7 May 2021
We speak to Mike Tyquin, Cartology’s Managing Director, to discuss the evolution of Cartology and how it responds to the changing retail and media landscape in Australia and New Zealand.
Cartology was born not because brands are demanding more and better data and insights (although they are) – but because of the customer. With the power to choose where they consume content, how they engage with brands, and how, where and when they buy products, control is firmly in customers’ hands.
For 95 years, Woolworths has built an incredible customer franchise with over 20 million customer visits a week to its supermarkets and a digital footprint as expansive as Australia’s top publishers. Cartology was created two years ago, to harness that customer relationship to help brands connect with customers.
The operative word here is ‘customers’. Of course, all media publishers want to connect brands with audiences. At Cartology – we connect brands with customers. No one else can offer that, especially from a position of being part of the most trusted brand in the country.
And our insights allow us to close the loop on customer transactions, with zero waste. This will be strengthened by Woolworths’ increased investment to 75% in data analytics firm Quantium, providing rich insights for brands.
We have evolved from a trade marketing resource for suppliers to a fully-fledged digitally led new media business. ‘New media’ because although our retail media channels across instore, digital screens, online ecommerce, search, magazines and radio are not new, we offer a multi-platform proposition with rich data and insights that directly reach customers.
Over the past two years we have recruited senior media and data experts who can converse with brand owners, introduced new products and renewed others to improve our media offering and strengthened our accountability and reporting with meaningful insights to prove brands’ return on investment.
Creating retail media businesses is something that retailers overseas, such as Walmart's Connect and Kroger's 84.51, have pioneered with great success. The biggest opportunity we plan to replicate is the ability to work with brands outside our ecosystem to inform their media buying with our rich data and insights.
Cartology has so far been a resounding success for our brand partners, with a 500% year on year increase in the volume of campaigns run across our channels and proven commercial results for brands like Nestle, Chobani, Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser, to name a few.
At only two years old, we still have a way to go to help brands understand the non-linear customer journey and how brands can drive sales in supermarkets. We will revitalise our instore screen proposition and Everyday Rewards communication. And we have big plans for campaign performance and attribution to hone our measurement capability.
Cartology is still very much in its infancy as brands better understand their customers and how to utilise data across their broader media buying and as we focus on continuous improvement and innovation. This is just a glimpse into what lies ahead.
