Sargento's Erin Price on Long-Term Growth and Consumer-Centric Innovation
In this episode of Brave Commerce, Rachel Tipograph and Sarah Hofstetter sit down with Erin Price, general manager of consumer products at Sargento.
Erin shares how Sargento's identity as a family-owned business has shaped its category leadership, commitment to long-term value, and approach to consumer-driven innovation.
Erin discusses how the company's newest brand platform, "The Sargento Family Promise," is rooted in transparency and trust, and how deep consumer insights, rather than fleeting trends, guide the development of new products.
She also offers her perspective on recruiting top CPG talent to Wisconsin, managing through change, and developing the next generation of business leaders.
A long-term mindset enables more meaningful innovation and stronger retailer relationships.
Consumer trust is earned through consistency, transparency, and product quality.
Data is only powerful when paired with focus, agility, and real-time consumer understanding.
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Forbes
a day ago
- Forbes
How Data Clean Room Technology Can Show Marketing Impact
Last year, international food giant Kellanova (part of the company formerly known as Kellogg) was hoping to improve sales of its Special K cereal in the U.K. as competition increased. Their hypothesis: Targeted audiences would buy more Special K with messaging and content that focused on the quality and value of the cereal. In order to test the theory, Kellanova used data clean rooms, a high-tech and AI-powered way to penetrate deep into data. The company was able to show their targeting worked—sales increased 9% among price-conscious shoppers, and 36% among premium shoppers—and has been using clean room technology for more aspects of marketing. I talked to Kellanova's Global Senior Director of Insights and Intelligence Louise Cotterill and Chief Growth Officer Charisse Hughes about how they used clean room technology to find success in this campaign and others. This conversation has been edited for length, clarity and continuity. It was excerpted in the Forbes CMO newsletter. What have been some of the challenges Kellanova has recently faced in terms of getting information about their customers? Cotterill: Like all CPGs, we don't own that last mile transaction data, and so we're very often blind to the people who are buying our food. By the aggregated data, we can see what's going on in general, but we can't see the specificity of what's happening. What we wanted to do is really be able to lift that veneer and have a better understanding of how our shopper is interacting with our brands, with our food, with our retail partners. The way we've been able to do that is through clean rooms. The way that they work is we will license data from a partner—that can be a third-party loyalty card, Circana data or it can be a retailer directly. That goes through a hash sheet process that translates that [personally identifiable information] data, so it's 'ID 1234.' At the same time, I bring in other data sets, and I know this ID has also entered into the suite with something. I might pair that with retail location data. So I understand the geography of where you're shopping, and maybe I can understand a bit about your household and lifestyle. I don't know it's you, though. That gives us that granularity whilst also respecting people's privacy at the same time. As marketers, we've suddenly gone from having panel data—which has worked incredibly well for our businesses, but we're projecting the outcome based on 2,000 people—to actually looking at millions and millions of records that we can analyze with AI and start to understand that granularity that drives our commercial business; something that's different to help us better connect with those consumers. Kellanova Global Senior Director of Insights and Intelligence Louise Cotterill and Chief Growth Officer Charisse Hughes. How did you land on using clean room technology to do this? Cotterill: The most important thing to do is start with a business problem, because if you start with the technology, it will never land and never get embedded in the business. My role is to look at how do we better use advanced sciences in marketing. Media is by far our largest expenditure. We saw a 1% to 2% improvement in media effectiveness and efficiency. That's a significant improvement to our commercial bottom line. We started with that as the objective: How do we create more effective and efficient consumer connections? What that took us to was the role of data collaboration. Kellanova is one of the most trusted companies. We have to do it at the gold star standard of privacy. The gold standard is a clean room where we can anonymize that data as much as possible. And so that was really where it went. The crucial part is that it's very easy to be seduced by data, the idea of technology and these shiny objects. If you don't start with actually a problem that you're trying to solve, all you get is a very expensive tool that never gets used. What's been great about the clean room is that we have not only been able to demonstrate impact, it's repeatable into our processes and practices, and that's the key unlock for anything that we do in these AI and data science programs. Is this a platform that you can continue to use at Kellanova? How was it established? Cotterill: The technology of the clean room is with a third party. They have neutrality in that their core work is making sure that data is anonymized and protected. We then partner with different third-party data providers to bring in those different data sets, but within the clean room as an analytics environment. That analytics environment is accessed by our internal data scientists. What's critical, and I think the way we see this world moving, is that data will not be a differentiator, but models will be. Everyone will have Experian, everyone will have Circana and Nielsen data. But where the real IP will be in how you use that data and how you build those models to understand, in this use case, what is a high-value consumer. Our internal teams are building the models. They're working side-by-side with our marketing, media and creative teams, and that's where the success was for Special K. It really comes to life because we have the control over how we build the audience, but we're partnering with our external partners to bring it to life. When you embarked on this project, was there any pushback, confusion or hesitancy among the team to do something this high tech and bring so many data resources into it? Cotterill: It was a clear business need, so it was a much easier sell than perhaps it might be [if we said] let's just chase this shiny AI tool. It came with a solve for a problem, but I'll be totally transparent: We didn't knock it out of the park the first time. It wasn't a magic turnkey solution. We had senior leadership who believed in it. And so when we don't see the results the first time, we still have the confidence to keep going and the belief that that will drive a meaningful impact in our business. That's what we saw with Special K, and now that's embedded into many campaigns in multiple markets. The beautiful thing is these models just get smarter every time we deploy, every time we target, every time we get a result, we are getting smarter and more understanding. Hughes: When you think about this space that we're all operating in, which is new and unknown by many, it's uncomfortable because it's not how we've always done it. It's techy. All those dynamics, we faced those. Add to that in some cases, you're spending more dollars because you're targeting a smaller group of people. So your CPMs are arguably going up, but you're driving a better return on investment at the end of the day. For sure it takes some convincing and some test-and-learns. We failed at first, and this spirit of failure, and failing fast and failing cheap, has to be a part of what you're building in terms of the muscle of the organization. It definitely takes time. My prior life was in retail, and you're able to recover a little bit faster because you're naturally accustomed, moving at that pace and testing and learning and adapting. When you're a bigger organization like Kellogg/Kellanova, you're building more of the internal confidence and belief in what's possible. Then you're using this test-and-learn approach to demonstrate what's possible, but you build it through words, collaboration and a partnership, bringing everybody together to talk through the plans, and really build that allyship and confidence. We are really fortunate that we had Lu, is a digital marketer who comes from an agency background, who could be our champion and wave the flag around, and, from my standpoint at the executive level, is bringing my CEO and CFO along on the journey as well. Was there anything that was specifically challenging or surprising about the whole process? Cotterill: I think the reason that we weren't successful the first time is because we were kind of like kids in a candy store. We've never had this level of data. It was so exciting. And so what we did was try to change too much, and in changing too much, at the end it was too complex for us to separate out the results. We knew we needed to do is just simplify it right back down. It's really easy to get ahead of yourself and to raise this notion of nirvana of what you should be able to do, but you've got to meet the organization where they are in terms of capabilities and process. Everything's changing every day, but still there's a lot of manual work. If you've got multiple creative, you've got to traffic and tag all those ads. We over-complicated it. You can't overestimate the importance of measurement: Aligning up front what you say is success, so that when I come back and I say this is what happened, I'm held accountable to those standards and those goals. With Special K, we set really high standards. We said we want to drive sales and we're going to measure that through a clean room. As a CPG marketer, we never get to see the real impact of our creative. With a clean room, we can see that I showed [someone] this ad, then she went on to buy. We were very clear to drive sales, and we far exceeded any industry benchmark on those sales with increases of 9% with price-conscious shoppers and 36% with premium shoppers. The second challenge that we set was if we can drive short-term uplift, what about brand health? These metrics move really slowly over time. They're extremely hard to move in social, a very fast paced environment. Our business-as-usual approach saw no lift at all. In the clean room audiences, we see an uplift of three times industry average. Presenting those results is a joy and a great validation. We really believed we could get there, and it showed that we could. Hughes: You can imagine if you bring different functions to the table to talk about the business problem, everybody has a different point of view on it. The hard thing is getting everybody to see the problem the same way and to want to test a single hypothesis. There could be tons of hypotheses about why a business is declining, or not seeing volume growth and household penetration. But to get the sales team, the marketing team, the shopper team, the insights team, all those folks having a shared view on the problem. People have different data, so they're seeing different things and a different piece of the problem. If you can break down those silos and get everybody to the table to say, we all believe that this is the problem we're going to solve, then it becomes a lot easier. Now you're just setting up a test and how you're going to execute that. How do these results compare with ones you'd seen earlier, both through panels, but also through online data before privacy was such a widespread concern? Cotterill: The big shift is we know that we are respecting our consumers and shoppers' expectations. We've taken the due diligence to honor and respect—and exceed, where we can—any privacy rules. The biggest shift for us is the granularity that we're able to see what's going on in our business. Panel data has been fantastic, but often the exciting parts in marketing are on the fringes. That's where you identify the insight or the opportunity. Those edges have been softened out for a long time. Whilst you talk about the clean room potentially as a targeting tool, we're bringing it further upstream in our strategy and business planning process because it gives us an incremental visibility we've never had before. We can see things like geographic divides in how our food is sold, or price sensitivity. We can understand that, amazingly, not all women are the same. There's different nuances, and we can target and speak to those in different ways. Most exciting is the measurement piece: You're not just relying on model data. You've got actual real data. For me, it's really hard to go back to working because the precision you've got, it looks so illuminating and so exciting. As a marketer, you just want to lean into it as much as possible. Hughes: Being able to talk to our consumers more directly about their behaviors, versus taking a retrospective and constantly having to look back; actually seeing what they're doing and how they're reacting in real time [is great], but the measurement part is probably the most exciting. There are those people who believe marketing is just a line item in the P&L to be cut, that is not really delivering on what we know it can deliver: growth, engagement and long-term business and brand acceleration. Now, we can demonstrate the sales impact as well as the brand impact. Being able to communicate that you need both is critical. Now we have the data, we have the test-and-learns, we have the insights and the capabilities to do that better than ever. What have you been using this technology for since the case study, and where do you plan to use it next? Cotterill: We're rolling it out across lots of campaigns. I'm in the midst of deploying a whole set now, and I at the same time, there's a capability training that's going alongside. It's one thing telling people the theory, but when they sit alongside the data science team, when they see the impact it can have, that's just elevating the capabilities of our marketers. We're rolling out across many campaigns. We've got it now in multiple markets. We see a potential where it can go beyond. The simplest use case is targeting. The next level is creative targeting and measurement. And the next level is where we start to use it to break down some of those silos, in terms of helping us across different commercial domains: sales across, pricing across. That's an innovation dream for us. We want to make sure [we are not] getting over-complex too soon. We're embedding it at this level right now, but we see a huge potential where it could go and complement a lot of the work that we're doing in various areas. What advice would you give to marketers that are looking at this kind of technology and are trying to decide whether to use it? Cotterill: I have learned so much by doing. Clean rooms are a great tool, but they're part of a repertoire of tools that we have to target. You've got to make sure that you've got the right brief, the right problem to solve it with. Clean rooms offer more control. They're often more precision. They're not turnkey. If you try and just change the shiny objects, it will never ever work. But when we've been able to embed it in the process and solve the real business problem, that's when it worked the best.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
$2 Billion Revenue CPG Company Awards SemiCab India New Pilot to Implement Drop & Hook Trucking Model
Company Announces Geographic Expansion of Lanes and Pilot of Drop & Hook Program in Indian FMCG Sector for the First Time Fort Lauderdale, FL, June 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Algorhythm Holdings, Inc. ('Algorhythm') (NASDAQ: RIME) – an AI technology and consumer electronics holding company, today announced that its subsidiary, SMCB Solutions Private Limited ('SemiCab India'), has been awarded a large expansion to its Master Services Agreement with the Indian subsidiary of the world's third largest consumer packaged goods ('CPG') manufacturer with over $84 billion in annual revenues. Under the first phase of the expanded services agreement, SemiCab India will provide managed transportation services to the CPG company on more than 40 heavily populated lanes throughout India, representing a 200% increase in lanes currently serviced. Upon completion of this phase of the relationship, the CPG company has agreed to broaden its relationship with SemiCab to include an expanded geographic footprint for services and an increased quantity of lanes served. Ajesh Kapoor, CEO of SemiCab Holdings, LLC, commented, 'We are excited to expand our relationship with our CPG client, which is one of the largest and most prestigious members of the National Digital Freight Exchange ('NDFE') in India today. The expansion of our collaboration opens the door to tremendous growth opportunities with a global powerhouse in the CPG world.' In connection with the contract expansion, SemiCab India announced a new pilot program with this CPG company in India modeled after the 'drop & hook' freight model. Drop and hook refers to the process of a driver dropping off a full trailer at a destination and hooking up to an already pre-loaded trailer, enabling the driver to quickly move on to their next delivery route rather than waiting for the trailer to be loaded and unloaded. This process, which has been widely adopted in the United States, will help us double the driving time in India. It has not been widely adopted due to infrastructure, operational, and technology constraints that, before SemiCab, companies have been unable to overcome. SemiCab's Collaborative Transportation Platform provides the operational and technological capabilities to support the drop and hook model in the Indian market. The platform can cut turnaround times by up to 80%, increasing the monthly miles per truck from an average of 3,200 miles to 5,000 miles with limited additional costs, improving shipping margins dramatically. SemiCab India is expected to go live with this multi-national company in June 2025. 'We are very excited to help pioneer the drop and hook model in India,' added Mr. Kapoor. 'This model can save countless hours of downtime, helping shippers avoid virtually all the congestion created by live loading and unloading in place today. Keeping our fleet fully deployed and quickly serving clients at metrics that no one else in the India market can match will serve as a major competitive advantage for us as we scale our business in India. We expect all other NDFE companies to adopt this model as we roll it out across the country.' About Algorhythm Holdings Algorhythm Holdings, Inc. is an AI technology and consumer electronics holding company with two primary business units – SemiCab and Singing Machine. SemiCab is an emerging leader in the global logistics and distribution industry. Since 2020, SemiCab has enabled major retailers, brands and transportation providers to address these common supply-chain problems globally. Its AI-enabled, cloud-based Collaborative Transportation Platform achieves the scalability required to predict and optimize millions of loads and hundreds of thousands of trucks. SemiCab uses real-time data from API-based load tendering and pre-built integrations with TMS and ELD partners to orchestrate collaboration across manufacturers, retailers, distributors, and their carriers. SemiCab uses AI/ML predictions and advanced predictive optimization models to enable fully-loaded round trips. With SemiCab's AI platform, shippers pay less and carriers make more without having to change a thing. For additional information, please go to: Singing Machine is the worldwide leader in consumer karaoke products. Based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and founded over forty years ago, it designs and distributes the industry's widest assortment of at-home and in-car karaoke entertainment products. Its product portfolio is marketed under both proprietary brands and popular licenses, including Carpool Karaoke and Sesame Street. Singing Machine products incorporate the latest technology and provide access to over 100,000 songs for streaming through its mobile app and select WiFi-capable products and is also developing the world's first globally available, fully integrated in-car karaoke system. Its products are sold in over 25,000 locations worldwide, including Amazon, Costco, Sam's Club, Target, and Walmart. For additional information, please go to Investor Relations Contact:investors@ Forward Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Any statement that is not historical in nature is a forward-looking statement and may be identified by the use of words and phrases such as "expects," "anticipates," "believes," "will," "will likely result," "will continue," "plans to," "potential," "promising," and similar expressions. These statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs and are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements, including the risk factors described from time to time in Algorhythm's reports to the SEC, including, without limitation Algorhythm's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024. You should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statement, each of which applies only as of the date of this press release. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update or revise publicly any of the forward-looking statements after the date of this press release to conform our statements to actual results or changed expectations, or as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Sign in to access your portfolio
Business Upturn
a day ago
- Business Upturn
$2 Billion Revenue CPG Company Awards SemiCab India New Pilot to Implement Drop & Hook Trucking Model
Company Announces Geographic Expansion of Lanes and Pilot of Drop & Hook Program in Indian FMCG Sector for the First Time Fort Lauderdale, FL, June 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Algorhythm Holdings, Inc. ('Algorhythm') (NASDAQ: RIME) – an AI technology and consumer electronics holding company, today announced that its subsidiary, SMCB Solutions Private Limited ('SemiCab India'), has been awarded a large expansion to its Master Services Agreement with the Indian subsidiary of the world's third largest consumer packaged goods ('CPG') manufacturer with over $84 billion in annual revenues. Under the first phase of the expanded services agreement, SemiCab India will provide managed transportation services to the CPG company on more than 40 heavily populated lanes throughout India, representing a 200% increase in lanes currently serviced. Upon completion of this phase of the relationship, the CPG company has agreed to broaden its relationship with SemiCab to include an expanded geographic footprint for services and an increased quantity of lanes served. Ajesh Kapoor, CEO of SemiCab Holdings, LLC, commented, 'We are excited to expand our relationship with our CPG client, which is one of the largest and most prestigious members of the National Digital Freight Exchange ('NDFE') in India today. The expansion of our collaboration opens the door to tremendous growth opportunities with a global powerhouse in the CPG world.' In connection with the contract expansion, SemiCab India announced a new pilot program with this CPG company in India modeled after the 'drop & hook' freight model. Drop and hook refers to the process of a driver dropping off a full trailer at a destination and hooking up to an already pre-loaded trailer, enabling the driver to quickly move on to their next delivery route rather than waiting for the trailer to be loaded and unloaded. This process, which has been widely adopted in the United States, will help us double the driving time in India. It has not been widely adopted due to infrastructure, operational, and technology constraints that, before SemiCab, companies have been unable to overcome. SemiCab's Collaborative Transportation Platform provides the operational and technological capabilities to support the drop and hook model in the Indian market. The platform can cut turnaround times by up to 80%, increasing the monthly miles per truck from an average of 3,200 miles to 5,000 miles with limited additional costs, improving shipping margins dramatically. SemiCab India is expected to go live with this multi-national company in June 2025. 'We are very excited to help pioneer the drop and hook model in India,' added Mr. Kapoor. 'This model can save countless hours of downtime, helping shippers avoid virtually all the congestion created by live loading and unloading in place today. Keeping our fleet fully deployed and quickly serving clients at metrics that no one else in the India market can match will serve as a major competitive advantage for us as we scale our business in India. We expect all other NDFE companies to adopt this model as we roll it out across the country.' About Algorhythm Holdings Algorhythm Holdings, Inc. is an AI technology and consumer electronics holding company with two primary business units – SemiCab and Singing Machine. SemiCab is an emerging leader in the global logistics and distribution industry. Since 2020, SemiCab has enabled major retailers, brands and transportation providers to address these common supply-chain problems globally. Its AI-enabled, cloud-based Collaborative Transportation Platform achieves the scalability required to predict and optimize millions of loads and hundreds of thousands of trucks. SemiCab uses real-time data from API-based load tendering and pre-built integrations with TMS and ELD partners to orchestrate collaboration across manufacturers, retailers, distributors, and their carriers. SemiCab uses AI/ML predictions and advanced predictive optimization models to enable fully-loaded round trips. With SemiCab's AI platform, shippers pay less and carriers make more without having to change a thing. For additional information, please go to: Singing Machine is the worldwide leader in consumer karaoke products. Based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and founded over forty years ago, it designs and distributes the industry's widest assortment of at-home and in-car karaoke entertainment products. Its product portfolio is marketed under both proprietary brands and popular licenses, including Carpool Karaoke and Sesame Street. Singing Machine products incorporate the latest technology and provide access to over 100,000 songs for streaming through its mobile app and select WiFi-capable products and is also developing the world's first globally available, fully integrated in-car karaoke system. Its products are sold in over 25,000 locations worldwide, including Amazon, Costco, Sam's Club, Target, and Walmart. For additional information, please go to Investor Relations Contact: [email protected] Forward Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Any statement that is not historical in nature is a forward-looking statement and may be identified by the use of words and phrases such as 'expects,' 'anticipates,' 'believes,' 'will,' 'will likely result,' 'will continue,' 'plans to,' 'potential,' 'promising,' and similar expressions. These statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs and are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements, including the risk factors described from time to time in Algorhythm's reports to the SEC, including, without limitation Algorhythm's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024. You should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statement, each of which applies only as of the date of this press release. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update or revise publicly any of the forward-looking statements after the date of this press release to conform our statements to actual results or changed expectations, or as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Disclaimer: The above press release comes to you under an arrangement with GlobeNewswire. Business Upturn takes no editorial responsibility for the same.
