“I guess you can think of us as like a 187-year old start up,” Nick Smithwick, retail media partnerships manager at David Jones Amplify says with a grin, when describing his youthful division of the business on the final afternoon of the Cairns Crocodiles, presented by Pinterest, extravaganza last week.
David Jones is of course one of Australia’s oldest department stores, but for the last 15 months its retail media arm, Amplify, has been giving its partners the opportunity to create a stronger advertising presence in DJs’ premium environments.
For closer industry observers, it may feel like retail media has been with us for quite a while now, but it remains a nascent space. For many, the first touchpoint comes via the increasingly ubiquitous digital screens you see when visiting supermarkets, malls and large retailers.
But there’s much more to it than that. Nowadays, some of Australia’s biggest brands are creating entire owned content ecosystems and inviting their commercial partners along for the ride. Think everything from glossy inspo-led magazines given free to shoppers, right through to TV shows – something the Commonwealth Bank even rolled out in May last year.
To dissect what is clearly an exciting and fast growing part of the media landscape, Barry McGhee, general manager at oOh!media’s REO, took the reins over at Hemingway’s Brewery on the final day of the Cairns Crocodiles. Across a punchy half hour, his panel passed on their fair share of insights and anecdotes.
And of course with anything fairly new, a key point of discussion was generating both internal and external buy-in, and really nailing the retail media education piece.
“Sometimes it takes a fair bit more than a few slides to convince a CEO of the value proposition,” Smithwick admitted.
In terms of businesses getting started in retail media, McGhee identified that there can be a tendency towards caution. “I think a good thing to remember for brands and agencies is that we shouldn’t let perfection get in the way of the good,” he said.
Integration of retail media architecture is another big issue to be reckoned with, pointed out Sarah Minassian, head of LocalEyes retail media at Metcash.
“For example, regarding the digital screens being rolled out, we’re often in non-integrated spaces, which can add to the time it takes for installation. So from a tech point of view, a big part of what we are doing is setting up for our advertisers by improving integration,” she said.
And then there’s the all-important need to measure results effectively, a topic Hayley Robinson, head of sales, MixIn retail media at Endeavour was keen to touch on.
“There’s a constant evolution. We have to work in a transparent way. If we get access to our data right, make it accessible to all, and get clean rooms up and running, then those agency-retail media partnerships will really come together nicely,” she said.
Matching media opportunities to brands and their heritage is also a key consideration. Although the panelists – perhaps wisely – would not be drawn on an audience question about some of the more left-field partnership opportunities that have come their way, there was consensus that the target audience always needed to be the prime consideration.
As Minassian summed up: “At the end of the day I always come back to one key point: “What does the shopper want? And how can we put the shopper’s interests first.”
Reporting by guest reporter Richie Kenzie, Australian Lead at Bud.