Home Insights   Thought Leaders   Joan Driggs

Thought Leaders: Joan Driggs

Vice President, Content and Thought Leadership

Focus and Expertise

  • Consumer Packaged Goods and Retail Analytics
  • Consumer and Shopper Insights
  • Marketing and Brand Management
  • Growth and Innovation Strategy
  • Channel Dynamics

About Joan Driggs

Joan attributes curiosity as key to her 30-plus year career as a results-driven market researcher, CPG trade journalist and thought leader. Her goal has always been to empower CPGs, retailers and industry suppliers with information needed to make smart decisions that support shoppers and consumers. Her motto: Make the shopper the hero.

In her current role, Joan designs, develops, executes and manages a wide range of thought leadership projects and facilitates collaboration between diverse teams at IRI and its partners. Together, these efforts pinpoint critical CPG and retail growth opportunities.

Joan’s thought leadership work regularly serves as a foundation from which IRI teams develop innovative, holistic solutions for clients, and is regularly showcased during top-to-top client meetings, industry conferences and webinars, media, academic and custom studies.

Joan has shared her expertise by leading dialogues on timely and compelling CPG issues. She is frequently quoted in leading industry media, such as RetailWire, MarTech Series, Chain Drug Review, Digital Commerce 360 and HAPPI. She supports industry organizations such as Network of Executive Women; and she’s on the Executive Board of Western Michigan University’s Food Marketing Conference as well as Les Dames d’Escoffier’s Chicago Chapter.

Hot Topics

  • New Product Pacesetters – Annual review of the top selling food and non-food items across multi-outlet and convenience channels provides insights into shopper motivations and how CPGs should be responding, and the tools they should be using to both target and measure their impact with shoppers.
  • Evolution of Eating Behaviors – Monitor the blurring of eating occasions and the concurrent narrowing gap between the CPG and restaurant industries to uncover new ways for CPG marketers to increase the size of the prize and maximize their share of the winnings.
  • Market Opportunity Assessment – Identify critical issues, trends and growth opportunities within the CPG, retail and over-the-counter health care markets to drive profitable growth and enhance competitive advantage.
  • Strategic Decision Making – Develop in-depth analyses of retail, manufacturer and consumer trends by integrating primary research, secondary source information and internal data in order to highlight key opportunities for a deeper and more customized revenue-generating analysis, and to identify strategic growth opportunities.

Thought Leadership

Speaking

  • The Hatchery, Inspiring Trends of 2021 and Beyond, January 2022
  • The Food Institute, What's Ahead in 2022, December 2021
  • Acosta Insights Symposium, Navigating the New Normal: Insights for Growth in 2022, December 2021
  • IFT Business FIRST overview, Tomorrow, Today, July 2019
  • ECRM's 2021 Global Market: Food & Beverage, IRI's CPG Innovation Checklist, July 2021
  • BevNET Live Winter 2020, Premium Beverage Opportunities, December 2020
  • Issues Watch: Forecasting the Political Landscape for CPG, E-Commerce Rises to the Occasion, November 2020
  • The Hatchery: What's Driving the Decade: Industry Trends, Grounded in Technology, January 2020
  • Food Industry Summit, The Budding Opportunity of CPG Cannabis, October 2019

Writing

Webinars and Podcasts

Awards

  • Progressive Grocer's Top Women in Grocery 2021