Insights and Studies, CPG Team Management, Field Marketing, Technology, Field Sales

How Spindrift Leverages Data to Evolve, Pivot, and Optimize Summer Promotions

How Spindrift Leverages Data to Evolve, Pivot, and Optimize Summer Promotions

If you missed our webinar on “FMCG Retail Execution Excellence - Best-in-Class Strategies to Attacking Summer Promotions Season with Confidence” with POI, you’re in luck!

We’ve broken down the webinar into digestible recaps with everything you need to know from the discussion with Earin Friedbauer, Director of US Retail at The Kraft Heinz Company, Hagen Panton, VP of Global Sales Capability at Nutrabolt, and Pete Paris, VP of Business Intelligence & Analytics at Spindrift Beverage Co, Inc. here for you.

In part three of three, you’ll hear from Pete Paris, VP of Business Intelligence & Analytics at Spindrift Beverage Co, Inc. Pete has worked in CPG for most of his career across retail, wholesale, and as a manufacturer, which has helped him provide a unique viewpoint for Spindrift to supercharge driving their business goals. With a direct connection to many departments including Sales, Marketing, Finance, and Operations, Pete provides the organization with a holistic perspective for a variety of products to help guide decisions and influence overall business performance.

Read along for a recap of the conversation with Pete on the strategies Spindrift is using to convert increased foot traffic, execute promotions from day 1, and win at the shelf during the busiest time of the year. Discover key strategies you can take away during this pivotal season with planning, new tests, and perhaps most importantly, a plan of attack to achieve execution excellence. 

 

Pete Paris, VP of Business Intelligence & Analytics at Spindrift Beverage Co, Inc.

How are you planning retail execution goals as you go into the busy season?

Pete explained that for Spindrift and most brands, it's more about getting better than they were last year, and the way they approach KPIs for the field team and execution, “Is how much more can we get out of them? What can we do?” he said. “One good example that we use in Repsly is we measure the size of displays. A couple of years ago we were measuring how many displays we had in store. We didn't care if it was 5, 10, 15, or however big the displays were. Now we migrated up increments. So now then we changed to 25 and 50 case displays.”

Now their key KPI, which everyone on the team competes for, is how many 100 case displays are they getting in every single store. Pete went on to explain that they try to take incremental steps each year, and as the business grows they need incremental points of interruption in store to hold account owners responsible for their profits and losses, and for growing the business.

“We've been fortunate to continue to grow exponentially over a period during COVID where a lot of brands struggled. We just accelerated even further And using Repsly helped us guide ourselves and guide our teams and even create competitiveness and camaraderie between them.”

Spindrift has teammates in California competing against salespeople on the east coast, and they can each get a chance to look and see how they measure and stack against each other. Pete explained the communication of the goals really starts at the account level. After that, they start doing their plans and when the plans are all finalized, then they communicate down from the calendar. So every account's important. It's now how they prioritize the accounts. That becomes the really challenging piece at the execution level is what's a priority, what takes the second step, and they go from there, he said.

How does available POS data (or lack thereof) from retailers impact your ability to evolve, pivot, and optimize your key summer promotions?

Pete explained that it’s critical for their team. His sales teams are a sponge to data and really desire to see it and have tools that allow them to drive conversations with managers when visiting key accounts.

They communicate that either through the syndicated data piece or through the help of Repsly. Pete explained that Spindrift has Repsly set up to where they have tools available in the store as well as tools available in some other places.

“Without that, we wouldn't be able to measure where we're standing at, or where we are versus our goals,” Pete said. “These guys have weekly goals and if they can't see this information as quickly as possible, then they're not going to be able to reach their weekly or monthly goals.”

“The data pulls everything together, gives us that snapshot, and gives us the direction of where we have to be before we get to the end.”

 

Emerging trends in FMCG and their impact on their busy season plans:

  1. Sustainability

  2. Managing labor

  3. Supply shortages

Pete explained that Spindridt has fairly simple packaging – aluminum cans and a bit of cardboard. But their biggest challenge is shrink wrap, and are currently working on some solutions to fight the amount of shrink wrap they’re required to use and hopefully eliminate it completely. 

As for supply shortages, since their product is made with real squeezed fruit, they deal with commodities every single day. “We felt the shortage big time last year when the Northwest had a major heat wave, which they're not used to, up in the 90s Fahrenheit for several days,” Pete said. “And it just ruined the raspberry crop so we saw the price of raspberries just explode on us last year, and it's still impacting it this year.”

With raspberry lime being their number one selling skew, Pete reflected on the panic that set, but as all resilient companies do, they pivoted and adjusted from their execution down to the store level.

For more from this webinar, check out part two of three, where we heard from Hagen Panton, Vice President of Global Sales Capability at Nutrabolt. As VP of Sales Capability at Nutrabolt, his team is responsible for aligning sales and marketing toward a common goal of retail execution. Nutrabolt tracks, ranks, publishes, and most importantly incentivizes the field team making for a fast-paced competitive environment that has stunned their competitors.

If you’d like to watch the webinar in its entirety and hear the insights of Earin Friedbauer, Director of US Retail at The Kraft Heinz Company, Hagon Panton, VP of Global Sales Capability at Nutrabolt, and Pete Paris, VP of Business Intelligence & Analytics at Spindrift Beverage Co, Inc., check out the full webinar here: FMCG Retail Execution Excellence - Best-in-Class Strategies to Attacking Summer Promotions Season with Confidence.


FMCG Execution Excellence Webinar

Ben Weiner

Ben is Repsly's content marketing manager, focusing on digital storytelling through blogs, video and podcast production, and social media. He recently served as Bullhorn’s senior content marketing specialist and is also the founder of InVision Media, a video production company that helped small businesses promote their message. Before joining the workforce, Ben was the captain, president, and social media manager of the men's ice hockey team at the University of Maryland. In his spare time, he enjoys rollerblading with his dog Chewbacca, watching the Boston Bruins, listening to classic rock, and playing competitive games of Settlers of Catan. Follow Ben on Twitter: @bennybyline.

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