Jess Gaedeke (00:00)
Okay, everybody, welcome to the Dig In podcast. I am so excited about today's guest because I have someone who is

insights guru, a wine aficionado, a travel enthusiast and a Cheetos merch.

promoter, although I am bummed I don't see it today.

So today

I've got Brodie Dunn, is director strategic insights with PepsiCo Foods North America insights and intelligence. Brodie, thank you so, much for being here. I know that we're gonna have a good conversation today.

Brodie (00:29)
For sure, I'm excited. Let's do this thing.

Jess Gaedeke (00:32)
Let's do it. Okay, well, we're going to get into an impromptu question. You haven't seen this one. Let's just kind of see where you take it here.

is the most enjoyable meal you've ever had in your life?

Brodie (00:41)
I've had a lot of, honestly, I've had a lot of great meals. So I would say the most enjoyable meal I had in my life was when I was taking my Saucy culinary class and I made a, at the end of it, you have to make a soup and I made a BLT soup that was half cream of cost, which is cream of Romaine and cream of tomato. And I had different rules underneath it and you had it.

create the same viscosity. So when you poured it side by side, it was red and green. And then I had bacon crumbles on top and Parmesan cheese down the middle with this beautiful fritter. And so when I brought that home and made that for my family, that was the most enjoyable meal because

Jess Gaedeke (01:14)
⁓ my god.

Brodie (01:21)
just want cooking is love.

And it takes all day to make it. And nobody had ever had cream of costs or cream of lettuce soup before. And it's so good.

Jess Gaedeke (01:29)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brodie (01:31)
And so that with tomato soup, just took it over the top. And it was just such a joyous moment. And when you eat it, you eat it down the middle. So your spoon, half green and half red with the Parmesan and the bacon on it, that's so good.

Jess Gaedeke (01:39)
Sure.

my gosh. Okay,

so how can I invite myself to your house where you recreate that experience? Cause that sounds... Yeah, no, I'm here for it. You know work, absolutely. And my love language is preparing food for others as well.

Brodie (01:51)
You'll be cooking all day with me because I'm not doing it alone anymore.

Jess Gaedeke (02:02)
last night on a casual, it was a Thursday. I did a lemon cake for dessert, which I don't normally do that, but my kids were really wanting it. ⁓

It was an olive oil cake and a little pork tenderloin like Wellington and a puff pastry with some prosciutto. It was really, really good. So yeah, I was feeling proud on a Thursday.

Brodie (02:11)
You're losing.

Nice. Yeah, that's amazing.

Jess Gaedeke (02:18)
So tell us about yourself, your background and where you are now.

Brodie (02:22)
I've kind of been around where food and humans come together from one of my first, like my first job ever watching dishes in a restaurant, right. all the way through to managing restaurants all the way, and then working at Yum brands and building the pipeline for pizza hut for a new products there. worked on all sorts of cool pizzas at pizza hut and they're still launching those pizzas today, or they still have them in the system today, even though I worked there from.

you know, basically 91 to

like cheesy bites pizza. Some of those things are all the things that I worked on. was actually part of in the team that actually developed all that worked on the front end innovation called the explore team for years. I bridged from there into kind of neuroscience, neuro marketing and neuroscience and

I loved my time and I learned a ton doing that work. And eventually we got bought out by the company I was with got bought out by Nielsen and I stayed on for the transition.

spent four years roughly doing

I, every day I learned stuff I learned about the human brain and it taught me a ton about how people think

both system one and system two. And I did this from 2008 to 2012 and it was very cutting edge.

I know what we kind of probably did wrong and I know what we kind of probably had really right.

and, and it benefits me in my role today. And since 2012, I've been hovering around the Frito lay brands and since, ⁓ and I've worked on all of them. And in 2016, 2016, they put me on Cheetos and Doritos and

haven't left. have so much fun. I love my brands. I love the consumers.

of those brands. And I love building people and watching people do cool stuff. Being eight years in role in Pepsi in one role is unheard of. And I don't want to go anywhere else. And I don't really want to do much else because I don't think the grass is greener. It's just a ton of fun what I do

Jess Gaedeke (04:13)
that's

so interesting that you were working in the neuroscience field at that time because my very first exposure to neuroscience in the world of research was a conference presentation by someone at Frito and they were describing how a Cheetos commercial comes to be and they talked about, I mean, you can talk about this in your sleep, but this is probably 15 years ago and I remember it so.

specifically because they were talking about the cue of the crunch, then it was the dust on the finger and it's the licking of the finger. And those are just some of those cues neurologically that really get people because it's the experience. ⁓ I remember that so vividly. That's so funny.

Brodie (04:44)
Yes.

Jess Gaedeke (04:49)
Okay. Well, you've done a lot of things. Now let's dig in to some of the stories that you have to share because when we were chatting, I said, my gosh, Brodie, please, please come on the podcast and let me pick your brain about

some of the most successful Super Bowl ads of all time you have been a part of. And I think there's probably dozens of lessons to be learned from

I'd love to maybe first start with how did you earn your seat at the table for such a massively important marketing moment like the Super Bowl? And now you've done it so many times, but like, how did you get to that point?

Brodie (05:21)
So that's a wonderful question. And I think the first rule is, as an insights professional, you have to be trusted. They have to know that you're a partner. In order to build that trust, you have to be able to convey empathy. You have to help be the channel of empathy to your organization in truth.

So that's how you ultimately earn your seat at the table. It's by grabbing the bull by the horns and showing your value through empathy and truth. And we can talk about how you break each one of those down and what that means. But I'm 11 Super Bowls in now

I've worked on Lay's, Cheetos, Doritos,

We've done on all of those brands to some level. Most of them I've been...

the insights lead for some of them I've been advisors

And

amazing journey every year and it's unique and

But at end of the day,

the creative agencies have to trust you and you have to drive empathy with them. can talk about how we do some of that and your internal marketers and all the way up to your CEO of your organization has to trust you because Super Bowl is such a big investment.

It means so much on the back end if you do it right. consumers think so differently about your brand.

Jess Gaedeke (06:31)
Yeah.

So as most of us listening are consumers of these commercials, right? We're the ones watching the big game and tuning in some people just for the commercial. So take us behind the curtain, literally, I guess. And where do some of these ads originate? Like, where's the inspiration for what ends up being sometimes a super wacky idea?

Brodie (06:50)
let's go to Cheetos because that's example you had earlier. So years ago, we were we had if you go back up

and you look at Cheetos advertising the 10 years prior, it was all about family fun and it showed families together doing playfully mischievous things, you know, and you can look at them

and they were were nice. But what what?

Our challenge was with Cheetos, and I think it will be for a long time. We're breaking through it. But what our challenge for Cheetos was that we were

a kids or kids snack or a family friendly snack. Right. And we were afraid of the dust. We were a kid snack that was afraid of the dust because guess

Moms like

said, I don't want that dust all over my house, which is a true statement. You don't. But

And what you when you had you and you listen to the the person tell you the story about Cheetos advertising. What we also knew from work with Cheetos with consumers is at the heightened moment of the experience, what people who love Cheetos, what they love the most is licking of the fingers. That's different than every other snack in our portfolio and even in the category. You know, and it's not it's a human truth around licking of fingers.

I mean, KFC used to have the term finger licking good, right? If you go to wings, if you go to like any wing restaurant, Buffalo, Wild Wings, Wingstop, whatever, you name it. Licking fingers is a very important ritual. There's even cultures where that's that you need to lick fingers, right? So that is very human, right? It's very system one. It hits right into that. That's system one lizard brain. That element.

And Cheetos had the

licking finger experience of any of our brands. And so when we were setting down with the agency and we were briefing, what are we going to do with Cheetos going forward? Because we need to take it beyond just being a kid's snack. That insight that I championed in the room to our leadership and our creative agencies was understand the value of

Like, and that has unlocked.

the creative expression for Cheetos. It's a Cheetos thing. And for how we think about how we advertise this. And since 2018, you really don't see Chester on advertising anymore. He's all over the place. He's on our packaging. He's in social, but of our big platformable television ads, Chester is not as involved. ⁓ And it's more about Cheetle and everything we've done.

And it's because we value it. That first year when we won the Grand Prix cons for creative strategy.

It was because we were not afraid to embrace Cheetle. It was because our greatest, in this case, our greatest system two complaint about our brand was our greatest system one asset.

And yeah, and so.

Jess Gaedeke (09:29)
Talk more about that because I'm not sure

will know exactly what you mean by that and I'd love for you to break

down a little

Brodie (09:34)
Yeah.

So system two is your, if you put into your thinking brain, your prefrontal cortex, your processing brain, right? When you start to use logic and reason, you're in your system two Your system one is your, will equate it to your gut feelings, the natural response you have. Two things, your fight or flight mechanisms, right? That's your system one. And so we often in research don't like to do state of research because we say people don't do what they say they're going to do.

Well, that's the conflict between system two and system one, right? And so when you can trigger both of those, when you can trigger a system one response and a system two response from consumers, you really got a home run. If they'll tell you they'll like it and you know from a system one they do like it, then you're in a good place. But what happened with this was we took the value of Cheetle and we literally said, if you look at the advertising and if you watch the MC Hammer Spot, we launched at Superbowl with Cheetos.

Jess Gaedeke (10:15)
Mm-hmm.

Brodie (10:25)
It was less about the launch of popcorn. We certainly put popcorn out there and it was in the ad was more about the greatness of Cheetle. The mess on your fingers because this guy is taking a Cheetos break in the office at the start of the ad. His boss comes by to give him a bunch of paperwork and he's like, hey man, I'm eating Cheetos and he holds his hand up. And his boss goes understand like you know what you got your moment. I'm not going to give you these paperwork because it's going to ruin your Cheetos experience and we can't do that.

Jess Gaedeke (10:46)
Yeah.

Brodie (10:52)
And the whole ad is can't touch this, right? And it's all

He can't touch anything. He can't hold your baby. He can't help you move your furniture. He can't do all the things to help because he's having his Cheetos moment. Leave him alone. And we carried that through to the following year with Ashton and Mila Kunis in Super Bowl. When it was, wasn't me because she was stealing his snacks. But the sign she was stealing his snacks was she had Cheetle all over herself. She would deny, I'm not stealing your snacks, Ashton.

And that was a great ad, another beautiful ad, another top 10 ad.

we laddered into out of the Super Bowl. We did things called Hands Free, which was a beautiful ad that said, what would have happened if, you know, Cheetle was,

we dreamed a world in which Cheetle was the inspiration to, you know, vacuums that vacuum by themselves without having to be put by hand, you know, hands-free cars for driving. Like we had all the dreams of the doors that open up at grocery stores. You don't have to use your hands.

Jess Gaedeke (11:34)
Thanks.

Mm-hmm.

Brodie (11:44)
we even took to South by Southwest, a hands-free house

Jess Gaedeke (11:47)
Mmm.

Brodie (11:48)
we won tons of awards for. And it's been nothing, but now we're in the other hand, which is winning lots of awards, right? People have to use our other hand to do everything because their hand they cheatles with is valuable and they can't touch it. Right? They have to leave it alone. It's just been a gift that just keeps on giving. And we've been on this strategy for, you know, since basically 2020 and it's not going away.

Jess Gaedeke (11:53)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Brodie (12:10)
There's so much rich space for the creatives and for the brand team. And it's really rare in this organization. When you show this to new, you know, VPs to do CMOs, this is my third CMO on this. When you show this to them and they kind of get it. Wow. Like, wow, this is really valuable. This is a huge distinctive asset for our brand. And, and we want to respect it. And so.

stayed on strategy, which is tremendous for us and very proud of it.

Jess Gaedeke (12:38)
Yeah, well there's so much runway around that when you have that core and that anchor of such a tremendous insight.

how does the creative process work then year over year? And you know, the research nerd in me really wants to hear, do you have to approach testing these things in a different way? Because sometimes they take a little bit of, you know, adoption and talk to us about that part of the process too.

Brodie (13:00)
Yeah, mean, testing, yes, the testing process is always fun. The biggest problem we have with testing is don't over test. And we can do that. And that can happen for a lot of reasons. It can happen

the insights folks that work on my

give

license to own their business and they know what they're doing. And so really we have to be able, as insights professionals say, is it worthy of testing or not? And then once it is, the other challenge we always have with our partners is don't come to us with what the solution is, come to us with what your question is. So even if you set it on the very first round of creative reviews, and even before that, when we set up the creative brief for Super Bowl,

We're on the journey. We set with them. What's the human truth, depending on how your brief is written? And I've seen many different ways to write creative briefs. But at the end of the day, that a brief should be simple and rooted in human kind of human behavior and human insight. And that's our job. If we've done our job well, we'll have a seat at the table. We're part of the creative brief process.

We are as integral as the creative agency and the brand team partners.

we set together to do it. And that's the power of honestly, me staying on the brand for as long as I on these brands for as long as I have, I am the historical person now. You know, my marketers rotate every two years. I'm on my fourth rotation of marketers. So that helps a ton. Stay, stay, keep that seat at the

And, ⁓ so start from the brief. Then when you see some of the creative output.

make sure what you want to get consumer feedback on is realistic. And then you can use all sorts of tools you want to use. But the more unobtrusive and honest you can get, you can go everywhere from we've done just simple friendship pairs. If you want to go old school qual, I wouldn't necessarily go in a room as much as I would. You've to build an atmosphere if you're going to do qualitative research of comfort.

and safety for the consumer.

so you

to do that. You need to recruit friendship pairs. You need to have a moderator who has a personality that builds and syncs up with the consumers you're going to talk to. You have to know, as you

qualitative research is all about the quality of the moderator, the quality of the conversation and the quality of the respondents. And so don't be afraid to be a stickler about the respondents because you want quality in means quality out.

And I have partnerships with powerful moderators who I adore, who can do that and have done that for me. And if you're doing it right, you can watch people and you even be in the room with them and see their visceral reaction to good content. And you know what you have there. Now, I would also tell you that we have very good quantitative tools to do all the early on testing.

And I love quantitative tools because it tells me of my got a rich fishing hole, but I love the qualitative because it's what builds empathy, especially with my creative, with my creative people. Wait, I have literally in my history, taken one of my creative leads who didn't wasn't liking the responses they were hearing and put them in the room with consumers. And I said, and they wanted to do it. And I said, we're going to do it. You're going to be a consumer.

Jess Gaedeke (15:40)
Mm-hmm.

Brodie (16:00)
but you'll be a consumer sitting there like a consumer. And they did, they participated just like a consumer. And when they came out of that room, when they were setting with the respondents, they had a different point of view, right? And that it's the empathy engine that drives creative brilliance.

Jess Gaedeke (16:10)
Mm-hmm.

Brodie (16:16)
And many times when we get in this world of AI and this world of quant testing, we forget that if you want something that's going to break through.

You really need to work with your creatives in a way to help them

unlock their breakthrough potential.

Jess Gaedeke (16:30)
Yeah. And there's nothing like being in that room and hearing that initial reaction, the laugh out loud or the, you know, that, like you said, visceral reaction. I mean, there's just no replacing that. I love it when brands put their stakeholders in real life with consumers.

I guess speaking of in real life, I don't know what it says about my personality, Brodie, but one of my favorite things to ask guests is like, where did it go wrong? Where did you fall flat on your face? Where did you have the hiccups? So

I'm sure you have lots of stories, or horror stories if you will, but what's one of the more memorable times that something went wrong in the development or filming or execution of a Super Bowl ad?

Brodie (16:58)
Thank you.

Well, I will say that if you're working with celebrities, it's always a

and I've done a lot with celebrities every year, that's finding the right celebrity that doesn't draw undue attention to themselves before Superbowl is really critical. And the right celebrities is celebrity that doesn't, that your message syncs up with.

whatever you want to put out there at Super Bowl and doesn't dominate you at Super Bowl either. The last thing you want to hear when there, when people are around the cooler the next day is, wow, did you see that Ben Affleck

No, I want them saying,

Jess Gaedeke (17:34)
That's a good point. Yeah.

Brodie (17:36)
did you see that Duncan ad that Ben Affleck was in? Or, you know, it's more, see the Duncan ad?

Jess Gaedeke (17:38)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Brodie (17:43)
is a huge measure of

if

celebrity is dominating or.

And you have to get that and you can actually learn

you're doing, when you're doing your research corner, qual research, whatever tool you use and however you use

can actually get

by just asking people after they see the ad, did they like the ad or did they not like the ad? You can also say, Hey, in one sentence, you know, tell me if you're going to share with a friend that you just saw this ad, what are you going to, what are you going to say? And then if they say the Ben Affleck ad, then you know, you're in trouble.

Jess Gaedeke (18:11)
Right.

You got an issue. Yeah. Well, and I know you're not going to tattle tale on any celebrities,

you do have a couple of examples of it, of it not quite going towards the brand's direction that they wanted.

So I know you're not gonna tattle-tale on any celebrities, but is there anything juicy you can kind of give us on, you know, the situation?

Brodie (18:27)
Okay.

So I would say that almost every year we've worked with celebrities, the celebrity has had to change before we get to the shoot. Almost every year. It's hard to think of a year where we weren't debating celebrities up until the last minute, or we even have had celebrities under contract who for whatever reason couldn't do a spot ⁓ or didn't want to do a spot because of, you know,

Jess Gaedeke (18:41)
Really? Wow.

Brodie (18:58)
the conditions of the world, let's just say, and we've had a pivot. And so when you do the research and a celebrity is involved, the other key thing to check for is, is this celebrity dependent? Did I have to use Ashton and Mila Kunis for that spot? No. Were they the perfect fit? Yes. Did I test with other couples? Yes, I did.

And we had three or four options that were viable for the it wasn't me spot with Cheetos on Super Bowl. And the great news is Ash and Mila were amazing. They were their house in Hollywood was for sale at the time. It was covid. They let us shoot in their house.

And by the

Jess Gaedeke (19:34)
yeah.

Brodie (19:35)
two of the nicest frickin people you will ever ever meet and the most human people

Even though I couldn't be there in person, I had to watch remote because we could only, it was COVID, we were going to send so many people into the house.

I adored that shoot. I watched remote the whole time, saw all the behind the scenes stuff, had a bunch of bloopers on it. That was so much fun. They are so real and human. And then, you know, we, we had somebody before Peter Dinklage, but Peter Dinklage was amazing. And I'm so glad we had

Jess Gaedeke (19:53)
over.

Brodie (20:00)
I, I know when we did the little Nas X Sam Elliott spot for Doritos Cool Ranch, there was a lot of people up for that, that cowboy role that Sam Elliott played.

And he was the perfect fit. And, you know, and we had a lot of drama around that. We, every year, even, even the year we did, you know, Jack Harlow

Jess Gaedeke (20:12)
Mm-hmm.

Brodie (20:19)
and that spot with Doritos barbecue, which was our second biggest innovation launch ever. We, you know, we, had all sorts of options on celebrities that we were working through constantly. And we didn't know till, till very late in the game who it was going to be. So you have to build content.

that is adaptable. And that is a good sign if it's adaptable content that it will not be celebrity dependent.

Jess Gaedeke (20:40)
Good point. Yeah.

Brodie (20:41)
So

it's always a trigger to say, hey, what other couples could we use or what other celebrity could we use or does it have to have a celebrity? The Dinamita spot we did with Jenna Ortega just two years ago, was it two years ago? Three years? No, two years ago. Yeah. That one didn't even have Jenna Ortega in the testing. And then we added her and it was a plus up.

Jess Gaedeke (21:01)
Mm-hmm.

Brodie (21:02)
Right. So.

That's how you have to think about celebrities. they add value to the concept and are they replaceable? Because you want to walk away with, wow, that was an amazing Doritos ad, or that was an amazing Cheetos ad.

Jess Gaedeke (21:14)
fascinating how much you have to think about on that celebrity front. And, you know, I'm curious too, just kind of as we, if we try to wrap up this vast experience you have on Super Bowl ads in that process, like what is the milestone? When does the team actually say this was a success and what timeframe does it happen in?

Brodie (21:32)
So by team, I don't know who you mean. I would say if it's by my internal partners, like my brand partners, my CEO, my CMO, like the internal organization

Pepsi, Pepsi Foods, not till the day after when they start seeing the social buzz and all the rankings,

they really start to really celebrate. We have a good feel because from

North America Insights and Intelligence Group, we have a good feel for how it's going to do

do a great job of my team of honestly taking quant data, running regression models, and predicting outcomes. And we've, for seven years in a row, have predicted our outcome on some of those key ⁓ consumer-voted polls.

And so it's amazing. So I, we give them confidence going in. Last year we had two, we had, we shot two ads for lays and, our data gave them confidence on which one was the right one to go with. We used our, our data and our, and our, our quant tools to help us understand which of the crash spots was going to was, you know, was going to make it. And we, predicted which was the strongest crash spot.

Jess Gaedeke (22:28)
Mm-hmm.

Brodie (22:40)
because consumers voted for it online last year. It was a consumer generated one. It was amazing. We brought crash back after years and we were able to predict where that was going to fall on the outcome, on the back

it's been, so honestly, we started celebrating a little bit early because we'd been right. Remember when I told you drive empathy and be right? That's the way you're going to see it at the table. That's how we've done it.

Jess Gaedeke (22:55)
Right.

that's a great segue into our next part of the conversation, Brodie which is really about one of your more passionate points of view as a leader in your organization and in our industry. And I think from what I've heard in our interactions, just empathy comes out of your mouth a lot in a really good way. know, it just it means a lot to I think who you are as a person, but also your professional point of view as well. So I'm just kind of curious.

Has that always been something that you've believed in professionally or is it something you've earned a greater appreciation for over the years?

Brodie (23:34)
I think it's a little of both.

think some people are just more empathetic than others. We know this, right? And part of it is tied to honestly brain science, if you want to get into it. But I've always been a very empathetic person. I can't watch a football player or soccer player snap their leg and I don't have a bad reaction. Yeah.

Jess Gaedeke (23:50)
You said that and my stomach just...

Brodie (23:53)
Yeah,

because your homunculus just fired and you're imagining snapping a

know, so I've always had, I think, a big empathy engine on me. And so that's helped. I think I've leaned into my empathy and I've leaned into my trust in people as a manager. and that's been part of my journey of success. As you know, as to help growing people and helping.

people make better decisions. and I think the older I get, the more empathy I'm getting. And so it's crazy kind of how that works, but yeah, it's absolutely both. And I can't imagine not having empathy. I would be a very sad, lonely human without it.

Jess Gaedeke (24:27)
Yeah, it would be super sad without that dimension. So how does that play out in the day to day Brodie? I know how you work with your team, I'm sure it plays out, but also in how you bring research to life, how you approach research on the front end of things, like how do we see empathy?

Brodie (24:39)
⁓

You know, it's my biggest conflict when I have to say no.

I don't like telling people no, right? And if somebody comes to me with a problem or a challenge at work or in my personal life, I hate to say no. And because it's just, I'm not wired that way. I'm wired to help. And because I feel their pain, I feel what they're asking for. And then I immediately want to help, which also, by the way, keeps me from listening all the way.

Empathy can sometimes shut down listening because for me at least because I want to turn empathy Quickly, I want to empathize quickly and go to action and sometimes that's not what I need to do. I just need to stop feel process ask questions and then get to a place where I can say no and that's Really tough, especially when you're in an in an organization like insights, right?

and so understanding how to listen, how to reframe the questions. And sometimes I got business partners that come to me who are not empathetic at all.

get type a personalities who are very much

driving an agenda. And that agenda may not be the customer, may not be the consumer. the human who eats or consumes our, you know, the snacks or consumes the product that our company makes. might be the customers that.

help us get it on shelf or it might be another agenda they have for whatever reason, could be personal goals or anything. And, you know, and when they come to you with the question, the hardest thing I have to do, one of the hardest things I have to do is get them to phrase that question with me. know, it's something that's human. The hardest questions I ask is never to consumers,

always back into the organization.

Jess Gaedeke (26:09)
Yeah.

What's a good tangible example of

question that's sort of in research speak that you then translate into an empathetic question about the human being?

Brodie (26:21)
The biggest one we get at ⁓ Frito or in my business is, well, how incremental is that going to be?

Okay, so what are you really asking?

I'm probably a 90, depending on what measure or tool you wanna look at, I like it's 98 % of America's households with one brand or

do you become

And what is it, how do you become incremental from a human standpoint? Well, you find new households who are buying you today. Well, if you're 98 % of them, that's pretty tough.

Unless Atlantis is going to rise out of the Eastern seaboard and give me 20 million people.

Jess Gaedeke (26:52)
And you've got a tam right there.

Brodie (26:54)
Yeah, I got an incrementality right there. But, or if I'm going to go be available, in a retail location where I'm not available today, where there are shoppers who are a little more exclusive than have the chance to be incremental. So I walked them through it. How do you think you're incremental in people's lives? Because you're incremental means you want to be, you know, bought or consumed in a different moment than your current product is. Right. And so, what.

So when do think they're going to eat you that's different than they eat you today? Or where are they going to buy you where they can't, where they don't have access to you today? So let's turn this into your question for consumers, not how incremental is this?

Jess Gaedeke (27:31)
So translating that sort of voice of the business into the voice of the consumer and insights is just the critical bridge that can help do that. Yeah.

Brodie (27:38)
That's the first

thing you have to teach an Insights person to do, because they're going to get those questions day one and they're never going to be human. Rarely will they be human and never is a strong word. Most of the time they will be business out to the Insights people.

Jess Gaedeke (27:51)
Yeah.

What a great illustration of one of the major reasons that insights should and continue to exist. So I've been really excited about hearing this answer from you, Brodie. What is your hot take on the future of the CPG industry? I love to throw out like a meaning of the word question like that and just see what you're going to do with it.

Brodie (28:09)
My hot take

consumer packaged goods are sold

location or mine, food. So I think it depends on the category and what's going to

right?

Everything's category dependent. But at the end of the day, retailers where CPG shines or were used to shine, historically has shined, have to find ways to build those experiences to make people want to get out of the house.

Nobody really wants to sit in their household day and just order from Amazon. I'm sorry. They don't it's ease and convenience for sure and that's critically important because guess what we're trying to save time Why are we trying to save time so we can do more cool stuff? And what's cool stuff cool experiences And where to cool experiences happen pretty much outside the house And guess what retail can be part of that journey

You probably have examples of retailers that doing cool stuff. You ever been to jungle gyms in Cincinnati?

Jess Gaedeke (28:58)
Ooh, I haven't, but I have heard about

Brodie (29:00)
my word, it's like Disneyland met the biggest grocery store you'll ever see in your life. It's an experience. know, I so Central Market here where I live in Plano, that's an experience. That's a culinary gym. You go there for the experience and then you end up, you know, buying cool stuff and taking it home and cooking like like a mad person. Right. So if you come, we'll go to Central Market. We'll get all this stuff for cream of BLT.

Jess Gaedeke (29:22)
We're gonna make yeah the BLT

scoop. Yes, please. my god. I'm gonna I'm gonna hold you to this Brodie. ⁓ Yeah

Brodie (29:25)
So yeah, experiences and whether it's that or

whether it's something else in a different world, how can Foot Locker change their concept now that they've been bought out, right? To be more about experience. Because that will drive, that will drive. You still got to win on all the other elements. What the retailers have to do is plus it up, be top of mind. If I'm going to buy shoes, I'm going to.

I gotta go have a cool experience at

How could they do that? That would be my challenge to Footlocker.

Jess Gaedeke (29:54)
Yeah, that's one of the kind of offshoots that I've been talking to folks about with the, you know, the reality and the cultural shifts that are happening with GLP ones. If there's a lot of consumers that are frankly just consuming fewer calories and just very different foods, how can restaurants and retailers and other brands create experiences that will allow all of those, you know, users of that particular drug to still have this experience and also to then crave brands, but in a different way than maybe in that.

real life.

Brodie (30:23)
the experiences they have need to be over the top. They need to be amazing. And they may have less experiences or, you know, or different kinds of experiences.

still have a lot to learn about GLP one and we're going to learn more about it. And that's

so, and super excited about whatever we're, we're going to find out, but yeah, at end of the day,

Food, at least my category, is still integral in human existence. It is a base

can certainly make it better. And every time they interact with your

whether eating the product or they're watching an ad or they're going on their social device and looking things out, if they interact with Doritos or Cheetos, I need them smiling. I want them smiling. I want them laughing. I want them embracing that joy.

Whenever they interact with my

Jess Gaedeke (31:05)
you have

a fun portfolio for that. And like you said, you've been doing the same role for eight years and you still are inspired and inspiring. So I appreciate that about you. I'm going to turn to the final dig. This is all about you as a consumer. So let's see what this side of Brodie looks like. What's the last product or service you bought on impulse?

Brodie (31:24)
having.

Honestly, it's

mean, I again, experiences and give you an example. It's probably a restaurant. I this is I value restaurant experiences so much.

Going to the French Laundry did that as a bucket list. I did it for, I took my daughter there for her 21st birthday. We took her, we took my wife too. We took our daughter there for her 21st birthday

Jess Gaedeke (31:44)
cool.

Brodie (31:48)
she deserves it and she's spoiled and that's amazing, but she knows

she's, she's fine with that and she appreciated

but it was also for us too.

It was, it was as much a celebration for her 21st as it was for our 21st as parents.

Jess Gaedeke (32:01)
Yeah.

Brodie (32:02)
And

it was really about that, but that was no holds barred. That was, and they did an amazing job, by the way, her 21st birthday, they gave her a great bottle of champagne, their model cone and everything. And I mean, wow, what a deal. And so worth it. And we still talk about it today, years later. So.

Jess Gaedeke (32:11)
⁓ cool.

Yeah.

Brodie (32:19)
I

would say if it's a food experience, when we go on

what it's all about. I have to, if I can find a Michelin restaurant,

or just not a Michelin restaurant, just find amazing reviews and local hole in the walls.

want the most amazing food and wine experiences. Cause that's how I live culture. That's why GLP one makes me

know I want to go to these places and I want to, and in order to really learn about Lisbon, you've got to eat and drink Lisbon.

You don't and then go see

can't do one without the other to me. And so I think the food and

wife and I did Italy in 2015, all the Northern Italy. We never went to one museum. we do is eat and drink our way through.

Jess Gaedeke (32:55)
Yeah, yeah, that's my idea. But I'm also GLP one user and I'm not stopping with the food and wine experiences. I think that's the thing is you still again want that, you you want that part of

Brodie (33:03)
Mm-hmm.

Jess Gaedeke (33:06)
even if it,

there's limitations.

can't wait to hear this answer from you, Brodie. So brands have distinct personalities. 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?

Brodie (33:17)
brand I would date.

I would say it'd probably be Ruffles. Ruffles has ridges. And ridges can be fun. So that would be a fun

A brand I would marry would probably be, I'm going to say,

Nah, I'm okay with Miss Vicky's.

Jess Gaedeke (33:33)
Yeah, there you go. Spice it up a little bit. Yeah.

Brodie (33:34)
Yeah, yeah, strong,

confident, down home. She can do some cooking. We can chill out on the porch together and drink some wine.

Jess Gaedeke (33:41)
Yeah.

I it. I thought you were going to say Lays just because

it's so reliable and been there and you know, been there for you for years and years. So that would be my marriage proposal from the propon. Bye.

Brodie (33:53)
You wanna know why? Not Lays?

Everybody dates Lays. I'm just teasing. I love Lays too. Miss Vicky's, she's a little more selective over who she goes out with.

Jess Gaedeke (33:58)
Oh man, you're right. You're right. You're right. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's a good point. So finally Brodie, what keeps you inspired at work?

Brodie (34:12)
Smiles

when other people smile, I'm smiling. So when I go to work, one of the things I want to do with every, every meeting is I want to make people smile. And you know what is completely selfish of

then I can

and, and listen, I work in a company

Jess Gaedeke (34:24)
Mm-hmm.

Brodie (34:29)
makes

It can't get any better.

I'm not necessarily saving lives here. I'm just trying to make smiles. And I do that in the office and I do that hopefully outside the office with

personal life and also with smiles.

Jess Gaedeke (34:43)
Yeah. Well, you have brought me smiles today. You've seen it. Hopefully you've heard it in my voice for those that are listening. Thank you so much for joining. And I'm not kidding. I'm taking you up on this soup experience because I'm, I'm in, I'm committed. I'm locked into this idea. So you'll hear from me. But thank you so much for your time, for your wisdom. It was wonderful to have you today on the podcast.

Brodie (34:55)
All right, enjoy.

That's it.

Thank you.