Beyond the retail media hype: How brands are undermining their success
After five years at the forefront of retail media with Cartology, Jodie Koning has seen the industry evolve at an astonishing pace.
Retail media has gone from a peripheral curiosity to one of the fastest-growing and most influential media channels in Australia. Yet for all its potential, one uncomfortable truth remains.
Many brands are still getting in their own way.
Retail media isn’t a silver bullet; it’s a powerful accelerant. But like any high-octane fuel, it demands a finely tuned engine and a skilled driver. Too often, I’ve seen brands stumble at the starting line, tripped up by fundamental missteps that undermine their investment and leave them questioning the channel’s efficacy. Marketers need to stop treating it like a box to tick or a ‘pay to play’ scheme and start treating it like the powerful, integrated, customer centric channel it can be.
As I step out of Cartology and into this new chapter – helping brands and agencies thrive in retail media, I want to shed light on some critical areas to get right, offering insights that I believe will empower brands to truly succeed in the retail media space.
The objective obscurity: Are you solving a problem, or just spending a budget?
This is perhaps the most significant hurdle. Many brands plunge into retail media with a nebulous sense of purpose, driven more by a fear of missing out than a clear strategic imperative. I’ve sat through countless meetings where objectives are either too numerous to be actionable, or so vague they offer no real north star. Starting this way will almost certainly lead to disappointment around return on investment.
