Podcasts about Kroger

Brooke and Danielle are getting into some of their plans and goals for the upcoming summer! The gals love a seasonal bucket list, and summer is the best time to do it! The gals also catch up on their recent separate trips to Florida, Danielle talks about her knee/foot insert journey, Brooke talks about her Disney day, and so much more. Don't forget to tag @galsonthegopodcast @daniellecarolan and @brookemiccio in your listening selfies and stories on Instagram! Check out our great sponsors! Hint: Go to HintWater.com and use code GALS to get Hint for just $1 a bottle with free shipping when you order 3 cases! OR Find Hint at Wal-Mart, Target, and Kroger! Nutrafol: Get $10 off your first month's subscription and free shipping when you go to Nutrafol.com and use code "GALS" HelloFresh: Go to HelloFresh.com/galsonthego16 and use code "galsonthego16" for 16 free meals plus free shipping! Gals on the Go is brought to you by BetterHelp! Visit BetterHelp.com/gals to get 10% off your first month! Hyundai: Test drive the Hyundai Tucson at your nearest Hyundai dealer OR learn more at HyundaiUSA.com - call 562.314.4603 for complete details Peloton: Take the Peloton Tread home for 30 days worry free! See full 30 day home trial terms and conditions at OnePeloton.com/home-trial Find your new place at Apartments.com - THE place to find a place! Be one of the first 150 people to get a $10 gift card when you fill out a quick survey at PodcastOne.study SHOP GOTG MERCH! *BLOCKED COLLECTION OUT NOW* https://fanjoy.co/collections/gals-on-the-go Shop the GOTG x Brooklinen COLLAB! https://brooklinen.pxf.io/LXaB7L GOTG YouTube Channel (watch full episodes with video!) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkCy3xcN257Hb_VWWU5C5vA Gals On The Go Instagram https://www.instagram.com/galsonthegopodcast Brooke's Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/brookemiccio Brooke's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/brookemiccio Danielle's Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/daniellecarolan Danielle's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/daniellecarolan GOTG jams playlist https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1vQ4FvPya39ff8SOGK9Dg9?si=87f7bd7fbc4445fd Business Inquires Can Be Sent to: GalsOnTheGoPodcastTeam@unitedtalent.com

Hey Listener, grab one of those weird neck pillows you buy at the airport because this week “My Wai-fife!” Lauren Bishop returns to the show to talk about all of the vacations we've taken since we were married a decade ago in 2013. Topics this week include: The first guest in the history of WYI? that thought starting a load of laundry in the next room was a good idea. Getting called out for not going to the rollergirls' game. Where can we go that has good beer and food? Visiting one of the oldest/biggest breweries on the East Coast in the middle of a subdivision. Growlers are not pitchers. The country's smallest Kroger. Evergrain and Zero Day. The Omni Grove Park Inn. Signing the book to get into the bar. The Kaiju Battle of Wrightsville Beach and Stevie Janowski. David Lee Roth kicks and Christmas at Junkers. The worst vacation of all time. Hallway blunts, screaming, and drinking yourself to sleep. Allegedly Pac Man Jones was an issue. A bar district where every college team has a bar. Knowing what time of the year it was because of the sports that were happening during your vacation. The need for escapism as an anxiety filled creative. Experiencing the over the top breweries of San Diego and some that flew to close to the sun. My Wai-fife doesn't understand that she isn't like the guests. Hiking for the first time. Hot take: We don't like Miguel's Pizza. Going to Texas and forgetting Whiskey L'Amour's name. Always have a Bud Light clone. Asheville 2: Now We Know Things. Going to Beer Hogwarts. Going to breweries in Boulder with Bombtrack. Escaping COVID by going to a cabin. The blueprint of a roller derby road trip. Michigan: God, Guns, and Weed. Asheville 3: Canceled by the Cronies. Going to Portland to marry people and hang out at the coolest video game bar ever. Fangirling out and the importance of telling stories in sports. A tale of 2 breweries. Stop playing Sublime at breweries. The KEXP journey. A return to the recent past in Las Vegas. 

Paige Cornetet is the bestselling author of the Spend-Then series, a collection of children's books teaching financial literacy by simplifying traditionally complicated concepts. A forward-thinking entrepreneur, Paige founded Millennial Guru at the age of twenty-six to provide companies like Kroger and Capital One with business coaching and strength-based team-building workshops. Paige, the eldest of four, is passionate about helping parents teach children imperative life skills and financial management techniques. She lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with her husband. In this episode, you'll hear about: My Dad's Class: An Intentional Structure for Teaching Kids About Money and Life—a children's book written by Paige How to teach financial literacy to toddlers What money topics to avoid sharing with kids How to explain affordability to children Teaching kids about earning money vs spending money Are we becoming a cashless society? Creating a financial family economy The Family Bank (chapter 5 from the book, My Dad's Class) Connect with Paige: Website: mydadsclass.com Instagram: @spendthen

We're settling the debate on gamification—again!Join us for a rewind (not rerun) of our most popular episode to date. Karl Kapp—the man who literally wrote the book on the subject—joins JD for a no-nonsense conversation on the dos and don'ts of gamification. Karl plays the ITK Game and explains how you can increase engagement, boost knowledge and super-size the fun by blending game mechanics within your learning programs.Karl also gives us an update on his YouTube series, The Unofficial, Unauthorized History of Learning Games. If you've ever wondered what L&D can learn from Candy Land, be sure to check it out!Watch the full video of this episode on the Axonify YouTube Channel.Sign up for ITK updates and show announcements at axonify.com/itk.Grab a copy of JD's new book - The Modern Learning Ecosystem - at jdwroteabook.com.In The Know is brought to you by Axonify, the mobile-first training and communication solution that helps make sure your frontline workforce is ready for anything. To learn more about Axonify's digital learning experience and check out success stories from companies like Kroger, Levi's, Briscoe Group, Citizen's Bank, MOL Group and Etihad Airways, visit axonify.com.

For Northwest shoppers, already worn down with supply chain issues and rising food costs, news of the Kroger and Albertsons merger last fall brought new worries. But the companies say the nearly $25 billion merger is a significant step to assure their long-term survival.

Mark is a dad and a health and fitness enthusiast. And he has 17 years of start-up experience. He is currently the founder and CEO of IWON Organics, a plant-based food company that makes bold, flavor-infused snacks and cereal made from plant proteins like peas, beans and brown rice - our mission is to help others with their health and nutrition journey. IWON (I'm Winning on Nutrition) is focused on promoting healthy snacking and successful, long-term eating habits based on the principles of balanced nutritional profiles, made up of healthy proteins, fats and carbohydrates.IWON's snacks can be found in over 5,000 stores nationwide, including Kroger's, Wegmans, Sprouts, Whole Foods (SoPac and NorCal regions), Vitamin Shoppe, Safeway, Ralphs, Brookshire's, and online at iwonorganics.com, Amazon and Thrive Market.Broadcasted LIVE on LinkedIn, Co-Hosts Alex Bayer (Genius Juice) and Wade Yenny with a combined experience in the CPG space of 35 years, chat about all things food and beverage in the market and share what's going on in their lives and any current events. They also do shout-outs and answer questions live from viewers & listeners during their show!

Original Air Date: March 3, 2023 As Americans faced soaring food prices, a proposed $24.6 billion dollar megamerger between Kroger and Albertsons was announced on October 14, 2022. These are two of the largest grocery chains in the country, accounting for more than 5,000 locations and employing over 700,000 people across its banner.  The United Food and Commercial Workers and Rocky Mountain Farm Workers Union- two of the nation's largest and oldest unions- are opposed to the merger citing its potentially monopolizing effects on the grocery industry and America's food system.    Back in 2015, Carol McMillian, a King Soopers groceryworker and a member of UFCW 7, remembers when Albertson's acquisition of Safeway impacted her personally. Today, she joins us along with Dan Waldvogle, Director of Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, to talk about why they are a part of a broad coalition to ‘stop the merger.' They spoke with The Takeaway about how this potential megamerger impacts some of America's most vulnerable workers and consumers. Editor's Note: We reached out to a Kroger's Spokesperson for comment. If interested, read below. “Our proposed merger with Albertsons is about growing jobs and careers, and we expect the merger to create meaningful and measurable benefits for our associates. We will invest an additional $1 billion to increase wages and expand our industry-leading benefits starting on Day one following close, and we expect to provide new and exciting career growth opportunities for many associates. This commitment builds on our track record of supporting associates, including the incremental $1.9 billion we have invested in wages and comprehensive benefits since 2018. The Kroger Family of Companies is one of America's largest unionized workforces and this merger also secures the long-term future of union jobs by establishing a more competitive alternative to large, non-union retailers. Kroger is a customer-focused organization, and our ability to deliver value to customers is rooted in providing lower prices and more choices. This is of critical importance to us, and we have a long track-record of investing in prices to lower costs, including investing more than $5 billion in lowering prices since 2003. As we have in past mergers, we will hold ourselves accountable to our customer commitments. This includes investing $500 million to lower prices starting on day one post close. With Albertsons, we will also offer customers a broader selection of fresh products and expand Our Brands portfolio to deliver more value without compromise.” 

Original Air Date: March 3, 2023 As Americans faced soaring food prices, a proposed $24.6 billion dollar megamerger between Kroger and Albertsons was announced on October 14, 2022. These are two of the largest grocery chains in the country, accounting for more than 5,000 locations and employing over 700,000 people across its banner.  The United Food and Commercial Workers and Rocky Mountain Farm Workers Union- two of the nation's largest and oldest unions- are opposed to the merger citing its potentially monopolizing effects on the grocery industry and America's food system.    Back in 2015, Carol McMillian, a King Soopers groceryworker and a member of UFCW 7, remembers when Albertson's acquisition of Safeway impacted her personally. Today, she joins us along with Dan Waldvogle, Director of Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, to talk about why they are a part of a broad coalition to ‘stop the merger.' They spoke with The Takeaway about how this potential megamerger impacts some of America's most vulnerable workers and consumers. Editor's Note: We reached out to a Kroger's Spokesperson for comment. If interested, read below. “Our proposed merger with Albertsons is about growing jobs and careers, and we expect the merger to create meaningful and measurable benefits for our associates. We will invest an additional $1 billion to increase wages and expand our industry-leading benefits starting on Day one following close, and we expect to provide new and exciting career growth opportunities for many associates. This commitment builds on our track record of supporting associates, including the incremental $1.9 billion we have invested in wages and comprehensive benefits since 2018. The Kroger Family of Companies is one of America's largest unionized workforces and this merger also secures the long-term future of union jobs by establishing a more competitive alternative to large, non-union retailers. Kroger is a customer-focused organization, and our ability to deliver value to customers is rooted in providing lower prices and more choices. This is of critical importance to us, and we have a long track-record of investing in prices to lower costs, including investing more than $5 billion in lowering prices since 2003. As we have in past mergers, we will hold ourselves accountable to our customer commitments. This includes investing $500 million to lower prices starting on day one post close. With Albertsons, we will also offer customers a broader selection of fresh products and expand Our Brands portfolio to deliver more value without compromise.” 

From a cold pitch to be on the show, to having a great conversation about creativity and how it exists everywhere we go. Johanna B. Voss is a talent manager, trusted by social media influencers who want clarity on how to build their brands, grow their businesses, earn their worth and plan strategically for the future. On behalf of her clients, she's closed over $4M dollars of brand deals, partnerships and speaking engagements. Her clients have partnered with brands such as Kroger, Walmart, AARP, Little Northern Bakehouse, H&R Block and ALDI. Negotiation is something she thoroughly enjoys be it for her clients, friends or with strangers. Entering her 13th year of working for herself, she understands all about the necessary pivots entrepreneurs take along their journey. Patreon Sign up to be a part of my "Daily Quotes" Follow Johanna: Instagram | Website Instagram:  @drealopz / @thejourneyofpursuit Work With Me: hello@drealopez.com  Show Notes / Take Aways: www.drealopez.com/journal/ep75 Website: www.drealopez.com Stay Updated

The ol' Paragraph Stacker, Dan who drives a van, connects with his pal, Pal, an account for the King of Rock and Roll. Together the laughs ensue as much as is allowed on the brittle skeletons of two middle-aged white men. Topics include: 1. Toast: Dark or light? Butter or jam? 2. Paul's vacation trip to the library, a Kroger, and a public garden. 3. Cable TV news mopes get fired. 4. Carol Burnett, 90, honored with the best variety TV special since the 1970s. 5. Dan's still teaching school. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/talkingparagraphs/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/talkingparagraphs/support

Our Spiritual Health impacts every area of our being. Christian Health Coach Mimi Kroger and I discuss just this often-overlooked component of our physical vitality. 4:30 How spiritual health impacts our physical health 10:51 The power of talking to God 15:11 The mango slice that changed my life 19:44 Childhood trauma and stress 25:47 The spiritual component of health and spirituality 31:38 Connecting our spiritual condition to our physical vitality 38:19 The spiritual component of health and destiny 41:50 Is this name-it-and-claim-it? 46:42 How to get in touch with Mimi David's book The Christian's Guide to Holistic Health Mimi's book Holy Spirit Help Me Heal Mimi's website

The NY Times tries to answer today's burning question: Why are more men getting perms?, Kroger grocery store chain announces the end of weekly circulars and coupons, Richmond police found themselves in chase involving a cement truck

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT In the early years of digital signage networks - particularly those that were ad-based - operators would often describe how their medium was captive. The proposition was that people stuck doing something - usually waiting - would pass their time looking at a screen. Then smartphones came along, and there went that notion. Except in places like gas stations, where people still needed to be somewhat focused on the task. A company called GSTV has been running a digital signage channel on the screens of fuel dispensers for almost two decades, and is deployed at more than 25,000 locations. The company dominates its category, and the mix of programming on the pump screens has 100 million unique viewers. The pitch to planners is far more sophisticated these days than the captive audience thing - something very obvious in this talk with CEO Sean McCaffrey, who gets into a lot of detail about the benefits for consumer brands and for the gas station and C-store operators who work with GSTV. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT Sean, thank you for joining me. It's almost weird to think about, but your company and your medium is actually a pretty mature medium now.  Sean McCaffrey: It is. I still look at it as very new. I've been with the business for five and a half years, and when I describe it to people at a backyard barbecue, and they ask what I do, I say: I run a six-year-old startup that happened and have a one-year proof of concept. So to your point, we've been around for 15+ years as a sector, if you will.  For people who maybe don't live in the United States, describe what it is that goes on.  Sean McCaffrey: Yeah, no problem. So GSTV  is a national digital video platform in 205 US markets. Out of 210, we reach about 50% percent of US adults every month, about 116m monthly unique viewers, and we connect with consumers three to five minutes at a time, three to five times a month when they're fueling up their vehicle. So think about it as a very habitual serialized engagement week in and week out when someone stops to fuel up as they're running errands on a road trip, on their way to the ballgame on a Saturday, that sort of thing, and we partner with the fuel and convenience retailers in the US to put in this amenity, provide information, entertainment, that sort of thing, and focus on building value for brands, agencies, retailers, and consumers, and we work with a variety of large chains, small chains middle market, kind of everything in between. And the nut of it is you've got a screen embedded in the fuel dispenser.  Sean McCaffrey: Correct. Our screens come embedded in the fuel equipment, which is a long-term hardware purchase decision for fuel retailers. The retailers get it as an amenity, and they get a small amount of promotional time within our show. There are shared economics amongst the parties obviously as well, and then we build a consumer experience that provides value to the retailers, value to consumers, and then brands and agencies can integrate in any number of ways. The way we look at it is we program a show every day. Every station is like an addressable household. The household has more family members, so we could have tens of thousands of different versions of the show on any given day, depending on what content and what advertising is running.  Now, we don't go probably down to that level of customization just based on how brands use it. But think about urban, suburban, weekday, weekend, all those lake and beach communities, let's say all summer long, that is a very different population from Thursday to Sunday, let's say in July versus January. So lots of ways to customize the entertainment, content, commercials, advertising, and so on. I have a bit of a past with this stuff going back to the early to mid 2000s when there was a Canadian company also looking at this, and at that time it was extraordinarily challenging to put a piece of electronics on a fuel dispenser that's sitting on top of a reservoir of thousands of gallons of flammable liquid. It was a little nerve-wracking.  Is it now a standard piece of kit, so to speak, for the fuel dispenser manufacturers like the Gilbarcos of the world? Sean McCaffrey: It is, and you're right, that era in the early to mid two 2000s, not just in our space, but really in broader digital signage or digital outta home, if you will, in general. There was a lot bigger hardware literally and figuratively, hardware and software challenges to solve. Now, they're not done today, but all of this has come a long way. So for our business today, yes, it's a very standard part of what our great partners at Dover and Gilbarco both produce. The retailer can make a choice on the equipment that they want to buy and everything comes kitted out for them. There's an upgrade opportunity if they have equipment already. There's a new equipment purchase opportunity, so there are obviously several different SKUs of hardware products they can buy, and then it's all IP addressable, and all enabled that our team runs. And we have a network operating center that it's all built on and enabled programmatically in terms of scheduling as well.  So it's really come a long way. Anyone that is involved in digital signage or the digital out-of-home space knows that mid two 2000s era, call it 15-20 years ago, there were lots and lots of networks trying to put signage out there in hopes of I think advertising would follow. A lot of it was probably a solution in search of a problem, as they say, and today, we're very focused on our place in the value proposition, so to speak. So our retail partners really care about that 20-foot consumer journey. Someone fueling up and then going in the store and buying anything. The hardware partners, they want a great product and to be able to offer this as an amenity, and then for consumers, our time is precious today While it's not a channel selection, you're not gonna binge watch hours and hours of our programming, let's say, in the way you might Netflix or Peacock. It is an opportunity to provide value to consumers, entertainment information, and that sort of thing. So come a long way in all regards, I think, and not just hardware.  And so you can retrofit an existing fuel dispenser, right?  Sean McCaffrey: They're some of the old SKUs of hardware, not necessarily, but yes, for the most part, it's generally an upgrade available.  And is that something you put on top of it, or you replace the screen that's in there?  Sean McCaffrey: It replaces the equipment that's already in there. One of the reasons that the businesses came together in a joint venture in early 2017 was first of all to provide some scale in the space. But second, there was a push from the credit card companies for a payment processing upgrade. So the EMV technology Europay, MasterCard, Visa. There was a requirement from the credit card companies that all the fuel and convenience retailers in the US had to upgrade their credit card technology. So that was an obvious time then for every retailer to decide on a larger upgrade cycle what they wanted to do, and many of them chose to augment it with screens that they didn't have previously.  So this is not a build it and they will come thing at all where you're incurring the capital cost to put this in, it's the fuel retailer?  Sean McCaffrey: Correct. That was the earlier generation of the business where some of the predecessor companies you probably know, or the company that you mentioned where there were screens that sat on top of the fuel dispensers of various sizes, and you then incurred every challenge you have beyond CapEx, just the installation, the maintenance, that sort of thing. These are all dispenser-integrated units. So the CapEx is built into the economics amongst the various parties.  And is the primary motivation to get people into the convenience store, because most few retailers these days seem to have a retail store associated with it, or is it the revenue share that they might see out of it or they do see out of it? Sean McCaffrey: It's primarily to drive people into the stores. A couple of percentage points of growth in soda and snack sales is I think a lot more interesting to most than the advertising revenue.  That's not to say the advertising revenue is not substantial or interesting, but there's lots and lots of data that the industry publishes every year here in the US about the volume of consumers that fuel up and just drive away, don't go in store, the volume that does go in store and what they purchase, and so any opportunity to drive sales in-store and raise basket size once somebody is in the store, for example, it gets you to buy a snack instead of just a soda, get you to buy a snack and a soda and a lottery ticket, you name it, is useful, and there's a great deal of sophistication in the space as well.  I think most consumers in the US are familiar with the largest brands, the 7-Elevens, the Circle Ks, and that sort of thing. But there are a number of what I'll call major and mid-major regional chains anywhere from 800 to 1000 stores down to maybe 50 to 100 stores where they've got a loyalty app, they've got a promotional program, so very sophisticated folks in the space that I think a lot would be surprised about to learn. I think the difference in fuel and convenience in the US to, let's say, grocery or big box or some of the other large physical retail channels, there isn't consolidated ownership that you see in those spaces. So at times, I don't think consumers really understand the size of the sector, but the fuel and convenience space is more than 3% of the US GDP. So it's a huge economic driver, and so back to the retailer, they care about that 20-foot consumer journey and getting more people to come in and then buy more once they go inside. I'm assuming that in the early days, you were selling the dream that if you do this, people will go into the store, but now the, the, there's analytics, there's the level of sophistication that can give you some data that will prove out that, yeah, this they saw this and then this happened, or how does that work? Sean McCaffrey: Absolutely. It's a great question. So obviously, the retailers have their own first-party data relative to sales. So they have an understanding most directly if something's being advertised out in the forecourt, and then sales go up in the store, they know. But we work with a number of third-party partners, IRI and Catalina, as two examples to measure sales lift both in the store and then nearby, in adjacent grocery stores, big box retailers, pharmacies, that sort of thing. Because there's an old cliche in advertising, right? That half of my advertising works, I just don't know which half, and that's not been good enough for a long time. We had 135, I think the number is, research studies in the field last year with clients from upper funnel analytics, brand favorability, and brand recall, down to much lower funnel direct sales and sales lift metrics. And so we've been at that for 5+ years now, and we start to see to some degree what you would expect, in other words, for CPG products in the fuel and convenience store. For very mature trademark brands and large-scale products, we might see a 1-3% sales lift which is huge for really established, CPG brands. For newer brands, li brand extensions, and things like that, we might see high single-digit, low double-digit sales lift, which is also great, and that's been validated by a number of the CPG brands that we work with as well. Obviously, the larger ones have very sophisticated in-house marketing sciences teams and do all sorts of market mix modeling. So even though we fund studies with IRI and Catalina, which are really well-established partners. The brands also do their own modeling and report good results.  It's a lot of what you would expect, I think, in that there's an opportunity to drive someone for an impulse convenience purchase when they're 20 feet away, if they're slightly hungry or slightly thirsty or many of the fuel and convenience retailers have pretty sophisticated food service programs these days and so if somebody's grabbing lunch or dinner, they've got a lot of choices. They can go to a grocery store and get a prepared meal. They can go to a drive-through at a QSR next door, or in some cases, they can go inside the field and convenience retailer and get pizzas and sandwiches and other things. We've got hungry consumers and a big opportunity to influence them but from a measurement standpoint, we've got lots of ways to draw a straighter line between the advertising impression and the business outcome. If you're doing that volume of research that repeatedly suggests that there's still some skepticism among the brands that they go, prove to me that this works. Sean McCaffrey: I wouldn't characterize it as skepticism as much as I think there's a spectrum depending on the category, and for example, an auto brand, the KPIs that they're looking for are dealer visits or site visits or someone going in and starting to build a vehicle. CPG brands obviously look at sales, and financial services brands look at card usage, card signups, and that sort of thing. So depending on the category, we've commercialized research capability with a couple of household names: Foursquare, Axiom, MasterCard, ISI, Catalina, and plenty of others. So our sales and marketing team can simply say “yes” when a client says, can we measure it? Some categories are more mature for us, for sure. Auto, CPG, financial services, insurance, you name it. There are some that are earlier adopters to us. Entertainment's one, for example, where we can show the trailer and tell somebody to tune in tonight, binge-watch it this weekend, et cetera, and so we've got a good diversity amongst categories. So in some cases, it's a newer brand, and they want to test and learn and then measure and grow. In other cases, it's brands where measurement is just a part of every single thing they do.  To my earlier point when I came up in advertising, I worked in a legacy radio business, a legacy billboard business where those are classically regarded as more, upper funnel reach media where we weren't typically asked to measure business outcomes or direct results, and I think today, especially in the current economic environment, particularly over the last decade, advertisers are looking to measure every marketing dollar they spend realizing it doesn't all do the same thing, right? The Super Bowl ad is not the same as a buy-it-now ad on social media or something like that. But the research that we do is on some well-established clients and some new clients, but I wouldn't say it relates to skepticism more so just that brands today expect everything to be measured,  And you also, I believe in the last two or three years have introduced capabilities to not only push people into 20 feet across the Forecourt, into the C Store there, but to the grocery store that might be five blocks away, that sort of thing is. Why did that happen, and what are you seeing out of that?  Sean McCaffrey: So the interesting thing I've learned more than I ever thought I would know about the fuel and convenience space, much less consumer behavior on the day people fuel, so we produced some research about five years ago with MasterCard, and then we did an updated version with a much deeper dive the last year with Affinity Solutions, which has credit card and loyalty card data to basically look at the way people spend money every hour of the day, every day of the week, online, offline, with then one filter, if you will, added: the day people fuel up and is anything different, and it turns out it's really different. Fuel Day is a surrogate for a lot more grocery shopping, a lot more QSR visitation, a lot more pharmacy stops, big box retail, do-it-yourself, that sort of thing. So Fuel Day is a very differentiated day for consumer behavior and consumer spending. So with the rise of retail media as an investment channel over the last couple of years. In other words, with Walmart starting a media network and Kroger starting a media network, we started having more and more of our CPG partners come to us and say, “Hey, we want to apply this sort of thinking, this retail media, commerce media thinking in the fuel and convenient space. But there isn't anyone with consolidated scale and the way there is in grocery and big box.” So as big as the biggest retailers are in our industry, you put the top five together, they have less than 20% of the sector. So we are the largest consolidated network in US fuel and convenience in terms of ad-supported media. We launched a product called GSTV Amplify, which is really a parallel path. Number one, it's about driving sales in the fuel and convenience stores, which is critically important, and then number two, it's recognizing that our consumers are 5-7 times more likely and spending that much more on the same day to go next door to a grocery store, QSR, you name it. So the agencies and brands that are spending money across retail media, in grocery, retail media in the big box, they can leverage that data, they can apply that thinking with us.  I had one Head of Investment at an agency say to me, this is basically the last TV ad someone can watch before they go into the grocery store. And I said if that framework helps you, sure, that's one way to look at it. We're in the solutions business. So from a scale standpoint, I mentioned our business. If you took the food and beverage sales at our stores compared to the largest grocery chains, what is the 10th largest grocer in America? If you added fuel to that like Kroger and Albertsons do when they when counting the numbers, we are the fifth largest behind Walmart, Costco, Kroger, and Albertsons. I'm not selling produce, I'm obviously not building physical retail stores, but I say it just to give an example of consumer purchasing power, right? And that's what brands and agencies are trying to find, the proverbial right place, right time, the right moment to find real attention and impact consumer behavior. Is there any kind of an audit trail? So if I'm on my big shop day and I stop at a fuel retailer and use my MasterCard to buy 12 gallons or whatever it is, and then I go to Costco, and then if it's me, I'll probably go to the wine store or something. But is that traceable? Is there a way of saying, okay, Dave got fuel at 11, and at 11:30, he bought stuff at Costco and so on?  Sean McCaffrey: So yes and no. Yes, in the sense that yes, we can do what you're describing. No, we're not tracking Dave specifically, right? We do not collect first-party data. So often, a question I get is if people are swiping their credit card at the field dispenser, so you know it's me. We do not collect and track that credit card data or any other data. What we have is a naturally data-rich environment. There is that credit card swipe, there is a device ID typically in the vehicle or on the person, and device IDs and credit cards are well-worn ways to connect to household identity graphs, loyalty card data, and other ways. So yes, so what you described, we do with partners. So depending on the category, CPG brand, or auto brand, we can do that walk back to impact to show sales lift, brand lift, or any other KPIs. We do some direct surveys.  There are companies, obviously, that do mobile location surveys that push advertisers for different things. But we work with well-established privacy-compliant industry partners to track that. As well as work with many of our brand and agency partners directly. Because the big agencies all have their own data operations these days, most of the big brands have an in-house marketing sciences team tracking all this. So what we decided to do when we were launching our approach to data analytics and research is not to build another black box that nobody was asking for, or nobody needed. What the big agencies and brands said to us is that we just need input. We need to be able to input the GSV exposure into our tools the same way we input a CTV impression or a YouTube impression or you name it, so they can understand the impact on the campaign because it's obviously never one thing. All of these ad impressions combined to provide impact to the brand and agency. But one of the things that were interesting to me when I consider joining the business is that it is much more of a mid to lower-funnel ad exposure opportunity. It's naturally frequency capped, right? We're going to see somebody three to five times a month, not three to five times a day when that banner ad follows you around the internet. So the fact that we do have these data signals that we can use, again, in a privacy-compliant way to track success metrics is important and a differentiator for us. Is it easier to do all that stuff now because of all the API integrations and AI and everything that's come along as opposed to in the past where yes, we have that data, but we're not sharing it with you?  Sean McCaffrey: It has, I think for a lot of different reasons, whether it's the rise of retail media, whether it's the acceleration of machine learning, tools, and this sort of stuff, or the big agencies all purchasing their own or building their own data operations, whether it's Epsilon, Axion, Merkel, that sort of thing or others like Omnicom. Everybody understands they need a privacy complaint consumer to opt-in to track this stuff, but then it's also important to have interoperability between all of this to measure. It doesn't do anyone much good to have a bunch increasing. walled gardens, right? So today, whether it's a cooperation-type environment or an industry-standard environment, it's a lot easier. At least in the US market, combined with the changes in the advertising market over the last decade. In other words, the value of the living room wall. Is certainly challenging now compared to when I was a kid, and there were three TV channels, and it was, every night was must see tv. Today we spend our time as consumers quite differently. That change was only accelerated with Covid as far as people splintered viewing habits, and then the disruption in signal loss and digital now with device IDs and other things being sunsetted, the deprecation of cookies. It's moving most advertisers into more, I think, middle-of-the-funnel analysis. In other words, not everything is a buy it now button sort of conversion—the proverbial last-click attribution of a decade ago. So for us, GSTV, is what we hear often from our advertising partners anyway. If we have the scale of broadcast, which they like because of most categories, you just still need a lot of people. We've got some level of digital muscle memory for targeting attribution. Then it is this real-world consumer opportunity, which is what people generally get excited about around mobile and out-of-homes. So it has the sort of DNA of several interesting things to advertisers, and we've built a team around the business on the sales and marketing side that comes from various big firms in the digital and video space. On our retail success team. I have a great team that literally helped build the network going back 10 years plus, and those two teams really parallel paths are commercial relationships and client service. So we have a retail success team that is just as focused on our commercial relationships with our retailers and our hardware partners. As is, our sales and marketing teams focus on the brands and agencies. The retail success team that's nurturing the footprint that you already have, are you still building that footprint, or is it built out?  Sean McCaffrey: Yes, we continue to build it. So a natural upgrade cycle still happens every month, every quarter, and every year, where we have retailers deciding to upgrade their equipment and add new sites. And then we have a very high 95+ percent renewal rate from retailers that have us already, and so the network is about a third of the fuel and convenience sector in the US today. At some point, it'll probably get north of half, and then beyond that, there's a point where we've probably ended up getting every retailer who's wanted this as an amenity because it is a different retailer. It's a retailer that is generally a little more focused on the customer experience, a little more focused on Forecourt conversion, a little more focused on end-to-end sort of promotional comms, and so on.  So there's no mission here to get every fuel and convenience retailer in the US just due to the nature of the space. But yeah, we continue to grow every month, every quarter, every year.  It's a case where it sounds like you have most of the markets that you'd want to be in any way so once you get to all that number, I forget what you said, it was 240 or something like that, at that point, adding more screens maybe doesn't matter all that much, right? Sean McCaffrey: Yes, you're right. It's one way to look at it. But I wouldn't say we'll be happy once we feel we've partnered with every fuel and convenience retail in the US who like us, I think their business continues to change. So as they think about forecourt-to-store conversion, integration with their loyalty apps, and promotions, we're talking to some commerce partners, some loyalty partners, and different people like that where can we potentially provide a service and another service and amenity to the retailers? Not everyone has the wherewithal or the financial structure to build that on their own. Can we go into parallel and adjacent spaces? We've typically not gone inside the store. We've not wanted to compete with our retailers in a way. But several have come to us lately wondering about their own sort of digital consumer experience journey, and there is an opportunity to partner together. So we're talking about that, and then the actual incorporation of the company. We do business with GSTV, but the actual incorporation of the company is destination media. And there's some thought to that in the sense that. We are a national digital video platform consumer, the literal consumer journey. There might be other places and spaces, high dwell time environments where it's somewhat similar to what we do today, where there's a premium audience we can define an entertainment and information amenity, and so are there opportunities to continue diversifying our consumer touchpoints, Channels within a platform-type environment where we can provide some additional value to the people we think about today, which is a long way of saying we're not going to build more screens or buy more screens just to get more screens. But I think there's some natural one plus one equals three or four or five with other potentially parallel channels or spaces beyond the fuel and convenience store.  Yeah, you would think that. My experience is that end-user customers are not looking for more technology vendors. They'd like to slim out the number that they have. So if you have enabling technology that could do the video marketing inside the stores they'd probably be pretty motivated to go that way as opposed to sourcing some other vendor.  Sean McCaffrey: We agree. I think there's a moment in time right now that to me feels a bit like that era you referenced earlier. In other words, in the mid 2000s where I think there are a lot of people, at least at this moment in time, running around suggesting hang screens anywhere you can hang screens, create experiences, sell ads and there's almost a suggestion that it's just that simple or just that easy, and anybody that's done it knows it's not, and it's really hard. And also, it needs to be there for a reason. In the mid two 2000s, there were a lot of networks that were well-funded and had great management. And, 2008's, recession aside, never really got off the ground because they were building a solution that really no one was looking for, vs. today, I think whether you're building a commercial real estate project and you're considering digital signage or you're doing something like we are, you have to think about how are you providing value?  And for us, we're doing something that would otherwise be overhead for the retailers and difficult to do at scale, and it was challenging when five or six companies were doing what we're doing, and they all were pretty small. It was tough to get the attention of larger brands and agencies. So yeah, whether it's the hardware and software capability, or the sales and marketing engine, or the combination thereof, we're happy with what we've built so far. By no means do we think we're done, but we're looking to be a solutions provider to partners and if somebody has a network or is considering building a network and we think we can provide value, we're certainly going to talk to them.  Do you have competition?  Sean McCaffrey: There is one small provider in our space that I believe has a couple of hundred locations right now. They work with a different hardware provider that we're contractually unable to work with. We're very focused on the fuel and convenience space from a retail partner standpoint, but from an advertising standpoint, I often get, who's your competition? Is it people in the movie theaters, or is it people in the airport or the malls? And no, we don't sell screens. We don't charge $100 a screen or $200 a location. We sell an audience, and you can slice and dice that audience in several different ways. So when we talk to advertising partners, it might be a major national CPG this morning, and they're launching a new product in the southeast this summer, and we're talking about that. We might have lunch with a television team at a big agency that's trying to find people who buy reach curves and things like that. And then late afternoon, it might be a digital auto home team at an agency looking for proximity to a QSR, and they want everything within five miles of a particular QSR.  We're competing for ad dollars in the television space, the digital video space, the retail media space, and the digital out-of-home space. And we don't have the luxury to say we're only one of those things, but I think we've got the opportunity to compete and take share across that spectrum, and that's really how we've grown. So the business has more than doubled in size in the last couple of years, both in employees and revenue. And it's mostly because our sources of advertising revenue have come from just a wider and wider part of the advertising landscape.  Does the business runway have an end to it because of the rise of EVs and EV charging stations and so on? I would imagine it does, but I think it's probably like 15-20 years out. Sean McCaffrey: We don't think of it as an end as much as an evolution, right? No one is debating the emergence of EV vehicles, no one is debating the eventual roadmap of electric vehicle charging. I think everyone, at least in the US anyway, is debating how long it's going to take, number one and number two. Number two, perhaps most importantly, is how's it gonna be paid for. There's never going to be enough tax subsidies to support all of it. So there we announced last year, we announced a partnership with our labs in ChargePoint to build an ad supporter network with ChargePoint, who's currently the largest large provider by a long stretch by probably a factor of five, the largest EV charging infrastructure provider where just like our business today, we think there's an opportunity for an ad-supported amenity to build out that infrastructure, and there's a bunch of advertising-supported models that have helped build out critical infrastructure going back to the early days of television and radio and everything since. Ad supported models help build us out. So we're excited about the relationship with ChargePoint and a number of their partners, and we think the journey for consumer behavior is going to be a long time, still a multi-decade transition, and as I alluded to earlier, the way we think about our business and the broader destination media sense is the platform and foundation we built in fuel and convenience is hugely important and hugely critical infrastructure today. But whether it's the EV platform, that's really our second network or a third, fourth, and fifth one to follow. We think time spent outside the home is going to continue to grow and add supported opportunities to identify those consumers, and serve them something relevant, measuring the success on the campaign is going to continue to be critical. So we remain pretty excited about the future, both the business we have today and the evolution it can drive for us.  That was super interesting, and time just flew by. I had many other questions to ask, but we'll have to do this again if you're willing.  Sean McCaffrey: Yeah, I'd be happy to. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you for having me. 

#202. We bet a handful of you are listening to this episode via Apple CarPlay right now. Better this than Ed Sheeran for the millionth time. There's nothing like the trauma of smashing buttons on your car stereo to stop the madness to turn you on to cycling. You may, however, have to talk to a stranger at a bike shop who knows more than you. You'll overthink it and feel intimidated no matter how nice they are. It's almost as intimidating as the first day on the job as a restaurant server. Either way, you may just need to take the tips as you get them. In streaming, Kory watched Air and learned the history of Nike pursuing Michael Jordan. Kendall watched John Mulaney: Baby J and learned some sneaky lighting tricks. We missed Dillon, and amidst the neurotic thought processing, you will, too. Speaking of whom, sometimes you need to quickly get in and out of Kroger like a rainstorm is coming for your own retribution. Trying to make sense of that? Check out the episode! Chime in via the LinkTree below and, until next time, be kind to each other. Main Landing Page - https://linktr.ee/fromthemidpod​​​​​​VOICE MAIL! Comment, ask a question, suggest topics - (614) 383-8412Artius Man - https://artiusman.com​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ use discount code "themiddle"

A proposed merger between two of the largest grocery chains in the country, Kroger and Albertsons, is under review by the Federal Trade Commission for antitrust violations. If it goes through, rural communities fear that the union could mean store closures and layoffs. We examine how past mergers play into fears today. Plus, a look ahead to tomorrow’s Federal Reserve interest-rate-setting announcement with Michael Pugliese, senior economist at Wells Fargo Corporate & Investment Banking. And, the nominee to assume the World Bank presidency is looking to retool the Bank’s programs to further emphasize the fight against climate change.

A proposed merger between two of the largest grocery chains in the country, Kroger and Albertsons, is under review by the Federal Trade Commission for antitrust violations. If it goes through, rural communities fear that the union could mean store closures and layoffs. We examine how past mergers play into fears today. Plus, a look ahead to tomorrow’s Federal Reserve interest-rate-setting announcement with Michael Pugliese, senior economist at Wells Fargo Corporate & Investment Banking. And, the nominee to assume the World Bank presidency is looking to retool the Bank’s programs to further emphasize the fight against climate change.

Despite all the rain, the Braves and Mets will eventually resume their first series of the season on Monday. In the episode of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Braves Report podcast, AJC beat reporter Justin Toscano and co-host Jay Black discuss how two days of rainouts may help Atlanta and how they will stack their rotation for the week. After the brilliant performances from Max Fried and Spencer Strider, we will discuss if the top of the Braves rotation might be better than advertised. Our crew also takes a deep dive into Marcell Ozuna's struggles. Justin has a conversation with hitting coach Kevin Seitzer to explain why the Braves DH is off to such a bad start and how he's trying to fix it. Follow the Braves Report podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode. You can also tell your smart speaker to “play the Braves Report podcast.” For more podcasts from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, please visit our podcast page. Check out these AJC stories mentioned in this podcast ·        Braves rained out again; Monday doubleheader will follow ·        Michael Harris II is back: What it means for the Braves ·        Max Fried's brilliance, Matt Olson's blast lead Braves past Mets ·        Why you're no longer seeing Braves use the big hat to celebrate home runs ·        As Marcell Ozuna tries to find his old self, the Braves are sticking with him ·        Braves' Orlando Arcia has ambitious goal for when he hopes to return THE BRAVES REPORT PRESENTED BY KROGER: Make Mom's Day special with the help of Kroger. Visit Kroger.com/mothersday to make Mom feel special. ADVERTISE ON THE BRAVES REPORT: If your business wants to reach a loyal and passionate group of Braves fans, please contact email us at advertising@ajc.com. SUBSCRIBE TO THE AJC: If you aren't a subscriber to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, click here to get unlimited digital access to the AJC at a special price. LISTENER SURVEY: We want your feedback on this podcast, so please take our survey and tell us how you feel about the show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's Sustainability Now!, your host, Justin Mog, brings you a roundtable conversation with the Louisville Sustainability Council and representatives from four of their 2023 Community Grant Awardees, which have just been announced! Joining us are: David Abell (Board member, LSC), Stephen Bartlett (Executive Direct, Sustainable Agriculture of Louisville), David Wicks (Ripple Effects: A Louisville/Ohio River Visioning Project), Brooke Pardue (CEO, Parks Alliance of Louisville), and Brigette Brouillard (ED, Second Chances Wildlife Center). The Louisville Sustainability Council (LSC) is pleased to announce that its Community Grant Program, funded by the Louisville Sustainability Fund, awarded 10 grants totaling $30,000 on April 1, 2023. Over 80 applications were received and over $350,000 was requested by a wide array of organizations and non-profits focused on innovative, entrepreneurial projects and programs. This is the 3rd grant cycle with the number of grant applications received doubling each cycle. Through the generosity of Kroger, Yum, Sociable Weaver Foundation, Partnership for a Green City, Office for Advanced Planning and Sustainability and Walmart, the amount awarded also doubled from the previous grant cycles. For more information on the Louisville Sustainability Fund and the LSC, please visit https://www.louisvillesustainabilitycouncil.org/sustainabilityfund 2023 Awardees: Canopy Certified Inc. - Canopy & Bernheim Arboretum & Research Forest: Environmental Impact Education Partnership Center for Neighborhoods - An Interactive GIS Learning Tool for JCPS Students: Communicating Sustainability Data to the Leaders of Tomorrow Fern Creek High School - Olla Irrigation Pots and Rainwater Collection Basin as a Sustainable Solution to Irrigation Needs in a School Garden Kentucky Resources Council - Community Engagement Workshop - Empowering Residents to Advocate for Cleaner Air and a Healthier Louisville - through the creation of specific curriculum, a guidebook, and implementation. Kentucky Solar Energy Society - Clean Energy License Plate Louisville Climate Action Network - Urban Energy Partnership (UEP) Parks Alliance of Louisville - Pollinator Garden/Nature Discovery Zone at the new Alberta Jones Park in California neighborhood https://parksalliancelou.org Second Chances Wildlife Center - Environmental Education Equitability Expansion for JCPS K-12 students https://secondchanceswildlife.org Sustainable Agriculture of Louisville - Three Sisters Collective Project at Barr Farms and in Louisville at La Casita Center https://salouisville.org The Library Foundation - Ripple Effects: A Louisville/Ohio River Visioning Project! https://lfpl.org/photocontest or https://www.lfpl.org/RippleEffects/slide.html " As always, our feature is followed by your community action calendar for the week, so get your calendars out and get ready to take action for sustainability NOW! Sustainability Now! is hosted by Dr. Justin Mog and airs on Forward Radio, 106.5fm, WFMP-LP Louisville, every Monday at 6pm and repeats Tuesdays at 12am and 10am. Find us at http://forwardradio.org The music in this podcast is courtesy of the local band Appalatin and is used by permission. Explore their delightful music at http://appalatin.com

We're jumping into our DeLorean to discover the future of L&D!2023 is a critical year for the L&D profession. After three years of nonstop disruption, L&D pros have an opportunity to define the role they'll play in the future of work. To make smart investments, they must get past the hype and focus their limited time and resources on the best ideas. But how can L&D specialists determine which ideas are worth pursuing and which will fade out fast? It's not like they have a time machine—or do they?Join Donald H Taylor and JD Dillon on a journey back to the future of L&D! Don's had his finger on the pulse of the industry for years thanks to his annual Global Sentiment Survey. Don and JD will turn back the clock to find out how the biggest trends impacted the workplace over the past two decades. Then they'll travel 88 mph (or 142 kph) to explore new ideas that are shaping the future of L&D, including AI, reskilling and the metaverse.Dona also provides a sneak peek into the Learning Technologies Conference happening May 3-4 in London, England.Watch the full video of this episode on the Axonify YouTube Channel.Sign up for ITK updates and show announcements at axonify.com/itk.Grab a copy of JD's new book - The Modern Learning Ecosystem - at jdwroteabook.com.In The Know is brought to you by Axonify, the mobile-first training and communication solution that helps make sure your frontline workforce is ready for anything. To learn more about Axonify's digital learning experience and check out success stories from companies like Kroger, Levi's, Briscoe Group, Citizen's Bank, MOL Group and Etihad Airways, visit axonify.com.

Natasha Case is the co-founder of Coolhaus Ice Cream. She created the company with Freya Estreller in 2009 because they did not feel represented by the ice cream brands on shelves and knew they could create higher quality and more unique ice cream with a more authentic story. They launched their ice cream sandwich company from a barely-drivable postal van at the Coachella Music Festival where the brand went viral. Since then, Coolhaus has scaled to a national fleet of trucks in LA and NYC, a flagship store and innovation center in Culver City, and a national grocery business of ice cream sammies, pints, cups, mini sammies, and cones in stores ranging from Whole Foods to Sprouts to Kroger. They launched a very successful dairy-free ice cream line (made from peas & brown rice!) in 2019. Natasha remained the CEO until Coolhaus was acquired by Perfect Day under their CPG umbrella company with a mission to make more sustainable products without compromise in December of 2021.  Natasha took on a founding CEO role with Lunch Bunch in August of 2022. By then as a mom of a two and five year old, she was driven by the idea of using creative eating experiences to inspire curiosity in even the pickiest of eaters… while also tackling a massive issue for parents around frustrations with packing lunch from a time, management, shopping, quality, cleaning and stress/guilt perspective. She plans to make Lunch Bunch not only a convenient meal delivery platform, but also a merchandise and content world to revolutionize our relationship to food and the way we eat. Natasha is devoted to transformational positive change by creating mission-led businesses. At Coolhaus, she devoted her work to the next generation of women and LGBTQ founders, entrepreneurs, and creators of diverse backgrounds to feel empowered to turn their dreams into realities in an equitable environment. Natasha partnered with Black Girl Ventures to create ice cream to raise funds for entrepreneurial grants, the Okra Foundation for Pride to create a flavor called EnjoyMINT for All, celebrating our differences through a top 8 allergen-free ice cream, and she is committed to teaching courses and frequent public speaking engagements to push the envelope for the next generation. She looks forward to bringing this ethos into the Lunch Bunch business. Natasha has been named a Forbes 30 under 30 Food & Beverage, Zagat 30 Under 30, LinkedIn 10 under 35 for Food & Leisure, 10 Most Successful Women in Business by Leaders Globe, and UCLA's LGBTQ+ 2019 Alum of the Year. She is a published author of the Coolhaus Ice Cream Book which came out in 2014 and was featured on Good Morning America and named as one of Martha Stewart's favorites. She has been featured in many national publications and media outlets like Entrepreneur, LA Times, and Bon Appetit, and has judged Food Network's Chopped, King of Cones, and Top Chef Jr. She co-hosted her own podcast, ‘Start to Sale' through Eater/Vox Media. In 2019, she joined YPO in the Beverly Hills chapter. Natasha is a board member of UCLA Arts Dept, Larchmont Charter School, Startup UCLA, Naturally LA and a member of the Lyft Council (Los Angeles). In 2022 she completed the Victory Institute training for LGBTQ+ leaders of tomorrow.

Jay Payleitner spent a decade in major market advertising on Michigan Avenue in Chicago writing and producing commercials for Corona, Kroger, and Midway Airlines (with Mike Ditka.) He also led the creative team that named SunChips. Following God's clear call, Jay spent two decades as freelance radio producer working with Josh McDowell, Chuck Colson, TobyMac, Bible League, National Center for Fathering, and others. Most notably, Jay has written more than 25 books including What If God Wrote Your To-Do List?, 52 Things Kids Need from a Dad, and Don't Take the Bait to Escalate totaling more than a half-million copies sold. He has been a guest multiple times on The Harvest Show, Moody Radio, and Focus on the Family. Jay and his high school sweetheart, Rita, live in St. Charles, Illinois where they raised five awesome kids, loved on ten foster babies, and are cherishing grandparenthood. Track him down at jaypayleitner.com.Rae Anne Payleitner grew up as the youngest of five, with four older brothers, to authorJay Payleitner and his wife Rita in St. Charles, Illinois. She loved growing up in the chaos of a close, large family - taking the lessons of her siblings and parents with her into the world as she attended the the United States Military Academy at West Point, lived for four years in Dublin, Ireland, and returned home to the suburbs of Chicago where she now works as a strategist for a technology company. If Rae Anne isn't spending her time 7 chasing around her nieces and nephews, she is writing, listening to Pat Hughes on Cubs Radio, or being just the right amount of competitive at Bar Trivia.https://jaypayleitner.com/ https://twitter.com/jaypayleitnerhttps://www.facebook.com/jaykpayleitner?ref=mf

Follow Rich! @richontechRich talked about how pinball machines are high tech with connected leaderboards, plus how Kroger is now accepting tap to pay. Rich also talked about how Twitter took away the blue verified check for legacy accounts so be careful about what you trust on Twitter because people can verify themselves and have misleading usernames.Jeff called to talk about the idea of biometric handgun technology.Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence breaks down Snapchat's announcements. Rich likes the MY AI chatbot now available to everyone inside the app.A caller commented on the new system preferences in MacOS Ventura and how it's not very intuitive.A caller asked about staying connected while on a cruise ship. Rich recommended looking into Airalo.Eon asked about accessibility features on the Samsung phones.Matthew called in to ask about planning a family reunion. Rich recommended Telegram, shared Google Docs, Tripit for itineraries and Google Photos for a shared album.Rich talked about a news report saying that people are noticing tap to pay activating further away than usual. Silent Pocket makes products that block radio waves. Visa says the card needs to be about 2 inches away from the reader.Thoughts on the new Apple high yield savings account.Photos Rich took were on a Samsung billboard, but it could have been better.Netflix is discontinuing DVDs by mail after 25 years.Marty Cooper joined to talk about making the first public cell phone call ever.Polestar 4 EV ditches the rear window.App to Know: Pixel Search on Google Play.David Koff of Tech Talk joined to explain how to get your personal data off the internet.Apple turned on Sound Recognition feature for HomePod and HomePod Mini. They can now alert you if they hear a smoke or carbon monoxide alarm.Feedback: How to stop Waze from running, Google Dropcam replacement.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 144 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D'Onofrio Ft. Kevin Larson (Kroger) appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

大家週五愉快！ 合作邀約請聯繫：onthewaytowork2020@gmail.com 2023《每日一股曆》最後剩下10本 購買連結https://forms.gle/SLK1z9x7zbnEx1E46 免費訂閱通勤精釀電子報：https://othewaytowork.com/pages/otwcraft https://gigabier.tesla.com/en_ie/gigabier 如何開啟Podcast訂閱服務: https://tinyurl.com/yerxluu8 Patreon訂閱往這邊走： https://www.patreon.com/onthewaytowork IG: @onthe_waytowork https://www.instagram.com/onthe_waytowork/ 日常生活IG: @onthe_way.daily Powered by Firstory Hosting

In this episode of the Ad Nerds podcast, host Spanky Moskowitz discusses how marketers can keep up with changes in the world. Moskowitz emphasizes the importance of using artificial intelligence and machine learning to work faster and more creatively, talking to customers to understand their needs, having quick access to data, working collaboratively with colleagues, and being inclusive and respectful. Moskowitz also discusses several key moments, including the new California almond milk ad featuring Cookie Monster, Disney's partnership with Kroger to use shopper data to reach audiences through connected TV, Apple Safari browser's closing of a loophole that allowed third-party partners to be passed off as first-party cookies, and Netflix ending its DVD delivery service on September 29. Key moments: California almond milk ad featuring Cookie Monster (4:02) Disney's partnership with Kroger for connected TV (6:34) Apple Safari browser's closing of a loophole (8:31) Importance of building a brand (10:19) Netflix ending DVD delivery service (14:21) --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/adnerds/message

Brooke and Danielle are getting into their essentials, tips & lessons learned from moving into an apartment! Whether you are moving into your first apartment/home with roommates or on your own, this episode is great to reference all things home organization, making the most of a small space, handling roommates, and so much more! The gals are also catching up on their busy weeks, and sharing the details of the new BLOCKED Merch collection! Don't forget to tag @galsonthegopodcast @Daniellecarolan and @brookemiccio in your listening selfies and stories on Instagram! SHOP GOTG MERCH! *BLOCKED COLLECTION LAUNCHES 4/21 AT 1PM EST* https://fanjoy.co/collections/gals-on-the-go ( BROOKE'S AMAZON APARTMENT MUST HAVES: https://amzn.to/4135ehJ DANIELLE'S AMAZON APARTMENT MUST HAVES: https://www.amazon.com/shop/daniellemariecarolan Shop the GOTG x Brooklinen COLLAB! https://brooklinen.pxf.io/LXaB7L GOTG YouTube Channel (watch full episodes with video!) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkCy3xcN257Hb_VWWU5C5vA Gals On The Go Instagram https://www.instagram.com/galsonthegopodcast/ Brooke's Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/brookemiccio Brooke's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/brookemiccio/ Danielle's Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/daniellecarolan Danielle's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/daniellecarolan/ GOTG jams playlist https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1vQ4FvPya39ff8SOGK9Dg9?si=87f7bd7fbc4445fd Business Inquires Can Be Sent to: GalsOnTheGoPodcastTeam@unitedtalent.com Please support the show by checking out our sponsors! Quince: Right now, go to Quince.com/gals to get free shipping and 365-day returns on your next order BetterHelp: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com/GALS today to get 10% off your first month European Wax Center: Book your smooth escape with the experts at European Wax Center. Make a reservation today—your first wax is free Hint: You can find Hint Water at retail stores like Wal-Mart, Target, and Kroger or have it delivered direct to your door from hintwater.com. New customers can get Hint for just $1 a bottle with free shipping, when they order 3 cases. Just use the code GALS at checkout. Squarespace: Check out squarespace.com/GALS for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, use OFFER CODE: GALS to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Not long ago, Sarah Franklin's friend saw a man in a Kroger parking lot that was just her type. Her friend hooked them up and they went on a date! Sarah shared the story on TikTok and it's been seen over 2 million times- a testament to random encounters, matchmaker friends, and fun story time!Sarah joins Laurie on this week's podcast to talk about Kroger man, her dating life and about her own personal journey to learn and love herself. Sarah is an optimistic, enthusiastic, hype-girl who by day is an association professional and special event makeup artist. By night, she shares dating insights on TikTok. She became a single-mom five years ago after divorcing the only person she ever dated. She has navigated the dating world with a lot of humor and collected great stories along the way -- she's learned to love herself through faith, fitness, and reflection. Watch the original video at https://www.tiktok.com/@sarahfranklinky/video/7212415861640940842 Follow Sarah on TikTok at https://www.tiktok.com/@sarahfranklinky Follow Laurie on Instagram at http://instagram.com/carolinasmatchmaker To learn more about Laurie and her team, visit http://carolinasmatchmaker.com Donate to Great Dane Rescue at https://www.greatdanerescueinc.com/ Donate to the Alzheimer's Association at https://www.alz.org/

Retail media is on the tip of every marketer's tongue this year. Cara Pratt, Kroger's SVP of retail media, launched the Kroger Precision Marketing media network in 2017, pioneering the use of retail media. Pratt joins The Current Podcast to talk about how her team of data scientists can tap in to purchase data from 60 million households to create more personal experiences for shoppers.

Troy shares his Super Secret project. Kroger Run!, the YouTube Channel. Below are links:   https://krogerrun.com https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCem6PND38063yDai66TAimg And search Facebook for Kroger Run! Listen and learn the skills and gear you need to start a YouTube Channel!

Forget the bravado. Confident humility Is the new power move in leadership.Successful leaders embrace this perspective of authenticity, empathy, and courage, while staying grounded and humble.I host President and CMO of Vitacost.com, Guy Burgstahler, who shares the secret to unlocking your full leadership potential and the engagement of your team.He started out as the Chief Marketing Officer then quickly transitioned into the President's role when the business was integrated into the broader Kroger enterprise.Vitacost.com, Inc. is a leading online retailer and direct marketer of natural, organic, and sustainable health and wellness products, Guy served in senior leadership roles at Albertsons, Garden of Life, Tractor Supply Company, and Dick's Sporting Goods.LinkedIn Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/guyburgstahler/Company Link: https://www.vitacost.com/What You'll Discover in this Episode:How competitive sports can shape your leadership.The upside of Impostor Syndrome.What pets can teach every leader about success.Tips for rapid eCommerce profit acceleration.Passion to prosperity: Turning your passion into business success.The ultimate parenting hack for busy leaders.-----Connect with the Host, #1 bestselling author Ben FanningSpeaking and Training inquiresSubscribe to my Youtube channelLinkedInInstagramTwitter

Contact your hostcharles_martin@appleinsider.comLinks from the showMixed-reality headset will be main focus of WWDC 2023New MacBooks set for launch during June's WWDCApple savings account for Apple Card has arrived — here's how to get startedLockBit ransomware is now targeting Macs for the first timeAirTag tracks down carjacked car used in a shootoutSega pays $776 million for 'Angry Birds' maker RovioKroger stores start accepting Apple Pay for grocery purchasesSamsung considering Microsoft's AI-powered Bing as default search engine over GoogleSubscribe to the AppleInsider podcast on: Apple Podcasts Overcast Pocket Casts Spotify Subscribe to the HomeKit Insider podcast on:•  Apple Podcasts•  Overcast•  Pocket Casts•  Spotify

Today is Monday, April 17, and we're looking at Whole Foods vs. Kroger.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Listen to a recap of the top stories of the day from 9to5Mac. 9to5Mac Daily is available on iTunes and Apple's Podcasts app, Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Play, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players. Enjoy the podcast? Shop Apple at Amazon New episodes of 9to5Mac Daily are recorded every weekday. Subscribe to our podcast in Apple Podcast or your favorite podcast player to guarantee new episodes are delivered as soon as they're available. Stories discussed in this episode: Apple Card Savings Account: Hands-on and how to sign up to start earning interest - 9to5Mac Rumor: iPhone 15 to use ‘frosted glass' finish, new ‘cyan' color option Kroger now rolling out Apple Pay support to stores across the United States Apple Card Savings Account launches: What you need to know Follow Chance: Twitter: @ChanceHMiller Mastodon: @chancehmiller@mastodon.social Listen & Subscribe: Apple Podcasts Overcast RSS Spotify TuneIn Google Podcasts Catch up on 9to5Mac Daily episodes! Don't miss out on our other daily podcasts: Quick Charge 9to5Toys Daily The Buzz Share your thoughts! Drop us a line at happyhour@9to5mac.com. You can also rate us in Apple Podcasts or recommend us in Overcast to help more people discover the show.

The Cobb County School District in Georgia has proposed allocating $930,578 for 11 new school resource officers in its fiscal 2024 budget. Superintendent Chris Ragsdale cites recent school shootings as reasons for adding armed officers to the force, stating that they deter potential intruders and provide immediate response times. However, Democratic school board member Becky Sayler expressed concern that an increase in armed officers could result in more student arrests, particularly among students of color. Republican board member Randy Scamihorn assured Sayler that the officers are well-trained to de-escalate situations. The final approval of the budget is expected on May 18th. Marietta City Council's approval of a mixed-use development project that would replace a Kroger grocery store with apartments and retail space was vetoed by Mayor Steve "Thunder" Tumlin. The project would have seen the redevelopment of a 4.8-acre lot by developer William Casaday, who requested a rezoning. Tumlin's veto was backed by Councilman Grif Chalfant, who campaigned for lower housing density. A six-month moratorium on new apartment building applications was approved after the project's rejection. The property's future remains unclear, with concerns raised about the possibility of less desirable commercial ventures worsening traffic in the area. Kennesaw House, now home to the Marietta History Center, was once a hotel where James J. Andrews and his group of volunteer raiders from the Union Army stayed the night before embarking on the Great Locomotive Chase in 1862. The raiders commandeered The General locomotive and three box cars heading for Big Shanty, Kennesaw, cutting telegraph wires and attempting to do as much damage to the railroad as possible. They were eventually captured, and Andrews and seven others were convicted as spies and hanged. Disney turned it into a film in 1956, staring Fess Parker as Andrews and Jeffrey Hunter as Fuller.  The Southern Museum, located across the tracks in Kennesaw, now houses The General locomotive and tells the story of the Great Locomotive Chase. The Southern Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.  Mount Paran Christian School has announced that student Claire Finch has been named a finalist for the 2023 Georgia Governor's Honors Program (GHP) as a visual arts major. The GHP is a four-week-long college immersive program for Georgia's top students in academics and the arts, and it will be held at Georgia Southern University. As a finalist, Finch represents the top quartile of the top percentile of her student peer group in the state. MPCS also set new school benchmarks with its largest contingency of nominees ever and multiple semifinalists named in one year. The program is fully funded by Georgia's state legislature.  Cobb County School District Superintendent Chris Ragsdale surprised many by recommending a tax cut as part of the district's $1.5 billion budget for 2024. Ragsdale proposed reducing the millage rate from 18.9 to 18.7 mills and offering 7.5% raises to all full-time employees. The budget also includes about $83 million to fund the raises, which range from 7.5% to 12.1%. Ragsdale called the budget "very employee focused." The tax rollback would reduce the district's revenue from property taxes by about $7.6 million annually. Two public hearings are scheduled to allow the public to weigh in on the proposal. The Marietta City Council has voted to freeze new apartment applications for six months, directing city staff to conduct a study examining the city's zoning code as it relates to apartments. The item authorizes them to hire a consultant if needed. Skepticism about apartments has been a concern for some time, as they have been associated with transiency, crime, and a lack of upkeep which leads to blight. The moratorium was approved after the mayor vetoed the council's approval of the 322-unit apartment complex at the corner of Powers Ferry and Delk roads. #CobbCounty #Georgia #LocalNews      -            -            -            -            -            The Marietta Daily Journal Podcast is local news for Marietta, Kennesaw, Smyrna, and all of Cobb County.             Subscribe today, so you don't miss an episode! MDJOnline            Register Here for your essential digital news.            https://www.chattahoocheetech.edu/  https://cuofga.org/ https://www.esogrepair.com/ https://www.drakerealty.com/           Find additional episodes of the MDJ Podcast here.             This Podcast was produced and published for the Marietta Daily Journal and MDJ Online by BG Ad Group   For more information be sure to visit https://www.bgpodcastnetwork.com          See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We've chatted many times before on the pod about how food has such an intimate connection with culture. Food can evoke so many strong memories and strengthen the feeling of connection with your culture. So as one of the main sources of Asian groceries in the US, what does HMart's meteoric rise in the US mean to us as Asian-Americans? In this episode, we bring you through a brief history of HMart and its massive expansion across the US, and delve into how the experience of shopping at HMart differs from that of both western grocery chains like Kroger, as well as that of other specialty grocery chains like 99 Ranch Market. We also discuss how the experience at HMart presents a unique melting pot of different kinds of shoppers, from ajummas who immigrated from Korea to young Asian-Americans trying to connect with their cultural roots. With the proliferation of specialty grocery stores like HMart providing access to cultural connection points to more and more people, we hope you can share with us your favorite memory of shopping at HMart or another specialty grocery store. Sound off in our social media comments with your favorite memory! Follow us on Instagram at @whereareyoufrompod and on TikTok at @butwhereareyoureallyfrom  --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/butwhereareyoureallyfrom/support

In this episode of Ad Nerds, Spanky talks about the Milk PDP and Gail's experience and what marketers can learn from it. He also discusses a free tool called Google's Drops that every advertiser needs, and the impact it can have on businesses. Spanky also mentions how Kroger used AI to personalize display ads for their new grocery delivery service, leading to a 259% surge in web traffic and a 16% increase in sales. Finally, Jack in the Box's collaboration with Weedmaps for the 4/20 cannabis holiday, and their new pineapple express milkshake. Key Moments Got Milk had its moment, but now it's Mooooved over (1:04) The launch of Google's Drops tool (3:05) Kroger's successful use of AI to personalize display ads (4:58) How to effectively allocate a marketing budget (7:04) Jack in the Box's upcoming 4/20 promotion (8:45) --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/adnerds/message

On this week's episode, find out how you can win some free merch with our new logo!Plus, Mike and Darin go to church together, a review of the Dungeons and Dragons movie, two Kroger stories of the week, and Darin got a senior citizens discount because he looks so damn old.This episode is fun sized for people with short attention spans so there's no excuse for not listening to it!#KROGER#DUNGEONSANDDRAGONS#WALGREENS#REECESSupport the show

Food Sport International is passionate about wellness and has successfully launched programs at leading retailers that engage customers around food and fitness. Their innovative Fit Market in-store program successfully educated consumers through a variety of programs focused on healthy choices. From community health fairs and screenings to digital incentive technologies that drive consumer behavior, Food Sport has the experience, resources and drive necessary to help focus consumer engagement around heath and fitness. They are a full service creative agency. Suzy Monford rejoined Food Sport International, the firm she founded, after leadership positions including: CEO of Andronico's Community Markets, CEO of Quality Food Center (QFC) and Group Vice President of Kroger's eCommerce and New Markets team. To keep up with the latest in the produce industry, be sure to follow The Produce Moms on all of your favorite platforms, including our blog, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok accounts. You can also watch The Produce Moms Podcast here.

In Episode 9 of this season's Digital and Dirt podcast, Ian welcomes Kay Vizon, Director at  Kroger Integrated Media to discuss Kroger's media strategy and how to utilize technology to create efficiencies and drive sales. To learn more about this episode and see behind-the-scenes photos check out Lamar's blog linked here - https://programmatic.lamar.com/posts/kay-vizon

Brooke and Danielle are getting REAL and checking in on their goals for 2023! The gals set some big goals for the year, so they are holding themselves accountable and seeing where they are at. Brooke also discusses her trip to Mexico with her boyfriend where there were some special surprises left in their room. And Danielle shares what she has been up to in NYC, including a staycation at the iconic 1 Hotel! Don't forget to tag @galsonthegopodcast Daniellecarolan and @brookemiccio in your listening selfies and stories on Instagram! Shop the GOTG x Brooklinen COLLAB! https://brooklinen.pxf.io/LXaB7L SHOP GOTG MERCH! https://fanjoy.co/collections/gals-on-the-go GOTG YouTube Channel (watch full episodes with video!) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkCy3xcN257Hb_VWWU5C5vA Gals On The Go Instagram https://www.instagram.com/galsonthegopodcast/ Brooke's Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/brookemiccio Brooke's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/brookemiccio/ Danielle's Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/daniellecarolan Danielle's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/daniellecarolan/ GOTG jams playlist https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1vQ4FvPya39ff8SOGK9Dg9?si=87f7bd7fbc4445fd Business Inquires Can Be Sent to: GalsOnTheGoPodcastTeam@unitedtalent.com Please support the show by checking out our sponsors! Gametime: Snag the tickets without the stress with Gametime. Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code GALSONTHEGO for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. MUD: Go to mudwtr.com/gals to support the show and use code GALS for 15% off Shopify: Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at SHOPIFY.COM/galsonthego Hint: You can find Hint Water at retail stores like Wal-Mart, Target, and Kroger or have it delivered direct to your door from hintwater.com. New customers can get Hint for just $1 a bottle with free shipping, when they order 3 cases. That's 36 bottles for $36 and free shipping. Just use the code GALS at checkout. ZocDoc: Go to Zocdoc.com/GALSONTHEGO and download the Zocdoc app for FREE. Then find and book a top-rated doctor today. Many are available within 24 hours. Canopy: Go to getcanopy.co to save $25 on your Canopy Humidifier purchase today with Canopy's filter subscription. Listeners can use code GALS at checkout to save an additional 10% off your Canopy purchase.

Join me for an update on how the Word of The Year is going, and what I have learned about the Break in Breakthrough. We will cover all the usual segments for a Monday show as well. A word on the guest form: https://www.livingfreeintennessee.com/guest-interview-application/ Available through midnight Central today! https://livefree.academy/op/the-great-financial-reset-response-webinar-3/?ref=52  Today's Sponsor: Paul Wheaton and Permies.com Kickstarter: Low Tech Laboratory - FOUR MORE DAYS! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paulwheaton/low-tech?ref=5xwwb3 Email feedback to nicole@livingfreeintennessee.com Livestream Schedule Tuesday, 12:30pm CT - John Willis and I welcome Joel Salatin Thursday, 1:00pm CT - I am joined by Amy Dingmann for an episode of Spicy Sisters Friday, 10:30am CT - Homestead Happenings Livestream Tales from the Prepper Pantry Easter Linner - Leg of Lamb, roasted squash, mashed potatoes, gravy, wild edible salad, homemade dressing, cheeses, meats, pickled things Sun Tea Season has arrived with all the mints It is GREAT to have a real kitchen again from a Harvest Cooking standpoint Pantry audit is moving slowly but in progress Making sauerkraut for the Spring Workshop Weekly Shopping Report There were again two trips this week. We took our first trip on Sunday, which is different than our usual time on Saturday. This could affect stock levels, depending on store schedules, however I saw no large changes that could mean a deeper problem. Traffic was rather heavy; I'd have thought it would be lighter on Sunday. It did not look like churchgoers, at least not dressed in their "Sunday Best." Dollar Tree was first. They were looking a little unkempt. Stock levels didn't look too different, but were a little lower in some shelves in the food aisles. Other than some browsing, I think I just grabbed a drink in there. Home Depot was next. The store was weekend-busy. There was plenty of stock all around. A 2x4x8 remains at $3.35. Aldi was next. We found everything we wanted, including heavy cream. While I didn't see any new price jumps, the bill was certainly higher than it used to be. Food City was last. I got one of only three 16 lb. bags of Meow Mix (that our kitties ask for by name), a box of Friskies cans, and a 2-pack of waste-free peanut butter. Just that was $61. Maybe we should get some Vaseline... Today's trip included Walgreens and Weigels (gas). Walgreens is affiliated with Kroger. Think convenience-store pricing but a larger selection. Two sections of coolers were covered, indicating new products coming soon. I was there for Rx; we don't get food there, but it would be a backup backup source if things got desperate. A gallon of untainted regular gasoline remains at $3.999. Frugality Tip from Janet I have one of these and it works for more than just ketchup; I use it for shampoo and anything else that will fit. https://www.amazon.com/Barproducts-com-Inc-KS-Ketchup-Saver/dp/B00FG8S1NO Operation Independence Pretty sure “Tweedle Dum” (T calls her Amy I believe) is going to give birth this week Main topic of the Show: The Break in Breakthrough What is the word of the year Why do I do it How to Find Your Wod of the Year What is the TRAP of each word Why I chose Breakthrough Q1 Lesson: BREAK - as in shatter all the things House breaks Relationship breaks and boundaries Personal, internal break Awareness of breaking in the world The OTHER kind of Break What I am doing about it Well, what CAN I DO? Boundaries & Communication Tapped into network experts and paid some of them for help Stopped telling people why Simplification Working ahead Clarified availability Identified two things the I will mentally adjust  Made the decide list The Good: conversations and new expansions (SRF creative arm, Toolman Tim and the radio show, sought after to speak, doing fewer things better and finishing them) What is next Can you choose a word of the year in April or do you need to wait until december Make it a great week! GUYS! Don't forget about the cookbook, Cook With What You Have by Nicole Sauce and Mama Sauce.  Community Mewe Group: https://mewe.com/join/lftn Telegram Group: https://t.me/LFTNGroup Odysee: https://odysee.com/$/invite/@livingfree:b Advisory Board The Booze Whisperer The Tactical Redneck Chef Brett Samantha the Savings Ninja Resources Membership Sign Up Holler Roast Coffee Harvest Right Affiliate Link

EP304 - ShopTalk Recap  ShopTalk 2023 took place at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas March 26 – March 29th, and seems fully back to pre-pandemic levels. Over 10,000 attendees, 600 exhibitors, and 50,000 one on one meetings, make ShopTalk the premiere digital commerce event in the US. In this episode we recap everything you may have missed if you couldn't make it to Las Vegas. We also briefly discuss e-commerce in Brazil, around Jason's recent trip to São Paulo. Key Themes At ShopTalk this year: Retail Media Networks Social Commerce and Shoppable Video Artificial Intelligence Retailers Becoming Plaforms Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 304 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, April 6th 2023. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 304 being recorded on Thursday April 6th 2023 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey JC and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners Jason you've been burning up the frequent flyer miles I was have all your trips been. Jason: [0:48] I have I just I did a double header I was just in Las Vegas for shoptalk, and then sadly I had to cut out of shoptalk a little early and head down South America to meet with a bunch of pupusas clients I don't I'm not sure I said the portal right there pupusas clients in Brazil so I got two visits Apollo for my second time. Scot: [1:10] People say I don't know you could be in the manual or how to how to pronounce your company's name. Jason: [1:20] But it's got you sound more like relaxed and laid-back than you usually do why is that. Scot: [1:26] Yeah I am coming to you live from my spring break come down here at the North Carolina coast J tone and apologize I'm not up to my usual audio quality I know that's going to drive you crazy but it's been three hundred four episodes we can have a low Fidelity one for me. Jason: [1:42] Low Fidelity Scott is still better than high-fidelity. Scot: [1:44] No thank you I appreciate that. Jason: [1:47] Yeah and is it nice down there. Scot: [1:49] It is we're having good weather it's nice and sunny not its usual heat so it's kind of a 78 but it's nice it's got fun to walk in the beach when it's not blazing hot. Jason: [2:00] Yeah I was going to say I'll take that. Scot: [2:01] Yeah probably better than Chicago her have to say. Jason: [2:05] Yeah it has just in the last couple days warmed up we hit 70 yesterday and then it did back down to 50 today but I'm heading out on spring break this weekend as well so I'm looking forward to some warmer weather also. Scot: [2:18] Yeah you're going to a more exotic location I'm jealous. Jason: [2:22] Yeah yeah we're a family and I are going to the Caribbean so that it is purportedly very warm there so just desperately trying to get all the last stuff done here so that we can go without any guilt. Scot: [2:35] Poop including publishing a podcast I love it your dedication is admirable. Jason: [2:38] That is priority number one I can't we can't leave without all our listeners that let me hear it at shoptalk that we haven't been publishing quite as frequently as they'd like. Scot: [2:48] Yeah it's a between all the things you have going on it's been a little harder this year but we'll we're getting this one in the can before we jump into the e-commerce have you been tracking the Mandalorian. Jason: [3:00] You know I have it's another great season I feel like we're treated to like like you know Premiere movie Caliber content every week now it's amazing. Scot: [3:12] Yeah I'm really enjoying no spoilers part of our policy that I'm enjoying the storyline and it's kind of a fun adventure to see we're going to take this the filoni verse is pretty interesting and enjoyable because they call it. Jason: [3:25] Indeed did you get fooled by any April Fool's jokes. Scot: [3:30] I didn't know it was on a weekend this time so. Yeah I feel like usually at work is when I get get kind of caught up in those things but in the ones I saw a companies do were just like so outrageously silly. A lot of them when you're in a recessionary period of doing layoffs the stuff that kind of it's hard to hard to be super jovial so a lot of them were either kind of hit flat or we're just going like not not really rocket industry. Jason: [3:57] Yeah. I I made a LinkedIn post asking why it seems like all these companies are only like really Innovative one day a year with cool product releases. I thought that would be a like pretty transparent comment and I got like 20 comments back talking about why companies aren't Innovative anymore. Mike I was kind of referencing all the the fake April Fool's products I watched a product in AI based tool that puts your name on the exclusion list when you buy a product so you get to stop seeing ads for it. Scot: [4:32] I thought is that real or that was April Fool joke. Jason: [4:35] There was an April Fool's joke but the feedback I got is very clear that if someone does want to build that, um they could definitely make some money I thought it was funny because it's a feature built into every advertising platform there's nothing stopping anyone from doing it that's why I thought it was funny. But apparently like taking the email address of all the people you sell something too and uploading it to a server via an API is too hard. Scot: [5:05] Well the problem is I only you know I'm okay with you pitching the other products it's just not the one I just thought so so it seems like the way you pitched it was much broader based like my whole I would never hear from you again. Jason: [5:19] Yeah maybe I I mean I wrote it on a plane on the way home from Brazil so we've. But you will be happy to know that I use mid journey to create a logo for the new. Scot: [5:32] Uncle yeah I've been really enjoying the journey it's been a lot. Jason: [5:35] I know you're getting good at it you've uploaded some pretty cool images. Scot: [5:39] Yeah I'm the king of anything to do with penguins can have a lot of. Jason: [5:41] I know you've got some like penguins lounging on the beach. Scot: [5:45] I'm a very specific command engineer for anything to do with penguins. Jason: [5:49] Yet another I'm going to go vote for you on LinkedIn for that skill. Scot: [5:55] My long hair looks kills the let's talk about your Brazil trip let's do that first because shoptalk I wasn't able to make it this year and I want to get kind of meaty on some of that stuff because there's a lot of really good good topics that tell us about Brazil. Jason: [6:11] Yeah so short trip to Brazil for those that aren't familiar with that market it's pretty interesting it's the largest market in Latin America people talk about latam all the time but the. The Dynamics in each country are wildly different and of course they speak a completely different language in Brazil than they do in the rest of Latin America so like. [6:32] It tends to be pretty variable country to Country, the Retail Landscape in Brazil isn't super Dynamic are interesting there's some good retailers but there's nothing that would work. [6:44] Super exciting a revolutionary to anyone that's used to shopping in the US but e-commerce is a pretty interesting Battle Ground Amazon is not the incumbent there's a Marketplace you know well Mercado Libre that, really focuses on Latin America. They're by far the largest Marketplace in Latin America and I think they're still bigger than Amazon but Amazon came to Brazil late and and people are speculating that they would have no chance that there's, all these laws that are unfriendly to expats and mercado Libre had a local presence in Brazil and all this stuff, and my sense is both companies are doing really well and continuing to thrive. E-commerce is growing similar to the US like they tend to be 10 to 15% a year growth for ecommons 4% for retail and both Mercado Libre and Amazon which are by far the two biggest players in Brazil are both growing, much faster than that industry average so. I haven't been there for years ago and back now four years ago people are like Amazon's the new guy and we don't think they'll make it and I think, like in most other markets what they've learned is that if Amazon is really serious about your Market there they're definitely going to be able to win over Shoppers and they, open the ton of infrastructure and they seem to be a credible competitor but it's kind of fun to be in a market where there's two a gentleman. Competitors. Scot: [8:13] Yeah and then did you go to anywhere else in South America just presume. Jason: [8:19] Saturday just Brazil and just how Paulo which is biggest city and in Latin America like 22 million, people in the metro area the digital stuff that was fun to me in Brazil so you know I like to talk about these Chinese companies that are doing really well in the US Xi'an, and she and is doing a bunch of experiments in Brazil that they're not doing anywhere else so in most of the country Shion is a direct-to-consumer model where they have deals with a bunch of factories, and they they sell direct to Consumer the in Brazil there a marketplace with three-piece hours. [8:54] And so that's their first pilot for 3p, and I don't know if it's related to this or not but there's a long time SoftBank exact who led like a hundred million dollar investment in Chien who's based in Latin America and just took a job as like. The head of Sheehan and Latin America and so it seems like they they definitely have a vested interest in the market. So it's kind of interesting to see how well she ends doing there like they are here and then you know Tim ooh is only a three-month-old company it's a pen duo duo, company that has done really well here in the US with app downloads and they did the Super Bowl ads and very similarly they are making a huge, advertising investment in Brazil and getting a lot of traction so that was interesting all of Latin America is having an inflation problem right now and it's kind of interesting Brazil has had this horrible inflation problem for a long time and so there's almost a way in which. [9:53] Brazil is. Doing economy is doing better than a lot of other Latin America economies because they are today already felt the pain of the like truly massive inflation that like makes our inflation seems silly. So that was interesting and then the to me the most geeky coolest thing of all although controversial is during the pandemic, the Brazilian government launched a government-sponsored instant payment system so I got. A digital wallet but the distinction between instant payments and digital wallets digital wallets can hold like credit cards and traditional forms of payment instant payment is kind of like. [10:33] You know do direct withdrawal from transfers from One bank to another, um and so they launched this National digital instant payment system called pics and so if you're a merchant you can accept pics and you don't have to pay any credit card interchange fees, you get your money instantly from the consumer there's all the the you know typical anti-fraud and consumer protection stuff in it and it launched in the middle of the pandemic in 2020 and today it's, used by seventy percent of the Brazilian population so I have to be honest like there's. In one sense a little jealous because I believe there's a lot of digital experiences that get held back in the US because it's such a pain in the neck to pay for stuff. Scot: [11:18] Yeah for a while most of Latin America with Zod and always had it explained to me that it was kind of like, they like to pass cash because the inflation problem they like to keep cash for than in the bank they don't trust the banking system a lot of times so there's this pic thing replacing that that Zod is the most popular payment mechanism. Jason: [11:40] Yeah it definitely has online there still is some cod4 sure it depends on the delivery window of the goods Mercado Libre an Amazon deliver like unsurprisingly fast, but like so you earned order furniture from magazine luiza and it's going to get delivered two weeks from now like the. You want to settle up at point of delivery not at point of order because of that that currency fluctuation or but at least you did. So yeah I don't know the exact breakdown but it just. It's interesting to have this like super ubiquitous payment and part of me and I believe the last time I was in Brazil this that didn't exist yet, and there wasn't a lot of Regulation so everybody and their brother was launching a digital payment method and they were all like a bunch of them were like fraudulent and sketchy and like I went down there and met like a client that was like a chocolatier that made chocolate, and they're like and we have our own digital wallet you're just like why does this country need 400 digital wallets and so part of me imagines that this pic system was sort of. In response to the private sector running amok. Scot: [12:55] Ankle and then how was the flight there and back there in ours there in our time zone right but you but it's kind of a long flight they're in. Jason: [13:06] They're so sad Paulo is a slightly more East so for me from Chicago it's two hours ahead for you they'd be one hour ahead of you. The flight from Chicago would be uneventful it's about a 10 hour direct flight but you can't get there from Las Vegas so I had to go as Vegas. To Dulles which is the wrong direction and then and then down and I had a tight connection I was super nervous, everything went went perfectly I'm sitting in my comfortable seat on the plane for the last leg of the flight down there and I say to myself. All green lights and right then the engine conked out on our plate. Went back to the gate so at the airport for like 5 hours and yeah it ended up being a 24-hour traveled. Scot: [13:56] I hate this map can be recovered. Jason: [13:59] But lucky fresh Jason and exhausted Jason aren't all that different. Scot: [14:03] Just kind of pull the string and you just start talking. Jason: [14:07] Exactly and it is definitely true that my travel muscles have atrophied so like I don't know just not quite as routine as it used to be for me. Scot: [14:21] Yeah give me a rundown of shoptalk what was all the good good sessions there. Jason: [14:27] Yeah well so high level this was the shoptalk the definitely felt like back to normal hundred percent like so there were over 10,000 people there which I think was the attendance of 29. 19 if I'm remembering right. It felt super vibrant and busy and you know you couldn't get a Starbucks because there was a super long line for the first time that I remember you couldn't get a hotel room at the show Hotel. And so a ton of people were having to stay off site which is a little bit of a bummer. The thing that has grown a ton is you know shoptalk offers this Meetup service. You know where it's kind of like Tinder B2B Tinder right like you give a list of. Potential customers you want to meet and they give a list of vendors they want to meet and if you both swipe right like they booked a meeting so shoptalk booked 50,000 meetings, for this event and you can you can go online and get you know Google pictures of the meeting space. It's way bigger than the exhibit space so I give it was a. Pretty interesting Dynamic and people felt like because it was double opt-in that the quality of the meetings was pretty good. Scot: [15:43] Yeah and that's where this is popular in Europe for a while and then most you should have never did it but it sounds like we're moving to that where as a retailer if you agree to X number of meetings they'll pay for your Compu of flight the ticket to the show in a room is it kind of how it works. Jason: [16:01] Yeah and they still have that so yes if you agree to a number of meetings you get comp to the show, I'm not sure about if they comp your hotel room or not I don't remember but um they used to kind of aggressively sell these meetings to vendors and back then Menders were like the meetings are Hidden Mist because you get a lot of kind of. Major people that were just using the meetings as a way to fund their trip and that weren't really interested in the products. My sense is that they they stopped doing that heavy cell and they now make the meetings free if both people opt-in. You don't you can be a vendor and get as many meetings as you want with people that that agree to see you and the only people that are required to take a meaning are these retailers that get their trip. Um but they still get to pick from amongst the people that want to meet with them so, it sounds like a little more voluntary and it sounds like it's working better and the inside trade show baseball, the guy that founded this show and sold it Anil apparently started a company to write the software to manage all these meetings and he sells it as a service and apparently, that's another business that's taken off for an eel that a bunch of shows are now using this this be to be tender software. Scot: [17:20] Like I never misses an angle gotta respect that. Jason: [17:22] Yeah I do. Scot: [17:24] Always gotta hustle goner. Jason: [17:26] I do I you know normally I'm anti serial entrepreneurs but you know occasionally someone wins me over. So that was kind of the vibe felt back lots of people were super kind and came up and, told me how much they appreciate the show and how much they regret that you weren't there there are some people that feel a little abandoned that feel like, you have your new get spiffy family better than you of your old e-commerce. Scot: [18:00] They can visit with us every so often on the podcast. Jason: [18:04] Exactly, so that was kind of the vibe and then you know as per usual they had bunch of Keynotes they had a bunch of track content, they had a big vibrant trade show booth and this this meeting space. And I kind of divided all the themes of the show into four big themes and the first thing I should tell you is, the first day of the show after about three key notes I made a tweet that like, the shop Todd drinking game this year is retail media networks and generative AI that you have to drink every time each one of those things came up and it got like. Five thousand retweets so it seems like there is pretty violent, agreement on those two themes so as it turned out those were two of the big themes was retail media networks and generative Ai and then the other two, that I like to talk about our kind of the social commerce video Commerce. Progression and then this last one that we'll talk about at the end called platforms. [19:11] So the first one retail media networks it's pretty interesting like everybody is talking about this stuff, there are now like we're tracking over 40 retailers that have launched a retail media Network so there's there's a huge fragmentation problem for brands that want to or need to advertise on these things, because all 40 of them have. Different infrastructures and tools and most notably they have completely different metrics and success criteria so there's no way to I. Apples to Apples how well your investment in any of these. These networks is working but there are a ton of sessions from the brand side talking about you know if and how you should be playing on retail networks there were a ton of sessions including one I did from the retailer side talking about how you should think about, launching a retail Network and use it there are a bunch of. The kind of Legacy vendors that have been known for these retail media networks like citrus add which is owned by my parent company and then pretty oh but there were also, 37 startups that were you know launching new businesses to help either retailers, manager retail media Network or Brands advertised on a retail media Network so. [20:30] Ton of taka talking about it I did a session that was interesting at least to me that was slightly broader than just retail media networks it what I was asked to talk about all the ways retailers could monetize data. Um and I had with me Nadine AA Julie jannetty who's the VP of, marketing for Vitamin Shoppe, and so I kind of put together this framework for my session hey there's three ways retailers can make money on data they can sell their data they can rent their data and they could use their data and, for sale I talked about all these examples like Walmart illuminate or Amazon premium analytics or Kroger's data, licensing arm or even selling data to iri for use we talked about how you could use that data in like personalization engines and generative AI engines and in targeted marketing campaigns, but the rent version was all about how you could use that data to launch and improve a retail media. [21:34] And the reason I call that renting is increasingly the big Trend in the successful retail media networks is, selling ads that don't appear on your own website so either off-site digitally so, I would buy retail media Network ad from Walmart that appears on Facebook and the reason I would do that is because Walmart has better first-party data than I do since I can't use a local look-alike audience from Facebook anymore to build the exact audience I want Walmart can so if I pay them to run an ad for me they can Target that add much better than I can and so the biggest retail media networks are, getting a lot of traction with these sort of off-site AD units, and then the other big thing that everyone is doing is trying to figure out how to move more of these ad units into the store and most retailers still get more eyeballs in more more footfalls in the store and then they do on their website and so they're able to monetize the store space. That's really interesting and increasingly these retailers are offering these clean rooms where you can kind of bring your data and they bring their data and you can you can kind of rent some customer Insight by, by in an anonymous way matching your data up with the retailers to get more insight about what your customers are doing. Scot: [22:57] Yeah and this is maybe just back up for listeners this is all really out of the IDF a and a TT changes right so, so Apple till third-party tracking and then Google followed and all this first-party data is now worth its kind of gold dust because they have the best clothes look data, is that a fair characterization why this is now a thing. Jason: [23:19] It is I would say it's a it's a conflation of two things one of them is that that the first party data from the Facebook's and Google's got depreciated by by these more stringent privacy restrictions but then the second thing that happened is grocery e-commerce more than doubled and in Inconvenient Truth of grocery e-commerce is that it's wildly unprofitable so there's all of this, margin pressure on retailers specifically in grocery and so if you look at the retail media networks that are doing the best it's Amazon Walmart Kroger you know that are the three biggest grocers in the US. Scot: [24:00] And then what is if a brand wants to be on like 10 of the 40 of these how do they do that it's just they just hire an agency to manage it all are there some tools developed coming along they'll do. Jason: [24:12] So you could do it in-house every one of these networks offer some sort of tool at the moment these are all pretty rudimentary so if you compare the the, instrumentation for these things too like the instrumentation for buying an ad on Google it's like it's several Generations behind but, in most cases it requires human intervention so in most of these these networks like you're literally calling a sales guy to place an ad for you which is. [24:42] Pretty archaic right like obviously the brands that want to do this themselves want to do it in a more automated way and so that this is where Amazon's the most ahead of anyone else and you know as you can imagine the bigger. Companies have little better instrumentation than the than the you know kind of mid-tier retailers are in are certainly then any independent retailer. So the instrumentation is pretty rudimentary you can use an agency like like mine or many of our good competitors to do this for you I would say the trend while a lot of people use us right now, in the long run they want to be able to do this themselves and not pay a middleman to do it for them so they're they're all putting pressure on the retailers to offer better tools and then there are third-party tools, um that try to learn the, the different data vulgarities and metrics from each of these platforms and kind of be a universal translator and I described many of these as like the channel advisor of retail media Networks and I actually think Channel advisor may offer a product in this space now too but like if you. [25:59] Longtime friend of the show Melissa from Pat view as a tool that that, is it is getting a lot of traction in this space there's some traditional ad automation tools like kin shoe and what's now sky, um [26:17] Do all this stuff so there's a lot of competition for tools the tools are replacing a lot of inherent deficiencies in the in the media networks at the. Scot: [26:28] Yeah yeah I like this one too many problem so I wouldn't be surprised of Channel those are spoken in there and then if you did it for Amazon like most of the verdict had done you know then it's easy to add multiples. Jason: [26:41] Yeah and you know everybody started with Amazon and they're now starting to expand and so. You know there's a lot of like coaching for people at different levels of maturity about all this stuff there were a bunch of retailers that came on and give case studies about how successful they've been, because these things are all pretty small they're growing really fast so like Ulta, I gave a presentation and they talked about how their Regional media networks growing at 40% Macy's talked about how you know in this was kind of a sales pitch but like, um how you know brands that bought their Premier retail media ads units like had 25% better sell-through than, then brands that that did not so talking about the efficacy. The tracking and measurement of all these ads is super dubious right now by the way Uber did a presentation and I don't know if you've noticed this an Uber lately but there they are weaning heavily into these ads as a new, monetization Channel I feel like their way over the top like I keep. You know I'm trying to book a flight to a ride to the airport and I've got a click through I you know click around eight ads too. [27:55] To do that which is somewhat annoying. So there's a lot of positive momentum and everyone talking about this is the Panacea and this the way to make money to more nuanced interesting conversations a lot of people are like. Is this new like when you're talking about retail media networks moving in store like isn't that a hundred year old practice called Co-op advertising that like every retailers, been doing I get in many ways this feels like kind of the digitization of a long-standing practice at retail and then you get into all these interesting questions. [28:28] Where's the money coming from that's going into these ads is it a zero-sum game is it like are they taking dollars from their trade budget that used to go to a store circular and buying an ad with it or is this marketing money that used to be going to Facebook and buying an ad with it, all of those conversations came up and then for the first time because this has been the most hype thing in my world for. [28:50] I don't know two years 18 months for the first time you're starting to hear the stories that and it doesn't always work out right that like. It's a lot harder to do than it sounds like when you just see a PowerPoint presentation from a vendor that's trying to get you to buy their tool. And you know a bunch of these guys are kind of stumbling like the the amount of eyeballs you have to sell like drop off really fast after you get pissed Amazon and Walmart, um and so you know it the fragmentation problem becomes a real problem for. For targeting and selling ads and we've seen at least one one retailer Gap actually have to turn off the retail media Network and kind of, give up and it makes perfect sense that they like, wouldn't be successful because at the moment all the advertisers on these networks are what we would call endemic advertisers their people that are selling stuff through the retailer and so you know probably have some, additional interest in having an add-on that retailers properties, there are no insurance companies are car companies buying ads on any of these platforms and if you think about it what who the Gap does not have is any endemic advertisers right like they sell all their own stuff so. They just had a hard time I think selling enough adieu. Scot: [30:08] Young sir wall she loves it because it's just pure margin was so much easier to sell a margin add than a product. Jason: [30:14] I have a whole deck of CFO quotes talking about how like this is the greatest business I've ever seen in my 30 year career as a retailer, because they're like there's 75 percent gross margin businesses for a bunch of companies that are used to eight percent gross margin businesses. Scot: [30:30] Yeah yet Game Changer it doesn't have to be it could be eight percent of Revenue and it'll drive likes it. Jason: [30:35] No that's that's why I keep talking about like you know a bunch of these guys are like uber just announced that they're near a billion dollars in. Ads you know that's I don't know that could be a hundred billion dollars in gmv equivalent or 50 billion dollars in gmv equivalent for Gruber. Scot: [30:54] Yeah they're actually they were one super annoying because I feel like there's a misalignment there because, they'll say you're right is 3 minutes away and I'll show you an ad and then suddenly will be like 12 minutes away you're like wait a minute and then they yeah they almost intended to make you wait for the ride while. Jason: [31:11] You're monetizing your bad service. Scot: [31:14] Yeah yeah that one feels like that's kind of bad biopsy. Jason: [31:18] Yeah and there's a controversy with all these things like you can, you know what's the right level of this stuff to put in right like a little bit of advertising there's an argument that it's a customer amenity and helps a customer but but too much is super annoying right and in general, why you know people start to start by sprinkling a little bit on this and it's not so objectionable but once they get addicted to it you know the first organic result on Amazon is now you know often well below the fold because everything above the folds been monitoring. Scot: [31:48] Yeah. Jason: [31:50] So that was the thing on retail media networks happily my company has like 50 subject matter experts in that that no more than me so I don't end up having to talk about that as much as I used to, which I'm frankly grateful for because I don't I don't like that business that much it's Louise interesting part of our whole Space to me, but the next big Trend was the whole evolution of social commerce and I'm kind of lumping shoppable video into social commerce so there were a bunch of platforms that gave Keynotes, Bill ready is the CEO of Pinterest he gave a keynote and he had kind of an interesting metaphor he's like you know for a long time, Pinterest has been kind of like the digital equivalent of window shopping except you are only window shopping at night when all the stores were closed and you weren't allowed to buy anything, and he's like you know the big goal for Pinterest this year is to open up all those stores and let you buy the stuff that you're interested in right and he made. Yes um funny arguments you know there's there's a lot of objectionable stuff on a lot of these social media networks and negative sentiment and all this stuff and because. [33:01] Pinterest is mostly product-centric it kind of side steps a lot of those. Those controversies and so you know he talks about it is a much more brand safe platform than a lot of other social networks they launched a second product last year called shuffles which is kind of a. A gen Z version of Pinterest that's even more kind of shopping list Centric, um it has and it has more video and short form video on that vis-à-vis Tick-Tock and so they announced that the show a bunch of shoppable features for shuffles for example. Um They do have some live streaming which one of the conversations that this show is that you know mostly live streaming isn't very high volume and isn't working but what bill was saying in their case is, they're using a i to chop up the live streaming video and turn it into short form video that's not live, and that that's monetizing pretty well so so you know he gave a kind of interesting talk about. [34:10] Commerce getting social getting more Commerce E from his perspective Tik Tok was also a platinum sponsor they had a big booth, um before shoptalk they launched the most robust, checkout experience I've seen on a social platform so they they have a multi-item cart called Tick Tock shop so you can add multiple items you can add actually add multiple items from different vendors all in a single Universal car, and check out a lot of the things that I always point out are usually missing from social check out like in tick-tocks to take tax credit they've added so this is a pretty robust, shopping feature that they've launched and when they launched it. It came with a Shopify integration so the first cuss clients that were on the shop we're all like Shopify customer so you know to me the most recognizable brand was packs on had a had their products on a tick tock shoptalk, and then at shoptalk the announced the first customer that was using their Salesforce integration which is the Cosmetics company e.l.f. [35:19] Um and so so you know we're starting to see. More robust shopping features on at least the tick tock platform, WhatsApp it's owned by meta they were pushing they were also Platinum sponsor they were pushing a lot of newcomers features that they built into their chat interface and so they're they're leaning heavily into this chat for business thing and they have what's called, they've had it for for Facebook and Instagram for a while now they're adding it to WhatsApp so you can kind of. Use WhatsApp is your customer service channel for asynchronous chat and you can natively sell stuff through that, B dance which owns Tick-Tock and you know also one of the biggest Platforms in China they have a they have a couple apps now that are doing really well, and you heard it here first on the show the up-and-coming one in the u.s. is called the laminate which is kind of, Tik toks version of short form video Pinterest it's very product Centric wish you eccentric version of tick-tock, and it's targeted at kind of gen Z, users and they announced shopping features in eliminate so that was interesting, Twitter had a I don't think Twitter had a formal presence that I saw but it kind of leaked during the show that they had applied for a license I didn't realize you. [36:49] I don't know who the governing body here is but to do in app payments so. You know you on musk likes his digital payments and so we try Twitter's moving there. Their shop gave a keynote the founder in Minecon gave a keynote, and he talked about severe shop is a native we social commerce Marketplace, um and he talked about how you know most social commerce experiences just suck and particularly the post-purchase experienced when you're going to get this stuff how you would return it, the shipping confirmation all of all of that sort of stuff oh I forgot my promo code all of that sort of stuff most of these native checkout Schmitt are missing, and so you know he kind of position very shop is a more robust version of all those and, particularly interesting because they have a livestream feature and they're often called out as the livestream success story and he said live streaming is a mixed bag he's like, live streaming converts way better than any of our other media types but it has way poor reach than any of our other media types so his thing was, it's very hard to get people to watch your video live but when they do you can sell them some stuff. [38:09] And then the last keynote that was interesting to me in this whole social space is tapestry which is the parent company of coach, talked about this whole notion that you know people used to discover stuff in store and now they're discovering new products they want to buy on, Kamar on social media platforms, and so sort of influencers are becoming the new Merchants for all these products and so they talked a lot about their their micro influencer campaign, and I'm always pretty getting interested tapestry turns all of the coach employees into micro influencers so they give, tools to all their sales associates to kind of publish influencer content and they financially reward them for doing that so, so a lot of cool interesting stuff in social commerce in short form video in the hallways there's still a lot of conversation about. How you measure this and how big is it going to get and you know are we going to catch up to China or we inherently different like they're all these kind of. You know open questions that are still out there but there was just a heck of a lot of talk about this whole problem of discoveries not happening on the stood in the store as much it's happening on social networks so, you know how the heck do we make that Discovery happen as much as we'd like it to. Scot: [39:33] Yeah it's a fascinating problem the Pinterest guys have been at it forever and never really broken the code on it you think by now they would figure something out. Jason: [39:41] Yeah this is the most explicitly I've heard them say and we're all in on building Commerce features, um the you know he talked about the progress they've made on onboarding shoppable pins like you know a small percentage of all the pins on the site are, are shoppable right and when I look at readers I have some retailers with huge catalogs and you know they could have. Millions tens of millions and a few cases hundreds of millions of skews and they might have like 6,000 shoppable pins on Pinterest right and so those pins. Do pretty well but it just like the the infrastructure of Pinterest isn't really there to handle these these massive catalogs yet. Sounds like they're working on it and by the way the CTO at Pinterest used to be the CTO at Walmart so he Jeremy King knows how to do Commerce at scale. Scot: [40:33] Wow cool. Jason: [40:35] So then my third trend is. Like the most megatrend of the year at the show and outside the show and they're actually a bunch of things that were like hinted at the show that then happen afterwards is the hole, emergence of artificial intelligence and whether you want to generically talk about artificial intelligence or specifically about large language models or generative AI like theirs, there's a million ways to slice this but I did a fun thing I scraped all the exhibitors from the the show and there's something like. 680 something exhibitors at the show if I'm remembering approximately right but 23% of them describe themselves as an AI company. So everybody has an AI story whether they're you know how a gentleman it is or not. And I'll be honest this is a plea for anyone listening in the show do not send me an anonymous LinkedIn invite telling me that you're the one company that invented a revolutionary way to shop Vai for the first time. Because you didn't. But I get a lot of pitches and I'm sure there's some amazing ideas in there but there's also a lot of noise. [41:57] So at the show I think Salesforce may have announced this at their own show beforehand but you know they've had this AI, Persona called the Einstein for a while they announced Einstein GPT for Commerce so for the Salesforce Commerce Cloud they've licensed the opening I technology so they you know you can now, use the their language model for shopping functions on your Salesforce Commerce Cloud thing. Meta did a keynote and they talked a lot about. [42:31] The use cases they saw for AI and and they maybe like an interesting comment that Mark Zuckerberg and Senior leadership are spending the bulk of their time on AI, and it almost feels like they're starting to do this pivot we're like they're calling they're trying to call a i part of the metaverse so that they can, stay say that they're still on the original Mission, but it seems like they're leaning into a I more than the metaverse right now and they hinted about some new image tools and then this week they released a new tool called segments anything which is sort of like an intelligent, um tagging and masking system so I put it through its Paces it's pretty powerful. [43:17] You know imagine you're you have a catalog of 100 million a pair of pieces of apparel and maybe your Marketplace so all that content was developed by different people and you want to show all of the dresses, on a mannequin instead of a live model and you don't know if you have the talent rights to the live models. The segment anything makes it super easy to, Why move all those those dresses to a mannequin or to a flat you know, merchandising hero image or whatever you want to do like so these these tools are solving real business problems for for high-volume e-commerce sites that are pretty interesting. There was a lot of talk at the show there weren't so many scheduled sessions on AI because if you think about it. [44:04] Shopify or shoptalk you know booked other sessions months ago so I need before all this chechi Beauty Buzz started and so the titles of the sessions weren't so much a i generated but the content and all the sessions was AI Centric, um she PT is something we've talked about several times on the show we probably should do a deep dive but they launched a new framework called plugins and so now for the first time you can extend chat GPT with actual Commerce actions so you can say plan I said make a meal plan for a week I want it to be keto friendly I want the meals to all be under 2,000 calories for the day and cost less than $20 and be easy to make and order all the ingredients and chechi PT will, build you a meal plan figure out the calories figure out all the ingredients and place an order with instacart or Shopify for all the stuff on that that shopping list and as you and I have talked about. The chat CBT website is now a huge platform and it was the fastest technology in human history to get to 100 million active users it took him two months and so there's over 100 million people using that website every month and they can now use it for actually buying stuff if they so choose. Scot: [45:21] Yeah the plug-in framework is amazing the it's kind of a whole new platform it's crazy. Jason: [45:28] It's pretty exciting a nuanced conversation I'm having with clients is that plug-in framework is not for the API so it's not so much like extend the capabilities of the, AI engine you're getting from open a.i. that you're building in your own branded mobile app it's extending the capabilities of the website URL owned by chat gbt owned by open a right and so. It really like they're creating a destination that arguably is going to compete with Amazon or Tik-Tok for visits and attention and so it I don't know if that is kind of a, you know a short-term thing until this functionality gets you know ubiquitously deployed or whether that's permanently going to be a super high volume destination but it's super interesting right now. Scot: [46:17] Yes fastest product 200 million users of statue PT so it's well on its way to being a whole new destination and it's been funny watching Google be so dominant for so long and all the excesses of, one time I went there with an engineer and he had a hissy fit that he didn't get fresh coconut milk and and yeah it just has been raining money out of the sky for those guys for so long it's going to be interesting to see them with a new competitor and see how they react, I think I think they've had it easy for so long that's going to be very hard for them to react at all. Jason: [46:49] Yeah the one of the Keynotes was this guy Sean Downey who's the president of America's for Google and that was his kind of first position he's like. Yeah you know search is one of the ways you'll use generative AI but, you know they're like I'm really excited about all the capabilities that you know we've built into Google Cloud platform to enable other people's to do Ai and so you know they're they're kind of saying like hey don't look over here at the large language models where we're not doing very well like look look at all these other things, but he did kind of you know he he openly talked about it and he's like hey from our standpoint. There's three things that you're going to see retailers do with a I right, where you know you're going to use it to help businesses grow You by better ads do better marketing better targeting stuff like that, you're going to improve operational efficiencies and he talked a lot about the demand forecasting use cases Amazon later gave a keynote where they talked about how they're really leaning into a i for for supply chain efficiencies, and then you're you know you're going to have new customer experiences like it's going to be a lot easier to shop for a product you saw in an image or that you can see with your phone or, or things like that then it than it ever was before and so so yeah he talked about it. [48:14] You know Amazon talked about how they're seeing that they now have 600,000 skews that they ship in 90 markets same day. [48:24] And so the big question is what's the right 600,000 excuse to ship and and which ones in which markets. And so there are saying that like this is really a problem that you know is way more efficiently so via a Ai and so there you know increasingly turning over the, the demand forecasting to these AI models they're also like heavily leaning into a i automation for the, the Fulfillment centers and you know you've talked about. They originally acquired Kiva and which was kind of an early a i model and they were kind of slow to really push that out to all the Fulfillment centers but it sounds like with their new focus on efficiency. The the heat is turning up on automating all these these fulfillment centers with quite a bit more. Um so those those kind of supply chain and back of house AI stuff we talked about a lot a thing that I didn't think about that's coming up a lot is. AI for employee training like that they're all these. [49:28] Tools about training people and helping people understand new Concepts and having access to vast knowledge bases and things like that and so a lot of the use cases that the show were, AI tools for employee upscaling in education which I thought was pretty interesting. Of the obvious application that we've done the most with is AI for product content so you know writing better product descriptions writing more unique product descriptions generating better in images, stuff like that and then again not a formal session but a lot of hallway conversation about. The brand risk associated with all of these AI engines so you know Getty is suing one of the big AI engines for kind of illegally training, on trademark Getty Images there was big news this week that some a bunch of Samsung Engineers were taking their most. [50:31] Why proprietary secret code like the debugging code for some of the the you know silicone chips that suck that Samsung makes, and uploading them to chat gbt to debug which you know then means open a.i. employees had access to all this you know all these Sam, secrets, um so they're a lot of those kind of things and the most bizarre but interesting keynote at the show and I think shoptalk always gets one of these like left-field Keynotes where you go why is this person in a Commerce show was Jeffrey katzenberg. [51:03] Who's you know one of the founders of DreamWorks and he works for a VC now or is one of the founders of a VC I think it's called Wonder company, and one of the companies in their portfolio is a net is an AI company called Natoma me and, they're trying to solve part of this brand safety thing they've invented their own flavor of, large language model they're calling sanctioned a I wear the the AI model is trained on a constraint set of data and it can only learn from that data, and so their pitch is hey you want to have an employee knowledge base and you don't want it to run them run amok and start trying to talk employees into leaving their spouses and stuff like that that like, the sanctioned a I approach is a much, bran safer sensible way to do it so I don't know where that all that out but it's it's super interesting to think about some of these problems. Are you worried at all about AI. Scot: [52:07] I am yeah there's there's a lot of icky things to be decided you know where yeah right now these things are crawling all this data and coming up with these insights from you know is that fair use copyright none of the IP laws were written with any of those in mind sir, there's a whole lot of lawyer and that's going to have to go on to figure it out so then being able to turn it on your own data is super handy because you own it and you could have your own little way either. It's happening so fast you can't even keep track of it you know there's there's people that now have wired a chat GPT to these 0 code interfaces so you can using your voice and some prompts you can build apps now it's just kind of. It's really crazy to see where this is going so fast. Jason: [52:52] Yeah yeah yeah I mean to me the speed is the the super exciting so a scary thing there was this letter that came out last week you know that was signed by, um a bunch of like super credible AI researchers and also some. Some like interesting you know competitors and people would likely ulterior motives there was calling for a pause on on all AI research that's more powerful than Chet CPT for and so now, you know all of my clients that are like hey I think I should be doing a I but you know, I have too much on my plate and I don't know what to do they're now using this letter as kind of an excuse to slow play it right because they're like. Like what are the you know concerns and ethics about all this stuff so I do I'm not saying they're necessarily wrong but this letter is I'm kind of dubious of this letter did you follow the. Nothing at all. Scot: [53:51] Yeah I don't think it's kind of causing one to slow down by any means so it seems. Jason: [53:58] That's a point like like how could it like a it's like. Is China gonna follow the pot like you know I mean you're not like them nobody's gonna be able to enforce it like there's no like what's the governing body that's going to enforce that and it has language in it like. Stop AI models more powerful than Chet gbt for well what's the metric for how powerful a large language model is. [54:25] Like how you know is bared more powerful I don't know. [54:30] Yeah so yeah I don't know but it it does put some fear uncertainty and doubt in the whole thing which is just kind of interesting and then the last of my four Trends is retailers becoming platforms, so you have a bunch of big retailers Amazon Walmart and instacart the between them had seven booths at the show. Walmart was a two-time gold Platinum sponsor of the show right so they separately have a Walmart marketplace booth, Walmart Commerce Technologies Booth where they're selling they're their SAS Commerce platform they're selling their Walmart go delivery services and they separately had a booth for Walmart data Ventures which is illuminate and all these, these other services like monetizing Walmart data, Amazon had three booths they had a by with prime Booth which is super interesting and they were they were touting, 25% sales with Don sites that added by with Prime and there was a lot of hallway conversation about the pros and cons of by with, that Amazon pay Booth which I found it interesting that they didn't roll Amazon pay into the buy with prime booth that it was its own separate booth and then. There are third booth that I have to be honest I think it was watch before the show but I had never heard of it till the show called Amazon today are you familiar with Amazon today. [55:56] Yeah so this is a service for brick-and-mortar retailers to list their in-store inventory, on Amazon search and if a customer wants to buy it they'll have an Amazon Flex driver go to your store pick it up and then deliver it to the customer. [56:13] So it's extending the marketplace inventory to the to the you know these brick-and-mortar retailers and so I, GNC PacSun and Superdry were three retailers that were always piloting it and I I think what that means is like, retail to the word that you know who's inventory isn't Shopify which is funny that it's Amazon. [56:37] But yeah I hadn't heard of that service and that's interesting like I'm digging into that service more but like. It just super interesting that like a company that you think of as a, competitor for a bunch of retailers has three separate booth that are booths at a retail trade show selling stuff to other retailers and by the way they're huge Marketplace they did not have a booth recruiting marketplace hours, I'm assuming because most of the new Marketplace sellers are located in other countries. And then instacart who you think of is a b2c company that has a bunch of consumers going in their website they had a booth totally dedicated to all the white labeled services, they're selling and most of them have carried in the name so I call it carried everything they call it instacart platforms, so it just super interesting to me to see all of these retailers again saying. Selling bananas is a well margin business it's way better to sell Services I Scot Wingo used to do it at Channel advisor. [57:48] Exactly yeah so you have a lot of Prospectors that are starting second careers as as pickaxe salesman. Scot: [57:56] Analogy. Jason: [57:58] Yeah and then of course there's all the, the actual platforms that are you know dramatically expanding their their services so Shopify waiting into the Professional Services Market a lot more Salesforce weaning into it and then a social commerce platform snap, actually like was selling all of their AI stuff which there are I'm sorry AR stuff which they're pretty you know advanced in as white labeled services to build into your own apps. Scot: [58:27] Probably cleanses and. Jason: [58:29] So if you want like if you have a product catalog that you need you know that's why I get home decor and you need to visualize it in the canoe in the consumer wants to, you know kind of use a IR to visualize it in the room or makeup Tryon or, or you know those kinds of things or maybe you want to scan a shelf and overlay reviews over product on the shelf or any of those kind of a our use cases you can now license a set of snap. And I think they call it snap are at our ease which I think a res is acronym for something but. You can you can license all those capabilities from snap instead of building them yourself. Yeah so that was in my those were my big takeaways from the show the kind of stuff that didn't make my list but came up a few times, there's a lot of talk about the the macro-environment macroeconomic environment and all the uncertainty there were a lot of sessions around convenience and Rapid delivery, they're you know our e-commerce and resale is still a big thing and there's kind of just this General notion that that it's the year of efficiency so retailers are investing a lot more in. In stuff that has a short term Roi and that's kind of back-of-house in the lesson just growing at all costs. Do you feel like you've been in the show now. Scot: [59:52] I knew that was awesome you saved me a lot of travel and a lot of trips in Starbucks. Jason: [59:58] Yes but you missed enjoying a bunch of iced lattes with me and you know hearing from all the fans that appreciate your your knowledge and POV on this podcast. Scot: [1:00:10] Yeah we need to open up an auto segment and then I can justify the trip can't do it right now. Jason: [1:00:16] Oh I forgot the most important part they announced a new show shoptalk fall. So shoptalk is normally in April they have two shows in the u.s. shoptalk in April grocery shop in October and then there's a shoptalk Europe that's in I think June or May so they're starting in 2024 they're going to have to shop talk shows in the US, the regular shoptalk in Las Vegas in March and a shoptalk fall which will be in my hometown of Chicago in late September. Yeah so second show I think there's some controversy if you're an exhibitor at grocery shop and shoptalk those two shows might be pretty close together and it could be annoying but I'm excited that a bunch of my Commerce friends will have an excuse to come visit me in Chicago and I'm thinking we I got a host some kind of event for a meet up for for listeners that want to get together because I never get to schedule meetings with as many people as I'd like to. Scot: [1:01:22] Yeah that's a lot easier to get to than Vegas for me so we'll see. Jason: [1:01:25] Yeah that's why I'm saying is you and I we should have a Jason and Scot Show event and we'll get like. Foxtrot is a local market and restaurant to host like cater breakfast tacos for everyone or something. Scot: [1:01:40] Okay I'm liking the sound of that did they announce the time let's work what will work on it offline. Jason: [1:01:45] And you think like if I was going to do a podcast I would do some research and get my intern on it it is October 8th through the 10th 2024 in Chicago at Javits Center. Scot: [1:01:57] All right let me check the calendar and get back with you. Jason: [1:02:01] I like it I know that was a lot there was a little bit of Amazon news did you have a POV on the recent layoffs. Scot: [1:02:11] It's been pretty dry an Amazon lamp they're just really trimming staff like crazy so they announced yet another 9,000 way off so I think this gets up to 27,000 because Amazon rules the warehouse people into their head count they're always in a million so it's feels like a small percentage but these are coming from, yeah I've heard the Alexa team got hit pretty hard, Lester was way out in front and all these new chat gbt capabilities far none of them are on a device yet but pretty soon I think we'll see it all over the place, there's some speculation maybe Microsoft will come out with a new phone products that would be that gbt enabled which would be kind of an interesting next-gen phone platform so I think. They've got a lot of precious they got macro they having to trim their head count to hit their numbers from a bottom-line perspective they were hired and then they're in this kind of gun / a knife fight over a i. So it's very interesting to see what they do the rest of the year around some of these these areas it's a tough sledding for sure for Amazon right now. Jason: [1:03:19] Yeah it's interesting because on the one hand you if you look at how many people Amazon added over the last 18 months like the layoffs don't you know. Don't seem that severe but it is interesting like some of these layoffs were in pretty key areas like areas that you would think of is primarily. Like income additive like they like they laid off people in the Amazon ad unit right which. To me that's not necessary where you'd expect to see. Ceci hits I personally am a little sad that they have this huge focus on efficiency because I very selfishly feel like the the echo Hardware is getting kind of long in the tooth and now there's all this new exciting large language model capability and like I'm super eager to see like a vastly improved. Solution there and I'm kind of worried that like all of this efficiency stuff is going to slow down the likelihood that it's going to come from Amazon. Scot: [1:04:19] Yeah I talked to a lot of people at Amazon still and something happened kind of during the pandemic where, the whole work from home and then the explosion of employees they've lost their efficiency so you know for a long they did it better than any other company with the two pizzas team Rule and all this Jazz but now there's so many to Pizza teams running around none of them know what's going on and it's kind of total chaos has become very hard to get stuff done, so I don't know them feel like trimming that count can be a good thing. Jason: [1:04:53] Yeah no I feel like the investors have mostly liked it by the way but yeah I think the big problem is its Day 2 at Amazon. Scot: [1:05:04] To be sets the stage for a bob Iger like return of pesos at some point maybe he'll. Jason: [1:05:10] Yeah I think that was that was on the bubble for me as a prediction for this year so. I don't think I actually pulled the trigger on it so I hope it doesn't happen this year I'll kick myself. But Scott what a shock we've used a lot of time again so as always if you found value we'd love it if you jump on iTunes and leave us that five-star review, and super appreciate everyone taking the time and all the kind words that you passed along the Scott and I the we're grateful that the show adds value and we really appreciate you guys. Scot: [1:05:47] Yeah have a great spring break Jason and until next time. Jason: [1:05:51] Happy Commercing.