Chris Humphrey leads the Hello Humphrey collective, a 15-strong team of hfractional professionals. We asked him what his journey into retail media had been.
What is your role and what does it entail?
I run Hello Humphrey, our family-owned media business, with my wife, Nadine.
We provide specialist media services to brands, media businesses and investment firms advising on media potential, monetisation strategies, media solution roadmap development and support for Martech selections/implementation.
How did you first become interested in retail media and move into it?
I’ve always been interested in media, cutting my teeth in WPP and Omnicom agencies, but my time spent building Team Digital at Tesco Bank really opened my eyes to the opportunity of digital + data + retail. Working with Clubcard data to finetune Tesco Bank’s customer propositions and marketing/social media efforts back then provided great performance insights as to the power of retail and transaction data when applied to media channels.
What most excites you about the industry today and what might happen next in RM?
The influx of advertising spend into the industry will really help accelerate much needed standardisation across the eco-system, while helping both the buy and sell side mature op models and tech stacks. Measurement is the biggest industry challenge given the need to attribute a growing diversity of media formats, from DOOH to shelf hangers, sponsored search to POS placements.
Driving attribution that helps advertisers accurately qualify their ROAS needs to be an industry-level next step, not just the reserve of the most mature retailers.
Who is your biggest inspiration in the retail media sector and why?
Given my time at Tesco, I have to say the continuation of the great work that was happening back in my day to what Nick Ashley and team have built with the Tesco Media & Insight business today goes a long way to demonstrating what is possible in retail media and how clarity of execution can deliver real gains to the businesses who are supportive of the initial and ongoing investment needed.
What one retail media campaign or strategy you’ve been involved in are you proudest of?
I’ve been lucky to work with some amazing retailers and global brands of late in this space. There’s one modelling/feasibility assessment project that really stood out for me last year, in my role as advisor to PwC UK. This client, a prominent UK retailer, summed up the scale of omni-channel retail media opportunity for me.
A great store and digital estate, ripe for media monetisation and most importantly a strong brand committed to delivering incremental value back to their customers, in interesting and innovative ways. That’s what I love about advising in this space: each retailer solution must respect the customer journey while opening up an entirely new path to [often incremental] revenue.
