Linda Bethea - Danone 00:00
Great ideas can come from anywhere, but for us, we need to make sure it's very much grounded in the consumer insight. Everything you do as a marketer starts with the consumer and understanding that landscape.
Jackson Carpenter 00:12
Today, I'm speaking with Linda Bethea CMO of Danone, North America, a global leader in dairy, water, baby and medical nutrition products. Linda has more than 25 years of experience in marketing for the food and beverage industry. She most recently served as Vice President of Marketing at Diageo, parent company of Johnny Walker, Guinness, Bailey's Smirnoff and other leading beverages. She also spent 10 years at PepsiCo, where she started as an assistant brand manager and climbed all the way up to senior vice president of marketing. Prior to that, she spent some time at Kraft food services.
00:49
Please make some craft macaroni and cheese.
Jackson Carpenter 00:55
So how do you manage marketing for a company with a huge portfolio of products? How can you improve your influencer marketing strategy? Will weight loss drugs like ozempic reshape the CPG industry? And how can marketers communicate the value of their work to business leaders? Let's find out with Linda buffet. Linda buffet, thanks so much for joining the TOP CMO podcast. Thanks for having me. And for those who aren't familiar, Linda, you are the CMO of Danone North America.
Linda Bethea - Danone 01:28
Yes, that is correct. We are one of the largest B corporations in the world and a top 15 food and beverage company here in the
Jackson Carpenter 01:34
US. Wonderful. Now, I think most of our listeners who have, like ever been to a grocery store are going to be familiar with Danone's products, but for those who may not be familiar with the scope of the company, lay out for us what exactly is it that Danone does? Sure.
Linda Bethea - Danone 01:52
So our mission is to deliver health through food to as many people as possible, and we do that through a very wide portfolio of products that span waters with our Evian flagship brand that most people know. We have a plant based portfolio, including silk plant based beverages and so delicious, dairy free frozen treats. We have an extensive yogurt portfolio with oikos, Activia, lightenfit, Danimals, yo crunch and several more. We have a ready drink coffee portfolio with stoke cold brew, a coffee creamers portfolio, including international delight and a baby food and formula portfolio under happy family. So we really do have products, foods and beverages that span the entire segment of consumer
Jackson Carpenter 02:39
needs enough to keep you busy as a CMO, it sounds like very much. So amazing. Well, I want to hear a little bit more about this B Corp status. I wasn't familiar with that, so share a little bit about that. I'm interested in in exploring it Sure.
Linda Bethea - Danone 02:54
So companies that are certified as B Corporations are committing to using business as a force for good, and our B Corp journey at Danone really started 50 years ago when our then CEO made an infamous speech talking about how our responsibility as a company didn't end at the factory gate, but we had a duty to ensure that we were doing good in the World, and so that really led to our commitments as a company to using business as a force for good, and thinking through in our mission to deliver health through food to as many people as possible. How we do so by having a positive impact on nutrition, health, people and the planet, I
Jackson Carpenter 03:38
think for a lot of our listeners you know, hearing just the scope of what it is you do at Danone and your responsibilities as the top marketer there, it's almost hard to wrap your head around how you go about thinking about strategy for such a big portfolio. And I'd love to get your thoughts on kind of how you wrap your head around having a cohesive strategy for such a varied array of products? Yeah, it's
Linda Bethea - Danone 04:06
a great question, because it is a broad portfolio. But again, for us, it all starts with that mission, and delivering health through food to as many pieces people as possible, and thinking through how each brand in the portfolio plays a role in doing that, because it's not one size fits all. We really start there, and then from there, think about the portfolio strategy, and what is the role of each category and brand. And for each brand, it's going to be different. Some may be leaning more into delivering the health portion of things. We have a number of initiatives looking at reducing the amount of sugar in our products, increasing the amount of protein, making sure we are putting forth the most healthful yogurt portfolio we can we have other brands very much focused on the sustainability aspects of things. On Evian, we've committed to 100% circular packaging by 2025 so we. Really start from that standpoint and think about the role of the brand in the portfolio, in delivering the corporate mission, and then marrying that with the consumer needs to deliver the right brand strategy and positioning that's ultimately going to deliver growth.
Jackson Carpenter 05:14
Now, a number of the spaces that you play in, I'm thinking in particular of like water, RTD, coffee, you know. But really, really the entire portfolio, to some extent, there are differentiators for the products, but they are kind of commodities, right? With a really strong brand that's selling them ultimately. And I'm interested in hearing a little bit about how you differentiate a product in a really crowded space. I've done some work, for example, in RTD coffee, and you go now to the canned coffee aisle in the grocery store and there's this wall of coffees facing you. How do you think about helping individual products stand out in crowded spaces?
Linda Bethea - Danone 05:56
Yeah, we definitely play in crowded, competitive categories, but I don't think any of our brands or products are commodities. We really do focus in on what are those key differentiators, both from a functional and an emotional standpoint, because it's all about delivering those benefits that consumers need. So for example, on oikos yogurt, we are very much focused on delivering high grams of protein per serving in a very delicious, accessible way to meet that consumer need. The marketing campaign to bring that to life is called Stronger. Makes everything better, right? We have the functional benefit of the protein that delivers the strength you need to power through your day. So that's one example of how you're taking the functional point of difference to deliver the emotional benefit that's going to resonate with a specific consumer.
Jackson Carpenter 06:48
I'm curious to hear a little bit about the process that you use as a marketer to kind of come to what the right benefit is to highlight. I imagine that you're approached from time to time from kind of like the product side of the business, saying we've made this great thing now, how do we sell it? Right? Or we see this great business opportunity in this space, and we've not yet developed a product for it, and how do we, how do we kind of find our way to wedge in? What are the frameworks you use to really think about how to find that differentiation in a crowded space? Both
Linda Bethea - Danone 07:20
of those things happen on a very regular basis, and that's the benefit of working for a company with really talented people. Great ideas can come from anywhere, but for us, we need to make sure it's very much grounded in the consumer insight. Everything you do as a marketer starts with the consumer and understanding that landscape going really deep on consumer needs and then mapping your product portfolio accordingly, so that you can identify places that you need to go deeper and build more benefits to meet those consumer needs with existing brands, or white space opportunities where you may have an opportunity to create a new product or a new brand to go after An emerging consumer need. We also do a lot of competitive analysis to see, are there places where maybe our competitors are not delivering against certain needs, where we could then go in and deliver against those?
Jackson Carpenter 08:13
I think that you've got this really interesting background as a CMO, where you've come from, I think most immediately before coming on, on it at Danone, you were at diagio, is that right? The alcoholic spirits brand, and that's another space where you see really like sort of strength of brand and story carrying products. And I'm interested in hearing a little bit about the lessons you learned in that role, some of the campaigns you maybe pursued in that role, and how that's informed the work you're doing now. For Danone,
Linda Bethea - Danone 08:50
yeah, the alcohol category is really interesting, because it's all about inserting your brands into culture. And so the three and a half years I spent there, I was leading the rum portfolio, which included the flagship rum brand, Captain Morgan and rum as a category had fallen out of favor in the US, which had led to a decline on the Captain Morgan business. So it was our job to really right the ship and figure out, how do you drive renewed relevance for rum, and specifically the Captain Morgan rum brand with younger consumers. And so for us, again, it all started with consumer insights and really understanding how younger consumer needs had changed, and we uncovered two key things that led to our turnaround strategy. One, the majority of Captain Morgan consumption was with cola, which has been on the decline in the US for years. And younger consumers weren't drinking cola at all, so they had no clue how to consume Captain Morgan, right? The go to drink is a captain and coke at the bar. If you're not drinking Cola, what do you order? It's not going to be captain so we do really think through our drinks. Strategy and come up with a diversified strategy to go after that younger consumer. The other piece we uncovered is that younger consumers were having more shots occasions, and Captain Morgan rum was not consumed as a shot, versus some of the key competitors that had emerged over the past few years, like fireball, etc. So that led us to partner with our rd team on an entire shots portfolio of innovation to capture that key occasion with the brand. And then once you have those consumer needs and that leads into your strategy, how do you bring that to life in a way that's truly going to be relevant and insert the brand into culture? So we had a lot of fun building the campaigns for Captain Morgan across both the base business and the shots portfolio that did that in a really fun and exciting way. And those were key lessons that I was able to take to Danone, where, arguably, the categories are a little less fun than alcohol, but you still have an opportunity to think about the role of the brand in your consumer's lives, and how do you truly play a relevant role and insert your brand into
Jackson Carpenter 11:07
culture. We had the opportunity as an agency also to do some work with a legacy rum brand, with goslings. And goslings, as you probably know, had created trademarked the Dark and Stormy cocktail in order to move product. And for those who aren't familiar or haven't done work in the alcohol space, the drink strategy is so important. How do you consume this product? And I'm curious, sort of tactically, what what those insights were, and how you how you kind of pivoted from the captain and coke to you mentioned a shot strategy, what kind of was all of the tactical steps that you took in order to right the ship with Captain Morgan?
Linda Bethea - Danone 11:54
Yes, so specifically on the drink strategy, it was really about partnering with our on premise partners right the bars and the restaurants that were going to be the key place to change consumer behavior, so we had to work really closely with them and with our internal bartenders to come up with the right drink strategy and then get that on the menus. Invest heavily in sampling initiatives to get those drinks, you know, liquid on lips to make sure that we were driving the right trial and changing the behavior of that younger consumer. So we actually fun fact, we employ four full time captains that bring Captain Morgan to life, one of whom has been the Captain Morgan for decades and first answered an ad, a help wanted ad in a newspaper. That's how long he's been playing Captain Morgan. And those captains go on the road. That's why we have four of them, in case they're, you know, event conflicts, but they travel to bars and to events, really bringing the captain brand spirit to life, and driving that liquid on lips, on those on premise establishments. And
Jackson Carpenter 13:01
that's something I've heard, you know, kind of over and over again in the alcohol space, is that it's really just essential to get people to try the stuff, right? Get people to try your drink, and then how, how does that insight come across to the work you're doing now with a massive, you know, not an alcohol but a massive kind of CPG portfolio. Does sampling play a role in the work you're you're doing currently?
Linda Bethea - Danone 13:23
It does, but I will say it plays a different role, especially given that I've been here four and a half years. I joined right before covid, and so any of the sampling plans that we had for that year had to pivot to other plans. We are now slowly building sampling back in to our brand plans, but on a brand by brand basis, right? We are fortunate to work in categories where most people have tried a yogurt or a bottled water, right? They know what the product tastes like, they know how to use it. And so we really think about, how do we drive that differentiation I talked about before and communicate the uniqueness of the functional and emotional benefits to our consumers, sometimes that is through sampling. So I'll give an example on that. We recently launched a product called remix across three of our brands, our oikos light and fit and two good yogurts now have remix products, which includes the yogurt cup with a side car filled with mix ins so you can mix it up and remix your snack. There are other yogurt brands on the market that have similar type offerings, but we really want it to come out again against our mission of delivering health through food and deliver a healthier version of that yogurt snack, and so for us, it was absolutely critical to drive trial of that so people can see the healthier option with the oikos, one that has more protein versus the competition, the too good version has less sugar versus the competition, but they are equally, if not more, so to. Delicious. So sampling played a huge role in our launch strategy. We actually just did a partnership with DoorDash, where if you order through DoorDash, you will actually receive a free sample of remix as well. So really thinking about the different ways that we can get that new product into consumers' homes,
Jackson Carpenter 15:18
oikos actually is a interesting brand to talk about. I read a bit about your Super Bowl strategy with huikos, which it seemed was a really intelligent, really smart strategy that paid off well for you. Tell our listeners a little bit about your approach to Super Bowl ads for oikos,
Linda Bethea - Danone 15:40
sure. So when I joined known we were an official sponsor of the NFL, we were the official yogurt of the NFL, but the team, at the time, was spending so much money on the NFL sponsorship that they weren't activating it in a scaled, impactful way. So I exited that sponsorship and took those dollars and found a way to reinvest in a strategy that's going to drive more scale and more impact for us. And so what we call it internally is hacking the Super Bowl. We essentially buy the digital stream versus the linear buy. So that's half the cost. And then we leverage NFL players versus having an official NFL partnership, and so those become the stars of our ad, but also serve as ambassadors on social, feet on the ground at Super Bowl, doing radio row to drive that earned PR we also use them for the experiential activation, on set, on site, doing all of those things so that we're able to generate much more buzz, many more impressions, both paid and earned, than we ever could have through an official partnership. And we're now been doing this. I think we're going into our sixth year of hacking the Super Bowl with oikos, and each year has been bigger and better than before. So stay tuned for Super Bowl 2025 because we have some great plans in the works.
Jackson Carpenter 17:05
And do you have a sense? Is there sort of any way of quantifying how much more impactful that's been for you? Yeah, absolutely
Linda Bethea - Danone 17:11
we, we believe it to know, and that you should measure what you treasure. And so we put very specific KPIs against every marketing program. And our oikos Super Bowl program has been proven to increase sales during and after the Super Bowl tent pole itself, while also driving an increase in brand awareness and key brand attributes. One
Jackson Carpenter 17:34
of the things that you mentioned that I'd love to dive a little bit more into the tactics of there was a time in my career when I was responsible as an in house marketer for an athlete sponsorship strategy, and spent a lot of time, you know, talking to agents, selecting athletes, negotiating sponsorships, etc. And one thing that I'm always curious about is how brands go about picking the right to athletes to maximize value, because, as I'm sure you know, and tell our audience, there are some that you know have just astronomical fees, and they're not going to give you a lot for it. And then there are others who have a great, passionate audience, and they're going to go above and beyond for you, and they're pretty reasonable, right? And this, this is, you know, these same problems are not unique to athletes. It's the same thing you see with kind of any influencer based strategy, right? So I'm curious how you think about that, how you go about picking the right athletes? Do you have, you know, an agency you're working with that you're offloading most of that too. Are you doing the kind of hard work yourself, and how do you think about picking the right folks?
Linda Bethea - Danone 18:43
It's a great question, because I think some companies do it really well, and others not so much. For us, it's very much a complex evaluation process, and it's both an art and a science. And so I'll use the example from last year's Super Bowl with silk almond milk. We knew that we wanted to do the Super Bowl. We knew we wanted to make a big splash, and we knew we would need a celebrity to drive the breakthrough. But to your point, a lot of the celebrities here and drive the breakthrough at Super Bowl are cost prohibitive. They are millions of dollars for a 32nd spot, and you get nothing else. We couldn't afford that, so we definitely had budget constraints. But more than that, we wanted somebody to your point, that was going to go above and beyond and do that, those additional things that would really make a difference for us, beyond Super Bowl, and also somebody that felt authentic to the brand we we really like to work with people that don't feel like paid sponsors, but somebody that you know are actually fans of our brands. And so we do work with an amazing agency called burns entertainment. And so we talked through all of these considerations and ultimately vetted over 50 different options for talent. Star in this and what it ultimately came down to was Jeremy Renner. Fit all of those and more, right? He had the right awareness scores. He fit the profile of, you know, the the family that we were going after with this consumer target, right? He's a dad to a 12 year old daughter. He, as most people know, was one of the most Googled celebrities last year, following his near death accident and his road to recovery, and a key piece of his journey to recovering his health was using silk almond milk in his smoothies every day, so he felt very authentic and natural to what we were trying to do with our Super Bowl spot. And he jumped at the chance to be able to weave his personal story into the brand story. And was so excited to work with us on this that he actually brought his daughter, Ava, on set with him, and she got to star in the commercial as well. So in the top of the Super Bowl commercial, we were able to capture all of this additional content with the two of them on set, where we then had social videos and Tiktok videos and things that felt very natural and authentic, and were able to extend our Super Bowl message in a really big way. And obviously this was his first paid gig post accident, and so that generated more PR than we ever could have hoped for. So all in all, it was a very much a high ROI for a talented celebrity.
21:32
Okay, so here's what I'm thinking. It's a Western but with a sci fi twist. But there's also a film noir plot running in the background, and dinosaurs, because why not? Right? Take the dinosaurs down a little bit. Okay, no dinosaurs, but a little bit of romance is always welcome.
22:07
And zombies, yeah, we have to throw some zombies in there. Your vision, our craft, topthoughtleader.com, I don't know. Can I listen to the first draft again? Back to the show?
Jackson Carpenter 22:24
Certainly, athlete sponsorships are nothing, nothing new in marketing, but increasingly, we're hearing more and more about influencer sponsorships. Does Danone do anything in the influencer space? Yeah,
Linda Bethea - Danone 22:39
we do a lot in the influencer space. I think if you look again, for me, it always goes back to the consumer. But if you look at how younger consumers are consuming media and marketing, there's been a significant shift. They're no longer watching linear TV. They're no longer interested in you know, the typical 30/62, ad featuring the celebrity they want that social content. They want the influencer that they trust. They don't trust big brands talking at them. They trust these people that they follow and listen to on a regular basis. I have a 14 year old daughter, and every new product that she asked me to buy is something she found on Tiktok, and she very much follows a certain set of influencers and trusts them more than she trusts obviously her mother, but also companies and brands. And so as we think about our portfolio, we have certain brands that are going after that younger. Zillennial consumer international delight is a great example. We had a huge focus on recruiting that younger consumer and shifted our media mix to a socially led media strategy with a huge Tiktok buy as well as more influencer led content. And that's been a huge success for us as we've grown household penetration with that younger consumer.
Jackson Carpenter 23:57
Now marketers who are selling a digital product or are selling primarily through E commerce, have a really easy way to measure influencer performance, right? It's like you can, you can look pretty closely at Attribution. How do you think about attribution when frequently the distance between kind of impression and purchase is is separated by by space and medium in such a way that it's it's kind of tough to measure directly. Yeah, again,
Linda Bethea - Danone 24:27
it goes back to setting the right KPIs and ensuring that you're measuring the right thing in each channel with each marketing campaign. So I'll give another example back on silk with an influencer campaign we did called swap it with silk, and it was really about targeting different consumer audiences with celebrity influencers all the way down to micro influencers with key recipes and using silk products in different ways. And we were able to measure the obviously impressions we got through those influencers of that campaign. And. Engagements, but also then, how many shares and things like that were you starting to see? Was there a groundswell of people using now silk more in their smoothies, as a result of seeing how these influencers create those smoothies and those recipes themselves.
Jackson Carpenter 25:15
Now going back to the beginning of your career, you started at PepsiCo. Is that right? Yes,
Linda Bethea - Danone 25:21
I started at Frito Lay in Dallas, Texas as an associate brand manager on Lay's potato chips. You
Jackson Carpenter 25:27
were part of Lay's kind of turnaround. Tell us a little bit about that. Sure.
Linda Bethea - Danone 25:32
So in 2009 lays, our flagship potato chip brand, and one of the you know, market share leaders was really starting to see competition from smaller ankle biters that were launching in that space, private label that was undercutting us on price. And so that was a real competitive challenge. At the same time that we saw a shift in consumer consumption habits, there was a real uptick in health and wellness knowledge and concerns at that time. And so people were consuming salty snacks like Lay's potato chips less because they perceived them to be junk food. And so again, we went back in partnership with our consumer insights team and really dug deep to understand what were some of the barriers to consumption. And they really were around the fact that they thought Lay's was a junk food that wasn't worth paying more for. So on the fewer occasions that they were going to consume potato chips, they would purchase private label or a local brand that they felt meant more to them in their community. And so with those insights, we were able to come up with a strategy that we called Simple ingredients Lay's local and what we did was we highlighted to consumers the fact that Lay's classic potato chips are made with just three simple ingredients, potatoes, oil and salt. And that was mind blowing for most of our consumers, who thought that it was a bag full of junk. But in fact, it wasn't. It was homegrown potatoes, oil and salt. And then we took that one step further, and we built a campaign that showcased the actual farmers that grew the Lay's potatoes all across the US, farmers that lived in your local community and have been growing potatoes for lays for decades, who inherited the farm from their dad, who inherited it from their dad. And so it really brought to life, lays the brand in a new light, and really showed that we were part of the fabric of communities all across America putting out a really simple, high quality product. And that campaign and that strategy led to us being the fastest growing CPG brand in 2010
Jackson Carpenter 27:38
and that's a trend that we've seen, you know, take off across, across the industry, this kind of, you know, local, local ingredients and simple ingredients. I think that's, that's fantastic. That's a great insight. You also were part of the iced tea portfolio. Is that correct? Yes,
Linda Bethea - Danone 27:56
I worked on the Pepsi Lipton Partnership, which is a joint venture between PepsiCo and Unilever across the ICT brands,
Jackson Carpenter 28:03
that is a that is a sector that has gone like RTD, tea and coffee both really have gone, gone absolutely crazy with growth in recent years. If I'm if I'm not mistaken, what what do you think really is at the root of that growth? Again, it all
Linda Bethea - Danone 28:21
goes back to health and wellness concerns. Consumers are reducing their consumption of carbonated soft drinks and looking at what they perceive to be healthier options, bottled water, flavored Seltzer and iced tea. And within the Pepsi Lipton portfolio, we were actually the first company to make an iced tea, a bottled iced tea made from real brewed tea leaves. Prior to the launch of Pure Leaf, all of the bottled iced teas in the market were made from tea powder. And so we were really able to come out with Pure Leaf and talk about the fact that we were made from real brewed tea leaves. Again, those real natural ingredients that people care about, and bring that to life and drive double digit growth year over year. So
Jackson Carpenter 29:05
when you look at this, this trend that's been unfolding over the course of your career towards kind of health and wellness, are there any spaces or sectors it could be, you know, CPG, or it could be, could be broader, that you think are ripe for disruption through a continuation of this trend? Is there anything you look at you think that's gonna that's gonna be totally transformed in another five years? That's
Linda Bethea - Danone 29:29
a great question. I mean, we're always looking at trends, consumer trends, and, you know, societal trends, to see what's going to be disruptive. I think one of the things that's disrupting the right now is the growth of GLP one drugs, right? We're seeing more and more consumers take these drugs for different reasons, and as they become even more accessible outside of the current injectable form, I think that growth will continue and. So based on the research we've done, it's really difficult for consumers taking those to get the nutrients they need in their diets. And so, you know, Danone, as well as I'm sure other companies are looking at, you know, what are the right products, you know, and advice that we can give to help make sure that people are eating the right amount of nutrients and getting the balanced diet they need while on those drugs.
Jackson Carpenter 30:23
And for those who aren't familiar with the term GLP, one drugs are like, like ozempic, we covid, those, those types of weight loss drugs, largely injectable.
30:36
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Jackson Carpenter 31:22
You I'm thinking of an article I read in, I think it was the Wall Street Journal that actually there were, there were some brands whose stocks were diving because they sold, you know, like junk food, and there was worry about people, you know, reducing their consumption because of the how widespread these drugs are. And I think that's a that's a really interesting point. Who do you think outside of the kind of pharma industry are going to be the biggest winners and losers of this, this new trend,
Linda Bethea - Danone 31:57
of the GLP, one trend in particular, or just,
32:00
yes, yeah, yeah. The GLP, one trend in particular. Um, I don't
Linda Bethea - Danone 32:04
know, it's a great question. I think, you know, technology is going to have to play a role. I think text disrupting everything. I actually just it's very top of mind, because I spent a full day last week in an AI immersion. So I think there'll be, you know, some type of tech disruption in that space that we haven't seen yet. And
Jackson Carpenter 32:22
speaking of AI, we talk a lot about this on this show. And you know, I ask everyone some version of the question, what do you think marketers are missing about AI? Like, what do we not understand that we really should understand more broadly? So
Linda Bethea - Danone 32:40
my big takeaway from last week was I'm not using it enough internally to be more efficient, to free up my time and my team's time to work on more strategic creative things. I think all that chatter in the industry has been about how AI can help you optimize your media by build your creative right. And we are using generative AI to help in those areas, for sure. But what people aren't talking about is how it can help you be more efficient and effective in your day to day job, which then enables you to be more strategic and creative in your day to day job. So I think that's the big unlock. I
Jackson Carpenter 33:17
think a lot of the chatter that you hear is around, you know, what's going to happen to the art department? Are we going to are we going to start, you know, having TV spots that are entirely made by AI. And I think you're correct that as it stands right now, a lot of the kind of imagery and especially video being produced by AI, can fall in a sort of Uncanny Valley, where it doesn't look quite right, sometimes, for reasons you can't quite put your finger on, but where AI is having an immediate impact is absolutely as a productivity boost to take care of a lot of those administrative tasks and enable you to spend more time on kind of the really high value, high value creative work. So that's a fantastic insight. I love that we've talked a lot about your successes and some of the things that have worked really well throughout your career, some of the great insights you've built and tremendous experiences you've had. Can you think of any tremendous failures you faced in your career, anything that just didn't work, and what did you learn from it?
Linda Bethea - Danone 34:25
Yeah, I think every marketer's had, you know, the wall of shame, as I call it. You have your wall of fame and your wall of shame, and I think it's really important that you celebrate those failures and learn from them. So I'll give you two examples, one on the innovation side, and one on the campaign side. So early in my career at Frida lay I had the opportunity to work on a team that was really focused on the future of snacking. It was probably one of the most fun assignments I've had in my career. But I think we were a little too ahead of our time, and we weren't mining enough of those consumer insights that I talk about. To really build the strategy and the proposition the right way. And so we had ideated around a line of snacks designed to pair with wine, which is a brilliant idea. And we got to go out to Napa, you know, and learn from some of the best about food pairings and wine pairings. It was wonderful, but the proposition, you know, was a massive failure for a number of different reasons, both from the consumer proposition as well as the PnL and the financials that we built just didn't work within the system. So that was a very fun failure, but learned a lot of lessons from it. And then back to the discussion we were having on Captain Morgan and trying to really shift the drink strategy. We did come up with an alternate drink called the Morgan mule, which, again, was insight based. Made a lot of sense, but as the campaign to launch this came to life, we went off course, and it was a lesson around how to best partner with your creative agency and drive mutual trust and open discussion so that you don't end up on set going, What the hell are we doing? And that's exactly what happened. Is we we had a series of missteps along the way, and nobody on either side was feeling great, but we didn't communicate that to each other, and we got on set, and we produced a film that was horrendous. I was actually embarrassed to go back and present it to our CMO at the time. We ended up having to reshoot it, costing the company, you know, dollars that we didn't want to spend in producing another ad. But, you know, it was a lesson in agency management and partnership and how to really move the creative process forward with trust and insight.
Jackson Carpenter 36:44
And I think you know, on both sides of kind of the agency relationship, everyone's been there at some point. Do you have any takeaways to share from that experience and from your broader experience working with agencies about how best to kind of manage agencies, and more specifically, if things aren't going right, how to how to fix it? Yeah,
Linda Bethea - Danone 37:05
Asian ritzy Relationships are hard. It's one of the hardest parts of the job. And I think what I found works really well is one building that foundation of trust, you really have to be on the same page and trust that you're both working towards the same goal and objective. You can't have the brand team really focused on delivering a business objective and the agency focused on winning a can lion. That's not going to work. For example, I also think in general, bringing the agency in as a partner and really helping them understand your business. They are not just a creative partner. They should be a business partner. The more they understand your consumer, your brand and your financial, business objectives, the better they're going to be able to deliver a campaign that can help you achieve them. I've
Jackson Carpenter 37:55
observed anyway that there's this kind of Gulf for a lot of marketing professionals, where they maybe start out as, you know, creatives, and they're spending all of their time in this kind of really creative headspace, building things. And as they advance their career, they hit a point where in order to continue an upward trajectory, they've got to figure out how to really understand business and how to understand business metrics, how to understand numbers, how to speak to a CFO or a CEO. And a lot of marketers can never, kind of clear that that that gap. Do you have any advice for a marketer who's trying to take that next step in their career and trying to really learn to understand and communicate the business side of what they do.
Linda Bethea - Danone 38:47
It's absolutely critical. I talk to our CFO on a near daily basis. It's one of the most important stakeholders I have as a CMO. And I think my training at Frito Lay really set me up for success as an ABM, there you are focused on not just learning marketing, but learning the business. They call it, knowing the business cold. And so that's my advice to every marketer, is know the business cold, know the figures, as well as your finance partner. I spent days and nights with my finance partners really going through every line item, the PnL, to make sure that I understood it. Yes, I was the marketer. I was responsible for the A and P line item. But you have to understand how that works with every other line item as well if you want to succeed as a marketer in business and
Jackson Carpenter 39:37
for a person who maybe you know, doesn't have a company culture that really stresses that, or maybe a person who doesn't have an MBA and probably isn't going to go back and get one, do you have any recommendations for how they can start honing those skills on their own?
Linda Bethea - Danone 39:54
Yeah. I mean, seek out those finance people in your company, right? Ask the questions you know. Lot of people are looking for a mentor two or three levels up in their function. Seek cross functional mentors. Take an assignment, a lateral assignment in another function. The most I've ever learned in my career was when I took a year long rotation into the field sales organization at Frito Lay I knew that's not what I wanted to do for my career, but I learned more in that one year than my prior six combined. So seek out those roles, seek out those mentors, and really dig into the areas that you don't know and learn as much as you can.
Jackson Carpenter 40:30
You know, I had a conversation with the CMO of Asana, actually, recently, and she talked a lot about how important her experience with sales was to her marketing. And she talked about how kind of anytime they're developing new sales assets, she likes to go and sit and actually give presentations or watch the sales team present. And I'm curious, you know what it is you think that marketers can really learn from sales teams and from sales experience, because I'm a big advocate of that as well. I also have a sales background. Yeah,
Linda Bethea - Danone 41:06
I think what was eye opening for me in that year I spent in the failed sales organization was how hard it is sometimes to sell our products or our campaigns into the customer. And it really shifted my mindset, which had been solely focused on the consumer, to thinking about the consumer, the customer, as well as the community. Right at Frito Lay you have 10s of 1000s of field sales professionals that are out there every day on behalf of your brand and product, and so you need all three of those behind what you're trying to do as a marketer or it's not going to work.
Jackson Carpenter 41:42
Linda, how would you feel about a rapid fire round?
Linda Bethea - Danone 41:45
I love rapid fire. Let's
Jackson Carpenter 41:46
do it right on what is the most important trait that a CMO needs to have compassion?
Linda Bethea - Danone 41:52
You need compassion for your consumer, right? I think a lot of times we forget that we are not the consumer, and so really put yourself in their shoes and have compassion and empathy for who they are, and also have compassion for your team. Most CMOs are leading really large teams and working across very large cross functional teams. And so bringing that level of compassion empathy to your job on a daily basis will really help you as a leader, if you
Jackson Carpenter 42:19
could market for any brand other than Danone. What would it be? So
Linda Bethea - Danone 42:23
I grew up in Massachusetts, and I'm a die hard Dunkin Donuts girl. Good
Jackson Carpenter 42:27
answer. Speaking of businesses that ozempic might, might hurt. Gotta, gotta help. Help Dunkin hold back against the tide. What is your favorite marketing book?
42:39
Ooh,
Linda Bethea - Danone 42:40
my favorite marketing book. I have a whole bookshelf in the other room. I'll have to give a plug to my friend Gary V because I think his books are actually very digestible, very easy, quick reads. He's written I think now five or six, kind of pioneered the ones on social media marketing, but some others as well. So I'll give him
43:03
a shout out. Jab, Jab, Jab, Right
Linda Bethea - Danone 43:05
Hook was That was his first one. Yes, I have a signed copy, the
Jackson Carpenter 43:09
first marketing hook I ever, I ever purchased. So, yeah, that's a good, good recommendation. Where, outside of marketing, do you look for inspiration, everywhere,
Linda Bethea - Danone 43:18
other than compassion, I think the other quality you need as a marketer is curiosity. You can find inspiration anywhere. You need to always be curious and asking questions, right? Everyone you meet is the source of ideas and inspiration every story you go into. I mean, I love just to be wandering around stores on every trip I take in another state or another country, you know, going to the local markets and just getting inspiration that way.
Jackson Carpenter 43:45
What's your favorite marketing campaign of all time? One that I've done, or one that I haven't any any marketing campaign?
Linda Bethea - Danone 43:51
I would say the ones I've done, it was definitely the Lay's local one. I'm Brian kershaman. I'm a fifth generation California potato farmer.
43:59
My dad started growing forles in 1974
Linda Bethea - Danone 44:04
not just because of the business results, but it was just such a fantastic campaign to work on that really touched everyone at the company again, from the growers to the people that made the potato chips to the people that were selling them in the stores every day. It was a really great experience.
Jackson Carpenter 44:20
What is your favorite junk food?
Linda Bethea - Danone 44:22
Oh, so many. My daughter and I have a huge sweet tooth. We love to bake. So we do a lot of from scratch baking. But otherwise, I would say ice cream. We are big ice cream fans. Good
Jackson Carpenter 44:35
answer. Is there anything we didn't discuss that we should have? I
Linda Bethea - Danone 44:37
would say the other thing. I mean, obviously, hopefully you can tell I love my job. I think I have one of the best jobs in the world as a CMO of an amazing brand portfolio. But more important than my job as a CMO is my role as a mother to my 14 year old daughter. And so that's the advice that I give to people that I mentor, or people that I talk to through these channels. Is, you know. Know, bring your whole self to work, whether you're a parent or a sibling or a friend, a dog, mom, right? Like all of that matters is going to make you a better, more engaged employee, and we need companies and corporations to value that. So that's part of my personal platform is just normalizing those things in the office and bringing your whole self to work.
Jackson Carpenter 45:22
That's a great note to end on. Linda, thank you so much for coming on top. CMO,
Linda Bethea - Danone 45:26
thanks for having me.
45:30
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