Q&A: Brian DeCoveny of Barrows Connected Store
Brian DeCoveny
Managing Director, North America
Barrows Connected Store
Responsibility: To connect in-store retail media for retailers and brands. My experience at Triad and CitrusAd has paved the path for the opportunities and challenges I'm tasked with today. The biggest opportunity is in-store, and Barrows Connected Store has all the components, including the technology, merchandising, platform and people to make it happen.
Biggest challenge right now: Helping retailers reach their potential as the best media channels. We all want to do it with speed and scale. But that needs to be balanced with careful consideration to shopper needs, reduce friction, improve confidence and store-level operational needs.
How you win with shoppers: Helpfulness. It is no different than being a clerk on the store floor. Barrows Connected Store takes a shopper-led approach to improve shopper experiences and satisfaction by asking "How do we best help shoppers?" The answer is providing the technology for brands and retailers to activate retail media with precise relevancy in each store. This is to help shoppers with product discovery, wayfinding and shopping decisions.
New marketing tactic that you use: Agile creative and content automation. Thanks to impressive AI tools, we are providing unprecedented, impactful creative assets for brands and retailers at speed. All with localized store-level messaging and relevant messages to shopper segments based on first-party data.
Best advice: Avoid making short-term decisions at the expense of long-term value. Today leading retailers are making strategic, future-focused moves by investing in in-store retail media. This shift makes perfect sense. Not only from a media standpoint — given that their largest and most engaged audiences are still in-store, where shoppers spend more time and interact more deeply compared to online — but also from a long-term sustainability perspective.
By replacing traditional P-O-P signage and in-and-out displays with dynamic retail media, brands can run more efficient campaigns with fewer logistical challenges, reduced costs and lower environmental impact. It's a smart move that aligns with broader ESG (environmental, social and governance) goals while also improving execution and ROI.
Memorable aha moment in your career: My aha happened during Super Bowl season. That's when I correlated that audience size to retailers that entertain Super Bowl-sized audiences every week to two weeks. As a media form, they deliver ads with greater proximity to purchase, aiding impactfulness with the ability to drive incremental sales right there and then versus waiting for a viewer/shopper to make his or her next trip and hoping the ad is recalled.
Being "in the moment" is a huge differentiator, and being "in the game" year-round is a super-sized opportunity for brands without the Super Bowl commercial-sized price tag.
What you're listening to right now: Podcasts like Retail Media Breakfast Club with Kiri Masters; Retailgentic (Scot Wingo) and The Middlemen (hosted by Tom Limongello and Todd Sawicki).
Future travels: My wife and I will visit Napa Valley later this year — one of our favorite destinations. We've always loved the beautiful scenery, incredible wine and relaxing atmosphere. It's a place that never gets old, no matter how many times we go.
