A Tale of Two Stores: Why Visibility Is the Difference Between Good Execution and Great Execution

David has earned serious placement inside Target. That was the headline of my Linkedin post recently, and it is still true. Landing premium placement in a major retailer is not accidental. It is the result of strong velocity, clear positioning, and a retailer believing a brand belongs there.

But when I started looking closer across stores in the same town, a different story emerged. One that spreadsheets alone would never surface.

At Walmart, the David display was clean, defined, and intentional. The focus was clear: single-serve options, tight execution, and a display that made it easy for shoppers to grab and go. Everything looked how you would expect it to look when a brand understands how its product is actually being used in that environment.

At Target, the display told a slightly different story. From a distance, it looked great. Premium placement, strong branding, clear messaging. But up close, several of the multi-pack boxes were already opened.

That is not a knock on the brand. It is a signal.

When you see damaged or opened packaging on a premium display, it immediately raises questions that do not show up in reports.

Are shoppers treating multi-packs like single-serve bars?
Is the packaging holding up under normal shipping and stocking conditions?
Is this an isolated store issue, or something happening across hundreds of locations?

This is where visibility becomes the difference between reacting late and learning early.

Looking at one store in isolation, it is easy to explain this away as a one-off. But when you can compare execution across retailers, formats, and locations, patterns start to form. The contrast between Walmart and Target in the same town is not just interesting. It is actionable.

With always-on shelf intelligence, brands can turn these moments into hypotheses instead of assumptions. They can validate whether shopper behavior is driving packaging friction, whether operational stress is causing breakage, or whether execution guidelines need to be adjusted by channel.

More importantly, this kind of visibility changes how brands show up to buyer meetings. Imagine walking into a Target conversation with real examples from Target, paired with a Walmart execution model that is working, supported by sales, shipment, and scan data. That is no longer a reactive discussion. That is a strategic one.

This is not about chasing perfect displays. It is about spotting friction early, understanding why it exists, and pivoting before it becomes a bigger problem.

The brands that win are not the ones with flawless launches on paper. They are the ones that see what is actually happening on shelf, across retailers and competitors, and use that intelligence to stay one step ahead.

The tale of two stores is not a story about success versus failure. It is a reminder that execution lives in the details, and visibility is what turns those details into an advantage.