The CPG View

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158

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Aug 2026

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The #1 CPG information source for Global Omni-Channel Leaders. Empowering you to win in CPG!

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August 20, 202621 min

Beyond the Shiny Objects: Winning Digital Commerce (Arthur Sylvestre, VP Media & Digital at Danone North America)

Can you walk us through your journey to becoming VP of Digital Commerce at Danone and share one or two pivotal experiences or decisions that shaped your path? In your role leading digital commerce at a large CPG company, how do you define success? Is there a guiding principle or philosophy you rely on when making strategic decisions? The digital commerce landscape is changing rapidly. What trend, innovation, or change in consumer behavior is having the biggest influence on how you approach online sales and engagement? What is one challenge you’ve faced during your digital commerce career, and what lesson could you share with people listening who may be on a similar path?

August 18, 202629 min

The Commerce Strategy Playbook: Navigating the Next Era of Retail Growth (Bryan Gildenberg, Founder & CEO, Confluence Commerce).

You have spent years analyzing the intersection of retail, commerce, and organizational strategy. From your perspective, what are the biggest assumptions about modern commerce that leadership teams still have wrong? A lot of organizations continue trying to optimize individual channels while the market increasingly behaves as one interconnected commerce ecosystem. What do you think executives are underestimating about that shift? Many leadership teams talk about omnichannel maturity, but internally they are still operating through fragmented incentives, reporting structures, and budget ownership. What organizational tensions are becoming most visible right now? One thing we are hearing more often is that commerce infrastructure decisions are now strategic decisions, not just technology decisions. How should executives think differently about platform architecture, data ownership, and ecosystem dependency? If you look out over the next three to five years, what do you think separates the organizations that compound advantage from the ones that slowly become operationally irrelevant?

August 13, 202627 min

Leading Through the Noise: The People, Decisions & Clarity That Drive Performance (Jason Baumgarten, Partner at Spencer Stuart )

Let’s start with your journey. You’ve gone from strategy consulting to now leading Spencer Stuart’s CEO and Board Practice globally. Looking back, what moments or experiences really shaped how you think about leadership and the role it plays in organizations? Today, you’re working right at the intersection of leadership, governance, and long-term performance, often with boards and CEOs during some pretty high stakes moments. When you look at situations like CEO transitions or changes in board, what tends to separate the organizations that handle those moments well from the ones that struggle? You often talk about helping leaders find clarity when the pressure is on. When things feel noisy or uncertain, how do you help CEOs and boards slow things down, focus on what really matters, and make decisions they can truly stand behind? You have a unique vantage point across industries and geographies. As you connect the dots across all that experience, what patterns are you seeing in how leadership and board dynamics are evolving today? And where do you think leaders still tend to underestimate their impact? Looking ahead, what are you most excited about when it comes to the future of leadership and the role Spencer Stuart can play in helping shape what comes next?

August 11, 202620 min

The eCommerce Inflection Point: Where Retail Growth Is Really Coming From (Jack O'Leary, Director, eCommerce Strategic Insights at NielsenIQ)

What Changed? What leaders must understand now 4 the shifts in market structure, regulation, or competitive dynamics that demand attention this week? What Leaders Are Getting Wrong? Default assumptions under pressure. The conventional wisdom that no longer holds and the blind spots that create exposure? Operator Moves? What to change in the next days. Concrete, tactical adjustments grounded in what operators are actually doing? Planning Implications? How plans should adjust. Connecting weekly signals to annual planning cycles and budget architecture? Executive Close? One operator takeaway. One board takeaway. Clarity that travels from the briefing into the boardroom?

August 6, 202623 min

Amazon Vendor Negotiations: Protecting Profitability & Driving Growth (Martin Heubel, Strategy & Amazon Consultant at Consulterce)

AVNs are often treated as annual tactical negotiations. Why do you believe they should be approached as a long-term strategic lever instead, and what are the most common profitability leaks you see during these negotiations? How far in advance should vendors realistically begin preparing for AVNs, and what does best-in-class preparation actually look like? Where do vendors unknowingly give up leverage in negotiations with Amazon, and how can they shift from defensive positioning to negotiating from strength? What signals should leadership teams watch for that indicate structural margin erosion is coming in their Amazon relationship? Looking back at your work advising more than 200 global brands, what moments in your journey most shaped the way you think about Amazon negotiations today, and what excites you most about the opportunity for brands to rethink profitability and power within the 1P model?

August 4, 202621 min

Commerce Intelligence & AI: Turning Data Into Competitive Advantage (Karthik Bettadapura , CEO & Co-Founder at DataWeave)

Commerce has become significantly more transparent over the last decade, especially around pricing, assortment, promotions, and competitive behavior. From your perspective, how has that changed the way brands and retailers operate? Many organizations are collecting massive amounts of commerce data, but still struggle to act on it fast enough. Where do you think the biggest execution gaps exist today? One thing executives are increasingly worried about is competitive volatility, where pricing changes, assortment shifts, or marketplace dynamics can impact performance almost immediately. How should leadership teams rethink responsiveness in this environment? AI and predictive analytics are becoming deeply embedded in commerce operations. Where do you think machine intelligence creates the most meaningful operational advantage today? Looking forward, do you believe commerce analytics becomes a centralized strategic intelligence function, or increasingly embedded directly into everyday operational workflows across organizations?

July 30, 202621 min

Winning Together: Building Retail Media That Works for Everyone (Molly Hjelm, Corporate Vice President, Head of Retail Media at Ace Hardware Corporation)

You’ve built your career at the intersection of sales, marketing, and retail transformation. what were the pivotal moments that led you to step into the Corporate Vice President, Head of Retail Media role at Ace Hardware? You’ve said you get energy from working with brilliant people and cultivating mutually beneficial partnerships. What is it about retail media that makes it such an exciting space for collaboration right now? Many organizations struggle to truly connect marketing strategy to sales execution. How do you design go-to-market strategies that genuinely unleash the power of marketing behind sales teams to drive measurable results? Ace Hardware has an incredibly strong brand and retailer network. What’s unique about building a retail media capability inside that ecosystem compared to other retail environments? Retail media works best when it creates value for retailers, brands, and customers simultaneously. What does a truly mutually beneficial partnership look like in practice and how do you structure teams and incentives to support that?

July 28, 202620 min

Winning the AI Shelf: Why Product Experience Is the New Competitive Advantage (Simon Angove, Chief Executive Officer at Syndigo)

Product content used to be viewed as a relatively tactical function. Today, it increasingly feels like core commerce infrastructure. From your perspective, what changed? Many brands still underestimate how much poor product content impacts conversion, discoverability, and retail relationships. What are the biggest operational gaps you continue to see across organizations? AI-generated content is creating enormous new possibilities, but also a lot of noise and inconsistency. How should executives think about balancing scale, governance, and product experience quality? One thing becoming clear is that the digital shelf is no longer just about PDP optimization. It increasingly influences search visibility, retail algorithms, advertising efficiency, and even supply chain performance. How interconnected has this ecosystem become? Looking ahead, where do you think product experience infrastructure evolves over the next several years, especially as AI agents and machine-driven shopping behaviors become more common?

July 23, 202619 min

Building What's Next: Leadership in the Age of Retail Media (Elizabeth Neubauer-Donovan, EVP, Head of Commerce & Retail Media Networks + Growth Monetization at Acxiom)

You’ve consistently been at the forefront of first-party data and omnichannel monetization/ What was an early moment in your career when you realized data would fundamentally reshape how media is bought and sold? Now as SVP, Global Head of Commerce & Retail Media Networks at Acxiom under Omnicom Group, what excites you most about operating at a global scale versus building a single network from the ground up? You’re known for building multi-functional teams and scalable organizations from scratch. What part of that building process energizes you the most the strategy, the talent development, the revenue acceleration, or the technology innovation? When you look back at that journey, what gave you the conviction that hospitality could become a powerful media channel? You spend a lot of time thinking about leadership and potential. What are you personally most excited about unlocking next in the industry and in yourself?

July 21, 202620 min

Winning the Next Chapter of Retail Media Networks: Relevance, Loyalty & Execution (Sherry Smith, President, Retail Media at Criteo)

Retail media has evolved incredibly quickly over the last few years, but the conversation has also become far more financially scrutinized. From your perspective, what phase is the industry actually entering now? A lot of retailers rushed to launch retail media networks, but many are now discovering that building ad inventory is very different from building a scalable media business. What are the biggest structural mistakes you see retailers making today? Brands continue shifting budget into retail media, but many executives are starting to question incrementality, duplication, and measurement consistency across networks. What are brands asking for now that they were not asking for even 18 months ago? One of the biggest tensions in retail media right now is the relationship between trade spend and media spend. How do you think CFOs and commercial leaders should be reevaluating the role retail media plays inside the broader P&L? As Amazon, Walmart, and Instacart continue to scale, what does the future look like for mid-sized and regional retail media networks? Do you see consolidation coming, or are there areas where smaller RMNs can still build defensible advantages?