Better Advertising with BTR Media

Karim Khalil, founder and CEO of Yaza Foods, has lived in Lebanon, Paris, London, and Nigeria. Everywhere he went, the food he grew up eating was missing from the shelf. So in 2020 he moved to the US with his wife and kid and started Yaza to change that.Before Yaza, he took over his father’s hair extension business at 20 and had an exit with a major CPG company.In this episode he and Destaney get into winning Walmart Open Call, working Costco roadshows, and why Yaza made its brand fun in a boring aisle. They also cover why the team is focused on velocity in their nearly 4,000 doors and has no new launches planned for 2027.Connect with Karim on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-karim-khalil/Connect with Destaney on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/destaney-wishon/

Karla O’Grady has been on Amazon’s live sports team since year one when they had one property, Thursday Night Football, and fifteen regular season games to sell. Five years later the portfolio includes the NBA, WNBA, National Women’s Soccer League, and a lot more on the way.In this episode recorded live at Amazon unBoxed, she and Destaney get into what makes Amazon’s live sports offering completely different from traditional TV advertising, how Sony used a full funnel Thursday Night Football campaign to drive 65% of attributed sales from a single awareness tactic, and why couch to cart is one of the most disruptive pieces of technology in retail media right now.Connect with Karla on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karla-o%E2%80%99grady-1567b527/ Connect with Destaney on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/destaney-wishon/

Alexis Katsafanas started her career as a fashion buyer at Nordstrom, went through Nike, Daily Harvest, and a stint inside Amazon before landing at Unilever Prestige where she oversees D2C and Amazon for some of the most disruptive brands in beauty right now including K18.In this episode she and Destaney get into why prestige and Amazon are not actually at odds, how the K18 Brand Innovation Lab partnership came to life including a giant hairball rolling through New York City, and why the biggest opportunity in e-commerce right now is not using data to make your channel smarter but using it to make your entire brand smarter.Connect with Alexis on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexiskatsafanas/ Connect with Destaney on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/destaney-wishon/

Jonathan Alsop started in e-commerce selling products out of a boutique home and garden store in Charlotte and ended up managing 15,000 SKUs for Rack Room Shoes before jumping to one of the most technically complex catalog challenges in the industry at MANN+HUMMEL, home to Purolator, Wix Filters, and some of the most loyal automotive customers on the planet.In this episode he and Destaney get into how to balance a highly loyal legacy audience with new customer acquisition, why building confidence in a DIY customer is completely different from selling a shoe, and how mini how-to videos shot in his own driveway are becoming one of the most effective tools in the catalog.They also get into AI, Alexa shopping, blinker fluid jokes, and why a single TikTok can now create a million dollar product while some legacy companies are still running on antiquated data systems.Connect with Jonathan on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathandalsop/ Connect with Destaney on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/destaney-wishon/

Mike Sommers has spent his career building brands that show up in culture in ways that actually stick. From spending eight years reaching endurance athletes at the point of sweat for Nuun, to activating at the US Open for Vital Proteins six weeks after signing the contract, he has figured out something most brand marketers are still trying to solve. You do not have to reach everyone to build a brand that everyone knows.In this episode he and Destaney get into why lighthouse brands aim narrow to reach wide, why follower count no longer equals influence, and why 99% of brands have zero permission to show up authentically on Reddit no matter how hard they try.Connect with Mike on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-sommers/Connect with Destaney on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/destaney-wishon/

Elan Halpern did not set out to start a yogurt company. She set out to fix her gut. What started as making small batches at home turned into 50 customer interviews, yogurt drops with personal phone numbers handed out at the door, and eventually a Midwest launch into 70 Fresh Thyme stores less than a year after hitting their first grocery shelf.She joined Destaney to talk about building iteratively, meeting your audience where they already are, and why building in public has been one of the single greatest marketing strategies Sour Milk has taken on.Connect with Elan on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elan-halpern/Connect with Destaney on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/destaney-wishon/

David Khoshpasand has spent years at Hasbro figuring out why retail media keeps getting blamed for things that are not its fault. The answer almost always comes back to the same problem. Brands are using the wrong scorecard.In this episode he and Destaney get into why total OPS is a terrible way to measure retail media effectiveness, why a high ROAS and a low ROI can exist at the exact same time, and why one competitor going viral overnight can tank your organic share in ways that have nothing to do with your ads.Connect with David on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dkmarketing/Connect with Destaney on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/destaney-wishon/

Christian Campisi taught himself Amazon advertising by sitting in on US account calls while doing his accounting job at Pink Stork. Two years later he was launching the brand into 4,600 Walmart stores. He recently joined Wedderspoon, the leading Manuka honey brand, to do it all over again.In this episode he and Destaney get into why brands that start with the tool instead of the problem almost always get it wrong, why lifetime value and acquisition cost are the only two north star metrics that really matter for CPG brands, and why sometimes every KPI says one thing and your gut says the other and your gut wins.Connect with Christian on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-campisi10/Connect with Destaney on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/destaney-wishon/

Amy Zitelman co-founded Soom Foods in 2013 with no branding experience, no marketing budget, and a product most Americans had never heard of. She built the brand by selling to chefs, showing up at farmer's markets, and collecting feedback for eight years before she felt ready to scale to consumer channels.She joined Destaney to talk about the flywheel effect between food service and Amazon, why if you cannot find the attribution there is none, and what the pivot from tahini jars to dressings is teaching them about listening to your customer.Connect with Amy on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-zitelman/ Connect with Destaney on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/destaney-wishon/

Nick and Destaney get into how to think about budget allocation across a catalog when every SKU has a different role, why a one dollar ROAS on a specific product might actually be the right call, and why brands that are still optimizing purely for ACOS and ROAS are falling behind without even realizing it.They also get into why giving AI just spend and ROAS data without the right context is one of the most dangerous things a brand can do right now, how time to conversion data should be changing how you think about day parting, and why the digital shelf is not that different from a physical retail shelf when you think about where the traffic actually goes.Connect with Nick on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/n-amos/ Connect with Destaney on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/destaney-wishon/