The rise of luxury retail media: Selfridges, Disney combine for unprecedented retail media Xmas campaign – as up-market department stores globally position for next growth wave from non-endemic brands

British luxury department store Selfridges has just launched a Christmas campaign co-created with Disney across almost the entire Selfridges portfolio of in-store and digital media assets. Now it’s pushing harder into retail media – and looking for similarly deep relationships with select brands aiming to tap its 36 million annual customers.

Selfridges head of brand partnerships Kate Eastop is driving that agenda – and bringing in more non-endemic brands, i.e. those it doesn’t stock in stores – into the retail media business. “I see this as a significant growth area for the business over the next few years”, says Eastop. So, she commissioned owned media advisor Sonder to develop a rate card for its physical and digital assets – and ensure everything is properly valued.

The new rates will be live for 2026 and Eastop says the process has helped “establish Selfridges as a serious player in retail media” while bringing internal stakeholders together on the kind of assets and partnerships the luxury retailer will build – and what remains off limits.

Sonder’s Jonathan Hopkins and Angus Frazer see momentum in the luxury retail media market as the supermarket and grocery sector matures. They say brands are willing to pay a higher premium to tap audiences that are more immersed in “retail theatre” experiences versus the transactional hit of the grocery aisle.

“If you’re walking into a theatre of brands in a store like Selfridges, then there is immense dwell time,” per Hopkins. “You’re there to enjoy the shopping experience, not get out as quickly as possible – so those factors are considered in the valuation.”

Sonder has benchmarked a global owned media asset pool of circa $12bn – and Frazer says the market is “approaching an inflection point” with in-store static and digital assets now presenting “the next wave of opportunity” for retail media networks versus commoditised low hanging fruit, like sponsored search and website product tiles.

He says the department stores Sonder has worked with on owned media “typically top out at around 25 per cent of revenues being derived from non-endemic brands”. Key to netting that upside is not being too greedy and eroding both the customer experience, the value of the brand, and thereby undermining the sustainability of the retail media business.

Their advice? Partner wisely. 

“Deep with a few can be better than light with many,” says Hopkins. “Find brands that are a really good fit with your customers and go deep in terms of those brand partnerships across the year. Find those mutually beneficial activations that are going to add value to your customers that you could never have achieved without that partnership.

“If you manage to achieve that, it’s going to create a proven use case within the business, start to normalise behaviour for stakeholders who might have been resistant to it, and then make it easier for future growth.”

Which is precisely the playbook that Selfridges is following – and carving out a deeper niche within the UK’s increasingly crowded retail media market.

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