The State of Creative Operations in Grocery Retail Promotions

The risk of traditional grocery retail promo workflows and how to stay ahead
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The state of grocery retail
promotion at a glance

57%

produce between 50 and 200 format and market variants per campaign

71%

have recently experienced a production failure

60%

say failures hit hardest commercially: missed promotional window revenue

84%

expect to automate a quarter to half of their campaign design within three years

Your promo campaigns are live. Your process is not.

Every week, across thousands of grocery retail stores in Europe and North America, promotional campaigns go live. Brandwidth 2026 maps where graphic production workflows breaks, what it costs, and what the teams already pulling ahead are doing differently. We break the problem into five parts.
Read them in order, or start where it hurts most.

1

The Scale of the Problem

Insights into how many variants, campaigns and markets a typical grocery retail team is producing, and why those numbers shape everything that follows.
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2

Where the Promo Production Process Breaks Down

Three fault lines run through grocery retail promotional production: speed, consistency, and error exposure. Only 11% say their current process reliably prevents next failures.
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3

The Business Cost

Operational disruption is the visible face of production failure. The real cost sits elsewhere, and most organizations have not formally accounted for it.
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You know the risks. Now see the numbers.

Eight questions. A risk profile that spans error exposure, speed risk, and scale pressure.
Calculate your risk
4

How Teams are Coping

Most teams get close to delivering most of the time. This part examines what that delivery is costing, and why the usual coping mechanisms are not solutions.
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5

What Comes Next

The industry is alert to the opportunity but uneven in its progress. Where automation actually lands first, and what it costs the teams that wait.
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“The teams pulling ahead have already begun their transition: connected infrastructure, governed templates, production risk shifted from people to systems.”

Brandwidth 2026

256 grocery retail leaders mapped the problem. See where you stand.

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About the Brandwidth

2026 research

Brandwidth 2026 is an independent quantitative research study commissioned
by CHILI publish and conducted by Savanta, a specialist research agency. Fieldwork was conducted in March 2026 via an online survey administered by Savanta.

Respondent profile

All respondents were screened to confirm direct involvement in producing promotional materials within a grocery retail organization. Respondents represent leadership functions in marketing, operations, procurement, brand management, IT and creative functions across organizations of varying scale, from single-market local operators to international groups running campaigns across multiple countries simultaneously.

Research integrity

No weighting was applied to the data. All figures reflect unweighted responses. Percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number. Where multi-select questions are referenced, percentages do not sum to 100 and this is noted in the report. The research was designed and conducted independently by Savanta.

About CHILI publish

CHILI publish is the company behind CHILI GraFx, the creative automation platform built to tackle high-volume, multichannel graphic production at scale. Founded on a deep understanding of the operational challenges facing marketing and creative teams, CHILI publish works with global brands, retailers and production agencies to replace people-dependent production workflows with connected, system-driven ones.
CHILI GraFx connects data systems, including PIM, DAM, pricing tools and CRM, directly to Design Systems that generate brand-compliant campaign variants automatically, at any volume, across any channel or market. Local teams can adapt within brand-governed parameters without design skills or central team dependency. The platform is used by global grocery retailers and has powered campaigns across thousands of store locations simultaneously.
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