00:10

Hello, everyone. I am Wendy Liebmann. I'm CEO and chief shopper at WSL strategic retail, and this is Future Shop. This is where I talk to innovators, disruptors and iconoclasts, about the future of retail. My guest today, I'm hugely excited for many auspicious reasons, which you will hear in a minute, is Sri Rajagopalan. He is, by all terms, a renaissance man. Many of you will know him as the co founder and co host of The CPG Guys, the industry's number one podcast. I'm always stunned and excited about the fact that it is such a successful podcast, and we'll talk about that in a minute. He's just begun a new role with a new company called Think Blue, and we'll talk about that in a minute. But beyond all his extensive experience in the CPG space with General Mills and Revlon and J&J and PepsiCo and FritoLay and everybody else, he is also the proud father of two amazing pop stars, Rhea and Lara Raj. Keep an eye out for KATSEYE. We'll talk about that in a minute, and I am thrilled to have him here, because today, I think it's today, is the anniversary of the 400th episode of The CPG guys. I am overwhelmed and honored. So thank you for joining me. Sri, welcome

Sri 01:36

Well, Wendy, thank you for having me in the first place. It's a pleasure to be here and be able to talk what's going on in North America today from an industry perspective, as well as hopefully you and I can share some leadership perspectives on what to look forward as the future beckons.

Wendy 01:53

I really do have to congratulate you on so many fronts, and eager to know a lot about all the things you're doing. I did forget one thing, Sri and I are big Yankee fans. His co partner, or, and co podcast partner, Peter Bond is a Dodgers fan, so there's always this thing going on, and Peter's been leading the way for the last few weeks, which really aggravates me. Three, but at least the Yankees have won three in a row. We'll see what happens tonight. But let's not give Peter any edge until we get to the 162 game anyway. So to the topic at hand. I mean, you, you have an incredibly unique perspective on the state of retail and the CPG space. I mean, part of it, I think, is, you know, my the lens I see is that these 400 episodes that you have done, you've had retailers, CPG, brands, service companies, for the industry, tech companies, and then you have that unique purview that is the background you have from big CPG companies doing lots of work around e commerce, digital marketing. What are the things that you have learned about the CPG industry and where things are changing, and need to change.

Sri 03:21

I'm actually going to point out a handful of things plaguing boardrooms in North America today, in the CPG industry, and correspondingly, they translate to retail because at the end of the day, the retail environment is largely a B2B environment, heavily dependent on large CPG brands, not just for products, but also for investments. So but first, I want to acknowledge 400 episodes. And the biggest beneficiaries of doing 400 episodes is we've had the luxury of being the biggest learners. Anybody who comes on the show 400 times over now is usually coaching Peter and me, we always walk away learning something new, like AI is a great example, right for most, AI is a buzzword in the industry. Peter and I can parse it out and say the things that matter in AI are generative, AI and applied AI, and give you five examples of what each of those are in translatable CPG or retail ecosystems are go to market. We didn't know those things ourselves. People came on the show and coached us, and I just gave you one simple example. But we've had learnings our strength in retail media comes from the number of retail media participants we've had on the show. And we're talking Seth from Walmart, Cara Pratt from Kroger, Precision Marketing, Bobby Watts, from ADUSA. We learn something new, either about measurement capabilities, how a consumer connection is made. I parse all of that, and I look at the last 24 months and the things that stand out in my head of. What's changed in the retail ecosystem is volume. America is going through a mini crisis in large and mid tier market cap, CPGs, in terms of volume. And then you start thinking, why? What happened? And this is stuff that is not largely publicly spoken other than acknowledgement. You can see it in CEO press conference after press conference for the quarterly earnings release with Wall Street analysts. What really has caused a significant volume change? Well, duh, inflation. What is that? Inflation? At the end of the day, a lot of inflation related pricing went into the ecosystem in the last three years, you know, depending on the aisle and the category within a store, could have been 10% but as high as, if you start looking at publicly available data, as high as 30-40% what change in the environment, though, in the last 15-18 odd months is SNAP and EBT has changed. A lot of the states pull back all the pandemic related handout dollars that were given out, the checks that were going to many families in America, dried up, and all of a sudden, what was what was being bought luxuriously, like lobster was one of the highest selling items inside a grocery store. Can you believe that now it's back to basics, and to be honest with you, what was traditionally in a basket prior to the pandemic, has become a little out of reach for a majority of consumers in America. And there was a high wave when service was in the 80% threshold, when shelves were empty and the dollars were in households, in shopper wallets, because of the various grants. The ones I described that in an 80% service scenario, shoppers were willing to put money at the table for these increased prices. Now that scenario has changed, and America's number one problem for mid tier and large market cap companies is to figure out how to drive volume again. And Wendy, I can go on about this for hours and hours and hours, because marketing is fundamentally also changed in the last no matter what a CPG CMO will say to me, I'm always willing to learn. But I've experienced this myself, over the pandemic. We moved to a world which is significantly omni channel in nature and digitally oriented in nature, the point where I'd argue 90% 95% of all transactions, whether they purchase in store, online, irrelevant on the go, are really digitally, digitally influenced, the role of an end cap inside a store is significantly diminished. Because, truth is, when traffic is down. And retailers actually are charging an investment equal to four years ago, pre pandemic, for the end cap, it doesn't feel right. And retails are also claiming investments in retail media, which is very lower funnel-oriented, end caps and retail media, the same thing at the end of the day. They drive lower funnel. So there there are fundamental changes in advertising we can get into as well.

Wendy 08:06

You've captured that so succinctly. And I think about that a lot in our world where we're talking to both shoppers on the one hand, so you've really captured that both angst, pain, wallet concerns, and on the retailer side, who are basically saying, you know, I don't get enough feet in the store, physical or digital. What do I do? Who's either getting it or who understands the problem, but who's get who's beginning to do things about it in ways that have impact. Are you seeing some of the companies do that, or are they in shock mode?

Sri 08:46

My alma mater, PepsiCo, has legendarily always been ahead of the curve. Hasn't changed to the date, right? Coca Cola, Mondelez suddenly you start looking at who are these people, and you realize, wait a minute, there's a pattern here. It's the DST companies. Why? Why are the DST companies are advantaged in this environment? DSD is a unique advantage versus warehouse, that people are in the store every day. They're connecting with store managers. Every day. They're connecting with a display on action alley at Walmart every single day, because they're walking up and down the aisle, they're able to see what end caps and private label actually exist and what don't. They are able to bust the myth and the reality of what's filling the shelves when one item is replaced with another, it takes a few weeks and syndicated data to catch up and go to management at mid tier, large market caps. So DST is clearly advantage and getting it all the way from doing price pack architecture, focusing on the right place in store, winning the search battle online via personalization, and focusing, again, on full funnel marketing, and not exclusively, lower funnel marketing. DSC is leading the way completely. No debate in. My head, my urge to all senior leaders in America, and I'm not talking about CEOs here. I'm talking if you're a director and above, in a mid tier and large CPG brand, I don't care what function you represent. Could be supply chain, could be it could be brand marketing. Could be selling ecosystem of customer partnerships, retail partnerships, you need to be in store a couple of times a month. There's a call for action in a crisis moment, you owe it back to the consumer. Go see what's going on be at retail. Don't sit in war game up in a headquarters location with tons of syndicated data and four other analysts data that you've chosen together and figure out, go get experience. The DSD companies have a huge advantage of you. If you if you don't. Wendy, you know what the alternative is. And most chief merchants would start telling me this, they're going to swap your space in store at the gondola. Congratulations. It's already happening on the display side in your weeks and months away, on the gondola side from DST, claiming your space. for example, over covid, snack and candy were the leading items. Department 82 is reinventing its I'm sorry, I tend to use those words like depart. I meant Impule. And the checkout register is reinventing itself to be snack and candy only oriented, not a great outcome for warehouse companies, but an awesome outcome for the DSD companies. So clearly that in-store makes a huge difference. Second thing on the advertising and marketing world, the shopper world is what I'd call it, is when these SNAP and EBT dollars started drying up, and the handout checks, or whatever you wish to call them, the government payments when vanished, they were the first to return to full funnel marketing and upper funnel marketing, while mid and large marketing debated, what's the new messaging? We got to figure out. We got to talk about value of our packaging. That's what they consume, because of the inability to really take pricing actions in a deflationary environment or a stagflation environment. DST actually said, I'm also not participating in any deflationary stagflation. But you know what, the value, I'm going to focus on upper funnel marketing, and I'm going to really go back to impressions, which you and I will laugh as a metric, but it's making a difference, whereas mid and large tier warehouse bands are still struggling. What do I do with retail media, the lower funnel? How do I go back into an upper funnel mode when I do? Do I communicate value in the packaging, the ingredients, nutrition, yada, yada, yada, depending on the aisle you're doing business in. And it's not one aisle. This is like a, this is like a pandemic that spread. So again, I'd urge mid-tier and large brands, you owe it to your consumer and your retail partner, to focus, again, on full funnel with the lean on upper funnel.

Wendy 13:02

I was at a client meeting with one of my colleagues the other day. There were, I don't know 50-60 of the, you know, category management people in the room. They had all their external insights vendors come in and present to them. And we would talk about examples of what we were seeing around the country and the world in terms of retail, and talking about one on one with shoppers, and asking for hands to raise about who was in the store, who'd seen this, who? And I was just stunned. These people were buried with data they had not been in the stores. I said to them, l, listen, you are shoppers yourselves. You even when you go to do the grocery shopping or to the drugstore or to the mall, you've got to look at this now so it feels close to what you were saying. So much more. Old World, new world, right? If I can't see what's going on, the data won't show me all of this, and I won't understand the speed at which things are changing.

Sri 13:56

Wendy, a simple example, if you get mired in the data way too much, and you're sitting up at a corporate headquarters, and that's what you use. You're never going to know there's 18 feet or 24 feet of space in a given retailer, because that data is hard to get. What's the height of the actual shell fixture? That data is hard to get. And you do when you're designing innovation and now a space, constrained environment, largely controlled by DSD. You need to know these things. There's no syndicated data that's going to tell you that, it doesn't exist. When you go to a store and you find a vendor, boutique vendor, who can do that with you, you know, what you're planning for. It's a changed world in 5 years. And, you know, the thing that really gets under my skin when and you know, with paragsha and Manish Sharma, we've started a new company called Think Blue, which is really focused on this transformation of how to return to volume, growth and profit one more time by putting the consumer at the center of it. Everything. That's another thing that I think over the pandemic, because brands went into crisis solving, they moved away from consumer centricity, whether it's innovation, whether it's profiles, whether it's target marketing, whether it's cohort based development, they moved into, I gotta create. I gotta focus on supply chain resiliency. Building ecommerce capabilities, things of that nature, versus consumer centricity. And even when retail media dollars absolutely just mushroomed, no one was asking the question, what's the ROI? What's the measurement? Why should it ROI, why is ROI that's good for Google, good for, I don't know. Let's make it up someone else's retail media network. Like, why is that the metric? And that's modern advertising, which is full funnel marketing?

Wendy 15:48

Yeah, so, so, you know, I'm glad you're saying this, because if I keep saying it, people look at me like, oh my god, she's, you know, historic, as opposed to, within the context of what you're seeing, in this, this world of not only CPG companies, but also the breadth of retail that you, that you spend time talking to, and you and Peter have been learning from so that, to me, is is so compelling. You You just you also raise the point, you know, you, if you haven't been in the store for a week, or two weeks, or whatever, and you walk in and you see your space, and then all of a sudden, you realize that the retailer's private brand is there, or there's an exclusive brand that's there, and you've also lost some space within that, or you've been moved somewhere, or you're not in the house at all. And I think that's the other piece of urgency we're that we're at arm's length from the consumer, and the shopper and the shelf.

Sri 16:41

brand leadership, when they looked at private label, would be good at a certain percent of the category, and as long as it hangs there, no one really paid much attention. Everyone understands that it's a profit driver. It's required at a certain space to fill a gap. I don't think the industry has taken time to understand what's going on with private label is a phenomenon. Let's start with the basics. Why is private label on a tear? It's on a tear because the consumer is looking for value first and foremost. Unless you can address that, good luck. Now, let's take it a step further. There's another fundamental change that's happened in private labels since snap, EBT dollars dried up, and supply chain resiliency came back one more time to a area of strength, and that is imported commodities, which got hard over covid, are now available by the droves for brands to buy and when volume is depressed 500 basis points across the board, well guess who can actually buy commodities, the same commodities that are going into brands, private label, so gapping it at 3% of a category, and three and a half can easily become five, six on the strength of the providing value. Simply put commodities are available for them for the first time at unprecedented highs. And if you look at Brand after brand after brand after brand, private label is being treated as a brand, not as a shelf filler for 16 feet or eight feet or four feet, you start looking at the quality of the packaging, the quality of the product. There's been an upgrade in America on private label over COVID. The word private label like that. That's yesterday's story. It's a store brand, and at the moment, we emotionally and psychologically acknowledging it's a store brand with that word brand, instead of calling it some obscure thing, like the consumer has never woken up a single day like, try this with your loved ones and your friends and your partner can say, Hey, will you go buy this private label product?

Wendy 18:46

For me, so much of our work has shown us literally for the even before covid This, particularly with younger generations, who don't have the same attachment to these, legacy brands, whatever, and are willing to try new right? So for them to walk in and be smart, because Publix has got a great pack. I'm not naming names, but I will, because my husband loves the Publix version of Hydrox. Great packaging, fun, great price point. Looks as good as anything else on the shelf. And then why not? Target used to own that space, and now I could be in in Walmart. I could be in Hy-Vee. I, you know, think about any of the, of course, Kirkland, you know, all of those. You talk about the consumer in the room, we would talk the consumer and shopper in the room. So many are still, you know, living in that old world, the old parameters, and not understanding that, that notion of a brand is very different to what it was. So I think you're absolutely right in all of that, that other urgency around understanding who the competition really is, there's

Sri 26:33

There's one more one Wendy, that comes top of mind that I've heard a lot in the last 30-40 episodes we've recorded, and then from getting around in the industry, and I call that insights to action, lethargy, I go back to a pre pandemic world. Insights largely were used for decision making, to take action, over covid. The whole notion of insights kind of took a pause, period, because it was about resiliency solve, solving that was a problem of the moment. Post covid, the insights to action has become insights for explaining versus action, boardroom after boardroom after boardroom, the data that comes in and the insights that coming are used to explain why our volume is depressed, versus the action required to correct it. That's a problem. That's a big problem.

Wendy 20:49

That's a big problem. It says, no wonder that our clients look at us when we say, Okay, here's what, you know, get on with it, and here's the how to activate the insights. And they're looking at us like, that's hard. And yes, it is hard. It is hard. How do I even as a brand marketer, or a Category Manager, a retail merchant how do I even make sense of this if I don't have the consumer as shopper in my mind's eye all the time? Are there other companies, small companies, where you've seen the sort of activity, the action, from the insights that are hurtful sites.

Sri 21:25

I'll just call out a brand that I experienced a lot of learning from over covid. Anytime I'd walk to the baking aisle, I would look at Kodiak Cakes, and what they've done four years ago, irrelevant, just Wendy, go to a Walmart, go to a Kroger, and just try to find Kodiak Cakes and report back what kind of facings they have on the shelf. And your mind will be blown. But if I ask you, who makes Kodiak Cakes you're not, you're not going to be able to name who it is. Over COVID in an 80 service environment. Clearly, if they were able to service they were welcome as a facing and they've been sticky in store to the day and because of the small brands birthplace being consumer centricity and direct marketing, first party data marketing, they have an advantage over mid-tier, large cap brands in an environment where you're not going full funnel date. They've never moved away from that vision. They've always been talking to them, consumers and shoppers directly, and even in a B2B environment, they've established and mechanisms, how they can do that. They don't fear social media. They can jump onto the latest trends, whereas mid-tier, large brands, social media is actually kryptonite. Because they fear UGC, why do they feel UGC, because they fear UGC. Why do they fear UGC? Because of the risk that it presents in terms of public relations, something can escalate out, and we've seen a few of these play out. Bud Light was a great example of one of those, and so but small brands are having a heyday with UGC. And it's not like small brands are just saying, do whatever you want in UGC. They have PR too. If you want to figure it out as a mid tier brand and a large market cap brand, don't let your CMO who historically, went to marketing 50 fun, 5104 in an MBA class, and says, 4 Ps are the only way, and doesn't even have, I won't even go to Tiktok and Instagram, he doesn't even have a Facebook account, and it's coaching people on how to do marketing. You should be ashamed of yourself. And then you say, oh, it's privacy. I don't know. That's why I don't have it. I worry about data privacy. Oh, my God, Lord Almighty, like holy cannoli.

I just gave you one example. You're going to find them all over the store. But then, if you're not walking in store and looking, you're not nice paying attention, because you're looking at it's got that's 0.04 penetration. But when there are 40 of them, the 1.6 points a share, you've lost 500 basis points. Gee whiz, one point 160 has gone somewhere.

Wendy 24:05

Yeah, you reminded me of the story. You're You're making me think backwards as well as forwards of of a client in the in the personal care space years ago, who said we've lost double digit share, and we don't know where it went. And I said, Well, did you see where else people are buying that category and, oh, yeah, but that's not our competition, but that's not the way the shopper thinks. Have you walked out the store and gone into, in this case, Sally's Beauty to see where they're selling?

Sri 24:31

Adjacencies have changed, and if you your competition is not just your aisle because that's the Marketing 5104 way of thinking that it's day part, like, let's take the food business as a simple example, because I've spent a decade and a half in the food business, and then I would say seven, eight years in the HBC category, right in the food business, to come in and say, I'm going to worry about breakfast or dinner or lunch. That's all yesterday's ecosystem. Shoppers. Call it. It's 120 bucks, or whatever it came, it might be, based on the trip and the trip mission they're seeking, they're going to pick up things of value in the store that they need that are closest to the list they have. In a previous world was the exact list that they had, where that value conscious seeking shoppers would get them the value that they needed and deserved. That old way of thinking. My competition only exists in the business that I do go look at the adjacencies. But then, how are you going to look at the adjacencies when you're not in store? How will you know?

Wendy 25:22

The other thing I love about the term adjacency, it is not from a consumer and shopper perspective, particularly the shopper perspective. Adjacency to me is also, it's not necessarily just what's here, but I'm in a strip and next door, as you're speaking about, you know what? There's the the Sally's Beauty, the Ulta here, the whatever there I might be in my Walmart, Target you know, Kroger, as you said, but adjacency for me, as I parked the car. Now, I parked the car, what's on all of that so I think about category. I think about store nearby. I think about adjacency on my phone.

Sri 26:09

Hold on to that thought for one second, because geo location-based, adjacency is a largely ignored insights opportunity for brands. If there's a value store, dollar, call it what you may a value store next to your traditional stopping outlet. You cannot be a serious marketer if you're not understanding the geo impact. What

Wendy 26:33

what does what frustrates me, excuse me getting all hot and bothered, is that as shoppers, you take any category person, you take any brand person, as shoppers themselves, and then they go back into their, you know, their ivory tower, and run numbers, and they forget about all of that. You know, one of my favorite stores is, is Five Below it's right next door to a Walmart. It's right next door to an Ulta, it's right next door to home. You know, all of those Home Goods. Anyway, I'm preaching to the converted on that one.

Sri 35:27

I also want to plug in there and say, look, but what is, what is the underlying cause of no change in 18 months for mid tier, large market cap brands, and I'll summarize it to the industry didn't require a massive earthquake level shift in the ways of thinking and execution go to market execution, until the last 18 months happened. You could largely take your playbook from 10 years ago and just play it out day by day by day. Today, the shoppers like 90% digital in many households are exclusively digital, between click and collect home delivery. intermediaries like Instacart, it's just a hodgepodge of a bunch of stuff. Now who's going to shop in store is also rapidly changed in the last 18 months, the 75 year old dad who might have wheeled a card previously, has realized Instacart is a blessing in many parts of America today, as a simple example, a lot has changed. Adjacencies have actually changed. The impulse areas have completely changed in terms of snacking and candy owning the day, pretty much with nobody else, aisles have reinvented themselves, and the need of the hour is radical change. There wasn't the need of the hour four years ago for four years ago for radical change. The question underlying all of this Wendy that I want to point to is, are America's leaders today skilled enough to actually activate radical change? Do they have the skill sets. They're not open to changing the playbook. Are they the right people for those roles? it's a provocative question. You and I can sit here and advise anybody, but if they're not willing to take action, and they're telling you, no, but this is how I've traditionally done it, that competition one was a great, they're not my competition. Well, great, awesome. Four years ago, you didn't need to even think of them as competition. If adjacencies have changed and what's going in the basket has changed, you have no choice say your competition.

Wendy 29:12

And as you said, yeah, the urgency for volume now more than ever before, whoever you are, best retailer in the country and the world doesn't matter. Everybody's in that position. So is it also and I, as we wrap up, we could talk for hours on this. I think about all the conversations that feel like they're distracting us. It's retail media, it's AI. I'm not suggesting these aren't really important things for us to understand, but they seem to be these bright, shiny things that have people. Oh, are we capable of using that? How are we using it? You talked about AI in the beginning, when, in some ways there are these really fundamental things that people, companies, big companies, as well, are not, or especially are not willing to address. So it. Is that what you see that in the conversations across your 100%

Sri 30:04

100% Wendy, I'll just break it down into two things. We've debated the marketing piece already. Go back to your grassroots, not even full funnel, upper funnel marketing, you've lost households. At the end of the day. You've lost a good 5% of households who have exited your brand, and might even have exited and traded categories because of the value aspect. How do you bring them back into retailing them? Grassroots, upper level marketing, personalized. Personalized is not one on one marketing mid tier and large. Large bands don't have the capabilities. Go back to your segmentation models, but focus on upper funnel storytelling doesn't have to be retail media lower level. In fact, retail media networks are scrambling now to be off to bring in off site excellence. For this very reason, they want to give you inventory so you can do upper funnel marketing. You have to be smart enough to take advantage of that. CMOS, you own retail media take them away from roles that were erstwhile like mine, which is the sales captains, which own retail media. You owe this to the shopper. That's one clearly like if you don't, if you don't do that, the whole notion of bringing back households you've lost, exiting categories, changing the profit formula for a retailer, I believe you are responsible for participating in its destruction as as much as you are, in terms of just watching things play out. The second one is innovation. There's been a conversation last 18 odd months, and its frequency has gone up and up and up in the last two, three months when I talk to senior leaders, and what they say to me, after we record the podcast, and Riverside I hit the stop button is I'm thinking of pulling back on innovation. I'll be like, why? And you and I know that innovation is obviously more investment to launch and make it successful than the core. And there's a temptation say, let's just make it up. Like innovation is like 7% of a given aisle or category. It's like, Do we really have to be seven? Do we have to be the leaders driving that seven? What if I pull back to three, my P&L look a whole lot more healthier, because you're focused on delivering the dividend. When you pull back, you can achieve it. You can cut a whole bunch of costs, no doubt, but you forget that the consumer comes by that aisle, repeats a trip, looking for something new. That 7% if it goes to three, will also cut short a trip on the court as a result, it doesn't work. The retailer doesn't like that formula. If you're cutting back, it just doesn't work. And that part has been surprising how leader after leader has been telling me I'm going to pull back on innovation and just save the dollars. I'm going to reinvest that into media, into, into upper funnel marketing, love the idea of reinvesting in upper funnel marketing, except the way you should be doing it is looking at your retail Media Network spend and building a balance of full funnel marketing, you don't need to find out there's the other crazy notion going on right now, crazy fixation, because that's all marketers want to attach themselves to, couponing. Let's double stack, triple stack, quadruple stack, pen, triple stack. I don't even know what six would be, but step two plus stack will be seven coupons, right? That's how you're going to deliver price value to the consumer.

Wendy 33:25

So my last question, really for you is…tell us a little bit about your new business.

Sri 43:14

Think Blue, think blue like the ocean, which means everything that I just said on the show, don't limit yourself based on a playbook from 20 years ago. And in some instances, when you go to the ocean for tuna fishing, which has been around 100 years, like upper funnel marketing, it's okay to go back to what you learned 20 years ago, because that's the need of the hour. The need of the hour is price pack architecture, which has existed 25 years ago. Do it right? So Think Blue says, do new things like challenge your retail media, $200 million investment and make it full funnel versus lower funnel. Think big. Think big on innovation. Is this the moment where you say 7% is too high? Is this the moment you say, maybe if I claimed eight and a half, that's my way back to volume growth? But it also says in the ocean, there are many things you find which have been here prehistoric go back to those basics, the number one focus of Think Blue is consumer centricity. So we're working with certain partners. We announced a partnership recently with 345 Global on what we call a revolutionary store of the future capability. We have a deep partnership with Nielsen IQ. I also deeply believe that in the E-commerce world, large brands and large and mid-tier bands have made a lot of investments from a capabilities perspective. Have you converted that to action? If you lost. Households simply try to sell more units won't do it. You're going to have to get back households you lost, and those are the units you want. Couponing is all you're doing is taking your reinforcing bad behavior of those that are already buying your product without the upper funnel marketing, they're not even going to know that you're double and triple stacking couponing. It's the same people just stocking up in the pantry, and at the core is the omni channel consumer who's now 90% digitally anchored, whether they buy in store or not, doesn't matter what aisle you are in store, general merchandise, grocery really doesn't matter. The end of the day, innovation, how the consumer is finding you is through social media, 60-70% of the time, significantly reduced from end caps in store trips. What are you doing to tell your story digitally? First on innovation, nobody should be launching innovation without a digital story first?

Wendy 35:58

We always say, follow the shopper to see the future, and that's exactly what you've set up, which is, which is perfect. Well, I can't thank you enough for joining me today. I know you've had a lot on your plate, Staples Center with your amazing daughter Lara Raj as part of this new fabulous group, that's going to dazzle us all. So you must be as proud of both your daughters and your three cats and Peter and hopefully the Yankees and 400 episodes is pretty stunning. So I congratulate you on all of that, and I wish you so much good fortune. Thank you so much for joining me today. It's been a great pleasure. And congratulations on all the things you're doing. It's really inspiring.

Sri 36:40

Thank you for having me. Wendy, it was an honor and a pleasure to be here and actually talk to somebody in the middle of shopper everything in consumer centricity that can actually relate. This was awesome.

Wendy 36:52

So what is there left to say? I mean, what Sri did in that 30 minutes or so was gave us marching orders. I feel like he was preaching to the converted, me, which is very much about consumer centricity, shopper centricity, get away from the desk. So the data isn’t valuable. But we've spent so much time buried enough data, that we are not understanding what's going on in the world around us, not just adjacencies of who's sitting next to us on the shelf, and what our retailers are doing. But who's the store, the next door and the next door and the next door and where is the consumer now shopping in this world where they're focused on value, and want innovation, where we've got huge issues around volume, because people are not walking into the stores or they're trading down. Sri really gave us a roadmap to think about through the lens of his 400 episodes of CPG Guys, but also through the lens of listening to big and medium sized companies and the struggles they have. If you want to see the future. Follow the shopper and Sri was really, really clear about that. So you've got the roadmap. It's the shopper first. See you in the future. Cheers for now.