Audience and Content Come Before Product, with Ash McMullen, Head of Ecommerce at Advantice Health

Transcript

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Peter Crosby (00:00):

Welcome to unpacking the Digital Shelf where we explore brand manufacturing in the digital age. Hey everyone, I'm Peter Crosby here from the Digital Shelf Institute. Product innovation has been around for centuries ever since cave dwellers invented the first club to make dinnertime easier in this new commerce era. However, with digital upstarts, algorithms, influencers, and other disruptors of considerations sets and shopping journeys, product innovation must change as well. Ash McMullen, head of e-Commerce at Advantice Health works with internal and external partners every day to redefine how product innovation is executed, starting with an understanding of audience and content that inspires the product, not the other way around. She joined Lauren ivak Gilbert and me to unpack this vital process transformation. Ash McMullin, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. We are super grateful.

Ash McMullen (01:07):

Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Peter Crosby (01:10):

And one of the reasons I'm delighted to have you here is that what you do is so much focused on product innovation and remarkably, we actually don't talk about that that much on the podcast. We're sort of so focused on the vagaries of the digital shelf. We don't really focus on that beginning part that is so critical to everything that's happening. And so you coming up with that brand strategy to differentiate, expand your portfolio, it's fed by the data and insights that you get from reviews and social listening. So with that focus on innovation, we would love to know about your background and why that piece of it is so important and fascinating to you.

Ash McMullen (01:52):

So kind to back way up, I've been in the e-commerce space for over 15 years, so it's like,

Peter Crosby (01:59):

God

Ash McMullen (02:00):

Bless you. And we all kind of got into it by accident, right? Didn't

Lauren Livak Gilbert (02:05):

Me a hundred percent.

Ash McMullen (02:07):

I know I was in the hospitality industry and my dad was, had distributorships, physical beauty supply distributorships when I was growing up, and he made the jump from physical to digital, and he needed help scaling this business on Amazon. And I was like, yeah, I'll trade coming home from 2:00 AM for working from home back in 2009.

Peter Crosby (02:31):

Oh my God, that's amazing. It's a,

Ash McMullen (02:35):

Yeah,

Peter Crosby (02:36):

A great internship.

Ash McMullen (02:37):

Yeah, before Amazon ads, I was repricing things manually. It was

Peter Crosby (02:44):

Did he pay you?

Ash McMullen (02:45):

Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. Good. Well, there's at least that I get to live in Italy while I was doing it. It was great.

Peter Crosby (02:50):

Oh my god, it was fun. All my dad did was make me work on boats on the weekend. He just owned a million boats. That was my

Ash McMullen (02:57):

Life. I mean, that sounds fun,

Peter Crosby (03:00):

Less than you'd think,

Ash McMullen (03:04):

But yeah, so it gave me a very interesting lens to kind of see everything through of going from when you could scroll on a couple of pages through the entire Amazon catalog, most of which was books back then anyway, and then they opened it to beauty and then seeing what works and what doesn't. And then kind of fast forward to today and knowing things like 80% of conversions happen on a mobile device and thinking of it through this lens of let's take a step back and what is this going to look like when we put it there versus, oh, here's this product. Make a strategy around it. Let's make the strategy from the beginning, from before we even create the product kind of thing. So taking all these different pieces of learnings from back when a plus didn't even exist, and you have all this real estate now that you can take up and how are you going to utilize that? How is it going to speak to the product? What are people even looking for?

Peter Crosby (04:19):

So that thought process is beginning. As you think about the innovation itself, what would the experience of it be? Not just in the use of the product, but in the introduction, the shopping for it. That's very cool.

Ash McMullen (04:36):

Yeah. If you think about the physical shelf, it was more driven by where's the white space and consumer insights from the traditional standpoint where digital is more search frequency, volume, what are people even looking for? How many products satisfy that search and

Lauren Livak Gilbert (04:58):

How are they looking for it?

Ash McMullen (05:00):

Exactly, exactly. So it's redefining how to identify the white space for the digital shelf and taking that insight and saying, okay, if people are searching for, I got to think of a good example, a retractable leash for a dog. I'm going to go outside my category for a minute, but if say there wasn't one or a lightweight one, because I know the ones that I have are just so heavy, I don't even use them because if you drop them, it's like dropping.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (05:38):

Here's the dog brick.

Ash McMullen (05:40):

And so if many people are searching for this, but there's only eight to 10 products that satisfy it, and none of them are really what they're looking for. It's a new way to identify a white space versus the traditional means of just doing the traditional consumer insights and surveys.

Peter Crosby (06:03):

So what you're talking about Ash is really fascinating and you're doing it at the company you're at now at Vanis. So can you tell us a little bit about your role and how it works within the company's org?

Ash McMullen (06:18):

Yeah, definitely. So Advantice Health, and I always kind of laugh when I'm at conferences like you've never heard of it. It's fine. It's totally fine. I just hope that you've heard of at least one or two of our brands. We're a private equity owned house of brands, and we're in the CPG category and we focus on skin health. So our brands are AmLactin, therapeutic body lotion with lactic acid. We have triple paste diaper rash cream, which is a really fun disruptor in the baby category. Carousel is the super sexy brand that makes fungal nail patches and fungal nail renewal products. And it's this legacy market leader in the footcare category. And then we have brands in first aid category like Derma Plast, new skin liquid bandage that a lot of people have heard of in Dom Burrow. So we live in a couple of different places on the shelves, if you will, and each brand has their own persona and different kind of growth trajectory and path forward. Carousel is more of a legacy brand. It's a market leader, so that has a different path forward than AmLactin. That is more of a, we're in the middle of being disrupted and disrupting at the same time because body lotion is so, it's such an interesting category because it's growing, but it's like everyone is around two to 3% market share. And then CeraVe is at the behemoth at the top, and it's just all of us like, oh, how do we break through the noise?

(08:08):

And then Triple Paste is this wonderfully super efficacious, great diaper cream product that has been a really fun brand to work on. We had a celebrity derm pick it up in the beginning of this year and used it as face pasting and used it as a barrier repair cream on her skin at night. Kind of like the idea of a deep conditioner in your hair, but for your face. And we had this great viral moment where triple paste was searched more frequently than diaper cream. So our branded terms surpassed our category terms, which were great. So that prompted an interesting innovation story of where do we take this and what would that look like? So all of these three brands have very different innovation conversations, and as we break that down, it kind of just, it's not a one size fits all. It's not like a here's playbook that will just work, just follow steps one through five. It's very much a collective of the different brains that are involved in the business and then different brains behind the brands and that kind of collective ladder up to the greater goal.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (09:29):

Well, first Ash, we need to have a side note after this about what face pasting is because I would like to learn, and I feel like this is a trend I need to know about.

Peter Crosby (09:37):

I'm sorry. Is it pasting or pasting?

Ash McMullen (09:41):

So it's technically pasting is how it was

Peter Crosby (09:45):

Like a Turkey

Ash McMullen (09:46):

Came about. Yes. Okay. But I like face pasting. That's just, that'll be your next prop. New trend.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (09:54):

Yes. Paste your face. Yep. Oh my gosh. Well, Ash, speaking of the brains that need to be involved in order to get this to happen and to think about these new innovative products. So who are the people and the functions in your organization that you talk to when you think about innovation and you're moving that forward?

Ash McMullen (10:15):

So first and foremost, our VP of innovation, he's a very integral part of that and the idea and the composition and insights and the wizard, if you will, behind the curtain of that.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (10:28):

Does he sit, sorry to interrupt, Ash, does he sit in sales or marketing? Where does the VP of innovation sit?

Ash McMullen (10:34):

He sits in marketing. So yeah, most of us sit in marketing and marketing partners very closely with sales. So it's when we're in office every month, we always have a sales and marketing team huddle. And on a weekly basis we have our marketing team huddle, but sales is a very, very strong part of our team. And so innovation sits directly in marketing, and then I sit also as e-comm in marketing. So we're all the bandit team. We have all the fun, but love it. We include finance in some of the fun so they can partake in it, but it's

Lauren Livak Gilbert (11:22):

Quick teaser. Ash is speaking at DSS 2025 and bringing her VP of finance, and it's going to be a great conversation about e-commerce. So make sure you save the date April 7th to the ninth, sorry,

Peter Crosby (11:32):

Digital shelf summit.com,

Lauren Livak Gilbert (11:34):

Adding that. Yeah, very excited. Sorry I interrupted you twice

Ash McMullen (11:38):

Now. Please continue. No, it's fine. He's super excited. So I am too. So yeah, we have our VP of innovation, myself, our CMO and our CEO are, I have to give them shout outs. They're fantastic women in leadership and it's been a great experience for me from a professional development standpoint to work for two women in leadership and they create a great culture in our company. So yeah, they're involved in all around big picture of how everything will play together and long-term brand health and company goals and things like that. And then in the different heads of the different brands. So from the product portfolio standpoint, from the voice of the brand, from the social aspect of it, and how will this interact with our influencer base, et cetera, is a big part of it. And then our sales team is also a part of it with the partnerships when it comes to the retail buyers and what they're looking for and how our strategy around growth and that omnichannel of Walmart target drug, what that looks like, which is very different from the Amazon part of it. And then a part of it is how do those two interact with each other? And then of course, finance, is it profitable and supply chain and operations of how do we bring this to life? And they do all the tough behind the scenes stuff that we really don't talk about, the logistics and where everything comes from and how it gets manufactured and put all together. So

Peter Crosby (13:27):

The back office miracle workers is hiding that. Yes.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (13:31):

So Ash, I do have a question because I think when we say innovation, people can interpret that as different things. So I do want to clarify when we're saying innovation, we mean, and I'm using this as a personal example because it's just something that I am familiar with. So Listerine was a brand that we had, and so it's a liquid, right? And you can swish it in your mouth, but a new innovation was the strips that you can put on your tongue. And then another new innovation was the tabs that you can chew, and that's a new product innovation, delivering the same type of product to the consumer. Is that how you would also define innovation or do you have a different kind of lens? I just want to make sure brands are understanding what we're talking about when we say it.

Ash McMullen (14:10):

Yes. So one of our examples that I'll give in that realm was our carousel fungal nail renewal liquid is in a tube and it has this little exactor thing that you put on the nail. And our innovation two years ago was a fungal nail patch. So we turned it into something that was more similar to a bandaid, but it had the ingredients in the pad that's in there. So that was our carousel innovation of that time. The build that I would add to that with is it can also be a completely new product that's maybe in an adjacent category or a separate category that's more just taking the brand from where it is now and giving it a whole new course trajectory.

Peter Crosby (15:07):

Let me ask you, Ash, you've obviously been in this biz for a while and you've experienced product innovation as a practice at other places. I'm wondering what is the difference now in terms of how you think about it and what of that is driven by the culture and the approach of where you're at and what is driven by how much e-commerce and omnichannel and covid, all those things. Can you just sort of tease that out a little bit to me this way that you work?

Ash McMullen (15:47):

Yeah, so I would say even when I started at Advantice, how we do things today is completely different than how we did things two years ago, even one year ago. So how we did things like 15 years ago is even that was more what are we missing in the skincare line that we have? And let's just create one. There's a lot more science and art behind it now. So one of the biggest changes is, and this took a little while for it to catch on within the company because it's challenging to totally shift how you've done something natively for years. And e-commerce is still generally speaking, relatively new, and it's not this universal knowledge that everyone just innately has and not just spoiler alert for the summit next year, but part of the success of these types of things comes from language and communication and really developing that within the organization and developing that culture that embraces it. And this is another kudos to our executive leadership. They're very, very open-minded and very accepting and welcoming of new concepts and thinking about, this is how we do it today, which generally speaking means that we shouldn't do it tomorrow kind of thing.

Peter Crosby (17:41):

That's how fast the world is changing.

Ash McMullen (17:42):

Yes,

Peter Crosby (17:43):

Yes,

Ash McMullen (17:44):

Yes. So having that foundational culture is very, very helpful. And then embracing that and building upon it to and educating, but in a very simple way of this is analogies help of the digital shelf version of this is the physical shelf, like sponsored ad searches every time someone hits search is basically a physical shelf reset in the digital sense. So that's kind of how we spoke about the auction of that keyword search. Just think of it like a reset, whereas physical shelf, it only happens once a year, but on the

Peter Crosby (18:35):

Digital it happens every second.

Ash McMullen (18:36):

Yes, exactly.

(18:40):

And then another big major difference is kind of how we treat retailers or retailer customers. Target is different than Walmart is different than Amazon. So product differentiation and assortment is so critical. And the challenge that we have now as our current portfolio, we have specific star products that are at Target, they're at Walmart and they're on Amazon. And when things like tentpole events roll around, it's like you got to put those products in, but it's going to be two days of discount and let's hope that pricing just kind of magically goes back to the way it was two days ago.

(19:28):

So to avoid those conversations that happen that are not the most fun versus talking about the results of yay look, but so positioning that and saying, okay, so moving forward when we're creating our nexstar product, it's going to be different for Amazon, it's going to be different for Walmart, it's going to be different for Target. And really getting that holistic buy-in from the entire team is critical to the success of that. And yes, it takes consideration of complexity because, and that's why supply chain is a huge part of that conversation because talking about three SKUs that are generally kind of the same, but they're all a little bit different. So how do we manage that from a resourcing perspective and also position it where this will be successful on all three platforms and be worth it for us and achieve that goal that we're going for. Wow.

Peter Crosby (20:33):

Yeah. Thank you for that. That was a really sort of fascinating journey through this revolution of how we need to approach the consumer and your partnerships in a completely new way. And I'd love to dig into that a little bit more because working with retailers, it seems in the best, just like you talked about in the best version of it, you are developing innovation in tandem with a retailer, and it seems like more and more digital and e-commerce is becoming kind of the proving ground testing, ground learning ground for innovation, and then growth happens from there. And I'm just wondering if you'd sort of walk us through those relationships with your key retailers and what that looks like in this era.

Ash McMullen (21:23):

Yeah, totally. So again, everything's a little bit different. So when it comes down to it, target and Walmart are looking at something different than Amazon is Target and Walmart want learnings from your D two C site or a TikTok shop and the external traffic that is happening not on a marketplace so to speak, that they're competing with. So they don't want to necessarily the data from Amazon sales because they're already competing with Amazon and they're competing as a marketplace on a macro level. So they want that incremental traffic that brands are bringing in and they're bringing shoppers to the category. And so when we're looking at, when we're working with Target right now, it's about Minis and that mini bin and how do we create drive and traction there as a potential for physical shelf placement and Walmart, we're doing a lot of exploration with walmart.com first to build velocities, then gain placement at the shelf.

(22:48):

And then our sales team just does a really great job of partnering with the buyers because they're the ones that are giving us the store insights and what they specifically are looking for. And that information is gold when developing innovation, and that is totally different than Amazon. So again, kind of goes to that. We need product differentiation and getting that buy-in there. And then the other piece of that is our tools. So tools are so meaningful in this equation. We use Stack Line on our side to look at category dynamics and competitive insights that we can use to inform certain decisions based on those category dynamics. So is there a subcategory that's growing? Is there one that's declining? Is there one that there's increased traffic too that we want to play in the space of what does it look like from an investment standpoint? How expensive would it be to break in, et cetera.

(23:52):

So those really help a lot because it takes you out of that black box where you're like, I think this will work. People are searching for it, and it looks like there's not a lot of product there, but understanding the competitive dynamics and the category dynamics are also super helpful. And then just looking at things that, taking that a step further of optimizations for mobile, what are those graphics going to look like And using the different insights from what someone's searching for or what is the buyer speaking about that people are searching for in the category. So how can we bring that to life on the packaging to make that stand out?

Lauren Livak Gilbert (24:44):

So Ash, how do you balance though new innovation with your existing portfolio? Because to your point, you need to have a different assortment across your retailers so that you can't have price matching, but you also need to focus on the core, and it also is more expensive in the long run to create new products and it requires new marketing and new messaging. So how do you kind of strike that balance?

Ash McMullen (25:08):

Yeah, so this is a fun challenge, and I say fun very endearingly because it's one that we kind of know a little bit of how to handle. It's not like the other crisis management that when something happens, it's never happened before and you're like, all right, let's just figure it out. This is what we do. It's half of what we do is just problem solving and getting stuff done. So the product assortment piece of the balancing act is as much as innovation is great, skew rationalization is equally as important. So we're not going to pile on more products that we believe will be successful onto products that suck up valuable time and resources. So we have a couple of products that were launched four years ago now, and they were done as tests, as differentiation tests. So we have one that we have a multipurpose nail repair liquid, and we have made bundles with actual manual files.

(26:31):

And then we had done a test with an electric filer, and the value prop of the pricing on the electric filer is just not there. Everyone's just like they're going to buy the liquid and plus an electric filer, you buy it once, it's not something that you repeat purchase. So it was a good test. It was like, okay, we'll see how we can differentiate these products and kind of try to pull away from being the same that's at the physical shelf, and that's something that we'll rationalize out. We'll phase it out and make room for new innovation. And so weeding out items that are not part of your, it's kind of like the 80 20 rule. So it's just an updated version of that. So that's really, really important. And when we're looking at things like price is also super important when trying to find this balance of new.

(27:41):

So if we're upsizing a product that's going to be something that's going to be available on Amazon versus something that we would put on Walmart. Walmart is very much more EDLP, everyday low price and conscious. So it might be a smaller pack size, but that piece of it is very important when striking that balance because we also don't want to create something that A brings the value down of anything that we have currently. So even when we're rationalizing, we're not going to blow it out at a really low price on Amazon and compromise the product that is the Native Star product that it's a version of. So being really mindful about that and kind of what we do with it and what happens to it and kind of maintaining the integrity of the brand and not letting it wind up in the gray market where we're in discounting three P diversion territory.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (28:57):

Well, Ash, that was actually going to be one of my questions because I think there can be sometimes a negative reaction internally from the brand for new innovation because they feel that it's competitive to the products that they already have. And also you might be metriced against a product that is a core set and then this new innovation comes out and you can't control the fact that that's driving more sales to that as a brand versus where you started. So can you talk about that dynamic, especially when it comes to the human element of that? Because I think with innovation that can be challenging for brand teams and e-commerce teams who are trying to make everybody win, but your metric differently internally.

Ash McMullen (29:40):

So incrementality the big guy, that elusive word, so I have a good example of this. Derma Plast is very well known among new moms is after birth, typically in the hospital you're handed a blue can that it says Dermo plast like pain burn and itch, and everyone knows it as Dermo Plast Blue can. And the primary off-label use case is a postpartum spray. Walmart had a big initiative to create a mother's health section, and it's a relatively new category, but it's all these things that you need but are in all different places in the store. So this new mom's health placement brought everything together and instead of putting Blue can in that set, we created a specific postpartum spray skew. And Walmart had the exclusive on it for the first year, and it did great. Meanwhile, there was slight cannibalization with the blue can in first aid, but not a terrible amount.

(31:03):

There was still more incrementality than there was cannibalization from the analysis that the head of Dermo Plast did. So then came the question of, oh, do we launch this on Amazon? And this is where that intersection of physical digital incrementality and conversation and decision-making comes into play. And while the cannibalization of the physical shelf was not very big, the digital shelf would've been much different. So we did an analysis of the keywords and the conversion and everything that drove this product, and the primary search case is postpartum spray. And if we put it in a different category and it had no reviews and we're not going to variate it and we're going to try to create legs on this product that everyone kind of knows the off case use anyway, we really didn't come to a conclusion where it made sense to put it on Amazon where we weren't going to not see cannibalization. The cannibalization after the analysis we did was like, Ugh, no. And now the other knock on benefit is like, well, Walmart gets to keep an exclusive essentially. So that became a win-win of just discipline, I would say, in us not being like, okay, we don't need to launch everything on Amazon and we can strike that balance of what works best for the product, the brand, and the company.

Peter Crosby (32:57):

I love that use of, I mean, not surprising that you're using data to help drive these things, but that data can be helpful when the gut is like, sell, sell, sell. The saying is, great, let's go. And I love the discipline, as you said, the discipline of that I think is super fascinating. Well Ash, to close out, I was wondering when you think about how you're evolving your process for the future and how you find, because so much is changing about the shopper's journey and them being in charge and how that leads into the innovation that happens way back at the start, what stands out to you as kind of the way you've been sort of driving that change, that future?

Ash McMullen (33:57):

The biggest part is kind of where we start in that journey. And it's interesting, I was at an educational future leadership program that our sales and logistics partner Emerson Group puts on in partnership with Harvard Business School. And it was exciting. I was like, oh, I can say I went to Harvard even though it was only for two days.

Peter Crosby (34:23):

You have the sweatshirt, I got a sweatshirt, good for you.

Ash McMullen (34:29):

But it was interesting because the professors teach for the future. They don't teach about today again, today's obsolete and tomorrow will be different. So they take it out years ahead and it's almost like they're teaching in the form of a strategic growth plan and where is it going? And it was a lot about indicators. And the best nugget that I took away from that is that audience and content come before product and also that eyes move before revenue. So taking those,

Peter Crosby (35:12):

Can you say that again?

Ash McMullen (35:13):

Yeah. So audience and content come before product.

Peter Crosby (35:20):

So the who and the sort of experience of it

Ash McMullen (35:23):

Come

Peter Crosby (35:24):

Before the actual thing you're going to make.

Ash McMullen (35:26):

Yes. Similar to how do you define white space, where are they going? And then the other piece is that eyeballs move before

Peter Crosby (35:35):

Revenue. So getting attention.

Ash McMullen (35:38):

Yep.

Peter Crosby (35:39):

Yeah.

Ash McMullen (35:40):

People are going to learn it, look at it, understand it, then buy it if they want to. So it's this concept of understanding who you're making this for and how it's going to look and be ingested, absorbed, and viewed prior to creating it and building it around the knowledge that you get from the audience and the content that you're going to think about it. So coming back to this process is I was thinking, okay, how would we apply that? And it kind of comes back to just the overall design, if we want to think of it that way, of how is that going to impact the content? Let's think about what kind of content this product, if we made it in this way, in this format, in this packaging, what is the content that we're going to create around it look like? Is it going to be easily held? What's the video going to look like? Is it going to, is the label going to be super visible if we position it this way? Is that going to be something that's going to add production time that we're going to have to keep being mindful of how we're positioning it? How is it going to be used? How is it going to be if it falls on the floor, what's going to happen to it? If it's shipped in a patented envelope, is it going to arrive smooshed or totally intact?

(37:16):

I'm kind of on another soapbox to eliminate cardboard boxes around products. It looks like roadkill when it arrives, even though it's totally intact in the box. But the customer experience when you open it is like,

Peter Crosby (37:29):

Yeah.

Ash McMullen (37:32):

So that's a big, big piece of it is really where do you begin and what data are you taking to that beginning point and how is that dictating your next steps

Peter Crosby (37:47):

And what will be your right to win in that environment? And I love that you're teasing those out earlier before you make the sort of the go no go decision or what, because oh my gosh, that's so fascinating.

Ash McMullen (38:01):

Yeah, because it's way easier to build a marketing strategy around a product that you're building for the specific strategy versus like,

Peter Crosby (38:09):

Oh, we have this product. How should we

Lauren Livak Gilbert (38:12):

Campaign to fix something that's broken?

Peter Crosby (38:15):

Oh my gosh. I love that. Well, Ash, thank you so much for just unpacking all of this or what really you're in the right middle of, which is how do we adapt to this? I've been thinking about it. Football is a game of inches, and now commerce is game of niches. It's like, I like that, that where the growth is going to come from is going to be, it seems like increasingly more down to these niches. And it doesn't mean you can't use the same product to cover a bunch of niches, but you have to sort of really dial it in and it's going to increasingly become like that. And I love the way you are thinking about innovation in that new environment. So thank you so much for the generosity of sharing it with us. So we really appreciate it.

Ash McMullen (39:06):

Yeah, my pleasure. It was awesome to talk to you guys. Thank you, Lauren. Thanks Peter.

Peter Crosby (39:12):

Thanks again to Ash for all the insights. As we mentioned, the 2025 Digital Shelf Summit next April is open for registration. Check out all the details at digitalshelfsummit.com. Thanks for being part of our community.