LAVAL, Canada — Joell Robinson, the former senior director of retail media at Giant Eagle, has been named Circle K’s new Director of Retail Media.
Robinson announced the move on LinkedIn, noting it follows nearly four years at Giant Eagle, where she advanced from director of performance marketing to senior director of retail media. During her tenure, she helped bring media buying channels in-house, built a dedicated team, and developed go-to-market strategies for new product offerings. She also worked to embed retail media more deeply across Giant Eagle’s marketing and merchandising divisions.
Her transition comes shortly after Alimentation Couche-Tard, Circle K’s parent company, acquired Giant Eagle’s GetGo Café + Market convenience store chain in July. In a previous interview with the Women in Retail Media Collective, Robinson said her work at Giant Eagle focused on breaking down silos between departments: “Once we embraced a more cross-functional approach, we started to see the integration points that hadn’t been connecting before.”
Circle K has so far kept quiet about its broader retail media ambitions, but Robinson’s appointment signals the company may be preparing to expand its efforts. Other regional and national convenience store operators, including Wawa, Casey’s General Stores and Parker’s Kitchen, have ramped up investments in retail media networks to capture incremental advertising revenue.
Circle K’s chief competitor, 7-Eleven, has become one of the most aggressive players in the space, with in-store and online advertising as well as its own branded radio station, Gulp Radio, broadcasting in more than 12,000 stores nationwide.
