Lauren Livak Gilbert is the Executive Director of the Digital Shelf Institute (DSI), which shapes the future of digital and advances commerce through community, content, and education. In her role, she defines the strategy for creating a global industry commerce community to support brands, retailers, and future leaders in the complex digital environment. As a thought leader in digital and design, Lauren has experience driving impactful multi-channel design content, transformative digital shelf solutions, and high-conversion web UX designs across multiple regions. Before DSI, she held numerous roles at Johnson & Johnson, where she owned the digital shelf for consumer products in North America. 

Nate Pinkston is the Head of Growth for Retail Media at Microsoft, where he manages end-to-end ownership of sales, customer success, and account management for the world’s largest retail media networks. As a digital marketing and engagement leader, he uses analytics to develop innovative solutions in the AdTech, MarTech, and retail industries. Nate has led teams to design and launch new products, reach new customer segments and markets, and work with C-suite executives to drive growth.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [2:38] How the structure and approach to joint business plans (JBPs) have evolved with retail media
• [7:41] The importance of internal team alignment and preparations for JBPs
• [12:51] Collaborating with retailers and internal teams for JBPs 
• [14:44] What is the eCommerce team’s role in organizing JBPs?
• [20:24] Retailers' receptiveness to brand’s insights and innovative ideas during JBPs
• [28:53] The value of transparency and continuous learning during the JBP process
• [38:54] How to standardize the JBP process

In this episode…

With more companies adopting retail media advertising, joint business plans (JBPs) between retailers and brands have become a requirement. Yet these plans are still in the initial stages, with both parties unsure of how to proceed. What steps can you take to collaborate with retailers and ensure your JBP reflects your business goals?

As early adopters of retailer media, Lauren Livak Gilbert and Nate Pinkston have invested countless hours and resources helping brands and retailers navigate JBPs. Industry standards for joint business plans haven’t been established yet, so Lauren and Nate recommend formulating recurring cross-functional meetings with internal teams and retailers to collaborate on strategies. This should be an integrated, holistic process that aligns the practices and goals of each team and party. Additionally, retailers are open to brand insights and ideas, so offering data and innovative approaches is crucial for establishing standardized business practices.

In this week’s episode of The Digital Deep Dive, Aaron Conant hosts Lauren Livak Gilbert of the Digital Shelf Institute and Nate Pinkston of Microsoft to discuss the ins and outs of joint business plans. Together, they explain how to optimize this digital strategy session, the importance of data-sharing and cross-functional collaboration, and the eCommerce team’s role in JBPs.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Aaron Conant on LinkedIn
• BWG Connect
• Nate Pinkston on LinkedIn
• Microsoft Advertising
• Lauren Livak Gilbert on LinkedIn
• Digital Shelf Institute
• Todd Hassenfelt on LinkedIn
• Chris Perry on LinkedIn
• Oskar Kaszubski on LinkedIn
• firstmovr
• “Digital Organization and Change Management” with Christ Perry and Oskar Kaszubski on The Digital Deep Dive
• Meghan Corroon on LinkedIn
• Clerdata

Quotable Moments:

• "The more you can try to figure out who those functions are...the broader approach you can build." - Lauren Livak Gilbert
• "Embrace the immaturity to say, let's bring definition here that's going to serve us." - Nate Pinkston
• "We're starting to see that people are starting to get that...everything needs to work together in order to be successful." - Lauren Livak Gilbert
• "You're not going to have a merchant or a sales team that just focuses on eCommerce versus in-store; those are going to come together." - Nate Pinkston
• "Retailers want to partner; they want to grow; they want to triple our sales this year." - Aaron Conant

Action Steps:

1. Create a cross-functional omnichannel team that meets regularly: This promotes knowledge sharing across departments, ensuring a holistic strategy that aligns with company-wide objectives.
2. Leverage brand size, whether big or small, to cultivate unique retailer relationships: Each brand size offers distinct advantages in flexibility or resources when approaching joint business planning.
3. Engage in early JBP preparation by involving essential functions, like finance and revenue growth management: Good preparation allows for better alignment and execution of strategies.
4. Embrace the role of eCommerce teams as orchestrators of the JBP process: This ensures a forward-thinking and adaptive approach to digital challenges.
5. Prioritize transparent communication and data sharing with retail partners: Increased transparency leads to more innovative opportunities and can strengthen partnerships.

About BWG Connect...

BWG Connect provides executive strategy and networking sessions that help brands from any industry with their overall business planning and execution. We network and knowledge share together to better understand and adapt to the newest trends, strategies, and pain points shaping growth in the digital space. BWG Connect, in conjunction with BWG Strategy, has built an exclusive network of 125,000+ senior professionals and hosts over 2,000 virtual and in-person networking events on an annual basis.

In addition, we have had 1x1 conversations with over 5,000 brands and have a real-time pulse on what digital strategies are successful and why. This in-depth knowledge allows our team to operate on the cutting-edge and provide our clients with best-in-class guidance on how to win in the digital world. We have provided free consultations and strategy sessions for companies of all sizes, from start-ups to Fortune-100, to enable growth, resolve issues and make curated service provider introductions that can impact your digital footprint.

We have held to the philosophy of providing high-level insights and actionable knowledge with no sales pitches in order to provide to our network the ability to listen, learn and act to improve themselves as well as their organizations. Our ultimate goal is to be the resource out there to help digital executives find the research they need to excel in the modern marketplace.

If you are interested in getting involved with any of our current or past events, you can find them here. If you are looking for help & would like to set up some time to chat with our team, you can schedule a time or reach out directly to Aaron@bwgconnect.com or Tiffany@bwgconnect.com.

Marc Walkin is the Co-founder and Head of Marketing and Growth at Turbyne, a vertically integrated B2B SaaS platform that simplifies retail media. With over 15 years of experience as a marketing leader, he has built modern retail and CPG brands, including Stop & Shop, Popcorners, Beech-Nut, and Staples. Marc specializes in brand transformation, corporate strategy, and shopper and digital marketing playbooks.