What Racing Wienermobiles Can Teach Every Marketer with Todd Kaplan (Kraft Heinz)

20:59Jim Stengel:You talk about all the things that are happening, you know, the things that you have entered for awards. But as I was looking at what's going on at your company, there is just a flood of creativity. And I just want to get you to go there. Your team seems to be really, really, really energized. And they seem to be pumping out strategic work that's unexpected from the company, that's creative. So what's going on? I mean, no, really, what is going on inside the company? It's been a journey because I think, like I said, coming in, a lot of the basics and some of the fundamentals needed some, like I said, some work.

21:37And so for the first year was a lot of what we call like crushing the fundamentals. So brand growth strategy, figuring out how we're going to grow the brands, right insights, brand positioning, visual identity, product packaging, like just the basics. A lot of companies, a lot of brands, they have that already, but a lot of ours, we had to up this, change that, do that. So really focusing on a lot of that. Was that hard? Yeah. Oh, yeah. And just systemically do it. I call it this thing, we call it brand tune-ups. And it's almost like we institutionalize it, almost like a car wash where you go to the first booth.

22:11And so to have the right trusted partners that we're going to do the brand wheel as we're working on that stuff. As we're, like I said, brought in a new design office. There's a lot of visual identity work and packaging work happening as we speak. So all that is happening in parallel while we're trying to kind of punch above our weight with a lot of these brands, like I said, that have this great awareness, this great penetration, this great kind of iconic history, but just haven't really been talked about. So I call this thing marketing that happens, which is basically the idea of marketing that exists beyond the walls of paid media, things you talk about, earned media buzz.

22:45And so through some of these things, like I talked about this collaborative process and working across the different brand teams and coaching the teams, working with our agencies, we've been able to develop a good heartbeat on some of these brands. While we're still doing really strategic, hardworking work, we just won from the Effie's, the number one most effective marketer in the United States from the Effie's, which we're very proud of as well. So hitting it on both sides, you know, really want to hit that cultural relevance with things like the mustard and all the fun stuff that we'll do all the way to really, really hardworking that's really ultimately going to drive the business.

23:17Jim Stengel:Did you have to, did you have to bring more work internally to do that? Did you, what changed in your organization? There's a few things I'd say. I think it's less about, like I said, the briefing process, what you fill out in the brief, how you work at the agencies. Like that's going to be pretty similar to a lot of companies you go to, but the magic is really in how you give feedback, how you talk about it, how you develop those relationships and evolve it. And listen, there's a range of brands we have. Some are humming more than others. Some are agencies more than like it's always going to be that kind of dynamic.

23:52But it's really just about understanding what great looks like, setting a bar and showing this is the type of work we can do. And look how easy that was. Look how cheap that was. It took three weeks and we hustled and we made it happen. And that was a thing. And it wasn't the brief that you had five weeks ago. And, you know, so trying to figure out all that stuff while we also do the hardworking stuff, we figure out how to connect the dots, think end to end. And what's great is all our marketeers really are looking end to end across the business. And so I think it's just driving that, that comfort that it's okay to throw something out there, build that ideas.

24:30And I want to create that kind of environment where, you know, we have this thing called creative council where, you know, it started off as a big, scary thing where people would come and I would review work and we'd talk about it. And I'm like, this isn't a scary, this is like people trying to build, trying to make your ideas better, push, poke, sharpening. And now people are willingly coming to kind of talk about it, discuss, debate, which is how it's supposed to be. Like good work does not just poof and appear. It's iterative, you know?

24:57Jim Stengel:So tell me more about the Creative Council. Is it all internal? You have agencies involved? It's internal. And so we have a cross-functional group of, you know, from, you know, your media team, your PR team, your insights team, your legal team, just also so everyone can talk at the same time. And when it works well, we have a very elevated discussion, sometimes about a brief, sometimes about a piece of creative, sometimes about, you know, I call a culture bomb or a fun like idea we can do. And so it really just depends. But just having a regular forum, I think, is important so that it's not just like, hey, you're on your own and it sends a signal that this stuff's important.

25:31We want to elevate the work, you know, at the end of the day. hey, I want to make sure all the work coming out is at a certain benchmark, at a certain bar, that it's hitting where it needs to do so. And so we're starting to get much better hit rate, which is great.

25:43Jim Stengel:Before we started recording, we were talking about your agencies. Yeah. And you have a diverse mix of agencies. Actually, it's a lot of the hot agencies, right? Of this group of agencies you're working with, I'm sure you're going to see a lot of them this week. Which one would you highlight as leading edge in how you work? I mean, we have a lot of great agency partners. And of course, we love all our agency partners. And, you know, we've done some great work with JL on the Weenie 500 on Philadelphia and making this new platform called the Philly Boy. We've done great work with Gut on the Gelometer, all that stuff.

26:16Widen and Kennedy has done some amazing stuff on Heinz. I think Rethink, when you think about it, as we've done some great work together and, you know, I was just talking with Mike Dubrick over at Rethink before coming out here, like they embody that same kind of collaborative spirit. You know, we were even just talking the other day with Looks Familiar, which is the French fry boxing. It was my third week on the job and I was just doing like dinners with different agency partners, whatever. It was literally the first time I had met Mike and the Rethink team. and you know and I was talking about hey here's how I like to work how do you like to work and we were kind of vibing out and he uh he's like hey I want to show you something on my phone we don't know what to do with it it was just like this little nugget he's like he's like don't you think that kind of looks like the Heinz logo I'm like oh my god that kind of does look like the Heinz logo and then we start just kind of but this was like a year before the thing even launched and then I was trying to take it down a different path like so there's there's a lot of different ways.

27:09Like I said, a creative idea needs to be harvested and born a certain way. And the great news is over time, you know, we're working with our global team. How does this translate to other markets? Like everybody hopping in on that one and really made that the success that it was. And so it's fun when you have partners who kind of geek out over it the same way you do.

27:36Jim Stengel:I spent years at Procter & Gamble trying to answer that question. We had the creative, we had the reach, we had campaigns that genuinely stopped people. And then we watched that value quietly disappear somewhere between the moment of engagement and the proof of a business result. That gap between attention and action is where most media budgets go to die. And most digital media platforms have been content to live inside it just a little upstream from accountability. Infillion is the company that decided to close it. They started as the original attention company built on the idea that a consumer choosing to engage with an ad is worth more than one who ignores it.

28:12Jim Stengel:But they did not stop there. They have built the infrastructure to connect the moment of attention to the proof of action across every screen, every format, every vertical. That is not a feature, that is a fundamentally different idea of what an ad platform should be. And it is the one brands have been waiting for. Learn more in the show notes.

28:35Jim Stengel:Rethink has been awarded, I think, Agency of the Year the last two years. I looked them up. I got curious about them. I've never worked with them. What is it about them? What is kind of the hot agency in Cannes the last couple of years? I mean, Widen wins the abundance of awards, GUT does, of course. But what is it not rethink they do they do a lot like um like i said the way that i think about these collaborativity things with these these three truths that i talk about the the cultural truth brand truth and consumer truth they have this thing called shallow holes which is basically saying that they like me like to do a lot of um insights led marketing so it's just hey this is the truth and you didn't know it was there all the whole time and we're showing it to you in a creatively interesting way it's kind of like if i go back to when i was at pepsi the better with Pepsi work or something like this, these things that you're just like, you want those ideas.

29:21Everyone's like, oh my God, like we should have done it. What I will also say from a creative standpoint though, is that what we've really unlocked back to the culture in the last couple of years, it's been a huge multiplier, huge difference maker for us. It's our internal agency, The Kitchen. They have done a phenomenal job as we've grown and expanded that. And a lot of these things, because they're in-house have been even more agile, more quick to respond, moving very much at the speed, managing all the socials for our brands, all the way to elevating up to TV spots and more. They've done a phenomenal job and also have a lot of work that's being awarded in all of the mix as well.

29:53Jim Stengel:Fantastic. How do you keep them, you know, the argument for going, you know, out of house is how do you keep an internal team simulated, invested in, creative? Do you think that's a false paradigm? I think people have the brief for an in-house agency wrong because I think, well, I don't know what it is at other companies, but, you know, if the value proposition is, we're cheaper. That's a horrible value proposition. That might be true in some instances, of course, but the real value proposition they have is they have an at craft Heinz.com email address. They are employees. They can sit on your team, be in your business reviews, make deep relationships because they sit at the desk across from the person.

30:33They don't need the brief. They're briefed through osmosis every day so that when they say, boom, when they see a trend and they say, oh, couldn't we do this? They already have that. They're not working on a couple businesses. They're not waiting for a brief and misinterpreting. So it's, that's the superpower of a creative internal agency when it's working well. And I think Tom Evans and Simon Ah and the team have done a wonderful job pulling that together.

30:56Jim Stengel:Did Pepsi have the similar design? Yeah. Lou Arbiter and the team over there do a wonderful job too at Pepsi. And again, everyone's structured differently and how it is. I think a lot of companies are doing that now. And we talked about capability building and all that's happened at Kraft Heinz over the last couple of years. I'd like you to riff a little bit on, as you think about, because you've been an interesting seat on this, as you think about a future-oriented brand building organization that's going to thrive in the world of creators and AI and everything that's around us and can, what do you think are the most important capabilities that CMOs ought to be thinking about building into their teams?

31:32I mean, there's a certain fundamentals of brand building and understanding how and why people buy brands and all that, but I think AI starts to do more of the doing of the stuff. I don't think the thinking is going to go away. And AI can do a lot of thinking too, to be clear. But it really, I think two of the biggest traits are going to be empathy, like consumer empathy and really understanding what is a real consumer insight. A lot of people still get it wrong and they cite a fact, which is very different from an insight, you know, right? And you want that insight that just jumps off the page and you're just like, oh my God, that's like so smart, so true.

32:07The idea of understanding how ideas are formed around tension and really figuring out where they intersect with the brand, like I said. And then the last thing is going to be this idea of agility. I think gone are the days of the client flying up here and just, you know, filling out the brief and the ivory tower and just waiting for the stuff to come back. I mean, I think the job is going to be, you know, platforms are changing, consumer habits are changing, especially in CPG and art categories, it's like you got to evolve or die, right? And so there's a lot even we're doing right now on the innovation side of marketing, which we haven't talked a lot about where I'm building new capabilities and how we fix stage gate and how we all, all those things that are so critical to, to get the right insights as we look, we also want to evolve our portfolio.

32:50So it's a lot to do.

32:52Jim Stengel:What are you most proud of in the last two years? Just most proud of the team and the resilience they've shown, honestly. I know you started with It's a little bit of like, holy crap, there's a lot going on over there, huh? Yeah, there is. You know, it's one of those things. There's good days. There's bad days. There's, you know, all sorts of change going on. But I think people who keep their head down and focus on the prize and, you know, when you look at the prize at Kraft Heinz and where we are today with where these brands can be, if you really unlock this the right way, it's like exponential.

33:25You know, another great quote that Steve talks about is cost cutting. And if you cut, you eventually are going to hit bone, but growth is infinite. And so it's this idea that where we can go and take these things, I am very proud that the team has shown such great resilience. They've shown really great agility in terms of being able to adapt and learn. I know me coming in and there was CMOs before me and before them and before them and before that. And like, it's got to be exhausting at some point of just, oh, my gosh, is this the new CEO? This is the new thing. But at the end of the day, people are in these jobs because they love these brands.

33:59And these are wonderful brands. And marketing, marketing is a self-selected industry, right? It's not as much of like, oh, I went into banking because of all the money I can make. Oh, I went into consulting because I like, like, usually people who go into marketing, they have some innate interest in either the category, the process, some part of it. And so trying to remind people, like, that's why you're here. Like, and if you don't, then you don't need to be here. But at the end of the day, get back to the fun. Like, this is a fun job. It should be a fun job. Even in a tough business environment, it should be a fun job.

34:32Jim Stengel:If we're not having fun, how do we expect consumers to like what we're doing? Of course you need to deliver, you know. Yeah. It was a big adjustment. You went from a company that you knew extremely well. You had built a significant part of your life at that company. Totally. What was the biggest adjustment? I think that in itself was a big adjustment because I literally, I came to PepsiCo straight out of business school as an MBA intern, all the way kind of, you know, did the musical shows, lots of roles. And that was one of the things that's so great about the way they do talent development at PepsiCo is do a P &G the same way and a lot of big companies.

35:01And that's one of the things I'm also very proud trying to build at Kraft Heinz is we have the breadth and the brands to do it, but we don't have the right processes yet to continue to have someone take an 18 year career that's perfectly manicured and curated to stretch and try and grow. So, but PepsiCo was, it was great over there and they were great to me. I learned a lot. And I think that was probably one of the trickiest things is as you're growing up at a place, you're, it's like, you spend a PNG. It's the same, same thing where it's a part of you. I still live not far from there. You know, I see a lot of people from there, but, and I still, to be clear, haven't drank in a Coke since leaving, but.

35:36I wouldn't expect you to. And that was, that's not by anybody else. That's just in my DNA. I'm a, I'm a, I got that challenger ethos still in me, you know, and it's, It doesn't even matter. But it's one of those things that just, it's a party. It was a great chapter. And I'm excited for the one we're building right now with Kraft Heinz. And it's been a lot of fun.

36:02Jim Stengel:Hi, everybody. I'm Andrea Sullivan, the CEO of Vive. And we have produced the CMO podcast with Jim Stengel for many years. And I'm sitting in his seat right now. It's so exciting. I wanted to tell you a little bit about one of our programs that's called Vive by Vayner. It's a 12-month program that's designed for C-suiters and founders. And we want to help people to grow their businesses, but also to grow themselves. And so we bring in people from Shark Tank to talk to our founders, but we also focus on wellness. We want to make sure that people are leaning into becoming their best selves, their best and happiest selves.

36:42Jim Stengel:So if you are someone that wants to learn how to grow your business and grow yourself, check us out at Vive.co. That's V-Y-V-E.co. We'd love to talk to you.

37:00Jim Stengel:let's move to the creative brief and we're going to make this especially creative today you've worked on so many campaigns and initiatives in your life right and we've talked about some of those before on this show i'd like you to talk about one in your history that you have found especially meaningful to you i'll try to think about one where um some of them are just like lightning in a bottle kind of things too i think when i was at i'm going to give a couple of okay answer your question that way if that's okay i think if there's one of pepsico was probably the the better with pepsi um just because again so it was so strategic at the time uh but also just iteratively how we got there and very fun how the logos would reveal themselves and we ran into all these legal barriers that we couldn't do we couldn't do a lot of things we ended up finding an origami artist to fold the fold the wrappers because we had it was a legal solve but actually made the idea much cooler so you know working with the guys at alma and the team over there to really do that was, I think, a lot of fun again.

37:54And it became a campaign that is still like endured and very specific about Pepsi with food. And they've now even evolved it since I've been gone into some other stuff. I think at Kraft Heinz, there's, I mean, like I said, there's so much that I'm really proud of. I think the first big beat that we had since coming over was really what we did a couple of Super Bowls ago with Mustard, with DJ Mustard and Kendrick Lamar, just because it was like this serendipitous moment. And I could kind of see the, all right, well, the Super Bowl halftime show, Kendrick Lamar's performing and the Grammys, he's going to win all these Grammys the week before.

38:27And he just shouted the word mustard, like maybe we should do something with mustard. And we started reaching out and talk. And so it really was a serendipitous, one of those quick sprints that in four weeks, we signed mustard, built the idea, came out with this amazing LTO, this really fun, our in-house agency, The Kitchen, built this spot. Boom. And we went. And again, it's the idea of lightning and a ball.

38:51Jim Stengel:It was a proof point of your philosophy, right? It was just a proof point that early on, I think the people at Kraft Heinz were like, wait, we didn't buy a Super Bowl spot, but we got all this talk value and we did. They're like, wait, what? We can do that? So it's like, yeah, like, let's go, you know? So that's, I think those are some fun ones. But like I said, there's so many, I have just a lot of fun in a lot of these little fun challenger things. I'm real pain in the ass on these things, too. It's fun. Who's been a creative mentor of yours over the years? or you don't have to pick one, but who have you looked up to?

39:23Jim Stengel:Who's helped you? It's interesting. I've talked to a bunch of folks throughout the industry and whatnot. One of my first bosses at PepsiCo, this guy, John Galloway, I don't know if you met him. He was the guy who hired me at PepsiCo when I was his intern and came back full time. And he thought very similar to me and liked to go big and take a lot of big swings, which was really great. I think since then, there's always a lot of stuff. You know, I geek out at a lot of the work in the industry and, you know, and I know we've talked with folks like, you know, whether it's fur and the stuff that he was doing at Burger King.

39:55And now I know he's going to have a lot of fun. And I've catch up with him every so often. A lot of other CMOs that we're just stay connected. There's a lot of these now group chats through like Nadine Dietz and, you know, a lot of the other organizations out there that just it's great to just stay connected and have such a tight community, even a place here like Cannes where you get to talk shop and celebrate the wins. and everyone's very supportive of each other, which is great.

40:20Jim Stengel:How do you ensure creativity is truly valued in the culture? I mean, you talk about that, you live it, right? I think you're very visible in how you value creativity, but you want that to, for everyone to understand that, to believe it, to internalize it. So in the marketing community, what's interesting is I've seen in the last five, 10 years, this massive shift as data, data, data, data comes everywhere all around us, which is great that we have all the data. Now we have all the AI and the media people are like, I can sell you this. I can get you this. I'm like, it doesn't matter if you have a shitty idea that you're putting into the media, right?

40:56At the end of the day, it's the good creative that speaks to you is the multiplier. And at the end of the day, it's one of those multipliers on ROI. It's one of those things that gets you to pay attention. And I have this philosophy that you need to start to operate outside the walls of paid media, because I know whenever a TV commercial comes on, I pick up my phone. I know when pre-roll comes on, I hit skip. And so I think what people lose is the sight that there's this creative element of marketing that in a world where CFOs are getting more like tighter lipped on, Hey, what are, what's your, what's the numbers?

41:28Where's the bottom line? As you do more lower funnel opportunities in a lot of industries, the creative is still the guts that behind it. You know, I spoke at the, um, ANAs earlier this year. And I don't know if you saw my talk, but it was really about this idea that brand building is like this idea of pointillism. So you think of painting like little dots over time. And the reality is, is every time you interact with a TV commercial, you see the product in store, someone talks about it at a kid's soccer game, whatever it is, you're getting a dot placed in your brain about that brand. And those dots need to all look and tell a cohesive picture.

42:03If they don't have the right visual identity, positioning, the right tension, the right tone. And over time, the brands like a brand like Heinz that does that very well, where it knows who it is, it has a very strong vis, it has a very consistent point of view. That's where you get to tell that multiplier of the brand value. Coca-Cola, some of these other brands that do that over time, rather than campaign to campaign to campaign. And so that value is really important that people understand that it's not just some fluffy creative thing that actually when you get brand right that's what gives you pricing power that's what gives you more loyalty repeat like that's easy to hire people

42:38Jim Stengel:everything all of it yeah yeah no it's good and the pointillism thing metaphor i mean it's for the company yeah because everybody in the company needs to understand that because everybody carries the brand i've talked about it internally because it's one of those things where like this idea of consistency. So at retail, on e-commerce, you know, on packaging, these are touch points that your brain, as you're seeing these things, again, brands are objects that it's shorthand for your brain to make decisions because you're not going to turn the label around and evaluate every pro and con of everything.

43:10So it's, uh, it's, it's important to get that right.

43:13Jim Stengel:Todd, who's been the most inspiring person in your life? Inspiring person in my life. Oof, just go right there. Um, I'd say my dad, probably on some level. So my dad is a pediatrician. He actually just retired, by the way. You know, I think he carries a joy with him about his profession. Like, he's one of those pediatricians that, like, everyone knows. Everyone in my school went to Dr. Bob, and they knew. And it's like one of those things. And it was one of those things where just to be a pediatrician, you know, working with kids, working with the parents more than the kids. I mean, like I would hear him on call talking, you know, like has such an easy goingness and loving to see like three generations of patients and just seeing that, that joy and just kind of in that.

43:57And that's kind of what I'd say on some level subconsciously, now that I'm talking it out with you, inspired me to probably go into a profession that it's not a job. It's something I want to do and I enjoy doing. And that's very important to me. That's why I went into marketing. That's why I went into sports marketing initiatives. It's why, you know, the type of marketing I want to do is things I really enjoy versus like, you know, just punching numbers in a spreadsheet all day and or doing it. You know, I do build a lot of decks, to be clear, but actually I get some weird level of enjoyment in that, too, to be clear.

44:27But yeah, I think I'd probably say him on some level for that.

44:30Jim Stengel:That's a beautiful story. Yeah. You're a sneakerhead, right? I'll make it later. I am. I am a sneakerhead. So how am I doing today with my sneakers? What do you think? They're okay. They're okay? They're okay, yeah. How about yours? Not for me. Mine are cool. They're Nike. Nike. Yeah, I'm very, so we talk about brands. I'm a very Nike loyal and very much at a young age. I must have probably like Jordan and all the kind of stuff growing up. But I have, you know, I probably have like 100 pairs of shoes. I mean, it's a problem. It's a problem. My wife calls me, you know, like I'm running out of places to put them.

45:01Time for a new house. That's what I say. I say I'm running out of places to put them. I need a bigger closet. She's like, you need to stop buying shoes. That's what you need to do. left brain right brain going on here that's that's fair that's fair yeah my son's a sneakerhead too and he recommended these by the way they're tigers those tigers and they kind of draw on the 80s tennis yeah i was gonna say they they look like yeah like the stan smith the low cut kind of things those are cool yeah so anyway i like that and they they've got a good can vibe too the kind

45:28Jim Stengel:of thank you todd you're warming up to them i'm warming up to them i was just i'm sorry about a very negative reaction i'm a what you see is what you get kind of guy it's okay it's all good it's all good. This was so good. Did you have fun with this, this interview? Anything we not talk about that we should have? No, I mean, like I said, I'm happy to, anytime, Jim, whenever you want to chat, I'm always happy to. And I just, I love the work you're doing and just embarrass you a little bit and just congratulations on your, your hall of fame induction and a big milestone this year. And I know CMO podcast, this is, you know, it's been a long time running, man.

46:01You've just done such a wonderful job for the community, for marketers. You're even doing the thing here at CanLion later in the week with all the junior marketeers. Back to, you know, on some level, just the level that you give back to this community is just, it's wonderful. So I just want to say thanks for that. Thank you, Todd.

46:16Jim Stengel:We're both team builders. We're both people person. A hundred percent. Oh, thank you, man. It's good. Hey. It was really good. Thank you. Have a great week. That was my conversation with Todd Kaplan. Three takeaways from this one for your business, your brand, and your life. First one, creativity is built on strong fundamentals. Todd reminded us that before you chase the next cultural moment, you have to earn the right to participate. Great brand positioning, meaningful consumer insights, thoughtful design, and consistent execution are what makes creativity effective. The best marketing doesn't skip the fundamentals, it builds on them.

46:48Jim Stengel:Second takeaway, I love this one, marketing is like jazz. That was one of my favorite moments of our conversation. Todd compared great marketing to jazz. You have a strategy and a framework, but you also have to be ready to improvise. When culture presents an opportunity, you can't wait for three rounds of approvals and the perfect brief. Sometimes the biggest ideas come from trusting your instincts, collaborating in the moment, and being willing to move quickly. That's exactly how ideas like the Oscar Mayer Wiener 500 came to life. And third takeaway, great leaders create the conditions for creativity to thrive.

47:22Jim Stengel:Todd isn't just building brands, he's building a culture. Whether it's his philosophy of collaborativity, bringing cross-functional teams together, or reminding marketers why they fell in love with this profession in the first place, He's focused on creating an environment where people can do their best work. Because when people are energized, supported, and having fun, that's when great brands and great ideas are born. That's it for this week's episode of the CMO Podcast. As always, I would be grateful if you shared our show with your friends, along with subscribing and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

47:57Jim Stengel:The CMO Podcast is a Vive Original Production.