What We Can Learn From Shopper Marketing - Episode 233

INTERVIEW WITH JULIE LIU

DESCRIPTION

In today’s podcast, we are talking with Julie Liu, a returning guest of the show, about the evolution of shopper marketing. The way we shop has changed over the years. How has that affected the marketing space? How do digital marketing and traditional shopper marketing co-exist? What can the two learn from each other?

Make sure you tune in to find out!

Julie has spent the last 11 years in consumer goods marketing, first with Shiseido working on a clean beauty brand in the APAC region, before making the move over to Grocery 6 years ago. She is currently the National Manager of Commerce Media at Ghirardelli Chocolate Company, responsible for leading the company's retail media and digital shopper marketing strategy across Confections and Baking.

“Find opportunities for both teams to learn from each other, sit in meetings together, and build a good rapport with one another.”

— Julie Liu

KEY TAKEAWAYS

In the past few years there has been a shift from traditional shopper marketing to omni/digital commerce focus.
Shopper marketing was one of the first functions to go omni, but more so behind the scenes. First and foremost, shopper marketers should be consumer-focused, and their backgrounds have traditionally been in the brick and mortar space, with customer marketing, brand management, and the agency side. Over the years, they have been able to adapt because of their previous roles, and they also have been in the digital space long before the pandemic
Tension between digital and shopper marketing about budget allocation with ecommerce and digital folks who are begging, borrowing, stealing from shopping marketing budgets.
Ecommerce folks are doing all of the education. Shopper marketers understand retail and there is a lot that can be learned from them: merchant relationships, promo plans, planograms, secondary merchandising, etc.
The predicted demise of brick and mortar was greatly exaggerated.
The retail media arms are positioning themselves as an omni solution. Retail media has the ability to influence what is happening in stores. It is important to align the online with the in-store efforts.
In practice, shopper marketers are incentivized by what happens in-store, and the digital marketers are incentivized by what’s happening online. We should be trying to understand what growth looks like for a brand holistically.
Shopper marketers are extremely flexible. According to the Path to Purchase Institute’s study, the discipline has become a jack/jill-of-all-trades, and difficult to recruit for. Their focus was on paths of cooperation being open and thinking more holistically about what the team should look like.
Shopper marketer and digital roles are likely to converge in the future, depending on the organization they are part of. Shopper marketers are eager to learn about digital.
Already shopper marketing moving digital - QR codes in shelf signage, digital POS displays.
From the standpoint of business goals, we need to understand where the customer is and how they are shopping, interacting with the brand. We can find ways where we are both activating and reaching our shared business goals.
Walmart Connect - bringing the first-party data into the store, so the digital folks need to understand what’s happening in the store.
Julie is excited about the next few years of growth in retail media. It has become table stakes, with more folks interested in retail media that will become 20% of the digital ad spend by the end of next year.
Bobsled is working on a framework for brands to think about how to allocate their retail media spend across platforms. It is coming out in May.
Julie is going back and forth about Instacart, still seeing good results from ads but wondering about their long-term place in the ecosystem. Pressure from competitors factors into the calculations.