I went one-on-one with Sonya Gafsi Oblisk, Chief Merchandising and Marketing Officer of Whole Foods, at The Milken Institute 2025 Global Conference.
Adam: You were a sociology major at Emory before getting your MBA at my alma mater, UCLA Anderson, where you studied marketing. What early experiences and lessons shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?
Sonya: It’s often a question of how you go from being a sociologist to a chief marketing officer. I’d say the thing that really piqued my interest and why I ended up studying sociology was the focus on understanding people, what motivates them, and behavior. That is really the thread that took me eventually into market research and then into marketing, merchandising, and retail. So, really thinking customer first, understanding your customers better than the competitors, and figuring out how you can serve them in new and innovative ways.
Adam: What motivates people?
Sonya: Lots of different things. I think people are inherently optimistic. They want to feel good about themselves. They want to have competence. They want to care for their families. There are lots of things that we do at Whole Foods as a brand that tie directly into what we like to call vibrancy. People are aspiring to live more vibrantly, and that comes to life in so many different ways. That is part of the fun of marketing, being able to connect and serve a very human need, and in many cases, a vulnerability that people may have.
Adam: As a marketer, how do you really get to the core of customer motivation? How do you understand what drives a customer at a given moment in time?
Sonya: We use a lot of different tools. Some of them are very analytical. I can look at what people are buying, when they’re buying it, and how frequently they’re buying it. Some of it is more qualitative, when we spend time talking to customers, listening to them, reading their feedback that they send to us directly, and what they share on social media about our brand and their needs. We spend a lot of time looking at trends that are happening in the food and consumables space. That is another source. Looking at all of this iteratively over time, we look for the difference that makes the difference. That is typically what leads you to the insight of understanding your role and how you can better serve and connect with your customers.
Adam: I’ve done thousands of interviews, and in every interview, I’m learning a lot, but there’s always one nugget that is a perspective-shifting insight for me. As a marketer who is continually analyzing data, do you have that same experience?
Sonya: Oftentimes yes, and sometimes it’s more subtle. It really depends on what you’re researching. In some cases, if you’re trying to precisely understand a need state, what is driving satisfaction, what is driving dissatisfaction, it may not be a nugget. It may be unpacking the layers of the onion to understand what that customer journey is and what their experience is. Or if I’m working in a white space or on some type of communication and really trying to rethink and reinvent how we go to market and how we’re connecting, oftentimes there is that nugget of “aha, this is actually what the customer is looking for. This is why they’re choosing Whole Foods as their destination or their solution, and here’s how I can better deliver on that for them.”
Adam: What were the keys to rising in your career and to becoming a Chief Marketing Officer at one of the best-known companies in America?
Sonya: I did a lot of learning. If you ask me what the key was in my career, I would say it was a lot of work. I love working. One of my personal mantras is always do your best. If you’re not going to do something well, then don’t even bother doing it. I did something that I loved. Every day, do something that makes you happy. I get a lot of joy out of my work, and I’m passionate about it, partially because I learn all the time. Another thing I like to say is help as many people as you can, and that has been my approach to my career. I’m a competitive person with myself, but I really enjoy supporting and helping others. By really engaging broadly, helping others, focusing on solving problems rather than getting credit, I was able to contribute more than I would have if I had stayed in my lane or focused solely on my own assignment. That serendipitously opened a lot of doors for me, which was really nice. When doors open, you just need to walk through them. Many times, having a successful career or one that continues to build and allows you to learn means taking risks, accepting assignments, seeking opportunities, and doing things you wouldn’t necessarily choose first. Magically, it all adds up to something big and gives you the tools to have more range and scalability in your leadership and skills.
I would even add the statement: it’s not just how can I add value, but what is the unique value that I can bring? We are so lucky to work at great companies with so many talented people. Everyone has some type of value to bring. Focusing your energy on where you can add unique value rather than redundancy and being additive to teams is key. This is where it’s like swimming outside of your lane. I’m a brand manager by training, but if I look at my career, especially the first ten years after business school, I was almost always on some type of special assignment, working with engineers or finance people. I don’t know what that says about me, other than that I really enjoyed learning a different discipline and applying my perspective to solve someone else’s problem. That is where you build and expand your leadership skill, your ability to influence, and your ability to solve problems at scale. You can build those muscles early in your career.
The world moves very quickly, and I can’t think of one discipline where you can operate in a silo and deliver results. Whether you’re working with technology, legal, product, finance, or marketing, as a professional, you will need to navigate different areas, communicate effectively with people who view problems differently than you do, collaborate, and define win-win outcomes.
Adam: What do you believe are the keys to successful leadership, and what can anyone do to become a better leader?
Sonya: Oh my gosh, that’s a big question. A lot to unpack there. Keys to successful leadership. In no particular order, I think one of the biggest things is being a low-ego leader. By that, I mean you don’t need to be right. Great ideas can come from anywhere. Credit needs to go to everyone else. Really focus on supporting your team with an element of servant leadership. At the end of the day, as the leader, your role is to empower others to achieve their potential and contribute at high levels. In complement to that, it is really about having clarity of thinking and vision. To me, that is the most valuable thing a leader can provide their team. It is not tactical direction, but vision, alignment on outcomes, and clarity on what needs to be done.
Adam: What are the keys to effective communication in marketing?
Sonya: We have lots of feedback loops with customers that we use, whether it’s in A/B testing or in qualitative sessions to make sure we are breaking through. I spend a lot of time in our stores with team members who hear a treasure trove of feedback from our customers day in and day out. I try to understand what our team members say are unmet or underserved opportunities, where we are not breaking through, where customers are not understanding, and where we can raise the bar. We seek feedback broadly from many different points, then synthesize it into actionable plans, steps, and tactics. Then we continue to iterate and refine. Often, when people launch something, whether it is a campaign or product, they think the work is done. No. That is just the beginning. Customers change quickly. Competitors change quickly. The marketplace changes quickly. This needs to be a continuous feedback loop, continuously refining and adapting to make sure you are relevant and useful to your customers.
Adam: What is the best way to collect feedback, and what is the best way to process feedback?
Sonya: Processing feedback involves taking all the input you receive and, with the right stakeholders and decision-makers in the room, having vigorous debate and exploring alternatives. That always helps raise the bar on outcomes. No one piece of feedback is the gospel or directive. It is input. The goal is to think about inputs, possible outputs or outcomes, and to process them with those who will be doing the work and who understand the context and have decision-making authority.
Adam: What are the most important skills that you developed that have allowed you to become the Chief Marketing Officer of Whole Foods, and what are the most important skills that you utilize today as Chief Marketing Officer of Whole Foods?
Sonya: I spend a lot of time listening to our customers, reading research reports, reviewing insights, and understanding trends both in our industry and more broadly in society to stay relevant. As I said, I spend a lot of time in our stores. If I had only one piece of advice about marketing, it would be this: you have to know your experience. Your brand is your experience. Talk to your team members. Use your tools and services. I am lucky that our office is above one of our big, beautiful stores in Austin, Texas, and I am in that store every day. I am also on the road almost every week, in stores across different cities. I seek broad input and look for edge cases. One thing I think is really helpful is looking for outliers where things are not working. People often fall into the trap of thinking everything is fine based on average performance. But are you achieving potential, or just managing performance? That is one big mental model I encourage my team to focus on. Are we managing performance, or are we managing to potential? Hitting your KPIs is great, but we could likely be doing more. How do we continue to move the needle toward that more?
We have done a ton of work this year on price value at Whole Foods. I’m proud to say we have lowered prices on 25 percent of the items we sell, including over 900 of our private label products. We are also selling more items on sale and promotion than ever before. We always knew value perception was a big opportunity. Because we offer the highest quality natural and organic products, and because we are viewed as a lifestyle brand and leader in food, our price perception tended to be worse than our actual prices. In other words, customers thought we were more expensive than we actually were. Our marketing opportunity was to break through that and change beliefs, encourage trial, and re-engage customers. We made incremental progress, and then last year we took a big leap. Even in light of inflation, we challenged ourselves to rethink pricing strategy and explore how far we could go. I asked how we could not only move the needle on sales but bring in more customers and increase frequency of visits. We leaned in in a big way, which scared a lot of my finance team, but they went along with it, so I give them credit. We saw record-breaking customer traffic, week in and week out, even as the grocery market was contracting. We moved the needle on sales and became one of the fastest-growing retailers in the industry. That would not have been possible a few years ago. It shows that thinking big and leaning in, when you understand the problem deeply, can reframe the challenge and create a different reality.
Adam: What are the biggest pitfalls that you’ve seen marketers fall trap to, and how can they overcome them?
Sonya: I would call out two things. One is being too literal with customer research and insights. Some people read a report and then just act on it without taking the time to understand context or the deeper meaning. In other words, they focus on the what rather than the why. We always want to know why a customer is thinking something, why they are asking for something. Not just that they asked for it. That is how insights are misapplied and end up not driving the desired outcomes.
The second pitfall is not understanding your brand’s DNA. Someone once told me that every company has a DNA. It is like a person. A brand is a living thing. You need to understand what it does well, what its vulnerabilities are, and work with that. Just like we think about improving ourselves as leaders or people or athletes, you have to work with what you have. Where I see brands go wrong is when they jump on the “me too” train, copying another company because it worked for them. But it usually doesn’t have the same impact. That is because you are working with a different person, brand, or company. Start with yourself and focus on being the best version of your brand.
Customers are highly attuned to authenticity. When something does not feel authentic to your brand, people pick up on it quickly. That is why it does not work. It all ties back to understanding your customer and building trust, which is the foundation of great marketing.
We have too much data and too few insights. People are overwhelmed with dashboards, KPIs, analytics, and research reports. They struggle to sift through all of that to understand what to do. Even when they get to the what, without the context of why, they do not land on the right strategy. You have to do both at the same time, whether you are working with qualitative or quantitative inputs. That balanced perspective allows you to create meaningful, strategic solutions.
Adam: What are the keys to building a successful brand, and what are your best tips on the topic of branding?
Sonya: I will use Whole Foods as an example, because I really cannot take credit. I have only been at the company for almost nine years now, and the brand was started about 45 years ago. What they did brilliantly well, even without having any marketers, was define their purpose. Our higher purpose at Whole Foods is to nourish people and the planet. They defined how to deliver that purpose through what we call our quality standards or product standards. Across our store, we have 500 banned ingredients that we do not carry. We have standards around animal welfare, sustainability, and worker welfare. They never compromised those. They were unrelenting in their application of those standards.
What that did was build a ton of customer trust and admiration for the brand. It created a huge level of understanding for what the brand stands for and why it is different. I believe that is still what allows us to stand apart from the rest of grocery retail. You are something different, and a customer cannot follow a chameleon. If you keep switching lanes, it is hard to build followership and engagement.
Adam: What advice do you have on how to market during the tough times when budgets are tighter and customers are pulling back?
Sonya: I shared earlier that one big focus for us, even before the wave of inflation hit, was around price perception. Our higher purpose is to nourish people and the planet. We want to provide natural and organic food that is responsibly and humanely sourced to as many customers as we can. We also need to be very attuned to the customer experience and their day-to-day challenges. That means balancing the message. We are here to support you on prices and also help you feel good about what you buy.
In our marketing, we try to provide both practical tools and useful information. For example, we communicate our weekly sales, price reductions, best deals, and highlight our private label 365 brand. That helps customers know how to save money at Whole Foods. But we also try to inspire them. People love discovery. They come into our stores looking for something new, for the best seasonal produce, for new brands, and product demos. It is the what and the why. We meet baseline needs and also satisfy higher motivations.
Adam: How do you utilize technology as a chief marketing officer?
Sonya: Technology is used across many areas of our business. We rely heavily on data to understand our customer experience and our team member experience, to improve productivity, and to forecast better. One of the most frustrating customer experiences is going to Whole Foods for a specific item and finding it out of stock. Forecasting tools help us stay in stock and deliver a better customer experience. Technology and data touch every part of our business. They are central to both the team member and customer journey.
One great application of AI is in our e-commerce business. We are always looking for ways to make it easier and more inspirational for customers to build their grocery baskets. That includes making relevant suggestions, showing complementary items, and offering helpful tips. Any way we can support and recreate some of the in-store experience online, while making it highly personalized, helps customers save time, save money, and achieve better outcomes. Whether that is building a healthier basket or sticking to a specific diet, that is an incredibly practical and valuable use of AI.
Adam: What does anyone who wants to work in marketing or anyone who is working in marketing and wants to get to that next level need to know?
Sonya: They need to be agile learners. They need to listen a lot. And they need to have a ton of passion for the customer. Passion is what sets people apart, especially passion for the customer. I have worked at a lot of great companies, and if I listed them all, you might wonder how they all fit together. I have worked with so many different customers. I can tell you, I can fall in love with any customer, because at the end of the day, a customer is a person. It is you, it is me. Helping them live their life better, finding solutions for them, serving them better is incredibly rewarding. If that motivates you, and you are willing to learn, try new things, work cross-functionally, and step outside your lane, that is all it takes.
Adam: What can anyone do to become more successful, personally and professionally?
Sonya: Learning is the biggest thing. Having learning agility and being a continuous learner is what sparks creative problem-solving. It helps you communicate more effectively and helps you understand your market in a much richer way.
