Key Departures Signal Evolution at Coles Group
Bec Penn Steps Down from Coles 360 Product Leadership
Bec Penn has left her role as Head of Product for Coles 360, Coles Group’s retail media arm. Her departure follows an intensive period of product and platform work aimed at turning Coles 360 into a more cohesive retail media business. At the same time Coles announced the exit of Mike Sackman, its chief technology officer. Two senior exits at once point to a material leadership reset across product and technology.
Strategic Insights on Retail Media’s Future
Penn identified several concrete challenges for retail media. First, fragmented systems that separate onsite, offsite and in-store channel activity undermine measurement and activation. Second, weak data foundations limit audience resolution and attribution. Third, reliance on external programmatic stacks reduces control over media outcomes.
To address those issues she led initiatives to align onsite, offsite and in-store experiences, build stronger first party data pipelines and move programmatic capability inhouse to gain tighter measurement and optimization. Her view is that system integration and a single shopper view are prerequisites for scaling retail media profitably. She also flagged AI as a coming force for automation in targeting and creative personalization, conditioned on clean data and governance.
Coles Group CTO Also Departs
Mike Sackman’s departure amplifies the operational implications. With both product and technology leadership roles vacant, Coles faces a near-term gap in executing platform consolidation and data engineering work. That may slow roadmap delivery if replacements are not appointed quickly, but it also creates an opportunity for a new leadership team to accelerate platform convergence.
Broader Implications for the Retail Media Landscape
The Coles shifts underline a wider industry trend. Retailers will focus on unifying tech stacks, strengthening first party data and bringing programmatic controls in-house. Vendors should prioritize interoperability and measurement capabilities. Brands must invest in data partnerships and measurement frameworks to maintain performance as AI-driven automation becomes more common.
Overall, Penn’s departure is less an endpoint than a signal. Retail media leaders who invest in integrated systems, disciplined data foundations and accountable AI will set the direction for the next phase of the market.
