marketing Archives | Tenser'sTirades

Retail Media and CPGs: How do Brands Optimize Investments?

February 13, 2025December 2, 2024 by James Tenser

AMID THE HYPE AND HYPERBOLE around Retail Media Networks, some fundamental issues about CPG marketing spending have barely been addressed. Brand marketers have an opportunity – perhaps an imperative – to elevate the dialog about how funds should be allocated, to maximize returns and sustain mutually profitable relationships with retail partners.

Ad standards are yet to be established across the RMN universe. The allure of first-party data is compelling, but each network presents its own interfaces and definitions. Established norms around trade marketing spending – the lion’s share of marketing investment by brands – are under pressure. Beneath the surface lurk issues around fairness and proportionality, too.

THIS ARTICLE IS PART ONE of a series, originally published on CPGmatters.com

Experts contacted for this article spoke mostly on background. The consensus is that RMNs are not easy to master and that best practices are yet to emerge. They introduce a heightened degree of intricacy for brand marketers and retailers alike. Some standards may be on the horizon, but trading partner joint planning is not getting any easier.

Concentration at the Top

A relatively small handful of retailers with very broad geographies and high customer counts are sweeping up the lion’s share of retail media spending and decision-making capacity. This presents steep challenges for CPG brands. Their “brand-width” is not unlimited, after all.

Expert Stories are for Closers

June 22, 2023June 15, 2023 by James Tenser

FOLKS KEEP ASKING me whether they can find more leads for my business.

The queries come in spam emails mostly, but also via bombardment of the contact form on my business web site. Several times a day, they promise a never-ending flow of mythical golden leads, which pisses me off.

I already know who my prospects are. I’ve been meeting them at conferences and expos for many years. What I want – what all of us need – are more closes. Expert stories are the key to making this happen.

Why I counsel B2B clients to flip the funnel

Spray and pray

Conventional marketing wisdom tells us that droves of customers are out there just waiting to hear from us. If we inundate the market with enough messages, a percentage of folks will catch on, a few will learn why we’re great, some of those will consider us, and a small fraction will Venmo us some cash.

The Five Yeses of Retail Tech Marketing

June 19, 2023February 12, 2018 by James Tenser

IF YOU HAVE a great retail technology solution to offer, five yeses control your future.

You already know – more or less – who the decision-makers are at each target account: the CIO, the head of store operations, the head of merchandising, the CFO, and the CEO.

Each of these individuals has the power to say “no.” If your solution doesn’t seem to align with one of their objectives, the game may be over. You need all their heads nodding to close the sale. Is your story designed to be persuasive to all five yeses?

Authenticity in Content Marketing: If You Can Fake That…

May 31, 2022September 4, 2013 by James Tenser

RIGHT NOW CONTENT MARKETING is the name of the game. That’s Content with a capital C, which is presently a thriving business in the ad agency domain. The idea is to influence the trends that flow through social and mobile media by inserting Content on behalf of brands.

There are many ways to accomplish this — ranging from hiring ringers to post favorable reviews and spam blog comments, to sharing genuinely valuable consumer information like product usage tips or recipes. It is also desirable to monitor Content posted by others, then respond as needed to amplify, rebut, or influence perceptions.

The motivation is, I think, largely fear-based. The social-mobile frenzy generates tons of uncontrolled consumer sharing, both pro and con, accurate and inaccurate. No doubt there are also dirty tricks being played every day by competitors bent on undermining their rivals. Brands lose sleep over losing control of their messages and so they hire hip young firms to help them create and spread content of their own.

The trick to making Content work is to put enough of it in front of the folks the brand wants to influence, especially the ones capable of influencing others — like bloggers and social media divas. The agencies are supposed to ensure that the Content is both artful and discoverable by the target audience. Hipness and coolness are good traits too.

So the goal is to create the right Content and embed it within the right Context, in order to better drive Commerce. A key attribute to making all of this work is authenticity — the perception that the Content is believable, relevant, and true (probably in that order). The new Content Marketing agencies are all over this, of course.

Today I shared a bit of content of my own on RetailWire.com as part of a discussion, Which Came First? The Content Or The Egg? It make me think about the quip about sincerity most often attributed to Groucho Marx, who is pictured here in the classic film, “Duck Soup.” (It may actually have been first uttered by French dramatist Jean Giradoux, but Groucho is funnier.)

Here’s my take:

It seems “content” is a wheel that keeps on rolling. Remember the “content is king” slogan that was popular at the peak of the dot-com frenzy? Its relevance then was the hunger for product data and other information needed to populate the new web sites. If you build it, you have to fill it with something, right?

Content was soon displaced by “commerce” as folks got the shopping cart and delivery mechanisms worked out and consumers got used to the idea of shopping remotely. After a period of more or less centralized control, the social-mobile reality has caused user-created content to explode, but in an entirely uncontrolled manner.

It is into this chaotic environment that the new content marketers are venturing. They hope their organized campaigns will somehow float above the SoMoLoMe din, resulting in a degree of influence over brand perceptions. A whole industry of B2C content marketing agencies is emerging to service this trend.

The risk is that these messages drown in a vast content sea in which the relevant mixes with the contrived. I don’t believe brands will win in this environment simply by opening the floodgates or turning up the volume.

Only quality and authenticity can win in such a content-flooded environment. To paraphrase the sage, Groucho: If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.