Steph Thomas is the Director of Retail & Experience at integrated agency VCCP and the latest interviewee to feature in our ‘Agency Views’ series. Prior to joining VCCP, she was Head of Retail at creative agency Haygarth, and has held senior roles at The Marketing Store and Katch International.
She unpacks how VCCP’s campaigns combine performance with cultural impact, the approach the agency takes to breaking down internal client silos, and why she’d love to bust the myth that retail media has to be about working with black box algorithms.
Can you tell us a bit about VCCP and how you operate in the retail media space? What does your day-to-day look like?
VCCP is a global integrated agency with a challenger spirit, operating under the core belief that “it only works if it all works.” Our clients are Mondelez, Co-op, De’Longhi, Kenwood, and General Mills.
My team, the Retail & Experience team, works in partnership with Media, and we challenge the traditional, fragmented habits of the retail and the media industry by offering a completely integrated end-to-end integrated retail solution.
A typical day-to-day for us is incredibly cross-functional, from deliberately blending brand strategy with retail strategy into creative commerce outputs to working closely with Media to optimise audience and media strategies.
The team, which I run with Steve Rogers who is our senior creative lead, is made up of a number of strategists and creatives; we all have varied days. The team develop projects that span the UK and into international markets for FMCG brands or retailers. One moment we could be working with Eastern Europe to help define new shopper missions and a principles toolkit for one of their major supermarkets; then later that same day, we’re creating a campaign mechanic, shopper activation and retail media creative for a food brand.
We also work each day with VCCP Media and a team of retail media specialists to explore active placements and continuously refine ROI using real-time insights for key brands.
How are you seeing client strategies around retail media evolve?
We see the retail media landscape growing exponentially – which is not new per se, but it has brought immense complexity, fragmented data, and chaotic consumer journeys. Because of this, client strategies are rapidly evolving from basic, tactical execution toward a structured and sophisticated retail media journey.
We are challenging clients to view campaign effectiveness with a sales lens alongside the ability to populate culture. You can do this in-aisle just as much as you do this on social: ‘Rice Rice Baby’, for Muller, achieved this in supermarkets as well as on Instagram, for example. And our recent Made to Share campaign from Cadbury created playfulness on the shop floor, tapping into ideas around sharing moments in a truly immersive way for Mondelez.
Secondly, sophisticated brands are evolving to integrate live business data, and we’ve launched a new proprietary tool for this with our Media team to create models that factor in actual stock levels, profit margins, and sales velocity. We are challenging competitors in our industry who focus on purely platform-led targeting toward creative-led performance.
What is your approach to dealing with any silos on the client’s side?
Siloed thinking is exactly what we set out to challenge. In most brand ecosystems, you have two polarised options: a purely media-centric approach focused entirely on driving up platform spend; or a creative focus that tells a good story but completely misunderstands the compliance and technical realities of the retail grid.
Our approach, I believe, is truly unique, as we try to break down client silos and encourage cross-functional environments from day one amongst their own teams. We also do this internally, and are clear on how to make it work well, so we have well-established processes and ideas around how to immerse teams and get them working collaboratively.
Having specialists in the room that span brand, trade, retail, and data, for example, helps to ensure each client feels at ease when their teams come together collectively at our offices. That way, the briefing is started as a collective, with insights and values outlined in one place so all the dots are joined up. This helps us to pioneer efficiency as well as integrated effectiveness.
We focus on championing retail best practice, and by bringing retail experience, tech infrastructure, and creative leaders into the same room early on, we align commercial sales goals with the brand marketing goals under one cohesive strategy.
What do you think is the key thing that sets retail media apart from other channels or media types?
What sets retail media apart is its proximity to the point of purchase, but as Byron Sharp noted at Cannes Lions this year, extreme media fragmentation can quickly erode brand recognition if you aren’t careful.
Distinctive assets and a brand proposition that shows up consistently, but is flexed to be meaningful across the funnels, is essential.
When it comes to the retail media channel specifically, its true superpower is the potential for closed-loop measurement that moves a business from basic vanity metrics to actual contribution margin. When properly executed, it allows you to connect meticulously crafted ad creative with game-changing automation. It’s the only channel where you can seamlessly layer first-party retailer data with dynamic creative optimisation to influence a customer at the exact micro-moment they are preparing to buy.
What’s a common misconception about retail media that you’d love to debunk?
The myth: Retail media is won or lost purely inside the black box algorithms of the retail ad platforms, and success is just a matter of scaling your budget and using standard data tools. I see people speak to this sentiment often on panels.
The reality: The integration of AI has effectively commoditised the automated buying platforms. If you’re only optimising within the platform’s default tools, you’re already falling behind.
The real value lies in moving the decision-making out of those black boxes and into an environment where you have total control over data and creative relevance. We have built a system to have that control and clients have utilised it throughout the last year. We have seen a 70% increase in sales for some clients driven by high-quality, data-reactive creative assets, not just automated media placement.
What one piece of advice would you give to brands who are considering adding retail media to their channel mix?
Before throwing budget at a retail network, critically map where you sit on the maturity scale. Avoid treating retail media as a disconnected, bottom-of-funnel performance tax.
Instead, invest in an end-to-end integrated infrastructure and robust asset automation engines, and see how you can manage audience data so that your retail media spend operates as a predictive growth engine rather than a fragmented cost centre.
Read more agency perspectives on retail media in RMA’s Agency Views series.
