Uncork Some Context to Drive Growth in BevAlc, with Bailie Duncan, Product Manager, Marketing Systems at Jackson Family Wines

Transcript

Our transcripts are generated by AI. Please excuse any typos and if you have any specific questions please email info@digitalshelfinstitute.org.

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):

Hey, everyone. Peter Crosby here with the Digital Shelf Institute. The beverage alcohol industry is a complex beast with an intense regulatory environment and shifting consumer preferences. The foundational fuel for driving sales is product content that is always accurate and increasingly adaptive to the consumer's context, an occasion, a specific meal, their budget. With 700 to a thousand new SKUs a year, Bailie Duncan, product manager marketing systems at Jackson Family Wines has rallied a small but mighty digital shelf team to make data a secret weapon that meets the consumer where they are and steers them toward the right product at the right time. Bailie, welcome to the podcast. We are so happy to have you on.

 

Bailie Duncan (01:09):

Yeah, I'm excited to be here. I love talking with y'all.

 

Peter Crosby (01:13):

So you are in the wine business, W-I-N-E, just to be clear, not W-H-I-N-E.

 

Bailie Duncan (01:19):

Sometimes it's both.

 

Peter Crosby (01:21):

Yeah, I know. It's defending for all of us. But you've worked across the wine industry. You've been on the store floor with customers asking for your mirror lot or peanut or whatever. And you've built out the digital shelf team and you talk about tasting notes for $500 bottles of wine. You've seen it all, you've maybe even drunk it all. But the Alkbev industry today is really seeing a shift in how consumers are buying and how they're interacting with alcohol across markets. And I'm just wondering, we'd love for you to start out by giving our listeners kind of a state of the state right now and how you're thinking about it.

 

Bailie Duncan (02:09):

Yeah. So I feel like there's always so many variables to what's happening right now, and I am going to give my perspective of what I'm seeing. And so I think a lot of times what happens, and we see this across industries, is there's a lot of click bait of people are going this direction and wind's down because of this and people are going sober curious and all of these different things, which may be true at the same time as other things are growing. And one of the things that you see a lot in adult beverage is that we are so restricted by compliance issues, legal issues, educational issues about purchasing alcohol online, that really we are almost always behind what other industries are getting to do because it requires lobbying. It requires educating consumers that you can have wine delivered to your house. There are so many things that happen.

 

(03:11):

Me living in Texas, we've seen so much change in the last six years about how you can receive alcohol to your house that we haven't really seen the full image of what is possible yet. And so I really feel like there's a lot of opportunity here. I feel like as more and more people are shifting to AI, we should think of it as an education tool versus an enemy and really help people feel a little more empowered and a little more confident about what they're going to buy. I think the general consumer feels like especially wine is a high risk purchase over a certain dollar point because there's this image that's been painted that you have to have the perfect bottle for the perfect pairing and you have to love it entirely and that there's so much pressure behind it that's socially constructed that we really have to break down those barriers to give people the confidence to go home with that $20 bottle, $30 bottle, et cetera.

 

(04:14):

So I don't know if that answers your question, but I think that we're really just needing to ride that wave and get in with customers in a more comfortable manner.

 

Peter Crosby (04:24):

No, I mean, thank you for that. That makes perfect sense to me. And it suggests that the shifts are all over the place and really what matters most is engaging with your customer where they are, where they're comfortable, and then being a partner on their journey for what it is that will give them delight in their lives. And that takes, I would imagine, more and more sort of personalization and context and all those other things that drive better and better connection with that consumer. Is

 

Bailie Duncan (04:58):

That right? No, of course. And it's all the way down to, if you like this, you're going to like this. And it's not just the numbers of we've got to push this. It's legitimately trying to figure out a customer's journey and what their preferences are and being able to meet them where they're at. So I think it's really, really important for personalization. You're right.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (05:23):

And Bailie, you have a big challenge in front of you because you have 700 to a thousand new products a year, which is bonkers. That's a lot of new products every year. Let that sink in for a minute. Everybody who's listening, who maybe has five products, new products every year, but you've really kind of been on a journey through the digital shelf because that's a lot of new product content. That's a lot of processes that need to change. How have you built that internally? What have you set up to be able to support that many updates in a personalized, seasonal kind of industry?

 

Bailie Duncan (06:00):

Yeah. So I will say it's always evolving. I think anybody that thinks that it's like set it and forget it, you have to always be ready for change and adapt. And one of the biggest things we did is that as we were expanding our digital shelf to really accommodate different channels, because we do B2C, B2B, we have DTC that is all ... We're managing all of that and to sustainably manage all those products because we do have to touch all of them. And that is really thinking about your data structure. If you have the ability to have a hierarchy or even think about your products and how they're related, you can really reduce a lot of that time to market by thinking about shared attribution. For us, we really tried to break it down and this was a massive exercise about, oh my gosh, it's like four years ago that we did from a flat data model.

 

(06:59):

So thinking about entering every single attribute on every single product and we have over 300 data points. So if you think about that, that's just not sustainable unless you have a massive team. And so then if you start to break it down, and for us, it was really thinking about the brand and then the product line. And for us, where a lot of those 700 to a thousand SKUs come from is that each year as a wine organization, we release a new vintage. And within that vintage of that product line, there may be five different package sizes of that one wine. And so it's really thinking about that and thinking about of that vintage, your tasting those shouldn't change between those five products that are released because it's the same juice that's bottled. And so if you start to think about that and apply that to your industry or your products, you can really reduce that time.

 

(07:54):

And so you might have, I think I map out in my head like tasting notes, what varietal it is and what brand. So if you have your brand and then you have your product line, you have your vintage and your five SKUs. So taking those three attributes across those five SKUs, originally we were entering 15 data points. We take that and at the vintage, it's tasting notes. Tasting notes are shared across all of those. That's one entry for those five products. Then you think about, oh, that's always going to be Chardonnay or that's always going to be a Pinot noir. So you enter that on the product line. So that's one entry that then is shared across all of the vintages. So you start multiplying and it's exponential time savings. And then you know which brand it is. So there's all this information that if you can figure out how to share across your products, can really, really, really help you save some time and save redundancy.

 

(08:48):

Because really at the end of the day, the more efficient our users can be about filling out these products, the faster we get them out the door. And it also reduces frustration. If I'm doing the same thing on repeat, I'm going to get bored and I'm going to get annoyed.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (09:02):

And at this point, AI can repeat a lot of those things for you,

 

Bailie Duncan (09:05):

Right?

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (09:06):

So that's not

 

Bailie Duncan (09:07):

The things

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (09:07):

You want to be focused on.

 

Bailie Duncan (09:08):

Exactly.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (09:10):

And as you went through this project you said about four years ago, this involved a bunch of teams, I'm assuming, right? A lot of cross-functional partners that needed to be on board. Can you talk about who was involved, what teams needed to get engaged?

 

Bailie Duncan (09:25):

I wish I could say it was a team effort.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (09:29):

Nevermind.

 

Bailie Duncan (09:32):

So for that specific exercise, we did ... So I like to talk about it as an us because it is an all us effort and it's really thinking about how the business is going to use the data and the information at the end of the day. And so we run on a real thin team, what you might want to call skeleton team to a certain extent, but all of us have a lot of skills. So it's able to make up in skill power versus manpower. And so it was, we were starting to launch all of our direct to consumer sites and it was like, how can we ... We are going to need all the wines enriched versus those 35 core focus skews. And it was sort of like, how can we eliminate some of this process? And so I took all of our data and I took how we came, how we manage our products in upstream systems, really looking at our ERP and what product identifiers could we use to tie products together and things like that to sort of automate it versus, "Here's a new SKU, I've got to go manually assign it to its hierarchy." And so I presented three different options with essentially two of why they wouldn't work and one of why it should work.

 

(10:56):

Choose my

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (10:56):

Option.

 

Bailie Duncan (10:57):

Yeah. But it was sort of the business was thinking about it in some of those different ways of, I understand that this is how we've always talked about our products, but it's time for change if we want to be able to manage this sustainably moving forward. And so that's where it really came down to. We have this identifier that talks about the product line. It's a six digit number, it's always associated with this product line, and then what do we have next? We always have a vintage. And so we were able to sort of tie it that way. And once taking that, there was a second part of the exercise of, cool, we know what it's going to look like, but where does the information that we have that exists in the system then need to be placed? So then you're able to then say, all right, you've got the product line, you've got the vintage, you've got the sellable SKU and the product sizes, what is associated with what level?

 

(11:50):

So then there was a mapping exercise and it's really a one-time thing that can take many hours, but once you do it, you've got that information saved. You can develop governance documents. Even if you don't use a physical, like you have to put this on this level in your system, you have a way to identify in general, you could probably put this on this level, but if you're going to be real nitpicky and like to enter it a bunch of times, go for it. And so we have sort of suggestions and the documentation is the most important piece of this so that if I get hit by the lottery bus, there's somebody else that can step in. There's somebody else that can step in and understand, but it also helps taking that to leadership and being able to justify like, "This is how we're managing this.

 

(12:39):

This is how we're able to scale. This is how we're able to move this nimbly and swiftly because otherwise it's just magic, the magic happens and we've got products that are selling online." So that's really important too, to have

 

Peter Crosby (12:55):

That. When you talked earlier about time to market, and that's money, and it's your competitive status and things like that. So I'd imagine, and tell me if this is true, you are also linking it to the change in time to market for what you're trying to do, or even maybe the capacity to even touch all those products or maintain it. And so how did that sort of metric achievement go for you?

 

Bailie Duncan (13:26):

Yeah. So I feel like there's so much to that question because it's all baby steps to

 

Peter Crosby (13:34):

Get

 

Bailie Duncan (13:35):

To where we're now and we're not done. It's like our process isn't done yet. There's so much to do. But previously it was user submits a request for a new item. So you think about that. There's somebody that's filling out an Excel form or emailing me and things like that. I go and create a new SKU and then I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I need all this information." So then email back to the user and say, "I need all of these data points. Please give them to me on this Excel sheet and then bring it back and either import it or manually enter." And then it's sort of, "All right, well, now we need to optimize. Now we need to then push it to this retailer." And it could sometimes take us three, four months, and then that's not even talking about digital assets and the creation there and things like that.

 

(14:23):

And so that's where, again, documentation, we have documentation on what's expected as far as imagery and what good online descriptions are by now, and I'm going to touch on some of the things of where does data live in other systems and how can you do soft integrations or true integrations? Because a lot of people think, "Oh, I've got to have this connected via an API to my PIM." But it's like, can that system also just kick out an Excel document that can be imported? So there's those things too. So it's like we get item creation is usually when the item goes on the plan for production. It is not harvested, it's not bottled, it's not shipping to our wholesalers or to our wineries yet. So we're really able to say, "All right, this SKU is created a year in advance, a year and a half in advance." So you have some level of runway- Visibility.

 

Peter Crosby (15:19):

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Bailie Duncan (15:20):

We have runway and then it's like, all right, this is bottled. If it's bottled, we already know the labels and all that kind of stuff. And so we kick off workflows depending on ... Some of them are automated, some of them are manually triggered, but it then gathers the information that's relevant to syndication that's not part of our magic background automations so that the user knows exactly what they have on the product and exactly what they're missing on the product versus having to guess. And so by eliminating the guesswork for our brand partners that are now very integral to our product enrichment, I think that our SLA from request to syndication is like five days

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (16:06):

From months. That's incredible.

 

Bailie Duncan (16:08):

Yeah, it really is. And so, and that's all the way ... We've done so much integration of other teams. We have an operations team that's then in there helping making sure that pricing's set in the correct places, that inventory is put in the correct branch plants for our organization. We have brand jumping in there. We have digital marketing jumping in there, making sure that there's appropriate SEO terms available for then optimizing the product descriptions. And there's so much stuff that then by teamwork has also helped with that. And just surfacing the information to the users and not focus. If you say, fill out these 300 attributes and only 10 of them are being used most of the time, if it's not worth anybody's time and then just saying, you're missing a tasting notes, but everything else is completed because we've used that data hierarchy. This specific product line should generally have the same description across every vintage because it's a core seller.

 

(17:09):

People are expecting it to be the same. There's obviously tweaks that need to happen to keep up, but yeah, that's a lot of it. And I know it's so crazy. Sometimes our people are ready to go and they kick it out a day in advance. And I have a few users that are so ... They're my golden users that get in there and as soon as the grapes are harvested, the wine's been tasted by the winemaker, they're getting it done before anybody's asked to sell it. And so it's really empowering to them to be able to be checking off their list. It's done. Let the sales begin.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (17:45):

And you sell B2B, B2C and D2C, right? Yeah. So are all of those teams the same? Because how do you make sure then that experience is the same whether they're buying from a retailer, they're buying from a distributor, they're buying on the direct consumer side? How are you connecting all of that content across?

 

Bailie Duncan (18:07):

Yes. So we have separate attributes to handle each, but what happens is that let's say the same team is handling our B2C and B2B. Generally, that's where really we can't directly sell to the box stores and things like that. It's our wholesaler, but our whole wholesalers also have a lot of B2B business because they're going and presenting to restaurants and things like that. And restaurants aren't setting up syndication channels. It wouldn't make sense for them at this point to ingest that. They're relying on the wholesale partners or even our national accounts team in order to decide what wine's going to be there, but it is great for those high-end restaurants or maybe a little independent liquor store to be able to use that wholesaler site to purchase. And so a lot of that information can be the same of what customers are purchasing at the shelf.

 

(19:07):

So we have that sort of optimized, but it's also optimized for the search with that retailer. And so there's a lot of work that goes there and we're sort of in the process of improving how we do that data ingestion to stay relevant and really leverage some of the tools that are becoming available for us to do that. And then for our D2C, we have our brand partners are still working on both sides, but they're thinking about the tone and voice. Ultimately, what we call three-tier business is signed off on by our three-tier person, and they're going to make sure that that's good to go. But in our workflows, it's like if three tiers already got into the product before brand is getting it for DTC, we'll surface what three tier put together to the brand partner for DTC, and then they can tweak that to change the tone and the voice and things like that.

 

(20:04):

The other thing we do is we store brand tone, brand, voice, all of those kinds of things as attributes within our PIM so that as we continue to venture into the AI capabilities, it's already there so that as we start to get those more customized descriptions, we're not worried about, "Oh man, this is AI voice." This is not how we talk about our wine. It's already stored there. And that's part of the overall efforts of data collection. But yeah, we have different workflows, we have different servicing, our brand teams are kind of clued into how they want to sell that.

 

Peter Crosby (20:46):

Going back a bit to what we were talking about in the beginning, which is this idea of that consuming wine is very occasion focused, it's very knowledge focused and very specific. And we talked about that using the word context, and particularly when shoppers are going to an agent to try and figure out this complex world of what they're doing, being able to have all of that context available, both for your own creation of content and how much you send to a PDP, what's on your D2C site, it's also how do you prepare those different ranges of context for different personas perhaps? And I'm just wondering how you think about that in your data and then how you surface that to the world.

 

Bailie Duncan (21:46):

Right. Yeah. You touched on it from working on the floor of knowing the MiraLot and the Peanut Nor shoppers and that's all of those perspectives of understanding the customer journey and meeting them. A lot of times it comes down to where are they shopping, what brand are they shopping? And then what do we generally ... Is this a year-round purchaser and things like that? And so I think that just because of adult beverage and things like that, we're a little bit behind of actually getting in there and having the data to the agents for anybody that's waiting in line for ChatGPT to give you your merchant account where we feel you, it's hard, but we're trying to enable a lot of those AI capabilities on our website that we've got the ... I'm part of the team that's doing the AI functionality and we have to think about when somebody's Googling, "I need wine that is a great gift for my father-in-law." We need to make sure that we have on the SEO backend of the pages that we have tags like gifting and the different holidays and things like that.

 

(23:00):

And one of the efforts that our digital marketing team is doing is they're taking clues from a recent webinar that you did, Peter, and doing data mining. And they're starting to think about what data can we get from the retailers or marketplaces that choose to engage with providing the search data for products. And we're starting to sort out, can we import this regularly and then set up ways that those keywords are flagged and set up audits for our products that, are you missing this kind of attribution? Are you missing this kind of search terms? And I think that we should be able to accomplish that using either AI or some other kind of logic to say, "You're missing more than half of the keywords that people are using to search for this type of wine and then allow us to improve and build upon that.

 

(23:51):

" And so a few years ago, I think I was telling you guys that we did an exercise with our education team to where we were like, "Give me a cheese, an ingredient, a cuisine, and a meat pairing for our wines." And we collected it for ... It was really, really close. It was 75% to 80% of our product lines. We had that data completed by our education team because we have an amazing education team. And then one of the things about that though is still like,

 

(24:25):

These people are sommeliers, they are still using so many language. So then it was one of those things to where that's great for that $500 bottle of wine, but then it was applied to one of our bestsellers that you generally see for between 10 to 15 dollars and you are asking us to pair as well with pizzettas. I can probably make a leap to what that is, but we don't need anyone then having to leave the page to Google what the food pairing is. And so it's really thinking about the consumer that we're serving it to and making adjustments from there. So I think I answered your question.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (25:06):

That's a great example.

 

Peter Crosby (25:08):

You totally did. And the reason why I think this is so important and the amount of work and thought you've already put into it is where's the growth coming from over the next two five years in the wine industry? And I would imagine it's some combination of connecting more individually with this fuller context and stealing market share from somebody else, in part probably by doing that. I mean, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think I'm sure you're trying to think about where is the growth coming from our industry and how do we grab an ever bigger share of that growth?

 

Bailie Duncan (25:53):

Right. And that's the thing is that if we have the data that we can serve, whether it's into an AI bot or we're just using it in the language of our product descriptions that the consumer can actually read and we can give them confidence online or even if it's the occasion of, "I'm putting my grocery list together online, but then I'm going to go shop in the store." It's the same thing as laundry detergent. You just get there and there's a bazillion different options. And if you pick a big old jug of stuff

 

(26:24):

And you don't like the way it smells on your clothes, you're kind of like in this weird position of like, "Do I drive this back to the grocery store and try and return it and things like that? " I think with some products, you can do that, but most places don't let you return an open bottle of wine if you don't like it. And so it's even things like in my head I think about back when I was working the floor and I would tell people, I would reassure people to feel confident in their usage of, "If you get home and you don't like this, come back and tell me and let me hear that feedback, but here are three other ways that you can use the wine if you don't end up liking it. " And so I think even meeting people in that manner of, we have a couple things in our blogs for our direct to consumer sites, but we need it more widespread than somebody searching the footer of our website, finding our blog, and then reading an article about what to do with the half bottle of wine.

 

(27:21):

We can have perfect wine for cockaven. This is a great way to make sangria. If you don't like this, did you know that you can use a couple tablespoons about apple cider vinegar and make your own red wine vinegar at home? Just all of the things like that, that we could also make it a little more friendly, a little more comfortable for people. I'm sure that some of our winemakers would hate that I said that, but it's also like-

 

Peter Crosby (27:47):

They're not listening to this podcast. Yeah.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (27:50):

It's practical. We like it.

 

Bailie Duncan (27:51):

Yeah. But it's one of those things of if the personal consumer taste didn't like it, that's okay. There's other ways to use it and then it's not sunk cost. We don't want anybody to feel like they've wasted money and that they can rejoin us on their journey. We always want to be that like, "We're not shaming you. We're there. You can lean on us. We're that buddy you come and talk to when you're looking for something." And so I think really positioning ourselves that way by leveraging those new AI tools or even just our product data can put us in a good spot. It's all about trust, trust and loyalty, trust and loyalty.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (28:30):

100%. And allowing them to mispronounce the name of the wine, right?

 

Bailie Duncan (28:34):

There is no- That's my

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (28:35):

Favorite example.

 

Bailie Duncan (28:37):

Yeah. No reason to correct. I got them what they wanted. They left happy.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (28:42):

I love it. I love it. And you talk a lot about educating your internal teams on picking the cheeses and the pairings and all of that, but you also have to educate them on that context that you were talking about, right? Most people know American cheese and Bri and might not know some of the kind of fancier terms and they need to understand like, "Hey, we're using these AI tools or, hey, we need these attributes." So how are you educating your cross-functional partners on why this product data matters, why you're asking these questions, why you keep coming back for all these things? Because in their day-to-day, they might be like, "Oh, why do I have to do this? " Kind of thing.

 

Bailie Duncan (29:19):

Yeah. So for our education team, I just let them give us attributes to their heart's desire and then take it from there because they are busy people and they need to move on. But one of the things that we really try to do, and this is across our different PIM involved people, is that we try and do quarterly sessions with our users and talk about what's happening in the world of the digital shelf, what's happening, what are people searching for, what are consumers considering when they're shopping? And we take some of the data out there and bring it back to those, you Users and every once in a while we'll pick a product and we'll pick on it a little bit, but it's not supposed to create internal shame either. We don't ever want to take it to one of our brand partners who are doing great jobs and tell them, "You did this wrong." But just more of a perspective shift of think about when you were buying your first bottle of wine.

 

(30:23):

Think about when you were testing things out, like where were you at? And I think a lot of that has to be bringing our California wine country-based team out of the mentality. They're immersed in it and telling them sort of anecdotal stories of this is where the rest of the country is at with this. We're not shopping based on what vineyard this was grown in. I have no idea where that vineyard is. I have to Google it and I work here. So it's really trying to explain that and put it in perspective. So I think the education, the quarterly meetings, sharing data when data comes out about shopper journeys. We have a woman that's entirely dedicated to consumer insights here at the company. And I always forward this stuff to her and she does these great company-wide email blasts about where our consumers are and things like that.

 

(31:24):

And that really, really helps of just reminding people and rooting people that not everybody lives in wine country.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (31:37):

And not everyone's a sommelier.

 

Bailie Duncan (31:39):

Yes.

 

Peter Crosby (31:39):

Yeah. And particularly in times where the industry is shifting and consumer taste and preferences and is all shifting, I imagine everyone's just trying to figure out, okay, what is this industry going to look like? How do we rally behind that? So I imagine there's sort of excitement, nervousness, fear, some range of that. And the only way to move through that is to have these conversations about innovation and connecting deeper with the consumer. And I think that coming always back to the consumer, sometimes in moments of stress, you can lose track of that and start looking inside rather than keeping the focus where you can really have an impact.

 

Bailie Duncan (32:32):

Exactly. And that comes down to R&D too, of what kind of new products, what gaps do we have in the products? And that's outside of my scope, but it's also looking at what is selling, what are people purchasing? What are they doing seasonally? It's like the low calorie or the no alcohol or canned wines and things like that are all things that we're trying to dip our toes into. And that comes from not just the in- store data, but the online data. People are searching for that stuff and how can we stay relevant and what's that going to look like on the shelf? And even packaging. The younger generations are looking for something a little more that they can connect to. There's a certain aesthetic that changes generation to generation. You have to remember that. And that is all the way down to how you talk about your wines too, your product descriptions.

 

Peter Crosby (33:25):

Well, I remember the arrival of the screwtop. So that to me was what's happening.

 

Bailie Duncan (33:32):

Yes.

 

Peter Crosby (33:32):

But I appreciate it because

 

Bailie Duncan (33:35):

It's easier

 

Peter Crosby (33:36):

Access.

 

Bailie Duncan (33:36):

It's not real cork. And it's like, yes. But did you know that ... And that's all about education. It's the same thing.

 

Peter Crosby (33:45):

Well, Bailie, the journey that you've had from shop floor to really creating the foundation for consumer engagement and growth and more efficiency, all of that is so centered in the work that you've been doing. And thank you so much for coming and sharing your journey with us because it's so valuable for our listeners. We really appreciate it.

 

Bailie Duncan (34:11):

No, thank you for having me. I'm always open to share.

 

Peter Crosby (34:14):

Which we're grateful for, for sure. Yes.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (34:16):

We love it. Thank you so much, Bailie.

 

Bailie Duncan (34:18):

Yeah, thank

 

Peter Crosby (34:19):

You. Thanks again to Bailie for sharing your journey with us. Time's running out to plan your journey to the Digital Shelf Summit on May 4th to the 6th in Atlanta. There will be wine, digitalshelfsummit.com. Thanks for being part of our community.