Incentives: Leading the Ecommerce Cause Within a Brand With Sri Rajagopalan - Episode 140

INTERVIEW WITH CPG LEADER SRI RAJAGOPALAN

 

DESCRIPTION

Over the next 4 weeks on the Ecommerce Braintrust podcast, we’re bringing you a new series with a very special guest. Sri Rajagopalan is an experienced CPG leader, leading the industry in a much needed digital transformation to adapt to the consumer’s changing shopping habits and path to purchase. Sri is also an ex SVP/VP of Ecommerce at Revlon, Johnson & Johnson & PepsiCo.

Make sure to tune in today to find out what Sri has to say about incentives and leading the eCommerce cause within a brand.

Sri Rajagopalan is an experienced consumer packaged goods eCommerce leader who has been leading the industry in much needed digital transformation as retail shifts to adapt to the consumers changing shopping habits and the path to purchase.

He has most recently led Revlon’s growth in eCommerce in beauty as Senior Vice President, including direct to consumer leadership, incubated, and scaled digital eCommerce for Frito-Lay PepsiCo and Johnson & Johnson consumer Inc as Vice President of Digital.

His knowledge of Amazon business development, omnichannel needs across grocery retailers and direct to consumers are well known in the CPG industry. He is an active LinkedIn blogger, and you can find several of his featured podcast interviews on YouTube. He is a board advisor to several CPG startups and is focused currently on launching his own supplements startup – Zenfuel.

“I truly believe the Achilles’ heel of large brands is the strength of the startup, which is the ability to control the conversation with the consumer at a one-on-one level.”
— Sri Rajagopalan

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Sri talks about his background in eCommerce, from PepsiCo to Revlon.

  • In March of this year, Sri helped launch a healthcare supplements brand Zenfuel, focused on stress, sleep, and energy (pill format as well as a vegan coffee creamer powder format that can be mixed into any beverage). 

  • Right up until COVID, for the most part, scale brands we're following digital leadership. 

  • Small brands and startups now have to really get up and be woke, that is the awakening of the sleeping giant.

  • Transformation of marketing is not digital and offline, it's mass communication with the consumer and one-on-one conversation versus mass, emotional-based advertising.

  • Marketing's role is to influence the consumer and send them to the store or the point of purchase.

  • The consumer nowadays doesn't care whether you're selling food service, or you're a mass merchandising manufacturer, or a convenience manufacturer. When they want a product, they want to be able to touch it, feel it, and most importantly, purchase it. 

  • Sri explains the allocation of budgets between the different teams at a large company.

  • The industry is now shifting to an understanding that search is really a function of marketing.

  • The best organizations will be the ones that fall into a model where every salesperson understands marketing, empathizes with marketing, has the skillset in SEO, SEM, asks the questions about a marketing mixed model.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

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