# S2 E8 - Grocery TV - Marlow Nickell

S2 E8 - Grocery TV - Marlow Nickell 

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[00:00:22] Tom: Hey Todd, we are ready to talk about grocery tv.  

[00:00:26] Todd: The Ill named grocery TV for the record. And, we talk about this in the conversation, which is, it is not just grocery tv. 

[00:00:35] Tom: Sometimes, you hit on something, you hit, hit on that bowling pin that went down first, and you go all in on it. I think that also speaks to the fact that they've been around a while. 

[00:00:43] Tom: This is not, just a tiny startup. And they've been through a bit of a hype cycle in technology. They started, and this was what you always talk about with me is I always want to go straight for the best technology and, to try to, ID people track them as best as possible.[00:01:00]  

[00:01:00] Tom: But that really in this discussion that we're gonna have with Marlow that was something they had to pivot away from. 

[00:01:05] Todd: The best technology or the best ideas aren't always what the market's ready for. And what's fascinating to me is the story of in store we're post early hype which means the companies who've been in it, we've talked about QSIC, we've got grocery tv, have been in it for a while. Their technologies are mature. 

[00:01:23] Todd: The products are mature, they work, and we're at a point now, where is the market ready to take off? What's gonna be the catalyzing event for in store on offsite was first, I think on site, kicked off as you've talked about Tom, with the pandemic.  

[00:01:39] Todd: And then now it's the question of in store. And what's fascinating to me is, I walked into Best Buy recently they adopted in store early, like almost too early 10 years ago, and if, and have backed away from it. And they have a store that you would think would be ideal for in store text screens, a layout that allows you to visualize across the store [00:02:00] and yet nothing. 

[00:02:01] Tom: Yeah, I mean think about it. At grocery tv, the reason this company is successful is from partnering with grocers not electronics retailers, which would've been the easier one 'cause they had screens all over their stores already. So that's crazy in and of itself. But the other part of it, I think I. 

[00:02:15] Tom: The fact that it's called grocery tv brings up a distinction in the way that retail media has played out, and that is what you're talking about. The progression of offsite onsite in store is very true for tier two retailers. Tier one retailers like Walmart basically started with onsite only, and then are now starting to, figure out offsite and then eventually, hopefully they will get to in store. 

[00:02:42] Tom: For tier two and down because they didn't have as much onsite traffic. It was all offsite and it was super easy to do offsite. And then onsite happened, as you said, during the pandemic. And that really accelerated. And now they, to differentiate themselves are starting to do in-store. And Marlow will start to talk [00:03:00] about how Hy-Vee is doing this really all over their store. 

[00:03:03] Tom: So from that perspective, that distinction is important to understand because otherwise you think. Offsite is something new, but it's been around and when we were quotient, it was so easy to do. It was almost impossible to sell anything else. 

[00:03:15] I'm looking forward to the rise of in-store because it is something truly unique to physical retailers. And it is differentiable and it will never be a commodity. And I think that's important. And so if I'm selling something, the more unique it is, hopefully the easier it is. And given the tech works and some of the new ideas like screens are cheap, pending tariffs are as cheap as ever. 

[00:03:41] Todd: The new technologies for screens like e-ink make the ability to deploy interesting screens. Fascinating. And it's not about to exactly your point, it's not about cool tracking, whatever else. It's about creating a cool environment and how do you present messaging to consumers. And what's [00:04:00] fascinating is I think the pandemic raised the question of is everything going to move to a digital environment? 

[00:04:05] Todd: And the reality is no. We do enjoy physical. Spaces. We do enjoy physical experiences. We do enjoy in-person experiences, and as a result, there's gonna be opportunities to market in those environments. It's I saw something over the weekend talking about how Barnes and Noble has survived and now beginning to thrive as they create more of a third place environment. 

[00:04:29] Todd: And that kind of speaks to that and speaks to wanting an in person environment, an IRL. Experience I don't think digital at home I think is actually more secondary. I think retail is just gonna be the better platform and better mechanism to do in-person real world marketing. 

[00:04:46] Todd: It's such a huge opportunity and it'll be fascinating to see it play out. 

[00:04:50] Tom: Just to, to, bolster your point. The reason that digital at a home became an ad tech sort of buzzword for retail media earlier than in store was because it was easier. [00:05:00] It was, oh, you can put whatever ads on here and there's no worry that the store is gonna be, wondering how to curate what's happening outside of their doors. 

[00:05:10] Tom: When you bring it in and you put it on their Ironman, if you put the wrong ad there, that's a problem. 

[00:05:16] Todd: Fascinating things to, to think about and I think, it's interesting you talk to, whether it's Marlow Grocery, tv or others is you can just, they ooze experience. 

[00:05:25] Tom: Yeah. 

[00:05:25] Todd: And real world understanding of this real world problem and or opportunity. Actually. It's not a problem. It's opportunity. And so I think what that's the experience they've had over building this company over the last, decade plus, really I, is comforting because they know what they're doing. 

[00:05:41] Todd: There's a ton of experience there and you can see why they're growing and again, them and others as well. And so since they're delivering a good product, it's, they're in a good position to help. Make this third pillar of retail media, I think finally grow and take off. And I do think you're right. 

[00:05:58] Todd: Tier two media is embracing [00:06:00] it. They're gonna be the experimentalists, the big guys have more concern. And as this evolves, we're gonna see some interesting things in the next couple of years. Again, I think this is where the innovation's gonna be, is in store. And I just, I know again, your own personal retail media experience going back a decade plus speaks to when I see your eyeballs. 

[00:06:18] Todd: Get excited about something. It is almost exclusively in store related. 

[00:06:22] Tom: And you'll hear this from Marlow the CEO of grocery tv where you know it, you can hear in his voice. It's yeah, offsite's the easy thing we're trying to do, the next thing . And to his to his credit, he is doing it in a way that's not gonna freak out ad buyers. 

[00:06:37] Tom: He's not overdoing the technology, but he is trying to build out a new channel that, that hasn't existed before. And you can't just use the easy button. And you can't just push the, the ad budget into offsite and wash your hands of it. You have to really think about the way you're doing it, where you're placing it, how you're measuring it. 

[00:06:54] Tom: So let's get into discussion with Marlow Nickell, CEO of grocery [00:07:00] tv. 

[00:07:00] Tom: At  

[00:07:00] Tom: so tell me how it started then what was the original business? 

[00:07:03] Marlow Nickell: Yeah, original business was just this general observation that you've got a pretty incredible captive audience in the in-store environment, right? 

[00:07:09] Marlow Nickell: If you're in the checkout aisle average dwell time, there's four and a half minutes. 

[00:07:12] Marlow Nickell: Plus it's an area that's visible to the whole rest of the store, mid journey in the shopping experience. And then beyond that, things like entrance, 

[00:07:18] Marlow Nickell: everybody's gotta go buy it and. There's all these other parts of the store that are interesting to be able to reach shoppers. And so really that original observation was just this is an amazing way to get in front of communities across the country. 

[00:07:28] Marlow Nickell: And if we could put digital signage there,  

[00:07:30] Marlow Nickell: we could do a lot of the traditional kind of marketing that's always been done there, but do it in a way that's scalable, that national brands can access programmatically just like they do any other digital platform. , in a nutshell we really are just trying to. 

[00:07:42] Marlow Nickell: Bring the same capabilities that you have for onsite retail media to the in-store environment where, let's be honest, like most of the transactions actually happen.  

[00:07:48] Tom: So when we were talking earlier, when you first started you were really on the bleeding edge of anything that you could do in store. You talked about front facing cameras and tracking people. So tell me what that [00:08:00] story I think is interesting. 

[00:08:01] Marlow Nickell: Yeah. So that's where I probably brought a too bit too much of the technology side to the business. We tried to do a few too many things at once at the beginning. We even had things like tracking out of stock products and planogram compliance and all kinds of things beyond advertising. 

[00:08:13] Marlow Nickell: We've learned the hard lesson that you need to be a little more focused in the company. And one that I think you're referring to is we used  

[00:08:18] Marlow Nickell: to do actually impression and engagement measurements so we could actually. See when someone was in front of the screen and whether they were looking at the creative or not, how long they were looking at it. 

[00:08:26] Marlow Nickell: So we could say like, here's exactly how many impressions have been served and how engaging your creative is relative to other creatives. And that was really cool stuff. But the reality is the market wasn't ready for that from a demand standpoint. And there's also just a lot of challenges from a scalability standpoint and a legal standpoint. 

[00:08:42] Marlow Nickell: And so we've really gone the other direction, got a little more pragmatic and basically just said, look. Just fundamentally, this is a really good media product. Let's just put great screens in the right parts of the store. And and that alone is really valuable. And so that's what we've leaned into and focused on. 

[00:08:54] Todd: What is the, what's the pitch to on the demand side that gets people interested today? [00:09:00] Is it dwell time? Is it reach what I think what's fascinating is as we think about in-store media, A, it's not well-defined yet. And B, you're doing it from the perspective of. In most traditional retail media is the retailers selling it. 

[00:09:16] Todd: You're a network model and you're the, you are the one selling it. So what is the pitch that's working today to getting brands and other marketers interested in advertising 

[00:09:24] Marlow Nickell: In-store so I'll answer your question, but just in the last bit you said we do a little of both. So sometimes the retailers selling, sometimes we're selling. 

[00:09:30] Marlow Nickell: Especially the larger retailers. Some of our more recent partnerships you may have heard about, like Hy-Vee for example. They're here at Shop Doc they've got a great RMN team. They're selling in-store inventory as well, and we're just really trying to help them power that capability. 

[00:09:42] Marlow Nickell: But then, yeah, we also can include them in, as a part of a national network of 120 retailers across the country and we can turn around and sell that nationally to brand advertisers. The the pitch is gonna change a little bit depending on who the brand is and what their objectives are. 

[00:09:55] Marlow Nickell: But the thing that's always true is it's an incredible audience. And it's an audience that's really receptive [00:10:00] to , marketing, messaging. People are coming into the store in a buying mindset. They're not trying to be entertained or distracted, like they're there to buy stuff. 

[00:10:07] Marlow Nickell: And they're generally open to discovering new things. So when you have marketing content in store, advertising campaigns that are running, like they, they actually are open to seeing it, and the engagement rates are higher than what you would typically expect on other media channels. And then, yeah, from a scale standpoint, even our network today, which is only about 25, 30% of US grocery we're reaching one in four coming up on one in three Americans, so almost a hundred million people across the us, all 50 states. 

[00:10:32] Marlow Nickell: So it's this like incredible reach you can get. That's harder and harder to find today as media channels get more and more fragmented. There's also other things too, like. 

[00:10:38] Tom: like,  

[00:10:39] Marlow Nickell: if you're a programmatic video buyer, you're used to ad fraud, made for advertising websites you're used to things that people just don't even pay attention to the kind of the ad blinders on online. 

[00:10:49] Marlow Nickell: It's very different for in-store when you run that same video creative it's a hundred percent viewable. It's contextually relevant, it's brand safe. Like it's, there's just a lot of really positive qualities in that front too. 

[00:10:58] Tom: To keep going with the pitch [00:11:00] yes, it's brand safe and it's, it's the lowest funnel you could be. You're right at the shelf where you're at the actually, let's talk about that. Where are these digital signs? 

[00:11:08] Marlow Nickell: So typically the, when a retailer starts out, they're doing some of the key areas of the store. So they're gonna do entrance. A lot of retailers have like print signage, entrance, like a, an Ironman stand that's there, they have to slide paper into every week, and that's an 

[00:11:21] Tom: I love the names of all these things. The Ironman. 

[00:11:23] Marlow Nickell: Yeah. I didn't make this up. And and it's very easy for them to swap that out with a digital screen. We have literally what we call a digital iron man. And that's just an easy change to make. It fits in really well. It reaches every shopper. So that's an area that we saw a lot of retailers leaning into. 

[00:11:36] Marlow Nickell: Then on the other end of the spectrum, it checkout. It's an area where you already have a lot of marketing messaging there. It's really high dwell time. Everybody's gotta go through it. And it's also because of the way that we do the setup. And check out. Everybody can see it mid journey too, when they're going up and down the aisles. 

[00:11:49] Marlow Nickell: So those are like probably the two most common. A lot of retailers that have pharmacies in store are starting to roll screens out there. And then I think more and more we're gonna see this year end caps, service departments more [00:12:00] category specific placements.  

[00:12:02] Tom: I think you talked about with hyvee, they're all over the store. Like it's not just the front what'd you call the the checkouts? The front end? 

[00:12:08] Marlow Nickell: Yeah. That's the retail term, but yeah. Yeah. 

[00:12:10] Tom: So if it's not if it's not there you basically are able to say a hundred percent. 

[00:12:14] Tom: are people going in and out of the store? How do you measure the rest of it? 

[00:12:18] Marlow Nickell: There's different ways to do it. You can do the really sophisticated stuff like we used to do at the start of our company where you're literally using image data or you're maybe tracking device ID in store. 

[00:12:26] Marlow Nickell: There's a million different ways you could do it. The simple reality is most brands, like they, they just want to know that they're being seen and they want to have at an aggregate level, an understanding of what's happening. And so you can do studies that basically tell you like, X percent of shoppers are gonna go to this zone in the store and Y percent are gonna go to that zone. 

[00:12:41] Marlow Nickell: And so there's like industry benchmarks that you can leverage for that if you just wanna do it at scale. But it's, again, gonna depend on the objectives  

[00:12:47] Todd: how much are the, are brands interested in like device ID matching and checking? Like traditionally, retail media is a big driver driven by ability identify shoppers and transactions and attribution and. Obviously if [00:13:00] store it typically requires some sort of device id matching. 

[00:13:03] Todd: that something you've seen a lot of demand for or is that more like more talk than actuality? 

[00:13:07] Marlow Nickell: more talk than reality. There's a lot of, there's a lot of pilots going on, but I have not seen anything at scale or in production, and I think it's kinda missing the point, in-store is valuable because you have all of these transactions happening. 

[00:13:17] Marlow Nickell: It's 85, 90% of the transactions for a retailer happening in their in-store environment. You have all those credit cards, you have all those, transaction logs of what they bought. And so that, that's all you need. If you wanna know that they went specifically by this one screen and the cooler aisle, then yeah, you gotta get a little more sophisticated. 

[00:13:33] Marlow Nickell: But if you just wanna know, like at an aggregate level, what was the impact of a campaign like you already have the valuable thing, it's the transaction logs. And the thing that's a little bit interesting to me is that data is being used to power offsite media right now. And I've always felt like that's a little bit interesting. 

[00:13:48] Marlow Nickell: It seems like it would make a lot more sense, 

[00:13:50] Tom: be honest. Interesting. 

[00:13:51] Marlow Nickell: honest. I don't know that everybody's thrilled about it. And I think that there's definitely great use cases for it, but if you just in a simple minded way, step back and say, okay, for on onsite retail media, I'm [00:14:00] gonna look at, the performance online for the campaigns I run there, and that's why it's exciting. 

[00:14:03] Marlow Nickell: Why would you not do the same thing for in store, run a campaign in store, look at the performance from a sales standpoint? 

[00:14:08] Todd: are you seeing as it seems like your point of Hey, stop doing offsite. 

[00:14:11] Todd: when You can do in store? Is that pitch getting some receptivity as you start doing, as Hey, we know they're there, and why don't you carve out some of those dollars from offsite into in-store  

[00:14:21] Marlow Nickell: Ultimately that's the retailer's call, right? I'm not gonna tell 'em how to make those sort of strategic decisions, but I do think it's a win for 

[00:14:28] Tom: It's okay in this podcast to make that, to make that push, make some strategic. Yeah. So you can, you could lead into it here. It's okay. 

[00:14:33] Marlow Nickell: Look at it from this perspective is anybody really that happy about offite retail media? 

[00:14:38] Marlow Nickell: Like from a retail perspective, the margins are not always that great. 'cause it's not their inventory they're selling, they're reselling other people's stuff from a brand perspective, like they could buy that elsewhere. The main value is really the retail data that's, it's not the inventory that's valuable. 

[00:14:51] Marlow Nickell: And I do think it's a fair question to ask, like, why would you not be doing that in an in-store environment and just matching it up with the Instore sales. Andrew Lipman 

[00:14:59] Tom: talked [00:15:00] a  

[00:15:00] Todd: lot about  

[00:15:01] Tom: in store as the most undervalued. Component of retail and it drives much higher attribution than almost any other of the types of retail media. And he's shocked that there's not more being done there. And I think that's kinda your point of saying, Hey, it's okay. Like people, you have shoppers, you have purchases. Like why aren't you just putting yourself in front of the purchaser at that point in time? It makes a ton of sense. 

[00:15:23] Marlow Nickell: I think there's also just this false assumption that people go into a store knowing exactly what they're going to buy and like the decision's already made at that point. 

[00:15:32] Marlow Nickell: No data will tell you that. People go in and a ton of the stuff on their list ton of the stuff they end up buying was not on their list going into the store. But most people don't even have a shopping list when they go in. And so they're very receptive to changing behavior. 

[00:15:43] Marlow Nickell: There's also just a lot of cases where. You can do upper and mid funnel marketing, you know that it's not gonna change behavior on that trip, but it will maybe the next one or the following. And so I always just look at this as it's an audience that you know you can get in front of in a really impactful way. 

[00:15:56] Tom: well. Costco talks about their in-store environment [00:16:00] as it's a treasure hunt to exactly your point, right? They want people to come and explore and they come in, it's the classic. You come in to buy a $20 thing at Costco and you walk out with $400 shopping cart. That's kind of their, their goal, and I think you're speaking to that is that's more common. 

[00:16:13] Tom: Also, I think one of the things you're getting into is retail is becoming more experiential. And beyond just the purchase of, I'm going to play with products, I'm gonna experience products, I'm using that to it. Digital shelves only do so much and in store solves a much better use case in terms of experience. I wonder, is it a build out question for retailers? 

[00:16:33] Tom: Is it a, how do you make it a consistent part of the experience? Talk through how you get retailers to adopt this. Is it a CapEx problem? Is it a retail experience problem? We get it, we're big fan, we're, we love the idea of where in-store is going and are shocked. 

[00:16:45] Tom: Tom's talked about this for, a couple of years now. As what gets him most excited about retail media, given his an experience with Approach it and what gets Todd most frustrated with me is, no, I'm not pressure at all. I totally get it. My focus on this electronic shelf labels and geeking out on putting promotions in front of people. 

[00:16:59] Tom: But [00:17:00] to your point, like with off-site you're making sure that you find that person that you already know, which, may or may not be the right idea. In store, just like on site, you don't need to target the hell out of people because you know they're there to shop. Yeah, tell us about your perspective on this. 

[00:17:16] Marlow Nickell: Gosh, where do I start? You were asking what makes it hard, why is it not become 

[00:17:20] Marlow Nickell: a bigger  

[00:17:20] Tom: it faster, bigger, whatever. What are 

[00:17:21] Marlow Nickell: Let's just, what's holding retailers back from really going so the thing I have experienced in is software and technology, right? And it's just a hell of a lot easier to make changes to your website than a physical store, right? it. onsite retail media, it was built out very quickly because it was code you could drop into your site and there were a lot of good options. 

[00:17:39] Marlow Nickell: And it's not rocket science to, to put a banner out on a website. We've been doing that for a while. And this is very different. You've gotta get physical hardware into the stores. You gotta do it in the right way. You gotta make sure you don't blow out your CapEx budget, which a lot of people do. 

[00:17:53] Marlow Nickell: And, for the RMN teams that are at retailers. They haven't really had to ask for a ton of permission for onsite retail media, [00:18:00] but for the stores, like that's a sacred place. The people operating those stores, the people on the merchandising side, their biggest nightmare is that these folks that are incentivized to generate revenue are gonna come in and just turn their stores into, times square and and there are examples of people doing that. 

[00:18:12] Marlow Nickell: There, there are companies that have. Try to put literal popup ads, in front of you, right? Where you can't see the product. You have to watch the ad first. 

[00:18:18] Marlow Nickell: Oh,  

[00:18:19] Todd: yes.  

[00:18:19] Tom: Cooler screens, of course. 

[00:18:20] Marlow Nickell: I didn't name 'em, but so I think that is a real fear that a lot of merchants and like store operations folks have. 

[00:18:26] Marlow Nickell: And so you've gotta start first talking to 'em and saying, okay what would it look like to have parts of your store be more digital? And so we always just do a store, walk with them involved and say, let's just look at all the print stuff you have. Do you enjoy swapping out these things every week? 

[00:18:40] Tom: And today we've talked with a retailer, a head of retail media, and there was an opportunity to replace those print labels or signs, and they did the whole math and figured out just the cost savings and the operational savings of replacing those and printing those out and doing that with justify the program. But they couldn't get the head of store operations, the exec [00:19:00] team behind it because they're just, they didn't want to. Muck with the experience. They don't wanna change what customers have been used to for 20 years, even if it was a better Yeah, it seems there's a lot, the unknown seems. Yeah, it seems like the excuses are either it's too small or it's meaning dollars is too small. 

[00:19:15] Tom: Yeah, it's too small in terms of dollars or yeah. Like I don't even know why the labor cost thing doesn't solve it for them, but yeah. 

[00:19:22] Marlow Nickell: Yeah, you've got CapEx issues for sure. I've seen a lot of retailers that try to do this on their own and they end up spending 3 to 4x what we do when we build out an equivalent program. And like right from the start, it's a pretty hard program to, make the unit economics work. 

[00:19:38] Marlow Nickell: There's also just like you're saying buy-in across the organization, it's hard to do that. And the bigger the company is, the more people you gotta have on board. And then, yeah there's the, it's a two-sided marketplace. You gotta have the supply and you gotta have the demand. And we're not at the scale yet where that demand is obvious. We've got coming up on 6,500 stores in our network, which is huge in a way. The tier one retailers don't really have any in store media to speak of.  

[00:19:59] Tom: Yeah. [00:20:00] Let's talk about as we get towards the end of this, I'd love to hear about your plans. How are you taking budget away from out of home, how are you connecting to the programmatic world? What can you tell us about where it's going. 

[00:20:13] Marlow Nickell: Yeah, I mean we, we certainly get some budget from the out-of-home world but we've largely tried to pivot more and more away from that just because if you think about it. Out-of-home buyers and budgets are really set up for billboards. Like they're about, these large format perms that they buy, the same thing they bought for the last 20 years. 

[00:20:29] Marlow Nickell: They might have another 10 or 20%, maybe that they can put towards more interesting things or whatever they wanna call it. So there's money there, but it's tiny. Where we're more interested is really the programmatic video space. Because if you think about comparing. In-store video or in-store retail media to what they're buying today for programmatic video teams. 

[00:20:46] Marlow Nickell: It just compares really favorably and their budgets are a lot more fluid. They're always looking to try new things that can increase incremental reach or be more efficient from a cost standpoint or just meet the objectives of their client, so I think that's where really the budgets are gonna shift. 

[00:20:59] Marlow Nickell: [00:21:00] Andrew's gonna actually debate this a lot. He's big on the this is the new tv. And I think there's some truth to that. There's certainly a lot of shifts happening with linear tv, but. 

[00:21:07] Marlow Nickell: I think where there's the most potential is the programmatic video side of things. 'cause it's just, it's really not hard to get started on that. 

[00:21:13] Marlow Nickell: You just need the brands to be bought into it. 

[00:21:15] Todd: I wouldn't have thought that programmatic video would've extend to in-store. So it's interesting you're talking about that opportunity of maybe the crossover big, like the leakage into the world and as people get more experience with it, then they'll invest more and understand Yeah. that's interesting. Where, what, where do you see in store in five years or 10 years and what is it, you're gonna see every retailer is gonna have multiple screens and it's gonna be, is it primarily video? Is it primarily. Yep. Quote unquote display or image-based advertising. what is the future in your mind or you, as you guys see at grocery tv? 

[00:21:45] Marlow Nickell: I'll give you the one year and build out to that. Like we, we feel very confident that by the end of this year, the majority of tier two retailers on down will have some kind of Instore media network. The slowest ones to move are the tier ones. 

[00:21:55] Marlow Nickell: 'cause it's just they have even more of these internal challenges that we talked about. So I don't know if any of the tier [00:22:00] ones will go this year. Certainly hope they do, but it's probably gonna be more of a next year thing. But even just with the tier twos on down, you're talking about, you can reach one into Americans basically. 

[00:22:08] Marlow Nickell: So it's huge and pretty high density in every market. So I think that's gonna be really exciting. I think that's gonna start to lead to a lot of demand that's coming into the market to. Match that supply. And then two to three years out, I think every retailer will be doing it in some capacity. 

[00:22:23] Marlow Nickell: I don't think it's gonna be an earth shattering thing. I think most shoppers won't even maybe notice, like it's just the print stuff turned digital and the life continues. But from a demand side, I think it's gonna be a huge opportunity. 'cause folks that have these really large programming video budgets that. 

[00:22:37] Marlow Nickell: A good chunk of that was not spent very efficiently before. It can now start to shift into this category and get a lot more for their dollar. Which is also a win for the retailers 'cause it's like truly incremental dollars that they didn't have access to before. So  

[00:22:48] Tom: Yeah, it's also you have, we had Dave Johnson who's CEO of Thrasio now on, and he was talking about his old P&G experience about how the packaging that these brands  

[00:22:57] Todd: have  

[00:22:58] Tom: needs to change. [00:23:00] It needs to, it needs to work so hard if there is no digital signage. Yep. It would be interesting to see how you work with. 

[00:23:07] Tom: Those brands, to see are you at the point with the brands where you're actually, consulting with them to get to the point of what they should be doing in the store? 

[00:23:14] Marlow Nickell: brand? It depends on the brand. Some of 'em are more forward than others.  

[00:23:16] Tom: But yeah, 

[00:23:17] Marlow Nickell: We talk a lot about what does best in class, in store retail media look like. Especially from a creative standpoint but also from a measurement standpoint. All that kind of stuff. But no, I think like it's in some ways like not that complicated. 

[00:23:29] Marlow Nickell: You think about where social media was 10 years ago, 15 years ago and now it's just very normal to have like social video and to run creatives on a social platform. And I don't think it's gonna be really any different for the retail space. You're just gonna have video running in store, or video running on site. 

[00:23:43] Marlow Nickell: And being able to deliver those messages that are either top or mid funnel if you're trying to just hit the objectives associated with that or. If it's more bottom of funnel, that could also work. 'cause it's obviously an in-store environment. But yeah  

[00:23:54] Tom: it's 

[00:23:54] Tom: like the Thanos line. I am inevitable. It's that's what comes to my mind of, we could have you, you would as [00:24:00] Thanos in that regard. You mentioned best in class, like who is, do you think the  

[00:24:03] Todd: best in class  

[00:24:04] Tom: for  

[00:24:04] Tom: in store today? Who's the one you always like to point to? 

[00:24:06] Todd: Oh my God, they really get into, do an awesome job with it. 

[00:24:09] Marlow Nickell: oh man, I don't get myself in trouble on that one. Yeah. 

[00:24:12] Tom: you can fine. Who are some of your favorites? Like you're, and campaigns that are obviously run within grocery TV are perfectly fine. We're the ones you guys look at and go, God they're our favorite customers. 

[00:24:19] Marlow Nickell: I think anybody that's doing custom creative that speaks to the environment, speaks to the context. We see that in the data that shoppers respond well to it and are excited about it. I saw one that was a this is actually a little while ago, but it sticks with me. 

[00:24:30] Marlow Nickell: It was a deodorant brand and and they were, this was running the checkout area aisle. And they said, Hey, do 10 calf raises while you're waiting in line. And it's a funny image to think of, like people standing in line doing calf raises, but it, but it works. And then, you're looking around seeing people do this and you associate with the brand and it's fun. 

[00:24:47] Marlow Nickell: And I just think what's cool about this environment is it's going back to basics a little bit. When it comes to advertising. It's just have good creative that speaks to people in an honest way. We're not trying to like hack people's brains here or trick them or anything. 

[00:24:59] Marlow Nickell: It's literally just [00:25:00] you're reaching 'em at a time when they're receptive, when they're in a buying mindset. And 

[00:25:03] Tom: Just your friendly neighborhood  

[00:25:05] Tom: grocer. Yeah.  

[00:25:06] Tom: And who's the retailer that that you look at as your  

[00:25:09] Marlow Nickell: showcase or 

[00:25:09] Tom: or  

[00:25:10] Todd: you, 

[00:25:11] Tom: implementation? 

[00:25:12] Marlow Nickell: Yeah, I don't wanna pick favorites. We have so many great 

[00:25:14] Marlow Nickell: Pick one. You can punch the ones that 

[00:25:15] Marlow Nickell: make. But 

[00:25:15] Tom: call it ones you like. 

[00:25:16] Marlow Nickell: but I think you brought up Hy-Vee. I think what they do that's very different is most folks are that have gotten into story tell media they've got one or two zones that they're trying right now. Hy-Vee, it's a full store experience now. 

[00:25:27] Marlow Nickell: In some ways, being on the bleeding edge can be tough. But it's also cool 'cause they're getting to learn all kinds of stuff that. Other people just can't test in the real world right now. So that's pretty cool. But, there's a ton of other great retailers we partner with that I think are executing in a cool way in terms of how they integrate in store with RMN. 

[00:25:41] Tom: Yeah,  

[00:25:41] Tom: no, I think the point is like for our listeners and people who follow us, it's they're gonna wanna go into a store and see, that's why I wanna bring  

[00:25:47] Marlow Nickell: it up though.  

[00:25:48] Tom: yeah, what should I go? And I think that's what we want to tell our listeners to do is. They need to experience this. 

[00:25:53] Tom: I do think it's inevitable, and I do think this is gonna be one of the biggest waves of retail media over the next five years is in store. [00:26:00] So I want, the people in our industry to start looking around and paying attention to yeah, everyone should go look at hyvee and  

[00:26:04] Marlow Nickell: what they're doing. 

[00:26:05] Marlow Nickell: Yeah. And if you're on the East Coast, we've partnered with ShopRite for a long time, like Wakefern, they're great. 

[00:26:09] Marlow Nickell: They've got a ton of different formats that they've been experimenting with. And Giant Eagle just rolled out with us. They've got some really great stuff they're doing. Any part of the country right now go look on our website, look at the map. You can see who's 

[00:26:18] Tom: Yeah, you have some good examples on there. Yeah. Wanted to thank you for being on the podcast. I hope you have a great rest of your Shoptalk, and thanks for being with us on the  

[00:26:25] Marlow Nickell: Appreciate it. 

[00:26:26]  

[00:26:26] Tom: You are listening to the Middlemen podcast with me, Tom Limongello