Commerce Riff with Sri & PVSB - November 10, 2026

PVSB 0:57

Welcome to the Commerce Riff, the weekly look at what matters in commerce from the CPG guys. I'm PVSB. Joining me as always is my co-creator Sri. Sri, how are your travels going?

Sri 1:09

Busy, busy, busy. Fourth quarter of the year for the CPG guys. And next week is the NBC event. Unfortunately, I won't make it, but I'm looking forward to see how that went, who the attendees are, and mostly hear from you about the special backstage tour you're getting to the studios. And then the following week, we're with Pinterest for our newly acquired share groups, you know, learning how to run them, how to partner with all the attendees, and with Ken Coogan, of course.

PVSB 1:34

So lots to look forward to. Absolutely. Four stories this week. Unlever tells investors that brand building and commerce are now the same job. General Mills considers separating its Hagadas business outside North America. The EU charges TikTok with failing to protect users' mental health. And Publicis fires back at WPP Cindy Rose in a blistering letter stre. Peter, lots to cover. Let's jump right into it. First up, Unilever. I had the pleasure of watching the 2026 investor event in Brooklyn last week, and I saw it through a commerce lens, and the company made one argument above all others. Brand building and commerce are now the very same job. A quick note that what follows are my reads of Unilever's own claims, not independent verification. That said, Unilever laid out a pure play home, personal care, and beauty business. Ice cream is already separated, and foods is set to combine with McCormick by mid-2027 at the latest. How it says it will win is Desire at Scale. I love that, Sri. An AI-enabled demand creation model with what the pre-event release called a relentless focus on in-market execution. The new operating model is global strategy local execution. Markets will own the PL and be accountable for managing the increasing convergence of content, media, and commerce locally. Read that twice. Content, media, and commerce used to be three budgets, three teams, and three agencies. Unilever is telling investors they are one system run by the market. Leandro Barreto, currently the CMO, becomes chief growth and marketing officer on January 1st, 2027. The financial frame is 46% underlying sales growth, at least 2% underlying volume growth, and 1 billion euros of productivity savings by the end of 2029. Three things I took from the day. One, OmniChannel, where every retailer gets a defined role. In the U.S., Harris Patel framed Target as where Unilever makes brands desired. Amazon as where it joins demand to sale, and Walmart as where it makes markets. Unilever cited point of sale growth of more than 10% a year at Walmart and about 20% a year at Amazon since 2024. U.S. digital sales grew 26%, and e-commerce is now more than 30% of U.S. turnover. Two, social and retail media run as one funnel. Unilever put 7 billion euros a year into brand and marketing investment, 2 billion more than 2021. Of the media it deploys, about 40% is digital, 35% social, and 25% traditional. Retail media AI is running across 44 retailers, Sri, in 22 markets. That scale. And the social numbers are big. Dove limited editions, including Bridgerton Partnership, we saw that at CAGNE last year, got a couple of samples, drove $150 million in U.S. sales in 2026, and about 45% of those buyers were new to Dove. Three, the shelf now includes the model's answer. Unilever says personal care is number one in LLM recommendations across Chat GPT, Google AI, and Alexa in the prompts it tested, and 91% of the tracked positions improved in six months. Concept development has gone from about five months to three hours, Sri. Three hours. Wow. CBG guys view of this caveat and a to-do list. The caveat is the ROI figures are Unilever's own paid media attribution and retail media spend wasn't broken out. So we can't tell how big that piece is. The open questions are the ones I'll be watching. How will retail media networks handle measurement when a brand wants one AI layer across 44 of them? And what happens to sponsored placement when the shopper's first stop is actually an LLM assistant. Then, to-do list for brands. Give every retailer a defined role. Put AI visibility on the scoreboard and run creators, retail media and availability as one measured system. And notice that Unilever just said ice cream doesn't fit that focused model, which is a perfect setup for our next story. Over to you, Sri.

Sri 6:19

Hey, thank you so much for a thorough and detailed coverage of your visit to the Unilever Investor Day, uh, Peter. So I've got a fun story over here, but maybe it's not so much fun because considering I was alma mater. It is, General Mills is actually considering a separation of Haganda's outside North America, which it still owns. I was one of the lucky tasters of that Haganda's ice cream upon my international visits. It picks up right where Peter left up, actually, because the Wall Street Journal reports that General Mills is considering separating from its Haganda's ice cream business outside all of North America move that could potentially lead to a sale of some sort. Planning is at an early stage and General Mills could ultimately keep the business if nothing pans out, according to people familiar with the matter. General Mills owns and runs Haganda's outside North America, including in Europe and markets such as Thailand, Mexico, and the United Emirates. There are stores in that mix as well. In the US, the brand is operated by Fronerie, which is owned by the private equity firm PA Partners Nestle and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. One person said that could make Fronerie a logical buyer at the end of the day. The potential sale price, though, hasn't been revealed and we are not aware at this point. Let me give you some context. The review follows General Murz's decision in June to sell shops it owns under the Haganda's brand in mainland China to invest a group. So the company said it'll retain the brand's retail operations in that country. General Murz is also in the middle of an executive handover. CEO Jeff Harmoning is expected to hand the reins to Dana McNabb in January 2027, of course. McNabb is currently the chief operating officer and said she will focus on a company-wide sales revival in cost cutting. Fisco 26, General Mellett sales over $18.4 billion down 5%, and it's super premium ice cream category at $782.7 million in sales. What's our take on the CPG, guys? This is portfolio pruning. And ice cream keeps being the first thing to go. We've seen this before. The journal notes that Unilever had spun off its business into Magnum ice cream, and Nestle said in February it would offload the rest of its ice cream units with companies selling supply chain mismatches, operational drags. Do the math yourself on General Mills. And that super premium categories, only a little over 4% of sales. So for a company about to get a new CEO, focus on cost and sales revival, it would have automatically been the natural place to look. Because what comes to mind when you think general mills is CDL. The questions we'd be looking out for and watching closely for a future report around the ref, does this stay a partial separation? Does it become a sale? Does Fronelli step up? And what does a leaner General Mills invest in next to prop up sales again? Over to you, Peter, because you are headed over to EU.

PVSB 9:07

Thanks, Sri. On Friday, the European Commission charged TikTok with failing to protect users' mental health by exposing them to a relentless stream of content that risks worsening eating disorders and anxiety. It's a case that strikes at TikTok's very business model. In a preliminary ruling, the Commission said TikTok's algorithm can be harmful and was leading young and vulnerable viewers down rabbit holes that cannot easily escape from. TikTok has 180 million users in the EU. Officials said the investigation focused on legal content. One video might not be a problem, but the cumulative effect of long run of them on one theme like body image or isolation could damage mental health. The commission found TikTok safeguards against these rabbit hole effects were ineffective. Read that. For example, officials said that when a user hit not interested on a video about eating patterns, the algorithm went on to offer similar content on diet and body image. TikTok pushed back hard. A spokesperson called the commission statement inaccurate and distorted. Can you imagine, three? Said the company had a strong record of protecting its community and pointed out that its policies prohibit content that promotes disordered eating and risky weight management behaviors. TikTok also says more than 79 million EU users have used its not interested in content filters. What happens next? Well, the EU wants TikTok to change the design of its for you feed and give users greater control over what they see. A commission official put it plainly. One focused mainly on engagement. This is part of a broader investigation under the Digital Services Act. And the Commission has already found preliminary violations over addictive design features like infinite scroll. TikTok now gets to examine the investigation file and now to defense, or could agree to change its recommender system. If the findings are upheld, the company could be fined a percentage of its global worldwide revenue. What's our view? Well, this ties back to the first story. Unilever named TikTok Shop as one of its priority channels and said creators and social are where demand gets built. So the same recommendation engines regulators are probing is where CPG dollars are increasingly going. Our read on what to watch, first, it if feed design changes in Europe, reach and discovery change with it. Second, beauty, personal care, and wellness brands live closest to body image themes. So brand safety and creative guardrails matter more. And third, the regulatory question of engagement optimized recommendations is going to follow AI assistance too, which is the shelf we talked about in the first story. Sri, close this out, would you thank you so much, Peter.

Sri 12:07

And I'm going to discuss Publicis and WPP. And let me tell you what's going on. It's our last story, of course, today. It's agency drama with real consequences for how CPG brands buy marketing. Publicis fired back at WPP CEO Cindy Rose in an open letter with the drum head published the whole thing publicly. Some background. Publicis has been winning a lot of businesses without a pinch. Microsoft, LVMH, Tiffany, and Paramount in the past year alone. Publicis was handed it while it was in the middle of pitching for Cookula's global media against WPP. Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun took the guaranteed PepsiCo account and pulled out of the Koch context. Of course, Koch's account went to WPP with Omnicom taking North America after WPP declined to repitch for it, having lost it a year earlier, and Densu taking some APAC markets. That saga wrapped up on the eve of WPP's third quarter results. So analysts asked Rose about what she called the pitchless CEO handshake thing. She didn't name publicists, but she said clients should fully understand the implications of such decisions and added, I do not think we do ourselves any favors in the industry of professionals by encouraging clients to bypass proper due diligence. Typically, what Peter and I used to use those who we call RFPs. Publicist answered with a letter that opens it yes, Indian signed. Your friends at Publicists, it says claiming Publicist wins on a C UI and cheek is an insult to clients is intelligence, and that skipping an old school pitch circus isn't skipping due diligence. Global companies, it says, don't hand over data, media, and tech keys over a friendly espresso and that easy. Then the sharper jab aimed at WPP not repitching for its biggest clients, biggest market. The letter says the handshake theory is that's believable as saying your troops, but to try it to try and win it back. And an extra six-week run was enough to sideline your teams. It's not an endurance problem, it's a capability one. Trump says WPP hasn't responded at the time of the writing to that letter. What's our lens here on the CPG guys? Set the sparring aside for a second. And the bigger question is the pitch itself. Sadun says that since the Omnicom IPG deal holding company options for global clients have shrunk. And clients would rather kick the tires on a preferred partner than run what he calls months-long beauty contests. Gartner's Jay Wilson says this is still rare instead of very large global media deals like PepsiCo's. He ties it to CMOs under pressure to move budget from non-working fees to working media where scale looks attractive in the first place. Notes it only really works for the biggest marketers. In his words, PepsiCo budget gives it more sway than, say, Olipa. And Foster's Jay Padisall says, pitches cost the industry $12.5 billion last year in 2023 when measured, a number that has only grown since then. And that brings us full circle to Unilever. Marketers are running cartnet commerce as one system. The agency model that serves them is going to look like one system to fewer, bigger platforms, priced aggressively for mid-size and challenger brand. The question is leverage. You may not get a pitchless global deal, but you can still decide what agency has to prove. Close us up, Peter.

PVSB 15:18

That's it for the riff. Reminder catch up on our recent episodes Dollar General's Austin Leonard and legendary New York journalist and media coach Jane Hansen. And let's not forget on the rise, our new podcast with our first guest, John Forker. Links are in the show notes. Bye.