Legal Can Be Your Best Commercial Business Partner, with Josh Jacobs, Legal DiReckittor at North America Core Reckitt

Transcript

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Peter Crosby (00:00):

Welcome to unpacking the Digital Shelf where we explore brand manufacturing in the digital age. Hey everyone. Peter Crosby here from The Digital Shelf Institute. Risk versus Reward. Does it always need to be a binary choice? Do you and your legal teams always need to be at odds? Well, there's a new lawyer in town and Josh Jacobs, legal diReckittor at North America Core Record and his team have invested a ton of time and effort in building out a process of collaboration, education, and intense communication to change that paradigm and make his record legal team a powerful partner in lowering risk and increasing the rewards. Josh joined Lauren Livak Gilbert and me to explain the innovative mindset and strong empathy for business objectives he brings to the challenging areas of risk management, brand protection, and consumer privacy. It's a really fresh perspective and a competitive advantage, and he brought along Mr. Mucus. Josh, we are so excited to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for joining us.

Josh Jacobs (01:17):

Thank you very much, Peter. I'm very excited to be here.

Peter Crosby (01:19):

Lauren and I have been trying to trick, sorry, I mean entice someone from the legal team on the podcast forever. So thank you so much for being brave enough to join us and share your knowledge. We're really grateful. Compliance, privacy and other legal issues, it plays such an important role in how products are represented in the market and the consumer's trust and confidence, so that collaboration between your team and all the parties involved in getting a product to market is really crucial. That's why we're so thrilled. And so we have so many questions, but let's start with your role and what your responsibilities are at Reckitt.

Josh Jacobs (01:59):

Sure. I'm Peter. I am enthusiastic to be here because Thank you. I think that partnership between legal and the commercial teams is very important and only increasingly important as we move into a more digital environment. There's just that much more content. We're moving that much faster. If we're not working collaboratively, then the system will fall apart and then legal will have no involvement in what we're bringing to market. So we need to assert ourself to be at the table, and I'm saying that to you as the legal diReckittor for the core Reckitt portfolio, north America at Reckitt. So what is within Core record is our biggest brands in North America are Lysol, Mucinex, Finnish, our VMS or dietary supplements portfolio, which is Airborne Riva Digestive Advantage, move free Mega Red. Our intimate wellness portfolio, which is diReckitts Ky Clearasil and Vet in Personal Care and Biofreeze and Therapro and a few other smaller brands finished Dishwashing detergent is a relatively large part of the portfolio as well.

Peter Crosby (03:30):

So you're really an obscure small company in the space and

Josh Jacobs (03:33):

Not busy at all. We are one of the global leading CPG companies across different parts of what you will see when someone in your household is sick. You probably have Mucinex, cecal or DUM in your

Peter Crosby (03:50):

House. Saved my life this winter. I'll tell you it was a winter viruses

Josh Jacobs (03:56):

And you're probably using one of our Lysol products. You probably have, but don't tell me if you have Cascade for your dishwasher instead of finish, but you might be using Jet Dry, you might be taking Airborne Gummies after working out. You might use one of our Biofreeze products. We are in your household most likely.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (04:23):

So Josh, in that role as lead digital counsel, how do you touch e-commerce? Can you tell us a bit about how you get involved with the e-commerce team in digital?

Josh Jacobs (04:35):

Yeah, e-commerce is certainly one of the teams that we engage with. I started at Reckitt as the end-to-end lead counsel for e-commerce. And I don't think that I would be in the role I'm in today if I didn't have the opportunity to be on the e-commerce leadership team and really understand from the beginning with inputs from people from supply and finance and certainly marketing and sales, but across the whole platform, having an end-to-end team that has to move quickly really forces you to learn the full spectrum of the business. So there's really nowhere that gives you the opportunity to quickly understand a relatively complicated business the way that e-commerce does. And that's not a pitch to say that people should find a career in e-commerce, but it's really to say that e-commerce is most likely kind of the focal point. If your company is doing something, you are posting something online or you're posting something through social media and that's where people are likely to see it. So it's just more visible.

(05:59):

I get up to speed with things because we have to push out content, we have to figure out what the digital risks are associated with things that we're doing. And it's certainly because of that, it's a quick fast paced environment with legal challenges that don't really have easy answers or answers that people know about. It's not an established area of law like contract law where someone could point back to what laws were being established in the 17 hundreds. These are things like AI or privacy or security where people are thinking about it and laws are being generated around it right now.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (06:47):

So speaking of that, Josh, in terms of collaboration between legal and the e-commerce team and that complexity and trying to figure out what the right answer is, how would you define successful collaboration or what things have been helpful for you to really collaborate?

Josh Jacobs (07:05):

The most important thing for successful collaboration is to bring in the cross-functional support people as early as possible. And it's okay to say right now, this is too much of a concept. We don't need to talk yet, but thank you at least for informing me that this is something you're thinking about. The advantage of that is that teams like legal or supply or finance can probably pick up on what are potential risks or pitfalls in an idea and be able to say, we're not saying no, we're saying think about this and there may be additional costs or burdens that you're going to need to overcome to get this to market.

Peter Crosby (07:48):

And Josh, in terms of that collaboration, the commercial teams are all about speed and the sooner you get to market, the sooner you're making the money and pleasing the consumer. But the things you talk about, privacy and compliance, they all require caution to a certain degree. And I'm just wondering how you work through those potential tension points and have that, what is it that you need in place between the human beings kind of working through this that makes it work? Does that make sense?

Josh Jacobs (08:35):

Yes. I hope that we're not, our goal is to facilitate or enable the business to do what they would like to do, but to inform them about the risks and the level of risk attached to some of the activities that they want to do and try to mitigate the risks. Or if we need to just say our opinion is what you're going forward with is too risky for something that we would advise doing. I think that you need to build trust and credibility

(09:13):

With your commercial stakeholders and you need to understand the business and understand business priorities and understand what is the potential size of what we're talking about. So if there's a project that is a high priority, I would say it is easy to push back to say if the business is saying there's tremendous opportunity with something we're doing well, there also then may be on the flip of that, an even greater magnitude of risk associated with it. So something where you're going to say, we're launching a TV commercial at the Super Bowl, something with that is going to have more risk than if you're going to say this is going to go on the Instagram handle of a brand and it's going to be up for two days. So I think it involves, I want all lawyers on my team to know the business well enough to be able to understand and calibrate risk associated with the nature of what we're doing.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (10:21):

And Josh, you talked about level of risk and that was something when I was on the brand side, we talked a lot about with legal because digitals and I'm air quoting here, level of risk can be much lower than something that can't be changed or is in writing and going on a wall or something like that. So when you say level of risk, how do you kind of define that with your stakeholder partners? I know there's complexity to it, but at a high level, how would you describe that?

Josh Jacobs (10:53):

I think that that's a constant struggle, Lauren, in terms of how do we make sure we're speaking the same language here in terms of what is risk. And I think that involves kind of talking that through and say, well, does high risk mean that I will tomorrow get challenged with a $100 million class action lawsuit? Does high risk mean that I will get a warning letter from a regulatory body? I think that we need to work that out, and that's one of the biggest challenges that in-house legal teams face is a lot of times people will come from a law firm environment where you advise on what is the law and any level of deviation from what the law would say to do. And not saying violating the law, I'm saying in terms of are there risks associated given the diReckittion of interest for regulatory bodies or what would be something that a plaintiff lawyer would be looking for?

(11:58):

Our answer is to, with the best amount of data we can provide, give you an answer for what type of activity would carry risk and what is the relative size of the risk. But to your point, absolutely there's different types of risk associated with what goes on pack of a product versus what's something that lives only in a digital environment because something that lives in a digital environment can be removed quickly, which means not only can you take down the content in a very short period of time, but also when you do so it greatly limits the amount of eyeballs that are going to be on something.

Peter Crosby (12:48):

Imagine a new head of e-commerce comes to one of your areas at Reckitt. What would be the top five things you should know about making your go-to market process as pain-free as possible from a legal and risk perspective? In other words, what things would you advise them like, Hey, here's the best way we can work together to be able to get in front of issues. What are the things that they should tell you? I'd love just your thought on sort of a little prep document for process. What would be really helpful

Josh Jacobs (13:25):

Process?

(13:25):

Yeah, what would be really helpful is to understand what the high level priorities are of the team so that when projects come through the legal team, we can contextualize them and also prioritize things. And people need to be increasingly comfortable with the idea that what the numbers are in terms of if yesterday priorities were 1, 2, 3, these different things that can change on the fly. So you also need to build a relationship so that you can say, I've got 10 things in front of me today. I'm not going to be able to work through all 10 of them based on my understanding from yesterday. This is my understanding of how to prioritize the workflow. Is that still how we're working? What to you business are the top priorities that we need to get out the door because it's not going to be, the business likes to say everything needs to get out the door in 24 hours. Well, that's not going to happen. And so we need to be able to push back both in terms of saying, so we need to share with each other and understanding, know what the priorities of the business are, know what the top objectives are, know where the big bets are, and also what we need to then do is be a credible partner so that we're trusted when we say, that may be a big bet for you, but let's slow down and talk through it.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (14:59):

I love that you guys sometimes have to slow down to go well quickly, but if you are collaborative and you're working together, then it can all be successfully worked through. So I love those examples. And Josh, do you have any specific examples of a collaboration with a brand or specific teams that really worked well and any kind of highlights from those collabs?

Josh Jacobs (15:22):

I mean all the time, I think that there's very good examples of how we collaborate. I think that we have good content across our portfolio. I think that they're trying to do things that have their own unique voice. I think that we've done great things to make Mr. Mucus an iconic and respected figure in the world of cold and flu that differentiates Mucinex,

Peter Crosby (15:58):

Mr. Mucus tm, I'm sure.

Josh Jacobs (16:01):

Yeah. Yes, that

Peter Crosby (16:02):

Guy has trademarked.

Josh Jacobs (16:04):

Yes, but a lot of fun around that and how we've used Mr. Mucus in social media to build upon the personality. Lysol has maintained it's leading position. I think that even beyond the category, it's the number three or at least the top five trusted brand in the country, just like a name. So Google it has not even just in the cleaning space. So to be able to work through Covid and kind of expand its reach as a category, as a brand that's taken a lot of great collaboration and digital is part of the strategy. We are always thinking about what role does digital play in terms of what is the go-to market messaging for a brand? I think with some of our brands as well, sometimes we've done a great job leveraging organic content. I remember a few years ago, I think Cardi B said she loved Veep and we were able to reach out to her agency and able to leverage that ourselves. And I thought that was a really good example that a lot of brands try really hard to work with influencers. And sometimes the best way to get content is have really good products that people like and people will on their own endorse or promote your product. And there's nothing better than something that's authentic.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (17:57):

The fact that organic and about search and how that works, I think that is a very strong testament to you having the education and the understanding of e-commerce. And I think it's a great call out to brands to say, if you haven't helped to educate your legal teams on the right lingo and understanding the business, that is a number one factor here. You can speak the language of the brands and you understand why all of this is important, but if you didn't have that, I feel like you couldn't do your job effectively. Right?

Josh Jacobs (18:32):

Absolutely. And these are conversations that I have all the time and the ability to understand things from a technical and operational perspective is critical to be able to help 'em in conversations I had with some leaders yesterday on one of our parts of our portfolio that has significant amounts of consumer data, and we were talking through, they asked me, what is the five-year horizon from a privacy perspective? And we were talking through what data points do you need, what's critical? And I was really pushing them to say, you're collecting some of these data points today because they're offered to you by a service provider, but my challenge to you would be can you collect less personal data and then try to use the fact that I know that you guys work with another partner for CDP augmentation. Can you use lookalike or matching to build some of the data that you would want so that you're reducing your potential exposure on a personal information respect, but still drive to your media objectives? So I think it was important that I understand not just what the business does, but what's critical to the business to say, are there ways that you can reach your objectives while also reducing your legal risk in the future?

Peter Crosby (20:09):

That's really impressive because I was actually about to ask a question just about the overall regulatory environment, and it does seem that there's going to be continued scrutiny on the use of personally identifiable information and people's privacy. And I love that question that they asked you. It's like, what is this going to look five years from now? I mean, that also shows that they're thinking about they don't want to have this conversation every day. They want to try and figure out a way to work that feels like it's going to be a sustainable approach that protects both the company and the consumer at the same time and also satisfies regulatory things that are changing all the time. Just wondering how you're feeling about that regulatory environment right now. So chaotic at the moment in the world, and it does feel to a certain degree, like some governments understandably maybe are using regulatory action to act about things that are happening in other spheres and to exert control where maybe in other areas they no longer have control. I won't dig into any of the details other than that. I think it's a very active roiling ocean right now and I'm wondering how you feel about it.

Josh Jacobs (21:40):

Anyone in corporate America would tell you that it is a very uncertain world and we are every day trying to calibrate to wade through the chaos as much as we can to understand what we can do. We're a global company. We have raw materials that are sourced from different places. We have production in different places. There are different things that resonate with consumers. And so I think that understanding that there are also different regulatory actors. That was also something that I try to make sure the teams are conscious of. When there's something that's done, whether it's the US federal government, whether it's an EU law, there also are the state of California also reacts sometimes in concert and sometimes in reaction to what's going on at the federal level. And then outside of just government bodies, I think the teams also need to be attuned to what are the types of things that a consumer just expects that might not be a legal requirement, but also would there be reputational risks or harms associated with doing something that might be legally permissible but might not be desirable to a consumer?

(23:23):

And those are things that I think that we need to also be challenging ourselves on. I don't really think we should be, even for a lot of these things, asking the question of what's the exact legal requirement I think we should be asking what would a reasonable consumer expect? And are we meeting their expectations? And whether that's privacy and someone saying, and I try to put things in those terms in terms of saying someone might think doing something like this could come across as creepy, so let's just take a step back and kind of think that through because the answer really is not determined by what is legally permissible, but what would make someone trust us and make us a brand that they want to have in their house?

Peter Crosby (24:18):

Yeah, we just recently came out of our digital shelf summit where so much of the conversation was about the ability to be able to scale how you present yourselves and your products to consumers, how the desire of companies to try and try and create content that fits more and more niches of personas because that makes for a better experience for the consumer. At the same time, what that requires is a lot more data, not only for that purpose to be able to have multiple versions of every product that might be persona focused, but also how much data, large language models want to suck up, especially the data that comes from manufacturers because that's the most reliable and trustworthy data that exists in the world. And so I'm wondering sort of on two sides of ai, one is that sort of increasing of the flywheel of compliance checks that will need to happen on one side. Can ai, how do you view AI as a potential ally in your work to deal with the scale of what it is that you have to do? And then secondly, how do you think about what are the rules of AI for people at Reckitt to be able to engage in the use of AI to get their work done? Can you talk about both sides of that? And I can remind you of any piece of that as you go through your answers if you like. Sorry, multipart question.

Josh Jacobs (26:03):

I'll try to talk generally about gen ai. So first we have, and I appreciate that companies are all over the place. I think last year I was on a panel about gen AI and we have a policy for use. We have some governance rules. We have AI champions that will funnel something through on a function and region basis to a centralized team that will help with the structures and have an assessment tool put in place that's calibrated against the EU AI Act. I think we have a relatively mature AI governance structure. We also have put forth a good number of resources towards building out AI use cases. We're certainly looking for it in the innovation space. We're looking for it where we can try to find efficiencies so that some of the more administrative type tasks we can see if there's a way to safely leverage gen AI learnings. One of the things that I've been pushing our team really hard on is exactly to your point Peter, are there things that are we can use within the legal team? There absolutely are. And I think those are things that we're trying to test and we're trying to make people feel more comfortable with the idea. So we are pushing for a claims pre-consult tool that is built with inputs from legal and regulatory and medical and r and d, and also has some learning capabilities. These are things that we'll see how they do.

(28:13):

I think though with gen AI generally and legal is a team of people that are highly skeptical of all things, but I think that it usually, I think people are positively surprised by the capabilities at this point of some of the tools, especially tools that we can build.

Peter Crosby (28:40):

Yeah, I mean, just hearing you list out the robustness of that program is so impressive because being at the summit, and Lauren, you probably can reinforce this as well, I talk to people whose companies are like, there's no AI happening at our company, including in the word brain. It's just not allowed all the way up to, and I think I would put you at the top, I mean hearing the description of it at the top of companies that are leaning into it, building structures. And that's just so impressive. And I think it's so competitively critical when we look at cost margins and the need for efficiency, but also the desire to drive better experiences and better performance. So it's super impressive to just hear what you've described there. Not usual, I dunno if you know that.

Josh Jacobs (29:40):

Well, it's not realistic to tell people they can't use something that they know will help 'em, so people will find ways around it. So I think that, and I appreciate that, Peter. I understand that other companies are trying really hard. We are aware of that, and we certainly did put up guardrails to make it harder for people to use gen AI in an unauthorized way to push and really as quickly as we could pilot some things, which there's a few projects in pilot phases right now to try to get people to leverage it. But beyond that, there's many vendors that offer services where they're using gen ai. And what I would say is to all those companies that are banning the use of AI within the walls of their operations, they're probably using third party partners that are, I mean, agencies will say, we'll use Gen AI to create content for you. I think that if you have a little bit of control over it yourself, it'll probably be less expensive and probably be higher quality content.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (31:04):

I also just think it's important to know what questions to ask. To your point about agencies, brands should know, you should work with your legal teams to understand are they using ai? Are we comfortable with that? I think it creates a whole new set of operating rules and questions for onboarding technology agencies, partners in any way that I think partnering with your legal team is such a critical aspect of that.

Josh Jacobs (31:31):

I would encourage them to partner with their legal teams because I know for sure that brands are doing this and that they're working with agencies or consultants to drive to build things, and they will be asked questions that they're not necessarily expecting. And this is a real opportunity for legal to show that they can have some strategic leadership by going to their teams and trying to get an understanding of is this an open source or closed source tool that's being built? What are the inputs to it? What type of guardrails do we have in place? I mean, I've asked questions, just kind of say, well, when something is built, whether internally or externally, does it then just go live or I'm sure then it gets to a point where it's put in front of some human beings and we look at the output and that is the answer that the brands want.

(32:36):

They want to have some ownership, but they need to ask that question. And they certainly need to be asking what type of material is going into the tool to make sure that both, that we're not running into any IP misuse or infringement issues to say, oh yeah, it's just pulling from anywhere in the internet. Well, that's sure problematic, but also even if it's an internal closed network, is it pulling out things that are not public facing and are there proprietary or confidentiality type risks? And this is an area where legal is going to ask questions that other functions haven't thought of yet, and we're going to lead to a better product.

Peter Crosby (33:28):

Well, and that's where the confidence, being able to build confidence in a process that you've established together is so important. Because once I think of the importance of automated workflows as an example, so that you can be sure that nothing can go out without the right signature having happened, what you can do is make that process faster and get your content, your AI content better and better so that the reviews become more and more rapid. I mean, it's taking the air out of something in a way that's repeatable, I think. And that's what it sounds like you are building is a process that is repeatable. And then you can just work and work and work to make that more and more efficient over time. But the word that keeps coming to me on both sides of the equation, but as I listen to you, is that the relationship that you and your team are intent on building is one of trust. And that creates the atmosphere for real collaboration instead of how long can we keep this away from legal before they start to muck around? And it sounds like you've created that environment with your partners, which is really impressive.

Josh Jacobs (34:44):

That's my hope, Peter. Absolutely. I think that that trust is very important and you build trust by being a credible actor and by being someone that understands the business extremely well. That's my goal for the whole team, is you need to understand the business objectives as though you are the marketing diReckittor. You are the e-commerce sales diReckittor if you know what they want to do, and you can think about how do I put the advice that I'm providing in the context that they need to hear? That's how we'll be successful.

Peter Crosby (35:35):

Okay, well someday, Josh, you need to write a book about this and then we'll have you back on the podcast because seriously what you're describing, it reminds me of the people who got into e-commerce early and mid and then created all the rules that we run by and the ways of working and they continue to evolve. This is the same, at least just from my perspective. Lauren's nodding.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (36:04):

I agree. Completely agree.

Peter Crosby (36:06):

So anytime you want to talk about this or when your book is, come back anytime. I know you're not writing or you might be writing a book, I don't know. But either way, this has been incredibly valuable for our audience and just a blast to hear you talk about what you're up to there. It's

Lauren Livak Gilbert (36:20):

Really cool. And I have to give Josh props because I was recommended to him by a colleague of his who used to work at record who said he was such an amazing business partner. So I can contest to the fact that Josh, you are doing an amazing job and your business partners really appreciate it. So bravo to you and the team.

Josh Jacobs (36:37):

Well, thank you very much, Lauren. Thank you, Peter. Happy to help out. There is no better way to learn how to do work in any business environment than to be in e-commerce. If you work in e-commerce, just based on the speed and the complexity of the issues that you face, you can build upon that experience into any type of business.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (37:07):

We will quote you on that. Indeed. Thank you, Josh. Literally,

Peter Crosby (37:11):

We'll get ready social media. Alright. Hey, we'll run it by you, Josh. Don't worry. Thanks again, Josh. We really appreciate you coming on. Thanks again to Josh for joining us and thanks to you as always for being part of our community.