Joe Tarnowski, VP of Marketing, Thought Leadership & Global Media at RangeMe, a product discovery and purchasing platform for CPG, retail and foodservice that works with more than 200,000 brands and 15,000 retail buyers across food and beverage, health and beauty care, and general merchandise categories.
Over the past 28 years or so, Joe has been in the business of content, particularly business-to-business content for the retail, foodservice and consumer packaged goods industries, working his way up from Assistant Editor of Foodservice Director magazine up to editor-in-chief of Progressive Grocer Independent, which he launched about 10 years ago. Joseph also launched the Connected Consumer Summit, a retail technology conference.
While freshly vaccinated food and beverage execs may be tentatively emerging from their homes to attend face-to-face meetings and events in the coming months, the last year has proven that virtual meetings – done right – can be just as effective, and way more efficient, says Greg Farrar at ECRM, which was forced to change its business model overnight last year.
Buyers are attending more frequently now that we're virtual, so they may have come to three sessions last year, and now they're getting their work done in the morning, doing meetings in the afternoon, and then they don't have to travel anywhere. We wouldn't be surprised in the future as trade shows come back, that ECRM and RangeMe can make things more efficient before, during, and after the show for buyers and the suppliers, because a lot of the work that people need to do up front can be done through these platforms.