Product content - what it is, why you need it

Episode Transcript

SPEAKERS

Randy Mercer, Mark Young

Mark Young  00:19

Welcome, everybody to this edition of CPG Insiders. I'm your host, Mark Young. Justin is off taking care of some family business today folks, you're just going to have to deal with me. But I've got a great guest today. And it's Randy Mercer, Randy is Chief Product Officer at 1WorldSync. Now, we're going to talk about a lot of things today. And we're gonna get around to 1WorldSync also. Because 1WorldSync, as some of you know, that has been dealing with Pharmavision. If you're dealing with Kroger and other retailers, you have to be in the 1WorldSync universe, you have to be a part of it. So we're gonna talk about that. But Randy, if you would, let's start off on Welcome to the show. And let's start off giving us a little background of who you are, so people have you know, have a little bit of a feel for who Randy Mercer is.

Randy Mercer  01:06

 Sure, yeah. So thanks, Mark. Happy to happy to join today. So, as Mark mentioned, I'm the Chief Product Officer here at 1WorldSync. So my job is to make sure as you might imagine that our products do what they need to do to service our customers, which which range range from brands or product manufacturers on one side, to retailers on the other. I've been with this organization, as an employee for about 10 years, but I worked with it for about 10 years prior to that as a technology provider. So the point of that is I've been I've been around this space for a long time. So I've seen I've seen it mature and evolve over time in a way that helps me, you know, do my job in terms of just continuing to evolve our portfolio. So that's a little bit about me.

Mark Young  01:55

And when we talk about 1WorldSync, let's get to that for a minute. 1WorldSync is really the bridge, the communication bridge between a lot of the big retailers and the manufacturer, right?

Randy Mercer  02:09

That's exactly right. We as a platform sit between those two populations of folks in, in, in the realm of of commerce, but I would just say Mark, we go way beyond that, right? So are we this bridge of of content? We are. But when you think of getting content from a brand, to a retailer, there's a lot that goes into it ranging from the creation of the content, the management, moving it understanding that's performing for you in the market. And so we provide those kinds of capabilities as well.

Mark Young  02:39

So could we can we expand on that a little bit? Let's let's start with. So first off, I'm, I'm a vendor, I'm new, I'm going to sell Kroger, I want to sell Target a number of other retailers. If I'm dealing with Kroger, I need a 1World account. Right? I have to have a 1WorldSync account. So so let's start there. Why do I need that? And what is it going to do for me?

Randy Mercer  03:06

Yeah, if you look at if you look at any retailer, and the strategy by which they come about the content that they need to, to operate the supply chain, meaning order warehouse, ship, planogram for products, get it on the shelf, and then the ECOM experience as well. The more that that that any retailer can do that in a very consistent fashion for his entire community of vendors, the better everyone's life is going to be, right? So when you look at Kroger, a decision they made many years ago was to standardize on on 1WorldSync as a mechanism for that acquisition of content from their supplier base. So that's why you work with us to get get to the Kroger ecosystem.

Mark Young  03:55

Now, what are now so I go to one world saying I upload pictures of my product, I upload content about my product, I tell my product story in there where the retailer can now capture that content, be able to understand what I do, what other tools are available in that system. Now that I'm in the system, what are the tools are available?

Randy Mercer  04:16

Yeah, it's great question. So you know, there was a time in history and go back, you know, 510 years, and our value proposition as a platform was really centered around just getting the content from the brand to the retailer, right? And there's a lot of value in that. And that's nothing wrong with that. But when you look at the workflow that goes into that the activities that go into, you know, to share content, I have to have it first right which means it's got to get created somewhere and just think of something as simple as images or pictures of your product. And there's obviously lots of other types of content as well. SEO marketing copy just as as another example. So when you think of what are the other things that our platform accounts for in terms of just moving content from plat point A to point B, that the origination of content and it just a perfect example of that is, if you don't have pictures, we have a studio here in Chicago that you can ship all your products to, and we'll take pictures for you and land them. Yeah, we'll land them right and the platform that you're going to need to distribute it, we can do the same thing for you know, things like marketing copy below the fold content, or you know, all types of of imagery. But just on the you know, the to take that even further. For organizations that say, you know, what, I just do not have the manpower just to satisfy this, this need of getting this content into this platform to deliver it to Kroger and hundreds of other retailers. We literally have people that will do that for you. So just give us your content, ship us your product, give us your content, we'll do all that work for you. Just as an example.

Mark Young  05:51

Who are the big retailers that use 1WorldSync?

Randy Mercer  05:57

It's a long list, start naming the ones that you know, and then probably...

Mark Young  06:00

Just give me the biggest ones, what's the biggest?

Randy Mercer  06:03

Yeah, so Walmart, Amazon, Google shop, shopping, Staples.

Mark Young  06:10

Target.

Randy Mercer  06:11

Target, yeah. Keep going down the list Kroger, big customers as well

Mark Young  06:16

CVS Walgreens Rite Aid, are they in there?

Randy Mercer  06:20

Walgreens, Walgreens is CVS and Rite Aid are not today.

Mark Young  06:24

Okay. So. So folks, when you when you're thinking about having an account with 1WorldSync, and let's say you're starting at Kroger target of the cases, this is this has much bigger implications than just that first account that you're focusing on, because there's going to be lots of other accounts that are going to access that very same data. And when the buyer, well, let's say the buyer at Kroger needs to look at your product, they're going to go to one world sync to look at your product, they're not going to go to your website. I mean, you might look at your website, but they're really going to go to 1WorldSync to look at the quality of the photography and the quality of the content and what information do they have? And are they all set for us to be able to do paid search on our website are they did they have the content to go onto our website. So I mean, this is a lot that's happening within that platform, and the retailers are going to require that kind of stuff. So I encourage everybody, if you don't have an account that you need one, let's let's branch off a little bit and talk about some of the downfall that brands are having now on building trust. So, and here's something that I tell people, Randy and tell me if you agree with it or not, we pretty much tell people that every product, and I say every there's always an exception. But nearly every product in the CPG space today is a commodity, that there is some other product that does what your product does, you may have a patent, you may have an a secret ingredient. But there's another product out there that does something similar to what you do. So in that regard, we kind of tell people, when you walk in the door, everything's a commodity. And our job as an ad agency, your job from one source or from 1World, the vendors job is to decommoditize that product. How do you take it out of the commodity category, and move it into a standalone freezone kind of product where where the consumers view it is not a company, not a commodity. And let me give you a quick example, folks. If you go, let's say you decide you're going to buy a new laptop computer. If you go to Best Buy to look at computers. If you're looking at a PC, you will look at six or eight different brands of PC computers. And most of those brands don't mean a lot to you and you'll look to see do they have an Intel processor? How much memory does it have a big as the screen, so on and so forth. But if you decide that you're a Mac user, you have no other brand you can look at. Because Mac even though the laptop is the laptop is the laptop, they have decommoditized their platform by making it significantly different or, more importantly, significantly different in the eyes of the consumer who wants to buy a new laptop? Is that a fair analysis of that Randy?

Randy Mercer  09:36

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Mark Young  09:39

So what would you say to people who when we're talking about losing trust and commoditization today?

Randy Mercer  09:47

Yeah, you know, there's there's a few things that go into that arc. And the first thing is when you think of, of any consumer shopping online, they're going to search for, you know, use use their charts or search terms. To look for what they're they're trying to purchase. And then what we know is that consumers don't look very far down the search results.

Mark Young  10:08

Right.

Randy Mercer  10:08

They start with the first one. And, you know, hopefully it's compelling and they drill down on it. And if and if it is compelling in an educational experience, and they often don't go very far. So the net of that is, if you're a brand, the degree to which you have search engine optimized your copy and your feature valuable points, or why buys all of that, so that your search results are as good as possible. I mean, that's the starting point for it. Right?

Mark Young  10:35

Yeah, because when most people when they go to a search engine, folks, they're not typing in Preparation H. They're typing in hemorrhoid treatments, Hemorrhoid ointment, Hemorrhoid Cream, how do I Treat Hemorrhoids at Home? This they're typing in the indication, or the deliverable that they're after.

Randy Mercer  10:55

Yep, you got it. And in any event to take that a little bit further, the search terms that people are using to find a certain product, it often varies seasonally, what holidays right around the corner. So what are the types of things that are top of mind that are bringing keywords to their mind might change a little bit from one day to the next for any given category of product. So there's all kinds of things that go into that, to make sure that you're the first thing on the list, or at least the first one or two. So if they do, if you do land there, and they look at you, the next thing is the content needs to be as compelling, as educational as it possibly can be to really inform the consumer help them make that buying decision quickly. And the more content that you can provide in that regard, the better. So the last thing that I would say is when you when you now couple that with brand trust, or just trust in the product that they're looking at, on the screen, and Mark, you mentioned, you know, they don't type in often the brand name or the or the product name is not keywords, right? So whatever trust you, you want to label that, as one of the things that goes into that. And we know that through through research that we do of talking to consumers and understanding their buying habits and search habits, and all of that kind of thing is that often before they press the Add to Cart button, and depending on the type of product that you know that behavior might vary, but they often might go out and look at that product somewhere else. You see, is there anything else I can learn about this, and sometimes they go to the corporate website, as you mentioned, sometimes they go to another ecommerce site, or whatever that is. And what happens is if they see different information, often, the extent to which it's different can result in a lack of trust, like, I'm not sure I'm seeing the right stuff, because it looks different on this other website. And maybe there's even conflicting information. So what we tell our brands is, the more you can get on every digital property on the planet from one place with the exact same set of content, the better your results are going to be from a consistency perspective. And that includes your corporate website, right? So we provide tools within our platform to not only get out to the retail community in on those digital properties, but to deliver that content in a very fluid way back to your corporate website. So that you're exposing the same thing that everybody else is going to see that you deliver that content from right? So get get found, have really good content and then making consistent across every every place you can.

Mark Young  13:18

And let me tell you what happens here, folks. Two things can happen. One, either somebody can go to a search engine and type in how to treat toenail fungus. And then they land on your product. And after they land on your product, they might land on your website. Now this is the common behavior. They do a couple of things. One, they go to Amazon and they look up reviews. How many reviews does this product have on it? How many stars does it get? Amazon is now the number one review site in the country. And it doesn't mean they're even buying it at Amazon, it just means they're going to Amazon to see how big the reviews are. The second thing they do is they go and they see your product. And they read your website and said okay, this product looks like it might work. Now I type the name of your product into Google. And I may even type in secondary words like reviews, complaints, problems, because I want to see if anybody's out there bad mouthing you talking bad about it. And that's where we're talking about here. When I go and I look. So you show me an ad whether that ad is in paid search or a Facebook ad, you bring me to your website, you've convinced me that this product may be something I need. Now I go to Amazon and look at reviews. Let's assume you had 300 positive reviews or four stars. Okay, you just crossed that hurdle. Now I'm going to go back to Google I'm gonna say product X reviews or product X complaints. Now you need to be curating that event also. And I think this part of what Randy's saying is, you have this online reputation going on whether you know it or not. And you can curate it or you can let it grow organically. But if you are not curating it, and if you are not managing it, it is hurting you far more than you know, and you have no idea how bad it's hurting you because you're not seeing it. Because we don't talk to the people who didn't buy from us. So therefore, we don't know why they didn't buy, we might talk to people who did buy from us. But we're not getting to talk to the people who didn't buy from us. And and this could be down to nothing more than I find a thread someplace on a chat board of a half a dozen people saying that they use the product and it made their hair fall out or whatever the case is, it could be the dumbest things that you know your product couldn't do in a million years. But somebody will go out there and write a bad item [sic] about it. The other thing that we see Randy is, and we see this a lot. So brand, let's say has a Facebook campaign going. And then you find out there's 500 People that have commented, and no one's no one's managing or curating those comments. And you will find people, I assure you, folks, there are people all over the world and all over America, who believe they are experts in everything. And who believe they know more than anyone else, and they have way too much time on their hands. So you will you will post a product in there and you have a great product, you post a product that works fantastic. And somebody will type a review in there. This is just snake oil don't fall for it. They have no reason for doing it other than they're just mean spirited people that have too much time on their hands. You need to respond to that you need to deal with that. Because when it goes unaddressed, and it goes unanswered in the mind of the reader. Well, they probably true because the company's not disputing it. The company's not managing it. I mean is are you seeing that same kind of stuff Randy?

Randy Mercer  17:19

Yeah, it's interesting that you bring up the topic of reviews and ratings q&a associated with that. Because when you know, when we look at our platform, clearly the content that we're trying to deliver to the marketplace, is is central to what our platform is. But we don't forget about those types of content that are that are not necessarily under the control of the brand, meaning the brand isn't originating reviews, and so forth, somebody else's the consumer the users are. So as a brand, you need to have visibility to those number one, you need to know if somebody's saying your stuff is snake oil. So you can respond to that. We have tools that help you do that. To the extent that reviews to some extent, need moderated in that way. Ultimately, you may want to leverage those reviews in multiple places, right, maybe more than just where they originated, which may can be even your corporate web website. So the degree to which we try to provide solutions to get that kind of content out to the PDT the product detail page as well, is part of that. So yeah, huge table stakes relative to selling your product online, is being attentive to those reviews today.

Mark Young  18:25

 Now, does 1WorldSync offer tools to be able to manage and observe and curate all of those all that communication that's happening?

18:34

We do. Yeah, so we have in addition to just moving content around, we have an E storefront application that you know, through which you can, you know, literally set up your entire e storefront, you can manage the procurement aspects of it all the way down to the distribution aspects of it. And it does account for all of that type of content on the product detail page to include the reviews capabilities and the ability to type in reviews, moderate those respond to q&a, those kinds of things. Yep, we do have that.

Mark Young  19:03

So I can respond to all of them in one platform.

Randy Mercer  19:06

You got it? Yep.

Mark Young  19:07

We don't have to jump from Yahoo to Google to, you know, Yelp or whatever the case is. I can see all of these comments all of these things at the same time. And I can respond to them at one time.

Randy Mercer  19:19

Yep. Yeah. And it's a powerful set of intelligence that a brand can look at to understand a lot of things about what's happening in the marketplace about his products.

Mark Young  19:28

 Do you also have a tool in 1World, and I'm asked this because I don't know the answer. Do you also have a tool that will comb the internet and look for conversations or look for information about my brand? It's on the internet that I don't know exists?

Randy Mercer  19:44

You know, we are we are not scraping that content off of the web pervasively. Right? What we have visibility to is the content that user generated content that originates from within our platform, is what we're looking at. What we should celebrate?

Mark Young  20:01

Now folks, I will tell you that at our agency, a Jekyll and Hyde, we do have tools that will do that. So we can actually, you'd be amazed what comes up to when we go out there and type in a brand name and look for any place where there's conversations about it. I'll tell you what else comes up with this, and this is fascinating. Sometimes we'll go out and look for conversations on a brand. And we find find entire communities using the product that are communities we didn't know exist or using the product for some use that we didn't know existed. So I'll give you an example. We had a one of our haircare lines made a a really strong hairspray. When we went out and started looking at who is using it, we found this entire underground group of people who go to raves and people who go to all these different parties. And they're all talking about this brand. Because this brand, the hairspray is so strong. And these people are saying yeah, this is the product you have to buy, if you want a mohawk if you want your hair to be spiked up if you want all this stuff. So this entire community is out there using the product that we didn't even know existed. So does these tools, tools, like you have tools like we have these do open you up to things. And they also open you up to find out opportunities about your product that you may not even know existed, until you start seeing how the public uses your product. On the other hand, sometimes you'll find people that are misusing the product. We had a um, I'll give you an example, we'll have another haircare product, and it was difficult to use, and people were not reading the instructions and misusing the product. And then they were going all over the internet to blame the product for their bad outcomes. When in reality, they just weren't applying the product properly. And that was costing the company massive amounts of sales, the company didn't even realize how bad they were being hurt. Until we were able to identify this and say, folks, look at your reviews here. People are saying that your product is ruining their hair because they're not following the instructions. So what did we learn? We learned that we need to we needed to beef up the instructions, we needed to really build up the content around how to use the product, we needed to really encourage people don't use the product until you watch this video to the point of putting a QR code on the packaging that says scan here and watch how to video before opening box. And what we're able to do we were able to bring the complaints down. Because now people reporting, Yes, I watched the video and I did what the video said and yes, my hair came out exactly like I wanted it to come out. And in this particular case, it was hair coloring. So you can imagine how sideways that can get if people don't follow it right. So in your opinion, how does how does. How important is content? How much? How does content make or break the brand? And I'm gonna say let's put this in the two silos. How important is the content to the retailers? How important is the content to the consumers? Let's start with the retailers. How important is it that we get content to the retailers? Because, hey, I, I sent I filled out their paperwork, I sent them a package. What else do they need? Why do they need anything else from me other than I sent him a box a product?

Randy Mercer  23:48

Yeah, no, it's a great question Mark. And it's the it's surprising, the range of perceptions that we have across our brand community relative to that exact question, you know, and if you look at it, you know, our customers on the brand side range from Mom and Pop manufacturers with one or two products, you know, not a lot of sales volume all the way up to the biggest of the biggest CPG guys. And if that size, you know the big guys have. They understand perfectly well the value of content, getting it to the retail representing their brand accurately in the marketplace, all the things that you just talked about, about what people are saying in the market, the sentiment or sentiment analysis that can even tell you more about that. So the big guys get that. When you get down into the little guys. Often they do think, you know, don't check me my product. I did an item set up form. Do you really need more than that? And we see it reflected in the use of our platform where they're not providing thorough copy. They're not providing imagery, and those kinds of things. And so we do a tons of education with our brand webinar after webinar and webinar, lots of outreach just within the platform itself. Trying to help the brand understand, you know, you don't have images in here. And here's the impact, here's what you're missing in the marketplace because you don't have the images. And if you don't have a way to get them, you know, we have the services where we can help you create them, right. So it's hugely important. A lot of brands don't quite understand it, for whatever reason, I'm sure there's somebody at that, that brand that gets it. But it's not the guy that's interacting with the retailer. So it's hugely important damages your brand, you're not selling as much as you possibly could be. So unless you're in the unique position where you're already selling as much as you possibly can produce, those people aren't in that position, then, you know, there's things that you shouldn't be doing with your content to sell more.

Mark Young  25:40

So let's, let's take a pharmacy for a minute, let's look at a Walmart or Kroger or Target, where we have mass retail and we have a pharmacy. And let's say your product falls into the HBC. It's in the it's in the retail category, you're going to want to provide through 1WorldSync you're going to want to provide great photo photography and great descriptions for the consumer. But through the 1World system, the head of pharmacy could go look at that product. Or even our medical director may want to go look at that product. And they're gonna want a different depth of information and content about this product. Right?

Randy Mercer  26:24

Absolutely. And as a great example, Mark, and I'll use I'll use an example that will resonate with with what you just described there. But but hopefully won't offend anybody. And it's one of our customers, a retailer out of western Canada, London Drugs, right, so they're a pharmacy, and they sell a very wide range of products. And we're the primary mechanism by which they get all of the content ranging from ECOM to supply chain, we do some imagery for them, we do a lot for them relative to their ECOM experience. And then their supply chain side site as well. So when you look at, you know, the if you're a brand, the stakeholders, or the consumers of your content, go way beyond just the retailer, and the consumer. And you know, there's a distributor layer in there that needs to have visibility to that, but you have your own internal customers or consumers of that content, your sales guys that need to hold sales conversations with prospective buyers. You got marketing people, you've got, you know, regulatory people potentially. And if you're, if you're a retailer, using the example you gave is a perfect example of where you need to provide visibility of this content. So to the extent that we provide a couple of different mechanisms where you can provide a very tailored experience for those internal stakeholders that need visibility of this content, and they're looking at the exact same content that is going to end up in line or end up in their procurement system, or their PIM system or their ERP. It's all the same information, right? So it's all about that consistency, and given visibility to anybody that needs it, not just the not just the consumer.

Mark Young  28:03

So if I was setting up my 1WorldSync system, I would obviously load in my consumer content. Is there a separate area where I would load in information for medical experts, for pharmacies, for pharmacists, for doctors, so is there a separate area where I would say, okay, here's the pharmacology, here's, here's the real science behind what I'm doing. Because I know of I give an example, folks, when we look at these big retailers, all the big drug drug firms, they have a medical director, they have a pharmacy director, and then they have buyers. So the buyer is looking at your product and saying, okay, yeah, so it's a topical anti itch cream, that seems pretty good. I could use a topical itch cream to get some good advertising. Maybe I'll bring it in, but the head of pharmacy might go and look at that and say, well, I want to see if there's any contradictions with this product? And does it? Does it interfere with other products that we might be selling on the pharmaceutical side, that my pharmacist needs to tell people hey, wait a minute, there's an interaction here. And the medical director, he might be looking at it, say, well, I'm running the I run the minute clinics in this in this group. And is this something that my nurse practitioners need need to have access to? So how would How would I, how would I disseminate that? And how would I break it down to get it to the right constituents?

29:29

Yeah. Another great question. So on that on that retailer, or that recipient content recipient side, we've got capabilities to operate workflows. And what that means is when when a new item maybe is published to me from a from a brand, we recognize that and we can set up workflows that let all those different constituents know. Hey, we got a new product in and we need you to go in and take a look at it and make some decisions about it and maybe ultimately say, yep, we want to we want to carry that or we're going to do XYZ with it in terms of how we merchandise, merchandise that. So that workflow that can be tailored to those different constituents, all the way down to what they see when they look at their workflow and making, you know, to make that decision about do we want to carry it, or whatever that decision is, it can be very tailored to what they care about, right? Is it the nutritionals? Is it the logistic information? Is it the pictures, you know, whatever that is, everybody might have a different role in that process. So we just get very specific about what we surface to those folks making their job to ultimately get that item fully in process, so that they can start selling it, make that as easy as possible. And then if you look at it from the brands perspective, similarly, not one person within that brand knows everything about you got marketing guys and logistics guys, regulatory guys, that all contribute to the information that ultimately makes its way over to the retailer. So on that side, we do the same thing. We enroll those folks in the process at the time, they need to be involved. And we ask them for the content that we know they're responsible for, versus asking one guy go find all this stuff. That rarely works very well. So we just get very specific and prescriptive about what we're asking both sides of the equation to contribute to.

Mark Young  31:10

So Randy, from time to time, especially in the HBC in the CPG space. Products have controversies. So you remember a few years back, there was an ingredient that was pulled off the market in kids cough syrups. And all of a sudden, all the cough syrups are off the market for the entire year. Is this a place where I would want to deal with that? So is this a place where I'd want to jump in and say to my retailers, just be aware none of our children's cough syrups contain the offending product, our products are safe on your shelf, bla bla bla bla bla, or is it a place where we would want to jump in and say, yes, this ingredient had a problem. But this ingredient had a problem when it was sourced from China. Our product isn't sourced from China, it's coming from here, and it's in his GMP rated and we don't have that issue. Is this a place where we would want to deal with those controversies that happen?

Randy Mercer  32:08

Yeah, our system is it's not a recall management platform. Right. So it's not it's not going to react to those circumstances.

Mark Young  32:16

I'm thinking more of getting out the content that we're not gonna.

Randy Mercer  32:20

Yeah, exactly. Yep. So the master data and the in the descriptive content is going to help, whoever it is that's looking at that content. And on the other end, understand that no, I'm not the problem. And here's why. And here, maybe some of the aspects of byproduct that make it not the problem, right.

Mark Young  32:38

I mean, how much of this did you see when California passed, what was it prop 60?

Randy Mercer  32:42

Prop 65. Yeah.

Mark Young  32:43

65. Thank you. When they pass prop 65, how much content did you see change, then?

Randy Mercer  32:49

Yeah, you know, the introduction of content to support initiatives like that, you know, there's, there's lots of them, right? Transparency initiatives around food and nutrition and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, we see that all the time. And it's one of the things, you know, it's this is not a one and done, right, you get your product in the market. And then you're constantly being asked for new things that support things like prop 65, and other initiatives. So yeah, it's what we have to do to just keep our platforms current, make sure they're collecting the right stuff, and delivering it to the other end. So it's an ongoing exercise.

Mark Young  33:21

Now, for those of you don't know what prop 65 is, that was a proposition that passed into law in California a few years back. And essentially, it said that, if your product had any one of I think it was about 60 or 100 ingredients in it, that that product could cause cancer, if you were in California. Now, the product didn't cause cancer if you were in Nevada, but they cause cancer. If you're in California, now, the reality is some of those ingredients, there would be an ingredient in a topical skin lotion, that they would say would cause cancer if you ate, you know, 10 gallons of it, which means you'd be buying body lotions and drinking it all day, which probably isn't going to happen. But regardless of whether the rule is crazy or not crazy, as as manufacturers, we just have to deal with it. So we just have to get out in front of it, and be able to make sure that our retailers know our product is prop 65 compliant, or we are shipping a new SKU that will be prop SKU, maybe maybe we have made a formula change. So could we notify, could we possibly notify people there's been a change to the formula to comply with, let's say Prop 65? Is, is your platform a place where we would do that?

Randy Mercer  34:40

Absolutely. Yeah. So you know, prop 65, those types of initiatives. Sustainability is a is a huge topic. You know, same thing, it's the master data that indicates a level of sustainability and how you get there and all of that. Numerous, numerous things like that, that you also solve that with the right The data isn't getting it out to the right, folks.

Mark Young  35:04

For those of you that are new to the world of consumer packaged goods, which we know is some of our audience, this is an amazing business. And it's a fun business. But it is not for the faint of heart. We have we have lots of complications in our industry. And the easiest way to manage those complications is to get the right partners with the right capabilities. So that you can automate as much of this as possible. And you can lean on experts, who already know how to bring you into compliance and already know what, what is being asked for. So I'll give you an example. If I sent products to you for photography, your people already know what the retailers are expecting in the photography, I don't have to shoot a bunch of pictures and hope I got it right. Because your people already know what Walmart wants, what target wants, what CVS, this is what this is what they're expecting. And it's they're looking for a picture with this many directions in this angle on a psych wall, and it has to have this resolution. And here you go.

Randy Mercer  36:12

Yep, you got it. Yeah, I mean, that's just part of the value proposition is, is having that experience having those retailer relationships so that we're working with them, when they change, you know something about what they're looking for, from, from an imagery perspective, a great example is the introduction, Hero imagery, right? It's just becoming one of those things that you just gotta provide. And we know that we know what their specifications are, we have the capabilities to auto generate that type of imagery. So, you know, we're just getting out in front of that from a brand perspective so that they don't have to do that, that research and education on their own.

Mark Young  36:46

So before we wrap up, Randy, let me ask a question. What what would be the, for all the consumer packaged goods companies that you deal with which you deal with the same group of people we deal with all day long.

Randy Mercer  36:58

 Yeah.

Mark Young  36:59

Except we deal with more of the Challenger brands, you deal with everybody. What, knowing that our audience is not the P&G's of the world, but our audience is the, you know, not in someone where the mom and pops but a lot of our audience are in the mid size firms. And maybe they're doing $5 to $100 million in sales. What is the best advice you would give them? What what do they need to know that you think they don't know? Or that they may not know?

Randy Mercer  37:30

Yeah, what you know, what, what we continue to learn more about Mark is, is the process associated with just making all of this happen, you know, getting getting the content created, the management of it, getting it out into the ecosystem, and then learning about how it's performing for you those processes, they, they tend to get overlooked, right. And then the end result of that is organizations are doing manually and they started, they miss things, they end up with bottlenecks relative to the guy that doesn't just isn't here today, whatever that is, we're just learning that the orchestration of that entire process is just as important as the content itself, right. And often the content is a good content is a is a nice end result of a very thorough orchestration process. So that's what we're focused on more and more today, it's just helping folks get those processes in place, get the right people involved in it, letting them know when they need to be involved, and when they don't. And then for the guy that just cannot dedicate the resources to doing that. Like I said, we've got the people, we can just do do it for you. Right. So at every stage of the process for pretty much every strata of the manufacturer, the CPG manufacturer spectrum, you know, we've just got a combination of either technologies or services that just solve those problems around how you orchestrate this process.

Mark Young  38:55

What is the best way for someone to start their relationship at 1World?

Randy Mercer  39:01

An email address, very simple hello@1Wroldsync.com. And it's one, the digit one, worldsync s y n c. So hello@1Worldsync.com

Mark Young  39:11

We'll have that in the show notes, by the way, folks, so don't worry about writing it down. It'll be in the show notes. Go ahead, Randy.

Randy Mercer  39:16

Yeah, that's really it. You know, let us say, you know, what we what we're going to be interested in is who you're trying to get content to, with specific retailer, a group of retailers, whatever that is anything that you want to tell us about your business in terms of your readiness to provide that content. And we can come back to you and just tell us there to tell you exactly how we can help you.

Mark Young  39:35

Very good. And if you're, again, if you're dealing with any of the big retailers or most of the big retailers, you're going to need to end up here. So so you might as well start managing it now and give yourself the runway to get all the content right and to get everything correct. Because if you go to Kroger, Target whatever the case is, and they do say yes If you're not here, it's not going to happen. You're going to have to have all this work done. Randy, great, I appreciate you being with us. And folks, if you go to the show notes for this episode at CPG Insiders, you'll find links for the website and for the email address that Randy just gave you. And, Randy, I hope that if anything new comes up, you'll come back and tell our audience about it.

Randy Mercer  40:27

Absolutely, man, I appreciate you having me on today. As you can tell, I like talking about this stuff, and always being here to share with me stuff that we're doing. Right,

Mark Young  40:35

Well, great job, buddy. And, folks, that's it for today. If if you liked to show send a link to somebody you know, and wherever you get your podcast, go leave us a five star review, because that helps us tell more people about the industry. And as I've told people, before we do this, we do this show because we we love this industry, we love helping new companies in it, and getting you know, see new products come to market. It's a it's a tough world, about 30,000 new products a year hit the market and about 150 of them survive. And our goal is to get you into that 150 not to have you in that 30,000 And that's the tools we're trying to expose you to we're trying to expose you to the tools that get you into that 150 new products a year that make it. When you think about that math when you think about 30,000 new products and 150 making it the maths against you. You need to you need to have every resource and every partner and every capability at your fingertips to get into that 150. That's it for today. We'll see you on the next episode of CPG insiders. If you're looking to greatly increase sales on your CPG product, don't hesitate to contact us at Jekyll and Hyde advertising and marketing. By the way, the only advertising agency with a guaranteed result just go to JekyllHydeagency.com Or feel free to give us a call at 800-500-4210