Commerce Riff with Sri & PVSB - October 13, 2026

0:00Sri: Brand marketing has one plan. Key account managers have another. The field team is doing something else entirely. Sound familiar? Our sponsor, Salesforce, can help. You can't win at the shelf if your internal systems are fighting each other. With Consumer Goods Cloud, you finally connect trade promotions, retail execution, marketing, and service. Everyone, including your AI agents, is working off the exact same data. And the best part? No massive IT headache. Keep your ERP. Keep your data where it is. Keep working in Teams, Claude, or Salesforce. Drive growth from warehouse to checkout with Salesforce at salesforce.com slash consumer goods.

0:51Sri: That's salesforce.com slash consumer goods. It's October 13th, 2026, and this is a Commerce Riff brought to you by the CPG Guys. Ten minutes of the news stories that matter in commerce this week. I'm your co-host, PBSB. I'm joined as always by Papa Raj, the father of Popstars, co-founder of ThinkBlue Consulting. Sri, how is the fall treating you?

1:15PVSB: So far awesome, Peter. I actually just got back from the airport. I dropped Lara Ajah at LAX. She's headed all the way to Dallas for some work. And then she comes back this weekend for Victoria's Secret fashion show in between. She's got two shows, Miami and Atlanta. Busy fall for all of us. Leah's launch is pending.

1:34Sri: Indeed they are, Sri. Busy for both of your girls. And for the CPG guys, we're slowing down our travel as we head towards the end of the year. All right. Four stories this week that cuts right to the heart of where commerce is headed. The convenience giant borrowing its playbook from Japan. Mars's vision for the next decade of shopping. Western consumer giant cracking the code on China's social media shoppers. And DoorDash putting its global media business in the hands of WPP. Let's get right into it. Let's start with convenience because 7-Eleven has a new leader and a very clear thesis. And it's one every CPG supplier selling into the channel should understand.

2:12Sri: Maurizio Leyva became CEO of 7-Eleven's North America arm in August. He's a consumer industry veteran, most recently group president at Keurig Dr. Pepper. Plans to revamp the brand in the U.S. and Canada is simple. Mirror what has worked in Japan. In his words, we're stealing with pride. And what is he stealing? Well, attention to detail and a focus on quality, which he says North America desperately needs to enhance. He points to iconic store staples like 7-Eleven Japan's Egg Salad Sandwich. Sri, if you haven't had one, they are the dreamiest, dreamiest sandwich. I actually have. Aren't they great?

2:51Sri: They melt in your mouth. There's nothing like a 7-Eleven Egg Salad Sandwich. He also points to extensive food variety and easy-to-open packaging. Parent company 7 & I Holdings has tasked him with an ambitious overhaul, modernizing stores, expanding private label brands across North America, and scaling the 7Now delivery platform. And he's candid about the shopper. Leyva said store transactions are keeping up in frequency, but not in size of basket. Value and quality will stay as important as ever, he said, but in an accelerated way. There's a capital markets angle too, Sri. The planned IPO of 7-Eleven Inc.

3:27Sri: has been pushed back and now isn't expected before fiscal 2027 at the earliest. 7 &I CEO Stephen Dacus said the objective is not to do an IPO, it is to increase shareholder value. He also said a lot of the oxygen has been sucked out of retail listings by AI because that's where all the money's going. The IPO is also a defensive measure after the long-running$47 billion takeover campaign by Circle K owner Koush Tard, which was ultimately withdrawn. And Dak has added that Seven and I has probably outsource too much and could expand in-house production expertise. Our lens, a bigger private label push plus a handful of iconic in-house staples means more of the convenience basket could shift to 7-Eleven's own products.

4:16Sri: If you're a branded supplier, you need a clear answer on why you earn the space. And if frequency holds while ticket size shrinks, the brands that win are the ones that justify a premium on both value and quality. One more connection for our listeners, Benoit Viter of Liquid Death, who we recently had on the show, built a digital-to-retail campaign for 7-Eleven and his earlier company, Mammoth Media. Convenience is a channel where media and shelf are tightly linked. Shrey? Thank you, Peter.

4:45PVSB: And I got a fun, let's say, quote-unquote, sweet story for us. Let's talk about a piece of research that we think every brand team should read because Mars just published his vision for the future of shopping and retail. And it's built on a ton of data. Mars partnered with Cantor and Synthesis to analyze more than 180 ,000 data signals across four continents. Shopper and channel publications, podcasts, and expert perspectives. On behalf of, of course, its snacking business. And the research lands on two detailed futures. The first, shopping stops being a chore. Agenting assistants handle the mental load, building lists, restocking, even pivoting when an item is out of stock.

5:24PVSB: Those who are skeptical about this, let me assure you, in the study that I've been doing in ThinkBlue Consulting on behalf of Coca-Cola's Retail Research Council with seven retailers, NGA and FMI, it's here. AI is in the middle of the shopping and it's very much occurring today. The second, shopping becomes an experience. With the functional role of shopping handled, physical stores become hubs for discovery and connection. Retailers need to pay attention. Mars says shoppers everywhere asking for the same three things make shopping efforts. Make it personal. Make it experiential. And the numbers behind those are actually worth noting.

5:57PVSB: Consumers using AI to discover e-commerce brands at more than seven times the rate of a year ago, that opportunity is projected to grow to$788 billion by 2035. 39 % of consumers already expect personalized online experiences. Personalized commerce is projected to be worth$427 billion by 2035, up from$189 billion in 2025. And 22 % of U.S. digital buyers already shopped via live stream, which is no surprise. Reynolds, Mars Snacking's global chief custom officer, says Mars is the insights and the commitment and is ready to work with retail customers and partners to lead this big transformation. Over the next five years, Mars says it will invest to imagine snacking and help retailers position snacks where consumers will discover that.

6:44PVSB: Now, here is a fair caveat from us. This is Mars' own research. So you can treat it as a point of view, but it's a well-sourced one. AI is real. The CPG lens from our side, the line that jumps out is this one. Brands must go the extra mile to earn a spot on the automated grocery list of AI. If an assistant builds the list, the shelf is the algorithm. That puts a premium on marketplace data, ratings, availability, retailer citations, and content. It's the world Scott Needham of SmartScout works in every day. He's been selling on Amazon since 2013 and the steam cracks category share across Amazon and TikTok shop.

7:22PVSB: If you want to know whether you're winning your category, the algorithm is. Wow. This conversation is a great place to start. Check out SmartScout, who is actually one of our latest episodes. Peter, I think you're going to talk to us about something very interesting.

7:37Sri: Yeah, Sri, let's shift to China because the Wall Street Journal has a story about Western consumer giant that is doing something most Western brands haven't been able to do there. grow. Racket, the master, the maker of Lysol, has posted 12 consecutive quarters of double digit sales growth in China. It started around 2022 when the China team asked CEO Chris Lick for funds to get ahead of a trend. Lick assumed they were talking about China's equivalents of Amazon and Walmart Plus. No, they weren't. As he recalls that he was told e-commerce was a yesterday technology. The new venue was social commerce.

8:15Sri: People scrolling through social media apps for entertainment and buying after seeing an ad. So Rekit went all in. It built 18 studios inside a five-story building on the outskirts of Shanghai. Crews broadcast live for 12 hours a day with employees selling Vite hair removals, cream, Dettol, Lysol's international equivalent, and other record goods, while shoppers bombard them with comments and questions in a chat that dominates the screen. At other studios, staffers join guest actors and influencers to film quick comedies and mini dramas about domestic life. In one, a parent argues with teenagers about smelly shoes, and Dettol comes to the rescue.

8:56Sri: The scale of the opportunity, some 800 million of China's 1.4 billion people use social media like Duyan and Kwai Shu every day, spending about 90 minutes a day on short videos, and half have bought items on the platforms. Reket's short-form video team drove 40 million new customers last year. Wow. From videos viewed, 15 billion Shreed. That's with a B, billion times. Emerging market sales grew 8.5 % in the first half, compared with just 0.8 % in North America and 3 % decline in Europe. And Rekin has begun replicating the playbook in Brazil, Mexico, and Malaysia. Our take? In this model, entertainment is the sales channel and the brand has to operate like a media company, studios, talent, real-time optimization.

9:50Sri: Social commerce is starting to catch on in the U.S. too, with shoppers buying through TikTok and Instagram links and live shopping streams on apps like Whatnot. It echoes something Benoit Vitaire told us about Liquid Death, an entertainment company that happens to sell water. Reket is proving the same idea works for disinfectant. The question for U.S. brands is whether you're willing to build that capacity and be patient while it scales. Wow, Sri. Let's close it out, shall we?

10:24PVSB: Absolutely, Peter. Don't you love that guy, Benoit Wattier? One of the most, I would think, prolific CMOs of our time. Anyway, I'm going to jump over to a delivery service and a media partner. So let's close this week with what we love here, agency stories, because DoorDash just made a big move on the media side, and it says a lot about where platform media is headed. DoorDash is named WPP Media's first global media agency partner, following a very competitive review. WPP has worked with DoorDash since its startup days, but the relationship is expanding beyond existing territories like the U.S.

10:59PVSB: and Canada to more than 40 additional international markets beginning next year. The Remic covers the full DoorDash portfolio, the namesake platform, UK-focused Deliveroo and Bolt, which operates in dozens of European and Asian countries. DoorDash said it elected WPP Media for capabilities and differentiated data, technology, and measurement, its understanding of global market dynamics, and the strength of the work over an eight-year relationship. WPP helped DoorDash on its first national use ad campaign in the lead up to its initial IPO, initial public offering, late 2020. DoorDash bought Volt in 2021 and completed its nearly$4 billion acquisition of Deliveroo last year.

11:40PVSB: The account will rely on Roedash's proprietary data and insights to support WPP Open, WPP's AI-powered operating system. And Roedash runs its own ad business, informed by customer transaction data, which, of course, it has access to every day. For WPP, it's part of a push to build existing client relationships and grow on. Estee Lauder appointed WPP Media as its first global media partner in April. in the same month Wendy's handed its U.S. media duties to WPP. Retaining business and giving clients a more unified view have been mandates this year for a company that is trying to return to growth.

12:14PVSB: It's like-for-like revenue-less pass-through costs declined 2.8 % in the second quarter. CPG guys, Lance, this is another data point in the agency consolidation story we've been tracking, including the recent one with PepsiCo's move to Publicis. And it shows that platforms sitting on transaction data choosing partners on data, technology, and measurement, not just reach. DoorDash is a media business now, and we're delivering in world under one roof. The retail media conversation for any brand selling through delivery is going global. If your measurement and your creative aren't willing to travel across markets, please listen to us.

12:49PVSB: Start now. Go on, Peter.

12:50Sri: Close us out, please. Thank you, Sri. That's a wrap on this week's Commerce Riff. A quick reminder to catch up on our recent episodes. We had two great conversations you don't want to miss. We referred to them in today's. Ref Scott Needham, founder of SmartScout, and Benoit Viter, Chief Media and Digital Commerce Officer at Liquid Death. Both are essential listening for anyone thinking about how brands win, where the algorithm and the shelf meet. Links are in the show notes. If anything we covered today sparked a thought, drop in the comments. We read everyone. And if you're not following us on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube yet, forget about MySpace.

13:25Sri: I joke about it, but ain't nothing there. Well, now's the time. We'll see you next week.

13:30PVSB: Bring on the Brewers.

13:57matter.

13:58Sri: Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by CPG Guys LLC. The views expressed by guests are their own, and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. The views expressed by CPG Guys LLC do not represent the views of their employers or the entity they represent. CPG Guys LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or other damages arising out of any individual's use of, reference to, or inability to use this podcast or the information we present in this podcast.