Joell Robinson, the former senior director of retail media at Giant Eagle, announced she has become Circle K’s new director of retail media.
Robinson, who made the announcement on LinkedIn, spent nearly four years with Giant Eagle, rising from director of performance marketing to senior director of retail media, according to her LinkedIn bio.
During her time as senior director at Giant Eagle, which owned the GetGo Cafe + and Market until Circle K parent Alimentation Couche-Tard acquired it in July, Robinson led new product offerings and the go-to-market strategy for retail media. She also brought the company’s media buying channels in-house and built the media buying and planning team, according to her LinkedIn bio.
In an interview earlier this year with the Women in Retail Media Collective, Robinson said she also worked to integrate retail media across Giant Eagle’s enterprise marketing and merchandising divisions.
“Once we embraced a more cross-functional approach, we started to see the integration points that hadn’t been connecting before,” she noted.
A spokesperson for Circle K did not respond by press time when asked to confirm the appointment and offer additional details.
Circle K and Couche-Tard have been fairly quiet about their plans for retail media, though naming a new division head could signal a ramp-up in activity and investment. Other chains like Wawa, Casey’s General Stores and Parker’s Kitchen have made moves in retail media over the past few years, eager to capitalize on the advertising revenue that comes from impulse-driven in-store and online CPG promotions.
Couche-Tard’s national rival — and recent acquisition target — 7-Eleven, meanwhile, has become a retail media juggernaut. In addition to in-store and online ads, the company also runs a promotional radio network, Gulp Radio, that’s live in more than 12,000 7-Eleven, Speedway and Stripes stores.
