
[00:09:17] in some important ways and you're seeing some of the brands that have historically
[00:09:24] centered their climate or sustainability initiatives in the branding are not necessarily
[00:09:32] backpedaling on the decisions they're making when it comes to the categories they play in,
[00:09:38] their product formulation and design, packaging, logistics, you name it. Those are continuing
[00:09:45] to evolve but they're de-emphasizing it in the positioning because the consumer ultimately is
[00:09:52] still making decisions based on factors like effectiveness and value and so on. You know,
[00:10:00] the last two things that I'll highlight would be there are significant cost savings
[00:10:09] in some of these areas. I think the conventional wisdom often leads us to assume
[00:10:15] the more sustainable choice is going to be more expensive or is going to
[00:10:20] require some compromise but I think increasingly in areas like packaging and logistics in particular,
[00:10:29] there's a pretty high correlation between things that eliminate waste or emissions
[00:10:35] and things that lower costs so if you can remove excess packaging material, if you can
[00:10:42] reduce the distance that a product has to move from a distribution or fulfillment center
[00:10:47] to somebody's doorstep, ultimately you are reducing emissions and you're probably going
[00:10:53] to pay less in shipping handling, fulfillment and break costs. I mean, if you can add
[00:11:01] increased profitability and reduced cost to that, that's important to brands and to retailers
[00:11:07] because that's ultimately, to Peter's point, when money is no longer free and there's a focus on
[00:11:11] profitability. That's where both sides of the fence are focused. So from the retailer side,
[00:11:17] I know you mentioned Walmart was a really great example to have a chief sustainability officer.
[00:11:22] What are some other examples on the retailer side where they're committing to sustainability
[00:11:27] and some of the programs that they're focused on? Sure. I think it's hard to find a major retailer
[00:11:36] in mass or grocery that isn't doing something. I think some of the standouts that I would point
[00:11:43] people to and listen, none of these retailers are perfect and all of them I think would
[00:11:53] acknowledge that and are continuing to evolve their thinking. But Amazon, Walmart, Ahol, Target,
[00:12:04] even in categories that are maybe a little adjacent to where you and I usually focus,
[00:12:11] IKEA is doing an immense amount. And just to hone in on a few of those, somebody like Amazon
[00:12:20] has barely broad-reaching climate initiatives. They've got a climate pledge fund that invests in
[00:12:31] both technologies that have the potential to reduce emissions for not just them, but for
[00:12:38] industry broadly, as well as consumer brands. But they've also introduced programs like
[00:12:46] Compact Buy Design, which is oriented to brand manufacturers as an incentive and a guide to help
[00:12:57] them reduce product and packaging weight and volume, which to the point we made a minute ago
[00:13:06] reduces costs and increases efficiency, but also gets them closer to their emissions goal.
[00:13:13] Similarly, the climate pledge friendly credential gives products that are eligible
[00:13:20] badge, not unlike the Amazon's choice or bestseller badges that is displayed
[00:13:28] contextually on search result pages, detailed pages, displayed a little differently on desktop
[00:13:34] and mobile, and it's evolving. But Amazon has shared that in 2023, on average, products that
[00:13:43] became eligible for that badge saw a 10% increase in product page traffic. They also said more than
[00:13:52] 60 million shoppers have switched from a product that didn't have the badge to one that did. And
[00:13:57] then just over the last week or two, Momentum Commerce published their analysis, independent
[00:14:03] analysis, that products that received that badge saw on average an 8.4% sales lift. So
[00:14:13] I had been saying until I saw that we don't know exactly what the impact is, but
[00:14:20] we at least now have a more quantitative way to consider the potential upside. And I think
[00:14:28] anything that helps a product stand out on a search result page to attract glance views
[00:14:36] and helps at least those motivated shoppers see essentially at a glance, this is a better choice.
[00:14:44] I think that goes a long way. And so you are seeing more retailers introducing these
[00:14:50] wayfinding and seal programs to help shoppers find and consider and buy products that meet
[00:15:00] some of the conditions that, but the retailer is driving towards, but more frequently,
[00:15:06] that the shopper is looking for. Sephora is another one that we're recording this
[00:15:13] on April 3rd, just a few days ago. Sephora introduced two new global sustainability seals
[00:15:21] that they're rolling out regionally first. But their ambition is to have some consistency
[00:15:28] across the markets they play in so that they can use their leverages retailers to guide
[00:15:34] the brand and help their shoppers find the products that they're telling them they're
[00:15:38] looking for. And isn't part of that in order to pull all this off, there's a huge amount of data
[00:15:46] that must have to exist behind the scenes. When you think of the supply chain that goes
[00:15:52] into creating these products now and the variety of places that it all comes together and everything.
[00:15:58] And I know that part of the emissions scope, for example, there's three levels of scope,
[00:16:04] if I understand it correctly, and that scope three is where it's really, you know,
[00:16:10] what are your suppliers giving you or what are they creating? And then if you're a supplier,
[00:16:16] where are you getting your ingredients? And so there's a real, it's a complex, which I guess
[00:16:21] is part of why you've set up decarbonized, like that there's a lot that needs to be done to
[00:16:26] be able to attach these seals with credibility in a way that a regulator or anyone else taking
[00:16:34] a deep look at it would accept, right? Absolutely. And there's a couple important
[00:16:40] ideas in there. One, and I don't know that we're all going to have to
[00:16:47] memorize all these new vocabulary words, but I do think one of the things that is really
[00:16:52] important about what's different about sustainability and specifically climate
[00:16:58] now versus maybe five years ago is to your point, there are these three scopes of emissions and scope
[00:17:06] one is basically what comes out of your own smokestack. You know, it's the stuff that
[00:17:13] your own facilities produce. Scope two is what you source in directly, energy for example, but scope
[00:17:20] three is really your value chain emissions, both upstream from your suppliers and downstream from
[00:17:28] your customers or consumers. And for both retailers and brands, 85 or 90% of their emissions are
[00:17:35] represented by those value chain emissions. And so that's why Walmart with Project Gigaton
[00:17:43] is so focused on engaging suppliers. And when you look across the industry, both the brands and
[00:17:49] the retailers, they're increasingly directing their effort upstream to their suppliers. And so
[00:17:58] retailers are supplied by the big brands. And that's why I think increasingly this is a topic
[00:18:09] that when I thought about it, and I think when many of us thought about it five or 10 years
[00:18:13] ago, it was sort of backstage. You know, I was aware that the retailers are making shifts in how
[00:18:20] they're sourcing their energy or maybe they were changing the technology they use to heat or
[00:18:26] you know, keep things cool in the cold chain. But that was all stuff that happened behind the
[00:18:31] scenes in a distribution center in the back room. It wasn't anything that impacted assortment
[00:18:38] decisions that impacted merchandising, marketing, things that show up at the digital shelf.
[00:18:45] What is happening increasingly is as the industry acknowledges the majority of the emissions
[00:18:52] actually come from the value chain, there's a growing level of coordination, growing level of
[00:18:59] you know, desire for standardization so that we can get to the desired outcome in a way that we
[00:19:10] can agree on and that's faster. You highlighted data and it's an immense challenge. You know,
[00:19:19] candidly, it's a little bit of the wild west in some ways. We haven't talked about regulation
[00:19:27] yet and I'm not going to dwell on it but you know, there's just an immense amount of
[00:19:33] regulatory activity happening in Europe in particular but there's some domestically too
[00:19:41] and a lot of it relates directly to what companies are going to be obligated to report,
[00:19:47] particularly public listed companies. And you know, when you get into the scope three discussion
[00:19:57] you start to shift from a corporate emissions number down to a product level. And so
[00:20:05] as I've been approaching this industry shift as an analyst, you know, one of the things that
[00:20:11] led me to start decarbonized.co was I looked at where the venture capital in our industry
[00:20:18] was flowing the same way I did way back when and I saw more than 20 billion of capital invested over
[00:20:28] the last five years into technology and solution providers oriented to retailers and CPGs whose
[00:20:35] value proposition includes isn't necessarily focused on but includes some way to help them
[00:20:43] get closer to their net zero target compatible with their business. And you know, the data part
[00:20:50] of that equation is a huge one and I think I've identified maybe 10 companies that are oriented to
[00:21:02] CPGs and retailers some are even more narrowly focused purely on food to help them
[00:21:09] calculate in a really efficient way at that product level. Here's this product's emissions
[00:21:17] through what's called a life cycle analysis and it's I mean, it's fascinating. I hope this is
[00:21:22] fascinating to the audiences it is to me that almost 15 years ago, Tesco made this big announcement,
[00:21:30] you know, they were going to introduce carbon labels for almost all of their
[00:21:37] assortment and ultimately it didn't happen because at that time the cost in terms of both time and
[00:21:48] money, you know, they got the cost down to something like 3,000 pounds per item. But it was
[00:21:55] still a six month really labor-intensive endeavor to get there now, you know, with
[00:22:04] technology and software, you can calculate with reasonable accuracy your entire portfolio,
[00:22:11] your entire assortment in a matter of weeks if not days so that you can then make all kinds
[00:22:19] of decisions about, you know, maybe next year's new product development or if you're a retailer
[00:22:25] assortment and selection decisions. And again part of the reason that this is
[00:22:31] such a fascinating topic to me is the brands are increasingly talking about how this is a factor,
[00:22:39] not the deciding factor but it's a factor in their M&A decisions. So if you're starting
[00:22:46] a new CPG brand in 2024 and your exit strategy isn't an IPO, you want to sell out to one of the
[00:22:55] multinational majors. One of the things your investors are telling you is you want to
[00:23:03] get them closer to their target, not further from it. So you have to be making decisions today
[00:23:08] that prevent unnecessary emissions and if you have necessary emissions you got to get on a
[00:23:14] pathway to phasing them out on a timeline that's compatible with your exit strategy. So
[00:23:21] the data to your point is a prerequisite for enabling these kind of decisions.
[00:23:27] And part of the reason that I think people like me who I'm not a sustainability practitioner,
[00:23:33] you know, I spent my whole career as a generalist but part of the reason that I'm
[00:23:38] focusing here is as the focus in the industry shifts from scope one and scope two, you know,
[00:23:47] where do we source our power and how do we move our goods to much more customer facing decisions,
[00:23:56] the implications are really starting to get more significant for cross-functional teams.
[00:24:04] You know, consumer and marketplace insights, product design and innovation, packaging,
[00:24:13] logistics, supply chain, procurement, marketing, merchandising, it's getting harder and harder
[00:24:20] to find a part of the organization that isn't going to have to upskill in some way
[00:24:28] a baseline understanding of some of what is happening on the horizon.
[00:24:33] So I think you know you are asking earlier, you know, I hope this is interesting to us as
[00:24:38] it is to you. And I think the thing certainly for me and the people I know in my life,
[00:24:47] the shift in vocabulary from sort of prevention to mitigation and adaptation kind of tells us
[00:24:54] where we are in this battle, I think that there's some stuff that's already happened
[00:25:00] that there'll be no walking back from. We're going to have to adapt our societies
[00:25:05] and cultures and the way in which we get products and how we thrive and grow food. I mean all of
[00:25:12] it's going to have to adapt or then do what we can to mitigate. And with that change in reality,
[00:25:20] I think it becomes a lot more interesting both you know as consumers but I would hope
[00:25:27] increasingly for companies to figure out what that is for them. And so with that sort of
[00:25:31] call to action that you just gave us, like there's stuff you can do now to be ready and to
[00:25:39] maybe even be ahead of your competitors in this to take advantage of the
[00:25:43] plus side that it looks like might be coming with it. So if you had to lay out
[00:25:47] two or three things that brand leaders can be thinking about now and sort of
[00:25:51] then near to midterm to make an impact, what are some things that you talk about to your clients?
[00:25:57] I'll focus my suggestions for what I think of as folks in commercial roles. You know, you're
[00:26:07] leading e-commerce, you're leading sales or marketing because depending on the size and
[00:26:15] maturity of the company, you probably have sustainability teams and entire teams of
[00:26:19] specialists that are focusing on different aspects of what we've been talking about.
[00:26:25] But you know, I think if you're in a commercial capacity, one of the things that is really worth
[00:26:30] doing is take your top two or three accounts or follow the 80-20 rule, whatever the accounts are
[00:26:39] that represent 80% of your total volume. Just go understand in a deeper way what their
[00:26:47] initiatives along these lines are particularly those that affect suppliers.
[00:26:54] That is things that either have implications for assortment and selection decisions,
[00:27:00] merchandising. That is where are we going to locate you in the building or on the shelf,
[00:27:06] physical or digital? How are we going to credential you or present you to the shopper?
[00:27:14] Because those kinds of programs are proliferating and they're not all worth participating in,
[00:27:21] but it's increasingly part of the engagement model of working with these big retailers
[00:27:29] at a minimum to be aware of what they're trying to achieve. You do have to understand that
[00:27:36] a few of these big retailers, I would say Amazon, Walmart and Target, I can point to
[00:27:43] examples at all three, are using their own labels to accelerate their progress where they're not seeing
[00:27:52] the pace from their large national suppliers that they're hoping for. So it's just becoming part of
[00:27:58] the engagement model. I would say secondly, when I think back to the early days of
[00:28:09] doing business with Amazon as a CPG company, we looked at the unit economics of selling an item
[00:28:17] that was going to be shipped directly to somebody's doorstep and all of the complexity of
[00:28:23] different minimum order quantities. It was a fascinating time, but where it led us was to
[00:28:30] think about different price pack architecture and pack configurations. That led us to think
[00:28:37] about pack size and product form and packaging decisions. I would say we're at another inflection
[00:28:47] point really driven both by the growth of e-commerce as a distribution channel and
[00:28:55] the growing focus on eliminating waste in an economically viable way. So focusing on
[00:29:04] product form decisions and packaging decisions to write size and lightweight is where the industry
[00:29:12] is absolutely headed. You look at categories like Laundry, where Armin Hammer when they were
[00:29:21] presenting at the Cagney conference six weeks ago was talking about their new power sheets,
[00:29:29] the first mainstream brand to launch Laundry detergent sheets. They were highlighting that
[00:29:38] they're the number two detergent sheet on Amazon. Amazon is a great launch pad for that kind of
[00:29:43] innovation, but they're going to launch it nationally this year. Tide just since we last
[00:29:49] spoke ahead of this conversation launched their Evo fiber-based product form. Both
[00:29:57] of these are concentrated dilutables that reduce the weight and the volume per unit, that is per
[00:30:06] serving or unit. That reduces all kinds of cost, helps you fill a truck with much more product,
[00:30:21] reduces the weight, which reduces the fuel cost. We use detergent sheets in our house and it
[00:30:31] delights me every time that I'm not dealing anymore with the huge plastic containers that you just
[00:30:38] go through and throw away. That kind of weighs all over the place that still is out there.
[00:30:46] To see something as meaningful as this category take that on in a really innovative way,
[00:30:55] it really does feel like a meaningful shift. Yeah. When I speak to brands, I think
[00:31:03] in some cases the technology, whether it's the product formulation or something in the value
[00:31:12] chain has caught up to the intent or the ambition to eliminate waste. In many cases,
[00:31:21] the waste truly is waste. It's just excessive and we don't need it. If there's not already an
[00:31:27] exercise that's embedded in your new product development or your annual line review process,
[00:31:33] just to revisit waste, I think this actually dovetails with the first point because the
[00:31:40] retailers are increasingly asking for this and they're rewarding the brands that are able to
[00:31:47] demonstrate progress in a meaningful way. In some cases, it's things that are even more
[00:31:57] system change level changes like refillable packaging. That today is a very small single
[00:32:04] digit percentage of the packaging landscape. In some categories, especially cleaning and
[00:32:15] personal care and others, it's building momentum. Exploring whether it makes sense
[00:32:20] and whether there's a partnership play with retailers may be worth considering also.
[00:32:29] Now, Keith, when you're working with brands, who are you working with that are trying to
[00:32:35] create these new innovative products or focus on sustainability? What function do they usually
[00:32:40] sit in or is it just different in every organization? Well, most companies on both the retailer and
[00:32:48] brand side, at least in the top tier of the industry at this point have sustainability teams
[00:32:55] and those teams are increasingly specialized in many ways. They'll focus on individual topics like
[00:33:06] climate or nature or biodiversity, but as you might imagine, none of those topics carry much
[00:33:15] meaning or weight to all of the conventional functions that we've been talking about,
[00:33:20] product development, packaging, marketing, merchandising, supply, you name it. What really
[00:33:30] brought me back again to those early innings of e-commerce is it went from being a fraction of
[00:33:38] somebody's job that had many other responsibilities to a specialized team to actually a way of
[00:33:46] working across the organization and that's what I see happening more and more today at some of the
[00:33:53] larger companies. That is, it's championed by the sustainability head of the sustainability team
[00:34:01] and you see more and more brands elevating it to one of their strategic pillars. We had
[00:34:10] Francesca Hahn of Mondalies on our podcast a few months ago and Mondalies is one of the brands that
[00:34:19] recently introduced sustainability as its fourth strategic pillar.
[00:34:24] As she was describing what that is doing in a practical way across the organization is
[00:34:31] making it part of the definition of success. With that, it's becoming a KPI that cascades down
[00:34:44] across functions, across levels into much more tangible things that are achievable.
[00:34:53] Mars I think talks about it as progress over promise and that is the ambition and the long-term
[00:35:02] commitments are a useful thought exercise. The real definition of success is about showing
[00:35:13] material improvement in a way that's economically sustainable faster and faster. That means
[00:35:21] embedding it deeper and deeper into the organization and making it part of everybody's
[00:35:25] job. I'm starting to see it become a conversation in a lot of these commercial functions. People
[00:35:34] that lead an Amazon team saying, okay, I had seen those climate pledge friendly badges.
[00:35:42] I was skeptical but I'm seeing enough signals that I want to learn more and I want to go
[00:35:47] become eligible. Somebody in a chief customer officer role who's trying to develop a coherent
[00:35:55] playbook that they can bring to each of their customer teams to not say yes to everything
[00:36:02] every retailer is asking for but to get credit for all the good work that they're already doing
[00:36:08] independently as a brand manufacturer and to connect that work to the retailers various
[00:36:14] initiatives and programs that might yield commercial benefits. I think just like e-commerce
[00:36:21] and Omni Channel, it is a discipline unto itself and it's becoming part of the way we work across
[00:36:32] functions. I think this is an interesting call to action to brands when you think about how
[00:36:36] it's starting to come up. There are targets in different countries around sustainability. There
[00:36:42] are some things you can do now that are going to impact sustainability and drive profit. If you
[00:36:48] think about how e-commerce evolved where it was one single team and then they broke out and then
[00:36:52] they became a COE and now they went back into the org. Let's use that as an example to say,
[00:36:57] wow, sustainability is following the same pattern as maybe e-commerce has in the past.
[00:37:03] So how can a brand get ahead of it and start working through these initiatives,
[00:37:08] understanding who in the organization can tackle it so that they're ahead of the game
[00:37:12] and they're not kind of playing catch up as a lot we're doing with e-commerce? I just think it's
[00:37:16] an interesting pattern to look at and a great call to action for brands altogether.
[00:37:21] I think it's a great point and on an even more micro level, I think it's a great
[00:37:27] opportunity for individuals who are developing their careers. That is, I mean, I saw
[00:37:34] the evolution of digital and e-commerce from an ancillary sort of afterthought that was not where
[00:37:45] the high performing brand managers wanted to spend their time on their ascent to the C-suite to,
[00:37:53] as we now see, most executives getting promoted over the last five years have
[00:38:01] considerable experience in omni or digital commerce, if not started there. I think
[00:38:09] Mars, it was just a brief mention in their NetDero roadmap, but they mentioned,
[00:38:17] generally speaking, on average and your mileage may vary, there's all kinds of variables,
[00:38:24] but digital commerce on average is lower emission than conventional brick and mortar commerce.
[00:38:31] Understanding why that is and how, I think there's a really interesting career opportunity at the
[00:38:39] intersection of these two industry shifts. When you look at some of the emerging brands,
[00:38:46] particularly the ones that are soaking up capital in an environment where the capital is not free,
[00:38:54] you know, many of them, it's not the only aspect of their value proposition, but it is a key part of
[00:39:01] it the same way that we saw brands starting with a digital first distribution strategy
[00:39:09] and marketing strategy 10 years ago. Yeah, Keith, it's a fascinating topic. It's great to see,
[00:39:16] you know, as you passed along the phrase that you've been hearing sort of from
[00:39:23] promise to progress, I think is it'll probably make it into my title, to be honest with you,
[00:39:27] because that to me is kind of the moment where you lean in and particularly the impact that it can
[00:39:33] have not only on people's careers, which is awesome, but also on, you know, the lives of
[00:39:42] the children that we all love in a world where it really matters is, I think, just exciting.
[00:39:50] So thank you as you've dug into this and really begun to build practices around it.
[00:39:56] It's exciting to hear it communicated in such a cogent and clear way that's connected
[00:40:00] to the business. So thank you so much for joining us and bringing that to the podcast.
[00:40:05] Thanks so much for having me. You know, the more folks that I've spoken to that are
[00:40:11] really doing the work in this space, I think they are increasingly pragmatic and understand that,
[00:40:19] you know, for this, for this to happen at the scale and speed that I think is necessary,
[00:40:26] it really is going to require different approaches that are going to, you know,
[00:40:32] have applications for most parts of our industry. And so it's going to present opportunity and
[00:40:39] it's going to present challenges. And I think anybody would benefit from
[00:40:45] understanding it and applying it sooner than later where they can. So I know your business
[00:40:50] is moving fast with potentially upcoming events. And, and I know you guys have a great newsletter.
[00:40:56] So I would advise anyone out there to go to decarbonize.co and sign up and make sure that
[00:41:03] you're keeping on top of this. It's a it's fascinating and obviously important. And
[00:41:08] thanks again for being here. Thanks again for having me, Peter and Lauren.
[00:41:13] Thanks again to Keith for sharing new sustainability wisdom with us. To keep up
[00:41:17] with all things digital shelf, swing on over to digitalshelfinstitute.org and become a member.
[00:41:22] Thanks for being part of our community.