With purchasing decisions being made closer to the point of sale, a fundamental shift in power towards retailers is underway, explains Nick Cavarra of adm Indicia.
Some 70–80% of decisions are made at or near the point of sale, says Cavarra (Kenny Eliason/Unsplash)
For decades, marketing has revolved around a single assumption: creativity sits at the center of growth. Agencies built stories, media amplified them, and sales followed. That model is broken. Creative still matters. But creative alone no longer drives growth.
Performance marketing has exposed the limits of awareness, retail media has rewired the path to purchase, and fragmented attention has made ‘brand recall’ an unreliable growth strategy.
Brands don’t need more above-the-line awareness. The future of growth is not being shaped by creative campaigns; it’s being shaped by the part of marketing the industry forgets about: the moment of conversion.
Conversion environments – shopper, point of sale (POS), retail execution, packaging, displays, and on-trade activations – now account for the majority of brand marketing investment, often 55–70% depending on category. Data shows that in many categories, 70–80% of decisions are made at or near the point of sale.
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Yet culturally, the industry treats this as secondary.
So, what should brands be prioritizing? Today, consumers don’t move from awareness to purchase in neat funnels. They decide in moments, often physical ones, shaped by context, availability, and ease: the grocery aisle, the bar, the shelf, the checkout counter. These are not creative environments; they are conversion environments.
To win in this space, brands need conversion infrastructure: retail connected systems that drive sales, and activation engines that operate where decisions are made.
Below-the-line activation won’t win you a coveted award. It’s complex, operational, and physical. Most agencies don’t know how to own it.
‘Did people like the campaign?’ has become ‘Did it sell?’
Or, in the words of David Ogilvy: “We sell or else.”
Physical retail, experiential marketing, packaging, and activation are now performance channels: measurable, optimizable, and tied directly to revenue.
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Optimized digital shelf content alone can drive a 20-40% conversion lift. When paired with physical activation, that impact compounds.
While agencies argued about brand versus performance, retailers quietly rewrote the rules.
Retail media networks are now among the fastest-growing advertising channels globally, projected to exceed $60bn annually in the US alone.
Retailers control the consumer relationship, the transaction, the data, the shelf, the measurement, and, often, the creative. This is not a creative debate; it’s a power shift.
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Retailers speak in terms of sales lift, incrementality, and basket growth. Agencies still speak about impressions and storytelling. Only one of those languages aligns with CFOs.
This shift is not limited to one industry. It applies equally to any brand that shows up at the moment of conversion: on the shelf, in the on-trade, in-store.
This new model rests on five pillars:
There will, of course, always be room for brilliant creative, but it’s no longer the lead driver of growth. The shift has already happened, and agencies need to adapt to survive. The future belongs to organizations that are not choosing between brand and performance, but to those that are building systems that connect them.
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