Capgemini

By Girish Pai, AVP, Group Manager, Retail, CPG and Logistics for Infosys


Ali Baba is a literary character from the Arabian Nights stories known for his ability to get virtually anything he wants by shouting “Open Sesame!”

Newell Rubbermaid president and CEO Michael Polk has joined the board of directors of Colgate-Palmolive. The move comes a little more than a month after the CPG company’s shareholders elected a slate of 10 directors.

Retail industry veteran Tom Dowdy has joined Mobee as SVP of business development to drive growth following recent enhancements to the mobile crowdsourcing and retail intelligence platform.

Dowdy is a seasoned CPG sales and marketing executive who joins Mobee from Gigwalk where he served as general manager of retail and brands. Dowdy is well known in the retail industry for founding National In-Store in 1994 and serving as CEO until the firm was sold to Omnicom in 2007.

CashStar, a digital gifting company, has named John Caron as chief marketing officer to lead all strategic corporate and product marketing efforts in support of the company’s aggressive growth plans.

SGK, formerly marketed as Schawk, a leading global brand development, activation and deployment company that drives brand performance, has appointed Andrew Flynn as SVP of brand strategy.

In this new role, Flynn will focus on identifying and developing strategic brand solutions for clients to help drive brand performance by leveraging the services offered by Brandimage and Anthem, part of SGK's brand development group, and Schawk, the company's brand deployment business.

Savvy consumer packaged goods and retail marketers already know the value of leveraging social media to drive sales and now Twitter has equipped them with a new tool to more effectively engage shoppers.

The social media platform recently introduced a new creative ad unit called the “Website Card” which enables advertisers to perform the neat trick of surfacing Web site content within a Tweet. Doings so allows advertisers to then drive traffic to any page of their site such as a specific product page, relevant blog post or notworthy review.

Interactions, a leading global integrated sales and marketing programs developer, has appointed David Zierman as director of insights.
 
Based in San Diego, Zierman will lead the company’s market research efforts including managing primary data collected via Mystery Shopping, Customer Intercept Surveys, Web Based Surveys, electronic customer satisfaction surveys (bottom of the receipt surveys) and Retail Audits. He will be responsible for the organization’s P&L as well as business development and operations.
 

New York -- Consumers have “no regrets” when it comes to dropping national food, beverage and household brand names from their shopping lists. In fact, nine-in-10 shoppers stick to store brands. Those are among the findings of a new survey Deloitte.

According to Deloitte’s American Pantry Study, 88% respondents say they have found several store brands that are just as good as national brands and that allow them to feel as though they are saving money without giving up anything.
 

Staples is in the process of acquiring PNI Digital Media, a leading innovator in digital media solutions for retailers, for CDN$1.70 per share, representing a net equity value of approximately CDN$73.9 million.

The purchase share price represents a premium of 31.8% over the closing price of CDN$1.29 of the PNI shares May 2 on the Toronto Stock Exchange and a premium of 28.9% over the 30 day volume weighted average price of the PNI shares on the TSX for the period ended May 2.

Walmart may not operate stores in New York but it managed to enlist the aid of the city’s top trash executive to reinforce the importance of accelerating recycling efforts.