Hall of Fame Profile: Bob Waibel

Bob Waibel grew up thinking he’d be a salesman. His father spent more than 30 years in sales at IBM, and although the younger Waibel wasn’t sure of his path, he was confident (in high school, anyway) that being a salesman was his end goal as well. But a marketing degree from the University of Missouri and a well-known brewery in his hometown changed all of that for him.

This year marks Waibel’s 45th year in the industry, having spent time on both the CPG and agency sides of the business. He is the senior director of commerce marketing at Conagra Brands, leading a team of 20 whom he says “day in and day out deliver great commerce marketing activations for our customers and our brands.”

THE EARLY YEARS

Waibel grew up in St. Louis in a family with four brothers and sisters. He spent weekends sailing with his dad at Carlyle Lake in central Illinois and bagging groceries at Schnucks early in his high school days. He worked there all through college when he was home, eventually becoming a part of the grocery team and stocking shelves.

His first job out of college was as a manager of promotions at Anheuser-Busch. He had come back to St. Louis, networked and found himself traveling to wholesalers weekly, doing everything from sales, merchandising and store resets to equipment audits, counting barrels in the marketplace and special events. He spent eight years with the company in total, ultimately working in consumer promotions.

CAREER DEVELOPMENT

Waibel’s next stop was at marketing agency The Waylon Co. At the time, agencies were springing up in St. Louis because of Anheuser-Busch (A-B) and other large CPGs. “I’d been working with agencies from the client side and this gave me an opportunity to understand how an agency operated from the inside — what the creative process to final art looked like, how an agency makes money, etc.,” he says.

Then came his chance to work at another world-class company. Waibel had lived in Atlanta while at A-B, and both the area and a job opportunity with The Coca-Cola Co. were too good to pass up. He began in the Fountain Division (now Foodservice), working with major on-premise customers that served Coca-Cola fountain drinks.

“We functioned very much like an internal agency resource to our Fountain customers, developing promotions that would drive Coca-Cola’s and our customers’ businesses,” he says. It was there he learned what great customer marketing looked like and how to make it work — for consumers, customers and its brands. He then moved into a channel marketing manager role, working on strategic planning for the casual dining channel for the Fountain division.

Waibel was at Coke for more than seven years before he moved back to the agency side, working on the bottler’s business. “The work was similar to what I was already doing inside Coke, but it was an opportunity to have a greater role in leading teams and managing the growth for a company which, on the agency side, means new business development,” he says. He held VP positions at Draftfcb, Ogilvy & Mather (BEN Marketing) and Arc Worldwide (Leo Burnett) for more than six years.

With invaluable agency-side experience under his belt, Waibel joined ConAgra Foods in 2007, realizing his passion for working for one company and that company’s goals. He moved to Tampa, Florida, to handle the east region shopper marketing efforts and, eight years later, landed in Chicago to take over all of shopper marketing as senior director.

Waibel’s early work at Anheuser-Busch were some of his first big wins. “Competitive breweries were spending big dollars to sponsor The Rolling Stones, The Who, etc.,” he says. “We wanted to find a more economical way to do something that not only created visibility for our brands, but that our wholesalers could leverage more effectively in local markets broadly.”

His group teamed with its agency The Comedy Store in Los Angeles to identify a group of up-and-coming comedians to take out on tour, eventually securing Billy Crystal and others. “The program was less expensive than trying to sponsor a major rock group tour,” he says. “We were able to execute it in far more markets and our wholesalers could use it to drive displays and promotions in their markets.”

Waibel points to mentors who have guided him throughout his career, including Bill Schmidt, at both Anheuser-Busch and on the agency side, who helped teach him how to navigate the corporate world early on. He says a boss at Coca-Cola, Chandra Stephens-Albright, gave him sound guidance that he’s passed on many times since: “Don’t just go looking for jobs; identify what you enjoy doing first. You’ll find more enjoyment that way.” And longtime colleague Mike Buczkowski, CEO of Digit-ix, continues to be someone he looks to for advice and coaching.

IMPACT AT CONAGRA

When Waibel landed at ConAgra Foods (which became Conagra Brands in 2016), then-SVP of marketing Mike McMahon (a P2PI Hall of Famer himself) was just beginning to build out the shopper marketing discipline. For him, it was an opportunity to work with experienced marketers Tammy Brumfield and Tom Lisi, and build out the function. “We put together a shopper marketing team that was really at the forefront of how to structure a shopper marketing function,” he says. “We established a team structure, processes and ways of working that did not exist previously. And they were truly industry-leading.”

About two years ago, the team evolved from shopper marketing to commerce marketing, which was much more than just a name change, Waibel notes. “We have made it our team’s focus to ‘make every moment shoppable,’” he says. The evolution is driven by several macro trends, including a dynamic store experience, with automation/AI and external forces such as the pandemic changing how consumers shop in-store; omnichannel evolution in which physical and digital commerce have combined; and new customer platforms, such as the strong emergence of retailer media networks.

“My team has expanded our focus to continue to find ways to drive our brand relevance with shoppers in every area they’re shopping — in-store and online,” he says.

As retailer media networks continue to pop up and retailer-specific shopper data becomes more available, Waibel says his team looks to drive Conagra Brands’ sales across the whole retailer ecosystem through marketing activation by leveraging shopper and retailer expertise, which includes shopper data with its customers.

“How and where my team focuses its efforts has become much broader,” he notes. “Not only are we finding ways to disrupt shopper journeys in-store with incremental displays and in-store activation and communication, but we’re also making sure our brands are showing up and standing out on the retailers’ digital shelves.”

LOOKING AHEAD

Measurement will continue to be a big focus for Waibel and his team. Pinpointing accurate, reliable and meaningful measurement and ROIs that are attributable specifically to shopper marketing initiatives has always been the challenge. “Add in retailer media networks, and it gets really complicated,” he says.

While ROAS (return on ad spend) has become the default metric, he’s not convinced it’s the right metric for success in the omnichannel space. It’s a constant battle, but one his team will continue to fight with all of its partners. “We also have to get to some standardization [between the different methodologies and metrics] so we’re looking at things the same way across the universe,” he says.