Senior Hires for Tesco Insight Platform

The Tesco Media & Insight Platform, which combines the British supermarket's loyalty card data and in-store insights with the expertise of its subsidiary dunnhumby, has appointed former Amazon exec Steve Edwards as Head of Agency, and former Pinterest man Russell Franklin as Head of Client Bus Dev.

The platform, launched towards the end of 2021, taps data from 22 million Clubcard households to help client brands identify their most important customers and understand what matters to them. Specifically, it aims to connect the dots between advertising exposure and customer behaviour across online and off-line touchpoints to understand marketing impact.

The firms says the appointments support burgeoning demand from agencies for the delivery of retail media campaigns. Edwards (pictured top) is currently Head of UK Agency Development at Amazon, with specific responsibility for building and executing trading agreements and joint business plans with major agency groups. Earlier in his nine-year stint at the online retail giant he worked as its Global Head of Agency Planning & Insight and Head of Emerging Ad Products. In his new role he will develop and cement partnerships with agencies looking to use retail media to deliver measurable results for the platform's clients.

Franklin (pictured below) joins from Pinterest, where he was most recently a Lead Client Partner for emerging clients, and earlier worked for Google and Zenith. He is now charged with expanding the role of Tesco Media among a broader range of clients, including non-endemic advertisers.

Both newcomers will report to Nick Ashley, the platform's Client Development Director, who comments: 'Retail media is no longer solely a bottom of funnel opportunity: increasingly, it is playing a broader role across the full marketing funnel for a wider range of clients. With agencies rapidly enhancing their capabilities in this area, and clients outside of FMCG increasingly aware of the opportunities retail media presents, now is the right time for us to extend the team further. To attract senior digital leaders of the calibre of Steve and Russell is a sure sign that Tesco sits firmly at the heart of the current media landscape'.

dunnhumby employs nearly 2,500 experts in offices throughout Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas and is online at www.dunnhumby.com .