Mia Fileman 0:05
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On this show, I talk a lot about online business because that’s the game that I’m in now, but I actually spent a decade in fast-moving consumer goods. Now, we’re starting to find that quite a few brand managers from FMCG are joining my program, so I thought we should do a dedicated episode just on fast-moving consumer goods marketing.
I’ve invited a fellow FMCG escapee – Melissa Packham – on the show today to talk about this, and also my weird love of supermarkets.
“It’s all about trends. It’s all about data. All of that feeds long-term decision-making. Marketing in FMCG is about where is the opportunity, what is the size of the prize, how do you value that up, where are we going to make it and then what agencies do we need to engage to support us because the marketing doesn’t happen in-house.”
That was Melissa Packham – a brand-centred strategist who leverages two decades of marketing experience to guide businesses in finding clarity, making agile decisions, and building standout brands sustainably and ethically.
Her business is Brand-Led Business. She helps SMEs create brands that aren’t business as usual with purpose-directed strategy and a systems approach.
Welcome back for the third time to the “Got Marketing?” Show!
Melissa Packham 1:58
Woohoo! Thank you so much! I can’t believe it’s time number three!
Mia Fileman 2:02
Well, your episodes with me are our most listened to.
Melissa Packham 2:07
No, you’re joking, right? Is that serious?
Mia Fileman 2:10
I am not joking. The data does not lie.
Melissa Packham 2:14
The data don’t lie. Numbers don’t lie.
Wow! I feel so privileged! That’s amazing!
Mia Fileman 2:21
We did the very first episode and this is not going to be the last episode.
Melissa Packham 2:26
That’s awesome.
Mia Fileman 2:29
Let’s dive in, shall we?
What is FMCG?
Melissa Packham 2:36
It certainly helps when you get into a room and you can drop the brands that you work on because everybody everywhere knows FMCG – fast-moving consumer goods – basically, anything that’s on a shelf on in a fridge in a supermarket. There’s a lot of them, and a lot of great brands in Australia that both of us have had the privilege to work for. That’s FMCG.
Mia Fileman 2:59
Take us through your FMCG background then I’ll do mine for context and a bit of back story.
Melissa Packham 3:06
Yes, sure.
I joined Parmalat Australia which is now called Lactalis Australia – a huge dairy company. They were one of the few FMCG companies headquartered in Brisbane at the time.
This was the early 2000s or mid-2000s. I got in before I finished uni. I started climbing that corporate ladder through the marketing department. A lot of change in that time, but basically working through being a brand manager up to marketing manager.
When I moved to Sydney, I discovered there’s so many more FMCG headquarters down there, so the world was my oyster, and I was very privileged then to jump across to Campbell Arnott’s at the time. I started off in the Arnott’s brand side of things and then moved across to the Campbell’s soup portfolio after that.
Yes, 12 years all up in FMCG.
Mia Fileman 3:59
Wow! That’s so similar to mine!
I started while I was at uni for a dairy company called Black Swan Dips which is a family-owned business. I did several years at Black Swan. When I graduated from uni, I was very fortunate to then be offered at position at Kraft working on the vegemite and peanut butter brand.
Then, I went across to France and worked for Bic which is also an FMCG brand – pens, razors, and lighters. Then, I came home and worked for Maybelline New York which was a grocery brand – also in Priceline department stores but predominantly we were in Coles and Woolies.
My sum total FMCG experience is at about 11 years.
Melissa Packham 4:49
So close!
It’s amazing, actually. You’ve definitely got more brands under your belt, I’d say.
Mia Fileman 4:56
You probably just spent longer with those brands than I did.
Melissa Packham 5:00
A long time, yes.
Mia Fileman 5:04
Today, I want to talk about the difference between marketing fast-moving consumer good brands and other industries – e-commerce service brands. How do you market an FMCG brand?
Melissa Packham 5:17
With lots of data and lots of insights at your fingertips – almost too much.
I’ve been out of that game since 2016 – quite a while now. It would be even more data that you have access to now. Basically, it’s all about trends. It’s all about data. All of that feeds long-term decision-making, lots of business cases.
When you’re marketing FMCG, it’s about where is the opportunity, what is the size of the prize, how do you value that up, where are we going to make it, who is going to make it and then what agencies do we need to engage to support us because the marketing doesn’t happen in-house. That all happens outside. Stakeholder engagement.
A lot of it is project management, engaging with departments, being able to be the translator and talk about the differences and engage the operations team who are going to actually physically make the product, the sales team to go out and sell the product, and then even fronting up to retailers and going to buyer meetings and having those topline discussions.
It's such a broad role in FMCG marketing, and that’s before you even get to the marketing part. That’s not even the marketing.
When you execute a campaign, it’s about watching those numbers; watching the sales on a weekly basis; being able to monitor what’s going on – which stores are performing, which products are performing, is your activation working, is the point of sale getting put up in-store. It’s everything.
Is that the answer you were looking for? It’s such a broad one.
Mia Fileman 6:54
Absolutely!
Did you also for years after leaving FMCG have dreams about AC Nielsen SCANTRACK reports?
Melissa Packham 7:03
100 percent.
Every time I thought I had the hang of that database, they would do an update, and I would have to relearn it. It’s terrifying.
Mia Fileman 7:15
This is so interesting because I don’t think any other category has this, but AC Nielsen – the research company – literally sells a product to consumer good brands where it tracks every scanned sale. I can see how many red lipsticks my competitors sold at Woolworths Kotara last week.
That kind of level of data – for my competitors as well as myself – by store, by SKU is next-level data which is why brand managers are swimming in the data.
Melissa Packham 7:55
Go gaga for data.
It’s a big shock when you get out of that world, and you don’t have access to the same data that you have to find other ways to access that data or put other pieces of data together and make a lot of intellectual assumptions.
Not having that at your fingertips is quite a challenge, especially in the online business world. What we have in digital insights and social media insights is lacking in terms of that follow-through sometimes.
Mia Fileman 8:29
Yes, I found that really challenging.
After I left Maybelline, I went to an agency. We were still working with a lot of consumer good brands – like Chupa Chups – but they weren’t giving us that data. That’s proprietary data. I was like, “Please! Tell me something I can build a campaign on! Please!”
Melissa Packham 8:48
Yes, and there’s something really scary – the crossover of data. You think about not only the scan data but the data that you get from loyalty programs like Flybuys and Everyday Rewards. You can cross-correlate that.
Suddenly, you know that the person that buys the pizza on a Thursday night also watches Netflix and subscribes to Foxtail and uses their NAB card to buy other things. There’s that super mega data kind of scariness that goes on, and you can get lost on it, but the insights that you can create and the hypotheses that you can build to then test are incredible.
Mia Fileman 9:29
Yes, you made such a good point earlier about the fact that – because of all that data and the insights and the stakeholders – if you are a fast-moving consumer goods company, you are liaising with a manufacturer – whether that’s in Australia or offshore.
At Black Swan, we had a factory in Australia. In Maybelline, we had factories all over the world that we would be liaising with. Then, you’re working with a sales team to put together trade presentations to go into Woolworths and make a case to get more ranging or so forth.
When I went and resigned, my boss said to me, “Why are you leaving?” I’m like, “It’s May, and I have not done any brand marketing. No marketing. I have crunched data. I have spoken at the annual conference. I wrote presentations for the sales team. I liaised with the factory. But I have not advocated for this brand once this year, and it’s May.”
Melissa Packham 10:28
Then, you got into the challenge of the agencies that you work with. Agencies are freaking amazing. They are amazing intelligent people. But sometimes, the dynamic can shift where the brand custodianship suddenly leaves the brand and sits with the agency who have most of the strategic thinking done on the brand and can influence at a top level.
If you’re thinking baby brand manager kind of level, there’s very little influence that can happen when your agency is talking straight to your general manager of marketing, and you lose that ability to maintain that custodianship which I always struggled with.
In fact, it got me into a couple of fights with agencies on occasion. It was like, “Actually, my KPI is the profitability and the bottom line of this brand, so it is actually resting with me in terms of this decision.” Let’s not forget where the roles and responsibilities end just so that line doesn’t get blurred.
I’m all for bringing the team. There’s a compiled team of experts on this, but I always struggled with losing that agency to my agency, really.
Mia Fileman 11:40
I felt exactly the same way!
I felt like the agency was having all the fun. They were doing all the big-picture creative work. But they didn’t know what I knew in terms of data because we kept that really close to our chests. They weren’t having discussions with retailers. They weren’t meeting customers on the ground.
When I was the senior brand manager of Maybelline New York, I would go to all of the events that we sponsored – festivals and parties and little makeup booths. I would actually be watching and observing my target audience in their natural habitat. My agency never did that!
Why are they entrusted to come up with the creative strategy? Meanwhile, I have to write the brief.
Melissa Packham 12:27
Yes, and let’s not diminish the importance of writing a really epic brief. That is a skill set. It is a long-term acquired skill and deserves time and effort and collaboration, but you’re exactly right. If we’re the ones inputting the information into that brief to create a robust piece that can get a creative outcome that’s actually going to move the dial, then we deserve some credit at the table for that.
You’re right. Your experience in terms of hands on the ground is a little bit different to mine. I was stacking milk shelves and working doing relays.
Mia Fileman 13:08
The planogram!
Melissa Packham 13:10
New planograms and being there going, “I’m stacking a milk shelf!” and secretly watching people shopping the category at the same time. It’s a little bit less sexy – a lot more smelly because the milk shelves are not a great spot.
Certainly, you can’t put that hands-on experience in a brief that gets appreciated. That actually helps get better strategic outcomes, right? The knowledge, the data, being on the ground, getting out there with your sales reps, and understanding what’s happening in the market is crucial.
Mia Fileman 13:45
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Two things I want to pick up on – first, let’s talk about how the creative process works because it is so bizarre.
The brand manager writes the brief then the marketing manager will review the brief. Usually, you send it over to the agency, then the agency may or may not come back with questions – usually not. Then, you don’t hear from them until they have exactly three ideas to pitch back to you.
Melissa Packham 14:59
Yes, always three.
Mia Fileman 15:00
It’s always three.
There is no collaboration. It’s literally they go underground in their agency and do all these cool brainstorm sessions with blackboards and trendy Gen Z and late-night pizza deliveries. Then, they come back X number of weeks later and pitch exactly three ideas to you. You get to pick one and then that’s how you work with an agency.
Melissa Packham 15:28
Meantime, holding on and hoping for dear life that they come back with something that you can use because there’s usually a very short timeframe. If there’s long timeframe, it’s because you’ve got about 60,000 stakeholders internally to engage – including your local team and possibly your overseas head office team – to make sure that they are onboard with that.
I love how short your approval process sounded in terms of the brief. That was exactly not my experience at all. It was way longer, with many more stakeholders involved, and months and months and month of getting it right, and potentially research to get it right.
That was my experience in getting the brief which shows the importance of getting it right – possibly a bit of overkill, but it really kills the process a little bit. You come out the end of that and you get to the campaign, finally. It’s like, “Ugh. I’ve already been here in my head for months already, so let’s just get it done now.”
Mia Fileman 16:28
Yes, there was a lot leading up to the brief, and then actually pulling together the brief after having done the research and having spoken to different millions of stakeholders, then it was my job to literally put pen on paper.
The second thing I want to talk about is the planogram.
What is a planogram?
Every twice a year, Coles and Woolies will change the shelving. They will change what products sit where on the shelf. That is then issued as a planogram. Then, representatives from the brand need to go into all the supermarkets and need to follow this ridiculous-looking document and need to literally move products and shelving to meet the new design structure.
I would go in there for dips and for mascaras. I would be like, “Chris’ dips have five facings on the top shelf, so I go and put those in, and I put the tickets in. Then, Yumi’s dips has another three facings on the top shelf.” Then, I go to the middle shelf and the bottom shelf and then the well. My hands would have frozen at this point.
Melissa Packham 17:52
Completely.
Mia Fileman 17:53
You are there for hours. It’s often very early in the morning. You are literally basically moving everything around and then you look at the products and you’re like, “Poor mates, they’ve just been deleted.”
Melissa Packham 18:12
“Sorry. No presence for you anymore.”
All the research that goes in behind that – there are some FMCG teams that have whole teams dedicated to the science behind where the product sits on the shelf, how it fits on the shelf, but also how that sways consumer or shopper behaviour as they are moving through the aisles and how that prime position is the one that you are going after. But if you have a poor brand that doesn’t have the budget for that, then you’ve got to make good with what you’ve got which informs packaging design which is a whole other element of an FMCG marketing experience.
Mia Fileman 18:54
Yes.
Melissa Packham 18:54
The four P’s are done really well, don’t you reckon?
Mia Fileman 18:57
Yes, we should definitely talk about that!
Before we get to that, I want to talk about the trends that you think are driving fast-moving consumer goods post-pandemic.
Melissa Packham 19:15
How much time have we got for this?
What an interesting time – post-pandemic! We’ve “come out of that” and we’ve got a whole suite of social issues and climate change and all the things, but we’ve also got the classics that are never leaving the trend list – like personalization, commoditization, the growth of private label, e-commerce, and all those kinds of things that are coming into it.
There’s a lot. Some have been on the trend list for over a decade. They’re certainly macro. The others are peeking their head over and going, “Hey! By the way, climate change is here! Sustainability is important!” and those interesting dynamics.
It’s hard being in that position as a brand manager to navigate which one is going to impact my brand in the short term versus the long term, i.e., “What’s my responsibility while I am in the seat for this brand and how can I ensure that I am setting the brand up for success in the long term at the same time?”
Mia Fileman 20:22
I think at a micro level, there are some that we can talk about that are really interesting.
When I was in fast-moving consumer goods, there was not a vegan product to be found – unless it was a vegetable. Now, there is an entire bay in the supermarket dedicated to vegan products. Vegan cheese specifically is massive now. The brands that are getting ranged are the ones that are vegan. We are seeing that across lots of different categories – dips, spreads, yogurts, all sorts of categories.
Kombucha? You do not need to go back too long. Kombucha was something you would have at some wu wu market in the Sunshine Coast. It smelt and looked funky.
Melissa Packham 21:21
As funky as the name, yes, for sure.
Mia Fileman 21:25
It was like Birkenstocks.
Melissa Packham 21:28
Dreadlocks.
Mia Fileman 21:31
Yes. Now, kombucha has its own dedicated space in chilled beverages. It has a shelf in the same aisle as Coke and the soft drinks in the non-refrigerated. It has prime positioning at the checkout next to the Mount Franklin bottled water and the 300-ml Coke grab and go. At the convenience section, there is kombucha there now. That’s how big a trend it is.
Melissa Packham 22:05
Also, there are hints to the pay to play. To get those prime positions, organizations have to pay a lot of money as part of making sure that they have got those positions. Yes to the trend and the proliferation of the beverage space. It’s certainly not a soft drinks, juice, and flavoured milk – like it was back in the day – but, yes, it does talk to the trend that warrant the invest will get it.
Mia Fileman 22:33
Yes, totally.
There’s more to this chat.
Play the next episode to hear the rest of the conversation.
