Interview: How B&Q owner Kingfisher aims to become a retail media powerhouse

B&Q and Screwfix owner Kingfisher is looking to shape up how its brand partners connect with customers.

In its quest, the home improvement giant has joined Currys, Tesco and Selfridges with the launch of a retail media proposition.

Retail media, where retailers leverage their own digital and physical spaces to promote products, is not a new concept in itself. But it’s an area that has grown exponentially in recent years – a channel that Tesco believes will be “bigger than TV” in terms of advertising spend by the end of 2025.

Keen to capitalise on the growing market opportunity, Kingfisher promoted Dany Satine to newly created role of group head of retail media in 2023. He’s been tasked with rolling out initiatives across B&Q, Screwfix, Castorama France and the DIY group’s other banners to bring brands closer to customers where they shop.

The retail giant anticipates that 3% of its group online revenue will come from advertisers in the near future – something Satine is very excited about.

“It’s hard to not realise that retailers entering the media industry is quite disruptive to a very established businesses [like] publishing, media agencies, broadcasting and streaming” he says.

“Normally retailers would have relied on the audience data of those media companies, [but now] retailers have realised that we have the power because we have our customer data.”

This, he believes, will “transform what media and marketing budgets look like” over the next five years.

Retail media is turning out to be a lucrative business for retailers, but Satine argues the proposition is “much more than a revenue stream” and is a way to harness the customer data it collects.

As the home improvement group looks to drive sales from both customers and brands, Satine shares he’s having to think more like an advertising agency.

“Internally, I need to drive my efforts and my strategy as a media house and not as a retailer. But [from the] outside when we talk about our brand standard and customers, we need to present ourselves as pure retailers,” he says.

Building a retail media offer

B&Q’s retail media proposition has been live on its website and app since the tail end of 2023, with Kingfisher partnering with CitrusAd to deliver the capabilities across the group.

Satine explains the home improvement retailer’s marketplace, which lists over two million additional products on diy.com, has helped grow its proposition.

“From a retail media perspective, that means we have two type of advertisers that are coming together,” Satine notes. The group has more than 300 first party and 200 third party sellers engaging in over 2,400 live campaigns on a monthly basis.

Kingfisher reported in its most recent financial year that Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) for its retail media proposition is “consistently above 600%”.

“Whatever touchpoint that we have to communicate [with customers] across online and offline channels, that’s something the advertiser also has right now,” Satine explains.

B&Q advertisers can sponsor product listings, display campaigns on its homepage or within the product result page as well.

Satine notes that brands can also reach out to customers via off-site channels such as newsletters.

“For example, our garden season is quite active right now so that means that an advertiser of the outdoor and garden categories can sponsor products, have branded content in our newsletter, and that will be connected to our in store activation,” he explains.

“The combination of an integrated retail media plan for a brand [can] deliver plus 60% uplift in sales, or around 40% uplift in store when having an online campaign [as well],” says Satine.

Not all retail media propositions are created equally

While finding advertisers for its B&Q and Screwfix network – which include LG Harris and Lick Paint – has been relatively easy, Satine says it’s been more of a challenge building the networks for the European banners with the group left “fighting for every dollar”.

“We can have a core operating model to engage in retail media activities, but we need to take into account the complexities of each of the market,” he says.

“B&Q has no issue in terms of market share. Hence, an advertiser will not doubt to forecast the effect of a retail media campaign. That will also happen in Screwfix.”

“Whilst in Casto in France, where we don’t have that leadership position, we fight for every dollar that we can get from brands and vendors,” says Satine.

He explains that the group needs to make its value proposition overseas “much more robust when we compare it to the UK market because… it’s a very competitive market in the DIY industry, and we’re fighting to get the same suppliers, brands and vendors to invest in our retail media network”.

Satine says that having existing relationships with brands and vendors that already allocate budgets in their yearly contract towards trade marketing and shopper activation with the group has helped secure deals.

However, he also argues that “when you put in front [of them] the retail media proposition, it raises a question of should we do both or one and not the other”.

“What we don’t want is brands to move money from one bucket to the other, but to present retail media as a strong value proposition to invest in to drive incrementality.”

Kingfisher has been able to share learnings across the group and its eight different banners to strengthen this proposition for advertisers, and Satine notes that the launch of B&Q’s retail media proposition was made easier by the fact it had already gone live in Castorama in France.

“It took us around six to seven months to roll out our on-site capabilities in Castorama France. In B&Q, Screwfix, Castorama Poland and Brico Depôt Iberia, it took us around three months on average,” he says.

Creating in-store opportunities

Satine explains the group’s online retail media capabilities are relatively mature at this stage, but the next challenge lies with creating offline and in-store opportunities for the group’s partners.

“Connecting and bridging the gap between the online and offline advertising, which is in store, is our biggest quest right now,” he says.

“The biggest bet that we have this year is our digital screens and later this year, an advertiser will be able to activate campaigns throughout a network of screens that are going to be live in our stores.”

Kingfisher is currently piloting the digital screens in selected Screwfix stores, with the idea of rolling them out to B&Q outlets if successful.

“We will start with key strategic stores where we know we can pull together enough volume to make our screen networks a strong case to invest on them,” says Satine, explaining that “the more screens you have, the more chances to uplift your value proposition as an in-store retail media network”.

One of the big challenges retailers rolling out retail media networks in stores face is getting the balance between advertising opportunities for brands and not overwhelming the customers with flashy signs – an issue that Satine says is “super important to us”.

“The pool of communications that you get [in-store] will be extensive, right? But the way we want to deliver this is, as we did it for online, is when is the right time.” he says.

“We know when it’s the right time to communicate, depending on the time of the year, the season where we are in, the current promotions that we have, and we cannot forget that our in store communications is integrated in our trading and shopper activation plan, so we need to combine those.

“On one side, you will have in store communications dedicated to our shopper activations that are part of in the negotiations that we have with our first party brands, and then on top of that, you will see opportunities to communicate on specific promotion or specific key messages that product and brands will want to deliver in store,” he concludes.

What comes next?

Satine explains the group’s retail media offer is under constant review: “We tend to be very critical in where we are, which is good, because that means that we’re constantly challenging the state of where we are.”

He draws upon Home Depot and Walmart in the US as inspiration for building the group’s retail media proposition, explaining that he exchanges best practices with the retailers stateside.

“In the UK, of course, we cannot forget about Tesco and Sainsbury’s,” Satine says, sharing that he’s looking to bring the innovative approaches to retail media in the grocery sector to the world of home improvement.

For now, he’s focused on getting the basics right across the whole Kingfisher group.

“When we fully roll out our in store capabilities, our data and measurement frameworks, that’s when I’m going to tell you we’re ready to take our next stage, which is ‘how do we be more creative and be more innovative in new ad placements?'”

“But right now, I think that we’re mature enough to say an advertiser can go in and leverage a very comprehensive value proposition of ad placements that touches every single channel that we have,” says Satine.

Kingfisher is a long-established force to be reckoned with in the DIY retail, but Satine and his team are clearly ambitious also prove that the group has the chops to become a media heavyweight as well.

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