Welcome to the Retail Media Moguls Podcast brought to you by Platform 195. We share trends and strategies across retail media to help you accelerate your brand growth. I'm your host Stuart Adelson.
With over 15 years of experience in the tech and online media industry, Luis is a seasoned leader known for his strategic vision and expertise in driving growth across key marketplaces like Amazon Woolwarts and beyond. His passion for mentoring young professionals and commitment to empowering diverse talent underscores his dedication to making a positive impact both personally and professionally.
Join us as we delve into the world of retail media with Luis exploring the evolving landscape of Omnichannel Measurement and uncovering insights that will shape the future of the industry. Welcome to the show Luis. Thank you so much for your pleasure. I've been quite an interesting journey for you. Obviously we've talked about Amazon and Woolmar in there. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about what you do and what you've done?
I'm sure thanks. I recently joined Essence Media and come here in the UK overseeing their e-commerce practice. Very exciting times. Not a lot to talk about right now about that because it's fairly recent. But I'll be helping them accelerate their e-commerce services and consultancy and retail media strategy as well as developing their ecosystem. In that sense it's very similar to what I've been doing in the past five years here in the UK. In the past three years I work for Jellyfish.
Basically I was tasked to take a lot of companies that will have considered Google Only Shop basically to be coming one of the largest independent agency partners here on e-commerce with the likes of Amazon, retail, citrus, etc. So focus two areas. One is to really develop the ecosystem of partners basically to work with and enable the commerce. And the other one is developing all the offers and that Jellyfish had basically around e-commerce that went from media consultancy to activation.
And I think what's kind of like the hot topic for this year everything that has to do with on channel and measurement prior to that. So I was working for Amazon here in the UK leading the big six network agency partnerships or at the time where was basically search Amazon search response or ad.
So basically that ship from the US landed and I had to figure out how to develop those partnerships with the network agencies here. You know five years ago the landscape was very different as you probably know from what it is like today. Well, I mean we're still in early days, but really you know my work was all about getting the client and the partners that decided about Amazon as a publisher.
Right today is more common to think about it that way but five years ago people knew that there was something happening, but they couldn't really put a finger on it around the power of retail media. And you know prior to that basically whole professional life back in the US where I work for being managing technology to providers like guy or Ken should at the time or in software.
And those guys I've been in you know the digital world for a while. So in that Amazon world to us about that role at that time you know you touched on the fact it was of search as did you see it evolve over that period. Yeah, so during the time of Amazon it was really cool because if I do that compared contrast when I had to basically quote unquote sell being and sell the dream of being in Europe.
It was a little complicated right because you know as you know Google is the heavy weight worldwide and Microsoft has done tremendous work in gaining market share but still is this 10 number two with Amazon is different everybody wanted to work with Amazon right but I don't think Amazon knew how to work with agency partners at the time or the ecosystem was all brand new came from a very retail focus world.
Advertising was something that was not even discussed necessarily as it is today in their financial. So it was a really interesting world because there was a lot of willingness from agencies to work with fear outweights to work with Amazon. At the same time I think Amazon had to learn how to work with those partners right so it was very interesting.
I didn't have to sell the dream of working with Amazon but I really had to figure out the best ways to do that and that includes the things like education like of the teams like for them to understand the product they offering you know what was in there for agencies a lot of that also had to do with financial models and business models right because.
I mean you come from the same world you know that left pocket right pocket is not interesting right it's about maximum I think driving in from mentality that kind of thing and I think then there's a lot of opportunity also around proof points case studies things that will really kind of define what the opportunity was on Amazon at the time.
I think that for better for words or in the pandemic things accelerated considerably and you know one of the big winners was e-commerce during that time in terms of growth because of the confines with that all the negative things set aside from that period of time it was a big accelerator for everybody doing e-commerce you know the world basically became digital right and we had to grow and learn and adapt very quickly to that new digital interaction versus the physical one.
So if I were to summarize my time at Amazon I think the first year was all about training basically getting people excited getting them to know the platforms the second year was all about growth and really you know once we set those foundations it was really about like understanding how you.
And then I used to grow in mentality for the brands and the benefits right so they would basically understand how to go beyond just trade budgets to really think about things like brand and the impact of what can Amazon do for my brand and last of not least I guess the last piece was about acceleration so the last year I was the Amazon was really about helping what we call the commerce acceleration program so really there's retail retail media and I always say that right like.
A lot of it as you probably know it's a lot of common sense right but you know if you don't have inventory sometimes you cannot advertise I bring it down to that very simple explanation that I think makes a lot of sense for people if you have bad reviews people won't buy your products right so you need to ensure that those things are fine tune right and.
It takes a little bit of time is not rocket science but it takes some time for people to get used to those concepts especially you know if you come from a world that you know it's all about just keywords and the sort of the right targeting strategy. You need that but you know the reason for that you need the retail sauce in order for things to really work yes yeah I'm actually quite a good analogy for how you actually build a retail media business within the retail is that education piece and.
The belief getting the belief in the stakeholders aligned and agreed and then demonstrating some success and then growing that and then what you've got that belief and shown that there's some success and got some growth and it's really how do you accelerate it you know how do you then scale scale and scale to create significant revenues.
Having got that sort of buy it it's about building trust at the end of the day right I think to me is the thing about retail media or retail or e-commerce it's about that connection with the consumer it's that digital connection at the end of the day it's I mean if you look at what's happening in the industry now and you know I wrote a little piece on LinkedIn last week about.
Retail media in the UK but this idea of being the connected consumer of understanding the customer journey of building that trust it's really cool right it's very. Like retail has existed forever right like you know you go back to the fishmonger and medieval times and even probably before that right to high streets and those things it's always about that connection and creating sort of this special experience for your consumers right.
That goes beyond search beyond targeting audiences and I think that's what's really cool about this industry that we're leveraging now the power of that data to create those connections you know that five years ago with basically a dream right like I remember five years ago or plus at this time you know I was at an off site in Barcelona and it was the first time we talk about marketing cloud Amazon I mean imagine that right where we are today.
I mean you talked about the high street there in the public we're evolving so quickly as an industry now you talked a bit about omnichannel earlier what does omnichannel mean to you. So that's a very interesting question I think that someone who defines retail media just being me to lower funnel like for me every tell me there's a part of that data in a way that retail data is what feeds omnichannel.
Yes, depends on your client or your brand and their objectives but for me is basically anything that touches the funnel from you know your brand budget's all the way to conversions right and the data that our data technology that goes to that so for some clients album might not necessarily be a play but for other client it's part of that very specific thing especially on grocery and things like that so for me any sort of interaction.
Interaction that you can potentially measure for your customer right if you're a brand if you are able to measure and have reach on that channel I will consider that I'm a channel. You know when I was a jellyfish only channel you know in the terms that we were talking to a retail clients it was very digital was all about bringing your Google your Facebook your digital channels together but you think about someone.
Let's say Sony right like omnichannel can also also means of like failed or freaking mortar that kind of thing depending on where you are but I mean basically as the definition says it's anything basically that is only present on your brand experience and the key for me is how you measure it how you send the right message at the right time to the right audience and how you potentially monetize that or have a specific API on that interaction.
As your work at jellyfish largely been on the brand side then helping brands like Sony for example capsulize on retail media or have you worked more with the retailers what's been the yeah. So my experience it has been more around helping brands basically be present on the specific market places and understanding the strategy of those market places. So the nature of the digital world the retail media is probably not a big chunk of that has always been Amazon.
So really help that I came from that world and I understood sort of the structure of Amazon their goals their product their offerings but I could take that information basically Taylor at solution. You know I would work with what we call retail consultants that will help answer the question of what products should I have on Amazon and why what sourcing models right we instant repeat with other retailers out there you know for instance we work with a large.
You the brand that Amazon was significant in Germany but so was other retailers so we work a lot with those guys and therefore understanding the platforms that power those network such as retail for instance but it was about understanding the category dynamics what was going on within those categories understanding what consumers were looking for et cetera et cetera and then you translate that into.
In a very simplistic way the list of products you want to tell the SK use rating whatever you want to call them and then you need to translate that into a media strategy media investment strategy right across the phone so that being you know things like at products that you want to use budgets that you want to use testing that you want to do that kind of thing but we're becomes interesting to me as well is the power of the data because we were doing very cool stuff with certain.
What is called non endemic so think that you wouldn't traditionally buy let's say on Amazon like you don't buy credit card but you can definitely you know if you are on Amazon you might see every now and then something that says that if you apply for this product you might get a voucher of discount that might be a credit card you know and is the power of that data or financial services for the model that kind of stuff so again like this is for me the definition of only channel retail media goes you know it's not confined to.
It's more about the power of that audience and the insight that you get yeah another retailer's get up to helping you with that data have you seen that there's probably some willingness but are they actually get up to help you in that scenario that's a very good question. I think we are in I wouldn't say the tipping point because that would be too early part pet should be fine but we're definitely going to change management what I mean by that is that.
It was funny because you know a lot of people will complain or when I work at Amazon a lot of my agency partners will basically highlight how Amazon had very limited data compared to other platforms and now Amazon is a little bit the standard when it comes to retail media on the data availability because as you probably know it's very fragment and it's a little bit of the wild west out there I like to change what but the available not so I think there's different levels of data sharing or willing is to provide that data.
I think it's very limited I think it's a learning curve you know a lot of companies out there are doing fantastic things I think boots is a perfect example of Walmart for that matter in the US that they're either taking Amazon as a footprint and emulating similar sort of data availability or at format but not everybody's there right so you know I think she look for instance in France car four was kind of sort of this big excitement about a year.
Go and we haven't seen too much progress in terms of what's out there or not out there there was a very good article about the frustration of not having that data so to answer your question is depends on the publisher or depends on the retail media network to be specific. Ideally what will happen is that people start seeing those benefits they will start to open up more and I think it might have been able to only take one big repeater or one big rosers to just.
Just expose a little bit more of data that obviously state and both within parameters of confidentiality and safety and all those things you the PR but the point is that someone starts doing that a lot of people will flock to that data and I think people will follow. In terms of planning side then we find in that actually most retails would say we'll plan the campaign for you and then they put together the plan they give it back to you as a brand as an agency.
How much are you able to actually do the physical planning as an agency when it comes to retail media so I will so much prepare the ladder that you mentioned meaning that that was a goal at jellyfish or really it's the goal at jellyfish and certainly something I will push for is that.
The higher agency service we should be able to do that have the experts right I mean that's the whole point of having retail media experts to understand and work with media strategists work with media planners to really come up with a comprehensive budget in our case I mean my experience you know it's always been us the ones driving as much as possible because our clients will be going back to the point of being on the channel love or clients will also be working on their product.
On their Google campaigns their Facebook campaigns their TikTok campaigns their album home linear streaming all of that some of this will be managed through the companies I work for and therefore it's very important for us to understand how all of this comes together right it's not silo.
There are instances in which we will have especially like I mentioned before in those some of those German publishers they will have things in house running their campaigns our value add on this will be to validate their strategy or partner with them in the fighting the right KPIs based on the brand's goal so yeah I mean if you're really maximizing what you're doing for an agency you shouldn't just be like pushing buttons or activating a plan and you should be working on that plan.
Partnering with the right ecosystem and understanding the impact of your Google campaigns how do you use those how do you drive traffic back to the marketplace or how do you use the data from that marketplace to influence programmatic outside of marketplace with that kind of.
Yeah I think it's the challenging thing for an agency isn't because there's a used to do the planning is that with a retail in the retail media space if you've got a brand typically that's come from a trade relationship and the accountability for success of that campaign within a trade relationship has to sit with the retail you know the brand is effectively saying that you know how to market you know how to sell products here's our budget look after it you do the plan and then to make that and if you haven't sold X amount of incremental.
Product then we're not going to be very happy with you and you're either not going to get the spend next year or we're going to reduce it or whatever it may be the minute you remove that and it's you know obviously it's changing a bit as consumer budgets come in and the metrics effectively soften the KPIs move away from.
Product sales and more into other sort of broader metrics but still at the heart within retail there's a requirement sell product yeah and just to me yeah actually that's where I think around the piece around validation and checking it fits with wider strategy is important because the brand still doesn't really want to take the accountability away from the retailer but also the agency has a great value in seeing how that retail media piece fits within the broader consumer
campaign and at the top end of the funnel within the retail media piece how that fits into the broader consumer campaign. It feels that is an accountability challenge I think there's a couple of things that first of all you're absolutely right I do think that there is been an evolution right of that what I mean by that is that we talked about that a lot of jellyfish around what we will call sort of the digital maturity of the client.
So you might have client that might be focused on sales and it will be very lower funnel and those tend to actually just the here's the budget that we have for trade marketing and we have clients like this is the budget for the year I need you to based on what's happening on Amazon or on creature enabled platforms activate done right like very simple very silo from that perspective but then you start basically going through that and it becomes more of a question okay I want to understand
how I can reach me funnel right and use perhaps some version of display or programmatic investment to reach the audience. Okay that's a little bit more advanced and then you have actually companies that we called multi moment multi connected where everything comes together in terms of okay well we need to understand the impact of social into commerce we need to understand the importance of it you.
So video drive engagement and you mentioned going beyond what I will say Ross right so it's not just return advertising spend but more about other KPI's and that could be things like new to brand lifetime value that kind of thing not everybody's there I mean it takes the journey we have a few clients that were multi connected and those were the ones where you're answering the question of what can Amazon do for my brand or what can you know looks
fantastic deal for my brand or Sephora or King Fisher and it's not just about how do I sell stuff now let's be honest it's retail right everybody at the other day once sell and this is where I think measurement is really cool and things that are happening around cloud because
four years ago one of the biggest challenge that we have that Amazon was to basically get people except about this plate and programmatic especially with a platform like Amazon because the answer will be well my clients they just want sell right like I don't care about we have Google stuff to do this but as soon as you start running marketing cloud you're able to understand simple things like what should be my search and display budget was the best combination to drive more sales what is the impact of those
display campaigns in my lower funnel and then you get into things like how should I think about multi touch attribution or how should I think about frequency in terms of when is there wastage in the exposure I get through my display campaign so the point is that it's very early days but because Amazon has enabled that data can I'm going back to your question about data now you're able to make those connections right and what we've seen in general is that you are going to get a lot of money
that you're not more budget and more investment because clients are seeing the benefits and the incrementality of that spend or you spend more wisely right and they're very happy with that because you get a certain data set that you didn't have access before so yes I think as things evolve what you're seeing is that more and more and those e-commerce budgets will become even bigger in the next years
if I'm not mistaken I think the UK is a 24 billion market right now in e-commerce and I'm mistaken the K-GAR is I think is 27% and basically retail media has a thick play on that and the point is that those budgets will become part of the brand budget at some point right that's the trend that we will see so and more and more and more CMOs will be very interested in understanding what's going on with that investment of how is that affecting my brand
if I was a brand that I was working retail what are the measurement tools that you would recommend to me to be using in order to clearly see that across from cloud measurement it's important it doesn't necessarily have to be Amazon marketing cloud but obviously if you're using Amazon yes do use that but you know there's other solutions out there like live ramp or Bellsport has some solutions as well
so in some way especially with you know a cookie less world that coming in identity I think that's super important I think attribution models are interesting it's complicated because everybody has their tape on that but being able to work with a good partner around that is important but my recommendation is building blocks is like you have to have your retail foundations right by that I mean like either have in house experts of work with partners that basically understand retail well
that can guide you through sourcing model the right API for retail tells the lost the just making sure that your catalog is coming right like you don't have to have everything in every single marketplace but you need to understand what to have in which marketplace and what to have if you sell directly to consumers you need to really understand that data
the distribution channels all of that stuff last mile has to be humming before you even think about advertising then the advertising piece I think raw as it's important and obviously you always want to maximize your investment in terms of sales but it's important also to capture new audience
that's right and to understand how you bring new eyeballs and new people how you get them passionate about your products equally important is to ensure that those people remain loyal right so if you're a grocery player right work with those guys that have retail media network
they're understand their subscription data their lifetime value data repeat purchases that kind of thing because all of that feeds back into the brand and then this idea of enabling a eloquent connected experience for your consumer
so you have to ensure and you have to enforce that no matter what the interaction is between the different channels in only channel that you have the right tools to ensure that the experience is the same to the extent that can be so if you're looking at an Amazon store that that presence is very similar to your dot com in terms of the branding the messaging all of that you don't want to have like a logo here that you know five years old and a new one here that kind of thing
if you think about what I mentioned before connected stores you know those digital displays that now you have a test goes the QR codes all of that stuff again I just that reinforcement right being able to measure that is super important online and offline so having the right set of tools is super important and most importantly I think it's not everybody can build like an army of people to do this is work with the right partner that not only provides the tools but it's able to interpret and even
to apply the changes needed yeah can you think of any sort of case study or any example of a brand that's really used on the channel measurement to effectively really accelerate growth of product sales or brand awareness depending on which API they were looking for yeah I think one that has done a tremendous job in this is loray out for sure I mean well they haven't been a client of mine directly on retail media but we've seen a lot of the work and the specials that we've been having
with Amazon in terms of how they work and all that they're open to testing they're open to measurement they're open to see the value and you just have to go through an Amazon dot com case study file to see all the good stuff that has happened on that front.
The edges and our one they were early adopters of play and they've seen a lot of benefit they had a lot of good thing going on to drive engagement so these are way brands of the future I will say that I really get that piece of understanding that experience that connectivity at jellyfish we have started to work or they
have started to work a lot on that front as well with clients that were 360 right so bringing that retail part connected and I think sort of the tipping point is where people start using that retail data to influence the other channel.
I think that none is a great example of that as well I was talking to someone who worked there and he was explaining to me how the center of what they're working on is the retail data the commerce data that's very exciting so it's not the after thought it's central to the decision yeah rather than planning top down with exactly using the bottom to plan up exactly very cool which is exactly how it should be.
Pretty there is we're sort of getting towards the end which is sad because I'm enjoying so much so lastly really probably with your commitment to sort of mentoring young professionals and empowering diverse talent we touched on that in the intro to just a bit more about that and what you're doing and what you've done there yeah so I'm originally from wild and my line central America and when I move to the US I probably know in the United States there's a large planning population a lot of people unfortunately don't have acting it's 32.
I had to growing up though in terms of access to education going to university that kind of thing so throughout my career I've been very fortunate to be able to work in what we called over there was basically minority associations right and one of the big ones that I work or I partner with actually was called out of the associations that you know for America they used to be called the association profession that you know in finance and accounting but I think you know what I'm doing is really good.
I think I think someone helped them rebrand but when I was in Microsoft I was an active member of the chapter we work a lot in doing recruitment so we will hire people and bring them on programs basically to help them at the time you know because believe or not I was a finance guy back in the day so I had a whole background in finance and what I did there was basically work in there was a financial
program so bring them early on minority focus basically students that were graduating to rotate and basically become professionals in that area when I was at Amazon I work a lot with the associations as well on that specific area I've done mentorship I think it's super important you know like you will
probably agree with this tour but sometimes you wish like the future version of you will tell you what to do or not to do at some point right so for me was in my university I work a lot on that front so I was a mentor for 10 years or plus in the undergrad program here in the UK you know a jellyfish we had a jellyfish sort of minority association so I work a lot kind of encouraging because jellyfish that global company you have people from other areas of the world into showing them hey guys
because you're from Brazil or you're from this ethnic background doesn't mean that you cannot have access to this leadership roles and things like that and these are great companies that encourage and give you that platform right and I will use my example of saying like listen I come to this level or professional experience obviously because of me doing my hard work and growing my career but also because I have companies that the events ordered me and it was all about what I brought to the table so it doesn't really matter
where you're from your ethnic background all that what matters is what you can do as a professional individual may very much the forward to do this that passes media comment well good well I think it's absolutely brilliant congratulations for doing that because it's so important to think to help bring people along and also help the diversity piece.
Good luck with essence maybe come. Thank you. Yeah it's exciting it definitely a new challenge. It will be UK focus so I'll be transitioning back to a local role. There's so much stuff to do that I'm going to be equally easy as I've always been very exciting.
Great good but there's only we can collaborate on do let me know absolutely thank you so much for gracing our retail media moguls podcast we've loved hearing from you and as always we thrilled for you to come back at some point in the future and maybe when you've got your feet under the desk essence media comment
we see how even another sort of six months of rapid evolution in retail media we can check again and see how it's evolved and especially that still exciting area of measurement and how and data and how that's being used to build bottom up from the funnel but thank you so much for coming and please do come again. Thank you for the opportunity really appreciate thanks. Thanks.
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