CPG Campaigns: Marketing is often about showcasing human truths (podcast episode #107)

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Look, let’s face it, our industry can have a bad reputation.

And I can see why. Just scroll through YouTube or social media and you’ll see self-appointed gurus shouting about tricks and hacks and shortcuts.

But sustainably successful marketing is not about shortcuts, it’s about digging into the very essence of what it means to be a human being.

Sounds pompous, I know, but hear me out.

Effective marketing deeply understands and portrays human realities, behaviors, and emotions. It connects authentically with people's experiences, desires, and needs.

So when I read this lesson in a podcast guest application – ‘marketing is often about showcasing human truths’ – I knew I had found a kindred spirit I wanted to sit down with and learn from Karuna Rawal, CMO and CRO, Nature’s Fynd.

Nature’s Fynd has raised $500 million in funding since its founding in 2012. Backers include celebrity investors like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Al Gore, and Jack Ma; along with institutional investors like SoftBank and Blackstone.

Rawal leads a team of 17 across Marketing, Sales, PR, Innovation, Culinary, Business Development and Creative – plus three agencies. Startups run fast and lean, she says.

Listen to the full episode using this embedded player or by clicking through to your preferred audio streaming service using the links below it.

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Stories (with lessons) about what she made in marketing

Here are some lessons from Rawal that emerged in our discussion.

Marketing is often about showcasing human truths

Rawal has created marketing campaigns with some of the biggest CPG companies, including P&G. She knows how to develop award-winning campaigns that are culturally relevant and create strong brand affinity. In 2014, Rawal joined a SWAT team at the request of the global CEO to develop the Always #LikeAGirl campaign within six weeks, balancing this task with her role as Chief Strategy Officer for Arc.

The team was small, just three people, who had to dig deep into the business and uncover a great human insight that would allow the creatives to develop a campaign.

Always planned a global campaign to drive an emotional connection to the brand, especially amongst Millennials, and foster popularity and brand loyalty. The strategy was to take the commonly used insult "like a girl" and flip it on its head to capture the subtle yet negative power it generated to inspire a movement to change "like a girl" to mean “downright amazing.”

This idea was brought to life through a social experiment to show the impact the phrase "like a girl" had on society – especially on girls pre- and post-puberty. The brand campaign would center on this social experiment to resonate with all generations of women (and even men). The centerpiece of the campaign: a video that captured how people of all ages interpret the phrase "like a girl." The campaign was a hit – winning over 180 industry awards with 14 Cannes Lions including the inaugural Glass Lion for Gender Equality.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way

Take advantage of opportunities planned and unplanned and make things happen.

Before Nature’s Fynd had a product at retail, the team got wind of an opportunity with Bill Gates (an investor) where he would try the brand’s fungi-based food on-air with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes. To capitalize on this national press exposure, Rawal directed the team to build a direct-to-consumer website in less than six weeks so that viewers could order and try the brand’s food.

It was a massive undertaking with overwhelming deadlines, but it worked. The team was able to drive traffic to the website, gain new followers, and convert early adopters to brand ambassadors, thus creating the opportunity to create consumer buzz and leverage insights that drove their subsequent successful retail sell-in. Again, without even having a product on the shelf.

Marketing matters, even for legacy brands

Rawal inherited the Duncan Hines brand at a time when it was in decline and took it through an aggressive initiative of launching over 40 new items in two years. She oversaw the implementation of revamping the brand’s advertising and packaging.

Rawal saw the need for the refresh and showed that the beloved brand deserved a spot in people’s shopping carts. It can be easy to focus on existing product needs and full brand overhauls are expensive, but the return can be massive.

Rawal and her team achieved market share growth of 9% and the highest ever market share in its prior fifteen-year period with record profit and margin growth.

Lessons (with stories) from people she collaborated with

Rawal also shared lessons she learned from the people she collaborated with.

Set a high bar for quality customer experiences

Chef Eric Ripert, owner Le Bernardin, culinary advisor at Nature’s Fynd

Ripert taught Rawal the importance of setting a high bar for culinary experiences with taste being a top priority. He became a fan of Nature’s Fynd and its use of Fy™, the brand’s nutritional fungi protein, so much so that he became a culinary advisor. He understood how innovative Nature’s Fynd was and felt that its products were good enough to be on his menu at his Michelin-starred restaurant. For the brand, it meant they had to ensure that the quality would never be compromised.

Nature’s Fynd just completed a partnership with chef Stephanie Izard as well, which got Rawal thinking about what makes a successful partnership, along with what to avoid. She shared her lessons in our discussion.

Always choose to do the harder right thing than the easy wrong thing

via Chip Bergh, former CEO of Levi Strauss

Bergh was Rawal’s first marketing director at P&G. He taught Rawal to “always choose to do the harder right thing than the easy wrong thing” and to always operate with integrity when it comes to people and business management. Not all leaders do this, and it makes being a leader a hard place to be.

Rawal has had to restructure teams, let people go and change campaign directions that not everyone agreed on, but she has always tried to do it with empathy and integrity and take a hard look at what is best for the business.

Align strategy with creativity

via Judy John, Global Chief Creative Officer, Edelman

John taught Rawal the importance of partnering marketing and strategy. She believed that strategy had to set the table so the creative could serve dinner. Strategy is so often done behind the scenes, like the research needed on the #LikeAGirl campaign to deliver the creative work that resonated so deeply with the campaign target audience. 

Discussed in this episode

Marketing: It’s not about you, and when you make it about you, you are never going to succeed (podcast episode #53)

Content and Communications: Tenacity, keep it simple, authenticity works (podcast episode #33)

CMO-CPO Collaboration: Bridge Marketing and Product for collaborative growth (podcast episode #95)

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Transcript

Not ready for a listen yet? Interested in searching the conversation? No problem. Below is a rough transcript of our discussion.

Daniel Burstein: Just that few words. Just flipping those few words a little bit can have such a different impact on someone, can it? That's great.

Karuna Rawal: Yeah. It is. and that's the thing I love about marketing, right. Time and again. And I've been fortunate, I've worked on a number of these, campaigns that, I think if you could. And, and part of it is, having worked on the agency side and really understanding creativity and how powerful it can be, but getting to that human insight and I, you know, kind of I talk about it as a, you know, you kind of cross that human insight with a brand truth.

You bring those together. And that's when you and like you said, you have to have a right to own that insight. Right. Like. Right. Yeah. Anyone can say, well, and I know I'm going to talk about like girl. Sure. But if you don't have a reason, a foundation for why that makes sense for you as a brand, consumers are gonna reject it.

So I think really thinking it through, it's deeper work and it seems. But when you land on it, it's pretty magical.

Intro: Welcome to how I made it in marketing. From marketing Sherpa, we scour pitches from hundreds of creative leaders and uncover specific examples, not just trending ideas or buzzword laden schmaltz. Real world examples to help you transform yourself as a marketer. Now here's your host, the senior Director of Content and Marketing at Marketing Sherpa, Daniel Bernstein, to tell you about today's guest.

Daniel Burstein: Look, let's face it, our industry can have a bad reputation. And I can see why. Right. Just scroll through YouTube or social media and you'll see self-appointed gurus shouting about tricks and hacks and shortcuts. But sustainably successful marketing is not about shortcuts. It's about digging into the very essence of what it means to be a human being. Sounds pompous, I know, but hear me out.

Marketing is about reflecting the core realities, behaviors, and emotions that drive human decision making and actions. The essence of effective marketing lies in its ability to connect with people on an authentic level, speaking to their experiences, desires, and needs. So when I read this lesson in a podcast, guest application marketing is often about showcasing human truths. I knew I'd found a kindred spirit, and I wanted to sit down and learn here to share the story behind that lesson.

Along with many more lesson filled stories. Is Karuna Rao, CMO and CRO of Nature's Fine. Thanks for joining us, Karuna.

Karuna Rawal: Great to be here. Thanks for having me, Daniel.

Daniel Burstein: All right. Let's take a quick look at your background. So people who know you know who I'm talking to. So I just cherry pick from your long and illustrious career. But I saw that you were a marketing director for North American drug retail at Procter and Gamble. You were the US president and global chief strategy officer at Ark worldwide, part of publicist Group and president and group client lead at Publicis Group.

Corinne, for the past five years, Corona has been at Nature's Fine, where she is now chief revenue officer and chief marketing officer. Nature's fine has raised $500 million in funding since its founding in 2012. Backers include celebrity investors like Jeff Bezos, Bill gates, al Gore and Jack Ma, along with institutional investors like SoftBank and Blackstone Group, and leads a team of 17 across marketing, sales, PR, innovation, culinary, business development and creative plus three agencies.

She says startups run fast and lean. All right, so tell us about running fast and lean. What is your day like as Chro and CMO at this startup?

Karuna Rawal: Well, I have to say no two days are the same. So it's it's hard to describe a typical day because we can go anywhere from, you know, working on, some packaging innovation that we're working on to looking and tasting new products that are in our innovation pipeline, to meeting with our creative team who is working on the next, you know, campaign for our new launches.

to getting into a business discussion, talking about our pricing strategy. you name it, it's, it's all bundled up in one day, and no two days are the same, so it's, it's a lot of fun. a lot of very quick decision making, which is very different from being in the corporate world. so, you know, things that used to take months and months and many meetings and many PowerPoint decks, often happen in a quick hallway conversation or, you know, grabbing a few people around the table and making those calls.

So, yeah, it's, all of the above.

Daniel Burstein: And you mentioned hallway conversation. I think you're joining me from home today. Like, what is that? Where is it? Hybrid. How are you figuring that all out?

Karuna Rawal: Yeah, we are a hybrid. So we actually, built a new our new facility and moved it on February 16th, 2020. I think back to that time screen.

Daniel Burstein: Time of.

Karuna Rawal: About two weeks. and, you know, kind of all had to go home. we slowly, you know, we kind of kept the essential functions, you know, obviously everybody shut down for I think it was a couple of months. And then slowly our manufacturing and the essential functions went back. And then over, over time, we I think the functions like marketing, finance, others who don't have to be in the office every day.

We have sort of a hybrid, arrangement. And part of that is because, you know, we've grown so much since we built the facility that it literally, for all of us showed up at the same time. We would not fit. So, it is a hybrid. So it depends on sort of needs of the business. And if there's, you know, critical meetings and, reason to be in the office.

And again, we're in the food business. So, I tend to be in the office quite a bit for tasting, different things. We're working on with our culinary team. That's a focus.

Daniel Burstein: On them having tastings on someone that's running in the office. All right, well, let's take a look at some of the lessons from the things you made in your career. As I like to mention, I've never done anything else. I've never been, like an actuary or a podiatrist. But like, as marketers, we get to make things. And that that makes us fun.

I guess in the culinary world, they do too. And then you actually get to eat it. But, so the first lesson you mentioned, I said, this is the top. I love this marketing is often about showcasing human truths. This is what makes marketing fun to me. I don't it's yes, it's a business acumen, but it's about people and learning about these, these odd things we call human beings and how to serve them.

so how did you learn this lesson?

Karuna Rawal: So, you know, if I go way back to when I decided I really loved marketing, at the heart of it was this notion of, really understanding what makes people tick. Right? I've always been curious, and I was I was, I'm an immigrant. I came to this country at the age of nine. And one of the things you learn as you, you know, get accustomed to different cultures because I as a child of a diplomat, we lived in many different countries.

And so it was always, you know, kind of figuring out what's going on, what are the cues, how do you understand why people do what they do and how do you acclimate? And so it kind of, you know, when I learned about marketing and it was kind of a ready, you know, logical transition to say, wow, this is all about understanding what makes people tick.

so really getting to the heart of, you know, an insight, a human insight to me is what does, really builds great marketing ideas and marketing campaigns. so an example of this is, you know, when I was working on, you know, always at the agency at the open, at an Arc, and we were really tasked with really understanding, how do we build this business and how do we make this brand more relevant to younger consumers?

So, you know, millennials and Gen Z was kind of known as it is the number one brand. It had functional superiority, but it didn't really have an emotional connection. with its consumers. So really digging into, you know, looking at the data and trying to understand and insight around, you know, what is it that drives people to change behavior.

And with this particular brand, as with many, I've worked on really getting to that initial point where people make a decision whether they're going to enter when they're entering the category, when they're trying to decide. And obviously, but this, category, it's at puberty and girls are trying to figure themselves out and they're going through this change and they have to make a, a decision to enter the category.

So it was really around really understanding what makes, you know, the consumer figure out, how do they think about what's going on in their lives and getting much deeper than just the brand? Because, you know, as much as we all revolve our lives around marketing, most people walking around do not, they're not thinking about brands. They're thinking about their own lives.

And that's what kind of led us to this, interesting data we found around the brand that girls lose 50% of their confidence. you know, when, when they hit puberty. And it takes a very long time for it to come back and it's, you know, they they lose confidence twice as much as boys. And so it was a very dramatic piece of data.

But really unwrapping that and thinking about how do we bring that to life in a way that is really compelling, that can drive, a change in behavior was was really the exciting part of working on this campaign. I was a strategist on this campaign, and it was really to help uncover this human truth that lay behind this idea of confidence was really what we were looking at.

And what are all the things in society that actually hurt girls confidence at that very vulnerable age. And that's where this idea of language and things people say and kind of say without even thinking. So this idea of like a girl being used as an insult, where you throw like a girl or you, you know, you run like a girl.

We really thought about how do you take that insight and turn it around? Because why should it be a negative thing? And then the more we dug into it, what we saw was what girls before puberty don't feel like. It's an insult. They think it's a great thing because they think girls that are just as, you know, powerful as boys.

And then we notice the shift. And to be able to kind of do the social experiment and really show that, you know, if you're probably familiar with the campaign, we really brought it to life in a way, creatively that juxtaposed this truth, this human truth around, you know, what's happening at this age and how the things we say and the things we do, really can affect a girl's confidence.

And so the entire campaign was built around that idea.

Daniel Burstein: Oh, absolutely familiar with that campaign. It's a beautiful campaign. Is it? Hats off to you. Because it was a beautiful campaign, because not only obviously writing campaigns meant to sell a product in one sense, but I think it was also changed. The culture change, the way people look at certain phrases so that what what a win win to have there.

and also it aligned with what that brand was. So I guess esthetically any brand could have said like a girl, right. target could have said that, I guess, or whatever, but boy, did I do cheer pointed aligned exactly with who that brand was starting to serve. yeah. But I want to ask you about you mentioned the functional aspects too.

So I want to ask you about like if you have any examples of actually digging into human truths to communicate the functional aspects of a product, because as marketers, when we talk about, you know, I think sometimes that that, that, that branding element is a big shiny piece and that's that with the eight teams are going to get on.

And that's what all the leaders want to get involved in. But sometimes we have to communicate the functional merits of the product. And I'll give you a quick example. I interviewed a NASA Landis, a vice president of marketing and Octane, on how I made it in marketing. I one of her lessons was to market effectively. You have to think beyond what your product does.

You have to understand the role it plays in your customer's lives. And for her product, it was a financing product for, as a commercial, like a B2B financing product for people that owned, different, dealerships that sold power equipment and stuff like that. But basic was a financing equipment. So she wanted to get and understand their lives, not just, okay, how do they use my product, but what are their lives like and what role does my product play in their lives?

So then she could get to the functional usage of her product, right? So for you, Karen, like do you have any examples of that was a beautiful branding example. But how you actually unpack and understand the human truth of the functional usage of our product and then communicate that?

Karuna Rawal: Yeah. So this is going to be a little bit of an an interesting example because it's actually for some work I did when I was at the agency for Walgreens and it was around their flu shot campaign. So, you know, if you think about flu shots and they were trying, you know, everybody's got the same flu shots, right?

Like you go to Walgreens or CVS and go, you know, anywhere. but the challenge is getting, you know, this was a few years back, obviously before Covid and all of that. But getting people to come in and get the flu shot was, was the big challenge, right? People. And then having them choose to go to Walgreens as opposed to the doctor's offices, whatever it might be.

so one of the things we said was, okay, what is it that's really preventing people from being able to do this? And our focus, our target focus was moms, because moms often are, you know, they're busy taking care of everybody else. And one of the things that really falls off their list is taking care of themselves.

So, you know, we spent quite a bit of time trying to understand, like, what is going on in her life that is getting in the way of her going and getting a flu shot. And what's the messaging that that would really help overcome that barrier? you know, we literally talked about it in those terms. So we really spent some time understanding her life and all the things that she was busy doing, especially if you think about Fall and back to school, which is when you're supposed to go get a flu shot, you're busy doing all of the things of getting your kids ready for school and shopping and, you know, getting your house,

whatever, all the other things. And then she literally kept saying, well, you know, taking care of myself and getting a flu shot just keeps getting lower and lower on my to do list. so one of the again, there is a human inside still, even though it's a function of very functional campaign. we got to the inside of, you know, as soon as you say to mom, you need to go do this to take care of yourself.

She's like, oh, I got all these other things to do. But the minute you turn around the message and you say, calm yourself for the ones you love, all of a sudden it was a flip on that inside to say, wait a minute, it's not about I'm actually doing this for them too. so that actually that little nuance of understanding her life and how the, you know, the categories fit into her life or didn't in that case, allowed us to craft a campaign that actually ended up, they hit their goal of their six month goal in five weeks.

I mean, we drove more flu shots at one, a Reggie Award and went on to be, a campaign that they still run. So very proud of that work as well.

Daniel Burstein: That's great. That's a great understanding of understanding other humans. And I know a lot in marketing. We talk about all these different new and emerging mediums and programmatic and getting these things right, which are all important things, and understanding people also gets us in the right way. But I think that's beautiful because just that few words, just flipping those few words a little bit, can have such a different impact on something.

Can it?

Karuna Rawal: That's great. Yeah. It is. and that's the thing I love about marketing, right. Time and again, and I've been fortunate, I've worked on a number of these, campaigns that, I think if you can. And part of it is having worked on the agency side and really understanding creativity and how powerful it can be, but getting to that human insight in a lot, you know, kind of I talk about it as a, you know, you kind of cross that human insight with a brand truth.

You bring those together. And that's when you and like you said, you have to have the right to own that insight. Right. Like. Right. Yeah. Anyone can say, well, and I know I'm going to talk about like girl. Sure. But if you don't have a reason, a foundation for why that makes sense for you as a brand, consumers are going to reject it.

So I think really thinking it through, it's it's deeper work than it seems. But when you land on it, it's pretty magical.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. So you and you talked about some work with some major brands, but something you mentioned when I asked you about your day to day, you said like, well, now in my life I got to make some pretty quick decisions. Right? So let's look at this next story. You say where there's a will, there's a way. And this, I think is about one of those quick decisions and hopping on an opportunity.

Karuna Rawal: Yeah, absolutely. So this one, is really about, my time at Nature Spy. And so it was again, I think it was, post Covid. So, I don't know, maybe post Covid, but I guess.

Daniel Burstein: I am, I am I'm.

Karuna Rawal: Trying to say, all right. but it was in, 20, 21, but we were still under Covid restrictions, I guess is the reason I bring that up. And, Bill gates and his, breakthrough energy Ventures is one of our major investors. And there was an opportunity we heard from their group that bill was going to be on 60 minutes with Anderson Cooper, and they were going to showcase a couple of his, investment companies, and we were going to be one of them, which was like, wow, this is amazing.

This was, literally Christmas Eve, I think December 23rd. and he was supposed to be, you know, doing this taping in, in January and, you know, we said, okay, you know, we'd like to come out and like, you know, have the product and do all the stuff you would normally do. And they said, no, no, no, no, this is Covid.

No one's coming to send us product. He's going to eat it on air and we'll go from there. And I thought, oh my goodness. Like, you know, first of all you're like, I hope this goes well. but more importantly, I thought, you know, when that 60 minutes airs, which as it turned out, it was on February 14th and this so this is now, you know, January 1st or so at when that episode aired.

And we didn't know at that point what kind of reaction he was going to have. Was it going to be, you know, he was going to love it or he was going to be like, yeah, this isn't you know, he's a very, direct guys. You can't like Bill.

Daniel Burstein: Gates or Anderson.

Karuna Rawal: Cooper. Bill gates. Yeah. So he had.

Daniel Burstein: Never tried it before.

Karuna Rawal: He had not tried these because these are new products.

Daniel Burstein: Wow. Okay.

Karuna Rawal: We so with a risky right. We're sending him product. We're hope you know I'm not there are CEOs. No one's there. but on the other hand to me it was like, okay, we can look at this and and you know, it's a yes, of course there's some risk. But on the other hand, you know, our products are great.

This is a great opportunity. How can we maximize this? Right. And this is keep in mind this is before we had launch. So this is very early stages. we hadn't even gotten into retail. We were not available anywhere. We were just developing the product. So we were sending them kind of our first batch, and it was going to be on 60 minutes, and Anderson Cooper was going to we thought he was going to try it.

So I turned to my team and I said, we are going to get so many eyeballs, googly. Well, first of all, people searching and then where are they going to go? They're going to go to our website, and there's going to be no way for them to buy this product. We've got to do something so they can actually we can capitalize on that momentum.

And we planned to, you know, launch our, like a direct bundle in April. And I said, no, no, no, we got to do this by February 14th. And everyone's looking at me like six weeks. I'm like, yep, six weeks. We got to have a salable product bundle ready to go. So when we literally built that thing in six weeks, which was insane, get had to finish, you know, finalizing our product or packaging all of the stuff, get it ready.

So literally when the episode aired, we were all watching, you know, fingers crossed you tasted it. And they both were like, this is really great. And we said, flip it on. And you clearly turned it on. And we sold out within 24 hours. and it was an amazing moment. again, not without risk, but sometimes you just you have to find a way to make things happen.

And the team still talks about this example because there was like, there was no way we thought we were going to be able to pull that off. And we did. And we were at that point a really tiny team from a marketing standpoint. but the momentum it gave us as a brand, and we were able to, you know, we were able to walk into retailers and show this clip of having been on 60 minutes and with Bill Gates and Anderson talking about our products and our company.

And it just means that, you know, selling to retail really smooth. Plus we got, you know, early feedback from all those people that bought the product. We got lots of great insights. we were able to follow up with every one of them and continue to fine tune the product. So it turned out to be a great way to do a soft launch, which was totally unplanned.

but actually one of the values of our company is always find a way. and so this example to me is, marketing is like that, right? Sometimes these things come up that are not planned for their opportunities. You have to jump on them. And we see this all the time. Lots of great campaigns for, you know, and ideas that just, they happen in culture or they happen because an opportunity presents itself and you have to be ready.

You have to be ready to take, full advantage as best as you can. And then it's not it wasn't perfect. We made, you know, and there were some speed bumps, but we got there and we accomplished what we needed to.

Daniel Burstein: Wow. Well, let me ask you. We talk about you in truths. Did you learn anything from seeing that Anderson Cooper and CNN 60 minutes team up close? Because I'm always curious about this, what we can learn from other industries. Like that's why when you talked about human truths, like, for example, I love looking at standup comedy, and I learned a lot from that group because they're doing kind of a similar thing we're doing.

They're setting up a proposition. They see if they get a conversion, stuff like this. and when I interviewed, Jeannie s, sorry, Jeannie asked about the head of content communications at Wacom and how I made it marketing. One of her lessons was about tenacity, and she talked about working as a producer of Entertainment Tonight and seeing it behind the scenes and seeing, you know, you talk about the tenacity your team went through, right?

Sometimes we just see the entertainment on the front end or those news shows on the front end. Absolutely. That tenacity behind the scenes, it makes it all happen. Right? And when we see that, that maybe we were like, maybe we can do it too for our product. So I think you're asking I mean, just kind of being part of that and seeing that up close.

I know you didn't get to go there in person, but did you learn anything from kind of Anderson Cooper and that whole team?

Karuna Rawal: Yeah, I think just it's exactly what you just said, right? This idea of the show must go on, right? Yeah. We we make it work. And we were under some very challenging circumstances. I mean, they didn't have any of the typical crew that they have. And and I'll tell you even a funnier story. So while I couldn't go, the team did call me and say, look, normally you would be here or someone from your team who can help answer questions because Bill always asks lots of questions as he's getting ready for, you know, doing what he's doing.

Can you just hang on the phone with us? And I was literally on the phone, Daniel, for eight hours and they'd be like, Bill wants to know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I answer the question, maybe go back to I was like, do you talk to builder? Like, no, no, to stay on the phone. I was like, do you want me to get on zoom?

No, no, no, you're good. And so the entire that entire Saturday, my family was just laughing so hard because I was literally on the phone, in case, you know, Bill had a question, but it but the thing about that, what it showed me is how prepared they were for anything that came up. So it's it's sort of like prepare for everything.

the show must go on, make it happen, even under really, really challenging circumstances. And I think in a startup, that's kind of what we do every single day. We're constantly, you know, the curveballs keep coming. And, you know, one day you're at the top of that roller coaster, and the next day you're like, oh, like, you know, we just got this, you know, commitment.

And now we have to figure out how to make it happen. Right. And that's been our reality. Like even when we started selling in retail, you know, it was thought, okay, well we'll go to Whole Foods and we'll, you know, maybe they'll take us in a few stores and then we'll go to our region because we were still building up our capacity.

And lo and behold, we have our first meeting and they're like, great, we'd like you to go national. And I was, you know, my jaw dropped and I was like, National is in like the whole country, right? Yeah. And so, you know, we had to do some quick work to figure out if we could do that. And the reality was we didn't think we could do it at the level that we wanted.

So we went back to them, which is unheard of, and said, hey, we are so excited, but we don't want to let you down, and we'd rather be prepared and make sure we can fire on all cylinders. So can we, you know, scale it back a little bit. They, you know, first they were like, okay, you understand, we never ask brands to go national right off the bat.

And I said, I understand. And I really appreciate it, but I want to make sure we do this right. So, you know, they were very open to us and kind of scaling back a little bit until we could get our capacity going and built. But it's it's about, you know, figuring out how do you pivot when unexpected things happen and how do you still, you know, keep your eye on the ball and continue to move forward.

But, yeah, always for challenges.

Daniel Burstein: Well, that's a great example of being a good partner, which I'm going to ask you about in just a bit. You got a great story for that. But first I want to ask, so, you know, that's a great startup story of, okay, boom, you've got an opportunity to get on the map. But you also said, marketing matters even for legacy brands.

So take us to this, legacy brand you're working with. And why did marketing matter?

Karuna Rawal: So the legacy brand, I worked on, I was fortunate. I started my career in, at P&G, and got to work on a number of legacy brands. So Jif peanut butter was my first brand, and I worked on Folgers coffee. but the, you know, the brand, I think, I love to talk about quite a bit is is the brand.

That was my first brand manager assignment, which was on Duncan Hines, which is the baking mix business. And Duncan Hines at that point was in a lot of trouble and kind of had forgotten the fundamentals. I mean, I'm still a big believer in the four PS of marketing, as old fashioned as that sounds. I mean, if you don't get those basics right along with, as you and I talked about earlier, the human consumer or human insight, the brand truth, it was basics are really, really important.

You can add all the other stuff on top. But if those pieces are not, you know, on a solid foundation, it makes it a lot harder. So, you know, Duncan Hines is a very well known brand. People had heard of it. You know, it's been around forever. It's like Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, Duncan Hines. But we were faltering when it came to marketing.

You know, we were out skewed, unsure. So we were we had, you know, we'd become so focused on delivering. I used to joke and, you know, we had 26 PhDs working on a moisture cake. And when I walked in, I said, was our cake moist? They're like, oh, yeah, it's like 98% moist. And I'm like, and do people care if it's 2% more moist?

Or should we, like, maybe work on something else? you know, but meanwhile we were not in the flavor game. And food is all about flavor. We were not, you know, really looking at all the different, more fun things that we could do. So really getting a solid innovation program that, brought the brand kind of to the forefront, kind of modernized.

It was the first part of it, but then it was an overhaul of everything, you know, was introducing we did 40 new items in a couple of years. we revamped the pricing strategy, we did new packaging. We came out with a new campaign. It was all the fundamentals. because, you know, you cannot rest on the morale of, well, everybody.

I mean, we had like huge awareness as a brand, but no one was that awareness was not turning into trial and repeat. And so we're really diagnosing where the problem was and what we needed to do in order to bring the brand into the, you know, 21st century was really a lot of the work that needed to be done.

But I've seen that time and time again. I mean, if you look at all these legacy brands, I mean, tied to me is always a great example. We did some work on tide as well. They're constantly reinventing. It's still about clean, but there's some new messaging there. They're more culturally relevant. So you have to keep I think even with, legacy brands, keep keep polishing the edges and keep looking for that insight that's going to drive the brand forward to the next generation.

And I think that's one of the lessons I learned really well at P&G is really look at when do people enter a category, how are they making their decisions, what matters at that moment? and then how do they move through different phases of their life? And where does what role does that brand or category play at each stage?

And then that's what helps guide your marketing.

Daniel Burstein: Well, let's let's talk about how you learn that about the customer. Because when you mentioned 40 new items in two years, that to me seems like a lot even for a Procter and Gamble brand. That's a little.

Karuna Rawal: Insane.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. So I wonder, like, how did you make sure you were launching new products, new SKUs that would matter to the customer? So for example, I mentioned Anisa Landis earlier. I'd interviewed her on how I made it, marketing another one of her lessons that I loved. You said it's not about you. And when you make it about you, you're never going to succeed.

And she talked about her time at General Mills working on the Mir Glen brand, and she saw that customers were concerned about VPA. So she had this great idea to take the tomatoes and put them in jars, glass jars, sell them at Whole Foods, and there's no VPA. And she was so focused on that she overlook the fact that the pricing you mentioned, the P's, the pricing for this would make it so expensive that people might want it, but it would be too expensive.

They would never buy it. So there's so much that goes into launching 40 new items, getting the pricing right, the packaging all that stuff. Can you give us just like a little insight into, like how did you learn about the customer that you would choose to give you a sense that, okay, I'm 100% these aren't gonna be successful, but let's get to a good batting average here.

Karuna Rawal: Absolutely. So it was two tiered actually. The first was really, understanding working with our retailers to really understand, like, you know, what do you think about noncompliance? What's going on? What's missing? What do we got? Right. What's not working? and you know, when you're P&G, you have the ability to access customers to get that kind of insight.

But often people, you know, people don't ask them those questions, and they actually have a lot of insight as to what's working well with their shoppers and what's not. So that was kind of the first step. The second was really what you alluded to earlier, which is spending and incredible. We did some really deep, deep consumer research, across the country in different, you know, demographic to really understand what did the brand mean?

to what were what was associated with the brand. Why did the brand matter, what was missing? and what was preventing people from buying it? And, you know, it was one of those where people were like, oh, I love Duncan Hines. You know, I don't just want a vanilla or chocolate cake. I want, you know, I want to try Funfetti or I want to do cookies and cream and so flavor variety quickly became very obvious as the thing that we were not delivering, in terms of pricing, we had kind of, I think we hadn't separated out like cake mix.

And interesting in that business is a very competitive product. It's almost like a loss leader for most retailers. And so you have to be competitive on cakes mix. But on the other parts of the business, you had more flexibility. So you could be a more decadent brownie that charged a little bit more energy. So you had to kind of figure out how to manage the portfolio, because it was a very complicated portfolio, but be competitive where you needed to be and then take margin where you could.

Right. So, figuring out the portfolio strategy and then packaging, you know, we hadn't touched our packaging in a really long time. So it looked dated. It looked it didn't pop out on the shelf. So there were some very basic things that consumer feedback told us we needed to fix. And when we put those pieces together and went to the retailer and said, hey, we're going to redo this whole thing.

And you're right, you know, I still remember poor lemon frosting did not make it, but most of the other items.

Daniel Burstein: That's pretty good. Well, and then also when you can go to the retailer and say, look, obviously KPMG's got the reputation that helps. But if you could say, hey, look at this homework we did. And this is why we think this will work.

Karuna Rawal: Able to show them, I mean, one of the most powerful things I find over and over again is retailers love listening to their shoppers. So we did a great job of putting together, a lot of the sound bites from the consumer research we did. So we had a really compelling story to tell, when we took it forward.

And it's a lot of the same principles I'm using now as we're building, you know, brand new brand and category.

Daniel Burstein: Okay, great. Well, those are some lessons from the things Karuna made. In just a minute, we're going to look at some lessons from some of the people she made them with. some of that collaboration, some of those stories. But first I should mention that the how I Made It a marketing podcast is underwritten by Mic Labs. I, the parent organization of marketing Sherpa.

You can build your artificial intelligence strategy with an AI Quick Win intensive from Mic labs. Learn more at intensives, not Mic Labs. I talked that's intensives that MEC labs ai.com gets to borrow from Duncan Hines. I'll say it's the funfetti of building an AI marketing strategy. The AI equipment intensive. I like that name. Funfetti. all right, let's take a look at, some of the lessons from the people you collaborated with.

You mentioned show chef Eric, repair owner at Le Bernard Den and the culinary advisor at Nature's Find. you mentioned you learn from, Chef Eric to set a high bar for quality customer experiences. How did you learn this?

Karuna Rawal: So I don't know if you've ever been to, an event or, you know, any if you go to any three Michelin star restaurants, probably two, but especially, especially, especially true, with, Chef Eric. You know, when I met him, I could just tell he had this, you know, just incredible passion for delivering an impeccable dining experience for every single one of his guests.

I mean, it's just the bar is so high and everything is just perfect when you go down there. so. But yeah, it takes that same approach to the food and to watch him. And, you know, I was behind the scenes in the kitchen as they're getting ready for service and watching the care meticulousness with which every dish is prepared.

He tastes everything, every, you know, like just the entire process they go through to make sure that every single item that leaves the kitchen is the best it can be and it needs. And if it's not good, it doesn't go out like it's just it's there's no no discussion, no debate. Make it over again. I mean, you're watching the you probably seeing some of that stuff.

Right. but it's at such a high level. And I was just so blown away by his passion, you know, not only for incredible food, but just his passion for creating this incredible experience for his customer and his consumer. you know, in his diner. So taking that same principle in terms of, you know, when he became a culinary advisor, just having him really set the high bar because we knew as we were, you know, building this brand, you know, people hear the story of, nature's Fine.

It's like, wow, it's, you know, it's found in nature, Yellowstone National Park. It's, you know, it was a part of a research project for NASA. we're now developing these foods made from fungi. But the big question everyone has is, how does it taste? Right? Like, that's the ultimate decider. And I've been in food and beverage a long time.

It's always about the taste. Right. And so having someone working with someone like him who sets the bar super, super high, and who's, you know, part of our team and is helping us advise and develop the best possible products to me is the best kind of credentialing we can have for taste. So I think what he helps us do is he reminds me all the time about setting the bar, you know, at the highest level that we can and working to achieve that.

And you won't get it every time, but you're always working towards that, level so that the consumer, when they taste it, it's like, oh, wow. And this is better for me and it's better for the planet. you know, but you need it because it's delicious, right? Like, that's that's where food has to start.

Daniel Burstein: Well, let's talk about that. Partnership dogs, a CPG brand partnering with, chef, a michelin starred chef. I don't know him personally. So this is not about him personally, but if you watch TV at all, you get this idea that chefs are not easy to work with. but you also talk about partnerships before partnered with Whole Foods, partnering with retailers.

So let me ask you, like what lessons have you learned about what works and what doesn't work well in a partnership or a collaboration? for example, I interviewed Tiffany Denim on the same of amplitude, on how I made a marketing, and one of her lessons was become a natural collaborator. And she talked about that collaboration is that key skill for every marketer and talked about that, this internal collaboration between the marketing and the product team to get everything right.

But when you talk about these collaborations, I see this all this time. There's that little X everywhere, right? It's Supreme x Louis Vuitton now. It's nature's fine, excellent Bernardin, what does it take from your experience. Like what works and what doesn't. And those type of like collabs and partnerships seem like very different cultures.

Karuna Rawal: Yeah it's it's that's a great question. It's something I've been thinking about for a bit because we just also, you know, did a recent collaboration in partnership with chef. Stephanie Iser, from Girl Indigo. And so it got me thinking about, you know, partnerships in general. And to me, it really comes down to authenticity. I think if we can, you know, approach these partnerships with a spirit of collaboration, as you said, but also be really authentic and transparent about what is it that we want on either, you know, how do we create a win win and and be really transparent about, you know, we're very honest when we go into a partnership like,

okay, here's the things we're looking for. And then we make I try very hard to elicit that same like, why, why does Chef Eric want to work with us and what what is he excited about. And if we can find those points of excitement. So I'll give you two examples. So one is with Chef Eric. one of the things we actually did, in addition to him being culinary advisor was last year, we did a limited, time release of a, collaboration where we actually he created a salad dressing using our protein.

so with a collaboration between Nature's Wine and our prepare to launch this, limited line of, amazing, delicious salad dressings. And again, we just sold them online for a short amount of time. They sold out in six hours, and people were raving about them. but it was a chance to kind of, you know, he wanted to do something really fun and creative.

And he just loved the idea of how, you know, our protein can make these sources that are so hard to make when you're trying to make vegan and that kind of. Anyway. And as we talk more, he got really excited about dressing. So we found a way to find a win win, something he was excited about. We were excited about and find those, you know, again, mutual points of interest with Chef Stephanie Iser.

You know, she's a big fan of she loves doing brunches at her restaurant. And we talked about like, what if we did one together and you created a menu using, our protein, and we just last two week. It's weekends ago. we did a she hosted a brunch with us at Cobre, her restaurant, and the entire menu was based on, phi.

So everything on there. And she loved it because she's a very creative chef and she likes playing with new ingredients. We found we try to find, you know, those things that excite both sides and, you know, like, let's capitalize on the magic. So always looks a little bit different because it's to that individual and it's authentic. and as a brand we have many different, you know, pillars we're trying to work towards.

And so finding that intersection of what we're excited about and what they love to do, I think it's, it's true for, for everything with, you know, even with Whole Foods, it was they were super excited about the innovation we were bringing forward. And they wanted to, you know, get out there as quickly as possible. So it was and I, you know, and then but bringing them in and saying, hey, as we're working on this pipeline of products, what do you what do you guys think would do really well with your cans?

Because your shopper is our consumer. So how do we find the common interest. And you know, they love being able to collaborate with us on future, products that we may be introducing.

Daniel Burstein: And that's a great lesson for. I mean, I love when good marketing lessons are just good life lessons. That's just a good life lesson for what makes a good relationship, right?

Karuna Rawal: That's exactly I should have said that. You're right. It's exactly. It's like any other relationship. I mean, you just have to. You have to take the time to understand the other side. You have to, you know, and you may not agree on everything, but at the same time, if you find those common points of interest, usually there's a spark there that leads to bigger things.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. And well, let's talk about here's another great lesson that this was not a marketing podcast. This is a parenting podcast or any life podcast. I mean, this would fit in just perfectly. You said always choose to do the harder right thing than the easy wrong thing. And you learn this from Chip Bergh, the former CEO of Levi Strauss.

How did you learn this from Chip?

Karuna Rawal: So Chip and I go way back. He was he actually was my marketing director who promoted me to brand manager. So I worked for Chip for a long time. and, he's been a, since been a mentor and advisor, a friend, you name it. And it's one of those lessons that never leaves you because he really, really emphasized at both in the way you run a business, as well as how you manage your team and your people.

And, you know, in both cases and in life, if we had a third like, there are times when you know that, you know, the easy road, is not the right one. It's often the harder one that you have to make a decision on. And so whether it's for the business, you know, if you think about just short term versus long term, you know, very much he was he believed in let's make choices that are going to, you know, build this brand for the long term as opposed to doing something that's just going to, you know, pop next quarter sales and then we're going to be in trouble because we didn't make the right

choices. Similarly with people, you know, P&G had this philosophy of up or out when I was there. So either you were, you know, promoted to the next level or you were asked to leave. And those are hard decisions to make, right? When, you know, there's always the temptation to say, well, you know, maybe if I tried something else for me.

But sometimes it's like when, you know, it's not right. Make the call. And my, you know, story that I always share is one of the first people I had to actually, like, go from the company, thanked me, which I was not. I mean, I was terrified to have that conversation. And she said, you know, I've been feeling for a while that this wasn't the right fit for me, but like, no one was having that honest conversation with me.

So thank you for having the honest conversation. Now I can move on and go do the thing. And she's gone on to be extremely successful in a completely different environment. But I think recognizing when something needs to happen and it needs to happen in a timely basis, making that decision, even though it's not easy, works for business, works for parenting, and she said works for life.

but he was the embodiment of, of, you know, he walked the talk and, it was a lesson he kind of reinforced all the time for, for everyone who worked with him. And, you know, not that long ago, I had the amazing opportunity to regroup with him. for a, a session on, you know, mentors and mentees coming together after a long time.

And I, you know, I can recall that lesson. And he was he was amazing. I said, yeah, but, you know, it just it stuck with me. And it's it's really helped guide how I manage, my teams in my businesses to this day.

Daniel Burstein: that's great. But let me ask you, so the natural next question is, okay, well, how do you do that? And let me tell you why I ask that. Right. Because we live in an age of short termism, right? I mean, if you're I know you're not a public company right now, but if you're a public company, you have to show, you know, instant results.

You mentioned Uproot and Procter and Gamble. That's not necessarily only about sales and profitability, but I'm sure that plays a role. So I just wondered do you have any specific examples of like okay, here's how I we did the right thing for the customer, even if it was wrong for the business in the short term. I'll give you just one quick example from some, you know, we've done we've done some research into what we call customer first marketing.

And we did a nationally representative survey of 2400 people. 1200. We said, talk about a company, you know, tell us about a company that you're satisfied with. And the other 1200. We said, tell us about a company you're unsatisfied with. And then we asked a series of questions and some of the key differentiators that came up between the satisfied and unsatisfied were not just the things you would think like they had a good experience.

Of course, you're more likely to be satisfied, but dissatisfied customers were more likely to feel like that company is acting in my best interest versus the unsatisfied customers who would feel like that company when its marketing is not in my best interest. That all sounds good in theory, but again, it comes down to probably being in a meeting room or board room, or making decision where you have to take a hit in the short term, even though you know you're going to have to report to the street in about a month, about this quarter results or, you know, whatever it may be, whoever you have to report to.

So I don't you have any specific examples or advice there around? Okay. I love this idea. In theory, when it comes to the just the heat of being in the trenches and having to show instant results, how do we do the right thing for the customer in the short term and in the in the short and the long term?

Karuna Rawal: Yeah. No, that's that's a great question. I think, you know, one of the examples I talked about earlier kind of fits in this, but I have a I have a I can expound on it a little bit more with Whole Foods, as I mentioned, you know, when they wanted us to go national, that would have been the easy wrong thing to do, right?

Because it would have, you know, it's like, great, we're now national, but the the price we would have had to pay when we couldn't deliver orders, when we didn't, you know, fulfill when our supply chain was under extreme, constraint and then ultimately disappointing that their shopper to me was that's not a price. You know, I thought was the right thing to do.

So fighting for that I think was is one example is like, if you know in your heart that this is not going to ultimately result in where you want to go, it's important to make that decision. Similarly, as we were getting ready to, you know, to launch, the it's kind of a funny story. So everyone in the category, when I, when we were getting ready to launch, everybody was working on a burger, right.

Impossible had launched a burger Beyond Meat and lots of burger. And, you know, our team was also looking at the burger because that was the thing. And I, you know, when I came in, I said, do we really want to do that? Because we're going to be it's like going up against Coke and Pepsi. We have no money and we're going to be trying to, you know, shot into the same, vast beyond without any, any dollars.

So let's kind of think about a different strategy. So we we decided to pivot and look at breakfast instead. And that presented an interesting opportunity. So we thought, okay, well we can do a great pork sausage that tastes just like a pork sausage, but obviously vegan and, you know, much healthier. And then we had a yogurt. We had, actually that was on 60 minutes that we were, you know, thinking we would launch, we said we want to do meat and dairy because that distinguishes us.

Once we got ready to do the launch, we realized that the yogurt, was not to the standard we wanted. There was more work that needed to be done. We were getting closer to launched. I only had to say, okay, maybe that's not that ready. Let's we had, you know, we decided instead of launching it, not having it be the absolute best it could be, it was better to take the time to make it right.

and then so we launched that a little bit later than we'd originally planned, but we had a cream cheese product that was ready to go. So we did that. So again, it was you can do the short term thing because you check the box, but then it comes back to haunt you if, you know, if, if it doesn't go right.

So it's constantly weighing that. And we're doing that all the time, even with our limited, you know, capacity, because we have to actually grow our protein. We have to be really careful because there's a lot of pressure. I mean, yes, you're right, we're not public. But at the same time, there's still a lot of pressure to how many doors are you in?

How many doors can you get into? And I keep saying, let's just figure out the doors work in and let's make sure we can deliver those consistently. So we really constrained, you know, expansion until our capacity and it has been ready to go. Because, you know, I know living with the results of a bad launch, it's it's really, you know, it's painful.

You don't want to go there. You want to build that reputation with the retailer and want them to trust you. And in the end, I think they were very retailers were very appreciative of us being honest and say, you were not ready for you. Well, we'll come back as soon as we've got the capacity. we're excited you're interested, but now would not be the right time.

So we're we're kind of really managing our, our growth to make sure that we don't overextend ourselves and stretch ourselves so thin that we can't support, the growth that we want to have. So that's probably a good, you know, that's a discussion we have all the time. But you're right, it's not easy because there's always pressure to say, go, go, go make it happen.

And you're trying to do that. But at the same time, you want to make sure you don't do things that are going to ultimately damage the brand and the business.

Daniel Burstein: history is littered with brands that have grown too fast and kill what was a good product in the name, but there is a, diner that's based in our hometown. Here is Amazing diner. And of course, they franchise occurred too quickly. And it's like, what? What is it now? Like, you have something special. It's hard to.

Karuna Rawal: Get another, lesson. I would say I've learned from, Eric repair. They have one lever in it.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah.

Karuna Rawal: And he's been very careful about just, man, you know, like, focusing intently on delivering. It's an experience like no other, but there's there's not 50 of them. and I think there's something to be said for that. Right. If you can figure out how to make, you know, do it, in a way that just delivers an outstanding experience, like, let's master that first before we try to do too many of them, right?

Daniel Burstein: And, and make sure we know how if we're going to scale up, make sure we know how to scale up.

Karuna Rawal: Because right. And scaling is not for everyone or everything. I mean, that in that, industry, it's obviously, you know, being that unique, one of a kind is a tremendous value.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. It is hard to do one thing. Well, that's of, let alone 50 things. one lesson here, you said align strategy with creativity. You learned this from Judy John, global chief creative officer at Edelman. And this industry. It's it's such a fun industry to work in for creative people. But if you don't have the strategy behind the creative, what are you doing at the end of the day?

So how did you learn this lesson from Judy? Align strategy with creativity.

Karuna Rawal: Yeah. So, you know, I spent the first half of my career, as a brand manager. So as a client, you know, on the receiving end of creative ideas and campaigns and, you know, as anybody who's sat on that side of this, there are a bunch of times where you scratch your head and you go, okay, great creative fun, but has nothing to do with my brand or the strategy here.

Right? So when I kind of went to the other side, to the agency side and got to actually sit in the role of a strategist, it was fascinating to see, like when you had, you know, when you brought like a strategic underpinning to a creative, you know, great creative. They, they ended up that's what they used as the foundation to go create.

and when those things kind of come together, they really have a tremendous impact because the consumer identifies the, you know, like, can relate to the insight right away. And then it's paid off beautifully in a creative way. But, you know, a strategist alone can't do, and so while I appreciated that, it wasn't until I read Judy was the one I work with on on the always campaign, and we never worked together before.

And I still remember, you know, she the the first meeting we were going to have with the client, she said, this one's all yours. You're the strategist. You got us off the table. I'm not serving dinner until you set the table. And I thought that was a really great way to put it right. So my job was to go in and make it almost, like, so easy to say yes to the creative, because we laid the foundation we had explained, you know, what we were trying to do, who the consumer was, what the insight was, why that meshed with the brand.

so it was almost like, you know, you you're ready for when the creative gets delivered because it just makes sense when you don't have that upfront strategy, especially for a client, you know, like P&G horse, who were very much looking for that. but it's important that any of us, I mean, every piece of creative I look at, I try to understand, okay, what was the insight, what was the strategy, what were they trying to do?

And how well does the creative pay that off? but that's a really important lesson. And I feel like I've been fortunate enough to sit on both sides of the table on that one. to understand what is the client looking for? And then as a strategist, to be able to say, okay, how do I connect the dots from what the client's looking for to what the creatives doing?

And that's that strategy is that bridge between the two. It's understanding the business problem, but then translating it into something inspirational for a creative to go idea from.

Daniel Burstein: So now when you're hiring, I mean, you're growing a brand, you're growing a team, you're growing a company when you're hiring, whether that's vendors or individuals on your team. Are you looking for people who have that combination or are you looking for? I'm building a team around this because for me personally, you know, I started my career as a copywriter.

I always looked at it as I needed to be creative, but I needed the strategy behind it because it's a commercial art, and without it, you just creative will write a book or something, right? but on the flip side, you gave a great example there with Judy about how you teamed up to work on the strategy in the creative.

So you kind of take us into what is your hiring strategy, whether it's for individuals on your team or your vendors, or is that like something they they have to have strategy and creativity, or I'm going to build this team of many talents and let's kind of pull them together with the right processes. We'll make it work.

Karuna Rawal: Yeah, that's a great question. ideally, yes, I'd like to find those individuals who have, you know, we've got a kind of a blend of both. I will tell you, it's not easy to find, you know. Exactly. I've learned that there aren't many people like me who've done kind of both sides of it. so what I've tried to do is build a team that collectively.

So I do have a, you know, I have an in-house creative team that obviously very much agency, creative background and then I have, you know, the sort of the category management side, which is much more of folks who are, who come from, you know, the Pepsi's and the Frito-Lay's and the PNGs and General Mills and like, they have the strong business, general management, what I call the left side of the brain of marketing.

And then you need the right side of the brain. And then we kind of put those together. And I think because I, I have the unique perspective of having done both, I'm able to bring those people together and the best ideas happen when they come together, when they can each, you know, benefit. And so I've seen a lot of that synergy happening on my team because these folks are very, you know, working very close quarters together.

And they you can take the same problem. They'll approach it in very different ways. But the magic happens when you can kind of bring those together.

Daniel Burstein: Well, thanks for walk us through your creative. This brings me to my final question. When we talk about strategy creativity, what are the key qualities of an effective marketer?

Karuna Rawal: Yeah, for me number one is curiosity. So it goes back to the question you asked me at the very beginning. I feel like if you are going to be a great marketer, you have to have an innate curiosity about what makes people tick and what makes them behave the way that they do. If you're not interested or excited in that, it's really hard to be a good marketer.

So I think that's, that's really number one for me. I think, you know, a level of, you know, interest and passion for creativity. I think is, and, you know, it doesn't have to be created in the just in a, in a defined traditional sense. But I think interesting ways to look at how can create creative solutions, transform a challenge or change behavior, like being being interested in in that, I think having, a passion for, for people and helping people and, you know, helping people live better lives.

And that's kind of the marketing world I grew up in. So I look for for that. I look for people who are, you know, very, action oriented. I think, you know, a lot of philosophical marketing is great, but people who are interested in getting in the game, and excited about winning and excited about, you know, putting work out there that makes a difference.

So people who want to make a difference in the world, I mean, a lot of it is around, you know, our company's values. You know, they want to leave the world better than they found it. they have the ability to find a way to get things done. They're super curious. and, you know, there's a love of marketing.

I mean, I've loved the the art of the art and science of marketing because it's both it's art and science. and, you know, but I think if you don't have some of the innate qualities of being interested in people, being interested in brands, being interested in and, creativity, it's hard to teach those things. A lot of the other stuff, you know, you can teach, but I look for people who have that, sense of, wanting to make a difference.

because I think marketing does make a very positive difference in people's lives if it's done the right way.

Daniel Burstein: I'd say, for the love of marketing, I wish I called the podcast and that's that's a good one. Well, thank you so much for all your time today, Corinne. I learned a lot. I appreciate you sharing so much from your career with us.

Karuna Rawal: Thank you. This was a really fun conversation, I appreciate it.

Daniel Burstein: Thanks to everyone for listening.

Outro: Thank you for joining us for how I made it and marketing with Daniel Burstein. Now that you've got an inspiration for transforming yourself as a marketer, get some ideas for your next marketing campaign. From Marketing Sherpas extensive library of free case studies at Marketing sherpa.com. That's marketing rpa.com and.