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Albertsons' Retail Media Network: Transforming Shopper Connections · The Retail Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Retail podcast live from grocery shop.
• 0:03
  And yes, we are in a Shark Tank. Really, really making me work my
• 0:09
  money enough to be joined by Michelle.
• 0:21
  Why Skittle you head up? I head up media creative and
• 0:24
  operations for Albertsons Retail Media Network.
• 0:27
  So what we're going to talk about, obviously retail media is
• 0:29
  a massive part of the show and what CPG brands and grocers are
• 0:35
  focused on. And what better way to unpack
• 0:38
  what this means by looking at how one US grocer is tackling
• 0:44
  that problem and driving value, I would say for their for their
• 0:48
  CPG customers. So Michelle, why don't we just
• 0:51
  maybe give us an overview of the team that you work for, what you
• 0:55
  do within Albertsons, how you're set up, and then we'll go into
• 0:58
  what you actually do for the CPG customers.
• 1:01
  Sure. So we are having a chat and we
• 1:05
  were talking about retail media. Are they, is it a retailer or is
• 1:10
  it a media company? We are a media company within
• 1:14
  our retailer. It's really important to
• 1:16
  understand that this media company is operated in the
• 1:20
  context of the retailer because when you put the retailer and
• 1:24
  then our core endemic clients, the CBGS together, we have a
• 1:28
  shared customer and we're really committed to making sure that we
• 1:33
  ensure a good customer journey through bringing that to life
• 1:36
  with behaviours and moments that matter to our customers.
• 1:41
  So First off, we are structured in that I lead up the media
• 1:45
  creative and operations. We have client success team that
• 1:48
  is really that voice of the customer working with our CPGS
• 1:52
  directly. And then we have our our product
• 1:54
  teams, our analytics team to make sure that we're bringing
• 1:58
  that measurement back to that experience that we're driving.
• 2:02
  But most importantly, when you think about our structure within
• 2:05
  a retailer, we have a strong relationship with our merchant
• 2:09
  teams. And the reason why is because
• 2:12
  our merchants know their category of business extremely
• 2:16
  well, the best. Yeah.
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  And what we do then is really build the media solutions around
• 2:23
  our shopper behaviours and also those those moments and the
• 2:27
  insights from the merchants themselves and that
• 2:29
  collaboration with our CPGS and. It feels like this is a subject
• 2:34
  we can literally spend a whole day talking about because there
• 2:38
  are so many aspects of it. I noticed that Albertsons sort
• 2:40
  of put together a collective to actually provide that value
• 2:44
  through a partnership that you're doing with.
• 2:46
  Can you talk about the collective?
• 2:47
  Like who is in the Albertsons collective and, and what what
• 2:51
  each sort of partner would you refer to them as a partner
• 2:54
  they're doing like Cap Gemini and and and the likes?
• 2:57
  Yeah. So when we say collective, we we
• 3:00
  really are thinking first and foremost about again that
• 3:04
  customer and that shopper of our stores.
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  So I gave one example of our merchants.
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  We do have some partnerships in place and some partnerships that
• 3:11
  we're we're really excited about.
• 3:13
  One of those partnerships is with Cap Gemini.
• 3:16
  But really it starts with a fundamental principle around how
• 3:20
  we want to improve the experience for our customer, the
• 3:23
  shopper, but also our clients, the CPGS.
• 3:26
  We have begin on a journey to really look at our end to end
• 3:30
  workflow, use our our our media and creative knowledge and
• 3:34
  isolate areas where we can get productivity.
• 3:37
  Now that may not sound that exciting, but being able to
• 3:42
  decrease our time to market and to bring that experience to our
• 3:46
  shoppers sooner is really important for our CPGS.
• 3:50
  And we are focusing in on creative particularly in the
• 3:55
  area of QA. The process of creative for a
• 4:00
  CPG to work with the retail media network is a lot.
• 4:04
  They have to blend their standards, their brand voice
• 4:07
  along with what we know about our shoppers and our brands
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  because we are providing that shop ability.
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  So that QA process of reviewing brand standards and just, you
• 4:18
  know, standard needs of getting creative live, we will be
• 4:21
  launching something that will help our productivity there and
• 4:24
  save at least one day to market. Is this were you doing retail
• 4:28
  media prior to this as a no? I wasn't doing retail media
• 4:32
  prior to this. What I was doing is so prior to
• 4:35
  retail Media I was working on our enterprise marketing side at
• 4:40
  Albertsons Companies and I really came and took this job at
• 4:46
  Albertsons Companies for marketing because it we had a
• 4:50
  built out loyalty programme which are.
• 4:52
  Really big fish just swam cars. That was just like, oh, Oh my
• 4:56
  gosh, remember I said that hearing?
• 4:58
  You say loyalty? Yeah.
• 4:59
  And they're probably very excited about how they could.
• 5:04
  I just was just some people would see this big fish swim
• 5:06
  outside would be like anyway about fish down there,
• 5:10
  swordfish, I think or maybe not, but anyway, apologies.
• 5:14
  So I came to Albertsons because they had a collection of loyalty
• 5:18
  and a drive to even enhance their digitally and gain
• 5:22
  shoppers in a in a privacy Safeway.
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  And so that concentration on the customer was why I came.
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  And then when I saw the value that could be created for CPGS
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  when I was still on the marketing side of the house, we
• 5:37
  started doing events because moments like shopper moments
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  are, are important to drive incremental trips, but they're
• 5:45
  also really important to drive that brand loyalty.
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  And particularly, that's where CPGS wanted to to lean into
• 5:52
  those shopper moments to drive that loyalty.
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  What's been one thing that surprised you doing this?
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  When you're when you're talking to brands and you're taking
• 5:59
  talking to them about taking them in on this journey with
• 6:02
  Albertson's, what's some of the sort of surprising things that
• 6:05
  you weren't expecting? Well, I think it becomes really
• 6:08
  A2 pronged approach, so some of it isn't surprising.
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  We've worked in an objective by KPI framework since we've
• 6:15
  launched our retail media network.
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  We know that there are certain business challenges that our
• 6:21
  CPGS have that again, through our insights about our customers
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  behaviour and by running the media and the right way based
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  off of whether we're trying to drive awareness and or even
• 6:35
  sales and then closing that loop with measurement, we can really
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  solve that in a repeatable way. So that's really where the
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  expectation of that part I that part I knew and that's where
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  we're also bringing in AI into the process because there is
• 6:51
  much more of a repeatable framework there.
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  The part that is exciting and expand is that we can really
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  build a relationship on those behaviours.
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  So by allowing kind of the repeatable process to be there,
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  we, we can do things like launch our influencer network where we
• 7:11
  can pre that connection and that custom content based on
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  behaviours either in the seasonal moments based off of,
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  hey, we know that this group of shoppers likes convenience.
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  Let's tap into that or localization, which is really
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  core to Albertsons and companies since grocery is a local
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  experience. And, and I presume that's how
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  Albertson sort of positions themselves within the US market,
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  right, in terms of providing those experiences for their
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  customers in a local environment.
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  So if I was one of the big Coca-Cola, Pepsi, one of these
• 7:48
  big sort of already established CPG companies and, and I came to
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  you, does your retail media network purely focus on the
• 7:56
  stores? Where, where does it start and
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  where does it stop the retail, the network that you have?
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  Sure. I mean, it's not just about the
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  stores. The stores are a component and
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  that full funnel channel strategy to reach the customers.
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  But again, if you think about what we know about our shoppers,
• 8:13
  their behaviours either tied to moments and seasonality or just
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  the behaviours that they demonstrate based off of their
• 8:21
  purchase history, all not loyalty card, you know, privacy,
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  Safeway, we can really help brands build a relationship and
• 8:28
  testing strategies. So that's where if I was Coke, I
• 8:33
  would be focused on using the insights that we have around our
• 8:38
  shared customer because we sell a lot of coke in our.
• 8:41
  Yeah, I can imagine. You know, solving their.
• 8:44
  On Pepsi and the others. OK, all of them.
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  And I have to say I was. I asked what my favourite food
• 8:53
  brand was the other day and I said I can't answer the.
• 8:56
  Question. Retailer.
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  But what I would say is I would focus on solving my core
• 9:03
  business challenges that are retailer specific.
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  But then I would think about how in brand strategy do I want to
• 9:10
  use that same insights and behaviours to really make more
• 9:14
  of an impact and prove out the results of what I'm doing with
• 9:19
  customers in a larger way Because there are shopper
• 9:22
  centric problems. But then there are insights that
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  be that can be carried into larger media strategy frameworks
• 9:29
  just. Jumping around a little bit in
• 9:32
  terms of going back to the AI outcomes, where do you find that
• 9:35
  your customers are asking you where those AI sort of focused
• 9:39
  elements, what's adding the most value to them?
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  So where, where, where does that conversation go?
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  Sure. So, you know, AI is really
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  simple if you break it down into two components, productivity and
• 9:50
  performance. That's what our goals are
• 9:53
  measured against. Again, where we really started
• 9:55
  our process is on productivity. We want to make it easy or our
• 10:01
  CPGS to get their message in front of our shoppers.
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  So many of our initial use cases are really focused in on that
• 10:10
  productivity gain. We set out the partnership of
• 10:13
  having an estimate of a 20% productivity gain, but really we
• 10:17
  think based off of some of our initial use cases as well as
• 10:21
  some expanded work that we've done internally.
• 10:24
  We can just because I'm not very familiar with it.
• 10:26
  So the 20% productivity gain, is that what what?
• 10:29
  Sorry where? Into market, OK.
• 10:31
  Yeah, for the brand. For the brand, so you know, they
• 10:34
  engage us, they tell us I have a marketing objective and.
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  You can shave 20% off that and get them straight off to it.
• 10:40
  Yes. What I why the time to market is
• 10:43
  really important is because at the end of the day, especially
• 10:47
  in those shopper centric programmes, we're solving a
• 10:50
  business need. So perhaps they're launching a
• 10:52
  new product, perhaps their category share is declining and
• 10:56
  that's really where we can help solve those business challenges.
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  And some of those as challenges are perhaps known like, hey, I'm
• 11:04
  bringing a new product to market.
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  You know, there's obviously an immense planning that goes into
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  that. But if a category share is
• 11:11
  shifting, they may want to react more immediately.
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  So we have to be prepared for both scenarios, one in which you
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  know, we can do customised planning for a new product
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  launch or we can also get that to market quickly for those
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  category shifts. That's that can be more of an
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  immediate lever. I got you.
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  In terms of looking towards the future sort of coming towards
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  the end of the the interview, how do you see the expansion of
• 11:38
  what you've started and and where the market is going?
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  Well, I, you know, I think we're on the beginning of this journey
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  and I'm really excited to be on this journey.
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  There is so much that can be done to enable efficiencies
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  which will then help drive performance.
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  And by performance, I really do mean the incremental action that
• 12:01
  happens as a result of these media campaigns that could be
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  sales that could. Conversion, right?
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  Some sort of conversion. And you know, we started very
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  simply on with both creative and media, but continuing to layer
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  on that. One of the things that I've said
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  around AI is someone still has to define the task to be done.
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  And you have to have great knowledge around the process of
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  media and who you're servicing in order to define those tasks
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  and continue to refine. The models will learn and they
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  will make it better, but you also need someone to help
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  continue that process. I got here.
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  I did say that was the last question.
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  It's just one of the one of the things I and I promise this will
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  be one of the things I've picked up at the show talking to a few
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  sort of younger CPG brands. They're just, you know, they're
• 12:46
  sort of starting out. They're, I don't know, make
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  chewing gums organic. They're just making something
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  small. Is there a place for them to
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  come to sort of have that retail media conversation or do you
• 12:57
  feel it's any sort of if we were going to your ideal customer for
• 13:00
  this, is it the big Unilevers and Nestle's of this world?
• 13:04
  It's both right and that's you were.
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  Talking about the local and that was why I was curious about
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  that. It is both and the reason why
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  it's both is and that's really where we shine as this this
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  media company when I talked about that objected by KPI
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  framework. That's really something that
• 13:20
  smaller CPGA can leverage because we have experience with
• 13:23
  our shoppers and we know how to drive that awareness and then we
• 13:27
  could measure the impact for them and close that loop.
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  But yes, there is, you know, still room for the Unilever
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  where we have that concentrated process of understanding their
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  objectives, doing custom planning and really integrating
• 13:39
  into our with our merchants for someone like Unilever.
• 13:43
  I got you. Are there any sort of trends
• 13:45
  that you're seeing within the within the retail media in
• 13:48
  general or within the categories?
• 13:51
  Yeah. So one of the interesting things
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  that has been happening is this classification of specialty
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  retail media network or more retail commerce centric media.
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  And then you have even new entrants like financial services
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  building media networks. For me, what was really
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  interesting when I was spending some time with a specialty
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  retail networks was their emphasis on content and
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  influencers, but really having high control over the process.
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  Where we are right now is we, you know, we have more of a
• 14:26
  hybrid approach in that we let our brands come through with
• 14:30
  their messages because we know we have that shared customer.
• 14:34
  And we are, you know, thinking about our influencer network and
• 14:38
  how we we put more of a voice on bringing our shoppers to life
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  through content and the integration of influencers.
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  But I think that there's something to be learned from the
• 14:50
  specialty and really what they're doing of controlling
• 14:54
  that experience around their customers.
• 14:57
  That's fantastic, Michelle. Thank you so much for giving us
• 15:00
  the time. It's been an absolute pleasure.
• 15:02
  Thank you.