Podcast | How to Achieve Greatness: Putting Your Data to Work

[00:00:00] [Sarah Alcock]: Hello everybody. I’m Sarah Alcock. I’m the UK Insight Enablement Director at dunnhumby. And I’m joined on the Category Management with dunnhumby podcast today by Casey Brady, Head of Category for Grocery at Red Bull, and Rob Plant, Senior Category Manager at Heineken.

[00:00:14] [Sarah Alcock]: So this episode is going to focus on how CPGs are using planogram data in interesting and innovative ways that support their businesses. So we’re going to start with a little context setting, and but quickly move into hearing from Casey and Rob about their experiences with Planogram Publisher.

[00:00:29] [Sarah Alcock]: When it’s used effectively, planogram data can absolutely help category managers and other internal teams within your business to achieve greatness. But if you haven’t experimented with that data before, then how do you know where to start? How do you identify potential use cases? What does success look like and how do you measure it? How do we get the maximum value from that data, not just for yourselves, but for other teams within your organization too?

[00:00:51] [Sarah Alcock]: So we’re super excited today to talk about all of these topics. So we’re going to spend some time talking with Rob and with Casey on the how to of planogram data, their practical use cases and real world case studies that start to bring the story to life for you, the listener. So we’ll look to cover off all of those opening statements and questions in our chat today. So I think let’s get started. So Rob, Casey, hi, welcome. Thought we could kick us off today with an intro to yourselves and your roles at your respective businesses. Casey, let’s start with you.

[00:01:19] [Casey Brady]: Yeah, so my name’s Casey. I’m the Head of Category for Grocery at Red Bull. So I kind of oversee a team of four category managers that look after respective accounts across grocery.

[00:01:27] [Rob Plant]: Hi. Uh, I’m Rob. I am the lead for the Tesco group from a category point of view at Heineken. So primarily focused on winning with Tesco.

[00:01:35] [Sarah Alcock]: Awesome. Well, thanks both for being here. Excited to kind of get into some of the real data points and all the exciting things that you’ve both been doing with Planogram Publisher. So yeah, we all know that when it comes to retailer and supplier engagement, we often talk about the importance of knowing what’s on the shelf, driving compliance, the desire to work closer together on things like mission-based ranging, and ultimately how to have more impact on the shoppers in store.

[00:01:57] [Sarah Alcock]: So Rob, I thought we’d kick off with you. Can you start by talking us through how you’ve been using Planogram Publisher in your business to tackle some of those ambitions?

[00:02:05] [Rob Plant]: So just put a bit of context in there. Heineken works within the beer and cider arena. Beer and cider is heavily promoted and has a huge amount of space in store. So there’s a lot of pressure on us to ensure that we have the right amount of space for our products and that we’re merchandising them in the right ways.

[00:02:20] [Rob Plant]: So if I take us on the journey that we’ve had with Planogram Publisher in Heineken. We first started using it a year or so ago. And what it really did beyond being able to understand how products looked and how they were arranged was help us with a key challenge we had. We had a brand that was growing rapidly, but it was stuck on the middle shelf within Lager. If you’re on the bottom shelf, you’re a stack, you get much better shelf fill.

[00:02:44] [Rob Plant]: So we were able to demonstrate using planogram data that actually we warranted a bit more space and that was fantastic for us because the buyers agreed. We showed them the just the planograms in a visualizer, just scrolled down through there and we were able to say, look, we’re not on shelf, we’re not on the bottom shelf here, we’re not on the bottom shelf here. This is how much it’s going to be worth you if you do that. So next range review came round, they moved us down and grew share, grew sales for us and for Tesco as well.

[00:03:11] [Rob Plant]: So that was a fantastic use for us. The other thing that we’ve been doing was Tesco have been putting branded bays into their stores for a couple of years now. I think it was Rivita, maybe the first one. But we saw that and we were just like, we’d like a little bit of that, but we need to sell it in. So we took that to our buyer and they said, well, look, you’re going to need to demonstrate how this is going to look in store, how it’s not going to interrupt the flow and really come to us. How many stores is it going to be in? What would it look like?

[00:03:41] [Rob Plant]: So using the Planogram Publisher, we were able to go away. We were able to identify the stores which had this certain amount of cider sales, which would support having a full bay of Strongbow products. We were able to mock it up, we were able to revise it with the buyer a few times. And ultimately we were, I think first within BWS to have branded bays and got called out in the industry a lot for how they looked and how impressive they were and, you know, that’s something that we found has been very useful for us over the last year.

[00:04:08] [Rob Plant]: So that was a great sort of like build on just being able to, oh, we’re moving a product from here to here and actually now we’re going to be shaping what the shelf looks like with a branded bay.

[00:04:17] [Sarah Allcock]: And Rob, a question on that. When you were engaging with Tesco, did having the visualisation, did it make it a more efficient process? Were you able to engage more of the Tesco buying team as a result of it? How did that process go a bit differently for you?

[00:04:31] [Rob Plant]: The ease of using the tool meant that we were able to iterate really quickly. The visual nature of it and the fact that it’s this is what your store looks like. We haven’t had to beg, borrow and steal planogram data and then use additional programs and find images to make it work. That was really useful in being able to just very quickly say, and this is the store, this is what it could look like.

[00:04:50] [Rob Plant]: And even I think we collaborated on it in a sort of Teams call, you know, just, oh actually this should go here. This I don’t think it would work in this one. And so we were able to iterate quite quickly and get the feedback and then respond within 24 hours. So, you know, that sort of category proposal and using it as a tool during meetings is in the right settings really good.

[00:05:10] [Rob Plant]: So those are the sort of like the first two ways. But actually there’s a lot more depth to the data underneath it. So we are in BWS heavily, heavily promoted. Quite a lot of our sales come from the goal post, quite a lot of them come from temporary distribution, which is brilliant. It’s brilliant for us to get that much space, but it makes doing range reviews quite challenging.

[00:05:30] [Rob Plant]: So if I’m looking at, you know, what has sold in the latest eight weeks through assortment, quite a lot of the time it’s going to be inflated for some products because it just assumes that it doesn’t take into account that actually plan space versus actual selling is very different.

[00:05:45] [Rob Plant]: So I’d found in my first year of working with assortment that I’d turn up and you’d get the slap on the wrist on, well, you’re daft, what’s it? That’s uh that’s obviously not the case, that’s temporary distribution and then you have to go back.

[00:05:57] [Rob Plant]: What Planogram Publisher getting an extract of the data from that has allowed me to get very, very accurate with my recommendations instead of just the latest eight weeks selling over Christmas. All of the distribution for our products would have been massively inflated, which makes it hard to sort of get a sense of how I would approach doing it.

[00:06:15] [Rob Plant]: With this, I’m able to say actually linking by TPN from assortment through to Planogram Publisher, I know exactly how many stores it should be ranged on. And it also allows us to cross compare and go, well actually, are we maximizing our distribution planned?

[00:06:28] [Rob Plant]: And crucially, not just for our products, obviously my commercial contacts and the buyer can sort of share with me what I should be ranged in, but via this I can understand what the competition is should be ranged in the and be much more accurate with my extensions and restrictions recommendations.

[00:06:42] [Rob Plant]: And so that plan distribution is fantastic for assortment, extensions, restrictions, but it’s also really useful for us thinking about MPI and what’s our headroom. Obviously when we’re planning with our marketing departments and innovation departments, they want us to, why aren’t you in 100% weighted distribution in Tesco?

[00:06:57] [Rob Plant]: What I found is this is actually a really tool to go back to people internally and say, where does this product fit and challenge internally so that we are more realistic in our goals and our asks for ourselves, for our customers and it helps us address any potential issues that may come up.

[00:07:13] [Rob Plant]: Does this product really fit with the rest of these on shelf? Would we recommend it goes here? And then taking that through to Tesco say, look, we’ve actually thought about this, you know, this is what the product is, this is what it looks like, this is how it’s going to show up on shelf and this is our realistic ask for it because we know that we believe it’s going to do better than this product which is in this distribution.

[00:07:32] [Rob Plant]: It’s really helped sort of bring the whole story together in a unifying way.

[00:07:39] [Sarah Alcock]: Brilliant. Thanks so much for sharing those examples with us. I think great to hear around that journey with the retailer and all the way through to execution and delivery. And but also hear how the additional viewpoints can make a difference internally within your business. I think everyone has faced into that challenge of realistic expectations and doing a little bit of managing upwards and managing sideways within a business. So brilliant to hear that there’s some value involved that it’s playing there too. So thanks for sharing. Fab, Casey, can we move on to onto you to get talk us through a little bit of the Red Bull experience?

[00:08:12] [Casey Brady]: Yeah, certainly. I think it’s, yeah, probably worth me setting a bit of context for Red Bull and the functional energy space. So functional energy drinks has been for the last few years one of the fastest growing areas within kind of total FMCG. It’s certainly driving the growth of drinks. But it’s growing quite a sustainable way.

[00:08:33] [Casey Brady]: So we’re seeing a lot more buyers each year. It’s driving household penetration. That’s across, you know, multiple brands. We are expanding our portfolio quite significantly. But within Red Bull specifically, most of our share still comes from our core energy drink products.

[00:08:49] [Casey Brady]: To put that into context, our original 250 mil energy drink can is the number one branded SKU sold in terms of units across the entirety of FMCG. You know, that’s ahead of the likes of bread, milk, other sort of household name soft drinks. So it’s quite significant in terms of the volume it’s selling.

[00:09:09] [Casey Brady]: But we also sell two other sizes within our core products. So we have a medium 355 milliliter product and then a larger 473 milliliter product. Both of those also sit in the top 10 in terms of units sold.

[00:09:22] [Casey Brady]: So we’re selling a lot of cans basically in that food to go space and it’s obviously growing each year. So a few years ago we basically recognised that we have a bit of an availability issue. So we were finding we were walking into quite a few stores and you might see a fairly well stocked fridge, but within that Red Bull area, you might see a bit of a hole, a bit of a gap. Not enough cans basically sitting on shelf. It could be completely out of stock.

[00:09:49] [Casey Brady]: So ultimately what that meant is that you’re capping sales. If you’ve got quite a loyal, a loyal shopper, we see a lot of loyalty within functional energy. If that product’s not available, they could just walk away and go to another store. So we recognised this and we knew that we had to do something about it.

[00:10:10] [Casey Brady]: So we took a number of steps to basically rectify this issue. Two of those, firstly was through space on fixture, ensuring that there are enough facings of this top selling product was super crucial. But then also making sure that we had the right field force in place. So the reps that go out into store and making sure that the fixture is compliant to planogram, but there’s also enough stock on shelf.

[00:10:36] [Casey Brady]: And this is where the planogram publisher comes in. So through the planogram publisher, we had our first use case of actually getting planogram data out to our field, making sure that they could see what the planogram should effectively look like when they walk into store and making sure that there’s the right number of facings for these products so they can get the stock out of the back and put it onto the shelf.

[00:11:02] [Casey Brady]: So I guess we’ve kind of got two points of contact with this planogram publisher. From a, I guess a head office point of view, as a category team, we’re using planogram publisher. We can quite quickly, as Rob sort of alluded to, get pulling that data. That unit rate of sale is such a crucial metric for us for this for this purpose. We can pull that in really easily, display it very nicely to put in front of the buying team, the range planning team and say, look, this is what we’re facing into.

[00:11:27] [Casey Brady]: You’ve perhaps got products on shelf here that have a much lower unit rate of sale versus these products that have a quite significantly high unit rate of sale and we have an availability problem. So we can go into to see Tesco and show this data and I guess from a head office point of view, get these planograms amended on mass to ensure there’s the right number of facings.

[00:11:47] [Casey Brady]: And then once those planograms go live, we can go into the planogram publisher, we can get hold of them and we can get them over to the field to make sure they’ve got the right materials to make their changes in store.

[00:12:02] [Sarah Alcock]: So based on those examples, how would you say it has changed or has it changed your relationship with the buying team at Tesco being able to kind of execute in this way?

[00:12:11] [Casey Brady]: Yeah, totally. I think for us bringing in the context and in, you know, in some instances other data sources to really bring to life that problem, it’s about finding a solution and you know, the planogram publisher, we find is the best in class tool to do that. It’s kind of as Rob alluded to it, it looks like a Tesco store, which is quite crucial when you’re speaking to Tesco. But you look like you’re in front of the fixture, but you’ve also got that data to hand and making it really, really crystal clear for the buyers and range planners. So yeah, we’ve certainly found it’s been really useful in that regard.

[00:12:5]0 [Sarah Alcock]: And then to flip that back onto internally coming into your business. Obviously like getting the getting efficiency achieved in the context of field force and how you use your field sales teams is always going to be seen as a big driver. Is there any other ways that you’re kind of using this data back internally in the business? Rob’s alluded to a bit of expectation management and reset of targets because of having all of this kind of brought to life. Is that a similar experience?

[00:13:19] [Casey Brady]: Yeah, I mean we find so obviously we deal across both the food to go space and the kind of back of store ambient multipack space across Express. Express is really, really crucial and PFS to be fair for functional energy particularly for food to go. But then also in supermarkets extras etc. We have a lot of planograms.

[00:13:44] [Sarah Alcock]: Yeah.

[00:13:45] [Casey Brady]: So we can’t go into every single planogram and be making recommendations. So it is really, really crucial that the data that sits behind the planograms is easy to extract, manipulate. I think what’s really great about the planogram publisher is that you can pull that data out and add what you want into it, put it back into the tool to kind of get the point across that you want to. So within Red Bull we’re really trying to, we have a lot of data sources and we’re really trying to get as savvy and as efficient as possible with all of those data sources and with the ease of use and speed of planogram publisher, getting that data out and marrying it up with other data sources is definitely a plus point for it.

[00:14:18] [Sarah Alcock]: So it’s been brilliant to hear about the examples that both of you have shared around how it’s made a significant difference in regards to what you’ve been able to put into store plus the relationships that you’ve described as a result. If kind of put the shopper back at the heart of it that have you got sort of verbatim or sort of real life examples or things that you use in your business to really talk to that experience at shelf as a result of some of these changes that you’ve introduced.

[00:14:41] [Rob Plant]: I think I mean the most obvious one for us would be the Strongbow branded bay. Like it stands out, it’s really impactful when people go into one of the, I think it’s 50 or 100, one of the two. 50 was the trial, 100 is where it is now. So yeah, they walk in, they’re not going to miss Strongbow. They’re going to pick up one of our ciders as a result, makes me feel good.

[00:15:06] [Sarah Alcock]: Yeah.

[00:15:07] [Rob Plant]: Makes our buyers feel good.

[00:15:09] [Sarah Alcock] Yeah.

[00:15:10] [Rob Plant]: We’ll take that.

[00:15:12] [Sarah Alcock]: Yeah. Were you allowed to kind of play around or were you able to kind of play around a little bit with the visualisation of what those displays would look like as part of this as well to pick the one that you thought would be most impactful?

[00:15:24] [Rob Plant]: It was something that we co-created with the buyer and they definitely fed in said, you can’t do that or you can do this or if you’re doing that there, then this has to move from over there.

[00:15:33] [Sarah Alcock]: And Casey, how about your experience? I guess talking to both of you guys which are both very well-known brands that the shopper experience is so important to both of your brands in store, right? They’ve got to stick out and that you’ve got a huge benefit of being in oh what we typically call out trade, off trade, right? So you’ve got that recognition there. Did you have a similar piece around bringing it to bring the Red Bull brand to life in store for shoppers and making a difference?

[00:15:54] [Casey Brady]: Yeah, totally. I mean it’s a very recognisable, well-known brand like you say. Um it’s a very fun brand. Um I guess in that food to go space that we operate in, we’re kind of limited in terms of what you can do to bring that to life. It’s the meal deal is the number one thing that certainly in terms of like POS and things like that. It’s meal deal. There’s not much room to do anything else. So we have to use the assets that we have and Red Bull’s quite unique in terms of it’s got three key brand assets and I guess the cartoon we don’t do so much with on the original can, but the bull and sun and the Rombus, they’re both quite instantly recognisable.

[00:16:32] [Casey Brady]: So actually you’ve got that added benefit if you get that space in store for that brand to really, really show up. So you know, we’ll be seeking to get that brand as, you know, the number one brand in food to go in what we refer to as the strike zone to the eye level. If you’ve got the right number of facings on there, it’s merchandised. We’ve got quite key merchandising principles around because we’ve got three sizes having them stair stepped so you go from the smallest through to the largest. We’ve got sugar free variants, we’ve got flavoured variants. Opening up that space allows us to really, really show up as a brand. And it’s across the total functionality and then wider soft drinks as well. So yeah, we found that it’s really helped us do that.

[00:17:16] [Sarah Alcock]: Is there anything that you guys would call out in the context of large store and small store? So I think Rob you were involved in a sort of express specific kind of initiative. Is there anything through the use of the tool that really allows you to bring that to life internally or make calls particularly when it comes to stock control or distribution that is specifically relating to the sort of store formats and the channels that we’re using.

[00:17:41] [Rob Plant]: So we were asked to support our buying team with recommendations for the express for growth which is happening, I think in April. Certainly from an analysis point of view, what I found with Planogram Publisher was really useful was just to say, okay, you’re moving from two ways that you’re going to range beer and cider or you’re going to show up in Express to three. Let’s have a look at what that looks like from your four bay most common planograms and let’s see whether what you’re saying to me actually plays out. So from that we were able to say actually you’ve probably got too much of this particular beer and cider product on shelf and its space says you should be, you should warrant, it warrants cutting in order to make space for faster growing parts of the beer and cider category. And being able to visually show, look, this is what it looks like. This is share of sales, this is share of space, this is trajectory year on year and then, you know, draw a little circles and say, maybe cut back here. Maybe this will give you some space elsewhere. Really in three slides really helps to visualise what the recommendations are, why and what the actions should be off the back of that.

[00:18:46] [Sarah Alcock]: Nice. So really being able to take a data led approach and I think sometimes with the smaller store format you can struggle because there’s so many potential opportunities for clustering, different missions that happen in store, the different experiences that the shopper has, but being able to bring that to life quite efficiently sounds like a win there and yeah, fingers crossed for April. And to specifically talk on the field sales impact. Have you found that did translate into like reduced visits? Like what KPIs were you able to make a difference in through those changes?

[00:19:19] [Casey Brady]: Yeah, I think the low hanging fruit as it were, the first KPI that they could go after is what we refer to as zero sales days. And we would have days if not weeks, some instances months of stores just not selling. So there’s a multitude of issues as to what could be driving that. But if you’ve got a store that’s not selling, you know, put into context of how huge these products are in the FMCG space. If you see a store that’s not selling at least one a day, you know there’s a problem there. So equipping the field with the planograms to help bring to life why that store might not be selling. Now it might be a an operational issue as to why that’s happening. But for them to be able to walk into a store, have the data, the visuals of what that store should look like, how many facings it should have is really, really powerful for them to home in on the stores that matter and to tackle those first before we start getting into more complex issues.

[00:20:28] [Sarah Alcock]: Rob, you spoke earlier about some of the conversations that you were able to have internally. I always think it’s a good measure of success for anything that this, if somebody comes to a category team and asks for an output from a tool. I guess in the context of chatting to maybe the account teams and those guys who are KPI’d slightly differently, have they shown an interest in this tool because they can see what it delivers for them from a sales perspective?

[00:20:52] [Rob Plant]: Yeah, no, it just helps us with setting realistic expectations. So they and realistic expectations for them and realistic asks for Tesco. So we go through an annual process, you know, joint value creation, whatever you call it in your business. And part of that for us is understanding which products that we have outside of the range reviews and how much more we could get there. So we could ask for stores for, like I said, 100% distribution, but actually, you know, Scotland behaves very differently in Lager. The Southwest behaves very differently in cider and they have their own planograms which reflect that. And being able to talk that through definitely educates people in the account team within the business about the opportunity. And then even further beyond that, brand teams. So we’ve been challenged by Tesco to sort of respond to them and said, look, how big can a brand that we’ve launched into the market quite recently, Cruz Campo, how big can it be? And what does it take to go on that journey with Tesco first to market exclusive launch with them in the off trade. So we’ve got a vested interest in that. So we’re working with the brand marketing teams, we can say, right, well this is our headroom for this year. This is where we can get to in order to move on. This is where we’re going to need to win with this brand in order to gain market share, gain share of space in a in a fairly zero sum game in terms of BWS space. You know, some stores we’ve got 17 bays worth of Lager. No one’s going to be adding an 18th bay in there. It does become about how your brands stand up and on their own merits and so we need to think about what the right thing is to do for the category and what the right products to have there.

[00:22:28] [Casey Brady]: I think I’d just, I guess echo that word realistic. I think category often are the voice of reason, you know, bringing that reality to life and being like, no, this is what we’re actually up against. Conversely with a, you know, 17 bay Lager fixture, we might have two bays of food to go drinks. That’s typically the average across grocery. There’s a lot of SKUs in that space, you know, maybe 70, 80, sometimes over 90 different SKUs in those two bays. So I kind of mentioned earlier how our portfolio expands. As our portfolio expands, those two bays don’t expand and we still grow in our core products that needs the space on shelf. So yeah, the planogram publisher with its look and feel with Tesco as well, bringing that to life in front of account teams has been really crucial to say, look, this is what we’re actually up against. And I guess how easy it is to go in and manipulate that space on the fly is really powerful because we can say, look, let’s give it a go. Let’s see what we can actually do here. And then they soon realise the reality that we’re trying to put across to them.

[00:23:43] [Sarah Alcock]: I think what we’ve kind of heard in a lot of what has been discussed is this is Planogram Publisher is a brilliant asset sort of in its own right, but where you can really kind of bring to life the opportunity. You’ve both spoken a bit about size of the prize and how to kind of drive tangible change in your business as well as in the retailer for shoppers is by getting that total complete view, which this feels like is it’s a key part of the puzzle and where we’re able to drive the most value is by seeing these sorts of bits side by side. So thank you Rob, thank you Casey for joining us on the podcast today. That brings us to the end of our recording.

[00:24:29] [Sarah Alcock]: So hopefully that’s given some inspiration for how category managers like yourselves and businesses like your own can achieve greatness through the data that they have at their fingertips. We spoke a bit earlier around a few things that could drive that greatness. So if we say wouldn’t it be great if you could work with your retail partners on mission-based ranging and the answer is yes, it would be great and yes you can. Wouldn’t it be great if you could guarantee compliance without needing to send field sales reps out to handle it every time and we heard that yes, you absolutely can. And wouldn’t it be great if you could get a better understanding of where your product sits so that you can maximize the impact of retail media and we certainly heard some a good few examples of how that is possible as well. So hopefully a lot of food for thought for the listeners, lots of inspiration in there and brilliant to hear from both of you today. So thank you Rob, thank you Casey for joining us. And yeah, looking forward to seeing what’s next.

00:25:19 [Rob Plant] Thanks very much.

00:25:21 [Casey Brady] Thank you.