The Consumer Insights Revolution with PepsiCo and Zappi | How to Turn Data Into Advantage
Timestamps are as accurate as they can be but may be slightly off. We encourage you to listen to the full context.
Podcast Summary
This CMO Podcast episode features a roundtable discussion on transforming consumer insights and analytics, centered around the new book "The Consumer Insights Revolution: Transforming Market Research for Competitive Advantage." Host Jim Stengel is joined by Steve Phillips (Zappi co-founder), Nataly Kelly (Zappi CMO), Katherine Melchior Ray (global brand leader), and Stephan Gans (PepsiCo's Chief Consumer Insights & Analytics Officer). The conversation explores PepsiCo's multi-year transformation from slow, fragmented research to connected learning systems that drive faster, smarter decisions. (26:45)
• Main theme: Moving from testing to learning - transforming traditional market research into agile, connected insights that enable real-time business decisions and consumer-centric growthSpeakers
Steve Phillips
Co-founder and Executive Chairman and Chief Innovation Officer at Zappi, the leading agile consumer insights platform. Phillips is a serial entrepreneur in consumer insights who founded Zappi with the vision of making research faster and cheaper while maintaining quality - transforming typical 4-week, $20,000 projects into 4-hour, $2,000 solutions.
Nataly Kelly
Chief Marketing Officer at Zappi and experienced global marketing leader who started her career as a Spanish interpreter at AT&T. She brings unique perspective on communication challenges across cultures and has held senior marketing roles at HubSpot, focusing on international expansion and B2B tech marketing.
Katherine Melchior Ray
Global brand leader with experience at iconic brands including Nike, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Hyatt, and others. She began her career at Fuji Television in Japan and has developed expertise in helping global brands maintain relevance across different markets and cultures.
Stephan Gans
Chief Consumer Insights and Analytics Officer at PepsiCo and co-author of the featured book. With nearly two decades of experience including 15 years at Unilever, founding a consultancy, and serving as head of strategy at Interbrand, he has led PepsiCo's transformation of its insights function over the past eight years.
Key Takeaways
Transform Testing Into Learning Systems
The traditional approach of expensive, time-consuming "tests" at the end of development cycles is fundamentally broken. (44:47) Stephan Gans emphasized that PepsiCo moved from testing (getting traffic light answers) to learning (having insights available whenever needed). This shift enables consumer centricity at all commercial decision points, allowing teams to iterate and improve rather than simply pass/fail. Instead of stopping development for 4-6 weeks waiting for research results, teams can now get rapid feedback to inform ongoing creative processes.
Data Fragmentation Is the Biggest Barrier
Organizations are sitting on goldmines of disconnected data across business units, brands, and countries. (24:55) Nataly Kelly identified this as the primary obstacle preventing companies from leveraging insights effectively. When data is unified into consolidated platforms, it can be democratized and leveraged in aggregate, similar to what happened with CRM systems. This becomes particularly critical in the age of AI, where fragmented data limits the potential for intelligent automation and meta-learning across markets.
Build Meta-Learning Capabilities
PepsiCo created a system where the entire organization gets smarter every time they test something anywhere in their 175+ markets. (27:02) By standardizing and digitalizing processes and data capture, they can now perform what Stephan calls "meta learning" - leveraging insights from one market to inform decisions globally. This approach transforms isolated local learning into accelerated organizational intelligence, creating compound returns on research investments.
Focus on Predictive Indicators Over Rearview Metrics
Most business leaders spend too much time looking at last week's sales rather than forward-looking indicators. (55:57) Stefan Gans advocates for insights leaders to help organizations balance historical performance with predictive indicators like household penetration development. This shift from reactive to proactive decision-making enables better strategic planning and helps teams anticipate market changes rather than simply responding to them.
Consumer Centricity Requires Cultural Integration
True consumer centricity isn't just about data and tools - it requires breaking down silos between insights and marketing teams. (52:54) The panel emphasized that successful transformation demands intensive training, behavior change, and relationship building. As Nataly Kelly advised, CMOs should "make new friends" with insights teams, recognizing that the smartest people in the room might be the quietest and most introverted, requiring intentional effort to draw out their valuable perspectives.
Statistics & Facts
- PepsiCo improved their creative effectiveness KPIs by roughly 30% through their insights transformation journey. (34:36) This improvement came from standardizing processes, connecting data, and shifting from testing to learning approaches across their global operations.
- Organizations with connected insights report 75% satisfaction between marketers and insights teams, compared to 51% for fragmented organizations and 48% for disconnected ones. (39:49) This data from Zappi's market survey demonstrates the relationship benefits of unified insights approaches.
- Women have twice as many knee injuries as men due to wider hips and the Q angle, which creates more pressure on knees. (41:37) Katherine shared this research insight from her time at Nike, which led to revolutionary changes in women's athletic footwear design and highlighted the importance of consumer-specific research.
