Leaders of Change: Tim Creed

TIM CREED is an eCommerce Team Leader at Mars Petcare, the largest pet food manufacturer in the world and a division of Mars Inc., one of the world’s leading CPG companies with household name brands such as M&M’s, Snickers, Uncle Ben’s, Wrigley, Pedigree and Royal Canin. He has spent 10 years with Mars in a variety of roles across sales, marketing and human resources. In his current role, Tim leads the strategy and execution of Mars’ portfolio of pet care brands in US eCommerce, working across the organization and with many of the largest eCommerce retailers and partners in the country, such as Amazon, Chewy, Walmart/Jet and Boxed.

Tim hails from Australia and currently lives in Nashville with his wife and two bulldogs, Sadie and Babette. He’s an avid sports fan, coaches and referees rugby, and has become a hardcore Nashville Predators follower. While he’s up for eating any unique delicacy (including guinea pig when he traveled to Peru), he’s certainly a below average cook. 

Why did you choose to pursue eCommerce in your career? I’m a relative newbie to working in eCommerce. A few years ago I was leading a sales team, selling our pet food brands to retailers like PetSmart, Petco and independent brick and mortar stores. A lot of the store managers and owners I met with were lamenting the loss of their customer base to Amazon and other online retailers. At the same time, I noticed what I thought was a mistake in our distribution reports...an online retailer, called Chewy, was doubling its orders every week from one of our local distributors. This was the moment I realized I needed to get into the eCommerce game. And it was a good thing I did, as Chewy has quickly become the largest online retailer of pet food and I’ve learned a lot working with them along the way. 

What is your biggest strength, and how have you used it for your success in eCommerce? Listening. As an introvert, I often sit back and listen before coming to a conclusion. It’s been hugely beneficial in really understanding the pain points of our customers, our retail partners and across our organization, and it’s helped to bring forward solutions with the customer first. This has been especially true when it comes to mining social commentary and the reviews left for our brands, as well as leveraging the search terms consumers use when creating content for product pages and promotions instead of using the language we think consumers want to hear.

What is the weirdest skill or talent to come in handy in your eCommerce experience? Finding the right bitmoji or meme to represent a situation. It’s come in handy as part of internal presentations to help tell the story with a light touch, and it’s always resonated well with my team when checking in when we’re not in the office together.

How have you most successfully influenced change within your organization (or with your clients)? When eCommerce sales made up less than 2% of our total market revenue, it required putting things into perspective to show the magnitude of growth coming from the channel using as clear data as possible. Then as stakeholders began seeing the growth, it required putting the consumer into perspective when skeptics and resisters challenged whether eCommerce was incremental to our traditional offline business.

Consumer behavior is shifting whether it fits our traditional business model or not, so it has taken empathy to think from the consumer mindset and it has taken courage to influence others to think from that lens. Putting things into language others use has gone a long way to bringing others along, such as scorecarding our digital shelf performance in metrics familiar with how we measure physical distribution and shelf performance. As the business has embraced the changes coming from eCommerce and everyone is wanting to unlock the benefits of eCommerce, it has then taken a different skillset to help direct resources and investments to where we expect the greatest impact.

What was your most “valuable” career failure, and why? When I stepped into my first line management role as a District Sales Manager, I had a couple of vacancies on my team. The team was feeling stretched at having to cover additional accounts so I felt compelled to fill the roles quickly. I began the hiring process right away and interviewed lots of candidates over a couple of days before making what I thought was a great first hire. It turned out that the hire was a terrible fit, and it was because I rushed things. I wasn’t clear on my expectations at the time of the interview and I didn’t bring enough associates in to provide a broader perspective that might have countered my blind spots. Since then, I’ve made it a priority to begin the recruiting process well in advance of any openings, and to take the time to get it right. 

In the last five years, what new belief, behavior or habit has most improved your life? I go nowhere without my mobile phone, and I use it for everything from capturing notes in meetings, ordering my coffee on the morning commute and tracking my dogs’ activity levels. But the best behavior change in the past few years has been influenced by my wife...turning my phone off when we’re going out for dinner or having friends over. It’s important to do something meaningful every day that makes you forget your phone.

What are you learning right now? Supply chain optimization. While it’s exciting to see the growth coming from our demand-driving eCommerce initiatives, ensuring we’re evolving our supply chain capabilities to meet current and future needs is critical. So I’ve been learning from our “Vendor Flex” and SIOC (Ship In Own Container) initiatives with Amazon, along with understanding where we can improve inventory forecasting in partnership with many retail partners.

What are the 1-3 songs that would make up your career soundtrack today?

• Waiting on the World to Change by John Mayer: In this track, Mayer is asking us to think about why we wait instead of stepping up to the plate and changing things. This has always been my state of mind when looking at the business and the opportunities in front of me, and never more critical than now in trying to navigate the changes we’re facing.
• Sometimes You Can’t Make it on Your Own by U2: The title says it all. It takes a team to succeed, and I’ve been lucky enough to have worked with great people around me and for me.
• Super Mario Bros theme song: The nostalgic tune is representative of facing a new challenge with an upbeat approach, eager to progress. Takes me back to my childhood days, but feels fitting for my career so far.

What are the 1-3 books you’ve gifted the most or that have greatly influenced your life, and why?

• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman: Based on insights from his Nobel Prize winning work, Kahneman clearly shows how humans make decisions using both rational thinking and intuitive thinking. It’s a great reminder for those of us in CPG and retail that we must appeal to the often irrational decisions consumers make when purchasing our products.
• Shoe Dog by Phil Knight: There are so many lessons packed in this autobiography of Nike’s founder, and as a lifelong fan of the brand, I couldn’t put this one down. Do what you love, never give up on your goals and be relentless about what the brand stands for… “Just do it”.
• Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl: As a WWII concentration camp inmate, Frankl believed that the way an inmate identified a purpose in life and immersed their imagination in that future affected their longevity. It may be a little more intense version of Simon Sinek’s Start with Why, but working for a company with a clear and inspiring purpose, such as “to make the world a better place for pets” is a recipe for longevity with an organization.

If you could have a gigantic billboard for the world to see with anything on it, what would it say, and why? “The grass isn’t always greener on the other side. It’s greener where you water it.” I read this somewhere recently, and it resonated strongly as I’ve just reached the 10-year mark working for Mars. I believe it’s critical to always be learning both on and off the job, and that growth comes from taking the time to better yourself. 

What are the worst recommendations or advice you have heard related to eCommerce? I often hear, “the biggest opportunity is to get as many products online as quickly as we can.” While eCommerce enables an endless aisle, the reality is that shoppers look at fewer options on the screen in front of them than in a physical aisle --particularly on a mobile device. The bigger opportunity is to ensure your most wanted products are easily found, and that you’re giving every reason for a shopper to make an immediate purchase because of the quality of information provided at the zero moment of truth. 

What advice would you give to a future leader of change about to enter business, or specifically the eCommerce field? Always be curious. Get as much breadth of experience early on so you can feel out where your passion really lies, and make sure that working with the Amazon ecosystem is part of those early experiences (at least for those in North America). Surround yourself with other agents of change -- transformation is infectious with the right people around you. And, truly embrace feedback, but don’t let it define you. Use feedback to define yourself. 

What specific, industry-related change do you believe will happen that few others seem to see? Delivery times for online orders will continue to get shorter, driven by the growth of drone delivery to homes. At the same time, local, independent retailers that lean on exceptional customer experiences and physical services will thrive. The growth of eCommerce doesn’t have to mean the demise of brick and mortar retail. 

What is the last thing you bought online, and why? Groceries via Instacart because traditional grocery shopping is the most painful experience I can think of. 

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Leaders of Change is a weekly interview series featuring select industry pioneers who are driving the evolution of commerce, the consumer and everything in between. If you would like to recommend a Leader of Change for consideration, please reach out to me on LinkedIn.