Uche Ofili, Director of Agency Partnerships at SMG and member of the RMA Advisory Board, spoke to RMA Editor Tyrone Stewart about being at the forefront of retail and commerce media, and where the channel is heading.
How did you get into working at SMG? Was it the chance to work with all these retailers that interested you?
I spent four years at Tesco, where I set up the agency sales team. That was probably the first UK dedicated grocer agency sales teams. My background is very much agency, though. I worked at MEC – now, Wavemaker. I worked at Mediacom, and I went to IPG.
At IPG, I was working on Aldi, and that’s when the conversations opened up with Tesco. And I was thinking, “yeah, this data is like liquid gold.” So, I went over to Tesco. It was a great journey. First in market. Largest retailer. But the conversation opened up with SMG, and I could see the direction of travel, the culture. And overseeing a team that faces into Asda, Morrisons, Co-op, Boots, The Very Group made me think that was a bit more challenging. Trying to think about the different maturity across all those different retailers would have been really challenging for me, and a new challenge for my career.
How is it working with all those different retailers, with SMG effectively being simultaneously in-house and not?
I sit in the central team, so I touch into all of our retail media partners, and it’s really interesting. There are different maturity stages, different product sophistication, different thinking in the teams. So again, a challenge, but one that I’m really enjoying. It keeps me agile, keeps me nimble. I’m building out a team to help service those different demands. But, all-in-all, it’s going really well.
Do you think having that agency background has helped?
Exactly that. Having that agency background is really good, because I understand agency DNA, structure, language, so I know exactly where we need to get in and speak to agencies, and what about, and how. But also managing the different relationships, the stakeholder management, the different go-to-market strategies – that’s something I’m au fait with from my agency days.
How has the retail media landscape changed since you’ve been involved in it?
So many new entrants into the market. It’s a little bit proliferated. I would say there’s so much choice for agencies and brands, and no one really knows where it’s going. But everyone knows that it’s a very lucrative part of the industry, and there are lots of retail media networks spawning from everywhere. So, it’s interesting to see where it’s going.
I do think that there are a lot of walled gardens that agencies have to now try and operate and understand and work around.
When I was at Tesco, it was very much we were leading the charge, and it was about education, and best-in-class. I think now many more retailers are getting on board and trying to replicate some of that success.
Do you think the model SMG has created is the future of retail media?
I think that our experience and understanding of retail media, the background in it, will really be beneficial to the long-tail of retail media networks. So, I think it makes sense for them to maybe utilise, or benefit from, our experience in-market already. That’s not just my experience at Tesco, but SMGs experience for the past 16 years and the great work that’s been done there.
If you’re a small retail media network – from an infrastructure, a tech, a CapEx perspective – it might make sense to collab with somebody who’s been in the market and done it before.
What are your predictions for retail media’s growth?
It’s a really good question, and it’s one that I wish I had the answer to, because a lot of clients are asking me, “what’s the size of the prize?” I think it depends on how much the agencies retain in terms of brand planning and activation, and how much is taken in-house as well. I think that adds a nuance, a layer to it, but what I can say is that I think that retail media continues to go from strength-to-strength. I don’t think we’ll have this sustained surge of increased spend, but taking money from linear TV, from print, from other traditional forms of advertising, is massively encouraging.
You mentioned other channels, do you think there’s a risk of cannibalisation?
This is so interesting. I don’t actually see retail media as any cannibalisation. What I do see it as is additive. I think it’s media, but enhanced by data implementation and smart thinking with that data and the retailers holding that first-party data. How do we deploy that across the different channels and touchpoints? That’s where I think we need to start getting to. Seeing it as a competitive channel, we might get a bit stuck. I think once we get people onboard to understand it’s just about utilisation of the data; that’s the sweet spot.
Is that cross-channel activation the future of retail media?
Retail media is just media and the enhancement of it from a data perspective. So, I think that’s the future of it. Multiple touchpoints, different channels, but optimised and underpinned by retailer data.
Final thoughts?
It’s super exciting. It’s great to see the different opportunities that present themselves on a daily basis. And the people in-market are really smart. So, I think it’s great fun. Especially at SMG, we have leaders of this industry at the forefront of innovation.
