Building Shopper Loyalty in an Omnichannel World with Hy-Vee CMO Kathryn Mazza

Summary

Podcast Summary: The CPG Guys – Building Shopper Loyalty in an Omnichannel World with Hy-Vee CMO Kathryn Mazza

Introduction

In the June 11, 2025 episode of The CPG Guys, hosts Sree Rajagopalan and Peter V.S. Bond engage in an insightful conversation with Catherine Mazza, the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and President of Red Media at Hy-Vee. This episode delves into the strategies Hy-Vee employs to foster shopper loyalty in an increasingly omnichannel marketplace, exploring leadership philosophies, retail media integration, customer service excellence, and future visions for consumer engagement.

Guest Introduction

Catherine Mazza's Career Journey

Catherine Mazza introduces herself as the CMO and President of Red Media at Hy-Vee, bringing a wealth of experience from her previous role at Dick's Sporting Goods. Her transition from an accounting background to a marketing leadership position underscores her versatile expertise. Catherine shares, “My accounting background has always served me well through all of my roles, including where I'm at” (07:37).

Leadership Lessons

Passion, Partnerships, and Change Management

Catherine emphasizes the core elements of her leadership style, highlighting passion, strong partnerships, and adept change management. She states, “If you don't have passion around what you're doing, you might as well go home because you're just not going to do your best work” (04:17). Building robust internal and external relationships allows for smoother collaborations and overcoming hurdles. Additionally, her extensive experience at Dick's Sporting Goods taught her the critical importance of navigating change effectively, especially when running a startup retail media network within a large-scale retailer.

Mentorship and Professional Growth

Catherine's Mentors and Giving Back

Throughout her career, Catherine benefited from strong mentorship, which played a pivotal role in her advancement to VP and subsequently to CMO. She acknowledges her former CMO at Dick's for guiding her through executive development courses that prepared her for higher-level responsibilities. At Hy-Vee, Catherine continues this tradition by mentoring others, fostering a culture of growth and continuous learning.

Daily Role as CMO

Balancing Brand, Loyalty, and Media Strategies

A typical day for Catherine starts with reviewing sales data and upcoming events to stay grounded in the company's immediate priorities. She then shifts focus to Red Media, overseeing campaign launches and ensuring revenue targets are met. Catherine outlines her strategic focus areas for the coming year:

1. Brand Development – Reinforcing Hy-Vee’s brand story and quality customer service.
2. Loyalty Programs – Expanding the Fuel Perks loyalty program to enhance customer retention.
3. Media Planning and Measurement – Transitioning to a new media agency of record to better measure campaign effectiveness (14:21).

Customer Service Excellence

Hy-Vee's Commitment to a Superior Shopping Experience

Catherine elaborates on Hy-Vee's commitment to exceptional customer service, encapsulated in their tagline, “A helpful smile in every aisle.” She elaborates, “When somebody is looking for something at Hy-Vee, the expectation is, is that you don't just tell them, hey, it's over on aisle six. No, you take them and you walk them over to the actual product” (17:08). This hands-on approach extends to their E-commerce platform, ensuring personalized and seamless experiences both online and in-store.

E-Commerce Integration and Retail Media

Full-Funnel Marketing and Digital Enhancements

Catherine discusses how Red Media integrates with Hy-Vee’s E-commerce and in-store experiences to create a cohesive full-funnel marketing strategy. She highlights their partnership with Instacart Carrot Ads platform, enabling sophisticated ad formats like shoppable videos and dynamic content personalization. Catherine explains, “We make sure that we're not just selling individual digital tactics for brands... but when a supplier has a new product, it's on display in store, on the website, and promoted across all digital channels” (23:09).

Challenges in Retail Media

Navigating Market Proliferation and Measurement Gaps

Addressing industry-wide challenges, Catherine identifies the overwhelming number of retail media networks and the difficulty suppliers face in navigating them. She emphasizes the need for networks to offer self-service access to data and robust reporting frameworks to demonstrate clear ROI. Catherine suggests that smaller networks could benefit from forming consortiums to enhance their data capabilities and reach (24:11).

Measurement and ROI

Optimizing Campaign Performance through Continuous Learning

The conversation shifts to the importance of tailored ROI metrics aligned with specific campaign goals. Catherine advocates for clear communication of objectives, whether for brand awareness or direct conversion. She emphasizes mid-campaign optimizations and post-campaign wrap reports to ensure continuous improvement: “Every single campaign should actually run better than the last campaign because you should be doing continuously learning through it” (28:48).

Leveraging First-Party Data and Personalization

Enhancing Consumer Engagement through Data-Driven Insights

Catherine outlines how Hy-Vee utilizes first-party data to drive personalized marketing efforts. By partnering with Mercury as their identity spine, they can create custom audience segments and push targeted campaigns across various media platforms. This approach ensures that advertising content remains relevant and engaging to consumers, thereby enhancing the overall shopping experience (32:38).

Future Vision: Experiential Retail Media

Innovating In-Store Experiences and Community Engagement

Looking ahead, Catherine shares her vision for the future of consumer engagement at Hy-Vee, focusing on experiential retail media. She is keen on integrating in-store demos, sampling events, and community partnerships to create memorable shopping experiences. Catherine believes that while digital and in-store media are important, fostering direct interactions with customers will set Hy-Vee apart: “We want to make sure our customers, when they do come in store, they have the most amazing experience ever” (42:05).

Conclusion

The episode concludes with the hosts expressing their gratitude to Catherine for her valuable insights and contributions. They tease future discussions and collaborations, highlighting the ongoing evolution of retail media and shopper loyalty strategies.

Notable Quotes

• Catherine Mazza (04:17): “If you don't have passion around what you're doing, you might as well go home because you're just not going to do your best work.”

• Peter V.S. Bond (24:11): “Some of the smaller networks could certainly join together and join forces because you know an opportunity that regional grocers do have is their customers are extremely loyal to them.”

• Catherine Mazza (28:48): “Every single campaign should actually run better than the last campaign because you should be doing continuously learning through it.”

• Catherine Mazza (42:05): “We want to make sure our customers, when they do come in store, they have the most amazing experience ever.”

Key Takeaways

1. Leadership and Passion: Effective leadership in the CPG and retail media space is driven by passion, strong partnerships, and the ability to manage and adapt to change.

2. Customer-Centric Strategies: Hy-Vee prioritizes exceptional customer service and personalized experiences both online and in-store to build and maintain shopper loyalty.

3. Integrated Retail Media: A full-funnel marketing approach that seamlessly integrates digital and in-store strategies enhances ROI and provides a cohesive brand experience.

4. Data-Driven Personalization: Leveraging first-party data allows for targeted and personalized marketing efforts, ensuring relevance and engagement with consumers.

5. Future of Retail Media: Emphasizing experiential retail media and community engagement will play a crucial role in creating memorable shopping experiences and fostering deeper customer connections.

This episode offers valuable insights for brands and retailers aiming to navigate the complexities of an omnichannel world, emphasizing the importance of integrated strategies, data utilization, and exceptional customer service in building lasting shopper loyalty.

Transcript

[Sree Rajagopalan]

Chain Drug Review's focus is on reaching the key decision makers across all retail channels, delivering comprehensive coverage of the latest shopping trends and in depth category analysis on health, beauty, over the counter products and wellness. Whether it's the latest trends, emerging technologies, or strategies for adapting to new consumer behaviors, Mass Market retailers deliver the critical information retailers need to navigate this dynamic environment. To subscribe to the newsletters of CDR and mmr, simply follow the hyperlinks in the digital liner notes of this episode. Chain Drug Review and Mass Market Retailers are published by Retail Media iq.

[Catherine Mazza]

Hello, I'm Catherine Mazza, CMO and President of Red Media with Hy Vee. Welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast.

[Sree Rajagopalan]

Welcome to the CPGuys podcast. Your host, Sree Rajagopalan and Peter Vs. Bond explore how brands and ret retailers engage consumers in an increasingly digitally driven world. And now, here are the CPG Guys.

[Peter Vs Bond]

Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys. I'm of course Sree, your co host, co founder and CRO of Think Blue Consulting, your partner to growth. Whether Retail Media, Omnichannel or Back to Basics in Store, we're here for you. Get in touch with me at sri@thinkblueconsulting co not.com not joining me today for today's episode is my co founder of the CPG Guys, Peter Vs Bond. When he's not podcasting, he leads Client Engagement and Flywheel, the E Commerce Accelerator division of Omnicon. If you're wondering why he couldn't make it today, he's actually driving his daughter down to Washington because school is just closed for the year. Please do listen to my older daughter Rhea Raj's music www.rhearaj.com headed to MTV in the UK as we speak today. And Lara Raj is a member of the universal music group Cat's Eye, who of course have another worldwide super hit in their song. Gnarly Touch of course has now crossed 400 million in streaming music. They'll be performing at both Lollapalooza and the Kids Choice Music Awards this summer, so do catch them online and on tv. Before we get to our guests, we want to ask you to consider following us on your preferred podcast listening app. If you already don't do so Apple is what I would recommend. Please do leave us a rating in the review. The rating tells us how we're doing. The review tells us are we having the right conversations because you shape the show. And now let's get to our guest. A guest that we have been waiting for quite a while. Can't really Answer why we haven't got to it. Here's the great news folks. We're here today and I can't actually wait. I'm equally excited as hopefully the guest is Catherine Maza is the CMO and president of Red Media at where she leads the growth of the platform at Hy Vee. Prior to she was at Dick's Sporting Goods. So please join me in welcoming her to the CPG guys. Catherine, been a while. I'm thrilled to have you. How you doing?

[Catherine Mazza]

Good. I am so excited to be here. So you guys are legendary and you know, bummed that Peter can't be with us. So you guys are going to have to get me on a second time so we can get the trio going on here.

[Peter Vs Bond]

Guys and gals, you heard it straight from Catherine's mouth. She's promised to come back on the show so maybe right after the one of the big events in our industry, which is grocery shop, later this year we'll ask for Catherine to come back on as we can probably do a nice recap of where the industry is, what her big plans are for 2026 and how red Media is making a difference in the grocery world overall, especially as a super regional. So I can't wait to do that. You've committed now, Catherine, so I'll come back. Chase and FOIA on the CPG guys here. So of course in the digital liner notes of this episode, we'll include links to your LinkedIn profile, Hy Vee's corporate websites as well as the LinkedIn pages for listeners to access. Well, we go on with our conversation. So I'm going to start with a softball for you, Catherine, if it's okay and but one that's very important for the industry. And as a people leader, what leadership lessons have you learned in your career that guide you today at Red Media? What inspired you to be in the hot seat running Red Media and cmo? I mean it's a very large role. You come from Dick's Sporting Goods. Why don't you tell us over the years what are those leadership lessons you've learned and how you apply it at Hy Vee?

[Catherine Mazza]

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I just got done doing mid year reviews with all of my direct reports at Hy Vee and you know, I like to share with them because I'm a new leader for, for many of them as well and I share with them. You know, there's, there's some key parts of my, my DNA that make up my, my leadership style. And I think these, I think these are key one, I think you have to be passionate about everything you do. I think, you know, my point of view is if you don't have passion around what you're doing, you might as well go home because you're just not going to do your best work. The next thing's going to be, you know, partnerships. You learn through the years that you have to be a good partner internally and externally. And when you build those strong relationships, folks are much easier to work with and influence. You can get over hurdles in an easier way. And then the other big thing that I think I got a real, real long lesson at through my career at Dick's is just change management and how important it is to get through change management. Especially as you're trying to run a startup retail media network within a large scale retailer. You know, it is not easy and you're, you're going to have a lot of wins, but you're going to have a lot of losses along the way and a lot of people at different points of view. So just having that relentless ability to work through the change management is something that I think has served me well. It's one of my superpowers, if you will.

[Peter Vs Bond]

Wow. So passionate. That's why we do the CPG guys as well. I mean, people ask us, how do you do two episodes a week, 500 episodes. And we love what we do. And we. Every conversation means the world to us because here's a little secret I'm going to give away today. I think Peter and I learn the most of everybody because somebody's always teaching us, coaching us something. As you will on this episode to us as well. The second you talk about partnerships and relationships, you know, having relationships means influence. We met today for the first time, not in person, but here. E meet up hopefully. And you said you'll come back a second time. That's relationships at its best. And then change management is one I'd like to talk to you a lot more about. And it has to do with if I go back five years in history pre Covid as the shopper got more and more digital. Of course, the shopper is nearly 100% digitally influenced at this stage. Not just on an app or on a given platform, but surround sound on their smartphone and on their tablet. You know, I have merchant after merchant. Tell me I don't want to touch this digital thing because it's a P and L drainer. It's not profitable. I hate E commerce from the bottom of my heart. Now, obviously, Covid changed that, but a lot of it was a forced error versus an unforced error. I still have merchants tell me that am I going to take names? Change management is so, so, so important. So I'm going to get to that in one second. But I'd love to talk to you about your career prior to getting to Hy Vee. So. Right. Take us through the years. What is a young Catherine Mazza getting out of college? He goes to take sporting goods suddenly into a career. She's VP of media for Dick's Sporting Goods. That's a big job. What happened in all those years? How did you get there? That bought you over to Hyvie?

[Catherine Mazza]

Yeah, that's, that's a great question. So of, of all things, I'm in marketing, but I actually got a degree in accounting and I was originally an accountant coming out of. Of college and I was a staff accountant for Dick's Sporting Goods and was working on fixed assets and depreciation. That being said, I took a lot of marketing classes at the University of Pittsburgh, and I always knew that I didn't necessarily fit the, the stereotypical role of an accountant. You know, I just, I, I knew that I had a creative side to, to my mind and I enjoyed narratives, storytelling, connection with consumers. So eventually after I did around in finance, the marketing department, you can appreciate it. You know, marketing is one of the largest, you know, expenses in sga. And Dick's was growing rather quickly at this point in time. And they said, you know, our marketing budget is a bit disorganized. It's growing. We need somebody over here in marketing that has a finance background to help us manage it. So that was the first role I took that really got me within marketing. And then from there it was just an amazing ride of just getting to take on more and more. And as the career journey went, went through the years, my focus started to go from finance to a little bit more marketing. And so my last role there was the VP of media. And then I was the, the GM for, for Dick's Media, their retail media network. We, we launched that in the time that I was there as well. And that's where, you know, my, my finance background really served me well, because when you're running a network, you know, you're operating as a media agency within a retailer and you have a standalone P and L and revenue goals, margin goals, all of your expenses. So, you know, my accounting background has always served me well through, through all of my roles, including where I'm at.

[Peter Vs Bond]

Today in my Wildest dreams being coming from as hardcore brick and mortar as Earth probably exists in my background, you know, running a route for Frito Lay in the Northeast and then later in Texas. I could have never imagined retailers will have media agencies leave alone a media opportunity. But here we are. That's change management at its kind of its best right now. Over those years, Catherine, as your career grew at Dick's and now at Hy Vee, did you have mentorship? Do you believe in mentorship? You know, I've always felt mentorship has evolved from one way to giving and taking, because reverse mentorship is real these days. It's been for a while. So tell us about, you know, did you have mentors along the way? Are you mentoring others at Hy Vee these days? Like, how does that work for you?

[Catherine Mazza]

Yeah, I had, I had several really strong mentors along, along the way. You know, I would say one of the more meaningful ones was, you know, the CMO that was there, you know, whenever I launched our Dick's Media. And, you know, he was just a really great leader that helped me understand how to manage the finance, the data side of things, along with just really rich qual, you know, creative, you know. And he also recommended that I go through this executive development training course that just really, really gave me the tools and the confidence that I needed to move into a VP level role. Because, you know, I would say in my career, the largest jump that I made was going from a director to, to a vp. You know, at the director, you're, you're strategic, but you're still kind of execution, very much hands on, you know, helping your managers out. And then when you go to the VP level, I think the bar just really raises for you. And then all of a sudden, when you have those, those two letters, you know, in your title, all of a sudden you can be in the room with the presidents and the CEOs and global leaders of, you know, of your, your suppliers and, you know, and it's a big, it's a big change and the expectations really, really go up. So I think, yeah, I think his mentorship in getting me through that, that time was, was really key. Then, you know, when I went over to Hy Vee, right, I'm coming from years of a career in sporting goods, and now I'm going and working in grocery, the CPG space, which I don't think there's, there's not a lot of advertisers out there that have higher standards, in my opinion, than some of the top CPG Brands. And so our, our, our president at the time at Hy Vee and she, her name was Donna Tweeten and she has since retired. But she was just an amazing mentor for me in that I was coming into grocery, didn't know anything about that. I was also flying in from the east coast to the middle of the country to a state I haven't even visited before. I went there and, you know, just trying to navigate the. A new. A new culture and trying to get through change management and influence people. So she was critical for, for me in being successful at Hy Vee to date and then in launching me into the CMO role. I actually talked to her earlier today. She's still a mentor for me.

[Peter Vs Bond]

You and I have something in common. And now after 30 years of being in CPG, I finally feel like I did the right thing, and that is I have a bachelor's in accounting as well. That said, let's transition now to your everyday role now as CMO and president of Red Media. What does a day in the life of a CMO at Hy Vee look like? Do you have to handle loyalty, customer acquisition, your storytelling, why a shopper should come into Hy Vee and get a basket, why they should go online, use the app. I mean, this is a big job. And then in addition, you got the media angle as well to complete the full funnel from upper funnel to lower funnel. So what does a day in the life of yours look like?

[Catherine Mazza]

Yeah. So, you know, every, every day my morning starts off and I look at how the sales were for the overall company from the day prior and I look at, you know, what's coming up this weekend. Right. What kind of big event or sale do we have this weekend? Our loyalty program. We do a fuel perks loyalty program, what's coming up there and just kind of ground myself and what is happening that week. And then I flip over to the Red Media side and I'll look to see how revenue is looking there, what kind of campaigns are launching, and just make sure I feel like we're in a good place there. Then normally, you know, I flip into meeting meeting zone. Right. And focusing a lot next year from a marketing standpoint in three areas. One is going to be brand. We've gotten away from talking about just how special our brand is with Hy Vee, and I think that's just the nature of the economic climate. And a lot of retailers are having this, you know, this issue with balancing their dollars between brand and trying to be super promotional and at the end of the day, reach people with value and get them into the doors. We're going to go back to Brandon in 2026 for. For HY Vee. So I'm focusing on, you know, telling our stories. Of course, quality customer service is at the core of everything that Hy Vee does. And then our connection with our customers and our communities is also a focus. Loyalty is a second area of focus, so we're going to be expanding our loyalty program. And then, you know, media plans and measurement is another area that I spend a lot of time focusing on. We are in the middle of transferring to a new media agency of record as we speak Speak. So there's. Yeah, there's just a lot of transition taking place right now to set us up for our fiscal 2026, which, quite frankly, is right around the corner. It starts in October.

[Peter Vs Bond]

First of all, I want to congratulate you on all the success and also good luck for fiscal 26 as it kicks off in October. But you said something very important in terms of loyalty, and that is customer service. You know, you guys are a legendary retailer in the Midwest. I mean, those that come to your stores obviously love you. We hear it from people. We hear it that come on the show. But having been a cpg, come from CPG background myself, Hyvie was very important to me in that. In that universe. Customer service is an art that many retailers have forgotten. Simple things like keeping the store clean, clean aisles, staying in stock. I'd love to hear from you. What is your definition? What is Hy Vee's definition of customer service? And how do you strive to achieve the best you can be at customer service?

[Catherine Mazza]

Yeah. You know, so, you know, our tagline is a helpful smile in every aisle. And. And we live that to, you know, to our core. Right. We want to be there and make people smile in their lives when they are in our stores or. But when they're home and they're, you know, cooking dinner with their families or baking cookies with their children's for the holiday. So in store, you know, really, when you talk about the stores being clean, of course, the stores being clean, people not standing in line, you know, forever at checkouts, do we have people bagging the groceries for you, being helpful, getting you, you know, out the door as you're going through your shopping journey? Right. Is somebody coming up and welcoming you into the store and helping you find whatever you need? And when somebody is looking for something at Hy Vee, Right. The expectation is, is that you don't Just tell them, hey, it's over an aisle six. No, you take them and you walk them over to the actual product. You know, you visit the bakery, you know, we give the children a free cookie, our meat counters. Right. We do a lot of consultation there with our customers. So. And I think one of the most important things right, when you think about customer service is every single customer needs to be thanked on their way out the door in a very authentic way. And it's something that sounds so simple. But I can tell you I don't get a thank you all the time in a lot of different places, you know, that I shop. So. And it, you know, it means a lot when you look somebody in the eye and you, you know, you tell them thank you for, you know, for doing business with you.

[Peter Vs Bond]

Katherine, no debate on anything you said, but the tagline alone is a punchline. Like if you, if you execute what the tagline says successfully, you've had them at hello. And then if you're going to say thank you repeatedly, I want to shop at Hy Vee, like, let's not even debate this anymore, right?

[Catherine Mazza]

Yeah, yeah. And the thing that you know, we're thinking about is the helpful smile in every aisle, right? That it's been, it's been around for a long time. Hy Vee is a 95 year old company and you know, so it's really talking about how the Hy Vee employees are going to be helpful smiles in the aisles of the stores. We're thinking about it so much more broadly now when you think about E Commerce, right, Our E commerce app and it being personalized and you being able to get your, your groceries delivered to you or quickly going up and you know, doing the, the drive up pickup of your groceries, right. Those moments should all be making you smile, taking a load off of you being helpful in your life. So our expectation is that we make impact in our customers lives, in our communities beyond just the shopping aisles.

[Peter Vs Bond]

So let's jump over to Ecom and what I'd love to learn is how Red Media actually integrates with Hy Vee's E commerce and in store experiences. You kind of started highlighting just the periphery of it right there with the pick up.

[Catherine Mazza]

Yeah, yeah. So from a retail media network standpoint, we do a lot of the basics, right? Every retail media network does, you know, the on site banner ads, the sponsored products we offer, emails, text messages. Here's where we're going to be differentiated. We actually just in March announced a partnership with Instacart Carrot Ads platform. And so we are actually going through that implementation right now. So we are going to have carrot ads as our ad tech solution. And so we're going to have really rich types of formats that advertisers can get access to. Of course we'll stop banner ads, sponsored product ads, but we'll also have shoppable video there with the actual products within the video right to the right hand side. So it's easy to add them to cart. So and then we also have gotten into ctv, different types of off site display, social and then when you get to in store that is where the magic starts to happen. And I think that's where we are really known to punch above our weight and we're differentiated. So we have over 10,000 digital screens across our stores and we have been working really hard to make sure that we have an operating model internally where my red media team could not be more attached at the hip with our merchants. It's a tough code to crack that other retailers have tried to and we've gotten there where. Let me give you an example of how that actually comes to life. So we will do a campaign for one of our suppliers and we partner with the merchants to make sure that the item is in store, is it on display, is it on certain end caps? Then do we have digital media supporting it on our site sponsored products? Are we running off site? And then when you get in store, do we have the digital screen above the end cap showing the products? Do we have different floor graphics, do we have the in store audio running? So we make sure that we're not off in red media just selling individual digital tactics for brands, I don't think that's where you're seeing that true lift and that true roi. But when a supplier has a new product or innovation and all of a sudden it's on the homepage of your site, we sent you an email about it. When you go in store, it's on display, it's all over the screens and we're talking about it in store that all of a sudden you're starting to sell some pallets there.

[Peter Vs Bond]

No doubt about it, that's what full funnel marketing looks like. And I'm glad to hear you talk of, you know, the great news is a CMO and red media owner, you can truly focus on full funnel. Put the shopper at the center and go all the way from browsing, learning discovery all the way down the channel into consideration and then actually getting the product which drives pallets like you said, not just for you but also for your vendors at the end of the day. So I have to ask, you know, as you look across the industry, while you guys may be giants of the Midwest, but as you look across the industry, what challenges do you think retail media faces today? Because one of the things we hear from CCOs and CMOs of brands is I'm tired. There's too many networks. They're asking me for 30% more, you know, whatever it is, 5% more, 30% more. Those are all academic numbers at the end of the day, too much proliferation and an absence of measurement framework. So those are some of the common ones we hear. What do you hear?

[Catherine Mazza]

I hear a lot of the same. You know, especially as a regional player, right. We, we have to fight to get our fair share of retail media dollars. And I think our approach is, you know, I think some retail media networks, from a supplier standpoint, they could actually be considered like a tax on the business. Right. The supplier has to pay a tax to do business. That is the last thing I would, my heart would be broken if I ever heard a supplier say oh, red media is just a tax on my business. Right. I want to provide value, meaningful value and strong ROIs. I want it to be, we want to be quality partners with all of the suppliers. So I do think though, you know that just the sheer number of networks, it's going to be really hard for these suppliers to navigate it. And you know, the larger ones, they're working with the, the biggest, the best media agencies out there. The media agencies aren't going to be, you know, spending time working with 50 different separate retail media networks. Right. And the, those size of media agencies, they're like, we don't want hands on white glove service. We actually want to be left alone and we just want to get our, our creative on your website. Right. Preferably the highest above the fold. We can. So, so I do think the networks that are not offering self service access to, to data through a platform like you know, the trade desk and they're not offering different, different capabilities in store and their reporting isn't where you know, it needs to be. They don't have the closed loop across the board or they can't show incrementality. I think they're going to get left behind. I also think there could be some, you know, consortium out there that, that forms, there's already different, you know, consortiums of data. Right. When you think about like what ripple out there, you know, where you can take your first party data in a safe compliant way and combine it with others to have a broader audience to reach with national scale. I think that's going to continue to be to be a thing. But I think some of the smaller networks could certainly join join together and join forces because you know an opportunity that regional grocers do have is their customers are extremely loyal to them in some, you know, in some places. So the quality of the first party data is extremely high. Now you might not have that national scale, the quantity of it, but if we can find a way for you know, some of the super regionals to come together in the future, I think it could be a real powerful thing.

[Peter Vs Bond]

No doubt about that whatsoever. In fact, think Blue Consulting, my other company, we are in partnership with FMI when we will be releasing some thought leadership around this measurement frameworks very thing in the fall and then at FMI midwinter a much bigger outcome. You are always welcome to join us in that journey not only to influence it but also to contribute and make sure we do the right thing for the industry to bring a framework. So we'll follow up with you. I'd set up this conversation if there's interest there but one of the areas I do want to actually jump into to go deeper is that very measurement and ROI et cetera. So a lot of confusion as you've already mentioned in the industry today from the supplier side where some I have never believed it's a tax when someone says it's a tax on the sales side. It's the weakness of the CCO and the sales teams they have. Remember Catherine, they have no idea how media works. Salespeople have no clue, no interest. They look at media and think it's all baloney because it's the attribution world. Right. So that's why they call it a tax. So it's actually a weakness in learning of sales teams. Now let's put that to the side for one quick second. Right. I'd love to now have you wear the retail lens and tell us tell our audience about ROI metrics. So how do you guys at Red Media help CPG brands maximize their marketing ROI and metrics that you share because you get the same mass that the industry does. I want to maximize my roas. I want to lower my cac. These are all common stuff. The new modern hot buzzwords are tell me about new to brand and incrementality IROAs. So I'd love to learn you address all of the above. Do some of them bring a giggle to your face? How does it work?

[Catherine Mazza]

Yeah. So the first Thing that we make sure that we do is we very clearly need to meet with the suppliers to understand what are their goals for any specific campaign. Because if it is a new innovation product, there is some type of heavy lifting you got to do out there to generate the awareness and generate the demand. So, you know, we're very, we're very open and honest with suppliers that, you know, ROI Roas incrementality. Yes. If you're trying to sell six packs of Pepsi for the fourth of July, yes, you're in conversion. You want to get them on sponsored products, you want to get it on display in store. But if it's something new, a new flavor of, you know, Coke or whatever, then I think there's an awareness component of it. So we're just very clear from the start, you know, what are your goals? Are we, is this a new product? Are we trying to create awareness? Are you just purely focused on conversion? Are you trying to grow market share, acquire new customers? And then we go through the media planning process and then from there we'll launch the campaign in the middle of a campaign. As long as the campaign is long enough in the middle of the campaign, then we'll do mid campaign reporting and optimizations so we can get a look under the hood and understand how's off site performing versus on site versus in store. The email that we ran a week ago, how did that perform? Should we do that again? So then we'll do some type of mid campaign optimization and, and then at the end of the campaign a couple weeks later, then we'll do wrap reports and really the way we should think about it is every single campaign should actually run better than the last campaign because you should be doing continuously learning through it. If you are meeting with your suppliers and you're going through the metrics at the actual media tactic level and you're comparing the results against the expected benchmarks in your properly providing insights to take to the next campaign, then you should just see your performance continuously getting better as you're learning the suppliers products and you're learning more about the way your consumers want to interact with the products.

[Peter Vs Bond]

You know, one of the things, Katherine, that comes to mind is I think suppliers tend to come and I come from the world of suppliers for 30 years. So I'm guilty very much of this as well that we complain about the metrics because we look at each campaign individually with one goal in mind, which is Roas, which doesn't make sense. Right. It should be based on a brand objective. Sometimes it can very well be for an innovation about driving awareness. That has very little to do with roas, but yet we keep doing that. But one of the excellent things you said here, which I think we need to take to heart as an industry, is are we doing closed loop? Does one campaign inform the next and then the next, and then that becomes a flywheel which kind of drives the media universe in general. And that's what will create optimized campaigns. I also heard you say you are working with suppliers to try and understand if you can midway through a campaign, dynamically optimize, which is very important as well, because learning is one of the best mechanisms of optimizing. Indeed. So I want to jump into first party data in the spirit of optimizing. You mentioned it briefly earlier. So how do you take advantage or leverage Hy Vee's first party data within Red Media to enhance brand advertising or brand outreach is a better word. And then I have to use one of the industry's buzzwords, please forgive me, personalization. How does that come into play?

[Catherine Mazza]

Oh yeah, okay. Okay. So yeah, first party data, it's the, it's the backbone of really every retail media network out there. We have, we have a different ID solution than I think many, many have out there in the industry. And it's called high vid. And what we do is we take our first party data and we work with Mercury as our identity spine. And so we load our first party data into Mercury and then that, that grows and finds our lookalikes. What Mercury also can do is identify people that come and shop on our site, but they're not part of our loyalty program and how do we identify those people? So then all of a sudden you have a really meaningful audience size that's built off of your first party data. And then we can build custom audiences, segment it and then take the audiences and push them to the trade desk or whatever media platform they're going to end up in. And then once you are able to take your transactions, flow them back through, take all the, you know, the engagement logs from the trade desk, bring it back through Mercury, do the matching. That's where you can kind of close, close the loop. So we use, we use our first party data for off site as part of carrot ads. We will also be leveraging our first party data and this is where the personalization is going to come in, will be using the first party data to drive the actual content that, that you're seeing. Right. So that it'll be very dynamic on site as far as the ads that the suppliers are purchasing. Now, from an enterprise standpoint, you know, as the CMO, I also have personalization as a priority for 2026 and really it's going to be again all about leveraging that first party data to make sure that we understand what is the content that is relative to our consumers and how do we meet them wherever they choose to consume media.

[Peter Vs Bond]

I've got another industry buzzword for you we talked about personally. Bingo. AI. And I got to tell you, Catherine, wherever I go, people want to talk. Now the latest buzzword within that buzzword is agentic AI. Right. But one of the things I've been curious about, not so much the retail media end of measurement, but the creative aspect of media in general. Right. As a cmo, you're probably often faced with the challenge of how you can be more granular in your media marketing, how you can be. Personalization is a big word and people mistake that literally for talk to SRI about shree only not cohorts. But how do you think AI will improve creative? Well, while a lot of negative is being discussed today as deep fakes and things of that nature, is there a world where AI will allow much more personalization, if there was such a word, mass personalization at scale?

[Catherine Mazza]

I think it should. I think, yeah, I think it should. It's something I'm just starting to look into. But you know, as you think about wanting to grow personalization, especially with some of these, you know, platforms out there, like a meta, right. Meta would recommend that you upload many different versions of the same product, but just slightly different creatives and let them do the work, you know, to optimize. The problem is, is creative takes a long time to build, especially when you have manual processes. Right. And you have limited numbers of people that can make all of these different versions. So I think AI should be able to do that. You know, I've seen a couple case studies where it's getting pretty darn good too. When you look at what is coming out of these AI platforms and even the copywriting that's done with call it a meta ad, right. That what the creative that comes out with the copywriting, it's pretty dead on. So I don't think we should be afraid of it. I think we have to figure out how we embrace it. How does it work for us? Do we need certain checks and balances? But you know, in today's economic climate and knowing we do need to be more personalized, knowing that we're not going to add hundreds of people to your marketing Department. Right. You have to find a way to work smarter. And I think if you don't embrace AI and different technologies, I think you're going to get left behind.

[Peter Vs Bond]

So the other word that goes hand in hand with AI is machine learning and natural language processors within the Red media ecosystem. Are you guys starting to look at both of them and starting to use it, especially on the metric side?

[Catherine Mazza]

Yeah, Yep, we're just starting to, to use that. I think there's two different use cases. You know, on the media planning side, I think we can use it. But then also on the reporting side. Right. You know, the data is getting pulled from the same places over and over again compared with transactions coming in from the same places putting together the metrics, you know, even there's, you know, machine learning that can help even build the insights right around the campaign. So yeah, I think that's an area we're not fully using it yet, but we're, we're looking into it and we're definitely going to be moving in that direction because it makes sense. Especially as you grow your business, you don't have people that can, you know, sit and do 75 rap reports in one day.

[Peter Vs Bond]

So I'd love for you to talk to brands at this point and agencies as well. In your mind, what is a best in class partnership with Hy Vee Media? But also since you are a marketer at heart and a CMO by role, what is a best in class partnership? Also look with Hy Vee in general and then how are you partnering with your peer, the chief merchant on those best in class partnerships?

[Catherine Mazza]

Yeah. So let's start with the enterprise side as the cmo. When I work with agencies, I want to feel like I can't really tell a difference on whether they work for the same company I do or not. Right. Especially when you're using agencies to like augment your, your staff. You know, I think you want to feel like they're part of your company, they have skin in the game, they're holding themselves accountable and that they're, you know, just as passionate about your business as, as you are. And you know, and that, that can be, that can be tough to accomplish because at the end of the day, you know, the agencies don't work for your business. But there's been a couple, couple partnerships I've had where, you know, we've had agencies that have truly held themselves accountable and truly always had the, you know, the best interest of our, our retailer in mind from a red media supplier standpoint. Best in classes we have an assigned salesperson, an assigned count manager. The supplier has shopper, marketing people or e comm people on their side. And our teams are having weekly touch bases to understand what is the roadmap for that supplier for the year, what are all of their big pillar moments, what are their must wins. As always on through the year and they're just meeting at the beginning of the year, putting together a plan, having weekly touch bases, being very agile, changing the plan through the year, having honest conversations about performance, optimizing dollars, coming in, you know, meeting face to face to whether my team goes out to see them or they come to see, you know, you should be having quarterly QBRs to be, you know, strategic and review the business. Those are the best, those are the best partnerships. And again the merchants have to be a part of that though. You're just not going to get the same return and buy in if you don't have the merchants there as well. To make sure that we're getting the product in store, it's getting into the planogram, it's going to be visible and you know, and hopefully on, on promotion at some point.

[Peter Vs Bond]

Awesome. I'm going to wrap it up with a question you can arguably predict that I would wrap it up with which is here on the CPG guys we like to fast forward and ask what's next. So that question is what is your vision for the future of the consumer? Visiting Hy Vee, whether online, offline, in store, seeing Hy Vee somewhere else through a billboard perhaps because even those mechanisms will never go away. I should never say never, but probably in a distant future what is your vision for the future of red media over the next few years in your current role as cmo?

[Catherine Mazza]

So we have a couple things, some, you know, a couple of the items that I think are going to be big bets. I'm not going to talk about them openly. Maybe when you have me back on in October I'll be ready to talk about a couple of the things we want to do. But you know, the area I'm really interested in is experiential when I think about retail media. You know we got the digital part, we have the in store. An area that we're spending a lot of time with is demos in store, sampling through E Commerce, sampling, surprise and delight, getting the product, you know, in, in front of the customer. Different types of events that were that we're doing with some of the suppliers getting out into the communities. So I think we, I think we're going to see the the evolution of digital the in store. We have a broad offering there in store. You know, it's, it's a slow burn right in store retail media. It's, you know, projected to be a billion dollars here, you know, in the next few years as a percent of overall retail media spend. It's going to be small, but I think we're going to get there especially in the grocery space where the lion's share of purchasing happens in store. And I think, I think it will for a while and then I think experiential because what we want to make sure is that our customers, when they do come in store, they have the most amazing experience ever. It is not about grocery shopping. It is about where they choose to spend time on their weekends and how do they have an enjoyable experience. And I think there's a lot of different, a lot of different elements of things we could be doing in store to interact with our customers and partnership with our, with our suppliers.

[Peter Vs Bond]

I love that you said there's a lot of elements we could bring in store because it's back to basics in the CPG industry and omnichannel retail. And that does require be ready. You already said the one on one very early upfront, right. Customer service deeply believe that's where it starts, that's where it ends. And once they're in store, you just make life easy for the shopper. And I love that you wrapped up saying I'm going to pay attention to the store a lot more and I'm going to make sure that the customer is captivated in store. So let me remind our listeners, you can find all of our content by simply going to a web Browser and typing cpguys.com as the URL. If you are someone you know something to contribute on this ongoing industry discussion on the CPG guys, please drop us a [e-mail] Again that email is contactpguys.com to our audience. Thank you for the clicks, likes, comments, DMs, meeting us at trade shows, coming to our events, recording episodes with us and to our sponsors. We are always grateful for you. The show doesn't exist without all of you. You work with us all in. We're grateful to have you as our audience of partners. Thank you Katherine. Sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, we're honored to have you. But more importantly, you made time for us on a Friday afternoon. I can't thank you enough. It was great to have you on the CPG guys and we will have you back shortly.

[Catherine Mazza]

You as well thank you so much. This was. This was great. Have a great weekend and congratulations again to your daughters. They are amazing.

[Peter Vs Bond]

Very kind of you to say that, Katherine. That's a wrap of this episode and we'll be back soon with another episode of the CPG Guys.

[Catherine Mazza]

Foreign.

[Sree Rajagopalan]

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