Member Spotlight (September-October 2023)
LINDSAY DEFALCO
Shopper Marketing and E-Commerce Sales Manager
Eagle Family Foods
Main job responsibilities: Shopper marketing and retail media across all brands and all retailers, plus Amazon sales management.
How you win with shoppers during uncertain economic times: We lean into stacking our shopper marketing and retail media plans with our trade promotions to amplify those offers to our shoppers. In key activation windows where there are not trade promotions, we look to supplement with shopper tactics like digital coupons or rebates to continue driving velocity with our shoppers.
New marketing tactic that you use: Retail media multi-vendor-themed event programs are a new tactic we’ve leaned in on with many of our brands and retailers. They have driven strong ROAS for us. These programs are great, because they center around events or occasions that are relevant to that retailer’s shoppers, such as summer grilling with Suddenly Salad or holiday baking recipes with Eagle sweetened condensed milk.
Best career advice you’ve received: Keep the consumer or shopper at the center of every marketing decision. Then build out from there to also incorporate brand, sales and retailer strategic growth objectives.
Memorable aha moment in your career: Back in 2021, I had an aha moment that retail media was beginning to significantly develop and change how to approach shopper marketing strategy and execution, as well as the overall marketing mix. This epiphany drove me to transition from my past experience as a brand manager into the shopper marketing manager role. I wanted to dig in to learn more about retail media and then guide how, when and where our brands should leverage it to reach the right shoppers, measure return and drive growth.
Fall plans: I have two young boys, so our schedule includes apple picking, pumpkin farms, T-ball games and Halloween costumes.
RICHARD PACE
Chief Client Officer and Co-Founder
Channel Agency
Main job responsibilities: We have a great team and we wear many hats at Channel. At the core, I manage the client relationships and strategy work along with my partner, Chris Stanton.
How you win with shoppers during uncertain economic times: It has been a challenge. The ever-changing shopper dynamics, the shrinkage of the front end and price increases have really forced us to think about things differently, while at the same time getting back to basics. We’ve been laser-focused on the data, finding the right time, place and route to get our brands into the consideration set along the funnel.
Best career advice you’ve received: Clients come to our agency with a challenge, and we aspire to address the challenge and deliver results. Instinctively we want to solve that problem immediately, often before the client even finishes asking for help. The best advice I received was from my father years ago: Listen. Not just to what the client is saying, but how they are saying it. There is so much you can uncover by not jumping in with a solution.
Memorable aha moment in your career: We do a lot of experiential and other kinds of events for clients. We have worked with brands large and small with the budgets to match. It obviously depends on the objectives, but you see a lot of brands spending significant dollars at events with little benefit for the consumers themselves. To make a connection with the consumer in a meaningful way, you need to speak to them on their level and enhance their experience over that of your brands.
Recent travels: I don’t sit still well, so I’m on the go a bunch. Over the past several months, I had a family reunion in Florida, saw friends in the Outer Banks and flew to Ireland with my father to play golf.