Podcast: Dollar General’s Charlene Charles bullish on retail media potential

Amid the expanding use of digital channels and the rise of omnichannel shopping, CPG brands are looking to connect with consumers in new ways and measure those interactions.

To that end, Dollar General last month announced what it called an “evolution” in its media platform, DG Media Network (DGMN). The Goodlettsville, Tenn.-based discount store giant launched DGMN in 2018.

“DG Media Network is here to deliver our brand partners an up-close and personal view of the Dollar General customer in a way that really no one else can,” Charlene Charles, below, head of DG Media Network operations, said in a podcast interview with Supermarket News. “We do this by creating more meaningful intersections between our partners and customers — essentially making it easier to reach the hard-to-reach and hard-to-measure [consumers] with the brands and products they want and need.”

Dollar General said the DGMN upgrade includes a spate of new advertising partners from major CPG companies — Unilever, General Mills, Hershey’s and Colgate-Palmolive, to name a few — plus new strategic partners to expand DGMN’s technology, analytics and media capabilities.

Dollar General certainly has a lot to offer CPG brands, with nearly 18,400 stores in 47 states. The chain noted that three-quarters of its stores serve markets of 20,000 people or fewer, a segment of customers often overlooked under current media strategies. The retailer’s mobile app also has 4 million monthly active users.

“We very much pride ourselves in the fact that we can reach more than 90% of our active DG customers through paid media,” Charles said. “Building on that, we have speed in our reporting through a self-service dashboard showing near-time real attributable sales, and we’re focusing on striving to provide measurement to demonstrate performance for every dollar in and dollar out.”