Well, Brian Monahan, a self-described “recovering media planner” who left Interpublic’s Mediabrands more than a year ago to become head of marketing for Walmart.com, didn’t
say that exactly, but he did say he wished he knew what he knows now on the client side when he was servicing them on the agency side.
That is, he said, “that a trusted agency
relationship has real juice inside a client organization.”
“I wish I had just relaxed,” Monahan recalled about his days worrying whether the client would be unhappy
and, even worse, pull its business.
“Having a trusted adviser who is an expert,” Monahan said of his agency partners, “is very valuable.”
The problem, he said, is that the world is changing fast, and so are the roles of agencies for their clients.
He said the old days of agencies being “fat and
happy” doing “rote tasks” are over.
“There is software coming online that is going to replace some of those tasks,” Monahan said, advocating that
agencies focus more on “being a brand agent with customer insights.”
“That’s what we paid for,” he said.
Focusing on value and
efficiency isn’t just how Walmart approaches its agency suppliers. It’s how it’s approaching all its suppliers, including the brands and manufacturers that sell their products
through Walmart’s stores, websites and apps.
He said Walmart’s promise to its customers is to ensure they pay the lowest possible cost for those products, and that the
company is focused on finding efficiency in everything it does. Including its own audience targeting -- and the audience targeting of its suppliers.
That’s why Walmart launched
the Walmart Exchange, an audience targeting platform that leverages Walmart’s first-party data on customer purchases, their website and store visits to target them better online and in other
digital media.
“We can track sales and see people who were exposed to the asset and see how that impacts sales at the SKU level” among eight million customers, Monahan said, calling
the exchange the “highest fidelity signal that is available in the world today for marketing driving sales.”