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Profitero’s Keith Anderson is joined by Andrew Lipsman, Principal Analyst at eMarketer. Keith and Andrew discuss the origin of Prime Day and its significance to Amazon, Prime Day’s evolution from a single day promotional event to multi-day, what it means for Amazon’s retail competitors and participating brands, and their Prime Day 2019 predictions.

In this episode, Profitero’s Andrew Pearl is joined by eCom veteran Neel Arora (Neel’s career spans time at PepsiCo, Amazon and Nestle). Andrew and Neel cover the eternal questions of eCommerce covering the incrementality issue, and what’s the ROI of my eCommerce investment?

In this episode, Keith is joined by Chris Barnes, SVP, Corporate Development & Solutions Delivery at Syndigo (formerly Gladson, WebCollage, FSEnet, Nutritionix, ItemMaster and Edgenet). Keith and Chris provide their perspectives on the wave of mergers, acquisitions and consolidation in the broader eCommerce ecosystem for retailers and brands. They also discuss what good content looks like, who gets to define what “good” is, and share lessons they’ve learned about how creating, managing, syndicating and analyzing content can be more efficient and effective.

In this episode, Keith is joined by Natalie Berg and Miya Knights, co-authors of the new book Amazon: How the World’s Most Relentless Retailer will Continue to Revolutionize Commerce.  

Keith is joined by Olga Yurovski, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Shopperations, a Marketing System of Record for the Retail and Consumer Packaged Goods industry. She is an industry veteran with more than 15 years of experience working for Fortune 500 companies in brand marketing, product marketing and shopper marketing capacities. Her journey from a corporate marketing world to a land of marketing technology startups gave Olga a unique opportunity to speak with hundreds of shopper marketers from dozens of CPG companies. Olga shares the story of founding Shopperations to help shopper marketers more effectively and efficiently budget, plan, and execute. The convergence of shopper marketing disciplines with eCommerce, and how brands’ organizational structures, toolkits and processes may need to evolve to preserve deep and direct relationships with consumers. Have a question for Olga? She can be reached at Olga@shopperations.com.

In this episode, recorded live from Shop.org in Las Vegas, Keith is joined by Eric Bisceglia, VP, Go to Market at Voysis. Previously, Eric served as VP of Product and Marketing at Attend, an event technology startup that was acquired by Event Farm. Prior to that, he held leadership roles at LogMeIn in product and marketing, most recently serving as VP of eCommerce where he was responsible for the company’s web strategy and online sales. Keith and Eric cover voice AI, as well as machine learning and AI as it applies to eCommerce and retail more broadly. They also discuss other themes and trends they were hearing at the event.

The FMI and Nielsen forecast that 70% of US shoppers could be buying groceries online by as early as 2022. But how should CPG businesses be preparing for this seismic shift? Keith Anderson is joined by Oskar Kaszubski, a global eCommerce leader with 15 years of experience leading digital transformation for Fortune 100 companies (including Mondelez and Kimberly-Clark), mid-size and start-ups. Currently, Oskar is VP, eCommerce Acceleration at Kellogg’s where he’s responsible for future-proofing global company growth via eCommerce and digital business innovation. Keith and Oskar discuss how to define the scope and lead digital transformation to position eCommerce for success (in terms of what to do but equally what not to do), the outlook for online grocery growth, as well as some of Oskar’s observations on specific technologies that are changing how consumers engage with retailers and brands.

At the start of the year, Forbes magazine called 2017 ‘the year of voice’ and study after study points to the phenomenal growth of voice-activated devices. In this new episode, Keith Anderson is joined by Eric Bisceglia, VP of Go-to-Market at voice technology platform Voysis, which enables brands and retailers to add their own voice interface to a website or mobile app. Keith and Eric cover what has driven voice adoption and where we are on the maturity curve, some of the decisions that retailers and brands are grappling with, as well as fresh new insight from a recent Voysis study which looks at the intersection of mobile and voice.

As Prime Day has proven, “fabricated” online shopping events can drive significant spikes in traffic and sales volume during times of the year that historically may not have been seasonal peaks.  In this episode Keith Anderson is joined by Nicole Vinson, the group director of eCommerce at The Integer Group. The episode covers a lot of ground, including how brands can optimize for seasonal and commercially-driven events like Prime Day, why prioritizing product content for mobile and voice devices is becoming so important, as well as some of the emerging marketing and merchandising vehicles that brands can leverage, such as Amazon Media Group (AMG).

As eCommerce continues to evolve and disrupt newer online categories like food and grocery, the path to success demands different strategies, skillsets, and capabilities. In this episode Keith Anderson is joined by Tim Madigan, Vice President of eCommerce at Tyson Foods, a Profitero customer. Tim began his career at Procter & Gamble and then joined SC Johnson where he created and built out their eCommerce strategy and capability. Keith and Tim discuss what it was like to play a pioneering role in establishing an eCommerce capability at some of the world’s leading CPG companies, what that team, capability and strategy ultimately looked like, as well as factors that are unique and different about leading eCommerce for a company that sells perishables instead of shelf stable products.

On the back of expansion into new categories such as Grocery, new touch points such as Prime Now, and new technologies such as Alexa, Amazon is rapidly expanding its ecosystem – creating a vast landscape of untapped opportunity for suppliers.   Andrew Pearl, Profitero’s Director of Strategy & Insights EMEA talks with Jack Webb who has recently joined Profitero as a Strategy & Insight Analyst. Prior to Profitero, Jack worked for ACCO Brands where he developed an expertise in Amazon Marketing Services.   In this episode,  Andrew and Jack discuss the key stages in building a trading relationship with Amazon, with a focus on the early stages of product launches, managing growth expectations and using Amazon services to drive further sales.  Andrew and Jack also discuss how a collaborative partnership with Amazon through data sharing can provide real benefits to brands.

eCommerce continues to be an increasingly dynamic landscape and a significant opportunity for brands across many different platforms: Amazon, retailer dot com sites (e.g Walmart.com) as well as DTC (direct to consumer). Profitero’s SVP Strategy and Insights Keith Anderson is joined by VaynerMedia’s SVP of eCommerce, Sabir Semerkant. VaynerMedia is an agency that focuses on social and digital marketing. The episode covers a lot of ground, starting with how to think about the eCommerce landscape and defining what eCommerce actually is. Keith and Sabir also explore how to define success online, where to play, and especially how to win by optimizing some of the fundamentals and some of the more advanced vehicles at your disposal – not just on Amazon.

In this episode Keith Anderson is joined by Jason Del Rey, Senior Editor of Commerce, Recode. They discuss what the potential Amazon acquistion of Whole Foods means to both sides, what it means to the grocery industry, and the future of retail. 

eCommerce is making an impact on just about every industry imaginable, and alcohol looks set to be the next sector to be disrupted by the continued shift to digital. In this episode, Profitero’s SVP Strategy and Insights Keith Anderson is joined by Danny Brager, SVP of Nielsen’s US Beverage Alcohol Practice. Keith and Danny discuss the recent Profitero-Nielsen white paper ‘How Alcohol Brands Can Tap the eCommerce Opportunity’ and cover the maturity level for the online alcohol category versus other CPG categories, the various online delivery models and what’s driving growth, and what alcohol brands should be doing today to plan for the future.

Online grocery shopping is widely regarded as the fastest growing segment in the overall grocery retail market. A recent report by FMI-Nielsen projects that online grocery spending could increase from 4.3 percent of total U.S. food and beverage sales currently to as much as 20 percent by 2025 – a $100 billion market opportunity. Profitero’s SVP Strategy and Insights Keith Anderson is joined by Nilam Ganenthiran, Chief Business Officer at Instacart, the leading online grocery platform in the US. Keith and Nilam discuss the state of online grocery in the US and how it compares to other more mature markets like the UK, some of the economic realities and challenges of online grocery overall, the distinctions between different grocery models (delivery versus click and collect), and what’s on the horizon on both the demand and supply chain side for online grocery.

The online channel represents a massive opportunity for new and emerging brands, enabling challenger brands to grab a disproportionate share of the market. Profitero’s SVP Strategy and Insights Keith Anderson is joined by Arnold Ventura, VP of Business Development at Califia Farms, a plant-based beverage manufacturer in California (which also happens to be a Profitero customer). Keith and Arnold discuss the many opportunities and challenges for both incumbent and emerging brands in the online channel, supply chain logistics and economic complexity for CPGs – particularly in the beverage category, as well as some of the opportunities for brands in going DTC (direct-to-consumer). Arnold was also generous enough to offer our podcast audience a special discount code to try Califia products. If you go to califiafarms.com, use promo code Profitero20 and receive a 20% discount on your order.

The U.S may well be the largest market for eCommerce in North America but Canada is fast catching up, with retail sales expected to reach almost 29 billion Canadian dollars by 2021. In this episode, Profitero’s SVP Strategy and Insights Keith Anderson is joined by Simon Rodrigue, who has led some of the largest and fastest-growing online businesses in Canada including Wal-Mart Canada and Sears Canada. More recently, Simon is the co-founder of natural tea brand InstantTeas.com. Keith and Simon cover the eCommerce landscape in Canada, the phenomenal growth that the market is seeing and what's fuelling it, online grocery models like click and collect and full-basket delivery, as well as the increasing opportunity for brands to sell direct to consumers.

Winning in the digital channel is about optimizing performance and continuous improvement - with data foundational to driving the most effective strategy and focus. In this latest episode, Profitero’s SVP Strategy and Insights Keith Anderson is joined by Scott Hamm, VP of eCommerce Analytics for Rockfish Interactive. Scott has spent the last 10 years in various digital analytics roles, helping customers drive online sales at pureplays like Amazon and omnichannel retailers like Walmart. Keith and Scott discuss how measurement and analytics have evolved for the CPG industry, how brands can effectively measure the impact of their eCommerce plan (e.g is their retail partner carrying the right product content?), the importance of digital shelf metrics to better understand the consumer path to purchase, and how brands can win in search - and where search is headed.

Coupons continue to be an effective promotion tactic, particularly with newer value-conscious generations. However times are changing fast: In the first half of 2016, Kantar Media reported that the number of digital coupons grew by 23.4 percent. Profitero’s Director of Strategy and Insights EMEA Andrew Pearl is joined by Paul Lees, Managing Director of CheckoutSmart, an app that enables FMCG brands to connect directly with supermarket shoppers before, during and after their shop through personalized digital offers. Andrew and Paul discuss the influence of digital coupons on a shopper’s path to purchase, how to tailor specific offers based on a consumer’s previous purchasing history, and whether shoppers are ready to take full advantage of beacon technology to receive offers in real-time, based on their location.

The recent announcement of Amazon Go represents another example of the retailer removing friction from the grocery shopping process and continuously innovating on price, selection, convenience and experience. Profitero’s Director of Strategy and Insights EMEA Andrew Pearl is joined by Stuart Heffernan, head of eCommerce at GSK. Stuart has industry-leading knowledge of the impact of eCommerce & digital on the grocery industry, starting his career back in 2003 for Tesco.com. Andrew and Stuart discuss the key challenges for FMCG brands as grocery shopping continues its shift to digital, the level of incrementality that the eCommerce model can bring to a business, why it’s so critical for brands to get the eCommerce basics right, as well as the secret to unlocking business engagement and investment for digital teams.