# S3 E28 T83 Quad - George Forge [00:00:00] [00:00:00] [00:00:01] [00:00:12] **Tom Limongello:** This episode of The Middlemen was recorded at Grocery Shop with the man with the best name in retail media, George Forge. Um, George works at Quad, which was originally Quad Graphics, and if you're old school retail media, you probably know them as a printer. When I started editing this episode, uh, their team sent me a ton of assets through WoodWing, which is their digital asset management system. [00:00:37] **Tom Limongello:** So if you're watching on YouTube or Spotify, lots of great visuals in this episode. Um, Quad has moved way past printing. They run circulars and FSIs, but the changes that they made when they went public were acquiring a performance media agency, um, splitting out some sub-brands of creative agencies. [00:00:57] **Tom Limongello:** They built a household data set on top [00:01:00] of mail. Um, if you've been to ShopTalk in or, or Grocery Shop in the last few years, what's probably the most impressive thing is their booth. Um, they have a full store on the show floor with, yes, cardboard displays, but also in-aisle screens and endcap screens. So for me, watching their, uh, evolution from print all the way to the coolest parts of in-store retail media is really exciting. [00:01:28] **Tom Limongello:** Um, and because of their history in shopper marketing, they work with pretty much all the grocery retailers. So you got Publix and Kroger and Costco and Target and Meijer and Aldi, and, um, they work on in-store campaigns, uh, for brands like Red Bull and AG1 and Hanes and Energizer with them. And they also work with the retailers on their own, uh, own brands and their enterprise marketing as well. [00:01:54] **Tom Limongello:** Um, and for, even for some of the brands that they work with, like Gorilla Glue, they're the agency of record, which means they're [00:02:00] running social and CTV. So, you know, they're, they bill themselves as a full service agency capability. Um, so two things to listen for in this episode. George talks about testing the store as you would test a webpage. [00:02:17] **Tom Limongello:** So talking about using eye tracking, heat maps, moving the call to action all over the place to make sure that the behavior is what they want to achieve. That is real measurement technology, um, in the store on top of having, um, the cool new screens. So I think that's, uh, a fun one to, to look at in more detail. [00:02:40] **Tom Limongello:** Second is- Why are the long tail, grocers, you know, really in George's view, supposed to be looking at their store as a digital asset? Now, this has been talked about, um, and if you look pre-COVID, a lot of these grocers didn't have enough web traffic. They still don't really have enough web traffic to really [00:03:00] compete with the biggest retail media networks. [00:03:01] **Tom Limongello:** But they do have store traffic. That being said, you would expect Quad, a company who's a platform and agency that's looking to push more and more on this channel, to want as many screens in the store as possible. But George has a contrarian take, and it's the same take that I'm hearing from brands like the ones that were on the prep call today, um, for P2P's In-Store Ignite in Chicago next month. [00:03:28] **Tom Limongello:** More screens doesn't mean more attention. The question is: how do you use screens or any signage to move people around the store? And so, as George puts it, if you're already standing next to the product, does the screen need to be there? He's got the credibility to, to question that, um, because even though most companies right now are getting excited about in-store, Quad has been in the store since before it was cool [00:03:55] [00:03:55] **Tom Limongello:** I'm here at Grocery Shop 2026 with George Forge- [00:03:59] **Tom Limongello:** [00:04:00] Yep ... at [00:04:00] **Tom Limongello:** Quad. Um, it [00:04:01] **Tom Limongello:** Quad it was great to get to know you back at NRF earlier this year. [00:04:04] **Tom Limongello:** Yeah. [00:04:04] **Tom Limongello:** And you have some exciting stuff to talk about, but I wanted to kinda level set for the audience because I don't think there's a lot of people who really understand what Quad is. Some people have a, a view of the old Quad, which is all print. [00:04:16] **George Forge:** Right. [00:04:16] **Tom Limongello:** Can you talk about the journey that Quad has been on- Yeah ... going from a print company to a modern marketing engine? [00:04:24] **George Forge:** Yeah. So great question. Uh, we're a 55-year-old company. Uh, I often say we're, you know, one of the largest, uh, marketing services company that people don't know of. [00:04:34] **George Forge:** Um, so it's a great question. We were started, the name Quad comes from the Quadracci family. Uh, it was started 55 years ago by Harry Quadracci. Uh, he- [00:04:42] **George Forge:** This is in like Wisconsin or [00:04:43] **George Forge:** something, right? [00:04:44] **George Forge:** Wisconsin. Yeah. Yeah. Pewaukee, Wisconsin. A small little town called Pewaukee, um, about maybe 30, 40 minutes outside of Milwaukee. So, um, Harry, you know, kinda had, uh, retail in his blood. His family had actually, uh, s- had a small grocery store [00:05:00] during the Depression, and they were, uh, selling groceries in the neighborhood. You know, the definition of hyper-local marketing. And, you know, during the Depression, they didn't wanna turn their neighbors away, so they actually, uh, you know, were taking credit in exchange for groceries. And so they needed to figure out their cashflow challenges, and they actually started a printing company in the back of, uh, a small grocery shop. Uh- It's, [00:05:22] **Tom Limongello:** yeah, it's super interesting that that happened. It's not unheard of. Yeah. That's actually how it works in England. [00:05:27] **Tom Limongello:** Yeah, Yeah. [00:05:27] **Tom Limongello:** exactly. They all own their own printing companies. [00:05:29] **Tom Limongello:** Yeah. But here in the States, it's a little [00:05:30] **Tom Limongello:** more rare. [00:05:31] **Tom Limongello:** Right. [00:05:31] **Tom Limongello:** Right. Um, so interesting on that, and that's the... You got us to the '20s. We're gonna have to- Yeah ...fast-forward a little [00:05:36] **Tom Limongello:** bit. [00:05:36] **George Forge:** Fast-forward to, to today. So Harry started the company in 1971, fi- you know, 55 years ago. Uh, he passed away, uh, early 2000s. [00:05:45] **George Forge:** His son, uh, Joel took over the company. He's the CEO of the company today. And the timing of that, if you look at what happened in the marketplace, uh, th- at that time, we were the largest privately-owned printer in, in the country. Um, and you look at, [00:06:00] uh, you know, where media was going at that time. At that time, retail inserts were the most important media, uh, you know- [00:06:07] **Tom Limongello:** Like the FSI? [00:06:07] **George Forge:** Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The FSI was the primary workhorse for most retailers. Um, and what was happening then, of course, we had, you know, Google and, and Facebook. It's crazy to imagine they're that young, but they are actually quite young media channels. And, you know, huge props to Joel and his vision to understand that, hey, you know, the media that our customers are buying from us today probably is gonna be very different in 20 years. [00:06:32] **George Forge:** And so he's very methodically kind of, uh, diversified the company into things that are print adjacent, things like in-store media, um, in-store display, uh, packaging, and things like in that nature. But then also, we had already been doing a lot of, because we grew up as a printer and we knew about digital file management before that was even a thing, uh, we also knew about understanding color and color strategy Right because we owned all these printing presses. So we had gone up into photography, we had gone [00:07:00] up into retouching, and because we were also doing retail inserts, we were also placing media as well. And so looking forward to where that needed to carry us, we've methodically built out a full service creative agency, full service media agency, and, uh, you know, what we aim to do is be kind of an anti-holding company, where we're truly one connected end-to-end solution today. [00:07:20] **Tom Limongello:** Yeah. So there was In that transformation, when did all of the, the acquisitions [00:07:26] **Tom Limongello:** and things start? [00:07:27] **George Forge:** Yeah, so there's kind of like two sides of the acquisition conversation. So we were a private company. Uh, we're public, but family-controlled today, which is very important, 'cause that's given us the, the freedom for Joel to kind of do, you know, execute upon h- uh, the vision that I talked about. [00:07:41] **George Forge:** Um, but there was kind of two paths on acquisition. One was consolidating acquisitions in the printing space. Right. So ...we had the most efficient logistics. We had the most ef- efficient production facilities. Logistics is critical, and, and we'll come back to that later. Um, but logistics is really one of the make or breaks in the printing space. [00:07:59] **George Forge:** Um, so [00:08:00] we did a number of consolidating acquisitions on the print side. That allowed us to grow and, and really create a lot of free cash flow to do more interesting things for where the market was going, gave us kind of that, that, that runway, if you will, uh, in order to invest in things like in-store, invest in things like media and creative. [00:08:16] **Tom Limongello:** Well, on the media side, you acquired a company. I knew the founder, ...Jon Morris- Yeah ...from when I was at Booth. Yeah. And he won the New Venture Challenge- [00:08:23] **Tom Limongello:** Yeah ......2005. [00:08:25] **Tom Limongello:** Yep. [00:08:25] **Tom Limongello:** Um, and for a while, he ran this performance agency- Yep ... that I saw was acquired by you. Yep. So talk about, like, how you moved from just printing- Yeah [00:08:34] **Tom Limongello:** to having a, an agency. [00:08:37] **George Forge:** Yeah. Again, I think it goes back to where our customers were needing us to go. In the early 2000s, a large grocery retailer would be investing tens of millions of dollars in, in circulars, and that, that media channel worked really well for them. [00:08:49] **George Forge:** We also started, again, into out of home and radio, other- Right ... traditional channels. But what Jon's team... Jon was super innovative b- well before his time, thinking about, what are [00:09:00] all the digital activation touchpoints, and how can we think about that, that last-click attribution bottle- bottom of funnel, and really be thinking about making, you know, kinda AI before AI of like, what's the next best action, uh, across all of those investments? [00:09:13] **George Forge:** So how that's diversified today, um, you know, obviously there's, you know, the number of, of digital media channels is exploding massively, especially when you consider, uh, retail media networks added on to this already huge digital ecosystem. And so what our customers increasingly are expecting is- I need to know where to spend my next dollar, and sometimes the answer is linear TV, sometimes the answer is out-of-home, sometimes the answer is Meta. sometimes the answer is Google. [00:09:42] **George Forge:** And we need the ability to kind of understand what those objectives are, bring all of that data in from all the platforms, bring all that data in from the offline activations- Yep ... and then also pull in what are the KPIs? So if you're looking to drive loyalty, what are the loyalty campaigns that we run cross-channel, and what's [00:10:00] that next best move? [00:10:00] **George Forge:** So we've built out, uh, Connex, which is the, actually the product that Jon's team, uh, originally kind of founded within Rise. And we've built out Connex to be full funnel, uh, regardless of what the media channel is, on online, at home, retail media, uh, or even at shelf. [00:10:18] **Tom Limongello:** So when we were talking about this earlier, you talked about how you were, you were merging, um, the creative process- [00:10:25] **Tom Limongello:** Yeah [00:10:26] **Tom Limongello:** and the data that you're collecting, and, and really all of these logistic capabilities. So can you talk about what it means when, [00:10:33] **Tom Limongello:** you know, you can [00:10:34] **Tom Limongello:** really be you can finesse the creative based on the data that you have. [00:10:38] **George Forge:** Yeah. So... And this is where I said we were gonna come back to, uh, us being, a, a- The logistics [00:10:44] **George Forge:** a logistics component. Okay, yeah. So, so we're the largest, uh, we're the largest partner with the USPS, if you will. And what I mean by that is we handle the largest segment of marketing mail in the US. [00:10:53] **Tom Limongello:** is where retail media came from with Kroger. Yeah It was all a direct mail play. [00:10:58] **Tom Limongello:** Exactly. So yeah, interesting. Exactly. [00:10:59] **George Forge:** So what we [00:11:00] did with that is we, we've built out this household da- household first data stack. And why do we do that? Um, the first thing is, like, it's cookieless, right? Uh, it is very resilient because people really don't move, and when they do, they always fill out an, a change of address 'cause they pretty much have to to- Yeah [00:11:17] **George Forge:** continue to get, you know, things delivered at their doorstep. And we're able to understand everything that hits that doorstep, and then we're able to augment that with other transactional data and other survey data, other industry available data. And back to your point on creative, we're taking those insights with our customers, bringing in what they know about their customers in a secure environment. [00:11:36] **George Forge:** Right. Augmenting it with what we know about those customers or those prospects, and then we're able to really build very smart segments that kind of build out that connection strategy. [00:11:45] **Tom Limongello:** Okay, so now that you're doing that, like, when I was working on retail media- [00:11:49] **Tom Limongello:** Yeah ...it was very much like, okay, we have a new channel, like mobile. Yeah. We're gonna borrow from web, and we're gonna pull those elements in. [00:11:56] **Tom Limongello:** Yeah. [00:11:57] **Tom Limongello:** Um, and we kept talking about how we're gonna personalize things [00:12:00] because we know- Yeah .........one-to-one, you know, we know through the loyalty program who they [00:12:03] **Tom Limongello:** are. Yeah. [00:12:04] **Tom Limongello:** That never really [00:12:05] **Tom Limongello:** happened. Yeah. [00:12:06] **Tom Limongello:** It wasn't really what the marketer wanted to do, It wasn't what the consumer really wanted. [00:12:10] **Tom Limongello:** Yeah. [00:12:11] **Tom Limongello:** What do you see as the, the new way to think about this, [00:12:14] **George Forge:** yeah, I think, I think it's, um, you know, I've used this analogy before. I'm a, I'm a rock climber. I love the outdoors. I love to, love to be outside. It's like, you know, companies, outdoor clothing companies- Right you know, some of them are like, "Okay, this is a... [00:12:27] **George Forge:** I need to talk about, you know, if I'm at high altitude in a dangerous position, I wanna make sure that I feel safe in that, in that piece- Yeah ...of clothing," right? And there's other people who are like, "I need something warm to walk the dog." And that's really the more relevant insight is it's the same product, it has the same product characteristics, but understanding the passions of those individuals and what really energizes them to potentially convert- It really ultimately comes down to effectively micro-segmentation, right? [00:12:54] **George Forge:** Um, I do think there's a kind of a time and a place for, and I just had a conversation with, uh, a very large, [00:13:00] uh, retailer that stopped by. They were looking for help on, uh, on uh, kind of one-to-one, uh, uh, video content. Right. And there is a time and a place for that. If you think about financial services, think about healthcare, and, like, how can you package up a personalized message that is really precise 'cause it's... y- we wanna be more precise in that, in that instance. Right. I think there's a little bit of room for both, but it's really, what is, what is that consumer really expecting? If you're looking for financial services products, you know that your FICO score, you know that, you know, different, uh, credit scores are gonna be pulled into that equation. [00:13:34] **George Forge:** You want that to be precise, and you want that to be tailored. There's other times where you just wanna feel like you're heard, and it's, and it's, a relevant message. Back to my, my, uh, getting the right fleece for the right reason. [00:13:45] **Tom Limongello:** Right. Now- You guys have this sort of privileged position of being in store already- Right [00:13:51] **Tom Limongello:** through the print and, and other, uh, display elements that you're creating. Yeah. as you're starting to get more signals of what's happening in the store, in [00:14:00] addition to knowing who the consumer is, [00:14:01] **Tom Limongello:** um, how do you develop creative for the store? Yeah. And I think we can probably look at some of the, the things that you've done. Yeah. Um, you know tell me sort of that process. [00:14:11] **George Forge:** Yeah, I think again, it goes back to, you know, we're thinking about it as a people first approach, right? We look at the touch point at home. We look at the touch points out of home. We look at the traffic patterns. How do people get to the store? How many competitors do they have to pass to choose your store? And so what is that connection strategy that's gonna get them to choose you to begin with? And then what are those signals in store that they're, that they're sharing as well? So, uh, I think what you're alluding to is some of our creative optimization as well, which is, uh, we call it accelerated marketing insights. [00:14:43] **George Forge:** Uh, and the whole goal, it it actually goes back again to our direct mail prowess because when you think about direct mail, a touch point delivering the mailbox could be 50 to 75 cents per piece. [00:14:55] **George Forge:** Oh, Wow. Not per thousand. [00:14:56] **George Forge:** yeah. [00:14:57] **George Forge:** yeah, yeah. Per piece. And so we need to be really [00:15:00] thoughtful about optimizing that creative because it's such a big investment, and we wanna make sure that it's absolutely as good as it can possibly be. [00:15:06] **George Forge:** So we've taken that accelerated marketing insights well beyond the mailbox and into the retail environment. So we're looking at gaze patterns. We're looking at heat maps. How are consumers actually engaging against the goal? And when we were talking earlier, I was sharing about a, a very large grocery retailer that was doing some, uh, loyalty, uh, pop-ups. [00:15:26] **George Forge:** And we were producing, uh, this really unique, um, pop-up that we do that kind of packs down really neatly. It's very, very effective. It's called a llama. Uh, and they liked it because it was just really simple from a store ops perspective. And they kind of invited us into the strategy conversation 'cause we looked at it and we go, "You know, I think there's an opportunity here." [00:15:44] **George Forge:** And we were able to identify a few key things of, you know, vast majority of Americans are right-handed, so we need the call to action to be in the right hand of the model. [00:15:52] **Tom Limongello:** So this is an element that's showing a, a consumer? [00:15:55] **George Forge:** Yeah, it was basically guiding the consumer to the loyalty app. Okay. Uh, and so the gaze [00:16:00] pattern for how they were engaging... [00:16:02] **George Forge:** We had a hypothesis, 'cause we've been doing this a long time, but we wanted to bring the evidence to the equation. So we brought it through our, our accelerated marketing insights, and we were able to look at how are people engaging, why are, where are they dwelling, are they actually converting? And we found that in that particular activation, the gaze pattern was all over the place, and it was not actually resting on the call to action we were trying to get to. [00:16:25] **George Forge:** Right. And so we were able to come back and suggest, okay, we should put this element here. We want them to look at this, then this, then this, then convert here. And we saw a double-digit increase in conversion from that tactic alone. [00:16:36] **Tom Limongello:** and so if I understand that example, that's sort of, you did a test. [00:16:40] **Tom Limongello:** Mm-hmm. [00:16:41] **Tom Limongello:** Is that a test that you did sort of, you know, in a real store that's live and you use lots of data? Yep. Or was it, like one simple test just to see where people would look? [00:16:49] **George Forge:** There's kind of three different ways that we do it. In that case, we're really just kind of looking at that one individual tactic, and so we can isolate that. [00:16:56] **George Forge:** Right. And that's a quick and super efficient way to do it. Um, we also, this [00:17:00] is a pop-up version of our, uh, of our innovation center. The [00:17:04] **George Forge:** store [00:17:04] **George Forge:** there, yeah. We have three of them. Uh, well, soon to be three of them. We're opening a new facility in Salt Lake. Our original is just outside of Milwaukee, and then we have one also in Greenville, South Carolina, and this is a pop-up one that we do a few times, uh, a year. [00:17:16] **George Forge:** So we can do kind of a mock store as well. and then- So, [00:17:19] **Tom Limongello:** like, what's happening in this mock store? [00:17:21] **George Forge:** Uh, exactly. So in this mock store, uh, we've got a lot going on here. So this is some of our, Favorite Child design. So Favorite Child is a sub-brand, ......uh- okay ... kind of- kind of a fun name underneath, uh, our creative agency. [00:17:34] **George Forge:** And the goal is to, like, how can we help, uh, brand strategy, and how can we take that brand strategy all the way down to packaging? So what you see here is kind of, uh, an own brand, um, a grocery retailer. We also do things like high-end golf balls. We also, we helped a, a brand that came to us, and they manufactured this super high quality dog food. [00:17:54] **George Forge:** They knew it was a great product, but they didn't know what the target market was. Right. They didn't have a name. They didn't have a [00:18:00] package. [00:18:00] **Tom Limongello:** So you really like- And so we had to do that whole- [00:18:01] **Tom Limongello:** the full [00:18:01] **Tom Limongello:** strategy for a brand or of a retailer to, to bring a product to market. [00:18:06] **Tom Limongello:** Exactly. [00:18:07] **Tom Limongello:** You're, you're bringing in a lot of the analytics to apply the tactics that you have [00:18:12] **Tom Limongello:** capability to do. Exactly. [00:18:13] **Tom Limongello:** Okay. [00:18:13] **George Forge:** Exactly. What's also unique about that too is like, we're bringing, most of the time, candidly, each one of these capabilities, as you know, you've been in the space for a long time, each one of these capabilities, there's a lot of competition in each capability. [00:18:25] **George Forge:** Right. The uniqueness is that Quad is uniquely doing that research, putting it through the rigor, putting it through the design, producing, distributing, and in-market testing. [00:18:36] **George Forge:** And that, that, that, is really very unique in the, in the space, to be able to connect all those dots. And every one of those handoffs just becomes opportunity to take time and money out of the equation while driving [00:18:47] **George Forge:** efficacy. [00:18:48] **Tom Limongello:** And so let's talk about where this goes in the future because I think what I was asking before about how did you test this- Mm-hmm [00:18:55] **Tom Limongello:** it was more to get at, I know that there are cameras in the store- [00:19:00] Yeah ......and there are, you know, like, there's, there's, ways of using some of the signage that you have to understand is a shopping cart nearby. [00:19:07] **Tom Limongello:** Yep. [00:19:08] **Tom Limongello:** All those types of signals are making it so that you can sort of AB test the store- Yep ... where you can, you know, do the types of performance- Yep marketing that you would online. How do you see that developing? [00:19:18] **George Forge:** Yeah. [00:19:19] **George Forge:** I think that where I would focus that conversation is retail media in particular. You know, retail media has exploded. Everyone wants to find ways to digitize their properties and find ways to shoppers, uh, brands with shoppers. [00:19:35] **George Forge:** Yep. And ultimately, I think it goes down to where's, where's the attention, right? Yep. And there are a number... there's a very small number of retail media, uh, platforms that are just crushing it, and really candidly are getting the vast majority of the dollars. Yep. And so for that long tail of of retailers, which represents hundreds if not thousands- [00:19:58] **Tom Limongello:** Which are more [00:19:58] **Tom Limongello:** sort of physically, s- [00:20:00] physical [00:20:00] **Tom Limongello:** store first [00:20:01] **Tom Limongello:** physical, physical first. [00:20:01] **George Forge:** Yeah. Like, for us to be able to help them succeed in this next generation, we need to be able to show some of that engagement numbers. So what we do with in-store retail media, we have a product called Insert Connect by Quad, and it's digitizing the shelf. This is a, an example of our, uh, of our patented wedge. What do you call this? So this is our- A wedge? This is our wedge vertical video banner. [00:20:20] **George Forge:** Okay. [00:20:21] **George Forge:** And the... Kind of it's a patented design that we, that we built out about a year and half ago or so. Um, the amazing part about it is it gives you 180-degree viewing angle in the aisle. Yeah. Also, the biggest challenge is that, you know, roughly six out of 10, uh, aisles are traversed by the average shopper. [00:20:39] **George Forge:** So how can we get them down the seventh? How can we get them down the eighth? You're probably not gonna get every shopper down all 10. it's not realistic. [00:20:44] **Tom Limongello:** Uh, I, I will- ... 'cause I n- I never know where I'm going [00:20:47] **Tom Limongello:** Yeah. [00:20:47] **George Forge:** But what we did with this is to be able to get that perfect viewing angle a- in that moment, that split second, where we're deciding whether or not we should go down the aisle or not. [00:20:55] **Tom Limongello:** Yeah. [00:20:55] **Tom Limongello:** I remember we [00:20:55] **Tom Limongello:** were [00:20:55] **Tom Limongello:** talking with with some in-store, uh, folks earlier last year and they were talking about [00:21:00] how when you come around the corner- Yeah ... that's the best part of the end cap. Yep. And so it sounds like you've done that in the middle of the aisle here which is interesting. [00:21:06] **George Forge:** Yeah, exactly. And the way we think about it is, and I'll get back to your question on measurement, but the way we think about it is if we think about those aisles that we call the power aisles where we know that shoppers are pretty much always going down salty snacks or, you know, when you look at salty snacks and CSD and fresh, you know, those are pretty much every shopper's gonna visit at least one of those, if not multiple. [00:21:26] **George Forge:** Right. And so the magic unlock that we've seen is to say like, okay, when you're making that turn, what, exactly what you said, and you're sort of exiting fresh, and you get to that coffin case with cheese and charcuterie, that's the perfect opportunity for wine. [00:21:39] **Tom Limongello:** Whoa, [00:21:39] **Tom Limongello:** you said coffin case. What, what is that? [00:21:41] **George Forge:** The, the open, the open case, uh, the, the big open case- [00:21:44] **Tom Limongello:** Oh, yeah. Okay ... the refrigerator case. So like in a freezer. Yeah. yeah. [00:21:46] **George Forge:** Yep. Yep. yep. So that big case that's frequently at the turn of the end of fresh- um, where you typically find cheese and meats and things like that, that's the perfect opportunity b- to, you know, hit crackers, to hit wine, to hit beer because that's that moment where you go, "You [00:22:00] know what? [00:22:00] **George Forge:** I think I am gonna grab that." And what we've seen is those types of opportunities, and another great example is in salty snacks, beer. You know, Yeah ...we're a Wisconsin company- Yeah, so we love our beer. And you make that... You, you know, get down salty snacks and you promote beer and salty snacks. We're seeing huge lifts for the beer category and that SKU. [00:22:18] **Tom Limongello:** We ran a test with a very [00:22:19] **George Forge:** large, beverage [00:22:20] **Tom Limongello:** large beverage company. We saw a 30% lift in that SKU and a 10% lift in that category from that one opportunity. [00:22:26] **Tom Limongello:** And [00:22:26] **Tom Limongello:** so these are all like very much sort of the shopper marketing tactics- Mm-hmm ...that people always wanted to do, or they did it with paper in the past probably with [00:22:34] **Tom Limongello:** you. [00:22:34] **Tom Limongello:** Yep. [00:22:35] **Tom Limongello:** Um, how do you see... Like, when you think about this from being an agency- [00:22:38] **Tom Limongello:** Mm-hmm ...how do you sort of blend this together? Like, are you, you know, having to pitch the merchants as well as the retail media, you know, uh, folks? [00:22:48] **Tom Limongello:** Like- w- w- ...How does that all work? [00:22:49] **George Forge:** That's a great, Great question. Yeah. And probably depends on the organization. [00:22:52] **George Forge:** Yeah, okay. You know, I think that's probably, you know, we've been hearing it and you've heard it at NRF, you heard it here, you know, in-store retail media continues to [00:23:00] be a major area of focus, but it takes a bit of a village because you have... It really takes C-suite engagement because it is very operational focused. [00:23:09] **George Forge:** There's electricity being run. There's, you know, shelving that's being adjusted for whatever reason, so there's, there's a flow issue as well. Um, so we need to get, you know, the right players involved. But once you do, um, it really gets to that opportunity to, to connect, and we always think about it in the trifecta. [00:23:25] **George Forge:** How do we make it super engaging and exciting for the shopper so they're getting educated on more product, they're walking out with a bigger and happier basket at the end of the day? That makes the retailer happy, and then that also creates a flywheel as well with the brand side because they wanna be in on that equation too, and they wanna be part of that lift as well. [00:23:43] **Tom Limongello:** it's interesting that you talk about how these things work, where you're, you know, you're moving, you know, uh, where you're putting a beer promotion where the small salty snacks are. [00:23:50] **Tom Limongello:** Right. What's interesting there is that- Does this sort of make it difficult to do annual planning or the JBP? [00:23:59] **Tom Limongello:** Yeah. [00:24:00] Uh, does it require more muscle on the merchandising side to move things around? Um, and so, you know, I've been writing about this in my Shopper Missions Substack where- [00:24:09] **Tom Limongello:** Yeah ... [00:24:09] **Tom Limongello:** I see a, a real opportunity to take screens like this, and when there's a calendar event and there's a sporting event, you can just sort of switch what's- Totally in that aisle. [00:24:19] **Tom Limongello:** Yeah. [00:24:19] **Tom Limongello:** I just don't know if the retailers are ready for that. [00:24:22] **George Forge:** I think, I think it is a little bit of a challenge. I think that the particular placements matter the most. So I think when you look at an endcap, and we've got beautiful endcap solutions. There's one just around the corner, um, that you've seen. [00:24:34] **George Forge:** It's beautiful. I think that's, uh, in practice, a, a difficult one because there is so much promotional change-out that just does require the merchant buy-in. It, it absolutely gets into, you know, joint planning. Um, but the way we've kinda circumvented that is to think about what are those, what are those touchpoints in the store that just give you that, that flexibility? So we have solutions that are called halos, like one [00:25:00] to two to three-sided, or pr- I should say two to three-sided screens that are sitting in fresh- [00:25:04] **George Forge:** One-sided [00:25:05] **George Forge:** would [00:25:05] **George Forge:** be [00:25:05] **George Forge:** difficult, [00:25:05] **George Forge:** Yeah. [00:25:05] **George Forge:** Yeah. Well, we Yeah ...we have lots of one-sided actually. We have a [00:25:08] **George Forge:** But we have, uh, uh, two, two to [00:25:11] **George Forge:** flat one actually, yeah. But we have, uh, uh, two, two to three-sided halos that sit in a fresh area or sit in a frozen area, and that just gives you kind of that opportunity to be, to not be so locked into exact shelf position. Right. So I think it's- it does take some finesse to be thinking about exactly where does that screen go and how do you not constantly chase the promotion of like, "No, I want the screen right next to the product." [00:25:32] **George Forge:** Right. [00:25:32] **George Forge:** The irony, like I think human instinct is you want that screen next to the product, but if you think about it, I'm already standing next to the product. [00:25:39] **George Forge:** Why do I need the screen there? So like- [00:25:40] **Tom Limongello:** I mean, even back at CES, I was talking with Liz Roche from Albertsons, and she was talking about how a lot of their best performing advertising is stuff that's in the wrong part of the store- [00:25:51] **Tom Limongello:** Exactly ......... [00:25:53] **Tom Limongello:** If you're a grocer and you have the frequency of getting somebody there three, four, five times in a month- Yeah um, you can [00:26:00] get them on the next trip. [00:26:01] **George Forge:** I, I think the only nuance I would call out to that, I wouldn't use the word wrong, I would use the word complementary. I think that's the better way to be thinking about it is is you can think about, you know, as I'm building my, my meal plan for the week, like- Yep [00:26:12] **George Forge:** what are those things where when, I'm standing in front of cheese, I need to be thinking about grabbing some baguettes, I need to be thinking about going to the deli area. I, you know, and so there's, I think there's opportunities where intuitively it might not seem right, but if you think about the shopper journey and their mentality, it's it's that complimentary component, [00:26:30] **George Forge:** And, And, and, that's where I would say there are times where an end cap can truly be wrong. It can just be confusing. You know, where you could have a promotion for dog food, and you could have applesauce on the screen, and it's like, well, this is... I don't want dog food and applesauce, you know- ... interacting, right? [00:26:47] **Tom Limongello:** I think [00:26:48] **Tom Limongello:** that, that, yeah and I think that's critical. I think that brings up a good point, which is- Generally, what I see from a lot of the vendors in the space that are trying to promote new technology is that they're afraid of going in-store because it's [00:27:00] still smaller than online, or, you know, on-site or off-site. Yeah. [00:27:04] **Tom Limongello:** Um, how do you look at that? Like I, I, think that's a- Sure obviously a, a competitive advantage for you. [00:27:09] **Tom Limongello:** Sure. [00:27:09] **Tom Limongello:** But how do you push so that the, you know, the marketer makes sure that they put dollars against [00:27:15] **Tom Limongello:** it? [00:27:16] **George Forge:** I think you have to be specific on, on your comment, 'cause you're, there's definitely elements of truth to that. But when you look at, when you look at kind of the, the mid-tier to smaller grocer, their website traffic is generally very weak. And it- Yeah ... and it, and if, and if that's a, uh, if that's a, uh- Yeah, no, that's fair ... sen- sensitive topic- ... then I would challenge you to look at the, the store traffic data against the web traffic data- Yeah And you'll see absolutely far more attention- [00:27:43] **Tom Limongello:** No, I think that's a great [00:27:44] **Tom Limongello:** way to look at it ... [00:27:44] **George Forge:** and awareness in the, in the, in the in-store space. And so I think that's, that's really the unlock is, okay, if we're not going to compete for online eyeballs against the, the traditional e-com solutions- Yep [00:27:55] **George Forge:** we've gotta figure out a way to compete with... Uh, it's ultimately an attention [00:28:00] economy, right? And we, our opportunity for attention is in that in-store environment. [00:28:04] **Tom Limongello:** Well, I wanna thank you for joining the Middlemen. This is a great- Yeah uh, backdrop to, uh, to the event. [00:28:10] **Tom Limongello:** Awesome. Yeah. Thanks for having me. [00:28:11] .