Jamie Lugo-Gifford of Beyond Meat: How Brands Can Break Down Data Silos and Drive Incremental Sales

"Understanding — when you put money into a tactic — what the holistic impact is on sales that are incremental for your company is pretty essential to understanding if you should pay money for it or not, or cut it out of your strategy."  — Meghan Corroon, CEO, ClerData

Brands must become more data-driven if they hope to increase profitability. That’s easier said than done, considering the ever-growing volume of measurement data brands collect and how fragmented it is across their retail partners.

Despite these challenges, some brands are finding ways to cut through the noise, better harness their data, and use it to drive more informed investment decisions. Beyond Meat is one of them.

Jamie Lugo-Gifford, senior shopper marketing manager at Beyond Meat, recently spoke at the 2024 Digital Shelf Summit about how Beyond Meat worked with ClerData, a leading provider of data intelligence software for incremental growth. The partnership helped break down data silos, optimize its shopper marketing campaigns, and generate greater return on investment (ROI) from its retail media investments.

Lugo-Gifford shares how Beyond Meat drives more value from its data — and how other brands can do the same.

How Data Silos Hurt Brands

Consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands face several challenges as they try to increase incremental sales and grow profits. A volatile economy marked by inflation has made consumers more cautious about where they spend their dollars.

With new retail media and online delivery platforms emerging to compete with traditional sales channels, brands also have to make difficult decisions about where to spend to get the best return.

In this environment, data is vital to guide their retail strategy. However, data silos often inhibit brands from making more informed strategic decisions.

"You have a lot of C-suites and bosses who are saying the words profit and efficiency and sometimes budget cuts, so those are hard decisions you have to make," says Meghan Corroon, CEO of ClerData. "To do that, you would wish to have all your data in a perfect dreamscape data lake that's endlessly query-able, so you could then just ask it a question, and AI [artificial intelligence] or somebody would come and serve the answer and then you make an awesome business decision. Sadly, that's not how most companies are functioning today."

Corroon says that brands need to make more efficient decisions because they are investing more money to get the same dollar of spend from consumers. Dismantling data silos can unlock incremental sales and drive a halo effect that leads to greater profitability. Beyond Meat discovered this during its engagement with ClerData.

Beyond Meat’s Data Test

Brands will spend an estimated $55 billion on retail media this year, but many don’t have robust measurement tools to truly understand the impact.

Seeking the best return for its marketing dollars, Beyond Meat worked with ClerData to identify which retail media platforms helped it most effectively engage and convert shoppers.

"This was a big project cross-functionally. We started with sales. We input all the sales data — all the traditional digital media data, as well as the retailer media network data — to really look at what we're spending to get that consumer to purchase." — Jamie Lugo-Gifford, Senior Shopper Marketing Manager, Beyond Meat

Beyond Meat had to do some data clean-up and formatting before performing its analysis. Application programming interfaces (APIs) also helped the company connect data from disparate sources. ClerData then applied its data models, which have a margin of error of 3%, to this source data.

This process allowed Beyond Meat to pinpoint the incremental ROI and halo effect of its retail media investments. Corroon says incremental ROI (iROI) encompasses sales dollars won that would not have occurred in the absence of the tactics measured and whether these tactics were ultimately cost-effective for the brand.

Halo effects are the positive effects of a tactic on incremental sales. She says understanding halo effects is critical for more precise attribution.

"Understanding when you put money into a tactic what the holistic impact is on sales that are incremental for your company is pretty essential to understanding if you should pay money for it or cut it out of your strategy," Corroon says.

What Beyond Meat Learned from Its Data

Beyond Meat discovered that some retail media platforms drove much better iROI performance than others.

Walmart Connect and Instacart had the strongest performance. Both channels performed above Beyond Meat’s expectations based on the company’s projected sales outcomes. Walmart Connect and Instacart also had significant halo effects across Walmart brick-and-mortar, Costco, Kroger, and natural and multi-outlet channels.
Fetch also demonstrated strong performance, but the results were mixed by sales channel. Kroger underperformed, which surprised Lugo-Gifford, given the platform’s significant costs.

"Kroger is huge for probably everyone in this room," Lugo-Gifford says. "They're very strong about their data and how well they know their customers, and so their media is seen as the most sophisticated in targeting. But at the end of the day, it is also a premium cost for that sophisticated targeting. So, when that sophisticated targeting doesn't perform as expected — you're not seeing incrementality within Kroger — that's where you have to re-evaluate that mix and the tactics that they deliver."

Beyond Meat has already begun this re-evaluation and has made several changes that will enable it to better optimize its retail media spend in the future.

How CPG Brands Can Capitalize on Data

Beyond Meat’s data silo-free approach has helped Lugo Gifford’s team justify pulling back on certain retail media investments. It’s exploring reallocating some spend across tactics within Kroger, but plans to stay the course with Walmart Connect, Instacart, and Fetch, since these platforms have the strongest impact on incremental sales and drive greater halo effects.

"We really sat with the information and are making some conscious decisions," Lugo-Gifford says. "Our budgets are tight."

Harnessing its data more effectively also has helped Beyond Meat address funding silos across shopper, trade, marketing, and promotions, and demonstrate the full impact of its retail media investments to budget decision-makers within the organization.

"As I'm spending dollars with Walmart, let's say, it should be viewed as a traditional marketing dollar that is driving conversion — not a trade spend, not a margin reduction — because even though we're spending it with this retailer, it is not only focused at that retailer," Lugo-Gifford says. "We're seeing effects nationally for this dollar that we spent with this specific retail media vendor. I think that's another piece that the data helped us support."

Lugo-Gifford says other brands who want to drive similar results should focus on getting granular data from their retail partners. They also should ask these partners to clarify how they define return on ad spend (ROAS) and how they attribute sales. This information will allow brands to better compare the effectiveness of one retail media network versus another.

"You need to ensure they're able to provide you the level of reporting that is required to be able to do this analysis," Lugo-Gifford says. "If they can't yet do that, then they're not ready, and they're not necessarily confident in what they're selling you."

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