Unpacking the Digital Shelf (Digital Shelf Institute)

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.

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.

Hinkley is a family-owned, premium decorative lighting company being run by its 4th generation. To win in their category, they have invested not only in best in class product and lifestyle photography, but also in a super thoughtful and ambitious digital shelf presence paired with sterling consumer care. These investments help earn their premium, and Hinkley’s longer term north star is to build brand awareness in a category that feels often brandless. Mike Friedberg, Director Of Ecommerce at Hinkley, joins the podcast to outline their overall omnichannel and digital strategies on the way transforming the consumers’ relationship with Hinkley as they find the statement pieces that transform their home.

The holy grail of personalization always seems out of reach. Turns out, it might be closer than you think. Michelle Bacharach, co-founder and CEO of FINDMINE, shares with Peter Crosby and Rob Gonzalez how brands can achieve personalization at scale through the product expertise you already have.

In 2018, Dawn Foods, a 100 year old, family-owned bakery ingredient manufacturer, made the strategic decision to invest in delivering a best-in-class digital experience for its customers. Gireesh Sahukar, their VP of Digital, joined Justin King and Peter Crosby to lay out their ongoing journey to digital and commerce success.

Well, folks, this is it. 2024 is actually the year the cookie finally dies. No more reprieves. And that means you need to get really serious about the steps you need to take to build out the new data that tells you what’s working, what’s not, what to test, and where to invest. Jeff Greenfield,CEO at Provalytics, has done these deep dives with hundreds of clients, and came to the podcast armed to the teeth with advice and best practices about how to prepare for the cookie’s funeral.

As we shift from stopping climate change to Mitigation and adaptation, retailers and brands are increasingly making Net Zero commitments and digging into the practical ways they can have an impact. And, it turns out, that those who do are enjoying the side impacts of lower costs and higher search views and conversion. A win, win, win. Keith Anderson, Founder & Principal Analyst at Decarbonize.co, joined the podcast to shine a solar-powered light on the ways that brands are organized around turning their commitments into action and positive outcomes for all.

A podcast topic so important we needed two guests to do it justice! The role of the ecommerce leader extends beyond ecomm strategy and performance to being the educator for the rest of the organization. Education that is critical to driving the business and mindset shifts required to achieve maximum growth and efficiency. And that takes a village. That’s why Lauren Livak and Peter were excited to welcome Antoine Borde, Global Ecommerce for Danone, and Ian Jentgen, Sr. Vice President at online training provider Circus Street.

Beating the competition on any digital channel, but especially Amazon, is not a set it and forget it exercise. From their deep expertise as the Amazon digital marketing agency of record for over 125 brands, the team at Bobsled marketing has developed a POV on what it takes to succeed on Amazon. And the measurement of maturity makes you a caterpillar, spider, chameleon, or Lion. Kiri Masters and Caroline Adams from Bobsled Marketing brought to the podcast their Amazon evolutionary scale from a report entitled The Amazon Maturity Matrix: 6 factors that drive results.

No matter how much we’d like them to stand still for just one freaking minute, consumers keep changing. And its really crucial for you to keep up with their moves, or better yet, anticipate them, in order to drive innovation on the digital shelf in the right direction. That’s why the smart folks from Wunderman Thompson Commerce & Technology have put out their 7th Annual Future Shopper report, and their Head of Innovation, Naji El-Arifi, and Hugh Fletcher, their Global Marketing Director and Thought Leadership Lead, joined the podcast to give us the highlights of where shoppers are headed. I must warn you, Space Commerce comes up.

When money was free, the term “profitable growth” used to be an oxymoron in the world of startup DTC brands. But no longer. Profitably attracting and keeping consumers has become essential for today’s DTC challenger brands. And it turns out that achieving that is a deep mix of analytics, media, and creative skills that are constantly in a mix of testing, learning, and scaling modes. And it turns out that achieving that is a deep mix of analytics, media, and creative skills that are constantly in a mix of testing, learning, and scaling modes. AJ Patel had a career at Unilever spanning those skills and modes, and he has now leapt to the startup world at U Beauty. He joined the podcast to share some of those learnings and how he and his team are applying those in a startup context across every shoppable moment.

After 7 years creating the Digital Commerce practice at IDC, Jordan Jewell has taken his analyst mindset to commerce platform provider VTEX, where he is applying his analytical brain to the future of commerce, and the paths to get there. Jordan joined the podcast to walk us through the path from analyst firm to vendor, and the trends and opportunities he is seeing to increasingly monetize every pixel on the digital shelf.

Digital shelf talkers, virtual try-ons, AI warehouse robots - these were just some of the technology that Andrea K.Leigh and I saw at NRF 2025 last week. We are at a critical time in our industry where technology can fundamentally change how we do business and enhance the consumer experience. Tune in to hear how brands and retailers are using technology to create more personalized, seamless and blended experiences both in-store and online.

Amazon cut affiliate marketing rates this week. So what? Turns out, it is a wakeup call for brands about Amazon's market power. Rob and Peter unpack it all.

The best part of being in the digital commerce community is how we are all continuously sharing with, and learning from, each other. It’s especially helpful when an independent, unbiased organization like say, firstmovr, creates an opportunity to find the best and turn it into best practices. And then share freely. That’s why firstmovr’s Chief Learning Officer Chris Perry is here today, to share the results of the first ever ENDCAPS awards - celebrating and elevating brands for best-in-class digital merchandising and PDP activation, and explaining how you can turn it into action - and maybe join next year’s honorees!

New commerce opportunities in social are popping up all the time. How do you test and scale these direct methods in an agile way? Peter Crosby and Rob Gonzalez spoke with Luke Garro, EVP and Content Director at marketing agency GYK Antler, about the best practices for brands to drive connection and commerce through social.

When Amazon shifts direction, manufacturers’ strategies can be upended or opportunities created. Eamon Kelly Senior Research Analyst in Consumer and Ecommerce for Edgewater Research shares with Rob and Peter his view of what is driving Amazon’s strategy in 2020 and what that means for you and your business.

The internet as we know it is in the midst of massive change. The buzzwords abound - blockchain, crypto, Web3 NFTs. It all adds up to a new way that people connect, interact and transact with each other digitally. It will have significant impacts on marketers, but many of those impacts and their timing are yet unknown. It seems like now is the perfect time to begin an extended conversation about what these shift and innovations are, and what they might mean for brands now and in the years and decades to come. Justin King, Chief Evangelist at Salsify and self-professed Web3 nut, dropped by the podcast with Lauren Livak and Peter to get the conversation started.

The digital data ecosystem is constantly evolving and changing as new data sets become available and brands work to connect the dots between each piece of the ecosystem. The important element for brands is learning how to navigate the complexity, break down silos in their organizations and turn insights into action at every step on the consumer journey. This is an audio rebroadcast of a webinar focused on just that, led by Lauren Livak Gilbert, with guest experts Tim Caggiano, Head of eCommerce Reporting & Analytics at Nestle, Salim Bachatene, SVP Global Sales, Ecommerce at NielsenIQ, and Michael Nunes, Director of Product Strategy & Operations at Pacvue.

The annual CAGNY event in New York, is a rich opportunity to get the pulse of CPG CEOs and CFOs, and identify business trends and areas of focus that will impact the industry up until the next CAGNY. We had a secret correspondent in the room to capture all the details. We are delighted to welcome Russ Dieringer, Founder and CEO of Stratably, back on the podcast to summarize the shifts we can expect from some of the largest companies on earth, and the takeaways for you.

Two trends in ecommerce are eliding to create a new, or renewed channel for acquisition and cross-sell. One, the increasing CPAs of digital ads makes that channel more expensive and less performant. Second, many retailers have begun or boosted their direct channels and have gathered strong 1st party data on their consumers. As a result, it is our old friend direct mail, in a shiny new technology-driven suit, that is providing strong results, nimble and precise targeting, at a reasonable cost. Dave Fink, Co-founder and CEO of Postie, joined the podcast to explain how.

So Gartner has this thing called a Hype Cycle, where tech goes from a Peak Of Inflated Expectations, to the Trough of Disillusionment, to the Plateau of Productivity. And I feel like Social Commerce just keeps careening back and forth from the peak to the trough. Could TikTok’s new shopping investments represent a moment where over the next few years we break through to the plateau? Taylor Siegel, Associate Director of Commerce Client Services at MRM Commerce, leads the Social Commerce Practice there, and dropped by to fill us in on the present and future of making money on TikTok.

Conventional wisdom is that ecommerce is no longer the growth engine of the business when percentage growth rates slumped after COVID. But is that really true? Wouldn’t some deep dive data be super helpful at this moment to help inform your forecasts and budgeting for 2024? Russ Dieringer, Founder and CEO of Stratably, thought so and so created an Etailer Index to help retailers and brands predict how much eCommerce will grow in the future and therefore what role it should play in their strategy. Russ joined the podcast to walk us through the data and what to do with it.

2022. The Year the Cookie Dies. What’s a brand leader to do? Rob and Peter welcomed Nishant Desai, Senior Director of Tech and Ad Ops at Xaxis, and Stu Richards, Lead Programmatic Strategist at Catalyst to detail the actions brands can take this year to thrive in a cookieless world.

A couple of weeks ago, the advertising and communications industry gathered on the beaches of Cannes for the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. In addition to celebrating the best creative work of the past year, there are executives from around the industry connecting to figure out what’s next. Our own Lauren Livak Gilbert was part of that throng, and she returned with some great insights we just had to share, so we put her in the hot seat for a change.

There may be no more rapidly evolving element of consumer marketing today than retail media. At the forefront of that evolution is Kroger Precision Marketing, as America’s largest grocer innovates to create a retail media platform that drives a delightful experience for the consumer and attributable results for their supplier partners. Things are moving very fast over there, so we invited Cara Pratt, SVP at Kroger Precision Marketing in to bring us up to speed.

The omnichannel marketing world is in a state of continual change — from new channels and the explosion of retailer ad platforms to shifting logistics and operational challenges. In this webinar recording, Peter joins ecomemrce leaders Melissa Burdick, John Denny, Macarena Herrera, and Jim Morgan, who will give you the tools for deciding between insourcing or outsourcing for your organization.

Today, Shoppers are creating post-purchase videos on over 35 platforms in 89 languages. Each of those represents an opportunity to amplify an influencer’s voice or learn from them. But how do you discover, amplify, and drive conversion through the right videos on the right product pages and channels? Ajay Bam, CEO & Co-founder of Vyrill, has created a platform that watches & listens to millions of videos online so you don’t have to. Ajay joined Peter and Lauren Livak to tell us how.

Webinar Sign Up: How to Shift from Transactional Marketing to Brand Experiences

Podcast cross-over event! Rob Gonzalez recently went deep on commerce in 2021 with the renowned Sri Rajagopalan and Peter V.S. Bond on their podcast CPG Guys. A rollicking survey of some of the biggest trends and opportunities in the year to come in commerce.

The complexity of driving maximum profitability as an omnichannel brand is stunning. Sales or channel managers today are not just taking orders, they are owning a P&L for their piece of the business, and they need help. For many organizations, that is a Revenue Growth Management function, or RGM. We brought back Jamie Dooley from The Partnering Group and his colleague Peter Leech, who is the Managing Director of Retail and Omnichannel Commerce at TPG, for Part 3 of Profitability Month to do a deep dive on this function and some case studies on how it is driving meaningful cross-functional alignment and business shifts toward sustainable, maximum profitability.

Fred Reichheld has spent a career at Bain creating and advancing the Net Promoter Strategy at some of the world’s greatest companies. And he knew it worked, not only to drive happy customers, but also outstanding financial success. In his new book, Winning on Purpose, he brings the receipts to prove it. Full of data, case studies, and practical approaches, Fred outlines the path to quote, turbocharge your loyalty growth engine using the most efficient and sustainable fuel ever invented: happy customers coming back for more and referring their friends.”

The three middle phases of Gartner’s Technology Hype Cycle are the Peak of Inflated Expectations, down into the Trough of Disillusionment, then up to the Slope of Enlightenment. When it comes to retail media, I think we are somewhere on our way down into the trough. But digital commerce advisory firm Digital Commerce Global, or DCG, has put out a retail media benchmark report that might just get us started towards the slope of enlightenment. Gregor Murray, VP of Strategy, Digital Commerce Global, joins the podcast to lay out some of the key takeaways that could impact how your organization thinks about your retail media investment strategy.

After a decade of rapid growth and experimentation, ecommerce for many is moving into a more mature phase, while of course still being incredibly dynamic. Many companies are finding that the new opportunities for category growth lie in establishing the best practices for omnichannel execution and then scaling those capabilities while adapting it to each local market. Vivian Valks, Global Ecommerce Acceleration Manager at Arla Foods, has been at the front lines of that ecommerce growth curve at Mondelez and at Arla. She is now leading Arla’s efforts to bring together the crossfunctional collaboration across teams and in every market to improve the consumer’s omnichannel shopping journey and drive better results. She joined the podcast to lay it all out.

More and more retailers are bringing their retail media networks online in 2024, which is both a management and measurement challenge for brands, but also a significant potential early advantage for those who figure out how to manage it. Andreas Reiffen, CEO & Co-Founder of retail media supply side platform provider Crealytics, joined the podcast to share how brands can tap into solutions and providers that can ease access and management, and brings insights into how, as ROAS dies, more blunt but more accurate forms of measurement can be deployed.

Throughout a 15 year career at Johnson & Johnson, Matt Fantazier, has careened from Finance, to Brand Management and now Director, Digital Experience at Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health. Each stage of that journey has informed a way of working as a servant leader, helping teams prioritize, execute and focus on the right metrics to drive the right business result. Matt joined Lauren Livak and Peter to talk us through his career journey and the set of skills and focus areas required to drive results.

“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.

Listen in on a conversation with one of the smartest people in commerce and a podcasting legend, at least to us at the DSI. Jason Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis and co-host of the Jason and Scot show, joins Peter and Rob to talk what the heck is going on in commerce and posit brazen predictions of the future.

From her perch as Director of Omni-channel Marketing at Nestle USA, Gloria DeCoste leads a small but mighty team managing over 300 channels in the daily battle to win the digital shelf. Gloria joins the podcast to describe the mindset, process, and intense cross-functional collaboration required to get baby SKUs to market and make ‘em fly with a focus on everything that her and her team does is in service of delivering great consumer experiences

During a downturn, there are factors that work in favor of an emerging brand driving sales and engagement with their consumers, and there are headwinds. Karen Howard, Managing Director of Circleup, an investment platform for early-stage consumer brands, shares data and insights on how emerging brands should think about surviving, and thriving, in the current environment.

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.

When the new class of GLP1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy came onto the market, grocery stocks took a big hit, in anticipation that people on these drugs would snack less and pull down unit sales. An overreaction to be sure, but John Carroll, President Digital Commerce and Analytic Services at Acosta Group, has spent time in CPG boardrooms discussing what the future impact and opportunities of a commercialized version of this drug might look like, and shared this point of view. Rob Gonzalez has a low opinion of humanity’s ability to let anything stand between them and their Twinkies, and this pre-thanksgiving Ozempic Hot Take podcast episode is the result.

Walmart.com has become an attractive marketplace channel for brands to consider. The trap that many brands fall into, however, is to simply "copy and paste" their Amazon product content and advertising strategy. But Walmart's platform is different in several fundamental ways, such as how products are ranked in organic search. This podcast is an audio version of a recent DSI webinar featuring Kiri Masters, Head of Retail Marketplace Strategy at Acadia and Tom Spaven, VP of Marketing at Good Wipes sharing their Walmart playbook for success and how your brand can utilize Walmart better in your digital shelf strategy.

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.

The holy grail of omnichannel marketing is merging the informative richness of the online experience with the see it, feel it, touch it experience of the brick and mortar store. The grail is on its way. Arsen Avakian, formerly CEO and CO-founder of Argo Tea, and now CEO and Co-founder of Cooler Screens, joined Peter to talk about how his company is providing a new digital retail media opportunity in stores that is driving tremendous growth and consumer delight.

We all know the last 4 years in digital commerce have been earth-shattering, transformative and, well, exhausting. Now, however, feels like a moment in time where it’s not only possible but urgent to take stock of the shifts over the past several years and reassess how to move forward in a way that works for both consumers and your bottom line. Accenture recently did a new version of their annual massive consumer research, this time across 13 countries, that really clarifies the shifts that are here to stay, and the clarion call that creates to the C-suite to make sure to build a business that works for the long haul. Jeriad Zoghby, Global Lead for Omni-Channel Commerce at Accenture Song, joined us to explain what consumers are saying, and why you can no longer hide from the new realities of digital commerce. Or, as we like to call it, commerce.

Online grocery will more than double to 21.5% of total U.S. grocery sales by 2025. A major outlet for that growth will likely be Instacart, and brand leaders need to fully understand the challenges, opportunities, and likely evolution of this platform to maximize revenue and minimize risk. Kiri Masters, founder of digital marketing agency Bobsled Marketing, is the co-author of a new book, Instacart for CMOs. Join host Peter Crosby of the Digital Shelf Institute for an interview with Kiri as she presents the key takeaways from her research.

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.

This week, This week, Peter and Rob do a deep dive on Casper's IPO filing and what it means for DTC. Plus, mockery of US states via their 2019 top Walmart purchases.

Getting clear answers to critical questions about your return on ad spend is, let’s just call it - a freaking nightmare. There are as yet no clear standards to compare retailer media apples to apples, no easy path to ROAS or, even more importantly, incremental ROAS, or iROAS. With the data being all over the place across retailers, and the incentives often at odds, the chain of trust on your media investments is broken. Not irretrievably so, but that’s where we are now. Andrew Criezis, President at NIQ, joined the podcast from the front lines of this battle for clear omnichannel ROI, and offers his best advice for how brands can organize and optimize for measurable omnichannel success.

We come bearing great news for the industry: the Wild West of Retail Media has just started on a path to get way less wild, and way more transparent, accurate, reliable, and secure. All thanks to the work of the IAB, the Media Rating Council and experts from across the industry. Yes, the IAB has released a landmark new set of guidelines for retail media and measurement, a significant step forward to help organizations quote “ensure compliance with privacy regulations, maintain transparency with users, and enhanced privacy protections in reported outcomes data sets. Joining us today on this Unpacking the Digital Shelf MEGAsode are Jeffrey Bustos, VP Measurement Addressability Data at IAB, Kelly Kachnowski, VP of Commercial Development at the Mars Agency, and Michael Schuh, VP of Media Strategy & Product at Kroger Precision Marketing. Let’s dig in!

“We like the operational headache.” This quote from the conversation with Mehtab Bhogal, Cofounder of Karta Ventures, perfectly describes the grit and expertise it takes to make a living rescuing and reinvigorating distressed DTC businesses. Mehtab shared his turnaround process, how he evaluates opportunities, and his perspective on the current and future environment for DTC success as headwinds continue.

The data is clear - in the age of authenticity, user generated content is a critical component in driving higher conversion rates, satisfaction, and loyalty on product pages and social media channels. Executing it at scale can be the challenge. That’s why we invited Tom Logan, Co-founder & CEO at content generation and testing platform provider Cohley to join the podcast and share some best practices around testing, scaling, and maximizing the sales impact of your user generated content strategy.

What’s the old adage? You can’t manage what you don’t measure. And defining the right KPIs to measure and optimize the business value you are driving on the digital shelf has long been a moving target. But there is now enough experience and best practices developing out there to really build a solid discipline around it. This is a podcast audio version of a webinar featuring of course Lauren Livak, Director of the Digital Shelf Institute and driving force behind the playbook, and our special guest, Whitney Young, Director of Ecommerce at Energizer to discuss the critical KPIs of the digital shelf and why it’s imperative to measure your successes in your ecommerce strategy.

This episode, we launch a new occasional format for the 'pod. A report on books that we think are worthy of your attention, and why. Rob kicks it off with his POV on Leap, by Howard Yu.

With 25 years in digital commerce, seasoned by tenures at Estee Lauder and J&J, Jennie Alexander has learned the essential ingredient of commerce - always keeping the customer at the center. Easier said than done, and Jennie is now sharing her data, organizational, and humanistic lessons from her work with others through her work as an ecommerce and digital consultant. She joined the podcast to share the fruits of those hard-fought lessons.

This week, Peter and Rob dig into the 2019 store closing stats, and talk about some potential sources of new revenue and margin in 2020.

Welcome to episode 2 of Profitability Month! Today we are taking a deep dive into the best practices to drive opportunistic innovation in the supply chain, as Dana Peirson, supply chain consultant at The Partnering Group, puts it. She and her colleague Jamie Dooley from the digital commerce practice at TPG joined forces on the podcast to outline some significant opportunities for realizing growth and profit through deep cross-team collaboration in supply chain optimization.

Content is understandably a key focus for digital leaders: it's the first thing consumers see and a key factor in their decision-making. Brands have placed a renewed emphasis on creating best-in-class content, but they're also questioning what content levers they need to pull to sway potential buyers. After extensive research and in-depth interviews with digital leaders, The Digital Shelf Institute & Profitero have found that it takes much more than producing great content to effectively convert shoppers. This is an audio rebroadcast of webinar featuring Mike Black, CMO at Profitero, Shazer Baig, Ecommerce Director at L’Oreal,, and Kathleen Harrington, Vice President, Digital Merchandising at Hasbro, who joined Lauren Livak Gilbert to talk through a new framework for managing and measuring content maturity.

As everyone strives towards increasing profitability in ecommerce and omnichannel, exerting more control over pricing erosion is a key area of opportunity. Which brings us to the people, process and tech to pull that off, and that often means building out and enforcing a MAP policy. We invited Rae Guimond, Director of Digital Shelf Strategy at PriceSpider, to join the pod and lay out the why, whats and how of implementing and honing a MAP policy in this era of profitability.

Every quarter, the ecommerce education consultancy Allume Group consolidates the output of expert conversations, annual reports, and the latest data to create their Ecommerce Insider Quarterly report, or EIQ. It’s chock a block full of the most current insights into the present and future of ecommerce. Andrea Leigh, Founder & CEO of Allume Group rejoins the podcast for her takeaways from their Q2 research.

Face it, it's been a tough week. So Rob, Peter, and production assistant Matt rattle off their favorite purchase experiences of the quarantine.

Excelling at ecommerce and digital marketing takes a certain combination of diverse skills, often difficult to find in one human being. Aaron Zagha, CMO of Newton Baby, thinks of it as a mix of math, magic, and art. Aaron joined Lauren Livak and Peter to walk us through how that mix shows up in the daily battle for consumer delight, well-rested babies, and optimizing for total growth at Newton Baby.

It was a tough week for direct to consumer brands as grooming company Harry's had a major investment challenged by the FTC, and online consumer goods store Brandless shut down. Meanwhile, major retailer Kroger received a $550 million investment from Berkshire Hathaway. Peter and Rob break down what all of this means.

The ecommerce and retail media landscape is shifting under our feet. Todd Szahun of Kantar and Kerry Curran at Group M Catalyst teamed up on a new foundational piece of research across both consumers and industry professionals. They join Rob and Peter to dig into the stats and takeaways that will inform marketing strategies in 2021.

The product information management (PIM) category is at a pivot point with Forrester, IDC, and Ventana Research all releasing analyst reports in 2021. The report leaders have changed several times in the last 10 years as the evaluation criteria for PIM has been rewritten by analyst firms and buyers, reflecting that a new and volatile market has been emerging. In this podcast presentation of a recent webinar, co-hosts Rob Gonzalez and Peter Crosby discuss what has happened over the last decade, and what they predict will happen next.

Register for the D2C Playbook Series featuring Vivian Chang

With acquisition costs rising and margins tightening, expanding the value of the customers you already have is the new growth strategy. Now with more app users than Starbucks, closing in on 12 million in the US, Fetch Rewards is supercharging the ongoing engagement of consumers with their favorite brands. Wes Schroll, CEO & Founder, Fetch Rewards, joined the podcast to talk about the opportunities available to brands to both monetize and innovate through creating loyalty at scale. Plus, it’s fun!

Links mentioned:

 https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox

Amazon is on an at-all-costs transformation to drive costs out of their business, squeeze the most out of marketplaces, and automate as much of their relationships with their suppliers as possible. According to Martin Heubel, founder of Amazon consultancy Consulterce, that means they are leaving the pesky details of growing your category and your top-line and bottom-lline growth to you. And that requires strategic shifts on your part over the next few years if you are to achieve profitable growth with Amazon. Armed with the results of a survey of 500 Amazon 1P Sellers, Martin joined us to chart that course of strategic rethinking that must happen for success in this next decade of the digital shelf.

Sometimes talking about the Future of Shopping, in capital letters, can be so annoying. Well, thanks for telling me someday we will be flying like the Jetsons, look it up GenZ, but what good does that do me now? That’s why it was so satisfying to talk about the near future of shopping - the cool, impactful experiences that are being created now by early adopters, with Nat Pavic, founder and host of the Salesforce Commerce Cloud Innovations Podcast, and product marketer at Salesforce. Take a listen - maybe the next best thing for your company is nearer than you think.

A few weeks ago, Spencer Millerberg, Founding Partner at DetailPage.com was on the podcast talking about the latest in SEO trends in digital commerce. But we invited him back for a deeper dive on Amazon AI, as they are the bellwether of where SEO will go in the next few years. The changes are ones no brand should sleep on, and the opportunities to win market share based on the right product page content to feed that hungry beast Rufus will be considerable. For example, Amazon has added hidden fields to fuel some of this new SEO. And only 7% of brands have them filled out. Sure, SEO is just a game, but this time rules are REALLY changing. Spencer joined the pod to talk about what’s happening, and what’s ahead.

On our weekly roundtable of what's happening in manufacturing, we're talking Halloween - or at least what's scary in manufacturing these days. Turns out it's trade wars and industry-killing millennials. Featuring host Peter Crosby, Rob Gonzalez, and Molly Schonthal.

Okay, yeah, so you need to pay attention to this AI thing. Steve Engelbrecht, Founder and CEO of Sitation, and his team have developed an AI tool that is capable of generating 15,000 product descriptions per hour for their enterprise customers, connected with their PIMs and the workflows to keep humans in the loop. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What does all this mean? Where is it going? What are the risks? Is this a job killer? Can it write my podcast intros? Steve provides some answers to all this and more in this episode.

Some leaders in ecommerce were able to see the storm clouds gathering over advertising-driven performance marketing, and invest strategically to test and grow new muscles for attracting and keeping customers. Joe Fisch, CEO of Wine Access, and his team saw those shifts coming, and have expanded the ways in which they reach new customers, and how they invest in content and superior customer service to keep them and grow their value over time. It’s an interesting road map for any brand looking to diversify their acquisition and loyalty strategy.

Register for our upcoming webinar with Jordan Jewell from IDC talking about the tech stack for D2C. https://www.salsify.com/content/webinar-d2c-playbook

Other sources we mentioned:

• https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/business/coronavirus-malls-department-stores-bankruptcy.html?utm_source=Premium+list&utm_campaign=266472b352-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_07_16_05_17&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_52809a9e4b-266472b352-71156322
• https://www.ai-cio.com/in-focus/shop-talk/how-do-you-repurpose-a-mall/
• https://twitter.com/michael_mba/status/1283211274747121664?s=12
• https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/the-great-acceleration

What makes us so darn special from every other species on earth, and what do we do about it? According to author and technologist Byron Reese, in his new book Stories, Dice, and Rocks, it is our ability to imagine the future and recall the past, and, by sharing that knowledge at an unprecedented scale to actually shape our future. Including in commerce. This is a fascinating conversation with a brilliant man with an optimistic view of humanity, backed up by data.

AI, Machine learning, I know, I know, give it a rest, Crosby! Sorry, we can’t. There’s just too much freaking potential in it, so there’s value in spotlighting use cases that show potential for making your jobs easier and your performance better. One of those is how to make your investments in paid and organic search more predictive and strategic through better data and new metics. Aisha Khan, VP Strategy and Insights at Momentum Commerce, joins the podcast to share the crystal ball for Amazon search that they have been building at Momentum Commerce, and how this kind of data could take budgeting, measurement, and performance in search to a whole ‘nother level.

The first 10 years of the Digital Shelf was about standing a program up on the side, seeing what would come of it. Now we know - and it's the main growth driver of virtually every brand. So now, the way we operate it must mature to be a profitable, reliable, measurable part of the business. That is why Chris Perry, Chief Learning Officer and Oskar Kaszubski, Chief Growth Officer at commerce education and change management consultancy firstmovr, revised their Sheared report to a new edition for 2023, entitled Going Corporate Commando in the Clash for Commerce. Get ready for some sage advice for moving yourself along the commerce maturity curve.

As we all know, the ground of commerce and consumer behavior continue to shift under our feet as we near the end of the 1st half of 2022. What do we know, and how should we shift to stay nimble and drive performance and profitability? Andrea Leigh, formerly of IdeoClick and now Founder and CEO of ecommerce education consultancy Allume Group, rejoins the podcast to put the recent earnings reports and shareholder meetings in perspective as we gird our digital loins for the next six months of adventure in a digital first world.

The trend of brand manufacturers going direct to consumer has created more opportunities than ever for them to delight their consumers with moments that matter. That delight turns into consumer advocacy and loyalty, which drives margin and revenue. Fred Reichheld, creator of the loyalty practice at Bain & Company, and the legendary creator of the Net Promoter System, spoke with Peter Crosby about what it means to be a promoter-based business and the path to turning consumer delight into business success.

Join James Seidl, VP of digital commerce at McCormick, to learn how he built a powerful ecommerce organization while leading the transformation of its direct-to-consumer (D2C) strategy. Explore McCormick's wins and lessons learned on this D2C journey, as well as Seidl’s actionable insights on how to build and execute a winning D2C strategy.

Until our robot overlords take over, winning on the digital shelf requires the right team of people. What is the mix of hard and soft skills that team members need to have to deliver and thrive in a rapidly changing and critical sector of the business? Lauren Livak, who ran North American Digital shelf strategy at Johnson and Johnson and is now Director of the Digital Shelf Institute, teamed up with Sheri Stoller, Director of Ecommerce at Trilliant Food and Nutrition in a recent Digital Shelf Playbook series webinar to answer this question and many more. It’s such a great conversation, we wanted to share it with our podcast audience as well.

Watch Chris Parsons, president of the Americas for the Mayborn Group

Benedict Evans Article

As new customer acquisition becomes more challenging, more brands are looking for ways to increase each consumers’ lifetime value. Earning and keeping the privilege of SMS messaging your consumers is one of those high potential relationships that can drive loyalty, repeat purchases, and premiumization. Megan Trinidad, VP, Executive Creative Director at digital design and advertising agency R/GA, joined the podcast to provide insights on the new best practices that are driving meaningful results for brands.

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.

For brands looking for growth, an obvious opportunity is expanding to new markets. But each market comes with its challenges, costs, and requirements for process and organizational transformation. This is definitely true of the countries that make up the EMEA market. Jérôme de Guigné, Founder and CEO, of ecommerce agency e-Comas, joined the podcast to share his deep experience working with brands large and small to establish profitable and sustainable eCommerce strategies in EMEA.

More than ever, brands need to wring maximum efficiency and performance out of every channel in which they invest. Marketplaces are places of great potential opportunity, but also require investment in new capabilities and skills to be successful. To make the most of your 2023 marketplace opportunity, Rob Gonzalez and Peter Crosby welcomed Emily Pfeiffer as their guest on the podcast. Emily is a Principal Analyst at Forrester Research covering commerce tech, specifically focused on B2C brands and retailers.

James Seidl from McCormick webinar on Sept 2nd: https://www.salsify.com/content/webinar-mccormick-digital-commerce

Fulfillment and supply chain have such a significant impact on both the consumer experience and achieving profitability in omnichannel. That’s why we wanted to dig into the relatively new area of microfulfillment. The ability to harness data about your consumers at a zip code level and turn that into the right product and assortments, manage inventory and availability close to the consumer, and get them their product fast is offering many companies reduced fees, improved inventory transparency, and lower costs. Corey Apirian, CEO at Davinci Micro Fulfillment, joined the podcast to discuss microfulfillment’s place in an overall fulfillment strategy and some examples of companies that are using it to shift to a more profitable, customer-friendly, and sustainable business.

At a time when every step in the consumer journey must feel safe, retailers have an opportunity to revisit the power of technology and their people to signal safety while re-introducing moments of discovery to drive sales. Gwen Morrison, former CEO of WPP's Global Retail Practice and a partner with Candezent Advisory, brings her vast experience working on retail innovation to a new moment and a new challenge – but one she knows retail will conquer.

When measuring Amazon DSP performance, if all you are looking at is ROAS, impressions, and views, you are not using the full range of metrics available to understand the impact of your spend across the full range of the consumer buying cycle. Kiri Masters, Head of Retail Marketplace Strategy at Acadia, recently published a report outlining 23 Amazon DSP performance metrics to measure, optimize, and communicate the impact of your campaigns, both on- and off-Amazon. Kiri joined the podcast to give us the highlights.

One of the biggest growth categories during COVID-19 is alcohol beverages, and consumers are using digital platforms to get it. Wayne Duan, VP of Ecommerce and Digital Commerce at Constellation Brands joins Peter Crosby and Rob Gonzalez to discuss how the alcohol beverage industry is managing this rise in digital consumers, and what of these new trends may stick and apply across other categories.

From the hallowed halls of Ogilvy, where branding was born, comes a new set of thinking around how brand can and must be infused into every stage of the consumer commerce journey. Edward Kim, Managing Partner of the Commerce practice at Ogilvy and Dan Saltzman, their VICE PRESIDENT, DESIGN + USER EXPERIENCE joined Rob and Peter to discuss how teams of misfits at global manufacturers are coming together to reinvigorate the role of brand in commerce.

www.bobsledmarketing.com

On January 27th, Peter hosted a webinar entitled 'A Crash Course in TikTok Marketing', featuring Evan Horowitz, CEO, and co-founder of creative agency Movers+Shakers, who created the most successful marketing campaign on TikTok ever.

Anyone who has spent any time following the ecommerce industry and particularly Amazon and Walmart is familiar with the journalism of Jason Del Rey, who spent a decade at Recode documenting the transformation of retail, and also through his podcast Land of the Giants: The Rise of Amazon. He has now come out with a deeply researched and incisive book entitled Winner Sells All: Amazon, Walmart, and the Battle for Our Wallets, and he joined the podcast to share some insights of this most consequential era in retail, and where this clash of the titans might go from here.

There’s so much noise in ecommerce today, and filtering out that noise to find the meaningful signal to push your business forward can be hard to find. Don Brett, Chief Digital Officer, NBG Home, shows us how his playbook, refined over the years, can lead to modern commerce success.

Every quarter, the ecommerce education consultancy Allume Group consolidates the output of expert conversations, annual reports, and the latest data to create their Ecommerce Insider Quarterly report, or EIQ. It’s chock a block full of the most current insights into the present and future of ecommerce. Andrea Leigh, Founder & CEO of Allume Group rejoins the podcast for her takeaways from their Q3 research.

The Wall Street Journal released an article this week with claims against Amazon for using Marketplace data to inform on their private-label business. Is what they're doing wrong? Rob Gonzalez gives his "rantifesto" on these accusations against the Amazon private-label business.