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Recorded live at the RetailX FMCG Confex in London (https://retailx.events/fmcg-instore-ecommerce/), this five-episode podcast series from RetailX explores the world of FMCG through conversations with senior leaders from brands, retailers, and data specialists at Dunnhumby. Each episode tackles a different angle of the sector’s challenges and opportunities – from retail media and shopper behaviour to wellness trends, omnichannel strategies, innovation, and the role of AI.
Across the series, a clear theme emerges: FMCG brands operate in a complex environment shaped by shifting consumer priorities, disruptive technology, and increasingly fragmented purchase journeys. Guests discuss how brands can stand out in crowded markets by deeply understanding their customers, using data insightfully, and delivering consistent, personalised experiences across channels.
Key topics include:
- Retail Media’s rise as a strategic bridge between brand and retailer, providing data-driven targeting and measurement while requiring collaboration across internal silos.
- Evolving shopper habits, where sustainability is expected but value remains critical, and convenience channels (including quick commerce) are reshaping how and where products are sold.
- Wellness & health trends, from gut health to sports nutrition, and the importance of taste, efficacy, and authentic communication in winning consumer trust.
- Omnichannel experiences and ecosystems that integrate data from every touchpoint to anticipate needs, build loyalty, and create seamless brand interactions.
- AI and emerging tech as both operational tools and consumer-facing experiences, with the potential to deliver personalised recommendations and new product opportunities – but also raising challenges in trust, measurement, and readiness.
References:
- RetailX Events (www.retailx.events)
- the FMCG event (https://retailx.events/fmcg-instore-ecommerce/) and report (https://intelligence.retailx.net/report-hub/retailx-europe-fmcg-report-2025/)
- thanks to Dunnhumby (https://www.dunnhumby.com/)
Hi, I'm Paul Skeldon from Internet Retailing and I'm here at the FMCG show in London.
I'm joined by Ed Sellia, who's Strategy Manager at Tesco Media.
Ed, thank you so much for joining us.
We're going to talk about retail media.
I think you can't really sort of interact with FMCG brands without talking about retail
media these days.
It's increasingly vital to FMCG brands.
Why?
What's so great about it for them?
I think it starts off with the fact that retail media is an infrastructure and an ecosystem
that's built around the customer.
So increasingly, the touch points that are informed by retailer data can influence a customer
positively towards a brand.
And so you've now got a set of what were analogue channels that are more informed by data,
more intelligence about how that customer is responding, and ultimately adding to the
existing way we build brands and drive sales.
And none of that changes.
It's just a set of intelligence that helps point our media in the right direction and
give us more confidence in the results that come out of it.
I mean, there's a sort of feeling amongst, not just FMCG brands, but retailers generally
and brands generally, that perhaps retail media is a sort of panacea that's going to
solve all their online marketing problems.
That's not really the case, is it?
I don't think there's ever a panacea or a silver bullet.
If you look at the way attention for customers is atomised now, the way that they use media
to inform how they buy, whether that's in store, because it's not forget that in store is
still the line share of FMCG sales and online.
Ultimately, there is no panacea.
There are new tools and new ways that you can diagnose how your brand is performing.
Ask questions why your brand is maybe losing customers, hemorrhaging in sales in some instances,
slowly decaying over time, and then put strategies in place to mitigate that.
And I think that the diagnostics that retail media allows gives you more confidence in
a strategy.
Obviously, strategy is all about choice.
And with the amount of choice that there is available now, brand marketers and performance
marketers, it can be overwhelmed by, oh my word, I've got so many channels to choose from
now, what do I do?
But ultimately, if you embrace the fact that you're never going to get it right perfectly
first time, you try things out, learn from it.
That's what ultimately allows you to invest that 20% of your budget with a bit more confidence.
Because ultimately, the way we build grow brands over time and how we keep them front of
them, I'm a customer is not going to change overnight.
Retail media is not here to do that.
Retail media is here to point the marketing in the right direction and influence with more
certainty the types of customer journeys that FMCG brands are looking to influence.
Absolutely.
You mentioned budgets in that, an interesting thing that came up in one of the panels at the
FMCG show was this idea that there are all these different channels for marketing, retail
media being one of them.
But there is necessarily extra budgets to do this.
Is it difficult to persuade people to point certain budgets to retail media?
It doesn't happen overnight.
If you're looking for an extra 10, 15, 20% in budgets with big organisations spending large
sums of money across media, it can be difficult to persuade persuades the right word.
But persuasion comes through evidence, through case studies, through learning over time and
often through experience.
Because I think people, they ask for case studies, but actually what they want to do is try
it themselves first, understand where the points of contention might be in the planning process.
An e-commerce person might go, "I'm really looking to work more closely with a paid media
person to drive a sales outcome and a brand outcome."
I want to use retail media to do it.
How do I make a case for that person?
And again, that might be a conversation that needs to happen eight months before a campaign
starts because they'll disagree.
They might have a different ethos.
But what I think retail media networks can offer is the glue that binds those departments
together looks at potentially siloed objectives and figures out, "How do we bring those a
bit closer together?
How do we start to use the data to build brand and to drive sales?
Maybe you've got two distinct segments, but part of the same media plan or media strategy?"
Moving money around global parts is difficult.
They're held in maybe different countries with different approval systems in place, but
ultimately there are certain markets where you'll have, I think Nestle, talk about lighthouse
markets and other brands will talk about the same kind of thing where you can make a test
case for retail media, take it back to the organisation and prove it that way.
And it often requires brave marketers to go and try those things and create that change
and also work more closely with people that, you know, since the dawn of data-driven
marketing have fragmented into different parts of the organisation and need to be brought
closer together around these briefs.
Because ultimately we're all trying to keep our brands strong and drive sales to invest
back into brands to create that sort of future long-term equity.
Absolutely.
You mentioned there that sort of people want case studies, though really they need to try
it out for themselves.
But, yeah, what are some of the examples of stuff that Tesco's media have done that sort
of highlights some of those points that you make?
And we've got quite a number of case studies now.
Over the last year, I would say, the business that I've worked really closely with Mars have
tested a lot of different aspects of retail media, both in the store environment, the
on-site environment, whether that's more high impact formats on-site, whether that's
store apps and connected displays in store, but also increasingly using the data off-site
across their social channels as well.
So that is an organisation that maybe came into retail media thinking, yeah, I'm not fully
convinced, but I want to make a case to my global team and we're going to test to invest
long-term.
So, that's a great case study of an organisation that's, you know, multi-portfolio, identified
a need for brands in different segments, so an impulse segment, confectionery, easy meals,
convenient meals, and also pets.
And then thought about how the touch points can be brought closer together.
So those are case studies without revealing lots of results.
You know, there have been quite a ward worthy, so celebrations recently won at retail media
X for Funnel campaign of the year.
And that's built off the back of collaboration with Mars themselves, an early brief, working
really closely with their commerce agency, VML.
And weaving together different aspects of that plan and how it impacts the different parts
of the organisation.
So, I talk about messy collaboration, it really is.
And you have to learn to disagree on certain aspects.
What are we measuring?
I'm not convinced by that channel.
Have you got incrementality for that channel?
If not, what's the next metric, best metric for you to be able to show the effect?
Why should I spend more for the security of your data versus going through my traditional
roots?
Conversations take time, and to go back to your word persuade, you know, that doesn't happen
overnight.
That people take a long time to be convinced because you're talking to people with 15 years
of experience doing something one way and then introducing slightly different ways of
doing it.
That takes time and convincing.
Yeah, but collaborations, it's interesting to say about messy collaboration.
That's a really lovely, honest way of putting it.
But this collaboration, I think, is so important between organisations like yours and the
brands.
But it's interesting that you have to, as part of that, agree to disagree or have different
views and threshold sort of path through it.
So, yeah, that's really good.
Just on that.
I think the reason why that's important is because, you know, if you look at the four
piece of marketing, there's an over obsession with promotion and that comms, essentially.
But there are the other three piece, you know, you've got your product, you've got your
place and you've got your price, all of which into play, and create, I think Mark Ritzon
talks about the 92% of marketing and the over obsession with the 8% of comms.
Where retail media is uniquely placed is it's kind of in the middle of a lot of different
departments that historically haven't always been super connected internally and also connected
to the retail strategies as well, whether that's working with Tesco or other retailers.
So retail media is calling out for people to come in, join the dots and look at, you know,
the different measures of success for price, different measures of success for product
for place and promotion, stitch it together and work out what is driving the effect for
my brand, what's doing something for my brand or my sales that wouldn't have been there
before.
And, you know, the industry is coming of age, I talk about coming of age quite a lot, it's
kind of in its, it's had a lesson period, but that's the exciting time to be, that's where
the difficult questions come for long, that the hype cycle is kind of, we've seen it
now over the last two or three years.
It's here to stay and it's being asked the right questions, which are the challenging
ones to justify itself alongside the storied media environments and storied ways of building
brands that have been done for decades.
Yeah, absolutely.
And part of the sort of changing, sort of market for FMCG in particular, that I think retail
media also has to sort of play a vital role in it, is this move to sort of quick commerce
and convenience, because that's, that's, for FMCG brands, that sort of changes what they
have to make, what they sell, what package sizes, all that kind of stuff.
And from a marketing point of view, that's a really big challenge trying to sort of get
that message out there to high-intention shoppers at that moment, isn't it?
So, what's your experience with the sort of shift towards Q-commerce and convenience
commas?
I think it's a really exciting sort of place and there was a massive rush, clamor to kind
of tie up all these kind of needs states and offer a solution that, you know, would
ultimately get somebody that cuts through their considerations set, right?
I need something right now, whether that's an impulse brand or it's, you know, topping
up your shower gel because you've quickly run out of your toothpaste.
What we're seeing with, with platform like WUSH, which is our quick commerce offer, is
that brands are attracting people who haven't tried the brand before.
Majority of sales are from new to brand customers.
What that means is because you've got a highly loyal Tesco customer using WUSH, similar
environments with quick commerce, that, that consumer comes in, tries the brand,
has a positive experience with the brand because it delivered on a new needs state that maybe
they weren't able to satisfy two, three, four years ago.
And ultimately, then, has the chance of retaining that customer long-term and driving
more out of that, that customer, value wise, whether that's an in-store, all that's another
.com purchase.
So, I think quick commerce is an additive part of the mix.
I think it's an additional needs state that doesn't replace kind of the traditional way
you would go and do a quick top-up shop midweek versus your, your, your full shop.
So, I think that's what's exciting is how do brands think, how can I increase my reach
or my potential sales with a certain profile of customer and use that environment to test
new avenues of budget, maybe new formats that cuts through and go consideration to intent
to purchase really, really quickly?
Brilliant.
Well, that's really interesting and I think something that I look forward to sort of seeing
more about.
There's obviously a lot more we can talk about about retail media, but I think that's
a nice sort of snapshot of where it's at for FMCG brand at the moment.
So, Ed, thank you so much for joining us and great to see you and thank you everybody
for listening and we'll see you again soon.