August 21 / NEW Social Media: Driving Brand, Demand, and Sales / 8a-12p
With Guest Trainer Steve McDermott, Digital Lead for Kantar Retail Consulting
Social Media has revolutionized the way people communicate with each other, changed the way they interact with brands and retailers, and re-framed how they experience—and share—those interactions. Many companies have charged head-long into Social Media in pursuit of millions of consumers—only to find it challenging to gain traction, let alone show a positive ROI on their investment.

Steve McDermott leads a lively discussion around this critically important vehicle, and outlines how it can help drive success for your team:

• Develop your Social strategy to align with your business strategy
  
• Leverage Social Media along the Path to Purchase™ to drive awareness, preference, purchase, and advocacy
  
• Create content for Social Media that consumers will engage with
  
• Understand where Social is going as it converges with Mobile
  
• Measure the right Social metrics and improve ROI

August 21 / NEW Understanding & Leveraging Social Media / 1p-5p
Kantar Retail is delighted to welcome the experts in social media listening at Visible as special guest trainers
Though social media has been a hot topic for years, much of the buzz is often narrowly focused on metrics like “number of followers on Facebook”—while the real opportunity is far broader. Applying science and analysis to social media conversations is critical to developing real-time, relevant shopper insights that can meaningfully be acted on. Come join us as we compare and contrast different methods of interpreting the millions of voices at the intersection of social and traditional media to better understand today’s shopper behavior:

• Social Media Toolbox: Evaluate the many measures and metrics that quantify—and qualify—the millions of conversations constantly taking place in the social media environment
• Voice of the Shopper: Listen to some of the conversations shoppers are already having about retailers and their strategies—and explore different ways to leverage these discussions
  
• Focus on ROI: Walk through the steps you should consider when leveraging social media to maximize opportunity

August 22/ General Session / 8a-5p
Leadership in Digital Retail: Capturing Shoppers with Trust and Technology
Anne Zybowski, Vice President, Kantar Retail
It’s the central question for anyone involved in US retail: How can your business translate online activity into in-store purchases? In order to grow, brick and mortar retailers must understand the ecommerce world—it’s essential to capturing opportunity in this rapidly changing retail marketplace. And yet, the answer to this question is not just having a website or counting the number of Twitter followers. Ecommerce is a shopper trend… to be effective, brands must respond. As “Earth’s most customer-centric company”, Amazon leads the way—literally turning the conversation and ratings of its shoppers into a loop of trust. It’s this recursive quality that drives success in becoming a Trusted Source, vs. fulfilling a checklist of digital initiatives. Kantar Retail’s Vice President of Retail Insights on Digital, Anne Zybowski, maps out an approach to winning retail’s New Frontier by elevating the conversation to strategic, evolving engagement.

The Shopper Has Gone Digital: Sketching Out the Horizon of Retail Opportunity
Mary Brett Whitfield, Senior Vice President, Kantar Retail
Technology’s spread—specifically web and social media usage—has completely changed the availability of almost every type of information. The resulting changes in shopping behavior have intensified efforts to understand how shoppers have incorporated digital tools and technology into shopping routines … and now, as smartphones and tablets permeate the environment, the horizon of retail opportunity has just moved again:

• 12% of all shoppers (28% Gen Y) posted to a social networking site, using a smartphone, about a purchase they were considering
  
• 25% of all shoppers look at online circulars to decide where to shop as part of grocery pre-trip planning
  
• 22% of Gen Y and 18% of Gen X shoppers have used a smartphone to research an item online while in a store

Mary Brett Whitfield provides an insightful presentation of where digital shopper behavior is today, powered by Kantar Retail’s ShopperScape® survey, and scopes out what evolving trends will mean for suppliers and retailers in the coming year.

Double Click on Shoppers: Driving Conversion Digitally…and Effectively
Jason Caine, Director—Retail & CPG, Compete
As digital shopper behavior continues to change rapidly, so do the sources that are most effective at driving conversion. Top retailer and brand sites constantly refresh their overall strategy as the portfolio of available online touchpoints and resources evolves and the ways in which consumers use it changes. Jason Caine of Compete walks through a mini-case study at the category level to highlight the data points, watchouts, and best-in-class ideas you’ll need to build the most effective tools into your holiday strategy: from social, email, and search to coupons.

Digital Transcends Functions: A Case Study on Nimble Adaptation
Michael Stich, Rockfish, Chief Growth Officer
Mary Goggans, Director of Business Development—ecommerce, Kimberly-Clark
We all know Digital has changed our lives, but has it changed the way our companies are organized and resourced? The user/shopper journey is now filled with traditional decisions utterly changed by new choices, all brought about by digital. Mary Goggans of Kimberly-Clark and Michael Stich of Rockfish share a case study—mapping out the future of the journey, including before, during, and after the shopper is in the store. Consider how this new shopper experience can change the way a supplier org works across the business—and hear how building new capabilities to support and align to it can drive opportunity at retail.

Crossing Paths: Multi-Channel Category Management
David Marcotte, Senior Vice President, Kantar Retail Market Insights
‘Merchandise the Screen’ is a phrase used to sharpen the thinking associated with good ecommerce design and process. The goal is to create an effective means of exposing the consumer to product in such a way that they then wish to purchase it…in other words, Merchandising. Category Management principles are an acceptable means of managing and merchandising stores, aisles, and shelves—and they are equally applicable to ecommerce. David Marcotte profiles how a single process can effectively bridge from the physical to the virtual and result in greater effectiveness, collaboration, and single company measures for success.

Shopper Connection in Real-Time: Turning Data into Dialogue
Michael Stich, Rockfish, Chief Growth Officer
Agencies and start-ups often collaborate with brands and retailers to put the benefits of new technology to work across the retail landscape. Many partnerships result in programs that leverage the new moments to connect and interact with shoppers that have been created by digital innovation. Michael Stich shares best practice in this space leveraging a case study around Momentfeed’s geo-based analytics—and the location-related functionality that it enables. Contemplate how retailers are taking advantage of these insights at the local level to communicate in real-time with shoppers and consider how business models and capabilities are adapting as a result.

Winning Retail’s New Frontier: 6 Big Re-definitions to Compete in A Truly Multi-Channel World
Bryan Gildenberg, Chief Knowledge Officer, Kantar Retail
Real growth in the marketplace is still that bright spot on the horizon we’re all racing towards—but it’s the only part of successful retail strategy that hasn’t changed radically. Today’s “wall-less” world requires different skill sets for retailers and suppliers as they partner to balance .com with brick and mortar to thrive. As the connections between value proposition, execution, and ROI have fundamentally been reset—the “Big Ideas” need to be re-defined. Kantar Retail’s Chief Knowledge Officer, Bryan Gildenberg, explains the Kantar Retail CLEVER model--Convenience, Loyalty, Experience, Value, Execution, ROI – each pillar has a changing definition that will, in turn, change the retail world. Amazon has eliminated the luxurious strategic choice--retailers used to be able to be good at one of these things and win…now they need to be good at ALL of them. Join us as we: redefine these fundamental concepts, offer key frameworks to help your company manage for growth in the 2010s, and demonstrate how retail strategy must change.

August 23/ NEW Understanding the New Frontier: Digital Retailing / 8a-12p
Retail’s New Frontier isn’t about replicating the in-store environment online—it’s about engaging wherever and whenever the shopper wants. A conservative approach drives a loss of relevance—retailers must take the risks necessary to make the “Clicks Stick” in a rapidly changing competitive landscape. Anne Zybowski leads an interactive, hands-on session to help your team stay ahead of the curve—join your peers and assess best practice, watchouts, and challenges in real-time as we “walk” several online stores and leave with relevant, applicable next steps:

• Compare and contrast best practice examples of using the store to meet digital expectations of brands and shoppers
  
• Identify the structural barriers within your retail customers that must change to enable an integrated approach to meeting shoppers’ needs
  
• Using Kantar Retail thought models, achieve clarity on the 4 ways shoppers interact with retailers online—only one of which is transactional.
  

August 23 / NEW Life in the “Amazon” / 1p-5p
Ecommerce has reached a tipping point—moving from fringe solidly into the retail mainstream. Amazon, the leading pureplay player, continues to cause ripples across the retail landscape as shoppers have their perceptions of convenience, value and experience continually reframed by Amazon’s unique combination of assets and capabilities. Kantar Retail’s Anne Zybowski and Bryan Gildenberg lead a forward-looking session, exploring the new retail realities of “Life in the Amazon” and discussing strategies to help your company and your customers tear down the “walls”:

• Disruptive pricing: Define the 2Ds and 2Ps of pricing strategy and anticipate the impact of digital tools, such as price-check apps
  
• Shifting categories: Familiarize yourself with the patterns of category evolution and outline the things retailers and suppliers can do now to prepare for a future where ecommerce is a larger piece of the pie
  
• Multichannel category management: Embrace an omnichannel world—shoppers view the shelf as endless, but today’s processes focus on optimizing limited physical space. To be a strategic partner, you must think differently.
  
• Agile mechanics: Prepare your team—and supply chain—for a world where delivering progressively more flexible solutions that meet shoppers’ increasingly demanding expectations becomes the norm.