Jack – 00:00:01:
We are launching as part of Ocado Ads a capability called the NPD Lab. So the NPD Lab allows us to use a small segment of the Ocado customer base and launch products incredibly quickly for them. So we think we can get products launched between three to six weeks. And we can design a simulation, a test for a brand and for a supplier. And they can test anything, right? Because the customer themselves won’t know they’re in a testing community. So we can test different promotions. We can test different media assets. We can understand how that NPD is launched versus their competition. So you have this whole range of insights you can deliver as part of a simulated NPD launch.
Paul – 00:00:42:
Welcome to the Time For A Reset Marketing Podcast: Insights from Global Brand Marketers, brought to you by CvE Marketing Consultancy. I’m your host, Paul Frampton-Calero, and in each episode, I dive deep into the minds of senior marketing leaders from around the world. Join me as we explore what they want to hit reset on an ever-changing landscape and uncover strategies that drive successful brand transformation. Welcome back to another episode of Time for a Reset in another of our series of conversations about the retail media and commerce media space. This morning, I’m delighted to be joined by Jack Johnson. Jack runs Ocado Ads. He was previously at IRI, then spent a long time at Dunnhumby, where he was involved in monetizing the Clubcard data, then went over to Ocado and was involved in a similar pursuit at Ocado in the early days and has just launched a few weeks ago, which you’ll have seen in the press, Ocado Ads as a retail media network proposition. So super excited to have you here, Jack, because it’s obviously very current that you guys pushing further into this space.
Jack – 00:01:46:
Great. And thank you for having me, Paul.
Paul – 00:01:47:
So Jack, we always start in the same place, which is if you had an imaginary big yellow or orange button in front of you and you wanted to hit reset on something in this industry, what would that be?
Jack – 00:01:57:
Yeah, I think it’s such a brilliant question because it really helps you challenge not only what’s absent in the way that we work, and especially in our context of being a retail media network and working with brands, it challenges not only what’s absent, but also what’s wrong. And I think if I was to really reflect on what I sometimes think can really hamper our ability to really grow and really think about how to do things differently, it’s this idea about repeating retail media plans that have occurred in previous years. And we do run into this a lot with some of our brands and some of the work that we do that we did last year, so let’s just do it again. And I think that really can sometimes hamper our ability to deliver that growth because sometimes the things that can work and things that are going to really deliver that growth and deliver those amazing experiences for our customers will be stuff that people haven’t done before. And innovation and anything around test and learn has been a really key part of the Ocado business, and it’s something that we’re bringing into the Ocado Ads fold as well. And I would love this idea of everyone. I’m going to try this set of things that I’ve never, ever done before. I’m really going to learn about it. So yeah, if I could hit reset on one thing, it will be this idea around repeating what’s always been done.
Paul – 00:03:07:
I love that. And it probably applies to most things in life, actually, if we think about it, because we do get into a bit of a rhythm. Our brains remember things, don’t they? And then we go back to them. So I definitely want to dig into that a little bit more. But before we do that, Jack, maybe let’s just unpack Ocado a little bit more, because I know when we were chatting, often still some people think of Ocado as a tech business, or they think of it as the delivery for Waitrose, which obviously Ocado is very much more than that and has changed a lot. And you run or you’re in the Ocado retail business rather than the Ocado tech business. So could you just unpack that a little bit for us and why you guys got into setting up retail media? And then we’ll come back and dig into your wonderful reset.
Jack – 00:03:47:
Yeah, it’s interesting. I think we often get this right, which is everyone has heard of Ocado and Ocado Group and some of the technology that exists around that. And we built our retail business off the back of a partnership with Waitrose. That was a partnership that lasted a number of years. And I think that has caused a bit of potential confusion about who Ocado is. And I think for us, Ocado Retail, we are the world’s largest online grocery retailer. We’ve been around for over 20 years. We don’t operate with stores, right? We are online only. And that gives us a really unique operating model, which we’ll go into, which actually mirrors how unique our retail media proposition can be. We leverage all of the Ocado Group technology. So all of the automation, the warehousing, it’s a full end-to-end fulfillment technology base. And then we also are partners with M&S. So we are the home of M&S food online within the UK. So a combination of those things gives us a really unique customer value proposition. So I think about what some of those things are. One is around range. So we have an unbeatable range within the UK. So we don’t operate with stores. We can have these long tails of products and brands because we don’t have a cost to serve that a bricks and mortar operation would have. So we have anywhere north of 40,000 products, which is well over twice the size of a big supermarket you’ll find here in the UK. So with that, we want to be the home of challenger brands and new and exciting products. And we want to be able to really inspire our customers to find a range of missions within our retailer. And that’s really exciting. So I think that has been what Ocado has been famous for alongside the service side of our retailer as well. So, we have amazing delivery drivers. We’ve got an amazing availability and our ability to service those orders that are coming through in seconds and none in the UK. So yeah, this whole premise around our customer value proposition is something that we’re famous for and something that we want to be more famous for. And we are currently the fastest growing retailer in the UK. So the time of this recording, we’ve been the fastest growing in the last six periods. So we’ve got loads of growth. We’re really exciting company. And yeah, I think all of that benefit of being an online, any retailer really does deliver value for our customers.
Paul – 00:05:57:
Thank you. Thanks for going into that. And actually with the whole service proposition, I remember during COVID, I mean, we’ve always been Ocado customers. I remember during COVID you guys were the fastest to suddenly add lots more slots and lots more availability. And I remember that rush of everybody switching during that early period because they just wanted to get grocery delivered to their house.
Jack – 00:06:18:
Well, that’s it. I think about what COVID did to the broader e-commerce ecosystem is unbelievable, right? Everyone became more tech savvy. I’d say the expectations of digital platforms became bigger from customers. And I think as part of that COVID boom, we had to relook about how our customer experience looked and how we benchmarked versus our competition. We’ll get into retail media, but retail media becomes a cornerstone of that proposition to customers. It is how customers will be interacting with your retailer, whether that’s through the search results they get, whether it’s the content that goes live on site. I think a combination of all these things, actually, COVID had to accelerate our thinking of this. The expectations of customers really, really shift.
Paul – 00:06:59:
Right, right. And you guys are already moving pretty far. Yeah. So let’s go back a little bit to as a kind of segue into the retail media and Ocado ads, your reset, which I guess in a company that was born in through technology, as you said, you guys probably used to moving faster, more agile, innovation at the heart. But it sounds like you still have to encourage people to make sure that they do reconsider thinking about new ways of doing. So what does innovation really mean to you? What does doing things differently and your teams at least bringing new ideas to the table look like?
Jack – 00:07:33:
I think innovation is all around trying something new and it’s with a goal in mind. So whether that’s about driving more effective advertising, delivering a more tailored ad to a customer, all the way through to, is my product development right? Am I bringing the right products to customers in customers’ hands? So for me, innovation is about trying something new and it’s about that goal that you’re trying to get to. So if I give you one very simple example of a piece of innovation we are launching as part of Ocado Ads is a capability called the NPD Lab. So the NPD Lab allows us to use a small segment of the Ocado customer base and launch products incredibly quickly for them. So we think we can get products launched between three to six weeks and we can design a simulation, a test for a brand and for a supplier. And they can test anything right? Because the customer themselves won’t know they’re in a testing community. So we can test different promotions, we can test different media assets, we can understand how that NPD is launched versus their competition. So you have this whole range of insights you can deliver as part of a simulated NPD launch. And I think about how different that is versus how a brand would have to operate with a bricks and mortar store. They’ve got to wait for a range window, they’ve got to have X amount of number of meetings with their buyer. They have to bring all of their research and insights to those meetings. Whereas actually what we think is a possibility is let’s create a really controlled simulated launch and give you as many learnings as possible as part of that and media will be part of that. But it goes broader than that and it goes to how we can help brands really successful launch NPD, which we know just how many failed NPDs there are. We know how much complexity there is in getting the launch right. And it’s hard and it’s complicated for brands. So what we’re really interested in doing is trying to solve for that challenge. And this is where innovation comes into it is how can we break our model to help answer some of these big questions.
Paul – 00:09:27:
I love that example. It’s a brilliant use case because to your point, the timelines, not least the limited shelf space that you have within a physical store, make it quite hard for things to happen in an agile fashion. And I guess that is a really goodmanifestation of why being online only gives advantage to the brands that you work with. You guys have obviously very recently launched Ocado Ads. What else plays into the value proposition to differentiate versus other retail media networks? Because, I mean, of course, the likes of Tesco and Nectar and Boots and others have been around for quite a while, and we’ve had a new influx of folks like Superdrug and others, Morrisons. Online only, you guys really own that online only space from a grocery perspective. So what else plays into the value proposition when you go and talk to the P&Gs or the L’Oréal’s of this world?
Jack – 00:10:18:
It’s an interesting question. It’s the same question we sort of asked ourselves because Ocado has been doing digital retail media for over 20 years. I think we were doing it at scale before any of the other retailers were. I would go as far to say that Ocado really were one of the early pioneers of digital retail media. So putting products at the top of search results, getting display media on site. We were doing this before the other grocers. I spent, as you mentioned in your intro, a lot of time at Dunnhumby. And I think my early years at Dunnhumby, retail media was not online. Retail media was couponing and it was all the in-store activation. But actually to think that Ocado was doing this for a long time. So we asked exactly the same question, which is what Ocado Ads and what makes us different? And I think it’s building on that heritage and it’s thinking, well, what is it about the online and our unique operating model that gives us a reason to talk to us over another retailer? I think one of those things, which is a structural advantage we have is around our data. So you’ll see all of the other retailers that have gone down scaling their loyalty programs, going down the route of member pricing to accumulate and gather data, which can power an insights and media proposition. For us, we don’t actually have that challenge because we capture all of the purchases of all of our customers inherently. We don’t have to have different mechanisms to gather that data. So we have natural close-loopedmeasurement. We capture 100% of customer data. And actually what we can do is through the tests we can run or the media that we can deliver, the insights and the data can be so strong. And that should be the testing ground and the innovation hub for how brands should view our retail media network. So I think there’s this area around data, which is something that we do leverage, but we will continue to really focus on. Where I’m so excited about the retail media proposition that Ocado has is the complete range of things that we can do and help brands with. So I think about all of the placements we have on search, on our favorites page, on some of what we would call our top level media, which is the high traffic pages you’ll see. We have targeted couponing and sampling. We have a really broad list of things that a brand can do to support their growth with Ocado. And I think we often get that feedback from brands, which is your proposition is from an online perspective, so much broader than your competition. Then you start to tie those things together, which is a broad range of assets and then data pass back and insights that can help on that. I think that is a brilliant combination for us to really leverage. And I think that is all going to be underpinned by a few things, really, not least our unique operating model, whereby I don’t necessarily like this trade-off between self-serve and managed service that retail media networks talk about. I actually just think you should be showing up in as flexible way as possible. So we want to make sure we have an operating model that if a brand wants to, work in a certain way, we will show up in that way. We’re not going to dictate terms of how our business should work. So we’re doing a lot of investment into technologies and platforms to make sure that we have both a self-serve operating model as well as a managed service. And then just this idea around just work with pace as well. And it’s the heart of innovation, which should be the most flexible and easy to work with retail media network out there because we don’t have the complexities of a store dynamic. And we also can just work quickly. It’s in our DNA as a business. So it’s a combination of all those things, which Ocado Ads will deliver.
Paul – 00:13:42:
Nice. I think what I’m hearing is flexibility, data-driven, very test and learn, which are words that probably all retail media networks actually talk about. But it sounds like you guys, because of your operating model and the technology background, probably have got an advantage to be able to move faster. And I think you’re right, having talked to a lot of brands about what they want. Often they’ll say they want self-serve, but they’re not necessarily entirely ready or have the teams of expertise to actually go and do all of that. But it does strike me that probably because of the technology backbone and engineers and the ability to build out new service technology, it feels like you’ve got an advantage on the self-serve side versus some others of the more traditional graces. Would that be fair?
Jack – 00:14:25:
I think that’s fair. I think an extension of this is how we operate as a retail media business. If I think about our competition at Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, the like, they are working heavily with third parties, with retail media networks that are run outside of the retailer. Now we are an in-house retail media network. We have our commercial function, but we play a role in connecting all the different parts of our business to ensure we have a compelling retail media proposition to brands. That gives us an additional structural advantage that we are easier and more flexible to work with, quite simply because we are in the retailer, we are making decisions on behalf of not just our brands, but our customers as well. When we are turning up to conversations, we are not just representing the media business, we’re representing a much broader spectrum of points of view and stakeholders within our business. It’s complex, and I think we will talk to brands through why some things are possible or not, but the fact that brands will have a voice into the retailer to experiment, test and learn, to run new media campaigns, all of the amazing stuff that we can deliver, we can make happen by having the right connections with our broader business. So the structural advantage of being in-house and being within the retail media business itself is incredibly important and something that we’re going to look to leverage as we roll into future years within our R&M.
Paul – 00:15:44:
Right. That makes a lot of sense, Jack. And just in really simple terms, you think about the fact that a lot of grocers have been around for a hundred plus years and the structure and the setup and the operating model for the core business is very different to the business that they’ve set up in media, which tends to be much more of a kind of tech consumer publishing facing business. Whereas actually you set up a business that was in digital and your retail media proposition is digital. So by definition, it’s slightly easier to build a unified customer experience, I suppose. However, I’m guessing that… Building in-house also has its challenges, right? Like when you’re wanting to do things that brands want to do, I assume you still have some of the same challenges with the core retail part of the business that’s more customer focused, or is it all holding hands and dancing in the fields?
Jack – 00:16:35:
No, I think it’s a really interesting question. And I think every retailer goes through this trade-off of value to brands and the commercials around the retail media business, and then the customer experience of that to users. And this trade-off is never perfect. And it’s different depending on what you’re talking about. And I think for me, this is where a really effective retail media business will take on all of the different needs of the business and be able to deliver something that delivers ultimately against three stakeholders, which is ourselves as a retailer, our suppliers and our brands and the advertiser, and the customer. And actually finding the middle ground between those three stakeholders, that’s where the real sort of secret sause. That’s where the real magic of retail media is, because there is mechanisms that you can deliver value againstthat whole ecosystem, is truly where the magic is. And I think where we have to think a little bit more strategically about it is online is 100% of our business. So if I think about a product going to the top of search results for Tesco, which might impact the way things are merchandised, you still talk about 10-15% of their sales, whereas things that are appearing on the top of our search results where customers are interacting with, that’s going to drive the margin of our business, that’s going to drive how the customer is seeing the products that we are servicing to customers, it’s absolutely integral to the trading of our business is things that appear at the top of the search results. So, when we take what is search retail media, we can’t just be optimising for brands or ad spend, or even for customer experience. We need to find the balance across all three of those things. And we just have to think about it differently. Because it is the entirety of our business. It’s not a smaller proportion.
Paul – 00:18:20:
Yeah, no, fascinating. Actually, once you unpack it, it’s really interesting. And like you say, I love that phrase around if you hit all three, it’s the magic. But equally, getting a tripartite agreement is never an easy thing. But it strikes me also, Jack, that a lot of retailers talking about the fact that they start with third-party tools and start to try and get insight about what drives the margin, but what also drives good customer experience. And then there’s a newer breed of technology that helps you get a slightly better balance between that. But I guess if you’re building your own technology and analytics, you’re, by definition, looking at those mixed, that balanced scorecard of what is working for the business to get the right basket size and what is speeding up the customer’s ability to build their basket. But also, is there a way to insert ads at the right place that support that experience, but ultimately drive additional margin for the retail media business? So by definition, I guess your KPIs and your analytics are a little bit more set up for success versus other retail media networks that have almost got to force new analytics into the system to be able to then challenge the grocery side of the business.
Jack – 00:19:30:
Yeah, I mean, the build that’s really important there is around the customer journey. And I think you have to understand how customers are shopping your e-commerce site. So we know customers are using a lot of search for exploration for new products. We also know they’re using a lot of the favorites page to shop products they’ve shopped in the past. We know the shopper journey isn’t linear, so they’re going from one category to the next. They’re using different ways on the site to discover new products, when that’s recipe pages, where that’s our inspiration pages, obviously very promo-led, so we have a lot of pages around some of our top offers that are available at the moment. And I think really understanding not just the right placement, what that placement’s being filled with to enhance and enrich that customer experience. And I think one of the principles that we are running our retail media business by is this notion of customer-first brand growth. So that’s what we want to deliver to brands, not just growth. And it’s this idea about twinning this customer-centricity, this customer-first message with ultimately what is growth. And Ocado has historically been a growth business. We want to continue to deliver that growth for brands. But by understanding that customer journey across our site and by filling those ad units with the most relevant products, that’s when you can really start to break down that secret sauce, that magic that I was mentioning, which is where you can twin together the customer, the brand, and ourselves as a retailer. So we are constantly trying to go into more detail about how is the customer shopping, where are they, what do they need, and then building an ad business that can deliver ultimately that customer experience. That’s the notion, rather than doing it the other way around where you’re like, oh, this looks like a shiny new ad unit. Let’s think how this can work for our customers. Actually, we should be approaching it the other way around.
Paul – 00:21:17:
I think what you just articulated there is the nirvana of what brands want, really. They want to understand because they, I mean, let’s face it, most CPG beauty-type brands do not have that insight. They don’t know how their customers shop and how that differs between different buying points. So I think that’s really powerful. And it also strikes me that your proposition probably works exceptionally well working directly in partnership with brands that have got teams that are capable. I mean, not to say that you won’t work with agencies because I’m sure you will, but the agency approach is slightly more campaign. I just want to buy some inventory with particular formats to deliver a number as opposed to I want to really understand the customer journey and the category jumps that my shoppers, my buyers might make and where I might be able to introduce new product development. It strikes me that there’s quite a lot of opportunity for brands to actually partner in a more strategic way with you, then maybe then used to, by buying from a media network. Cause when we say media network, it usually is I’ve got impressions and audience, and you want to actually reach that and drive conversions. So that seems like quite an interesting opportunity out there.
Jack – 00:22:30:
Yeah. And this is where retail media networks, i.e. Ones attached to some of the big grocers in the UK, this is where they do have a broader spectrum of capabilities. And I’ve spoken through the NPD lab, which is one example of that. But it’s what’s the range of ways in which we can support, even just not just in media, it’s that whole range of category management, it’s price, promo, it’s all of those different things. So I think you’re right. I think one of the results of us having that long range that I mentioned around our operating model is we have many more suppliers and spectrums of brands within our supplier base. So we have anywhere up to about 2,000 suppliers, which is a lot more than you’ll see in some of the other grocery retailers, which means we have this enormous spectrum of understanding of what is retail media to them. And this goes to the heart of what I was talking about earlier around having a really flexible operating model. So if you’re one of the big suppliers that are building retail media teams or some of our medium suppliers, that maybe are leveraging their media agency to support on some of their capabilities, or if you’re a really small supplier, you might be one or two people working in the back of your kitchen, what does retail media mean for them? And I think having a flexible operating model and a way of showing up to those brands to enable that customer-first brand growth, that’s where we really need to double down on. And I think it’s not having a one size fits all. And if there was one thing, some of, I think, other retail media networks can be, guilty of, it is having a one size fits all to their supply base. And we want to be the complete opposite of that, right? And we want to make sure we’re having a range of operating models so that anyone can show up in whichever way they want to. The conversation around media agencies is fascinating because they’re still trying to work out what their play within this world is. And I think where we will get to with media agencies is our data and it’s our audience data. Because I think the use of retail media or retail data, offsite, so through audience extension, through the measurement that can deliver, that’s, I think, where this space will start to evolve. And I think where we can be really flexible is having more openness to partner with agencies on data sharing and ultimately on our audiences. So, yeah, it’s going to be fascinating to see how that plays out. But yeah, it’s changing all the time with media agencies.
Paul – 00:24:49:
Yeah, you’re right. It does play back into what you said earlier about keeping flexible. If you’ve got a self-serve platform for a long-tail, smaller supplier versus the ability to sit down with a big strategic brand and go, how do you want to launch two, three new products this year? That does give you quite a stretch and quite a range to be able to work differently. So you mentioned rightly that you guys got into this space probably earlier than anyone else from a digital retail media, if we call it that, even though it wasn’t labelled that at the time, but you did have ads on your site. That kind of places you in an interesting space to be able to crystal ball gaze to think about what comes next, because you can build stuff yourselves quite quickly. And you obviously have got the data and analytics to know what you might need to build. So particularly in this customer core grocer business and retail media, where do you think this goes in a few years time? Because let’s be honest, this is still quite a nascent industry that we’re talking about today.
Jack – 00:25:44:
It’s a really interesting paradox where the advertising industry will talk about retail media being new and all of the exciting opportunities that it can deliver. But then working within a retailer where this isn’t new, this has been happening for decades and is structurally built into our business of how we work with our brands and with our suppliers. So I think it does give us a unique perspective. And I think one is like a really simple point, but one that’s definitely worth people remembering is we’re operating in the fastest growing channel, right? Online. And I think… That’s not going to go away anytime soon. So I think if I’m looking at advertising channels and I’m thinking about where it’s going, there’s going to be more impressions. There’s going to be more eyeballs. There’s going to be more opportunity to work within a growing channel. Now, selfishly, I will talk about Ocado because we’re the fastest growing retailer within the fastest growing channel. But it’s a really important point for brands to remember, which is I’m going to go where my customers are going. And I think that whole growth story around online is something that will continue to evolve and something that we really want to be, obviously, will be a loud voice within. So I think growth is going to come. It will be there. I think where I see other things happening is continual fragmentation. I just don’t see that going away. I’m part of the IAB working group in the UK for retail media. I work a lot with ISBAas well. And there is some amazing work happening when it comes to standardization, especially when it comes to measurement. And there’s some amazing work happening. And I think there will be some amazing things that are documented. And I think there will be a loud voice for standardization within the market. But getting to standardization requires incentives. There has to be incentives, one way or the other, for people to change the way things have been done to deliver standardization. And I think that probably could deserve another conversation at its own right.
Paul – 00:27:35:
Well, and also you guys all want to be different. I mean, publishers, they can argue they’re slightly different, but they’re all in the core. Your businesses are so radically different as grocers and retailers that you can standardize in some senses, but you’re not going to want to become the same because you’re online only and most of the others aren’t.
Jack – 00:27:52:
Exactly. And I think standardization is such an interesting topic. And I think speaking about how things are mapping out in the US, where I think there has still been movements towards that. But I think when I think about the US, which is obviously a lot more of a sophisticated market when it comes to first-party data and audience extension, they are up against the big programmatic competition, search and paid social, et cetera, where, you know, there’s a higher expectation for standardization. Whereas the moment I look across retail media, the expectation is that, where does, how does this all get? I think you need to have tech players, retailers and brands all on the same page and all incentivized to use standardization and what comes out of it. And I think we’ll see a lot of that. I think we’ll see a lot more publisher deals that happen between retail media networks and publishers. So if I think about connections that already exist with the likes of the Trade Desk, Pinterest, Snapchat, all of the ones that, you know, are there, we’re just going to see more retailers getting into this game about how can they take their first-party data and have that audience extension there. And I think you’ll start seeing more of those deals and we might start to see some bigger ones as well. And then not within my world, but definitely something we’ll see more of is this digitalization of in-store. So you’re starting to see it already. You can see it in the likes of Tesco. There are some other retailers that are going quite heavy on this. In-store screens is this idea about bringing digitalization and targeting within a physical environment. Although it’s not an area we will pay and it’s very interesting.
Paul – 00:29:19:
We do a lot of work on both sides of the pond and that in-store piece is obviously much more progressed in Europe, UK, Europe than it is in the US. So actually the US is more akin to your project. Like everything was much more digitized. Probably, I mean, I debated this actually the other day with Amir, who runs Nectar360, we debated why that was. And I think part of it is because you’ve got all the big tech players out there. Therefore, the analysts are looking for real scale and platform-type businesses. So they’re like, well, go to digital first. And then a lot of them actually ignored the fact that they’ve got 20, 30,000 stores around the country that they could have been doing a slightly better job putting digital screens into. So that’s only just beginning to catch up now because they need that next level of scale, because they’ve almost used up search, used up offsite. And it’s like, where do we go? We have to go back to where we started almost.
Jack – 00:30:10:
Yeah, no, I think that’s right. The extension of that is, I think, retail media networks have been focused on inventory that is measurable, to your point, I think where the digitalization space will go is how you can start to genuinely deliver a measure uplift. And I think that’s going to be difficult. And there will be methodologies that will kick around, which I’ll stay on the side of e-commerce where you can easily measure your uplift and you can understand which customers are buying and buying into your products. But yeah, it’ll be interesting development nonetheless.
Paul – 00:30:39:
It will, no, it will be interesting to see what happens. So I’m going to take a slight segue now into a more personal view of your own. Obviously your type of role, running a retail media network is a fairly new role in the grand scheme of things. And as you talked about, you have to balance lots of different things. You have to work with multiple stakeholders internally. It’s a very commercial role. It’s a very tech innovation-type role. What are the core attributes of the role do you think going forward? Because I imagine the technology is only going to grow. As you said, you’re in the e-com online-only space. AI probably is going to play a bigger role. So if you were calling out almost like the attributes to people listening about, if you want this as a job in four or five years time, this is what you need to focus on learning. What would those skills or attributes be?
Jack – 00:31:25:
So, I mean, there’s a long list, isn’t there? I think the role itself is a generalist role. It’s understanding commercials. It’s having an understanding of technology integrations. It’s understanding how a retailer works and how it trades. This list could go on and on. And because I think retail media becomes so integral to the connection between, as I was mentioning, customer, supplier, and the retailer, that you need to understand all those three stakeholders to then understand what propositions you can do. Because retail media is only successful when the whole business is bought into it. So if I was to call out the very, very most important things, I think it’s influence. And I say it’s having influence at all levels of a business. So it’s influencing your team to be making the right decision. It’s influencing CEOs and C-suites to get on board with what needs to be done when it comes to retail media because there are costs associated with it. There are complexities that go alongside of it as well. And then influence suppliers and brands. So to be able to walk into a room and be able to understand their business and understand how a retail media proposition can help unlock their brand objectives. So there’s this whole sphere of influence that I think, if you could focus on that and how you work with people and how you can really start to drive change through an organization through influencing others, maybe the number one characteristic that you would need. I think the second part is a real inquisitive nature, whether we call it curiosity or however we want to describe it. You need to understand how a retailer works and operates. And I think unless you’re going to go and have a few years working as a buyer or working in a trade operations, role of some description, you are going to have to find that information about how a retailer works. And then understanding how retail media slots into that is so important. So I think you have to be naturally curious. You have to be inquisitive. You have to ask questions. That is definitely a second area. Probably the final thing I would call out is around resilience. You will get knocked back. You will speak to someone in a different part of the business and they’ll have a point of view that’s like, wow, that’s completely different to how I was expecting you to answer that question. And actually, it does have to make you change the way you approach your work. So resilience and making sure that you can find solutions to challenges and all of those types of stuff is so important. So yeah, I could go on and on, but those are the top three. That’s what I would say.
Paul – 00:33:49:
No, that’s really well articulated, Jack. I think the rally cry in the middle there around really understanding retail is a really good one for a lot of people listening probably. Because just because it’s called media doesn’t mean it behaves the same way as media that you might know elsewhere. And I think a lot of people that are in the agency vendor space just assume it’s just very similar. But as you rightly call out, you have to have a deep understanding of how retail grocery works and the kind of old way of merchandising and JBPs versus this new retail media. You can only understand it if you actually dig in and understand what came before. And I also really like your point about influence and resilience. Because from a lot of the folks that I or we speak to, you see that there is a lot of struggle sometimes to get the core business to buy into this area. Even though it seems very obvious, the numbers are big. But just because numbers are big and margin can be good doesn’t mean that everybody’s going to be comfortable with it. Because once you start to use words like data monetization, understandably, people that are looking after customer experience, start to think differently. So I think you’re right. It’s also understanding what other people’s goals are and realizing that, as you said, you have to show there’s opportunity here to do this. But it also aligns and coalesces with what you’re trying to do. And it’s okay, good for the customer. It’s not bad for the customer. Because if you only focus, I think so many people focus on, well, there’s commercial gain to be had here. And they think, well, everyone’s going to sign this off because I’m bringing new incremental revenue and margin to the business. But of course, different people come at it from very different angles. So I think you’re right to call those things out. And that’s the reality of building a media business inside what is ultimately a very customer-orientated organization.
Jack – 00:35:30:
Yep, totally. And just to build on one of those points, really understanding someone’s objectives, not just assuming that a message on commercial upside is going to make the blindest bit of difference. Because a lot of the time, it doesn’t, and nor should it. And I think, especially when you’re working with people within customer marketing, functions within a retailer, it’s not your job just to blindly drive commercial outcomes. You are playing such a key role in the experience that a customer has. And you should understand that you have a key responsibility then. And I think that’s something we take very seriously. And I think someone stepping into roles looking after retail media businesses, you have to understand that and you have to lead with that because it doesn’t work otherwise.
Paul – 00:36:14:
Well said. So the very last question I always ask, Jack, is when folks are listening to this, they always think that our guests have everything together and know exactly what they’re doing every minute of the day. And they’re fantastic leaders. And of course, most of them are, and you are. But everybody’s always a work in progress. There’s always things that you’re having to improve at. So either against that ideal kind of retail media network leader that you just painted the picture of, or just you and how you’re trying to develop. Could you just be vulnerable for a second and talk about the spaces that you’re trying to get better or improving?
Jack – 00:36:46:
I know you ask a lot, you’ll guess this. It’s a great question because we spend a lot of time as leaders and managers a lot of the time encouraging our teams to think about development and how are you going to be growing and what should you be focusing on? It is easy sometimes to forget about what you need to be focusing on. And I think I’ve definitely taken some time this year on the lead up to the launch and thinking about who am I going to be a leader in 6, 12 months? What do I want to be doing? And I think definitely, and just linked to what we were just talking about, something that is really front of mind for me is the ability to articulate retail media to people within our organization that aren’t from an advertising background and don’t know what CPMs and CPCs are. And the concept of using our data for targeting or meta, for instance, is completely new. But that is a real challenge. And I think I am definitely challenging myself. It’s a really key development area for me is how can I go and speak to a finance director or someone within the customer team or even other people within our commercial function and be able to translate our world into something that they would understand? And sometimes you really have to fight yourself being like, what? Want to go into that at a level of detail because I feel like they might need it. They’ll never understand it and nor do they need to. So being able to translate a retail media context into other people’s roles is something that I’m focusing a lot on. And I know I often get it wrong. We’ve all been there, right? When we’ve been trying to explain a concept to someone and there’s just a blank face at the end of the conversation or the chat and you’re like, you didn’t get this. And I think you visibly know when something hasn’t landed. And I think that’s something I’m personally trying to work a lot more on. And I think definitely encouraging my team as well to be focusing on that as well, because we don’t want to be seen as a retail media team that chat all this different lingo and have all these different acronyms to explain things. Our job is to simplify it for the rest of the business. So that’s something that I’m focusing a lot on. So that’s probably a bit more of the sort of retail media space. I think I probably have a more general sort of thing I’m working on at the moment as well, which is around like, how can I be a more effective leader from a people development perspective? And I think this is something that has evolved over time for me because it’s something that was ingrained to me in Dunnhumby, as a people-first oriented organization and make sure your team have development plans, etc. And make sure that you’re having all those conversations. But as you go into more senior roles, you realize it’s not just people that report into you. You have people reporting to you who have their own teams. So how can you instill a culture of development within your team when you can’t be the one having all those conversations because there’s not enough hours in the day? And perhaps in the past, I was a bit guilty of going, well, I’ll do as much as I can. But actually, this is around empowering your leaders within your team to be having the same approach to development for their teams. Again, don’t think it’s there yet. Something I’m definitely focusing on is this whole concept of leading through others, specifically when it comes to personal development, which I’m very passionate about. So that feels front of mind for me at the moment as well.
Paul – 00:39:47:
I really love that, Jack. Thank you for being so honest. I think that’s a challenge for all leaders as you get into more senior roles. It’s how do you keep those that report into you accountable, but also how do you still have interaction and engagement with people underneath to make sure that they realize how much you value those things. When there’s so much to do in a world that moves so quickly and there’s 100 different opportunities, it’s quite often easy to compromise that development piece, I think. And I think that’s a really important call out. And yeah, look, this has been a great conversation, Jack. You’ve given us obviously a view of where Ocado Ads has come from and where it’s going. And I think the proposition sounds super interesting. I love the flexibility, the focus on test and learn and data. But I also love the conversation we’ve had about the challenges of running a business like this and how you need to make sure that you find the right language, the right metrics, the right kind of engagement with others so that they can buy into the excitement that maybe we all have about it because everyone comes from a different angle. And yeah, you’ve left us with really nice thoughts about how we all as kind of leaders can make sure that we connect with other people in the organization to get where we need to get to, but also grow and develop through our teams. So all that really remains is me to… Thank you for being such a great guest and for being so open.
Jack – 00:41:09:
Yeah. And thank you so much for having me, Paul. Really enjoyed the conversation. So, yeah, thank you.
Paul – 00:41:13:
It’s been a pleasure. And that’s a wrap for this episode of the Time For A Reset Marketing Podcast: Insights from Global Brand Marketers, brought to you by CvE Marketing Consultancy. I’ve been your host, Paul Frampton-Calero, and I hope the insights shared today will help you reset and refine your strategies for successful brand transformation. We’d love to hear from you. If you’re enjoying Time For A Reset, please do leave us a comment or a review on your preferred platform and subscribe to be the first to know when a new episode drops. See you next time as I chat with another senior marketing leader. See you soon. Bye.
