Arjun Chakravarti
Cogknition Analytics
Seizing Opportunities: How Consumers Influence the Macroeconomic Outlook for Private Brands in 2024 and Beyond

In 2023, inflation cooled from 40-year highs despite consumer spending and employment continuing to defy expectations.  In his outlook for the economy, Arjun will explore whether the U.S. can maintain momentum over the next 12 to 18 months by taking the audience through a deep dive into how different classes of consumers are shifting spending in the post-pandemic economy. Specifically, consumers are facing unprecedented variation in their personal circumstances from consumer costs to labor market prospects and accrued wealth in ways that will have important consequences for the private label industry. 

Jonathan Finch
Daymon
Strong Foundations: Building your Private Brand House for Long-Term Success

Houses, like private brands, are built from the ground up.  A stable foundation is essential for continued growth and success. This presentation will discuss a variety of back to basic, foundational strategies that must be solidified before building up your private brand portfolio through innovation. In part 2 of his presentation, Jonathan will focus on the future and ways to capitalize on consumer demand – provided that your foundation is secure.

Scott Lucas
Sterling Brands Cincinnati
Consumers See Your Product as a Brand: You Should, Too

What's the difference between a private label and private brand mindset?  How can you optimize your products' advantage over national brands and other retailers' brands?  Drawing from his more than 25 years of design and branding experience in the CPG and retail sectors, Scott will explore the process of creating a winning private brand and discuss the opportunities it can present in a retailers' overall strategy and your company's success.

Amber Roberts
Threefold
The Global Rise of Retail Media and How Private Label Brands Can Unlock Its/Their? True Potential

With retail media set to overtake TV before the end of this decade, the channel has become a must for brand marketers. In the next era of retail media, private label brands will invest with RMNs to grow sales, build loyalty and better compete with national brands through data-backed, omnichannel campaigns. In this session, retail media expert Amber shares how this has already begun globally, where the retail media industry is headed and what that means for private label.

Brooke Feenstra-Swensen 
Jocelyn Carter
Kerry
Building Private Brands for The Evolving Consumer

Join the team as they share the "Kerry" experience on the evolution of innovation in private brands.  In this presentation you will learn about the evolving go-to market strategy of some of the biggest private brands in retail.  They will explore the consumers changing pallets and desire for experimental foods in private brands as well as the push for items that offer the best possible sustainable nutrition solutions in private label.  

Workshop
Panelists: 
Jason Reiser
Sherry Saffert
Kristy Smith
Jennifer Day
Market Performance Group
Understand the Building Blocks for Establishing a Strategic Partnership 

Private brands have become a strategic focus and competitive advantage for retailers creating an opportunity to elevate the partnership between private brand suppliers and their retailer partners.  Historically, large CPG branded suppliers have leveraged a framework with retailers that has delivered deep, strategically aligned partnerships. The time has come for both retailers and private brand suppliers to think differently about their engagement. Retailers' requirements today are evolving, and private brand suppliers need to understand how to elevate their approach and capabilities. Likewise, amid this change, retailers have a responsibility to help not only their internal cross-functional teams but also private brand suppliers to navigate to meet enhanced expectations.

Through their own direct experiences, supplemented with a multitude of “Voice of Industry” interviews across suppliers and retailers, please join the Market Performance Group and their roundtable of former sales, merchandising, and Private Brand leaders to learn about the key capabilities that lead to driving strategic relationships.  We will also discuss the top characteristics consistently demonstrated by premier CPG suppliers that showcase brand leadership.  By the end of this workshop, participants will have gained an understanding of their current relationship strengths and gaps, developed a prioritized roadmap to address any gaps, and created a contact strategy to drive future partnership success and strategic engagements.

Erich Kahner
Joe Cook
dunnhumby
Aldi, Lidl and the Right Competitive Response

The dunnhumby team will share results from their company's recent Grocery Retailer Preference Index study, with a deeper look into the different trajectories of Aldi and Lidl in the U.S. market. They’ll discuss which retailers have the strongest private brand portfolios to compete against the German discounters, and what private brand portfolio best practices those retailers might be employing to win.

Dave Fedewa 
Brooke Daniels 
McKinsey & Company
Innovate to Dominate: Unleashing the Power of Next-Gen Private Brands

In this session, the team from McKinsey will explain how the role of private brands has evolved as a result of changing consumer behavior and market trends, and how this has created an imperative for retailers to scale private brands as a source of competitive advantage. They will also explore how manufacturing industry leaders on the private brand side are partnering with retailers and B2B industries to bring cutting edge tools to drive private brand adoption.

Fireside Chat
Moderator:
Jason Reiser
Market Performance Group 
Panelists: TBD
Unlocking the Power of Private Brands: Building Trust, Delivering Experience, and Innovating for Success
Private brands both derive meaning from and reinforce the retailer brands they are associated with while maintaining their own distinct brand purpose, identity, positioning, and equity. Private brands are not just a more affordable alternative or knock-off of a national brand equivalent. As such, both retailers and suppliers need to evolve their focus to encompass three important areas to ensure private brands deliver not only sales growth but also drive brand equity, traffic, and loyalty for the retailer: Authentically Building Brand Trust With Consumers; Delivering a Unified Brand Experience; and Radically Shifting Their Approach to Innovation.