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- [00:00]
Peter Vs. Bond
Retail media is rapidly becoming the go to channel for brands, aiming to engage consumers with measurable performance along the path to purchase. Retailers are increasingly empowering brands to accurately target meaningful audiences based on their longitudinal purchasing behaviors and execute media impressions across on site, off site and in store channels throughout the entire marketing funnel. For brand marketers, effectively incorporating retail media into their marketing budgets is essential for growth in today's omnichannel landscape. To address this critical need, Cornell University has partnered with the CPG Guys, along with leading industry executives and visionaries from around the world to launch the first ever retail Media Strategy Executive Education program. This immersive four day program at Cornell Tech May 5th to the 8th, 2025 brings together industry thought leaders and renowned faculty to share best practices for building compelling retail media platforms. You'll discover how to collaborate on creating best in class tech stacks, measure performance to ensure brands Access the necessary KPIs based on Campaign objectives and establish strong partnerships between brands and retailers. In addition, the program covers optimizing brand strategies using AI driven campaign design at scale to achieve marketing goals. By the end of the Retail Media Strategy program, you'll have gained a deep understanding of the retail media ecosystem and how both brands and retailers can accelerate organizational transformation to thrive in the future of performance marketing. See the link in the digital liner note to this episode to learn more about the Retail Media Strategy Executive Education Program at Cornell Tech May 5th through the 8th, 2025 welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast. Your hosts, Sree 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 another episode of the CPG Guys Podcast. I am your co host, pvsb. When I'm not sitting in the Podcast chair, I lead industry and client engagement for Flywheel. It is the E Commerce Accelerator division of Omnicom. As always, I'm joined by my fellow co founder. He's the Chief revenue officer at ThinkBlue Consulting. He's the patriarch of the Raj family media empire that includes his wife Kavita, his daughters Laura and Rhea, who are pop stars in their own right, and of course his three cats who are Instagram aficionados much bigger than the CPG Guys. Most recently, he held the title Chief Customer Officer at General Mills. Of course I'm talking about my bff, my Ride or Die. He's the man known as Sri Sri. Welcome back from Las Vegas.
- [02:53]
Sree Rajagopalan
Oh boy, what a great four days in Las Vegas we had. But more importantly, at the time of this recording, you're right about the Raj family because we will be in full form tonight at none other than Saturday, March 29th at the time of this recording, the Women in Billboard Music Awards.
- [03:10]
Peter Vs. Bond
Wow.
- [03:12]
Sree Rajagopalan
Kabir and I didn't get red carpet, but Rhea did. So watch out for the Getty Images popping up later this evening. You know, of course, by the time we release this episode, you should be able to find him easily. But I will report back from the award ceremony. What's going on on the Connecticut side?
- [03:28]
Peter Vs. Bond
Well, you know, Sree, I'm all elbows up here in Connecticut getting back into the swing of things after being on the road for three weeks. Our time in Las Vegas was exhausting, but so completely fulfilling. You and I had the opportunity to meet a lot of new people and reconnect with so many of our industry friends. It was truly a homecoming in, in its own right. And I'm just glad that we, we got to see where the industry is going in terms of thought leadership. I thought there were some really interesting presentations and tracks that took place at Shop Talk this year. That being said, you and I had limited time and ability to, to sit in those presentations as we were doing so many other things. But wow, I got a hand. I'll just start off by just handing it to our friends Sophie Warro, Ben Miller and Joe Laszlo, the entire team at Shop Talk for putting on yet another spectacular event. They delivered in terms of the content and they put together a compelling several day experience. We were so grateful to attend the show and just hats off to them. Another, another great show in the books. Looking forward to what they've got in store for the rest of the year. I know they've got possible going on down in Miami, then Shop Talk Europe over in Barcelona and then of course Shop Talk Fall. So lots of events coming up this year. What were your thoughts, Cherie?
- [05:03]
Sree Rajagopalan
Yeah, Let me start off first by thanking our friends, especially Ben Miller from Shop Talk, for the generosity and partnership with us and for the wonderful event he puts up along with Sophie Waro and the rest of the Hype team. The outcomes are always spectacular. People feel fulfilled for coming to the show, whether it's this one or grocery shop later in the year. Big, big, big shout out and thank you from my side.
- [05:33]
Peter Vs. Bond
Yeah, Shree. So let's walk people through the event. I think we should start at day zero, right? Not even day one, because day one, day one was listed as Tuesday, but there were some things going on on Monday. Why don't you, why don't you start us off with. There was a big event Monday evening. What, what exactly happened? SRI A huge, huge, huge thank you.
- [05:59]
Sree Rajagopalan
To all those that came out to the CPG Guys with FMCG Guys and Women in Retail Media Collective Networking reception that we held at 5pm so many of you came from brands, retailers. Huge thank you to our four sponsors for your partnership in this journey of throwing what is now one of a tradition at either of Shop Talk and Grocery Shop, the kickoff reception, which is done by Peter and me on the CPG Guys. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Plenty of pictures to go around if you haven't seen them already. Simply go to the CPG guys LinkedIn page or look for the tags from this past week on the CPG Guys and you'll find who came and you'll see that it was another fun, fun, fun event for Peter and me. Your thoughts on the party and the reception?
- [06:49]
Peter Vs. Bond
A couple things. One, we're going to include a link to the photos in the digital liner notes of this specific episode. But you called out our sponsors. I want to identify them individually because they were an integral part of our ability to host that party. So our friends at Epsilon at Pentalap Advantage and then Dunhumby, in partnership with Osmos, I'm going to do some interviews with them this week and get their summary thoughts on the event. We're going to publish that as a separate podcast episode as well. But to all our friends at those those companies, thank you for making the event possible. Everyone who attended thought it was great. I remember talking with my friend Eric Heller when he found out that we were throwing a party. He completely rescheduled his entire travel plan because he didn't want to miss that party. And he said he was not disappointed with the decision he made to reschedule his flights to get here from Atlanta. So I want to say it was a great event. Particularly I think we have a couple people who helped us put this together, SRI that you may want to give a shout out to.
- [08:06]
Sree Rajagopalan
Big thank you to Suzanne Krital, a friend who has known Peter and me for quite some time. Known me for a decade long at least. Very generous of you to come out, join us, manage the attendee flow. This work starts 60, 90 days in advance. Huge thank you, Suzanne. I also want to thank Sarah Leinberger for helping us on the day of the event itself and my wife Kavita, who gave us generously the ability to get audio video of the event. Thank you, Kavita, for doing that. Thank you to all three of you. Without you, the party would have been incomplete. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I do want to also do the same thing you did, Peter, which is I want to thank our four sponsors one more time. Without you, a lot of this doesn't happen. So thank you to all four of you for not just sponsoring, but also coming out, participating, engaging in networking, engaging in conversations and making the evening a spectacular one.
- [09:04]
Peter Vs. Bond
Yeah, Shree. I particularly want to thank Mama Raj for what I think when you look at the photos that are in the album with the hyperlink and the digital unnotes, you'll agree she did an outstanding job of capturing people as they were coming in, walking through the party floor and making sure to capture some of those magical moments. I will make one interesting mention, sri, when we, when we leave this space. Right. We have a commitment for the venue cost and some food and alcohol commitments. And strangely enough, our, our alcohol bill came in at about $10,000 below, below what we had contracted to consume. What does that tell you? Sri, what does that tell you?
- [09:56]
Sree Rajagopalan
I want to point something out. You know, earlier this month I had hosted a thought corner with Nielsen iq and I had the Bevalk expert join me for the discussion on a Friday afternoon. There's a clear indication trend that NIQ sees in its data that alcohol consumption is slowing down. I think it really peaked during COVID and now we're seeing the other side of it. There's also a new stat that Gen Z is more into mocktails and very craft cocktails as opposed to wine, beer and hard liquor. Tequila seems to be the choice. You know, I'm giving away the plot from a dark corner over here, but yeah, I think it's a new trend, Peter, that I think we all have to start thinking about, especially if you're in the business, that alcohol consumption is shrinking, especially at the more younger levels.
- [10:44]
Peter Vs. Bond
Well, you and I, you and I are certainly teetotalers ourselves, sri. So it's no, it's no surprise to us. It was just interesting that, that I think as people are doing venues and events, it's probably time that, you know, you revisit what are the cost implications for venues and what the expectations are because people are consuming. You know, consumer behavior around beverage consumption is fundamentally changing. Right.
- [11:17]
Sree Rajagopalan
But yep, I'm going to move us along, Peter, to later in the same evening. Day Zero. Yeah, we had a fabulous hosted dinner thanks to our friend Jack Shannon with Recess, an experiential sampling company. Also an opportunity for retail media networks, for upper funnel inventory, and for brands who repeatedly tell me again and again and again, I need to bring back Lapse hustle. These are the largest brands in the world to the what I would call the ankle biters or the upstart brands. All of them. So huge successful dinner. Your thoughts?
- [11:48]
Peter Vs. Bond
Yeah. First of all, I'll say to Jack Shand and the team at recess the fact that they recently announced a partnership with Dollar General feeding into their JBP program around Dollar General Media Network, their experiential sampling is qualifying for that. And I know they have another major, major retail partnership announcement coming up in very short order. You know, I thought it was a. I love hosted dinners because it's an opportunity in a more quiet setting and a personal setting to connect with people rather than in a loud room that can be crowded at times. Like not to not to say that our party wasn't a lot of fun. It was great and it's a great way to connect with a lot of people over a short period of time. But I do like those one on one conversations and I thought it was great. I had a, a tremendous opportunity. I sat next to Angie Leip from Nestle and we had a great conversation. I know you were next to our dear, dear friend Podmihari, the Chief Digital Officer at Purina and co host of what the Tech podcast. It was a lovely evening and it really set the stage for the next day and connecting with everybody at the conference. But I thought day zero. I'll give it 10 out of 10. Terrific, terrific day Sri.
- [13:13]
Sree Rajagopalan
Terrific start to the conference for us. By the time we were done with day zero, we had already met 400 people, which is incredible.
- [13:21]
Peter Vs. Bond
And our friend Ben Miller from Shop Talk showed up. Another call out and shout out to Ben, who was quite vociferous in promoting the party on his LinkedIn page. I think it's becoming readily apparent to anyone who's involved with Shop Talk and Grocery Shop that the way to kick off any of these events come hang with the CPG guys. We draw a really interesting crowd, we're a lot of fun and it's a great way to start off these events.
- [13:52]
Sree Rajagopalan
Indeed, Peter. So let's get to day one, which is of course Tuesday, March 25th and super keynote in particular. I love a statement Radical new approach to brands and brand building which is on the new market stage by Mark Parokas from Shark Ninja Shark Ninja has done an incredible job building a one on one relationship and convincing consumers of value. There are two key words here, Peter, that I deeply believe in. In today's value challenge times, if you can communicate value in a meaningful way despite the high price point. They aim to build one on one household relationships. Those are two winning formulas and without having to complicate things and without having to learn 30 new things. Those are some of the oldest words in the English language, value and loyalty. And that's what they defined as radical new approach to brands and brand building. My hat's off to you, Mark, and what you do at Shark Ninja.
- [14:56]
Peter Vs. Bond
Yeah, I would agree, Sree. Shark Ninja has done a really great job of delivering value but and you might say that they have a sharp price point, but it's certainly a lot better than the company that they tend to be compared to for the most part, which is Dyson. Dyson's built really high quality products, but a very, very premium price. Shark Ninja came in and said, you know, we can deliver just as much quality, but at a price that many more consumers will find accessible. And. And I think they articulated that in the keynote. Sree. Really spot on. Yeah.
- [15:36]
Sree Rajagopalan
Moving on to the tracks, Peter, how did you like the names of the five tracks? I love the new market, the Hospitality stage, but you know, the vision stage, the inspiration stage and the value stage. But clear tracks the future of retail media. Embracing welcoming retail experiences, maximizing shopper value, visions of the Future for 2030 and Tech Solutions. The names are absolutely on point for what I would have expected as an attendee.
- [16:04]
Peter Vs. Bond
I agree. So let's talk about the one that's probably most relevant to our audience, which is the future of retail media. A lot of people familiar to this podcast showed up on stage. Our dear, dear friend Harvey Ma, who's the vice president General manager for the member access platform or MAP at Sam's Club. Aaron Dunford, VP of media from Nordstrom. He was on our podcast a few years ago. And then of course Lauren Lavin from Group M and another friend of ours, while she hasn't been the podcast someone that we've interacted with, Amy olkers from from TikTok. There were some really great conversations going on there. There are probably a couple people that I saw on stage that I know, I know remark to you that we need to get them on the podcast. People like Mike glaser from, from PepsiCo and, and Francis Dillard from, from Driscolls. But in all I thought they were, they were good populated panels with credible subject matter experts and, and I think they did a pretty good job of facilitating some conversation that made people like us in the audience think okay, that may be approach that I hadn't thought about or an angle I hadn't considered. And I think we left with a couple of meaningful nuggets from, from the, from the tracks that they built. Sree.
- [17:27]
Sree Rajagopalan
Yeah. So one, I'd like to take a deeper dive, you know, maybe go through a few of the sessions. Here is the retail media track. So let's start with our belief on, you know, a good friend, Andrew Lipsman, who has joined us earlier this year at CES for an actual podcast with cvs.
- [17:43]
Peter Vs. Bond
Yeah.
- [17:44]
Sree Rajagopalan
And if you didn't hear that, that was earlier in January. Yeah. But you know, Andrew believes deeply that screens in store is a huge opportunity for in store retail media and one of the huge locks unlocks existing.
- [17:59]
Peter Vs. Bond
And I don't think that's just, I don't think that's just because he spent a hot minute at Cooler Screens. I think he sees the value in this with data.
- [18:07]
Sree Rajagopalan
So I'd love for you to tell us, tell our audience, what do the CPG guys think of screens and retail media? Because, you know, we have partnered and will be partnering with Grocery TV as well.
- [18:17]
Peter Vs. Bond
Yeah. So my thought is this. I think it's about setting expectations of what you get in a physical store compared to what you get through owned and operated properties or off site in the case of lower funnel, middle funnel, and even everything that's off site and on site. There is a high expectation around personalization. Right. Because we have the ability to do that. We can target audiences, we can deliver very personalized messages in store. That's a, you know, right now where we stand, that's not realistic. As long as you're willing to set the expectation that you're going to create highly relevant experiences and not necessarily personalized there. We can talk about personalized in a little bit because there are some, there is some headway that's going on in that particular space. But I think screens in store are very important because you can communicate, particularly discovery kinds of moments if you position the screens and deliver a message that's relevant to where that screen is found in the store. Right. You don't want to talk about necessarily baby products in the alcohol aisle and you don't want to talk about pet products in the hardware section of the store. Right. So as long as you understand how to deliver messaging in the right place, it can be a highly relevant experience and it's measurable because you can identify when particular experiences happened and when a transaction occurred in the store. And you can measure in a closed loop format whether that had some impact on conversion. What do you think?
- [20:01]
Sree Rajagopalan
100% yes. Peter. And that leads me to the very next session that I enjoyed. Pushing the limits of commerce media. And speaking of who's doing that very well is Harvey Ma, VP and GM of the MAP platform at Sam's Club. What they're doing, if you haven't heard the story and you don't know, and as a brand, I'd highly recommend you get in touch with MAP and get to know more. There are two things that stood out in my mind from an earlier podcast. The kickoff of Women's Month, early March this year that we did a Diana Marshall, Chief Experience Officer for Sam's Club, where she referred to two very important things. One was the ability to work with Sam's first retailer in the history of the CPG Guys partnership who has come on the show and talked about ltv. Brands don't have the ease of doing ltv, don't have the data. She talked about a possible partnership there. The second one was what they're doing. Very contextual, real time advertising. As you walk through the aisles of a Sam's Club. Tell us more about that and why you like it.
- [21:07]
Peter Vs. Bond
All right, so let's let me start by sri. We wouldn't be the CPG Guys if we didn't break down some acronyms. So you use the term ltv. Most people think of that as, as customer lifetime value. You and I have kind of settled on the fact that it's probably more appropriate to say long term value as opposed to lifetime value. So let's put that aside, that we've dealt with that. What Sam's Club has done is they.
- [21:28]
Sree Rajagopalan
I want to clarify why you and I say long term versus lifetime. Consumer habits and patterns change over time. Changes necessitate maybe the testing of new brands, new preferences, new flavors, formulas, etc. So Peter and I prefer to say it's more. It's not necessarily a lifetime, but it's long term. Hold on to that consumer as long as you can. That was the thinking.
- [21:53]
Peter Vs. Bond
Yeah, exactly. And a great example is what is, what is lifetime for someone selling cereal versus someone selling diapers? Right. Very different lengths of time. But that said, so what Harvey and Sam's Club have done is they have finally delivered on a scalable personalized experience in retail. Let me, let me break that down. So personalized means I can deliver messaging to a consumer based upon either their historical purchasing behavior or where they are in the store. Those are the primary ways that I would want to deliver personalization. Right. Because if they're in a particular aisle and I've got A message about a product that I think is relevant to them. I want to serve it up to them. Right now, up until now, the only two mechanisms to do that in a really personalized way were being delivered by both Amazon and Instacart. Right. They created these smart carts where so long as you provisioned your account when you walked into the store. Right. You could then be delivered personalized messages on the screens that appeared on these shopping carts. The challenge of that has always been the capital necessary to expand that to wide distribution. Right. Who's going to fund it? Is the retailer going to fund it? I think you and I know historically the answer to that is no. Are the service providers like Instacart going to provide that? Well, so far they have. But the ability to build and then deploy and then manage over time. Right. Because these things, once you put them in the store, it's not like they're good for the next 40 years. You have to maintain these devices. Right. They can break down. There are a lot of things that can go wrong. So it's challenging from a capital and a maintenance perspective. Along comes Sam's Club, and they say, I'm going to turn the model on its head, and I'm not going to rely on the retailer to fund the capital necessary for the customer experience. I'm actually going to put the capital burden on the actual shoppers. And what do I mean by that? Well, we're going to deliver the experience in their smartphones, and they're responsible for paying for and upgrading their smartphones. So what it comes down to is now Sam's Club only has to make a software investment to deliver personalized ad experiences into the Sam's Club mobile app, which many of their club members are using to execute the wildly popular Scan and Go capability, where you scan the UPC code on a product as you're putting it into your. Your club cart as you go out, scan the QR code on the kiosk, and out you go. And so while people are putting those products into their cart, they're holding their mobile phone. And now all of a sudden, the team at MAP can deliver personalized advertisements. That is the way you drive scale and personalization in store. So major, major kudos to the team at MAP for delivering that promise of personalization and physical retail. What do you think, sri?
- [25:07]
Sree Rajagopalan
So, Peter, personalization is the name of the game again. If you want to get lapsed households, it's one of the only ways to do it. I'm going to move us now to another very important Conversation that took place, which is content. Content was hot in the beginning of COVID A lot of money was put into the sea of Scanner. And for those who don't know Scanner, you know, you hear it referred us, refer to it often. Search, content assortment, navigation, ratings and review by a friend, Chester Twigg from his Ken View days. And that conversation was around the marriage of content and shopping. You personally are a content king. Flywheel is a content king in this post Covid world. From a lower funnel shopping perspective, is content as important as search?
- [25:56]
Peter Vs. Bond
Well, I think they go hand in hand. Sri. If I'm doing search on one of the myriad of marketplaces right, I need content to fuel my customer experience. I think you and I both know that how content is formatted for different marketplaces is very important. The dimensions are different, the capabilities are different. So brands need to be able to take the base content that their agency of record is typically developing and then format it so that it works on Amazon, so that it works on Walmart, so that it works on Target. And that isn't easy to do in a very manual world. Well, the great thing is we don't have to worry about the manual world anymore. We've got great companies that have built AI based tools that quickly take the base visual and content elements and transform them into marketplace ready content to be syndicated into those marketplaces and to display and drive that conversion. That, that is the, that the promise is asking for. So yeah, Sree, we're at a pivotal point where we now have the ability to format all of the content necessary in seconds to reach all of the marketplaces where a product can be found.
- [27:24]
Sree Rajagopalan
I think, Peter, a word that I want to use, please don't shoot the messenger is AI.
- [27:30]
Peter Vs. Bond
I think never heard of it.
- [27:32]
Sree Rajagopalan
A lot has been said about the negative aspects of AI. This kid could be a positive if done the right way. You know, I had a great conversation with Kara Pratt who leads 8,451 kpm about ethics in retail media. And this was part of that conversation. But I do believe use AI for your power as a superpower and advantage. So that was the a lot of what I heard in the retail media track. There was more about storytelling. You know, content is very much a piece of that as we heard on the stage. Talent and influencers. So again, you guys are experts at Flywheel on the influencer world. Tell us about your partnership with TikTok.
- [28:13]
Peter Vs. Bond
Yeah, so flywheel is part of the partnership program at TikTok Shop where we offer brands looking to activate in this social commerce platform, full service, soup to nuts, including establishing partnerships with third party fulfillment companies to help brands take advantage of the most compelling stat that I think you and I have heard all year, which is TikTok articulating that they're able to accurately convert 40% of their users to commerce through TikTok Shop, that is just remarkable. Sri. And so if you're a brand and you're sitting on the sideline and wondering when it's time to get into TikTok shop, the time is now. And the great thing is, some of my Flywheel colleagues, notably Darren Baker and Molly O'Brien, are ready to help you identify what's the right brand or group of brands in your portfolio and help you actually deliver against that and the promise of, of, of TikTok shop. Now, am I saying to you that in, in the first year that the volume you do through TikTok shop is going to be commensurate with what you're typically doing on Amazon? No, nobody's trying to say that. But if you want to get in the game and start understanding how this works, how to get influencers, how to present your brands, which brands to choose, how to do the fulfillment, and then start to measure some of the engagement coming out of this platform, that's squarely where Flywheel has positioned itself to work with brands looking to be on TikTok shop. So it's a really exciting time. There were some great conversations. I know you and I spent some time over at the TikTok booth with our friend Ajay Salpakar, who you knew from your J and J days. It was they, they, what they're doing is just absolutely phenomenal. We're so excited about that. I had quite a number of conversations wearing my Flywheel avatar with brands that were keenly interested in understanding how to activate. Let me tell you, don't get caught up in the fact that you are a manufacturer that's built for pallet production and warehouse distribution. We can, you know, many companies, Flywheel included, can help you navigate everything that's needed to bring a TikTok shop experience to life. So really good stuff going on.
- [30:51]
Sree Rajagopalan
Part of that is listening, right? I think the clear Message from the CPG Guys, TikTok is important. TikTok shop is important. Even if you're not selling bundles and bundles of pallets because you're a warehouse manufacturer, that really depends on the retailers to do so. You need to have a presence to talk to the today's Gen Z millennials and pretty much up and down the eight spectrums people are using TikTok. So that was a key message. So another last one that I did want to talk about in the retail media side was the Agency of Tomorrow. So Peter, I'm going to put out what I feel are factoids or what I feel are must haves for the Agency of Tomorrow. You know this this panel had Ace Creatives and the Havas Media Network along with Sam Knight who came to a party, one of the interesting well dressed guys. I always look forward to running into him at events and see what what new outfit he has on from smg. And to me, here's what an agency of the future looks like. Number one, it embraces social and teaches warehouse brands how to work with social media. Number two, it understands that the shopper is yes 100% digitally influenced today. Not 90, not 80, not 60 just to please some chief merchant with 40 years in store experiences who just doesn't want to adopt digital because they just have no interest in learning it and therefore builds brand plans, brings together that which is the third brings together commercial selling organizations of the largest market cap brands with media which is the CMO and marketing and brands that builds one plan to activate in store and online that creates JVC joint value creation for brands and retailers and JBP which is merely execution of a business plan. Those things stand out in my head. Embracing AI for good is par for the course at this point. AI for content and creativity is par for course at this point. Those are all the ads I personally would say agency of the future wants to build a one on one relationships, cares about LTV as we have defined it long term value and jumps on test and learn for new retail media network opportunities. Anything else you learned or wanted to add from that session before we talk about some of the other yeah, just.
- [33:14]
Peter Vs. Bond
Just that the ones the agency of the future that's going to succeed will come to understand that retail media is media and they will understand how to buy for it, how to measure against it and they'll be able to shift away from more traditional methods. That's where the agency the future is. But it also depends upon to a large degree the retail media networks embracing the fact that the ad units need to be readily standardized and need to be priced in a way that the industry can coalesce around. And lastly, that measurement is available to brands the way they want to measure performance, not in a black box and being done by the retailer in isolation. So as long as those things happen, we can see a bright future for retail media in terms of its contribution to the overall marketing budget.
- [34:11]
Sree Rajagopalan
Sri, no debate about that. I mean, it is full funnel marketing. At the end of the day, people should be focused on that to bring back lapsed households as well as follow through on the journey of loyalty and retention. Let's talk about some other things. There was a very good one that I enjoyed. Again, very made for today's time, which is personalizing discounts and promotions to drive sales and loyalty.
- [34:35]
Peter Vs. Bond
Yeah, Sree, this is not new, right? If you think about what Dunhumby was doing.
- [34:41]
Sree Rajagopalan
Drumroll. We know the creator of such a personalized program right here wearing a red T shirt.
- [34:47]
Peter Vs. Bond
Where is he?
- [34:48]
Sree Rajagopalan
The six foot register receipt creator.
- [34:51]
Peter Vs. Bond
There you go. So, so it's even before that, Sree, right. When Dunhumby came to North America and partnered with Kroger, they brought with them some experience they built with Tesco. So I can't even say that Kroger was the first to market with this. But most notably in North America, what they found was being able to identify audiences through the use of purchasing behavior coming from their loyalty program, where in the case of Kroger, 96 cents of every dollar that is that goes through the register is attributed to a household. Right? You can build highly refined audiences so that for people that have never bought a brand before, what is your objective? Your objective is get to try the product. Just try the product, right? So your offer is very simple. Buy one unit, get this versus someone who's much more developed and is a frequent buyer of your brand. Your goal is to expand consumption, right? So you're to give them a threshold offer that is fundamentally different than the than the brand, the new brand buyer, right? You're going to say buy a certain dollar threshold or buy a certain unit threshold. And the great thing about this big data is that is easily achievable not only in the more traditional format that Kroger made famous through personalized print and personalized email, but more so in today's offer environment and retail media so that the offer I see when I do a keyword search, not only should I be receiving the brand that values me the most, but the offer that they give to me should be highly personalized to where I sit in their audience segmentation so that they get the most value out of it. It's not everyone gets the same offer. And so that is readily apparent in today's day.
- [36:45]
Sree Rajagopalan
Speaking to that very personalization, there was another fantastic session labeled Generative AI and the next generation of search, which had the Aldo Group, Reddit and Tilly's. We deeply believe in Generative AI being a major, major, major anchor of search. Go forward thoughts on that one. Because I deeply believe it's already embedded in many of the search streams today. Of course it is speech, but then generative is the next level.
- [37:14]
Peter Vs. Bond
You know, in one of the meetups that I had, I met an old colleague of mine who used to be at Flywheel, Eric Howard, and he's now part of AdFury AI, which is actually using generative AI to create and scale video content for retail media. That's the promise, right? You need that kind of scalable content not just in, in. In static imagery. Right. JPEGs and PNGs, but actually in in motion video. It's my firm belief, sri, that when all is said and done and the lions are handed out in Cannes this summer, an event where you and I have the pleasure of going to, that it will likely be announced on stage that one of the companies that won the business that won the award, that the entirety of the content video that won the award was generated through a. Not just like partially, like literally everything will artificial. So yeah, I think it's critically important they talked about it on stage. You know, search is no different. It's not just about discovery. Search itself can be influenced very strongly by highly personalized video advertising. And that's the promise that Generative AI brings.
- [38:29]
Sree Rajagopalan
There's a lot of conversation on search. Many, many onstage discussions on search. The future of search gamification was one such thing. There was conversations on subscriptions, Gen Z and how you optimize stored experiences for Gen Z and beyond. And now, Peter, we've talked quite a bit about sessions, especially on one of the most important topics, retail media. Let's talk about other things that took place. You know, we had the chance, we were asked to and had the chance to go to seven or eight different networking receptions over the.
- [39:03]
Peter Vs. Bond
Oh my goodness, outside of our own.
- [39:04]
Sree Rajagopalan
And dinners we chose to host.
- [39:06]
Peter Vs. Bond
Yeah.
- [39:07]
Sree Rajagopalan
So tell us about some of them. You know, what did you find fun? Did you get to network? Who did we go to?
- [39:12]
Peter Vs. Bond
Yeah. Well, on Tuesday night we had a wonderful opportunity to go to. First and foremost, there was a happy hour being hosted by our. By our friends at Universal and our dear friend Bob Perry over at Sbar, where we got to. Got to interact with quite a lot of people. So thank you for inviting us to that. The other event that I really liked that night is we popped over to the Park MGM to Babette Steakhouse at a dinner that was being organized by our Very close friend Daniel Torres Dwyer from the FMCG guys and hosted by Chelion, which is a European based e commerce platform that is making its way into the United States. It was a lovely conversation, a very intimate space and I think you and I had some, some outstanding exploratory discovery conversations and Valeria, the founder of Chalian sat across from me. She was so delightful but so incredibly insightful. What a great little evening. I don't know what you think SRI.
- [40:26]
Sree Rajagopalan
Content Intelligence for the longest time when I had a VP of E Commerce role and was working in the e commerce space exclusively one of the most important questions that get asked if you want to, if you want more money for contention, tell me. The ROI and I were able to struggle to actually connect the quality of content and the actual lift that came from improved content. Well, that's exactly what Shellyon does. If I were to summarize it in a nutshell and many more insights of course, but that's the important part. But I also enjoyed some of the other. You were saying something about content?
- [41:01]
Peter Vs. Bond
No, I was just. I was going to talk about another event the following morning but if there's something else you wanted to cover, by all means means.
- [41:08]
Sree Rajagopalan
Yeah, I, I just wanted to mention real quick that I do believe in this post pandemic kind of volume challenged environment. Content may be one of the many weapons in your arsenal that's going to help you get your brands back to you laps household things of that nature by telling value stories via content. Value is not limited to price.
- [41:33]
Peter Vs. Bond
No, there was another event we actually before we went to. I forgot before we went to the the NBC Universal event, our dear friend Maya Mert from TCC Global invited us over back to the scene of the crime from the night before where the CPG guys party happened which was Eye Candy Lounge. The Eye Candy Lounge. And we had a lovely opportunity to interact with so many of our friends. Lauren Grusky who is now leading Chase Media Solutions, our friend and colleague from the CPG guys, Suzanne Kratol was there. That was a lot of fun. And then I had a Harmon, Abby Harmon. She showed up and then I got to meet a really absolutely wonderful person. Shout out to Jen Novak from Kind Snacks who lives up in in Scranton, Pennsylvania and had just a very in depth conversation about the state of the industry and what was going on. So it was a nice little intimate crew and got to hang out and talk to all of them. That was an absolute delight. What I did want to make mention is the following morning.
- [42:48]
Sree Rajagopalan
Oh hold on Peter, we weren't done with that evening yet. You forgot about the NBC Universal reception.
- [42:53]
Peter Vs. Bond
No, no, I mean I did make mention of it. It was, it was a, it was a really nice venue. A lot of people we knew showed up there and we weren't, we were there for a hot minute. It wasn't like we were there for a lot of time before we went to the dinner over at park mgm. But Bob was very kind to invite us to that.
- [43:10]
Sree Rajagopalan
Yeah, I mean the reason I bring up all of these is not to impress upon people that the CPG guys go to a lot of receptions. It's the importance of networking.
- [43:18]
Peter Vs. Bond
Yeah, very much so.
- [43:20]
Sree Rajagopalan
This is why we come to, we come to learn, we come to network and we come to increase our education knowledge.
- [43:27]
Peter Vs. Bond
We're not going to drink all sorts of expensive booze. We don't drink booze. So that's not why we're going to these events. It truly is the networking. We are very cheap dates. We go to literally to network, to meet people, to talk to them, to find out what's going on. And every, you know, that was a very exclusive group of thought leaders that, that were in the room that day. So really special. Yeah. If it's okay, sri, then I'm going to move on. Wednesday morning I, I switched my avatars around and Flywheel had a coffee and commerce breakfast event at Border Grill that was being co hosted by our dear friends at Walmart Connect. And I was joined on stage by my colleague Toby Wilsey who's VP of product focused primarily on the Walmart business. And Renelli Morrell from Walmart Connect. Talk about the new display advertising API and the ability to do very automated execution of upper funnel advertising through Walmart Connect. So really exciting times. And then after we were done talking, our friend Andrew Lipsman came on stage and he had more of a fireside chat with Toby. And Toby took questions from the audience for a good 20 minutes. And afterwards I was connecting with our friends at bic Shout out to Devin Weekland and her team. But she thought that Toby was just absolutely brilliant and had so much thought leadership to share. And I, I concurred with her. I, you know, I'm pretty sure Toby has forgotten more about retail media than I can ever hope to learn in my life. Sri. I mean I was kind of being facetious there, but wow, what a great event. We had about 40 brand brand representatives show up at this event. My friend Eric Heller was there as well. There were, there was a great, and it was just such a spectacular Breakfast. And a couple times the topic of TikTok Shop came up. And we were fortunate to have Darren and Molly there from Flywheel to have one off conversations at the back of the room. And so all in all that way to kick off Wednesday morning was phenomenal.
- [45:55]
Sree Rajagopalan
No doubt about it, Peter, the list of names that you just gave of who was speaking itself is enough for people to want to have come and participated in the comfy and commerce. I remember doing one with you in New York. So sounds like this was a much larger, larger scale in a much bigger venue in the middle of one of the most important conferences for omnichannel retail. I'm going to wrap us up here, Peter, with a little bit of fun we had getting to watch you two at the Sphere. The Sphere. So thanks to Shopify and our friend Alana Pollock from Roku, who actually invited us to come see the Sphere and this unique kind of digital concert with YouTube. YouTube, of course, had opened the Sphere as one of the first performers during the Super Bowl. A couple even whenever it was In Vegas, maybe 2024, February, from the outside of the Sphere. It's incredible. It's just so huge. So huge. You can't take a picture with that thing if you're close by. When we walked inside, we were first of all overwhelmed by the absolute size and magnitude of what scale was enormous. Enormous scale concert started. Could you tell we were in a virtual concert with you?
- [47:11]
Peter Vs. Bond
No, I could not. That they looked like they were down on stage. The resolution on the wall was remarkable. Sri. I mean, you and I were kind of jaws dropped. Wow, this is, this is a showstopper. I was absolutely impressed with that experience. My understanding is the plan for first for the Sphere experience is to build numerous spheres around the country and to some degree have travel and comps. Because the production cost to put one of those Sphere experiences together is not small. We're talking in the tens of millions of dollars. So to have that limited to a single venue is probably not terribly cost efficient. But if they can take that and go to Atlanta and go to Miami and go to New York and go to Chicago, suddenly many more people can see it and the cost can be amortized. But it was a lovely evening at the Sphere. Something that you and I, I know it was on your bucket list. It certainly was on mine. It was a great way to finish our time in Las Vegas because you and I had to head out the door at 5am the next morning to make a 7am flight to Chicago.
- [48:25]
Sree Rajagopalan
So Chicago, of course, he denied Me deep dish pizza. Because he doesn't like it.
- [48:30]
Peter Vs. Bond
Because the best New Haven is the real pizza that's not Chicago, isn't deep isn't pizza. That's more like corn pie.
- [48:38]
Sree Rajagopalan
So let me, let me wrap this up for our listeners, right? Fabulous spring 2025 shop talk.
- [48:44]
Peter Vs. Bond
Yeah.
- [48:45]
Sree Rajagopalan
If you haven't been to the conference, if you have been to the conference, chime in. Tell us what you liked or didn't like about the conference. We thoroughly enjoyed it. This was one of the best kind of three and a half days we spent in Vegas in a long time, despite having gone to grocery Shop, CES and many other events in Vegas. Right. From the quality of the speakers on main stage, the topics, the continued importance of retail media in our industry, in the omnichannel retail world, the receptions, the dinners, and of course, the most important MVP event of them all, to kick off networking reception with the CPG guys. Thank you to our four sponsors. Without you, the reception doesn't exist. I'll say thank you, thank you, thank you to all the attendees that came. 300 of you, thank you, thank you, thank you from brands, retailers and service providers.
- [49:34]
Peter Vs. Bond
I'll concur. I'll name them again. Our sponsors, Pentalap, Epsilon, Vantage, and then Dunhumby in partnership with Osmos. We're so grateful that you enabled that party to bring so many of our industry colleagues together. It was a spectacular evening. Look, as I mentioned, look shortly for an episode where I speak with representatives of each of those companies to talk about their perceptions on the show and what they think is so interesting about it. But, sri, it was a delight to spend five days with you in Las Vegas. I know we kind of, we make fun of Mandalay Bay because we're there so frequently, it seems, but it is a venue with the scale needed to be able to host an event like this. So it's not like we're so hard done by having to stay at Mandalay Bay. Right.
- [50:32]
Sree Rajagopalan
Somewhat scary when you know every restaurant, every venue at one of those casinos.
- [50:36]
Peter Vs. Bond
You know, you know all the hiding places, all the nooks and crannies.
- [50:39]
Sree Rajagopalan
Right after the 25th time. I don't think there's a place we don't know at Mandalay Bay. So let's wrap this one up. Peter.
- [50:45]
Peter Vs. Bond
Yeah. So sri, it was a great event. You know, I'll just make mention of one thing. It was noticeable that the RMNs weren't in presence as much as we'd seen in the past. We would encourage them to come back. We think It's a worthwhile venue, but it was special time for us. So great to see our friends. And I know you and I are already starting to think not only about what we're going to do next year, but but what we've got coming up, particularly Cannes Lions this June, where we think it's going to be an incredible event. And the retail media networks will be in full force, as will the brand expect to see us doing some really special things. You know, we're already talking about Our dear friends at Omnicom are building a podcast booth in their in their beach activation. So expect the CPG guys go. Let CPG guys to be conducting a whole bunch of conversations in Cannes with the beach as the backdrop. And we've got some plans for all sorts of other activations, so please stay tuned. A lot is going on with can, but Sree, I just want to again, thank you particularly for your partnership, for your guidance, for your leadership, your camaraderie, your friendship. You make Shop Talk for me so much better and I can't wait for what the CPG guys have got coming forward.
- [52:19]
Sree Rajagopalan
Peter, I'll reciprocate the same sentiment. Thank you for the partnership on this journey of the CPG guys to all our listeners. A reminder. You can follow all of our content simply by going to a web browser and typing cpguys.com do follow us on LinkedIn. To all our followers on LinkedIn, I can't say thank you enough times for the clicks likes DMs stopping us at conferences like the one we just talked about. Shop talk, spring 2025, wanting to take pictures with us, coming to events, doing dinners with us, and always responding with a yes or no when we ask you a question. The show doesn't exist without you, so if you don't mind, I'd ask that you leave us a rating on the Apple podcast. Why is this important when you do that? The rating tells us how we're doing, if we're having the right conversations, and most importantly, also makes us much more findable in the search algorithms.
- [53:09]
Peter Vs. Bond
All right, everybody, thank you. Yeah, thanks Sree. And to our audience, Elbows up. We look forward to speaking with you on the next episode of the CPG Guys Podcast. Goodbye.
- [53:35]
Unknown
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