Reinventing Iconic Brands, Women’s Health & the Power of Getting Your Hands Dirty with Laura Thompson of Bayer Canada

How do you reinvent an iconic brand without losing the trust that made it iconic in the first place?

In this episode of SHeCOMMERCE, Cristina and Jacqui sit down with Laura Thompson, Country Division Head of Consumer Health at Bayer Canada, for a conversation that moves from data, brand building and consumer trust to women’s health, leadership and why sometimes the best leaders are still willing to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty.

Laura reminds us that building brands today looks dramatically different than it did even two years ago. Consumers have more information, more choices, more influence—and increasingly, more control.

The answer isn’t changing who your brand is.

It’s reinventing how consumers experience it.

🍵 Spill the Tea

Before Laura joins the conversation, Cristina and Jacqui spill this week’s tea on the shifts reshaping consumer health and commerce:

• Bayer’s leadership evolution: Samantha Avivi’s appointment as Global Chief Marketing Officer for Bayer Consumer Health—and why the integration of marketing, commercial leadership, data and analytics matters.

• The convergence of beauty, wellness and health: Former Glossier CEO Kyle Leahy’s move to WHOOP sparks a bigger conversation about consumers no longer thinking in neat category silos.

• AI is changing how people shop: Shopify data pointing to the power of AI-referred shoppers leads to one big question for healthcare brands: when consumers stop searching and start asking, how do you earn the recommendation?

💥 Inside the Conversation with Laura

Building brands today is different.
Data underlines nearly everything. Brands once controlled much of the information consumers received. Today, ratings, reviews, digital platforms and AI have shifted more of that control to the consumer.

Reinvention doesn’t mean abandoning what made you iconic.
For Bayer’s consumer health brands, Laura says science, efficacy and trust remain foundational. The opportunity is to rethink how those brands show up—from packaging and claims to channels, platforms and personalized messaging.

Access is bigger than price.
Laura shares Bayer’s Road to Billions mission and its focus on expanding access to consumer health. That means considering price points, pack sizes, channels, information and whether consumers can actually find and understand what they need.

Science is the backbone.
As consumers face an overwhelming amount of health information, Laura believes credible, science-backed information becomes even more important—not less.

🔥 And Then We Talk About Women’s Health…

This is where the episode gets personal.

Laura shares eye-opening insights on perimenopause and menopause and the very real impact these life stages can have on women, their careers and the economy.

Among the statistics discussed:

• 1 in 2 women are embarrassed to ask for help.
• A massive cohort of women is entering the perimenopause and menopause stage of life.
• 1 in 10 may leave the workforce because of menopause symptoms.
• 1 in 5 believe their symptoms could hold them back from progressing at work.

And perhaps one of the most sobering reminders of the episode: women only began being meaningfully included in medical research in the 1980s.

Meanwhile, women are often managing not only their own health but the health of children, partners, parents and entire households.

That makes access to credible, easy-to-understand health information more than a marketing opportunity.

It’s a responsibility.

Laura challenges brands and retailers to think beyond selling products and instead understand the transitions and pivotal moments in women’s lives—and what women actually need during those moments.

💪 Leadership, Hustle & Saying Yes

Laura’s leadership story starts somewhere refreshingly unglamorous: in sales.

Building displays. Ordering product. Working store backrooms. Owning a territory. Seeing immediately what worked—and what didn’t.

And she loved it.

That early experience shaped the leader she is today: someone who loves the hustle, isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty, learns by watching great leaders and not-so-great ones, and has built a career by saying yes to opportunities other people sometimes didn’t want.

🎙️ Quotable Moments

“Building brands today is very different than it was even two years ago.”

“It’s not like changing who we are, but it’s just reinventing how consumers experience us.”

“Our science is the backbone of our organization.”

“We owe easy access to information—to credible information.”

“I love the hustle.”

“Being able to hustle, get my hands dirty, roll up my sleeves—I’m still that way today.”

This episode sits right at the intersection of the SHe and the COMMERCE in SHeCOMMERCE: how brands earn trust in a radically changing marketplace, how companies can better serve women throughout their lives, and how leaders stay grounded while navigating change.

Because building better brands and building better workplaces aren’t separate conversations.

It’s not just business. It’s personal.

🎧 Tune in and join the conversation.

Bold Brands. Fierce Women. One Sisterhood.

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