From Driving Ecommerce at Three Distinctive Brands Comes a Lot of Wisdom, with Wendell Venerable, VP eCommerce, Congo Brands

Lauren Schiavone spent 17 years at P&G as a brand manager and a builder of ecommerce from the ground up. She has now taken that wealth of process, tech, and organizational experience and combined it with a deep understanding of AI to create Wonder Consulting LLC. She works with teams to guide them from AI novice to AI expert, moving AI value from “write this email” to “optimize my PDP content across this retailer for the upcoming season”. Lauren joins our Lauren Livak Gilbert and Peter Crosby to drop some wondrous AI knowledge for our listeners.

How do kids, parents and shoppers really discover brands today, and what does that mean for marketers trying to keep up? In this episode, Teresa sits down with Belinda Gruebner, former CMO of Moose Toys, to explore how the toy industry has evolved from catalogue-driven retail to creator-led discovery and always-on storytelling. Belinda shares lessons from scaling a global brand portfolio, building digital and marketing capability across markets, and rethinking packaging, content and owned assets as part of the omni-channel experience. The conversation also tackles the impact of Australia’s new social media restrictions for under-16s, the growing importance of community and real-world connection, and the ethical questions brands need to confront as AI, data and digital acceleration continue to reshape the digital shelf.

Over the past year Chris Perry, Chief Learning Officer at firstmovr, has had literally, and I mean that literally, hundreds of conversations with ecommerce leaders and doers about the ways in which AI can be wielded to simplify work and improve outcomes. As they often do at firstmovr, they generously created a new series of free content called PROMPTED that clearly lays out some of those AI cheat codes that can supercharge your work and help you see around corners. We interrogated him about a few of those to get you started.

Reckitt. Red Bull. Congo Brands. Working across an ecommerce powerhouse, to one of the most vibrant brands in the industry, and now at a feisty startup, Wendell Venerable, VP eCommerce at Congo Brands has amassed a ton of hard lessons and hard-fought victories. Wendell joins the pod to share generously from his past experience, and his view on the future of commerce in the next era.

With 4500 customers across every industry creating digital assets inside their platform, Bynder has a bird’s eye view of the rapid transformation of the process to make imagery and drive it to market. And how AI is transforming that cycle. Our guest Cliff Crosbie is VP, AI Consultancy at Bynder, and he brings both stories and data that illuminate the strategies and best practices that are working to drive massively greater efficiency and better results on the digital shelf and the agentic shelf.

Do you feel as though your IT function and marketing or eCommerce functions are not in sync? This is often the case in organizations but it doesn't have to be. It is time to break down the silos between IT and other business functions and start to think about every function as the business. The Digital Shelf Institute partnered with MikMak to interview CIOs and business leaders from over 15 different brands to understand how they are bridging the gap between these functions. This is an audio rebroadcast of a webinar focused on that research, led by Lauren Livak Gilbert, featuring Darren Silverman, SVP of Digital, Commerce & Media at Petmate, and Marni Edelhart, Director of Marketing at MikMak.

When an iconic Australian brand with 125 years of history realised it needed to evolve digitally, Bega’s leadership knew transformation couldn’t wait. Darryn Wallace, Executive GM of Retail Sales, and Carla Salsone, Head of Retail Marketing and eCommerce, join the podcast to share their journey so far and the lessons along the way. From adapting their approach to retailer engagement, to embedding digital shelf fundamentals and building cross-functional ways of working, they walk us through practical steps for driving meaningful change in a large, heritage brand.

Today, PDP imagery packs more of a punch in search and conversion than ever before, as the carousel becomes a full-funnel storyteller for both humans and agents. Dave Feinleib, Founder & CEO at It’sRapid, brought a set of New Year’s resolutions for your image strategy to power up their top line revenue impact.

The holiday shopping season is always the perfect petri dish for how consumer behavior is shifting, and the data from their journeys should be listened to. Daniel Reid, Principal Insights Analyst at Similarweb, joins the podcast armed with that hot off the holidays data that highlights the extended consumer shopping journey, and how earning confidence and trust early and often can get you in that shopping cart early, and make your promotions more impactful when your meaningful shopping seasons arrive.

The ecommerce industry over the last decade has relied upon the kindness of strangers, to paraphrase Tennessee Williams. People who, on the path of their career, share their discoveries, painful lessons, and future musings with the rest of their peers. One such person is our guest Todd Hassenfelt, Sr. Director, Global Digital Commerce Strategy & Execution at Colgate-Palmolive, who brings both his wealth of knowledge and optimistic perspective to this conversation about focusing, deprioritizing, and driving change management in what will no doubt be another truly transformative year in commerce.