Time For A Reset Marketing Podcast: Insights from Global Brand Marketers · Overline

85 - Navigating the Future of Retail Marketing JBPs: Balancing Collaboration and Complexity with Paul Stafford, Head of Retail Media at Superdrug

·40 min·1 clip

Everyone's using retail media wrong. It's not about bottom-of-funnel sales—it's about building brands

The best work starts with partnerships. Paul Stafford's reset is built around collaboration, but he keeps it commercial: both sides still need revenue. The host does not let the chat drift into easy retail media hype. Instead, the episode asks whether the channel can win a bigger role in brand building without pretending performance pressure has gone away. Budget is the first wall. Stafford is direct about retail media teams trying to get onto media plans, win spend, and then make the work count. That makes the ambition messier. Moving from short term activation to a fuller brand story takes proof that marketers and agencies can trust. The UK stays close to the center of the conversation. The host frames it around the market Stafford knows best, while noting that North America may not be miles ahead. Some retailers seem further along than others. The tension is useful: the industry wants to talk about bigger brand value, while many teams are still scrapping for plan space. Stafford sees a signal in the briefs. His Trade Desk example, with connected TV appearing in 50% of the retail media briefs it sees, gives the episode its sharpest clue about where demand may be moving. Still, saying retail media can build brands is the easy part. Proving it through campaigns is the work. For wider credibility, retail media has to connect the audience, the activation, and the commercial result in a way brands believe. The tone stays warm but not soft. The host reflects Stafford's points, brings in earlier conversations like Amir from Nectar, and keeps asking whether the industry is making its case well enough. The reset lands in a sensible place: retail media is a partnership discipline, not just a conversion lever, and the complexity comes from trying to satisfy today's revenue targets while making a case for longer term brand value.

As heard by us

A focused retail media discussion on partnership, audience value, and the shift in budget toward CTV.

This episode centers on retail media, but its real interest is the case for making brand and retailer partnerships do more than drive a single sale.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want retail media stripped back to the real tradeoffs.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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