Who bonuses off of a shopper? Marketing leadership is so often disconnected from that thought. Arguing about packaging ... Shoppers today bring in a laundry list of incremental, guilt-ridden behaviors with them ... energy ... slave labor ... combined, makes decision making 3 and 4 times harder than it was for their parents. More from John Ross.

Pre-shopping is on a rapid increase, says John Ross. 30% of shoppers doing so for low-value items now. Retailers say in-store marketing is most effective ... yet they understand it the least.

John Ross, president of Interpublic's Shopper Science, head of the Emerging Media Lab, and former CMO of Home Depot, is on deck. Studies people from the minute they run out of toothpaste to the moment they hand over cash at the checkout for a new tube. Need to understand the journey from undecided to decided in a broad definition of retail. To start, define the shopper. Classic demographics is an old model. New model is how they behave. Individual consumer can send as much as they receive, an active participate, two-way exchange with brands.

Aflac today announced that M. Jeffrey "Jeff" Charney has resigned as SVP/CMO of the company's U.S. insurance operation. Charney joined Aflac in November 2008 and departs to accept a chief marketing officer position with another company. The company also announced today that veteran marketing expert Michael W. Zuna, who joined Aflac as vice president of Marketing last year, has been named to lead the Marketing division.

Promising to provide more consistent mobile audience tracking, comScore Tuesday unveiled mobile-optimized tagging for publishers to measure traffic and engagement metrics across a range of devices and mobile operating systems. To launch the new service, comScore has partnered with mobile analytics and billing company Bango, which has offices in the U.K. and U.S. comScore said its mobile tags would provide standardized audience metrics on all major smartphone platforms, hundreds of feature phones, and next-generation devices including tablet computers. To date, comScore's mobile measurement offerings include metered panel of smartphones (Mobile Metrix), a multi-market online survey (MobiLens), and a …

Yahoo said Tuesday it acquired ad technology firm Dapper to bolster its core display advertising business. The company's technology allows marketers to serve display ads assembled on the fly to automatically show the right ad or offer to the right audience at the right time. Online weather service Weather Underground, for instance, has relied on Dapper to generate dynamic ads with creative drawn from advertisers' product catalogs, Web sites and inventory systems. Yahoo has already been working with Dapper under a program the Web portal launched last year to partner with outside ad technology providers to bolster its Smart …

California's struggling economy has cut into donations to the Salvation Army, so it's launched a new campaign to increase awareness and boost in-kind donations to its thrift stores. TV spots show cast-off items in a new way: A red t-shirt rolls up into a heart, for example, with the tagline, "One man's old shirt is another man's new start." In another, an old desk chair casts a heart-shaped shadow: "One person's chair is another's new outlook." Print ads are headlines, "It's easy to do good." Aimed at middle-class families who might feel unable to make a cash donation, …

Citi's Landsman: Ultimately, it's a bank. Core mission of our team is to connect inspirational ideas to P&L. Proxies (pilots) let us use other people's dimes. Bring 'em back in and showcase them: everybody is a closet marketer. Leap of faith (thank you, Kierkkegard) is not enough. People bring biases into decision-making process. We've abolished the closed-door policy. Treat it like a private equity shop. Everyone has seat at table. Everyone has skin in the game together. That has been a radical shift for us. Digital media has invited that because people have lots more opinions than they …

David Edelman, partner, marketing & sales practice, McKinsey, is moderating the panel. Rubin is thanking the recession for giving digital a push. Edelman goes back to ask Rubin to expand on how to prove digital. How to get the mo? Rubin: 1. Do lots of pilots, demonstrate success, people start to adopt it. 2. Then, executive mandate (must prove it to everyone). 3. Metrics really make the case. Show increase in sales calls, quality of leads have shorter sales cycle. My argument to sales forces: I'm giving you an extra month per quarter to make your quota.

This afternoon's panel will discuss how to get mo' in large organizations, a la how to play the whole piano, per Bernhard Glock, and not just the eight keys in the middle. Lisa Landsman, Managing Director, Internet and Mobile, Citi North America Consumer, sees a gap vis a vis P&L between the old world and digital. Hard to get the CEO to buy in. Richard Rubin, Vice President- Global Web and eCommerce, SAP, (diamond stud in ear!), giving the B2B angle.