Cornell University’s Dan Hooker - Omnicommerce Leadership

Dan Hooker 0:00

Hi, I'm Dan Hooker, faculty at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, and you're listening to the CPG Guys Podcast.

PVSB 0:10

Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast, set at the intersection of commerce and tech. Your hosts, Sri Rajagopalan and Peter V. S. Bond, explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in a digitally driven world. And now, here are the CPG Guys.

Sri 0:29

Hello and welcome to this special episode of the CPG Guys Podcast. I'm, of course, Sri, your West Coast co-host and also co-founder of ThinkBlue Consulting, your trusted partner in your Omnichannel journey, where you can get in touch with me at Sri@thinkblueconsulting.co. Please do listen to my younger daughter, Lara Raj of the band Katseye, who have announced a full tour in the fall that's going all the way to Western Europe and of course across the United States. And my older daughter, Rhea Raj's music, is now a Mac Cosmetics Girls. You all found out about that, and she has announced on our socials that she will be a face of the Toyota Electric Vehicle later this fall. So you can check that out as well. And who am I joined by today? Mr. Bond himself. And of course, Mr. Bond, when he's not doing the CPG Guys, is Moonlighting as the head of industry and client engagement at Flywheel, the Commerce Acceleration Division of Omnicom, and he, of course, is the co-founder of the CPG Guys. We just got back from Ithaca. We just got back from Cooperstown. Tell us all about it, Peter.

PVSB 1:31

Well, the first thing I want to tell you before I get to that, Sri, is late last week I was having a dream, and then the devil came to me in my dream, and he said to me, if you're willing to let the Red Sox sweep the Dodgers, I'll let you sign Skubal. And now the phenomenal Detroit Tigers pitcher is a Tiger No More. He is part of the Dodgers rotation. The spoils keep getting better, Sri.

Sri 1:57

But he actually called me to tell me, you know, we got swept by the Dodgers, and he said, like you care, you just got Daddy School. He said, that's why I called you.

PVSB 2:05

That's all I cared about. But Sri, first of all, we'll talk about Cooperstown. To watch your face in Cooperstown, walking through the hall, going to the memorabilia stores, the museum store in particular, I could just see the inner kid in you, just exude that kind of unbridled happiness. So right there alone, it was worth the price of admission. But to follow that up with such a phenomenal five days in Ithaca with a just a crackerjack group of professionals and our friends, one of whom we're going to interview today from Cornell, who put this whole program together, Sharia could not be happier with the 2026 Omnicommerce Leadership Program. It was a huge success by all measures.

Sri 2:56

Well, I can't give away the NPS of how the program scored. What I can give away is a visit to Cooperstown was the NPS of 100 for me. That's my NPS for that visit. So, Peter, it was a pleasure going to both places with you. And what we're going to do on this program before I get started is I want to thank all of you that listen to us, all our sponsors. Without you, there is no podcast. So thank you. Make sure you're subscribing to our podcast on your preferred listening platforms where you can get our latest episodes and even go back and consume some of the 610 plus episodes we've already published. And now it's time for a guest. It's Professor Dan Hooker, drum rolls, please, Mr. Bond, faculty at the Johnson School of Management at Cornell University. The CPG Guys recently partnered with him on an executive education program at Ithaca. Our focus after last year's program was Omnicommerce Plus Media, and we introduced the role of AI in this space. We also discussed the value of joint value creation. So join us in welcoming to the CPG Guys live from Ithaca, Professor Dan Hooker himself. Dan, how are you doing, man? Thanks for joining us.

Dan Hooker 4:01

Hey Guys, I'm doing great. Hey Peter. Hey Sri. It's doing great. How are you?

Sri 4:06

We're doing awesome. We just came back from Ithaca, so we're doing awesome. It's an honor to have you. And I must say it's an honor that you chose to partner with the CPG Guys with us. You know, Peter and I being able to partner with an Ivy League university, it's special, and we hold that deeply, deeply in our hearts. Before we dive into the hard hitting strategy.

PVSB 4:28

This is the Ivy League.

Sri 4:30

There are others, but this is the at some point, Peter, we're going to have to come back and talk about all the first Cornell has done. So before we dive into the hard-hitting strategy here and get into the depths of what this program covered, I want to remind our audience, please check the digital liner notes of this episode. You're going to find links to Dan's LinkedIn profile, the actual program page itself, and while you're on Spotify, Apple, whatever listening platform, Peter loves the number five, so why don't you smack that button that says the five-star rating for the CPG Guys? Look, I'm not even asking you to leave a comment, just the review. Number five. So, Dan, welcome. I'm going to jump right into the conversation. Having over 70 senior retail CPG tech executives converge on Ithaca to immerse themselves in omnicommerce re-engineering was needless to say monumental. From your seat at Cornell, what was the underlying industry fiction or capability deficit that bought these leaders together and how did combining academic frameworks with street travel execution resonate with this special cohort that showed up?

Dan Hooker 5:32

Well, thanks, Guys, for having me today. And wow, what an amazing program we had last week. What a wonderful group of leaders in retail consumer packaged goods and all the service providers that were there. I would say there's tension from the moment we arrived having all the different parts of the business in the room in one room at the same time. A third of the participants were retailers. A second third were from consumer packaged goods and brands. And that final third came from the service providers and the tech companies that are the engine behind the business. They're all in the same room, no media, just raw, we like to say unvarnished conversations. So there was friction from the start. And as we know, there's friction in the industry right now. You know, the consumer has the power, they have information at their fingertips. She's shopping differently, uh, where she shops, how she shops, when she shops. Um, and of course, and a big feature of this program was the impact of AI. I mean, AI, everything, AI, AI, AI. Man, we hit it pretty hard during the program. And this program included both faculty and practitioners. So we really dove into the nuts and bolts of how the business operates by sharing, um, sharing experiences from both sides of the equation or all three partners. Um, so that was really a rich experience for everyone. People were able to ask questions, have discussion. Um, in fact, it wasn't even really presentation, it was more a discussion, uh, a five-day discussion on how to remove the friction from the industry. So um, together it was just phenomenal. You know, the participants got to ask the questions live in class, and then of course, the conversations that happened after class and the breaks at dinner and during all the networking events were amazing. And um, you know, I would love to share specific examples of some of the great takeaways from the program. But thanks Guys for partnering. It was such a great program.

PVSB 7:30

Dan, welcome to the podcast again. It's good to have you back. You're well on your way to uh earning the five-timers CPG guy the varsity jacket, which is so deeply coveted by people who come on this podcast. I have to agree with you, Dan. I think about the powerhouse of partners that we were able to bring to represent in that room. Infrastructure platforms like Kevel and Iterate.ai, performance retail media tech like Pacvue and Fetch, delivery and merchant giants, including Walmart Connect, Instacart, DoorDash, and shipped. From your perspective, how did having these distinct capability leaders present in the classroom really help this audience of executives bridge the gap between academic theory and real-world tech stack execution?

Dan Hooker 8:24

You know, here at Cornell, I'm consider myself a practitioner and not just a pure academic. And, you know, when I teach my classes, I like to think of the real-world application, especially for our students going out into the real world. So when Walmart Connect, as you said, Instacart Ship DoorDash, and the infrastructure players like Kevel and Pacvue are all in the same room, the abstract disappears and we start focusing on reality. Um, we quit debating, you know, theory and talking about practice, looking or diving into the actual plumbing or the infrastructure of the industry. That was a great part of the program. Let me just give you a couple examples of how that came to life. You know, Walmart Connect and Clorox got up on stage and they talked about a way that they partnered together to create or reduce the friction for their mutual shopper and deliver great benefits for both their companies and their brands, as well as a consumer. The questions changed from the theory around what's possible to how did you actually do that and why do you do that? And our participants in the program got to really engage and interact. Another example, Joe McCorkle from Kevin, Austin Leonard at Dollar General, they showed us how DG, retail media, is leveraging Kevin's tech stack to create the future of media in the dollar channel. And like I said earlier before, the follow-up discussions that happened, you know, outside of the classroom in the network sessions was priceless. So just a great um combination of faculty presenting the theory or the academic view of what's happening, and then practitioners actually showing it how it comes to life. And we able to just really learn from each other, roll our sleeves up, dive in, and have those uh important conversations. No media in the room. I mean, I know you Guys were in the room, but we were able to just have the real honest conversations. And there was such a great level of trust that that this group had in the very early hours of the program that it just took down those barriers, those walls, and allowed us to have that honest dialogue that's so rich.

Sri 10:19

So, Dan, wait a minute. Are you saying we're promoted to media? We're not B2B influencers anymore.

Dan Hooker 10:25

Aren't you an AI company now, Guys?

Sri 10:28

There we go. Yeah, you know, we are working on replacing one of our hosts with an AI bot. We won't say who. But Dan through the week we kind of tackled everything from full funnel retail media, joint value creation dynamics to prompt-based agentic AI commerce. When you look back at the week's lectures, breakout sessions, debates, what was an aha moment you're taking away or a mindset shift you saw wash over the room?

Dan Hooker 10:55

Yeah, I have two for you, and it's pretty easy. The two biggest aha moments for me was, and let me just describe the program a little bit. During the program, we divided each of the participants up into teams, and the teams were given a challenge to help deliver a retail media and shopping or digital marketing strategy to help meet the shopper journey from the lens of a retailer, a consumer packaged goods, or some combination thereof. And they used Iterate's technology platform. We created agents and the teams deployed agents to deliver on that objective. So the big aha moment from that right away was that if you and I'm talking you, like someone working in the industry, is not actually utilizing AI, you're gonna get left behind. Now, that doesn't mean just let the agents run amok. You have to put some tight guardrails around them. We know this, the idea of tokenization and the cost has to be managed, but that was a big aha moment. So if if you're not using AI today to help you feed your business up, then you're gonna get left behind. And secondly, and equally important, was a relation that like I just talked a little bit about was that the agents need directions from real humans, can't just let them loose. The humans need to be involved, otherwise they will still hallucinate. I know they're gonna get better, but that agents are here to you to use and to be part of our business, but we have to stay involved, and the humans uh have to be part of the equation, a big part. So it's a combination of both. That was my big kind of takeaway aha moment from applying the uh practices that we had in the program.

Sri 12:33

Well, so much for the AI podcast shows, Peter.

PVSB 12:39

Yeah, Dan, uh before I ask my question, I'll I want to comment on something you said at the beginning of your response, which was the community that it fostered and the level of trust. You know, we established a WhatsApp group and a LinkedIn group as well coming out of this, and the chatter has been consistent since we left Ithaca. And I'm also not going to rat someone else, but some uh rat someone out. But there was someone in the group who actually so trusted me that uh this person said, I need you to help me find a spouse. Now I'm not gonna rat them out. I don't know if I'm exactly the target dating service. But anyhow, we're gonna keep that quiet. I think it's very funny. But in all seriousness, Dan, one of the main themes we always emphasize, uh certainly on the CPT Guys podcast, is breaking down internal corporate fiefdoms, which is what we tried to do here, right? Bring brand marketers, sales leads, digital self manager, and supply chain teams onto the same page. How did the curriculum really help these executives rethink joint business planning and cross-functional alignment so they can go back to their organizations and actually drive unified category growth? Because that is where the rubber will meet the road, right? Right.

Dan Hooker 13:59

Yeah. Um, that's a great question. And, you know, if you think about this, isn't something that we shied away from. And if you were to ask leaders in the industry today about JBP or JVC, they all do them. Um, but at the end of the day, it usually just becomes an exercise in creating a lot of work that you have a meeting and then the work just gets parked on the side of the desk or filed away somewhere on your computer. And not much happens in most or many cases. And part of the program was to change that thinking and think about joint value creation and working together, breaking down those silos instead of two sales team negotiating a number, well, marketing, merchandising operations, supply chain, supply chain find out later or have their own version of JVP. This curriculum forced the leaders to think about, and I and I hate to use this word, the fiefdom, and that changing your organization around a strategy of creating value for both your partners. Full funnel commerce is the shift that's gonna make most organizations successful. And we encourage participants to stop thinking about optimizing their own function and start thinking about the entire shopper journey from end to end. Of course, the AI tools and agents are a tool or a ways to help get there faster and more efficiently. But this program forced those conversations to happen. We provide tools to actually make it productive through the AI tool suite that we we developed in the program. Um and then the outcome would be, you know, a plan that we all are comfortable with that can lead to growth for both organizations. So yeah, it was really good. And and back to your point, Peter, like you know, evident in the WhatsApp group or the LinkedIn group. I mean, this group just connected. I mean, they were sharing, they're still sharing stuff from what they experienced in the program. In fact, you know, one of the the retailers had just sent a picture of his family on the beach because he wanted to tease us that uh we're all at work and you know he was putting his feet in the sand and and watching the waves come in. And so what a wonderful experience.

Sri 16:07

Thank you so much, Dan. So now let's close this out for our global practitioner audience. Let's send them home with a key takeaway. And I'm gonna ask you, Dan, if you had to issue a single Monday morning reality check as everyone goes back to work to their leadership, what is the number one capability or strategic pivot? They have no choice but to execute this quarter to ensure they aren't left behind as commerce, media, and AI.

Dan Hooker 16:32

Just continue to mushroom and accelerate every hour. Yeah, everything's happening really fast. I would say put the customer back at the center of every decision. We've heard this before, we say it all the time, but put the customer back into the center of all your decisions, not the PL, not the org chart, but her, the shopper. And that's the filter for everything. If you put that customer in the center, you know, everything else will come together. Um, and secondly, experiment with AI aggressively, test and learn, but do it with the right guardrails in place. So, yes, you're moving fast, but you're not actually blowing things up. And here's the one thing that most leaders might miss, or or if they haven't, they need to think about this too is giving your teams or your people genuine permission to take risks, fail, learn, and adapt. So if if if people are afraid to experiment, you don't really just have an AI strategy. You have, you know, you have a slide about one, and you're just talking about it, not actually executing something that will really help accelerate your business and make you much faster and more efficient. So that would be my uh key takeaway for Monday morning that uh not only the participants got out of the program, but a way to think about the future of retail.

Sri 17:43

Dan, thank you so much for joining us on the CPG Guys to recap our recently concluded executive education program at Cornell University. It's been a pleasure talking to you.

Dan Hooker 17:52

Always a pleasure. I look forward to next year.

Sri 17:55

Uh now I will turn it over to Peter to introduce and discuss all of our collaborative partners on the program and get each of their viewpoints on what they experience.

PVSB 18:08

Hi, this is PVSB with the CPG Guys. I am live in Ithaca, New York at Cornell University today with Luke Berlestry from Pacvue. We are at the Omnicommerce Media and AI executive education program that Sri and I are so proud to be co-producing with Cornell Exec Ed. So, Luke, what prompted Pacvue to be a collaborator and partner on this particular program?

Luke Balestri 18:31

On the onset, easy yes. When you look at the opportunity to get everyone in the ecosystem in one room talking about the future of not only our industry, but really the transformation that's occurring in commerce today, it was an easy yes for us. And we feel really passionate that this is the time to be bold. And so when you get this opportunity to sit with retailers, brands, support partners, these are the these are the rooms that create that full of view of action for the future.

PVSB 19:02

Luke, coming into today's event, were there any things you were hoping to bring issues you're hoping to address, or were there any expectations you had about what you would get out of this program?

Luke Balestri 19:14

Yeah, I think um, you know, like uh selfishly, uh AI has been a big part of both my my life and my team's life, but also the the Pac View organization. Um, and getting structure around how we think about that, how we deploy that, and how we really make that a um, you know, a huge part of our our future was always an opportunity. And so there's been tremendous um speakers, but also just uh the work we're doing together as teams around how do you structure it so that it doesn't get out of control and you really start to gain the value. And so that was that was a big thing for me. Another one is, you know, just the opportunity to understand where everyone sits at kind of the current moment in our space has been really fulfilling to understand that you know, everyone does see we're kind of at a a special moment. And 30 years ago, you would have never had a room like this sitting together. And the silos that have been created because of that past life are now ready to be broken down. And collectively, as a uh, you know, an ecosystem, we can really drive forward together.

PVSB 20:22

So now that you've been here, we're on day four. Are there things that are you've found to be particularly valuable that really surprised you as you kind of alluded to the silos are being broken down? But what are you getting the most value out of? Is it is it what's happening in the room? Is this what's happening during the event? What what what's really what's really driving your excitement about this program?

Luke Balestri 20:43

Well, always love going back to school after uh 20, 20 some years. Um, and so it's it's been neat to kind of.

PVSB 20:49

But you don't have to rush a football here.

Luke Balestri 20:50

Yeah, I don't have to do any football stuff, which is obvious inside joke that is not going to leave the room here at uh Cordell. Um I think it's a bit of both, right? Like uh just you know, 10 minutes ago I had a side conversation with somebody that if we were at a conference, it would have been a just a quick high and buy. And you you're starting to really understand not people just for their titles or their roles at organizations, but really as humans. And I think when we break down those, even those human silos, um, those barriers, we can we can start to to move forward together. So I think that's critical. Now, the content has just been, I think from start to finish, really engaging, really interesting. The conversations that have popped up out of it continue to keep not only me interested, but the room interested in it. And now, you know, we can collectively take all of these learnings and go back into our uh specific organizations and really start to implement change. Um, and I think doing it as one kind of voice is great. Now, the other is networking um outside of the classroom is you cannot put a value on that. And And I talked a little bit about the human side, but also just how can we help each other? Like we are not in competition against each other. Our job is all to serve a better consumer. And when you start to have conversations that are kind of in fate or in fate of what the consumer is is really undergoing, it completely changes the conversation. And so competition that existed 30 years ago about one brand doesn't want to sit in a room with another brand or a retailer, another retailer, those are gone. And it's really about how do we create a better environment for all of us to exist.

PVSB 22:33

So if you were talking to someone at a retailer, is it only for someone in the retail media or e-commerce department, or should this be something that other departments at the retailer should avail themselves of?

Luke Balestri 22:45

E-commerce is not a channel, it's the evolution of commerce. And omnicommerce is the way the world's going to work. It's the way it is working now. And so every part of the organization, it's up to them to go create that change. And I think the more people that get educated about the moment, the better it's going to be overall. And so I look at conversation that I had just 10 years ago with somebody around what are you focused on? And their focus was very pure to the point. They were worried about replenishment of their in-store business. You can no longer kind of live in that world.

PVSB 23:19

Everybody in the organization is impacted by what's going on digitally. So, Luke, looking into the future, do you think this is something that you and Pacvue will want to participate in future years?

Luke Balestri 23:30

I was already talking to Dan about potentially coming out and uh speaking at a Cornell class, but I think anyone that has the opportunity to either support this as a sponsor like PacView or as an individual, you would be making a huge mistake not to be a part of this in the future.

PVSB 23:45

Luke, thanks for taking time out of your day to talk with us. Absolutely. Hi, this is PVSB, co-founder of the CPG Guys. I am live in Ithaca, New York, at Cornell University today with Kristy La Montagna from SHIPT. We are at the Omnicommerce Media and AI Executive Education program that Sri and I are so proud to be co-producing with Cornell Executive Education. So, Christy, what prompted SHIPT to be a collaborator and a partner of this program?

Kristy LaMontagna 24:16

I have a special connection because alongside Peter, I was a student in year one and I really saw the value immediately. And at SHIPT, we're all about curated experiences and bringing great things to life. So the value is so immediate. My mission has been figuring out paths to bring not just my peers, but partners along as well as this program continues to evolve.

PVSB 24:36

So, what have you observed and what have you learned from this program so far now that we're in day four?

Kristy LaMontagna 24:43

How much it's evolved and stayed current. So what we talked about in year one is much different than what we're talking about today. It consistently pivots to address what's happening in our industry. And I think this program does such a great job of bringing both retailers and CPGs and businesses that help support that together in a way that we're not just creating relationships, but we're helping really set the foundation for what's happening in our industry and how we continue to pivot and grow.

PVSB 25:11

So as we think to 2027, should we expect to see you and SHIPT involved in this program?

Kristy LaMontagna 25:17

Absolutely. And likely more partners, both from a retail front and a brand perspective, too. So super excited to continue to help grow this program.

PVSB 25:24

Yeah, I think what's really interesting is not only are you here, but you encouraged and brought along some of your partners to participate. Why was that an important component of this for SHIPT?

Kristy LaMontagna 25:34

I think allowing and creating opportunities to help retailers and brands be a part of that vision in different. Like this year, we've brought together Hy-Vee, a great longtime partner in the Midwest, alongside Wakefern in the Northeast, and very different partners in terms of where they're at. But uh it's it's great to have brands here as well. So I'm excited to incorporate some of our brand partners in the past uh in the next iteration as well.

PVSB 26:00

As you think about both the retailer and brands, are there archetypes within those organizations, different departments that you would think would benefit well from attending this program beyond just the obvious e-commerce or retail media?

Kristy LaMontagna 26:14

I think where I'm really leaning in on now is is retail media. Last year we sponsored Heather from Giant Eagle and her at similar timing, her role evolved, not just from an e-com perspective, but uh from a retail media network as well. So I think continuing to kind of marry similar titles or existing roles, both in e-commerce as well as uh retail media sets the tone for what future positions or roles could look like as well, and things that we probably aren't even forecasting yet.

PVSB 26:43

All right. Kristy, thanks so much for participating and thank you for speaking with us today.

Kristy LaMontagna 26:47

Of course. Thanks for having me.

Sri 26:52

Hello, Sri with the CPG Guys, and I'm here at Cornell University with none other than Mr. Joe McCorkle himself from Kevel, one of the collaborating partners of this amazing program here. That the CPG Guys, along with Cornell Universities and Kevel, we have designed a unique program which is all about AI, omnicommerce, and retail media. So, Joe, thank you for joining me on the CPG Guys. How you doing, man? Doing great. Thanks for having me, Sri. Great to be here with you Guys. You bet, man. So, you know, as you came here to Cornell University, what prompted you to want to be a collaborator partner, not just an attendee?

Joe McCorkle 27:27

Yeah, it was a great program. I heard about it last year to begin with. And first of all, it started with the CPG Guys, you know, your network, your credibility. Also Cornell as a trusted academic anchor. Those Guys, the CPG Guys, they're trusted. We take an introduction anytime. We're we're very much hands-on building at Kevel. We're committed to shaping the future of retail media, and in our CEO James's uh 2026 manifesto, this is a cornerstone of that. So we're we're all on board to build it together. And you Guys in the AI business too, won't you tell us a little bit about what that is? Sure. I've I've been in machine learning for like 17 years, so that's one of the very first pieces of this AI puzzle. But Kevel really we're we're looking at the suggestions. AI, everybody talks a good game about AI, but not everybody can actually use AI for reporting or decisioning. We do both at Kevel. So very much looking forward to also our agentic AI. And because we have a platform that's been around and tried and tested, we we built this before anybody even thought about it at Kevel. And it actually helps you become very visible to all those agentic AI bots that are out there shopping on someone else's behalf. You're either seen or you're not seen. And our our infrastructure allows your products to be seen uh and be part of that ecosystem.

Sri 28:47

And now that you've been here, part of this program, you know, you've been here four days, what are you seeing so far? Are you enjoying it?

Joe McCorkle 28:52

What are you learning? Any big aha's? Yeah, for me it's been a lot of aha's. I mean, we've had a good mix of academic professors weighing in on what they're seeing, uh, especially with the genetic AI and and what's in the market. We got a great mix, a split mix of uh 28 retailers, 28 brands, and 10 tech providers. I think that's quite a great representation. And for me, I also want to learn from brands. I sell to retailers and I sell to marketplaces, but brands play a big part. And I even have a committee that I'm building with the brands to really get their input on how they see retail media and commerce media evolving and what they need.

Sri 29:31

You know, the committee that you refer to, maybe the CPG guy should have a role in it just saying. I don't know. You may be invited shortly. One last thing, Joe. So now that you've had a chance to be here at Cornell, you've been a collaboration partner, sounds like you've been able to lev leverage the moment, you know, learn yourself. If I asked you to come back in 2027, which by the way, we are it's already in the works, would you?

Joe McCorkle 29:54

Absolutely. That's a must for us. Um, I've already asked to put it in our budget and make sure that I'm available. So we will all be available and looking forward to more members of our team coming also, so you can learn from them and they can learn from the broader community as well.

Sri 30:08

Yeah. More than the budget, where my head is, is we got to bring in that AI element from you Guys as a platform for retail media. I think there's so much more in the industry that discussion needs to happen. So, Joe, I want to thank you for joining me here at Cornell University. It's been a pleasure, man, working with Kevin, and we look forward to many more partnerships with you. Thanks, Sri. Great to be here.

Joe McCorkle 30:28

Thanks again.

Sri 30:32

Hi, Sri with the CPG Guys, and I'm here with Jag Wadhwani from Fetch Rewards. And we're here live at the Cornell Omnicommerce Plus Media Plus AI executive education program at Ithaca. Jag, I got a question for you, man. What prompted you all to want to be collaborators on this program?

Jag Wadhwani 30:51

Sri, first of all, thanks for having me. Uh what we learned after doing a pilot with you last year and sending a few of our folks is that this is really the cheat code. This is the way that we can learn about things uh from the smartest brains in the industry and bring the learnings back into our organization.

Sri 31:13

What about learnings in the three, four days you've been here through the course of this exec ed program? Any big aha's, any watch outs, any big things you're taking away?

Jag Wadhwani 31:23

Well, in addition to our favorite topic, AI, and you all have done an amazing job at really helping us understand how to harness the power of agents, which I believe is the uh evolution, you know, beyond prompting. The most valuable has been the nuggets, the nuggets of information that come out of these conversations, hearing from the brand side, the manufacturer side, and the retailer side on how they're thinking about things. And these things just don't get published. So it's really a privilege to be in the room with you.

Sri 31:54

And generally, Jag, how are you keeping up with AI on your own? You know, what are you where are your learning platforms? Are you leading a bunch of articles? Have you started building agents, using agents, things of that nature?

Jag Wadhwani 32:06

Absolutely. Uh we have such a privilege at Fetch uh to be founder-led and to be encouraged to um experiment with AI, innovate, and really build things that are going to keep us ahead of the industry.

Sri 32:19

As you think about rewards and the role of AI, do you think there'll be dramatic change there? Are you seeing anything already? Because you know, scanning a receipt with AI may be infinitely easier than without AI. And this is just me being naive. I don't know any better.

Jag Wadhwani 32:34

Absolutely. The biggest thing that we have seen today is actually more about uh harnessing the data that we have and the speed to market that we can use our data to inform our partners. What used to take us several days and working with our analytics team is actually uh immediate now through just using our own LLMs.

Sri 32:54

And your own observation, working with a variety of brands like you do. Have you seen that there are areas where AI is getting more prevalent in media, omnicommerce, et cetera, or is it still early days?

Jag Wadhwani 33:07

I believe it's still early days. What we're hearing is that most of our partners today are really utilizing it for internal data and analysis, but uh what's up and coming is actually less on the business side and more on the creative side and how dynamic, creative, and how AI-generated creative is going to help CPGs move a lot faster. I got one last one for you based on your experience here. Would you come back next year? 100%. You Guys put on a great, great program. We're really excited to bring more of our people and our partners next year. Thanks, Jags, for joining me on the CPG Guys.

Sri 33:42

Thank you. Thank you so much for being a collaborator with Cornell University and the CPG Guys on this omnicommerce plus media executive education program. I have a couple of questions for you, Katie.

Katie Daleo 34:01

Awesome. Thanks for having us. We're really happy to be part of this.

Sri 34:04

There's no way we'd have missed having DoorDash here. The first question I have for you is when I reached out, what prompted you to say yes, you wanted to be part of this? Like what influenced you to be part of this program, other than my charm, of course?

Katie Daleo 34:17

That is that is a couple things. I think one, in a world where there are so many conferences and industry events, I think this program is really unique in its format. It's really about discussion, it's about learning, it's about hands-on experience. The networking is fantastic in terms of building a community. Um, I love that it's not just across CPG partners, but it's also with retailers, and it's recognizing that those two things are getting closer and closer.

Sri 34:45

So you mentioned the community. What if we found a way to sustain this conversation in the share group? Would it be attractive? 100%. For the industry in general.

Katie Daleo 34:53

Absolutely. Because I think again, there are a lot of events that we all attend to. And you know, CPG is a small world. I mean, it's fun seeing people I literally worked with 10 years ago, uh, the partners we work with today. But I think a lot of them tend to be going to be at X conference in the next month, but having something where it's ongoing dialogue.

Sri 35:11

Just the continuity that goes away at the conference, it's like one and done. And then next year, the same thing all over again. Right. All right. The next one I have for you is, you know, you've been attending various parts of this program. You were also a presenter. So tell us what you what you saw. What was exciting, what sort of conversations were meaningful, what wasn't, things of that nature.

Katie Daleo 35:30

Yeah, my favorite session was the one that you helped lead, actually, on JVP to JDC, really kind of underscoring the pivot from a transaction or a deal and more to a true partnership and a collaboration, which is given how fast retail media and omni-channel commerce is moving and how much learning there is to be shared across retailer and CPG. I think really reframing the relationship in that regard is meaningful.

Sri 35:57

Of course, Parag and I through Think Blue Consulting, which is also a partner here with Cornell University, were trying to bring the concept to market of JBP so yesterday, because it's only transactional financials. JVC is you put the consumer at the center, which kind of takes me to Jesus Delgado's presentation, The Ex-Merchant. He started his whole conversation by saying it's got to be customer, which is in your and my is consumer. So what do you think about that? Because that's what JVC is anchored on. Both parties, retail and CPG, sit together at the table to see how they can jointly grow trips and baskets by focusing on the customer.

Katie Daleo 36:32

Yeah, 100%. I actually grew up in CPG. So I started my career um at Unilever. Um, and I think sort of the thing I took away from that is I'm very consumer-centric. It sort of drives a lot of the decisions you know we make at DoorDash, and no one knows the consumer better than a CPG. And so in a world where we are all fighting for the consumer's attention, there's a real opportunity for platforms like us to learn from the brands who know it best. And I love the reframing of it, that we're focused on the same person or thing, um, and that there's mutual sharing to be had.

Sri 37:05

Let me close this out by asking you a simple question on AI. AI as a word is in every single conference you and I attend in the industry. It's in conversations by CPG, by retailers. What's Yaldo's big perspective on AI?

Katie Daleo 37:22

It's here. I think figuring out how both at the individual, the brand, the platform level, figuring out how to use it in a way that has to be kind of embedded in your day-to-day is still a challenge to be done. Um and I think we as platforms, oh that sort of education and the how-to and some of the learnings we're starting to see from like consumer behavior back out to partners so that they can learn um and figure out how to adapt their ways of working.

Sri 37:53

That was the whole reason, Kitty, we decided to actually have a project here for everybody attending this program on AI and building an AI agent for JVP to JVC. So I hope you enjoyed that part of it as well.

Katie Daleo 38:04

I love it. I think the hands-on element is really unique to this program and very another kind of plus for this structure is you're able to take the content and it's very tailored to in the moment, and nothing is more in the moment than AI.

Sri 38:17

Awesome. Katie, I want to thank you for making time to record this segment with me. I want to thank you for being a partner and collaborator with Cornell University and some of the CPG Guys. We hope to have you back next year.

Katie Daleo 38:28

Yeah, it was a pleasure. I look forward to it.

Sri 38:29

Thank you. Ready to go for it. Sri with the CPG Guys, and I'm sitting here live at Cornell University's campus at Ithaca, New York. And joining me today is Parag Shah from thinkblue labs.ai. And we have Brian Sathianathan from iterate.ai. How are you about doing on campus here live?

Brian Sathianathan 38:55

Uh doing great. It's a fantastic event, and thanks for having us here, Sri.

Parag Shah 38:59

Parag? Great to be on Ivy League campus always, right? And that's how I feel, man. Yep. And be an instructor at Cornell. I wouldn't have thought about the wildest dreams. Exactly. You are and me.

Brian Sathianathan 39:12

Being a student is an amazing experience. Exactly.

Parag Shah 39:14

Exact exactly. I've gotten more pings from my family in India that I'm a teacher at Cornell than than student.

Sri 39:21

The happiest one in the house is not my kids or my wife, it's my mom. I can imagine. So, Brian, let's kick this off by asking you the first question over here. You know, when we called and said there was an opportunity to come out to Cornell, be part of this program, what prompted you to say yes, I want to be a collaboration partner, create some content, speak and attend?

Brian Sathianathan 39:40

There are a number of reasons. First, we were very excited that we got that invite to collaborate together at with Cornell. Um we uh major part of our business is in retail. So we have lots of retail customers, and the whole opportunity to talk to retail and CPG leaders was very exciting for us because I think the we are going through a rapid transformation. I mean, it started with digital and now AI is like accelerating it at a numerous pace. Uh and we've learned a lot over the years, and this would be a great opportunity to have that share our thoughts, have learnings, and also learn from these leaders as well, and create a collaborative environment. And and what what's what's better than any place? It's Cornell, right? Because it's a premier institution. Ivy League. Ivy League, right? So uh so we're very excited about it. And uh I think it fit really naturally well with the type of things that we are already doing.

Sri 40:31

Yeah. Awesome. Paragon start the next one with you. Now that you had a chance to be both a teacher here as well as an attendee. What were some high-level observations you saw in this program that excited you?

Parag Shah 40:42

Yeah, Sri, as you know, I've been in the industry for 25 years and fortunate that I have seen two transformations, right, in in a little over one generation, right? Like digital transformation, and now we're in the middle of an AI transformation, right? Which is just an exciting moment to be. And the timing of this program couldn't have been better because we are at an intersection of a major, major technology shift, but more importantly, shopper behavior shift, right? And as we are looking at it. So the three biggest things I walked away are three C's, right? Content. The content was absolutely fascinating, the speakers were top-notch. The knowledge that was shared around with with the group was just absolutely amazing. And I'm walking away with so much more intelligence as well as capability on what the future is. And I know talking to fellow attendees, they have the similar feeling. The second thing was uh community, right? Seeing retailers, CPG companies, brands, uh service providers, technologists, academics, they all coming together to really focus on the common cause to help the shopper live better was an absolutely amazing thing. And the third one was collaboration, right? Seeing this community come together, collaborating to solve the common problems across the board, right? That was just absolutely fascinating. And the key highlight was the agentic project that we worked on where students were actually working with agents and developing real-time solutions for shopper challenges. Absolutely magnificent to see that. And I can't thank iterate to really give the platform and make it available to us.

Sri 42:18

Well, Senity, Brian, I'd love to hear your thoughts as well. What were the aha moments over here for you? Any big takeaways that excite you?

Brian Sathianathan 42:25

Uh, number of them. First thing, the collaboration and the engagement was amazing. There was every session had at least three to five follow-up questions and discussions around it. Very deep engagement, and also they are applying that to their industry. And that application, I think, was really interesting. And during lunch I spoke to a number of people, and one of the things that kind of came out is that they all have some kind of agentic experiences in the past in their organization, but then they never got to have a first hand experience because of you know IT security and various things. So they got to use an agentic platform and apply it for their own business. And it was really interesting to see. In fact, um a couple of the folks were actually coming and talking to one of our colleagues who's running that that test. I'm still working on it, but I got a question on this. So it was really good to see that engagement and the continuity. Even after the session was over, people are still continuing to engage deeply on it. Yeah.

Sri 43:17

No doubt about it. So let me close this out, Brian, by asking you would you come back again next year? Was it worth the time?

Brian Sathianathan 43:23

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Sri 43:24

All right, I look forward to seeing you again next year. Parag Brian, I want to thank you both for joining me on the CPG Guys.

Parag Shah 43:30

Actually, Sri, it's great to have iterate on this platform, right? Like students are going to benefit from it so much.

Sri 43:35

That is awesome.

Parag Shah 43:36

Thank you again for joining me. Thank you.

PVSB 43:45

Hi, this is PVSB. I am with the CPG Guys. I'm live here in Ithaca, New York at Cornell University. Today I'm with my dear friend Cristina Marinucci, co host and co founder of the SheCommerce Podcast. We are at the Omnicommerce Media and AI Executive Education Program. Cristina, welcome.

Cristina Marinucci 44:05

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

PVSB 44:06

Absolutely. So what prompted you to actually show up in Ithaca, New York in the middle of summer to appear at this program?

Cristina Marinucci 44:14

Well, first you asked. So I obliged. But also, Cornell holds a special place in my heart. One, it's Cornell. Two, I met my dear friend and podcast co-host, Jacqui, here two years ago, and I participated in the program as well. And that was such an enlightening week that we spent here and met so many great people in my network. Uh, so definitely wanted to come back and share back some of the learnings that we've had over the podcast journey.

PVSB 44:42

So in your session this morning, you spoke with two industry leaders. Can you talk to us a little bit about what that conversation entailed and ultimately how you felt it landed with the audience?

Cristina Marinucci 44:53

Yeah. Um, we talked about the invisible factors that are uh affecting women in commerce. And we talked about it from the lens of um, you know, businesses being transformed by so many things that you've spent the majority of the week talking about AI, retail media, technology, all the things. But it's also deeply personal. And there are differences between men and women in the workforce. And we really wanted to normalize some of those conversations and drive awareness and visibility to how those opportunities and issues affect us differently so that we can be better managers, we can deliver better results and drive the business together. And I think it was really enlightening. I heard a lot of great feedback after it about how much people appreciated that and how we really navigated some sensitive topics with empathy and with transparency. And the two women that we had on, Claire and Jennifer, were just wonderful in terms of what they were able to share and showing that vulnerability, but also relating some of these things that are typically more female-dominated conversations to also say how our male counterparts also experience some of these life issues or that invisible load or co-parenting, et cetera. So I think it was very inclusive and really related back to the leadership required in some of those situations to bring out the best in people.

PVSB 46:17

Yeah, I absolutely agree, Cristina. I think what made it particularly effective was you showed up on day four. They had three days to build personal relationships. And what that meant was there was a measure of empathy that had been engendered as part of that process. And so that I think the audience was incredibly receptive to what you were talking about. So here's my big question we're gonna do this again in 2027. Can we even keep you away, let alone invite you to attend?

Cristina Marinucci 46:46

I'm already here.

PVSB 46:47

That's it. She's pushing us aside.

Cristina Marinucci 46:49

I just I need more than 30 minutes for these important topics.

PVSB 46:53

Do you think we need to bring Jacqui over next time?

Cristina Marinucci 46:55

Absolutely. Yes, it's anonymous.

PVSB 46:58

Yeah. And the only the only question is whether we're gonna be doing it up here in Ithica or we're heading back to New York. So I I'm assuming that either venue. Cristina, thank you as always.

Sri 47:13

Hi, it's Sri with the CPG Guys, and I'm here today with Priyash Shahane from Instacart. Priyash was with me live at the recently concluded Cornell University Omnichannel plus Omnicommerce plus Media Program. He was one of the collaborator presenters. He was also one of the attendees and got to attend the full program. So I thought I'll ask him a few questions about how this program was. So Priash, welcome to the CPG Guys. How are you doing? Good, good, Sri. How are you? So when when I approached Instacord and Instacort connected me to you, what prompted you to want to collaborate with Cornell University, the CPG Guys on this program?

Priyash 47:51

Firstly, like wanted to thank Cornell and the CPG Guys for giving us this opportunity and partnering with us. I think a couple of reasons as to why or what piqued our like interest and my personally my interest in this program. One was just like the diversity of attendees. Uh, we had folks from retailers, from RMNs, from brand our brand partners and agencies, obviously, as well as a myriad of like infrastructure platforms, AI platforms. So just the diversity in the room and getting to hear opinions from all sides of like the table, if you will, was immensely helpful in for us to figure out how we position ourselves and like how and what we learn from from other stakeholders in the ecosystem. So I think that was one of the key reasons. Obviously, in addition to that, I think the the format with Carnell University and the program was set up in such a way that it was more of like a workshop style program rather than like your typical conference. So just being much more informal, hands-on. We also had a capstone uh-esque project during the program. So that was super interesting. And I think that was another factor that really like motivated us to participate and collaborate on this.

Sri 49:04

And Priyash, not only were you a presenter about the state of measurement in our industry from a media standpoint, retail media standpoint, you also were an attendee in the program. You said a little bit about you know what was exciting for you to collaborate. Now that you went through the whole five days, any big aha's takeaways to share?

Priyash 49:21

Yeah, I would say like a couple, honestly. Um the first is obviously the elephant in the room, AI. Um it was great actually hearing about AI, how every player in the ecosystem is thinking about and applying AI and the consumer behavioral shift with AI in a different way. And I think none of us have figured it out yet completely. However, we're all kind of learning on the fly, and it it's really exciting, an exciting spot to be in the industry to kind of see where this goes and like who where this shapes up and how AI influences consumer purchase decisions.

Sri 49:57

On that particular topic, Priyash, how are you thinking about measurement in AI? Because it could be a friend or foe.

Priyash 50:04

Right now, like I said earlier, we feel like it's a little bit early in terms of how we leverage AI. We obviously leverage AI in all of our internal processes on the operational efficiency side. I think where it plays a role specifically on in terms of like adding to measurement is still something that we're in the early stages of exploring. Kind of expanding on what I was saying earlier, like my some of my other takeaways were on the measurement topic, definitely. I think the hunger for measurement was actually topical across the room. Um, I think everyone saw how many questions and interesting discussions that we had as a follow-up to some of the measurement sessions that Instacart did as a part of the program. So there's a real appetite in the industry for coming together, and we're working with the IAB to collaborate on that and develop better standards for measurement in commerce media. And third, I think, and this is the biggest one, is that in 2026, like commerce media is just not a no longer a channel, like a specific bucket. It's actually, I would say, it's media with just better and high fidelity signals that you can apply across the board. So some of the interesting takeaways, and these were some of the consistent themes that I heard for across the board from a lot of our speakers and participants alike.

Sri 51:20

You bet Priyash. So if I asked you, would you if we did this again next year, another version of this, would you come back?

Priyash 51:26

Of course. I think uh this was a great learning session for for us, as well as sharing some of the mechanisms and methodologies that we adopted in Instacart with the group there. And I think it was a great collaborative session and definitely happy to participate next time when we do it.

Sri 51:42

Priyash, I want to say thank you for joining me on the CPG Guys. Hope to see you soon again, man. Awesome. Thanks, Sri. Let me remind our listeners you can find all our content by simply going to a web browser and typing cpgGuys.com as the URL. If you or someone you know has something to contribute to this ongoing discussion on the CPG Guys, please drop us a line at contact at cpg Guys.com. To our audience, thank you for the clicks, likes, comments, direct messages, meeting us at trade shows, coming to our events, recording episodes with us and our sponsors. We're always grateful for everything you do for us. The show doesn't exist without all of you. You work with us all year, and we are grateful to have you as our audience and partners. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Peter. Pleasure doing this episode with you. Give me your big takeaway from this executive education program at Cornell that we were partners on.

PVSB 52:33

Sri, only together can we solve the problem putting the customer at the center of our decisions. It means that everyone has to have a venue to express their concerns, their priorities, and together we solve those problems. We covered a lot of really valuable material. And it's people at the end of the day that are going to make this all work. So that's my big takeaway, Sri.

Sri 53:01

Peter, that was awesome. Thank you so much to our audience. That's all we have for you today. We look forward to you joining us on the next episode of the CPG Guys.