Linda Lee - Campbell's 00:00
I often say your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness. And it's that challenge that natural tension that comes in modernizing iconic brands. That's exactly why I'm here at Campbell's. And what attracted me.
Ben Kaplan 00:13
This is the podcast where we go around the globe to interview marketing leaders for the world's biggest brands, fastest growing companies and most disruptive startups, re ideas packaged a certain way want to spread, they want to be told to someone else's simple, surprising and significant data to unlocking viral creativity is to make it rapidly scalable. This is TOP CMO with me, Ben Kaplan. Today I'm speaking with Linda Lee, CMO at Campbell's The US consumer packaged foods giant Did someone say? Good? Good. Campbell's Of course. With a special focus on its meals and beverages division. Linda oversees marketing for not only the iconic red and white branded soup, but also other highly visible and well known brands like V eight prego, pasta sauce, Pacific foods and chunky. Previously, Linda how Chief Marketing Officer roles at Stonyfield farm and chef's cut real jerky. And her experience in the food and beverage space also includes launching the good things brand, driving a total business turnaround for Triscuit crackers, and even launching the GM category in China. So how does one approach reinvigorating and refreshing a classic brand like Campbell's in the dynamic, fast paced, and post pandemic world of today? What kind of consumer insights and innovative strategies are required to keep such an iconic brand relevant, especially with younger consumers that are suddenly cooking more often? Let's find out with Linda Lee. Linda, one of the things that I know is top of mind, I think it's a good starting point when you have an iconic brand like Campbell's is, how do you modernize it? How do you make it relevant because you have a lot of brand equity. But that's also brand history that positions you maybe pigeonholes you in a certain way. And I know from talking to you that a lot changed the pandemic too, with suddenly making certain audiences that maybe were harder to get at more accessible. So how are you thinking about modernizing and iconic brand, but leveraging all of the assets that obviously it has, including many ways in iconic look of a can as well?
Linda Lee - Campbell's 02:24
Well, like you said, it is absolutely a strength of the brands here at Campbell's. But I often say your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness. And it's that challenge, that natural tension that comes in modernizing iconic brands. That's exactly why I'm here at Campbell's, and what attracted me to join a great, great opportunity. So how we think about modernization. To me, it's actually quite simplistic in the way of for legacy brands to even be considered have that legacy. There's absolutely every legacy or iconic brand has a magic within it that has lasted through the test of time. That is where humans and in this case Americans make a very strong connection to and so step one is understanding that truth and understanding what that magic is and ensuring that in those modernization efforts to never ever walk away from that.
Ben Kaplan 03:36
What are those for Campbell's that, you know, like this is part of the magic, we don't mess with this.
Linda Lee - Campbell's 03:39
Pick the pieces that we don't mess with with certainly be the visual equities of the brand. We know that red and white. That color combination is very much it is what makes it iconic in some ways, in certainly in our single biggest touchpoint with our consumers. And we know that there is the equity of comfort, the role that we play in consumers lives. That is That is who we are. And we celebrate and make sure that that's part of that magic. That remains is it's what people value, kind of our value proposition to our consumers is bringing that comfort.
Ben Kaplan 04:24
You talked about, you know, the color scheme, we talked about the comfort, are there certain product differences, product lines, where we're conservative here, and we're risk takers here or here's how we push the envelope or here's how we innovate. But do you do it on tomato soup? Or do you do it on something else? I was curious if a can vary if there's certain products that are considered foundational that you're less likely to do
Linda Lee - Campbell's 04:48
funny enough. When we look at our product portfolio, we actually have icons, we have four flavors that are named as the icons and that would be Eat chicken noodle soup, tomato soup, cream of chicken and cream of mushroom. So those for no question you know they are we treat them with kid gloves in that sense. And we have a lot of other flavors. And that is where what we have found is we actually have some aspiring icons that, in fact, I think we've neglected a bit or didn't realize we had some feature stars feature icons within our portfolio that over the last two years, we've been consciously building awareness around them driving some activation, some new recipes around like cheddar cheese, and French onion soup. So there's actually a couple of emerging aspiring icons, I see, well,
Ben Kaplan 05:49
a lot of this, I think new opportunities emerge. Because if you're providing comfort, and you're providing at the scale that Campbell's does big societal changes, shifts, change in behavior, create opportunities, or challenges. And certainly, in this era, after the pandemic, what happened during the pandemic, and we've chatted about it before is that, you know, lots of younger audiences came in because they're just like cooking, more eating at home. And it's a chance to the pie aware of Campbell's brand, but maybe they weren't like personal users, or maybe their parents gave them a Campbell's soup or a different package meal. This was a real opportunity. So how did the pandemic play into that, and also, you know, you're still a CPG company. So you still gotta like, have products in the right channel at the right place at the right time on the shelf that the consumer is gonna get, or a virtual shelf and Instacart? How did all of that impact modernization and how you thought about it was an accelerant?
Linda Lee - Campbell's 06:45
Absolutely. And I think the first piece is that the strategy was in place, had we not had the strategy of modernization in place, we would probably react at slower to that rapid change that we all experience together,
Ben Kaplan 07:02
meaning that you were already in the mindset of change. We're changing, we're evolving, and we want to do this quickly. So if a bunch of disruption comes, you don't have to change your mindset mindset is set the specific change,
Linda Lee - Campbell's 07:15
right? Okay, the base activities such as, as part of the modernization journey, one of the big things was the food, you know, what consumers find acceptable the expectations of what makes a healthy food, we had opportunities to make those modifications to improve to upgrade our food and those tick time. And even at the time of the pandemic, we had completed those efforts. And so the food was in a much better place, we also had in place, the new campaign, a very different campaign that had begun to, to come into the marketplace that season, we call so that fall, and winter, we had a new campaign that was resonating with consumers. And so those are just couple of the examples of what we already had underway. When then the pandemic came, and we were ready, you know, we were all ready, like you said, planning for that transformation, that change. And but it's not just the desire, but having some of the goods, the wares or tools in doing so. But then with that influx of occasions, that influx of need that influx of younger consumers, what it did was, we needed to quickly respond to that and do even more. And that was the acceleration. When it first happened, we actually paused all of our marketing, this is like
Ben Kaplan 08:53
spring 2020. Were you doing this or fall to
Linda Lee - Campbell's 08:56
spring 2020? Okay, it was probably late spring, early summer became clear that this is not just a blip. We paused all of our advertising, because that if you kind of put your mind back into that timeframe, let's be honest, we're all scared that yeah, there was this unknown newness. And so we wanted in there was a lot of sadness, a lot of, you know, News That was very real. And so we paused and said, No, we should not be advertising for the sake of advertising. And our new filter became, we're only going to do things that provide comfort or utility to our consumers, because that is what they need in this moment. And that clarity of how we show up that's actually pulled through beyond, you know, that initial period and it gave us a lot of, it's almost like a bit of an internal rally of and challenge in some ways of what can we do more to provide that comfort and utility that consumers are seeking
Ben Kaplan 09:59
what is an example of something derived from comfort and utility that maybe you prioritize or put a greater emphasis on now that before you would have just done the TV spot or something like that, what would be an example of that? Well,
Linda Lee - Campbell's 10:12
I would say an example, in this particular moment that was different than two years ago, that was different than even a year ago. So even in this period of change, is there's no question the inflation, the stretch wallets that many, many Americans are experiencing, right, this moment, we have quickly pivoted and said, Noah, we're going to talk about in provide the solutions of how do you stretch your meals had a stretch what you have, and we have a new program out there called made to stretch. And so that's an example of being very much here. And now what are those needs? What brands do we have in our portfolio, not even just limited to the iconic, condensed Su, but also we have prego, we've got PE salsa, you know, we have many brands in there that really can provide the solutions to what people need today, which is a good meal. That's comforting, that's delicious, that the family loves. But it's also going to stretch their dollar stretch their wallet,
Ben Kaplan 11:22
I see. So being more of like, more upfront about the value proposition and not just even of an individual product, but a portfolio of things that could be put together to one way. Got it. And how do you what are you seeing now so that we kind of, you know, 2020, pause, you kind of refocus things you were already modernizing. There is this sense, in a number of industries, a lot of CMOS, I talked to her just businesses of do we want to revert back to the mean, so all this stuff with pandemic sort of happened, and then now we're out of a pandemic, and we just kind of revert back. But there's, as you pointed out, economic challenges and inflation, and we're not sure, are we in a recession? Are we not in a recession, all of that to the gains that you made? You know, particularly with younger audiences? How do you sort of sustain them and not just have it go away? Just as fast as it came?
Linda Lee - Campbell's 12:13
Yeah, I mean, that is the job. And, you know, I smiled when he said, revert back to the mean, there is no mean, okay, to revert back like the I, for me, that is number one of there is no mean to revert back to things have changed. And that doesn't mean though, that they will just naturally continue down the path that they've been in, it is absolutely on to us to continue the growth, as the contexts will continue to evolve. And so what's changed as the Z lives right have have come back. What's changed is, we've talked a lot about already around inflation, tighter wallets, those are real changes that become headwinds kind of post a tailwind period. But what's also changed. And this is why I don't think about it as reverting back to the mean is, what changed is everyone had to learn and become Constable, or more comfortable with cooking, especially the younger generations that you can't take away the fact that that occurred. And that's a skill set. And, you know, an extended period of time of experience that we get to build upon. You know, before the pandemic we had a pillar of growth called Quick scratch cookie in the audience for that was limited because it was against folks who actually cooked at home post pandemic, that pillar has now evolved to inspire to cooking solutions. And I know it's a lot of you know, these these words, we sometimes can spend too much time overthinking then, but it was choice fall in that pack change bracket dicing that Everyone now knows how to cook and everyone is are a possible audience for us. The what, but as lives get busier, having solutions becomes even more important. Cooking isn't just a hobby, for most. It is helped me get to a solution and have lots of choices. I have more skills today. So inspire me, inspire me to want to cook with, you know, with with tables. It also recognizes that those younger consumers are more diverse in their palates in their you know, just what is going to get them excited and how they eat, what that experience looks like. So it's just an example of what's changed. And therefore what are we going to continue to inspire all of the many young consumers that we brought in the last three years.
Ben Kaplan 14:56
to modernize a well known brand, you have to start by under stating the key inputs to its brand equity. Why does this logo or color or appearance represent the brand? Why does a long standing partnership reinforce the brand's goals? Why do consumers come back to the brand? Once you've answered some of these why's, you can find alternative pathways to get there, different platforms, channels, or even messaging approaches that reflect new, more modern sensibilities. But it all starts with the why. What do you bring from your background? I mean, you've had a long career in CPG, consumer packaged goods and food and beverage, what do you bring with you from those other experiences? And I'll just pick a couple. For instance, you were Chief Marketing Officer at Stonyfield farm, a brand that's become more well known as as a yogurt brand. It has a has a portfolio of products in the Campbell’s level of things may be considered a smaller brand, but well known. So what do you take from that experience? Now? What did you learn that helps you in this kind of modernization effort over a bigger portfolio of brands,
Linda Lee - Campbell's 16:08
so much actually, in I would say that about every experience I've had for that particular one, I'd say two things. Within my portfolio, we have Pacific foods, and Pacific foods is our organic brand within the portfolio. And so to have come from had that Stonyfield experience, it made my understanding and appreciation of what's unique with Pacific foods. It just made that seamless and intuitive. of where do we find the synergies of our brands that are fully fully scaled, like Campbell's or prego. But how do we make sure we don't lose what's unique and necessary to be able to continue to grow civic foods, which, you know, there are synergies, but they're also uniquenesses. So that appreciation of big scaled brands with growing GE community brands that are fairy founder, entrepreneurial, mission, purpose led, that's one piece, the other is a little unexpected, and I didn't expect it when I joined stony field, which is I say, even after being in CPG, and, you know, large, kind of world class CPGs. Throughout my career, I thought I understood brain building and marketing, until I showed up at stony field and learned from the founder, Gary for Hirschberg. Learn from him how he built Stonyfield. That is when I realized that modern marketing was actually more like how Stonyfield built its brand. versus, you know, how a tide or Campbell's built its brand, you know, over 100 years ago,
Ben Kaplan 18:05
and what do you mean by that in the sense that because I do know, a natural transition for kind of founder entrepreneur led brands, and we're a global marketing agency. So we've helped all levels of brands and help build, you know, build up brands like harmless harvest, for instance, or something like that to become bigger. The path that a lot of people think about is founder led entrepreneur led, and a certain point it grows enough. And it's like, bring in the marketing professionals that have data insights and understand all this and it kind of graduates to something and then you try to not lose what made it special. See your point, the magic, right? Yeah, okay, it has got to come to be bigger. Now, it's got to be in more places, but don't lose the magic. It's often thought about like that. But you're saying, in some ways, the opposite, which is like, there's a lot to learn from building something up from the bootstraps, and we ought to use it more in sort of professional CPG lands. So what do you mean by that?
Linda Lee - Campbell's 18:57
Absolutely. When you ask me modern marketing, not just marketing, you know, good marketing, world class marketing, it's modern marketing. And what I mean by that simplistically is classic or traditional marketing. When you think paid, owned, earned, paid, is that the center that's what you go and tackle first and then the surrounded with maybe your owned and then earned is on the outer ring,
Ben Kaplan 19:22
you like bring it bring in the PR person at the end? We got this whole campaign, we got this ad campaign we got we're doing all this, like, what can you do to get it out there? You had the very end of the process?
Linda Lee - Campbell's 19:31
Yes. Yes. And when you think about the impact of VR mix, the biggest impact of your mix is from your paid, it's from your large what I call large screen video could be whether it's linear TV, you know, CTV, whatever you want to call it large screen, large screen TVs or large, large screen videos. That's your your workhorse for your plan, and you surround it then by the smaller screens. To then surrounded with some earned in this, you know, mind you this was from 2017, and even kind of five, six years a lots changed that, that vice, you know that at that time, that was very clearly the playbook for a large CPG brand, versus something like a stony field. And in our case, Pacific foods, these brands built, it's not easy building a brand to, you know, $300 million. Plus, that is not an easy thing. And anyone who's been in startup understands that, you know, might be kind of easy getting to 50 million. But going beyond that, and being able to sustain that, that is not an easy feat. And when I think about them, that model, what's at the center is owned, the next rain is earned. And the final grade is paid. It's it's an inversion, it's a different utilization of each piece, and it's by necessity. So when you don't have millions of dollars, or even a million dollars in media spend, you're going to make your own does, is must have. So for small brands, that clarity of who we are, what we bring to the world, what value consumers need and want from us, that's a must have, but then to be able to articulate that in a way that sticky and for others to want to share or to have an experience that sticky. And for others to want to share that has to exist for the earned peace to work, it's magic. And then you get to a size that you can actually afford to put some paid dollars and then amplifies. But I do think that's that's just a very different. It's where does the inspiration of how you show up in the world? Where does it come from? The traditional method is what's my brief to my campaign, very different than Who are we? And how do we share who we are and what we're about to the world?
Ben Kaplan 22:18
Well, I think we often think about it in this manner. And when we may even for a lot of our clients, like even prioritize, earned, then owned, then paid you can talk about when that makes sense or not. But the reason I think there's power in that and 100% agree with you is that it puts a little bit of discipline in that you can't spend your way out of problems. You can't spend your way out of Brad crazy kid is like if I put enough money here, people just gonna see the name. And we're fine. Instead you have to like how do I have something worth saying and then you put paid on top of that if you got a big hammer, then suddenly, this can go everywhere and do really well. So it puts discipline because you got to be really good. And then you be like let me have a big bullhorn that I can just shout this
Linda Lee - Campbell's 23:02
out. Absolutely. And there's different ways to talk about that, right? It's either the repeat is actually more important than the trial, you have to have a recent for people to repeat. Another way to talk about it is in CPG specifically, and I'd say fascinating CPG. The brand is the product, and the product is the brand. That's not necessarily true of luxury. That's not necessarily true. It deep and fake and spirits. in consumer products, though fast moving consumer products, the brand in the product are equally critical. And therefore that product piece it is to me it is part of that owned aspect.
Ben Kaplan 23:43
Sure. And one thing that is interesting and sounds like we were talking about Pacific and we do a lot of work in the organic space to fish, a lot of private label organics for big, big supermarket chains. One thing that's interesting now and just interesting dynamic, and I don't know how you solve this is you have people that come out of pandemic are interested in being healthier, and health has been amplified. And so interest in like organic, but at the same time, budgets are stretched thin. So people want to like I want to be healthier, and maybe spend less or at least not spend more and I'm worried about inflation, everything else. So it's interesting times where it's sort of opened up different avenues and niches of products and opportunities in this space to if you can leverage to your point about the owned or the earned and be relevant with like conflicting tides and winds and other things and how do you think about navigating that where you know maybe traditionally we wouldn't say like yeah, you're gonna go healthy go organic. You expect to spend more now people might expect to spend less.
Linda Lee - Campbell's 24:46
Yeah, I think things like Costco and Trader Joe's it they fight they set that expectation. Now you can get something that is high quality or healthier, has certain attributes, health attributes and not have to pay more for it. And if you take it outside of food, you see it in things like in clothing, you know, you look at an Everlane or in glossier and beauty, you see that macro trend of that shift of consumer expectations? That is absolutely real. And I would say, you know, within our portfolio, it is one that there is choice, you know, people can make choices. We call it, you know, for all wallets, and all I know, pallets, we we make sure we've got that opportunity. But in time, you know, I think the, what we're talking about in terms of where it is, in some ways of things are kind of coming or converging to a mean. Yeah, is that at some point, just it is the e and t and the expectation. I think, in time, some point one could envision that that's potential outcome. But in the meantime, I think having the range of brands that fit all wallets and all pallets is still our current kind of near end strategy.
Ben Kaplan 26:20
In today's fast paced consumer world market research isn't just about conducting lengthy and costly periodic studies. The advent of modern market research tools, has revolutionized and accelerated our access to data. Even smaller companies can now glean invaluable insights about their customers on an ongoing basis in real time. But the real art is not just in having the data. It's about turning that data into a compelling narrative, and quickly enough to act on it. Each data point tells a part of the story, a story about your consumers, their behaviors, their needs, the quicker you can interpret the story and develop action plans based on its insights. Think this month or quarter rather than this year, the more competitive you'll become in the ever changing consumer landscape. One other part of your background, which is interesting to me was you were at a market research firm ipsas Your president global solutions in a quest? How do you incorporate data market research? You know, many CPG companies are famous for having really big insights departments and things like that as well. How does that experience impact you now being actually at a market research firm
Linda Lee - Campbell's 27:34
close in? What I learned in that experience was are kind of expected, or what I'll say is the amount of time it takes to do research to get gain insight from a, you know, let's say a new product, concept test, or product test. What I learned from that experience was it should not take us four weeks, eight weeks, in some cases, it was 12 weeks. That, to me, people just accept as these are norms and therefore. But in that experience, I quickly realized no data is available to us immediately, if not existing in kind of the world already in the digital sphere, already. And so I think resetting even my own expectations of how long it should or should not be taking for us to gain insight. That was one piece. The other is in and I kind of just noted on it as before, you know, the expectation, and a bit of the proprietary knowledge was in your ability to afford to do custom research. And you did that's where big CPGs had a just an advantage and ability to do to get better insights to then develop better products or better communications. When I was at Ipsos became really clear to me No, just through social listening, if you have really, you know, you have good tools and capabilities around social listening, a lot of the questions you have, or desires for insight that you have on consumers behaviors, opportunities, they're already out there. And how do you utilize at that time? Now it was around social listening tools. But today, you see it in AI, you see it in hate data is not a problem. That's not what's proprietary and limited to only a few. What is now going to determine who has a better chance of winning or losing is the speed of which you can actually analyze and make sense of an action. The data that's already out there. How do you have a scrape for that data that's out there without having to commission expensive and big custom research studies?
Ben Kaplan 29:59
I actually did it We have a one of our top data is one of our market research agencies. And I even did a training at Clorox, they have a big insights division on this notion of like rapid fire continuous market research, because there's all this data to draw upon. If things are changing all the time, Does it still make sense to do monolithic study once a year and then update it? Or can we do more continuous things, they get continuous insights. But issue is, to your point, if you're doing continuous things, it's only meaningful if you action on them. So continuous insights means you need continuous action as well. And I think that's where the trend is going. As we start to wrap up, is there any areas where you just feel like the cutting edge, you know, maybe it's marketing channels, maybe it's platforms made something else that like Campbell's needs to be playing more in, I was chatting with the CMO at State Farm iconic insurance brand. And one of the things she was telling me was how they tried to have be a first mover in different channels, different platforms, just because there's a tendency to think of StateFarm as as not being that right, there's a lot of brand equity, what's new, what's hot, what's Campbell's thinking about? That either might surprise people or might be something different than we might otherwise expect? So funding
Linda Lee - Campbell's 31:12
I have two answers to this in the way that I think you're asking the question of what's new, what's hot? What are we, you know, kind of leaning into that would be unexpected. I would say it's the things that we're already doing. And I'll use chunky as the example. You know, chuck in the NFL, long, long, long time, partnership, very embedded into our equity, moving into gaming, moving into Madden, you know, partnering with EA Sports with Twitch, that has been tremendously successful for us. And so we continue to not treat that as just a point in time, let's dabble in that gaming space, but rather, we're continuing to build that out. And so I'm very excited. I feel like we've just only touched on the surface of what's possible, and what's, in some ways, almost necessary in order to remain relevant. And to introduce ourselves for the, you know, the future younger generations of consumers for chunky. So that's an example as I think to, you know, the intent of your question. I smile because on, you know, my other answer is actually maybe also unexpected in a different way, which is, historically ethic, what we're really here at Campbell’s, what we're really good at is measurement. And, and I'm talking about theory and marketing mixes Brand Lift studies, in we're very, very responsible with the short term and long term returns on our investments. But as a result, sometimes of that rigor, there are tactics that are old school that I think have relevancy today, we're probably under utilizing. And it's always great tool for the right job. And a couple of those areas that I've got interested in understanding is radio, Field Marketing, you know, sampling things that you we've always had in our toolkit, but when you're in that high optimization, mode, those are sometimes harder to measure the direct return to but having spent no time at stony field at shoves cat, you know, in that venture startup space, the tools, like the ones I just mentioned, those are the ones that actually have a lot of effectiveness, maybe not necessarily the most efficient, but very effective. Again, right tool for the right job. So that would be kind of my secondary answer things a little bit. They're not necessarily new and cutting edge. But when used properly, can can actually, for us, I think innovate how we're showing up where our brains are showing up?
Ben Kaplan 34:13
Well, in one way, maybe on innovating the traditional model, you talked about how traditionally, it's like paid is at the center, and then maybe owned, and then maybe earn and flipping that on its head another way which I'm interested to get your take on, because when you're sort of, I think use the phrase, soup season and kind of leaning into the sort of timeframe where Campbell's adds a lot of value. Well, the way we're thinking about it is typically when you're building a campaign, which is a little bit more of the paid approach, it's like you're like, who's my target, who's my target audience? What's the message to reach them? And then what is the time that I reach them right person, right message right time? Well, otherwise, I'm interested to get your take on because it seems to see embedded in that notion of soup season is inverting that, which is like maybe it's like, what's the right time? Let's go in with that. because it's soup season, come on, it's Taco Tuesday. It's all of these things, then what's the message that we need to activate that time? And then also, let's make sure we're getting the right person. But maybe, to your point, it's a broader audience. There's more cooks. So do you think about that of it's not always just maybe timing could be the lead, instead of the last consideration in something like a soup season?
Linda Lee - Campbell's 35:23
Absolutely. I mean, we, we may call it six season, but it's actually more than one season. And it is in that time, there is that right time. And so the first bit of that is back to routine and the football season kickoff, that's the fall, that then rolls into the holidays, where transfer about six weeks, which then rolls into what we call winter warm, you know, you get into that January, February timeframe, there's that winter, warm time, you start to come out of that a little depending on where you are in the US when we hit you know, another mini celebration time of Easter. And what we're now working through is if we bring in so many consumers, through the holidays, through that kind of the first half of what I just described, how do we extend that? How do we extend that through more every day meals in? So that's been a bit of the addition is that moment of everyday meals, we certainly participate in that through our Prego and pace. But we believe that condensed absolutely should be in those everyday meals beyond those holidays or the winter windows.
Ben Kaplan 36:39
Is there anything I think that you try to do counter-cyclically To say you have these natural periods? But can we do something like a great example that I often think of is like Amazon Prime Day, when does Amazon Prime Day hit? It happens in July? Why is it happening in July? Well, Amazon is going to drive a lot of purchases during the holiday season. But what about this notion of like Christmas in July, Amazon literally now they copied some Chinese companies to do this, but brought Christmas to July, with Amazon Prime Day to go counter cyclical. So final question on timing. How much do you spend, like we have table stakes, we got to drive things in the holidays, we got to drive things in winter months, and how much time and what advice you have for other CMOS to think the opposite of that to try to do something different? Because there might be an opportunity that you're missing. Because you know, when you think about time, it doesn't always have to be directly what you expect.
Linda Lee - Campbell's 37:31
My personal time if I had to make a quick, you know, how much of my time did I think about the expected seasons? And what are we doing versus the unexpected? The expansion, the growth extension? I would say my personal time is probably 30%. In that holiday, the things that we know are happening and we know we win. How do we do it better each year, I would say probably 30% In that way, maybe less. But honestly, probably less. The majority of the time is in the seasons, the occasions the places that are unexpected that are not planted in the peaks of the of today's consumption. Because that is where we can grow. That would be my estimate a bit of where my headspace is how I spend my time with my teams.
Ben Kaplan 38:25
According to Linda Lee, reinvigorating a classic brand isn't just about keeping up with trends. It's about understanding the evolving needs and desires of consumers, while simultaneously staying true to the core values of your brand. So pay attention to consumers changing lifestyles, see how that overlaps with a modern interpretation of your brand's heritage and take a page from past growing startups who leverage earned and owned media. Just because paid ad spend has traditionally been a driver of food and beverage marketing plans, doesn't mean it has to. We truly understand and empathize with our consumers. We can innovate in ways that honor the past, engage the present, and anticipate the future. For TOP CMO. I'm Ben Kaplan.
39:17
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