Innovation Isn’t Linear: Inside Pernod Ricard’s Strategy

In this episode of the Greenbook Podcast, Karen Lynch sits down with Tucker Mitchell, Senior Manager of Innovation Insights & Strategy at Pernod Ricard and 2026 Greenbook Future List Honoree. Tucker shares how innovation actually happens inside a global portfolio brand, where insights, strategy, and speed must constantly balance.

The conversation explores how AI is reshaping workflows without replacing human judgment, why “innovation overload” is a real organizational challenge, and how teams can prioritize for impact. Tucker also dives into the power of storytelling, building a personal “brain trust,” and designing research that accounts for human unpredictability. For insights professionals navigating complexity, this episode offers a grounded, actionable perspective on what it really takes to turn ideas into market-ready innovation.

Key Discussion Points:

• How AI supports synthesis and speed—but still falls short on emotional insight
• Managing “innovation overload” across brands, teams, and priorities
• Why storytelling—not just data—is critical to driving decisions
• The importance of building a personal “brain trust” for growth and perspective
• Designing research that accounts for human contradiction and behavioral bias

Resources & Links:

• Greenbook Future List
• IIEX North America

You can reach out to Tucker Mitchell on LinkedIn.

Many thanks to Tucker Mitchell for being our guest. Thanks also to our production team and our editor at Big Bad Audio.

Transcript

Karen: Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Greenbook Podcast. If you don’t know me, I am Karen Lynch. I’m happy to be hosting today and happy to be talking to another one of the 2026 Greenbook Future List Honorees. I am here today with Tucker Mitchell. Tucker is the Senior Manager Innovation, Insights & Strategy at Pernod Ricard, and I’m very excited to have you here. So, before I tell you more about him, I’ve already mentioned he’s a Future List Honoree. He’s a passionate learner, he’s a student of cognitive science and behavioral economics, all sorts of things that, you know, really get the audience at Greenbook excited because we’re all into the latest and greatest in that space. He’s also a bit of a foodie, so I’m excited to talk to you, Tucker. First of all, welcome to the Greenbook Podcast.

Tucker: Thank you so much, Karen, this is such a treat for me. It’s been an honor for the last couple of weeks with the finalist program coming out and the publicity around it. But, big fan of the work that you guys do, and this is a great mid-week treat for me.

 Karen: Oh, thank you so much for saying that. You know, I’m anxious to talk about kind of just being an honoree in general, but to set the stage, tell everybody a bit more about your role, what it is you are, kind of, charged with in the space of Innovation, Insights & Strategy.

Tucker: Absolutely. It’s a bit of a title that stretches a lot of different boundaries and is very cross-functional. So, I have been with Pernod for the last two years or so. We sit within a global function called the Innovation Hub within the organization that is tasked with scaling innovation. Focus in the US was my initial scope; now I’m starting to pick up some projects that are priority in the US, but would potentially scale to other markets the way you sit here in the US. But it is a title that has a different hat every hour. One of the great things is that it stretches the portfolio of brands that is such a lovely part of working at an amazing company with the history of Pernod. So, at a 10 a.m. meeting, I’m wearing the Kalua Coffee Liqueur hat. At 11 o’clock, I’m pivoting to Jameson. By 12:30, I’m to Absolut Vodka and our wonderful partners over in Stockholm and Sweden. So, we have to be chameleons, as we say, and really have to understand the incentives of a lot of different partners, both in different time zones, but also different functions than the organization. But our core stakeholders are the Innovation Hub that are the innovation marketing team globally. And then we stretch everything from white-space identification, opportunity assessment and understanding the role of the brand and the portfolio strategy, each market, to ideation, doing that collaboratively with AI now, of course, helping us do it quicker, concept generation, classic concept testing, qual co-creation, liquid pack, all the way to passing it off to our brand insights teams when they’re getting ready to work on launch campaign and development. So, we had things off right as things are about to go live, and then we [unintelligible 00:02:56].

Karen: I mean, not only are you switching hats based on the brand you’re working on, right, you are then, like, literally switching hats based on the type of work that you’re doing. It sounds like a full workload [laugh] to say the very least.

Tucker:  I’m certainly somebody that likes a good challenge day-to-day. I’m the kind of person that when I tran—you know, to out myself a little bit when I was in studies and things like that, I preferred when I had five things to do in two days versus two things to do in five days. It just kind of gets my myself into the right flow state and kind of finding the right balance between difficulty and challenge and my skills and where I was. So, I like things, I think, better on my feet, it’s just my style. I like to work things out, and I like to hop into different places, so it keeps us energized. But, it’s not for everybody, I think.

Karen: Yeah. That’s great. That’s great. You know, I’m anxious to talk to you about being a Future List Honoree, but I do want to go back to something you said because I, of course, instantly get curious when you say, like, you know, “AI is kind of in the mix.” And I think that there are people right now in our audience who are, yes, we’re talking about kind of AI methodologically in research, but what you’re talking about is AI in innovation work, and some people would talk about, you know, whether AI is really capable of helping with that kind of creativity that comes from ideation and facilitation. And that’s some of the work I used to do as a qualitative researcher and facilitator, so I’m really curious what you trust AI to do in your day-to-day.

Tucker: Let’s jump in. I think—

Karen: Yeah, please. 

Tucker: There are certain things that I love, AI for. You can—you know—to me, I need to compartmentalize it in different buckets: you have synthesis, you have assistant of data analytics, you have generation of new ideas, which is where I’m a bit more cautious. So, I love it to help me synthesize across many, many, many different aspects of what I’m doing, make sure I don’t have any blind spots. I know based on experience so far—although the technology is changing every hour—that it’s not the best at mining emotional human insights. That is not something that’s done by just looking at 7000 pages on a deck and understanding all the data and things that are there. You need to understand the motivation, how to get people motivated. So, you can help us draft that out, but I still think the core of insights generation is a human task, especially understanding the stakeholders that we sit next to every day. And then when it comes to ideation and generation, I think I separated out to again, the synthesis of what we have and understanding knowledge gaps, the actual ideation and generation of new ideas, whether that’s packaging actual flavors of new products, cask finishes for whiskeys, cognacs, things of that nature. And then the idea of screening, right? The actual research side to yourself. So, I think I’m more on the cautious optimism when it comes to the screening. There’s a lot of tools out there that we pilot, and I never want to turn down a pilot. It’s probably daring to say that on a podcast like this—

Karen: [laugh].

Tucker: —but I’m going to say it anyway.

Karen: For sure. Good for you [laugh].

Tucker: I will voluntarily question—you know, I’ll probably spend two times as much time as I would on a scoping call, questioning everything, but just know that’s what you’re getting into with me. I’m not someone that takes a solution off the shelf and says, “Looks good.” I’m going to want 70 questions on it, so get ready. But you know, I’ve seen some of the fast-screening tools work quite well. I’ve seen some regress some of our responses to the mean where, with the generative AI, when you run enough respondents, or you run enough runs, we get a lot of things that are middling, which doesn’t help our teams differentiate and pull things apart and create the tension we need for our business to prioritize. So, watching it very closely. But big fan when it comes to synthesis, big fan when it comes to putting pieces together.

Karen: I love that. Thank you so much for going there with me. You know, as you’re giving that explanation, and I’m thinking about the work you’re responsible for, I’m reminded that, you know, the Future List at Greenbook celebrates those who are, you know, within the kind of first decades of their insights career, and you certainly sound and present yourself like somebody who’s been doing this for decades. So, first of all, well done. Second of all, you know, congratulations again. Let’s just talk a little bit about, you know what brought you to this place where you are, you know, a stellar insights professional already?

Tucker: That’s very sweet. I—and I’ll take that compliment to the bank—I may need to get a lottery ticket later—I will, I would say I was a learner and a researcher in my studies, undergrad. I love learning why people do things as a lot of us do in this industry. My heart is a qual. My brain is a quant. So, I like to—I’ve been, I was a mental math four or five year old doing mixed fractions on the computer as a kid, but I get energized by people. I get my good ideas through people, I like to externalize my thoughts. So, that’s where I get my energy, so it balanced out well. And I love psychology. I actually started my undergrad training thinking I was going to go more into counseling and therapy, very different aspects of the way that my—that I took it, but at the end of the day, I wanted to digest behavior and see things very tangibly out in the world very quickly. And I gave a lot of credit to my dad, who, at the time, was working in finance, and said, “You should explore market research,” and you know, you’re not going to be sending peer-reviewed APA papers around waiting a couple of years for things to get reviewed and published. As much as I’d love to maybe do research and teach later in my career, I really would, but I was looking for things to move a bit faster. And he said, “You love food, you love this industry.” My dad worked at McCormick foods before I was born. My grandmother was a specialty foods consultant. My dad’s family owned a diner in western PA, so food and bev is definitely the bull’s eye for me. And he said, you know, “You could continue to look at the research design, you can create the experiments that you want, and you can be a people person, but you can also see it out in the market in 12 to 18 months.” And I was hooked. And that was in college, which got me to a very unique type of person that knew that was a niche and concentration that I wanted at 20. And once, I noticed that, I pivoted all my course load, work and personal research, and eventually my thesis, and then my initial career towards attacking it [unintelligible 00:09:01].

Karen: You know, that’s so great. And I think that there’s probably lots of people who don’t have that kind of—that ability, right? That ability to say, “Yes, I know what I want to do.” And I think it’s such a gift that you had counsel, you know, with your father, and then, you know, kind of identifying things you’re passionate about at a very young age. So, I’m really happy for you. I’m happy that turned out that way. So, now I want to ask you, like, again, you know, congratulations, what did it feel like for you when you were nominated and then, of course, became an honoree? Because for those of you who don’t know the process, people are nominated, and then once they’re nominated, they are notified that they were nominated, and they have to fill out an application. So, you know, so Tucker, you would have found out that you were nominated. And so, there’s your first little hint. And then, of course, you were selected by the panel of judges. So, what was your thoughts?

Tucker: I would say, incredibly grateful, and a bit taken aback initially when I found out the news, even on the nomination. And then when things came around this winter, on the actual hitting of the list, I was energized more than anything. I was grateful. I’m incredibly grateful for the incredible teams that I’ve worked with over the last, you know, just under a decade and nine-and-a-half years or so, even back to college, my first internship. I’ve learned so much. I’ve had some incredible advocates and some mentors that I talked to weekly, of my brain trust, of people that I still leach information out of and knowledge and insight. But I was energized. I just, I love our industry. It made me—it lit the fire a bit more, I think, that there was a recognition there, but also that what we’ve been doing, or what you all feel like I’ve been doing, has been working, and has been, you know—is leaning into a direction that the industry is interested in. But I also just was energized to get up in the morning and keep going. So, I’m very, very grateful. It’s one of the coolest things that’s happened. But I’m ready to keep going.

Karen: So, you know, every now and then one of our—so we do these podcasts with Future List Honorees, and every now and then they say something, and I’m like, “Right there, that’s a differentiator.” I can pick those out now because I’ve been doing this for a few years. Talk to me about this brain trust you just mentioned because I bet that is something that not everybody in this industry has. I have some hints of what you might say, but I’m not going to make any assumptions. So, tell me about this because is it tangible? Is it intangible and just, kind of, metaphorical? Talk to me.

Tucker: It’s intangible. This is not a monthly happy hour or a part of the trade associa—this is people that I love, people that I have incredible respect for in the industry, that I’ve crossed paths with, that I reach out to ad hoc when I need advice, when I need perspectives on teams, maybe I’ve not worked with, roles opening up in my career, challenges when it comes to meeting new vendors, new methodologies, or if I just need to get unstuck, I’ll go to the brain trust. I won’t go to AI quite as much as I go to the brain trust on getting unstuck on things, but just, you know, to hit my blind spots, but also these people, many of them have seen incredible amounts, much longer careers than I have, and are incredibly successful across different industries, both on the consulting and vendor side as well as on the brand side, not just in food and bev, and I respect that more than anything. So no, it’s an ad hoc thing. When I can see them in person, I think if they’re listening, they probably know who they are, but it’s a wonderful thing where we can get together. It’s usually more one-on-one than a group.

Karen: Yeah. It’s great. I picked up on it because at one point when I was self-employed, the whole concept was, even if I was, kind of, a sole proprietor and had my own shop and didn’t have employees—I had contractors, but not employees—and the concept was, have a board of directors, even though they’re not really a board of directors, but have those people—I could have called them a brain trust, just as easily—have the people that you reach out to. And I think there’s something about the recognition of saying I can reach out to a person about this without feeling—you know, without getting imposter syndrome, or feeling like I’m not worthy, or, you know, like, recognizing, like, I can gain from a conversation with these individuals and they are generously going to give it to me. So, I think there’s something about that. A lot of people are afraid to ask. 

Tucker: I’d hope that they don’t roll their eyes when they see a text for me on a Tuesday at 9:30—

Karen: I doubt it. 

Tucker: As I’m coming out of a meeting. I try to do the same for people. I try to say, you know, doors always open. I, as you can tell, like talking about our industry, and get excited by it, so I will happily take a call while I’m cooking dinner on a weeknight, if it means getting to reconnect with people I care about and helping them out. So, it’s kind of a, it’s kind of a transitive thing. 

Karen: Yeah. Well, I love it. Thank you for sharing, and I hope it inspires people out there who are listening to either form their own brain trust or offer to help somebody out, too, in their career. Because without that kind of mentorship, I think there’s a lot of winners in this industry that won’t move forward because they don’t really know what their full potential is. So, thank you for sharing that. Let’s talk a little bit about the strategy aspect of your business, right? Because, you know, we can talk about insight innovation, which is a big hot button for Greenbook, obviously. Our entire IIEX event series is based on, kind of, innovation in insights, and then just innovation in general is a big value of ours. But the strategy part of it is a little different, the strategic project you’re leading. How do you help, you know, get insights in the mix to some of the strategic initiatives at your organization?

Tucker: Yeah, I think it starts with where—again, in a portfolio, type of a company, like, Pernod—where for me at working primarily in the US business, but also now a bit globally, where they’re seeing their three to five year growth if they need help kind of identifying some of those spaces, you know, I can help with kind of that long-term. But we don’t typically do as much of that as we do, you know, we’re given the portfolio strategy with some clear prioritization, and we’re ready to execute and make sure that we know that these 30% of brands are counting on innovation as one of many levers to help drive their grand strategy on a page, or their growth plans for the next three to five years. Not every brand needs that, right? There are some extremely mature brands in our portfolio that have incredible equities that also wouldn’t go through the same process of innovation because they’re extremely master distiller-led, as opposed to a different kind of an R&D process that you typically have in a classic CPG, like I did earlier in my career. I’m sure a lot of listeners have the experience working with the labs and techs, if you’re on the brand side, on CPG and food and bev. Some brands don’t need the type of innovation that we’re looking at, so we’ll start by prioritizing who’s really asking for it and why, right, what role is this going to have in their overall three to five year plan, and then, how do we prioritize work so that we don’t get overloaded? Because that comes up a lot is, you know, what’s the potential payoff for the organization based on the size of the brand now and our ambitions as challengers or as leading brands for the next three to five years? That’s how we, kind of, decide where to focus. It’s kind of your client—not the exact same kind of consumer, where to play and how to win, but what brands do we focus on and also, what brands are my stakeholders focus on, right? If they’re responsible for the development of innovation like they are for many brands across the globe, you know, I work with a team of three. So, there’s only two of us in the US, and one now in Paris, and then a director sits in Paris as well. So, we can’t be everywhere at once, and it’s fun to wear a lot of hats, but we have to draw the line somewhere, and usually that’s asking for more help or ruthlessly prioritizing so we know that the payoff is worth it for the organization. And then, you know, understanding what do we know and what are the gaps are, and then the strategic work, whether that’s, you know, branching into new occasions and need states for certain brand stretch, which is an area I love, which especially with a lot of the brands we work on, like, Jameson Irish Whiskey, Absolut Vodka, incredible heritage, the Glenlivet single malt, right, you can understand the types of brand stretch conversations, or not, that we might have internally on where we want to go and what the sandbox is that we like to play with. So, we start from the overall portfolio, and what that is, we start with what brands need it, and then we kind of turn our heads there. It may change on us in two weeks, but we at least try to get our pecking order started and then we dig in with what do we know and where do we need to get?

 

Karen: You mentioned need states. And one of the questions I was going to ask was, you know, kind of about, you know, kind of, innovation based on consumer problems to solve, right? Like, are we addressing something, a gap in there? But as you’re talking, I’m thinking to myself, maybe the question is even simpler than that. And so, I would ask you, Tucker, how do you is there sort of a strategy in place about, you know, this is some ideation we’re doing, perhaps to meet consumer needs, this is ideation just based on trend work that we’re doing, or this is ideation that’s just based on senior leaders guts because we have the feeling. How do you balance whether you’re going after a consumer need, or whether you’re going after kind of creative inspiration, or you know, just other disparate data points that might be pointing you in a direction that you all feel strongly about?

Tucker: This is what is a day-to-day challenge. I think we have a lot of everything you just mentioned, and then some things in between, right? And I think I always, based on training and best practices, try to bring it back to the need state where we are in the demand landscape for our organization, making sure we’re not oversaturating our portfolio in certain spaces, but certainly, when we get passion, ideas and things that come from leaders in the organization, we try to fit those in and make sure that they work. You kind of have a kind of a bottom-up jobs to be done approach in kind of ideating across a lot of things within maybe a sandbox of a jobs to be done. Sometimes you have to reverse it and do the reverse jobs to be done and find the role if there’s something that is something that the industry and that the leaders in our organization want to capitalize on fast. A good example of that from my time at Duncan was Beyond Meat was coming up very, very fast, and the Impossible versus Beyond plant-based meat programs and that like, thoughts we’re going quickly. So, the leadership at Duncan felt strongly about being the first QSR to have the Beyond Meat breakfast sandwich, and that partnership, as well as the co-branding there. And we went and we ran, and we, you know, we had to understand how to sell it in the organization. But it was a capitalize now or not type of a moment. And we did a lot of, you know, understanding the business case. So, the business case still had to be there. But we also understood to understand how we were going to measure success, which might have been a little bit different with the way that we approach something like that, a partnership that might be more about buzz and [haloing 00:19:32] back to the master brand and drawing a little bit of incrementality on top of the core, versus something that maybe is more cohesive and comprehensive that’s brand stretch, that’s more sizable, that’s maybe more of a five to seven year plan. So, different innovations also have different roles. Some of them are going to be that partnership halo back; some of them are going to be groundbreaking things that are new technologies or new liquids that we’re going to try to really disrupt. So, we balance that out, but occasions and needs is how I start and then we try to, whenever we have gaps, we fit them as quickly as we can.

Karen: Are there any, you know, if you think about good innovation, right? Or innovation you’re proud of, or innovation that really was a big success, like, are there any success stories that you can share with us, that you’ve had, that you’re like, you know what? I’m really proud of the work we did, and also that I had, you know, I had a say in that you can kind of boast about a little bit [laugh].

Tucker: Oh, gosh, that’s—oh man, there’s been a lot. I think, one that I’m proud of, just because of the speed, is something that came out kind of quickly, both work, but also how quickly we were able to get every aspect of the organization the line was the recent launch for our Absolut Vodka with partnership with Tabasco hot sauce. It’s a fantastic Bloody Mary mixer, it’s capitalizing on a ton of trends, both within the experiential and savory drinks, a little bit more on the spice element and people looking for global flavor inspirations, two extremely popular and legacy brands with great history. But it was something we had to move on fast so we didn’t have the opportunity to do every step of what we typically would have, demand estimation, concept. We did a lot of strategy, and oftentimes I like to say we work in insights and strategy and there might be a week where I do 10% research, 90% everything else [laugh]. Or actually looking at data and actually helping my teams build business cases and sell internally and externally and get ready for customer meetings to help us actually make sure we can get this stuff out to market. So, that was a lot of that for Tabasco, but also helping to understand, with the time that we had, how much could we help? How much could we make sure that the liquid really tasted like that pure expression of the tobacco extract that we get down from McIlhenny and Co, and the wonderful products from Louisiana? How do we make sure that bartenders love this and this becomes a back bar staple? So, we did some, with the help of Sonny Kim on my team—shout out to Sonny, who’s a fantastic partner—did some qualitative tasting groups that were somewhat discussion, somewhat tasting and mixed drinks and others, to understand whether the recipes that we were going to suggest and the proportions were really hitting, whether these would be things that the bartenders would even serve at their style of restaurant for their clientele. Would they actually just keep using regular Tabasco sauce, or would they use it as the convenient play that we thought it would, and which is a lot of them, they do. So, there was a lot of creativity in the learning plan there that maybe isn’t your typical, you know, stage one through stage four, but we made an impact where we could, and so far, so good.

Karen: I love that example. Thank you so much. I think that whenever you can, like, bring it home like that, and I’m sure there’s a lot of people listening who I, myself, have been known to partake in a cocktail, so the fact that we’re even having this conversation, I’m sure there’s plenty of people listening, thinking to themselves, like, “Either I see myself with that drink. Thank you. That sounds delicious. I’ll go check it out.” Or who are also, like, still trying to get their head around, you know, around heat. I’m one of those people that if I ever get a margarita and it’s hot around the rim or something, I’m like, I don’t know if I can drink this, and then I find myself drinking it. So, I imagine there’s, yeah, all types in your segmentation there.

Tucker: I’m on the side of always asking for more hot sauce. So, they bring out the spicy, and I asked for either a little bit more Cayenne or a little bit more Tabasco.

Karen: So funny.

Tucker: So, it was a fun product.

Karen: Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. So, it leads me to actually, kind of another question, which is, this is based on when I was doing some research before this, you were on the Mindful Innovator podcast, and you talked about the challenge of innovation overload. And as you’re talking, and you know, I was thinking of asking you some other questions, I’m like, let’s just go to what let’s just go to what innovation overload is. And I don’t know if you recall that conversation you had, but you know, we can all feel it, I think, listening to you talk right now about just how much is going on all the time across such a huge portfolio of beverages. So, talk to us about innovation overload.

Tucker: I think it goes back to that portfolio strategy of what have we agreed to that the brands need at the beginning of the year, and then as the year progresses and we start to see results come in of other types of growth levers on the brand, whether they are innovations or not or campaigns or packaging refreshes, et cetera, sometimes innovation is looked to be something that can come in and help, if needed, help get teams a little bit across the line for the fiscal year, to reinvigorate consumer bases, to capitalize on opportunities that come up, like, when the Tabasco opportunity approach itself for our folks in Sweden, the Absolut Company. So, we have to be extremely agile. That’s a term that’s used constantly, but we have to be unafraid of a little inertia and we need to grease the wheels so that if we have worked on something for a couple of months and we need to pause it because there’s an opportunity that’s bigger, that’s too good to pass up, we can’t get frustrated. And then we have to make sure that everybody’s getting in line and understand what is the new priority. Innovation overload can mean in more than just projects, it can mean the number of ideas, it can mean having different opinions about where brands should play, and how do we kind of align and arbitrate some of those conversations on maybe the short term need of a market, like, the US versus the global strategy of a large brand like Jameson or the Glenlivet. So, all that kind of throws into the stew of innovation overload, and then, you know, making sure that we’re spending our time on the things that are going to drive the most growth from a day-to-day basis, right? If things start to pivot and we see the opportunity, or competitors might get there faster, or we’re able to, you know, we don’t get there quite as quickly as we want, we need to be we need to be able to pivot. But it all comes down to prioritization, constant communication with our innovation teams, daily, hourly, about has the pecking order changed? Should we pivot? Should we pause this project mid-flight? Should we not kick off? And of course, aligning closely with our executive leadership in innovation, which kind of oversees all of it. So, meeting with them constantly and making sure that if things changed from a top to top perspective, everybody’s aligned, and then we go.

Karen: Are you ever the one that has to push back and say, you know, “No,” or, “Not yet,” or, “Not the right time?” Because with strategy in your job title there, I imagine that there are at times, that you’re the one that says, either, you know, “Data says this,” or, “Trends say this,” that’s a tough position to be put in.

Tucker: It is tricky. I would say, typically, I try to separate it out to the, is it the big idea of what this could do for the brand, or is it the specific execution of the idea that maybe we want to go back and talk about or we could strengthen that business case? I always try to put myself not only in the shoes of our consumers and shoppers, but in the shoes of our customers and buyers that are retailers and [unintelligible 00:26:33] providers with the distributors as well, and the three-tiered process within beverage alcohol. If I feel like, if I was in their seat, the sales story could be strengthened, I’m going to tell them. If I feel like we’re in a great place where consumers are giving us a lot of credit, but the uniqueness element of an innovation might not be as unique to our customers—again, there’s retailer partners who are buying and creating their shelf sets—I’m going to tell them because I don’t want us to get all the way to the end to that sell deck, and feel like we are missing a great hook of a reason to believe, or the size of the business case, of why this brand has a right to play in this space and why we can do it. So yes, I’d say, like I said, if it’s more about the actual execution of an idea, it’s a little bit easier to say, “How can we strengthen? How can we look at the feature combination? Where can we push the guardrails of the brand? Or where can we stretch a little bit further to be a little bit more ownable or different?” If it’s the idea itself, there are some times that I can and sometimes that I probably—and best to say, “Okay, let’s get along for the ride, and let’s see the best way to maximize the potential,” which is often if we have something fast moving to say, “Hey, can I have the voice of the consumer and the analytics aspect help us maximize this?” If this has happened, and let’s help you blow it out.

Karen: So, now I’m curious. This is, like, we are way down in the weeds here, but you know, you had mentioned there’s a team of three of you. And I’m thinking, how do you—is there—I’m assuming your organization also has insights teams. Maybe you also have CX teams, I don’t really know. And I started to think about even the internal groups and how you work together. So, I assume you also have a consumer insights team, and they’re doing different work. Are they feeding you in the work you’re doing or are you kind of duplicative? How do you work? 

Tucker: Yeah, we’re part of the global consumer insights function as part of Pernod. We’ve actually shifted that structure a little bit recently. So, there’s two of us who sit in innovation insights in the US. There’s one in Paris that helps us with a lot of the non-US exclusive products, of things that are launching maybe only in other markets outside the US or for different brand focuses, depending on prioritizations of other markets like India, Taiwan, et cetera, and depending on some of the brands that might be bigger over there that aren’t in the US. There’s also market-specific consumer insights teams, which is where our team used to be. So, there was an innovation on that was part of, specifically the Pernod Ricard USA subsidiary. So that, of course, is a large consumer insights function that has brand insights, it had innovation, it has—used to have demand strategy. It has all different elements of that. It has consumer and shopper strategy, now is, kind of, a new [arm-led 00:29:09], and then ROI analytics and things like that. So, we’re talking to them constantly. It doesn’t really matter where we sit. We’re always talking with people who have great insight and great knowledge and access because we’re trying to democratize and make those stories very simple for people and very easy to activate. But we do, it’s cross-functional, but we also work with a bit more of a global reach now that we’re part of the—still on a consumer insights function, but as part of that global hub.

Karen: It’s interesting to think about, there are going to be insights professionals, for example, listening to this, brand-side insights professionals, who maybe don’t have that kind of insights innovation or Innovation, Insights & Strategy team. They don’t have that, so they are doing the communication, right? So, they are trying to do some innovation work in their normal day-to-day of just representing the voice of the customer. So, any advice for people that are a little less mature as an organization, or not as robust of an organization, about how those insights professionals can, kind of, do some of the lifting that you’re doing to help inform, you know, product development teams, or even the, you know, the strategic decision makers?

Tucker: Yeah. I like to say, install your window, then watch when it opens on its own. So, a director, and part of, I would say, part of the intangible brain trust, when I was earlier in my career, once said that you have to wait—even at a big organization—you have to wait for your window of influence to open, and then if you don’t grab it, it’s gone. So, relationship building, of course, is critical in understanding. Who is truly sitting in that seat of decision maker. Is it one? Is it multiple? Is there alignment needed? How is that arbitrated? Understand the ways that those decisions are made, and in what forms. Are they monthly meetings? You know, are you part of those meetings? Are you not? Can you review those documents, and can you give people either verbal or reviews to help them strengthen their cases? But when the opportunity comes, and this is kind of an intangible thing, where you feel like someone might not even explicitly be asking for help, but you see it as an opportunity to either strengthen the business case of an idea, strengthen the questions that they’re asking, it’s a delicate process of doing that with your stakeholders because you care so much about them and our collective success, and you want to work together, but you also want to make sure that you’re not leaving any stones unturned. So, I would say, to the best of your ability, take a step away from your day-to-day work and even just talk to your teams, you know monthly, just do check-ins and say, is there something I can be proactive on to kind of support? Or if you hear something at a meeting and you hear a type of question come up from a leader, talk to your stakeholder behind the scenes afterwards and say, “Hey, I think I can help with that.” So, it’s often not being—don’t wait to be asked and wait for that window to open. It’s not you forcing it open. It’s typically, it’s ajar, and you got to grab it because it closes fast.

Karen: Yeah. Yeah. No, I love that advice, and also the idea of, kind of, being proactive and asking what you can do. I think there’s a lot of people that I have spoken to in the industry who, they are executing research that they are being told to do, and they’re not necessarily at the level where they’re making recommendations to serve other areas of the business, you know?

Tucker: I would say a lot of the foundational work that we’re doing around categories, around I won’t say—I’ll say trends, but really trying to get under the why on trend, and really trying to right-size it for our org, we don’t and we can’t wait to be asked for that. If someone a couple of years ago said, you know, did you know if we were waiting for someone to ask us about what’s going on with the trend of people drinking a little bit less and trading off between a cocktail and not in moderation among younger people, and we waited for them to ask us now, we’d be in big trouble, right? We have to be looking out for our teams, and that’s where the intangible strategy piece comes in. And I don’t think you need strategy in your title in order to be better. Like, anybody can. 

Karen: Do you hear that, for the people in the back? You don’t need strategy in your title to act as a strategist. I love that. Okay, so another question that I have for you because now we—again, having done some research, you’ve talked about storytelling, and you’ve talked about how critical it is for stakeholder alignment, for example. And now my mind is racing when I look at this question that I included on the brief about, really, all of those different people that you were saying are our stakeholders, not just internally, but you know, you’re talking about not just consumers, but you’re talking about, you know, buyers, you’re talking about customers, you know, that might be stocking liquor stores, you’re talking about bartenders, you know, you’re talking about so many different types of people along the way. Talk to me a little bit about your take on storytelling because it can be pretty cliche. Lots of people talk about it, but you know, what’s your personal take on storytelling and are there things that you do when you’re trying to communicate to people? Are there, you know, either frameworks you follow or something that helps concepts or ideas or research land with others?

Tucker: Yeah, first, I’m going to pick up on an initial part of that question, which is a little bit about how do we, kind of, right-size things for different audiences. Storytelling is a big part of that. In my head, I have a—and I’ll use the metaphor of the industry that I work in—I have a giant punch bowl with a story of information, and I’m going to spoon out that and make different drinks depending on who’s coming over, right? If I try to serve everybody a base punch, no one’s going to be excited, but once I make them a custom drink with the same base, everybody’s delighted. You ever gone to a bar that says, “What kind of flavors do you like? You know, what can I make for you? Like, do you like sweet? Do you like sour? Do you like smokey?” It’s a very personal element to that. I cannot bring the same information to my R&D teams, that I can to my innovation teams, that I can to my supply chain teams and operations. You just can’t, you know? There’s people at different elements, we all have expertise, we’re all busy, we all have different incentives, we all have different people we’re working with, and if I try to bring them that giant punch bowl, it’s going to spill, and we’re all going to get a little messy. If we try to dose that up in the right way and make the right drink for the right person, that’s where we have magic. It’s a lot easier said than done. That’s a pretty metaphor, but obviously metaphors and stories help. I think back to a book that I read a few years ago by the great author Morgan Housel, who’s also wrote a fantastic book that I bet a lot of people on this have read, called the Psychology of Money. He wrote a book, I think it came out last year, 2025 or 2024 called Same as Ever, and there’s a lot of wonderful stories in there about lessons that have been learned over hundreds and thousands of years of human history that kind of continue to be the case. And one of the greatest chapters that I [unintelligible 00:35:52] and I continue to go back to, is just called, “Best Story Wins.” It’s a lot… it’s a lot of excitement to find the right answer, but you can’t stop there. Sometimes the time at which we’re moving on projects allows us that we can only find the right answer without putting it into a great story. Sometimes we need to move and make decisions, and then we’re telling that story for our customers when we’re selling. So, for me, I like to cluster things into pithy names and brands. Like, think about what’s memorable, things that have two to three words. We remember the first and last things that we hear. We don’t remember books; we remember sentences. So, I try to pull out those things that I know I want people to remember, put them at the beginning and the end, draw some tension in the middle, and I try to minimize—and I’m hurting my brain here because I told you I’m a brain quant—I minimize the amount of charts. I really, I hate data dumps, I hate cross-tabs on slides. I love looking at them, but that does nothing for my teams, but have them ask more questions and makes us slow down. So, leveraging visuals, pictures, things that get us out of our seat, things that get us energized. Of course, it needs to be validated and scaled. But I also like to—like I said, with the punchbowl metaphor—bring things into a language that we can all, kind of, understand. And when you see someone crack a smile like I saw you did, Karen, when we’re talking, if you’re watching the video, then I’ve got something. So, you gave me a little validation here. Thank you.

Karen: I am a big fan of metaphor, and I will not forget that one because it is so good, it’s so rich, and I love it. And I’m sure the people listening suddenly were like, “Yes, that makes perfect sense.”

Tucker: A little bit too, if you ever need a great way to explain a very complicated finding in a metaphor, that’s a great use for generative AI. 

Karen: Mm. Mmm.

Tucker: It is a phenomenal use for generative AI. I do use it when I struggle. I’m not always as lucid as I am now after my afternoon coffee, but if I’m ever feeling stuck, I will say, here’s what I’m trying to describe. Can you help me describe it? But use—I’ll give it a frame—I’ll say, use a baseball analogy. Or, knowing my audience, I’ll say, you know, “Use the analogy of a line cook,” or, you know, “Someone who’s distilling in a master rickhouse in Kentucky.” Incredible bourbon, and it’s pretty good.

Karen: Yeah. So again, I say this all the time when I talk to Future List Honorees in particular. I’m like, this is what the judges saw in you. Somehow or another, I can always tell with these recordings that there is a character to the Future List Honorees, and I feel validated every time I talk to someone and you are delivering. Thank you so much. It’s really, it’s fantastic.

Tucker: [laugh]. That’s very sweet.

Karen: So, I have one more, like, you know, light, not at all light question that I really wanted to ask you because, you know, we talk about, you know, especially now we’re talking about AI, right, but the emotional part of it and the reality of who human beings are. So, of all your stakeholders, there is this consumer, right? There is going to be the one person who’s going to drink one of your beverages, whether they are, you know, sitting in their living room after a day at work and they’re having a cocktail, whether it’s a Saturday and they’ve, you know, added a little Jameson to their coffee, not pointing at anybody in my house. You know, but—

Tucker: Sounds good.

Karen: —yeah. We’re a big Jameson family, by the way. I did marry an Irishman, and we were in Ireland, and we took our family to the Jameson experience. So—

Tucker: Good.

Karen: Anyway, but the question I have is around something you’ve talked about before, which is, you know, human beings and their behavior, it’s often irrational, it’s unpredictable. You talked about kind of liking behavioral science and behavioral economics. Tell me your POV on that and how you, kind of, design some of the work that you initiate to account for that.

Tucker: I try to plan for contradiction, and that’s not an easy thing to get businesses aligned to when we all want very simple stories that—or if you have a research plan or a learning plan, the things would build on themselves that when the ideation happens, if you whittle down your ideas from 40 to 10 and then in your next stage, you don’t want something contradictory to come up, but that is sometimes the net the nature of random sampling and the way that we do quantitative work or survey-based work, and also, especially when you get into qualitative groups, where I still love going in person and sitting behind the glass. I was lucky enough to be traveling for some focus groups and tastings a couple weeks ago in the Midwest, and you know, I was telling my team and pinging them while they were watching live from New York, like, get ready for this because in 45 minutes, they’re going to say they like this style, then they’re going to taste it and love this, even though it’s something they said they don’t like. So, we need to prepare an arbitrage against that. I think when I can start the conversation with, it’s not going to be the cleanest story, it’s not going to be perfect, but we can make it very succinct and actionable, people can kind of get a little bit of a kick out of it, right? Because you can start to say, “Oh, maybe Tucker predicted”—or we can kind of say, like, “We kind of had a sense as to where this was going to go once they tried something and experienced it versus talking about it.” You know, the say-do gap is as real as it ever has been. And I don’t believe that… I personally don’t believe that AI yet is great at designing for behavioral economics and understanding biases and heuristics and anchoring effects. I think it’s really good at exploiting confirmation bias and making us feel great about what we’re asking, especially the conversational piece, which is a very dangerous thing because flattery can get you some places if you’re talking to an AI. But I try to arbitrage our team and get them ready that it’s not always going to be the cleanest, especially in qual. And then I try to be very clear as to the why behind if things, especially in quant, are not aligning to what we might expect them to build. And then question design is critical. Every word inflection of everything from qualitative moderation to AI moderation to persona builds to just, you know, a classic ten-minute survey, five-minute swiping survey, every piece of stimuli that we see matters, the order matters, and I’ll be ruthless about reviewing that, maybe longer than I need to because I’d rather know that it’s going to happen in an unbiased way and that we don’t prime our respondents. If we do that, then we can let the ships fall. But question types really matter. And try to keep things, you know, with academia, way too many things that we use, making sure that we’re not leading the witness.

Karen: Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that, bringing that level of rigor into the process, I think, is, you know, spot on. And as somebody who used to execute qualitative I can say that most qualitative researchers are probably pretty grateful when there’s somebody in the back that is, you know, [laugh] that is organizing the order of exposure so that the qualitative researcher—

Tucker: Well— 

Karen: —doesn’t have to make those decisions on the spot [laugh].

Tucker: That’s this, like, that’s the psychology background in me, and the love of designing experiments. But I also, you know, need to recognize that our business needs to move. So, I can have fun with that personally, but then when it comes to telling that story, I need to say, this is why we should—should we be concerned? How concerned should we be? Do we need to replicate something? And how do we move forward?

Karen: Yeah, I love it. You know, I have to be mindful of our time. You know, I only have you for another few minutes, so I need to ask you, is there anything I didn’t get to that you were really hoping that we would cover?

Tucker: Oh, gosh what’s your favorite Jameson right now? No, just kidding.

Karen: [laugh]. Did I mention [crosstalk 00:43:38]—

Tucker: I guess— 

Karen: Coffee over rocks, with a little bit of—anyway, yeah, yum.

Tucker: Yeah, copy. I would say, I’m curious because I haven’t met a ton of the other folks on the Future List in person yet. I’m hoping to, and we’ll see some folks at IIEX in April— 

Karen: Yeah, North America.

Tucker: —in North America for DC later in late April, so I’m excited to do that, but I’m curious if there are any more themes or trends that you’re picking up about this year’s group versus others. I think, you know, I’ve certainly chatted with a few online. I’m seeing some very interesting technology driven, I’m seeing some more classic strategy and insights practitioners, methodological innovation, like, seems like an amazing cross-section of the industry. As someone who sat on the panel, what are you seeing as kind of some underlying similarities, maybe, with the group?

Karen: It’s interesting this year. So, yes. So again, for those listening, our Future List Honorees are all given an opportunity to speak across our, you know, global event series. So, Tucker will be joining us on stage at North America in particular, facilitate a conversation, actually, as you’re on the brand side, with another Future List Honoree. One of the things I am seeing is there’s going to be AI in the agenda, right? We all know that. But what we pushed for with people is, these have to be very specific, tangible use cases. It’s no longer abstract, right? This is absolutely the application of this tool in the toolbox and how it is being used effectively in the organization. So, I think there’s going to be a lot of people who you know are showing up. Yeah, they may be tired of hearing about it, but it is the most experimented tool in the toolbox at the moment, no doubt about it. So, there will be a lot of that, but we also have some, you know, great topics just about innovation in general this year. You know, I don’t have the agenda up right now, but we have people talking about, you know, how, you know, kind of some of their processes for getting started with innovation, but also just some really great plenary talks that are going to be inspiring. We have, you know, some brands that are showing up on stage, some really great, you know, to name a few, like, Crunchy Hydration and Olipop in the food and beverage space. So, some really, kind of smaller, I don’t want to call them boutique brands because they’re not, but they’re emerging brands right now, and we can always learn a lot. Talking Rain is coming. We can always learn a lot from, you know, brands that are just not as mature and how they’re executing research. I’m excited about that. We’ve Rivian coming to, you know, just talk to us, talk about, you know, innovation in a different industry, right, automotive. Of course, we will have some tech giants, you know? We’ll have Microsoft, we’ll have Amazon, we’ll have Google, so of course, we will have some of those in the mix as well. So, what I’m most excited about, which I’m not really sure if it answers your question, per se, about the themes and topics, but I’m most excited to see how these brands are executing research to inform either their innovation efforts or adjust, you know, kind of the growing pressures that are mounting for consumer insights in general. But we have a variety of tools that they are, you know, that they are using. I mean, they are using everything at their disposal right now. So, exciting energy, I think.

Tucker: No question. And the order of operations and what they might line up a learning plan, as I see, and I’m curious if they do in different industries, all good plans are made to be shifted. So, if you have a four or five-stage plan and you need to condense it to two, and then you flip the order, and then it’s top-down and bottom-up, like, you know, curious to understand how people do that and manage change within the organization and get everybody aligned when those things pivot quickly.

Karen: Yeah, yeah. Now, it’s going to be a really great event. I’m excited that you’re going to be there. You know, if you’re listening, you know, please, I hope you join us. This year will be—you know, I mean, I probably say that every year, but this year, I’m particularly excited about it. We have just a great showing and a great group of individuals presenting. And of course, our Future List Honorees is, there are lots of them coming to North America. That’s where the majority of the Future List Honorees are going to be speaking. So, all right, last question for you, then we both have to hop, right? The tagline at Greenbook is, “The future of insights,” so what’s your take on the future of insights? What do you think we’re headed for?

Tucker: Simplification, which is probably not something you expected to hear. But I think we all have so many tools at our disposal, as you said, that I’m going to zag and say there’s a reckoning and understanding what really is driving impact. Costs are under pressure. Businesses are, you know, dizzy with the amount of information they have in AI and you know, 30 different AI tools we get introduced to every week. I think the future of insights is really focus and understanding, what is it that is going to help us, cutting out some of the noise of things that are really cool but maybe not working as much yet, maybe pausing them for now, not necessarily projects internally and new innovations, but tools, data streams, et cetera, and keeping your teams ruthlessly focused on extracting as much value out of those tools. Human-at-the-center AI support. But I’m a big fan of trying to simplify data streams and get us focused on it because a lot of times there’s some overlap between them, and we might not need access to every single thing.

Karen: Excellent answer. Thank you so much. Tucker, what a pleasure having you on the podcast. Thank you so much for joining me.

Tucker: Thank you, Karen. 

Karen: You’re quite, quite welcome. 

Tucker: Such a fun conversation. Thank you.

Karen: [laugh]. I know it could go on and on. But I’ll see you in DC in a couple of weeks.

Tucker: You sure will. Thank you.

Karen: You’re welcome. All of our listeners, thank you for tuning in because without you, we don’t have an audience, and we’re just so grateful that you show up for us, therefore we will keep showing up for you. To our editor, Big Bad Audio, to the entire team at Greenbook, who helps us not just produce, like Brigette, but also helps us market these, we’re grateful for all of you. So, until next time, everybody, thank you for joining me for another episode of the Greenbook Podcast. Bye-bye.