The Key Takeaways From Groceryshop 2024 Live Podcast
In this exclusive podcast episode from Omni Talk, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga join Groceryshop's Ben Miller and Rocquan Lucas for a rapid fire recap of all the key takeaways from Groceryshop 2024 in front of the live conference audience.
Key topics covered include:
- The overall the state of the Grocery industry right now
- What’s next for the evolution of the physical grocery store
- The importance of adjacent revenue streams
- The best AI use case or case study heard at the conference
- The technology that excited the panel the most
- The "Quote of the Show"
- The most surprising thing from the conference
- And the most interesting thing the panel learned off-stage, away from the planned conference content
So, give it a listen, plug it into ChatGPT, and recap the conference for your team like a boss!
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy
Transcript
Welcome, everybody.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for staying for the final countdown.
Speaker A:Like, somebody's gonna start singing for me.
Speaker A:No, not happening.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for coming, though.
Speaker A:We are going to do a live podcast recording.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:Yes, we are recording.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:You can make noise and make it sound like there's a gigantic audience in here, which there is anyone clapping?
Speaker A:No.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker A:There we go.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:Well, I wanted to.
Speaker A: we get into the grocery shop,: Speaker A:Wanted to give you a quick background.
Speaker A:Those listening at home right now know Chris and they know me.
Speaker A:We are the founders of Omnitalk Retail.
Speaker A:We are the only retail podcast that is in Apple's top 100 podcasts right now.
Speaker A:So go right now.
Speaker A:You can download any of the episodes, and this episode will be available for everybody right after the show.
Speaker A:So if you need to take notes for the rest of your team back at home, that's where to go.
Speaker A:Do it now.
Speaker A:Next, I want to make sure we introduce the real experts that are up here.
Speaker A:Ben Miller and Raquan Lucas from the grocery shop team who are joining us.
Speaker A:Big round of applause for Ben and Raquan.
Speaker C:Thank you.
Speaker A:For those of you who don't know them, Ben is the vice president of original content and strategy for grocery shop and Shop talk.
Speaker A:And in his role, he works with the internal teams here to create external research with partners to lead content creation across grocery shop and shop talks spring, fall and Europe shows.
Speaker A:And then Rakwan is grocery Shop's vice president of content.
Speaker A:He oversees the agenda that we were all following this week.
Speaker A:He develops that and does speaker recruitment for grocery shop.
Speaker A:And now that we have the intros out of the way, I just want to give you a quick rundown of how this is going to work.
Speaker A:So the four of us got up very early this morning to put together our key takeaways from the show so far.
Speaker A:So we're going to go through just like the last session.
Speaker A:And rapid fire.
Speaker A:We have four minutes for each topic to talk through exactly what each of our takeaways were.
Speaker A:And brace yourself for the buzzer, because if you thought that I was loud when I came out here, that buzzer is going to blow you all away.
Speaker A:So let's get into it.
Speaker A:You guys ready?
Speaker D:Let's do it.
Speaker A:All right, gentlemen, the first topic is around what the overall feeling of the show is and what the state of the grocery industry is right now.
Speaker A:Ben, we're going to you first.
Speaker C:Great.
Speaker C:So I'm going to use a rule of thumb that it's never too early in the wrap up session to talk about Taylor Swift.
Speaker A:Rapid session even needs to be a qualifier.
Speaker A:I think it's never too early to.
Speaker C:Talk about never too early.
Speaker C:So never too late.
Speaker C:If the grocery industry was getting dressed to go out, it would be wearing.
Speaker C:There's a lot going on at the moment t shirt right now, so there is an awful lot going on.
Speaker C:But what that's created around the show is a real buzz.
Speaker C:There's been real energy, there's been real burrs, and that's kind of almost a contrast with how tough the market is at the moment.
Speaker C:And I think what that's created is an environment where people want to learn.
Speaker C:They're trying to shape because there's some massive forces putting the industry in different things.
Speaker C:And it's also created a real feeling of collaborativeness, but also openness to the extent that it's almost completely sending to therapy at times.
Speaker C:I'm sure you've been in conversation the amount of openness, because people have got the same problems and we're trying to solve these same problems together.
Speaker C:I think the last one probably is a bit more seriously.
Speaker C:It's been great spending time with some incredible retail and brand executives and having looked into quite a few retailers eyes over the last couple of days, there's a lot of tired people in our industry.
Speaker C:It's tough.
Speaker C:People are working hard, so we're going into holidays, we're going into the big time.
Speaker C:We're going into this time when we make our p and l of the year, and a lot of people are going into it knackered.
Speaker C:So I think if you were in HR, if you're in leadership positions, there's definitely a look after your team vibe at the moment.
Speaker C:But it could just be that people have been out partying too much over the last few days.
Speaker D:Vegas does that to you.
Speaker C:Vegas does that.
Speaker B:I guess what I would add there, I don't have, like, the Taylor Swift reference, but one that I'm thinking of is more so aligned with Wendy's, the fast food restaurant.
Speaker B:Their slogan is like, where's the beef?
Speaker B:But I feel like the state of the industry when I'm talking to some of the retailers, it's kind of like, where's the growth in this situation?
Speaker B:So how do you kind of drive volume?
Speaker B:Is it going to come through traditional trade or is it going to come through these adjacent revenue streams?
Speaker B:We all know that margins are being hit.
Speaker B:We just talked about that a bit earlier, how their net margins are about 1.6% in the US, 0.9% in the UK.
Speaker B:So it's kind of just, everyone's just coming together to figure out what's going to happen, where's the growth going to come from?
Speaker B:And I think we were hoping that across the three days of the show that we could assist with that.
Speaker A:Chris, where do you land?
Speaker A:We've got people who are tired.
Speaker A:They're trying to get their stuff together.
Speaker A:We've got people trying to find new revenue streams because margins are getting thinner.
Speaker A:But where do you, like, put the state of the grocery industry after the last three days?
Speaker D:I think that's all true.
Speaker D:I think the word I would use to sum it up is pragmatism.
Speaker D:I feel like the entire industry is just being very pragmatic right now.
Speaker D:And grocery, when you look at it across retail, has probably always been more pragmatic than other segments of retail.
Speaker D:But you and I talk about it on our show all the time.
Speaker D:For the last couple years, we've been calling it to show me the money year or years, because it seems like the tech investment is really just going to those things that have a card carrying case of ROI attached to them, versus the fun, fancy tech projects that everyone likes to do in their corner.
Speaker D:Which makes sense because the issues are real, particularly the labor issues, which I've heard over and over again at this show, and coming into the show are real, and you've got to figure out what to do with them.
Speaker D:So, yeah, pragmatism would be my word.
Speaker D:To sum everything up.
Speaker A:Yeah, it sometimes makes our job harder.
Speaker A:Picking our fast five for the week.
Speaker A:Because it used to be like, oh, my God, Amazon's gonna do this crazy new store and they're gonna make everybody use smart carts.
Speaker A:And now it's like, well, everybody's making sound financial investments.
Speaker A:They're thinking through these pragmatic decisions now.
Speaker D:Just walk out is cumbersome, right?
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker D:That was the quote this week, right?
Speaker C:I mean, all creator, my colleague Joe, who wrote that it's Roi, not R and D.
Speaker C:Yes, I think that's right.
Speaker D:That's good.
Speaker A:All right, let's go on to the next one.
Speaker A:What's next for the evolution of the physical grocery store?
Speaker A:Speaking of Amazon, Chris, we're going to you first on this one.
Speaker D:Yeah, this one was interesting.
Speaker D:I didn't know this.
Speaker D:I didn't think about this at all coming in, but I think given the attention on retail media, there's going to be a continued focus to figure out how to unlock that in the store, because that's where the volume comes.
Speaker D:And that's where most of the data is sitting latent for us to understand around all of our shoppers.
Speaker D:And what hit the nail on the head for me with that was when Pepsi's vp of digital commerce was on stage and he was sharing actual case studies of where they've had success attributing digital media spend to in store behavior.
Speaker D:And the two that he mentioned, which I thought were really interesting, were Sam's club now and their mobile app, because they're pumping retail media through that.
Speaker D:Or not Sam's club now, but Sam's club and it's scanning o app.
Speaker D:And you saw their announcements with their big store this week.
Speaker D:And then the other one was a capercart, you know, which like folks, like some of the Chinooks teams in here today, they're deploying for that, that same reason.
Speaker D:So I think when you talk about the physical retail store, that's, that's where we're going to see a lot of the investment in the momentum.
Speaker D:But how you actually unlock that in a fiscally responsible way through either one of those tools, I think is still a moving target and hasn't really been determined yet, but I still see a lot of energy going in that direction.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:The same session, one of the panelists totally dissed your Walmart radio as the perfect in store media execution.
Speaker A:I know you were very disappointed about that.
Speaker D:Yes.
Speaker A:Rock, where do you stand anything here that you would throw in?
Speaker A:What components are in the next evolution of physical grocery?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So I don't want to keep rehashing some of the things that we talked about just earlier as part of the zeitgeist presentation, but I think in terms of, in addition to kind of unlocking retail media in store, I think, you know, still those technology investments that are going to help make the store more efficient are super important as well.
Speaker B:You know, what I'm thinking about right now, and that's coming to mind is just the different technology that can help with assessing kind of out of stock.
Speaker B:BJ's has rolled that out and partnered with tally and that's on all of their stores.
Speaker B:I think it's one of those technologies where we're seeing it kind of being adopted so well that it's kind of scaled.
Speaker B:And so we think that obviously there are going to be other technologies that people are interested in that are going to unlock and efficiencies, make things easier.
Speaker B:I'm also thinking about different technologies that can help with fulfillment and store picking as well.
Speaker B:So those are probably equally important.
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker C:I mean, we were, in thinking about this, we'd come up with a model that I was really proud of.
Speaker C:It was my four c model that the role of the future store is going to be content.
Speaker C:So store as a marketing channel, basically community, collection and convenience.
Speaker C:But it didn't really work, because actually, by collection, we meant delivery.
Speaker C:But I was a d, so I couldn't have that.
Speaker C:And then Ethan from Placer AI, who some of you might know, did a presentation earlier where he completely ripped the idea of convenience to pieces and said, it's just not important at the moment.
Speaker C:People are prepared to put in more effort, to travel more, to find the right value equation for their family.
Speaker C:So my four c's is a little dented, if I'm honest.
Speaker C:But I think the core of content as a marketing channel, we talked about.
Speaker C:But the other area is about community, and we touched on it a little bit more than we have done in other shows.
Speaker C:And I think that's so important.
Speaker C:Franz Muller, and we've had great feedback from his opening day keynote, global CEO of Ahold Delaire's, and talked about the importance of their stores in the community, the roles in the community.
Speaker C:I think with community, it links to purpose, which links to sustainability.
Speaker C:We're still not talking about sustainability enough as an industry, and I think that's been absent from the conversation the last couple of days.
Speaker C:But, yeah, this whole idea of the stores and their role in the communities, as often, they're often one of the biggest employers and one of the biggest businesses in any local community, and I don't think we're making up for that.
Speaker A:All right, moving on.
Speaker D:All right, my turn.
Speaker D:Let's put four minutes on the clock.
Speaker D:Thank you, Ann.
Speaker D:All right, Raquan, let's go back to you.
Speaker D:How imperative do you think adjacent or additional revenue streams are going to be for retailers and grocers going forward?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So me and Ben almost had to battle it out for this one, because this is a topic that we're both super interested in, and I think we would say that it's resounding.
Speaker B:Yes, it's super, super imperative that retailers be thinking about adjacent revenue streams.
Speaker B:We shared some statistics around kind of why, what retail media could do to potential margins.
Speaker B: tation where she said that by: Speaker B:Again, I think it just shows the importance of that being kind of the way to kind of unlock growth and potential profit.
Speaker B:And then the only other thing that I would probably add here is, while it is kind of an opportunity, that it's right smack in front of the faces of retailers, I think you still need to be pretty smart and strategic about how you enter that opportunity and make sure that you're delivering on targeting and you're getting the measurement right and you're delivering the value to the brands so that you can make it all work and not just doing a half hazard drop at it.
Speaker C:And there's still so far to go on that we're just a day one in every stage on that.
Speaker C:I mean, yeah.
Speaker D:Ben, do you think, is it all about retail media for the additional revenue streams, or is it mostly about it?
Speaker D:Like, how do you think about that?
Speaker C:So it shouldn't be.
Speaker D:It shouldn't be.
Speaker C:But retail media is absolutely dominating.
Speaker C:Data monetization is really big, and selling insight and selling software and selling consultancy and selling hardware is also a big part of it.
Speaker C:But retail media is just kind of gobbling up all of the oxygen in the room on this one.
Speaker C:And if there was a great illustration for that for me, so two years ago, some of you would have been here.
Speaker C:Shop talk grocery shop 22.
Speaker C:We had a keynote panel and it was all about e commerce profitability.
Speaker C:And one of the participants was Natalie Knight, who was then CFO from Aholdelez.
Speaker C:And she publicly stated that their ambition was to grow a retail media business worth a billion dollars.
Speaker C:So that was just two years ago.
Speaker C:Franz Muller on Monday.
Speaker C:The ambition now in a strategy is $3 billion for their adjacent revenue streams.
Speaker C:So that, for me, illustrated the speed of change.
Speaker C:I guess one of the other things we'd thought about it as a way to offset the rising cost of e.com.
Speaker C:and I had a conversation with two grocers on Sunday evening, both of whom have got very small e commerce businesses and both of whom said their number one priority was retail media.
Speaker C:So it's kind of more than just offsetting.
Speaker C:It's actually just how do we, how do we grade this profit pool?
Speaker C:But the other thing is that there seems to be this.
Speaker C:The big are going to really benefit here, and the small will benefit because they can buy services from the big.
Speaker C:And it's the bit in the middle I worry about.
Speaker D:Anne?
Speaker A:Yeah, I think the thing that we didn't talk a lot about here, that is also another adjacent revenue stream.
Speaker A:Amazon is a great case in point, is membership programs.
Speaker A:I think there's a lot of benefit to be had on one hand from just getting, getting your customer to be more sticky because you're offering them so many things for that monthly membership, but also you get to know more about them, which then I think helps feed into personalized shopping experiences.
Speaker A:It feeds into your retail media possibilities.
Speaker A:And so I think that's another area where grocers really need to start thinking about partnerships and what makes the most sense to like, get people to stay consistent with them as a retailer.
Speaker D:Yeah, and Kroger had the big Disney plus announcement this week to that point.
Speaker D:All right, Anne, let's go back to you for the first 1st response on this one.
Speaker D:What's the best AI use case or case study that you heard here at grocery shop?
Speaker A:I mean, coming from a production team at a major top ten us retailer at Target, I have to say that where I'm hearing the most investment in Gen AI right now across the board is in personalization when it comes to marketing materials.
Speaker A:So the ability to really drive in and, and take a $300,000 photo shoot budget to shoot just basic product photography on different sets and backgrounds now can be divvied out by what region of the country this person is.
Speaker A:And it costs tens of cents, tenths of cents on the dollar to create those images when it used to be a team of 25 people and a budget of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Speaker A:And the impact that I think retailers are starting to see from that are going to have a huge impact on the industry and change a lot of jobs for a lot of people working in those departments.
Speaker D:Pretty compelling.
Speaker C:Brock?
Speaker B:Yeah, I would agree that we're definitely seeing it unlocking creativity and in marketing efficiency.
Speaker B:We had a speaker who I see in the audience here, MTs, who's the head of performance marketing at Wreck it.
Speaker B:And he talked a lot about how you can leverage generative AI to just be more efficient with your marketing to help with tagging a content.
Speaker B:And I believe he mentioned that it led to kind of a reduction in hours, in time put in by being like 50%.
Speaker B:So really great example of that.
Speaker B:I guess my additional comment here would be that we've kind of created what we kind of see as the framework for what degenerative AI use cases could potentially be.
Speaker B:We talked about how it can unlock efficiencies, how it could propel and drive creativity, and the last one being how it could transform shopping experiences.
Speaker B:That last one is probably the part where we weren't seeing like too, too, too much here at the show.
Speaker B:So we'll be very keen to kind of see what that looks like in the future.
Speaker B:Obviously, there's the leaders like Walmart and Carrefour who are developing more consumer facing technologies that could offer a better shopping experience by using generative AI.
Speaker B:So I think we'll continue to see how they're progressing with that.
Speaker B:And I guess maybe the only other thing to mention would be that we did find out through our startup pitch program that there is interest in Genai startups because a company called simulate AI won starter pitch competition and they're kind of focused on leveraging gen area of AI for search.
Speaker C:And that really surprised me.
Speaker C:It feels like we're so far past the peak of Genai hype for a Genii company to win startup pitch, which is an audience vote I thought was really interesting for me.
Speaker C:Some of what I've heard leans into this, what's been a theme of the show, which has been around making and the importance right now in the current climate, current industry of making really small incremental gains.
Speaker C:Now, in the previous panel before, I've just heard Adgil Hop, who leads the global grocery practice of Deloitte, basically say that that's rubbish, we should be focusing on a big picture.
Speaker C:But when you're only making like 0.9 of a percent on margin at scale, all these tiny little incremental things really matter and really build up in our industry.
Speaker C:And there was a great presentation from Caleb Carr from snook markets, and he used this great term which was about they're using genai to automate hate.
Speaker C:So you're not suddenly going to see lots of awful social media posts from snooks.
Speaker C:That's not their style.
Speaker C:What he meant is how you remove the things that people don't like doing to be able to free up time to add value.
Speaker C:And that, I think is really valuable for us to think about.
Speaker A:Whoa, you just made it.
Speaker A:Close call then.
Speaker A:All right, next one.
Speaker A:Technology that excited you the most these last three days.
Speaker A:Raquan, let's go to you first.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:I think the technology that I was super excited about, and I might get some like, grunts or groans in the audience, but it was definitely to Anne, your point?
Speaker B:The use of technology to kind of drive in store retail media.
Speaker B:So whether it's the opportunity that Instacart Capercart could provide or potentially with the scan and go app that Sam's Club is building, I think those are the opportunities within in store retail media that excite me.
Speaker B:I think some of the other ways that you can use, you can kind of drive in store retail media, I'm not so certain about, like, whether it's just about kind of growing digital screens in the store.
Speaker B:I don't know if that, like, gets to kind of what I would imagine the brand advertisers kind of, like, want in terms of being able to kind of deliver more targeted and personalized ads and make them measurable and attribution, I feel like that part is a little bit further along.
Speaker B:But when you can do it on a digital device that kind of travels with you as you're shopping throughout the store, that kind of makes it a bit more compelling.
Speaker B:So that's the technology that.
Speaker A:Yeah, I agree.
Speaker A:And maybe we could do this another way and say, like, the technology that you were least excited about, too, if that.
Speaker A:If that helps you talk about it in another way, too, because I have to.
Speaker A:I have to say, like, the capercart, I'm with you, Rock.
Speaker A:That one blew me away.
Speaker A:But, Chris, I know that you have some thoughts on.
Speaker D:That was your favorite thing.
Speaker A:I think that was one of the things.
Speaker A:Not that it's revolutionary what's happening, but I've been, you know, I've been a skeptic for a long time about that.
Speaker A:And so seeing it put to use in the way that it has been and the gamification that they announced this week, I think I might be softening.
Speaker A:But what do you think?
Speaker A:What excited you?
Speaker D:Well, I think on that one, I mean, just going back to that, I think the capercart is exciting, but it has to be tempered.
Speaker D:Excitement, for sure.
Speaker D:And the reason I say that is, let's go back to the dichotomy of Sam's club scan and go app and the capercart.
Speaker D:Sam's club has the audacity to go build a store where you have to use the scan and go app to shop it.
Speaker D:And then you say to yourself, well, why can't a retailer do the same thing with a capercart?
Speaker D:And they can't.
Speaker D:And I've been talking to people, I've been asking people this question throughout the show in the back halls, and what they're telling me is there's a lot of things that prevent it.
Speaker D:There's the business model of the cart itself.
Speaker D:There's the dynamics of how the cart is built.
Speaker D:Like, where can you put the kids?
Speaker D:There's also the, where do you put the big bottles of water?
Speaker D:There's no under trade of the cart.
Speaker D:And so it's a big risk for somebody to do that, to take the risk and to go that bold and try to convert their operation to this, even though from all intents and purposes, we hear that people like using the cart.
Speaker D:And yet when you compare the adoption rates at Sam's club with scan and go, 30% of shoppers use the scan and go.
Speaker D:The best store at Instacart, according to David McIntosh, their chief connected stores offer is 10% of transactions.
Speaker D:It's a big delta.
Speaker D:And so I don't know which wins out.
Speaker D:But there's a lot of things that have to happen for the cart to take off to the way it probably, ideally, I think we all would like to think it would come out of this conference, but sure.
Speaker C:Well, I mean, certainly the street likes it.
Speaker C:The Instacart share price, obviously off the back of Fidget OC's appearance here at the show, all time high, because they're buying the story of the connected store and they're buying the retail media players.
Speaker C:But for me, it was, it was Chris Nicholas, CEO of Sam's club.
Speaker C:I love a good grocery store.
Speaker C:I pick out a good grocery store.
Speaker C:I've scarcely been as excited to think about a store as what they talked about with what they're going to do with sams in Dallas.
Speaker C:I mean, the audacity, to take your phrase, Chris, to say 100%, everybody has to use scan and go.
Speaker C:Everybody has to check out via the computer vision.
Speaker C:I think that's game changing.
Speaker C:Absolutely game changing.
Speaker A:All right, I.
Speaker D:All right, Ann, let's change it up.
Speaker A:Here a little bit.
Speaker D:What was your quote of the show?
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:My quote of the show was when we, you and I interviewed Franz Miller, the CEO of Ajul del Hez, and you actually asked him, you said, what is the most important technology or area of investment that you think retailers should prioritize right now?
Speaker A:And his answer was data.
Speaker A:I can't do his accent, which.
Speaker A:This sounded better when his accent.
Speaker D:That's probably a good thing for everyone.
Speaker D:Data.
Speaker A:Proper and clean data.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So I think that that was really interesting.
Speaker A:You and I were both kind of.
Speaker D:Taken aback, like, well, I almost fell over standing up because, like, I've never heard a retail CEO ever say the word daily to anyone.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker D:But it was really cool.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Makes the case for the kind of things that we're talking about where, you know, what does the story of the future look like?
Speaker A:What are the key components of a successful retail media network and in store programming?
Speaker A:Data is a big proponent of that.
Speaker A:But anybody else, Ben, what do you have?
Speaker C:So I'm going to share one from a gentleman, a doctor.
Speaker C:Doctor Oliver Vogt, who is leading Tesco's efforts to drive kind of additional revenue through free consultancy, micro fulfillment.
Speaker C:But his incredible background in data science and in Amazon and in fulfillment models, and he's someone I've got to know a little bit over the last six months, a year, and he's somebody who actually is really interesting to listen to when you get the chance.
Speaker C:And he had this lovely quote, which was, innovation isn't isolation.
Speaker C:And that's a massive mind shift change in our industry.
Speaker C:Other industries talk about collaboration and cooperation and friendly relationships much more than we do.
Speaker C:It's so competitive.
Speaker C:Those wafer thin margins put a massive barrier in the way of collaborating in a way that Silicon Valley does, for example.
Speaker C:So to hear it from Tesco, I thought was really interesting.
Speaker C:And yeah, we talked about a bit with Fiji Simo when we talked about Uber coming on their platform.
Speaker C:And she was very straightforward.
Speaker C:Yeah, they're a competitor, but actually they do restaurants much better than us.
Speaker C:We can solve a pain point for our customers quicker by collaborating and trying to build our own, so why not?
Speaker C:And I think there is this mind shift is slowly changing towards more collaboration, finding more areas to work together as an industry to solve pain points for our customers.
Speaker D:Yeah, one plus one equals three.
Speaker D:Raquan, what was yours?
Speaker B:Yeah, no, I think mine is kind of related to this idea of cloud collaboration, but more so internally at CPG organizations.
Speaker B:An executive by the name of Uyon Kahneman at McCormick said that budgets are emotional.
Speaker B:And what he was referring to was just this idea of, as things start to shift towards an advertising spend, starts to go more towards retail media, where is that going to come from?
Speaker B:Is it going to come from trade marketing?
Speaker B:Is it going to come from brand?
Speaker B:And so it was about a recognition of different parts of the organization being protective of their dollars, but not maybe in the best interest of the organization.
Speaker B:So how do you kind of solve for that and correct that?
Speaker B:So that was mine.
Speaker D:Yeah, mine was.
Speaker D:Mine came from Mark Ibbotson, the former EVP of operations at Walmart, at a breakfast on yesterday morning.
Speaker D:I'll just leave it with you.
Speaker D:And I thought it was a good, it was a good quote that captures what I think the last session before we came to into here was summarizing at the end, which is he said, the challenges on us to create better jobs for our associates, which goes in a little bit to what you said too, Ben, about automating the hate.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:And so I think that's an important lesson for us to take back as we go back to our organizations.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:All right, next question from all the content, what surprised you the most?
Speaker A:My surprise, and I want to tell you guys this, is that I loved the themed candy in every room.
Speaker A:I didn't get a chance to tell you that, but it has been been such a delightful treat.
Speaker A:But rock, we're going to start with you here.
Speaker A:What has been your biggest content surprise?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So I would say we kind of had a couple of sessions that we knew going into it.
Speaker B:We're going to address it head on.
Speaker B:But I was surprised at just how much conversation was being had around brand loyalty and customer loyalty.
Speaker B:And so wasn't necessarily expecting the conversation to evolve on this subject.
Speaker B:In regards to Ram Krishnan, the CEO of PepsiCo North America beverages, just discussing this, but he shared on stage how he's kind of encouraging his company to not just think about brand loyalty, but what he's calling precision loyalty, which is like this idea of moving away from mass marketing to offering more personalized messages.
Speaker B:To hear someone that senior being leaning in on more like personalization and not just going after kind of like big super bowl ads and things of that nature was really interesting and compelling.
Speaker B:So that's one thing on the brand side as it relates to loyalty.
Speaker B:And then I would say on the retailer side, what I'm finding, I think it's related and to what you were talking about with these membership programs is that it's feeling like it's kind of a race to just add as many benefits as you can to these membership programs.
Speaker B:So whether you're just adding subscription services and bundling that in, I guess that's a draw in a way for kind of customer acquisition.
Speaker C:We've got to run out of streaming services, surely, right.
Speaker C:We are.
Speaker C:I mean, retailers are going to be creating new streaming services just to be able to bundle them back into their loyalty scheme.
Speaker A:Well, they're going to have to go into other categories.
Speaker A:I mean, they're going to have to go into hospitals.
Speaker A:They're going to have to go into, you know, other, other areas beyond.
Speaker A:Just here's your streaming service for free for the month with your membership.
Speaker A:Ben, what do you have?
Speaker C:Yeah, I mean, my surprise was actually a bit of a negative and I think we've given a lot of, a lot of credit to instacart during the conversation and a lot of credit to Fiji Simo and what she's done.
Speaker C:But one of her answers was a real surprise to me and also a disappointment appointment.
Speaker C:So Fiji also sits on the board of OpenAI, so she's got this unique view of where the generative AI in the long term might play in grocery.
Speaker C:And when I asked her the question, the long term vision that she gave was that it'll enable marketing personalization at scale.
Speaker C:It's like, I kind of thought there might be something else, something bigger that we haven't seen.
Speaker A:Give me more.
Speaker C:Maybe that's why we passed the hype, because actually that is.
Speaker C:And if we can do that, that's big.
Speaker C:But I just kind of thought there might be something else.
Speaker A:Oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker A:I feel bad.
Speaker C:It's okay.
Speaker D:Or she's innovating in isolation and not telling you what she does.
Speaker A:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker D:Okay, last one.
Speaker D:What was the most interesting thing you learned offstage, Ben, away from the content program?
Speaker C:I was in a really interesting conversation.
Speaker C:It was all about shrink.
Speaker C:And I think we thought shrink would be bigger on the agenda than it turned out to be.
Speaker C:But I think what did I learn?
Speaker C:I learned I didn't realize how much of a bigger problem shrink is in the US versus Europe.
Speaker C:So it was a closed forum and retailers shared some numbers and we had some global operators in the room.
Speaker C:And the delta between the shrink and this is theft.
Speaker C:This isn't, and this is theft from the shop rather than in the supply channel.
Speaker C:Waste much higher at a delta that was greater than I expected it to be.
Speaker C:But what came out of that conversation really clearly is that retailers who have some level of control over the flow of shoppers in their store, so whether it's a one way system, whether it's gated, whether it's a retail format that requires you to check in to be a member, those retailers have significantly lower shrink than supermarkets where you can walk in now.
Speaker C:It's kind of so logical when you say it, but if this is the case, we're going to see more.
Speaker C:I know Tesco are already starting to put one way systems in some of the superstores in the UK.
Speaker C:If we really want to exploit or capitalize on the in store retail media opportunity, we're going to need to know who the shopper is when they come into the store rather than when they leave.
Speaker C:So I think there's going to be a couple of factors going to come together for future store formats where there is more control over the shoppers and more knowledge of who they are.
Speaker D:Got it.
Speaker D:Raquan.
Speaker B:I guess some of the things that I was learning off stage, I think is just the appetite that it feels that retailers have more and more around kind of working and partnering with one another.
Speaker B:I think that one of the announcements that we kind of had in the lead up to the show was Tesco's announcement of their transcend technology and what that could unlock for assisting retailers around the world with their fulfillment in e commerce businesses.
Speaker B:So I think just the retailer retailer relationship and collaboration seems to be kind of shining and being talked about a little more.
Speaker B:Obviously, Tesco has, you know, it's a solution that they've commercialized and want to sell.
Speaker B:But I think to Ben's point around, you know, innovation not being in isolation, I think we're starting to break through on that.
Speaker D:Ann, what was the biggest thing you learned?
Speaker A:I was in another session, breakfast session, and I was very surprised to learn that the number of retailers who are investing right now in Genai search on their websites.
Speaker A:Shocked.
Speaker A:Like, from clubs all the way to regional grocers, we hear the big news about Walmart obviously doing generative AI with their search.
Speaker A:I think it shows me that as consumers, we're going to start shopping very differently.
Speaker A: ch instead of just serving up: Speaker A:So I think that, to me, is a real telltale sign of kind of where the future of consumer behavior of search and what their expectations are going to be from grocers.
Speaker D:Nice.
Speaker D:I got 20 seconds.
Speaker D:Mine was that checkout free as a concept just really isn't that important anymore.
Speaker D:Like, it just seems like it's not something that consumers care about that much.
Speaker D:It's not something that retailers care about that much.
Speaker D:It's being put out in the press that that's what the new Sam's club store is about.
Speaker D:I don't think it's about that.
Speaker D:I think it's more about understanding the data flow in that store through the setup of the store.
Speaker D:So that's mine.
Speaker C:Yeah, I mean, we've been buzzed out, but I just want to take a minute to reflect on what sams are doing because I think it could be so important.
Speaker C:They're making every single shopper have a digital device to be able to shop that store.
Speaker C:That's huge when you.
Speaker A:But they can, like, I think that's the point of clarification here, too, Ben.
Speaker A:Like, like, a regional grocer can't require that right now.
Speaker A:As a member of Sam's club, I think you're, like, buying into that a little bit more so than like, or maybe I'm wrong, but I know 100%.
Speaker C:But they've got to try.
Speaker C:I mean it almost makes me want to get.
Speaker A:Oh, I agree completely.
Speaker A:I just think it's important that we make that distinction here because I think like, it's not apples to apples when you're a, a grocer sitting in the audience who wants to test these things?
Speaker D:Well, it depends where things converge too, right?
Speaker D:Like Ben was saying, like if shrink becomes a big issue too, and you have to go to controlled entry points and exit points, then that facilitates the greater adoption of scan and go throughout the industry too.
Speaker D:So I don't think any of us know how the convergence is going to happen yet.
Speaker D:But yeah, Sam's club is set up to benefit from it the most by how it operates.
Speaker C:Exactly.
Speaker D:And they've got the audacity to do it, right.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker A:Audacity.
Speaker D:Audacity.
Speaker D:That's the word of this session.
Speaker C:Well, on behalf of the grocery shop team, I just want to thank, well, firstly, thank you for staying to the very end.
Speaker C:We really appreciate it.
Speaker C:We're going to wrap up so you can get to your flight.
Speaker C:Thank you for coming.
Speaker C:Thank you for taking part.
Speaker C:Thank you for the cold conversations.
Speaker C:We really appreciate it.
Speaker C:It's a community, not a show.
Speaker C:So thank you.
Speaker C:Dates for next year.
Speaker C:Sunday it's an afternoon start.
Speaker C:Sunday the 28 September through to lunchtime Wednesday October 1.
Speaker C:So an extra evening for even more parties to be even tighter afterwards.
Speaker C:So thank you.
Speaker C:Really appreciate it.
Speaker C:And safe journey home everyone.
Speaker C:Thank you.
