Erin Everhart

This is a must-read for CMOs! Mars United Commerce recently spoke with CMOs at leading retailers to hear what business challenges they are currently facing. Michele Roney outlines three key capabilities retailer CMOs must build within their marketing organizations to help tackle these challenges. Link to read it in the comments 👇

1

1 Comment

Retail is not just about "experiences" in 2024—it's about connected experiences, says #RetailMediaSummit keynote Jessica Hendrix, EVP and CMO of Hy-Vee, Inc.. And that's where #retailmedia comes in—expanding the relationship between shopper and retailer to also include brand advertisers. As a regional chain, Hy-Vee has always been deeply integrated into communities, offering regional insights beyond national chains. Demonstrating the evolution of experiences, Hy-Vee has installed food courts in stores (inspired by Eataly)—Chinese, Italian, and American fare. Shoppers have shown time and again they will spend more money at a location if they connect to the experience. Capturing shopper attention is harder than ever, but delivering relevancy is about diving deeper into the shopper data—beyond demos to psychographics and behaviors. Also, kid influence is much stronger now with parent shoppers than in the past. But there are challenges in measuring relevance—what did the shopper communicate all the way to the register? Biggest trends for the next 12 months: • In-store media will become more important. • Brands/agencies will build centers of excellence to maximize their retail media spend/campaigns. • Value of 1st-party data will continue to evolve. And the big question going forward: how will AI fit more specifically into #retailmedia? How will it become integrated into our needs? Path to Purchase Institute

2

This is a must-read for CMOs! Mars United Commerce recently spoke with CMOs at leading retailers to hear what business challenges they are currently facing. Michele Roney outlines three key capabilities retailer CMOs must build within their marketing organizations to help tackle these challenges. Link to read it in the comments 👇

1

1 Comment

New media channels have to prove that they work. Recently, we released an incremental sales lift benchmark for CPG brands using in-store retail media based on 16 studies over the last 5 years. In a follow up interview with Sara Lebow and Arielle Feger at EMARKETER, I had the opportunity to share a bit more about the study and what we’ve seen in terms of adoption of in-store retail media over the last 8 years. In short, it’s been easier for non-endemic brands to jump on board vs. CPG brands primarily because of the budget silos. The non-endemic brands have thought of Grocery TV as another opportunity to reach their audience in a brand-safe environment where they're more likely to be paying attention. The idea of non-endemic in a grocery store is somewhat controversial, but we’ve seen a number of creative, contextual campaigns that tie the environment to the product (ex: credit card companies including messaging about grocery points at the point-of-sale). We're looking forward to providing more benchmarks for both CPG and non-endemic brands to make it easier for them to invest. #DigitalAdvertising #CPG

37

Insights from Placer.ai shed light on how household income migration trends are impacting major players like Target, Dollar Tree, and Darden. Target's strategic moves, such as opening new stores and investing in technology and supply chain, seem to align well with the changing economic dynamics in emerging markets. On the other hand, Dollar Tree's review of its store portfolio reflects a wise response to demographic shifts driven by migration, especially in regions seeing a rise in affluent households. In the dining scene, there's a common thread: a push for expansion. I am intrigued by regions like Las Vegas and Idaho. While we're thrilled about our client projects there, we're keeping the details under wraps for now but this is exciting and good information to note. #HouseholdIncome #RetailTrends #MarketInsights #BabyBirdCommunications

9

3 Comments

Learn how Best Buy is leveraging Adobe Experience Cloud to streamline content management and improve speed to market. With Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Workfront, Best Buy has unlocked reducing time spent on iconic launches by 83%: ✨ Efficient Content Delivery: Best Buy now uploads product images, all different SKUs and content to the website in hours, a task that previously took days. 💯 Enhanced Personalization: Adobe Experience Manager enables personalized content delivery across different channels, ensuring relevance for customers. ⏱ Significant Time Savings: what once required a team of four working 15 hours now takes a single person just 2.5 hours, thanks to streamlined workflows. 🤝 Improved Collaboration: Adobe Workfront facilitates faster creative approval processes and task management, boosting efficiency and reducing time spent on iconic launches by 83%. https://lnkd.in/d5nMRtXP #retail #retailmarketing #contentsupplychain #digitalmarketing #ecommerce

41

3 Comments

A majority of my role at Stitch is focused internally on the Stitch brand, helping to develop our offerings, building out our partner marketing program (alongside my BFFL Jessica Leeds), and finding new ways to tell the Stitch story. But, I also get to work a lot with our customers. I help lead our creative services team and get to work with clients on the creative execution of their campaigns in Braze, I am building out our inaugural Customer Advisory Board, and I'm currently on a mission to help our clients get their work recognized through the Braze Torchie awards. While I absolutely love opportunities to partner with fellow marketers on these fun things, what stands out to me most when working with our customers is actually getting to see my team in action. I cannot stress this enough: our team knows their sh*t 👏 As a Braze user myself, I truly can't envision not having the support of my Stitch teammates. They think through every little detail of how to best leverage the platform, how to get data where it needs to go, how to implement best practices, and are constantly pushing me to be a better marketer. The team has been generous enough to share some of their expertise through our Thread The Needle video series, doing practical how-to videos on things like masking PII data within Braze, configuring your email channel to avoid spam, setting up the Braze / Segment integration, and more. Want to up your Braze skills to be a better marketer and get a firsthand look at how incredible my team is? Be sure to bookmark our Thread The Needle playlist on YouTube as your go-to resource for using Braze. Link in comments. 🔗

29

1 Comment

Check out my latest blog post for @SEMpdx: Navigating the @Reddit Rabbit Hole: #SEO Opportunities and Pitfalls for Brands https://ow.ly/XTpN50SnEvC #reddit #redditSEO #redditmarketing

1

Another milestone: Yahoo DSP advertisers now have seamless access to Kroger audiences. At Kroger Precision Marketing, we believe in the power of our precision purchase signals. Shopping behaviors reveal lifestyles, aspirations, and life stages more meaningfully than demographics alone. This builds on the self-service programmatic capabilities we announced last Fall. Both Yahoo and Kroger Precision Marketing have first-party signals at the core of this offering. Much of the digital media industry has been using the same third-party data signals for decades – and those signals are fading. Big brands are making the switch to retail data. Some key features in our approach: ✅ Programmatic Controls: Manage your own campaigns & activate custom-built, Kroger purchase-based audiences with closed-loop sales measurement in your existing Yahoo DSP seat. ✅ Flexibility: Apply quality controls including verification and brand safety tagging. Easily layer Kroger audiences onto your media strategies, maintaining control of optimizations and rail settings. ✅ Pricing Transparency: Fully-transparent pricing model; know exactly how much of your media investment is allocated to inventory vs. audience vs. measurement. I’m proud of the entire team behind this at KPM. And a special shout-out to our Yahoo collaborators, Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, Mike Brunick, and Beth Nussbaum Gross - among many others. Read more from Kathryn Lundstrom at ADWEEK [article link in comments] #adtech #KrogerPrecisionMarketing 84.51˚ #RetailMedia

290

13 Comments

Jounce Media's newly published State of the Open Internet Report explains the industry’s chronic bidstream congestion issue and how to address it. This latest research highlights the trend toward consolidation we are seeing on the supply side and is a must-read.

3

Partnering with the wrong agency is risky business for new founders. Too many apparel brands partner with the first agency that promises high ROAS (Return On Ad Spend). And it almost always leads to: Ineffective marketing strategies. Inconsistent branding. Lost revenue. To avoid this, we ask three questions before partnering with an agency. 1. How do you define and ensure quality control for my brand? --> This confirms they align with our brand guidelines. 2. What's your internal revision and approval process? --> This helps us understand how our feedback will be incorporated. 3. Which KPIs and metrics will you report on? --> This ensures efforts are measured against our brand's specific goals. Now, I'm curious to hear from you! When vetting an agency, what questions do you ask to ensure alignment and success? Let me know in the comments.

2

Today, one post can redefine a brand's future and impact the bottom line. One viral Tiktok took Walgreen's gummy mango peelable candy to the stratosphere. And yet, most brands are still allocating their big production budgets into a TV spot that will get ignored. To win today, brands have to rethink their internal team structure and approach. In the era of social brands your competitors are also consumers, making it imperative to be social-first ready.  #BrandStrategy #SocialMediaMarketing #ViralContent #SocialBrandEra

10

Exciting news! Path to Purchase Institute just published my latest article on Impulse Shopping. At Provoke Insights, we surveyed 1,500 individuals across the US to uncover who's most prone to impulse buying and which industries are most susceptible to impulse shopping. Our findings reveal crucial strategies for marketers. Big thanks to Melissa Conforto for her hard work on this project! #ImpulseShopping #MarketingInsights #marketresearch https://lnkd.in/e5DV3MUx

14

Ads on Grocery TV’s In-Store Retail Media Network Achieve an Average 14% Sales Lift for CPG Brands: NEW YORK, April 16, 2024 — Grocery TV, an in-store digital advertising network reaching 1 in 5 Americans, today announced the results of a meta analysis that showed, on average, consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands achieve a 14% incremental lift in sales by advertising on their network. The meta analysis included studies from the last […] #DOOH #digitalbillboards #digitalsignage

3

Lean In. Learn. Lead. That was the key takeaway from AI Trailblazers Summit on Thursday at NeueHouse. Always great to catch up with my marketing rock-star friend Marisa Thalberg. While not everything was new news, there were some great reminders. Repeated throughout the day: The ole garbage in; garbage out adage still applies. AI data is only as good as data put it. The data put in is only as good as the smartness / cleverness of the person who reviews it when it comes out. Watch out: bias in the data needs to be managed thoughtfully. We need to be sure the data is not discriminatory! Worth repeating: AI isn’t going to replace humans, but humans with AI are going to replace humans without AI. Bob Lord said “Be promiscuous!” (Interesting suggestion) & recommended @PerplexityAI, an AI-based search engine functionality, or as its creators like to call it, an ‘answer engine’ functionality. Checked it out & think pretty cool. Thanks Bob. We hear so much about AI's ability to make data more robust & efficient but two marketing case studies stood out on the creative application of AI. Jonathan Halvorson, MBA shared Cadbury Silk’s Valentine’s Day interactive experience (Mondelez India) that allowed couples to weave significant moments into a heartwarming love stories brought to life by generative AI technology. Heavy sigh here. Jean-Paul Jansen shared the success of the Mars Pedigree Brand’s Adoptable AI initiative in collaboration with Adopt-a-Pet.com designed to help shelter dogs find forever homes. Adoptable uses digital doubles to provide information about the pose & general characteristics of a shelter dog. Then creates AI-enhanced adoption ads based on factors like viewer’s location & pet availability. Loved, loved, loved that. One interesting sidebar from Unilever’s Samantha Tucker-Samaras that had the audience ewwing: 95% of serotonin, the “feel-good” neurotransmitter known as the key to happiness & well-being is produced by bacteria in our gut. There was a connection between this factoid & AI having to do with R&D. A few other takeaways: AI is a tool. Just like a calculator or the Internet are tools. Collaboration is key to help stitch it all together & so teams are not duplicating efforts. Talent still matters. Big time. AI can spur 3 things (if used properly): Efficiency, Optimization & Creative Excellence. Prompting is a skill we all need. AI doesn’t mean reducing your workforce but will make your workforce more productive. No one has a crystal ball. Things are moving fast. Stay tuned! There are fences but once you get over them, it’s a whole ‘nother world. One final call-out: When asked if AI should be regulated. The answer from panelists & audiences was a resounding YES. Many thanks to Greg Kahn; Amit Shah; @ShivBirSingh; Cheryl Guerin; Sophie Kelly; Suzanne Vranica: Patrick Garcia; Lisa Besserman: Vivek Vaidya & so many others for sharing their amazing insights & experiences. More to come. #AI #NYTechWeek

25

10 Comments

Some great call outs from Jerry Daykin this morning. Two points to highlight: 1) Embrace do-not-block lists and 2) Do not block the news Opt-in to great quality content (including journalism and diverse voices) that reflects your values & principles, and make sure those opt-ins override any brand safety controls & exclusions you have https://lnkd.in/eu6Xx85A

19

🔔 Salt Bae's NYC Steakhouse Closes: A Lesson for E-commerce 🌟 Salt Bae’s viral fame couldn’t save his NYC steakhouse from closing. This reminds us: virality ≠ business success. In e-commerce, it’s tempting to chase viral moments. But here’s what really matters: 1. Strong Foundations: Quality products and stellar service. 2. Customer Retention: Turn first-time buyers into loyal fans. 3. Consistency Over Flash: Sustainable growth over viral spikes. Long-term strategy beats short-term buzz every time. Let’s focus on lasting value! #Ecommerce #DigitalMarketing #BusinessStrategy #CustomerRetention #MarketingLessons

4

1 Comment