John Ross | President & CEO
Mr. John Ross has been the Chief Executive Officer and President at IGA, Inc. since October 2017. Mr. Ross is responsible for IGA’s domestic and global operations. He served as the Chief Marketing Officer, Executive Vice President of Inmar, Inc. and also served as the President of Inmar Analytics. He served as President of Inmar Promotion Network.
Mr. Ross served as President of IPG Emerging Media Lab at The Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc. He also founded and served as Chief Executive Officer of IPG’s Shopper Sciences, where he led the media brands retail practice, working with retailers and brands across the world on branding, shopper marketing, media strategy and innovation. He has spent a majority of his career in retail, serving in store operations and merchandising, e-commerce and marketing. His early career was in retail in-store operations, merchandising, e-commerce and marketing.
Before joining IPG, he spent 11 years with Home Depot in various marketing roles, including e-commerce, branding, global marketing and advertising. He worked to launch Home Depot into international markets; developed marketing plans to launch the chain into new categories like major appliances; supported the development of proprietary brands, many of which, like Hampton Bay and Ryobi, have become industry leading brands; and during his tenure, saw the chain more than double in size. He has dedicated his career to listening to shoppers, understanding their evolving needs and delivering differentiated experiences that inspire loyalty both in-store and online. He has extensive shopper analytics expertise and executive management experience. He has championed the rise of the technology-empowered shopper and advanced the role data analytics play in marketing and retail.
With more than 30 years of retail, data science and marketing experience, he has been a contributor to the company’s initiatives to use technology and data to improve the delivery of information, goods and services that make a difference in the lives of shoppers and those who serve them across the globe. Foremost in his accomplishments was pioneering new customer scoring and analytics tools to parse shopper data and manage loyalty for retail clients in categories ranging from specialty pharmacy and health to traditional grocery, convenience, discount and mass merchandising. He serves as a Member of Strategic Advisory Board at Inmar, Inc. Mr. Ross is the Author of the book “Fire in the Zoo”, covering retail marketing science, shopper marketing and the value of data-driven listening. He co-authored the Google shopper marketing book, “The Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT),” and founded both IPG’s Shopper Sciences and the “Neural Shopping Matrix” path-to-purchase research methodology. Mr. Ross holds an MBA from Tulane University.
