Providing greater sales and market share for manufacturers and retailers around the world: Acosta

In any organization, the sales and marketing department plays a pivotal role in the success of the business. The unique and important role of the sales and marketing firm is to bridge the gap between the potential customer's needs and the products/services that the organization offers that can fulfill their needs.

Acosta is one such sales and marketing agency which is a privately held firm that continues to lead the industry in helping consumer packaged goods companies move products off shelves and into shoppers' baskets. Acosta has discovered four megatrends driving change in the industry today including demographic shifts, channel blur, health, and wellness and a digital revolution

Why Acosta

Critical Expertise: Acosta has the talent and technology to construct data-driven strategies; the reach and relationships to execute against those strategies; and the tools to monitor, track, and optimize metric-based results for clients and retailers.

Diverse Talent: The team of Acosta is made up of more than 26,000 employees, many of them having worked at prominent consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, leading retailers, or marketing agencies. Sharing perspectives across channels and backgrounds, Acosta's nimble workforce takes a proactive approach to collaborate with clients, driving swift action to grow sales and market share when opportunities arise.

Innovative Technology: Acosta's ability to connect real-time data into its comprehensive sales and marketing platform delivers insight that matters to clients. It's retail merchandising employees leverage advanced mobile technology that uses daily point-of-sale data to track, analyze and optimize in-store activities, establishing automation for a variety of complex processes while capturing information to drive faster, more effective decision-making.

Maximum ROI: Acosta is an investment for its clients, not an expense. As such, the company is committed to delivering measurable returns for clients and retailers. In addition to higher sales, improved efficiencies, and lower costs, Acosta delivers an average brand share of 3.7 percent to full-service clients, more than 2 percent higher than brands managed by other brokers or in-house teams.

Services offered by Acosta

Business Intelligence: Acosta's industry-leading Business Intelligence (BI) division is the nerve center and catalyst behind the company's data-driven strategies and optimization efforts. The firm has more than 600 multi-disciplined experts, their BI teams work one-on-one with consumer goods manufacturers and retailers to generate insights that make a measurable difference.

Headquarter Sales: Acosta enjoys long-standing relationships with virtually every leading brand and retailer. The company's national platform, which boasts more than 100 offices, also provides superior coverage relative to smaller regional, multiregional, and quasi-national players. Acosta's many connections, along with the size of its client portfolio, create a greater presence in stores across the nation and, ultimately, more influence as it relates to introducing new products to the market, securing strategic shelf space and optimizing promotional activities. Acosta's Headquarter Sales division features retailer-aligned teams that develop and execute customized business plans for clients.

Retail Services: Acosta's retail teams are focused on bringing their clients' sales plans to life in-store every day. The firm is keenly focused on maximizing client ROI by understanding which stores to go to and what activities to execute. Its rich retail experience enables them to collaborate with their clients to design customized retail solutions that meet the unique needs of their business.

The company's nearly 20,000 retail associates are in stores every day, averaging 200,000 outlet visits every month. Each in-store associate is armed with advanced mobile technology that uses daily point-of-sale data to track, analyze and optimize in-store activities, establishing automation for a variety of complex processes while capturing critical information to drive faster more effective results. Whether increasing the speed-to-shelf of new products, gaining greater distribution of current products, or ensuring correct out-of-stocks and voids, Acosta's in-store team makes the company's retail merchandising what it is powerful.

Consumer Marketing: Acosta houses its integrated sales and marketing agency, Mosaic, to provide clients with innovative ways to engage consumers and drive purchases at every point along the shopper journey. The agency's many offices across the U.S. and Canada complement Acosta's vast footprint across North America and, subsequently, help create efficiencies as they relate to executing promotional activities in clients' targeted consumer and channel-specific geographies.

The Visionary behind the success of Acosta: Darian Pickett

Darian Pickett serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Acosta. He joined Acosta in 1991 as a Business Manager. Throughout his career, he has contributed to virtually every area of Acosta's sales business and has held numerous operational positions spanning sales leadership, sales strategy/operations, client services, customer marketing, analytics, business management, and retail management functional areas.

His executive leadership roles as Chief Client Officer, President of Sales, President of Strategic Channels, and EVP Business Development are a reflection of his responsibility for the total client experience and sales execution across all Acosta lines of business. Over the years, Darian has consistently led by example in exhibiting a steadfast commitment to operating according to the company's core values, engaging associates, building deep and trusting client relationships, and ensuring Acosta's operating model remains sound so that the company can deliver continued growth.

"Within every sales channel and virtually every retail environment, Acosta leverages its near-century of experience, to influence more sales for more clients than any other company."