Nicole Ayers: Full Episode Transcript

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Question Everything, a podcast all about learning from the successes and the failures of those who dared to, well, question everything. This podcast is part interview, part therapy, and part Price is Right. We have our own game board stacked with questions that'll make even the most successful CMO sweat. I'm your host, Ashley Walter, CMO and partner at Curiosity. On today's episode, I sit down with Nicole Ayers, Pet Business Unit Director at General Mills, where she's leading the charge on Blue Buffalo's first leap into fresh food. Between tales of envy-worthy product launches and serial cannibalism, if you know, you know, today you're going to learn why consumer testing isn't where creativity goes to die. It's where it gets better. Why your employees are your most underrated brand influencers, and why letting consumers tell your story is the savviest way to outsmart the competition. So be prepared to sit and stay because this episode is going to be a real treat.

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Nicole Ayers: Nicole introduction 

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Learn more about Blue Buffalo on their website

Nicole Ayers is a 15-year General Mills vet, where she has held leadership roles across finance, marketing, and general management, both in the US and internationally. She currently serves as business unit director for growth accelerators in General Mills' pet segment, including high-growth innovation and market expansion efforts. In this role, she is spearheading Blue Buffalo's strategic entry into the fresh pet food category and guiding the US launch of Edgar Cooper, a premium European pet food brand. Previously, Nicole oversaw a $1. 2 billion cereal portfolio, where she managed flagship brands including Lucky Charms and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. No big deal. You've been busy. Welcome to the Question Everything podcast. Hi, Ashley. Thanks for having me. Oh my gosh. I've been waiting for this day. So glad to have you here in Cincinnati in the studio.

Yes, it's great to be here. I love every time I walk in; I get energy from all the pink. I love hearing that. I love hearing that. Well, you're on brand today too with the red. So, I hear you guys are just fresh off a two-week shoot launching this amazing new innovation from Blue Buffalo. What's been happening? Tell me a little bit about it. Yeah, it has been busy, and we've got great partners in Curiosity. We were out in LA a couple of weeks ago shooting, and it was my first pet shoot. You mentioned my intro; I've only been in the pet industry for about less than a year, and I'm spearheading this launch for General Mills. So I got to be on my first pet advertising shoot, and it was so fun.

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Nicole Ayers:  Love Made Fresh shoot with Curiosity

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Learn more about Blue Buffalo on their website

I had no idea how important pet talent was. And is the dog excited? Do they like the food? Do they not like the food? Do they wag their tail? Are their eyes open and looking happy? So we spent a lot of time with dogs, and it was great because I'm a dog lover. So it was really fun. Okay. Rumor has it on set, it's like you can't touch the dogs. Don't look at the dogs. Nobody can do anything until they break, and then you can actually play with them and have fun. Ultimate prima donnas in the moment. Like, it's like, don't look at the, like literally don't look at the dog. One of the dog's names was Indy. And it was like, Indy's on set, everybody quiet.

It was like more prima donna than the prima donna humans. Amazing. But they were great. And when they weren't distracted, they did great shots. And it's interesting because we're launching this new pet food. We're going into the fresh segment. And when we were shooting, the dogs like couldn't stop eating. And the trainers would get so worried because they would overeat; because you would do multiple scenes. And so, it was the first time they would like grab the dog by the neck and pull it back. And some of the trainers had said they'd never had this problem before when they were shooting for pet food. And I was like, I think we're going to sell pretty well if these dogs can't stop eating the food. That is a great sign. Yeah.

OK, awesome. Well, I can't wait for the work to be live and for everyone to see it. It's really fun. Yeah, it is. OK, so you know how this podcast works, right? I've got a game board stacked with 12 super spicy questions. You don't know what's behind them, and the power is all in your hands, my friend. Where do you want to go first? Let's start with my favorite number, which is four. Number four. And see what we get. Why is four your favorite number? So I played volleyball back in the day, and my number was always four. And so it has stuck with me. I think I was assigned the number four, and I defended it all through college. Love. I love that. OK, my daughter plays volleyball. It's a great sport. We should talk about that more. 

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Nicole Ayers: Love Made Fersh product launch strategy 

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Learn more about Blue Buffalo on their website

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OK, so we just launched part one of the Love Made Fresh campaign. What advice would you give to other brand leaders who are bravely bringing new product innovations to market? Yeah, I think maybe two things. The first one was being really clear about the value you provide to consumers so that you can bring it to life in the creative. And it was so important for us to be really clear on what made us special about our entry into the Fresh segment and what made us special about the brand of Blue Buffalo being the player to enter that segment. And so, being super laser-focused on that, so that for part two, the answer is you have a great agency partner and great creative partners that you can trust to bring that to life.

Because then you're not debating: is the work good? Is the work not good? You're debating: are you bringing to life the most important thing for the consumer in the most compelling and relevant way? And so having those two things really crystal clear, both what is unique and interesting for my consumer and then having an incredible agency partner. And the amount of times we debated and didn't know what we were going to do because it was something new, and we started like not really sure on what the brand would stand for and that we had to grow into it. And it required a lot of trust with the agency partner there with curiosity. And so I think that having that trust really helped us evolve the work beyond probably what we thought it could be because we were willing to try like, oh, maybe we try this. Oh, that actually like worked really well. That looks great. Or maybe we try moving it this way. So I think having that trust to try things and maybe they not all be successful to get to the product launch was really important as well. That's great. How do you how do you think that trust was built?

And so, if you approach something and it doesn't work and you're upset about it, then it kind of ends the conversation. If you approach something and it doesn't work and you're like, oh man, here are the three things I learned about it and what I would do differently, you're just moving the ball forward. And it also makes it easier to build that trust because you're not afraid of failure; you're excited about learning. And so, I think as we engage with our partners, hopefully we showed up with a mindset of like, we actually didn't have it all figured out and we needed to do that with others. And it let us be a little bit vulnerable on the journey.

And that, for me, built trust because our partners could come in and say, hey, we're not sure if this is going to work, but let's try it. And so, we got to just get more ideas on the table because we weren't worried about it being a bad idea. We were just trying to learn as quickly as we could to get to the best work we could. That's great. I mean, I'm not in those meetings. They don't let me in a lot of them, but I do hear in the walls just how fun they are, how inspiring they are, how great of clients you are. And that's got to be probably central to it. They can walk into those meetings, be a little bit vulnerable, and come with their best thinking.

There's not going to be that severe judgment or turning things away. You're really open, which I think is great advice, especially in newer relationships. I mean, this isn't a relationship that we've had for 20 years; this is a relatively new relationship. This is our first work coming out together, and I think building that trust so quickly is pretty incredible. Yeah, it's been remarkable. And I think we were really excited to work with Curiosity because of the way they showed up in the pitching of, like, oh, we're not sure. This could work. This could work. What if we tried it this way? And there was so little preciousness about things where we were all just kind of willing to say, I don't know, let's try this. Let's see if this will work.

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Nicole Ayers: Nicole’s thoughts on AI-generated creative spots 

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Learn more about Blue Buffalo on their website

And I think we got to some really good work together. I'm excited. I'm excited for it to be in the world. Awesome. And I hope the dogs love it as much as they love the food. All right, let's go back to the board. All right. OK, we did number four. Let's go for number 10. OK, number 10. OK, number 10. Would you ever greenlight an AI-made spot, or do you think you're all in for the practical? Oh, it's a great question. AI is a hot topic right now. It is a hot topic. I mean, I like to believe that AI is only as good as the creative people who are behind it. And so, would I approve an AI greenlight spot?

It really depends on who made it, and what the brief was, and what the prompts were, and what all of the strategic discussions that went into the content. I think as we've gone through this progress, we've seen it's a great way to shortcut to bring something to life, to say like, oh, we talked about this. This is what it could look like. But you have to have an idea for AI to be meaningful. So I guess I would greenlight an AI spot, but it would be because we had all of the discussion on the lead up into it, and all the prompts, and what needs to happen as far as what is the output versus just like, I don't know, having some rando go in and be like, dog eating food.

I think the brilliance of AI is the people behind it, and who are the hands on the keyboard. Yeah. Are you guys experimenting internally at all with AI right now, or staying away from it? No. I mean, we're experimenting with it, and I think a lot of it is around, there's so much, I would say, streamlining that can be done content creation, where you're doing different edits or different shapes that you've got to get into in different frames. So I think there's just a lot of non-value-added work that can be taken out of AI before you even jump into the creation of the creative. But we've got a great central brand experience team that is constantly looking for new partners and figuring out how do you take out some of that non-value-added work and get to the creative that you want to faster.

And I think that's the best way to be using AI right now, because there's a lot of stuff that we probably aren't adding value on with the creative brains we have, but we just are going through what are the system motions are and finding ways to take that work out. So we can be thinking about what are the ideas and what is going to capture consumers' attention, is a really great way for us to be using AI. More of that high-value brain space. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that. Exactly. All right. Let's go back to the board. 

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Nicole Ayers: Lessons Blue Buffalo can learn from Lucky Charms

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Learn more about Blue Buffalo on their website

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Let's do number seven. Okay. Okay. Here's a question for you. You have worked on Lucky Charms and Blue Buffalo. Tell us, what could Blue Buffalo learn from a heritage brand, like a Lucky Charms?

Such a great question. And I worked in cereal for many, many years. I love working on Lucky Charms. And it was so funny. I remember when we acquired Blue Buffalo, maybe eight years ago. I was like, you know, it's not that different. It's just like cereal, but for dogs. And they're like, I've learned a lot. It's not, by the way. It's like if you ate cereal your entire life and had to get all of your nutrition from your cereal, then maybe you can equate it to dog food. And I was like, okay, point taken. It's not the same. It's not the same. But there are lessons that can be shared between the two. And so I think Lucky Charms, what is so great about that brand is people love it for a very specific reason, which is like your childhood in a bowl.

It's made with marshmallows, and people bite into marshmallows. They taste good, but there's like this emotion you get from the taste and the thrill of Lucky Charms. And it's so great. I have a three-year-old, and her favorite cereal is Lucky Charms. And I see the same just joy come through her when she has her bowl of Lucky Charms. And so that brand, I think, is really clear about what it does for people, which is deliver joy. And I think Blue Buffalo can do the same. We are all about loving like family, treating like family. And how do we continue to elevate the role of the pet in the family? And just being laser-focused on the role that we play around bringing the pets into the family. And we say this thing at work where it used to be pets are the new kids and plants are the new pets. And so every generation, pets are becoming more and more meaningful in people's lives. And how, as Blue Buffalo, do we my generation of childhood, and now my daughter is having that same joy, how do we just continue to evolve the way that Lucky Charms has evolved? I love that. That's great.

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Nicole Ayers: Why Edgard & Cooper teamed up with PetSmart

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Learn more about Blue Buffalo on their website

OK, so you helped launch European pet food brand, is it Edgard? Edgard. Edgard and Cooper in the US as a PetSmart exclusive. Is that correct? That is correct. OK, my research is correct. OK, good. So curious, talk to us a little bit about the strategy behind bringing an exclusive brand for a specific retailer to market. Yeah, well, first I'll talk maybe a little bit about the brand. So Edgard and Cooper is this incredible brand started by these three founders over in Belgium. And it's one of the fastest growing super-premium brands over in Europe. And they were so focused on one of their pets had really bad GI issues. And so they spent a lot of time looking at his poop, trying to figure out different ways to make their food.

And they created this wonderful product that is made from meat that's never been frozen, produced into a great-tasting kibble that the dogs love, and is really great for GI. And so that's the heritage of the brand. And as we started talking to them over in Europe, and we acquired them without the intention of actually launching it into the US. But it's such a great fit for the market here when I tell you that story. You're like, I can probably think of a bunch of people who would love that kind of product. And we actually got some interest from PetSmart. And they're like, oh, we had our eye on that brand. And so it just kind of came together really well where there was a really good fit in the US.

We had a really good partner with a retailer to be able to launch it in a meaningful way. And when you watch how they've launched the brand in Europe, they do these incredible retail partnerships where they call it painting the store turquoise. So you walk in, and the colors pop off the shelf. They're vibrant. There's really great packaging that just captures your attention. And it's fun, and you kind of want to engage with it naturally. So we needed a retailer partner that we could set up a great in-store experience so people could go find it, would be willing to partner with us, so we could do things like demos and sampling. And so it's been great, a great partnership with PetSmart to be able to execute in such a unique way because it's hard to launch a new brand in a new market.

And we've been able to do that with them really, really well. And it's a really great bullseye consumer that shops at PetSmart for the brand as well. Smart, very smart. I can't wait to see it. Yeah, you should check it out. I have many, many favorite children, both my fresh business and my Edgerton Cooper business. Yeah, well, and I love the idea of painting it turquoise. I imagine, are you thinking like that on blue, on the blue? I mean, we're bringing refrigerators in; this is kind of a new in-store setup for you too. Yeah, I mean, I think sometimes we forget as marketers the importance of in-store. It is your number one marketing mechanic because you've all those eyeballs walking through the stores. And I think the Edgerton Cooper team got it right.

And I think with the coolers that we're bringing in, with our really distinct branding, really playful dogs, I think consumers are gonna see it and wanna kind of learn what is inside those two doors and open them up to pull the product out. And so I put a lot of stock into how we show up in-store because I think it can drive a lot of trial and a lot of awareness. And if you show up in a cohesive way, it doesn't feel like brand building, but it's a really strong brand-building component for the plan. Yeah, don't sleep on in-store. Yeah, don't sleep on it. I love that, okay. All right, let's go to the board. All right, let's do number six. What's the secret to selling in bold creative to General Mills stakeholders?

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Nicole Ayers: The secret to selling bold creative to companies like General Mills

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Learn more about Blue Buffalo on their website

And you can come from your Blue Buffalo time; maybe it's your cereal time. I mean, just as an outsider, you think you've got the P&Gs of the world, the General Mills of the world, big, scary, I don't know. And then here you are, bringing all this amazing creative and innovation to the table. Any secret sauce there? I don't, there's maybe a couple of things, I think. One is, and if you talk to anybody on my team, like the number one question I always ask is, like, what's the strategic importance of that? And so I think it always comes back to the strategy, and like, you can be bold, but you have to be bold and strategic. And without being strategic, you're just doing stuff that might be cool, but maybe not achieving the objectives you wanna do.

So I think when you set a really solid strategy that everybody can align on, and it's a big enough strategy where people can look at and say, oh, I see how that's gonna drive growth, is kind of part one to it. And so for the fresh, the entry into fresh, being able to talk about the strength of the brand, the growth of the category, where we are differentially superior to existing offerings, having that strategy gets everybody to say, oh, like I see how you can be successful and go capture growth, is the first part of it. And then I think the second part of it is just not, and I'll go back to this theme of not being afraid of failure because I think if you're gonna do something bold, you kind of have to be like, well, that made me a little bit nervous.

Like, I'm not sure, like, is this, if it feels safe, then you're probably not being bold enough to be able to capture what's going on in culture or being bold enough for what the brand stands for. So I think once you kind of have a really good strategy that people are aligned behind, and you wanna kind of toe the line of just like discomfort a little bit to say, like, have I pushed this far enough to make people go like, ooh, yeah, you're swinging for it. And then I'm like, okay, I think we're in a good place. You're strategically aligned to me, and I have pushed you to the brink of, wow, you're really going for it. Then I feel like that's a really good way to get to bold ideas.

Nicole Ayers: Why Glossier has the best product launches

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Learn more about Blue Buffalo on their website

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Yeah, yeah, that's great, that's great, okay. All right, let's try number five. All right, number five. What's a recent product launch from another brand that has made you a little bit jealous? That's a great one. I'm currently obsessed with brands that are able to launch with their communities of people. And so I have been obsessively following Glossier because I just think the way that they're able to engage with their consumers and understand what they like, what they need, and then use their consumers to tell their message is like masterstroke. And so I look at that a lot for inspiration and say, like, man, it's so much more fun to work on a brand where other people want to sell it for you. And Glossier has just mastered that, where they serve their community and then their community serves them.

And it's really a reciprocal relationship. And I think that's such an interesting, modern way to launch a brand in a world where you have access to consumers through social and DTC, and you can have that kind of unique relationship where you're no longer just yelling at people to go buy you, but they're also telling their friends to go buy you and creating your content for you. And the way they've been able to do that, I think has just really been really inspirational. Do you think about, like, tapping into— I imagine Blue Buffalo has like insane loyalists as well, maybe not as crazy as maybe Glossier, but I mean, it's a staple in the home. Pet is kid, high-quality ingredients. And once you're on it, you don't really switch off of it.

So how do you like tap into them, their passions, and get them excited about a new product launch like this? Yeah, that's exactly the question we're asking ourselves now around how do we tap into that? And it's interesting because we do this thing called ratings and reviews, where we kind of send out the product to get people to tell us how they thought about, how they thought it was. And then we can start to pre-populate our ratings reviews, as I think a lot of people do that. What I didn't expect when we did that was, people started posting, even though we'd asked them not to, about the product before we had launched it, because they were so excited by how much their animals loved it.

And that got me thinking, like, man, people really wanna share things that their pets love with others. And so how do we become a partner in their sharing that with others? And as we launch this new product, how do we enable the sharing? And one thing we've talked about internally is we've got a really big contingent of internal people at General Mills who love the product and want to talk about it. So like start at home and make sure you're asking people, you're like, oh, I tried that product, I really like it. I'm like, can you tell your friends about it on social media? And how do you turn your employees into your first line of influencers to start talking about the products they love and things like that?

So that's just one thing that I'm thinking about is every touchpoint should be an opportunity for somebody to go tell the world about how much they love it. Because the product delivers, and it tastes really great, and animals love it, and it's got superior nutrition. And so how do we get others to tell the story for us? And that can start with your employees; it can start with your agency partners. And just like we say this in sales, always be selling, but how do you always be thinking about somebody else helping you sell your product and not just having your TV campaigns do it or your digital campaigns? I think that's so smart. I think employees are such an underserved or represented group of influencers.

I mean, especially at a General Mills, I don't know how many employees you have, but I'm guessing it's over in the thousands. And a lot of them probably aren't thinking about Blue Buffalo every single day like you are, but they do have pets. They're almost a consumer in a lot of ways, right? And yeah, how do you get them excited by it and just trying it, just like you would a normal consumer? I think that's really cool. You almost need your own little internal employee campaign. Exactly. We should think about something. We should do something fun. Yeah, exactly, for the internal launch. We should do something fun for the internal launch. Yeah, okay, all right. You heard it here first. We'll figure that out over dinner. Yeah, we'll think about it over dinner.

Nicole Ayers: How to maximize your marketing dollars against big category spenders

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Learn more about Blue Buffalo on their website

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A lot of those that listen to these podcasts, they might consider themselves challenger brands. Maybe they're not the number one spender in the category. And so, yeah, just curious if you have any advice or perspective on how to think about that. I think it's probably, and it gets back a little bit to how do you get people to tell your story for you. You can spend lots of money being on football games and all the prime media and the last places people are actually watching live television. And it's really expensive. And it's really getting crowded, I would say. And so we'll do some of that. But we're in a category, like you said, of big spenders. So I think the best way to do it is be really interesting so that what you're doing is actually paid attention to.

And then for me, there's also a component of how do you be culturally relevant so that your story is easier to share because it has something in common with people in their everyday lives versus just advertising that you're serving up to them. And so I think being interesting and being culturally relevant, and it's such a hard, I think it's an art we're still learning. But how do you start to be part of a conversation versus forcing your way into it or just screaming at people? And that is, it's so hard to find something that's an authentic way for your brand to participate in what's happening culturally. And it requires you to move so fast because culture moves so fast.

And so identifying it, figuring out your unique right to participate that is authentic and meaningful, and then doing that in 36 hours is a whole thing. And I think we're still figuring out how to do that. But I think the brands that are able to be really interesting and be really authentic, and then attach themselves to culture in some way, have an outsized impact because people want to talk about them. And you're not just serving up your advertising, but they're also like, oh, this is fun to talk about. And so they spread your message for you. Yes. I mean, you're speaking my love language here. I mean, we know 86% of ads are ignored or, even worse, misattributed to a competitor. And so oftentimes, you can't afford to be boring.

If you're going to put any dollar behind it, at least make it interesting so people see it and want to see it and want to consume it. One of the phrases that our CMO used to use was, how do you be thumb stopping? You just have to get people to stop, because no one really wants to look at advertising. So you've got to be entertaining enough and add that value to their lives for them to even pay any attention to you at all. So I think that's step one if you're going to compete with some heavy spenders. And lucky for you, dogs are cute and entertaining. Puppies and babies, right? So cute. Oh, my gosh. Those dogs are so cute. Yes, so true. It's so true. All right, let's go back to the board.

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Nicole Ayers: How to know when the strategy and creative are right 

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Learn more about Blue Buffalo on their website

Let's do number nine. OK. How do you know when a strategy is right? And then also, what about the creative concept? So we talked a little bit about not being fearful. And you can bring lots of ideas. And we can test. And we can fail. When do you know, man, this is it? It's so funny. We just went through this. And I think you go through a couple of rounds and you start to know, you'll get the feeling. And that's the worst coaching you can give to people. It's a feeling you'll get. And it's true, though. But it is a collective kind of feeling where everybody's like, oh, it's all there. And I think the hardest part about when you're getting to great creative is the messy middle where you're like, oh, but it's better than the one before.

But it's not quite right. But you think it's better. And so a lot of times, and I think earlier in my career, I don't think I knew what the feeling was. So I didn't push until I got there. And I think part of getting to really good creative is making sure you're continuing to push and not just say, oh, it's better than the last round. But it's better than the last round. But is it delivering the four things that we need it to deliver? And the first one, is it interesting? Will people stop and look at this thing? Because if they don't look, then it doesn't matter if I hit my four RTBs because no one's paying attention. And is it delivering on what we aligned on? We talked about earlier, strategically?

There are three or four things that are really compelling reasons to think something will grow. And is my creative delivering upon that strategy? I think that's a really important part to make sure that it all works together. But then there is that je ne sais quoi when you're in the room and you're looking at something and everybody is like, oh, it's interesting. It has the right tone. It has the right, you're hitting the right messages in a really clear way. And you look around, everybody just smiles a little bit as a sigh of relief of like, oh, yeah, that's it. And you have to do it a few times to know what that feeling is. Because then when you're not there, you're like, oh, I actually need to keep pushing.

And even I will say my boss will do this sometimes where I think I'm there, and she'll ask me three really good questions. And I'm like, shit, we're not quite there yet. Because we didn't hit those, maybe it's like, do you think the branding's coming through? Do you think people really stopped to look at this? Just some pause and reflect questions to make sure you're pushing the work to be as good as humanly possible. And then you look at it and you go, oh, yeah, that's it. That's nails. Front of the agency. You may even know him, Pete Carter. He was a guest on this show. He describes that moment as, he calls them the tingles. He physically can feel it on his body when the idea and the strategy are coming together.

That's so right. It might have been a couple weeks ago, probably coinciding with the first rough cut we saw of the first spot we were working on. And I went home, and my parents recently moved to Minneapolis, where we live. And my mom was like, you're in such a good mood. I was like, mom, I'm having the best work week ever. Everything is just working. The team is working really well together. The creative looks are awesome. It was just like when you're hitting your stride, just feeling really good. And then the next week happened, and something else happened. But you got to enjoy the wins. You really do. We don't celebrate the wins nearly enough. I rolled around that week, really, all of it. I love that.

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Nicole Ayers: How Blue Buffalo loyalists will react to Love Made Fresh

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Learn more about Blue Buffalo on their website

All right, let's go back to the board. All right. Am I going to be your first person to get through all 12 questions? Nope. I also don't think you're going to get through all 12, but we'll see. Let's do number two. OK, number two. Love Made Fresh asks pet parents to go the extra mile. How do you get Blue Buffalo loyalists to change their habits? That's actually, we were kind of just chit-chatting about this a little bit. But when you think about, you're going to bring some new users likely into the market, how do you think about those Blue Buffalo loyalists and getting them hyped and excited for it? Yeah, I mean, I think the Blue Buffalo loyalists, the good news is they already love the brand because they're loyal to us.

And you think about the things that are really special about Blue Buffalo. We have an incredible origin story with the founder, and they created this product to make sure that their dog could be healthy. His name was Blue. That's why it's Blue Buffalo. And we have really held this wonderful nutritional superiority with natural ingredients and nutritional superiority. And we have a nutrition philosophy where we give the dog exactly what they need for the best health that they can have. And that is, I would say, in the DNA of Blue Buffalo. And I think Blue Buffalo loyalists know that. And so when we came to launch Blue Buffalo Fresh, we thought a lot about how do we make sure we hold ourselves to all of the standards that we hold ourselves to Blue Buffalo?

So for loyalists, it's like a no-brainer, really. They're like, I actually, why wouldn't I feed them Blue Buffalo? I think the hurdle that we'll have to get people who are non-Fresh users, who are in Blue Buffalo, to understand, it's actually easier than you think. If you think about a lot of the advertising in the Fresh space, a lot of the players are currently demonizing Kibble and saying, Kibble's not great. Feed your dog this. This isn't good for you. Feed your dog this. And it's not really true. And so the role that Blue Buffalo could come out and say is, actually, we think you should mix all these great things together. We have great nutrition across our whole portfolio. How do you mix everything together and make the meal the way you want it?

And so I actually think we're going to be a little bit of a relief for our Blue Buffalo loyalists who maybe are hearing in their ear, oh, don't feed your dog this. It's no good. And we're like, it is good. It's got great ingredients, natural ingredients. We're so proud of the quality that we put into our food. And now you can do that with Fresh. And here's how you mix it. And here are some inspiring ways for you to chop it, or shake it, or stir it, or however else you want to put it into your bowl. So I'm hoping that we can translate that to the loyalists so they try our new product. That's great. I feel like you have to be all in on Fresh. It's so wild to me.

I love the idea that you can really have both, and both are doing really great things for your pet. I'm just hearing you say that. It makes me think of cloth diapering. And for so long, I'm like, you either have to be all in on cloth; never use a regular diaper. And I'm like, I can't do that. How do moms do that? I love you and praise you for doing that. But then somebody was like, no, you actually don't. You can cloth diaper when you want and use a regular diaper when you want. And there's just this freeing, I think, that maybe some of these Blue Buffalo loyalists will have. It's just an addition to the amazing lineup that you already have. Exactly. A nice little topper sometimes, too.

Nobody wants to be told what they're doing is bad. And I think it's a really common marketing mechanic. It can be highly effective. But it doesn't make you feel good about yourself. I just don't want to do marketing that makes people feel guilty. Yeah, especially when you're trying to do something so great for a family member. All right. I think we've got time for two more, I'm hearing. All right, let's go back to the board. Number 11. 

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Nicole Ayers: Why concept testing shouldn’t be the final verdict for creative

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All right. So you're big on consumer testing. When do you ignore the feedback and just go with your gut? Gosh, I am trying to think about a time I've done that. Normally, I'm going to invert your question. I know you asked it, but I'm going to change it.

Because there are a number of times that I have thought I was so right. And I'm like, I'm going to go with my gut. And I'm like, you know, and I call the thinks versus the knows. Like, I think, or people are like, we think this, we think that. I'm like, you know what we should probably do? Is go ask a consumer. And there are so many easy ways for you to do quick, 24-hour testing. Go ask 50 consumers. And the number of times I have been proven wrong by just asking consumers, I actually, when I think I have a really strong gut, but somebody else is like, I'm not really sure, the first thing I do is pause and say, let's go. Even if it's 10 people.

Even if we, I've sent homework and been like, hey, we're having this conversation. It was when I was in serial. We're having this conversation about what some, like, a demographic will think. And none of us are in that demographic because we're all too old. Can you go home and go find, like, your neighbors, like, high school and college kids, and ask them if this is actually cool or not? And we came back, and I was like, I think this is so dumb. And it turned out it was really cool. And the demographic thought it made sense and all of the things. And so I have been proven wrong so many times. So what I thought was right. And a couple of people in the room, like, oh, I'm not really sure.

And we just go ask a couple of people. Go ask 10 people, 15 people. Does it make sense? Does this make sense to you? Is this interesting? Is this cool? Would this catch your attention? And the number of times we've gotten to a better answer by just pausing and doing a quick consumer pulse has been amazing. So I don't, I kind of always, the consumer is usually a tiebreaker for me. Well, I think that's just, like, a really smart strategy just to incorporate into, like, your daily working life. How easy is that to just go field 50 consumers and just get a quick fact that you can kind of add to your gut or say, you know what, I actually was wrong, and they proved me wrong? I really like that.

Do you do a lot of concept testing then? We do some concept testing. I think there's, it depends on where you are in the journey. I think a concept test is really helpful when you have all of the pieces together, and you're like, OK. And it also, for me, feels like the answer you think is going to be right, and then you're tweaking. I think there's a lot of stuff that is just smaller things. Like, we were even, even today we were talking about language. And I was like, you know what, we're not sure if that will resonate or that will resonate or that will resonate. Can we just go, like, put it into consumer really quickly and figure out what we think is going to be the most, like, the most clear to consumers?

And so I think we do do concept testing for big projects. And for me, that tends to be towards the end when you're, like, tweaking around the edges. But I think there's so many touch points between that concept test, either before or after, where you're kind of, like, crystallizing or sharpening something. And you're like, oh, let's just go ask consumers. You're like, oh, we should for sure be using that word instead of that word in all of our comms, which can be really helpful. And then earlier on, I think you can converge more quickly. You know when you're, like, boardroom innovating and you're like, oh, we should do this, this, or this. And you're like, that seems like a great idea. Usually you should not do that. And you should take the 10 ideas that you are starting to think about and then do really quick interactions with consumers. We call it prototype testing. To say, like, what's interesting in this? What's interesting in that? And it helps you narrow down in on what the spaces are that could be really meaningful for a consumer. Before you get too far along to a concept test where you're, like, here's my idea,

is input, and it's not the answer. You should never make a decision off of a concept test, but you should probably hear like sometimes you'll hear something around, like, I didn't really understand the first seven minutes. You're like, oh, the pacing might have been off and maybe we change that super. It's not like the creative's not good. It's just that there's an element of it that wasn't clearly understood, or the music was slightly off, and it gave people this feeling. So maybe we change up the music. It's never a place; it should never be set up to kill something. It should only be set up to make it better. So whenever we go into testing, the question is always like, what are we going to learn in action?

And the action is not to not do it. That's not helpful. The action should be, well, we're not sure if the, we think there might be too many scenes and it's too choppy, and people can't follow it. Cool. We're going to check for comprehension. Do you guys know what you might take out if it doesn't have full comprehension? We think that music, we're actually choosing between two great things to test. So I think concept testing can be where things go to die if you're going to make a decision based on it. But what you shouldn't be doing is making it better with your learning. Because, again, like you're not feeling, you're just learning. So you're just going to take what you did and make the work better on the outside.

Nicole Ayers: One of Nicole’s biggest learning moments

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Learn more about Blue Buffalo on their website

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It just goes back to like your central foundation of that, which I really, really appreciate. Okay. That's good advice. Yeah. All right. Last one. Where are we going? We did it. All right. Number three. Number three. You've said, 'mistake it till you make it.' What's a mistake that has happened in your career that has moved you forward? Do you remember saying that? I don't know. I say a lot of things. I believe it. I mean, I'm all about, like, you don't fail. I know. I know. It's all full circle. It's very freeing when you're like, oh, learning moment. Learning moment. Yeah. Has there been a mistake that you, like, go back to frequently? Like, God, I learned so much in that moment. I'm so glad that mistake happened.

I have made so many mistakes in my career, honestly, or had learning moments, I think. I'm trying to think of a good one. You know, I'll use one in serial, where we were on year two of a really cool campaign. We have, gosh, I'm going to blank on the name, but it is, this year it is Touchdown Taste. Oh, it's training camp. So year one, we did the Kelsey Brothers and we did a mix with them and did all this stuff. And then year two, we're now doing it with Justin Jefferson and some other wide receivers. I'm not on that team. The creative team is doing it, and the team that's leading it is amazing. But the way we got there was because we were progressing something around nutrition.

The capital came in really high, and we essentially had a plan with like a massive hole in it. And we're like, what are we going to do for back to school? I don't know. Big deal. Big deal. And we're like, shoot, we have no idea. And so we sat in a room for a while and like, well, these brothers just like blogged about it or they just put us on their podcast. We could do something with that. Could we do that? And we just had to like come up with an idea to fill the gap. And it ended up like really snowballing into this awesome execution, which has now turned into training camp. And we're repeating it this year during football season.

But I think the fact that we had like really no plan at all unlocked something super, super cool and culturally relevant that has been living on. And so that was a pretty big mistake because you never want to go into your fiscal year with like no plan for the biggest aperture of the year: cool moments of the year. Yeah, I mean, it was not a great moment, but you had the right people in the room. We had the right mindset around like, what can we do? What's interesting? What's interesting for our consumers? What's interesting in culture? And we're able to kind of, I would say, not stumble onto, but have a nugget of an idea that we were able to just make bigger and bigger and bigger.

And I don't know if we would have been as bold as that if we hadn't failed before and had no option. So we were able to really step into it and create, I think, a really nice aperture for cereal around football that is living on, which is great. So that would be maybe one example. Should we clear the board? I feel like we should clear the board. There's one more on there. Let's do it. Let's do it. Oh, there is. I feel like we should do it. 

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Nicole Ayers: A BTS look at Cinnamon Toast Crunch’s cereal cannibalism campaign

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Learn more about Blue Buffalo on their website

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Let's clear the board. All right. All right. All right. Speaking of cereal, I need your hot take. OK, what are your thoughts on cereal cannibalism? God, I love it. I love it so much. It was so funny.

So Kate Erickson is the brand manager and Brandon Trail are the two people who are kind of running that campaign. And we were at a meeting corporately, and they grabbed me because I moved on to Pet, and we had worked on the foundation a little bit together. And a lot of what we talked about was, one, the food didn't look delicious enough. And so, how do we evolve our advertising to make the food look more delicious and keep the quirkiness of Cinnamon Toast Crunch? And then I left and went to Pet. But that was kind of like what we had been talking about. And they grabbed me in all way, and they showed me the advertising. And I was like, oh, my God, it's so good with like the creepy music and the partnerships they were able to get to.

And I absolutely love it. I think it's brilliant. And it comes back to it actually solved a really big strategic question we had, which is this is the best tasting cereal, like I think like the best tasting cereal. And how do you deliver advertising that really demonstrates it? And like, what better way than to have the cereal eat itself? I mean, it's brilliant. So, yeah, I think the team did such a great job. I mean, that is like the perfect example of where you say strategy meets like bold and exacting edge, and like it's easy to sell. And I planned to end this way. I love this for us. So you've seen the podcast. You know, we love to end with a little this or that rapid fire.

Nicole Ayers: Closing remarks

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First thing that comes to mind. OK, let's do it. All right, let's go. Lucky Charms or Cinnamon Toast Crunch? Oh, Cinnamon Toast Crunch. It is the best tasting. It's my like childhood dream, really. I just, I can't. OK, would you rather work with a legacy brand or a challenger brand? Oh, challenger brand. I'm in the fight. I like the fight. OK, riding a tractor or riding the subway? Oh, fun fact. I actually know how to drive a tractor, so I'm a good driver. I know. I know that about you. All right. Misty May or Kerri Walsh?

All right. So fresh, so clean, Arheya. Oh, so fresh, so clean, every day. Is that your walk-up song? It is. All right. The hardest one on here: dogs or cats? Oh, it's easy: dogs. Cats are nice, but dogs are the best. Thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been a total blast. If our listeners want to connect with you, where's the best place? Yeah, find me on LinkedIn. Send me a message. I'd love to connect with creative people who are facing big problems. Awesome. Awesome. We'll link to that in the show notes. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you.

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