Decoding Retail Media Networks: A Deep Dive with Andy Murray, Molly Rapert, and Rod Thomas

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Podcast brought to you by the Sam M. Walton

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College of Business at the University of Arkansas. I'm your

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host, Brent Williams. Together, we'll explore the dynamic

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landscape of business, and uncover the strategies, insights

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and stories that drive business today. Today, I have with me

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three of my Walton College colleagues. I have Dr. Rod

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Thomas, who is Associate Professor of Supply Chain

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Management. I have Dr. Molly Rapert, who is Associate

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Professor of Marketing. And I have Mr. Andy Murray, who is the

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Executive Director and Founder of the Customer Centric

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Leadership Initiative at the Walton College amongst some

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other things, but well, welcome to the Be Epic Podcast.

Molly Rapert: 00:00:48

Thank you, Brent, we're happy to be here.

Andy Murray: 00:00:49

We're excited.

Brent Williams: 00:00:50

Well, today, we're highlighting a piece of

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what I would call industry focused research around retail

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media networks that, that the four of us have been working on

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for over a year now. We've published a white paper last

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September that we called Realizing the Promise of Retail

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Media Networks. We have another one recently published. And, and

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then we've got some on some academic work that's underway.

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So I want to get to kind of that whole process of industry

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focused research, but maybe let's just start with the

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research itself. For many listening might not know what we

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mean by a retail media network. So we probably should start

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there. Andy, I'm gonna start with you. Tell the audience here

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while I introduced you as the Executive Director of the

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Customer Centric Leadership Initiative, you've had quite an

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industry career. And, you know, have sort of a lot of your

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career bridged this gap, a little bit between practice in

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in academics. But so maybe I'll start with you. Tell me what a

Brent Williams: 00:02:00

retail media network actually is?

Andy Murray: 00:02:03

Well, if I can only define it with such, you know,

Andy Murray: 00:02:05

clarity that everybody could understand. It'd be amazing. But

Andy Murray: 00:02:09

you know, that's an interesting question. I was at the

Andy Murray: 00:02:11

beginnings of the shopper marketing world and one of the

Andy Murray: 00:02:14

first questions was, what is it? And it took forever to define

Andy Murray: 00:02:18

it, which I think is one of the challenges we have with retail

Andy Murray: 00:02:22

media networks, I think you when you look at that question, you

Andy Murray: 00:02:25

almost have to define it from the set of common core elements,

Andy Murray: 00:02:28

and then let it build out from there. Because the edges are a

Andy Murray: 00:02:31

bit murky in terms of where's that line and how you define it.

Andy Murray: 00:02:34

When we did the research, we probably got 30 different

Andy Murray: 00:02:37

responses to you know, what is a retail media network. But I do

Andy Murray: 00:02:40

think there's some common elements that we find that's

Andy Murray: 00:02:43

really important, that guided this research. We were looking

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primarily at omni channel, it was looking at these advertise

Andy Murray: 00:02:50

as an advertising platform that had first party data, closed

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loop reporting, where it really at the two core elements in its

Andy Murray: 00:02:58

ability to measure and be able to get that kind of clarity of

Andy Murray: 00:03:02

what's really happening in the in the transactional space of

Andy Murray: 00:03:05

advertising.

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We're really talking about a advertising

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platform, if you will, that the retailer is, you know, providing

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for itself and for its partners. And I think that's a fair

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statement.

Rod Thomas: 00:03:19

Yeah. When Andy said first party data, what do we

Rod Thomas: 00:03:23

mean by that? First party data refers to our shopping history,

Rod Thomas: 00:03:27

right? Traditional media with a lot of advertisement, we look

Rod Thomas: 00:03:31

globally, did we get a sales lift or not? With retail media,

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you have the ability to be very focused. They can track not only

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what you saw and were exposed to but what you actually bought.

Rod Thomas: 00:03:43

And that what you actually bought, that's the closed loop

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piece that he was talking about. So it is a micro targeted, or

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gives you the ability to be very micro targeted with your

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marketing efforts. You know, exactly if Molly was exposed to

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an ad last night, whether or not she bought. If Andy was exposed

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to an ad, whether or not he bought. And that level of

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feedback gives you the ability to target consumers more

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effectively. And it also lets you kind of constantly

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experiment with the ad you're giving everybody. So to me, it's

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the ultimate marketing tool, but I'm not the marketing expert,

Rod Thomas: 00:04:23

Molly jump in.

Brent Williams: 00:04:24

Well I was gonna jump to Molly there. You know,

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Molly, you are the marketing expert, you and Andy. And you've

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not only that you've really engaged industry throughout your

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whole career in your classroom, which I think is something that

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you've done so so well. But as you've gone through this process

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of the research on retail media networks, I just wonder, what

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are a couple of things that stood out to you?

Molly Rapert: 00:04:50

I'll say with respect to the definition, what

Molly Rapert: 00:04:53

was really interesting to me from the viewpoint of having

Molly Rapert: 00:04:57

talked to industry experts a year ago and then now this past

Molly Rapert: 00:05:01

year was how the specificity changed. I felt like last year

Molly Rapert: 00:05:06

in our conversations, people just refer to retail media

Molly Rapert: 00:05:10

networks, but no one was defining it in the same way as

Molly Rapert: 00:05:14

Andy said 30 disparate definitions, most of which had

Molly Rapert: 00:05:19

descriptors like the wild wild west attached to it. And now I

Molly Rapert: 00:05:24

feel like there has been some convergence of what it is, and

Molly Rapert: 00:05:28

they've moved past that into, okay, exactly, what do we expect

Molly Rapert: 00:05:32

from it? And it's happened with a great deal of velocity.

Brent Williams: 00:05:37

Yeah. Well, you know, maybe I should ask this,

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why is this such a big deal?

Andy Murray: 00:05:43

Well, it's really a fundamental shift in the way,

Andy Murray: 00:05:47

advertisers can go to market and connect with customers. And it's

Andy Murray: 00:05:51

new, I mean, Amazon, when they published in 2019, a $32 billion

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take in ad spend, which hadn't really been pulled out on the

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P&L and reported that way, a lot of jaws dropped collectively in

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CMO land around the world of retailers saying that's a big

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one, something's happening. And so if you look at what makes it

Andy Murray: 00:06:13

a big deal, part of it is the money that's been moving into

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the space of the velocity it's been moving, could be well over

Andy Murray: 00:06:20

100 billion globally, in 2026. So that's a lot of money moving

Andy Murray: 00:06:26

into this space. And when you get that kind of money moving,

Andy Murray: 00:06:28

something's happened, right? I mean, and to pay attention of

Andy Murray: 00:06:31

what is that thing that's happening is really the question

Andy Murray: 00:06:34

we've been asked to kind of look at or been tasked to look at,

Andy Murray: 00:06:38

and then excited to try to explore of just what is

Andy Murray: 00:06:40

happening that's allowing this to, to emerge so quickly.

Molly Rapert: 00:06:44

And I'll add to that, that, if we look at the

Molly Rapert: 00:06:47

broader context of what's happened over the course of our

Molly Rapert: 00:06:50

collective careers, it's considered the third wave. And I

Molly Rapert: 00:06:55

think Andrew Lispsman with insider intelligence really put

Molly Rapert: 00:06:58

it well, when he said that first wave took 14 years to get from 1

Molly Rapert: 00:07:03

billion to $30 billion when we're looking at search, and we

Molly Rapert: 00:07:07

go to the second wave of social, that took 11 years to go from 1

Molly Rapert: 00:07:12

billion to 30 billion. They've made this move in five years to

Molly Rapert: 00:07:16

get to that. So the traction, the velocity, the way it's

Molly Rapert: 00:07:20

entrenched, along with everything else, Andy said, is

Molly Rapert: 00:07:24

really what's keeping it on our horizon.

Rod Thomas: 00:07:26

The other reason I'll say it's a big deal, it

Rod Thomas: 00:07:29

gives you that rare triple win for consumers, if retail media

Rod Thomas: 00:07:35

is operating properly, I'm not getting ads for women's coats,

Rod Thomas: 00:07:40

right? I'm not getting ads for things that are not appropriate

Rod Thomas: 00:07:44

for my age or my tastes, it is a customized solution for me, it

Rod Thomas: 00:07:48

doesn't waste my time. For suppliers, for the brands, it

Rod Thomas: 00:07:54

gives them an opportunity to market their goods and products

Rod Thomas: 00:07:58

and services in a way that is so targeted and so bogus, it should

Rod Thomas: 00:08:02

increase their sales volume. For the retailers, it's an

Rod Thomas: 00:08:05

incremental revenue stream. And the key is it's not always a big

Rod Thomas: 00:08:09

dollars like Andy said, it is higher margin, much higher, the

Rod Thomas: 00:08:14

margins on retail media are much higher than product sales. And

Rod Thomas: 00:08:17

that's why you're seeing retailers so aggressively

Rod Thomas: 00:08:21

pursuing this right at spotting a lot of the omni channel, omni

Rod Thomas: 00:08:26

channel's expensive from a supply chain perspective, home

Rod Thomas: 00:08:28

delivery is really expensive from a supply chain perspective,

Rod Thomas: 00:08:32

retail media offsets the lower margins with that supplemental

Rod Thomas: 00:08:36

margin.

Andy Murray: 00:08:37

And I think the other thing that's important why

Andy Murray: 00:08:38

we wanted to study this is that this is not getting born like a

Andy Murray: 00:08:42

TikTok or a Meta, where, you know, it's a media organization

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dealing with a new channel that's emerging, even those are

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huge channels. This is this is being born inside of an existing

Andy Murray: 00:08:53

commercial relationship, that just up ends everything in terms

Andy Murray: 00:08:57

of now the retailer is also a seller, you know, and the client

Andy Murray: 00:09:02

and who's the client who's the buyer roles have shifted, and

Andy Murray: 00:09:05

you put that kind of organizational change into a

Andy Murray: 00:09:08

pretty established ecosystem with the way things work, it can

Andy Murray: 00:09:13

cause quite a bit of disruption inside the organizational

Andy Murray: 00:09:15

frameworks.

Brent Williams: 00:09:17

We organize our research around the promise and,

Brent Williams: 00:09:23

you know, gaps to the promise and ways to move forward. And I

Brent Williams: 00:09:28

want to get there in just a moment. But but maybe, maybe

Brent Williams: 00:09:32

we'll back out for just a second and just talk about this

Brent Williams: 00:09:35

research process and maybe why we did this right, you know, so

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this is absolutely an emerging phenomenon. And we decided as a

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group that this needed an academic look, but it also

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needed it pretty quickly. Right? You know, we didn't feel like we

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had a lot of time to get the thought out into market and you

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think about the Walton College, when I think about our vision,

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you know, I really just break it down into two core components.

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One is transforming lives, we tend to think about that, of

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course, as our students every day, when they're on our campus

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and, and throughout the other aspects of their lives with the

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but, thought leadership is also a core component of who we are.

Brent Williams: 00:10:22

And this was a real opportunity it seemed to provide thought

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leadership in an area that was emerging. And we did that

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through qualitative research methods. And Rod you are, you

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know, the expert on our team, at least in these methods. So talk

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a little bit about how we went about this research.

Rod Thomas: 00:10:42

We went into our laboratory, a chemist goes into

Rod Thomas: 00:10:44

a lab and starts mixing chemicals. Our lab is industry

Rod Thomas: 00:10:48

professionals, and their corporate settings and what

Rod Thomas: 00:10:51

they're doing. And it's really, it's, it's awesome to be

Rod Thomas: 00:10:54

involved with a brand new industry, cutting edge industry.

Rod Thomas: 00:10:58

And we're on the forefront of that, where we got to talk to

Rod Thomas: 00:11:01

dozens of industry leading experts, and get their insights

Rod Thomas: 00:11:05

on this. So qualitative research in general, is we go talk to

Rod Thomas: 00:11:08

people not structured, right, we will have an interview guide and

Rod Thomas: 00:11:12

some standard questions, but we want to take it wherever it

Rod Thomas: 00:11:16

wants to go. Where, whatever they need to talk about. And

Rod Thomas: 00:11:19

then we come back, we go through, we call it coding. But

Rod Thomas: 00:11:23

essentially, we look for patterns. We look for common

Rod Thomas: 00:11:26

themes and what they're telling us. And we try to identify

Rod Thomas: 00:11:30

those, and then try to look at how those things link together.

Rod Thomas: 00:11:33

And overall, what we're trying to do is describe it, a new

Rod Thomas: 00:11:37

phenomenon would be the academic term for it. But for industry,

Rod Thomas: 00:11:41

let's get our arms around what the heck are we talking about

Rod Thomas: 00:11:44

retail media, right? Just defining that is difficult,

Rod Thomas: 00:11:47

describing what's involved with that, and that we went to the

Rod Thomas: 00:11:51

next stage of okay, how are we gonna get better. And we're

Rod Thomas: 00:11:55

pinging all kinds of people from different backgrounds. It wasn't

Rod Thomas: 00:11:59

just suppliers. It wasn't just retailers, it wasn't just third

Rod Thomas: 00:12:02

party providers. It was all those things in those different

Rod Thomas: 00:12:06

perspectives, from big companies, small companies,

Rod Thomas: 00:12:09

whatnot. And when you talk to enough people, you start to get

Rod Thomas: 00:12:13

redundancy. And that's kind of where we said, okay, we got

Rod Thomas: 00:12:16

enough to publish. Let's get those insights out there for

Rod Thomas: 00:12:19

everybody to learn from. But a big part of what we're doing

Rod Thomas: 00:12:23

upfront, is describing it, defining it and differentiating

Rod Thomas: 00:12:27

it. How can how can these retail media networks be most

Rod Thomas: 00:12:30

successful? How can they differentiate themselves from

Rod Thomas: 00:12:33

the competition, because although there's over 600 of

Rod Thomas: 00:12:36

these right now, they're not all going to survive, right? We're

Rod Thomas: 00:12:40

hearing more and more from our suppliers, there's gonna be

Rod Thomas: 00:12:44

we're gonna count on our hands, how many of these are really

Rod Thomas: 00:12:47

gonna thrive five years from now.

Andy Murray: 00:12:49

I think from an academic side of this, that was

Andy Murray: 00:12:51

a new process for me, Brent. And I probably struggle the most

Andy Murray: 00:12:55

coming from industry, because I'm like, well, I got all these

Andy Murray: 00:12:58

specific questions I'd love to ask and Rod and Molly,

Andy Murray: 00:13:01

especially last year, the first time through, we're like, no,

Andy Murray: 00:13:05

that's not how we do it. We can't go that route. Yeah, but I

Andy Murray: 00:13:08

really want to know about this, or that. And it's like, you

Andy Murray: 00:13:11

can't do that, you know, that's not the academic approach and

Andy Murray: 00:13:15

letting this breathe and letting the insights unfold from, from

Andy Murray: 00:13:18

some very macro questions that had no leading biases in them.

Andy Murray: 00:13:22

It was just completely, you know, macro, I thought were that

Andy Murray: 00:13:25

we're not going to get much out of this. Let's get to the

Andy Murray: 00:13:29

specifics. And I was totally wrong, I mean, it really was

Andy Murray: 00:13:32

fresh to see that. And I see a lot of industry research

Andy Murray: 00:13:35

published. But the value of this coming from an academic model

Andy Murray: 00:13:39

approach really makes it a bit different. And it was something

Andy Murray: 00:13:42

that I had to learn how to adapt to. And now I totally appreciate

Brent Williams: 00:13:46

Yeah, I mean, it was so much fun to have you. And

Brent Williams: 00:13:46

the value.

Brent Williams: 00:13:49

I might call you a quasi academic now on the team, and so

Brent Williams: 00:13:53

Molly, from your standpoint, you know, you've worked on many

Brent Williams: 00:13:57

academic research teams you've worked with, with, with industry

Brent Williams: 00:14:02

professionals, your whole career, but we got a chance to

Brent Williams: 00:14:06

kind of blend that on this team.

Molly Rapert: 00:14:08

Right. And I think that that is, to be honest, the

Molly Rapert: 00:14:12

beauty of Walton, it's what attracted me here in the first

Molly Rapert: 00:14:15

place. And I think that this is a great example of it, but it's

Molly Rapert: 00:14:20

certainly not the only example. I think it pervades everything

Molly Rapert: 00:14:22

we do from having the Customer Centric Leadership Initiative,

Molly Rapert: 00:14:26

to business integrity centers to, I have an advisory board for

Molly Rapert: 00:14:32

my class that picks the articles that my students read. I run the

Molly Rapert: 00:14:36

retail advisory board, that is industry executives from around

Molly Rapert: 00:14:40

the world. I think this is who Walton is, it's this is a

Molly Rapert: 00:14:44

natural extension of that. And so then to be put in a setting,

Molly Rapert: 00:14:50

that is part of our daily responsibility of doing

Molly Rapert: 00:14:54

research, but carrying that same philosophy into that setting.

Molly Rapert: 00:14:59

It's my favorite research hands down, where we're looking at

Molly Rapert: 00:15:02

exactly what is happening in industry, putting our frameworks

Molly Rapert: 00:15:06

and our understanding with that. And I don't think it gets any

Molly Rapert: 00:15:11

better than that in academia. But I also don't think it gets

Molly Rapert: 00:15:14

better than how Walton is positioned to bring these

Molly Rapert: 00:15:18

entities together in the proximity that we can.

Brent Williams: 00:15:23

You know, Molly, I completely agree, I tend to

Brent Williams: 00:15:27

say that this industry engagement that the Walton

Brent Williams: 00:15:30

College has the ability to do and is fortunate enough to have

Brent Williams: 00:15:36

is our superpower of maybe for a lack of better way of saying it.

Brent Williams: 00:15:41

And, you know, in this community, and in this state, I

Brent Williams: 00:15:46

feel like it's, it's not only that industry is here, it's that

Brent Williams: 00:15:49

they want to engage. And so they want to engage with students,

Brent Williams: 00:15:53

our students want to engage with them, our faculty want to engage

Brent Williams: 00:15:56

with them, industry wants to engage in thought leadership.

Brent Williams: 00:16:01

It's just a really unique thing about the Walton College of

Brent Williams: 00:16:05

Business, Northwest Arkansas and Arkansas more broadly.

Molly Rapert: 00:16:08

I think it's more unique than maybe the audience

Molly Rapert: 00:16:11

would even realize, because it's so common sense. I mean, why

Molly Rapert: 00:16:15

wouldn't you have academics working with people in industry,

Molly Rapert: 00:16:19

but the reality is, it doesn't happen, and certainly doesn't

Molly Rapert: 00:16:23

happen to the extent that it happens at this table and in our

Rod Thomas: 00:16:27

I think it was I told you so, Andy.

Andy Murray: 00:16:27

I'd like to also add, I think the diversity of

Andy Murray: 00:16:27

college.

Andy Murray: 00:16:29

I think so too but then you said, you know, retail

Andy Murray: 00:16:29

the research team was really important and didn't probably

Andy Murray: 00:16:30

media is a supply chain problem. And I had never thought of it

Andy Murray: 00:16:32

manifest itself until this round we had where, you know, what's

Andy Murray: 00:16:36

the supply chain logistics guy going to be added to a very

Andy Murray: 00:16:39

complicated retail media, technical thing. But then as we

Andy Murray: 00:16:42

got into it, and started asking questions, one of the executives

Andy Murray: 00:16:46

we interviewed said, they only hire into retail media network

Andy Murray: 00:16:49

roles, supply chain logistics grads. And that's the point, I

Andy Murray: 00:16:52

thought Rod was gonna, like, just come out of his chair in excitement,

Andy Murray: 00:17:05

that way before. But you know, Rod saw it right away. And I

Andy Murray: 00:17:09

think you've been saying it's a supply chain problem for the

Andy Murray: 00:17:11

last couple of years. But I don't think that would have come

Andy Murray: 00:17:13

up without that academic diversity that tried to bring

Andy Murray: 00:17:16

this team together to explore this problem.

Brent Williams: 00:17:18

We got to tell the audience a little story here

Brent Williams: 00:17:22

about trust, I think. This is under the cover, look at their

Brent Williams: 00:17:30

research team. Andy or Rod. Let me start with Andy.

Andy Murray: 00:17:36

Yeah.

Brent Williams: 00:17:37

What did you learn about trust?

Andy Murray: 00:17:38

Well, this is such an interesting story. I can't

Andy Murray: 00:17:41

believe you're asking me this. But the first round through as

Andy Murray: 00:17:44

we're doing the coding, we started talking through themes.

Andy Murray: 00:17:48

And and I can't remember if it was Molly or Stephanie, or I

Andy Murray: 00:17:51

don't think it was Rod, it might of been Rod, said, you know,

Andy Murray: 00:17:54

what we're dealing with here is a theme around trust. And I like

Andy Murray: 00:17:58

trust, I don't hear that word in the professional circles I run

Andy Murray: 00:18:01

in and these other things that sounds soft, that sounds

Andy Murray: 00:18:04

ambiguous. And, you know, we can't put that in the research.

Andy Murray: 00:18:08

And I couldn't have been more wrong as I started, explore

Andy Murray: 00:18:11

that. And we had some pretty heated conversations around

Andy Murray: 00:18:14

trust. And it does it really manifest as a construct. And

Andy Murray: 00:18:17

over time, as we kept working through it, and then I got my

Andy Murray: 00:18:20

hands on Stephen Covey's book, The Speed of Trust, and it broke

Andy Murray: 00:18:24

down all the things that we were talking about in just different

Andy Murray: 00:18:27

language. And so it was quite an epiphany, and what did we have

Andy Murray: 00:18:31

some vigorous conversation on that. And I'll be in first say I

Andy Murray: 00:18:34

was wrong.

Brent Williams: 00:18:35

Well, I will say, that's probably the only

Molly Rapert: 00:18:35

And my memory is, I think, I honestly don't

Molly Rapert: 00:18:37

place that you were potentially wrong during this. But it was

Molly Rapert: 00:18:38

remember if it was Stephanie or myself that just flippantly said

Molly Rapert: 00:18:42

really just such a fun part of this story that we picked at

Molly Rapert: 00:18:46

each other at throughout it, but no, but it was this, you know,

Molly Rapert: 00:18:50

this blend of someone really rooted in practice with with,

Molly Rapert: 00:18:54

with researchers that are really rooted in academics that like

Molly Rapert: 00:18:59

being able to work through those issues really made this word

Molly Rapert: 00:19:03

much more meaningful.

Molly Rapert: 00:19:12

it, but it was Rod that went and pulled the trust literature, I

Molly Rapert: 00:19:16

remember this and started bringing out the dimensionality

Molly Rapert: 00:19:19

of it and showing up with an academic article on it or

Molly Rapert: 00:19:23

saying, I really think you need to think about this. And then

Molly Rapert: 00:19:26

next thing I know, I'm seeing Andy on LinkedIn talking about a

Molly Rapert: 00:19:30

trust tax. This is the beauty of it.

Rod Thomas: 00:19:35

I'm filing copyright infringement. The power of

Rod Thomas: 00:19:43

qualitative research is it is interpretive. And we do need to

Rod Thomas: 00:19:47

have those conversations we need to make sure those themes that

Rod Thomas: 00:19:51

we're talking about are really there and need to go back to

Rod Thomas: 00:19:53

some of them later on. We were asking some of our people we

Rod Thomas: 00:19:57

were interviewing are the trust issues, absolutely it came up,

Rod Thomas: 00:20:01

right? We didn't beg the question. You didn't start out

Rod Thomas: 00:20:04

with, we're going to make this about trust. So going back to

Rod Thomas: 00:20:08

when you were talking about academic research, we're

Rod Thomas: 00:20:11

supposed to be unbiased, we're supposed to be neutral. We are

Rod Thomas: 00:20:13

scientists, we don't go into it with an agenda, like a business

Rod Thomas: 00:20:17

person, or even a journalist would. And that's powerful. And

Rod Thomas: 00:20:23

the trust vetting came up, nobody explicitly set it up

Rod Thomas: 00:20:26

front. But that's okay. Right, they were to show that they're

Rod Thomas: 00:20:29

talking all around it. There was a lot of mistrust up front,

Rod Thomas: 00:20:33

because it was unknown. People didn't know what retail media

Rod Thomas: 00:20:36

was. A lot of these suppliers were just like, where's this

Rod Thomas: 00:20:40

going to end? How much is it going to cost me? How is this

Rod Thomas: 00:20:42

going to impact my business? They were fearful. And then

Rod Thomas: 00:20:46

there was this element of is my investment gonna pay off and all

Rod Thomas: 00:20:51

that so there was the credibility dimension of trust,

Rod Thomas: 00:20:53

there's also this benevolence, dimension of trust of, are they

Rod Thomas: 00:20:56

just using this as another way to tax me or generate money. So

Rod Thomas: 00:21:02

they were talking all around it. And we finally got them on

Rod Thomas: 00:21:05

board. And people started explicitly saying, as well, and

Rod Thomas: 00:21:08

then we could dive into it very directly. But it was fun. It

Rod Thomas: 00:21:13

took me back to my industry roots as well. And Andy, and I

Rod Thomas: 00:21:17

look at each other hard time. So it was a great context to do

Rod Thomas: 00:21:20

that.

Andy Murray: 00:21:21

And I think I got stuck on the benevolence side of

Andy Murray: 00:21:23

trust, and not really understanding lack of

Andy Murray: 00:21:25

capability, as everything was new is a trust issue, because

Andy Murray: 00:21:28

you don't you can't trust it, this decision is going to work.

Andy Murray: 00:21:31

Right. And I'd never really looked at it that way. So thank

Andy Murray: 00:21:34

you, Rob, for disabusing me.

Brent Williams: 00:21:37

Rod, let me ask you this question. Oftentimes,

Brent Williams: 00:21:41

research gets said it's either industry focused, kind of white

Brent Williams: 00:21:47

paper research, or it's academic. It's truly possible

Brent Williams: 00:21:52

for research to to be disseminated both ways and so

Brent Williams: 00:21:58

how do you do it?

Rod Thomas: 00:22:00

It's not easy. It's difficult to do. But I think

Rod Thomas: 00:22:03

we've done it here. Because it is such a new industry. Because

Rod Thomas: 00:22:08

it's such a new phenomenon. We can go to the academic

Rod Thomas: 00:22:11

literature and go, hey, industry's doing this, we need

Rod Thomas: 00:22:15

to get out in front of this, let's define it, describe it,

Rod Thomas: 00:22:19

talk about the theoretical implications where we understand

Rod Thomas: 00:22:23

what's going on, we can predict what's going on. And on the

Rod Thomas: 00:22:27

industry people love it to be because we're giving those

Rod Thomas: 00:22:31

participants in our interviews a voice, we're able to say things

Rod Thomas: 00:22:35

in a neutral manner, that they probably couldn't say to their

Rod Thomas: 00:22:39

retail partners. Or we can say in a neutral way where everybody

Rod Thomas: 00:22:44

knows it's coming from an unbiased place. If I'm a

Rod Thomas: 00:22:47

supplier, if I make a comment to my buyer, there's usually an

Rod Thomas: 00:22:51

agenda behind that, right. And vice versa, there's usually

Rod Thomas: 00:22:55

something behind that we're unbiased, we're neutral, we are

Rod Thomas: 00:22:59

all about providing trustworthy information we'll bring trust

Rod Thomas: 00:23:03

back in. And so I think you can do both, it is difficult. But

Rod Thomas: 00:23:08

we've shown we have white papers out there now, you and I did a

Rod Thomas: 00:23:12

supply chain variant in more of a practitioner oriented journal.

Rod Thomas: 00:23:16

And now we're working with one of the leading academic journals

Rod Thomas: 00:23:21

on describing, defining, and differentiating this. So to me,

Rod Thomas: 00:23:25

this is the holy grail. But it's difficult.

Brent Williams: 00:23:28

Yeah. Well, I'll come back to now the work

Brent Williams: 00:23:31

itself. As I said, we we sort of started with the promise and as

Brent Williams: 00:23:35

we've gone through a couple of iterations, so and I should

Brent Williams: 00:23:39

remind, you know, those listening, you know, we did a

Brent Williams: 00:23:43

round of interviews over a year ago. More recently, we've done a

Brent Williams: 00:23:48

second round of interviews, and really looking at what to had

Brent Williams: 00:23:52

changed, you know, but but I'm gonna ask you all to help me

Brent Williams: 00:23:56

blend those things together, you know. So, Molly, I'm gonna start

Brent Williams: 00:24:01

with you. Just we've talked a little bit, we almost kind of

Brent Williams: 00:24:05

got into the promise of retail media networks, but not quite.

Brent Williams: 00:24:09

So as you've listened over the last, let's call it 18 months

Brent Williams: 00:24:14

working on this, what as you think about? What is the

Brent Williams: 00:24:17

promise? And how is it evolved?

Molly Rapert: 00:24:21

So I loved working on this part, I think we

Molly Rapert: 00:24:23

actually each ended up getting to work on our favorite part.

Molly Rapert: 00:24:27

But this was it for me. To look at the possibilities that exist

Molly Rapert: 00:24:31

as companies are investing in this more and more, and it's

Molly Rapert: 00:24:35

becoming a stronger part of the ecosystem. So we really looked

Molly Rapert: 00:24:38

at it from a triadic point of view, what's the promise for the

Molly Rapert: 00:24:42

consumers, for the brands and for the retailers, so I'm going

Molly Rapert: 00:24:47

to hang it in that framework to have some consistency with our

Molly Rapert: 00:24:51

first white paper. So I think there's an colloquial phrase

Molly Rapert: 00:24:58

that comes from Thailand it says same same but different. And

Molly Rapert: 00:25:02

that is just what kept resonating with me after every

Molly Rapert: 00:25:05

interview, we had this second round, there were things that I

Molly Rapert: 00:25:09

would write down and say well that was the same, that was the

Molly Rapert: 00:25:12

same, but boy, that's changed that's different over the last

Molly Rapert: 00:25:16

year. So I'll give you an example coming out of consumers,

Molly Rapert: 00:25:19

a consumer remained at the forefront, the consumer, the

Molly Rapert: 00:25:22

promise for the consumer was that they would receive this

Molly Rapert: 00:25:25

personalized, relevant, timely message that helped them as they

Molly Rapert: 00:25:30

were in their journey that remained the same. But what was

Molly Rapert: 00:25:35

completely different was the specificity of the promise with

Molly Rapert: 00:25:39

round two. And you know, it, we did not do quantitative

Molly Rapert: 00:25:44

research. So we haven't really explored what caused that

Molly Rapert: 00:25:47

specificity to emerge, I would guess it's that companies are

Molly Rapert: 00:25:51

investing so much money, that that means in turn, they're

Molly Rapert: 00:25:55

expecting more out of the promise but whatever the cause

Molly Rapert: 00:25:59

that specificity did emerge there so that it no longer

Molly Rapert: 00:26:03

became about Rodney, getting a personalized, relevant message.

Molly Rapert: 00:26:08

But the promise that was articulated to us in 2023, was

Molly Rapert: 00:26:13

they expected Rod to get an email prompting him based on

Molly Rapert: 00:26:18

what is relevant to him first thing in the morning, and that

Molly Rapert: 00:26:21

email, and that messaging, whether it's social media or

Molly Rapert: 00:26:24

other platforms would constantly adjust throughout the day,

Molly Rapert: 00:26:29

iterate based on data that's close loop and going back to

Molly Rapert: 00:26:33

adjust what he's receiving. And that it's not only taking place,

Molly Rapert: 00:26:39

this was a big difference not only taking place in the digital

Molly Rapert: 00:26:42

space, but tying into the physical store. A great quote

Molly Rapert: 00:26:46

from a an individual he said I want our amends to influence

Molly Rapert: 00:26:51

physical merchandising as wel so that my shopper is reached no

Molly Rapert: 00:26:57

matter where they are, what they're doing in store online,

Molly Rapert: 00:27:01

in between, and actually referred to it as a tightly

Molly Rapert: 00:27:04

integrated, curated set, a seamless fabric of Rod's life,

Molly Rapert: 00:27:11

that was a different narrative than what we heard last year,

Molly Rapert: 00:27:14

which was personalized, relevant, timely. So the same,

Molly Rapert: 00:27:19

but different.

Rod Thomas: 00:27:20

Much more nuanced.

Molly Rapert: 00:27:21

Much more nuanced.

Rod Thomas: 00:27:22

Much more informed, much more sophisticated. The

Rod Thomas: 00:27:26

suppliers went from a year and a half ago of the fear of the

Rod Thomas: 00:27:29

unknown to, okay, we're getting our arms around this now, we're

Rod Thomas: 00:27:32

going to drive this, this is what we want, this is what we

Rod Thomas: 00:27:35

need, this is what we expect. And if you're going to be a

Rod Thomas: 00:27:39

media network, we're gonna treat you like a media network. And we

Rod Thomas: 00:27:42

expect things that we would get from traditional media, right?

Rod Thomas: 00:27:46

ROI, an understanding of what our investment represents, what

Rod Thomas: 00:27:50

services are you going to provide? One of the most unique

Rod Thomas: 00:27:53

things that came out of our research is the buyer supplier

Rod Thomas: 00:27:57

relationship inverts here. Typically, the retailer is

Rod Thomas: 00:28:01

buying something from a supplier. With retail media,

Rod Thomas: 00:28:04

it's just the opposite. The suppliers are buying media

Rod Thomas: 00:28:08

services from the retailer. And those relational dynamics

Rod Thomas: 00:28:11

flipping like that the power dependence relationship

Rod Thomas: 00:28:14

fundamentally changes. And that presents some challenges, right?

Rod Thomas: 00:28:18

You go from one meeting where you're kind of in the driver's

Rod Thomas: 00:28:21

seat and saying, I want this to go down the hallway, somebody

Rod Thomas: 00:28:25

said, and now it's my turn. Right.

Brent Williams: 00:28:29

You know, Andy, I felt like you have your head

Brent Williams: 00:28:33

really around how we see this, you know, you said same, same

Brent Williams: 00:28:38

but different, right? I'm gonna kind of go to the different

Brent Williams: 00:28:42

because because there are some points where I think we also we

Brent Williams: 00:28:46

heard, you know, a year ago, 18 months ago, people were really

Brent Williams: 00:28:49

just kind of getting their head around this, what is this

Brent Williams: 00:28:51

phenomenon? You know, how are we going to approach this? We feel

Brent Williams: 00:28:56

like in some areas, the gaps have closed over the last year

Brent Williams: 00:29:00

or so. In some areas they haven't. What are some places

Brent Williams: 00:29:05

where you really see some substantial change?

Andy Murray: 00:29:08

Yeah, Brent I think there's three things that are

Andy Murray: 00:29:10

different from last year that are a bit of closing the gap

Andy Murray: 00:29:14

that we heard and the first is around conversations. The second

Andy Murray: 00:29:17

is around clarity. And the third is around competence. And if you

Andy Murray: 00:29:21

look at the point of conversation we heard quite a

Andy Murray: 00:29:24

bit of we're having different conversations today than we had

Andy Murray: 00:29:27

a year ago between the suppliers and the retailers. And I think

Andy Murray: 00:29:31

that's important conversations around the importance of

Andy Murray: 00:29:34

incrementality or measurement and those conversations are more

Andy Murray: 00:29:37

transparent, which those conversations as wasn't

Andy Murray: 00:29:40

necessarily happening back a year ago. We weren't hearing

Andy Murray: 00:29:43

about those conversations. On clarity we saw a lot more

Andy Murray: 00:29:46

strategic clarity emerge over the last year. And what I mean

Andy Murray: 00:29:50

by that is the clarity around everyone that we talked to had

Andy Murray: 00:29:53

some form of an assessment process to be able to assess

Andy Murray: 00:29:56

capabilities. They all had a segmentation that allow them to

Andy Murray: 00:30:00

understand how they're going to interact with the different

Andy Murray: 00:30:03

retail media networks and that clarity was really important.

Andy Murray: 00:30:06

And they also had a better understanding of which brand

Andy Murray: 00:30:09

objectives are going to work better with retail media

Andy Murray: 00:30:12

networks, and then other brand objectives. And that's a lot of

Andy Murray: 00:30:16

strategic clarity. And there was probably a bit more clarity

Andy Murray: 00:30:19

around their macro game plan, I think a year ago was we don't

Andy Murray: 00:30:23

know what we don't know. Now, it felt like there was a lot more

Andy Murray: 00:30:26

clarity about what their roadmap needs to look like in terms of

Andy Murray: 00:30:30

the challenges to overcome or whatever the next conversation

Andy Murray: 00:30:33

really needs to be. On clarity, there was also an operational

Andy Murray: 00:30:37

clarity, more understanding around what tactics work better

Andy Murray: 00:30:40

than other tactics, what work processes need to get

Andy Murray: 00:30:43

reinvented. And a lot of the companies have been really

Andy Murray: 00:30:46

working on that. And then the last one is on confidence, I

Andy Murray: 00:30:49

think we saw a lot of confidence in the language and in the, in

Andy Murray: 00:30:53

the approach that we didn't see before, in the competence coming

Andy Murray: 00:30:57

usually from upskilling, that every organization has done a

Andy Murray: 00:31:00

quite a bit of upskilling over the last year. And that has

Andy Murray: 00:31:03

resulted in a competence in terms of how they approach the

Andy Murray: 00:31:06

the retailer supplier relationship, or how they

Andy Murray: 00:31:09

approach the changes they need at the organization. So

Andy Murray: 00:31:12

confidence was really markedly different. But it wasn't

Andy Murray: 00:31:15

systemic, it had a lot to do with who was who took what

Andy Murray: 00:31:18

individual role, and took it upon themselves to provide that

Andy Murray: 00:31:22

leadership. And a big company might have very different

Andy Murray: 00:31:25

outcomes. If the, if the key actors working together weren't

Andy Murray: 00:31:28

really on the same page and didn't didn't really align, then

Andy Murray: 00:31:32

then the outcomes when the individuals themselves just

Andy Murray: 00:31:35

leaned in and you can you could feel the leadership coming from

Andy Murray: 00:31:38

them, their outcomes could be completely different. So it

Andy Murray: 00:31:42

wasn't systemic, it was very individual. Is that what you

Andy Murray: 00:31:45

guys thought?

Molly Rapert: 00:31:46

And I would add in, it, it was very difficult to

Molly Rapert: 00:31:49

separate our areas, because the promise was the same but had

Molly Rapert: 00:31:53

changed. And then trying to identify whether that change was

Molly Rapert: 00:31:57

truly in the promise or in the reality and that which is what

Molly Rapert: 00:32:00

Andy just discussed. But I think they really went hand in hand

Molly Rapert: 00:32:04

that as these changes were made in the reality, as people became

Molly Rapert: 00:32:10

more aware, especially of bifurcation between early

Molly Rapert: 00:32:13

entrance and later entrance, I think the narrative of the

Molly Rapert: 00:32:17

promise changed, as well. And we are hearing almost two tracks

Molly Rapert: 00:32:21

laid down the track that we heard last year, very general

Molly Rapert: 00:32:24

conceptual in nature, and then the track this year, which was

Molly Rapert: 00:32:29

especially for the early entrance into it much more

Molly Rapert: 00:32:32

specific, much more strategic. So the promise became almost an

Molly Rapert: 00:32:37

elevated set of expectations that they needed to happen in

Molly Rapert: 00:32:42

order to be satisfied. And like, one of the quotes and I'm sorry,

Molly Rapert: 00:32:49

I know, I love leaning into the words of others, but one person

Molly Rapert: 00:32:52

said, The only value proposition that retail media networks have

Molly Rapert: 00:32:57

is measurement. So within a week, I should be able to run a

Molly Rapert: 00:33:00

number of tests and be so far ahead of where I would have been

Molly Rapert: 00:33:04

a month or a few months ago. And that is the implied promise. And

Molly Rapert: 00:33:09

they're saying that were last year, they would say the promise

Molly Rapert: 00:33:13

is measurement closely purporting.

Brent Williams: 00:33:16

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. You know,

Brent Williams: 00:33:19

this is what this level of specificity really is what makes

Brent Williams: 00:33:24

this phenomenon really, really exciting. You know, Rod,

Brent Williams: 00:33:28

something that don't we should have talked about a little bit

Brent Williams: 00:33:33

earlier is a sample, you know, how do you put a sample

Brent Williams: 00:33:37

together? Because, you know, we talk to a pretty wide variety of

Brent Williams: 00:33:42

people intentionally that had lots of experience. And so, you

Brent Williams: 00:33:47

know, there's many different brands represented and different

Brent Williams: 00:33:51

retailers, different regions of the world. And so this was

Brent Williams: 00:33:56

pretty a pretty broad look, that we're taking right?

Rod Thomas: 00:34:00

Yep. Yeah. It's not Sam's quantitative sampling,

Rod Thomas: 00:34:03

where your sample sizes thousands or millions of people.

Rod Thomas: 00:34:06

But even with qualitative research, you want to get a

Rod Thomas: 00:34:09

broad representation. We want different levels of an

Rod Thomas: 00:34:13

organization, we want different members of the retail ecosystem.

Rod Thomas: 00:34:17

And it's important to have that because we didn't want this to

Rod Thomas: 00:34:21

be just about one retailer. We're just about one CPG

Rod Thomas: 00:34:24

company. We want it to be generalizable enough that it'll,

Rod Thomas: 00:34:28

it'll impact or those insights could potentially impact

Rod Thomas: 00:34:31

everybody. Right? And qualitative research is not

Rod Thomas: 00:34:34

going to be as generalizable as when you're crunching big

Rod Thomas: 00:34:38

datasets with econometric models. But I think our sample

Rod Thomas: 00:34:41

because we did have different regions of the world and

Rod Thomas: 00:34:45

different players really did give some insight that could

Rod Thomas: 00:34:48

help a wide range of people. So qualitative sampling, you start

Rod Thomas: 00:34:52

out with, the first criteria is it has to be somebody willing

Rod Thomas: 00:34:56

and able to talk about what you're interested in talking

Rod Thomas: 00:35:00

about. So we couldn't have people that weren't playing in

Rod Thomas: 00:35:03

this area. So they had to be experts, or at least have work

Rod Thomas: 00:35:07

experiences in there. And from there, you kind of try to

Rod Thomas: 00:35:11

provisionally test what some of the themes are. So we might

Rod Thomas: 00:35:14

start out with a handful of people from contacts that Andy

Rod Thomas: 00:35:18

knew, let's be honest, that's what it was, it was contacts

Rod Thomas: 00:35:22

Andy knew. From there, though, we started to see things and we

Rod Thomas: 00:35:26

said, huh, I wonder if this is just a US base, then what's with

Rod Thomas: 00:35:30

all these people in Europe or Asia? Hmm, I wonder if this is

Rod Thomas: 00:35:33

just a supplier thing, let's go talk to some providers or some

Rod Thomas: 00:35:37

retailers. And we were truly trying to push the boundaries of

Rod Thomas: 00:35:41

what we were seeing. So with qualitative research, some of

Rod Thomas: 00:35:45

the sampling you do is a provisional test of what you're

Rod Thomas: 00:35:48

starting to find and themes from the data.

Brent Williams: 00:35:52

Well, and, kind of going now I guess back to the

Brent Williams: 00:35:55

final stage of the paper itself, the way forward? What are some

Brent Williams: 00:36:01

key thoughts? Not only did we describe, which we did a lot, we

Brent Williams: 00:36:06

did a big focus on describing. But there's also some insights

Brent Williams: 00:36:09

about the way forward.

Rod Thomas: 00:36:12

was a big area. Right? And to Molly's point in

Rod Thomas: 00:36:25

the past, we just said we need better measures. Now it's very

Rod Thomas: 00:36:28

clear. No, no, no, we need log level data. We need to know what

Rod Thomas: 00:36:33

time Mary Sue logged on, how long they looked at the ad, what

Rod Thomas: 00:36:38

ad they saw, did they purchase online that evening? Or did they

Rod Thomas: 00:36:43

come back into the store the next day? It's a much more micro

Rod Thomas: 00:36:48

targeted measure, under measurement as a part of that,

Rod Thomas: 00:36:51

too, was make it verifiable, right, because back to the trust

Rod Thomas: 00:36:55

issue, right? Don't just tell us with summary recording retail

Rod Thomas: 00:36:59

media is great. No, no, no, let's, let's see what's going in

Rod Thomas: 00:37:01

behind this reporting. It was the raw data was what we were

Rod Thomas: 00:37:04

hearing from a lot of the bigger suppliers, alignment continues

Rod Thomas: 00:37:08

to be a big issue, both both sides of the relationship. So

Rod Thomas: 00:37:13

for a retailer, it was hey, if we're going to, if we're going

Rod Thomas: 00:37:16

to invest in retail media, let's make sure our merchants, our

Rod Thomas: 00:37:20

store ops, and our retail media is all on board. So we can get

Rod Thomas: 00:37:24

synergies of the phenomenon saw on retail media, and then

Rod Thomas: 00:37:27

reinforce that and still work. Reinforce that with something

Rod Thomas: 00:37:30

the merchants are doing. For the suppliers. You know, there's

Rod Thomas: 00:37:34

this big distinction between upper funnel and lower funnel

Rod Thomas: 00:37:36

levels. Retail media is agnostic to that. They don't care whether

Rod Thomas: 00:37:41

you're driving sales of existing customers or acquiring new

Rod Thomas: 00:37:44

customers, retail media helps. So those people need to blend

Rod Thomas: 00:37:47

those roles and be a little more aligned. The integration piece

Rod Thomas: 00:37:51

came up in terms of information and systems, retail media data,

Rod Thomas: 00:37:57

one of our big recommendations should be available to

Rod Thomas: 00:37:59

everybody, right? Internally and externally, there are a lot of

Rod Thomas: 00:38:04

key stakeholders that can benefit from having access to

Rod Thomas: 00:38:08

that information. So one of our recommendations is give them

Rod Thomas: 00:38:12

access to it. Even internally, it shouldn't be just a retail

Rod Thomas: 00:38:15

media manager type of information piece, the merchants

Rod Thomas: 00:38:19

needed it, store ops needed it, supply chain folks need it. So

Rod Thomas: 00:38:22

let's make that more widely accessible. On the last piece

Rod Thomas: 00:38:25

Andy touched on is the human capital. There's a different

Rod Thomas: 00:38:29

skill set here. It is a new industry. It is, it does combine

Rod Thomas: 00:38:34

cross functional areas. So there's a need for training on

Rod Thomas: 00:38:37

just kind of what retail media is and what the capabilities can

Rod Thomas: 00:38:40

be. As well as very specific pieces of art, very specific

Rod Thomas: 00:38:46

types of capabilities. Now, there's probably a need for more

Rod Thomas: 00:38:48

data scientists, or the marketing that there's probably

Rod Thomas: 00:38:52

a need for people that understand the whole spectrum of

Rod Thomas: 00:38:55

the funnel of marketing. So there's clearly a human capital

Rod Thomas: 00:39:00

investment in certain types of skill sets and cross training

Rod Thomas: 00:39:03

that's there. So those are really our four key points

Rod Thomas: 00:39:06

moving forward, recommendations to make retail media networks

Rod Thomas: 00:39:10

better.

Brent Williams: 00:39:11

Well, this human capital discussion gives me an

Brent Williams: 00:39:16

opportunity to pivot us back to the college and in the

Brent Williams: 00:39:20

classroom. So we talked about our vision of being a thought

Brent Williams: 00:39:27

leader. And then we also said, you know, a huge part of our

Brent Williams: 00:39:31

vision as a college is transforming lives. And so Molly

Brent Williams: 00:39:36

and Andy actually here, because you you actually partner. Here's

Brent Williams: 00:39:41

another beautiful part of this work. This makes it way back

Brent Williams: 00:39:46

into the classroom. How does it do that?

Molly Rapert: 00:39:49

It absolutely does and in a variety of ways. First

Molly Rapert: 00:39:54

and foremost for me to have somebody like Andy who's willing

Molly Rapert: 00:39:56

to invest his time, come into my classroom. Other people who were

Molly Rapert: 00:40:02

involved in my class who will be willing to speak on this

Molly Rapert: 00:40:07

subject. So the students are hearing about it before, they're

Molly Rapert: 00:40:10

I mean, there's definitely not a textbook written, can't even

Molly Rapert: 00:40:14

hardly find academic articles written on it yet. And so we

Molly Rapert: 00:40:19

have to hear from individuals who are boots on the ground

Molly Rapert: 00:40:23

doing this. I think also, this has given us ways to learn about

Molly Rapert: 00:40:30

what is being discussed at conferences, I don't think you

Molly Rapert: 00:40:34

can go to a conference right now in our field, where they're not

Molly Rapert: 00:40:38

talking about measurement, talking about retail media

Molly Rapert: 00:40:42

networks. Andy's great about bringing so much of that

Molly Rapert: 00:40:45

information back to us and posting on LinkedIn. But we also

Molly Rapert: 00:40:49

have collaborations with the IAB. And I'd like to think that

Molly Rapert: 00:40:54

a lot of that push of the IAB comes out of our recommendations

Molly Rapert: 00:40:58

from last year where we said, these individuals are clamoring

Molly Rapert: 00:41:02

for measurement. So when all of those relationships become

Molly Rapert: 00:41:07

almost institutionalized people that we can now call and talk

Molly Rapert: 00:41:11

to, we can bring that back into the classroom, and, and give our

Molly Rapert: 00:41:17

students a leg up on something that is not being discussed at

Molly Rapert: 00:41:20

other institutions, where we have marketing majors, but we're

Molly Rapert: 00:41:25

talking about it, I know I'm talking about it in my class,

Molly Rapert: 00:41:29

maybe even more than they want me to, but I talked about it all

Molly Rapert: 00:41:32

the time. And they're going to come out very literate in this

Molly Rapert: 00:41:35

area, and very well aware of another employment career path.

Andy Murray: 00:41:41

Yeah, and I think what we're seeing with retail

Andy Murray: 00:41:43

media networks, is that it's a leg of the stool, to a bigger

Andy Murray: 00:41:47

stool called Connected Commerce, really. And so if you look at

Andy Murray: 00:41:50

what's happening with social commerce, advertising,

Andy Murray: 00:41:53

marketing, there's going to be a time where we get to there's no

Andy Murray: 00:41:56

dead ends, where everything you see could actually turn into a

Andy Murray: 00:41:59

transaction or a purchase opportunity. And I think that

Andy Murray: 00:42:03

plays out for students in one of the things Molly does in the

Andy Murray: 00:42:05

marketing class, which I think is brilliant for the students is

Andy Murray: 00:42:09

take, take them on store walks, and prepare them for store

Andy Murray: 00:42:12

walks, and go on store walks to see the customer journey, with a

Andy Murray: 00:42:16

retailer, a buyer, with a supplier, and very few students

Andy Murray: 00:42:21

get that opportunity. But now they can go through that

Andy Murray: 00:42:23

opportunity with a connected commerce vision ahead of time,

Andy Murray: 00:42:27

and they can ask different questions because they, they

Andy Murray: 00:42:29

understand the importance of what's happening digitally

Andy Murray: 00:42:31

first, understand how that space might be searched before it's

Andy Murray: 00:42:35

actually shopped in store? And how do you look at that through

Andy Murray: 00:42:39

the eye, a fresh set of eyes, the connected commerce, for

Andy Murray: 00:42:42

students, and I think they're getting very practical and very

Andy Murray: 00:42:47

unique experiences that come from similar learnings from this

Andy Murray: 00:42:49

particular research.

Brent Williams: 00:42:51

Yeah, and these students that are that are

Brent Williams: 00:42:53

taking these classes, you know you mentioned, they have a leg

Brent Williams: 00:42:56

up, I believe that fully to be true. Because they understand

Brent Williams: 00:43:01

the context, they have a leg up in knowing the context that

Brent Williams: 00:43:05

they're about step into and contribute to. So you know, I

Brent Williams: 00:43:08

hear time and time again, where where our students, you know,

Brent Williams: 00:43:12

are ready, you know, whether it's an agency, a consumer

Brent Williams: 00:43:16

products company, or retailer, a company focused on supply chain

Brent Williams: 00:43:22

management, like they have the context, and they're ready to

Brent Williams: 00:43:25

contribute really.

Molly Rapert: 00:43:27

I think Rod is a great example of this, because

Molly Rapert: 00:43:30

he has been saying since day one, let's look at the supply

Molly Rapert: 00:43:33

chain implications of this, you know, so what if we give

Molly Rapert: 00:43:37

somebody a personalized, relevant message and get them to

Molly Rapert: 00:43:40

the shelf to reach for a product that oh, isn't there? You know,

Molly Rapert: 00:43:44

and so he's discussed this. And I know he's taken that back to

Molly Rapert: 00:43:47

the classroom too and his supply chain students are hearing about

Molly Rapert: 00:43:52

how they fit into this ecosystem. I guarantee that

Molly Rapert: 00:43:56

conversation's not taking place on other campuses, but he's been

Molly Rapert: 00:44:00

living and breathing this project. And then taking it back

Molly Rapert: 00:44:04

to his very fortunate students.

Rod Thomas: 00:44:07

I have, right and I teach a supply chain strategy

Rod Thomas: 00:44:09

course. And we talk about capabilities that we need to

Rod Thomas: 00:44:12

meet in consumer needs. That's why supply chains exist, to meet

Rod Thomas: 00:44:16

those needs. So my master's students have heard about it, my

Rod Thomas: 00:44:19

undergrads have heard about it and they get excited, and it's

Rod Thomas: 00:44:21

reinforced across the curriculum, when they're

Rod Thomas: 00:44:24

marketing as well. I think that ties back to what you're talking

Rod Thomas: 00:44:27

about earlier, the value of research. Our research should

Rod Thomas: 00:44:32

inform and drive our teaching. Right? And if if we're, if we're

Rod Thomas: 00:44:37

doing good research that's relevant to industry, by all

Rod Thomas: 00:44:39

means, let's bring it into the classroom. And if we're out in

Rod Thomas: 00:44:42

front of the industry on this, it really does set up our

Rod Thomas: 00:44:46

students.

Brent Williams: 00:44:48

Industry focused research that involves multiple

Brent Williams: 00:44:52

disciplines, academics and leaders from practice that's

Brent Williams: 00:44:58

impacting thought in industry, will impact the academic

Brent Williams: 00:45:02

literature and is impacting current students. Win win win

Brent Williams: 00:45:08

win?

Molly Rapert: 00:45:09

More than a trifecta.

Brent Williams: 00:45:11

Yeah, that's right. Well, Rod, Andy, Molly,

Brent Williams: 00:45:15

thank you for what you've been doing for the college for

Brent Williams: 00:45:18

pushing this research forward this knowledge forward. I really

Brent Williams: 00:45:23

enjoyed working with all three of you on this project.

Rod Thomas: 00:45:26

Ditto.

Andy Murray: 00:45:26

Thank you, Brent. Really enjoyed it.

Molly Rapert: 00:45:26

Absolutely.

Brent Williams: 00:45:30

On behalf of the Walton College. Thank you for

Brent Williams: 00:45:32

joining us for this captivating conversation. To stay connected

Brent Williams: 00:45:36

and never miss an episode. Simply search for Be Epic on

Brent Williams: 00:45:39

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