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MEET OUR SPEAKERS
Christoph Sterkel
Head of eCommerce Northern & Eastern Europe
Session Title:
Kellogg’s Europe eCommerce Strategy
Session Synopsis:
In this session, Christoph will share some best practices from digital shelf optimization, retail media effectiveness and how Kellogg is deploying its digital content for its cereal brand Kellogg’s and salty snack brand Pringles. Christoph will also explain the three main pillars of the overall European strategy. One major focus of the session will be on Kellogg’s transformation towards a D2C and B2B company.
About Christoph
After his Master in „International Business” in London, Christoph started his career as a Category Manager in the Beauty Care division of Henkel in Düsseldorf, Germany. He then became eCommerce Manager in the Laundry & Home Care division of the group. After traveling around the world for 5 months, Christoph joined Kellogg in Hamburg, beginning of 2020. There he is responsible as Head of eCommerce Northern & Eastern Europe for the strategic development of eCommerce and leading Kellogg Europe’s transformation towards a Direct-to-Consumer company.
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Rocky af Ekenstam Brennicke
Brand & Marketing Executive Former Brand & Creative Director, Other Stories
Session Title:
We are only humans - how to balance insight, intuition and customer interaction
Session Synopsis:
1. Balance reliable data and intuitive intelligence
2. Understand what customer obsession is, really
3. Keep eyes on the target and take decisions
About Rocky
Business-oriented brand builder, and fashion/lifestyle marketer for 20+ years. With a customer-first mindset, where insight outranks assumptions but still does not disregard intuitive intelligence. Like to considers herself an empathic firestarter, a constant learner and a Keynote raconteur, but the latter is up to the audience to judge.
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Rupert Breheny
Google Emerging
Technology Advisor
Session Title:
The Long Road to the Metaverse
Session Synopsis:
We're still a long way from a stable, interoperable, commercially viable metaverse where retailers can generate recurring revenue from digital and virtual sales. But there is light at the end of the tunnel. By the end of this session attendees will have:
1. A functional definition of what the metaverse is;
2. Some case studies of existing brands making effective use of the metaverse in its present state;
3. Some ideas on where money will be made in the future.
About Rupert
With an honors degree in Marine Biology from a prestigious British university and expertise in sea urchin reproduction, Rupert was rendered largely unemployable at an early age. However, thanks to a mid-career turnabout he became Google’s first British webmaster. His hobbies include virtual reality, responsive web design, and buying more video games than he’ll ever have time to play.
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Alex Pallete
Founder and Chief Strategy Officer
Session Title:
Business growth through Purpose
Session Synopsis:
Your company is of no value unless you provide real value. Only if the organization has a positive impact on people's lives will it be relevant to them, and as a result, it will be able to grow. In this talk, Alex Pallete will show you why the purpose is the driver of your business growth and how some companies are already doing it.
About Alex
Alex is an expert in brand building & the co-founder of #stayhuman, a member of the board of trustees of Ashoka Spain. With the firm conviction that without adding meaningful value a brand becomes meaningless, in 2014, he founded the strategic consultancy PICNIC. Believing in the value that brands can bring, he develops strategies that drive the growth of companies, starting by rediscovering the purpose of their brands. In 2021, Forbes named him one of the top 100 most creative Spaniards in the world of business.
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Tamar Kasriel
Futurist &
Managing Director
Session Title:
What Will Consumers want? Fulfilling Retail in the Future
Session Synopsis:
Tamar will address the key changes in shopper needs and wants in a complex and disrupting retail landscape, and will explain how:
- Consumer expectations are shaped and adapted in response to all of their retail interactions wherever they may be. Retailers need to understand and appreciate the totality of their target shoppers’ worlds, even the ones where they don’t have a presence;
- Physical retail has an essential place in the future, continuing to provide a potentially delightful, convenient, and fulfilling experience;
- Retail in the metaverse is likely to evolve over the next 5-10 years.
About Tamar
Listed by Wired Magazine as one of the world's most influential futurists, Tamar Kasriel has over 25 years of experience in advising blue chip organizations from Unilever to Tesco to Coca-Cola to De Beers on how to plan for the future. With a particular interest in the nexus between technology and consumer society, her main focus is on the implications for FMCG, luxury, and retail. Having worked at the Guardian MediaLab (now Guardian Online), she moved on to the Henley Centre (now part of WPP's Kantar) where she rose to become a Director and then set up Futureal in 2007.
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Andrei Georgescu
Managing Partner
Session Title:
Trends in email & SMS marketing that can change the consumer experience and increase sales
Session Synopsis:
Both Email and sms marketing are mature communication channels, with well-defined operating criteria and principles, however, the creative approach of the two communication channels allows for a friendlier and more interactive relationship with the audience. In addition, currently the new technologies from Google for email marketing make people talk about what would be the biggest change that happened to email since its invention. But SMS also knows new developments and applicability in the marketing area, and data management in tandem with email can lead to notable results.
About Andrei
Andrei Georgescu, co-founder and Managing Partner of White Image, created the first email marketing company in Romania, almost 20 years ago. Passionate about data and communication, Andrei grew his company from a simple hobby to the leading provider of email marketing services, marketing automation and creating creative campaigns to attract, retain customers and increase sales. Thus, White Image services have been implemented in hundreds of companies in Romania and Central Europe.
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Roxana Ionescu
Partner and Co-Head of the Data Protection Practice
Session Title:
Upcoming regulatory challenges for eCommerce initiatives – a privacy perspective
Session Synopsis:
If you think the current regulatory framework applicable to eCommerce initiative is complex, just wait a few months. New rules in the digital area, from the already adopted Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act to the proposed rules on artificial intelligence or discussions about regulating the metaverse, are bound to continue reshaping how marketers develop their eCommerce initiatives. Data protection and privacy is a big part of this discussion. Given the wide range of these rules’ impact, preparedness is the key, hence the need to know and understand the new rules now to prepare for the future.
About Roxana
Roxana Ionescu is a reputed specialist in the data protection field, having assisted clients on complex privacy matters related to clients' core-businesses, marketing or employment activities, database sharing and data protection implications of business transfers, projects and mergers, both national and cross-border. She is closely connected to EU data protection developments and constantly contributes to relevant papers in the area of data protection and privacy.
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Jakub Sakowski
Senior Ecommerce Expert
Session Title:
3 reasons why other stores are selling much more than you
Session Synopsis:
In the session, you will learn about the fundamentals of online marketing strategy for e-commerce that the majority of online stores are missing. Expertise based on auditing over 600 online stores within the last 12 months. See how you could use transactional and behavioral data your customers are sharing with you in order to grow your sales and distinguish yourself from the competition.
About Jakub
An ecommerce expert and consultant with particular flair for seamless CX and customer journey. On daily basis preaching the best practices among online stores to help them build a strategy for steady growth. Avid triathlonista and a football lover.
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Gabriela Stănică
CIO & E-commerce Director
Session Title:
Opening speech Retail & e-Commerce Stage
About Gabriela
Gabriela Stănică is Chief Information, Data Officer and E-commerce Director, Carrefour Romania, heading the company’s IT & Digital department, as well as the e-commerce one, and at the same time being member of the company’s Executive Committee. Gabriela has over 15 years of experience in creating and managing teams in different companies. Prior to joining Carrefour, she held the position of Head of Marketing IT at British American Tobacco, where she coordinated teams from Europe and North Africa, having previously held the position of Chief Information Officer at Vodafone Romania. Gabriela began her professional journey at Avon, where she held several positions over time, culminating as IT Executive Director Central and Eastern Europe. Gabriela joined Carrefour Romania in October 2020. Here, she has accelerated, together with her team, the automation of in-store and back-office processes, streamlining the operations in the stores throughout the country, the supply chain and logistics. At the same time, under Gabriela’s coordination, Carrefour Romania modernized its IT infrastructure in 2021 and invested in migration to the Cloud, aiming to be 100% in the Cloud by 2026.
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Cătălin Samara
Chief Executive Officer
Session Title:
The Omnichannel perspective - where Retail meets e-commerce for an integrated shopping experience
Session Synopsis:
Omnichannel shopping has become the new normal for almost all consumer products and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Through omnichannel shopping, consumers can shop across multiple sales channels - online using their laptop or phone, in physical stores, while benefiting from a seamless, holistic consumer experience. This new normal has important implications for consumer-product companies, including direct-to-consumer businesses such as retail. E-commerce is booming, but physical stores remain important. In this context, retailers need to take into account omnichannel effects; for example, customers who have a great e-commerce experience may stop purchasing items in stores. The french retailer Carrefour România and Bringo make a great team, mastering omnichannel to become the best-in-class players, completing the omnichannel journey.
About Cătălin
Cătălin Samara, CEO BRINGO INTERNATIONAL (part of Carrefour Groupe) since January 2022, has been part of Carrefour Romania from 2000, being one of the first managers in the company. He was also one of the Executive Board Members in Carrefour Romania starting 2011, holding a series of strategic positions inside the company, from Regional Hypermarkets Director to Chief Marketing Officer, Digital and E-commerce. In the last 3 years (2019-2021) he was the COO of Carrefour Romania. After graduating from Ovidius University in Constanta, he joined Blaise Pascal University in Clermont-Ferrand, France, then took up a series of programmes at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), business school in Lausanne and London Business School. From 2017 to 2020, he lead (in parallel with its positions inside Carrefour Romania) the BRINGO Romania team as Business Sole Director , and in the 3 years spent there he contributed to the fast evolution of a unique business model designed to provide an exclusive personal shopping experience. In his current position as CEO BRINGO INTERNATIONAL, Cătălin is leading the operations in 4 countries (Romania, Belgium, Argentina and Morocco) and also the roadmap and the technological approach of the Bringo application, following the principle of the ‘’personal shopper” in all geographies. Bringo Romania is active today in more than 37 cities, having more than 200 different brands, 2000 physical stores, including the networks of 3 international food retailers and several verticals such as restaurants, pet food shops, flowershops, pharmacies, beauty shops, toys, electro-it etc. The Bringo App has been recently refreshed in Romania, with a new design offering also new services to the clients, such as the purchasing via meal vouchers from the 3 food e-grocery retailers in the app, being so the first agregator app in the local market offering this option to the Romanian clients.
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Laurentiu Croitoru
National Sales Manager
Session Title:
The role of technology in Deposit Return Systems
Session Synopsis:
What is a Deposit Return System and how it works. Examples of high performing Deposit Return Systems throughout the world. Pro arguments of using technologies in Deposit Return Systems.
About Laurențiu
Resource revolutionary with more than 10 years sales and people management experience. You can find me working for a more sustaynable tomorrow, one beverage container at a time.
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Alice Anghelea
Growth Revenue
Session Title:
How Open Banking impacts our society, our businesses, and us as consumers
Session Synopsis:
In a world of financial changes and data security challenges, the open banking framework is set up to offer the most simple, yet secure approach to electronic payment initiation services and account information services for the customers, empowering their right to choose and grant consent upon their own financial decisions. Romania, a humble last entrant in this framework, is now ready to adopt the growing open banking services, very popular in the EU, the UK and other digitalised countries around the Globe. The session focuses on the interaction with financial data for both businesses and end users, evoking the numerous benefits and use-cases the open banking solutions propose to entrepreneurs, financial and non-banking institutions, eCommerce stores, utility companies, and other complex financial-data extraction systems in the country, ultimately embedding their care for offering their customers the safest and innovative methods in handling their finances. On November the 4th, on the Retail&eCommerce Stage at Gotech World, find out what account to account payments are, and how they can boost your business and score to customers retention, together with the benefits of integrating fully automated and completely integrated solutions on all the accounts and financial data your business operates.
About Alice
With a great entrepreneurial background, building around customers’ motivators for change, Alice has over 15 years of experience in driving revenue growth for technology and BPO companies from early stages towards maturity in both domestic and international markets (EMEA, CEE). She has contributed to the nascence and growth of the international market for UCMS Group EMEA SaaS workforce technology and BPO services, becoming the relevant alternative against giant global providers in our market. She has also contributed to the growth of the market leader and most preferred HR technology & services provider by large multinational companies in Romania. Moreover, she’s a founding member of an online reviews’ aggregation and analytics platform for consumer brands, the first one in Europe. Since 2022, Alice has joined Smart Fintech, the main open banking innovation lab in Romania, managing the start-ups’ go-to-market strategy, in a client-oriented approach of the innovative open banking solutions set up as the future of digital payments and financial data aggregation in Romania, and in the CEE.
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Ana Maria Georgescu
Co-founder
Session Title:
How Open Banking impacts our society, our businesses, and us as consumers
Session Synopsis:
In a world of financial changes and data security challenges, the open banking framework is set up to offer the most simple, yet secure approach to electronic payment initiation services and account information services for the customers, empowering their right to choose and grant consent upon their own financial decisions. Romania, a humble last entrant in this framework, is now ready to adopt the growing open banking services, very popular in the EU, the UK and other digitalised countries around the Globe. The session focuses on the interaction with financial data for both businesses and end users, evoking the numerous benefits and use-cases the open banking solutions propose to entrepreneurs, financial and non-banking institutions, eCommerce stores, utility companies, and other complex financial-data extraction systems in the country, ultimately embedding their care for offering their customers the safest and innovative methods in handling their finances. On November the 4th, on the Retail&eCommerce Stage at Gotech World, find out what account to account payments are, and how they can boost your business and score to customers retention, together with the benefits of integrating fully automated and completely integrated solutions on all the accounts and financial data your business operates.
About Ana
Ana is a highly experienced technical and sales consultant, specialised in integrated informatic systems solutions and business processes for service-oriented architectures. Over the last 18 years, Ana helped large international enterprise customers from the financial-banking, telecom, or utilities industries to set up their technological processes and implement the latest digital business transformation strategies. In the last 3 years, she focused her attention also on the fintech innovative domain, launching in 2019, together with Mihaela Georgescu, Andrei Dumitru, and Alexandru Cociu the Romanian start-up Smart Fintech. The start-up was established as an innovation lab, set to deliver innovative open banking solutions that emerge from the two words: Finance and Technology. Their ambition is to create in Romania value-added services based on the PSD2 EU Directive and help foresight the Romanian market in this direction. Ana is an active member of the European Initiative Group for legislative proposals to the European Parliament initiated by the European Digital Fintech Association.
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Andra Imbrea Palade
Digital Content Marketing Manager
Moderator
About Andra
Passionate about retail, Andra has covered this industry for the past 7 years, from editorial content to organizing and hosting B2B events. Andra is currently the Digital Content Marketing Manager at Progresiv, one of the biggest B2B media companies covering the retail & FMCG industry. She is in charge of planning, developing and overseeing the digital strategy, but she is also involved in the management of the company's B2B events, such as Conferinta Progresiv, Trade Round Table, Progressive Women and more. She is the former Editor-in-Chief of retail.ro, a publishing project launched in 2020, covering the retail industry and has managed the retailArena conference from 2017 to 2021
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