As seen in IN MERCHANDISING The 200-plus individuals listed in this section have been identified as notable figures at their respective companies that represent leading brands and retailers within the global merchandising community. Their continued achievements have earned them inclusion among this latest installment of our Who’s Who series, which recognizes the top performers in shopper marketing, digital shopper marketing, insights and merchandising.
Transcript
As seen in
IN MERCHANDISING
The 200-plus individuals listed in this section have been identified as notable figures at their respective companies that represent leading brands and retailers within the global merchandising community. Their continued achievements have earned them inclusion among this latest installment of our Who’s Who series, which recognizes the top performers in shopper marketing, digital shopper marketing, insights and merchandising.
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7-ElEvEn Inc.n Tom Burkemper, Senior
Director, Merchandising Burkemper’s responsibili-ties include leadership for 7-Eleven’s merchandising initiatives for energy and functional beverages, coffee, juices and other beverages in the U.S. His more than 20 years of experience includes roles within the CPG, pharmaceuticals and bev-erage industries.
n Rob Chumley, VP, Retail/Business Innovation
n Rebecca Frechette, VP, Merchandising Frechette has been VP of merchandis-ing for 7-Eleven since 2012, leading all aspects of the center of store, services and private brands businesses. She builds and executes strategies and solutions for a broad range of businesses, including candy, snacks, health and beauty, general merchandise, wireless phones, prepaid cards, lottery and tobacco, and also leads all product development for 7-Eleven’s private brands.
AAccO BrAnds n Chris Cunningham, Global Design
Directorn Gary Lazicki, U.S.
Marketing, Retail Merchandising Manager Lazicki uses category man-agement and research-based brand strategies to activate merchandising platforms across office product categories.
n Ryan Tesiero, Senior Leader, Visual Display & Merchandising
AcE HArdwArEn Mike Berschauer, Director,
Retail Operationsn Lorne Cohen, Group Category
Manager, Consumer Insights & Shopper Marketing
n Elyse Sanneman, Store Design & Planning Manager, Retail Development
AdvAncE AutO PArts Inc.n Kevin Conniff, Director, Inventory
Management and Visual Merchandising
AmErIcAn ExPrEssn Suzanne Burg, Senior Manager,
Marketing & CommunicationsBurg focuses on communications for the small merchant segment, including P-O-P signage placement and cardmember engagement for marketing efforts such as Small Business Saturday and digital offers.
AmErIcAn GrEEtInGs cOrP.n Don Batson, Director of Retail Design
and Experience
APPlE cOmPutEr Inc.n Rachael Weiss, Retail Merchandising
Manager
AsIcs AmErIcA cOrP.n Sarah Booth, Director of Retail
Marketingn Casey Nolter, Director of Retail
AvEry PrOducts cOrP.n Kimberly True, Director,
Visual Merchandising
BBAyEr HEAltHcArEn Ben Barra, Manager, Merchandising
Services
BEAm GlOBAl sPIrIts & wInEn Jim Dionne, Senior
Manager, Marketing Procurement Dionne leads the Americas marketing procurement team, providing direction for effective category management of Beam’s marketing spend including agen-cies, media, print, POS, display logistics and warehousing.
n Jeanette Koklamanis, Senior Purchasing Agent
BEst Buy cO.n Chris Brandewie, Director of Store
Designn Toni Engebretsen, Director,
Visual Merchandising
BOsE cOrP.n John Devine, Senior Manager,
Merchandising
n Eric Green, Global Display Category Manager
BrOwn-FOrmAn cOrP. n David Dorsey, VP, Director, Global
Licensing & Sales Promotion
Burt’s BEEsn Spencer M. Blaker,
Global Director, Retail Marketing
n Theresa McDonald, Merchandising Manager
n Tiffany Pieja, POP Merchandising Manager
ccAmPBEll sOuP/PEPPErIdGE FArmn Susan Bell, Director,
In-Store Merchandising, Pepperidge Farm Bell leads the in-store mer-chandising team at Pep-peridge Farm, which part-ners with sales and marketing to deliver merchandising vehicles for customers.
n Justin Cerritelli, Senior Customer Development Manager – Innovation
n Chris Cogan, Senior Manager, Merchandising
n Jeff Lee, Director of In-Store Execution
cHurcH & dwIGHt n Dan Bracken, Director, Marketing
Services
tHE clOrOx cO.n Jill Kettelhodt, Sales Merchandising
Louis Dorado oversees a team that brings to life planograms, floor-plan execution and promotional space at the more than 8,100 Walgreens stores in the United States and Puerto Rico that are visited by more than 6 million shoppers a day.
Such a wide scope requires skills in operations, logistics, customer service and efficiency. “I think like an industrial en-gineer, have the heart of an operator, and I have a passion for people and their development,” says Dorado, who came to Walgreens in 2007 from United Parcel Service after previously working as a Certi-Saver store manager.
At Certi-Saver he learned daily store operations and how to treat shoppers, while in his seven years at UPS he focused on spatial planning and operations. “I began running the indus-trial engineering group responsible for process engineering, time studies, labor forecasting, space optimization and utiliza-tion plans,” says Dorado. “Managing space, people and pro-ductivity is no different across industries – every inch of space has a cost and opportunity associated to it. The success and differentiation of every team and operation in any industry is determined by the people, technology and processes.
“Capabilities, process and technology are core in all that we do [at Walgreens], enabling us to run and change the business simultaneously.”
Dorado’s team deals with resets and revisions as well as the opening of flagship locations, interacting with clients as well as several departments within Walgreens. “We are a central hub for source data that feeds more than 90% of the compa-ny, including marketing, e-commerce, pricing, insights, supply chain, operations and even finance,” he says.
As the needs of the company and its clients change, Dora-do and his team try to anticipate and act by hiring top talent, building efficient processes and using best-in-class tools. The
duties of his team evolve to drive efficiencies, capacity, accu-racy and compliance, he says.
“At times, we consider ourselves a capabilities development department that just happens to build planograms,” Dorado says. “This evolution has provided a more relevant seat at the table and has allowed us to design a structure that embrac-es technology, automation, business process outsourcing, vendor collaboration and, most importantly, career progres-sion. What I’m most proud of is the continued efforts across marketing and merchandising to deliver a cohesive message in our stores.”
So, what is Dorado’s view of the role of merchandising in shopper marketing? He likens every inch of each planogram
in Walgreens stores to a massive billboard, seen by 12 million eyes daily. He says his team wants to respect clients’ invest-ments in the value message, brand perception and visual cues of their “billboards.”
“The fact that shoppers sometimes do something very differ-ent than what they think and say they do opens up the door for retailers and brands to drive purchasing behavior,” he says. “The role of merchandising, in collaboration with marketing, should be to manage the quantity while driving the quality and effec-tiveness of each message. Everything we visually present to the shopper has to have a role and drive expected behavior.”
WALGREENSLouis Dorado, Director of Space Management
“ capabilities, process and technology are core in all that we do, enabling us to run and change the business simultaneously.”
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Photo by Tracy Rasinski
Henry Hendrix has watched Henkel become a more effec-tive player in the marketplace since he joined the company 10 years ago. He credits the integration of his two functions – shopper marketing and in-store merchandising – with some of that success. “Both are all about marketing to the shopper,” he says. “We thought of them traditionally as separate pieces, but there were times that our shopper marketing campaigns and the merchandising on the floors weren’t telling the same story. It has become really important for me to bring that to-gether wherever we can in a seamless execution.”
Hendrix never would have predicted he could be where he is today. From a very young age, he dreamed of being a corpo-rate pilot. He attended Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz., where he eventually shifted his focus slightly to aviation business. His first job out of college was with an airport authority in Tucson, Ariz.
After earning his MBA with a concentration in marketing from the University of Arizona, he went to work for Minnesota-based Northwest Airlines as an international strategy manager. But Hendrix, like many others in the aviation industry, changed paths after 2001. He became a marketing manager for a regional res-taurant company in Arizona before taking a neighbor’s sugges-tion to put his marketing background to use in the CPG world.
Joining the Dial Corp. in 2003 as a brand manager was his first step. Following a few brand manager roles and the acqui-sition of Dial by Henkel, he moved into the parent company’s Winning-In-Store group. By mid-2011, he was promoted to his current position, which is based in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Hendrix says that sometimes the strength of a trade pro-gram alone will warrant the type of merchandising he and his six-person team wants to see on the floor. “If the objectives of the retailer and the objectives of our sales team are cov-ered through traditional trade selling, then a shopper market-
ing component isn’t necessary,” he says. “But for those times when more is needed to communicate the equity of the prod-ucts being sold, that’s when the shopper marketing overlay becomes an important piece of what we’re doing.”
The three shopper marketing managers who report to Hen-drix generally divide by channel and cover all the brands under the Henkel umbrella. On the merchandising side, two manag-ers are responsible for working with the sales and brand teams to scope projects, and an engineer serves as project manager, pushing all projects through the development process with
the company’s agency of record for shopper marketing and merchandising, RockTenn. His team works most closely with its marketing groups, sales planning team and supply chain, as well as with the field teams for its in-store merchandising work.
Hendrix says his team works with retailers on general mer-chandising needs for both the beauty care and laundry care
sides of its business. It offers a national menu of standardized floorstands, PDQs, pallets, etc., that fit the needs of most retailers. “We’ll also do cus-tomized work, which could be changes in prod-uct mix so the structure will be the same but the product mix is different,” while other times it may be changes to the creative or even custom structures, he says.
Hendrix points to the company’s partnership with Dollar General as a success. In 2009 the partners began a literacy-themed stock-up program that works across all of Henkel’s brands and gives away 30 computers in 30 days. This year’s effort awarded 30 e-readers. “We get all of the product groups on the shelf because we know from basket analysis that these products tend to be in the cart at the same time when peo-ple shop,” Hendrix says. “We were trying to find a way to get people to come to Dollar General looking for these items and buying them all in one location.”
HENKEL NORTH AMERICAHenry Hendrix, Director, Shopper Marketing & In-Store Merchandising
“ But for those times when more is needed to communicate the equity of the products being sold, that’s when the shopper marketing overlay becomes an important piece of what we’re doing.”
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n Karyn Froseth, Director, Shopper Marketing Capability
n Ron Hughes, Director, Shopper Experience Innovation Hughes works at Coca-Cola Refreshments across mul-tiple retail and foodservice channels. He has developed a robust stra-tegic innovation process and built a “state of the art” multichannel shopper experi-ence innovation center. Hughes has been leading the Front End Focus Consortium work at Coca-Cola since 2006. He has more than 18 years of experience, including director of marketing for Sara Lee Branded Apparel where he developed retail and marketing programs.
cOInstAr Inc./rEdBOxn Joseph D’Adamo, Senior Manager,
User Experience
cOlumBIA sPOrtswEArn Adrienne Moser, VP of Global Apparel
ExperienceBrignac creates and manages all mer-chandising display vehicles, from concept to commercialization, for ConAgra’s gro-cery brands.
n Scott Faragher, In-store Experience Manager, National Accounts Faragher develops and implements custom sec-ondary display and semi-permanent display initiatives for ConAgra brands.
n Dean Kubiak, Director, Category Leadership – Snacks, Specialty & Refrigerated
cOty us llc n Michael Curella, Senior
Manager, Wall Strategy
n Dimitri Foutres, Director, Wall Strategy
n Spicer Khakoo, Manager, In-Store Design and Development
n Dana Ocampo, Manager, Visual Merchandising/Space Planning
crAyOlAn Beth Ondush, Manager,
Merchandising
crOcsn Sophie Bundalo, VP of Retail,
The Americas
ddIck’s sPOrtInG GOOds Inc.n Rick Neira, Director, Visual
Presentation and Store Environments
dOllAr GEnErAl cOrP.n Bryan Wheeler, VP, Merchandising
dr PEPPEr snAPPlE GrOuP Inc.n Laura Bailey, Manager, Merchandising
Strategy
EE&J GAllO wInEry n Laurence Peters, Design Director,
n Steve Kram, Associate Director, In-Store Merchandising
n Diane Rogers, In-Store Merchandising BU Lead, Oscar Mayer/Cheese and Dairy/Planters
n Craig Schisler, Associate Director, In-Store Merchandising
n Jeff Waterman, Senior Manager, In-Store Merchandising
ll’OrEAln Michael Arecchi, VP of Merchandisingn Nancy Hafter, Assistant VP,
Promotional Development & Procurement, Consumer Products Division
n Laurie Houlihan, VP, Promotional Development & Procurement, Consumer Products Division
n Gail McCahery, Director, Promotional Development & Procurement, Consumer Products Division
n Christina P. Ragazzini, Director, Promotional Development & Procurement, Consumer Products Division
lG ElEctrOnIcsn Bill Thomas, Director,
In-Store Marketing Thomas heads in-store marketing for the electron-ics marketer. He honed his category management skills at Whirlpool, and now at LG he over-sees all in-store marketing assets devel-oped across all channels in the U.S.
tHE GrEAt AtlAntIc & PAcIFIc tEA cO. Inc. n Vince Nolan, Director of Space
Planning Optimization
GrEEn mOuntAIn cOFFEE rOAstErs Don Collins, Senior Marketing
Manager, Merchandising & Retail Innovation, KeurigCollins leads the merchandising & retail in-novation department, including strategy for in-store set designs across U.S. & global markets. Key is the Keurig system brand equity at point of influence and creating the perfect shopping experience in-store through branding, visual merchandising, displays and in-store activation for retail impact.
HHAllmArk cArds Inc.n Kurt Kozacek, VP – Visual
Merchandising, Mass ChannelsKozacek leads a cross-functional team re-sponsible for developing merchandising strategies across all big box, chain drug, and grocery customers.
n David MacConnie, Visual Director – Mass Channel Visual Merchandising MacConnie leads the visual merchandising design stu-dio across multiple creative disciplines (product presentation, graphic design and industrial design) for Hallmark Cards. He is responsible for strategic and conceptual development of merchandis-ing initiatives throughout mass-channel customers including store/brand envi-ronment and consumer-facing market support.
HAnnAFOrd BrOtHErs cO.n Richard Meyerkopf, VP, Merchandising,
Hannaford and Sweetbay
HEnkEl nOrtH AmErIcAn Henry Hendrix, Director, Shopper
Marketing & In-Store Merchandising See profile on page 4
tHE HErsHEy cO.n Steve Moore, Senior Manager,
Front End Experiencen Frank Sheehe, Global Retail and
Merchandise Manager
HEwlEtt-PAckArd cO.n Ray Carlin, VP, Retail Solutions
HIllsHIrE BrAnds n Tinesha Freeman, Senior Manager,
Space & Assortmentn Paula Steenstra, Director, Creative
Developmentn Katherine Tai, Manager, Space &
Assortmentn Christopher Witte, VP,
Customer Development
HuntEr dOuGlAs Inc.n Maureen Marrone,
Director of Visual Merchandising Marrone is responsible for developing in-store merchandising programs, including a variety of display systems and P-O-P materials available to retailers that are designed to accommodate different showrooms and different budgets.
JJOckEy IntErnAtIOnAln Mark Fedyk, VP, Retail
JOHnsOn & JOHnsOn sAlEs And lOGIstIcs cO. llcn Steven Hecht, Director, In-Store
Strategy & Innovation
kkAOn John Sullivan, Senior Director,
Strategies & Effectiveness
kEllOGG cOmPAnyn Jeff Woods, Director,
Merchandising & Print Services
7
When Jason Floyd was recruited to join Microsoft just over two years ago, he felt he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to work on a brand like Xbox. Proving himself right, Floyd now has a significant notch in his career belt. He describes the re-cent launch of Xbox One as “by far the biggest thing I have ever done in my life.”
Considering Microsoft only rolls out new consoles for Xbox every 10 years or so, Floyd joined the company at just the right time. He had previously worked his way up into Blockbuster’s corporate office for visual merchandising, and then moved on to executive visual merchandising positions at RadioShack and GameStop.
Soon after Floyd joined Microsoft, his team got to work on the Xbox One launch by gaining an understanding of the re-tail landscape and the company’s business objectives. The team designed all of the visual merchandising and brand as-sets, creating all category management guidance for retailers around the world, and managed execution in the U.S., which entailed custom work with various retailer partners.
Leading the worldwide visual merchandising team, as well as more recently the interactive design team for Xbox, Floyd over-sees merchandising strategy and category management at re-tail. His team also develops and provides all of the navigational, shelf and promotional signage. “For any campaigns we launch
or any new titles, we provide the graphics for the windows, the power aisles and the endcaps, and also the product-holding displays for preorder and launch,” he says. “Anything Xbox at retail comes out of our portfolio of assets and guidance.”
Floyd and his five-person team (with an additional three vendor contract positions) work closely with the company’s re-gional marketing teams. “We design the strategy, look and feel, and the assets they should use, and then we work with them as they customize for their retailers around the world,” he says.
He believes his work on the retailer side goes a long way in guiding the strategy and approach his team takes for the con-sumer and shopper. “I like to think my experiences help us get closer to what the retailers need as well as understand the dif-ferences in our shoppers by class of trade,” he says. His team pays close attention to creating in-store signage and materi-als that not only help the consumer and shopper but also the store associates who are selling the products.
The team works with retailers through its global channel part-ners as “they evolve or modify be-cause every retailer has a unique set of standards,” Floyd says. “We
can’t just go in and drop unless we buy that space and say we own it. We have to adapt to their requirements, so we almost become a consultant role for the globe. We modify by retailer by class of trade as the requirements fit, and will work to ac-commodate our own requirements within that as well.”
His team relies on the marketing team to design the overall brand strategy for any product, provide research and analyt-ics, and also indicate how the brand should appear above and below the line. “Once they provide the foundation, tools and understanding, as well as the story and proposition,” he says, “we take all of that data and turn it into a strategic merchan-dising program for retail.”
MICROSOFTJason Floyd, Group Manager, Worldwide Visual Merchandising
“Every retailer has a unique set of standards. we can’t just go in and drop unless we buy that space and say we own it.”
Photo by Alan Abramowitz/Abramowitz Studio Inc.
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Steven Zoellner has spent the last seven years creating mer-chandising solutions through the many positions he’s held at Cadbury, Kraft Foods and now Mondelez International. He credits his early career in retail management with giving him a unique perspective.
Having worked for both Walmart and Best Buy, Zoellner is trained to look at every program from the perspective of the store manager and the person responsible for placing, stocking and maintaining a display, as well as of the shopper. “I’ve seen literally millions of shoppers walk through stores,” he says. “I saw what they liked, what they didn’t, what they ran their carts into and what they decided they would walk around. Com-bined with my account management, sales planning, project management and analytical experience, it allows me to look at merchandising programs in a very holistic, 360-degree way.”
Zoellner leads a 14-person team responsible for bringing Mondelez merchandising-related strategies to life in-store. “As we’re developing merchandising solutions, whether a redo of an inline display or developing secondary display solutions, POS or shopper marketing materials, I have the ability to look back on my career and draw on what actually happens in-store.”
His team’s daily tasks include developing and providing executional solutions for off-shelf filled displays as well as all thematic, fold-flat displays that the company’s direct-store-delivery force uses to build displays. Additionally, all perma-nent racking solutions that support ongoing brand strategies come through this team.
In Zoellner’s mind, seldom is there a universal solution at re-tail anymore. “All the major retailers need custom solutions for their shoppers and their shopping environments, and we’re more than willing to support that,” he says. Often those spe-cific solutions address universal issues. “We try to work with the industry to identify these universal issues, and then we’ll
provide the appropriate solutions to the appropriate retailer.” His team sits within the larger customer business devel-
opment team at Mondelez and is closely connected to sales planning, shopper marketing and brand marketing, as well as product supply, logistics and a team of global merchandising colleagues that studies trends impacting the company – with the goal of bringing global insights into the U.S. market.
Zoellner points to a biscuit-wide promotional campaign
that ran this past summer in which the company leveraged its partnership with the band One Direction to generate in-creased in-store activity and display placement. He says his team was “very well linked” to the 360-degree campaign. Another highlight is the “Oreo Cookie vs. Creme” brand cam-paign that was executed in the first quarter of 2013.
Zoellner believes that not every piece of merchandising needs to be linked directly to a shopper marketing program, but the “best and biggest” shopper marketing programs are typically linked to equally sizable POS programs. “It’s critical that they’re linked together as part of the planning process,” he says. “Not only do our internal teams need to be linked, but we have to be connected with our retail customers where we want to execute these programs. The mistake a lot of com-
panies make – and we do, too, but we’ve gotten better about catching ourselves – is planning in a vacuum only to find in the real world there are a lot of road bumps along the way and things don’t seem to play out. We all need to be on the same page.”
Mondelez’s Nabisco Holiday Traditions Spectacular display recently won a platinum
Design of the Times award. Zoellner says the colors, shapes and modularity of the ice castle-themed display allowed for large and very intricate structures in-store. The true beauty of the theme, he says, was that it allowed the company to sup-port retailers beyond the holidays. “It didn’t have to come down immediately,” he says. “Retailers could generate a lot of impulse, basket-building sales off those displays, even after the Christmas timeframe ended.”
MONDELEZ INTERNATIONALSteven Zoellner, Director of Shopper Merchandising Solutions
“ the mistake a lot of companies make is planning in a vacuum only to find in the real world there are a lot of road bumps along the way and things don’t seem to play out. we all need to be on the same page.”
Photo by Steve Hockstein / Harvard Studio
9
mmArs cHOcOlAtE u.s.n Christopher Cuello, Director of the
Merchandising Center of Excellencen Adrienne Mattar, Merchandising
Manager, Merchandising Center of Excellence
mAttEl Inc.n Daryl Finley, Senior Manager,
Visual Merchandising
mAyBEllInE GArnIErn Sean Johnson, Director, Global
Merchandising
mccOrmIck & cO. Inc. n Sarah Bankert, Senior Merchandising
Innovations Manager
mEAd JOHnsOn nutrItIOnn Beverly Hughes,
Customer Marketing Manager
mEIJEr Inc.n Shawn Buckner, Group VP of Foods
Merchandisingn Dave Clark, VP, Brand & Product
Development
mEnArd Inc.n Scott Mueller, Senior Store Planner
mErck cOnsumEr cArEn John Pender, Director, Visual
Merchandisingn Michele Smith, Associate Director,
Visual Merchandising
mIcHAEls stOrEs Inc.n Chris Jernstrom, Director,
Merchandising Strategies, Canada
mIcrOsOFt cOrP.n Karyn Abrahamson, Director of Visual
Merchandising
n Bill Brownell, GM, World Wide Retail Services
n Jason Floyd, Group Manager, Worldwide Visual Merchandising See profile on page 7
n Jake Jacobsen, Senior Retail Display Manager
mIllErcOOrs llcn Brian Dirks, Point of Sale Manager
mOndElEz IntErnAtIOnAln Rosa daGraca, In-Store Merchandising
Coordinator n Joan Hernandez,
Packaging Engineer
n Stephen Spaner, Associate Director, Merchandising
n Steven Zoellner, Director of Shopper Merchandising Solutions See profile on page 8
nBc unIvErsAl studIOsn Elizabeth Bishop, VP,
Creative Marketing
n Mary Khachikyan, Production Planning & Purchasing Manager
n Cory Wofford, National Retail Merchandising ManagerWofford is the team leader for the West-ern half of the U.S.
nEstlÉ-PurInAn Joyce Courtney, Senior Display &
Merchandising Specialistn William Kambol,
Senior Display and Merchandising Designer Kambol oversees Nestlé-Purina’s shopper marketing efforts at retail, including sales, marketing, display structure and graphics. He works on several brands including Beneful, Fancy Feast, Pro Plan and Tidy Cats.
n Greg Norsworthy, Director, Retail Presentation, North America
nEstlÉ-wAtErsn Pam Mashman Venn,
Marketing Manager, Point-of-Sale
nEwEll ruBBErmAIdn Becky Stapleton, Senior
Manager, Packaging & Merchandising Stapleton leads packaging and merchandising global-ly for the writing segment at Newell Rubbermaid.
nIkE Inc.n Kenneth Edwards, Senior Visual
Managern Matt Kelly, Global Procurement
Director, Retail
nIntEndO OF AmErIcA Inc.n Heather Burton-Garcia, Senior Retail
Marketing Manager See profile on page 11
nOvArtIsn Margaret Farrell, Manager, Displays/
Special Packs, Pain Categoryn Steve Kamp, Associate
Director, Displays/Special Packs Kamp and his team handle displays and special packs including samples for OTC brands.
10
OOFFIcEmAx Inc.n Chuck Luckenbill, VP,
Visual Merchandising
n Daniel Sorvig, Director, Visual Merchandising
PPEPsIcOn Brian Kelly, Senior
Director of Merchandising & Execution Part of Kelly’s role as senior director of merchandis-ing solutions for Pepsi Beverages includes knowing which non-alcoholic beverages pair well with meals like chicken and pizza, based on the fact that a shopper’s trip mission is the best predictor of in-store behavior. Kelly’s team interacts with brand marketing, field sales, shopper insights and shopper marketing personnel.
n David Lothian, Senior Director, Merchandising Center of Excellence
n Keith Romere, Manager, Pre-packed Temporary Merchandising, Frito-Lay
PEtcOn Gladys Hernandez,
Director, Visual Merchandising & Store Design Hernandez is responsible for all P-O-P, institutional messaging, fixture development and store design.
Managern Andy Monaco, CMS Category Managern Don Overton, Pet Care Display Leadern Bill Smith, Senior Category Account
Executive, Duracell NA FMOT
rrEckItt BEnckIsErn Shannon Durham, Director,
Category Management
rEEBOk IntErnAtIOnAl ltd.n John Lynch, VP – Head of U.S.
Marketing & Merchandising
rEvlOn Inc.n Michael Bastian, Senior Art Director,
Merchandising
rOll GlOBAl n Dave Churchill, National Director,
Merchandising
ssABrA dIPPInG cO. llcn Pete Loizzo, Director, Sales Operations
sAm’s cluBn Brian Graham, VP, Merchandisingn Heather Mayo, Vice
President, Grocery Mayo has more than 19 years of operations and merchandising experience in the retail club channel. She has held responsibility for more than 14 different categories, and was honored as divisional merchandising manager of the year for Sam’s Club in 2009.
sAmsunG ElEctrOnIcsn Ronald Elowitz, Director, Visual
sArGEntO FOOds Inc.n John Bottomley, Senior Director of
Retail Merchandisingn Michael Vaszily, Marketing Director
of Alternate Channels & Strategic Merchandising
sEPHOrAn Maureen Watson, Senior
VP, Merchandising Watson oversees the color, skincare, fragrance and Sephora Collection depart-ments. She has worked for Lucky Brand Jeans and Babies “R” Us.
tHE sHErwIn-wIllIAms cO.n Paul Cobb, Director, In-Store Marketing
skullcAndyn Jeff Chuh, Director of Visual
Merchandising
sOny cOmPutEr EntErtAInmEnt AmErIcAn Susan Karbaf, Senior Director,
Retail Activationsn Millie Steury, Senior Director Channel
Marketing Sony Playstation
sOny ElEctrOnIcsn Scott Blazer, Senior Buyern Linda Lampman, Senior Manager,
Retail Marketingn Anne Lips, Retail
Marketing Lead Lips is responsible for retail marketing functions that drive consumer aware-ness and sales via in-store merchandising solutions such as POS and retail promotion materials, displays, collat-eral, packaging and online assets. She has developed merchandising programs for some of Sony’s most important product launches like Blu-ray, 3-D HDTVs, sound bars and 4K Ultra HD TVs.
n Naila Sfeir, Director of Retail Merchandising, Brand Activation
11
Photo by Timothy Shonnard
A common thread runs through every step of Heather Burton-Garcia’s career path: she has always tried to find ways to reach consumers and encourage them to experience something. From the days when she owned a hospitality design firm to now as a marketer of video games, portables and consoles, Burton-Garcia has always thrived on creating experiences.
Even during a nearly seven-year stint at the Beeline Group, “a lot of my touchpoints were interactive or integrated mar-keting displays where consumers actually engaged with prod-uct directly.”
Burton-Garcia did some work with Nintendo while at Bee-line, then joined the gaming company to get her own experi-ence marketing a specific brand and to become “more closely linked to the strategy behind why decisions were being made at the retail level.” She joined the company in 2007 in mer-chandising development, then assumed her current role as senior retail marketing manager last June and is now focused on marketing products to consumers through retail channels, whether online or in traditional bricks-and-mortar.
“We’re focused on finding a way to market our products for the right consumers,” she says. “Whatever that audience seg-mentation is, we’re driving new and innovative opportunities for them to experience the product at the store level or to be intrigued enough to convert from a shopper to a purchaser.”
Burton-Garcia leads a team of seven that is vertically focused by portables, consoles and general retail marketing. The team engages with Nintendo’s consumer marketing teams, retail sales teams, public relations and corporate affairs, product marketing teams, design team, engineering services and its 140-person-strong national field force that takes the displays and marketing programs and installs them and/or manages them at retail.
She was heavily involved in the development of the Wii U console and has had responsibility for retail-specific events and remodels, including the remodel of the Nintendo World Store in the fall of 2010. “I was able to bring in my interior de-sign experience as well as understanding the overall engage-ment points in retail displays development that I had done at the Beeline Group,” she says.
Her team spent a year developing a retail shop-in-shop for a partnership with Toys “R” Us. Currently testing in eight stores in the U.S., the program includes dedicated Nintendo associ-ates to help with the customer experience. “We have the op-portunity to help each customer make the right purchase, not only with the hardware, but also offering different accessories
that might enhance that experience,” she says.Depending on the product being launched, Burton-Garcia’s
team will create custom programs based on the consumer seg-ments it has identified. “Our intent is to make sure we’re providing
very solid experiences for consumers and shoppers at particular retailers,” she says. “It doesn’t help us or the retailer to not be aligned on a product offering for that particular audience segment within their store.”
Customization of programs and campaigns is based on retailer restrictions as well as the team’s knowledge of the audience segment. “It’s also im-
portant for Nintendo to maintain the brand integrity overall, so we won’t customize to the point where it jeopardizes what that experience would actually be or what that product is all about.”
That’s where the strength lies in Nintendo’s 2013 Design of the Times award-winning Wii U Interactive display program. “This program was thought through strategically to create a unique and retail-customized experience that was right for the shopper in that particular retailer or environment,” Bur-ton-Garcia says. “The overall brand integrity and architecture was very critical. We wanted to make sure that in every retail location the overall impression of the brand remained consis-tent, yet the retailer-by-retailer experience and how custom-ers engaged with the brand in each location varied.”
NINTENDO OF AMERICAHeather Burton-Garcia, Senior Retail Marketing Manager
“It doesn’t help us or the retailer to not be aligned on a product offering for that particular audience segment within their store.”
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n Jim Jensen, VP, Daily Living Implementation & Space Planning
n Don Whetstone, Senior Director, Merchandising Strategy and Development
n Mike Wiltgen, Senior Space Management Manager
wAlmArt stOrEs Inc.n Chad Henderson, Senior Design
Visual Merchandisingn Steve Rogers, Senior Director, Visual
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Manager Visual Merchandising
wAlt dIsnEy studIOs HOmE EntErtAInmEntn Renee Richardson, VP, Integrated
Retail Creative
wHItEwAvE FOOdsn Jim Blumberg, Director,
Integrated Marketing
wIllIAms-sOnOmA Inc.n David Jimenez, SVP, Visual
Merchandising & Store Experience
wOrld kItcHEn llc n Chuck Schneider, Senior Director,
Visual Merchandising
yyAnkEE cAndlE cO.n Jodi Villani, Director of Visual
Merchandise
n Natalie Zimny, In-Store Marketing Strategy Manager Zimny drives large-scale strategy, guidelines and long-term innovation for storewide marketing.
tHE tImBErlAnd cO.n Jackie LaLime, Director,
North American Merchandising
tImE Inc./tImE wArnEr rEtAIl sAlEs & mArkEtInGn Troy Stratton, Director, Retail Display
uunIlEvErn Paulo Philip Atienza,
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n John Coyle, Director, In-Store Visibility
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wwAlGrEEnsn Rachel Bishop, VP, Global
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n Louis Dorado, Director of Space Management See profile on page 3
n Mike Hattenschweiler, Senior Manager, Visual Merchandising & Creative Services
n Tony Shinker, Retail Channel Marketing, Display & Packaging ImplementationShinker leads in-store merchandising activities for Sony’s personal and mobile audio categories. He oversees the retail and channel marketing teams and stays current with brand strategy, packaging development and display/fixture imple-mentation.
