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10 minutes of expert insights every weekday. Your morning ritual for staying ahead in retail media.
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[00:00:00] Kiri: I was recently a guest on one of my favorite retail media podcasts unlocked with Austin and Elizabeth, and this is one of my favorite podcasts because it is all about the career stories and personal [00:00:15] POVs of notable people in the retail media industry. It is more candid and more personal
[00:00:22] then a lot of the very excellent but quite tactical or nitty gritty oriented podcasts that are out there. So I was [00:00:30] very flattered to be asked on the show, and I talk a little bit about the origin story of retail media, breakfast club. What I was doing before all of this, some of my. Uh, routines around content, things [00:00:45] like that.
[00:00:45] But what I wanted to share with you on this little snippet from that conversation is a little bit more of my process as a writer, and this is something that I feel a lot of people could tap [00:01:00] into. To lean into storytelling. Austin has a really great perspective on this as well, which he shares after I give my little spiel and to end with, I do share a kind of embarrassing, [00:01:15] but quite funny story from a few years ago that I've never shared publicly.
[00:01:19] I think you're gonna like it.
[00:01:21]
[00:01:22] Kiri: I do highly recommend checking out the Unlocked Podcast with Austin and Elizabeth. Now let's listen to some highlights.
[00:01:29] Elizabeth: [00:01:30] thank you for writing and continuing to educate our industry, because I know when we first met about a year ago and I started to read your content, I'm like, how does she do it? This is incredible. To have the stamina and mm-hmm. [00:01:45] It's not easy to come up with this type of storytelling every single.
[00:01:48] Well,
[00:01:49] Kiri: thank you for saying that. I get that comment quite a bit. I'll say what I, what I usually tell people is one, it's my job. I don't have busy jobs like you guys. This is all I do. I sit at my [00:02:00] desk and sometimes I have content planned out for a week. Sometimes it's three o'clock in the afternoon. And I'm like, I need a newsletter for tomorrow.
[00:02:09] What am I going to write about? And I just have to sit there and write the damn thing and then record the podcast that [00:02:15] that's the thing. Second is, do you guys ever feel bored or like you've run out of challenges to solve in your jobs? No.
[00:02:23] Elizabeth: I dunno what, bored and probably because I'm a mother of two girls and
[00:02:27] Kiri: Yes.
[00:02:28] Well those,
[00:02:29] Elizabeth: I'm a chauffeur. [00:02:30]
[00:02:30] Kiri: Right. Well, there's that too, but like there is just so much to talk about. There is, there is a, I've got a list of, there's a hundred things that I wanna get to and things that are kind of percolating and never run outta things to talk about. It's my job, it's what I do [00:02:45] and because I've done it for a while, I've become a bit more quick at doing it, and AI certainly helps.
[00:02:50] I, I use it all the time. It's, it's an incredible tool. I wouldn't be able to have the, the same level of output as I do. But yeah,
[00:02:57] Elizabeth: you're the first one to bring up AI [00:03:00] in our conversations, and I know that's a little bit off topic, but would you share with our listeners a few of the platforms that. They should look into.
[00:03:08] Kiri: Yeah. For me it might, it might not be the same for everyone in the audience, but I use Claude for writing. [00:03:15] It's a bit of better writing partner. I've started to use Claude Cowork as well to actually automate some tasks solid, and I just, I feel hopelessly behind on all of this stuff on automation because it takes a while to actually learn it and set it up.
[00:03:27] So don't worry if you're feeling [00:03:30] behind on it. That's certainly how I feel. I use chat BT a lot, and then I also. I use notion to store and catalog all of my content that I've written. All of my interview notes, save a lot of research [00:03:45] there. And one thing that I'm not sure if you guys have noticed, I don't do it all the time.
[00:03:49] I'm really making more of an effort to do it, but I love to use personal anecdotes and stories whenever I can to make a point. And. People [00:04:00] seem to really love it. I've had people come up to me at events and say, oh my gosh, I love the Baby Chino story, which was like an opening of a story. It was like a story about my son and uh, I love doing that.
[00:04:12] There was a book that I read a few years ago called Story [00:04:15] Worthy, and it was written by this guy who is, you know, the Moth, the storytelling competition, the Moth, yes. It's, yeah, so it's like a standup storytelling. It's not meant to be humorous, but it's like people's personal stories and it's a storytelling [00:04:30] competition.
[00:04:30] It's amazing. So this guy who's a champion Moth contestant, he wrote a book about storytelling and how to effectively tell stories, and he is got a concept in this book called Homework for Life. And it's basically every [00:04:45] day you write, just write a.
[00:04:50] Something that happened. It could be from that day, it could be a memory from years ago, and just start documenting things that happened. It doesn't need to be anything significant. [00:05:00] Some of the most powerful stories that we have is not about going on this amazing vacation or hiking the Camino Trail. It's about the conversation that you had with your kid or about the dog running away or something like that.
[00:05:12] So I started doing that. I write. [00:05:15] Write things down, extract it and get it into my notion database. And then I use AI tools to see or write an article on like, how, which story can I use as an opener for this? And sometimes a link will be a [00:05:30] little bit tenuous, but that's something that I've really started to enjoy is, is bringing more of that storytelling in and um, it's fun.
[00:05:38] I think we could all have a lot more fun in this industry. We did not need to be so serious.
[00:05:44] Elizabeth: [00:05:45] I dunno. I'm having a lot of fun.
[00:05:46] Austin: Yeah, that's, that's part of why I think that this, all of this content works too, is because there is a very engaged group and we do like to have fun. We all work really hard, but we also, you know, we, we genuinely like talking about this stuff [00:06:00] too.
[00:06:00] We can learn about it all day if they'll let us.
[00:06:02] Elizabeth: Yeah.
[00:06:03] Austin: I do have this image of you sitting there in front of your computer talking to the AI and writing back and forth to the ai 'cause you're like, I couldn't get anyone on the phone today, so this is who I get to talk to. Here are all my stories. But it, it, it feels like [00:06:15] it's almost like a second brain and a little bit of an editor that's helping you stay organized even when you didn't realize that, that you were organized.
[00:06:23] Making those connections is, is really key. Mm.
[00:06:25] Elizabeth: Yeah.
[00:06:25] Austin: The the storytelling aspect though is, is right on. And, and I think that's definitely [00:06:30] throughout people's sales careers that if they haven't gotten the message around, you have to be able to tell a great story that helps differentiate your brand, your product, your team, whatever it is that, that you have to do.
[00:06:40] It's, it's definitely something that I hope people don't underinvest in the development of [00:06:45] those skills, just because there's easier AI tools that can help you spit out content, but you have to be able to tell that story that's creates that human connection that you're talking about. So. And remember, of course they do.
[00:06:57] Yeah. It creates the strong [00:07:00] relationships, it creates the, the ability for you to land a highly technical point because you can relate it back to something that they probably have experienced in their life too. Miracle Ads is the only retail [00:07:15] media solution designed for both one P and three P Marketplace brands. Why does that matter? Marketplace sellers demand a seamless advertiser experience that still offers full funnel ad formats, [00:07:30] and retailers need a flexible solution that allows you to scale your media business.
[00:07:35] Kiri Masters: Learn more@miracle.com. That's M-I-R-A-K l.com.
[00:07:43]
[00:07:43] Kiri: And then in [00:07:45] the interview, Austin and Elizabeth asked me about how I first got into the retail media game, and this actually presented a perfect opportunity to tell a story that I've never actually told publicly before, that I think you're gonna get a real kick out of.
[00:07:59] [00:08:00] Instacart, launched their, uh, self-serve ad platform and they just came out of the gate with something that was accessible. It was smart, it was really well thought out, and it really made me think about this whole [00:08:15] ecosystem outside of just the big behemoth in the room. So that was really the moment.
[00:08:19] So actually I partnered up with one of my colleagues at. Bobsled Marketing was the name of my agency, one of our ad advertising leaders, Stephan, and we, we started [00:08:30] writing a book about Instacart. It was called Instacart for CMOs. And because I wanted to get into this Instacart's very interesting because it's a four-sided marketplace.
[00:08:38] You've got the brands, you've got the advertisers. You've got the retailers and then you've got also the shoppers in the [00:08:45] stores as well, and that they're kind of like, they have a little bit of a choice in what product gets picked off the shelf as well. So it's just something new that I wanted to unpack and really understand.
[00:08:54] And so we interviewed a bunch of people. I spoke with some really [00:09:00] great investment. Equity analysts about Instacart and registered the domain Instacart for CMOs. And one day I get a text from my assistant saying, there's something that you need to look at quite urgently. And it [00:09:15] was a take down notice from.
[00:09:17] Instacart legal team about this domain that I had registered Instacart for cmo, and because I hadn't actually launched the book yet, it was just kind of like a holding page while I was getting everything ready, they [00:09:30] thought that I was some personator, someone sort of like. Using their trademark as a bad actor.
[00:09:36] That was, that was in their claim. So they, they actually made me give up my domain, instacart CMOs [00:09:45] com and I, I was actually just, I was preparing for this. I was just looking at this like it went to arbitration and everything. I was like, look, I just wrote a book. To tell everyone how great Instacart is [00:10:00] and you know, no good deed goes unpunished.
[00:10:02] So that's the kind of hi jinks you get into when you're trying to get into the content marketing game.
[00:10:08] Austin: That's so funny, and obviously that for CMOs it was really around like, Hey, this is a real [00:10:15] media opportunity, real marketing opportunities. You need to understand it. And someone on legal team was like, Nope, we're just gonna shut that down by the way.
[00:10:21] I'll save everyone the trouble. I just tried to navigate to it. It is still shut down, so apparently, apparently,
[00:10:27] Kiri: no, they own it. Instacart owns it now because [00:10:30] I had
[00:10:31] Austin: though, so,
[00:10:32] Kiri: no, of course not.
[00:10:35] Austin: We'll have call.
[00:10:39] Friends
[00:10:39] Kiri: over there that, that, that book is really funny. Like the only people that that buy that book are people who were interviewing for [00:10:45] jobs at Instacart only,
[00:10:48] Austin: which is not a small number. So, well,
[00:10:50] Kiri: I guess so. It's a few years old now. Yeah. Anyway, I, I wanted to tell you guys a story that I hadn't told publicly, so there you go.
[00:10:57]
[00:10:58] Kiri Masters: Well, that is it for today. [00:11:00] I hope you enjoyed this little snippet from that episode that I did with Austin Leonard and Elizabeth Donovan from The Unlocked Podcast. We'll link up to it in the show notes. Thanks for listening, and I'll catch you tomorrow.
[00:11:13]