Accomplished executives will accelerate Cooler Screens’ mission to transform the consumer experience and solidify its role as a strategic digital media platform for retail
In response to accelerated growth, Cooler Screens is expanding its leadership and advisory board with industry leading talent from customer centric organizations to optimize the expansion of its platform, re-define and improve the in-store consumer experience and solidify the company as the world’s largest digital media platform for retail. Cooler Screens was founded on the core idea that consumers deserve a far better experience than what is available today in bricks-and-mortar retail and the new leadership team will enable this mission.
“This is retail media 2.0., and with a world-class team of accomplished innovators in place we are poised to not only bring the digital and physical worlds together and transform omnichannel marketing but also create an industry gold standard. This collapses the consumers’ path to purchase into a few feet of retail space and a few seconds as opposed to traditional sequential ads that require much longer periods of time and much more physical space to drive sales,” Cooler Screens Cofounder and CEO Arsen Avakian said.
Cooler Screens’ leadership team additions include Lindell Bennett from Amazon as chief revenue officer and Shelly Schaffer as chief financial officer. Additionally, Cooler Screens’ Chief Customer Experience and Operating Officer John Gomez was promoted and will take on additional responsibilities as president while retaining his former responsibilities.
As chief revenue officer, Bennett brings extensive experience building new teams and businesses, while also launching new technologies and products. He will focus on helping brands capture the attention of customers already in the aisle, to build brand equity and increase sales simultaneously. His goals include establishing an insights-led revenue organization, strengthening the direct sales team, expanding distribution of Cooler Screens through programmatic partnerships, helping agency partners activate new in-store media opportunities and developing deeper omnichannel measurement for brands.
“I spent over a decade helping define something new: the nascent retail media landscape,” Bennett explained. “This experience is important because, at Cooler Screens, we are redefining the in-store experience by meeting customers where they are at – in the aisle – and finding new ways to help them make decisions while there. The question is, how do we make the experience better for customers while also providing an opportunity for brands to stand out? That’s a question that I want to help answer, because there is a huge opportunity here for brands, not just in terms of messaging, but also in terms of measurement. I can’t wait to help unlock this potential.”
In just over ten years at Amazon, Bennett held a number of US roles, leading enterprise CPG, running the mid-market and pioneering the enterprise cable and wireless business. He also spent time in Asia, leading the mid-market and enterprise sales teams for Japan, while also launching Amazon’s first ad sales team in China. Additionally, he started and led the task force that built Amazon’s narrative and reporting framework and was a key contributor to its brand-building and omnichannel measurement suites.
As chief financial officer, Schaffer brings more than three decades of experience in financial and strategic planning, investor relations, business development, compliance and governance to her role at Cooler Screens, where she will be instrumental in accelerating and broadening growth across the ecosystem of retailers, brands, agencies, resellers and programmatic partners. Her extensive background has focused on technology and software, online platforms and branded consumer products in public, private and venture-backed companies, including The Coca Cola Company, Support.com, Yahoo, Mercury Interactive, Catalina Marketing, Nestle and more.
Gomez, now Cooler Screens’ president, chief consumer experience officer and COO, executed Cooler Screens’ expansion in Walgreens, Kroger, Giant Eagle, Chevron, and CVS stores. Prior to joining Cooler Screens, he was president and CEO of KKR-owned Cardenas Markets, where he doubled the size of the $1 billion-plus food retailer. He also held the positions of EVP of operations, marketing and merchandising at Trader Joe’s and chief operating officer at Argo Tea.
Three leading growth and innovation experts will join the startup’s advisory board: Andrew Appel, former president and CEO of the predictive analytics service IRI; Andrew Hill, chief data officer of global CPG marketer Unilever; and John Clavadetscher, who is transitioning from his full-time role as Cooler Screens’ president and chief commercial officer.
Appel, who was president and CEO of IRI for nine years, brings substantial experience in data and analytics to Cooler Screens advisory board. At IRI, he led the company’s transformation from an insights provider to delivering growth as a technology focused Big Data global company. Over his approximately six years at Aon, Appel was CEO of two multi-billion-dollar divisions and was promoted to COO in his last year at the organization.
Hill is responsible for Unilever’s global data, advanced analytics, and information agenda spanning the full enterprise. He was named DataIQ’s most influential person in data for 2022, as well as data visionary. Prior to coming to Unilever, he spent 20 years at global customer data science company Dunnhumby in leadership roles across North America and Europe.
“Starting from the C-suite and advisory board and throughout the entire organization, Cooler Screens has assembled a team of innovators with a sure footing in uncharted terrain,” Avakian said. “Their forward-looking leadership will put our technology at the service of consumer trust and the user experience. This is the team that can bring the data-driven science of e-commerce to retail, fusing these two channels to enable true omnichannel marketing.”
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