Reinventing Retail Marketing: Dr. Jan Flemming’s Blueprint for the Future
Retail media is no longer just the fastest-growing channel in advertising — it’s evolving into one of the most consequential. Global retail media investment is expected to reach $200 billion by 2027, with European spend now outpacing growth in the broader digital ad market. Retailers, once seen as media bystanders, are becoming full-funnel customer platforms powered by first-party data, AI, and commerce adjacencies in digital, audio, social, and in-store experiences.
Against this global swell of retail media innovation, Dr. Jan Flemming — Head of REWE Group Media and CMO of PENNY— has emerged as one of the most compelling marketing leaders reshaping how retailers build relationships, deploy media, and create value in a digital-first, sustainability-led world.
The REWE supermarket chain is the flagship retail brand of the Cologne-based REWE Group. It is one of the largest food retailers in Germany and a major player in Central and Eastern Europe. PENNY is the Group’s discount grocery chain, operating in Germany and multiple European countries.
Honored in 2025 as Media Personality of the Year in Germany and recognized as Internationalist of the Year, Jan has steered not just marketing outcomes but industry perspectives—challenging assumptions, advancing transparency, and proving that retail innovation can be both human-centered and data-powered.
Proving Why “Good Enough” Isn’t Enough
Jan Flemming catalyzed one of the most important industry conversations about media performance by exposing a hard truth: IP-based geo-targeting—which the industry had relied upon for years—was only 10% accurate at the postal-code level.
Rather than settle for incremental improvement, Jan’s team engineered a new targeting system that achieved 67% accuracy, sparking industry-wide dialogue and raising the bar on media accountability. It wasn’t just a technical challenge; it was a cultural one—questioning inherited assumptions to build something measurably better.
Two Roles, One Unified Vision
Since 2023, Jan has held dual roles — steering REWE Group’s retail media division and leading marketing as CMO of PENNY–a combination still rare in retail organizations globally. The advantage? A connected view of customer experience and monetization that unifies brand strategy, loyalty, data intelligence, and media commercialization, enabling quicker innovation cycles and holistic measurement of impact.
Under his watch, REWE Group Retail Media Connect has expanded across:
- In-store digital advertising across thousands of screens
- Online retail media via REWE.de and PENNY platforms
- Sponsored search and display solutions
- Omnichannel activation with closed-loop measurement
- Social amplification tied to point-of-sale performance
This integrated approach positions REWE Group not just as a retailer with media placements, but as a scaled commerce media ecosystem — one that reflects where global retail is headed.
A Billion Flyers Retired — And a Better ROI Born
In a landmark sustainability and efficiency move, REWE Group retired more than one billion printed flyers, redirecting budget and audience attention to digital alternatives. The initiative wasn’t just an environmental signal — it demonstrated marketing modernization at scale:
- Tons of CO₂ eliminated
- Cost efficiencies unlocked
- Measurement vastly improved
- Customer engagement digitized
For many global retailers, printed circulars still represent one of the hardest habits to change. In Germany’s hypercompetitive grocery sector, it was a bold lesson in moving legacy behaviors into measurable, addressable environments without losing reach or relevance.
Germany’s Largest Loyalty Program, Powered by First-Party Data
In early 2025, Jan helped launch Germany’s largest loyalty program built on first-party data, marking another display of forward momentum at a time when privacy regulations and cookie deprecation have forced marketers to invest directly in authenticated relationships.
For Jan, first-party data is not just an abstraction — it is the foundation for personal relevance, retail media precision, and long-term trust.
To learn more from Dr. Jan Flemming and why the future belongs to the marketers and retailers brave enough to redesign the foundations, rather than “decorate” the outcomes, watch the video interview on Internationalist Marketing TV (IMTV) on YouTube by CLICKING HERE.
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In our conversation, we discuss the following:
- You’ve been described as a trailblazer in data-driven media innovation– from exposing flaws in digital geo-targeting and pioneering new standards of accuracy, to eliminating printed flyers to save tons of CO₂, to launching Germany’s largest loyalty program powered by first-party data. How did you manage to move from innovative ideas to real-world results?
- How do you balance long-term brand strategy with the immediacy of media innovation?
- What sparked your decision to challenge the industry’s reliance on IP-based geo-targeting? Your work showed that geo-targeting accuracy was only about 10% at the postal code level, yet your new approach improved this to 67%. How do you see this shift influencing the future of digital media standards worldwide?
- Your geo-targeting breakthrough sparked industry-wide debate about standards and transparency. How important is it for marketers to question long-standing practices, even when they seem “good enough”?
- REWE Group’s move from printed flyers to digital communication not only modernized outreach but also saved tons of CO₂. What was the biggest challenge in driving this transformation, and how did customers respond?
- With the launch of Germany’s largest loyalty program based on first-party data, how are you redefining customer relationships in a privacy-first world?
- What leadership lessons have you learned from running both marketing and media in parallel that other marketers might apply in their own organizations?
- What advice would you give to marketers worldwide who want to turn operational challenges into industry-wide solutions, as you’ve done at REWE?
Listen to Jan Flemming discuss what retail marketing intelligence looks like in a connected commerce world, and also listen to The Internationalist’s entire Trendsetters podcast series here on iHeartRadio’s Spreaker or wherever you download your podcasts.
Key Takeaways for Marketers Everywhere
| Strategic Lens | What Jan Proves |
|---|---|
| Innovation | Challenge industry assumptions and test rigorously |
| Media | Demand transparency, accountability, and proof |
| Leadership | Collapse silos between marketing and media |
| Loyalty | Own your customer relationships directly |
| Sustainability | Digital transformation can drive efficiency, impact, and growth |
Jan Flemming’s impact isn’t simply that he modernized a retailer. It’s that he shifted the definition of what retail marketing intelligence looks like in a connected commerce world — one where media, customer experience, sustainability, and loyalty are not separate ambitions, but the same strategy expressed through different channels.
Retail media is projected to cross $200 billion globally because retailers are no longer selling products — they are selling audiences, intent, and first-party signal. Jan’s work shows that how a retailer evolves matters just as much as how fast.
And for marketers everywhere wrestling with fragmentation, vision fatigue, or transformation paralysis, his record makes one point undeniable:
The future belongs to the marketers and retailers brave enough to redesign the foundations, not just decorate the outcomes.
