Investigative journalist, Jeroen Smit was the host and moderator of the Retail Loyalty Congress 2019. Jeroen has more than 20 years of experience writing for top Dutch newspapers as well as management books about retail and corporations throughout the Netherlands, including AHOLD.

The last 24 months have undoubtedly been a period of tectonic change for retail which has seen huge implications for the online and offline retailers. Boxed.com has been one of the online players which is disrupting the industry, named by Forbes as one of the next “billion-dollar start-ups” boxed.com offers a personal touch in a traditionally impersonal environment of wholesale shopping clubs. With the recent announcement of Boxed.com's first partnership with a major retailer Lidl, all eyes are on this start-up. Boxed.com's founder and CEO, Chieh Huang, joined us at the RLC 2019 to bring his experience of the convergence of offline and online retail.

For the third year in a row, chef and campaigner Jamie Oliver joined us at the RLC 2019. After his successful masterclass on boosting the fresh category in 2018, he discussed his ambitious goal to halve childhood obesity in the UK by 2030 and how retailers can encourage consumers to make healthy swaps.

Following the success of his masterclass at the 2018 RLC, Steven van Belleghem returned in 2019, this time with his keynote 'When digital becomes human', which further explores the relationships with consumers and the balance between human and machine.
 

By 2020, Generation Z will account for 40% of consumers – changing marketing, retail, food and beverage, restaurants -  basically everything. But it's not just Gen Z consumers that we need to take into account, they are also your next employees, and their needs are very different to the milennial generation. It's time to make way for Gen Z.  Jonah Stillman can call himself a true expert in Generation Z because he is one! At just 19 years of age Jonah currently advises the NFL and LinkedIn on how to reach young adults, and he also spoke at the RLC 2019 to advise retailers about connecting with this new generation of consumers and employees.

Purpose is the buzzword of the moment, with billion-dollar purpose-driven brands like Tesla, Patagonia and Airbnb leading the cultural revolution around business as a force for good. But what is brand purpose? What are some of the myths and misconceptions around it? How can older companies reverse-engineer it into their DNA in an authentic and meaningful way? And how can leaders harness its power in order to create compelling brand propositions for a new generation of socially-aware consumers - as well as attracting the best employee talent who want to do meaningful work? In his illuminating talk, Afdhel Aziz joined us at the RLC 2019 to share key principles and examples to help introduce the topic in a clear and inspiring way. 

Jimmy Nelson is a world-renowned photographer. After spending his childhood­ in boarding schools he felt socially isolated and so he set off to find a place where he was comfortable in the world. Upon returning home from Tibet, Jimmy’s visual diary, featuring revealing images of a previously inaccessible Tibet, was published to wide international acclaim. He joined us at the RLC 2019 to discuss his work to date, as well as his path to differentiation.

Sekou Andrews, the world's leading Poetic Voice, joined us at the RLC 2019 to seamlessly blend inspirational speaking with the spoken word. He offered us a creative perspective on embracing failure, encouraging unconventional thinking and being the kind of leader who walks your innovation talk. 

In recent years the rise of hard-discounters in the retail industry has been monumental; they have irrevocably changed the face of retail in Europe and Australia whilst making steady inroads in the US. One of the world’s leading thinkers on global strategy, branding, and retailing and co-author of the book Retail Disruptors Jan- Benedict Steenkamp, joined us at the RLC 2019 to explore the strategies retailers can adopt to compete in this new retail landscape. 

Generation Z is the buzzword of today, but what about Generations Y, Z & A? Gen Y is addicted to interactivity and Gen X is skeptical about the future. Aljan de Boer has made a career out of understanding the upcoming generations to advise brands on how to better understand and service their customers. At the RLC in 2019 Aljan de Boer explored how generations Y,Z&A are not only becoming our new consumers but also our new employees.

85 percent of data is never even used once. While our tools become more powerful, and skills become available, a lot of untapped opportunity lies ahead. Viktor Mayer is the Professor of internet governance and regulation at the University of Oxford. Due to his work to advocate expiration dates on personal information, and contribution to the GDPR, he has been named 'the godfather of the right to be forgotten'. After his success at our 2015 congress, he joined us once again at the RLC 2019 to discuss what data hurdles retailers face and how they can overcome them.

A type 1 personality is someone who can change the old into the new and therefore is seen in people who produce out of the box ideas. With more than 30 years' of experience in neuropsychology, Dr. Erik Matser has worked for many large organisations as well as for Chelsea FC alongside José Mourinho as a psychologist for the first team. Erik Matser joined us at the RLC 2019 to discuss how people can change the old into the new. the so-called Type I personality.

Named the world's 4th most compassionate business leaders, David is globally renowned for The Plastic Bank's solution to make plastic waste a currency that transcends poverty while stopping the flow of plastic into our oceans. 

The self-styled "Cinderella of Advertising', Rory Sutherland is the Vice President of Ogilvy Group. He joined us at the RLC 2019 and challenged us to stop looking at the bigger picture and instead "sweat the small stuff" in order to be memorable.

Leading convenience store, 7-Eleven in South Korea is at the forefront of digital transformation. By reshaping its customer experience the retailer now has 'smart stores' (7-Eleven Signature), smart vending machine convenience stores (7-Eleven Express), and AI cashier robots (Veny) Mr.Younghyouk Kim, 7-Eleven's head of the management strategy department, joined us at the RLC 2019 to discuss the evolution of the convenience store to the center of digital transformation.

Emma joined Tesco as the Group Marketing Communications Director, just under three years ago as part of the team tasked with putting the well-loved brand back on track. On arrival, she created and launched Tesco Food Love Stories - a multi-award winning campaign hugely credited with re-engaging customers around food quality and powerfully driving Brand perception. Emma's passion for uncompromising consistency and putting the customer at the heart of the brand is an essential ingredient, given her remit covers each and every piece of customer-facing marketing communication that goes out on the brand. Emma joined us at the RLC 2019 to discuss Jamie Oliver's healthy swaps initiative. 

GPA is Brazil’s largest retail and distribution group. Director of Customer Experience of GPA, Teo Ornelas has acquired extensive experience in retail and customer strategy through transformative projects in South and North America. Teo joined us at the RLC 2019 to discuss GPA’s digital transformation journey, leading to the development of a digital platform powerhouse, with more than 10 million users.

Anabelle is selected as one of the 9 Featured Marketers in Latin America during 2018 by Marketers by AdLatina. Throughout her years of experience in the Costa Rican retail industry, she has been able to build successful awareness campaigns around Auto Mercado’s short-term loyalty promotions. Her team’s latest achievement is to get the new app (for collecting stamps digitally) to become the most downloaded local app in the shopping category of the App Store during the first week.
 

With less than 4% of Australians meeting the daily recommendations for eating vegetables, leading retailer Coles set themselves a challenge. A challenge to get more kids to eat vegetables. With the help of some sticky friends, the retailer did just that. The GM of marketing operations at Coles, Mark During, joined us at the RLC 2019 to discuss Cole's recent success, Stikeez Fruit and Veggies, which not only saw more kids eating vegetables but also saw a sales uplift but also impacted customer engagement scores and increased sales in the fresh department. 

Netto is a Danish discounter with more than 1300 stores across Denmark, Germany, Sweden and Poland.  Jeff Salter, Senior Director – Store Concept & International Marketing, joined us at the RLC 2019 to discuss how physical grocery stores can be transformed to attract shoppers in the changing competitive landscape. The masterclass focussed on the shopper-centric transformation of a retail concept – and on how convenience and sustainability must be integrated in a natural way.

Sainsbury’s was established 150 years ago and is the UK’s second-largest supermarket. Rebecca Heathcote, Senior Marketing Properties and Propositions Manager, leads brand partnerships and customer propositions at Sainsbury’s. She joined us at the RLC to share her thoughts on how distinctive customer propositions can build your brand and develop an emotional connection with customers.

Taylor Leigh Cannizzaro is Chief Alliance Officer at Plastic Bank. She creates relationships that produce employee and consumer engagement for purpose. Taylor identifies and develops potential opportunities to deliver further value and impact through partner alliance and application of assets. Her systems strategy has launched programs and companies to market, developed campaigns and events, emceed, lead seminar and keynote engagements, built and lead teams. Taylor helps companies be in action and drive with the purpose to fight ocean plastic and alleviate poverty globally, together!

Around six years ago, Barbera Rahn took the lead of Albert Heijn's Loyalty team. Innovative kids' concepts like Moestuintje, VR dinosaurs, Insect tattoos and the successful vivo | Villeroy & Boch glassware programme, are just a few examples of the many loyalty campaigns Barbera launched during her time at Albert Heijn. Being on the lookout for surprising angles and relevant content to attract more shoppers at Albert Heijn isn't just a job, it's a purpose. At the RLC, Barbera shared her experience and Albert Heijn's perspective on loyalty, as well the recently introduced more digital approach. 

Nobody made a difference by being like everyone else, and this has never been more true for retail than now. BrandLoyalty’s newly appointed CEO, Claudia Mennen, has witnessed a number of key changes at BrandLoyalty and the industry in general. Claudia joined the company seven years ago, in the role of CFO. In 2019, she kicked-off the congress by looking back over past years and shared her vision for the future.

Brian Crain leads Partnerships and Business Development for Precima globally. Based in Paris, France, Brian brought his 20+ years of software, analytics, and new markets experience to lead retail and B2B growth for Precima. His focus and inspiration are on building long-term partnerships with companies to unlock huge value from Precima’s AI, analytic and software capabilities.

Karlijn van den Berg and Hans Ruitenberg have more than 25 years of experience translating and designing customers' needs into relevant solutions for brands. As part of BrandLoyalty's digital arm IceMobile, they joined us at the RLC 2019 to discuss how retailers must be inspired to think big but start small.

Hans Ruitenberg and Karlijn van den Berg have more than 25 years of experience translating and designing customers' needs into relevant solutions for brands. As part of BrandLoyalty's digital arm IceMobile, they joined us at the RLC 2019 to discuss how retailers must be inspired to think big but start small. 

With over 25 years of experience in international food retail and over 12 years within BrandLoyalty, Koen designs and facilitates training for clients & colleagues on food retail-related topics. During the 2019 congress, Koen hosted a masterclass to explain how to command attention with your POS materials using our best-in-class examples and learnings from over 3,000 programmes. 

Everyday Christina evaluates millions of lines of data to help improve our programmes. In this masterclass she walked through a real-life scenario to show the influence of data during all stages of a programme: before to help design, during to steer, and after to evaluate the success and plan for the future.

The audience of tomorrow is about to become your consumers of today, so who are they and what do they want? Following on from the talks of Jonah Berger and Aljan de Boer, Kids' experts at BrandLoyalty, Miranda Evans and Kirby Beckman took audiences on a journey to remember what it’s like to be a kid again. Giving you a chance to go in-depth into how BrandLoyalty stays connected with the upcoming generations to create successful kids programmes again and again.

The audience of tomorrow is about to become your consumers of today, so who are they and what do they want? Following on from the talks of Jonah Berger and Aljan de Boer, Kids' experts at BrandLoyalty, Miranda Evans and Kirby Beckman took guests on a journey to remember what it’s like to be a kid again. Giving them a chance to go in-depth into how BrandLoyalty stays connected with the upcoming generations to create successful kids programmes again and again.