Consumers today aren’t just buying products, or even experiences—they’re buying into values. As more people align their shopping habits with brands that reflect their personal beliefs, how can companies authentically connect with their audience without coming across as performative?
Joining us today is Phyllis Rothschild, Chief Marketing Officer at Pete & Gerry’s, pioneers in humane egg production. Phyllis, a recently awarded “Woman in Marketing,” is on a mission to bring clarity to the egg aisle by educating consumers on animal welfare and sustainability. With a deep understanding of brand authenticity, consumer trust, and marketing innovation, she’s here to share how brands can build real connections in a world where consumers demand transparency.
About Phyllis Rothschild
Phyllis Rothschild has been the Chief Marketing Officer at Pete & Gerry’s, LLC for just shy of two years, with a storied career prior to her recent position. With over 30 years of experience in marketing and branding consulting, she joined Pete & Gerry’s with the goal of aligning the marketing strategy with the business strategy, growing strong brands, building brand love, and prioritizing consumer education, awareness and engagement.
Since joining the Pete & Gerry’s team (with its family of brands Pete & Gerry’s and Nellie’s Free Range), Phyllis has supported the company’s mission of producing healthy, delicious eggs by setting a higher standard for humane animal care and sustainable farming practices across the industry, and has been the driving force behind the brand’s thought leadership efforts. By leading the entire marketing function, she oversees the implementation of creative campaigns, strategic partnerships, social media marketing, content creation, product and packaging design, shopper marketing, and innovation.
RESOURCES
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Transcript
Greg Kihlstrom (00:10.284)
Consumers today aren’t just buying products or even experiences. They’re buying into values. As more people align their shopping habits with brands that reflect their personal beliefs, how can companies authentically connect with their audience without coming across as performative? Joining us today is Phyllis Rothschild, Chief Marketing Officer at Pete and Gerry’s, pioneers in humane egg production. Phyllis, a recently awarded woman in marketing, is on a mission to bring clarity to the egg aisle
by educating consumers on animal welfare and sustainability. With a deep understanding of brand authenticity, consumer trust, and marketing innovation, she’s here to share how brands can build real connections in a world where consumers demand transparency. Welcome to the show, Phyllis.
Phylis Rothschild
Thank you so much, Greg. I appreciate you having me.
Greg Kihlstrom
Yeah, yeah, looking forward to talking about this with you before we dive in. Why don’t you share a little bit more about your background and your journey to becoming CMO at Pete and Gerry’s?
Phylis Rothschild
Sure, well thank you. My entire career prior to joining Pete and Gerry’s was in the consulting space. Most recently with McKinsey where I led the branding and loyalty practice. I have always had a passion for brands and marketing and loyalty and what makes consumers tick and why they choose to buy products that they choose or choose to show their loyalty and love with their dollars. So this has been something that I’ve always wanted to do and I figured
Phylis Rothschild (02:34.506)
It’s time to put my money where my mouth was all these years and switch over to the operating side. When I started looking, I was super intentional about what I wanted to do. I really wanted a brand that had a purpose behind it, more of a mission driven approach to a company. I really love the food and beverage space, particularly who doesn’t love eggs. So that really worked out well. And then I wanted a brand that still had some room to grow something that gave me a chance to do some shaping and molding and building of a brand to really connect with consumers in a powerful way. The added bonus is that Pete and Gerry’s is in southern New Hampshire, which isn’t far from my Massachusetts home. So I get to go in and see people and work with my colleagues. It’s been one of the best career decisions I’ve made and I’m having a really good time.
Nice, nice. Well, yeah, let’s let’s dive in here. And, you know, first thing I want to talk about is what you touched on, which is that this authenticity and brand marketing and consumer trust. so certainly something that you’ve been involved in throughout your career. But as you mentioned, moving to Pete and Gerry’s gives a unique opportunity there. How do you work as a CMO to ensure that Pete and Gerry’s messaging remains genuine and transparent?
So all of our marketing and all of our messaging and communications and connections with consumers is really grounded in our company mission. We talk about Pete and Gerry’s as the first to do it better, still doing it best, committed to animal welfare, small family farms, and one another. And so everything we do really translates that message into our content. That said, and to your point, it’s one thing to say you’re authentic or you’re doing this is something to actually be that way and have the proof points behind it. So in Pete and Gerry’s case, we were the first egg producer to be humane certified, the first egg producer in the US to be B Corp certified. We have nearly 300 family farms that we exclusively contract with that provide our eggs.
Phylis Rothschild (04:45.506)
This isn’t just about a messaging play for us. It is truly doing what we say and saying what we do and being able to stand behind that messaging in a very truthful and transparent way. The other thing that I would say is our brand speaks about being inclusive and being approachable. And one of our biggest proof points is that we play in the premium egg space. These are eggs that are either free range, organic or pasture raised. And so we have the full compliment of all of those types of eggs. We’re the only premium egg producer in the US, premium egg brand that does that. So it’s sort of representative of this big tent. We welcome all people, no matter what their style or taste is with regard to premium eggs, they have an option to choose what’s best for them.
Yeah, yeah. So as you mentioned, it’s one thing to say it and there’s another thing to do it. What have you seen from other brands where, you know, most likely well-intentioned, but, know, some mistakes that they’ve made when they’re trying to appear authentic, but it’s just falling flat?
Phylis Rothschild
Yeah, I mean, I think that what I feel as mistakes in the space of being authentic brand is when you try too hard. And one of the more common things that we see often is this need to sort of jump into the cultural narrative, whatever that may be, on a given day or given week. And so if there’s a popular meme or a TikTok dance that goes viral and then all the brands decide, you don’t have to post about all of these things, right?
And I think what happens is when you mirror too much toward what that sort of phrase of the day is or trend of the week, then you go off brand. And that appears inauthentic and starts to create trust issues with consumers. The other thing that I find that some people think is a mistake in the authenticity of branding world is
Phylis Rothschild (06:55.276)
You don’t have to be serious or boring to be authentic, right? You can stay true. You can still have a sense of humor. You can still be creative. You can still be engaging. You don’t have to lecture. You don’t have to speak down to consumers to be authentic. One of the things that I love, when we launched our pasture raised brand two years ago, we really wanted to make consumers understand what it meant to be pasture raised, but we didn’t want to sort of spit out a bunch of stats and figures and facts. We really wanted to do something that could almost make them viscerally appreciate what Pastor raised was. So we launched the almost the wildest campaign. And the story was about the lengths that consumers will go, shoppers will go to, to get wild eggs, right? So they would potentially steal from ostriches or creep up on an alligator’s nest.
It was a funny way of engaging consumers and telling that story and saying that peat and jerry’s are almost the wildest eggs. There’s their hens that are out in the wild eating critters and living in the woods. Don’t have to go to these extremes to get almost the wildest eggs. So we were still authentic to being a pasture is brand, but we did it in a very clever, silly way.
Greg Kihlstrom:
Nice, nice. Yeah. And yeah, you know, I think a lot of a lot of brands again, you know, I’m presumably most are well-intentioned and kind of going after this authenticity. you know, this is driven by what I’ve seen at least for four years, the trend of consumers buying based on values in addition to other things. You know, we’ve also seen trends about experience and other things, but buying to based on personal values. And, you know, I think it started out as like it was a millennial thing or something like that. But, you know, we’ve I’ve seen stats for, all generations really aligning along, you know, purchases along personal values. Perhaps younger generations are more apt to do that early on or whatever. But how do you connect? mean, kind of similar to the last question. But, you know, how do you connect?
Greg Kihlstrom (09:07.328)
Knowing that this is a consumer values are a consumer value. So, you know, double value there. But how do you connect with consumers on this level without appearing opportunistic?
Phylis Rothschild
It’s important to do your homework. We’ve done a lot of consumer research to really dig into what matters to the premium egg shopper. And in order for us to be able to connect with them in an authentic way and in a truthful way and resonate with them, we’ve got to learn about them, right? You don’t just resume. So we’ve done some pretty detailed segmentation to understand who that premium egg buyer is.
And there are three of them, three segments that we go after. The first one is what we like to call Ellie. She’s typically a mom and she cares about a lot of things, right? So she cares about her family. She cares about good values. She cares about animal care. She cares about a good taste and good quality. She cares about companies that do what they say they do and are truthful in their marketing and messaging. She likes to tick a lot of boxes.
And so for her, we have our Nellie’s Free Range brand that is very much sort of an accessible sort of gateway into premium eggs, if you will. It’s at an affordable price and it does still convey that message around care and kindness for our animals and for our community. And it has sort of a frivolous kind of whimsical visual look and feel and tone to it. And I think it very much connects with that family.
So that’s one. The second segment is really the organic buyer. We call her Beth. she tends to associate organic as a shortcut for healthy. So she’s looking for things that are going to her body that are pure. And we really message around that for the Pete and Gerry’s organic line where we talk about no GMOs, no antibiotics, hormones. We talk about the fact that it’s a clean, pure protein.
Phylis Rothschild (11:12.17)
And we emphasize those aspects because it’s important for her and that connects with her truthfully. The third segment is what we call Heather the hen hugger. She is someone who really truly cares about animal welfare. And she can cite specific statistics for you about what it means to be a pasture raised hen. So she knows they get 108 square feet per hen of outdoor space. And so there we’re really talking about
room to roam, frolic in the sunshine, eating bugs and worms and critters and being outside and outdoors and living the way hens should as nature intended. And so that packaging is also a bright yellow and sunshiny. And so that’s our Pete and Gerry’s Pasture is line. So we really truly try to understand what matters and what these customers value and then speak to them at their level on their language and provide them the choices that they can make that’s best for their family.
Yeah. so, you know, several of the things that you mentioned there involve some education and you’ve you’ve made egg juke. I can’t say egg education. Yeah. I like it. I like it. And you’ve made that a core part of your strategy. And, know, to your point, that person that.
Knows the square footage and and keeps up with these things like there whether they get a G educated through you or through other sources It sounds like that’s a part of your your strategy What misconceptions maybe have you found the about egg production and animal welfare that some of this education stuff has helped with?
Phylis Rothschild (12:58.498)
Yeah, so probably the biggest misconception in the egg category is that cage free means the hens go outside. It is not true. So cage free actually means that they don’t live in cages, but they barely see the light of day. They’re in large industrial structures that tend to be very crowded. There can be a million hens in one building and they do not get to live like people think that a free hen or chicken does. They are crowded, they can’t flap their wings, they don’t have perches, they can’t do dust baths, they don’t have access to green or outdoors or eating critters on the ground. so the cage-free label is a little deceiving to a lot of consumers. And so we really make a big point of differentiating between cage-free and free range, which is what a lot of our eggs are. And those hens go outside.
They get access to sunlight. They get access to wildlife and exposure. And they are really living their best lives. And pasture raised gets just even more space outdoors. So they just have a bigger pasture on which to do all of these great things. And the thing is, is that that misconception leads to consumers thinking an egg is an egg is an egg in some ways. And so what we really try to emphasize is it’s not just about the hen welfare, which is primary and super important, but it also translates into better eggs. And you can feel it in the sturdiness of the shell and the thickness of the shell. You can see it in the amber color of the yolks or the viscosity of the white, and you can taste it. The eggs taste richer and creamier. And so that’s a really big important misconception and point that we like to make. Perhaps
The second one, which is very timely right now, is what’s happening with egg prices. So there is, again, a misconception that all egg prices are going up. And that’s not really true. If you look at the premium segment of the category, which is where we play, we have not raised our prices to retailers in the past year. So that’s stayed pretty constant over the past year. And where you’ve really seen that price hike is at the commodity level, those
Phylis Rothschild (15:24.824)
what we call the bottom well, the caged and cage-free eggs, which have gone up pretty significantly. And that’s because avian flu has impacted that segment of the category. So the millions of birds that we’ve lost over the past year, and particularly significantly in the past couple of months, has been almost entirely in the caged and cage-free segment. And because of that limited supply, you’ve seen prices increase.
So what’s happened is the price difference between those commodity and the premium eggs that gap has narrowed and So there’s this perception that all prices have gone up, but that’s not really true And what’s great for us and great for anyone who wants to buy a premium egg is that with that gap narrowing? More consumers are pausing at the shelf and saying well if I’m gonna spend a little bit more or more
I might as well try these branded premium eggs, which say all these great things about how they take care of their hands and potentially might taste better and be better for me. And so that’s really what’s happening in the space. And that’s an important point for us to educate on.
Greg Kihlstrom (16:41.976)
from your description of a a past campaign earlier, it sounds like you’re doing a good job of this, but I wanted to ask the question, you know, how do you think about balancing the education piece? Because, know, you bring up some great points as someone who cares deeply about animals and animal welfare. Like I what you’re saying resonates greatly with me. But, you know, how do you how do you balance the education part, which goes into details that, you know, it’s important, but.
You also want your marketing to be engaging and digestible. So how do you think about that balance?
I love this question because it’s so important to us. It’s important that our brands speak our personality as well. And we don’t take ourselves too seriously. We take what we do seriously and taking care of heads and making sure we have the strictest, best standards of animal welfare on our farms. But when it comes to talking about eggs, it’s okay to have a little fun. And we also don’t want to be cagey about what that means in terms of how we take care of them.
Right. I’ve lost my head and egg.
Greg Kihlstrom (17:49.984)
I would imagine, yeah.
But at the same time, as I said before, we don’t want to lecture to anybody. Education doesn’t have to be speaking down to someone. And no one needs to get a PhD in egg science in order to make their omelet on a daily basis. So we want to keep it light. We want to mix in some humor and some whimsy and make it relatable for consumers so that they want to learn more about what’s going on. Our most recent Pete and Gerry’s Organic campaign.
is a great example of that. We hired a spokes worm who then talked about what it’s like to live on a peat and Gerry’s organic farm. And he spends his day sort of dodging pecks from his head and friends, Edna and Gladys, who are trying to get him. And he talks about his luxurious surroundings and the luscious pasture and the access to different bugs and worms. And then he realizes,
Apparently that means they eat worms. And it’s very cute and funny, but it does again convey this message that our hens are living as nature intended. They’re outside, they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing. And this ability to get organic feed and to live amongst their friends on the pasture is what truly creates these precious pearls of protein.
Yeah, nice, nice. So I want to switch gears a little bit here or maybe a lot and talk a little bit about how you’re using AI. You we talk about artificial intelligence a lot on this show. Always like to ask some questions along these lines, you know, just how you’re using it, how you’re finding the right balance in, you know, there can be a tendency to kind of go all into these things. And then, you know, as.
Greg Kihlstrom (19:41.57)
hearing you describe the brand and how careful you’ve been about crafting those personas and stuff, I would imagine, you know, it’s a consideration when you use AI of how you’re gonna help or hurt some of that authenticity in marketing. you know, just curious thoughts on that.
Well, I’m glad you clarified artificial intelligence in the the egg world. When we hear AI, we’re constantly worried about avian influence well, yeah, the other AI, yes.
Yes. No, it’s true. I think there are a lot of ways that AI helps. I think it helps massively with efficiency and with things like data analytics so you can better segment your audiences and design offers or design communications or content that’s well tailored to their different desires and preferences, things that will resonate with them.
You know what? It can also enhance response times. If you are trying to be authentic and say that your consumers matter to you and then it takes you a week to get back to somebody, I mean, do they really matter to you? So AI can help you with that side of things as well. So there are a lot of things that we believe that AI can enhance and like any tool, but there are things that it can hurt too. And I think on the hurt side is when people overly rely on it, particularly in marketing.
Phylis Rothschild (21:06.082)
where as we talked about before, the messaging starts to go off brand. starts to sort of, you lose that distinct tone or distinct aesthetic in your visual systems because you rely too much on it. And then it starts to appear almost robotic in the responses and in the way that you appear. We’ve all been victims of that. We all know when we get, whether it’s an email or, some sort of visual that we see and we know that it’s been generated by AI and that immediately starts to create an issue with trust in the brand.
Yeah. So as we wrap up here, I want to ask a little bit about your, you so you mentioned you came from the consulting world, moved to a role in as a CMO. I’d love to hear, you know, as a CMO, you know, what’s what’s a lesson that you’ve learned that, you know, you feel like every every marketer should know.
Let’s see, I think that one of the things that I’ve learned the most about being a CMO and particularly I think in the marketing discipline is that perhaps in the last five years, marketing is transformed almost more than any other discipline or department. And I probably because we’ve had so much to prove, you know, it’s that age old question, does brand matter? Does marketing matter? You know, what’s the impact? If I could only tell you, I’d know which part to cut.
Phylis Rothschild (22:36.728)
So I think that marketing has really been forced to prove itself in the past five years. And I’ve learned that that means you can’t sit still. You have to constantly be aware and understand what’s at the leading edge, what can you test and learn, and what’s sort of gimmicky versus what’s not. I once heard someone make a comment that as a C level at the CMO level, you sort of learn and earn.
your confidence, your confidence in your decisions, your confidence in the campaigns you choose to make. And I do believe that with that recognition that I don’t know everything there is to know about marketing, that I’m constantly learning and earning my confidence in the choices that we make as a team. So I think it’s this sort of ongoing evolution and evolving into making the right choices and constantly building on what you’ve done in the past.
to be better at execution, be better at performance, and really truly get the notion that marketing does matter. You have to tie it to the business performance. You have to tie it to the growth agenda of a company and make sure that marketing experts on your teams know what it means to make business decisions, right? We all love the beautiful creative. We all love the fun aspects of marketing but you really do need to ground yourself in what impact it’s gonna have on the business.
Yeah, yeah, that’s great. Well, Phyllis, thanks so much for joining today. I’ve got one last question for you. I like to ask everybody, what do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
Phylis Rothschild (24:16.52)
One thing that I try to do is connect with peers as often as possible. I think, you you can do it through formal networks. I belong to one called Form for Naturals, which is really about marketing in the natural space. And I talk a lot to my peers about not just successes and things they’re doing, but challenges and frustrations. Sometimes it’s more of like a self-help group than anything else. And I think those are really valuable.
I tried as much as possible to attend conferences or events or speaking engagements. Brand Innovators is one that I’ve gone to a few times and even spoken at and I really appreciate what I’ve learned there. A lot of reading and just getting, staying up to speed as much as possible. When people do reach out, I try to listen and understand what’s out there and what is the newest, latest thing that’s happening in the space.
But that, you know, it’s like I said, in order to stay agile, you’ve got to be able to make decisions, but you also have to be able to pull back and know when something’s not working in a quick way and say, okay, we tried it, didn’t quite make sense. Let’s move on. Don’t beat yourself up, but just keep trying new things and see what works.
