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.