Retail Chief Merchants hold on very tightly to Shopper Funds to keep Trade Marketing / Co-op dollars secure. At the same time, retailers have been trying to run retail media for the last 5-10 years, and many of them have created a star player with product listings. But retail is a team sport, and to truly understand how it's done, we can take inspiration from the Philadelphia Eagles' Super Bowl LIX victory.
Think of Retail Media as the skill positions - Quarter back, Running back, Tight end. Many of us, me included, expected the Super Bowl to revolve around Saquon Barkley's explosive plays after his record-breaking season. While that wasn’t the case, he still played a crucial role in securing the victory.
Think of Saquon the RB as the sponsored product listings, and although early on those placements can drive incrementality, against a savvy customer it can take more to break through. However, the energy the Chiefs spent keeping him in-check opened up more opportunities for QB Jalen Hurts. If Retail Media is to move into full-funnel, and bring digital media into the store, the gameplay needs to be more than just a single tactic.
Think of in-store trade marketing / shopper marketing as the offensive line with its price promoting shelf-talkers, floor stickers, in-aisle standing displays and end-caps. If you're a retailer, and you're not aligning your offensive line with your retail media efforts, what could happen?
Ask Marc Walkin new head of marketing Qsic who says that if you're running retail media outside of the store without aligning it with your in-store trade promotions, you're likely just subsidizing your competition. If you're running CTV ads outside of the store and your competitors own the in-store end caps, who's gonna win?
The Eagles could not have won without aligning their skills team with their offensive line. Saquon Barkley actually made sure he was in better contact with his O-Line by having a dedicated text chain, because they were dispersed living far away in both PA and NJ. That was different from when he was on the Giants when they all lived in New Jersey. The text chain between Skills and O-Line was used for Saquon to hear what plays the linemen liked and were studying each week, and making sure the offensive coaching staff were aware. Fortunately for the Eagles, they had hired the largest offensive line in history, the power of which is best illustrated with a mic'd up Jordan Mailata striking fear in the Chiefs with Dark Knight lines like: "I was wondering which would break first, your spirit or your body!!" So perhaps it would have been criminal to ignore this large an asset.
What happens when the offense isn't tightly aligned? The Chief's offensive line couldn't handle the heat that Josh Sweat brought and Mahomes, previously considered by some to be the best quarterback in the game, was busy either getting sacked or throwing interceptions to Cooper DeJean and Zack Baun. In one particularly feverish run out of the pocket he didn't even see poor Travis Kelce had his hands up. But I digress...
Why might retailers keep these offensive tactics separate? Retailers are cognizant of the issues and conflicts, but fear the implications of change. Trade / Co-op dollars are much larger budgets than Retail Media, and retailers have been striving to prove that retail media delivers completely incremental dollars. While the largest retailers can justify this due to their national scale, what happens if you're a regional or local chain?
"For RMNs other than Walmart, Amazon & Kroger (the other 60 US RMNs) it is becoming commonplace because 1) the media is being activated by the customer shopper marketing team and 2) the funds are NOT national brand dollars but rather co-op trade funds. This presents a fundamental problem as the promise of retail media was that the retailer could access national brand dollars which would be incremental. If they are only accessing trade funds, that is a reallocation of in-store investments and frankly counter productive because that investment has to be shared with ad tech partners like the Trade Desk or other DSPs." — Peter V.S. Bond of the CPG Guys.
The real issue for retailers starts much earlier in the season. CPG spending with retailers needs to be credited against a Joint Business Plan (JBP) in order to 'count', and today, those discussions are not unified.
James Tenser, Principal of VSN Strategies and a former editor at Brand Marketing and Supermarket News, commented:
"I once thought you'd have to pry the trade dollars out of merchant's dead hands, but it's conceivable dollars could shift if the retail media budget brings a net sales volume benefit. A well done retail media campaign might result in increased trade spending." — James Tenser
But as James implies in his recent post about retail media investment, if the national retailers benefit disproportionately from national dollars from Retail Media, then brands may start to see yellow flags from the FTC based on the Robinson-Patman Act. That Act, lightly enforced for decades, was originally designed to ensure fair distribution of investments among retailers based on the proportion of sales each retailer generates for a brand. However, recent lawsuits against Pepsico and an alcohol distributor suggest it may be stirring back to life.
But let's be real. Smaller retailers can't simply throw a red flag to challenge a play. For them, merging retail media and trade marketing isn't just a potential advantage—it might be essential for survival, especially as brands are already investing more in trade and retail media with giants like Amazon and Walmart.
In a presentation on posted by Pentaleap we're starting to see regional chains foreshadow a day when JBPs might merge:
"There will be more blurred lines between merchandising, trade funds, and retail media, along with more standardizations, collapsing, and consortiums. — Joell Robinson, Senior Director of Retail Media at Giant Eagle
and at Grocery Shop way back in 2024 the CPG guys heard from east coast super-regional retailer Ahold-Delhaize's Melissa Emerich of the AD Retail Media team say that not only are they merging their JBP (joint business plan) discussions across banners like Giant, Hannaford, Food Lion and Stop & Shop, but also merging the Retail Media and Trade Marketing JBP discussions.
All of these moves seem to indicate that Retail Media is maturing, and with that there are more discussions about bringing it more into the main retail organization. Michelle Urwin posted a chart from the The FMCG Guys that considers from the brand perspective the current rigidity of brand investing only in the JBP means that unless the JBP itself changes, there's no way to get to full-funnel strategies.
Merging all JBP discussions might mean the retailer takes a hit on either trade or retail media budgets, but if they don’t do it they risk three big things.
With an aligned offense comes the potential for a unified JBP, which requires a team strategy where every player and every play is optimized toward the shared goal. Retailers have the chance to turn their JBPs into their playbooks, merging media, trade, and merchandising to finally play to their potential.
None of this is easy, and that's why many are saying this year's Eagles may be the best team ever. In the end, retailers, like football teams, need a balanced game plan. The Eagles’ Super Bowl victory wasn’t even just about their offensive stars—it was about a cohesive team effort. In our world, retail media (the skill positions) and trade marketing (the in-store offensive line) drive your promotional plays. But if your in-store "defense" isn’t on point—meaning your inventory, assortment planning, and merchandising decisions aren’t aligned with your promotions—then even the most clever plays won’t count.
As Jalen Hurts often says, "Offense wins games, but defense wins championships."
