Engaging Consumers Through Human-Centric Strategies

Kailey Raymond: Creating a portfolio that caters to the needs of consumers is more important than ever as we navigate economic downturns in a post pandemic world. Consumers want to indulge in products that benefit them while making their dollar stretch just a little bit further. In order to create lasting relationships with consumers, it's important to develop simple, human-centric strategies around data to serve them.

Today's guest is Umi Patel, VP of Consumer Insights and Analytics for North America PepsiCo Beverage Portfolio. Umi and I discuss permissible enjoyment, macroeconomic trends, and storytelling through data.

Umi, you've worked at PepsiCo for most of your professional career. I think you had a stint at Labatt, shout out, but you've been at PepsiCo since 2007. Tell me about your career journey.

Umi Patel: Yeah. Thank you. First of all, thank you for having me here. Yeah. My career journey's been amazing, honestly. I am so grateful for the different experiences I've had, whether those experiences are different categories, different channels that I've worked in, different countries. I've been fortunate enough, even with PepsiCo, to work in the UK on our snacks business. Different brands, like there's amazing big brands, small brands, emerging brands. It's really been such a diverse 15 years and every time you step into something else, a new challenge is given to you so I'm very, very grateful for that.

I would say one of the consistent things that have been part of every single role or every single experience is, what I like to call it, the consumer or the human and the decisions that we are trying to help influence the consumer to make. When this role, which I'm currently in which is the VP of Consumer Insight and Analytics, presented itself, most of my career has been in a marketing capacity role but it made complete sense. I mean, the consumer has been at the core and at the thread of every single role that I've had. So it was amazing to one, be even considered for the opportunity and then to have the opportunity to be able to drive this agenda within beverages at PepsiCo. That's been my journey. Lots of diverse experiences, lots of different brands, but really, at the core of it has been this passion and love for the consumer and understanding what it is that drives them and how we can influence their behavior.

Kailey Raymond: I love that. We've talked about that a few times on this show where the chief customer officer or these different roles have been emerging and really, a lot of them just mean that the customer's been at the center. It's always been at the center of marketing as well and your experience in marketing certainly showcases that. As you're in this role as VP of Insights, Analytics, what is your role and your team's role specifically as it relates to the consumer engagement journey?

Umi Patel: I think we play a part in many of the processes but if I had to really wrap it up and say what our role is, our role is a couple of things. It's really to be that master listener, right? We are the ones that are often at the forefront of hearing what consumers are saying before anybody else in the organization is hearing it or seeing a trend through the numbers before anybody else within the organization is seeing that. So I think listening is really, really key and comprehension is also really key. I think our role is also to be that connector.

A lot of the data, a lot of the information comes from many different parts of the organization and our role really, is to connect those dots and then tell that story in a way that is going to translate into our marketing plans. So that, to me, is the powerful role that we play and one of the biggest reasons why this role excites me.

Kailey Raymond: That's so cool. So I love the way that you frame that, listen and connect. I want to dive in specifically to the listen portion. We'll get to connect a little bit later. But in terms of listening, there's a lot going on in the world right now. I'm curious what you're tracking in terms of the top macro trends as it relates to driving the consumer experience in the beverage business. What are some of those things that you're looking at as you're thinking about planning ahead?

Umi Patel: I mean, one of the things we can't ignore is the macro economical conditions that are surrounding us, right? The high inflation, the raising of food and beverage pricing, all of that is something that we are really keeping a very close eye on because we know that impacts how or consumers are going to shop and changes their shopping habits.

One third of the US population is making less than $50,000 so how do we make sure that we are providing the right solutions and the right offerings to those consumers as well as the middle income, the higher income consumers in an environment where they may be pulling back, they may be reconsidering what they're purchasing, how they're purchasing it, how often they're purchasing it. So macroeconomics is definitely something that we are, along with probably many, many people, many, many organizations, are keeping an eye on and the impact of that on consumers. That's the big one. Honestly, that is one big one. The other thing that we saw is what we call this trend around home as a hub, right? So if you think about pre pandemic, we all used to be in our homes in the morning and then probably in the evening and then the pandemic hit and-

Kailey Raymond: All day, in my home right now.

Umi Patel: Yeah. Exactly. Here we were and this home that used to be a morning and probably an evening occasion for most individuals, not all but most individuals, became this hub. It became the center of everything that people were doing, especially when the lockdown happened, right? That's no different from what we see. We see our beverage consumption, what we call liquid refreshment beverages, the amount of occasions happening in home drastically increased during the pandemic year which you could say, "Makes sense." Everybody was home, everybody didn't really have a place to go, whether it was school or whether it was leisure, whether it was work, we were all doing it from home. But what's really interesting in the last year and change is as the world has started opening up, what we've seen is those levels of consumption happening at home hold which is an interesting trend-

Kailey Raymond: Very interesting-

Umi Patel: Because the assumption was that as the world starts opening up and people start mobilizing a little bit more, we would start seeing those consumptions go back to pre-pandemic levels and there's a couple of things that are driving that. Back to the macroeconomics, right? Now, while we are out of the pandemic, we've got this macroeconomic environment which is causing all of us to make choices in terms of what we're doing and what we're not doing. So now, you see consumers spending a lot more time at home because they are trying to save, because they're trying to make their dollars stretch further. So that's another trend, which for us is key because then it impacts the types of products we offer, the PAC types that we offer, right? If a lot more of that consumption is happening in home, then we need to make sure that we have a portfolio that is servicing that consumer need. The other thing is this health and wellness and balance trend, right?

Kailey Raymond: It's been growing. I feel like everybody is in the health and wellness industry now.

Umi Patel: What we saw is most people when they talked about health and wellness pre-pandemic, were talking about physical health and we've heard it. We've heard it in the news, we've talked about Gen Z talking a lot about it but this need for balance is really, really coming to the forefront. That's manifesting itself in, at least for beverages, manifesting itself in people wanting enjoyment from their beverage but permissible enjoyment, right?

Kailey Raymond: I love that phrase. Permissible enjoyment is so good.

Umi Patel: They want permissible enjoyment. So I'm drinking a beverage, of course it's got to give me some kind of joy and that's never going to go away but I want it to be permissible. So you're starting to see the needs of things like zero sugar in beverages across multiple categories. You're starting to see people look for functional benefits, right? So I want more than just enjoying a flavor. I want this flavor to give me a mental boost. I want this thing to give me the ability to focus. So all of these functional benefits are really rising to the forefront as we are looking at some of these trends.

So I think the three big ones that we're seeing right now is the macro environment and how do we make sure that we are providing the value that consumers need right now and want, how do we ensure that we have a portfolio that is going to cater to people who are spending more time at home and drinking at home, and then what are those benefits that we're going to be providing through our portfolio from a health and wellness and a permissibility perspective.

Kailey Raymond: The term permissibility, it's delightful as it relates to drinking and beverages. I think that's fascinating. So it seems like you're capturing all of this insight from the context of what's happening in the greater macro environment from consumer trends. You're piecing it together into building the building blocks of strategy. So a lot of these come along with some pretty difficult challenges. You're piecing data together from different sources. You're trying to get ahead of planning for years ahead of time, building physical products. When you're taking all of this information in and building that roadmap and sharing this information throughout the organization, how are you thinking about solving some of those challenges across the organization with data? I know that you're bringing in all of this information. What are some of those solutions that you're coming up with?

Umi Patel: We have the first phase of planning which is the collection of our data, looking at our data, finding the trends within our data, and then translating them into what we call jobs to be done. What are those jobs? What are those big, needy jobs to be done that will inform a strategy essentially? So that strategy or those jobs to be done then inform the “how that job should be done” which is, in many cases, manifests itself through either a product innovation, through programming, through campaigns, through content.

So our role as the insights organization is to drive the awareness of what we're seeing and then really work with the marketing organization to solidify those in simple jobs to be done. And then, those jobs to be done are used by the marketing organization with creative partners, media partners, a whole host of different people within the organization to develop the how essentially, which can be in many different forms, as I've mentioned.

Kailey Raymond: Absolutely. That's so cool. So yeah, we were talking in the New York Times a few weeks ago and they were saying the exact same thing which is like, "You need to unify all of this data, make sure it's accessible across teams so that those teams can then act on that data," and I think that's really something that is incredibly difficult to do in especially a large organization. It really requires a lot of standardization, definitions, processes, things that aren't necessarily easy to enforce.

I'm always curious in speaking with leaders, especially in insights and analytics, is how would you define good data? What does that look like at Pepsi?

Umi Patel: I think there's this notion of simplification and I think good data is hinged on that. So good data is data that you can put together and then simplify into a simple story that will allow you to develop plans to influence people's behavior. It's easy to say. It's really, really hard to do but I really do think the data is only as good as the story that you can tell with it.

Because often, if there isn't a story, what you have is just a collection of information and that's not helpful. A collection of information is there, yes. It's fact but it's not helping me decide what I should do. So I think for me, the real definition of good data is really about making sure that we are simplifying it and being able to tell a simple story that people can act on because that's ultimately what we want to do. We want to develop plans that are hinged in this data or this story that will help us have a conversation with consumers, that will help us develop a relationship with consumers. So that, to me, if data can do that, then it's doing its job.

Kailey Raymond: Absolutely. I mean, I think that the way that you mentioned simplifying and act, I think that's a very elegant way to phrase this. We hear that often is there's a lot of data, it's easy to collect data, it's not easy to act on data because those are the processes and the definitions and all of those things that make it really, really difficult.

Umi Patel: I also think that story needs to be human-centric, right? One of the things that we've been talking a lot about here is that we often refer to people as a shopper or a consumer and at the end of the day, it's the same individual who is at the core of it. So how do you develop those human-centric stories from the data?

Kailey Raymond: I totally agree with you and that's something that, throughout my career, I've spoken about that. I've always worked in B2B. And so, I've said this a million times but I often think that B2B businesses forget that they're speaking to humans on the other side of the equation like they're making decisions as well. And so, B2H, business to human, I think, is becoming this interesting blend. Especially because direct to consumers becoming such a massive piece of the way that organizations are going to market, the way that you connect with humans individually is going to be a game changer.

Umi Patel: Agreed.

Kailey Raymond: I like that cross-industry perspective of, "Listen, we're all just speaking to humans. You got to make it human and human-centric. It's really important." You mentioned it's really hard to get this right, to make it simple, to make it actionable. We have been talking about this at Segment as it relates to the customer data maturity. It takes a little bit of time for you to be able to figure out exactly all the different places that you're collecting data, synthesize that, create a place where you can enforce rules to make sure that everybody has an individual customer profile that then you can act on. Talk to me a little bit about some of those foundations, maybe, that you needed to build when you were coming into this role at PepsiCo.

Umi Patel: What I will say is, while I'm sitting in this role today, there have been many folks before me who have started this journey and we really do have a very solid foundation here at PepsiCo which is something that I think we're all very grateful for because I think the processes help you organize the data, they help you give you a space to put that story together.

We really start with our planning process, right? There is a very robust planning process that kicks off as we are kicking off our brand strategy planning for our marketing. I'm speaking more from a marketing perspective but this is a discipline that happens across all of our functions in the organization. There, it's creating that space. It's creating that environment where you can have the ability to look at all the data in different ways, collect all that data, have the time to simplify and say, "What is this really telling me?" because you have a lot of data at your fingertips. You don't always need all of that data to tell the story that you want to tell.

My team and I, what we do is we look at that data and say, "What parts of this data are the most relevant for the business that we are supporting or the business that we are helping drive and what is it about this data that makes it important? Why is it important?" So we have a very robust planning process. We then have a very robust time in our planning process to have those debates and have those discussions with our marketing partners, with the insights organization, with, sometimes, the broader business stakeholders also.

I think it's easy to sometimes do the data synthesizing, telling the story but skip the debating. Debating helps you bring people along and it helps them feel as though they're involved in the work and the data that we're seeing. That then, when you do come out of this process with a strategy or what I referred to earlier as the big jobs to be done, it creates collective ownership. That is one of the things that we take pride in doing as a team and we hold ourselves to doing every year. Even though you could say data isn't changing or the trends aren't changing every year, it depends. I mean, that was the case pre-pandemic but now, everything is moving so fast-

Kailey Raymond: Now they are-

Umi Patel: That it is changing-

Kailey Raymond: 100%-

Umi Patel: Really fast. So having these disciplines, I think, really help drive that process.

Kailey Raymond: That's a really great takeaway of the fact that you are enforcing collaboration and communication across teams through debate. I think that is something that, you're right, can oftentimes go overlooked, something that you don't necessarily want to make the time for. But ultimately, the work that you do and your team does not only hits marketing, it hits every part of the organization and so making sure that everybody understands how everyone can act on the data that you're collecting. Really, really interesting. Great insight. I'd love to learn a little bit more about some of the ways that you're actually using some of this good data that we talked about. So do you have any examples of how you're using data to build some of those consumer engagement tactics?

Umi Patel: One of my favorites is a campaign that we just did on brand Pepsi. It's called Better With Pepsi. It's all around this idea that food tastes better with Pepsi. So it's a simple thought but it's driven from my data and findings from my data. One of the biggest drivers of what we call the carbonated soft drink category is the need for it to go well with food, right? So it goes well with-

Kailey Raymond: Pairing, yes.

Umi Patel: Pairing, etc. So we saw that in our data and we saw that to drive the growth of the category, salience with food is an important part of our plans that we should lean into. That insight and that data trend to show that food is driving this category and the association is food is driving this category, led us then to this campaign of Better with Pepsi. Whether it's burgers, whether it's pizza, whether it's fries, everything tastes better with Pepsi.

So that's one of my most recent examples that I really, really love that it started off with a piece of data showing that in order to grow, we need to drive this part of the business. That then translated into a big job to be done that we need to make sure that people think of Pepsi when they are thinking of food. That then led to a super creative campaign called Better with Pepsi which you can see, the trend on its own is like, "Okay. Yeah, I get that." But when you start seeing it manifest itself into an end product, that's where the power of data becomes powerful because now, we've got a campaign out there that is changing the way consumers think about Pepsi and buying our product when they are eating food at home, right?

Kailey Raymond: It's simple but it makes perfect sense.

Umi Patel: Exactly.

Kailey Raymond: I'm thinking a 10-course tasting menu. Here I am, I'm like, field marketing hat is on, "How can we hit the streets with this and really elevate this?" that would be fun.

Umi Patel: It's really a powerful campaign and it's really great to be part of that from the beginning and to see what drove it. A lot of people only see the end product but there's a lot that goes behind it.

Kailey Raymond: That's so cool. My mind immediately went towards, "I'm sure that's also driving some really interesting partner conversations," and your ecosystem is changing a little bit and you're driving an entirely new strategy with that really simple, elegant, little insight there. That's a very, very cool thing.

Umi Patel: Partnering with a lot of our away from home customers, all of that is stemming from what you could say is the insight and the data behind it.

Kailey Raymond: I want to shift a little bit into some of the people that you might turn to for inspiration. So do you have any folks, companies, people that you think are doing it in terms of consumer engagement?

Umi Patel: I do think the entertainment space is doing a great job. So I think the Hulus of the world, the Netflix of the world, I think they're able... Similarly to what I just shared with you, is taking the data and turning it into a campaign that can then drive behavioral change. I think some of those entertainment spaces are taking the data that is showing what consumers are gravitating towards, how frequently they may be watching something, what time of the day they may be watching something, and then taking that data to develop shows and to target those folks with specific content that they know is going to be relevant to them. It's also a bit freaky sometimes because I'm like, "How well do you know me that I am seeing this?"

Kailey Raymond: It is.

Umi Patel: So on the flip side, there's that part of it. But when I'm sitting there trying to figure out, "Okay. What should I watch?" and there's something that's being served to me that I just know is going to resonate with me, I'm actually quite grateful for that.

Kailey Raymond: Yeah. You're like, "Okay. I don't have to do the scroll for an hour and a half to try to find what I want to watch." They know me. Yeah.

Umi Patel: They know me and they know what's going to resonate. They know how to serve it to me. I do think that is an inspiration and the core of that is understanding your audience and knowing and listening to what they want and being able to then serve them with that. So I do find that very inspiring and I often think about how would you translate that to a beverage model, right? Because it's not-

Kailey Raymond: Rapid testing.

Umi Patel: Yeah. A beverage that you can create your own beverage or whatever that may be, customization-

Kailey Raymond: Go into the fountain and take a couple of different ones together, that's rapid testing.

Umi Patel: That is a big source of inspiration as I look at how quickly and how agile they have to be with their data to turn that data around and to serve it back up with something that really makes sense.

Kailey Raymond: Yeah. It is so interesting, the difference between digital only businesses and blended businesses and the ways that they can rapidly iterate leveraging data. You're right. That is such a source of inspiration to say, "How can we take all of these insights that consumers are giving us every single day and test really quickly, figure it out, and move on from there?" I do get freaked out by those recommendations though.

Umi Patel: Yeah. The other thing that I find very inspiring is we have a media analytics team here at PepsiCo and they have many data sources that allow you to really understand who the demographics and psychographics are around the stores that we provide our portfolio through. So we're a company that provides consumers with our beverages through either an away from home venue or a retail venue.

So we have a lot of tools that allow us to really target who's living around those places that are selling our products and then making sure that we are serving them with the right information. So if there are value offers that are happening or taking place in close proximity to where they may be, really targeting that shopper or household with the types of products that we know they drink, the values that they possibly could want, the combos that they may be looking at, looking at the fact that they're a household that drinks this type of beverage and eats this type of snack and if you put it together and serve that up to them-

Kailey Raymond: Better with Pepsi.

Umi Patel: Yeah. Serve that up to them in the geography in which they are in, then the chance of converting that into a sale is much higher. So I also think our media analytics team is a real source of inspiration and that partnership that we have with them really allows us to take not only the consumer data but the media data and combine it together and drive shopper behavior.

Kailey Raymond: That's so interesting. Contextual insights, pairing it with some of your first party data sources to really drive that engagement. You're blowing my mind a little bit because it's touching on a lot of things. It's touching on individualized personalization, localization. It's all these things that are really hard to accomplish and are you saying that you are doing this on a household level?

Umi Patel: We do, yeah. We have household data that we target. We understand what the patents are from a consumption perspective for these households and then we can use our media to ensure that we are targeting them with the right offerings and things that they may want. I mean, if you're being served up with all of this media content or information, you want it to at least be relevant to you. You want to feel as though I can actually do something with this and that's what that capability allows us to do.

Kailey Raymond: That is so cool and yes, you mentioned you're increasing conversions with that. That totally makes sense. That is an awesome example. I was talking to the CMO of Tailored Brands a couple of weeks ago and she was saying that they're also trying to figure out household data of a teenager who's going to prom and they need to figure out what their suit is like and then the parent who might have to get another outfit for another occasion. Have you had any insights into figuring out within a household if there's folks that like different types of beverages, somebody's a little bit on that health trend and somebody's like a little bit on another one?

Umi Patel: Yeah. We do a lot of consumption tracking data which is consumers track what they're drinking, where they're drinking it, who they're drinking it with, what occasion they're drinking it for. So we know a lot of that information by geography, by cup, and then we use a lot of that to help drive our strategies, right? So what should we be offering? Which categories are they leaning into? Is this household a coffee drinking household or is this household a soda, CSD drinking, or a water household? So yeah, we have a lot of that data. We use a lot of that data to inform our strategies and it's something that we collect ongoing with our consumers.

Kailey Raymond: That is so, so cool. You all are blending a lot of different types of data all coming in and pairing together to increase conversions. That's the name of the game, especially nowadays when you're trying to save as much as you can. Do you have a favorite piece of data they all collect or a really fun insight that you might be willing to share?

Umi Patel: We have this capability and data source that helps us understand what attributes consumers are looking for in their beverage or their food items that can help serve a need. It's a pretty sophisticated AI tool that pulls in data that is things that consumers are talking about through social listening, things that may be trending on food service menus, patents that may be being filed for that we don't even know whether they-

Kailey Raymond: Whoa.

Umi Patel: Translate. So it's a really, really amazing capability that we have. What it does is it takes this machine, think of it as this machine, that takes this data from all different sources and helps you understand what is trending now and what we believe will trend in the future to meet these needs states of consumers. To me, I find that fascinating, right? Because if you can really understand that and see where things are going, it'll allow you to develop, in our case, an innovation pipeline that will be able to serve the needs of consumers now as well as the needs of consumers in the future. By no means does it tell us everything we need to know but it gives us a really good, solid foundation of where we believe the demand is today and where the demand is going in the future.

Kailey Raymond: The crystal ball. That's so cool.

Umi Patel: I wouldn't say it's a crystal ball but it-

Kailey Raymond: I'll take one of those anytime you want to send one over.

Umi Patel: It's the closest that we have to a crystal ball but that is one of my favorites. I learned about that when I came into this role about a year or so ago and I'm continuously learning about it, to be honest with you. There's endless possibilities with that capability so that's something I'm super excited about. In terms of what does it help do, it helps inform our innovation pipeline, product innovation, packaging innovation pipeline.

Kailey Raymond: Yeah. Machine learning and AI is just... There are so many awesome use cases for it. The crystal ball analogy is a good one though. That's so cool. They all have-

Umi Patel: I like to think I have a crystal ball. I mean, who wouldn't?

Kailey Raymond: Of course, of course. What do you see as it relates to any changes that are on the horizon as it relates to consumer data in the next 6, 12, or more months?

Umi Patel: I think we just touched upon it. I think AI is a big one. More and more of our data sources will come from capabilities or tools that are AI-enabled that allows us to be much more agile. It allows us to quickly take the data, synthesize it, simplify it, create a story, and act on it and there's a need for that. The world is moving so fast, things are moving at a rapid rate now so you need those tools and capabilities and processes to be also moving at the same rate as what the world is moving. So I do think that is going to be a really big thing in the horizon if it is... It's already here. It's just going to require us to have to put more focus on that.

Kailey Raymond: Yeah. Absolutely. There's a study by IBM, and this was years ago at this point so this is probably outdated information and it's probably even crazier now, but data doubles every 18 months to two years. And so, just how you synthesize that is obviously impossible for human beings and so you need to rely on machines to be able to do that. It's not just structured data, it's unstructured data.

Umi Patel: It's unstructured data too.

Kailey Raymond: Social listening, like you were talking about, picking out those trends. That is massive natural language processing technologies, the ability to really put structure against that so foundational to some of the strategies and tactics that we're going to need to deploy in the coming years. Last question that I have for you today, what steps or recommendations do you have for somebody if they're looking to up level their consumer engagement tactics?

Umi Patel: I think I'd go back to the question that you asked us and what's our role within the organization. I would say, first of all, the willingness to listen, I think, is really key. Sometimes, I think we all have our own biases and we bring those biases. So being able to just have a mindset where you are open minded and you're willing to look and listen to what the data is telling you.

Once you've got that mindset and you've got that behavior, the other thing is to really find ways to implement that in your process, right? So we talked about the data's only data if you don't have the processes to implement that in your planning process because it's your planning process and the output of your planning process that gives you where you should focus. It's the way you should focus then that you take to bringing to life, right?

So I think for anybody who is looking to either establish or step up from where they are today, I think the key is really a bit of a behavioral change and a mindset change which is you may have known something before and many people have worked in many categories for many years and I think a lot of categories have been performing the same way for many years. I think those times are changed. Even something that may have been performing the way that it was performing, no longer performs that way. So it is important for you to understand why and you can only understand the why if you are open to listening to what is happening so that would be my advice.

Kailey Raymond: Great advice to listen, to change, if you need to, a little bit of your behavior, be willing to collaborate and as you said before, debate and commit. So Umi, thank you so much for being here. I learned a ton about what you all are doing and leveraging data in the customer engagement journey. Appreciate it.

Umi Patel: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Super exciting and great conversation.