Rob Saker's Blog

The majority of the sessions and activity seems centered around day 1, and for whatever reason I always have a firedrill to deal with on day 2.  I was dealing with a recall last year, and this year I was dealing with an extract we were manually creating.  Not sure who the winner is, but I know I’m always on the losing side.

Note to presenters, choose shorter names for presentations.  Here’s three select presentations:

• Putting Innovative Customer-Centric Strategies to Work in Meeting Customers Healthcare Demands
• Translating Granular Shopper Understanding into Optimal Store Experiences Across Multiple Retail Banners
• Customer Marketing: Driving Enhanced Retailer and Manufacturer Partnerships

Where’s the element of surprise?  Best presentation had the title, “Analytics and Winning Teams.”

As I was dealing with data files, I was unable to make the first sessions.  I had been looking forward to Paul Beahm of Wal-Mart, who spoke to the “Putting Innovative Customer-Centric Strategies to Work in Meeting Customers Healthcare Demands.”  I suspect that plays very well with our Health & Wellness initiatives, especially the Start Making Choices program.  It would’ve been interesting to hear what he had to say.  We’ll have to ask Rachel what she thought.  Cannon’s memory may have been strained at this hour.

I made the Manufacturing-Retailer Collaboration Panel.  The big theme by the Retailers was the desire to have greater collaboration across manufacturers.  Their complaint is that they hear the same presentation on the same topic repeatedly, one per manufacturer.  They’d like to have manufacturers partner on insights and collaboratively help retailers.  Several were very adamant about the need for collaboration across manufacturers, so I suspect the first manufacturers to do this will have an advantage.

Of course, any advantage could easily be offset by sharing proprietary insights.  Manufacturers spend significant sums to develop competitive advantages, and insights and analytics are often key to this.

I suspect technology could play a big role here.  We’ve built tools in the interactive space to be usable outside our physical environment.  A good example of this is the Store Locator, which allows users to locate our products at our retailer.  This is built using a web service, or Service Oriented Architecture approach.  The primary use of this specific application is on ConAgraFoods.com, and is used by both consumers and our call center.  We also have branded experiences on Healthy Choice, Hebrew National and other sites, where the user sees only that brand.

We’ve extended this to external sites, too, with advertisements on Yahoo Consumer Direct.  Users see an ad for Hebrew National on Yahoo, and have the ability to locate our products without leaving Yahoo.

That same approach and architecture could be used for retailers, too.  Imagine offering our retailers a service where their consumers could locate nutritional information across retailers.  We start with a small service like that to test the waters and expand scope.  I’d love to have competitive nutritional values available in one searchable database.

I’ve got one similar idea in concept stage with PAM that I can’t go into.  It’ll be a good test to see if it would work.

James Carville and Mary Matalin were the last speakers in the general session.  Mary was a bit off her game last year, but she made up for it this year with very insightful comments.  Carville looked shell-shocked at the internal war going on in the Democratic Party.  They both agreed we were in unprecedented times.  The Republican party hasn’t seen a race like this since 1940, and the Democrats haven’t seen a race like this.  All the leading indicators of success haven’t proven correct.

It’s a true black swan year, but I wonder if they looked at negative correlation.  Carville kept repeating that nobody ever had won on negative sentiment.  The positive indicators didn’t predict success, but what about people’s frustration with political fighting?  Lack of action on health care, the economy and other factors have people so resentful they’re going for unifying forces.  The correlation of candidates to negative factors would explain both Obama and McCain.

Matalin repeated the joke about her husband being 4.0 on graduation (his blood alcohol level).

Brief lunch with Mollie and Jesse.  Beautiful flowers on the table.  Jesse’s mom must’ve been in town.

Sat in on a few afternoon conferences.  Nothing as interesting or relevant as day 1.  Was interested in “Kodak’s Digital Transformation-Global, Marketing Data Platform.”  Spoke to the feedback loop in marketing platforms.  Was good to hear people reiterating the need to design feedback loops within your programs.  Analytics is not a bolt-on!  You’ve got to include how you want to measure your programs as part of the design.  You’ll overcome any design flaws, and occasionally identify opportunities.

Jeff O’Shaughnessy of IRI led me through a detailed demonstration of IRI Impact.  IRI Impact is the next generation of CPGN Plus.  It’s evolutionary – nothing completely new here – but really seems to have focused on usability and building a platform where marketing enables sales.

If we were using ILD, Impact would inherit any custom hierarchies or panel definitions for reporting.  Alerts are easier to create and more flexible.  Reports would be defined by marketers, and individual users would go in and define their customizations.

Very nice tool.  Of all the tools I saw, I think this would have the greatest, fastest impact within our business (including ILD).

I enjoyed the Summit overall.  It would have been nice to have had my CI guys here, as I always gain additional perspective from them.   I didn’t hear what I had hoped to about some things, but knowing where not to go is also useful.  I always enjoy learning more knowledge and gaining perspective in the industry.

That’s it for my Summit notes.  I’ll be sticking around Orlando for a few days to hang out with friends.

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