Bant Breen:
Brigette is the Global Head of snack futures at Mondelez. SnackFutures is the arm that drives innovation for the company and is actually pushing the aggressive global growth for the business around the world. Tell me a little bit more about snack futures and what you’re working on right now.
Brigette Wolf:
It’s a small team. We self-named ourselves as SnackFutures and looked to answer where is the company going and where are consumers’ needs going even when they don’t know it. Where does the world of CPG snacks intersect now with almost every industry, and where are those opportunities. I often joke if I could take a wand and Snapplify that occasion and we’ll do that. We’re seeing that in your areas of stress and sleep in how you think and focus, we clearly have a lockdown on indulgence and connection with some of our brands. In other places of well-being, there’s a very long runway for us to go. We’re doing things like dirt kitchen snacks, which is a plant-based veggie-forward snack, very different both in its name and design to what we have another brand called Kapow, which takes its heritage from Mondelez, it takes the cacao fruit that normally is wasted as we make chocolate, and we’re one of the largest manufacturers of chocolate. There was this huge opportunity to upcycle the fruit and go back to that, and we’re taking the fruit component and making cacao fruit bites. Different ways of looking at our supply chain. We have a brand in France where we talked about the planet first. At SnackFutures, we have a mantra that is good for people and deliciously fun, because it’s snacks after all. Can we put that lens on the responsibility in how we do this? For no Kool-Aid, it’s a carbon compensating brand locally sourced and produced, very much designed for the millennial who is the Eco-conscious consumer. We are all worried about the planet, but to participate in it and to be hyperactive and composting in your backyard and doing all these other things, it’s hard.
Bant Breen:
In terms of innovation, innovation has been harder to do in a remote work context. What are your thoughts about that?
Brigette Wolf:
I think it’s a chance for us to go back to the people. We often talk about whether it’s on a big brand or a new one. Innovation is about solving problems, whether it’s a business problem and a new process or a consumer problem. Lots of times we’ve gotten removed from what we call consumers and they’re almost another alien group that we watch behind glass doors, or we listened to. There are people who are eating and are struggling or thriving, surviving, depending on where you are in this past year. It’s an opportunity to step back, analyze what is going around, and where are the core needs? Where are those behaviors shifts and what are they like? Somebody said, “Finally, somebody’s done this.” I think it’s a different style of listening. It’s trying to get as empathetic as you can with the person you’re trying to serve. By empathy, it’s not just the need on that occasion, it’s what does their apartment look like? What are they doing? Then, every once in a while, stepping back being like, “Would you eat like this? Who eats like this?” Then you got to rewind and start over again. I think even having a mindset and the startup community is brilliant at this because you get knocked back all the time and innovation is to hold things lightly. To reiterate, we talk a lot about tests and learning, but it’s about what have you learned, what can we tweak? What can we now activate and change? Those cycles, I think in a world of innovation, have been faster. Then we’ve just found some novel ways of engaging consumers to make sure that we’re we are checking in with them and listening.
Bant Breen:
Brigette, thank you so much for being on UNCAGED today and we look forward to having you back.
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