David Young, VP of Retail Media at Dick’s Sporting Goods, joins The Big Impression podcast to talk about how the retailer in enhancing the customer journey.
As retailers look to turn shopper relationships into media businesses, Dick’s Sporting Goods is focused on building a retail media strategy that feels less like advertising, and more like service.
David Young, VP of Retail Media at Dick’s Sporting Goods, joins The Big Impression podcast to discuss how the company is approaching retail media at a time when the space is becoming increasingly crowded, competitive and performance-driven. For Young, the differentiator comes down to experience, trust and understanding intent in moments that matter to consumers.
Damian Fowler (00:00):
I'm Damian Fowler.
Ilyse Liffreing (00:01):
And I'm Ilyse Liffreing.
Damian Fowler (00:02):
And welcome to The Big Impression.
Ilyse Liffreing (00:09):
This week we're joined by David Young, VP of retail media at Dick's Sporting Goods.
Damian Fowler (00:14):
And this one hit a little close to home for me because I've got young kids who are getting into sports. In fact, soccer right now and I can tell you it's quickly become its own universe.
Ilyse Liffreing (00:24):
Exactly. In fact, Dick's is more than just sports goods. It's building its whole brand around the culture of sport itself.
Damian Fowler (00:31):
From immersive stores to game changer, which is its youth sports app used by millions of families, the company's creating a media ecosystem that stretches far beyond the transaction.
Ilyse Liffreing (00:42):
So today we're unpacking how brands connect with consumers through sports culture and why retail media is becoming much more experiential and emotional.
Damian Fowler (00:52):
So let's get into it. So David, tell us about the new campaign. I understand this is the third back to school campaign you've done with this brand.
David Young (01:03):
That's right. Yeah. We're working with On Footwear who many people know is a performance running brand out of Europe. So they have a very specific tone to their branding and we've been working with them and scaling their business through Dick's Sporting Goods for years. But it's very performance focused. It's very minimalist and modern and it's approached the tone to their creative. And a back to school moment, especially for us at Dick's Sporting Goods, is really focused on family. So it gave us the opportunity as Dick's Media to really flex the full breadth of our capabilities, not just targeting, not just media, but also up into briefing in our creative team to create a bespoke campaign for our athletes that was really more focused on making kids feel confident at the start of school. Our athletes, our customers, our gearing up in store, made sure on was one of those first brands that they were thinking about when they were going to gear up for their kids.
Damian Fowler (02:01):
Yeah. It's a key moment that for all parents. I know I've got a seven-year-old who plays soccer and there's always a degree of anxiety. So it's very important to get that moment right,
David Young (02:12):
Especially
Damian Fowler (02:12):
For parents. Could you give us a little bit more insight into how the campaign, what the creative element of the campaign?
David Young (02:19):
Almost exclusively shot with children from the Pittsburgh area at a local school, basically allowing them to show their own personalities in the footwear, which is a line that was specific to Dick's and different ways that they performed going into school. And some of that was sports related. Some of it was just about being more confident in yourself and in your skin dancing around in a way that really brought the personality of that moment to life and put on front and center in a way that was unexpected for a brand that traditionally would not be a brand that a lot of those parents would reach for when they think about their kids versus themselves on a marathon run. And we saw a complete shift in sales, not just in over benchmark and impressions, but greatly exceeded our benchmarks and our goals for sales for that particular program.
(03:10):
And there's a reason we run it and iterate it every year and think of a new way to angle to approach that key insight that's really resonating with our athletes.
Ilyse Liffreing (03:19):
I feel like one thing that might be even surprising to the consumer is that you guys have to start on that campaign now.
David Young (03:27):
Exactly.
Ilyse Liffreing (03:27):
And maybe you could walk us through why you even have to start it at this point in the spring ahead of the back to school season. And I think one of those is just how many channels you are looking at.
David Young (03:39):
Yeah, you're right. It's not just creative production. It's the number of channels in which we're working, everything from connected TV through the in- store experience. And the lead times are different depending on what we're talking about, let alone trying to determine what product is we want to source and show within that event. I think another element though is the insights that we have on our customer base, on the athletes themselves. We see the signals from our retail performance of when people start thinking about Gear Up and it is way earlier than you might expect. But we know and experience this ourselves that we start to see that purchase behavior begin in the late spring and the earlier summer months as families start to prepare for those moments.
Damian Fowler (04:23):
It's interesting, this is the third time around you mentioned, what have you learned about doing this the last couple of years?
David Young (04:31):
I think what we've learned is actually a truth that's at the core of the offering in general, which is like the way we pitch ourselves is where we are connecting brands to the culture of sport. The culture of sport means many different things. I think everybody immediately thinks fandom, but that's one element. Sport culture is fitness. Sport culture is fashion. Sport culture is performance for youth sports or even myself as a hobbyist. And just even the mentality that you get from sport that people bring into the business world or into their personal lives. I think we are sitting on a connection to our customers from the assets that we own, not just the purchase data, but the shopping experience that we have on the commerce side. As you mentioned, yes, there's some anxiety that can be tied to some of those purchases, but it's also very aspirational.
(05:25):
It's fun to shop for sporting goods and fashion and footwear in a way that some of the categories aren't. And then on the other side, we own Game Changer, which is the number one youth sports app in America. It's stat tracking, game scheduling and streaming for over a million teams across many different sports across the country. So we are with these families and with these athletes from the sidelines to the store. And the insight we got from that is that this is a life stage for many people. When you have a young athlete, and that's primarily who we serve, is the families with young athletes. You're in that for 10 years and that's something we want to connect with both for vendor partners and even non-endemic partners.
Damian Fowler (06:11):
That's interesting, the life cycle you see. And the physical stores play an important role in anchoring Vital, the community. Could you talk a little bit about, you said from the sidelines to the store, and I love that phrase actually. If you could talk a little bit more about that connection.
David Young (06:26):
Absolutely. I think there's a lot of research around shifts in third spaces and how retail is leaning into the ability to connect with the consumer in a different way. What we've built at Dick's Sporting Goods is as much an experience of sports as it is a shopping experience. So we have a few different store footprints. Our premier is called a house of sport. It often has a climbing wall. It has a football field on the side of it. Wow, that's
Ilyse Liffreing (06:58):
Huge.
David Young (06:58):
It will probably have 50 yards, maybe not a full football field, but close enough. Batting cages, hitting bays. This is almost an FAO Schwartz for sport, but it helps us bring our brand to life in a different way and also to bring the product to life in a different way for our consumers. And I think the other insight from that is it also allows us to bring a space for brands who aren't selling product in our store to come in and participate in those moments and participate in that culture. Because again, if I am a sporthood parent, it's not just affecting how many cleats I buy a year and I'm right there with you. But also the car I drive, the loyalty programs I'm a part of, the phone I own, it could go around the pie chart on my share of wallet and so much of it is influenced by this life stage I'm in that is central to the identity that I have as a person, not just even as a consumer.
(07:56):
I think that unique connection that we have is something that we want to hold dear but also unlock through Dick's Media Network.
Ilyse Liffreing (08:05):
I would love to get into some of those results you've seen so far and those KPIs. Have you seen any proof so far that connecting all those touchpoints, the media, the data, the in- store experience is changing how customers actually engage with Dick's?
David Young (08:22):
Absolutely. I think you see it just from the relevance in and of itself, if you're just talking core commerce or retail media, the ability to connect specific product back to the purchase history or the shopping behavior of a given consumer or segment of consumers is going to help us drive results digitally. But I think a lot of what we've also built in our stores through our experiences that we built into stores are giving us more insight into product engagement, into impressions of individuals who are seeing those spaces and even sentiment where we're able to capture that for a few of our executions that are, yes, helping us drive sales lift for specific brands in the door and allowing us to share that with brands. And we're seeing market shifts and control versus a test group when we're running some of these executions, that it's also getting us more data because there will be executions where we will have product that maybe you won't see the sales lift you expected for that particular product even if you see lifts of an engagement, lifts in what we'll call it a tryon request, for example.
(09:29):
So we see that our athletes are engaging with a product in an outsized way, but maybe there's a product problem, right? Maybe there's a colorway issue. It gives us as a retailer even more intel to help us make better decisions about how we're planning the store and the product that we're buying.
Damian Fowler (09:48):
One of the fascinating things about sports culture is that it's very much influenced by what's actually happening in the real world at any given time. This year, of course, we've got the World Cup and then you obviously see moments around March Madness or the Super Bowl or the Olympics. How do you tie in the campaigns that you're working on with the kind of culture at large? You've got your SKU level data even, but then you have this kind of broader culture of sport at any given moment.
David Young (10:16):
And we participate in that culture both as an entity ourselves and we know our consumers, our athletes are there. So we're creating around the events like the World Cup, specific approaches for both vendor partners and non-endemic advertisers to reach our athletes as they're participating in these events because we know they're there. They are athletes themselves. That's what we always call our consumers. So we know they're participating at a moment like the World Cup. We want to make sure that we're showing up in the right ways and we're helping our brands show up in the right ways too and connecting in store events all the way up to the top of the funnel as well where so many people are competing for broadcast views. We want to be able to help brands cut through down in the in- store environment because how are you going to participate if you can't get a ticket?
(11:07):
You're going to go get a jersey, you're going to pick up an official ball or you're going to watch on CTV or highlights through social. All of that are signals that we're capturing and that we see ourselves and we want to make sure that we're leveraging not only for ourselves and product sales, but for brands to be able to connect in those moments with the right type of message.
Damian Fowler (11:26):
You have all of this data on particular athletes interests, let's say it's soccer. Do you see connections between one category and another? Are you able to draw lines between say one athlete who is interested in soccer and then maybe the athlete's interest in other sports that are closer to it?
David Young (11:45):
Yeah, you can start to see that snowball effect and it can be different age group to age group based on the insights that we have. You can also see how it starts to grow specific categories. We would anticipate coming out of an event like a World Cup. There will be an after effect within broader soccer and licensed year than we would've seen it in an off year just as those moments of a culturals like geist help to influence how our consumers are showing up in store.
Damian Fowler (12:17):
What's your perception of this particular moment?
David Young (12:19):
Yeah, I think it's a couple things. I think it's first and foremost, I'll call it cultural readiness, especially in America. I think just the way soccer is consumed now thanks to a lot to connect to TV to social media, there are younger athletes, younger consumers and even those who are older who might be still newer to the sport if they didn't grow up with it, who are more engaged because they're able to be more engaged. You can consume more high level soccer year round in a way that you could not before. And in a world where we're always hungry for more sports and more high level sports, it is untapped and I think it's still growing here. And I think what brands are recognizing is you have the largest economy in the world that is more ready for this particular moment than ever before and they want to make sure they're able to capitalize on it.
Ilyse Liffreing (13:14):
Have there been any other surprises in terms of unique ways you've leaned into first party data or just simply takeaways that you think worked better than expected or something that you'd rather maybe tweak for the next time?
David Young (13:31):
Something we're leaning into that's working better than expected is not related to data. It's related to the shopping experience. So in store, part of our in- store advertising solution is something called a lift and learn, where we have magnetic shelves in front of the screen with RFID enabled product. So as you lift the product, the creative will change and it's enabled for sound as well and we're capturing sentiment through that experience too.
Ilyse Liffreing (14:00):
Do you think that could work with just any product?
David Young (14:03):
I don't know if it could work for any product and we also works different product to product. So different categories, like part of having all this data, we're learning what works in different categories in different ways. So I don't think that works for everything, but we're learning enough to know how it works differently in say golf versus in footwear and even then within you started dimensionalizing footwear, how it'll work in different places there. But I think some of those learnings are also helping us with non-endemic partners who we're bringing into the store to help them understand how they can best reach those athletes, because we're getting those same product and engagement metrics on messages that we're showing there to help them show up in the right way.
Damian Fowler (14:44):
Now you mentioned the non-endemic partners. That sort of leads us to a little bit of a conversation about the retail media play that Dick's has started leaning into, is it in 2022?
David Young (14:53):
That's correct.
Damian Fowler (14:55):
And then how has that, I guess the question is, that seems like an age ago, especially in the world of ad tech. How has that four years, how has it evolved for you, the retail media network insights that you are able to now offer your endemic and non-endemic partners?
David Young (15:12):
I think the way it's evolved, and I'll give a lot of credit to the team that stood up that offering. I've been in seat about a year and a half. So there's a part of that journey that I saw secondhand, but what I've experienced since I joined and what I've seen as we've grown is that it's constant iteration in two different ways. There are definitely best practices and must haves that you want to have in this space, better understanding of the athletes you're reaching, the right type of attribution model, incrementality, these are basics and core offerings that go with it, but that only gets you to a certain point. How you start to grow beyond that and how you're partnering with any type of advertiser has to come back to the unique connection that you have to your consumer or in our case the athlete.
(16:02):
So that's part of where that story or that feeling of sporthood comes from, but also what are the assets and how our athletes work with us that are going to be unique and help us create differentiate experiences. That's really what led to us building what we built in store. That's what led to us thinking about building out a creative offering to help brands tell the right stories to different segments of our total athlete base. And now we're really building on what is a core best practiced foundation into offerings that are more specific about our value proposition and the athletes we serve.
Damian Fowler (16:38):
Just on that, how would you define your valu proposition?
David Young (16:41):
Connecting advertisers to the culture of sport because fandom is one aspect, but there are many more and they're often core to the identity of the individuals that we serve. So helping you reach them with a message of how they see themselves is much more impactful than just scale of data. So we find both the moments either when they're in an aspirational mindset and they're in our store or when they're locked in on a loved one's performance and game changer or leveraging our data set to use the right signals to ensure an advertiser knows I'm going to reach somebody who's actually interested in my product during World Cup.
Damian Fowler (17:21):
You're in a really interesting space in the sports culture space, unlike other retailers, you are dealing with that aspirational side of
David Young (17:30):
Things.
Damian Fowler (17:30):
I mean, you may hear from CPGs that they're in an aspirational space too, but I feel like sports is unique in its own way. So I feel like you've got a sweet spot right there to correct.
David Young (17:41):
We feel the same way. It's a very interesting space to be playing. It's freeing in some ways because it allows you to tell very cool and interesting stories and it's also, it's a challenge in others. You have to build something that's differentiated that fits a very unique mindset, but we've been up to the challenge so far and we're excited to keep exploring that space.
Ilyse Liffreing (18:01):
I feel like a lot of the retail media networks that are growing up in ways tend to be a litle bit more siloed perhaps versus part of the overall marketing or
David Young (18:14):
Branding
Ilyse Liffreing (18:16):
Perspective of the company. How would you describe how Dick's is different than that siloed philosophy?
David Young (18:25):
Right. We are all one team, pardon the pun, but I report- It's a good one. I report into the CMO and the chief e-commerce officer, dual title. So my partners and my peers are enterprise marketing, category marketing, e-commerce. And because we have these same aligned incentives, we are finding new ways to work together that are benefiting the entirety of the business. So if that's me investing in capabilities that are going to eventually help support everything we're doing in marketing or us leveraging the insights and the strategy that can come up at our category marketing team to help my team be smarter about how we're showing up in a specific category with a campaign concept. There's a lot of opportunity that we've started to define, but I think what the first thing is the silos comment is not something that's been true for us. It's not true because we haven't let it be true.
(19:33):
We set up time to knowledge share to ensure we're collaborating in ways that means that some of that painful work that can incur in organizations around ways of working is always happening, but that is what we have found has been beneficial.
Damian Fowler (19:49):
One thing I'm really curious about, you represent hundreds of amazing sport brands. How do you determine in terms of your overall strategy as a retailer, which ones kind of get the spotlight?
David Young (20:06):
Within the retail media network or in general?
Damian Fowler (20:08):
In general, I think.
David Young (20:10):
Yeah, I think some of that comes back to the stories we want to tell together. And I'd say first and foremost, we represent a lot of very large and I'll call, I'll say world-class storytellers, but in a lot of ways they also represent themselves. The stories that they want to tell where their synergy with how we want to show up to the athlete, that's really where we find those moments. And sometimes that means we're going to show up together with a partner. Sometimes it means they're going to be thinking more of a specific play through the network, but we really try to focus on those where we see resonance and overlap with our own customer base and what our athletes are looking to see and what also gels with the business goals that we have with a particular partner.
Ilyse Liffreing (20:59):
I know something that Dick's and even you are very passionate about is the changing nature of youth sports, which has changed significantly and what's gotten more expensive, more time consuming. Parents have more choice too than ever, I feel like. So professional
Damian Fowler (21:16):
Almost in some ways. I think youth community has become like this funnel. Yeah.
Ilyse Liffreing (21:20):
How does that shift influence how you market to modern families and kids today?
David Young (21:27):
Yeah. So I'd say a few things. It's hard to be a parent in this space and not acknowledge the shifts that are occurring in youth sports. It feels weird to even call it an industry, honestly, because I think something that's core to the beliefs at Dick's Sporting Goods is that sports change lives and we believe that firmly. It's why we're in the business that we're in and it's formative to how our consumers grow up. So we try to lean into the possibility that participating in sports creates rather than maximizing any given return with one family or another. I think there's ways of how we want to show up that we try to be very clear and concise about to make sure that yes, we are running a business, but we're not going over the top, if you will. The other side of what we're doing is in the Sports Change Lives campaign or initiative that we run where we are literally giving back to communities in need, leagues in need to help ensure, as you mentioned, there's this gravitational pull towards travel sports.
(22:35):
Not everybody can participate in that in the same way. We're very serious about ensuring that we're elevating leagues of all types and ensuring that as many kids can play as possible.
Ilyse Liffreing (22:46):
Oh, that's great. Now, when you zoom out a little bit, what would you say success looks like for Dick's as a media platform over the next few years and perhaps not just as a retailer?
David Young (23:01):
Exactly right. And I think you said it. We try to avoid calling ourselves an RM. I think because of the assets we sit in and the partnerships we have, we want to be in a commerce enabled sports network. We believe we already are, but we think we can get bigger and more sophisticated because we really do have a unique connection to the rest of sports culture that is almost the glacier under the ice or under the water, if you will, for the total sports culture in America. And we want to unlock that for not only for our own business, but for advertisers for at large.
Ilyse Liffreing (23:35):
If you could change one thing about how brands show up in youth sports culture today, what would it be?
David Young (23:42):
Show up for the everyday athlete. I think we all want to be aspirational. I think part of being aspirational means you're often speaking to the best player on the team. I think there's a lot of opportunity when you speak to the 12th player, the one who wants to be a part of it and how you help empower them in this space.
Ilyse Liffreing (24:02):
Besides Dick's, is there a brand you think is doing it the best right now?
David Young (24:07):
Connecting with youth. I do think I like the way you've started to see Nike find their personality again, which is almost counterintuitive to what I just said about the youth athlete, but I think in general, the relaunch of their brand campaign last year, which we were able to participate and the tone that they brought to market is in many ways unapologetic. It's very true to their legacy, but in a new way based on insights about today's young athlete that I think is really interesting and how they've shown up.
Damian Fowler (24:43):
Do you have a take on where brands play too safe in sports marketing? I'll
David Young (24:48):
Go to my same point. I think if you're trying to speak to everyone, you're speaking to no one. And I think sports in general is becoming more specialized, more fragmented around subcultures. Look at run for example, and that can be now everything from lifestyle through to performance. Those are unique customer bases and you need to speak to them differently. Don't be afraid about either picking a lane or building a message that is more unique and based on the insights you have on those subcultures, because I think that's more and more of that today. Even in youth sports, our diamond athlete looks very different from our soccer athlete, for example. And we need to think about that ourselves as marketers. I need to think about that as an RMN when we're bringing our vendor partners or other advertisers into those spaces. So that's my guidance.
Damian Fowler (25:50):
And that's it for this edition of The Big Impression.
Ilyse Liffreing (25:52):
This show is produced by Molten Heart. Our theme is by Love and Caliber, and our associate producer is Sydney Cairns.
Damian Fowler (25:59):
And remember,
David Young (26:00):
Helping you reach them with a message of how they see themselves is much more impactful than just scale of data.
Damian Fowler (26:09):
I'm Damian.
Ilyse Liffreing (26:10):
And I'm Ilyse.
Damian Fowler (26:11):
And we'll see you next time.