Jenny Thielen - Shopper Marketing in 2025

On this episode, we’re joined by Jenny Thielen, CMO at Green Seed North America, and a seasoned CPG marketer who’s spent her career helping food and beverage brands find their footing, grow distribution, and scale sustainably. 

Jenny shares a wealth of insights on what it really takes to win in retail today - from how to de-risk growth and avoid costly pitfalls to how to build true shopper marketing muscle that drives velocity without burning cash. 

We dive into her playbook for helping international brands successfully launch in the U.S., how to tailor both product and messaging for a new consumer base. 

Jenny also breaks down how to approach retail media, what brands are still getting wrong about shopper marketing, and the key lessons she’s learned from Green Seed helping Siggi’s, Quorn, and GoGo squeeZ grow from early-stage to household names.

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 Episode Highlights:
🌱 How Green Seed helps brands de-risk growth
🇺🇸 The playbook for bringing international brands to the U.S.
🥛 Siggi’s, Quorn, and GoGo squeeZ growth stories
💰 When and why Green Seed takes equity
⚠️ The biggest pitfalls Jenny sees emerging brands make
🛍️ What shopper marketing really looks like today
📈 How to think about retail media networks
🔥 Trends and brands Jenny is watching right now

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Table of Contents:

00:00:00 - Intro & Overview
00:47:23 - Green Seed origin story
04:19:08 - Siggi’s growth story
08:01:03 - Quorn growth story
09:55:27 - GoGo Squeez growth story
11:09:28 - When and why Green Seed decides to take equity
13:53:22 - De-risking growth for brands
16:01:25 - One of most common pitfalls Jenny sees brands make
17:14:03 - The playbook for bringing international brands to the U.S.
20:29:21 - Tailoring messaging and recipes for the U.S. consumer
28:54:10 - Expanding beyond the ethnic aisle
30:50:13 - Shopper marketing
34:40:11 - How brands can get shopper marketing wrong today
36:19:13 - Shopper marketing for brands selling $5–10M/yr
39:11:22 - Retail media networks
41:33:00 - Trends and brands Jenny is watching

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Links:

Green Seed North America – https://greenseedna.com
Follow Jenny on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferthielen/
Follow me on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-martin-steinberg/

For help with CPG production design - packaging and label design, product renders, POS assets, retail media assets, quick-turn sales and marketing assets and all the other work that bogs down creative teams - check out KitPrint.

Transcript

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welcome to shelf help Today we're speaking with Jenny Thieland CMO at Green Seed North America sales and marketing accelerator that's helped scale brands like Ziggy's corn go go squeeze yogurt just to name a few into nine figure exits prior to Green Seed our Jenny LED shopper marketing at RX Bar before cofounding an ash leisure brand and had stints as fractional CMO for a variety of orders before coming on board with Green Seed so definitely got a lot of really great experience so really excited to dive into it yeah Jenny first off maybe just for the listeners that that aren't all that familiar with Green Seed maybe just give us kind of a quick lay of the land in terms of origin story behind the company core service offerings that you guys offer to your clients maybe just a few of the brands you guys work with and then we'll go from there absolutely well thank you for the great uh intro Adam awesome to be here I love what you're providing for the CPG community so uh yeah to start Green Seed was started by a guy called David Wilson who had experience bringing different brands into the US market and so yeah I think you know just through his learnings he saw this gap in you know how brands come to the US market and what really you know it is a unique ecosystem especially when you compare it to some other markets out of Europe for example just way more complex way more players and so saw the need to help educate and you know handhold a little bit of other brands through that process and so yeah what what kind of came out of that is basically a scrappy operator LED alternative to hiring what would be otherwise a full in house US team so we guide food and beverage brands from their first doors to scaling and when the timing's right possibly PE or strategic exits just depends on you know what the business's goals are but we're operators first consumer obsessed and we spend money like it's our own Green Seed also has an international network of 11 offices in Europe so we've got kind of this global footprint with over 100 consultants focused on CPG food and beverage and so I think our clients also appreciate that we can kind of look at the US market as both outsiders and insiders meaning we have like folks from overseas on our US team so they know the unknown unknowns and that hide in this market and you know for example in many of our brands home markets there's only a handful of retail players and you primarily will ship everything direct as compared to our US ecosystem with many fragmented players and then we've got a strong team of operators across functions with I think over we we counted it up once like over 100 years of combined CPG the experience so all of that helps scaling brands with that knowledge base and our ability to navigate this challenging market really helps our brands to feel prepared and like they're putting their best foot forward and then our core service offerings so there's a couple ways we help the first way is kind of like a project sprint I guess I would call it which we are opportunity assessments and that's our chance to kind of help you nail your product position your commercial plan and also just you know figure out if there's a fit with our team and your team and then the second way is a kind of a fractional shared service model we've been using this model long before fractional became a buzzword but our clients definitely see value in having that breadth of experience that our team offers that can help you run sales operations shopper marketing analytics pretty much everything you need to to build a successful business without bloating overhead a few of the brands we worked with today we work with a variety of both private family owned brands that you know are looking for sustainable growth to more PE and venture back brands that are aiming for an exit but at any one time we have a pretty tight portfolio of select clients that we know we can deliver for and currently we have beautiful heritage brands like mold and salt that will be 150 years old next year to newer brands that we've incubated and built from scratch in house like Sweet Haven Candy Co that just landed in Costco for the first time this summer has been in sprouts for a little bit now so yeah it really spans the gamut but yeah it's it's definitely a fun space to be in helping brands grow and scale you just kind of dive into a few let's just say like real world examples pretty sure you guys helped Siggy scale into I think I read it was 15,000 or so doors plus a bunch of Starbucks on the way to I think it's about like 300 million or so exitant in 2018 looking at that like first example I'm kind of curious what did Ziggy's look like when you guys started working with them what were some of like the key areas that that green seed helped with and I guess what would you say were the keys to getting to the point where the business was was ready for that nine figure exit for sure yeah so when Green Seed began working with Siggi's I think Siggi had just moved from Iceland to New York City for his MBA and he had kind of found the problem that US yogurts were overly sweet and artificial tasting he definitely wasn't wrong so he kind of just started making Skyr in his apartment with a recipe his mom sent him early days I think he was literally like still riding his bike around Manhattan delivering yogurt to four or five stores when he met the Green Seed team so he was like still selling batches at farmers markets etcetera and so yeah Green Seed came in and was like hey we think you have something here but it's all about you know how do you position it and set the brand up for successful growth because it was a pretty different offering at the time it was kind of you know even pre uh show Bonnie kind of taking over in the Greek yogurt category so the yogurt category at this point in time was still very much ripe for a disruption so Green Seed helped lock in the basics so designing that kind of clean Nordic packaging system that you see uh setting up the co packer and how to manufacture this product at scale outside of Siggy's apartment and then through to like opening up the Whole Foods East region in 2009 and so Siggy also worked with the green seed sales team started selling in the natural channel and getting strong there as well and then I think yeah just locking in that positioning that was all about the simple ingredients not a lot of sugar capitalizing on some of where the consumer trends were heading but products were not yet delivering on the Skyr is also got like this thicker texture the milk is strained four times and it's just this really delightful eating experience so kind of you know educating consumers that this is not your kind of run of the mill yogurt and I think you know then heading into the sustainable growth phase that part was more about keeping spend discipline supporting with smart trade support and there was more like minimal PR and influencer at first but more focused on building a sustainable growth business and building the operating drum beat as well so like getting an SOP process in place getting their order to cash and deduction processes in place which are so many sort of like hidden cost of operating that can really be a lot of pain if you don't have a good process for them um so yeah this is getting the selling engine and the supply to keep pace with that so so eventually distribution did include a a pretty major as you mentioned I think a 2016 Starbucks placement in 7,000 cafes which that in itself using placement as sort of a marketing lever to get that sort of visibility in a situation where there aren't many other yogurt players and then that's just such a huge unlock outside the grocery aisle and so from there the brand really you know scaled even more rapidly becoming pretty much a top growth story in the US yogurt category and yeah eventually Lactalis acquired them in 2,018 so yeah that is um a great kind of piece of green seed lore having that that growth story um personally still love the ciggies brand but yeah a fun one for sure how similar was the that journey to exit with corn yeah that one um so both actually partners of the green seed business David Wilson who I mentioned and Sanjay Pancholi I I think that's actually where they met so Sanjay had come in I think as an operator there or general manager possibly um and they basically kind of just helped identify the right product range for the US market more or less mirroring the way consumers actually ate meat and so at that point in the the meat alt category it was still very much on like the upward swing or even pre that upward swing so corn was one of the first movers there and they focused on you know getting the most differentiated products into market which at the time were kind of chicken based that was a gap in the set and focusing on their unique protein source of the mycoprotein which is high protein high fiber as well as environmentally friendly with a low carbon footprint so that brand you know it was all about identifying the right sales channels to build a strong loyal fan base which began in the natural channel and growing those velocities growing demand so that they could uh eventually focus on launching into more conventional channels as well where it made sense but in the end I think it was you know all about focusing on getting this amazing product into mouths uh in store demoing brand ambassadors explaining the product and also not rushing to scale so measured growth and scaling smartly as those velocities built that makes total sense too last real world example and then we'll dive into some other stuff I think the other one that you had a big played a big part in kind of getting in up in a really scale to an exit as well was I think the name is matine but I know it as like the Gogo squeeze yogurt yes materne yeah I think it's how you say that but I my French is not great but yeah so they materne actually had this product called Pom Pot which is like kind of like basically an applesauce that you see here today but I think you know it came I believe in a pot at first as well and so that even pouch format wasn't really a thing yet in the US market so you know the pom pot I think it just you know David had a hunch that we needed to reposition that brand to really resonate with a US consumer so they LED um kind of everything from the rebrand to the go go squeeze name the packaging design the the format of the squeeze pouch and the go to market plan to again kind of launch that brand in a smart way through the natural channel regionally growing sustainably and yeah that brand really took off I think it was kind of a perfect storm of things just being that on the go format and squeeze pouch that's easy for a kid to eat being a mom of two now myself I definitely favor the pouch format over a lot of other more messy alternatives so yeah that that was also a really great growth story for as well shifting gears a little bit I think from from what I know I'm not sure how much this is part of your world at Ed Green Seed but I'm pretty sure you guys also in certain situations write checks I think anywhere from K up to 2 million I'm curious what brands like situations etcetera typically lead to an equity invest an equity investment along with the the services piece yeah for sure I think it really starts first with just having like a really great highly differentiated product you know I think you see new CPG brands launch every day and to what extent they truly are breakthrough and different and unique it varies but to have the chance to cut through in in our market you really do need something differentiated that solves a really painful pain point for consumers the next thing that we look for is great people just working with people operators who have that passion that drive that kind of X factor and who are just good people to work with and collaborate with some kind of proof of concept in the market as well you know early traction early velocity when something that leads us to believe that there really is something there and scale potential strong unit economics obviously important um as well seeing how you know fully understanding how people react to the product having grit as a founder to learn and iterate and the passion to grow not only a healthy business but help evolve the category I think is something that gets us really excited as well yeah that makes sense just kind of a related question siggies as an example you said you guys started working with him and when he was in his kitchen making yogurt really early on you guys offer you know a lot of value and there's typically cost comes along with value and I imagine you know he didn't have a huge budget back then how does that play into is that a situation where you'll you know forego some service fees up front for maybe equity I'm just kind of maybe that's a more to specific example but in general using CGI's as an example like how does that work when you're getting in with someone that early on that probably doesn't have a huge budget yeah for sure I can't speak specifically to the siggies example just cause that was pre my time but I do know that yeah the founders of our or owners of our business for sure Sanjay and David will kind of take a look at the opportunity and you know work with the brands on a case by case basis like for some yes there will be like equity investment at play and you know any combination of fee retainer or equity I think you know they kind of look at you know each brand is a unique butterfly with unique needs and depending on the potential that they see for it and I think they're flexible on how they structure that for sure yeah that makes sense I'm sure it's a case by case basis largely mm hmm when we spoke a few months ago I think it was maybe like two months ago one thing you mentioned is you said like one of the green seeds main goals is to to de risk growth for brands what are the most common risks to growth that you see or most common ways you see a brand's growth stall at whatever point yeah for sure so I guess to the piece about de risking we kind of like to crawl before we walk before we run um I think this kind of goes to what the initial engagement with green seed would look like too so we have these things I mentioned called opportunity assessments where we really get to know the people really understand what the business objectives are and the growth ambitions of the brand and not just commercially financially but people wise you know what's the business trying to achieve is it family run is are they looking for an exit and that really allows us to build the right plan together and allows us to get a feel and understand how the entrepreneurs think how they work and if we're a fit for them as well so I guess that's risk number one that businesses can face is bringing the wrong people into their business too early or the wrong partner on and to that end we're helping brands not take on that risk uh in house and get burned uh in you know that manner and from there we can help build um you know a strategy and a PNL that is rooted in many many years and many many brand launches of doing this so we really do kind of have the understanding of how much cash it'll take to get a launch nationally done what that means what partners we would need to bring on to help the brand to be successful so I guess yeah just a lot of years of learnings and trial and errors that we can bring to a brand before they ever set foot in our market and from there if there is a mutual fit and an opportunity worth facing many brands will bring on the wider green seed fractional sales marketing and operations teams for help to execute the strategic plan and that in my view is another way that brands can kind of de risk their launches again it's comes down to like bringing on you know the wrong people in house or wrong partners but yeah I think there are a lot of learnings that again we bring to the table to help brands avoid some of the common pitfalls your question on like what is one of the most common pitfalls I think that emerging brands can make I think it's really the biggest one I can think of is getting your distribution ahead of your velocity growth because if you don't build up that demand in a really meaningful way to where you'll feel confident that the poles will happen at every new door and be incremental to your business versus cannibalizing your business that is where things start to slow down you may risk losing shelf space in some of your earlier retailers and so then your run rate you know it will fall accordingly and you may end up sort of close to square one so I think um taking on growth in a measured approach a strategic approach um getting into the right accounts first I think we get this question a lot too is like how is our service different than a broker and not to say there aren't strategic brokers out there I'm sure there are but sometimes we'll hear brands like launching too soon into perhaps a more conventional retailer full chain before they really have the demand and and velocities to back that up and so that can be a lot of dollars and sloughing fees and essentially investment out the window if you really don't have the the right fit to turn those velocities to warrant that distribution one of the big focus is bringing international brands into the the US market over the years just working with them doing this a number of times have you found there's like somewhat of kind of a I don't know let's just say a standard playbook for bringing brands in the US market that works versus things that typically don't work absolutely I mean yeah I honestly I wish there was a standard playbook it would make my job a lot easier but no I'm uh in all seriousness like I think it really does come back to really nailing your fundamentals I think you know even though there's new trends and bells and whistles that come up all the time in this industry new people trying to sell you new tools again it comes back to nailing you know your 4 PS so first and foremost like your product really has to be genuinely delicious delicious craveable repeatable so to that end how can you drive trial in a way that's efficient gets products into the right mouths I think that piece of food and beverage marketing won't you know go away in my opinion being crystal clear about your product positioning and brand point of view it has to be an easy get for emerging brands because you typically don't have a lot of resources time earning that awareness from the consumer is hard to do and so making the most of every interaction with that and consumer is critical the second p you know having a clear and simple pricing architecture that fits with the positioning of your brand and it's growth ambitions by that I mean it's like if you have if you want massive scale if that's your ambition you should price competitively for mass reach or if you're fine owning a smaller but perhaps more profitable niche premium slice of the pie price your product accordingly for promotions you know using these strategically I think it's it can be easy to spend yourself into the ground and especially if you don't have a back office operations team handling your deductions in a really diligent manner but also blanket 0 I's kind of don't tend to deliver profitable growth we tend to want to pulse promotions during particular times of year or just ahead of like the seasonal peaks of your category so that shoppers are looking to buy you you might beat out your competitor in that case layering your marketing tactics during these promotional windows also tends to be the way we see the best velocity lift and sustained velocity lift and then finally place so even using like class of trade or channel as a marketing lever so where you choose to show up or don't where you choose to show up first does say a lot about your brand one example of this that I think one of our former clients stock held Dreamery does very well our launch strategy was actually to kind of go deep in the food service channel in New York City first and show up at all the most iconic bagel joints like Sara's Family Bakery and that was a way they kind of built that street cred and brand ahead of going into retail so I think you know tailoring your your strategy in place to actually help build your brand is another kind of scrappy marketing lever that early brands should definitely be intentional about is there a best way to ask it in terms of the average American consumer versus the average consumers in the other countries that they started in or had been selling in is is there kind of a commonality in terms of the way you position brands for like historically been focusing on the American consumer if that makes sense yeah I you know I wish I could find like a common thread and I I don't know like the American consumer when you put that bucket out there is so diverse and I don't think obviously there is like a one size fits all I would say even we do work with a lot of international brands but we work with a lot of domestic brands as well who are maybe regional and looking to scale so what I really think is important for any emerging brand to remember is like not to be too precious about your brand in early days because you really need to approach with a learning mindset and intellectual curiosity to say like is this working is it landing with my consumer is it an easy get I can't remember where I first heard this phrase or who to credit for it but you know I really like it marketing is sales at scale so I like to imagine myself talking to an individual consumer like understanding deeply their psychological process like their thought process their behaviors in the category um and actually when I was at R X bar I think this was such a part of our culture it was even like part of our on boarding process that everyone had to work in customer service for the first few weeks of their employment no matter the level which I love the whole company was required to work in person demos at least once a quarter so like keeping that voice of the consumer very close in top of mind for everybody in the company I think is so important again especially early days when you're learning what message really resonates with people finding your most scalable why as Doctor James Richardson calls it side note if any entrepreneurs operators haven't read the book Ramping Your Brand yet I highly recommend it it's one of the books I train my team on but you know essentially the most scalable why is the reason that people are most likely to convert and so whether you do that scrappily through your in market activation through in person sampling and taking really good notes on what you're hearing or if you prefer to figure it out behind the scenes through consumer research if you're you know a little bit more precious about your brand and what you put into the world either way it's critical to get this part right before pouring loads of money into your marketing support otherwise you may not see you may see good trial but you may not see the repeat you're hoping for totally um and one example of this I think that we recently worked on is a candy brand called frit out of Germany have you heard of this one I don't think so anyway yeah so it's a really delightful chewy candy genuinely a good product it's kind of like got little notches in the candy so it's terrible like terrible not terrible you can tear pieces apart and chew it and really fun tactile eating experience so that that brand had been in market for a couple of years before you know it wasn't really catching much traction or the eye of retailers I think in large part because the positioning wasn't really landing with US consumers and candy is a very crowded space so if you look at the brand it actually still exists in Europe and it's a very uh successful brand there it's more kind of kid focused a little bit juvenile with fun characters and things but we actually saw the opportunity to sort of completely rebrand the platform and go after a different consumer we are very grateful that the team had kind of let us lead a rebranding effort and everything from consumer research we did some focus groups with millennial moms and Gen Z and ended up um developing a completely new brand platform called Sweet Haven Candy Co that really goes after um this idea of like nostalgic chewy candies of our youth but getting a glow up so it's a cleaner candy made with real fruit juices and pieces and even freeze dried fruit is in there and it genuinely is so delicious like everyone who tries it is like wow I can't believe how good this is and it's natural vegan no high fructose corn syrup no gelatin so that's been a really fun one to work on I think I might have mentioned this already but they just had their first rotation in Costco this summer and you're really getting some traction digitally and on social media as well now so yeah that's been a fun one to start seeing those elements of traction now previously having not had a lot of big wins so I'm not sure if the brand name is for it did they uh huh terms of where they're still selling in Europe is that still remaining the same they only did the rebrand just for the US market as far as I'm aware yeah they they've kept the frit brand um because it's worked in the international markets so if it ain't broke don't fix it but yeah now the new brand is starting to catch some wind here in the US which is really exciting very cool education around products and product names that are local to a brand's country of origin versus kind of like and just making them more relatable to the US consumer I'm kind of curious how you guys think about this from product naming and education standpoint totally I mean the short answer is simpler the better I mean it's again you're fighting for very uh scarce mental availability in consumers mind so the quicker the get usually the better but of course I like my nuance so I'll give you a long answer too I really think it depends on who you're talking to so and also what phase the market is at so like for a more premium price product you might be going after a more high income shopper who has possibly traveled the world a little bit more than the average American they've tasted global flavors and so maybe they do know what gochujang is and you can get away with calling your product Goji Jane and if you're fine with maybe having a more niche audience to start then you can call it Goji Jane if your ambition is to get it a little bit more mass appeal more quickly I would say then maybe that's a case where you would call it chili paste and you know possibly could call it gochujang but have like an explainer line what is that below but again in general for emerging brands will want will advise our brand partners to explain it in its simplest terms so that the American consumer can grasp you know what the product is just from seeing it on shelf because the packaging really is continues to be the most important marketing lever a brand can have in its early arsenal because again with like limited a marketing budget that your first gut reaction to seeing the product on shelf is what's most likely to convert aside from actual naming from an act from the actual it's like a palette of the average US consumer do you I'm not sure how much you guys get in the formulation R&D side of things but do you potentially sometimes recommend these brands actually conform to maybe what the average American consumer palette is versus what they're used to in Europe or Asia or wherever they've been used to selling totally yeah so we actually do conduct some in home usage tests for some of our brand partners especially if there's you know products in the range that maybe we're not sure how they'll go over with US consumers or if we want to figure out like what the hero items in the range should be but yeah actually one example we had earlier this year working with a tea company we found out that like their cinnamon flavor actually just wasn't quite hitting the Mark for US consumers actually and we recommended that they kind of go back and look at potentially adapting that it turns out that US consumers like a really punchy cinnamon flavor kind of like red hot gum if you think of that I personally loved that growing up and their formulation happened to be a little bit more nuanced and balanced and not as in your face so there are certain palette differences that we definitely see and you know recommend sometimes optimizations to to better hit the Mark and expectations of the US consumer for certain brands is there also often a big push to try to avoid your clients brands being styled into some sort of center store aisle and I'm curious if that is one of the goals what have you found works from a pretty common issue we hear from brands especially if they're coming to market through an importer or another route to market where they just don't have a lot of control where they ultimately end up and so they will sort of get relocated to this ethnic or international aisle where the the velocities just don't tend to be quite as high as other parts of the store so to your point um by getting yourself out of that aisle and into the the core set where you belong quote um can help drive growth but that you know it can be a tricky path because the buyer tends to be a different buyer and so it's you know managing that retailer relationship in a delicate manner to say hey we want to actually present to a different buyer move our UPCs out of this aisle can be tricky and and so having a team again who's kind of handled those types of conversations before I think can really help and then also showing to the retailer why you belong in the core set so you know that could require a positioning change if if your brand was really if it was really just a copy paste of your product from your home market that could mean that you need to do some of the positioning work we've been talking about already to better tailor your offering to a US US consumer with more scale potential so really kind of doing your homework and figuring out the the elements of your product and positioning that would resonate better um and then it could mean a new packaging it could mean some new copy on your pack but whatever that the outcome of that I think your brand would just have to be ready to possibly make some changes in order to unlock the growth potential of the US market sure yeah makes sense shifting gears a little bit I know you've you know obviously had a lot of success there when you hear the term shopper marketing and like the funnel fall into the shopper marketing bucket absolutely so I have a pretty broad definition of shopper marketing myself because because to me it means really how of course you have like brand and consumer marketing so you know what does your creative look like and how is that you know emotionally connecting to a consumer but then for shopper marketing to me that means how do you then bring that brand to life across the consumer journey and which touch points are most likely to be you know moments of purchase intent and growing that purchase intent to a critical mass where the conversion finally happens and so you know that's a little bit broad but then in those terms shopper marketing really can be you know spanning from digital so social media or paid touch points obviously all the way down the funnel to in store point of sale signage or floor stand displays of course the whole kind of new world of retail media but in a practical sense then I kind of bucket shopper marketing anything any tactic that is meant to drive sales specifically at a retailer versus more brand or consumer marketing which might have a bit more of a national or Halo sort of intent behind it you've been in this broader shopping and marketing world for quite a while how is it any ways that it's really changed significantly over the past four or five years totally yeah I think you know when I was first coming up in shopper marketing you know Instacart wasn't really a thing yet so I'm dating dating myself now but back then there was sort of this pendulum swing from like into digital so like you know all of the leaders were especially were just like oh my goodness you know now we can have these measurable attributable channels let's pour all of our money into this let's maximize the ROAS but now the digital landscape has kind of changed so much you know there's add an indication on every channel now AI slop permeating a lot of it and I almost feel like there's this consumer you know they're revolting against some of these things and it's funny because me as a marketer I personally love to see ads on my TV on my digital on my social it's a learning opportunity but as it turns out like a lot of my friends and family hate ads and they're like let's skip through them they're just trying to tune them out as hard as possible but I think so what like the world is kind of just is craving authenticity in this moment and so for me that kind of means the pendulum swinging from digital back to physical I'm actually a fan of bringing more in person high impact touch points back into the mix so for example in store demos I think those can be a great way to again learn your target consumer what they're looking for what they're responding to and having sort of that like which part of your story are they having that visceral emotional connection to experiential events can also give you that kind of insight really cool premium brand swag that people actually want to carry and not throw into the trash like these physical manifestations of a brand I think are actually what's getting more attention now and being shared more organically and earning more word of mouth in in social and digital spaces so that sort of brand attraction is actually what's most valuable and coveted I think how do you earn that word of mouth and so I think the more brands can start to think about and reverse engineer that that'll make everyone your marketing dollars just go that much faster you mentioned something along the lines like a brand can throw a lot in a lot of money into shopper marketing but if the product and product and market fit aren't there you're just burning cash so like assuming brands have these two pieces dialed in what are you seeing these days are like the most common ways brands can get shopper marketing wrong or or or misunderstand shopper marketing yeah that's such a good question and I think it might come back to not having a clear understanding of what your objectives actually are so the mistake I see a lot of people make is kind of relying on ROAS as your default KPI maybe and again that that ROIs as a your default KPI I think comes from when you don't have a clear idea of your objectives the problem with ROIs is it's obviously a useful metric to understand efficiency but then I think it always needs a secondary KPI so what's your KPI for effectiveness and for most emerging brands or you know brands with eight to nine figure growth aspirations it will be your new to brand so what percent of your your buyers are new to brand how many absolute new shoppers or customers are you bringing into the brand and what are the customer acquisition cost of that and then not only the the cost but what quality of customer are you acquiring is it a high user is it a light user I think you know looking at a lot of the marketing texts you know how brands grow brands are actually built large brands are built on a lot of light and medium users but again for early stage brands you really need your core heavy users to be your brand advocates that your ambassadors that are gonna go run and tell her whole network their Instagram network their family their friends to help you tell that story and make all of your dollars go farther in an organic capacity so yeah I program looks like for a brand that's doing you know five to 10 million a year in sales yeah for brands like this I think it's about being very targeted and smart about where you spend because to make an impact you know doing blanket programs across across your whole universe may not get you the results and lift and velocity you're looking for so typically I will recommend that brands kind of be very strategic about the accounts they're even targeting so looking at accounts that bigger retailers might um tend to look at as inspiration accounts you know one example of this would be like Wegmans on the East Coast or you know a Gelson's an heirloom central market all of these like higher quality not to say other groceries aren't high quality but more premium shopper where the trends start to emerge getting into those accounts and performing well can be um sort of an early indication indicator of traction for your brand and you know help I have retail case studies that then you can go and sell into additional retailers so focusing your efforts on what I kind of call these tier 1 accounts and putting in a fully loaded shock for marketing plan in those accounts so you know from driving trial doing things like in store demos in a top segment of the stores depending on what your budget can allow but focusing on those highest foot traffic stores where you can get the most return drive the most units moved show up in the spins data as higher velocity and other retailers may start to take notice of that so it's really about being smart and intentional I think about where you're spending and then another lever that I recommend all my emerging brands get into early is a sponsored search so usually through Instacart as the platform just because they are kind of the largest player across most of the key retailers that you can get into early days but this is the best environment in my opinion to kind of test and learn it's lower funnel and closer to conversion so it's easier to tie your dollars of what you're investing to see a positive return um and scale that and then on the back end you'll also get a better idea of your shopper's behavior especially for brands in absence of other data or insights you can just kind of analyze your keywords see which aren't you know driving the most conversions and if you're seeing like a particularly strong influx of shoppers from a certain competitor that can be insightful or you know what other cross category keywords are popping up in your data and might indicate a strong partnership opportunity so yeah I think those types of things figuring out how you can get both qualitative insights from your marketing efforts as well as you know quantitative ROI driving tactics in your toolkit and scaling those early will help you to build your brand in a profitable and smart way is kind of a newer thing being integrated into the overall shopper marketing strategies from your perspective what does this kind of a well rounded strategy look like for a brand that's investing budget here and what should they keep top of mind especially with a lot of the larger retailers their programming tends to be more expensive higher minimums you know 50 to 100 grand per campaign to get met you know attribution and measurement on the back end in some cases and so obviously you know that takes a certain hitting a certain revenue threshold before that makes financial sense it feel like it's kind of a requirement depending on what stage a brand is at at this point yes yes and no I think I'll say because ultimately I think buyers just want to see the velocity on shelf sure and the incremental dollars you're bringing to set and if you're doing that in a really strong way it obviously gives you more leverage to push back if you but um you know the incremental dollars and and uh their category growth is usually what they're incentivized by but increasingly we've seen retailers like Walmart are challenging their suppliers to achieve certain uh digital penetration targets so you know some of the brands I've worked with um were hearing that they wanna drive as much as like 15 18% plus of their businesses on digital when we know that the data shows that for food and Bev in general digital baskets are still around 10% of purchases so it's it's kind of interesting where the retailers are you know pushing brands to essentially help them grow digital pie by getting their shoppers into that ecosystem to that end I think you know the more you can invest and show partnership to your buyer in that area it does help them to lean into your brand so it may make sense to invest in these platforms as long as they're driving a positive return for your business yeah and then if they're not you know bring someone in with the experience in scaling these platforms because there really is you know a lot of untapped growth here and there's no reason those campaigns can't be driving profitable growth for your brand totally cool it's all been really helpful you're obviously such an expert in the CPG world and you guys work with a lot of different brands a lot of different clients I feel like you have a pretty good pulse on what's happening any particular brands or just trends in general in the CPG world that lately you've been really tracking or getting particularly excited about for sure I think this one has been happening for some time at this point but the premiumization opportunities of commodity categories those are always really fun and exciting I think to see how you know brands can come and disrupt the space and especially as like the macro economic environment becomes more challenging for people squeezing their household budgets for food people tend to eat out of the home less however they obviously still want delicious food at home so you know feel like what are ways that people can feel like they're getting a restaurant quality meal at home and how can brands help people make those delicious eating experiences and so I think this is actually a time when premium brands can lean in and invest in trial and educating people just how to elevate their at home cooking we're actually doing that currently with a beautiful brand called Maldon Salt if you've heard of them they're out of the UK but they have these really beautiful large crunchy pyramid shaped sea salt crystals that actually a lot of chefs prefer in their cooking so how do we educate um you know at home cooks on what are some of the best ways to elevate their dishes through changing swapping to a higher quality seasoning and salt it's delicious on everything I personally love it on my avocado toast or steak but I think you know these types of opportunities on how to bring quality and delicious eating experiences at home um is something that I'm really excited about totally I think that makes a lot of sense actually Jenny this has been awesome really appreciate the time what what's the best place for people to follow along with you and then best place for people to follow along with Green Seed North America yeah for sure we're particularly active on LinkedIn I think so you can connect with me I'm Jennifer Thielen or Green Seed Group North America I'm always happy to connect with emerging brands and founders and bounce around ideas so thanks again Adam to you for bringing this community together and having me here today yeah likewise appreciate the time that's coming to the US that has not like the old branding that's still under simplifying tweak or adapt their recipes to yeah LED shopper marketing at Rx Bar what parts of the let's just say that when we chatted a month or two ago what would you say a minimum viable shopper you touch on retail Media Networks