People to Watch 2015: Aaron Newhouse, ACH Food Companies

Before graduating from college, Aaron Newhouse had a pretty good taste of business outside of the classroom. He was part of a group called Corporate Leadership Fellows that enabled him to interact and learn from corporate executives from around the globe. The result, he says, was practical experience and a realistic orientation to the business world. “Few college students get the opportunity to have two-hour roundtable discussions with executives from major corporations.”After a year living abroad in New Zealand, Newhouse began his work in shopper marketing – on the agency side of the business, first at Ryan Partnership, then J. Brown Agency (now G2) and TPN. That experience gave him the opportunity to jump feet-first into working on “incredible global brands and begin to learn retail,” he says. During his time at TPN, he spent just over a year at Walmart’s home office and a year in a contractor role at PepsiCo on behalf of the agency. “That crystalized my desire to move to the client side of the business for the next challenge.”Newhouse spent four years at PepsiCo before joining ACH in April 2014, where he has been tasked with creating and developing the discipline of shopper marketing. While he remains the lone team member, he says it’s far from a “one-man show.” “It takes a lot of people to bring good work to life,” he says. “I get to work with some seriously talented people across all functions – brand, sales, packaging engineering, insights, agency partners and more. Without that collaboration, my job would be impossible.”Learning from trusted mentors at every step, Newhouse says there are two individuals who had the greatest impact on his career thus far – Otto Hektor (whom he worked with at G2 and TPN and who is now senior vice president, account management, at Schawk) and Daniel Warhaftig (who he worked with at TPN and PepsiCo and who now is senior marketing manager – channel solutions at MillerCoors). “They genuinely wanted to see everyone around them develop and succeed, and their passion for marketing really motivated and inspired me.”The speed at which the role of shopper marketing has been integrated into the culture at ACH is impressive, he says. In just 18 months, he has successfully aligned on the mission/vision of shopper marketing with the company’s senior leadership team as well as all major functional departments, signed on agency partner Upshot, integrated shopper marketing into its IAT planning process, conducted a shopper insights research project, and executed programs to “test and prove” the contributions of the work.He hopes to grow the discipline within the company as well as throughout the industry. “We must continue to find meaningful ways to bring brands to life at retail and partner with our customers to drive category growth,” he says. “I’m very curious to see the long-term impact that the flux of retailer consolidation will have on our discipline, either positively or negatively.”While he strongly agrees that shopper marketing content should be targeted and integrated as much as possible across the most appropriate vehicles and media channels to reach shoppers, he doesn’t necessarily believe that defines being “omnichannel.” “I view it as more of a retailer capability because they’re the ones who have all those channels where consumers and shoppers are engaging with the retail environment.”Newhouse says the role of the physical store will change by not changing at all. “At least not as dramatically as one may think,” he says. “I don’t think we’re going to see a shift at a larger scale for some time. But I do believe the creation of unique services will continue to evolve to enhance the shopping experience.” Digital enhancements to the traditional store environment, store-within-a-store merchandising solutions based on specific shopper demand moments, and drastically increased access to health services beyond the core pharmacy are what he sees as definite changes in the future. “Retailer consolidation is occurring, and I don’t know yet if that is an opportunity or challenge,” he says. “We as marketers have to focus on really adding value beyond price.”As a member of the Path to Purchase Institute’s League of Leaders, Newhouse appreciates that it helps to “shrink this huge industry into a very small and accessible network,” he says. “That’s critical in order to foster productive and ongoing conversation about industry challenges and best practices as well as charting the course for where we see it going next.”

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