Brian Schiegg Of Schwan’s Consumer Brands: Five Things You Need To Build A Trusted And Beloved Brand
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Be prepared to fail on occasion. If you don’t sometimes push the envelope, you are at risk of being stagnant or boring. I’m proud to say that we have tried many new ideas. Some have worked and others have not. The key is to learn from your mistakes and know when to pivot or stop.
As a part of our series about how to create a trusted, believable, and beloved brand, I had the pleasure to interview Brian Schiegg, President of Schwan’s Consumer Brands.
In January 2021, Brian Schiegg joined the company as president of Schwan’s Consumer Brands, Inc. The business unit markets and sells delicious foods from iconic brands such as Red Baron®, Freschetta® and Tony’s® pizza, Mrs. Smith’s® and Edwards® desserts, and Pagoda® and Bibigo® Asian-style foods. Brian has accumulated more than two decades of leadership experience in the consumer and packaged goods industry. He most recently served as chief operating officer of Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc. and president of Ocean Spray International Services, and spent many years in leadership roles for subsidiaries and departments of Mars, Inc. At Mars, he gained a broad range of experience, including in areas such as general management, business transformation, supply chain leadership, procurement, manufacturing, product development and energizing retail brands. Brian earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and English from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Southern California.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
Ironically, my career started far away from brands as my first job was in commodities. After graduating college, I had planned to attend law school but thought it would be valuable to gain some work experience. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to start my career at Cargill as a commodity trader. I loved the fast paced, analytical side of the work, as well as the relationship building side of the business. The role exposed me to branded companies and the connection these brands have with consumers.
Can you share a story about the funniest marketing mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
When designing a retail experience for the Asian market with an agency, we had come up with designs that we were really excited about and thought would work wonderfully in the market. Before we locked the design, we socialized it with local colleagues and found that we could have potentially offended our customers. Luckily, we avoided a mistake by being cautious and taking this step. It also put a local lens on a global idea!
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
From a performance standpoint, Schwan’s is one of the fastest growing companies in the frozen-food industry. We have great-tasting products across the pizza, desserts and Asian food categories, with iconic grocery store brands such as Red Baron® and Freschetta® pizzas, Edwards® desserts, Pagoda® and Bibigo®, among others. Through our Asian-food portfolio, we bring authentic Korean flavors to the U.S. market with our Bibigo® brand, which is incredibly popular in South Korea and, increasingly, in the U.S. We’re also investing capital across our manufacturing network to meet the growing demand for our foods.
We all believe a key to a great business is a great culture. Our culture is built on the
idea of one table, one team. We value one another’s opinion, are open to healthy debate and care about the success of our teammates. The concept of a table is quite literal, as we find ourselves at food tastings across all teams tasting new product innovations. It’s a complete meal with Asian food offerings, pizza and, of course, dessert.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
Although the frozen pizza category is quite mature, we still see growth potential as consumers continue to make pizza a must-have on their grocery lists. To keep the category exciting for consumers, we see a need for more premium ingredients, single-serve options and new innovation. These past few years, we launched Red Baron® Pizza Melts, Red Baron® Stuffed Crust Pizza and most recently, our Red Baron® Fully Loaded™ Pizza.
Across the U.S., we are also working with retailers to revolutionize how consumers shop for frozen Asian food products in-store. We’ve created “Asian Destination,” which is a merchandising set designed to bring all frozen Asian-style food brands into a two-to-three-door section, making it easy for shoppers to find complete solutions for Asian meals. The set that we propose to retailers was created using a proprietary category review process to highlight current opportunities for retailers within their frozen Asian food offerings. These opportunities include selling authentic Asian products, like Bibigo®, and flavor profiles typically found only at specialty Asian markets. This combined with local availability gives consumers the opportunity to easily find and try new foods in the Asian foods category.
Ok let’s now jump to the core part of our interview. In a nutshell, how would you define the difference between brand marketing (branding) and product marketing (advertising)? Can you explain?
- Our vision is to create a global-lifestyle company that inspires a life of health, happiness and convenience for our teammates and consumers. All of our brands operate within this framework. Over time, marketing has evolved from highlighting rationale product attributes to creating more of an emotional and aspirational connection to a product. Successful branding means connecting with consumers over more than just what a product is or what it does. For example, our Bibigo® brand represents authentic Korean cuisine that’s both approachable and convenient while allowing the consumer to explore cultural cuisine. This provides excitement for consumers, and the opportunity to expand their at-home meal options in exciting new ways.
- To truly build an iconic product or brand, I believe we need to devote energy to creating a brand that has a distinct point of view that connects with the consumer on an emotional level.
Can you explain to our readers why it is important to invest resources and energy into building a brand, in addition to the general marketing and advertising efforts?
A strong brand evokes a feeling and emotion in the consumer that transcends evolving product offerings. Over time, the best brands continue to reinvent themselves to be relevant to the ever-changing needs of their consumers. Brands are also aspirational and allow consumers to feel connected to something bigger than themselves. When done right, a brand can help the consumer project something about themselves to the world. Investing the resources to building a trusted, beloved brand takes time, but it also pays off in the end with the consumer loyalty gained — and eventually brand enthusiasts and influencers who help advocate for and build the brand organically.
Can you share 5 strategies that a company should be doing to build a trusted and believable brand? Please tell us a story or example for each.
1. Hire people who believe in your brand and its mission. We are fortunate to have a great team that believes in our brands and their potential. As we build our team, we look for people who are excited about what we are trying to accomplish and are energized to dig in.
2. Do a deep-dive on the data. It’s important to know your market and category inside-and-out. Strong marketers are storytellers at heart, but they also need to excel as general managers. This can only be achieved by fully understanding the consumer and the customer landscape.
3. Numbers don’t lie, but they don’t tell the full story. It’s important to explore beyond the data. To do well, a company needs to engage with and listen to its consumers, and pay attention to what they think, believe and feel. This is where storytelling comes into play — by finding the right insight to connect the brand to the consumer’s life in a compelling way.
4. Be prepared to fail on occasion. If you don’t sometimes push the envelope, you are at risk of being stagnant or boring. I’m proud to say that we have tried many new ideas. Some have worked and others have not. The key is to learn from your mistakes and know when to pivot or stop.
5. Don’t force purpose when it’s not there. Many brands that are developed and uniquely positioned around a purpose are very successful. Existing brands can certainly pull it off, but careful planning and consideration of the brand’s mission and purpose is necessary to ensure that these efforts are seen as authentic to consumers.
In your opinion, what is an example of a company that has done a fantastic job building a believable and beloved brand. What specifically impresses you? What can one do to replicate that?
The work by CJ CheilJedang on the Bibigo® brand in South Korea is great example. It is known across the country in multiple food categories for delivering great-tasting and convenient foods, and its grown tremendously over the past decades. During my career, I was also fortunate to work on the M&M’s brand at Mars. M&M’s continues to remain relevant to all consumer cohorts by evolving its communication and product innovation with the ever-changing culture while remaining true to its core and having an authentic brand voice that projects fun and enjoyment for all consumers.
In advertising, one generally measures success by the number of sales. How does one measure the success of a brand building campaign? Is it similar, is it different?
- In general, it can be challenging to measure the success of a brand-building campaign as it doesn’t necessarily translate directly to short-term sales. With my background in general management, I believe it is important to ultimately tie the branding efforts to sales in the long-term, otherwise you risk not knowing how well your resources are being allocated.
- Some common methods of measuring the success of a branding campaign can be done through deep dives on individual consumers, where you can see if the brand messaging is resonating, and if consumers are taking notice of your brand over competitors. Additionally, awareness and household penetration are great measurements that companies should be paying attention to in order to see if campaign efforts are making a difference — look for a steady increase in each.
- For all branding campaigns, it is important to build in brand insights and drivers to ensure all marketing activities serve the larger needs of the brand while also driving sales.
What role does social media play in your branding efforts?
- Building a strong social media brand identity is a terrific way to connect authentically with consumers and share the brand’s personality regularly and consistently. We have work to do in this area and are accelerating our efforts in social media. Last year, we pulled together a team of talented individuals who focus on graphic design, video, social media, public relations, customer experience and more who make up an internal creative agency called “The Pulse.” The Pulse routinely partners with our marketing teams to develop compelling content that resonates with our brand loyalists, while also attracting new consumers to our brands.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Empathy. The past two years generated a huge appreciation for front line workers in all industries. I truly appreciate what our frontline team members did and are continuing to do throughout the pandemic across our factories, distribution and DSD teams to keep shelves stocked in our retail partners’ freezers and our consumers’ homes. I am personally committed to ensuring that this groundswell of appreciation and empathy continues as we move forward.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel,” by Maya Angelou.
I find truth to this every day. If you start with genuine care for people, the business results will naturally follow.
We are blessed that very prominent leaders in business and entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world with whom you would like to have a lunch or breakfast with? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
My father. I don’t see him enough, so he is my first choice.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
I can be found on LinkedIn. I also encourage you to follow Schwan’s Company and our several brands on most popular social channels such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
Brian Schiegg Of Schwan’s Consumer Brands: Five Things You Need To Build A Trusted And Beloved… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
