Nikki Baird

Well, brands and retailers have to go where the people are, and clearly they are all on Facebook. The real question is, how do you get them to pay attention to you without it feeling like you're intruding into their lives? I don't think brands have truly figured that...

I just moderated a panel of Millennials yesterday at Epicor's user conference. Some of these questions would be met by looks of confusion by my panel of 6 women and one man. Like the Facebook question. Only 2 panelists were highly engaged on Facebook. The older panelists (mid-20's) didn't...

I'll just add that India has long had this kind of problem, but one way they are tackling it is very interesting -- a site where someone can report that they paid a bribe. I think bribery is inescapable, and a clear quandary for US companies. To me, the...

I think there's a growing benefit in associating your brand with a charity food institution, like Tony's has -- my local Panera's (can't speak for the whole chain) doesn't sell day-olds, they give them to Second Harvest. I've seen countless people come in towards the end of the day...

I caught that report from USA Today as well, and I was surprised to hear that retailers are seeing more theft from Self-Checkout lanes (SCO). There are a lot of different ways you could go with this one:

- One of the initial benefits of SCO was that consumers...

First, I agree that a strong social media presence is important for CPG brands. And while Facebook may come to mind first, I have to say I have personally viewed more CPG ads on YouTube lately, almost more than I've seen on broadcast TV these days. So don't ignore...

From the case studies I've seen and the retailers I've talked to, the biggest predictor of sales success is average time per customer. When matched against a certain level of traffic and a target level of conversion rate (that whole turning shoppers into buyers thing), the store can become...

I think it's possible to spend a whole discussion on what "know" really means. I do think that retailers in some ways fall into the economic trap of sunk costs -- they've been collecting customer data for years and they have a ton of it. It's got to be...

The things that people don't like are just as valuable as the things that people like. And why guess or infer? Why not ask them? From that perspective, I think it's brilliant.

I think the only drawback to EnemyGraph is -- how do you work with the "enemied" brands...

I must confess, I have recently stumbled across a lot of articles that take on some of the parenting techniques that have resulted in the current generation of teens -- helicopter parenting and the like (a helicopter parent, if you're unfamiliar with the term, hovers over their child and...