Unpacking the Digital Shelf

Risk vs. reward. Does it always need to be a binary choice? Do you and your legal teams always need to be at odds? Well, there’s a new lawyer in town. And Josh Jacobs, Legal Director at North America Core Reckitt and his team have invested a ton of time and effort in building out a process of collaboration, education, and intense communication to change that paradigm and make his Reckitt legal team a powerful partner in lowering risk and increasing the rewards. Josh joined the podcast and laid out he brings an innovative mindset and strong empathy for business objectives to the challenging areas of risk management, brand protection, and consumer privacy. It’s a really fresh perspective, and a competitive advantage. And he brought along Mr. Mucus!

Jon Harding, CIO of Conair, shares his expertise on how IT drives business growth and transforms organizational collaboration. He highlights insights from a recent DSI research report, emphasizing the crucial synergy between IT and marketing teams. The conversation also delves into the benefits of agile methodologies for technology planning and the role of AI in enhancing operational efficiency. Ultimately, they stress the importance of breaking down silos to align IT initiatives with business goals, paving the way for a more integrated approach to consumer journeys.

So when Lauren invited Heather Campain, VP, CPG Integrated Go-to-Market Strategy at Epsilon, onto the podcast I immediately went to her LinkedIn, and here’s what I saw below her name: Unified Commerce Leader | Silo Slayer | Possibilist | Omni Integration | eComm| Marketing | Retail Media | Joint Value Realization | JBP | Product Dev | Data+Analytics | Transformation. That plus 10 years at JnJ, Head of Strategy for the Walmart Business at Pepsico, and now at Epsilon. I thought “this is going to be good.” And it was.

Sunava Dutta, Chief Product Officer at Pacvue, shares her expert insights on navigating the complexities of mega sales in retail. She discusses how brands can adapt strategies to meet evolving consumer behaviors, emphasizing data-driven approaches like Incremental Return on Advertising Spend. Sunava also highlights the importance of cross-department collaboration and innovative tools to enhance decision-making. Additionally, she dives into the role of AI in retail, exploring its creative potential and the challenges it brings.

“How Can We Get More Product Content to the PDP Faster”? That question is top of mind every day for Carolan Di Fiore, Digital Content Deployment Manager at Hershey. Drawing from her prior experience in Ecommerce and digital roles at other global companies like Bimbo Bakeries, Carolan hit the ground running at Hershey a year and a half ago, and joins the podcast to describe the strategies that she and a cross-functional group of marketing, sales, data, and technology leaders are implementing to deliver answers to that core question. And in doing so, speed time to market, accelerate performance, and delight the consumer.

Three hundred freakin’ episodes of Unpacking the Digital Shelf! We celebrate by bringing together the 3 co-hosts to squeeze out the lessons learned from our generous and brilliant guests, and highlight where we think you’ll want to put your energies to make sure you, and your organization, are ready for the opportunities to come.

Loyalty is one of the most important components of love. It can also be one of the greatest drivers of your competitive advantage and growth in financially challenging times. Chris Perry, Chief Learning Officer at firstmovr and our own Lauren Livak Gilbert teamed up to dig into the best new practices of loyalty and describe them in a new research report, 8 Love Languages of Shopper Loyalty. We dive into their advice on how to most effectively build your relationship and turn your best customers into even better customers and, ultimately, your advocates.

Retail media has been around long enough now for some clear trends to develop in terms of the best practices that lead to the best outcomes from your investment. Russ Dieringer, founder and CEO of Stratably, has returned with a refresh to their “How Brands Do Retail Media” report, which uses both quantitative and qualitative data from more than 70 large to medium-sized CPG brands to separate the leaders from the laggards, and illuminate the path to greater ROI on your retail media investment.

In the 2024 holiday shopping season, use of AI chatbot shopping rose 6,000% over the prior year, according to Adobe. Those are searches driven by the intent of the shopper, and many never even make it to a product page. Winning your place in those shopping journeys will require mastering the new capabilities of generative engine optimization, or GEO. Max Sinclair, Founder & CEO at Ecomtent, joined the podcast to provide a primer of what’s changing and what’s possible to start seizing the opportunity faster than your competitors. Early mover’s advantage is at stake, and the answer won’t be more keywords.

Brian Yamada, Chief Innovation Officer at VML, says this era of AI innovation could be best described using the title of the Oscar Winner for Best Picture at the 2023: Everything, Everywhere All at Once. So Brian joined the podcast to take some of the craziness out of it all by digging into the 3 waves of AI innovation - content, experience, and agents. How you should think about them and how to work through them within your organization and with your partners.