Insights Driving Superior Outcomes with Haleon's Sammi Zola & Pete Fox plus Kroger Precision Marketing's Andrew Butz

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Hi, I'm Pete Fox, Categories Manager at Haleon.

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hi, I'm Sammy Zola, Director Shopper Marketing for the Mega Channel at Haleon.

SPEAKER_03 0:07

Hi, Andrew Butz. I'm a director at KPM, leading our personal wellness and baby vertical. You are listening to the CPG Guys Podcast.

PVSB 0:17

Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast, set at the intersection of commerce and tech. Your hosts, Shri Raja Gopelin and Peter V. S. Bond, explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in a digitally driven world. And now here are the CPG guys. Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast. I am your incorrigible co-host, PVSB, father of future pro golfer Nadia. Sure, she's seven, but she could be on the LPG. It's gonna happen. I mean, if Shree can have two famous pop star daughters, I can have an LPGA player. It's the fast ticket to a college sponsorship. I think it is. That's what I'm told. Very good, Scottish. I also Moonlight as head of industry engagement at Flywheel Omnicom's Commerce Acceleration Division. Today, Shri and I are in the Queen City, otherwise known as Cincinnati. Some call it Porkopolis. That's an old name. Used to be the meat packing city. And we are actually at the home of 8451, where Kroger Precision Marketing is based. And we're so grateful to our dear friend Brian Spencer for making this space available and helping us bring today's guest together for this conversation. My co-host, he is the father of pop stars Rhea Raj, who just signed a record deal with Universal Music Group. Congratulations to Rhea. And of course, uh Cat's Eye's very own Lara Raj. Shri Kat'S Eye was on the stage at Coachella with the K-pop demon hunters. God, it's killing me. He's also the chief revenue officer at Think Blue Consulting. I call him my BFF and my ride or die. He's the man known as Shree. Shree, what's going on, man? So much stuff. Did I hear something? Did I hear there was another award given today to the Cat's eye band? Nomination.

Sri 2:08

AMI Award. So we'll be in Vegas mid-May. Hopefully, get to watch the nominations for best new artists, similar to the Grammys. But Peter, we're in Since. What a fun trip this is turning out to be. I mean, we kicked off the uh Ignite CPG conference with FMI's keynote this morning. We've already recorded an episode here at uh 84 51 KPM. We're doing a second one. And Brian's invited us to stick around for Cinco de Mayo.

PVSB 2:35

Cinco de Mayo?

unknown 2:36

Yes.

Sri 2:36

And I said, where do you where you like the French fries at Cinco de Gallo?

PVSB 2:41

Oh, that's where you get food for Cinco de Mayo. You got a Cinco de Gaio. Yeah, I do a little cheeseburger and those fries in the paper bag. Those are good.

Sri 2:48

Francais Fryo or something like that. I know at Cinco de Gallo. Cinco de Gallo, I like it. He was trying to school me what Cinco de Gallo is. You're just a Luddite, sure. I'm not done, Peter. I wasn't done. Oh, so we're going to Mad Tree Brewing.

PVSB 3:00

Did you forget? We are going to Mad Tree.

Sri 3:02

We're actually going to record an episode from a pub.

PVSB 3:04

Turns out the VP of Marketing in Mad Tree is a fan of the CBG guys. It'd be fun.

Sri 3:08

This is a fun 24 hour stuff.

PVSB 3:10

I'm loving our time here.

Sri 3:11

Then I gotta go get Geeky in Chicago. I know. On AI on shopping with Coca-Cola.

PVSB 3:17

All right. Uh Shere, as always, thank you for joining me. Uh, I'd like to remind our audience, uh, please follow us on your favorite podcast platform, Apple, Spotify, YouTube. Heck, you can even ask Alexa, play the CPG guys, and she'll do it for you. But if you're on Apple or Spotify in particular, please, please, please leave us a numerical rating. Our favorite number is five, but hey, it's up to you. Five. Five is good. Five is good. Doing so, honestly, it helps make our podcast more findable by industry contemporaries of yours. So uh please take the time to do it because uh a lot, there are a lot of people out there looking to be both educated and entertained, and we hope that we fill some of the void. Where we we look at the CBG guys kind of like a craft beer. We do, we don't, we're not gonna have a hundred percent share a stomach, but if we're in your rotation, then then we've accomplished our goal. We just want to be part of part of the collection of podcasts that entertain and educate you in the process. Okay, enough of that. Let's get to our guests. Today we are joined by three people sitting at one of the most important intersections in modern commerce: brand strategy, consumer insights, and retail media activation. Together, they're going to take us inside how a leading global health and wellness company, Halion, and one of America's most data-rich retail media networks, Kroger Precision Marketing, are building the operating models that let brands move at the speed of the shopper. What a novel concept. From Halion, we have Sammy Zola, U.S. commercial media director, and Pete Fox, category strategy manager. And joining them from Kroger Precision Marketing is Andrew Botz, Director of Client Success and Partnerships. Sammy, Pete, Andrew, welcome. Thanks. Thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Thank you for having us. I'm a frequent listener, so I'm excited to be here.

PVSB 5:10

Likewise. Thanks for having us. Oh, we love it when people listen to our podcast. That's great. Our own mothers don't listen to our podcast. So this is not true.

Sri 5:18

Who are the first who was the first to download an episode? Your mom, my mom. Yeah, two five. I don't think she listened to it.

PVSB 5:24

I think she just downloaded it. I think everyone here would agree the stats matter. So you've got to download the podcast. Please download the podcast. To our audience, go to the digital show notes this episode. We have put the LinkedIn hyperlinks to each of our guests in there, also to Haleon's corporate site and a KPM site so that you can multitask. Everybody likes to do that. You can learn a little bit. You're out for a jog on a Saturday morning. You listen to this episode, you hear the dulcet tones of Andrew's voice. Like, I want to check this guy out. Let me see who he's, what he's all about. Just click the hyperlink in the digital show notes. They're all there. All right. Let's get to the questions uh we've prepared for you. I'm really excited about today's conversation. This will go to all. I'm going to start with Sammy, and then we'll we'll ask Pete and Andrew, Andrew. You can round it out. But cute story. I want to know a little bit more about who you are, what your roles are, and what, from your perspective, turning insights into action means from the role you occupy. Sammy?

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Yeah, thank you. So a little bit about me. I am sitting in the US shopper director role, but I spent the last five years in our Commerce Center of Excellence. So really setting standards for all of retail media networks, retail agnostic, and really focusing on what's the future, how do we invest, what do we change, et cetera. And for me, I think the most important thing about like the fastest insight is we get, and we should work very closely, insights in shopper or insights in media in general, is the faster we can get to those golden nuggets of what the consumer wants or you know, something happening in the industry, et cetera, the faster we can move to shift our plans. And now that we're moving at the speed of light, we need to do it faster than ever.

SPEAKER_02 7:09

Pete. Yeah, hi, thanks. I'm Pete Fox. I'm in uh category management leadership here at Haleyon, which if for those of you who don't remember, you might notice by some of our iconic brands, Flonase, Tom, Sensodyne. Um, and we um so my role, if if if Sammy's looking for gold nuggets, that would make me the miner. Um I have been I have been um in the CPG world for about 20 years, and the last 15 have been directly calling on Kroger in an insights analytics type role with 8451 pretty much open on the computer all day long, along with our other syndicated data and other information. Um I have a different slightly lens on this, is that as part of our Halion uh AI and advanced um technology goals, I was part of the pilot program for our co-pilot rollout. And I was one of the first 300 people out of 5,000 to get a premium copilot license. And in the last 180 days, I am in the top 2% of prompting volume for all of Halion globally. You couldn't make top one? Is that what okay? I I honestly my goal for next year is to be in like the bottom 25% and to have the agents be doing that work for me. Oh, that good answer. Good answer. Andrew, welcome.

SPEAKER_03 8:17

Thank you. Andrew Butts. Uh, I'm one of the directors here on our client success and partnerships team, and I have the privilege of working with our partners like Haleyon and others in the wellness uh space at Kroger, uh, helping them grow at the end of the day. It's about driving growth for brands, and we've got a great toolkit of assets here to help them do that.

PVSB 8:34

Oh, and insights to action.

SPEAKER_03 8:35

What does that mean for you? I actually like insights to impact.

PVSB 8:39

Ooh. Taking it to the outcome level or the outcome, not just the activation, the outcome. If we're gonna drive growth, I think he stomped the CPG guys.

Sri 8:49

We already found a profound Brian. We can't recall the title. I'm sorry. Okay, sorry. We can't, sorry. Brian Dowley for him. Sorry on now, all of you are gonna want to know what the heck that means.

PVSB 8:59

Say more. Sammy knows about the t-shirt Sri. She knows about the t-shirt quotes. Oh, yeah. I think she no, I meant the when we print when we print quotes on the press shirt. I think she may have come armed with some pithy statements for later. We're we're gonna hold you to that, Sammy.

Sri 9:13

So if you guys want to solve for all the listeners as well, what is Profan Brian, you're going to have to go back and listen to the episode from two weeks ago, which is also with Kroger Precision Marketing, but I'm not gonna give away the plot if you listen.

PVSB 9:25

It's a nugget in there, it's a mine, it's a nugget. I know that much.

Sri 9:31

All right, let me welcome all three of you, Sammy, Pete, and Andrew to the CPG guys. Thanks for joining us. And I'm gonna kick this off with Pete and Sammy question for both of you. Keeping a pulse on the consumer has always been table stakes in CPG, of course. That's what it's all about. We save a common person at the end of the day. But there's clearly a renewed urgency around speed right now, given all the volume challenges in the industry. Pete, maybe I'll ask you first and then Sammy I'll come back to you. Pete, from a category strategy standpoint, what's really driving that in SAMI? Talk to us about media changing consumption behavior, which is really adding fuel to that fire. So Pete, first. Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_02 10:09

Thanks for the question. Um I would say from our lens, we are tracking across like four different time stages. One is we have the long-range macroeconomic things. Like right now, if we have one in three households that are, you know, 55 or older, you know, by 20 in in by 2035, it's going to be closer to one in two. So we have to watch how those behavior things happen over time. But it's not happening daily, it's happening gradually. Then we have other things that are more mid-range, like the evolution of what's happening with GLP ones and how those shoppers who are now on those medications are changing their spending habits, what they're not buying anymore, what they're buying instead, symptoms, side effects, et cetera, many of our brands can help address. But then we also have the immediate stuff of like how is our innovation tracking? What are we doing versus competition? But then we have also those immediate moments that require genuinely deep diving into what's happening, whether it is a when our our competitor went out of supply, where did that volume go? Is this going to be long term? How do we address it and immediately send those signals to everywhere it matters? Um it's not just saying, hey, sales team needs to know this for their own benefit and Kroger needs to know it so that they can lean in with us as needed to support and supply, but also to make sure that signal goes straight to our brand teams on their on their media piece, the supply chain team, so they can either change production or address production. So it is about the getting the data as fast and everywhere as you can, accurately and timely validated sources. So that is really kind of the key on why that timeliness is getting so demanding. And on top of that, we have had the exponential growth of data availability. So it in addition to saying, hey, we have all the top line data we've always had access to. But now if you wanted to get down to the modal price of a buyer that happens to be within six miles of a Costco at a Kroger store that's a Hispanic family of three or four, you could get to that level, but it's that balance of when did we hit the floor of the rabbit hole? When do we get the rabbit hole? And does it matter? And is it going to really change things? So that's that's a little bit of why that intensity of data and understanding the speed of where those nuggets are really drivers and when it's just more information.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Yeah, I would say from a media consumption, there's four things I think about. One is the path to discovery is completely changed. I mean, we've long talked about there's no linear path to purchase, right? You know, a linear path to purchase. It's really a loop now. People can go from discovery to purchase in seconds. And so the scrolling on social and LLMs and like doing your research.

SPEAKER_07 14:02

Scrolling.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

The doom scrolling, exactly. That is fundamentally changed. It's it's no longer we don't talk about the future of search, we talk about the future of discovery. The second thing is consumers' expectations have changed. Like everything's on demand and everyone demands personalization. Long gone are the days of like one creative, one message fits for a purpose. So if you're not relevant and changing that creative and that messaging in the right place and the right time, then you're obsolete. I would say the third thing is we can't get away from it, whether it's algorithmic or agentic commerce, right? It's here to stay. So people are shopping differently. They're not engaging in the same way. I think last year I did a presentation and it was one in four people started their AI, like started their discovery path on um AI. And I think it was two weeks ago I sat in Ascendant and someone used the term or the the stat 50% or more people are starting their path of discovery on AI. So that fundamentally changed how we have to address like our most important customer is likely gonna be the LLMs instead of humans in the future. Um, and I think the last thing is trust has changed, right? So that's forced us away from brand-led creative to really that influencer and creative conversation. Like that's we've even seen it in our own marketing.

PVSB 15:22

I mean, we've done testing and we've seen skyrocketed ROI versus brand for it's amazing to me how someone we've never met who lives a world away from us can have a profound impact on a decision to make a purchase more than all the creative that you could see on a PDP.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Yeah, I I agree. I mean, it's as far it's it's all ages too. I mean, my mother-in-law called me and she was like, I bought my first thing on Instagram. And I was like, congratulations, welcome to the club, you know. Like, I mean, it's it's it was an influencer and she just it spoke to her for her daughter's wedding.

SPEAKER_06 15:59

It was great. All right, so Pete, this is for you specifically.

PVSB 16:07

Uh I want to understand how the job of category insights has actually changed in the last year at Hallian. And I think you kind of talked to this, but I want you to double-click, I want you to double-click down, walk us through a day in the life. You know, what are your weekly insights workflow look like? And I'd really like to know, because you opened the door to agents, how you're seeing those helping you do more than you've ever done before uh and do it better than you've ever done before.

SPEAKER_02 16:34

Yeah, great question. So I will say the the first part of the week is always a blitz. Monday morning. Monday morning is a Monday. But it honestly doesn't even start Monday. It starts the prior week. Um, and because in order to make sure that what we're reporting on on Monday is accurate, um, because we don't want to spend our money trying our our Monday connecting with our Kroger counterpart and trying to explain what the difference was between their number and what they're seeing and our number. So it really does take a lot of work to try and make sure that our data is right, that our our product hierarchies match theirs, because the minute that the custody of data changes from 8451 into our ecosystem, we have to still have those ways to refresh it. So if an item moves from one category to a different commodity within that category, then it just starts to create you know divergences of those facts. Yes. And it gets really bad over time, especially if there's a restatement of older data, whatever. So your your year-to-date number changes and nothing changed from the prior week except it was two quarters ago. The the term restatement still gives Sri and me hard palpitations. Yes, it does. Um, but honestly, so so the great news is is with the advance of technology and a lot of the tools that we get from 8451, whether it's an API of their of their kind of key PI facts or uh, you know, our use of things like Power BI, what used to take a lot of time building the data, refreshing the charts, adding the storylines is almost as quick as uploading whatever the new refresh into the cycle is. All the visuals are pre-populated, we know the trends. We even have the you know, the scripts and the cope and the agents that can help us build out the commentary because of tenant issues, you know, Kroger is not in our Power BI system. You know, so we have to still find a way to translate that to our uh category manager counterparts. And so how AI has really helped me in that is that it allows us to get past that first round of diagnostics with almost no work. Um, so we go from having like a pile of data to knowing what brands, what packs, what key items, what subcommodities, what geographies, what stores drove that change. And then, thanks to some 8451 tools, they've recently pushed out something called Agent Monday. An Agent Monday is an AI agent that will push the consumer diagnostic second layer out to us on some of our key key brands. And so we'll have the benefit of instead of waiting until Monday to see the results to then start digging in to say, was it households? Was it you know, repeat, was it whatever? It's already in our inbox, honestly, by Sunday night. And so, and so instead of the questions coming from my you know sales counterpart saying, hey, what was our our change on, let's say Tum's or Advil last week? The question says is what do you think is driving the household decline that's taking place in Red Meyer division? So the conversation immediately elevates, and also to that point about the digging for mine, you know, you know, mining for gold, we're actually trying to get to that a lot faster. We have a map of where to go look thanks to tools like that. Um, and so that has helped. Where we also have some of that benefit with with other AI or other tools is that that's not the only source of data that we have to look at. So, in addition to 8451, we also know what happened at Meyer, what happened at you know, Walmart this week, Amazon. So we have to start trying. So when it takes all of that initial diagnostic of what we did and frees us time to either do more competitive work, looking at maybe other brands, green spaces, and more strategic lens. So it really frees that time to put a more comprehensive story together.

PVSB 20:02

So, Pete, if it's in your inbox on Sunday, does that mean you miss watching The Real Housewives of Rhode Island, which comes out on a Sunday night? By the way, my latest guilty pleasure, yes, thank you. The audience is giving me big thumbs up. If you thought Jersey was crazy, you should see Rhode Island. I'm sorry.

Sri 20:19

I watched every episode of the first edition of Beverly Hills. Yeah, what oh, you did? You've watched it all? This is 15 years ago. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 20:26

But you haven't kept up. Okay, you should. Peter, we're gonna be honest. We're we're a big Bravo household ourselves, but we're we're really more in the below deck summer house space ourselves.

PVSB 20:35

But here's the big question. Should the VP guys be at a BravoCon? Should we be at BravoCon? Yes. Go to Can. Yes. At BravoCon to Bravo and to possible for next year. Absolutely. Yeah, thank you. We're gonna do we're gonna talk to all of the all of the entrepreneurs there who are selling merchandise. Shri.

Sri 20:57

I'm sorry, I went off on a tangent, bad. But the last name, Bondo, don't you want an Agent Monday for the CPG guys? Yeah, I do. All right, what an awesome name, Agent. Agent Monday. Sammy, this one's for you. As your team hunkers down on building out activation plans, what separates out purchase data that is genuinely actionable from data that's more informative or noise in the ecosystem? And then can you give us an example or two of a moment where the distinction really mattered for you?

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Sure. Um, I think the easiest one, you know, we have household brands that are very seasonal flonase, theraflu, robotessin, and information that's just reporting the news would be like, hey, pollen is indexing right now, or you know, it's heavy allergy index or it's heavy, you know, Tama flu prescriptions are up. Like that's just reporting the news. But something that's actionable is hey, and you were speaking to this earlier, Pete, is hey, not only is it pollen index or you know, the flu index up, it's up in these four states. And in the next four weeks, we think it's gonna spike here. Because that what that allows us to truly do is shift our creative, our messaging. And even in some cases, we've done triggering merchandising in different display ads, like digitally and creative in those markets. So you're not just saying be prepared for the season, you're saying pollen or you know, flu is spiking here, like buy now, right? So to me, that just that that gives you something actionable, right? That we can tangibly take away. Um the other thing that I would say is something that we've shifted, like using those insights, is we've done propensity models. So we instead of broad targeting for consumers we think we know, we're actually doing more precision targeting for like what we actually can predict will happen. It's that predictive engine. So those insights allow us to do that and reach people in the right time at the right place with the right message.

PVSB 22:56

Yeah. I absolutely love you talking about that because propensity is so important. That the if if you're a a marketer and you haven't shifted from demographics to behavioral, I mean, what is income? Income is not a propensity to buy, it's simply a capacity to buy. So I think you hitting on the propensity being very important. Drew?

SPEAKER_03 23:16

Yeah, I was gonna say uh just melding off a couple of things. So since the insights show up through Agent Monday, uh we no longer have Sunday stuff. So that's really, really exciting. So P can show up. Sunday. He has plenty of time to watch all of his Bravo shows on Sunday night and then show up with this wonderful report in his inbox that helps decrease Bravo report all of the household division units, like all of the things that help us activate more effectively. So to uh Sammy's point where it's you know a seasonal index for pollen or uh cold cough and flu, those types of things, we can deploy those insights in a very targeted and effective way uh to maximize the investments and drive the business forward.

PVSB 23:53

All right. Andrew, you've been you just chimed in there, but you've been very patient and I want to draw you into this conversation very directly. Uh I think we all know that Kroger precision marketing sits on top of one of, if not the richest first-party data sets in retail. Been this thing for very long. That was it. That yeah, my answer is yes, you are correct. Um how is artificial intelligence specifically changing you and your clients' abilities to deliver faster, more relevant insights? Uh, and how are your brand partners seeing this actually manifest in practice?

SPEAKER_03 24:28

Sure, love it. Thank you. Uh, so we hit a little bit on Agent Monday. Uh so as we think about some of the insights capabilities that we bring to bear, uh, Agent Monday is a report uh across brands that shows up in our Catman's inboxes and Sammy's inbox to help decompose what happened the week prior. Uh and it gets down to a geographic level. Uh, we look at household trends, competitive trends, uh, category trends. Um, so that's just an automatic uh, you know, report that our clients get. And to Pete's uh comments before, it really trims like the analysis side of it. So instead of mining, we're like maybe like panning uh a little bit more so we're not going too far down to dig it out. And then it enables us to take those insights and activate in real time with what we're doing. Uh so whether we're running something through a DSP partner in a live capacity, whether it's Trade Desk or our new partnership with Google through DB360, uh, where we can integrate those signals and optimize in real time to sales, to households, to units, we can take the insights to activation to then drive that impact.

PVSB 25:31

Great. And you did mention, you said Google and you mentioned the Trade Desk. It's very clear that having ecosystem partners, again, is about democratizing the data and making sure that brands have the most availability to apply that data to create actions that lead to outcomes. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 25:50

Absolutely. And I would say the other side of that too, and the panel said on it a little bit. There's an abundance of data. There's no shortage of data, knowing what to do with it. And then I would also say having the operational rhythm and structure is a business to connect insights to shopper, to brand, to category, all of those things working harmoniously together is a really critical component.

SPEAKER_02 26:10

Yeah, I was gonna chime in too, is that some of the advancements that we're seeing out of the different 8451 products are great in the sense of the AI. So another product they have is their is called their inquiries product. And it's a um it's a short form survey type tool that you can hit a group of households up to you know 10 questions if you want to. And if you're not necessarily a qualitative person, you could ask AI to help you. And it will literally tell you what your business question is and it will pre-populate you with a different group of questions that have been already kind of vetted by their team based on other things, and you could modify from there. So it's allowing kind of this democracy of the data to be everywhere. So you don't have to wait for your insights team to build, you know, a whole survey group or whatever else, because you already have their team helping you after you've already had like this first layer of of AI to help you build it if you don't know where to start. So and and I know that there's a lot more work that's being done on the Stratum product. And as they move closer to a more Power BI level, it'll only be easier to see AI being applied there via whether it's language models like copilot or other agent type work there.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

I think the theme that like you're both hitting on is that we used to spend so much time doing the work instead of strategizing. So now we can do the work actually strategize and take the next step so much faster.

PVSB 27:24

Going from 80% working and 20% strategizing to the inverse.

SPEAKER_00 27:28

I mean, hopefully in the future we could like go to a meeting, set our agent to do something, come back, and half of it's done.

PVSB 27:34

How do I keep Shri from using an agent to replace me as the co-host? That's my biggest authority in the works. I know that's why I'm worried about Shree.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

It's called Agent Bond.

PVSB 27:43

Oh, Agent Bond.

Sri 27:44

Project Agent Bond. Monday Agent Bond. Taking Agent Monday Bond, Agent Bond Monday. Agent Bond Monday, that's what I like. I'm coming for you, Shri.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

He just likes to the personal, it's the emotional connection.

Sri 27:56

All right, Pete, this one's for you. So with the volatility in the economy, uh volume growth being a challenge for pretty much every large CPG brand at scale, and consumer behaviors changing by the hour. What are the most surprising shopper insights your team has surfaced in the past year, or what surprises you? And critically, uh how did you get uh the Haley on organization to act with you as you brought those insights to bear? Yeah, great question.

SPEAKER_02 28:22

Um so one of the insights we really got to this year, and it wasn't necessarily there was a brand new insight, but it was how we applied the applied the insight. So the allergy business for us is is a pretty big business, and unlike with with the Kroger footprint, allergy season is not universal. It's not like the Super Bowl where everything happens on the same date. You have some divisions down south that are selling swimsuits, and you have some divisions on the same week selling snow shovels. And so it is very hard as an enterprise for Kroger to do everything for everyone. And we've sort of over the over time had more of this. We're going to work to the traditional allergy season. And as a result of that, we had some of our biggest, most important uh divisions that were kind of being cut off this pre-build of the season. And you had some other divisions out west that were really big for the Kroger enterprise as well that were being cut short of the allergy season. So we really went and dug really deep on this one and using both, you know, over seven or eight years of allergy incidence detail coming out of IQ VIA. We complemented that with 8451, you know, circana measures so that we can basically show when these early and late divisions are are breaking, you're losing share because the message was wrong at the wrong time to those shoppers who, maybe unlike a cold and flu shopper, is much more just in time. They're waiting to see a tree bloom before they're buying allergy products as opposed to a cold and flu shopper, which might be buying in October, knowing that someone's someone's gonna get sick. So it was really about how do we reframe the reframe the overall plan uh and to bring it forward. And so we had a big allergy summit with the Kroger category manager here as a follow-up. We had a quick fast follow with the Kroger digital team. We applied all different, you know, loyalty data, you know, search terms so that the digital team could roll out basically a different like campaign ahead of the season for the rest of the full enterprise at those key divisions to really, to really drive the message. Um, and I I heard you guys like numbers. Do you like numbers? We're we're kind of we we like the numbers. Show drop drop some knowledge on me. All right. So the flones brand at those divisions grew eight and a half percent. Now it had been a pressured brand over time compared to two percent at the divisions where it did not materialize. Um and it was also so it was a you know six-point differential here between just the divisions who did and the divisions that didn't. We also had a six percent delta between the flonese brand and the category at the same exact divisions, and which was also a four percent gain compared to the um rest of market in those same geographies. So these are the same geographies that are also competing, they went with the same allergy conditions in the same markets, under the same pressures. And we grew segment share, we grew market share, we grew households, we grew basket penetration, we grew household penetration. And the best part about all of it was we didn't just grow with households that were like promotional heavy households. We grew with the core Croyal. And this is the shopper who we know is in the store, you know, a couple times you know, a week, a couple times a month, spending a large percent of their basket dollars there. And that has been our goal is how do we drive that conversion from the grocery side of the house, which gets the traffic on the perimeter, to the OTC healthcare side, you know, week on week to really drive that volume. So for us, it was a big success. We brought that forward to the organization after the fact, to your point, Sri, and said, how can we bring this forward to not just take the Kroger team resource, but the brand team resource and apply that same concept to our brand messaging. And I think Sammy's talk keyed up a little bit prior to this.

SPEAKER_00 31:43

Yeah, I mean, I was gonna say that's that's kind of our like our job. Like we found something successful. And to be honest, we didn't do that much advertising around it at Kroger. It was all the data and how we activated as much as we could from a merchandising, et cetera, standpoint. So bringing that back to brand and they're doing trigger targeting, et cetera, like that's table stakes. But how can we truly fundamentally use this data and use the insights to have more impact when we actually execute? Because a lot of people say, like, oh, it's more targeted, it's more expensive. But if you have more quality reach and more quality output, then you're gonna have more sales and more share.

PVSB 32:21

Let me remind our audience that today Shri and I are speaking with Sami Zoe and Pete Fox from Halion and Andrew Butts from Kroger Precision Marketing.

Sri 32:28

Andrew, this one's for you. Beyond data delivery, how are retail media networks like Kroger Precision Marketing evolving their role to help brand partners optimize? You know, uh two weeks ago we had a discussion on availability of real-time data. So that's what I'll ask you to think of. And how do you see that relationship between the brand team and the RMN changing as the tools are getting smarter by the hour? Now we have an agent Monday.

SPEAKER_03 32:54

I love it. Uh so let's talk. I think the Google Partnership is uh is a great example uh for us to start with. Uh Google is one of the first partners that we've deployed conversion APIs with. Uh so as we think about our ability to uh execute and optimize in real time, whether it's new buyer suppression. So if your goal is only uh household penetration and new buyers and we know that somebody bought, then a KPI of the campaign should be no longer targeting people that have already purchased. Uh and so our ability to do that within that ecosystem, uh, optimize to sales, whatever it is, like that's part of that ecosystem now with Google. As we look to deploy cabbies, the conversion APIs with other DSP partners that will continue to expand from a tactical perspective. Uh, and then as I see kind of like where the long term goes, it's bringing that automation from something like an agent Monday all the way through into the activation side of it. Now there's gonna be some pipes that have to get connected and a whole bunch of tech work that gets done within that, but the ability to create kind of that marketing engine and that marketing ecosystem, I think unlocks a lot of value and potential for brands.

SPEAKER_06 34:02

All right. Pete and Sammy, this is this is to you.

PVSB 34:05

I I'd really like to know, uh Sammy, particularly as you sit across across a broader responsibility. How are you modernizing your approach to how you leverage retail data in your planning and activation process with all of Halion's uh retail partners?

SPEAKER_00 34:21

Yeah, well, this has been quite the journey, I will tell you. Um a couple years ago, we simply activated from a shopper marketing standpoint. There were obviously some brand dollars being spent with retail data, but no one was really connecting that path. And I think the beauty to me, and I've said this to both of these guys sitting right here, retail media and retail data, it's the same stuff, I should say. I'm not gonna use a different word, as as traditional media.

PVSB 34:51

It's the data saying that retail media is media.

SPEAKER_00 34:54

Yeah, it's just media.

PVSB 34:56

Is that a t-shirt with that quote on this? There might be that could be on a t-shirt one day. But anyway, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 35:01

Um, but at any rate, um, it's the data and AI capabilities that's that connective tissue. So we have shifted, um, and this has been a journey, but we've shifted self-service, right, on platforms where like all of our men's are creating data partnerships against across platforms. And I'll use trade as an example. Um the first iteration of it was truly just saying, hey, can we bring all of our retail data audiences into one spot so we're not hitting everyone a million times? How do we control for frequency, greater audience, you know, more effective? But then it became, well, how incremental is that audience to our national, right? To our three P. So we did we did do a test and like Kroger was included and others were included. And Kroger had up to 30 to 40% incremental audience versus what we had. So now we're on this journey of how do we bring together what are we doing when we just buy, let's say, KPM to drive Kroger, but how are we using those retail data audiences to create incremental audiences and bring it all together? And we've seen when you go self-service, the cost goes down. We're creating less media waste because we're controlling for frequency about across platforms.

PVSB 36:11

It's very important, isn't it, to be to control because your goal is to optimize and efficient, make more efficient your media spend. And when you accidentally oversaturate an audience across multiple platforms, that that doesn't serve your purpose. And it's just not good for your investment.

SPEAKER_00 36:27

Yeah. And I loved that test because we literally could control, we had maybe 1% overlap between the audiences, which was amazing. It was huge. Um and we saw a meet, like we had consistently like four quarters of ROI growth for like specific environments. Phenomenal. Yeah, it was great. It was awesome. Um, anyway, so I I see the future of that integration has to come together. You have to have holistic planning. You're gonna have audience mapping. And we're even working through right now how do we pull retail data, whether it's Stratom or AMC or Illumina, all of them, into our integrated marketing so we could do audience profiling and audience sizing across all of those retailers. So it's a journey, but it's happening.

SPEAKER_02 37:06

Yeah, Pete, anything to add to that? Yeah. I think CMA actually uh teed me up here pretty well. So I think the one piece that changes how my job changes in order to enable that, and not just for today's dashboard, but it's for tomorrow's AI use, is that pretty much every category manager or someone like myself across has has historically been building all of their insights with the intention of a human audience. So the reframing of how we collect, how we capture, how we store, certify, qualify, and make safe that when Sammy's team down the road uses Copilot or another AI-driven tool, that that's a certified correct answer. And that you're not getting an echo or something else that is out there that says, this is this is this is the source of truth. This is a real answer that has been validated, certified, not just accidentally pull something off SharePoint that looks kind of like what it's looking for, but it's an eight-year-old study, you know, or something. So that will help do that. And and part of this is also to my point earlier is the democratization of the data access for everyone who needs it as fast as possible and be AI or prep for AI. That's that's key. So that is how the modernization has to happen. And that does exactly Sammy's point is how do we then look across those retailer networks, whether it's data and to be able to merge them together. You know, one of the hardest things we try and do is try and figure out like our category attributes across different retailers, especially because private labels masks use an IRI.

SPEAKER_00 38:39

Well, in a massive clean room, we need it.

SPEAKER_02 38:53

Or versus a, you know, to try and really say this is what's driving the category. It's not that the whole category is acting one way. You have amazing pockets of growth and pockets of pressure in the same exact moment. But unless you're spending that extra time to really add that piece, and my my my good body bad is gonna love the shout out here, but retail is detail. And the problem with the retail is detail is nobody wants the t-shirt. There you go. For sure. Like, come on. Are you saying we got like 10 t-shirts out of it? Nobody wants to know how you built the watch, they just want to know what time it is, and so there's that balance of saying, hey, look, we have to get the time and have it be ready, but it has to be right um at the right level.

PVSB 39:33

So I I love it. Shree. Uh, think about that. Uh LLM agents are legitimate stakeholders in the process, they have to be accounted for and have to be considered in what deal.

Sri 39:46

Yeah, I know it is. Yeah. Although now my mind is thinking retail is detail is detail. Since he Pete.

PVSB 39:53

Since he Pete?

Sri 39:54

Okay, there we go. Since he is home, Since he is home. Sammy's like, I can't believe I got scooped.

SPEAKER_00 40:02

So proud of him, honestly. That's yeah, okay, good.

Sri 40:05

We got two words out of this, Peter. We got profile, Brian, and now we have retailers detail. I like it. Go ahead. That'll be the use like crazy. Andrew, did you have something to add before I ask you the next question?

SPEAKER_03 40:14

Love that. I just had to build on uh Sammy's commentary around kind of the incremental reach and the opportunity of the retail audiences and all of the benefits in terms of audience duplication, reach frequency. What Sammy shared specific to Handland is not a unique dynamic that we see. Um often the audience incrementality and overlap when we bump that up in Trade Desk or other DSP partners is generally like a minimum of 40% incrementality in some of the categories, uh particularly in kind of the beauty and in wellness space and OTC, we see even higher up to like 70 or 80%. Um so it's a really meaningful opportunity to engage all of the households and the kind of the insights and opportunities, uh, particularly within the self-service space in a really productive way.

SPEAKER_00 40:52

I was gonna add one more thing because you said something about LLMs. I think the future and journey of that is like we're using jellyfish, which is like I would the easiest way to explain it is that like an LLM listening tool. That's gonna change the path for how we're doing everything. Because like we had some an initial study that came out that said one of our products had a different sensorial and flavor profile than our competitors, and they were winning. So it informed our innovation. And now we're presenting KPIs for like how we're changing whether it's condition or seasonal awareness within the LLM. So I think that is also a journey we're on of that changing.

PVSB 41:25

I've referenced on this podcast many times research that Northwestern did with MIT. Uh, then they they sufficiently prove that almost everything you get out of a very expensive and time-consuming focus group, you can probably just by getting just reading all the reviews that are publicly available on numerous marketplaces. And it's it's just true. And getting those kinds of nuggets of insight is is very valuable to brands being able to pivot and evolve where they're going. Shree?

Sri 41:55

Andrew, we'll bring you back into the next one. From Kruger Precision Marketing's vantage point, what does the gap look like between where I would call the North Star CPG brands are today in terms of insight to action speed, taking it that would be real-time data that y'all are making available as well as the Agent Mondays. And then where are the what's what's the separator between those brands and then just everybody else?

SPEAKER_03 42:22

Love it. Great question. Um, and we we touched on this uh a little bit earlier. Um and I do think there there is a very clear divide between those that are doing this well and there's always opportunity, it's a very evolving space, uh, and those where like have some opportunity to figure it out. It it truly comes down to how like teams and systems are structured within the CPG environment. And so if you operate in silos, you will get siloed outcomes. Your KPIs are not necessarily aligned, your strategies aren't necessarily aligned. And so when we bring kind of the full vertically integrated structure together, that's where we see impact happen. I would say probably three to four years ago was the first time sitting on kind of the side of the desk where I started to see brands really start to like re-engineer and integrate for this new world. Um, and those are, you know, some of your very, very progressive uh organizations, like very large uh marketing organizations, and and others have learned from that and are starting to follow suit. Uh, but I do think we've got to break down silos uh and we've got to get really crisp on KPIs and what the appropriate outcomes are.

PVSB 43:31

So breaking down the silos is perfect for my question before Sheree closes this out. Uh Sammy and Pete, uh traditionally consumer insights and media were very siloed entities. How are you breaking that down, creating some connective tissue? And what what's the outcome that you will deliver?

SPEAKER_02 43:52

Yeah, and I I think part of part of that is not necessarily the the shared data, but it's the shared vision of what we're trying to accomplish. And the data is only part of the strategy. So it's the validator at some times, or it's the discovery sometimes, but it's really saying, hey, what are we trying to accomplish? Uh whether it's share or attention or whatever the different measures are that we're trying to do for individual piece. It's it's about the collaboration, but then again, it's the speeding up the time that it takes for anybody to get to an answer. So in the past, we'd have a big meeting and we would come out with this big work list, and then it might be a couple of weeks before you finally got back to everybody with all the tasks. Now, co-pilot facilitator probably have everybody's you know, action items already in their calendar by the time the meeting's over, you've got all this other actions going on, and we can get back to some of this information much, much quicker than we can so that we can spend more time on the strategy and less time on the report to get to the strategy. And that's really the collaboration that goes along with the way our business works very well together, both in field sales and then corporately. But and then also to our point is how do we un unlock a little bit of that governance between the departments so that it doesn't take Sammy to ask a salesperson what's the latest on the sales data? She already has access to it already.

SPEAKER_00 45:06

Yeah, I mean, I I think that's a great point. I I think long and shopper, at least, I called it the tribe tripod sales insights in shopper. Like we always had to be in lockstep together. Um, but what I've seen over the last several years is that we've been breaking down silos, like Even with our media center of excellence, we started inviting in our insights and analytics teams to our meetings to say, like, hey, how can we bridge the gap? Or like, how do we make this tighter? How do we learn what you know faster? How do we work together to build that marketing ecosystem, if you will, so that we aren't, we don't have to like tap each other on the shoulder, that we already know the work streams. We just need to know who we have to go to and who we have to collaborate best with. Because honestly, if you do something on your own without insights, it's it's nothing. It's the insight. I love that insights to impact. I think that's really together.

SPEAKER_03 45:57

One build on this too. Cause I think brands have a responsibility to do this, but then partners on the retail side have a responsibility to do it as well. And so some of the structural shifts that we've made here in bringing essentially like all of our commercial businesses together under one team. So when Sammy and Pete talk to their team at KPM, we have their interests in mind across the insight side of it, the media and loyalty as well, and then connecting that bridge back into the Kroger ecosystem as well. So I look at that as a very productive flywheel that we're building here for partnership and growth.

PVSB 46:28

Shri, close this out, would you?

Sri 46:30

All right. I'm going to ask all three of you to take turns and kind of give us a little bit of a forward-looking view. AI has come up so many times during this conversation, including Agent Monday. So as you start thinking about the intersection of AI and insights from the seat you sit in, the role you are in today, uh, what do you think in the next 12 months will be uh pivotal for you as you think about AI and insights? So maybe we'll start with you, Pete. Yeah, great question.

SPEAKER_02 46:56

Um So I would say uh what's with the future view for me is saying, you know, there's there's always been that adage, right? If you're gonna chop down a tree, the first 75% of your time is sharpening the knife. And a lot of the work that I think both myself and a lot of other organizations are trying to do out there is to say, we need to stop for a second on the sharpening the knife and let's go put together a chainsaw because that's what we're building for efficiency. And for to be able to lift a different data set and drop it into the same into the same model and it just spin out, you know, we're we're clear in a forest. And that's what the goal of speed of decision really gets to. I mean, it's always been a long time. We've had a long time now where you could be, you know, in a in a store on your phone and have a Power BI data set there, and you could see how an item is boring there. But we it wasn't always to the point where someone could say, How does this item compare to that item and tell me with the household differentials or what whatever those metrics are? That's going to be the difference maker. And although our brands do have slightly longer lead times, we do have slightly longer times between our planogram resets compared to, let's say, a DSD, uh type store delivery um grocery uh manufacturer, like we still have to bring a lot of that insight still back in under safety of like our privacy. We still want to be working on how do we work with Kroger Pharmacy to get information about like how can we model out a GLP1 household and what does that mean? But but there's guardrails that we still have to do. So some of that assembly that chainsaw is understanding the safety mechanisms of both the data, the governance, and then so that it doesn't actually end up in, you know, the wrong retailer's presentation and whatever those are. So there's a lot of work that's supposed to be done to prep the data for the audience and and to verify that it's going to be something you could stand on and trust the accuracy of that information. Sammy.

SPEAKER_00 48:42

Um yeah, I'll take it in a different direction. I think about um I think about the future of how we build audiences and how we reach consumers. So there's a lot of, I'm just gonna call them whether it's propensity model or AI-driven audiences. And everyone, I would say a lot of people are dipping their toe, but no one's like really dove in and said, okay, just take it and run with it. Like I know we did some testing and those AI audiences do really well at converting and finding the right people.

PVSB 49:09

But we haven't just said carte blanc, just you haven't just pulled the trigger into the case.

SPEAKER_00 49:13

We haven't just pulled it. We can how much exactly. So I I don't know if it's in 12 months, but I do see a future of how are we leveraging all of these AI audiences and then pulling it back, whether it's in a stratum or AMC, et cetera, to say like what are we actually learning about those people and so we can inform the future. So I do think there's like a huge shift that's going to happen eventually. I just don't think everyone's quite ready for that.

SPEAKER_03 49:39

Andrew, last word. I love it. I love Sammy's uh commentary there with like maybe not in the next 12 months, but I think the like the testing and iteration that's necessary to get us there are definitely things that we can do in the next 12 months. Uh, there are things that uh are less like privacy compliant concerns and things like that when we get into like health information, um, but we can do some things in in the short term. So I think like the test and learn side of it's gonna be really critical uh over the next 12 months uh and look forward to to bringing that to life with our partners at Haleyon.

PVSB 50:10

Brilliant. Well, if you're like Shree and me and you heard some pretty provocative thought leadership kind of out of our guests today, fear not, go to the digital show notes of this episode, click on their LinkedIn profiles. You can learn more about them. And while you're there, click on Halion's uh corporate site and KPMs and you can learn more about these incredible industry-leading organizations. Shree. This is a great conversation. What's what's your big takeaway?

Sri 50:35

Two things. They're very short, but they should be obvious if you've listened to this episode. The first one is Agent Mondays. AI has arrived. It's here, it's going into decision making, evaluation, even innovation, from what I heard. So that's one. And the second one, by popular demand, by CP. Retail is detail. Retail is detail, yeah. End of story. That's a mic drop moment.

PVSB 50:59

I think it absolutely is. Let's not drop our mics though. That's a that's a that's a figurative mic drop moment. Uh, we don't want the reverberation. We're recording this. It's gonna it's gonna send everything into a tizzy. Uh yeah, sure. Sri for me, it's um it's just embracing this change and figuring out how it's gonna help us collaborate, do more than we've ever done before, do it more accurately, and and do it in such a timely basis that we're not just looking in the rearview mirror. We're in the moment and we can adjust exactly how we're making decisions, and it can have a direct and a meaningful impact, not just gosh, I wish I'd known that six months ago. That's that's what's valuable to me. Pete, Sammy, Andrew, thank you for joining us today. What a great conversation. Really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_06 51:46

Thank you so much. Thank you.

PVSB 51:50

To our audience, this community does not exist without all of you. You engage with us, uh, be it in person, at conferences, as we're walking along the street in Tokyo or wherever, uh, certainly on online and through email. Um, and we are really grateful to you and all of our partners that enable us to do this and share what we hope is both educational and entertaining. We really want to thank our 44,000 plus LinkedIn followers. They they come from all walks of the community, from retail, from CPG, from agency, from tech stack partners. The ecosystem is very broad. Please follow us on all your social media platforms, not just LinkedIn. We are on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. I don't think we're on MySpace anymore, Sheree. I think that's that's gone. But um, we had we really do appreciate it and thank you. Um, we look forward to having you join us on the next episode of the CPG Guys Podcast. Goodbye.