Consumer 360 Live! with Walmart's Whitney Cook

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast, set at the intersection of commerce and tech. Your hosts, Sri Raja Gopalin and Peter V. S. Bond, explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in a digitally driven world. And now here are the CPG guys.

SPEAKER_04 0:23

Please welcome to the stage the CPG guys, Peter V. S. Bond and Sri Raja Gopalin.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

All right. Hey everyone, how are you doing? Welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast. It's it's a special episode for us. We are doing this live on stage at Nielsen Consumer 360 in Orlando, Florida. Wow, what a great event. For those of you who don't know me, I'm PVSB. I'm one of the aforementioned CPG guys. And when I'm not standing in front of a microphone podcasting, I'm also the VP of Partner Strategy and Development at Fetch Rewards. You heard from my CEO West Shrill a little bit earlier today. This podcast is dedicated to exploring how brands and retailers engage consumers in an increasingly digitally driven world. So we're very educationally focused, and we're going to try and take that approach today with our guest. As always, I'm joined on this journey by my co-pilot, my BFF, my fellow hack. He's an industry icon when it comes to e-commerce and more generally omnichannel. I call him the Lord of Los Angeles. He's best known as the man with one name. No, I'm not talking about Bono or Eminem or even Madonna. I'm talking about the man we call Sri. Shree, how are you? Can you believe we're here at Consumer 360? Isn't this awesome?

SPEAKER_01 1:47

First of all, it feels awesome to be back at such a large forum. Congratulations, Nielsen, for actually pulling this off, getting everybody to come over here. It just feels good to be with human beings once again. But how am I doing? The Yankees are in first place, 26 and 9. For those who don't know, you can't check your MLB app. If you didn't know by now, I'm from New York City, big Yankees fan. All I need is for Daniel Jones to deliver in the fall. Google Daniel Jones.

SPEAKER_02 2:15

Always a baseball battle between us. He's an LA Yankee fan. I'm in Connecticut. I'm a Dodger fan. What are they always going to be? We are going to the All-Star Game. Going to the All-Star Game. Look for us. We'll be on social media. Hey, we're we're pretty excited to get this episode started. We're going to do it with a live audience. Our first time doing live audience three. This is a little different. Live podcast. Who would have thought two years ago we started this? Go figure. We've got a really special guest. We're going to introduce her in a couple of uh minutes. But to our audience listening and the people here, don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn. Just take out your phone, open up your LinkedIn app, and enter in CPG guys into the box, and you will find us. I'm not seeing anybody doing that. So I need you all, no, seriously, open. Hey, hey, hey. Now here I'm going to make it a little more, I'm going to sweeten the pot here because I took a screen cap of the last person who followed us before we came on stage. So for all the people that are here that follow us during this presentation and this podcast episode, we're going to select one lucky person who's going to get some serious CBG guys swag. And you know we've got a swag in going, right? Go them your shoes. Oh, have you seen my shoes? They're a little, is that too much? No? Okay. But seriously, take it out, follow us. It's where you can connect with the community we've created. We've got 13,000 people. There we go. I like it. More there it is. Whoop. I promise Whitney I wouldn't say that when she came on. But seriously, love for you to follow us there. Had to get it out. Our podcast is available on like 40 plus platforms. Obviously, Apple, obviously Spotify, but if you have a home voice OS, you can just ask Alexa to follow the CPG guys and it'll come up and pop. So I probably just set off like 30 or 40 Alexa's at home, didn't I, Sri? You certainly didn't. Okay. Anyhow. You know, and the best thing about all of this and the content we create and post on LinkedIn, Shri, how much does it cost?

SPEAKER_01 4:11

Absolutely nothing. We're an educational podcast. The mission remained the same two years ago when I called Peter and said, Do you want to do this thing right at the upfront of COVID? We're here to share what we've had the luxury over 25 years in the industry of learning.

SPEAKER_02 4:26

So this morning we heard some really great conversations. I like the one with Craig Dobetsky. Was there anything that kind of drew your attention?

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Yeah. First, um, before I even go down that path, Peter, the first thing I'm going to say is a lot of people ask me, many of you asked me last night, this morning, uh what uh what happens, because now we know Craig said every day is on Monday, except every day is on one day. What do you do during the sunlight hours? So when the um sun rises and before the sun sets, I'm actually chief customer officer for a company that makes uh world uh makes food the world loves. If you've heard of Cheerios, Honey Nut Cheerios, Lucky Charms, Betty Crocker. Um I am the North America chief customer officer and own the relationship with uh retailers. I've got a few observations. First of all, yesterday, today, Craig, uh John, the our keynote speaker from yesterday, and also Bethany Frankel. First of all, I wanted to share some common traits between Bethany and me. Number one, you're gonna assess you and Bethany. I'm gonna try, man. Okay, try. I'll see it'll be a good try. Homebody. I love uh love spending time with the fam. LA is home, like he said. I'm not the Lord of Los Angeles, but I do live in Los Angeles. Believe it or not, I am introverted. You laugh, Peter laughs, but hey. And uh one of the things that really touched me yesterday, as John rightfully said, was what do you do for yourself, right? It's a challenge and a question to all of you as well. What do you do for yourself? We usually forget because we're running 800 miles an hour. Life moves on. And it was the last question that was asked of Bethany as well. So Peter inspired me a year ago when he gave up drinking alcohol. I gave up drinking alcohol a few uh months ago. And uh, thanks to Bethany, I now know I can call it as I'm I too am an equal opportunity beverage drinker, and I love my water. There you go. Uh we both don't like makeup, wink wink. Uh that one, that one intrigued me, especially since um in the green room when we were chatting, and I think it was on stage as well, we talked about hyaluronic acid as one of the ingredients. And I started thinking to myself, you know, previous role working for a beauty company, twice over. Anti-aging is all about hyaluronic acid. Now, people go to prison for actually throwing acid on somebody. And um, how we program the world to believe acid is an ingredient is actually pretty cool because even when I look for anti-aging products, I'm looking for hyaluronic acid because it is the game changer. So Craig inspired me to really think afresh. I talk to consumers, talk to I can't say consumers, sorry, customers, the way they want to be talked to. And then finally, Bethany and I are both skinny. Peter and I failed that mission.

SPEAKER_02 7:11

That's why we're not we could have gone with skinny guys podcast. That's why we're not skinny guys podcast. I would have played very well.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

We have to be authentic, right? Couple other things, Peter, that I picked up. You know, a key message post-COVID that I hope resonates with every single one of you, which is are you looking back or bouncing forward? Like everything you learned here, I I really don't enjoy it when someone asks me, oh my gosh, we're gonna return to normal again. We live in a different world, a world that's very different from two years ago. So how do you bounce forward? Uh one pep pee of mine, please don't say brick-in-mortar, please don't say e-commerce. I've lived that journey, day one of e-commerce, starting 2013. It's an omnichannel world, whether we like it or not. Um consumers buy stuff when they want to, how they want to. They engage on a device, and yes, they do still engage in front of a brick-and-mortar shelf. And uh the next statement that I heard was progressive with purpose. Yeah, everything Craig talked about, if you sum it down, drill distill it down, is progressive with purpose. Customer, I won't use the word consumer anymore, but each one of you is a customer of 20 things. The glass of water you're drinking right now, you're a customer. You're people. Thank you. You said people. Thank you. This is how we bicker all the time. So um we just stay together for the kids. Absolutely. That's it.

SPEAKER_03 8:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

So you know, someday they will grow up. What do we do? What do we do? I don't know, man.

SPEAKER_02 8:35

I don't know. So um We're gonna have to move to Del Boca Vista. I think that'll be the place. Yeah. Seinfeld fans, okay, you understand. I'm staying in California.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Okay, good. 75 degrees every day. I like to rub it in East Connecticut. Um, but you are you are a people. You are a people, correct? You are. You consume stuff every day, you buy things every day. Whenever you represent a brand, that could be pushing analytics out, data out, decisions such as branding, placement on the shelf. Ask yourself a question, even if you're not a consumer or user of that exact product, what would I do? That's how your customer, your people's are going to behave, your peeps are going to behave. I'm thinking we may have incorrectly named our podcast.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

You're right. After Craig the People's Guys. The the PPG guys.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Yes, good. Yes. So let me, I'm happy to announce Craig. I don't know um if you're here, if you left, you inspired us to actually own the domain now, PPG Guys.com. While he was talking, we went on to Namecheap and bought the domain.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

So we're now we're converting.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

You've heard it right here. Last two messages, Peter. Fall in love with the problem.

SPEAKER_03 9:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Identify the problem, fall in love with it. And this one will stay with me for life. I'm actually gonna get a shirt that says it. Take care of the magic. The math will follow. 25 years, often a time I've been making decisions on the basis of math. I will commit to taking care of the magic. I know the math will follow. All right. Sri Well, enough of us rambling.

SPEAKER_02 10:04

There you go. Let's get to our guest here. We have a very special guest. It's her third appearance on our podcast. She's an industry thought leader with an outstanding career with roles at great companies like Inmar and Kellogg prior to January of 2020 when she joined the world's most elite retailer, Walmart, where she now serves as the senior director of omnichannel transformation and commercialization. Please join the CPG guys in welcoming to the stage Whitney Cooper. Whitney? Whitney, I know that you were sitting there going, when are these guys gonna stop talking? I totally was. I know. You were standing there in heels and we were we were rambling on, but welcome to the podcast. So glad to have you here. How was your trip to Orlando? Everything, everything go okay?

SPEAKER_00 11:00

I mean, aside from, you know, losing my luggage, yes, I did check a bag for two days. Don't judge, need options. Um aside from my luggage getting lost, everything was really good. Yeah. It got found, don't worry. This is in Sri's outfit, by the way.

SPEAKER_03 11:16

Well, we're we're really excited. I wouldn't ban it if I could. I I failed the skinny pod, remember, we already announced it. I mean we've covered it. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

Now, this is your third appearance on the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

Where's my jacket?

SPEAKER_02 11:28

Oh yeah. She she said after five, we got to be like SNL and give her one of those smoking jackets that they're gonna be. Oh, whoa, whoa. Educational podcast. Oh yeah, I said SNL Saturday Night Live, for those of you who don't know. We are we do nothing more. Our biggest thing we do on the podcast is break down acronyms so everyone understands what we're talking about. But yes, Whitney, we're having it designed now. Two more episodes, you get your custom smoking jacket.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

CPG Guys Hall of Famer. How about that? So happy to have you. Thank you for joining us. You know, thank you for coming out to Nielsen IQ and being part of the people's. And um, this uh we have episode 200 going out on Wednesday. We actually have Seth Delaire, the chief revenue officer of Walmart. Whitney's episode will go out on Saturday, so y'all can actually hear yourselves on Saturday. How about that?

SPEAKER_02 12:14

The louder you clap for Whitney, the more you can hear it on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

There you go. You can hear yourselves. Peeps. So uh Whitney, you recently got promoted, senior director of transformation and commercialization. World's most elite retailer. I say that publicly all the time. My largest customer, my day job. And um, talk to us about the word. What does this mean, commercialization at Walmart, and then your specific role? It has the word commercialization in it. So bring it together.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

So, first off, thanks so much for having us here. Uh, I'm really excited. This is my first time on stage in two years. So it's really physically. So it's really, it's just awesome to be out here. Honestly, it's awesome. Thank you. I get this question all the time from people. Um, what is, you know, you think about just the idea of transformation inside of a company like Walmart, everyone's like, what exactly do you do all day? Uh and the best way to think about it is really in two parts. When you think about the evolution of, first off, when you think about the evolution of retail media, when we decided to in-house what at the time was Walmart Media Group and evolve it from the partnership with Triad, someone very smart, I don't know who, realized that in order to do this the right way, you've got a 60-year-old, very strong merchandising organization with this, you know, new upcoming group of people from Florida or California or New York, but not in Bentonville. And in order to really make this thing come alive, we needed to create a new way of operating, a new way of thinking uh inside of the organization. And so I was brought in to help be the glue mediator, uh, make jokes about, you know, this Walmart thing doesn't work out. I'm definitely gonna go to law school. Um, mediator, uh translator between all of these different groups inside of the organization, merchandising, site operations team, marketing, and Walmart Connect to really drive a new model for how we build the retail business. So that's the transformation part of what I do all day. When it comes to the next generation of retail media, you know, we've been in this thing, in this thing now for three years. So since we brought it in-house, um, and the reality of it is we've been super focused on creating best in-class products for our advertisers to use to speak to our customers, highly focused, obviously, in the digital space. But when you think about what our value proposition is, um, with the strength of our 4,700 stores and the network that we have, I'm gonna go back to what I said four seconds ago. It's our stores. And in order to really create awesome experiences for our customers, suppliers, advertisers need to be able to speak to our customers in the stores. So I now um am leading the efforts in coordination, I say that, but that's it's in coordination with the operators out in the stores, with our, you know, next generation tech team out in California with our, you know, store of the future team in Bentonville to create and commercialize the right way to do advertising in the store. So it's as you can imagine, um, a complex effort, but it's uh it's an incredible thing to be a part of and super excited about it.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

You know, I love that you said the word like store four times in there because it's often easy in this disruption to forget about the store and think everything is digital and e-commerce. It's omnichannel. So thank you for that.

SPEAKER_04 15:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

Whitney, it's fairly undeniable that the pandemic shaped the future of omnichannel commerce. Would love to hear from you what your perspective is on the key components playing out over the last two years that have dramatically accelerated this.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

I mean, you know, the last two years have really been a time of uncertainty, experimentation, and consolidation for us. Um, you know, no industry or sector has been untouched by this. It's been hard and tough on everybody across the world. The interesting thing about this is that it really allowed us to look at and really hone in on what was the trends in the consumer, like I want to say almost a consumer, customer, looking at what our customer was really doing out in store. And we we started to really think about like what does commerce on customers' terms mean? Um I'm gonna talk about Walmart Illuminate um here in just a few minutes. But once we started engaging that tool and and really seeing what was happening, um we've learned we've learned a lot. And, you know, 69% of our customers changed the way that they shopped during the pandemic. Um obviously the acceleration of e-commerce originally was driven by you know health and safety concerns. But what we what we've seen is that that actually has created new behavior. So um the adoption, once people figured out, like, wait a second, I can have groceries actually delivered into my refrigerator while I'm at home on Zooms all day and I don't have to actually go into the store or wait a minute, once I actually figure out how to use the app, this is super convenient. This stuff has been very sticky. So that's been the biggest, um, that's been the biggest like aha for us is just the diversification of how our customers are shopping. It's not just a it's not either or, it truly is an and uh across the board.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

Yeah, I've I've Sri and I have talked about this before. Uh for me, the advent of scan and go has dramatically increased my use of Walmart as a retailer and actually going into physical stores. What a great concept.

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Yeah. Excited to see um, you know, referencing Sam's Club, their skate and go uh experience is incredible. So really excited uh about what what's happening um on our on our side of the fence with that.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

The shelf tag still matters, y'all. It just happens to be increasingly more digital. Whitney, if I look at your background, right? You've been with an agency. You've obviously come from some of the most elite brands in the world. And um actually previously a competitor. How funny is that? And uh now you're in retail, like you've covered the spectrum of this. So I feel you're best qualified to kind of coach us a little bit on retail media. Retail media is literally the hottest buzzword in the industry these days, right? Every retailer, you name it, is now coming up with a retail media platform of some sort. How many of you are from represent brands over here? See a lot of hands? See some hands. Let's say about 50% of the audience is brands, another 25 is just shy. They don't like tough to raise hands. You know, you burn a calorie every time you lift your arm. So Peter and I could actually stop the audience list, so we cheated. Um that's that said, I'm sure you're getting hit up with an ask for retail media, right? So like I said, most retailers now have a retail media platform, but not every retail media platform is made today for being exactly what a brand would want. What are successful components of a retail media platform and what makes one given retail media platform like elite versus another, which is still starting up or early in its maturity?

SPEAKER_00 19:46

It's crazy how big this thing has gotten. And I step back and think about this. I remember, you know, back in my my shopper days, those those words were just a whisper. And now it's it's incredible to see how now that's like it's a thing. I can remember sitting, you know, with executives trying to talk them into believing that this was a real thing. And it it's it's here to say. So it's it's really it's interesting to to to observe. I'll tell you from having worked um on the brand side with you know several different media companies and just seeing this evolution over the the last really 10 years. You know, ultimately, I think retail media networks that are looking at the full, and that's one thing that we're very focused on right now. When you think about the full spectrum of that funnel, and you know, obviously we're a retailer, we are here to serve our customers, but we're here to sell stuff, right? We're also here to help brands drive awareness. So when you think about that full funnel of experiences, I think having the lens of, you know, how I'm going to talk to the customer, regardless of where he or she or they are shopping at any point in time is really, really, really important. And I would say kind of the ingredient list here is retail media networks that are creating those opportunities in the physical space, super important. Not just saying that because I, because I'm, you know, representing the the team that's building that, but just having ran those, you know, shopper budgets and having ran a P ⁇ L, I think that's that's super, super important because as we all know, it's it truly is on me. It's not just digital, it has to be physical as well. Um I think another thing that's really important to think about too is like how you're you're speaking to your customers and how you're you know, how you're working with merchandising is really is an important factor as well. Um, you know, this is it's one of those things where I'm I'm answering this halfway with my supplier hat on and half half with my Walmart hat on. But having a strong retail media network that is integrated into the business is very important. I'm going to talk more about that in a little bit. But that was one of the first things I focused on when I joined the company is how do we, it cannot be us and them. It has to be a they in order for it to truly drive the business. At the end of the day, impressions matter, clicks matter, row as matters, but sales lift incrementality that's and really driving and growing a brand and really moving the business. That's the stuff that I don't want to say that matters, but that's it's what creates long-term growth for everybody. So those are the things that we're really focused on. And I think, you know, several other players in the industry are doing the same thing. Um, but it's for us, it's about the scale of which we're able to do it.

SPEAKER_02 22:54

I love what you said about having to integrate the two. I worked at a retailer at one point, and I remember getting ready to go to the annual operating plan, and they were putting their books together. And five minutes before we walked in, they realized, oh, we need something from the digital team, picks up a phone, says, Hey, do you have any slides you want to include in my deck? And they emailed it over. That's not a very integrated strategy. So I totally understand that. So, in that, in that light, let's talk a little bit about the connection of physical and digital uh happening at Walmart and how you have to think about that vis-a-vis your shoppers. Should CPG, this is a bit of a leading question, but should CBG brands now pay attention to the store shelf connected closely to the digital shelf? Because we all walk into stores with these devices. I know you have some really interesting data around that. You know, what is the role of content in having an impact on physical store activities?

SPEAKER_00 23:51

So I'm gonna go back to say I've talked a lot a lot about this over the last couple of years. And at the end of the day, I mentioned, you know, Walmart's been around for 60 years. Best in class, we know how to run a store. We have the best best operators in the industry. There is a formula. It it is tried and true. It works. Stack them high and watch them fly, as Mr. Sam used to say. In the digital space, it's been so interesting. And I know there's there's a ton of a lot of category management folks in the room. Think about we've created whole disciplines, whole teams focused on category management and the physical shelf. Like, think about how many meetings all of you you've been in that, you're just focused on the aisle and the shelf experience and packaging and placement. And the big push that we are making right now inside of our organization as well, like let's be honest, it's a new muscle for a lot of people. You know, it's not the class of omni merchant, it's a new breed of unicorns that are being developed across the industry right now that understand both the physical space and the digital space. And where we're seeing a, I think our our best supplier partners are having the most success are the folks that are like, they're creating that discipline on the physical, or I'm sorry, on the digital side as well. So for us, it's it's thinking about, you know, if you go on a store walk with, you know, some of our senior executives, they walk in and it's that doesn't need to be there, that needs to be up, ooh, that that doesn't feel right, that's distracting. We're creating that same type of mentality and having, you know, we're all looking at the site every day. We're shopping, we're walking our digital store. So I think, you know, knowing that we are hyper focused on that, I think the the brands that are really um succeeding in this space are also taking that same mentality inside of their organizations. They're creating digital shelf teams, they're creating, you know, the next breed unicorn category managers that understand that digital space. And I personally, supplier hat, personally on the content side, I mean, we it having best in class content is now like a it's a table stakes. Like you have to have that. And I think that's something that um it's really interesting. It's been shocking to see some of the brands that you would think would be, you know, very innovative still be still be behind. So, you know, we found that, and this is really interesting. Just most recently we ran a study. We actually found that 82% of our food and beverage customers that are in the store, they actually use their phone while they're shopping. That is huge. Did you hear that?

SPEAKER_02 26:44

82% of people who are shopping physical Walmart stores are using the mobile app or the site. That's a health moment. That's huge.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Yeah. And just a quick correct for everybody who's taking notes in here. Uh there's a survey we did um and we conducted this research study. And out of the folks surveyed, yeah, 82% in the food and beverage aisle, which I think is really interesting because it wasn't, they weren't shopping, you know, ETS or electronics. They were actually looking at reviews and looking at content on our site in the store. So when you think about reviews and you think about the power of reviews, I think a lot of people think about reviews like, oh, I don't need to do a review for a box of Cheerios. Everyone knows what, you know, no one looks at that. That's not true. I think um, especially with fast-moving consumer goods, like having reviews is just as crucial. Um, and we actually have the data to prove it. And what's so interesting about this, out of that 82%, it wasn't just once. They were doing this two to four times during the trip. So when you're when you're looking at the data, you can't, it's kind of undeniable how important the content is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

Yeah, you know, for category managers in the room, it always the way I've been trained over 25 years, is it was always about merch dollars and the pog. Today it's about search and retail media, as you just said so, content, the user experience, and then ratings and reviews. Like in again, think like people like peeps like yourselves, right? You go to uh blah.com and you're looking at ratings and reviews before making decisions, no different for what people buy from you.

SPEAKER_03 28:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

All right. So you use some words there, such as sell stuff. Um drive awareness. That's an invariable term. Very professional. That's very technical. It is. It is. We're here to sell stuff. I want to be trained how to sell stuff. Server customers. That's a learning. Server customers. So um you know, if I look at all those words and I try to bring them back into retail media that you you briefly touched touched us earlier, right, about the full funnel. Um retail media immediately gives a knee-jerk reaction. It's all about search and the paid search, and that's what it is, which being coming from a sales background, that's all about the number of units I can push. But um to me, what I'm learning is retail media is first about what it's always been audience acquisition, consumer engagement. Then like I was taught this morning, uh, if you get the magic right, the math will show up.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

I love that. I mentioned earlier, you know, we're super focused on it it's not just about the performance piece of it. It's also when you think about upper funnel, it it that is as equally as important. And it's it's an interesting tango and dance um dance, excuse me. It's a dance because I think those um one, the skill sets and the the people that you're hiring, and we, you know, we're face this internally, but I know also externally in your organizations. It's very different uh skill sets with hands-on keyboards and then like brand management. So as we're as we're thinking through how we're we're building this out, you know, ultimately like our mission is to create opportunities for our advertisers to engage, whether it's you know, at the moment of truth on the shelf or it's you know, when a customer is you know sitting watching TV, we are here to allow that engagement, right? One of the things that we're focused on, you know, we recently announced the Walmart DSP. So that was a Congratulations. Yeah, that was it. DSP, that's demand side platform. There we go. Uh I know I'm using the acronyms. That's okay. I can pull out the ED. Why we're here. Yeah. Keep you on the straight and narrow. Straight and narrow. You know, but traditionally, uh, this format's upper funnel things like connected TV, but for the first time ever in Walmart history, we're actually now bringing that inside of our under our wing. So I'll I'll leave it to say that.