Jess Gaedeke (00:16)
Thank you everybody for joining the Dig In podcast. I'm here today with Khary Campbell, VP Consumer Research and Insights at Comcast. I have been so looking forward to this conversation. Thank you, thank you for being here today.

Khary Campbell (00:27)
Jess, thank you for having me. I've been looking forward to it as well. So happy to finally have a conversation.

Jess Gaedeke (00:32)
Awesome let's do it I want to start with an impromptu question you haven't heard this for me yet but just to get things going and I love with your background I'm excited to hear how you answer this what is an album that you wish you could listen to again but for the very first time.

Khary Campbell (00:45)
Mmm.

very first time it would be a tribe called West Midnight Marauders.

Jess Gaedeke (00:51)
Nice, nice. What did that mean for you? Like, where were you that first time you heard it? Do you remember?

Khary Campbell (00:56)
So first time I heard it, was after school. And this was a time when

I would not eat lunch so I can save my lunch money to go buy the CD. And so, you know, I remember getting my mom to take me to the record store. was a record store called Strawberries in the town I grew up in. And she took me there. She kind of dropped me off at the curb because it wasn't cool to go into the record store with your mother.

Yeah, but I went in there and had my money. I got in. had to wait till I got home to listen to it. ⁓ But from the moment I put it on, just every song straight through. In fact, I was listening to it this weekend. And that's, know, if people who really know me know that's probably my favorite group. And it was first introduced to me from my brother. So me and my my siblings were all four years apart. So I'm the youngest of three.

And my older sibling, my brother, he was a freshman in college and he came back and he gave me one of the cassettes for Christmas, a Tribe Called Quest first album. And since then, it just became a special group to me musically, just through that introduction through my brother and has stuck with me throughout all these years. So if I can go back and hear that again for first time, that would definitely be one of them.

Jess Gaedeke (02:09)
Yeah, that sounds like it'd be super special. That's

us a little bit about your background and where you are now. Kind of walk us through some of your background.

Khary Campbell (02:17)
Yeah, certainly. So I've been in this wonderful industry of research and insights for over 20 years now. It started by chance. It started out a necessity. I joined a focus group because I needed something to help pay my portion of rent when I first graduated from undergrad. And by joining that focus group, I also applied for a job as a phone recruiter and thankfully got the role. And so I started, I always say I started at the entry level of this industry.

and kind of worked my way up through the different levels. so spent some time as a phone recruiter with Schlesinger Associates and then eventually moved into project management, opened up a facility for them in San Francisco. And so spent the first five years or so of my career on the data collection facility side, learning the ins and outs and allow the foundations of my research career.

But on the side, I was always doing things within the music entertainment industry. So doing promotions, helping plan events or execute events. And so with that, I eventually co-founded a multimedia company with myself and a good friend of mine. And we ran that for three years. And so both left our corporate roles and ran that for three years. And we thought that was going to kind of be our future.

And so we both found ourselves in graduate school with the intent of continuing to grow and kind of scale what we're doing from entrepreneurs. But we found ourselves in a place where we able to make a successful exit from that. And so I was in grad school and thinking about what are my next steps going to be. And General Mills reached out to me through a resume book. And I was fortunate enough to land an internship. And that started a 10-year career with General Mills. And so

was able to rotate through a lot of different roles, both in kind of centers of excellence roles, sitting on actual brands, leading cross-functional teams, doing an expat role, lived in Switzerland for a year. So I just had a chance to look at insights and really form a perspective on how to do that from a business. So not just how do you execute research and how do you come up with a research plan.

but how do you look at a business and how do you form relationships with your partners and stakeholders? And how do you make sure insights are leveraged to make better business decisions and drive active? So loved the time there. Then had an opportunity come my way where I spent two years at L'Oreal leading their consumer science team. So was in research innovation for North America. And so that was a very interesting time because I joined three weeks before the pandemic and everyone went into lockdown.

Jess Gaedeke (04:45)
busy.

Khary Campbell (04:45)
As

well as can imagine a truly global international company, having to come in and do all that virtually, it taught me lot of different skills, both from a research standpoint, but also a team leadership standpoint and being integrated. But we had a chance to build some really foundational capabilities and some, I'd say, capabilities for the company. And then Comcast reached out and...

when they present me the opportunity, it was kind of looking back over my career and taking each piece and put together into one role. And so it really did feel like a, you know, a full circle moments because the funny thing that I tell people is if you're to look at where my office is, the building behind me is where my first job was at Schlesinger Associates as a phone recruiter. That's so crazy. It really came full circle.

to the street corner ⁓ of where I started. And I used to wonder, how do you break into a large company like a Comcast? It felt so far away from me. But to come back some odd years later and be in a position to actually be part of that family and that company and help lead the research and insights initiatives and function has been very fun and very inspiring.

It's been a 20 year career. It's spanned several different industries. It's seen several different kind of evolutions and ways of where research and insights can be used for good and can be used for driving business. And it's given me a lot of opportunities to build my leadership skillset as a leader of team, but also a leader in the company.

Jess Gaedeke (06:23)
an amazing full circle story, know, literally, like physically to come back to that place. But but also I love that reflection of how those experiences have shaped who you are now. And something that we want to dig into now is is how not just the diversity across those industries, but maybe the diversity across the capabilities that you have really experienced and been a leader and been part of so.

I'm going to ask you to tell me a story because our listeners really do crave inspiration from other leaders. And I think one of the best ways to inspire

is to tell a story. And you were integral in the development of the virtual reality capabilities at General Mills and really that in context learning embedding that as a capability. So I'd love for you to go back to the beginning of that time. What was the context at the time like?

what inspired this idea of we need to do this in context learning is something we need to develop a capability around.

Khary Campbell (07:12)
Yes, certainly. So really the first impetus of it when I would first join the team, it was called the In-Context Experimentation Team, or we would call it the ICE team for short. But this team really worked on how do we deliver in-context learning meaning. We want to understand what consumers are making decisions and thinking about things in as close to a real world context and environment as possible.

So it wasn't about depending on focus groups or sending out surveys. It was about using concepts or prototypes and getting in the moments when consumers are actually making decisions. So whether it's at the shelf, going in store and having prototypes on shelf, if it was going to a sporting event because you're making a product that's meant to be on the go snacking, we actually go to these different places, create the context or insert ourselves in the context

and get learning from consumers in that standpoint through observation, through conversations, a lot of really cool ways to go about it. So when I first joined the team, somehow a pair of the the early version of like the Google Glass or Google Goggles landed on my desk and someone said, hey, we're cleaning out one of the closets. We had one of these laying around, thought you might be interested in it.

And so I got it, but it was a little bit out of date, but it started me thinking like, what can we do with this? Like there's this free piece of equipment here. It's pretty cool. You know, we're starting to learn about things about virtual reality and augmented reality. What can I do with this? So I started having some conversations, doing a little research on my end. And I started to think about one of the opportunities we had was going into store locations.

Right. So I mentioned we specialize in context learning and a big part of that is we would hand make different prototypes. So the packaging, the product, we would go into a retail location. We put it on shelf. We do things called lemonade stands where we go in for two to three days and look to sell this product. But that required a lot of time and investment in terms of making the product, making the packaging.

So on this team, we had a packaging engineer, Tony Swinson, fantastic guy. But anytime we'd have to come up with a new product or package, him and I think it was Ben was our other packaging engineer. They would design the package. They would go to an on-site studio. They'd have to print everything out, cut it, and they're constructing all these packages by hand. You can imagine when you're doing a lot of innovation work, you want to look at

multiple kind of iterations and so they may be creating four different versions of a concept and have to create enough to stock a shelf space or maybe if you're doing a cereal box you might want to have enough to have You know one or two kind of across and then maybe three or four deep You may go multiple shelves and so it would take a lot of time and effort But also on top of that you need to get buy-in you need to have partnership from your retailers

They did not have to let us into their retail locations. They could have their own promotions going on. They have shoppers coming in. So it's a disruption to them. So we had to rely on their partnership. And then also recognizing where we were, we were in Minneapolis and Minnesota. Only a fraction of the retailers that we work with were located there. There are a lot of different retailers like HEB.

that weren't located in Minneapolis. A lot of them are in Texas. So we're also not getting access to those. You have to go through the logistics of traveling and doing all these things. And so we came up with the idea of what if we can create virtual reality shelf sets of all the different retailers we have and use that for learning with consumers. And so this can cut down on having to create physical product packages.

for every piece of concept or product we want to test. This alleviates a problem having to identify a retailer who had self-space open, was willing to let us in, who had the logistics down, and avoided the need to travel to different states, to different cities, and all the things that come along with that. And it just allowed us to do learning a lot quicker, a lot more efficiently, and to bring consumers in. And so...

We set off on a process to build these virtual shelf sets of all the retailers that we worked with, putting in the different dimensions and putting in the skins. And then we had to create a program and infrastructure that it worked with the virtual reality headsets. So we can come in, our consumers come in, and it's as lifelike as possible. You can pick product off of the shelf. You can turn it around. You can actually put it in a basket. You can actually go to a checkout line.

You had people walking around the store. You had the noises of a supermarket, the checkout noise and things of that nature. So make it as realistic as possible. And it was really a game changer for us being able to do a lot of those upfront kind of that funnel, putting a lot of things in, starting to funnel down and then allowing us to put the next best iteration in front of consumers in live environment.

So it started from a piece of equipment landing on my desk to looking at a problem that we face on a regular basis of getting logistics to work together and making product by hand and saying how can we do this in a more efficient way? How can we leverage technology?

Jess Gaedeke (12:35)
So many logistics were eliminated through that process, right? Just thinking about it, like you said, the physical creation of that product or packaging, the coordination of the retailer. So this is like a massive, I would assume, savings to the organization. How did you generate the conviction that this was the right way to test those things? Because at the time, this was kind of a new thing, right? The ER and AR was a new thing. So how did you build that conviction internally?

Khary Campbell (13:00)
Yeah, so first partnership. And so I had a fantastic partner, Karen Randolph. So she was a senior sales strategy manager. And she saw where the opportunities in Roblox were because being on the sales side, she often held a lot of the retailer relationships and saw a way for this to add value for our retailers. you look at like shopper insights, a lot of shopper insights, at least at a lot of CPGs,

They're set up to help provide learning, insights, and perspective for the retail partners. And so for instance, Kroger, there could be a team that's assigned to Kroger and they want to bring new and differentiated insights and perspective to that retail partner. And so Karen saw this as a way of not only could it help us, but this can be a fantastic way to strengthen the relationship and bring some new insights and learning to our retail partners.

So first, conviction came from finding another partner in the building who saw value and really saying, how can we make this a reality and a possibility? Then it was leveraging what we did day in, day out from a work standpoint, which was a test and learn approach. And so doing things small, having the conversations, and trying things out. You want to start small. You want to do those pilots. And you want to have those proof of concepts.

And then as you go through that, you want to bring more people in. And then you always frame it out in terms of what's the potential value of this. Is it going to be something that's going to help us do work better? Better insights, better work process? Is it going to be faster? Faster speed to insights, faster speed to decisions, faster speed to your next question? Is it going to be more efficient? Is there something in here that can save us costs?

save us time, save us logistics. And so if you can go across that continuum, you may not need to show all three. In a lot of cases, you're not going to be able to show all three. If you can show one to two of those in a meaningful way, you start to get more people that are interested to say, how can I join in on this process? How can I be a supporter? But also, how can I give feedback on this? And so those are things I've found to be very helpful.

in getting conviction and in that process in particular, all those things were very helpful. We certainly had a lot of redirect moments, a lot of let's step back and think about this differently. But it all came with the thought process of how can we get to this place that we believe is going to be better for the team, for the business, better experience for the consumer. So we had a strong and clear purpose and worked our way towards it.

Jess Gaedeke (15:31)
Well, you mentioned the redirects and I don't know what it says about my personality, but I love those kind of, you know, barriers or hiccups or redirects.

was something that didn't go quite as expected and you did need to problem solve? Like where did it not go right?

Khary Campbell (15:46)
I feel like it did not go right in a lot of places, but that was the fun of it, right? I think maybe one of the first things where it did not go right is the program that we're building to run this on our kind of internal programs. It was just a massive amount of information and data and it was running extremely slow. Right? So had a lot of hiccups in it. And what it took was

having a conversation of, all right, what do we think is one of the root cause? Are the things that causing these issues? Is it something that we have decision rights on that we can fix? Do we have to bring other people in? Is this something that can be solved through time, through effort, or maybe through investments and really getting clear and getting an idea on that? And then looking for kind of a solution to work around. And what we found

is that we just need to have a different conversation with our external partner that was helping us build this program and unlock some new options. And so for me, one of the lessons I learned from that is really continue to invest that time upfront to make sure the communication is as clear as possible, that you're kind of briefing or your beginning brief is as detailed as possible and that you're having those kind of check-in cycles that are making sure communication is happening.

and your deliverables are gonna be the things that you're looking for. And so at the end of the day for this particular one, it was a relatively easy fix, but it was one that it took us making sure we're having the right communication on the right things at the right time to work our way through. so whenever you're bringing something new into an organization, especially a larger corporation that's pretty mature and really well processed, there's just a lot of different considerations

in different point of views that can be necessary, but also some that can be distractions. So you also have to get very good at learning how to navigate that appropriately, how to ensure the right people are part of the process and that people are informed in the right way, at the right frequency, in the right tone, and connecting it to why it matters to them or why maybe it doesn't matter for them.

But it was definitely a process that encountered a lot of obstacles and a lot of learning opportunities to figure out how to navigate, how to overcome, how to redirect appropriately.

Jess Gaedeke (18:04)
sounds like a lot of emotional intelligence is baked into successful deployment of that type of program too. So I'm sure you have that in spades. So overall, what's your biggest takeaway from this experience? know, embedding this type of new capability at a company the size of General Mills, it's no small feat. What's your biggest takeaway from it?

Khary Campbell (18:21)
So one of my biggest takeaways is whenever you're going on this type of endeavor, it's first ask yourself, can we do this? And then the next question should be, should we do this? Those are two very different things. And a lot of times something can come along and it's like, can we do this? And the challenge of figuring it out continues to drive something forward. But if not counterbalance or rooted in something, we should do this.

because back to one of earlier points, it's going to provide this benefit, this output, this value system back to the team or to your company. That should be a guiding principle. But to go along with that, I would say it's also asking the question, how might we do this? Because that opens up the world of possibilities and it frames things that you may not have done before. When you're starting up a new program, a new project, a new capability,

If it's truly new, it's something that hasn't been done or attempted or done successfully before. And so you have to ask a different question of how might we do this? Right? That removes roadblocks, that opens up doors. Yeah. Versus when you ask, can we do this? Well, the first thing people go to when you ask, can you do this? They look to the past for examples. And they say, well, we haven't seen it done successfully, so I don't believe I can do it. Or if they haven't spent a lot of time or due diligence,

Thinking on this before, a knee-jerk reaction tends to be, don't think I can do this. It becomes a challenge. But when you say, how might we, it invites creativity.

It invites people to put on their thinking hats. It invites the opportunity to think about things differently. So I think that was a big takeaway from me is framing things in how might we do this, and then being clear on the can we do this versus should we do this.

Jess Gaedeke (20:00)
Yeah, I love that framing. And I think that can we do this? Should we do this? How might we do this? It's just a really helpful framework for people to think through. And it's kind of similar to one of our points of view here at DIG is about how really successful initiatives need to balance some different viewpoints. You need to understand what is the customer or the consumer want? What is the market ready for? And what's the business prepared to actually deliver?

There are some instances where if that consumer need is significant and important enough and the market opportunity is big enough, the business will find a way to deliver. The business will solve problems and remove barriers in order to do that. having that alignment across those three perspectives or voices, we agree, it is just really important. But I love this aspirational vibe to this, how might we? Because that just, you know, it sort of necessitates a problem solving kind of approach. I love that.

Khary Campbell (20:53)
Yeah, and I love what you said about how DIG thinks about things. And when you start thinking about consumers are going to have a need and someone's going to figure out a way how to solve that or meet that need. There's another principle that goes along with it. It's you want to become obsessed with the problem, not obsessed with the solution. Right. And I think

very famous professor from Harvard, Christian Clayton,

I believe it's his principle. It's be problem-assessed, not solution-obsessed. Because when you're focused on just that solution, you're going to figure out a way to make something work, even if it's not the right thing, even if it's not what's needed. You just have so much conviction and belief in it, you want that thing to move forward. Versus if you're focused on how do I focus on this problem and be obsessed with that, that allows a world of possibilities of different solutions.

You have more agility to move on to, right, this didn't work. Let's think about the next one. What did we learn from this? How do we get better? Let's look at the next potential solution. so problems don't go away until the right solution comes along. So focusing on that problem is never going to put you in the wrong direction if you're surrounding with the right principles of how to approach it and how to potentially solve it.

Jess Gaedeke (22:00)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's one of the beautiful things about a really good insights professional is, you know, it's human nature to want to sort of get through the problem and move on to solution because it's uncomfortable in the problem, right? That's where the friction is. That's where the discomfort is. But the people that really marinate in that problem

truly, truly understand it from an empathetic point of view.

They come up with brilliant solutions, right? You can't fast track to a solution until you've really lived and breathed the problem.

Khary Campbell (22:28)
Yeah, very true.

Jess Gaedeke (22:29)
Cool. Well, that's an awesome story. Thank you for telling it. I want to turn now to you as a thought leader in your industry and in your organization. And I know that you have a pretty passionate point of view about the importance of in-person research. In fact, I loved your recent LinkedIn post about this. It really spoke to me and a lot of our colleagues. So tell me about that point of view. Why in the world is that so important and what should people know about it?

Khary Campbell (22:51)
Yeah, so to me, this is something I've believed in for a very long time. And I know it's a point of view shared by many other people. But you need to do learning in a real world environment. Similar to the team I used to lead, the In Context Experiment team, learning in the context of what your consumers are experiencing, what you're dealing with, what they're seeing on a day to day basis. That's a way you build true empathy.

And when you can build that empathy and you can combine it with your knowledge of the business and all the different business variables that you need to own as a business leader, then you can make decisions that are not only going to do a better job of satisfying your business conditions, but they're going to do a better job of meeting the needs of your consumers. And at the end of the day, the businesses we're in, we're here to provide products, provide services,

provide potentially a brand and experience that pleases consumers. Because when you can please a consumer, that's when consumers are going to do business with your company. Right? And so we spend a lot of time in the buildings, kind of in your four walls and your building strategies, your building tactics. You're going to say, how are we going to go to market with this? How can we scale it? How can we improve our margins? All those different things that you need to figure out as a business to keep it running, keep it sustainable and keep it growing.

But all those things, they do not happen unless you have a consumer at the end of those conversations. Provide this product and service or experience too, because they're the ones that are going to pay their hard earned dollars and spend their limited amount of time and energy towards. So you have to do that. And one of the best ways to build that empathy is to do it with consumers in their environments.

Right? And so whether it's going in home, just imagine how powerful that is. Someone's inviting you into their home. That's often a place that we think of it's kind of your sanctuary. That's where you are kind of having your peaceful time or you're having your exciting time, whether it's with family, whether you live by yourself, you know, all those different variations of what home life can look like.

people are inviting you in there and giving you an opportunity to observe and listen and speak with them. And notice I'm saying observe and speak with, not speak to, not learn about, maybe learn with, but you're able to do that in a real environment. And nothing can replace that in my point of view from a research and learning standpoint. I can bring you the best video clip. I can give you the most descriptive kind of

bullet points, can have charts, I can have slides, but it's not going to replace what you actually pick up from being in person and interacting with your consumers.

Jess Gaedeke (25:40)
Yeah.

Yes, I totally agree. And I'm curious, what types of stakeholders internally, which of your cross-functional partners do you see as being critical to getting in home, getting into the lives of consumers? you see it as like senior leadership? Do you see it as product managers? Is it folks that are more on sort of the sales side of things? Like at Comcast, as an example, what are the types of roles that you think are so important to experience that in context, real life learning?

Khary Campbell (26:09)
I say all the above, all the above. We're all in one way, form. The work you're doing, whether or not you interact directly with the consumer or not, the work you're doing is going to play a role in that final interaction we have with the consumer, whether good or bad. In regards to what your role is, we want everyone to work towards that having a good experience for a consumer.

Jess Gaedeke (26:11)
Yeah.

Khary Campbell (26:33)
We want to be on that side of the equation, right? And so the more that you can build in, why does my work or how does my work link to these consumers and link to the things they're looking for and the challenges, the aspirations they have? How can I see my work lead towards that? It makes you that much better and prepared at your job to face the conversations and decisions that we need to make and the strategies that we create.

Right. And so I don't put a ⁓ title or a level in terms of who needs to be there, who shouldn't. I think certainly depending on who the person is and their role and their responsibilities, some might lean heavier than others. And you have to look at kind of the full spectrum of things you need to do and be responsible for. But I cannot think of ⁓ a role and I cannot think of a title or function that should not

have some interaction with consumers in a real life environment.

Jess Gaedeke (27:32)
Yeah, everyone needs that empathy. I think that's a great point of view. So what's your hot take on the future of the telecommunications industry? There is so much going on right now. What do you think's next?

Khary Campbell (27:43)
Yeah, so what I think of Nexen, I don't even know if it's, it goes beyond the teleco industry. I think we're getting ready to see accelerated change in consumer behavior. I think because of a lot of the social political things that are taking place and just, just the current ⁓ events, people are going to be making a lot of different choices and it's going to be a mixture of those kinds of forced choices, things that are maybe out of your control, but you need to respond and react and adjust to.

And then you're going to have the other side of that, those that are a little bit more choiceful, they're a little bit more proactive, they're the things you want to do. I think we're heading into a space, we're going to see a little bit more of the kind of force adjustments in consumer behavior. And I think it's going to accelerate how people are choosing to spend their time, spend their energy, spend their dollars. And so I think every industry needs to be thinking about that and understanding how they can meet consumers where they are and also see a bit into the future and say,

What things can we provide? Can we do? Can we set up to do differently to meet consumers where they're going to be going because of this? And when you can get ahead of the curve just a little bit, you certainly want to focus in the present because you have things happening on a daily basis. But if you can get good at finding ways to understand what's likely around a corner, and you want to have some kind of probability around that, and then you can look at what you provide.

and say, is there a gap or is there a white space of what we provide? Do we need to close that gap? Or is this a white space that actually nobody's thinking about right now, at least that we can tell? And do we think we have a really good chance at being the best provider in this space or this area? We think we have the right to win in this space. And if you can do the work to get slightly ahead of where consumers are.

So by the time they get there, they start making those decisions and you're there to greet them, that's a fantastic situation to find yourself in. So if I look at Teleco in particular, I think a lot of things are working towards a bit of a convergent state. And that's how do you look at the ecosystem of the different products that you have, the different services, and put them together in a way that just creates a new experience for consumers that they can't get.

They just have one product or maybe one service. So it's how do you unlock a new and differentiated experience for them, a new product, ⁓ a new way of doing things they do on a regular basis, but maybe you need to cobble together a couple of things. So I think that's something that you're going to continue to see coming to life in the telco industry.

Jess Gaedeke (30:18)
Yeah. Well, Intelco is in a unique position to be able to offer those bundles, right? It's sort of ⁓ a benefit of all the assets that are usually under one roof. So that's a really good perspective. And I love the point of view about if you can just get slightly ahead of the curve, right? Because right now it might be hard to look five years out, but if you can get 18 months out and you can

that short-term horizon and meet them where they are, it's really good, really good advice for folks.

Khary Campbell (30:44)
And one of the best ways to figure out where that future is going to be is spending time with people, with your consumers in the present. Because that's where you build out your point of reference. So if I go to you, Jess, and I say, the smell of blueberry muffins baking, I can put that on a slide. And you likely have a point of reference somewhere in your life. And you can.

kind of imagine that. But if we're trying to think about things that are in the future, there may not be an existing point of reference. So I can put something, a bullet point on a slide, or I can have a video talking about it, but you may not have the real life point of reference to grab onto that and say, I understand what this means. But if you are in the moments with consumers and kind of learning,

the ways that they're creating solutions on their own. They're creating their own hacks to what they want a solution to look like. They're creating their own recipes of something they want to bake. I may say a new ingredient that you've never experienced in real life, you've never smelled. I can put that on a slide on the bullet point and you're going to be left a little bit confused or you're not going to truly understand what's happening from that standpoint. so again, when we talk about getting ahead of the curve,

To me, a lot of it goes back to spending time in person, in context with consumers, because that's where you build those points of references. And then it becomes much easier down the line than when things are being talked about when they're being discussed. You have that point of reference and you understand why it's so important or you understand why this is such a challenge and why it's so valuable. So getting ahead of the curve, think a lot of it, if not all of it, starts with spending time.

with people, with the humans that we serve, and with your consumers.

Jess Gaedeke (32:32)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I can tell why it's such a passionate point of view of yours, and I'm very glad that you've shared it. And for the record, I completely agree. So we're going to go now to the final dig. This is all about you as a person. And so feel free to just give us the straight truth, just like a consumer or human would out there in the world. What's the last product or service you bought on impulse?

Khary Campbell (32:51)
It was in Whole Foods and it's called Choc Exo. And it's like chocolate peanut butter cups. Well, they're not peanut butter cups, it's chocolate. And the inside is passion fruit. I love passion fruit. love chocolate. There's a lot of things in Whole Foods that's positioned a little bit more healthier of a chocolate. I think it's a dark chocolate. And it was on sale. So it's all right. It's two flavor profiles that I love.

Air it's on sale. I have nothing else to do. I'm kind of walking around the store Let me give it a try and so that was the last Impulse by I did and that was about a week ago

Jess Gaedeke (33:27)
Okay. And are you going to be a repeat purchaser of that product?

Khary Campbell (33:30)
The the the jury's still out on it I think at the sell price is something I would probably buy again at its full price I may not because I am a a old-school kind of chocolate and peanut butter fan and so higher price versus kind of the the tried-and-true chocolate peanut butter That will likely win out in a lot of cases

Jess Gaedeke (33:51)
You have a high bar for that experience and that is totally fair. What's a category or a brand or maybe a specific product that you could rationalize any price point for you just have to have it in your life?

Khary Campbell (34:02)
For me, it's actually experiences. So I wouldn't say it's a particular brand or category. It's experiences and that usually comes down to travel or like concerts. And especially if I'm able to have that experience with other people around me that I care about or I love. And so whether it's a trip or going to a concert with friends and family, those are things I'm usually willing to and able to rationalize.

the price is like this is going to be maybe a once in a lifetime experience or maybe we will have only two other chances at this throughout our lifetime. Let's do this. The other one you can I can usually rationalize myself around is a well tailored suit. I'm usually good at rationalizing that and that goes back to my father often say,

still says as they being cheap winds up being expensive because you just need to keep replacing things repairing things. So if it's something that you need to last invest the money once and then you don't have to worry about it again.

Jess Gaedeke (35:10)
Those are two really good examples for rationalizing a price point for I love those. And ⁓ I've seen some of your suits, at least in some of your,

photographed things I've seen online, just definitely on point. So well

brands have distinct personalities, as we know, what's a brand that you would date and a brand that you would marry and they don't have to be the same brand.

Khary Campbell (35:31)
This is a fun question, fun question. ⁓ Date would be swatch watches. If you remember swatch watches. I remember them growing up. They always came in a lot of different colors and kind of the neons and things of that nature. And they've continued to evolve and have a lot of different designs and styles. But it would probably be date the swatch. It's very fun. It's very...

Jess Gaedeke (35:39)
I do, yeah, yeah.

Khary Campbell (35:55)
can be very trendy. It can be different things you're looking at for different occasions. And then the other one would be Omega would be kind of the Mary brand. So brand a little more steeped in history, higher quality and standards, quality control, craftsmanship. They really focus on taking their time, creating their time pieces, but it's still very much accessible.

And the interesting thing was, they did a collaboration, I think, two years ago now, and it was kind of Swatch times Omega. And so they took a very iconic design of the Omega watch and they did it with a twist of Swatch. And so they changed the materials, they changed some of the colors. And so it's a little bit of best of both worlds. And so it's an interesting thing there. But I think it would be Date Swatch and Mary Omega.

Jess Gaedeke (36:45)
Yeah, and this mashup of your girlfriend and your wife in the same product. mean, wow, they solved it.

Khary Campbell (36:49)
That's pretty cool. girlfriend becomes a wife. Yeah. ⁓

Jess Gaedeke (36:54)
That's awesome. Well, it keeps you inspired at work. You seem like a very inspired professional. I'd love to hear what does it for you.

Khary Campbell (37:00)
Yeah, people, absolutely. My teammates, whether it's my direct team or people I get to interact with day in and day out, people are inspiring because people are different and have different perspectives and different needs and that's very inspiring to me. I'd say the other one is just a good challenge. I like the nebulous things. I don't like things that come to me very well-defined.

I like to say it's just kind of gnarly. This is nebulous. We know there's something here that we can figure out. We're not sure what it is. Those are the fun ones to dive into and see if you can be part of a solution to it. And sometimes a solution is saying this is not the thing we should be doing, but you had to spend some time with it and usually talking through or working through it with people, which I said before inspires me to figure out what that next step is going to be.

And so those are two things that regardless of what's going on, ⁓ people and new challenges are things that continue to inspire me and say, how do I get better at what I do? How do I rethink about the things that I do? And how do I get motivated to bring others along the journey with me? So those are things that inspire me on a daily basis.

Jess Gaedeke (38:19)
Well, I'm glad that you have that inspiration because you do a lot of good for the industry in terms of your point of view on innovation, insights, all the things. So it's been such a pleasure to learn from you today and to hear your story. So thank you so much for joining me.

Khary Campbell (38:32)
Thank you. Pleasure's been mine.