Are You Letting Customers Tell Your Story?

Paul Hemingway (00:02) if we were to go after the same media channels that they're going at our minor investments compared to their 45 million dollar investments we're gonna lose the share of voice game right And so we have to be really thoughtful in terms of where we place those investments, right? Ben Ard (00:42) Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Paul. Paul, welcome to the show. Paul Hemingway (00:47) Thanks Ben, great to be here. Ben Ard (00:49) Paul, I'm excited. This is going to be a fun conversation, but before we dive in, let's hear about your background, work history, and let the audience get to know you a little bit. Paul Hemingway (00:57) Yeah, Ben. Wow, it's been a long career in marketing, I think is the short of it. And you and I were talking before you pushed the record button. It's crazy to think that I've been at it for so long. Career-wise, I would put forward I started my professional marketing career. out of Ohio State with a job at Kimberly Clark. So for four years, I was the Huggies brand manager. If you have questions about diapers, I'm happy to be your guy. I transitioned from Kimberly Clark down to Abbott Nutrition. They had just purchased a couple of sports nutrition brands. I'm wearing a football jersey today. You can tell I have a passion for sports. It was just a cool opportunity to work with some brands that I felt like I could live, like lifestyle brands working with NFL athletes, that sort of thing. ⁓ From there, I transitioned across town in Columbus, Ohio to Wendy's headquarters, where they were interested in standing up a breakfast program. For me, it was this magic combination of marketing meets general management, entrepreneurship, you will, setting up a new ⁓ day part platform, thinking about the operations model, the labor model. Like, how are we different than McDonald's across the street? So I there for a while, that transition to time at Coca-Cola. I mean, is there a better spot to... be a marketer, I think is the short of it. at Coca-Cola, I led beverage strategy for Wendy's. So kind of a really unique role where one day I left the office as a Wendy's employee. I returned on the Monday at the Wendy's building as the Coke guy, right? But just a great experience. I moved on to Smucker, so JM Smucker. You would associate them with jams and jellies, but I was leading coffee innovation. So working on brands like Folgers and Dunkin and Cafe Bustello. My family, my wife. they were all in, well, my wife is from Phoenix. My family had all, my parents had retired outside Scottsdale. And so I think Phoenix was just an inevitable part of my path. And so I have older children who went off to Ohio State. They picked the right school. And it was an opportunity for us to say goodbye to the Midwest. Like goodbye Midwest, goodbye gray skies. And we made the move to... Phoenix, well the Phoenix area, five, six years ago. So currently I'm with Lighthouse Foods. They're a company that has been around a long time. I'm sure we'll get into that. We sell refrigerated salad dressing. So we're the number one player in that space. So think about the good stuff that's over by the baby carrots. And we've brought on seven additional retail brands in the last five years. So can speak a little bit to how we've launched Guy Fieri's Flavortown or we've invested in emerging spaces like vegetable based pasta in a brand called Veggie Craft. And it's been great. The company is in Northern Idaho. I'm in Phoenix. So there's a lot of bouncing back and forth and layovers in your neck of the woods, Ben Ard (04:03) I love it. Yeah, you're right. I'm right in between both of those. love it. Paul, I'm excited. This is going to be fun. Your experience is amazing. I mean, like you said, you've gotten to work with some of the best brands and today our focus is going to be on media placement. So you have a long career of understanding this space just to like cover our basis when we're talking media placement that can mean different things to different people. What's your definition of what media placement is for everyone listening? Paul Hemingway (04:29) Yeah, I think for me, media placement is really driven by who you're trying to engage, who you're trying to talk to, and where they're picking up messages, frankly. I mean, that's as simple as it gets. And so when you think about media placement, in today's world, there are a gazillion, a gabillion spots where you can place those messages. And so it's the election of where... where, how do you want to reach your target, essentially. Ben Ard (04:57) I love it. So let's start to get a little tactical. Like you have, like you just said, the full spectrum. You've got all sorts of opportunities for media placement. How do you narrow it down to the best opportunities? What are you looking at? Where do you find those? How do you really focus on that whole segment? Paul Hemingway (05:13) Yeah, I'm a big advocate of thinking before you do. So I think it really does start, a bit of a self-assessment. You've got to look in the mirror as a brand owner, and you've got to define who is our consumer, who do we want our consumer to be, and get to know them. An older consumer. may be influenced by younger consumer habits and practices, but they're different, different preferences. There's different messages to be absorbed. So that's number one, like who am I, who am I targeting? I think you also have to think a little bit about who am I up against, right? Chances are your brand isn't the only brand that is in the consideration set for a consumer. Who else is out there and how are they positioned? And beyond that, as you start thinking about media placement, where are they placing their bets as they try to connect with the consumer? And from that, it drives strategic decisions. Am I targeting the same person that this competitor is targeting? Am I targeting somebody different? Where is that person living and breathing as it relates to picking up content in media placement? And do I frankly have the dollars to compete against the other guys in these different media channels, right? So case in point, we... We're a salad. Our number one brand is Lighthouse salad dressing, Refrigerated salad dressing. It's lower awareness. It's the expensive good stuff that you would find in the produce section of the grocery store. And yeah, and she's probably 65 years old, right? Plus, right. So, so this is a great example, right? So that's our core consumer, Ben. Who do we want? Ben Ard (06:45) ⁓ My mom, think, is exclusive on Lighthouse. It is quality. She's plus. Yep. Yeah, she's in her 70s. Yep. Paul Hemingway (06:58) Well, we want your family, my family, our kids purchasing it and we want them squeezing it on everything. It's not just a salad dressing. It's great on pizza. It's great on french fries. You get the jest. So that's the desire. That's the target and that's the desire. Who are we up against? So if you were to associate ranch dressing with a brand, chances are you're going to say... Ben Ard (07:21) Craft? Am I wrong on that? Hidden Valley, yep. Paul Hemingway (07:23) In Valley Ranch, ⁓ and I mean they're huge, right? They're owned by Clorox, 25 % of the the Market Share Center store and you know I think the latest estimate, they're spending $45 million in marketing and advertising. So all you agencies out there, what a great partner that is throwing dollars at this brand to hold onto their market share. So we have a story that would appeal to a consumer that we're better for all these different reasons. Fresh, premium ingredients. For goodness sakes, we're next to the fresh produce in the grocery store as opposed to sit in their warm center store but you know if we were to go after the same media channels that they're going at our minor investments compared to their 45 million dollar investments we're gonna lose the share of voice game right And so we have to be really thoughtful in terms of where we place those investments, right? If they're going all in on broadcast media during daytime TV, I think as a brand owner or a brand steward, there's an opportunity to say, great, enjoy. You can own the share of voice in that channel and we can be very thoughtful, strategic in terms of where we go. We're going to give you that and we're going to go own Pinterest. We're going to go on podcasts and we're going to go on video games, right? So that we're capturing a majority share of voice at least of that consumer if that consumer is our target consumer. Are you following me on that thinking? Ben Ard (08:56) yeah, I love that. So with that, one of the interesting things about media placement is always measurement. And every media channel has a different way of measuring. When you look at it, I mean, our dream as marketers to say, put X amount of dollars into this media channel and I know I got X amount of dollars out of it, but how do you look at success and failure? How are you measuring? Hey, this is working. This isn't working. Let's invest more here. divest in these other areas, what do you look at? Paul Hemingway (09:25) Yeah, it's tough, right? I think there's a little bit of the old school marketing guy in me, right? So go back in time 25 years ago when I was the brand manager on Huggies. Like marketing in those days, was like find a cute baby, create a TV commercial of baby in diapers rolling around, play it during the Oprah Winfrey show. when know moms pregnant moms are considering their diaper purchases and we're off right You know, fast forward to 2025 and I don't think Oprah is on anymore. Number one, broadcast TV is dying. Streaming is a challenge. You've got multiple platforms of social media. You've got digital opportunities. You've got, you know, alt channels like podcasts, for example, where that you could consider in your in your marketing mix. Not to mention, you know, given my role right now, I'm reliant on the retailer as the access point for a consumer like you, Ben, to actually go buy a lighthouse brand or a Guy Fieri's flavor town brand. So number one, I have to think about the funnel. So at the top of the funnel with the goal being awareness, frankly, I'm looking at some of those old school KPIs. So I'm thinking about reach, frequency. I'm thinking about cost per impression, right? And looking for efficiencies there to get the message out into the wild, right? Bottom of the funnel is easier, right? Because there's this linkage to retail media. So I'm able to place ads with Walmart, place ads with Kroger, and attribute those ads to actual purchases of our product. Instacart is a great platform for us as well. I those three work really, really hard for us. But then that behooves the question, right? Like, ⁓ great. And what about these, I mean, sizable spins top of funnel? I mean, really, it comes then down to Ben considering pre-post measurements and A-B test markets, OK? So let's talk about those individually. So pre post, I would think about KPIs around the attributes of awareness, household penetration, and repeat. And typically we will get that information back in the way of a survey, right? Big campaign for the Super Bowl, we're gonna measure before, and we're gonna understand the uptick afterward, okay? And internally, we can associate certain levels of growth, long-term growth for the brand, when we understand increases in those different buckets. Another way that we think about that is A-B tests. So case in point, we could take a city like Seattle and compare it to a city like Portland. I mean, one could argue that they're different. I would argue that as it relates to our flagship brands, they're the same, right? Higher awareness of our brands in those two cities, salad dressing consumption is consistent. And so when you have, you know, an apples to apples DMA comparison, city to city, I can turn the lights on in one city. I can keep them dark in another. and I can understand the value proposition of my investments in one city versus another. And that tends to be in a world where you're working with executive teams and board of directors, they may not care about the marketing KPIs. They care about sales, sales lift, and profitability. Ben Ard (12:31) Mm. Paul Hemingway (12:50) And so being able to create those case studies either pre post or you know, test market A versus B that really tends to justify the investments that we're that we're making to, I mean, to build both the, you know, the sales opportunity in the near term and the brand livelihood in the long term. Ben Ard (13:11) I love it. Okay. These episodes are short on purpose. We're running out of time. got one final question. I want to like sneak in here. It'll work out. I apologize if this is a minute longer. Everyone listening, when you're looking at media buying opportunities, do you go to each individual platform or market separately? Are you using consolidated tools? What's like the efficient way of finding the best opportunities in the right places in front of the right opportunities? Paul Hemingway (13:18) Let's do it. Yeah, you know, for us, we're not big CPG. We're small becoming medium. And so you got to associate the size of our company with our treasure trove of resources. So we're a lean team. So we frankly have to rely on external partners to help us understand, evaluate, iterate moving forward. So. know, Lighthouse, we place major investments into two brands right now. One is Lighthouse, one is Flavortown. And what we've done is we've brought on two agencies. One is a media buying agency. So we essentially, you know, the exercise is we'll brief what we're trying to achieve. with some insight in terms of what's going on in the categories in which these brands compete. They'll come back with a media mix recommendation, and then it becomes a bit of a collaboration back and forth. Following campaigns, they'll come back with results. They obviously have an agenda in terms of staying our media buying agency and we'll iterate. I think the one thing that we do that may be a bit unique is we also have brought on a third party marketing mix agency. I've worked with them for 20 some odd years and a bunch of nerds working off of spreadsheets and doing that for you know, handful of other CPGs and what we're able to get is recommendations in terms of how we can adjust our mix to drive better results and insight to what the other guys are doing that perhaps could work for us, right? So you're essentially managing a portfolio of media investments to really shift those chips, if you will, to those media squares that are delivering the results that you desire. Ben Ard (15:03) you I love that. That's amazing. Well, Paul, we could go on for hours, but again, we need to get everyone back to their work days. And I really do appreciate the insights for anyone who's listening that wants to reach out and connect with you online. How and where can they find you? Paul Hemingway (15:34) Yeah, let's hit me up on LinkedIn. I'm there. I work for Lighthouse Foods and would be happy to connect. Ben Ard (15:41) Perfect. And we will link to Paul's LinkedIn profile in the show notes below. Paul, thank you for the time and insights today. I really appreciate it. Paul Hemingway (15:47) You got it, Ben. Pleasure.