Global – Bacardi Ltd.

1. In your opinion, how has the Retail Tech landscape evolved over the years? What are some of the advantages of the current technological evolution?

Naturally the last 2 years through the pandemic has accelerated the need for retailers, and brands, to ensure that buying products is as seamless as possible for the consumer – frictionless checkout experiences, ability to have speedier delivery than before, and finally the basics of availability from the right products of interest to ensuring availability of the product.

Ecommerce used to be D2C and Amazon really, but the volume of customers that the retailers have versus these more traditional ecom platforms has inevitable allowed them to broaden the offering to invest for brands, as well as creating a more simplified experience for the consumer through iterative test and learns.

The biggest change from a brands perspective is the opportunity to have a more self-serve biddable model versus a fixed inventory space onsite and therefore allowing brands to intercept consumers in their broader shopping journey higher up in the purchase funnel. By opening up these data sets, and creating a more attributable journey for a brand, particularly brands that rely less on a d2c model, has been game changing to bring that purchaser journey firstly higher up the funnel, but also allows for more brand building in a much more targeted way to drive both demand creation and conversion.We’re seeing this play out with the launch of Dunnhumby Sphere opening up the wealth of opportunity to access certain Tesco data sets, as well as the integrations of The Trade Desk with more and more retailers – this will be one of the biggest challenges to Amazon’s DSP offering.

2. What according to you are some of the challenges plaguing the Retail Tech landscape and how can they be effectively mitigated?

I see more opportunities than challenges but if I think selfishly from a brand side, the actual tech of some of the retailers is clearly less developed from an algorithm perspective than the likes of Amazon, and then moving into the media platforms themselves.

The expectation now of digital platforms is a seamless UI, attribution models working at 100 percent and an ability to manipulate the data sets to suit what each brand wants. The reality is that we’re in the early stages of the self-serve model for retailers which means naturally they won’t be as sophisticated from a media buy perspective compared with the likes of Amazon. I see this being mitigated, not in a tech development way, but more seeing the opportunity of the data sets on offer and the ultimate knowledge of what media levers are working, or not, to deliver both short term sales, as well as that longer term brand demand, in the most targeted and efficient way.

Don’t go over the top on biddable offerings. Creating a completely unfettered environment within a retail site isn’t beneficial for consumers or brands and it becomes too messy and expensive

Amazon as one of the most sophisticated retail tech players still has user and reliability teething problems, but all expected with the pace of change!

3. Which are a few technological trends influencing Retail Tech today? What are some of the best practices businesses should adopt today to steer ahead of competitors?

I think there are two conflicting trends standing out which are the data fabric and then data privacy. Ultimately the offer and opportunity from retailers is to give brands certain data sets that otherwise wouldn’t be available, enabling a much more targeted approach as well as attributable approach to a media buy. Conflicting this is the long standing, yet still hot topic of data privacy, and ensuring the two can work hand in hand from a consumer perceptive. It’s on both sides to ensure we are considerate of this as it serves us both well in the long term to maintain a healthy relationship with your consumer!

One area Bacardi is focussing on is testing out frequency caps and messaging hierarchies to match the depth of audience complexity with the risk of pushing a consumer away – we are trying to balance giving the right message to the right person at the right time, with being obsessed with an immediate end sale.

4. Do you have any advice for industry veterans or budding entrepreneurs from the Retail Tech space?

Don’t go over the top on biddable offerings. Creating a completely unfettered environment within a retail site isn’t beneficial for consumers or brands and it becomes too messy and expensive!