2022 Women of Excellence, Innovator
Michelle Baumann
Chief Strategy Officer
VMLY&R Commerce
When WPP introduced VMLY&R Commerce, the end-to-end creative commerce company that was born out of the merger of Geometry Global and VMLY&R in early 2021, Michelle Baumann played a key role in the transition. And she continues to drive the business toward growth with the creation of a next-gen strategy team, uniting the agency’s brand experience and marketing sciences teams under a single capability — a collaborative, holistic insights team.
VMLY&R Commerce strives to help modern brands grow by unifying marketing strategies around commerce. Most recently, the agency’s executive vice president of marketing science, Baumann was named chief strategy officer in June. Her role brings research and data-driven rigor across category, brand, shopper and retail insights to optimize its strategic process and media activation delivery across touchpoints for clients.
Prior to assuming her current post, she spearheaded VMLY&R Commerce’s Strategic “X-Drive” Process, the agency’s consultative approach to AI-driven demand mining, opportunity sizing and moments mapping, and guided the technology team on the Connected Commerce platform. She also led the marketing sciences team to deliver industry-leading omnichannel dashboards and proprietary ROAS models that integrate planning KPIs and measurement performance across budgeting, retail media, retail sales and shopper behavior data at scale across thousands of programs.
Baumann started her career at Kantar Retail. She then transitioned to IRI before joining Geometry Global.
Valerie Bernstein
Executive Vice President, Business Development and Marketing
Advantage Unified Commerce
When Advantage Solutions set out to reorganize its 26 marketing agencies to keep pace in the industry, it brought together its award-winning agencies IN Connected, Edge Marketing, Sage Tree, Beekeeper Marketing and eShopportunity in what became Advantage Unified Commerce. With that brought not only their shopper, e-commerce and media strengths in one place, but also Valerie Bernstein, who was tapped as executive vice president, business development and marketing.
With more than 20 years of commerce experience across IN Connected and Edge, Bernstein has proven success leading business development and net new growth year over year, but the addition of marketing signaled the first time the agency had dedicated a role to this effort. Since assuming the post in January 2022, she has been tasked with building its offering across shopper, retail media, e-commerce, search and content with the spine of data, tech and analytics that support it all.
But her path wasn’t just about launching a new story, capabilities, website, social channels and paid media plan. With a group of key creators within the agency, she began setting a strategic foundation for the new concept of unified commerce that brings together shopper, search, content, commerce media and trade. It goes beyond only consumer-facing activation to provide total integration with sales and supply chain.
Charlene Charles
Head of DG Media Network Operations
DG Media Network
Dollar General announced the evolution of its media network (called DGMN) in June, and Charlene Charles was a key component to the innovation. DGMN, which initially debuted in 2018, was created to unlock the next generation of growth for the retailer’s advertising partners. With DGMN, the discount retailer provides access to real-time data with trusted brands to help them serve its customer base, delivering more than 2 billion transactions annually.
Charles has been the innovator behind the scenes. She joined the team in 2021 and began supporting the mission of DGMN: to better serve the often overlooked and underserved rural customer. DG’s first-party data addresses this gap, allowing brands to tap into their unduplicated, extensive and accelerating reach.
With previous experience in both digital media, CPG and retail media, Charles manages the overall operations for DGMN. She established the nuts and bolts needed for a successful media network early on and a leadership that ensured the launch of DGMN was seamless.
Today, Charles is focused on the overall roadmap for DGMN, ensuring new products that are introduced align with the values of DGMN and allow advertising partners to see closed-loop sales attribution with their media dollar investments. She understands the advertiser’s needs and works to ensure the operational structure keeps that in mind, while focusing on the best ways to reach the Dollar General customer.
Kina Demirel
Managing Director
Mimeda
Kina Demirel has been a shining demonstration of what women can achieve in a male-dominated industry and region. A well-known voice in CRM and retail media topics on a global scale, she was charged with heading the first-ever retail media company in Turkey in June 2021.
A longtime veteran of Migros Group, where she held a variety of CRM and marketing communications roles, she became the managing director of Mimeda, which sits under the Migros & Anadolu Group umbrella and connects brands with the right consumers through the right channels via the enormous bank of data that Migros Group owns.
In her previous roles at Migros, she contributed to strengthen Migros’s shopper loyalty through data-driven and innovative CRM strategies. She initiated the establishment of Mimeda, using a startup mindset to build the new organization in a short timeframe and creating significant awareness in Turkey’s retail sector about the importance of retail media topics.
Based out of Istanbul, she is guiding companies about how to find success using Mimeda’s marketing and communication channels, such as in-store digital screens, store entrance sensors and checkout areas, online retail areas, personalized advertising areas and new digital platforms, such as Migros TV.
Alex Falconi
Executive Vice President, Director, Client Operations
Arc Worldwide
Alex Falconi joined Arc Worldwide with one mission: to create an agile shopper agency of the future. In four short years, she has built an operational model that is apropos for the agency’s “Irresistible Commerce” position and brand.
Falconi’s experience in project manage-ment, client services and shopper marketing at TracyLocke, Momentum Worldwide, Geometry Global and elsewhere gave her a good understanding of all the complex facets of shopper marketing from the client, retailer and agency vantage points. Her goal for innovation, therefore, is always the same: simple solutions.
Falconi headed up the creation of Arc’s track system — a foundational element to the agency’s operating system. It provides a consistent methodology to scope clients’ businesses and to build staff plans fit for any budget, with the different tracks driving the development of Arc’s creative and strategic products and services.
Falconi also spearheaded the client operations team after Arc won the Unilever account in 2021. She recognized the need for an internal client-facing operational team to support each client’s success going forward and will continue to build out this team.
Her change management plan helped the agency win Colgate’s shopper business earlier this year. With a Publicis Groupe approach, she tailored it to the needs of a shopper client. Her templated approach has successfully onboarded key anchor accounts for the agency and continues to serve as a point of differentiation during the pitch process.
Julia Miller
Group Vice President, Commerce Media
The Mars Agency
Julia Miller’s role for The Mars Agency centers on strategic planning for commerce media programs. She also leads the agency’s development of the metaverse and Web3 as a shopper engagement tool, and she’s exploring ways for clients to activate through these rapidly emerging platforms.
Miller’s natural inclination to explore new tools and technologies that can inform and improve this foundational work for clients has put her at the forefront of the agency’s broader innovation initiatives. Case in point: M&M’S Music Lounge, a program created for client Mars Wrigley that her team brought to life in both the real (through an interactive showcase at summer music festivals) and virtual (with an immersive augmented reality experience) worlds.
Last Halloween, Miller led efforts that paired Mars Wrigley with SnapChat and DoorDash to create a “virtual vending machine” that let holiday shoppers order candy for home delivery in less than one hour.
While Miller has served as the primary planner for the Mars Wrigley business since assuming her current role in early 2022, she now also leads half of The Mars Agency’s media strategy team, directing all national consumer promotion work.
Before joining the agency in 2015, she spent 10 years at Benjamin Moore, where she led both strategy and implementation for the company’s entry into direct-to-consumer e-commerce. She started her professional career on Wall Street.
HONORABLE MENTION:
Cassandra Ericson
Manager, On-Premise Channel Marketing
Diageo
Cassandra Ericson spearheads the U.S. installment of Diageo Bar Academy, a global B2B community ecosystem that uses education and inspiration to elevate the quality of the on-premise trade with three pillars: training/development, community and inspiration.
The ecosystem continues to grow, now with more than 1 million global website users and 121 million people reached on social media. Ericson is credited with its success for the past three years, with Diageo Bar Academy being voted one of the best bartending schools online.
She also heads up the sponsorship of the United States Bartenders’ Guild (USBG) World Class events. The educational platform leads to a global bartending competition and all competition challenges are inspired by the latest industry trends and backed by Diageo.