Veriti

0:00Eleanor Hayden:Welcome to the Emerging Brands podcast. Sharing the stories behind brands you'll want to shop next. I'm your host, Kelly Bennett. I am a New York City-based brand strategist for CPG Food and Beverage Brands. In each episode, I'll take you behind the scenes of founders that are building better-for-you products and bringing them to market. it. Also, I talk to brand builders, retailers, industry experts, and tastemakers who help bring those cool products to your shopping cart. You will hear stories of real-life founders, their launch strategies, and practical advice you could use to grow your own brand or simply discover what's next on shelf.

0:42Eleanor Hayden:And the best part is you could shop all the brands featured on the show. This podcast is brought to you by Hummingbirds. Hummingbirds is the go-to platform built for creator-powered retail activations. They're connecting everyday creators with CPG brands to generate shelf-level awareness, drive in-store momentum, and generate authentic content in markets that matter the most. Go to hummingbirds.com for all the details and let them know I sent you. Now, let's dive into the new episode. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to a new episode of Emerging Brands Podcast with Kelly Bennett. Today, I have an industry expert on the podcast because I know so many emerging brand founders listen to this podcast and they are figuring out what do they need to understand about CPG?

1:40Eleanor Hayden:What does it all mean? Who to work with? When to work with them? How does it all work together? So Eleanor Hayden, she is the founder and CEO of Verity, is here today. And we're going to really break down retail media and shopper marketing. And what does that mean? What emerging brands can do to get started? And what does that look like scaling a brand? So Eleanor, I'm so happy to have you on the podcast today. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Thank you for sharing your insight. This is a really interesting topic. I'm personally learning more about it, and I'm excited to hear your perspective and just your point of view of making the most out of the retail experience for brands.

2:32Yeah, I'm really excited to chat with you on it, too. I think there are a lot of really fun tips and tricks we can share today on my call and And then talking about kind of things to look out for and opportunities for emerging brands and startups to get after it.

2:47Eleanor Hayden:So to get started, let's just dive into what is retail media and shopping marketing? Just really, really simply for someone who's new to CPG, new to retail, what exactly that means? Yeah, I'll do that also maybe with like a quick kind of intro to, you know, shopper marketing is it's funny because a lot of people don't know what shopper marketing is or didn't know for a really long time. And it's becoming a lot more popular now, especially as retail media is becoming more popular. Right. And really starting to understand and see the value. And, you know, I always worked on the CPG side, brand side my whole career.

3:28I started off at Pepsi and I built out the shopper marketing departments at Kodiak Cakes and Siete Foods. And then when, you know, about four years ago, I started independent consulting and working with more CPG brands and kind of grew into an agency really not on purpose. We had, you know, we worked on over 70 CPG brands and our whole business has been referral based. And so it's just always been kind of really organic with that growth as brands keep coming to us and we see cool opportunities. And I am just like a really, I'm really connected to our company mission of bringing, making better for your products, more accessible to the masses.

4:07So we do really focus on, you know, sustainable or better for you products in the space and helping prop those up next to the big codes. And how do we help give them that like big CPG kind of experience and support while still being, you know, an emerging or startup brand. And so we do work a lot on CPG brands in the emerging and mid market space. And I love doing podcasts like this because any chance that we get to help other brands as they're kind of starting to get some of their first distribution, maybe, you know, not big enough yet to bring on a shopper marketing employee or consultant or even, you know, an agency or anything like that.

4:47But what can they start doing today to help really boost and drive more velocities beyond what they're doing with like, you know, their regular trade spend and things like that with the buyer. And so I'm excited to talk more about that. And then answering your original question on what is shopper marketing? Um, you know, shopper marketing, at least by my definition is any marketing related to grocery region, any of the retailer, um, relationships. So I think like, you know, when you think of brand marketing, you have influence marketing, you have field, you have, um, PR and things like that. And I think all of those elements do come into play with the retailers.

5:26But in addition to that, there's in-store marketing, there's, um, online and digital through the grocery retailers and how do we marry all of those tactics together to find like the most efficient program or plan for a campaign to run for a brand that'll get them the most in sales and new to brand and that velocity growth and everything that they're looking for and so shopper marketing you really you have like your amazing brand team that's doing all this work like building brand awareness and connecting with shoppers on social media and all that stuff and And then being able to take all of that amazing work and connect it all the way to the shopper in the store, really like all the way down the funnel.

6:06So shopper marketing really does focus closer to the bottom of the funnel. And how do we connect with, you know, HEB and feel local in Austin, Texas, when we're a brand that's not local? Or how do we connect with, you know, shoppers at Walmart? Because the way you're connecting with shoppers at Walmart is very different from Whole Foods, right? A Whole Foods shopper is very experiential. They want like a nice kind of engagement with the brand at Whole Foods, but Walmart, like they're pretty price conscious. So how do we make sure that we're showing up for them in a way that's appropriate to them without always having to knock off, you know, dollars and things like that without training them to always buy you on discount.

6:45Eleanor Hayden:Thank you for pointing that out because I feel like so many brands, their gut instincts or what they feel like is the only option when they hear about marketing in store is some sort of discount. And I hate that approach. I really do. I've seen so many small businesses over my last 15 years in building consumer brands almost or sometimes do put themselves out of business by just relying on discounts and then competing with themselves. And we know the same. It's so bad. And so I'm really glad that you made that distinction right off the bat. So someone who's listening, who's new to all this, this is not what we're talking about.

7:29Eleanor Hayden:We're really talking about other ways to market in store so that your brand stands out from the rest and you're really focusing on other ways to market and not just dollar for dollar. Yes, exactly. And you nailed it. Exactly. Like that is why we don't just encourage, like we run coupons, don't get me wrong, but even the way that we run them and recommend them for brands, we're extremely strategic about, you know, looking at your promo calendars for some of your key retailers, making sure that any coupons we're running doesn't line up with a promo. So we're not stacking or things like that. Like we're very intentional about, you know, using coupons in a strategic way that says, okay, like how can we, you know, maybe extend the sales lift off of this other program or promo.

8:16and then even finding like the right offer and product mix. So like maybe you have products that are more, you know, profitable. You have higher margins on those products. So like, let's push those a little bit more. Is there an opportunity for us to be running, you know, offers that encourage people to buy two or three units? And then if we're doing that, let's marry that with some sort of kind of stock up type of campaign that we would be running. So how do we like use all of the tactics together? Maybe you're using three different tactics in a way that really like kind of amplifies all three together and gets, again, the most reach for biggest bang for your buck.

8:52Eleanor Hayden:We love biggest bang for our buck, especially as a small medium size brand who, you know, is next to the big players in the industry that just have essentially endless pockets to compete on marketing. And so I really like how you are helping also the Better For You products because by and large, that's the space of founders who listen to this podcast. How can they start thinking about maybe some more examples of what you're talking about just so that they can understand maybe those beginning stages of when they are just starting to get into retail? Like they're just getting into some of their first doors.

9:36Eleanor Hayden:Maybe the next level from the specialty retail circuit, but that next stage of growth. Whole Foods, yeah. Yeah. Or even like before Whole Foods, like the smaller supermarkets maybe in their neighborhood. How can they start approaching this? Because it all sounds really cool. And especially thinking about helping convert shoppers in store. It's really challenging to do. So I would love to hear your perspective of how an emerging brand founder could start thinking about this in those really early days. Yeah, I love this. I've actually been talking about this a lot and I haven't been on a podcast in a while.

10:18So I feel like I have a lot of new ideas that I'm excited to share.

10:21Eleanor Hayden:Please share them all here. So one thing that I think, you know, a lot of brands and I used to do this a ton. I remember back when I was at Kodiak Cakes, we used to just show up to the retailer and buyer meetings and bring them ideas. Like we didn't always just say, hey, what are your can you send me your shop or marketing catalog? And then we'll pick two things from it and execute it, you know. But like. All these EPG brands are so creative and everybody has these like amazing, really like fun ideas that are super connected and authentic to their mission and everything like that. And then like, how can you take some of those really fun brand awareness campaigns and like integrate it with a retailer and saying like, Hey, you know, Bristol farms, like, would you be open to doing this with us?

11:07Erewhon, would you be open to doing this with us? And like, bring these to the buyers. I think like buyers right now across the board are bored. Like they're just so everything's been so bland and like, you see them so quickly picking up on these new ideas that brands are reaching or connecting with them on. I think a really great example is, you know, I don't know if you guys remember a while back, this is obviously a really big example, but like Poppy was doing mini cans at Walmart for a dollar. They had these big dump bins of mini cans for a dollar. And it was so smart because instead of just saying, Hey, Walmart, let us do your OGP sampling part of the online grocery pickup and delivery sampling program and drop a can in every bag.

11:47Like, Hey, can we actually like create a revenue opportunity for you? Walmart. And say, let's do those mini cans. We'll sell them for a dollar. They worked out whatever margins they were. And they got those nationally. And now you see Walmart doing that, not just with the mini cans, but like, I don't know if you guys have seen over in like the sauce set at Walmart. Now they're selling like mini bottles of sauces for a dollar. So people can try different hot sauces. Like I've seen Foshans in there. I've seen, um, you know, some different like hot sauce brands. And so it's like that inspired so much more.

12:18Eleanor Hayden:That's a great example. And people are, and it's like, you know, it was the same size sample that Boshans was handing out at Expo West, you know? And so like, how can we take these really like fun and unique ideas, bring them to the buyer, show them an opportunity for them to grow, utilizing more space in their stores or whatever it is. And, and really do that. I mean, Poppy also, um, you know, with their like clothing line at target, like I honestly did not buy into that. And then my nanny walked in the other day wearing a Poppy sweater and I was like, you actually bought that? Like people are into it.

12:52So it's like, maybe, you know, there's opportunity for things like that at some of the smaller retailers. So I would say like, first and foremost, you know, trying that out. And I used to do that a ton when I was at Kodiak case, we would bring really fun ideas to Jewel Osco and Hy-Vee and doing these like different partnerships, maybe with their dietician programs and things like that. So just any ways that you kind of get scrappy and creative, like, I guess I'm just encouraging founders out there to not be shy with their buyer.

13:19Eleanor Hayden:I was going to say too, I mean, Poppy is Poppy, right? Like it's really built a ginormous brand around it for someone who's just starting out and maybe they're nervous just being in a buyer meeting. And this is still very new to them. What are some ways that they can pitch an idea that doesn't feel like they're coming in and trying to take over the conversation or overwhelm or put too many ideas on the board and then they kind of give a scattered too new of a feel like do you have any tips of how to bring up that conversation or when to bring up that conversation just so that an emerging brand founder is doing it in a way that feels professional that won't come off as like super green.

14:08Yeah. I think like, you know, a lot of the brands there is, there is at least one retailer out there that has really bet on them, right? Like if they feel encouraged to go and continue selling and continue growing with other retailers, there's gotta be like one retailer that you've just built a really special relationship with them that, you know, they're like, Oh, we're their favorite. They love us. And when you have that, that's the time to say like, Hey, you know, when you're in your next call and you're talking about innovation or you're talking about, um, line extensions, things like that.

14:43That's when you introduce this new idea. Hey, we're launching this new product. We want to get, and you're offering exclusivity, whatever it is, we want to give this to you. And Hey, we would love it. We have this really fun 360 plan. And these are how we would love to activate part of that as an in store component. Would you be open to leaning in with us on that? And we can together really like grow velocities within the category and showing them what the opportunity is for them to through your marketing idea. I think that shopper marketing has been such a useful tool for brands to be able to stand out amongst competitors because, you know, a lot of times it's really like, who's got the most trade spend?

15:24How are we going to like give more promos? And like, it's so boring and bland and like how can we add you know this color to it through really fun and creative ways to engage shoppers more because like shopper expectations are a lot higher now too I don't know if you walked into Target but there's not one end cap at Target that doesn't have like cool corrugate like designs and pop-outs like you kind of have to now to show us stepping it up so I think like that is all kind of like one way I really encourage kind of founders to work closely with their buyers, even at like, and especially at, I should say, like the more like, you know, smaller local retailers, because those are ones that aren't really like offering a ton of shop and marketing tactics anyway.

16:11So bringing them to them. Another thing is like, and actually like on that kind of like reminds me, there's that soy sauce brand Jozo that like they, I, you know, I did a podcast with them a little while ago. And they were talking about how like, I mean, he literally like loads up his backpack with soy sauce and bops around New York city and goes to little bodegas and says, Hey, would you carry my soy sauce? Like that's the grind that I think is part of that initial kind of startup. It's like, Hey, you know, get into more of those bodegas, get into more of those little like one-off shops and start having people really like start seeing your product more and more.

16:53And then from there, you know, using that data, of course, to which that's, you know, not revolutionary, you get everybody's already doing that. But just remembering, I don't know, like, take yourself back and remember at the end of the day, like, what founders are like, as a founder, you're doing like that grind, the scrappy work, like you're getting after it in ways that maybe you haven't in the past.

17:13Eleanor Hayden:So that is a good reminder, because I feel like So many founders are going into it now thinking that there's more of these magic bullets and kind of skipping the part where it is more of that grind and hustle to get into doors and just assuming that it's really easy because they have a delicious product that everyone's going to be knocking on their door in the reverse. And so I like that you're saying that because we could use innovation, we could use modern marketing, but also at the end of the day, it takes that knocking on doors and being like, hey, this is my product. What do you think? Can we come here?

17:56Eleanor Hayden:I think the mix of both is what really makes a brand stand out. yeah i think like probably like one of the biggest messages from today is just to like remain confident because if you really do believe in your product and your brand and you do have something that's truly differentiated from others in the category like the buyers are excited about it i honestly over the last four years you know working on so many different brands and different sizes of brands i can't tell you you know when i first started i was getting brands telling me like oh we gotta you know we're in a lot of like natural stores we're in a regional whole foods and we got a 75 store test at Target.

18:31Now I'm seeing brands come to us saying, hey, yeah, we're, you know, we just launched three months ago and we're getting national distribution at Target. Like, you know, we are getting a big national distro at Walmart, it's gonna be our first retailer. Like it's happening so much faster for brands. I think like feeling confident and taking, you know, approach those big retailers, like feel good about it. I think a lot of it too is, you know, this is not marketing forward. and I know everybody hears this all the time, but like, if, if you do kind of launch a product and you're just hoping that, you know, one, one thing I see founders struggle with a lot is they come to us and they're like, Hey, okay.

19:12With retail media, we need to have a nine X row as because our margin is only 10 cents or something like, like super low. Like, okay. Even with that, Is it sustainable for you to continue selling this product? So like if you don't have your numbers right in the first place, as you scale, it's just going to hurt more and more.

19:31Eleanor Hayden:That was going to be my comment too of it's cool that people are having these bigger opportunities, but if you don't have your financials lined up properly, you're going to put yourself out of business also at the same time. So could you also break that down of just helping founders understand the cost of shopper marketing? And how to just think about it from a strategic point of view? Because I think you just touched upon something so important. Yeah, that's actually a really good question. So a lot of times, you know, retail media is the first thing that comes up in the shopper marketing realm because retail media, um, on all the platforms, there's no minimum.

20:17You could spend$500 a month if you want to spend$50 a month. I mean, a lot of times like there's really like either no minimums or extremely low minimums. And so, um, so it's great. Cause like anybody can engage. Um, the other nice part about retail media is you're getting a lot of data live back. Um, and yeah, Yeah. One thing that I just see brands doing a lot is expecting because they're getting all this data back. They're seeing their return on ad spend. They're seeing sales, like they're seeing all these things and they don't see that with like a Facebook ad. You don't see that with your influencer partnerships or your celebrity sponsorship.

20:56Like you're not seeing dollar for dollar what you're making back. So the expectation seems to come on retail media a lot to make up for inefficiencies and other portions of companies, businesses. Now I've seen businesses take this a couple ways. Some companies say like, okay, well, they might be like a little bit more older school and thought and they're like, well, we need to keep our PR agency and we need to keep our influencer agency and we need to keep our social media and shopper. So what do we do? And it's like, you know, so we've seen that and, you know, that's totally a strategy if that's like how, you know, you're growing.

21:28But I think when you're looking at and having to make certain cuts and changes, you know, we've also seen, we've, we've worked with tons of brands who are like, yeah, we actually cut our email marketing. We cut our PR down by half. We've cut this and that. And a lot of it is because they are realizing like they want to focus on the bottom of the funnel first and work their way up. And if they can get more of those bottom of funnel shoppers at the end of the day, like that's, what's driving sales. That's what's helping fund your business. And so on the retail media front, it is very accessible for brands, but then it's also like, sorry, I think I spread into like a few different topics there, but I'm into this tangent.

22:05Eleanor Hayden:Please go within. It's really like, you know, just remember like not to expect your retail media to make up for inefficiencies in your cogs, for example. And we have that happen a lot. You know, like during when tariffs were especially bad, we had multiple clients coming to us saying like, oh, like tariffs are up. Our ROAS needs to be higher. And it's like at the end of the day, only 8 % of food and beverage purchases are happening online. 92 % of them are still happening in stores. So like when you're looking at retail media, when you're looking at retail media, like, yes, there's tons of growth and there are more and more shoppers being added into online grocery every single day.

22:47I mean, these companies have barely scratched the surface of what's capable for online grocery. So I'm here for continuing to invest in shopper in retail media, but brands need to remember that it is an investment and you are seeing sales and we are seeing amazing return and all these things, but we don't want to, you know, you set your expectations at a 10 X row as you're missing a ton of opportunity there, um, for, for more new to brand shoppers and more sales. And again, that's the investment in the future growth of your business. If you can bring in more new to brand shoppers today, that could be 20 % of that are your lifers, right?

23:25Like these are the people who are super loyal. And so like, how do you remember to keep investing in that and stay focused on the future and staying proactive as opposed to like, right now, we're all like, you know, we have these crazy shifts and changes we want to make. So that's kind of that.

23:42Eleanor Hayden:That leads me to my next question because everything that you're touching upon is one, just very interesting. And two, I think you're also touching upon different strategies to go about this, right? And especially for someone who's brand new to CPG, a lot of what you said, they're taking notes, Googling at the same time of like, okay, what the hell does this mean? So how do you work with brands? Because I feel like this is what you do, right? You live, breathe and sleep this and you help brands navigate all of this to find the right strategy and what makes the most sense for where they are now and where they want to grow.

24:20Eleanor Hayden:What is their budget? What can they invest? How do you, can you walk us through an example of say one of those earlier stage better for you brands that's been building their own brand awareness themselves, maybe has a little buzz behind them, but they're still very new to retail. Yeah. So with every client we bring in, no matter the size, we actually, um, we do a full assessment on their business. We look at what are your projected revenues for this year? What are you hoping to do next year? Like what are your goals and expectations with next year's revenue? Are you launching new products? Do you have line extensions, big retailer launches?