What you need to know:

• Retailers seeking greater share of finite trade and marketing budgets, with some suggesting the traditional marketing funnel is collapsing, i.e. positioning for dollars beyond ‘performance’ or direct budget pots.
• Yash Gandhi, CMO at Steggles and Lilydale owner Baiada Poultry, sees retailer media as important, but lower funnel.
• Brand investment, he says, remains king.
• But retailers could take a bigger slice of Baiada’s overall spend – if they can prove incremental sales.

Amid debate over ‘the collapse of the funnel’ and retailers reallocating ad dollars from traditional brand-building media channels, Yash Gandhi, CMO at Steggles and Lilydale owner Baiada Poultry, thinks there is a long way to go before that happens.

In a commoditised category, “it’s critical for us to differentiate our brands and to do that we have to invest in brand building”, per Gandhi.

“There's more and more ask for trade spend, but you've only got a finite budget, so you can't keep pouring money into it without investing in your own brands first,” he says. “‘Brand over time, sales overnight’.”

But he says using retailers’ loyalty program data for targeted campaigns has delivered gains.

“They’ve got rich data. If you know who your consumers are or who you're going after, a brief targeted at a certain segment of shoppers has seen a positive shift in terms of people trialling our brand or redeeming various offers,” says Gandhi.

“So there are times where it is quite helpful. But not at the cost of brand investment – and that's the trap marketers need to watch out for.”

Meanwhile, privacy law proposals published last month are a broader watch out.

Missing links and ROI

Gandhi says Baiada takes similar view to most of the other marketers interviewed for Mi3's Retailer Media Next report – more work on ROI and linkage across in-store and online is required.

“Don’t get me wrong, retail media is an important part of our marketing mix, because we do need a tactical layer for when the consumer flows down the funnel – from awareness, consideration to the final path to purchase,” he says.

“Where there is room for improvement is demonstrating ROI of the various assets deployed at point of sale and in-store. Can you link what was seen on the screen, point-of-sale, to the product that was purchased? That's the missing link.”

If retailers can robustly connect all of those dots – effectively guaranteeing results for every dollar spent – Gandhi thinks brands will find it an offer they can’t refuse.

“Our spend with retailers hasn't increased … It's what we would spend typically, but as their offer continues to improve, it may shift,” per Gandhi.

“If they can provide insights from the data, ROI and effectiveness of what is being spent on their media channels, that will certainly make things interesting.”