How Once Upon a Farm's DTC Ads Grew Its Retail Business | Harness the Halo 2/6

Well, a lot of that becomes masked when I now have 10 products and 10 aisles, all these retailers.

Now out of key and we're seeing things like paid search at Crober or Target. It might be actually having an effect on another account. There's a huge opportunity in connecting streaming TV. You just have to get over the sticker shock of the CPM, like the price is high. But the effectiveness is there.

It's a balance. It's not either works. That balance of the upper funnel and lower funnel and making sure everything is working synergistically. Hello and welcome to a special episode of the D to C podcast. This is Harness the Halo, a six-part series from D to C and keen.

The quick version if you're just tuning in, growth used to have a cheat code. You'd put a dollar into meta and you'd get a customer back the same day. This has gotten harder and building a brand that lasts now means spending money in places where you can't draw a straight line from the dollar to the sale. The bet of the series is that better measurement is what gives you room to make these moves. Because once you can see the payoff, you couldn't trace before you can spend into it.

The Halo is that payoff. It's the lift you get from the money you can't tie directly to a click.

In the last episode, the first episode of the series, Keen's Justin Jefferson gave us a wide view of what's working

across hundreds of brands at once. Today, we're going to go the other way, a deep dive into one business.

“And now here's the thing I want to get into.”

At a lot of companies, the money that builds the brand and the sale that the money eventually creates sit in two different places. One team spends to create the demand. The results often show up somewhere else entirely on a shelf in a marketplace in someone else's numbers. And every platform in between lines up to take the credit. Figuring out what actually drove the sale is the hard part.

My guest today lives close to that problem. Jennifer Birdland runs digital and e-commerce at once upon a farm. The organic kids' food brand you've probably seen in the cooler at the baby aisle. Her world is the DTC site, Amazon, and the marketplaces, the shop are marketing. Before, she also worked at Nestle General Mills and 3M, so she's seen how this works at big companies and at a growing one.

We've also got returning podcasts, alumni, Keen's Bradley Keifer. Brad is the chief revenue officer at Keen, and he can tell us how this tends to play out at the brands. At the brands they model Jennifer Brad, welcome to harness the halo episode 2. How are you doing? Good.

Appreciate the opportunity. Jennifer, can you give us the lay of the land? I've been trying to actually get once upon a farm on the podcast.

Probably since I started here because you guys are such an incredible success story.

“Can you give me the lay of the land of what actually sits under you at once upon a farm?”

And what doesn't? Yeah, so I am the VP of digital marketing and e-commerce at once upon a farm. And on that desk, I oversee all of our media. So that's brand media, obviously, heavy and digital, but also inclusive of TV. All of the retail media and then performance marketing, digital comms, e-mail, life cycle, etc.

I also run our end-to-end e-commerce business, which is inclusive of director consumer and Amazon. So that's a bit more of that general management role, piano, accountability, etc. How much of the budget is sort of dedicated to creating demand versus capturing it? That isn't ever evolving mix as our business grows and changes, right? And candidly, we're actually using keen now, which is helping to inform that a bit.

Overall, we're looking to have a healthy balance because you need that upper funnel. You need that awareness driving, but you also have to convert at the end of the day. And so those things obviously go hand in hand. I do oversee all of that media except for trade, which sits within our sales team and that plays a very important role from a conversion and perspective.

But we're really continuing to balance against our business objectives and measure constantly holistically along the way. So I know retail has become a huge piece of what happens at once upon a farm. And I was reading about the cooler initiative. How do you think about your job on the digital side as it relates to driving people to retail? And how do you account for the impact that you have through all of your digital efforts on the retail side?

Yeah, and you mentioned coolers, that's an interesting one. Because they are, we have broad distribution across the country across retail and obviously a growing the e-commerce presence as well. The coolers are growing, they're growing across accounts, but also across regions.

“So it's one where you have to deploy a little bit different objectives.”

And in terms of, you might need to be more targeted with those coolers more focused on retail media, paid search, etc.

It varies by account and it varies also too.

We're talking about baby pouches versus our kid pouches. So you go into whole foods and crowbar, you'll find us in the dairy section. But we also now have baby coolers in those accounts as well, which in the baby aisle. You go into target, you'll find us in produce and so it really varies by account. We've also grown across the retail space, so playing now within center of the store and shelf stable products both in the baby aisle as well as the bar aisle. We offer kids bars.

“So education actually with our brand and with our consumers is a really important thing, not just at the high level.”

What is the brand about, what is the stand for, but also down to the most tactical level of where are you actually going to go.

In retail to find us. We have a healthy digital e-commerce business so thinking about online grocery and so it becomes a little bit different dynamic online. But again, that's where our retail media efforts serve us well. Bradley from from your side, working with once upon a farm, how are you seeing keen interact with these challenges of kind of unraveling the halo effect of digital on retail and when you have got such a cool form factor of something like like these coolers where you're creating a new space in the retail store.

It's also going to have a great impact. I assume on what you're doing on the digital side when people start, you know, just because it stands out so much you're more likely to maybe react to an ad you see once you've seen one of these coolers from your side, Brad.

Do you see these kind of worlds interacting?

“I think there's this kind of two different worlds that I would even highlight in that one is there's the organizational world and two there's the math and data world.”

So part of the evolution that we see with, you know, brands like once upon a farm or just anybody who's like a fast growing fast evolving company is the company who we were a year ago is not the company we're trying to be a year from now. And as we get bigger we now have bigger data and it's like there's not a shortage of data. There's oftentimes a shortage of resources or a shortage of alignment or an understanding of how like this lever interacts with that lever. So there's just like organizational evolution or maturity that has to happen alongside of the model in and of itself because a lot of times when brands are D to C and they're emerging and that's all they're doing.

And I think Jennifer could talk about this too, a lot of the marketing efforts like you can see them pretty short term like there's a lot there's enough correlations that you can see early on that are like not as right as they could be but they're not wrong. Well a lot of that becomes masked now when all of a sudden it's like well I now have 10 products and 10 aisles and I've got all these retailers and I've got all this this challenge that I had. It just adds organizational complexities so both and how you measure which you know is a native part of our solution when you think about portfolio and how we think about like there's a P and L for a bar versus a P and L for a refrigerated product like they're very different P and L's you know there's different margins but also there's just like there's different objectives for each of the teams.

Because sitting now within it is not just the complexity of the organization between finance sales and marketing there is also inside of that it's like you have a target on something different than Walmart wants that want something different from Amazon that wants something different from Whole Foods right. And now all of a sudden you have just so many layers of competing priorities that it's like every now and again you just got the pause long enough to say like what is the data telling us. Do we even have the data to tell us a story and do we have the organization lined up to actually make action and make improvement off of this right.

And that's part of the evolution that like I think once upon a farm is on a phenomenal job at it and everybody goes through this like you know growing pain of like how do we get to where we're going right and that becomes one big challenge beside the data that I think organizations really need to think about as they grow. Jennifer when you hear me kind of read that intro there about the the halo and harnessing the halo how do you think again there's so many different halos present in the way you guys are operating the business.

What what stands out to you as the halo that's most maybe cognizant to you that you're creating on the digital side.

“Well the fact is is that is very real consumers are not on the channel we've known that for a while and the thing that has become increasingly noticeable for me and the business over time is that our marketing is not on the channel as well.”

And we saw this early on Brad actually summed it up very nicely and he's not even on the brand side so kudos, Brad, but we really saw this early on and it's sometimes easier to see those signals in the earlier days your budgets are smaller, your programs are more tight.

Driving to the site a very clear shop now called action and we saw our retail business take off or we saw other efforts in sticker or other programs with accounts start working more efficiently and game more momentum.

“So it was kind of clear in the signals that something more is happening here and that there really is this cross channel cross account but also cross tactic effect.”

We're starting to look at that more deeply now having keen on as a formal partner so it's been really interesting to start to dig into more of the details of that.

So when the upper funnel brand marketing works awareness PR streaming TV things like that where does it tend to show up in the numbers first that you watch.

So first and foremost I would say that we look at proxies signals so we're looking at site traffic organic site traffic as well as paid branded search demand all of those things we look at conversion on our site because that's an immediate opportunity for sale.

“And also more holistically where we're seeing it is in awareness household penetration because that's really at the end of the day what that upper funnel media is intended to serve and we do see the fact there.”

I guess I don't talk to as many brands that are at the scale you guys are at where you're really looking at those household penetration and awareness numbers tell me the story maybe a little bit of how awareness and household penetration has increased at once upon farm. We are very data driven company so understand that maybe these aren't things that smaller brands look at but it's something that we have been looking at over time and as we turn media on or as we increase that media particularly the upper funnel.

We have started to see those numbers accelerate month over month so it's been an interesting effect but I guess even beyond that we see like I mentioned these other signals in terms of some of our other efforts working harder for us working more efficiently more effectively that might be a trade program or even within our retail media efforts. We're really and I was saying more formally now with keen teasing out the deeper elements of this effect the fact that Amazon performance media might have on our retail business is starting to become very clear.

How does it work internally at the business where you've got all these different teams working on different things and each team is in some sense you know they're they're focused on what they're focused on but their impacts resonate across the whole business. I'm sure this is something you're kind of as you say unraveling right now but give me maybe a sense of how it works internally at once upon a farm with how you communicate about the halo across the company.

Yeah, so this is one thing and not to discredit or disavow my prior jobs or life but this is one thing that I really appreciate about working at a smaller company.

There's just naturally our less silos so we've made a big effort I actually lead by weekly meeting. It's an omnichannel marketing team it's across key members of my team key members of sales sales leadership that has helped facilitate insights conversations they might say hey I see this happening here and I can say well we were doing media during that time or things like that.

So that was kind of our initial step the other thing is just organizationally within the marketing department all of media sits on my team.

So it's brand media is retail media is performance marketing and of course they have distinct budgets and you know they they plan and execute against those budgets but at the end of the day it's one team and not a lot of silos so they do plan collaboratively.

“They do optimize they do share data and I think that also helps facilitate against these bigger business objectives and then I guess like I've kind of said before we are starting to formalize this more.”

Having the key platform on board and there's been some interesting things from that so like the data see example I gave like that's very real and it was very obvious back in the early days but now out of key and we're seeing things like paid search at.

But it's been a bit an interesting insight and unlock for us and something that we you know plan to lean into further as we continue to optimize our media mix and our budget allocations.

“And I think it's because of something we mentioned earlier right that's usually a shocking learning for a lot of folks is the halo that comes from like bottom of funnel activations.”

But yet like you kind of said earlier why that's true and why it makes sense which is like there is no linear path or a very singular minded shopper anymore. They're shopping all over the place when there's convenience factor when there's you know it's like you don't know if those impressions that you're gaining on target search are driving them to go by somewhere when they're on vacation when they're going to go by. And now all of a sudden it's like that that impression mattered and it mattered differently than they came here to buy and therefore the conversion was those going to be there and that's where like I think we under credit sometimes it's like.

The impact of an impression and how it could lead to awareness and how awareness leads to a conversion later on right it's being able to understand all the signals because it's not is.

“Every two weeks I go to the same grocery store and I buy the same cart full like that shopper that's not real anymore right like that's what we all built forward is this very linear path or it's very linear funnel.”

And now marketing is more like an amoeba right it's just like it's stuff everywhere because the customer is everywhere so it's amoeba marketing now at this point. I don't know it's my trademark that like it likes that I just thought of that in the moment but like it's a very real marketing it's just a blob of chaos right it's like but it's structured chaos I guess. Yeah it reminds me of Serino bears she came on the podcast and talked about that the funnel is dead and now it's a tornado because you've just got all you've got all these different but I like amoeba even more does that resonate with you Jennifer.

But I add into my LinkedIn right now. Alright in the in episode one Justin Jefferson argued that when you own the top of the Amazon results page another dollar of search spend is most likely buying customers you've gotten anyway. So I'm curious is this is something that's on your mind as you spend into marketplaces.

“So the halo works for growth but it also works for efficiency and understanding where you have to spend and where you don't I'm curious is that sort of kind of efficiency something that's really on your mind as well making sure that you're not.”

Spending money to acquire customers who would have bought you anyway most certainly I mean obviously there's always a little bit of protection and defense you need to do especially against a brand like ours because we we have a lot of branded search share. So you know competitors will come after you but yes we've actually it's interesting that you say that because if I have my Amazon business manager on this call he's done a lot of optimizations within that media plan specifically. One to really maximize the budget that he has and put it reasonably against driving new customers awareness where he can while still defending our brand defending our space.

So I do think it is a bit of a balance but that has been much of our mindset as well. Take me to a time on the digital side where you've maybe taken a bigger you guys are operating at such a high level but but are there are there times where you've sort of taken a big swing top of funnel that you had to either have a lot of data to back up or the the faith of your of your executives in order to. You know in order to back up that you that ended up really paying off is there is there an aspect of what you're doing top of funnel that has really worked better than you thought it wasn't hard to justify it when you let into it I guess.

So from the very early days we kind of instilled this test and learn mindset and I think that it served as very well so our first TV test was back in 2021.

And I was small it was very small isolated maybe it was like a month long test but we built from there so then we started layering and more of an integrated campaign we did TV post social plus out of home. And we had a lot of geotesting before we went national so we were looking at and this was also before we had keen so we were trying to to measure as best as possible but we are looking at like market mix and what we did in a particular market relative to a comparable hold out market measuring lift that way we are of course continuing to look at all these digital proxy metrics like the branded search demand site visits et cetera.

So I there wasn't necessarily a single point per se but it was a build upon build and all of that testing and learning and just that entrepreneurial mindset gave us the confidence the data and the confidence.

Are there any of these channels that are sort of like your pet favorites I know you're not supposed to choose your favorite children but are there like looking at at the keen reports are there any of these channels that you see punch above their weight maybe more than others.

“Streaming TV we have an opportunity to continue there and we are leaning in also personally this doesn't necessarily out of keen or even out of our business but I'm very bullish about YouTube.”

I think there's a lot of opportunity on YouTube from a consumer demand perspective usage relative to available ad inventory and then also to it's the one platform that truly transcends screens it's on the TV and your pocket it's on your iPad it's on your all your devices on your TV and your home.

And I just think that that's a really interesting and smart play by them but powerful opportunity for marketers does that hold up with you Brad with across the brands that you work with.

Yeah for sure I mean there's a huge opportunity and connected streaming TV oftentimes the question is like for the large legacy enterprise brands it's like do I make the switch from linear to streaming is that the choice that I'm making.

“Or oftentimes it's emerging challenger brand to we're asking the question of like well how do I gain top of funnel and it's like I think I need to be on TV but there's still a lot of this like legacy like.”

Linear TV bias of like old marketers who are like my TV play equals linear it's like that's just not true anymore right I think the Jennifer's point is like.

The same video assets that you can create you can now spread them on social you can put them on TV like that that used to not be a thing right like you can take larger campaigns and I'll slice them out so like even from a cost of being on a serve like a cost of creative. If you do it correctly knowing that you're going to be putting on multiple platforms you can reduce the cost but also the impact is is quite large and a big opportunity especially within the retail media networks as the retail media networks become DSPs full funnel DSPs there's huge opportunity there because their first party data.

Is actually very, very valuable now that the targeting capability is there in streaming TV so it's not just like CTV as a channel is effective you can also spend more within these like you know retailer DSPs now at the top of funnel which kind of has two benefits want if you're an emerging growing brand the retailer always wants you to spend more and there's always kickbacks right well if I need top of funnel. I could spend it with Walmart or with Amazon get the kickbacks on the retailer relationship side because the money still funneling to them and you just have to get over the sticker shock of the CPM like the price is high but the effectiveness is there so just be very mindful of how you spend it like that's what we would see in our data at this point.

The retail media network reports its own conversions what happens when you try to add them up I know you know platforms that are maybe earlier in their genesis are maybe more hungry for conversions if you go on the retail media networks own reporting.

Is there a lot of duplication of the of the results they report.

“There's necessarily duplication although they're probably certainly would be if you were trying to add them up I think the thing that is challenging for marketers is every methodology across the retail media networks is different.”

So it does present a challenge also when you're trying to kind of look across the landscape so we use the data and the signals from those platforms more in real time to optimize but when we're looking more holistically and measuring across a larger period of time we're stepping back a bit from those specific metrics and looking more broadly. And that's where things like our awareness tracker household pen come in as well as other things when in terms of looking at sales trends overall and whatnot and and bringing keen into the mix to has helped I think kind of level set the playing field from a measurement standpoint.

And so you mentioned YouTube I was on a call I'm on a call with a bunch of D to see operators on a that we do on a monthly basis it's a slack channel there's been a lot of talk over the past couple years about meta ads and. I've treated like a one stop shop for top of funnel all the way through conversion and it still is able to behave like that but I feel like more and more brands once they reach certain scales are looking into other ways to generate top of funnel awareness and YouTube comes up again and again and they were actually all there was a lot of people in agreement.

They were starting to see YouTube not only as the top of funnel for you know the Google suite where you generate awareness and then you capture it on the bottom but also like for the whole digital spend YouTube has this potential like you say because it's on everyone screen does that hold up with with kind of what you're seeing about YouTube's potential.

“I mean I think it certainly does I don't know that I would ever fully replace I think you need a healthy mix of channels to reach your consumers and to make sure that you have the right balance of reach and frequency.”

I'm not necessarily all in on one channel I think you need a mix I think a lot of this also to has to constantly be going back to your business objectives so what are we trying to do what are we trying to deliver with a particular campaign. It certainly plays a role still it has its challenges though as you've kind of identified tick talk is important to us so we look at our mix more holistically and then there are other things that we may pulse in that you wouldn't necessarily think of they're not necessarily digital but we do do out at home we do do direct mail so I think those also play a role in that total mix.

Tiktok is a good show and and that was another thing we actually discussed on that call was sort of the potential to scale tiktok but how it's like a whole different like that that potential exists now where you can get tiktok to as big or bigger than your medicine. But the infrastructure and architecture it takes in order to achieve that is very different than the campaign structure you might have on meta because it might involve a thousand affiliates or a thousand people that you're managing and gamifying.

And you talk a little bit about tiktok shop and how you guys have approached scale on that platform.

Yeah so we are there we are doubling the affiliate content the creator concept is a very real reality is essentially necessary to scale on that platform. So yeah I would say we are in our very early journey on tiktok shop.

Some challenges there when you're looking at like a baby food brand baby in general they have some restrictions around categories that we've been working through.

But that's a really interesting one and what we've seen so far is that it seems to be helping us to reach net new consumers. So I'm excited about that we also know from like industry data there's a very real effect of tiktok on retail accounts like target or even Amazon.

“So going back to your halo discussion there's definitely interaction there that can be very I think interesting and beneficial for brands and growing brands.”

Can you walk me through how you think about halo space like pick a channel maybe it's CTV I think that was the one you said that you're maybe the most excited about or streaming.

Can you walk me through how you look at the halo for a channel like that how and how many teams it kind of goes into because I imagine a lot of those numbers end up showing up on the retail side. How do you how do you look at the numbers for a platform where you're not going to see the sale you're not going to see row ass usually the next day is that accurate.

“Yeah, I mean for the most part I think there are instances where you can capture somebody right away after a big campaign I mean we started dabbling in NFL placements a few years ago now and that's become a part of our mix so.”

A big reach moment like that you do see maybe some near term sales on the DTC site but yes there is a very real effect on the retail business that may be a little bit more lagged and again it kind of depends on the consumer and their journey because these consumers may have been hit prior to seeing a big temple spot.

But then we were also looking at sales looking at it relative to when we ran a big moment and you could see correlation there or you could kind of see that lag.

Now that was a triangulation of data but also one of the reasons why we brought keen on because you can start to see that in a more sophisticated manner and I'm sure Brad can speak to better than I. Yeah for sure I mean that the whole point of the solution like ours is really to look for the causal relationship between all the dollars you spend the impressions you gain and the revenue that you return across time and that's where like the importance of the across time part really gets lost in a lot of the row as signal because a lot of the platforms that are reporting impressions and things like that are looking for.

“correlations between like you know the last click and stuff like that so that's what ends up happening is like you lose the signal but that's not how marketing actually works right.”

The reason you look at awareness is because you assume that like just because I'm aware doesn't mean I'm going to go buy your product tomorrow but it doesn't mean I'm not going to buy your product next time I go to the grocery store right and like you kind of lose all of that through this process and you're trying to look for enough of these signals.

So one it's it's not really looking for the causal relationships, but it's understanding the concept of ad soccer decay and no that some of these things have a ramp period in a fall off period.

It's the reason that you have the well balanced KPI is a Jennifer talking about which is like I need to know awareness because awareness is my leading indicator to what household penetration great. One is the lagging indicator of household penetration it's also revenue right so like I need to make sure that I have all three of those things going because you could over obsess over awareness and not actually drive conversion. You could over obsess over growing household penetration, but it doesn't actually lead to growing revenue at the rate at which you want right like just because you have more households doesn't mean, especially for a portfolio of products like once upon a farm.

“It's one thing to say I'm growing the number of households, but if they're buying one product that's not as successful as if they're buying four products right and again it's like it makes sense when you say it that way.”

But at the end of the day it's like we become so singularly focused in the measurement world we obsess over the click in the measurement world we obsess over the awareness and it's like they they're all working together and having that well balanced funnel understanding how all the things relate together. And giving yourself enough time for all of those things to be measured correctly is what makes it so tricky and that's where I think you know we often set up the wrong KPIs that are two short cited that are two binary and it's it's not it's not that simple like if it was we'd all be doing it really successfully right.

So I think that's where where I would really focus a lot of that that attention from a modeling capability like ours and that's where we see a lot of brands get in trouble.

Like for your audience in the D to C world everybody's so focused on those signals that Jennifer talked about early in the once upon a farm story, which is like I'm finding the right correlation signals, but it's like that's great. It's good to build your business, but it's also not as profitable as you could be right because you're so focused on acquisition. If you forever focus on acquisition you never actually break through on brand breaking through on brand is where EBITDA starts to show up right and it doesn't mean that you don't focus on acquisition it means you focus on.

“Casting a wider net rather than just like shooting the fish in the barrel right at some point you have to cast a wider net into the ocean right and at what point do you make that decision.”

I think that's a great opportunity to support it because then you see the opposite problem too, which is people start casting a wide net and wasting a bunch of money measuring the wrong thing, but also they can't keep up on the supply chain side right. So there's all kinds of other problems that happen if you're not looking at all things together at all moments. I'm thinking of the amoeba and I'm thinking of a pond and I'm thinking of the amoeba lives in the pond and you're throwing pebbles in the pond and each of those pebbles is your one of is a marketing effort and there's interaction.

The behavior between each of the ripples that's created it seems like quite a fun challenge to be to be operating at scale are you having a good time Jennifer. 100% I mean I'm a marketer CPG marketer this is what I love to do, but kind of echoing broad sentiment it's a balance it's not either or you can't just have all awareness. They're not all gonna buy you know is so it's that balance of the upper funnel and lower funnel and making sure that everything is working synergistically against your total business goals.

And then how do you look at repeat because that's the other big piece here you've got your you're moving in the right direction in awareness and looking at your public disco disclosures household penetration and repeat are both moving in the right direction.

How do you think how do you model out I guess repeat in in this amoeba pond environment.

“So this is where DTC and the rest of the business maybe become a little bit more separate or more separate than I would like.”

Looking at repeat rate closely over time on the rest of the business side it is that is also something repeat that we are measuring and by rate in our brand tracker so it is tied under those awareness metrics something that we track month over month. And as an omnichannel business and brand I'd like to bring those things closer together because we know we know from survey data that some of our most loyal consumers on DTC are in fact often buying at retail as well.

The store picking something up they grab it is on sale or it's they ran out before their next box so we definitely know that there's a strong interaction happening between those channels.

At the highest level what what are the most I don't know one or two what are the most important KPI that that you're looking at on a daily basis and then alternately what's the number maybe you've stopped trusting you don't look at or don't care about as much that other people might be focusing on too much. That's the one yeah that it is it is it's a very it's an easy thing for people to talk about it is an easy thing for non marketers to understand but we've also done a lot of education internally.

Over the years to our non market or stakeholders around us and what it actually means as you know I can go out and buy a bunch of once upon a foreign branded search terms and I can show sales for it that doesn't necessarily mean it's a win. And it goes back to your business objectives so it was my objective to grow households drive new consumers that type of search campaign probably isn't going to do that maybe a little bit.

“If my objective is simply to like drive as much sales as possible at all costs maybe that's the right thing to do but again I think for successful business it goes back to that balance and that mix.”

And then KPIs that you do focus on would would it be household penetration for you as your top one and one from for us from a total brand perspective we do look at share in accounts and then on the DTC side there are some very core metrics in terms of. the purchase frequency retention caq customer acquisition and then of course all of that feeding into customer lifetime value another one I was going to mention actually that is one that we look at on the retail media side but it's also one that I I like but I caution against so we do look at new to brand.

And those accounts but the reality is as we know that new to brand person at target could have bought elsewhere before and we know that interaction happens a lot with retail and online so.

“It's another one of those proxy metrics that we kind of evaluate but also take with a grand assault last question maybe starting with you Brad like looking at the once upon a farm account and what what what you they're doing with keen.”

What are you most excited for the growth like over the next year or a couple years for a brand like once upon a farm. I think the benefit is that they build a solid foundation and the upside is huge right and and I think Jennifer is excited about that as well where you could see that one when you have a brand presence that is focused on building a brand and that brand presence is also been focused on innovating into new categories. Both of those things combined become a launch pad for something that really could become very disruptive in the category and I still think we're like early days in the disruption of what they're doing for a lot of their products because they're new right like they've been innovating like crazy and expanding across the store like crazy.

So you got to think I mean there they're at the level of sophistication that they are and this is not like actual like half of their portfolio is still so new to the point where it's like we haven't even hit the point of diminishing return from most of their marketing on some of these product lines. So it's tremendous opportunity for them to continue to grow and and I think you know again the benefit is like we have other portfolio companies who haven't focused on building the brand presence they've been so focused on innovation.

You're the greatest product innovation company that never actually supports any of your innovation right from a marketing perspective and we see that so often with portfolio companies.

And so I say kudos to the ones upon a farm team for kind of keeping that balanced focus which creates huge upside the big challenge for them is can they continue to lean into marketing and capitalize on that right that's going to be the big challenge because as you grow across the portfolio. You now have to spend even more money at the top of funnel because the return could be huge as well so that's going to be the big challenges making sure that you can continuously show that business case and continue to capitalize on it that's the exciting opportunity I think for the steam Jennifer from your side what's your what's your exciting take away.

Well first of all I love the sentiment that Brad has on our our brand thank you.

Yeah, I mean I'm excited about our partnership with keen and really having an unbiased data driven lens on our spend and on our spend potential with any job that I've had and especially at like a startup in the early days you want as much dollars as possible and working media.

“I always always that question of okay is it working and my measuring enough you know all the things and there does come a point where you have to ask yourself okay.”

Is it time to actually invest some of these dollars in measurement or keep putting it and working media and again in the early days it's it's media hands down because you can get the signals. The point where you need to shift to that more sophisticated formal measurement and I'm excited that we've done that I also am excited to and that.

“It's not just about marketing or sales metrics we're able to look at our spend at our campaigns at our marketing dollars.”

Financial lens and against financial kpi's and I think that's really powerful especially when you're talking internally across different stakeholders.

Beautiful well I want to thank you both for coming on the D to see harness the halo series has been super interesting people want to follow your journey Jennifer do you recommend they follow you on LinkedIn.

“Yeah that would be great nice and then otherwise go check out keen ds.com if you want to get get measuring at this level any any final words for a spread.”

Now I'd say just keep going right from this is the world's biggest most complicated puzzle that is CPG marketing in 2026 against all the crazy headwinds so you remain on bias and remain data data led and I think at the end of the day the data will lead us where the data leads us. Sometimes we have to put our emotions to the side and yeah keep doing the right thing and think about the amoeba. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode if you're not a subscriber to our newsletter you can do that right now at direct to consumer all one word dot co.

I'm Eric Dick and this has been the D to see podcast we'll see you next time.