A United Vision: Breaking Barriers in Retail Media
The retail media landscape presents unprecedented opportunities for brands and retailers who know how to seize them. While many companies are rushing to stake their claim in this growing space, the most successful organizations share a common trait: They've mastered the art of cross-team collaboration. When departments work in harmony, retail media programs don't just perform better — they transform into powerful growth engines for the entire business.
Consider this scenario: You're a brand marketer who's discovered a retail media network (RMN) delivering exceptional iROAS. You can see the potential clearly, but when you bring it to your brand marketing colleagues, their enthusiasm doesn't match yours. They're concerned about disrupting existing media plans and potentially compromising other initiatives. It's a common situation, but it doesn't have to be this way.
A major CPG brand recently faced this exact challenge. Instead of letting departmental concerns derail their opportunity, the brand brought together brand marketing, trade marketing and category management for a holistic approach. The result? Their retail media program didn't just drive digital sales — it amplified in-store performance, strengthened retailer relationships and created a blueprint for future launches.
Rethinking Success
The most effective retail media programs thrive on organizational structures that encourage innovation and collaboration. For retailers, this means fundamentally rethinking how success is measured and rewarded. Traditional performance metrics often focus too narrowly on department-specific goals, creating unintended barriers to collaboration. Smart retailers are now developing comprehensive KPIs that reflect both short-term wins and long-term value creation. They're including cross-functional impact measurements in performance reviews and creating shared goals that encourage departments to support each other's initiatives.
Compensation structures play a crucial role in this transformation. As Charlie Munger famously observed, "Show me the incentive, and I'll show you the outcome." Leading retailers are taking this wisdom to heart, structuring bonuses to reward both individual excellence and team achievements. They're following Amazon's example of using long-term equity compensation to align interests across departments. This approach ensures that when retail media succeeds, everyone shares in the victory.
Communication emerges as another vital piece of the puzzle. Successful retailers establish regular cross-functional strategy sessions, create digital dashboards accessible to all stakeholders and implement real-time reporting systems for immediate feedback. This constant flow of information ensures that merchandising, marketing, operations and other teams remain aligned and can respond quickly to new opportunities.
Selling More
For brands, the path to success starts with reimagining how marketing budgets are managed. Progressive companies are moving away from rigid channel-specific allocations, instead pooling marketing resources to maximize flexibility and impact. This approach recognizes a fundamental truth: Whether the money is spent on trade promotions, brand advertising or retail media, it all comes from finance with a single purpose — selling more products to more customers.
Working Together
Agency relationships also require careful consideration. The most successful brands create clear frameworks for agency collaboration, with transparent evaluation criteria and regular feedback sessions. They make it clear how agencies can compete for additional business while requiring cooperation with other partners during active campaigns. This balance of competition and collaboration ensures that agencies remain motivated while working together effectively toward common goals.
The brand-retailer relationship itself benefits enormously from this collaborative approach. Successful programs establish clear, mutually beneficial success metrics and create structured communication channels for sharing data insights. Regular strategic planning sessions help both parties identify opportunities and adjust tactics as market conditions change. This transparency and flexibility build stronger partnerships that can weather challenges and capitalize on opportunities more effectively.
Leadership plays a crucial role in driving these changes. The most successful organizations host regular leadership forums focused on cross-functional opportunities, provide visible support for collaborative initiatives and invest in tools and training that facilitate teamwork. They create cross-functional teams for major initiatives, develop shared planning calendars and regularly review and optimize workflows to remove barriers to cooperation.
Culture building becomes equally important in this transformation. Recognition programs that celebrate team success, training focused on collaboration skills and regular team-building activities help create an environment where cross-team cooperation becomes second nature. Both physical and virtual spaces for cross-team interaction encourage informal exchanges that often lead to breakthrough ideas.
Impacting Investment
The future of retail media belongs to organizations that can collaborate, communicate and align incentives to harness the power of their entire team. When departments work together, sharing insights and supporting common goals, the impact extends far beyond immediate sales metrics. Companies see stronger retailer relationships and better long-term growth trajectories.
About the Author
Angela Myers, currently serves as SVP of retail media for G-Comm, a division of Goodway Group. She brings over 20 years of experience across retail and ad tech with former leadership roles at Oracle, Datalogix, and A&P. With a strong background in insights, analytics, data monetization and retail media coupled with a customer-first approach, Myers now leads G-Comm, Goodway Group's retail media accelerator, expertly navigating brand marketers and retailers through the evolving retail media landscape.