Brian Seel

Sr. Manager Consumer Insights

Sargento Foods Inc. · Plymouth, Wisconsin, United States

Present

Leading consumer insights on our meals business (Slices and Shreds). Supporting brand teams with all primary research and syndicated data analysis teams. Also work with Category Management to develop impactful sales stories and media teams to improve media measurement. - Recruited, hired and managed our first Sargento Consumer Insights intern - building on previous people management experience at McCormick. - Responsible for managing brand equity tracking, delivering quarterly updates to senior leadership and Board of Directors on brand health. Updates inform strategic decisions to ensure we are building the health of the Sargento brand. - Lead quarterly reporting of household panel data - helping brand teams and leadership understand if we are growing KPIs. - Responsible for year-round tracking of key consumer trends, including annual presentation to the organization with a focus on implications for future strategies. Past areas of focus include sustainability, AI and consumer definit…

Manager Consumer Insights

Sargento Foods Inc. · Plymouth, Wisconsin, United States

Led consumer insights for the snack businesses - including cheese sticks, string cheese, and the Balanced Breaks line. - Led research highlighting key brand purchase barriers for Balanced Breaks. Insights helped improve brand advertising and helped the brand successfully appeal to non-buyers. - Managed packaging research to optimize Balanced Breaks packaging graphics. Work helped design team improve ingredient treatment to romance the product more and drive appetite appeal. New graphics also helped optimize shopability at shelf. - Supported a cross-functional team working on sustainable packaging solutions across the Sargento portfolio. Conducted research to understand consumer perceptions of and desire for sustainable packaging. Research led to a roadmap to develop recycle ready packaging solutions.

Sr. Manager Consumer & Market Insights North America

McCormick · Hunt Valley, Maryland

Responsible for consumer and shopper insights related to key McCormick businesses in North America. Support Cooking, Baking, and Convenient Meals businesses across the U.S. and Canada. Also support Masterbrand strategy team in positioning and advertising development. Lead Shopper Insights in the U.S. Managed a summer intern and also recruited, hired and managed an Associate Manager Consumer Insights. - Led large, cross-functional team through a purchase structure study covering 26 different categories related to our core businesses and the broader universe of flavor solutions. Study identified opportunities for McCormick Skillet Sauce launch and additional key innovation opportunities based on portfolio gaps. - Drove efforts to get to a new positioning on the Zatarain's brand to drive growth on the seasoned rice business. Led consumer insights work to understand current consumer perceptions of the brand and opportunities based on product appeal. Work led to revamped positioning and the…

Manager Consumer Insights - Advanced Analytics

ConAgra Foods

Part of the Advanced Analytics team within Consumer Insights, supporting the ConAgra grocery portfolio (10 brands) by managing the marketing mix process, analyzing business drivers, sizing innovation opportunities, and consulting on pricing actions. Also provide analytic support to the Media/Digital/Social/PR teams, working to find new methodologies to measure and improve digital/social media. - Led research to measure the ROI on ConAgra’s CRM/recipe program. Provided insightful analysis around sales impact, the online behavior of users most engaged with the site, and share of voice learning that demonstrated the website was the top recipe site for the 2 million visitors. - Leveraged pricing models and syndicated data to create a category story for cooking spray sales teams that included optimal category pricing recommendations for both PAM and private label. Sales teams were able to sell in recommendation for private label price increase at retailers and price gaps with PAM closed by…

Manager Global Digital Consumer Insights & Analytics

Kellogg Company

Part of the Global Digital Strategy team which supports markets, business units, and brands in their digital marketing efforts. Specific charge was to bring consistent best-in-class processes, methodologies, and approaches to digital research efforts across the company. - Key projects included partnering with Nielsen IAG to measure online advertising breakthrough and ComScore to track the audience composition of online buys. Research led to 2x improvement in digital ROIs.

Associate Manager Market Research - Brand Insights

Kellogg

Sole researcher supporting established (in-market) brand team on Pop-Tarts, a $600 million business with a research budget of $1.4 million. Provided 4-member brand team with consumer insights and IRI data analysis around key advertising and category management decisions. Also had responsibility for digital research initiatives on two RTEC brands (Rice Krispies and Frosted Mini-Wheats). - Planned and led qualitative creative development research and animatic testing for integrated, kid targeted “Hide and Seek” program. Leveraged the research to highlight the key challenges for the brand team and agency as they worked to optimize the creative. Campaign supported the best new Pop-Tart flavor launch ever and won a 2009 Silver Effie Award. - Brought new to Kellogg, simulated shopping methodology to brand team to help research a category management decision. Insights were critical in giving senior management, sales team, and buyer the confidence to make a significant shelf change at Wal-Mart…

Sr. Analyst Market Research - Brand Insights

Kellogg Company

Researcher supporting two brand marketers working across Smart Start and Raisin Bran brands with a combined research budget of $520,000. Key responsibilities included copy development research and tracking. Other research projects included testing potential benefit claims, package testing, ethnographic work, and concept testing. - Led consumer deep dive qualitative research in Raisin Bran Crunch that led to brand repositioning and insight for new campaign idea that led to the best MillwardBrown AI score ever for the brand, drove a 10% increase in sales and won a Silver Effie Award.

Project Manager

Decision Insight

Responsible for managing projects from proposal to final report. Key clients included Frito-Lay, Pepsi, Pizza Hut, and KFC. Primary focus was new product development research using simulated shopping and discrete choice methodologies. - Directed simulated shopping study for Frito-Lay that resulted in Tostitos brand successfully getting their chips sold into 7-11 for use in nachos in a test market. - Oversaw online menu research for KFC that effectively modeled real world sales results helping KFC to decide which menu changes to take to test market. Managed follow-up study involving in-store customer intercepts in test markets.

Sr. Consumer Insights Analyst - Brand Insights

Payless ShoeSource

The researcher responsible for supporting Men’s Category Team, Puerto Rico, and Canadian team with insights and market research (both primary and secondary). Also performed a significant amount of data analysis for marketing leadership.

Corporate Audit Intern

Sprint

Summer intern working on two engagements, both involving the auditing of billing groups at Sprint. Identified issue with the billing process for new commercial data customers, resulting in the company identifying $20 million in unbilled revenue.