Ivonne Kinser on Is Experience the Brand or the Brand the Experience

Ivonne Kinser on Is Experience the Brand or the Brand the Experience

Welcome to be customer led, where we’ll explore help. Leading experts in customer and employee experience are navigating organizations through their own journey to be customer led and the actions and behaviors employees and businesses exhibit to get there. And now your host, Bill Stagos.

[00:00:32] Bill Staikos: Hey everybody. Welcome back to another week of Be Customer led. I have one of the coolest guests I think that this show has ever head on, so I cannot wait to introduce a really special guest. So Yvonne Kinser is, is Vice President of Marketing and Innovation at Avocados from Mexico. Now, I don’t know about you all, but I’m an avocado freak and I have avocados all the time, and I just had to have Yvon on the show and she gracious, gracious.

Agreed to come on. And some of you have also probably noticed their amazing commercials in which I really wanna talk about for a quick second too. But before we do, Yvonne, thanks so much for coming on, Be customer led. I’m so excited to have you on the show.

[00:01:08] Ivonne Kinser: Hi, Bill. Thank you so much for inviting me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Love your show, and ready. Just,

[00:01:15] Bill Staikos: All right, well, let’s get into it. So, Yvonne, we ask all of our guests. The first question is, tell us about your journey. And you’ve got a really interesting one of course. And. just what, you can go back as far as you’d like, but what were some of even some of the differentiators maybe in your career?

Yes. I

[00:01:33] Ivonne Kinser: definitely have a very eclectic career. I say that I spent the first half of my career learning the rules, and I have spent the second half of my career breaking them. when, when you start, right of college, you. Dream with being part of this big brand. Mm-hmm. and a global organization.

And I did, I took that route in the, on the agency side and also on the corporate side and it’s great. And I got to work on both sides with brands that I really admire. And at some point during my journey, I realized that I was lacking something else. That those traditional environments were not providing me.

And is the freedom for thinking and the creative freedom through your career. You get to gain self-awareness on your professional side and learning what are your passions and your strength and mine are. Linked toward the creative side. So at that point half of my career, I kind of reset and I start my journey for those environments that were also financially stable and solid, but also provide that.

Creative freedom and that freedom of thinking that I was craving. And, and I can go, I have a very eclectic of experience. it had been a very fun, wild ride, but that’s how I ended in avocado from Mexico after going from the very rigid traditional corporate environments. Then I did my tour through technology companies, startups, really cool small advertising agencies, fast, nimble.

Super creative and then I end up in avocados from Mexico, and which is both really. And when, the rec, their recruiter contacted me to go to avocado from Mexico, I came to the interview with experience in fashion, retail technology, agency client, airline, not at all in fresh products. So the first thing that I asked to my CEO now that he was interviewing me for the position of, the head of digital marketing, is that I wanna make sure that I have what you’re looking for.

So why me? I have no experience whatsoever in the category. And then he said, Because I’m not looking for someone with experience, the category. I’m looking for someone that is creative and that knows very well the digital space so they can help me do what nobody else has done. Done I was sold. I mean

[00:04:32] Bill Staikos: that’s pretty incredible.

And how brave of your CEO to not to be thinking outside of the box as well for someone with your skill and background. Not necessarily from a fresh produce background, but also, but someone who’s gonna maybe. Rock the boat a little bit, break some glass even, in the role. And your background is really eclectic and I love that you are able to bring all that to bear for your company.

For our listeners, Yvonne, who don’t know avocados from Mexico, can you tell us a little bit about the company? Cuz it’s super interesting you guys cover a lot of different stakeholders. Yes, we

[00:05:06] Ivonne Kinser: are. it is funny because one thing that we say is that we are not from Mexico and we don’t say la avocado.

But we are a marketing firm that is the marketing arm of two organizations. Growers and exporters of avocados from Mexico, in Mexico, Metro and Mexico, and the importers and distributors of avocados from Mexico here in the us. Those organizations for first time in history came together under one of the checkoff programs of the US Department of Agriculture and created this marketing organization that I’m part of, and we have a.

Two missions or one mission in a two-prong approach mission, which is to build the brand avocados from Mexico in the US and increase the consumption of avocados from Mexico in the us. So just a little bit of the bragging rights. In the eight years that the organization has existed, we have increased the imports of Mexican avocados into the US from 1.2 billion pounds of avocados per.

To almost 2.5 billion pounds of avocado spray. Oh my gosh. That’s a lot of

[00:06:21] Bill Staikos: guacamole. That’s a lot of guacamole I love, avocado toast and with, with egg on it, or chicken. I mean, it’s one of my favorite things on this planet to eat. I think I’ve perfected my own recipe on how I love it, but we go through a lot of, and I’ve got three little kids, so we go through a lot of avocados, in this house.

And I do look out for your product, by the way. Good. In particular. So tell us a little bit about Yvonne. I’m curious. So you’ve got this interesting role at the company. You’re bringing together marketing innovation and, and you, can you tell our listeners about why the company wanted to bring sort of these two things together within a marketing function, and how did they work together too?

[00:06:59] Ivonne Kinser: Yeah, I think that’s an interesting question because I think that we, that was not planned, that was actually organic. I started with the organization in 2014, as I said before, as the head of digital marketing, but there was no digital marketing. I, I built it from the ground up and, it. As one of the most progressive and creative and innovative digital practices in, in the industry.

I, I’m not saying in the fresh pro industry in the industry, and I have been in plenty of marketing conferences when I have the great opportunity to discuss marketing with colleagues from another companies, companies that I admire very much and big brands. And they asked me how you guys are able to do what everything that you do, obviously, is, is, not a secret that are budgets, maybe like, 1% of their budgets and.

talking to them and having those conversations in the industry, one thing became very clear to me. That is the way we approach marketing, first of all, as a, we market as a cpg even though we’re a product marketing company. And, but the other thing is that we’re small and nimble and hungry, and we are explorers.

[00:08:24] Ivonne Kinser: And we move super fast because we’re a flat organization. So I, I’m, I’m, I’m going to answer your question because that flexibility and that speed allows to do a lot of innovative things, especially in the area that I was leading digital marketing and, and we became actually recognized in the industry, as you seen as Fast Company 2021, as the most innovative brand.

No brand in the press for industry. Yeah. Brand. So because a lot of innovations happened, in my space, when I got promoted to head of marketing, it was just a natural that I just kind of lead the innovation agenda for the organization. That doesn’t mean that all the innovations that come out of our Cara from Mexico come from my team, but I really push.

The whole organization to, just thinking innovatively. And we took the whole company from the manager’s level and evolve to, Yale University one week innovation workshop, for example. And I organized it so. Remember for me it’s important. I spent half of my career searching for that space. So now that I have it, I enjoy and I want to bring everyone in my organization with me through that innovative journey.

[00:09:49] Bill Staikos: I love that. I love that. Have you thought about maybe, maybe in prior roles where you were more, maybe in more traditional, maybe marketing kind of function, if you were able to also bring in more of that innovation, do you think? Mark. Oh, I guess my question is, Yvonne, do you think that marketing organizations today would benefit from having more innovation type of disciplines embedded in their team or responsibility embedded in their team?

Not to your point, maybe owning innovation for the company, but really thinking differently about innovation in its context to marketing. Absolutely.

[00:10:26] Ivonne Kinser: I have seen organizations. That claim to be innovative or the one to be innovative, but the internal structures. Actually continu intuitively, block innovation.

I have had the great opportunity before Oura from Mexico also to be part of a, a, an organization, a brand that I was a legacy brand, but has a, had a pocket, a group of people led by a great leader that I was lucky to report to and I wanted to just, Refresh the brand and renew the organization. So it happens in legacy organizations where you have a group trying to drive innovation where end, end up happening.

And that’s what I, I’m not gonna name that company, is that at the end it was so difficult detention between the legacy structure and this small group trying to break through with innovation that we end up being all let. Entire marketing department just to go back to the start of school. So it’s not easy to, to easier to innovate from the new, like we did in our car from Mexico.

You never gonna have anyone that can tell you, Oh, that’s not the way we have been doing things in the past because you were not doing things in the past. So that’s what is easier. But legacy structures are really, really hard to break.

[00:11:59] Bill Staikos: I know that from spending 25 years in corporate America, I’m at a different company now at Medallia, which is really nice.

It’s a much smaller organization. You can move much more quickly. You can innovate at a completely different speed at a relative to like a large bank as an example. But I know exactly what you’re saying. Avocados from Mexico, you had mentioned before was sort of, is, is the marketing sort of agency for several different camps, so importers and distributors, growers and packers.

How do you approach marketing? When you’re serving all these parties, right, that really cover the entire value chain, including marketing directly to consumers, right? Which are doing, How do you think about that? Because you have to represent all these different parties, but you’re still, marketing to consumers and of avocados.

How do you balance that? That feels like it’s gotta be a very difficult balance.

[00:12:53] Ivonne Kinser: Yeah, is difficult and very, very interesting and fulfilling because one thing Billy, that is very interesting is that when you think about almost 2.5 billion pounds of avocados, I think that what comes to your mind is this like huge growers, like multimillion dollar growers with big, and that’s is, there’s nothing farther from the truth because it is comprised the export program out of 30,000 small farmers.

And if you think about it, the minimum that you need to be part of the export programs is 12 trees. So it’s, it’s very small farmers, but then we have a board of directors that represents those 30,000 farmers and then 7,000, packers and distributors. So we basically reports to the board of directors, and then under our organization we have consumer marketing, we have shopper marketing that.

The group that owns the relationship with the retailers, the Walmart, Kroger, et cetera. And then we have food service marketing owns the relationship with, Chipotles chilies and, and all the food operators. And then we have consumer marketing. That is, is the area that I lead. We have to work together internally in the leads of each of the departments.

We really have to work together. So the communication, the message, and the brand come through. In a cohesive way that because the consumer can be shopping in the grocery store today and eating a avocado in a restaurant tomorrow, or watching, Super Bowl pod the next day. So the brand has to be consistent, but no one team can manage at all.

So, so we really have to integrate.

[00:14:47] Bill Staikos: That’s really fascinating. I didn’t realize that from a grower perspective. I mean, you’re, you’re talking about a handful of avocado trees, right? Really? You’re making a difference in people’s lives, even Right. Additional income or their only income perhaps. I love that mission.

I didn’t realize that that was part of the organization’s mission makes me even more of a fan of the, of the product than what you guys are doing now. That’s fascinating. If I wanna talk to you a little bit about Yvonne, how you think about the customer experience with respect to your role in marketing.

Obviously you guys are producing amazing content. Your commercials are, I mean, you had a great spot on the Super Bowl. You recently came out with another spot, which is just fat, just fantastic. I just, for the listeners, I was telling Yvonne I watched that, that spot three times today cuz it was so funny and so cool.

How do you think about the customer experience in your role, right? You’re serving sort of the growers and the packers and the producers, et cetera, but how do you think about the end consumer in that marketing or in your day to day with your team?

[00:15:56] Ivonne Kinser: Yeah, I love that question because I think that is one of the biggest challenges that we have as marketers, especially when you grow and your markets grow, how you keep that customer experience genuine to what the brand is and what the brand represents.

And I think that everything starts. Even beyond marketing, I think that everything starts with the culture that we create within the organization. we, at the beginning of the, the, when the company was created with data research to understand how consumers in America interpret Mexico. What Mexico means to them.

And then on the positive side, Mexico represents just like fun and joy and, and it’s a colorful culture. So we adopted that and, and obviously to differentiate our brand and, from the rest of commodities and it’s, we encapsulate that notion of that, Mexican culture into something that we call Mexican.

And that mexicanity, which is the, the soul of our culture is written in our colorful walls in the across the office. I think that that has to come through in everything that we do. Even beyond marketing. LinkedIn, for example. It’s a complete different audience. we’re not talking to consumers, we’re talking to peers who industry.

I feel it. I mean, I feel that mexicanity when I. Sharing something that we’re proud to share or or thinking or that type of stuff. I think that those things that are not necessarily in front of the consumer pushed by paid media, also build that experience with the consumers.

[00:17:48] Bill Staikos: I love the fact that you are one of the few marketing people I’ve spoken to and I get to speak with a fair amount.

That has just said, and I’m gonna paraphrase what you said, and I don’t wanna botch it, so forgive me if I do. It does. Even beyond marketing, it starts with the culture and making sure that that is coming through and that is such a, an important part for consumers to connect to the product and to the brand and is part of the customer experience that I don’t think a lot.

Marketers or just even industry professionals think about, and it’s clear that you guys are trying to express that through your product, through marketing and other things that you’re doing. I love that you said that it was just so, I mean, I’m gonna steal that somehow, but I will, I’ll make sure that I credit it to you for sure.

it feels like there are two camps. So one of the things that I want to talk to you about, particularly as a marketing leader, one camp says the brand is the experience. Another camp might say the experience is the brand. I’m curious, just you’re doing this work every dayon, what is your perspective on that?

do you agree or disagree with one camp or the other? I’ll put you on the spot a little bit. , and how do you think about even maybe connecting the two as well?

[00:19:02] Ivonne Kinser: Yeah, I think that it goes back a little bit to our previous conversation. I like a thousand percent. The experience is the. And the problem is when you approach it the other way around, when you, you approach it from the perspective of the brand being the experience, it loses authenticity because it is a manufacturer experience that is not coming naturally from the brand soul and the brand essence on the other side when you, when the experience builds the brand.

It’s really, it’s extremely difficult to control every experience the consumer have with the brand. So if it doesn’t come from an authentic place, you lose it. And we’re in, in a market right now where the consumers are very, very smart. They know they can get like immediately when a brand has. Fake or trying to be something that is not.

That’s why, going back to our previous point, that’s what we really, and this is credit to my ceo, he really, really put a lot of emphasis on building that internal culture. So everyone in the organization feels that culture and that will permeate to their work, to the consumers, to the food operators, to the retailers.

[00:20:27] Bill Staikos: All right. So Yvonne, a couple more questions. How do you think marketing is gonna evolve over the next couple of years? You’ve been in this space for a while. I recently read a quote of yours where you had said some of the effect of the combination of brand and performance is where marketing is going.

So, What did you mean by that? Share that with our listeners. Your perspective

[00:20:49] Ivonne Kinser: there. Yeah. like as you say, we, I wanna say we have been around for a while, , and, it was, when I started my career, the lines were like very, very bold. Separating all the channels where consumers. Spend their time right now.

Those lines are blur. And a consumer doesn’t think. Well, I’m going to this website because I’m going to be a shopper in the next 15 minutes. Okay, now I’m going to go to read this blog and now I’m going to be a consumer. So that doesn’t exist anymore. And, when those lines are getting blur, we as marketers, we need to adapt.

I think that one, something that I’m seeing. Happening, and it’s a very, very interesting evolution of the, the marketing spaces is these new ecosystems on the real retail side that are being creative, are growing and are becoming a very interesting space to build a brand, not only to. Target shoppers, but to actually build a brand.

So when we today marketers, we launch a campaign, I think that is obsolete to think is this a brand campaign or is this a. This is a shopper campaign. It’s a campaign for the consumers to be engaged with the message of the brand so they go feel compelled to shop your product. It’s blended, and that’s why we call it brand performance because you dry performance while branding and that’s the way it’s going to be and, and it’s going to be more and more and more integrated.

[00:22:40] Bill Staikos: So talk to, So that’s really interesting. So talk to us maybe about some of the ecosystems that you’re seeing that are driving a lot of this, and are there different capabilities or tools that you need as a marketing leader, or maybe it’s even talent on the team that you’re thinking about, and how, and to address that evolution.

[00:22:58] Ivonne Kinser: Yes. So we have the, in the past we have verticals, right? We have a ver a C that was a vertical. Then it was, then those verticals grow to the point that became ecosystem. So if you, want to go to the Kroger ecosystem or the Walmart ecosystem, Those are pretty big. I mean, you can, you can use your entire marketing budget in one of those ecosystem.

So for brands small like us and, and of course we have our shopper team that have like focus efforts in those retailers. But from the consumer perspective with the brand small like ours, what we have found that is, effective is to partner with the technology companies that have access to all those ecosystems.

Mm-hmm. with through one media, buy through eCommerce facilitated companies, for example. That super was a great example. We make all our brand assets Shopable. And those assets run through multiple of those ecosystems, for example.

[00:24:12] Bill Staikos: Very cool, very cool. I love, I love how you’re bringing together brand performance in that way.

And pivoting. And that’s, that feels like it’s a very, almost new thing. That’s not something maybe and at least in the last couple years. Is that right? That’s not something that

[00:24:27] Ivonne Kinser: Yeah, Yeah. Totally. And, and not even us. I mean, we’re, I think, or at least we try to be always a step ahead trying to. Analyze and assess the current situation and the current environments to some way predict what is coming and act before it became a trend.

So we are actually, exploring that type of opportunities, getting into better test with technology companies that are launching this brand effort within those retailers. But it’s new. But what happened is, what is interesting? I saw it and it was so interesting to watch during the pandemic talking to these technology companies, fast and furious, trying to get, gather insights of what was going on in the, in the minds of the marketers, for them to develop their products at a speed of the light.

Capitalized and that that growth of eCommerce. So it was interesting to watch and when we kind of passed that core of, Covid, they all came with amazing new products to facilitate that transition to that more evolutionary space, if you call it.

[00:25:41] Bill Staikos: It’s amazing what the pandemic, how much is, how much it has accelerated, not just digital, but so many different things in our lives as consumers in so many different ways.

I think we’re gonna. Changed forever. All right. Last question then for you, for today. Where do you go for your inspiration, Yvonne?

[00:26:00] Ivonne Kinser: Well, I work in nature. I, I think this is maybe something unfair to say because I know that there was a lot of, a lot of things that, that were not very positive during the pandemic.

Intellectually, for me, it was the best years of my life because we got to work from home. I’m a thinker, I’m an introvert. You may not come across like that, but I, I’m, I’m an introvert, so I need a lot of time to think and I reflect a lot about a lot of stuff, so I had a lot of opportunities to, in the mornings.

Earlier I came, I was here and between calls or taking a call or whatever it was, I got to walk around a lake that is next to my house and is full of nature and my best ideas. I mean, it was so much and so much inspiration that came to me that I was working with my phone just taking notes and mental notes about stuff because the.

the speed of my thinkings was just accelerated by the freedom and the nature and, and everything that, that inspired

[00:27:12] Bill Staikos: me. That’s awesome. Now, do you continue, I, I don’t know if you are all going back to an office or not, but is that a practice you will continue to do and make time and space for yourself to do it?

after I discovered that, that was an amazing source of creativity and, and, I just make them. I just had a purpose of keeping it and fighting for it and in some way make it a priority. So, so we went back to the office. I don’t have as much time, but now that we’re getting into summer again, I have, the days are longer, so I still have time to do that at the end of the day, but, Yeah, I, I wish I, I could keep that practice forever because it was a, a huge discovery that is very valuable for me, and, and I wish I never have to give it away.

[00:28:01] Bill Staikos: I’m very different. I’m an extrovert, I’m a classic extrovert, and I get energy and ideas and conversations like this, so my brain is gonna work now all weekend long, and the, and the ideas will be flowing. That’s the one benefit. Well, there are a lot of benefits to doing a podcast. Meeting interesting folks like yourself, having really cool conversations and learning from them and hearing their stories.

My mind is already bubbling and I know this weekend I’m gonna be doing a lot of thinking and create and creating. So Yvonne, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show. I learned a ton, one about the company that you work for. Two great perspective that you shared with listeners around your role in marketing, the connection to the experience, the brand connection to experience.

Just a lot for us to think about and just thank you so much for, for your time and, and, and sharing your expertise.

[00:28:51] Ivonne Kinser: No, thank you so much. It was a pleasure. It was a great conversation and enjoy it. I’m an introverted, but that doesn’t mean that I enjoy this conversation very, very much. I just gave you my energy.

Now I have to go on my own and recover that in energy .

[00:29:05] Bill Staikos: I understand. I understand. Well, thanks again. Have a great. All right, everybody. Great. Great show. We’re out. Talk to you soon everyone. Thanks for

listening

[00:29:13] Ivonne Kinser: to be customer led with Bill Stagos. We are grateful to our audience for the gift of their time.

Be sure to visit us@becustomerled.com. For more episodes, leave us feedback on how we’re doing, or tell us what you wanna hear more about. Until next time. We’re out.