Breaking conventions: Sweating assets to drive growth

Lindsay Rogers: Hello, and welcome to the Brand Hunch 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 Dusseldorf. Tom's one of the most hunch led marketers I have ever worked with.

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Lindsay Rogers: 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 non dairy milks, the Milk Lab Barista Milks, uh, 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, driving growth across wine brands like McGuigan Wines and Tempest Two.

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Lindsay Rogers: That is 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. 

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Tom Dusseldorp: Thanks, Linds. 

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Lindsay Rogers: 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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Tom Dusseldorp: Well, I mean, there's a long history in my family of kind of agency. So my mother was, um, head of Strategy for Moe and Joe, the original ad agency. And so then I felt I needed to continue the family legacy and I joined Publicis Mojo, which is the French owned version of that particular business.

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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. 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, but I thought, you know, let's give this ad thing a try.

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Lindsay Rogers: I thought you were going to say you've always had a family legacy and drinking wine, but I mean. No, we.

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Tom Dusseldorp: have that too. I think we share that with a lot of others. 

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Lindsay Rogers: And so talk to me about how has your career evolved from agency into the marketing department? 

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Tom Dusseldorp: I think the catalyst for that was, you know, when you work on brands that Pernod Ricard have from an agency lens.

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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. 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.

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Tom Dusseldorp: And that was the kind of the catalyst to leave agency and go and do it. 

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Lindsay Rogers: 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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Tom Dusseldorp: I think this is something you're particularly good at. I just think this brutal honesty around, you know, 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.

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‍Tom Dusseldorp: lose the connection to growth. And so I think keeping that singular purpose in the heart of all the conversation, I think you can get the most out of.

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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. And so then when that gets lost, I think you lose a bit of that kind of connection. 

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Lindsay Rogers: And the purpose, like what are we all here to achieve, which is growing brands. 

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Tom Dusseldorp: Yeah. 

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Lindsay Rogers: So what I know from you is that you absolutely lead with kind of hustle and hunch. You're a break the rules kind of guy rather than, you know, live within the structure. Where do you think that comes from for you?

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Tom Dusseldorp: Look, we've got a lot of entrepreneur blood in the, in the gene pool. You know, I think, and I've kind of looked back in our, 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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Tom Dusseldorp: But more, more importantly, I think, you know, 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, Oh, can you manage this from A to B? Just keep it really stable and just manage, like, Like that is not what I do. 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.

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Lindsay Rogers: And so what is it that you look for when you've moved between roles and different organisations? What is it that gets you out of bed and, you know, sort of obviously the stable things, not your jam, but what is it that you do look for?

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Tom Dusseldorp: I look for gaps, I think is the way to describe it. Like, again, you, you, I'm hyper aware when I'm in a business that I'm there to drive growth.

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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? 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.

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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. But once you change the mindset of the people and the organisation to growth, these holes emerge and then you go, right, how, how are we going to fill them?

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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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Lindsay Rogers: You mentioned before that you're not here to build brands. Do you not think that brand building drives commercial value?

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‍Tom Dusseldorp: 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. Um, I'm not, I don't know how I'd go to be, to be honest. I think I might struggle with the, you know, we, we spend seven to 10 percent of net sales on, on marketing and your job is to drive, you know, awareness campaigns, new consumers, like there's probably fairly limited, um, not growth potential.

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Tom Dusseldorp: But I think I might struggle. Where I see my sweet spot is actually companies that are kind of in the, the, the hundred million to a billion mark. It 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 a hundred million top line, like you're changing the destiny of that organisation.

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Tom Dusseldorp: Whereas in huge global corporations, I think that, you know, 50 million, like 50 million revenue is just. It's just not that compelling, 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.

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Tom Dusseldorp: And it's, you know, sacrosanct. And so your job is to maintain the brand health over generational change. And that's been something which I learned at Pernod Ricard, you know, working on Chivas Regal, 1801. 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.

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Tom Dusseldorp: And so, you know, I see myself more as a brand creator than a brand builder. 

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Lindsay Rogers: Yeah, it's definitely been my experience working with you. I think you love the challenge and the challenger approach to even state industries. 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've held previously, how do you feel like that role has evolved?

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Lindsay Rogers: Um, 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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Tom Dusseldorp: 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.

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Tom Dusseldorp: In fact, I can pinpoint the moment where I saw the, the separation of that. So there was a marketer at Pernod Ricard, his name's Paul DeVito. He, he just looked at the business like it was his, and it was his money. It was his. And everything he did had a very clear commercial outcome in terms of what that marketing initiative was going to generate.

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Tom Dusseldorp: And, you know, he was heavily involved in how you turn sponsorship from just a consumer experience to a trade experience. Leverage loader experience, you know, so he, he just changed my mindset about how marketing can be a tool for genuine revenue profit growth. Um, 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? 

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Lindsay Rogers: 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?

Tom Dusseldorp: 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.

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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? Like that kind of, I've seen that play out in a number of places. And I see marketers kind of get nervous about taking on true P& L responsibility.

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Tom Dusseldorp: Like if you said to most marketers, okay, you're going to do this activity. And if it doesn't deliver the commercial outcome or what you say it is, it's Your job's on the line, you know, cause for salespeople, it's a binary outcome. You either achieve a number or you don't, you know, there's a high pressure.

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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, Paul DeVito, I saw do it. He'd sit at the board level and he would commit to numbers. You know, not many marketers do that. Not many marketers sit there and say, I will deliver X thousand cases. 

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Lindsay Rogers: Yeah. 

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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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Lindsay Rogers: And so do you feel therefore that sales should sit under the remit of this CMO role?

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Tom Dusseldorp: I think it depends on the size of the organisation. Um, it's definitely heavily influenced. Um, 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. 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.

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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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Lindsay Rogers: I was reading a recent report, actually it was a 2021 report with an article more recently off the back of it, talking about how CMO roles are on the decline, sort of 7 percent year on year cross category.

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Lindsay Rogers: And, um, Um, in favor of more specific sort of growth, revenue, commercial roles, uh, 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, um, elements reporting into overall growth. What do you think about that structure?

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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. I think marketing is about forward growth, future growth. Sales is about immediate growth. And so the sales lead, if their primary kind of capability is about that kind of here and now growth, you're getting kind of virtual circles around.

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Tom Dusseldorp: Pricing tactics, promo cycling, you know, what, what, what ends are we going to, you know, it becomes about tactical executions. Whereas marketers, I think are differentiated 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 that are going to, that are going to yield future growth in an organisation.

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Tom Dusseldorp: And that's where I think. you know, the danger of deprioritising the CMO role, if we call it that, just marketing in general, you lose the ability to unlock future potential. 

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Lindsay Rogers: Yeah. Awesome. Um, 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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Lindsay Rogers: I think when we first met you at Freedom Foods with the almond milk, um, work, where does that stem the new product development component or the, Product P of the four Ps of marketing, if you will, where does that sort of love come from? And how have you sort of managed to harness it over your career? 

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Tom Dusseldorp: Yeah, it's, I I've been accused of maybe launching too many.

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Tom Dusseldorp: New products, which I'll take on the chin. 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? And 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 Pernod 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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Tom Dusseldorp: 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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Tom Dusseldorp: Everyone will say, just invest in what you have, double down or extend. Um, and I think Mourne 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 Shandon S style market from Marlboro and sparkling and method traditional.

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Tom Dusseldorp: So they did get there 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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Tom Dusseldorp: And so then MPD is like a fantastic vehicle in that environment. 

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Lindsay Rogers: And so what's your broad process, whether it's just thinking back to all the consumer products you launched into supermarkets, um, or more recently in Australian vintage, what's your, where do you start? Do you look at where the customer gap is?

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Lindsay Rogers: 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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Tom Dusseldorp: I mean, it's, it's such a cliche, but you know, what is the consumer need? Like what is not being fulfilled? There are so many great startups and, and products and businesses that you go, that's a really cool product, but you will never click buy.

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Tom Dusseldorp: You'll admire the, the ingenuity or the uniqueness or whatever, but you're like, this is not for me. 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 how first starting point is, what can we make? What can we do?

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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. How do we sweat assets? How do we, how do we take the limitations of what we have, but then make it extraordinary.

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Tom Dusseldorp: And I think the best case example of that is when you look at what we did with milk lab and I say we, cause it was a team, it's certainly not Me in isolation, you know, one of the limiting factors was we, we really could only use the one liter Tetra Pak brick, you know, and, and, and on from the outside in, you know, as I'm from a marketing perspective, you're like, oh, that's such a boring format.

Tom Dusseldorp: It's such a, 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.

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Tom Dusseldorp: I think to be even more. Compelling or breaking as you kind of articulated. And so we really kind of got to a, 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? 

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Lindsay Rogers: Have you ever, 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, but it's the same thing?

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Tom Dusseldorp: Um, 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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Tom Dusseldorp: I'm 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 yet to see it. Yeah. 

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Lindsay Rogers: And what do you think is the interrelationship between brand and wine?

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Lindsay Rogers: What have you learned? 

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Tom Dusseldorp: Look, I think wine is absolutely a marketing haven, you know, as is most of liquor, to be frank, you know, I, I would struggle to draw you to a really unique. Drink in alcohol in general, that is just so unique that it is the differentiator, you know, like I think it is about brand. It is about position.

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Tom Dusseldorp: It is about, you know, how you look and what you, what you mean to people. 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, really good. Awesome glass. The problem with that is once you bought it once, you wouldn't buy it again.

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Tom Dusseldorp: But to be honest, I'd love the problem where a hundred million people all bought me once and then I'll work out what to do later. So again, that kind of, there is growth, but then people will then say, well, what about sustainable growth? Yeah. Not plateau growth. Yeah. I mean, innovation can be very, you know, hot and cold.

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Lindsay Rogers: Mark Ritson, love him or hate him, wrote an article in Marketing Week recently about product being the most important and overlooked P of marketing. I'll read a quote and I'd love your thoughts on it. You don't control product. You aren't 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.

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Lindsay Rogers: If you wipe away the dust and the thick layer of bullshit from the side of the marketing team, the ingredients still say product. Has that been your experience?

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Tom Dusseldorp: Totally. I mean, it's just fundamental. I think all marketing does, and I, I, I'm not going to quote it right, but the, the, 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.

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Tom Dusseldorp: You know, it fundamentally comes down with your interaction with that product. And again, going back to Milk Lab, I would argue that the success of that product was about the formulation. You know, Roseanne Simois, this phenomenal food technologist, put this combination of very simple ingredients together in a way that solved 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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Tom Dusseldorp: So that when consumers have that coffee moment, which we all know of those coffee drinkers out there, that that is a non compromising experience. It must be amazing or it's, it's nothing. She nailed it, you know?

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Tom Dusseldorp: And so I think that was actually the moment where that brand through product became a juggernaut.

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Tom Dusseldorp: And then everything else, as Mark articulated, all of the, 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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Lindsay Rogers: She basically did your job for you.

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Tom Dusseldorp: A hundred percent. 

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Lindsay Rogers: Shout out. Um, and so let's say you have this amazing, great idea, build a business case around it.

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Lindsay Rogers: 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? 

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Tom Dusseldorp: Yeah. I mean, that's a really good question. We, 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 agendas in businesses.

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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. You get signs, I think, but then there has to be room for adaptation, you know, optimising, changing, you know, all of those words.

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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 has kind of got sustainable growth ahead of it. And I think, you know, I think that's what I kind of look for and have experience.

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Lindsay Rogers: And so you've got, let's say, go back to this sort of amazing idea, the messy monkeys, say 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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Tom Dusseldorp: Yeah, I mean, again, I think, you know, that's, that's another massive role of, of the CMO or marketing team.

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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 con, 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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Tom Dusseldorp: 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 ta das, you know, like, oh, you know, amazing, like suddenly reveal to everyone this grand plan or this huge idea. Nine times out of 10, it's going to get shot down because you got to then go back and pre align everyone on the journey to where you got to.

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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.

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Tom Dusseldorp: Building the messaging around where you're going and how you're going to get there. So that when you get to the board, when you get to that big meeting, they've already got some sense of where you're going and there's some, and there's some alignment, right? Cause often those people will give you directions or give you redirects or kind of feelings or thoughts in that moment.

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Tom Dusseldorp: It's informal that they would never do around a board table or across a meeting.

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Lindsay Rogers: Yeah.

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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 learned. I've got out.

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Lindsay Rogers: Yeah. I mean, stakeholder management, one on one taking people on the journey and people feeling like it's all of your idea then rather than just one person's idea to shoot down.

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Tom Dusseldorp: Yeah. But, but again, like, you know, if I'd said to them, Oh, we sat at our desks and we kind of thought, Hmm, let's come up with an alliterated name for a kid snacking brand, you know, okay. Messy sounds fun. Messy monkeys. Oh, that's cool. Cause ideate with the, with the team as parents, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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Tom Dusseldorp: You know, if I laid that out in front of the, the board or the management, they go, are you mental? Like, this sounds ridiculous. 

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Lindsay Rogers: Oh, marketing is the colouring in the paper.

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Tom Dusseldorp: Yeah, a hundred percent. So, you know, I think. You know, there's a little bit of kind of formalised the process a bit, but there's also, as you say, that hunch, that little bit of moment of genius where it kind of, you know, you just click, you get it done.

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Tom Dusseldorp: Yeah. 

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Lindsay Rogers: 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? 

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Tom Dusseldorp: Well, I wasn't drawn back. I think that's a good, you know, a good clarification. I worked in Pernod on spirits and, and champagne, which genuinely, you know, I think in the vast majority of cases sell themselves.

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Tom Dusseldorp: Um, the wine business is a new space for me. I'd never worked on it before. I was quite daunted by it actually. Cause even sitting on the spirit side, when you look at wine, you've got the biggest brand in Australia has maximum 3 percent market share. Like the, the proliferation of brands and wine types and regions and countries.

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Tom Dusseldorp: I mean, it is, it is daunting. 

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Lindsay Rogers: Is that unique to Australia or? 

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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, um, climates kind of moving around a little bit, but you know, we, it's all, it's coming from everywhere and everyone's kind of competing in the same spaces.

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Tom Dusseldorp: So 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 see that if I were to deliver growth through my team, through how we approached it, we could deliver it.

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Tom Dusseldorp: Like if I, if we did something that could do a million cases. Mm. We'd, we'd turn up and we'd, 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, um, Lakes Folly, great, great wine, every vintage they put a sign up on their gates has sold out because there just simply isn't any more.

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Tom Dusseldorp: Whereas Australian Vintage has the breadth and sourcing across multi market that we could deliver something at scale. 

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Lindsay Rogers: And so what are you up to? 

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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. 

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Lindsay Rogers: So it's not just the drinking category, alcohol in general?

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Tom Dusseldorp: No, alcohol is down. Right. But on a total kind of per serve 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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Tom Dusseldorp: 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 am a, I am a.. 

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Lindsay Rogers: You do do your fair share of tasting.

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Tom Dusseldorp: Look, I do tasting, but I can't tell you in any certainty what it is. But what I can say is that Rosé, if you pull that out of the data, is on fire.

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Tom Dusseldorp: Like it is flying. Is it because it's drinkable? 

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Lindsay Rogers: It's easy. 

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Tom Dusseldorp: A, it's drinkable. B, 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, 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.

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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. And everyone went, Oh, wow.

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Lindsay Rogers: Okay, I'll pay it. 

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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? It has to go on the top shelf because it doesn't fit in any other shelves, you know, so everything about it was about changing that whole perception of that market.

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Tom Dusseldorp: And I look at wine very similarly. I go, where are the growth opportunities? How can we hone in with our market? capability to then access that. And then let's, let's drive hard into it. 

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Lindsay Rogers: 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?

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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. 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, uh, which I am more aware as I push through 40, but.

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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, and this was learned. This was definitely learned. So I had a marketing leader back in the Pernod days, a guy named James Slack, who's still, you know, one of the best consumer marketers around.

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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. And I think, you know, You know, people get a bit stalled because they're like, Oh, I don't have sufficient data or I'm not 100 percent clear.

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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. 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.

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Tom Dusseldorp: When I shifted to service or I've shifted to say camp Australia 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. Cause 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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Tom Dusseldorp: So it needed an I. T. Solution to solve for that kind of last minute kind of need. And so you know that with 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 hone it afterwards.

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Lindsay Rogers: 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? 

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Tom Dusseldorp: Oh, it's love hate. You know, that old thing you're like, uh, consumers don't know what they want. You know, I'm a consumer, you know, I kind of go.

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Tom Dusseldorp: I go, it's a bit of both, 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. Mm-hmm . And, and to be honest, it's always kind of been right, you know, when you, your gut feel, well no, the testing, you know, overlaying that research, overlaying a bit of that rigor, you know, and so this will be music to the ears of our head of category and insight.

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Tom Dusseldorp: Um, 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. We, we got it wrong in a few occasions. So I, I, I'm more open to it now, but I think it's about what questions you're asking.

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Tom Dusseldorp: Like, what are you trying to solve for? 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 a, like, if you know the answer, don't worry about it. 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 in an area, then it's got value.

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Lindsay Rogers: 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, that was a huge shift for me?

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Tom Dusseldorp: I think just around thinking about, you know, some people just think about the product, Whereas insights can come out of that.

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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, you know, How this thing ultimately is going to get out in an efficient, cost effective way, you know?

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Tom Dusseldorp: And so I think it's not so much about a specific insight, but it's kind of where they come from. 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, At the demand planning meeting again, marketing should be there, you know, like in these forums, you get really, really interesting and compelling stuff.

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Tom Dusseldorp: And so knowing that they're there, I think was what I, what I've learned. 

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Lindsay Rogers: And so what's your strategy there? Do you just self insert yourself into these meetings that traditionally a market is not attended or what's your thinking? 

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Tom Dusseldorp: Yeah, I think, I think, I think some marketers think they shouldn't be there.

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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 are we performing, they need to have as good, if not better insight and understanding onto that performance than if I would ask salesperson A, because, you know, the brand guardian or the brand leader is literally the owner of that brand.

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Tom Dusseldorp: And so you need to know, not just channel. A, you need to know A, B, C, D, and where is it working or not working? Where is salesperson A? will only know channel A. 

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Lindsay Rogers: Yeah.

Tom Dusseldorp: Because that's what they look after. So, 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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Lindsay Rogers: What a joy you would be to work for. Um, what do you think makes a great brand and who do you admire? Who do you think does it well in any category? 

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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, but there was one that's, I've just has blown me away because like, you know, when you, 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, is really challenging.

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Tom Dusseldorp: So pretzels, I don't like pretzels. I think pretzels are horrific. And I, you know, I don't for a myriad of reasons, but there's this brand called Macy Taylor, which do pressed pretzels. The flat ones where they're flat. I'm in game changer.

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Lindsay Rogers: Do you like them? 

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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. 

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Lindsay Rogers: So do you think it's the actual pretzel that's changed? 

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Tom Dusseldorp: A hundred percent. Just by pressing that annoying, rigid stick like snack into this lovely disc that you can, you can dip in dips and you can use all it. Like, game changer. 

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Lindsay Rogers: Yeah. I don't, I'm gonna have to get on board. 

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Tom Dusseldorp: Yeah. But like even just that little innovation, right? When you look at snacks and you go, there's there, 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 coals and bullies and get more shelf presence and more, more range extension.

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Tom Dusseldorp: And so that would be a really healthy business. And it's co packed in Europe. So to hit 4. 50 on shelf at 187 grams and it's co packed overseas. So you put in all the supply chain costs to get tither. From there to hit like, And they're running, I don't know how much margin they're making, but I'm very admire, admiring their innovation.

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Lindsay Rogers: 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 or your, whatever your current. So then, cause you couldn't really do that with a traditional pretzel, it would fall through the middle. So you sort of, you've opened up the use case, I guess.

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Tom Dusseldorp: Massively, massively. And it's softer. It's friendly. You know, there's just so much to love it. And 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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Tom Dusseldorp: But that brand has done it. The other one is this high smile brand, the toothpaste brand. 

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Lindsay Rogers: On the Gold Coast. 

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Tom Dusseldorp: I mean, just, It's like so clever. I mean, there is a massive trend in young people and flavor and excitement and discovery. And you take the most boring category of all time, i. e. toothpaste. 

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Lindsay Rogers: Yeah.

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Lindsay Rogers: Someone was telling me the other day that I think that 10, 11 year old is collecting all the different flavors, um, and lining them up in the cabinet as a status or as an cult collection. 

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Tom Dusseldorp: Yeah. I mean 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.

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Tom Dusseldorp: Like that, you know, like that'll never come out of Unilever. Like they're just, they're just, they're not able to, and honestly, I think, you know, we'll see how long High Smile goes because the, the challenge with, and there's a good case study on this, you know, is this longevity innovation or is it just hot for a moment and then we'll go.

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Lindsay Rogers: The whole idea of a fad that you mentioned before. 

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Tom Dusseldorp: You know. Ultimately, who cares? But I look at it and go, I'm super admiring of what they did and how they've broken and they're riding this phenomenal wave. 

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Lindsay Rogers: So this conversation has proven that a lot of your career has been growing brands via gut instinct.

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Lindsay Rogers: You obviously build in 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? 

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Tom Dusseldorp: That's a great question. Um, 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 had has to be built on a deep understanding of the commercial kind of.

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Tom Dusseldorp: How it's performing, you know, what's, what's the, the, the stuff within that proposition that, that is working or not working. 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 it with, you know, really strong point of view that, that you're happy to put forward.

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Tom Dusseldorp: 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. Like, like it just shows that when young people and they're much more open to disrupting than my generation. Yeah. You know, we're still a bit old school, we still kind of hold back a bit, you know, manage up, you know, make sure your, your boss is.

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Tom Dusseldorp: is, is looked after or whatever, you know, all that sort of stuff. Whereas young people are more than happy to go, Oh, I just think that's a bad idea. And I'm like, okay, wow, like why and what? So I think just helping hone that enthusiasm, that, that, that ability for that honesty that they, they totally, totally deserve.

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Tom Dusseldorp: And just grounded in good commercial understanding, I think future marketers will be, will be excellent. 

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Lindsay Rogers: Amazing. I really enjoyed the chat today and thank you so much for your time. 

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Tom Dusseldorp: Thanks, Linds.

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Lindsay Rogers: What I loved about my chat with Tom was this idea of sweating the assets. It's 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 signaling 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.

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Lindsay Rogers: As you can tell, he's a marketer full of hustle, and I hope you enjoyed the chat.