OFFICIAL CALL FOR PRESENTERS: Category Leadership Conference

IIR Presents the 5th Annual

Category Leadership Conference

From category management to shopper engagement.

September 27-29, 2010 • Chicago, IL

OFFICIAL CALL FOR PRESENTERS
Submission Deadline: Wednesday, March 24, 2010
[Note: Papers are accepted on a rolling basis so early submissions are encouraged.]
From: Amanda Powers, Senior Conference Producer, IIR
Re: Category Leadership Conference 2010, Call for Presenters
Event Date & Location: September 27-29, 2010, Chicago, IL
Deadline: Wednesday, March 24, 2010
READ ON FOR SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS AND GUIDELINES.

Added Bonus: Each speaker will receive free admission to the conference (a $2000+ value) including admission to all conference sessions, networking events, lunches, exhibit hall, etc.

WHAT
The producers of the Shopper Insights in Action Conference present the Category Leadership Conference, an unbiased industry event that showcases next generation best practices for using data, insights and organizational prowess to optimize the shelves and improve total store sales.

Entering its fifth year, the event producers (IIR), are working vigilantly to once again raise the bar so that the content and experience are unparalleled.

The event will showcase the latest methods for reinventing category management and working with cross functional teams in sales, shopper insights and shopper marketing to drive growth and win at retail. Whether you are new to category management, a seasoned veteran, or a proactive strategist interested in being a better collaborator, this is THE event for you.

WHO
We are currently recruiting corporate retailers and manufacturers from a diverse range of industries to share new perspectives and case studies about the next generation of category management.

TOPIC AREAS
Content areas for 2010 include but are not limited to:
Navigating Brand Needs with Category Needs during Strained Times
The Role of Brands in Stores
Driving Retailer Growth & Profits by Understanding Customer Interactions with Categories
How Lifestyles and Lifestages Affect Buying Trends by Category
Using Shopper Information to Drive Better Decisions at Retail
Turning Plans into Success at the Store Level: Getting the Implementation Right
Building Category Plans Equipped to Evolve as Customers Needs & Preferences Change
Driving Incremental Volume in Categories to Improve Total Store Performance
Beyond the Numbers: Evolving Your Category Management Practices with Shopper Insights
Managing the Assortment Amidst the Private Brand Boom
Reinventing the Store Layout to Optimize Flow & Adjacency Opportunities
Redesigning the Aisles Around Shopper Occasions
Testing Category Changes Virtually
Aligning the Innovation Pipeline with the Value Proposition
Category Management Principles in Convenience Stores
Recalibrating the Assortment Mix Models to Align with Today's Consumers
ROI: Integrating Data to Ensure Optimal Return on Investment
Innovative Solutions Delivered on the Shelf
Identifying Your Competency Models to Ensure Effective & Efficient Category Management
Streamlining Category Management Analytics & Reporting
Next Generation Sales: Insights + Collaboration=Powerful Results
How a Grocery List Can Dictate Path to Purchase

We are also currently recruiting speakers for the Shopper Marketing Fusion Summit - The intersection of category management and in-store marketing
Reorganizing the Cross-Functional Teams for Transparency and Data Sharing
Creating a Process to Move from Insights to Deployment to Implementation
Building a Shopper-Centric Marketing Team
Integrating Social Media & Social Networking
Creating Cross-Channel Synergy for a Seamless End to End Shopping Experience

** Please feel free to submit additional topics of your choice. These are only a few themes and we are not limiting submissions to these topic themes alone.

Please see template below for standard abstract format:

Sample Session Summary

Maximizing the Balances Scorecard for Agents and Site Improvements
Tom Smith, VP, Customer Analytics, ABC Company
Tom offer a dramatically different approach to using balanced scorecards for enterprise-wide business improvements. He will show how he designed his agents scorecards, implemented them and how he communicated the findings to key stakeholders to create change. He will also share his ideas to “interactive” measures versus “linear” measures so that measurements align better with the user and customer experience.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
• A new balanced scorecards design system
• More effective measurement of an organization
• Transforming into business improvements

Brief Bio: Tom has spent more than 20 years within with various Fortune 100 companies focused on building the right metrics infrastructure. He has led the customer metrics group within ABC for the past 10 years where they have measured over 30 million in cost savings improvements. He is certified in XXXX.

Speaker contact details:
Tom Smith
VP, Customer Analytics
ABC Company
123 Main Street
Cleveland, OH 10111
P: 333.444.5566
Cell: 333.444.66.777

Please indicate which format you feel would be most appropriate for the proposed topic. Format options include:
Standard case study presentation (45 minutes long)
Panel (3-4 participants debate a selected topic for approximately 1 hour)
Lead an interactive audience discussion breaking the audience into teams (45 minutes long)
Experiential workshop (3.5 hours long)
Moderated discussion (45 minutes long - submissions should be prepared to service as moderator for a discussion group)

For Practitioners Only:
For consideration, please email apowers@iirusa.com with the following information by Wednesday, March 24, 2010:
Proposed speaker name(s), job title(s), and company name(s)
Contact information including address, telephone and email
Please indicate which of the topics you plan to address. If it is the latest tools and techniques, please indicate what is new about the. (Please indicate the topic area if it is an interactive session and the amount of time you will need).
Talk title
Summary of the presentation (3-5 sentences)
What the audience will gain from the presentation (please list 3 key takeaways)

What if I am not a corporate practitioner (from a client-side company) but still would like to participate?
80% of our content will be delivered by corporate practitioners. A limited number of sessions on the program are reserved for our event sponsors. If you are a consultant or solutions provider and wish to be a part of the program, please contact Jon Saxe at 646-895-7467 or via email at jsaxe@iirusa.com for information on how you can get involved.

Due to the high volume of response, we are unable to respond to each submission. All those selected to participate as speakers will be notified shortly after the deadline.

Thank you for your interest in The Category Leadership Conference. Check back for updates on the program at www.iirusa.com/category.

All the best,

Amanda Powers
Senior Conference Producer
Institute for International Research

Shopper Marketing and the CEO

Steven Skinner recently wrote a great post about why CEOs should turn to shopper marketing and make it a higher priority.

According to the article:
Miller Zell research indicates that while 65% of customers are now making lists prior to entering the retail store, 60% of those same shoppers will make brand decisions inside of the store.

Read the full article which looks at such questions as: Where does shopper marketing begin? Where does it in turn end and category management begin? What about brand management?

Read the full article here.

Shopper Marketing Fusion Keynote Speaker: JB Steenkamp

JB Steenkamp, Author, The Private Label Strategy: How to Meet the Store Brand Challenge

Jan-Benedict E.M. Steenkamp researches global marketing; the effectiveness of marketing strategies such as branding, private labels and new products; interorganizational relationships; and marketing research techniques. He teaches in these areas and in innovation and strategy.

Dr. Steenkamp is the author of Private Label Strategy: How to Meet the Store Brand Challenge with Nirmalya Kumar of London Business School (Harvard Business School Press, 2007). An award-winning researcher, he has written or edited five books, and over 100 scholarly publications.

He also is executive director of AiMark, a global center studying key marketing strategy issues, which brings together academics around the world, two of the top-four market research agencies, and brand manufacturers. He has consulted with numerous companies, including Procter & Gamble, Kraft, Unilever, Reckitt Benckiser, Zurich Financial Services, KPMG, Sara Lee and Johnson & Johnson.

Dr. Steenkamp serves on the editorial boards of all top marketing journals and is past editor of the International Journal of Research in Marketing. The Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences awarded him the Muller lifetime prize for “exceptional achievements in the area of the behavioral and social sciences.” It was the first time the prize was awarded to a researcher in any area of business administration.

Before joining UNC Kenan-Flagler, he taught at universities in Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain, South Africa and the United States.

He received his PhD, master’s and bachelor’s degrees, all summa cum laude, from Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

About the Shopper Marketing Fusion Conference

The Category Management Conference was transformed into this Shopper Marketing Fusion Event because brand and retail community wanted an event to feature the big picture of what next generation category management is able to achieve – and that’s only possible through the collaboration and convergence of other integrated marketers.

FUSION is based on the vision to overhaul an organizational mind-set to embrace shopper-centricity, beginning with the synergy of all marketing functions using shopper insights to innovate product offerings, product adjacencies, in-store environments, formats and more in order to increase basket size, improve brand differentiation and raise loyalty.

It is the first event to truly echo the progress the best-in-class brands and retailers are making.

In-Store Marketing for Orange Juice

Be on the lookout for a very friendly display that sounds like Tom Selleck, urging you to purchase Florida orange juice. The mustached celebrity's voice is slatted to be on in-store displays for Florida Department of Citrus, as the company shifts from heavy television marketing to in-store presence.

The Ledger reports, "a recorded message in the cooler from OJ spokesman Selleck will remind shoppers "Florida orange juice (is) healthy, pure and simple," Leigh Killeen, deputy executive director for marketing, told the commission. Side panels will reinforce that message.
And when shoppers open the clear plastic lid to get the refrigerated OJ product inside, the cooler will spritz an orange fragrance.

The department will roll out the cooler displays as a pilot program in Florida stores later this year, Executive Director Ken Keck said. If that proves successful, the talking, spritzing coolers will be available nationwide."

Selling OJ Focuses on Grocery Stores

Campbell Soup Company Extends V8 Fusion Line

According to this article in TradingMarkets, Cambell Soup Company’s introduction of two new flavors for their V8 Fusion line will help bridge the “vegetable gap”, which is the difference between what consumers should eat and what they actually do eat. Most Americans do not get their recommended intake of daily vegetables, but with the addition of the two new flavors (Goji Raspberry and Passionfruit Tangerine) which taste like fruit, well it might help moms in getting their kids to eat their veggies!

Phil McGee, director of Insights & Category Management at Campbell Soup Company will be speaking at our upcoming Shopper Insights in Action 2009 conference this July in Chicago. For more information about the conference and about Phil, please visit our Shopper Insights in Action 2009 event page.

Segregated shopping in neighborhoods

In a recent blog at Reveries, they look at how shopping experiences have become more segregated than ever. Neighborhoods with strong concentrations of different ethnicity lead to segmented shopping experiences.

An example is provided in the post about a shopping experience in Queens, New York.

If you were to take the 7 subway line to the 74th Street stop in Queens, you might think you were in "a South Asian neighborhood. There are shops selling saris and Indian jewelry ... Yet nearby flats are mostly occupied by immigrants from Central America. The shops are patronized by South Asians who travel into the neighborhood."