[00:00:00] Welcome to Unpacking the Digital Shelf, where we explore brand manufacturing in the digital age. Hey everyone, Peter Crosby here from the Digital Shelf Institute. So when Lauren invited Heather Campain, VP, CPG Integrated Go-to-Market Strategy at Epsilon, onto the podcast, I immediately went to her LinkedIn.
[00:00:29] And here's what I saw below her name. Unified Commerce Leader, Silo Slayer, Possibleist, Omni Integration, Ecom, Marketing, Retail Media, Joint Value Realization, JBP, Product Dev, Data and Analytics Transformation. That, plus 10 years at J&J, head of strategy for the Walmart business at PepsiCo, and now at Epsilon. I thought, this is going to be good. And it was.
[00:00:55] Heather, welcome to the podcast. We are so happy to have you on. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here. So much, because we are going to be chatting about a function, a capability that we think is having a bit of an identity crisis right now, shopper marketing. You have tons of experience with shopper marketing, and you see firsthand every day how the consumer data and shopper insights are so critical to being successful on the digital shelf.
[00:01:24] So I have been dying to, and Lauren too, not just me, have been dying to dig into this with you. So what do you, how would you know when you speak to customers about that role and work with them on strategies, what do you describe, how do you describe the shopper marketing function today?
[00:01:43] Well, you can't see me right now, but I have a very big smile on my face because I think it's one of those things that if you describe the function and you asked five people what the function is, you're likely to get five different answers. And I feel like in the time that I've spent in shopper marketing and working with shopper marketers, I really see it as a role that's at the intersection between the retail strategies and objectives and the brand's strategies and objectives.
[00:02:14] But to your point, I do feel like it is having an identity crisis. But as we think about, you know, really what that role can be and the promise of that role, it really is, as we talk about buzzwords like Omnichannel and things like that, it really is where that rubber hits the road of what is the brand looking to do? What is the retailer looking to do and how does that come together? How is it the right thing to do for the shopper in that particular retailer?
[00:02:42] And how is it the right thing for the consumer of that brand? I was just going to say, Heather, I'm super excited about this podcast, mostly because we used to work together when we were at J&J and you were my go-to for all things shopper and Omnichannel. So I love this conversation. But to your point, I think I would love your perspective on what shopper marketing used to own and what they're now expected to own, because traditionally shopper marketing was more in-store, right?
[00:03:11] Like it was promotions and more stuff and activations that were happening in the store. But I feel like that's expanding now, right, in terms of expectation. Right. And I do, I feel like, for instance, when I was at J&J, we had a consumer promotions team. And so we were a little bit later to the game with operationalizing shopper marketing. So it was more digital for us at that time.
[00:03:37] But if you think about the evolution of shopper marketing and, you know, I was not in CPG back in the trade marketing days and things like that. But it most definitely, when a lot of people say shopper marketing, some people also call it customer marketing or trade marketing. A lot of times people are thinking about shelf talkers and, you know, just a myriad of tactics, I would say.
[00:04:04] They don't give it the credit that I think it is due for the strategic nature and kind of that, you know, that balance of you're kind of in the middle of two. Sometimes they're very aligned strategies and sometimes they're not between a retailer and a brand. And so there's a lot that goes on there.
[00:04:25] And over time, you know, as retailers became media entities, then, you know, definitely a lot of the shopper teams took that on in the beginning. But as those dollars ballooned and ballooned, you know, more and more people started looking at, hey, what is going on over there in shopper? And what is going on with my dollars and all of this? And so I do think retail media has definitely been an inflection point.
[00:04:54] And, you know, those dollars can be in shopper. They can be in brand. They can be in e-commerce. And so I think, which goes back to the original comment about an identity crisis. It is what should shopper own? What should they not own? And so I think, you know, it's it's an evolving role. And I think it's a very important role. But it's it's changing. Definitely.
[00:05:21] Yeah, I think the the the the term shopper marketing to me takes the consumer out of I mean, I know the word shoppers in there, but the marketing part immediately goes, oh, so what is that? Like, I don't know what the right term is to make the focus be on the journey of the shopper. And then marketing is you use those tactics to make that journey come to life. Right. Yeah.
[00:05:50] And so that's sort of that's sort of I was wondering if I was thinking about in the right way, which is that the things you the marketing that you do should have an end result of what which should be a convenient, enjoyable. I don't know whether we want to go as far as personalized, perhaps personalized experience for for your shoppers, which should lift all boats. Is that like sort of capturing at least the essence of it? If not. Yeah, I agree with you, Peter.
[00:06:19] And I think, you know, as you think about being a consumer and a shopper, we all are. It's not like you vastly change between Peter, the consumer and Peter, the shopper. You're the same person if you're going to buy and consume a product. And so, you know, as we think about the funnel, there's so much talk about the funnel. There's lots of talk about whether the funnel is alive or dead. I do think the funnel is is fading in many ways as we have all these signals.
[00:06:47] And I think as, you know, retail media, I think the thing that it ushered in was our ability to close the loop and then find out the performance of the media. And I think we got so focused on that and performance and ROAS and those answers that, you know, to your point, we kind of forgot about the poor shopper or consumer. However you want to, you know, whichever lens you want to be doing.
[00:07:15] And in today's, you know, there's been data driven marketing for a long time. You use data of some sort to create your marketing plans. But the promise when everybody started carrying the phones was that, you know, personalization and we would be able to, you know, know and market to Peter better.
[00:07:33] And I think this, this, these silos of shopper and consumer marketing, brand marketing, shopper marketing, really what you're doing is you're marketing to a human. Peter is who I'm marketing to. It's Peter marketing. That's right. That's the day. New function. That's right. And so. Thousands of people dedicated to it. I think, I think exactly millions even.
[00:08:01] I think getting back to getting that consumer, that person into the center. And, you know, it used to be, you know, you drive awareness, you create the consideration and then they purchase. Those things could happen in a second or they could happen over the course of weeks. And so you can really be talking to Peter as a consumer, letting him get to know your brand in a bigger way. Or Peter could decide, hey, I'm going to go buy that brand right now.
[00:08:29] And so really you do want to bring those things together. And so I think this idea of kind of shopper and brand being so separate or even brand and performance being so separate doesn't make sense because it doesn't create the human element in marketing. And so we do have all these signals and we have all this data. And how are we bringing it together to make a better, you know, customer experience, brand experience, retail experience? How are these things coming together?
[00:08:58] And, you know, you said, dare I say, personalization. And, you know, personalization could be one to one. Like, Peter, I know everything you just did. I know what you shop for. And it can get creepy or it can just be very relevant. And so I do think people want relevance. People are busy and frazzled and they just assume have a nice personalized experience.
[00:09:21] But when there is that separation of shopper and brand, I do think we're creating an artificial consumer versus a shopper. And we're not bringing it together as much as we owe the human that we're marketing to. The Peter. The well said. Yes. The very well said.
[00:09:42] So when you see the best, the firms that are doing it best, that are thinking in this maybe more strategic way about what they're trying to achieve, where do you where is it traditionally sat in the organization? Where do you see some of the sort of leading folks putting it? Yeah, I think it has traditionally sat closer to selling organizations.
[00:10:09] And I do think it has been associated with bottom of the funnel. And then as retail media has come on board, I do think a lot of the commercial leaders really talk about ROAS a lot. It's something very easy to kind of ingest and understand. What did I spend? What did I get as a result of that? But what it doesn't do is really take into account a lot of the elements of shopper and consumer metrics.
[00:10:38] So looking at what is my household penetration? What is my buy rate? How often are people coming in? And then what am I trying to do from an objective standpoint? And so I think it's very traditionally has been sales focused, ROAS focused. And I think for the betterment of the humans that are being marketed to and for organizations really thinking about what are our collective strategies here?
[00:11:07] What are we trying to do? And, you know, how are we doing acquiring consumers and or shoppers? How are we doing with our retention efforts? And so I don't think it should have the boundary of just being bottom of funnel or to produce sales entirely. But like what are some of those overarching things? And then how do you work together between closer to retail and then further upstream to really achieve those objectives together?
[00:11:37] And Heather, sometimes I feel like we get stuck in like this is a shopper marketing function and this is the brand function and this is the e-commerce function because that's how it's been for forever. But if we could take like think of a clean canvas and there's no boundaries here and maybe take the word shopper marketing away and think more of the capability and what they're doing. What do you see the future looking like?
[00:12:02] Do those capabilities just flow into more of an omni-channel role and we kind of move away from keeping those functions separate? Like what's your thought on what that future looks like with no restrictions? Yeah, and I think that no restrictions is so important because if you think about it, you know, the iPhone was launched in 2009, which in some ways sounds like a long time ago, but also not a long time ago. And so, you know, the brand marketing functions were there. Sales functions were there.
[00:12:32] But what wasn't there is e-commerce functions or these, you know, and shopper marketing may have been trade marketing or whatever. And it's just sort of evolved over time. But, you know, I would say there should be a lot more emphasis on the marketing and a lot less emphasis on shopper.
[00:12:48] And I think while I do think it's important that somebody that is working closely with, you know, Walmart or Target or Amazon, you know, that they understand the rules of the road there. At the end of the day, it's still marketing. And, you know, whether we're marketing to Peter, Lauren, you know, it doesn't matter which group. They're all doing it in service of Lauren or Peter.
[00:13:14] And so to me, I think the emphasis should be on marketing, not shopper or brand. And to me, I feel like we did additive. We added boxes or added responsibilities to boxes, but we never reconciled. And, you know, I mean, when e-commerce did need to be ring fenced at a time, there was a lot of work and understanding to be done. But that work is done now, I think.
[00:13:41] And like we know what it takes to have a strong PDP and we know what it takes to do those things. And so now what does that next evolution look like? And so I think it is, you know, if you think about old school product placement, you know, the four Ps, how do e-commerce, shopper marketing, brand marketing come together to do the right thing on behalf of human beings?
[00:14:05] And so I just think it is the old boxes that has really gotten in the way. Because I think, you know, you've heard Omnichannel and this integrated and connected commerce, unified commerce. You hear a lot about it. Everybody's hearts are there. Their heads are there. But we've talked about it for several years now and it really has not come to fruition. And I think the key reason it hasn't come to fruition is the boxes that you're mentioning.
[00:14:31] So I think it really is going to take looking outside those boxes and say, what is our objective? And then what is the, you know, let the form follow the function. What do we need to solve for? And what does that look like? And I think it doesn't look like e-commerce and shopper marketing and brand marketing. It looks different. And hopefully the budgets look different. And, you know, because there's a lot of turf wars going on with retail media.
[00:14:59] And I think nobody really truly wins in those circumstances. Yeah. And Heather, I'm wondering, and if, you know, if you don't want to reflect on this question, it's totally fine. But I'm thinking now of we're in a moment of there's a lot of chaos in the world, a lot of uncertainty. You can see both businesses and consumers maybe going into a bit of a crouch.
[00:15:23] And, you know, do you feel like this is a moment where some of those, because sometimes it, I hate to say, but it takes a crisis or at least, you know, you need to change the way you're doing business. Because external forces are creating an environment that you did not plan for. And so what do you do about that? How do you squeeze more growth? How do you figure out what that looks like in an environment of maybe increased uncertainty?
[00:15:53] And I'm wondering what you're getting, if you're getting a sense from your client community or from the industry sort of might that open up opportunities for some of these conversations that people have been reluctant to act on? I do think it could. I kind of see it from three different angles. One is, you know, from a business standpoint and just dollars.
[00:16:16] When you look at all these different functions and people doing all these things, might it be more efficient to approach it in a different way? So that's not great news for employees or the job market per se. But I do think there's probably a much more efficient way to get the job done.
[00:16:34] And then from a tech standpoint, you got a lot of, you know, there were different buying philosophies about do we go best in breed for each particular thing? And I think sort of that first phase of going into mad tech, marketing tech, ad tech, all of that was really, okay, let's make sure we can do job X and we're going to buy the best capability for job X.
[00:17:02] But there wasn't a lot of look at the interoperability of things. And so I think people are really taking a step back now to say, okay, from, you know, in my consumer journey, are these things talking together? Am I getting the most bang for my buck across all of these things? And is it creating the best consumer experience that I can have?
[00:17:25] So I think the drive to be more efficient to in tech is going to take shape as the economy goes down. And then, you know, from a consumer perspective, it's pretty unsettling. We know as people that it's pretty unsettling right now. And so, you know, as you think about what that means as a person, you know, a lot of times you retrench in times like that. You may be less risk averse.
[00:17:54] You're seeking comfort. You want more control where you can get it. And so a great way for marketers to take advantage of that is to, you know, make you feel like I know you, make you feel comfortable with the selections that you might make. So, you know, getting back to this personalization, the more relevant the conversation you can have, the more trust that you can build by getting that relevance right.
[00:18:18] Those things are going to be increasingly more important as people are, you know, stretching their dollars and thinking twice about what they're spending. It's going to require a better relationship with your consumer or shopper and understanding really the dynamics of how that works and then executing on it really well. And loyalty becomes a huge piece of that, which usually sits with shopper marketing. Yeah.
[00:18:46] And or it could be CRM marketing. And so what we're saying here is like, blah, blah, blah marketing. And so it really is how do the marketings work together? How do they become friends? And, you know. I now have my title of episode. Blah, blah, blah marketing. With Evercampaign. You have to include Peter marketing in that. Yes, of course.
[00:19:15] It's really the same thing. But Heather, you said something before that I wanted to kind of double click on a bit. Budgets. So there are turf wars, right? Trade, shopper. Where is it coming from? I mean, based on your experience, like being in shopper marketing and then seeing where we are today, what are your thoughts about? I like to call it kind of the three-headed monster. Like, where should the budgets come from?
[00:19:43] Knowing the constraints of a large organization that has traditional budgeting and finances to be involved. Like, how do you think about where we should be going with that conversation moving forward? I laugh because when I used to lead shopper marketing, I was given a budget at one time. And I actually begged not to have it. I just said, can we please do a better job of planning from brand through retail and not split the budgets?
[00:20:12] Because we might not be doing the right things on behalf of the business based on where the money is. And so I feel like the more you split it, then you're driving efficiency for that split. And so, you know, you're going to do the best Walmart budget you could have or the best, you know, national thing that you can do.
[00:20:35] And so I feel like as you're looking for the brand, you know, it's really creating that right balance of what are the national things that we need to do to get the job done. But then how does that work? I do think the very interesting thing is, and this is like the ongoing debate is, you know, shopper people are often told that, you know, they're not media people. So they should not be in charge of it because the media team should be in charge of it.
[00:21:02] But then a lot of the media teams have never experienced joint business planning negotiations. And so, you know, they may not know what it means that if you, you know, typically you might do cuts in Q4. But if you cut that Walmart budget, that could have merchandising implications. You know, you surprise a buyer and, you know, that could be an end cap or that could cause you distribution issues, you know.
[00:21:29] And so to me, this idea of retail media, is it media? Yes. But is it also part of a company to company entire operating plan? Yes. I think the answer to both of those things is yes. And so I feel like you can have the best media person in the world that may really cause some problems in the land of retail media.
[00:21:53] And you could have a person that really gives up the farm with retail media negotiations because they don't know the right media questions to be asking. So I feel like it's like a yes and yes. And so I feel like the more the budget can be together and you can work collaboratively to deliver those objectives and to deliver the KPIs. Think about what are the suites of KPIs that is a win. Like, what are our consumer acquisition costs?
[00:22:20] Are we creating the right data foundation to measure lifetime value? And so all those things are done better when you have the resources of the e-commerce team, the commercial team, the national teams. You know, the budgets are bigger. The more the data flows together, the better the outcomes are going to be. And so I feel like the three headed monster. I feel like it's good to have that amount of expertise.
[00:22:47] But then I also think P&L wise, you make better business decisions for the total objectives of the business when it isn't a separate. And joint business planning needs to actually be joint. I mean, yes, it does. I wrote a research paper about that. Anybody listening, please read it. But I totally agree with you. And you started to kind of dive into one of my next questions, which was really about metrics for shopper marketing. So what should they own? Should they own metrics?
[00:23:17] Should it be joint owning of metrics across e-commerce and blah, blah, blah, marketing function? Like, how do you think about the metrics piece of it? I feel like if we could align on what are, you know, because obviously when it's in sales, you're, you know, your job is to grow the sales and grow the business. More and more companies, though, even with the selling teams are starting to really eye profitability. And as we go into an economic downturn, that is only going to intensify.
[00:23:46] And the way that you manage the P&L, you know, it's not just through trade planning. It's collectively, you know, what are our consumer acquisition costs? Are they going up or are they going down? What is our loyalty percentage? You know, like as we're looking at, you know, our overall buyer churn, are we getting buyers in? Are we keeping them? Are we getting them in more than they're leaving? And I think if everyone could be seeing those things.
[00:24:14] And so, you know, from a selling standpoint, okay, yes, you need to sell more of this. What do you need to do to sell more? Do you need to get more people into the brand? Do you need to keep the people that you have because you have a leaving problem? And how are we working to fit? Like if we have a leaving problem, is it that we're not communicating to them right? Or is it that the product is not delivering? And how do we have, you know, sales at retail, you're the closest to the consumer.
[00:24:43] So you have a lot of insight into how that's working or not. And how do you create that, you know, circular? Because there's a lot of, you know, brand, you know, a lot of times it's talking about how the commercial team, you know, isn't doing this or that. The commercial team is talking about how if the brand could just do this or that.
[00:25:01] And it's how do you get to those collaborative conversations and then kind of get, I feel like shopper could own metrics, but it seems like a little bit inauthentic to me where I feel like if people could collectively look at consumer acquisition cost, what is our lifetime value? And I understand those things because I feel like sales typically looks at one set of metrics. Brand is looking at a different set of metrics.
[00:25:29] You have shopper in the middle kind of trying to translate what's important back and forth. So I think, you know, really thinking about what are the most important metrics. And a lot of your shopper metrics are the forward-looking metrics. So you can see when a problem is coming, if you know which metrics to look at, they're the leading indicator.
[00:25:50] So, you know, just getting back to what are our joint metrics and then, you know, how do we own these and put some accountability on everybody to have skin in the game? My head keeps coming back to organizational design.
[00:26:09] And, Lauren, you know, you've been doing a lot of research around organizational design right now, hint towards future research coming out from the DSI. And I was wondering, as we talk about this, what are you seeing? You know, what do you think? What will break down these silos?
[00:26:33] What will cause the right incentives and the right amount of attention to be paid? What is the organizational design for that in your mind, if you don't want to give too much away? Yeah, I mean, it was exactly what Heather and I were talking about. Like, you need to remove the this is the functions we already have. And you need to think about what are we trying to achieve and how are we trying to achieve it and rethink how you operate.
[00:27:01] So instead of saying sales function, marketing function, shopper marketing function, I had this conversation on the interview for the research yesterday. You can't work in those buckets anymore. You need to identify like, hey, we as a company are going to organize by category or by need state. And then everybody who's a part of that need state, let's say, for example, I'm making this up because it's the first one that can make my mind. Beauty, right? You're a part of the beauty need state and you are a collective of brands.
[00:27:31] You have someone on that team that focuses on marketing and their responsibility is performance. Their responsibility is brand. Then you have someone who's your IT partner, your finance partner, your legal partner. So you're operating more as like a little business around the need state versus saying, hey, I sit in shopper and I only think of this one piece of the puzzle because to Heather's point, you miss the rest of the organization. And that's a big change. And I realize that.
[00:28:00] And so part of the research that I'm doing is to figure out like what are the stages you need to get to. And one of the first is, and Heather, I'd love your thoughts on this, is your sales and your marketing team need to report to the same leader. Because if they report to a different leader, then you're automatically creating a silo and you're pinning each other against each other. So they need to report to whatever name, insert here, chief growth officer, chief experience officer. There's lots of different names.
[00:28:30] But sales and marketing need to report to the same leader. And that's kind of the first step in this type of transformation. But Heather, I'd also love your thoughts on it. Yeah, I'm just smiling because I think that that is exactly right. And the really crazy thing about incentives is that we have found out over years that they work.
[00:28:49] And so the point is, when you're in your point with sales and marketing, if you're incented on kind of dueling objectives, then it doesn't work. And so I feel like the whole sales versus marketing separation, how many cartoons have we seen about that over the years? And for a reason.
[00:29:11] And so I do think, you know, this is a different era where these things do need to come together and have more, you know, kind of joint operating accountabilities. I do think that's it's the easiest solve, I say in air quotes, because it's not an easy solve to your point. But I do think it has been set up for a lot of decades.
[00:29:35] And I go back to like I think about integrated omni channel and some of the favorite work I have ever done was back in 2015. And we delivered, you know, this Oh Joy, you know, build your first aid kit. Some of my favorite work. Um, and you know, what really made it sing was, you know, at that time, I, I had the accountability for category management for shopper insights for e commerce, for shopper marketing.
[00:30:03] And the only thing that I didn't own in that process was sales and supply chain. Um, but I did bring them in and like we had a very strong village that was also collaborative with, um, you know, not just the customer team, but then with the brand team and sales strategy. Um, and so it has never worked that seamlessly again. And I really think about the boundaries of org structure and design.
[00:30:33] And, you know, my agency partners at the time were like, this is so refreshing because, you know, like if we wanted insights and to create a learning agenda, I wasn't dueling with another leader that decided maybe that wasn't a priority or whatever. And so when you don't have those artificial lines, you can just get everybody aligned to the subjective and go. And, you know, I think about that, like that 2015, that's 10 years ago.
[00:30:59] Um, and how it just seemed like that was going to be the wave of the future. And then I have not, I myself haven't been able to achieve it quite that fluidly. And then, you know, I've watched the industry struggle with that and it all goes back to org design and incentives. And it takes time though. And I think to my point about what the future looks like, I'm, I'm painting the future, but it could take four years to get there depending on where you are in your organization. So what I'm trying to do in the research is really break down like what those tangible steps are.
[00:31:29] And to your point, Heather, after you have that joint leader, you have joint incentives. And then from there, like you, you test it with one of your brands and you figure out how to create an omni-channel team. But I also think it's a huge call out to HR. You need to recruit differently. You need to train differently. You need to think about like how you're creating leaders in your organization. They need to have a circulation through an e-commerce role.
[00:31:54] Like that needs to be pulled into how you're building the general manager of the future, which isn't being done now. So this is a systemic shift, but there's, there's steps that you can take to get there and you can't do it tomorrow, but you have to start. Yeah.
[00:32:09] Well, and based on my role at PepsiCo, I attended a transformation conference and it really struck me for how much change that I have been a part of in the industry, in my roles in e-commerce or shopper marketing, how little transformation or change management training I've had. And that can be said of all executives.
[00:32:35] So like these executives that are in charge of creating these magnitudes of change have very little, a lot of times it can be, you know, consultants that are brought in to do these things. However, as I've watched this over time in many ways, consultants can go so far, but there are cultural things that are very important and really it starts and stops with the current leaders.
[00:33:03] And so to create those magnitudes of change, I just feel like, I feel like a lot of the business leaders today just have not been through a type of training or, you know, through all of that stuff that it really struck me when I went to this transformation conference and saw all these change management professionals and all these frameworks that they have that I know are going unused.
[00:33:27] And, you know, I really thought that that was something that, you know, as I think about the magnitude of change that needs to occur, it's not easy and it hasn't been done before. So to be a leader taking a big leap like the one that you're talking about, and it does start with the small steps, but to be an early mover on that is difficult.
[00:33:52] I've been thinking about this so much because, you know, as we record this, we're literally a week away from our summit where the current count for people to come is almost 800, which is stunning.
[00:34:09] And I've been thinking about our people, our people are the members of our community and how they have for their entire careers been in a position where they aren't those decision makers that you're talking about, but need to heavily influence and find their people to build a movement to create change from the middle of the organization or the next level down or something.
[00:34:37] And that is the clarion call that I think. And and I I've learned from them how hard and arduous that position is to be needing to run your book of business and also, you know, try and shine a light on the path to change and to growth. So that's what that's what that's what excites me so much about this conversation and what I look forward to at the summit.
[00:35:06] And and and I'm sure, Lauren, your future research will provide thoughts for that. But also, I would I mean, part of me is like, look at your organization and see are they capable of this kind of of change? And then think about where you want to be.
[00:35:29] What is your capacity, you know, armed together with your comrades to be able to drive this kind of change and sort of bring it while, you know, shift changes are happening at the top versus. It's never going to get there and I want to go someplace and I know I don't mean to be cavalier about changing jobs or something like that. Like, I know there's all sorts of considerations in doing that, but but I do think.
[00:35:55] These moments are sort of existential to get the growth that that that are that are, you know, our members deserve and are being being asked to deliver. Or anyway, sorry, that was. Yeah, no, I found that like peer learning, discussing, venting, therapy, all the things I feel like are really important. I've also learned that you got to find, you know, like I call them the coalition of the willing.
[00:36:24] And, you know, when I started out with some of my biggest change, you know, I went to the most strategic places, which are usually the big ones. And I found there's a lot of resistance there. And that's kind of how I learned about the coalition of the willing. It doesn't necessarily have to make sense or be the most strategic place in the organization. But if they are willing to go along the ride and kind of create that change in that proof of concept that can get people started, you know, those are my people.
[00:36:53] And that's how I've been able to create some of the change that I have. But I do think, you know, at the upper executive level, becoming very comfortable with things that typically have not been part of the role or are less comfortable like media or, you know, switching back and forth. If it's brand, then getting more comfortable with customer P&L thinking and how it works.
[00:37:18] And so I think, you know, I was just reading something yesterday about like, is the future in specialty or a generalist? And somebody had just put out on LinkedIn something about the generalist making a comeback. And I do think, you know, there's something to be said for that because, you know, to your point, like how you can only go so far if you're in the middle of your organization, even if you find that coalition of the willing.
[00:37:42] And so I think I'm really, really excited for Lauren's research to come out because I think it's going to be a very important piece of research. Because, I mean, you're asking like the million dollar question. And so I think it's going to be a great piece of research. I also, in this last moment, found actually the title of that, which is the coalition of the willing.
[00:38:07] Because I think the big takeaway here is what we're talking about here, which started with shopper marketing, has now ended up being an episode about. I'm going to be shopper marketing may cease to exist if you start to think about how you really want to serve the consumer and where growth really comes from. And that's super exciting.
[00:38:30] So, Heather, thank you for helping us find our way through this topic to something that is also a really fundamental call to arms as we head into this next era of hopefully through chaos to hope and all that stuff. But thank you so much for bringing your heart and your brain to this conversation. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. I love talking about this topic. And I do think there is a lot of optimism.
[00:39:01] And, you know, I think it's just such a fun pioneering place to be and a fun time to be in it. So love talking about it. And thanks for having me. Thanks, Heather. Thanks again to Heather for the clarion call. I hope we can all answer to it. As always, thanks to you all for being part of our community.