Running a Spin Cycle of Content for the Digital and Agentic Shelf, with Marilia Moreira, Digital Marketing Director at Whirlpool Corporation

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 (00:23):

Hey everyone, Peter Crosby here from the Digital Shelf Institute. Some of the most inspiring stories in our industry are when a company who has been a leader in their category for more than 100 years can find the grit, determination, and change management energy to transform to meet today and tomorrow shopper, however, and wherever they want. Like say, Whirlpool. Marilia Marrera, Whirlpool's digital marketing director, has spent 18 years at Whirlpool and is now focused on bringing their digital and agentic product experiences to life for consumers on every touchpoint. She shared with Lauren Levak Gilbert and me the people, processes, and metrics they have devised to continually elevate their ability to help their consumer choose Whirlpool. Welcome to the podcast, Marilia. We are so excited to have you on and chat about your journey. Thank you so much for joining us.

 

Marilia Moreira (01:19):

Thank you for having me here, Peter.

 

Peter Crosby (01:21):

So 18 years at Whirlpool?

 

Marilia Moreira (01:27):

Almost 18. Yeah.

 

Peter Crosby (01:29):

You look 20, so that's astonishing. What an amazing, an amazing journey, and especially when it comes to the digital shelf part of your career. You've just been involved in it all at Whirlpool. Cleaning data, content strategy, of course, as always, helping the organization along, bullying the organization along, whatever it takes. And so we would love to just start because you've really transformed Whirlpool's business and the many ways in which they can connect with your shoppers and consumers and how you work with your customers. So let's start at the beginning of the story. When did you take over the role that focused on this piece of the business?

 

Marilia Moreira (02:15):

Yeah, I think to be fair, this has been a full team journey. Of course. It wasn't me alone, but I've been very honored to be part of that group. I came into the role the beginning of 24. I already had a few years of e-commerce behind me, but that was the first time that we all sat down to define and organize our digital shelf efforts, actually using those words. Until we did that, the team was creating assets for the product launch, and then we were manually setting up in our PIM and then manually loading it into retail.com. Every single one, there was not a lot of data on performance, and it was incredibly tedious. It was prone to air lots of control C, ControlV, lots of spreadsheet. And if you think about the size of the company, it's like, oh my gosh, we need to find a better way to do that.

 

(03:25):

If the product changes, if we have a feed, the market changes. Appliances, you're not relaunching every six months. You actually have them ... They stay on the portfolio for a while, but the competitive landscape keeps changing. So that was the moment that we decided to let's organize it. And then we built together a team that within sales, sales ops, IT, brand, and then we started to move the muscles.

 

Peter Crosby (03:57):

So you get all these smart people in a room, you've identified the problem. What strategy did you all come up with? What project did you embark on to take you to that digital shelf era?

 

Marilia Moreira (04:10):

We started with one retail, one retailer focus, really looking at what are the opportunities that we had on the table, what were the pieces that were missing? What were the struggles? And again, it was a huge team, a lot of folks involved in this. And I think overall the consensus was that we need to make it better. So everybody was very open-minded into looking at it. We look mostly at, we look at content, we looked at everything like copy, salient bullets, every single piece of asset, understanding what made sense, what didn't make sense. We also looked at a lot of data because as I said before, we didn't have a lot of data available. We were following a process of setting up thousands of PDPs. We were not analyzing what was working, what was not. And then we prioritized. So again, obviously there were other pieces of the business pulling into retail media, optimization and other things, but I was closer to the content portion of it and defining what are the models that we're going to focus on, what are going to be the templates, what are the guardrails, what are the style guides?

 

(05:34):

What are all the structure to make sure that the program could flow? Obviously in the beginning it was hard. We had some rework, we had some challenges as everybody that is setting up a new process, but overall it was a lot of work to define what are the models, how we're going to optimize them, and what are the pieces that we're missing? And then while the team was setting up the complementary work streams that were making it all come to life. And in parallel to that, I think it's important to say that we also started our PXM program. That was the program that was building the pipes. So at the same time, we were fixing one retailer to see how it could look like. We were also working internally with our systems, our PIM or DAM or syndication tools and making sure that we had it all organized and structured correctly.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (06:32):

So you mentioned prioritization, and I think I love how you started with one retailer, and then you kind of went from there and figured out each of the pieces of content. But when you think about all those cross-functional teams that had to work with you to get this done, how did they think about prioritization? Because this was something new that you were doing and not everybody was focusing on digital and it might've been totally foreign for someone in IT or R&D or supply chain. So how did you work with them on prioritization because it might not have been part of their job before?

 

Marilia Moreira (07:07):

I think that's a great question, Lauren. We started with the basics of a simple pareto of what are the models we need to go that mean the most for the business. And then we were adding on the layers of what is the strategic importance of that model? Is this model floored or not? Is this model when you launch? Is this model? And we were like, is this model something that hasn't been touched for five years? So we tried to add a little bit of science to it, but it was truly a combination of facts that helped us to build a prioritization model that made sense for the broader group and then we worked together on it. We had to batch it out and to make it simple. If you start with a list of 500 models, it can be quite overwhelming. If you create multiple batches of five models, it becomes suddenly something that you can digest.

 

(08:09):

So we started little by little running the batches and testing and enhancing the process. And then we ended the year with 500 scales that were touched between brand sales and all the work streams that we were running in parallel by the end of the year.

 

Peter Crosby (08:29):

So it sounds like to be able to do a project that involved this many teams and with this much effort, you must have had, tell me if I'm wrong, a lot of C-suite support for this initiative, is that correct?

 

Marilia Moreira (08:46):

I had support from the leadership for sure, but I also had a lot of support from my coworkers. I think it was a mixed for sure because the team was seeing the struggles, the team was seeing the opportunities and they were visually visibly seeing the sales lift KO by SKU as we were optimizing them. And then as that was happening, we ended up putting our fuel on it and it started to scale and it started to grow. So then we went from the one retailer in 2024 to a little bit a broader scope in 2025 and an even bigger scope in 2026.

 

Peter Crosby (09:28):

Well, that's exactly what I was thinking of Marilia is that the consumer shoppers desires for an experience were the impulse. It sounds like they wanted to shop in a different way. And I mean, I remember my grandmother having a Whirlpool washing machine in her pantry or wherever that was. And I even remember what it looks like with the big round metal dials in the light blue stars that were all around it or something like that. I just remember that so clearly. But now we're in an era, and especially for high consideration things, I would love to know in a high consideration set, is that even more important, do you think, than say Aspirin or something like

 

Marilia Moreira (10:16):

That? Absolutely. I think when we're talking about a thousand dollar, $1,000 product, if we are not able to explain the benefits of your product, I think it's the same thing as any other category. You're driving traffic to a PDP, and if I don't find what I want there, I'll go to another one. So my retail media investment actually might have driven a sale to someone else. So we've been very intentional about making sure that the clear message of the products are coming in, making sure that we, again, update the assets for the new shopping, the new shopper. So for example, we had a beautiful image of a hand in front of a stainless steel panel. If you don't know what that is, you will say it's a hand in front of a stainless steel panel. It's like, oh, nice hand. But when you are in the industry, you know that you want to talk about a fingerprint resistant stainless steel.

 

(11:26):

And the image without the context, it doesn't sell and the image without context does not explain what the consumer is looking for. So we've been investing a lot and making sure that all the key messages are answered and the differentiators of the product are clear. Again, trying to help the consumer to know what they're shopping without having to look at 10,000 different places. The appliance purchase process is complicated on itself, so we want to make sure that at least we make it easier to digest it and understand the benefits and continue that.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (12:05):

I just bought a new house and I just bought a washer and unprompted. I bought a Whirlpool washer and I messaged Melia because I had such a great experience on Lowe's and that was one of the retailers that they prioritized and built out all this amazing content. And I found everything I needed from a specs perspective. It answered all my questions. And I was walking through with her how I made the purchase. And I went to Reddit and I went to ChatGPT and I went to Google and I went to Lowe's and I went to the Whirlpool website and it was a really ... There's a lot of thought that goes into a decision. I have to get a dryer and a washer. It's a lot of money. So I want to say that because Marilia, it was really great to see all the work that you were doing as someone who was a consumer really kind of coming through in the purchase experience.

 

(12:50):

So kudos to

 

Marilia Moreira (12:51):

You for that. I love you. You made my day when you paint me that to tell me that.

 

Peter Crosby (12:57):

And so where I was headed, which I think is somewhat related is once you have these brilliant basics in place, what is your ongoing optimization? How often are you able to refresh? And I know you're still updating your catalog on other places, but I'd just love to know your ongoing sort of life cycle now.

 

Marilia Moreira (13:17):

So we try to create a process that try to simplify the process into a sprint. So of like, okay, we're going to start with an audit with the prioritization, we're going to enhance the content, we're going to create that content and publish it. We're going to measure it. We're trying to make that always on and it's hard to show what I'm doing with my hands.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (13:44):

The audio. She's making a circular motion in a cycle. A circular emotion. Yeah.

 

Marilia Moreira (13:50):

But to make sure that we can have that as a cycle that never ends. Once we learn that something is working, you can reset what the baseline is. Once you have what you know what is working, you can adjust the templates and the style guides. So the way that we are building it is truly with, I would call it continuous improvement mindset that is a cycle that will keep self-improving. Are we at a stage that we're doing the wave two for the same model? Not yet. We are still working on, we still have a lot of products to work through. So we're working towards finalizing the first wave of all of it so that we can then start shifting and going back into models that we already optimize with the best practices that we're learning. But I think one thing that was also important was to accept that progress is better than perfection.

 

(14:47):

I think that in the digital space, we have the flexibility to move faster. And from a company that has been very focused on printed materials and things that get floored, it's a different pace. And then making everybody comfortable with that shift of like, look, it might not be the perfect style guide, but it's good enough. It's better than not having that information and then we're going to keep rolling and then we keep optimizing. So even when we see what we created in the beginning of the year compared to what we created at the end of the year, what was the end is like 10 times better. And so going back to the continuous improvement, we will soon have a lot of work to do on the models that we did in the beginning because we want to make sure that we keep elevating the bar.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (15:41):

So Marilia, measuring success is also really important, right? You're talking about the progress that you're seeing and how progress is better than perfection, but it's also important to showcase to the leadership that all of the work and the money and the effort you're putting into the content is actually kind of seeing a return on the sales side. And you mentioned that a bit, but I'd love for you to talk about, what did you focus on from a measurement perspective? Because that can sometimes be overwhelming too, because there's so much to measure.

 

Marilia Moreira (16:09):

I love that question. I think that's the beauty of digital marketing and digital overall is that never ending scientific experiment, that you measure here, you learn something, you change, and you see the results. And that has been a lot of what we've been looking at. Some industries that are listening to us probably have access to a lot of data from their retailers and some industries will have less. I think we're in the middle. We had a lot of data from sales, like black and white sales data available, but we didn't have with the frequency that we would like the amount of information about how our digital channels are performing, what is the consumer behavior? What are they doing? What are they clicking? What are they engaging? We could know that from our branded properties. So as part of that work, the work that I mentioned in the beginning where we decided to work on the content and the media and then on the analytics side of it, we put a lot of effort, again, huge team leading the charge to make sure that we were able to create the right API connections with the retailer partners so we could see some of that data flowing and really measuring one by one of like, okay, what was the performance of this SKU before?

 

(17:35):

What is the performance after? If you do that plus retail media, what is going to be your ROI? What are the levers that you can pull? What are the adjustments that we can make? So we did a lot of AB testing and the team worked really hard to make all of the necessary dashboards and connections of data for us to be able to work on. And I would say it's still not perfect. We're now working with DigitalShelf Analytics. We're doing a POC so we can understand how we're going to run that and what are the data points that we need to consider building, it's a never ending journey, but again, when we're able to show that we drove a lift in sales because we optimize that content and that return is twice the amount when you add retail media to that optimized model, it just makes the excitement of the company and the stakeholders and it just helps us to bring people in.

 

(18:42):

And I think on top of that ... Sorry, cut you off.

 

Peter Crosby (18:50):

Speaking of ... Sorry, let me do that again. Speaking of bringing people in and along, it's always the story of creating the digital shelf at organizations that you do need to bring your organization along. And so as part of that, how have you educated in your organization during this journey and sort of spread the digital knowledge and wealth out to other areas in the organization? How has that worked at Whirlpool?

 

Marilia Moreira (19:21):

I love that, Peter. I think the fact that I'm a Whirlpool dinosaur helps for sure.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (19:28):

I wouldn't use Dinosaur.

 

Marilia Moreira (19:30):

Well,

 

Peter Crosby (19:30):

No, now I'm trying to think which kind of dinosaur are you?

 

Marilia Moreira (19:36):

I don't have to

 

Peter Crosby (19:36):

Think

 

Marilia Moreira (19:37):

About that. That was not a superhero effort in no way or form. It was a combination of factors. We are an 110 year old company and with that legacy, we over index our knowledge and in store. So over the years, the company has been investing in our digital products and our digital capabilities, but it was within a smaller group that was like, let's call it a COE. And after we grew and after we developed the capabilities and we tested and we learned, then this becomes that time of, okay, what am I going to do next in my career? And Worpo was very intentional about that because what they did was obviously not all of the talents, but a lot of very good talents that are like my partners in Prime, let's say today, they're in sales, they're in ops, they're in brand, they're in shopper, but they came from that digital group.

 

(20:42):

And so having that, the digital capabilities, the digital talent is spread across the company, made us stronger together. So it was, instead of one person holding the flag and trying to move everything alone, we actually had allies in all the functions. Does that mean that everybody within the function understand what we were doing? No. But does it mean that we had more influence and we had more openness to have conversations and to challenge things and to evolve? Absolutely. So it was a very good combination of like an HR strategy to build that digital capability and spread it out the company. And then us using that as a lever to make all the connections and keep the movement and keep the transformation.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (21:32):

I like to call it digital osmosis, right? You're just trying really hard to just get it ingrained in the organization. I love that. And Marilia, we can't get through any podcast without talking about agentic commerce. It is a hot topic in the industry. I would love to hear what is your approach? How are you thinking about it, especially as you're really kind of beginning this journey and making sure you're going through all this content, how are you thinking about that added element of agentic commerce?

 

Marilia Moreira (22:01):

Oh, I knew this one was coming. It has

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (22:04):

To, right? I mean, it's very

 

Marilia Moreira (22:06):

Predictable. We have to, but I'm going to be super honest. We are truly investing in our foundations. I think if we ... And I even mentioned that when we were in the summit is content accuracy, content consistency, content quality, all the technologies on the process. They are incredibly important as we are training the LLMs. So as we look at where we are in the journey, we're making sure that we have that consistency so that we can train it correctly and then consequently we can expand. So it was like phase one of the journey, but super exciting about all the outcomes we've been working ... And I think because we are doing the foundation, we have been working with product of like, can I optimize message for SEO? Can I optimize the copy of the PDP? Can I optimize the way that we talk about the images?

 

(23:11):

So there are a lot of things. And then when I say SEO here, like SEO, AEO, GEO.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (23:17):

Insert acronym here. Yep.

 

Marilia Moreira (23:19):

EIEI. All the acronyms with the same intent that is increasing the visibility, increasing how many times we're citated, recommended by the agents. And it has been a very rewarding experience to see how we're trending in this space right now in terms of AI overviews and so on. And knowing that while we are investing in content, we are also investing in the foundation to make sure that we are able to accelerate when we are ready.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (23:57):

I also think your category is a perfect category for LLMO, whatever, GEO, AEO, whatever, any agentic search basically, because there's a lot that goes into it, right? There's a lot of features. It's an expensive purchase. So it's really interesting to see what you've been doing to be the answer that's actually showing up when you're searching on an LLM, because I think your category needs even more context for an LLM to choose your product. Would you agree as you're thinking about what you're

 

Marilia Moreira (24:29):

Seeing in your space? Absolutely. I think for a very long time, we as a company were focused on page one rankings in Google as everybody. And so we had a very different spectrum of articles and pieces of content that we were generating. And with us going into and looking at the Gentech commerce, we started to put a lot of effort into the PDP itself and the product education because it was very like, it's not about ranking number one on how to best clean dishes. It is about ranking number one into the top three that agent will recommend. So I think that's definitely a journey. We have many other spaces still to explore to increase that visibility. But if we are consistent and we are telling the same thing in all our retailers and on our brand.com, I would say we are already one step ahead and then we can supercharge that with partnerships, with YouTube and many other channels that will compliment, but we are really like, I feel like we're doing the dirty work right now to make sure that it all gets set up for that.

 

Peter Crosby (25:55):

So speaking of brand.com, more and more we read about with AEO, GEO, EIO, that the brand.com really needs to be the definitive, everything that could possibly come into a conversation is found somewhere because they'll come to your site as kind of the authoritative place. And I think you were in the. Com business, the D2C business for Whirlpool for four and a half years. So I'm wondering at this phase, how do you think about the relationship between that? Is brand.com first and then, okay, we have our core content established and it's the broader set of FAQs and then it goes out into retailers. So what's that relationship and how do you think about it today?

 

Marilia Moreira (26:49):

That's a great question. So today, the way that we look at it was to ensure that for every single product we develop, we need to have a set of baseline content and a set of baseline information. It can be baseline assets, it can be baseline specs, but we need to make sure that we have every single launch meets that baseline that will be necessary for our good execution in our own branded sites, as well as as in the retailers. One thing that we've been noticing and learning as we go through this journey is that because our branded sites, obviously we have the chance to add more context.

 

(27:45):

We're going into spaces that before were not very common. Yes, I am optimizing copy for that PDP for that new product that has launched, but I also need to tie it all back together to a category messaging and then I need to title back to a brand message that is consistent. And that's not always how the launch process works. We have our brand voice and we have our products, but how do we talk about this entire category? How do we talk about this subcategory? How do we talk about this feature across multiple models? So I would say we're making it a tri-dimensional matrix right now that for us to look at it of like, okay, there are the baselines that are the output of the launch process, but then there are also deeper conversations we need to have and more detail concierchy that we need to set up to make sure that we come to life in our own sites the way that we want to show up to the consumers, for sure.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (28:56):

And

 

Marilia Moreira (28:56):

Are you-

 

Peter Crosby (28:56):

I love the way of thinking about it. Sorry, Lauren.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (28:59):

That's okay. No, no. Are you also thinking about with LLM citations are really important. So whether that's a blog or an industry expert that talks about appliances, whatever that looks like, talking to your PR team and your corporate comms team, are they a new function that maybe you haven't worked with in the past, but now are super critical in the whole digital shelf effort?

 

Marilia Moreira (29:23):

So that's the shiny star. I think that's something that we've had our own content machine, let's call it with our own digital marketing team, but now we're seeing the value and we're seeing those opportunities. We don't have very good processes in place yet to make sure that we have all those connections, but we have shared goals and objectives and we are working together to like, how do we bring this to life? So that's the shiny start that we don't have an answer yet, but we are very excited about But unlocking and figuring out how much we're going to be able to

 

Peter Crosby (30:06):

Drive together. And the fact that you are aware of that and thinking about it now, I think is kind of almost state of the art in this phase that we're in. So that's amazing because if you think about the amount of control, brands like Whirlpool have over experiences on the three different shelves, physical shelf, a ton of control of what that experience is. You sort of have control over your shelf space and the promotions and all of that. The digital shelf, you're trying to control the algorithm through content and also to a certain degree through retail media. But on the agentic shelf, the control really goes to low. All you can do is sort of have it on offer. And then what swirls around you to influence the consideration set is this sort of almost what's old is new again. These become more urgent and it's not something you can control.

 

(31:05):

So it's you driving influence with the influencers and things like that. And so I think that's kind of a fascinating new connection between brand and sort of. Com digital shelf to make this whole experience come together. It's daunting, but I hope exciting to folks to put that together.

 

Marilia Moreira (31:28):

And I think that it also helps us to, with context. I think Lauren, the last time we met, we talked a lot about how much context matters. And sometimes we have limited levers to pull when we are working on a retail site. But if you are working on our own, we have the possibility to add FAQs, we have the possibility to have the back links and we have the possibility to get things to bring things to life the way that we know that the consumer will be searching for. So that app also has been very exciting to explore and figure out.

 

Peter Crosby (32:08):

Very cool. I have one last question. As I was thinking about the metrics that we're trying to move or that this process of content enhancement and enrichment and the investment of it, what are the ways in which it can pay off? And one of the last things I thought about when it comes to the bottom line growth is being able to then cycle this content back into the organization and to places like customer service and things like that. And I was wondering if you guys had a process for that to happen to hopefully lower those costs of serving the customer while also, of course, improving their experience. Does that happen at Whirlpool?

 

Marilia Moreira (33:00):

I would say not to the level that we would like, but we share the vision. I think we're making a lot of investments in the customer services side as a company overall to bring more technology, to bring more information, to bring more support to that team, to make sure that we have the right answers and they minimize the complexity of their work. It's already a very stressful job. Yes. And so we are going there. I think there's still a lot of opportunity for us, especially as we go back to how we structure the data in our DEM, in our PIM and how those things get out. There's still some additional stitching that we need to make and to be able to make that available to multiple parts of the organization. Right now, if we're able to get that content consistently out to all our retailer sites, we're celebrating.

 

(34:03):

But knowing that we're building the technology behind to also have, they will also unlock that to happen on the customer services side. It's very exciting. It just feels a little bit distant until we can get the muscles. But I'm also very critical, so I don't want to also reduce the excitement of the work. It's just that it feels like we need to step on the ground first.

 

(34:32):

Absolutely. To be able to then run and break through into those spaces.

 

Peter Crosby (34:38):

I think that's what's so exciting about the investment that you're making. It serves so many purposes because you are a product company. And so the more rich your catalog can be, there's so many uses that it can have moving forward and building that process that lasts and optimizes is tremendous. I love these stories of 110 year, hundred of year organizations that are really doing the work of modernization and really serving the consumer are just thrilling. And so I just want to thank you, Marilia, and Whirlpool for allowing you to come here to have this conversation. It's really valuable and super inspiring.

 

Marilia Moreira (35:25):

Thank you so much for having me here. I hope other people relate. It's a journey that it will probably never end because once we figure something out, it will change and we'll have to figure out again. But I think talking with a group of people that are in the digital space and are going through this process for me has been very helpful and encouraging and given me the energy I need to go back there and continue to drive the transformation. I hope the team and the people listening can feel that too.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (36:02):

Huge kudos to you and the team, Marilia. You've done such an amazing job. And thank you so much for sharing your story, and I'm sure everyone who's listening will relate and learn something. So thank you so much for coming on.

 

Peter Crosby (36:13):

Thanks again to Marilia for sharing their product content spin cycle with us. She reinforced how important our community is on this journey. And the Digital Shelf Summit is the best place to forge these connections, digitalshelfsummit.com. Thanks for being part of our community.