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BONITA SPRINGS, Fla. — The emerging leaders of the Emerson Group are bringing their digital commerce expertise to retailers.
The team was selected by founder and president Scott Emerson, and the members have honed their e-commerce skills with CPG brands. Now they want to enable retailers — like the ones they spoke to at the National Association of Chain Drug Stores Regional Chain Conference here — to fulfill their own digital potential.
From left, Lexie Centrone, Addie Masonius, Adam Vannozzi, and Marie Boudazin at the NACDS Regional Chain Conference.
“We’re one of the newer teams at the Emerson Group,” says Amazon catalog manager Marie Boudazin, 27, who graduated from Temple University’s School of Tourism and Hotel Management. “We’re bringing a lot of dynamism to the company and changing how the structure works. There is a lot of opportunity for engagement in the digital space for our legacy brands. In three short years these brands are building momentum, experiencing both sustainable and profitable growth, and they’re excited. Retailers can have the same experience.”
The team has been working primarily to boost brands’ sales on Amazon, and on Walmart and Target’s websites, notes 28-year-old sales analyst Lexie Centrone, but Scott Emerson wants to change that. “We are pushing brands’ route to market by exploring all channels, from TikTok Shop to Ali express, Shopify and DTC channels,” says Centrone, who started her own online blanket and sock businesses while in college. “Its exciting to develop broad-scale partnerships with these emerging platforms on behalf of our brand partners. We work hard to facilitate these agreements to get products in consumers’ view.
Team members credit Emerson Digital Commerce general manager Anu Bliss with easing their entry into what for most, was a new field. “We all got really lucky with our internship program,” says Boudazin, noting that Bliss built the team from a limited staff to its current roster of more than 20 in part by celebrating fresh ideas. “She’s very unconventional, always pushing us to try different avenues. She has created a safe and trusting environment for us to try out different ideas.”
Most recently, the Emerson Digital Team built out the capability to manage clients’ media spend in house, notes sales analyst Adam Vannozzi, 25, who majored in economics at Penn State. “Clients had been using outside vendors, but we established the capacity to do it ourselves so there’s a bit more connection with the people who have their hands on the keyboard and what the brands are trying to achieve.”
The new capability is part of the Emerson Digital Accelerator, which is enabling e-commerce with content, setup, search and shipping. “All of these components work together to provide an overall enhanced digital experience for our retail partners, brands and consumers,” says digital shelf analyst Addie Masonius, also 25, who majored in graphic design and played basketball at Assumption University.
Most relevant for retailers are the team’s three PIM (project image management), or digital shelf, tools: Salsify, Syndigo and NielsenIQ Brandbank. Salsify is used for Amazon, Target and Walmart; Syndigo for Ahold Delhaize, Wegmans and Publix; and NielsenIQ Brandbank for Wakefern.
Boudazin’s preferred PIM is Salsify, because she says it’s user friendly, interactive and provides the most freedom to disseminate information. “Salsify allows us to use this huge data warehouse to push out information to retailers,” she says. “So it’s been a game changer.”
The overall PIM capability this year will include a simplified content collection process powered with Salsify, as well as an improved relationship with customer care to unlock ratings and reviews, and scorecard and retail readiness audit and analysis projects for top partners.
In the meantime, the digital shelf feature offers everyday excellence with item setup and maintenance for all brands across all top retailers. It also provides enhanced content and core content, and manages copy, images and video. It includes specialized catalog support resources for Amazon, Walmart and Target, earning best-in-class retailer relationships and sales enablement.
The Digital Accelerator also provides custom homegrown generative AI to create and optimize content at scale. The low-cost offering was developed in-house with Emerson’s brand partners in mind. Leveraging existing large language models (LLMs), it evaluates top search terms and current listings, and even scans images for relevant key words, then writes suggested titles, bullets and copy.
Digital creative and content expert Montclairity partners with Emerson to develop unsurpassed handwritten copy, imaging and video capture.
For last-mile delivery, Emerson uses direct-to-consumer and Instacart capabilities.
Digital commerce should not be considered in isolation from brick-and-mortar retailing, the team members emphasize. They cite findings that 83% of shoppers did an online search before visiting a store; 21% research a product on a retailer’s website; and 25% are more likely to purchase a product when enhanced content is present. And over half of consumers have taken advantage of a “buy online pick up in-store” promotion, with 49% making additional purchases while they are picking up their order.
Assessing how far the team has come and how far it has to go, Boudazin says, “We’re in such a privileged space. If we’re able to identify a gap, we can say, ‘I want to fill that,’ and then get plugged in and see what we can do. All of Emerson’s e-commerce capabilities make that feasible.”
Adds Vannozzi, “There are so many data points that being online gives you that you just can’t get in-store. There’s a very clear need now to not only package those and drive insights behind them but also wade through the noise. The question is what’s important to you that achieves your goals — especially on the marketing side. Everyone wants to know about their return, but if you’re trying to get your voice out there and no one knows who you are, you’re going to have to sacrifice that.”
“The best thing about our jobs — and the worst — is that Amazon is always changing,” says Boudazin. “I’m never bored. Would I like an easy day? I would love one, but that doesn’t happen. With the platform always changing and new capabilities always emerging, we’re constantly learning, which is exciting.”
Vannozzi says everyone on the team is humbled by the awareness that “you’re only as informed as Amazon’s latest requirement and the latest article you’ve read on LinkedIn.”
Says Boudazin, “Anu always tells us, ‘I’m not the smartest person in the room. I read for a living.’ She encourages us to be externally focused and ‘read, read, read.’ That is how she inspires us to be the best we can be.”
She adds that Scott Emerson gets the most out of his employees by fostering their individuality and urging them to pursue their passions — in or out of the workplace. “When I first started, he told me, ‘You don’t have to be the best at your job. You don’t have to be an expert, But if you’re the best at being a good friend, or a good daughter, or at working out, then you’ve already succeeded in life.’ Having that mentality takes the pressure off us, but still makes us work 110% because of him and who he is.”
