TRANSCRIPT
Peter (00:00):
Welcome to unpacking the digital shelf, where we explore brand manufacturing in the digital age, [inaudible] Peter Crosby here from the digital shelf Institute. The journey to winning on the digital shelf can't be made in weeks or months or as we all know, years. To manage expectations, the right outcomes and your sanity, it is vital to understand where you and your company are on that journey and what the right next steps are to move along the maturity curve towards operational and performance excellence experts from Salsify and the DSI teamed up to articulate a digital shelf maturity curve, and they presented it in a recent webinar. The content is so foundational to any leader plotting their digital shelf strategy that we wanted to present it here in podcast format. So here with me hosting our Joe Gaudreau head of the commerce strategy team at Salsify and Lauren Livak, director of the digital shelf Institute.
Peter (01:06):
Welcome everyone again. I'm Peter Crosby, I'm executive director of the digital shelf Institute. And all of you here are in e-commerce and you know, that it's both a marathon and a sprint, right? A constant sprint to achieve results each and every day, week, month, and quarter, and then the marathon to continually work to get better and better across your organization and your tech stack and all the touch points that matter. So we're here today to talk about that marathon and how you can break it down into achievable stages of a new maturity curve developed by experts from Salsify's commerce strategy team who spent the last few years doing nothing but helping brand leaders build out their strategies across a number of dimensions to achieve their business goals. So we're joined today by Lauren Lee vac who run, who ran north American digital shelf strategy at Johnson and Johnson, and is now a commerce strategist for Salsify. Hey Lauren, thank you so much for coming on to share what you've developed. We really appreciate it.
Lauren (02:03):
Thank you, Peter. Super excited for the content today.
Peter (02:06):
And so we're also joined by her favorite boss. This is her only boss right now, but in any event by Joe Gaudreau. Who founded the commerce strategy team and has spent the last gosh, Joe, it's been like six and a half years at Salsify right working day in and day out with customers who are figuring out this e-commerce thing. Joe, thank you so much for, for coming on.
Joe (02:28):
Pleasure to be here Peter six and a half years. But I think that could be measured in dog years.
Peter (02:33):
It certainly feels that way. To me, it's been five and yeah, five and a half for me. So I feel you, but Joe, let's get to it. Why don't you get us started with the context for why and how the digital shelf maturity curve came into being
Joe (02:48):
Sure. So this is something that I'm thrilled to be able to introduce today in partnership with the digital shelf Institute, as Peter mentioned, Lauren and I have hundreds of conversations a year across the entire team, we have thousands of conversations with brand manufacturers and there have been some call it common themes, and that is really bad. You know, I mentioned that, I feel like my time at Salsify has been in dog years and I think anyone that works in e-commerce probably feels like their roles within their organization change at a very similar pace. So, you know, first off for everyone here today, I just wanted to say, thank you. Thank you for having us as guest presenters on this incredible webinar. I'm excited to speak to the entire digital shelf community and share two inspiring new tools that we've been working on over at Salsify that will help brand manufacturers win on the digital shelf. And this has just been a fantastic partnership. It's an aspect came from the digital shelf Institute. So let's get right to it. It's Peter mentioned my name's Joe Goodrow. I'm joined by my fellow strategist friend colleague, favorite employee, if I'm the favorite POS Lauren Lee vac. So let's get right to it.
Joe (04:09):
So in the next 30 minutes, we're going to cover a few things. We're going to cover who is winning and why we see the pendulum swinging. And we don't necessarily think that that swing is to who you think it is. As it relates to brands that are winning in modern commerce. We want to talk about why it is so hard and it's an organization wide challenge for established brands to win in. Today's fragmented, endless multi-channel market. We're going to share with you a guided path to digital transformation. And this is what we're really excited about because it's based on it's based on you. It's based on the folks that work at brands. And we're so excited to introduce you to the industry's first digital shelf maturity curve, as well as an accompanying assessment so that you can understand not only where you are, but what changes you can make across your organization to move up that maturity curve.
Joe (05:07):
And then we're also just as importantly, going to introduce you to the industry's first digital shelf playbook. That's been authored and created by Lauren Lee vac, and Lauren's going to walk you through all of it. So we have some incredible content. Let's not waste another second. I know Lauren's ready, I'm ready. So let's get into it. So we know that everyone on this call knows about the digital shelf and the way it's being disrupted because you live it day in and day out. So we're not going to spend too much time on what most of you know, as digital upstarts. So I'm not going to ask you to sit and stay to hear about another digital upstart. But I do want to highlight a wild one, which launched in 2018 as a D to C pet brand. All of these DTC natives are the folks that you would say are, are winning and come at it with the highest level of maturity because they are starting as digital natives, but from our research and from our conversations with brands, a more well-known brand that most of you likely have in your spice cabinets, McCormick they're winning the digital shelf too.
Joe (06:20):
And you can see here from their annual report, you know, 22% year over year growth in the quarter, by focusing on digital engagement, you know, this would rank as one of the more mature org organizations by the standards that we've defined in our findings. And throughout the year with a very high level of maturity. Another example is, is a true house of brands in L'Oreal L'Oreal announced fiscal 2020 results back in February. And I never saw a headline on this, but as I was digging into their, their earnings report, one thing stuck out, stuck out, and it's hard not to e-commerce sales rose by 62% across all of their divisions. They've gone from a single digit e-commerce sales a few years ago to almost a quarter of all of their revenues, over 9 billion, us dollars directly attributed to e-commerce. And as I started up front, you know, the big brands have been investing in digital and e-commerce for years, and they've moved their entire organization to think digital first and the top line results that have proven that have proven that e-commerce is here to stay and the future executive and the executive mindset must come with a digital first strategy.
Joe (07:40):
So if you're sitting here, you know, to me, this is showing that that, that the, the playing field is leveling out, that big brands are competing at the same level of those digital upstarts. It just takes them longer to get there. So if you're a sinner sitting here and wondering how do I get my brands to this level of digital excellence, let's first level set on the challenges that you are likely facing. So we understand, and we all know that on the digital shelf, there is infinite competition with unique and constantly changing requirements by your retail customers or by your direct to consumer teams, trying to deliver compelling product experiences to the end consumer. And we know that these challenges are complicated. And the way that you get to market today with your products is likely by filling out hundreds of spreadsheets with hundreds of columns for each retailer.
Joe (08:34):
And so the process is extremely manual. And for the brand manufacturers that have been established for 20, 30, 50, a hundred years, we know that the way that these organizations have been set up, it's very likely that they have data that lives everywhere and nowhere at the same time, these are monumental for organizations to face. And the reality is that is that digital transformation requires your entire organization to win. You must start small and build on progress. And each phase brings new wins and new challenges along the journey. And this journey has to be centered around the consumer and your shopper. It looks for brand experiences everywhere and anywhere. They are 24 hours a day, seven days a week with that shopping cart that they have in their pocket, through their mobile device. And so with that, I'm excited to introduce the digital shelf maturity curve. The maturity curve is built on 10 years of Salsify's collaboration with our customers and partners, many of the world's largest brands and retailers, and this model was created specifically for brand manufacturers seeking digital transformation in order to continuously adapt to grow sales and market share.
Joe (09:58):
A lot of, a lot of companies would think about this in a crawl walk, run approach. And that's a nice approach from a project management standpoint, it's a simple mindset. And, but for the digital shelf, we wanted to go a level deeper. We wanted to create maturity levels that would align with what your organization is actually experiencing with actionable steps to move from one stage in the journey to the next. So let me walk you through each of the stages here. So the first stage that we would assess an organization to be at is the collect stage where they're unifying siloed data and siloed teams as the first step on their digital journey. And what we see is organizations move from siloed teams and data gaps to a central centralized source of information. That's accessible to the right people across the organization at the right time.
Joe (10:52):
The second phase that we think of within our maturity curve is the activate stage where you're delivering foundational product content to key channels. Your organization is likely going to be moving from incomplete product listings on one or more priority sales channels and to a live product detail page on every priority retailer for the full set of available skews in the enhanced stage enhancing product experiences with interactive rich media on existing channels, across as many of your products and and across these retailer sites as possible. And what you're going to have feel your organization transform is from meeting a channel or retailer. There are essential product page requirements towards delivering the most engaging and effective product experiences possible for that given channel, the expand phase is really exciting that we've seen mature organizations start to get to where they're expanding to new market opportunities. And this doesn't necessarily mean a market like a country.
Joe (12:01):
This could mean a market like opening up a direct to consumer channel. It could be opening up social con taking advantage of social commerce and engaging your consumers in a new and different way. And what your organization is likely to feel is to move from selling a segment of your products effectively across a priority set of channels to growing market share by selling more brands, more products in new markets and through those additional channels. And finally, the optimized space where your organization is adapting to market forces as a unified front, as one digital first organization with a shared set of KPIs and a transparent collaborative, collaborative, repeatable process across the entire organization where you know that you've now moved from seasonal sales and marketing and product strategy to an organization that's agile that can proactively adapt to market forces to make ongoing and iterative improvements.
Joe (13:04):
So another thing is that, and this is our maturity curve. We're really excited, but there's a reason that we're kind of showing the exponential growth here. We imagine adding a sixth stage, a seven stage to this maturity curve, as we evolve the process bake based on the market forces, the demand that the consumer is ultimately putting on you, the brand manufacturer. So this is just the start. We're really excited about this. I'm thrilled to introduce it to everyone. And we believe that by taking this phased approach, understanding where your organization fits today, that you can transform your organization to a digital first, a truly competitive brand manufacturer with, within this space. So we're really excited to introduce this. And, you know, one thing that we thought would be pretty exciting, pretty fun. Let's pause for a second. Let's make sure this is interactive. What stage do you think your organization is that today, are you at the collect stage where your teams and your data are still siloed?
Joe (14:10):
Are you at the activate phase and within your organization, do you face delays and getting live on key channels? Are you in the enhance stage where some of your product pages are performing really well, but some are still underperforming and you're trying to unlock, why are you in the expand stage where there's so many opportunities that you're not even sure which one to tackle next, or are you at the optimized phase where, where you don't quite have the iterative process and the agility throughout your sales operations to be able to effectively manage your commerce operations at scale? So a pause here, let folks complete the poll. Peter, how are we doing?
Peter (14:52):
We're good. I actually, it looked like the poll answers are slowing down. So I shared the poll results. Can you see them on your screen, Joe? They showing up? I can. And so tell me what you think about about these, these percentages. Are they what you would expect or is that what you're?
Joe (15:12):
So it's, it's, it's really interesting. You know many organizations that, you know, are weighing in here, feel like they're still on, you know, year two or year three of their journey, but what's really exciting is so many folks have started it. And they're acknowledging that they're not at phase one. So I'm really curious, you know, and I would love to understand, you know, how these brands are thinking, you know, first, do they agree with the stages? And second, are they taking actionable steps to move their organizations forward and up that digital maturity curve that this is just fascinating results theater just in, you know, 20 seconds of webinar time.
Peter (15:55):
Hey, Joe you just said, and you tell me whether it was intentional or not, but that you were equating each of these stages to a year of time. Was that intentional? Do you see brand sort of, is it kind of an annual process to move through these stages or some you can complete the, yeah. What, what did you, do you think of them as sort of part of yearly planning or something like that? I, I
Joe (16:18):
Do. And the reason that I equate them and, and it's, it's, it's meant to be loosely two years, Peter, is that the companies that are putting their transformational plans in place where they're placing their big bets on their 18 month strategy, their 36 month strategy, or even as far out as a five-year strategic vision, they do operate typically on those annual plans and those year long timelines. And we know that it's a challenge, it's a challenge to undergo organizational change. It's not something measured in days and weeks. It can be measured in years. I'd actually almost asked Lauren who has some of the big brand experience if, if she, if she agrees with my answer or not.
Lauren (17:02):
I definitely agree with your answer. I think as you're building out your business plans for your three-year, five-year, you always take into account, where are you right now? And where do you want to go to next? And if you have the right tools and teams in place, it's definitely more of a yearly process rather than a monthly process. And as I get into my section, I think it will be helpful to see where you need to advance different priorities along your maturity curve that can help you achieve that. But I definitely agree. Yeah.
Peter (17:28):
So, Joe you know, I know these frameworks are interesting, but only really matter once once you can figure out what it means to you, right. To each individual company. And when you were talking about it, often one organization, right, particularly in global organizations can have different regions or even brands on different stages of the maturity curve, right? So where are you at? Where the answer that we just got here, we don't really know whether it applies to the brand I control or the region I'm in or whether it's sort of a corporate mindset, but Joe, Joe does that resonate with you? And, and and I think that's why we kind of made the investment why Salsify made the investment that we're about to talk about.
Joe (18:13):
So completely agree with you, Peter, and I would love to share with, with the audience that this is not just a conceptual concept that we're rolling out today. This is an actual assessment. And so for our guests on the webinar, the digital shelf Institute reached out to us at Salsify we marshaled resources. And this is a real live assessment that you could go take now not now, now, because Lauren has some amazing content coming up, but right after, right after the webinar. But to exactly Peter's point, this could be done at a market level. This could be done at the brand level, or this could be done across your organization. And we believe that many of the foundational principles within the assessment will, will be beneficial to either that market, that brand or that country.
Peter (19:05):
I know it's, I know it's a lot of, it's a lot of dashes, so I hope you don't mind typing it, but we'll also be sending the link along in your, your post-webinar email and spelling assessment. As you can tell by looking at the graphic on the left is sometimes tricky, but it is with four S's separately. Just wanted to note that, Joe,
Joe (19:26):
Thank you Peter. More reason to stick around for Lauren's section in a second here. So let me bring this to life and then, then let me pass it, pass it back to you, Peter for a second here. So let's, let's look at two examples. Let's, let's look at a brand in the activate phase, and this is a real live result that would come back take after taking the assess assessment, a brand who has invested in content and infrastructure, but is hitting major roadblocks with getting live on its most important retailers. You know, it could be that the retailers change their attributes. It could be your missing content. It could be that you've reprioritized what you're selling and don't have an automated connection or a full handle on how to meet the requirement. But you can see here exactly where there might be room for improvement across the street, across your strategy, across your process, across your content, across your architecture and your technology stack and across the channels and your, your customers and partners themselves.
Joe (20:27):
Let's look at another example, you know, this is, would be of a brand who's nailed their go to market process. They're in the expand phase. They understand the core priorities that they need to tackle, but they still have an opportunity and room for improvement across their strategy and across their content score. And so the assessment is a simple set of questions that you can go in that you can answer. And these are the type of types of results you're going to get back where we make some recommendations based on our, our years of experience, but frankly, there's, there's even, there's even more you can do here. And this is what I'm really excited to hand off to Lauren, because we don't want to necessarily just give you an assessment, right? We believe that the power is in is in making change and driving change across your organization. So this is a tool in your toolbox, but there's even more that we have to have to offer.
Peter (21:22):
Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Joe. I, I wanted to jump in here actually with us kind of an observation that window made in the Q and a tab, which is open and available for anyone else. She says, I agree with the stages, Joe, but not necessarily the one happens before the other. We are in all of these at once, depending on the brand or a customer, is that what you see across the board?
Joe (21:46):
That's such a great, that's such a fantastic comment, Laura and I saw, I saw you come off there. We certainly see it from, from our perspective from the brands that we work with and that we partner with especially a house of brands that could have multiple brands at different level of maturity, as well as different priorities. That true, true to that point, start to make incremental improvement across each of those different phases and each of those different sets of priorities that we've outlined in those phases. Lauren, what are your, what are your thoughts?
Lauren (22:19):
I just, I love the comment window because I think it's a fabulous transition into my content because I'm going to talk a bit about the, how you move to each different section of the maturity curve as you're kind of going through your journey. And to your point, you have to worry about a lot of different things, but you have to prioritize. What's the most important to focus on first. So I love that comment because it really does apply everything is important at different stages and at different levels that you need to focus on it. So really great thought window.
Peter (22:50):
And, and I think with that, Lauren just start like essentially when to did your intro.
Lauren (22:56):
Okay. Awesome. Well, Joe, if you can go to the next slide for me so you heard Joe talk about the maturity curve and all the different stages. And now I'm going to talk a little bit more about how to operationalize that for your organization through the digital shelf playbook. And we've created a digital shelf, playbook webinars series that focuses on that, how, and it was really born out of organizations asking, what do I do next? What should I be focusing on? How do I do it? And what are those key areas, when did to your point that are kind of all happening at once. And so we created 10 pillars that we found through all of our conversations with customers, from my personal experience. I know it definitely applies that are really critical to focus on throughout all of the different stages of maturity.
Lauren (23:45):
The first one being people in team structure, do you have the right people in place? What is your org structure? How are you working cross-functionally process? Do you have a process to create digital content, to work with your supply chain colleagues to get that content live and online executive mentality, it's both a top-down and a bottoms-up approach. So it's really important that everyone's on the same page and marching towards the same goal, enabling technology. Do you have the right tools in place to be able to support this change and what are they, and are they working efficiently for you distribution priorities? I know we all want every single product detail page, every DTC site, every experience to be perfect, but if you're starting at a different, at a different stage of the maturity curve, and maybe you're just starting off, you really need to prioritize, which are the skews, which are the retailers that you should be focusing on first to make sure you're prioritizing those that are giving you the most bang for your buck data and content readiness.
Lauren (24:50):
Where is your data? Is it ready? What do you need to improve? Where does your data live? Change management? This is one that I think is so critical at every single stage and is really, really important for organizations. How do you bring it every single business unit, every single person on the journey with you and explain that why e-commerce education, making sure that everybody knows why you're asking for certain things or what's happening in the e-commerce space, why you need to get certain kinds of data or have certain kinds of experiences, content strategy. What does best in class look like? And how does that best in class continue to evolve as you go through different levels of maturity and as the e-commerce space changes, and then last but not least value measurement, how are you actually measuring the work that you're doing and making sure that it's impactful and that you can learn from it and plug it back into the overall process.
Lauren (25:48):
So that's the, the, those are the pillars of the digital shelf playbook, and it is a webinar series that we're launching. So each pillar has a specific webinar that we'll go deep dive into each of those sections. But what I want to talk to you about today is a couple of examples of how this can apply. So, Joe, if you go to the next slide, that before I get into the examples, I do want to emphasize that one size does not fit all. And when to, again, I'm pulling in your comment because it was so perfect, every single stage of the maturity curve, all of those pillars definitely apply at some level, but you need to know which ones should you be prioritizing so that you can be successful in that current moment and set you up for success. So I'm going to walk through two examples today.
Lauren (26:31):
So the first example being collect, and this is the examples of beverage company and their goal was to increase speed to market for product content, because they were increasingly being beat out by their competition because they didn't have a really great customer experience online. And so the really important pieces for them were to identify and discover where they were in their current state and what was happening so that they could get to that next level of maturity. So they first focused on process. There was no defined process teams didn't know who was doing what, how to talk to each other. And they documented all of that as well as where the data and content were coming from and to pivot to people and team structure who was responsible for what this beverage company only had one person dedicated to the digital shelf and only a percentage of other people's jobs.
Lauren (27:25):
So it was very difficult to understand who was doing what and who needed to move into each stage of the process as content was being developed or out to the retailers. They then focused on technology once they understood the process and the people and where the data was. Did they actually have the technology to be able to enable that? What were the systems and how did you work with the data that you did have? And then my favorite one change management, it was really important for the executive teams and the leaders of all of the functions to really showcase that the digital shelf was a priority and that each team should focus on it and focus on it for a specific reason, which was their ultimate goal of increasing sales and speed to market so that all of the different business units could work together and really understand why this was important. And the one thing I will emphasize there. Oh yeah, yeah.
Peter (28:20):
I just wanted to ask a quick question. So in the collect stage, is it always these four or was with this particular company you were working with where these were the four that floated to the top?
Lauren (28:31):
Typically we see this to be these, to be the four that you would focus on, again, depending on the organization and maybe you already have the technology in place and you needed to figure out the process that would apply usually at a high level when I've worked with customers that are at collect, these are the four that applied, but again, based on the structure itself, there might be one that might be slightly tweaked.
Peter (28:51):
Individual results may vary
Lauren (28:54):
Exactly one size does not fit all. And the one point I wanted to make about change management was that change management does not end. It doesn't end at any stage of the maturity curve. It is continuous. And so the type of change management you do and who you target and how you're talking to different levels of the organization just evolves. So I wanted to emphasize that point. So the second example we have is an enhanced example for a beauty company. And when they were speaking with us, they said that their goal was to have best in class product detail pages for their top 500 products. And then they want it to be in the top five sheriffs search for their top 100 products. And for them, it was really important to go beyond the basics. They had the basic above the fold content and information, but they didn't really have those enhanced experiences.
Lauren (29:45):
They weren't winning on search. They really needed to focus on specific areas that would, that would help them win. So the first thing they focused on was e-commerce education. An example they gave me was that from a search perspective, a lot of the teams some of the sales teams, some of the kind of regulatory teams didn't understand what search was and how it worked. So it was really kind of bottle-necking the process. And there was a lot of back and forth, and it was really difficult to get content that would help them be in the top five sheriffs search. So that took a lot of e-commerce education to understand what search was and why it was important. Then from a distribution priority perspective, they wanted to focus on their top 500 products, but not all of this 500 products were actually working well online.
Lauren (30:32):
So they had to look at what were those priorities and where should we be focusing our time? Is it those 500 that we started out with? Or should we move in and out based on what's performing well on e-commerce or what's performing well on one of our specific retailers, they then had to start measuring. So they had the basic information. They knew that they needed to prioritize, and they had a lot of different tools that gave them insights about what was happening, but those incidents weren't being used. So they had to look at that data and say, okay, how is my content performing? What's performing better, which experiences are best for my customers online. And they use that to inform all of their choices on content, but they also use that to inform their people and team structure. So they wanted to cover more skews.
Lauren (31:21):
They wanted to have better experiences. They wanted to expand their team and wanted to have the digital shelf as a major priority. So they looked at all of the value measurements that they had and were able to make a case to expand their team and understand where they needed to focus, to be able to drive better search results and better product experiences for all of their products online. So those are just two examples of different stages of the maturity curve and how those tie into the pillars of the playbook. But I do want to emphasize all of those pillars are important and we will be deep diving into them in the webinars series. So hopefully that was helpful and you'll be able to join,
Peter (32:00):
Hey Lauren, can I ask another question just cause I'm insanely curious. Do you find that most customers or most brands teams arrive to this process with a clear goal or as part of the process, making sure they choose, they really get, you know aligned on what their goal actually is.
Lauren (32:22):
I think a lot of teams have a very high level goal. And what we need to do is talk about how you can make that a bit more specific and find some quick wins to be able to achieve that. So usually I find there's a high level sales target, or a high level sales goal, but you need to be able kind of break that down and say, okay, how are we going to do kind of small snippets to get to that larger goal? Yeah.
Peter (32:45):
So, or that marathon sprint analogy I used in the beginning, like the marathon is overall, we want to get best in class, top five of search, but what's the sprint to do that for the first 10 products, or I don't know what the right solution can do, but that kind of thinking right. To map that out.
Lauren (32:59):
Exactly. And that's the pillar approach, right? Knowing that there are 10 critical pillars and you need to focus on one or two now, knowing that as you mature and as you kind of conquer those in that stage of maturity, then you can focus on other priorities. Got
Peter (33:13):
It. Okay. So what are we doing next? I think we're, are we doing another poll?
Lauren (33:17):
Yes, we are. So Joe, the next. Perfect. Okay, awesome. So similar to what we wanted to keep it interactive. And I'm really curious to understand which of the pillars would you prioritize as your number one area of opportunity? This will help us a lot to understand which ones are the most popular and what topics we should bring in and why
Peter (33:39):
You do have to scroll at least on my screen. You have to scroll to get to all 10. So take in your view and then choose wisely or quickly whichever whichever works. So just so I understand, so what, what you're doing for the DSI and couldn't be more grateful is over the next several months, really like almost until the end of the year, that will be a steady drip of these webinars, which we'll talk about each one of these pillars. And, and who knows maybe someday we'll lump it all together into some actual playbook, but but what's wonderful about this process and we really welcome your feedback is that this gives us a chance to really bring out sort of all the scholarship that, that Lauren and the commerce strategy team have built at Salsify. And, and through the DSI, release it to the public and hope that it can help, you know, a broad swath of, of brands to, to find their place and their journey to the next to the next stage. So let me end the poll here and share the results. So let's see it's really well distributed. Oh, perfect.
Lauren (34:48):
It is. So it looks like data and content readiness is the, the winner here and then process and content strategy and e-commerce education. I actually find this really interesting because from a, from a process standpoint, being the number two option that was chosen, usually a lot of people stray away from that. But I think in, in e-commerce specifically, it's very important to make sure, you know, what is happening when and with who, so that you can get all of the other pillars, correct. Setting up that baseline process. And the other one in tandem is data and content readiness. If you don't have the right data and the right content to be able to feed into the process, none of the other pieces will be successful.
Peter (35:34):
And so just, just cause I always go to the highest and the lowest ones, I'd say distribution priorities has nobody in there. W did tell me, can you just tell me just a snapshot of what that's about and why you feel like it's it's it belongs as one of the 10 pillars.
Lauren (35:52):
Sure. So as an example, let's say that I'm in a company and I have a hundred products and I want to make sure all a hundred of those products have the best content online, make sure they're all on, for example, amazon.com. But what I am not looking at are all a hundred of those products actually selling on Amazon and are people purchasing them, whether it be because it's the pack size or the number of products, or because it doesn't have a good experience online. And so what you need to look at is which of those a hundred products on Amazon have the highest e-commerce sales are, is it only three or four of them? Is it 20 of them? So you should prioritize content and experiences for those 20 and then figure out what's the plan for the remainder of those specific products online. So it's looking at the specific skews, the specific products that are actually delivering the most sales online for you, then doubling down on content on those content, excuse me, on those first and then tackling the rest of them.
Peter (36:53):
Well, this is great cause given the sort of, kind of equal responses, all the webinars should do pretty well. I'm a little worried about four little distribution priorities, but we're going to, we're going to convince you that you should attend that webinar.
Lauren (37:05):
Yes we will. And what's also interesting about distribution priorities, I think too, is that you usually find that at later stages of maturity that's what you're focusing on after you have a content strategy after you have your, your all of your technology stack, ready to go, you have your process, you have your people you're trying to figure out, okay, now how can I change it, my assortment, how can I make sure that that they're performing well? So that's an interesting result as well from, from the poll.
Peter (37:33):
Terrific. And we are actually at time. So I think what I will just do, unfortunately, not, not time for more questions at the moment, but we'll have 10 webinars to dig into them. So the priority sort of call to action today is, is if you're interested, please go over to the assessment tool that Salsify kindly built for us and, and see what your results are. And, and then hopefully we'll help. We would love your feedback. Lauren and Joe are both on LinkedIn, I'm on LinkedIn. You can connect up with us and let us know what your experience is. I'm, I'm offering that Lauren and Joe, but I'm assuming you're okay with that.
Lauren (38:14):
Yes, please would love to.
Peter (38:17):
Awesome. And and, and so the assessment tool, and then as I said over the next several months we will be rolling out these live webinars where we can dig into each one of those pillars. But so I, I think with that, I would just like to Lauren and Joe, for, for sharing their results of this really intensity intensive strategy work and conversations over the last several years, we will email a recording of this webinar to you, a link to the assessment and make sure that you get all the details for signing up for the digital shelf playbook series and thanks to Joe and Lauren, and thanks to all of you for being part of our community, thanks to Joe and Lauren for this significant investment in strategic resources for the leaders of the digital shelf, if you would like to see or share the original source webinar, we have the link in the show notes, or go to digital shelf institute.org/digital-shelf-playbook again, digital shelf institute.org/digital-shelf-playbook, all the webinars of the digital shelf playbook series. We posted there over the coming months and the link to the Salsify assessment tool is in the show notes as well. If you have questions about any of this or hate using show notes, you can reach out to Lauren Lee vac, anytime@laurenatdigitalshelfinstitute.org.
Thanks for being part of our community. [inaudible].
