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How Five Below & Ovative Group Power Omnichannel Commerce | Shoptalk 2025 Insights
Episode 241 •
27th March 2025 • Omni Talk Retail • Omni Talk Retail
00:00:00
00:12:16
Shownotes
In this episode of Omni Talk Retail recorded live from the Meta Podcast Studio at Shoptalk 2025, hosts Anne Mezzenga and Chris Walton welcome Five Below’s VP of Digital Marketing, Abhinav Agrawal, and Ovative Group’s SVP of Growth, Jesse Grittner, for a high-energy discussion on how omnichannel strategies are transforming retail. From the collapse of traditional retail boundaries to the rise of AI-driven personalization and measurement, this episode dives deep into what’s driving growth and innovation.
Key Moments:
0:35 – Introductions and Shoptalk energy
1:00 – Jesse’s background in retail and Ovative’s role
1:20 – Abhinav’s unique path from engineering to marketing
2:15 – What “growth” means for Ovative
2:45 – Defining omnichannel and digital-first engagement at Five Below
3:45 – How digital storytelling connects to in-store sales
4:10 – Measurement techniques: triangulation and Meta partnerships
5:01 – Choosing data-driven retail partners
6:01 – What makes a successful retail collaboration
7:03 – The future of customer journeys and AI influence
8:19 – Five Below’s top priority: content that follows trends
9:17 – Ovative’s investments in creators and rapid insights
10:20 – Smart tech investments and first-party identity
11:40 – AI’s role across the retail tech stack
#shoptalk #retailtechnology #retailinnovation
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Transcripts
Speaker A:
Hello, everybody.
Speaker A:Welcome back.
Speaker A:This is Omnitalk Retail.
Speaker A:I'm Anne Mazenga.
Speaker B:And I'm Chris Walton.
Speaker A:And we are back from the Meta Shop Talk headquarters.
Speaker A:We're in Surf B.
Speaker A:We gotta give a big shout out and thank you to Meta, where you can unlock seamless customer centric experiences with omnichannel ads.
Speaker A:Thanks to Meta for making all of our coverage possible.
Speaker A:Now, Chris, it's time to introduce the two gentlemen in between us today we have next me, the VP of Digital marketing, Abhinav Agrawal of Five Below, and Jesse Gritner, the SVP of Growth from the Ovative Group.
Speaker A:Welcome, guys.
Speaker C:Thank you.
Speaker D:Thank you.
Speaker D:Thanks for having us.
Speaker A:How's it going so far?
Speaker D:It's been good.
Speaker D:Busy.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker D:Lots of fun content and fun people.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker A:Good.
Speaker A:You're having a good shop talk?
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker C:Great show.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker B:Busy show.
Speaker B:Frenetic pace, high energy, right?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, let's start off by having each of you introduce yourselves.
Speaker B:Tell us about your background and your roles.
Speaker B:Jesse, why don't we start with you since you're right next to me here.
Speaker A:I go directly next to you.
Speaker A:So close.
Speaker C:I've been at Oveda for about nine years.
Speaker C:I lead our business development, marketing and client services teams.
Speaker C:Prior to that, a mix of retail, consulting and marketing.
Speaker C:Started at McKinsey, spent some time at Target, and then a couple of years at Amia for loyalty marketing.
Speaker A:Amazing.
Speaker A:All right, Abhinav.
Speaker D:Cool.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker D:I think for me, this is my third career.
Speaker D:So I first started as an engineer at some point.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker D:I used to design semiconductor chips and then I was a data analytics guy and then I got into marketing because it's so good now.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker D:For 15 years, I've been doing marketing and E commerce and retail.
Speaker D:And today I lead Digital Marketing at 5 Below, which is my mandate is how do you use media and content to drive customer behavior and sales for the enterprise?
Speaker D:Yeah, I've been here three years and it's a lot of fun.
Speaker B:Jesse, I want to go back to you, too.
Speaker B:What is growth like?
Speaker B:How do you define growth?
Speaker C:Growth is the opposite of stagnancy, as you and I were just talking about.
Speaker C:We put those teams together.
Speaker C:We think that they're the teams that connect the most to the market.
Speaker C:And we want to find ways to make sure that we're bringing insights from the market back to the company and then taking the company out to the market in the right way.
Speaker C:So that's how I describe the role of that team.
Speaker A:Well, Abhinav, I want to go to you next.
Speaker A:One of the big topics of conversation here at Shop Talk today has been unified commerce, Omnichannel, commerce, whatever term you would like to use to describe it.
Speaker A:What does that mean for you and your team at five Below?
Speaker A:And then maybe share a little bit for us about how you and Jesse's teams are working together to help create that.
Speaker D:Yeah, totally.
Speaker D:I think for us, Omni actually means that we should be able to serve the customer and be available for the customer wherever he or she is.
Speaker D:We are a very unique business in that we have a lot of our business in the stores.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker D:But we actually serve a customer that's very digital in nature.
Speaker D:So we've got to kind of manage the customer journey where they discover us, they get inspired by us in the digital medium, maybe even the website, but then they're shopping in the store.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker D:And to actually be able to enable all of that, I think there's a lot of work we need to do first in making sure the stories we're telling in digital and in the stores are very similar.
Speaker D:But then in terms of working with Jesse and team, we need to have really, really good measurement to make sure that the activities and efforts we're putting from a media perspective, which are truly digital, to hit that customer, are paying off in the stores.
Speaker D:So that's kind of a big component of how we play in Omni as a marketing team at five Below.
Speaker A:Jesse, what would you add to that?
Speaker C:Yeah, so we're a media and measurement agency.
Speaker C:And so for Five Below, we are their measurement partner.
Speaker C:We provide advanced measurement there.
Speaker C:And I think to Abhinav's point, it's the ability to understand what marketing and media investments do for your business, regardless of channel, and understanding how those things combine to really power the enterprise so you can make smarter decisions.
Speaker A:Well, especially, I mean, Abhinav, I know from my own children's experience that they are finding you online.
Speaker A:They are only they.
Speaker A:They hear about the five Below products online.
Speaker A:How are you.
Speaker A:How are you measuring that?
Speaker A:And how they see you on their social channels, and then they're walking into the store.
Speaker A:How are you leveraging Jesse's team to kind of help you do that?
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker D:So I think from a measurement standpoint, we have philosophy around triangulation.
Speaker D:So I think Jesse's team and their technology with the media mix models help us a lot in having one point of triangulation.
Speaker D:We also have pretty deep kind of measurement capabilities with meta, where we're actually able to see the content we're putting out on social.
Speaker D:How is that impacting people coming in the store.
Speaker D:And then we have internal measurement techniques as well with surveys and other kind of points of contact to get confidence that, hey, like when we're putting stuff out on social, people are seeing that they're actually reacting to that and coming into the store.
Speaker D:So really triangulation is the way we get more confidence that the stuff we're doing on social is actually working.
Speaker A:Yeah, right.
Speaker A:I imagine.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:So Abhinav, I'm curious, you know, the digital space, I mean, there's so many partners in a lot of ways.
Speaker B:Like you could literally partner till the cows come home, you know, is one way to put it.
Speaker B:But how do you vet the partners that you work with?
Speaker D:Yeah, I'd say a couple of things.
Speaker D:One, I think is the focus on data and measurement is just there because, like we're performance marketing, we're focused on driving sales for whatever we do.
Speaker B:So you need to be able to do that with you.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker D:So no, like, yeah, no like fluffy stuff.
Speaker D:It's like, what are the numbers?
Speaker D:Show me the numbers.
Speaker D:That's good.
Speaker D:Incremental sales.
Speaker D:And we see through kind of attributed sales versus incremental and really focus on incremental.
Speaker D:So that's a big part of it.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker D:The second thing I'd say is like, retail is very, very cross functional.
Speaker D:So beyond measurement, anyone we bring on either like on team or as a partner, we just need to have the ability to work cross functionally because you gotta have the same thing in the store, on the site, in the marketing to really have that omni experience.
Speaker D:So those two things I think are key for us from a culture perspective, which is you got to be data oriented, be able to talk data and then really work cross functionally.
Speaker D:Where things also are moving pretty fast in today's age with social.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:Like, everything's changing pretty quickly.
Speaker B:Got it, got it.
Speaker B:That's interesting.
Speaker B:The measurement being the first and foremost thing that you said.
Speaker B:That's really interesting.
Speaker B:Jesse, what about from you, from the perspective of the partner, what do you think a good partner needs to do to help make the retailers like abhinav successful?
Speaker C:I think it starts with who you choose to partner with.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:And you know, hearing abhinav talk about data driven incrementality, triangulation, that's music to my ears.
Speaker C:That's very much how we operate.
Speaker C:And so I think that making sure that there's a fit on the way in to the relationship and that what we provide is what the client is looking for is super important.
Speaker C:Beyond that, I think it's two Things probably one is shared objectives, real clarity on like what is the business trying to drive both in the near term and the short term.
Speaker C:I think in the absence of that, it gets really easy to get pulled apart pretty quickly.
Speaker C:And then the other piece is test and learn.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:And there's so much changing, as Abhinav said so rapidly.
Speaker C:But we can learn as we go.
Speaker C:And having a thoughtful approach to test and learn with both large scale and smaller scale tests in platform, cross platform as a way to inform the decisions, I think then it means that we've got that shared understanding of what works and what doesn't.
Speaker A:Abhinav, I want to go to you next is we kind of, we're here at Shop Talk.
Speaker A:Everybody's kind of giving their opinions on where the future of the industry is going to go.
Speaker A:How do you think that these unified or omnichannel shopping experiences are really going to change for five below customers, you know, as we head into the coming years?
Speaker D:Yeah, again, I think it's like doing what I said and just doing it really, really efficiently and being on top of trends.
Speaker D:I think really again, like I said, the trends in retail are changing way, way quickly and the more you can stay in tune with the trends, the more likely you are to succeed.
Speaker D:So the more nimbly you can move, the more content you can put out there that's in line with the trends and measure the performance of that.
Speaker D:That's going to be key.
Speaker D:The other thing which I think I'm seeing as a trend is it's still new.
Speaker D:I haven't heard that a lot here, but with AI, I think just the customer journey might change a little bit in the way they search for stuff.
Speaker D:So how do you show up in those customer journeys where they're not?
Speaker D:Yeah, they might have an AI based search where location is very, very contextual and you know, how do you like show up in those customer journeys is going to be something which we'll keep an eye on.
Speaker A:Are there any areas that you're prioritizing in those that you talked about Abhinav, like content or application of AI or anything that you're kind of putting to the front of your priority list right now?
Speaker D:Yeah, it's definitely content.
Speaker D:I'd say for now I think it's content.
Speaker D:I think we heavy focus on content.
Speaker D:Trend.
Speaker D:Right content, listening in for trends, getting the right trends out there in time.
Speaker D:That's a big focus for us.
Speaker A:Jesse, how about you from like a more broad retailer perspective, where do you kind of see changes coming when it comes to unified commerce.
Speaker C:I think it's about the collapsing of boundaries.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:Increasingly we can't think of it as one channel or one platform.
Speaker C:It's all blurring together.
Speaker C:One of the panels I listened to yesterday just talked about the pervasiveness of digital that Gen Alpha in particular is growing up with and is so used to.
Speaker C:And so we, we have to think about where we can reach that consumer at any moment across their day with content that's going to be compelling, relevant, authentic, and then give them a reason to take an action.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:And that's always been the goal.
Speaker C:But again, those boundaries I just think are blurring and collapsing really rapidly.
Speaker A:Where are you as the ovative group investing then when it comes to or where are you investing or helping your retail partners invest when it comes to.
Speaker A:To the right technology to support those?
Speaker C:Yeah, I think there's a couple of areas.
Speaker C:One is what Abhinav was talking about, the content creator influencer ecosystem and being able to do that at scale is I think really increasingly important.
Speaker C:And there are tools that we can invest in and partners we can invest in to enable that.
Speaker C:And then I will go back to the measurement piece as well.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:Which is the ability to get deeper and more rapid insights on what is working because the consumer is moving so quickly.
Speaker C:You've got to be able to have those outputs happening daily, weekly.
Speaker C:You can't wait for a month, you can't wait for a quarter.
Speaker C:Those things have already moved on.
Speaker C:So those two things I think are really critical.
Speaker B:So that all makes sense at a conceptual level, what both you guys are saying.
Speaker B:But let's end on this.
Speaker B:Let's press a little bit harder here.
Speaker B:There's a lot of tech here.
Speaker B:Everyone's capital constrained.
Speaker B:And Abhinav, maybe you answer this one first and then Jesse, and take an industry view too.
Speaker B:You don't have to speak from the point of view of 5 below, but from an industry point of view, if you were making capital decisions around technology, what would you be investing in?
Speaker D:Yeah, I think definitely measurement as a baseline.
Speaker D:But I think on top of that, I think the more specific you can get with audience identity and being able to target that audience in the right place at the right time especially, I think things get kicked down.
Speaker D:The can gets kicked down every now and then with cookies disappearing.
Speaker D:But at some point, I think the more you can own your first party identity or collaborate with people who have a good ID graph to reach the right customer at the right time with the right content, I think there's some value in investing in that.
Speaker B:And Abhinav, what are the foundations of understanding your audience identity?
Speaker D:Yeah, so I think it's.
Speaker D:For me, I think there's a couple of ways to do it.
Speaker D:One I think is either like build your own first party data set, which either requires investment in data collaboration or launching your own loyalty program in some form factor, or you collaborate with people who have ID graphs out there.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:You know, there's a bunch of people who have done the work to build ID graphs.
Speaker D:There's a bunch of data around customers that they have which helps you like segment and target.
Speaker D:So it's one of those two options, different investment levels, different payoffs in terms of kind of when they pay off.
Speaker D:But those are two things that come to mind.
Speaker B:Awesome.
Speaker B:That's great.
Speaker B:Great.
Speaker B:How about you, Jesse?
Speaker C:I would echo a lot of what you just said.
Speaker C:I.
Speaker C:I don't think I have a ton to add to that.
Speaker C:The only other spin on that would probably be the.
Speaker C:The AI elements of all of those things.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:We see it coming into every element of the tech stack these days and it's only going to accelerate.
Speaker C:So everything that you just said, with AI powering it more and more.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker B:Or being set up to be powered by AI in the long run too, that's another way to think about it too, I would imagine.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker D:Yep.
Speaker B:Awesome.
Speaker A:Great.
Speaker A:Well, we want to give a big thank you again to Meta for making all of our coverage possible here from Shop Talk today.
Speaker A:Thanks again to Avanav, to Jesse for taking the time with us to share some of your brilliant insights.
Speaker A:And I'm so excited to follow up with Chris about this afterward and we'll share more with you at the takeaways session tomorrow.
Speaker A:So again, until next time, be careful out there.
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