Commerce Riff with Sri & PVSB - September 15, 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.

0:50Sri: That's salesforce.com slash consumer goods. It's September 15th, 2026, and this is the 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 Paparaj, the father of pop stars, co-founder of Think Blue Consulting. Shri, you just finished the cat's eye European leg of the tour. how was it for Papa Entourage?

1:22PVSB: A frenzy of fans is what I'd say. So we did London, London, arenas, two days back to back. So we're talking about 50 ,000 people, Manchester, Paris. And then we wrapped up at Amsterdam while they're still playing at Cologne and Copenhagen, etc. We had to come back home for Bala and just, I got to work for a living, man. But it was a frenzy period. The amount of kids that wanted to take pictures with Mama Raj and me, out of control. We are legit celebrities now in certain environments. Don't forget, I'm also a CPG guy. Does that qualify me? I think it does.

1:55Sri: My question to you, Sheree, is what was the average age of the fan that wanted your signature? I'm thinking they were pretty young. Less than 18. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. All right.

2:05PVSB: There were a few adult-like moms who wanted the picture, too, in the process.

2:08Sri: That Papa Entourage. She's a cutie. All right. This week, it's a changing of the card at Albertsons as Meg Whitman steps in as executive chair. Omnicom deals with the fallout of losing PepsiCo to Publicis. Kroger cuts its outlook as Cyclospora and Squeezed Budgets Bite and Amazon takes its ad business straight into, wait for it, ChatGPT. I'll kick it off. Albertson's company has made a notable board move this week, appointing Meg Whitman, the former eBay and Hewlett-Packard chief executive, to newly created role of executive chair. With the appointment, Kim Fenebrask shifts from board chair to lead independent director, and the board grows from 10 to 11 members.

2:53Sri: Whitman won't be running the company day to day. That's still CEO Susan Morris's job, but she'll act as an operations and strategic advisor to Morris and the senior team, with Albertsons pointing specifically to her experience streamlining technology and AI-driven operations as the reason for the fit. quote, Meg has remarkable track record of helping companies strengthen execution, accelerate growth, and create long-term value, unquote, Morris said in the announcement. It is worth remembering, Sri, that the resume here. Meg took eBay from$30 million to more than$8 billion in revenue between 1988 and 2008.

3:31Sri: That's just a decade. Then spent the better part of a decade at Hewlett-Packard engineering its split into HP, Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. He also has done stints as a U.S. ambassador to Kenya and CEO of Quibi, and currently sits on the board of CoreWeave, Motive Technologies and Fervo Energy. So this is someone comfortable around both enterprise tech and AI infrastructure. The timing says a lot. Albertsons is trying to reverse softening sales and sharpen its execution at the same time competitors like Kroger are dealing with their own top line pressure. More on that in a minute. Bringing in a board level operator with 40 year track record of turnaround signals the company wants outside firepower on strategy, not just the C-suite.

4:22Sri: Over to you, Sri.

4:23PVSB: Thank you so much, Peter. And I have a blockbuster bombshell for you guys. Omnicom is dealing with the fallout from actually losing PepsiCo to Publicis. So let's talk about it. pepsico stunned the agency world on september 2nd by handing its global media business reportedly worth somewhere between a billion point seven and a billion point nine in annual span just just i just want you all to focus on the magnitude and size of that business for an agency almost two billion dollars across more than 200 markets to the publicist group without a formal pitch process ending a relationship with omnicom that actually ran three decades or close to it omnicom stock dropped by as much as 5.8 % on the news and executives said they were blindsided.

5:06PVSB: Learning of PepsiCo's edition only hours before it went public, Omnicom still resents pieces of the PepsiCo relations. PR creative, some sports marketing work remained in-house, but the media loss alone is estimated at$100 million in annual fees. That's a lot of money. Speaking at a Goldman Sachs conference this week, Omnicom CFO Bill Angelastro didn't sugarcoat it, saying the company is running a detailed root cause review of what happened and what it could have done differently. He confirmed something bigger. Omnicom is targeting a workforce of roughly 105 ,000 employees by the end of 2026, down from about 120 ,000 at the end of 2025.

5:40PVSB: That's a reduction of 15 ,000 people or roughly 12.5 % of the headcount, a serious reduction in the workforce. Some context on that number. It's not purely a PepsiCo story. Omnicom closed its acquisition of IPG back in November 2025, which is huge. We reported it here on the CPG Guys Rev. and a chunk of the reduction reflects merger synergies and the removal of duplicate corporate costs from combining the two holding companies with workforce is totaled about 128 ,200 at the end of 24. Angela Astro said the headcount changes a very little impact from client-facing people except where staff move because an agency wins or loses an account outright.

6:18PVSB: Worth watching where this goes next, Angela Astro suggested. The PepsiCo outcome actually gives Omnicom more flexibility to pursued new opportunities and other opportunities, and pointed to Coca-Cola's North American media business, which Publis is stepping away from, as one example of a large account now back in play. Good luck to Omnicom on chasing Coca-Cola. Thank you, Sri.

6:38Sri: If you remember a few weeks back, we covered the cyclospora outbreak hitting salad kits and fresh greens. Well, it's still leaving a mark. Kroger lowered its full-year same-store sales guidance to 0.2 % to 0.8 % down from a prior 1 % to 2 % range and pointed to both the outbreak and stretched household budgets. CEO Greg Foran told analysts that reductions in snap benefits, higher fuel prices, and softer consumer confidence are all pressuring budgets. The shoppers are buying more on need. Traffic was up in the quarter, but basket sizes shrank. Second quarter, same-store sales grew just 0.2%, below the street 0.8 % estimate.

7:19Sri: Total revenue of$34.62 billion also missed. On Cyclosuora specifically, Kroger said the outbreak shaved roughly 0.35 percentage points off same-store sales growth in the quarter. And while the impact has eased, it is still lingering into Q3. Layer on lower pharmacy drug prices tied to inflation, Reduction Act policy, and softer egg prices year over year, and you've got several headwinds hitting at once. Even as Kroger keeps investing in price, it is something that weighs on my mind, Foran said of inflation. I would expect the pressure is actually going to mount. Profit still grew$640 million versus$609 million a year ago.

8:06Sri: So this isn't a company in crisis, But between Kroger's guidance cut here and Albertson's bringing in a turnaround minded exec chair in the same week, it's a reminder that the conventional grocery channel is still fighting for share while value and discount formats keep pulling budget conscious shoppers away. Sri, you want to close this out?

8:26PVSB: All right. So I got a big one for you. Amazon is finally now thinking of piloting its ad services inside one of the popular AI engines. And let me break it to you. Amazon is taking its advertising business somewhere new directly into conversational AI. Not a surprise, Peter, about time, because we were thinking inside the wall garden only, but they do need the operational kind of scale of being inside conversational engines because that's where shoppers are. The company is piloting a partnership with OpenAI that lets Amazon advertisers extend campaigns into ChatGPT. Very clever, if you ask me.

8:59PVSB: With Delta vacations amongst the first U.S. brands testing the integration mechanically. ChatGPT ads inventory will be part of a managed service through Amazon's demand-side platform or DSP. Amazon's team helps set up and optimize campaigns available on both cost-per-click, cost-per-mile pricing, but OpenAI will retain control of ad delivery decisions through its own system. Ads will show up as text and image units beneath. Organic ChatGPT responses with sponsored labels, consistent with how OpenAI has run ads on its free and go subscription tiers to date. The pilot is US only for now. This actually matters on both sides.

9:33PVSB: Why? Because for Amazon, which neared$70 billion in ad revenue as reported last year and runs the third largest digital ad platform, it's a bridge into one of the most used AI products in the world and a way to bring non-endemic advertisers, brands that don't sell on Amazon at all, into its ad ecosystem via a new channel. For OpenAI, it's a win because they recently crossed a billion-dollar annualized ad revenue run rate and is prepping for a closely watched IPO. What better one story to have than saying Amazon is my partner. Landing the biggest retail media network as a launch partners, therefore a meaningful proof point, especially with some marketers that reportedly underwhelmed by chat GPD ad performance so far.

10:12PVSB: Let me add one footnote worth flagging. OpenAI had reportedly been in talks with the trade desk, an independent DSP and an Amazon rival earlier this year. So its choice to launch with Amazon instead of its own small story about where the leverage actually sits in the deal. OpenAI has also previously worked with retail media networks at Target, Albertson's Media Collective, though Amazon is obviously the largest partner by far by yet. Take us home, Peter.

10:38Sri: Thank you, Sri. That's a wrap on this week's Commerce Riff. We haven't already caught up on recent episodes. Go back and check out our conversations with Lauren Levac-Gilbert from the Digital Shelf Institute and our sit down with Hershey's Jessica Duquesne and Flywheel's Alison Gill on Scream for Reese's. Both are really good listens. If anything we covered today sparks a thought, drop it in the comments. We read them all. If you're not following us on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube, well, now is the time. We're going to be in Northwest Arkansas this week for Walmart Data Ventures Inspire the 15th through the 17th.

11:13Sri: Then it's on next week to Viva Las Vegas. September 21st through the 24th for Grocery Shop. We'll see you next week.

11:47Sri: subject matter. 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. CBT 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.