Today’s Shopping Landscape: Strategies for the Changing Consumer Journey
Featured Speakers’ Bios
Jeff (Ephraim) Bander
Chief Revenue Officer
Eye Square
Ephraim (Jeff) Bander is the Chief Revenue Officer for Eye Square, a global leader in human experience technology. Jeff has been a leader of innovation in Market Research for 20 years, helping companies in over 60 countries better understand their customers. Jeff was instrumental in Neurofocus’s purchase by Nielsen in 2011. Jeff then helped launch Sticky, the world’s first webcam eye-tracking company based in Sweden, from his basement in Brooklyn. Sticky is now part of Tobii.
Jeff opened the US office for Eye Square at the end of 2017. He is a respected industry thought leader, focusing on how companies use technology, art, and psychology to provide valuable, actionable insights using Market Research Systems 0,1, and 2.
Jeff has won numerous awards, including being named the recipient of the ARF (Advertising Research Federation) Great Mind Award and the Next Gen Market Research Disruptive Innovation Award.
Jeff wrestled at the University of Georgia. He and his wife, Shoshana, split their time between Santa Cruz, California, and beautiful Brooklyn, NY. If you’d like to reach Jeff, please email him at bander@eye-square.com.
Keith Bryan
President, Best Buy Ads, Media and CRM
Best Buy
SHOPPER 2023
Co-Chair
Keith Bryan is the President of Best Buy Ads & SVP of Media Strategy & CRM at Best Buy. During his 18-year tenure at Best Buy, Keith has led category marketing teams, served as a Merchant Director—where he led the computing category and launched and scaled Best Buy’s successful Apple store-within-a-store, and even led the teams responsible for credit cards and membership like the My Best Buy loyalty program.
But ultimately, Keith had his sights set on transforming Best Buy’s media strategy and on building a retail media business for Best Buy—a business that he started 12 years ago and saw to fruition in January 2022 with the launch of Best Buy Ads. Keith believes that retail and publishing are converging into a powerful ecosystem with the power to positively impact both the customer experience and advertiser outcomes.
Before Best Buy, Keith was a CPG brand manager and corporate attorney, receiving his MBA from Duke University and his JD from Emory University. He dreams of being a better skier, more accomplished guitar player, and of writing a series of children’s books about secret phenomena within an old stone wall. Keith is the epitome of one of his favorite quotes, “this is what progress feels like.”
April Carlisle
EVP, Commerce
Spark Foundry
April recently joined Spark Foundry as EVP, Commerce to build commerce capabilities to deliver competitive advantage for our clients. She will leverage Publicis Groupe’s advanced commerce solutions to deliver holistic investment strategies for clients to drive profitable growth in the increasingly competitive landscape of e-tailers.
April most recently was the VP, Shopper Marketing for Coca-Cola which included any marketing activities of the Coca-Cola portfolio that drove value creation strategies and sustainable growth within the context of a retailer or e-tailer.
Prior to joining The Coca-Cola Company, April worked for 24 years at Procter & Gamble in various sales and marketing roles of increasing responsibility working with most key U.S. retailers. Her last role was building and leading a Shopper Marketing Center of Excellence for North America. Additionally, she led global capability building in shopper marketing by conducting over 300 clinics with brands to ensure product initiatives would be successful in the retail context. April then moved to LeoBurnett/Arc Worldwide as the SVP, Global Shopper Marketing for 5 years. Her responsibilities included leading global training and development for both clients and agency resources on Shopper Marketing. Her key clients included P&G, Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s, and 3M.
April is a leader in the Shopper Marketing industry. She was recently inducted into the Shopper Marketing Hall of Fame, is a distinguished Faculty member of the P2P Institute, has been a “Who’s Who in Shopper Marketing” for 8 consecutive years on both the manufacturer and client side and has spoken at conferences around the globe.
Additionally, April is an adjunct professor at Northwestern University teaching a Shopper Marketing graduate level class through Medill. April resides in Atlanta with her husband and teenage son. Her adult daughter is a proud shopper marketer as well working at an agency in Chicago.
Jason Clough
Senior Director Client Insights
Comscore
Jason has helped brands and publishers transform data into actionable intelligence for the past 7 years. Essential to Jason’s core DNA is a love for data and how it can change outcomes for his clients. He routinely collaborates with global brands on thought leadership and white space research that supercharges their understanding of an ‘always on’ strategy and the necessity to stay aware of an always evolving consumer audience. Data can tell incredible stories and Jason loves to bring those stories to life.
AJ Dalal
Senior Managing Director, Data and Metaverse Strategy
Publicis Sapient
AJ brings 20+ years of experience defining and implementing enterprise strategies for Fortune 500 companies ranging from Data Science, Strategy, and Engineering. Since 2017, AJ fell in love with the potential of web3 and has never looked back. Excited to apply his knowledge from the past 20+ years into web3, AJ creates dialogue with clients where he demystifies the space, develops strategies that are practical and scalable, and co-develops roadmaps that change as often as our weather (AI anyone?). From startups through to Fortune 500 companies, AJ loves to define and deliver differentiating strategies that embrace the ethos of today’s / tomorrow’s space.
Paul Donato
Chief Research Officer
ARF
Paul Donato joined the ARF as Chief Research Officer in October 2017. Paul is a highly-regarded leader in media and advertising research with more than two decades of industry experience. Earlier in his career he co-founded WPP’s Media Research Business Unit, served as CEO of Kantar Media, and Technical Director of IBOPE Latin America. He was the EVP and CRO for The Nielsen Company for more than a decade, overseeing Nielsen retail, consumer, mobile, and media measurement methodologies. Upon leaving Nielsen, Paul founded Jatopond, a media and market research firm. He also has led business units at Simmons, and at Audits and Surveys Worldwide. He currently sits on the Future State Committee of the National Air and Space Museum. In addition to leading the research team, Paul will also play an active role in overall ARF leadership, helping to guide our future direction.
Michael Ellgass
EVP Global Retail Marketing Solutions
IRI
Mike is the retail marketing expert within IRI’s Media Solutions division who works with leading CPG retailers to build unparalleled end-to-end capabilities to drive personalization and performance optimization across the marketing process. From insights, to purchase-based audiences, to measurement across sub-campaign elements, his team works to bring the power of big data and superior methodology to drive growth for retailers and their retail media networks.
Prior to joining IRI, Mike spent more than 10 years with Kraft Foods and then spent 10 years with Walmart, most recently leading category marketing where he oversaw hundreds of millions of dollars in integrated retail marketing campaigns and worked closely with the Walmart @labs team to launch the WMX loyalty platform. Mike holds a master’s degree in marketing from Wake Forest University and a bachelor’s degree in finance from Indiana University.
Ian Essling
Senior Director Survey Insights
Comscore
Ian has been leading custom research and thought leadership projects with Comscore for over 13 years. His leadership in the digital commerce space includes the development of Comscore’s mobile commerce measurement solution and “State of…” research across multiple verticals, including retail commerce, gaming, health, and media.
Elizabeth Harris
Chief Strategy Officer
Arc Worldwide
Asking questions about the things you don’t know—the things that scare you—is a necessary part of achieving growth. Just ask Elizabeth Harris, who was named a winner in Path to Purchase’s 2021 Women of Excellence Awards in the “Innovator” category. Elizabeth has turned her natural curiosity about people’s shopping behavior into a rewarding, tenured career.
With deep experience in marketing research, shopper journeys and brand experience planning, Elizabeth is the expert in making brands irresistible to the people they serve.
Along with being our CSO, she is also an adjunct professor at Northwestern University, where she teaches shopper marketing to the next generation of aspiring marketing professionals.
Recently, Elizabeth helped Sages, a business resource group for employees ages 50+, secure the Age Friendly Institute’s ‘Age Friendly Employer Certification’ for Arc and its Publicis Groupe counterparts—Leo Burnett, Publicis Health and Digitas North America. These were notably the
first agencies to be certified in the program, paving the way to a more welcoming and accessible workplace in the advertising industry.
Julianne Hudson
VP, Marketing Science
VMLY&R Commerce
Julianne Hudson, VP Marketing Science, is a transplant from strategy to marketing science where she leads the X Drive process of finding growth for clients in conventional and non-conventional places. Her objective is to use research to make strategy stronger and use strategy experience to make research stronger in the context of retail. She supports all clients of VYC in North American with recent work spanning Adidas, Alen, British American Tobacco, Colgate, Diageo, Ford, John Deere and others. Prior to that she was Director of Strategy for Geometry where she lead the American Greetings shopper marketing business as well as worked on General Mills, Mondelez, Nestle and Orascoptic to meet their shopper marketing needs.
In a previous role, she worked for Brokaw where as a Senior Brand Planner she developed brand campaigns for a handful of hospitals and brand development for a series of B2B manufacturing and automotive companies.
Julie has a Master’s in Communication Practice and Theory from Cleveland State University’s School of Communication and lives Northeast Ohio with her husband and sons, where she is in a constant fight for the remote control.
Michael Joffe
Global Strategy, Android Marketing
Google
SHOPPER 2023
Co-Chair
Rohan Karankal
Global Shopper Insights, Center of Excellence (CoE)
Mondelēz International
Rohan is an Insights & Analytics Professional with over 18 years of experience in diverse Insights & Analytics roles such as Shopper Insights, Consumer Insights, Advanced Analytics, Strategic Pricing & PPA, and B2B. He has worked across developing and developed markets. In his role, Rohan is leading the way in Shopper Excellence as Global Insights & Analytics Centre of Excellence at Mondelēz International.
Helen Katz
EVP, Global Data Intelligence
Publicis Media
In her current role, Helen Katz leads the global research unit within Publicis Media. She is a trusted industry expert on research, with a particular focus on data quality and reliable measurement. Her interest in innovation inspired her to play an instrumental role in developing best practices in the measurement of addressable TV and advanced video campaigns in the U.S.
A 22-year Publicis Groupe veteran, Katz has served in various strategic research capacities for Publicis Media, Starcom, Zenith and GM Planworks – the holding company’s former division devoted to the General Motors business. In 2009, she was integral to the Publicis Groupe team that launched The Pool – a unique research consortium that aimed to identify the next new ad formats across various channels such as online video, mobile/tablets and more. Prior to joining Publicis Groupe, she was Vice President, Media Research Manager at DDB Needham.
She began her career as an advertising professor at Michigan State University and is currently an adjunct professor at DePaul University and New York University. She has published numerous articles in industry and academic journals, as well as three textbooks on advertising and media, the most recent of which is The Media Handbook (8th edition, 2022). She is the ex-officio Chair of the Executive Committee of the Media Rating Council, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Advertising Research Foundation. Katz is also the recipient of the Advertising Research Foundation’s “Great Minds” award for research innovation, Jay Chiat’s Strategic Excellence Silver Award for innovation, and Stars of Attribution leadership award.
Katz has a master’s degree in advertising and a Ph.D. in communications from the University of Illinois and was an undergraduate English major at the University of London.
Tony Marlow
CMO
LG Ad Solutions
Tony Marlow is the Chief Marketing Officer for LG Ad Solutions, based on the East Coast. He is an insights-driven executive and leads all aspects of marketing and communications for the company.
Prior to his current role, Tony was CMO for Integral Ad Science, where he helped transform the brand into a recognized and trusted partner and helped take the company public through an IPO in 2021. Prior to IAS, he was the CMO for the ‘big data’ company Data Axle, and was the Global Head and Vice President of B2B Marketing for Yahoo.
Tony is a media and marketing expert with a special interest in data, digital media and CTV, and in helping brands be innovative to make deeper and more meaningful connections with people. He is a frequent speaker at digital media conferences, and has provided comment for news articles and television stories.
Additionally, Tony is on the Board of Advisers to social measurement startup SocialStatus.io, he co-founded mobile app development company Appy Dragon (creators of RacerTracer) and serves on the Advisory Council for Colorado State University-Global Campus (CSU-Global) to which he delivered the 2017 commencement speech. He has served on the board of directors for the IAB’s Research Council, IAB Video Center and the Media Ratings Council. He is also an Ironman triathlete in his spare time.
Tony attended the Australian National University and the University of Wollongong, holding two Bachelors degrees (Psychology and Commerce) as well as a Masters degree in Strategic Marketing.
Scott McDonald, Ph.D.
CEO & President
ARF
Scott McDonald became the CEO and President of the Advertising Research Foundation in March 2017. Prior to joining the ARF, he held senior research positions at leading global media companies, including 18 years at Time Warner, and 14 years at Conde Nast, covering both the consumer and the advertising sides of the media business. Throughout his career, he has kept a foot in both the academic and business worlds, teaching for 5 years at NYU and for 18 years at Columbia Business School. He serves as an adviser to the Social Science Matrix Program at UC Berkeley, and is on the Board of the Population Reference Bureau. An avid art lover, he also is on the board of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He holds an A.B. degree from UC Berkeley and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Shawn McGahee
Head of Retail Media
Shawn McGahee is the Head of Retail Media at Google who is responsible for partnering with Retail Media networks and ensuring they get the value of Google’s media and technology offering. Beginning his career in Retail Media at Triad, Shawn is a sales and marketing leader with ~20 years of experience using advancements in data and technology to help Fortune 500 companies redesign corporate brand strategy, optimize digital marketing investments, and generate multi-million dollar business growth. Shawn brings broad industry expertise across Retail, CPG, Tech, Telecom and Agency environments.
Melvin Melendez
Senior Art Director
Arc Worldwide
With a passion for merging art and technology, Melvin has excelled for the past five years as a Senior Art Director on the Intel account, creating innovative, interactive experiences. Projects such as Intel’s Intelligent Point of Sale have radically changed the way shoppers navigate the PC aisle by blending education with engagement to help them feel empowered when making this crucial investment. Melvin is invigorated by the challenge of pushing the envelope with technology while creating open and accessible communication for any shopper.
Vita Molis
Head of Research & Insights, NA & Global Functions
TikTok
Vita Molis has 10+ years of market research experience and is the Head of Research & Insights for Global Business Marketing at TikTok. Focusing on both audience and product research.
Over the course of her career, Vita has designed research programs to help global brands make informed business decisions and shape marketing strategy. She has a diverse background in qualitative and quantitative research with a focus on thought leadership and advanced statistical analysis across a variety of industries: CPG, Beauty, Retail, eComm, Tech and Finance.
Prior to TikTok, Vita worked at both boutique and large-scale research firms. Most recently, she led the Nielsen Music research practice where she worked with brands and labels on audience insight and brand sponsorship.
Ally Schnitzer
Retail Media Lead
PepsiCo
Ally Schnitzer is the Retail Media Lead at PepsiCo supporting key retailers Target, 7E and Circle K. She is responsible for directing strategic omni-channel media investments in partnership with Shopper and Ecommerce teams to maximize ROI for the PepsiCo portfolio of brands across retailers.
Prior to joining PepsiCo, Ally spent 10 years at media agencies. During that time, she led strategic media planning and buying for the SCJ Home Cleaning + Shoe Care brands producing data driven omnichannel media plans. And also worked on well-known pharma, tech, financial and a variety of retail accounts across Chicago media agencies— PHD, Omnicom Media Group, Spark and Mindshare.
She is a passionate digital media enthusiast and measurement fanatic. Ally is also a graduate of Chicago’s Second City and enjoys all things comedy and college football.
Dana Sparber
VP, Insights and Research
NBCUniversal Advertising and Partnerships
Dana Sparber serves as Vice President of Insights and Research at NBCUniversal Advertising & Partnerships. In this role, Dana evaluates innovative measurement solutions and delivers thought provoking consumer insights with a focus on serving multicultural audiences across NBCUniversal’s One Platform.
With more than 20 years in TV and digital media advertising, spanning both nascent businesses and large global corporations, Dana transforms data into actionable, insightful narratives and presents them in an impactful way for consumers.
Prior to joining NBCUniversal in 2020, Dana held similar research posts at FOX and Univision. She also worked on the product side at Nielsen in the early development of mobile audience measurement solutions.
Dana is an active member of the ARF Cultural Effectiveness Council. She studied TV & Radio Communications and Marketing at CUNY Brooklyn College and currently resides in New York City.
Cassie Taylor
Global Trend Lead
TikTok
Cassie Taylor is the Global Trend Lead with over a decade of experience in advertising and marketing, working with some of the world’s top brands and agencies. She wields a careful combination of left brain and right brain, being adept at both design thinking and integrated strategy.
After graduating from Parsons, her professional experience includes Faith Popcorn’s BrainReserve, Havas Life, McgarryBowen, Havas Worldwide, Huge, and BuzzFeed.
Currently as a lead at TikTok, her current focus is building the global trend discipline that tracks and translates the many cultural trends that are sparked by TikTok’s audience. Those trends are then used to uncover points of differentiation for TikTok, as well as help marketers better activate their efforts in a meaningful way on the platform.
Ben Tienor
Director, Gulp Media Network
7-Eleven
Ben leads customer insights & analysis at 7-Eleven, Inc. He has 20 years of retail experience across specialty & mass concepts, both large & small formats. Since joining 7-Eleven, his team has spearheaded Gulp Media Network & The Brainfreeze Collective programs, which, when paired with transactional data, help CPGs understand and market to immediate consumption shoppers.
Jessica Wohl
Senior Editor
Ad Age
Jessica Wohl is senior editor at Ad Age. She was most recently a senior reporter at the publication, covering the food and restaurant industries. Prior to Ad Age, Jessica was a food business news reporter at the Chicago Tribune. She got her start in journalism at Reuters, where she covered some of the world’s largest consumer packaged goods and retail companies.