Gail Horwood
101 Great Minds on Music Brands and Behavior
Gail Horwood, CMO, Kellogg North America
Gail Horwood is the CMO at the Kellogg Company. Prior to joining the Kellogg Company, she was the Vice President of Worldwide Digital Strategy at Johnson & Johnson. A multi-talented change agent, Ms. Horwood’s strategic approaches within marketing, digital product pioneering and operational skills have seen her achieve recognition as an industry transformer and leader.
AdWeek 2019 named her Chief Marketing Technology Officer (CMTO) of the year, Brand Innovators 2019 featured her in the top 100 Women in Brand Marketing, and AdAge 2014 recognized her as Top Digital Marketer.
With over 30 years of extensive experience, Gail is a multi-faceted marketing mastermind.
“That’s why I keep going back to what is your brand, what is your position, and what insights will help you get there? An algorithm isn't going to tell me that, but it will be helpful.”
— GAIL HORWOOD, CMO, KELLOGG NORTH AMERICA
Uli Reese: Tell me about your role at Kellogg.
Gail Horwood: I'm the CMO of Kellogg North America, and my job is to focus on programmes, capabilities and activation partners that support our portfolio of brands. I have a team of functional experts, about 60 people, across multiple disciplines, including design and experience planning, media, consumer affairs, digital, CRM, loyalty, and we work together with our brand teams to elevate and make most effective on brand marketing investments across all the consumer touchpoints, including retail and shopper activation. The exciting part of my role is I consider that brand experience throughout the consumer journey.
Reese: How important is everything audio in brand building today?
Horwood: I'm the CMO of Kellogg North America, and my job is to focus on programmes, capabilities and activation partners that support our portfolio of brands. I have a team of functional experts, about 60 people, across multiple disciplines, including design and experience planning, media, consumer affairs, digital, CRM, loyalty, and we work together with our brand teams to elevate and make most effective on brand marketing investments across all the consumer touchpoints, including retail and shopper activation. The exciting part of my role is I consider that brand experience throughout the consumer journey.
Reese: How important is everything audio in brand building today?
Horwood: We consider sound part of our brand foundations and distinctive assets for our brands. We're fortunate that our brands have sound at their core. If you think about Rice Krispies and ‘Snap, Crackle, Pop’, Pringles and the ‘pop’ of the can opening, the toaster being activated for Eggo, or ‘It’s great’ the trademark phrase of Tony [the Tiger], they are incredibly important brand foundation and signatures. One of the opportunities for us is to continue to make sound relevant in a different consumer environment; so how do we take what are inherently foundational equity pieces of our brand and continue to leverage those and make them relevant today.
Reese: With such a rich foundation at Kellogg, what are the challenges and opportunities in moving to the next level?
Horwood: It’s a huge opportunity but also a challenge in that our consumers leverage these audio signatures and use them in their own social media. It’s fantastic because they become brand ambassadors, but they use them however they like, so control of the brand control is no longer tight. What's important is that we continue to actively set the tone and the foundation for how sound is used. We want to play a role in helping guide that process, so that's been very interesting. For me, it requires us to be on the cutting edge and one step ahead. We're always defining the feature as opposed to letting someone else define it for us.
Reese: What the next generation of consumers want to know is- do you really care, and is the brand authentic…
Horwood: In general, I’m using borrowed equity lightly. Music is so powerful, but unless it's something ownable by brand, it's a Zeitgeist moment but not necessarily enduring. What's important is to go back to our brand foundations, and the sounds that are central to our equity, and how we keep them current. Through digital means, there's a lot of things we can do with Tony's trademark ‘It’s great’, and with Snap, Crackle and Pop and the sound of breakfast or the Pop of a Pringle’s can and the toaster bell for Eggo. What's been fascinating to me is that for many years, brands were encouraged to think about sound off because how people consumed content on Facebook, Instagram etc., was not a sound-based experience; it was a sound off experience. One thing COVID has accelerated is the way that sound has become important because technology before was muted. Now we say ‘Oh you're on mute’ like that's a bad thing, so that’s a monumental shift in the last year.
Reese: Ivy Ross, VP of Design at Google, says, ‘If you don't have confidence in yourself to figure out what that sonic watermark is, it's much easier to grab something that will make you popular like a hit tune or a pop star, but it doesn't last over time because culture changes’. Care to comment?
Horwood: I couldn't agree more. Music and culture are so critical to brand relevance, so I'm not minimising it, but if you see that your relevance to cultural cues without standing for something, or understanding what your identity is, that's everything. One of the things we've really focused on is the rise of podcasting and how we can use our sonic identity within the podcast universe to signal our brands and their relevance. I'm always looking for, and mining, cultural relevance, human behaviour and brand equity, to be at the nexus of those things.
Reese: We’ve seen the decline of the sonic logo, so in terms of how to make your brand sonically future proof, what would your headline be?
Horwood: It's solidifying brand foundation and understanding what your equity is. You need to do a lot of due diligence and workshopping around your sonic equity. It’s not a static thing, and it's changed dramatically in the last 20 years, but you need to be very clear on the attributes of your sonic equity and how it should be used. My job is to make the sonic search across every dimension of our brand frictionless. I must isolate the sonic identity and make that discoverable through sound, search or social and link it to our bigger brand promise. Tony’s equity ‘It’s great’ is about encouraging and supporting youth, and giving them the confidence to get out there, so we need to associate ‘It's great’, and Tony, with those behaviours. We went through this process at Kellogg a couple of years ago, where we spent time thinking about our sonic identity as Alexa and voice assistance was rising. What role can a brand play in a voice-assisted world when a lot of that is being managed by Amazon or Google. That's why I say search, because audio search is already happening through voice assistance, but how do we integrate our brand into that?
Reese: Tech has changed in the last five years and sonic has become so dominant, where are we going with this, and why is this happening now?
Horwood: COVID accelerated behaviours that were already underway. That isolating experience with sound and the use of voice assistance accelerated dramatically during the pandemic because we were spending so much time at home. I believe we were on that path anyway. I don't believe we're ever going back, so we must steward our iconic brands and keep them current. The way to do that is to study consumer behaviour. What I wish for, and what isn’t readily available today are real consumer insights around voice assistance and podcasting. You get performance, you get stats, but you don't get a ton of actionable, behavioural insights. I ask for them all the time; tell me how people are leveraging this technology so I can better create content. There are not enough true behavioural insights within the sonic ecosystem.
Reese: Many of your colleagues say they need more data, but they don’t want to take the magic out of music or the process…
Horwood: I believe technology is an assist, not the answer. Human cognitive intervention and thoughtfulness is part of the equation. I like the idea of algorithmic assisting as I'm making these decisions because it helps me understand a vast amount of data that I wouldn't have access to and cognitively couldn't compute. Again, it goes back to just because something's popular doesn't mean it resonates with your brand and your equity in your business challenge. Too often in the early days’ search was how we’d create content to be popular, but it doesn't necessarily equate with brand equity or growth. That’s why I keep going back to what is your brand, what is your position, and what insights will help you get there? An algorithm isn't going to tell me that, but it will be helpful.
Note: The interview took place in New York, United States, on the 29th of April 2021.
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