Nobody wants to walk into their their grocery store and it to be
NASCAR. No one's looking for ads
everywhere all the time. Yeah, use the screens
intelligently to deliver messages that are maybe
relevant. Hello and welcome back to the
Retail podcast Live from I was going to say shop talk live from
grocery shop. I'm here with Harles Fischman,
VP and general Manager of encounter RRD underneath the
umbrella of RRD. So, Hans, for those who don't
know what you guys do, why don't you tell us what you do?
We work with both retailers and advertisers and what we try to
do is for a retailer, we're trying to take the idea of
digital signage to the next level for their customers.
How do you use digital signage to personalise the shopping
experience to put more items into carts and baskets and and
how do you to create a more bespoke and modern experience
for an advertiser who wants to be in the store?
We managed to solve actually something very similar, which is
that we're putting more items into baskets and carts.
We're trying to personalise and customise the targeting of a
message that goes to a consumer as they go through their through
their shopping journey and more importantly, providing back the
relevant data that's necessary for them to make smarter
marketing decisions. You must meet a lot of
customers. I mean, there's these, these are
sort of some of my hard getting go to question.
You must meet a lot of customers, yes.
What's the number one problem that they're trying to solve
when they come to talk to you? Well, I think for a customer,
and let's let's define this, there's 2 customers, there's
retailers, and then there's advertisers, brands.
For a retailer, they have a challenge with margin for linear
foot. And so by bringing in
advertising, by selling more items for linear foot, by by
activating data in a way that they've never been able to
actually create a value for it, we're actually allowing them to
think of their store in a different fashion in terms of a
blended margin. And for the advertiser, we're
helping them deliver messages directly to consumers when
they're actively making a purchase decision.
If I'm in a grocery store, for example, I'm there to buy
something. So if you can influence that
purchase decision in real time, you actually have created an
entirely new marketing channel, an opportunity for attribution
and conversion. What are some of the outcomes
that you're creating that? So you've obviously mentioned
that you've got two types of customers, the agency and then
the the the retailer. What's the main outcome then
that you're producing for either or?
Obviously you're trying to convert.
For, for a retailer, the number one thing that we create is
revenue and it's now revenue through a couple of different
revenue streams for the advertiser.
We're providing a different level of data that's ever been
possible before in a real store. And when we look at the growth
of retail media networks and, and the growth really is
tremendous, but it's based on a couple of pieces of information.
It's based on being able to target effectively, it's being
able to have attribution and attract conversion.
And as you do that in the digital world, which is actually
very straightforward and easy. The challenge is, is that if
you're a retailer, most of your traffic is in the physical
world, it's not digital. And if you're an advertiser,
most of the sales are happening in the physical world, not
digitally. As big as e-commerce is, it's
still only 20% of retail and that's globally.
So as we look towards what are the possibilities for an
advertiser, we are allowing for and delivered to them the data
necessary to make smarter marketing decisions.
And for a retailer, what we're providing is the ability to
activate and to create value for arts of their store that
haven't, they haven't really been able to figure out how to
make that U on par with what they're able to do digitally.
So would you, would you say that you're earlier on you mentioned
that you're an advertising company that's come into tech,
correct, right. So therefore you understand that
world better, right? Is that right?
That's correct. So we are, we are an advertising
company that does tech and we've been like this now for decades.
That's what we do, which is that we find technologies and we
adapt them for purposes of delivering marketing messages.
Over time, as digital has come to the forefront, we've of
course adopted digital technology to allow us to target
more effectively. And we do that in a variety of
ways depending on what the medium is.
If it's digital advertising, display, we do that.
If it's CTV, we do that. Depending on which each one has
had their advantages and mechanisms for this, for
purposes of growing this out, where what we've built is the
ability to take the digital methodologies that we've
developed, the learning and iteration that we've done over
decades and we're now applying it physically in the real world.
So we're bringing the capabilities that you would do
digitally to bear inside of a store.
And that's what I mean by being an advertising company that does
technology. If I were a technology company
and I'm trying to say, oh, here's my crazy widget, First
off, odds are it isn't born over the course of decades of
learning and iteration. You don't have the relationships
with the brands that you need that are necessary to actually
build the business around that. And more importantly, you're not
providing solutions for retailers.
In other words, you have a solution in search of a problem.
We have a problem that we have learned how to solve through
literally years and years of working from the advertising
perspective and bringing that into retail environments.
Perfect, final two questions. Where do I start and where is it
going? So you start by calling me.
So we, we, we, where we start is actually by building up the
supply. And what does that mean?
It means by working with retailers to be able to build a
larger scale to the business. So you're agnostic to the
retailer then, in terms of what? So we are agnostic to both
retailers and to brands. Our our goal is to actually
facilitate business between them by providing solutions for both
sides. Got you.
OK. So this if I've got a retail
media network already, you're providing the content for me.
We I can. And the medium.
I can, we can do two things. We can we can work with you as a
retail media network. Let's say you're a large
retailer today and you have a retail media network, an RMN.
We can work with you to figure out how to deploy these into
your stores and incorporate them in.
So you can now have increased scale.
So in other words, you have demand that you've generated
digitally. We can help you bring that into
store and we do that by the programmatic capabilities that
we can bring to bear by tying this into a back end system that
is fully modern and designed specifically to deliver digital
advertising from a demand perspective.
We can actually help you with either bespoke pieces where
you're doing custom installations in the store very
similar to like an end cap or something along those lines.
Today. We're also working with you to
help encourage the retailers to adopt and that comes in the form
of your media spend goes to the retailer to a much higher degree
than they do through other channels than you typically see
through programmatic channels. That allows for the retailer to
recognise a return on their investment that much more
quickly. This creates a healthy cycle, a
circle of virtual, a cycle of virtue, if you will, That a
virtuous circle. That's what I was looking for.
Thank you. To create a virtuous circle.
That virtuous circle then actually encourages retailers to
adopt more technology because they're making more money from
them more effectively. So to answer your question,
where do we begin? The proverbial chicken or egg?
Yeah, We work today with existing networks and our goal
is to actually maximise the opportunity with them.
We then work in conjunction with several large global technology
providers and not as a vendor relationship, but as a partner
relationship to build an ecosystem where all of these
different companies can now succeed and help bring the
capability into retailers and large retailers, small
retailers. And then so where did you see
the future? What, what?
What is the future of this? Industry, the the future of this
industry is it starts where it began, which is how do we look
at the retail experience? We as consumers, not not me as a
technologist or you. You're hosting this podcast.
Yeah. How do we as individuals that go
into a store, how can I create an experience that is more
bespoke, more personalised and customised, very similar to what
I might get off of my mobile device, right.
When we get our mobile device, it's universal.
It applies to everybody, but over days and weeks it starts
personalising to how I want to see information.
If I'm a retailer, how do I bring that capability to bear
inside my store? So I think that over time what
we're looking at is the the increase of more individual,
smaller discrete displays that deliver personalised recommended
messaging based on behaviours I may have taken or based on
perhaps a loyalty programme or other some other form of first
party data that allows for us to develop systems to the target
messaging that helps drive consumer behaviour.
Most importantly, when I say drive influence, it's really
about how do you influence a consumer to take action?
Yeah, that's beneficial to them. And in many respects in digital
advertising, it's overload, right.
Nobody wants to walk into their their grocery store and it to be
NASCAR. No one's looking for ads
everywhere all the time. Yeah.
Use the screens intelligently to deliver messages that are maybe
relevant for maybe it's Peach season.
Peaches are now in season. So here's a delicious cobbler
recipe. By the way, for cobbler, you
also need butter and you need milk and you need Graham
crackers and you need these things.
So that creates the opportunities to deliver
targeted marketing messages as we start thinking about the
context of the shopper in that environment and how do we
deliver that message, That's what Encounter is.
It's the platform that enables it.
I myself am not a marketer. Yeah, I'm a product person.
As a product person, I've listened to marketers, but I've
also listened to retailers. And we believe that we've
figured out the solution that meets both of their criteria,
their needs and their requirements, but at the same
time allows for us as consumers. And it's always starts with the
consumer, right? It's like, yes, brands want
everything and retailers want everything, but if you annoy
your customer, you got nothing. Yeah, So you have to start
there. So to create that experience and
how do you do this? How can we be privacy safe?
How can we put privacy at the forefront of artists of how we
look at this? How do we then tie the the
messaging and making sure that I am delivering that message for
Peach cobbler when it's time? How do I allow the local manager
to who knows their customers and greets them by name as they walk
in the store? How do you how do you create
that environment? How do we create an environment,
a technology platform that allows for ADA compliance or for
people that have you know, that are differently abled?
How do we how can we support them better using the exact same
technology? When we look at this in its
holistic platform, the same technology that allows me to
deliver a targeted ad for somebody for Peach cobbler can
also identify somebody that has especially different needs.
And by making this work at an enterprise grade, that's what I
think the future looks like. Miss Brilliant Hans, thank you
so much. Thank you.