Welcome to the Retail podcast live from grocery shop.
And yes, we are in a Shark Tank. Really, really making me work my
money enough to be joined by Michelle.
Why Skittle you head up? I head up media creative and
operations for Albertsons Retail Media Network.
So what we're going to talk about, obviously retail media is
a massive part of the show and what CPG brands and grocers are
focused on. And what better way to unpack
what this means by looking at how one US grocer is tackling
that problem and driving value, I would say for their for their
CPG customers. So Michelle, why don't we just
maybe give us an overview of the team that you work for, what you
do within Albertsons, how you're set up, and then we'll go into
what you actually do for the CPG customers.
Sure. So we are having a chat and we
were talking about retail media. Are they, is it a retailer or is
it a media company? We are a media company within
our retailer. It's really important to
understand that this media company is operated in the
context of the retailer because when you put the retailer and
then our core endemic clients, the CBGS together, we have a
shared customer and we're really committed to making sure that we
ensure a good customer journey through bringing that to life
with behaviours and moments that matter to our customers.
So First off, we are structured in that I lead up the media
creative and operations. We have client success team that
is really that voice of the customer working with our CPGS
directly. And then we have our our product
teams, our analytics team to make sure that we're bringing
that measurement back to that experience that we're driving.
But most importantly, when you think about our structure within
a retailer, we have a strong relationship with our merchant
teams. And the reason why is because
our merchants know their category of business extremely
well, the best. Yeah.
And what we do then is really build the media solutions around
our shopper behaviours and also those those moments and the
insights from the merchants themselves and that
collaboration with our CPGS and. It feels like this is a subject
we can literally spend a whole day talking about because there
are so many aspects of it. I noticed that Albertsons sort
of put together a collective to actually provide that value
through a partnership that you're doing with.
Can you talk about the collective?
Like who is in the Albertsons collective and, and what what
each sort of partner would you refer to them as a partner
they're doing like Cap Gemini and and and the likes?
Yeah. So when we say collective, we we
really are thinking first and foremost about again that
customer and that shopper of our stores.
So I gave one example of our merchants.
We do have some partnerships in place and some partnerships that
we're we're really excited about.
One of those partnerships is with Cap Gemini.
But really it starts with a fundamental principle around how
we want to improve the experience for our customer, the
shopper, but also our clients, the CPGS.
We have begin on a journey to really look at our end to end
workflow, use our our our media and creative knowledge and
isolate areas where we can get productivity.
Now that may not sound that exciting, but being able to
decrease our time to market and to bring that experience to our
shoppers sooner is really important for our CPGS.
And we are focusing in on creative particularly in the
area of QA. The process of creative for a
CPG to work with the retail media network is a lot.
They have to blend their standards, their brand voice
along with what we know about our shoppers and our brands
because we are providing that shop ability.
So that QA process of reviewing brand standards and just, you
know, standard needs of getting creative live, we will be
launching something that will help our productivity there and
save at least one day to market. Is this were you doing retail
media prior to this as a no? I wasn't doing retail media
prior to this. What I was doing is so prior to
retail Media I was working on our enterprise marketing side at
Albertsons Companies and I really came and took this job at
Albertsons Companies for marketing because it we had a
built out loyalty programme which are.
Really big fish just swam cars. That was just like, oh, Oh my
gosh, remember I said that hearing?
You say loyalty? Yeah.
And they're probably very excited about how they could.
I just was just some people would see this big fish swim
outside would be like anyway about fish down there,
swordfish, I think or maybe not, but anyway, apologies.
So I came to Albertsons because they had a collection of loyalty
and a drive to even enhance their digitally and gain
shoppers in a in a privacy Safeway.
And so that concentration on the customer was why I came.
And then when I saw the value that could be created for CPGS
when I was still on the marketing side of the house, we
started doing events because moments like shopper moments
are, are important to drive incremental trips, but they're
also really important to drive that brand loyalty.
And particularly, that's where CPGS wanted to to lean into
those shopper moments to drive that loyalty.
What's been one thing that surprised you doing this?
When you're when you're talking to brands and you're taking
talking to them about taking them in on this journey with
Albertson's, what's some of the sort of surprising things that
you weren't expecting? Well, I think it becomes really
A2 pronged approach, so some of it isn't surprising.
We've worked in an objective by KPI framework since we've
launched our retail media network.
We know that there are certain business challenges that our
CPGS have that again, through our insights about our customers
behaviour and by running the media and the right way based
off of whether we're trying to drive awareness and or even
sales and then closing that loop with measurement, we can really
solve that in a repeatable way. So that's really where the
expectation of that part I that part I knew and that's where
we're also bringing in AI into the process because there is
much more of a repeatable framework there.
The part that is exciting and expand is that we can really
build a relationship on those behaviours.
So by allowing kind of the repeatable process to be there,
we, we can do things like launch our influencer network where we
can pre that connection and that custom content based on
behaviours either in the seasonal moments based off of,
hey, we know that this group of shoppers likes convenience.
Let's tap into that or localization, which is really
core to Albertsons and companies since grocery is a local
experience. And, and I presume that's how
Albertson sort of positions themselves within the US market,
right, in terms of providing those experiences for their
customers in a local environment.
So if I was one of the big Coca-Cola, Pepsi, one of these
big sort of already established CPG companies and, and I came to
you, does your retail media network purely focus on the
stores? Where, where does it start and
where does it stop the retail, the network that you have?
Sure. I mean, it's not just about the
stores. The stores are a component and
that full funnel channel strategy to reach the customers.
But again, if you think about what we know about our shoppers,
their behaviours either tied to moments and seasonality or just
the behaviours that they demonstrate based off of their
purchase history, all not loyalty card, you know, privacy,
Safeway, we can really help brands build a relationship and
testing strategies. So that's where if I was Coke, I
would be focused on using the insights that we have around our
shared customer because we sell a lot of coke in our.
Yeah, I can imagine. You know, solving their.
On Pepsi and the others. OK, all of them.
And I have to say I was. I asked what my favourite food
brand was the other day and I said I can't answer the.
Question. Retailer.
But what I would say is I would focus on solving my core
business challenges that are retailer specific.
But then I would think about how in brand strategy do I want to
use that same insights and behaviours to really make more
of an impact and prove out the results of what I'm doing with
customers in a larger way Because there are shopper
centric problems. But then there are insights that
be that can be carried into larger media strategy frameworks
just. Jumping around a little bit in
terms of going back to the AI outcomes, where do you find that
your customers are asking you where those AI sort of focused
elements, what's adding the most value to them?
So where, where, where does that conversation go?
Sure. So, you know, AI is really
simple if you break it down into two components, productivity and
performance. That's what our goals are
measured against. Again, where we really started
our process is on productivity. We want to make it easy or our
CPGS to get their message in front of our shoppers.
So many of our initial use cases are really focused in on that
productivity gain. We set out the partnership of
having an estimate of a 20% productivity gain, but really we
think based off of some of our initial use cases as well as
some expanded work that we've done internally.
We can just because I'm not very familiar with it.
So the 20% productivity gain, is that what what?
Sorry where? Into market, OK.
Yeah, for the brand. For the brand, so you know, they
engage us, they tell us I have a marketing objective and.
You can shave 20% off that and get them straight off to it.
Yes. What I why the time to market is
really important is because at the end of the day, especially
in those shopper centric programmes, we're solving a
business need. So perhaps they're launching a
new product, perhaps their category share is declining and
that's really where we can help solve those business challenges.
And some of those as challenges are perhaps known like, hey, I'm
bringing a new product to market.
You know, there's obviously an immense planning that goes into
that. But if a category share is
shifting, they may want to react more immediately.
So we have to be prepared for both scenarios, one in which you
know, we can do customised planning for a new product
launch or we can also get that to market quickly for those
category shifts. That's that can be more of an
immediate lever. I got you.
In terms of looking towards the future sort of coming towards
the end of the the interview, how do you see the expansion of
what you've started and and where the market is going?
Well, I, you know, I think we're on the beginning of this journey
and I'm really excited to be on this journey.
There is so much that can be done to enable efficiencies
which will then help drive performance.
And by performance, I really do mean the incremental action that
happens as a result of these media campaigns that could be
sales that could. Conversion, right?
Some sort of conversion. And you know, we started very
simply on with both creative and media, but continuing to layer
on that. One of the things that I've said
around AI is someone still has to define the task to be done.
And you have to have great knowledge around the process of
media and who you're servicing in order to define those tasks
and continue to refine. The models will learn and they
will make it better, but you also need someone to help
continue that process. I got here.
I did say that was the last question.
It's just one of the one of the things I and I promise this will
be one of the things I've picked up at the show talking to a few
sort of younger CPG brands. They're just, you know, they're
sort of starting out. They're, I don't know, make
chewing gums organic. They're just making something
small. Is there a place for them to
come to sort of have that retail media conversation or do you
feel it's any sort of if we were going to your ideal customer for
this, is it the big Unilevers and Nestle's of this world?
It's both right and that's you were.
Talking about the local and that was why I was curious about
that. It is both and the reason why
it's both is and that's really where we shine as this this
media company when I talked about that objected by KPI
framework. That's really something that
smaller CPGA can leverage because we have experience with
our shoppers and we know how to drive that awareness and then we
could measure the impact for them and close that loop.
But yes, there is, you know, still room for the Unilever
where we have that concentrated process of understanding their
objectives, doing custom planning and really integrating
into our with our merchants for someone like Unilever.
I got you. Are there any sort of trends
that you're seeing within the within the retail media in
general or within the categories?
Yeah. So one of the interesting things
that has been happening is this classification of specialty
retail media network or more retail commerce centric media.
And then you have even new entrants like financial services
building media networks. For me, what was really
interesting when I was spending some time with a specialty
retail networks was their emphasis on content and
influencers, but really having high control over the process.
Where we are right now is we, you know, we have more of a
hybrid approach in that we let our brands come through with
their messages because we know we have that shared customer.
And we are, you know, thinking about our influencer network and
how we we put more of a voice on bringing our shoppers to life
through content and the integration of influencers.
But I think that there's something to be learned from the
specialty and really what they're doing of controlling
that experience around their customers.
That's fantastic, Michelle. Thank you so much for giving us
the time. It's been an absolute pleasure.
Thank you.