Commerce Connections: Connected campaigns start with the shopper mission

In a keynote conversation during Commerce Connections at ADWEEK House: Advertising HQ in New York City on October 7, ADWEEK’s Zoë Ruderman and Albertsons Media Collective’s Liz Roche discussed how retailer insight can shape creative before the media plan is set.

A connected campaign is easy to describe and harder to execute. In a keynote conversation at Commerce Connections, ADWEEK Chief Content Officer Zoë Ruderman asked the question that framed the discussion: “What makes something genuinely connected and not just showing up in multiple places?”

For Liz Roche, who leads Measurement, Media and In-Store Solutions at Albertsons Media Collective, the answer starts with how people actually shop. “The shopper journey has gotten extraordinarily complex,” she said. Grocery purchases still happen primarily in stores, but consideration can begin days earlier while someone watches television, scrolls social media or commutes to work. Connected campaigns use different channels in service of the same shopper need, rather than simply repackaging the same message.

Roche used paper towels to show why the distinction matters. A 28-pack purchased before Labor Day may point to a back-to-school stock-up. A single roll bought at 7:30 a.m. may signal an urgent problem before work. Those are different missions, even if the product is the same. “It’s got to be part of a larger story,” Roche said.

That is also why retailer data needs to enter the creative process earlier. Roche argued that retail media has often used shopper data in the rearview mirror, to explain what happened after a campaign. The more useful role is as an input. In Albertsons’ work with P&G, shopper insight helped determine the markets, products and execution from the outset. The retailer brought its understanding of the grocery environment, while the brand brought the bigger creative idea. The result was work designed to feel authentic in the store rather than pasted onto it.

The store itself featured prominently in the conversation. Roche described it as “the original full-funnel experience,” where someone can discover a new product, sample it, see a promotion and make a purchase in one visit. That makes physical space more than a final conversion point. It can be a setting for storytelling, especially when audio, screens, displays and product experience are planned together.

Measurement, however, still needs to catch up with that ambition. Roche called for “progress over perfection,” with brands, retailers and agencies triangulating category performance, brand outcomes and media results instead of relying on a single efficiency metric. Her critique of ROAS was direct: it may show that a brand reached people who already buy, without proving the advertising changed the result.

The conversation’s lesson was straightforward. Connected campaigns begin with the shopper’s mission, use retailer insight to shape the idea, and measure against the business outcome the campaign is meant to influence.