This week on the podcast, Brent sits down with Wendy Jean Bennett, vice president of retail commerce leadership at Tyson Foods. They discuss Wendy Jean's career in the food industry spanning over 30 years, mostly at Tyson. Wendy Jean shares her passion for food and desire to influence the company to make it better each day. They also discuss the evolving food industry landscape including trends towards convenience, sustainability and global cuisines, and how Tyson is navigating the omni-channel retail transformation. Finally, Wendy Jean reflects on the value of mentors, exposure, networking and saying yes to new challenges throughout her career journey.

It's interesting people ask me what I

value the most. I value the influence I have on the company

to be able to make it a better company every day I wake up of

how can I make this company better, and help drive this

organization.

Welcome to the be epic podcast brought to you

by the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of

Arkansas. I'm your host, Brent Williams. Together, we'll

explore the dynamic landscape of business and uncover the

strategies, insights and stories that drive business today. All

right, well, today I have with me Wendy Jean Bennett, from

Tyson Foods. Wendy Jean is the vice president of retail

commerce leadership at Tyson Foods. Wendy, thank you for

joining me.

I'm so happy to be here. Brent. This is

fantastic.

It is. I'm excited to have you here. You

know, in your role, I think you have category leadership, I

think insights, e commerce, shopper marketing, and and

you've gotten a really varied set of experiences mostly in

food. So 30 years in the food industry, most of that at Tyson

I think so. And I thought what was really interesting is maybe

going all the way back to the early part of your career, I

think you're in food service at a university?

The old days. Yes yes.

So quite a career thus far. Tell me more.

Tell me more about your current role and would love to learn a

little bit about from your viewpoint like what did that

journey look like?

Absolutely. I think it's important to

understand people's journeys, at least from a business lens and

sense and a career development, which I think is critically

important. So currently, you nail it on the head, I have four

disciplines, all on the retail side of the business, retail,

meaning grocery mass retailers also includes dollar, drug, club

channels. So all those channels of business on the retail side,

it is category management, which is a great discipline, we are

the advisor for many of the retailers we work with. So we do

share and we look at the growth and what's happening in that

category and deliver insights to those retailers. There's

actually a firewall you might not know that, but with a lot of

retailers, you cannot just openly talk to sales like they

trust us we have NDAs to be able to deliver the best category

advancement to help everyone grow. So that's that's the

largest discipline I manage. Then as you said, we have

insights ours is more of those insights directly related to the

retailers. So the big questions they're asking like right now,

what's going on with the consumer? What's going on with

snap money, government money going away? How is that going to

impact us in the business so our insights team really

concentrates. It's all primary research, so not using

syndicated to do that, our category team does use

syndicated and we do have insights people who manage our

syndicated tools on those sides, commerce marketing is shopper

marketing. You're right on we changed the name because of omni

channel,

Right

So now because it does include

ecommerce is on my team as well as shopper marketing. So we call

that now commerce marketing. It's everything incorporated

together, whether you're buying or planning offline, online when

you go to the store, when the conversion happens. So those

four disciplines is what I managed today.

You asked about the journey. I always knew

Okay.

I wanted to be food. So I'm going to start old old school

story of when you people ask, what do you want to be when you

grow up? Well, my number one answer was an astronaut. You

know, I'm old. So I was drinking Tang, and I always want to do

the astronaut. But number two was I wanted to be a waitress. I

know that's really, you know, big, big job there when you're

young. And all I wanted for Christmas was the little note

pad that they used to take orders on and one of those tear

pads and I got it. And so I would take your order on the

dinner table me my brothers, sister and family. And I would

even though we only had one item like you know you had only got

meatballs tonight. That's all you're getting. But let me take

your order down. And I was I always knew I wanted to be in

food. So food was always my journey. At that point, the best

schools was Cornell which we couldn't afford to go to, even

with scholarships, and UNLV so interesting enough, I'm a girl

from New England, New Hampshire and went to Las Vegas, so not

smart always to go to a town that's open 24 hours when you're

young. But so great life experiences there but it

actually was a fantastic college. And you had all the

hotels right there that you could do internships with and

restaurants so you could specialize in hotel side or

restaurant side. I specialized in restaurants. So that's what

got me into the food business and I loved my first journey, as

you mentioned, was in colleges and university it's contract

management services. It used to be Marriott management services.

It was bought out by Sodexo. There's three big E's, Compass,

Aramark, and Sodexo. And so then I worked at different colleges

University what's so great, I love about that and what I love

about the university atmosphere and being here today is in

business, sometimes you're stuck in your internal business lens

world. And when I worked on campus, I mean, the students

would come in, and we'd have student managers and students

that worked with us, with us, along with full time employees.

And you talked about philosophy and life and things they learned

in class, and they want to apply it and what are the thoughts on

that and quantum physics and you could have such a books diverse

conversation, and keeps you young at the university campus

as opposed and gives you more diversity and inclusivity

honestly, from being in that perspective, and having that

broader lens, because I find that expanding your horizons is

the best thing you can do to open your thought process of how

you act and react to business problems in this world.

You know, and on that note, I think one thing

about the Walton College of Business that I love is the

interaction that occurs with industry, you know, and whether

it's here, whether it's out in the business community, it's

happening every single day

Every day.

And there's a lot of magic that happens for

for both. So I think it was really, I really enjoyed hearing

from your perspective, you know, what is the value you get from

interacting with universities, colleges and our students?

I absolutely love it. And I love that spark

of curiosity, nothing, you know, when you hire, you look at will

and skill. And I, I can teach someone, almost anything, as

long as they have, what they learn here, the rudimentary

business acumen application, and if they have the will, I'm gonna

hire them. So that's always what's exciting to me is that

spark of curiosity, and that will so I loved working in the

university environment, I'm gonna skip forward. And I

learned a lot on how to be a manager, some leadership skill

sets, you know, and one of the core ones I would say for

myself, is motivation and inspiration. I, you know, in

these times, and everything we just handled with the pandemic,

it was important to have motivation and inspiration as a

leader, and really dig deep and project that for your team. And

the second thing I learned right as I went from my 20s, to 30s,

was self awareness is a skill set. I swear if I have a book,

Brent it's gonna be one of the chapters, and how do I know

this, because I went and saw someone on stage, who was pinch

hitting for me, because I was not feeling well. And I kind of

had a little bit of laryngitis couldn't talk to someone who was

pinch hitting for me, and I'm watching him on stage. And it

was a peer. And, you know, it was a good, you know, thing. It

wasn't very, you know, it was good. You know, like when you

sit in the audience, and you're listening, and you're clapping

and doing all the right things, the right right moment, and head

nodding, but it really didn't blow me away. And it was good,

but not great. And I see people around me looking at their

phones. So they're not engaged. You can see it in the audience

when you're losing them. And then he came off, and I'm like,

how do you think it went, he goes, oh, I killed it. That went

great. I was fabulous. And I literally had that moment of oh,

he is completely unaware. He thinks he really did an A level

job. I'm a big grader. I know that's bad with school. But and

I'm like it was like a C and it really needed some improvement.

And so it's interesting because I sometimes over analyze, but

the second I'm done something I say how can I do that better.

But I also think that makes me a sharper manager for continuous

improvement. So that was a big lesson I learned in my 30s that

context and perspective are critically important. And one of

the most interesting classes I took at that time was body

language. And watching people's body language it really helped

me is then as you noticed in my career, I went into sales and

marketing. And so I'm working with our retail partners, I'm

working on the foodservice side, I have gone all the way to lead

teams, some of our key retailers, like Kroger, Meijer,

Target. And it was really that nothing was more important than

in the meeting and watching the body language of what happens.

And sometimes people are focused on the content they need to

deliver. And they're reading their slide or they're reading

their notes. And they're not paying attention to the dynamics

of the room. And I would leave and go, Oh, they're already

going to do something with our competitor. And they're already

moving forward with this because they totally pushed back a

little bit and showed disinterest or they're thinking

of that strategy. And they really liked that idea. We need

to follow up on that. And honestly, my directors, these

are leaders, these are directors would be like, wow, I didn't

even notice that or I didn't even catch that. And those are

some of the critical things that really unlock success in

business. And they sound very elementary, but we don't always

teach that as well or how to apply that and engage it in the

business world.

Yeah, that's right. And that's an onload

ongoing learning process. How do you as you lead teams is in

these four different areas of the business across sales and

marketing? Well, I guess how do you go uncover those needs and

hire hopefully to do a great job getting those skills into your

organization. But how do you develop people as you think

about those needs and across your teams?

Yeah, absolutely. A you gotta have

strong onboarding plans. And Tyson is very good at investing

in this and we have day long classes, people go to dow get on

boarded, learn about Tyson get grounded in that. And then when

they come to us, we just have to teach the basic functions of the

team and work on that. So they job shadow is critically

important in the process of onboarding and learning of what

they do to learn their skill sets. And then we luckily work

for a big company that invests in people. So we do have

different levels of investment, we partner with many we have

LinkedIn learning, we have Tyson University, where they learn

about our products, and they really get hands on with our

products and our stance some sort of some people who come

from a CPG landscape, they're not used to dealing with

animals, right? So it's, it's a beast, no pun intended, of

sometimes working with a commodity that's perishable. I

said, if I ever left Tyson, I'm going to a shelf stable product

that can last a long period of time, as opposed to something

that has days that it can last on shelf and you gotta get good

turns.

You know, most of our listeners know Tyson and

most of us as consumers know, Tyson. But tell us a little bit

about Tyson, sitting where you sit maybe broadly about the

company, and how its evolved over time.

Absolutely. I you know, I'll be honest,

Tyson was a five year plan for me. When I came I it was my

first exposure to Arkansas. So I said, not sure, this was 2003,

it is much more developed now. And it was a five year plan just

for me to get it was my first manufacturer because I'd work on

the other side of the customer side of the business beforehand,

so but the family it's really does treat you like family. And

I came from an organization where the leaders had their own

keycard to get to the 14th floor, so you don't even have

access to them. You would not even see them unless it was a

special meeting. And literally, I was with Donnie King yesterday

in our cafeteria eating lunch. I mean, that's how unassuming

servant leadership it is. You can see anyone in the hallways

at any time you can open door policy go and talk to them. So

the reason I'm still am with Tyson, by far, it's interesting.

People ask me what I value the most. I value the influence I

have on the company to be able to make it a better company

every day I wake up of how can I make this company better, and

help drive this organization and the influence I have the

organizations that yes, I love all the jobs I've had, if like

you said, I've had probably eight jobs at Tyson. And they've

been great. But I really loved having a seat at the table and

just being able to influence more than anything of where

we're going and being able to talk to our leaders and then

talk to everyone. I mentor, you know, eight or nine people on a

regular basis, because that's so important, as you said, to grow

and develop our talent, and make sure to convey and teach them

how to be a leader. And I think that's the hardest step in

anyone's career is going from an individual contributor to now a

leader of other people, because you're used to doing it your way

and this and so then you have those people that overly

micromanage and want to see it done their way. Or you have

people that are so so hands off because they don't know how to

approach coaching, which is a whole nother skill set you have

to learn when you step into that leader role of I always say one

of the lessons I learned, which I really love is there's a lot

of leader, you learn from the worst, right? You learn from

some of your worst leaders. And I used to have a big clock

watcher, and at Tyson we all get up early we're there for the

most, I know it's like an eight to five. But for the most part

we're there in the seven o'clock hour. And he used to like watch

the clock. And so one of the greatest things I learned from

reading, and another great HR manager was measured output, not

input. And so I really love that lesson. And I always try to do

it with my team. I'm not gonna sit here and watch the clock, I

need to know if the scope of your role is is busy enough or

too much and you need more headcount to help do what we

need to do in order to be successful as an organization.

That's my job. And then my other biggest job is remove the

barrier. In any organization of life. There's some red tape or

there's some no's and it's great to get a no, I tell my team all

the time you want the no, because no just means not. Now,

it's not the right timing. Timing is so much of it, right?

We just had terrible second quarter earnings. So yes, we're

a little tightening the belt a little bit. But we're still so

optimistic about our future and you know, the markets are

turning, we're getting there, we're already have moved the

needle. So it's so optimistic of that future. And Donnie King

feels that way too. So don't get stuck or mired down in the

moment and make sure we're shooting for that vision.

Yeah. Well, you know, I guess, speaking of

vision, and the future maybe, one thing that I thought it was

so interesting just a moment ago, you said, this all started

with a passion for food, even as a child, you loved it, and you

love serving food to your family. Food, and the industry

is something we can all relate to, but it is evolving.

Absolutely.

So I'd love to hear your view on how you see

the whole industry evolving, and then maybe, maybe commenting a

little bit on how you see the consumer evolving as it relates

Absolutely, yeah, it's so funny. Pre

to that.

Interesting

pandemic, it's like cooking is dead. No one even knows how to

It's not google, not anything else. And

cook anymore, millennials can't cook. And then they all learned

not all of them. But a large majority learn during the

so you know, 80% of the content on your phone now is video that

pandemic and a lot of these home meal kits, you could have gotten

them really comfortable with cooking. I do see us staying

more in a convenient side because one of the key lessons

we learned and we're seeing post pandemic and I'm going to talk

about multiple categories, not just ours, but again, produce,

bag salad, pre cut vegetables, people aren't going backwards,

they're still purchasing those and I think that will continue

because they realize how how important time is and we saw

people make decisions of A I'm going to retire early. We saw a

lot of people leave the workforce or some families went

back to a single household income instead of dual household

income because they're trying to do the work life balance and

they really thought about their work life and what they wanted

to accomplish and raising their families or whatever life stage

you're in. But people really did get back to cooking and and

you're seeing it with TikTok and the trends interesting enough

for Gen Z 43% start their product search on TikTok.

we're consuming. So I when you said where do I see it going? I

definitely see less things like recipe cards and recipe books,

and us morphing into this great video content, and easy,

convenient ways to deliver it. And what I mean by that was the

feta cheese bake craze that happened on TikTok. If you heard

about that, but it was the whole block of cheddar and all the

grape tomatoes. And so it's already kind of pre portioned.

And I just assemble, or what we call speed scratch in order to

then cook it and make it so I think that will happen. The

other thing that I think is really exciting is when I grew

up, you know, get Chinese food and maybe a little Mexican, and

now, Thai food and Korean food. And there's such an exploration

of global foods coming to the market, we're finally selling

more dark meat than ever before in our chicken, which we

couldn't move at all come 10 years ago.

So we are seeing a proliferation of what

Interesting.

that mixes with consumers, I still think they're going to

want convenience, I think we're going to find ways to be

frictionless, like I said, seamless in the omni channel

right now it's very price sensitive people, not everyone,

but there's a group going back into stores to shop for the best

deal of protein because of the inflationary environment.

Because right now most retailers are catchweight. So it has a

range of the price or a maximum. And so therefore we're, you

know, losing a little bit of sales that way. And we got to

figure out how to do that. But we will, right I mean with

everyone's kind of scared of AI, what I'm excited about AI it's

going to deliver predictive analytics that we've been

talking about. And I'm sure the school that we I know you've

been talking about. I've heard it from students for quite a

while now. And it's finally coming to its impetus. And I

think that will help with so much more efficiencies and so

much more predictive analytics of what consumers are going to

do. But, you know, I still see them going to cook it's going to

be easier, it's going to be more convenient cuts, it's going to

be more global. So we're gonna see mix change on proteins. A

lot of people think of pork is just pork chops on the American

plate. And pork is the number two global cuisine in the world

once you get past chicken and goat if you didn't know goat's

to the number one protein of the world.

I did not.

You did not know that. And then so the like

pork is huge in the Latino culture and in Asian culture as

well. It's not beef, like we're big beef eaters, which is great,

but I just think we don't have it in the right form for them to

cook up a great stir fry or some of these other you know, items

that we're seeing out there from street tacos to tort, you know,

tortas, with Mexican sandwiches, and there's just this whole

proliferation going to happen and I'm finally starting to see

Indian which I'm excited because I love Indian. The first wave of

Indian was very polarizing because it was curries. So you

either love curries or hate curries. And now we're seeing

chicken tikka masala, which is tomato based, American palettes

get that and we're seeing biryanis, which are rice

flavored dishes. So I think we're going to see a lot more

global cuisine in the palette, which I think is exciting. We're

still seeing people travel, even though, you know, people are

tightening the belt there. They didn't travel during the

pandemic. So travel is really still big right now on people's

minds and getting out there for summer vacation. So I think

we're gonna see that product mix shift, but I think that's

exciting. I think we're well poised. I think it's funny. And

you might not know this, you know, this, but when people

think protein, they think of cereal, because it's called out

on cereal that, you know, there's so many grams of

protein. And we're the OG protein people like chicken,

beef and pork, like, it's the original protein. So I think

people forget that. So we're going to a lot of call outs and

protein if you've looked at any of our packages lately.

Yeah. Well, I think I think what's so

interesting about everything you're talking about is it's

giving you your team Tyson, really an opportunity to deliver

more value to the consumer, right. And that is either you're

saving them time, or you're opening us up to new experiences

that we might not have gotten without without your products.

Yeah, and the culinary part, just like you

said, is a passion for me. That's one of the things I loved

working on the foodservice side is working with our top chain

customers like Chipotle, they're a customers of ours or potbelly

sandwich works, if you're aware of them in the Midwest, and

developing specific products for them to use in their formats.

You know throughout your career, you

And they all have different cooking platforms like we have

stoves or a lot of us now have air fryers. That's the other

thing, it kind of surpassed instapot. So we're doing a lot

of things that work in the air fryer. So but from a culinary

lens, it's really exciting to see the next proliferation of

where's Jimmy Dean going, where are we gonna go with State Fair

for snacking, we're gonna go with our anchor, Tyson brands.

So there's some great ideas in the pipeline that are going to

be pretty exciting.

mentioned some companies you've worked with, you've worked with

lots of large retailers over your career, you know, and it's,

it's collectively that you know, a producer, you know, in a brand

company like Tyson and retailer together, they're coming

together to deliver that product and value to the consumer. So

how do you think about building relationships with those with

with your customers, ultimately, to serve the consumer? And how

do you do that sustainably?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, the first step

in all the consumer work, and even working with retailers

outside in approach. So where I see some companies fail is an

inside out approach, like this is the, you know, this is the

product I have, and this is the capacity of chicken I have. And

I'm going to force that instead of saying what is this retailer

strategy, which they will provide to you, especially when

you're a partner like Tyson is. And what are they? What is their

vision for the next three or five years? And then looking at

that, and making almost like a Venn diagram of where do we both

correlate, a lot of retailers right now we're really big on

sustainability. And we have made huge strides under John Randal

Tyson, on sustainability. In fact, in the cantar rankings,

that was the were in the top 10. For the first time ever Tyson

is, I mean, it's always been

Congratulations on that.

Thank you Kraft. We're, we're in the top

10 for the first time category, my team sustainability moved 22

spots. And the differences just giving a quick grounding is we

used to do just what we can directly influence, a lot of

animal welfare things that community that we're involved

in, that we can impact. And John took it to things we can

influence. So growing corn, right, we don't grow corn,

farmers grow corn, and then it's harvested, and we make it for

our feed that we give to our chickens, for example. So you

know, we are now influencers to help with green gas emissions,

helping reduce deforestation, helping with corn growing and

better soil and landscaping. So we hadn't had that before. So

that was significant. For we've been part of the global climate

change and going to global forums in Europe. So it's been

very evolved from that standpoint, but our retailers

really care about that, too. Consumers want sustainability.

They want sustainable packaging. It's been the number one thing

we've heard on retailers lips this this year. So in that Venn

diagram, we find the places where we align typically its

sustainability and innovation, our corporate responsibility and

the values you have to click connect on that level of

understanding the integrity of what you both are and then have

that transparency and create that partnership where you can

have that transparency to then evolve and create these growth

initiatives that you can work on together. So that's like the the

ethos of where it really needs to stem from. Instead of being

like this outside in approach, like I said, it really needs to

come from this coordinated effort of partnerships. So the

best unlocks I've seen in my career is us being equally

transparent. And there's times when some retailers can be just

very guarded, you know, and it's, they're not really letting

you in and try to do that. And then I've seen the other end of

the spectrum where we created great strategies for them to

grow their business. And then they didn't love our price. And

so they went and executed that strategy with somebody else,

which isn't really what you want. But you know, and then

luckily, there's always like the leadership, when you have your

top to tops that you can go, come on, now, we're delivering a

lot of value to you, let's make sure we're partnering. But for

the most part, I've had really good luck with some really good

partners. I mean, Walmart is the cornerstone here has been an

excellent partner through the years, and we've done so much

together, working, you know, me, specifically, on deli, and most

recently, with David Baskin's team, I mean, you know, just

trying to grow and figure out what we're going to do together

and how to unlock growth. I mean, people just think that the

Walmart beef, which we supply for them, even though it's

private label, we're one of their suppliers. They don't even

think it comes from the US when you ask those consumers they

think it's Mexico or somewhere else. And they don't even

realize the quality it's you know, upper to their choice.

It's high quality product that is on the shelves people can get

every day. And they're now working on rebranding. If you've

seen local stores there, it's American farmers and and they

are labeling the product and but we work really well with those

customers Meijer, Target and Kroger, my others, we all found

ways to unlock and drive success. But it does ebb and

flow. And it's hard when you have leadership churn, I would

say that's the hardest thing I've learned through the years

because sometimes you're back to square one, or maybe square two,

but you have to like re onboard everyone, so and you lose some

of that momentum. So there's been many times where I've been

close to the brass ring, and we're gonna close a great deal.

And we're all aligned, and then you know, something happens. And

then you get out, of course, correct and drive from there.

But I've also been grateful enough to experience some really

good wins, and some really good partnerships along the line. But

like I said, I think too many times I hear from retailers,

people are pushing this widget, like, Oh, here's this bottle of

water, like I'm gonna, this is why you need this bottled water

Brent. It's the best bottle water and I know there's Fiji

and polar, it's springs. But this bottle of water is really

going to drive your sales. And when you just, you know,

everyone can talk about features benefits, I laugh because every

single vendor spire in the world is number one, it's something

their generic decks will say, where I got the number one brand

or word number one in frozen, grocery, you know, vegetable,

this. And so everyone finds the thing that they can raise the

number one and I have found in my experience, that's nice. But

it's not always what your retail partner is really looking for in

order to drive growth in a category.

And when you look at driving growth in a

category with two big companies trying to get alignment and

drive that growth to meet the consumers need. Talk a little

bit about you know kind of mention this with leadership

change potentially can disrupt that. Talk a little bit about

the role of building personal relationships to to create

momentum.

Yeah, um, well, it's difficult. And

Walmart doesn't allow that. So you're not able to do that,

other retailers you are. So you are able to develop that. It's

interesting that you say that, I'm not going to talk about

myself, I think I'm old school or and I've learned, I came from

a very sociable family. So we always debated at the dinner

table and you know people don't do that anymore. My father

wanted us to know math. So quizzes us at math and wanted us

to debate because in his mind debate was not a four letter

word. And he wanted us to have a point of view on things. So I

really appreciate that I learned that, what I find nowadays is

I'm training and onboarding and working with people and we were

talking about coaching and development. I'm, I'm not seeing

that like confidence and that point of view. come across and

so when you said when leadership and things aren't going your

way. The word I'm thinking of is they tend to cower and and not

be resilient I guess is that word and so it's really standing

your ground and teaching that resiliency because you're gonna

get knocked down you're gonna learn lessons from that knocked

down but you do lose a lot of momentum. When you do have a

change. Wait, like I said, what you have to do is depending on

what level it is, is use the people, whatever, let's say it's

a VP of a certain account was gone. So you have to use the

merchants at the lower levels to help say, this is what we're

working on, and it had a lot of momentum. And then you have to

make sure to connect to the level above with our like our

chief customer officer, Jason Nickel. And make sure to bridge

that very quickly. So you don't lose that momentum. Does that

make sense? Does that answer your question?

You certainly did. You know, one thing I was

thinking about what we've been talking about retail, and in

your connection into retail, when you think about retail, and

how quickly it's been changing, I mean, there's an omni channel

transformation that's been happening as a, as a producer,

and as an a group of brands. How do you think about that? And how

is that affecting you? How do you how do you set a strategy

First of all, it's absolutely impacting

for that?

us, let me be crystal clear. It's it, let me let me tell you

where it was easy and where it's hard. And it's definitely

ongoing. So we did instantly set a strategy, we're a little bit

late to the game, but not very, it was about four years ago,

Yeah, I think this, my, this numbers a bit old, it's probably

four or five, we already had, I'm gonna say some base,

pictures and images and content and for all of our CPG, like a

ballpark a Jimmy Dean, all of that is going to have all that

basic information, because we have excellent brand marketers

who are going to ensure who see the evolving world happen, where

we were stumbling a bit, and we've quickly caught up is on

fresh images. So again, we sell Tyson tray pack, poultry, and we

sell as I was saying fresh meat. And so Walmart expects us to

have the images for all the products we do that are even in

private label. So that was the gap that we had a quickly closed

and we are still closing. And then there's been evolution,

even if you look online. So at first, you'd see like, this ugly

picture of meat in this like foam tray. And you're like not

very attractive. And now so then it's like, well, let's have a

hero picture of the cut of meat and then or the raw cut of meat

a year old. But the last time I looked there was over 600 retail

and nice put your block next to the package. And now they're

even evolving more of their kind of 3d ish. So if you've seen the

latest and greatest images out there, they're very 3d, you can

see that size more I'm sure we've all done this where you

think, oh, I was thinking I was getting maybe a 12 ounce, and it

comes 32 ounce, like you couldn't tell the pack size that

you were getting from an online commerce. So you have to build

structure, you have to build process, you have to work with

partner agencies to take pictures, do all the work, do

all the content. And then search is so huge in that world, you

need to have the right taglines key words to pop in the

algorithms. So literally, we have experts that literally work

on that for our entire portfolio, working to make sure

we're relevant because you have to be relevant in that space.

And almost every retailer, every core retailer out there now has

some type of retail media, they are pushing themselves. Walmart

media networks that had been stood up in a relatively short

Connect is the one locally but almost like I said, everyone has

one where they are saying we get this many shoppers that come

through, we want your brand media to be on our media

channels. So that's been a huge shift from six years ago, or six

and a half years ago. Now, when I was in what was called shopper

marketing. Now I'm leading our commerce marketing, that's the

biggest shift is the rise of those retail media networks. And

just making sure we all scorecard it because impressions

don't really sell product, right? So at the end of the day,

period.

Exactly,

it doesn't a click rate or, or an impression, aren't the things

quite a quite a phenomenon. When you when you

that really blow my socks off. In order for us to get more

sales, it has to be combined with seeing the conversion rate

seeing the growth happen as well, because otherwise you can

spend endless dollars on search, you know.

think about how you're going to allocate dollars, what are like

the core metrics and core, maybe even the core capabilities that

you look for amongst those returns?

Yeah, well A, I want to make sure their

score carding, so like I said, there's a lot that will say

we'll give you this many impressions. And like I said,

that's great, that's like the entry level. But we want to get

a little bit more sophisticated, and a little bit more robust,

because we want that dollar to be as effective and efficient as

possible for where we can spend that dollar. And we work with

Nielsen on MMX and so one of the big things and I could throw out

the challenge. Most of these retailers aren't using like a

third party verification like Nielsen MMX. So there our

scorecard numbers are different. And so we you just need to have

that where with all of understanding so one of the

things one of the guidelines we have, I haven't heard this from

others yet. But we say once our search and our once our share,

excuse me not our search, once our share hits on the omni

channel, the same as in store, because mostly our business is

still in store, we're not, we're not like Amazon or someone's

gone all ecommerce, it's about 11% of our total sales, right

now we see it going to 14. So once so that's really adequate

saying, once our share equals brick and mortar, okay, then

that's enough of that search, like we're going to turn that

off and go to another tactic, because we just don't think

we're going to proliferate more beyond that. So we've been told

were the one of the only suppliers that are are doing

that, when we talk to some of these retail media networks, but

it is evolving, I think Brent too, it's going to be a future.

You know, we're gonna need some specialists in this field. And

we're actually hiring for those. And it's hard to find there's a

lot of brand marketers it's a lot of marketing, there's a lot

of shopper marketing, but this is a quickly evolving just like

we saw with digital and E commerce when that was

proliferating. And now, we're seeing this as it's something in

the future that we're gonna have to help and work together. But

we were participating in a lot of them, because a lot of those

are great partner customers of ours, and we're doing a lot of

tests and learns. And I appreciate those retailers being

willing to do test and learn and learn together of how we can

make this better and enhance this process over time.

Absolutely. We the Walton College released a

white paper on sort of the, you know, the promise and the future

of retail media networks. And to your point about talent and

knowledge in this area. That was one thing we heard from our

interviews, that you know, there was a there's a need for the

development of talent

Yeah it's a gap.

and knowledge in that area.

And I think I haven't heard and maybe you

can even give me a better source of a great vision of where we

expect this to go. You know, it's it's a revenue stream, I

get the I get wanting to make sure your audience that you're

capturing at your local retailer, you make them privy to

this, and you utilize this as best as possible. But I'm not

sure I haven't you know what I haven't seen that like

frustrates me personally as a consumer, but I would love to

see it. We're in summer grilling phase, I'd love summer grilling

and grilling out. And they're not connecting some of these

mass channels, their household goods with food, right, like

I'm, I am going to need a new grill brush, a new silicone, you

know, slick grill brush to use with my barbecue sauce. And my

chicken or I might need new hot pads or towels or tongs or

something like that. And we're not combining it, the food

department is still the food department and this is still

that department. So you know, the whole point of omni channel

and frictionless buying is just that. And so don't segment how

you buy, if it's seasonal for that don't make it food. And I

think part of the issue and it happens this way at Tyson, it's

not throwing stones is there's individual VPs of departments

that roll up to this. And so there's this vision, but we

really haven't unlocked it because no one's willing to give

up their space on the platform and their pages to make this

kind of work.

Well. And, you know, I think that I don't know,

exactly in a vision, but I feel like what we heard and, and

promoted through that piece of work was really trying to remain

centered on the consumer, you know, if we can remain centered

on the needs of the consumer and creating value for that

consumer, ultimately the consumer is going to win and

then and then we're going to win.

Absolutely. Like I said, it always has to

start with the consumer. And I'm always suspicious of when it

doesn't, right. I'm always like, what are you selling? Right?

Well, we've covered a lot in in food, CPG,

we've talked about retail, we've talked about omni channel

transformation. I'm going to kind of kind of come back to

almost where we started, a little bit about your journey.

And maybe as you think about you know, as you lead teams and you

lead lots of teams with professionals that are building

their careers. What's one or two things that you look back on

What's going on here?

your career, you really learn that you think maybe gave you an

advantage or can give other people an advantage?

Oh, I love that question. The first one

that instantly popped to mind is a mentor. So all of my changes

in career, big changes so I was in the field working in college

and universities. And literally, I had a mentor who said, you

really kind of good at this marketing stuff. Have you ever

thought about marketing? If you've looked at my degrees

Hotel Restaurant Administration, I was not classically trained in

marketing. And I said, yeah, I do have an interest in that. And

he said, well, I think we have an opening, and are you willing

Well I feel like I heard a bit of a second one,

to move to our headquarter location, so I had to go from

the west coast to DC. And I'll give you a shot at this. So

mentor, having formal mentors. I think a lot of people have

informal mentors, but really formalize it, work at it. See

what areas of interest you have. Because there's one thing

learning at the school, the disciplines of supply chain and

logistics and brand marketing, and but then you get into the

business. And it's sometimes it can be different than what you

originally thought, or there might be a new evolving area,

right? We've, like I said, while all these new areas we pointed

out that didn't even exist, and like when we were going to

school, so it'll continue to evolve. So make sure you have a

good pulse on where where that lens is, the perspective of

business, what areas of interest you have, what mentors can help

you even if you have do informational interviews or

learning, get you connected to that, and then help coach and

guide you through your career. So number one, are, and it took

a long time, it wasn't until my 30s until I had a formal mentor.

So I wish I did that sooner. I wish I started saving in my 20s

better. And I wish I had formal mentors earlier is the first two

things. But that was the one thing and Paul Davis, my other

mentor on the Walmart team when I was on Walmart Deli. Actually,

I he was my mentor because he was D E and I, diversity, equity

and inclusion. And he said I think you should probably be

great at retail. And at that point, I only had foodservice.

He said, would you like to come on over to the Walmart team and

do deli because deli acts a lot like foodservice. And I said

sure, you know, I said yes, when those opportunities come at you.

And that brought me over to retail and I haven't left. So

those were two really pinnacle points in my career, one to

learn marketing and one to learn retail that were both brought to

me by exposure, by being part of like a business resource group

is where I first met Paul. So getting exposure, networking,

and then a mentor. And it might sound cliche, but it really does

work that way. So that's the first thing when you said, the

question that really changed some of my trajectory from that

perspective, and I'm trying to think beyond that.

which was say, yes, you've said yes to many different types of

challenges. And maybe they weren't always exactly linear.

Yeah, I am at heart, I'm a curious person.

We talked about curiosity, and I'm kind of a nerd. I'm like a

Star Wars geek and Lord of the Rings, and all those kinds of

sci fi and love to read still, so you know, it's the old school

stuff. And so I like a different challenge. So I do like to learn

and I like to be challenged. I'm just I knew I never wanted to be

a specialist at something. And I applaud everyone who does do

that and has expertise. And I literally am a jack of all

trades, master of none, because I like being able to because I

want to see all the parts to something to then be able to

have, like I mentioned that influence. But there's different

career paths for different people, I mentor people who are

experts in IT, and they are just want to be an IT field. And

that's what they want to do. And I completely applaud that as

well. So it's, you know, that's what it's about with diversity,

equity and inclusion is just getting exposure and making sure

you're helping people guide you on the right path. But just make

sure you're open to different experiences. And saying yes,

even though it has trials and tribulations, is probably some

of the best thing I've done in my life.

Well, what a great way to end. You know,

Wendy Jean, I must say thank you for your leadership and thank

you for engaging with the Walton College. Tyson Foods is a

wonderful partner. We have so many alums there and you hire

our students. We have interns there as we speak. So

we do you do

Thank you for that partnership. And thank you

for joining us today.

Well, we love the Walton College. I

really have enjoyed my time getting to talk to you. And heck

if anyone out there wants some mentoring or anything else

offline, WendyJeanBennett@tyson.com. So

please reach out or reach out on LinkedIn and can connect you.

Thank you so much.

You're very welcome.

On behalf of the Walton College thank you for

joining us for this captivating conversation, to stay connected

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