Loading summary
Transcript104 lines
- [00:01]
A
Hi, I'm Mark Williamson, AVP of Retail media at Costco Wholesale and you're watching the CPG Guys podcast.
- [00:09]
B
Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys podcast.
- [00:11]
C
Set at the intersection of commerce and tech, your hosts Sree Rajagopalan and Peter Vs Vaughan explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in a digitally driven world. And now, here are the CPG guys.
- [00:28]
D
Hello and welcome to this episode of the CPGuys podcast. And of course Sri your goes and also CIO co founder of Think Blue Consulting, your trust. Support me on your omnichannel development journey where you can get in touch with me at SRI thinkblueconsulting Co. Please do listen to my older daughter's music at www.rearaj.com and follow laraj. My younger daughter is a member of the world's fastest growing global pop group Cat's Eye that will come off a clean sweep at the AMAs. Three nominations, three awards. Starting a global as well as 21 city US tour. Today we're recording live from Cannes, France. This is in the series of 10 this week. Last year I chatted with our guest who didn't know if it was going to come to Cannes this year. We talked about growing in a lake somewhere. But we're actually doing this live, which makes me very happy and it's awesome that we're going to do this live. Of course. I'm joined by co host and co founder of PBSP who mobilizes head of industry and planning agent of Flywheel, sixth generation division of Omnicom. Peter, day four for me, day three for you. How's it going so far?
- [01:29]
C
Feels like day 30. It's been, it's been a luxury. Not a lot of sleep. But the best for me is when you and I got our hour and a half of free time this entire show and we walked up and down quasi and all the people that we knew we ran into as we walked. That was to me the absolute ball of events. Like in a minus, you know what
- [01:51]
D
I do to go to events. I don't want to give you a free time. I sold it to you as free time. But it really went to me a bunch of Mark.
- [01:59]
C
This is how our conversation usually goes. Pre event, anywhere we go. Peter, I'm building in time so that you can walk the floor, you can have a little relaxation and then we show up on the ground. He goes, okay, remember what I told you I was going to do?
- [02:12]
D
Yes.
- [02:12]
C
Scratch that. Your schedule is mine.
- [02:14]
B
Anyone?
- [02:16]
D
All right, so make sure you're subscribing to our podcast on your preferred listening platform where you can get on latest episodes. Go back and consume some of the yes 600 plus episodes we already published. Of course you all listen to our Fortune Finder C Suite series the new which featured CEOs, CCOs, CMOs, CEOs and so much more. Lots of Cs if not follow the date of the last 10 hour episodes late May to mid June or so. And now let's move to esteemed guests
- [02:43]
C
having the he's esteemed nothing quite out.
- [02:45]
A
I'm steaming you steam. I was going to say it's pretty hot.
- [02:48]
D
That's the bar for esteem working on that. Esteemed. Get it Spanish. Yes.
- [02:52]
C
Esteemed.
- [02:53]
D
Esteemed. Having the AVP of retail media Costco Home sale back in Australia for a spectacular return appearance feels like winning the ultimate corporate championship. Peter, you better clear a spot on your desk and get your shortwest analytical notebook open because say within a look at the world's absolute favorite warehouse cloud and how they're fundamentally rewriting the entire commerce for your ecosystem looking out across the industry right now they're doing fabulous. Lots of growth. A massive system wide parent shift happening where legacy platforms try to hide their ad tech inside black boxes. The Costco actually went live on stage, did the exact opposite. Unveiled the entire tech stack with absolute bold transparency. And marketers therefore aren't just looking for genetic ad impressions anymore that struggle for clean deterministic data environments that do indeed respect the merchant's role. First drive the actual pallet velocity of the warehouse floor. So ready when you guys are. Join us in Welcoming to the CPG guys, Mr. Mark Williamson, AVP of Costco and Intel Media. Welcome man. What would Catalyst say?
- [03:59]
A
Well, thank you and first of all, congratulations on 600 episodes. Thank you. I had the pleasure of making a video to celebrate your 500 episodes.
- [04:07]
D
Certainly did you.
- [04:08]
A
You're not slowing down. But congratulations to you both.
- [04:10]
D
Thank you. Thank you. I'm still excited that this conversation doing this live with you actually started with the latest LinkedIn post from you last year.
- [04:18]
A
I'm a little bit sad because I was having so much fun not being in Cannes that being here is a little bit of a downer. Not that it's not a great event and everything's fine. I'm very happy that I'm here, but I'm kind of sad having that other side of my personality which is I'm not a camp.
- [04:33]
D
Did they play the GNR song for you? Work under the jungle. It's all engaged. That's what you followed?
- [04:39]
A
Not quite, but that would be good
- [04:40]
D
in the digital line. Announcer this episode will include links to Costco wholesales company corporate websites for listeners to access while we go on with the conversation and of course, Mark's LinkedIn profile. So Mark, let us kick it off with the big news that completely has been well received by the industry. At recent industry events, you took the stage and you actually did what no other retail media network has done so far. You were very transparent about Costco's full technology stack, revealing details such as the identity, vendor, dsp, clean room, provider use. Why did you make a deliberate choice to embrace absolute transparency and how does that influence partnerships from brands and agencies?
- [05:22]
A
I don't think I expected it to be as big of a deal as it was, to be honest. The playbook that we wrote was to be as transparent as possible. There's been a high call for transparency in the retail media and e commerce media space. And I don't know if there's a lot of mistrust. There's just a lot of opaqueness in how things work. And one of our goals when we set out to do this was to do it differently. And this was one of the areas that we identified as being important because like in, in, like in all humility, I don't know if anybody would look to Costco wholesale and of all the things we do well, point and say those guys who ad tech really, really well, like I don't think that's an area where we have a right to win. And so I felt that the only way that we could move hearts and minds and build the kind of credibility that we need is to be overly transparent with the, with, with the tech stack that we're building. And in terms of response like one, the response was surprising to me of, of, of how unique it felt because at the time I didn't really think it was going to land that way. But I think there is a high degree of, of appreciation from the industry, from brands, from agencies and because it gives us something concrete to talk about. Because a lot of them have their own ad tech, they have their own data, they're making decisions as well. And I think it helps them inform and it's a sharing of best practices. But I think it makes it easier for them to figure out how to plug into us, how to plug us into them. And I think ultimately that's good. And, and if I, if I assess the last few months since that presentation, like I have noticed a, a switch from some other program, some other RMN some other CMS to do the same thing. I feel like there is this, I think this groundswell of let's be a little bit more open. And I think that's a good thing for the industry.
- [07:02]
D
I couldn't agree with you more. The CBD guys knows all the well that when you're the first to take the mobility industry, it actually sets up a lot of oxygen. Of course, others will carve you, but you suct atom. Voila. Wow.
- [07:16]
A
Appreciate it. Thank you.
- [07:17]
D
Mark.
- [07:17]
C
Welcome to the podcast. We're glad to have you back. Episode number two, you're three more away from the coveted varsity.
- [07:26]
A
This is like hosting snl.
- [07:28]
C
It is okay, except it's not a smoking jacket.
- [07:30]
D
Go up the jacket Joe got.
- [07:34]
C
There are only about four people would have ruined the jacket.
- [07:36]
A
So that's, that's plenty of motivation.
- [07:38]
D
I like that.
- [07:39]
C
So we did have Sarah Marzano on the Marketer on Monday. She's been on the ones and we recorded four panel sessions and she goes, so I hit my five now. Right.
- [07:50]
A
Well, I don't know if that counts.
- [07:51]
C
Status quo.
- [07:52]
A
Yeah. I mean, to be the Alec Baldwin of the CPG guys podcast would be like, that'd be a life.
- [07:57]
C
I mean, like we think of the theme Tom Hanks people will go, now
- [08:02]
A
listen, a lovable America's dad. America's dad.
- [08:06]
C
Do that. You have a beautiful phrase that SRI and I have come to really respect. It's retail media. Costco exists to accelerate merchandise sales. You maintain a strict structural hierarchy where merchandise velocity and member loyalty sit firmly at the very top. So if the digital ad campaign doesn't help with visible pallet product or reinforce the value of membership card, it simply doesn't belong in your ecosystem. So my question is, how do you enforce this merchant first philosophy when national brand managers come in with legacy KPIs focused entirely on vanity at metrics, I'd
- [08:47]
A
say it's a bit of a transformation. And some of the meetings we've had already here at Cannes have been very reinforcing that there is appetite from both sides to do this differently and to do it better and to have a compounding effect between brand objectives and retailer objectives. I don't think retail media is so cool that it's going to change brand management or the fundamentals of building a brand. And so to expect them to come all the way to us is a little bit too much to ask. But also for a brand manager to ignore the realities of retail. And my and somebody told me earlier today is that Costco is its own channel, it's not the wholesale channel, it's not the club model, it is Costco. And so I feel like our responsibility is bringing that lens forward to a brand manager, even down to the point of let's walk the floor with the brand manager. Customer teams from cpgs, they're on the floor all the time, they're walking with merchants. They understand the logistics, the in and outs. Brand managers don't really understand at its at the core, the magic of Costco. We believe that the more we bring that into their world, they're creative, their, their, their expertise is unmatched. We can help them do what they do even better by bringing, whether it's the data, the intelligence, the targeting, the measurement, but the magic of Costco into their minds and let them just create from there. So like, I don't know if it'll help in all or it'll work in all instances, but we're confident that this model can, can really bridge the gap between brand and retail.
- [10:13]
C
It's a follow up to that. Do you encourage brands to come to you with new innovation, an idea and let you collaboratively build out how you can bring that to life through retail media? Like what, what are you, are you looking for something fully baked or do you like to get in there and add some ingredients? I guess is what I'm asking.
- [10:30]
A
Yeah. Seldom does fully baked work at Costco because the nuances of just the executional realities and so we have to adjust just about everything that happens. There's very little boilerplate that can work at Costco and so the expectation is that they are bringing ideas and we might bring ideas to them, but there's an army of brand managers, it's me and a handful of my underlings doing the best we can to keep up with 150 suppliers each. And so like, like the balance, the balance of the thinking and the creativity is definitely on the brand side right now. The good news is like they're, they're no shortage of ideas coming out of these brand teams or shopper teams or activation teams. Our job is to make it fit. And like I was exposed to a very large brand, was looking to introduce a new item where they have limited distribution inside of a Costco. That's reality. That means their national playbook is not going to work. They have a test in a small market, but they didn't want to just put it on the shelf and hope it works. They didn't want to just do sampling and hope it works. And so what we talked about it, they ran A roadshow which gave them a slightly higher footprint, it gave them signage, it gave them a whole experience that ended up performing incredibly well. Does that idea scale up to 630 warehouses? I don't know, but that's the kind of thing where the brand conceived of the story. But we, we can help them figure out how to bring that story to life within the, you know, the limitations but also the unique, powerful solutions that only costly can bring.
- [11:57]
D
You know, you talked about the magic of Costco wholesale just as we started the show. I kind of said congratulations on first worldwide manage. Now I'm going to flip the script and say, hey, a lot of retail media networks started up with brittle ecosystems measurement being weak or non existent, at least sort of not to the brand of satisfaction for the amount of investments that were going in. You actually have somehow carved out a last Wilbert advantage where you've been able to quietly observe the market and engineer robust privateer cloud from the ground up. And how did waning and prioritizing clean unfragmented data foundation allow you to completely black box whatever called reporting traps that have frustrated CPT teams, brand teams forever?
- [12:43]
A
Well, I mean never underestimate the power of a clean sheet of paper and that's been a huge benefit for us is that we're not starting from scratch, but we're pretty darn close to scratch. And a little bit of serendipity as well because I arrived at Costco about the same time of a technology, a big innovation in our technology business which presented the opportunity to enter a new relationship with Google Cloud, which opens up new relationships with different partners that are cloud native and really what we were looking for. And so I feel like we were the beneficiaries of, of a, of a blank slate and some serendipitous timing. And I would say like I have to acknowledge the fact that a lot of the original sins of retail media, a lot of the shortcuts I did myself. I've been doing this for about 15 or 16 years and so I've lived and breathed that. And so there's a lot of scars that I carry on myself that I promised myself I wouldn't do again if I have the opportunity.
- [13:43]
C
Shout out to my friend Jose Gomes at Google Cloud, he and his team. I work with Jose at Dunhumby and he is as smart as they get. So you're in very good hands.
- [13:52]
A
We the first meeting we had with with Jose and the cloud team, we were with our CIO and others from our ads agro technology business and A few of us from the business side and they brought a perspective. Jose, leading the thought, you know, being the thought leader in that about like the art of the possible. And it was incredible because we had written the shell of our retail media plan but we still didn't know how it was actually going to work. We just knew what we wanted the end game to be. And in that, in the two hour session, like walking out with my IT partners and go, oh, so that's it right? Like this is how we're going to do this. And, and like, and ever since then we just been able to stack capability on capability because I think we got the framework right. Not that we'll get every decision within it right but the framework itself I think has a lot of legs and gives us the ability to grow to scale, to flex as needed as we go through this.
- [14:42]
C
Jose, I'm sending a bill to your marketing team for this advertisement. We need to reconcile on them, but that's neither here nor there. Let's look at a highly disruptive off site capability recently rolled out which is Google product listing ads, the PLAs. This isn't a typical off site audience extension. Standard connected tv, CDV storytelling. Moving Costco's first party retail media directly into Google shopping search, right? For the brands listening. Why does leveraging Costco's high intent audience data inside Google's open shopping engine radically perform better than a brand trying to buy those generic keywords on their own?
- [15:24]
A
I mean, I think it all comes down to commerce and you know, although the retail media is generally stuck in the lower funnel bucket, it's definitely a role that we're meant to play. But the strategy behind how we're picking the channels that we're going into is that we don't get to pick or dictate where people consume content, where they do their searching, where they do their discovery. And so it's incumbent on us to show up where that is happening. And so there is a lot of traffic on Costco.com, we have a lot of keyword searches, we sell a lot of big and bulky items. This is great, but that's not the totality of the way that people are discovering, the way that they're researching, the way that they're finding out what it is they're going to buy. And so we, we noticed a gap in Google search. There's still a high volume even with all the disruption coming from AI and LLMs. A lot of people still go to google.com and they put in television, they put in Washing machine, they put it in refrigerator and it turns out we sell a lot of those things on Costco.com we have a great value on high quality items. We have white glove delivery and services. And that story can't get told if we're not showing up, if we're not servicing, where that matters. And so if you're a brand, of course they can buy the keywords. They may not be able to buy the shopping ads if they don't have a conversion channel they can drive to. This is obviously an area that we thought we could be and it doesn't hurt when you have a lot of your supplier partners asking for this capability. So we're good listeners from time to time as well.
- [16:46]
D
Good listeners indeed, sir. So tying high intent open web search to verify warehouse data is a game changer. Congratulations. And getting that done, let's look at what you call IL or in real life activation, the third pillar of your declared omnichannel media strategy. Costco Wholesales physical club warehouses are legendary for the high frequency, massive basket for traffic. How are you taking real world physical store signals, everything from fuel pumps, warehouse digital screens, dynamically trying to connect them back into one single digital loop that's beneficial for the consumer.
- [17:23]
A
We feel like we do have a competitive advantage in the ability to capture signal in the physical space. And it starts with the card scan on entry and it ends with the card scan on exit. And so like there is that closed loop ecosystem that already exists for us and to my knowledge we may be the only retailer that is scanning a card on the way in. And that, that brings, that brings an incredible insight in understanding what conversion can look like in the warehouse. All of that data is captured inside of our Google Cloud instance, we call it our unified data platform. And it's all captured there at a member. And with all of the innovation we've been doing on our website and through our activation partners, signal capture has been paramount in all of it. And not just capturing a signal, because you can tag anything and you can gather things at an Adobe ID level, a ramp ID level, a core ID level, and then all the proprietary IDs that we have sprawled all over our own and operated ecosystem. If it doesn't tie back to a member, then none of it matters anyway. And so we've had to make big investments in making sure that the signal is captured and it's captured at the member level, which then allows us to pair that with the data coming from the warehouse, the traceable transactions and understanding what those facets look like. And so for the member, what ends up happening is we get to show them that we know them. We get to start for the first time talking to them from the context of their full Costco relationship. Not their travel relationship in isolation, their Costco.com relationship in isolation, their warehouse relationship. All of those like that is Costo to them. But to us it's been independent business units that the sum total of all the parts creates the Costo brand that people know and love. But we've had to look at that and say we can't change structurally how Costco is organized, but we can use advertising technology to piece it all together so that so the experience that our members get is as focused as possible.
- [19:16]
D
Listening to you, I'm impressed that not only are you commercial retail media leader, but you're a dead leader. Congratulations.
- [19:25]
A
Thank you. For your manager.
- [19:27]
D
A reminder to audience for speaking with Mark Williamson, AVP for Costco Wholesale Retail Media.
- [19:33]
C
Mark, I want to dig into this concept of a composable architecture. Your technical setup is intentionally designed as a cohesive orchestration layer where identity activation and clean room metrics can evolve independently without disrupting the core business. So why should global CBG technology have stopped trying to build rigid custom end to end stacks and instead adopt Costco's modular composable blueprint?
- [20:04]
A
Here at CAM and in other places, we end up talking about technology more than I think we would. So you think like, okay, let's talk about upfronts of spend commitments and activation ideas. More and more we are collaborating on the technology and this is accelerating quite a bit on the agency side because they're looking for interoperability with the tools that they built. But I do think there is wisdom in this idea of modularity or composability because none of us can predict the future. We don't know what technology is going to be in five years, three years, one year, in six months. And I think everybody knows the feeling of being trapped either in whether it's tech debt or a contract for something that you know is limiting you. And to me there's nothing more frustrating than knowing what's possible but not being able to do it. And so we put a premium as we were building this that we think we're putting the right components in the right order with the right partners. But something's going to give at some point. There's going to be a new innovation, there's going to be a partner that doesn't fit exactly the way that we thought they were going to fit. And we're going to have to act fast. And I look at some of the leaders in this space that are technology companies, they are so good at this. And there was a piece of news that dropped yesterday from one of our big competitors and probably 10 people in my company sent me the article and one of the comments I got was how are they doing this? How are they moving so fast? And how is this the fourth or fifth big announcement they've made in the last week? That is after years of architecting something that allows you to be bold and move quickly and integrate new technology quickly. And so like we may not be move as fast and be as bold as they are, but I think that we should be in the driver's seat of what we do rather than outsourcing it to third party tech that kind of controls our destiny.
- [21:47]
D
I want to now keep going deeper and geek out about that. So the composable modularity is the ultimate future proof and play. We're rapidly entering the I'm sorry, forgive me freaks, gentic era of commerce. But autonomous. It's predicted that autonomous AI agents are beginning to manage complex segmentation, path to purchase recommendations, real time budget optimization all happening CPUs behind the scenes. How is Costco wholesale utilizing advanced AI orchestration layers to cut through the operational friction making your complex multi partner systems intuitive and highly usable for brand teams as AI a deep consideration and response.
- [22:28]
A
It is a, it's a topic and so we have, we have work to do in this area and I would say we're definitely not an early adopter of this and I'm not an AI skeptic by any stretch. But, but what has been important to Koswell at large is how are we governing, how are we controlling, how are we making sure that the promise of AI isn't creating issues other places. And so whether that's removing humans from an automated process or it's adhering to our data governance or privacy policy or whatever it may be, there's a lot of due diligence we have to do to make sure that we are responsibly applying AI to the business. Now there and there are examples of AI within the Costco wholesale in general and other areas. But for us in retail media I would say that we are picking partners who are AI forward. And so when we are finding who we're going to work with, it is a consideration for us. Even if we are not activating on their AI capabilities yet or if they haven't built the thing that we want them to build yet, we are showing a preference for Companies that have a demonstrated ability to innovate and have a position on the role that AI can play and helping us move as fast or be as agile or as reactive as we need to be to AI.
- [23:37]
D
So I assume you're CPG vendor partnershiping ideas with AI too.
- [23:41]
A
For sure. And like I said earlier that on the, on the member side, we don't get to dictate where members consume content. Our job is to show up where they are. And I think it's the same thing on the buying side or the media planning side or whatever it may be. We don't get to pick how media is bought and sold. And as big as we are, as cool as we are, I think it's the wrong strategy to create a walled garden. We're the gatekeeper. Tell everybody to come through our front door and do it our way. I don't think we're going to get away with that. And so our strategy has been we have to plug into however people are buying. So whether we're bringing AI tooling or our tech stack is interoperable with AI tools, that's the more important thing. So I would describe us as AI ready.
- [24:21]
C
Mark. As a follow up to that, let's say you find out that your business partner is developing an agent to replace you as the co host of a podcast. What would you do?
- [24:31]
A
You know what, you can't fight. You can't fight the future.
- [24:34]
D
Just go with Mr. Bart Williams.
- [24:38]
A
I'm confident that AI can do this better than I do, but I'd still subscribe and watch just to see what he says. But you never know. Hey, part of me, just like the robots take over, I just want to.
- [24:48]
C
No, I'm obsolete. There you have it from the authority. All right, let's talk so many ways. Let's look down the road at merchant media collaboration. Loop in many traditional retail environments, the media network operates as an isolated outside fiefdom that frequently causes friction with the actual cat Cody merchants Free wins and inadequate description. At Costco, you deliberately fuse media capability directly into the merchandising life cycle. Can you take us under the hood of the internal relationship? How do your media specialists work alongside the warehouse buyers to drive mutual and growth?
- [25:37]
A
I know that none of our merchants would describe our relationship as seamless. It is. It's a work in progress. Ad tech is tough. Merchant relations is one of the hardest parts of being a retail media gm and I think especially in our world right now is probably the most important thing that we need to do. And so the way that we position our. We call them our growth team. So we have growth managers and growth coordinators. Their job is to be the connective tissue between everything happening in the marketing and media world and our merchandising organization. I would say that the biggest issue right now is there's more merchants than there are retail media specialists. So they cover a lot of ground and they can't go as deep as we'd like them to go. But in Costco, being aligned with virtual is an absolute imperative. There's no margin for error. If we get behind an item because a brand got all excited about it and that item is sold out, or it has regional distribution or it's not hitting its sales metrics and it's on its way out, that creates a lot of disharmony and distrust with our merchant organization. And it's not all on the negative side. On the positive side, there may be merchandising decisions that could be made because of the amplification of retail media. So we have to be lockstep with them on everyday items that are regularly replenished. It's a little bit easier to be predictable about moving toilet paper, but we want to be a solution for all cost of merchandising, especially those brands that are what makes Costco unique. Those brands generally don't have agencies, they don't have big brand marketing teams. They're looking to us to say I am getting in. I have a regional test, I'm running a demo. I've got six weeks to prove that we should stay. What should we do? And that the only way to do that is for us to align with our merchants and making sure we understand the plan. And we're not being redundant, we're definitely not being conflicting that we can be additive to help throw a little bit of extra growth on top and help that audience try to be successful.
- [27:31]
D
Well said on the partnership with the merchants because the next question to ask you will probably highlight that very well. The ad stack does indeed need to be connected to the assortment. As you mentioned, there are hurdle rates, things of that nature. You were living in the world of a world renowned hyper curated discipline product assignment. You're not getting 50 versions of an item. You're carrying the absolute best value selections. How does this limited SKU cloud warehouse environment fundamentally change the digital shell co option in your on site properties? Does a highly curated box mean that retail media real estate el Glasco is infinitely more valuable and defensive for combat pair?
- [28:14]
A
Hopefully quickly. You get in a fight, you get your parking spot, you Go in, you get into the building and you get in there and you say. And immediately your list is gone. And you haven't yet discovered the thing that you want. And so like. And I think. And that is the magic of Costco, Recreating that online is incredibly difficult. And so what we try to reinforce is our role in bringing the processes of discovery into the digital space. And the way that works organically on Costco.com is we have merchants who bring those treasure items onto the homepage. In a lot of cases, those are not pay to play. Those are a merchant with 40 years of experience knowing and feeling what needs to happen. The algorithm is their guts.
- [28:59]
C
Yeah.
- [28:59]
A
And they're incredibly good at it. So. So if you're a brand and you're trying to break through, you don't have the sales velocity, you don't have natural distribution. You. Your item doesn't even hit the algorithm, which is the merchant's gut. What do you do? And so we are me are finding ways to inject these items into the purchase journey. Whether it's upper funnel on the homepage, it's mid funnel, maybe on the category page, or it's lower funnel. I'm sure results. We've got to bring items that don't have inherent sales velocity to the forefront because that's what the treasure hunt looks like on. On the website. Because that's what it looks like in the warehouse. Incredibly hard to pull off. Haven't. Didn't have to do this in grocery. Didn't have to do this at the other wholesale club at Costco. If we can't get new items that are exciting and innovative and high value in front of the right people at the right time, then we have not replicated what happens in the warehouse.
- [29:50]
C
It would be an unusual trip for me to Costco if I didn't come back with 10 or more items. I can tell you I rarely go in with a plan to buy a single item. So it's all about the discovery.
- [30:03]
A
You've never rode on it before. Oh, it's crazy. I dare you walk in without a car.
- [30:07]
C
Yeah.
- [30:07]
A
See if you can get out.
- [30:08]
C
Oh, my God.
- [30:09]
A
I said I was going back to the. It is. It is a thrilling experience. I went in once my wife one thing is pick up my daughter's prescription. Ten items later, I walked out, got to my truck and realized I did not pick up her.
- [30:21]
B
I know.
- [30:21]
A
That's why I went in with no cart. I was carrying 10 things in my arms.
- [30:25]
C
Wow. Maybe.
- [30:26]
D
Peter, this is why we ask you about the hot dog eating capability that
- [30:29]
C
Mark Williamson had, it was, it is way out.
- [30:34]
A
We're thinking hot dog feeding contest down on the beach next year. Like this Joey Chestnut. Oh my God, our celebrity appearance.
- [30:42]
D
Deny me the canoe again.
- [30:45]
A
We can do both.
- [30:46]
C
Coney Isle. Watch out. All right, so I get the last question. Today we want to send our global practitioner audience home with a golden nugget of advice. And since we're not going to get that from you, we'll ask satyamskin if you could look at a corporate cbg, chief customer officer or hemp sales dead
- [31:06]
B
in the eye today.
- [31:07]
C
What is the single biggest reality check or piece of blind spot advice you can give them to help them stop treating retail media as a lower funnel marketing attacks and instead unlock true closed loop incremental volume for this quarter.
- [31:21]
A
The good news is that I've had the same conversation with these same people multiple times over the last couple days and I have a few more through Thursday. The golden nugget or whatever it is that I'm supposed to be providing here is like, don't, like, like don't think of retail media just as lower funnel. Obviously there's lots of opportunities in all of our programs are trying to get upper funnel and quote, unquote, win brand dollars and all that kind of stuff. In terms of winning at Costco and winning quickly at Costco, it's don't bring the same ideas, don't bring the same concepts or asks that you have with other retailers to us because either it won't work, it doesn't make sense or like there's, it needs to be specific to what we're doing. And so I feel like we need to speak the language of media. We need to operate the way that it works. So we're not creating new processes, new new platforms to learn, new languages to learn. Like we don't want to be so bespoke that we're hard to work with. But the same idea won't necessarily translate into our environment. So the conversations we've been having have been what is the cost open? Specifically, how do you extract unique value out of the data, out of the experience, out of the equity to, to put, to make one plus one equal, I don't know, I'll take 10. And that doesn't come by recycling everything you brought to every other retailer.
- [32:39]
C
One last thing, Cannes Lions was developed for agencies of record to celebrate the creative that they produce. But it's hard to walk up and down the quasi, see the applicant and not understand how prominent retail and commerce Media are to the audience here. So give messages to CCOs. Why should they be here with their CMOs hand in hand at K Alliance
- [33:08]
A
we have to fuse, we have to fuse the creative world with the execution layer, with the commerce layer. And that thing is like I have been opposed to rebranding retail media as commerce media because it makes too wide of a net and it devalues my career choices. However, I do like the idea of like it's about commerce. The reason you build brands is to sell more stuff. The reason we operate buildings the way we do is to sell more stuff. We all are oriented for growth. We want staying power, we want customer lifetime value, we want loyalty, we want, we all kind of want the same thing. But at the end of the day was a purchase made and I got taught a lesson today by head of marketing from a massive cbg and the example that he gave was Porsche has a ton of brand equity, but how many people actually buy it? How much commerce is actually there? So you can build the brands all you want. If you can't pay it off at the point of purchase, then what difference does it make? And so I think one of the frustrations that we have, like when we're therapizing with the creatives, with the brand teams, with the heads of marketing that we're meeting with this week, a lot of the action items we've identified is let's get in the room, the customer team, let's talk about these plans. And that's easier said than done, but I think it definitely has to happen.
- [34:24]
D
I do own three Porsches. They gave me cubic inches each And I paid 20 bucks for each.
- [34:30]
C
You're talking about the Matchbox Porsches.
- [34:33]
D
I wonder how you go to the Matchbox one.
- [34:35]
A
Oh definitely. There are a lot of Matchbox cars in my house. Unfortunately they're owned by my 18 year old daughter and they're mostly F1 cars.
- [34:42]
D
So mine are actually owned by me, not my kid. Let me remind our listeners you can find all of our content by simply going to Web browser typing cpguys.com as the URL. If you are someone you know is something to contribute to this ongoing discussion over CPG guidance, please do send us an email at reach uscpguys.com that's r e a c h u s cptgas.com to our audience. Thank you for the clicks, likes, comments, direct messages, meeting us of trade shows, coming to our events, recording episodes with us. Our sponsors are always grateful for you, with all of you. There is no CGAs show. You worked with us all year. We're grateful to have you as your audience and partners. Thank you Peter. Pleasure doing this with you. Live from Cannes, France. Give us the big takeaway from Mark's moments today.
- [35:22]
C
I'm sure you and I'll have different ones. Mine is particularly around partnership with Equal Cloud. I think that has given them capabilities off site that make sure they're products appear where people are present. You've got to go where the consumers are. The consumers are doing search outside of the owned and operated properties of Costco or an ecosystem marketplace partner they may use. And you need to make sure your products show up there so that they can click on Buy button actually drive conversion because at the end of the day what Mark said is it's about driving sales, moving pallets of merchandise. That's my big takeaway.
- [36:03]
D
Well sanded. Mine actually was very early up in this conversation when we talked about radical transparency sharing the full tech sac. The app platform I think is a game changer with First World Advantage. Come with us from you today. Mark, thank you for returning to the CPG Dance Practitioner platform to share this monumental master class with our audience. Please check out the Digital show notes Follow Mark on LinkedIn DeepW Costco Wholesales Open source Transparency playbooks. Thank you.
- [36:32]
A
Thanks for having me.
- [36:34]
D
That's all we have for you today. We look forward to you joining us on the next episode of the CPG Guide.
- [36:51]
B
The content in this podcast episode is provided for general informational purposes only. By listening to our episode, you understand that no information contained in this episode should be construed as advice from CPGuys LLC or the individual author, hosts or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for research on any subject matter. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by CPG Guys, llc. The views expressed by guests are their
- [37:21]
C
own and their appearance on the program
- [37:23]
B
does not imply an endorsement of them or or any entity they represent. The views expressed by CPTGuys LLC do not represent the views of their employers or the entity they represent. CPTGuys LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or other damages arising out of any individual's use of, reference to, or inability to use this podcast or the information we present in this podcast.