Brands these days can’t afford to make huge missteps. In this episode, Perteet Spencer, VP of Strategic Solutions at Spins, joins Elliot Begoun as they talk about helping large and small brands leverage the right data to grow their business. Perteet and Elliot discuss the multiple uses of data to understand what is happening in the marketplace, the dynamics, and what is changing. Perteet also shares her thoughts on the effects of the COVID outbreak on the marketplace based on the data and how trends have been flipped upside down. Get to know which products have fared well throughout the outbreak and what could you expect moving forward with the resurgence of the center of the store. Learn how Spins gives its clients a complete view of the marketplace to have a better hold during these unprecedented times.

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A Practitioner Approach: Using Data to Drive Your Business Forward with Perteet Spencer

I’ll introduce my guest, Perteet Spencer of SPINS. Perteet, why don’t you introduce yourself and give a little background?

Elliot, thank you for having me. I am excited to be here with this group. My name is Perteet Spencer. I am the VP of Strategic Solutions at SPINS. What I do in my role at SPINS is to help brands, large and small, connect with the right use of data to grow their businesses. I am pleased to be with this panel. I come from a long history of CPG. I worked at General Mills for a long time prior to coming to SPINS. I like to pride myself on taking a practitioner approach to the use of data. I hope that I can be helpful to this group.

Thanks for joining and doing this because it’s such an important topic to talk about. Data is always an important topic, but more so than ever, because brands in this environment, they can’t afford to make missteps. They have to be more capital efficient. They have to be more effective. One of the ways to do that is to use data to tell their story, but also to understand what’s happening in the marketplace and the dynamics and what’s changing and what’s shifting. Before we start with the questions that come in from the audience, one question I have is what have you seen? What are you seeing that is noticeable since the outbreak of COVID?

It’s been an interesting few months for everyone, but particularly interesting as we look at the data because where we saw the market going was a bit flipped upside down. It’s been fun because I’m a data geek. It is fun to watch the market and looking at where things have shifted. A couple of things that stick out to me, one is the overall health of natural products. That is important. SPINS certainly takes advantage point looking at specifically the growth of health and wellness products, which have driven a lot of the growth in the marketplace, but one could argue in an environment where access to both budget in food is a bit more limited now than normal that potentially the need for more health and wellness-oriented products has gone away.

I would say that certainly has not been the case. I would say one big thing is we continued to see health and wellness products stay particularly strong. Some pockets that have thrived more than others are certainly ones that are based on immunity. Certainly, that’s top of mind for people, but also things like plant-based, which we’re seeing they tolerate a lot of categories in the store that have stayed strong. Another couple of big things that have been interesting as a result of COVID are the revisiting of the center of the store again. That’s particularly interesting because over the past few years, for sure you’ve seen this dramatic growth and the refrigerated perimeter. I think as a result of people being more conscious of the number of trips they’re making, we see a revisiting of that center of the store.

At that time, I think there have been a lot of great products that have hit the market and disrupted some of those legacy spaces like soup, beans, etc. We’re seeing some of those behaviors stick. That’s another interesting a-ha. The third I’ll call out is the concept of value. We’ve seen promotional levels stall quite a bit so that’s driven overall inflation of pricing and store. What has been interesting is the kind of definition of value, not in terms of price on the shelf, but also in terms of the need states that consumers are looking for as many shelters in place orders are still in effect.

Examples of that are larger sizes, given your home more often. You have the propensity. We’re buying a lot more orange juice in our house because we have kids at home every day more than we ever have for a long time. Those larger sizes, but then I would also say splurging on more premium items as a bit of escapism. You’ve seen the rise of things like candles, face masks and things like that as people try to find small respites. It was a stressful time.

As a self-professed data geek, I get you. I know it’s not something we are supposed to admit publicly. What’s been the biggest surprise for you?

It’s a good question. To my earlier point, the big surprise is the resurgence of the center of the store. I think it has proven that some of those basic needs still exist for consumers. That represents a huge opportunity for disruption. If you look at some of those legacy categories that people wrote off and maybe reconsidering again, that’s probably been one of the biggest ones. Certainly, the biggest pleasant surprise has been that even in circumstances where budgets are tighter than ever, people are still voting with their pocketbooks against purpose-driven brands and that continues to matter.

Anecdotally, I think that consumers are going to even be more connected and more motivated to buy purpose-driven brands. Also, simultaneously they’re beginning to recognize and make that connection between what they put in their bodies and how their bodies are performing during tough times. There’s that sense that they’re more of a stakeholder in their own health than before. That bodes well for the natural products industry. What about the flip side categories? The shopper dynamic has changed. Shopping behavior has gone from more of the treasure hunting, spending time meandering the store that allows for the discovery of new items and some storytelling to a rote process. You queue up in line, you put your mask on, you go in and you get the hell out as quickly as you can with your list. I’ve talked to a few other people on your team about the basket size increase and all of those things. What other trends like that have you seen?

We’ve seen that in a couple of different ways. One is if you look at some of those grabs and go categories like beverage cooler, where you’re grabbing something to drink on your way into the work to the office, protein bars, jerkies. Those have been formats that have struggled a little bit during these shelters and place orders specifically because that occasion is much more limited than it was historically. We still see strong needs for protein and some of those functional benefits. I feel confident that those categories will rebound as things are to open up again but short-term, those categories have certainly taken a hit. The other interesting thing is some of the channel shiftings that we’re seeing in a higher involvement category.

A good example, there is a CBD. Over some time, we’ve seen a dramatic rise, distribution, and availability of CBD products, which has started to slow as a direct result of COVID. If you think about it, it makes sense to your point. You’re trying to get in and out of a store. The occasion where you would be asking someone to unlock the shelf and do the research is probably limited. Some of those brands are seeing an influx of online purchasing. We have the time and you’re not putting yourself at risk. Those are a couple of ways directly that categories have been heard or if not, transformed short-term as we get through this.

It’s going to be interesting to see what sticks and what changes in terms of shopper behavior and even channel with out of home shrinking and eCommerce growing significantly. We have a lot of questions around where’s discovery going to take place and trial? What’s going to ever happen to demos and those kinds of things? There are a lot of companies, brands, and people who are reading that have used this period to start thinking about what can they be doing? How do they evolve? How do they use this window and this moment to self examine and change? What does SPINS do during this time if you have been looking at new products, new things, new ways to serve your constituency?

I like tipping in myself as a SPINS OG. I started using SPINS back in 2005 as a brand marketer at Mills. It is in our DNA to consistently change and evolve as the times do. The most important thing I think we’ve been doing is continuing to be a service to our partners. We’ve been releasing weekly insights to help our brands stay ahead. The reality is we are in these unprecedented times and so the need for the data is more than ever. Our number one priority is making sure our clients are here in the next 5, 10, 50 years.

Giving them those insights has been paramount to what we do, but continue to invest in our channel coverage to give our partners the most complete view of the marketplace. In fact, in a couple of weeks, we’re launching a whole new channel or a couple of new channels. One focuses on pets and one focuses on the regional grocery. We are helping and continue to give our partners the most complete coverage of the marketplace and then continue to invest in digital applications to make that all easier to digest in real-time.

A couple of questions. The first one comes in anonymously, but the question is, “As a small brand trying to allocate limited funds trying to decide whether I should be investing in data, can you tell me why I should make that investment?”

I would say now more than ever, it’s critical. I have the luxury of getting to talk to a lot of retailers and they are cutting back on their assortments, given the circumstances. Going with a tighter, more productive mixed

You’re seeing skew rationalization taking place.

Data is fine, but the context is the king. I think data give you that context.

Explain that a little bit more. That’s a new statement that I think warrants a little bit more exploration.

Data is essentially a bunch of facts. It is a bunch of statistics. Without a broader constructor which those statistics mean anything, it’s not overly helpful. I always caution brands like, “Do you want every piece of data we can get?” No. As much data as we can get, or we don’t want any data. You have to be mindful of what you’re going to do with it and how you’re using it because it can send you in many different directions. What data does, particularly in these times, provides some texture around how your performance is relative to everything else in the marketplace. As an example, if I know my velocities are five units per store per week, that could be amazing in the category that I play in. It could be awful, but without knowing either of those answers, it’s hard for me to have effective conversations with my buyers, justifying the case for brand expansion, all of those things. I think you need that context as a core element of growing your business.

You made another important point that I want to follow-up on. That is if you’re going to invest in data, have a plan as to how you’re going to use that data. I always recommend trying to think about the questions you want and the data to answer for you. If it answers it in a certain way, what actions come out of it? Otherwise, people sometimes bring in data into their business and they use it almost as a comfort, “I’ve got data,” but it is to answer the question or to leverage it. They use it in a way that’s either putting you in a position to have a strategic conversation with a buyer or to put you as a business, in a position to make strategic decisions about expansion, contraction, new items, pricing, all of those things.

I think of it as a genie in a bottle. That is not like if you rub it, it’s going to rebuild something earth-shattering. You have to know what your wishes before you rub it. Take the best advantage of it.

That’s a great analogy. Let’s jump into some more questions. This one from Joanna. Joanna, it is nice to have you on again. I saw a stat that the percent share of private label has declined. Are you seeing this in the natural space? Are there any categories where private label is increasing chair?

It’s certainly going to vary category by category. Overall, we’ve seen our rise of private labels in total, specifically in natural products, but across the store. That’s not surprising. It’s consistent with recessionary times that we have arisen in privately. Those people look for efficient ways to save money. That being said, private label thrives strong segments where the innovation might not be equally as strong, or there might not be a strong value proposition. There is still a place for the strong performance of branded products with the right level of differentiation.

This question comes from Rebecca Cass with Qula. What is your advice to a small startup that doesn’t have a budget for SPINS data, but genuinely needs some data around a specific set? For example, powder, juices, teas for such.

I think SPINS as a company has acknowledged that there’s a broad need state across our portfolio brands that we work with. We’ve got a broad set of solutions designs to meet the needs of a small emerging brand all the way through your largest CPG brands. If you want to reach out after this, I’m happy to have a follow-up conversation about what could be a fit, but we’ve got some great tools that can give you a quick snippet of a space that you might be interested in. You have enough to be thoughtful in how you grow and scale the business. We can always grow with you as you grow.

Here’s another question. This one’s from West of Snooze. What is one of the biggest transformations in shifts you have seen in the data across categories in the natural food space over the course of the last few months?

Plant-based is probably one of the most interesting spaces that we look at because that’s a space that was emerging. Plant-based has been growing at scale for several years. There have always been plant-based products around, but what’s been interesting is to see the amount of activity around plant-based. We’re seeing plant-based outpace total food and beverage, natural products. We’ve seen a dramatic influx of products there. What’s been interesting about that space is to see not only the breadth across categories in terms of reach but also some of the innovation that’s coming in around protein sources. All plant-based is largely still snowy. You’re seeing a lot of emerging formats beyond P-protein even come into space and that’s been incredibly interesting to watch real-time.

I saw an interesting stat that 42% or 43% of Americans consider themselves flexitarians. I thought that was a staggering number.

That insight once unlocked so much growth for these companies. As you look at the migration of that trend, it started at were a product that was not an animal by-product and tastes not necessarily a requirement for that space, but as better-tasting higher quality options have entered the market, that’s opened the door for an influx of consumers to come into that space.

Here’s a question from Sarah Bird with Beyond Broth. She says, “I appreciate the need for data. Can you share rough pricing for a category Snapshot or data that will tell me how my brand is performing versus the category, key brands, velocity pricing, etc.? Can you share or point us to where we might be able to get some general consumer trend data, for example, size and growth of the health and wellness category?

A couple of things there, I’d say, Sarah, I can give you some options. We have entry-level packages that would prep you for a key retailer meeting that you have and give you a good sense of the lay of the land. That might be $1,000. We have much more comprehensive packages as well. Give me a call and we can work through your needs and figure out the best way to service you. In regard to the consumer insights and your question there, one of the SPINS’ other strengths is that we have strong consumer panels offering. We tap into the same panel that Nielsen and I are using.

We overlay all of our attributes on top of that. Sarah, as you think about Beyond Broth, if we have an immunity-related health condition, I can look at immunity-related health adoption, not only in the Broth category, but all other categories in the store to give you a sense of what is the consumer threshold for your proposition. We can do some interesting use cases of consumer panel across the board to give you more texture around the consumer behavior behind what you’re seeing in stores.

That’s an important point for the jump to the next question. That is, sometimes when we start asking for data, we start thinking first about the cost of data. I would encourage everyone to look at it as an investment decision, not a cost decision. What are you going to invest in? What do you anticipate or hope the ROI would be? That can guide you. Before you even start looking for data, ask yourself, what am I trying to understand? What am I trying to figure out? What am I trying to do to glean so that I can use that to make a shift in the way I’m doing business, tell a better story to a buyer, to an investor, answer a question about the future of a product, all of those things?

If you start with the question that you’re trying to answer, what I have found historically working with SPINS is that’s the best way to approach SPINS. It is to come with, “Here’s the question I’m trying to answer,” rather than, “Tell me the data packages that you have.” Here’s the question I’m trying to answer, and here’s why I’m trying to answer the question. Usually what happens then is you get closer to the best or optimal solution in terms of investment ROI. First of all, disagree with me, Perteet if that is false. You’re trying to mind and identify and it’s better to come and use you as a collaborator in terms of trying to answer that question than just a data provider.

I will say I am personally much more helpful when I know that. When I know what’s what problem you’re trying to solve, then I can put my thinking cap on understanding the most efficient way within your budget to find a solution. I love that in terms of thinking about it, in terms of the ROI, and coming to us with the problem that you’re trying to solve first. I think the other thing that resonated with me about what you said about ROI is I would ask you, what is the cost of not having the data? Can you effectively grow your business without it? You can get relatively far in getting into your first couple of retailers with a strong story that you cobbled together from outside data sources. Once you’re in distribution, there quickly becomes an anchor point. That context around what you’re measured against. It becomes critical to your scale. I would ask you, can you grow and continue to accelerate your performance in the market without it?

There’s a huge risk there. I see this far too often with younger brands. You can lure yourself into a sense of security or a sense of accomplishment by growing distribution. If you have a cool product and an ability to tell a compelling story and a willingness to invest to get on the shelf. You probably have a pretty good chance of getting on the shelf, given your category, given your pricing, and so forth. That’s the battle. The war is getting off the shelf. What I’ve seen a lot of brands do is they have this lovely growth curve early on that’s driven by distribution growth, but then they have to execute within that distribution. They have to do it. They haven’t understood what it’s going to take to do that or what success means or all of those things to warrant that investment. It is another form of investment. Data is another form of investment. That should be part of your growth hypothesis. It should be considered as the potential use of funds. If you don’t have the money budgeting forward in the future, and as you solve your capital and cash needs allocating for that’s important.

In the decisions, you have to make to correct. Don’t get cheaper without it. If you have a fundamental velocity issue, but you don’t know about it because you haven’t invested in the kind of data to assess is your growth driven by distribution or pricing, or fundamental like product issues. It doesn’t get cheaper. It is time to at least have some of those insights. As you scale, you can do it in the right way.

There’s a line that’s missing in most P&Ls that I call the oh shit line. That’s when you have that moment of, “Oh shit, I didn’t think that through. I didn’t do that or this is a mistake that’s going to cost me.” You have to think about what the offset is there. Jenny from Green Drive has a great question. If a small brand can only see one or two subsets of data, what should we be looking for? If you can only afford a little data, what’s the best data to look at?

Jenny, I hope you’re doing well. The most important data to look at as a starting point is wherever you’re in distribution. The retailers where you’re in the distribution for your category, that’s going to give you enough to be dangerous to at least effectively manage the set that you’re in. Your category or subcategory that will give you a sense of your performance at that retail relative to other items in your competitive set. There are some instances. I think about some of the plant-based brands. I’m sure a lot of people saw the Kroger Study that was released, which talked about the placement of plant-based meats next to regular meats. In that instance, you may need to make that investment and a broader set beyond your media category.

If the bigger box that you’re trying to compete in is not just other plant-based burgers, but burgers in general. I think about what is your competitive frame, and then buying and set the competitive frame. T is critical to have, at least the retailers are in distribution immediately to ensure that you’re strong there. Certainly, if there are a couple of other retailers that are on your hit list, at least those have a path to growth. That having the insights for the retailer is critical because that sets the tone for your growth story. You want to be able to prove that not only were you able to get on the shelf, but successfully turn where you were. That becomes a repeatable story for other retailers to take you on.

Here’s a cool question. Is SPINS doing or offering anything as it relates to a lifestyle diet? Paleo, keto, grain-free, plant-based, cross-category to see what’s going on.

We have over 500 attributes now and we have a whole suite of lifestyle attributes. Not only do we look at paleo, keto, grain-free across the store, but then we can also look at combinations. What is the growth of a product that is keto and grain-free versus the growth of a product that is keto? We look at that cross channel and that is particularly important because from what we’ve seen, we’ve got two sets of retail, two classes of retailers that we look at. We call it natural to enhance, which tends to be the more premium retailers. We think about them as being an innovation channel because that’s where a lot of your innovation scales.

We then have a mass retailer, conventional retail, the beauty of seeing things like grain-free or keto across channels. It’s a good marker of retailer readiness and consumer readiness to hop on to a broader audience. We’ve often seen with many emerging brands that each sometimes tries to scale too fast and you end up with retailers that are not always the best fit with your consumers. Understanding the tipping point of when it’s right to cross over to those more broadly appealing retailers can be another interesting use case of the data.

Jenny jumped in with a follow-up to that as how has that info conveyed to SPINS? Is it only via a certification, like gluten-free, etc.? How is the attribute assigned in terms of lifestyle?

There are a couple of ways. One, we have partnerships with many of the certification partners, Plant-Based Association, the keto governing body. We have partnerships with all of those. We synchronize their list with the list of VPCs we’re getting in. The other way is we’ve got a lot of rule-based logic in our technology, which enables us to highlight combinations of ingredients and attributes that would give a product a particular attribution. The third way is directly from the brand. We have a product hub. There’s no cost to enter your products into that hub. That’s another great tool to directly share the attributes of your product as a third feels safe in that process.

We got a bunch more questions here. This is an anonymous one, and that is, what are the best practices when meeting with a buyer? How to use data when meeting with the buyer or anything like that? You speak to a lot of buyers, what do they want to hear from suppliers, vendors, etc.?

In my first job out of college, I worked for Lego. We always talked about the work from there or what’s in it for me. That’s something I’ve always carried with me. When you talk to the buyer, they’re generally incented on growing their category either through accelerating velocities of what’s there with existing consumers or bringing in new consumers into the aisle. Whenever you’re meeting with a buyer, I think you always want to have that what’s in it for me mindset. I get to look at a lot of sales stories and a lot of times, brands tell the me show, which is all about what’s great about my brand. While that is an important element of the story, you need to carry that all the way through into the impact that your brand will have on the buyers’ category and performance because that’s ultimately how they’ll measure success.

I think a key element is having one crispy narrative around why your brand exists and what the value proposition your brand provides that no one else can, but then quickly tying that out with a clear plan of what impact do you expect your brand to have on the category? Why do you believe your brand can help grow the category and what you’ll specifically do to support that brand, to ensure its success whether that be trade or demos or other in-store support?

This one was emailed to me, and it’s the perfect time to ask it because it’s similar to the one you answered. How is data used or how can it be used to improve your investment narrative?

We work with a lot of PEVC firms at SPINS evaluating the strength of brands or the potential of brands. Most often I think data can be used to highlight the big picture of how big your brand can be can get. The big question from an investment perspective is typically what is the size of the prize? What is the total accessible market, whether that be the small market or the broader landscape that you’re competing in? That’s a difficult question to answer without data and a fact-based behind that.

Here’s an interesting one and that is online. What SPINS is doing for eCommerce? We’ve seen a massive change in the amount of grocery sold online. There’s not a lot of data available except if you’re on your own website, but not a lot of data from Amazon and from what others are doing. Is there talk or any move afoot to try to do anything along that perspective?

It’s a high priority for us. We see the growth of eCom, which I’ve heard anecdotally has been accelerated to 4 to 5 years and in this COVID window. We do have a few eCom retailers as a part of our ecosystem, like Thrive Market as an example there. We’re always bringing in new retailers that would be inclusive to be common to our ecosystem on average 10 to 20 per month. That’s central to us. The other way we measure panel is that core measure eCom is often through a panel. What’s great about a consumer panel is it gives you not only visibility to our body of POS retailers, but it would include the big economy like Amazon within that projection. That’s another great way to get a pulse on what’s happening on eCom and to what extent. We do a lot of work with brands around channel shifting to understand how much of their brick and mortar volume shifted to eCom, particularly during these times.

I have a new favorite question. This just came in and I love it because a lot of people have the guts to ask it, but it’s often overlooked. What is ACV?

All Commodities Volume. Think of ACV as a weighted average of the distribution. I live in Chicago, so I’m two blocks away from open produce and I’m two blocks away from whole foods. If I look at the value of those retailers in terms of absolute velocities, they’re not going to be weighted the same. Getting into distribution at my neighborhood to whole foods, it will be worth more to my business and absolute dollar sales will likely be more than getting into distribution at my local 700-square-foot store down the street. What ACV does is it measures the weighted and impact of distribution based on a retailer size.

I’ve been studying data for years and I remember the first few times I heard ACV. I didn’t have the guts to ask somebody what it was. I used it and went with it. It’s a great question to ask because it is a unique measurement. It’s an important one because not all stores are created equal. This is a way of saying what the entire universe representing potential volume and then allocating a portion of that potential volume to each of those stores because one store could be worth more potential buying than another.

The CV for the market is 100%. You can’t go over 100%. As I said, I’m a data geek, so I will just rattle those off. If there are other ones that you’ve thought about, please weigh in the chat. The other hopeful distribution metric that you might hear a lot is TDP. I tend to find that is also a helpful one as it relates to health because it also comes to encompasses. ACB is a good metric of breadth. How many retailers you’re in, but it doesn’t touch on depth. If you look at your brand ACV, you could be in 90% of all retailers, but still have a ton of opportunity. What TDP captures is not only the breadth of distribution but the depth on the shelf. If you have 1 item versus 2 items versus 3 items, your TDP is going to look a little bit different. That’s another one I like to use a lot.

Explain what the acronym is.

Total Distribution Points. ECB, I don’t know. That’s the wrong calculation, but it looks at your distribution times your number of items so that you have a total sense of performance in that universe

Are there any others while we’re at it? Let’s keep geeking out and then we’ll go back to questions.

I think the big three are ECB, TDP, and then SPP, which is your Sales Per Point. SPP is probably the most important when you look at the health of the brand because SPP Sales Per Point is going to be a marker of your velocity. How are you performing once you’re on the shelf? Elliott to your point, it takes a ton of work to get on that first shelf, but that is where a lot of the heavy lifting begins. Mastering your velocity as your sales per point is going to help you grow in the right way. One example could be that in a certain market you’re crushing it. Your SPPs are strong and then in another market, your SPPs are low. If the retailer looks at it and totals there, they might see the average performance. Instead of potentially risking discontinuation because you have middling to low performance, SPP is a good way to help you dissect your performance at a store level to play to your strengths and follow the growth.

Here’s a follow-up to that and that is how can the data be used to measure my promotional effectiveness?

You should measure promotional effectiveness. We’ve got a bunch of promotional metrics, percent dollars on promotion, percent lift so you can understand the effectiveness of your promotions. That is a critical element and often brands probably don’t tap into them enough, but vital to your performance.

It’s vital because trade spend is often one of the biggest contra revenue hits to a brand and managing that is vital. Also, using that data to have a good conversation with the buyer around the impact that spends is happening and why that investment should or shouldn’t be made and justifying of that. It’s in both party’s best interest that money’s going to get spent, but if it can be spent to generate more money then that’s a win-win.

We spent a ton of time as brands mature, helping them do that in the right way. Trade is a space where it tends to be a significant amount of the spend. There’s typically less time spent dissecting. We are making that spend in the right way, be it frequency or depth of discount. We spend a lot of time healthy and brands optimize their trade performance as they get to scale to make sure they’re not wasting dollars. No one has dollars to waste in this environment. If you can save a penny to go to something that’s going to drive the growth of your business, it’s worth it.

I’m going to take a moderator privilege here and so forth. My question is around your coaching for young brands. As brands begin to think about either geographic expansion or chain expansion, or even channel expansion, how best to use data to evaluate where to go next? There are lots of things I’ve seen from your indexing and all of those, but what would be some recommendations there?

Going back to our earlier conversation, I think you want to start with a growth hypothesis or growth thesis where you think you can get the next growth of your brand and then use the data to prove or disprove that. As an example, if you think you have the most traction with the more regionally executed retailer expansion strategy, then I would use our regions to dissect a performance of brands or propositions within those regions and see how they’re doing. That’ll be a good marker of whether that hypothesis was right or wrong. You all know your brands more than the data know your brands. Start with that growth thesis and then use the data to prove or disprove that. We have hundreds of ways to break the data, be it retail or region or a class of trade. There are lots of different ways you can break it. I think you want to understand what you think. As much value as you’ll get out of understanding, if you’re right, you may learn you’re wrong. That then at least guides the next place that you might want to look.

That’s a super important point there. That is the whole goal. If you have a growth hypothesis is to find out if you’re right or wrong quickly. Finding out that you’re wrong is not a bad thing. Finding out you’re wrong two years into a huge amount of investment and time is where it hurts. Finding out you’re wrong and you’re in an underlying assumption quickly is one of the most valuable pieces. To riff off that, I’ll also want everyone to understand that the data alone does not complete a story. It doesn’t give you absolute yeses or noes. It doesn’t answer every question. It is an arrow in the quiver. It can help you narrow down. It can help you avoid mistakes. It could help you better tell your story. It can help you make more informed decisions. As entrepreneurs got experimenting and using data maybe as a guardrail that helps you identify if you’re performing or underperforming as quickly as you can so that you can make those adjustments. It is as effective as trying to use data to predict your performance. There are two ends of that continuum.

You’re right. Many of you all have disruptive, innovative propositions. There’s not going to be data to tell you like, “Are you going to crush it in the marketplace or not?” especially for disruptive ideas. If you can use the data to help validate your gut, it gives you a more well-rounded story.

The other thing to do is use the data to better understand your competition, not just the data on the why behind the data. If you see a competitor, something that you’re looking or targeting to perform against is doing well, then take some time in-store to understand maybe why is it they’re doing well? Is it shelf placement? Is it maybe that their message hierarchy is clearer or more concise than yours? Is it their pricing? Is it their packaging pops more on the shelf? There are things that data can tell you. There are things that data can point you to further investigate and you have to do the work and look at things holistically.

That’s one of my favorite uses of a panel data because I think often brands presume their consumer is a specific set. They’re like, “It’s the same as X brand.” Often, the panel will help prove or disprove that. I call the panel on data the why behind the buy. It gives you a texture around who the consumer is. I think often brands will presume that their competitor is the person that they focus on the most. I’m making this story up. It’s not a real story, but if you take some of the plant-based meats, you might be anchoring yourself against another plant-based meat. If the real competitor is in animal-based meat, that’s going to change your messaging, how you talk to consumers, your promotional strategy. Potentially even your distribution strategy. Understanding who and using data to validate that can be incredibly helpful.

For those who want to get in touch with SPINS, learn more, find out more about the packaging solutions, things that the packages solutions you can offer, how best to do that?

You can reach out to me directly. I’ll make sure it gets to the right person. My email is PSpencer@SPINS.com.

I appreciate it. Thanks for joining us. Everyone, have a great day. I’ll talk to you soon.

Important Links

• SPINS

• PSpencer@SPINS.com

About Perteet Spencer

Natural/Organic Industry Strategist with a classical twist. 15+ years experience leading and developing high performing sales and marketing teams.

Specialties:
Brand Management, Brand Strategy, General Management, Marketing, Advertising & Media, New Product Development, Innovation, Core Renovation, Channels (Natural/Organic, Club, & Foodservice), Sales Management 

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