← The CPG Guys
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- [00:00]
Leslie Conway
Hi, I'm Leslie Conway, head of Walmart Connect Canada and you are listening to the CPG Guys podcast.
- [00:10]
Podcast Narrator
Welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast. Your host Shree Rajagopalan and Peter V. S Bond explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in an increasingly digitally driven world. And now, here are the CPG guys.
- [00:29]
Peter V. S Bond
Hello and welcome to the CPTGuys podcast. I'm your prodigious co host PVSB who also moonlights his head of industry and client engagement at Flywheel, the commerce acceleration division of Omnicom. Joining me today is my co founder of this growing enterprise. He's also the chief revenue officer for ThinkBlue Consulting. He is patriarch of the Raj family media empire, parents to pop sensations Rhea and Lara Raj, Lara being in the band Cat's Eye. And of course his wife Kavita is a podcaster in her own right. Of course, I'm talking about the man known as Sri Sri. We are a few weeks away from Grocery Shop. What's on your mind for the big event? What's going through?
- [01:14]
Shree Rajagopalan
I have something else on my mind. Peter. The timeless recording. This is a big weekend for the family. Do you know why?
- [01:21]
Peter V. S Bond
No. Do tell.
- [01:23]
Shree Rajagopalan
Two MTV Video Music award nominations for Cat's Eye. By the time this episode is released, we'll know if they want one.
- [01:30]
Peter V. S Bond
That's huge. Sree. I mean just the success of your daughters. I know I kid about it all the time with you but I know how in a debut year, I know how incredibly proud you are. And I also know how hard your daughters work. Your daughters are the hardest working musicians I've ever seen.
- [01:48]
Shree Rajagopalan
Work ethic matters, Peter. Across the board. But both kids are there. Kavita and I can't go. My father in law's arriving on Monday. We gotta get the house ready. That's easy as it got. But you know, hopefully next time all that separated Grocery Shop. We got a big party. As always, the CPG guys party. Kickoff day, Sunday, September 28th. Those of you listening, if you already haven't applied to come, you know you can see it all over our LinkedIn posts. Let us know if you want to come. Contact@cpguys.com that easy. And then we have hosted dinners Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. I think it's going to be a busy week for you and me.
- [02:23]
Peter V. S Bond
Let's put a link, we'll put a link in the digital liner notes of this episode SRI so people will find.
- [02:27]
Shree Rajagopalan
It also called a huge week.
- [02:30]
Peter V. S Bond
It absolutely is. Shree, I'm looking forward to getting to Vegas with you, seeing all our Friends, all of our colleagues, our industry cohorts, it's going to be a tremendous couple of days in Las Vegas, getting back on the travel circuit as we've taken a bit of the summer off. Huge week. Huge. Huge. All right, 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 515 plus episodes we've already published. All right. Over the last two weeks, I've made trips back to my home and native land, Canada, went up to see mom in Halifax, and had a little business with Flywheel up in Toronto. And we are very pleased today to have a guest from north of the border. We've had previous guests from Walmart on our podcast more than a dozen times, primarily from Walmart Connect here in the US earlier this year, we expanded that to include the Walmart Connect team down in Chile. Now we get to add Walmart Canada to that growing list from the world's most elite retailer. A guest is the newly minted head of Walmart Connect Canada. She brings with her a deep experience in media and advertising. She started at my childhood favorite Toronto station, Chum fm, spent time at great places like Bell Canada. That's like AT&T in Canada, right? Bell Telephone. Remember those old days? Astromedia, Hatch 64. And more recently, she was leading Mindshare Canada. You know our dear friend Jeff Malmod, who does the retail media minute on our LinkedIn page. He is also from Mindshare down in the US but please join Sri and me in welcoming to the podcast link Leslie Conway. Leslie, greetings. How are you? How you doing?
- [04:20]
Leslie Conway
I'm great. Thank you so much. And sri, congratulations on those award nominations. Excited to hear what happens.
- [04:27]
Shree Rajagopalan
Thank you.
- [04:28]
Peter V. S Bond
It's going to be a big event in in the Raj family. I am excited about it. Nothing would please me more than to see them holding up that iconic astronaut with the. The. The box of popcorn. Those. That is. That is a piece of my childhood that I will always remember. Leslie, we're going to include in the digital Internet of this podcast links to your LinkedIn page, Walmart Connect's LinkedIn page, and Walmart Connect's webpage. Because our audience is often liking to multitask. They're sitting at their desk, they're typing away, they're listening to us in the background. They want to switch over and learn more about you as our conversation goes on. So we make sure it's easy, don't have to write anything down. It's all in the digital liner notes. We have lots and lots of links there. We're going to have links to our party invitation at grocery shops. So all of that's going to be available. Just go to the liner notes. We're going to take turns asking questions. I'm going to kick us off with the first question. It's a pretty basic one. Right. Why don't you provide us and our audience with an overview of Walmart Connect, particularly in terms of your mission and how you integrate into the merchandising activities.
- [05:39]
Leslie Conway
Absolutely. At Walmart Connect, our mission is really simple. We help brands connect with Canadian shoppers in meaningful ways and accelerate their growth. As the number one omnichannel retailer in Canada. With over 400 stores, we reach over 10 million shoppers every week. It really gives us the unique ability to engage and influence our customers at broadcast level scale, right at the point of purchase, whether that's in store or online. And what truly sets us apart is our deep understanding of the Walmart shopper and the unique ways they want to interact with our brand. This insight allows us to help brands succeed by tailoring and creating impactful campaigns for them. From an integration perspective. Our entire Canadian head office is one campus, which means merchandising, e commerce, store operations, data, insights and marketing teams all work closely together. The collaboration lets us share insights, it lets us stay aligned with our customer needs and it lets us deliver real value for our partners. I'm still new here, but I can already see how this proximity really fosters our cross functional approach and helps us do what's best for our customers and partners every day.
- [06:50]
Shree Rajagopalan
Leslie, first of all, welcome to the CPG guys. It's a pleasure to always host someone from north of the border. So in lines with the makeup of Walmart Connect up in Canada, how do you define success for Walmart Connect both from a brand advertiser and a consumer experience standpoint.
- [07:08]
Leslie Conway
So for brands, I think success really means measurable growth. Right. That could come in the form of sales lift, incrementality, long term brand building. We like to set those outcome frameworks upfront with our partners. It allows us to pull the appropriate levers in terms of our capabilities to really deliver on that success metric. And then for customers, I think it's really just about relevance. Serving helpful, timely ads, meeting needs and giving them a great experience. Everything that we do within Walmart really has to be about that customer experience. So that for us would be success relevant metric, relevance as our metric with customers and then balancing those two is what makes it work. Right. So that we can deliver on ROI but also improve that shopping experience for Canadians.
- [07:56]
Peter V. S Bond
Leslie, recently Walmart Connect in Canada adopted the core retail media campaign development platform that's being operated by your colleagues in the U.S. can you double click down on that? Elaborate on the change and particularly what you see as being the enhanced value to the brand advertisers that will be using this platform the way their counterparts in the United States do.
- [08:22]
Leslie Conway
Of course, our global Walmart ads platform. You were reading our LinkedIn yesterday. We've had thousands and thousands of views and so much appreciation. So it was really formally. Yeah, formally announced yesterday and it's been a huge milestone for us in Canada because the platform really lets us scale that innovation faster. So it's bringing all of the advanced tools to our Canadian partners. Most of them are excited because in many cases, as you know, US and Canada are so close together that there are US counterparts who have already been benefiting from our global platform. So they know the potential value that it can bring, like better campaign management, precision targeting, deeper measurement. And what's nice is that the US has sort of tested it for us and now we're able to take that experience, unlock those plat, unlock the new capabilities within the platform a lot faster because we've got a very aggressive roadmap coming up. But it also gives us the ability to tailor that experience to the Canadian marketplace.
- [09:22]
Shree Rajagopalan
Understood. And that's how it should be. Local is best. So now comes the fun part of this dialogue. Walk us through the full funnel capabilities of Walmart Connect Canada. You know what capabilities are available on site, your off site partnerships and then how it connects back to the all important store.
- [09:41]
Leslie Conway
Store is king. So on site we have our sponsored search, our display, you know, capturing intent and driving conversion in our off site world. Now we can run campaigns extending them across really anywhere in the open web, social, connected tv, building awareness and consideration in stores where we're reaching shoppers sampling demos, digital signage, audio. And then we've really gotten into the exper, the experiential activations and we're calling it retailtainment. It's been incredibly success for us and successful for us and our brand partners and it gives shoppers like a little something extra for their shopping experience. We had one really successful one where with a partner, food partner, we set up a kind of build your own experience. So it started in our digital environment telling people to come out and that this is what they could expect. They came out, there was tables, there was a whole elaborate setup where we took out up a portion of store and then all of our signage along the path from in store, from our shrouds when you come in to our, you know, blades and wobblers right at that premium shelf location where they could then find it and take it home with them. And the feedback was unbelievable. It really won a lot of hearts and minds. So very excited and I think it's, you know, that full funnel approach to everything lets us influence the shopper journey end to end and prove out those partner results.
- [11:07]
Peter V. S Bond
Yeah, I think it's important to recognize the multi touch attribution in the path to purchase. Like consumer journeys are not driven by a single exposure. Perhaps if they're doing browsing on your owned and operated property and they're already halfway or more down the funnel and, and they could do that. But it is very much about creating awareness, getting into the consideration set, helping them find the right item understand is it, is that product right for me based upon the images, the copy, you know, you're, you're buying food, does it fit my lifestyle that I'm trying, my authentic lifestyle I'm trying to live. So I think all that's important and part of that is just understanding that you're having that full funnel capability on site, off site and then to your point, tying it into the store where particularly among groceries, that is where most of the sales in the industry still happening. We can't forget that as much as we love the excitement and the sexiness of digital, if it doesn't translate to sri's point, it's got to be local and it's got to translate to the store or you really haven't done your job. I think that's pretty clear. So following up on what SRI said, you know the power of retail media is closed looped measurement and marketing. So my question is what's happening in Canada relative to behavioral data applications? Because understanding shopper behavior is the best way to figure out who you want to talk to and whether they ultimately executed on what you're hoping that they do.
- [12:46]
Leslie Conway
Knowing the Walmart shopper and how they want to engage with Walmart and how they do and how they shop is is so important. And so, and we, we rely as connect, we really rely on our first party data. So reaching 80% of those households, engaging 10 million shoppers weekly in this country, it's, it's so invaluable to what we do and then diving deep on what is it that they're doing. What do we know, you know from external third party but then how does that really translate to how our shoppers are shopping with us and how we can be really relevant and help our, you know, our brands partners understand how to have those conversations at different points of the journey with our customers. And that data really helps us unlock those consumer behaviors, trends that we're seeing in the true Omni. Like because we're reaching omnichannel shoppers so they can be anywhere at any time, whether they're learning about the product, looking for the product. You know, it could be search, it could be display, it could be brand pages, it really could be anything before coming into store and then experiencing it when they get into the store and they've arrived at that aisle which is like search in our e commerce world. They've arrived and they're ready to buy and we're making sure that those brands are top of mind. And so it's understanding how each of those behaviors and the trends that we're seeing allow for the unlock of the, of the omnichannel shopper and closing the loop on those measurement outcomes. So they looked online, they bought in store. What did that mean? Like how, how did those experiences connect? And then what do we know about how you need to message them? We can do a lot of AB testing, we can test, you know, in certain areas during certain time periods and it's those kinds of unlocks that really, you know, we have it within our data, we have it within our ability to sort of do test and learn controls and AVs for clients and, and so that's how we've been doing it and where we're going with it.
- [14:41]
Peter V. S Bond
Let me remind our audience that today Sree and I are speaking with Leslie Conway. She is the head of Walmart Connect Canada. Sree.
- [14:49]
Shree Rajagopalan
So I'm getting all the fun ones today. The next one I'm sure you could have predicted this was coming, which is of course artificial intelligence. So how have you guys up in Canada started thinking about leveraging artificial intelligence and of course data analytics and the whole ML machine learning that comes with it to refine ad targeting, maybe more customized, much more contextual, etc. And improve campaign effectiveness for your advertisers?
- [15:18]
Leslie Conway
Absolutely. Walmart is no stranger to innovation. We're a people led, tech powered retailer that's always looking for new ways to serve our customers and empower associates. We're actively integrating AI and new technologies across the business to make shopping faster, smarter, more personal, whether that's in store or online. And on the advertising side we use AI for everything. Consumer analytics, Real time campaign optimization, deeper performance insights. Our new platform will take this even further, unlocking more ways to deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time and driving greater efficiency and measurement for brands. Ultimately, these innovations aren't just about technology. They're about creating a better, more seamless experience for our customers and our partners. Partners.
- [16:05]
Peter V. S Bond
And it's just a little bit of a follow up on that. My assumption is you're obviously, as with the platform itself, you're benefiting the investments that are being made by other divisions within Walmart around the world. I'm assuming though, that as you see opportunities to develop things that you need in your marketplace, you're presented with the opportunity to look against that as well.
- [16:30]
Leslie Conway
Yes, we absolutely are. And we're starting to use it really to make our media planning and execution even more precise and accountable here in Canada.
- [16:39]
Peter V. S Bond
All right, so a couple of weeks ago, I, in my Flywheel avatar, I was sitting in on a Zoom presentation by one of your colleagues, teaching some of my colleagues about your wonderful new platform. And that begs the question about your strategies that you're implementing to deepen partnerships with not only brands, but agency partners in Canada. Make sure that because this ecosystem involves not just the brand advertisers, very often they are employing agencies like Flywheel to help activate their, their investments. So how are you looking to deepen the partnerships and make all of the partners in this ecosystem able to help brands grow on your platform?
- [17:30]
Leslie Conway
Yeah, for, for. I've been in sales and partnerships my entire career. You know, whether it was on the sales side and you mentioned all the companies I've worked with, or it was being a part of Mindshare most recently. So I think if I could, you know, instill something, it's like that every company and brand and campaign is really different. The basic building blocks to partnership is recognizing those unique, the uniqueness and the nuances that everyone has. So beginning by defining objectives and aligning on outcomes and measurement frameworks has to be at the, at the base level, like that's where you have to start. And then it's how do we use our capabilities and data to co create solutions with our brand partners that can meet those specific business goals. Because if we're not doing that, it doesn't repeat and it also doesn't respect our consumers in terms of what the customer wants when they come into the store or into our online environments. And, and what we're doing to get to get the brands for the right outcomes, but also doing right what's right by the customers with agencies near and dear to my heart. We, I know and I, and I know our team knows who's came and talked to you. It's the focus has to be on making it easy to plan and buy and measure Walmart Connect and just allow you access in the way that you want it, take advantage of the platform and the way that you want to work with us. So I think you know, we've moved away from just being a managed service environment and adding in our self serve environment. And I think as we do those unlocks, you know, the aim is to not just be seen as providing shopper marketing tactics. Right. It's to really be that media partner and we are working on ways to evolve that both in our ways of working but also in the tools and capabilities that we're providing.
- [19:25]
Peter V. S Bond
You know, I think it's important and I want to emphasize what you just said you had been a fully managed service business. You're now offering self service and that's a recognition that there are, there are small brands, there are challenger brands even within large enterprise portfolios of companies. And whether you want to do it in house or, or you want to, you want to outsource it to, to, to Walmart Connect Canada, whether you want to use an agency already trust to do activations, maybe they're doing it at Walmart in the US as well. The fact is is you're giving brands the choice to implement and activate retail media at Walmart Connect Canada however they want to and, and that that allows them to succeed. Yes.
- [20:14]
Leslie Conway
Yeah. And it's not one or the other like a brand may choose to come and use the managed service because they don't have that maturity in the retail media execution space. But then work with an agency who is highly capable, works across the entire ecosystem of you know, various retail media offerings that are in the, in the market and they want to pull those self serve levers. So and I don't think you're ever set in one or the other. If there's a new framework, if there's a new measurement that you want to create, you can work with us in a managed service and then go back to working in self service. So it's really about ease of use and access.
- [20:53]
Shree Rajagopalan
Hey, one of the questions I had on my mind that we probably did not ask you earlier was the partnership and relationship with Walmart in the U.S. you know, here in the U.S. we regard Walmart Connect as one of the very, a developed retail media ecosystems that exist. Do you guys exchange knowledge with each other how to get better the type of capabilities, etc. How does that work? Learning from each other?
- [21:21]
Leslie Conway
Yeah, of course, I mean our entire internationally and I know you met with Chile, but internationally we work together too. We are a global company and we are a global platform and we are accessing capabilities so that customers everywhere can access the Canadian marketplace, the China marketplace, the US marketplace, Chile, wherever you want to sort of, you know, interact with us. We want to make it easy for you to work with us. So we absolutely learn from one another. The platform is a global platform so it really consolidates those centers of excellence and we trade, we not trade, but like we share information through those centers of excellence and help each other sort of learn and grow and understand what's coming in retail media or what's different in certain marketplaces. Where, where are we unique and how are we different?
- [22:17]
Shree Rajagopalan
So KPIs so for your advertisers, what KPIs are you prioritizing to measure campaign success? You're here in the US we hear a lot about incrementality being the most important one at this point. That always drives to the top. But then there are basic ones like roas which have existed forever. So what are the priority metrics to measure campaign success and media roi? And then how transparent is your measurement approach for brands seeking to activate via Walmart Connect up in Canada?
- [22:48]
Leslie Conway
Yeah, I mean you hit on two of them. Like the three most common that we ask for are really that incrementality, sales lift and return on ad spend. But I think again as we sort of work to what are those business outcomes you want to drive and so what are the measurement frameworks that we can start to build for you? So whether it's awareness or consideration or sales that you're trying to do, there are going to be different levers. So we can, we can actually like establish different KPIs that we can track and optimize against given any campaign. So I think there's more flexibility in that as we go forward. And then being in a closed loop measurement it allows us to sort of look at how campaigns are conform, are performing both online and in store to bring different insights into the go forward. I guess it's really about providing insights. So it's how do we go a little bit further further and push brands to sort of see what other KPIs can I have right, because they, they want to know about new customers. They want to know like are these laps buyers, is this like, is this a new trend? Like what more can we be doing And I think that's how we trigger like getting past the basic metrics and saying what more can we do? How far can we push this? How deep can we go in terms of providing greater, more enhanced opportunities to stay relevant and ensure your brands are top of mind? So I think that there's a lot of different objectives that we can create metrics around, especially within retail media. And I don't even know that we've defined them all yet. Like, I think that's why it's such an exciting environment to be in right now.
- [24:22]
Peter V. S Bond
All right, well, since I already, as I was, as I was going through my notes and I was going to ask you about self serve versus managed, I think we already covered that and we talked a little bit about the agency aspect. So I'm just going to close this out with It's a big announcement this week on you're officially moving to the platform. But you know, I'm reminded of the Janet Jackson song what have you done for me lately? That was yesterday. Let's look to tomorrow. What's the next big milestone you're thinking about? To continually keep Walmart Connect Canada at the top of, you know, the experience and the capabilities within the Canadian market and frankly globally.
- [25:06]
Leslie Conway
That's a big question. I think I'll break that into two parts. First, I'm going to talk about Canada and what we're doing here and then why global advancements are exciting for the Canada market. So first in Canada, we're at the front end of our ads platform journey. Right now it's about training, support, ensuring a really smooth transition into our new platform, whether that's for managed service or in our self serve environment. We're also excited about the roadmap and the capabilities we're launching to enhance the overall experience. API integrations, creative builders and reporting tools are all coming down from the global perspective. Our next exciting milestone is really about advancing global accessibility. That's a unique differentiator for us and we're deeply committed to building a truly global and inclusive advertising ecosystem. We're investing in our consolidated Walmart ads platform to empower our advertisers, no matter where they are in the world, to connect brands with customers at every stage of their shopping journey with consistent reporting and measurement.
- [26:11]
Shree Rajagopalan
I know Peter said he was going to wrap it up with that one, but I actually have one more for you and that really comes to advertisers who are not on the platform as of yet. Tell them how should they start working with you? Who do they contact? And secondly, why should they be super excited to ping you and say let's do it.
- [26:32]
Leslie Conway
Ping me and say let's do it. I think that there is just so much opportunity within retail media right now defining what we can be. We are still at the front end of our growth scale. So I love a challenge. So call me, give me a business problem. Let's hash that out and let's see where retail media falls within your path to success.
- [26:56]
Peter V. S Bond
Sri how are we going to make it easy for them to find Leslie and get started? Oh wait, we put a link to our LinkedIn profile on the digital liner note to this episode. That's easy for them. Just click on the hyperlink.
- [27:09]
Leslie Conway
You can also go to LinkedIn beyond our LinkedIn like, which is Walmart, which is Walmart Connect Canada. You can also visit our website and you can always find us.
- [27:18]
Peter V. S Bond
We will include all those links in the digital liner notes of this episode. All right. To our audience, we want to thank you for joining us twice each week for our podcast conversations. We greatly appreciate the now over 39,000 followers on LinkedIn who like and share our content. Please do follow us on your preferred listening platform. Most of you choose Apple and Spotify, but hey, you want to ask Alexa to play the CPG Guys podcast? I probably set off a couple thousand home home devices by doing that. My apologies or audible frankly just about anything. If you can find a podcast on a platform, you can find the CPG Guys and we particularly look forward to seeing you in person a couple weeks at Grocery Shop or any of the other conference that front conferences will be frequenting over the fall season. Sri, your big takeaway from what Leslie shared today. What are you thinking about?
- [28:19]
Shree Rajagopalan
I'm actually not going to give you just one takeaway, Peter. You know, anytime we have someone on the show from north of the border, it's a learning moment not just for our audience, but for you and me as well, right? To me the realization hits me again and again. We're you and I haven't done enough to have the Canada market be on the show. Learning and listening to someone from Walmart, especially Walmart Connect up in Canada is great moment to integrate and understand as North America how things are functioning. The one thing that I did ask Leslie that stood out in my mind was how they work across continents, countries, etc to learn from each other. And she mentioned, hey, we do it internationally. You know, referred to us going to Chile and then the fact that they're always in constant communication to learn from each other. That's how a great company develops and builds capabilities.
- [29:10]
Peter V. S Bond
You know, I want to go to that, that after meeting day cocktail party with all the Walmart connect people around the world. I want to be a fly on the Wall Street. I know you do too. And listen to the conversation that's going on between, you know, Ryan and Rich and our friend Lucas Barros down in Chile and, and Leslie, I bet it's a. I bet it's a humdinger. We would hear some conversations. My, my big takeaway sree is that they've moved from being purely managed service to having the ability to let brands choose how they want to engage on the platform. They can, they can do it self serve, they can do managed serves service. They can work with agencies, they can move back and forth. It depends on what they're doing. Maybe they want managed services for more upper funnel activities. Maybe they want to do self serve for lower funnel or vice versa. It really comes down to what the brand is looking for and that means flexibility. That means brands will win. That's what I take away from that. All right, that was a great conversation. Leslie, thanks for sharing your expertise in all things retail media north of the border. We greatly appreciate you joining us today. Thank you.
- [30:24]
Leslie Conway
Thank you. It was fun.
- [30:25]
Peter V. S Bond
Sri, as always, appreciate you being here with me to our audience. Thanks again. We look forward to speaking with you on the next episode of Wait for it. The CPT Guys Podcast Goodbye.
- [30:49]
Podcast Narrator
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 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.