Shopper Marketing - September 2017 - 41

promotional testing, optimization and analytics.
"That's where I touch shopper marketing from
one angle as far as ROI and optimization, which is
part of our holistic trade approach," he says.
Barton is involved in some of Keurig's top-line
forecasting and organizational reporting as well
as building broader commercial insights that
support the company's organizational strategy.
"Within the strategy work I've been a part of,
targeting activities and shopper marketing activities have been the key element of our approach," he says. He also manages and helps to
optimize the company's national coupon budget management strategy.
Barton points to a targeting strategy the
group developed since he assumed his post in
April 2016. "We've uncovered some key insights
on who our shoppers are, and we're a business
that looks at things very much from a long-term
value perspective, so it's well-suited for targeting and personalization," he says. The team has
spent a lot of time working - from a shopper
marketing perspective - on how to bring new
people into the system in a targeted way, while
developing things with test and learns, direct
mail, printed coupons and digital approaches.
"A year later we're sitting at a point where
we have a pretty clear sense of what works
and what doesn't and how to move forward
on that," he says, adding that he takes pride in
having developed it from insights all the way
through to execution. "We now have a general
coupon and shopper marketing strategy that
helps support that initiative."
Another mentor for Barton is Patrick Minogue, senior vice president of e-commerce at
Keurig. Minogue previously headed the cus-

TJ Barton
COMPANY: Keurig Green Mountain
TITLE: Manager, Revenue Growth
Management Insights and Capabilities
AGE: 26
EDUCATION: Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (bachelor's, physics)

tomer marketing department. "I worked with
him on some of our commercial strategy and
that helped me really understand how insights
can help drive action," Barton says.
With an eye on the digital space for his own
career, Barton sees shopper marketing in a
transitory moment where traditional methods
continue to be successful, but the shift to digital continues. "The details and development
of the digital space is so young and new that
figuring out how to best activate and really get
good ROIs and strong performance continues
to be a key question, as well as how to best
integrate it into a portfolio of programs."
He predicts e-commerce becoming a much
larger portion of the everyday shopper's life.
There will be new things popping up that extend beyond just regular shopping that are
transforming the ways we interact with buying
things, he says. And the tie between e-commerce and the physical store will be stronger.
"There will be more integration and it will become more seamless, whether through pickup
or more ways to interact with a store digitally."
- Erika Flynn
SEPTEMBER 2017 SHOPPER MARKETING y

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Shopper Marketing - September 2017