The way CPG brands plan, execute, and measure their marketing has changed faster in the past five years than in the previous twenty. What used to be a predictable annual exercise has become a continuous cycle of replanning, reacting, and realigning with retailers, consumers, and internal stakeholders who are moving just as quickly.
That’s exactly what Greg Dolan and I dove into on Keen’s latest podcast episode. It was a candid, lively conversation about the state of shopper marketing, the rise of retail media, the growing burden of administrative work, and the foundational data challenges that still slow teams down. Most importantly, we talked about what it actually takes for CPG organizations to move from reactive annual planning to true continuous optimization.
You can listen to the full conversation on Keen’s website here:
https://keends.com/podcast/episodes/ep-209-escaping-annual-planning-trap-shopperations-continuous-optimization/
Below are the core themes we explored and the shifts we believe are reshaping the future of CPG marketing operations.
Annual Planning Is Dead in a VUCA World
Not long ago, most CPG brands approached planning as a once-a-year ritual. Teams built decks, set budgets, outlined shopper programs, then executed those plans with minimal deviation. That rhythm made sense in a stable environment.
But stability is not the world we live in anymore.
Today’s CPG industry is undeniably VUCA, meaning volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Supply chain disruption, retailer power shifts, accelerating digitization, fragmented media, and unpredictable shopper behavior mean that any plan created nine months in advance is almost guaranteed to be outdated before it launches.
In the podcast, I put it bluntly: annual planning is the way of the past. Modern teams must plan continually, reforecast continuously, and adjust with speed. Plans are fluid now because the world is fluid.
Why Continuous Planning Matters
Continuous optimization isn’t just “planning more often.” It’s a fundamentally different operating model.
In a continuous planning environment:
- Plans adapt to retailer conversations in real time
- Teams can react to competitive moves or supply disruptions within days, not quarters
- Budgets shift toward what’s working instead of staying locked in outdated assumptions
- Cross-functional partners have up-to-date visibility into plans and performance
The result is a more agile, collaborative, responsive marketing organization that doesn’t get trapped by the calendar.
One of the key points I stressed is that continuous planning only works if the underlying data structures, systems, and workflows support it. Otherwise, it just creates more chaos and admin work. That’s why so many teams are overwhelmed: they’re trying to operate in a continuous world using annual-planning tools and spreadsheets that were never designed for this level of complexity.
You Can’t Optimize Until You Fix Your Foundations
Many brands want to skip straight to analytics, AI, and advanced modeling. But without proper data “raw materials,” those investments fail.
In the podcast, I emphasized three foundational building blocks:
1. A system of record for marketing plans
If campaign details live in shared folders, random spreadsheets, or vendor-owned files, teams will always struggle to analyze or optimize.
2. A standardized data taxonomy
Without consistent naming conventions for tactics, initiatives, vendors, campaigns, and products, every analysis becomes a painful, manual cleanup job.
3. Clean, structured data that everyone trusts
This is the fuel for analytics, automation, and AI. If the fuel is bad, nothing downstream works.
Greg and I talked about real examples of teams working with 15 different vendors, each delivering data in different formats. It’s impossible to optimize in that environment. Before analytics, before modeling, before AI, you need clarity and consistency.
Retail Media Is Too Big To Be a Silo
Retail media has exploded to the point where it now represents 70 to 80 percent of many brands’ shopper budgets. Yet in many organizations, it’s still treated as a separate world—managed by a specialized team that isn’t fully connected to the rest of the shopper or brand planning ecosystem.
That silo is becoming expensive.
Retailers themselves are merging in-store and e-commerce buying teams. Brands must match that integration internally. Retail media is no longer an experimental digital add-on. It is the center of modern shopper marketing.
As I shared on the podcast, if you want to stay relevant in omnichannel shopper marketing, you must understand retail media. Teams that embrace this shift are gaining influence, growing budgets, and having more strategic conversations with retailers. Teams that resist are falling behind.
The Administrative Overload Is Real
One of the most painful truths we discussed is the crushing administrative burden shopper marketers face today. Research shows that 52 percent of marketers’ time is now spent on admin tasks: replying to emails, compiling decks, formatting data, and answering internal status questions.
That is an extraordinary loss of talent, creativity, and strategic thinking.
This happens because stakeholders (sales, brand teams, finance, leadership) need information, and the only way to get it is by asking marketers to manually pull it from multiple systems.
Systems that weren’t built for transparency create an endless cycle of “Can you send me the latest version?” Continuous planning makes this even harder if you don’t have the right tools.
The antidote is self-service visibility. A single system where you plan once, and anyone can answer their own questions. Not only does it save time, it elevates the role of the marketer from data wrangler to strategic partner.
The Future: AI and Intelligent Marketing Operations
We ended the conversation by looking ahead at how AI will reshape marketing operations. The first wave is already here: natural-language querying, automated insight summaries, and self-serve reports.
But the future is far more transformational.
We talked about agentic systems that will eventually:
- Recommend optimal plans
- Predict performance based on historical data
- Allocate budgets dynamically
- Automate scenario planning
- Continuously refine plans without manual intervention
But none of this happens without the groundwork: clean data, integrated systems, and a consistent taxonomy.
AI will not fix chaos. AI will accelerate chaos unless the foundations are in place. But when those foundations are solid, AI becomes an accelerant to strategic excellence.
Closing Thoughts
This podcast with Keen was a great opportunity to reflect on how dramatically the CPG landscape is shifting and how essential it is for teams to modernize their operations.
The message is simple: Annual planning cannot keep up with a VUCA world. Continuous optimization is the new standard.
But to get there, teams must build the right data foundations, integrate their planning systems, reduce administrative drag, and embrace retail media as part of their core shopper strategy. The next frontier is AI, and the work we do today will determine how ready we are for that transformation.
You can listen to the full episode here.
If your organization is ready to modernize your planning and build a continuous optimization engine, our team at Shopperations is here to help, let’s talk!
.png)
