It may seem like every company in the world has a DTC offering, but even now, there are businesses that are just entering the DTC space. Perdue Farms launched it’s DTC presence in January of 2020, and it has been go, go, go ever since. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, David Zucker, the CMO and SVP Ecommerce at Perdue Farms, explained the steps he took to get this effort going and how the company is experimenting with the online customer experience. Plus, he explains how Perdue balances its DTC efforts with the relationship it has with retail partners, that may not always be happy with the idea of a company moving its product online. According to David, the key to making sure that you can succeed both online and in retail is to have transparency, communication, and a differentiation of offerings that will link both kinds of experiences, What does that look like exactly? Find out on this episode!
Main Takeaways:
- Don’t Undercut Customers: When you work with retail partners, you want to keep a good working relationship with them even if you have your own ecommere goals. Don’t try to undercut or outprice the retailers you work with, find other ways to serve customers in ways that retailers can’t, like through bundles or bulk options, etc. And, try to find ways to drive demand to both your own site and your partners’ stores by building in technology or conversion tools that link everything together into a seamless experience.
- Conveying Your Message: Soometimes the things your proud of most live within the walls of your organization. But it could be helpful to let those secrets out and make them a part of your brand.
- Go Old School: Acquiring customers is one of the biggest challenges any business faces. Instead of trying to compete with everyone else in the same new, up and coming channels, look to some of the traditional methods, like print and direct mail, where you can stand out and deliver something more unique that will resonate with customers.
For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.
Key Quotes:
“I think what’s the really exciting part about working in a company of this size looking at it from a family perspective is that regardless of how big the company has achieved over the last 10 or 15 years, they still manage to keep it … There’s a small feeling about it, which is really, I think, a testament to the senior leadership and how they’ve been guiding and channeling the organization, and making sure that, that’s not being lost.”
“Ultimately, we don’t care where people buy Perdue chicken, as long as they buy Perdue chicken. And so, if someone comes to any of our digital properties, we ultimately want them to leave that experience with a Perdue purchase. And so, if we can get them over to one of our customers like Kroger, or Walmart or Stop & Shop, then we definitely want to advocate for that.”
“Through our ecommerce platform we would have a direct relationship with consumers, and we innovate. We have an innovation center here and we develop all of our own product. The idea of having direct relationship with our consumers would give us much faster feedback in that process. And so we could get and do different tests. So we could get fast feedback on not only people’s preferences and taste for the product, but also willingness to pay and their impact on promotions.”
“When I joined the company, there was no one here but me that really understood digital. 10 months later, we launched the site…So we had to hire a team. We built it internally, and then launched in. And so, during that whole process of building it, also developing the strategy. Perdue has other brands of protein besides just Perdue. And so, this was the … One of the things we thought about was just that people, if they’re coming to the website to buy Perdue chicken, maybe they would buy the other products, the other brands the company would sell. So there was a conversation with the leaders of those businesses, as well, about putting their brands on the website. Product placement, imagery, is something that we’re still working through. This is it’s a small operation and all those things are really important. So we very much started in January with something that we thought was going to be a first draft. Something more of a proof of concept, not a proof of concept, but a little more than that. And then Covid hit, and the whole world went upside down. We literally went from a couple hundred orders to several thousand orders on a regular basis.”
“This is not the place where you’re going to come and get Perdue chicken for less expensive than you can buy in any of your retail stores. We do that very specifically. We’re not trying to undercut our customers. It was a big conversation that we had with our customers. So what we do is, we provide bundles. You can come and buy onesies and twosies of things, but it’s going to be much more expensive at a per item level, plus you have to pay for shipping. And so, the benefit really that we found with our consumers is where you give them … It’s more of like a value of giving them a lot of one thing or two things.”
“We have started looking at other ways of acquiring customers outside of digital, and using things that were really much more traditional, like print media, which is still a very, very big part of direct marketing. And so, we’re using those things. And honestly, this is where existing companies that were direct marketers and even had strong ecommerce businesses, a lot of them started as print direct mailers and had either stopped or significantly curtailed that part of their business. That was an experience in a prior life. But everyone’s stuck at home, so suddenly, your mailbox now, is a little bit like a treasure trove of stuff.”
“The thing about being more digitally focused, having people that are thinking digitally, is they’re automatically thinking more analytically. And so, they’re thinking about optimizing, getting the most leads per dollar. Then the question is, is it the most qualified leads per dollar? The question is, what is qualified? And so, then you start to work down from this broad funnel to getting something that’s very efficient. It’s no different than any direct marketing person would be saying, ‘I need to efficiently acquire a new customer through a key word on Google.’”
Bio
David Zucker is the CMO and SVP Ecommerce at Perdue Farms. Prior to joining Perdue, Zucker was the general manager and chief marketing officer of Omaha Steaks International. He also previously served as chief marketing officer for both Vitacost.com, an online retailer of vitamin, nutritional supplements and shelf stable foods and now a part of Kroeger Co. and Gilt Groupe, an online flash sale website of high-end fashion for women, men, children and home products.
Zucker also had ecommerce and marketing roles at Dell Inc., Home Shopping Network (HSN), Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and Priceline.com.
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Transcript:
Stephanie:
Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of Up Next in Commerce. This is Stephanie Postles, your host and CEO at mission.org. Today on the show, we have David Zucker, who’s a Chief Marketing Officer and SVP of eCommerce at Perdue Farms. David, Welcome to the podcast.
David:
Thanks, it’s great to be here.
Stephanie:
How exciting. I think this interview’s going to make me a bit hungry, so I’m fully preparing for stomach rumbling, noises, just in case you hear it. Just be prepared.
David:
That’s good. Well, we’re hungry for chicken too, here.
Stephanie:
Yeah. I want to talk a bit about your background, before getting into Perdue Farms. I saw that you worked at some pretty awesome places before, from Vitacost to Omaha Steaks. I wanted to hear a little bit about your journey and your past.
David:
Sure. So if I take you all the way back, so I’ve got a Doctorate in Economics. And really decided when I was getting my PhD, that I did not want to go teach. Because I wanted to work in business and in industry. And really took the math part of my economics training and applied it in marketing, and used that to grow throughout my career.
David:
The parts of the organization I ended up being successful in were the analytics parts of the marketing organization. And then those part of the organizations became larger parts and more important in the organization as marketing became more digitally focused and more metrics driven.
David:
And so, the companies that I ended up gravitating to and being more successful at, like the ones you mentioned, Vitacost, Omaha Steaks, were ones that were either online or had big direct marketing businesses where analytics really is the driver of their marketing programs.
Stephanie:
I got it. What drew you to Perdue Farms?
David:
Two things. One is I’m originally from the east coast, and my wife and I just wanted to get back here. Our children are in this part of the country, our families are in this part of the country, so that’s one thing.
David:
But professionally, when I was looking around, wanting to get back to the east coast, what was really interesting about Perdue is that … And I had joined the company, not as the marketing leader, but as the person to help them build a digital strategy, is that there were a lot of things that I was finding through my research at Perdue, that I had never realized Perdue did. And specifically, about the care and focus that it had in raising its chickens, and how it looked at husbandry.
David:
It was interesting, the more I thought about it, it was that it’s a family run company. And it’s one that with family run businesses they tend to think longer term, as opposed to public companies, which think quarterly. And so, I could stall a lot of that longterm thinking in a lot of the decisions that were on the website, and the way that they were making decisions around what to invest in.
David:
It was really intriguing. I think, based on my background and the things that interest me, being in a company that really takes care and consideration with how it raises an animal for food, that’s really important. And I also heard that the way that they treat their associates was also topnotch. I was like, “It sounds like a great place to go work.”
Stephanie:
Yeah. I mean, I know I mentioned this before, but I grew up in Salisbury, which is where they started. And always hearing about the career paths there, and how they treat their employees, even seeing the marketing materials that they put out, it wouldn’t always be about their actual business. Sometimes it would be highlighting different employees and the things that they were doing, and how they were helping the community. So I definitely grew up always thinking about them.
Stephanie:
What was it like shifting into a company that you said, family run? I think it’s been around for 100 years, or maybe a little bit over 100 years, at this point. What was that like shifting into a company like that?
David:
So I came from a company that actually was just … We celebrated 100 years, at Omaha Steaks. So for me, actually, it was pretty easy coming into the company. Perdue’s 101 years old this year, which is fantastic.
Stephanie:
Yeah, impressive.
David:
Which is a huge milestone. It’s great. I think what’s really exciting is that at Perdue, there are several generations that work in the business. So Jim Perdue is still a very active chairman. And there are four or five fourth generation family members that work in the company. So it’s really great. Some of them work on our direct to consumer team, and are really active. It’s fantastic.
David:
In terms of, I think what’s the really exciting part about working in a company of this size looking at it from a family perspective is that regardless of how big the company has achieved over the last 10 or 15 years, they still manage to keep it … There’s a small feeling about it, which is really, I think, a testament to the senior leadership and how they’ve been guiding and channeling the organization, and making sure that, that’s not being lost.
David:
And so, still very active in the community, very active in all the communities actually, that the company, that we have locations at. That’s really great to see that, that’s been kept up as the company’s grown in size.
Stephanie:
Yeah. I love that. You were the first eCommerce executive, I think, ever hired by the company. I want to hear what you were expecting from the role? And, what were you most excited to get into?
David:
Well, it was a pretty interesting interview process. The job description was something like this, “We kind of want to get into the digital thing.” And so I was like, “Okay. That sounds like a pretty interesting thing to try and help you with.”
David:
And so, the exciting part was, is that there was a lot of uncertainty. And personally and professionally, I like that. The other thing is that Perdue didn’t really know what they didn’t know or what they wanted, and so they needed someone that was comfortable in that ambiguity.
David:
And so, coming in and first understanding what the company had already done, how they were already thinking about it, because they had already done several years worth of insights and research, and starts and stops of thinking about different things just given what eCommerce had been doing over the last 10 years. It made sense. So coming in and getting a good understanding of the landscape, and how the company’s been approaching things.
David:
And then, figuring out where our strengths are and leveraging where are the things that Perdue can probably invest in or think about from a digital perspective, and understand how they can gain out of it was a big part of developing that strategy, which ultimately ended up into three primary pillars.
David:
One is eCommerce, which is we launched our website. We can probably talk more about that. We launched it in early January, officially to consumers in January 2020. Right before Covid started.
David:
The second pillar is very much around using all of the digital properties that Perdue has to support the retail businesses that we supply chicken to. And so, ultimately, we don’t care where people buy Perdue chicken, as long as they buy Perdue chicken. And so, if someone comes to any of our digital properties, we ultimately want them to leave that experience with a Perdue purchase. And so, if we can get them over to one of our customers like Kroger, or Walmart or Stop & Shop, then we definitely want to advocate for that.
David:
The third pillar was really around using our digital platform to be able to test new products. And so, because through our eCommerce platform we would have a direct relationship with consumers, and we innovate. We have an innovation center here and we develop all of our own product. The idea of having direct relationship with our consumers would give us much faster feedback in that process. And so we could get and do different tests. So we could get fast feedback on not only people’s preferences and taste for the product, but also willingness to pay and their impact on promotions. So things that would help some of our trade teams when they interact with the sales and buyers and our customers.
Stephanie:
So then, I want to go back to the first pillar, talking about launching the website.
David:
Sure.
Stephanie:
I mean, what did that look like launching in January 2020? And then, Covid’s hitting, I mean … And then also trying to figure out what do you want to put on that website. Do you want to do a direct to consumer thing? Or do you want to just focus on your retail partners? It seems like there’s a lot of things to think about. What did it look like behind the scenes?
David:
When I joined the company, there was no one here but me that really understood digital. 10 months later, we launched the site. So we launched it actually in late November, as a soft launch, and then officially went live with consumers in January.
David:
So we had to hire a team. We built it internally, and then launched in. And so, during that whole process of building it, also developing the strategy. Perdue has other brands of protein besides just Perdue. And so, this was the … One of the things we thought about was just that people, if they’re coming to the website to buy Perdue chicken, maybe they would buy the other products, the other brands the company would sell. So there was a conversation with the leaders of those businesses, as well, about putting their brands on the website. Product placement, imagery, is something that we’re still working through. This is it’s a small operation and all those things are really important. So we very much started in January with something that we thought was going to be a first draft. Something more of a proof of concept, not a proof of concept, but a little more than that. And then Covid hit, and the whole world went upside down. We literally went from a couple hundred orders to several thousand orders on a regular basis.
David:
That was really scary and it blew up our logistics partner. During that whole time, we actually had to change logistics partners because the original one couldn’t send out the volume that we were generating. Which was new for a young team here, that really didn’t have a lot of direct consumer experience at all. We were changing partners.
David:
The building of the website, the creative, the research we did on the name was all something that we took really seriously. Because as a branded company, it’s something that we are … We’re really concerned. Concerned is the wrong word, we’re just focused on what we call ourselves, what the consumer perception and perspective is of that. And also, where there’s any channel conflict.
David:
And so, the website that we used, we actually repurposed our corporate website, which was perduefarms.com. We folded the corporate information under part of the tab structure that we used on Perdue Farms. But we made perduefarms.com was of all the things tested, that’s the one that resonated the best with the consumer as a place to come and purchase protein products from us. But there was a lot of research done on that in terms of what to call it, as well as, the impact it could potentially have on other brands that we sell.
Stephanie:
Yeah. When you’re thinking about how to draw in consumers, I mean, Covid obviously probably sent a lot of new ones your way, but if that wasn’t there and you’re thinking like today, maybe, “How do I draw in new customers?” What are the biggest functions that maybe pull people in?
Stephanie:
When I went to the website I’m like, “Ooh, there’s good deals if you buy here. I can get like a 10 pack. I’ve got kids. We need this much chicken. It could be fine.” But what did you find out customers cared about to get them to come and order directly from you?
David:
Well, the first thing is that we’re not the cheapest alternative. So I think there’s a lot of other eCommerce sites. This is not the place where you’re going to come and get Perdue chicken for less expensive than you can buy in any of your retail stores. We do that very specifically. We’re not trying to undercut our customers. It was a big conversation that we had with our customers.
David:
So what we do is, we provide bundles. You can come and buy onesies and twosies of things, but it’s going to be much more expensive at a per item level, plus you have to pay for shipping.
David:
And so, the benefit really that we found with our consumers is where you give them … It’s more of like a value of giving them a lot of one thing or two things. So our organic chicken breast packages are our big sellers. Our multi protein packages are big sellers. We just launched seafood and desserts on the website that are not Perdue branded. They’re other brands. They’re doing really well.
David:
And then, and we offer it nationally. And so that’s the other thing is that we found that there were people all over the country that were really interested in the message that Perdue had that found us maybe through Covid, that have stayed with us, where Perdue chicken products are raw, non-prepared products are readily available because Perdue, primarily, is an eastern brand, like east of the Mississippi. It’s not as well known mid part of the country and west. And so, that message that we have does seem to be resonating with customers outside of the eastern seaboard.
Stephanie:
Got it. Were there any surprises once you launched the website and got to see what customers were ordering, how they interacted with it? Was there anything surprising around that?
David:
Not really. I think the biggest surprise that we had, and probably we think that everybody else was having it at the same time with Covid, is just the significant change in the economics of acquiring customers online, changed overnight. And so, while it was very efficient for a really long time, Covid changed that. And so, it’s very … It’s gotten extremely competitive. Much more competitive than it was before Covid. Partly because everybody that was in an eCommerce business is stronger now. Everybody that was thinking about doing an eCommerce business is like, “Okay, now’s the time to do it.” And the people that were failing at it, got a bolt, a jolt of success and they were like, “Well, let’s stay in it.” And so, that all happened at once.
David:
We were part of that. I mean, we were one of the new businesses that were there. We were competing for [inaudible]. That was probably the biggest thing that we had to adjust as we think about just the basic economics of how we run that part of the business.
Stephanie:
Yeah. I mean, how do you think about competing now? Because I’ve heard this from quite a few guests that ads are crazy right now, CPMs are crazy, it’s a lot of new incumbents popping up that can promise anything, maybe even if they don’t have the backend to always fulfill it. And so it seems hard for a consumer right now, to be like, “Okay, this is a 100 year old company. They’ve got it figured out versus this is a new company that’s maybe just testing some messaging with me to see if this all will stick.” What ways are you finding to get through the noise and find your customers and keep them sticky where they keep coming back?
David:
Well, the really good thing is, so on the acquisition side, the Perdue name has a lot of equity, and it’s definitely something we have seen to be extremely powerful in when we’re going out to acquire customers. In terms of powerful relating in terms of being more efficient. That’s been fantastic.
David:
The other thing we’ve done is we have started looking at other ways of acquiring customers outside of digital, and using things that were really much more traditional, like print media, which is still a very, very big part of direct marketing. And so, we’re using those things.
David:
And honestly, I think, we were … This is where existing companies that were direct marketers and even had strong eCommerce businesses, a lot of them started as print direct mailers and had either stopped or significantly curtailed that part of their business. That was an experience in a prior life. But everyone’s stuck at home, so suddenly, your mailbox now, is a little bit like a treasure trove of stuff that could be-
Stephanie:
It’s fun.
David:
Yeah, exactly. So we found that, that was actually a really good way for us to start to effectively and efficiently drive new customers.
David:
What we see is on a retention side, is our retention rates are much stronger than I would’ve expected in a regular direct marketing business. I think that very much speaks to two things.
David:
One is the quality of product that we’re putting in front of consumers is we’ve had 100 years to figure this thing out. And so, that part I think we do really well on.
David:
And then, the other part is, is that the brand is just … People do know the brand. And so, if you know anybody in the east coast, they’ve probably heard of us. The people even on the west coast, even though you live on the west coast, you might’ve lived on the east coast at one point, and so you recognize it at least that now, there’s things that are available for you.
David:
The other thing I would say that’s really different between … Just I want to be super clear about it, is that Perdue is primarily a fresh chicken business. Right? So when you go into a supermarket and buy Perdue chicken, you’re either buying … Maybe it’s one of our prepared products in the frozen case, but in the fre … But the chicken you would buy from us primarily is in the fresh case. When you buy anything from the direct to consumer business, it’s all frozen. And so, it’s also a different use case the consumers are not necessarily buying chicken from perduefarms.com having it shipped to their house to eat chicken that night. So they’re using it much more for freezer stocking, we have a lot of gift purchases. And so, there’s multiple uses of our site, verse the use case of someone walking into a local grocery store and buying our product there.
Stephanie:
Yep. Were there ever any tricky conversations when it came to working with your retailers, where maybe they said, “Oh, okay. Perdue’s now going online. They’re going direct to consumer. Now I have to compete with that.” How did you balance those conversations so they didn’t feel they were about to get cannibalized?
David:
Yeah, on a knife’s edge is how we balanced them. It’s really important because, look, no matter how big our direct to consumer business is here, it’s not ever going to be big as the mother ship. It’s just not going to be. It’s part of our ability to provide our products to consumers where they want to consume it.
David:
So the companies that we supply chicken to under their own brands, some of them were concerned, and we had real open, transparent conversations with them. The things that got them over the hump were, “First of all, we’re not going to compete with you on price. We are going to be more expensive because we have this relationship with you and the consumer looks … You guys provide a certain value that we don’t need to get into that space.” That’s one thing.
David:
The other thing is if it’s a really big market and people are now consuming in multiple different ways. And we feel that by having this offering, we’re able to provide another way for the consumer to buy the product. And just kept that communication going.
David:
And then, I think the other part that really helped a lot is that our second pillar of the strategy was much more around getting people to buy Perdue product anywhere. And so, what we haven’t yet built out on the site, primarily because Covid derailed that part of the strategy. We were so focused on shoring up the direct to consumer business, that the first pillar. Is that second pillar is really around getting consumers from the anywhere on any digital experience you’re having at Perdue brand anywhere to ultimate buy that product at retailer.
David:
So we have partnerships with things like Price Biter with Whisk, different kinds of shoppable content, where actually our Perdue recipes are on all the Samsung digital devices. You can actually buy Perdue chicken through the direct to consumer site on your refrigerator, if you have one of those Samsung high end refrigerators. We’re the only-
Stephanie:
[inaudible] that sounds awesome.David:
It is awesome. I mean, it’s what other way would you want to get your chicken. It’s the first place you’re going to know when you’re out of chicken. And so, while you can buy it directly from us, the experience that we’re very much in the process of designing and developing is making it very easy for the consumer, when they’re in the process on our site to be able to say, “Look, I want to convert at Walmart. I want to take your chicken, the Perdue chicken that I found on your website, but I want to buy it at my next visit to Walmart, or I want to do my … I want it, do the click and collect experience at Walmart.”
David:
And so, Whisk is a technology that we use. We have it on the perdue.com site as well as the perduefarms.com website. It allows you to do that. It allows you to take a product and drop it into your basket if you’ve signed in at multiple retailers. They know if the product is in stock or not, and so they’re able to recommend other products.
David:
And so, I think the partnership between … We have a direct to consumer business but we’re very much concerned about driving traffic to your local retail, our local retailers to buy the Perdue product. Plus, here’s all the other stuff you can buy at the local retailers.
David:
Those conversations actually go pretty well. “But so like wait. Now you’re going to be a demand driver for us? Okay. We like that.” And so, I think with the advent of Covid and now they’re all building and shoring up their digital experiences, they very much get it. I mean, the number of people that are shopping on their websites, I mean, go back three years, what retailer had a really, any halfway decent experience to buy food online? Maybe two.
David:
And so, we’re now, I think, a strong partner at the table when they’re thinking about digital experiences. And so, we’re not … There’s clearly some competition but it’s very much a … It’s a place where we both realize we’re … Can satisfy the consumer for different experiences, and we’re bringing different things to the table. Let’s figure out how we can partner with each other so we both in.
Stephanie:
Yeah. Oh, I love that. Okay. So it’s like, “Yes, we’re a little bit competitive. However, here’s all the benefits that we’re also going to offer to you.”
David:
Right.
Stephanie:
Yeah. So I mean, you have a unique viewpoint into all these conversations, so I want to ask, what are these retailers asking of you all? What requests are you getting? What do you hear that they want right now, when it comes to you partnering with a company like you, what are they requesting? Even if it’s very futuristic, even if it’s crazy. They’re asking for things where you’re like, “That can’t happen for another 10 years.” But I just want to hear how they’re thinking.
David:
Yeah, sure. I would say that the most leading edge things that we’re doing, we’re probably doing with Sam’s Club right now, which we’re in the process of launching. Which is, you would go onto Sam’s Club’s website and you would buy Perdue chicken from Sam’s Club. But perduefarms.com is going to ship it to you. And so, what these retailers are doing is they are trying to figure out with partners like us who have the ability to send product directly to the consumer, how can these customers get, be a conduit to getting consumers that product faster.
David:
I think a lot of organizations are taking the step of, we, Perdue, would have to deliver our chicken to the warehouse at Sam’s Club. And then, you would buy it at Sam’s Club and Sam’s Club would ship it to you, or Sam’s Club would do, would ship it, a click and collect. Sam’s Club is being more forward thinking. They’re thinking, “Look, someone’s going to come to our website and we just want them to leave with the product they want to leave with. If that means they can get it in the store, great. If that means that Sam’s can deliver it to them, that’s great. But if that means we can get a partner to ship it to them, the customer doesn’t … Why would the consumer care about that? They wouldn’t. They just want the product.”
David:
So we, Perdue, because now we have our own eCommerce business here, direct to consumer business, we have the capabilities internally to do that, to have those conversations and solve those problems for how our sales and marketing teams internally, it makes us a stronger partner for companies like Sam’s Club. That’s an example.
David:
I think the other things that we’re trying to think about, and this is I think, we’re both asking questions this way, is how do you leverage each other’s social media? How do you think about consumers interacting digitally with our brands, so it’s more transparent of, “You know when you go to Sam’s Club, and you start talking about the quality of chicken, Sam’s Club doesn’t raise chickens. Perdue raises chickens. So who do you want developing and talking to the consumers about chicken husbandry? Is it the retailer? Or is it who, is it the people like Perdue who actually grow the product?” And so those are … And how do you do that? Do you do that through digital experiences? Do you do that through things like email and video and visits the farm virtually? Those are all things that we’re in the process of working on with them.
Stephanie:
Yeah. I always think there’s a lot of interesting details that happen behind the scenes at companies that should be shared more. And you’re starting to see those trends pop up on TikTok where it’s like, “Oh, look how this one thing is made.” Or, “Look what a factory looks like when it’s doing this.” I think consumers are at this place now, where they want to know what’s happening behind the scenes. And, it’s also just interesting. I mean, if companies lean more into that it could at least be a little bit of a bump in the marketing campaign, just to tell the story behind the scenes.
David:
Yeah. I mean, look, at the end of the day, we raise animals for food. Right?
Stephanie:
Yeah.
David:
And so, I think it’s important that we understand-
Stephanie:
It’s trickier.
David:
It’s trickier, but just to be really clear, we take that. It’s a big responsibility for us, and it’s a big responsibility for how we manage, how we, as an organization, manage through the communication with the consumer. We’re very transparent about what we do. It’s we have an animal welfare meeting every year, where we … I think we’ve had it, this is our fifth or sixth year we just got done doing it, where we had our … We have consumers that come. We have our customers come. And we have several organizations that are animal welfare groups that come because we want to hear about the things that we can do better. And so, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for us to be able to communicate what we do and how we do in that vibe.
Stephanie:
And why things matter. Now, you look at all these packages and it’s always … I was just talking to beauty company the other day. It was like, companies are like, “No this. No that. No that.” She was highlighting some of the things that companies aren’t using in products anymore are actually not that bad, but they’ve gotten to know everything, and less is more.
Stephanie:
But also, I feel like there’s a lot of education still needed when it comes to, “What does that actually mean when it says something doesn’t have antibiotics?” Or, “Something’s humanely raised.” It seems like people can say anything these days and having a company who can come in and be like, “Here’s what this actually means when it’s on our package. Here’s what happens behind the scenes.” Could be very valuable as well.
David:
Yeah. It’s one of the things again, because it’s a family run company, Jim Perdue, our chairman, is feeding this chicken to his children and his grandchildren. I mean, it’s not that big corporation where we’re worrying about like, “Just we got to get super profitable.” I mean, obviously our company, it’s worried about making money, but it’s our values are very much rooted in the way this company was started. And while it’s a business, it very much is concerned about raising animals in the most ethical way. So we’re not just worried about what the criteria is to do it, we very often are the ones that are helping develop what the criteria should be, on the leading edge of that. So as an example of that, we’re looking more humane ways to raise the animals.
David:
The other thing is this idea around transparency is that any organization can call up our company and literally probably get on our farm within 24 hours. Anywhere we have one. And so, it’s not like that there’s certain farms that we allow visits to verse other ones. We don’t really have anything to hide because we really feel good about what we do and how we do it. I think we’re, as the marketing person for the company as well, I think what we’re getting better at, and Covid gave us a little bit of a speed bump, is figuring out what and how to communicate that to consumers so they understand what we all know in the organization. Which is, you really wouldn’t … We don’t think you should buy any other chicken because of literally the care and respect for what we do as an organization both with our associates, the relationships we have with our farmers, the partnerships we have with our customers, and ultimately how we take care of the chickens.
Stephanie:
Yep. Yeah. I love that. When thinking about the future, what projects are you most excited about? What maybe moonshot bets are you all taking right now in the company?
David:
I would tell you that it’s a little bit of just getting really good at the basics. I think that’s the first step. Covid, there’s a lot of things that Covid changed in the industry. Both in terms of how we work with associates in our harvest facilities, labor is now a huge constraint given where it was three years ago. It’s just that part of it’s a different environment.
David:
So I think on our production and our husbandry areas, there’s a lot of things the company is doing to think more about longterm how to make that a strategic advantage for the organization.
David:
On the marketing side, I think, I mean I just mentioned it, but really what we’re trying to do there is, develop the marketing platform that can clearly communicate to consumers what we did historically. What Frank Perdue did, where it took a tough man to make a tender chicken. Everybody still talks about that. Everybody still in the northeast remembers that after, if you’re over 35 years old, you remember that. We’ve lost a little bit of that. There’s much more competition than there was. So from a marketing perspective, the idea is really how to figure out, how to communicate what we do, how we do it, in a way the consumer values.
David:
And then I think from a product innovation, we’re just going to continue to develop fantastic products. One of the products we’re super excited about in this area of vegetable protein, Perdue’s an animal protein company. So the approach that we took into it was the combination of plants and animals. And so, we developed the chicken plus product, which for every serving, you get a quarter cup of vegetables with it.
Stephanie:
That’s great.
David:
The real unlock there was you said you have children.
Stephanie:
I’ve still got them. I need that.
David:
There you go. There you go.
Stephanie:
Sneak them in however you can.
David:
That’s exactly it. I mean, exactly what you said. It literally has a quarter cup of vegetables in every serving of chicken nuggets. And so, we market to the parents. The message is very much around … I don’t want to say, sneaking it in, but that’s … You get to take a vegetable product and deliver it to your children, so they’re getting a much more healthy version.
David:
We’re trying to figure out other ways to do things that are like that. As opposed to, we’re not adverse to it, I just don’t think that it’s probably a place that … It’s probably not a place that we’re going to be very strong in, in the near term is all vegetable protein. Because we see what we’re doing in the blended space, and it’s been really successful. So we think there’s still some opportunity there to press the gas harder.
Stephanie:
Yeah. That’s good. I need that. I need to pick some of that up for my boys. I feel like they would love that.
David:
They would.
Stephanie:
All the nugget things. Yeah, that’s –
David:
Everybody … You can’t tell the difference. Honestly, you can’t. Well, I want to be careful about making a claim [crosstalk] on a live podcast here. It’s really, really hard to tell the difference. You know?
Stephanie:
Yeah.
David:
Even if you put two side by side, they are just, they’re just fantastic. I’d highly recommend them.
Stephanie:
Yes. Yum. Okay. Stomach growling, already. The last piece I wanted to touch on is you’ve been in the B2B space that shifts to B2C, and have seen that whole world for a while. I want to hear what opportunities you see right now when it comes to B2B companies, because we’ve seen a slow uptick when it comes to actually moving online, also trying out the B2C model. So I’m just wondering how you’re viewing that landscape right now, and maybe what you would advise companies who are B2B even thinking about going digital right now?
David:
Do it.
Stephanie:
Do it.
David:
You got to do it. It’s going to happen one way or another. I think that most of them, they’re definitely most of them are thinking about it already.
David:
I mean, I think it was maybe 10 years ago, even in the spaces I was looking at, there were a lot of people that were talking to the marketing people that were in my circles. And in the B2B space about, “How do we leverage what’s worked well in direct to consumer and bring that to B2B?”
David:
I would tell you that the opportunities are at the higher end of the sales funnel. So where you generate those marketing qualified leads for an organization, there’s I think, that’s where the direct to consumer marketer can add a lot of value in a B2B marketing organization by helping and educating the organization in terms of that top part of the funnel of getting these marketing qualify via large volumes of qualified leads in through digital acquisition channels. And then, scoring them literally, so when they become a sales qualified lead, they come with a lot of equity with them. As opposed to maybe a traditional less analytical or less digitally focused organization would operate is they got a list of cards or they got a list of [inaudible], just going to start checking them off.
David:
The thing about being more digitally focused, having people that are thinking digitally, is they’re automatically thinking more analytically. And so, they’re thinking about optimizing, getting the most leads per dollar. Then the question is, is it the most qualified leads per dollar? The question is, what is qualified? And so, then you start to work down from this broad funnel to getting something that’s very efficient. It’s no different than any direct marketing person would be saying, “I need to efficiently acquire a new customer through a key word on Google.”
Stephanie:
Now, it seems like it’s the perfect time to also find those folks. I mean, there’s so many people who have gotten into D2C and running marketing for them. I mean, the talent pool’s there, it just has to be tapped into. Yeah. Cool thing to know how to think about that from a B2B angle.
David:
Yeah. They’re in large demand. And then, the other thing I would just say, I mean, I think it’s probably been overstated, but I’ll continue to bang the nail, is just definitely think mobile first. Because everybody carries around a phone, and from a development perspective when you think about creating messaging and creative, you need to really create it for this device and not the laptop or the desktop. In many cases, people, they’re using that phone as a work tool as well as an entertainment tool.
Stephanie:
Yep. I wonder at what point we’ll just walk into a meeting and just have our phone. Plug it into a monitor or something and that’s just all we need in the future.
David:
I can’t believe it’s that far away. I mean, look how fast we adopted Zoom.
Stephanie:
I know, exactly. Next year. Maybe a couple of years. Well, David, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It was a pleasure having you on. Where can our listeners find out more about Perdue Farms and yourself?
David:
You can go to perduefarms.com or perdue.com and we’ve got all the information about the company and the products that we sell, and the organization, itself, is there.
Stephanie:
Amazing. All right. Thanks, David.
David:
Thank you.
