[00:00:02] Intro: Welcome to Time for a Reset by Overline, recorded live at the Nectar three sixty retail media summit during the Cannes Lions two thousand and twenty five in partnership with Nectar three sixty. In this special episode, we sit down with senior marketers from global brands and retail leaders to explore the biggest questions shaping modern marketing and the retail media landscape From balancing brand and performance to rethinking retail partnerships and exploring the role of retail media in a fragmented, full funnel world, this is the conversation happening behind the scenes at Cannes Lions two thousand and twenty five.
[00:00:43] Paul Frampton-Calero: So we’re back with another guest. Welcome Charlotte Murphy, head of retail media for The UK for Unilever at the Nectar Retail Media Summit where I think you’ve already been on stage, haven’t you, Charlotte, talking about retail media? So we’ll go deep into some of the subjects she’s probably already talked about. So maybe start with how are you seeing across full funnel brand performance retail media? How are you seeing that relationship and the importance of retail media changing, and how is that changing how you work across the many parts of Unilever that, I guess, connect with a lot of different retailers?
Charlotte Murphy: Yeah. I mean, that’s a brilliant question. I think we’ve seen retail media go on a real journey the last few years. Mhmm. It’s really evolved, and the the gap has closed between creativity and short term performance sales focused.
[00:01:28] Paul Frampton-Calero: Yeah.
[00:01:28] Charlotte Murphy: And that’s made us really rethink around how do we plan for retail media, set up for retail media. We see retail media not just as a performance channel, but as an ecosystem that allows us to build brands and drive brand equity. And we’ve been on a journey to embed retail media into our media planning process so that we can really ensure that we are showing up to our consumer where they are in that path of purchase. Mhmm.
[00:01:57] Paul Frampton-Calero: So it sounds like retail media is less of a even though you’re a SME, I suppose, in that area, you’re joining it up with how planning has worked across all of the other channels and making sure that it plays the right role alongside more brand led channels or other non retail media digital channels.
[00:02:13] Charlotte Murphy Exactly that. So retail media, because it has gone full funnel, as he obviously
[00:02:18] Kristen Nolte: say True.
[00:02:19] Nick King: Planning for it requires a new skill set. And I always say retail media demands a new level of collaboration to plan across all the different areas that retail media can deliver growth for. So my team, we are responsible for looking after retail media. We integrate retail media into brand plans Mhmm. Working very closely with all of our brands to understand the brand jobs to be done and making sure that the retail media plan is fit for purpose to achieve those goals. Our marketing strategy at Unilever is all around driving desire at scale for our brands, and retail media can, of course, be the perfect platform for this. So how we integrate
[00:02:59] Fiona Davis: is
[00:02:59] Nick King: key, and how we really break through with creativity that connects with our our consumers
[00:03:06] Mario Mijares: is gonna set us apart.
[00:03:07] Charlotte Murphy: So I wanna dig a little bit deeper on that, Charlotte, because I think it’s super interesting, and we touched on it just before we started recording that Unilever’s in the experience business and, like, how do you create interesting omnichannel experiences that bring in new to category, but also frequency, etcetera. So connecting the dots is obviously an important element, but yet in store shopper, digital retail media, digital at home, it’s all been quite fragmented today, and you’re clearly trying to think about it from a joined up perspective. So how do you encourage the business to strategically think of retail media, which Yeah.
[00:03:38] Angela Myers: Sometimes is a bit
[00:03:39] Charlotte Murphy: of an awkward name because it suggests it’s just this media thing as opposed to data driven ability to plug into the consumer journey.
[00:03:46] Nick King: Yeah. Exactly. And it is a journey. I think every brand’s on the journey of how do we set up for retail media. I often think it’s not really about where is it structured. It’s more around a set of shared principles, and we make sure we’re always thinking around the omnichannel experience, putting the consumer experience right at the heart of what we plan and how we plan. And those principles that go across all the teams at Unilever make sure that we are thinking about retail media because we’re not suddenly just talking to thinking about that consumer experience once they get to a store or once they go on a retailer’s website. We need to be thinking full funnel, full path to purchase
[00:04:21] Charlotte Murphy: What are all those
[00:04:22] Nick King: touchpoints? Exactly.
[00:04:22] Mario Mijares: What are
[00:04:23] Nick King: all those touchpoints, and how do we show up with content that’s relevant for each of those platforms that connect to each consumer? Yeah.
[00:04:30] Charlotte Murphy: No. No. I think that’s a really refreshing way to think about it. Take it away from bottom of the funnel to the data. Any data set helps you decide when to build a touchpoint and how to build it. Yeah. I think often in the digital world, we’ve used data as a as a means to drive better efficiency or effectiveness. And, of course, it does do that. And you touched on this already, but how is that changing the nature of the partnerships that you’re building with retail and the role of your team in those conversations versus, I guess, what would have historically been sales, merchandising, shopper?
[00:05:00] Nick King: Retail media all starts a partnership. It’s aligning on shared goals, having that deep understanding of what matters to our consumers, and using that foundation to build partnerships in retail media. Retail media isn’t just about buying ad space. It’s about co creating experiences that deliver that excitement across that whole path of purchase. I know I keep saying it, but it’s so important that we move away from any sort of channel specific planning, and we really do think multichannel for how we bring ideas to life across a multichannel approach. So, yeah, I think it all starts with partnership, definitely. And we work really closely with our our retailers to make sure we have building experiences in collaboration with them.
[00:05:42] Charlotte Murphy: Right. And I guess that is necessitating a slightly different way of collaborating because in the past, a lot of these areas have been quite siloed. And Yeah. Partnership by definition means there is value for both sides. So have you guys started to show up in different ways to kinda just change what was originally a very clearly buyer seller relationship to one that has actually got things moving back away?
[00:06:04] Nick King: Yeah. It’s a great question because it’s it has to evolve to meet the new media landscape that we’re now in. And I always say this, and I’ll continue to keep saying it, that retail media demands a new level of collaboration.
[00:06:17] Charlotte Murphy: Right.
[00:06:17] Nick King: It means that we are meeting internally and externally with people in a room that may have never been in a room before. Right. So we can really plan and be future thinking on how we plan for retail media.
[00:06:29] Ben Richardson: Mhmm.
[00:06:29] Nick King: And that does mean stepping outside of how you may have done things a few years ago with buyers and how that works with planning media, but it’s completely changing. What I would say at Unilever is that all of our teams, our commercial teams, are upskilled on retail media because it’s important that they’re also talking to their team’s equivalents at the retailers. So it’s definitely a journey that we’re on, but we are all on a journey to upskill. It’s a crucial part of our relationship with retailers, and it’s even more crucial in terms of how we speak and cut through to connect with our
[00:07:02] Rob Edwards: I think
[00:07:03] Charlotte Murphy: that’s a brilliant point. And I think it’s not one that gets talked about quite as much. Yeah. Someone talks about partnership and changing the JBB process. But I think what you hit on there, like, starting different kind of conversations, educating and upskilling on both sides so that you’ve got common language and common shared goals to create shared value because all of those teams are all trying to create mutual value. But sometimes, I think in the past, maybe, the way to it might have fallen on the buyers rather than the sellers, but that relationship has clearly evolved in the way that you’re thinking about playing the role as a educator and an influencer in a shifting landscape as much as the practitioner knowledge. And retail media, I think, is a really great point.
[00:07:42] Nick King: Yeah. We need people who understand media to be talking about retail media.
[00:07:46] Rob Edwards: Right.
[00:07:47] Nick King: And that’s why it’s really important that we upskill the wider teams and that we have people in a room that maybe have never worked together so we can actually be helping different areas of the business put the best plans forward for all of our brands. Yeah. And that might be bringing together different agencies that have never spoken to each other before. We’re on a journey to integrate our agency more into retailers’ agencies and how we work together and collaborate.
[00:08:10] Charlotte Murphy: There’s more people in the room every meeting.
[00:08:12] Nick King: Sometimes there is a lot of people. Actually, sometimes you only need that to happen once to kick off the discussion. Right.
[00:08:18] Charlotte Murphy: Make people feel involved. And then
[00:08:19] Nick King: Everyone has something valuable to add.
[00:08:21] Catalina Salazar: That’s the thing.
[00:08:22] Nick King: Because you’re not gonna find someone that has the answers to everything. So sometimes you need to hang everyone together to begin with, and then we we can all understand what we’re trying to do. And then that really sets us up well for Right. Brilliant cut through retail media Yeah. Strategy.
[00:08:36] Charlotte Murphy: I love that. It reminds me, early on in my career, I worked in traditional media and then very early moved into digital, and I just saw two different groups. I mean, now there are, like, 30 different groups of people. Like, if you’re a paid social person, retail media, web development, brand, everyone talks different languages. And I think retail media leaders like yourself actually are rearchitecting, like, a translation role. Like, it’s Yeah. Of course, you’ve got the knowledge and you but, actually, a lot of the time, I think you’re just translating and connecting the dots so that everybody can see where the opportunity is.
[00:09:04] Nick King: Yeah. I think that’s why retail media, we often refer to it as a channel, but it is an ecosystem. But there’s so many different areas you can tap into, whether it’s insights, activation, measurement. Yeah. There’s so many areas. It’s so broad, and so many people across the business can benefit from different areas of that ecosystem. Right. So, again, it’s making sure that you say it’s highlighting what those are in retail media and how they’re changing because the innovations in retail media are changing constantly. It’s such an exciting space.
[00:09:33] Charlotte Murphy: Yeah. And make it accessible to your point.
[00:09:35] Angela Myers: Like, because accessible. If it’s it’s scary,
[00:09:37] Charlotte Murphy: just human nature behavior is that you’re a bit fearful. This seems like the new stuff, and this is the old stuff, and I’m over here. Whereas, actually, the smart people are the ones that realize that they can bridge. Yeah. Yeah. So last question, Charlotte, before we wrap up was, is there anything else that you’ve heard or seen in cam where you’re like, uh, gonna take that back to the team? We need to focus more on that.
[00:09:55] Nick King: Oh, good question. I’ve seen there’s been so many great things at Cannes. We just heard from Kate at the Nectar event, and she spoke about the future is really about how do we bring brand ideas to life through every channel. I think that’s really important that we continue to think about that and include retail media in that.
[00:10:13] Charlotte Murphy: Right.
[00:10:13] Nick King: So fully integrating retail media to bring that creative experience to life. Retail media has become a canvas for creativity, and the bar just keeps getting set higher and higher every year for creativity. So I think how we bring those ideas closer together throughout that whole ecosystem of the shopper experience that you’re gonna go on is gonna be really great.
[00:10:34] Charlotte Murphy: I like that. To me I mean, I’ve said this before, but I think retail media was almost becoming a pathfinder for all media to kinda show that, actually, if you use data intelligently across the whole consumer journey, you can build more integrated, joined up touchpoints rather than all this siloed behavior. Retail media, I think, by definition, because you have the in store element
[00:10:52] Rob Edwards: Yes.
[00:10:53] Charlotte Murphy: It’s a necessity because so much is bought still in store. Even though ecommerce is rising, you have to join the door.
[00:10:58] Nick King: Definitely. And it’s so important. We’ve done the studies at Unilever that show just how important it is to be planning on-site, off-site, and in store holistically. And that often we come back to as a team as well because, again, the consumer isn’t just in one area. We are consumers, and we are everywhere, so we need to be planning for everywhere.
[00:11:17] Charlotte Murphy: Yeah. Love it. Thank you, Charlotte. I really appreciate you making the time. It was a great conversation.
[00:11:21] Nick King: Thanks very much.
[00:11:23] Liz Caselli-Mechael: I’m delighted to be joined by Kristen Nolte from Dell. It’s a pleasure to have you here.
[00:11:27] Kristen Nolte: I’m excited to be here. Thanks, Nick.
[00:11:29] Liz Caselli-Mechael: Kristen, could you just give us a little intro into yourself and what you do at Dell?
[00:11:34] Kristen Nolte: I am the SVP of media at Dell, and I run everything between b to b to b to c to what is becoming everything and ubiquitous with everything media.
[00:11:47] Liz Caselli-Mechael: Great. So given that you run everything, in a world where you’ve got to justify every marketing dollar, how are you balancing that long term brand building with short term performance?
[00:11:59] Kristen Nolte: It’s been a big evolution for us, to be honest. We started with, as most people, kind of what can you measure. So last click analysis, learning how to work bidding platforms with ROAS, etcetera. And then we got into complex media mix models, but we haven’t really known how to bring the two together in a more cohesive way. So the last click is awesome. You can manage it in real time. It’s hourly. Media mixes are longer, and they take longer to take hold, but they’re probably more accurate in terms of your total upside. So our latest and greatest has been using the media mix as really our platform for determining how our dollars are spent in the planning phases, but then we use more transactional KPIs as we think about the journey of the customer. So not just last click revenue, but but things like engagement, and are we starting to see people consent to having relationships with us? Are they providing their email address? Are we seeing engagement scores in digital video? Are they watching the whole entire episode, etcetera? So it’s kind of a new frontier of measurement framework for us, but it’s working.
[00:13:10] Liz Caselli-Mechael: Fantastic. And then within that new frontier, where’s retail media fitting for you as a business?
[00:13:16] Kristen Nolte: Yeah. So retail’s part of our omnichannel. It’s part of our journey. So we actually get a lot of insights from our retail partners first and foremost, even before we see some of that on our own. If you think about it, retail provides the ultimate choice. Right? They’ve got the comparisons. They have all the things when people are starting that early journey, whether they’re doing it in Amazon or they’re going to a brick and mortar store or however they’re handling that, and they get that early phase. They get that first touch of the customer who’s saying, I don’t know what I want yet. I just know I need something. So we take a lot of those insights. We work hand in hand across that customer journey, and our job is to take that insight. And wherever the customer goes next, we’re ready with as much insight as we possibly can have.
[00:14:02] Liz Caselli-Mechael: You touched on customer journey there, and I think it feels like a massive cliche to say that things are changing in marketing. But it does feel like the customer journey is more fragmented than ever. People are using things like perplexity. But I just wondered how, at Dell, you’re thinking about that customer journey and what it means to you and your relationship with your customers.
[00:14:23] Kristen Nolte: It’s funny. We all I think when I went to school anyway, not all of us. I won’t claim that you’re my age tech. But it was very funnel ish. Like, we always talked about the funnel. There’s like, oh, you do this, then this this, then this this, and we drill people down. And then there was, like, this linear journey, right, that customers would take. Oh, well, it’s it’s not exactly a funnel. It’s it’s phases of education throughout a more linear process. And now it’s just it’s like a spider web. People are are going into certain spaces. They’re coming out of certain spaces. There’s things that we haven’t known how to track yet. There’s things like the LLMs that are not clickable media. So people are asking questions and having conversations way before they even land on our website or go to a retail store or go to Amazon or however they’re gonna make that ultimate purchase. So those signals that we used to capture along the way, like, that were very distinct to our brand or our store inside of wherever it was, a lot of that research happens well before they enter any of those domains. And then they may come back out, but it’s like the whole thought process of what we do with them has also evolved. And knowing that, hey. It’s okay to get them in a platform, for example. Like, we used to measure, for example, social clicks from a social platform to our website. Now it’s like people aren’t leaving the social platform. Like, they’re even transacting inside of those social platforms. So it’s it’s a whole new way of thinking about performance and what that means and looking for those early signals that you’re not gonna see coming directly to you anymore.
[00:15:55] Liz Caselli-Mechael: Yeah. And in that world, the retailers are becoming powerful media owners. How are you starting to think about or not starting. How are you continuing to think about retailers and a role within that whole process?
[00:16:06] Kristen Nolte: Everyone who touches a customer right now is considered a partner. Right? It’s in some way, shape, or form, and there’s a reason why these retail media partnerships are emerging. It’s because they’re owning the impressions. They’re owning the conversation. They’re also, in some cases, managing through what pops in these LLMs and what pops in SEO today. They, again, have the ultimate customer dynamic of the upper part of the conversation. And so it’s been a really awesome evolution for us because choice is great. Like, we have lots of opportunities to optimize our media plans, and that’s just another weapon in the arsenal.
[00:16:45] Liz Caselli-Mechael: Yeah. Another opportunity to Yeah. Talk to people. You’ve been at Cannes for sort of three or four days now. I’d love to just get a little bit of the insight from your perspective about what’s important and how you’re seeing the conversations that are happening here.
[00:16:58] Kristen Nolte: Beyond, like, the rose bottles that I’ve learned. Exactly. Some really interesting conversations about marketers becoming customer experience officers, which I find incredibly insightful because it’s going back to the experience you offer your brand and the word-of-mouth that you get. Now word-of-mouth now comes through digital channels and communities and ways that people interact with your brand and about your brand, but it kinda gets back to some really core values around, hey. Your customer experience actually drives what you do. And popping in those things are becoming ever important to people actually considering your brand and getting whatever traffic that you might see to your website or to your stores or wherever you’re selling your product because that’s what’s showing up. And it kind of is just a reminder of the basics. And then the other piece is just, honestly, the world of AgenTek and what these agents will do for us in taking some of the more operational constraints off of us, and and that’s really how I see it. We’ve been constrained by our own businesses. We’ve been trying to do personalization at scale for quite some time, and we haven’t been unsuccessful at doing so. We’ve tried to be in all markets and all languages, and that’s very difficult unless you throw people at the problem. And now the opportunity has really opened up for us. So we’re considering which new locations will we actually start putting more marketing dollars into. It’s just fundamentally changing that and learning more about just how people are already using agents in what they do. It’s a obviously new frontier for us all, but it’s gonna unlock so many opportunities as we go forward. So excited to see where that goes.
[00:18:43] Liz Caselli-Mechael: Exciting times. Kristen, thank you so much for joining us on Time for a Reset. Have a wonderful rest of the week.
[00:18:48] Fiona Davis: Awesome. Thanks, Nick. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Time for a Reset special edition in Cannes. I’m here with Mario from seven eleven. Welcome, Mario. Welcome back to the podcast with AdMob on call.
[00:18:59] Mario Mijares: Me. It’s great being here.
[00:19:00] Fiona Davis: Yeah. And we’ve got a lot of exciting stuff happening today at the Nekta three sixty activation here at the Carlton, and we’re running the podcast throughout the day. So I’ve got Mario as our first guest today, which is fantastic. We’re gonna get started. Mario, you could just give the audience a little bit of background on what you do at seven Eleven.
[00:19:16] Mario Mijares: Yeah. Hi. I work for seven Eleven convenience stores. We focus in North America. My team manages everything having to do with customer data, loyalty, monetization, retail media.
[00:19:27] Fiona Davis: Awesome. Right. We’re gonna dive straight in. So first question of the day for you, Mario, value creation. What’s the biggest opportunity in retail media today on creating more value for brands and enhancing the shopper experience? And how do you see retail media evolving over the next eighteen months?
[00:19:42] Mario Mijares: I think the problem we have is that there’s still this generic perception of retail media is one thing, and it isn’t. Right? If you think about it, retail media has the ability to be the absolute golden product that we’ve always been looking for. Influence the consumer at the point of purchase Yeah. Before they make a decision. Right? But the way it emerged and the way that a lot of the teams that are buying retail media are set up for is they’re trying to buy the same product across all retailers. Performance ads on first party websites. That works really well for a mass merchant, right, for an online merchant. I work at a convenience store. There’s not a lot of people that go to our website to figure out if we sell chips or energy drinks. But I saw this meme. It was really good. The angry girlfriend meme where the guy is looking at behind the girl in the red dress, that’s 1% of sales, 95% of the ad spend, which is online, and the girlfriend is 85% of the sales, which are in store and is getting 5% of the media budget. I think that’s because of where it started. And, generally, the brand teams that I talk to are very focused on buying a certain product. Yeah. And we don’t have that product. We don’t have a big website. When we talk about in store, then they move us to a shopper marketing team who wants to do activations. So, okay, that’s great. We’ll do activations. But I think if we really wanna add value, what we need to do is change the way that the brands work with the retailer to really capture the consumer at the point of purchase before they make a decision. And you need to treat the retailers different because everybody has something that’s special about them. Like, somebody who’s buying sports gear in a sporting store is gonna be very different than somebody that’s buying chips in a convenience store. And so it’s gonna be difficult because before, I used to be able to go talk to my media agency, just buy media, run a campaign, and that was it. And now I need to sit with the big box. I need to sit with the supermarket. I need to sit with the convenience store. I need to so it it’s quite complicated for the brand. So it’s not an easy way. So long way of saying, traditionally, the way we’ve done joint business planning between the retailers and the brands has to change, and we need to integrate marketing budgets into that. And how do we not only sell you product and buy ad space, but we place the products in there and activate the consumer in a meaningful way. Yeah. I don’t know how to do that.
[00:22:12] Rob Edwards: Yeah. But that’s what
[00:22:13] Mario Mijares: we need to do.
[00:22:14] Fiona Davis: So it’s a fair answer to a tough question. In terms of the strategic role of retail media, so it’s traditionally been seen as a performance channel, but you’re now starting to see brands wanting to evolve that into something a little bit more strategic. How do you think about that within the seven Eleven organization?
[00:22:31] Mario Mijares: The way that a lot of media had been bought for years and years and years was because that’s where the fish were. You used to buy aggregated audiences. That moved from buying aggregated audiences to targeted audiences online. But there really was not a lot of signal, at least for the products we sell. There was not a lot of signal online because very few people search, where can I buy cookies? Where can I buy a soda? There really was never a signal for that. But that’s the way we bought media. I’ve seen very, very few brands that have gotten really good at using retailer data to understand the consumer and to change their marketing and tailor their marketing to how the consumer is behaving those particular stores. We’re very good at that as retailers because that’s what we do. Like, we’ve been looking at data forever. When I have chats with brands and I tell them how I segment the consumers, because that’s the way I see them shopping. Yeah. But that doesn’t really fit with our personas. We don’t use personas. We had a new guy come into seven eleven, big marketing background, and he came and asked me, well, Mario, why are our personas? I was like, we don’t have any. What do you mean? So how do you sell? Like, who’s the buyer? I said, well, what are you trying sell? Because I don’t care if somebody is male, female, a b socio, race. Are they buying coffee? Are they not buying coffee? What is the frequency with which they buy coffee? Are they buying energy drinks? Are they loyal to one brand of energy drink or they switch between brands? That’s what I care about. Right? So the targeting and the messaging is gonna be based on that. Maybe I’ll vary the creative a little bit if it’s male, female, or a b social, but what I start with is the retail behavior. I don’t think that a lot of brands are using that. Right? It’s not something they’ve traditionally done. And the teams that generally we have meeting with the retailers are not the data geeks. Right? It’s a shopper marketing team. And when I start going through the richness of what we have with the shopper marketing team, either they go like a deer in headlights. Oh my god. Oh, really? What are you talking about? That sounds really complicated. Can we just talk about an aggregated audience? Or they go off the deep end. Oh, I would like to target microtargeting. And and so, again, I think it is the structure of the relationship with the teams and how the brands are working with the retailers is based on a model that is no longer relevant.
[00:24:53] Fiona Davis: Yeah. That’s super interesting, especially in a world where they’re trying to hyper target people. And that may work in a pure digital environment, but when you’re in in store and you’re trying to influence the transaction, especially in yours where it’s such a short time span Correct. It’s a very different operation.
[00:25:07] Mario Mijares: For example, the way we run our retail media is we break it in three bits. We do have performance units on our seven hour network because we do do a lot of delivery. So we have that. It’s a small part of it. We take our loyalty data, which pretty big. We have over a 100,000,000 registered members. We take that. We connect it to all the ad tech and all the digital display, social. What we use that for is top of the funnel. Like, creating the awareness of the product is here. This energy drink brand has a new flavor. Great. Once we get to the store, our two primary channels are the gasoline pump screen, and in store, it’s the radio. That execution is purely bottom of the funnel, not quite a hard sell, but it’s like, close the deal. Close the sale. There’s no storytelling. So brands, as they get better at working with us, they understand that distinction. Yeah. But when they initially come in, they come in with their preconceived notions and ideas, a, oh, I hear you have in store radio. I wanna run this commercial because it works really well in morning drive. It’s like, yeah. Morning drive. You’re in a car, in a traffic jam. You can listen to a thirty second you can’t do it in the store. You you will lose the consumer.
[00:26:16] Fiona Davis: Yeah. Got it. And then also, Moe, like, you do a lot of innovation work in your stores with the innovation hubs. Correct. That’s a very different thing for a brand, being able to do live testing, which is much more on the brand side of marketing, trying to get something new into market. Can you talk a little bit about that?
[00:26:32] Mario Mijares: The way we look at retail media is not just selling advertising. So for us, it’s the whole of all of our data. We make all of our transactional loyalty data available in a insights platform called c shopper. You can find opportunities in there. So I’ll give you an example. You’re an energy drink brand. You’re looking in there, and you realize that 5% of the people that were drinking your energy drink now are drinking kombucha. Okay. That’s a good finding, but what the heck? Why? Yeah. Now you have an opportunity. No. Don’t know what to do about it. We built something called the BrainFreeze Collective. It’s our customer panel where you can do research. We have over 300,000 customers that have signed up where we can do any qualitative quantitative research. It’s tied to the c shopper, so you can drag that 5% of customers that customers that were drinking your energy drink, drag them into the BrainFreeze Collective, and do research with that group of people. You were buying my energy drink. Now you drink kombucha.
[00:27:25] Liz Caselli-Mechael: That Tell me
[00:27:25] Mario Mijares: what make a lot of sense. Like, why? They explain to you, you come up with some hey. What if we come up with, uh, kombucha energy drink? Like, probiotics and all that. I was like, oh, yeah. I I would totally buy that. Okay. Plausible.
[00:27:38] Fiona Davis: Mhmm.
[00:27:39] Mario Mijares: Plausible product launch, but it’s risky launching a product. Right? We have this beta test, which is a lab store, cameras everywhere. What we could do is, hey, energy drink company. Let’s make a small run, 200 cans. We will merchandise it in that store. It’ll look like a real product on the shelves. These are real stores, real consumers. They don’t know it’s an experiment.
[00:27:58] Rob Edwards: Mhmm.
[00:27:58] Mario Mijares: Right? Cameras everywhere. And what we can do is we can see who buys the product, who puts it back down, how many people look at it. The cameras can track people. So the guy with the red t shirt, this is what he did. As soon as the guy with the red t shirt gets to the checkout, the date, time stamp, and the camera, I can marry that to the all the loyalty data, and I now know the guy with the red t shirt, this is his purchasing history for the last five years. Yeah. So we do that and we figure out, yes, this product is gonna work, is gonna be accretive. There is is or isn’t gonna be cannibalization. It’s gonna bring new people to the market, new people to the brand. Great. Let’s launch it. So then we agreed to launch the product as an exclusive in 07/11. We launch it with a loyalty offer, shopper marketing, and then use retail media to tell the world, and then we close the loop and do full attribution on that. So our goal with that is not just selling ads. We want to position seven eleven as the place for innovation, the fastest, cheapest, easiest, less risky place to innovate. The only thing we ask for is give us an exclusive. Yeah. Right? Because we want seven eleven to be the place where all the new cool stuff comes out of.
[00:29:03] Fiona Davis: Comes out. And that’s way beyond just performance marketing, obviously, for a Correct.
[00:29:07] Mario Mijares: And so for us, that’s our vision for retail media.
[00:29:09] Catalina Salazar: Yeah.
[00:29:09] Mario Mijares: Right? It’s more than just give me money. I’ll put an adze, and I’ll sort of tell you if it did well or not.
[00:29:14] Fiona Davis: If it worked. Yeah. In terms of partnering with brands, what are some of the obvious misconceptions? You talked a little bit about that earlier, but what are some of the misconceptions they have about retail media in general?
[00:29:24] Mario Mijares: I think it all goes back to the same thing I thought, that it’s all the same, that it’s all performance media, that it’s a product you buy. You take an IO and you’re working for me. And it shouldn’t be that way. We both share the consumer.
[00:29:38] Fiona Davis: Yeah. It’s inherently more of a partnership. Right? Because you’re both striving towards the same goal, getting somebody to buy a product. Correct. In your case, you have multiple brands whether you want them to buy the product for that brand. It’s I wanna know what’s working, what’s not working, and then you help me sell more product effectively.
[00:29:55] Mario Mijares: Yeah. We don’t want any mediocre products in our stores. You don’t want to have your product be mediocre. Right? So we rely on all your brand marketing, all your product knowledge, all all your product development. You rely on our ability to get the product on the shelves, have it in stock, but also tell the consumer about it. New products often fail because nobody knew there was a new product. Especially in our stores, consumers are in autopilot. They go in, beeline straight to the cooler. They know I like the green can. Open up the green can. Was there another color? Uh, I just I like the green one. Maybe if they knew, there was something else. Hey. This is like the green one, but it has probiotics. Oh, that would be cool. Maybe I should try that. It’s a joint responsibility. We’re not treating it as a joint responsibility yet.
[00:30:45] Fiona Davis: Okay. So So that’s the area to grow into for the next twelve to eighteen months then?
[00:30:49] Mario Mijares: I think so. But the hard thing for everybody is, let’s take the big brands we work with, like Red Bull, Monster, Coke, Pepsi, KDP. They’re not gonna be able to do that with 50 retailers. So they’re gonna have to figure out, and we’re figuring out how do seven eleven becomes one of the key partners for them.
[00:31:08] Liz Caselli-Mechael: Yeah. And then they
[00:31:09] Mario Mijares: need to figure out who are the retailers who really want me to grow my business. Those partnerships then are gonna resonate. Now what happens to all the smaller retail and the long tail of retail medias? We don’t know.
[00:31:22] Fiona Davis: Yeah. Okay. So last question of the day for you, Mario, was anything you’ve seen that’s really resonated with you at Cannes this week or any kind of key themes that have come out that have kind of stuck with you?
[00:31:32] Mario Mijares: There’s a lot of AI. There’s a lot of hype about it. I don’t think I’ve mentioned AI. Have I?
[00:31:36] Fiona Davis: Of course. Not once. No.
[00:31:38] Mario Mijares: I mean, it’s like I haven’t had to drink once. Nope. Not even one drink. Somebody asked me this. I was in a panel yesterday. And what do you think it’s gonna be like next year? I think this is one of those industries that goes from ditch to ditch. Right? And somebody’s gonna go way, way, way on one side on the fully personalized creative automation and all that. And then as well, what happened to the brand identity? Right? We’re forgetting that. We were talking about it before. I was in a event last night. There was this retail media journalist called Colin from Ireland, I think it was. And he was saying, this is supposed to be the Cannes Festival of Creativity.
[00:32:12] Fiona Davis: Yes.
[00:32:13] Mario Mijares: And we’re all talking about data and personalization. And he said, if we had called this the Cannes Festival of Data Monetization, I was like, nobody would be here. But but I think we’re all in the conversation we’re having. We’re forgetting that. And you can’t. Yeah. Right? Yes. You can. No. You can’t. You can’t forget that. I think that is the one thing that I’m missing that I haven’t seen balance in all the conversations we’re having. It’s the thing that scares me. The other thing that scares me is that a lot of the way we do marketing and a lot of the inventory we’re used to buying is gonna disappear. Because when I go online and I ask something in Google, I get the Gemini answer at the top. I was like, oh, great. I don’t need to click on the 10 lawnmowers you should buy. All those at units that were gonna be there, I’ll never get to see. We buy a lot of placements. I’m not sure what’s gonna happen with that inventory. I’m not sure how to market to that agent that’s gonna be answering the consumer’s questions. We’re going to very interesting times. Yeah. And, unfortunately, I don’t have any answers. Yeah. There’s probably smarter people than me that you guys
[00:33:12] Fiona Davis: But you make a good point about the brand identity component of it because in a world where you’ve got AI agents talking to AI agents, the consumer is still ultimately the person who’s buying your product. And if you’re not influencing them outside of that environment, then both them and the AI agent, how are they gonna know to buy your product?
[00:33:30] Mario Mijares: Correct. Somebody was asking me yesterday, well, of course, out of home units are still gonna be working. I said, well, maybe. But if your car drives itself and your eyes are not on the road anymore sleeping. Or sleeping or watching a movie, maybe those out of home don’t work anymore. Now the consumer will always have their eyes open inside the store. Yes. Right? And they’re purposefully there with their wallets ready to buy something. So I think in the future, retail media is gonna be more important. It’s not gonna be called retail media. It’s gonna be called media. But we, together with the brands, need to figure out how to work together.
[00:34:02] Fiona Davis: Yeah. Okay. Well, on that note, we’re gonna end today. Thank you so much, Mario, for coming. It’s great to have you again. Cool.
[00:34:08] Mario Mijares: Thanks. Thanks. Thank you.
[00:34:10] Maurits Priem: Well, welcome to our special edition of the Time for a Reset podcast here in Cannes. I’m Angela Myers. I’m hosting today. I lead retail media for Goodway Group, and we’re here with Ben Richardson from the Albertsons Media Collective. So welcome.
[00:34:24] Ben Richardson: Thank you very much for having me.
[00:34:25] Maurits Priem: Yeah. Could you please tell everybody about your role, what you do? And, of course, you’re quite new, so we’d love to hear a little bit about your journey and how you got to Albertsons.
[00:34:34] Ben Richardson: Absolutely. I’m happy to. So, yes, I’ve been at Albertsons. This is the beginning of my second month here, and it’s been an exciting whirlwind since minute one. As my VP said when I started, he said, buckle up, and that’s literally been an accurate preparation. I’ve been nonstop since I started, and I think the role evolves with every day, every meeting. We are a small, nimble team that is building and growing, and it’s really is a start up mode, about 200 people in Albertsons Media Collective. My role is on the newly formed agency team, so working with, partnering with, building first time connections with all the agency major holdcos, some specialized independents that focus on retail media. And then, also, I’m gonna be focusing on some non endemic, pharma being one of those, something that’s sort of endemic adjacent where we have 2,000 pharmacies, as well as perhaps financial services and some other categories that might ring true for retail media.
[00:35:33] Maurits Priem: Big role.
[00:35:34] Ben Richardson: So, yeah, it’s a it’s big and I mean, there will be more of us, but it is a big and evolving challenge.
[00:35:39] Liz Caselli-Mechael: And Yeah.
[00:35:40] Ben Richardson: Every day, it seemed the to do list seems to get longer in an exciting way.
[00:35:43] Maurits Priem: Yeah. So So you’re only here two months, but you’ve had a long career. And so what do you think that the great strategic value is of the Albertsons Media Collective relative to what’s happening in retail media, but also just how Albertsons stays competitive with brands and other retailers?
[00:36:00] Ben Richardson: Sure. Sure. So, yes, I’m coming most recently from Walmart, Walmart Connect. And prior to that, I was at Amazon, Amazon Ads, and worked both on non endemic businesses and endemic businesses at both of those places, and they have both created amazing products and machines and talent and people that are leading the industry for certain. And now it is the race to see who in this next group can capture the next piece of the pie or be a competitive challenger. And speaking to one of the earlier points is that we are small and nimble, and so we can maneuver like a jet ski versus a large aircraft carrier is gonna displace a lot of water and move a lot of tonnage, and you can’t necessarily try to beat that directly. But a jet ski can find ways around and find pieces that are still large enough for us to have great success without taking it head on. So the grocery industry, the grocery business where we specialize, we are the number two pure play grocer in the country after Kroger, and it’s a trillion dollar industry. Even though Walmart takes the biggest share of that, there’s still plenty of room for all boats to rise in this monstrous industry. And the consumer behavior in grocery is one that is constantly changing and evolving with new generations coming into grocery shopping, but also new ways of seamlessly conducting your grocery process from online to offline.
[00:37:31] Maurits Priem: Yeah. So from a customer experience perspective, I actually see a lot of news about Albertsons being so focused on the shopper experience.
[00:37:39] Rob Edwards: Yeah.
[00:37:39] Maurits Priem: How do you think the media collective actually keeps that shopper experience pure in a way, but also bolsters it, makes it better?
[00:37:47] Ben Richardson: Yeah. So the important thing that we try to keep in mind that the leadership has instilled in me as I’ve onboarded is we are a retailer first, and that is true for all retail media networks. It is you’re a support function effectively of the products in the stores. Without those products being bought and sold, the data doesn’t get created. The customer experience isn’t there to then feed and fuel the media ecosystem. So it is important to know that we draft off of what the merchant teams are doing and what the retailer team does. And so that is where we derive our strength and where we drive our power. And specific to Albertsons in the grocery world, we have constant promos every week as most grocery
[00:38:34] Mario Mijares: stores
[00:38:35] Ben Richardson: do, but these promos are significant and drive units as soon as they hit each week, really drive units. And so one way that we look to bolster is to tie more tightly with what the merchant teams are doing, with what the promotional calendars are doing, being ahead of that with our brands so that we can then align media to create the to amplify that flywheel effect and that snowball even accelerated even more greatly. It does then require some coordination on the supply chain and the procurement front because you can’t amplify the flywheel and have people show up at empty shelves. So it creates opportunity as well as challenges. But we’re working hard to create a holistic customer journey, and our journey is probably more heavily weighted in store than online currently. And so a big announcement we had this week was launching in store screens with their partner, Stratocash, and they’re gonna be piloted in 60 stores initially in a couple regions and then ideally rolling out to all 20 to 70 stores across the country over the coming year. And those will include close of measurement, which is a unique Yeah. Function and actually tracking to be able to know dwell time and tag an impression to a sale in that trip by someone seeing an ad.
[00:39:49] Maurits Priem: Well, it sounds like there’s recognition that the media collective is really in service of the business. Is there also recognition that the media collective has the power to drive new business?
[00:39:59] Ben Richardson: That is a good question. I don’t know that I’ve been there long enough to ascertain that yet. I think at the leadership level, there is definitely a connection at the top and an acknowledgment. It’s not a side business. It’s not a silo. It’s not a rounding error. Financially, it may be still, but from a strategic perspective, we just had a new leader take over management of the collective, who is Jen Sens. And she’s here this week, and Ken, and she is the EVP chief commercial officer. She oversees ecommerce and pharmacy And now the collective, she’s also coming from the merchandising side, and she really has just jumped right in with both feet and has a great sense of the strategic importance that we bring to the business. And I think is seeing already in a handful of early meetings where she can unlock things and bring her deep experience. She worked at PepsiCo as well. Yeah. Deep experience from a retailer and a merchant into supercharging what we’re doing at the collective. So by being small, the access to the leadership and the strategic decision making is fairly flat.
[00:41:02] Maurits Priem: Yeah. Her last name, Science, is actually my maiden name.
[00:41:05] Mario Mijares: No kidding. Yeah.
[00:41:06] Ben Richardson: You’re not related.
[00:41:07] Maurits Priem: We’re not related. Okay. Alright. So switching gears just a little bit.
[00:41:10] Liz Caselli-Mechael: Yep.
[00:41:11] Maurits Priem: When you think about partnerships in the space, and, obviously, you’ve come from other networks as well. Yep. How do you see the current status of partnerships across the Albertsons Media Collective ecosystem today, and
[00:41:21] Alice Anson: where do you see
[00:41:22] Maurits Priem: it going in the future?
[00:41:23] Ben Richardson: Yeah. It’s evolving quickly as many things in media moving quickly, and a lot of people and teams and companies are skating to where the puck is. Retail media is the buzzword. It’s plastered all over Cannes along with a few other things, AI, etcetera, but it’s still fractured and two different worlds. It is really worlds colliding. And but Walmart, it’s Bentonville meets Madison Avenue. Here, it’s Boise meets Madison. You know? And these are people and backgrounds that do not know each other historically and are rarely, if ever, the same person. Or it’s rare that someone was a merchant buyer for a a big retailer and then is now in the retail media team. And I know a couple people who’ve made that transition, But by and large, you’re getting people on both sides to learn new languages. So ROAS is meaningless to a merchant, and units and and GMV is foreign currency to someone who spent their whole life in media spreadsheets. And so the onus is on us, on the ones who are kind of operating at the edges of both of these, and that’s the agency community. It’s the the media community, the publications that are learning about this, the IAB, etcetera, to bridge the gap in this knowledge, and the suppliers themselves to bring the teams together and have all folks at the table. And there’s lots of situations in the world where you say, well, everyone could be at this table at the same time. And but, you know, truly, if we can have merchants, the media teams, the retail media networks, the media agency, the creative agency, even the planning teams, the strategy teams, brand managers, thinking about this holistically because it is a complex ecosystem where you’re talking about a year out, what are they going to plan to buy for a cycle of holiday and back to school and you name it, and then what does the media look like to help drive that, and then layer on top of that creative ideas and tent poles and the Super Bowl and the Olympics and you name it. And so all of this is happening in layers at the same time, but it’s not happening cohesively necessarily.
[00:43:28] Maurits Priem: Yeah.
[00:43:29] Ben Richardson: Like integrated. Yeah. And it’s it’s hard. It’s a lot of groups and teams and TV up fronts and different commitments and agency holding company programs and deals. And Amazon has a ten year head start on a lot of this. And so I think there are things that are really coming together with publicists buying Mars United, so they’re in housing a ton of commerce and retail media expertise and Kineso at IPG and Flywheel at Omnicom.
[00:43:56] Maurits Priem: So There’s recognition in the market. This has to happen.
[00:43:58] Ben Richardson: Certainly recognition. Every agency now has a commerce lead or several, so it’s quickly coming together because they need that expertise to service their clients. But it’s like many things that are work in progress, it’s not quite there
[00:44:11] Maurits Priem: yet.
[00:44:11] Ben Richardson: So my job is to find those places and glue them together while they’re finding places with us to glue them together. And, Yeah. Hopefully, we all meet in time to make planning for the next cycle.
[00:44:22] Maurits Priem: Yeah. Thanks. So yeah. What’s your number one takeaway from Cannes?
[00:44:25] Ben Richardson: Well, my number one takeaway from Cannes, I’ve spent a lot of time in our meeting space. So one Mess. Zoom out takeaway is, my god. It is it is crazy and hectic and intense and overwhelming. I live in Brooklyn. I’ve lived in Brooklyn since 02/2005. And I think of it a little bit like that in the sense that the first to discover Brooklyn aside from people who moved there in the seventies, but in the modern version is the artists and the sort of edgy folks who were okay to not live in Manhattan, and now there’s twenty, fifty story skyscrapers coming online in Brooklyn. So it feels a little bit like something that started with the artist community and the creatives.
[00:45:03] Maurits Priem: That’s fair.
[00:45:03] Ben Richardson: And having their celebrate the creativity, and that’s still here, but so much has come around it and a lot of good stuff as well. But it’s grown to be something that is very different from where it started. Yeah. And this is my first time, so it’s overwhelming to have not seen the evolution talking to people who’ve been here for ten years. They’re just dropping into the first one. But I think there’s incredible content, great stuff to
[00:45:27] Liz Caselli-Mechael: take
[00:45:27] Ben Richardson: in, and everyone is doing really, really creative stuff. And just seeing the creatives plus leadership equals people putting their best foot forward to stand out. So I know that’s not what am I learning about AI in Ken, but I honestly haven’t gotten into a session Yeah. Enough sessions to say. So, yeah, that’s kind of my general
[00:45:49] Maurits Priem: All takeaways are good takeaways. Yeah. Well, Ben, thanks so much. Thanks for joining us today. We really appreciate it. It was great to have you.
[00:45:56] Ben Richardson: Yes. My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:45:58] Rob Edwards: Yeah.
[00:45:59] Charlotte Murphy: We’re in Cannes. Gonna talk about what the trends that are coming out in Cannes, and we’re at the Nectar retail media event where Nectar, early this week, launched the new AI retail media platform. So interesting to see two kinda hot trends intersecting with each other. Rob, maybe you can just give a little bit of a brief intro to your background and what you do, and then I’ll ask you a little bit about what you’re seeing in Cannes and what you think is being reset
[00:46:21] Ben Richardson: in terms
[00:46:22] Charlotte Murphy: of what marketeers are prioritizing.
[00:46:23] Angela Myers: Sure. So I’ve been in marketing or advertising for more than two decades. I won’t put a number on it, but long enough, I remember monoprint advertising. Let’s put it that way. So, yeah, my background has been across media and agency, primarily media and all forms of it, and then I’ve stepped into client side six years ago with Arla. Why? We wanted to see the whole journey and understand that process from start to finish and be able to manage that through. And that’s really exciting to see with our brands because we have some huge brands globally and and in The UK. So my role at Arla is head of media and digital. So my team that I have established and built over that kind of six years is responsible for nearly 60% of our working spend or activations for fourteen, fifteen brands across The UK. Some of those brands include LERPAK, huge beast, an amazing product. Now Mayork and then we’re really invested in the master brand now to tell the story about who Arla is in The UK Yeah. As well.
[00:47:19] Charlotte Murphy: So I’ve seen a lot of the other brands have got the Arla master brand anchors them or somewhere within the packaging. Yeah.
[00:47:24] Angela Myers: Yeah. And, typically, we’ve been a sub brand led business, but now we would need to tell the story of the master brand to build that purpose and that understanding through constraints.
[00:47:32] Charlotte Murphy: Makes a lot of sense. You touched on quite interestingly in the fact that 60% of your working budget you manage in house, and there’s always an interesting debate about is in housing. Is there more of it happening or less of it happening? And I always think it’s quite fascinating. It always depends on who you ask. Speaking to a few reporters, very senior editors whose view was in housing’s a dead trend, and I’m like, I’m not so sure. So I’d love to get your view on how has it given you competitive advantage, and how do you think about that and the way you work with your agencies at a time when we’re in Cannes when there’s a lot of challenges around the kind of holding group model and what position they play in a world where brands do more what you’ve done, which is take responsibility for strategy, audience planning insight, and then use some agencies to do some more plug in specialist work.
[00:48:15] Angela Myers: I see. It’s a blended relationship, and I don’t see that changing. I think where we’ve been really clear and concise in what we’ve done is we’ve owned more of the performance related activation, but building that out. So it used to be that my role would be just digital activation, but, actually, the reality is it’s just media. It’s just content. So we’ve built out from there. But it’s really important that you have open and honest dialogue with your partners, and that’s what we’ve done. And, actually, the last two years, when we’ve done our audits on our media Mhmm. Buying and delivery, we’ve had the best two years we’ve ever had. And that’s a shared responsibility from what we deliver, but also being super clear in working with, in partnership, our agency so they can deliver based on what we want to achieve. And then we can audit it and understand the measurement principles and successes and share in that success. So so do I think in housing is a dying art form? No. Do I think it’s gonna explode as it did a few years ago? Probably not at the same pace, but I see it more of a collaboration. But that’s the critical piece. Wherever you sit, there’s a specialism with with your responsibilities. It needs to be open and collaborative.
[00:49:19] Charlotte Murphy: I like the way you frame that. I think that blended
[00:49:21] Liz Caselli-Mechael: Yeah.
[00:49:22] Charlotte Murphy: Is a really interesting way you think at what we often call it right housing rather than in housing. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Because no two brands look at in housing in quite the same way. You have to decide what are we brilliant at, and what do we want to take in house and have FTs on our Yeah. Kind of p and l for versus where can we bring different types of specialists. And then I love the premise of you still want to partner with your agencies, but just in different ways. But I guess what that means is they need to lean in to have the adaptability and the agility to work in different ways rather than put their arms around all the media budget, which is what they’ve been used to.
[00:49:51] Angela Myers: Yeah. 100%. And the landscape is shifting so quickly that there’s capabilities that none of us have, so we learn together. Right? And that’s that collaborative approach. And, yes, you’ll have specialisms and lean on those specialisms. But the market and the landscape and the opportunity to activate has changed so quickly Right. That neither of us are gonna be best in class. We need to learn Right.
[00:50:11] Charlotte Murphy: The power of collaboration gets you faster quickly. Yeah.
[00:50:14] Angela Myers: Absolutely. And, again, a live conversation is very much around, okay, typically and historically, we’ve been partnered with the media side of the network agency. My question has been, should we be looking higher up and going, actually, across the whole network, there’s probably disciplines and skill sets we’re not touching. And, actually, as we change as we move forward, does that relationship breathe out based on what we need for our experiences with our consumers, not just solely I need to buy eyeballs? Right.
[00:50:43] Charlotte Murphy: That’s a really good point that I hope a lot of agencies listen to that, hear that, because it might be that the nature of how you engage. But if you’re a trusted adviser and you contribute to how the business is growing, then your relationship could adapt and grow in different ways rather than it be we’ve got less than we used to.
[00:50:58] Angela Myers: Yeah. And, look, I think we’ve been really lucky with a number of the relationships that side and individuals that have leaned into that conversation, understood the direction of travel and the ask. And because we’re not doing it for the sake of doing it, we’re doing it to drive value. And if we drive value and we’re better at what we do, it’s a better story for the agency than to tell other clients around what they’ve helped to deliver.
[00:51:18] Charlotte Murphy: Absolutely. With that blended team, how does you balancing brand versus performance marketing versus retail media, which is a fairly new art? How do you do that? Have you built an internal And, like, how do you think about getting that right balance, and how much responsibility is on your team
[00:51:33] Angela Myers: to drive that versus the agency? Always think about it. It will never end effectively. There’s two goals for us, and that’s what we need to be super clear on is branded growth and in your sales. Those are the premises to your point around storytelling and performance. We model. Yes. We’ve got an existing relationship with Ubiquiti to our We’ve built in house capability as well, so that relationship has changed. Yeah. So we can access more of that data ourselves in a faster turnaround. But I also think when we look at budget allocation and planning, the pressure is building to go, there’s one pot of your knee. Mhmm. It’s gotta do two things. Right. It’s gotta keep the retailers happy as well, but more importantly, it’s gotta be impactful for consumers.
[00:52:14] Rob Edwards: Right.
[00:52:14] Angela Myers: So we’re building that concept of an Arla Media universe within our agency partners’ planning tool, but we are pushing the boundaries. We are asking for more when we talk about retail media is, can you plan for that, and how does that then work? We then take that with econometrics and modeling to say, I wanna see the success. Right. I wanna see how this is delivering value.
[00:52:37] Charlotte Murphy: The actual real contribution? Absolutely.
[00:52:39] Angela Myers: Because we need to go back and say, as a UK business, this pot of money delivered this. As a category, we delivered this. Mhmm. As a brand within that category, this is what you delivered. Right. And that’s a great story to then tell retailers as well as you farmer owners as we are a cocktail.
[00:52:53] Mario Mijares: Right.
[00:52:54] Charlotte Murphy: And I think it’s so fascinating, this whole dynamic, because I think two things could be true at once, which is a lot of people are saying that retail media is we’re gonna be all media. I think that was the panel you were just on was it was framed at. But on the other end, a lot of people are saying, well, the cost of the data is actually making it quite challenging. And sometimes some of my other media is outperforming. So both of those things can be true at the same time, which I guess does make that point around how do we really get into understanding contribution incrementality on your net sales value.
[00:53:19] Angela Myers: 100%. I think we’ll see another step change over the next couple of years in in measurement and measurement principles. Typically, I think within our business, we kinda first click, last click mentality of if it’s above the line, then that’s what’s driven it. If it’s below the line, then that’s what’s driven it as a conversion. Agree. Yeah. And the reality is, I think we need to evolve that thinking to go, okay. Well, what’s the confidence waiting around each step and into investment into activation? Yeah. And then measure whether we were happy within that confidence index by the step. Because each media can’t just have the same measurement principles. It’s not a flat line. No. So we, again, are talking about how do we change our measurement framework Yeah. To accurately suggest that we’re talking about above the line activation. We know exactly where we’re performing. We’re talking about below the line. What does it look like
[00:54:05] Rob Edwards: Yeah.
[00:54:06] Angela Myers: From an in store or an econ perspective? Right. And that’s tough yards at the moment, getting people to commit and understand and build consistency.
[00:54:14] Rob Edwards: Right. Because if I go back
[00:54:15] Angela Myers: to my earlier point and say in the last two years, we’ve had the best media success we’ve ever had, we’re doing something pretty well. What we need to do is migrate that through the whole process.
[00:54:24] Charlotte Murphy: Very interesting. And you talked about shopper and, obviously, the retailers. You’ve had sales relationships with over the retailers for years. How is the JBP process adapting, and how are you adapting your structure to be able to manage that? Because it doesn’t sound like anyone’s getting it entirely right.
[00:54:40] Angela Myers: Yeah. I can’t believe anybody’s got it right, and we’re among that, to be brutally honest. We collaborate across sales and marketing. Do we have a structure that would facilitate it as a center of excellence? Not currently. Is that on the radar? Potentially. That’s my opinion. That’s where we should get to, but we’re not there yet. So I think the JVP is dependent on retail relationship. What’s the future of that? Yes. We’ll always have tactical investments with retailers. But, actually, let’s absolutely be clear on what is working spend within that. So what’s the JMP? And then how do we measure that in relation to every other media that gives it a fair crack of the web? And then as a retail media owner, you live and die by the value you add to that relationship. That’s the difference. So I think what we’re starting to see is maybe a mindset shift between the retailers from I’m a supplier to I’m now a client of you. Right. So that’s a big shift.
[00:55:33] Mario Mijares: Yeah. It was
[00:55:33] Charlotte Murphy: a pure buyer seller relationship, and now it’s going both ways.
[00:55:36] Liz Caselli-Mechael: Yeah.
[00:55:36] Angela Myers: Yeah. And then if you add in the media side of that as well, it becomes a publisher mentality rather than a retailer, but still hold the retailer values and be a retailer. But the mindset and being able to step into a publisher thought set Yes. Is really important.
[00:55:50] Charlotte Murphy: Yes. And publisher mindset whilst not forgetting, at the end of the day, there’s a customer experience Yeah. That Yeah. Yeah. Editorial and content enriches that experience. But at the end of the day, someone wants to get the product they need, well, particularly in your Yeah. People buy it. It’s a very quick regular purchase. So
[00:56:07] Angela Myers: Oh, absolutely. And I think the opportunity to understand and and how you interject and either inspire or or or disrupt somebody to buy your product is really important. So I’ll give you a quick stat. In The UK, more people spend more time thinking about the toilet roll they’re gonna buy than the milk they’re gonna buy. Wow. So when people are in store, you have to have activated really strongly before people get in, but you also then need to bring that theater as well to be able to entice people through to that because we are talking about branded milk, and that doesn’t come at the same price
[00:56:37] Charlotte Murphy: as I’m late. And you’re in a category where it seems like there’s a different version of milk launching all the time.
[00:56:42] Angela Myers: Absolutely. Absolutely. But I think that, again, we’re guilty stroke. That’s what we believe is the right thing to do. So we’ll look at insight and we’ll look at the human truth around a need state or a mission, and we’ll bring milk out where it’s relevant to. And and we have done recently with protein milk. So having launched that very, very recently protein in it. It has indeed. Well, we’ve got our Starbucks ready to drink coffee with protein in as well. So just a little bit of a little plug. There we go.
[00:57:06] Charlotte Murphy: So finally, last question. Yes. Is there anything we haven’t talked about that you’ve seen in Canon as, like, surprised you? I was like, I must tune my team into that. I mean, other than AI, maybe.
[00:57:16] Angela Myers: Yeah. So we’re starting to talk across the global business around connected experiences for consumers and for shoppers through our brands. And that’s been a mantra across multiple sessions that I’ve seen, which I think is brilliant. And, obviously, the guys at Netto spoke about that today as well. Yeah. For me, if we focus on that, how do we measure for it? So I said in the panel earlier, yes, we do ROI, but how do we move to an ROE measure? What’s my return on experience? Right? When you think about branded growth and sales.
[00:57:46] Rob Edwards: So I
[00:57:47] Angela Myers: think that planning for experience is really good because what it does do is it breathes creativity, and that’s what
[00:57:53] Charlotte Murphy: And the vast majority of people are still always gonna buy their milk in a physical store.
[00:57:57] Angela Myers: Well, really, really loyal as
[00:57:59] Mario Mijares: well. Right.
[00:57:59] Charlotte Murphy: But the digital experience and how that connects, We all know it’s important, but I don’t think we’ve got all the tool sets to be able to join the shots. Maybe AI will help with that. Yeah. And I think we could make it less human.
[00:58:09] Angela Myers: I think that’s a really exciting area creatively for us because I think what we’re guilty of is probably just having a set number of assets, making them work. Right. But the reality is of AI and creative AI is that mission, stroke, need state moment and testing and learning quickly Right. To be able to deliver either in the big stores, main estate, inconvenience, and petrol station. Where are we?
[00:58:30] Charlotte Murphy: Right message, right place, right time. My job hasn’t changed. It’s just we got new tools. So, look, Rob, wonderful conversation. Thank you for making the time. My pleasure. Thank you.
[00:58:38] Fiona Davis: Welcome back to Time for a Reset special can edition today. I’m Fiona. I’m your host from the Overline team. And with me, I’ve got Catalina from Vault. Welcome, Catalina. Thanks for coming down.
[00:58:48] Catalina Salazar: Thank you so much. It’s super exciting to be here.
[00:58:50] Fiona Davis: We’ll start just by asking if you could tell people what you do at Vault.
[00:58:54] Catalina Salazar: Okay. So I have been at Vault for two years, and I’ve been building the retail media business across 33 markets.
[00:59:01] Fiona Davis: Awesome. So we’re gonna dive straight in and start asking about value creation in retail media. So what do you think the biggest opportunity is for retailers to help brands build both an a shopper experience and create more value for them across the entire retail media experience?
[00:59:17] Catalina Salazar: First of all, I think retailers need to have a more comprehensive strategy on the retail media roadmap. So at Vault, we have four pillars. The first one, to drive that value is data and insights as a service. Mhmm. I think that’s the most important thing we can offer to brands, our insights, understanding of the shoppers, and creating that data and insights pillar in the strategy is important. Yeah. The second is it’s not only about the retail experience and the point of purchase. These consumers are also elsewhere. Yeah. So the ability to connect with them outside of the apps or the shopping experience is important as well to be able to tell brand stories that are gonna differentiate the products. Yeah. So I think that off up element that is now talk of town is super important. It’s a second pillar of our strategy, something that we’ve been working on in the last two years because consent is a pretty big important topic in that, and it’s taking a long time to be able to build it properly. So we value privacy and wanna do it the right way. So we’ve been building that consent framework to be able to then connect with those users outside and offer value through storytelling and branding. Then, obviously, the in app experience is super important as well. It’s our third pillar where we ensure that when that person is connecting with the brand at the point of purchase, that experience native, doesn’t feel frustrating, annoying, invasive. So creating that value in the experience, making it feel natural, and relevancy is key in that pillar for us. And fourth, also, there’s opportunities to reconnect with the consumer after they have the shopping experience.
[01:00:59] Fiona Davis: Mhmm.
[01:00:59] Catalina Salazar: So how can we add value? How can we deepen that relationship after the purchase? So through loyalty and other execution. So having, like, a more comprehensive strategy, not just in app experiences or, like, on retail experiences, but thinking about media planning and insights, communication, conversion, and reengagement.
[01:01:20] Fiona Davis: I was gonna ask you about where do you see that going over the next twelve to eighteen months? How do you think that’s gonna unfold, and what are some of the trends you’re seeing in that space now?
[01:01:29] Catalina Salazar: It’s a great question. Like, I’ve been really excited about this Cannes and the recent events like ShopTalk and these places because I’ve I’ve started to see how we’re converging with technology. So you see all these events now. You see people from product. You see people from brand. You see people from retail. And we’re, like, really in a moment we’re figuring out how we do this together
[01:01:53] Fiona Davis: Yeah.
[01:01:54] Catalina Salazar: And how we collaborate better. And the industry is really screaming for that collaboration, definition of standards, integrating the different elements, like the technology, the communications, the performance. So I think we’ll see a lot more of that. We’ll see more companies helping us connect and offering value in that connection and those processes that aren’t much needed. And I think the industry is moving into more integrated technology, creativity, and performance.
[01:02:21] Fiona Davis: When you’re sort of looking at the strategic role of retail media, you just kind of touched on that. A lot of brands will go into it thinking of retail media as just a performance tactic rather than more integrated part of their overall program. How do you guys see that evolve? Because, obviously, you work in a very specific immediate shopper experience as well, and so you play a pretty unique role in that space.
[01:02:41] Catalina Salazar: That’s true. Like, we feel sometimes pigeonhole in the performance Yeah. Element because we’re so close to the point of purchase, and people get these products in thirty minutes. So, obviously, even though our audiences have so much more value than just the performance element across the communication spectrum, they still see us and will judge our performance in the results in the sales. So that always happen for all retailers. Like, I think it’s something common. And I feel that we have the right to win there, and we need to look after that performance and deliver. So I think we have a proposition there. But as we build these off app opportunities and our audiences are now available across other platforms, there’s opportunities to connect with the consumer and tell stories and use better creative, not just like an offer. I like to say that in my media experience before moving to ad tech and technology, it was really interesting to learn that for you to be able to be aware of a brand, you need about 14 engagements. And in retail, you don’t have 14 impressions No. To win. You you have to be really sharp and offer a promotion, and that’s it. But before we do that, we need to create value about the brand and and really position the brand. So I think with these off app executions, we’re gonna be able to do that, create that engagement, those 14 moments of connection with the users, and then drive the value in the performance element later on. So it’s like a more full funnel approach that we can now do.
[01:04:23] Fiona Davis: So I was gonna ask, that was my next question because Mario is on just before you from 07:11, was talking about that one of the misconceptions that a brand will have is that, yes, you’re excellent at the transactional side of it and the performance, but all the data you’re collecting on that person can be used across any area of your funnel. Do you see the same thing where it’s more like a strategic partnership, not just in the, I can help you convert this purchase in this moment, but I can also give you back a load of data that helps to inform your upper funnel strategies as well.
[01:04:52] Catalina Salazar: Yeah. I think if you only compete at the point of purchase, people are in a very rational moment. So that’s why the creative at that point is offer driven and not so much value driven. But if you took those users and connected with them elsewhere when they’re probably just not even that aware
[01:05:10] Nick King: Mhmm. And
[01:05:11] Catalina Salazar: you start having a more value driven conversation about what your product is better Mhmm. Like telling that story in different formats, different moments, then when that person comes into the marketplace, it’s primed. Yeah. They already understand the value and the superiority of your product, so so you don’t have to rely so much on the performance discounting piece Piece to get it. The value has been created. So I think if brands understand that they need to create this connection and tell these stories in a better way, leveraging our data through the funnel, I think we’ll see better results. Yeah. I think that branding element, we cannot miss it, and I’ve seen way too many brands disregarding the importance of the branding and the connection and the storytelling.
[01:05:57] Fiona Davis: Are you having brands coming to you asking for specific innovation? Are they looking to you guys to innovate, or are they literally coming to you saying, I want performance media, and you’re having to sell the innovation side of it to them?
[01:06:09] Catalina Salazar: We work with different clients that are at different stages in their maturity. When you work with more established brands, they have gone through this process with many other vendors forever. Yeah. So I think they have a little bit more experience, and they know that culture and creating moments and doing innovation really sets them apart. Yeah. So those brands are super cool to work with because we’re, like, really thinking just beyond clustering a discount. Like, we’re really creating value, creating moments, doing cool things. Yeah. And you can see that in the sales later. Like, it connects with people. But we also have a lot of trade marketing teams that are, like, really worried about getting the sales, and the campaigns will be short and very value driven, discount driven. So, yeah, I think I would say the majority of our past two years’ campaigns have been performance driven. But in the last six months, what we created more tools and, like, made our audiences available for better things
[01:07:11] Liz Caselli-Mechael: Yeah.
[01:07:11] Catalina Salazar: We’ve seen a lot more brands coming to us and really thinking of cocreation, co marketing, what ideas can we bring to life. And I think I’ve seen it at Cannes as well. Like, this whole owning the moment, owning culture, and creating that connection, I’ve seen it a lot. That excites me because I think that’s what we’re really gonna see beautiful storytelling paired with data driving outcomes.
[01:07:35] Fiona Davis: Yeah. And that was actually my next question to you was, what are the insights you’ve seen coming out of Cannes so far? So so I’ve heard multiple people on the Quizet talking about everyone’s talking about AI. Everyone’s talking about the importance of data and tech, but we are at the creativity festival. So what’s your take on that? Because you do need the data and tech, but you also need the creativity.
[01:07:55] Catalina Salazar: That’s a really great question. And just before we were here, I was telling you, I’m a software engineer. Yeah. And years ago when I was graduating, agents were already a thing. And now they’re becoming mainstream and everyone’s talking about them, but AI, machine learning, multi agents, they they have been here for a long time. And I see them as enablers Yeah. Of doing things faster, uncovering perhaps insights easier. But I think the creativity and the human touch and the ability to connect emotionally is something that perhaps wouldn’t be something a machine could easily deliver without us really putting the effort there. Yeah. So I don’t see it as something that is either or. I see we need to learn how to use it to do the best outcome possible. And to be fair, one of the best examples of creative that has been in my career, like seventeen years in media, is actually from an agency back home that leverage a lot of Twitter data and mined it and did all this machine learning on that data to uncover really nice insights for really cool campaigns and creative that was inspired by this data. And it was magic. Like, getting that insight right and then building something super creative deliver the most incredible results I’ve seen in my career. And, like, it was amazing. It’s like, you can do it.
[01:09:22] Fiona Davis: Yeah.
[01:09:22] Catalina Salazar: It’s doable. Like, we’re not enemies. The CTO is not sitting far away from the CMO anymore. We need to work together and drive outcomes and use all these tools to our advantage. I’m I’m not scared. I think I’m an AI positive person. Yeah. But I think the hype is a bit much.
[01:09:38] Rob Edwards: It’s a
[01:09:39] Fiona Davis: bit like the year of the mobile. That’s what we were saying. Yeah. The year of AI for, like, two years now. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming in, Catalina. It was lovely to have you on.
[01:09:49] Catalina Salazar: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
[01:09:51] Fiona Davis: Nice to see you guys. You too.
[01:09:53] Maurits Priem: Welcome to our Time for a Reset podcast. I’m Angela Myers. I lead retail media for Goodway Group, and I’m here with Liz Casselli Michel. And you are from World Central Kitchen. Please tell us about your role.
[01:10:05] Alice Anson: So World Central Kitchen is a nonprofit founded by chef Jose Andres, and we really focus on bringing meals in the aftermath of disaster to communities that need that food, but also that comfort and that ability to come together. So we were founded fifteen years ago in Haiti. Today, we’re in many parts of The US, Kentucky, St. Louis, California, as well as Ukraine and Gaza.
[01:10:30] Maurits Priem: That’s wonderful. And your role specifically?
[01:10:32] Alice Anson: Yeah. I lead external marketing and communications. So while it can be distinct for nonprofit, we found that there’s a lot that private and retail and nonprofit and NGO have to learn from each other.
[01:10:45] Maurits Priem: Yeah. Great. Alright. So we’re gonna chat a little bit about your brand, you as a brand today, and how that fits in the retail media space. So first, let’s start with within your role. You have to balance what you’re doing from a brand perspective with a performance perspective. So how do you think about that when you’re budgeting and planning for the media that you’re gonna run?
[01:11:05] Alice Anson: I think the biggest thing that we’ve evolved on is getting to a better point in treating different audiences differently and acknowledging that they have other kinds of exposure that we don’t control that may contribute to where they are in the funnel as well. So for us, media coverage during a disaster may make someone much more familiar with us, and they may be ready to move farther along on the funnel or in the journey than someone in a country that hasn’t been exposed to our work before. So what we’ve tried to do, rather than think about an overarching guidance for any kind of split between top of funnel and lower funnel, is that we’ve really tried to customize that by segment and lean in on lower funnel for communities and countries where we’re pretty well known, where we’ve already built strong trust. But to really take that step back and make a proper investment in understanding the brand and knowing what our values are and what our differentiators are in areas where folks won’t have had those other kinds of exposure to us. So breaking that into segments has been a huge part of starting to figure out that split.
[01:12:09] Maurits Priem: Yeah. And that’s really fascinating because it sounds like the planning aspect is really centered on audience. And what a dynamic business that you’re in, right, because there’s an element of that, well, this thing happened. Here’s a reaction. How do you think about recency and time in planning, if at all?
[01:12:27] Alice Anson: Yeah. Planning, if at all, is definitely, like, a key phrase. I think we try to have a strong perspective, strong tools in place, but the reality is that we don’t and can’t plan our campaigns. You know, we’re going into US hurricane season now, so we’re anticipating that there’s going to be a lot of responding within The US in the next few months, but we don’t know where we’re gonna be or when that hurricane’s gonna strike. And when people are really the most attuned to it and ready to, like, be part of the response is in that first forty eight hours. So, really, our standard for ourself is that once we know we’re responding, we want something in market in the first two hours. That’s a big change for me. I come from a CPG background. We had long planning cycles at my previous home at Nestle, but it’s a huge part of making the work successful because our strongest response will always be when we’re first in market, and we need to maximize that time.
[01:13:19] Maurits Priem: And it makes audience that much more important for you.
[01:13:23] Rob Edwards: Mhmm. So
[01:13:23] Maurits Priem: when you think about how you plan for your audiences today, like, what are some of the data sources or partnerships outside of what you already know? What are you leaning into?
[01:13:33] Alice Anson: I think some of it is really understanding the relationships people have to communities. So when you see many of us have relocated for work or over the course of our career or for education, but we’re still really deeply connected to the communities that we’ve lived in before, to the communities our families and friends live in, that’s one audience and quality that makes you very attuned to look for a way to help when that’s what’s needed. There might be other more classic indicators if you’re a regular donor to nonprofits or to emergency response. But a lot of my mindset is I don’t want to be fighting with other nonprofits for the same pie. I really want us to find new audiences, build trust with them, and make them feel like giving and engaging a nonprofit is a way they can have an impact and trust. Because I think it’s very easy to kind of watch the news and feel helpless, but there are so many groups out there that maybe are not giving to nonprofit right now or haven’t in their adult life, but actually would love that opportunity to feel that they can have a personal impact. So the idea of getting to net new audience is a really important one for us. We don’t just wanna cannibalize each other within the nonprofit space. We wanna be part of bringing new groups into the solution.
[01:14:50] Maurits Priem: Yeah. Are you working with any retail media networks today and leveraging their audiences or talking about how you can collaborate?
[01:14:59] Alice Anson: That’s a great question. I would say where we are on media strategy is that we’re entering a year that’s really focused on diversifying. So we’re coming out of, I think, using too few tools in the toolbox. And something that’s been really powerful for us is that we’ll have brands and companies that really step up and support us. Sometimes that’s with direct cash or with in kind contributions, but sometimes that’s also in how they show up in storytell. So that’s where we have showed up the most in retail media is actually when our partner companies, whether that’s on the CPG side or retailers themselves, make us part of their story of how they help with communities. So it hasn’t, to date, been part of our direct strategy, but it’s been somewhere where we’re sort of showing up together with United Voices.
[01:15:40] Maurits Priem: Yeah. I’d love to hear about this next year as your role evolves, as the company evolves, as the media evolves.
[01:15:47] Alice Anson: Yeah. It’s an ambitious year for us. I think we’re an organization that’s grown really fast through the just unbelievable support of communities and people really feeling motivated to have that impact, let’s say, faster than we could have ever anticipated and faster than we were built for yet on the marketing side. So we have a lot of opportunity to build a stronger foundation. I would say some of our goals are to really get much smarter on how we use data and how we can be more personalized for those that are already in our ecosystem. That’s been a gap for us so far. As I think many nonprofits and organizations that start small, you you don’t always have the data infrastructure there when you’re starting those relationships. And so making sure that we can get value out of that data over time and create a better audience experience for them that they aren’t bombarded with so much information. They really get what we know they care about most. That’s one big priority. I think in accordance with that, getting into a better segmentation approach, especially market to market, is a huge one. So we tend to be fairly well known in The US. And because of the number of particularly hurricane responses, though also tornado and flood, has been a way that many Americans have gotten to know us. In other markets, we’re not so well known yet, but we’ve been treating them identically up till this point. So right now, we’re in the middle of a much bigger process to have a more global strategy that meets people where they are.
[01:17:13] Maurits Priem: Yeah. That’s fascinating. Alright. So this is your first time at Cannes,
[01:17:16] Alice Anson: right, for this organization? For this organization, it is. Yeah.
[01:17:20] Maurits Priem: Yeah. And so what has resonated the most in terms of what you’re hearing or watching or listening to in a in a panel and how that translates to where you need to go next year?
[01:17:30] Alice Anson: Oh, I love that because there is so much that’s happening with really different kinds of companies and brands that I do have a lot of takeaways from. So I think the biggest conversation that’s really, like, wormed into my brain to stay is that we have audiences that their time, their focus, and their choice is much more precious than maybe how we used to treat it. So they have the opportunity to quickly switch focus, to quickly move on from what you’re showing them. There are really no more truly captive audiences in most of the spaces that we communicate, and that means that we need to earn that time and earn that attention in a way that has not always been the default for marketers. It’s something that we’ve been able to take for granted. And when I think about that for us, on one hand, I feel like I have a great assignment because we do have a really active community that’s interested in what we’re doing, and we can earn their attention because of that passion and compassion. But on the other hand, it also reminds me, like, this is a value exchange. When I show up for an audience and I want their attention or focus or donation, it’s not just about what we’ve done in the past. I need to be with them every time showing that there’s impact and there’s a reward. There’s value for them in that exchange when they share their data, when they share their time, when they stick with content that they’re viewing of ours. And so that value exchange has become a huge part of my guiding light when I think about all of the choices that we make as a communications.
[01:19:02] Maurits Priem: You’re closing the loop with them, basically. Yeah.
[01:19:05] Alice Anson: Yeah. That really we can’t take for granted that they were interested in us once, so they should be interested in us forever. Every single time, we need to show up and have a really quick and compelling why for why something is worth their time or their donation.
[01:19:17] Maurits Priem: Alright. Great. Well, thank you so much.
[01:19:19] Alice Anson: I’m really excited for the summit and so appreciate getting to spend time with burners. I feel like I’m learning so much from this group already.
[01:19:25] Maurits Priem: Yeah. Yeah. Same. Right back at you.
[01:19:28] Fiona Davis: Welcome back to Time for a Reset, the Cannes special edition. I’m Fiona from Overline, your host. And today, I have with me Maritz from Ajo de la Jez.
[01:19:37] Unknown: Did I
[01:19:37] Fiona Davis: get that right? Yeah.
[01:19:38] Rob Edwards: You did.
[01:19:39] Fiona Davis: Maritz, do we start just to let people know what it is that you do?
[01:19:42] Rob Edwards: Well, to begin with, Adelas is one of the largest retailers in the world, grocery mainly.
[01:19:46] Fiona Davis: Mhmm.
[01:19:47] Rob Edwards: One third Europe, two thirds in The US, East Coast, all that. And I head up retail media for Europe and Indonesia.
[01:19:54] Fiona Davis: Awesome. Yeah. So welcome to the podcast today. We’re very keen to get your insights. One of the first things that we’ve been asking everybody that’s joining us today is, what do you see as the biggest value creation opportunity for retailers now to help brands not only with their branding itself, but also with the shopper experience in overall?
[01:20:11] Rob Edwards: To begin with, theoretically, retail media, if it’s omnichannel, would be able to give a full funnel experience. Mhmm. Uh, nevertheless, in my opinion, retail media will be part of a larger omnichannel campaign mostly.
[01:20:24] Charlotte Murphy: So it has its role to
[01:20:25] Rob Edwards: play, which is not just conversion building Yeah. But definitely also branding and more mid and upper funnel. And I’m happy to hear more of that every year when I come to Cannes. There is more of mid and upper funnel in retail media happening here.
[01:20:39] Fiona Davis: Yeah. And are you getting asked more of that from brands now? Like, are you seeing some of the brands that have been in the retail media space for longer starting to ask for more of that innovation from you guys?
[01:20:48] Mario Mijares: Yes. Yeah.
[01:20:49] Rob Edwards: But that is not just demand driven. Yeah. It’s it’s both supply and demand driven. I see retail media networks all over Europe offering more and more mid and upper funnel media.
[01:20:59] Fiona Davis: Yeah. Okay. So where do you see it going over the next sort of eighteen months? How do you see that evolving, that relationship?
[01:21:05] Rob Edwards: It’ll evolve in the direction it’s already evolving in. So we’ll see more mid and upper funnel. We’ll see more mid and upper funnel media. We’ll see, obviously, more digital at home. So digital screens in store, we’ll see more off-site. Sure. We’ll also see more non endemic.
[01:21:20] Fiona Davis: Yes.
[01:21:20] Rob Edwards: We see more and more of that happening, and that’s mainly it. Yeah.
[01:21:24] Fiona Davis: Have you seen more of an appetite now? Certainly, some of our other guests were talking about an appetite not only for CTV and digital video, but also for audio increasingly because a lot of retailers have in store audio. Are you getting the same demand?
[01:21:36] Rob Edwards: Well, we’ve been doing audio for long. Yeah. It’s not the biggest part of what we do, but it’s part of in store, which is still the biggest part of the retail media that we sell. Yeah. At least in Europe, that is. As most people know, there is quite a big difference between The US and Europe.
[01:21:50] Fiona Davis: Yeah.
[01:21:51] Rob Edwards: As in in general, US is ahead of Europe. Yeah. Except for the stuff happening in
[01:21:55] Fiona Davis: the course. So yeah.
[01:21:56] Rob Edwards: Definitely, Europe is ahead of what’s happened. I just, this morning, came out of a session specifically on in store measurements. Mhmm. I was listening to a conversation between mostly US people and felt like going five years back in time later. No. So Yeah. We have to give them credit where credit is due. They’re way ahead of Europe. But on the in store side, there is much to learn, I guess, the other way around. Yeah. So we we can return the favor as you
[01:22:20] Fiona Davis: Well, I mean, that’s a good point around obviously, the buyer experience in Europe is different, and the shopper habits are different in Europe than what they are in The US. So does that even
[01:22:29] Rob Edwards: Not too different. I doubt whether there’s lots of difference Really? In general in grocery. Well, my world is grocery mainly. Yeah. But it’s not just in the grocery business. By far, most of the revenue is happening in store. Phil. Yeah. Roughly 80% of all buying decisions are happening in store.
[01:22:45] Fiona Davis: Yeah.
[01:22:46] Rob Edwards: And then also in store has reach comparable to the biggest broadcasters.
[01:22:50] Catalina Salazar: Yes.
[01:22:51] Rob Edwards: You see the numbers flying over LinkedIn every other week. So that’s the second reason. Third reason is it’s hugely underinvested, hugely underinvested. And then finally, there’s lots of convenience coming in there as well as in buying convenience. More and more of in store, mainly digital screens are programmatically available.
[01:23:09] Fiona Davis: Yeah. What’s the relationship there then? You’re seeing more of the digital as to driving people to store and making sure the brand message is hitting, so when they’re in store, they get to the convert faster? Or what do you think
[01:23:19] Rob Edwards: about it? What there is this chronological order. I think we ditched that already years ago.
[01:23:24] Fiona Davis: Yeah.
[01:23:25] Rob Edwards: There is no chronological customer journey anymore. It’s all over.
[01:23:28] Fiona Davis: Yeah.
[01:23:28] Rob Edwards: It’s Spaghetti Journey.
[01:23:30] Fiona Davis: Yes. But
[01:23:31] Rob Edwards: in that Spaghetti Journey, in store is the new TV.
[01:23:34] Fiona Davis: Oh, okay. That’s an there we go.
[01:23:35] Rob Edwards: Yeah.
[01:23:36] Fiona Davis: It’s quite of the day, folks. So in terms of that strategic role that retail media is playing, that it’s previously been considered a performance channel now, something that brands are starting to ask you guys to get more involved in that strategic layer, how is that playing out for you guys in the types of product packaging that you’re providing to brands? Like, has it changed the way you’re going to market?
[01:23:57] Rob Edwards: Well, One of the things that has happened along that transition that you’re describing is also that most of the retail media networks, and partly this also goes for us, is it has definitely moved away from something that was part of trade conversations. Yeah. It’s not a toll gate. Yeah. And it shouldn’t be. It should be way more about joint business planning and helping brands build their products and their businesses. Yeah. It’s way more of a collaborative way of working than the fight we every now and then have in the trade relationships. Yeah.
[01:24:28] Fiona Davis: And how have you seen that change, that JVP process over the last couple of years? Have you seen the brands adapting alongside what you guys are doing on your side?
[01:24:37] Rob Edwards: We’re learning all sides. This golden triangle where you have the agency and the advertiser, the retail media network, we’ve been learning all three angles of the triangle and educating each other.
[01:24:48] Maurits Priem: Yeah. So
[01:24:48] Rob Edwards: we’ve been learning from the brands and the other way around. Same goes for agencies. So there’s much to learn for every angle. So Yeah. Retailers mainly had to learn about media, speaking the media language.
[01:24:58] Catalina Salazar: Mhmm.
[01:24:59] Rob Edwards: And then agencies had to learn about and still are learning about in store, for example. And then for brands, it’s, again, a whole different ballgame where breaking down the silos is one of the most difficult things to do. Yeah. So during my career, I’ve had the opportunity to be at all of the angles, all sides of the table in retail media. So I know how hard it is Yeah. To break those silos, but it’s definitely something that needs to happen. But I see them coming down more and more.
[01:25:23] Fiona Davis: Yeah. There’s progress, anyway.
[01:25:25] Rob Edwards: Yes. Yeah.
[01:25:26] Fiona Davis: What are some of the biggest misconceptions people have coming in to talk to you about retail media when they’re coming to the table?
[01:25:33] Rob Edwards: We’ve had many agencies thinking that it was all just part of trade Yeah. And the trade relation and the trade budget, whereas we in, uh, are really trying to separate the two. Where I’m always saying that let’s make sure that as a retail media network, you join plans, but not forces
[01:25:51] Fiona Davis: Right.
[01:25:51] Rob Edwards: With the trade department. So it should be voluntary, which means if as soon as it becomes voluntary, then that means that you have to compete with whatever media is out there. And I think retail media networks can on almost every single aspect of media. Retail media should be able
[01:26:07] Unknown: to out
[01:26:07] Rob Edwards: compete not even out compete the alternative media.
[01:26:10] Fiona Davis: Yeah. So one of our earlier guests was talking about on the podcast previously that, originally, there was no downward pressure on price for retail media network because it was all on-site and effectively walled garden. But the more they moved into off-site, the more they realized there would be price pressure because they’re being benched against things that aren’t retail. Do you see the same thing as well?
[01:26:31] Rob Edwards: No? No. Yeah. No. I disagree, actually, because every brand can only spend the euro or the dollar once.
[01:26:37] Fiona Davis: Yes.
[01:26:37] Rob Edwards: So it doesn’t matter whether you’re a gold gardener or not. Still, they would have to decide whether to spend the euro or dollar on your retail media network on-site or another media.
[01:26:47] Maurits Priem: Gives the ROI.
[01:26:48] Rob Edwards: So still, there there’s been price pressure on it always. What has changed is that it was relatively difficult in the early days to reason why you had a specific price. So what most of the retail media networks did was either they had some historical pricing
[01:27:04] Mario Mijares: Mhmm.
[01:27:04] Rob Edwards: That dated back from the days that some of that media was baked into trade relations.
[01:27:08] Fiona Davis: Relations. Yeah.
[01:27:09] Rob Edwards: And the other thing they did was just look around and ask around. Every retail media network has colleagues that are advertisers. The retailer is an advertiser by itself, so is quite aware of the prices in the market. And that’s how most of the pricing in the early days took place.
[01:27:24] Fiona Davis: Yeah. And so in terms of general ROI then on things like off-site, are you still seeing the performance standing up to other competitors in the space?
[01:27:33] Rob Edwards: It’s difficult to compare because from most of the off-site advertising done by retail media networks, what should it be compared to? Because if it’s not done through a retail media network and you can’t do the closed loop measurements, then what should you compare it to? So you get the interesting comparison between a stone hard ROAS or even iROAS, for example Mhmm. Compared to reach, your frequency. So it’s difficult to get yeah. CPM. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:28:00] Fiona Davis: Yeah. Okay. We always like to ask this question at Cannes in particular. What are some of the insights that you have come across or interesting developments or innovations you’ve seen that’s captured your attention in Cannes, or any takeaways from what you’re hearing along the closet that you would talk about?
[01:28:17] Rob Edwards: So last year, I wrote a guest blog for the IAB on Cannes. I called it, like, the seven key takeouts for retail media from Cannes. So there were seven. But then in the end, I said, but interestingly enough, there was three topics that nobody talked about and then or almost nobody. One was the consumer. I still hear too little about the consumer, which is not good. The consumers should always be at the center of everything we do. This is also where brands and retailers should always find each other because brands should have consumer at the center always. The other one was I hear very little about Amazon. Whereas looking at it from a distance, they are the retail media market. So that’s interestingly not talked about enough, I guess. And then there was sustainability, which in my opinion has three different topics, carbon, privacy, and preferring the good choice. And then I concluded the blog with, oh, yes. And, of course, there was AI. And that’s similar this year, AI, but different. Because last year, AI was all over the place. Mhmm. Nobody really knew what to think, or at least that was the opinion I got or what to do with it. But now I hear many, many conversations on retail media or media in general and customer journeys moving into an agentic world. And as consumers will start using agents and retail media will also start using agents
[01:29:38] Fiona Davis: Yeah.
[01:29:39] Rob Edwards: And advertisers will start using agents, we move into a agent to agent world. And that’s interesting. How do you advertise to an agent? Well, maybe not.
[01:29:48] Fiona Davis: Or maybe, yes. Do you treat them like a consumer?
[01:29:51] Rob Edwards: No. I don’t think so because the the agent is very different, but I’m not sure how this is gonna play out. Interesting presentation on the Nectar Summit here in Khan Yeah. In the opening about this agent to agent world. And I’m not sure how it’s gonna play out, but there’s definitely some big change is gonna happen. Yeah. And as with every big disrupting change, we all tend to overestimate the short term impact and underestimate the long term impact. It is the on the long run, it’s definitely gonna have some big changes on our world here.
[01:30:23] Fiona Davis: Yeah. Well so one of the earlier guests literally said, we’re here where it can. We’re talking about AI technology data, and nowhere apart from in the ballet itself are they talking about it’s the festival of creativity and brand. And he sort of said, I don’t know that I have an answer to this, but how do you maintain brand awareness and brand values in a world where you’ve got agent to agent talking to each other?
[01:30:46] Rob Edwards: Well, I’ve seen really nice examples of brand keys. Yeah.
[01:30:50] Catalina Salazar: There are
[01:30:50] Rob Edwards: all sorts of different names for the app. So brand keys, all your brand guidelines baked into an agent. Yeah. I’ve even seen examples of AI making sure that the branding is even better because they’re checking whether the creative fits with the brand key or the brand guidelines.
[01:31:07] Fiona Davis: Yeah.
[01:31:07] Rob Edwards: So I’m not too afraid of that. What I am afraid of is that we don’t talk creativity enough.
[01:31:12] Fiona Davis: Yes. We have a live example of that too. We only relaunched our brand from ControlVest Exposed to Overline about a month ago. And we had literally within a day, all of the regular OpenAI type agents had already fully indexed a whole new proposition, and literally, the Milagay was, like, verbatim what our pitch is. So it’s like, you know what? It’s actually pretty good. Yeah. And it had only been out in the wild for about one day that did a great summary of what the pitch was. So I do think you’re right about it has the capability to ingest the brand values if they’re public. If they’re out and you’re talking about them in marketing, you’re making them available in the right way. So yeah.
[01:31:50] Rob Edwards: The creativity in general so you’re right. Outside of the Palais, it’s lots of ad tech. Lots of retailers, more and more is also a good thing. And there’s relatively little talk about the creative. But I’ve been using since a couple of years, maybe you’ve seen a model that I call the MediaCube. It has three axis, reach, data, and tech. And it’s only because I’m too stupid to think in four dimensions, and I can’t visualize it, that I leave out the most important one, which is creativity. Yeah. Because every research that we do I mean, we just did some super interesting research in The Netherlands within supermarkets, a part of the Haldeles family. And we’re seeing again that 50% of the impact is the creative. Yeah. So we’re talking reach and data and tech all day, but, actually, 50% of the impact is the creative.
[01:32:39] Fiona Davis: The data is telling you that the creativity side of it is the thing that’s where people in your direction.
[01:32:43] Rob Edwards: Yep. Yeah. So one of the interesting things that also happened in Cannes is I think we should give that credit is that Cannes is not all about being polite with a rose. Yeah. Because yesterday afternoon, there was a very interesting meeting in an Irish pub.
[01:32:57] Fiona Davis: Yes.
[01:32:58] Rob Edwards: Dark. Everybody squeezed together, drinking Guinness Yes. Yelling boo. And it was it was just the best thing ever. It was a lots of lots of fun and tongue in cheek.
[01:33:08] Fiona Davis: Yeah. I believe that’s the exchange wire
[01:33:10] Rob Edwards: Yeah.
[01:33:10] Fiona Davis: Question you’re talking about. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:33:12] Rob Edwards: It was really nice. But the interesting thing that happened is because of all the fun and the crowd yelling, the really sensitive topics were touched, actually, in a quite transparent way. So that was really, really nice. One of the things that I took from that was Andrew Lipsman, who was being challenged on the topic of fragmentation.
[01:33:29] Fiona Davis: Mhmm.
[01:33:29] Rob Edwards: So how in the hell are the brands in going to cope with 200 different retail media network walled gardens? And then he asked, what’s the problem? And then everybody was quiet, like, where is he going? He said, what’s the problem about having 200 retail media networks? He said, in all of the media that you do, you’re probably advertising on thousands and thousands, maybe millions of different websites. We don’t think that’s strange. It’s just that as long as it’s programmatically available, then you can manage the tail. And that really opened my eyes because until then, I was thinking fragmentation is an issue. Right? How are we gonna solve that for the brands? Yeah. And then I was thinking, okay. So as long as the tail of all those retail media networks is programmatically available,
[01:34:09] Liz Caselli-Mechael: Yeah.
[01:34:09] Rob Edwards: Then it shouldn’t be that big of a problem. Actually, it’s not too different. Yeah. It’s similar to the quote that I said on in store being the new television. Just the other day, something really strange happened to me. I was reading the newspaper. I still do, the paper one. And I was reading the news, and then next to it was a car ad. What was it doing there? I was reading the news, and then there was a a car ad next to it. Isn’t that strange? And people are looking at me like, where is he going? No. That’s not strange. We’ve been having that for a hundred years. Is it? Well, that’s exactly my point. So if that’s not strange, because what’s the relationship between a car and the news that I’m reading? So why would it be strange to have a car ad in a grocery shopper journey? Yeah. Why not? It’s just because we’re not used to it. And we will get used to it quickly because I see examples all over Europe and, by the way, also on the other side of the Atlantic. So sometimes somebody give you a different perspective. You’re like, oh, actually, okay. Yeah. That’s true.
[01:35:06] Fiona Davis: And, actually, I think that’s all we’ve got time for today. So thank you so much for coming in. It’s great to have you, Ruben. And Thanks for having me. Hope you have a a fantastic rest of Cannes.
[01:35:15] Rob Edwards: Thank you very much.
[01:35:16] Fiona Davis: Okay.
[01:35:16] Maurits Priem: Welcome to a special edition of Time for a Reset podcast here from Cannes. I’m Angela Myers. I lead retail media for Goodway Group, and I’m here with Alice Anson from Nectar three sixty. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for having us. Yeah. Tell everybody about your role.
[01:35:32] Unknown: Yeah. So I’m really lucky. I lead our digital retail media business. So that is effectively be that our websites, be that off-site digital media across social display. And, also, recently, I overtook all of our digital in store strategy, so across our screens, etcetera. And my role goes all the way through the ecosystem, so everything from defining the proposition, building the tech, and then sales and operations.
[01:35:58] Maurits Priem: Awesome. For the listeners that don’t know, just a little bit about Nectar three sixty in total, just like what are the big stats?
[01:36:04] Unknown: Yeah. No problem. So Nectar three sixty is the in house retail media data and loyalty agency for the Sainsbury’s group. Sainsbury’s, a UK grocer, also has Argos, which is a general merchandise retailer, and two clothing as well. We are really proud to have The UK’s largest coalition loyalty program. So we work with multiple brands, obviously our own group, but also British Airways, SO, etcetera, to allow collectors to earn and redeem points, and we have 23,000,000 active collectors in The UK.
[01:36:35] Maurits Priem: That’s a lot of scale.
[01:36:36] Unknown: It’s a lot of scale.
[01:36:37] Maurits Priem: Yeah. Alright. Well, with all that scale, how do you think about creating value in the ecosystem for all of your brand partners?
[01:36:44] Unknown: So everything for us starts with the customer. And for us, we have two customers. We have our clients and our agencies that we work with and, obviously, the end consumer. So when we’re thinking about creating value, it’s really about how do we solve for the problems that they have. Really excitingly, it can. We’ve recently launched our Nectar three sixty Pollen platform, and that really came from the fact that brands are saying to us there’s too many retail media networks. It’s really difficult to work with. We can’t truly omnichannel plan because all of the systems are unique. And, actually, measurement is a constant battle in the industry. So we took away all of those problems and basically put it into a single platform. So creating a unified retail media platform that allows you to go from conception of an idea to running a campaign and then measuring it in one single tool. We’ve been really lucky that we’ve worked with a portfolio of around 10 to 12 different clients and agencies through this, so really extensive user research, listening to them about their problems, and some of the amazing feedback that we’ve had is that this is what they’ve been asking for. This is bang on the nose. So that’s really the ultimately what we do.
[01:37:46] Maurits Priem: Yeah. That’s actually really incredible. And the fact that you had that level of engagement in the research phase
[01:37:52] Rob Edwards: Yes.
[01:37:53] Maurits Priem: How do you think that actually really helped shape where you are today, and are you gonna continue to do that?
[01:37:57] Unknown: Absolutely. So UX first is something that I’m super passionate about, and I think whenever you’re building something for people to use that you can’t sit in the ivory tower and think, like, whatever I think is gonna be perfect. So we’ve had everyone involved right from the beginning, thinking about what are the pain points with how we currently work, how do we move that forward. We’ve also been involving them in all of the user testing. So everything actually from design conception, so putting the designs in front of them and saying, what about this, what about that, all the way up to now that the platform is live, getting them in the tool. The exciting thing is the road map for the future. So we already have these broad topics that we really want to explore, so stuff like a GenTech AI, creative generation, etcetera. But what I’ve asked the team to do is reserve a significant proportion of the development time for user feedback. So it is core to how we create the program. It will be core to how we continue to do it. And I think it’s so important. Right? We’re ultimately a client service business, and we need to get that right.
[01:38:53] Maurits Priem: That that’s right on. And it’s evident in the panel discussion earlier, you had some of your advocates on stage with you, and I read the press release as well. So it sounds like they’re strong advocates of what you’ve released. And it sounds really exciting, to be honest with you. I mean, it’s kind of a game changer. We don’t see a lot of that in The US outside of some of the big networks. So well done.
[01:39:12] Catalina Salazar: Thank you.
[01:39:13] Maurits Priem: Yeah. So when you think about the role that retail media is playing for these brand partners and how they’re thinking about using it both strategically and tactically, how do you think about not just the platform that you just launched, but how do you think about the current state and where things are gonna head to allow them to be both strategic and drive awareness and upper funnel as well as tactical lower funnel and conversion?
[01:39:37] Unknown: Yeah. And I think, obviously, at the event today, we’ve had a a few really interesting panels and and hearing the brand’s attitude to things. I think what we’ve really seen recently is this movement away from people thinking a retail media team exists in its silo. Charlotte, you know, even mentioned it on stage, but actually where they’ve gone to is how do we get retail media on every plan. Yeah. And I think that is truly it. So the way that I personally view retail media is it’s not a vertical channel. It’s a horizontal layer of of data power that sits under everything, and that means that it can do everything. So when we think about brand building, one of the amazing things about retail media is that you can cut your wastage. And in a world where actually marketing budgets are are more difficult than ever, like, why wouldn’t you do that? And why wouldn’t you think about that? And I think what we’re starting to see now is more agencies and more brands are coming to the table with that approach to be, like, actually, retail media is creator. It’s not boring. It is dynamic according to their different part of the shopper journey. And, actually, I think by having amazing events like this, by having podcasts like yours that bring experts of the industry together to talk about it more. That awareness level is going up, and we are seeing a a movement in the industry.
[01:40:42] Maurits Priem: Yeah. It actually speaks to great partnership Yeah. Which we saw on stage and you’re essentially speaking to. How do you think about partnership then Nectar three sixty Sainsbury wide? How do you think about where partnership is evolving with everybody you’ve spoken to today and you’re and you’re speaking about now?
[01:40:58] Unknown: Yeah. So I think, really, when we look at the Sainsbury’s world and everything that we do there, it is a partnership. It’s that removed closeness is how we view our relationship with the retail piece. So, absolutely, it’s it’s really important that we have that relationship and we understand the category strategies, etcetera. We wanna be separate enough to drive innovation. I think when we think about collaboration, for us, it’s also not just about collaborating with other brands. It’s about also creating a really open environment for the industry to grow. So events like today, it’s never a closed door. We have retailers from all over the world that are here. We have competing retailers that are here. And and that’s really important to us because, actually, as we’re in a maturing market, which the retail media is, we need to make sure that we’re getting the best voices in the room. We’re educating one another, and we’re kind of bringing everything together.
[01:41:44] Maurits Priem: Yeah. Very progressive mindset. So you’ve been here hosting today, which is wonderful, but you’ve been at Cannes for a few days. What do you think you’ve picked up or heard or learned that you’re gonna take back with you? I’m super passionate about AI and everything that happens within that space, and
[01:42:02] Unknown: I think it’s really interesting about the move to agent to agent conversation, obviously, the rise of GEO, generative engine optimization. And I think, really, what he has highlighted to me is that we are only scratching the surface in this. Every day is a school day. And, actually, worlds are really colliding in this environment. No longer can we be like, okay. Well, this is tech and any tech have to worry about it. We absolutely have to do that. I think the thing for me as well that I always love about Cannes is that it kinda reminds you of the power of human connection. Being able to see people that you’ve either only seen on a screen or, like, you’ve not seen for twelve months, I think that’s really exciting. And being able to share those ideas is great. And, again, in a world of AI, that can’t be replaced, in my opinion. So I think that’s probably the thing that I love most about CAM.
[01:42:48] Maurits Priem: Yeah. Well, thank you so much. This has been a great day. Your event is wonderful. So thanks for letting us be a part of it, and thanks for sitting down with us today.
[01:42:56] Unknown: Thanks for supporting us. Alright. Great.
[01:42:58] Paul Frampton-Calero: Thanks for tuning in to this edition of Time for a Reset by Overline, recorded in partnership with Nectar three sixty during the Cannes Lions two thousand and twenty five. We want to hear from you. If you’re enjoying Time for a Reset, please leave us a comment or a review on your preferred platform, and subscribe to be the first to know when a new episode drops.
