McCormick CMO Tabata Gomez shares how she restructured her team's workflow to be more 'agile'

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Tabata Gomez, McCormick's CMO, talks about restructuring the team's workflow and capitalizing on food trends.

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00:00People connect with delicious products that are trending and they want to make them Gen

00:04Seers and millennials are all about that.

00:12One of the reasons why I joined my core mix was to help evolve the way we do marketing

00:17to really accelerate sales and drive brand growth.

00:22And in order to do that, I knew we needed to be more agile because we needed to be able

00:27to capitalize on the trends on food that were being out there and to be able to connect

00:32with consumers in a faster way to what was appealing to them.

00:36But in order to do that, we had to restructure a little bit the way we work and create a new

00:41system that would make us much more agile.

00:43In the past, work flowed by different groups and it wasn't fully connected.

00:49And what I wanted to do was create these pods where I would put everybody around the table,

00:53literally, and have them be able to work together faster towards one single goal.

00:59And when they work in sprints, it's a lot easier to get the work done because they hit one thing

01:04and then they move immediately to the other.

01:06And that has allowed us to move very fast, but it also allows us to connect all the different

01:11pieces, whether it's the consumer side of the portfolio or our branded food service side

01:16of the portfolio.

01:17So think about for our brands, like a Cholula brand, we have products we sell in store.

01:22We have products we sell online.

01:24We do a true commerce, but on the other hand, we also have table products on restaurant table

01:30tops and on the back of house, in the kitchens, in the cafeterias.

01:35And if we put everybody around the table and work that way, we're actually able to capitalize

01:40and make the most out of that entire ecosystem.

01:43I always get asked what's my favorite McCormick product.

01:46You know, it's like having to choose between all your favorite children.

01:49It's really hard.

01:51But I must say I'm very, very loyal to our Cholula green sauce.

01:55It's my favorite.

01:57For the Cholula brand, the number one Mexican hot sauce,

02:00when we had planned the campaign for the launch of 11 new SKUs of mainstream Mexican products,

02:07we had chosen to hero a traditional Cholula SKU as part of the campaign.

02:12But we had some really interesting products in the portfolio.

02:16And what we started seeing is that there was a lot of pickup on Birria on social media.

02:22And influencers were talking a lot about it.

02:24We were seeing a lot in restaurant menus.

02:26So we had designed and created a Birria SKU, a simmering sauce that was going to be part of the

02:31campaign.

02:32However, that was not going to be the hero product.

02:35But all of a sudden, we started seeing a lot of pickup online.

02:39And one of my team members came to me and said, hey, what if we did something bold and different?

02:45What if we actually leverage the Birria product as the hero SKU of the campaign and launch that way?

02:52And, you know, we were 48 hours before launching for Cinco de Mayo.

02:57And I just looked at the team and I was like, well, if we can make it happen, let's do it.

03:02So Birria was something amazing that was trending and we led with that.

03:08And that allowed the brand to win.

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