Breaking conventions: Sweating assets to drive growth

00:05

Hello and welcome to the Brand Hunt Podcast, where we explore ideas and hunches around how marketers are growing great brands. It's a look under the hood at how much is marketing science and how much is built on a hunch. In today's episode, I'm joined by Tom DeSoto. Tom, Tom's one of the most hunt lead marketers I have ever worked with.

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00:23

We've known each other for many years. He's led marketing and new product development across brands you'd have seen in the supermarkets, such as Australia's own Nondairy milks, the Milk Lab, barista milks, messy monkeys in the kids aisle and barley, plus in cereals. He was the CMO at Camp Australia, the well-known national before and after school care service and more recently, CMO at Australian Vintage.

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00:42

Driving growth across wine brands like McGuigan Wines and Tempus Two. It's quite the CV. Tom lives at full pace with his enthusiasm, and I think it will make even the most jaded market. I want to look at things differently. Welcome to the show, Tom. Thanks, Linds. So you started your career off in agency land many, many years ago before making your debut into the marketing department at Pernod Ricard. Talk to me about those early years.

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01:04

Well, I mean, there's a long history in my family of kind of agency. So my mother was, head of strategy for Mo and Jo, the original, well, ad agency. And so then I felt I needed to continue the family legacy. And I joined publicist Mojo, which is the French owned version of that particular business.

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01:25

And really, that was kind of a it was a bit by luck, I kind of fell into it. It wasn't like design, you know, you finish school, you think about what you want to do. I'd always worked in businesses all through school and through uni. You know, I always held down some kind of food service job that was really informative.

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01:44

But I thought, you know, let's give this ad thing a try. I thought you were going to say you've always had a family legacy and drinking wine. But I mean you know we have that too. I think we share that with a lot of families. And so talk to me about how does your career evolved from agency into the marketing department.

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01:58

I think the catalyst for that was, you know, when you work on brands, that partner, Ricard have from an agency lens, you get this kind of level of excitement. You see opportunities that you can create real change. The problem is you don't have the decision making power. And so we often or I personally felt that clients just didn't get it.

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02:21

And so suddenly I was like, well, I've got to get on that side of the fence to truly execute things that I believe are going to shift the dial. And that was the kind of the catalyst to leave agency and go and, you know, take control. And what would you say to a you now being, you know, to a me on an agency side, how do you get the best out of a client relationship?

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02:41

Oh, I think this is something you're particularly good at. I just think this brutal honesty around, you know, is, is this thing that we're all aligning to do. I mean, ultimately, we're all just trying to drive growth of some kind, whatever that growth might be. And I think sometimes, you know, agencies can get lost in the pursuit to produce good work and lose the connection to growth.

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03:05

And so I think keeping that singular purpose in the heart of all the conversation, I think you can get the most out of that kind of client dialogue because I, you know, I speak to a lot of my colleagues and peers and they talk a lot about creativity and work and never kind of I hear about what the growth aspirations or how that's going to drive an outcome or any of that kind of stuff.

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03:26

And so then when that gets lost, I think you lose a bit of the that kind of connection. And the purpose like what are we all here to achieve. Growing brands. Yeah. So what I know from you is that you absolutely lead with the kind of hustle and hunt you're a break the rules kind of guy rather than, you know, live within the structure.

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03:43

Where do you think that comes from for you? Look, we've got a lot of entrepreneur blood in the in the gene pool. You know, I think and I've kind of look back out in our line a little bit to understand the drive. You know, there were a lot of entrepreneurs in my family, and I think and even in my siblings, you know, if you look at what my, my sisters, my brother are doing, like, we're all pursuing, changing certain things about the areas of expertise that we have.

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04:10

But more, more importantly, I think, you know, other than undiagnosed ADHD, I have this desire to really do interesting things and push into areas that are not so stable. So I'm not the person that people say, how can you manage this from A to B? Just keep it really stable. And just like like that is not what I do.

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04:31

And I think that, you know, that drive has kind of permeated through all of the jobs that I've, I've taken on in my career. And so what is it that you look for when you've moved between roles in different organisations? What is it that gets you out of bed? And, you know, sort of obviously the stable things not, you know, jam, but what is it that you do look for?

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04:48

I just I look for gaps. I think is the way to describe it. Like, again, know I'm hyper aware when I'm in a business that I'm there to drive growth. You know, that is my primary purpose. It's not to manage people. It's not to build brands. It's to deliver growth and ultimately shareholder value, whoever they might be. And so when I do that, I kind of look and say, okay, well how might we do that?

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05:14

And what are the what are the things available to us? The tools, the capability, the the team, the channel, you know, let's do that analysis. And once we start to see or I start to identify certain gaps, and often these are not my, my insights. You know, like sometimes team members have really, really interesting ideas about how we might go about driving that growth.

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05:35

But once you change the mindset of the people in the organisation to growth, these holes emerge. And then you go, right, how how do we going to fill them? And that for me is where I get really excited. And I think, you know, if you look back at all the things that we've done, you know, we've executed some of those really well and some of them horrendously.

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05:53

You mentioned before that you're not here to build brands. Do you not think that brand building drives commercial value? What's your. I think it does. I mean, I think it's just different. There's a different mindset in a way. You know, like if you were to say, okay, Tom, you can go and be CMO of Coca-Cola. I'm not I don't know how I'd go to be, to be honest.

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06:14

I think I might struggle with, you know, we we spend 7 to 10% of net sales on on marketing, and your job is to drive you know, awareness campaigns, new consumers. Like there's probably fairly limited, not growth potential, but I think I might struggle where I see my sweet spot is actually companies that are kind of in the, the, the 100 million to 1 billion mark.

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06:39

Seems really odd to say it that way, but I think companies in that space really, really like if you can nail something that delivers 50 to 100 million top line, like you're changing the destiny of that organisation. Whereas in huge global corporations, I think that, you know, 50 mean like 50 million revenue is just it's just not that compelling.

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06:59

You know, so it's a different mindset. And so brand building, if that's your primary role, I think you're sitting in an organisation where the brand power is the future proof of that organisation. And it's, you know, sacrosanct. And so your job is to maintain the brand health over a generational change. And that's been something which I learned at Pernod Ricard, you know, working on Chivas Regal 1801.

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07:21

You know, the mantra was just don't break it. You know, there wasn't a mantra of how do we grow it because it's going to grow itself to some degree. And so, you know, I see myself more as a brand creator than a brand builder. Yeah. It's definitely been my experience working with you. I think you love the challenge and the challenge approach to even state industries.

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07:40

How can we break things that have existed for a long time? When you think about the role of the CMO, the one that you're in now and the roles that you held previously, how do you feel like that role has evolved? And specifically at a C-suite level? How do you interact? What's your approach to effective CMO at a board level?

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07:56

You're the growth champion. You know, that's the evolution. You know, a lot of my time has been morphing from a brand builder to a growth engine kind of leader, and that's been very much around this kind of commercial evolution. In fact, I can pinpoint the moment where I saw the the separation of that. So there was a marketer at Pina Ricard.

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08:19

His name is Paul DeVito. He he just looked at the business like it was his and it was his money. It was his his brand. And everything he did had a very clear commercial outcome in terms of what that marketing initiative was going to generate. And, you know, he was heavily involved in how you turn sponsorship from just a consumer experience to a trade leverage loader experience, you know, so he he just changed my mindset about how marketing can be a tool for genuine revenue, profit growth.

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08:55

And that was when I kind of started to go, okay, I aspire to be more like that. So what do I need to build the muscles around to be able to now kind of lead that function? And what's that journey been like for you? That sounds like more responsibility and earned respect over time. How what's your journey been there?

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09:10

It's it's actually just taking more risk. I think marketers sit in this kind of lovely space where. Oh, well, the campaign, you know, didn't work for whatever reason. And the sales team tend to kind of look over the fence and go, what did that truly deliver? You know, lucky we're here running all of the price promos and, you know, customer programs and you know, what are what are they adding?

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09:33

Like that kind of I've seen that play out in in a number of places. And I see marketers kind of getting nervous about taking on true personal responsibility. Like if you said to most marketers, okay, you're going to do this activity, and if it doesn't deliver the commercial outcome of what you say it is, your job's on the line, you know, because for salespeople, it's a binary outcome.

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09:53

You either achieve a number or you don't. You know, there's a high pressure, there's a lot of load over that side. And marketers I've seen kind of want all the care but kind of no responsibility. And so I think the shift was and again pulled the video I saw do it. He'd sit at the board level and he would commit to numbers.

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10:10

You know, not many marketers do that. Not many marketers sit there and say, I will deliver X thousand cases. Yeah. And I think that to me was a kind of epiphany where if you're willing to take the risk, own the outcome in terms of the commercial delivery and, and ultimately put your career on the line to some degree, that's when you can truly kind of have a seat at the table.

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10:32

And so do you feel, therefore, that sales should sit under the remit of this CMO role? I think it depends on the size of the organisation. It's definitely heavily influenced. I think, you know, a market orientated business that is, you know, utilising marketing and sales in a kind of cohesive, collaborative way. It could sit under a CMO leadership.

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10:54

I think I'm relatively agnostic about it, because I also do believe in matrix structures where, you know, I can influence sales as if I'm leading that function. I don't need to lead it. I think it just comes down to kind of the the org structure that you have at the time. But either way, you need to be influencing it like you're managing it.

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11:13

I was writing a recent report, actually, the 2021 report with an article more recently off the back of it, talking about how CMO roles are on the decline, sort of 7% year on year across category. In favour of more specific sort of gross revenue, commercial roles, that have a marketing element, but those sort of, I guess umbrella roles would have a almost like a finger of marketing, but also have other, elements reporting in to overall growth.

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11:37

What do you think about that structure? Yeah, I mean, I think marketing is just absolutely critical in an organisation. I think if it becomes too sales orientated, you lose the forward view. I think marketing is about forward growth. Future growth. Sales is about immediate growth. And so the sales lead, if they have primary kind of capabilities about that kind of here and now growth, you're getting kind of virtual circles around pricing tactics, promos, cycling.

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12:07

You know what what what ends are we going to you know it becomes about tactical executions where as marketers, I think a differentiator from salespeople because they look at the growth for year two or year three and they're putting in place or should be putting in place things they're going to that are going to yield future growth in an organisation.

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12:24

And that's where I think, you know, the danger of de prioritising the CMO role, if we call it that, just marketing in general, you lose the ability to unlock future potential. Yeah. Awesome. One thing I know about you is your deep sort of, I guess, love, but also expertise in new product development. You've done it in multiple roles, in many capacities.

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12:43

I think when we first met you, at Freedom Foods with the almond milk, work. Where does that stem the new product development component or the product pay off the full pace of marketing, if you will? Where does that sort of love come from, and how have you sort of managed to harness that over your career? Yeah, it's I've been accused of maybe launching too many new products, which I'll take on the chin.

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13:06

I think it's been it's a lever, right. So go back to the original thing around what? What do I see my role as? I see myself as driving growth. And so, you know, a lot of people would disagree with kind of relentless NPD. Like if you go back to the pantry, Ricard, they've got these power global brands that they want to hold very stable in markets growing organically just through market power, great pedigree and, you know, story brand story.

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13:30

Their innovation pipeline was was zero. You know they invested a lot of time and effort thinking about innovation. You know some of the best stuff I saw coming through you know there was excellent things. But they never saw the light of day because in the end, the trade off between investing in something new and making it from nothing versus investing in something you have that is showing good signs of growth.

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13:52

Everyone will say, just invest in what you have, double down or extend. And I think mom champagne was a really great example of something. They did get out where they said, look, how do we move away from France as an origin on champagne and get into this Chandon-esque style market from Marlboro and Sparkling and method traditional.

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14:10

So they did get that. And and it's been incredibly accretive to that brand. But when you're in an organisation that is sitting on excellent assets, so they have the ability to produce things and they're kind of stuck for what to do with those assets, then the natural kind of avenue is to say, well, let's create, things that can leverage these assets.

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14:30

And so then MPD is like a fantastic vehicle in that environment. And so what's your broad process, whether it's just thinking back to all the consumer products you launched into supermarkets, or more recently an Australian vintage. What where do you start? Do you look at where the customer gap is? Do you look at the market gap? Do you look at trends like, what's your sort of approach to that?

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14:48

I mean, it's it's such a cliche about, you know, what is the consumer need, like what is not being fulfilled. There are so many great start ups and and products and businesses that you go, that's a really cool product, but you will never click buy. You'll admire the the ingenuity or the uniqueness or whatever. But you're like this is not for me.

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15:09

And maybe you're reflective of a broader market. I think for me it's like what are we solving for. But but when I say that it's it's genuinely about half first starting point is what can we make. What can we do. And I think that's a different approach to kind of other potentials is I tend to try and ground what we do in what we end up making or producing, or the new product we do within our capability.

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15:33

How do we sweat assets, how do we how do we take the limitations of what we have, but then make it extraordinary? And I think the best case example of that is when you look at what we did with Milk Lab, and I say we because it was a team, it's certainly not me in isolation. And, you know, one of the limiting factors was we we really could only use the one litre tetra pack brick, you know, and, and from the outside and, you know, as a from a marketing perspective, you're like, oh, that's such a that's such a boring format.

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16:01

It's such a, it's a, it's it's a nightmare, you know, but then when it flipped on its head in terms of as just a canvas for amazing design and we've seen heaps of that. You know, when people throw Chanel on a tin can and you go, oh, you know, I'll eat that tin can, you know, that just is such a great kind of knowing where the guardrails are and what you're working with just hones the concepts, I think, to be even more compelling or breaking, as you kind of articulated.

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16:26

And so we really kind of got to an amazing place to that because we started with what can we do and then and which products then do we do we take out of that have, you know, I don't actually know the answer to this, but have you ever taken a same product and just rebranded it for a different unmet need or different consumer?

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16:41

But it's the same thing. Yeah, but not with great success to be to be frank, I think. And now we shift to wine because I'm now in the kind of the global wine business. I think the wine industry is very bad at that. You know, when I started at Australian Vintage, I kind of had a rule with myself that if I'm talking too much about labels, you know, like literally stickers on bottles as the game changing differentiator that we're going to be doing.

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17:10

I was going down a pretty kind of troubling path, and there is a belief in some, you know, some instances, you know, that is effectively your, you know, your face to the consumer. And so changing that will change your destiny. I just I'm not I'm not I'm yet to say it. Yeah. And what do you think is the interrelationship between brand and one.

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17:26

What have you learned. Look, I think wine is absolutely a marketing haven, you know, as is most of liquor, to be frank. You know, I would struggle to draw you to a really unique drink in alcohol, in general that is just so unique that it it is the differentiator, you know, like I think it is about brand, it is about position, it is about, you know, how you look and what you what you mean to people.

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17:57

I mean, a great example of that is kind of I mean, there's so many. But you think about Crystal Head vodka, there is absolutely no reason for that product to have existed other than it was just really awesome. Glass. The problem with that is once you bought it once you wouldn't buy it again. But to be honest, I'd love the problem where 100 million people all bought me once and then I'll work out what to do later.

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18:21

And so again, that kind of there is growth. But then people will then say, well, what about sustainable growth? You know, plateaued growth. Yeah, I mean, innovation can be very, you know, hot and cold. Mark Ritson, love him or hate him, wrote an article in Marketing Week recently about product being the most important and overlooked pay of marketing.

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18:39

I'll read a quote and I'd love your thoughts on it. You don't control product, you on in charge of it, but if you aren't helping assess it, improve it, and evolve it, your company is losing out on massively important insights and genuinely enormous opportunities. If you wipe away the dust and the thick layer of bullshit from the side of the marketing team, the ingredients still say product.

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18:56

Has that been your experience? Totally. I mean, it's just fundamental. I think all marketing does, and I'm not going to quote it right. But the I read once that it was all marketing does is let consumers know that you're a good product quickly or you're a bad product quickly. You know, it fundamentally comes down with your interaction with that product.

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19:17

And again, going back to Milk Lab, I would argue that the success of that product was about the formulation. You know, Roseanne SIM was this phenomenal food technologist put this combination of very simple ingredients together in a way that solve for taste, for texture in a high heat, high acid environment. You know, and it does it better than any other product on the market.

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19:42

So that when consumers have that coffee moment which we all know, those coffee drinkers out there, that that is an uncompromising experience. It must be amazing or it's it's nothing. She nailed it. You know and so I think that was actually the moment where that brand through product became a juggernaut. And then everything else as Mark articulated, all of that, you know the window dressing and the stuff only accelerated and enhanced people's approach or discovery of that particular little bit of genius.

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20:13

She basically did your job for you. 100%. Shout out. And so let's say you have this amazing, great idea. You build a business case around it. I assume you go and test it or you get some sort of external validation. At what point is the horizon of this is working or not for you? Yeah. It's a I mean, that's a really good question.

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20:30

You know, I do get in the habit of thinking if it's not immediate it's a failure. You know and that again goes I think goes back to the urgency of growth agenda in businesses. You know there's not this long horizon for willingness to accept it. Kind of bumbling along. But the reality is that you can't determine whether it's a thing or not that quickly.

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20:51

You get signs I think. But then there has to be room for adaptation. You know, optimising and changing, you know, all of those words. If you don't give it time, you'll never you won't really know. And there's a few unfortunate I mean, there are some innovations or products that go really fast, but then they die really fast because they're fatty or they're not actually in a space that is kind of got sustainable growth ahead of it.

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21:15

Yeah. And I think you know, I think that's what I kind of look for and and have experience. And so you've got let's I go back to this sort of amazing idea, the messy monkey. So for example, when you started working on it you proved out the business case. How do you then go about pitching it at a C-suite level?

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21:31

Yeah. I mean, again, I think, you know, that's that's another massive role of of the CMO and marketing team. It's about a connection. Like everything in the business should go through marketing. There should be connections with every function within an organisation, almost like it's a, you know, it's a conduit that everything comes through. And I see my role at a C-suite level is to be continually connecting, communicating with other leaders within the organisation, keeping them in real time, up with what we're working on.

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22:00

Because I think those kind of soft updates or small check ins or those quick alignments, you know, I am a firm believer that there should be no two days, you know, like, oh, you know, amazing like suddenly reveal to everyone this grand plan or this huge idea. Nine times out of ten it's going to get shut down because you got to then go back and realign everyone on the journey to where you got to.

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22:24

And so that's been also a big part of kind of my evolution is understanding that you, you know, you need to be having CEO conversations, even as a brand manager or even as an ABM. You know, the coffee machine chat where you drop in a tidbit of what you're working on or what you're excited about. You know, some people call this managing up, but actually as a marketing function, it's just about building the messaging around where you're going and how you're going to get there, so that when you get to the board, you get to that big meeting they've already got some sense of where you going?

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22:56

There's some and there's some alignment, right. Because often those people will give you directions or give you redirects or kind of feelings or thoughts in that moment. It's informal that they would never do around a board table or across a meeting. Yeah. So I think that's been a big part of kind of how I've managed to get out the things I've, I've got out.

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23:15

Yeah. I mean stakeholder management and, and and taking people in the journey and people feeling like it's all of your idea then rather than just one person's idea to shoot down. Yeah. But but again like you know if I said to them are we sat at our desks and we kind of thought, let's come up with an alliterative name for a kid stacking brand.

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23:32

You know, okay. Messy sounds fun. Messy monkeys. That's cool because we collect kids monkeys and we ideate with the with the team as parents do. You know, if I lay that out in front of the the the board or the manager, they go, are you mental? Like this sounds fruity. Marketing is the colouring in design 100%. So, you know, I think, you know, there's a little bit of kind of formalise the process a bit.

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23:54

But there's also, as you say, that hunch, that little bit of moment of genius where it kind of, you know, it just clicks. You get it done. Yeah. So talk to me a bit about Australian vintage. Give me some context on the business itself and what's drawn you back to the wine space. Well, I wasn't drawn back. I think that's a good, you know, a good clarification.

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24:12

I worked in pano on spirits and and champagne, which genuinely, you know, I think in the vast majority of cases sell themselves. The wine business is a new space for me. I'd never worked on it before. I was quite daunted by it, actually, because even sitting on the spirit side, when you look at wine, you've got the biggest brand in Australia, has maximum 3% market share.

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24:35

Like the the proliferation of brands and wine types and regions and countries, I mean it is it is daunting is that you need to Australia or. No it's global. I mean wine is a totally global ecosystem. Now, you know, you've got wine coming out of all major economies. Climate's kind of moving around a little bit. But, you know, we it's all it's coming from everywhere.

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24:59

And everyone's kind of competing in the same spaces. So it's it's it's a real challenge. But you know, joining the business, what I was excited by, if we go back to kind of the earlier point, what I got motivated by was they had this phenomenal asset base. You know, I could say that if I were to deliver growth through my team, through how we approached it, we could deliver it.

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25:21

Like if I if we did something that could do a million cases, we would turn up and we we'd serve that to our customers, you know. And that got me incredibly motivated because I'm sitting there going, we could really step change this business. Whereas if you go to the Hunter Valley and there's an example like, Lakes Folly, great, great wine, every vintage, they put a sign up on their gate to sell that, because there just simply isn't any more.

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25:44

Whereas Australian Vintage has the breadth and sourcing across multi market that we could deliver something at scale. And so what are you up to. Well it's challenging. You know wine on a total alcohol level is down 4%. It's been declining since 2019. Spirits is in growth. Beer is in growth. So it's not just the drinking category.

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26:04

Alcohol in general. No. Alcohol is down right, but on a total kind of person basis. But wine is particularly down. And so again, you kind of look at it and and honestly, you know, I could reel off all the negative stuff around wine as to why wine is in trouble and all the things that are going on. But again, going back to what we talked about, where are the gaps?

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26:23

Yeah. Like where are the holes in that story? And the holes are that, you know, if you pull out rosé, which in my view, and I want to be clear, I am no wine aficionado. Right. I'm a I'm a you do do your fair share of tasting. Look, I do tasting, but I can't tell you in any certainty what it is.

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26:40

But what I can say is that rosette, if you pull that out of the data, is on fire. Like it is flying. I mean because it's drinkable it's easy a it's drinkable bay. There's some phenomenal brand work going on. You know this phenomenal kind of bottle label story. Providence. You know there's a whole bunch going on you know.

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27:02

And again you can learn a lot from these iconic spirit brands. Because if you just change the orientation of certain parts of categories you can drive huge growth. I mean, Grey Goose is probably still the best example in spirits where they said, you know, there was this vodka market 30, $40 for for ease of numbers. And they came out and they said, no, we're 70, $80 and we're double the height and we're the best vodka because we're also from France.

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27:28

And everyone went, oh, wow, okay, I'll pay it. I'll do it. You know, obviously it was more complicated than that, but everything about what they did would tell you, you can't do that. Like there's no because by doubling the height of the bottle, what did they ensure their bottle was going to be where it was going to be placed?

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27:45

It has to go on the top shelf because it doesn't fit in any other ship. Yeah. You know, so everything about it was about changing that whole perception of that market. And I look at wine very similarly. I go, where are the growth opportunities? How can we honing with our capability to then access that. And then let's let's try to get into it.

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28:04

You're such a hunch guy. You definitely lead with gut and then you sort of prove that out. Is that inherent or can it be taught? I don't know. For me it's in it's it's inherent. You know, I'm also I also bring with that a fair level of of chaos. You know, my teams have, you know, often accused me of adding a bit of turmoil in their day.

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28:23

They you know, they would love a little more process, you know, these words that give me hives, but I think, you know, so there is a cost to that which I am more aware as I push through 40. But I think it can be taught. I think it's more it's more about encouraged, you know, and I think what I, what I, what I look for in my teams and what I'm hugely, I'm hugely supportive of.

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28:46

And this was learned. This was definitely learned. So I had a marketing lead, back in the days, a guy named James Slack, who's still, you know, one of the best consumer marketers around. And he would always challenge me by saying, you know, which means what? You keep telling me what things are, but tell me what they mean and what that means for us or the brand or the business, you know, like, take it to that next level and have a point of view.

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29:09

And I think, you know, people get a bit stalled because they're like, well, I don't have sufficient data or I'm not 100% clear. I'm like, but just by forming a position, you're drawing on something and then we can have a conversation and we can identify what we don't know, what we now need to find out to a, B or C.

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29:25

And so, you know, hunch or gut or opinion or whatever you want to use, I think still has genuine validity because when I did work in, when I shifted to service or I shifted to so camp Australian mindset, their mantra was all about I don't care about opinions. I just want facts and data. And if I've got facts and data and that's not a private equity thing, that was part of the kind of business culture because it was very it led it was actually an IT company because it was about facilitating families to book sessions last minute, you know, very highly regulated environment.

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29:57

So it needed an IT solution to solve for that kind of last minute kind of need. And so, you know, that would those two different cultures kind of showed that I think this hunch or this having a point of view or an idea or an opinion is still incredibly valuable. But you then got to hide it afterwards.

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30:14

And so you mentioned there around kind of proving or finding the gaps in your own understanding. What has your relationship been like with research and testing. And has it evolved. Oh it's a love hate. You know, that whole thing of like, consumers don't know what they want. You know, I'm a consumer. You know, I kind of go, I go, it's a bit of both.

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30:33

You know, like, I think I'm being more open to doing testing the older I'm getting, you know, the the less I kind of I just assume I know what's right. And, and to be honest it's always kind of been right. You know when you, you know gut feel will know the testing. You know overlaying that research, overlaying a bit of that rigour you know.

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30:55

And so this will be music to the ears of our head of category and inside, who has hammered into me, you know this. Let's just do a bit of a bit of dipstick, you know, and we can maybe go a bit deeper because, you know, when we did do a couple of those things and to be fair, we ignored a couple of signals.

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31:12

We got it wrong in a few occasions. So I, I'm more open to it now. But I think it's about what questions you're asking, like, what are you trying to solve or what are you trying to ask for. Like, don't I never want to do something where we already know the answer and we're just trying to validate it because it's like, if you know the answer, don't worry about it.

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31:28

But if it's truly something penetrative, like you want to understand something deeper or you want to get a guide in a place you don't know about or a known area, then it's got value. Awesome. And in terms of those insights that have sort of completely changed your frame of thinking, are there any across your career where you think that was.

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31:44

That was a huge shift for me. I think just around thinking about you know, some people just think about the product, whereas insights can come out of the channel, you know, the customer, not the just the consumer. You know, there's actually insights all throughout the value chain, even the ops team on certain like I've seen amazing kind of switches of thinking just coming from some of the line operator on how this thing ultimately is going to get out in an efficient, cost effective way, you know, and so I think it's not so much about a specific insight, but it's kind of where they come from.

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32:21

And I think being open and this comes back to, again, those conversations that you're having throughout the journey at the at the coffee machine, at the at the demand planning meeting. Again, marketing should be there. You know, like in these forums, you get really, really interesting and compelling stuff. And so knowing that they're there, I think was what I, what I've learned.

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32:40

And so what's your strategy there. Do you to self insert yourself into these meetings that traditionally a market is not attended or. Yeah. What's your thinking. Yeah I think I think I think some marketers think they shouldn't be there. And so I'm like, no, we're there and here's why and here's how. And empowering and explaining to the team why it's so critically important that if I ask the brand manager of brand A, how we performing, they need to have as good, if not better insight and understanding onto that performance than if I would ask salesperson because you know, the brand Guardian or the brand leader is literally the owner of that brand.

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33:18

And so you need to know, not just channel a, you need to know ABCd and where is it working or not working, where a salesperson a will only know channel a. Yeah, because that's what they look after. So the you know, you've got to have a broader perspective across the performance of that brand commercially and the brand health and consumer in the mindset.

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33:39

What a joy you would be to work for, what do you think makes a great brand? And who do you admire? Who do you think? Does it work in any category? Well, I, I, I did a little kind of dig and, and there's a few that stood out and some are kind of, some are a bit, a bit random.

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33:54

But there was one that I've just has blown me away because like, you know, when you kind of stuck on your, on your snacking and you've got your repertoire and to go into a whole new stacking snacking space is like, it's really challenging. So pretzels. I don't like pretzels. I think pretzels, horrific. And I, you know, I don't for myriad of reasons, but there's this brand called Macy Tailor which do pressed pretzels, the flat ones where they flatten them.

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34:22

I mean, game changer. Do you like them? It's amazing. Like, suddenly press pretzels is like a staple in the house, and I'm like, how did they do that? I'm reading the packaging. I'm investigating. I mean, this is this product is co packed in Europe. So do you think it's the actual pretzel that's changed 100% just by pressing that annoying rigid stick like snack into this lovely disc that you can, you can dip in dips and you can easily like Game changer.

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34:48

Yeah, I don't I'm gonna have to get on board. Yeah. But like even just that little innovation, right? When you look at snacks and you go there's, you know, there's you can't optimise the pretzel. It's like, oh no, no, you know, so I'm, I'm loving what they're doing. And I'm seeing them start to expand into Kohl's and Willy's and get more shelf presence and more range extension.

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35:06

And so that would be a really healthy business. And it's co packed in Europe. So they hit for $50 on shelf at 187g. And it's co packed overseas. So he's putting all the supply chain cost to get it from there to hit. Like and they're run. I don't know how much margin they're making. But I'm very admire admiring that innovation.

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35:26

Well what's interesting is when you flatten a pretzel you mentioned dipping it opens it up to a whole new, you know, you've got your hummus so you have whatever you can. So then you couldn't really do that with a traditional pretzel and fall through the middle. So you sort of you've opened up the use case I guess massively, massively.

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35:40

And it's soft. It's friendly, you know, there's just so much to love it. I know it sounds so dumb, right? But these are the sorts of things when I get into businesses that I just get really excited about where I'm like, oh my God, we can flatten pretzels. If I was working for them, I'd be like, how do we leverage this capability into something really cool?

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35:58

But that brand has done it. The other one is this high smile brand, the toothpaste brand on the Gold Coast, right? I mean, I'm just like, so clever. I mean, there is a massive trend in young people and flavour and excitement and discovery, and you take the most boring category of all time, i.e. toothpaste. Yeah. Someone was telling me the other day that they I think that ten, 11 year old is collecting all the different flavours, and lining them up in the cabinet as a status or as a cult collection.

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36:26

Yeah. I mean, it's it's brilliant. It's brilliant marketing, you know, again, it's like, it's it's genius, you know, but that would never come out of Procter and Gamble like that. You know, like that'll never come out of Unilever. Like they just, they just they're not able to. And honestly I think you know we'll see how long a smile goes because the the challenge with and there's a good case study on this you know is this longevity innovation.

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36:50

Or is it just hot for a moment. Yeah. We'll go. The whole idea of fads you mentioned before who you know ultimately who cares. But I look at it and go, I'm super admiring of what they did and how they're broken, and they're riding this phenomenal wave. So this conversation has proven that a lot of your career has been growing brands via gut instinct.

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37:08

You obviously building research, testing, and, you know, the commercial lens. What would you say to marketers of the future in terms of how to set themselves up to be you in 20 years? That's a great question. I mean, if I just take examples of my team is just kind of giving them the confidence and the guidance to have that perspective, to have a point of view, to not be afraid to suggest an avenue of growth, but that has to be built on a deep understanding of the commercial kind of how it's performing, you know, what's what's the stuff within that proposition that that is working or not working.

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37:47

So don't just have an opinion on something you haven't investigated the kind of depth on. So if you know the subject matter better than anyone else, you will continue to progress within the organisation. If you then can. Back at with, you know, really strong point of view that that you're happy to put forward. And there are times where I've been a bit like, okay, maybe that wasn't the right forum to throw out your I reckon, but you know, whatever.

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38:09

Like, like it just shows that when young people and they're much more open to disrupting than my generation, you know, we're still a bit old school. We still kind of hold back a bit, you know, manage out, you know, make sure your, your boss's is thinks it's their idea or whatever, you know, all that sort of stuff. Whereas young people are more than happy to go, I just think that's a bad idea.

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38:31

And I'm like, okay, well, like, why and what? So I think just helping hone that enthusiasm, that, that, that ability for that honesty that they totally have and just grounded in good commercial understanding. I think future marketers will be will be excellent. Amazing. I really enjoyed the chat today and thank you so much for your time. Thanks, lens.

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38:58

What I loved about my chat with Tom was this idea of sweating the assets, looking at all of the different levers that marketers have to create magic and drive growth. And I guess his idea too, around marketing is whether you're signalling that this is a good or a bad product from all of the different perception inputs that come together to form an image of a brand.