Why Brands Still Don’t Get Retail Media with Colin Lewis

Nick Morgan and Paul Blackburn welcome strategist, writer, and retail-media advisor Colin Lewis for a rapid-fire tour through creativity in retail media, why “conversion everywhere” should be your mantra, and how AI & LLMs are reshaping search and shoppability. Drawing on decades of experience in strategy, teaching, and marketing leadership, Colin makes the case that innovation is everywhere—and that retail media is its own channel with its own language.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

• Creativity is a mindset, not a media format: True innovation in retail media lies in rethinking how networks are structured, scaled, and sold—not just how ads look on screen.
• Think like a media company, not a retailer: To scale, retailers must think like media companies: get C-suite buy-in, hire media sales, align trade, ecomm, ops, and stores, and manage change.
• The Era of Conversion Everywhere:  Shoppable formats reduce the distance from inspiration to purchase across on-site, off-site, and in-store, without sacrificing brand building.
• AI’s next frontier: LLM optimisation will upend “search” habits; brands need brilliant basics plus new skills to be searchable by LLMs.
• Mind the Fab Four: Brand, Trade, Shopper, and Digital often operate in silos; retail media forces new ways of working.
• From co-op to accountable media: Expect trade/coop budgets to fold into retail media with demands for ROAS, incrementality, and closed-loop outcomes.

About the hosts:

• Nick Morgan: Nick is an entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in digital marketing and eCommerce. He founded Vudoo in 2018, a platform that enables in-stream content commerce across articles, videos, and images. Nick's work transforms every ad impression into a potential shop front, offering a seamless eCommerce experience.

• Paul Blackburn: Paul is a digital media innovator with over 20 years of experience. At News Corp Australia, he launched the "Intent Connect" data platform and led innovation in shoppable video and the "Total Commerce" framework. Now as Chief Growth Officer at Vudoo, he helps brands, publishers, and agencies unlock new ways to monetise content through immersive, commerce-enabled experiences.
  
  

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