Marc Pritchard & Marchoe Northern (P&G) | Superiority That's Sustainable

Hi, I'm Jim Stangel and I help major brands find their purpose and activate it in the profits follow. For seven years, I was the global marketing officer for Prokker & Gamble, where I oversaw the marketing of hundreds of brands. You may not know it, but the CMOs, the chief marketing officers of all of your favorite brands are trying to connect you with your favorite products and services through purpose. And on this show, I delve into how they do it. This is a special Earth Month episode on this CMO podcast. My guests today are from a company I know pretty well and a company that is a leading force in the movement toward more sustainable brand building. The company is, you likely guessed it, P&G. I am joined today by Mark Fritchard, P&G's chief brand officer, and Marco Northern, the senior vice president and general manager of P&G's North American home care business with brands such as Swiffer, Dawn, and Cascade. P&G is of course the iconic consumer goods company with sales around $80 billion and $25 billion brands. P&G is 186 years old this year and has always been a leader in sustainable business practices. Over the past few years, a company has taken that to a new level, with a commitment to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040. They are also pioneering novel ways to bring consumers better products that are also better for the environment. And it's P&G, so of course they have a tagline for it. It's our home, made better, made to save. Here's my conversation with two great leaders who also have great chemistry together, Mark Fritchard and Marco Northern. Welcome Marco and Mark to the special Earth Month edition of the CMO podcast. Mark, you have been with P&G I think 41 years. Congratulations. It's 40. I'm just waiting. Okay, we're on here about a month. Just for what you're saying. And Marco, you're a youngster. You've been what 24 years with P&G? 25, rounding to 26. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, you're both more. I was there 25 years, but I've been gone 15. Wow. So before we start talking about sustainability, I have a question for each one of you. And that is, what's changed the most in P&G in the last 15 years? And what has not changed? So who wants to jump in and start this very, very conceptual question to get us started today? So, Jim, I'll start. And I love that question. And what I tell you, I'd start with what hasn't changed. And I think, you know, the company is so rooted in our purpose, values and principles and just the quality of talent that we have. Like I think those are just hallmarks of the company and they just continue to be. I think what has changed, at least in the area where I've had responsibilities in North America the most, has just been the pace of innovation and the pace of or just the, I think it's just the differences required to reach consumers has evolved tremendously. So I remember and you will remember, I remember going to Jim's single marketing hours and talking about, you know, just the rigor at which we work on a TV spot or a print ad. And I think just the sheer amount of content that we create today, like we just couldn't even see it all today. Like, I mean, I remember thinking about tabletop processes and we're bringing in everything. And that just is not the world that we live in. Like you'd have to do a tabletop daily almost for just the amount of content that we're putting out. I think just the way or the scale of assets required to reach the consumer has changed dramatically. And now we have AI and all the language learning models, which is going to be a whole new level of innovation and speed and customization. Yeah. So I think that that is, that's what makes it exciting, but I think it's by far one of the biggest changes. But I'll turn it over to the expert because I'm sure he has something brilliant to say about what's changed and been the same. Well, I'll start with the brilliance of what you said at the beginning, which what hasn't changed, which is the purpose, the values, the principles and the incredibly high quality and integrity of the people that are part of P&G. And I would say though, the composition of the people has changed, the diversity has changed. And now, oh, so close from 50% of our managers being women. And that's a pretty substantial change. The diversity from a race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, ability, all that is changed, open, discussed, and Marco and I are working a lot about how we turn that into growth through multicultural marketing growth. And that's something Jim, you remember, had been around, but I think that the traction for that has dramatically accelerated and seen as a major growth opportunity, which is super, super exciting. What's changed big time is, and Marco, you touched on where I was going to go, is the way in which we build brands. The brand building framework that our friend Jim Stengel pioneered. Going back into history here. Back 25 years ago, at least 25 years ago, the who, the what, the how is the same. How we deliver has changed. Jim, I remember when we were at the Global Leadership Council meeting and you were talking about digital and how digital was coming and we needed to get on with it. And we were spending maybe 2% of our media in digital at the time. We're more than 50% now. In some parts of the world like China, we're 90%. And your point is right to now where everything we do is constantly being affected in some way by data and digital technology. Pampers now reaches 98% of their consumers. Starting with first party data that they get from their Pampers club, then moving it to programmatic digital, then to programmatic streaming, it's amazing. Just over in China, their ability to be able to connect with somebody from broad-scale eye video to TikTok social media to e-commerce, of which more than 50% of their sales are e-commerce. That's just testimony to how things have changed. Yet, it still comes down to who's your consumer. What are you trying to do to serve them? What are their needs? How do you communicate with a campaign with a brand equity benefit that delivers superior performance and value? The same but different. And I'd underscore and P&G's ability to change and shift, I think, is something that's just remarkable at 186 this year. So, I just want to punctuate what you said there, Mark. I was at a program at the Kellogg School about two weeks ago, it's an annual program, a marketing leadership summit, brings academics together and practitioners. I sort of helped facilitate it and designed it. At the end of the day, I got up to summarize, and four women on that agenda, who were key notes, were women of color with P&G background. I just said, including Tracy Brown at Walgreens, who made the most remarkable speech. And I just said to everyone, I just feel a tremendous amount of pride that I worked at that company that has nurtured and supported and sponsored this kind of talent to move into other industries and to make a huge mark. And Marco, you're a living example of that. Thank you. All right. Now, there are topics, sustainability and brand building. Now, I know that you know this that any change in a company, any positive change in a human being in a company has to be meaningful to people on a personal basis. And I would like each of you to talk about how and why this area, which P&G has been such a leader in. Why is this meaningful to you as a person, as a business leader? Marco, why don't we start with you? Sure. Sustainability is foundational for me. And I start with my four daughters, so I have four girls. They're 14, 12, 10 and 7. And I view it as our responsibility to them to leave the world as good, if not better, than what we found it. And I think the actions that we get to take right now as business leaders is so important to that. You know, we talked about the importance and the quality of people that P&G attracts and develops. And this is a really important issue to our employee base. It is absolutely essential for the people who we hire to know that they are impacting the world in a positive way. And our brands play a critical role to being able to enable that. And so when I think about why sustainability is so front and center as a business leader today, it is because of our social responsibility. But it's also so key to us being around for another 186 years is continuing to attract the type of talent that wants to innovate and actually make a real impact on the world. Wow, Mark. That is hard to follow. So I'll follow with some similarities. It starts at home. Starts with my wife Betsy and my three daughters who are very sustainable and have pushed it well beyond what I would have done by myself. And in terms of buying locally, gardens, the push that I got from my middle daughter who went to a college in Vermont and then worked on a biodynamic farm that helped us understand what that was all about, what was necessary to be able to live and farm in a biodynamic way, my youngest daughter who is an herbal studies and herbal medicine and other things. So there's just this kind of part of the ecosystem of our family. But Marco said it extremely well, we don't have a choice. We've got to be a company that builds for the future and designs for the future. So the company and the people that we bring into the company are employees and all the people that we work with have a runway for the future. And I think what we've been able to do is we've been able to think about this in terms of how we build it in to how we operate, not bolt it on. Take care of our own operations to reduce the footprint, innovate so we can help consumers and then help the industry in whatever we can. And that's exciting and it's also worth a lot. It's a great way to create value and it does good. So it is truly that force for growth and force for good that we're trying to achieve. Well let's kind of go into that space now, Mark, about how you integrate it. I mean, P&G, we said, is one of the oldest companies in the world, one of the most admired. The mantra, do the right thing, has been around from, if not all that, 186 years, a lot of them. It's always had sustainability, I think, in its blood, right? But it has definitely ramped up to new levels in the last few years, at least from what I see. Bold commitments that you're making publicly, broader industry involvement, Mark, which you just referred to, a new company campaign. I love it. It's our home, made better, made to save. So I'd like you to talk about this ramp up, beginning with the catalyst. Take us back to, I know you said how this is personal to you and meaningful, but what was it in the company? Was it consumer data? Was it the feeling of certain individuals? Was it a category that started, or a brand that started to make its mark? If there was one, what was the origin story of this tremendous innovation and commitment that I see from P&G? I think, Jim, we could probably go back probably about 20 years ago, maybe even a little bit long. You said it. It's always been in there, but I can remember a conversation with Susan Arnold, who I was working for in the early 2000s, who was saying, we've got to get on sustainability. And it was a very poignant moment when she said it, so senior leadership. Then we had some folks who were working in the area, and we were working with people like Bill McDonough, externally, who has kind of created this cradle to cradle type of a mindset. So we began some of the efforts to try to learn a lot about our own operations and then set some goals. Set some goals for 2010, then set some goals for 2020. And our CEOs declared it and said it was important. I would say it started really accelerating in around 2014-15. Virginie Helias, who is now our Chief Sustainability Officer, kind of rang the wake up call bell. Part of it came down to the extent. I remember looking out the window at our towers when there was a large poster unfurled from Greenpeace that was basically calling us to task. And so there were a couple of these elements which said, you know what, this is heating up. We need to get more organized on it. And then it was David Taylor declared it as one of our citizenship priorities. And that began an effort looking not only at our own footprint, but starting to look at innovation. And then our current CEO, John Moller, has come out and made it a major focus area. So in addition to our strategies, he's put environmental sustainability as one of the major focus areas. And now what we have is it's a regular drumbeat of activities to where it is becoming truly built in. So I wouldn't say there's one catalyst. And within that, of course, what always came to the forefront was, we're consumers on this. And you know, 20 years ago, there was a small group of consumers who really cared. Now that's become far more mainstream. Still, 90% of people want to do something about sustainability, but only about 11% actually do because that's where we need to help make it easy for them to do that. And that's where innovation comes in. Marco, you started your career at P&G and supply chain, right? Which I think has always had sustainability at its core. So could you give your perspective on this ramp up, this and what you're learning from P&G's tremendous focus in the space to add to what Mark said? Sure. I think from the plant standpoint, we've always had a real commitment really from the context of cost savings, right? Or just as we think about ways to eliminate waste is kind of the culture in our plants. And so I think that that has always been one of the areas of focus for us. And we've made meaningful progress over decades in terms of how we think about eliminating waste in our operations. I think that Mark was very generous with his comments about others and the work that they've done. We have to highlight the work though that he's done as well because I think he talked about the importance of moving sustainability from bolt on to being integrated into how we do our work. And I think he has been a major change agent of that. I think one of the things about our company is that we tend to not want to commit to things externally until we're sure that we can actually deliver those things. And I think that that has been true in the context of sustainability, where many of our competitors have been out there espousing different things. But we've really said, hey, let's commit when we know that we have the infrastructure. And I think he's really been a huge champion of enabling that and not making sustainability solely an activity unto itself, but really thinking about how do we make sustainability core to how we think about superiority for our brands. And that I think is the game changer when you really think about it because that is what really unlocks the other 80% of consumers who want to do something with sustainability but are not today. And so I would be remiss to not call him out as being one of those people on the list that has really driven a significant change in terms of how our company thinks about and is organizing to be able to go after the big consumer opportunity in this space. Thank you, Marco. You should let your three daughters have your three daughters listen to the show. I will definitely do that. I appreciate that. But just to add on it is, Marco said something that's important, which was something that we carefully focused on, which was how do we truly make this mainstream is superiority that's more sustainable. So it's a very carefully chosen phrase is that we wanted to ensure because our business model is focused on daily use cleaning, health and hygiene products for performance drives brand choice, which means we need to have a superior performing product, package, communications, retail execution and value when we focused on superiority that's sustainable, that's when people start getting really excited because now you could come up with a way to clean better and make it more sustainable. And Marco is being modest as well because the home care organization that Marco leads, cascade in particular was one of the pioneers to really come up with a way where cascade is a superior performing dishwashing product that actually uses less water. Brilliant campaign that's making a huge difference, not necessarily and even make cases that are even focused on sustainability, just focus on the benefit. 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As a former CMO who speaks to podcast guests regularly, I know the rise of online shopping means e-commerce services and experiences are more important than ever. If you're a company looking to reimagine your e-commerce ecosystems, contact Deloitte Digital by visiting www.deloittedigital.com. I was reading a study on the ANA's website that I think BCG helped with and PNG is obviously a big part of the ANA. It was looking at all the categories and which ones from the consumer's perspective are leading and home care was at the top. Marco, I'd like you to talk a bit about that. Why is home care at the top? What role has PNG played? Marco talked about Cascade, but it was really interesting for me to see such a category that swummed and melded a PNG to be at the top of how consumers see brands leading and sustainability. Yeah, I think that both brands are all of our brands have a really rich history as we think about the opportunity to drive significant improvements and performance. One of the things, Jim, that we're learning about in this space is really the importance of convenience and lowering that mental load. When we talk about convenience, one of the things that we're learning is that the mental load is really the time that the consumer, from the time she starts or he starts thinking about the task, till they actually complete the task and can move on to the next thing. One of the things I would say home care has done well over decades is really look for opportunities to reduce that mental load for consumers. If you think about the Mop and Bucket job as an example, Swiffer really revolutionized that job because it reduces the mental load. I don't have to think about who's in the house before I mop the floors so that they don't walk on them right after I get done. I don't have to think about prepping the water. All I need to do is literally take the Swiffer out and start mopping. The floor has it as a quick drive formula. All of those things I think have played in over time in terms of how home care just simply innovates to be able to deliver some of these sustainable benefits. The thing that I would tell you that I think is particularly exciting is as we've lived through what we've lived through over the last few years and really had sustainability come more to the forefront, it's obvious or more obvious how our brands can really play a role both in terms of energy savings as well as water reduction savings. The results that these brands can deliver while still providing superior performance is what I think is the game changer. If you think about, we recently launched Cascade Platinum Plus and we've been advertising it as you don't need to prewash and there's no rewash required after you use because there are no failures with this product. What that actually enables consumers to do is save over 100 gallons of water a week. That is a game changer and it saves time and it does all those things that we've talked about in terms of reducing mental load for the consumer. Those are the things that I think are the ands to Mark's point. We don't even have to necessarily talk about the energy or water savings because the core benefit is so compelling and that's just the natural outcome of it is that we actually have all these water and energy savings to boot. Mark, we're talking about Cascade. From your perspective, what are some of the other brands that are beacons for PNGs, progress and sustainability? I know it's integrated into how you think about brands now. What other brands do you think have been experimenting showing the way being a brand that others look up to in the company because I know that's a dynamic within PNG and a very powerful one. They're innovating all around the world on multiple brands. Learn from each other and that's one of the incredible strengths of this great organization. What other brands Mark would you highlight? Well, I wanted to add on top of the Cascade marketing brilliance that Mark has done. First was the do it every night campaign from Cascade. That gives people to use the dishwasher more often and save water because four gallons of water go through your dishwasher versus in a cycle versus every two minutes when you wash. Amazing insight. Mental load point. Fatton and plus, they now have a behavior they called scrape load done. That's all you got to do. Don't prewash scrape load done. Fairy liquid. Fairy is the dawn equivalent in the Cascade equivalent in the UK. They're actually quite good as well. The behaviors is a little different and what's important is a little different in the UK, particularly now. There's an energy savings possibility of washing on a short cycle. If you can turn to a short cycle, you'll use less water and less energy and it takes less time. A good example is tide, of course. Cold water and you remember back when we introduced the first variant of cold water. Now they've upgraded their entire portfolio of products to wash in cold and it's a superior wash in cold. What they've been able to do is get a better wash plus there's also benefits that less shrinkage of your clothes, less damage on your clothes, more color, safe over time and it reduces 90% of the energy of heating the water and can save you $130. Tides are a good example. On the other side of the ocean is Ariel. That does the same thing. They're more explicit about the environmental sustainability benefit of how washing in cold can basically remove a million cars from the road. Those are two very, very strong examples. We're now seeing some new examples. Head and shoulders is coming out with a new product called Bear, which is nine ingredients. So it's in an eco package that literally you can roll it up. It's that malleable. It's also from a nature standpoint takes many of the ingredients out. Herbal essence by a renewed natural ingredient, literally real natural ingredients sourced from and working with Royal Botanical Gardens Q to come up with plant-based shampoo and conditioner. Even something as simple as Gillette going to plastic all over their package, which was virtually impossible to get in unless you use industrial grade scissors to a cardboard pack, which now the cardboard pack, it actually has made the packaging better. It's easier to get into. It looks better. It's easier to shelf. It's added sustainability across multiple elements of this. I could go on. We don't have enough time, but you get the point that it's really getting built in. Fabulous examples. Hey, I know you're taking a global perspective on this, but I still live in Cincinnati. I'm a resident and I've noticed even what you're doing locally. Just this month, there is a recycling hackathon where you're a partner in that as is Kroger and Fifth Third Bank and University of Cincinnati and other organizations. I just love that PNGs, it's an iconic global company that so many people admire, but you don't forget about the cities where you do business and the communities where you do business. I'd like you to talk a bit about what you do as leaders to keep that culture that way, where you don't forget where you're from, why you do this combination of global, local, I think is another tremendous strength of the company. I'd like you to talk a bit about that as it relates to sustainability. The thing I would say is one of the things that where we started is our employees care deeply about the matter of sustainability. It is one thing to do it in terms of how we actually approach our brand building. It also is important that we have an impact in the communities that we operate and serve. Some of it is local river cleanups that some of our organizations do here with a little Miami, but it also is linked to our brands and saying, hey, beyond just the water savings that a cascade can offer, how might we partner with local agencies or with national agencies in the case of change the course and say, how could we impact water savings more broadly and really participate in water reclamation efforts. I think it is really pulling that thread all the way through because even for our consumers, it matters to them as well to know that our brands aren't just looking to be self-serving, but also see the opportunities beyond to say, hey, we would love to play a part. It'd be great that we also do some things within the community to say how might we help support places like the Colorado River Basin and refilling that. Those are just ways that I think it reflects the character of our company and the character of our brands to go beyond just selling products, but to say, hey, we really want to make a difference. Those are the people that we hire, but that's just what we get to do as P&G. I think it's one of those things that really serves as a pride point for us, for me personally, but I think also for all of the employees here. Mark, anything to add to that? I think it's built in to our culture because it's built into how we've operated for this some 186 years. William Cooper Proctor, who was the grandson of the founders, created the community chest for Cincinnati, for people who are underprivileged and underserved because he recognized that a healthy community is going to be healthy for society and healthy for the company. But that part of it, that community piece has always been important. Our manufacturing plant employees take great pride in their community. I worked with the Hoopney plant. Marco worked in manufacturing. You get the fabric of the company when you're in those places. So then when you have something like the Colorado Basin project, the people in Box Elder Utah get involved in that because it's part of their community. It would go back to something that when it comes to the sustainability point, we've made it explicit what our focus is. One, reduce the footprint of our operations. Two, help consumers by innovating, reduce their footprint. And three, help the industry and the communities in which we live and work to reduce their footprint. These community efforts like recycling make a difference. We did for the Tokyo Olympics, we did a recycling project which allowed us to be able to turn all the recycled plastic products which included many of ours into the podium. We have it in addition to some of the programs that Marco was talking about. We have a technology that we're focusing on to help the industry. Here's the technology. We call it Holy Grail. What it is, it's a digital watermark that goes on to packaging that allows the sorting at the local recyclers to sort product more effectively to help make sure that you can get it into the right recycle stream. Then we have a technology that is able to actually cleanse and repurpose the plastic to make it 99% pure. It's built in and it's just part of the integrity and the values of our company. Many leaders will tell you you want to retain the best talent. We hear that over and over again on the show. But Deloitte Digital's research suggests that a positive overall experience with an organization alone is generally not sufficient to retain workers. In fact, 25% of surveyed workers reveal they plan to leave their current organization within the year. So what can an employer do? In my experience, I have found that it always comes down to relationships. In fact, when I was at P&G, we found a strong correlation between an employee's relationship with their first boss and their ultimate career advancement. Deloitte Digital's research also found this to be true. A positive relationship with the manager is a critical factor in employee engagement. Deloitte Digital's tool, the workforce experience NorthStar, can help you build stronger manager and employer relationships. It measures a combination of employee experience factors, satisfaction, and retention. If you are looking to drive loyalty and retention at your organization, and I'm sure you are, check out Deloitte Digital's new report at www.deloittedigital.com slash US slash WXD report. Another thing that's built into P&G is the way the company codifies best practices. I mean, just I don't know if there's anyone in the world better at that. I mean, I think there's a lot of different ways to build a brand-based framework. I think there's a lot of different ways to build a brand-based framework. I think there's a lot of different ways to build a brand-based framework. I think there's a lot of different ways to build a brand-based framework. I think there's a lot of different ways to build a brand-based framework. It's a very principal-based company. As you are making this evolution and how you build brands, what are some of the principles that you're sharing and teaching with your brand builders across the world? We continue to share within the framework of our superiority model that it starts with the consumer, starts with who? Who are you serving? What's the job to be done? You also want to take into consideration the context in which someone's cleaning so they can reduce water, reduce energy, reduce waste. Getting that insight is critically important. Then translating it into what the brand stands for, what's your brand equity benefit? It's still the same benefit. But then also back to what the principle that Marco talked about was this point around superiority that's sustainable. It's cleaning that's more sustainable. Cleaning that uses less water. Cleaning that uses less energy. That principle we've really focused on to ensure people get that part. Then how you bring it to life is still the zero first and second moments of truth that really are just the five vectors of superiority. We teach and show how each of those comes to life. But if it comes to how you embed it in sustainability, we still do the same types of training. Probably about every six weeks we have what's called a brand power hour. It's the next generation of the Jim Stengel power hour. I like the name. Exactly. Because it's power learning and we give examples and we show people. We've even done one around how you make this happen. The beginning of every one of those power hours has the brand building framework and how it leads to superiority and how it leads to results in terms of growing the market, growing share, growing users, growing sales, growing profit. Just this morning, it's our home Earth Day Summit, which was an hour and a half close to an hour and a half of case studies that you went through and looked at all the different things that we are doing in terms of how we're innovating and building brands. Learning is kind of like a campaign. We still do an internal brand building campaign all the time about how to build our brands and how to do it in a way that's sustainable. Andrew never complacent on it, right? It's always evolving. You're always improving. Constantly. Marco, I'd like you to talk a bit about what Mark just said. You're operationalizing in your job as a line leader. Everything Mark just talked about. What have you learned as you've operationalized the principles and the framework that Mark just went through? Yeah. I think a few things I would highlight. I think first, a key capability that we have is the Sustainability Academy. These are just virtual training sessions that are available to the organization to really upskill in this area. Separately, as a fabric and home care business, we've really taken on the challenge of upskilling our leaders in this area. We found that to be a key focus area for us as we think about how to reach our ambition 2030 goals. Starting with, call it our band four or five, the senior director and vice president level in the organization, how do we continue to upskill them through quarterly training and sessions, sharing a lot of the case studies that Mark just referenced. The other thing that I would mention is how do we operationalize it is tied to our initiative work processes. Really looking at each of our innovations and asking the questions about what is the impact of each of these innovations in terms of how we're getting better from a sustainability standpoint. We scorecard ourselves red, yellow, green for each initiative that we launch because we want to continuously make progress in the area of sustainability. The final thing that I mentioned, which I think for me as a leader has been eye opening and something that keeps us on track is, as I mentioned, as a company, when we commit to something externally, we have a plan to deliver it. One of the things that is expected of us by our leaders is to come with, hey, what is our glide path to deliver each of these different goals? How are we in terms of making progress against each of those? And we have our annual reviews. That is one of the things that we are expected to bring is, are we on track for our packaging waste reductions? Are we on track as we think about our carbon emissions targets? So I really think that we are doing that double-click engine to say, beyond just what the consumer sees, do we have the right systems in place to underpin it and to ensure that the results are indeed sustainable? Accountability, transparency, key PNG principles of doing business. It is beautiful to hear. Hey, I want to flip it back to you, Mark, and maybe get Mark could have been involved in this as well. Mark has said these beautiful words about your leadership in this space about a half hour ago. I was looking at a study that Deloitte did in the market, and the study found that 56% of branding or marketing senior leaders had little to no say in the sustainability strategies and plans in our companies, 56% the majority, which I found like, what? So Mark, I'd love you to speak to our audience out there who may not be as involved as a leader as you are. What's your counsel to those senior marketing executives at companies across the world to get as involved in this as you are and to make the kind of impact you're making? That is an astounding fact. I didn't realize that now. And you know this as we get into different industry efforts, we do find lots of the marketing leaders are looking for roadmaps and ways. So to some extent it's kind of understandable. If you have a sustainability officer, talk to your sustainability officer as a starting point. I give Virginie Helios great credit for she engaged me very early in this journey. She said, you know this is going to have to come from marketing and with marketing leadership. And it comes down to is focusing on who are the consumers that you're serving? That's big piece of advice. Who you're serving? What how important is sustainability to them? Whether it be a consumer, a customer, a client, whatever. Find those insights because those insights are what allow you then to be able to unlock how you can translate it into your service or product, which then leads to how you can translate it into how you communicate it and how you market it and how you create demand for it and how you bring it to market. So if you come at it through that lens of your business, it makes it a lot clearer that there's literally no choice that marketing leadership needs to be part of this because it's part of your core business. Why I think it's kind of understandable in some cases why many have not been involved is because it's been separate. It's been a separate either a corporate effort or a bolted on effort or even just focused on the operations of the business. And that's fine and it's good. And it's actually where we started. But when you start doing your life cycle analysis or LCA and look at your footprint, you realize, okay, well, that's a portion of the environmental impact. But the larger portion is, in our case, the usage of our products. So that's where you need to now build it into your business model and build it into innovation and they're building it into demand creation. And frankly, our jobs in terms of helping consumers use the right habits to use the product that's a huge marketing challenge. Getting people to use their dishwasher versus washing dishes, habit chain, scrape low done habit change, turn to short habit change. Lots of real marketing opportunities. Marco, can you comment on what Mark just said? And I'd also love you to talk a bit about this habit change point Mark made. I mean, that is marketing, right? And you've done a great job of that in home care. How have you done it? Yeah, I would say, you know, to just echo Mark's comments, I think that sustainability has to be part of marketing's job because it's so foundational to driving that habit change. And I think one of the things that we're learning is the habit change has to be linked to some level of consumer benefit. You know, one of the biggest sustainability opportunities that many of our brands would see is the opportunity for refills as an example. But today, refilling is a messy job for consumers and they view it as difficult and taking more time. And so one of the challenges ahead of us, which I think marketing needs to be at the center of is how might we revolutionize or reimagine that job for the consumer in a way that makes the habit change easier. And you know, one of the ones I would highlight from the home care portfolio is really Don Powerwash, which we launched with a refill model. But the actual spray that Powerwash doesn't, anyone consumers use it, you see them do this hand motion action because it is like a delightful experience to use Powerwash. But it actually requires a habit change because you actually spray the dishes or you spray the surface before you actually turn on any water. And so you actually see up to a 50% reduction in water usage. Now if we led with, hey, consumers, please use Don Powerwash because it reduces, you know, water usage by 50%, people would likely not use it. But because they know that the performance is predicated on having the suds from the Powerwash actually activated prior to rinsing, that's the reason why the water reduction happens. And so it's a way that the consumer sees a, you know, significant benefit that requires them to actually or props them to actually say, yeah, I'm willing to make that habit change. But I think the more we can do things that allow the benefit to be significantly greater to warrant the habit change, that's when we actually see the behaviors move. And that's what I think is the big challenge ahead of us as marketers and why it's so important for us to be, you know, at the forefront as we look to drive this industry change to more sustainable solutions. And what's so amazing about that example is how Marpo's team had to do iterations of advertising in order to be able to get to the point where you explained, you don't rinse until you're done until the end. So spread white rents, right? Rinse, exactly. It was, it was, it was brilliant. That's, that's marketing. And, and that's exciting. We opened up the show talking a bit about leadership and I want to close it talking a bit about leadership. In my research before this show, I learned that you have were named coach of the year, Marco, in the brand buddy organization at PNG. So Mark, I'd like to flip it to you. Marco talked about the impact you've had in this topic we've been talking about. I'd like you to share with our audience why Marco was coach of the year in the brand building organization. Marco is, is one of the single, I mean, really one of the single best coaches that anybody could ever have. First of all, she mentors dozens of people, can't even count how many people she mentors. But Marco is, is, is one of those people who is, is very obvious that she cares about every individual. And it's, it's, and it's, there's this, there's a gravitational pull to, to Marco that because of you could, you could just, you could feel every, every ounce of her is, is, is full of purpose values and principles. And Marco is very clear. One of the, one of the, one of the clearest communicators in terms of what's expected, what you need to do when you're meeting the expectations, praise, and when you're not constructive dialogue and description and, or constructive criticism, if we're necessary, but done in a way that allows people to rise to the occasion. So what you see is it's, it's the testimony of it is the outcome, which is really brilliant brand building on, on so many different fronts and a highly motivated organization. So it just, it makes difference. I'm now envisioning all of the, the key people, you know, like, like Angelica and Garin and, and, and, and team, you know, they're the, these people who benefit from Marco's clarity, passion, and deep values. Thank you, Mark. Thank you so much. Marco, I can't, I can't let you, and you're smiling for a viewer. She's smiling as a beautiful smile. For those in our audience who would love to be coach of the year and their organizations, Marco, could you share one piece of advice from your perspective for our listeners? Yeah. I think the biggest thing I would say is really get to know the people who work for you and let them know how much you really do, how much you really are invested in them and helping them to achieve their goals and really understanding what they are. Because I think oftentimes I've been in situations where I coach people based on what I want for them or what I might want for myself. And I think it's really important today to really understand what do people want for themselves and how do we help best unlock that for them and be the best supporter that we can to help them achieve what success looks like for them. Marco and Mark, this has been a beautiful conversation. I'm filled with pride that I worked at this company for many years and I love what you've done in the years since I've left. And this work you're doing in sustainability is classic PNG at its best. So thank you for sharing your insights. This is going to be so helpful to so many companies and people in this, in this Earth month we are recording in. And I think what PNG says is let's make every day and every month Earth Day and Earth month. Thanks Jim for the honor. It's an honor to be here with you. That was my conversation about sustainability and brand building with Mark and Marco. Three takeaways from this one for your business brand and life. The first one, integrate sustainability into your brand building approach. Don't make it a bolt on. If you can think about building your brand sustainability as part of your superiority and part of your benefit for consumers, you will be more successful. Second takeaway, reduce the mental load for consumers. Most of the sustainability efforts that will make an impact involve habit change. PNG is a master at inspiring habit change while reducing the mental load for the consumer, making it simpler. Third takeaway, don't underestimate the power of internal learning, inspiration and upskilling. PNG is great at this. Marco and Mark talked about they have a program to upskill their leaders. So they're always thinking about training and internal development. And bonus takeaway, Marco is one of the greatest coaches within PNG's culture, which means she's one of the greatest coaches in the world. Her magic, it all comes down to getting to know your people what motivates them, caring about them and caring deeply about their development, their goals and how that links to the business and brand. That's it for this episode of the CMO Podcast. If you found this helpful and entertaining, I would be so grateful if you could share our show with your friends. And I would be super happy if you subscribed so you can be updated as we publish new episodes. And if you really want to help, leave us a five-star rating and a positive review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. The CMO Podcast is a gallery media group original production.