Retail Media Central to Giant Eagle's Strategy, Justin Weinstein Says
Retail media needs to be embedded in a retailer’s go-to-market strategy, not something that sits off to the side, Justin Weinstein, EVP, chief merchandising & marketing officer at Giant Eagle, said during a keynote session at last week’s Retail Media Summit.
Giant Eagle laid the groundwork by installing scanners inside stores, setting up shelf-checkout lanes and launching a loyalty program, Weinstein said. Then the $10 billion food retailer had to answer a few questions: "How does that loyalty program collect data? How does that, then, enable you to do personalization? How does that, then, build brands?"
Central to building customer loyalty has been putting value front and center, which goes well beyond lower prices, Weinstein said. "It’s about service, it's about quality, it's about uniqueness, it's about differentiation," he said. "If there's not value for them, it's just a money grab; and if it's just a money grab, we're going to erode trust; and if we erode trust, we're not going to have customers, we're not going to have data, [and] we're not going to have retail media."
Related: Learn more about Giant Eagle's retail media strategy from digital leader Heather Feather
To make retail media stick, be scalable and add value; retailers need a strategy that goes beyond "grow retail media dollars," Weinstein said. "The strategy has to be, 'How are you going to do something unique for the customer? How are you going to provide them with value that is different than what the guy down the street is able to do?'"
Giant Eagle has put in place capabilities with Leap Media Group and the myPerks loyalty program, which the retailer has nurtured and invested in along with e-commerce, Weinstein said. In building this array of pieces, retailers need to ensure a win-win-win scenario for customer, retailers and CPG partners, he said.
Sitting inside that reinvestment plan are a few pillars: providing excellent service, which is easy to say but challenging to do; higher-quality products, with the idea that "if it's not of the quality we want, we shouldn't be selling it;" and a better shopping experience, leveraging channels ranging from grocery television to in-store displays, Weinstein said.
"My encouragement is not to say that this is the right strategy" for every retailer, he said. "This is a strategy. ... Having something that you can say, 'This is our guiding star, in terms of who we're going to be, and how we're going to be there for the customer, and for our partners,' is something that has galvanized our organization in a powerful way."
And the strategy isn't solely about retail media but also involves personalization and loyalty over time, Weinstein said, adding that Leap is an acronym that stands for loyalty, experiences, audiences and partnerships. "We start with loyalty because it all starts with the customer, and with the data," he said. "How do we have the right audience targeted? How do we have the right level of personalization? … And then the last piece is the most important: How do you measure it?"
Giant Eagle also has worked to bridge newer forms of outreach with more traditional ones, going beyond sponsored search, algorithms and other digital tactics to sometimes just focusing on what’s in the customer's backyard, Weinstein said.
During the NFL draft, for example, held in the retailer's hometown of Pittsburgh, Weinstein's team proposed a mobile outdoor display in the form of a motorized, branded shopping cart on wheels. At his urging, they signed up "tens" of brand partners to help pay the costs — and share in the attention.
"We delivered unbelievable media impressions through this," he said. "It wasn't about us saying, 'Hey, we need you to do this because we want to pay for this buggy.' It was us saying, 'We need you to do this because we have an opportunity to go reach these customers. We have an opportunity to hitch our wagons together to win.'"
And that doesn't always involve a high-tech solution, even in 2026, Weinstein said. "Sometimes, it's a buggy with a heavy engine on it, and two guys dressed up in capes, riding around the city of Pittsburgh," he said. "And it's an awesome example of retail media, in my opinion, that breaks a lot of the norms but keeps a lot of the core ingredients that have to be in place in order for a retail media network to ultimately thrive."
