Get to Know Jenny Echeverri
To learn more about Jenny, from the most important trend she's seeing today in CPG to the one thing she'd want an unlimited supply of, check out her interview below!
I love shopper marketing because...
Of the psychology and the science to it. If you haven’t worked in this field, you may not think of it as a science or psychology, but we’re discovering the insights, human behavior, how we can influence different purchase decisions, and how different points of media intercept the brain in different ways. I went to school to be a teacher, so I don't have a marketing degree and I landed in shopper marketing sort of by accident, but psychology was my favorite class in college. I just like getting into the minds of people – how they think and how they make behavioral decisions. My favorite thing is being able to crack that code and put something out there that resonates because you understand, and you know how the brain responds. I think it is such a cool thing that we get to do every day.
The best advice I've received in my shopper marketing career is...
Don’t have preconceived notions when you go into a specific task or campaign development. Let the insights truly guide you. I think it sounds basic, but some people struggle a bit with that because you can have something in your mind and you're very subjective sometimes to what you think makes sense and what you think resonates. I had a mentor years ago who was just really, really focused on data and letting the data tell the story. I think that's probably been the truest advice and it's made me the best shopper marketer, or better I would say. At the beginning of my career, I used to approach things more with the mindset of “I think I would respond if we said this”, so that's what you put on the ad and then you just send it out the door, and I don’t have that approach anymore. You have to just let the insights guide you. And sometimes they're going to steer you away from what you inherently think or what your instincts might be telling you, and that's okay! It’s about understanding that you might not be the target audience – be objective and listen to the data. Everyone has an opinion, and if you, as a shopper marketer, think that you’re going to be able to incorporate everyone's opinions and everyone’s thoughts into something, you will fail. That has been a difficult lesson for me to learn over the years. You’re not going to please everybody. You're not going to be able to incorporate everyone’s wants, hopes, and dreams.
The most important trend I see today in CPG is...
The overwhelming emphasis on and shift in behavior to e-commerce, digital, and more importantly social shopping. I don't even know if I would call it a trend, but I think it's probably the most important new and developing aspect of shopper marketing, or just marketing in general. The path to purchase is no longer linear, it's literally everywhere. People can now transact from almost anywhere, from any place geographically, on any device that they may happen to be using at that time, and on any platform where they're spending their time. It's just this crazy integrated and connected commerce world.
Something I've learned in the last week is...
This should be no surprise to anybody, but I learned that you can know a lot about a topic or a subject and still never become an expert. We’ve been doing a lot of mandatory training around negotiating, and I've always thought of myself as a pretty good negotiator. I've done other training in the past and it's a big part of the job, especially when you work with a big retailer like Walmart or Sam's Club. I went in thinking this is going to be easy, I do this all the time and instead, I realized I'm not very good at some of it. There's just so much to it, so I think that it was that ah-ha moment for me. I feel like I do a really good job of negotiating and I always get extra value, but this training taught me that I'm probably leaving a lot of value on the table still. I wouldn't have thought that about myself, so it was a good reminder that it doesn't matter how many times you've done something, just because you do it a lot doesn't mean that you are the best at it. There's always something new to learn, especially in the world we live in now where knowledge is constantly changing and evolving. I would say even three or four years ago we had this on our radars as something to keep an eye on and COVID just completely accelerated the importance of those things.
I think to me the number one most important aspect of what we do now is having to figure out how to be in all those places and make it seamless. It's not easy though, and none of us have figured it completely out, but it should be everyone's top priority, I think. That's why my job title is now Omni-Shopper Lead, because it truly is an Omni world that we're living in. We can't just think about shopper marketing anymore, we have to think about this universe that's been created out there for shopping.
My favorite travel spot is...
I think it changes every year. If you asked me a couple of years ago, I would have probably said San Andreas, Colombia. My husband is Colombian and I'm a sucker for a good beach resort. San Andrea is an island in the Caribbean that Colombia owns, so it was the first and only time I had ever been to a legit island, out in the middle of the ocean. To experience that different way of life, island time and island living, is just so cool. It also has the combination of what I fell in love with my husband’s culture –Latin American and family-oriented. But I've recently fallen in love with Cancun too, I’m not going to lie. I've been twice this year and I just love an all-inclusive. I think my everyday life is just so chaotic and stressful – there's so much planning and scheduling – so I love going to an all-inclusive resort that has beautiful beaches and beautiful views, where I don't have to think about what we're going to eat or where we're going to go or what we're going to do. It’s all there for you, and in my life right now, I think it doesn't get better than that for me.
If I weren't a shopper marketing, I would be...
My mindset is very much about growth, development, and helping people...
A teacher. I say this all the time – my retirement job would probably be in collegiate education. I went to school to become an elementary school teacher and realized quickly in that process that it was not for me, but I think I would like to teach at the college level at some point in my career. I came from a background where education was not valued and there wasn't an important emphasis placed on it. I was the first person in my whole family, on both sides, to go to college. It was just never something that people laced a lot of focus on, so with my kids, it's extremely important. I think the benefit of teaching toward the end of my career would be that I would then have career experience to bring, whereas had I just gone straight into teaching then I probably would have been teaching more generic topics like math or English, which is important don't get me wrong, but I think being able to influence someone toward the end of their college years as they're figuring out what they want to do and helping them gain the knowledge and experience to go and do that would be really cool. My mindset is very much about growth, development, and helping people, so teaching would definitely be in the running for what I would do.
I'm happiest when...
My children are thriving. We’ve had a rough go. Both my kids have some special abilities – my son, who's seven, is autistic and my daughter, who's going on 16, was diagnosed with a rare connective tissue disorder and has some physical disabilities that cause a lot of pain. So, I am the happiest when my kids are having a great day and we can all just be together with everybody feeling their best. There is nothing better than that because sometimes there are lots of days in between, more days than I would like. When my kids are thriving, feeling their best, and can be their best selves, that’s when I'm at my best.
If I had an unlimited supply of one thing, it would be...
Caffeine-free Coke Zero. I can't have the caffeine. I suffer from chronic migraines, so I had to give up caffeine years ago. I will drink caffeine-free Diet Coke too, don't get me wrong, but I just love a caffeine-free Coke Zero and you can barely find it anywhere. So, I’m not kidding, when we went took our kids to Tulsa before school started for the weekend, I came back with ten cases because they had it there. They don't sell it here, so if I could just have an unlimited supply, I'd never have to worry about it again. That would be at the top of my list, which is so silly, but it's so true. It’s a little thing that makes me happy.
I love Breaktime Media because...
There are a couple of reasons! One is just connecting back to all the things we've talked about – the ability to really intercept a consumer/shopper’s day and bring some lightness, but also provide them with some sort of value. The light-heartedness of the experiences that they build allows people to have that little break, have some fun, and also learn something about your brand or gain something while doing it. It's a really unique thing that they offer. There are a lot of partners out there that I work with that are content creators, but I think it's the combination of the content and the way that the content is created to engage that makes a difference. The experiences, and how shoppers navigate through the experiences, are just seamless. That’s what I've yet to find elsewhere. I'm such a big fan! That's why I think there are always places within my strategies where Breaktime just fits a need that no one else can. Making those connections with shoppers is so important, and in the world of shopper marketing, we have such little time to connect with shoppers. Banner ads and things like that give us a couple of seconds to try to grab their attention, so to have their undivided attention for up to two to three minutes, where the shopper is really engaged and learning about what you have to offer, is such a unique thing. Especially in the crazy busy commerce world that shoppers live in.
At the end of the day, the product is the product, but it's the people that make it work.
Breaktime also has top talent. The people that I get to work with make a difference. A product can be amazing, but if the people maybe are just not people you enjoy talking to or working with that's kind of a bummer. And it happens a lot in the world that I work in, so when you have that combination of an amazing product/service and cool people that you just love to get on calls with it’s great. Genuinely, I think Breaktime has some of the best, most talented, down-to-earth, and authentic people that work on the team. At the end of the day, the product is the product, but it's the people that make it work.