The Modern Retail Podcast

Blockchain and AI are IBM's big bets to take the company back on the top as a leader in innovation and technology. Michelle Peluso, chief marketing officer at IBM, discusses how the technologies will change the craft of marketing.

There's a lot of talk around "nimbleness" inside big companies. But the legacy internal red tape stands in the way of operations and the lessons of traditional marketing behavior are difficult to unlearn. That's been the responsibility of Pete Blackshaw, Nestlé’s Global Head of Digital Innovation Service & Service Models, who has spent the last few years working on changing up the company's internal makeup so it can move faster. Blackshaw discusses the ease and difficulty of being a direct-to-consumer brand, his upcoming new job at Cintrifuse and more.

Instagram has long been touted as a haven for direct-to-consumer brands. The case has been the same for Rothy’s, a women’s shoe brand that recently surged in popularity after actress and royal family member Meghan Markle, wore the label on the day of her pregnancy announcement. But as the DTC market gets more and more saturated and that starts to reflect on Instagram, there's also potentially a tipping point where it ceases to make sense as a medium. Cooper discusses opening retail stores, finding new growth paths, investing in TV and more.

Cannabis has succeeded in going from being stigmatized by society to now capturing the imagination of retailers, investors and consumers. MedMen, a publicly traded company out of California, is at the forefront of the developing cannabis industry. Standing in the way of its retail strategy are big hurdles like hyperlocal compliance issues, inconsistent regulations that differ state by state and the stigmatization associated with cannabis itself. David Dancer, the newly appointed CMO at MedMen, talks about hyperlocal marketing, working with influencers and figuring out cannabis marketing.

The agency world is shrinking. Alex Leikikh, global CEO at MullenLowe Group, thinks there is an oversupply of agencies in the U.S. market. He believes that as more clients start to go in-house, there will be more mergers and more agencies will go out of business. MullenLowe Group is also a result of a merger that happened over three years ago. In our latest episode, Leikikh discusses management lessons he learned, the importance of bundling creative and media talent together and more.

Citi has doubled down on music as it tries to become a more emotional part of its customers' lives, Citi’s Global Consumer CMO Jennifer Breithaupt said in the latest episode of Making Marketing. Breithaupt discusses how experiential made Citi’s marketing more effective, doing market-mix modeling and more.

Independent agencies are having a moment in the competitive advertising agency landscape, but it's not all rosy. On this episode of Making Marketing, Neil Heymann, Droga5's new chief creative officer, discussed how tough it is to be an indie creative agency these days, with client demands that keep changing in a market where it feels like nobody cares about creativity anymore.

Last week, Midwest digital shop VML was merged with old-school legacy agency Y&R, one of the first moves under WPP's new CEO, Mark Read. It's part of a larger plan to create a slimmer, less siloed holding company that's better suited to face the challenges of the industry. The global CEO of now named VMLY&R, Jon Cook, says a consolidation in the industry was long overdue -- and this is just the beginning.

When it comes to lifestyle brands, Equinox makes a pretty good case for itself. What started out as a luxury gym has evolved into a hospitality brand, talent agency, digital magazine, and more. Leading the lifestyle charge is CMO Vimla Black Gupta, who believes that her role is all about understanding her customer as a whole. On this week's episode of Making Marketing, Black Gupta sat down to talk with us about the Equinox lifestyle, the art of mastering your own data, and how they expanded into a talent agency and hospitality brand.

In 1977, Robert Greenberg, also known as Bob, and his brother, Richard, decided to combine both their creative powers and initials to create R/GA. Since its creation over 40 years ago, R/GA has evolved many times, and that, according to Bob, played a major part in keeping it successful. On this episode of Making Marketing, Bob sat down to talk with us about the origins of R/GA, its near-constant evolution, and why people are so scared of change in the industry.