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- [00:01]
Peter Vs Bond
Hey, it's pvsb with the CPG guys. Sri and I are going to be in Las Vegas, Nevada January 6th through the 9th for the 2025 CES conference. Monday evening we'll be hosting an invite only party at the Aria. On Wednesday morning we'll be emceeing a Breakfast briefing on 2025 retail media investments that's sponsored by CVS Media Exchange. That's over at the Park MGM Tuesday appearing over at the OMG Commerce Experience at the Cosmopolitan. And we'll be seen mostly around the area space. Expect to see us going into a lot of the area sky suites for individual meetings. We'll even be recording some content there. If you see us, stop by, say hello, take a selfie, whatever you want. We love speaking with people. We look forward to seeing you in January. Happy holidays everyone.
- [01:04]
Lauren Steinberg
Hi, this is Lauren Steiber with Lola Companies and you're listening to the CPG Guys Podcast.
- [01:13]
Sriraja Gopalan
Welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast.
- [01:17]
Peter Vs Bond
Your host, Sriraja Gopalan and Peter Vs Bond explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in an increasingly digitally driven world.
- [01:29]
Sriraja Gopalan
And now, here are the CPG Guys. Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast. I'm your co host, pbsb and I'm not talking into a podcast microphone. I work at Flywheel, a division of Omnicom. My co host, he is an industry luminary. He has a wealth of brand experience having worked at companies like PepsiCo, JJ now known as Kenview, Revlon, and most recently he was the Chief Customer Officer at General Mills, just to name a few. He's also the Chief Revenue Officer at Think Blue and he's father to the incredibly talented daughters Rhea and Lara and their explosive music careers, along with his wife Kavita and her iHeartRadio podcast, Lights, Camera, Conversation. Even his three cats have more followers on Instagram than we do on the CPG Guys. Yes, that is true. Of course I'm talking about the man known as Sri Sri. Let's. Let's start with the pleasantries first. Tell me about Happy Diwali. How was it. How was it for you yesterday? All good with the. I know your father in law was there. Did you have a good time?
- [02:33]
Sri
Diwali was awesome. We got to go to the temple.
- [02:36]
Peter Vs Bond
You know he likes doing that on festive occasions. I was good to light lights with the family. I actually did light a sparkler.
- [02:45]
Sri
Maybe I shouldn't have, but we did it anyway.
- [02:46]
Peter Vs Bond
At this point it's on Instagram, so might as well put it out publicly. The volume was awesome. Most important piece of it, Peter, is.
- [02:53]
Sri
I got to spend it with the kids and family.
- [02:55]
Peter Vs Bond
That's what matters the most. So that was awesome. But it was also Halloween. So for those of you listening to the podcast, go to my Instagram feed and you'll see how I celebrated the wallowing, which Peter got the joy of seeing this morning because Diwali and Halloween.
- [03:09]
Sri
Were on the same night.
- [03:12]
Sriraja Gopalan
Scary clown you had going on there. But I, I asked people to go check it out. You know, Shree, Nadia and I went out. She went as. As Hermione. I was Hagr. It was, it was a lot of fun. But let's. Now that we've got the pleasantries aside, Sharia, let's do a little postmortem. The Fall Classic has come and gone. Would love your thoughts on the on the Series. And what do the Yankees need to do to. To make it back to the world series in 2025?
- [03:38]
Peter Vs Bond
First of all, let me tell you how grateful I am that we got to go to. I got to go to four World Series games, games 1, 2, 3 and 4. And now I'm less bitter that it ended in five because I went to 80% of the world Series, both at Dodgers and at Yankee Stadium, which was a lifetime dream.
- [03:56]
Sri
The reality of the situation was, you.
- [03:58]
Peter Vs Bond
Know, I could make a thousand excuses. We had four fielding errors in game five. Game one, we had two fielding errors. Nestor Kodesh shouldn't have pitched. The bottom line is none of that. The bottom line is Dodgers completely outclassed the Yankees in the five game series. I'm the first one to admit that if we want to win a World Series, we're going to have to the road passes through the Dodgers in 2025. And the way to do it is do little things, play little ball. Which means focus on every play. Manufacture runs, not depend on slugging as the only way. Although that methodology nearly worked, it got us to the world cities. It did not work in the world cities because the Dodgers out slugged us. It was a better team, better played. The Dodgers deserve to win. Bottom line, better pitching, better fielding, better hitting. That's what baseball is about. I'm very grateful. I gotta go to four games like a lifetime dream come true. Most people may get to go to one. You did three yourself.
- [04:59]
Sriraja Gopalan
I'm glad I got to go three games with my best friend and I wouldn't have had it in any other way. Yankees, Dodgers, World Series. Okay, enough of baseball.
- [05:07]
Peter Vs Bond
Listen, man, the part I don't understand, Peter, is the tick out parade. Is today. It's actually happening while we record. Los Angeles is literally on fire. Like they're, they're burning cars, they're lighting stuff up. Like, is that how you celebrate? It literally makes no sense whatsoever. It reminds me of English fans after the Premier League. It literally makes no sense.
- [05:28]
Sriraja Gopalan
I celebrate by going to a fanatics.com and ordering myself all sorts of gear. That's how I celebrate. But yes, all right. Sh. Thank you for that. Before we get to our guest, want to remark that the CPG guys is part of a very notable collection of podcasts which includes CPG Scoop, that's Recent Jennifer and of course the FMCG guys with Daniel, Christine and Efrain. Please make sure to follow each of our podcasts in your favorite app, Apple Podcast, Spotify, whatever. If you follow us that way you'll ensure that you automatically are notified of any new episodes that pop in. We produce two a week. Daniel's doing the same. By the way, congrats to Daniel and the team at FMCG guys. You just crossed episode number 200. Sree. That's pretty big for those guys.
- [06:13]
Peter Vs Bond
I mean congratulations to Daniel and the team for really putting in the effort. Efrain Nicola, we know how it feels to be at episode 200. I still remember cutting a cake for that Peter with you. And yeah, we look forward to you growing and getting to the 436 Markle. This is 438 we're recording.
- [06:33]
Sriraja Gopalan
Otherwise we want to remind you that we're partnering with drugstore news on December 4th at iconic Lincoln Center. We'll be co produce the annual Issue Summit in its 21st edition. We're co presenting eight awards at the event in the HBC space to both brands and retailers. We're also partnering with their sister company Path Purchase Institute on the annual Omnishopper Awards to be held November 14th out in Schaumburg, Illinois. We're a select group of winners. We're going to feature on the CBD Guys podcast. It's at the P2PI Live event to be part of this or sponsored. Get in touch with us at ContactPG guys and of course links to all of the Raj family, social media accounts, The Drugstore News, P2PI events and Cornell which you probably heard in the pre roll before we started the podcast. All those events are available through links in the digital liner notes of this episode. You never have to write anything down. Lots of hyperlinks just toggle over. 90 plus percent of you are listening on your mobile devices. Just click and browse While you're listening to the melodic tones of our conversation. All right, let's get to. Let's get to our featured guest for today's episode. Regular listeners of this podcast know that Canada is my home and native land. We've had a number of great brand guests from Canada join us for prior episodes. Today, we're very fortunate to have a guest representing Canada's leading national grocery retailer. Loblaw's Companies Ltd. Is Canada's food and pharmacy leader with notable banners like Great Canadian Superstore, Shopper, Drug Mart, and of course, loblaws. Here to speak with us about how Loblaw is engaging its shoppers in a digitally and data driven world is the senior vice president for media loyalty and Loblaw Digital. So please join SRI and me in welcoming to the podcast, Lauren Steinberg. Lauren, how are you? Welcome.
- [08:23]
Lauren Steinberg
I'm good, thank you. I wish you kicked it off with some basketball, with some NBA talk. Then I could have gotten in there. I stayed quiet because I have no. I have no right. I have no right to speak there. But next time, let's talk NBA and I'll run circles. It'll be.
- [08:39]
Sriraja Gopalan
I'm pretty sure Tree would love to do that. That's where you. Where I'm sure you will run circles around me.
- [08:47]
Sri
That I actually enjoy watching the Lakers.
- [08:51]
Sriraja Gopalan
I'll tell you this, Lauren, you'll find this interesting. When I was living in Toronto growing up, I went to the very first Blue Jays home game out at the X. Yeah, it was great. I remember those good old days. They didn't win a lot of games, but boy, and it was cold. It was actually snowing the opening day back in the 70s. It was fun.
- [09:14]
Sri
Whenever I visited Toronto for work, I made sure to get a room at the Marriott, which overlooks Rogers Center. And my brother also lives right next to Roger center. So from his 23rd floor apartment, from the balcony, we can actually watch games.
- [09:29]
Lauren Steinberg
Look in.
- [09:30]
Sriraja Gopalan
Yep, that's pretty good. Hey, Lauren, Shereen. I've got some great questions for you today because we really want to dig in to where Loblaw is going with digital loyalty, E commerce and retail media. But before we get to those questions, you want to just give our audience a brief overview of what your remit is at Loblaw companies.
- [09:52]
Lauren Steinberg
Yeah, for sure. And maybe before that, I can just quickly tell everyone what Loblaw is because I know there's a large portion of your. What do they call it when you've listed. Not viewership, but I guess you're listed followers. We'll call them followers, sorry that are probably not familiar because you're mostly in the States. But for those that don't know, Loblaw is Canada's largest retailer. We do about 60 billion in annual sales and we operate across many verticals, the largest being grocery. But we've also got a very large footprint in pharmacy. Beauty. We're the largest beauty retailer in the country. Apparel through our Joe Fresh brand which also participates in some US retailers. We've got 2400 retail locations across the country. So we're basically in every city, we're in every town, we've got virtually every Canadian shopping with us in one way, shape or form. And then to top it all off, we've also got the country's most beloved loyalty program, PC Optimum, which I'll talk a little bit about. We've got an award winning bank with one of the best credit card value propositions in the country. And we've got an incredibly successful E commerce business, which is where I spent the most time during my tenure at Loblaw. I joined Laba in 2013. At the time we had no e comm business. Today, like I said, we're lucky to boast over 3 billion in annual E comm sales. And just under a year ago, I expanded my portfolio to include media and loyalty, meaning I'm now responsible for what you could basically look at as some emerging growth engines for the company. Given we've been a retailer for over 100 years, these are some of the new pursuits or new ventures that we're exploring. And this move was very intentional. The three other, you know, portfolios or those three portfolios coming together, they're largely dependent on each other to be successful. You know, all just like digital and particularly e commerce, they need retail media dollars to drive profitability in return. Digital, you know, that's the team that builds all the technology to power our retail media is offering and you know, all the platforms that they monetize. So there's a lot of opportunity in cross pollination there. And that's why those groups came together under myself. So it's been an excellent accelerant for all parts of my portfolio and I'm excited to share a little bit more today.
- [12:19]
Sriraja Gopalan
Well, this is going to be a great conversation Lauren, because if you follow this podcast, you know how much we love to talk retail media. It is, it is increasingly, if not the one of the most important topics that comes up on this podcast. So to our audience we're going to include in the digital liner notes this episode links to Lauren's Lincoln profile, the Loblaw company's LinkedIn page and Loblaw Advance's website. So if you want to learn more about what we're discussing today, just click there and you can connect with Lauren. You can learn more about the details behind what we're about to get into. So why don't we do that? You made mention of the fact that Loblaw is known by many names in Canada. Would love for you to dimensionalize the Loblaw business beyond. You gave us an idea of the revenue key metrics, particularly around your addressable audience and fundamentally why brand advertisers should be working with Loblaw as a mechanism to, to effectively and measurably reach your, your customers.
- [13:27]
Lauren Steinberg
Yeah, so many reasons. I mean, obviously you know, as a retailer we're looking at market share but at the end of the day, you know, most CPGs in the country are doing 30, 40, 50% of their sales in our, you know, retail and E commerce channels. And so in theory, if you're growing your business with us, you're growing it, you know, across the country. We have a first mover advantage when it comes to a lot of these kind of emerging channels. Loyalty. We've been around, we've been doing it, you know, best in class for as long as most Canadians can remember. Obviously we took the two largest loyal programs in the country, Shoppers Optimum and PC plus. And we combine those about what is it now, I don't know, seven or so years ago. And what that unlocked was an incredible amount of data and insights and gives us an opportunity to share those in a very customer friendly way with CPGs nationally. And so we've built a pretty robust media ecosystem that allows customers, or our clients, I guess, or there's so many versions of customer depending on what hat I'm wearing. But it allows CPGs to reach their customers in the most efficient way and actually start like times are tough for CPGs for retailers. Right. There's high pressure, particularly for CMOs to start measuring the effectiveness of every single dollar that they're spending. And so that is really what we are trying to do, make sure that every dollar being spent, whether it's in our Ecosys system or outside of our ecosystem, can be measured and tracked back to a conversion. Right. Deterministically. And so we've built this incredible ecosystem of on site media. Right. So allow, you know, giving folks access to our $3 billion of e commerce eyeballs. And actually I'd be remiss if I didn't mention loyalty, our digital loyalty platform in particular, because our PC Optimum app, PC Optimum, the program, our loyalty program has 18 million members. And if you know, Canadian, like the Canadian population, that's pretty much everybody that is kind of allowed to have a phone and apps. But we also have 10 million people who have downloaded that app. We've got 6 million using it on a monthly basis to inform their shop. And I know we'll talk a little bit about it. But you know, the customer's journey is changing quite a bit. And so offering folks onsite media options, off site media, using our powerful audiences, our data to target their customers elsewhere in store media so we can leverage in store audio and screens and connecting that all together and then tying this all back to performance. That is what we are uniquely positioned to do. And it all continues to go back to our loyalty platform and the data that we have that sits inside there because 70% of customers at checkout are scanning that code to get points to be rewarded because we continue to invest over a billion dollars in points every year into that ecosystem. And so it's just an incredible value proposition for both sides of the coin. Vendors can or cpgs brands can reach their customers and we can continue rewarding our customers, Loblaw's customers for shopping with us.
- [16:58]
Sriraja Gopalan
Lauren, there was a real tell in what you said when you, when you debated what does the term customer refer to? Because that's indicative of the fact that your Customer from a B2C perspective is a consumer who comes and shop your store. But you're now marketing media solutions and the role and the dynamics between brands and retailers is transforming the era of retail media. Because now you are actually selling an advertising solution to them. Whereas previously you were the only one writing a check, now they're writing checks, so to speak. And that requires a whole new dynamic in the relationship between the brand advertiser and the retailer as a media publisher. So that's really interesting.
- [17:42]
Lauren Steinberg
I think one of the earliest things that we decided was important to hold us accountable to building an incredible retail media network was that our own internal marketing team that buys media on a regular basis and is spending media on growing our control brands and our brand affinity, that they would come to us to do their marketing right and that would hold us accountable. We should be the first choice when it comes to how our own enterprise spends money. And if we can hold ourselves accountable for that, if we can do that, then there's no question as leaders that everyone else would want what we're offering. As well. And that's kind of really always grounded us in building the best technology, having the best retail media ecosystem, the best channels to reach customers, and the best measurement, you know, to be able to kind of have that closely narrative that people can actually feel good about.
- [18:30]
Sri
Awesome. First of all, Lauren, I want to welcome Loblaw and you on the show. Loblaw is actually well known in the US So the numbers that you just quoted, some of them, 70% of the transactions going through, scanning through the register that you can actually provide visibility from an e commerce perspective, $3 billion of volume and then the panel size that you already spoke to. We've been making decisions in the US on the basis of 250,000 household shoppers with syndicated data providers from a research standpoint for how many decades now, Peter? Obviously that has changed in the recent past. But you know, CPG was built on the backbone and anchors of 250,000, which is very high. I still remember in the late 90s, early 2000s, when it was 100,000 households and all decisions were made that way. So the numbers you gave are actually very staggering in my eyes in terms of the size magnitude, touching every shopper. So congratulations on all the success and $60 billion of volume and being the clear market leader. So I'm going to jump into Loblaw Advance. What is it? What are the component solutions of Loblaw advance that you make available to brand advertisers? And how do brand advertisers take advantage of Loblaw Advance?
- [19:51]
Lauren Steinberg
Yeah, so obviously I kind of jumped ahead a little bit because I was just excited to speak to the offering. And so maybe I'll start with. Like I said, I joined advance about nine months ago and my favorite story to tell is I find that the best way in my previous role on digital that I still hold, I find that the best way to build the best products is to spend time with your customers. And with advance. In my first couple of weeks, I was like, the best way for me to know what my customers want is to sit with the sales team. Because the sales team are the ones that are coming back from vendor meetings, CPG meetings. And they're saying, here's what I heard from them, here's what they want from us, here's what they need next. And I remember I was sitting and I was just literally just meeting these folks for the first time. And one of our account executives came in and she had just gotten back. She had a meeting about Reese's and she said she took out of her purse she had a bunch of new Reese's Peanut Butter cups with caramel. And she said, hey, Lauren, like, can I offer you one? This is their new product. And I said, I don't really like caramel. And then I went to a couple meetings, I said, thank you, but I don't like. I went to a couple meetings, came back, and another account executive was sitting at that roundtable and the wrappers were empty there. And she said, oh, did you try this? This is the new Reese's Peanut Butter cup with caramel. It was so good. And I said, oh, no, I don't really like caramel. Then I went home and the next morning I was driving into work and I was driving by this massive billboard on the gardener. And if you know anything about Toronto traffic, you know that I'm staring at it for a pretty long time. So billboard's highly effective in Toronto. And I see, no joke, like, it must have been there for weeks, but I noticed it for the very first time, a billboard with Reese's Peanut Butter cup with caramel, brand new. And I looked at it and I was like, you know what, that does look good. And I actually ended up buying it that very same day. And if I think about that, that is, to me, that is the perfect analogy of like, there's the awareness that was Chantal, who would come in and talk to me, that this is a new product that exists. And then there was, you know, confirmation that this is actually good from another ae, Carolyn. And then I saw it finally. And in the old day, we would have given 100% credit to that last interaction, right? Billboard would have gotten 100% credit. Obviously that's not easy to track, but the analogy still sticks. The new way is actually that just reinforces that customer's journey is not linear and we need to start thinking about media upper funnel, lower funnel in a very unified way and in a way that optimizes on the fly. And so yes, advance has what all the other retail media networks have in terms of online inventory. On our first party channels, we do third party buying with our audiences. We do in store buying with screens and audio, but at the end of the day is special about us. What I'm super excited about is our omnichannel platform that allows you to buy all of those things on the fly with recommendations driven by AI around optimization and distribution of your budget and you can target based on your goal. Do you want new customers new to brand, new to sku? Do you want to reduce churn? Do you want to drive sales what is it that you are trying to do? And that is really how marketers should be able to think about it. We've just forced them for so long to have to choose a channel and choose a tactic. And what we're trying to do is bring that all together, make it easy for folks to access it in a self serve way. And we're really excited about some of the early returns. Of course we've got a bunch of other things. I could talk to you forever. We've got a data and insights platform called Lydia Data, Insights and Analytics. We've got our audience hub where you can access our audiences and deploy against them in your environments, your preferred environments. But at the end of the day we're trying to make it easier for customers to easier for our clients to reach their customers and then with all the confidence in the world say this is what it did and for them not to have to like manage that program that campaign on the fly. Like there is technology to help us do that. That is actually what we're best at. We have some of the best engineers from some of the best companies globally building this with us inside of our four walls, downtown Toronto and just really excited about what that unlocks for our clients.
- [24:10]
Sriraja Gopalan
So let's build on that a little bit. Lauren, because you made mention of the fact that the rather expansive loyalty platform, the combination of what shoppers, drug mart and traditional loblaw had in pcoptimum. How are you using data from your loyalty program to enhance the customer experience across the funnel, so to speak?
- [24:32]
Lauren Steinberg
We're doing it in the same way we do it for ourselves, right? We're using that data, not interfering with it, taking all the implicit and explicit behaviors of our customers and we're running it through dozens of algorithms that can actually make the decision on the fly and at scale and then optimize it based on real time response of that. You know, there's so much wasted media spend out there, it's unbelievable how much money we waste. And you know, we've built some pretty incredible personalization platforms within Lava Digital that we use for our own customers. I mean anyone who lives in Canada would know PC Optimum is the reason people love it. Is it Personalization like that is my offer feed. No two offer feeds are alike. Everybody gets rewarded on the things that they buy most and we take that same methodology and bring it into advance. And obviously the, you know, the recipe, that's the secret sauce, you know, I can't get too into the details of that but ultimately we're able to target with precision because we know exactly who you want to reach. Sometimes you tell us and sometimes the machine will tell you. And we're able to know exactly what they purchased based on what they saw. And then we can optimize based on your objective on the fly. And so the goal is to set it and forget it, but learn with it. Right, people? We go into client meetings and they're like, well, how does it optimize? I'm like, I wish they could. That's like saying, well, how does Google search choose the perfect results for you? And of course, there's a million different parameters. But I think what we've proven is that clients can trust us because it actually performs. We always AB test. We always have a control and a test group to make sure people know the fully incremental lift of every dollar that they're spending that we hold ourselves accountable to. We always have. And so that's, I think, a big differentiator for sure.
- [26:32]
Sriraja Gopalan
Sri. I heard Lauren say incrementality. Didn't hear her say roas. Are we beyond that? Are we beyond that? I've already got the point where we're actually measuring.
- [26:45]
Sri
Forget about all that, Peter. I've got notes here where she mentioned AI guided. And so we're going to have to come back to it.
- [26:52]
Sriraja Gopalan
I know it is the hottest buzzword.
- [26:55]
Sri
In the industry that you all have actually converted from a buzzword of just the word AI into actionable AI, meaningful AI. Call it what you want. Applied AI is the right word that comes to mind. We'll get back to it. At some point you started talking to us about personalization, so it's the perfect segue. You just mentioned personalization results into the proper rewards for your customers. And AB tests actually result in the incremental lifts. If that's a brand goal based on the fact that you're actually doing that by campaign for brands. But let's get into the depths of personalization, because again, that's the third buzzword I would say in the industry that's all over the place today, demystified for us. Get into the world of personalization. You've got nearly every household in Canada because 18 million phones means you've got every household at this point. So how does it play in Loblaw's loyalty strategies? And then how does it actually connect back with merchant priorities for loyalty? Is that even one of the most important KPIs for them that you're working to actually achieve?
- [28:03]
Lauren Steinberg
I wish you were at a meeting with me yesterday. We Would have had a good time with that question. So personalization, you're right, these are all buzzwords, but the reality is this is what retail runs on, right? Personalization AI like this is not, this is not new. We've been doing these things for a very long time. I think right now though, what's important to me to convey to my team, which I literally stood up yesterday in front of hundreds of them and shared, is yes, personalization has the power to get every customer to add one additional product to their basket. Right. Like that's originally initially where you might start. But the reality is I think everyone, like my boss, my boss was everyone would agree it from a leadership perspective that we actually want to use personalization to deepen the relationship with the customer. And I always say to my team, it's yes, it's about showing customers what they want to see, but it's just as importantly about not showing them the things that they could care less about. Right. Like every pixel is so important, particularly in a media driven world, that you've got to make sure you use that canvas in the most efficient and effective way. And that's where personalization comes in. And so we've built a pretty robust, what we call engine, we call P13N13 characters between the P and the N in the word personalization. And that's intentional to differentiate between the concept of personalization and the platform within our four walls that powers it. And what P13N does is it's kind of their three components. The first is the controls. So if you think of this as like the cockpit and that's where our merchants can go in and build campaigns based on their objectives. The second is, is kind of the brains behind it, where you can kind of look at it if I keep it the analogy as autopilot. And that's really where we take the objective and the goals of the merchant and we actually figure out the right channel. I feel like it's such a broken record, but it's true. The right message in the right channel at the right time at the right frequency. Right. And the last one is the third component is really around measurement and optimization. And that's based on let's take the learnings now, let's keep applying them to this campaign on the fly and every subsequent one. And what we're finding is that the lift is not only in the basket, but the lift is actually in the lifetime value. And that tells us we're doing the right thing. That tells us that we're showing customers what really is Valuable to them. And sometimes that's not a product, sometimes that's a service, right? We have a whole bunch of services. Sometimes that's a feature, right? So if a customer is starting to spend less, maybe personalization is actually about showing them our swap and save feature, right? Where it allows you to build your list that you use to go into store. But with the click of a button, you can see like, for, like products that are virtually the same, but a different, potentially a different brand, or they're on sale and we'll show them to you at a lower price and customers are saving using those features. That's that. That might equate to, yeah, you're spending less today, but actually you're going to trust us more and you're going to come back to us because you know that we're going to always make sure we offer you the best price. Particularly now when value is so important. That's what matters, right? And so for us, that personalization engine, P13N is about actually empowering everybody to do personalization, not to do a bunch of use cases of like, let's personalize this canvas or let's personalize this subject line, or let's personalize this campaign. It's actually to give everyone the power to have every pixel personalized in their environment that they work on. So every product manager on our online grocery platform and every engineer on building Joe Fresh, our apparel brand, and every product designer optimizing the PCOPTIM app, they can personalize, right? They have the tools to. Whether it's the design team or the build team or the operate team, it's kind of, you know, we went through a very similar journey with experimentation about six years ago. Build the platform, enable the colleagues, serve the customer. And we're taking the same approach of personalization.
- [32:08]
Sri
You know, I love that you're focusing on LTV as a retailer rightly should, versus just basket incrementality. Brands need to get very serious about understanding how to build LTV via personalization. Because with AI and the data you'll provide and the dominance in the Canadian household market, brands can actually dream of doing this and actually execute it and build for LTV with you as opposed to just for the basket incrementality.
- [32:35]
Lauren Steinberg
Totally. And that's really a hard thing. I guess the biggest challenge has been in a retail environment for grocers. I mean, you would, you know, you, you both would know it very well. It's about daily trading, right? It's not about lifetime value. And so that is really, we are Kind of the, you know, we try to be the cheerleaders of ltv and it's a journey, but it's, you know, it's so important. It's hard to get people to like, sometimes to understand, sometimes to prioritize. But I think everyone can rally around it at the end of the day.
- [33:09]
Sriraja Gopalan
Let me remind our audience that we are speaking today with Lauren Steinberg. She's the senior vice president of media loyalty and Loblaw Digital at Loblaw's Companies limited. So Lauren, my question to you is, how is Loblaw delivering meaningful retail media performance measurement that's going to help brand advertisers kick the habit of the old world of linear television and print media and ensure their, you know, their boards, their leadership that the investments they're making in Loblaw are actually moving the needle.
- [33:45]
Lauren Steinberg
Yeah, I mean, I guess the challenge has always been, you know, to be frank, it's like the metrics that matter to one CPG are not the metrics that matter to the next. And you quickly find yourself in a world where you're having to build measurement and not only that, to build goals and objectives and dashboards and you name it for your different customers. At the end of the day, that's the place that we found ourselves in. We've got everything, standard media metrics, closed loop attribution, roas, iroas. We show percent of new buyers, sales left, I think those things. But I think what I try to get our teams and what my teams actually try to get me to rally around and what gets me excited is there's probably two. The first is, you know, 100% deterministic sales data. Right. The retail media network exclusively leverages first party data for reporting rather than like modeled or extrapolated data. And so that's where obviously the power of loyalty comes in. And being the biggest loyalty player because we're able to track purchases back to the customers on a one to one basis and we're able to directly attribute sales to a campaign. But then I think, you know, another, another area that excites me and I think excites brands and creates, you know, a bit of a competitive, you know, bid dense environment is competitive conquesting also, right? Like creating an audience of your own buyers or your, you know, your competitors buyers and that makes it, you know, more efficient and more relevant for the shopper. I think that that's a really, you know, a really big reason why actually I have, right now I have my VP of online grocery, so our VP of PC Express or online grocery business. The VP of Products for advance right now, I made that change. And so you have someone who cares about both sides of the coin. He wants to make sure that the experience is super relevant because he knows that improves his conversion. But then also that the ads and the density of the, you know, the ad inventory and the actual boosted products, that those are all relevant, it actually makes for a really perfect experience for the customer at the end of the day. And so like, for me, obviously, measurement is a moving target. I think that as industry changes, as client needs change, we just need to be agile with that. And I think that's a big reason. I probably can't share much today, but happy to come back when we've got something more substantial. But we're building some pretty awesome measurement tools with some pretty cool partners who also play in the space. And I think that's going to be another game changer for us. I think we're going to differentiate ourselves based on the technology and our ability to measure. That's really kind of our secret sauce. And so more to come on that.
- [36:48]
Sriraja Gopalan
You made mention of auction density, which is interesting. I liken the grocery channel in Canada to be in between grocery in the US and club in terms of the assortment. Like you walk into a US grocery store and most categories will have three or four major national brands and then they'll have some store brands, whereas in Canada it's usually there's one fewer national brand. And that has to do with a whole lot of reasons. Right.
- [37:20]
Lauren Steinberg
Production.
- [37:21]
Sriraja Gopalan
So, you know, yeah, you have to, you can't, you can't just take American. You have to, you have to put bilingual packaging, which means you have to run separate product lines, which means there are all sorts of efficiencies of scale. Do, do you, do you. How do you. I'd just love to hear just a little bit on the whole auction density thing, because I know that's certainly an issue for club stores to make the retail media platform ultimately generate the kind of revenue you're looking for. I have to imagine auction density is something that you concern yourself with on a, on a, on an ongoing basis.
- [37:52]
Lauren Steinberg
Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, I think you, you said it perfectly. Like it's something that we're constantly thinking about. It's like it's a bit of a chicken and egg. Like, if this guy isn't bidding on it, why would this guy. You gotta get, you gotta start somewhere. We've spun on that one and, you know, new categories, but I think, you know, I think a big Area of focus for us is just keyword targeting. Being able to be super granular. Also being really transparent about, you know, search terms, frequency, our mrr, like so in terms of like our search relevancy ranking, like all that stuff is depending on how mature the CPG is, that stuff can be a really great catalyst to start the engines on the bid. And once one is in, they come. Right? Because then you have a person with 100% share of voice and that's another one, like including share of voice in our reporting. Not something that in theory we thought we needed. And then some of the bigger folks, they wanted it. And once you put that up, all of a sudden, yeah, it's a bit of a. Bit of a jumpstart. And so we're not perfect. It's something that, you're right is hard. I don't have a recipe for it, but I think honestly, just transparency in performance and then running tests, little tests just to show the lift and all of a sudden you got people that start to care because we've been able to prove that, you know, it helps quite a bit.
- [39:22]
Sri
For the first time on the cpg, guys, we've heard the word auction density. So it's exciting that you're bringing new terminology into the show because you can bet that we're going to ask other retail media providers how they're handling auction density and if they've given it a glance. But there's a reason, I guess, you're a leader in this space. So we've talked quite a bit about how you're building things. What you look at leadership metrics, the fact that you always put brand goals for the campaign as the number one most important metric which really defines how the campaign is executed. And so let's get into that world of brands. Right, so how does a partnership with Loblaw work on this? How do you collaborate with a brand to optimize retail media? And again, the key word I'm going to use is mutual benefit. Because at the end of the day, if you serve the brand and you're not serving the merchant, it's a swing and a miss, like a strikeout. And then if you serve the merchant and you don't swing a brand, then you don't deliver for the brand, they're not going to come back again. It's like you're demoted to the minor league. Sorry, we're using baseball analogies because we haven't gotten over the World Series yet. But talk to us about a collaboration, how you manage your balance between merchants and brands. So you have outcomes for both.
- [40:38]
Lauren Steinberg
I mean, I guess like at a macro level, what's good for one is good for the other, right? Like our merchants want us to partner with our brands, with their, with the brands that we do business with to continue to generate investment from them and collaboration with them. We've given our merchants a playbook of like, hey, when your merchant or when your CPG calls you up and they, and they're like, I'm having this challenge or I'm losing share in this SKU or what's happening with, they know, it's like, is that a problem that advance can solve? Yes. Here's your person, right? A big change that we made pretty recently was reorienting our account executives against our retail categories. They used. We just kind of like, I think when we started it was just like, hey, this feels like a portfolio that's fair dollar wise and fair dollar wise and fair dollar wise. But the reality is if you can build a relationship with your category counterpart, the door is now open, right? They're the ones who are doing 60 billion in sales, not us. If that door is open, then all of a sudden, and you're actually doing good work with those folks, then all of a sudden you're invited in and you get an opportunity to offer solutions. And so I think like, you know, I talked about diversifying tactics, omnichannel, you know, distribution of your media dollars. But we're also trying to encourage brands to just think about what their key objectives are before setting their media strategy. You know, so like, are you looking to acquire new customers? Are you looking to maximize your sales? Are you launching a new product? Or if those are the opportunities that you're creating, give us a call. And as a brand, they need to be thinking about finding the right customers at every stage in the journey. Right. For example, like we can target audiences in any part of that funnel and then we can convert them into long term brand advocates. Right? And so that's the beauty of retail media is we help our partners find the right customers and we also provide a closed loop measurement to assess if it worked. And I think that, you know, the second our merchants understand that, the second we have, we're in the room even when we're not, you know, and so I think that's like, I don't know if that completely answers the question, but like, that's how I think about it at a, at a macro level. It is about, it starts with the relationship between advance and blah, blah category and then that extends, you know, we don't want to look like we're selling, we want to look like we're solving, you know, and I think that's that the onus is on us to do that through proof. And I think we're getting there.
- [43:04]
Sriraja Gopalan
Yeah.
- [43:04]
Sri
I want to go back to just how does a partnership work? Right. Like, can you give us like a little bit of a play by. Play on a heart?
- [43:11]
Lauren Steinberg
Yeah, yeah, yeah. First of all, these, they're in meetings every week with their, with their clients. You know, they have them easily accessible, but at the end of the day, like the framework is joint business planning, period review, open lines of communication and access. Right. And the access is for platforms that self serve, giving you full, you know, ownership over your campaigns. However, we also very much have managed services. So we kind of have a portfolio of opportunities depending on what stage you are, what your budget looks like, how big your business is with us. If you're new to advance or if you're kind of established, if you have a retail counterpart, you do business inside, blah, blah, or you're, you know, you're non endemic. We've got something for everyone, if I'm honest. But ultimately it's like we've got business development or we've got retail and they come and bring their clients to us and we work with them to understand their priorities, build programs that meet their needs.
- [44:17]
Sriraja Gopalan
So, Lauren, let me shift over to privacy. I'd love to understand how you're balancing consumer privacy with the need for brands to target retail media campaigns. And how do you ensure that personalization doesn't feel intrusive to your shoppers? Like, are there categories that you exclude from personalization or certain things that you make sure that you don't cross the line in the eyes of your consumers?
- [44:47]
Lauren Steinberg
Absolutely. I mean, we're loblaw, right. We're constantly being scrutinized. And so we take that very, very seriously. We aren't very flexible. We've got dedicated legal privacy folks inside of Advance. We are very careful. We don't target around alcohol or pharmaceutical, medicinal. That's not what we're trying to do. Right. We're really focused actually on CPGs, the ones that you know and love. And when it comes to data, it isn't really about handing it over. Right. And that's not because it's our secret sauce. It's because we care about our customers and how they might respond to something like that. You know, we go through endless training and discussions and making sure that we are, you know, incredibly thoughtful and incredibly careful and really systemically, we have to be like, that's just how the system is built, right? Everything is hashed, everything is protected, everything is moved into audiences versus direct targeting. You can't tie anything back to an individual. It really just is about cohorts and behaviors and whatnot. And so, I mean, I could talk about this forever, but I mean, I think it really comes down to having people who genuinely care and who put themselves in the shoes of the customer and are the customer, frankly. And we always err on the side of caution. And it doesn't matter if it's going to cost us millions of dollars. We're not going to do it if it doesn't feel right. And I think we're very sensitive. Very, very sensitive. Probably the most sensitive company you could find in this country when it comes to that. It only takes one wrong step to ruin a lifelong relationship, and we're not willing to take that risk. And so we're doing this so that brands can reach customers and add value, not to make the customer a pawn. That's not what this is about. This is about doing what's right for the customer. And brands get the benefit from that.
- [47:00]
Sri
I get the pleasure now of closing out this episode with the last question. And it's one of our favorite questions that we ask everybody who comes on the show, which is what are some of the trends you're following in the customer insights segment driving retail media activation that you're focused on developing, continuing to develop the advanced platform? Just looking forward. I mean, we've talked about AI quite a bit, but that it's already a backbone. But what are some of the other things that are shaping your thinking?
- [47:28]
Lauren Steinberg
So maybe two things. One is not being so stringent on inventory, like the types of inventory. I think inherently, because we're so digital, LED and technology focused, we tend to forget that the vast majority of transactions are still happening in our stores. Right. Like basically 95% of them. One and two. Actually more than one in every two customers who goes into one of our stores visits us digitally first. Yes. But at the end of the day, like there's still tons of value in focusing on things like sampling. Right. Things like our in store screen network. Like that's where most of the transactions are happening. That's where we're closest to the point of purchase. And I think that we can't really forget. We tend to get caught up in the next bit of technology. But at the end of the day, there's so many opportunities to interact with your customer and influence their Purchase at store level in, you know, a rewarding way still for them, whether that's with promo or points or, you know, like I said, sampling and the like. And so that for me is like obviously a big priority, a big area of focus. Otherwise, like, you know, I just want to make sure that we're building something that's scalable. You know, like, I think that it can become very easy to move into a very managed service space. We always want to have a white glove option for folks and at the same time, we always want to be able to give them. Give our, you know, our customers free rein. Right? The. Put the power in their fingers and have them learn with us. Like, I think there's so much benefit to transparency. And transparency is something like I apply to my team's way of working. I apply to my leadership style. We apply to our communications with our customer. And so for me, it's like ultra important that we build transparency into our products for advance and for our CPGs. That's probably something that like, I'm always hyper aware of and you know, try to learn more about how others are doing it and how we might, you know, push, be leaders actually in that space. I think that's like something that I would be super proud of, that no matter what, you know, when. When a CMO of a company has money to spend, they trust that we are, you know, the best place to spend it because they know with, you know, with certainty. Like, I think, you know, I'm. My background is marketing and I can remember like, you know, I know, you know, I can't. I. There's so much skepticism with what Facebook, you know, or meta products or, you know, any of those advertising platforms are truly driving because they all have their own, you know, way of measuring it. And so we just want to. We just, we don't want that reputation. We want to be known as a partner, not as a, you know, as a place to, you know, where your money goes, but you don't really know what it delivers. And so transparency for me is like, it's the thing.
- [50:19]
Sriraja Gopalan
I love that. No black box at Loblaw. You guys are actually opening it up and showing. Showing people how it works. That's great. Let me remind our audience that you should visit cpguys.com you can find all of our content. You can sort episodes by topics like retail media. And if you think your company has some thought leadership to contribute to this ongoing community discussion we've established here, drop us an email@contactpguys.com maybe you can join us on a future episode of the podcast. And if you're on Spotify or Apple or even on cpguys.com please leave us a rating and review. The rating helps feed the algorithm that makes us more findable by industry professionals like you in the review, while it helps us fine tune the people we talk to and the topics we cover. And of course we really want to thank the 34,000 plus followers on LinkedIn that choose the CPG guys to both educate and entertain. So we're really grateful. We wouldn't be able to do this without you. We're so incredibly excited to meet you in the Wild Shreen. I've been going to a lot of trade shows lately. We've got a couple more this year. And if you see us, whether we're in line at the airport, getting on a plane or we're at a trade show, you see us wearing our swag or whatever, come on over, just say hi. We love to talk to people. We really don't bite. We're just a bunch of gentle old curmudgeons. But seriously, Lauren, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing with us some of the top lines on everything Loblaw is doing to help brands engage consumers. Really appreciate it.
- [51:58]
Lauren Steinberg
Pleasure. Thanks for having me.
- [51:59]
Sriraja Gopalan
Yeah, absolutely. And anytime you've got something new to announce, you have an open invitation to come back. Talk to us. You're always welcome. We love to break news and share knowledge with our audience. So we're really excited about that.
- [52:16]
Lauren Steinberg
Will do. Thank you.
- [52:17]
Sriraja Gopalan
Yeah. So Sri, what do you think? I know you were copiously scribbling down notes. Would love to hear some of your your summary thoughts on what Lauren shared with us today.
- [52:26]
Sri
I'm probably wondering why I have a pencil and looking left and the right. It's because while you speak, I actually go to your website and I'm actually real time getting pages of notes on the conversation. So let's start up top with. You know, Peter and I were excited to have you here in the first place. The first time we've had someone from Loblaws come on the show and talk to us about the wonderful things taking place. And I think it's important for the US market to learn from other countries in the extended reach of the complete dominance you have of the Canadian market. $60 billion. Not just grocery, but also GM Pharma Beauty. I love that you've got your own pay system with the credit card making it a true360. Trying to understand shopper behavior because I bet they're not just using it at blah blah. They're using that credit card for many other purchases other places as well. Theoretically you're touching every Canadian household you talked a little bit about which eventually evolved into a lot about E commerce loyalty digital as a backbone. You got the first mover advantage which means your loyalties automatically. The loyalty programming that you can work with brands is automatically best in class. But I love that your personal goal is helping CMOS measure every dollar spent not just inside your system, but outside your system as well. $3 billion of e commerce, that's actually huge. That's larger than many retailers in the U.S. i would say most retailers in the U.S. but the eyeballs access that comes through and understanding E commerce is significant and therefore automatically the digital loyalty program becomes part of this which means you have 18 million-odd members. And then you talked about 70% of those customers scanning, scanning often. And a brand can truly build its plan on being in the marketplace in Canada around Loblaws. Then we got into Loblaw advance and you I loved another statement you made there. The best way to build great product is sit with your sales teams, listen, learn. You must have said listen a handful of times, which is awesome. Build what the industry wants versus what you want to do. And then you gave the Reese's example which I thought was fascinating. Can't deny that yesterday was Halloween. That makes it extra special because anybody want to guess what? I'll go back. You know, I sit in an office but as soon as I go home, what candy bar will reach out for? The Omnichannel platform allows one to buy media with AI as a backbone. It was an excellent example of applied AI through recommendation based engines based on most importantly brand goals. This is a new development in CPG that I would say has happened in 2024. It's important retail media programs build their entire ecosystem of delivering inventory against brand goals versus sales goals only, which was the past. And then I love the discussion on the word audience but the whole purpose of Loblaws retail media being make it easy to reach audience. And then we talked a little bit about personalization. Another key statement. Personalization to evolve to result into rewards for customers. How you do that AB testing which really focuses on incremental lift. Talked about the P13N engine. Love that those sort of names are important because talked about the cockpit, the brains or the autopilot. And then the real goal of the brains on the autopilot and the cockpit being measured and optimized in real time. I love that Yellow Focus on ltv. LTV is important. It is the metric in a ecosystem after inflation where large brands are losing households that will actually get a focus back on bringing households and most important word, retaining them. Then we talked about measurement. Obviously you've got the basics, IROAs, incrementality, ROAS, all the words that are important to brands in the industry. I loved this one word and I'm going to say it loudly. Deterministic sales data. First time somebody's come here on the show and said deterministic sales data, which means it's 1p. No model nonsense, which is awesome. We already talked about auction density. I mentioned it earlier. That's fabulous. And then how you build tools with partners. But tech and measurement, normally people would say tech. You said tech and measurement is the anchor for you to continue to build tools, which is awesome. Privacy I took for granted. You guys would have a wall around it. You kind of confirmed that, you know, it's audiences versus individuals is the keyword there. And then you also mentioned you're not going to be stringent on inventory as one way or the highway. And wrap it up with transparency is the backbone. And that's why CMOs, when they're ready to invest with you, they know with certainty they're going to get bang for the buck. That's a wrap. Peter.
- [57:08]
Sriraja Gopalan
That is great. And by the way, thanks for mentioning the candy thing again. Now I'm fixated on the fact that, you know, next month sri, they're launching the new Peanut butter and Jelly M&MS. You think there would be someone, one of the hundreds of people who listen to this podcast at work on Mars, that might want to get a note to Mr. Tim LaBelle about getting the CPG Guys an early preview of that particular new product launch? I'm not saying they have to, Peter, but I'm just saying holiday gifts from.
- [57:34]
Sri
The CPG Guys will be those. Except peanut allergies. We got to be careful.
- [57:39]
Sriraja Gopalan
Oh, I know, I know. Anyhow, sri, that was a great summary as always. Thank you for joining me on this journey into our audience. We really appreciate you listening to us for education entertainment. We try to make it enjoyable so that you learn a little bit in the process. And we look forward to speaking with you on the next episode of the CPG Guys podcast. Goodbye.
- [58:11]
Narrator
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