“How Can We Get More Product Content to the PDP Faster”? That question is top of mind every day for Carolan Di Fiore, Digital Content Deployment Manager at Hershey. Drawing from her prior experience in Ecommerce and digital roles at other global companies like Bimbo Bakeries, Carolan hit the ground running at Hershey a year and a half ago, and joins the podcast to describe the strategies that she and a cross-functional group of marketing, sales, data, and technology leaders are implementing to deliver answers to that core question. And in doing so, speed time to market, accelerate performance, and delight the consumer.

Three hundred freakin’ episodes of Unpacking the Digital Shelf! We celebrate by bringing together the 3 co-hosts to squeeze out the lessons learned from our generous and brilliant guests, and highlight where we think you’ll want to put your energies to make sure you, and your organization, are ready for the opportunities to come.

Loyalty is one of the most important components of love. It can also be one of the greatest drivers of your competitive advantage and growth in financially challenging times. Chris Perry, Chief Learning Officer at firstmovr and our own Lauren Livak Gilbert teamed up to dig into the best new practices of loyalty and describe them in a new research report, 8 Love Languages of Shopper Loyalty. We dive into their advice on how to most effectively build your relationship and turn your best customers into even better customers and, ultimately, your advocates.

Retail media has been around long enough now for some clear trends to develop in terms of the best practices that lead to the best outcomes from your investment. Russ Dieringer, founder and CEO of Stratably, has returned with a refresh to their “How Brands Do Retail Media” report, which uses both quantitative and qualitative data from more than 70 large to medium-sized CPG brands to separate the leaders from the laggards, and illuminate the path to greater ROI on your retail media investment.

In the 2024 holiday shopping season, use of AI chatbot shopping rose 6,000% over the prior year, according to Adobe. Those are searches driven by the intent of the shopper, and many never even make it to a product page. Winning your place in those shopping journeys will require mastering the new capabilities of generative engine optimization, or GEO. Max Sinclair, Founder & CEO at Ecomtent, joined the podcast to provide a primer of what’s changing and what’s possible to start seizing the opportunity faster than your competitors. Early mover’s advantage is at stake, and the answer won’t be more keywords.

Brian Yamada, Chief Innovation Officer at VML, says this era of AI innovation could be best described using the title of the Oscar Winner for Best Picture at the 2023: Everything, Everywhere All at Once. So Brian joined the podcast to take some of the craziness out of it all by digging into the 3 waves of AI innovation - content, experience, and agents. How you should think about them and how to work through them within your organization and with your partners.

After a decade of rapid growth and experimentation, ecommerce for many is moving into a more mature phase, while of course still being incredibly dynamic. Many companies are finding that the new opportunities for category growth lie in establishing the best practices for omnichannel execution and then scaling those capabilities while adapting it to each local market. Vivian Valks, Global Ecommerce Acceleration Manager at Arla Foods, has been at the front lines of that ecommerce growth curve at Mondelez and at Arla. She is now leading Arla’s efforts to bring together the crossfunctional collaboration across teams and in every market to improve the consumer’s omnichannel shopping journey and drive better results. She joined the podcast to lay it all out.

During her 35 years at Mars, Angela Mangiapane has been a leader in the front office, the middle office, and the back office, most recently as President of Mars Global Services for the last 9 years.. She has been a witness to, and a driver of, the digital era. And from those experiences come great wisdom and principles that should be guides to the coming generations of digital and technology leaders, as well as human beings in general. Rethink Collaboration. Get Your House in Order. Unlearn to Relearn. As she prepares to “rewire” instead of “retire”, Angela generously agreed to join the podcast and pass along some of her observations and encouragements to our you. Listen up.

I’m assuming all of you listening are human, so I also assume all of you, like me, struggle with beliefs about ourselves and our capabilities that hold us back from our full potential. If you’re not human, please connect up with me on LinkedIn, because I have questions. In the meantime, though, for us humans, and because of systemic barriers, particularly women, we need to find ways to rewire our brains to SNAP out of it and pivot to beliefs and actions that help us achieve our goals and lift others up with us. Today we are joined by Erica Anderson Rooney is the author of Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors, in which she details a neuroscience-backed method for altering the subconscious beliefs that hold us back.

When it comes to the promise of Social Commerce, we have the Social part down, but the Commerce part is still very much a work in progress. We have news on that front. Andrew Criezis, President at NIQ, recently returned from a trip to China with insights, data, and experiences that foretell new social commerce experiences and formats that might just make the leap across the pond this time. And yes, of course, it involves AI.

The best part of being in the digital commerce community is how we are all continuously sharing with, and learning from, each other. It’s especially helpful when an independent, unbiased organization like say, firstmovr, creates an opportunity to find the best and turn it into best practices. And then share freely. That’s why firstmovr’s Chief Learning Officer Chris Perry is here today, to share the results of the first ever ENDCAPS awards - celebrating and elevating brands for best-in-class digital merchandising and PDP activation, and explaining how you can turn it into action - and maybe join next year’s honorees!

Digital shelf talkers, virtual try-ons, AI warehouse robots - these were just some of the technology that Andrea K.Leigh and I saw at NRF 2025 last week. We are at a critical time in our industry where technology can fundamentally change how we do business and enhance the consumer experience. Tune in to hear how brands and retailers are using technology to create more personalized, seamless and blended experiences both in-store and online.

The digital data ecosystem is constantly evolving and changing as new data sets become available and brands work to connect the dots between each piece of the ecosystem. The important element for brands is learning how to navigate the complexity, break down silos in their organizations and turn insights into action at every step on the consumer journey. This is an audio rebroadcast of a webinar focused on just that, led by Lauren Livak Gilbert, with guest experts Tim Caggiano, Head of eCommerce Reporting & Analytics at Nestle, Salim Bachatene, SVP Global Sales, Ecommerce at NielsenIQ, and Michael Nunes, Director of Product Strategy & Operations at Pacvue.

Technologists who work on DTC and retailer.com sites spend a lot of time doing things like building personas, creating customer journey maps and service blueprints, and conducting usability studies. But if you're a brand selling your products on a retailer's platform, you don't need to worry about that, right? After all, you don't control the user experience.... or do you? While it's true that brands don't control the User INTERFACE of retailer eCommerce platforms, their product content, product data, and advertising interacts with it to create a unique User EXPERIENCE and ultimately shapes the path to purchase. This is an audio rebroadcast of a webinar focused on just that, led by Lauren Livak Gilbert, with guest experts Amanda Wolff, CRO at Jenda, and Bailie Duncan, Lead Product Owner at Jackson Family Wines.

Consumers' shopping behaviors are ever changing and they are rewriting the rules. Brands who understand their consumer preferences and desires, what channels they prefer and how they want to receive their products will be a step ahead. This is an audio rebroadcast of a webinar focused on just that, led by Lauren Livak Gilbert, with guest expert Jeriad Zoghby, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Interpublic Group (IPG).

In an ever changing eCommerce environment both brands and retailers need to collaborate together in order to align on initiatives and goals that are beneficial for both sides. Many of these conversations happen during Joint Business Planning (JBP), but it is often not standardized across retailers, and brands might not know the right questions to ask or data to bring to the table to have the most beneficial conversation. This is a podcast rebroadcast of a webinar hosted by Lauren Livak Gilbert and featuring Lynsey Sweales, Partner & Global Omni-Channel Strategist at Cognitive Union. Listen in as they discuss best practices for JBP planning and how to prioritize working with your retailers.

G’day Mates! That’s right, listeners, today we are going down under, to dive deep into the intricacies and opportunities for brands in the Australian market. Our expert on the ground is Teresa Sperti, Founder & Director at digital commerce advisory and education consultancy Arktic Fox, and even if you’re not considering Australia as a market you’ll want to listen for her super sharp commerce insights and amazing accent. And be introduced to a little AI sprite called Olive.

For our listeners who sell direct to their consumers or buyers, a composable tech stack is pretty much a necessity these days to keep up with the buying experiences your customers expect. And in the next era, it will be essential to achieve the kind of more niche and personalized experiences that will be necessary to drive growth and win market share. James Semple, Product Management Director at Salesforce and self-proclaimed “Evangelist of the Composable Ecosystem, joined the podcast to discuss the current and future states of contextual omnichannel commerce.

Our listeners have a love/hate relationship with retail media and every organization continues to wrestle with how to organize, execute, and measure it while keeping up with the vast amount of change coming from the big players in the market. And what about all the others? We invited Russ Dieringer, Founder and CEO of Stratably, back on the podcast to use data and his brain to prognosticate what the retail media market is going to look and feel like in 2025. Heads up: it don’t seem like it’s going to get much easier on you and your teams in the year to come.

Product innovation has been around for centuries, ever since cave dwellers invented the first club to make dinnertime easier. In this new commerce era, however, with digital upstarts, algorithms, influencers, and other disruptors of consideration sets and shopping journeys, product innovation must change as well. Ash McMullen, Head of Ecommerce at Advantice Health, works with internal and external partners every day to redefine how product innovation is executed, starting with an understanding of audience and content that inspires the product, not the other way around. She joined the podcast to unpack this vital process transformation.