Spark Plug
113 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 1 year ago - ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsSpark Plug talks to smart people working at the intersection of business and technology, to spark authentic conversations about the future of retail, customer engagement and technology. Brought to you by the team behind Spark Loyalty — your smarter loyalty leader.
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Episodes
Merkle's Jayme Gehrke on Retail Loyalty
June 03, 2021 16:00 - 24 minutes - 16.7 MBJayme Gehrke is a Senior Director of Business Development at Merkle, one of the world’s leading customer experience management companies. In an insightful conversation with Spark Plug, Jayme talks about the new 2021 Forrester report on retail loyalty, data analytics, rewards optimization, zero data collection, behavioral tracking, and SnowShoe's vital work as a partner with Merkle on loyalty programs worldwide. Thanks for listening to Spark Plug -- find all our episodes at Sparkplug.audio ...
Dr. Joanne Brasch on the Global Commodity System and Retail Sustainability
May 27, 2021 14:00 - 31 minutes - 21.6 MBDr. Joanne Brasch's work for the California Product Stewardship Council covers the gamut from environmentally preferable purchasing to global commodity systems, supply-chain sustainability, and environmental protection. Her work promotes a circular economy that emphasizes product cradle-to-grave stewardship and extended producer and retailer responsibility. Waste360 chose Dr. Brasch as one of the “40 under 40” award recipients in 2021. Thanks for listening to Spark Plug -- find all our epis...
Coupontools - Bert Croimans describes how his team leads in loyalty and rewards worldwide
May 20, 2021 13:00 - 13 minutes - 9.23 MBCoupontools serves over ten thousand customers around the world in 85 countries on nearly every continent with a leading digital marketing platform used for rewards, loyalty, coupons, digital vouchers, gift cards and much more. Bert Croimans serves as Head of Sales and Marketing at Coupontools. Based in Belgium, Coupontools is now seeing renewed interest as the retail world recovers from Covid. Thanks for listening to Spark Plug -- find all our episodes at Sparkplug.audio Spark Plug is bro...
Retail Zipline CEO Melissa Wong Shares Her Insights on Retail Communication and Startup Success
May 13, 2021 14:00 - 25 minutes - 17.9 MBMelissa Wong, CEO and co-founder of Retail Zipline, shares insights about the growth of her company, key customers who have broken the code on maximizing customer satisfaction, and the challenges of raising funds as a female entrepreneur. Retail Zipline has raised $39 million in venture funding and is a rising leader in retail communication with customers ranging from global manufacturers to local retailers. Thanks for listening to Spark Plug -- find all our episodes at Sparkplug.audio Spa...
Lenka Jelinek, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, Green Zebra
May 07, 2021 07:00 - 19 minutes - 13.7 MBLenka Jelinek, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer for groundbreaking retailer Green Zebra, describes her journey to digitize the channel of the convenience store grocery retailer. Jelinek outlines the challenges and opportunities that she has encountered in her transition from compute market leader Intel to a leadership role at market innovator Green Zebra. Green Zebra has changed the face of grocery retail in underserved and high-density, walking-friendly communities, and Jelinek i...
SnowShoe CEO Ned Hayes on Launching the Spark Tap, a New Retail Innovation
April 28, 2021 18:00 - 17 minutes - 12.4 MBNed Hayes, CEO of SnowShoe and long-time identity and retail innovator, describes the current retail scenarios that led SnowShoe to create the Spark Tap, a revolutionary new hands-free device that can securely and safely log retail loyalty events. Joined by market researcher Ashley Coates, they discuss the arduous path towards innovation. Engineering hurdles included scaling a prototype, sourcing electrically conductive plastics and lighting a 3D printer on fire! Thanks for listening to Spa...
Merchant Risk Council CEO Julie Fergersen on Preventing Retail Fraud
April 20, 2021 16:00 - 19 minutes - 13.7 MBMerchant Risk Council CEO Julie Fergersen is a lifelong expert on fraud prevention and retail consumer protection. As CEO of the Merchant Risk Council, Julie has led the way in expanding the MRC's international reach, and assisted hundreds of retailers to understand, identify and prevent fraudulent behavior. Julie gives insights on how to retail fraud trends, the e-commerce pandemic "peak" and how the retailing future has to continue to pass the "Mom" test, even in the era of augmented reali...
Susan Stover on Retail Authentication, Biometrics and Femtech
April 09, 2021 20:00 - 23 minutes - 16.1 MBSusan Stover, public speaker, consultant and expert in identity services. As a former VP of Digital Content at FindBiometrics and Mobile ID World she transformed our conversation about mobile authentication. Today, she shares insights about naked payments and retail biometrics and also educates us about FemTech as a baseline requirement for all new tech moving forward into the future of technology innovation. Thanks for listening to Spark Plug -- find all our episodes at Sparkplug.audio S...
Skip Newberry: The Technology Association of Oregon's Mission and Social Impact
March 26, 2021 20:00 - 31 minutes - 21.5 MBSkip has headed up TAO for nearly 10 years. In this interview, Skip explains how his team works with local entrepreneurs, investors and policymakers to help startups play the "long game" of social change to create an inclusive world-class innovation economy. Clear-eyed insights on point of sale systems, diversity in tech, BLM, how Covid has changed tech work globally, and the opportunities for startups and small retailers in a post-Covid world. Thanks for listening to Spark Plug -- find all...
Joan D. Pepin on Auth0 and the Future of Security
March 12, 2021 20:00 - 30 minutes - 21 MBJoan D. Pepin, Founder and CEO of stealth-mode security company ZeroWall.io, is previously a two-time Chief Security Officer at Auth0 (recently acquired by Okta for $6.5 billion) and at Sumo Logic. In our interview, Joan comments on market consolidation in the IAM space, SnowShoe's hardware-centric approach to security, and tells us that Alexander the Great used secure protocols still deployed in modern systems today. Listen for a front-row perspective on the global shifts in security and au...
Joe Jensen of Intel Retail (Part 2 of 2)
March 05, 2021 20:00 - 21 minutes - 15 MBIntel leads the way with retail innovation in technology, customer service, and new analytics insights. In this second of a two-part interview, Intel Retail leader Joe Jensen discusses retail during Covid, hyper-curated content, micro-targeting, technology enhancement, and behavior tracking across diverse retail experiences. The retail revival is coming post-Covid -- and Joe believes that more technology makes everything better, and he shares his mission to help brick-and-mortar retail conn...
Joe Jensen of Intel Retail (Part 1 of 2)
February 27, 2021 01:00 - 18 minutes - 12.7 MBIntel leads the way with retail innovation in technology, customer service and new analytics insights. As head of an Intel division worth billions, Joe Jensen emphasizes learning from retail customers and deploying best-in-class technology solutions to make retail better. In this first part of a two-part interview, Joe talks about his history at Intel and shares his learnings from the front lines of retail's 21st-century digital transformation. Joe's insights point the way to the future of t...
Main Street Retail Research with Karen Jensen
February 12, 2021 20:00 - 16 minutes - 11.6 MBLearn about the state of modern small retailers from the hands-on research conducted by an expert in retail technologies. Pre-Covid retail was booming, and instead of falling off a cliff, small retailers during Covid demonstrated surprising resilience. The same group of Pacific Northwest retailers have some interesting post-Covid predictions. Thanks for listening to Spark Plug -- find all our episodes at Sparkplug.audio Spark Plug is brought to you by SnowShoe.io, the leading provider of S...