Today, I am continuing our 2025 Shopper Marketing Agency Landscape series by featuring Advantage Marketing Partners (AMP) — a dynamic, agile team that brought serious energy to the conversation. Unlike a typical one-on-one interview, AMP showed up as a crew. Watching them bounce ideas around, pass the mic, and build on each other’s insights made the experience richer, more multifaceted — and honestly, just fun. They’re not just colleagues, but collaborators in the truest sense.
In an increasingly fragmented retail landscape, Advantage Marketing Partners offers true end-to-end solutions through its “One House” model consisting of Advantage Unified Commerce (AUC) and Amp Agency. This team doesn’t just activate commerce—they unify it. As part of the broader Advantage Solutions ecosystem, Advantage Marketing Partners sits at the intersection of creative, analytics, field expertise, media, and retail intelligence.
I sat down with Christi Geary, Kathryn Longhurst, Jessica Ruscito, Kelly Ravestijn, and Bilal Janjua — leaders across AMP’s core functions — to understand what makes this agency uniquely suited to serve modern CPG brands.
AMP’s leadership team is composed of Christi Geary (Head/GM), Kathryn Longhurst (SVP Ecommerce & Marketing), Doug Grumet (SVP Media, Intelligence & Innovation), Dino de Leon (SVP Executive Creative Director), Lisa Hurst (SVP Marketing & Strategy), Kelly Ravestijn (SVP Strategy & Intelligence), Will Clarke (SVP Business Development), Jen Gruber (SVP Commerce Analytics), Jessica Ruscito (SVP Media), Amauri Campos (SVP Amazon), and Danielle White (VP Project Management)
Agency Identity + Focus
Advantage Marketing Partners (AMP) is the marketing services arm of Advantage Solutions, a powerhouse with roots in brokerage, sales, DTC, and supply chain. AMP represents a consolidation of 10 legacy agencies — including AUC, amp agency, Upshot, IN Marketing, Edge, eShopportunity and others — into a single, unified model.
Their mission?
💬 “We exist to help brands grow by unifying brand love and buyer behavior.” — Christi Geary
AMP is reimagining shopper marketing not as a tactical, transactional function, but as a creative, strategic engine that connects consumers to brands through a combination of data, behavioral science, and retail execution.
Their ideal client? Mid-size challenger brands ready to scale omnichannel growth, especially those looking to break down silos between sales and marketing, unify budgets, and rethink how commerce can influence brand equity.
Team + Talent
AMP’s team is built to reflect the complexity of modern commerce, combining retail specialists, strategists, media buyers, behavioral economists, creatives, and analysts under one roof.
💬 “We hire for curiosity and collaboration. Hard skills can be taught — but the pace of this industry requires people who are passionate about the space and obsessed with learning.” — Kathryn Longhurst
A key differentiator is their deep field presence and client-embedded roles, which allow them to act as translators between fragmented client teams. AMP often sits between brand and sales teams, ensuring alignment on everything from pricing and promotions to tentpole activation planning.
Process + Workflow
AMP’s process isn’t linear — it’s modular, collaborative, and deeply informed by data. Their planning always begins with business alignment and retail assessments to define goals and competitive threats.
The lifecycle looks like this:
- Business Alignment & Briefing – Collaborate with client stakeholders to define the “why” and “what.”
- Retail Assessment & Opportunity Mapping – Led by Jen Gruber and Bilal Janjua’s analytics team, identifying the “where.”
- Behavioral Strategy & Audience Segmentation – Kelly Ravestijn’s team defines the “who” and “why” with human-centric insight.
- Media + Creative Planning – Executed iteratively, not sequentially, by Jessica Ruscito’s team in close sync with creative.
- Execution & Optimization – Channel-specific buying paired with constant feedback loops.
- Post-Campaign Measurement & Strategic Handoff – Results that ladder up to brand goals.
💬 “We don’t start or finish without analytics and strategy anchoring the work.” — Christi Geary
Measurement + Accountability
At AMP, measurement starts before a dollar is spent. The team builds custom KPIs aligned to each retailer’s role in the ecosystem, while layering on syndicated data and retailer insights.
💬 “It’s not just about ROAS. It’s about context: What were we trying to achieve, and how does that tie into the client’s broader business goals?” — Bilal Janjua
They benchmark performance across clients, categories, and campaigns using their proprietary Alchemy™ platform, a single source of truth for campaign intelligence, MMM inputs, and retail-specific ROI.
Tech + Data
AMP’s tech stack is flexible but powerful. It integrates seamlessly with client systems (TPM, CDP, PIM) while bringing its own Alchemy™ platform to centralize insights, reporting, and modeling.
💬 “Every agency claims to have dashboards. What makes the difference is the people who translate that data into go-to-market action.” — Christi Geary
In addition, AMP has embraced AI for media optimization and discovery, segmentation, and creative development support. Their strategic team uses AI for pattern recognition and behavioral mapping during early planning phases.
Trends + Evolution
1. Retail Media’s Full-Funnel Potential
AMP is seeing retail media move far beyond its roots in paid search and trade partnerships. Today, it’s powering full-funnel strategies — influencing everything from brand storytelling to point-of-sale tactics.
💬 “Retail media isn’t just a media buy anymore — it’s a strategic lens through which we’re rethinking brand investment, measurement, and engagement across the entire path to purchase.” — Jessica Ruscito
With data-rich environments and outcome-based targeting, retail media now demands creative agility, tailored messaging by platform, and real-time optimization — a shift that has brought media, creative, and shopper teams closer than ever.
2. Blurring Lines Between Brand and Commerce
The days of siloed “brand marketing” and “shopper activation” are numbered. AMP sees a future where these are not competing disciplines, but two halves of a connected consumer experience.
💬 “Every moment is a commerce moment. Whether someone is streaming a show or shopping on Instacart, brands must deliver value, relevance, and a reason to act.” — Kelly Ravestijn
This trend is forcing marketers to stop treating shopper marketing as tactical and instead treat it as a strategic layer of the brand experience — measurable, personal, and conversion-oriented.
3. Psychological Shifts in Shopper Behavior
Today’s shoppers live in a paradox: they’re more price sensitive than ever, yet emotionally loyal to brands that make them feel seen and supported. AMP calls this the “value vs. values” tension, and it’s reshaping how campaigns are built.
💬 “It’s not enough to just discount. Brands have to stand for something and connect emotionally, while also delivering undeniable utility.” — Kelly Ravestijn
This is where AMP’s behavioral science and Nudgenomics™ approach come in. This powerful strategic framework helps brands craft micro-interventions that align with how shoppers actually make decisions in real-time, high-pressure retail environments.
Advice to Clients
What are the most successful client relationships AMP has? Ones that treat the agency like an extension of their internal team. It’s not just about briefs and check-ins — it’s about open collaboration, shared goals, and real-time dialogue.
To future-proof your shopper or commerce function, AMP recommends:
1. Unify your reward systems across brand, sales, and commerce.
If your internal teams are incentivized in different directions, your agency partners will feel it, and so will your results. AMP believes alignment begins with accountability. When brand and sales are measured against shared KPIs, planning holistically and moving with purpose is easier.
2. Invest in flexible planning models and rapid decision-making.
The old annual planning cycle can’t keep up with today’s real-time retail environment. AMP encourages clients to embrace agile frameworks that allow for mid-course corrections, quick testing, and timely activation, without waiting for perfect conditions.
3. Get comfortable with co-creation, iteration, and test-and-learn cycles.
Perfection is the enemy of progress. AMP’s most forward-thinking clients bring the agency in early, leave room for iteration, and understand that some of the best insights come from in-market learning. Trusting the process — not just the plan — is key.
💬 “There’s no longer business as usual. Speed and intentionality win.” — Christi Geary
Final Word
AMP’s competitive edge comes down to four core strengths:
1. Unification
AMP doesn’t just talk about integration—they live it. Their teams sit at the intersection of sales and marketing, brand and commerce, digital and in-store, and act as the connective tissue that many client organizations lack.
Whether they’re embedding with the brand team or aligning pricing strategy with in-market activation, AMP is built to break down silos that slow growth.
💬 As Christi Geary put it: “Brands who start to recognize that they have to get rid of this siloed approach... are the ones who are going to make it happen.”
2. Retail Expertise
Unlike many agencies that treat retailers as channels, AMP treats them as strategic collaborators. Their field-based talent model gives them unparalleled insight into how each retailer operates — from promotional calendars to store-level execution.
They bring retail nuance to everything they do, ensuring that shopper activations are not just creative, but channel-relevant and retailer-respected.
Their close ties with Advantage Solutions let them activate with the same intimacy as a sales team — but with a creative agency mindset.
3. Behavioral Strategy
At the heart of AMP’s strategic planning is Nudgenomics™, its proprietary strategic framework rooted in behavioral science. Led by Kelly Ravestijn’s team, Nudgenomics™ blends data, psychology, and cultural insight to understand not just what shoppers are doing, but why.
💬 “In a world of troves and troves of data, the most important thing is to understand the humanity behind it.” — Kelly Ravestijn
By layering behavioral patterns over retail analytics, AMP ensures every tactic is grounded in actual human decision-making, not just demographic assumptions.
4. Commerce-First Creativity
Shopper campaigns aren’t afterthoughts at AMP — they’re the main stage. Their award-winning creative team approaches retail and commerce as places to build brand love, not just move units.
💬 “Our creative team believes commerce creative is just as sexy as brand TV.” — Christi Geary
That mindset turns everyday retail moments into powerful brand-building opportunities, with storytelling that drives emotion and action.
Want to learn more about how Advantage Marketing Partners can help unify your brand’s journey from awareness to action? Contact the team at advantageunifiedcommerce.com or connect with Christi Geary and Kathryn Longhurst on LinkedIn.
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