Brian Ley Email & Phone Number

Chicago, Il, Us

Chicago, Il, Us

Elevated to a global role leading a team in five countries that delivers Foundational Consumer Strategy​, Foresights and Trends, and Disruptive Innovation Insights to support Kraft Heinz's 10-year strategy. ​

Chicago, Il, Us

Springdale, Ar, Us

Purview included Base Business, Innovation, and COE functions for iconic brands like Tyson, Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farm, and Ball Park. Team leadership for up to 12 insights strategists.-Led the implementation of a data-driven foresight practice to identify and size emerging cultural trends. -Modernized Tyson’s Demand Landscape framework for whitespace identification and sizing via consumer segmentation and need state understanding-Established Catalyst Innovation Teams that leveraged agile insights and analytics processes to develop disruptive innovation platforms

Springdale, Ar, Us

Initially hired to lead Base Consumer Insights for Prepared Foods (Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farm, Ballpark), my responsibilities quickly grew to include the Tyson Brand and Innovation Insights. The scope of this role was equivalent to Sr. Director or VP levels at other large companies.-Led the refresh of all communications and packaging for the $3 billion Tyson Masterbrand leveraging neuroscience to optimize consumer touchpoints.-Developed proprietary drivers and barriers approach to uncover and size brand growth opportunities. This approach used system one consumer responses and artificial intelligence.

Chicago, Il, Us

Led a team of nine Insights & Analytics professionals across marquee clients. Our deep consumer understanding, rigorous hypothesis testing, and synthesis of results measurement created a virtuous learning cycle that created new capabilities for Starcom and positive profit outcomes for clients.-Established a Behavioral Insights practice that integrated fast-moving digital signals (search, social, CRM) with primary research to inspire effective creative messaging and targeting. -Deployed Business Intelligence solutions for data integration and visualization of all digital optimization efforts. -Led the development and execution of learning agendas across Kellogg's US. Deployed single-source measurement tools (Nielsen Catalina, Oracle Data Cloud) to optimize $350 million in brand-building investments.

Cleveland, Oh, Us

Valspar was a $4 billion global leader in the paints and coatings manufacturing industry. The Valspar consumer brand is the most-widely distributed DIY paint in the US. Sherwin-Williams acquired Valspar Corporation in 2017. I founded Valspar's first Consumer & Marketplace Insights team, balancing classically trained best-practices, and developing new and better ways to bring consumers into the decision-making process. In a short amount of time, my team and I generated actionable, strategic insights uncovering unmet needs in the tortured the home improvement process. The work we did had a tangible impact on how consumers select color, purchase, and apply products for their homes.

Chicago, Illinois, Us

Not all brands are created equal, and some of the brands I worked on needed help. I’m proud to say I helped turn around two major brands with consumer led innovation and messaging, and accelerated the growth of another to the tune of +10% annually.

Chicago, Illinois, Us

When food prices skyrocketed 2007 through 2011, I played a central role in helping Conagra cover more than $70 Million in commodity inflation and increase margins at the same time. I also used custom modeling and analytics to help the company optimize tens of millions of dollars in marketing spending and wrote the company's playbook for using analytics to navigate unprecedented public relations crises.

Mclean, Virginia, Us

Performed key analytical consulting role in support of Mars' multi-billion dollar snack portfolio of iconic brands (M&M's, Snickers, Milky Way, Twix). Ongoing responsibility for marketing mix modeling and forecasting activities, in-market product testing, pricing research, and ad hoc market research activities focused on driving volume, share and earnings.

Bachelor Of Science - Bs, Marketing

Certificate, Behavioral Economics

Master Of Business Administration - Mba