#545: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Supplier Voices | How Ibotta Uses Data to Help Brands Reach Increasingly Elusive Consumers

The way Chris Riedy sees it, this is either a very exciting time to be in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry, or a really scary time. What’s creating these two views of the industry is the fact that it is undergoing a tremendous amount of evolution that creates new opportunities, but the playbooks that used to work are much less effective today.  

Riedy, who is Chief Revenue Officer at Ibotta, points to one significant development that is spurring this evolution: the consumer today has much more choice. As consumers take an omnichannel approach to shopping, it’s no longer enough for CPG brands to get distribution at the right grocery store, on a good aisle, and with good shelf placement. 

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Transcript

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Welcome And What We Will Cover

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Good afternoon, good morning. Mark Johnson from Loyalty360. Everyone's happy, safe, and well. I want to welcome you to our new edition of the Leaders in Customer Loyalty Podcast. This is the Industry Voices edition. It's great having you with us every Thursday. Today we're joined by Chris Reed. He is the Chief Revenue Officer at Ibotta, one of the companies that are helping brands connect customer loyalty, promotions, retail media, and most importantly, measurable business results. As brands face growing pressure to deliver profitable growth, improve marketing effectiveness, and create more relevant customer experiences, organizations like Ibotta are playing an increasingly important role in helping brands reach consumers with the right offer at the right time and in the right channel. Today we're going to discuss the future of CPG customer loyalty, data, and measurement, as well as AI, brand partnerships, the impact of retail media, and Ibotta's growing media network and what customer loyalty leaders can do to stay ahead in the fight for customers. Chris, thank you very much for taking the time to join us today. It's great having you with us. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Doing great, Mark. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Absolutely.

Meet Chris Reed Of Ibotta

SPEAKER_00 1:19

First off, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your role at Ibotta, and maybe a bit about your background?

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Yeah, 100%. So uh Chris Reedy, I look after the all of the go-to-market at Ibotta. So the sales team, the B2B marketing team, the uh client analytics or customer insights team. Uh, and we're really focused on talking to the CPG industry about how Ibotta can help them deliver on their what we would consider to be performance marketing goals. Um I've been at the company for about a year and a half. We're having a great time. Before I joined Ibotta, I spent uh a year at a connected television startup called TV Scientific. And before that, I spent about 12 years uh kind of all over with Twitter doing various uh sales and marketing roles.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Perfect. For those who may not be familiar with Ibotta, can you tell us a little bit about the company, what you guys do, how you do it, uh, and you know how you help with kind of brand engagement, uh customer experience for uh brand marketers?

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Yeah.

Why Ibotta Went White Label

SPEAKER_01 2:30

So if you think about Ibotta, I mean, I I would really just classify us as the purchase layer that kind of unifies shopperslash retail media for the marketer. Um, but I think to really understand it helps just to take a step back because the business has been around for 14 years. And for the first 10 years, the primary focus was on a consumer app business. So go to the Google Play Store, go to the Apple um uh app store, and download an app called Ibotta. And that app was a great curation of uh digital promotions from all the CPGs that you love that you could go into your favorite grocery store and redeem and save some money. That worked really well. Uh 50 million downloads of the app over time. The challenge is I think as many of us know, trying to keep people engaged in an app-based environment is hard. And we all have tens, if not hundreds, of apps on our phones. And so the the business was going really well. It's just hard to hit that kind of escape velocity from a usage standpoint. And in 2021, uh, through a lot of work that had happened with Walmart, we had the opportunity to start a partnership with Walmart whereby we're the exclusive provider of digital promotions inside of Walmart. And what that really helped us see is that the the ultimate goal for Ibotta is we love it if somebody wants to install the app, but we really want to reach a shopper where they shop natively. And so today we live in a white label native environment at Walmart, but also at Dollar General and Family Dollar at the last mile deliveries like Uber and Instacart and uh DoorDash. We just announced a partnership with 7-Eleven. We're gonna move into the convenience space there, and then some other grocers as well across the country. And so we were an app delivering these great promotions. Uh, all of our customers said we need more of this. So we we we we expanded and went directly to kind of the retail environment.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

So, what's

Proving Promotions Drive Incremental Sales

SPEAKER_00 4:38

the vision for the future then? Uh is it more kind of a discount program, a kind of a currency, or is it helping brands more directly uh to kind of develop their own engagement strategies and own uh paradigms for success?

SPEAKER_01 4:52

So we want to 100% help the brand. So we want to help the CPG uh in a profitable way drive growth full stop. We want to help the retailers uh via our software and via the solution to drive value to their customer. That's obviously really important. And then at the heart of this whole thing is the American consumer, who is uh increasingly challenged from an affordability standpoint. And so as we get deeper and deeper with a CPG partner, we're really trying to understand goals of every single sub brand. We're trying to understand is it, you know, where are we in the margin perspective? Where are we from a trying to gain share versus defend share? We're thinking a lot with them about their retail media strategies and how do we leverage the promotion as a as a catalyst or a partner to said retail media strategy. So we're we're really focused on profitable growth for the CPG, but the only way that happens really well is by meeting the consumer where they are and then ultimately putting forth the right promotion. You can't just use that kind of one size fits all. Everybody gets $3 off, and there we go.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

And in that uh vein, you know, there's a number of people have their own mutual media networks, right? You have Nielsen, you have kind of all the legacy players at the point of sale, uh, everyone's hitting the CPG up for a discount, right? Potentially, or a new way of thinking or access to data. Very fluid industry right now from a CPG perspective, right? How, how how can you provide value to them, right? Because it's it's very fluid uh in in many ways, right? Everyone's uh has a new technology. You guys obviously have a very you know uh poignant and kind of focused technology, but the the whole CPG industry is is kind of changing, correct?

SPEAKER_01 6:50

I I think it's a um depending on how you look at it, it's either a very exciting time to be a CPG or a really scary time or challenging time to be a CPG because you are absolutely right about the evolution. Um I think the playbooks that worked for decades and longer are less applicable today. There is so much choice for a consumer. Uh the consumer uses such an omnichannel shopping focus, and I don't even know if they realize they're doing that, but it's not as simple as it once was that hey, we get distribution to this grocery store, we get a good aisle, good shelf placement, and we're ready to go. Because now the consumer is making multiple stops, they've got their local kind of grocer, they've got the big box grocer that's doing some stuff, they've got the delivery services. Um, and then you even see these kind of co-brands where you might have a D, you know, a CTV service that's asking you to shop at a certain retailer. So there's a lot of choice for the consumer. And because of that, I think things like brand loyalty, uh, durability, uh, you know, what you talk about often, I I think it's challenged. And all of that's happening while the need for value is going up exponentially because cost is rising. So for us, I think the thing that we have to stay incredibly focused on is this North Star of delivering profitable growth to all of our partners. We believe that a promotion doesn't subsidize a behavior. We believe it catalyzes a behavior. And if we can't prove that, it makes it hard for us. And so what we have spent a lot of time on in the last couple of years is measuring the effectiveness of promotions and then also working with both our CPG partners and third parties like Circana to give them our data and ask them to measure what do you see is happening? Um, and that has proven to be quite effective because when we give our data to Circana, they say, wow, you guys are really impactful, seven times as impactful as a traditional media campaign. And so though that type of difference, a 7x difference, that gets the attention, I think, of a of a CPG. And then ultimately, you know, that we've got to do the work and then we've got to show them the results. So the CPG in conclusion here is like as long as they're focused on profitability and driving growth from a profitable standpoint. I think, I think that's what they need to look for in all of these platforms. Like you said, everybody's calling. We've got the solution for you. Trust me. Trust folks, but verify as well and verify through through data.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Absolutely.

Value When Price Beats Loyalty

SPEAKER_00 9:37

So uh you mentioned a couple of different things. Uh brands uh are trying to provide value to the customers, and value it takes uh kind of another number of different form factors right now, right? Does the program have value, the customer loyalty or customer experience efforts have value to the organizational team, to the customers, to the brand? But also in this K-shaped recovery, value is very unique as well, right? And some brands are somewhat tone-deaf to that, right? You know, we're gonna maybe create a different size or we're gonna create a different product, uh, but we're not necessarily leveraging the engagement, the kind of the long-term brand equity they have, uh, which you can get from a customer multi-program, they may not be responding in that way. So, you know, how are you looking at value from both a product offering and to a customer perspective in this economic environment?

SPEAKER_01 10:25

Yeah, it's a really good question. I think you know, value is definitely a multi-pronged thing. Um ultimately value is about the consumer feeling really good about the purchase they made. That comes from what's the price they paid for it, what's their reaction to the product? Did they like what they purchased? Did they feel like it tasted like or it performed the way they expected? We see that about 60% of shoppers, two out of three shoppers, are gonna prioritize the price over brand loyalty. And to me, this is one of the most fascinating things that's happened recently, where you you have these heritage brands, these big American brands, and you name the category, we all can pick them out. They're these like they're synonymous with uh with what the actual category is. And it used to be we drive brand loyalty, everybody knows us, we can kind of leave our prices alone, maybe we can tweak move them up a little bit, and people will buy the product, which is not the case anymore. And so what we're trying to help our partners do is really appreciate, you know, are we trying to get to a new household? Uh if so, what's the right discount that we need to provide? Again, to make sure we're focused on driving profitable growth. Um, if if maybe we've penetrated a lot of American household and then you're trying to build basket size, you're trying to get somebody to buy two instead of one or three instead of two, that's a different tactic. Um, but in each of those elements, and then everything in between, the the thing that's really important is to have access to a lot of data. And then we take that data and then run it through models that say, hey, what's the most likely place to get somebody to go from buying two to three? What's the discount required? Uh, what's what's the way to get somebody to consider this brand if they haven't considered it in the last year? And that that element is where we really focused on value, focus on value. You're absolutely right, though, that you know we can't impact the flavor of a product. And so we're just gonna do everything we can to help the help make it easier to get it in the consumer's hands. So they can trial it or they can buy more of it because they already like it on the on the loyalty angle.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Absolutely. So you talked about uh understanding price, uh kind of understanding the consumer is very important. Do you have the ability to look across how that customer is engaging with other uh brands, right? If they're shopping at a giant food, potentially then they shop at a giant eagle. Can you use a clean room process to kind of identify um those uh customers and behavior and from an access and data point?

Using Data Without Drowning In It

SPEAKER_01 13:10

We can. Uh so so we've got you know, we have these these two mechanisms, right? Like in one way, we're we're working, we have this white label product that lives inside of Walmart or lives inside of DoorDash. And if you go to Walmart or DoorDash, you would never see the name Ibotta. You would never see powered by Ibotta or login to Ibotta. You just see Walmart Cash at Walmart or you see a digital promotion at DoorDash. So in those instances, every single day, we're getting full closed loop reporting that shows us which products we move. So we have no doubt if we're moving product A versus product B. And then inside of our app, we have millions of users that link their loyalty cards uh from their favorite shopping partner. And so in that environment, we can really start to see what's happening from a big box versus a small grosser, what's happening from a dollar channel versus a big box. And that goes back to that thing I was mentioning earlier, just on the data. If you have, if you don't have access to data, it makes it harder to forecast what will happen in the future. Um, having that access to all that data is the thing that I think really is one of the things that compels brands. Because when we go sit down with them, we're not just saying, hey, it's back to school, so do this thing. We're saying, hey, it's back to school. And here's what we've seen from our shoppers over the last few years around this time of year, as it relates to the categories you're most interested in. And then from there, you know, what is what's the next product that somebody's buying? So if, you know, trying to do that, buying one, two, building basket size. Um, and that that is incredibly powerful. Uh, ultimately, we're trying to lead with data because that drives the performance. And the performance drives the profitable growth. And that's this flywheel. We think if we're delivering profitable growth to the CPG, they start to think about promotions much differently. It's not this kind of isolated tactic that maybe you do when you're launching a product or when something's maybe not moving on the shelves, but it becomes more part of your always-on marketing strategy.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

No, I think you're right. And and brands, you know, we do uh a number of research papers throughout the year, and we did our 2026 data customer loyalty uh paper. And brands don't struggle necessarily with having access to data. Uh, you know, they do they have an organizational data store uh that uh allows different parts of data to be there? Does the customer loyalty team or customer experience team have access to that? They oftentimes have too much data. And the vendors, the consultants, you know, the deployments, the accentors, they're coming in and say, yeah, you don't need to do that, you need to transform everything you have going on. You just don't need to do something simple, small, measurable, iterable. You need to go home run, right? And that creates challenges for me, for you, for everyone involved, right? Because at the end of the day, they sell you the strategy and they're like, yep, as far as good luck. Yeah, uh, screw you guys, I'm going home, right? So it's kind of that same thing. And that's a big challenge. Simplicity, having four or five right data points that you can action on, you can drive messaging on, and you can create engagement around is imperative, correct?

SPEAKER_01 16:30

I I think that yes, absolutely. And again, to go back to this like, is it a great time to be a CPG or a really challenging time to be a CPG? You know, you've got you're sitting there uh inside of a manufacturer of a sparkling beverage, let's say, and and you've got reports coming from each of your retailers. Uh, you've got your retail media, which is coming through a different, it's coming from the retailer, but a different through a different door. They're telling you the impact. And it's happening all over the place. And you're trying to take all that data and get it normalized to see like what really happened over the last month. That is a major challenge. I agree with you with regard to um too much data. Ultimately, you can make it hard to action. Uh, what we feel, we feel like we've got a couple really cool things that we bring to the table. One, we measure online e-commerce, which is incredibly important to all CPGs and retailers right now, but we also have the offline presence. If somebody goes into the store and purchases something at a retailer, we have the ability to see that. So we have this, we have this online offline thing, which you think is very powerful. And the other thing is we have, we believe um in the transparency of data. And so a lot of vendors that maybe aren't just selling you a block of data, hey, go do this, but they're selling you a solution that's powered by data. They don't really want, they want to keep score. And I don't blame them. They want to say, hey, campaign's over. We delivered this, this, and this. And that I think is where the CPG starts to get stuck because they get this report from the retailer saying we this is your sales. And then they get all these vendors that say they impacted the sale, but the impact is larger than the actual units moved as reported by the retailer. And so then you're like, well, what who do I trust in this instance? And that's why we have taken a big step to partner with the likes of Circana to say, hey, you take the data, you see, you work with all these CPGs, you have a great panel that that looks at performance of uh marketing, you you show us what you think is happening and you you show the the CPG, such that we're not the ultimate arbiter of success. I think that that's what I would be looking for is about if I'm a CPG. Who's really taking a partner-oriented approach with me? Who's who's not trying to claim every conversion that happened? Who's trying to that that's not the right way to go? Um, it might feel like the right way to go at the moment. Hey, we did really well, but if you don't have the trust with the partner, if the if the CPG doesn't feel like you are one of those four or five partners that really is leaned in with them, I think it gets harder to be successful in the long term.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Yeah, I think that's interesting too. Like Sircana, I mean, that's uh very familiar with those guys. I mean, there's still some co-petition between you guys there, right? I mean, because they have panel data, they have access to these different data, they they want to be that arbiter to record. So it takes a little bit of trust to kind of form a partnership, right? Obviously, they have some complimentary assets as as well, right? There, they have some competitive pieces too, but synergistically, it seems to be uh, you know, a potential win-win for everyone because it's neutral in that regard.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

Yeah, and like so you're absolutely right. Like Circana has panel data, we have panel data. We we don't we're not in the measurement as a business business. Um, we're in the promotions, digital promotions business. That is where we are going to thrive. We have an incredible bit of software that allows us to show up natively inside of these retail experiences, meet the American consumer where they are. We love that business and it's awesome. You're absolutely right. Again, we each have this panel data that's super helpful. Circana has just done a really nice job of building trust with the CPG. And we we're not we're not trying to say, I love Sirkana as a partner and uh we we will keep working with them. But there are other elements out there, other companies that measure on behalf of CPGs. And we really want to say to the to the packaged goods company, who is the your source of record? Who's your source of truth? Um, if it's a different company, well, we're comfortable giving our data to them as well. We really believe in what we're doing, and we want to help. And we understand when you're trying to break through, you may have to take a bigger step. You may have to be a little bit more courageous by sharing your data with uh with third parties to measure. And so that cooperation, we think it's healthy for us because we're not in the exact same business. And you're absolutely right. For them, they start measuring promotions in a way that hadn't been measured before. For us, we get promotions measured next to media. And that's a really good thing for us just to just to show the power of what can happen uh from an incremental sales standpoint.

Buying Across The Ibotta Network

SPEAKER_00 21:33

We talked a little bit about it, the you know, the Ibotta performance network, the IPN. Uh, you know, how uh many brands are part of the the IPN and you know, being part of the network, how does it make it easier for brands to connect with consumers?

SPEAKER_01 21:48

Yeah, so if um so if we're talking the CPG, so on the on the retail side, you know, you've got probably these think about 60 partners that we reach out to different. Retailers where we're working. If you talk about the CPG side, it's probably low thousands, couple thousand, two thousand to three thousand, I would say. And um I think there's a big opportunity there. Like, I don't know if we're at 20%, I don't know if we're 10 to 20% of the scale where we ultimately will go. As our software, especially from a buying standpoint, uh, becomes easier to use. We get to a more self-service capability. I think you'll see that number expand. So right now, um, we're probably gating some of our opportunity just because it's we're building everything out. So the the value to your point uh for the CPG, if we go back, we use the sparkling beverage manufacturer, and they're sitting here going, I've got all these people calling me. They're they're helping this way, they'll help me over here. And it's all these little point solutions. And what the IPN does, the Ibotta Performance Network, is it allows you to buy at one time with the goal of driving incremental sales. And we will work across all of those nodes on our network to make sure we're hitting your objectives. So if your goal is to deliver, you know, we use a metric called cost per incremental dollar, how much do you need to pay to earn an incremental dollar of revenue? Not a dollar that would have happened anyways, an incremental dollar. So then we can pay attention to that with you across all of these nodes on the network. And it allows you to then, rather than you going here, here, here, here, here, here, here, you just are talking to your IBOTA team on a weekly basis, saying, okay, how are we doing? Where are we performing best? What do we need to optimize? Is that buy two working as well as our new to brand buy one? And that optimization that we're working on in a in a fashion as the campaign is live, that's the thing that really makes it easier for the CPG. And then what we're a lot of stuff that's happening now, and I would say the next, a next frontier for us, is then working in cooperation with the retailer, uh, the Walmart, the DoorDash, the Instacart, on the retail media execution. So helping the brand drive discoverability of the fact that they're running a promotion, not just when you get to the product detail page or not just when you're in the search results, but how do we bring that further up into the discovery flow? That's some work that we're doing right now. So that cooperation, both at the at the retailer level and then across, so that you're not doing it one by one by one by one by one, is the value that we're bringing forward, all while focused on driving that incremental sale as opposed to a sale that would have happened anyways.

Aligning Trade Media And Retail Media

SPEAKER_00 24:48

You know, when you look at uh kind of customer loyalty, customer experience, uh, you know, talk it's definitely fluid, uh, but customers still want to have, we just did a big consumer study, they want to be loyal to brands. Oftentimes they feel they may not be listening to them. So some of the offers or engagement may they may tune out. When you look at some of the challenges brands face in regard to digital promotion, say their efforts, you know, what are some things they're missing? Maybe one or two things that they uh may be doing wrong or could do better to enhance the efficacy of their efforts.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Great, great question. This is the same thing. Like, is it a great time or a really hard time? Because of the choice is massive. So I think there's a couple, there's a couple things that I would say. By and large, historically, promotions and media have lived in two different sides of the house at a CPG. Yeah. Uh the promotion is driven by the shopper and trade team that are working directly with retailers, the media team owned by the CMO, working with an agency, and then retail media lives somewhere in between those two things. So the the first thing is that ultimately you're trying to compel a consumer to buy your product in each of those instances. It's all about the shopping journey. And if you there is a big opportunity for each of these companies to unite from a at least what we're doing in market at a given time. And what I mean by that is like if you are doing a halftime show at the Super Bowl for one of your brands, but then your retail media is pushing a different message, and then your promotion strategy is not tying back to those things. To your point, the consumer is like, I think it's confusing to see, whoa, I just saw this great thing. And wait, now I saw this different thing. And then conversely, I see this dollar off, but I don't see any marketing. And then the next week I do see something in my TV or something, something on my local pot radio or a podcast that I'm listening to. So I think the challenge for the CPGs is to take these traditionally disparate kind of trade versus media, and now this new entrant retail media. How do you put one goal against all of that rather than three unique goals that can work against themselves? Uh if you've got a media team that's trying to drive this reach at a low cost, and then you've got the promotions team trying to drive trial and you're doing it in two different ways. That's that is just something that I think is a massive opportunity. I think in conjunction there, I think there's there's just a ways to go for us in this commerce slash retail media thing. I think it's all gonna kind of shift together. But even if you're buying Netflix as a CPG to drive awareness of a product, you should be thinking about the impact that that is driving and how many more, whether it's landing page visits or how many more add-to cart and ultimately purchases is driving. And thinking about the recipe of you know, broad national media to retail media to promotions, and how are they all working together such that you have this algorithm that should say, you know, I'm gonna spend this much on national right now, this much on retail media, and I need to do this much promotion to support each of them. That's the future. We get to this agentic buying that we're all reading about and talking about. That's just rule-based buying, where there's some decision engine that's saying, okay, the goal of the national media is to do this. When it does, when it hits that goal, do more of it. When it doesn't, do less of it. So I think to get ready for that, the CPGs can do a lot to just build the rules, the goals against each of these segments, such that it's one view of the customer, as opposed to these disparate teams meeting with the CFO every Monday. And at the end of the day, the CFO is like, okay, everybody's killing it, but we actually didn't drive any more sales this week. What's happening?

SPEAKER_00 29:01

Absolutely. Um,

7-Eleven Rollout And Better Partnerships

SPEAKER_00 29:03

so you talked a little bit about the partnership with 7-Eleven. Uh new, you know, how is that partnership coming uh coming along? And and you know, what promotion uh or performance-based uh you know, promotions are you putting into play with them and and and how's and how's how's it working with 7-Eleven?

SPEAKER_01 29:21

Yeah, so 7-Eleven is super exciting for us. Uh it's our first step into kind of pure play massive convenience. Um, and the 7-Eleven is as good as it gets. I think it's plus or minus 11,000, 12,000 stores in the United States. Um, you've got a massive footprint to work within. 100 million, I think, in their loyalty network, which is that's a big, that's a big number. And so for us, we're in the, we're in the early stages right now. So we announced the partnership uh a couple of weeks ago. And now we're going through that process of getting to understand their consumer, uh, understanding the behaviors and the patterns of their consumer so that we can do that same thing that I mentioned, kind of take the data to make sure that we're building the right offer for a given brand inside of that environment to drive profitable revenue growth. So I would expect over the next few months, you'll see us start to, you know, start to roll this out. The cool thing about these partnerships is, you know, we have this software that's white label. So 7-Eleven decides what what color it's going to be and how it's going to live inside of their environment. Uh, and that gets us off the ground. But ultimately, it's being live with them and learning, uh, taking a look back at our historical data, evolving very much in this test and learn capacity. So I am really excited about this because of how important the convenience channel is, especially to the food and beverage, you know, especially to that kind of the sparkling beverage company, the snack company. That this is a massive, massive opportunity. So we're really excited about the partnership. Um, and I would say in a couple of months we can come back and tell you about some of the some of the learnings we've had and some of the some of the wins we've had.

SPEAKER_00 31:13

Excellent. When you talk about uh kind of the partnerships being very important, we talked a little bit about some of the challenges that brands have kind of creating partnerships. Uh, you know, we do uh as I mentioned, we do a lot of research, take a customer loyalty report. 46% of brands said that partnerships are very important to them. Um, you know, when you uh look at partnerships, you you know, you've expanded uh you have the nuggets, Storedash, Uber, you have a technology partnership that enables them to do some very unique things, which brands kind of struggle with as well. How should brands be looking at partnerships, both from a brand-to-brand perspective, potentially, and a you know, brand to vendor that can enable a brand partnership?

SPEAKER_01 31:54

It's I think it's a great, great question with regard to all the things that are happening, right? Um to to be a CMO right now at a CPG, and I can't imagine what their email inbox looks like or their or their phone numbers getting everybody's got a solution for them.

SPEAKER_00 32:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

So the the things that that I think about, um are we aligned? Are we trying, do we understand each other's goals and are we each trying to go with them in the same way? Do we have trust? Do I feel that you as a partner uh has skin in the game slash wins when I win? And that is something that I think is often overlooked. There are these point solutions that do a little bit of this or a little bit of that, and they do it well, but they don't understand the entire set of ingredients that go into success for the brand. And so when we think about partnership, we're looking for kind of the win-win shared interest thing. We only get paid when we actually sell a product on behalf of our CPGs. That just that in and of itself drives a lot of alignment for us. Like we don't make any money just to have something show up or to get clicked. And so we have a strong alignment just through our business model. And then we fully appreciate that in the world, in the day we're in today, and as we go forward, proof is incredibly important to marketers. You can't just say this kind of worked or this worked and we think it worked, trust me. And I think when we're looking for partnerships, we want the same thing. You know, so when we go to 7-Eleven, they're incredibly interested in driving the digital penetration of their business. They're incredibly interested in driving value to their consumers. And that is what we do very well. And so that's really synergistic. Um, if they were looking for something else, like, hey, uh, you know, we don't want to do this, or we're not gonna give you access to that, or you can only show up on Tuesdays, but not the rest of the week. It just has to make sense to each of us. And we have really similar goals there. And that's what I would recommend to anyone who's working with a partner or a vendor. Do you have similar goals? Are you aware of what good looks like? And then do you have the transparency at the end of the day to look at the results and say, did this work or didn't it work? As you know, Mark, like not everything works. And partnership is about being able to get better and better and better. It's not everything works every step of the way. So I that's what I would be looking for, or that's what we're looking for when we're when we're out there talking about future partnerships.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

Excellent.

AI For Shopping Assistants And Models

SPEAKER_00 34:45

And you talked a little bit about this earlier, some of the AI attributes of the platform. Uh, AI, last year or something, uh, people in customer experience, customer loyalty weren't doing a whole lot around. Now they're doing more. Uh, but still there's some concerns, consternations. Uh, but when you look at it, how should brands be considering or how did maybe how does AI helped optimize customer experience, customer loyalty for those in the IPN network? And how do you think brands should be approaching AI holistically from what you see that works?

SPEAKER_01 35:17

Yeah, so we could probably do an hour on on that question. Here here's here's a couple thoughts. Um, AI means a lot of different things. Uh I think AI sometimes means like the actual consumer experience of being inside of ChatGPT or being inside of Claude or being inside of uh Sparky at your favorite retailer. Um and in that instance, I think about those kind of answer engines or conversation platforms, much like I think the old world of search. So, you know, we had in the way back, we had something called search engine optimization. That was making sure your you know your search results showed up correctly, you could pay to get the right ones to show up higher because you you you you knew that was something important to you. So I think about those things very similarly. And uh anywhere somebody is searching for your category or your brand, you need to be present. Uh, you at least need to be aware of what's happening there so you can decide when to be present. So that's one side of the equation. And um, I think it's incredibly important. It's such early days. Like there's some incredible stats that we've seen. I think Sparky at Walmart says that when somebody interacts with that AI shopping assistant, the basket's 35% bigger. But I don't really know, like that over time that's going to evolve dramatically because it's such early in the, so we're so early in the adoption curve. So that's the first thing. The second thing I would say is, you know, how are you using artificial intelligence or machine learning to comb through all that data you were talking about earlier? Um, that is a real powerful opportunity today that it yesterday it took a human and and the the existing computer framework as much, this much time to get through stuff. Now it can happen so much faster. And so I think from a data analysis standpoint, uh, that is that is available to us today. And that's something that we're doing a ton of. We're taking a look at all this data we had, and then we're building models that say, okay, for this product inside of this category to attract a new customer. Last thing, we talked a little bit about this, but at some point we're gonna get to this world where the sparkling beverage manufacturer says, my goal is to have this score from a brand love standpoint, this score from a share of category standpoint at this level of profitability. And that those rules will then power all of these agents to go out and look for media and look for retail media and look for promotion opportunities to achieve those goals. Um and the only way you can do that effectively is by understanding what you're trying to achieve. What is that brand love quotient that you realize you need? Because that's what drives durability. Um, what do you need from a retail media or a share standpoint? What do you need from a driving profitability standpoint? And so that comes back to that unification of the consumer journey versus having a media channel and a trade channel and a retail media somewhere in between. Those would be my three takes on the state of AI. And I think as you can tell, I we could talk a lot more about it.

Final Takeaways And Where To Follow

SPEAKER_00 38:47

Chris, thank you very much for taking the time to join us today. It was great getting to know you as well as I bought a little bit better. It was great hearing about the transition from an app-based offering to one that can drive engagement, drive customer loyalty for not only the CPG customers, but also for customers like 7-Eleven. And uh definitely looking forward to learning more from you as you continue to evolve. So thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 39:10

Hey, Mark, it's really nice to spend some time with you. Uh, thank you to you, to all your listeners. Um, we just want to drive incremental impact for the CPG. And we want to do that by helping the American consumer find value. So it's a super fun conversation. Um, good luck to the Broncos in the fall. And uh I uh I look forward to chatting with you again.

SPEAKER_00 39:30

Also, want to thank everyone else for taking the time to tune in. Make sure you check back every Tuesday for a new edition of our Leaders and Customer Loyalty podcast, the Supplier Voices edition. Don't forget to subscribe and follow us on YouTube and across the social media channels listed below. Until then, have a wonderful day.