Retail Media Pioneers Recap | Breaking Down Silos & Driving Cross-Functional Alignment

Retail Media Pioneers Recap: Breaking Down Silos & Defining Retail Media’s Role in the Business

Here we review the key takeaways from a panel discussion focused on “How do you define retail media’s role within the business and break down internal silos to maximise your budgets and structure for growth?” featuring Rishika Choumal, Global Retail Media Lead at Henkel, and Michele Dainty, Shopper Marketing Director, UK&I at Pladis Group.

Key takeaways and what speakers said:

The speakers underscored the need for strong internal collaboration and organisational alignment to maximise the value of retail media. Because the discipline touches so many teams sales, marketing, shopper, media, finance it is often constrained by structural silos and fragmented ownership.

Michele Dainty of Pladis highlighted the importance of bringing teams along the journey, noting: “I think it's taking them on the journey and showing them the power and what you can do with retail media.”

Several core reasons emerged for why collaboration is essential:

1. Differing Objectives and Timelines: Sales teams typically operate with short-term, quarterly revenue targets, while marketing teams prioritise long-term brand equity. Without alignment, these competing priorities can hinder cohesive decision-making.
2. Siloed Budgets and Ownership: Retail media investment often spans multiple departments, each controlling separate budgets. This fragmentation makes it difficult to take a unified, strategic approach. As Rishika Choumal noted: “It's extremely critical to have one single source of truth… and the right team setup in place because a lot of times brands are strapped with resources dedicated to retail media.” 
3. Knowledge Gaps: Many teams are still unfamiliar with the full capabilities, formats, and potential of retail media. This creates hesitancy and slows adoption unless brands invest in education and upskilling.
4. Lack of Shared Measurement: Without common KPIs and consistent reporting, it becomes challenging to demonstrate impact or build organisation-wide confidence in retail media investment.
5. Siloed Execution: When different teams manage on-site vs. off-site activation separately, it can lead to inconsistencies, inefficiencies, and missed opportunities to optimise performance.

Actionable tips:

1. Establish shared objectives and KPIs upfront to ensure every team is aligned on what success looks like.
2. Create a centralised data infrastructure and a “single source of truth” to support consistent measurement and decision-making.
3. Foster cross-functional collaboration and communication through regular touchpoints, shared planning cycles, and joint accountability.
4. Invest in dedicated resource and upskilling to build internal expertise and close knowledge gaps.
5. Align budgets and decision-making processes so that retail media can be planned and executed holistically rather than in isolated pockets.