Some brands are so iconic to the American family that the passion for them is passed down generationally. Scott Hegstrom knows all about those kinds of brands. 

With a marketing degree in hand from Michigan State University, Scott started his career journey at the household appliance juggernaut – Whirlpool. Through the company’s innovative leadership development program, Scott went on to lead KitchenAid’s Stand Mixer unit, and learned how to harness the consumer’s passion for a product. Now at NIQ, Scott leverages his market insights in the tech and durables sector.

Scott joins Breaking Schemas co-host John Branch to discuss his experiences at Whirlpool, emphasizing the value of rotational leadership programs and direct consumer interaction, what the transition was like to the private equity-funded company SVP Global, and how passion has underlined the disruption in all of his work. 

*Breaking Schemas is a production of the Yaffe Digital Media Initiative at Michigan Ross and is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

How Scott launched his career from an internship at Whirlpool

02:45 I started what they called the Consumer Appliance Care Leadership Development Program. And what that was, was a rotational. Every time you get good at something, 12 to 18 months later, they plucked you out and they made you go learn something different. So, really big investment from the company that really made sense across multiple functions, whether that was procurement or finance. I ended up in the consumer services portion of the business, which is really where I had a great opportunity to learn the consumer at the very onset of my career at Whirlpool. 

On understanding your consumers

Empower those individuals with the ability to solve the customer's problem, and then also ride along with the service technician, like, you can learn a lot by looking at your computer, of course, of the metrics, but at the end of the day, what that taught me is get out of your desk environment, go sit with a call center agent where you're listening to consumers directly, and you'll learn as much or more than the 250, 000 research project that tells you how good you are on a dashboard.

What surprised him after shifting from OEM to agency

I think what surprised me the most was even if you have retailers that on paper look virtually identical, like if you asked somebody at a dinner party, what the difference between CVS, Walgreens, or Rite-Aid, like, oh, they're pretty much a similar business, but the needs of organizations, even if they seem similar on the surface, are dramatically different. And I think the biggest thing for me to understand was how to probe with questions on the front end, how to understand their needs, and then tailor our approach to be very custom to what those retailers need at any point in time. And then also understand that that might change. 

Show Links:

• Scott’s LinkedIn