hello again welcome to the webinar shop talk back talk uh this is going to be a recap of one of the commerce industry's biggest events held uh two weeks ago in las vegas if you were there we're here to reinforce your learning if you weren't there we're here to fill you in on what you missed my name is peter breen i'm with the publicist commerce marketing team and i'm going to be the host today um i don't know if the webinar is going to be quite as snarky as the title might suggest but we are going to give it a try in a couple of spots first thing i want to do is warn you uh we're here to discuss shop talk i'm going to do my best to pronounce it that way but there's a really good chance some point during the next hour my bronx accent is going to come through and you're going to start discussing shop talk if that happens don't worry um the topic will not have changed here's the agenda just take a second to look through because that's all it will take um we're going to kick things off with a brief overview of the event run through the key themes that we're going to be covering in depth during our uh panel discussion and then we'll dive right into that panel discussion where two of the foremost thought leaders on commerce marketing not just within our ranks at publix commerce but across the industry um are going to offer their perspectives on the key themes that they experienced at the show with experience being a very important word in the discussion um then we're going to leave uh some time at the end to field questions from you folks out there in the audience and you can send those in at any time during this discussion using the formal uh q&a function down there on the menu at the bottom of your screen um also maybe we can invite you to send us your thoughts on some of the key themes that you heard some quotes or use cases or recommendations that you got out of it if you were there as well just to add to some of the learning that we're going to be getting here today um now we'll take a look at the overview of the event um i'm sure all of you here are familiar with shop talk um or you probably wouldn't have joined the webinar um even if you haven't attended the show um you've you've heard a lot about it but just to make it official um you know shop talk is one of the premier retail events on the industry calendar every year brings together thousands of professionals retailers brands technology companies startups in particular because that's always been a key part of the show um and the investors that are there to check out the startups as well as a variety of media representatives all to talk about the current state of retail and the future of retail started back in 2016 and it really only took a couple of years for it to become one of the premier events for the industry i went the first time in 2017 i've gone pretty much every year i think except one since then that's not a brag i have so many shows in las vegas over the years i would never brag about going to one but this one is an interesting one to uh to attend um shops talk officially announced 10,000 attendees this year that's kind of the same general number they've been releasing for the last few years still a really big event an important event but maybe not growing like it once did um they also announced 5,000 new attendees and that's great because that means there's a lot of fresh energy and a lot of new thinking at the event but it also kind of implies that there were a good number of attendees from the past who didn't feel the need to come back we certainly saw that across uh uh our client uh organizations and retailer partners just not as many familiar faces this year um now of course along with the 900 exhibitors and the 200 speakers in attendance there was little john shop always uh hosts a second night beach party on the lovely shores of mandalay bay's pool um for some reason they always seem to get a hip-hop artist who's not quite at the top of the charts anymore to headline the event this year it was little john um now we we all know that overused expression what happens in vegas stays in vegas it's usually somewhat appropriate for the shop talk beach party we won't say anymore about that um now new technology as i said is a key aspect of the show so i thought i'd mention the companies that won the annual startup pitch competition this year kind of gives you a feel for the solutions that were top of mind this year so we had sotira um which helps companies find ways to monetize overstock we had uh customized consumer gaming from playably um big s ai with personalized shopping solutions leica world with scalable ai video uh retail ready with automated warehouse compliance and shop peaks not sure about the pronunciation there um but they do instant digital storefronts for brands so just to give you a feel of some of the new technologies out there okay um and now before we get into the formal panel discussion just wanted to hit on all of the main themes that we heard during the show these are the seven topics that u that our panelists are going to be diving into in just a second you know our plan here today is to give you the insights um enough insight so that you don't feel bad about not being there or if you were there and couldn't get to as many sessions as you wanted to because you had to put out some fires back in the office or because you missed most of thursday because you ended up in the pool at the little john concert and you stayed out a little too late afterwards so first one delivering experiences that are going to resonate with consumers influence their behavior and drive loyalty across all forms of consumer engagement as we're going to discuss this was the hottest topic at the show um next was optimizing retail media with the emphasis on optimizing less talk this year about how great retail media is and all the things it can do more talk about how to make it great which was good to see um artificial intelligence similarly uh the discussion was far more pragmatic this year less talk about it being a gamecher more talk about how it's already changing the game leveraging social commerce the power of social media as a tool for engagement and sales in general but also a lot of conversation about the critical roles of influencers and content creators in all aspects of marketing um building loyalty creating formal programs that will drive behavior and lifetime value but also more generally talking about building communities of followers that will stay loyal and help evangelize the brand to other consumers and then finally connecting commerce using uh all of these concepts many others to provide a seamless shopping experience for consumers by mil uh building a more aligned uh internal organization um and then we'll wrap up with some other key takeaways that things that didn't quite fit into any of those six buckets that we thought might still be noteworthy to mention and with that i would like to ask our panelists to turn on their mics and turn on their cameras and we will get started with the discussion as i said we are delighted to have two leaders in the commerce marketing ecosystem here with us um and happy to be working alongside with alongside them as well um they've really been helping guide the industry forward and so we're happy to have their their perspectives here today we've got andy murray who is founder and executive chairman of sachi x andy hello and thanks so much for being here hello peter it's great to join you and amy and everyone else and we have amy andrews who is president of mars united commerce amy hello and thank you thank you for having me excited to talk about this okay so if you're both ready we will just jump right in with the uh first key theme and that is delivering experiences experience was the most popular word most used word at the show most often used in the context of the physical store but also discussed in the context of just about any other method of consumer engagement um andrew lipman the industry analyst predicted that experiential is going to be the next frontier for advertising it's kind of like a call to uh marketers to kind of stick it take a step back on the intense focus on digital media efficiency to remember that they need to engage consumers through relevant moments and impactful messaging not just through ad placement now amy we've got a quote here on this slide and an image that comes straight from the panel discussion that you moderated on commerce media so if maybe you could start us off here yeah absolutely um it was definitely the word of the show um i think at the little john party and every other uh happy hour event we were joking that if it was a drinking game and you said experience um we we wouldn't be standing up in vegas because it was expressed so many times um what's interesting is i led a panel um that was titled pushing the limits of retail media it had nothing to do with experiences um and that was the word of that panel as well so peter you referenced um some of the images on this slide i was joined uh by harvey moff from sam's club um who leads their map retail media network you know he said it everything that's old is new again and sam's club is looking at those experiences and bringing back things like the taco truck that you see here in the parking lot and i think that's just a really interesting example because peter to your point when we talk about retail media the conversation to date has really been about performance and data and how do we drive efficiency and i know that's our second topic so we'll talk more about that today as well um but you know you had harvey talking about taco trucks um you have the quote from aaron from nordstrom here as well talking about building an experiential network instead of a transactional network um nordstrom's is doing you know their version of taco trucks is you know yurts in the store for the holidays and a new swim shop that's all about experiential so i just think it's really um it it was refreshing to think about coming back to the human beings that we are reaching um with any of our marketing messages um and thinking a bit more um than just the the data point and the efficiency on what is the endtoend experience that we as marketers should be delivering um to these people who were asking you know to shop at our stores or buy our products so i thought it was great that we were kind of coming back to that what's old is new again um and just kind of see that conversation uh shifting a little bit okay great andy what are your thoughts around this topic well i would echo what amy said i thought it was exciting to see experiences come back into the conversation set and if i look at experiences from a shop what was the shop talk experience let me start there um it was a little different this year i think as you pointed out less on shiny new and i would say more on how do you harmonize the different bits and bots of what we've got to work with to get to performance i mean the backdrop of this probably fewer brands went than last year and you know they're under a lot of volume pressure to start showing some volume growth performance is is definitely key and when you start talking about the this the store experience um i'm excited to see that get more airtime and for my time at walmart uh we found that you know nines and tens on the net promoter score to drive those surprise and delight moments um are definitely exciting and fun to see but what actually drives the growth um more so or has a bigger impact on on the customer promoter scores as we called it was in reducing the dissatisfiers and there is still a lot of friction in the total experience from you know what what it's the impact on out of stocks or uh not being able to check out properly and then that kind of stuff so as as i look at it um i think there was a healthy amount of discussion on re on reducing dissatisfiers and taking friction out of the advertising to commerce kind of gap that exists uh alongside the surprise and delight moments but um yeah so i thought that was a healthy thing i did see one uh thing on the floor um as i walk around through that space and by the way you know amy will tell you that experience was on everybody's booth that alongside of the word commerce but um but i did see some interesting things that show that harmonization is starting to come together um interesting to see cqic uh intore audio radio if you want to call it that where they've really started to pay attention to the audio experience of a shopper and then being able to measure down at a store level in a performance-based way uh by dayart you know how what's that experience like measure that experience and then link it back to to the retail media and other pieces so like that would did not exist you know a few years ago so it's nice to see that harmonization of intore experiences start to come to life i would add to that too andy it's nice to see some of the innovation coming in store and not just online and digital because we know that over 80% of people are still shopping in stores day in and day out every week so i think we've um as an industry kind of seen the innovation in ai and outside of the store environment so it's it's nice to see that in the store space and to your point have those vendors who are not just innovating but helping us optimize performance there too um so that the argument is not i can measure it in digital but i can't measure it in the store i think we're starting to see that evolve as well yeah i i would agree and i think also uh the instore is often sometimes seemed just too transactionally oriented and and we know from from our research that 85% of decisions in store are still based on emotion and paying attention to that as an emotional moment of truth uh that's where that surprise and delight can make a difference the treasure hunt the different things that that lift the emotions of that intore experience so it's uh good to see it move beyond just a transactional environment yeah and it's funny the the last thing that i asked my panelists who i i mentioned harvey and aaron but our final panelist was jenna griffith from paypal which is great to have a company like paypal in the retail media conversation um but i asked everyone like "what's the one thing that you wish you could measure?" um and jenna said "i wish i could measure how people are feeling." um which i think directly speaks to that andy and is so great um because if we could get to that it's it's getting to that ultimate you know like why behind the buy instead of um you know are we measuring did someone purchase well did they reluctantly did they wish they could have gotten something else all that so i love that point from jen of um maybe something we could aspire to as an industry in terms of measurement yeah for sure okay great and while we're not going to be talking um specifically about measurement as one of the key themes that of course was a thread that ran throughout everything the need to measure everything and as you're saying the need to go deeper into measurement not just looking at the rorowaz but but all of the reasons behind what's going on um okay great um so we'll move into the second theme and we've already sort of segueed uh toward this already and that is is uh optimizing retail media obviously no big surprise that retail media was one of the biggest topics on the agenda but it didn't quite have the overwhelming presence that it's had in the last couple of years either on the stage with a number of speakers talking about it or um among the sponsors and the signage around the show um and also the discussions were a lot more pragmatic about how to do it right rather than just hyping up what it can do um and now i know andy you had some thoughts on this topic when we interviewed you at the show so maybe you could start us here yeah i i would agree with you peter that it it didn't seem to have the same relevance in terms of the um the mystery and the excitement and the hype which was good but i think the thing that struck me is the amount of times the retail media network conversations from the stage were linked to the question of the marketing funnel and where does it fit how does it align uh and then that led to several panel discussions i i heard around is the marketing funnel even relevant as a framework uh and if you look at the impact the marketing funnel has had uh in our industry it really has been a framing device on upper funnel lower funnel some middlefunnel so much so that most organizations on the brand side are organized around those particular areas of the funnel and it's become an organizational concept to go with it and so therefore you know does this collapse the funnel does the upper funnel work the same and i think the interesting uh conversation that i heard most interesting was the one uh by google near the end uh around um how they're embracing a different approach which is uh the four s's as they call it which originally came from bane um more recent research out that it's not really a funnel anymore it's really streaming scrolling searching and shopping and those uh those are really the that's a better way to look at it uh and in addition to that where finding the influential touch points in each of those four categories now i i love that and i think that is a more interesting way i just hope we don't take it as an organizing principle and all of a sudden we've got the stream team the scroll team and the search team that will only make our lives more difficult than less difficult so uh and the other thing i would say on the retail media is side is um those that seem to be making the most progress at least as shared from the presentations were those that probably had at least 20 30% of their business in dtc might have been born through dtc and they're looking at kpis like cac you know cost of customer acquisition and lifetime value ltv as as more expansive metrics to really look at the value so the dtc players i think were coming on strong in terms of from the stage of their use and deployment and understanding of how to get the most out of uh retail media networks what did you see amy yeah i i think definitely well one um agree it was not as much of the hot topic um on the panels even though and maybe an indication that my panel was on retail media but we ended up talking a lot more about experiences um and and those are obviously intertwined but um i think what's always great about shop talk in these conferences is all the conversations that happen between the panels and between the presentations when we're together and i feel like a lot of the conversations that we were having are where where you were just going andy around kpis and what are the right kpis what are the right objectives um for retail media so i i agree i i think actually at a previous grocery shop i talked about kind of the death of the funnel um i think we've we've become very rigid around the funnel and let that drive some of the decisions instead of taking a step back and saying what are the objectives that we in whatever organization you're a part of align to um and what are the kpis that we're going to use to measure those and i think you know step one is alignment which is obviously easier said than done um but i think i i love where you were going with some of the dtoc um first brands on is there a different way that we should be thinking about the objectives for retail media um or just having that clarity of you know maybe it's not a onetoone i i think rarely it is with uh traditional media but if we're making an investment in retail media and there's some other benefit that we get with the retailer how do we all align on how we quantify that if we want that as a kpi and if not you know we can we can make different decisions but i think there's some interesting conversations you know going on with our clients now in that space um and certainly in the you know massive vegas hallways of shop talk around how do we um you know per this headline how do we optimize and in order to do that i think it's how do we have alignment on what are those objectives and how are we going to track those kpis yeah and you um brought up a point there that sparked a um an insight for me around the retail media in general i think two or three years ago we were hearing some retailers talk about it's not retail media it's just media um and i think that's really evolved and it was really clear at shop talk where those that are seem to be getting um better results have looked at it as an omni channel tactic that's integrated and and thoughtfully put together with in a jbp with the uh plans on how to optimize the intore space or the intore components along with other things like social commerce and how does it all come together versus treating it as a standalone by itself uh area or channel and i think that's a healthy shift in the conversation absolutely and i think that's from the um uh that certainly resonates from the brand manufacturer side but also i think for all of these new players coming into the broadest definition of how we're defining retail media in the same way if you're um a retailer um however we want to define that right paypal is on the the retail media panel um if you're someone who's looking to start a retail media network how do you think of it similarly as you know a way to deliver a total experience instead of just another platform to monetize yeah totally totally okay then we'll move on to our next key theme which is activate i thought this was going to be the word of the show i didn't think it was going to be experience i thought it was going to be ai so i'm surprised me too i was surprised first yeah um yeah and and to that style point there i don't know if i actually heard anyone say artificial intelligence ai is good enough now and for forever shall be we won't need to use it it's going to be like a zip code or an ibm um here similar to retail media less talk about how ai is going to change the industry a lot more talk about how it's already changing the industry um both behind the scenes by making um operations a lot more efficient and effective and faster um and also through a lot of different consumerf facing activations especially in the context of search where conversational search natural language uh search engines as well as new visual tools are changing the essence of product search and also giving consumers more control over their search experience um amy if we could start with you on some of the themes you saw around this topic yeah sure i think um similar to retail media um it was interesting to you know see some of this discussed on stage but um a lot more of it was kind of in the hallways because it wasn't as much of a a topic as i thought it might have been um although uh peter you led with some of those um winners so definitely i think in the the startup space and on the floor we were seeing more um vendors and new entrance in the ai space so that's exciting um what i heard the most and had the most discussions with um different attendees at shop talk was you know around this quote at the bottom that if the future is um an ai agent that's shopping instead of a human being how does that factor in with everything we just said about experience so we're trying to create these wonderful experiences um for real humans um and then how do we think about that in combination with um an ai shopper and where i think there's a a huge opportunity around this and again where we had um a lot of conversations in between the shop talk panels was around the first purchase i think with ai it makes that first purchase um as we talk about customer life cycle and lifetime value um with ai that first purchase in any category um is so much more important um so when we think about bringing people in um i think there's a different um approach and different waiting to that now um because we know that there's so much automation um coming after that so that to me was a topic that um i think we're going to continue to see over the next several shop talks just because um this is so integrated peter to your point like it it wasn't the new news it's just how does this continue to evolve so those were kind of like more where my conversations were around shop talk i don't know andy if you had similar or different conversations with folks or or saw anything different well i i agree with you i felt like it was really coming at it uh from the use cases of what's really there versus the the potential uh most of the potential still seems to be in the internal uh productivity savings creative savings and things like that um i did come i went to the conference with a question around this area and it's the first bullet point you know how is generative ai transforming search and when do we think that shoppers are going to give up on the traditional methods of search and uh boy google did disabuse me of that concept that question because uh or concern because they hit it pretty straight on with some real data and their recent reports on their search volumes um they've had a significant increase through the at least the march uh 2025 five data where they've reported processing over five trillion searches annually i mean oh my goodness that's that's just huge and it's a big rise from even just last year so you know that surge alone uh i don't think they're too worried about it and the google searches are are really a bit more sometimes customer relevant than what you're seeing so i i think that is an interesting point um if you look at at search i do think the traditional retailer sites have some catching up to do uh with some of the capabilities i was um and and where ai could play a stronger role so if i go to google i did this this morning a friend of mine barry thomas at canar and i were chatting about you know buying golf clubs and if you go to uh google and you say you know find me golf clubs for a high handicapper for those who don't golf that means you're not very good uh but and so you really want to have some some clubs that fit that and and and google came back with a really good uh search set of search results that pointed me to the kinds of clubs high handicappers would want i went on to three other retailer sites and put in the same prompt uh and i put in a prompt for high handicappers and high and low handicappers which are very different types of clubs uh and their search results were identical uh whether that was you know target walmart uh amazon they they just hadn't really you know provided that more relevant response that is um you would expect now and my expectations of what i can get through search it continues to go up my behavior hasn't really changed that much and so i think there's some some ways to go there i i did see a couple things from the stage that i thought okay that's really cool um that's consumerf facing and and one was from meta where they did a demo on a a shampoo brand called kit and they see there's ads running on instagram on this new shampoo brand it's really cool uh and you pause they pause the ad and then up come like a conversational chatbot where you can ask it uh does this work with frizzy hair right and then it comes back and says oh yeah it works with frizzy hair and it does this or that and then you can have a conversation while you're looking at the ad around the product attributes and how it might relate to you in a more conversational way where it also then takes you to to a buy button if you want but but it helps you then sort through what sense right for me what variant in a in a really uh seamless friction-free way and i thought okay that's really really cool uh i shared that story with one of the clients i said i want i want to try that on one of our brands went back to meta and asked them hey can you give me a demo on that a little bit more and they were like "we don't know what you're talking about." so we got to if anybody's here is from meta can you please tell me um where that demo could go and how i can get access to it so i do see things like that that i feel can be game changers for the consumer experience but we still feel i still feel like it's going to be a while before we see it manifest in a way that could work at scale yeah i think that's um so interesting too because the examples you gave andy with um google and your golf clubs and um with the the hair uh chatbot like i think that takes us back to the experience they are those like that's right very natural human experiences they're done in that way um i was talking to a friend recently who's very anti- ai you know worried ai is going to take over the world and they said "oh i don't i don't do any of that." um and uh we started talking about google and they were like "but isn't it great how google kind of like summarizes it all and tells you." i'm like "that's ai that's done in such um such a natural way that you know when you don't even notice and it becomes a benefit." um that to me just links back to we are focused on the experience whether it's in store or digital for sure speaking of ai taking over the world before we move on can can i ask you to give us some thoughts on the operational improvements you can't talk about ai without talking about the workforce and the future of humans working um there were a couple of things especially this this bullet point here on creative versus creativity wanted to get your take on that um karen tracy at at meta um on one of the panel discussions um put it as creative will be automated in the future but creativity will not um and uh someone from the aldo group mentioned that they're automating everything on the back end that no one wants to work on so if i could just get your thoughts on the future there of of humans versus the bots well the the meta conversation is is really you know go ahead go ahead amy well go ahead well the meta conversation i was at that presentation too and she said something else that i thought was mind-blowing which was every person should spend two hours a day experimenting and playing with ai and if you don't you're falling behind and so like i don't have two hours a day to do that so i'm going to be definitely falling behind but it's like no that's the that's the benchmark so that kind of shows you how how big of a transition they think that's going to be uh and uh i i just thought that was an interesting point on that piece but go ahead amy no i was just going to say on the um yes gosh i'm not now i'm like when when can i get by my one to two hours as well um but uh on the creativity versus creative point i i think that definitely there is um a huge uh role for creativity that i believe will never go away i think actually might even be more important and probably to the point of um you know spending that play time in ai like how do we bridge those two so that ai can help us come up with even even better new ideas i know what my creative team always tells me is um you know because ai is pulling from things that are existing in the past to be truly creative and come up with something new we can certainly use ai for inspiration but we need to kind of think beyond that um so i think i i love the you know ai will not replace creativity creative i think is a little bit trickier because a lot of people probably on this call are defining that differently and might have different groups within their organization or or people who might have that in their their title um what's exciting to me about ai and what we're talking a lot about at shop talk and and other forums with our clients is if we are able to reach people um and we have a lot of publicist commerce tools to do that um in terms of uh core id and and reaching individuals wouldn't it be great if we could live into what we say as marketers where i amy get a message that's perfect for me peter you get one for you andy you get a different one for you andy probably something about your handicap um and they knew exactly what that was and can target you you know with that number um that would be amazing and i do think there's a huge component for ai to help us take those wonderful big creative ideas and make them hyperpersonalized um and that's where i think there's a big role for ai in the creative conversation yeah and i also think that you know there was a lot of hand ringing around when you know photoshop came online and people started using it it's going to you get rid of graphic designers and and it really didn't it it did make it and it really didn't even take a good designer to be a great designer you know to be a great designer um you have to have craft and mastery and i think there's a craft and mastery that's required in creativity uh ai tools like gen canvas and and others can can take some of the mundane pieces out but it doesn't really um let you get to that higher order of creativity that like you said amy uh things that haven't been thought of yet that really are making unique connections maybe someday it will i don't think it's there now okay great thank you uh moving on to the next theme which is leveraging social commerce as a tool for engagement and conversion as well e-arketer um the uh the number there was that they expect sales through social media to double to 137 billion by 2028 um it was the main topic for a handful of sessions but also mentioned in a lot of others for its effectiveness in uh delivering engagement and sales and then specifically um about the importance of influencers and content creators um on just about every stage of the path to purchase also in every step in the product life cycle which i thought was interesting as well um andy what were you hearing around this topic well i saw a lot more than i thought i would at the conference regarding uh some real results happening by uh leveraging the social commerce with creators and influencers and i i would think that that probably had the most uh stage presence in terms of um case studies that you could look at uh that and again the brands that were dtc born tended to dominate in that space true true religion own your true with celebrity influence like megan the stallion and anita or uh levis's with beyonce and what they've done with that um taco bell super bowl ad with liv moss and how they leverage the customer to co-create the ads with them as creators i thought was was really really interesting and so i think in all those examples though the big i guess aha for me was they they all talked about being really clear about their purpose as a brand so with taco bell you know a good third of it was on liv moss and what that meant to them and then aligning the influencers and the creative creators to really come along that purpose and so i thought that was good i thought that was good to hear you know that you have to get that brand purpose really tight for you to get the most out of it and then align influencers and creatives around at a purpose level and then let some of the guard rails go uh to get the most of the personality and individualism through but always come back to that core purpose and we also uh there was a question asked the most influential uh social commerce platform to be on and uh to a person at least in the cmo round table was tik tok so i i wasn't quite aware of just what kind of lead tik tok has in this space but it is it is pretty ch a pretty sizable lead yeah i love what you said andy about um you know starting from that core brand purpose i do think that's where we see the best examples in this space um certainly at top talk but even even beyond that and that's i think when when you have that strong branding that's when brands like taco bell can open it up to be more co-creating with their social influencers and and other consumers um i think what's interesting about shop talk and you know even other platforms like super bowl we're still seeing so many celebrities um kind of leading the conversation in examples i think the more interesting conversation that we're starting to see more of is more of those micro influencers and how do we bring those into commerce aligning them to specific retailers um and really again creating more of those onetoone personal connections um at that level and i think we can do that a lot more at scale with tools like ai um instead of just uh you know the big celebrity conversation which i know has a role but um i i think there's going to be a shift away from that i agree with you 100% a matter of fact the i was more excited about the taco bell example where there the customer was invited to co-create and i also think one that uh wasn't talked about much but is is one to be held up to go look at is rent the runway and how that they you know they'll convince a a potential customer to give up loads of personal information um in order like size height and everything else and weight in order for you to be able to share and find people like me in reviews that might be wearing that same outfit so i could say i want to see that outfit on someone like me you'll get a lot of information to get that and then it encourages that sharing but that creation's been done uh by other customers and i think that is where the future's headed and and i hope that we see more of that kind of you know consumer level co-creation creators that all participate with the brand in meaningful ways i think run the runway is a great example too because that's taking social content um and integrating it into their platform so i mean again it goes back to omni you're not looking at the rent the runway pictures on tik tok or instagram it's built within the site and to your point um you're seeing people who you know are your size and style and all of that so i think that rent the one ray is a great example of um that integration between social and commerce too yeah i mean i you're right and when i saw that i felt like i was looking at the future of something that had real potential for scale because you know looking at reviews are one thing but you know how do i know those you know 4,000 reviews how many of them are like me they buy like me they like the things they like and so just looking at the quantity of the reviews isn't enough and i think this is where ai could come back in to help reinvent the review process and rent the runway i think is the closest i've seen maybe there's others out there that have brought those to harmonize that ai component alongside of the consumer participation and and starting to reook at how reviews can be done okay just tagging on that andy before we move on um the uh the ceo of reserve bar um was in a session where he talked about their goal being um using ai so that the ratings a consumer sees when they go to the website is their own based on their purchase history and their behavior rather than some pundit um at some magazine somewhere so it plays right into what you were saying um okay yeah i saw that i thought that was pretty clever yeah go ahead sorry right um next uh next topic is building loyalty a lot of sessions dedicated to this in fact there was a whole track on it um looking at best practices and launching and managing formal programs but the broader conversation um being establishing emotional connections um and building communities of brand loyalists um whether or not they're signing up for a membership program um this is becoming increasingly important because younger consumers showing far less um brand loyalty than prior generations the stat that kind of jumped out uh with uh um with me was 39% of gen z shoppers switching brands every purchase cycle um so a need to kind of really make a connection there um amy if you can uh can start us off here on what you heard yeah absolutely i mean i think this is another example of and probably because we're at shop talk um by nature like looking at how does this intersect with commerce social loyalty and i love what you said about google and the s's like hopefully that doesn't result in a new structure and silos and all of that um so i liked the shop talk conversation around loyalty was you know more around integration i love this quote around um community here at the bottom like how do we think about loyalty as something that's integrated and not just another channel or tactic uh you know or line item on the budget so i was pleased that we were hearing more of that conversation um that stat stood out to me too as well peter um you know the 39% uh trying different brands every purchase i think that as we look um around how loyalty is changing um it's great to see us thinking about that in a more omni channel way as well um my 8-year-old i just took my 8-year-old to the eminem store in new york um and we signed up for the eminem fun club which is one of our programs um and i think that's just like a perfect example of total omni channel right it's the store it's the m&m's.com it's every retailer and retailer.com and how do we and he was you know super into it and and wanted to sign up and all of that so like how do we think about loyalty in a more integrated way for um the next generation i was excited to see some of these examples um at shop talk and just how we're talking about it you know being much more a part of the total experience and again not just a a separate um channel yeah one of the things that amy and i have been talking about quite a bit is um how professional sports uh programs and franchises have kind of taken fan loyalty fan development to a whole new level and i think there's some things we can learn on how professional sports are building out and think about loyalty and fan development to traditional cpg type brands or other brands um what i'm seeing is really a convergence of what we traditionally called crm uh into a broader context of not just you know consumer relationship management but commerce relationship management and how does the com how do the commerce touch points through that relationship need to be managed so that we're really clear and able to follow on and and build those relationships um and the seg and we can leverage segmentations of audiences that have been built uh example i saw was the elf uh beauty squad loyalty program and again convert instead of just looking at that as a traditional crm type program uh they converge that with tik tok challenge of i lips face challenge which you know leveraging the tik tok social commerce into a crm loyalty program i thought was a bit unique and um so i i think it's loyalty and crm kind of joining the party uh organizationally in many retailers the email marketing is over here and not really integrated into a a customer relationship discussion that i think is a good evolution step forward i i love the language around that too right um whether it's uh consumer or commerce relationship management relationship management versus fandom like i i love that we're um and i think that's why we got excited about um you know commerce from a a sports setting like there there is something really interesting i think about um creating fans um and i think that resonates too with um more of the younger generations like how do we bring fans into it that aren't just um buying on autopilot but that are you know truly loyal and fans to your brand okay great and then our um last key theme which kind of pulls everything else together um in a lot of different ways connecting commerce wasn't a track wasn't a lot of of sessions dedicated to connecting commerce but again a thread that ran through just about all of the conversations um the need for for connecting commerce both um internally to align uh the business and externally to to provide a seamless shopping experience for your consumers um was uh um you know discussed often especially around the context of retail media um so andy with this final topic what were your takeaways well it certainly was a theme and i also think uh to amy's earlier point it's something that you hear in the hallways and in the networking which is the advantage of going to a shop talk um and what i really see happening in the space with the commerce and connecting commerce is we all know this right for especially a lot of the big brands commerce tends to be the last in the planning or sat at the kids table or you got your tv idea and then oh yeah we're going to put this on amazon or walmart or wherever and and it's uh the last and what we know to be true is that the commerce planning usually happens way ahead of the advertising development in general and so we're seeing this conversation happening on where where should the commerce commerce conversation in a campaign development happen and it needs to be those that seem to be doing a better job are integrating it into the very beginning briefing sessions of an idea so that we think that through a lot of times you have to take um the brands uh take a a new item that you're going to sell into physical retail uh comps and ideas that are way ahead of the traditional advertising development so you can't afford to let it be the last thing to happen in the planning stages and so just for the lead times alone and so what i see happening is um a trying to work through the language what is commerce mean uh what are the constructs what are the principles what are the mindsets so that we don't end up constantly chasing a gap that's between the advertising and the commerce and i think that gap has got to close and most often than not it's organizational design principles and barriers and structures that are getting in the way of of making that more seamless so that seemed to be a pretty big conversation topic at least in the hallways on how can we connect the dots so that it is and again it's probably an outcome of a funnel-based design where we look at the commerce as lower funnel than something that has to be built into the idea at the very beginning i i'm could not agree more and i i know that the conversation around you know needing to be further out in in commerce starting first is certainly one um we've had for a while and continues to be a pain point i think um uh to build on that i think that we've talked about kind of breaking down the the funnel and you know what's upper or lower and maybe that doesn't matter i think what's interesting with some of these um other topics that we've covered like ai and social is if we're truly connecting commerce in those spaces how can we even challenge some of our own um commerce timelines or assumptions that we've had in the past and to your point andy i think that would absolutely have to result in different organizational design but um i was talking with a client recently around how do we take advantage of a social opportunity and they said i i wouldn't have even thought to call you guys on that um because i'm social and commerce and you know separate team separate budget so um i love that challenge too and and this client also brought up well you know but we can't really we can't link it to anything that we're doing at retail because we planned that so long ago and you know we had a great conversation on well well let's think about if we can break that paradigm like why couldn't we think about something to you know take advantage of something in social in the next 24 hours um that does have a commerce outcome maybe it doesn't link to the plan that we did 18 months ago um but maybe there's a different avenue that we can do so um i think it goes back to what you said andy on how do we define commerce and if we are willing to broaden that definition and maybe uh extend the table um i think there's a lot of things that we can do and and challenge for the future as well i i agree amy and i think there's still quite a bit of upskilling that needs to happen uh within um the marketing community uh in order to understand the power of commerce and how it's being leveraged today a lot of the senior leaders in you know big branded companies may not have grown up with a commerce experience and they're and and it's so new so we're still at that nason stage so i'll give them a bit of grace on on why it's not more connected today but it just puts a little bit more emphasis on our jobs as agency partners um and others to to focus on upskilling and and make sure that we're working with the current best practices and and really understand you know how can you leverage these connect these tools in the right way that ends up in a very connected experience than something that looks like it's been frankenstein together okay um we're coming up on time and we're wrapping up um we were just going to look at some final thoughts before i hit any of the the points here on the slide i'd love to go back to you two to get your final thoughts um any key takeaways any themes any any learnings that we haven't covered yet that really stood out to you um at the show and andy if you uh if you've got any thoughts there to start us um yeah i i think because of the um more macroeconomic pressures of of trying to get unit volume which is a very real issue right now we're not getting any growth through pricing uh e-commerce is still the fastest growing element out if unless it's premium brands or private label you have to be growing your e-commerce side and and i think the danger in this in this inflection point of where we are is we're still inventing there's still a lot to learn and i think we have to be still investing in test and learn even as painful as that is in the current economic pressures um i think those that are just going to lean into i'm only going to spend on what works today that's proven um will probably get left behind because i think the the improvements and the newer things that are coming tend to be built on the backs of learnings that versus just something completely out of the blue so that test and learn uh mentality and mindset and and innovation in that uh commercial innovation is important where many brands are really good at product innovation but maybe that muscle of commercial innovation isn't there and we're still in an innovation space which is a very exciting time to be in in marketing and in advertising but um but it's also a very challenging time because the real quarterly business results are really chasing volume and that volume is chasing you know proved metrics and a lot of it still unproven yeah i agree and i think um peter that speaks to your first point here like it it's still a continuous evolution um and the image of netflix right um i love that love that billboard but um you know netflix probably isn't the most relevant example anymore either right like we've seen uh more innovation there and how different generations are streaming um and consuming different media so um i i agree with everything andy said i think continuous evolution and probably even um more so in um you know some of the current economic environment i i think those who are willing to take risks as we um are kind of in this phase and maybe entering something new um i think that's going to be important and that's probably where we're going to see even more innovation and probably more leaders emerge yeah sam walton had a great quote it was uh although we're not in a recession but he said a recession is a terrible thing to waste and maybe to reframe that you know challenging times are a terrible thing to waste uh because that's where the innovation and growth can happen i wasn't going to say the rword andy but i i know i said he said it [Laughter] so yeah bring us back up to close us out more positive note please yes i was just gonna going to say that you know the discussions from this stage around um you know the current economy were all very positive so we should we should keep it keep it that way for as long as we can um just wanted to mention here because you know the brand building is dead comment i think probably deserves um some explanation there were a couple of people a couple of people on the stage who said that brand building as a singular objective for advertising is out of date um in this world of performance marketing that we're living in um don't know if i necessarily agree with that um but as in the case of netflix there were a lot of great examples of brands that continuously evolve um shark ninja and and um stanley 1913 you know companies that are really looking at what's going on listening to consumers listening to changes in behavior um and running with it and and continuing to keep their brands fresh um so a lot of opportunity out there we should i tried to ignore i i tried to ignore peter the the the crazies stuff said from the states like that it's controversial i mean but i did hear mr wonderful say linear tv is back and it is the way to build brands and i'm still trying to get my head around that one but um anyway there was there were a few sound bites from the stages that were like i don't know if they're being provocative or um they really believe that but um i don't see how you can survive without building without some attention to building your brand whether it's ingrained into your commerce activity i'm not sure it has to be a completely separate function then i think that's what's changing but brand building is not head okay um we should wrap things up here so if we can move on to that last slide um first off want to thank the two of you um andy and amy for being here today for providing all of these great insights um you know you you were as advertised um just a lot of great thinking on what you took away from the show so thank you so much for being here um the learning doesn't have to stop here though um we just yesterday published our um shop talk um recap u the trends report around the event where we have um thought leaders from 11 different publus commerce uh companies uh giving us what they took away from the show including andy and amy here so you'll you'll get to to to learn more from them um as well uh we have a lot of things planned coming up in the future we've got some some virtual webinars we even have some some live events that we've got uh we've got planned um that uh we'd love to have you back for if you want to get a copy of the report you can just scan that qr code or you can go to publicistcommerce.com and get yourself a copy um but we'll also be back to you with an opportunity to review the recording of this event and as i said also some other some other opportunities for uh for future things that we'll be putting on here at publicist commerce uh thank you so much we hope you're walking away with some some uh snippets that are are going to help you with your jobs and we hope to have you back here again soon so take care everybody