Conference Speakers

Jim Flannery

CEO, SummitVentures LLC

BIOGRAPHY

Jim Flannery is CEO of SummitVentures LLC, a Consumer Products consultancy focused on helping brands grow their business by building consumer and trading partner trust.

Prior to starting SummitVentures in 2019, Jim was Senior Executive Vice President at the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA). He was responsible for GMA’s overall Member Value Creation efforts and had primary responsibility for developing and implementing collaborative relationships, initiatives and programs with retailers and their trade associations across all retail channels.

Jim led the consumer products industry’s effort to develop and launch the SmartLabel™ transparency initiative, which enables consumers to get access to information about hundreds of attributes on thousands of food, beverage, personal care, household product and pet care products.

Jim joined GMA in 2013 from after 36 years at Procter & Gamble (P&G), where he most recently served as Managing Director, Customer Development, P&G Global Operations. Prior to that position, Jim was Director, Global Customer Marketing, from 1998 to 2003 and had responsibility for P&G’s industry-wide commercial collaboration efforts and the internal capabilities required to deliver them.

Jim’s responsibilities at P&G began in the U.S. soap and detergent and food and beverage businesses from 1977-1994, where he had sales and management roles in the coffee, orange juice, shelf stable drink, peanut butter and snacks businesses. He served as Market Strategy and Planning Manager for P&G’s food and beverage business before departing to Australia in 1994. From 1994-1998 he directed customer business development and customer marketing in Australia and Asia.

At P&G, Jim held volunteer leadership positions at GMA, the Food Marketing Institute, ECR-Australasia and ECR- Asia, and played an instrumental role in the creation of the Consumer Goods Forum.

A native of New York, Jim holds a B.A. degree in Human Resources Management from Upsala College in East Orange, New Jersey.  

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Building Consumer Trust Through Transparency, the SmartLabel® Journey

Consumers today, including Regulators and NGO’s acting as their proxy, are seeking more and more information about the products they use and consume. SmartLabel® is industry’s response, providing consumers easy access to more information than could ever fit on a label. Jim will discuss why 75% of consumers say they are likely or extremely likely to use SmartLabel® to find the answer to questions about the brands they use. Why over 800 Brands, 51,000 items are already using SmartLabel® to provide information to consumers and why Regulators are looking at digital disclosure as an elegant solution for information transparency.