Say Hello to Georgia Leathart

Get to know Georgia, Cartology's Agency Strategy Lead

As a strategist, Georgia asks a lot of questions. This time, it's our turn. We asked Georgia to share her thoughts on Retail Media, working at Cartology and how she uses her natural curiosity and collaborative spirit to solve complex challenges for our partners and their brands.  

Tell us a bit about yourself and your role. 

I’m Georgia, a relatively fresh Cartologist with just one year under my belt as Agency Strategy Lead. Prior to joining Cartology, the last decade of my working career has been spent within media agencies, in planning and strategy roles, most recently as Head of Strategy at Hearts & Science.

I come from a family of advertising bodies, my mum was a media planner for most of her working career, and my brother is a creative so there’s plenty of heated debate in the family Whatsapp on advertising campaigns, brand vs performance, and what we deem good or bad creative or comms strategies. 

My role is to bring my passion for media strategy and marketing theory into our business. Ultimately, I’m collaborating with the agency and our internal partners, turning customer insights into strategic media plans that solve a challenge for our agency partners and their brands.  

Most recently in my role, I’ve been working with the team on a new piece of research to understand customer behaviour across different centre types. We’ve found that for FMCG brands, the size of the centre matters and smaller retail centers are the most valuable, commanding the lion’s share of sales and customer spend due to convenience. Working closely with agencies, we’re using this research plus our deep customer insight to evolve the path to purchase and Retail Out of Home strategy for maximum efficiency.

What specifically about your work here, or the challenges we're tackling, gets you genuinely excited to come in every day? 

The village model of client, agency and creative agency that has existed for some time now holds enormous potential if expanded out to also include Retail Media partners. This means we’ll be able to effectively and authentically connect brand and trade media, delivering truly connected campaigns across the  customer journey. 

It is early days on this journey, but there is huge interest and appetite in this space, and we’re already experiencing some clear wins from clients that are leaning into this unified model.

Looking at our business, what's one area where you see immense untapped potential for growth or improvement? 

No one has a greater understanding of customer behaviour and category trends than we do, so my big passion is working hand in hand with clients, agency and creative partners to leverage these insights to create idea-led campaigns. A great idea can start with the theatre of in-store, whether it’s through BIG W or Supermarkets, and play that out across multiple formats across the broader customer journey.

What’s one trend you’re keeping a close eye on? 

A concept I’m coining is ‘Reactive Retail’. Trending products and recipes have amassed since COVID and the continued rise of TikTok. As part of the Woolworths Group we have the ability to see these cultural shifts having true commercial impact as items move from trending to transacting. 

If anyone has tried to buy cottage cheese lately you’d be aware of this one… a viral ‘beef hot honey bowl ft cottage cheese’ tiktok recipe caused the product to sell out, and this phenomena has even been reported on the news.

Thus far, these viral moments are living purely within social, however I’m passionate about bringing these closer to store through agile Retail Media solutions. 

Moments like these are the ultimate way to drive product trial and attract the holy grail of customers, ‘light buyers’.

What's the best career advice you've received? 

If you’re in a meeting, ask a question. Be present, and participate. If you didn’t say a word then that meeting probably wasn’t worth your time. I was told that very early in my career and it has stuck with me more than anything else. 

As a strategist, sometimes my curiosity and passion means I probably ask TOO MANY questions. However, the benefit is that I walk out of every meeting having learnt something new.