Coherent Thoughts Podcast

In this episode of Coherent Thoughts, host James Glover speaks with Jay Shemenski, Senior Lead of Global Brand Marketing at Under Armour Basketball. Jay has spent the past 8 years in digital marketing and communications. This week, James and Jay discuss Under Armour’s recent push in basketball, strategic athlete partnerships the brand has made, identifying your brand with values, promotions, and how to successfully help customers to buy in multiple categories.

In this episode of Coherent Thoughts, host James Glover speaks with the Retail Doctor, Bob Phibbs. Bob is an internationally recognized business strategist, customer service expert, sales coach, author of three books, and motivational business speaker. As the Retail Doctor, Bob has worked to help brands like Lego, Omega, Vera Bradley, Yamaha, and many more. This week, James and Bob discuss the importance of being good at the fundamentals in retail, the power of predictive analytics, brand storytelling, engaging disengaged customers, and much more.

In this episode of Coherent Thoughts, host James Glover speaks with Mark Demeny. Mark is the Director of Product Management for the Content Cloud at Optimizely and is an expert in Content Management Systems and related marketing technology applications. He has over 16 years of technical and strategic expertise in the content and digital marketing space. This week, James and Mark focus the discussion on content. Some of the topics include personalization, what marketers get wrong, the effect of SEO on content quality, machine learning, how much content brands need to create, and much more.

In this episode of Coherent Thoughts, host James Glover speaks with Jed Schneiderman. Jed works at Kognitiv as Industry Practice Lead for Media and Telco, where he guides a global team to bring the full impact of collaborative commerce to rapidly evolving sectors. Jed has an extensive background in marketing with an emphasis on loyalty and retention, email and permission marketing, as well as search and social media marketing. This week, James and Jed discuss keys to survival in an Amazon-dominated marketplace, owning consumer relationships, super-serving customers, zero-party data, and much more.

In this episode of Coherent Thoughts, host James Glover speaks with Michael LeBlanc. 

Michael has over 20 years of retail experience in marketing, promotions, CRM, and e-Commerce. He’s the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc, an advisory and media company that includes several of North America’s leading podcast properties including The Voice of Retail, Remarkable Retail, and The Food Professor podcasts.  He is also a Senior Retail Advisor to the Retail Council of Canada. 

This week, James and Michael discuss some differences between Canadian and American retail, customer retention, brand-building, and more.

In this episode of Coherent Thoughts, host James Glover speaks with Joseph Caravaglia, who works in digital personalization at a top sportswear brand. This week, James and Joe discuss the relationship between personalization and experience, a cookie-less future & privacy, some tips for brands looking to embark on personalization, and much more.

With extensive experience in the digital marketing, personalization, and retail worlds, Joe provides some great brand-side perspective from his years of providing top executives with actionable insights.

In this episode of Coherent Thoughts, host James Glover speaks with Brian Rants, Senior Strategist and Evangelist at Cordial. This week, James and Brian discussed the marriage of data and content, relationship-building in marketing, the importance of providing value through personalization, and much more.

Brian Rants is a veteran marketing strategist that helps Cordial prospects, clients, and team members understand and make the best use of Cordial. He has over 15 years of experience in marketing and creative positions.

For more from Brian on privacy and customer experience, go to: https://thecustomer.net/thecustomer-news-episode-4/?cn-reloaded=1&cn-reloaded=1 

In this episode of Coherent Thoughts, host James Glover speaks with Doug Stephens, founder of Retail Prophet. This week, James and Doug discuss retail’s rapid transformation over the past year, some top takeaways retailers should consider, why Amazon may be its own worst enemy, how to properly build brand loyalty among your customer base, and more.

Doug has spent over 20 years in the retail industry, holding senior international roles including leading one of New York City’s most historic retail chains.

Author of three books and numerous articles in publications like The New York Times, The BBC, Bloomberg Business News, and The Wall Street Journal, Doug is a coveted speaker among major brands and organizations across the world. 

For Doug’s new book, “Resurrecting Retail”, check out: http://www.retailprophet.com/books/resurrecting-retail/ 

In this episode of Coherent Thoughts, host James Glover speaks with Kristen LaFrance about digital transformation in retail. James and Kristen draw on her background in retention and digital experience, discussing retail’s rebound in 2021, the advantage that bricks and mortar retailers have over digital natives, using personalization to minimize churn, and much more.

Kristen LaFrance is the “Mayor of DTC Twitter” and head of Resilient Retail with Shopify, whose work has appeared on Privy, Honest eCommerce, Modern Retail, Lean Luxe, and more.

Her focus is retention as a natural outgrowth of a great customer experience. 

“It’s about people over metrics, treating your customers as unique human beings with goals, dreams, and desires.”

For the article mentioned in the podcast, visit: https://medium.com/@kristenndecosta/customer-acquisition-vs-retention-a-battle-for-dtc-brand-focus-43b675c72616 

In this episode of Coherent Thoughts, host James Glover speaks with Rachel Cowlishaw from Movable Ink about digital transformation in retail. James and Rachel talk about her perspective from her time at Neiman Marcus, common misconceptions surrounding email strategy, and effectively using creatives in your personalized emails.

Prior to joining Movable Ink, Rachel worked on the client-side in a variety of marketing and CRM roles within the luxury retail space. She joined Movable Ink from Neiman Marcus, where she oversaw personalization and CRM marketing across email, SMS, and mobile. Most recently, she led a cross-functional agile team, focusing on A/B testing and scaling personalized customer experiences and omnichannel journeys across stores and online. In addition she played an integral role in the enhancement of their martec stack, consolidating customer data and integrating vendor partners into a CDP. Rachel now oversees North America retail accounts for Movable Ink’s Strategy Team.

Learn more at movableink.com.