The CPG Guys Summer '25 Industry Rank Punditry

Summary

Podcast Summary: The CPG Guys – Summer '25 Industry Rank Punditry

Podcast Information:

• Title: The CPG Guys
• Hosts: Peter V.S. Bond & Shree Rajagopalan
• Description: CPG & FMCG eCommerce industry icon Sri Rajagopalan & consumer loyalty guru Peter V.S. Bond explore how brands and retailers understand and engage with consumers in-store, online, and everywhere in between. cpgguys.com
• Episode: The CPG Guys Summer '25 Industry Rank Punditry
• Release Date: July 30, 2025

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1. Introduction and Upcoming Events

The episode kicks off with Peter V.S. Bond announcing the upcoming Grocery Shop Kickoff Party in Las Vegas on Sunday, September 28th, from 6:30 to 8:30 PM. This event, hosted in partnership with Rethink Retail, is highlighted as a significant gathering for industry professionals to celebrate the start of the annual Grocery Shop event.

Notable Quote:

• Peter V.S. Bond [00:01]: "If you're planning on attending Grocery Shop this fall, make sure to arrive in Las Vegas mid afternoon on Sunday, September 28th."

2. Casual Banter and Social Media Milestones

Peter and Shree engage in light-hearted conversation, celebrating Shree's growing Instagram following and discussing their efforts to increase podcast ratings and LinkedIn engagement. They emphasize the importance of audience interaction and encourage listeners to leave ratings and follow them on LinkedIn for additional content.

Notable Quotes:

• Shree Rajagopalan [02:00]: "I can't say thank you enough."
• Peter V.S. Bond [03:28]: "Why are you sad? Crazy?"

3. Trader Joe's and the Omnichannel Debate

A significant portion of the episode centers around Peter's LinkedIn post addressing Trader Joe's absence from eCommerce platforms. Shree analyzes the responses, revealing that 80% of comments cherish Trader Joe's in-store experience, fearing that digital integration might dilute it. Conversely, 20% of the feedback supports the addition of digital channels like click-and-collect, citing convenience for busy families.

Notable Quotes:

• Peter V.S. Bond [10:12]: "I wrote a letter to Trader Joe's and it was particularly targeted at Tara Miller, the VP of marketing there."
• Shree Rajagopalan [11:24]: "It clearly says the post went viral."

4. AI in Content Creation and Originality Concerns

The hosts delve into the increasing use of AI for generating LinkedIn posts. They discuss how AI, while enhancing productivity, risks homogenizing content unless properly trained to reflect individual voices. Peter advises training AI models with specific data to maintain originality, referencing Jeff Cohen from Amazon as an example of effective AI utilization.

Notable Quotes:

• Shree Rajagopalan [19:36]: "AI will only be as good as how well you train the model."
• Peter V.S. Bond [23:03]: "It's about edu. It's about entertaining."

5. Retail Media Landscape and Competition

Exploring the competitive dynamics of retail media, Shree references Sarah Marzano from eMarketer, highlighting that Amazon and Walmart dominate the market, capturing the majority of retail media dollars. They discuss strategies for smaller retailers to compete, emphasizing the necessity of partnerships and adopting efficient media strategies despite lower profit margins.

Notable Quotes:

• Shree Rajagopalan [27:33]: "If Walmart truly becomes a national media player, they're going to be the number one choice for investing media dollars."
• Peter V.S. Bond [28:04]: "There's nowhere to go but down from Amazon."

6. Importance of Store Walks in CPG Roles

Peter and Shree advocate for regular store walks, asserting that understanding the physical layout and in-store dynamics is crucial for comprehending digital shelf strategies. They argue that firsthand observations provide invaluable insights into product placement, pricing, and competitive intelligence that data alone cannot capture in real-time.

Notable Quotes:

• Shree Rajagopalan [33:33]: "Store walks should be the way of life for anybody in a commercial role in CPG."
• Peter V.S. Bond [34:51]: "You will learn so much by just walking a store."

7. Upcoming Conferences and Networking Opportunities

The hosts highlight several key events, including the Grocery Shop in Las Vegas, Advertising Week in New York, Unboxed in Nashville, and CES in 2026. They emphasize the value of attending these conferences for networking, learning about emerging trends, and staying abreast of industry developments.

Notable Quotes:

• Peter V.S. Bond [39:03]: "Unboxed is the granddaddy of the conferences."
• Shree Rajagopalan [42:13]: "Be curious, show up, shake some hands, ask questions."

8. Top Episodes Recommendation

Peter and Shree recommend five standout episodes from The CPG Guys podcast, featuring influential industry leaders like Jamil Ghani from Amazon, Diana Marshall and Greg Pulsifer from Sam's Club, Mark Williamson from Costco, and Jeff Cohen from Amazon. These episodes are praised for their insightful discussions on topics ranging from Amazon Prime's value proposition to Costco's retail media strategies.

Notable Quotes:

• Peter V.S. Bond [52:14]: "These are episodes that you and I have personally curated to say they are significant retail episodes."
• Shree Rajagopalan [56:18]: "He took a very important topic for Costco and simplified it so that everyone can understand it."

9. Conclusion and Calls to Action

The episode concludes with the hosts reiterating the importance of leaving reviews on podcast platforms, following them on LinkedIn, and engaging with their content to enhance visibility and support the podcast's growth. They extend invitations to sponsor upcoming events and encourage listeners to tune into future episodes for continued industry insights.

Notable Quotes:

• Shree Rajagopalan [61:11]: "Spotify, Apple, take a second, leave us a rating."
• Peter V.S. Bond [62:04]: "Click that bell. Ring that bell."

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Key Takeaways:

• Event Participation: Engaging in industry events like Grocery Shop and Unboxed is pivotal for networking and staying updated with market trends.
• Omnichannel Importance: Integrating digital channels with physical experiences is essential, though it's crucial to maintain the unique in-store charm that brands like Trader Joe's offer.
• AI Utilization: Leveraging AI for content creation can boost productivity but requires careful training to preserve originality and brand voice.
• Retail Media Dominance: Amazon and Walmart currently lead the retail media space, posing significant challenges for smaller retailers to capture market share.
• Practical Insights: Regular store walks provide essential on-the-ground intelligence that complements digital data, fostering a comprehensive understanding of consumer behavior and product performance.

Final Thoughts: This episode of The CPG Guys offers a blend of strategic insights, industry commentary, and practical advice tailored for professionals in the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) and Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sectors. Whether discussing the integration of eCommerce in traditional retail models or the evolving landscape of retail media, hosts Peter V.S. Bond and Shree Rajagopalan provide valuable perspectives aimed at empowering brands and retailers to navigate a digitally driven marketplace effectively.

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Stay Connected:

• Website: cpgguys.com
• LinkedIn: Follow Peter and Shree for weekly content updates.
• Podcast Platforms: Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and more. Remember to subscribe, rate, and review to support the show!

Transcript

[Peter V. S Bond]

If you're planning on attending grocery shop this fall, make sure to arrive in Las Vegas mid afternoon on Sunday, September 28th. That way you'll be able to attend the big Grocery Shop Kickoff party being hosted by the CPG Guys in partnership with Rethink Retail. The party runs Sunday, September 28th from 6:30 to 8:30pm Our kickoff party is where all the industry luminaries customarily gather to celebrate the beginning of this annual event. In the coming weeks, we'll provide more details on how to register and how to sponsor. In the meantime, make sure your travel plans ensure your arrival in Las Vegas to join us for the kickoff party. Welcome to the CPT Guys Podcast. Your host, Shree Rajagopalan and Peter V. S Bond explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in an increasingly digitally driven world. And now, here are the CPG Guys. Hello and welcome to another episode of the CPG Guys Podcast. I am your adorable co host and co founder, pvsp and I also moonlight as head of industry and client engagement at Flywheel, the commerce accelerator division of Omnicom. I'm joined, as always, by my ride or die, my bff, the Waldorf, to my Statler. For those of you who remember the Muppets, he is the patriarch of the Raj family media empire. His incredible performing artist daughters Ray and Lara. His wife Kavita, who is also a great podcaster. I used to say he had even less followers than his cats, but Recently Sheree celebrated 25,000 followers on Instagram. It's. It's incredible at TikTok one or the other. But anyhow, Sri, great to have you. How you doing, man? What's going on?

[Shree Rajagopalan]

I'm doing awesome, Peter. It's a sunny day in Los Angeles. 85 degrees. Everything's good. It's windy, we've got five miles an hour wind. I'm just happy we're doing this. We got a bunch of topics teed up today. But you know, Peter, I can't believe I have 25 this morning. When I checked, it was 25 this afternoon when I actually posted it on Instagram and said thank you to the followers, it was 25.4. One and a half hours later, as I check 25.5. So we are adding followers by the hour. I can't say thank you enough.

[Peter V. S Bond]

What is it about CPG retail that's just caught fire in this community, Shree? It couldn't be anything else.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Do you have to deflate me, Peter? I thought it was my looks.

[Peter V. S Bond]

It is your good looks. It is your good looks. Thanks for joining. Guess what, people? We don't have a guest today. It was time. Time for SRI and me to do a little rank punditry. We hadn't done it in a while. It's always something we enjoy and our audience loves to get our point of view on things. And so shree is combined. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What?

[Shree Rajagopalan]

You almost sound disappointed when you say.

[Peter V. S Bond]

We just by choice. I know, I know.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

We are not suffering from a lack of gas.

[Peter V. S Bond]

We have got. We have got so many people lined up. Episodes recorded that are awaiting final sign off, we gotta release them. But it was high times.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Do we get in a week?

[Peter V. S Bond]

This week it's been about. It's Monday and there have been five.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Right?

[Peter V. S Bond]

That's my point. Why are you sad? Crazy? No, I'm not sad. I'm not sad. I'm just saying it's. It's a lot. But SRI has queued up a whole bunch of topics that we're gonna bat around. And before we do that, I'll just remind you, if you like what you hear, you're on Spotify, you're on Apple. Leave us a rating. Our favorite number is five, but you get to decide that. And while you're there, leave us a little review. Tell us what you like, what you don't like, what you want more of, what you want less of. Honestly, giving us a rating helps feed. The algorithm helps other people in our industry find our podcast. So I will tell you, if you type in CPG now on Apple Podcast Sree, all you have to do is type CPT and we go right to the top of the list.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

That's correct. Maybe because we're number one. I don't know. Might have something to five ratings. All the kind, generous people listening to the show have helped us with. Maybe that's what's helping, I'm guessing. But Peter, I do have another request for the audience. Those of you that have landed on this podcast, somebody referred you over. Do follow us on LinkedIn as well, because we're releasing over 25 pieces of content every single week.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Crazy.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

On the CPG industry and retail. Lots of things happening in industry. We're going to discuss a bunch of them. Please do follow us on LinkedIn. Very easy to find.

[Peter V. S Bond]

I was looking at some of the other, you know, what I would consider our contemporaries in this space and their engagement levels on LinkedIn. All, you know, all admirable, all doing well. We stand. We stand apart in terms of our audience and the engagement of our audience.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Isn'T that A song by Martika. Toy Soldiers. She sings about that. Left, right.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Toy Soldiers.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

I thought that was Stand Apart. No, like Toy Soldiers, 1994. 3. Something like that.

[Peter V. S Bond]

You sure it's not a. You sure it's not a. A cover tune from the Donnie Donny Osmond Toy Soldiers.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

I distinctly remember Marty cover. We're going to solve this mystery before the end of this episode.

[Peter V. S Bond]

We are. We are.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

As we should.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Thanks, as always. It's about time we did this. You and I have been. By the way, great seeing you. Last week you and I were up in Ithac at the food executive program being run by Cornell. It was great to spend some time with you there. You know, the summer's usually kind of dry for us, but there's another event. Sri, I just mentioned to you that I. That I found out about. We'll talk about events a little bit later, but I want to give a shout out to all my fellow flywheelers down in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Tomorrow, the E Commerce Brazil Forum kicks off. Sree. We talk about shop talk, right? Shop talk is what, about 10 or 12,000 people, right?

[Shree Rajagopalan]

I'm still sad, upset, and jealous. You got to go to Santiago.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yeah, yeah.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

I didn't get to go. And we haven't yet been to Brazil together, so.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Sri, do you know how many people are scheduled to attend E Commerce Brazil Forum, which kicks off tomorrow in Sao Paulo?

[Shree Rajagopalan]

30 whacking thousand.

[Peter V. S Bond]

30,000. That, like. That like, puts Shop Top Javits to shame. To shame. It puts it to shame.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

CES doesn't qualify.

[Peter V. S Bond]

I mean, all. All props to our friends at Shop Talk. Grocery shop. Love to death. But 30,000 people, Sri, I think. I think the CPG. Do you think the CPG guys should be there next year?

[Shree Rajagopalan]

I'm going to answer that question another way, folks. If you're listening in, you will see the CPG guys there next year.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yeah, Shree, I was checking the weather out because, you know, it's winter there, right? But, you know, Sao Paulo is kind of like the Florida temperate compared to North America. So right now in Sao Paulo, it's like 73 degrees. I think we need to get there next year. Sri.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

100%. We will be there. I will be there. You guys will be there. Peter will be there.

[Peter V. S Bond]

We'll be there.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

And I want to correct myself.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yep.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Step by step, heart to heart. Left, right, left. We all fall down like toy soldiers. Martika. 1988, baby. I was wrong on the year Martika.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Okay, so she gets. She gets the. She gets the credit. But when was Donny Osmond? He. Did you Google for.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

I'll get that answer out before the end of this episode. I'll give you my word.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Maybe An Inconvenient Truth.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

No, no, I'll find out. But I got the Martika on, right? Because. All right, Peter, I'm going to tell you the reason why, and I think it's important. Growing up in India, 1988, when I was still maybe 10 years.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Sri. You grew up in Virginia.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

You all be quiet now. Okay? Y' all just mind your business now. Sir. Sir. So I used to listen to this show every Friday afternoon on BBC radio on something called Shortwave 2, which kids today are not even going to understand what that means. But it used to be the band on a radio with an antenna 3ft, 4ft long, and the longer you drew it, the better the odds of getting reception. And living in the eastern side of the United Kingdom, I had to point my antenna to the west. How does that sound to you?

[Peter V. S Bond]

That's not bad.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

And it used to be. It was called a show called multitrack. That's top 40. That's where I listen to it. And I'm going to jump.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Sri. While you were waxing philosophic about your childhood, I googled. I was wrong. It was Donny Osmond, Soldier of Love. It was not Toy Soldier. So I stand corrected. You are correct. It is.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

I know my music.

[Peter V. S Bond]

I know you do.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Especially 80s 90s.

[Peter V. S Bond]

There you go.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

And modern 20 plus. But I got something. I got a bombshell, something to start us off with.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Okay, You. You have. Matt, you put that. That. This. This is a list that you created. It's been hermetically sealed in a. In a. In a. In a mason jar. It's kind of like Johnny Carson back in the day on the today.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

But the way things are going these days, Peter, nothing is really sealed. Anything can be unsealed.

[Peter V. S Bond]

I know. That's just. All right.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

It's just going to depend on the narrative.

[Peter V. S Bond]

I've got a bombshell.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Go Trader Joe's. Trader Joe's is a. Has a little bit of a cult like Falling. I am part of that cult.

[Peter V. S Bond]

We just a little bit of a cult like Falling.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

The Raj family shops at Trader Joe's. Everybody loves things at Trader Joe's. We have specialties each of us want. It is our number one choice for food. And Bev. Grocery. I'd say food. Not bad necessarily. Food, that's where we get fresh produce. Deli, a bunch of stuff. Quick runs. We go to Ralph's Our friends at Kroger, maybe Whole Foods, which is down the street from us, occasionally a Vons, which is another two miles away. But they're very specific things. But Trader Joe's VR part of that call. You decided Mr. Bond decided to make a post on his LinkedIn profile.

[Peter V. S Bond]

I wrote a letter to Trader Joe's and it was, and I will mention sri. It was particularly targeted at Tara Miller, the VP of marketing there.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Yes. And you said in the modern days of Omnichannel, when the consumer is either 100 or nearly 100% digitally influenced, why does Trader Joe's not have two things? It's a website. Website through which you sell product. Second or at least, or at least.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Let me see the products or at.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Least let me browse, get to know, etc.

[Peter V. S Bond]

And the second inventory.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Yes, click and collect was the other one like a pickup pickup option. And holy smokestacks, Peter, did that, did that post raise a firestorm? And you know, I started looking at who's commenting, what, what, what are people saying? And I'll tell you.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Did you run that through large language model?

[Shree Rajagopalan]

I did. I ran it through chat 2.0, the paid version, just so that I can get a better outcome and get tighter results. And here's, here's what it told me. It said approximately 4-5th of those who commented or 80%. 80% took the site. I don't like using percents. I'll go with 4/5.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Okay.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

4/5 of people who commented clearly, clearly, clearly were of the opinion that Trader Joe's is a very special in store experience and digital will ruin it for them because they are the primary shoppers or they love going in store, they go with their kids and even when the kids have grown up, they're part of the TJ cult now and they love that. Whereas if they mention any other grocery store, they have no interest. And 20%, I think so eye to eye with you, which said digital, of course, it kind of doesn't make any sense. And I looked up the profiles of those 20. We know most of them. You know, there are two income working families, both spouses. You know, they're busy the weekends, they don't have time to shop and they really want a pickup option. What do you have to say about this in an when you get 75 comments, 4 reposts, 150 likes, clear to say the post went viral.

[Peter V. S Bond]

What are your thoughts? My thought is in a subsequent survey of those people that were opposed to e commerce, 90% of them own buggy Whips which is really interesting. I don't know if you knew that. I don't know. There's a cause and effect there. But you know, I'm not. I'm not sri. I am not calling them Luddites. I am not calling them Luddites. Seriously. Okay, I'm going to be serious. I'm going to be serious.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

What do you mean when you say Luddite? What does that even mean?

[Peter V. S Bond]

It's a biblical reference to people.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

No, no. I want you. Simple English.

[Peter V. S Bond]

The Luddites didn't like any type of technological advancement. They like. They like the world just the way it is. And here's what I would say. Most of them are saying. I don't like. I don't want E Commerce. Guess what? You don't have to have E Commerce. You don't have to use E Commerce. Okay? But there are many of us who do like sri. You know that. I was at the Wegmans opening last week in Norwalk, Connecticut. And guess what? Lo and behold, Wegmans is now on my instacart shopping list. So guess what I did last night.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

You placed. I want to guess. I want to guess. You haven't told me this. Yes, you placed an entire basket over $150, probably 200 or higher. Your entire week's pantry loading.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yep.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

And you're going to go to click and collect or even home delivery.

[Peter V. S Bond]

No, no, no. It was delivered. Delivered this morning. I ordered it last night. Eight o', clock, it showed up on my door by nine o' clock this morning.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

You got a young kid, you're busy. Lots of activities.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Sri. Do you know what Trader Joe's share of wallet was for that transaction? 00. So I don't begrudge people who love the idea of the. The nostalgia of taking going for a discovery shop. But I don't know if you've been. I don't know if the Trader Joe's like around you. Is anyone like the one around me? The parking lot's always crammed. It's a fight to navigate. I have no desire to do that. And I certainly don't want to bring my daughter in. Because if I do, two things will happen. One, she'll complain about how long it takes and two, she'll start throwing extra things in the basket. So you know what? What if Trader Joe's gave me a dark store? It wouldn't affect anything to do with the in store experience of the store in Orange County.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Peter, I won't contest it. Cause you know that I believe Omnichannel is the way forward. There's no debating that. It's just silly at this point. Yeah, but I love my in store experience at Trader Joe's. My spouse will not shop for groceries anywhere else. She's in love with it. And once I got introduced, so am I. I know every aisle and I think I even know price points.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Well, here's the thing.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

I want to talk about the parking lot though.

[Peter V. S Bond]

I want to talk about the pricing though. SRI because you brought it up. Okay. Truth be told, Trader Joe's pricing in some categories is really great. There is no better pricing in the cheese category than Trader Joe's. But there are a lot where they are more expensive. The lowest price, if you really want to get down to it, is their sister company Aldi. Now they have a very basic assortment at Aldi and Trader Joe's caters to, I don't want to say exotic, but certainly unique items and unique flavors and a lot of what I would call indulgent products. Right?

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Yes, for sure. I think what they've done with private label is a lesson for every other retailer. For sure. I got to tell you, every time I go, I do look for surprise and delight. Even though it's mostly 95% or so the same price products, I still, it keeps me going back again and again. But I, I want to say something about the parking lot.

[Peter V. S Bond]

It's horrible.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

I can only talk about the local one. To me that I shop.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Same here, same here.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

When I, when I finish my shopping trip and you know These are not $50 trips. This is a full basket, $100 plus maybe 150. When I'm backing out, I just completely tune in. 360 vision, peripheral, extra mirrors because there's constant motion. People coming in, going out, cars in, out. It is so tight. It's in California and Los Angeles. They already make parking spots so small and tight to begin with. That is my, that is a gripe of mine for sure, Peter. But I still enjoy going in store.

[Peter V. S Bond]

And I'll also, I'll also compliment Trader Joe's on their flowers. Nobody has better flower prices than Trader Joe's. But at the end of the day.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Sree, if they gave me click and collect, will I use it? No debate. That's the only place I'll ever shop.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Exactly. Exactly. So the point is this, to those of you, why are you so afraid of me getting my E Commerce? I heard people argue. I don't want to have to have a drive up line in the front of the store or space Dedicated. Fine. Give me a dark store. Well, that. If, if, if I get a dark store, right, where they, they the only people. There are people picking for E. Com delivery or pickup. Right. Sri. That doesn't affect, that doesn't, that doesn't have a material effect on anyone else who's walking into a store for the experience. Right.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

I kind of mentioned, Peter, that I also go to Ralph's. I also go to Vaughn's.

[Peter V. S Bond]

I know you do.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

And I also go to Whole Foods. Why do I go. Those are my quick fills and very specific.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yeah, but treat.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Okay, no, but Peter, if. Hold on, hold on, Peter, one second. Yeah, how do I do my quick fills? These are 35 orders. There's only seven, eight items in the basket. I'm doing click and collect.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yeah, I know.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Trader Joe's is not getting that order.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Sree. I'm gonna, I'm gonna shout out a couple of products. I just want you to answer yes or no. Yes, you, you can. Yes, you buy this at Trader Joe's or no, you don't. Okay, go for it. Paper towel? No. Amazon toothpaste or Walmart toothpaste Shampoo?

[Shree Rajagopalan]

CVS shampoo?

[Peter V. S Bond]

Amazon. Yes or no? Just yes or no. So what I've just named is there are wholesale categories, particularly in household and beauty and personal care. You cannot shop at Trader Joe's. They have all of those categories. They've combined into a four foot section and they have nothing. They have nothing because they choose not to. So you can't.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

I did say fool, Peter.

[Peter V. S Bond]

No, I know, but my point is, is to live, to live your life with fast moving consumer goods. You can't, you can't just do it at Trader Joe's. And so my point is you're shopping somewhere else, right? And they have E. Commerce. At the end of the day, it should be. It shouldn't be about what the company wants to do. It should be about what your consumers want.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

All right, So I would just.

[Peter V. S Bond]

I would just politely. I would just politely say to Tara Miller and her colleagues at Trader Joe's, hey, I love what you're doing. Great experience. I'd love to buy more, but unfortunately I can't because guess what? Wegmans has moved to town and they've got E. Commerce. And now I don't have to drive 45 minutes to Norwalk. I don't even have to drive half an hour to Orange to go to the Trader Joe's there. I can just have it delivered. So I've loved buying your products. If for some reason I'M coming back from somewhere and maybe I pass the store, maybe I will drive in. But honestly, you've lost your share wallet. You just have.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

All right, 19 minutes in, we are on topic number one. But it was important. No, it was important because it cooked up a few firestorm on LinkedIn. Your post and I thought it's important to address it. Let's go to topic number two.

[Peter V. S Bond]

What is it, Sheree?

[Shree Rajagopalan]

AI has been action on LinkedIn for the last few months. I can see everybody left and right by using AI to write their posts on LinkedIn.

[Peter V. S Bond]

What's the telltale sign?

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Telltale signs are actually graphics.

[Peter V. S Bond]

It's well, it's well, it's well written.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

It's well written. The English language.

[Peter V. S Bond]

It's organized.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Well, it's organized.

[Peter V. S Bond]

You can see it's got emojis, lots.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Of emojis, emoticons, all of it. You can tell. And a lot of these people I work with, I know they don't write like that because they've said that to me.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Would it be fair to say the CPG guys have dabbled in this?

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Yes, the CPG guys have.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Are you, are you telling a secret to our audience?

[Shree Rajagopalan]

I think they know.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Like the one on Trader Joe's. Do you think it might have been partially written by AI? You might have AI hated.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

You might have started by yourself and you might have run it through AI to clean it up. But that's you from the heart.

[Peter V. S Bond]

It is, it is.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Yeah. But how does that make you feel? Like everything is written by AI.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Like there's a really sree. You know, One of our favorite marketing oriented satirists is Tom Fishburne. Right. The market tunist. By the way, if y' all don't follow the market tunist, you should, because if you're in CPG retail. The cartoons that he draws every week are so spot on and so satirical. They are awesome. He had one last year. Two frames, two different people in each frame. Frame number one person sitting at computer talking to a colleague. Look at AI. Isn't this incredible? I can take this entire document, boil it down to three points and, and post it on LinkedIn and share it. Right. Move to the other frame person saying, look at this. I can take these three bullets that I got off of LinkedIn and I can turn it into an entire document using AI. That's the irony of it. Right? SRI the question does it all help us process and think more and advance more? That's the real thing.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Yeah. So clearly AI makes it easier. Productivity debating that is Silly.

[Peter V. S Bond]

The ability to produce copious amounts of content, no question, faster than ever before.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Peter, here's my issue and I'm sure this will get resolved with time. If you're doing it, I'm doing it, Joe's doing it, Mary's doing it, blah, blah, blah is doing it. Everybody's doing it. At some point we're going to generate the same type of insights and output.

[Peter V. S Bond]

That's why it's important, I think, for anyone using AI to one, have a paid version and to train an agent to understand what your POV is.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

So let's talk about that training.

[Peter V. S Bond]

The worst thing you can do. The worst thing you can do is say, write a LinkedIn post summarizing this article, right? That has nothing to do with you. That is the engine, figuring out how to summarize an article. What you need to start doing is creating agents, which you train ChatGPT to say, here are articles that I've written in the past. Here are the points. This is my voice. And then what you have to do is say, here's an article. Here's my point of view. Write a, Write a summary based upon this topic in my voice, right? And then I tweet and then I, you know, and, and highlight a couple of the points you want to make and then start tweaking what you get out of it.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

I just wanted to give you a chance to call me Luddite. And, and here's why you're not a Luddite. I, I'm, I'm all for AI. Yeah, it's. You have to adopt.

[Peter V. S Bond]

You're more of a lemming than a Luddite shree.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

You have to adopt. With technology, you don't have a choice. That's life. Otherwise you get behind.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Wait, unless you shop at Trader Joe's and then you don't have to. Oh, sorry. We moved on. We moved on.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

I am concerned originality is going to get diluted unless, as Peter described, you have to train the model. AI is as good as you do.

[Peter V. S Bond]

You don't want to look like everybody else.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

And I don't think we have evolved where the model can understand our individual perceptions without deep, deep, deep training. And which one of us has patience and time to do that?

[Peter V. S Bond]

It's not that hard, Sree, because all you have to do is say, train it to the CPT guys. Like, what did I do? I said to the agent, go to CPGpodcast. That's the CPG guys page. And I said, read all the posts for the last year, right? As A framework for the voice of the CPG guys. Right. And then I've started to always refer. I built an agent and then whenever I ask it to do something, I say, do it in the voice of the CPG guys. And it has a frame of reference. And you know who taught me how to do that? Jeff Cohen. Our friend, Jeff Cohen from Amazon.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Amazon.

[Peter V. S Bond]

He's been training an agent. Jeff Cohen, we love you. Answer your question. We do. He trained an agent to answer questions the way he answers questions. How did he do that? By showing emails and posts that he'd made over the last year or two where he answered questions. You just have to get to the point that is what will happen, differentiate you so you don't sound like everybody else.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

I think the point you and I are trying to make is AI will only be as good as how well you train the model. You can't just expect to walk in, use the system and get the output.

[Peter V. S Bond]

That if you're using a free version of ChatGPT, you have no idea of who you are. And frankly, you have to learn what the other. All the other engines are, Gemini and Claude and all those others. Some of them are good at something, some of them are good at the others. And you have to start learning a little bit about that. And you'll get better at it, but you got to start doing it. You'll never get better if you don't start.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Couldn't agree more. I'm going to move us over into a favorite topic. Our audience's favorite topic. Retail media. A good friend from E Marketer.

[Peter V. S Bond]

I thought K Pop was our favorite topic. Have we switched or is it baseball? Baseball, Is it your favorite topic? How about baseball? No, we're off baseball till 2026. Right. We're just.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

I'm renaming us to a business podcast that also talks about.

[Peter V. S Bond]

It's too late. Shreif.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Good luck.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Okay, what's our favorite topic? Retail media.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Retail media. That's what our audience loves. And our dear friend Sarah Marzano from eMarketer recently put out a graphic as well as a article about how when it comes to the fight for retail media dollars, you and I publicly stating data that we've seen from Emmaarket in the past. Walmart gets $7 out of 100, Amazon gets 75 plus and everyone else is fighting for the rest.

[Peter V. S Bond]

But that like 16% of the rest.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Well, Sarah's latest article says that 16% is shrinking.

[Peter V. S Bond]

That basically.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

So. So the pie Amazon. Well, two things, Peter, two insights. The pie that Amazon and Walmart have is growing, but it's coming at the cost of the rest. And even in that growing pie, Walmart's getting a piece from Amazon.

[Peter V. S Bond]

There's really nowhere to go. There's nowhere to go but down from Amazon. They're at 77%.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

More importantly, Peter, I think Amazon needs to understand, listen to this clearly. For most large CPG brands, Walmart is a single largest business. When Walmart truly becomes a national media player with capabilities, they're going to be the number one choice they are for investing media dollars. So they're going to, they're going to start taking a share from Amazon quickly, but it is an increasing share. What do you do, Peter, if you're part of the rest of the rat pack and so many of them are our friends?

[Peter V. S Bond]

So a couple of things SRI you have to do. One, you have to understand that you're never going to be able to build the way Walmart and Amazon build because they can amortize the cost of the build across a much larger revenue base for most, if not all of the others. You have to buy, which means you have to partner. You have to partner with dsps, you have to partner with in store retail media screen providers. You have to partner with all sorts of components of the tech stack. And you know what that means? It means you're going to give up some of that margin. The promise of an 80% margin, right? Gross margin. After you partner with ad tech partners, the net's going to come down. But you just have to understand that that's the reality. Because you know what, Sri? I'd rather get 50 or 60% of something than 80% of nothing. So the first thing you have to understand is they're going to have to, they're going to have to buy, right? They're not going to be able to build. The second thing is they need to start focusing on as they do that, thinking about, I'm going to give you an acronym. You may, you may remember sri. It's called Scanner. You ever remember the scanner? Search Content sree. You are on mute.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

I, I think Search Content Assignment, Navigation, Rating Reviews from our dear friend Chester Twig.

[Peter V. S Bond]

X Love Chester. So here's the deal. S is search and that's the paid search component, right? So buying is going to be important there. It's actually the rest of the terminology where I think a lot of other retailers can make some advances and there's one in particular. The content is great. You want to make sure that you've got all the content pipes, assortment is, you know, the price pack architecture that's much more the manufacturer. The one where I think retailers will benefit is if they start turning to their CPG suppliers and say I need help on navigation. Sree why don't you tell me what that means? Navigation. What does it mean?

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Use it experience Peter it's very straightforward.

[Peter V. S Bond]

For at the category level. It's at the category level isn't it?

[Shree Rajagopalan]

It's the ability for a customer to find what they want in seconds and be able to check out it well in seconds without 30 clicks. You know people shop recipes ability to shop recipes in one shop not have to find one item at a time. Browse search click on the site category browsing sometimes and then get 30 sponsored ads. When you are searching for stuff, all this ruins customer experience and ruins navigation.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Make sure if you're a retailer that you are an easy destination for shoppable media.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

One other thing I must call up before we go to the next topic. There's another reason why other than Amazon and Walmart, most other retailers are going to struggle to scale their media business.

[Peter V. S Bond]

What's that?

[Shree Rajagopalan]

And that's their merchants. Their merchants have zero training, zero slosh. They have limited training in media. It's not how they function. They are function to work off a soft JBP and investment dollars from cpg and that comes via trade. Those numbers are already large. CPG is not going to budge and shower media dollars when you don't have media like capabilities and most of them don't. And even if they add it, they're not going to have scale to be true media. It is a serious issue and I think two years from now, three years from now, the shakedown has results and there's going to be a handful of players and the rest are going to have to still fight for trade dollars and call it media or whatever they want. So next one.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Chain Drug Review's focus is on reaching the key decision makers across all retail channels, delivering comprehensive coverage of the latest shopping trends and in depth category analysis on health, beauty, over the counter products and wellness. Whether it's the latest trends, emerging technologies or strategies for adapting to new consumer behaviors, Mass Market retailers deliver the critical information retailers need to navigate this dynamic environment. To subscribe to the newsletters of CDR and mmr, simply follow the hyperlinks in the digital liner notes of this episode. Chain Drug Review and Mass Market Retailers are published by Retail Media iq.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Peter the importance of store walks I think you were reminded recently walking into a Wegmans we did one together. You did the norwalk one we did, we did one on the way back.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Actually from, we did one in Ithaca.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Yep, in Ithaca. On the way back to Beacon, New York to see our good friends at Critio. Tell us about the store walk in this importance because I, I, I deeply believe anybody in this business needs to do store walks routinely and often because that's where the action starts, with the planogram in store.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yeah. So you and I both know that 90% of you know, center store, grocery and perishable grocery still happens in the physical store. So if you don't understand what the shelf set and how the store is organized and what's going on, then it's going to be hard to imagine how to do things on the digital shelf. You will learn so much by just walking a store, understanding adjacencies, understanding how products are co merchandised. You know, by the way, when I was in Norwalk, I ran into our friend Kevin Koop who runs Morning Newsbeat. Shout out to Kevin. He was walking the store with the store manager on the day one and he was talking about it. He wrote a really nice post in Morning Newsbeat. But I think that you need to understand so much about how products are presented to consumers in a physical store because a lot of that mindset will go into how they shop the digital shelf. What do you think, Peter?

[Shree Rajagopalan]

You also pick up a bunch of competitive intelligence knowledge.

[Peter V. S Bond]

You do? Sure.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Pricing unconventional displays new items that may take time to show up in your syndicated data reports that you're very used to. And even if you have a field salesforce by the time they report it, it may take 10 days or a week. I haven't seen anyone to the day, including dsd, successfully capture in store intelligence from the field force in any meaningful manner to act quickly. So I believe deeply, deeply, deeply that store walks should be the way of life for anybody in a commercial role in cpg. Next one I have, Peter, is conferences. Where are the CPG guys going to be?

[Peter V. S Bond]

When was the last time we went to a conference? Sri, it's been months. God, I feel way out of the, I feel out of the game.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Was it Shop Talk?

[Peter V. S Bond]

I think it was Shop Talk.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Oh no, come on man. We were in France.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Oh yeah. We went to Cannes. That's right. In June. But like July and August, just quiet, quiet times for the CPG guys.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

And where are those CPG guys going to be in the near future? Where can we expect.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Let's talk about, let's talk about the 10 grocery shop. Okay. Las Vegas, the 28th of September through, I think the 1st or 2nd of October, we're doing a big kickoff party in partnership with Rethink Retail on Sunday evening from 6 to 8. That's going to be fun. At Mandalay Bay, we're going to be hosting a couple, I think three private dinners Sunday, Monday and Tuesday night for some clients of ours. So that should be fun. We're looking forward to connecting with the people that'll attend those. It gives us a little bit more of an intimate setting for us to talk. It can get a little loud at that party on Sunday night, the kickoff. But love, there should be about 2, 300 people there, Cherise. So that'll be a big party. But grocery shop's gonna be. We're gonna be in Las Vegas, then we'll be in New York. I think the week after that at Advertising Week may even see us up on stage there. We're working out some details, but we may be moderating a panel or two at Advertising Week and we're trying to see what else we can do while we're there. It's always good and things are still in flux. And then sri, what have we got in November in Nashville? Are we Honky tonkin? What's going on?

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Y' all just be cool right now. So we're going to the unboxed show.

[Peter V. S Bond]

The unboxed event.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

And so Peter, help our audience understand Unboxed. What is Unboxed?

[Peter V. S Bond]

Well, I should also make mention of, I think sri. I don't know if you might be. You might be meandering up to Seattle in September to go to accelerate. We still haven't decided that that's the seller conference. That's more for very different three piece seller.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Yep. Y.

[Peter V. S Bond]

It's that people are a little bit more hands on. Unboxed is the preeminent event for partners in the Amazon Ad Network and brands that advertise primarily through these big agencies. But it will be. It's kind of the complement to the upfronts that they do in May. So in May they do a big upfront in New York. They bring out all their big celebrities and show all their properties and. And they say you need to advertise streaming through Amazon prime and whatever. This is about the full funnel. This is about everything from search to dsp, streaming television, Amazon marketing, cloud clean room. It is the be all and end all for anyone who is serious about full funnel advertising at Amazon. It is a big, big, big, big event for people that are in the Amazon advertising ecosystem. And that means if you're if 77 cents of every dollar retail media goes to Amazon, then that's where you want to be. It is a. It's the granddaddy of the conferences.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Yeah. These are things companies need to start showing up at. And even if they have to understand sellers, they have to understand smaller advertisers. Send somebody from shopper marketing to attend and learn. I mean when I attended my first many, many years ago, it was a learning moment for me. It's not for everybody, but at least once in your lifetime go understand, learn, understand all the new stuff Amazon is going to share with you at the conference. I want to go back to grocery shop near term Horizon.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Go ahead.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Other CPG guys having a party?

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yeah, we are. I said on Sunday.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

And that Sunday party, that Sunday party.

[Peter V. S Bond]

We'Re doing that with Rethink Retail.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Yep, you said that and you probably already heard it in the opening roll of this podcast. Anyway, you want to get in touch. No more. You want to sponsor simple way to do that. Just reach out to [e-mail] or ping Peter and me. It's pretty pretty straightforward, right?

[Peter V. S Bond]

Pretty straightforward.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Big event. We're have brands, retailers and of course service providers.

[Peter V. S Bond]

It's the party. Let's just be honest.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

The opening party. A grocery shop by the we are.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Shop talk people at Shop Talk themselves.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Ben Miller is happy to say that.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Ben always loves to say there. We're the unofficial way to open opening party.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

And this time it's on a Sunday when everyone's already in. Should be a lot of fun.

[Peter V. S Bond]

So if, listen, if you're making your travel plans to grocery shop, make sure you get in to Las Vegas mid afternoon so you can go to the.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Party and ask for an invite to the CPG guys party at Grocery Shop 1.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Everybody goes. Everybody goes to this event.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

The CPG guys are also hosting some special dinners.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Dinners. Yeah.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Share more. You should be getting some invites to those in your inbox. Check out in the next few weeks and then Peter, next year begins with a bang and it's called c. Hold on, hold on.

[Peter V. S Bond]

I do want to say. I want to say one thing about. About Amazon Unboxed. Okay. There are still tickets available. Do you know how much it costs to go to grocery shop? Sree. It's like several thousand dollars. Do you know how much it costs to go to something like can. It's like 10 or 15. Do you know what Amazon charges for unboxed? 429 bucks. 429 bucks. Get yourself a damn ticket. And you know what? Even if you don't sree, do you know how many people go to can or go to grocery shop and don't even get a ticket? They just. They loiter. They kind of like they live on the perimeter of the event, and they do quite a lot of business just by doing that. You need to start thinking about Unboxed as one of those events. Even if you don't have a ticket, you should be there.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

I couldn't agree. I couldn't agree more, Peter. But the reason I bought up Conferences is I want to emphasize one more time one of the best mechanisms for learning networking. Be curious, show up, shake some hands, ask questions, go listen to some of the presentations. Maybe you'll learn a thing or two. And then we'll start 2026 with a bang at CES.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yep.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Are we hosting another party at CES?

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yeah, we're going to host another party.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Do people want to be seen?

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yes. That's a big party for the CPG.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Industry party to be seen at sri.

[Peter V. S Bond]

I tell this story. I'm not going to name names, but I've told this story. You know the story I'm going to talk about. I was sitting by the door about half an hour after our party started, and the number three person at one of the world's biggest retailers walked in, came right up to me and said, listen, my team's a little upset with me because they're. We're hosting a big dinner on the other side of the casino right now. But I told them I was going to be late because I needed to hang with you and Sree for about an hour. So he sat there, talked to me for 20, 25 minutes, then he went across the room, talked to you, and then he shook a couple hands on the way out, and he was gone.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

But I'm thankful that he.

[Peter V. S Bond]

I was thankful that he did. That's what we do. We bring the people together. Because you know what? You know, Sree, here's the reality, because we talked a little bit about this, we're going to. It actually bleeds into our next topic. Right? True. Which is true.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Which is podcast.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Which is podcast. Right. I know the question you have for me is, is it still number one for learning?

[Shree Rajagopalan]

I don't really mean number one. Like, is it one of the solid learning mechanisms?

[Peter V. S Bond]

Sure it is. You know, just ask, ask, ask the presidential candidates from the last election cycle how important podcasts were. They were incredibly important.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

You know, Peter, that's a mic drop message you just gave. I don't think we need to debate this any further. If you're going to listen to a podcast, what's the name of the podcast they should be listening to? Any prizes.

[Peter V. S Bond]

What? I will remind people in the B2B podcast space, particularly around the topics that you and I cover. With few exceptions, the purveyor of a podcast is promoting their own company. It is about the products their company sells. You know, ad tech companies, insights companies. That's what it's all about. Right. So they have what I would consider to be understandably a very company focused point of view. You and I are fundamentally different. Yeah.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

There's a word, Peter. What's the word for you and me?

[Peter V. S Bond]

We are independent practitioners. Yeah, I work for. Everyone knows what I do during the day, but that hasn't really had an impact. What I do during the day is very much about what I do on this podcast and I've been doing for years. So push that aside. The reality is you and I speak truth to power. We do things like we're doing right now. We have ranked punditry sessions. There are a handful of other podcasts that do that, you know, and we. We name some of them in our. In when we put out our list of favorite podcasts that we think you should listen to. But there's still a lot of them that are pure companies. You know, I love. You know, I will. I will just rage on about Rayvon rather about my. My friends Todd and Tom who run the Middleman podcast. Yeah, they work for an agency, but those guys, they speak truth to power. Right. But for the most part, people that are running podcasts in our space that are B2B are there to either promote their company or to heap praise on their clients. And that's not what we do here. That's just not what we do.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

So to be very clear, Peter, the purpose of the CPG guys, it's not like people already don't know, is to provide education. I call it edutainment.

[Peter V. S Bond]

It's about. Right. It is about. It is. It is about edu. It's about entertaining. And. And we. We don't entertain for the sake of entertaining. We entertain because it makes the education easier to consume.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

And. And, Peter, so we don't. We're not asking you just to listen and follow the CPG guys.

[Peter V. S Bond]

No.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

We recently put out a list of top 10 podcasts that we love.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Actually, it was 27. Now shree up to 27.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

27 list in 27 in the list.

[Peter V. S Bond]

We are able to create a culture where people in our industry use podcasts. As a way to learn. And if all they do is listen to our podcast, they're going to get bored out of their mind if all they hear is you and me. As much as you and I like to hear each other talk, we. We need them to listen to other points of views, other areas of focus. Because if they do that, then we'll be in the rotation and they will regularly listen to us as they will other podcast purveyors. So if you haven't seen it, go to the CPG guys LinkedIn page and you can find a nice PDF of 27 podcasts that we like to listen to. Right? And you'll learn. If you just listen to a bunch of those, you'll learn. So do it. It's great. And you'll have fun doing it, I promise you.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

So we got a couple more topics here. Peter.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yeah.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

We recently partnered with Cornell University to kind of do the first retail media program for CPG and retail executive sri.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Do you think Cornell Cornell was. Is considered to be the first national university and do you know that it was from Its founding in 1875, it was the first Ivy League school to be co ed.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

What do we know about Cornell and ice cream?

[Peter V. S Bond]

We know that they have agricultural degrees and that they've created all sorts of different dairy focused products, pasteurization. I mean there's just so. They have patents, they have so much stuff. And the milk bar, the ice cream shop on campus is a must destination when the CPG guys are in town.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

It is a must visit.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Go to the bar like you were like when I said we're going to Wegmans. What did you say? We gotta go to the. We gotta go to the milk bar first. We gotta go to the milk bar first. So that's what we did. But Cornell sri, we've talked about this in the past.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Show me the way to the milk bar.

[Peter V. S Bond]

We successfully completed back in May the very first executive ed in person program for retail media.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Four days Cornell certificate. I think the attendees walked away energized.

[Peter V. S Bond]

What was the feedback?

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Attendees walked away energized. They loved what they saw. They enjoyed the curriculum, but they also enjoyed the networking. I know many of them have fallen smaller groups and stay in touch with each other to bounce off what we wanted.

[Peter V. S Bond]

We wanted that.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Yeah. And due to the super success nature of the first of those, we need to answer a big question that many of us have asked for in the.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Industry is asking are we producing logo T shirts?

[Shree Rajagopalan]

A second one.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Oh yeah. That question. Do you want to answer It.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Yes. So we are in talks with Cornell. We've given it some thought. I think we will likely have a second one but hold on to, hold on to that thought. More coming from the CPG guys. We know you want it doesn't need in the industry. We haven't, we haven't inked the ink.

[Peter V. S Bond]

The paper yet but we did reserve, we did reserve the, we did reserve the hotel shoot people. It's, it's. We tell people that it's going to be the week of June 6th.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Okay, there we go.

[Peter V. S Bond]

So it's going to be, it's going to be after.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

It wouldn't let me tease. Come on.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Sorry. But the thing we're still talking about is how do we take this international. That's to be determined. We're working on that.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Who should attend this program in the future?

[Peter V. S Bond]

Sri, if you are a honestly on the retailer side, if you're running a retail media network, you should be at this event.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

And if they want to know more about details of the program that took place, can they ping the CPG guys?

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yeah, they can ping the CPG guys. If you're a brand, if you're running media for a brand, you should be there. If you're a cmo, you should be there. And you say why should, why should. Why a cmo? Listen, you gotta understand what retail media is. It's just getting bigger and bigger. If you keep outsourcing it to someone on your media team or your agency to understand you're it. It's sree. It's like what you say about social media. If you're a CMO and you don't have TikTok and Instagram on your phone, I'm not asking you to post but you better be doom scrolling every now and again because if you're not doing that, you don't know your shopper. I would argue if you're a CMO and you don't really understand retail media, you're doing your brand a disservice. Please, please, please come to our program next year. It will everyone who went thought it was game changing.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Absolutely. So we'd love to see you there. We'll be. We'll be sharing more information on next year's program shortly.

[Peter V. S Bond]

It's coming.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Get in touch if you want to know more. And we're sorry if you couldn't make it to the 2025 edition in the summer. Now Peter, I'm going to read out the names of five episodes on the CPG guys and you're going to now.

[Peter V. S Bond]

What do we talk? What are we. Okay, so what are we talking? These are just. We're eight months. We're eight months into the year, right?

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Yep. Seven. These are finished yet some of these.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Are the most listened to episodes, but not all of them are. These are episodes that you and I have personally curated to say they are significant retail episodes that if you have not listened to them again, you're doing yourself a disservice. You missed out big time.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

You're doing yourself a disfavor. Please do not miss these and I'm going to read them out for you. The first one we recently put out is an episode recently concluded with Jameel Ghani Live. Peter did it. Tell us more about the episode from Amazon.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yes. So Jamil is the worldwide head of Amazon Prime. He's vice president, worldwide head. And we did it on day one of Prime Day this year. And why was it so important? Because he really kind of clarified what is Amazon Prime. It's not a loyalty program. It is a subscription service which gets you all sorts of of benefits. And his goal is to give you disproportionately great benefits when compared to the competitors. And he really, really articulated what Amazon prime is all about. So absolutely. Listen to this episode. Jamil is a fantastic guest, full of knowledge and really answered our questions comprehensively. Sree, I was blown away by that episode.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Second one, Peter, was shot at CES earlier this year. It was the opening episode of Women's Month on the cpg. Guys, Diana Marshall from Sam's Club.

[Peter V. S Bond]

What was special so Sri, first, I'm going to tell you a side story. I was having dinner that night. After we recorded the interview, Sam's Club was hosting a dinner over at the Eiffel Tower restaurant in Paris. Paris. And I was supposed to go with a colleague of mine from, from Flywheel. And the last minute she couldn't go. And so she sends me a message and she says, hey, listen, I can't go, but I'm really trying to get something done with Sam's Club. Do you think you could get some time with Diana Marshall, the Chief Experience Officer at. At Sam's Club? It would mean a great deal to me. And I replied back to her in Slack. Well, I just had an hour interview with her on the podcast today. But yeah, I could probably walk up to her and ask her another question and then you could see the dot, dot, dot. Okay, that would be good. But in all seriousness, Diana Marshall, who our friend Harvey Ma reports up to, Harvey being the head of Sam's club map their retail media platform. I mean, she was just very articulate in the value proposition from a customer experience that Sam's Club is delivering to its members. Right. The Scan and Go app, the new Scan and Go advertising, the in store experience. The in club experience, I should say. I mean she, she really paints an incredible picture about how Sam's Club is separating itself from the rest of the club format. It's a really, really solid conversation. I highly encourage everybody.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Also pretty solid insights on just leadership, retail setting and how to transform, evolve over time and be just that boss Omnichannel leader. The next one I have is Greg Pulsifer, who's the SVP of E Comm for Sam's Club. We dove in depth with him about how E commerce runs at Sam's Club. We love the Scan and Go. We talk about it all the time, Right?

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yep.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

One of the best forms of retail media that can possibly exist is Scan and Go because you're in the moment at the.

[Peter V. S Bond]

But just about the whole, whole in club experience. Absolutely. Being able to just scan the barcode, throw it in your basket and now you just push it right on through the, the, what do you call them? The, the archways and boom, you're paid for. You're up. You're Greg.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

You have one of the highest performing episodes of 2025.

[Peter V. S Bond]

People liked his episode.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

If you want to learn more about just Omnichannel General, given his background that he came from vf he was actually at General Mills. He was Apple. So he's got a pretty solid background in Omnichannel, especially retail experience. He's the right guy for that role. I recommend everyone listen to it. Then we had another very high performing episode. Our new friend in the show, Mr. Mark Williamson.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Don't feed his ego. Don't feed his ego. Oh my God, he was awesome. Sri. You know, while we were over in Cannes, you know what Mark was doing? He had an incredibly satirical post on LinkedIn. He was wearing a captain's hat and a blue blazer and, and he was sitting in a rowboat adjacent to the pond outside of the entrance to Costco. And he said, while you're on, while you're on the Mediterranean, come on out to up northwest, northwest United States and, and meet with me. I'm, I'm, I'm. I'm on the pond out front of the headquarters. Just, just funny. But in all seriousness, wow, what a conversation with Mark.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

He took a very important topic for Costco.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yeah.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Which otherwise would be very difficult conversation to have. Simplified it so that everyone can understand it. And I want to give him a big, big, big shout out for really demystifying how it works in a club environment, which was largely in store. How they are now refocused heavily on understanding the digital world as a rightful.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Well, you know, what I loved about him about what he told us is we know that a lot of the big retail media networks are about generating a lot of money, a lot of profit. He came to the table with a very different perspective. He said the mission from Costco leadership is as follows. If it doesn't drive sales in Costco, then it's not doing its job. This is not about generating profit from the sale of advertising. This is about driving sales volume. Now, if you're a brand that is facing volume pressures right now, that should darn well be music to your ears that this retailer is about driving more sales in Omnichannel. What do you think?

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Absolutely, Peter, you're 100% right. I like the way he shared that information in a way that landed simple but yet delivered the meaning of how Costco operates. And I'm going to close out this episode, Peter.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yep.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

With a biggie.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Mr. Jeff Cohen from Amazon, episode 501.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Episode 501 shot live at Conliance. A summary of Con Lyons this year. If you couldn't go, you want to know everything. Jeff could not have done a better job of summarizing the five key themes that emerge at Cannes Lion. So I encourage everybody to listen to it.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Jeff, in and of himself, he's such a font of knowledge and his ability to think through situations and figure out the meaning for the broader industry. He really is a joy to talk to. I mean, you and I sit down and we know when Jeff is at the table with us. One, we're going to have fun. That's the entertainment part of it. But we're going to learn a lot. We always leave the table learning and knowing a lot more than when we sat down. Because Jeff, that's how we. That's the game he brings, right? Phenomenal.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Absolutely, Peter.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Listen to those five episodes, people.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Right on the retail side. Very soon we'll cover.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Yeah, we'll go ahead. But I was saying Jamil Ghani from Amazon, we've got Diana Marshall from Sam's Club, Greg Pulsford from Sam's Club, Mark Williamson from Costco, and also Jeff Cohen from Amazon. Those are five absolute must listen to episodes. We'll put them all in the digital liner note to this episode. We'll have links to all those with.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

That, Peter, take it away. Let's close this one out.

[Peter V. S Bond]

All right, Sri, we record this on a Monday night. We're gonna release this episode two days later.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

So that's done on purpose. So it's very fresh in time.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Very fresh. Very fresh. You just like you and me fresh, right, Sree? Just like us fresh.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

I can't keep pace with this guy.

[Peter V. S Bond]

I know. He's trying to be witty. I am. I'm always trying to be witty. Sree, as always, it's such a pleasure doing this with you. I really, really love the friendship that you and I. We've had it for years. It just gets. It's like our friendship is like a fine Bordeaux, Sri. It just improves with age. Not that we drink it because we don't drink anymore.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

He's trying to be funny, like I said.

[Peter V. S Bond]

But in all seriousness, I love doing this week after week. This is the best part of my week. If I haven't gotten a phone call from you by noon, which is 9am Your time, I'm like, what am I doing wrong, Sree? I gotta hear Sri and how many times have we talked on the phone today, Sree? Like, 10, maybe? Exactly. That's who we are. That's who we are. Thanks as always, Shree. Love doing this with you.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Thank you, Peter. This was awesome. That wraps another episode. But before we wrap up, let me ask our listeners one more time. Spotify, Apple, take a second, leave us a reading. It makes our podcast more searchable, findable for others. And then if you have a moment, please do take a second to actually go to LinkedIn and follow us. Yeah, follow us on LinkedIn, 25 pieces of content every single week, week over week.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Sri, when they follow us, right? This is both follow us personally and follow us on our company page. Once you are following us, you're going to know in the upper right hand corner, you'll see a little bell. Click that bell. Ring that bell. Ring that bell. Here's why. Because you will. Then it'll bring up another page that says you can change from only getting content that the algorithm says is relevant.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

Boo.

[Peter V. S Bond]

Boo. Boo, boo. If you click the multiple bells, you get to see everything we post. So you don't. You. You tell the algorithm, I'm sorry, the CPG guys are too important. I need to see everything they post. You do that. You get. You get us every time we post something.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

And if you're not going to ring that bell, go back to 1979 and listen to Anita Ward song.

[Peter V. S Bond]

You can shop at Trader Joe's too. I'm just kidding. Sorry.

[Shree Rajagopalan]

I'm going to shop at Trader Joe's no matter what happens.

[Peter V. S Bond]

I know. Oh, I'm just teasing. It's Come on, everybody. It's a big come on. We're just having fun here. Anyhow, Tara Miller, Trader Joe's. You're invited on the podcast. You have your own podcast called Inside Trader Joe's. You want to come on and talk to the CPG Guys? You got an open invitation. We'd love to hear from you. Anyhow, Sri, thanks for joining me to our audience. Thanks again. And we look forward to speaking with you on the next episode of, Wait for it, the CPG Guys Podcast. Goodbye. The content in this podcast episode is provided for general informational purposes only. By listening to our episode, you understand that no information contained in this episode should be construed as advice from CPG Guys, LLC where the individual author, hosts or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for research on any subject matter. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by CPGuys, LLC. The views expressed by guests are their own, and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. The views expressed by CPTGuys LLC do not represent the views of their employers or the entity they represent. CPT Guys LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual's use of, reference to, or inability to use this podcast or the information we present in this podcast.