Costco's Mark Williamson - Live from Cannes Lions 2026

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0:50Mark Williamson: That's salesforce.com slash consumer goods.

0:56CPG Guys: Hi, I'm Mark Williamson, ADP of Retail Media, Costco Wholesale, and you're watching the CPG Guys podcast.

1:04Mark Williamson: Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys podcast set at the intersection of commerce and tech. Your hosts, Sri Raja Goplin and Peter V.S. Bond, explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in a digitally driven world. And now, here are the CPG Guys. Hello and welcome to this episode of the CPG Guys podcast. I'm for Shreya Goz and also CIO, co-founder of Think Look Consulting. Your trust partner on your Omni channel development journey where you can get in touch with me at shreya.thinklookconsulting.co. Please listen to my older daughter's music at www.adriarajakom and follow Lara. My younger daughter is a member of the world's fastest growing global pop group, Cat's Eye, that we've come off a clean sweep at the AMAs.

1:48Mark Williamson: Three nominations, three awards, starting in Global as well as 21 City U.S. Tour. Today we're recording live from Cannes, France. This is in the series at 10 this week. Last year I chatted with our guest who didn't know if it was going to come to Cannes this year. We talked about growing in a lake somewhere, but we're actually doing this live, which makes me very happy and it's awesome that we're going to do this live. Of course, I'm joined by the host and co-founder of PBSV, Human Services of Industry and Planning Engagement of Flywheel, Commerce Exploration Division of Omicom. Peter, day four for me, day three for you.

2:23Mark Williamson: How's it going so far? It feels like day 30. It's been a lot, not a long sleep, but the best for me is when you and I got our hour and a half of free time this entire show and we walked up and down, and all the people that we ran into as we walked. That was, to me, the absolute bowl of events like NMLS. You know what I do to go to events? I don't want to give you a free time. I sold it to you as free time, but it really went to me a bunch of offensive. Mark, this is how our conversation usually goes. The free event. Anywhere we go. Peter, I'm building in time so that you can walk the floor, you can have a little relaxation, and then we show up on the ground.

3:05Mark Williamson: He goes, okay, remember what I told you I was going to do? Yes, scratch that. Your CFO is mine. All right. So make sure you subscribe to our podcast. We have our listening platform. We can get on the latest episodes. Go back and consume some of the, yes, 600 plus episodes we already have on Legend. Of course, you'll listen to our Fortune 500 C-suite series, 10U, which featured CEOs, CCOs, CLO, CEOs, and so much more. Lots of Cs. If not, follow the tale of the last 10 episodes late May to mid June or so. And now let's move to our esteemed guests. Having the... He's esteemed? I'm steaming. You're steaming.

3:42Mark Williamson: I was going to say it's pretty hot. Is that the bar for esteemed? We'll be all about that. Esteemed. Get it? Spanish. Yes, esteemed. Esteemed. Having the AVP of Retail Media, Costco, bone sales, back in the studio for a spectacular return appearance feels like winning the ultimate corporate championship. Peter, you better clear a spot on your desk and get your sharpest hand. nickel number open because say we're going to look at the world's absolute favorite warehouse club and how they're fundamentally rewriting the entire commerce via ecosystem looking out across the industry right now they're doing fabulous lots of growth a massive system-wide partnership happening by legacy platform strategy their ad techniques are black boxes the costo actually went live on stage to the exact opposite unveiled the entire tech stack with absolute bold transparency and marketers, therefore, aren't just looking for genetic ad impressions anymore.

4:34Mark Williamson: Let's start with the clean, deterministic data environments that do indeed respect the merchant's role first, drive the actual value of the velocity of the warehouse floor. So, ready when you guys are. Join us and welcome into the CPG guys. Mr. Mark Williamson, ABP of Costco and Intel Media. Welcome, man. What would Ketan as well, I should say?

4:54CPG Guys: Well, thank you. First of all, congratulations on 600 episodes. I had the pleasure of making a video to celebrate your 500th episode. You certainly did. You're not slowing down. But congratulations to you both. Thank you.

5:06Mark Williamson: Thank you. I'm still excited that this conversation, doing this live video, actually started with the latest LinkedIn post from you last year.

5:13CPG Guys: I'm a little bit sad because I was having so much fun not being in Cannes that being here is a little bit of a downer. Not that it's not a great event and everything's fine. I'm very happy that I'm here. But I'm kind of sad having that other side of my personality, which is, I'm not a camp.

5:29Mark Williamson: Did they play the GNR song for you, Welcome to the Jungle? It's all fun and games. That's what you followed. Not twice, but that would be good. In the digital line and answer, this episode will include links to Costco wholesales company and corporate websites for our listeners to access while we go on with the conversation and of course, Mark's LinkedIn profile. So Mark, let us kick it off with the big news that completely has been well received by the industry. At recent industry events, you took the stage and you actually did what no other retail media network has done so far. You were very transparent about Costco's full technology stack, revealing details such as the identity vendor, DSP, clean room provider use.

6:09Mark Williamson: Why do you make a deliberate choice to embrace absolute transparency? And how does that influence partnerships from brands and agencies?

6:16CPG Guys: I don't think I expected it to be as big of a deal as it was. To be honest, the playbook that we wrote was to be as transparent as possible. There's been a high call for transparency in the retail media and the commerce media space. And I don't know if there's a lot of mistrust. There's just a lot of opaqueness in how things work. And one of our goals when we set out to do this was to do it differently. And this was one of the areas that we identified as being important because like in all humility, I don't know if anybody would look to Costco Wholesale. And of all the things we do well, point and say, those guys do ad tech really, really well.

6:51CPG Guys: Like, I don't think that's an area where we have a right to win. And so I felt that the only way that we could move hearts and minds and build the kind of credibility that we need is to be overly transparent with the tech stack that we're building. And in terms of response, like one, the response was surprising to me of how unique it felt, because at the time I didn't really think it was going to land that way. But I think there is a heightened degree of appreciation from the industry, from brands, from agencies, because it gives us something concrete to talk about. because a lot of them have their own ad tech.

7:24CPG Guys: They have their own data. They're making decisions as well. And I think it helps them inform. And it's a sharing of best practices, but I think it makes it easier for them to figure out how to plug into us, how to plug us into them. And I think ultimately that's good. And if I assess the last few months since that presentation, I have noticed a switch from some other programs, some other RMAN, some other CMS to do the same thing. I feel like there is this, I think this round swell is let's be a little bit more open. And I think that's a good thing for the industry.

7:57Mark Williamson: I couldn't agree with you more. The CBD guys knows all the well that when you're the first to take the movie industry, it actually sets up a lot of oxygen. Of course, others will copy you, but you set the tone there. Well, no.

8:11CPG Guys: Wow, appreciate it. Thank you.

8:12Mark Williamson: Mark, welcome to the podcast. We're glad to have you back at number two. You're three more away from the COVID versus the...

8:21CPG Guys: This is like hosting SNL. It is. It is. Okay. Except it's not a smoking jacket.

8:26Mark Williamson: Go up to Jacket and Joe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There are only about four people that have groomed the jacket.

8:32CPG Guys: So that's plenty of motivation. I like that.

8:34Mark Williamson: So we did have Sarah Mars on the market or on Monday. She's been on once. And we recorded four panel sessions. And she goes, so I get my five now, right?

8:45CPG Guys: Okay. I don't know if that counts. That is full. Yeah. I mean, to be the Alec Baldwin of the CPG Guys podcast would be like, that'd be a life.

8:53Mark Williamson: I mean, like we think of the, you know, the theme, come, hey, Sam, people will go, no. Listen.

8:59CPG Guys: A lovable America's dad. America's dad.

9:02Mark Williamson: Do that. You have a beautiful phrase that Sri and I have come to really respect. It's retail media. Costco exists to accelerate merchandise sales. You maintain a strict structural hierarchy where merchandise velocity and member loyalty sit firmly at the very top. So if a digital ad campaign doesn't outlive visible power of product or reinforce the value of the membership card, it simply doesn't belong to your ecosystem. So my question is, how do you enforce this merchant first philosophy when national brand managers come in with legacy KPIs focused entirely on vanity ad measures?

9:41CPG Guys: I'd say it's a bit of a transformation. And some of the meetings we've had already here at Cannes have been very, very reinforcing that there is appetite from both sides to do this differently and to do it better and to have a compounding effect between brand objectives and retailer objectives. I don't think retail media is so cool that it's going to change brand management or the fundamentals of building a brand. So to expect them to come all the way to us is a little bit too much to ask. But also for a brand manager to ignore the realities of retail. And somebody told me earlier today is that Costco is its own channel.

10:20CPG Guys: It's not the wholesale channel. It's not the club model. It is Costco. And so I feel like our responsibility is bringing that lens forward to a brand manager, even down to the point of let's walk the floor with the brand manager. Customer teams from CPGs, they're on the floor all the time. They're walking with merchants. They understand the logistics, the in and outs. Brand managers don't really understand at the core, the magic of Costco. We believe that the more we bring that into their world, their creative, their expertise is unmatched. we can help them do what they do even better by bringing, whether it's the data, the intelligence, the targeting, the measurement, but the management of Costco into their minds and let them just create from there.

11:00CPG Guys: So I don't know if it'll help in all, it'll work in all instances, but we're confident that this model can really bridge the gap between brand and retail. That's a follow-up to that.

11:10Mark Williamson: Do you encourage brands to come to you with new innovation, an idea, and let you collaboratively build out how you can bring that to life through retail media? Like, what are you, are you looking for something fully baked or do you like to get in there and add some ingredients, I guess is what I'm asking.

11:26CPG Guys: Yeah, seldom does fully baked work at Costco because the nuances, just the executional realities. And so we have to adjust just about everything that happens. There's very little boilerplate that can work at Costco. And so the expectation is, is that they are bringing ideas and we might bring ideas to them, but there's an army of brand managers. It's me and a handful of my underlings doing the best we can to keep up with 150 suppliers each. And so the balance of the thinking and the creativity is definitely on the brand side right now. The good news is there are no shortage of ideas coming out of these brand teams or shopper teams or activation teams.

12:06CPG Guys: Our job is to make it fit. And I was exposed to a very large brand was looking to introduce a new item where they have limited distribution inside of a Costco. That's reality. that means their national playbook is not going to work. They have a test in a small market, but they didn't want to just put it on the shelves and hope it works. They didn't want to just do sampling and hope it works. So what we talked about it, they ran a roadshow, which gave them a slightly higher footprint. It gave them signage. It gave them a whole experience that ended up performing incredibly well. Does that idea scale up to 630 warehouses?

12:37CPG Guys: I don't know, but that's the kind of thing where the brand conceived of the story, but we can help them figure out how to bring that story to life within the limitations, but also the unique, powerful solutions that only Cosby can bring.

12:52Mark Williamson: You know, you talked about the magic of Costco wholesale. Just as we started the show, I kind of said congratulations on the first of all, our advantage. Now I'm going to flip the script and say, hey, a lot of retail media networks started up with brittle ecosystems, measurement being weak or non-existent, that we sort of knocked to the brand satisfaction for the amount of investments that were going in, you actually have somehow carved out a last over advantage where you've been able to quietly observe the market and engineer robust private data from the ground up. How did waning and prioritizing a clean, unfragmented data foundation allow you to completely fraud with black box, black box, whatever called reporting traps that have frustrated CPT teams, brand teams forever?

13:39CPG Guys: Well, I mean, never underestimate the power of a clean sheet of paper. And that's been a huge benefit for us is that we're not starting from scratch, but we're pretty darn close to scratch. And a little bit of serendipity as well, because I arrived at Costco about the same time of a technology and a big innovation in our technology business, which presented the opportunity to enter a new relationship with Google Cloud, which opens up new relationships with different partners that are cloud native and really what we were looking for. And so I feel like we were the beneficiaries of a blank slate and some serendipitous timing.

14:17CPG Guys: And I have to acknowledge the fact that a lot of the original sins of retail media, a lot of the shortcuts, I did myself. I've been doing this for about 15 or 16 years. And so I've lived and breathed at it. So there's a lot of scars that I carry on myself that I promised myself I wouldn't do again if I had the opportunity.

14:38Mark Williamson: Shout out to my friend, Jose Gomes at Google Cloud. He and his team. I work with Jose at Duncumby and he is as smart as they get. So you're a very good hand.

14:48CPG Guys: We, the first meeting we had with Jose and the cloud team, we were with our CIO and others from our ad tech, our technology business, and a few of us from the business side. And they brought up respect in and Jose being the thought leader in that about the art of the possible. And it was incredible because we had written a shell of our retail media plan, but we still didn't know how it was actually going to work. We just knew what we wanted the end game to be. And in the two-hour session, I was walking out with my IT partners and I go, oh, so that's it, right? This is how we're going to do this.

15:19CPG Guys: Wow. And ever since then, we've just been able to stack capability on capability because I think we got the framework right. Not that we'll get every decision within it right, but the framework itself, I think, has a lot of lights and gives us the ability to grow, to scale, to flex as needed as we go through this.

15:38Mark Williamson: Just saying sending a bill to your marketing team for this on data advertisement, we need to reconcile on them. But that's not the here nor there. let's look at a highly disruptive off-site capability recently rolled out which is google product listing ads the plas this isn't a typical off-site audience expenditure standard connected tv cdv storytelling you're moving cost of first-party retail media directly into google shopping search right for the brands listening why does leveraging costco's high intent audience data inside Google's open shopping engine radically perform better than a brand trying to buy those generic keywords on their own?

16:19CPG Guys: I mean, I think it all comes down to commerce. And, you know, a lot of the retail media is generally stuck in the lower funnel bucket. It's definitely a role that we're meant to play. But the strategy behind how we're picking the channels that we're going into is that we don't get to pick or dictate where people consume content, where they do their searching, where they do their discovery. And so it's incumbent on us to show up where that is happening. And so there is a lot of traffic on Costco.com. We have a lot of keyword searches. We sell a lot of big and bulky items. This is great. But that's not the totality of the way that people are discovering, the way that they're researching, the way that they're finding out what it is they're going to buy.

16:58CPG Guys: And so we've noticed a gap in Google search. There's still a high volume. Even with all the disruption coming from AI and LLMs, a lot of people still go to Google.com and they put in television. They put in washing machine. They put it in the refrigerator. And it turns out we sell a lot of those things on Costco.com. We have a great value on high quality items. We have a white glove delivery and services. And that story can't get told if we're not showing up, if we're not servicing where that matters. And so if you're a brand, of course, they can buy the keywords. They may not be able to buy the shopping ads if they don't have a conversion channel they can drive to.

17:32CPG Guys: This is obviously an area that we thought we could be. And it doesn't hurt when you have a lot of your supplier partners asking for this capability. So we're good listeners from time to time as well.

17:41Mark Williamson: Good listeners indeed, sir. So tying high intent open web search to verify warehouse data is a game changer. Congratulations. I'm getting that done. Let's look at what you call IRL or in real life activation, the third pillar of your declared omni-channel radio strategy. Costco sales, physical club warehouse is a legendary for the high frequency, massive basket for traffic. How are you taking real-world physical store signals, everything from fuel pumps, warehouse digital screens, dynamically trying to connect them back into one single digital loop that's beneficial for the consumer?

18:18CPG Guys: We feel like we do have a competitive advantage in the ability to capture signal in the physical space. And it starts with the card scan on entry, and it ends with the card scan on exit. And so So there is that closed-loop ecosystem that already exists for us. And to my knowledge, we may be the only retailer that is scanning a card on the way in. And that brings an incredible insight in understanding what conversion can look like in the warehouse. All of that data is captured inside of our Google Cloud instance. We call it our unified data platform. And it's all captured there at a member level.

18:54CPG Guys: And with all of the innovation we've been doing on our website and through our activation partners, signal capture has been paramount in all of it. And not just capturing a signal because you can tag anything and you can gather things at an Adobe ID level, a Ramp ID level, a Core ID level, and then all the proprietary IDs that we have sprawled all over our own and operated ecosystem. If it doesn't tie back to a member, then none of it matters anyway. And so we've had to make big investments in making sure that the signal is captured and it's captured at the member level, which then allows us to pair that with the data coming from the warehouse.

19:28CPG Guys: the traceable transactions and understanding what those facets look like. And so for the member, what ends up happening is we get to show them that we know them. We get to start for the first time talking to them from the context of their full Costco relationship, not their travel relationship in isolation or Costco.com relationship in isolation, their warehouse relationship, all of those like that is Costco to them. But to us, it's been independent business units that the sum total of all the parts creates the Costco brand that people know and love. But we've had to look at that and say, we can't change structurally how Costco is organized, but we can use advertising technology to piece it all together so the experience that our members get is as focused as possible.

20:11Mark Williamson: Listening to you, I'm impressed that not only are you a commercial retail media leader, but you're a decade now.

20:19CPG Guys: Thank you for your participation. Thank you for your participation.

20:21Mark Williamson: Thank you. A reminder to our audience So speaking with Mark Williamson, AVP for Costco, wholesale retail media. Mark, I want to dig into this concept of a composable architecture. Your technical setup is intentionally designed as a cohesive orchestration layer where identity, activation, and clean room metrics can evolve impedently without disrupting the core business. So why should global CBT technology ahead stop trying to build rigid, custom end-to-end stacks and instead adopt Costco's mod for our composable blueprint?

20:59CPG Guys: Here at Cannes and in other places, we end up talking about technology more than I think we would. So you think like, OK, let's talk about upfronts of STEM commitments and activation ideas. More and more, we are collaborating on the technology. And this is accelerating quite a bit on the agency side because they're looking for interoperability with the tools that they've built. But I do think there is wisdom in this idea of modularity or posability because none of us can predict the future. We don't know what technology is going to be in five years, three years, one year, in six months. And I think everybody knows the feeling of being trapped, either whether it's tech debt or a contract, for something that you know is limiting you.

21:40CPG Guys: And to me, there's nothing more frustrating than knowing what's possible than not being able to do it. And so we put a premium as we were building this that we think we're putting the right components in the right border with the right partners. But something's going to give at some point. There's going to be a new innovation. There's going to be a partner that doesn't fit exactly the way that we thought they were going to fit. And we're going to have to act fast. And I look at some of the leaders in this space that are technology companies. They are so good at this. And like there was a piece of news that dropped yesterday from one of our big competitors.

22:12CPG Guys: and probably 10 people in my company, Seth McGiart-Hill. And one of the comments I got was, how are they doing this? How are they moving so fast? And how is this the fourth or fifth big announcement they've made in the last week? Like that is after years of architecting something that allows you to be bold and move quickly and integrate new technology quickly. And so like we may not move as fast and be as bold as they are, but I think that we should be in the driver's seat of what we do rather than outsourcing it to third-party tech that kind of controls our destiny.

22:42Mark Williamson: I want to keep going deeper and geek out about that. So the composable modularity is the ultimate future for play. They're rapidly entering the, I'm sorry, forgive me for these new words, an agentic era of commerce. But autonomous, it's predicted that autonomous AI agents are beginning to manage complex segmentation, path to purchase recommendations, real-time budget optimization, all the happening in CPEs behind the scenes. How is Costco also utilizing advanced AI orchestration layers to cut through the operation of fiction, making your complex and multi-partner systems included, and how you're usable for brand things as AI, a deep consideration at this point?

23:23CPG Guys: It's a tie. And so we have work to do in this area. And I would say we're definitely not an early adopter of this. And I'm not an AI skeptic by any stretch. But what has been important to Coswell at large is how are we governing, how are we controlling, and how are we making sure that the promise of AI isn't creating issues other places. And so whether that's removing humans from an automated process or it's adhering to our data governance or privacy policy or whatever it may be, there's a lot of due diligence we have to do to make sure that we are responsibly applying AI to the business. And there are examples of AI within the Costco also in general and other areas.

23:59CPG Guys: But for us in retail media, I would say that we are picking partners who are AI forward. And so when we are finding who we're going to work with, it is a consideration for us. Even if we are not activating on their AI capabilities yet, or if they haven't built the thing that we want them to build yet, But we are showing a preference for companies that have a demonstrated ability to innovate and have a position on the role that AI can play in helping us move as fast or be as agile or as reactive as we need to be to AI.

24:33Mark Williamson: So I assume your CPG vendor partners have made ideas with AI too.

24:37CPG Guys: For sure. And like I said earlier, that on the member side, we don't get to dictate where members consume content. Our job is to show up where they are. I think it's the same thing on the buying side or the media planning side or whatever it may be. We don't get to pick how media has bought and sold. And as big as we are, as cool as we are, I think it's the wrong strategy to create a walled garden where the gatekeeper tell everybody to come through our front door and do it our way. I don't think we're going to get away with that. And so our strategy has been, we have to plug into however people are buying.

25:07CPG Guys: So whether we're bringing AI tooling or our tech stack is interoperable with AI tools, that's the more important thing. So I would describe us as AI ready.

25:16Mark Williamson: Mark, as a follow-up to that, let's say you find out that you're a business partner or if you're developing an agent to replace you as a co-host of a podcast, what would you do?

25:26CPG Guys: You know what? You can't fight. You can't fight the future.

25:29Mark Williamson: Just go with it. Thank you for this before I've been in.

25:33CPG Guys: I'm confident that AI can do this better than I do. But I'd still subscribe and watch just to see what he says. But you never know. Hey, part of me just like the robots take over.

25:43Mark Williamson: I'm obsolete. There you have it from the authority. All right. Let's talk so many ways. Let's look down the road at merchant media collaboration. In many traditional retail environments, the media network operates as an isolated outside fiefdom that frequently causes friction when the actual catcording merchants frequents an inadequate description. at cost can you deliberately fuse media capability directly into the merchandising life cycle and take us under the hood of the internal relationship how do your media specialists work fundamentally alongside the warehouse buyers to drive mutual power and growth um i know that

26:33CPG Guys: none of our merchants would describe our relationship as seamless uh it is it's a work in progress. Ad tech is tough. Merchant relations is one of the hardest parts of being your retail media GM. And I think, especially in our world right now, it is probably the most important thing that we need to do. And so the way that we position our, we call them our growth team. So we have growth managers and growth coordinators. Their job is to be the connected tissue between everything happening in the marketing and media world and our merchandising organization. I would say the biggest issue right now is there's more merchants than there are retail media specialists.

27:10CPG Guys: So they cover a lot of ground and they can't go as deep as we would like them to go. But in Costco, being aligned with merchants is an absolute imperative. There's no margin for error. If we get behind an item because a brand got all excited about it and that item is sold out or it has regional distribution or it's not hitting the sales metrics and it's on its way out, That creates a lot of disharmony and distrust with our merchant organization. And it's not all on the negative side. On the positive side, there may be merchandising decisions that could be made because of the amplification of retail media.

27:44CPG Guys: So we have to be lockstep with them on everyday items that are regularly replenished. It's a little bit easier to be predictable about moving toilet paper. But we want to be a solution for all Costco merchandising, especially those brands that are what makes Costco unique. those brands generally don't have agencies. They don't have big brand marketing teams. They're looking to us to say, I am getting in. I have a regional test. I'm running a demo. I've got six weeks to prove that we should stay. What should we do? And that the only way to do that is for us to align with our merchants and make sure we understand the plan and we're not being redundant.

28:19CPG Guys: We're definitely not being conflicting that we can be additive to help throw a little bit of extra growth on top and help that out and try to be successful.

28:26Mark Williamson: What settled the partnership with the merchants? Because the next question I have to ask you will probably highlight that very well. The ad stack does indeed need to be connected to the assortment. As you mentioned, there are hurdle rates, things of that nature. You are living in a world of a world-renowned, high-peculated, disciplined product assortment. You're not carrying 50 version of an item. You're carrying the absolute best value selections. How does this limited SKU, club warehouse environment fundamentally change the digital shelf option in your home site properties? Does a highly curated box mean that retail media and retail Costco is infinitely more valuable and defensive for a comeback pair?

29:10CPG Guys: Hopefully quickly, you get in a fight, you get your parking spot, you go in, you get into the building, and you get in there and you say, and immediately your list is gone. And you haven't yet discovered the thing that you want. And that is the magic of Costco. Recreating that online is incredibly difficult. And so what we try to reinforce is our role in bringing the processes of discovery into the digital space. And the way that works organically on Costco.com is we have merchants who bring those treasured items onto the homepage. In a lot of cases, those are not pay to play. Those are a merchant with 40 years of experience knowing and feeling what needs to happen.

29:53CPG Guys: The algorithm is their guts and they're incredibly good at it. So if you're a brand and you're trying to break through, you don't have the sales velocity, you don't have national distribution, your item doesn't even hit the algorithm, which is the merchant's gut. What do you do? And so we are finding ways to inject these items into the purchase journey, whether it's upper funnel on the homepage, page, it's mid funnel, maybe on the category page or to lower funnel, I'm sure results. We've got to bring items that don't have inherent sales velocity to the forefront, because that's what the treasure hunt looks like on the website, because that's what it looks like in the warehouse.

30:29CPG Guys: Incredibly hard to pull off. Didn't have to do this in grocery. Didn't have to do this at the other wholesale club. At Costco, if we can't get new items that are exciting and innovative and high value in front of the right people at the right time, then we have not replicated what happens in the warehouse.

30:45Mark Williamson: It would be an unusual script for me to Costco if I didn't come back with 10 or more items. I can tell you I rarely go in with a plan to buy a single item. So it's all about the discovery.

30:58CPG Guys: You've never roland-oign it before? Oh, it's crazy. I dare you, walk in without a cart.

31:02Mark Williamson: Yeah.

31:02CPG Guys: See if you can get out. Oh my God. Without going back to the edge. Like it is, it is a thrilling experience. I went in once, my wife, one thing is, I was picking my daughter's prescription. 10 items later, I walked out, got to my truck and realized I did not pick up her.

31:16Mark Williamson: I know that's the thing.

31:17CPG Guys: I'm in with no cart. I was carrying 10 things in my arms.

31:21Mark Williamson: Wow. Maybe Felix, this is what we ask you about the hot dog eating capability that Mark Williams had. It is real.

31:29CPG Guys: We're thinking hot dog feeding contest down the beach next year. What do you think this? Joey Chestnut. Oh my God. Our celebrity appearance. Oh my God.

31:37Mark Williamson: You're going to deny me the canoe again. We can do both. Coney, I'll watch out. All right. So I get the last question today. We want to send our global practitioner audience home with a golden nugget of advice. And since we're not going to get that from you, we'll ask some of them. If you could look at a corporate CPG chief customer officer or hemp sales dead in the eye today, what is the single biggest reality check or piece of blind spot advice you can give them to help us stop treating retail media as a lower funnel marketing attacks and instead unlock true closed-loop incremental volume for the score?

32:16CPG Guys: The good news is that I've had the same conversation with these same people multiple times over the last couple of days and I have a few more through Thursday. Like the golden nugget or whatever it is that I'm supposed to be providing here is like, don't think of retail media just as lower funnel. Obviously, there's lots of opportunities and all of our programs are trying to get upper funnel and quote unquote win brand dollars and all that kind of stuff. In terms of winning at Costco and winning quickly at Costco, it's don't bring the same ideas. Don't bring the same concepts or asks that you have with other retailers to us because either it won't work, it doesn't make sense, or like there's, it needs to be specific to what we're doing.

32:58CPG Guys: And so I feel like we need to speak the language of media. We need to operate the way that it works. So we're not creating new processes, new platforms to learn, new languages to learn. We don't want to be so bespoke that we're hard to work with, but the same idea won't necessarily translate into our environment. So the conversations we've been having have been, what is the cost of when specifically? How do you extract unique value out of the data, out of the experience, out of the equity, to make one plus one equal, I don't know, I'll take 10. And that doesn't come by recycling everything you brought like every other retailer.

33:34Mark Williamson: One last thing. CanLions was developed for agencies of record to celebrate the creative that they produced. But it's hard to walk up and down the closet, see the applications, and they'll not understand how prominent retail and commerce media are to the audience here. So give messages to CCOs. Why should they be here with their CMOs hand in hand at K-Lines.

34:04CPG Guys: We have to fuse the creative world with the execution layer, with the commerce layer. And that thing is like, I have been opposed to rebranding retail media as commerce media because it makes too wide of a net and it devalues my career choices. However, I do like the idea of like, it's about commerce. The reason you build brands is to sell more stuff. The reason we operate buildings the way we do is to sell more stuff. We all are oriented for growth. We want staying power. We want customer lifetime value. We want loyalty. We all kind of want the same thing. But at the end of the day was a purchase made.

34:40CPG Guys: And I got taught a lesson today by head of marketing from a massive CBG. And the example that he gave was Porsche has a ton of brand equity. But how many people actually buy it? How much e-commerce is actually there? So you can build the brands all you want. If you can't pay it off at the point of purchase, then what difference does it make? And so I think one of the frustrations that we have, like when we're therapizing with the creatives, with the brand teams, with the heads of marketing that we're meeting with this week, a lot of the action items we've identified is let's get in the ring with the customer team.

35:14CPG Guys: Let's talk about these plans. And that's easier said than done. But I think it definitely has to happen.

35:20Mark Williamson: I do own three Porsches. We'll leave two big inches each and I create every bus. You're talking about the Matchbox courses. You are the Matchbox one. Definitely.

35:31CPG Guys: There are a lot of Matchbox stars in my house. Unfortunately, they're owned by my 18-year-old daughter. And they're mostly F1 cars.

35:38Mark Williamson: Mine are actually owned by me, not my kids. Let me remind you, as you can find all the content by simply going to the web browser, typing cpgguys.com as the URL. If you or someone you know has something to contribute to this ongoing discussion over CPGG, please do send us an email at reachus at cpgguys.com. That's I-E-C-H-U-S.CTGuy.com to our audience. Thank you for the clicks, likes, comments, direct messages, meetings, and trade shows coming to our events. Reporting episodes with us as sponsors are always grateful for you. Without all of you, there is no CTGuy.com show. You work with us all year.

36:09Mark Williamson: We're grateful to have you as an audience and partners. Thank you. Peter, a pleasure doing this with you live from Cannes, France. Give us the big takeaway from Mark's moments today. I'm sure you and I'll have different ones. Mine is particularly around partnership with Equal Cloud. I think that has given them capabilities off-site that make sure their products appear where people are present. You've got to go where the consumers are. The consumers are doing search outside of the owned and operated properties of Costco or an ecosystem marketplace partner they may use. And you need to make sure your products show up there so that they can click on buy button actually drive conversion.

36:51Mark Williamson: Because at the end of the day, what Mark said is it's about driving sales, moving pallets of merchandise. That's my big takeaway. Well, Sandy Deed, mine actually was very early up in this conversation when we talked about radical transparency. Sharing the full tech stack, the ad platform, I think is a game changer with first-to-word advantage. Come with us from you, Jay Mark. Thank you for returning to the CPG Glass Practitioner Platform to share this monumental masterclass with Aronia. you are, you can check out the digital show notes, follow more on LinkedIn, DeepTar, LibCostco, Wholesales, open source, transparency, playbooks.

37:27Mark Williamson: Thank you. Thank you for having me. That's all we have for you today. We look forward to you joining us on the next episode of The Secret G Guide.

37:46Mark Williamson: The content in this podcast episode is provided for general informational purposes only. By listening to our episode, you understand that no information contained in this episode should be construed as advice from CPG Guys LLC or the individual, author, hosts, or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for research on any 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.

38:22Mark Williamson: 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.