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Instacart’s chief marketing officer Laura Jones calls this the “year of brandformance” for the 11-year-old online grocery platform.
The amalgam comes from two functions of the marketing department, brand and performance. Those teams had reported to separate leaders, but Jones, who joined from Uber two years ago, felt they would perform better for clients and customers as one.
“This year has been about finding platforms that can really work across the funnel, and then a lot of experimentation because we’re still early in this journey,” Jones told Adweek during a conversation at Cannes Lions last week. “From a creative standpoint, we know the value we deliver and we’re about nourishing the modern household,” she added.
Following the success of “The World is Your Cart” brand campaign featuring Lizzo, Instacart aimed to grow awareness among consumers about the platform’s ability to aid discovery and inspiration across grocery outlets.
As a result, Instacart’s integrated marketing team will focus on raising brand awareness and brand focus. Jones says this will include a certain amount of “stretchiness” to find the right channel mix for upper, middle and lower funnel outcomes.
Jones says the online grocery category is still “massively under-penetrated,” even after online retail boomed during the pandemic. Grocers saw 20 to 30 percent of their business shift online at the peak of the pandemic, according to McKinsey, with another 14 to 18 percent shift expected by 2026.
“There’s a strong need here, so it’s really just helping people habituate and realize that this is a replacement for the routine that I think many of us had, which is spending Sunday going to the grocery store,” said Jones.
The Retail Media opportunity
Instacart is also benefiting from the explosion of retail media, where brands work with stores to create ad campaigns for the retailer’s digital and in-store channels.
According to eMarketer, ad spend for U.S. retail media will grow to $40.81 billion (+31.4%) this year and reach $61.15 billion next year. Of the major retail media outlets, Instacart was predicted to have the largest growth, up 44.5%, with the nearest competitor, Walmart with 39.7% growth.
Chris Rodgers, chief business officer for Instacart, told Adweek the company currently has around 6,000 brands advertising through its retail media network. The “giant movement” he has seen over the last couple of years is the effectiveness of retail media buys, where the media is directly tied to increased sales.
Rodgers highlighted the presence of major U.S. retailers, including Kroger, Albertsons and Roundel (Target), all having their senior retail media leaders at Cannes Lions taking meetings.
And while Instacart is still “a retail enablement company,” building solutions to facilitate online sales, it has also been developing its own ad tech stack built for mid-sized grocers such as Sprouts Farmers Market. Sprouts, with 401 outlets in 23 states, will leverage Instacart’s Carrot Ads to power its new retail media network.
Sprout joins Califia Farms, General Mills, Primal Kitchen and Siete Foods to be among the first brands to leverage the Carrot Ads service.
Future areas of growth
Forgoing a temptation to go global, Jones and Rodgers say the focus will remain on North America where they still see “a lot of opportunity” in the U.S. and Canada.
Growth, they say, will come from its Connected Stores platform, introduced last September. Smart Cart and Smart Checkout Technology will allow shoppers to move seamlessly between a retailer’s app and its in-store experience with personalization at the fore.
“We can start to digitize the shopping journey, we can do wayfinding, we can make recommendations, we can use all of that personalization on the screen,” says Rodgers who sees that as “a massive opportunity” in the short-term.
The tech is delivered through Caper AI which Instacart acquired in 2021.
Instacart has also announced a new partnership with one of America’s fastest-growing retailers, ALDI.
ALDI Express is a virtual convenience store that delivers ALDI-exclusive products to customers. The tech is powered by Instacart. It offers access to nearly 2,000 of the chain’s best-selling items, delivered in 30 minutes. “Together with Instacart, we’ll continue to find ways to innovate and make the online grocery experience even more effortless and accessible,” said Scott Patton, VP of National Buying at ALDI, announcing the deal earlier this month.
