Kevin Hillstrom: MineThatData

Case Study

Let's spend some time talking about a case study. I will analyze a business called "Beans". The data is real, the company and scenario is fictional.

The business is owned by Paisley Ingram. She calls Beans "The Internet's Only Variety Store". If you ask Paisley, she'll tell you ... "I sell whatever I want to sell. Always have. My customers love me."

Annual Demand/Sales for the past five years.

Demand 4 Years Ago: $31.0 million.
Demand 3 Years Ago: $28.4 million.
Demand 2 Years Ago: $27.4 million.
Demand 1 Year Ago: $25.6 million.
Demand as of 1/1/2026: $20.8 million.

Woo boy.

Let's dive in and see what a study of merchandise and categories can tell us about the problems at The World's Only Variety Store.

Your Mission

Years ago I worked with a CEO who had a Mission for his team.

He firmly believed in retaining customers, in loyalty programs. He believed that he could "force" a customer to become loyal. Seriously. He talked about it. Just get the right offer in front of the right customer at the right time. Throw some points at the customer. Let the customer redeem points when he told the customer it was the right time to redeem points. "It works for BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse!" Good for him ... free pizookies all around.

The Mission? "We're going to thrive by creating a large number of highly loyal customers, and we have the tools to do this outside of the merchandise we sell."

I mostly disagree with the guy, but he had a clear Mission for his team.

(IDEAS) * (TALENT + LEADERSHP + STORYTELLING) = MISSIONS

His team moved in lock step with his Mission. The guy did his job as a Leader. His Team was talented. His Leadership was good. His ideas were poor. His storytelling was non-existent. This meant his Mission, while clearly articulated, had minimal value.

He needed new customers.

It is possible to have a good Mission but a bad outcome.

Stories Support Missions

I met with a client ... the analyst was struggling to articulate something important. I spent fifteen seconds tying thoughts together ... an Executive then said to the analyst "Why didn't you say that?"

The analyst looked mortified.

Because HE DID SAY THAT!!!

Of course, he didn't say it in a way that resonated with anybody.

Every three or four years, stories re-emerge. They re-emerge because technology moves us in a direction we don't fully understand, leading to a handful of individuals who articulate the future in a way that allows us to feel comfortable, feel knowledgeable, feel confident, and consequently take action.

In my hobby (headphones), people will ask questions about headphones or review headphones on Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/). You can sniff out bad storytelling in two seconds ... it is clear contributors using AI to write, and you know it the minute you see it. AI has a structure that is synthetic and inauthentic. It's obvious. Bad storytelling.

The same thing happens in business.

In catalog marketing, there are no storytellers ... and that is horrifying because the most famous sitcom of all time leveraged catalog storytelling as a core component of the series (Elaine working at the J. Peterman catalog). Seriously ... pick one employee from any ... ANY catalog brand who is a brilliant storyteller. I'll wait for your reply ...

You'd think the catalog vendor community would be able to communicate a compelling story that does not use terms like "digital fatigue", "Gen-Z", or "leading brands".

Human Teams = Talent + Leadership + Storytelling.

Our equation evolves.

(IDEAS) * (TALENT + LEADERSHP + STORYTELLING) = MISSIONS

Strong Teams, Weak Teams

Last year, my Green Bay Packers were a very good team that was decimated by injuries to key players.

There are three overriding teams on a football team.

Offense
Defense
Special Teams

In the playoff game in Chicago, the Bears scored 25 points in the fourth quarter to rally for a 31-27 win. They entered the fourth quarter trailing 21-6.

On offense, the Packers generated 421 yards and had zero turnovers. That should be enough to win a game.

On defense, the Packers yielded 445 yards, but generated two turnovers.

In terms of penalties, the Packers had 65 penalty yards vs. just five for Chicago.

Here's a fun stat. On special teams, the Packers kicker missed two field goals and an extra point. That's seven points given away in a four point loss.

In other words:

The offense was good enough to win.
The defense was good enough for three quarters then fell apart in the fourth quarter.
Special teams gave up seven points in the kicking game.

One team ... three sub-teams with varying levels of success.

Does the same thing happen at your company?

I'll go out on a limb and say ... yes ... yes it does.

It's easy to pick on the merchandising team ... they source the products that customers buy. If they do a poor job, there's no amount of help that anybody else can provide to prevent a lousy outcome.

It's also easy to pick on the marketing team. It's a discipline that, historically, has been populated by an odd combination of absolutely dim-witted knuckleheads, brilliant business leaders who will run brands in the future, highly competent individuals who execute campaigns flawlessly, and analytics professionals who want to optimize things that nobody else wants to optimize. Try running a great team with that combination of talent!

I've spent a lot of time talking about category performance in the past month, for good reason. When the marketer or analytics professional understands how merchandise categories fit together (and interact with marketing channels), the professional can "be a bridge" between marketing and merchandising ... the professional can be a Leader, growing categories that yield high-value customers, capitalizing on the profit generated by specific categories.

Your business has a lot of teams. Those teams are unlikely to function perfectly. Be the person who helps teams function better.

Ideas * Human Teams = Missions

A quote from the Prof G newsletter:

This is the moment where we should all start believing again, when ideas become missions ..."

Ideas do not become Missions without Human Teams.

That's where you enter the picture!

Ideas generally come from an individual. To implement the idea, you need one or more (sometimes many) Human Teams to get the work done, to build the bridge from ideas to a Mission.

Take a moment, and articulate in ONE SENTENCE what the MISSION is of your marketing team.

I know, it's hard to boil the essence of your marketing team down to one sentence.

This might be the MISSION of your MARKETING TEAM.

"To connect as many people to your brand as many times as possible at the lowest possible cost, thereby generating increased profit."

The equation that represents your MISSION is as follows:

(IDEAS) * (HUMAN TEAMS) = MISSIONS

The equation can be stated differently. Are your HUMAN TEAMS effective? Divide each side of the equation by IDEAS and you get the following:

HUMAN TEAMS = (MISSIONS) / (IDEAS).

This is where it gets good! For instance, assume you have 1 mission and 10 ideas.

HUMAN TEAMS = 1 / 10 = 0.10.

Now assume you have 1 mission and 100 ideas.

HUMAN TEAMS = 1 / 100 = 0.01.

You have a framework for thinking about how effective your HUMAN TEAMS are. What if your marketing team has no missions and 200 ideas?

HUMAN TEAMS = 0 / 200 = 0.00.

Your HUMAN TEAMS are effective when they convert ideas to missions at a high rate.

This is the thing we all observe ... all the time. There's nothing more irritating than sitting next to an "ideas person". The "ideas person" slows everything down ... they are ineffective in that nothing gets done at a reasonable pace but they control the discourse by constantly polluting your marketing ecosystem with ideas. "Big Ideas" are even worse.

Now think about Apple with the iPhone. That's an IDEA that is converted to a MISSION through HUMAN TEAMS. The device doesn't have to do everything ... that's too many ideas.

Bad ideas also result in problems, because bad ideas consume human teams, taking resources away from good MISSIONS. When #papertarians demand that you turn the clock back to 1955 and mail a catalog (because Gen-Z has digital fatigue or whatever), they are asking you to implement a bad idea that consumes the resources of human teams, taking away your ability to complete your MISSION.

(IDEAS) * (HUMAN TEAMS) = MISSIONS.