Laura Knebusch with Georgia-Pacific

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: [00:00:15] Welcome to the High Velocity radio show where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Georgia-Pacific, Ms. Laura Knebusch. How are you?

Laura Knebusch : [00:00:32] I’m great. Thank you for having me.

Stone Payton: [00:00:34] Well, it is an absolute delight to have you on the show. I got a ton of questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but maybe a great place to start would be if you could describe your your title, more importantly, your role and what you and your team are are really out there trying to do for folks.

Laura Knebusch : [00:00:53] Absolutely. So I am the head of marketing and consumer experience for Georgia Pacific Consumer Products. So I lead a team of about 80 people. And our role is to to to help our brands. We support a portfolio of brands, help our brands achieve their objectives and market by delivering a better experience to consumers across all the ways that they interact with our brands. And we compete in household essential categories like toilet paper, paper towels, paper plates and napkins and cups with brands like Brawny Sparkle, Vanity Fair, Dixie Quilted, Northern and Angel Soft. So a lot of great household names.

Stone Payton: [00:01:29] Well, you make paper towels sound exciting. So you must you must have a real talent for this. I can tell. I can see it in your eyes. I can hear it in your voice. You really do find the work exciting. Rewarding. What are you enjoying the most about the work these days? What’s the most fun for you?

Laura Knebusch : [00:01:47] Sure. Well, you know, some people may say toilet paper is an exciting category, but I would disagree. And I think we found that out during the pandemic. I mean, this is a product that everybody uses. You may not think about it all the time. You may not want to think about it, but when you don’t have it, it’s a it’s a big deal. And I don’t think any of us expected what the the potential scarcity, what that could how that could impact consumers that we saw during the pandemic. So these are household essential items. They are providing a benefit and convenience to consumers every day. So it’s fun to work on brands that, you know, consumers need and appreciate and a lot of fun to be in marketing today. There is so much that is changing between technology and digital and the consumer and content. It’s every day is like a new day. So it’s pretty exciting world to be in right now.

Stone Payton: [00:02:36] Well, say more about how you were able to navigate the pandemic, if you would. Anything that your that you’re able and willing to share about maybe some of the challenges that you were faced with and how you worked around or through them? I’d love to hear that.

Laura Knebusch : [00:02:51] Sure. I mean, it was a very you know, it was an entirely different experience. I don’t think anyone, as we know, was prepared for what was happening. And certainly from a brand, our brands and these categories, the role that they were playing with consumers. And so at the time, we knew, you know, as a brand, we weren’t going to be out there trying to sell our products. We didn’t, you know, that wasn’t what consumers needed. So our brands really transformed their messaging at the time to really be more supportive. I mean, we were there because we wanted our consumers to know we’re here with you. We’ll do our best to help you find the products that you need. We’ll make it as easy as possible for you to to find the products. But just know that we’re here and we know that you’re having a challenging time. So we very quickly pivoted our messaging just to provide that connection and that reassurance to consumers. And then when things were a little bit more stable, we knew, you know, we knew we had the products out there and available. Then we went back out and said, you know, made sure that we could connect consumers. So we just we had to be agile. So think about our messaging as I think about how we reach consumers, but also just understanding what consumers needed during that time.

Stone Payton: [00:03:56] So I got to ask, what is the back story? How in the world does someone like you find themselves in a role like this? Was it always consumer goods or was it a different path for you?

Speaker4: [00:04:08] Sure.

Laura Knebusch : [00:04:08] I mean, I’ve been and I would say general management, brand management marketing for my entire career. So 25 plus years. And I’ve been at Georgia Pacific for 15 of those. And I did know coming out of particularly out of business school, I was looking I had a passion for the consumer. I really enjoyed kind of some of my early jobs in this area. And I and I knew I did want to spend more time in brand management focused on bringing kind of solutions to consumers and then I’ve had the opportunity in my time at Georgia Pacific to work and lead businesses and also lead kind of the marketing capability I’m in now. And I and I very much enjoy the ability and opportunity to to do both. And so it’s been an evolution. It’s been a learning experience. A lot of great jobs along the way. But they have all led me to where I am today.

Stone Payton: [00:04:52] Well, and we’re all blessed for it. So what what have you learned over the years about not just connecting with consumers, but actually getting them to engage with the brand? I’m sure it’s a ton, but maybe a pearl or two of do don’t? I don’t know.

Laura Knebusch : [00:05:10] Well, I think the number one thing is to always start with the consumer. Don’t start with the product, start with the consumer and understand again, every brand is going to have a different target consumer. And it’s not a one size fits all. So understand your consumer, not just not just their functional, not just what they need from a paper towel. What are they? What are their needs and aspirations and values and belief and life and. As you think about your brand, how does the brand, how is your brand able to to address, again, the functional needs, but also their emotional needs? And I think being able to find that sweet spot is really critical. You know, we just launched a new campaign for our Angel Store brand. Angel Soft is a toilet paper brand. And that consumer, you know, is someone obviously busy life mom handling a lot of family priorities, often having to prioritize and make choices about what they buy. So not not able to necessarily buy everything they need every week and definitely needs to make sure things are not adding complexity to her life. And that brand brings a product that is soft and strong, so they’re not making trade offs. But for her, that also adds simplicity. So it’s providing functional benefit, but also that simplicity benefit to her life. And so we just brought that to life in a really fun new campaign. It’s and it’s we created an animated world of angel soft ink. It’s located in the clouds. So the campaign is called Crafted in the Clouds. And it’s just a really fun, engaging way to deliver a very simple message and be able to do it across all of our touchpoints. Because if if that’s the other big thing, it’s knowing your consumer being clear on what you want to say, but then you have to be consistent about doing that Over time and over, all the touchpoints or consumers aren’t going to take away. You know, what’s really different about your brand.

Stone Payton: [00:06:49] Now when you’re crafting an effort like that, all the way from initial ideation and strategy to the execution, are you working with internal teams, external teams, trying to hurt all the cats and they both work together, or do you do mostly in-house or. Yeah, tell it to that.

Laura Knebusch : [00:07:06] Sure, we’re doing both and we will leverage external partners. And we did leverage in particular an external creative agency called Gray to help craft the strategy and campaign around this idea. And we look to them for kind of their strategic and creative expertise. But we also have in-house resources because today, with all the different touchpoints and all the different content and all the different the added complexity of trying to reach consumers today, it can be more costly and timely as you think about what it takes to bring a campaign to market. So we use in-house. We have an in-house creative team as well. We have an in-house group that buys some of our media for us and digital. We have brought in some of our analytics in-house so that we can better and more quickly measure the performance of our campaigns and our investments. And that’s allowing us to do to to bring all of that great content to life for the consumer, but do it in a way that’s still efficient and allows us to be agile.

Stone Payton: [00:08:01] So in my world, there’s a little bit of data and more available than there was in the old days when we got started, way back when I had black hair. Laura But it’s easy to measure some things, but I can only imagine the amount of data available to you in your team and then trying to make sense of it. Do you have people dedicated to that as well?

Laura Knebusch : [00:08:24] We do, but I also think it’s really important that it’s not just one person’s job or two people’s jobs to be able to do that. I think with the amount of data that’s available to us, it’s really important for everyone in the organization to own how they can leverage that data and how they can use it. I mean, that’s how we’re really going to make the most impact and act in a more agile manner. But it was a focus of mine as I came into this role was to build us a better foundation. We had a lot of, to your point, we had a lot of data, but it wasn’t. It was in silos. It wasn’t connected. We weren’t it wasn’t always in the hands of the right people to use it. So we’ve kind of brought it all to all of our data is now together. It’s connected. We’ve added tools to make it more accessible to to the broader organization, to make it easier to visualize some of the, you know, the insights that are coming out of the data so that we can leverage it and actually create the kind of value we can with with all that data that is available today.

Stone Payton: [00:09:18] Clearly, you have seen witness been a part of often maybe an architect of more than just incremental change, truly transformation over the years. What do you see coming down the pike? Do you have your eye on some general trends in the industry or the economic arena period that you feel like, okay, this is going to impact us and we’re going to learn about this and nudge this way?

Laura Knebusch : [00:09:42] I’m sure. You know, I think we’ve seen so much change happen in the last couple of years, and I think it’s only going to continue to accelerate. You know, a couple things we are really focused on. One is just the changing consumer. As you see millennials kind of come into their full purchasing power. As you see Gen Z really come into market and start to really you start to see the impact of their purchasing power. You know, very, you know, different attitudes, beliefs, purchasing habits, you know, expectations from brands as you look at some of these different these different groups. And then you just look at the fact that we’re we’re talking with an increasingly multicultural consumer. And so, again, how are we making sure the diversity of our consumers is reflected in the diversity of our brands? So I think that’s going to continue to impact how brands can connect with consumers. Certainly we’ve talked about data. I mean, data again, will only increasingly impact our ability to hopefully be more targeted and be more relevant, be more efficient. But it’s also more complex as there are regulations around data privacy and consumer expectations around data privacy as we look to the deprecation of the cookie and what that’s going to mean as far as how we reach consumers. So there’s a lot of complexity in there that we have to navigate and manage. And then finally, like the hot topic right now is of course, AI and generative AI, which, you know, I’ve never seen something as come on as strong as think as the conversation in this area over the last few months. And you know, while it may not be all the way where where it will be yet it is the hype is real. Like there are some really, really exciting ways that this could transform how we operate and marketing. And so we are very focused on identifying some of those early use cases, starting to experiment and learn, because for me, this is this is a win and how not an if, you know, it’s going to impact how we work.

Stone Payton: [00:11:32] I love to hear you talk about this stuff. It’s like a playground for you. I mean, I mean, I’m sure you have your moments and your times, but you clearly enjoy the the work. So and I enjoyed my work as well. Earlier today, we had in the studio right here in little old Woodstock, Georgia, we had a city official and we had a CPA and we had a solopreneur like graphics person in the studio. It was fun to capture those local stories. Of course, I bragged, I’m going to be interviewing somebody from Georgia Pacific later today. But my question is this Are you finding that you are compelled to and that there is a path for a Georgia Pacific to leverage all these capabilities? The position you have in the marketplace, the influence you have in general to have some local economic impact?

Laura Knebusch : [00:12:21] Absolutely. And there is a lot of work happening at the Georgia-Pacific corporate level around, you know, involvement and a lot of different programs in the community. What I have, you know, my team helps more as as we think about each brand and as a role for each how each brand can impact in the local community and for any brand as they look at partnering with the cause or partnering with, you know, a local opportunity, it always needs to start with what that brand stands for. And does it make sense for that brand to kind of be in that conversation and to be kind of supporting in that area? And I think a great example is brawny. You know, brawny is a brand. Most people most people are aware of it. It it stands for strength. If you remember the big our big Giant, our lumberjack, you know, he’s about strength. The product’s about strength. And the great thing about brawny is they don’t just want to celebrate, you know, the strength of the product or physical strength. They like to celebrate emotional strength and resiliency. And that is a great platform to go activate locally. And, you know, again, pandemic was a was a wonderful example of this where very challenging time. A lot of people though everyday heroes in their community stepping up to try and help others. And so brawny created a program called Giants Take Action. And it was about celebrating those giants, those local giants, those everyday giants who were showing that resiliency. And so they supported they had people nominate and identify local heroes that were providing food to those who couldn’t afford it, who were getting necessities to those who couldn’t leave their home, who were providing hygiene, helping to enhance hygiene in the community. And so, you know, dozens and dozens of people, they were able to support their programs in the local community and highlight that, that, you know, the Giants and all of us. And so I think that was just a great example of it totally fit what brawny stands for, but absolutely a way to bring that to the community.

Stone Payton: [00:14:12] Well, I am so glad that I asked, and it inspires me because at our household we’re empty nesters. I am often the one who runs out and gets the paper towels and the toilet paper. But I’m going to lean a little more into Brawny just knowing that, I mean, it feels good to to know that. So I’m really glad that I asked. I’m switch gears on you here a little bit before we before we wrap, I am genuinely curious to know outside the scope of your work, which again seems like you have plenty of fun there. What passions, if any, do you have? My listeners know that I like to hunt, fish and travel, but what passions outside the scope of the work? What do you have a tendency to nerd out about or dive into?

Laura Knebusch : [00:14:48] Oh, absolutely. So, you know, my family, of course, my husband and I have an eight year old girl. And so a lot of focus just on on them and being together. I love to travel and love to explore. And I’m really excited. My daughter is getting to be the age that we can I can really help instill that in her, um, you know, health, health and wellness, you know, both myself. But, you know, especially again over the last couple of years how important it is to support that within others and within that, within my team. Um, and then just mentoring. I love to, you know, mentor others. I’ve been really lucky to be to get to be where I am in my position and the ability to impact others who are looking for how they can continue to grow in their career is pretty exciting to me.

Stone Payton: [00:15:32] All right. You got a lot of irons in the fire, Laura, as my daddy would say. So any big plans? What’s on the horizon like for the balance of the of the year? You guys rallying around a project or a set of projects?

Speaker4: [00:15:48] Yeah, we’ve got a.

Laura Knebusch : [00:15:49] Lot of great work coming out. As I mentioned, we have new campaigns from Angel Soft, a great new launch from our quilted Northern brand. They just launched in paper packaging or had a number of their items launched in paper packaging. So again, really exciting as we think about the the environment and continuing to try and bring our products to life in in a sustainable way. We’ve got, you know, exciting new kind of content coming out from Dixie. So a lot of really bringing to life a lot of the work we’ve been doing over the last couple of years on on how to make our brands more engaging. So we’ll definitely continue to see that continuing to work on digital transformation and how our, you know, how, where and how we reach the consumer and continuing to test and learn a new channels And then always internally, how are we just transforming the way that we work as a team?

Stone Payton: [00:16:37] Well, if it’s any endorsement or testimonial, every brand that you’ve mentioned during the course of this conversation is probably in my pantry right now, will certainly be in my pantry between now and when everybody descends on us for Christmas house. So you’re already doing a fantastic job. Keep up the good work. Let’s make sure that our listeners have a way to tap into your work. If they if they’re somewhere that they they can go to learn more or have a conversation, whatever you feel like is appropriate. But I want to I want to keep our listeners connected with your work.

Laura Knebusch : [00:17:07] Absolutely. So you can certainly find more about our brands by going to Georgia pacific.com and you can go and find any of the individual brand sites you can learn about Georgia Pacific, but also find any of the individual brand sites on there. If there’s any questions you have directly for me, you’re also welcome to reach out to me on LinkedIn.

Stone Payton: [00:17:23] Fantastic. Well, Laura, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show. Thank you so much for sharing your insight, your perspective. And let’s don’t make this a one time deal. Let’s let’s check in periodically and get caught up on your on your efforts. I think that I think that’d be great programing for for our crowd. And I know you and I have a good time in the conversation.

Laura Knebusch : [00:17:47] I would love it. I’ve enjoyed it.

Speaker4: [00:17:49] All right.

Stone Payton: [00:17:49] Until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Laura Bush with Georgia Pacific. And everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.