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A
If you're planning on attending grocery shop this fall, make sure to arrive in Las Vegas mid afternoon on Sunday, September 28th. That way you'll be able to attend the big Grocery Shop Kickoff Party being hosted by the CPG Guys in partnership with Rethink Retail. The party runs Sunday, September 28th from 6 to 8pm Our kickoff party is where all the industry luminaries customarily gather to celebrate the beginning of the of this annual event. If you're a brand or retailer looking to attend or a service provider seeking to sponsor the gala event, email us@contactpguys.com in the meantime, make certain your travel plans ensure your arrival in Las Vegas. To join us for the kickoff party.
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B
I'm Molly Jelm with Ace Hardware and you're listening to the CPG Guys.
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A
Welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast. Your host, Shree Rajagopalan and Peter Vs. Bond explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in an increasingly digitally driven world. And now, here are the CPG Guys. Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast. I'm your incorrigible co host, pvsp, who also moonlights as head of industry and client engagement at Full Flywheel, the commerce acceleration division of Omnicom. Joining me today is my co founder of this growing enterprise. He's the chief revenue officer for Think Blue Consulting and he's also patriarch of the Raj family media empire. Of course I'm talking about the man known as Sri Sri. I was going to talk baseball and the big trades that went on, but as we record this, you're heading to Lollapalooza tomorrow in Chicago. What? What's the deal here, my brother?
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C
First of all, incorrigible co host indeed. We can discuss that a little.
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A
I'm cute and cuddly, Sree. I'm like a big fuzzball. Don't you just want to.
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C
I have to look up the. I want to look up the dictionary definition before I come for the next episode.
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A
I'm intolerable.
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C
So go Headed to Chicago as you said. Cat's Eyes performing Main State Sunday. I can't wait. I have artist passes so it should be a lot of fun. We're literally flying in out just to go see Cat's Eye, maybe see a couple other artists. But I'm super excited. And Peter, I'm actually going to vlog my trip. Leaving from home airport. Never done it before. I'm a little bit nervous because I don't know what's right and wrong, but I'm super excited. This is a big Moment. Ria's recording at mtv. She's going to be on Vivo Discover. She was just on MTV uk, which is already public at this point. So this has been a super weak for the Raj family. And look at this. We're recording Molly John. How much better can it get?
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A
So MTV is now. Is she being interviewed by Alan Hunter or Martha Quinn? Wait, am I dating myself? Is that.
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C
That's like the Real World. The rest of that issue in 1993.
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A
Sorry, never. I'm an old. I. I remember the very. Do you know what the very first video on mtv.
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C
Oh, I got a word for you. Aren't you. Can I call you a Luddite now?
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A
Yes, you can.
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C
There we go. That's a word he taught me.
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A
Sree, do you know what the very first video was on mtv?
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C
Not the Real World.
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A
The real mtv back in the day. The very first video was the Buggles take on me.
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C
Aha.
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A
No, it was the Buggles video killed the radio star.
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C
Oh, you're right. I do remember that.
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A
And the second video was Nicklo. You've got to be cruel to be kind. I know those two. Those are my.
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C
I actually remember. I remember both of these. My. My favorite first music video was actually Take on Me by a high. It was like a game changer. If you look at it now, you'd laugh. But for that time it was a game changing music video.
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A
3. We're dating ourselves. Our audience is gonna. It's like going over their heads. We're gonna have to. We'll have to. We'll. We'll pick this up off offline. But. And we'll talk baseball next time because our guest today really good at many things. Baseball's not her bag.
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C
So do we accept collect calls? If you have suggestions for the secret.
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A
We. We will. We will. Will.
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C
From a rotary phone only.
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A
Yeah. Thanks again, Shree, for joining me. As always to our audience, make sure you're subscribing to our podcast on your preferred listening platform where you can get our latest episodes and even go back to consume some of the Shree like 510 plus episodes that we've already published. So enough about our boilerplates and our little tata tat. Let's.
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C
You know, I was very proud of 510 until this morning. I was looking at. Joe Rogan has been dethroned to number two. Joe Rogan and I started. He has 2,328 plus episodes.
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A
They do it five times a week.
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C
I felt very small.
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A
Five times a week like we do two a week. That's a lot anyhow. But hey, we have a bigger audience than he does. Okay, maybe not. All right, let's get to our guest because I think we've held her up long enough. Today we're pleased to have with us a return guest, but she's representing a retailer we have not yet discussed on this podcast. Ace Hardware is the largest retailer owned hardware cooperative in the world with over 5,500 locally owned and operated hardware stores in approximately, wow, 70 countries. That is pretty big. Our guest recently joined ACE to stand up, a brand new retail media network. I've known her for over 10 years. We met at Dunhumby when they were partnered with Kroger. Her career includes work at spins, IRI, the Dunn Hubby, successor at Kroger 8451, and even Dollar General. She's now the corporate vice president and head of retail media at Ace Hardware. Please join SRI and me in welcoming to the podcast our very dear friend, Molly Jele. Molly, welcome back to the podcast.
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B
Thank you for having me back.
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A
It's great to have you here. Before we started the episode, we were regaling on all the changes in our families and everything that's going on. We're in the midst of summer and we're so glad to have you on. You know, we've had on some people from the DIY space and I love the angle of Ace Hardware because it is your neighborhood hardware store. So we're looking forward to having you on to discuss today. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, so we're going to include in the digital liner notes of this podcast episode links to your LinkedIn profile to ACE Hardware and your corporate site where people can learn more about what's going on. Because we're just, we, we, we're very excited about, about what we have to talk about today. So I'm going to launch right into it. I think As I mentioned, 5,500 stores, 70 countries worldwide. You have a very unique position as a co op of independent retailers. How do you think that structure shapes the way you've approached retail media compared to some of the traditional big box retailers that are out there?
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B
You know, I think you're right. A lot of people think of Ace Hardware as that neighborhood retailer store for them. But you shared some of these stats in your intro. We're actually huge and international. We've got now 5,900 stores across 71 countries. Internationally, we've got 5,100 stores in the US and we're growing every year converting more retailers to ACE Hardware locations. We have full US coverage across all 50 states and we're a co op of independent retailers as you said. So what I have come to love about ace as I've learned more about US and the ACE mission is really that we are in the business of supporting independent business owners. The vast majority of our stores are independent retailers that really they opt in to the buying power, awareness and branding of the ACE Hardware cooperative. And then in addition to that, ACE has a really robust loyalty card program, a huge scaled E commerce business that's growing double digits annually and an incredible amount of site traffic and app usage. And so from a retail media standpoint, all the foundational elements are there for strong scale and reach, you know, as an important ecosystem for advertisers.
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A
Yeah, I would add to that Molly, your comment on the strong E commerce existing portfolio. I think we all know how important that is for full funnel retail media that if, if you don't have a vibrant E commerce business, your ability to do lower funnel fast conversion and really see the value in retail media can be extremely challenging because you know, when you do upper funnel, you know the conversion time window is substantially longer. So having already in place a vibrant E commerce business is really going to help jumpstart your retail media certainly.
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B
And that transactability on site is so important even though vast majority of our sales are still in that immediate convenient store location. Having the ability to fulfill fulfill a customer's desires on E. Com and have it shipped to store or delivered to their home, you know, is, is tantamount and so important in today's ecosystem.
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C
Molly, welcome to the CPG guys. It's fabulous to have you back. Different brand, different retailer at this point, but arguably in a space which is much more well penetrated in Ecom than food Bev and everyday retail was on the grocery side. So it's a pleasure to do this with you. Obviously we know, we've read, but we know that ACE balances local relevance with national scale. How do you kind of preserve that contractor walking into the store, buying on that app, kind of engaging with you all at the hyper local way while delivering this unified marketing message that you're actually ACE Hardware through the media engine that you now actually lead and represent.
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B
You know, at corporate, we're in a position to influence and enable these independent retailers, but ultimately our retailers themselves are in control of everything from their assortment. They have a huge amount of control over what products they choose to bring into their stores and a lot of that assortment ends up being fully bespoke and local to their area. And they also have the ability to opt into how marketing messaging shows up in their environment. And this is, you know, a hard to replicate dynamic. And it really is that that allows us to be both a global brand and have that true authenticity as a hyperlocal retailer. We have both that balance of having a store in every neighborhood and that ability to be incredibly helpful and immediately convenient, which is what helps us, in our opinion, compete with the biggest box that out there.
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A
You know, when I think about that about being hyperlocal, think about it, people live in different climates with different terrains, with different needs, how they spend their time and so having that hyper local assortment, but being able to represent that. So depending upon you log on to Ace, the assortment you're going to see available to you is going to be relevant to your very specific community. So that makes it extremely appealing to a consumer, not just looking at some national assortment.
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B
And our stores can carry. You might have an Ace hardware that has an extensive lumber assortment. You might have women's hats in some Ace hardware. It really is a very diverse assortment. And hats off to our e commerce team. The fact that they have feeds of products that are localized down to the in stock of that local store near you that could be fulfilled in your area becomes really complex in this type of customized ecosystem.
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A
So Molly, let's get into the data aspect which really helps fuel the success of retail media. Ace Rewards, your loyalty program has I think at last count over 71 million members with a pretty impressive level of engagement. How are you leveraging this loyalty Data to power AceMedia's audience targeting and personalization?
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B
So loyalty card data, as you and I both know and believe from our backgrounds at Dunhumby and other places, loyalty card data is the gold standard because it's what enables you to have that longitudinal view of what people are doing over time. Many of your listeners here may be familiar already with Ace Rewards and they may know it by the mailers that they receive with coupons for them. But it also shapes everything that we do from a marketing standpoint, from the of course the direct mail they receive to the email messaging they see, to their site experience and the curated offers that we provide. From a retail media standpoint, it's what will enable us to close the loop in store and online for purchase behavior and do some really interesting things from a targeting standpoint as well.
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C
Hey Marley. So as Peter referred to data as an asset for any company and so the 71 million is no joke and I for one am one of Those who does get the mail is frequently because I have a local store within 2 miles of where I live and that's where I shop. And I gotta imagine though that this data as that is a backbone for personalized advertising.
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B
That's exactly right. It's the backbone that personalizes their experience of all of the marketing levers that ACE Media or ACE Marketing Marketing has been executing and sharing with our customers today. And it will also be the backbone of ACES Media Network as well.
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C
Awesome. So we heard that you're actually launching a full funnel portfolio right out of the gate. You just arrived. You know, you obviously have deep experience in this space. What led to the decision to debut such a comprehensive offering instead of rolling it out one step at a time?
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B
I see, you know, now we're, we're 10 years after, you know, the first retail media networks came on the scene. ACE is standing up this business four to five years after some of our leading competitors in the hardware space have chosen to do so. So in many respects we're late to the game. But I've been sharing internally and externally that I see our late mover status actually as a late mover advantage in so many ways. The first is, and this relates directly to the question, you know, the tech stack and what's possible in this ecosystem has evolved so significantly even in the last two, three years that to answer your question of why launch with a full funnel portfolio from day one, the reality is because it's possible now and it was not possible when some of those retail media networks first launched their portfolio. So the fact that we'll be able to with the partner that we're launching with, which is Epsilon Retail media launch, a programmatic in store and on site offering is really just a testament to how much the tech stack in retail media has evolved. That late mover advantage, I think plays in a number of other ways too, which is we're not creating this marketplace. Retail media already exists. The budgets, the levels of ownership and accountability at advertisers. This is a known entity. And so not having to carve out the market, which was really the case four or five years ago, even among hardware vendors, is helpful. And then I also think it's giving us this opportunity to learn from some of the things that have caused hiccups or slowed others down in the past, which is really, you know, the fact that we're not home growing anything as we launch. We're not building our own tech stack. We're truly leaning into our point of difference, which is the Ace Shopper Data and our inventory and pairing it with a leading player's UI UX to be able to offer a full funnel portfolio and leading measurement from day one. And to me that just makes sense and it's possible. Now.
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A
Let me remind our audience that today SRI and I are speaking with Molly Jelm. She's the corporate vice president and head of Retail Media at ACE Hardware. All right, Molly.
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C
So, hey Peter, I have a follow up, if it's okay.
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A
Oh yeah.
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C
So you know, obviously Late Mover has distinct advantages. Like you said, budget's already in place. Your partners, vendors to ACE already understand that this is important. They're probably very focused on omnichannel retail. But it also means you have to change a lot of process behind the scenes. So have you been working on that as you made these announcements?
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B
We'll be paving the way for a lot of process and we'll be working to link in with existing and established processes internally with our current marketing co op, with our merchandising teams. One of the beautiful things about ace, I shared a little bit at the start of this is just that the primary value we provide to our retailers are twofold. It's the, the buying power of ACE and then it's the marketing that we provide on behalf of retailers to drive awareness and trips into their store. And so what I have found coming in is that we have a C suite that's really understanding of and believes in the power of marketing, maybe more so than other retailers that I've had exposure to in the past. And so we've got, although there is change that's needed, there's a lot of interest, excitement and passion internally for what this marketing will enable as far as results for our business, our brands and our categories.
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A
All right, so Molly, you mentioned the partnership with Epsilon. And in doing that partnership, the launch involves some great interoperability across commerce platforms like flywheel and PacVue. How does this clear commitment to an open infrastructure you think benefit your brand partners?
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B
Yeah, that's right. We will be interoperable. I can't say it either with those platforms and we'll have self and managed capabilities right at the onset. And just in general, we believe that in this stage of retail media, wherever possible it's easier to engage advertisers in their preferred tech stack rather than asking them to try to push to change their habits. And so in that sense, I think it ties back well to our, both the late mover component of our conversation, but also this desire for us to be standing up, you know, the Helpful network, our desire to be helpful to our brands.
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A
I, I think about that and bravo for doing that because having been at one of those commerce accelerator companies, I see firsthand what the value is like. They have built incredible capabilities that will enable their clients to do things that you may not be able to easily do when they try to use the native retail media platform's capabilities. Right. So concepts like intraday bidding strategy or other things like that that make it so much so valuable for brands that have kind of outsourced to a commerce accelerator and this lets them immediately jump in with the platform they already have. They're integrated with Epsilon and that allows them to just now plug Ace right into their overall media plan and not lose a step. They don't have to get up to speed. They already know what they're doing in the integration with Epsilon and it's going to mean that suppliers and advertisers are able to reach your consumers very quickly.
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B
Yes, well summarized. I think in general, let's remove the friction and let's take advantage of the expertise and the best practice that's already known and established in the industry and do that from day one.
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C
Yeah, no debate, no debate about that, Molly, whatsoever. I'm thinking now about, hey, as we've said multiple times on this episode, you know, you're launching with a big bang, lots of capabilities. You picked Epsilon as the partner, you're ready to go. And it's very intentionally curated to do it at scale and get going. But I gotta imagine from the brand perspective, the vendors, your clients right now, with such a broad set of capabilities, you can't take on everybody on day one because that'll just be chaos. Maybe you are ready to take on everybody on day one. So would you mind sharing how you're going about that? Like, how are you choosing which brand partners? Is it your top five, top 10? And then why that is important as well.
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B
I'm learning here from a lot of my experiences elsewhere. And so it's been an exciting time to bring to bear some of those, you know, hard fought and hard won learnings. We're launching this network with a lot of intention, with a desire to carefully curate a set of committed partners who are in it for the kind of the short term and the long term. And we want them with us to launch exclusively within our media network. So I think this sets us apart from others in this space. It's about growing, of course, growing mutual business, but with purpose and ensuring that in doing so we can fulfill our mission, which is to be helpful to our brands and our retailers by giving them more control over their outcomes with a radical level of accountability.
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C
Molly, what do you mean by exclusive?
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B
To engage with us as a kind of exclusive cohort of brands that will launch early on with us. The good thing is our vendor community has been incredibly receptive to this so far. We've been approaching in kind of more intimate conversations up until now, but by the time this episode airs, we'll have had our big launch at ACES Fall convention announcing the media network to all of our endemic vendors. But those who have heard and seen a peek under the hood to what we're building really appreciate it as a new toolkit that we're making available to them to grow their business at ace. And they'll have, well, we have a fantastic enterprise marketing engine here at ace. This toolkit will provide them more control than they've ever had to drive visits, awareness and sales outcomes among key customer groups that ACE and drive conversion in E Comm.
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A
Molly, I think you know that brand advertisers look at investing across the 200/ retail media platforms that are out there and what drives them to prioritize those platforms is two things. Does the RMN have scale? And it's very clear that ACE has scale with 5,900 stores, 5,100 that are in the U.S. the other one is measurement. They need to know that in this era of closed loop systems where performance marketing can actually be measured from incrementality, new to brand, long term value, all those kinds of things that retail media enables that. So I guess my question is, I know it's a passion point for you. What can advertisers expect when it comes to transparency and performance reporting from day one of the ACE Media Network?
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B
Yeah, that's right. I am. I'm incredibly passionate about measurement. It's one of the reasons I love retail media, because it's one of the things that sets retail media apart from other advertising levers available to marketing to marketers. And so it was incredibly important to me that our advertisers benefit from the best reporting available from day one. Our partners as we launch will have the benefit of a real time dashboard that will track on site and off site investments and the sales impact. They'll be able to use that same dashboard to place on site buys and off site orders. And just exactly to echo what you just said, in order to earn that next dollar, you have to show that the investment is working for both sides in order to show for our merchandisers that this is having an impact on the category in order to show that we're able to address business pain points through the media and in order for our vendor community to be able to bring back, you know, the right story internally for what they've observed and then what they've done to address what's going on in their business at ace.
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A
So what I hear you saying is, well, I'm never going to say ROAS is dead because it is a common metric that people can use, but what you're promising them is performance marketing way beyond what a traditional ROAS solution offers.
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B
Yes, there's still a role for roas in optimization and especially in the real time nature that it can provide the real time sales signals that it can provide for optimization to outcomes. But we're aiming for much more than that.
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C
You also mentioned solving pain points for your customers, your clients, your advertisers. When you say pain points, what are they saying? Like the top one or two? Is it measurement?
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B
Yeah, when I'm talking about pain points, I'm talking about business pain points. And that's why I love retail media because it allows you to come together on what's going on with the business. Are our sales down? If so, is it because we're losing customers? Is it because they're switching within the store? And so that opportunity to be able to target that specific cohort with a message that's going to resonate and is designed to shift their behavior, the precision and accountability that comes with retail media is what I'm really excited for our vendor community to take it.
- [26:48]
A
You know, Molly, the lifeblood of brands is growth through innovation. Do you see acemedia as being a great place for brand advertisers to come and launch and promote their product innovations?
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B
I definitely do. And I think, you know, our E Comm platform, the fact that we can fulfill those orders through E Com and that it can be a place for them to potentially influence our retailers to accept their innovation through the demand that is generated by product being shipped to their stores to fulfill for a customer. It's a different dynamic here at Ace because we have these independent retailers that aren't maybe automatically accepting innovation. And so in that sense, retail media looks like a potential avenue to increase the likelihood that your distribution would increase and put a little more control in our vendors hands to drive that awareness.
- [27:45]
C
So Molly, as we come to a close here, the final question we love to ask is always about focusing somewhat, a little bit on the future kind of outlook, things of that nature. So we'd love to get an overview of what's on your what do you think in ahead? Right. Like what's your vision for how Ace Media will evolve? Your arguably releasing a bunch of capabilities already. How do you see it helping local brands, independent store owners, you know, the entire ecosystem of everyone who does business with y'.
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B
All. There's a lot that we're launching right out of the gate. A full funnel portfolio, off site, in store, on site and best in class measurement. So we definitely do have our eye on portfolio expansion, particularly in store lovers I think can be really valuable for the type of business that we have with the immediacy of consumption and the convenient play that we have. But really right now I'm most excited about seeing what this new toolkit is going to do for our brands at Ace. We know retail media is an effective marketing lever. We'll have the ability to see on the back end how it performs. And so what I'm most excited about is really shaping what that best part practice is in our environment with our shopper and how these levers can be used to maximum effect to drive business outcomes.
- [29:11]
A
Molly has been a terrific conversation. I know you've got a lot on your plate. You obviously launching a platform, working in partnership with the merchants at Ace Hardware, trying to bring this all together and making some announcements. Are there any particular venues we should be expecting to see you out and about at later this year? Is there anything that's kind of coming to mind where we should look to see you out in the wild?
- [29:42]
B
Our biggest milestone is going to be this big announcement that we'll make at our venue in mid August and then you'll see me on the conference circuit this fall. I have no doubt Peter will be taking some selfies in the hall.
- [29:57]
A
We've been known to do that a little bit, Molly, ever ever since today. We've been doing it for going on 15 years now. Hard to believe.
- [30:06]
B
That's right. Oh, and our cmo, Kim Lefkoe will be. I'm sorry. We can cut this portion. I don't know. Cut that portion.
- [30:17]
A
Listen, Molly, thanks for coming back to the CPG guys and sharing with us all the exciting developments at Ace Hardware. We're so grateful. And do come back again and maybe you can control your CMO to make a visit to the CPT guys. We'd love that.
- [30:36]
B
Absolutely. You would love her. You would love Kim.
- [30:41]
A
If she was able to draw you into Ace Hardware. She must be a phenomenal person.
- [30:46]
B
She'll tell you that story.
- [30:49]
A
We're buttering the toast to get her to Come on, we're being as sweet as we can be anyhow.
- [30:55]
C
Remember he said he's incorrigible and huggable. You know me.
- [30:58]
A
I'm just kidding.
- [30:59]
C
Connecting the dots. Full funnel. Full funnel, Peter. That's what it is.
- [31:03]
A
That's full funnel. Peter. Molly, again, thanks for joining us. My best to Chris and the kids. Great to have you.
- [31:11]
B
Thank you so much.
- [31:12]
A
What a great conversation we had with Molly Gelm. Seems like Ace Hardware with their Red Vest Media platform is going to present a tremendous opportunity for brands selling through the DIY Channel to reach consumers in a full funnel manner. Thanks for listening to the podcast. We look forward to speaking with you on the next episode of the CPG Guys. Goodbye. 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 CPGuys, LLC. The views expressed by guests are their own, and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them 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.