Noel Kinder

Jason Miller 00:14
All right, Jason Miller here, and welcome to episode number 12 of the marketing for what matters podcast featuring my special guest, the former Chief Sustainability Officer at Nike, Noel Kinder in this conversation, we’ll have the privilege of hearing Noel’s insights from a career journey that led him to a lot of different roles at Nike that all converged to contribute to his ability to influence a deeper business integration with sustainability initiatives. We talk about the measures Nike took to rebuild the trust and increase transparency after the sweatshop controversy controversy in the 1990s and we explore how the space hip issue sustainability experiment really exceeded expectations and creative momentum for the sustainability department elsewhere in the company, and we know emphasizes the importance of aligning incentives and mitigating risk with pre competitive collaborations with other companies. You talked about being smart with your ESG commitments and how you communicate those and really designing sustainability into the very fabric of the business, rather than trying to just bolt it on. And I’ve seen Noel speak several times here in Oregon. He’s a delight. He’s full of wisdom, he’s full of experience, and he’s got a great story to share with you. So without further ado, let’s dive into this conversation with Noel kinder. All right, welcome to this episode of marketing for what matters. I’m jam at peaceful media, and I am so excited here to have a chat with Noel kinder. Noel, it’s not every day that I get a chance to talk with some conversation about sustainability, with a former or retired, former or current C level C suite, executive fortune 100 company. So I truly feel blessed that you are spending some time with us today to share your journey and inspire others who are going to be following in your trail. And so first, just thanks for joining the marketing for what matters. Podcast, yeah, thanks, yeah. We’re gonna dive a lot deeper into your journey at Nike as we get going here, but before we go there, and for everybody’s sake, you know, Noel just did retire earlier this year, and so this is all kind of a historical storytelling. But first, I would love to just help the audience get to know you a little bit better and understand what tick, what makes you tick beyond you know, the executive side of you, the professional side of you. And that question is, what lights you up when you wake up in the morning?

Noel Kinder 03:01
That’s a great question. One of the things that’s been really interesting about being retired or taking a break, or however you want to characterize it, is that I spent 25 years in the same corporate ecosystem, and I was fortunate to have a whole bunch of different jobs in lots of different areas of company, but having this break has kind of given me the opportunity to do really whatever the hell out. So I’ve had the chance to do some advisory work for some nonprofits, for some venture firms, get to talk to founders who are in the climate space. And honestly, I’m just really enjoying learning out there. Everything’s on technology that scrubs the smoke stack of long haul shipping vessels to new ways to manufacture carbon fiber plates. And it’s just been really, really fun to, you know, share whatever experience is relevant with with the people that run those companies, and hopefully help them on their journey and and, you know, my satisfaction is just gig to to learn from them at the same time,

Jason Miller 04:00
yeah, and I’ve had the pleasure of hearing you speak at a couple different venues, including the University of Oregon summit for sustainable organizations, as well as the wings conference here in Portland. And you are a great storyteller. And so I feel like it would be interesting to dive in a little bit to your earlier experiences and what inspired this, this road that you’ve gone on in the sustainability space, and I know you’ve shared a couple stories about your father’s influence, but I’d love to just ask you broadly, what early influences did you have in your in your life that sent you down this track?

Noel Kinder 04:38
Yeah, I mean, I think I shared in that speech that you saw my parents were hippies, and they were they were unabashedly out there, as in terms of their hippie roots. And I would hear stories about that all the time as I was a kid, and obviously as I got older. And you know that there’s, it’s easy to stereotype that, but, but I think what I really learned from that was that, you know, part of. Your role in this world is to make it a better place. And so my dad did that through healthcare. He was a critical care nurse and ICU nurse for a really long time, and I saw kind of firsthand his attempt to ease people’s suffering. In a lot of ways, there was no chance that I was going to follow in his footsteps, that just I knew from an early age that wasn’t gonna happen. My mom was an entrepreneur, but always kind of with the sense that she wanted to help people, help small businesses, those kinds of things. She was a bit of a marketing whiz, and so she applied that skill set to kind of helping people succeed in their own right. And in a somewhat ironic twist, I married a serial entrepreneur who is very much about, you know, the power of small business. So I think growing up in that household really, really left its mark on me in a really good way. My dad was also the son of career expat. So he lived all the planet. He lived in Pakistan, Hong Kong, Australia. And so I kind of grew up with this notion that I wanted to see the world in a number of different ways. And so ultimately, for me, that manifests itself in an instant and Peace Corps and Honduras in the mid 90s, which was very much with the goal of making the world a better place. I mean, I think in some ways, I probably benefited more from that experience than the people I was trying to help. But those two things in particular really, really had a dramatic effect on me, and I think, to this day, guide who I am as a person and what I attempt to do with my career and my life.

Jason Miller 06:27
Yeah, yeah. It’s spelt just in the two times I’ve heard you speak, there’s a genuine you’re rooted in substance. To pull a to full a Dan Lanning phrase for all you football fans out there in the marketing for what matters world. So yeah, let’s, let’s go into Nike a little bit because, you know, you had that brief state in the in the Peace Corps, which is kind of cut off by a hurricane, sort of traumatic or traumatic event there down in Honduras, but dabbled a little bit in local crime intervention coaching, I understand, and I’m sure there. I’m sure there’s some beautiful stories to be told there. But then you got into to Nike and and really had a you played a lot of diverse roles and worked in a lot of different departments, and I’d just love to hear how that’s contributed to your understanding of how organizations can find, you know, integrate sustainability on a much deeper level. Yeah,

Noel Kinder 07:30
it was a really long journey. I mean, to be totally frank, when I got to Nike in the late 90s, in 1999 you know, as the height of sweatshop controversy, and I had just come back from Honduras, which was, frankly, kind of birthplace in the sweatshop controversy, not just for Nike, but for lots of other companies as well. And I really wanted to contribute. And it was made very apparent to me through a number of conversations that I wasn’t due disqualified to participate in that space. And so I was a little dejected. And of course, I took a took objection to that assessment, but, you know, I was happy where I was. I was getting ready to start a family. My wife and I had just gotten married, and it’s not, you know, Nike’s great company. I grew up in Portland. It was always in my backyard. So I was going to stick around and learn what I could. And I was really fortunate to have what seemed like an endless array of different opportunities there, from starting in footwear quality and learning about how athletic shoes are designed and engineered and ultimately manufactured, and having a chance to go visit those factories that make them multiple times over the course of my career, and ultimately living in a country where those shoes are made, to spending some time in finance And I let a strategic planning function for a while, and you know, you start to put the pieces together of how big company runs and how those pieces work together to be effectively, the engine of the machine that ultimately results in a 50 plus billion dollar enterprise, which is pretty rare. You know that those are, those are unicorns, as they say in the venture world. And the opportunity that afforded me was really to see the enterprise from numerous different angles. And when I finally got the opportunity to work in sustainability, which is when I came back from being the general manager of Meki Vietnam for three years, I love what, what was at the time called responsible supply chain. It the opportunity to have all those different experiences and to understand how change is really affected in a company. Is it was really, really important to affecting change more broadly, right? And services sustainability in the in terms of using those levers to actually drive change. You know, how do how do we forecast? How does that impact how a factory operates? How does a factory operate? And how does that impact our waste stream? What’s the design element that influences a more sustainable product over. Time, what are materials are available? How do we actually, how the materials get made? How do you interact with those vendors, and all that stuff became really, really important when I became Chief Sustainability Officer, because then I was acting in an enterprise level, and so that that was really, really important, because, you know, Chief Sustainability Officer is attempting to drive change while a business is still doing what it’s doing, while it’s still trying to grow revenue, while it’s still trying to expand margins, while it’s still trying to satisfy all these different stakeholders, whether shareholders or employees or activists, in some way, shape or form. And so it’s a really tricky job, because you’re balancing all these different interests trying to drive effectively a transformation at the same time that you’re running in Nike’s case, of $50 billion enterprise Well, welcome

Jason Miller 10:44
back. We had to take a short little wardrobe change break there. You know, just like we’re just keeping that real here at peaceful media,

Noel Kinder 10:54
I don’t think your viewers want to see a highly sweaty former chiefs thing. What happens if you happen make

Jason Miller 11:02
you make some dry bit?

Noel Kinder 11:04
Yeah, well, unfortunately, the HVAC failure in my, the room that I’m in, those are keeping up. Yeah?

Jason Miller 11:10
Well, the thing I was gonna just kind of tie in there is, and we’ll speak more to how you, how you facilitated leadership, and how you facilitated conversations. But what I really hear in that what you gained from all that experience and different roles and different functions was an ability to not only speak different functional language, but also to empathize on the pursuits and challenges and roadblocks and constraints that other departments just face as we chase these sort of dual priorities, right of sustainability and profitability for your for your shareholders. Frankly,

Noel Kinder 11:50
you’re spot on. I mean, I think that that was, I mean, one of the things I used to joke about this, you know, over the course of my career, I was really fortunate to have opportunities to mentor people, more junior people in the organization who aspired to be in roles that I was in, especially the last role that I was in. And one of the things that I would kind of joke about was I had a short attention span, and that meant that, you know, I kind of hopped around from different roles every two to three years, pretty much over the last decade, decade and half of my career. And while I joked about it, I think that was really instrumental in understanding what is a planning function or a sourcing function or a finance function or strategy, like, what are they actually tasked with doing? And to point like, how do you understand how to help them? If you’re at a minimum, finding the intersection of incentive between what they’re trying to get done and what you’re trying to get done. And you know, with sustainability, in the early days of the sustainability strategy, that’s reasonably simple, meaning that you can find intersections of incentive that, you know, accelerate efficiency or profitability. And I’ll give you a couple examples. You know, any, any big product company, especially silver and apparel, will will air freight things from time to time, put stuff on a plane because it got commercialized late. You needed to get it to this destination for something special, like a launch date or something like that. You don’t really want to do that, but sometimes it’s just kind of a necessary evil, because you need it there faster. Yeah, well, air freight is really expensive. It’s also really carbon intensive, and so to the degree that you can plan a little more effectively, that you can commercialize things ahead of time, which isn’t always possible, by the way, but if you’re just a little more deliberate about things, you can start to save a significant amount of money and really start to cut down your your carbon footprint as a result of that, there’s another example that I share often that was really an organic initiative by the European logistics team early on in my tenure in CSO, that the team is really passionate about sustainability, and Nike’s digital business was really starting to pick up at the time, and that meant that there are lots of trucks going out with individual boxes that were digital orders for consumers all over Europe. And what they figured out was that if you could resize that box and make it a little bit smaller, you could get more boxes in the truck, which meant a your cost per unit goes down and get more boxes in the truck, more units go out. Cost for the truck goes down per you, per box in the truck. You’re also shipping less air, which means that your carbon foot pretty close down. And so there were lots of those examples. And what was really cool for me was that, you know, because we get sent the signal as a company, from the from the board to the CEO, to me, to the executive team, the sustainability was a priority. It really kind of gave people the license to innovate. And you would see these examples where I travel around to the different regions, Europe in particular, but also in Asia, where people were really proud of these innovations that they’d come up with that were not only good for the planet and in the service of kind of these broader goals that we did set as a company, but they were dire for business too. So one of my favorite ones was actually in Japan, where, in an effort to eliminate waste, they came up with reusable totes. And so the distribution center, just kind of out by the Tokyo Airport, would send these totes to the retail locations all around Japan. And instead of just being corrugated boxes that they would get recycled, hopefully or probably threw them away, they had these toes kind of go back and forth, and virtually eliminated the amount of quarry. So it was really, really cool to see that, and pretty energizing, honestly, that that I felt like it had taken on a momentum and inertia of its own.

Jason Miller 15:37
Yes, yes. I didn’t tell you this before, but I actually worked in one of those warehouses that was doing the regrind product. Yeah, way, way back in high school, yeah. So I mean, the the opportunities to develop products from waste is certainly something I want to dive into as one of the initiatives at Nike that has really helped you guys live, live the promise, you know, and live to the values that you’re you’re espousing here. But first, let’s go back into the history of Nike. Because, you know, growing up here in Oregon, it was big headlines. Nike’s, you know, world headquarters are in our backyard here, almost throw a paper airplane over there and and, you know, reputation was golden here as a major employer. And just, you know, amazing, you know, the Nike swoosh on on Jordan, and you know, all the amazing things that Nike was able to do in the 80s and 90s, and then this big headline comes out, and you know Nike’s reputation, and it sort of brand, took a big hit and put you guys on defense. And it certainly wasn’t you. You weren’t at the company then, but you inherited some of this, you know, as some of that reputation, even though it was way back in the 90s where the, yeah, the manufacturing contractors, labor practices, just, you know, needed some work. So what measures Did you see the company? I know this could be in past tense, but did you see the company put in place to rebuild trust and increase transparency for consumers sake?

Noel Kinder 17:14
Yeah, that’s a great question. You’re right. It wasn’t quite there yet, but like I said earlier, I was in Honduras as a Peace Corps volunteer when that whole thing happened. So my entry point into that issue was very different than most people, and I’ll get to your question. But I think it’s interesting that in somewhat serendipitous that I was there when that was happening, and my entry point into that issue was I lived in southern rose, near a city called solo Teca and the maquiladoras. The factories were up in the north coast, five, six hours away, and the one thing that I ran in my house from had two young children. She lived with her mom, and she was always agonizing over whether or not she left her kids with her mom and moved up there to work in these factories, because there they made their living Sally Tamales in the city every weekend. That was how they how they survived. And she felt like that. Doing that, albeit with the sacrifice of leaving children for long periods of time, was a more stable economic income. And I had none of the context, right. I didn’t. I’ve been living the US. This is effectively pre internet, certainly pre internet there, and so I didn’t have any noise. So when I came back to Oregon, and this was a this was an issue, it was a little puzzling to me, and the more I got familiar with it, the more I understood it, the more I understood the complexities and the the criticisms more clearly. And so, like I said, when I when I went to Nike in 1999 it’s kind of height of this, and I really wanted to get involved, but I didn’t wind up working in it, but I got to know a lot of the people that did. And one of the things that was readily apparent was that this was incredibly important to Nike, to to carve its way through this, to do the right thing and and the the commitment to that was readily and while I didn’t work directly in that space for almost 15 years after that issue, it was all around there was a board committee that was set up specifically to oversee that particular issue. In fact, I reported to it for the better part of six years between two different jobs. But there were entire teams, one of which I led when I came back from Vietnam, but hundreds of people whose jobs it was to work with the factories that contract that we contracted with the made Nike product to ensure that they comply with the code of conduct, that if there were issues, they were resolved quickly, if they were unable to resolve them, or if the contractors just, frankly, didn’t want to resolve them, then there was a pathway out of that particular contractor. It was a very systematic approach, and I think that you know when you’re on the outside. You, you see the headlines, and you, you read the anecdotes that they’re they’re unacceptable. What I learned being very much in the inside of it and and not only leading that function, but prior to that, leading a country where was Nike’s biggest source, country was that in order for that regimen to be affected, it has to be integrated into the fabric of the way the business operates. And so what I think, to answer your question directly, that was the most effective thing to me, was having a sustainability team, and I mean sustainability in the broadest possible context. So both later practices and supply chain environmental practices, etc, at the table when you’re running the business. And so when I was the GM of Vietnam, I had a senior leader that was part of the leadership team that sat next to the leader for planning, the leader for finance, the Leader for Product Development. And they were, they were part of this discussion. And as the General Manager, I think probably 30 to 40% of the topics that I interacted with the contract factories with were on this topic. And it wasn’t necessarily fixing bad things. It was often more proactive, you know. So if you’d sit down with a contract partner once a quarter and go through the status of the business, and they talk about the delivery, they talk about their product niche, or what are the kind of the normal things. A standard topic was always sustainability. How are we doing on waste management? Is there anything you need help on? You know, have you had any issues with the code of conduct? They were independently audited, so we talk about those results where they had issues. And I think the thing, in addition to making it kind of part and parcel of the everyday conversation, is that it was viewed as something really important as a as a performance indicator. It was not just kind of the side thing that you talked about, oh, because we have to right, right, and I got to know it really as an indicator for future growth for a manufacturing partner. So even in the role prior to that, when I used to run the sourcing and supply planning function for paragraphs, we put together a balanced scorecard for our suppliers, price, quality, delivery and sustainability. And sustainability in that context was really, were they complying with the code back and the ones that really leaned into that, that really understood it, that that were innovative in that approach, were the ones that were likely going to be longer term, more innovative partners in every aspect. It was a leading indicator for whether or not they’d be successful over long term. Could they actually grow with the company. And in hindsight, I think that that’s true whether you’re talking about an IT vendor, a manufacturing vendor, a materials vendor, you know, I think the way people treat their people, way companies treat their people, the way that they think about kind of the more progressive aspects of running business are an indication as to how well they’re going to grow long term. And in the case of the company like Nike, or or or one of its competitors, those are the kind of partners you want to work with in the long

Jason Miller 23:14
term. Yes, yes. So aligning incentives with everyone, everyone that touches the Nike brand, I imagine that there were slogans like, just do the right thing, that that would circulate within the internal communication threads here, there at there at Nike. I mean, was there like, as some sort of like, some sort of like, hey, let’s the headline or the slogan for what you guys were doing in that department, that you guys would kind of return to and make sure that you were aligned, continually aligned to that

Noel Kinder 23:49
it wasn’t even so much a slogan. It was just part of the way of your grand what irresponsible supply chain team I sat at the leadership table of the of the global sourcing manufacturing VP, and I reported CSO at the time. And so, you know, it ultimately was the leader of manufacturing’s responsibility to make sure that factories operated the way we wanted to in every aspect, like I said, cost, quality, delivery, sustainability, and when I would go to give my report to the board of directors that my boss came with me, that was a conversation we had together. And so asking the the manufacturing leader to be accountable for that alongside at that time, the VP responsible supply chain was a pretty powerful signal that it wasn’t something that happened off to the side. It was just part of the way that you manage these relationships and and I will tell you that, you know, the longevity of those relationships, the part the approach that we took that was really rooted in partnership, was really important to that. Because, you know, one of the things that we talked about a lot when I was there was that 85% of the product that those factories made were made by partners at Nike, habitable. Relationships with for 15 years or more. So these are, these are long term relationships. These are not transactional. Of course, there are transactional relationships in any supply chain, but the overwhelming majority of the companies that made products for making, I think this is still the case. Are long term partnerships, some of which you know, last decades, well beyond 15 years. Some of them were 40 years. And so to have that kind of relationships allows you to innovate, to course correct when something’s wrong and you don’t have relationships that span that number of decades without it being rooted in shared guides. And so

Jason Miller 25:37
yeah, yeah. That’s why it must have felt so exhilarating to be able to have that this level of impact, where downstream of downstream of downstream. You know, companies are aligning with these new incentives that are being communicated and consistently adhered to. And I want to, I do want to, I’ll save the sort of how you communicated this and sort of the consumer side of the communication for a later section of this podcast. But I feel like right now is a good opportunity to bring up how you were introduced to this role and CS The CSL role, and how you tried to create a sort of cohesive march toward the sustainability goals. And got confronted right away with this, you know, balancing of priorities, which is kind of the big theme of of the this podcast, right, is, how do you balance this sustainability and the things that are good for the planet and the people that live on here, and all living things, honestly, well, also being really profit driven and, and almost a capitalist and and aggressively growing for everybody. So I thought, I thought the story you shared at the summit was is a beautiful encapsulation of this. And I didn’t want to name any names or anything. But just as you’re kind of going around, kind of paint the story you’re going around, you’re new to the role you’re in that first month, and you’re going around meeting other C suite officers and executive, high level executives, introducing yourself, kind of sharing, sharing the agenda that you have as the new CSO. And as you walk into one office. Think you called it a Bostonian accent, met you and said, You look buddy like That’s great. Really happy for your your sustainability agenda is priority 1001 just get in line. And I’m really curious, you know what getting down to the trenches of these conversations, and how you how you map that with that sort of a corporate or personal roadblock, and learn to adapt and overcome that, and so that you’re all moving towards a shared vision of a sustainable or more sustainably aligned Corporation.

Noel Kinder 28:00
Yeah. The irony of that conversation was that that that individual wound up being a huge order of future. But yeah, in the moment, I was a little deflated. I think actually, what he said was, we’ve got a million priorities every season, and this is about a million.

Jason Miller 28:15
And third on those, I was off by digit, yeah,

Noel Kinder 28:18
by orders of magnitude, yeah, yeah. But, you know, look, I because, kind of back to your earlier, because I had lived in that world. I lived in the product creation space manufacturing. I got it, you know, I had friends that were product developers, and I knew how busy they were. I knew, you know, they’re just really keeping their head about water most of the time. So I had a sense of what I was asking. And so it didn’t. It didn’t completely surprise me that he would say that. But you know, over the course of the conversation, we we identified kind of back to that, that catch phrase of an intersection like, Okay, well, what could what come you find that doesn’t feel like extra work for the teams, and we settled on waste, because anytime you make stuff, anything you leave on the cutting room floor, particularly into our apparel. This is materials you’ve paid for but you haven’t used, so you’re not getting any value done, but it’s lost margin in effect. And that resonated, you know? We said, Okay, we’re gonna, we’re gonna sell on that, right? And that, that agenda grew over time. You know, we started to see, we started collectively, see the impact of keeping it simple, keeping it focused, focusing on things that the teams could actually have an impact on, setting tangible, quantitative goals that that we could integrate into the way that they did their jobs every day, and that really helped. Now, don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t always easy. There were, there were parts of the company that just kind of didn’t really see their connection to it, and I understood why, right? Because sometimes the connection to a sustainability agenda, particularly for a product company, if you’re not in the product space, can feel a little indirect, to say the least. And so sometimes you sprinkle the strategic seeds throughout the company, and some grow faster. Than others all the time, but it really helped to have an executive team who really articulated this as a priority, to have a board committee that had been in place for 20 years at that point, whose job it was, at least in part, was to oversee the strategy and results associated with the ambition we had put out there. And so having kind of the structural things in place kind of continued the momentum. And so, yeah, you just kind of have to know that not everybody’s just going to jump on board immediately, and that’s okay. And more than anything, understand that you’re doing this while you’re trying to grow a business. And so there will always be roadblocks. There will always be individuals who don’t feel like it’s their priority. There’ll be people who just don’t, frankly, care, and you’ve got to be patient and somewhat Zen about it and keep focused on the things that you’ve committed to as a company, and focus on what are the big levers that really drive change in service of those goals?

Jason Miller 31:11
Yeah, yeah. And I feel like, when you give social impact or a sustainability seat at the tables, you know the tables that really drive the company towards a compass point you start asking different questions. And I would love to hear if you have some stories of questions that were asked in those in those domains that generated new product lines or managed efficiencies. I mean, you’ve mentioned supply chain, but just, I think of like, regrind, right? Like, and how much impact that hit had in local neighborhoods and playgrounds, and just, just from a consumer standpoint, what that meant for your brand perception. Like, I was like, God, Nike is really trying to do something with what would normally end up in a waste waste bin. And so I’m kind of curious what, how the what questions were asked to generate those, and what was the impact of that, from from a profitability standpoint for the company and and my hope here, my this, the underlying current of this question is, I hope that there’s other entrepreneurs who will hear this and go, You know what? This is worth it to grow my my bottom line, you know, this is worth asking these questions and pursuing, because look at what it did for Nike business. You know?

Noel Kinder 32:41
Yeah, it’s a great question. I mean, one of the things that I think I was so fortunate to work for a company that was incredibly innovative and had been for the long time, so you have entire teams of people who get to ask all kinds of crazy questions, right? What’s the next crazy cushioning system? What’s the most innovative, you know, material that we can invent? And as I took over as CSO, there’s already a team working on the question, what’s the lowest carbon footprint shoot we can make? And that product wound up being the spaceship. And if you haven’t seen it, spaceship is this kind of chunky, very esthetically unique product that really is made out as much recycled content as the teams could find, because at the time, that was the quickest pathway to reducing carbon, right? You use materials over and over again. You’re amortizing that carbon footprint of our multiple lives or multiple iterations of that material. Yeah, and nobody had any idea black based that product was going to be successful. It was really a science experiment. I mean, we all acknowledge that it was, it was really unique. It was unlike anything esthetically that Nike had done before. And, you know, it was at the time, it was just part of the culture to let these teams experiment. And it got enough horsepower behind the project that, you know, we pushed it out of the nest and set it out in the world, and kind of became this thing. And after a while, I started seeing them everywhere. I managed to cut my finger really badly. Maybe a year or so after the product came out, went to this that cut zoomcare Not far from my house. And sure enough, the nurse that was there was wearing pure spaceships, I asked her about these things are so comfortable, I got four pairs of them. So I say to your point, being willing to experiment and being willing to try to tackle really challenging questions in a unique and innovative way can really result in some pretty incredible, pretty incredible products and, and, and you may find solutions that don’t really represent what else is out there. And sometimes that’s that that’s that’s enough in and of itself. What was interesting about that project was that it. Really represented what was possible. So it was never really intended to be, you know, 10s of millions of pairs of shoes, right? It was, we didn’t really know how big it was going to be. It’s what, a bit certainly bigger than we expected. But it was, it was a demonstration of what was possible. We knew that you had to have that to kind of stimulate excitement with consumers, but you really to drive impact at scale. That came down to material changes in really big franchises, things like Pegasus or, you know, dry fit hoodies that, you know, things that really were massive, massive franchises, but they didn’t take the same kind of esthetic approach that space, they were really more about making the change, albeit somewhat small within the scope of the garment, but given the number of units that that product sold, it really, it really helped, and really, in some cases, one small change to one franchise that was a really big franchise had a material impact on or publicly stated goals around waste reduction and carbon reduction. So at least for us at the time, it was really about kind of the the appetizers. One executive called it right this kind of crazy science experiments, and you could show world, hey, look, we’re using the power of innovation. Do something really cool. We’ll start to integrate the lessons we learned across the entire product line. And when you do, you may not even see physically the result of that, but the overall impact, because change unit is actually massively bigger than that science experiment they should,

Jason Miller 36:30
yeah, yeah. So it speaks to getting some some wind in the sails behind this, behind your department, and showing the business cases and wins. Sounds like that that creates a flywheel effect of propels the whole thing forward and gives you some guideposts. I forgot to mention in some interviews about the power of pre competitive collaboration, which I was like, honestly, we’re small. Peaceful media is a really small business. Work with a lot of small business clients. And you know, collaboration is is very common in our space. You know, we’re talk to another agent, marketing agency or creative agency and owner, and they’ll gladly share their numbers. And here’s what’s working for us. I just, I didn’t realize that that’s even possible at a scale like Nike or that, you know, and that just thinking about the impact of that, that you can influence and be influenced by other companies that are all seeking a greener, happier, you know, more sustainable world. So I was curious if you could share some examples from your pre, pre competitive collaborations, and what are the things that companies can do to sort of risk, mitigate the risks around sharing IP or sensitive information, just like how you navigated that to create great victory for the planet.

Noel Kinder 38:02
That’s a very important aspect to that. Yeah. I mean, you need good legal advice, and frankly, there’s some really specific protocols if you have your competitors in a room, that you have to stay within certain guidelines to ensure that you’re not crossing any bright red lines around competitive behavior. So when we had those conversations, we were always really, really sure to have legal representation in the room, mutual legal representation that kept those conversations in balance. Probably the most important example was really on the carbon footprint reduction. If you think about a company like Nike or the fort apparel industry in general, the carbon footprint from that industry comes from really two things, the materials that are used to make the products, and then the energy that it takes to make those materials, to make those materials, and then make those materials into Finch grids. So you’re talking about feedstock from polyester and power grids in places like Vietnam, China, Indonesia, and the materials piece you have some domain over, right? What you choose to buy, what you choose to brief into product, is, there’s, there’s some, obviously, some influence over that. Although, to really go where we need to go as an industry, you’re gonna have to not space too. Where it becomes really tricky is the composition of power grids in places like Vietnam, right? That the single brand doesn’t have any influence, right? You think about Vietnam, it’s a very dated power infrastructure. They’re still using coal fired power plants. They’re buying that coal from China. And there’s all kinds of geopolitical implications in that. And so that’s where I think pre competitive collaboration becomes really important, because as big as Nike is as much product as it makes in a place like Vietnam, it’s needless to say that even these government has lots of voices that had an opinion on all kinds of things, and Nike’s, but a lot of them, and so what one of the things that was really helpful was you’d have brands like Puma or even adjacent industries or Frank. The industry’s already close to us, like Apple or LG companies that had footprints in those countries, Vietnam, Indonesia, who had science based targets, stated public carbon reduction targets, who all have the same challenge that they needed their suppliers to have access to more renewable energy. And of course, as a single brand, you articulate that point of view, but it’s much more powerful when you come together, right? And so you know, there’s no competitive advantage to lobbying for access to renewables for your suppliers, right? And in some cases, those suppliers are the same suppliers, then which competitor you’re talking about. And so orchestrating kind of a unified voice around increased demand for access to renewables, that that was a really important aspect of that. And I’m certain that that Nike and my successors still do that, because it’s one of the few ways you’re actually going to drive change. You can have individual conversations with individual governments about those kinds of things, but it’s much more powerful if you come together as an industry or as a consortium of companies that span multiple industries, many of which use way more energy than than Fort Worth. Herald, so that, I think that that will continue to be an aspect of what companies are going to have to do to drive change. I mean, this is all what would be considered scope three admissions, right? It’s so your extended supply chain, things that you just don’t have as much leverage over, but have made significant commitments around. And so, you know, in order for you to have a fighting chance of even scratching the surface of achieving those goals, you really have to lean into pre competitive collaboration.

Jason Miller 41:34
Yeah, and that’s, that’s a beautiful demonstration of your tenacity towards these goals. And I don’t know how much responsibility you you hold on as probably a large team and a history of CSOs and future CSOs that are that are really watching this, these initiatives, but I think it would be really easy for a company of of your size to say that, you know, a company of any size, really, to to look at an entire country’s political regime and initiatives and goals and priorities, and go, that’s just something we can’t affect. When, you know that’s when you get creative and start thinking about, well, we’re linked our arm, linked with five other major, major corporations, then we can really move the needle here and that, I think that’s a that’s a amazing and courageous that you guys are pushing forward on that. I want to pivot a little bit here, Noel, to how this is how we, what you’re doing, is communicated with consumers. And just found a quote there from the, you know, real, I think relatively new CEO, Jim Don out, who’s just acknowledging that, you know, see it, consumers really do care quite a bit about sustainability. I think the exact quote is, consumers increasingly care about sustainability. And I’m curious, how do fortune, 100 companies such as Nike, think about telling their brand sustainability story. Well, I know you’re not the CMO, but I’m kind of curious how the two departments can work together. Yeah. I

Noel Kinder 43:15
mean, it kind of comes back to that notion of growing a business, expanding margins, and doing things like meeting your commitments. From a sustainability standpoint, you have to figure out how to weave all those things together. And I will not pretend to be any sort of brand expert at all, but you know, there are certain ways that you signal that this is more sustainable. The thing that I thought was really important for us at time was to be deliberate about it and and be quantitative about it. And so, you know, if we were going to put any claim on something that we had the data to back up how we actually got to that claim. And as you see, the regulatory regime’s changing in Europe and California and you know, various states around the US, and frankly, even while being on scope of Europe, governments are now required to do that, right? If you’re going to make a claim, and you have to have the data to back up how you got to that client. But that was always the approach that we took that’s tricky with consumers, right? Because you can’t say, here’s this claim and then here’s all the data that supports it, right? They just, they don’t. I mean, as a consumer myself, I can’t metabolize all that stuff. And I lived in this space for the five, six years. So I think you have to do it in a way that is that signals that it is more sustainable with enough information to say why, and then provide the backup. Should somebody really want to dig into that? And so Nike has a whole tier of product called move to zero. And move to zero is kind of the umbrella brand category for product that has recycled content in it, and at least that’s, that’s what it was at the time that I was there, and sure it still is. And that was kind of the simple way that we did that had its own market, little pinwheel of swooshes, which is actually really cool. Historic Nike brand mark, and that was kind of CO opted to represent that all of that product that that was deliberately integrated with recycled content. And of course, the goal would be, over time, that everything’s got recycled content, but as as it was available as a net performance requirements. That’s, that’s how the teams would do that. And that actually stemmed from kind of, you go all the way back to the way that we tried to integrate sustainability, kind of these broader sustainability metrics that we had put in place and certain things that had to happen product world. And in order for us to achieve some of those things, we had to integrate recycled content. And so the option of that was, well, we’re going to do it. We might as well tell the consumer about it. I think the tricky thing is, most data would tell you, consumers want they don’t want to pay for it. They feel like they shouldn’t have to, right? That’s just the right thing to do, which is totally fair. And they want it to perform. They want it to be cool. Then, you know, they want it to be unique to whatever brand you’re talking on. This case, Nike. And so that’s a that’s a pretty tricky Rubik’s cube to solve. And I, like I said, will not pretend to have silver bullet for how you market that, but it, in my view, it becomes an and not a thought. And what I mean by that is you don’t want to try to shift your brand from what it is to something else. And so you know that what I used to say is, we’re not going to try to out Patagonia. Patagonia. Patagonia has clearly established themselves as a certain brand identity around sustainability. They’ve taken sort of political positions that that’s not, that’s not what other brands are. And so if, if you’re trying to pivot, it, be really careful, is what I would say, that you’re still true to what your brand identity is, and that sustainability becomes that, and sustainability, and you do it in a simple, understandable, concise way,

Jason Miller 46:58
yeah, yeah. All those questions come up for me here as a marketing and communications agency, I wonder we touched on this a little bit in Eugene. One of my questions was about offense versus defense. Right, defensive maneuver is taking care of the latest PR nightmare, right, which was where the you guys were in the 90s, early 90s. But in another way, like the defense is sort of seeing that consumers are starting to demand, you know, more sustainable products and recycled materials and so forth, whereas an offensive maneuver would be to go and educate and empower consumers to demand more from the their product manufacturers or the retailers, right to understand the impact of of the materials that are chosen for your industry as a whole. And I’m kind of curious at what role if any education and empower consumer empowerment played at at Nike, your umbrella? Yeah,

Noel Kinder 48:10
that’s a good question. I mean, yeah, of course, we use the communications strategy to kind of inform the world about what we were doing. But again, you have to do it in a pretty concise way, right? People, people’s attention spans. There’s lots of competition for right? I mean, I’m not above being distracted by lots of things, and so figuring out a way to communicate that stuff through different media, through different channels, but in a way that’s concise and compelling is trippy. And so, you know, you lay out a strategy, you figure out the channels that you think are going to be the most compelling and resonate the most and try to be authentic. I mean, I think that that was the thing that I always felt, for me personally, being the representative of that work, in a lot of cases, was being earnest about what the work was, what we were trying to accomplish, what the challenges were, because not easy, right? There’s, there’s no, there’s no simple answer to this stuff, and it takes decades to accomplish some of these things if you, if you even accomplish them at all. So finding a way to maybe not pound your chest, but just be honest and earnest about what it is that you’re trying to accomplish and how you’re trying to do that, and you hope that people believe you and that that’s compelling to them.

Jason Miller 49:27
Yeah, did you do? You have any examples of of, you know, consumer communication initiatives that really were effective, that that helped move the needle and help people understand that. You know, Nike’s doing something right for the planet.

Noel Kinder 49:45
Yeah, I don’t have any data to say we did produce why, but I do think spaceship is a great example where the product kind of spoke for itself, right? The brand marketing around it was great. It was really interesting. Even the name space hippie co what? And there was a whole story behind that, how they came up with that, and it was rooted in history. So I think, you know, sometimes you just catch lightning a bottle, and that’s really, really compelling to people. And to be a product company, to have your have a product that that is representative of what you’re trying to do that was really helpful to me as a chief sustainability officer, because I go see, this is what we’re trying to do, right? And then there are other examples of where we pulled that innovation through to other things that weren’t quite as crazy you’re out there, or as much of the science experience that was so, you know, I don’t, I don’t know there’s, like, one catchphrase or one interview I did, or, you know, one right thing that we did that was that was super compelling. But I do think space hippie. It was one of those things where, kind of, it was this perfect storm. Product was really interesting and neat. The story was great. It was a little kind of guerrilla marketing for even internally, right? It was this thing that was a little bit off to the side, like I said, science project. And, you know, it worked really, really well. And that was cheat four years ago now. And it’s hard to do that on radio, right? It’s hard to catch lightning in a bottle. Yeah? Basis,

Jason Miller 51:19
yeah. I’m happy to just go back to your answer earlier about the earnestness. I’m really happy to hear that that’s whether you’re a small company, small business, or a massive business, that earnestness, authenticity, just being true to your consumers, is something that that scales, you know, because it’s, it’s certainly something I think, I think, especially with younger audiences that become much more keen, you know, much more big bullshit meters, right? Like they can detect someone who’s who’s talking Bs, and to do enough research and find the material that help expose whether or not the company is actually in integrity.

Noel Kinder 52:09
And although what I think is really interesting about consumers these days, and I’ve got three teenagers, yeah, a 1618, 20 year old in my house is to observe their behavior. It’s very different than mine was about age. You know, thrifting, secondhand is just kind of part of their consumer patterns, in a way that I wouldn’t even consider back when I was that age. And so there’s, there’s almost a little bit of conflict in some of that consumer behavior, in that I’ll use my oldest daughter as an example. You know, her favorite outfit is, like a thrifted top, thrifted bottom, something that she bought off Deepak or plato’s closet, and then a pair of brand new pair of Air Force ones. So you’ve got kind of both sides. You’ve got the consumers, you know, kind of hype around the Air Force One, but then you’ve got something that somebody else owned for who knows how long, and she got a discount. So, you know, I think particularly in sustainability, there’s always a desire to say that the consumers want more sustainable product, and I think that that’s true, but I also think that there’s this inherent conflict between who they are as consumers and what they say they want, and as a brand, you’ve got to figure out how to navigate that and give them both.

Jason Miller 53:21
Yeah, yeah. And this touches on, I think the fashion touches on the topic of greenwashing and green hushing. Sure, it’s slightly cliche by the time you’re a CSL, but I would be curious to know, like, what you see in the fashion and and retail space to thread that needle between greenwashing and greenwashing, and just getting threading that needle of communication so that you know you aren’t overstating, you know, the results you’re able to generate. Yeah,

Noel Kinder 53:57
what’s, what’s really interesting about today is that, you know, the regulations green washing laws make them great, requirements around disclosure will already change the game, and in some ways that that’s stimulating green and ushering right. We’re not going to say anything right Sue, but a lot of companies already have set right. They’ve already set goals, they’ve already made statements of products. And so I think if you’re going to do it right, you got to do your homework, and then you have to show your homework to the world. You have to be honest about the pathways that are required for you to achieve the things that you’ve committed to. If you have a product out there, you have to be clear as to why it is what you say that it is. And you know the bar is going to get higher, and so you are going to have to do a life cycle assessment to show the carbon footprint is to an independent third party, yeah, probably at some point you may need to do that, particularly with things like the digital passport requirements that are coming in Europe. There’s a lot more data. It’s required to to put products out into the world, and so you just have to be prepared for that. And I think, you know, some companies clearly, historically, have made mistakes where they’ve said, you know, they’ve used branding trends that were somewhat nebulous and weren’t particularly clear on why they were what they were, and they’ve gotten their hands slapped with the sued. And I think companies are learning from it. There’s been this really interesting swing when I became CSO. That was in late 2018 there was this mad rush for everyone to make commitments, carbon negative commitments, Carbon Positive commitments, carbon neutral, whatever everybody was trying to you know, every big event, climate week, coveting and fashion Summit, it was all oriented around what brand was going to make the next big commitment. And that dissipated over time, in my opinion, because a lot of people who made those commitments didn’t really understand how they were achieved. And as time wore on, that became clear. What we did at Nike, and I think Nike is still doing, is making sure that as you make those commitments, you understand what’s required, get there, and then you’ve got internal and to support them, and that you’re clear, certainly now under under the pressure of regulation, to show what the assumptions. And so I think that really, really changes the game. And maybe as simple as over time you flip a tag in a target or a Nike store or a D store or whatever it says, you know, 100% recycled polyester. And there’s a little more detail required associated with that, but that’s probably what we should have been doing anyway, in so much as the consumers have the time and the mind space to actually process,

Jason Miller 56:47
right? Well, there you go, speaking again about being rooted in substance and making sure that it’s not these initiatives and these commitments are made on a whim. You know, the CEO shower, you know what we’re gonna bold claim? Yeah, there

Noel Kinder 57:07
was a period where that was the case. No question about it. Was kind of one upping each other to make these big, bold commitments. And that’s that stage is clearly gone.

Jason Miller 57:19
Have you seen any maybe, beyond Nike, just across the this industry, there’s space that you’re in. Have you seen any failures that have instructed you on what to what to do next time, or what not to do when it comes to communicating sustainability, initiatives and commitments?

Noel Kinder 57:37
Yeah. I mean, I think it comes back to what we’ve already talked about. Some of the failures that I’ve seen are just brands. Are kind of walking back our commitments. Are you seeing brands? And it’s actually going to take us another decade to get to where it’s going to get to? You know, I think just being clear about what it’s going to take to achieve those things, you know, like I said, some of the biggest levers required to achieve, some of the biggest commitments, are outside of your control. That’s okay. Just, just say that, you know, hey, look, in order for us to achieve, you know, this kind of commitment or this kind of carbon reduction, we’re going to need access to renewables in X, Y and Z country. We see a pathway there, but we’re not sure it’ll happen in in the time frame that’s required to achieve that the goals that we set out by the time we’ve said we’re going to achieve them, I think it just requires a lot more face. Parents, yeah, yeah.

Jason Miller 58:25
Well, we don’t have a ton more time, Noel, and I want to just get some broader insights, especially as you’ve gone into lots of speaking opportunities, and I know you’re writing your book soon, wink wink, and that you’re doing a lot of consulting right now with with companies across the world. And I’m just curious how you frame and if the CEO is coming to you saying, we we need to generate revenue as quickly as possible. We need to be profitable as quickly as possible. How you frame the opportunity of a strong commitment to sustainability?

Noel Kinder 59:00
It has to fit in your business model. It has to be integrated in a way that makes sense. Then, you know, I think the biggest mistake, and as we were just discussing, is to make these broad, sweeping statements that your company founded on purpose, and you’ve got to, you know, make these massive impacts on society. That’s that’s really admirable, but it has to fit within your business model. It has to be part and parcel of the way that you run things. And it can’t be at odds with what you’re trying to do for from a company standpoint, you know, if your goal is to make a make it an innovative carbon fiber production, which is actually the company that I spent a little time talking to, is an amazing process. What what they’re doing that’s more sustainable is they cut tons of waste out of that production process. So, yes, it’s a lower, lower carbon footprint. It uses less energy. They’re not producing as much waste. That’s meaningful. But then to say, you know, and we’re going to be carbon positive by 2050, okay, everybody’s already made that mistake, but let’s not go there. But. Hone in on the benefits that the core business is generating. Oftentimes, they’re just going to be because you come up with a product that’s better and more efficient and that’s okay,

Jason Miller 1:00:12
right, right? Well, Said, I just simply, do you feel like sustainability leadership is a competitive advantage, and why or why not? Yeah, that’s

Noel Kinder 1:00:25
a great question. I think it’s a requirement in certain parts of the world, particularly in Europe. I mean, the perspective on it is just really different than is here in the US, partly because the regulatory pressure is mediated, right? It’s happening now. And so a lot of what’s happening is less about how do we become a leader and how, or more about how do we drive value from something that we’re going to have to report on? Any which, which, I think is the right question to ask, right? You shouldn’t be doing this as an extracurricular. It should just be part of the way you run your business, and you should be driving value from it. So I think that’s more the question these days. And I, you know, I think in the US, where things are a little bit behind what they’re doing in Europe, you don’t quite have the regulatory pressure yet. The SEC hasn’t done what they said they were going to do for years. Now you’re starting to see some action from individual states like California, you know, I think for the moment, in the US, it will largely be, it will be a reporting requirement. And so I guess the question then becomes, maybe a more fundamental, okay, we’ve got to point on this. What’s your strategy? Again, you don’t have to commit to the world that you’re going to turn climate positive in a decade, but just be clear about what your what your point of view is, and there will be a continuum. No question about because I think at the end of the day, sustainability, or ESG more broadly, comes down to what do you care about as company? And then the answer may be, we don’t care about this. That’s not what I would have. But they don’t care. Then then fine, do your regulatory compliance, submit your reports done. No problem. You’re helping set a level playing field across a certain aspect of the market. But companies that do care about it, or do want to have the purposeful approach to the way that they run their business, then use that reporting requirement or that that regulation, the regulatory pressure, to have a conversation about, what’s your strategy and your strategy? Strategy is about focus, right? It’s not about signing up for everything. It’s about what are the few things that we can do to actually try to impact in this space that is complimentary to the business trying to move up? And I think that that’s that’s really the question a lot of businesses need to ask is, what do we care about? Why are we doing this? And what are the what are the really important things that we can lean into so that we’re driving value from from the ESG space?

Jason Miller 1:02:52
Beautiful, beautiful. No, no, I would. I’d like to plant some trees with you before we do that, though, I’m going to share my screen here, but where can people learn more about you and what you’re doing in your next post, Nike and your all the adventures on stages across the world.

Noel Kinder 1:03:11
I’ve been pretty active on LinkedIn, probably more active I’ve been in ever actually started posting friend keep up to date on all the things that I’m doing. Yeah. Do you want to learn more about learn more about me, that’s probably the first place to

Jason Miller 1:03:24
start. We will certainly put that in the show notes for everybody about to share my screen here and hop over to our partner over at one tree planted. So, yeah, check out. Check out Noel on LinkedIn. Is really posting, really good stuff, man, I love, I love how you incorporate storytelling into your into your content and thought leadership. So kudos there. And I already know where you want to plan. Do you want to quickly share your experience? What? What ended your Peace Corps tour in Honduras? Sure. Yeah.

Noel Kinder 1:03:59
My Peace Corps tour was ended by Hurricane Mitch, which happened in 1998 november of 1998 wiped out. Firstly, all the infrastructure devastated the country killed more than 11,000 people, and even this many decades later, it’s still recovering. So yeah, absolutely under US is going to be the place that I would like to plant trees. We’re

Jason Miller 1:04:20
going to ask our friends over at one tree planted. Where exactly are those trees? We were just looking around the map here earlier, before we got on this the recording, and as Noel’s traipsed across most of the country, it it would be that kind of cool to know exactly where those trees are going. But no, we’re gonna get those trees on your behalf and send you a receipt of that after this call, I just, I really again, I really appreciate you jumping on our humble little podcast and and sharing your story. I think it’s just fascinating for people who are seeking. Um, seeking for a large scale solutions to know that companies like Nike are are really, really earnestly trying their best to incorporate this into their business model, and that there’s success on the other end of that rainbow. You know that it’s not just a pursuit of hippies. You know Wall Street can win here too, and that’s we’re ultimately trying to find, is that mesh point so that everyone’s winning, you know, including the birds and the bees and the insects that live in this beautiful forest that we’re looking at here on the screen. So any, any close, closing thoughts before we end today’s episode?

Noel Kinder 1:05:42
No, I think you know, as I reflect you, kind of, we jokingly talked about me writing a book, yeah, the working title in my head, in search of purpose, I have spent, I think, most of my life, looking for a way to make a positive impact in whatever I did, and I’m sure that will continue, probably until the day that I die. But you know, to the degree that people are motivated by by having a an impact on the rule and trying to make a positive change, stick with it. It comes in many forms, and it can be expressed in almost every aspect of what you do. And I’ve been really fortunate to have the opportunity to do that for 25 years of the company that I grew up with in my backyard. And, yeah, I’m looking forward to continuing to do it through lots of other places.

Jason Miller 1:06:30
Yeah, yeah. I think you had a brief stint in your parents basement after, you know, returning from from Honduras and kind of questioning what the heck you’re doing. I that story really resonated with me. That’s where peaceful media was born as well, a not often told story just, you know, parents basement, like refactoring everything and figuring out who I am and what I want to contribute to the world so I can, I can tell why I resonated so much with with you at both of the events, and I really look forward to following your speaking career and your prolific writing career. No. Thank you so much for joining marketing for what matters.

Noel Kinder 1:07:12
Thanks for having me, Jason,

Jason Miller 1:07:13
all right.

Nicole 1:07:14
Thank you for tuning in to our podcast. Marketing for what matters. You can find us on Apple, Spotify, Google or Pandora. Love the show, leave us a review and follow us on social media, at peaceful media to stay up to date about new episodes and as always, thank you to this earth for giving us all we’ve ever needed. See you next time you.