Personnel Appointments/ Editorial Index

Personnel Appointments

BRAND MARKETERS

AB InBev, St. Louis U.S. Chief Sales O cer Brendan Whitworth was promoted to Zone President North America and AnheuserBusch CEO. He succeeds Michel Doukeris, who transitioned to the company’s global CEO role. Whitworth has held various commercial leadership positions in the U.S. for the last eight years.

RETAILERS

Albertsons Cos., Boise, Idaho Former Best Buy transformation executive Sharon McCollam was named president and chief nancial o cer. She reports to CEO Vivek Sankaran and succeeds Bob Dimond, who will retire and remain with the company in an advisor capacity through February 2022. McCollam assumes several leadership responsibilities, including nance, corporate strategy, information technology, supply chain operations and property development. She is involved in all aspects of the company’s growth and transformation strategy.

SOLUTION PROVIDERS

InMarket, Culver City, California Former Label Insight CEO Todd Morris was named president. With more than 25 years of experience in high-growth, data-driven

APRIL CARLISLE SHARON MCCOLLAM TJ REILLY BRENDAN WHITWORTH

businesses, Morris leads InMarket’s expansion of strategic solutions that power growth for leading brands. Prior to Label Insight, Morris served as global president of Catalina Marketing and served in various leadership roles in Procter & Gamble’s multi-billion-dollar laundry and cleaning products business.

Spark Foundry, New York Spark Foundry, a global media agency brand within Publicis Media, hired P2PI Hall of Fame inductee April Carlisle to lead its commerce practice. As EVP of commerce, Carlisle is responsible for solidifying the agency’s vision for the critical role commerce has in delivering a competitive advantage for clients. She leverages Publicis Groupe’s advanced commerce solutions to deliver holistic investment strategies for clients to drive pro table growth in the increasingly competitive landscape of e-tailers. Carlisle also is focusing on accelerating this critical area by further integrating the agency’s strategic commerce capability, industry-leading insights, and outcome-based omnichannel commerce solutions in all areas of media – with a focus on retailer media – content planning and optimization. Before joining Spark Foundry, Carlisle most recently served as vice president of shopper marketing at The Coca-Cola Co.

VMLY&R Commerce, New York TJ Reilly was named to the North America leadership team to expand its retail media capabilities and address rapid e-commerce acceleration. As EVP of performance media, Reilly is responsible for overseeing a customer-centric media approach to commerce channels, optimizing acquisition and performance growth for clients end-to-end. Reilly brings with him vast digital marketing and analytics experience with previous leadership positions at Signet Jewelers, eBay, Clearsaleing and Rosetta. IQ

Editorial Index

Aisle .............................................59 Aki Technologies .....................62 Albertsons Cos. .................28, 58 Aldi ...............................................59 Amazon ...............................26, 57 Anheuser-Busch ...............14, 19 APMEX ........................................56 Apple...........................................57 Arc Worldwide ..................19, 20 Bayer Consumer Health .......13 Beam Suntory ..........................26 Bountiful Co., The ...................14 Brandshare ................................11 Campbell Soup Co., The .......56 Chicory .......................................56 CitrusAd .....................................59 Clerk ............................................58 Coca-Cola Co., The ..................28 CVS ..............................................22 DDB New York ..........................20 Digitas .........................................19 E. & J. Gallo Winery .................30 Eaze .............................................57 Facebook ...................................57 Fakespot ....................................57 FCB/RED .....................................19 Field Agent ................................58 Foodspace ................................... 9 Foresight ROI ............................10 Frito-Lay North America.......21 GE Appliances ..........................16 General Mills .............................12 Google ........................................58 GSK Consumer Healthcare ..20 H-E-B .............................23, 30, 59 Henkel ........................................15 Hershey Co., The...............22, 23 Hy-Vee ........................................24 IBM Watson Advertising .......22 Intel ..............................................19 Ipsos ............................................59 Johnson & Johnson ...............30 Kellogg .......................................28 Kroger ..................................20, 58 Lightning Labels .....................58 Marketing Arm, The ...............21 Mars Inc. ..............................28, 30 Mars Wrigley Confectionery21 Mattel ..........................................16 Meijer ............................26, 28, 30 Mercatus ....................................24 Meredith Corp. ........................58 MetaMask ..................................56 Mondelez International........23 Neptune Retail Solutions .....60 Nightfood ..................................11 Packaged Facts ........................25 Path to Purchase Institute 8, 10 PepsiCo ...............................26, 28 Procter & Gamble ...................28 Publicis Groupe .......................59 Publix ..........................................59 PureWow ...................................56 Resonate ....................................59 Sam’s Club .................................30

SC Johnson ...............................30

SheSpeaks .................................22 SmartCommerce.....................59

Southeastern Grocers ...........30

TPCO Holding ..........................57 TPN .......................................22, 23 Treasury Wine Estates ............. 8 Twitter ........................................57

Tyson ...........................................15 Unilever ......................................30

VMLY&R Commerce ...............23

Walmart........................11, 26, 28 Westward...................................62

Retail Intel

Westward Whiskey Wins with Local Personalization

BY PATRYCJA MALINOWSKA

Seeking to break through as a brand and drive the burgeoning American single malt whiskey category, Portland, Oregonbased craft distillery Westward tapped Aki Technologies to implement a hyperfocused marketing campaign as part of its broader digital media strategy.

“We’re a small brand trying to build awareness, but we don’t have the budget to go and build mass awareness across the country … so it’s [about] trying to build awareness with the right type of people in terms of the campaign,” says Westward CMO Richard Black. “Being a $70 whiskey, we’re really ‘luxury’ and targeting a very speci c audience.”

Marrying Westward’s rst-party data with Aki’s third-party data, the partners identi ed three consumer segments to seek out in the distiller’s home state and neighboring California: • Oregon Lovers — a uent, Oregonbased whiskey drinkers. • West Coast Whiskey Lover — older, high-income whiskey drinkers. • CA Cool Whiskey Drinkers — young, social, California drinkers.

While two of the target segments leaned toward traditional purchasers, the “CA Cool” segment was added into the mix based on Aki’s consumer mapping recommendations. “It was great because we wanted to get some learnings out of this campaign as well. Testing the audience, testing the regionality and then testing against other media sources like Google and Facebook,” says Black, a spirits industry veteran who had brie y worked for Aki before joining Westward.

From Dec. 14, 2020, to Jan. 12, 2021, the partners served up rich media and video ads generating 1.5 million impressions. The ads were deployed by segment and further personalized via Aki’s “moments powered by motion” approach, which the adtech company describes as predicting when a consumer will be receptive based on data signals spanning from time of day to accelerometer and gyroscope readers, and then targeting ads by any of the more than 160 individual moments Aki has perfected over the last six years to best drive sales.

“The creative wasn’t 100% where I would have wanted it to be, but it’s a tradeo ,” Black says, referring to the ease and speed of execution possible with Aki’s algorithm. “I just give [Aki] some assets, we create these and — boom — we’ve got 220-odd permutations of moments and personalized ads that are proven in this test we ran to be more e ective.”

The personalized creative drove higher engagement rates across all of the consumer segments: • Personalized video drove 22% higher engagement than non-personalized video. • Personalized interstitials averaged 44% more engaging than non-personalized. • Overall, personalization drove 33% higher engagement than non-personalized creatives.

“That’s the kind of metrics that Aki can track and are very useful,” Black says. “But what’s useful to me as a brand owner and somebody who wants to drive the business is: How many people are coming to visit my website? How many people are going to the retailer stores where we’re sold? And we saw incredible tra c. We still, since we ran the campaign, have never had tra c like that to our website, even from Facebook and Google, where we spend relatively signi cant money over time.”

While Westward tested tap-to-map ads directing consumers to a nearby retailer, the campaign objective was to maximize digital engagement, so most of the ads linked to Westward’s website. “Our website is where we can capture consumers and we’ve found workarounds [to restrictive regulations] where we can ship to 25 states in the U.S. … so tra c there is as critical as driving people to retail stores at the moment for us,” Black says.

That’s a bold strategy for a category that has historically shied away from the e-commerce business for myriad reasons. “The spirits industry is a little behind when it comes to digital,” Black says. Yet the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the shift online in this category as in others, and Westward moved rapidly to adapt to the change in consumer behavior.

One of the key learnings that came out of the campaign and will inform Westward’s future digital engagement e orts was the importance of a landing page to close the sale.

“I would have wanted stronger conversion rates on the click-through, and we needed a landing page because consumers never knew our brands,” Black says. “We were getting these incredible amounts of tra c, and they were just landing on the product page so they weren’t getting enough information around what this is and why I should buy it.” IQ

BevAlc Commerce Initiative

The Path to Purchase Institute’s BevAlc Commerce Initiative (BACi) is an industry share group and learning platform devoted to helping beer, spirits and wine markete rs meet the new omnicommerce expectations of their shoppers. To join the group and learn more, contact Patrick Hare at phare@p2pi.org.

December 7 -8

instoreexperienceforum.com

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The In-Store Experience Forum will guide attendees to better understand the ways in which evolving shopper behavior is changing the role of the physical store and the impact on best practice brand engagement strategies.

• Essential Elements of the Omnichannel Store Experience • The Role of Brand Marketing in the New Store Environment • Understanding Current and Future In-Store Purchase Drivers. • Future Focus: A Visit to the Grocery Store in 2030

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