Retail Media Alignment - Introduction

Previous posts:

Retail Media: How did we get here?

The Retail Media Business Opportunity Statement

The retail media business is a heavy lift in terms of integrated consumer & shopper journey, data, shopper & category vision, technology capabilities but also organizations and within, teams capacity, skills, and a complete 360° in how collaboration is shifting whether you are an endemic supplier/advertiser, a retailer/merchant/publisher supported by in-house or outsourced solution providers.

With an opportunity forecasted to hit $141.7B in 2024, fast catching up with Linear TV and potentially overtaking it as the third-largest channel by spend within a few years, and because of the operative dynamics of this business, we are already witnessing companies dominating it while other in the “can we/should we?” will be largely left out as the learning curve and fragmentation increase.

Fast changes

??On the retail side - How big should it be?

from the trench: If you happen to have ten stores, and you happen to sell an incredibly unique product, and you have a high level of engagement with a community of interest, you’ve got a retail media network opportunity.”

Start small and think BIG (Willingness-To-Pay & Cost-To-Serve) from the start: What Win(shoppers)-Win(Sellers/Brands)-Win(Retailers/Merchants)?

??On the fragmentation side - From reach thinking to walled gardens, alliances, and interoperability, focusing on tangible and measurable results.

??On the future of targeting side - From Amazon to mainstream, fuelled by the decline in linear TV ratings, the demise of third-party cookies, and the ability to deliver ads to shoppers in physical stores.

??Digital, specifically digital-influenced, is here to stay; retail media is helping brands reach consumers through channels other than retailers' owned websites using their 1st and 2nd-party data collaboration.

Addressable in-store retail media is offering new engaging and meaningful ways to engage with shoppers.

?? On the consumer side, with a new generation much more aware and reshaping how we shop, fragmentation is not their problem.

Faster challenges

??88% of executives think their customers are changing faster than their business can keep up.

??Brands struggle with managing finite budgets and choosing the right retail media opportunities. The traditional siloed approach to brand and performance within marketing teams leads to confusion about ownership of spend.

??Brands, Retailers, Agencies, Technology partners, and their trade associations all understand or are adapting their organization structures and leadership to navigate the changing landscape, sometimes pushed, other times with misaligned agendas, with first movers or late movers reshaping the status quo beyond small incremental leap, like how incremental value should or could be standardized, others go beyond, like Melanie Babcock, VP of Retail Media and Monetization at Home Depot:

“Well, first, I don’t think we have a standard definition of incrementality. Value isn’t just incremental sales; and it’s many other things...Retail media is now bringing last-mile media to those suppliers so they can see the whole picture,?whether it’s a brand campaign, a consideration campaign, or a performance/conversion campaign. And remember, a brand campaign isn’t all about sales. It’s about driving preference or even just awareness, but at least?Home Depot can show you closed-loop attribution on how that customer behaved with that ad — whether it’s on HomeDepot.com or external. That, to me, is the value.

So what?

To go further, sometimes, we need to step back and ask ourselves whether this retail media initiative is worth pursuing, and if so, what net benefits can this effort be expected in terms of joint-value creation and collaboration?

After all, if you see this as a significant and urgent initiative, isn’t it worth jointly bringing the best internal and external resources available to ensure it goes well?

Guiding question - Strategic integration:

??Is retail media defined and integrated within your strategic BET(Bigger- Effort-Targets) across the organization (think initiative instead of tactics)?

What are your value GROT drivers?

??Are some less-tangible benefits been quantified? Are you using comparable metrics vs. other competing initiatives?

?Guiding question - Organization structure:

??Is retail media viewed as a key (current or future) component of consumer and shopper marketing initiatives (pre-, during, and post-activation)? Is it an essential and urgent focus for the integrated sales and marketing organization? ??How are capability, capacity, and effectiveness tracked, measured, shared, and optimized currently and in the future?

Guiding question - Tools and Platform:

??Is there a comprehensive end-to-end system linking all retail media-related tools (insights, planning, activations, measurement) with tight integration to POS (sales) CRM(loyalty, shopper insights)? ??Are these services made available and shared for joint-value collaboration initiatives between parties using a fair subscription-based model?

Guiding question - Consumer and Shopper Insights:

Are decisions data-led based on historical, forecasted hypotheses? Are analysis of both shopper and consumer insights directly connected to measurement systems for Penetration, Sales value and volume, ROAS, agreed incremental KPIS, and ROI overall?

Guiding question - Digital experiences:

Are sophisticated and compelling digital experiences delivered based on shopper expectations in every stage, from consumer awareness and consideration to driving trial and repeated shopping needs and missions with near real-time (digital) shelf inventories, content, creative, and order pickup options to understand the ROI of each activation?

Guiding question - Omnichannel experiences:

??Is the omnichannel experience fully integrated from brick-and-mortar stores to e-commerce with a near real-time understanding of digital-influenced behaviors, inventories, and in-store impact from online activations?

Guiding question - Metrics & Measurement:

??Do you have or get a platform dashboard with a visual representation of shopper acquisition, engagement, and sales by behaviors, experience, brand, etc., via in-depth shopper and consumer insight collection and analysis across all retail media efforts, channels, and activations?

Guiding question - How BOLD are you?

Assess brainstorm, your from/to: From: current status quo To: where you want your future aspiration to be with this initiative.

For instance, Strategic integration could shed light and give a meaningful representation of your maturity or the maturity of your prioritized Joint-Value Collaboration.

The point is to help you develop an accurate representation that can guide your decisions on launching or not a joint-value collaborative initiative.

So step back and ask internally or jointly with your core or extended team the above key guiding questions as a first step toward internal and external alignment.

“Every fact of science was once damned. Every invention was considered impossible. Every discovery was a nervous shock to some orthodoxy. Every artistic innovation was denounced as fraud and folly. We would own no more, know no more, and be no more than the first apelike hominids if it were not for the rebellious, the recalcitrant, and the intransigent.”

— Robert Anton Wilson

• Do you think of Retail Media as an Initiative: a new internal or external component of a strategic plan that seeks to improve collaboration, team effectiveness, culture, or overall business strategy?
• How will you collaborate as a merchant or as a seller? What Category, Consumer/Shoppers unmet needs would give you both a competitive edge if implementing this initiative?
• Do you mostly coordinate, cooperate, collaborate, or better, are you above market in all three?
• Do you have a Penetration|Behavior>< Attitude matrix power by your Retail Media merchant (shopper) and your own CMI team(consumer)?
• How will you translate these findings into a joint-value creation initiative mid to long-term? How will you create/learn/cadence share your joint measure of commitment?

What's the Retail Media business opportunity?

Retail Media uses merchant first and second-party deterministic data for insights-driven marketing and merchandising initiatives to satisfy the needs of targeted shoppers and enhance the shopping experience supported by its partners' technology capabilities platforms connecting demand and supply within addressable channels with agreed measures of commitment to win, it is operated by the sellers or its expert partners in autonomy and transparency, supported by the Merchant to improve business results and brand equity for merchants and sellers.

Next to this Alignment/Collaboration series, let's dive into internal alignment and collaboration. Thank you for your time and comments. John.

The alignment model through Commercial and Operational collaboration