Unpacking the Digital Shelf

The journey to winning on the digital shelf can not be made in weeks, or months, but years. To manage expectations, the right outcomes, and your sanity, it is vital to understand where you and your company are on that journey, and what the right next steps are to  move along a maturity curve towards operational and performance excellence. Experts from Salsify and the DSI teamed up to articulate a Digital Shelf Maturity Curve, and they presented it in a recent webinar. The content is so foundational to any leader plotting their digital shelf strategy, that we wanted to present it here in podcast format. Here with Peter are Joe Gaudreau, head of the Commerce Strategy Team at Salsify, and Lauren Livak, Director of the Digital Shelf Institute. 

Thrasio often gets lumped into the  “Amazon seller aggregator” category. But when you talk to them, that’s just the how. Here’s their mission:”to be the most impactful consumer products company of the next century.” A key part of achieving that mission is creating  and expanding thousands of global brands at scale. The man in charge of  that part of the  mission  is Arturo Aranda, who brings his experience leading creative at BBDO, Facebook, MRM/McCann, working with some of the biggest brands in the world. Rob and Peter dug into what it takes to do brand building at the scale and speed of a Thrasio, and what it means to the company’s overall mission.

When one ecommerce executive from a global brand tells you they are pushing for a radical rethinking of the beliefs that have driven growth for decades at their company, it’s an interesting anecdote. When 10 executives tell you the same thing, it’s a research project. When Molly Schonthal, founder of the Digital Shelf Institute Executive Forum, and Chris Perry, Chief Learning Officer at firstmovr, started hearing similar anecdotes and data points around shifts from members  of the Executive Forum around the shifts their companies were making to maximize growth - consequential shifts in long-standing pricing strategies, assortment  planning, org and  budget, they decided to tackle bringing a forceful call to action in the market. This new research is titled The Shift to Total Growth Accountability, and Molly and Chris joined Peter to talk it through. 

In the early days at Marketplace Ignition, one of the first marketplace strategy consultancies, the question founder Eric Heller heard repeatedly from his biggest client was “What do I do next?” In some ways, very little has changed. Winning the algorithm requires constant attention, and the new shiny object of retail media should not obscure that fact. Eric, who sold Marketplace Ignition to Wunderman in 2017 and went on to become WPP’s Chief Knowledge Officer for their AMazon Center of Excellence, joined Rob and Peter to highlight the trends that are rapidly shaking the box of ecommerce, media, and omnichannel growth, and how brand execs must keep their eye on the ball.

Is Loyalty the new CAC? The Post Purchase Consumer Journey represents an multi-staged opportunity to drive loyalty and customer lifetime value, deriving greater margin from the investment in D2C. David Morin, Sr. Director, Retail + Client Strategy at post-purchase platform provider Narvar joined Peter to bring to life the various stages of the post-purchase journey and how brands are intensifying their focus to drive trust, transparency, and advocacy, and making every customer feel like their most important customer. 

Inside Amazon, vendor managers are renowned for having vast amounts of data at their fingertips to fine tune performance and, famously, drive negotiation with their brand manufacturer partners. Imagine if you could go to those negotiations, or better yet, fine-tune your Amazon business every day with your own set of financial, retail, advertising, and brand data out of Amazon systems. The team of ex-Amazonians at Reason Automation have set out to provide just that. Rob and Peter sat down with Reason’s co-founder and CEO, to talk about what data is critical to managing your business and how they democratize access for any brand looking to win.

What do Drew Barrymore, Mindy McKnight, Taraji P. Henson, and Priyanka Chopra Jonas all have in common, besides being famous, talented, and beautiful? They are building successful brands with beauty brand incubator Maesa. They also all work with Rich Simpson Senior Vice President, Customer Development, North America & International at Maesa. Rich is charged with building a repeatable, scalable, sustainable process to grow Maesa’s brands in a digital-first omnichannel world. It’s challenging, innovative, fun work, and Rich brings the discipline of his big brand experience with General Mills and JnJ and merges that with the agility and creativity demanded by brands built on personal connections and storytelling.

Amazon, and the rest of the world has changed a lot since the last edition of John Rossman’s bestselling book on leadership and innovation, The Amazon Way. The updated 3rd edition has hit the digital and physical shelves, and the author joined Peter to talk about how those changes have impacted the classic leadership principles that made Amazon the innovators they are. In this new era, Amazon’s experiences through massive growth have demonstrated that some changes need to be made, changes that are instructive for brands that are riding a wave of change themselves.

Keeping up with the rate of innovation and investment flowing in the retailer ad space is almost an impossible task. It requires both brand and retailers to stay focused on building the capabilities to make the right decision to take greatest advantage of the right opportunities. From her role as Managing Director of Retail Media, Americas at Criteo, Sherry Smith brings her experience running global media agency Triad to the tech space, which gives her a 360 degree view of the ecosystem and best practices in the space.

From P&G, to global confectioner Ferrero, and now to helming digital commerce at PE-owned Eastpoint Sports, Rachel Tetreault brings a competitive mindset and a fierce commitment to continually refining the organization, the processes, and the key KPIs it takes to win. Rachel joined Peter to share her key learnings and best practices from across her adventures in ecommerce.