What makes a product more than just a purchase?

In this week's episode we are joined live at IIEX North America by Sarah Shain, Senior Manager of Shopper Insights at Red Bull. Sarah's insights focus on delivering tangible results and fostering a broad sense of identification with the brand. She highlights the power of brand loyalty, even in the face of challenges like inflation and the COVID-19 pandemic, emphasizing the enduring importance of the in-store experience. Through engaging anecdotes, Sarah and Karen discuss the emotional reliance and deep meaning that consumers find in their interactions with products, and how that manifests in research.

You can reach out to Sarah on LinkedIn.

Many thanks to Sarah for being our guest. Thanks also to our producer, Natalie Pusch; and our editor, James Carlisle.

So hello, everybody. Welcome to a live edition of the GreenBook Podcast. This is Karen Lynch, happy to be hosting this episode live at IIEX North America, and I have the pleasure of speaking with a fabulous insights professional. Her name is Sarah Shain. She’s the Senior Manager of Shopper Insights at Red Bull.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I mean, I’m super lucky to lead the shopper insights team at Red Bull out of Santa Monica, which is our US headquarters. We have a nimble team that reports to the sales organization, and we inform our field counterparts on, kind of, what’s going on in the market. And we consider ourselves not only Red Bull experts, but category experts as well, and it’s really fun to be able to do that every day.

So, awesome. And yeah, I’m really glad. So, it’s good to have an expert, you know, on something like the energy drink category in general, but also beverages in general. So, I’m sure your knowledge spans actually a little bit bigger than just energy drinks, right, in the beverage space for sure.

Yeah, so as I’ve heard from many folks over the years, it was a winding path. I started my career in Washington, DC. I thought I wanted to do politics. Very different arena in a lot of ways, but a lot of weird similarities to what I do now, I would say. I was always really interested in why people do what they do and how you can kind of get them to do things, so if you think about it, purchasing like, not so different than maybe voting for a candidate in an election, right?

Is it seven years at Red Bull?

Yeah, so I’m kind of an interesting case because as you might have guessed, I majored in poli sci, I did not have a psychology background from undergrad. So, I really needed that master’s program to pivot my career in the direction that I wanted to go; I didn’t have that foundational knowledge of research methods, principles of psychology, the different biases that we have, so for me, that program really gave me an underpinning of all those important things that we do on our team, and I think probably any market research or insights team does. But it was also at that higher level of, like, what is actually applicable to business rather than just, like, a fun survey from an undergrad perspective. And we worked with a lot of different businesses. You know, it was at USC who has a lot of great relationships with the community, so we were able to consult for several different companies, gave us amazing internship placements. And that really made me kind of ready to go as soon as I graduated. Like, I was at Red Bull and off and running. So.

Yeah. That’s great. That’s great. Cool story. Tell me, were there any sort of milestones along the way at Red Bull and anything that was either really formative in your career and some of the steps that you’ve taken? I know you’ve had a few positions along the way, so just take me on that journey at Red Bull.

Yeah. So, I think after graduating, which was getting my masters, very formative, completely changed the trajectory of my career at Red Bull. You know, we’re still a young company in CPG land. We’ve only been around for 25 years. That’s really pretty young when it comes to a lot of our competitors in the space.

So, you mentioned, you know, informing the organization. So, talk to us a little bit about, you know, kind of what teams or departments, you are actually informing? Because shopper insights is feeding two different teams than what some people might have experienced within their own organizations.

Yeah. So, I’ve been told from a lot of folks at Red Bull who come from other CPG companies that the way we’re set up is a really unique advantage for us. And we are tied really closely to our other Santa Monica-based category insights team, and we roll up to sales, like I said. So, we have another consumer insights team that sits under marketing in a different building, and they have a whole host of other problems to go after. But we are very closely entrenched with sales and the sales teams in the field and our category folks in the field are our real stakeholders, so everything we do needs to be actionable and usable for them.

Yeah. If you could expand on that because, “Being better able to help them.” In what way? What do you do for those teams in particular?

Essentially, what we do is answer questions, right? So, they can be simple questions, they could be complex questions. It’s something maybe you could answer in a day or it might take you six months. But they know that they can come to us with any type of question. And a lot of time, these questions are coming from retailers themselves.

That’s great. Cool. Thank you for that explanation. Let’s talk a little bit about the shopper side of things. So, when we were doing our, you know, pre-work on this episode, I know you had talked to my podcast producer, Natalie, about your shopper-centric approach. Tell me a little bit more about that, how you define that, what that looks like for you.

Yeah, so I think what I have a little bit going for me is that I don’t have a completely traditional background. So, I have a little bit for my master’s program, but I think that also allows me to not feel constrained by, I think, a lot of maybe traditional ways certain things have been, like, supposed to be done or whatever. Like, for example, my team could tell you, I hate Likert scales. I never want to do them. We just don’t do them. Like, other people can do them. That’s great. I don’t like them and I don’t feel like I have to do them because I get what I need without doing that.

So, you may not know this about me personally, but I have a career prior to joining GreenBook as a qualitative researcher. So, that is where I used to live, on that side of things. So, always curious how qual fits into the equation and how you are balancing both qualitative methods, quantitative methods, and any other methods for that matter. What’s that like for you internally?

Yeah, we definitely do more quant on a day-to-day basis. I’m always itching to do more qual because I think it’s so interesting, and the times that we have done it, it’s been extremely rewarding. In 2020, as I mentioned, we did one of our biggest qual projects, which was extremely informative at the time, doing virtual focus groups. I think for us, we just really want to have those really big, juicy questions to go after good qual projects. And sometimes our day-to-day questions are more simple around, like, I don’t know, do you prefer buying this in the cold cashier placement in the front of the store or do you prefer buying it on the warm shelf? Like, sometimes the questions are a little bit simpler, and we don’t necessarily need to dive into qual. But in conjunction with our online community and tools we have at our disposal, we also have the ability to get video responses and things like that in small bites. So, we’ll incorporate that in where it makes sense to do so.

Yeah. Very cool. So, one of the things you had mentioned was metrics a little while ago. And again, in kind of preparation for this, thinking about the ROI of insights and your function and what your department does for others. And talk to me a little bit about some of those metrics that you’re using. Like, how do you kind of gauge that value that you are providing to the teams that you are working for?

So, there’s the metrics we work with, which are, you know, shopper panel metrics, and then there’s metrics of how are we doing, which is a lot more fluid, right, and harder to nail down. When I was kind of thinking about this topic, I think, you know, it really starts with having an advocate for you at the top. And since I’ve seen Red Bull kind of go on such an expansive journey, increasing our insights capabilities, I’ve seen that value firsthand of having those people in the beginning that really knew the power investing in an insights team.

Very cool. Very cool. So, you know, thinking about this idea that it’s advantageous for you to be just kind of shaped the way you are shaped, I keep thinking, what is the challenge for people that are not shaped that way? What do you think are the obstacles for people that don’t necessarily report to category teams, or even sales on that matter? Like, what’s the issue that they might have to face?

Yeah, I think we work closely with our counterparts in the marketing side of the organization, and I think their challenge is a bit of a longer lead time in terms of seeing things come to fruition, whereas I think we move very fast and… like, we see stuff happen, we see the action that comes from it, we move on to the next thing. I think with them, it can be a little bit harder to kind of get that insight into action right away, just because of the long planning times of marketing and how far out campaigns have to be thought of, and we kind of have the privilege of being able to execute things in store relatively quickly, seeing insights come to life relatively quickly.

Are there things you do to help you stay focused that way? Like, are there any tips, tools, habits, behaviors that you do to help you with that focus? That seems challenging for some people, I bet.

Yes. I drink a lot of coffee and Red Bull.

That’s awesome. Very good. Thank you. I want to go back to one other thing we just talked about, too, which was your collaboration with your marketing insights teams. So, in my experience, sometimes different insights teams within an organization don’t communicate very well; they don’t have that good report.

So, since I’ve been at Red Bull, we’ve had monthly touch-bases with our are, kind of, counterpart team, and I think that has really made us all feel like we are united in our insights point of view and we are there to accomplish a [laugh] shared insights vision; we’re not against each other. It also helps that actually currently, I think most of the pe—not most of the people, but quite a few people on their team have come from the sales organization. So, I’m not going to lie, that’s very helpful because they get both sides and so we’re able to work very well together. At the end of the day, all of us care about is being curious, making sure what we report is the truth, and doing it in the most actionable and easy-to-understand way possible. And we’re lucky that we’re in alignment on that. And from there, like, any issues have nothing to do with us. So.

Let’s just talk for a minute about behavioral methods, for example, or applied behavioral science, which is, you know, different from applied consumer psychology. But what are you doing to kind of understand consumer behavior and maybe just shopping behavior, but also usage behavior or anything else that’s in your purview? Are there methods you’re using or is there anything interesting that you can share with our audience?

I mean, probably nothing no one hasn’t heard before, but, you know, we do, like, shelf tracking studies to see where optimum placement is. We recently did a consumer decision tree project. We’ve done MaxDiff analysis, we’ve done [conjoint 00:16:20]. I think, for us, the way I think about how to really understand shopper behavior is there’s a lot of assumptions and the organization. We’re all shoppers, we can’t remove ourselves from that, right, we all have our own biases, and every single day, it’s a struggle for me to be, like, “Okay, this is what I would do, but [laugh] this is not necessarily what the bulk of energy drinks shoppers would do.”

Yeah. For sure. For sure. We certainly learned that, also, firsthand that they can change very quickly.

Yeah. So, if it’s a question or a need coming from leadership, it’s as simple as, like, sending them an email or walking over to them as quick as possible. If it’s needed, for more of a broader audience, we have a monthly sales call where we record all our sales numbers, share all of that, and our team kind of will insert ourselves if we have something really important to share. My team also just started our own podcast type of share-out. Literally, like, two weeks ago, we did our first one and it’s kind of like this really casual conversation, but we’re talking about insights sharing a few slides.

Yeah a bag of tricks. Well, that’s what you need sometimes, right? You need to do what work—you know, when it reaches different people what’s going to land, so—

Yeah. So, I think in my experience, it’s sometimes different than people might assume. To me it’s more of a life stage than a demographic, and not necessarily just a life stage, but, like, a working situation, the mental situation that week or that month, whatever you might be going through at that moment. I mean, demographically, yes, we’re probably talking in, like, the 25 to 50 range is the bulk of consumption, but really, like, for example, we know parents rely heavily on Red Bull and probably energy drinks as a whole. So, whether you’re a parent at 27 or a parent at 37, you’re probably going to be having, like, similar needs of consumption, similar just pain points in life, whatever that may be, so we would kind of bucket that person into that’s their consumption occasion. It doesn’t really matter what their age is.

So, we have somebody on our team—you just met her—Bridget. Shout out to Bridget. She’s an amazing events coordinator for us, but she is also a Red Bull fan. And she always has a Red Bull with her. She starts off her day with it.

This is, like, 80 milligrams. It’s like a cup of coffee. So.

Yeah, well, we’ll see what happens later. It’s not like I’m not pretty caffeinated. So. But super cool. Now, here’s what I was going to say, like, testing my assumptions, right? I know that you have this extreme sport community, right? You really lean into that.

Yeah. So, first have to give the disclaimer that I’m on the sales side of the business, so I’m not as involved in all of that fun, sexy marketing as one might want to be. But yes, I am also familiar with all of those videos. They pop up on my LinkedIn a lot these days, which usually LinkedIn was like, not as interesting as [laugh] as it is lately.

Yeah. We might not all be trying to, like, fly [craft 00:23:23] airplanes [crosstalk 00:23:24].

Yeah, no, thank you [laugh].

Have you been to those events? Have you been able to get to some of them?

I actually have not. I think I’m owed a ticket.

Well, you know, let’s get that marketing team to kind of say, “All right—” [crosstalk 00:23:41]—

Yeah, a couple things come to mind. So again, as we kind of alluded to earlier, my team is looked to provide insights across the macro-economic landscape; people expect us to know everything. We certainly don’t, but we try our best to have a pulse on what’s going on. Some of the things, especially recently during inflationary times, what have you, I think there’s been a lot of talk of what we see people shifting to private label, in terms of everything that they’re buying across, like, the grocery store. And I think we’ve seen that happen a little bit with certain categories, but there has not been as big of a shift as people might have thought.

I love that. And in terms of noodling, right, to use that word right back at you is, you know, I’m thinking about my own behavior as well. And I’m like, “Oh, that’s really interesting.” When our money is, you know, being—you know, with a feeling that constraints—

I mean, it’s the power of brands. Like, I have my own brands that I love, you know, outside of the energy category that the price would have to probably go up a hundred times for me to [laugh] stop buying them or something crazy like that. Like, my team knows there’s a few things I talk about all the time, and I think it’s wild to see how powerful that is. And I think this is the perfect example of, like, how, you know, maybe something like extreme sports videos, is ultimately going to filter down to somebody saying, “No, that’s my brand of choice and, like, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

Yeah. I mean, to me, this is the fun part of the job, right, when we get to do these hypotheses. And—

Yeah, well, it sounds like you’re one of the folks who really enjoys those different, like, delivery methodologies and has stuck with it. So, I know you all are out there. So, this is why we can’t assume that, like, there’s any sort of one type of behavior going on, right? There’s a lot going on.

Yeah. I mean, even toilet paper—full disclosure—like, even toilet paper. Like, I discovered a, you know, a niche brand that delivered toilet paper to our house during the pandemic, and now my kids are, like, “When are you leaving toilet paper again?” And I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, you’re so funny.” Like, they want the big box of toilet paper to show up at the house. They think it’s amazing.

Oh, my gosh. I mean, people will tag Red Bull on a lot of crazy social media posts, so I’ve seen some weird things out there. But mainly, I think, just the sheer amount of consumption. Like, there are people out there who would gladly drink, like, multiple cans a day. And those, we literally, like, call those our brand lovers, like, can lovers. They love it.

That’s so funny you say that. I’m a coffee drinker, as we discussed earlier, and I—we’re staying at an Airbnb this week, and I brought my portable Keurig with me—

It’s funny that you say that because I have a puppy and he sleeps in the other room and I’ve had the same conversation with my husband of, like, “Should we bring the coffee machine in here so I won’t get, like, accosted first.” He’s like, “No,” but, like, I think I’m going to wear him down at some point [laugh].

Yeah. Wear him down. It has worked for me like a charm. And it became, like, this magical moment for me in the morning because I felt like I was getting away with something and I didn’t have to be responsible yet, right? So, it developed—

Yes. I’ve never seen so many sessions with the name AI in them, so that’s for sure happening. I found [Lauren’s 00:32:09] presentation really interesting this morning on, you know, how they’ve kind of tested ChatGPT against some of their surveys, how much it can really accomplish. And my team and I talk about this a lot, and we want to make sure that we do choose to use it, we use it very responsibly and in the right way and kind of maybe dip a toe in. So, I think from that presentation, I really gleaned that garbage in, garbage out is probably the most [laugh] valuable thing that I heard.

Yeah. Yeah. That’s interesting when you say dipping a toe in because the conversation I was having earlier today with another attendee was—you know, at GreenBook, we’re a media company, it’s a little different, but we’re actively swimming. We’re not in the deep end yet, but we’re actively swimming. So, I think it’s really interesting—

I hope so [laugh]. We’ll see.

Yeah. So, I did get my five-minute warning. So, let me ask you this before I wrap. Is there a question that you wish I had asked you that I didn’t get to?

I mean, I always love talking about why I love working at Red Bull. So—

That’s great. Well, and it sounds like at a higher level, they respect the work you’re doing—

It is. It is. Absolutely.

Cool. So, what is next for either you or for Red Bull? What’s on the horizon?

So, our Summer Edition Juneberry, just launched about a month ago. So, I hope if everyone has not tried it yet, please go out and try it. It should be an all retailers near you. It is delicious. But I can’t wait to see how that resonates with our consumer. We’ll probably be doing some more research on that as the summer goes on. We’ll see if it’ll become a permanent addition. Those of you who are brand fans might know, our Summer Editions often become permanent additions if they do well. So, that is what is coming up for us next.

where could they either reach you or learn more about your company?

Well, we have a pretty established online presence, so I think if you go [laugh] looking, you’ll find us. And then you can find me on LinkedIn.

All right. That’s great. I want to thank you so much for this conversation, for your time today, for being here at our event, and for sharing this podcast stage with me. I want to thank Natalie Pusch, our podcast producer. I couldn’t do the work that I do without her. She really is amazing. Thank you so much, Natalie.