Hello, everyone.

This is Omnitok Retail.

I'm Anne Mazinga.

And I'm Chris Walton.

And we are coming back.

We are live from the Fusion group booth number 4938.

Here it's day two of NRF and we have another wonderful guest.

Joining Chris and myself here in the Amitak recording booth, we have Michelle Weiskitel, Albertsons Media Collective's head of media creative and operations.

Michelle, welcome.

Thank you for having me.

It's exciting to be here.

Of course.

So, Michelle, let's start off.

Tell us about your background and also I want to know what media creative and operations, what does that actually mean?

Like what are you actually in charge of?

All the things, all the things that deliver a media product to our customers.

My background is in media.

It's probably right.

Right.

It is.

It's like the Jack of all trades for media.

Yes.

All right.

So my background's in media.

I had the opportunity to really become focused on, on performance media and programmatic.

And as I was doing that, I really thought about the importance of the customer and the measurement around that and had the opportunity to go to a retailer, Safeway at the time which had rich privacy conscious loyalty data.

Still.

Does you like that?

Privacy conscious?

I love that.

Adris.

Yes.

And it's really fun because you can really build a total media product from end to end with insights, media solutions and measurement.

Well, the retail media landscape is changing a lot.

We've already had some good conversations about that today.

What do you feel like needs to be true for a retail media provider to be successful in the industry in 2025?

I think it's no different.

When we started, we are a media company and we are a retailer.

Okay, interesting.

And to do that, you put your customer first.

Those goals are mutually aligned.

As a retailer and a media company, we both want to drive solutions for our shoppers and then have that return on sales.

So we have mutually aligned goals.

In doing so, we need to think about the customer journey.

And that customer journey is really omnichannel.

And so much of what we're seeing here at the show is around in store, but it's also connecting that digital experience.

We also plan with our merchant teams and really think about the whole four Ps of marketing, going back to school, throwing in that four Ps.

But it's truly important to really think about the relationships with our merchants, what's going to be in store, why it's in store, and then planning the marketing promotions around it.

Well, and Michelle, I'm Curious from that makes complete sense.

From the customer perspective, how has that changed your organization?

I mean, you started in media.

How does the retail organization look?

Different.

Different.

Now that you have retail media.

Like you said, you're a media company and a retailer, how are you set up internally to support that?

That's a great question.

I think one of the biggest changes is our reporting structure and we have the same leader as our merchant team.

So we report into Omar.

He is our chief digital and merchant officer.

So both our retail media network and our merchant teams and our enterprise marketing team all report into him to make sure that we have united goals for the company.

Great.

So similar question to that too.

I want to click into the operations side of your job a little bit too.

So I'm curious, and we always love when we can learn from the executives that we get to interview, having been former executives, you know, at a large retailer ourselves.

So operationally, how has what you're doing at Albertsons changed, say over the last, you know, two or three years or said differently?

Are you, Are you doing things?

Are you putting in place new tools and processes that didn't exist before that you can share with our audience?

Absolutely.

I think right now it's the volume of machine learning and automation.

Oh really?

That we have in place.

So we have a really robust roadmap.

It's all centered around our customer and really driving that efficiency and effectiveness.

But we have a very robust roadmap and you have to understand how you operate first and foremost.

So we have very documented workflows, which I know sounds really boring to some, but it excites me.

It's kind of how you do the work at the end of the day.

So you've had to put in place and document the processes as you've stood this up, right?

Correct.

And then that allows you to bring in the machine learning.

It allows you to then bring in the automation and really have the human oversight to make sure that you're driving that customer value.

Customer value.

Where it makes sense.

And where does the machine learning come into play?

We talked to somebody yesterday.

Does it come into play on the insights?

Does it come into play on the activation or is it both?

Yes.

And it's yes.

And throughout the process and it's used in different ways.

We are piloting using our both our in store and digital sales in our in flight optimization process.

And then we will continue to learn from that, building both optimization strategies for our brands and the category through our media approach.

Interesting.

Okay, that makes sense.

Yeah.

Brand and category is important.

When you think about it from a grocer's perspective, that's interesting.

I haven't heard that before.

Especially when you think about how everything ladders back up into a category and how the brands itself are dependent on the category insights.

Right.

As a grocer, you want to grow not only the brand but the category particularly.

Right.

Yeah.

Makes sense.

Well, Michelle, we're here at nrf.

I'm curious based on all of those things that you have going on right now, you mentioned that you are looking into LLMs and other automation for your work.

What do you hear?

Like what's on top of your list of places to check out or technologies to explore or content to go to while you're at the show?

I'm just excited about this show.

One of the things that is the most exciting, it is so retail centric and I love being in retail.

It's really fast paced and the amount of focus on retail media with its own track on Saturday was just amazing to see the evolution of those two coming together.

We've had huge executive presence with Omar.

We've had our head of our product from Albertsons Media collective also speaking.

So we've just had a great presence and it's fun to interact and see all the innovation.

Any big takeaways from that session?

Because we were not at that but we've heard a lot of good things about it.

Yeah.

Like any key highlights that people should be paying attention to or try to find that content if they can.

Yeah.

I would really suggest listening to Omar's content.

I think he brings a very interesting perspective.

As I mentioned, he is our chief digital officer at and merchant lead.

So the way the insights that he brings, coming from a background of Amazon and other tech forward companies into now overseeing a very media centric business, shows how both technology and the overall business operations are coming together to form a holistic media solution.

Right.

Wow.

Three shout outs for the boss Omar today.

I hope my review, I hope this is being recorded for my review.

I haven't met.

We haven't met Omar yet.

We're gonna have to get him on the podcast here at some point.

Yeah.

So open the invitation to Omar because he got three shout outs.

All right, well let's let you out of here with this.

So 2025 start a year January.

We're in the second week of January.

What are you excited about in your job?

What do you really want to accomplish this year?

As I mentioned, we just have a really strong roadmap and partnership with our product engineering team and we have set goals around efficiency and effectiveness.

We achieved a 20% productivity gain around effectiveness last year, but we are much more focused on driving both efficiency and effectiveness this year.

And so I'm very excited.

Got it.

So it's about standing up the retail media side, and it's also about making it as effective as possible.

All right.

Awesome.

Well, Michelle, thank you so much for spending time with us today.

Of course.

Thanks for having me.

We hope you have a great rest of the conference.

And to all our fans out there, we'll be back all day doing more interviews from the Fusion Group Podcast Podcast Studio, which you can find at booth 4938.

And Anne, as always, be careful out there.