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

86 - Breaking Down Silos: Lessons for CPG Marketers for Unlocking Customer Insights, with Mario Mijares, VP of Marketing, Loyalty, and Monetization at 7-Eleven

·35 min·2 clips

Mario says 7-Eleven's retail media uses three channels, and in-store audio closes the sale because customers are in and out fast.

1. Time For A Reset Marketing Podcast episode 86 focuses on breaking down silos for CPG marketers through Mario Mijares's 7-Eleven perspective. 2. Fiona Davis, GM of CVE Marketing Consultancy, hosts Mario Mijares, VP of Marketing, Loyalty and Monetization at 7-Eleven, whose role covers in-store media, shopper marketing, loyalty, customer analytics, personalization, CRM, and data monetization. 3. The episode asks what marketing should reset, and Mario's answer is that silos inside marketing and large CPG organizations block progress. 4. Mario says 7-Eleven previously had marketing reporting to IT and then brought in Marissa Jarrett as CMO, which he uses to explain why data without tools did not create value. 5. He describes building a toolset over five years to use customer data across the retail funnel and the product development funnel. 6. The tools he names are C-Shopper for analytics, Brain Freeze Collective for research, the Lab Store for live experiments, loyalty for product sales, and retail media for communication. 7. Mario gives an energy drink example in which C-Shopper shows 5% of customers moving toward kombucha, which signals an opportunity. 8. He says the Brain Freeze Collective can pull in that exact audience and ask why they switched, then test a probiotic energy drink concept. 9. He explains that the Lab Store lets 7-Eleven run a real-store test with cameras, real customers, and loyalty data to see whether the idea cannibalizes existing products or attracts new buyers. 10. He says the final step is shopper marketing and retail media, so the product can be introduced, supported, and measured end to end. 11. Mario argues that the biggest challenge is that the analytics team, brand team, and research team often do not talk to one another, even when they all have access to the same data. 12. He says convenience stores are different because they are a low-commitment place for line extensions and new product innovation, especially for products that would not make sense in a warehouse club or grocery pack. 13. Mario notes that 7-Eleven sees a lot of innovation from small companies, and he says those companies often use the retailer's tools more holistically because one CMO owns the budget. 14. He points to in-store radio as an example, saying a 30-second energy drink ad did not work in convenience, while a condensed seven- or eight-second version was better suited to closing the sale. 15. He says 7-Eleven's outside-store targeting is bespoke and behavior-based, built around price elasticity, frequency of purchase, and brand loyalty rather than pre-canned segments. 16. Mario's phrase 'movable middle' is his way of describing consumers who are more likely to move than loyal competitor buyers and should receive the marketing focus. 17. He says 7-Eleven is rolling out AI-generated radio under the name Radium and expects it to become the largest radio station in the United States with 250 million listeners per month. 18. He says AI is useful for analyzing transcribed customer videos and surfacing sentiment, but he still double-checks AI outputs because he is not fully convinced they are robust yet. 19. The conversation is interview-led, practical, and example-driven, with Fiona Davis pressing for operational detail and Mario answering with tools, tests, and process. 20. Listeners who work in retail media, CPG marketing, loyalty, or convenience retail will get the most from it; listeners seeking entertainment rather than operating models may skip it.

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