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 It is whatever channels allow you to figure out, here’s the customer. Here you are. There’s 400 lines to get us there, which will get you there correctly and most personally. Retail Unwrapped is a weekly podcast hosted by Shelley Cohan from the Robin Report. Each episode dives into the latest. Trends and developments in the retail industry.

Join them as they discuss interesting topics and interview industry leaders. Keeping you in the loop with everything retail.

Hello everybody, and thanks for joining our weekly podcast, retail Unwrapped. I’m Shelly Cohan, and today I’m very excited to have back on the podcast Dominic, Ms. RiNo. Got it. Is the, I know, right? Your last name always trips me up, but I got it right today, so that’s good. You did perfect. You thank you. You are a re retail media mastermind and you’re like former CEO of like a hundred different companies.

You’re like me, you have your hands in a lot of stuff. That’s what I did. Oh yeah. It’s great. And today we gonna, and I connect with people like you, so it’s even more fun like that. That’s the best part of my job is meeting people. I love it. Absolutely. That’s why we do it. So I was really intrigued. So when you and I were chatting and you had this view about retailers are now being quote unquote publishers, and so we’re gonna talk about what that means and how this idea of retail media networks is just exploding into all kinds of exciting things going into 2026, uh, which is great.

But Dominic, before we jump into that. I have to just tell our listeners about the new lead, like her podcast. It’s actually a broadcast that came out. We launched it in March. It’s my pet passion project, as you know very well. You helped me with it in the beginning, as you recall. Oh, and the whole I, the whole idea was, uh.

You know, for those listeners that don’t know is I would have these guest speakers come into my class at FIT. They’d have an amazing time with my students and they would give them such great tips and advice, and it was so riveting. And then I would look around the room and it, I’d be like, oh, that’s like 27 students.

Like, how do I get this story out to more people, more students? And so that’s how Lead Like Her was born. I interviewed leaders and my goal was to get these stories out to all people for free. My other passion project, Dominic, as you know. Is lowering those educational costs for students and getting wider access for stories like this.

So we just dropped, started dropping ’em about three weeks ago. It’s great. All of these leadership, um, broadcasts will be embedded in fashion, Institute of Technologies leadership class. And also there will be an upcoming ebook that is going to be written with all the tips about what these leaders have faced in their journey.

So. Um, please tune in, lead like Her drops on Tuesday. Coming up the next two weeks, we have Maria Seldorf coming up, a former, uh, OVP at Bloomingdale’s, and also Julie Bernard, someone I met at Sax fifth Avenue, who is a killer. Dominic, you would love this, CMO. So, um, she has a great background, so I think you’ll find her, um, leadership broadcast.

Very interesting. I love it. I love it. I love that. I love your passion to things. That’s really why I love. So let’s talk about retailers as publishers. So first I have to ask you, Dominic, well even before we get to that, let’s step back. You just got back from Shop Talk. What’d you see? Anything interesting people, you know, you always see people, but what make Chopped, what makes Cho talk really unique is that, um, their one-to-one meetings.

I was literally doing every 30 minutes from 8:00 AM 6:00 PM Um, I was fortunate to be able to moderate a grade panel with, uh, fending, skims, David German. We had a ball there, but it was truly like the number of connections you can meet with, you can connect with it. I learned more from each of those individual conversations than I would’ve any session, to be honest.

Well, skims is super hot right now. They’re doing a lot of cool stuff. Right? Oh yeah. And that’s kind of, uh, you know, that whole experiential retail has was, has been interesting, especially having been born outta the publisher world where everything’s an experience. It really is connecting a.to me pretty big.

So Dominick, let’s talk about your world in publishing. So you were, you’ve been in publishing a long time, so there’s a lot that has changed in the past 10 years, certainly the last five years. And I would even say I’m not an expert in the publishing field, but I would say in the last year we, the retail industry has kind of blown it up, so, oh yeah.

When you mentioned this idea of retailers as publishers, tell me about that. It’s connecting with their audience. I think you saw it in terms of, uh, the pop-up stores, uh, which started a little bit and it was a big deal. And then I, I mean, I, I was mentioning on stage, it shocked me. Um, it was not shocked, but I got a message, oh, there’s a Harry Potter pop-up store right here in Long Island.

And just boom, there’s the restaurant, there’s the store, there’s everything. And I think. Consumers are more often connecting with those brands as things. Um, a great example is the Duolingo Owl Wallet. Traditional retail, more of an app, but people know it. Um, Wendy’s is known to be a snarky personality, uh, the Twitter feed for Wendy’s, and consumers expect that now.

That is what it is when you’re speaking to a retailer or a brand. You are speaking to that personality and that personality is brought through via publishing and whether it be whatever channel, be blog, your, uh, TikTok channel, whatever. That’s how it’s working now. Yeah, it’s great. And I think one of the big trends that’s trained has really like changed in the past, you know, five years is this ability to get this first party data.

Oh yeah. And retailers finally kind of jumping on the bandwagon of understanding and realizing the depth of that data and what they can do with it. It is a little bit Big Brother, a little bit concerning. Um, but I’ve seen things where they’re targeting their users, where it’s, uh, almost the extent of that Harry Potter’s popup example.

Meaning tonight there is something, tune in now or reach out to this. Uh, and I, I do think that’s. The error we’ve hit is that we’re gonna constantly see the first party data, giving that direct targeting and retailers and brands turning much more into, um, communicating with the consumer the whole time.

Yeah, definitely. I know, I know a lot of companies, I know Walmart was really big on this, even pre pandemic days when they really started looking and targeting its, you know, core demographics based on historical purchasing data. I mean, a lot of companies have done that too. Yeah. But then they went to then integrate online, offline with historical data information.

Now you fast forward, now we’re doing predictive analytics, and now we’re making decisions about, you know, what. You know, assortments, you know, realtime decisions about assortments and pricing and all that, all that, that’s what I found fascinating. I’m, uh, very fortunate to be on the board of directors for, um, engage Three, where they’re doing, uh, the pricing analytics and we look at that realtime data.

You’re looking at social media metrics. Who is posting about what and what are they saying and what is the, um, uh, emotional connection to it all? And that’s something really powerful. Honest when you see that, like at times, to be honest, it’s unbelievable to me. You see how fast we are moving. Um, it’s amazing.

So we have a term for that sentiment. Sentiment analysis. Yep. So reading the sentiment of how consumers feel. So back in the day we’d, we’d do surveys and you know how good surveys are. They’re as good as the person wanting to answer the questions the right way, way, or needs the answer. So exactly. Or. Or they don’t know how they feel.

They just, yeah, they just, they don’t know how they feel about stuff. But when you, when you start looking at what’s being posted on social media, it becomes very real about how consumers are feeling about a brand or a product. Uh, even the environment, it’s anonymity. That’s kind of where I was born out of especially.

Oh yeah. And. Online you have that an anonymous, uh, ability to complain and you see so many people will reach out. So when you connect that data point into this market, um, uh, one of the things I was proud of, uh, I was CMO of Aama Picks, and I would just sit in the lobby and let people walk in. Uh, and I studied a little Yiddish just to talk to some of the local Orthodox customers.

What, what do you like? What do you not like? What’s resonating? What, uh, makes you happy? Um, and, but that’s all that, you know, retail, retail’s relationships, it’s all about connecting and trying to understand exactly why do you do what you do, and how can we help you do more of it? That’s fascinating. Yeah. I, I never looked at the, you know, looked at it that way in terms of social media and people being able to bravely post on there without having to really put their.

Yeah, I know bravely sometimes so much as really, you know, there’s a difference. But yeah, you, you have all these points. And now I love is also I saw recently at uh, NRF, they were analyzing with AI and cameras, just how people walk in the store and the, um, inclination of just how they leaned or stopped in a section being a data point.

Yeah, they’re interested in that, but you know, that’s also. Something I learned from Shop Talk. Just being there, seeing how people responded to things, made me say, wow, you know, that you could see how that person’s kind of tilting the head sometimes or not. Maybe that’s something a major. Yeah, maybe not.

You always have to infer as much as you can to connect with people. Well, I find it fascinating your story about how you would sit and ask customers questions and just try to really understand what was happening with them. You know, who was excellent at that? One of our iconic retail people is Mickey Drexler was the iconic person that would do exactly what you said and just really try to understand the why behind, uh, consumer behavior.

And so, you know. I think it’s true today. Now we can do it a little more scientifically, so it’s a little easier to do. But let me ask you a question, Dominic. Yeah, please. Amazon. Walmart, yeah. They got all the deep pockets. They can do all this analytics. What about the small retailers? What about the mom and pops, the uh, younger, you know, startups?

Can they get this same type of relevance? I think it’s a question of resource. Um. I was working with a woman who had, um, a rather large restaurant in New York, and she was XPR person. So I knew her from that world and she was looking for advice. And one of the things we did was I said, how many customers do you have every night?

Well, we’re a small restaurant. We have 40 customers, so how long would it take to call all 40? Every night. And she started to, and we implemented a process for a week just to say, how was your meal? And what was fascinating is, number one, if there was any data point she needed to fix, she’d fix it. Oh, tada was too cold, don’t worry.

You coming in. It’s all on me. And by the end of the week, she started getting those repeat visits. Um. Immediately people responding. And I think you can do that. Uh, I did that with aama pics. I drove an hour to Brooklyn and I would literally just have a sheet next to me in the car. You know, I would be like, Hey, phone call, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I would call that first customer. Um, one of the things I was taking away was you, which you could address immediately. They said, oh, I, I wish your coupon was this percentage versus that. I said, let’s make a coupon code for you right now. Let’s just handle right now. And I think for a smaller retail, you might not have the data of that scale, but you do have the data of your own scale if you can.

That’s true, that energy to it. If you know that restaurant was 40 customers a night, 40 tables a night, sorry. And then you’re, they, you can address that. In a way, I would almost argue the smaller business has an advantage if they could find the time. You call every customer, you call every relationship. Um, and by keeping that human contact, you’re getting that exact problem to solve.

There’s always gonna be a problem now to solve it. So you just flipped my whole idea, which is actually it’s the big companies that are trying to mimic the smaller company’s one-to-one personal relationship and scale it to be a more personalized journey. Right? And so they’re the ones that need to use the data analytics because they’re so big and they need to get, and they can’t, Amazon can’t physically call every single customer of Amazon

Right. Um, but I’ve always been that type of reach out. I, um. I remember I tell everyone when on my past life when you and I met, I called you, I called everyone I was working with and I said, what, what’s happening? How’s it going? You know, at times is a lot. I mean, there was a week, uh, this current week, um, I probably average about 14 to 16 calls a day.

I’m scheduling every 30 minutes. When you have those moments of turnaround or those moments of growth, and you need to know what’s happening. Yeah. Uh, yeah, you are right. You could send out a survey and you could be like, Hey, Shelly, tell me the top seven things that resonate in your life. That’s not the same thing as, what do you need?

And more often than not, especially a smaller business, they could readjust to that market demand and say, oh, you need this. I’ll make it happen. Whatever it is, I’ll make it happen. And for me, I went. If you need a new coupon code, no problem making a new coupon code for you right now. We’re gonna make it happen

That’s great. So I wanna ask you a question and uh, I’m not sure if you have a point of view on this or not, but I’m gonna ask you anyway. So, live streaming live streaming has really been a big, um, growth factor, especially in China. Uh, the US really has been kind of very slow to get on board with live streaming.

Do you have an opinion on what, what’s going on with livestream? Is it something that we can look forward to in 2026? Oh my God. Um, yes, let’s start there. Um, other countries certainly are doing it constantly. I have seen it, um, from a grassroots side of things here, um, but not to the scale. Sorry. During the pandemic, my daughter was addicted to, um, the crazy pearl lady, and that was a woman who would go on air and she would shuck pearls on like TikTok.

Constantly. And what was amazing is you’re watching her saying, ah, every pearl she’s selling is like 20, 30 bucks, but she’s doing it as one a minute, whatever. You know? And I think that ability to connect with the consumer, it’s almost actually about, I never thought of it till now, but it connects to what we were just saying before, that the smaller retail, it’s small business, you can connect, you can readjust your pricing rather quickly, and the larger businesses are trying to connect to that.

Whether it via live streaming, whether via whatever, how do I connect to that person quickly? Yeah. Virtual assistant. So, you know, back, if you have your own little mom and pop store, you can FaceTime your customer and walk ’em through the store, tell ’em what’s going on. Oh yeah. So how do you, how do you do that at scale and why haven’t we done it at scale in the us I guess we’re trying to, there’s a, an actually a company, I’m on the board for her called Parla Retail, trying to do that and trying to, uh.

Um, each of those people, and I, I, but I love those concepts. ’cause ultimately at the end of the day, um, I say I, you know, especially in the media side, uh, I used to always preach that it’s the same method. You’re just trying to connect, you’re trying to get a message out. And it used to be, uh, read all about it, standing on Times Square, the little kid, the 14-year-old kid with the newspaper.

And when you’re talking about retail, the, uh. It is just selling that product. How can I do it? And now you have an Amazon situation, but I still have to connect back to that guy in the village, having the country store connecting to everybody. Yeah. And if you can’t succeed at that, that’s where the, it goes awry quickly.

Yeah. It’s that authentic storytelling, right? That’s all this is. And that has been the journey of my entire career is storytelling. You and I are telling stories to each other and we’re connecting as humans by telling stories. And especially with this, uh, podcast, we tell podcast, it’s telling that story to the consumer.

That the consumer says, I like that. I, I wanna get into that story. I wanna buy that product. I wanna connect with that. Yeah. So where are you? Tell me what’s going on with retail media networks. I know a few years ago, probably three years ago, you know, it became a big deal. A lot of big companies started investing in it, and I think originally retail media networks was a place to get more revenue.

So selling, I mean, it was like very transactional selling ad space to get money. Yep. To get more revenue. But now I think it’s kind of transformed a bit and it’s no longer. Transactional. But you know, tell me what you’re seeing. I am seeing the mad dash, same mad dash I saw for social media X number of years ago for mobile X number of years ago.

It is a wonderful opportunity, especially with data, to connect with people right in the pla right, in wherever they are, or connect with your exact consumer. Um, but in a way exactly like social media. We’re still figuring out what do you do with this? Just because you can do something with it, should you, um, almost reminds me of five years ago when, uh, a lot of companies I saw were doing Facebook Lives and there was some consumers like, this is not, not what I want.

And we try to find it. And I kind of feel like that now. I am talking right now with a wonderful company on, um, launching, uh. An ethnic based retail media network, uh, without kind of revealing too much on it Wow. To meet customers across that de uh, across various channels. But it’s, I’m, uh, we’re trying. I think ultimately, as long as that, uh, goal is in place of connection, it’s great.

I think at times we almost all get distracted in each of these. The common thread is you get distracted by the tech. Which is a wonderful enhancement, don’t get me wrong, but it’s, you know, not dissimilar to when we launched chat GPT and everyone says, let’s use it for everything. No, it should be helpful not replacing on every account.

Every account. Right. For sure. I think that, so when I think about retail media networks, I think retailers are getting really smart about it. And instead of just looking at it like this transaction of, you give me money, I’ll put your ad up in my store, on my floor, on my ceiling, whatever it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But, but now they’re, they’re really trying to say, okay, but where, where does this most make sense in the shopping journey? And how can I, the retailer. Get more data, more information, more real time analytics that help me the retailer build a deeper relationship with the customer. It’s not just selling ad space, it’s how can I use these, you know, vendors that use ’em, but you know, have the vendors help me get to know my customer better.

And the vendors are saying, I don’t wanna just throw an ad up on a. You know, end cap of a store. I wanna understand, you know, who’s looking at the end cap? Why are they looking at the end cap? Right? I love the stage you’re describing because I feel like the first stage with social media, ai, retail media networks, online publishing, mobile journey, it’s always that excitement stage.

How much can we do now? And they go all in and they go. Completely crazy in on it. And then ultimately we get to the same question, which is what you asked, but how do we connect to the person? How do we just get done what we need done? And it almost feels like this, uh, shift that occurs where it starts in the shift with how much can we do?

And then I feel like maybe it evolves into what do we need to do. I know we could do everything under the sun with ai. I could replace my, you know, but what do we need to do ultimately at the end of the day, and how do we make that happen? I think that ultimate, that question shift is where, um, it’s becoming the biggest impact.

Yeah. It. It’s funny, I’ll, I’ll, uh, I know you have very limited time today, but I, I do wanna share you, I have all the time for you. Oh, you’re so sweet. So, one of the things that you’ll just love. So, um, I was interviewed by a colleague of mine for a legends, uh, leverage storytelling podcast that’s coming out.

And, uh, my big like question, or my big kind of statement was, you know, press releases are dead. Like, yes, no one, no one cares about press releases. They wanna know the story, they wanna know the narrative. And so when we think about retailers, you know, how can they develop their own storytelling? They should be right.

They should be. I think not only should be, I’ve been preaching, uh, press releases being dead since I. Late nineties, but I think, okay, so I’m a little behind you, Dominic. I’m sorry. No, you’re, you’re right on target. No, I mean, yeah, no, people have tuned out to that. I think the evolution now though, has become the individual.

Um, I’ve seen now that I’m, oh my God, you broke 30,000 followers, Dominic. Yeah. I have 30,000 followers on LinkedIn. It’s that connection to that individual that is everything. Um. I would argue, and I’ve seen this over the past year more than I haven’t, I’ll go to a conference, let’s say, and more people will follow and buy a ticket or a booth.

And I don’t think it’s magical. It’s not me. It’s just that human recognition again. Um, it’s the equivalent of, Hey, shell, where are you going? Let’s go together. You go to Manhattan tonight, let’s go to Manhattan. Um, and I’ve seen deliverables you could quantify. Here’s the press release, here’s that personal, um.

Especially when I was running one company in the past, uh, the personal email call, like the CEO blast, the direct age, I’m going to this conference, I’m speaking here. I’m speaking there, had such a higher impact than just, here’s another press release. Here’s another pretty, even a pretty ad. We are tuned out.

We are, I think, approaching the TikTok generation, influencer generation. Everything is personal. So where should retailers be spending their money? We’re kind of saying that ad agencies, and I don’t wanna say this but I’ll say it, ads, ads are kind of dead now. Um, you know, doing press releases about product launches or, you know, new strategies is kind of dead now.

So where should retailers be spending their money on the retail media side? I think while at one point Influencer was a fad X number of years ago, speaking as a person now who has, uh. Multiple influencer requests a week. It, it, it’s hitting that. I think once it, in, uh, LinkedIn in particular, it really was striking because it’s not a mass market thing.

You don’t have people with 20 million followers. You have people with the right followers. But I think between that point and the first party data point where you could target those customers directly. It is whatever channels allow you to figure out, here’s the customer, here you are. There’s 400 lines to get us there, which will get you there correctly and most personally, the most connected.

Yeah, that’s a great way to look at it, right? Because everyone’s different. Everyone. You might not have that first party data up, you know? You might not have that individual correction connection. You might have it. We wait and see. So I think that maybe the big key takeaway is, you know, it’s the whole marketing efforts has moved to storytelling and retailers and brands have to figure out what’s your story, what story are you telling?

How are you gonna connect that? It’s so well, but, right. You and I, I think have that in common. Being storytellers, we both like connecting to that story. So. Well, thank you so much. Thanks for being on Retail Unwrapped and uh, it’s always a pleasure having you on. I love talking to you and I can’t wait to see you again.

Great. We’ll talk soon, and for our listeners, if you have any advice or you want to hear any special topics, just go to the robin report.com and fill out that. Contact us. Thank you for listening to Retail Unwrapped. We’ll be back in one week with another podcast. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast service.

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