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Hello and welcome. You're listening to Marketing Matters on the Wharton podcast
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network. This is our weekly podcast where we analyze the latest in marketing, advertising, customer
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behavior, branding, new product launches, retail specialties. I'm Barbara Khan, the Patty and JH Baker
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Professor of Marketing, and my co-host, Professor Americus Reed, is out of town today, so I'm doing it by myself, which
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is sad. However, I am welcoming a terrific guest, a person we've had before, and who knows quite a lot about
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everything that's happening in marketing. So, it's very exciting to have him here. So, I'd like to say hello
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to Peter Adams, who's the dive. Hello, Peter. >> Hi, Barbara. Thanks so much for having
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me on and I'm happy to be on the show now that it's in a podcast format.
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>> Yeah, it should be fun. Um, we we put it out to our huge Wharton Network and all
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Wharton Network friends. So, we have a very intelligent, interested audience who are very concerned about the latest
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things in marketing. And that's what's great to talk to you about because you
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often talk about marketing trends and you talk about how marketers are adapting to um or adapting to economic
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shifts to AI to changing consumer behavior and all those kind of topics. And of course, you also talk about
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state-of-the-art new marketing campaigns, the holiday campaigns that every marketing reporter seems to have
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to do at this time of year. Uh what's happening in holiday marketing? But before we get to that, I know that you
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recently went to um a conference sponsored I think by or it was called advertising week conference or something
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like that. I forget exactly what it's called. War something like that. >> Uh advertising week in New York. Yes.
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>> Oh, okay. That's a pretty descriptive name. So, advertising week in New York.
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And you get like some pretty high up marketers discussing some of the latest trends. And so I thought maybe we'd
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start there. Um and you can maybe tell us some of the things that you've talked
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about in thinking about what's going on in marketing. >> Yeah. So for advertising week um you
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know it was an interesting time for the conference to happen. Uh obviously there's quite a bit of uncertainty
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affecting uh multiple aspects of the industry right now with uh tariffs with the conference landing right as holidays
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are ramping up and then you know on an individual company basis there's quite a
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bit of consolidation uh advertising week draws a lot of folks from the ad agency
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world and is actually in the same office space as some of the IPG agencies which
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are getting acquired by um Omnicom. So uh a little bit of a harried conference this year. I think people are a little
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jumpy uh but also very well attended which I think speaks to the fact that people are looking for uh kind of
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guidance and how >> and networking for the next job. >> Sure. Definitely. I mean I mean you've
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seen um just in the past few months the number of layoffs uh some of them affecting marketing uh pretty intensely.
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Um, so yeah, definitely uh a lot of interesting off-site happening to complement the main sort of
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agenda that's put on by advertising week itself. Um, and yeah, many of the typical topics you would expect as well.
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Uh, AI, uh, creator and influencer marketing. I moderated a panel that was about uh local marketing strategies but
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ended up actually intersecting with a couple of those topics as well because that is another area uh that is being uh
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disrupted and evolving very quickly right now. >> So there's a couple big themes that
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maybe we can dig into a little bit that I saw in some of your writing. One of them was this interesting idea, you
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know, on the vanishing middle class. So and I've seen a little as some some changes on that too. It seems like the
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rich are getting richer and the poorer are getting poorer and there's nothing
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in the middle and obviously a lot of marketing is being generated to those, you know, 1% rich people. So, you're
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seeing a lot of emphasis on new luxury and things like that. Um, but how does that affect in general? Not everybody's
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going to be able to focus on the 1%. So, how does what's what's the big effect of
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this vanishing middle class? Yeah, I mean it's it's for for years or for
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decades, uh marketing, broad-based marketing has focused on, you know, the middle class folks, uh people who can be
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regular repeat purchasers. You think of categories like packaged goods, stuff like that. Um even stuff like more
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premium food and beverage brands. This has always been a big opportunity, but as you pointed out, there's been um some
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research that was put together by War. Uh also other companies like McKenzie have sort of identified some of these
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patterns where uh it's just an increasingly bifurcated bifurcated market. That's a fun thing to say out
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loud. Um but yeah, there's there's incredibly welloff people uh who have,
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you know, continued to prop up the economy. If you look at the share of how consumer spending hasn't maybe tapered
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off as much as some people expected it to given tariffs and things like that, a decent amount of it is propelled by um
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you know very welloff upper middle class uh and higher uh consumers. But yeah, then there's the other end of the
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spectrum and um it affects marketing strategies because marketers now need to factor
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value and affordability into their messaging more even if they aren't necessarily budget brands. They have to
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acknowledge that things that used to be maybe regular or repeat purchases are are maybe a little bit of an extra ask.
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I mean, you think about categories like groceries. That's where a lot of people
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express the most frustration with prices rising. Um, but it also changes what these researchers call kind of consumer
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milestones. I mean, fewer people are buying a house or having kids. Conventionally, those events happening
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is a big spending trigger for brands. They go, "This is now an opportunity for
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us." But if those people are no longer doing that, and they're no longer doing
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that in greater numbers with young consumers, that poses a real problem. Yeah, the housing market is particularly
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interesting. People have a little bit of golden handcuffs because they a lot of them bought property or starter houses
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when the loans were really cheap and they're locked in. They can't get that
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loan again. And so they're kind of locked in and I think that's stagnating
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the housing market a little too. Then of course on the other end there's these
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people who have just way too much money. And so some of the industry that's developing around that ultra luxury is
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is an interesting kind of marketing situation. And I I'm looking a little bit about that and like branded
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residences and use of of luxury brand names on condominiums like MercedesBenz or Aston Martin condos and this idea
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that's really catering to the super wealthy but that's a very very small
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percentage of the overall population. So not clearly not what's driving most
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marketing. Um, and so I guess you know along the lines of what you're saying is
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if you if the marketers are going after not the ultra wealthy but every you know
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the other the other part and they're focusing on value. What's your take on what that does to
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loyalty? Um, you know, I mean, a lot of what we're talking about when we talk
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about marketing in our marketing classes now is the importance of customer lifetime value and building picking the
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right customers and then, you know, like subscription models and retaining customers and things like that. But if
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you're really focusing on price and value, that's almost the antithesis of
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loyalty in some sense, unless they're making some of this value contingent on
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relationship. >> Yeah. it it the I mean I think the loyalty question is it gets challenged a
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lot. Um I I think depending on the category marketers now have the benefit of having a lot more granular data. Um
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you think about um places like retail and um even restaurant uh QSR brands, you know, they've they've had loyalty as
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part of a playbook for a while, but especially now with some of these factors we're talking about knowing when
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people are buying them, what's pushing them to buy, and being able to leverage
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that um to not only inform their own marketing strategies, but in the case of retail, now monetizing those
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capabilities to sell to other brands that are also struggling with the same problems. retail media networks.
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>> Yeah, exactly. Um, but the loyalty thing, I I read an interesting report
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from this agency called Razerfish the other day and it goes back to that sort of milestone um question we were talking
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about uh just now. Uh there's a really interesting insight there in there. I
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forget the specific share of consumers, but the consumers were basically saying,
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I would rather receive these sort of bespoke promotions that recognize frustrating points in life. like if I
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take a redeye flight, I want early check-in at a hotel. And I would prefer that over getting an upgrade to the
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suite on my honeymoon. So again, you think of honeymoon, that is a traditional consumer milestone, things
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that marketers maybe try to usually add a little more white glove service around, but more people are kind of
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saying, you know, there's so many aspects of day-to-day life that are frustrating. If you can alleviate that
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in any way, that fosters loyalty. Um, and yeah, I know, you know, pricing and value and promotions are seen as sort of
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lowhanging fruit in the loyalty space right now, but I do think there are a lot of loyalty strategies kind of being
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driven on deal right now. Um, yeah. >> Yeah. My problem is whenever you do it
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on deal that just I don't know but you know I don't think of it I think of that
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as a fight to the bottom and typically you want to build it more on what you were saying earlier understanding what
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the customer is buying looking at data and then maybe alleviating pain points as you suggested or maybe finding new
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opportunities to delight whichever way but still it is contingent on understanding the data and that brings
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us to another big issue that you wrote about and I'm sure was discussed a lot
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is how AI is changing both customer behavior and marketing response and to your initial point like jobs and things
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like that. So I mean maybe you can speak to each one of those buckets. First one
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that I'm interested in is I don't know how much they talked about from the
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customer point of view, but not only are marketers using AI to look at the data to build the models that you're talking
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about and to identify some of those opportunities, you know, to customize to a customer, but a customer is now
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looking to AI to tell them what to buy. And was there any conversation on how that's changing customer decision making
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this focus on you know chachi bt to help you make a decision on what to buy >> to the extent that everyone is obsessed
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with the sort of the agentic question um right now you know definitely is a word
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that was top of mind during a lot of the AI talks at advertising week and continues to be as people start to think
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ahead to the holidays in 2026. I mean, you know, Amazon and their earnings boasting about how much their assistant
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is being used. Um, you know, it only went national, I think, within the past, you know, year or so. Uh, but, you know,
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they've got the muscle to kind of push people towards features like that. And
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Walmart, you know, the biggest retailer in the traditional sense, also working with, you know, the chat GBTs of the
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world to develop similar capabilities. Um, and yeah, I mean I think for marketers thinking in the long term, you
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know, it's a potentially exciting channel. Um, but you know, for right now it's, you know, sort of the large
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companies with the capabilities to invest in this stuff will probably have the first mover advantage. Um, and for
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others who don't have the sophistication, um, you know, it it'll potentially sort
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of, uh, be a disadvantage in some ways. you know, Amazon has already eaten up so
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much share of e-commerce and things like that by just being the most technologically sophisticated and
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convenient. You know, do they further grab more share if they've got the best
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shopping assistant or what have you. >> Yeah. I mean, your answer to the question, you you flipped the question
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to what I asked, but in answering your question, you probably answered it also. I was thinking about how it changed the
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um actually the mindset of the consumer. But what you're suggesting is these
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agents really exist for some of the big players. And so clearly they're going to
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be programmed to give the big players more advantage. So uh perhaps what's happening is the more you depend on
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these agents, the more you kind of narrow the playing field because only the big guys are having
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them. I guess that's what you were saying. Um I was just wondering like if it changes how I make decisions. Do
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people just listen to what the agents say and do that and then so there so that who has the agents really are is
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going to frame where purchases are being made? I guess that's what your answer
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was. And do you believe that? I think consumers I mean you know there's still
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areas where AI falls short but purely anecdotally know that um yeah people when they're struggling to think of
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something like a holiday gift idea will prompt chap GBT like this person likes X
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and Y what's a sort of you know a potentially surprising or thoughtful gift I could get them that that that's
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how people plan uh you know everything from vacations now and yeah holidays for sure. Um I'm not sure you know like the
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the adoption of these uh individual chatouts kind of at the consumer level is quite high and um continues to be
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very engaged and you know just speaking from personal experience right now every
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year my family does a secret Santa uh drawing through a platform that also doubles as serving gift recommendations.
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And I noticed for the first time this year it has an AI thing. So if you're drawing up a wish list for your secret
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Santa, it'll you can plug some prompts in and it'll recommend them to you. So
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um it's definitely informing Yeah. consumer shopping behavior. >> Yeah. Yeah. And so therefore, the people
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who control those agents and control those platforms are obviously doing it in their own best interest. And so
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you're going to see the big get bigger in that kind of thing because the smaller ones can't afford it. Um, so the
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other thing that people are talking about with AI and it sounds like, you know, was a topic there was how much
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it's replacing jobs or how much at these advertising um, agencies or whatever
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these marketing situations, a lot of the work that used to be done by people is now being done by AI. Was that a concern
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or >> I I mean I think that the idea that AI is wholesale replacing roles at agencies
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is um you know maybe a little overstated sometimes. Uh there's no doubt that you
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know agencies are investing very heavily in this but I read an interesting article the other day that was talking
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about this AI washing. Um obviously the economy is not in a very good spot right
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now. ad agencies in particular, the publicly traded holding companies have not been a in a good spot for a long
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time. I mean, they're financially mostly financially pretty distressed companies
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that are now looking to break apart and sell stuff off. Um, you know, I think if
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they can sell their layoff story as, you know, AI is replacing jobs, it looks better for them um in public. But the
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the thing that's more interesting for me with the agencies is how it's starting
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to switch up how they approach their services models. Um, so WPP, the largest ad agency, um, last month introduced
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this new offering where basically, uh, the their clients don't even need to hire an agency anymore. They can
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basically just make use of WPP's AI technology for their campaigns. So, um, they've gotten a lot of questions. Does
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this cannibalize agency work? You're basically saying, you don't need to hire
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people anymore. You can just borrow our tech. Um, and it'll be interesting to
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see if sort of their competitors also adopt this. Um, cuz it's the type of thing that, yeah, definitely disrupts
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sort of the traditional agency model, but might also be kind of necessary as this is what clients are sort of
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demanding and they value the ability to have technology partners who can help them execute their marketing.
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>> Yeah. Well, that'll be interesting. Well, given that we have you now and it
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is Christmas, I see that you have written on a number of these new holiday stories and what's happening. So, we
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might as well dig in and see if there's anything interesting. Let me This one
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isn't a holiday story, but I'm since you wrote about it, let me just ask. Pepsi
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has been changing all their logos. I mean, every year there's a new logo change for them. Last year was Mountain
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Dew. This year they overdid their corporate branding. Did you have a takeaway on like how important that is
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or like you know I know they think it's important they spend a lot of a lot of
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time on it but did did what was your reaction to the importance of overhauling this and
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what you know I don't know what what did you take of that when you wrote that
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article? >> Yeah I mean they're a business that's under quite a lot of pressure right now.
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um they have an activist uh investor campaign that they're sort of contending
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with that's pushing them to shed some lower performing aspects of the business. And you know it's right there
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in the name PepsiCo. Pepsi for a long time was you know kind of the big focus. They're a food and beverage company but
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Pepsi is the flagship and at least when it comes to traditional full sugar Pepsi
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is a brand that has been in pretty serious decline in recent years. has dropped in just a few years from being
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the number two soda in the US to number four. Um, and the PepsiCo corporate branding for a long time sort of
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mirrored the Pepsi branding. It was similar color schemes and sort of visual motifs, but this new overhaul
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um moves Azure. It is the most dramatic change away from that yet. So, um, what they're trying to do is highlight we're
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not just Pepsi. We own 500 brands and we own cool new growing brands. I mean, they recently acquired Ciiete, uh, the
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Mexican food company. Uh, they bought Poppy, which is obviously their big response to this prebiotic cola
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disruption. Um, so this overhaul is sort of, yeah, positioning them as more than
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just Pepsi and being a kind of well-rounded food and beverage business. Uh, and yeah, the the visual identity
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looks nothing like what they've done before. >> Nothing. Yeah, I'm just looking at it
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now. I mean, I know we're not showing it, but it is radically different from
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the past where it really did focus on Pepsi and and what that meant. And now it's, you know, the red and blue is
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gone. It's more like uh natural colors, organic kind of feel, definitely to food
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and well, we'll see how that happens. And now Todd Kaplan used to be at Pepsi,
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but then he moved to Craft, I think. >> And I think you wrote an article about
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that, too. Did you write something about Craft? I thought I saw something on that.
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>> Yeah, he he had a big presence at advertising week. Um, and was >> he's a cool guy. We had him on the
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podcast and like I don't know why he left Pepsi. I don't know what but he had
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been at Pepsi for a really long time and I I guess he left a few years ago for the opportunity at Craft. So yeah, what
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was your take from what he's been doing? Uh well so his talk at advertising week
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touched on a thing that I think is affecting a lot of legacy marketers right now is um he has always been a big
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champion or I shouldn't say always but in recent years has been a very big champion of this idea of um you know
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thinking past traditional media strategies toward earned media. Um you know how do you get your brands being
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talked about in culture in ways that extend beyond paid advertising. And so basically in his first you know year
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plus at craft he has been um just sort of peppering uh the industry with like these little and large activations that
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are very kind of culturally oriented. Um Hines Mustard did a collaboration with Mustard the DJ behind the Kendrick Lamar
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songs. Um, and so he spoke at advertising week just sort of about how to identify those moments and kind of
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keep pace with the sort of churn of mostly social mediadriven content. You know, these memes emerge overnight and
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it presents brands a small window of opportunity to kind of go viral and attach themselves to those. Um, but you
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know, how do you identify them? How do you make the most of them and make sure they're the right fit for your brand?
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Was a lot of what he was talking about. And this is a change we see taking hold all across the board of this kind of
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pivot away from traditional kind of paid national advertising to this very socially uh organic contentoriented
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approach. Um and it's led to some interesting results for sure. I mean Craft Hinds has um you know managed to
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keep its brands a little more on the pulse of culture. Uh but you know the larger business obviously um you know is
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struggling with what a lot of other kind of large packaged foods companies are right now. Yeah, that's an interesting
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thing. Um because it it's a different tool set than than people have. And it
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sounds like he's somebody who has the traditional one and is in the new world
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because now you're looking for these cultural moments. You got to do them fast because they they change. So you
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don't have a lot of time to test everything. And if you don't do it through the lens of your brand, you can
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get into trouble. I mean the famous one a couple years ago was Bud Light and Target and all of them. they responded
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to something that would seemed perhaps in the on the drawing board to be a no-brainer and then they release it and
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they get this really negative response and see a huge effect on sales like it's
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not small effects on this and yet if you're doing that kind of marketing where you're looking for the cultural
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moment or the opportunity I could imagine it's it's tough to know at really quickly whether or not it's
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the right move for your brand to discuss it. Uh, so you I guess you have to have
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some kind of blueprint as to what is in the brand's DNA and what isn't and
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things like that. Did he talk about something along those lines like how to know it and how to know it fast?
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>> Yeah, I mean I think I I think you've kind of you know I don't know how much
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you know a specific criteria is employed but I think yeah very much understanding
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the sort of brand values and where they come from. Does this make sense with our
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narrative? Um, and you know, this is a case where, you know, we just talked a little bit about how agencies are being
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disrupted, but this is a case where kind of like partners can help. Um, there was
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a separate talk I went to that was with PepsiCo and their CMO was saying or their beverages CMO was saying, um, you
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know, we've got some of the most experienced marketers, the most talented marketers, but we don't get the
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algorithms like our agency does. So they've developed this new partnership model where they've put their social
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agency much closer to their internal teams to kind of keep a pulse on these things that we're talking about, making
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sure they're aligned with the brand values and things like that, but also that they can be reactive in the way
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that we're talking about. So it's definitely causing a lot of these traditional large marketing
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organizations to kind of switch up how they think about everything from agencies to CMO roles and things like
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that as well. You know, you think about like these companies that are great and then all of a sudden they make a misstep
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like a Dolingo or something like that was like that everybody thought they were terrific and then I forgot what it
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was but they made some misstep. And so I would imagine part of what you're doing
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with this is not only learning to figure out which ones you respond to and which
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ones you don't and then when you do, how you make sure it's through the brand's
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lens, but you got to also figure what do you do when you made a mistake? How fast
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do you get out of it? you know, because it is a very fast window. So, if you make the mistake quickly and maybe own
00:24:04
it quickly, it might go you might not have to deal with it for too long. Yeah. I mean, it's like anything else. I
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I think the decision-m needs to be um fast, but unfortunately, you know, we were just talking about the
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cultural relevance brands can find in responding quickly to social stuff. I mean, social stuff can also quickly bury
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brands. I mean, uh, good example of this recently was Cracker Barrel, uh, >> made a fairly innocuous update to their
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logo. There's been a good deal of reporting, including in the Wall Street Journal about how basically, you know,
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even bots sort of seized on this as a contentious topic, and they're still trying to kind of claw their way out of
00:24:47
something that I I've never really understood why that was such a flash point. I mean, you can say what you want
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about the logo, but I didn't think it should be as controversial as it ended
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up being. So, um, yeah, I think staying really reactive and being able to pivot quickly is super important. Not waiting
00:25:02
weeks on it, not going through, you know, multiple different agencies and crisis PR firms, you know, you got to
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kind of maybe go with your gut a little bit more on some of this stuff. Um, you know, the Duolinga case is one of these
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things where I think the leaderships at the company just sort of misread the rumor and AI. Um, you know, they started
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talking so much about AI and how great AI is. And um the thing people loved about their marketing was it's you know
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it was very focused on their mascot but it was very human in a way. It was very humorous. It was their mascot reacting
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to things in culture. And then for the the company leadership to say AI is all that matters and and things like that. I
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think you know there's a it's a really testy sub subject still. Um >> and uh yeah was obviously very
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alienating to some of their user base. >> Yeah. I mean it's interesting how this
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but anyway let's end. And I know we don't have that much time left, but it
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is Christmas. So, let's go to the biggest retailer and the story you wrote on Walmart and the Grinch. Uh, what was
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your take on all of that? >> Yes. So, Walmart for the past couple years um has really embraced uh this
00:26:05
very pop culture forward messaging strategy. I mean, last year for the holidays, they ran an ad that featured,
00:26:11
you know, Gilmore Girls and all these kind of famous uh sort of seasonal touchstones. And this year they're kind
00:26:17
of returning to a similar playbook, but focusing on one kind of cultural property, which is the Grinch. And
00:26:24
they've basically built this whole kind of world where they're tying um kind of
00:26:29
their product assortment and services into the world of the Dr. Seuss uh Dr. Dr. Seuss is how the Grinch Stole
00:26:36
Christmas. And um they've recently updated it. Walton Gogggins, who previously appeared in their ads that
00:26:41
they started running this summer, is now playing the Grinch. So, um, you know, I
00:26:46
think in times like this, we we we were having the conversation earlier about like kind of value and promotions, what
00:26:51
a weird holiday period it is, um, and and why that, you know, could potentially lead more people to kind of
00:26:57
focus on on messages of value. But, you know, Walmart is historically known for value, but they're leaning into a very
00:27:03
kind of storytelling first approach, which I think might actually end up working pretty well for them. I think
00:27:08
people are looking for a sense of escapism uh and nostalgia. Um and it gives them a chance to also, you know,
00:27:15
they they are highlighting their product assortment as well. But I think it's a
00:27:18
pretty savvy campaign. >> It's so funny because it's like that sounds so much like traditional
00:27:24
marketing, you know, going to Dr. Seuss and the Grinch and Christmas and nostalgia. I mean, those are things we
00:27:30
were teaching 25 years ago. So you start from culturally forward and AI and social media and you end up with Walmart
00:27:38
and the Grinch. Kind of interesting what happens in marketing. Anyway, we are out
00:27:43
of time. So Peter, thank you so much for joining us today. And where can listeners go to read up with your
00:27:47
stories and keeping up with the times? >> Sure. Uh you can always check out uh
00:27:52
marketingdive.com. Uh we also have a daily newsletter and two weekly newsletters focused on
00:27:58
agencies and mobile marketing. Uh, and I post about my stuff on LinkedIn as well.
00:28:03
So, uh, give me a look there. >> Thanks a lot. Thank you. That's all we
00:28:08
have time for today. I'd like to thank our producers, Dion Simkins and Marissa
00:28:12
Remma. And thank you all for listening. We'll be back next week. Till then, this
00:28:16
has been Marketing Matters on the Wharton Podcast Network. I'm Barbara Khan here without America's Reed.