Costco's Mark Williamson - Live from Cannes Lions 2026

Mark (00:03)

Hi, I'm Mark Williamson, AVP of Retail Media at Costco Wholesale, and you're watching the CPG Guys Podcast.

Papa Raj (00:08)

Hello and welcome to this episode of the CPG Guys' have some for Sri, your co-host and also C.R.A. co-founder of Think Look Insulting. Your trusted partner in your omnichannel development journey where you can get in touch with me at shri at thinklookinsulting.co. Please do listen to my older daughter's music at www.rhearaj.com and call her Lara Raj, my younger daughter is a member of the world's fastest growing global pop group, Katseye and we've come off a clean sweep of the AMAs. Three nominations, three awards, starting in global as well as 21 cities.

the commerce acceleration division of Omnicom. Peter, day 4 for me, day 3 for you.

us going so far.

PVSB (01:10)

like day thirty. It's been it's it's been a lot Sri. not a lot of sleep. But the best for me is when you and I got our hour and a half of free time this entire show and we walked up and down the croissette and all the people that we knew we ran into as we walked. That was to me the absolute goal of events like Cannes Lions.

Papa Raj (01:31)

You

know when I do bigger events and give you a free time? I sold it to you as free time when really you went to be a bunch of off...

PVSB (01:39)

Mark,

this is how our conversation usually goes pre-event. Anywhere we go. Peter, I'm building in time so that you can walk the floor, you can have a little relaxation, and then we show up on the ground and goes, Okay, remember what I told you I was gonna do? Yes, scratch that. Your schedule is mine, I own every second.

Papa Raj (01:56)

All right, so make sure you subscribe to our podcast and you put up a listening platform where can get all these episodes Go back and consume some of that. Yes 600 plus episodes you already published. Of course, you'll listen to our Fortune 500 C-Suite series and you which features CEO, CCO, CMO, CTO and so much more Lots of Cs if not follow the deal the last 10 hour episodes late May to mid-June or so and now let's move to our esteemed guests having the

PVSB (02:24)

I'm

steaming you steam I was gonna

Papa Raj (02:29)

bar for esteem.

PVSB (02:31)

This

Let's see.

Papa Raj (02:35)

Having the AVP of retail media Costco wholesale back in the studio for a spectacular return appearance feels like winning the ultimate corporate championship. Peter, you better clear a spot on your desk and get your sharpest analytical notebook open because today we're going to look at the world's absolute favorite warehouse club and how they're fundamentally rewriting the entire commerce media ecosystem. Looking out across the industry right now, they're doing fabulous, lots of growth, a massive system-wide paradigm shift happening with legacy platforms.

hide their ad tech inside black boxes. Costco actually when live on stage did the exact opposite, unveiled the entire tech stack with absolute bold transparency and marketers therefore aren't just looking for generic ad impressions anymore, they're starting with clean deterministic data environments that do indeed respect the merchant's role first, drive the actual pallet velocity of the warehouse floor. So ready when you guys are, join us in welcoming to the CPG guys Mr. Mark Williamson.

Welcome man AVP of Costco Retail Media ain't I?

Mark (03:39)

Wh

why thank you. And first of all, congratulations on six hundred episodes. Thank you. I I had the pleasure of making a video to celebrate your five hundredth episodes. You so you you're not slowing down. But congratulations to you both. Thank you.

Papa Raj (03:48)

We

Thank you. I'm still excited that this conversation doing this live with you actually started with hilarious LinkedIn post from you last.

Mark (03:59)

I I'm I'm a little bit sad because I was having so much fun not being in Cannes, that being here is a little bit of a downer. Not that it's not a great event and everything's fine, I'm very happy that I'm here, but I'm kinda sad having that other side of my personality, which is I'm not a Cannes.

Papa Raj (04:14)

Did they play the GnR song for you? Welcome to the Jungle? It fun to engage. That's what you follow.

Mark (04:19)

Not

quite, but would be good.

Papa Raj (04:21)

In the digital liner notes of this episode will include links to Costco wholesale's company corporate websites for business to access while we go on with the conversation and of course Mark's LinkedIn profile to mark. Let us kick it off with the big news that completely has been well received by the industry. At recent industry events, you took the stage and you actually did what no other retail media network has

done so far. You were very transparent about Costco's full technology stack revealing details such as the identity vendor, DSP, clean room provider use. Why don't you make a deliberate choice to embrace absolute transparency and how does that influence partnerships from brands and agencies?

Mark (05:02)

I don't I don't think I expected it to be as big of a deal as it was. to be honest, the playbook that we wrote was to be as transparent as possible. There's been a high call for transparency in the retail media and the commerce media space. and I don't know if there's a lot of mistrust, there's just a lot of opaqueness in how things work. and one of our goals when we set out to do this was to do it differently. And this was one of the areas that we identified as

Being important because in all humility, I don't know if anybody would look to Costco wholesale. And of all the things we do well, point and say, those guys do ad tech really, really well. Like, I don't think that's an area where we have a right to win. And so I felt that the only way that we could move hearts and minds and build the kind of credibility that we need is to be overly transparent with the tech stack that we're building. And in terms of response, like one, the response was surprising to me of how you

Unique it felt because at the time I didn't really think it was going to land that way. But I think there is a high degree of appreciation from the industry, from brands, from agencies, because it gives us something concrete to talk about. Because a lot of them have their own ed tech, they have their own data, they're making decisions as well, and I think it helps them inform. And it's a sharing of best practices, but I think it makes it easier for them to figure out how to plug into us, how to plug us into them. And I think ultimately that's good. And if I if I assess the last few months since that presentation,

I have noticed a switch from some other programs, some other RMN, some other CMS to do the same thing. I feel like there is this groundswell of let's be a little bit more open, and I think that's a good thing for the industry.

Papa Raj (06:43)

I couldn't agree with you more. The CPG guys knows all too well that when you're the first to take them into the industry, it actually sucks up a lot of oxygen. Of course, others will copy you, but you set the tone, man. Well done.

Mark (06:56)

Wow, appreciate

Thank you.

PVSB (06:57)

Mark, welcome to the podcast. We're glad to have you back, episode number two. You're three more away from the coveted varsity CPG.

Mark (07:07)

This is like hosting SNL.

PVSB (07:09)

Except it's not a small there's there there are only four people that have room the jacket. So that's not so we did have a Sarah Marzano on on on eMarket or on Monday, she's been on once, and we recorded four panel sessions, and she goes, so I have my five now, right?

Papa Raj (07:10)

So we can't know what the jacket is.

Mark (07:12)

Did you know that it's

Plenty of motivation. I would like that.

I

I don't know if that counts. Alex Baldwin. Yeah. I it to be the Alec Baldwin of the CPG Guys podcast would be like a like a that'd be a life story.

PVSB (07:38)

I mean like we think of it as the the the Tom Hanks but we'll go and listen.

Papa Raj (07:42)

you

Mark (07:43)

A a a lovable America's dad. America's dad

PVSB (07:47)

Do

that.

You you have a beautiful phrase that Shri and I have come to really respect. It's retail Media Costco exists to accelerate merchandise sales. You maintain a strict structural hierarchy where merchandise velocity and member loyalty sit firmly at the very top. So if a digital ad campaign doesn't help move the physical pallet product or reinforce the value of a membership card, it simply doesn't belong in your ecosystem. So my question is: how do you enforce this merchandise?

Merchant-first philosophy when national brand managers come in with legacy KPIs focused entirely on vanity ad metrics.

Mark (08:26)

I I'd say it's it's it's a bit of a a bit of a transformation and like some of the meetings we've had already here at Cannes have very very reinforcing that there is appetite from both sides to do this differently and to do it better and to have a compounding effect between brand objectives and retailer objectives. I I I don't think retail media is so cool that it's going to change brand management or the fundamentals of building a brand, and so to expect them to come all the way to us is a little bit too much.

Ask, but also for a brand manager to ignore the realities of retail. And why had somebody told me earlier today is that Costco is its own channel, it's not the wholesale channel, it's not the club model, it is Costco. And so I feel like our responsibility is bringing that lens forward to a brand manager, even down to the point of let's walk the floor with the brand manager. Customer teams from CPGs, they're on the floor all the time. They're walking with merchants, they understand the logistics, the in and outs. Brand managers don't really understand at its at the core.

The magic of Costco. And we believe that the more we bring that into their world, their creative, their expertise is unmatched. We can help them do what they do even better by bringing whether it's the data, the intelligence, the targeting, the measurement, but the magic of Costco into their minds and let them just create from there. So like I don't know if it'll help in all, or all it'll work in all instances, but we're confident that this model can really bridge the gap between brand and retail.

PVSB (09:53)

So follow-up

to that, do you encourage brands to come to you with new innovation, an idea, and let you collaboratively build out how you can bring that to life through retail media? Like what what are you are you looking for something fully baked or do you like to get in there and add some ingredients, I guess?

Mark (10:10)

what I'm asking. Yeah, seldom does fully baked work at Costco because of the nuances of just the the executional realities. And so we we have to adjust just about everything that happens. There's very little boilerplate that that can work at Costco. So the expectation is is that they are bringing ideas. And we might bring ideas to them, but there's there's an army of brand managers, it's me and a a handful of my my underlings, doing the best we can to keep up with 150 suppliers each. And so like

Like the balance, the balance of the thinking and the creativity is definitely on the brand side right now. The good news is like there are no shortage of ideas coming out of these brand teams or shopper teams or activation teams. Our job is to make it fit. And like I I was exposed to a very large brand was looking to introduce a new item where they have limited distribution inside of a Costco. That's reality. That means their national playbook is not gonna work. They have a test in a small market, but they didn't want to just put it on the shelf and hope it works.

They didn't want to just do sampling and hope works. So what we talked about it, they ran a roadshow, which gave them a slightly higher footprint, it gave them signage, it gave them a whole experience that ended up performing incredibly well. Does that idea scale to 630 warehouses? I don't know. But that's the kind of thing where the brand conceived of the story, but we had we could help them figure out how to bring that story to life within the limitations, but also the unique, powerful solutions that only Costco can bring.

Papa Raj (11:36)

You know you talked about the magic of Costco Wholesale. Just as we started the show, I kind of said congratulations on the fast-mover advantage. Now I'm flip the script and say, a lot of retail media networks started out with brittle ecosystems, measurement being weak or non-existent, at least not to the brand's satisfaction for the amount of investments that were going in. You actually have somehow carved out a last-mover advantage, where you've been able to quietly

observe the market and engineer a robust private data cloud from the ground up? How did waiting and prioritizing a clean, unfragmented data foundation allow you to completely leave from a black box, what I would call reporting traps that are frustrated with CPT teams, brand teams, whatever?

Mark (12:23)

well I mean never underestimate the power of a clean sheet of paper. And that's that's been that's been a huge benefit for us is that we we're not starting from scratch, but we're pretty darn close to scratch. And a little bit of serendipity as well, because I arrived at Costco about the same time of a technology and a big innovation in our technology business, which presented the opportunity to enter a new relationship with Google Cloud, which opens up new relationships with different partners that are cloud native and and really

What we were looking for. And so I feel like we were the beneficiaries of a blank slate and some serendipitous timing. And and I was at like it like I have to acknowledge the fact that a lot of the original sins of retail media, a lot of the shortcuts, I I did myself. I've been doing this for about 15 or 16 years, and so I have lived and breathed that. And so there's a lot of scars that I carry on myself that I promised myself I wouldn't do again if I had the opportunity.

PVSB (13:22)

Shout out to my friend Jose Gomes at Google Cloud. He and his team. I work with Jose at dunnhumby and he is as smart as they get, so you're in very good hands.

Mark (13:32)

We the first meeting we had with with Jose and the cloud team, we were with our CIO and and s others from our ad tech, our technology business and a few of us from the business side, and they brought a perspective and Jose leading the thought you know, being the thought leader in that about like the art of the possible. And it was incredible because we had written a shell of our retail media plan, but we still didn't know how it was actually gonna work. We just knew what we wanted the end game to be. And in that in the two hour session, like walking out with my IT partners and go, so that's it.

Right? Like this is how we're gonna do this. And and it like and ever since then we've just been able to stack capability on capability because I think we got the framework right. not that we'll get every decision within it right, but the framework itself I I think has a lot of legs and gives us the ability to to grow, to scale, to flex as needed as we go through this.

PVSB (14:23)

I'm sending a bill to your marketing team for this unpaid advertisement, maybe they've reconciled them, but that's that's neither here nor there. Let's look at a highly disruptive off-site capability recently rolled out, which is Google product listing ads, the PLAs. This isn't a typical off-site audience extension or standard connected TV, CTV storytelling. You're moving Costco's first party retail media directly into Google shopping search, right?

For the brand listening, why does leveraging Costco's high-intense audience data inside Google's open shopping engine radically perform better than a brand trying to buy those generic keywords on their own?

Mark (15:04)

I mean

I think it all comes down to commerce. And you know, although the retail media is generally stuck in the lower funnel bucket, it's definitely a role that we're we're meant to play. But the the strategy behind how we're picking the channels that we're going into is that we we don't get to pick or dictate where people consume content, where they do their searching, where they do their discovery. And so it's incumbent on us to show up where that is happening. And so there is a lot of traffic on Costco.com. We have a lot of keyword searches, we sell a lot of big and bulky items.

This is great, but that's not the totality of the way that people are discovering, the way that they're researching, the way that they're finding out what it is they're gonna buy. And so we've we've noticed a gap in Google search. There's still a high volume, even with all the disruption coming from AI and LLMs, a lot of people still go to Google.com and they put in television, they put in washing machine, they put in refrigerator. And it turns out we sell a lot of those things on Costco.com. We have a great value on high quality items, we have white glove delivery. and

services and that story can't get told if we're not showing up, if we're not servicing where that matters. And so if you're a brand, of course they can buy the keywords. They may not be able to buy the shopping ads if if they don't have a conversion channel they can drive to. This is obviously an area that we thought we could be and it doesn't hurt when you have a lot of your supplier partners asking for this capability. So we're good listeners from time to time as well.

Papa Raj (16:26)

Good listeners indeed sir. So tying high intent open web search to verify the warehouse data as a game changer. you get that done. Let's look at what you call IRL or in real life activation, the third pillar of your declared omnichannel media strategy. Costco wholesale's

Physical Club Warehouse is a legendary for the high frequency, massive basket for traffic. How do you take in real world physical store signals, everything from fuel pumps, warehouse digital screens, dynamically trying to connect them back into one single digital loop that's beneficial for the consumer.

Mark (17:02)

we feel like we do have a competitive advantage in the ability to capture signal in the physical space. and it starts with the card scan on entry and it ends with the card scan on exit. And so like there is that closed loop ecosystem that already exists for us. And and to my knowledge that we may be the only retailer that is scanning a card on the way in. And that that brings that brings into incredible insight and understanding.

Understanding what conversion can look like in the warehouse. All of that data is captured inside of our Google Cloud instance. We call it our unified data platform. and it's all captured there at a member level. And with all of the innovation we've been doing on our website and through our activation partners, signal capture has been paramount in all of it. And not just capturing a signal, because you can tag anything. And you can gather things at an Adobe ID level, a ramp ID level, a core ID level, and then all the proprietary IDs that we have.

sp spraw all like sprawled all over our own and operated ecosystem.

If it doesn't tie back to a member, then none of it matters anyway. And so we've had to make big investments in making sure that the signal is captured and it's captured at the member level, which then allows us to pair that with the data coming from the warehouse, the traceable transactions, and understanding what those baskets look like. And so for the member, what ends up happening is we get to show them that we know them. We get to start for the first time talking to them from the context of their full Costco relationship, not their travel relationship in isolation, their Costco.com relationship.

And isolation, their warehouse relationship, all of those, like that is Costco to them. But to us it's been independent business units that the sum total of all the parts creates the Costco brand that people know and love. But we've had to look at that and say we can't change structurally how Costco is organized, but we can use advertising technology to piece it all together so the experience that our members get is as codes as possible.

Papa Raj (18:55)

Listening to you, I'm impressed that not only are you commercial retail media leader, but you're a tech leader now. Congratulations. A reminder to our audience for speaking with Mark Williamson, ABP for Costco Wholesale Retail Media.

Mark (19:03)

That was relation.

Mark.

PVSB (19:14)

Dig into this concept of a composable architecture. Your technical setup is intentionally designed as a cohesive orchestration layer where identity, activation, and clean room metrics can evolve independently without disrupting the core business. So, why should Global CPG Technology Head stop trying to build rigid, custom end-to-end stacks and instead adopt Costco's modular composable blueprint?

Mark (19:43)

here at Cannes and in other places, we end up talking about technology more than I think we would. So you think like, okay, let's talk about upfronts and spend commitments and activation ideas. more and more we are collaborating on the technology. And this is accelerating quite a bit on the agency side because they're looking for interoperability with the tools that they've built. But I do think there is there is wisdom in this idea of modularity or composability because none of us can predict the future.

We don't know what technology is going be in five years, three years, one year, in six months. And I think everybody knows the feeling of being trapped, either in with whether it's tech debt or contract or something that you know is limiting you. And to me, there's nothing more frustrating than knowing what's possible than not being able to do it. And so we put a premium as we were building this that we we think we're putting the right components in the right order with the right partners, but something's gonna give at some point. There's gonna be a new innovation.

There's gonna be a partner that doesn't fit exactly the way that we thought they were gonna fit, and we're gonna have to act fast. And I look at I look at some of the the leaders in this space that are technology companies, they are so good at this. And like there was a piece of news that dropped yesterday from one of our big competitors, and probably 10 people in my company sent me the article. And one of the comments I got was, How are they doing this? How are they moving so fast? And how is this the fourth or fifth big announcement they've made in the last week? Like that is after years of

architecting something that allows you to be bold and move quickly and integrate new technology quickly. And so like we may not be move as fast and be as bold as they are, but I I think that we should be in the driver's seat of what we do rather than outsourcing it to third party tech that that kind of controls our destiny.

Papa Raj (21:27)

I want to now keep going deeper and geek about debt. So the composable modularity is the ultimate future proof of play. We are rapidly entering the, I'm sorry, forgive me for using the word, the agentic era of commerce, where autonomous is predicted that autonomous AI agents are paying to manage complex segmentation, path to purchase recommendations, real-time budget optimization, all happening in CPEs behind the scenes. is Costco also utilizing advanced AI?

orchestration layers to cut through the operational friction making your complex and multi-partner systems intuitive and highly usable for brand uses of AI. deep consideration at this point.

Mark (22:07)

it is a it's a topic. And so we have we have work to do in this area, and I would say we're we're we're definitely not an early adopter of this, and I'm not an AI skeptic by any stretch, but but what has been important to Costco at large is how are we governing, how are we controlling, and how are we making sure that the promise of AI isn't creating issues other places, and so whether that's removing humans from an automated process or it's adhering to our data governance or privacy policy or whatever it may be, there's a lot of

Diligence we have to do to make sure that we are responsibly applying AI to the business. Now, there and there are examples of AI within the Costco wholesale in general and other areas. But for us in retail media, I would say that we are we are picking partners who are AI forward. And so when we are when we are fine, when we are finding who we're going to work with, it is a consideration for us. Even if we are not activating on their AI capabilities yet, or if they haven't built the thing that we want them to build yet, we are

We are showing a preference for companies that have a demonstrated ability to innovate and have a position on the role that AI can play in helping us move as fast or be as agile or as reactive as we need to be to AI.

Papa Raj (23:17)

I assume you're CPG vendor partners are bringing ideas around AI to you?

Mark (23:21)

for sure. And the like I I said earlier that on the on the member side, we don't get to dictate where members consume content. Our job is to show up where they are. I think it's the same thing on the buying side or the media planning side or whatever it may be. We don't get to pick how media is bought and sold. And as big as we are, as cool as we are, I think it's the wrong strategy to create a walled garden, we're the gatekeeper and tell everybody to come through our front door and do it our way. I don't think we're gonna get away with that. And so our strategy has been we have to plug into however people are.

buying. So whether we're bringing AI tooling or our tech stack is interoperable with AI tools, that's the more important thing. So I would describe us as AI ready

PVSB (24:00)

Mark, as a follow-up to that, let's say you find out that your business partner is developing an agent to replace you as the co-host of a podcast, what would you do?

Mark (24:10)

You know

what you can't fight, you can't fight the future.

PVSB (24:13)

Just

go with it.

Papa Raj (24:14)

you, Mr. Mark Williamson.

Mark (24:16)

Yeah

I I I I'm I'm confident that AI can do this better than I do. but I would dev I'd still subscribe and watch just to see what he says. But you never know, hey it's like part of me just like the robots take over, I just wanna

PVSB (24:28)

I'm on I'm obsolete there you have it from the authority. All right, let's talk about

Papa Raj (24:32)

in so many ways.

PVSB (24:35)

Let's let's look down the road at merchant media collaboration loop. In many traditional retail environments, the media network operates as an isolated outside fiefdom that frequently causes friction with the actual category merchants. Frequent is an inadequate description. at Costco, you've deliberately fused media capability directly into the merchandising life cycle. Can you take us under the

of the internal relationship. How do your media specialists work harmoniously alongside the warehouse buyers to drive mutual autonomo growth?

Mark (25:16)

I know that none of our merchants would describe our relationship as seamless. It is it's a work in progress. Ad tech is tough. Merchant relations is one of the hardest parts of being a retail media GM. And it's it is I I think especially in our world right now, it is probably the most important thing that we need to do. And so the way that we position our we call them our growth team, so we have growth managers and growth coordinators. Their job is to be the connected tissue between everything happening in the market.

marketing in the media world and our merchandising organization. I would say the the biggest issue right now is there's more merchants than there are retail media specialists. So they cover a lot of ground and they can't go as deep as we would like them to go. But in Costco being aligned with merchants is an absolute imperative. There's no margin for error. If we get behind an item because a brand got all excited about it and that item is sold out or it has regional distribution or or it's it's not hitting its sales metrics and it's on its way out.

That creates a lot of disharmony and distrust with our merchant organization. And it's not all on the negative side. On the positive side, there may be merchandising decisions that can be made because of the amplification of retail media. So we have to be lockstep with them. On everyday items that are regularly replenished, it's a little bit easier to be predictable about moving toilet paper. But we want to be a solution for all Costco merchandising, especially those brands that are what makes Costco unique. Those brands generally

don't have agencies, they don't have big brand marketing teams. They're looking to us to say, I am getting in, I have a regional test, I'm running a demo, I've got six weeks to prove that we should stay, what should we do? And that that the only way to do that is for us to align with our merchants and making sure we understand the plan that we're not being redundant. We're definitely not being conflicting, that we can be additive to help throw a little bit extra growth on top and help that out and try to be successful.

Papa Raj (27:10)

Well said on the partnership with the merchants. Because the next question I'm about to ask you will probably highlight that very well. The ad stack does indeed to be connected to the assortment. As you mentioned, there are hurdle rates, things of that nature. You are living in a world of a world-renowned, hyper-curated, disciplined product assortment. You're not getting 50 versions of an item. You're getting the absolute best value selections. How does this limited-skew club warehouse

environment fundamentally change the digital auction of your home site properties. Does a highly curated box mean that retail media relation of Costco is infinitely more valuable and defensive for the incumbent brand?

Mark (27:53)

are hopefully quickly that you get in a fight, you get your parking spot, you go in, you get into the building, and you get in there and you say, and immediately your list is gone. And you haven't yet discovered the thing that you want. And and so like and I think and that is the magic of Costco. Recreating that online is incredibly difficult. And so what what we try to reinforce is our role in bringing the process of discovery into the digital space. And the way

That works organically on Costco.com is we have merchants who bring those treasure hunt items onto the homepage. In a lot of cases, those are not pay-to-play. Those are a merchant with 40 years of experience knowing and feeling what needs to happen. The algorithm is their gut, and they're incredibly good at it. So if you're a brand and you're trying to break through, you don't have the sales velocity, you don't have natural distribution, you your item doesn't even hit the algorithm, which is the merchant's gut, what do you do? And so we are we

Are finding ways to inject these items into the purchase journey, whether it's upper funnel on the home page, it's mid funnel maybe on a category page, or it's lower funnel on short results, we've got to bring items that don't have inherent sales velocity to the forefront because that's what the treasure hunt looks like on the website, because that's what it looks like in the warehouse. Incredibly hard to pull off. Didn't have to do this in grocery, didn't have to do this at the other wholesale club. At Costco, if we can't get new items that are exciting and innovative.

And high value in front of the right people at the right time, then we have not replicated what happens in the warehouse.

PVSB (29:29)

It would be an unusual trip for me to Costco if I didn't come back with ten or more items. I can tell you I rarely go in with a plan to buy a single item. So it's all about the discovery.

Mark (29:42)

never raw dogged before? it's crazy. I I dare you, walk in without a cart to see if you can get out. Like without going back to the entrance. Like it is a thrilling experience. I went in once, my wife I one thing was to pick up my daughter's prescription. Ten items later I walked out, got to my truck, and realized I did not pick up her Rx. I went in with no cart. I was carrying ten things in my arms.

PVSB (29:48)

my god.

I know that.

Papa Raj (30:05)

This is why we ask him about the hot dog eating capability that Mark Williamson has.

PVSB (30:10)

But it is

it is renowned. It is renowned.

Mark (30:13)

We're thinking hot dog eating contest down on the beach next year. Joey Chestnut, we have our celebrity appearance.

Papa Raj (30:20)

Are you

going to do an IME the canoe again?

PVSB (30:24)

Alright,

so I get the last question today. we want to send our global practitioner audience home with a golden nugget of advice. and since we're not going to get that from you, we'll ask some no, I'm just kidding. if you could look at a corporate CPT keep keep customer officer or head of sales dead in the eye today, what is the single biggest reality check or piece of blind spot advice you can give them? Tell them stop treating retail media as a lower funnel market.

marketing and tax and instead unlock true closed loop incremental volume for this quarter.

Mark (31:00)

The good

news is I've had the same conversation with these same people multiple times over the last couple of days, and I have a few more through Thursday. like the the the golden nugget or whatever it is that I'm supposed to be providing here is like don't it like like don't think of retail media just as lower funnel. Obviously there's lots of opportunities and all of our programs are trying to get upper funnel and quote unquote win brand dollars and all that kind of stuff. in terms of winning at Costco and winning quickly at Costco, it's don't bring the same idea.

ideas. Don't bring same concepts or asks that you have with other retailers to us because either it won't work, it doesn't make sense, or like there's it it needs to be specific to what we're doing. And so I feel like we need to speak the language of media. We need to operate the way that it works so we're not creating new processes, new new platforms to learn, new languages to learn. Like we don't want to be so bespoke that we're hard to work with.

But the same idea won't necessarily translate into our environment. So the conversations we've been having have been what is the Costco plan specifically? How do you extract unique value out of the data, out of the experience, out of the equity to put to make one plus one equal, I don't know, I'll take ten. And that doesn't come by recycling everything you brought to every other retailer.

PVSB (32:18)

One last thing, Cannes Lions was developed for agencies of record to celebrate the creative that they produced. But it's hard to walk up and down the Croisette, see the accurations, and not understand how prominent retail and commerce media are to the audience here. So give messages to CCOs. Why should they be here with their CMOs hand in hand at Cannes Lions?

Mark (32:47)

we have to fuse we have to fuse the creative world with the execution layer, with the commerce layer. And that thing is like I have been opposed to rebranding retail media as commerce media because it it makes too wide of a net and it devalues my my career choices. However, I do like the idea of like it's about commerce. The reason you build brands is to sell more stuff. The reason we operate buildings the way we do is to sell more stuff. We all are oriented for growth. We want staying power, we want

Customer lifetime value, we want loyalty, we want, we all kind of want the same thing, but at the end of the day was a purchase made. And I got I got taught a lesson today by a head of marketing from a massive CPG. And the example that he gave was Porsche has a ton of brand equity. But how many people actually buy it? How much commerce is actually there? So you can build the brands all you want. If you can't pay it off at the point of purchase, then what difference does it make? And so I think one of the frustrations that we have.

Like we're therapizing with the creatives, with the brand teams, with the heads of marketing that we're meeting with this week, a lot of the action items we've identified is let's get in the room with the customer team. Let's talk about these plans. And that's easier said than done, but I think it definitely has to happen.

Papa Raj (34:03)

I do three courses. You know, the eight cubic inches each and every.

Mark (34:08)

How many bucks for each?

PVSB (34:09)

about the matchbox Porsches that you have out demands a lot of those are.

Papa Raj (34:12)

You go to the Matchbox one.

Mark (34:14)

definitely.

There there are a lot of matchbox cars in my house. Unfortunately they're o they're owned by my eighteen year old daughter. And they're mostly F one cars, so

Papa Raj (34:21)

I actually own by me Let me remind all of you that you can find all of our content best if you go to our browser at cpgguys.com. you are someone you know or something to contribute to this ongoing discussion on the CPG Guys, please do send us an email at preachus at cpgguys.com. That's R-E-A-C-H-U-S at cpgguys.com. To our audience, thank you for the clicks, likes, comments, messages, meetings and trade shows, coming to our events, reporting episodes with us as sponsors. We always grateful for you. Without all of you, there is no CPG Guys show.

you both with us all here. We're grateful to have you as our audience and partners. Thank you. Peter, pleasure doing this with you live from Camp Trans. Give us the big takeaway from Mark's moments today.

PVSB (35:01)

I'm sure you and I'll have different ones. Mine is particularly around partnership with Google Cloud. I think that has given them capabilities off-site that make sure their products appear where people are present. You've got to go where the custom the consumers are. The consumers are doing search outside of the owned and operated properties of Costco or an ecosystem marketplace partner they may use. And you need to make sure your products show up there so that they

can click the buy button actually drive conversion because at the end of the day what Mark says it's about driving sales, moving pallets of merchandise. That's my big takeaway.

Papa Raj (35:42)

Well sent indeed. Mine actually was very early on in this conversation when we talked about radical transparency. Sharing with full tech stack, the ad platform, I think is a game changer with first-mover advantage. Cold dust from you today, Mark. Thank you for returning to the CPG Guys Practitioner platform to share this monumental mass of class with our audience. To our audience, please check out the digital show notes. Follow Mark on LinkedIn, deep dive into Casco, wholesale's open source transparency playbooks. Thank you.

Mark (36:11)

Thank you.

Papa Raj (36:13)

That's all we have for you today. look forward to you joining us on the next episode of the CPG Guys.