'We're the coach versus the quarterback': General Mills' DTC lead Carter Jensen on how the CPG giant goes about e-commerce

General Mills is known for being the company behind household name brands Wheaties -- but it's also trying to build out a robust DTC strategy.

At the Modern Retail DTC Summit, held last week in New Orleans, General Mills' global e-commerce lead of DTC Carter Jensen took to the stage to talk about how he approaches his role. That conversation was recorded for this week's Modern Retail Podcast.

Jensen isn't the usual CPG conglomerate leader -- he only joined the company about two years ago. "I come from a weird hodgepodge of startups and consulting and agency land for the last 10-plus years," he said. But this variety of hats worn has helped Jensen better conceptualize how such a big company can go about direct-to-consumer strategies.

General Mills brought in about $4.5 billion last quarter -- and direct e-commerce represents likely a tiny fraction of that. This year, General Mills is on track to launch DTC campaigns with about 30 brands -- which he described as "exponentially" more than the launches from the previous two years. Still, Jensen said that DTC is an increasingly important part of the overall program at the company.

"The vision of DTC from the top has shifted and changed," said Jensen. And a lot of that was thanks to the pandemic-led e-commerce boom. "We look at DTC now as not necessarily the end all be all, but a really important part of what we call the connected commerce journey."

Different brands have different needs. For example, General Mills has upstarts from its incubator program -- and the company uses DTC tactics to gain helpful consumer fit data. The conglomerate also launches standalone websites for product drops, like it has for limited-edition Wheaties boxes. While General Mills does use e-commerce as a revenue driver for some brands, it is still very small compared to the company's vast distribution channels.

And, at the end of the day, the company's playbook depends on each brand. "We lean on our brand teams, they are the brand experts. They're the ones who know their products, their partnerships, their consumers the best," said Jensen. "We come in with the DTC capability of knowing the tech stack, knowing what works, knowing how to ship products... we're the coach versus the quarterback, and we let them take control."