Kimberly-Clark Puts Retail Media to Work for Shoppers

The consumer is the ultimate judge of retail media success. Market leaders like Kimberly-Clark are putting their full energy into leveraging retail media to make the consumer experience better.

In their session at the Path to Purchase Retail Media Summit in Chicago, Kroger Precision Marketing’s Jenny Holleran joined Kimberly-Clark North America’s omnichannel marketing lead Matt Herrmann to talk about how retail media drives more value for shoppers across the purchase journey. In their conversation, Holleran and Herrmann explored topics such as:

• Changing consumer expectations

• The role of the digital shelf in connected commerce experiences

• Building omnichannel capabilities as an organization

• Engaging all parties to holistically plan retail media campaigns

It’s all about the consumer

“Incremental sales isn’t the goal of retail media,” Holleran said. “Sales are just the outcome of creating a great customer experience. You can design beautiful and creative advertising, but the message won’t matter if the customer experience fails. Leading brands and retailers today are focusing on making the customer experience more seamless.” - Jenny Holleran, Regional Sales Director, Kroger Precision Marketing

Holleran shared some recent data points from 84.51°/KPM research to illustrate her point:

• 90% of consumers are changing their shopping behavior because of inflation.

• 63% of shoppers are now looking for coupons and more offers more than they were before.

• 50% are switching brands.

• 27% of households are still concerned about COVID.

Retailers must offer customers a digital experience that’s just as engaging and appealing as the in-store aisle.

At Kroger, the shopper loyalty program is more important than ever with 96% of purchases tied to a loyalty card. Customers appreciate the value-exchange as they earn personalized savings - and very-popular fuel points – from shopping at Kroger.

KPM data scientists track more than 3,000 variables in that shopping data to inform a more inspiring consumer experience. Armed with this first-party data and insights, retail media networks like KPM are positioned well to provide more value and better experience for shoppers at scale.

How consumer expectations have changed

So how have shoppers’ expectations transformed in the past year? Beyond price-sensitivity, Herrmann pointed to two other areas where he’s observed significant shifts:

• Sustainability: “It's actually a difference-maker on shelf. About two-thirds of our shoppers say they're willing to purchase products because they are viewed as greener or eco-friendly.”

• Mobile: “While consumers continue to return to stores, mobile continues to be undervalued in the whole marketing mix but will continue to be an important avenue for marketing moving forward.”

Kimberly-Clark’s omnichannel team embraces a mindset of innovation towards the customer experience. “We’re always exploring how to remove friction from the purchase journey at any time and any place,” he said.

“Shoppers have demonstrated comfort moving across device, across platform, building baskets at one ecosystem and converting in another, and that in and of itself is really the definition of omnichannel.” - Matt Herrmann, Omnichannel Marketing Team Lead, Kimberly-Clark North America

Omnichannel marketing is leaning into that shopper-centric mindset and curating experiences that are working in unison with one another – while aligning those tactics to measurable KPI’s.

Where the digital shelf matters most

The digital shelf now is often the first place shoppers engage with the brand, and brand owners don’t want it to be the last, Herrmann explained. If the brand is not discoverable, available, transactable, and repeatable, then the investments brand owners are putting against media and search will never be maximized.

“Customers are changing their behavior with inflation,” Holleran added. “We're seeing so many new people using Kroger’s app. They may still be primarily an in-store shopper because that’s what they're comfortable with, but they're going online first to explore the products and plan their trip out.”

Kimberly-Clark’s radical transformation to online-first organization

Keeping pace with consumer habits, Kimberly-Clark has leaned into capability development across the company.

“We have taken some new approaches to facilitate a new way of working,” Herrmann said.

That includes bringing in creative thinking and functional experts, as well as more formalized training.

“We're spending a lot of time upskilling our traditional functions like sales, account management, brand managers,” he said. It’s part of an enterprise-wide mission to become more fluent in omnichannel and retail media—so everyone involved speaks the same language and can make progress together.

Driving collaboration with agency, retail partners

As their internal teams become more educated about omnichannel, CPGs must also loop in their external partners to ultimately deliver what consumers want. At Kimberly-Clark, they approach omnichannel marketing with a three-pronged approach, working together with agencies and retailers to find solutions.

“It’s no longer the traditional brief that rolls downhill into execution,” he said. “Give your agency and your retailer the license to consult and act on the business.”

Brands and retailers need to partner to create a seamless consumer experience. Kimberly-Clark and Kroger are working hard to ensure shoppers have the right experience anytime and anywhere.

This conversation was originally recorded on June 30, 2022, as part of the Path to Purchase Retail Media Summit. Highlights are published here with permission from the Path to Purchase Institute.