39 — Best Of: How Walmart is Commercializing the Power of Data Science

Lenny: 00:00:00

Hello, everybody, it’s Lenny Murphy with the _GreenBook Podcast_. Since it is Thanksgiving week, we are taking some time off to be with friends and family and loved ones; hope that you are doing the same. But we are representing one of our most popular episodes. This is the one where we interviewed Linda Lomelino from Walmart about the launch of the new Walmart research product. So, hope that you enjoy it. If you didn’t catch it before, it is worth listening to. If you didn’t catch it before, it’s worth listening to again. We will be back next week with a brand new episode. Until then, hope you have a happy Thanksgiving. Take care.

Linda: 00:01:23

Thank you so much. It’s so wonderful to be here.

Lenny: 00:01:25

Well, let’s see if you think that when we’re done. But—

Linda: 00:01:47

Yeah, absolutely. So, a little bit of context, before I dive into my current role. I am a sociology major, so I’ve always been passionate about understanding people their behaviors and their experiences. I started my career in consumer insights, so working for both small boutique firms as well as larger firms like GfK. I helped brands, improve services, offerings, advertisement, both in the US and in Brazil.

Lenny: 00:03:42

That is very cool and my brain is going in 100 different directions to explore that. But that was also—so you recently spoke at IIEX in Austin, and that was kind of the context of your talk there as well. Is there anything else you’d want to mention about that, that dives in a little bit deeper?

Linda: 00:03:59

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, first of all, the conference was fantastic. It was so nice to be in person again, after so many years of not being in the circuit anymore. Also phenomenal talks from other folks as well. But what I really wanted to focus on and what I did focus on was, you know, the acceleration that we’ve seen over the last two years specifically.

Lenny: 00:06:57

So, that may be the best synopsis—

Linda: 00:09:33

I very much agree with you and I’ve seen that trend. And it’s not specific to Walmart. I think, to your point, we’ve seen it across the industry, right? And so, I think it starts with companies realizing that they have very valuable data assets, right, at their disposal, and then the natural evolution of that is to say, okay, well data in itself is not valuable. The tech that you build on top of that data asset is where really the value comes in, right?

Lenny: 00:13:09

Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, if we go back several years, two examples come to mind that are I think, are [unintelligible 00:13:17]. One would be Tesco with dunnhumby, and how they’ve evolved from just, kind of, scanner data, right, to now, it is a fully baked insight data, research, and marketing organization. I mean, they’re playing in all of those arenas now. Kroger with 84.51˚ which is now as a standalone research organization that serves their internal customers as well as external customers and monetized that.

Linda: 00:14:56

Yeah, that’s a great question. So, we are already serving external clients. So, Walmart Luminate is the first product coming out of Data Ventures. And again, the vision here is to—well, our northstar has always been our end customer, right, and so our plan is to continue to put out data products that ultimately serve our end customer. It’s one of the things I love most about Walmart’s culture is this customer-centricity or customer obsession.

Lenny: 00:17:20

So, I’m about to get really geeky because I’m really excited.

Linda: 00:18:43

Yeah, yeah. So, I can—oh, my goodness to talk about geeking out. Now, I’m the one who’s going to geek out on this stuff. So, we have a primary research capability. And I actually want to talk about some of the things that I think make this very different than other sampling offerings out there.

Lenny: 00:24:06

Again, audience can’t see me. If they could… yeah. [laugh], I’m blown away. And [frankly 00:24:14] because, yes, everything that you were describing. And I got my start in research in polling as well, so [laugh] yeah, we’ve been fighting these fights for a long time.

Linda: 00:25:35

So Lenny, it’s unfair that you’re reading the roadmap.

Lenny: 00:27:46

Okay. So now, reading your roadmap [laugh]—or at least how I would put the roadmap—so I would imagine, and follow up on what you said, that there will be some things, if you’re going to go that route, facial coding makes sense. It is an embedded capability. That would be an API, I expect, through an existing—through another partner. If you decided on having—or eye tracking, those type of capabilities, rather than it being an internal development or even an acquisition, there’s plentiful partners that you could do an SDK and have those capabilities.

Linda: 00:28:54

Yeah. So, the first half of your question. So, the partner versus develop for us is a decision that we make thoughtfully at the capability level, right? And so, Walmart is an incredible company and a lot of the technology is coming from across the enterprise, right? We’ve built some really compelling tech and intelligence and some of it may be a great fit for Data Ventures and some of it is not necessarily a great fit, a partner might make more sense.

Lenny: 00:30:50

So, you may or may not know this, but a few years ago, we were envisioning this transition to more of a digitally led industry in trying to address this issue, and we built a platform called Savio, which was effectively a talent marketplace for the insights industry. And it’s been mothballed, but this idea of needing to create an agile, flexible service component for technology-based companies is an important one. There’s actually some news coming from us soon on the status of Savio and that idea, so we may want to circle back around and have a conversation because I think that, for me, the core of it is, as an industry, we are an ecosystem. How do we connect that ecosystem in a new way that is based on the reality of where we are? So, even our producer, Karen Lynch, you know, Karen is a moderator; that is her background is in qualitative research.

Linda: 00:32:36

Yeah. And thank you, I obviously think I have the coolest job in the world. But I couldn’t agree with you more. I think that, you know, there has to be a way to bring experts in when it makes sense, right? Because it does not make sense to your point for us to have a hundred moderators on staff, right? But we need to be able to enable our clients to do the best research possible.

Lenny: 00:35:26

So, you know, I make it my business to have my finger on the pulse to know what’s going on. And I’ll tell you what, I had no clue that you were going this far. This is a groundbreaking conversation that the industry needs to hear. Because I don’t anybody else really gets it either, Linda. Not that you’re going this far. And maybe I’m wrong. Is your response that that, “Well, then you’re not paying attention?” Or have you been kind of, not necessarily in stealth mode, but you’re just now begin to really talk about where things were going?

Linda: 00:36:02

Yeah, I don’t think people knew we were doing this. And I say that because of the reactions I’ve gotten from the IA conference, and then more recently, the IIEX conference. You know, I think what we are doing, I think is groundbreaking, if I may say so. And that’s only because I’ve been in the industry for 15 years. And so, seeing us bring together not only experts, but technology to enable experts, and tying in more than just primary research, right, with all of these different data sources for a complete understanding, I mean, it’s something that I think has not really been done before, at least not at this scale.

Lenny: 00:37:28

Yeah, I expect there’s a lot of folks who hear that, that go, “Holy crap”—

Linda: 00:38:43

No, and, Lenny, if I can add one more thing that actually a client pointed out to us. Different from the Googles and the LinkedIns and the Facebooks, our values are aligned to our clients’ values. In other words, the CPG companies in the supplier space, what they want is very much aligned to what we want, right? And so, the beauty of that synergy, right, doesn’t exist necessarily with a Google a Facebook and a LinkedIn, right? And so when, you know, this alignment on customer-centricity, and then the tech to enable those conversations and that understanding, I think adds another layer of what makes this pretty unique. And yeah, I’m very excited about where this is headed.

Lenny: 00:39:36

Yeah. So yeah, we could go off forever. I want to be conscious of time because my brain is swimming. I do have to ask one more kind of future-looking question and—

Linda: 00:40:23

Yeah. I could not be more excited about this topic and we probably again need to do a whole ‘nother session on activation. But for those who are listening who are not aware, Walmart has a beautiful business called Walmart Connect. And that’s really focused on, you know, presenting customers with the right ads, right, be it in store or online. And they happen to actually be our sister organization within Walmart.

Lenny: 00:41:17

Yeah, I never thought I’d ever say this on a podcast, but are you hiring?

Linda: 00:41:43

Yeah, so we are scaling in terms of people and talent and we could not be more excited about who we’ve attracted over the last year, from some phenomenal product, business, account management, data science, design, I mean, the list goes on and on. So, you know, for those who are listening and are interested, we are absolutely hiring. Folks can even email me directly. We are hiring in a lot of different functions and there are a lot of roles that are open and available both on the Walmart careers website as well as LinkedIn. And so, if anybody also wants to connect with me, I’d be more than happy to point them in the right direction.

Lenny: 00:42:50

And then on that note, we’ll wrap up. Linda and I talking beforehand and I had mentioned that after IIEX, my family and I drove from Austin up through that area of Arkansas and Missouri and, kind of, Oklahoma, kind of up in that cluster and how gorgeous it is. So, for what it’s worth, if you hear this and you get excited and you thought, “What? Bentonville, Arkansas?” I’m telling you—

Linda: 00:43:27

Yeah. And I’ll add also, so northwest Arkansas, as someone who was not born and raised here, was the best surprise I’ve had in the last five years. Incredible location and Walmart is building a beautiful campus, so please check it out. But also we have campuses both in California and in Hoboken, New Jersey. And so, for those of you who are in those areas as well, please do not hesitate to check out the roles that we have open because we do have a few locations, I think in Chicago and Dallas as well. And so, we are very flexible in terms of location and we’d love to chat with you about open roles.

Lenny: 00:44:08

So, do you want to give your email address or—

Linda: 00:44:12

Yes. Yes, so lindalomelino on LinkedIn if anybody would like to connect, and linda.lomelino@walmart.com. If anybody wants to shoot me a resume or just a note, I would love to hear from you.

Lenny: 00:44:24

All right. You open the floodgates, Linda.

Linda: 00:44:29

I did [laugh].

Lenny: 00:44:32

I get excited getting all—at every podcast, please past guests, future guests, don’t—but man, this is just really cool. It’s all cool, but to hear—this is something that I’ve been predicting for years was going to happen. So, there’s some level of personal satisfaction we’ll say, I guess. I wasn’t crazy, was I? But more than that, it’s just the possibilities of adding value, right, of making consumers lives better, you know, helping the entire ecosystem that is built around Walmart, with your presence and scale, it’s just, it’s cool. It’s great. So congratulations, really. It’s just awesome.