I'm writing this from a house with no furniture.
We've finally sold or donated almost everything. We're sleeping on camping mattresses. Meals are eaten on paper plates disposible cutlery. Does that count as girl dinner?
After 16 years living on and off in the US, my family and I are moving back to our hometown of Perth, Western Australia, to be closer to family. So I'm sitting in an echoey, empty house in Atlanta, soon to get on a flight to France, feeling all the things you feel when you close one chapter and open an old one back up.
This is also the last week of the season for me at Retail Media Breakfast Club. After Cannes I'm taking a long, much-needed break — a little time at the beach with my family in Europe, sightseeing along the French and Italian coast, before the 17-hour flight from from Rome to Perth.
Don't worry. Retail Media Breakfast Club isn't going anywhere. The podcast, the newsletter, the funny video skits you've been enjoying — all of it continues. I'm just taking the summer, and I'll be back online in late July.
This week at Cannes
I'm at Cannes this week, which means I'll be departing from my usual 6am Eastern Time delivery schedule. Expect a smattering of shorter content popping up at odd hours as I run between panels and interviews. Here's a few events I'm particularly excited about:
Retail media couples therapy. Something I've wanted to do for ages. Three couples — each one a brand paired with a retailer — airing the drama in their relationship on stage. I'm paired with Mark Williamson from Costco Retail Media. I play the brand, he plays the retailer, and we are a couple with money troubles. It'll be a lot of fun.
The debate. I'm back on stage with my frenemies Andrew Lipsman and Colin Lewis. It's billed as a debate about retail media, but let's be honest — nobody's there to weigh both sides of an argument. They're there for the jabs and the insults. It's one of my favorite events of the week.
A private breakfast with Mirakl Ads. On the final morning, when everyone's hungover, jet-lagged, and ready to go home, we're all at our most vulnerable and ready for real talk. I'm hosting a closed-door breakfast with podcast sponsor Mirakl Ads on what's actually on the minds of retail media network leaders at Cannes. I'll share some takeaways here afterward — anonymized, of course.
Did you know leading retailer media networks drive 85% of their ads revenue through mid- and long-tail advertisers?
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Retailers who want to capture ad spend from the long tail of 3P marketplace sellers use Mirakl Ads in their tech stack.
Something new: Basket Case
But the thing I'm most excited to tell you about is a new podcast I'm part of called Basket Case, produced by The Drum and QSIC. The first episode went live Friday.
Episode one digs into a real head-scratcher: why does the physical store get skipped over so often when marketers build campaigns? We pour everything into the digital touchpoints, and the store — where most of the volume happens — gets an afterthought.
The episode features David Haas, President of QSIC, and Austin Leonard, head of Dollar General Media Network. There's banter with my co-hosts: me, Gordon Young, editor-in-chief of The Drum, and Marc Walkin, head of marketing at QSIC. We've got a psychic medium predicting the future of commerce media, some confessions from marketers, and a new video skit from me about shelf talkers.
Here's a taste of the skit — the eternal struggle of the brand whose entire in-store strategy is one shelf talker:
Marc Walkin
278 episodes, and still not scraping the bottom
This is the 278th edition of the Retail Media Breakfast Club newsletter!
I often get asked often how I find things to talk about. Honestly, that has never once been the problem. The list of topics I want to cover, revisit, or learn more about is far longer than the slots I have in a week. It always has been.
What I love most is hearing from the people who disagree or have a different take. You tell me where I'm wrong, what I left out, who I should have spoken to — and that becomes some of the best follow-up content I make. So thank you for coming along, and please keep checking me.
Thank you for tuning in, for the disagreements, and for sticking with this for 278 episodes. Catch the Cannes tidbits this week, and I'll see you back here in late July.
