Okay, so we're gonna get started. Really excited to have Clorox with us again this year, with the company's CEO, Linda Rendle, and CFO, Kevin Jacobsen, with us. [audio distortion] to start is just on volume growth. Volume has been kind of at the forefront of the conversation at the conference for, you know, all the companies that are here. And for you guys in particular, right, when will it tick [audio distortion] Right. Q4 , much better than expected, still down only 2%. But there were a couple of things that maybe were, I don't call it one time, but timing from, and some benefits, improved performance and so on.
So just I guess maybe we can start with: How should we think about your volume growth trending from here? You know, can we start to see growth, I mean, as soon as the Q1 , given easier comps, or does this kind of some of that sell-in dynamic that benefited last quarter, you know, make so if we should cool our jets and, you know, kind of wait a little bit and think forward?
Excellent. If you permit me, I'm just gonna say a few comments, and then get to that question.
Okay. [audio distortion]
Hope you were happy to see in fiscal year 2023, our performance based off of delivering against our priorities of maintaining top-line momentum, rebuilding margin, and continuing to invest in the long term. So we delivered 4% sales growth, 6% organic, grew margins by 360 basis points and grew earnings by 24%. And I know we're gonna get into 2024 in our assumptions and volume, but you know, as we look out, we continue to see a stretched consumer more in aggregate. Our categories have been resilient, but my comments will be consistent with what we're seeing from a consumer perspective. And then just one note, we had provided guidance on August 2nd at our call, and of course, we had a set of assumptions around that.
I just wanted to be clear that what is not contemplated in that is that we announced on August 14th through an 8-K that we had a cybersecurity incident, and that was not factored in. Obviously, it happened after. We don't know if there's a material impact yet, and we don't have an update to our financials, but I wanted to make sure that was clear before we got started.
Okay, good.
So, more on volume, which is important to how we think about 2024. Certainly in Q4 of fiscal year 2023, we saw improved volume performance, as you noted. Item was down less, as we started to lap the full price increases we took over the last 18 months. And what we would expect in fiscal year 2024, as we continue to finalize lapping, that which will happen at the end of this calendar year, that volume will play a more significant role in our top line performance moving forward. I wouldn't say, you know, that it will be linear and given there's more visibility and we're assuming a recession, a mild recession in the back half of our year.
You know, looking at that and saying that that will be a straight line is not what I would commit to now. But we do believe volume, and it's already continuing to play a strong role, will play one, and we believe we have the right plans investing in our brands and their superior value. We're investing more in advertising and sales promotion this year. We always invest strongly at about 10% of sales, but this year we decided to spend 11%. And as well as we have strong innovation plans that will support that return to volume growth as consumers begin more normalized behavior as we lap pricing. So again, volume will play a stronger role. It won't be exactly linear this year, but we believe we have the right plans in place to continue to expect that moving forward.
Okay, great. And in that vein, and on the August call, you'd mentioned innovation, right? And more important than ever, driving volumes, and particularly given the assumptions you're making around the consumer environment. So but what's interesting is that R&D, as a percentage of sales, has actually been down over the last 10 years, pretty consistently year-over-year. Granted, there's been so much pricing in the, in the numbers more recently. So I'm sure if we looked at it relative to volume, it's probably a different conversation. So I'm just curious, is R&D an area that you think requires or warrants maybe additional spending as innovation grows in importance, or do you think the sort of R&D machine is properly funded as it, as it stands today?
Well, maybe I'll frame my comments in broader terms in terms of how we're thinking about investment broadly in our company. And we believe we have made the right set of investments to ensure the long-term value creation for our company and for our brands. And if you look across all of the buckets, that would be in things like advertising and sales promotion, where we're spending strongly and we lead in share of voice in our categories. Whether that be in ensuring that we have the right infrastructure from a technology perspective, we're investing $500 million in our digital transformation. And then R&D is no exception. We are one of the leading spenders among our peer group, and we continue to be.
And so we feel very good about the R&D that we have in place to deliver incremental value from innovation, which is critical to our 3%-5% sales growth number. And although that number has remained flat in terms of output spending, you know, our business is significantly bigger, and we're able to drive the right efficiencies. But that's an area we continue to be leading in our industry and is an example of the broad set of investments we're making to ensure the long-term health of our business.
Okay. Could you maybe talk about then within that, how maybe your approach to innovation has changed or what it means to go after kind of bigger, stickier ideas? And if the process, that R&D process is different today than it was, it was five years ago or, you know, pre-IGNITE.
It is different. And we had been building better innovation processes long before IGNITE as well, and we really focused then on ensuring that we got closer to the consumer, that we were shortening the window that it took to innovate. So those windows can be pretty long, innovation cycles. So pre-IGNITE, we were really focused on shortening that window. And as we headed into this new period, what we wanted to ensure was taking the learnings that we had from the previous period and applying them. And the biggest learning we had was that when we could launch innovations in consumer need spaces that we could invest in for multiple years, we call bigger, stickier innovation. Then that was a better return to us, and we had more contribution from a top-line perspective, and that's what we're focused on doing now.
For each one of our categories, we wanna have platforms that we can invest in for multiple years, and that incents retailers because they know that innovation is gonna be around for a while. We can continue to put fresh items on the shelf for the consumer and give them new news, and it makes that, R&D spend even more efficient, which helps us, drive the number that you spoke about, Lauren. So that's what we're focused on now. Good examples of that would be Glad, where we've had many years of innovation come out of technology platforms that we've invested in. It's allowed us to build a better trash bag with less plastic, with a better sustainability profile. We've been able to add great scents, and colors. For those of you who are into Barbie right now, a pink trash bag.
And it really ties into that. I know a lot of our guys in the room are like, "Oh, my goodness, more Barbie." But a pink trash bag is pretty cool right now. So that's a good example of something that a technology platform allows us to do something over and over again at scale and get good return on the capital that we put on the floor in order to do that. And we have that across a number of our brands right now, and we launched major innovations in every one of our major brands last year, and we would intend to do the same this year.
Okay, great. Okay. Other key focus area, of course, has been gross margin recovery. So big, big chunky start on that, on that front, to say the least. But could you maybe, Kevin, talk a bit about the key inputs dictating the pace of recovery as we look through 2024 and even beyond? Right, because this year, cost savings, sorry, excuse me, fiscal 2023, sorry. Cost savings and pricing really drove the bulk of it. So just curious, you know, raw materials, does it become a tailwind at some point? [audio distortion]
Thanks, Lauren. For a little bit of context, for the folks who don't follow us as closely, we've seen significant cost inflation over the last several years. If you think about Clorox, a typical year of inflation would be around $75 million for the supply chain inflation. Two years ago, we experienced $800 million of supply chain inflation. Last year, $400 million, and now this year, about $200 million is what we're projecting in our fiscal year 2024. So a moderating inflation environment, but still inflationary. Then Lauren, to your good point, our commitment is to rebuild gross margins back to pre-pandemic levels. We've lost about 800 basis points through this inflationary cycle. Over the last 18 months, we've leaned in very aggressively on pricing. We've taken four rounds of pricing.
Broadly across our portfolio, we've seen large double-digit increases, and that was a key contributor to helping us build back margin. But the other two areas we're focusing on is cost savings. We have a very well-established cost savings program at Clorox that's delivered value for decades, and that continues to deliver very good value for us, and then supply chain optimization. During the pandemic, we built up 10s of millions of dollars in our supply chain as we're building resiliency and to manage through all disruptions, and we've got the opportunity to pull that out. And so last year, we made very good progress. We recovered about 360 basis points of that 800 basis points we lost. Pricing was the biggest lever we pulled, and then cost savings and supply chain optimization.
As we move forward, and particularly this year, we don't have in our plan an assumption of broad-based pricing. And so you'll see less benefit from pricing, but we'll continue to drive cost savings. We'll continue to drive our supply chain optimization, and we think in spite of ongoing inflation, we can continue to make progress growing gross margin. And then I think, Lauren, as you look past this, to your question about longer term, you know, we have bought these commodities for decades, and they are cyclical, and we expect at some point they will roll over, and we'll see some level of deflationary support. We don't expect that this year, but we would expect that as we go forward at some point, and that will certainly contribute to margin rebuilding.
Okay, great. So since we're talking about long-term margins or longer-term margins, I, I wanna ask a question about ESG, which normally goes at the end of these conversations, but I, I think it's interesting to maybe contextualize some of the efforts that you guys have been making on ESG and how it, you know, may impact the P&L. So, yeah, maybe could you talk a little bit about how ESG efforts, you know, impact the, the P&L? Just very let's be broad with this.
Sure. I'm glad you asked it in the middle. ESG is very important to us. Not only is it consistent with the purpose we have as a company to champion people to be well inside every single day, but it's a key way we manage risk. As you look at what's going on with waste, what's going on with our planet, it's critical that we, we take steps to ensure the, the health of our business. Part of what we'll need to do is address these sustainability things. So we've set aggressive goals. And in that context, we have set those goals in context of our general managers' goals. So they are accountable for delivering innovation plans, cost savings plans, and sustainability plans, with incentives all together. And that leads you to what, what would be the P&L impact?
What we're always trying to achieve is a triple win. And we can't always do this, but it's why we have our general managers in charge of sustainability, and we embed it in the business. We would love something to be a more sustainable option. So we remove plastic or we remove some type of waste element, we make something refillable, we change the form, and we'd love that to be a cost savings. And in a lot of cases, if we concentrate something or do it differently, we can actually get a savings out of it. And then we would love it to be at least parity, but preferably better from a consumer experience standpoint. And we have numerous cases where we've done this in the past. A good one, that we've done multiple times is concentrating Clorox with the bleach.
It's really good for the planet. We're not shipping as much water around. We're reducing plastic usage. It's better for store shelves in terms of holding power, so retailers love it. And when consumers get it home, it's much easier to use, and they have a better product experience. And then certainly it, it saves us money. And so we are aiming to get that. Lauren, it's not always gonna be the case, though. There are gonna be things we're gonna invest in. PCR is a great example. We wanted to be using 100% PCR by 2025, and that's more expensive at the moment. And so there are places where we're going to invest and use the P&L to do that, and we're going to continue to drive cost savings and [audio distortion] .
But in aggregate, we believe it's the right thing to make sustainable transitions, and it's right for the long-term value creation of our business. And over time, it's money and costs us money, but we still think it's the right long-term value creator. And in the short term, you know, we're managing that while continuing to expand margins. So what we contemplated this year means that we'll make significant progress on our sustainability goals, while we're building margins.
Okay. And also to Kevin's point, going beyond that pre-COVID benchmark also is very much in the cards, even as you're making investments in sustainability, would you say?
As it relates to gross margin?
Yeah.
Yeah. So for us, job one is to get back to pre-pandemic levels of gross margin. As you think beyond that, Lauren, our expectation is through our cost savings program in a normal co-op environment, you can offset cost inflation and take a little bit to the bottom line to grow margins over time. But there's no question, in the immediate term, it's about rebuilding to pre-pandemic levels and then longer term, we'd expect to make progress on, on expanding margins over time.
Okay, great. Switch gears a little bit and talk about distribution. So many of your products were very popular, at least during COVID, and then, you know, demand often outstripping supply. So, you know, with that mismatch in a lot of your categories, retailers had to go to other suppliers to kind of, to fill the needs that they need to have on their shelves. So I guess, where would you say you stand now when you think about total distribution points or your share of shelf within a category? So that's also another way, an important way to look at it, versus where you were pre-pandemic.
Well, the good news is we were popular during the pandemic, but we were popular before, and we're still popular. So that helps the execution of this and what the results are. So you're absolutely right that we were not able to fully supply during the height of the pandemic, and so retailers did bring, you know, third tier brands in, and we're largely through that. So most of that stuff has been rationalized. We're back to assortments generally that make sense from a retail perspective. And so that means versus the pandemic time, we have significantly grown share of TDPs, the measure that you talk about. We're up well over a point since the pandemic.
Now we're still slightly below where we were pre-pandemic, but at the same time, we've been able to increase the efficiency of each one of those items on the shelf, so the dollars per unit are higher. So those two things say we're moving in the right direction, and the execution has been strong. And our retail partners have been very collaborative in ensuring that we have category growth prints that are led by our brands, given we're number one and number two share brands.
Okay, great. Are there, I guess, your categories are different, right? You've got cleaning, you have dish soap, sweets, right? There's Brita. So as you think about the portfolio and the different categories, are there ones where there's greater incremental opportunity to grow distribution, to grow shelves, whether it's shelf space in a retail or more broadly, distribution?
Well, I would say a category that grows faster always has more opportunity for distribution, because typically it requires more holding space. And then also, of course, I think it's important to note, the digital shelf is a very different animal all in itself, because you don't think about it in traditional share of TDPs. I hate to say there's unlimited ways that you can gain distribution. So, we're thinking about that. For example, you rightly point out both [audio distortion ] and Brita, that have grown very quickly, and so we're always working with retailers on ensuring we're having the right space, that we have the right distribution online. And you've seen that. You've seen shelf expansions in categories where we've been able to have faster category growth and faster brand growth.
Then in other cases, we're leveraging things like sustainability and compaction to actually reduce the amount of shelf space overall for a category. And that makes good sense from a retailer perspective, and drives efficiency for them and doesn't impact the way the consumer interacts with that, as long as we get it shelved right, etc . So I think sometimes it's a very valid measure to say i s more space better? Yes, sometimes, but not always. And that's what we're balancing across our categories, depending on how consumers shop them, the degree of penetration online, and then again, how fast they're growing and the growth opportunities moving forward.
Okay. I guess, you know, to take the inverse of that, are there areas where you think the distribution footprint, and maybe this is by channel, I'm not saying by retailer, but by channel, broadened out to places where it's maybe not as relevant? You know, is there distribution that spread to outlets where you think it's not the best environment for your brand or a given category where it would be a worthwhile exercise to pare back?
Well, we want to be where shoppers are, and so if shoppers are in a channel, we want to be there. And we want to have the right proposition then to, obviously create value overall for our company. But that's really the key way that we, we approach it. And, you know, when a lot of channels have started over the years, I think people have feared that, and we don't fear it. You know, when Dollar started, we were one of the first people to have a team on the ground. When e-commerce started, the same thing. And so we approach that as we have to be ubiquitous for the shopper, and then we will do all the right things on the economics to make that work for us.
That has worked really well, being where the shopper is. I'm very, I'm very comfortable with where we're distributed today and, I feel really good about all of the channels and the way they're performing.
Great. Let's talk about household penetration. So you spoke into an expectation that it would be down for [audio distortion] categories overall, given how much pricing there's been. Maybe just first off, do you see a marked difference across categories for where household penetration is trending?
No, and you're exactly right, that we anticipated, and one of those is one trade-offs we made, when we took pricing, was that household penetration would come down. Now, putting that in context, which for you is distributed in nine out of 10 households, we have very high penetration across our categories. But we did know that, that would come down. And typically, what ends up happening is you lose some of the light users in the category or people who have newly entered. They tend to exit during times of taking pricing. And then we see usually your heavy users use more, and that's exactly what we've seen. So we made that trade-off eyes wide open. But that being said, we're very focused on, as we return to volume growth, returning to household penetration growth, and getting that back.
We do that through good innovation, through brand building, through using merchandising in a strategic way to introduce consumers either back to our items that they might have walked away from or walked away from the categories. Or for new users who've never tried us before, back to school is a great time to do that. That's a typical period where we introduce parents to our products as they're sending their kids back to school, and we just did that this summer. So that's what we'll be focused on is gaining that household penetration back, but we feel good about where we are versus the category. You know, we're right in line in terms of the household penetration declines that we've seen. And we have solid plans in 2024 to begin to reverse that trend over time.
Okay. I was actually gonna ask about back to school. Seems like Germany's back to school season going on, don't they?
Google tells me that's what's been happening.
So, I'm just curious, then, if you've seen any kind of pickup in this, you know, right. Some, you know, the businesses that have traditionally benefited quite a bit during back to school season. But, you know, COVID creeping back in quietly with the conversation, draft, you know, it's all there. So yeah, just curious about incremental merchandising or activity that you've had, you know, just in the, let's call it recent weeks.
We planned very strong back-to-school plans for our cleaning business, Glad, and other items that are sold in back to school. We'll of course report on that when we come out and talk about Q1 earnings and how those performed. But we were very pleased with the plans that we had in place with our retailers. They were excited about it too, to have a more normalized back-to-school period and bring shoppers into their stores. What I would say is, you know, as it relates to your comment on illness, it certainly is out there. It is a more normalized environment where people, unfortunately, are getting cold and flu again.
There's a lot of things going around, and that's the way that we're continuing to remind retailers we need to put our products in front of the consumer, remind them to do this, to keep them well, to keep their kids in school. So it provided a great opportunity as we got through the lapse of COVID, to continue to work with them to have the right plans to grow the category moving forward. Our assumption for fiscal 2024 is a normalized cold and flu season. We always pretty much make that assumption, and then we'll update you as we learn more about what's expected. But yeah, there's certainly a lot of germs going around right now.
Okay. Thanks for sure. Another business with seasonality to it, charcoal. So charcoal, you know, ended up having a really nice recovery this summer or through the end of the fiscal year. I guess, just curious, our long-standing objective had been to get charcoal to be less seasonal, right? To have more year-round grilling, and then the consumer kind of took you there during COVID. So I guess now, do you think we're at a point you can start thinking about, again, more normalized curve on charcoal? As we kind of lap some of the bigger ups and downs, and maybe just an update on the improvements you've made on price gaps, if that's held through the current week.
So, you know, broader context on Kingsford, I hope it would be helpful for people. You know, back in 2018 and 2019, we looked at that business, and it wasn't meeting our expectations, and there were a number of factors in play. One, we saw alternate forms outside of briquettes really expanding, and we didn't play materially in those forms. And we needed to revamp our innovation pipeline to address that. We needed to address the fact that retailers were using Kingsford briquettes in a very exciting way, but not a way that was sustainable to drive store traffic, and so they were deeply discounting. And the category was no longer as profitable as it needed to be. So we put plans in place in 2018 to reverse that.
We put new merchandising plans in place. We put innovation. We launched a set of alternate fuels, and that led to very strong performance during the pandemic. Not only people staying at home and buying grills and grilling more, but we think the playbooks that we put in place performed very well during that time. In 2023, we saw some more competitive activity from private label and some third-tier brands, and so we had talked about the fact that we weren't happy with our performance, and we immediately made plans to adjust that, including, Lauren, to your point, that we had larger price gaps than we wanted because private label did not follow our pricing that we took in December. And that worked in Q4. So Q4, the business performed well.
About 50% of our business is done in Q4, so that was a critical period for us to ensure the health of our charcoal business. So what I'd say on seasonality moving forward, people really love to grill on the wild days of five, fourth and Labor Day. I don't believe we're gonna ever change that. So this business will be a seasonal business moving forward, but what we can do is continue to expand the occasions. You know, more people are grilling for the everyday meal occasion. When they stay at home more during the week or because they're experiencing more tough economic times, they tend to cook at home, and that's a great opportunity for us to help them make a meal on a grill that tastes great on a Tuesday night.
So we continue to do that, but we would always expect that we're gonna have those big bumps during those key holidays, but we continue to work on what we call extending the season.
Okay. Another, this is going to, like, strike you as an oddball question, because I'm guessing you never get it. But another business where you've expanded the occasion, Hidden Valley.
So let's talk about Hidden Valley, Lauren, you're making me happy.
Yes.
Because it's huge. So at least in Nielsen data, right, it's your second largest business.
It's a large business, right? In Nielsen, it's 14% of Clorox's sales. And again, when's the last time you were asked about Hidden Valley? So I think just an update kind of on that business, what's driven success, you know, maybe learnings from that business that could be applicable to others, even though, again, it's such a different business, but maybe are applicable to other categories in which you compete.
Yeah. Hidden Valley, which is a ranch business for us, has done extremely well, and it is a big business for us. It's one of. We have a few other food brands, but it's really our only major foray in the foods business. And it is a wonderful flavor enhancer that we have been able to take our innovation and brand building capabilities and grow over time. So if you just look at the last four years, Lauren, we've grown that business high single digits from a CAGR perspective over the last four years. And we've grown market share quarter after quarter after quarter for multiple years. And what works really well, it's a very strong brand that consumers love. It is a taste of ranch. When people think about ranch, they think about Hidden Valley.
We've been able to use innovation to create new flavor profiles, new forms, in order to let the consumer use it in all the occasions they want. So as food trends have changed, if you're pro-protein, if you're a vegetarian, if you use the grill, if you use sous vide, there's a form for Hidden Valley that allows consumers to get that great taste, and as well as expanding into more, you know, fashion flavors. So as spice comes up, we're allowed to use ranch as a base, and consumers give us permission to add spice to that as well for them to enjoy it. So it's a great case of all of our capabilities in a full form, great margin work to allow to invest in the business, strong advertising and sales promotion, great innovation, great retailer plans.
And of course, that's the model for the rest of the brands, that Hidden Valley has absolutely been a star. We love that brand.
So let me take that into a broader portfolio question, because you've got a Hidden Valley, Hidden Gem, as really nobody asks about. And then, like, VMS, it, you know, hasn't really gone as hoped, you know, back in the day, that's been very clear and transparent on that. As you just think about your overall portfolio, right, or category exposures, you know, how are you thinking about portfolio development, right? Whether it's white space, how, what's the, I guess, the checklist, as you think about potential changes to the portfolio, what would be the criteria? What would be interesting to add organically or inorganically?
There are two different types of things we think about with portfolio. The first, it's related to, you know, how we think about uses of cash, is we always want to invest in our business to start. And that means ensuring that we're investing in the right opportunities in our portfolio. So you rightly call out BMS, which is a good example of a set of businesses we bought a number of years ago, that were in categories that were, we viewed as pretty attractive. They were growing faster, they were on trend, but our performance has not met expectations and our own expectations. And so that is a good example where we've right-sized. We're focusing more on making that more profitable and then being a nice contributor, albeit smaller contributor, over time.
And taking that investment and putting it in things like Hidden Valley, where we see a greater return. So we're doing that work in the current portfolio that we have and maximizing across a very diverse set of brands that we have. And then we're always doing the work with our board to say what other spaces would our capabilities run themselves to, where we could create great value? We are highly focused on return there. We want to buy something that has strong returns for our shareholders. And then, of course, if there's a business that we feel is underperforming in our portfolio, that we would look at that the same way. And we do that all the time with our board and constantly evaluating.
The most important thing that we do is making those internal allocation choices, year to year, to ensure we're maximizing what we can get out of what we own.
Okay. I mean, what would you say are the two capabilities, right? Because I think back, you know, his won't do the history thing, but, like, there was a period where Clorox had a very specific way of talking about its capabilities, that where it played, where it didn't play, and so on. And then the thought process on how to expand that, because it's, the portfolio is fairly disparate, right? I mean, there are big sizable businesses, but the synergies between them are not always all that clear from an external standpoint. So as you think about with the board, what could be interesting, what are the two capabilities that you have that you think are most applicable as you explore the art of the possible?
We like to be in categories that are more, middle five, and that's really about being able to, ensure that we create value because there's a competitive set that's more rational. And we tend to lead in those five categories with one, number one and number two, share brands. So we can bring big company capabilities to categories that have fewer competitors and are a bit more rational. So we like to compete in those types of categories. And then what we bring, and really it's all centered around how we create superior value. We bring the capabilities to develop superior value brands for consumers that win in the marketplace. And if you look at our value superiority rating, that would play out.
You know, our superiority is higher than it was pre-pandemic, and we've done that through investments and innovation, through investments in brand building, and we're really good at that. And we're good at taking categories that benefit from long-term trends and taking those trends over a number of years and leveraging innovation to take advantage of them. A good example of that would be, you know, broadly in our categories, aesthetics and experience matter. So we brought that to life in cleaning products through the way a product feels, the way it smells. Same thing in a trash bag. We're able to take that trend and over time, give the consumer more and more benefits through good innovation, that we own and have the rights to, and then investing in that innovation. And that's what we're really good at.
You know, we're less, we're less about fashion, we're less about fast trends. And then we're very good at supply chain and removing costs to invest back in those brands. So whenever we're looking at a business, we're asking ourselves: Is this a place where we can take a business over the long term, invest very steadily in innovation, invest in brand building, and make it, you know, be the leading player in that category and help guide where that category goes over time? And that's where we see really good return on the investments that we make, and that's what we would be looking for moving forward.
Okay, great. You mentioned earlier that your, your financial plans for fiscal 2024 assume a recession in the back half of the year. Right, and that's helping to inform the advertising plans and the step up. One question I had from the earnings call was how a recession would even impact your business positively. You know, sort of we've seen value-seeking behavior across people's already, right? For your business as well. We're gonna have lots of pricing in the second half. We've noted the consumers tend to come back to brands after times off. So just, if how would a recession manifest to impact your business and then therefore be influencing, you know, the financial outlook?
You're exactly right, Lauren. We, we've assumed an outlook in the back half of our fiscal year, which is the beginning of calendar year 2024, a mild recession, in the U.S. That manifests itself in a number of ways in regard to how we respond to that. You know, Lauren, and you know this, if you look at our categories, they tend to be fairly recession-proof. If you look at the last recession back in 2008, if you assume that's a reasonable comparison period, because of the everyday essential nature of our categories, you don't see a significant, reduction in category growth. Our categories typically grow 1%-2% per year in a normal year, and in 2008, we saw our categories decline anywhere from about flat to down about one point.
Fairly modest change in category growth rates as a result of the recession, primarily based on the nature of our portfolio. We expect consumers to be under some level of pressure and it'll put a little pressure on our categories. It also informs our plans. As, as you mentioned, we are investing in advertising 11% of sales. Typically, we invest about 10%, but we think that's a good, smart investment. If you think the consumer is under more pressure this year and we're going to be even more focused on value, we want to reinforce our value superiority messaging. We think there's a good opportunity to lean into spending based on an assumption of a mild recession. But historically, it's been a fairly modest impact on our portfolio.
Okay. Just speaking to advertising, what are you finding is the best way to reach consumers? You know, kind of what's the best, the ideal marketing mix these days? I'm guessing it's different across categories.
You know, what we aim to do is have a personalized relationship with consumers, and that in aggregate is what we use to decide the vehicles that we have. And that tends to be digital, and it tends to be across the entire path to purchase from a consumer perspective, when they're deciding, when they're in store or online. And of course, you know, our best advertising, too, is when they come home and use the product and they are delighted by it. So more than two-thirds of our spend today is in digital. We had a goal, Lauren, as you know, to get to know 100 million consumers in the U.S. and therefore use that digital marketing to personalize content to them. And that has led to significant improvements in ROI.
In fiscal year 2023, we had our strongest marketing ROI that we've had. And then, of course, has led to our consumer value superiority, which is an important thing over the long term, that helps us to increase that brand section of the value superiority that we have, and that is at record highs. So that's, you know, the way that we, we think about advertising is both in the short and long term, and we use vehicles depending on ROI that are the most effective. And that can be different by brand. Some brands respond much more to retailer media, for example. Other brands, you know, like Hidden Valley, giving them recipe content is highly effective.
So we really do tailor it and allow the general managers to make decisions based on what's best and what the best return is they can get on their brand and with their set of consumers.
Okay, great. Good end there. But thank you both so much for being here. We have a breakout session, so please join me in thanking Linda and Kevin for being here, and then you can keep going and break out if you want.
Thanks, Lauren.
Thank you.