2024: The Year of OMNIGEDDON!, with Chris Perry, Chief Learning Officer at firstmovr

Transcript

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Transcript

Peter Crosby (00:00):

Welcome to Unpacking the Digital Shelf where we explore brand manufacturing in the digital age.

(00:16):

Hey everyone. Peter Crosby here from the Digital Shelf Institute. The chance to take full advantage of growth opportunities of the next few years will come from evolving your strategies and tactics to be fully omni. Yes, it's time for Omni Gaden Gaden, Gaden Geden. Chris Perry, chief Learning Officer at first mover joins the podcast to share new research around the best practices in commerce that will make sure your organization is set up to take full advantage of what he calls booms day instead of doomsday. Again. Anyway, Chris joined Lauren Livak Gilbert and me to explain just some of the key principles and practices that will guide you to Booms day. Chris Perry, welcome back. You know how much we love having your joyous brain on our podcast. Thank you so much.

Chris Perry (01:04):

Thank you so much Peter and Lauren, I'm excited to be here again.

Peter Crosby (01:07):

So your newest piece of research is the end all, be all for commerce expectation for 2024. Drum roll please. It is Omni Gaden, not in the end of the world sense, but it is the beginning of the new omni trends to watch out for in the space. And it's funny, it's brilliant, it's informative, so congratulations on the research.

Chris Perry (01:33):

Thank you so much. We had a lot of fun putting it together. And I would say the hard part was we saw a lot of people put out predictions for the year, and it's always nice to throw out a prediction. We obviously don't actually know what's going to happen beyond what we know is trending towards happening, but we really thought Omni Getin gets some attention and allows us to focus on what we call expectations for Booms Day preppers, because again, it's not dooms day, it's booms day. It's positive if you do the right things, but it's more that we obviously are all seen, but we tried to collect the first mover, all puns intended advantages that leaders in this space are doing right that we get to see as we peak in the windows of a lot of companies we're working with. But not everyone is doing them all right?

(02:21):

And I don't know that everyone will be perfect, but we had, well, more than 12 in our group, we had to filter down. But it was really that idea of like, Hey, you know what leader number one is doing five of these really well, but leader number two is doing one of those and then another one. And it was kind of like, what if you could borrow all the pages from the playbooks of all the best and almost do everything perfectly, even though perfect is a moving target, right? So that's why we don't ever want to be arrogant to say we know exactly what's going to happen, but it was more of a, these are things we know winners are doing. They may seem somewhat intuitive, but they're not always easy to do. And as I always to say, throwing out a Harry Potter quote, if you say Voldemort by his name, he's a lot less scary. Even though he is a challenge, you have to take him on. That's what got us excited about putting these together. And obviously we just had a lot of fun using explosive AI generated images of carts exploding out of nowhere. So it was a lot of fun.

Peter Crosby (03:21):

Well, as you mentioned, there are 12 of these trends that you are calling out, but given the length of our podcast, we're zooming in to four of them. So kick us off with the first one.

Chris Perry (03:34):

So the one that Oscar and Amanda and I have a lot of heart for, and I think most people do once we unpack it a little bit is what we call the dawn of catman 2.0, category Management 2.0. And I think most people like the concept if they're familiar with it, of what category management can do for an organization for a partnership. But we've actually seen category management, and this isn't against the leaders in those roles, but it was almost like they were on leave for a while within the world of e-commerce. Because when we go back to my early, early career was still brick and mortar. Yes, e-commerce was starting to happen, but that was before anybody focused on it. And because most of brick and mortar was relatively mature outside of occasionally like, oh, we got into club or we got into dollar for the first time.

(04:28):

There might've been new channels, but it was basically, I'm in grocery, I'm in mass, I have low single digit growth each year. How do I drive incrementality? How do I use my four Ps of sales and marketing to drive bigger baskets or new shoppers or more trips? Nothing new, nothing crazy. I mean, I think many of us probably had an IRI or a Nielsen chart on our wall about how to drive growth was number of households, number of trips, dollars per basket, right? Or dollars per trip. So that was common. But then when we got into e-commerce for the last 10 to 15 years, you had all these new four Ps, right? The PS were roughly the same, but how they work and the levers they pull and the tools you use and the ways you measure all very different. And so for the last decade plus, I almost feel like we went from enlightenment to the dark ages a little bit where we didn't actually leverage all that amazing category management expertise that was sitting next to us and another team because they were still managing the base of the business.

(05:32):

And the e-comm teams are focused on getting the levers and the capabilities optimized. But now that e-commerce is starting to mature, especially now that covid accelerated everyone into this space, we actually, with everyone does content and everyone gets reviews and everybody has availability, and everybody has assortment designed for the right channels and so on. All those levers we need to pull, how do I drive incrementality? What's going to make my content better than someone else's content? What's going to make my assortment, if all the products are almost the same high quality products, what's going to make mine more relevant to that shopper? So one of the areas is that category management opportunity. It's choosing a specific type of growth, not just all growth, but baskets. And even within baskets, right? Do I stock people up on the same item? Do I trade people up on a more premium item?

(06:28):

Do I cross sell them across my items right across brands? I mean, those aren't all mind blowingly different things than we've thought about in the past. But I think a lot of brands just try to do everything with all their levers. And arguably we need to design our levers or the how around a why, right? Maybe pick one why, right? Hey, I have a premium brand from my base brand or from what the base category offering is that I want to trade people up. And I could literally point all my levers towards that very specific goal, still having amazing content, great assortment, but all design around that. And when I see growth, I'll know that it was because of that type of growth, even before I get some of the data that again, a rcna or a Nielsen maybe able to provide, or even the retailer, I can actually see very specific types of growth. I've actually designed around very specific types of growth. So it's really just this opportunity for us to bring Catman back to the table, educate them on the levers, which they may not be as expert on yet, but they were experts on the principles of driving incrementality. So if we could combine the two knowledge bases as a team, we could bring enlightenment back to e-commerce and then teams can win because of very intentional types of growth.

Peter Crosby (07:39):

Yeah. In capman 2.0, do you have a couple of start doing this, stop doing that, that you're seeing from your best in class clients?

Chris Perry (07:50):

Definitely. And again, there's lots of examples, and I don't want to say if a company's like, well, I already do some of that, you probably do. Are you very intentionally doing that? We actually at first mover, we call it smarter growth. And again, it's not because you're not smart, it's using that smart acronym of specific, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant time bound goals. Because growth is a goal, but growth isn't one dimensional. It's multidimensional, right? And we actually have identified 12 different types of incremental growth, which again, just build on some of that historic IRI and Nielsen, how you drive growth baskets, trips and buyers or households. But I would say the first start is choose for a skew for brand based on where its role in the category, its role at that retailer, its role in your market, choose a goal or maybe two goals and design everything around those things.

(08:49):

Really lean into those. It probably doesn't surprise anyone, but a Proctor and Gamble or a L'Oreal does this really well down to the individual skew level, tide liquid laundry detergent sells you in, brings people hopefully not into the category, I hope everyone's washing their clothes, but brings people into Tide as a new brand buyer. But then Pods is trading you up to pods, power Pods is trading you up to Power Pods very much. It's really bringing a brand strategy, your catman strategy back to the brand online. But then once you're at Power Pods, they're like, Hey, you know what? You're already buying everything we want you to buy at that level. We buy bigger trade across to Downy Unstoppables and Bounce dryer sheets. So every single SKU almost maniacally drives you up. And even L'Oreal does a really nice job. Every time I search. Like L'Oreal Revital Lift, all of their paid search is featuring stock up SKUs, premium S skews new add-on S skews or cross-selling into something else. So they defend themselves with their branded terms, but they design all their activation around very specific audiences, very specific types of growth. And so it might seem really tactical to throw that example out, but it works and that there's a reason they're winning even as a non challenger organization in the sense that they're not small and nimble that way, the historic challenger profile, but they act like challengers because they get that nitty gritty down to that granular intentional growth goal.

Peter Crosby (10:20):

And it sounds like that focus is really important, like choosing what you're doing, testing it, working, scale it, it's just this constant

Chris Perry (10:29):

Wheel. I would also say I know Profitero in their benchmarking study from last year, it's their seventh annual one that highlighted that more teams were actually hiring dedicated catman roles. So again, that doesn't hurt to have a dedicated specialist, but bring your other Catman team in the original, the OG team, bring them back, teach them again, we do a lot of workshops with teams like this. Again, educate them on the levers they don't fully understand so they can use the principles they do to help the strategy for the team. And the one stop I would say is more, I've had a few teams even this year who've said, oh, well Chris, that makes sense, but we'll do it once we get the data. And you're like, what do you mean you'll do what? Once you get the data, well design around those goals. We can't measure them easily.

(11:22):

And you're like, alright, so you're going to wait until someone perfects the data to do the thing you can do right now, which is, and I use that analogy, I'm sure I've used this on our podcast before together, is that if a tree falls in the woods and you're not around to hear it, does it make a sound, right? Yes it does. You didn't have a tool to measure the sound, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't go. I don't want you to cut down trees, but in that example, go cut down some more trees. And even if you're not there when they actually fall, more trees will have fallen in the direction you designed them to fall. So it's just that idea of that would be the stop is don't wait for the perfect data. Yes, data helps, but there actually are a lot of metrics out there that can indicate your success for building a basket, driving more trips, even if it's not perfect yet. Like the perfect end-to-end data,

Peter Crosby (12:16):

You need an analogy that does not harm the planet. Yeah, I

Chris Perry (12:20):

Don't the planet, that was just the one I had available.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (12:23):

What if a dog barks in the distance in another house but you didn't hear it? Does that mean that

Chris Perry (12:29):

Virus music sound right? Yes, you did. And if you want more barks, just adopt more dogs. Right?

Lauren Livak Gilbert (12:35):

Perfect.

Peter Crosby (12:36):

Done. Thank you. Amazing analogy. This is so much better. Sorry, Lauren, go ahead with the important thing.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (12:41):

Okay, I was just going to say, I think Chris, this is my favorite, one of the 12, and I think it is potentially the least talked about out of all of them, but the most important, and I'm hearing a lot from brands that they're building out category management teams, which I think is fantastic. But I think the watch out, and I'd love to hear from you is don't build an e catman team and not connect it to the existing Catman team that has all this knowledge of hundreds of years of selling in store. The real power is yes, having an e catman team and your category management team working together and learning from each other

Chris Perry (13:19):

1000%. And like I said, I do believe that having a dedicated person on an area of change is important because agreed, without it, you don't get any focus or any actual work done. I mean, again, it's like saying e-comm is everyone's job without actually holding anyone accountable. That doesn't work. But to your point, this isn't a multi-channel approach. It's an omni-channel approach. Yes, you might need an Amazon catman person if that's obviously a large part of your business, which it is for a lot of CPGs. But what about Walmart? You don't want just a walmart.com catman without the bridge into store knowing the influence of the digital activity on in-store sales, knowing that over time merchants are starting to look at digital performance to determine in-store placement. So to that point, I remember when I was hiring teams, some of my leadership at different companies, we want e-comm experts. Those didn't exist before. Someone who knew the original learned the new, right? That maybe recently there have been people that just started their whole careers in e-commerce, and that's not bad either, but they also could benefit from learning brick and mortar. That's still part of the equation. So I fully support that. You might literally have a double digit size team on Catman. Don't forget about them. They can help you, but you may have to engage them in, train them a bit.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (14:40):

And if you're a digital leader listening to this podcast and you've never met your category management team, go meet them. That is my

Chris Perry (14:46):

Start doing that

Lauren Livak Gilbert (14:47):

Massive call out. Okay, Chris, let's go to the next one. The next theme data. We know brands have endless amounts of data, but what about data is important in 2024?

Chris Perry (14:59):

And this is a loaded one, which obviously ties a little bit back to catman, it ties back to omni, it ties data obviously feeds into everything. We call this one wholly data so that not to use profanity trying to keep this pg, but I think the challenge is there is a lot of data out there, not even as we were saying, but not all of it's perfect yet. But there are different types of data and one of the things we do a lot of education on in our events and trainings and whatnot is leading and lagging metrics or inputs and output metrics. And what I mean by that, if you're not familiar with that, and honestly I took a sales training like 10 years ago was the best training. I went in rolling my eyes at the end. I was like, that is so awesome as a concept just because it allowed us to orient around the things we could actually control if what do we ultimately want omnichannel sales and share growth, right?

(15:51):

Because Lauren and I have worked on projects in the past on profitability. I'm going to also add in profitable omnichannel sales and share growth. However, that is a lagging metric. I really don't control that at all. That's influenced by things I do have more control over. So that's a lagging metric. And actually no one has asked me for my opinion, but on your performance reviews when you have sales and share growth goals on your sales performance reviews, I really think that's unfair because you really can't control that. What you could control, you might be, it's almost in a racy model. Like I'm not responsible for it, but I'm accountable for it, right? I'm accountable for the outcome, but I really couldn't do anything about that outside of the leading metrics. Like again, and this is the four Ps of marketing or in store and online.

(16:42):

Am I in stock? What's my availability rates? What are my vendor lead times or my on time in full rates for a Walmart like my otif, what is my assortment mix? Is that designed correctly in selling at the best velocity, getting the best profitability? There's all these leading metrics, and again, an account director or a VP of something might own many of those, but the individual teams actually need to own individual ones of those. Because if you're trying to manage all metrics, it becomes hard to go execute on all of them. And that's where this becomes kind of interesting because you get the different specialty teams focused on the right part of the matrix, and then they can all lead leading metrics lead to lagging metrics. So I do like that quote from Peter Drucker. You can't manage what you can't measure. I also, I changed it though.

(17:37):

You can't manage what you don't measure because we actually have a lot of that data. Even some companies that still don't have where they're changing from one digital shelf analytics provider for leading to another. And so they don't have the scorecards right now. You can still go and get quick manual scraping. You can walk the shelf and do some of this yourself in about five to 10 minutes on your top skews that make up the majority of your sales and just confirm, am I in stock? Am I in distribution? Where am I for my top keywords? Am I gaining placement, losing placement? Do I have complete content? And then obviously compelling content is measured a little bit differently, but that can also be with tools like visit and shopper shopper surveys and research. You can confirm the quality of your content, the effectiveness of your content.

(18:30):

Not to mention that obviously reviews and other things both are a driver but also a validator. So I think the idea is, and that's where even going back to Catman, there are basket metrics and that are leading to the overall, Hey, I jumped my sales by 20%. Why? I have no idea, because I haven't been looking at my leading metrics, right? Well, we designed only around baskets. So I think it's because of baskets, the leading metrics are 80% of the laggy metrics. That's why we're successful. So I think this is a nice tie into the catman 2.0. Catman is why you grow, whereas content or availability is how you grow. And you can get into semantics of why, what, but what is the sales and share, how are those levers and why is the specific one of the 12 types of growth you choose to design around and then measure again? So there's a lot to unpack with data, but I think part of it is not dividing the data into the parts you can actually influence

Lauren Livak Gilbert (19:35):

And actually doing something with the data rather than collecting. I feel like in the past years it was like we just need all the data and everybody had the data, the brands have the data, maybe they didn't do anything with it. Now you need the data to work because you don't have the time to waste, to not have a strategy that isn't pointing you towards profitability.

Chris Perry (19:55):

Exactly. And Lauren, to your point, I hear a lot of brands, I'm going to say I haven't heard it as of 2024, but this was 2023 fresh, right? It was this, oh, we're doing direct to consumer. Oh, that's awesome. How's it going? Well, it's not that successful, but we're doing, that's a whole nother beast to unpack why, but that's my first question. But we're doing it to collect the first party data and you're like, my first maybe slightly snarky question is, do you know what that means? Second, are you doing anything with that data? Oh, well, not yet. Well, alright, so again, I'm going to be very humble. Would've probably said some of this stuff I'd like to think I wouldn't have. But at the same point in my role in the past, but my role as a change leader forced me to constantly challenge my own status quo.

(20:44):

And so I've tried not to be that person, but we all fall into it and I've done it too, but it's just like I'm doing this because I know it's important. Okay, what are you doing with it Cricket? And you're like, okay, so first party data is great if you have a plan to or are actually actively using it to benefit the other data, that is the second party and third party data that you're trying to also capture to show those lagging metrics that you're trying to influence. So I love that point, Lauren, you got to do something with your data, not just hoard it in Fort Knox.

Peter Crosby (21:19):

So the next one that we're going to, I was kind of thinking if I went to an AI image generator and put the name of it into ai, what would come out? And I think I would be laying on a cloud and thinking of shopping carts or something like that. But you called it dreaming in Omni. And we're at this place where we've been talking about omnichannel for a really long time, but it feels like this time is at a place where now e-commerce has become and must become more mature in thinking of the total business and what is each impact on each other to lift all boats to incrementality wherever it can happen by the combination of these two motions. So is that anything near what you were talking about when you talk about dreaming and Omni and what's your advice there? What are you seeing happening?

Chris Perry (22:19):

Yes, as you said that, I hadn't even thought of that image, but I imagine if I could get a big enough cart, maybe it's a Costco cart, I could put a purple mattress in it and sleep very comfortably with maybe some my pillow Giza Giza dream sheets. I love this. But yes, so when we thought that it was this idea of we know Omni, there needs to be a digital fluency, but really there needs to be an omni fluency because again, yes, if you're only on an Amazon who is also omni, but might be a little more e-comm, digital commerce oriented today, many marketplaces around the globe are, the shopee and ladas and et cetera are mostly e-comm. But yes, have an omni piece, but we need the base of the business everywhere is still omni. It is brick and mortar with an omni element and will continue to be both.

(23:10):

Our whole thing was that fluency. When I think back to, I majored in French, and so if there's anybody listening who thinks, oh, now I'll talk to Chris in French. I do know what you're saying. I can't speak it back to you. It's been many, many years since I was really allowed to practice. But I went into two different immersion programs where within the third week, I remember dreaming in French, and they had said that once you did that you essentially were becoming fluent. Because I literally can remember having an entire dream where I was speaking and listening and it was quite cool. But that was the idea of we actually have to be dreaming in Omni as opposed to bolting it on at the end of a conversation. And this plays into this idea of catman and data, right? It is looking at all the metrics and remembering that they encompass e-commerce and Omni together.

(24:00):

But this might even go a little more macro. The simplest thing a brand could start doing to start thinking and dreaming in Omni is, and I've been silly with some of my audiences, my training workshops is like at the end of a meeting on a campaign, on new product launch, A JVP, anything small, large, whatever, just be really awkward and turn to the team. If you're in person, it's even more awkward. Turn to the team go, Hey, you know what? I love what we've discussed today. Could we make this more omni? And then be really quiet, just 30 seconds of awkward pause. If you're in person, everyone will look down. Someone might go to get water. If they're on Zoom or teams, they will shut their camera off. Some brave soul will go. Before I answer that, I wanted to find out, I know what I think omni means.

(24:50):

What do you mean omni means? And I would love for somebody to say that because then what you'd say is, you know what? Let's lay out almost a mini checklist. Let's quantify slash qualify what Omni means, right? We know what the four Ps of launching a new product are. Have we added the other omni considerations, right, from assortment to content, right? Again, going back to, and that then gets measured by that data, those leading metrics. But the point is metrics come second, right? But the question comes first. Accountability is about asking the team, have we done this? And I'd almost also argue it needs to be part of your, I mean, it should be, I think profiteer data showed that it's still not everyone's agenda item with their buyers, their merchants, their top to tops. Why shouldn't that be the first part? If it's a separate topic, Y isn't it first?

(25:43):

And to be fair, maybe it shouldn't be a separate topic. It should be integrated into every topic. Unless there was a very explicit to get the product to the in-store, store location, we need X. But part of this is just holding people accountable with the right questions, then using the data to validate the success of those question driven accountabilities. But this is very much part of, I know a lot of, I know Walmart and Target, thankfully it's still funny to me when I teach other markets, they're like, oh, well, don't show me us examples of how retailers are organized and that's not how we are. I said, it's coming to you like an online plus offline merchant, enterprise merchant team that's coming. I'd want to get ahead of that and start acting like they were going to be one team before they were one team.

(26:32):

So that I'm already a captain in their mind of how to think. The next level is obviously what a lot of teams are doing is bringing the Walmart connect into the room or the Amazon ads into the room. Because at some point, I could see a world where you had a platform merchant that wasn't just the buying versus in-store versus online, and then a media team. It could just be one contact to rule them all because a lot of it will be self-service. So the person that engages you is looking at all the leading actions, all the leading metrics. And we need to be thinking that way and acting that way even before a small regional grocer is ready to do that act that way you can do it and they might not like you at first because you're adding friction, and you can just say, this is the vision of the future. We're already trying to live that future today. It will help you. And if they don't understand it, that might mean that they're not really a great partner, but they will understand if you give them the right vision.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (27:33):

And I also think that for the internal organizations, it might disrupt a lot of how you've been working for a long period of time, but embrace that change and try to break down as many walls as you can to get to an omnichannel structure. Because if you don't have that omnichannel structure, you can't dream an omnichannel

Chris Perry (27:54):

100%.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (27:54):

The last,

Peter Crosby (27:55):

And Chris, when it comes to sort of the energy behind omni thinking at organizations, where do you find the genesis of that push comes from? Is it just completely depend on the organization? Sometimes it's the e-comm person driving it sometimes. Is there a trend that you're seeing or a quality of the leader that's driving that thinking? Or what should people be looking for inside their org or what should they be to be able to drive this thinking effectively?

Chris Perry (28:28):

That's a really great question. So I would like to say mean, and again, I have not been perfect myself, but I think my natural, I want to do the right thing. I want everyone to get their mutual benefit, but I also, I see I'm not going to do that at the expense of where the world is really going. I'm not going to status quo us to death because I want to make you happy. I want to make all of us happy because we actually all one. And I'm also though not unwilling as a leader myself, and I see this in a lot of leaders. I'm not afraid of being wrong. And I know we will talk to this momentarily with respect to media, but if Amazon advertising doesn't drive as much incrementality in a media mix model as Google or Facebook for a brand, show me that number and I'll fully understand why you're investing the way you're investing.

(29:18):

But don't tell me retail media doesn't drive as much ROI when you haven't done the media mix modeling prove me wrong, and it's not me wrong. Prove that the opportunity that this is a growth potential channel for us wrong by actually doing the thing. Just don't shut me down because you don't know it. And there's a risk there. Let's ab test it small. Let's get the numbers. Because when we start seeing the numbers, sometimes people are really surprised. So again, the data doesn't lie when you actually do it. So I think there is a sense of just leaders that are, everyone wants to be humble, but we all have to practice being humble. I'm confident, but I could be wrong. Literally, you could call me out right now. Chris, you're a nut and I am, so I'm open to that. But show me why I'm a nut and then I'll be a nut for what you just said because I'll be one of your fanatics that behind your point of view, because you've helped me understand it.

(30:16):

But I think there are a lot of people that are afraid of change, which we all are, and they shut things down that pose change. And so I would look for a change leader who's willing to, I do think the leadership needs to be the one holding people accountable to have we really thought about how omni this is. But that first change, you might be a manager level, go talk to the VP or the director and get them on your side around, Hey, I don't want to change everything we're doing overnight because what we're doing has worked to date, unless it hasn't, right? And then that would be another motivator. But I need your help. If we're going to do it right for the long term, we need to also think about this whole other checklist of things that makes this a more omni and that's going to help us all win.

(31:00):

But I'm happy to lead it or facilitate it with you, but could you help me? Can you sponsor that in those meetings? You only need to convince the one domino leader to actually hold the team accountable. And even if you only could do that with, I'm just making this up, if your Walmart team was willing to lean in because they're already kind of omni oriented with the buyers, the enterprise merchants, get them to become the case study that you bring to the grocery teams and to target. I'm not worried Target isn't doing that either, but you may have to start small, but get one case study of how one team, I know in my past life we had different divisions and one division got on board with e-Commerce. One division was like, that's a real nice opportunity. We'll keep looking at it. Well, then when they saw the other division doing better, then they wanted to figure out why they weren't doing this better.

(31:46):

And you're like, well, you didn't fund us. You didn't support us. We can help you. We're ready to go. We're on standby, ready to go. So that's part of that change leader role. But even as a change leader at a lower level get, I would say persuade a leader who may not already be a change leader to help you be a change leader. I would say pollinate that, change leadership to them around a common metric. And I think my last little point, this is going to sound like I'm uber maniacal, but I'm not sitting clapping my fingers together in a dark room at a desk, but figure out how other people are measured and orient the story and opportunity around how they win. I don't mean that to be selfish, but we are what we manage for. It's human nature. It's human nature. It's human nature. So hey, sales leader who hasn't historically been e-commerce oriented, what is your ultimate goal? How do you go up in the company? Oh, this and this. I can help you get that, but we have to do this. And this actually also makes sense after you because this is where the shopper is going to. So it's start with them. And then because undoubtedly, your goal is ultimately all aligned because you all want career success, organizational success, et cetera.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (32:57):

So Chris, last one, we can dive into the funnel. Dun, dun, dun. There's always the debate. Is it a funnel? Is it not a funnel? What does it look like? But you're predicting that the full funnel stops being a four letter word. Tell us what you mean by that.

Chris Perry (33:10):

Yes. So the reason that title came up for this area was for the very reason that in a retail media and what arguably was a full funnel planning workshop with several organizations, I've had two where I was asked to remove the word full funnel from any reference because it would offend the team. And I said, now, one of them said it when I'd said the word in a planning meeting. And I said, oh my gosh, what did I say? And they were like, don't say that word. Well, I'm thinking I said something by accident, or I pronounced it wrong or something. And they're like, no, we don't use full funnel. That will make the media team upset. Like we're still trying to figure out, okay, you know what? I am totally aware of sensitivities between teams, and I've had some teams that we don't call it omnichannel, we call it fidgital. Oh my God, please, I

Lauren Livak Gilbert (34:08):

Don't care. And I don't agree with that. I

Chris Perry (34:10):

Don't care what we call it if we're all calling the same thing, the same thing. And we're going towards the ultimate right goal, but full funnel is the right approach. Now, again, don't actually, it's not really a funnel. Obviously I use funnel for teaching, right? It's easy to, there's lots of complexities to the different types of things to drive awareness and consideration and that loop, but the funnel's an easy visual for people to go from large audience down to small. I use that. But the word full funnel represents this idea of integrating retail media, paid search and everything else, all the way up the funnel. And then thinking about how the national traditional media flows down the funnel all the way to the point of purchase too, and can actually aid that. And planning our media activations, again, very similar to catman thinking, Omni, all of this is in that same vein, but coming at it from another angle.

(35:00):

And I just think that not a lot of companies have this full funnel planning process perfected yet, and that's okay, but it's the fact that we won't even say it because there're different teams at stake and there are different egos who might be, and that's the part, going back to human nature, I totally respect that. There's a team who owns that, and if you start trying to own that or encroach on that, that puts a risk to their team and people's livelihoods, and people get defensive, and I get that, but this isn't about trying to lay people off or be, let's just combine teams and get rid of extra headcount. I don't think that, I think actually there's more than enough work to go around. It's just making sure that we're not doing them in silos. So again, e-commerce and brick and mortar should not be done in silos.

(35:46):

Retail media and media should not be done in silos. It's that same idea of breaking down barriers based on unfortunately, sometimes people's egos and incentives and career, the risk to their careers, and knowing how much thought does go into a lot of HR succession planning and whatnot. I would think that, and I know there are other organizations who haven't been as sensitive to that, but I want to always be sensitive to people behind the titles and the teams. But I wouldn't want to be on a boat that was going to sink one day. You know what I mean? Just because I like the color of my boat or I like the seed I'm sitting in right now. I want to be on a boat that's going to float and has a motor and ISS going to take me somewhere long term, whether it's at that company or beyond. So even if we're still trying to figure out full funnel media and how retail media fits in, I'd want to be a part of that and not doing it the status quo way that then makes me a dinosaur when down the road, the few roles left as AI impacts careers and whatnot, might require someone who knows how to do full funnel media. I would hate to think I got sidelined in one or the other and didn't get to bring it together. So it's just more of that.

(37:01):

There's the actual process of integrating them and then evaluating them together with media mix modeling and retailer data supporting how all things at tribute to actual sales, but also the awareness goals, depending on what your objective is. But there's also that internal organizational barrier removal of trying to get past this. We're not going to do this because that might upset John or Sarah's team, something like upset their team and help them, I don't want to say upset them, don't offend them, engage them, motivate them. You have a challenge here. Let's solve this together. If you do your heroes, that's exciting.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (37:42):

Showcase how it's beneficial for them as well, and how it will affect them in a positive way. I totally agree with that. But that takes a change management, the quarterback role you were talking about previously to say, Hey, we're all in this together. It's going to help us all, but you have to personalize it. Chris, I'm hearing what you're saying, and I agree, is that if you're a salesperson or marketing person in shopper marketing, legal, whoever you are, if you are the quarterback who's trying to get them on board and change their mind, you need to make it specific to them and understanding how it will affect

Chris Perry (38:12):

Their, and them could be one person, it could be the leader person, which obviously always helps to cascade down, or it could be the group of the four or the 10. And I will say, I feel like in my, I happened to hit multiple organizations as one of the first waves of change leaders. So I will say personally, that was frustrating because I often felt like I had to, I don't think people didn't like me. It was just that when they saw me, they saw this unusual amount of energy coming their way, expecting them to do something different. And so I think there was a love hate, I'm like miracle whip, right? It's like, you love me or you hate me, but I was there for a right reason. I was there to help all of us. I want all of us to succeed. You need that kind of, maybe it's that happy go lucky type approach, but that change leader in whatever wave you're in, it's just a constant, well, have we ever done it a different way or why? And again, even just asking that, why are we doing it that way? Don't say it like you're stupid. Why are we doing it that way? Just say, I think I know why we're doing it this way. Could you explain why? And then ask why a few times back? Because when you get to the root thing, you might go, there's that root driver changed, right?

Peter Crosby (39:29):

Yeah.

Chris Perry (39:31):

It's almost the movie inception. If you could go into a dream and a dream and a dream and plant the seed, you have to ask those questions all the way back and then seed it there. And then they just start believing different when they play back the tape from, well, this was why I was doing that and that's why I did this, and this is why I did this. And suddenly they believe differently and it changes the course. But it does take a lot of that one-to-one engagement. And I don't want to expect every leader who's listening out there to suddenly go like, oh my gosh, I still have a real job to do, and now you're asking me to have one-on-one heart to hearts with everybody. Maybe. I mean, that may actually allow you to do your job long-term. It won't also hurt in a post covid remote world where we don't even really see everybody all the time to actually build relationships and develop friendships within a work setting to help for mutual goals. So none of this is easy, but I think my frustration is it's not easy. It's not hard to say. It's hard to do, but a lot of people won't even say it. So then we don't do either.

Peter Crosby (40:32):

And you started, Chris, we started the podcast talking about omni Gaden to take advantage of the boom or to be the ones who get the boom. And we don't know what the size of the boom in every category is going to be. It could be a little boomlet, it could be big. But what we know is that your first mover, the whole reason why your company exists is to help people be first movers and get the most juice before anybody else gets there. And this kind of mindset is absolutely critical to being the ones who can take the most advantage of the opportunities that are to come, particularly in this time that we're in, where it's top line and bottom line growth. You're cutting costs or at least staying flat, but expected to get more and more juice out of every opportunity. And not everyone's going to pull that off. So is it going to be you Omni, it seems like is the opportunity and full funnel thinking is the opportunity to do that at scale.

Chris Perry (41:46):

All of these in my mind, are different. If it was a three dimensional matrix object, all of these, whether it's the media integration, whether it's the channel integration, whether it's the data organization and integration of leading versus, I don't have a visual yet. Honestly, I think this would become the movie, A Beautiful Mind where you start thinking about calling someone to put me away, but it's slicing it from different sides of just how do we stitch all of these together and really intertwine them and knit them together? Again, none of those silos are net new that we've never heard of. But it is that whether it's like there's a team that only focuses on levers, but not the why growth drivers. There's a team that focuses in-store versus online. There's a team that focuses on all metrics, but not the leading metrics. And then there's the team that doesn't focus on, there are teams that focus on a media versus a retail media, and I'm sure there's another two or three other silos that need to be stitched together.

(42:49):

But it is like a Rubik's cube that it doesn't need to be individual things. It needs to be one square or one cube. And I feel like all of these kind of circle that effort of breaking down why we're not connected and then reattaching us so that we are connected. And so, like I said, I always want to close with that. This is not easy. We are always here to help in any way we can. Again, both at no cost with our industry events and our partnerships with you all, and research that we're doing and putting out, again, just to help democratize great knowledge. But again, we work behind the scenes and advise and train and certify all levels, all regions, and even do work. We have temp services that help teams too. All of this just to plug into a COE or a team that may not have the headcount or the bandwidth to get it all done.

(43:40):

But again, we know we can't do all of it either. There are other awesome teams out there and agencies that can help too. And we always try to connect the dots between those, Hey, you're looking for this. These three companies do that and might stack well with what you're already doing. So just having been in the trenches, like fellow first movers out there, it's hard when you're the one behind everyone else trying to push them, and you look behind you and there's no one behind you. And so always, that's kind of our mission is to be we're the first mover to the first mover, if you will. So everybody needs backup. Even the people who are leading the charge.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (44:18):

And Chris will be at the digital shelf Summit. Yes. Talking about, I'm talking about change management. We're excited.

Peter Crosby (44:23):

Wait, Lauren, there's a digital shelf summit. Oh

Lauren Livak Gilbert (44:25):

My gosh, yes. In Nashville in April.

Peter Crosby (44:28):

Oh my goodness.

Chris Perry (44:29):

Everyone should be, I'm very excited in person has been, oh

Peter Crosby (44:32):

My gosh. We are

Chris Perry (44:33):

Been a challenge in recent years. So I'm really excited to be back on the physical stage, sharing it with G Chang, who heads up global digital commerce at Mondelez. We're going to be talking about change management together. And because Mondelez has done a lot of the pages of the playbook to drive change internally and honestly is one of the companies that I would say does the best in performance in their categories, in part because of all the change leadership that they've done and the formula they've used to drive that change, which pulls into some of these omni getin expectations.

Peter Crosby (45:07):

Well, we already have hundreds of people signed up to be there, and space is limited. So if you're thinking about it, digital health summit.com. But so we've covered four. There are 12, so much more to unpack. And so Chris has done a fancy little URL for us. So to get the full report first, mover.com, there's no E in mover, so it's first mover.com/omni as an omnichannel, giddon as an Armageddon, G-E-D-D-O-N. So first mover.com, omni giddon, and you can get the copy of the full report. And Chris, I'm assuming reaching out to you on LinkedIn, great way to get in touch.

Chris Perry (45:57):

Yes, please connect with me on LinkedIn. You can always reach us at Chris. You can reach me at chris@firstmover.com or hello@firstmover.com. We'll get all of us. And you may not want all of us, but if you want

Peter Crosby (46:09):

All, that's a lot of energy coming at you. There's

Chris Perry (46:10):

A lot of energy already coming from me, let alone if you had Oscar and Amanda and our team.

Peter Crosby (46:15):

Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Chris Perry (46:15):

But like I said, remember, there's no E in first mover because there's really no E in E-commerce either. So yeah.

Peter Crosby (46:21):

Oh,

Lauren Livak Gilbert (46:21):

Nicely done, Chris.

Peter Crosby (46:22):

Oh yeah. Well done. Alright folks, that's it from Chris Perry. Chris, thank you so much for the new research and for all the energy. It keeps us all going and heading in the right direction. So thank you very much.

Chris Perry (46:37):

Thank you for having me. So cool to be here again.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (46:40):

Thank you, Chris.

Peter Crosby (46:41):

Thanks again to Chris for the fun and insightful advice. Get it live digital shelf summit.com. Thanks for being part of our community.