How to research shoppers in a post-pandemic world

Ryan Barry:

Hi everybody. And welcome to this episode of Inside Insights, a podcast powered by Zappi. No, I don't have COVID, but yes, I do have a cold. I’m Ryan, and I'm joined as ever with Patricia Montesdeoca, my co-host. How you doing Patricia?

Patricia Montesdeoca:

Pretty good. And I'm very impressed that even with a cold, you're able to sound upbeat and say my name right. So thank you.

Ryan:

You're very welcome. This is day four of the cold and I'm a walking stereotype. It's the man cold. I'm feeling sorry for myself. And I'm a little grumpy and I want to go to bed and all that stuff. Last time we talked about a new arrival in your house. How's your puppy doing?

Patricia:

He is just the most adorable thing. 

Ryan:

Orzo yeah? That's his name?

Patricia:

Orso, with an S. He's a little bear. Because orzo with a Z, it's a small pasta. 

Ryan:

I like that kind of pasta by the way.

Patricia:

I do too when it's gluten free, but Orso is just the cutest little thing. He may not be as cute as Rio because I'm biased, but he's just a toy. He looks like a little stuffed animal that moves.

Ryan:

Amazing. I'm glad to hear it. I can't wait to meet him. One of these days, we'll meet him.

Patricia:

I will be there, I'll knock on your door with the two puppies.

Ryan:

That's not a problem. My wife, as you know, is a nurse. She's working tonight, which means I have all three kids. So you want to bring the puppy over, you'll be a hit in this house tonight. Although then you'd have to deal with my sniffles and that's not fun.

Patricia:

That's not fun. And I don't have a car because my son is home.

Ryan:

Oh, parent stuff. Shout out to all the parents who listen to Inside Insights. Your kids are back to school. They're demanding as hell, but aren't they lovable? 

Patricia:

They're the best thing.

Ryan:

They grow too fast. My son is two weeks into kindergarten while we're recording this. Off from school today because today's Rosh Hashanah and he's already learning a lot. So shout out to the public schools here in the Metro west of Massachusetts. He's teaching me math, which is pretty fun.

Patricia:

Oh my God. How beautiful. Well, my son is into his second stint or second year or second semester, second something at Bentley and he's enjoying life and everything with it. And I'm just, I couldn't be prouder of the three ones.

Ryan:

I love it. It's a good time to work in insights. I'm excited about today's conversation. You know, when we scripted this, we didn't know we were going to hire Lindsey. I got this habit of hiring clients. I don't know what it is.

Patricia:

I think I know this.

Ryan:

You used to be one of them.

Patricia:

I raised my hand though. I'm like me, me, me.

Ryan:

I like hiring clients, but I like seeing them get promoted more and I hope Lindsey joining Zappi means a lot more of our customers are going to get promoted. Shopper marketing. Whew. Everybody, it's a moving target. Am I digital first? Am I retail first? If I'm digital first, how do I have a physical presence? If I have a physical presence, how do I show up where people are digitally?

And how do I catch attention when search algorithms and historical behavior change everything? Wow. Big topic. So we haven't had many Zappi guests with the exception of you. Lindsey has joined our company to create a shopper insights pillar for us, something that we've gotten pulled into. We didn't really have an intention of being a shopper insights platform, but all of our customers are like, does Zappi help us out? So here we go.

So Lindsey Gladden is today's guest, she is the product manager for shopper insights at a lovely company called Zappi that I work at. And so do you Patricia. And so does Kelsey. And we love Zappi. We love shoppers. We love people. And so we're going to talk a little bit about that and we're also going to get a bit of perspective from Lindsey and what it's been like to shift from a big business. She worked for Keurig Dr. Pepper, then Pepsi. And then before that Verizon. So, a career in sort of bigger businesses, but she started in software and now she's sort of coming back. So I'm really excited to hear from her about that change, but also about what she sees in the shopper landscape. Shall we?

Patricia:

I've had the pleasure of talking with Lindsey before so I think you're going to enjoy this one because she's one of those people that speaks softly and carries a big stick. So enjoy the chat.

[Music transition to interview]

Ryan:

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm joined here by my colleague, Lindsey Gladden. Sounds cool to say that, doesn't it?

Lindsey Gladden:

So cool.

Ryan:

I dig it. The truth is, everybody, I was saying this to Lindsey before we hit record, I wanted to interview Lindsey before she joins Zappi. This is not our first official conversation, but I'd like to consider it our first official conversation.

Lindsey:

It's the first time it's just the two of us. So it counts.

Ryan:

It counts. So Lindsey, how long have you been on the dark side now? Has it been a month?

Lindsey:

Almost. This is week four? Yes. Week four.

Ryan:

And I am catching you on the eve of you getting on a plane without your children and spending some time with your husband by the beach. How are you feeling about that?

Lindsey:

I'm feeling really good about my decision to take a vacation a month in.

Ryan:

It's important.

Lindsey:

It is. It is.

Ryan Barry:

All right. So Lindsey has joined Zappi to help us create a shopper insights pillar. This is not a podcast about selling Zappi because I don't even know what Lindsey wants to do yet. There's two points I want to cover with you. The first is there's a big shift happening in our market of people who've been corporate insights professionals for their career realizing that they want to get into software or they want to get into the supplier side of the industry. And I want to just get some of your reflections so far. And then I do want to talk to you more broadly about shoppers and the convergence of brick and mortar and digital and how those worlds are coming together from your perspective.

To give our audience a bit of context, Lindsey helped Pepsi stand up their shopper insights team in a previous life, has been working on many iconic brands, and has worked across verticals. So I think she's going to bring a lot of experience and perspective to this conversation. So you're in for a treat.

Lindsey, first topic. You've just moved from a big corporation to a 300-person software company. What are some of the things you've had to learn or unlearn so far in your brief time with Zappi?

Lindsey:

So it's really interesting because this is my second boomerang. I started on the supplier side. I actually did a tech startup previously where I was employee number 13 and only the second female.

Ryan:

Wow.

Lindsey:

Yes. Lots of jokes there. So I've done it before. And I almost think that was more of a culture shock going from small to huge because I was very quickly reminded in corporate America that you don't just March into C-level offices and let them know what you think could be optimized.

That's less appreciated outside of the startup world. So I think in many ways, this has been coming back to a work style. I feel more comfortable closer to where I started. And it's been really fun. So I am working a lot with our UK-based team and they have been so kind about calendar invites as there's quite a time difference there. And so I think that's been, honestly, the biggest shift has been going back to a multi-office, trying to juggle time zones model more than anything. I did joke with a friend on Friday that I now practice agile in my daily life, but I talk about agile a lot less than I did in my previous role.

Ryan:

Yeah. It's like, if you're talking about it, are you actually doing it? There's something interesting too about remote ways of working when you're scattered across different time zones. I mean, so I joke a lot, Lindsey, that you've got basically four hours a day where the whole company can talk and they're the most manic four hours of my life. It's like the only four hours you can get people live. And then the rest of it is asynchronous.

But it's also changing. I mean, you're, I think the third person we've hired in Texas. From my perspective, it's opening up borders for companies. We never had an office in Dallas. And so we would have never put somebody there. And now all of a sudden, we're hiring anywhere where we find the right person, which puts more emphasis on being able to work in agile ways. I was using air quotes, podcast peeps. But yeah, it's actually quite tricky. 

So okay. So you've come back full circle after many, many years being on the corporate side. What are some things that you see done well in corporate business that perhaps startups need to learn, technology businesses, disruptive businesses need to learn?

Lindsey:

I feel like I'm coming back with a whole new appreciation for the brand narrative and what really happens behind the scene. So I had worked across a lot of different industries, a lot of different CPGs and held hands tightly in some of those roles as far as understanding their research questions. But what that looks like in real life and how that was really getting used and how the decisions were being made, I think I gained a lot more understanding there on the level of politics and selling that happens from the insights seat, just trying to get the whole organization on board with what your research has told you to do.

Ryan:

Yeah, it's true. And I think in software businesses, it's hard to have a customer-centric narrative because you're constantly creating things. And it's exciting to talk about them, but there are some human truths that have cascaded over time, and people care about themselves. They don't care about the shiny toy the software company's built. And I think I take a lot of my inspiration personally from what great consumer marketers do. I mean, Nike to this day is still one of my favorite marketing organizations because notwithstanding the few times they've stepped in shit, the customer is always the hero of Nike's story. They're always the ones accomplishing greatness, breaking down barriers, whatever those things are. So that's a good learning. All right, Lindsey. Let's talk about shopping. Shopping's a big... I would say a buzzword. It's a department. It's a capability. And it's really important because it's how companies ultimately transact their innovations. What does shopper insights mean to you?

Lindsey:

So I've been having this conversation a lot.

Ryan:

I can only imagine. First time we get to have it, though. I'm very excited about that.

Lindsey:

Yes. So really, it's looking specifically at everything that happens between the time that you create this really wonderful new product and that point of consumption. You can make the best product in the world, but if it doesn't get put in a shopping cart somewhere, somehow, then it's going to get cut eventually because it's just not performing. And so really understanding what is that behavior that gets you into the car? How can we influence that? What are those different lovers? What is the shopper expecting out of it?

Ryan:

That's a good definition. From innovation to consumption and how do you basically bridge that gap. I like that. So I want to talk about, I guess, the changes in preferences of how people shop with you for a little bit. Personally, I think I'm old school. I like to go to the grocery store. Isn't that weird? I think it's weird. My wife, we split the decision-making in purchasing in this house. She uses Instacart. I can't tell you the last time she went to the grocery store. Now, we're talking about CPG, but I see this existing everywhere. I was talking to Peloton. You and I are both fans of Peloton. If you guys, those of you listening, want to crash a ride with Lindsey and I, just get at us. We'll add you as friends.

But Peloton is thinking about a digital-first experience and how they use brick and mortar. I don't know if you know this. They have something like 900 brick and mortar shops. And now that shops are a thing again, they're trying to think of reciprocating...opening up a shopping experience. So I guess give me some of your thoughts on just in-person versus digital and how they complement or work against each other in today's environment.

Lindsey:

So it's interesting because in a previous life, when I was in a shopper role and we were looking at shopper insights, you had these very noticeable life changes that led to e-commerce behaviors. So maybe I adopted a pet or I had a baby or I moved and I'm further from the shops that I like. And these triggers would cause you to adopt more e-commerce behaviors. And then we had a global pandemic, and all of that went out the window, and everybody adopted new behaviors, period. 

There was no shopping the way you used to shop because that just wasn't a thing. And so you had a lot of this e-commerce. You have to click and collect where I drive up and pick up my groceries versus they show up on my doorstep. Maybe I'm shopping at Whole Foods but I'm doing it through the Amazon app. And so it became very complicated.

But the challenge is that as a shopper, as a consumer, I expect these experiences to be seamless. So when I go to order some more Dr. Pepper Zero Sugar, which I am the world's biggest fan of, and it's not on my Walmart app, but I know for a fact it's on the shelf in the store, as a shopper, I get really mad. Now, someone who works in CPG understands why it's not always seamless like that, but there is even more of this expectation that these experiences will be similar. So when you look at someone like Peloton, who's known for all of this digital first, and they're trying to translate that back into a brick and mortar store, it's the opposite challenge of, "I expect everything at my fingertips. Now I'm in a store. Can I really access all of that at once? Do you have enough here for me to get the full experience?" And I think it will be a huge challenge across industries to just show up in these ways that are very seamless regardless of how you choose to interact with the product.

Ryan:

I love the seamless point, Lindsey, because first of all, a consumer's just a person. Let's call them Jeff for a minute. Jeff doesn't think about channels. It's like, "What's going to work best for me today? And I think the reason why I like to go to the store is because it gives me a break from sitting in the house, where I work 60 hours a week." And I think for Jill, it's like, "I'm not bringing three kids in that damn place. So you better have my tabouli or whatever I want to buy."

But let's just say, for instance, I'm an innovator who's created a product that is more crisp, more refreshing, more delicious than Dr. Pepper Zero, and I don't have your attention in the store anymore. How do I get your attention in that environment when... you know what you're looking for when you go to the beverage aisle at this point in your life, and maybe something catches your attention, that drink brings you to a different decision. But it strikes me that end caps don't exactly exist in e-comm. And so how does that work for a brand? How do they stand out?

Lindsey:

So this is definitely something that I think we're trying to figure out. And as I map out what we want to do in the shopper space at Zappi, part of it will be how do we help brands understand how to make up for that? So I've personally worked in a lot of CPGs with a lot of impulse purchase brands. So a lot of those really fun foods that you're walking through Kroger and you see them on an end cap and you're like, "Yeah, I totally need that this week. It wasn't on the list, but I am grabbing it." In e-commerce, your behavior is often in search. So either you're typing in text or your voice searching, or you're looking at a previous list and just adding to cart from there, and you don't have that browsing behavior. So there are different places that our brand can play in e-commerce, whether it's a banner ad or being a part of a promoted group of items. Walmart has had back to school lunch items on their homepage for a while, and I've definitely been using that section lately.

There are ways you can play in that space, but understanding how well your brand plays there, I think will be very pivotal going forward..To your point earlier, there's a million different ways to get your food now or to get your cold medicine or to get your books or whatever else it is you're looking for online, and they all play differently. Different people shop at different places for different reasons for different convenience. But again, I expect my brand experience to be very seamless regardless. And so figuring out the best place to put your chewy granola bars for back to school versus your chewy granola bars in January when everybody's trying to lose weight, those might be two different places.

Ryan:

Yeah. Good. Very good point. So in some ways, do you think that the end cap of tomorrow is programmatic media placement, in-app and out-of-app? I mean, I'm taking a bit of a reach from what you said, but it popped into my head while you were talking.

Lindsey:

Yeah. I do think that that will be more where the focus of energy is and where people are looking for those promoted items because I think to a large degree, shopping in stores will never fully go away. It may evolve, though. So do we need... In the US here, we have these enormous stores that carry everything. But at some point, will that become information overload and shoppers want a more curated assortment in store versus what they find online or do they expect to find everything everywhere? 

Ryan:

That's a good point because if you use your Amazon app or your Peloton app or your Instacart app, it does have algorithms that curate your experience based on your behavior, which is actually counter to the brick and mortar Kroger model. All respect to the world of Kroger. I love you guys. I go to Wegmans. It's down the street. Wegmans is designed to make me have to walk through the whole place, not to give me a frictionless experience. They'll move the lotion because they want me to go see the ice cream stand that they've just put up or what have you. And I wonder if there's something to what you're saying. Why would I deal with that? I just want three things here. Get out of my way. That's a really fascinating thing.

Now on the flip side of this... Let me tell you a quick story, because I think it will illuminate my point. I, a year and a half ago, wanted to buy a new backpack. My backpack was ripped. I had it for seven years, eight years or something like that. And so I posted on Facebook, any backpack tips? Two things happened. I got about 65 conflicting comments from my friends with very little alignment. And then every single company that is on the planet who makes backpacks remarketed the shit out of me. Do you know what backpack I'm using today?

Lindsey:

What?

Ryan:

The same one I had. Because I was so overwhelmed by this, I was like, "I don't know what to do." I'll show you this, but those of you listening, you won't be able to see my backpack is literally ripped. I'm just like, I was so overwhelmed.

And so that's an interesting, I think, tension for new brands. How do I take advantage of the…’I bought this on Instagram’ type of dynamic, without overly swamping people with your messaging to the point where I'm not buying anything. Because it's different to buy something in a cart where it's like, "Doritos 3D? I'm buying them things." It's different. I mean, have you seen brands particularly do this well where they're using digital marketing to their advantage without being a pain in the ass, I guess?

Lindsey:

So I think some of it has to do around how you target those ads. And so some companies are out there going out super, super broadly. I am a Peloton owner. And so the number of ads I get for competing products because I have looked up Peloton stuff before is ridiculous. I'm like, "I already own an exercise bike. I don't need to. We're good." 

Ryan:

So ridiculous. What a waste of money.

Lindsey:

Yeah. But there's also some people who do it much tighter. And so sometimes I'll get an ad for something and I'm like, "I didn't know I needed that, but now I'm going to order it," because it is so targeted based on, "You've shopped X and you fall into these demographics," that I'm like, "Oh, this this feels really compelling. It's not just blasting me in a space where I'm already overloaded." I also think influencers and using them well is something that is becoming increasingly important. So younger generations really want really authentic brand stories. And so if your influencer strategy feels like you're just paying a bunch of influencers to make your brand more cool, it's probably not going to work, versus there are some out there that I watch the story and I'm like, "Is this a campaign or do you really love this product? I can't tell the difference."

Ryan:

Love the authenticity point, Lindsey, because I think this is one of the most beautiful parts of consumer behavior today is that people are genuinely demanding that relevance and they speak with their wallets. Not a great thing for big business who used mass marketing to jam things down our necks for the last 150 years. But I think it's a good thing for the world. So I think that's a good example. But this insight of the importance of media buying, search ads, remarketing, I think is a fascinating one because I too get the NordicTrack ads. Of course, I've just severed any chance of NordicTrack becoming a customer of mine. That's okay.

I don't want to buy another $3,000 exercise bike. I already got one of those things. But if you were to serve me up... I don't know... A foam roller or equipment that would make me feel better when I'm exercising, to your point, oh yeah. You've just created demand that I didn't have. And it's not that different from putting milk next to cookies in the dairy aisle, is it? The only reason cookies are in the dairy aisle is because you consume those things together. It's pretty simple. I find that fascinating.

I mean, the other thing is you're also speaking about, particularly in an e-com world, how important brand awareness is because people have to go and look for you. And I've seen some big brands, Apple being one of them, who's taken... And this is public, right? They've taken their ad strategy away from performance marketing and it's basically saying, "We want awareness in all the categories we play so that when consumers are in that moment, whether it's at Best Buy, an Apple store, apple.com, or amazon.com, they type in our name. They're not putting in just any tablet. They're putting in our tablet." That's a really interesting point. 

Lindsey:

When you look in e-commerce, how are you tagging your products? If you're searching for the Cherry Dr. Pepper Zero Sugar on the Walmart app, which I do every week, depending on how things are tagged, when they're out of it depends on what comes up next. So if I'm Coke and I have Cherry Coke Zero Sugar in stock, I will get when Cherry Dr. Pepper Zero Sugar is out of stock, I will get Dr. Pepper Zero Sugar, and then Coke Cherry Zero Sugar. And so it's making sure that you have the right tags and stuff in there so that when people are searching for things, if your competitor's unavailable, you're coming up top of mind in that first half where they're seeing it. And I think that's where you start to get some of that very interesting brand switching that goes on in e-commerce when stuff is out of stock.

Ryan:

Well, that's a great tension too because that's before I've put you in my basket versus your NordicTrack example, which is like, "Don't be clever there. That doesn't make any sense." This is going to be fun. I'm really excited. All right. So independent of tools, toys, technology, and vendors, if you were to be back on the brand side and you were starting a shopper insights function and your CEO said, "We need to get better at shopper marketing. We need insights to drive the strategy," What are some principles or pieces of advice you would give to that version of yourself as you're starting that journey?

Lindsey:

And I can't even take credit for this. Someone has been doing this longer than me taught me this, and it's one of the best pieces of advice I got in a shopper role. Going out and doing a lot of listening. The end questions are often very wide and varied. But if you can dig under, "Okay, why do you need to know this very specific thing?" Those themes tend to be overarching. And so yes, retailers have different ways of articulating that and wanting to know maybe slightly different metrics. But if you can dig deep into, "Why are we asking this?" A lot of times, they're the same question. So let's go out and buy one way to crack that nut and then just report it across these different vendors as they need it, because shoppers are just humans in a store. They don't vary that greatly between retailers. You have some SKUs based on things like income or what's actually around me. But at the end of the day, we're just people looking to put stuff in our carts.

Ryan:

It is interesting how we organizationally bucket. Even we're doing it. You're the shopper pillar lead. But our customers create things then they sell them and... Well, they create them, then they market them, and then they try to sell them. They're the same people, right? It's no different. But yeah, I guess we can lose sight of that.

So you said something that I wanted to drill into a bit. So I've never been in a shopper role. Full disclosure, folks. I did say to Lindsey before we started recording, I don't know anything about shopper marketing except for the fact that I market Zappi whenever I can. It strikes me that there also might be a tension between brand and shopper marketing inside the shop that you might work in. But also if you're selling soda, you've got to have a different person at Kroger, Walmart, Amazon.com that you have to sell it to who presumably might have different perspectives. So I guess, how do you go about synthesizing that to get to some harmony? Because it strikes me that it's potentially a big bureaucratic nightmare to deal with. 

Lindsey:

It can be. Yes. So a lot of times, your brand and consumer insights and innovation insights sit under your marketing department, and shopper insights and shopper marketing often sit under a commercial or sales organization. And they're like cousins, not even siblings. And so there is that tension between what wins out. So I've seen before where on the sales side, someone will go into a retailer and offer something, but it doesn't align with the brand goals and the brand priorities and the brand, "This is the voice of my brand," but the sales guy's like, "I sold it in. It's an enormous program. Why are you not happy about this?" And your brand manager is like, "Because that's not what I stand for." And so it's trying to stay on the same page and use the same data and have the same understanding about what matters.

Ryan:

Yeah. That's tricky. I mean, this is one of the reasons why... I mean, we've talked about this, Lindsey, in our many essays on LinkedIn to each other. The company structure getting in the way of the company performing is one of the most maddening things to me because presumably, the sales team and the brand team could just as easily get aligned on brand principles and sell that way. I don't know. Novel concept. But I imagine there's a tension within that because that PO speaks. I'm sure there's this story that you've got somewhere of, "Yeah. But I got to PO piss off the brand manager," and I could see where... particularly in companies that are traded with quarterly goals in mind. I mean, that earning price matters. So that deal at Kroger is a big thing, and that's frustrating, isn't it? So how would you go about uniting those? Let's not kid ourselves and think we're going to change the structure of big companies. We're not, at least today. Maybe some other day. I guess, how have you navigated that in the past?

Lindsey:

I think really trying to just get the right people in the room and have a human conversation about what it is you're trying to accomplish. A lot of times, there are ways to bring it together that everybody feels good about. But if there's no communication there, that's extremely tricky. Because these two teams are cousins, not siblings, they're out of different budgets. And so they're using different tools and different data sources and different ways of decision-making, different KPIs. And they’re getting on the same page about, "How are we going to measure the success of any of this and say that we won?"

Ryan:

Yeah, that's an interesting point because I've seen this within our customer base. It's a completely different team. And then when it happens, I mean, the truth is the reason why we're standing up a shopper pillar is because our customers told us that we should, and we tend to listen to them. But I remember it being different people and then pulling in the insights people who then wanted some credit on some level for it.

So all right. I want to ask you one more question. This is from my own knowledge as well as the knowledge of everybody who wants to get smarter at shopper insights. What are the few metrics that do matter in terms of that unification and measuring success from innovation to consumption? What are some of your go-to like, "We've got to be able to track and measure these metrics."?

Lindsey:

So for me, one of the most important things is you can have the coolest innovation in the world, but it needs to be purchased. Otherwise, it's going to get cut. And so I think going back to a lot of those basics on, "What's the distribution of this? What's the purchase?" But I also think there's some metrics in terms of how much attention you are getting at the shelf. So that can be incredibly impactful because maybe you need to argue for more facings at the shelf because you're getting a ton of attention, but your purchase isn't high because you don't have enough on the shelf right now. And so I think attention is very interesting to look at, especially with new products.

Ryan:

I like that. And actually, did they purchase it? It's one of the tensions in software too, which you're now a product manager. So we can talk about this. This is our first one-on-one. It's so easy to build an innovation that you think is cool, but similar to your point, if it doesn't move customer value metrics, then it's certainly not changing the share price of a company or delivering value to the company.

There's a book. I actually was just reading this book over the weekend. Highly recommend it. It's called Escaping the Build Trap. And I think it's similar whether you're selling soda or building software, where you come up with ideas and you try to innovate your way out of a problem without being like, "Is this actually landing in someone's day? Is this really working?" And I think all people who are innovators are guilty of doing this, whether it be briefly with their intuition of being like, "It's fine. I just gotta keep going," or to their detriment leading to 90... What is Nielsen's current stat? 90-something percent of innovations flop. I wonder if that's even a new stat. I feel like they've had that forever.

Lindsey:

Having been on the brand side, it is such a scary stat…

Ryan:

How do I get in the 10%? All right. Bonus question for me. We're going to ask one more question, and the question I want to ask you, without giving away your whole playbook here, what are some of the biggest problems that you see in the shopper insight space that you hope to be able to try to solve? Biggest problems. You don't have to necessarily get into tools and toys and stuff, but just real business problems that you were faced with that compelled you to want to switch.

Lindsey:

So I think as all of this behavior has shifted so rapidly, what I'm hearing is that the shelf life of shopper insights is not what it used to be. So you used to be able to go do a very long and expensive project, but you could use it for a couple of years, then you would just repackage it a little bit differently with some trends the next year and a new way to act upon it, but keep the insight the same.

Three months. Three months is what I've been told the shelf life is. Yeah. We've seen it on the consumer side where you need answers and you need them quickly. I think that has now come to the shopper side. And so we're seeing a lot of organizations staffing up shopper teams where they either didn't have them before or they didn't have a large team and they're having to add headcount to keep up with needing insights this quickly. And so I think that will be the biggest thing that I hope to be able to take action against is just being able to help these folks get those answers quickly on a regular basis so that they can keep up with the rapid changes.

Ryan:

Wow. From three years to three months. That's insane. On some level, I've celebrated the change because I mean, my career has always been plagued with, "We've always done it this way. The trend line always says it this way," which is a big contradiction to, "We need to change the way we work." And if there's one good thing that happened to this industry last year, it was that stuff all got thrown out the way. So yeah, SMRs report over digital transformation or whatever buzzword they put on it will look like an exponential increase. We'll all take credit for it. But I think some of it was our trend lines being bucked. That's okay. It's a beautiful thing.

All right, Lindsey, you've said a lot. Now you have to promise me that in about a year, when you've changed the shopping insights world and you're big and famous and you're speaking at conferences, that you'll come back and visit my podcast again so that we can talk about all of the great things that you're doing. And this is my first ever first one-on-one podcast interview. And it's been very fun. I'm super excited to work with you.

Lindsey:

I love it. I'm so excited to be here.

[Music transition to outro]

Ryan: Cool. Patricia, what'd you think? I, as always, I'm really keen to get your key takeaways for our audience. They love them. I love them. And so does Kelsey, because they make for beautiful visuals on our LinkedIn page.

Patricia:

You know, you probably remember this because you've got an amazing memory. Shopper is one of my passion points. I do have to admit that I have many because insights in general is my passion, but I was handed a blank piece of paper once a while ago at Colgate and told to develop the shopper department, the shopper insights department. So I have a very large space in my heart. And I thought that the questions that you asked Lindsey were dead on. So let me give you a little paraphrasing and summarize the chat that you just had with Lindsey for our speakers to know what to do on Monday morning. All right?

Ryan:

I dig it, let's do it.

Patricia:

Number one. What exactly is the definition of shopper insights? Sounds basic, but it's a really good question. She summed it up beautifully. The art and science of understanding every step in the journey between innovation and consumption.

That means really understanding what you need to do to influence every step of that journey. So that the end result is in your favor, right? Knowing the motivations that lie behind every action and non-action. Because at the end of the day, you need to have the insight necessary to understand what it takes to get into the cart and then purchase it. That's number one.

Number two, how different are shopping mediums interacting now? I mean the world, as we all know, has exploded. Lindsey was really wise. She took a step backwards and she says in the past life stages and life changes were the ones that motivated how we changed the way we shopped, right? When we got married or unmarried, moved out or moved in, had a kid or didn't have a kid, right? There were all different things that made major life a state of flux.

Well, life was in a flux for all of us this past year. Everything changed. Now at the end of the day, businesses just want to sell and shoppers just want to buy. So when we have that understanding, then we go into saying, seeing what shoppers want to buy. But they want to buy easily, seamlessly and painlessly. What does that mean? That means that businesses have to make sure that shoppers are not encumbered or confused by all the differences in the shopping environments. They won't have to make sure that they offer everything everywhere at the right time, in the relevant way. That sounds easy, not. But that's what you need to do. Right?

Number three. How should brands stand out to their target audiences in the new medium? I mean, in the past you used to have an end aisle or a big ad or something in the store that would jump out. But now it's something that's difficult because you don't know where you're at and how they're doing it. So how do you do that? How do you stand out to them? Well, you've got to really know them. You've got to know their browsing and shopping habits because the two are very different.

In the past you would go to a store and browse, but many times you'd buy. But now people can spend hours just browsing. Right? And that's something that's not always easy to capture. There are times when they're actually just browsing versus shopping. So know their habits. Know what needs they have so that you can offer the products and services to meet them and be where they shop. So you have to make sure that you understand how it works. All right.

Now, number four, after you know them and how do you stand that to them, how do you entice them? Entice is a very loaded word. Entice is not illegal. Entice is just to call in, talk to them, be at their level. How do you do that? Target tightly, not broadly. I have to tell you, that sentence. There are about three quotes of Lindsey's in this interview that I thought were golden. This one was one of them. Target tightly and not broadly. Aim for adjacent shoppers. Offer complimentary items. So adjacencies, complimentary items. Be strategic about leveraging influencers. Don't just offer influencers because of influence. Look for something that is authentic, not sounds authentic. It's very different and people want to be respected, not sold to. So that's important because they have the control, it's in their wallet.

Number five, is brand awareness still important today? Hell yeah. It's only important if you want to come up in their search. So if you want to get bought, yeah, brand is kind of important. So it's essential that you make sure your brand appears. Where? When people are searching for your brand. When people are searching for similar things. When people are searching for competition. Right? All of those times you have to come up. Not just the simple time when they're looking for you. All of the adjacencies, which goes back to number four, know your people's habits. And number three, know your shopper in general.

Number six, what are some principle pieces of advice that you would give to people starting on their journey to shopper? Listen, listen, listen. That's something that we've heard from so many of our podcasts people. And we've heard and we value that and listening journeys are essential. Listen to your target. And then she talked about listening to your stakeholders. And then she said, listen to the product owners and listen to your competition.

What are you going to do with that? You have to find out what each of these separate teams are asking and why they're asking. What are their motivations? And when you're done with all that, then you can start seeing the full picture. Because at the end of the day, shoppers are just people looking to put stuff in their carts. Golden quote, number two, that was amazing. Shoppers are just people looking for things to put in their carts. I've been there. I'm one of those.

Number seven. How do you manage the tension between consumer and shopper or brand insights and shopper insights or brand marketing and shopper marketing? I'd love to say there isn't a tension, but we all know that there is. And Lindsey does as well. She gives a very simple, very straightforward advice. Number one, communicate despite any organizational blockers that exist in your company. Number two, get all the people in... The right people in the room. It doesn't matter. That's where you're going to share objectives, share data, share resources and align in a win-win manner because at the end of the day, you all have to succeed, for you all to succeed, right? So that's really important and know how you're going to do that.

Number eight, this was a good one. One liner. What is the biggest change in shopper insights in the past year? Insights shelf life went from three years to three months. Wow.

Ryan:

Wild, right?

Patricia:

Oh my God. Insights in shoppers used to be two to three years. You could use them and you could leverage them. Now, three months, the world has changed all over again. So it's crazy. It's crazy. So now you asked it first, but I left it for last because I thought it was really cool to wrap it up in because again, her amazing one-liners. What was the biggest plus for her, for moving from big corporations to smaller startup companies. And she just said, you do agile versus talk agile. Drop the mic, just drop it. Right? 

Ryan:

You know, it's funny. I didn't want to quote Lindsey on LinkedIn, but I wrote a post about this and it broke the internet.

Patricia:

I figured you would.

Ryan:

As you know, and I know Kelsey knows, nothing gives me more joy than LinkedIn posts that break the internet, but it really resonated with me too.

Patricia:

Oh yeah. Been there totally. Now those of you keep track and are really good. You've heard that I said it was 10 points. So we have one really left. I know I said the previous one was the last one, but this is really the last one. You asked her, what is the one thing small companies and startups need to learn from the big corporations. And I was waiting for her answer, because I didn't know what she was going to say. Consumer centric, brand narratives. That is amazing. As you paraphrase or you said, we're always looking in the small companies about the next shiny new thing. Consumers don't want the next shiny new thing. Consumers want to hear about themselves and how you're going to help their life. So that was amazing. We have to, we in small companies have to be better at consumer centric, brand narratives and that pretty much dropped the mic completely.

Ryan:

So talking about consumer centric, brand narratives, I completely agree. So I was leading a project here at Zappi. And we were redefining our strategic narrative because increasingly our customers aren't just insights people or marketing people, et cetera. And I was going to hire a narrative consultant and a good friend of mine who's the vice president of marketing at VoxPopme, Jen Vogul recommended this book called building a story brand.

And so we ran this exercise with about 20 of us and we built a script for a movie where our customer was the hero and we were just a small part of it. And it's a really interesting reframe and I think very few businesses do it well, particularly technology companies. Everybody wants to talk about the shiny toys, but all that really matters is the customers, the hero. Because all people really care about is themselves. And that's true for narratives. It's true for shopper marketing. It's true for a lot of things. It is a human truth. We care about ourselves. 

Patricia:

It is. That's life.

Ryan:

Well as always, it was fun. And I told Lindsey this before we recorded. I didn't think I was an expert in shopper, but I'm a marketer. And if you really think about shopper marketing, it's the epicenter of behavior change. Ads influence people. Performance ads, convert behavior. End caps get me to bag, grab a bag of cookies, right? So I think it's some of the most fascinating influences that trigger behavior change, oriented marketing at play because you're getting somebody to do something they otherwise wouldn't stop in their tracks and change behavior. And I think it's a fascinating area of psychology to study. So our next guest is one of the smartest people I know. She's an advocate for women in research for diversity and research. She leads advertising research for, I think the third largest advertiser in the United States. Her name is Christine Avallone and she is a senior manager of advertising insights at Verizon Wireless. I'm fired up.

We're going to have a really robust discussion on how to set up advertising programs that help make ads better. That helps measure them. That helps link them to performance. That works across channels. It's going to be awesome. So tune in. If there's somebody who's doing badass work in this industry that you want Patricia and I to talk to, you know the drill. Email me at ryan@zappistore.com. Hit us up at insideinsights@zappistore.com. Follow our brand, follow our podcast page. Throw up a smoke signal. Doesn't matter, we'll figure it out, but we want to talk to all the innovators so please get at us.

Patricia:

You know Ryan. Those people can be you. If you have something that you want to share and you want to…

Ryan:

Great point.

Patricia:

…you want to platform. Call us, nominate yourself. We're here. We love people who take charge. So call us, write to us, reach out.

Ryan:

Call on me. It's a beautiful thing. I had some electrolytes during this thing. So I'm feeling a little bit energetic. To our listeners, we appreciate you. Thank you for listening to a nasally congested version of me. I'm vaccinated. I'm COVID free. Just got a little bit of man flu going on. I'll be just fine. Until next time my friends. Patricia, thank you. Kelsey, Judith, appreciate y'all. Have a great day everybody.

Patricia:

Bye.