Renetta McCann
Chief Executive Officer
Starcom MediaVest Group

Illuminating the Consumer Path to Purchase
The simple, linear process that once carried the consumer from exposure to an advertisement, through awareness and toward the shopping cart can no longer be trusted to deliver a meaningful consumer outcome. It is no longer sufficient to understand if a person saw, heard or read a commercial message.  What we need to know is whether or not we captured his or her attention—the scarcest resource in today’s economy.  In her presentation, Renetta McCann will talk about how to master the consumer attention economy and effectively traverse it by leveraging a profound understanding of consumer intention.  In this illuminating new exploration of the consumer purchase path, McCann will talk about the various motivators and levers that compel a consumer toward a desired behavior.

Bob Livingston
Author, How You Do…What You Do
Create Service Excellence That Wins Clients for Life

Today’s marketplace bears a striking resemblance to the treacherous Bermuda Triangle, anchored by the challenges of escalating competition, well-informed clients, and dismal customer service.  The result is that your clients and customers have more influence and choices than ever before.    But by establishing Service Excellence as your top strategic and cultural priority, you can differentiate yourself from competitors and forge loyal relationships that can last through time.  How you do, what you do must be your focus....

Lisa Klauser
Vice President Consumer & Customer Solutions
Unilever North America

Shopper Showdown: How to Thrive in the New Economy 
As the media barrages shoppers daily with news of the mortgage meltdown, unprecedented price increases, and recession, they have developed a wide array of creative strategies to survive and thrive in the New Economy.  Is your business equipped to deal with this new reality?  In this session, Unilever explores how consumers are evolving their shopping behavior and adjusting store and brand choices to offset increasing food and fuel prices.  Learn how your shoppers are affected and what you can do to maintain and grow your business. Unveiling the newest Unilever Trip Management Report.

Simon Uwins
Chief Marketing Officer
Fresh & Easy
Tesco

The Story of Fresh & Easy
Learn how Tesco took their philosophy of creating value for their customers in Europe and brought that to the United States.  In so doing, they had to create for themselves a New company, with a New Culture, marketing a New Brand in a New Country.  How were they to create value for the customers in the US as they have elsewhere in the world?  How did they use research to determine the answers to those questions?  How well are they doing having created the Brand and the Company? These and more are the questions that will be answered during this insightful presentation.

Ann Mooney                                                          
Assoc Marketing Director           
Procter & Gamble

Mike Hess                      
Global Research Director
OMD

Jack McGauley  
Manager of Consumer Research
Schnucks

“Evolution of the Store as a Marketing Medium”
The increasing fragmentation of consumers and media is driving more dollars into the store, and the need for an integrated marketing approach is more palpable than ever.  The store, which is known as the last mass media opportunity, remains largely unmeasured as a marketing medium.

Ann Mooney, Associate Marketing Director at Procter & Gamble, Mike Hess, Global Research Director at OMD, and Jack McGauley, Manager of Consumer Research, Schnucks will present the impact of the growth in shopper marketing on the overall marketing strategy and introduce new industry-standard metrics for evaluating the effectiveness of In-Store Marketing.

Greg Wasson
President & Chief Operating Officer
Walgreens

FedEx Fast and Disney Friendly
Connecting with customers across 10,000 points of care
Walgreens is an icon among American drugstore companies.  The 107-year-old retailer has met basic consumer needs from the days of drugstore soda fountains to drive-thru prescriptions.  Today, more than 6,000 stores serve customers in 49 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.  By 2012, the company expects to operate 10,000 “points of care,” intersecting with customers where they live and work – from highly-convenient brick-and-mortar stores … to non-retail care sites, including worksite health centers, medical campus pharmacies, assisted living facilities and specialty prescription sites.

Join Walgreen President Greg Wasson to learn more about the company’s three-pronged strategy:  

• broaden access through expansion of stores and alternate sites
• leverage retail stores to enhance the customer’s experience through innovative store design, new product offerings and optimized assortments, ultimately making every Walgreens “my Walgreens”
• selectively expand into related health and wellness services that strengthen core offerings beyond traditional pharmacy, put the patient first and help meet America’s need for better healthcare access at a lower cost

“You may not consider the corner drugstore a hotbed of creativity,” wrote a reporter for TheStreet.com in March.  But Walgreens, she said, is “finding new ways to keep customers in the store longer … and expanding its brand in creative and logical ways.”  Find out more in this presentation by Greg Wasson.

John McDonnell
Chief Operating Officer
The Patrón Spirits Company

The Power of Premium Brand Building
Even in a challenging economy, there are successes to be had in marketing a premium brand.  It is all about analyzing a category, determining an unfulfilled consumer need, and then developing and marketing a brand to consistently deliver to meet that need. That is how Patrón Tequila has become an industry benchmark in the ultra-premium white spirits category.  Learn how Patron accomplished this remarkable growth through their important research and category study. 

Robert Luff
Executive Vice President
Chief Technology Officer
The Nielsen Company

“The Future of Reaching Our Customers”
You will have the opportunity to look into the future of how technology will change our industry.  The first dimension will talk to the rapidly changing data collection methodologies.  You will see some of the latest technique in capturing data from outdoor, to in-store to in-home.  Of course this data is only valuable if it can be turned into information to better address our customers’ needs.  This will be the second dimension of this session.  Here we will address how the usage of information will change our customers’ everyday life experiences from how we market to them to how they shop.