Episode 11: Unlocked with Austin & Elizabeth, featuring Paul Brenner

I saw things they didn't see, which was the tech that could enable programmatic buying and understanding where retail media was and its growth of onsite and eventually offsite. And I just felt like in store had to be a part of it because that was the majority of the audience. And they had something that radio didn't Austin, which was attribution, right? Which is what radio always wanted, right? To take credit for, you know, driving those audiences to those stores. Welcome back to this week's episode of Unlocked with Austin and Elizabeth. Each week Austin and Elizabeth sit down with friends, leaders and innovators to go behind the scenes of media's third wave retail media where digital innovation, brand storytelling and data driven strategies collide. Welcome back to Unlocked with Austin and Elizabeth. I'm Austin Leonard, co-host of our podcast. And by my good friend and partner in crime here, Mr. Elizabeth Donovan, hey, Liz, how's it going? It's going great. How are you? I am good. I'm good. Lots going on in our world and excited to have a special guest this week. Mr. Paul Brenner, Paul, how are you doing? I'm good. I did not just get back from Miami like you two. So we just not back. Well, I got back last night at 10 p.m. She all a tan and fresh and here I am with my midwestern whiteness. Well, I'll tell you I didn't have any time. Get the beach or the pool. There was no time. Non-stop meetings. That's how you know you were productive, Liz. If you didn't get much time outside, you know you're out there doing the work. So that's what we do. Well, awesome. Well, this episode is a special passion point because we've got a lot going on in store finally. And really, we've seen the restore retail media. It's really started to get the spotlight over the past years. If people are starting to prioritize it more, the technology's advancing. Before we dive into that, Paul, I'd love to hear more about your background. Prior to really becoming a leading voice in our retail and commerce media industry. Okay. You know I'm a lot older than you. That's where we should start, right? Believe it or not, my first for into the advertising medium goes back to the 1992 radio commercial license as we're being doled out and TV was being gobbled up for different purposes. And I kind of started my career in that space. And over 25 years, really moved from one advertising based medium to the next, right? Radio to television. This is before there was a web browser Austin. There was actually web browsers. And then I went into smartphone apps and then in dash technology. But everything I've always done is about building an audience and then selling ads against that audience. So I've done that probably six or seven times on a global scale, right? Just all over the world. And it's probably like 2018. I had decided to really kind of retire but not work anymore. That's a different thing. And I left corporate America and some buddies of mine here who had a very good exit when they sold Salesforce or exact target to Salesforce for Salesforce marketing cloud. They said, Hey, we got this thing we're doing within store. Why don't you check it out? And I started digging into it for the next six months. And, you know, I saw things they didn't see, which was the tech that could enable programmatic fine and understanding where retail media was and its growth of onsite and eventually off site. Which is what radio always wanted right to take credit for, you know, driving those audiences to those stores. You sold it that way. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And we laughed because in our careers, if you could sell airtime and you're selling, you're selling, there's no printed thing that someone can bring into the card dealership or show to their boss. There's nothing happening in prime time TV. You have to be listening to hear it. So if you can sell air, you can basically sell anything. But the biggest idea of radio was big, broad awareness, but customized to different audiences. And the power of that audio format is really strong from brand telephs, right? As well. Yeah. And so that's really when my aha moment come when I won, I saw a tech that was, you know, selling music and messaging into retail environments. And then I held that up against the retail media. And I might have hypothesis that I proposed to the board time was like eventually in store will be part of retail media. That was in 2018, right? And so I just went on a campaign to make that a reality and just try to be a strong voice forward across the industry, across the world. Lomba, that became true and now screens are true and just trying to beat advocate in the industry. Well, that's phenomenal. Paul, this is what retail and commerce media is like we think about our backgrounds and the pioneers really in the space. It's those omnichannel solutions and all the technology partners that we've worked across. You basically worked on every single channel of media from your experience. Thank you for not going into retirement and coming back into the industry. That was my wife. She said, what are you going to do? Drive me crazy. My husband has had more years until he give retire from the NYPD and I say you could play one year of golf and then you go back to work. I don't know if that's going to be like Austin. He started his career in radio as well. So maybe Neil will be our producer moving. It was a boom. It was a boom. I mean, so much money was made in radio for 20 years. You know, like couldn't even get out of your way to stop making money in radio for, you know, 92 through mid 2000s, right? Early 2000s. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's such a strong efficiency channel for how do you reach a lot of people and how do you tell your story? And you know, one of the advantages that Audi has the video doesn't is how fast you can move to create content, but also just the ability to when you're looking at digital formats or you're watching something, you have to actively engage. But with audio, it actually, you can tell a story that can go into our brains and our memories in a very different way. And you can actually start to continue to build that by the efficiency and the number of touch points you can have. And you tell the story and the consumers actually they're telling the story inside of their head instead of looking at it and looking at your version of the story. That's part of why radio has always been fun and audio specifically, but. And retail media by my early math and its proven now, and we have 190 million listeners a month, right? I mean, viewers and listeners. So it's bigger than radio or bigger than connected TV. And you talk about the captive audience over a period of time. It's another reason I thought I was so fascinating, right? Because you weren't just using an in-dash and car, portable meter kind of thing. It's people, right? That are in those stores. And that's probably the best time to have that impact on them. It's funny that it's radio still touts that it has, you know, 265 million listeners. And we all know the holes in that, but shoppers or shoppers. And they're in the stores. And it's where you can make the most impact with audio and display. So looking back into when you first discovered retail and commerce, when was that aha moment where you're like retail commerce media? It's a thing. I would say so we launched in 2018. It was a few years. I mean, it was probably 2020, 2021 when retail media people finally started saying, we will include in store in retail media at some point. And that over the course of that year went from at some point to, wow, we should really be thinking about this more. And when I started to hear the, instead of me just saying it all the time and people starting to respond, that was when I think I understood that, you know, this is going to be something, right? It just took that retail media owner and eventually that's changed who controls it, what side of the house is on. But when I started to hear really good-sized enterprise networks say, yeah, we should be thinking about in store, that's when I felt like it was going to happen. That's phenomenal. And, you know, we all met, I think in 2021, you know, right after COVID at the most recent ascended, you know, once we could all get back together. And I would love for you to share about like, what was it like during those building moments into this company and, you know, getting the word out and going out in market during that time? Well, COVID was a blessing for some in context of this question, not good in a lot of ways, but because, you know, grocery became a necessary business, right? And it became one of the only things open, right? In that, in a lot of that, if we're at least that one year, right, where everybody was at home building doing lessons with their kids for school, it created that window, right? It created that window of saying, I should pay attention to this. And it just really built from that, right? So that was a really significant time for us. We picked up our biggest customers in 2020. And we had to install through COVID and we had to work through that, right? And we had to deal with the health risks of that. And then it started to ease up in 2021 a bit. And then out of that, it just kind of continued to build momentum. So that was really the impact from a COVID aspect was actually good for our growth business. But it was hard. And I think that's, you know, we've got a great marketing team. What they usually do with me is just set me out in front and say, talk about this and use your ability to get people behind to like draw interest to it. And we originally built the vibonomics brand, which you all know primarily. That's now our direct sales team. It wasn't on a marketplace at the time. It was just we signed up a grocery chain. We signed up a sporting goods chain, a drugstore chain, go out and direct sell. The retail media still was not owning it, right? This was when they said, give me a minimum annual guarantee. Give me the most of the rev. You go try and sell it, right? And that was a lot of the early marketing. We decided to launch build in store marketplace in like 2022 when our next prediction was R&Ns will eventually sell this inventory themselves, right? They will bring it in house eventually. And so we really just tried to build a brand around bi-bonomics that talked about why in store is important and why you should be bringing this into your fold, getting brands excited and trying to get the brand to draw the retail meeting network over, you know, into what they wanted to invest in digital. And then we launched in store marketplace in 2023 with really the very basis was self-serve. When you're talking through that timeline, all this part that's really exciting is that retail media really got the boost that it needed when digital e-commerce and delivery, specifically grocery, started to get the boost in the tailwinds. Unfortunately because of COVID, fortunately because it helped accelerate human behavior, that actually allowed a lot of the retailers to get the resources to get serious about building the retail meeting networks. And we talk a lot about on our show about the power of the data allows us to do closed measurement. And it started in digital because that's where most of those teams started by helping to monetize the on-site inventory and then obviously the off-site tools. But primarily was driven by the power of the retail data to measure digital sales and digital touch points differently. And what's fascinating about us that that grew, that's how the retail media business has actually got a free sources to staff and grow. Many of them to your point went through the outsourced growth curve where in order to get started, they didn't have enough people. And they worked with lots of different partners to help do that. But I think it's this is the part that's great is as those teams got bigger, they realized that their biggest assets were not just the websites. It is the power of the data. It's their customer base. Where's that customer base most? It's in their stores. That's where I think like in store retail media has been around since the advent of the first shelf sign. Not even just like the actual signage, but like putting the label of the thing at the shelf was where in store retail media really started. Now it's having this resurgence in a different way because all the what we learned from digital, starting measurements, starting with targeting, it's a little different in store than it is online isn't it all. So when in store marketplace, we came up with that idea in 2023. We decided to leave vivenomics in place as a direct sales arm because there were still retail media networks that wanted to subsidize or add incremental value by having somebody out in the market kind of advocated for in store sales. When we launched ISM, I think what we saw was yes, the investment and growth had come from onsite and off site. The digital tools were the investment. And we never really walked into that saying, ISM needs to be at the same digital technical level of what you're doing over here. You're always going to have to think of it differently because it probably started in 1942 with a white spray paint on a piece of wood in front of a store, you know, making a promotion for soda pop. Like it literally is that old, right? And so the question is that I've always tried to deal with on in store marketplace is yes, tech is the foundation of RMM and the way that they try to incorporate new sales channels like in store is to always think about tech. What we've done with in our research and why we brought this up was I wasn't seeing that growth beyond say 1% of an RMM budget being towards the place where probably 85 to 90% of the actual buying is a curry, right? And so I just sat back and said, well, something has to change. We can't all just keep saying create tech that makes the in store digital experience better. Yes, it will eventually have an impact, right? Totally agree with that. But what I was seeing was the merchant was staying in one room and the RMM was staying in another room. RMM was saying, I grew out of nothing using tech. Therefore, I must use tech to grow in store and the merchant saying, no, I've been doing it the same way for 50 years. This is the way I do it. How are we going to figure this out? And I think that's really so my on the ISM is to marketplace. My premise is a little wrong and then I thought tech was going to be what broke it through. And I just had not seen that change occurring over a few years. So I said, well, let's look at it from a different lens, right? And that's to your point, it is not a new thing at all. It's about how do you talk about it? So when we heard at a Senate, most recent, you know, you released this research, which I think you guys did some really good work really surveying a lot of the key leaders across all the spectrum, not just, you know, retailers or not just brands. What I hear the most from brands is that what's holding the back is measurement because they want to be able to measure it like they do measure online and they need to show that it has a better incremental lift than other things they could do either in store or with digital channels. And I think generally what you have found is that measurement is definitely something we need to solve, but maybe not the key driver of why it's not moving faster. Is that a fair way to sum it up? Yeah, I think what came out of our initial hypothesis was a reaction that said measurement, yes, consistent metrics first. So I think, you know, a tech is really just taking a requirement and automating it or making it faster or making it more obvious, right? But what we heard was consistent metric. And so people started saying, well, I have four different scorecards and why do the there's different metrics on every scorecard, right? So what are the three or four metrics on each scorecard that make a collective view of my total investment and my total product movement, right? Not I need to go talk to the merchant for this and the you know, the RMN for this and then my merchandising person here and build my menu mix model over here and then try to strap together loyal shoppers versus new to household versus all the different ways that they break out the persona is what really got out of that was consistent metrics. And you know, we did roll it out of the Senate. Awesome. Thank you for being there and being attentive and asking good questions. After that actually at the event and even after the two weeks after we that was two weeks ago, a couple weeks ago, a long list of brands have come directly to us and said, you struck a nerf. Like we want to understand what this is. We want to give feedback. Even the IB, as come around and said, you know, this is the something we need to address because the hopes of tech in store driving it on its own by itself is going to be RMN by RMN, right? And they're all different vendors and everybody has their market advantage and I applaud those kind of innovations. I think everyone will benefit in that space if we agree on what these consistent metrics should be across the two sides of the organization. And the brands have confirmed that in their response. I would love for you to share with the audience, Paul. Like what consistent metrics are you getting X for or are you supporting for the industry currently? So I can draw from a market leader who's a good friend of both of you is one of our clients. And about two years ago, we started down this road of what does an omnichannel study really look like? How do you leverage the data you already have from your in-store providers? The way that they look at measurement and we identified ways to break apart category leaders, you know, in each different part of the organization, set up a structure where if you buy an omnichannel investment in store has a certain set of metrics that are really provided by the merchant and they're included in the RMN offer, but as it's bought, essentially the merchant buys the inventory from the RMN, right? Internal math. But it's really the metrics that the merchant would normally provide to that brand individually. The metrics the RMN uses to assess their performance and we put them together into one outcome. And in one year, the revenue for in-store didn't get reallocated. It grew by an order of magnitude, an order of magnitude, 10X, right? And it was really just process change. It was literally just the way it was bundled together, the way it was sold, right? How they included the merchant in the, okay, your allocation is going to be 30% of the buy, or 25% of the buy, which is where we've kind of landed, 25% and then they turn the merchant and say, okay, you're going to be part of that program. Now you have to worry about where the skid is on the floor and where the product is in the shelf. Those are your normal things, right? And then when it's done, you're going to provide me back the product movement metrics at the end. And so we didn't invent anything new. We didn't create a new, SVR is not new. It's a through line of what those key metrics are. And then we started this cadence and I mean, we'll do I think so far this year, we've probably already for that one provider done 50 studies on different campaigns and trying to find category diversity like you want to do. And it really has been an order of magnitude. And so there was no new tech at that point. Now do they now think about, oh, okay, how could I use tech to make that better? Of course, right? Of course, but they didn't establish that through line before and that that's what we did. It wasn't specific metrics, but that's kind of secret sauce I wouldn't share anyway because that they figured this out. Well, you're leading this eggway. What's a story that you haven't talked about before that you'd like to share? Wow. I mean, there are a lot of them. We get the behind the scenes on a lot of things. I think one thing that I find really interesting is the constant struggle and Austin you're in this world now is when you're trying to solve for this, how do you structure the organization to make it work? Right? I've watched it happen in real time where, you know, the merchant exact team decides that's the kind of person that should go run the RMM and infuse merchant thinking. I've seen the RMM designator red rover, they throw in over the enterprise market and said go advocate for RMM to be on that sily organization. And I've seen some really interesting things play out with that that the behind the scenes stories of like the feuds and the who's in charge are almost comical sometimes. You know, and I go, do you work for the same company? And so the funny story is I was being negotiated with a very large RMM and they were really like, oh, in store this, in store that and I'm not sure how we're going to make this work and negotiating hard with me. And we got on a call with the legal enterprise and we were all in the call. And the person said the name of their RMM and legal goes, and what is that? No, they didn't know. They didn't even know. I mean, that's about the best I can do for you, but it was one of those moments where it's like, man, the RMM is really trying to find its way inside of this giant enterprise. I mean, again, that's that's part of like what you talked about a lot of is the different growth curve of the RMMs and organizational linemen and organizational change, not just the retailers, but across the industry. It feels like there a lot of what when we talk about the report and where in store is getting some of the growth in the tailwinds, it's all tied back to the same thing that we're trying to do on the digital side too, which is like, how are you driving in communal growth? And how do you tie into the overall strategy that the business has as a retailer that whether it's CBG or someone else that they have to help grow their sales at that retailer? And how do you prove that it's incremental? And then how does that fit into your overall portfolio? That's the maturation curve that everyone keeps talking about. Everyone keeps trying to put, you know, different like his teenage years of retail media is this column was great. It was very funny, but he talked about it in terms of potty training, which is always a journey, which day are you on? So shout out to Colin Callagher from Ivy for that one, but I think part of the mix of that is how do you educate an internally? How do you navigate to say not what you should control, but how do you leverage the tools of thin the business to grow the overall business? And I think that's part of the reason in store has hasn't grown faster as well as because that's the most visible part of the traditional side of the retailer. It's not about control. It probably feels like that, but it's about how do you make sure that people know how it's going to impact the customer experience and how does the drive sales differing or better than what they've done previously, right? Yeah, and that comes down to contribution margin. Honestly, I mean, whenever you, I had probably what three years ago, I forget who the research person was to gauge your success as NARM in as between 0.1 and 1% of your gross overall retail sales, right? And that was always kind of a benchmark where you saw kind of early adopters achieving 1%. I've been in meetings lately, particularly in the UK, where CEOs are now saying they would like see 3% out of our men contribution margin. And I'm like, well, if you're going to go there, you really need to sell these organizational challenges, right? And so it's kind of happening as the revenue shows up and the growth shows up, I think that can be aided by crossing over into that end store piece because I'm seeing in a lot of cases 20% new money, right? On a campaign by campaign base. So if an RMN is saying, I want to see 40% growth for you, Mr. Brand, 20% will be for end store because we figured that out for you. It's an easier conversation to have, right? So to support what you're saying, Austin, is it, you know, it's a growth cycle. But to hear into CEO say that tell the team they want 3% contribution margin, it's astronomical numbers. Yeah. And I think the CFOs and the C suites that like I think that's a useful benchmark. I think at the end of the day, though, that it's the folks that are doing right, it's less about what the contribution margin is and how do they contribute to the overall business and how are they helping to drive the total business for the retailer and for the partner that's advertising because if it's just about the contribution margin, then it can be challenging and aviants. Yeah. It just makes it, it just makes it more obvious. I guess is the point, right? It might give you more resources to try and new things, or it might, you know, allow the org change to be easier decisions, right? I'm just saying that's kind of like what everybody talks about is like, you know, I'm a public authority company and I have to grow the business and if I discover that by empowering retail media and market, you know, the marketing people to work together better work better together and to, you know, to do those things. Ultimately, it does help contribution margin. I think that's more of where I was going with. I totally agree with you on the making the right decisions. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, man, we got deep in the weeds and again, that's what we love to do on on this show for sure is have people hear some of the conversations that are happening behind the scenes that they don't know is to get to hear. So these are sure a lot of perspective ball. You're welcome. You are welcome. Always fun to talk to you. On a podcast or standing around a tabletop, whatever. And we have one final question for you that we ask all our guests. Uh oh. Let's in your arm and exec survival kit. Patients. Patients. I like that. Patients. That's a great one. You're the first one to say that. Yeah. I think we all of us that I've lived in retail and commerce. We know that the ideas can flow faster than than the realities. So I commend you for having patients in your toolkit and that two year sales cycles. One year integration plans, right? Two year revenue roadmaps and then a whole lot of noise in between their Austin and Liz. So yeah, patients. Well, I wasn't built in a day. Was not didn't I burn down in a week or something? We'll have to fact check that one later. You might fact check that one. I got an optimism too, Paul. That's right. That's our. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for jumping on. We're excited to share the research work that you guys have done. We'll add it to the podcast liner notes so that people can dig into themselves. But we really appreciate you joining and sharing some of the stories today. It was so great to have you, Paul. Thank you for your time. Thanks, Liz. Thanks, Austin. Awesome. Thanks for listening to this episode of Unlocked with Austin and Elizabeth. As always, you can find all of our past episodes. Follow us on LinkedIn, go to Apple or Spotify or wherever you like to listen to your podcasts, share with your friends and give us a like and a high rating. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for more very soon. Bye. Thanks for tuning in to Unlocked with Austin and Elizabeth. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to follow us on Spotify and Apple podcasts so you never miss a moment. We're dropping new episodes regularly and we've got plenty more to share. Until next time, stay curious, stay open and stay unlocked. The views and opinions expressed in this episode are solely those of the participants and do not reflect the views of the host or their affiliated companies or institutions.