Retail data is transforming the way brands plan and execute campaigns, but not by changing advertising fundamentals. Instead, data enables marketers to get closer to the customer, says Bruce Williams, chief media officer for the Americas at Dentsu.
“Retail data really isn’t changing the way that we’re thinking about advertising today,” Williams told Beet.TV Editorial Director Lisa Granatstein in this video interview. “It’s really supportive and enabling … audience-first planning and experience-led planning.”
According to Williams, retail signals provide more than basic attributes; they offer insight into consumer journeys, buying patterns and motivations.
“It’s that level of granularity that empowers us to plan and activate experiences that are going to resonate with both advertisers and customers alike,” he said.
Balancing brand and outcomes
One challenge, Williams said, is finding equilibrium between emotional brand-building and measurable results.
“Pragmatically I think the balance is easy. It’s the customer at the core and if we’re building strong connections with great work, we will see the outcomes come,” he said.
The real difficulty, he argued, is organizational.
“It’s typically the marketers or the business that get in the way … we make short-term decisions, we operate in silos, and that impairs us from being able to make that connection in a strong way.”
Retail data, combined with technology and validated KPIs, often provides the foundation for aligning brand storytelling with sustained performance.
Anticipatory and responsive signals
Williams described retail data as both predictive and real-time.
“It’s an anticipatory signal because it helps us understand what we generally know about a customer … but it’s also responsive because oftentimes you can see it happening in real time,” he said.
That dual role allows brands to reshape product messaging, bundles, and experiences based on actual consumer motivations.
Storytelling with impact
Williams emphasized that retail data connects brand storytelling directly to sales.
“I see it as three things: an enabler, an enhancer, and an arbiter,” he said.
As an enabler, it fuses experience and outcomes; as an enhancer, it elevates personalization and inspiration; and as an arbiter, it validates investments and bridges the gap between emotional storytelling and transactional results.
Road ahead
While retailers and endemic categories are already using these signals at scale, Williams said there’s vast room for growth across the industry.
“Retail data itself … is really, really nascent in the industry,” he noted.
Moving it upstream into strategy and planning, expanding its role in audience development, and applying it to forecasting could unlock broader opportunities.
“There’s a ton of opportunity,” Williams concluded, pointing to retail data’s expanding role in helping brands make more robust, foresighted decisions across the advertising ecosystem.
You’re watching “Using Precision Data to Build Brands”, a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Kroger Precision Marketing. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
