How Mars, Monster Energy Are Navigating the Evolving Retail Media Landscape
If she had to describe retail media's state of maturity today, Kelly Spehar, director of global retail media strategy at Mars Snacking, would say the industry is in a “light jog, early run” phase.
"I think it's important to remember that retail media has grown at an exponential pace — growing faster than search, faster than social," said Spehar during a panel discussion at P2PI Live & Expo on Nov. 13. "It's very important that we keep a steady growth."
The industry has made significant progress. CPG brands are more strategic in their investment and measurement approaches, gaining alignment across cross-functional stakeholders, Spehar noted, while retailer media networks have also matured with innovative ad placements and enhanced capabilities in incrementality and ROI measurement.
"I definitely think that, while we're in a steady jog/quick run, it's a marathon," she said. "We're all in it for the long term."
Ending the Silo Game
Though CPG brands have made strides in getting everyone at the table, breaking down internal silos continues to be an imperative.
"The silo game doesn’t work anymore," said Ben Galvin, senior director of e-commerce and omnichannel retail sales at Monster Energy Co. "Shoppers don't shop in silos or channels so we as an organization, especially brands, can't work that way either."
Upfront alignment of stakeholders across different departments is the best way to make advancements in this space, Spehar said.
“Retail media spans e-commerce, it spans shopper, it spans trade — now it’s spanning media,” Spehar said. “We have to get all those stakeholders in at the upfront of annual planning, budget allocation [and] campaign briefing to make sure we have alignment on specific KPIs.”
Social Commerce & AI Tools
In today’s omnichannel landscape, marketers need to meet consumers where they are, Galvin said.
"There's no more of this idea of going out and finding the consumer,” he said. “It's more important to find where they are and touching that consumer where they want to shop or where they want to discover."
To guide investment decisions, Mars developed an investment matrix taking into account a retailer's capabilities (audience targeting, reporting, etc.) and commercial growth (future growth potential, net sales value, etc.) to create a ranking of retailers based on region. It's a guiding principle, Spehar said, for where they should be investing regionally, as well as what tactics should be employed.
Like other CPG brands today, Mars is embarking on the social commerce or "conversational commerce" space. Mars has always run media on TikTok from the brand media perspective, Spehar explains, but now the company is exploring the commerce side of TikTok, leveraging TikTok Shop, to deliver conversion moments.
As part of this experience, the company has also explored AI solutions that can help them review and expedient approvals on content creation coming from influencers and react in real time.
At Monster Energy, the company is continuously looking at their shopper's path to purchase — specifically how to ensure and take into account a decision to purchase a product was made by a shopper well before they entered a store.
"When we go into the store and shop, we still have our phone in our hand, and we're scrolling," said Galvin, adding the shopper might be on the retailer's platform or shopping and pricing elsewhere. "That influence is so important when it comes to your media strategy. You may not actually see those attributable sales through a dot-com-purchase experience, but it then is creating that digitally influenced sale to the in-store experience."
