Parents and Carers: Driving Challenger Brand Growth Through Connection and Content, with Emily Jones, Ecommerce Channel Controller at HiPP Organic

Transcript

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Lauren Livak Gilbert (00:00):

Welcome to Unpacking the Digital Shelf, where industry leaders share insights, strategies, and stories to help brands win in the ever-changing world of commerce.

 

Peter Crosby (00:22):

Hi, everyone. Peter Crosby here from the Digital Shelf Institute. Being a challenger brand in the highly competitive baby formula category is not for the faint of heart. To the contrary, at hip organic, it takes a lot of heart, built from the family founders who needed a formula that their own child could tolerate. They now own 7% of the formula milk category in the UK and growing. Emily Jones, e-commerce channel controller at Hip Organic joined the podcast to walk us through the omnichannel journey that is intensely focused on the needs of the parents and carers that they strive to connect with wherever and however they want. Emily, welcome to the podcast. We are so excited to have you on.

 

Emily Jones (01:05):

Thank you. Thank you. I'm pleased to be here.

 

Peter Crosby (01:07):

So you're in a really cool and yet competitive space in the baby food category at Hip Organic, and it's a challenger brand. You are competing with the bigger players and you have probably a leaner marketing budget, I'm guessing, and smaller team, but you have a really clear picture of your consumer, from what I understand from watching a brand. So we'd love to start out just you telling us a little bit more about Hip and what are the business objectives that lead your day.

 

Emily Jones (01:41):

Sure. Yeah. So as I said, thanks for inviting me on, and it's actually lovely to be able to share a Challenger brand's perspective on e-commerce. So to share a little bit more about Hip, we're family-owned and run. As you said, we are a Challenger brand within the baby milk space. Our category is fascinating because we have parents and carers coming in and out, so it's a real leaky bucket. You've got to keep bringing people in. Yeah. And it's also very emotive. So you have becoming a parent's obviously wonderful, but it can also be incredibly stressful. So we have that part to work with. And then really what we are focused on is just trying to make parents and carers' lives that little bit easier and no matter what their decision's been on their feeding journey.

 

Peter Crosby (02:36):

And I'd love to know more about when you think about it competitively and also how you want to connect with your consumer, what sets Hip Organic apart? What do you folks lean into?

 

Emily Jones (02:47):

I think it's just truly trying to put ourselves into the parents and carers' shoes, to be honest. And actually, I think what helps is we are a big bunch of parents, different ages, different families, pet parents, baby parents, you name it. So yeah, I think what really ... And because we're also family owned and those values do come through quite strongly through the business too, I think that really helps and sets us apart.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (03:19):

Yeah. And at a smaller company, Emily, I mean, I'm sure you wear many, many hats and have many jobs and have your hands in many different things. So can you talk a little bit about your role and what you own?

 

Emily Jones (03:31):

Yes. Yeah. So I guess there are a lot of hats that we wear. It's a very broad scope, and I think that's quite typical of smaller businesses. What it really means is we are doing everything in a sense of we are leading and building that five-year strategy. We're responsible for how we show up on the digital shelf down to being in stock and also hitting our targets. So it's a very broad scope. We rely really, really heavily on our agency partners, so our Amazon agency, D2C fulfillment partners, so people that really specialize in these different areas. And then there's very strong cross-functional working when it comes to working with our operations and marketing teams. Again, I'd say being in a smaller business, it's kind of a bit easier in some respects because you can just walk across the office and go and have a chat with Anne or Adam, or it's a lot easier to collaborate and make decisions in that way.

 

Peter Crosby (04:44):

One thing I love was your title of e-commerce channel controller. And I thought, aha, you control these channels.

 

Emily Jones (04:53):

I try.

 

Peter Crosby (04:55):

Trying to wrangle them in. And I was just wondering, because you mentioned D2C and also Amazon. Can you tell us a bit about your digital channel strategy and do you ultimately want to get people into D2C or does it not matter? How do you think about them all in the lifetime of a consumer?

 

Emily Jones (05:15):

Really good question. Yeah, we've put a lot of work into reviewing all of the insights that we have to really understand more about the shopper journey. So how are shoppers engaging with our brands on the digital shelf? Where are they choosing to purchase and when? And then that's what we've then fed into our strategy really. So as an example, if you look at the likes of Amazon, say, what you'd probably have is a shopper researching on Amazon. They've decided what brand they want. So they're wanting to read more into the brand, but then they may actually want to go to a physical shop, which people still do, crazy, to buy that product because they want to feel it and touch it, and this is what they're going to feed the baby. And then they may come back to e-commerce to subscribe because they've made their decision.

 

(06:13):

It's heavy, it's quite expensive. They'll then want to subscribe. And so yeah, what we've tried to do is get really clear on what the different areas of e-comm offer our shoppers, what they want from us really, and then build our range and content to work with that.

 

(06:35):

And it's crazy working across the ... Be all of those retailers are different. The fulfillment routes with those retailers are all completely different. But yeah, our end goal is just being where the shopper is and making it as frictionless as possible for them.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (06:54):

To

 

Emily Jones (06:54):

Worry about.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (06:56):

Yeah, no, that is enough to worry about for sure. And from a content perspective though, since you own the digital shelf, do you own the content in all of those different channels? Because I feel like that could make it easier to keep consistency across D2C and your PDP and your retail media ads and everything.

 

Emily Jones (07:12):

Yeah. So it's all kind of managed in- house. And so our marketing team, somebody in our marketing team is overly responsible for all of our content, but then each part of those different areas of content are developed based on the platform. And so what you see on our D2C would differ to what you see on Amazon, for example, versus what you see with any grocery.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (07:40):

But it's the same brand voice across each of them, right? Okay.

 

Emily Jones (07:44):

Exactly. Yes, exactly. And I think that's where it helped with marketing, owning it. So that kind of tone of voice is the same, but what is said and even the images could be different depending on the channel that you're shopping on.

 

Peter Crosby (07:59):

Particularly because I imagine as a challenger brand and you talking about it being a family-owned company, it's very important for those things, I would imagine, to ring through no matter where you discover because it is such a crowded category and there are very loud voices in it.

 

Emily Jones (08:17):

Yeah. And in some respects, it's lovely because I've worked for big businesses where we didn't actually have a story to tell. And we created incubator brands that really were from a big corporate. Whereas I think what's lovely about Hip is you basically had two parents that were struggling to feed their twins that developed a formula and then started to sell it. So that kind of story and that heritage is- That

 

Peter Crosby (08:47):

Ethos. Yeah.

 

Emily Jones (08:48):

Yeah, it's already there and it's still felt through the business today, which I think is very unique.

 

Peter Crosby (08:55):

And Emily, you report up through sales or?

 

Emily Jones (08:59):

Yeah.

 

Peter Crosby (08:59):

Okay. Okay. And so that makes me think about the working an omnichannel campaign through that way across your organization. How do you get everyone aligned? And of course we're in a period of a lot of change and the shopper with Agentic and things like that, it seems they get even more control and you folks in some ways get less control. So I'm just wondering how the organization works itself through that process and through the change that is constantly happening in this business.

 

Emily Jones (09:36):

Yeah. And I think it is. It's constant change management and you think you've got one thing sorted and then something else pops up. And I think that's why we all love working in digital slashy commerce because we must all get bored easily. But yeah, it keeps us on that. A lot of

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (09:54):

Slash hate, right? I feel like there's a little slash in there. The

 

Emily Jones (09:59):

Slight ... Yeah. Yes.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (10:01):

Your

 

Emily Jones (10:01):

Eye twitching.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (10:02):

Yep, I get it.

 

Emily Jones (10:03):

Exactly. Yeah, I was just thinking that's probably not captured. Yeah. So I'd say I think there's two things. We have to really focus on bringing people on the journey with us, and then also being really clear on priorities. And those two elements are fundamental to driving any change, I think, through any business. So if I talk to maybe bringing people on the journey and what that looks like, we spent a lot of time upfront myth busting because I share it as skeletons in closets, but there are those hypotheses, those worries that you could bring a proposal to your leadership team and it's a no immediately because you haven't understood their concerns.

 

Peter Crosby (10:52):

Everything that

 

Emily Jones (10:53):

Lies

 

Peter Crosby (10:54):

Around in the dusty corners of-

 

Emily Jones (10:55):

It's kind of bubbling. Yeah, exactly.

 

Peter Crosby (10:57):

Yeah.

 

Emily Jones (10:58):

So that's been the first most helpful step I think that we took. And then it's also engaging that broader internal team so that they understand the context behind any of those priorities that we've set ourselves. And again, what that looks like is we would bring that broader Amazon team to our Amazon quarterly business review, for example. And it's just helping people understand why we do what we do. And then I think the bit that's been hardest for me as quite an agreeable, personable millennial woman was just being really direct and saying the thing and asking for help and escalating when there are roadblocks, I think probably learned the hard way that it just needs to get done. But yeah, so I'd say from bringing people on the journey, you've got that side. And then if I talk to quickly how we focus on priorities, in a smaller business, it's really tempting to say yes to everything, which we can't resource.

 

(12:13):

So it becomes like, what are we actually not going to do? And then setting maximum three to five priority areas, building the project team around those projects, and then yet focusing quarterly on tracking those projects through versus the KPIs that we've set.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (12:36):

And from that perspective, Emily, I'm curious, because things change so rapidly in our industry, how do you think about adaptable planning? So maybe you set those three priorities and then you check in for the quarter and you're like, oh no, maybe we need to shift this in or out. Do you have a way to be flexible and how do you convince finance and legal and everyone else to be on board with that flexibility?

 

Emily Jones (13:02):

Yeah, I think actually one thing that's really reassuring is we have as a business move to quarterly planning. Yeah, I think so. And we will only ever plan the next quarter out, so your current quarter, next quarter. And then as you say, things are changing all the time. And so that might mean that something new and shiny comes up. And then at that point we'll be like, well, is it right to focus on this? If yes, again, what are we not going to do as a consequence of this? And I'd say agentic commerce, AI, they're all- Speaking of shiny. Areas. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Peter Crosby (13:49):

And just staying on this omnichannel piece just a little bit more, I'm just wondering, because I imagined that your roots are in store, that's where the real relationship started to be built. And how does the overall, at this point in your tenure, how does the overall organization, and maybe particularly leadership, think about the importance or lack thereof? Where are they on the, we're really leaning into this or it's critical to our omnichannel success. And I'm just wondering where that sort of mindset is at this

 

Emily Jones (14:28):

Point. Yeah, and we are. I think quite a few food and beverage brands, we are weighted more heavily towards traditional, what we call traditional trade stores. And we still are today, but we can see that, again, it's parents and carers, the parents and carers, our future parents and carers are Gen Z, and they're digital first, they may still go to a shop, but I do think that percentage of sales, it will continue to- And the

 

Peter Crosby (15:03):

Influence

 

Emily Jones (15:04):

Of it.

 

Peter Crosby (15:04):

Yeah.

 

Emily Jones (15:05):

Exactly. Yes. Yeah. So I'd say from a digital marketing perspective, I feel really proud of where we are in a sense of how we're showing up when shoppers, when parents and carers are looking to research for us, how we're showing up I think is helpful and unique and also authentic to us as a brand. I'd like to answer the point. So the kind of strategic importance, I would say I'm a perfectionist, so it will never be probably as important as I would like it to be, but I work in digital commerce. So yeah, I would say that we do have that support and we've got that team in place, but there is still friction, I would say when you work in a traditional trade kind

 

Peter Crosby (16:00):

Of

 

Emily Jones (16:00):

Business.

 

Peter Crosby (16:02):

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Can I just ask you one more question because I keep hearing you say parents and carers and I would love to ... The carers is a new ... I was wondering what that term signifies separately from is it ... Yeah, anyway, I would love to just understand

 

Emily Jones (16:19):

That. Oh, yeah. I think I just always say it because I feel like it's inclusive in a sense. Yeah, no, no, it is. I was just wondering what's

 

Peter Crosby (16:26):

Inclusive of.

 

Emily Jones (16:28):

Yeah, I think it's just because I know they say it takes a village and I think it does. So it's literally like it might not just be your kind of parents, it could be grandparents or extended family or even childcare settings really. It's just to acknowledge that you've got that broader network now.

 

Peter Crosby (16:51):

And do you message to carers at all or is it just you use that language, but it's really the same message to out to market? Yeah.

 

Emily Jones (17:00):

Yeah, essentially, yes. Yeah, because it would be, I guess our kind of communications with parents and go back to it again, parents care. It must have been drilled into me. Yeah, we would essentially communicate with whoever contacts our feedback. Yeah, exactly. And then also in our marketing content, again, we would be very inclusive of that kind of broader village that it takes to help raise a baby.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (17:33):

But I think that's a great point that you know your consumer and you know who's involved, and so you're messaging to them in an authentic way. And I think that speaks to who you are as a brand and how you care about who you're serving. So I think that's amazing. And then Emily, you've mentioned a bit, you're a challenger brand, right? We know this. And there's other bigger brands that might have very, very big marketing budgets. And so there's always a question, maybe. There's always a question, how do you compete if you don't have the large marketing budgets? How do you think about that differently from a challenger brand side?

 

Emily Jones (18:11):

Yeah. Yes. So yeah, sadly, we can't outspend them. We'd love to. So yeah, it does mean that we have to do things differently. And I think from our side, I guess the benefit is we can be quite nimble and we can test and learn. We don't need to ask for lots of permission through different levels to get things away. So I think really we have to be more targeted to what we're trying to do because we can't grow everything across every platform. So yeah, it's just really about being nimble, moving quickly, testing and learning. If something's working, we do more of it. If something doesn't work, we stop it. And that's what we have to do essentially.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (19:07):

And how does that work with testing new channels? Because sometimes that also takes budget. So you can't have too many tests going on and then you also have to run the base business and you need to figure out, is it the right channel to work with? So how do you balance that kind of perspective?

 

Emily Jones (19:23):

Yeah. And I think we have the added complexity as well of once you've added a new channel in, you have to manage it as well. So you've kind of got that initial part of like, right, we want to launch this new channel, for example, we think it's really relevant to Gen Z. We'd have to go away and cost all of that up, but then we also have to think about, well, who's going to do this work as well? So that would form an important part of it. When there's an opportunity, I think our leadership team's very open to ... If it's going to help us grow and be more relevant for shoppers, nine times out of 10, I'd say we do the thing, but then it becomes more about how do we resource that channel and then- It goes back

 

Peter Crosby (20:16):

Up to your, what do you say no to? What

 

Emily Jones (20:18):

Do you

 

Peter Crosby (20:18):

Shift around?

 

Emily Jones (20:19):

Yeah, exactly. And then it could be actually, we do want to do this, but here's an agency that does it really well. So we'll maybe own the comms side of it, but they could run it from a fulfillment perspective, for example, that's kind of almost not outsourcing, but leaning on specialists in those areas. Absolutely. It's such a complex

 

Peter Crosby (20:40):

Area. Yeah.

 

Emily Jones (20:41):

It's such

 

Peter Crosby (20:42):

A complex area and there's a reason why agencies exist. And so you want to be able to lean into that, especially with a small team to just get that additional expertise of working with a bunch of different people and having resources that can flex at the agency-

 

Emily Jones (21:01):

Exactly. ... when

 

Peter Crosby (21:01):

Needed. Yeah.

 

Emily Jones (21:02):

Yeah.

 

Peter Crosby (21:04):

Yeah. I mean, you said the keyword, which is growth. I mean, the big question, and I mean, birth rates, given what they are in various countries, growth has to be, I would imagine, largely achieved by stealing market share or as you said, finding a new channel in order to steal market share or something like that. Is that how you think about it? That's where you have to capture new consumers and take them away from other people or find a way to get to the new parent or the

 

Emily Jones (21:35):

Oncoming

 

Peter Crosby (21:36):

Parents earlier in a way.

 

Emily Jones (21:38):

Yeah. I think if I think one of our retail partners, yes, we're a challenger brand, so we are here to disrupt and to gain share away from those larger brands. I think where we are helpful is we're organic and the category isn't 100% organic, so we lead in that area and then it's us just really focusing on that strength. So some parents and carers will choose organic, above non-organic, for example. So it's just building to our strengths, and that helps drive the category value too, alongside it.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (22:23):

So Emily, I'm assuming you don't have a lot of new products that you put out, right? It could be maybe a refresh or a packaging change or something like that. So how do you think about continuously engaging with parents? Is it engaging with them on educational content? Is it talking about restocking? I'm just curious, you don't have a lot of new products and a lot of other brands might, so how do you think about keeping that relationship up?

 

Emily Jones (22:50):

Yeah, and I think you're right. There aren't huge amounts of innovation, especially not in baby milk or formula milk. So you're right, we have to just keep that conversation going. And to be honest, it's more from a marketing and our consumer perspective in a sense of how we communicate, whether that be through brand ambassadors, building communities, social media, how we keep engaging with those parents and carers, but again, in a relevant way. So we're giving them useful information. We're not just there saying, "Hey, buy us. We're the best." It's more like you might be struggling with sleep, you might be struggling with transitioning to feeding up a bottle. There's various different areas that we know parents and carers do actually need support. It's more weighing into those conversations and trying to help them at the best possible time.

 

Peter Crosby (23:58):

So the ability to tell those deeper stories, to add channels, to test and learn, that's someplace where I would think AI could be helpful to you to maybe help you achieve some of that additional scale or ability to reach even finer slices of your consumer. And then additionally, where AI is now becoming, as we talked about a little bit about this earlier, of the shopper's new shelf is the agentic shelf. And I'm just wondering how you think about AI and employing that to both serve your work, but then also to show up for the consumer.

 

Emily Jones (24:47):

Yes, and it is baby milk, it's a really high consideration category, so it is influencing and I think we'll continue to influence that kind of consideration/decision-making phase of their feeding journey. And so yeah, it is super relevant. I think that we've been fortunate to show up quite strongly in some of these queries to date, which is great. And I do think that that's very intentional because our digital marketing team have, as I said, are focused on ensuring that our content's all very relevant and it's giving parents and carers information around topics and areas that they may be struggling with or might want reassurance around. Yeah, I'm quite excited by it because I just want to know more and more about it in a sense of if we can get closer to what kind of queries, what kind of questions people are asking, what do they want to know, then I think again, that helps us develop our content to be even more relevant in the future, not to rank higher, but more to just be like, actually, if we keep just bringing it back to what do they want to know when they're making these kind of queries and searches and how can we best answer that, then I think we naturally will return really well because we're giving them what they need.

 

Peter Crosby (26:24):

Well, and that's the thing about being a challenger brand and having such a strong ethos is that I would imagine that that appreciation flows through to your consumers and they share, they talk, they

 

Emily Jones (26:38):

Comment.

 

Peter Crosby (26:39):

So as you lose direct control

 

Emily Jones (26:42):

Over,

 

Peter Crosby (26:44):

You can't really control Agentic.

 

Emily Jones (26:46):

No, no. But

 

Peter Crosby (26:48):

The people you know can, the people that are connected to your brand and probably influencers that you do have relationships with, I would imagine, things like that. But that's where I think the authenticity shines through in that environment versus brand spending power and things like that.

 

Emily Jones (27:10):

Yeah, you're right, because I think that people share the good and the bad, don't they? But I think you know if you've got a strong brand, if you look at those reviews and your review ranking is high and people just can't help but talk about it. If it's made a difference to their baby in whatever way or to them, they will share it, thankfully alongside the other elements where they might not be so happy with their delivery or whatever, but-

 

Peter Crosby (27:41):

But

 

Emily Jones (27:41):

Then

 

Peter Crosby (27:41):

It's how you show up in that moment, which I

 

Emily Jones (27:43):

Imagine

 

Peter Crosby (27:44):

As a challenger brand, you're very present for those conversations.

 

Emily Jones (27:48):

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, I'd take that almost a step further because when we do have challenges, say for example, even with a delivery, that comes straight back to our team internally. We'll go and try and fault fix and understand what's happened there and then put a solution in place, which I think would potentially set us apart to a bigger business where your account manager may not even know that that's happened.

 

Peter Crosby (28:18):

And the delivery of your baby formula, I would imagine is a very important thing to get right.

 

Emily Jones (28:25):

Exactly. Yes, it is.

 

Peter Crosby (28:29):

Well, Emily, thank you for walking us through your business and how you folks think about it and the work that you put into showing up for your consumers in such an authentic and really empathetic way, I think speaks incredibly well of your organization. And what you've built there in your time there is just, it really does ... I think you feel, you sort of express the difference that it makes across the omnichannel journey. And I think that's, again, where the growth is going to come from. So thank you so much for sharing all that with us. We really appreciate

 

Emily Jones (29:06):

It. Thank you. Well, thank you for inviting me on. I really appreciate it.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (29:09):

Thanks so much, Emily.

 

Peter Crosby (29:11):

Thanks again to Emily for sharing their omnichannel journey. It's the kind of generous spirit that makes the DSI community so vibrant. If you aren't a member already, swing on over to digitalshelfinstitute.org to become one. You'll find your people there. Thanks for being part of our community.