BrandSide: Sofia Colucci is THE CMO of Molson Coors

The goal of the show is to help you break in and thrive in advertising and marketing. Welcome back to our brand side segment where we're interviewing the folks agency professionals report to today's guest is a halt of famer. It's Sophia Kaluci, the CMO of North America at Moulson Cours and one of Forbes's top 50 most influential CMOs. She's led award-winning work for brands like Cours Lite, Miller Lite, Blue Moon, and plenty more. Her team is behind some of the boldest ideas in the beverage marketing category today from beer flavored prangles to real-time campaigns that hit group chats and headlines. We were in their office in Chicago for this recording and it was a pleasure. We'll talk a lot, you're gonna learn a lot. Really what's on her mind is creative effectiveness and she'll teach you what it takes to lead a massive brand portfolio. How to be a client, agencies actually love to work with and the framework that they use at Moulson Cours to make creative work that performs. Also, why starting on Bacon and Meat Snacks helped launch her to the top of her career. She's been named Woman of the Year by Chicago Ad Federation, a campaign US top 50 CMO and a brand innovators top 100 woman in marketing. You'll see why when she starts talking in this show. Let's get into it. This is the breaking and entering advertising podcasts and as usual, I'm your accomplice, Gino Schellenberger. Kick it, Mikey. All right. So, Fiya Kaluichi, welcome to the breaking and entering brand side podcasts. How the heck are you doing today? I am good. I'm thrilled that you guys came in for this. I love your clips. Your 60-sightened clips on LinkedIn. Thank you. I view them pretty much daily and I was thrilled that you wanted to jump. I mean, you guys were on it this morning as we're recording this. It is what Thursday, April 17th, the work that came out with Pringles, the Beer Flavor and Miller Light Flavor chips. Chris, is that correct? That's exactly beer and a can to new levels. It's all a team under Anne Ligan and they've been working on it for a while and it just makes sense. We always talk about partnerships or collaborations that feel right for the brand and the role of the product and the category and the skills right. We definitely need to talk about these collaborations throughout your career and some of the high ones that have gotten so much attention, have made it into our friends group chats as well and they're not advertising adjacent in any way, shape or form, breaking through culture through these partnerships will definitely be on the agenda today. But your role is CMO North America from North America, Moulsen Quors, beverage company. Is that correct? That's correct. Just over two years now. Just over two years. What does this mean? What are you looking over? Tell us about yourself and your role today. Sure. So basically, I've been at Moulsen Quors now close to eight years so I started on innovation, launching new brands into new spaces really fun. Then made my way back to brand on Miller and our economy portfolio and then now for the last couple of years, CMO. So essentially, our team is responsible for obviously the branding, really the portfolio of these different iconic brands. Whether it's Miller, Quors, Moulsen in Canada, Blue Moon. So we have our beer beer. We also have flavor. So we have brands like Duplochico, Simply, we just launched a brand called Happy Thursday. We're also now starting to get into non-elk as well too. So we we have Zoa, which is a energy drink with Dwayne Johnson. We just announced a partnership with Divertrees. So I don't know if you've ever heard of those products, but it's actually these really amazing mixers for with alcohol. And we actually just acquired a brand out of Australia called Naked Life. So it's Australia's number one zero proof cocktail. What we're trying to do as a company is we obviously like our core and our history is in beer. We're never going to walk away from that. But we also know that consumer dynamics are continuing to evolve. And we think it's really important for us to have a broad portfolio that really meets consumers where they are. So that's why we're going from just beer to beverages. Interesting. So you're looking over all these this portfolio here. I mean, that's a lot of work. That's a lot of those are like multiple brands multiple brands, multiple segments. Luckily we have obviously an incredible team, not just the marketers. We have all of our cross functional partners. And so really obviously goes out saying it's a big team effort. And it's so much fun. Like it really is. So, you know, I wake up our team wakes up and we think to ourselves, man, we're doing some incredible work and we're really excited to do it. Yeah, so how do you kind of corral that team and like all the different brands within the portfolio? What is your job specifically? So my job, I mean, look at this point, like obviously I get involved with the work, but we've got incredibly talented marketers. So there's a marketing leadership team. So there's vice presidents of marketing that sit across the different portfolio. Right. We've got an awesome VP of marketing, Leslie in Canada. So she oversees all Canada. And then we have different vice presidents or senior directors, depending. So we have someone overseeing Miller. Coors above premium flavor beer economy. So there are lots of talented people. Maya here who's sitting across from me, you can't see her. She leads up our brand comes side of things. We've got Justine and she's actually, you know, she was just promoted into a new role all around leading our creative effectiveness ambitions and we'll talk about that. So my job at this point, like there's certain things that I definitely get more involved in like Super Bowl is a good example, but in general, like what I, you know, what I'm trying to do is like I'm ultimately responsible for the both driving top and bottom line growth across this portfolio. It's thinking of the marketing levers behind it. So at the most common level, like you could talk to some people come for peace and people come six fees, but how do you manage all the different levers within the marketing mix to make your grant brands grow. And we like to think about is that, you know, we like to think how do we give consumers a reason to reach for our brands. And so that for us, it's, you know, we, our vision is to build brands that make people want to hang out with us. And so that's an in beer in alcohol, what you hold in your hand says so much about you. So the brand building aspect of it is huge. I was going to ask you, I think you might have answered it, but maybe you'll open up some other thoughts to like how would you describe the work that Molson Coors makes. Yeah. So I think like people might look at it in different ways. Like I've had a lot of people say, wow, like you guys are really great at building your brands and culture and you're not afraid to take risks and do creative things. And we're definitely, you know, I think, and we love creativity, but we like to say like we love creativity and we like it even more when it sells beer or beverage. So, you know, and in the last number of years, we've actually started to really sharpen what our creative ambition is and it's all around creative effectiveness. And for us, it's, you know, we have a very clear ambition. It's case for case, we want to be the most creatively effective beverage company in the world. And by that, what we mean is, you know, we need to be driving obviously creativity, but we need to be driving results with it. And we measure that with brand health, we look at, you know, our sales and we look at your KPIs around, are we putting out really great work that is so out. That's good to know because if I'm working at an agency, I just want to make the best creative work potentially. If people might be thinking that as they're just getting into their careers or maybe they just got into an agency, whatever it might be, but you have to remember on your side of things, it has to be effective as well. Yeah, it's a great reminder. Yeah, and the great news is and we can talk because we went into this ambition and we've created a framework and we're definitely going to talk about that today. And we built it with our agency partners. And so they were part of the journey with us. And I think we have some incredible agency partners and they're in it to sell beer as well to any of our beverages because they also know that the work is going to keep on coming if it produces results. So luckily we're all on the same page got it got it because I might just if I'm an art director copywriter, I might just want to win a can. Yeah, but you're thinking, you know, you're thinking that and you're thinking of these two. Yeah, so it's a great look like it's a great provocation and push and I've seen both sides of it. So, you know, I've been now working, especially like at most encores where we do get to do a lot of creative work. Like, yeah, like I've seen the full spectrum of sometimes people just want to do hard working work that, you know, is never going to win an award and sometimes it's like, hey, this is going to win an award. I can't and like, you know, and I think it's about finding that balance and what I've said is like we've actually look like we like to be recognized just as much as anyone and we also know that recognition, especially for our agency partners is a good thing because it also helps them attract the best creatives as well too. But what we've tried to do too is really think about it like how do we continue to push against effectiveness and so, for instance, like we have won something like last year we actually did quite well at can and we had some work that won some gold lions, which was awesome. Our goal and you know, we've worked with the can line advisory board and they're awesome and so we can talk about that, but we've been pretty clear like there's some marketers that say, hey, down the road, our goal is to be a can line marketer of the year. For me, I actually think about it, I want to win a creative effectiveness can lie in like around effectiveness, like that would be great for us. The other one too that we said is yes, we really believe in f's because if you think about the case studies around f's, it is all around effectiveness. I mean, look, like last year in 2024, we actually were the f's marketer of the year, like not just not just, yeah, and it was across work that was done by many of our brands, not just one brand with many of our agency partners. And so we were really proud of that and look in some years, you might get it some years, you don't, but I think like that's where our that's again going back to our ambition around creative effectiveness, we're laser focused on that. If other things happen if there's like, Cleo's or one show or all these different words, great, you know, and that it does make people feel good, it makes us feel good too. And we want to celebrate with all our partners, but ultimately like we need to be driving the health of our brands, we need to give consumers a reason to reach for us and we need to do that with creatively effective work. Totally, totally, I know it's very hard to win an affi and those submissions are a nightmare. I left agency like right when I was supposed to do an affi submission, I saw the parameters and that is not for the faint of heart, that is legit stuff there. So I have a lot of props to you all. I mentioned giving your agency partners some recognition and you also mentioned that framework. I don't know if we can get into that, but I would love to hear about like some of the agencies that you're working with, maybe like, how do you even navigate that? Like how you decide who's which agency is working on what any sort of line of sight there. Yeah, it's a great question. I think like, you know, and I know you've worked at agencies as well too, like I think it's always that balance of having a diverse roster of agencies and we have a lot of brands, both in the US and Canada. And they play in different segments. And so I think it's finding that balance of how do you have the right number of agency partners so that, you know, they're diversified across your brand, so you have different people looking at your brand, so they feel and look different, but at the same time you also need to make sure that you're giving your best agency partners the right amount of work, so you remain an important client to them. You know, because I like what we have seen in the past and I give my predecessor, Michelle, a ton of credit for this. She's awesome. I learned so much from her. And, you know, even when she came in, I remember at the time I was running innovation, so I was probably a little less connected to the brand side of things. But even she looked at the roster is she's like, wow, we probably have too many agencies. So how do we start to get focused and we've continued to do that. And so what I would say is we've got a great roster of agencies and, and they work across our brand. So for instance, we work with Droga five and they really, I mean, they focus a lot on our course like work. Scott Bell love Scott. He's got to get on the show. So you come on. Well, now Sofia's asking for him to come on. So I'll send him a text. Scott, you got to come on. We should call him. We should call him. Yeah, Scott's great. We actually, I was with him when we shot our first Super Bowl campaign together and he's he's awesome. That was the high six spirit and that was with Droga. So that was the first Super Bowl campaign we had done in over in 33 years because before that we had actually been, we couldn't advertise because our competitors, they had exclusivity. They gave that up. So that was three Super Bowl just ago. And that was when we came out with the high six spirit. So that so that was with Droga. That was awesome. We continue to do great work with Droga. We're really happy with them. We also work with different agencies as well. So we work with like DDB. We come like the DDB collab. So that's, you know, Adam and Eve, DDB Chicago, as well as Alma and Alma's been great because not only were there roots in, you know, working with Latino consumers, but they have actually proven to be an agency that goes, you know, well into the general market. They like to say that too. So we've done really creative things with them. We also work a lot with the rethink out of Toronto, Aaron Starkman, shout out Aaron, and that team. They're great. And so they, they have worked with us for years on Moulson. And and what I love the work that we're doing there. It's really tied to this great platform for for Moulson. But then at the same time, we're doing a lot of culturally relevant work. And then finally, we also work with mischief. And they've been fantastic with us too. So we just, we did our last campaign with mischief. And they've been awesome across a lot of our brands. So they touch course light. They touch blue moon. I can't forget Leo. So, yeah, 50 F. Yeah. So Leo, we really started working with them recently again in the last year on Miller light. And we're really proud of the recent 50th anniversary work. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. They're not far away too. They're right down the street over Yonder. You just go pop over there. You can yell at them or say what's up. Check in. Like, how's that? How's that going over there? Yeah. But look, so with these agency partners, like we, we really, like we actually just had our, we have like a, you know, trainings and stuff. We do 13. We have our annual marketing academy where we bring in all of our marketers actually across Latin America. Because we look at some of the global work there too. Canada, US, and we had a session, which is all about partnering with agencies and loving your agencies. And, and we, we really believe so much in that. You know, and like actually one of the things that we talked a lot about is I hate the term like when people are talking about work or things they go, I hate when people say the agency or I taught it. It's like, no, like, who, who's your agency is a DDB? Is it Leo? Who's the person? Because I, I don't like to think of agencies as transactional to us. It's like we're all partners. We're all teammates in it together. Got it, got it, got it. Yeah. Interesting. So, and then, so you have multiple agencies that you're working with. And then like what would be the other option, then have like just one behemoth, like doing all the work across the different brands. Like what's. Yeah, we could. Yeah. And frankly, in the past, like there were times, I would say probably like maybe four or five years ago where we had a, we had a moment in time where one agency in particular had a ton of the work. And it's fine. And it can work. I think it really depends on the people that are there during that time. Like agencies are one thing. The reality is it all comes down to the people that you're talking with. And so, and so I think right now we're in an amazing situation, I think, where we've got good relationships with our agency partners. We've got great talent at those agencies. But you, like you need to continue to foster those relationships. And also when I say that, it's not just about being nice, like part of, part of being a good client is also giving good direction, giving good feedback, prioritizing, making choices. And I think like it's not just about being a kind person. It's also just about like having good leadership as a client. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah, I think all this is interesting with the thing that you said about the people is actually what we tell the aspiring advertisers out there all the time. They ask, should I go to a small agency? Should I go to a large agency independent versus not? And I used to say, go to a large agency, get that big experience. You get multiple clients. Now I just say, find the people that make the work you like and see where they're at because they move around quite a bit in this world. Yeah, they might they might the agency names stay the same, but the people move around constantly. And especially in agencies that has that has sometimes like, you're right. Sometimes it can be tricky as well too. Because then you don't want to keep as a client moving from one agency to another. Yeah. But I agree with you. It comes down to the people. Yeah. Yeah. Got it. Got it. So can we talk then about your journey? How you broke into all of this? I understand the agency landscape. I don't know how to break into the brand side. So at what point did you say to young Sophia? I want to work in marketing. For sure. So I grew up in Canada. And you might hear it a little bit in my accent. But before that, you're nodding. You're like, yeah, I hear it. I've been in the US now for 14 years. So I feel like I lost it a little bit. But actually, you know what? I think my earliest memory of probably being into the idea of marketing or advertising. So my family's from Uruguay. And I lived there when I was younger. And we just watched a lot of television. And like even to this day, I still remember a commercial from for insect repellent. And it was a jingle. And I'm saying it. Sure. Which my siblings, like sometimes they can't fully by still remember. I also remember cigarette jingle, but I'm not going to say that one. It's 1, 2, 3. Mafoo, le conviene. Mafoo, le conviene. Con 1, 2, 3. And then it goes 1, 2, 3. Yeah. Yes. By the way, I cannot sing as is very nice by that. That's fantastic. But I do have a pretty solid memory, especially when it comes to songs. I'm sad what the what's in my mind. I'm like, this is not a good use of my mind space. It comes out. What's your karaoke song, man? No, I won't do karaoke because I'm a terrible singer. But jingles, jingles, I'm good at. Interesting. Whistling I can do for whatever reason. Yeah. But you know, um, how old were you when you heard that that jingle. I would have been like six. Yeah. Yeah. Cause we left Uruguay when I was seven. So anyway. So that made your kind of moment. Then throughout the years, my parents traveled a lot. Great family. But again, they we watched a lot of TV. I was, you know, like latchkey kit, you watch TV, you watch commercials. So a lot of that. I think I'm one of my first part time jobs in Canada. I was in high school. There's the equivalent of Walgreens is called shoppers drug mark. And it's actually probably better. It's a better drugstore because they don't have targets there. So it's like the drugstore there. Shoppers is quite good. And I remember I, I loved it. I worked in cosmetics. And I remember stalking the shelves and like seeing these like L'Oreal hair dye boxes. And I would see them. I would look at them. I go these feel so much more upscale than the Revlon ones. I, you know, at the time I was just really kind of noodling. Why is that, you know, and why do I think this is better? And just being around all of these consumer package goods in my part time job. It just got me like really, really interested in it. Then I went to university. So in Canada, we call it university, not college. And, and I remember I didn't undergrad in business because I'm a child of immigrants. So you take something really practical. So all four of my siblings and I took business. But I didn't know what in business I want to take. But I remember my first year doing a marketing course. And I thought to myself, wait, you can have a job where you get to work on these things like these products. I was interested in my part time job or these commercials. So that kind of, that was really I think what finally nailed it for me was just like seeing that there could be something that I was interested in. And that felt kind of fun. Yeah. But what I will say, and this is something that I've said before too, that I'm not, I don't subscribe to the philosophy of when people when adults tell young kids pursue your passions. I just like, I'm going to tell you why is because I think that sometimes it can lead people down this path of, oh, I got to do something that's just like in it because I love it. And you know, not pursue like financial success. By the way, I'm not saying that you need to just chase money. But I think that you need to be pragmatic on what you choose. And so that's why like marketing for me was quite pragmatic because it was something that I found interesting. Then over time, like I was pretty good at it because it's kind of balances art and, you know, a bit of science in the business and it also requires leadership skills, so things that I could do. But then you can make a living out of it too, you know, and I tell people to like, when I, so I've only worked at three big companies. So I started, you know, out of university, I worked at a Canadian food company called Maple Leaf Foods. And then I went to PepsiCo, and now I'm at Wilson course, but even when I was at Maple Leaf Foods, like it's as Canadian as you can get with Maple Foods. And one of the first categories I worked on was, well, first it was meat snacks. And then I made my way up to sausages. And then I finally hit the mecca with bacon. Yeah, yeah. I mean, maybe you heard me talk about bacon before because I talk about it a lot. Oh, yeah. Oh, no, there's, there's an obsession with bacon. But, um, but yeah, the first one of the first assignments, I remember my VP of marketing, like gave me, I was an assistant marketing manager on meat snacks. The brand was hot rods. And these are my meat snacks. And remember, he goes to be up. I feel like these, we could give these out for Halloween. What do you think? And I'm like, yeah, this was in the summertime. I remember the following Halloween, like, I went out and I did audits to understand, like, what's the packaging for Halloween on regular candy? What's the pricing? And I remember I put together a little audit of a recommendation for a Halloween hot rod to launch the following Halloween. It's so ridiculous. I got so excited about it. And yes, like, so maybe I was passionate, but let's, I started in meat snacks. And I remember at the time, this is my VP Adam, who's awesome. And he just laughed because he's like, I can't believe how much you enjoy this. But I think it was more, I liked the idea that I could make an impact that I could come up with an idea. And then a year later, I walked into a store. And I saw it there. And that was really cool. So the Halloween candy's worked then the Halloween hot rod. Yeah, got it. Yeah, got it. The big insight I remember seeing it was I realized, oh, all these chocolate bars and candies don't actually have Halloween stuff around them. Because then, you know, once you hit November 1st, you're screwed. So you actually need to just put it in the pack that everyone wants it in in the price point. And then just make sure it gets merchandise in the Halloween aisle. But I give you this example more so because what I try to tell people is not just to, you know, be pragmatic and think about something you like, something that you're good at that you can make a career out of. But also start anywhere, start somewhere and then work your butt off. And then what's going to happen is because you like it and because you're working hard. You're going to hopefully do well. And then you're going to get more and more opportunities and those opportunities are going to become more and more interesting because you become better. So if I look at where I started in my career, I was on meat snacks. Yes, got to bacon, which is obviously, you know, what we all aspire. But now, like, I got to be part of a team that's working on Super Bowl commercials. And it's really amazing. But I didn't start here. And so that's one of those things just for everyone to keep in mind that you got to start somewhere. How did you get that first job? That first job, like, again, this was, this was a hustle. I mean, I went, I was in university and my parents, like, they're awesome. But, you know, my dad taught at university, my mom worked in international development. My dad was in animal science. And then because actually Uruguay, where they're from has a lot of cows, more cows than people in Uruguay fun fact. So very agricultural heavy. So that was part of the reason that they went to this town in Canada called wealth, which has a big agricultural school. And then my mom, actually, my mom, she was always like, she's incredible. So she worked in international international development for Deloitte for years. And she traveled the world. And she was in management consulting. So I learned a lot from both of them. But yeah, there was no connections or help from them for them. They were like, you'll figure it out. Again, I was privileged for the fact that my parents were, you know, they were able to provide the education for me to go to university. So I had a huge leg off to begin with. But even when I was at university, like, I did, you know, a, like, I was a TA, like a teaching assistant. I did a exchange program. I did an internship at a, I actually, that was a first job and internship at a company called Celestica, where, you know, we were making like graphic cards for Del not exciting. But again, every opportunity helped me get to the next one. So that job at Maple Leaf Foods, I wouldn't have gotten that if I hadn't, you know, put my hand up and volunteered for all those other things. Was it just like networking or you replied to a job? It's networking, but it's also like, because I think that's the other thing with networking and I'll say this for any younger people out there right now, I got a lot of people who come to me, whether it's neighbors, friends, like, you know, connections and they say, hey, will you talk to this younger person, like, they're in university or they just graduated. And I'm always happy to talk to them. But the end of the day, we're going to give the job to people who demonstrated grit and perseverance and who gone out and gotten experiences. The networking, yes, it helps, but you need to substantiate it with experiences and demonstration that you've done things to give you that ability to get this, like, that's because otherwise, most in course, like, there's a lot of people that want to work here. Your job, like, and I say this because especially with younger people in a good way, get those experiences, start anywhere, join a club at school, get a part-time job, because then once you join that club, that's something that you've still having your resume. And then that experience, you can leverage to get something better, like a co-op, like an internship. Once you have an internship, that's really helpful then to be able to get a job. That's how I got my job on Maple Leaf Foods. So I say this because it's truly, like, your opportunities are what you make out of every opportunity you have in front of you today. That's right. That's right. It's just like if you advertise. I'm lecturing. I'm sorry. No, I love it. I'll put it. It's like, some people ask me, like, should I do a stunt? Should I, like, send a message in a bottle? Should I have been more requests to company $50,000 to get their attention, whatever it might be, but I always ask them, "Let me see your work. Let me see your resume." Because no amount of advertising will fix a bad product necessarily. So you need to make sure you work up and then you can think about the creative brief for breaking in. Totally. And if the work's not there, you're not going to get the job. I totally agree. Yeah. Interesting. So then you had those internships, you broke in to Maple Leaf Foods there. What else then were some of those high points in your career, those critical decisions where there was a crossroad? I could do this. I could do that. You made a decision and then took you to where you're at today. Yeah. I mean, I think there's different ones. Like a fun one from Maple Leaf Foods was actually when I finally hit the jackpot on Bacon. Now at the time, Bacon was considered to be like it was part of the commodity category because it kind of is a commodity if you think about it. But I remember I was probably in my mid 20s and I'd go out to bars. I was single and I meet guys and I told them I worked on Bacon. And suddenly it was like my ticket to a free drink. It was amazing. That's a big time. Yeah, and I realized like Bacon, wow, there's a lot of power in Bacon. And so at that point, I thought, okay. Yeah, let's, what if we could do something with this and I was a marketing manager at the time. So that same VP who's like a man's fear. You're crazy. We put together. He let me like they supported me to put together a brief of like what if we created something interesting out of this insight, which is like Bacon is like chocolate for Matt and this idea that people love Bacon. So out of that by the like there's so many things we can poke holes into. I can poke holes into this campaign, but it was we worked on this idea with an agency at a Toronto called John Street. And we created and this was again, this was back in 2006. So a long time ago, almost 20 years ago, but it was called the Republic of Bacon and we created a world dedicated to people's love for Bacon. We had like a national anthem. We had a flag. So the whole thing was ridiculous, but it kind of I was pretty young still in my career and just the energy out of that was this like like just such a sign to me of how much I love to be able to do this stuff. And so at that point, I realized like I probably wanted to do more of it. And while maple leaf foods was a great company. I thought, okay, it's probably good if I go and work at a company that has even more of that. I also met my now husband Jonathan up there. He was working on hot dogs. I was on bacon, but he was a good combo. He was going back to the US to do his MBA and he's American. So if we ever wanted to be in the US, it probably made sense for me to work at a more global company. And so that's when I made the move to PepsiCo. So I spent seven years at PepsiCo, the first two years on the beverage side there. And then they were awesome. They helped me transfer to Chicago. And we wanted to be in Chicago. So I spent a number of years here. Okay. Got it. Got it. And any like fun stories at PepsiCo. I mean PepsiCo like PepsiCo is awesome. There's so many smart people at work at PepsiCo. A lot of a lot of ex consultants. A lot of strategy is happening there. And he's there. He got that from SNL. I don't know. I don't know where. But in, you know, all seriousness, like you really learned some great fundamentals, really smart people. And, you know, I'd like I was working on the Chicago when I was here in Chicago, I was working on the cereal and oatmeal businesses. So actually one of the really fun ones was cat and crunch. And we had this whole kind of campaign around a late night talk show with cat and crunch because we actually didn't want to be targeting our cereal to kids because it didn't fit like the nutritional requirements we wanted. So we were like, hey, let's target instead like the kids with adults. And so we had a lot of fun there. But I think, you know, like one of the big a haze for me for PepsiCo was this was one of the last rules that I did when I was there. It was my second. I was coming back from my second mat leave. So I had my boys. They're now nine and 10, but I had them really close together. And I remember I was coming back after my second mat leave. And I thought I was going to come back to the same category, like running our cereal business instead. I got this other weird random roll at the time. And it was like running growth channels innovation. It was the job. No one wanted. And I remember feeling at the time like telling people you don't want that job. But then they gave me that job. And I remember feeling kind of I was pissed and frustrated for maybe a day or two. But I remember actually was joth in my husband that says, feel like you got to look at the bright side of this. Like you've already done the director of cereal job. This is something new that you can get new experiences with. You're going to be thinking about new go to market models. You're going to be thinking about innovating and ecommerce like new partnerships. And it was just that click that made me reframe it and actually ended up being such a great experience because like something I really do enjoy is working with sales partners is, you know, more of that like connection to the broader organization. And and they did require for me to think and and actually build these new innovation models that we didn't actually make happen at the time that I was there. But all the work all the works to get there happened and what's interesting and it wasn't easy like we didn't have funding. So it wasn't it was a grind. And there are nights and days when I was like not very happy in the job. But the funny thing is that around that time, I got a call from Molson quarters because they needed a senior director of innovation. And if I hadn't had that experience, I wouldn't have gotten that job at Miller course. And so it's one of those things that it's just such a good reminder that sometimes like these experiences that don't feel that great at the time can be the biggest blessing. It all works out. Jack says that all the time. Okay, so that led you to Molson course. So and that's where you're at today now. So we kind of went full circle here. So I have a couple of extra fun questions about Molson course. Can you tell me about a time where you went above and beyond helping agency make a great piece of works since you've been at Molson course. Yeah, I mean, look, I think there's if I take a step back and if I look at the body of work or team is doing, I like to think that that's how the team operates in general because to make that kind of, you know, creatively effective in culture work. You got to go above and beyond the time like you have to be if a agency partner has a really great idea most of the time it's pretty complex from a supply chain perspective. It means legal to get on board right away. So it requires our team to just be in it from day one. If I look back, there was a time. So it was I moved from innovation over to the Miller brands, actually like right in the heat of the pandemic in 2020. And it was a time to where the campaign we had, it didn't really make sense anymore because like it was encouraging people get out of your phone, like off your phone, go to the real world and get a beer, which you couldn't do during the pandemic. So we basically had to do a lot of real time marketing work. And as a result, we were working very closely with DDV at the time. There was so many great ideas that were coming and we were, it was just like this constant flywheel of just more and more things happening. I'm Ari Weiss. He, you know, I learned so much from him, he became a dear friend. He, he would probably call me every single night just to talk through ideas and push and pressure. I remember my husband be like, what was that already calling it? It sure is. And yeah, yeah. And, and we like, there would be debates and conversations and pushes. And so there's so many ideas that, you know, we launched in the year or two. Like, um, canton, uh, canceled holiday work parties, URL, um, you know, we can talk a beer and a man's shoesy beer drops with like. And so much of it required our teams to go above and beyond. So I say our teams because I did, but like it's not just it was everyone, you know, it was all of our teams. It was Ari's team. It was all of us. And in a way, like it was the pandemic. So this was a really fun thing to be focusing and just on. And, and I think like, and there were some moments like and, and the DDD team, the creative team at the time. Um, the nicks were on it. Yeah, I got a question from the next. I'm gonna be pulling up. Right. Right. And I, I mean, I love the next. They're like little brothers to me, but I'll never forget. Um, I mean, they have this one idea. It was the, the shoe, and so it's a partnership with new balance and me, everybody lock in. This is good. Maybe that was their idea. The thing they had, they're asking about. But they had this, this great idea of essentially creating a cozy meeting made out of his new balance. And it was for Father's Day. And it was, hey, like, let's own it. We're kind of a dad's beer. Like the dad shoe. Um, but we needed new balance to, to be in. And so they created a beautiful deck, but they said, hey, we're the agency guys. Like it's going to come off better if you reach out to them. And so we got more pole and leverage there. Yeah. So I mean, of course, like, this goes back. But I don't even see it as going above and beyond because anyone on our team would have done this. And like, we're happy to do it. And LinkedIn slewding is one of the funnest things you can do. So we agree. I love you guys on LinkedIn. It's fun. So we found Chuck on LinkedIn, send him a random message. He's like some strategy guy at, at view balance. And I remember like putting to like setting up a conversation with them. I think it was the first time I had put like, I had a, you know, teams call with them. I usually was not wearing makeup, a baseball hat this time. I actually brushed my hair made myself presentable. And then just said, Chuck, we got an idea for you. And I didn't really have to do much because the deck that our agency partners, you be had created was possible. And so the work spoke for itself. So I was just like, I'm just going to click these slides. You can read for yourself. But I was happy to help, you know, and I think like, I don't know, I think going this idea of going above and beyond like the reality is now our teams. They've created a little bit of an engine at Wilson course to be able to get these ideas out like that in the world. So a good example is last year. It was the course lights out idea when Otani hit a foul ball into a course light sign and, you know, it made a little indentation on our can. It happened that day. We had actually a couple of different agency partners retouched us that day. I remember. That's good. That's what you want. Yeah. Yeah. You want that. I remember Marcelo, who's our VP, of course, awesome. And he's just creatively fantastic. He and I were at an airport together, I think Aaron and Mike simultaneously texted us or called us. They already had like slides ready to go. And we said, yeah, we're in. And then but what we needed to do is we need to work really quickly with our teams and get the social post out and just get something out there. We needed to make sure that our legal teams were on board. And here's the thing because we have been doing this kind of stuff. We have just like laundry list of examples of work that some of its work some of it hasn't. But we've built that muscle here internally. Right. They know like just start off small. Do get it out there. Don't waste a day. Take advantage of those first 24 hours, put a social post, put something out there in the world, let it continue to build. And the cool thing too is it's like when our cross functional partners, when they see that work out there too, when their neighbors, when their friends text them about it, they're proud too because we're all in it together. And so that's where it's like that's that's an example, the shoesie one, like again, they're not it's not really for us. It's just being part of the team was the so the shoesie one I want to go back to. Because that one, I mean, that one is just it's just I remember when it hit our fraternity group chat like everybody was talking about like this is so cool. So you got on that zoom call with the new balance, Chuck, and it was just after that call, he was just one call and it got approved and you you made he's he's just he was kind of excited and he goes, oh, let me talk to the team internally here. And I think Chuck sold it in. I mean, Chuck was an integral member of the team as well. And so yeah, no, so we've got a lot a lot of love for him. And then yeah, like at the same time, like none of these things are linear, like there's pivots and something doesn't work and you got to try and you got to do all the stuff. And so there's a lot of people behind the scenes that are making it happen. But like that was a good example of it. What are other ones? Oh, beer and events. That was an interesting one. This was like the beer ornaments. Beer ornaments. Yes, those are awesome. Yeah, but I saw one somebody I think somebody had one. Yeah, and initially like that was a great idea. But like we like again, the DB team had it, but like they initially we couldn't figure out like the technology to make it work. And I'll never forget one day, Ben, who is the ECD, Ben Nolan, like reached out and he's like, hey, I gotta talk to you. They cracked it. And like we figured out a way to make it work. And it was like essentially creating like a shell, like you know, those Easter eggs, like the plastic ones and like you can put the beer can inside. And so it's just like it's really fun when those things happen and they come together. And it truly is, it's, it takes a village to do it. I want to ask what's the best thing that was never made? Yes, so I don't know if I can say it. Can we get something? Please, please, please, please. We'll talk off the record. But I will say like I am proud that there's a lot of things that we have done that have used our constraints to be even more creative. Right. And so if you think about before we were in the Super Bowl. We had some really fun creative ideas to get attention outside. So there is one where we had the world's longest URL. And if you typed it, you could get a free Miller light to take attention away from our competitors like, you know, we launched it during the Super Bowl when they had their add on. All the work that the course team has done with Patrick Mahomes. So there's, there's a rule with the NFL that if you're an active player in the NFL, you can't actually advertise beer on television. But Patrick Mahomes is a huge course like fan. And so we want to celebrate that and we partner with him. And so the team has done things to be really creative. So they came up with like, like I see you nodding. So the course late, which was the course like flash and like the course like fair. So they just launched the time capsule work with them. So what I would say is I'm just really proud that the team is able to find these constraints to make our work even more creative. We can bring it home then. So I really the final two questions is what advice do you have for somebody breaking in to marking? How do you break in? How do you stay in it for the long term to be a CML one day? And then the other one is what advice do you have for agency professionals out there? Yeah. So, okay. So the first one is advice for someone entering in. I mean, like I think it goes back to the stuff that we talked about earlier, which is like every experience is a good one. You know, like don't think that you have to start to that point by doing like the really sexy like PR brand act and you know, something that's going to get you an award. Yeah. Every piece of work that you can get your hands on, give it your all like take it seriously, even if it's something that might not feel really sexy. You never know and like maybe you know, your client isn't going to want you to go that creative with it. That's fine. Push as hard as you possibly can to get it to the best place that you can because all of that is going to build your portfolio. And then eventually like the more and more work you have, the more creative opportunities are going to get. And I think yeah, the advice for agency partners, I mean like look like I, I, the way our agencies have pushed us like I think what I actually really love we didn't even get into it, but like we built with our agency partners part of our creatively effective goal is we built a framework. I talk about it sometimes and we built that with our agency partners and it's all around building your creative muscle and it's an acronym that's like how we actually evaluate creativity at Wilson quarters. And and it's been really helpful for us because every idea that we brief on that we give feedback on is all built around this framework and all of our agency partners like the reason we actually developed it was part of the. The opportunity area we had was that our marketers were starting to rely too much on science to make decisions so we had a lot of testing we had a lot of data and so when they were briefing for ideas or they were giving feedback sometimes it was all based around. And we needed to do is essentially build our skill sets of how we could actually become stronger marketers so if you think of someone who in advertising or marketing who has a lot of experience we call it the marketing got and so and essentially like so it's like it's a way that looks at work like magnetic does it make you feel something you know unexpected is it so cool that friends outside the advertising world and a text you about it is it simple. You can explain it to your Uber driver so you can i'm not going to go through every letter but you can see the end the U of the S every single marketer at Wilson quarters uses this muscle framework our agency partners use it now to and it's but we built it with them and so I would say you know going back to like working with agencies like the reason we developed that was pushes from our agency partners and how we could be better marketers and and then we did it together which I really love. It's incredible well then anything else that we need to go over I think you did an amazing job I really appreciate you having us here in the office Jack do you have anything any questions over there. Really not what I learned is not all the all the opportunities you're going to get right away we're going to be bacon you have to start off me. You might have to start off in meat snacks or sausages yeah sounds pretty good to me to sweet so if you thank you so much for taking the time this has been incredible we really appreciate it. No thank you guys now we need a course like totally so be up so be up so be up nice golden alright thanks guys.