How Molson Coors, Mars, WK Kellogg Activate Full-Funnel Retail Media
Brand leaders from Molson Coors Beverage Co., Mars Pet Nutrition and WK Kellogg Co. took the stage at Retail Media Summit Canada, Feb. 19 in Toronto, to discuss retail media strategies and tactics across the purchasing funnel, from supporting major ad campaigns in-store to elevating entire product categories.
During a lively discussion moderated by Cyndi Loza, Path to Purchase Institute senior editor, the panelists also had candid conversations about measurement and identifying gaps, while also revealing how retail media budgets are shaped.
Molson Coors has leveraged retail media in the U.S. for the past seven years, but efforts only started in Canada in 2023. “It’s still a relatively small part of our overall marketing investment, but we’ve seen growth,” said Kacy Raffe, senior marketing manager, e-commerce, Molson Coors.
She anticipates further budget increases as the company continues to "build learnings” and "validate performance."
Raffe told attendees at the sold-out event that her “team has largely focused on aggregating retail media from first-party platforms. As an alcohol advertiser, we’re limited in terms of where and how we invest. That really guides our investment priorities.”
However, Ontario's beverage-alcohol market expanded late last summer, with beer, wine and ready-to-drink cocktails now sold in convenience stores and more widely in grocers, in addition to province-owned and -operated Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) outlets.
“We’ve been leaning into retail media to walk up or amplify some of our brand-led campaigns,” Raffe said.
A recent example? Molson’s 2025 Super Bowl campaign for Coors Light that ran in Canada and the U.S. The campaign, dubbed the “Case of the Mondays,” featured limited-edition “Mondays Light” packaging of Coors Light at participating retailers across North America, including Canada, about a month before the big game. According to research, the Monday after the Super Bowl millions of Canadians take a “sick day,” making it the perfect opportunity to enjoy a cold beer.
“We put the [campaign] message through the lens of retail media to activate on those platforms,” Raffe said. “Early indicators show really strong results, and we attribute that in part to the synergy and messaging across the different touchpoints.”
Andrene Dos Anjos, manager, omni and shopper marketing, Mars Pet Nutrition, shared that retail media is now widely available to pet brands. When she joined the company almost three years ago with a newly dedicated team focused on retail media, “there were probably about two or three of our customer retailers who had RMN capabilities,” Dos Anjos said. “Now all our customers have it.”
The Mars Pet Nutrition omni and shopper marketing team works with a budget allocated at the beginning of the year, “which we're free to deploy as we see fit. But then we continue through the year with retail media and showcase opportunities where we can use it,” Dos Anjos added.
WK Kellogg Co. finds a retail media approach that involves multiple brands works “better for us versus a single brand by itself. And so, we try to go by category,” said Tulika Pandey, e-commerce and shopper marketing lead, WK Kellogg Co. “Our marketing budget remains flat, so we have to power up anything incremental for retail media.”
To earn budget, she said, the team “learned to be very clear on our objectives” and target a specific audience with creative that speaks to them.
When it comes to measurement, Pandey finds using retail media at the top of the funnel a challenge given its natural emphasis and strength at the bottom of the funnel. “We start talking CPMs, which are never capable when it comes to retail media.” she said.
But that doesn’t mean RMNs can’t be an effective investment, with valuable use cases for retail media on a CPM, top-of-the-funnel basis. “If you're doing a multicultural targeted campaign, I think it makes a lot of sense to use the benefits of retail media and its targeting,” Pandey said. “You are then willing to pay that premium CPMs versus a traditional campaign.”
Dos Anjos expressed a desire for RMNs to enhance their ability to track and demonstrate e-commerce conversions. “Their mentality is more about the in-store conversions versus online conversions, something that I’m personally interested in,” she said. “I've seen few retailers have that capability.”
