The CPG Guys Sri & PVSB are joined in this 2 part episode by digital experience maven Steven G. Koven VP of Omnichannel & eCommerce at Crossmark. Most recently, Stephen was VP of Digital Experience at Hormel Foods and had previously worked at Henkel and The Clorox Company.

Stephen speaks to how brands can leverage user-generated content like product ratings & reviews up and don the marketing funnel to drive commercial success.

Questions Stephen addresses:

1. It’s been my experience reading reviews on sites like Amazon, that many reviews are 1 or two words. How can you go about generating more meaningful reviews? 
2. It seems many brands are deathly afraid of negative reviews? Should they be? How 
   should brands consider dealing with this feedback? Also, what should they NOT do? 
3. How should  brands consider maintaining their UGC program? What things should they be considering in ensuring it delivers sales results? 
4. In my prior life as an eCommerce leader, the way I would make sense of all the UGC on  my site and on retail sites was to hire a bunch of summer interns, give them some PCs, put them in a conference room, tell them to read reviews and come back at the end of the summer with a presentation. Clearly, this is neither scalable nor objective. What 
   should brands be doing in 2021 to learn from UGC on their products and their  competitor’s products? 
5. There is this concept called syndication. What does that mean, why is it important to 
   brands? 
6. What is going on in the industry about monetization of syndication? Is this good for retailers, brands and consumers? 
7. What about Q&A? Should brands offer Q&A on their sites? How should they build a plan 
   to respond on retailer sites? 
8. What is the importance of visual content? Are there some ways to promote collection? 
   
   

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The CPG Guys Sri & PVSB are joined in this 2 part episode by digital experience maven Steven G. Koven VP of Omnichannel & eCommerce at Crossmark. Most recently, Stephen was VP of Digital Experience at Hormel Foods and had previously worked at Henkel and The Clorox Company.

Stephen speaks to how brands can leverage user-generated content like product ratings & reviews up and don the marketing funnel to drive commercial success.

Questions Stephen addresses:

1. My first question is: would you please define what user generated content is and whether it is measurably important on the path to purchase.
2. Can you speak to how UGC can and should be applied in eCommerce, particularly the digital shelf? Any innovative examples?
3. Does the impact of UGC matter based upon the product category? I mean, is it really important to collect reviews for a 2 liter bottle of Pepsi or some asparagus? What other factors may influence the importance of UGC in the path to purchase?
4. There are a great number of brands, particularly in food & beverage, who prior to the pandemic, had not invested in UGC. Now, by all accounts, they are scrambling to get started. Can you walk our audience through exactly how to get up and running and what needs to be considered in developing a UGC program?
5. Once you have designed a program and have selected the vendors, you’ll need to actually implement it. Can you speak to specific concerns that brands should address during the implementation phase?
6. OK, now you have your program established and you want to start collecting content. The million dollar question that I know Peter gets asked all the time: how many reviews do I need? And a follow up: once I hit the threshold, am I golden, have I reached my destination?
7. Does quality come into consideration? In other words, does only the start rating matter or are there other factors? (recently, length, sentiment, assortment coverage, supplementary product-relevant questions)
8. What are some major ways to generate the content?

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The CPG Guys Sri & PVSB are joined in this episode by Andrea Leigh, VP of Strategy & Insights at Ideoclick, an eCommerce Accelerator Consultancy for brands at Amazon & beyond.

This is a fun and lively conversation about the transforming landscape of eCommerce.

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Questions that Andrea addresses:

1. Your story starts as a Golden Gopher, and is cemented in success at Amazon and now running your own agency focused on helping brands win on this platform. Decompose this for our audience how this journey evolved.
2. You just released an article named ‘warning signs that your amazon business is off track’. Can you walk us through the highlights of it?
3. How important is eCommerce in a brand’s journey in 2021? Is it non-negotiable? Does this apply for startups, small brands or larger brands?
4. AMG - fact or fiction ? Is ROI growth or performance marketing?
5. Take us through your services and how you improve your platform and deliver value to your clients/brands?
6. Subscribe and save - is it really a driver of success? What does one need to drive it? 
7. DTC vs Amazon? Why does one need DTC when there’s Amazon?
8. COVID has cemented Amazon as a priority at every brand. Conversely, Amazon’s supply chain weaknesses were highlighted under the demand stress. However Amazon was a household name far before it. What is the DNA of success at Amazon. What drives it? Is it a winning platform for brands in the long run?

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The CPG Guys Sri and PVSB are joined in this episode by That's it Fruit's founder and CEO Lior Lewensztain to speak about how his on-the-go fruit snacks are thriving in the digital omnichannel environment.

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Questions that Lior addresses:

1. Your story starts at USC, then you became an MD (doctor) and then you got your MBA. Now you’re a founder of a fast growing snacks and nutrition oriented food product. Decompose this for our audience and tell us how different it is.
2. In your opinion, what are the things you must do to build a successful specialty food business?
3. How is That’s it bar working to ensure it is ecommerce & omnichannel ready = what are specific initiatives or actions you have taken?
4. DTC - it seems every brand is focused on delivering some sort of direct partnership with the consumer especially if subscription oriented. How are you focused on it? 
5. Take us through your innovation methodology and how you source your materials and then decide if it's right for the marketplace?
6. Is click & collect the future of Shopping? If so, how are you partnering with retailers to ensure That’s it bars are in the shopping basket? Was impulse the primary stimulus for that’s it making a consumer’s basket? If so, how do you drive impulse today, particularly on the digital shelf?
7. Foodservice & convenience - two largely impacted areas in 2020 : how did these impact your business? How did you navigate? What’s next for the company?
8. The pandemic has obviously changed shopper behavior for good it seems - do you agree. In the role you play how are you responding to this and preparing for the transformation?

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The CPG Guys Sri and PVSB are joined in this episode by CommerceIQ founder and CEO Guru Hariharan to speak about using machine learning and automation to optimize the full eCommerce channel to win at the moment of purchase and drive profitable growth.

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Questions that Guru addresses:

1. How did your professional experiences at Shutterfly, eBay and Amazon affect your founding of CommerceIQ?
2. What is the mission of CommerceIQ and what brand needs does it fulfill?
3. With the rapid growth of eCommerce in 2020, how is CommerceIQ keeping up with increased demand for insights, data and retail media $?
4. What specific tools does CommerceIQ provide? What brand persona or archetype typically uses them?
5. How are brand partnerships established with CommerceIQ? Do you hunt for opportunities or are brands coming to you with the recent shift to eCommerce?
6. What’s the role of product content - digital shelf SEO copy, title, bullet points in your offerings?
7. What do you think is unique about Amazon, what’s your next prediction and how should brands prepare for it?
8. In order to grow eCommerce sales significantly, does the upper funnel matter more and this whole digital revolution is about customer acquisition?

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The CPG Guys, Sri & PVSB are joined in this episode by Tara West the founder & proprietor of Tara West Fashion. Tara is an independent personal stylist and one of Boston's pre-eminent fashion and lifestyle bloggers. Voted multiple times Boston's Best A-List Fashion Blog, and listed among the top 100 fashion blogs in the country, Tara West's blog received hundreds of visitors daily and reaches over 30,000 Instagram followers who rely on her to identify appropriate fashion trends for professional women.

Questions Tara addresses:

1. How do you market your services such that someone selects you as a personal stylist?
2. What observations have you made about the impact that the pandemic on fashion & apparel and, more specifically, their need/want for a personal stylist?
3. How has the demand for the mix of services you provide been evolving in the pandemic?
4. How are people shopping differently during this time in terms of physical vs digital stores and the mix of fashion they are looking to buy? Categories that are growing vs. shrinking?
5. How do you consult professionals using video conferencing on fashion relative to the environment in which they are conducting these video calls? How does a professional successfully “up her/his Zoom game?”
6. You’re also a social media influencer. Please help us understand the work you do and how you monetize that work for people who don’t contract you for personal services.
7. As an influencer/blogger how are brands working with you? And has it changed since the pandemic?
8. How has the pandemic shifted the focus of your selected fashions for social media and how do you successfully amplify your messages?
9. At latest count, you have nearly 30K instagram followers. Why did you choose Instagram to make a position and how do you grow your base? Is it all organic or is there a monetary customer acquisition strategy?
10. From a technology perspective, what are the tools you use to create all of the content that you post? Are there must-haves in content generation?

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The CPG Guys Sri and PVSB welcome Rob Gonzalez, CMO & co-founder of Salsify, co-founder of  The Digital Self Institute & co-host of Unpacking The Digital Shelf podcast.

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Rob covers the following topics:

1. What is the mission of the Digital Shelf Institute and why did you and Peter decide to found it? What are core activities you support?
2. Are PDPs & search bars the future of branding, What is a PIM and how can it enable success in this branding support? Please walk us through this.
3. What are the top 4 of 5 things that brands need to get right on the PDP?
4. Is TV dead? What evidence supports this? How should brands respond?
5. How do brands value their digital ad spend including attribution measurement outside of the individual media platforms where the investment is placed?
6. How should a brand invest against trade in 2021 given all that happened in 2020?
7. Turning to Salsify, what is the Open Experience Alliance all about? What were the market conditions that necessitated Salsify launching it? Was it successful?
8. The DSI recently released a retailer ad spend report, how & when was this conducted and what were some of the key findings from this research?

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The CPG Guys Sri & PVSB continue founders month in 2021 with Katie Hotze, the founder & CEO of Grocery Shopii a white label retailer shoppable recipes app that helps shoppers save time while assisting retailers in expanding basket sizes.

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Katie answers these questions:

1. What was the shopping experience friction that frustrated you as a shopper, leading you to develop the Grocery Shopii solution and how did you go about validating that your frustration was more widespread among shoppers?
2. What are your thoughts on the current state of technology innovation taking place in the grocery industry and where in the shopping journey is the disruption taking place? Is it more focused on the first or last mile? Has the pandemic radically altered this course? Is there enough disruption happening?
3. We understand you leveraged a startup incubator to launch Grocery Shopii. What are some of the key capabilities it brought to make your business development efforts successful? 
4. So, connecting recipes to grocery shopping is nothing new.  What do you see are the issues with how recipes are used today by grocers and brands, and where is the opportunity to disrupt this space?  To make the platform operate, you need to have actual recipes. How do you source the recipe content? How is this different than what others in the industry are doing? - the golden tipping point, fishing in the ocean
5. There are several other recipe-to-basket software solutions available on the marketplace, I won’t mention them by name. What makes Grocery Shopii stand ahead of the pack in terms of functionality, value, etc. from both the retailers and shopper perspectives? Why do you describe it as outcome-based? Does it help consolidate trips and build baskets?
6. Shoppers increasingly expect the shopping experience to be tailored to their individual needs, leveraging longitudinal behavioral data sets and shopper attitudes. How does personalization come into play with your solution? - the greatest opp for grocery today is gen x and millennial. Fresh content with every visit. There is a metric called cook time she thinks of M-F for meals
7. What is your target audience within the grocery vertical: big national/super regional players or small to medium sized grocers? Maybe all of the above? And where are you in the process of adoption? Regional grocers know their customers, and we can help convert them.
8. How are partnerships fueling your growth?
9. What are your other priorities for growth and what are the major accelerators you are employing? Tech is a sandbox. Meeting the shopper in the micro-moment.
10. Mentorship is a major theme in how you have built your business and a major point of advocacy for you, yes? Would you please expand on this and offer any advice to members of our audience seeking to venture into their own businesses? People, people, groups, names a mentor.

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The CPG Guys Sri & PVSB welcome Chieh Huang, co-founder & CEO of Boxed.com for this episode.

Chieh co-founded Boxed.com 8 years ago. He holds a bachelors degree from Johns Hopkins and a law degree from Fordham.

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Questions Chieh answers include:

1. Your career was born into the legal field early and then passed Astro Ape & Zynga? How was Boxed born? 
2. What is the mission of boxed.com and what consumer needs does it fulfill? Is it a club/value ecosystem?
3. With the rapid growth of eCommerce in 2020, how is boxed keeping up with increased demand and fulfillment needs?
4. What tools, avenues and vehicles does Boxed use to reach the consumer? What is your philosophy of value for the consumer?
5. How are brand partnerships established with boxed? Is it a rigid criteria?
6. What opportunities do brands have to highlight themselves on boxed? Is retail media a capability? How does a brand execute against this?
7. What’s the role of content - digital shelf SEO copy, title, bullet points...what matters?
8. The pandemic had a significant impact on manufacturer supply chain capabilities including private label. How did Boxed manage consumer expectations around OOS and how did you keep consumers engaged when they might not have been able to source products from you?
9. How do you bring on new assortment from brands? Can brands bring on exclusive assortment only sold on boxed?
10. Hacking growth in ecommerce requires a deep focus on numbers - what are the metrics that should matter to brands selling on boxed?

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The CPG Guys Sri & PVSB are joined in a two-part series by Bryan Gildenberg, SVP of Commerce at Omnicom Group.

In the second episode of the series, Bryan shares his predictions in CPG retail for 2021.

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Specifically, Bryan addresses these questions:

1. As we move to 2021 emerging trends. 2020 was a year for the books - can anyone really create an accurately successful plan for 2021? What advice do you have for brands?
2. Amazon. It’s evolved and it’s a larger part of CPG businesses and brands. Where does it belong? Marketing or Sales? Or elsewhere COE on its own?
3. Let’s get to the role of social media vehicles in lower funnel CVR. Tiktok vs instagram vs native facebook or twitter? In Gretzky terms: where is the puck going?
4. DTC provides data and nowadays attribution is real in the digital journey. 1st party data is therefore par for the course?
5. Reinventing the demand chain on how to drive customer acquisition to engagement to conversion - developing and sustaining a customer relationship : they all have new ways and means. 

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