Ace Hardware's Kim Lefko & Molly Hjelm - RedVest Media 2027 Upfront

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0:50That's salesforce.com slash consumer goods. Hi, I'm Kim Lefkoe, the Chief Marketing Officer for Ace Hardware. Hi, I'm Molly Jow, my lead retail media for Ace Hardware, and you're watching the CPG Guys podcast. Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys podcast, set at the intersection of commerce and tech. Your hosts, Peter V.S. Bond and Sri Rajagopalan, explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in an increasingly digitally driven world. And now, here are the CPG Guys. Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys podcast. I am your lovable co-host, PBSB. I also moonlight as head of industry and find gate from the flywheel of the Omnicom Acceleration Division.

1:42I am so excited to say that we are recording today's episode from on top of the Chicago Cubs dugout at historic Wrigley Field, the site of the 2027 Red Vest Media Upgrade. More on that in a few minutes. My co-host, he is the father of pop stars, Ria Raj and capsized Lara Raj. The fans call him, of course, Papa Raj. He's also the co-founder of Think Blue Consulting. Please join me in welcoming the man known as Sri Sri. We've had a couple of big baseball-related bucket list items this summer. I took you up to the Hall of Fame. We saw the Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony. And how could we top that?

2:22We are recording an episode inside iconic Wrigley Field here in Chicago. This is huge. What do you have to say? First of all, you know what's comical? That I have half a million followers on social media as Papa Redshade. But that said, I want to first thank Molly. About a month and a half ago, she sent us a message inviting us to the upfront here for RedBest Media. And then we chatted about a podcast and how we'll do this. And a month and a half later, thanks to you, Molly, and to you, Kim, CMO of Ace Hardware, you and I are making a bucket list moment come true. Earlier this year, Peter and I got the baseball nuts.

3:04You'll find that out pretty soon. as evidenced by our CPG guys' jerseys. Here's an homage to the Yankees' mind of the doctor. I got my Gina number in the back, as you can see. All that said, it's like a... Thank you. Very soon, I think we're also getting a red dress jersey. I think you are immediately after. You'll see that on our video. That said, we got to do a one-two thing this year, which is we made a dream of mine come through another bucket list moment, which is go to the actual Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Cooper Sound. And I was a kid in a candy store going to the actual Hall of Fame and just buying up more memorabilia than a truck could fill.

3:42But more on that later. But this feels like the icing on the cake. Really special. I mean, we're literally sitting here, the home of the iconic, historic, one of the few remaining original stadiums, the home of the Chicago Cubs. And we're two feet away from where the players sit. This is insane. Priya, are you ready to be on the on-deck circle? You want to start swinging? Oh, my gosh. If I had a chance, you know it. You're going to pull an errand chat, Jonas? You know it. Do it. I know it. We started from pitches during our event today. Hey, hey, hey. We did. We saw tomorrow's starter. There we go.

4:17That was pretty good. All right. Before I get to our guests, I'll just say three things to our audience. One, subscribe or follow us on whatever platform you listen to. Give us a rating when you're there. That helps make our podcast more findable. so subscribe rate uh and uh and then tell your friends about us that's what we're you're not gonna ask for the five star rating uh okay the five sorry give us a five star you know like number five okay where do you get where do you go to get hamburgers four guys no five guys you want to listen to good music do you listen to four for fighting no you listen to five for fighting smash the five people smash the five i didn't know where that was we're all about the bus okay Okay, subscribe, raise, follow.

5:00That's a great setup. I thought you said, where do you go to get hammered? Pierre's not the only one who can throw surprises at you. Follow us on LinkedIn. That's another important thing. We publish a lot of content there. We've got tremendous stuff. Make sure you're following us on LinkedIn. Okay, subscribe, rate, follow. All right, our guests, as I mentioned at the Open, we're doing something special. We're here at Wrigley Field, home of the Cubs. And this is the site of the inaugural Red Fest Media Upfront event. If you've been following the story, You know Red Vest Media is Ace Hardware's retail media network.

5:30And we've covered its journey before. Why Ace got into retail media in the first place, the co-op model that makes it unique among other hardware retailers, the launch portfolio, the tech stack that they showcase today. As we record this, we're just at the tail end of the upfront. And of course, the measurement philosophy, they all built right from day one. This is chapter two. We're not re-litigating a launch. We're actually going to learn, though, that Mali exceeded a budget. Well, you know what? If you want the leather seats, you're going to have to pay extra. But she was ahead of time. You want the seat warmers?

6:07That's more. You want the sports foil package on the outside? Right. Hey, I built what you want, but if you want a little more, it's going to be a 250-cam-up capability. What can I say? We're here today to talk about what's happened since they launched, what surprised the team, what work, what they do differently, and how a year of blessings from advertisers and merchants is shaping their 2027 roadmap. So to do that, we've got two guests who've been at the center of it. Joining us are Kim Lefkoe, Chief Marketing Officer at Ace Hardware, and Molly Delm, VP and Head of Retail Media at Ace, the architect behind Red Nest Media.

6:41Most have been past guests on the CPG Guys. Kim brings a career built on the grand side before nearly a decade at Ace, giving her a front row view of how the organization and vendor community have responded to retail media. Molly has spent the last year building Red Vest from the ground up. And today, fittingly on Upfront Day, she and the team are unveiling a broad new set of capabilities from measurement enhancements to audience library that really got my attention to its standard social and influencer offerings and a headline-making DoorDash partnership. So grab a seat. We're at Wrigley Field.

7:16The Upfronts just wrapped. Pull out your Cracker Jacks. We're going to get right to the source. Kim, Molly, welcome to the CPG, guys. How are you doing? Thanks for having us. Doing great. Thank you. We are so excited to be here. Thank you for the invitation, Molly. Anytime I get to spend with you is extra special, but to do it here at Wrigley, wow. You had me at hello. You had me at hello. This is so exciting to be here. We're going to get into this. I'm going to mention to our audience in the digital show notes of this episode, you're going to find links to both the LinkedIn profiles with Kim and Molly and to Redvest Media's corporate site where they can learn more about what we're talking about today.

7:53So I'm going to get us started off. Kim, I'm just going to go to you. We're recording at Wrigley Field following the inaugural outback. Sri and I know what this moment represents to us, but what we more importantly want to know is what does this moment represent for Ace and for the brands that are going to grow with you through what you talked about today. Yeah, it definitely is two iconic brands here in Chicago with Ace just over 100 years. And you guys probably know the exact year of Wrigley. What is it? 1914. Yeah. OK, there you go. And so when you look at iconic brands coming together, that's kind of the foundation of us hosting the event here.

8:33But we also like the idea of baseball and Ace and springtime. you naturally think of shopping at Ace and that is Americana. And we believe the brands go together really, really well. It was a little bit of ingenuity when Molly and I were saying it's one thing to host a retail media upfront event, but our vendors travel across the country and go to these events all the time for, what do we say, 200 retail media networks out there. What can we do to just level up and do something really disruptive? And I think we did it. I think we hit it out of the park. I think we did. Let me first congratulate you both on your first upfront.

9:11What a big moment. To understand that you pulled this off in a year is insane. Like, congratulations to you both. Peter and I get to go to so many upfronts in a year. This one was special. The content that you had, all the announcements you had on all the new partnerships. The social one especially, I think, was very special because that's the future of how things will be created in this world. So, obviously, people walking away from here, the brands are going to have some buzz. Like several of you mentioned on stage, they're going to walk away, they're going to tell stories, they're going to talk about capabilities.

9:44Bottom line, they're going to be excited. So Kim, let me ask you a question first. So as the person responsible for the perception of Ace Hardware and how customers actually engage with the brand, what differentiates the Ace customer from other customers? Yeah, we talked about that as a huge competitive advantage for the vendors investing in Redvest Media. We have a really special network of customers in our Ace Rewards program. And there are retailers out there with 200 million members in a retail program. I think they set the pinnacle. We're close behind with 80 million members in Ace Rewards.

10:21What makes that customer so special is they're very sticky. We have a retention and a requalification of Ace Rewards customers choose to shop Ace year after year after year. And they're our best customers representing over 60 % of our sales. So for a vendor investing in retail media to be able to have a network and data insights of that magnitude, that's sticky. And oh, by the way, a nice caveat is 91 % of them own their home. And when they own their home, they're willing to spend more. They're willing to invest in high-quality brands, which is really what a vendor community is looking for when they make investments into retail media.

11:07So we have a special group of press cards, that's for sure. No debate. And I'm one of those that actually owns a room and the store is actually close to my house. It's just too convenient. I still like going in store. Molly, the next one's for you. Let's talk about purchase-based audiences. Today, you talked about the audience library. Let's get to that. how does that differ from what you've traditionally been doing for the last year, the audience-based library? It's a great question. So first-party data, our loyalty data that Kim was just talking about, has always been at the center of our targeting from day one.

11:43With no extrapolation, our vendors are getting the benefit of that deterministic targeting that is the true value of retail media. But we've been doing it differently than I think they're accustomed to with many other retail media networks in that we're starting with a highly relevant first-party data audience, the buyers of their brand and those that are predictive to buy their brand. Maybe they shop the category, maybe they shop an adjacent category. We put those together as a pool of customers and we allow AI, we've been using AI from day one to optimize the campaign from among all the highly correlated variables available in retail data towards the outcome we seek for that campaign, which is typically conversion.

12:26Now, that's revolutionary. That's an amazing application of retail media. It's an amazing evolution of purchase-based targeting in retail media. It also doesn't fit cleanly with the way that everybody wants to plan their media. You guys both know as people are planning allocation of national budgets, oftentimes they have a brief or oftentimes they have specific cohort-based objectives where they want to engage a specific customer. Now, we're living in the best of all worlds. We know that the way that we have been targeting is extremely performant. It's 7X, the ROAS that we see of manual targeting.

12:59And yet we also want to be able to say yes and answer to that call as well. It also allows for our first corray into engaging non-endemic brands. And so we're really excited to be able to offer. Kim had just shared 91 % of ACE customers own their homes. ACE wants to be there with that trusted relationship between homeowners and the brands that help them maintain, enjoy, and continue to fix up their biggest asset. My goodness, as you talk about the non-endemic opportunities, my head starts to race and I have so many more questions that could probably keep us here for hours. It's not the heat, right?

13:35Blazing hot. No, no, it's not the heat. No, but I think that's really great. You know, there's no ball game today, tomorrow, so we can be... No, I know that, but Sri, can you envision a day when the Roz sisters are playing a concert here at Wrigley Field? Wouldn't that be better? There we go. I think that could... Let's table that for another discussion. Kim, back to you. Now, you obviously spent, as I mentioned at the beginning, spent a career on the brand side prior to Ace, and you've now been here for a decade. So you bring both sides of the table to the conversation. I'd love to know from your perspective, what stood out for you in this first year of Red Best Media?

14:11And did anything surprise you about how the organization and vendor community responded to the introduction of Red Best Media? Yeah, it was very impressive. I think the ability to be a hundred-year-old company, you know, over a$20 billion at retail, we're large. And to be able to move nimbly and quickly to launch something is quite impressive. And to go from idea to launch in less than a year is outstanding. And in large part, to Molly's vision, her fortitude, she's a builder. And she's done this before. And I think there's great learning for anyone listening. when you enter into a new initiative, go find an expert that can come in and execute and build because they've done it before.

14:53They run faster. And Molly definitely has done that for us. A vendor has to go first. And you heard that during the Upfront panel. And a shout out and kudos to Steele, Rust-Oleum, and Black & Decker to be the first one saying, hey, I'll jump in. Someone needs to go first. And they were major advocates. And you heard it on the panel today. Here's my thing. My takeaway from what we offer, and this is my big learning coming out of our first year, is Molly and I talked. We were late to the party. And that was our podcast conversations leading up to now. But it amazes me that the top five retail media networks out there today collecting millions and billions of dollars into retail media, and they're building their own brands.

15:39And they're touting private label and house grants. and it is a significant. And for my - How would that make you feel as a brand manager? Well, that's the thing. That is my past life spending over 20 some years sitting in that seat of a vendor and selling to retail. That's different at Ace. We love the brand and the product and the innovation and the exclusivity and we get the features and benefits and our red vested heroes actually use the product. That is a major differentiator and we grow if our brands grow. and we don't grow and then take the insight and try to build out a private label inside and that's really really special but says something about the value of integrity but also just a fight to win at ace the next one's for you molly but wait you have pulled off a banger for brands y 'all actually set on state you're and you're the first retail media network to do this how on planet earth kim this is Unscripted.

16:40You convince your chief merchant that you will connect retail media to increased distribution. That was epic. I will give you that. I never heard that. I never heard that. Yeah. And Molly has said it and she can speak to it so much better. But the merchant community, here's something that you don't see or know about the ace culture. We say the name on the front of the jersey is way more important than the name on the back of the jersey. And that's the way we show up inside the culture at Ace. And so the merchandising team and the marketing team, we cross lanes to do what's best for the company and what's best for our vendor partners.

17:16And I think that's what you saw play out. Yeah. Can I build? Co-op model, there's a lot of complexity. You heard it. You heard it on stage. I think it was SBD that was saying, you know, Ace's biggest advantage is that they're 5 ,300 stores. Ace's biggest disadvantage is that it's 5 ,300 stores. As a vendor, that can be challenging to navigate to try to grow your distribution. but also it can present a challenge for our merchants too because the buck doesn't stop with the merchants here within our corporate ecosystem. It's really these independent store owners. And so the bottom line is that retail media and the retailer reach solution that we offer is actually a helpful tool, not just for vendors, but also for the merchants at Ace.

17:57You all can say what you want, but what you pulled off? To the bands listening, bands that attended today, You have no idea what a big deal it is of first in the RMAN space to actually connect. Late-mover is still first in the market. We will say that there are a lot of internal discussions of all hands in when we select which brands, which products are going on retailer rates. This is the advantage of late-mover advantage. You can just bypass a bunch of things and just jump to it. So, Molly, here's my original question before the unscripted one. about a year ago you were on the show you were literally recruited to start red vessel media as you were preparing to launch did you think you have an upfront a year later that too at cops this has totally exceeded my wildest dreams so it was not on her bingo card it was not on my bingo card especially to do just 10 months post launch there's so many things you understood the assignment yeah there were so many things that have stood out to me i mean the fact that we launched on time in six months.

19:02The fact that the performance was there from day one, we're doing third-party MRC-accredited real-time measurement that we don't see before a vendor sees it. And so in those early days, the fact that the measurement worked is not a given. And then the fact that the performance was there, that was one of my biggest surprises. The merchant community, how quickly they ran to embrace this as a tool in their toolkit also surprised me. And then how many vendors were quick, not just to invest that first dollar, but that next campaign and the next one really predicated on the performance. We now have hundreds of brands investing in our first year.

19:38And I think that's the thing I'm most proud of. Thank you. That the performance is there, that it is a toolkit that drives business growth and that the vendor community and the merchants have embraced it. Molly knows that my hometown ace hardware stories, Paige's hardware on the green in coastal guilford connecticut and my daughter nadia who's in the audience hi nadia hi there we go she likes going there because the red vest heroes they hide a stuffed hammerhead shark called fin and move it around the store the minute she runs in she goes hunting for the shark and if she finds it she gets a tootsie roll so right there you've got an ace hardware shopper for life.

20:21My kids go to the most dangerous power tools. Oh, what an example of local community reaching out to customers, making it fun. Yeah, no, absolutely. If you want to get a nice Guilford, Connecticut t-shirt, the only place to get it is at these hardware store pages. They sell them there. It's great. It makes you feel very local, very community. All right. Now let's get down to talking about your big announcements today. Molly, Redvest already had a full funnel portfolio. Now you've announced a broader set of new capabilities this morning. Give us the lay of the land and what you announced. Absolutely.

20:58Three things guiding our roadmap today and going forward. The first is we want to be launching, and we're not like every other retailer, and we want to launch things that are uniquely ACE. We also want to enhance the level of insights available to our vendor community to help them manage and grow their business at ACE. And three, we want to engage with advertisers and with customers wherever they're spending their time in the systems and in platforms where they already are. And our innovation announcements today sit cleanly within those themes, of course, by design. We announced some of the elements we've just been talking about.

21:30We've been talking about scaling our Retailer Reach program, category drivers, which are integrated merchandising campaigns that multiple vendors can take part in, our weather-triggered programmatic campaigns fit very cleanly in with Aces Valley to our communities. where we're there for them in times of weather. We made some sizable announcements on enhancements to our measurement. Launched real-time measurement from day one. That's been fantastic. It's part of why this network has scaled so quickly, but it was never going to be enough. And so we launched new-to-brand reporting that's standard in our wrap recording.

22:01We launched incrementality, test versus holdout control. And what's your look-back period on the new-to-brand? You talked about it earlier. That's not like 12 months. So the beauty of it is that no matter which way you who has a business defined new to brand, we have a granularity of cut that allows you to do that look back window in three month increments all the way back to 24 months. Wow. Which is phenomenal. Because the person cycle of a lawnmower is fundamentally different than malts that you're getting for your, yeah, exactly. And that's why you need a longer look back window. Precisely.

22:38And we found, we were able to share some data on stage today. On average, 30 % of the customers that have converted as a result of Red Vest campaign were net new to the brand, had not bought them in the last year. You're that free? I did. 30 % net new. I had a bunch of incredible numbers across the three hours earlier. Yeah. The ones that retained, in my mind, the most were the ones that ended in an odd number. That's what Kim told me today. That's right. It's true. Remember things and don't do it in even numbers. People remember odd numbers. We're not even our most exciting announcements. Ooh, go.

23:10Our most exciting announcements today were the partnerships that we announced. I mean, personally. I saw some logos on there. There are some logos on the wall. On stage here at the upfront, we announced our influencer network, our Ace Hardware Influencer Network. Vendors now have the ability to a partnership with Influential to tap into data-driven, but also Ace-vetted influencers. The landscape of customer trust is shifting to content creators, and we want to be right there at the nexus of customer trust. Did we also hear that your partnership with DoorDash, most of the customers on the platform on NetMute?

23:45Actually, I invite Kim to talk a little bit about our beautiful relationship with DoorDash and I can talk about what we've just announced. Yeah. So, you know, we I think it was two years ago, we saw a trend happening with marketplaces. And this is inside even before retail media. And there was this big question of their competitor, keep them at arm's length. And we made the complete opposite decision. We got to know DoorDash quite closely and said, we want to be on the cutting edge and do some testing with you. DoorDash is right there. Let's go DoorDash. Let's go JR. DoorDash, start the wave, please.

24:17DoorDash, they are a progressive partner. And, you know, as we sat down and talked about our business needs, like Ace Rewards and being able to collect that information, they were really passionate about that. As we got into retail media and said it would be wonderful to be able to offer retail media placement in DoorDash for Ace Hardware. They were excited about piloting and testing that. So don't run from where there's tension. Pay attention to the tension because there's probably an opportunity for innovation when you have the right partner. And DoorDash has been outstanding. We found on the whole that the data supports that 90 % of the customers that convert on the Ace storefront on DoorDash are new to Ace hardware.

24:5790. 90%. And so what's thrilling about what we launched today, which is our advertising partnership with DoorDash available to our vendor partners starting right now, is that they'll have the ability through our toolkit to be able to engage with new customers to ACE and be part of the Zyka's bringing new customers to ACE. Kim is running a marketing engine that's tasked to do that, and now vendors can be part of it. You guys sound like a success in numbers paradise for brands. That's it, Kim. This one's for you. Thank you. You had over 250 people here in the audience today for your first upfront.

25:31I'm sure this is only going to grow and grow and grow as we are. So I'm going to ask you to take a second, not do the boots that Molly has, but put yourself in the shoes of the audience. Yes. Those boots are made for walking. Wow. Not for running the bases right now. Yeah, not for running the bases. They look pretty fast. Everyone who is here, though, will go back, share these updates. Lots of exciting new announcements. You'll shade precise numbers across the board. If you were a CMO at the vendor, when you listen to all this and you engage with Red West Media, what should be the first call you put into your teams or to you maybe, Kim, and say, let's do blah?

26:14What resonates the most? Right. There's a lot. I do like a couple of the three points that differentiate Molly walk through those. The first I have to start with, and I know I've stated this earlier, I've been in their shoes and there's a lot out there. We lead with trust and high integrity and the level of transparency in building campaigns and showing the results of the campaign is something you absolutely get with us. And marketing's changed. It's no longer, you know, 50 % of my marketing investments working. I just don't know which 50 % it is. And that used to be the mantra 20 years ago. But now you know what works and you know for every dollar invested what you're getting in a ROAS back.

26:56And we work hard in a level of transparency to grow that number with our vendors. The second I mentioned it before, we grow when our brands grow. And that's, you know, that's a differentiator. And I hope when they go back and have discussions internally of we have five retail media networks we can invest in. And I don't practice right at the top because the major differentiators, we care about the number one thing that is the sustainability of life for their company, their brand, and their products. So I would say those are a couple of things. We measure what matters. We're very, very transparent and high integrity on the campaign builds.

27:35And their brands are equally as important to us as they are to them. Those would be the key points of conversation in a boardroom deciding where to invest next year. Okay. Molly, it was very clear to me today that measurement was front and center in the conversation. So let's talk about that. You are very passionate about measurement. I've known that for almost 15 years now and have data as an under firm in our shared career paths. How are vendors and merchants responding to performance so far? And what will these enhancements do for the dialogue as you look to build out Redvest Media further?

28:17Yeah. So in my early days, earlier this year, I was at a leadership meeting, a merchandising leadership meeting, and I was sharing our amazing campaign results. I was showing them averages by tactic. And our chief merchandising officer, Brian, turns to me and he's like, yeah, yeah, that's great. What was the total business lift as a result of running this campaign? He's like, that's what I care about. I need to see that if our brands are investing in this tool, that we can see it at a macro level. And, you know, we hear that all the time in retail media. No one's going to say as a result of this media campaign conducted here that your entire business is going to move as a result.

28:56They shy away from it. But as a result of that direct conversation, I said, let's bring into our wrap reporting for the merchants and for the vendors. Let's just put in our wrap reporting total business results. We're going to show what happened to your business during the campaign versus the pre-period and versus year prior. We're going to also show you the campaign level results. But at the end of the day, if over the long term, this media is not actually moving the needle for your business on a macro level, then we should have that conversation. We should be aware of that. We should have that front and center because that is the goal.

29:31It is not a successful campaign. It is a successful another 100 years for your business. Brilliant. Kim, as a CMO, you have a tough job. Earlier, we already talked about the fact that you represent the brand. But in the world of retail media, that you guys are now a year and two, and you're already in this great venue, you're one doing an upfront. Obviously, you're successful. We've discussed metrics, partnerships, things of that nature. But a big question I have for you is the world of retail media, as far as the brand see, is a clutter. Lots of buzzwords, measurement isn't clear. And so the best way I'll summarize it, it's not a noise on retail media.

30:09How do you guys ensure that you can separate meaningful opportunities from retail media noise? Yeah, it's a good reason the way that we started. You know, all along, we weren't going to join and just be me too in the market with retail media. And we entered saying, hey, we've got a couple of major points of difference. Let's lean into those. And we want to operate differently. We want to operate with the vendor at the center of what are their goals and ambitions with the program. And we also were leaning on Molly to say we need innovation. We need a product roadmap that shows new ways. And we have a philosophy at ACE where we say test, learn, refine, scale.

30:53And Molly's job with retail media, and she's done it very, very well in the first 90 days, is let's be testing these key initiatives that we think are very, very important with how people shop and how people live. And how do we bring that in and scale it for all 250 vendors in retail media as an opportunity for growth? And good ones are social media. We didn't have that. This retailer reach was a concept of there was a pain point, something our vendors were giving us feedback. And I'm like, all right, let's see what that could look like. Run a small test. We've got something. Let's go ahead and scale it.

31:26So no matter whether it's retail media or any marketing initiative, if the organization isn't spending 10, 20 percent on testing, that could be money, that could be people, that could be time. We need to be testing rapidly to scale the best ideas. And Molly and her team take that approach. And the testing could be on our own with our own technology or it could be through other vendor partners, which is pretty cool. Now I'm going to ask you to look forward into the future. We do have two, three more questions for you, but let's do future forward. A year passes by. I have a part A and a part B. Part A, how the heck are you going to triumph doing it up front at the Wrigley Field?

32:07And B, what do you look forward to a year out from today? because you kind of set a very high bar for all the automates. We've already talked about how do you top this venue? I think we come back. I think we've got to come back. I think there's going to be a lot of home. I know where Brian wants you to hold the next one. It might be a little south of here. Yes. There are some White Sox fans on staff, but there's something really special here, and I bet we would get a larger audience after this really well-executed, super fun, very nostalgic, beautiful day. I love it. So I think we come back here and, you know, Molly, I'm not going to publish it here.

32:49Molly and I have had a lot of conversation about what the numbers look like and the vendor support. But here's a number that she and I talk at length about. I want vendor retention. And when we sit down for our weekly status or our monthly status and talk about the state of the business, I often ask how many of our vendors are reinvesting at the same rate or higher? Because when they do that, it means there's something great happening here. And that's a metric we care about. It's because ACE is the plan. That's right. Do you want to sing the jingle? From my perspective, year one, we've seen amazing traction.

33:25Those first campaigns from a vast majority of vendors. If we're here again next year, when we're here again, exactly right here next year. I just I hope that even more of our vendor community will have had the opportunity to have their first campaign. And I also hope that everybody that was here in the audience today will have had their fifth, sixth, seventh campaign under their belts, that they will feel really confident in the learnings that they have for how to deploy not only our existing portfolio, but also the new solutions that we launched today. Molly, you talked a little bit ago about the big announcement you made around influencers.

34:04Social and influencers are huge right now. They are bigly, one might say. So tell us a little about why these felt so important to launch with your vendors here at the end of year one. Well, we want to be where our customers are spending their time. We also are an extremely trusted brand. And so it just made sense as we think about launching things that are unique to A, since we think about being where our customers are, and as we think about the feedback we've received from our vendor community who are also shifting national budgets in favor of social, we really want to be at that kind of, I say, nexus of customer trust.

34:44We want to be in the mix of authentic voices, interacting with product and engaging in an authentic way. And influencers is where that's at. And so we wanted to be able to engage with our brands to be able to respond to their requests there. to be able to create mutually beneficial campaigns, and then to be able to amplify them to our customers and measure the impact. Yeah. When you think about how a customer shops, and DoorDash said this on the panel, when someone goes to a marketplace like DoorDash, they know exactly what they're going to buy, and they're just trying to find out how much and how quickly they can get it.

35:21When I look at shopping today, when someone goes to the search bar in the past, they were looking for a product and availability, what's happening with social media is this unexpected discovery. I didn't know I needed that. And I need to go out and buy it because of what I saw in social media. And so there's a whole level of product discovery, brand discovery, lifestyle discovery that's happening in social. And I love what Molly and the team has done to put us front and center. And again, making ACE relevant with how people shop. It's so true because I had no idea that Sheree and I needed CPT guys branded baseball jerseys and yet here they are.

35:59Absolutely. Totally. On that DoorDash partnership, JR is not the only one with the story. I'm building a Yankee shrine in my office. Like I mentioned, we were at the Hall of Fame. We collected a bunch of memorabilia. On Sunday, as I was putting stuff up on the wall, I do a lot of DIY. I realized then special screws for sheetrock and guess what I did? I already knew I needed special screws for sheetrock. I went to DoorDash and guess what happened? It was hardware. Nice. And then within two hours, I got my Yogi Bear picture up. I love it. I do. I love the DoorDash partnership that we announced. It's so efficient.

36:40It solves the problem immediately. It solves the problem. As somebody who's doing in the midst of a project, I think it's a fantastic amplification of the helpfulness and convenience of Ace because I had the exact same experience as you, Sri. I was planting my garden earlier this year, realized I did not buy anywhere near enough soil. And I was able, while still in my gardening gloves, to place an order on DoorDash for more soil from Ace. And it was delivered 20 minutes later. And I could continue and carry on with my project with no disruption. So not having to go to the store one more time. Kim, one more thing about social.

37:17What do you see from an overarching marketing perspective being the role of social? Yeah, I said it before. It's a new form of discovery. And we are in the past. Here's been our social strategy. We have 5 ,300 ace retailers across the country. Many of them run their own social channels for their local store. Wow. And so we gave the guidance that we want you to be present on social media. and the first priority for you is to care for your customers there. So if they're asking questions or they're trying to engage with your store or the brand, you engage with them with a care lens, not a selling lens.

37:59And our stores have done an incredible job. Are they inspiring each other through this? And some are fantastic, you know, and others have got opportunities. Now we publish content that they could use, but now as we get to this stage of sponsorship and selling and being a platform of discovery, it changes the game a little bit. And so you'll be seeing more from us, not just through influencers, but you'll be seeing more plays with us in social. You know, Peter, as we close this out, I'm going to share a few observations that stood out. Number one, the social partnerships. Awesome. That is the future.

38:36That's how things are going to be shopped. The sooner you bring them on board, creators, the better off customers will have it. your partnership with DoorDash and the likes of DoorDash as well. They're not the only one. You have Instacart as well. Realizing the immediacy needs of the customer and having that as an option is important. And you'll have recognized it in year one of the RMN. Measurement transparency that you talked about, Ken, that's important as well. But the one that I'm going to say is yowza. And you deserve a pinky up from Katzai for that. Pinky up. Bingo. So merchandising to connect the only and the first retail media networks of your brand.

39:17Pepsi was here today. They don't have that with anybody else. No. Distribution opportunities. Yowza. Game change for Sri. What about your thoughts? Yeah, for me, Sri, it's a couple of things. I love the influencer component of it. The fact that the people who use Ace, the people who work at Ace, can all contribute to the local community feel to it, that one community can inspire another. And that's what they bring to this game, the local relevance. You heard them say, 75 % of the US is within a 15-mile drive of an Ace Hardware store. That's reach, that's relevance. And with the partnership with DoorDash and the other last-mile delivery marketplaces, the sky's the limit in terms of your ability to reach consumers and drive the brand Rose of all the brands selling through your door.

40:08So thank you. Thank you for that. Kim, Molly, on behalf of Sri, the CPD guys, we are so grateful that you would invite us to Chicago for this epic, epic event. If you're looking to do a roadshow, might I suggest Dodger Stadium in the future? I know I'm a little biased in that respect. I know. We're going to have that fight. It's the East Coast West coaching. Ladies, thank you so much. Please come back and join us and tell us as new things develop, what's going on at Red Vest and Ace. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you, guys. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for always putting a spotlight on Red Vest Media.

40:44It means a lot to us. To our audience, that is a wrap. I now have a date at the Hello Kitty Cafe with a beautiful little girl. High Tea with Nadia. Shree, thanks for joining me. Mine is bullying. It's so hard in America. I know. Although I am getting to see cats tonight before they leave on tour. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. All right. to our audience. Thank you for joining us. We look forward to speaking with you on the next episode of the CPG Guys podcast. Good.

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