Today's consumer packaged goods firms need the agility to redirect investment into growth-driving initiatives if they are to remain competitive amid volatile market conditions.

Now that we've settled back into our routines and our own personal New Year's resolutions have fallen by the wayside, we'd like to suggest a new resolution to adopt: Get more nuanced about marketing to Millennials.

The new year brings a big, new project for many CPG marketers: the annual task of strategic planning. And in today's retail marketplace, where shopping behavior is changing at blazing speed, it can take a lot of crystal ball gazing to imagine what the right approaches will be three to five years from now.

Today, in the world of tech and software start-ups, mergers and acquisitions are happening almost as fast as the businesses are being launched. However, we often forget how often M&As are happening in the consumer and retail world. According to PriceWaterHouseCooper, the total value of consumer and retail deals exceeded the value of Internet and software M&A combined. In 2013, the Internet and software industries had a total of $55 billion and the consumer and retailer market was a staggering $91 billion in M&A.

At the start of another year, we tend to look for inspiration around us and to vow to adopt new behaviors. As a CPG marketer, there are few more inspirational brand stories than the incredible rise of Kind Snacks.

As I stared at a seemingly endless array of packaged chicken parts in a high-end grocery store recently, a mother of two strode up to the refrigerated section and decisively grabbed a package that promised "All-Natural Free-Range" chicken. "Yes!" she exclaimed to her kids. "Here they are!"

With knowledge being the currency of the future, and unbiased information more accessible than ever before, it's not surprising to see that brands are embracing simplicity and transparency as pillars of their product, messaging, and marketing strategies. A notable shift from pre-digital strategies, where information was often obfuscated and protected, changing consumer sentiment is driving this change - and products are getting better.

As we enter the New Year, marketers and non-marketers begin to look back on all we've accomplished last year. As advertisers, nostalgia has us reminiscing about the latest of late nights, the incredible feats we accomplished, and the campaigns that made it big along with those that didn't. For most planners we might put together a deck on what consumer culture was and how it has changed. But as planners working in CPG, one of our favorite things to also look back at is all of the random creative ideas picked up about the products we launched, and how they …