The CPG View

Kaitlyn, you've built an impressive career in CPG sales and leadership, and today you lead customer development across multiple channels for Nestlé Health Science.

Tell us about your journey and what inspired you to build a career in consumer products and sales leadership.The health and wellness category continues to evolve as consumer expectations change. From your perspective, what are the biggest trends shaping the future of health and wellness, and how should brands and retailers be adapting to meet those needs?

You oversee growth across a diverse mix of channels—from mass and drug to natural, value, and alternative retail. How are winning brands approaching omnichannel differently today, and what separates the companies that consistently outperform in today's retail environment?

You've built a reputation for leading through collaboration, developing high-performing teams, and driving results in complex environments. What leadership principles have been most important throughout your career, and what advice would you give to aspiring sales and CPG leaders looking to accelerate their growth?

Looking ahead, what excites you most about the future of the CPG industry, health and wellness, and retail? And if you could leave our audience with one piece of advice as they prepare for what's next, what would it be?

Let’s start with the consumer. When someone opens a delivery app, they’re often shopping with a completely different mindset than when they walk into a store or even shop a traditional e-commerce site. What have we learned about those moments and what actually drives the decision to buy?

Delivery has created entirely new shopping occasions—the forgotten ingredient, the late-night craving, the last-minute party, or simply “I don't want to leave the house.” How should brands think differently about winning these smaller, more immediate moments?

The physical shelf has always been incredibly important in CPG, but now brands are competing on a much smaller digital shelf. What actually gets a product discovered and added to the basket when consumers have hundreds of choices but very little patience?

Once a consumer finds a brand through delivery, the bigger opportunity is getting them to come back. What are the smartest ways you’re seeing brands turn a convenience-driven purchase into repeat behavior or even loyalty?

If you were sitting with a brand leadership team building their delivery commerce strategy today, where would you tell them to stop treating delivery as another sales channel—and start thinking about it as a completely different way to win the consumer?

Can you walk us through your career journey and the key experiences that led you to where you are today as CEO of Advantage Solutions?

With the shelf now extending from in-store to digital retail media networks, how is Advantage Solutions evolving its capabilities to help brands win both the physical shelf and the digital shelf?

Many CPG brands struggle to connect strategy at headquarters with flawless execution in stores. Where does Advantage add the most value in closing that gap today?

The retail and CPG industries are being transformed by AI, retail media, data, and changing consumer expectations. What developments are you most excited about over the next three to five years, and where do you see the biggest opportunities for brands to win?

As we wrap up, if you could leave our audience of CPG and retail leaders with one piece of advice or one challenge to help them build stronger businesses and better teams, what would it be?

We spent our last conversation talking about how quickly commerce is changing. As brands move from understanding that shift to actually responding to it, where do you think they should be placing their biggest bets today?

As AI becomes embedded across media, content, retail and commerce operations, do you think the traditional boundaries between those functions start to disappear and what does that mean for how organizations should be structured?

There are more platforms, signals and opportunities competing for investment than ever before. How should leaders determine what is truly driving incremental growth versus simply shifting dollars or attribution from one channel to another?

As more decisions move from human-led workflows toward AI-driven and eventually autonomous systems, what decisions should brands be comfortable handing over to technology and where does human judgment remain critical?

If we look three to five years ahead, what does a truly AI-native commerce organization look like—and what will the companies that win have done differently from those that struggle to keep up?

You’ve had quite the journey across beauty, FMCG, e-commerce, and omnichannel. Take us back a little how did your career evolve, and what eventually brought you to leading E-Commerce and Amazon across Europe for L’Oréal Luxe?

Luxury beauty is such an interesting category because the experience matters just as much as the product. How do you bring that sense of discovery, excitement, and luxury into an online environment while still driving performance?

You’re working across more than 27 European markets, which sounds exciting and probably a little complicated. What have you learned about scaling a big e-commerce strategy while still leaving room for what makes each market and consumer different?

Amazon, marketplaces, TikTok Shop, retail media—the commerce world keeps adding new places for brands to show up. Which areas are you most excited about right now, and where do you think brands sometimes get distracted by the next shiny object?

You’ve had a front-row seat to a huge transformation in how people discover and buy brands. Looking ahead, what excites you most about where commerce is going and what’s one thought, lesson, or piece of advice you’d love to leave our listeners with?

Every company says they want to build long-term customer value, but then the annual budget shows up and suddenly everyone is focused on this quarter. Why is it so hard for organizations to invest today for a return they may not see until another budget cycle?

Let’s talk about CLV for a minute. The concept makes perfect sense on paper, but the models can sometimes assume a level of customer loyalty that simply doesn’t exist. Where do you think companies get overly optimistic when they try to put a value on a customer?

In highly competitive categories, are we even thinking about the “lifetime” part correctly? If consumers are constantly being won, lost, and won back, should brands start thinking less about Customer Lifetime Value and more about something like “Customer Leasehold Value”?

Once you have a more realistic view of what a customer is actually worth, how should that change the decisions being made around acquisition, retention, promotions, retail media, and where the next dollar gets spent?

So bring it all together for the executive sitting in that budget meeting: if the goal is to build a stronger commerce business rather than simply hit the next reporting period, what questions should leadership be asking before deciding where to place their bets?

You've said a shopping journey that used to take 19 days can now take just 19 seconds. What's driving that shift, and how are the best brands leveraging TikTok to launch products, drive discovery, and accelerate sales?You have a unique vantage point across Beauty and Food & Beverage. What separates brands that are truly winning on TikTok from those still trying to figure it out? Which brands are doing it particularly well, and why?Brand safety remains a top concern for larger brands. What do you think brands misunderstand about brand safety on TikTok, and how are leading brands managing it without becoming so cautious that they miss out on culture and opportunity?How are the best brands thinking about ROI on TikTok, and what are they measuring beyond in-app conversions to understand the broader impact on their business?How are leading brands approaching the creator ecosystem? How do they identify and select the right creators, and what technologies or tools are helping them make smarter decisions?

The consumer is generating more signals than ever, but more data doesn’t necessarily mean more clarity. What are the signals you believe executives should be paying much closer attention to right now?

We often talk about understanding what consumers are doing, but the harder question is understanding why. Where are you seeing the biggest gaps between traditional consumer measurement and what actually explains behavior today?

As consumer behavior becomes more fragmented across stores, digital channels, platforms and generations, how should brands rethink the way they define their consumer and identify where their next source of growth will come from?

AI is dramatically changing how quickly organizations can analyze and act on consumer intelligence. Where do you see AI fundamentally changing the insights function versus simply making existing research and analytics faster?

Looking ahead, do you think the biggest competitive advantage will come from having better consumer data—or from an organization’s ability to connect those insights to decisions faster than everyone else?

For years, commerce teams have been trained to look backward. What sold, what worked, what changed. What happens when intelligence starts telling us what to do next instead of simply explaining what already happened?

There are hundreds of decisions being made every day around pricing, assortment, promotions, content, and inventory. Which of those decisions should we actually be comfortable handing over to AI, and where does human judgment still matter most?

Here’s where it gets interesting: what happens when every brand and retailer has access to increasingly similar AI capabilities?

Does competitive advantage come from having better technology or from asking better questions and acting differently on the answers?

We’re also moving toward a world where AI agents may increasingly influence or even make purchase decisions for consumers. How does commerce strategy change when brands aren't only trying to win the shopper, but potentially an algorithm shopping on their behalf?If we fast-forward a few years and AI is simply part of how commerce operates, what do you think the best companies will have learned to do exceptionally well that most organizations aren't doing today?

1. How are you and your team at Dentsu helping brands adjust to the collapsed funnel, where discovery, consideration, and conversion can happen in the same session?2. Where does agentic AI fit into that shift, and how should brands be thinking about agentic commerce, media, workflows, and team structures?3. As you build the commerce organization at Dentsu, how do you structure teams so budgets can move fluidly toward what is working instead of staying locked into channels or trade calendars?4. How are brands balancing the need for speed with brand safety, legal approvals, and organizational gridlock?5. When a sale can’t be attributed to one channel, who should actually own the outcome inside the organization?6. With media evolving faster than many brands’ ability to manage and report on outcomes, what does the measurement stack need to look like by 2027?7. Before brands can budget by outcome instead of by channel, what capabilities need to exist first, and are brands ready to make that switch?8. If you had to give a CMO one sentence to put at the top of their 2027 plan, what would it say?