Retail media is now a £1bn business in the UK. Retailers have never had more data, more control, or more choice over which brands they back.
And yet many fmcg brands are still turning up with the same national campaign and expecting it to land.
There was a time when scale did most of the heavy lifting. Build fame, build distribution, and retail would follow. That world has gone. Today, retailers are data owners, media platforms and commercial operators with their own priorities. If your plan does not serve their shopper, their category or their margin, it is not just weak. It is invisible.
Plans are still too often built brand-first, with retail treated as an afterthought once campaigns are locked. The old model assumed retail would flex around the campaign. Increasingly, retailers expect the opposite.
The starting point has to shift. Instead of asking: “How do we get this campaign into retail?”, brands need to ask: “What growth problem does this retailer need us to solve?”
That moves planning from broad audience demographics towards specific shopper missions: top-up, trade-up, hosting or budget stretch. It also means customer teams need to be involved much earlier, before ideas, media and assets are locked.
Unlocking sharper insights
Done properly, this unlocks sharper insight: where baskets can grow, which shoppers are under-buying and how brands can drive recruitment, frequency or trade-up. It concentrates investment where retailer need, shopper behaviour and brand advantage overlap.
There is a tension emerging here, too. Retailers do not necessarily want more brand activity. Increasingly, they want fewer, bigger, more commercially useful bets that genuinely grow the category and strengthen loyalty. Many large brands still have the budgets, but their planning systems are often too slow and too brand-led for how retailers now operate. Retailers own the data, the media and increasingly the customer relationship.
The brands responding best are designing activity with retailers, not just for them. Tesco’s festive Coca-Cola meal deal partnership worked because it supported a real shopper mission while aligning with Tesco’s wider commercial agenda – not just Coke’s visibility.
The shift in mindset is simple: stop asking: “How do we get this campaign into retail?” Start asking: “Why would this retailer choose to build this with us?” One approach treats the retailer as a channel. The other treats them as a customer.
Being a big brand might still get you listed. But it no longer guarantees you will be wanted.
Lorna Hawtin is chief strategy officer at Zeal
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