Hall of Fame Profile: Brent Rosso

Brent Rosso has never been one to shy away from a good startup challenge. A native of the Twin Cities in Minnesota and classically trained as a marketer, he never could have predicted his career path coming out of college. He says job prospects have come and gone that would have taken him away from his hometown, but instead he chose to stay right where he’s always been. And now, with four startups under his belt, he says being in the right place at the right time, recognizing challenges as exciting opportunities — and a stroke of luck here and there — have made for a rewarding and fun ride.

THE EARLY YEARS

Rosso, who values his childhood growing up with his parents and brother, remembers the lasting impact a sixth-grade teacher had on building his confidence. “At one point, I said I wanted to be a lawyer,” he recalls. “Her response was, ‘You got it, kiddo.’” The power of her support stayed with him, from his first jobs as a kindergarten soccer coach and lifeguard at the city municipal pool, to his current post as vice president of UB Media at Ulta Beauty.

A graduate of the University of St. Thomas with a degree in marketing, Rosso says it was his economics studies (for which he earned a minor) that landed him his first position as an e-commerce manager for online advertising at Fingerhut.

CAREER DEVELOPMENT

Fingerhut was the second-largest catalog company in the nation at the time, and Rosso learned the true disciplines of database and direct marketing. “I was a sponge,” he says. But the job lacked the innovation that he began to realize would fuel his drive going forward.

“They had been around for 100 years and it was a finely tuned machine,” he recalls. Soon after, he was “plucked up” with three others and put in a corner of the organization. “We were told there was this internet thing … go figure it out,” he says. “We did some really cool stuff after that and had a ton of fun building out our digital strategies.” That four-person digital team eventually grew to more than 200 in about 18 months.

Federated Department Stores eventually bought Fingerhut, but Rosso says it wasn’t the best marriage. The day after Fingerhut shuttered, he was in on the ground floor of a new operation: a small mom-and-pop lighting showroom that needed to build its catalog business. As the marketing director of Bellacor, Rosso helped build it from scratch to a category leader within two years.

In 2005, he moved a couple of miles down the road to work in e-commerce for the retail giant that had always been in his backyard. His work at Target would be similar: to build its media presence, starting as the manager of online advertising.

Rosso would go on to spend more than 14 years at Target, ultimately holding the post of vice president of digital media. He led all digital media channels and built teams internally and/or partnered with one of its many agencies to run those businesses, while also standing up new product teams.

“We were building capabilities, based on our data and technology, to support those channels,” he says. “That was very successful — to the point where the marketing organization asked to expand beyond just media and think more holistically for marketing.” A number of product teams stood up to support the marketing organization in that agile manner, he notes, “and that was really cool because what an unlock that became in how we operated and got stuff done.”

He also led the measurement team, which he believes truly transformed the marketing organization, considering how little measurement there was at the time. “We were meeting with the CMO and CFO and their direct reports monthly, reviewing measurement and making real-time changes not just in digital, but even in our broadcast media,” he says. He also led an audience strategy team, and a programmatic strategy and activation team in Bangalore, India.

By 2010-2011, Rosso says Target executives realized this martech foundation was the basis for a new business at the retailer. More specifically, a retailer media network and a more modern approach — and Rosso was tapped to help write the business case for launching that division. “This was all about leveraging that first-party data and understanding the outcomes associated with doing that wherever you might reach customers,” he says. He then guided the launch, leading everything but the sales organization for what is now Roundel at Target.

Rosso says he’s had many great mentors over the years, but Ron Neher, who headed up e-commerce development during Rosso’s early days at Fingerhut, taught him about leading people and teams. That’s what Rosso is most proud of today: the teams he has been a part of throughout this journey. “It’s not about me at all, but about building a team,” he says. “When you come together and empower them to do and see where we want to go, they take you there.”

Rosso spent the next three years consulting for both retail media networks as well as the martech/adtech space.

IMPACT AT ULTA

When the opportunity to lead the retailer media network for Ulta Beauty (dubbed UB Media) arose, Rosso just couldn’t pass it up. It was a strategic initiative for the organization, and 95% of all transactions are tied to Ulta’s loyalty program. Working in a corporate culture that he describes as a “breath of fresh air,” he in October 2021 built another team that is tasked with reimagining and building more capabilities within UB Media’s foundation — and equipping it to handle much more scale. “That team will make or break us, so that’s where we’re spending the majority of our time right now,” he says.

RETAIL MEDIA GOING FORWARD

Rosso sees retail media’s growth as both exciting and rewarding — and views change as opportunity. He encourages his team members to embrace the ever-rapid changes in the space and to think about what might be next. Their guiding principle is to always do best by the guest. “This retail media network is not a business that sits on the side of Ulta Beauty — we are core to everything that we do.”

Rosso stresses the importance of collaboration with brand partners and especially clients to build stronger relationships. He says his team will continue to focus on building out more owned and operated inventory via the web and their app, but also in physical stores. “That’s a white space in the retail media network space,” he says, “And we believe there’s tons of opportunity there.”

As retail media networks continue to pop up and consolidation is not as likely across retailers, it’s the networks’ job to determine what that means for the retail media network space, Rosso says. “We have to figure out ways to come together and make things easier for our clients and our brand partners. That’s a challenge we’ll have to think more and more about.”