People to Watch 2015: Monica Young, Philips North America

Growing up, Monica Young was always the first one in her family to read the Sunday newspaper each week, and she’d always start in the same place. “I used to love to read through the circular ads, to see what was promoted, the strategy behind it and the ad layouts,” she says.When she got to college, she knew only that she wanted to be a business major. Through her four years at Fairfield University taking classes in marketing, finance, accounting, management and IT – and heavy project work that simulated real-world experiences – she realized that understanding shoppers and what makes them convert to buyers would always be her passion.Now, 10 years into her career (including eight on the agency side at IN Marketing), she is senior manager, shopper marketing, at Philips North America, responsible for all shopper marketing in-store and online for its portfolio of brands. She also manages the company’s shopper agency team, which she says “is my right hand” in getting things done. “I’m responsible for strategy, working with customer relationships, managing the agency team and managing shopper marketing internally. My agency team handles creative and orchestrates the execution.”One of her biggest tasks recently has been to oversee merchandising display creative for in-store and ensure it “aligns more with our shopper marketing creative so we have a holistic look and feel, and shoppers can really understand our products. We also need to make sure our message is resonating throughout the entire purchase journey,” Young says, noting that she sees herself continuing down the path of turning shoppers into buyers. “I just don’t know if we’ll call it shopper marketing anymore.”Young says she is most proud of a program she worked on during her agency days with a retailer in the club channel. The retailer’s fresh department needed a boost in penetration and perception. Her team was able to develop a multifaceted program that helped build this retailer’s credibility and increase traffic in the department while also benefitting the category overall.“Building partnerships with retailers and providing solutions that build baskets and drive trips while also finding new ways to grow our category – that’s the golden ticket,” she says, adding that she’s currently working on a number of partnership programs with other brands. “We have to be thoughtful and create meaningful relationships with brands that are already in the category as well as create adjacencies within our portfolio to show retailers we’re helping drive traffic to the aisle and build a basket for them.”Digital marketing is a major topic of discussion at Philips, Young says, and the need to get it right and provide a seamless omnichannel experience is so important in categories with considered purchases. But measurement, and aligning on what success is, is a major challenge she sees going forward. Shopper marketing works, but why? And is ROI the right measurement?But even bigger than these questions in her mind is truly breaking through the clutter and actually reaching shoppers in a meaningful way, knowing how connected they are all the time. “There are so many things going on and we need to focus on delivering our messages in a way that resonates with that shopper at the right time,” she says. “Everyone wants personalized content and messages that mean something to them and that feel like an exclusive offer, but getting that right is a challenge.”

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