Power to
the Marketer

We're going to share a lot more about how at Emarsys, we're translating our vision of Power To The Marketer into product development, including some really exciting announcements to improve marketer productivity and personalization with, you guessed it, AI. So in this session, we're going to explore how Emarsys accelerates time to value by quickly onboarding data and channels to execute omnichannel campaigns. We'll talk about how we're built on our AI heritage, and are infusing AI throughout our platform to help improve marketer productivity and truly power personalization. We'll talk about demonstrating ROI and the business impact of marketing, and showcase a bit how we're trying to look at continuous improvements to meet not just today's needs, but the future needs of marketers. And for this session, I am delighted that we are joined by a distinguished panel of three speakers. Kelsey Jones, who is our Head of Product Marketing and Customer marketing, is joining us live from Indianapolis. Kelsey has over a decade of experience in this industry and is a member of my team. She's helping to shape and deliver real results for our customers. Balint Vegh is our Vice President of Product. He'll be joining us live from Budapest. We are truly a global team. And Balint is responsible for driving overall product development to ensure that our product continues to deliver maximum value for our customers. And last but not least, Aadil Kumar joining us from Berlin is our Senior Product Manager for Gen. AI and Intelligence. And with that responsibility, he steers the vision, the strategy and the execution behind the latest Emarsys AI innovations. So with that, it's my very great pleasure to hand things over to Kelsey. Awesome. Thank you Sara. I'm very excited to be here again with you this year at our Power To The Marketer Festival, and I'm honored to be able to help kick off our Omnichannel and AI Masterclass with our first session around product innovation and strategy. And what a better way than to start with the ways in which all of you marketers, customers, employees, partners, industry leaders have truly helped shaped Emarsys' strategy, our roadmap, and the innovations that you're going to see throughout today's presentation. But because we are going to be talking about innovation and roadmap, we are going to be discussing, you know, how we start with everyone's favorite side, the legal disclaimer slide. So please make all of those purchasing decisions based on what is currently generally available in the product today. All right. So Sara mentioned and spoke to this slide a little bit earlier. But just to reiterate I want to talk about how these things then translate into our product strategy and some of the innovations throughout our platform. So last year at the Masterclass, we discussed the ways in which marketers were on this constant tightrope, balancing consumer expectations and business expectations. Since then, we've seen some of those things remain constant. As Sara mentioned, the evermore empowered consumer, while others have become more prominent, or even made achievable through innovations like AI. But today, marketers are still navigating how to support that ever more empowered consumer. On an average, a person is using 3 to 5 devices every day. Multiply that by six, which is the average number of channels that they're engaging on. And that's a lot of content and choice at your consumer's fingertips. And this puts pressure on you as brands and marketers to continue to cut through that noise and deliver the meaningful content when it matters most. But just delivering that personalization, it's not enough, and it must be consistent across every single channel. And brands need to respect as Sara mentioned that customer data privacy, consent and preferences when delivering those experiences. But the good news, and you'll see in some of the AI research that you can unpack and look into a little bit more, is that consumers understand the value that you are providing when they give you their data, because they understand a better, more personalized experiences and offers. But they simply want you as a brand to provide transparency into that process. What does that look like for them? It's again coming back to that value exchange. And that third macro trend that we talked about is really that combination of economic turmoil over the past several years, as well as all of the growing complexity of the tech sector surrounding customer engagement priorities. And businesses have faced reductions in their budgets, downsize team capacity, supply chain issues that have affected customer loyalty and even more importantly, have placed an increased scrutiny on the customer experience and every single engagement that they have with your brand. The backdrop of all of that is that exploding martech sector that we now have seen the visual of over 11,000 applications. That's creating complexity and silos in businesses that have really forced IT to prioritize tech stack consolidation, reduce costs, and optimize technology utilization. That can help really simplify the execution for your marketing teams so you can get back to driving deliverable omnichannel engagement. Now, how are we doing that? When we think of it through the vision, and it's our vision as a business, as Emarsys as a whole, not just our product, not just services, but our entire business to help you as marketers achieve those business outcomes as you navigate this complex, very exciting landscape that we are a part of today. And we are helping marketers achieve those outcomes, results, that's revenue. It's not about volume. It's not features because we only succeed when our customers succeed. And it's our mission to really reimagine what's possible for you as marketers. Going back to that theme of infusing AI everywhere so that you, as marketers, can delight your customers and get the results that your businesses need. So what do marketers need and how does Emarsys deliver on that? Well, we know that you need to understand that empowered consumer completely. And in order to do that, Emarsys makes it easy to access, but then activate that data for meaningful customer engagement. You need to spend more time on critical value added work and Emarsys builds the platform with the marketer's user experience in mind. That means it's simple, it's intuitive and built with a flexible framework so that you can work in the way that you need to work and operate. Now you're also expected to deliver that consistent, seamless experience that you hear along the way, and Emarsys has the tools to easily unify that personalization across all your channels and devices. And while doing that, you must figure out how to create new and incremental revenue streams and Emarsys helps you scale that across all of your channels, your brands, your regions, and certainly across the businesses that you support to drive outcomes. And finally, you must anticipate customer actions and behaviors. And that is changing day over day. So Emarsys really equips you with the proactive insights and reporting so that you can drive smart, data driven decisions, fast. So with all of that coming together and in mind, we've really built the customer engagement platform so that you can do the following. You can connect to the entire experience. You can make insightful data driven decisions and you can adapt to the market needs with speed and agility. And all of that is inherent to all that. We can give you the ability to tailor that engagement to your business needs with industry specific capabilities, so that you can accelerate some of that time to value. And because these are the pillars of our product and our innovation strategy, it means that we will continue to deliver innovation that supports the marketer, business outcomes, and certainly the overall customer experience. Now, when we think about how does that then translate to how do we build the product? Well, we are fully invested in a strategy and a product strategy that opens up the power of omnichannel to marketers. And that means that we have to make it easy for you as brands to connect other market leading providers into the Emarsys platform. We then continue to put a focus on building upon those Emarsys core services, such as content, automations and analytics. And we've been a leader in the Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Personalization for five years in a row. On top of those core services are our native channels. And we have the most native channels of any omnichannel platform. And you need to have all of that in one place. And we see SAP as part of our native channels, whether that's through commerce or sales. And that really opens us up to being able to support new industries. Now we've developed the ability for what we call clickable connectors, such as Mention Me being able to bring in that referral data and activate it in seconds with some of our tactics. Other channel providers like Sinch and other CDP offerings like mParticle, are also ways in which you can plug and play in your data to activate across different channels. Now you're going to hear from several of these technology partners and their use cases over the next two days. So be sure to catch those sessions either live or on demand. And then finally, we know that it's not possible to make everything a clickable connector, and especially the things that you need and want to integrate. So this is when the open and extensible framework comes into play, whether that's through APIs, relational data, webhooks, or open data. This framework has and will continue to open up the platform and make it easier for IT teams to bring in the data that you need so you can maximize your customer engagement capabilities across the entire experience. Now I'm going to hand it over to Balint. We're going to talk about how we've translated this framework into some of our recent innovations. So with that I'll hand it over to you. Thank you very much, Kelsey. We've delivered all those exciting innovations that you see on the slide since last year's Omnichannel Masterclass. And we're putting our foot on the gas pedal as we move into 2024. And we're listening to what you need. And we would like to ensure that you reach the desired business outcomes. We are delivering innovation with focus on helping you deliver omnichannel messages that resonate with your target audience. Also equipping you with intelligence and insights to propel the businesses ahead. Also accelerating and extending value of the composable platform that you heard from Kelsey. And last but not least, providing resilient enterprise grade solutions that's underpinned by trust and also scalability. And in 2023, and also already in 2024, we delivered more than 100 features. But let me pick a few that I think are the most exciting. Some new channels like Mobile Wallet, TikTok and now WhatsApp, they are providing the best converting channels. For example WhatsApp. I will talk about that channel later. In cases we see over 50% conversion rate on using that channel. Also omnichannel content blogs. We started with web and now also in-app followed by email in 2024. That's a feature that's really important if you want to keep your content consistent and reusable across all channels. Also, partner integrations including Mention Me, Segment.com, Google Analytics and many more. You will hear why they are important across these two days and also during our presentation with Kelsey. And last but not least, we introduce many small productivity enhancements. One of them is the undo-redo function we see. The other the account switcher. And there are indeed many more. These tiny developments mean a lot in terms of daily productivity. If you're actively using the platform, you can save minutes, hours using those features. These are continuous developments that help you gain the most out of our platform. And speaking of new features, we don't just deliver those new features. Our product development philosophy is aligned with our mission that Kelsey spoke about earlier. We are delivering innovative products that help you marketers solve real challenges and also reach key business outcomes. And to that end, quantity isn't everything. We are most excited when customers actually adopt the features. And here I picked three features that enjoy really high adoption and that provide immediate value to our customers. My first example is TikTok. I don't need to introduce TikTok, a social network to you. It has more than 1.6 billion active users. And here we introduced it to our digital arts portfolio, and it delivers highly targeted display ads to target contacts. And also you can import leads from TikTok. And what we've seen is within the first 3 to 4 months of implementing that feature, there were more than 100 customers immediately using it. And even since then, we see a very rapid uptake. My next example is Audience Reporting. Audience reporting was a feature request that was asked by most of our customers. And last year we delivered it so that customers are not able to measure performance between segments and also gain insight into the behavior of customer cohorts and optimize conversion and revenue. And the interesting thing is, this feature is still less than a year old, and two thirds of our customer base is already actively using it and enjoying its benefits. And my last example of adoption is Omnichannel Content Blocks. Now that's a relatively recent feature, as I said, already launched in two channels and launching in other channels this year and next year. And that keeps your content consistent across channel, keeps your brand messaging consistent, and also allows you to reuse that content elsewhere in other campaigns or in other channels. Now that even in the very early trial stage was used by dozens and dozens of customers, and now that we're releasing that the global availability, we see a really huge uptick in usage. So all those three examples underline not just delivering feature but delivering meaningful features. And with that, I hand it back to Kelsey, who will talk to you about the philosophy of our AI development. Awesome. Thanks, Balint. And with all of that in mind, it's really important to think about, as you mentioned, the ability to bring in all things to help drive adoption. You know, and it's great to see some of these highly requested features and how the teams are delivering functionality that marketers need and more importantly, can easily adopt. And with our mission to deliver AI infused solutions that help marketers deliver results, it's not just about the next shiny AI or gen AI feature. It's about making AI transparent and easy to use by infusing it throughout the platform, not just one and two disconnected features. And with SAP's business AI, we build the system of intelligence with three core principles in mind. One is relevancy. AI features and tools are embedded purposefully into your marketing workflows. Two, it's about reliability, where solutions are built on a broad, scalable, and secure data foundation. And three, it's about responsibility, adhering to the highest ethics and privacy standards. And these combined together are the AI foundation that will improve creativity and productivity, deliver the personalization at scale that you need to deliver, and keep pushing those boundaries of time to value. So now to another exciting part of our presentation, we're going to talk about some of our latest product announcements and innovations that will give you, as marketers, more power to deliver personalized omnichannel engagements that drive business outcomes. First, we are announcing a bundle of new and existing AI infused solutions that will power personalization and also supercharge your productivity. So marketers can start by understanding more about your customers, what's working, and why with intelligent insights. Our Customer Intelligence module, also known as Smart Insights, helps marketers so that they can discover trends, patterns, affinities all in your customers behaviors to help inform your marketing strategy, meeting customers where they are with what they want, leveraging that AI personalization and segmentation to do it. And marketers can target specific audiences using AI segments based on predicted life cycle, status, spend, channel engagement, and more. And then you can optimize delivery time and channel to ensure that you are increasing customer engagement with send time optimization. Now for our new features, and I am excited to talk to you about is new content creation and generation announcements. Powered by generative AI and large language models, this category of AI innovations represents the new and exciting work that can be done with AI to again enhance personalization and supercharge your productivity and efficiency. So first subject line generator and pre header generator for email is going to go generally available in July. And this is going to help accelerate creative email subject lines that are going to cut through the noise. Product Finder. Today we are allowing you to easily search your catalog and then pull in products using AI and algorithm based matching. The future version will allow you to give marketers the ability to quickly search the product catalog to the best items to include in their message. And this is now in pilot. So think of an example that you can search the top selling shoes that may have high inventory but are not on sale. We'll quickly be able to add those items directly into your email. And then the last one is the segment generator. And this is one of my personal favorites. This is going to give marketers the ability to use the natural language to generate a segment in seconds. So again, think about top selling shoes with the highest profit margins that have access inventory. You can immediately create that audience and use it for segmentation and personalization. Or another option you'll be able to use with this is being able to review an existing segment, and you have the ability to have the generator to them provide a clear description of that segments. You can know how to drive your campaign or engagement. Now, while I'm honored to be able to share some of our latest product announcement with you, we couldn't do any of this without the commitment from our product and our engineering teams who are listening to you and our customers. All of your requests, all of the feedback that come in and are bringing those innovations to life again, really underlying innovations that can help you drive adoption within your business. So with that, I'm going to hand it over to Aadil, our Product Manager for AI, and he is going to show us this functionality in action. So Aadil, over to you. Thank you very much, Kelsey. And hello from Berlin, everyone. Aadil Kumar here and in just a second you'll see me demo our latest and greatest features on the Emarsys platform. But before we begin the product demo, let's spend some time to set the scene. We'll walk through a typical workflow for a marketer working for an e-commerce company. The marketing question is a new genre for our brand, bestrun. An e-commerce enterprise brand that is in the space of fashion retail. Now, with the summer sun adding a sizzle to the air, the brand has just hauled in a collection of the city's hottest new drops, specifically the most killer stilettos on the block. The challenge? Our marketer has been entrusted with navigating these uncharted waters by creating and deploying strategic summer campaigns, highlighting these new arrivals to bestrun's user base. His recent transition into the company means that he's still trying to find his bearings, digging deep into the nitty gritty of Bestrun's marketing operations and procedures. He is tasked with identifying missing opportunities and areas for future improvements. He must also act swiftly to ensure that Bestrun's clients receive a slice of the summer's buzz while the sun is still high in the sky. He envisions an automated marketing flow, a seamless connection from audience attention to conversion, enhancing customer lifetime value and ending with satisfied returning customers. The decision making process is littered with roadblocks. What is the right content? How can we effectively position the new products? What campaign elements could cost effectively drive traffic and generate revenue? And looming about all of this is a ticking clock. The summer sun is relatively short. Every wasted moment is an opportunity slipping away. A potential customer lost, a sale is made. The stories of past marketing efforts have sent shivers down his spine, campaigns and program that took days, sometimes a week to fully execute. But it's a good thing for a marketer that Emarsys has been and is releasing just the right products to help our marketer achieve his goals in the best and most efficient way. To show you what I'm about, I'll hand it over to myself from the past to walk you through the latest and greatest. Aadil from the past, over to you. Thank you very much, Aadil from the future. As a marketer that's been tasked to identify the missing opportunities for growth within the Emarsys platform, there's no better place to come to than the strategic dashboard, which presents me with a consolidated view of all my different marketing activities tied back to the higher level objectives of revenue growth and the number of active customers in my database. Since they're trying to find out what the missing opportunities for growth are, I could quickly see that the drive purchase frequency strategy is not performing as well as it could be. I'm going to click on Get Better results with tactics and tactics are pre implemented best practice marketing use cases. These automated marketing flows allows me to execute complex use cases in a couple of days, of which the normal execution by the use of an external consultant, for example, could take weeks if not months. I can see that a filter for strategy to drive purchase frequency, and I want to find a tactic that fits my use case the best. Let's go with the Convert Active Buyers tactic, and this identifies the active buyers who are likely to purchase more frequently and makes them our most valuable customers. I can quickly select the channels for which I want to use this automation program in, which is email, web, digital ads plus AI segment. I can see that this is an AI optimized tactic. After reviewing the tactic and making sure everything looks good, I can quickly create the tactic. Before we jump into the actual automation program itself, I want to make sure that I can come back and quickly find the automation program or the asset that I created using the asset tagging feature, which is really important for me, being an enterprise brand and having multiple marketing teams working within the same Emarsys platform. So I can assign different marketing tags or asset tags that make my life easier when I could call and find a particular asset. So I know that this is a promotion for summer sales, and this is going to be for America, Asia. And also I know that this is in progress. So this is a to-do topic. So I'm going to hit apply changes. And these are all the different tags that I've been assigned to this particular automation program which makes coming and finding it using the tags functionality a lot easier for me to do. Perfect. So we see that we have the Convert Active Buyers automation program. So this is what the automation program looks like under the hood. We have a program that checks every day for customers that are ready to become active customers by using an AI segment based on propensity scores and sends them an email campaign letting them know that we have some hot new drops they should be checking out. Let's go into this email campaign and see what we can do to spruce it up. Great. What I'm looking at right now is the Email Visual Content Editor. This is where I come to in the Emarsys platform to create marketing campaigns for email use cases that are contextually relevant for the overall objective that I'm trying to influence. I see that I have to fill in some information over here. What I'm going to use is Emarsys' latest generative AI functionalities to do that. I'm going to quickly copy this introductory passage, introducing the new Aineg stilettos and jump into the block content generator. I'm going to paste the content that I copied and also specify an audience - fashion forward individuals that are into heels. Amazing. I'm going to try out the creativity and I'm going to click Generate Blog Content. As you can see, I also put in a typo, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem for our large language model, as it's using GPT 4, which understands the overall intent really well. So I don't have to worry about small typos here and there. As you can see, now we have a text that's introducing the AIneg stilettos. But instead of just another piece of text that's introducing the stilettos, I would like to use this opportunity to call out a product launch that people can come to in person. I'm going to hit fine tune and hopefully the context that I've created over here, along with my fine tuning instructions, should go across the large language model with GPT four, and then we should have a product launch campaign. Perfect. We have the text that is calling out a July 16th product launch, and that looks really good. So I can quickly click 'views' and voila! I already have a text created for a predefined campaign that is context relevant to the text over here. That's introducing the AIneg stilettos. Amazing. Now let's spruce up this email campaign just a little bit more by inserting some product very quickly and easily using the Product Finder. With the product finder, we're trying to do two things. One, make product searching within your product catalog super easy and intuitive without you having to worry about how to match product catalog fields to the different html fields. All I have to do is open up the product finder and search for, let's say, bag. And then I can see that Emarsys uses heuristics and AI algorithms to detect which product catalog fields match which content fields in the best way. If I wanted to make some changes, I could, but it looks good to me at this point in time. I can then quickly search for the products that would be a good fit for this marketing campaign and insert them. So we have some nice bags over here that can go along well with our new stilettos. Let's go about inserting them one by one. We have the Normal, we have the Maftsia and maybe let's do the Laureline. Perfect. So we have now a marketing campaign for email marketing that introduces their new stilettos, calls our product launch, and also inserts some other products that our customers could be interested in. Since we've put in some work in defining these different product blocks, let's make sure we can quickly and easily access them in another email campaign by clicking Save to Reuse. I'm going to save these three blocks one by one, and I know that I can quickly and efficiently go to another email campaign and have them accessible by going into the Slip Save blog section. Now, before we jump out of this particular email campaign, let's put the cherry on top by ensuring that we have a nice subject line. What I can do is use data once again by going to the subject line generator. The subject line generator, what it does, it takes the marketing campaign in question along with different prompting instructions. As you can see, this is how Emarsys has introduced prompt engineering for us marketers. I told the language model that's underlying this that it is an expert marketer and copywriter and then breaks the subject lines, three different distinct parts that grabs attention, adds a sense of urgency, introduces the product and adds a contextual element emoji. As you can see, we have subject lines that perfectly meet the different criteria that's been specified. Let's say we're happy with this one over here, and we can quickly click Insert Subject Line and not give feedback at this point in time. And what we also realize is that there's a good strategic relationship between pre headers and subject lines. And that's why we did. So we created a pre header generator that takes into context the subject line that we created along with the emails context to create the perfect pre headers for any marketing use case that we would like to run. So I'm going to insert this pre header. And that's perfect. And jumping back into our automation program. Let's quickly check out the reminder campaign. So this is a reminder campaign. And I just want to use some of the blocks that we saved from the previous step in this particular campaign. So I'm going to find the blocks that I saved, click insert into campaigns, put that over here and also add the three column product blocks that we created in the previous step. Great. Now we have a reminder campaign that is also perfectly fitting our particular use case. Again, created with little to no time and effort jumping back into our automation program. Let's quickly take some time to understand and confirm that we are, in fact, using the correct segment over here. I'm going to click on Edit segment. As a marketer, what I'm looking at right now is AI segmentation essentially using the power of propensity scoring and predictive analytics to understand what customers can become or are likely to convert into becoming active customers in the near future. Of course, these are different templates that I can quickly change to incorporate any aspect or any different use case that would make sense to do using AI segment or predictive scoring. And these are also the different templates that are available for me. So there's email engagement, web engagement, lifecycle segments, so on and so forth. So making it really easy to understand and use the intelligent analytics that comes with the Emarsys platform to help me improve my marketing outreach capabilities. Not only this, I know that Emarsys is building out some really, really interesting generative AI features, especially in the conjunction with segmentation. As a new marketer within with the best front as a company, I need to make sure that I can quickly understand the different segments that my previous colleagues have created for me. For example, if I didn't know what to exactly expect from this segment, what I can use is generative AI's ability to understand the context and nuance of different aspects or criteria of a segment, which can run for pages at a time. And you can see the generative AI has generated a description using GPT four. That helps me understand what is exactly going on from the segment, and also makes it easy for me to search for the segment in the future. So the last purchase was in the 30 days, identifies is female, aged 25 and has an interest in fashion, wallets or shoes. Amazing. If I wanted to, I can quickly use the segment back in the automation program that we created in the previous step. But that's all I wanted to showcase to you today as a marketer. What we did was saw how we can identify a missing opportunity with the strategic dashboard, and then address that missing opportunity using the power of the premium implemented marketing use cases that we call tactics. Understand how content creation is made much easier by the power of generative AI and the context that we can provide to these generative AI models. That helps us create the best fine tuned content for different marketing use cases, along with sending out that content to the perfect audience, using AI segment, and then making sure that we can find and navigate the platform really well using reusable content blocks, asset tagging. And then lastly, we ended with how generative AI also will in the future will power productivity and ease of use for the Emarsys platform using generative AI segments by making segmentation, search, and description very easy to do. That's all for me. For now, back to the presentation. So we've heard from Aadil a lot of exciting and groundbreaking AI innovations we're delivering. But as you know, AI is not new. And in fact, Emarsys has decades long heritage in innovating with AI and empowering marketers to work smarter. We started in 2013, actually, with Customer Intelligence Smart Insights module, which is empowering marketers to measure customer lifetime value calculations and predictions around customer lifecycle stages, spending, future value, etc., etc.. And a year later, still ten years ago, we introduced product recommendations, what we call predict, and that provides product recommendations on web, email and mobile. And also that's an algorithm that was really durable across time. In ten years, it's still delivering above market average conversions. Few years later. Again, something I would like to point out send time optimization. That's an individual user level learning model which decides when to send out campaigns across channels so that the open rate is optimal. Also, you heard in this presentation about AI segments and AI scores. Those scores are built from channel engagement, lead or buyer lifecycle stage, likelihood to purchase, likelihood to churn, predicted spend on next purchase. I will also talk about the customer use case built around churn and inactive customers and the threat and how we handle that as well. So those AI scores are the basis of AI segments that we generate that can provide you the highest possible conversion. But we didn't stop there. Let's look at the year 2020 when we were acquired by SAP. That was the year when we introduced tokenized personalization. That tokenized personalization is a key for you to keep content omnichannel by using those tokens that that can be inserted into different campaigns across many channels. And just a few years later, we had another service introduced that's core to properly launching campaigns. That is the Self-serve Value Measurement, which helps you quickly test and optimize campaigns for performance. And then last year, we introduced a lot of changes to our analytics capabilities. Audience reporting. You've heard about how high the uptake is already in adoption, omnichannel campaign reporting as well. These are very interesting and important additions. And then last year and this year we're doing a lot with gen AI. You've heard in the announcement you've seen them work in the product demo as well. And now let me talk about our AI vision, what you can expect in the mid and long term from us. We believe that AI excess marketer productivity. And it provides assistance along the entire campaign creation flow to improve campaign performance. That's what you heard from Aadil. We start with defining the right problem. Then comes the right tactic, which turns into an automation journey with the click of a button. Then you create the right content using gen AI. You create the right segments using AI as well. Then you launch it at the right time on the right channel, and afterwards you have analytics at your support that will help you decide what to change, what to improve next. And here on my screen, although, it's tiny on the right hand side, you can see an AI assistant. And yes, that AI assistant will actually guide you through that journey from creating the right audience to personalized content and messages. AI will be here for you to make the most out of personalized engagements. Aadil, you looked at how are you created content with the content block generator now going further, employing the AI assistant for content creation, in this example that you see on the screen, the AI assistant is recommending you to insert the virtual 15% off to that campaign creation flow. So again, little insights that help you tailor the content, not just generating it based on your recommendations, but also using all the context, helping you to improve on things that you might have not thought about. And last but not least, the dashboards are internal dashboards. Aadil mentioned the strategic dashboard, but, there's also more. If you have a lot of dashboards where you can rely on AI support in the future to make sure that you draw the right conclusions, and then your next campaigns will be even better than the previous ones. And also one important message. AI blends into the existing workflow. There's no need to re-learn the platform. There is no need to reestablish your processes. It will be really seamless, integrated into Emarsys. Also, we're aiming to provide a transparent return on investment growth from day one. And let me introduce three customer examples to you who are already using our AI capabilities. First one is City Beach, a very innovative customer, and they achieved 48% growth of win back from deflecting customers within 90 days. How they did that through using predictive AI segments and product recommendations. And if you look at the code, AI was able to predict where people were turning or deflecting on a one on one level. And that's the key. That's not possible with only human intervention. You need to know all the context. You need to analyze the context of millions of potential buyers and potential deflecting customers. And that's where you can reach such efficiency. My next example is PUMA. Puma, by using AI segments, product recommendations and sentence optimization, grew their revenue share of email and web channels five times within the marketing portfolio in just six months. And that's the business impact. But let's look at what impact it had on the team itself through the code, generate greater insights into customer behaviors, create more consistent, personalized journeys, and deliver them across different touchpoints. Now that's the definition of omnichannel. And that's the definition of true 1 to 1 communication. And the result is obvious a tremendous growth in online channels. And my last example is Betty Bossi. This is a customer who started using our subject line generator the earliest. Now subject line generation is just a tiny part of the whole content generation copywriting journey, but it's an important one. And also, just within the few weeks of using it, we got this customer code. I wouldn't want to be without it. And why? Because subject lines are generated that are always helpful can be used right straight away with minimal tweaking. And that means that marketers can now spend time on some more valuable tasks instead of thinking about many, many content variants and not being sure what to do. And with that, I'm closing the AI vision session and handing it back to you, Kelsey. Awesome things Balint, and it's great to see how we've been infusing AI into Emarsys for well over a decade, as you mentioned. And our vision for the future is truly backed by customers who are adopting those solutions and seeing real, tangible results now. Our product roadmap, again, anchors back to those differentiators that we talked about at the top of the session. Marketers need solutions that provide industry tailored use cases that are going to accelerate time to value, and those solutions must then be connected. Putting you, as marketers on the path towards omnichannel excellence. Insightful giving you as marketers the intelligence to be efficient and make those data driven decisions and adaptive so that you can leverage a flexible platform that you can adapt to your unique business needs. Now, this is all built on that foundation of trust, ensuring performance and scale. Now, as we talk about that as our product strategy, our differentiator, Balint why don't you tell us a little bit about some of the few highlights that we have coming from the product release that rolled out today, and then we'll talk a little bit more about the Future Vision roadmap. It's really great to talk about our vision, long term vision, but it's also at least as great to talk about those features that are being released as we speak as part of our June 2024 release. Let me mention a few highlights of the release. WhatsApp conversational messaging. I mentioned to you why that platform is important. Very high conversion rates, hundreds of millions of customers reach through that and we're not stopping there. We're currently launching one way messaging through WhatsApp, but the next stage is already ahead of us two way messaging. And also we're thinking about how to employ AI within that feature. So you will see more and more improvements to that single feature this year and also next year. The next example LinkedIn ads integration. LinkedIn is a very big social network that has over a billion customers. It's an addition to our digital ads channel. And with that, you can share our audiences with LinkedIn and also using LinkedIn lead generation forms, you can collect customer data. Now that's really important for a lot of B2B use cases. So we're really proud of that addition. Let's navigate to another area with a very important area. If you are using a marketing engagement platform, you would like to ensure that every data that's possibly accessible to you is there to use for personalized messaging. And if you want to do so, you potentially want to connect to CDP. That's why we built a real time CDP connector to SAP CDP. And that real time connector is actually very easy to set up. With just a few clicks and few minutes out of the box integration, you will be ready to connect your data from SAP CDP. And it powers privacy first personalization. It also helps in segmentation, and then it enriches profiles in CDP, which means that the data that's created in Emarsys like email activity is actually shared back to CDP, and it appears there in the customer profile. Along the same line, we also have mParticle integration, third party CDP. That means that yes, we're focusing on SAP CDP, but we're also extending our offering of Productized third party CDP integrations, starting with mParticle but there are also many more on the road this year and next year. Along the same lines, you can sync contacts, audiences, external events and have segmentations, personalization and also activate marketing engagements. So you have really the right access to the right data to fuel your marketing campaigns. Another integration Google Analytics. I don't need to introduce Google Analytics to you. It's the place where most of the web activity and customer insights are collected by everyone who is active on the web. So by using that integration, you are able to segment on audiences and also trigger marketing automations near real time. A very valuable data source. Again, improving to 1 to 1 personalization. And last but not least, there are two features that are connected to organizations which have enterprise grade scale. Large marketing organizations spreading across multiple countries, across multiple brands. Aadil showed you how asset tagging works in automations. We're also extending asset tagging to content blocks as well. And as we will work through the year and next year, we're adding asset tagging to a lot of our content. Why is it important? It's important because that's the best way for you to categorize assets, make it easily searchable. And also, it's very important that you can set the right permissions as well. As a distribution, again, in the large marketing teams, if you as a central marketing team want to keep your content consistent, you can push now not only automations and email templates, but also content blocks through to your teams. And it makes sure that your content is really consistent and you're sharing the right best practices. Kelsey, I'm handing it back to you. Awesome. So we are at the top of the hour, but we have one last section that I think is exciting for the group. So Balint, you know, I had the privilege to talk to a lot of different customers, whether that's at industry events, our own events like Sapphire or Power to the Marketer, or even virtually sharing best practices and use cases. So it's great to see so many of the things that they are talking about brought to life in our quarterly releases. Now, let's look ahead into the future and talk a little bit about what product innovations will be taking center stage over the second half of the year and into 2025. We looked at our long term vision. We also looked at what we are delivering today. So let's now look at what's coming in the rest of the year, in the current development cycle and also the next development cycle. A few interesting innovations, starting with my favorite in terms of productivity improvements, segment territory unification. That's very important if you want to create segments that are accessing all data within the platform without any barrier and without any channel limitations as well, generate segments that are generated quickly and scalably so that you can save a lot of time. You can improve usability also with tiny usability fixes in the new segment editor like categorization and logic nesting. So that will be a piece where if you don't run the AI segments, you want to do the segments together manually, it will really speed up your work. Another interesting feature around enterprise capabilities is enterprise analytics. Consolidated reporting of key metrics in a single global view for businesses with a multi business unit structure. But you have multiple brands or multiple countries. Here, we all have analytics screens that you can easily filter down to the right level and also aggregate. But if you are not using Emarsys as your primary analytics tool, you can also export all that data and look at it in your preferred analytics tool. That's important for you if you want to create sea level dashboards, or you just want to create dashboards that help you decide on a more aggregated level. That would be a great addition to your feature set. Content blog generation. Good news. Aadil mentioned this feature and it's not in the distant future. It's in the near term future. It's coming very soon. And all the productivity improvements that you heard about, subject line, it's coming as well here to Content blocks. I won't spend more time on it because you already heard a lot about it and seen it in action. That's on our near-term roadmap. Industrial partner tactics. We were the first to introduce tactics to the market, and we did that because we believe that it really cuts time from the idea of a campaign to actually creating the customer journey with just a click of a few buttons. You've seen it in action with Aadil and you've seen it, we have dozens and dozens of tactics already within our platform, and we're extending the tactics offerings to industries like travel and hospitality, sports and entertainment. And also we are introducing tactics whenever we add a new third party integration. So for example, if you would like to use our loyalty partner Annex Cloud, you will find tactics, and you can almost out of a block with a few clicks start using them and integrate. And my last example for today is data and asset separation. Again very very important for large scale organizations. If you want to make sure that data is restricted to the right people in countries within brands, then this is an excellent tool. And also the other way around, if you want to have a global organization that runs campaigns across multiple brands or multiple locations, overriding sometimes even the local campaigns, then this would be the ideal tool with the right preference and data management tools as well. And I would like to thank you for your attention. And I would like to hand it back to Kelsey. Thanks, Balint. That was an extremely jam packed session to kick start our Masterclass today. We went through a long list of both new and existing features, many of those available coming in our June release, which we rolled out today, so you can learn more about everything coming up in June at our release website, which is your first QR code on the left hand side. To keep a pulse of our future looking roadmap and some of the things Balint just walked through, you can check out the Roadmap Explorer, which is the QR code right in the middle of your screen. And then finally, for any of our existing customers who are on the line, if you are interested in taking on some of the new features and pilot giving them a test run, giving us feedback, please reach out to your CSM or you can follow that QR code. You can directly request the access to that pilot feature. Thank you all so much for your time today. Enjoy the rest of the incredible lineup of speakers, brands and partners. And with that, Sara, I will hand it back over to you. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Kelsey, Aadil, and Balint for a fascinating, thought provoking, intriguing session. And thank you all for the time you put into it. I hope everybody enjoyed it. And I hope you've been inspired to invigorate your marketing with new channels, and find some creative ways to infuse AI into your marketing.

We are now going to start to talk about one of Emarsys' customer Huel, how they are driving profitable, scalable growth through customer advocacy marketing with our partner Mention Me. Now, if this is your first introduction to Huel, you should know that in 2015 they really set out to transform how all of us think about nutrition. And that mission is to make nutritionally complete, convenient and affordable food available with minimal impact on both animals and the environment. They had an incredibly fast mindset of growth and innovation, and since launching in 2015, Huel is actually sold over 300 million meals to customers. So they are really exciting company with a history of fast growth that we should be looking forward to hearing from. And in this session, we're going to explore the customer advocacy element of it and how it's related to performance and how it works alongside their traditional cross-channel marketing mix. And we're joined by two distinguished speakers. Tash Reynolds from Huel. She's their global head of CRM. She's actually based in the UK, but I believe she's actually joining us from New York today. So we're becoming yet more global. And as part of Tash's role, she leads teams in both the UK and the US and really, truly leads on Huel's number one value of make customers happy by nurturing relationships with loyal customers around the globe. With Tash is wonderful Kat Wray, who's the Director of Strategic Partnerships at Mention Me. Those of you have been on our masterclasses before, you may have had the opportunity to hear Kat speak. Kat's based here in London, and she's been with Mention Me for over six years. And she really has focused on honing a really deep expertise into how brands can harness the power of customer advocacy to grow their businesses. So without further ado, I'd like to hand things over to Tash and Kat. Great. Thank you so much, Sara, for the introduction. And thank you everyone for joining today. So in terms of what we're going to be covering today and our session, so we're going to start by talking to the power of customer advocacy. First we're talking about what customer advocacy is. But also why is so important for businesses be leveraging it to drive growth, especially in the current climate. And then we're going to talk about how you'll have done exactly that. And first of all, highlighting the value of that customer advocate, but also how Huel have leveraged advocacy data to supercharge profitable growth that they're sustaining. And if you have any time at the end, more than happy to answer your questions. But we're hoping it's a really useful session for you guys that this session is jam packed full of data, insights, tangible examples, that you all can use as inspiration off the back of the session. So we really hope you found it useful. So before jumping straight in, we wanted to set the scene on why it's so important for brands to be leveraging customer advocacy to drive growth, especially in today's climate. So we know right now it is a really tough mark out there. And there is a million reasons why that's the case. But two reasons that come up consistently as a challenge is, first of all, acquiring high-quality customers is getting more and more challenging. And again, there's a variety of reasons for that. It is more competitive than ever. So everyone is competing over the same customers and differentiates yourself can be really challenging. But also there is also really a big overreliance on paid acquisition channels that can often be quite inconsistent and unpredictable when it comes to cost and effectiveness. On the flip side, retaining customers is even harder and getting customers to come back, spend more, and become a lifelong customer of your brand. And so those key reasons are driving a lot of painful consequences. So we're having conversations with a lot of brands out there where some of them are missing growth targets, profitability, struggling, customer lifetime value might be dropping, engagement rates are struggling, and often there's overdependence on things like discounting. And ultimately what we're seeing a lot of is that brands are paying a huge amount to acquire customers using paid channels, and they're paying a huge amount to retain customers with discounts. And so if they are driving growth, it certainly isn't profitable growth they'll be able to sustain. And so what we're doing at Mention Me is helping brands drive that profitable growth by helping brands unlock the power of their customer base and specifically within them, help them unlock the power of a specific segment of customers that most brands are overlooking right now, and who already exist in your database, and it's a huge opportunity to unlock straight away. And just to explain what we mean by this, so most of the time when we're speaking to brands in the market, the way they will measure the value of a customer and the way they'll prioritize results, attention and targeting is focusing on the customers with the highest lifetime value. Who has the highest spend looking at recency, frequency and monetary value? Now obviously that makes a huge amount of sense, of course, but it is quite a limited view of your customer. Your customers do a lot more than just buy with your brand. And a key piece of data and a key lens of data that a lot of brands are missing out on are actually who are your customer advocates? So who are the customers who are actually going to the lengths of spreading the word about your business and helping drive organic growth through referrals? If you can get your customers doing this on your behalf, that is the most valuable way for you to be driving growth and the most valuable form of marketing. But whilst is the most valuable for marketing, it's also one of the most invisible. You know, word of mouth, referral, it's very difficult to track and very difficult to action any kind of way. And a lot of the time at Mention Me, we'll be speaking to brands who, you know, they know a good amount of customers come in from off the back of recommendations, which is great, but whilst that's great, they can't actually do anything with that information, and they can't drive it from a marketing perspective. And so what we do at Mention Me is we help brands turn advocacy into something that brands can really leverage as a growth driver of their business. And just to visualize the impact of this. So this is all real life data, and a real life example with Huel. And this is one of many examples we've got with them. But the small blue dot you see on your screen is one of Huel's customers. Let's call her Steph. And for most brands right now, this would be the way you can look at Steph. So obviously be able to zoom in on information on her spending and engagement and RFM individually. But typically brands are looking at Steph in isolation. However, because Huel understands the power of advocacy and is tracking advocacy data, this is actually what we found happened after Steph. So she referred three of her friends who referred, who referred, who referred, and they ended up with this incredible network of customers that spent over a quarter of 1 million pounds with Huel. And as I said, this is one of many examples of networks we've uncovered within Huel's database. And so the key thing here is to an extent, referral and advocacy like this will be happening in all your business right now. And that's why it's so important to first of all make more of this happen. Make it really easy and seamless for your customers to be referring their friends and drive their organic growth. But secondly, track this data because if you can track this data, you can start unlocking these new valuable segments of advocates and start thinking about how you want to start treating them differently in your CRM strategy to drive more growth from within. And ultimately that's our vision at Mention Me is help brands think advocacy first that when you're thinking about driving growth in your business, the first thing you think about is how do we get our customers to go out there and spread the word on our behalf before you start investing more and more on paid channels? Paid channels aren't going anywhere. But if you think in this order, if you think advocacy first, you're going to have super economics as a brand and be able to drive truly profitable growth that you'll be able to sustain in the long run. And ultimately, how we approach that in driving profitable growth through advocacy is in two key steps. So the first step is unlocking word of mouth and referral as an acquisition channel to acquire high-quality customers. And the second step is then leveraging advocacy data from that to then maximize customer value and revenue you're driving from within your customer base. And so what we're gonna do now is talk about how Huel have done exactly that, how they've driven that profitable growth through advocacy and starting with that first step on how they've unlocked word of mouth and referral to acquire high-quality customers. So I want you to go ahead. Thanks, Kat. Sara gave a great introduction to Huel. So won't spend too much time talking about it, but Huel did launch in 2015, and we are now the world's number one complete nutrition brand. So what that means is our product range provide a convenient way for you to consume the essential vitamins and minerals that you need. And we have helped millions of our customers to easily fuel their goals and stay on top of their nutrition. So, speaking of our customers, let me introduce you to what we refer to as our Hueligans. We now have around 5 million Hueligans worldwide in over 46 countries. And it's safe to say as a brand, we are really obsessed with them. Customer obsession is at the heart of everything we do. It's part of our brand DNA, and we even have stickers on our laptops that do say "make the customers happy." From the beginning, we knew we wanted to drive a strong community within our customer base. And as you can see from the pictures on the screen and the fact that people even now have Huel tattoos, we think we're doing an okay job of that. So our branding was always really prominent. Our product range was great and really different, and our customer obsession had led to strong customer satisfaction. All combined, this meant that Huel was naturally becoming a part of customers' everyday conversations, and word of mouth recommendations were happening. As a brand, we knew there was an opportunity here, but we had no way to measure and activate that. And that's when we started working with Mention Me. So Mention Me allowed us to add a whole new layer to our relationship with our customers. We'd already driven brand loyalty through customer satisfaction and built really strong relationships with our customers. But what Mention Me did was they allowed us to take this one step further and activate brand advocacy, which helped us to really propel growth and continue to help us propel growth. Mention Me made it really easy for us to optimize and track advocacy in a much more sophisticated way, whilst also providing technology to make it really easy for our customers to refer. So great example of this is using Mention Me's name share functionality. So for those of you who aren't familiar with Mention Me, I'll just explain what the name share functionality is. So referrals happen in everyday lives, as I said. It happens in word-of-mouth conversations, in everyday lives. And Mention Me name share allows customers to keep those referrals happening offline. Instead of using digital links and codes, name share allows customers to simply tell their friends to use their name at checkout. This means, as I said, customers referral behavior can remain offline, and recommendations can continue, but our customers get rewarded for it. I think the key thing in all of this, and something I want you to take away, is that as a brand, our customer obsession meant that we'd naturally built really strong relationships with our customers, and they were in turn showcasing real brand loyalty. However, what we've realized is, although loyalty is great, taking that to the next level and really activating and driving those customers to become brand advocates is so key to growth. I think it's safe to say that everyone on this call is probably thinking about how they can drive and activate loyalty. But what's been key to us is taking the next step and building on advocacy and referr a friend, and all of this is what will really help to drive growth. So Mention Me made it really easy for us to activate and unlock brand advocacy and made it really easy for our customers to refer a friend. And off the back of that, in year one of working wtih Mention Me, we saw 10% of new customers come through referrals, which was huge. And this has grown over time. And last year we saw nearly 20% of new customers come through referrals, which was driven by 22% of our customers referring. This growth has come from lots of incremental testing and changing that we've done with Mention Me, and they've really enabled us to figure out who in our customer base has the highest propensity to refer, and tweaking our referral campaigns to ensure that we're always providing what resonates most with our Hueligans. As you can see with our projections for the coming year, we're aiming for 27% of new customers to come through referrals as a channel. We're really going to double down on referrals in order to reduce the reliance on our paid channels and really help drive our sustainable and profitable growth that Kat's been talking about. We aim for this to be our biggest share of growth with Mention Me yet, which is really exciting, and our plans involve really utilizing all the data that Mention Me have to offer. I was just saying, on mute... Beyond those amazing results that Tash has talked about in terms of that growth and new customers from being able to track and optimize referral. Is it also enables you to really rethink the way you're looking at the value of your customer and unlock whole new valuable segments of customers you can do more with? And so, as I said at the beginning, the way to visualize this is most brands right now will measure the value of a customer based on their spend, looking at lifetime value, recency, frequency, and monetary value. But that is a limited view of your customer. And so we apply a whole new lens of advocacy data on top to get a much more holistic view of the true value of your customers. As the way that we measure that is a metric called extended customer revenue, or ECR, which is the lifetime value of a customer, as we all know, plus all the revenue they've driven through referring their friends. And so just to visualize the impact of this, so let's say Huel have a customer Steph. Steph makes two purchases with Huel a year. And so because she's not a particularly high spender or her repeat purchase rate isn't particularly high, Steph is automatically segmented as lower quality. So sure nurtured in the background but not prioritized in any kind of way. And for most brands that would be their view of Steph. However, because Huel understands advocacy and tracks advocacy data, they can see that while Steph might not look that valuable based on her direct spend, she's actually referred seven friends who've referred four more. Her extended customer revenue is much, much higher than that original direct spend. And so what this data does is it enables brands like Huel to have a competitive advantage to identify that it is customers like Steph that are your VIPs. There are so many opportunities you can do with this data, which I'm just going to talk to in a minute. But the key thing here is most brands aren't doing this. They don't have this data. And so then the problem there is you're only seeing Steph for that 140 pounds a month. So she could be sitting in your inactive or your defecting segment. She's not being prioritized. And so she might get frustrated, leave, and take all her friends somewhere else. So what this data is doing is it's enabling brands like Huel to unlock whole new segments of customers that are truly valuable. They've been over looking to be doing a much more valuable job with. And the results I've seen at Huel really speak for themselves. So there are figures that you can see on screen really show how referrers and the people they're going to refer are real quality, high-quality customer groups. The one example on screen, I'm not gonna talk through them all, but the one example that I really want to highlight, is that if a Hueligan starts a relationship with us through a referral, they're 3.5 times more likely to go on and refer themselves. This really highlights that high ECR piece that Kat's just been speaking about and also shows how referrals can really snowball growth. I think long story short, I wouldn't really want you to all take away from this session, is that advocacy and referrals can really drive both high quantity of customers, but also real high quality of customers as well. So so far, what we've talked to is how Huel has unlocked word of mouth and referral to acquire quality customers. But what we're going to talk about now is how they're then leveraging the advocacy data we just touched on to maximize customer value and the revenue they're driving from within that customer base. And the first thing to touch on that's really important is that when it comes to identifying your customer advocates, they're not always the customers you think they're going to be. So when I was going through that referral chain earlier and showing Steph, her original spend, and then her ECR, there might be some people on the call thinking, "That's great, good to know who is referring, but I assume the people spending the most of the people who refer the most. And so we've got them covered in our top spending segments." That's actually not the case. So we've done analysis across over 500 clients, and there's absolutely no correlation between how much someone spends with the brand and how much they refer. And so again and again, what we're finding is it's genuinely customers like Steph that don't look valuable based on spend that often are driving the most indirect revenue through referral. And that was absolutely the case with Huel. So to give some context on Huel's segmentation strategy. So Huel work with an agency right now that help them identify different customer segments, and they base this on data such as data points on location, gender, lifestyle, things like that. So you can see on the screen some examples of the segments that Huel uses. And that really helps them target their messaging and engagement to make sure they tailor that in the right way. However, when it comes to Huel figuring out where they were going to prioritize their efforts on which segments to spend most of their time on, previously, what Huel did is they were looking at which of these segments have the highest lifetime value, and that was where they were focusing most of their attentions focus on engaging and retaining. However, since then, what we've done is we've added advocacy data into this. And what that's done is it's completely changed the way that Huel views valuable segments and which segments to be prioritizing. And just to visualize this, pretty sure this is quite a busy slide so I'm going to walk you through the graph in front of you. But on the left hand side on the y axis, you've got the lifetime value of those segments. And on the x axis in the bottom you've got the ECR of those segments. So ECR being lifetime value plus revenue driven through referral. So previously as I said Huel would prioritize in segments who were spending the most with the highest lifetime value. So as you can see on the screen, these segments G, O, and H were the ones where Huel was doubling down on and focusing most of their research and attention on. However, because we've now landed on top advocacy data, we've now unlocked five key segments that Huel were previously overlooking. So all the ones you can see circled in pink. And the really key thing to show here is all of these people, these customer segments, they're quite low on the LTV axis. So they're not spending a huge amount themselves. And so a lot of these segments of customers would have potentially been inactive or defecting. And so as I said before, they wouldn't have been prioritized. However, what we can see on the x axis is they are driving a huge amount of revenue just indirect referral. And so what this has done is unlocked hugely valuable customer segments that Huel were previously overlooking. They can now do a huge amount more with. And that's obviously really exciting for a CRM team like Huel who have lots of ideas on how to activate that. Yeah. And this was so exciting for us and continues to be. It's giving us a whole new lens to look at our customers through. It's given us a whole new segment to talk to, and our new purpose for communicating with our customers as well. So what we're going to do now is just run you through some initiatives that we've been running here at Huel, just to give you an understanding of how you can utilize this advocacy data. So the first thing I'm going to talk you through is around product launches. So as a brand, we're always expanding our product range, always launching new products and new flavors. But until now, we haven't been utilizing advocacy data as part of these product launches. What we decided to do from a recent product launch, which is our Black Edition, Ready-to-Drink, as you can see on the right hand side of your screen, was really treat our advocates as the everyday influencers that they are. We decided to target those customers that sat within the behavioral segment most likely to purchase this product, but then also overlaid that high ECR data to find the perfect cohort of customers. So what that gave us was the customer group most likely to purchase this product, but also most likely to go on and refer it as well. We created a beautiful gifting box that our influencer team actually poached for themselves as well, and sent out to influencers as well. And we sent that out to these customers completely free of charge as a way to say thanks for being a great advocate. And here's some free products of our new range for you to try. Now, we were measuring the impact this based on purchasing and referring, but the results we found were so much bigger than that. So we actually had 150% increase in new product social shares, not just on traditional channels that we see, but also on LinkedIn as well. So we unlocked a whole new channel that we could potentially use in our social strategy going forward. But it was also really interesting to see that if we'd done this with, just high-value customers that were spending a lot, we might have seen some increase in social shares. But because we did it with advocates, they really wanted to shout about our brand. We also saw a 280% increase in positive customer service contacts. And who doesn't want to be part of a team that's causing positive tickets rather than just negative ones at the time? And at the point that we pulled these results, we saw that 25% of these customers went on to refer that new product to their friends. We know this has gone up since then, but that's still of course, and customers at the time had gone on to refer. Now, what's really key in all of this is that utilizing these referrers, gave us a whole new segment and trying to engage with around our product launch. And if we'd taken this same concept and done that with high-value customers, yes, they probably would have gone on to purchase. But doing it with advocates really unlocks a whole new customer group that we're seeing our product being recommended it from their friends and family as well. So because of the success of the system, we're going to roll out as part of our ongoing product launch strategy. I'm really excited about that. We're also utilizing Mention Me's AI capabilities. Yeah. Just to get some context on there. So in our platform, not only can we measure the existing customer revenue of a customer, but can also predict that using AI machine learning. So we can predict all your customers who are likely to become advocates in the near future. And we can also measure of your existing advocates who are sharing, who would like to stop sharing in the near future as well. Yeah. So with these customers that were likely to stop advocating referring, we've taken the hypothesis that these customers have already recommended the product they purchased to all the relevant people in their life. So does giving them a new product to try, unlock new people they can refer Huel to, and therefore prevent them from lapsing as an advocate? So what we've been doing with this customer group is sending them a product that, although it might have an affinity to the product that they currently purchase, it's something they've never tried before. To not only see if they go on to purchase it, but do they go on to refer new people and therefore stop themselves from lapsing as an advocate? This, again, has given us a whole new purpose for communicating with these customers. Plus, they feel really rewarded and valued, and they're getting something free from us as a brand. This is a test that is currently in progress, so we don't have results to share. But what we've seen so far, everything looks really promising and it's potentially something we're going to roll out as part of our BAE strategy ongoing as well. Now, one of the great things about working with Mention Me and Emarsys together is there're heaps of Tactics ready to go, and set up ready to use so you can easily activate and utilize the ECR and advocacy data that we've been speaking about. This has meant, as our team over the last few months has been able to really build out journeys that are talking to these customers and really nurturing them in a different way. I think the most refreshing thing from this is really the fact that we have a whole new world of CTAs to use with these customers because we're talking to them about different things rather than just getting them to shop now. A great example of this is that we recently sponsored Soccer Aid in the UK. So if you don't know, Soccer Aid is big charity celebrity football game. And off the back of that we received concert tickets that we could share with our customers. Now, previously, we would have set up a competition with our high value customers and thanked them for purchasing. But this time, instead, we did it with our advocate and we looked at those with high ECR and went up to them to say thank you for being an advocate and then also giving them the chance to enter the competition. Now, not only was this great for us to be able to say thank you and recognize this segment, but we also saw great engagement from this campaign. And also on the day these customers were sharing on socials and really shouting about the fact that we've given them free tickets to the game. What we're also keen to do from here on out is measure the impact on how this campaign influences the behavior of this cohort, longer term as well. And in the last use case that Huel is currently implementing in terms of leveraging advocacy data is leveraging advocacy to create lookalike audiences to optimize performance of paid acquisition channels. So Huel is setting this up right now. But we've set this up with a lot of our clients already. And in terms of how it works, we'll create a segment of customers who are your top advocates, who are the ones driving the most indirect revenue through referral. We'll then push those segments into the likes of Facebook and Google as lookalike audiences to then target similar-looking customers in terms of acquisition. And when we've compared the performance of the advocacy-led audience versus all those clients next-best-performing audience, we've decreased the CPA on paid channels by up to 25%. We've increased ROAS on these paid channels about 30%, and we're also helping acquire higher-quality customers who are 15% more likely to refer onwards. So it is super exciting. And as I said at the beginning, we know brands are very over-reliant on paid channels. So to make this more cost effective is a huge game changer in terms of enabling brands to more effectively use their marketing spend. The Huel assessment is up right now in all their regions, but a particular focus region is the US, which is as a real focus target region for them right now, because they recognize this will really supercharge the effectiveness of the paid channels in acquiring new customers in that area. And so hopefully today, what you've learned is by thinking advocacy. First, there's kind of three key ways it really helps you with that profitable growth. So the first is obviously unlocking word of mouth and referral as an acquisition channel to acquire quality customers. It also helps you unlock whole new segments of customers you've been ever looking to drive, more revenue and more value from within your customer base, but also it helps improve the efficiency and the effectiveness of your other marketing channels, including paid channels. And so really, all of that driving towards that long term profitable growth that will scale. That's it for us today. If you're keen to connect with either of us, we've got our QR codes on the screen here. And yet back to you, Sara. But thank you all for your time. Thank you very much, Kat, Tash. That was really a fascinating story. Before I let you guys go. Tash, I've just got one question for you. What would your advice be to any businesses on the call that want to lean into customer advocacy? They're really not too sure where to start. I think for us, the key thing that we learned was that being able to have the data and understand who those customers are within your customer base is really, really essential to start in. And then once you know who they are. Just testing everything. I think that's where we we've really built our strategy from just testing them testing them and then and just try loads of different things. Think outside the box. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, both of you. If anybody has additional questions for other our fantastic speakers, you can reach out to them on LinkedIn. You can see the QR codes on the screen. I'm sure they would be delighted to hear from you. And a final thank you to both of you for me, for making the time to participate today. I know you added a lot of value for everyone. So what do we all get from some of this? I think for me, I took away a reminder about how important word of mouth is as such an incredible driver for business. And I think the other key takeaway was really interesting that I wouldn't have realized was the fact that the referred customers are so much more likely to refer more customers, and that you really are starting to create a cycle there as you start to get that going. And perhaps, I'll see if I see nods that that's starting an indication that you're starting to get it right and you're starting to get the program right, and it's starting to actually have a life of its own, which I think as a marketer, I find really, really exciting. So thank you both very much.

I think it's now time to move on to our next, exciting session. And we are going to be joined, by Replacements and Attentive to talk about how they're serving a traditional and digital marketing approach to serve an actually very broad, demographic. So if you haven't encountered Replacements, you should. I'm actually a customer, so I'm happy to be an advocate as well as an introducer here. They had 40 years of being a go to service when it comes to replacing pieces of precious time with China, or adding to a collection that you perhaps already have. And during this session, we're going to talk about some really interesting things, because usually when many of us think about new customers and engaging with them across channels, I think we do tend to end up leaning into thinking about a younger demographic. I think that's quite natural. But the nature of our products, replacements, customers do tend to represent perhaps a slightly older demographic. But what's fascinating to me about this story is as they've started to work and think about their customer engagement strategy to appeal to younger demographics, they found success actually appealing to older demographics. So there were things that you could learn from appealing to one that actually worked with and other that perhaps were not as obvious, on the get go. So to go into that in lots more detail, I would love to introduce Amy Childress is the e-commerce marketing manager of replacements? She's joining us from North Carolina. She's been author placements for 29 years, so she has an amazing pedigree and depth of knowledge about the company, the products and the vision and how they go to market. And is responsible for evolving the customer experience at replacements over time to continue to foster really deep and more meaningful engagement with her customers. And Amy is going to be partnered by Kara Lewis, who's lead client Strategy Matter attentive. She's joining us from Ohio. But I am to warn you all that you might see boxes in the background because apparently she's in the process of moving. So if there's a story there I've teed it up for her when she comes on camera. Kara is a fabulously enthusiastic client strategy manager, with well over eight years experience guiding very diverse brands to help them create creative consumer experiences through technology. So it's my very great pleasure to hand over to Amy and Kara. Thank you so much, Sara, for that wonderful introduction. All right. Hello, everyone. Thank you so much. I am so thrilled to be here today. As Sara mentioned, I'm Kara Lewis, CSM at Attentive. And as Sara mentioned, please, that part in my box is in the background. I am indeed preparing for a multi-state move, so hopefully that won't be too much of a distraction from today's exciting conversation. And I'm so honored to be joined today by one of my favorite clients, Replacements. Now, I've worked with Amy from the Replacements team for a few years, so I'm pumped for the opportunity to talk through their experience with SMS with attentive. Now, if you're not familiar with attentive, it allows brands to drive revenue and loyalty with smart marketing and reach shoppers where they typically are their phones, of course. Now, over 8000 leading brands like Crocs, Skechers, Charlotte Tilbury, Claire's and of course replacements rely on attentive to deliver engaging commerce experiences. As mentioned, I'm Kara, I'm a CSM at attentive. Now let's get to the good stuff. Amy, I'm so excited to chat with you today. Would you mind giving the audience some background on yourself and replacements? Happy to chat with you today, Kara. So as Sara mentioned, I have been with Replacements for nearly 29 years. And yes, I know who stays at one company for that long anymore, but it's such a cool business. So my role at, replacements, I'm the e-commerce marketing manager, which encompasses everything from email and SMS, strategy to the user experience on the website. And I know, the marketers all know that, with the norm, we wear many hats. When we're dealing with, like, legal and creative and all that good stuff. But so about replacements. It started in 1981 by our founder, Bob page. He was an auditor for the state of North Carolina, and he hated his job. But on weekends, he enjoyed antiquing and searching for China, crystal, and sterling patterns, and so much so that his friends and family constantly asked him, while he was treasure hunting, to look for pieces in their dinnerware that were broken or missing, and he even to keep track of their request, he'd handwrite them on index cards and keep them with them while he was out and about. So what started as a dinner wear matching service for replacements has morphed into what our e-commerce site is today. So if you or anyone, you know, is looking for a missing or broken piece, chances are we've got it. And since we're talking about, evolution of traditional marketing, I wanted to share that I have seen our marketing strategy evolve from a monthly little classified ad in the back of southern Living to, today's multi-channel, digital marketing strategy. Excellent. Thank you so much. I mean, I'd love stories like this. It really is a brand rooted in tradition. To see a brand like this grow from just, a little weekend hobby to to something of this caliber. It's really exciting for me. And, of course, who doesn't love to go to a relative's house and find a missing piece of China or, like, a really cool, dinnerware set there. So. So let's dive in. Amy, you've been an attentive client for three years now, thinking back to 2021, when you first got started with SMS. What challenges did you hope text messaging could help your brand overcome, and what goals were you focused on when you first launched SMS? Sure. So when we... We're a very niche market or business, and it's reflected in our demographics. So if you look at the chart, you'll notice that 10% of our customers are under the age of 49, and 62 are above the age of 65. And having this age demographic of 65 plus, we know that older generations have trust issues with change and technology. And with the evolution of privacy laws and such, we noticed that our email opt out rates were increasing month over month. And when given the chance to unsubscribe from communications, our customers typically would go what we call the nuclear route, which is, you know, getting out of all communications. So we lost ways to communicate via mail and print. So when launching with Attentive, we felt that it was a way to explore a new type of communication strategy with this demographic. It provided us a way to understand if our customers would even be receptive to this channel of communication. We were also hoping that this launch would not only gain their trust with SMS, but also maybe regain their trust and have them opt back into email. Absolutely, absolutely. And, Amy, we do notice often that privacy is a big concern for a lot of our clients. So I'm always quick to mention our privacy compliance capabilities at attentive. You know, we have a team of lawyers that are ensuring that we're adhering to several of the legal requirements such as Tcpa, Ada, GDPR and more. Now, I know when you first got started with SMS, we were brainstorming a ton of ways to really hit home with your unique demographic, since it isn't your typical age group. So how did you work with the Attentive team to really help you target that demographic and either gain or regain their trust? So our main goal was to acquire new customers, of course, but it was also to regain our lapsed buyers or our opted out of email customers. And after that first month, we had 14,000 opted in subscribers. And by the end of that first year, we were up to 60,000 opted in subscribers. And as of today, we're just a little shy of 95,000. But after onboarding you, Kara, and the rest of the Attentive team, you really helped us to go beyond that typical industry standard for SMS and like truly partnered with us to help map out a strategy for our signup unit offers, ideas for marketing campaigns and, you know, their cadence. You encourage AB testing, and you met with our team on a regular basis with check-ins to answer any questions we had and offer up new ideas for us to try. Absolutely. Absolutely, Amy. And, you know, a lot of our AB testing involved the sign up email. Of course, that's that very first experience that a potential prospect or existing customer, future repeat customer has with your brand. So, and with testing these AB testing units, everything from 10% off $150, to stay in the know, $15 off $150, $5 off $100. We really tested a lot to find the sweet spot of healthy list growth without cutting into profit margin. And we learned that an offer certainly outperformed no offer, but there was really a sweet spot to find, which was key for understanding this demographic. And of course, as for campaigns, we did a lot of AB testing with SMS versus MMS. Which of course, if you're not familiar, is a plain text message versus one with an image. And of course, as Replacements features many visually pleasing promotions, there was ample opportunity to highlight specific products. So this is something we like to do with a lot of brands to see if showcasing some of their products, increases the chance of conversion, and then additionally, testing out copy and offers and campaigns was an easy way to see what resonated with this unique audience. How did your demographic influence the way you thought about SMS? I'm not gonna lie, and Kara can attest to this, but we were a little doubtful that our demographic would embrace SMS, honestly. You know, from that initial pop up on the website, to an email banner landing page, we did not think our demographic would want to sign in, sign up in general, nor go through the full opt-in process because it's, reply y and then you get your second text, you know, to get the promo code. But, you know, we do get a lot of feedback that our website has too many pop ups. And so we were worried that with any sign in message upon entry to the site would cause a little bit of friction. And, you know, as expected, in the initial launch, there was some communication and confusion with these folks, prompting calls to our call center. But we had prepped our customer care team on how to handle questions. And I will have to say that our customers proved us wrong and have adapted well to this new channel. Yes. And if there's one thing that I do love about your customer base, Amy, is they are very transparent, with their feelings, and they will reach out and let us know how to improve the experience, which is much appreciated. So allows us to really be nimble and quickly make adjustments, to accommodate, our audience right now. What campaign do you think resonated the best with your audience? How did you find a balance between SMS and your other channels? So I know this is technically called a journey, but we try to get to know our customer right off the bat with our welcome conversation, our conversational journey. And because of the breadth of our inventory, we love to learn, you know, what category our customers truly want to hear about. So that we can create a customer and category based segment, such as China, crystal, silver, estate jewelry. And then we send them specific content geared towards their interest, especially when we have new arrivals, you know, promotions on specific products, you know, and so on. For our product campaigns, I would say our Black Friday and Cyber Monday strategy is well received. We of course have the big, you know, splash, during, you know, that weekend. But for the past couple of years, we have mapped out a plan the week prior to Thanksgiving. For example, our customers who have made the most purchase were sent a special just-for-you "Thank you for being a loyal customer" and have a promo code. Other segments may have received, you know, gift with purchase opportunities, and others may have received a one-day-only flash sale. You kind of get the idea. Absolutely. And again, this is probably a common thread through all the sessions we'll see today. But again, really identifying those customer segments and then tailoring, the text messages accordingly. Really makes a difference in conversion rates and engagement rates. So, it's really key here that the Replacements team is able to communicate to the, the audiences and for their unique, customer segments. Now, was there anything that surprised you, when you started with SMS? It may be our demographic, but our our customers were really happy to reply back to our SMS text. They would send kudos and comments and ask lots of random questions. And, because we already have a customer team already in place. We developed our own kind of concierge group to answer our daily conversations, in the dashboard. And, it's actually worked out kind of. Well, and it's from the perspective of an added layer, personalization. And they could offer recommendations on product. And, we realized AI generated responses could be more streamlined in our process. But at the moment we're okay providing that extra service to give our customers the confidence to make that next purchase. Absolutely. And this is a really great example of how it pays off to reimagine the classic customer services through new channels. Of course, our longtime customers who have stuck around since inception should still be catered to and familiar ways, even as we evolve our methods of communication. And of course, my favorite thing about SMS and text messaging is you're going to get that notification right there in your, you know, your general messaging app where your family text you or your friends text you. So, it's obviously very easy for your customer base to, you know, quickly reply to that SMS that they, that they receive from you all. And then of course, the customer care team is right there able to respond. So you can't get any better service than that. Now, what are suggestions for brands out there with a niche demographic like replacements? So I would say the first thing is to understand your customers' interactions with SMS. And so to really start AB testing early and that's anything from, you know, testing your content, you know, it'll help evolve your strategy. As we mentioned, test SMS versus MMS. And then of course send times and days. You know, we think that, you know, yes, it's a 100% open rate, quote unquote, you know, but some people may not interact at 10:30 in the morning and 7 p.m. is better. So to really kind of understand where your customers are. And then test those segments and sign up offers. Another thing I would recommend is to take advantage of the pre-built journeys in the dashboard. They're great. And let the Attentive platform do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. And your CSM with Attentive is your partner. Thanks, Kara. Don't be afraid to ask questions or share your ideas of the things you would like to achieve for your brand. They're a great resource to help further your goals. And if you do have any questions, chances are there's a case study on hand that they can supply, or they'll quickly give it on to an appropriate department to get an answer for you. And then it was really helpful for me to attend the Attentive Beyond the Message webinars. They're a great resource. Listening to other companies' strategies and successes were so helpful in the beginning for us when we were establishing our strategy, and content in the beginning. Absolutely. I love all of those answers. Obviously, the one about working with your CSM is my favorite. But really, our CSM team is here to help you implement your SMS program. And I make it personally my goal to really become, as you mentioned, an extension of your marketing team. I want to know your brand and your customers as well, or if not better, than you do. So all of our CSM, here at Attentive to strive to do that. And we have a team of over 100 CSM that work very closely with their brands to make sure, they're getting the most out of their SMS program. Now, Amy, you mentioned beyond a message, I think that's a great call out for those in the audience that aren't familiar with Beyond the Message. It's a quarterly webinar that we host to give our customers an update on new products, but we also highlight several customers that are doing some really creative things in the market. And it's definitely a good opportunity to get some inspo and hear what's working or not working. And if you're interested in attending the next one, we're definitely share the link after so you can sign up . Now, Amy I got one more question for you. What are you looking forward to most with Attentive? So we are currently utilizing the suggested method, excuse me message, AI tool. And so when creating our content for our campaigns, when we are coming up, what we think is kind of like a clever idea, we'll enter into the message open field and we take a look at the suggested AI message. And it helps us play around with our copy, and the message tone, a sense of urgency, and that type of thing to improve our message. And, you know, when we think we have an awesome, clever message, we run an AB test against the, you know, the suggested just, you know, to see who's idea is better. But, and we've just been added to a test group and we're very excited to demo Attentive's new AI opportunities. So we're testing the AI Pro, which is featuring AI audiences and send time AI. And we're also testing AI journeys. Absolutely. Yes. Of course, it almost be a little bit strange if we didn't talk about AI at this point. And I love that you're as excited about AI as we are. I think with such a niche market like yours, AI really opens the door for so much opportunity. With the ability to create 1 to 1 personalized text is going to be so interesting to see the texts that truly resonate the best with your audience. And then, as well as some of the other AI features. Amy, like you mentioned, send time optimization. With such a unique demo, the classic 11 a.m. text that works best for other brands might not work the best for your audience, right? So send time optimization would be sending the text at the time the learning model really knows will convert the best with each individual subscriber. Now that's all we have for our session portion this morning. Amy, thank you so much for being a part of the session. Now we'll be taking some questions from the audience. We will thank you both very, very much. I think that was a really interesting and inspiring session. I think we all learned a lot. And I know for me, it's fascinating to hear about how SMS, which is, the channel we do tend to associate with a younger, a younger demographic being so incredibly effective here. Amy, I had a couple questions that popped in for you, if you wouldn't mind. If you're for marketers who are just kind of thinking about expanding into SMS, what kind of advice would you give them about tracking success? What metrics would we should they be looking at, do you think from your experience? Well, definitely understanding, the tracking we were looking for engagement. We were looking at, like I mentioned, there's the pre-built, journey. So going beyond that, that general marketing campaign, is set up your post-purchase journey, you're browsing your cart, abandons, everything from a win back is really encompassing. The whole picture that's offered with Attentive. And that really helps you understand and track and also tracking again AB testing is tracking where your messages are really hitting the spot. Really understanding the time of day and a conversation journey helps as well. In that, you know, you're zeroing in on that segment and seeing where those successes are. Wonderful. Thank you. I think that's really, really great advice. One final question. If I could, and it's come knowing that you are both an Emarsys customer and an Attentive customer, which gives you a very rich, digital marketing strategy and a reach of channels. What's next for you in your strategy? What are you looking to do? Well, we have much success with both platforms, actually. We've integrated the two, so we have the ability to understand our customers, trying to build that strategy and that, you know, if a customer is not engaging with their email, we have the ability to send them a text, and really kind of understand and build those segments where we know that maybe someone is sunsetting into a different form of communication, if that makes sense. It makes perfect sense. It's about understanding where your customer wants to engage with you, and making sure they're not in the wrong channel at the wrong time with potentially the wrong message. Right. And we have, again, our age demographic, they have really surprised us in that, email, not so much anymore. They, want to to have that instant, notification that there's a sale or there's new product arrival. So it's definitely been interesting seeing how they've engaged in the channel. I think that's really, really fascinating. And it just makes the point that it is omni channel is for is for all demographics. The trick is to find which which parts of the omni channel are going to work best for you, but not to assume that older channels that Bratz are more familiar with are the only ones that are going to take you into into a given space. And I think Covid actually was a game changer for us because, with this demographic, they were FaceTiming with grandchildren. They were really learning, you know, what their capabilities with their technology was. And so it we saw a definite, increase in mobile. We kind of switched over from desktop to mobile device usage. And so that's kind of how we knew that, our customers were a little bit more in tune with their technology. Which is fantastic. It's what making sure you actually understanding your customer and that they're giving you those signals. And it's just up to you now to actually react to them. Exactly. Wonderful. Well, thank you for that. I think we're up on time. And I very much appreciate your investment of time. Amy. Kara. Thank you. I think there's a lot for people to think about and to think about in terms of how they can evolve their marketing strategy. I'm sure both Amy will be happy to take any additional questions. There are QR codes on the screen which will help you to connect with them on LinkedIn, and I'm sure they would be delighted to engage and my thanks once against them for their time and engagement and the fantastic information that you shared. Thank you very much Amy, Kara.

Our next session is going to talk about revolutionizing customer retention, specifically AO's story and their blueprint for building trust, authority and loyalty. If you haven't encountered AO, you should know that they've been a trusted online retailer in Britain for well over two decades and now are the UK's market leader in major domestic appliances. They actually own 16% of the total market share and 30% of the online share, which I think is interesting probably for this audience. And that's all down to this relationship that's centered around the relationship with their customer and that strategy that drives that. So we're going to spend the next session talking about how AO has elevated its approach to its customer experience and transformed the way they're using customer data to really build closer, more loyal relationships with our customers. And the fun part of our speakers today is they've actually been working on the strategy for AO together for the last three years. So I think they're going to make quite a dynamic duo. We have the privilege to be joined by Craig Hogan-Farnworth, who's the head of CRM at AO. He is joining us live from AO's headquarters in Bolton, which for those perhaps not as familiar with the geography is, Greater Manchester. He's been with AO for six years, so he's got a rich amount of knowledge about the company. And he leads the team in designing and executing effective CRM strategies. His partner in crime, is the strategic consultancy team lead for EMEA at Emarsys, Ellie, who is here in the UK. She's been with us for over five years, working alongside our customers to transform their marketing strategies and personalize engagements with customers, and brings a wealth of perspective to the conversation. So it's my very great pleasure to hand things over to Craig and Ellie. Right. Thank you so much, Sarah. And thank you, Craig, for joining me here today. Craig, do you want to get started? And just to kick off with a bit of an introduction to AO as a brand and why we started working together in the first place? Yeah. So I can do. So thank you for the intro. You've got quite a bit, which is really good. So I think we've got a wide audience attending today, so, yeah, AO, we've been around for almost 25 years now. We do have, a really good partnership with Emarsys over the last 4 or 5 years, which has really allowed us to kind of challenge ourselves and delve into our kind of key issues, our key problem areas within our email channel and with our CRM channel. Our overall message, you'll see across all else AO's marketing, we are the UK's most trusted electrical retailer. We pride ourselves on now about being really customer focused and having the best customer journey within our industry. As I was listening briefly to the previous presentation about, interesting about Covid being, a quite a positive thing. And it was for AO as well because we don't have any stores. We're not customer facing where we have stores in the high street here in the UK. We're all online. We have a lot of our partners who do, but we don't. So to try and, put a face behind a brand, face in front of the brand is quite a challenge. But, something we do really well, we continue to do really well with the support of Emarsys across the strats team, which has been fundamental to where we're at currently. Absolutely. And I've had the pleasure of being able to come up to very sunny Bolton, just yesterday for a workshop with you and the team. But we've been working together now for over three years now, to help you adopt your channels, but also execute your really ambitious strategy. And as you've mentioned, like what really struck me as a business, AO you really do truly live and breathe. Your experience for the customer, to maintain your really high trust pilot school, but also to build loyalty with your base. And that starts from the really competitive prices you offer and the services for the smooth delivery. But it also really continues into how you plan to execute your CRM and how you want speak with customers as well. So as I mentioned, we've been doing workshops with you for the past few years, and this has really helped us understand some of your challenges that you are facing. Many marketers in the industry now know growing zero and first party data is key to the success of your brands. Increasing product relevancy was also a big thing that came out of the workshops that we've done, because you've got such a broad breadth of range. How do you speak to customers at the right time with the right product? And also how do you keep them engaged throughout quite a long sales cycle? You know, you're not going to be buying a washing machine super regularly. So you want to give them a great experience, but also give them reasons to come back and engage with you as a brand. Is there anything else you want to add to that Craig? Yeah, it's all the points that are on the screen as the main challenge is to do very close-linked together for us at AO. The range of products we sell, we do sell several thousand products on the previous screen that that was displayed. Quite a lot of what we sell is distressed. So people who maybe had a kitchen appliance that's given up, it's broken, something that you need on a basis. We do the very next day delivery thing really, really well so we can fulfill next day delivery on a range of products. Or major electrical products or major domestic appliances. One of our main challenges is how we then get people into our breadth of range? How do we tell people that we. Because you've had a really good experience on one major product we sell. Several thousand other things that you could get a competitor's on the high street. So by increasing product relevance, when a customer onboards with us through our welcome journey, that is something we've worked really closely with strats team at Emarsys on how we can use the data that's available against the customer's order, or maybe what our customers have been browsing online, through what they give us on, on on certain, we'll go into web channels shortly. But what they give us information, what we can utilize. And that all that really comes with targeted campaigns with really editorial, engaging content, which is one of the points on there. So not everybody's going to be in a sales environment, giving it a sales period or in the market for something. And while we keep them engaged by not just driving sales, then that and the customer's role is really, really important. And that builds right into our customer activation, on how we can keep more customers active in our database for a longer period of time. By understanding a little bit more. So all these challenges really are closely linked together. And fundamentally keep us on our toes. Yeah. And this led us to identify three key areas that we wanted to focus on over the past few years. You've got a fairly large marketing team, so we've been able to build a roadmap for them to basically execute across there and make sure that your team keeps actually delivering value for the business. So number one was lead generation with web channel. We identified there was a missing opportunity and the majority of your customers were coming into the space through your checkout. However, you know, there was a large pool of people who were probably coming to you through shopping when they were searching for their next washing machine. But you actually never had an opportunity to sell to them relevantly. So we wanted to make sure that we were capturing people who were coming to your site. Secondly, we identified the opportunity to beat competition with automation. So identifying more customers enables us to map out those customer moments that matter to you as a brand, whether it be from leads, first time buyer or first time buyer to repeat. And secondly, sorry. And thirdly, was a call to action with an email template toolbox, which what does this mean? Basically, we identified that there was a huge opportunity to update the AO template to really, speak to what the customer was looking for and drive more click and site traffic engagement. But we'll get into all of that in a little bit more detail. Craig, I think this was really underpinned by how we work together. I think the main benefit I see from working with my clients and working with the project teams that we've got behind us is actually like the project management side of it. And actually being able to deliver a roadmap that helps you be successful in your teams by using the technology. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think one of one great thing and why we've been strategic partner of the Emarsys for a few years now is we're very open about our challenges. On the previous page, just one of the one of many. But we're also more than happy to be challenging Emarsys to do that really well for us. They challenge us on certain things we may be doing wrong, maybe something we want to trial. We're not afraid to trial things. But the middle point about how we beat the competition with automation. It's how flexible automations can be within the Emarsys platform is a really big bonus for us. We can send customers down multiple different types of automation, omnichannel automation, including, social, direct mail channels and SMS channels. So, just because a customer is not interacting with a certain form of marketing, email isn't for everyone. But by overlaying engagement and purchase data with demographic data, which we have available to us, allows us to put through people through smart and more, relevant automation to hopefully the end goal to convert and getting them where they are. So that's a really big one for us. But, you know, Emarsys get it when we have our sessions together, which is really important to us. It's made for a very exciting project. So as I mentioned, we kicked off with lead generation with web channel. So our studio services team have built up these templates, which essentially have understood that capturing just email isn't really enough. And there's a huge opportunity at that point when someone's engaging with you to have a bit of a value exchange and essentially understand the mission and why they've come to AO.com. We had some great sessions and I think understanding, as you mentioned, Craig, the majority of your customers have probably come to you because they bought a broken appliance. But also there's a large pool of people who are renovating, or they're buying a gift or they're preparing for school to work. And, we are just, I guess, to caveat, we've launched with email and we're about to go live with what's on screen. So, just by launching the email sign up, we managed to drive with you 14% uplift on your opt in database. And we're about to go live with this progressive profiling, which is really exciting. But why is that important to you? What do you plan to do with this data once you understand that someone's renovating or that a distressed customer? Yeah, it sounds fantastic. And we can see that 40% uplift, it is brilliant for us. We still got an email address at that point. Nothing really much else to help us if you're a new customer or a known customer to AO. But what this allows us to do, going forward is to really put customers through a more relevant, personalized welcome journey, even if we know a snippet of information about these customers. It gives us the opportunity to target and to show more relevant information based on what our customers and a moment is in their life, whether it's renovating, whether it's gifting around peak trading time periods of towards Christmas time. You know, that allows us to really give some insights and put that in the welcome program. I'm a massive advocate of home. The more you know about someone, the more a customer feels like you get them. And I think we have philosophy at AO. We want to know our customers. So even at a very early stages of our customer's AO journey, before they come into a purchase and transactional journey. If we're able to get a little bit more information about them, we can tell that welcome journey. And again, use the automated tools available in Emarsys to allow us to trial that through different channels. Absolutely. And that leads us nicely to once we've identified more customers, it also instantly opens up the opportunity to speak to them. And through automation, it's really clear when someone's coming to you and they're trying to buy a washing machine, it's actually quite a difficult task knowing that, how it will fit with, which features you want. And I think automation has been a paramount to you as a brand, being able to deliver on your promise of being trusted advisors to your customers. And also, we know that the majority of your customers are purchasing washing machines initially, but then there's a huge opportunity within your welcome program. You've already alluded, Craig, that we've worked on this quite closely with you to make sure that you're- I mean, actually, maybe why don't you tell us how it's improved the customer journey for you? There's two aspects of it. There's customers who you can cross-sell using automation within multiple types of products. I can say we are a customer facing organization. So, you know, ... For us in terms of showing our breadth of range. We also sell within that category. There's over 250 types of washing machine that you can buy. A washing machine, let's be brutally honest, it's not the most exciting product in the world. It does a job somewhere integrated in a kitchen, behind a door, somewhere unsure. But there are multiple different technologies within washing machines. Our customer may or may not know about that can first of all, make it quicker for customers to put cycles on, there's Wi-Fi connected. You can put your washing on from your car or your desk if you want to. But you also then can save money with energy efficient appliances. So what that allows us to do we get more information out of a customer. We can tailor these welcome journeys and ultimately use things like buying guides and be really detailed into our customers. Gaining more information we can help one of the customers in that sort of, initial purchase period, they're in a discovery phase of the purchase. These are 5 to 6 hundred pound products. It's not something you're going to buy just in the wind. So it's really, really important that we understand that. And we show we understand that to our audience. Absolutely. And your automated results really speak volumes. Because, 45% of your revenue being driven by automation really takes the pressure off the teams as well. That's down to relevance. It's how we work as a team. Within CRM here, about how we can use relevant content to help and increase that conversion of a customer. And ultimately back to the very beginning, if we understand the customer engagement trust, which is fundamentally our business. Absolutely. And finally, we look to improve the call to action within an email template toolbox, essentially enabling the AO team to speak more relevantly to their customers. The email template, you know, what's possible with an email has really accelerated over the past few years. And so from a technical standpoint, but also a strategic, standpoint, that was just a really good opportunity here for a bit of a refresh to drive tech engagement and also site traffic. I think what was really interesting, digging into your customer profiles with you is that we identified there was some really key information that your customers seek and desire before making a purchase, whether it's the saving or social proof from other people or they really want to know about the product features. This was all stuff that we basically took and evaluated your email template and just made sure that you were firstly showing the right information to the customer, but also actually being able to understand how much, what people were engaging with as well. How does your team now use the template, how they found it improved the productivity of the team and the engagement as well? Yeah. I mean, the engagement results speak for themselves, first of all. So we had a, I'd say good engagement number against email. But we saw opportunity how we could significantly increase that. Email is a very small window of opportunity in terms if you look at a whole kind of read rate, how long, how many seconds a customer reads an email. You have a very limited window to get their attention, particularly if you're in a really busy kind of industry and your inbox is full of competitors. So I think for us, we wanted to use the templates. We increased that CTAs from three. So we had pulled in emails where you could click three times to a CTA, maybe the title of the product. This now allows us up to nine points of click within each email. And each point can be more relevant to a certain type of demographic customer. So by that I mean some customers are more led by energy efficient. So we show energy rating on a particular product, particular on a lot of Indians, a TV example, which, is still got multiple generations. But, you know, if you get the right product, you can save yourself thousands over the course of the first five years. But it's also ultimately pays for the product. Reviews really, really important to people. So they want to know they're getting the right products and they see, you know, if this got 4.7 out of 5 and that's really that's a good rating or hundreds maybe, you know, even a good quality product, the promotion times, which is at the top there in red, that allows us to have up to four of those on this spot, which may be something like it includes additonal bonus of 10% off. So it really allows us to add more relevant information, which are core kind of USP, why you should buy this product in a small space. These render really well on mobile which is you know again what lot of businesses do best practice to build mobile first. So, it's key why we increased our email engagement by such a number. But we challenge ourselves, right? We're still challenging themselves. Are these the right thing to do? Should we display things in a slightly different manner? But Emarsys' fully aware of that. So, we'll keep chasing you down to fix it. Yeah. And I think that's exciting, what's really exciting about this, as well as I think it's really helped you stretch how you use the product recommendation tool as well. Like your team are now also testing using a product finder, like what additional information you should be bringing into AI recommendations. So, you know, I think, starting small within the email template and then seeing how you can utilize other features within the platform. It's been really great to watch and it's been a real evolution. So the results speak volumes. Oh, sorry just before we move on, just sorry I'm looking at time, but we also have the challenge of Data Mall We have a high adoption of Data Mall, which I'm pretty sure has been discussed in this afternoon's, or this morning, depending on where you are. All these we look at that in terms of how we could adapt and still get across and multiple points of click across using Data Mall that's again something we consider, throughout what we've redesigned the "pods" with new concepts. Because that is for us we're seeing that grow... The email templates constantly evolving in terms of what's possible. And it's just been really great to see your team lean in and adopt the new capabilities. What's also amazing about your brand is how playful you are in your tone of voice, and that gives you so much opportunity within email campaigns to engage your customer. So again, working with our services team, the team got creative. One of the challenges has been, as you mentioned, around cross-sell. And also, you know, identifying when someone could be interested in another category. So ideas like, 'what kind of barista are you, Simon?' Or 'Oops, I don't drink coffee. How about other gadgets for the morning?' All these tools have really, you know, they were really fun and exciting as a team to be able to concept. And it's also been great to see some of these rolled out. How do your team approach targeting customers? Because all of this ultimately feeds data. Then you can lead into segmentation. Yeah, it certainly does that every click point or every email send is obviously going to get a certain interactions and information about how to segment moving forward. The great thing about a lot of these examples is that we use them when we know customers not necessarily market. So we can be more playful with our languages. You know, using personalization, first name, a lot of these don't show prices. They're more engaging, kind of fun style of language. But also, you know, we see that price is ultimately important. So, yeah, if we know customers interested or not interested in coffee or aren't interested in coffee, it allows us then to build segmentation and put them in targeted automation. And that's not just on these examples. There's just dozens of these type of examples that we use. But I think for us, it's just really important that we still have our tone of voice. Again, we're not customer facing. We don't have stores, so it's important that we carry that across. Show that we understand customers and continue with that relevant journey. But, yeah, these are great. We rely on these, and the performance of these is really good. Fantastic. And I think the results really speak volumes for the collaboration between our teams. With our platform expertise, but your teams, what your teams know about the business, it's really helped to deliver experience that resonates well with your customers. And again, this really shows in the results. So I'm personally from my side, really proud of what we've been able to do together as a team. So thank you for your openness and your partnership in the collaboration. And being able to achieve these results. I'm really, looking forward to what we're going to be able to do next year as well. So yeah, I completely agree. And it's a big thanks to the team of Emarsys that understand our business challenges. We see Emarsys as kind of as an extension of our CRM team. So, we have a lot of account managers come and sit with us on a monthly basis to understand where we're currently. The numbers do speak for themselves, but we can't rest where we are. Email is constantly changing. We need to consider all the channels, through SMS. We need to, you know, things like WhatsApp, everything that's coming really, in our industry. What are the market leaders and what we do for that? So yeah, great results. But we can improve on them. And we will improve them over the next 12 months. So by continue to challenge ourselves and be challenged, which is, I think, a great collaboration so to have. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for your time today. And yeah, if anyone else, listening is interested in working with the service team, feel free just to reach out to CSM. But yeah, thank you again for joining me today. Thank you both, Craig and Ellie. I think that was fascinating. We've got a couple things,1 or 2 that come in. I'm conscious, we're getting tight on time, but I think it'd be nice to pick up 1 or 2 of them. Craig, this first one's for you. The most powerful assets to transforming any organization are, frankly, the people. Right? So do you have any advice you could share for marketing leaders on empowering team members throughout your teams? Yeah, it's it's very straightforward for us here. I manage a team of 12 CRM specialists with AO and just this recently in the last two days, and again, this is a good example because it's the workshop with Emarsys. When we kick off new projects here, we have in the past just had heads of or senior management. We like to delve in a little bit more and make sure every extended member of the team is involved in projects, to have them really involved and engaged from the off. Now, that doesn't mean they'll be involved in every step of the project, but then they're fully a level at that stage, then fully align what we want to achieve over the next coming months 12 months, six months, whatever that might be. So for me, it's the big key is keeping the team engaged with what we want to achieve or for the goals of the project. I've got people who don't necessarily work on that particular silo or CRM. Then one person might work on one part of CRM. If they know the project, they feel like they can come to me and say, I've got an idea. Yeah, I've got an idea on how we could improve that different area. And we had one just a couple of weeks ago, which went up to executive level at AO and it was it was loved. But if we don't give people our platform and kind of ability to feel they could be involved, that'll never happen. So yeah, very simple. Just have a really engaged team, but allow them to be engaged, at the early stages. Thank you. Craig, I think that's really good and important advice. I've got one more for you, and then I'll let you escape. You've been working with Ellie now and the strats team for some time. What's the biggest learning, or change to how you were doing things in the past that was uncovered during this partnership? I think it's the ability to be open and to be challenged. I think, Emarsys do that really well. They are expert in the field and they work with many of the different brands that are not necessarily in our industry. Listen, we don't claim to do the right thing, we're doing the right thing that we feel is now, but the great thing about Emarsys is that because they can come in and look at what we do with outside eyes, if we're really detailing the brand and how it should feel. They challenge us and say, "why not try this, why not try that?" And I think that's really important. I think it's a partnership moving forward. If you're both on the same page with that, but the suggestions that we have on some projects are not necessarily what Emarsys agree with and I think the team and I know Ellie and the guys are more than comfortable to challenge us. But I'd like to think it's because we're open enough to be challenged, and not just to kind of say, No. We're doing the AO way, that's it. And I think that just leads to us ultimately going to the right result. Wonderful. Well, that feels like a very positive note to to wrap things up on. So Craig, Ellie, thank you again so much for your contributions. I think this is another really great session. If anybody would like to connect again you'll find QR codes on the screen. To their LinkedIn connections. And I'm sure if you have any questions that we weren't able to get to you, they would both be delighted to talk to you 1 to 1. And Ellie, Craig, thank you again for joining us today.

Now, you may be thinking that traditionally CPG brands have had little direct engagement with their customers. Primarily sold through brick and mortar retailers, perhaps. But recently, with the growing value of first-party data, there has actually been a huge shift as CPG brands move more to direct-to-consumer. And today we're going to hear from a panel of distinguished CPG leaders who are successfully using omnichannel and personalization to build deep consumer relationships in conjunction with their more traditional sales channels. Now, it's wonderful to have a fabulous panel. It's even better to have such a distinguished host to run the panel for us. And our distinguished host is Don Brett, who also acts as the host of the CPG View Podcast Host. Don's background has over 20 plus years of omnichannel and e-commerce experience, including his time at Newell Brands, which is a consumer goods leader with over 100 global leading brands. Today, he's going to host this fantastic panel and pull insights out of some people in the industry whom he respects and knows well. So with that, it's my very great pleasure to hand over to Don. Thank you, Sara, and thank you to the Emarsys team for having us today. As the panelists come online, I wanted to start off by saying two things. One, it is incredible to see in the attendee chat folks from Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Southampton, the UK, Italy, America. It's fantastic. So I hope everyone who is listening, is able to extract value from this. And I'm extremely honored and privileged to have some of my great friends on, with me, today. So first, I wanted to start, before we dive into our questions here, I want to just start and ask, could each of you briefly describe your role, and can you share an overarching goal that your team is focusing on this year with regards to D2C engagement? I'd like to start off with Diana, with you and Andrew, and then we'll go to Jamie Decker and Jamie Schwab. Absolutely. What a pleasure to be here, everyone. So I'm the CEO, the global director on ecommerce capabilities for Kellanova . And, you know, I think is, is part of my role is really kind of driving what is the next generation of capabilities in the market, driving our marketing excellence. And I love this topic because really, as we think about marketing, to become a real growth driver is putting the consumers at the heart of everything we do. So one of our, you know, our North Star is to put people at the center of sustainable brand growth by harnessing a variety of trusted and unified consumer data, and we unlock that a little bit more. But the idea is to leverage that to drive deeper insights, being able to support AI-based decisioning. And at the end, right, the goal is to deliver personalized and connected experiences that really get us to become the world's best performing, snack-led powerhouse, which is our big goal. And when we talk about putting people at the heart and at the center of everything, that's rooted by a very strong first-party data set that we're trying to get, and having also enriched that with three partnerships. So our markets, you know, we're trying to as the global center team, we are really putting a lot of tools in the hands of our marketers. We are creating a lot of playbooks and a lot of best practices on how we do this from a crawl-walk-run perspective? What are the best channels? What are the touchpoints? What are the different strategies to collect that first-party data in a very responsible way? I love what Sara was saying, right. We owe to our consumers and shoppers to protect, to care and protect. And I think that's part of our strategy is like bringing what I said, right, is trusted data. So that's very important to us. And that's one of our big goals today at Kellanova. Awesome. Andrew, over to you. Yeah. Good afternoon. Morning, evening. Depending on where you are. It's a pleasure to be here as part of this session. My name is Andrew Gallo. I'm the Chief Omnichannel Officer for American Greetings, and I have responsibility for a couple of different businesses. One is our direct-to-consumer websites and companion apps. We operate three websites: americangreetings.com, bluemountain.com, and jacquielawson.com. And we have companion apps that allows consumers to access the same assets through mobile. And then I also operate our e-commerce, channel, which is really the sale of any physical product that we offer, as an organization, but is sold on somebody else's platform. That can be an in-store platform, like a brick and mortar retail partner, or it could be, one of their websites or even a pure play, online retailer. So that's the scope of the responsibility that I have. I think consistent with what Diana has said and likely what you'll hear from all of us is that everything has to start with the consumer. You know, our biggest challenge is when we don't have direct access to the consumer, but have to do that through somebody else's platform. It's how do we gain enough understanding of the shopper and their journey and their behavior on somebody else's platform, whether our brick-and-mortar store or online, so that we can then either partner with the retailer who has access to that consumer directly to develop unique campaigns and personalized or customized campaigns, which often results in things like understanding segments of consumers, bringing insights to the retailer who holds the actual data, and showing them that we understand our product or category better than they will, because that isn't their expertise. And if we bring those insights, then it influences them to share with us the insights so they can get from the data that they hold about the consumer in themselves. So it's truly a partnership on our direct to consumer sites where we do have that data. It's a very different answer. You know, we know something about each of those, visitors to our sites, and we can customize that experience based on prior usage or existing, you know, real time clickstream type of data. And we can customize our outreach to those consumers in real time. Awesome. Great. Thank you. Andrew. Jamie Decker will head to you. And then, Mr. Schwab. Yeah. Hi, everybody. It's such a pleasure to be here. My name is Jamie Decker. I lead omniactivation for Del Monte. And for us at Del Monte, omniactivations made up really three facets. It's one is all of the e-commerce selling elements. So whether that's through retail .com, the pure play networks of Amazon, or delivery networks in Instacart and Shipts of the world. And then we also have our omni activation organization. So that's anything within the marketing funnel that ties back to consumer purchase at a retailer. And then we've got all of the data and reporting that supports all of that. You know, in regards to the consumer specifically, I think Andrew said it perfectly in regards to the areas in which we are leaning in, in a big way, and it's working with our retailers specifically on the first-party data that they have. And to Andrew's point, how can we make sure that we're leveraging that first-party data with our retailers and then bringing the insights that we have to really influence how we have to think about that differently and in different ways in which we go about it? You know, and as we look further into the consumer engagement path in 2024, we're going to be placing a heavy reliance in regards to how can we engage with the consumer and influencers through the social content, and how do we further build out what that looks like and have this two-way engagement through social leveraging AI, to really get after our consumers and engage appropriately. Thank you, Jamie and Mr. Schwab, would you mind introducing yourself? Yes. I also go by Jamie. So we'll see how this goes today, Don. It's a pleasure to be here and speaking with everybody from around the world. Really appreciate that. My name is Jamie Schwab. I'm the VP of Global Digital Commerce at Colgate-Palmolive, sitting in our, global digital organization. So I've got some colleagues who, I'm gonna be here representing today in some respects. But within my role, what we're trying to do is help build capabilities across all digital commerce, whether or not it be pure play, omni-customers, DTC, along the way and how that can help drive things at a local level. And we're excited to be able to touch so many different businesses and categories around the world. We got a very good chance to understand how to build those capabilities based on the life cycle that any of our given products are. We sell pet food through the Hill's Science and prescription diet business. We have a few, facial skincare brands around the world, as well as, the household goods that many are familiar with between Colgate and toothpaste, Palmolive dish soap, and so on. So thanks for being here. Yeah. Thank you, thank you, Jamie. And, you know, I do think we'll go to the next question in a moment. But a lot of what we learned as marketers early in our career are very consistent, I would say, with what we're facing now. But in the spirit of transformation, things are changing. You know, we learned about the 4Cs, or 4Ps in marketing when we were in school. And I'm sure, there's still learning about that in universities today. We learned about the 5C's. I think this is all very, very relevant to the space we're in. And Sara covered it, mentioned it earlier. You know, when we were thinking about transformation in many of our earlier roles in our career, it was very much focused on... As e-commerce was growing, it was actually similar to what Sara said it was, can you get the product? Can you ship the product? Will the product arrive on time? I think the point with regards to personalization is can you get the right message to the right consumer that's contextually relevant, and can you do it consistently? And I think data, and to Jamie Decker's point, the personalization component, is very real. Well, I wanted to flip, and ask one more question of the group, what's maybe not keeping you up at night, but what's one of the most significant challenges at the top of your mind as you think of about DtoC or direct to consumer engagement. Andrew and Diana, we'll start with you. Awesome. So I think, you know, one of the biggest things for us is how do you create a value exchange that really resonates? And how do you ensure that the value exchange is dynamic over time? Right. So if you think about, you know, of course the relationship with the consumer is going to change. How do we make sure that as we are creating these personalized experiences, how do we evolve them as the relationship with our consumer evolves? Right. So if you think about, even in the funnel, right, somebody becomes aware of it and they buy it and they become loyal. They are expecting different exchanges throughout the journey. And creating that process to enable us to be dynamic. Right. Of course. And that's how the power of all these data comes in, where we understand where you are in your journey and how they're changing and, you know, as they go into different journeys, how do we then create a different communication, that different exchange? So personalization is not a one off, right? I'm like, oh, this is Diana up with so-and-so years old and like Pringles is well, you know, she's now in a different stage. So being able to dynamically evolve, as their relationship changes, I think is one of the biggest challenges, because it's not like you have your, your person, your first-party data, at any minute, any time, those people can sign off, right? They can say, well, I unsubscribe, I don't want you to talk to me anymore. So it's kind of that keeping that constant engagement live and exciting. And of course, this is a is a reciprocal exchange with the consumer. Yeah, I would build on that and say that, I think the biggest challenge is that there are so many ways to reach consumers today that it can almost become an overwhelming canvas or landscape, and you're forced to make decisions on where are you going to invest. And that includes not just payment to get access to those folks through different channels, but also the development of creative content that's feels relevant and unique and authentic to the person that's receiving that. And so for me, the biggest challenge is trying to find a way to measure the effectiveness or reaching consumers through all these different points of contact. Some are going to be less efficient, but maybe very important strategically because one of your goals may be I want to acquire a broader customer base. And that's a whole different set of tactics and ways I'm going to measure success than if the other one is, I need to be very focused on a specific audience, and I have to drive profitability with that consumer segment, and that that sort of begs a different set of tactics. And then all of them require the ability to try to measure in some way attribution. And that's a very challenging thing to do when you don't have first-party data. So, that's the thing that keeps me up at night is how to keep coming in and spending the company's money in the appropriate way to meet our financial goals. It's a real. It's a real challenge. Jamie, we head to you. And then. Miss Decker. I can dovetail off both of those, because I think the word complexity is the biggest thing that keeps me, you know, engaged and thinking and worried all at the same time because the speaker system that's evolved that, both Diana and Andrew were just speaking to, there's so many choices that that need to be made as you go through any given part. And the other side of it is the emerging piece. I don't know how much it's emerging, but what's the profitability of a direct-to-consumer business model look like? Right. I think we've all seen an arc in terms of the investment, the PE-backed businesses, the ones that have come in and done that. And how do you build something that is profitable? Right. Because from a long-term standpoint, but also how are we valuing the data that we're trying to collect or trying to engage consumers to get? Like, how does that fit into that same equation? So there's just a lot of math in the whole thing, right? When you try and lay it all out from a journey standpoint to engaging in that journey and then to ultimately monetize it, which is what we're here to do. Right, Miss Decker, over to you. Yeah. I mean, I think everybody hit on the main points really, you know, from a D2C standpoint, it is, to Jamie's point, it's what is the role of direct to consumer from a profitability standpoint to what insights can we get on our customer at the end of the day to make sure that we are engaging appropriately and using that data and learnings from that information? But then to kind of sum up, you know, some other things that have been said throughout this morning so far, it really comes down to, for me, it is this information superhighway that is being thrown at the consumer on a day-to-day, hour-to-hour basis. And how do we make sure that the information, the content, the personalization that we are serving up is going to stick, right? How many times do you actually have to serve a consumer to make sure that they are getting your message and they are choosing you with all of the information that's coming to them at any given time on the three different screens that they're utilizing as they're, you know, listening to their podcasts, listening to the radio? It's just so much information. So how do you make sure that your information is sticking and keep that consistency that we've been talking about this morning? Yeah, that's a great, that's a really good point. I wanted to ask the group get your perspective on first-party data strategy. You know, as we talk about this, you know, the backbone of D2C engagement is obviously data. And many CPG brands face challenges today, and various degrees with limited transaction visibility, which does require to you all's point, and Jamie, maybe it was keeping you up at night, is to find ways to collect the data and leverage the data at scale. As I guess maybe for this group, and maybe we'll have two members contribute, on this one, and we'll keep it moving. I want to make sure I've seen actually some questions come up in chat. And some of them are really interesting. And I would love the group to maybe chime in there. But the question here for two of you is, with the crumbling of cookies and not always having access to the customer transaction journey, how are you all thinking about your first party data strategy in 2024 and 2025? Sure, happy to chime in. So definitely, I think we are one of those. We don't have a lot of direct-to-consumer websites, so we have a variety of touchpoints that we use to capture that data. And of course every single one gives us different level of attributes. But think about we have brand-specific promotions. That's one we have connected packaging that we have used a lot, and we starting to use more and more, with the use of QR codes, shoppable media, where I think that's a big experimentation. We continue doing our own websites, with some D2C engagements that we have for some, like, you know, special packs and a special customized product. We have also consumer surveys and pulse sampling ratings and reviews, and consumer affairs. So we have a broad variety of touchpoints that we are planning. And we are aligning that a little bit to understanding what attributes you need. And we are guiding things to say. It depends on if you need psychographic data versus behavioral or transactional. These are the different touchpoints that you can use to unlock a little bit of that collection. We think about first-party strategy or first-data strategy. It's really about engaging consumers in the channels that we can control first. So, you know, we have a set of social channels where we are communicating regularly with our followers in terms of our company, our mission and purpose, new product launches, etc. So we're in the space of digital celebrations and physical celebrations both. So, everybody in the market has a reason to celebrate something or somebody. And so by staying connected and being relevant in that space, reminding folks that there are events in their lives that they want to celebrate and they don't want to forget, that's a very natural and authentic way to stay connected to folks. And when they do connect with us in social channels, they're sharing things, too. We can watch what they're sharing, what they're saying, what their comments are, and start to get a little bit of a feel for are we meeting their needs? The second thing I, as I opened up, I shared that we have three different direct-to-consumer websites, and companion apps. And we can see that behavior directly. We know when consumers come to our sites, what their, you know, clickstream looks like, what they're using and sending. And so we can use that information to serve up a more customized, personalized experience when they come back to us. But I would tell you, we tend to focus an awful lot on digital. And that's critical because when consumers are shopping on digital channels, but we shouldn't throw out or alienate some of the tried-and-true ways of getting insights from consumers as well. And we don't. So we collect a lot of first-party data through quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. And that can be then used to go back to our retail partners who hold perhaps some of the data on an individual transaction at a consumer level. We can share insights that we're getting about our category and how consumers feel about it. And that's how you influence the folks that may have direct access to some of the first-stream data to share insights that we can then leverage. I love that one of the things that, you know, and I wanted to tee this over to, Jamie Decker and Jamie Schwab. But one of the things that I also think about a lot that comes up in conversations, even on the podcast, and we interview several members in our community pretty regularly, is the notion that the future. I've said this a few times. So, ignore if you've heard it. It's the future is going to bring a compression of time rather than an elongation of time, and our ability to synthesize data and act on that data to capture and create value will separate companies that are top tier from those that are not. And I think it's a question that all of us, anyone listening, or even just those in our community, have to really be assessing and taking a step back and understanding all of us in some permutation one way or another, have said the customer, the consumer is the heart of it all. So finding ways, capabilities, and systems to enable us and your brand to stay very close to he or she will be critically important in order to position yourself for the best in class and future. Jamie Decker, Jamie Schwab, anything you wanted to add to this point? Before we keep moving? You know, I don't know that I necessarily have much more to add, but I think time to just kind of layer on to your point is, obviously this is new-ish. It regards to the data that's out there and how rich it is. So I think it's, you know, there's this portion of it where it's how do we leverage our community, to really understand what are the best tools that are out there because so many of them aren't new. What's the most relevant, what's going to set us apart? And how do we work together, to really understand where to focus and where to invest. Great. Awesome. All right, with that being said, what we're going to do is we're going to move to the next question I want to talk about for us to talk about. Yeah. As we think about customer or consumer experience and personalization, first off, there's this concept of value exchanges between brands and customers, our consumers. And we all know these exchanges are critical to capturing data and enriching the experience. There's nothing worse. We've all experienced it where we get served an ad for maybe a brand that we were thinking... Oftentimes I feel like our phones actually extract our thoughts, but that's another thing. Anyway, but as we're thinking about something, a brand, I was looking for actually some soccer cleats for my son the other day, and it was a pretty disappointing experience when you get served, I got served an ad that wasn't at all the types of cleats that I was looking for. It wasn't his age. It wasn't the demographic. It wasn't all these things. So it really kind of missed the mark and put me off a little bit to... Did they actually understand me and what I'm searching for, or should I actually just go somewhere else and buy the product? So I think that's a very real concept that we have to be aware of as marketers and make sure that we have the best capabilities and the best systems in place. We're not always going to get it right as marketers, but we should aim to get it right much more than we get it wrong. So I guess I want to ask this next question, maybe to Jamie Schwab and get your thoughts too. Can you give us an example of where you're creating a specific type of value exchange that has encouraged consumers to share, perhaps more personal information, enabling you all to deliver a better personalized experience, the opposite of my soccer cleats. Well, that's the goal, right? Just to not have that experience go. Yes. Well, one thing that we're doing that's a good example of this, and you're right, it has to start with a bit of consumer empathy for what is it that we're trying to do on that side. And that gets into the complexity. So how do you do that? Right. So we've got this program. We launched it in Mexico recently, where we went out to acquire and enrich data around oral care routines. Right. And so what we did is we went with that empathy to say, "We want to seek to understand your routines and build upon that so that we can better serve you overall." So we promoted this quiz. We put a quiz out. We promoted it through email, through other means of pop-up, and things along those lines. But when we were seeking out that information from consumers, we found the willingness to give it and offer it. We blew away the benchmarks. On emails, we got over 90% completion rates. On pop-ups, we got over 50% completion rates. So the ability to acquire that information, when you approach it with an open hand towards, "we're trying to help." And from that side was really wonderful. You also have to take that scale part that we said and understand, how do you put a foundation in place to put that information so you can then action it on the other side? So as we went through this entire process and we've continued now to roll it out in other countries around the world, you know, that's the mindset that you have to go in. Not only am I going to do this in a consumer acceptance way, like, how am I going to get information that I can turn around and then share how our products can help you achieve what it is that you're looking for? Hit the soccer ball a little harder, I guess, right? But how do we do that? And at the same time, how do we ingest that information? Where do we put it? And then how are we going to turn around and use it? Like all of this has to be sorted throug as we move forward. I could add something. We have a unique product category that we participate in because it is almost always purchased to then be given to somebody else rather than be consumed by the person making the purchase. So, that gives us a natural ability to talk to our consumers and address some of their pain points. So, for example, the number one reason why folks forget to use one of our products, or don't use one of our products, is forgetfulness. And so we have a natural way to ask a person when they come to our direct-to-consumer websites, when you're connecting with somebody else to celebrate a birthday or say, "I'm thinking of you," or to share a sentiment, it's going to somebody else, and we can ask them, hey, if you're celebrating a birthday this year, you'll probably want to celebrate that same individual's birthday next year. So let's set up a reminder so that you don't forget, right? The number one pain point we can solve by simply asking them, would you like us to send you a reminder next year? And so we've been able to create interactions that are very authentic and very personal. And a very large percentage of our members use that feature. Thank you. And, I think that was that was really insightful. We have a couple of questions from the audience and I think we should talk to. And then I want to hand back to Brett quickly. So I think we've got a lot more to cover here. But we've got a really interesting question that's coming from the audience. The examples that all of you are talking about are primarily consumer brands, that are adding channels and strategies into a mix. Do you guys have any thoughts on how a company that's predominantly B2B should think about moving themselves closer to a B2C environment? And there's a subsidiary question about should brand development proceed channel strategy in this case, or should they perhaps go hand in hand? I'll take a first pass at this. And then fellow panelists, please add on. I would say for a B2B or B2C, it really, it not trying to oversimplify here, but it doesn't matter. You we have to stay as close to the customer and consumer as possible, and ways in which we can can do that... Emarsys has a great type of solution for this. There's numerous ways in which we can stay close to the consumer, but the opposite of what we want to do, or what we're trying to do, is make business decisions not based on data, based purely on qualitative, kind of gut feels and hunches and what we've always done. So that's the one piece I would mention, fellow panelists. Anything else to add there on that B2B B2C question? I can jump in with something because I smiled. I don't know if anybody can see me, but I smiled at the question because, I've been finding myself trying to dig in deeply and get very strategic in terms of how we build an omni-mindset in an omni-capability here on a consumer business. And most of the information I find is written in B2B language. So I'm replacing the word customer with consumer as I go through and I'm trying to articulate how do we do that. So I also think the D2C model, direct to consumer, and that profitability point, you know, it had such a clean, clear visibility where you could stay super focused on the consumer at the end. And then you had attribution models that were built, whether or not you appreciated or loved them, you actually had more visibility to that consumer journey as you went through with the various tools that were available. And now we put up walls between us, or we don't have as much closed loop attribution. So the challenge is how do we get there? So I kind of feel like we're all trying to get at the same thing, but notice everyone's using consumer centric, customer centric, like, what are you trying to do? Who are we here to serve? And then build off of that as you move back through their journey. I think it's very, very important that the brand organizations, if you're in a large organization or small organization, it's important for the brand teams to be working very, very closely, with understanding the consumer quite well. It doesn't really matter the size of the brand or the history of the brand. That's point one. Point two would be making sure that there's a clear channel strategy in order to best serve that consumer. And it really comes down to that. It's as simple as that. And the best way to serve that consumer is oftentimes making sure you have the right capabilities and the right systems in order to best serve that consumer. So I would say it's not one or the other. It's actually two in the same working very closely together. It's not something that the brand organization does that the channel or trade or revenue growth management or whatever term anyone wants to use. It's not they're not done separately. They have to be done together and they have to work as one. I'll chime in through that. And I think, you know, when you think about it and we think about end-to-end content creative and product, you know, a strategy is when you start with strats right at the beginning of the year. Part of that is defining what is that consumer need, right. What are the, gaps that you're trying to solve for? And that should unlock all your strategy all the way from new product, new packaging, and what channels are you going to use to kind of serve that need. So again, it's putting that consumer, that shopper at the heart of everything we do, because when we're doing strategies, that's what we are trying to do, is we're trying to solve for an unmet need. Right? That gives us that growth that we want to deliver. So it is one and the same. Like you're not doing one thing or the other, is like, it's all comprehensive with that consumer and shopper lens at the center of everything and every decision that is made. Right. So again, if you think that type of consumer is more in one specific channel or different channels, how are you going to create that strategy to serve with the right brands, with the right pack, architecture, right, to serve those. So it is a connected strategy, right? And again, sometimes it doesn't work as great because there's a couple of silos in the company. But in the ideal world that's kind of you know, the common thread is you have to serve that need, with brands and channels. And I'll say just what we're going to move into the next and final question here is we have about ten minutes. I think the headline here for all of those listening for anyone in our community, and this is why I'm honored to have friends sharing the virtual stage with me today is the. This is. Pretty basic. It's what we've all learned. All of our careers. Whether you're a junior member in your career, whether you're a mid-level member, whether you're a senior member. The point that is very important is we as the where-to-play and how-to-win choices evolve in any organization, the capabilities needed to enable those choices have to also evolve. I happened to be, you know, fond of what the team as Emarsys has been able to do with their capabilities. However, it's really important for any brand and any leader to take a step back and ask themselves, do we have the right capabilities to enable our where-to-play and how-to-win choices? To Diana's point, it all starts and ends with strategy and the choices and the corresponding investments needed to find those choices. So again, not trying to oversimplify, but would also just encourage everyone listening to take a step back and think quietly in a room and ask yourself, do we have the right systems and capabilities for our evolving landscape and our evolving ambition as a company? And if you don't, that would be a great starting point. I would recommend. So we have seven minutes left. I wanted to ask this to the group I want to start with my Jamie's. And then Jamie Decker goes first, as always. Who worked with her for years and was lucky. She actually trained me. So digital transformation initiatives. So I hear you laughing, Jamie. These issues are critical in adapting to any evolving consumer landscape. As you think about this, the initiatives are also pivotal in improving how brands interact with consumers across not only digital, which is what we've been talking about, but also physical to Andrew's point, touch points. I guess. Jamie, I want to get your thoughts with every brand focusing efforts on getting closer, better understanding the consumer, delivering a better experience while driving more efficiency and revenue on the business, which is all what we've been talking about. What's the top digital led initiative you're working on this year? Yeah. For us it's really just about continuing to expand that user experience, right. Getting more targeted with everything that we do or just continuing to get closer and closer to the consumer and making sure that we are serving up the right information, the right content, the right marketing, the right advertising at the time that it makes the most sense. And then from there, it always comes down to learning what we're getting out of it and making sure that we're using those metrics for continued optimization. Great. Jamie Schwab, before we hand it over to Diana and to Andrew. I'll keep it brief and I'll throw a few stats out there. Retail media is the transformation area that's got a lot of, my and my team's energy, within the organization. Insider Intelligence released yesterday. They're now calling it omni retail media, omnichannel retail media. And how that ties together that by 2028, it's going to be about 25% of total media spend in the US. So if you just, like, pause for a second and think about that and where it's going and what it's doing, along with coupled with the emergence of marketing clouds, whether it be AMC or Walmart Connect now connecting, as they've announced to their Luminate data set and everything that's happening there. The visibility and potential of the consumer journey is being enabled and empowered with retail media. And so this is a must focus area on how we can leverage that and then I saw a question in the inbox about first-party data. Can we pair our data into that. Right. Can we also see what we know and combine it in clean rooms with, with what the closed loop retailers have on their side as well? There's just, there's a lot to sort out, figure out and action here that can drive towards, consumer centric efficiency. That's great. Andrew. Andrew and Diana. Anything to add here? We've got about, 3 to 4 minutes. I would double down on what both of Jamie's have said. You know, optimizing the consumer experience is critical. I think leveraging retail media networks or omni retail media networks is going to be critical as well. I think doing all of that is really important. I think what we're really focused on is trying to figure out, how do you make the point of engagement as close to the transaction as possible? And so removing friction at the time that I'm talking to and engaging with the consumer and whatever channel that is, how do I get that moment to be as close to the the point of transacting as I can and making that as seamless as possible so the friction is removed? That's I think we're always trying to understand how to how to do that as best we can. Great. Diana, anything to add here? You know, I guess when you talk a lot about the transformation initiatives. You know, I think we are also in a bigger path as well as a corporation to change a lead the life a lot more than just marketing. So, you know, we are definitely one big priority for our marketing transformation. But we are also looking into our GM, and we're looking into procurement. And I think that's key to enable a lot of the changes that we need. Right. I think we talk a little bit of our GM in this conversation about, you know, what's first brand product, how you serve. And if you think about it, having those also digitalize, having the right data, the right technology into all those aspects is what's going to help us kind of really provide those great experiences. Right? Because an experience. Yeah, marketing is amazing. There's going to be a huge lever for us to have that right communication. But if you don't have the other things working alongside with you, we are not going to be able to serve the right products as an example, right, at the right time. We're serving our retailers in the right, appropriate way. So we are really having a little bit more comprehensive transformation because, we need to, you know, work as an entity to all be realized, use that data driven approach to be able to solve for that, consumer needs. So we need to be true about like putting the consumer at the center consumer. We say consumer products, consumer, customer, shopper at the center of everything we do. Yeah, I think common theme for us, in this panel, I hope everyone got today is, to Diana's point, the consumer, customer, shopper, keep them at the center of all that you are doing. I saw a note from, I believe, Tom, which channels are you looking to activate your first party data in a better place? I think what anyone who has any questions about this, feel free to ping me or any of the panelists offline. I'm sure we would be, willing to, to help you in any way possible. I would say ultimately, we have to continue to evolve capabilities here with regards to the first party data. We've said, I think we said it to this point, probably, nausea of how important it is to keep that customer, consumer and shopper at the center. And we all know that the first party data we want to get really understand him or her, get really close to him or her and serve him or her very, very well with our data and repeat, and that's how we'll create value and continued competitive advantage. So with that being said, I think we have 30s left. I want to say, Sara, is there anything that you want to add before we close ? Yeah, I've got one question I'd like to pose, if that's all right. And then we can let everybody get on with their days. And this is very much for our panel. Can you tell me about some of the uses that you're seeing for AI? And for marketers within consumer products specifically? I'd really be fascinated to know what you're seeing and perhaps what you're planning to do. I can go ahead and start, but I feel like Jamie Schwab is going to have a lot, a lot of really, really great insight around this. But, you know. I have to let you go. You know, for us, the big thing for AI this year is leveraging our agency partnerships and the tools that they've already had or that they already have and they've already built around AI. Where we're looking to potentially focus is how can we use AI through social learning and social responding? The one caveat to all of that is the opportunity need, willingness ability to be able to teach AI the right things on behalf of the brand, if you're looking at, you know, in-taking the information and having AI respond to certain things through social channels. But that's kind of that's a big area of opportunity for us as we look to this fiscal year. And on our side. At a at a high level, I think there's a couple of things we're really trying to understand where we can get, the most value, from a use case standpoint, particularly with Gen AI. I think AI is embedded similar to what JD said, there is embedded in so many different tools and so many different aspects of what a lot of our vendor partners or SAS providers are already doing not a little on the retail side of everything, but on top from a commerce standpoint. Right? I think understanding and figuring out how to create and develop content at scale is probably the most appropriate use case, that we're exploring. Andrew and Diana, anything to close out with on use case. I would say a couple of things. So we are looking at, you know, AI in many areas, of course. We are using a little bit of supervised machine learning as well to kind of harmonize data sets in a clean room environment and be able to find what are the most valuable addressable audiences that we have. So that's some of those use cases also in the generative AI piece on the content area, we are looking into, how does it help us to get faster at creating some more personalized content? So some, you know, we are training some models to start with, for some of the content creation piece. But we are also looking to copy to help us even get faster and better at creating that SEO product pages and product descriptions. But yeah, so we're we're testing it in many different places. We do have a very, comprehensive AI council that has to approve use cases to be sure that we are being, and protecting, you know, our data. But, we're exploring many, many areas. Great. Andrew. Anything to add? Just I would just add, you know, we're an IP creative company. So we really believe in the value of protecting IP, not just ours but others. So we're very cautious as we enter this space. We definitely see opportunities for looking for automation and efficiency that might come from it. I will end it with we were using a generative AI through ChatGPT right now in one use case, which is on our websites or our direct to consumer websites, that somebody is trying to determine what to write in a, as a message in a card. We've now offered up the opportunity for consumers to add some inputs into a ChatGPT model in what spits out is a very customized, personalized message, that has been generated through the help of ChatGPT. But it's, you know, it's the consumer entering that information, not us. So, we feel really excited about that and consumers are using it. Sarah and team and Emarsys team, thank you so much for hosting, having us on this panel. I did want to say that you could feel free to connect with any member of the panel. You can see the, fancy, QR codes the master's team has created for us. Please reach out if you have any questions, or there's one thing I would just say in closing. The reason that we started the CPG view, the reason we started the retail e-commerce club, is to help everyone when and when bigger and when together. And the way you do that is by leveraging a community, of leaders that you can lean into. And just wanted to say thank you to my panelists for joining me. I'm honored to have you. And thank you to the Emarsys team. Thank you very much. Don, Jamie, Jamie, Diana, Andrew, I think that was a fantastic session. I think we I know I learned a lot, so I'm guessing that other people took a number of gems from it, some definite tips and tricks and an insight into your industry that perhaps we all didn't have. So thank you very much again for your time, for your thought provoking suggestions and ideas.

And now we're going to continue with our omni channel theme. We've set that up I think extremely nicely for the day. We're now going to switch formats a little bit and take a deep dive. And that deep dive is going to be into the story of Molton Brown. Now, I know I was surprised by this. I wonder how many of you knew that molten brown actually started in 1971, in London, founded by two vegetarian founders, actually as a hair salon at 58 South Molton Street. I didn't know that. Ten years later, in 1984, they'd already developed their first signature scent, one that proudly many of us are familiar with orange and bergamot. Sure, I have something downstairs, and now this is a grown to be a leading otha parfume and Toilette and Bath body Hair home collections brand that I think we're all familiar with. Since day one, Molton Brown has set itself apart in a planet friendly mission with a real commitment to never test on animals in the 90s and through sharing its environmental statement. Now, Bolton brand is continuing to transform its offering further and truly lead the way in delivering sustainable, sustainable products for its customers. And we are very privileged to be joined, by Naresh from Molton Brown, who's a senior manager for business transformation and the cosmetic business. Norris's journey with Kayo, who is who owns Molton Brown, has been with over eight years and he's focused on business transformation and leading efforts within the cosmetics sector, encompassing iconic brands including Molton Brown. He's going to be partnered by Sunny, who's a director of sales enablement and partnerships at Sinch, who's joining us from London. And Sunny has over 20 years in the telecom space and, which is a vast array of knowledge and expertise in this industry. We're going to learn a bit from them about how Molton Brown has embraced ESG, both in terms of technology choices and product offerings, and we're going to see how the brand uses their sustainability message in their omni channel campaigns to resonate with customers and drive sales in their sustainable product lines. So, without further ado, it's my privilege to hand over to Naresh and Sunny. Welcome. Thank you, Sarah, for that introduction. So I'll just kick off, from my side first. So, I just wanted to say, it's a real pleasure, to be here today alongside Naresh, from Molton Brown. And in turn, give you the audience, the opportunity to see how Molton Brown has embedded an omnichannel, approach as part of the customer engagement strategy. So to kick off, I thought it would be worth, just taking you through, an insight as to why, as a business, it is important, to be thinking about implementing an omnichannel strategy in order to engage with your consumers in a better way, so we can see that a huge amount of consumers, want to be able to engage with businesses via digital channels, of their choice in real time when it suits them. And it's fair to say we as consumers, in today's world, want to either, get information or answers to our questions in real time. As opposed to, having to pick up the phone or send an email, to get the information, which, as we all know, can take a lot longer. And the experience is not as good. Secondly, I think we've already touched on this today. Consumers are looking for the personal touch. They want businesses to know who they are and how they like to purchase and interact with them. And because of this, businesses need to outreach, to their consumers with a personalized targeting, a targeted, way that resonates with them. To, you know, the end goal is to entice them to purchase, you know, the product or service or services that they're selling. Thirdly, consumers, are looking to interact with a business, for service and support related queries by digital channels. By having this in place, it can help lead to, repeat purchases and, ultimately, help drive up sales. So just another reason why businesses need to consider that omnichannel strategy. So just moving on. The big question is, where can you, as a business, talk to your customers? Well, from this slide, you can see that the figures are quite astounding on what channels they're using on a regular basis. And I think it's worth also pointing out that if you have a customer base that contains multiple age groups, it's worth considering how you communicate with them today. You know, for example, the millennials, Gen Z, the metaverse, you know, research out there is showing that they often will only engage, with a business by using digital channels rather than picking up the phone, for example, and therefore, if you haven't got that omnichannel approach, you could be missing out on engaging with a large part of your customer base. So with a business hat on, the big question is how can we as a business benefit from an omni channel strategy? What research, out there is, in fact, telling us that, businesses are likely to see an increase in their revenues, a reduction in opex due to it being more cost effective, to servic, consumers as opposed to, for example, in power calls or selling sending letters. And finally, they've seen a big improvement in their NPS scores due to businesses providing an improved customer experience. So that was a just a brief insight on how consumers would like to interact with businesses today. I'll now hand you over to Naresh, who will take you through the Molton Brown story. Thank you Sunny. Thank you everyone for the panel also to arrange such a great, platform for other interact to interact with other marketeers as well. As Sana mentioned, Molton Brown is one of the leading brand for caucus undercover global cosmetics portfolio. We started in 1971 and today it is in one of the top and global cosmetics portfolios and leading brand has premium brand. We started growing from a small scale opticians into a leading international fragrance brand, as is today. We are present in multiple channels, stores, websites, travel, retail and luxury department stores and also the most esteemed hotels in the world. So, we took a based on the conversation with lead of the experts that we heard about the connected customer experience of the digital transformation. A lot of things needs to come into play. So we did take, step of digital transformation journey three and a half years ago to understand how do we reach the consumers in terms of across different channels, starting from this, when you see on the screen and like we had a very static content, our objective for the content is to resonate well in terms of personalities and modern heritage communities, in terms of a content strategy, even though the content is very static. We wanted to understand whether it is resonating for consumers across different channels, and how do we ensure the content is talking to the consumers, through our channels. This is something is was very important for us. And also, as you see in the left side, the images are more product focused. And really the main object is to drive the conversion as a marketer on the digital transformation aspect of it. So we did do the analysis, we did some auditing in-house and we wanted to change or we need to shift it. We wanted to shift our content strategy from more storytelling to not only to a better engagement, but also to showcase our brand better, focusing on our brand pillars, quality, individuality and and also our, brand aspect as well. So if you see on the right side, you think it's more evolving in terms of the, engaging content as well. So, it's more of you have videos, you have more, running content, you have, more of responsive design. And also in terms of the content, which is more, engaging aspect of it, and that is where it's changed the game of showing, of how people were seeing the traffic on the site got increased, the images or the products. What we have established that they were able to come back to us and understand about what is this product about. And they were trying to be more engaged from the consumer point of view. And this is some of the example I wanted to show. And in terms of going through as a brand itself, as I mentioned before, we had a lot of we had we had existing in multiple channels in the market. So whether it is travel or whether it is standalone stores, outlet wholesale and hotel and retail distributors and e-commerce, wherever, whichever channel you go, for example, you go to an e-commerce site and you see our product category where you have bath and body, and when you see the products and at the same time you walk to the store, you'll see the same way in the in also the products has been stored, so consumers will never get confused. Consumers will get more seamless experience to understand. Oh, I saw this on the e-commerce site and when I go to the store, I see the same section and of the product as well. So that is that was also a game changer for us trying to to bring that into our strategy as well. In travel aspect, travel, retail, we have very high interest in showing our culture and also about, for example, we are an existing industry global. We want to ensure our, omnichannel experience presence can continue in the travel aspect as well. And also from the standalone store, we have 50 plus stores in the UK, in couple of stores in the US and across the globe as well. And and also when you go to the in the when the consumer walk to the outlet, you can also see multiple products based in the aisle or etc. and wholesale on hotel. We are also existing in one of the leading, hotels in the world as well. So just to give a background of our content strategy not only resonates just e-commerce across all the channels. We want to work on how to bring the consumer journey, into seamless experience as well, that we are also offering virtual consultations, because this is also something consumers would like to understand that they following ESG or other they going to resonate their needs as well. So that also helped us to understand what consumers is really looking for. Also, one thing we learned, the more and more we feel that we know the consumers with all the technology, but more and more we realize that we don't know our content because consumers are always changing, they're always learning about different, and they are smart more than our brands as well. So they always want to know any product today how sustainable it is, which is great initiative from the environment perspective as well. So we did launch virtual consultation so consumers can go to the store to understand what is happening from the virtual consultation aspect and they get all the information from the products, etc.. What I would like to show next is about the content, which is part the strategy of more engaging content. This is something that if you see in terms of the different channels, for example, of what you see on the first slide is more engaging content instead of consumer goes to the website and see, okay, what is the content I'm looking for at the same time we wanted to ensure the content is more resonating in terms of what consumers would like to see. And the category across the fragrance, across the bath body lotions, everything was more apt, and we wanted to also show different content across different channels, because if you see Gen X or Gen Z or millennials, they go to different, different channels. And Gen Z, for example, they don't like any more emails, they like everything to be on the phone and they want to have in the email messages and apps, for example. So we wanted to have this content. Would you go across different channel is different content, but it still provides the right message for that particular generation as well. And the last one I wanted to show in this aspect is about the engaging content about, if you see the content is more engaging in terms of showing about, it's also more responsive. And the consumer goes to Instagram, they see a different content. But if you go to a Facebook or any other channel, you go to different content, but still the content is giving the right information for that particular consumer as well. So this we also tied up with several ambassadors as well. So in terms of the content. So in terms of the content was also about the brand ambassadors, which is also our good partnerships in terms of bringing the campaign of the brand level. And this has been helping also in terms of bringing the advocacy from the particular content. And the next slide is wanted to show about on different channels, about Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. So in terms of Instagram, Facebook or, Twitter, we had multiple channels where we had where you can see a snapshot of how big is our channel in terms of the traffic. This is also in terms of we are able to measure every day in terms of, data analysis and statistics as well, which is really helping in terms of bringing the customer experience across different channels. So seeing the content shift across different channels is also important for any marketer to understand about why it is email or social, or whether it is website or editorial, the content. We want it to have that content strategy. At the same time, the technology behind it also needs to help in our digital touchpoints. Because we have e-commerce, we have stores, we have, we have standalone stores. We have also about, social media channels. The consistency of the content and the technology behind it is going to help in terms of bring the seamless journey. I'll also talk about the technology in couple of minutes as well. So in terms of the technology, it's very important to understand there is a lot of, technology stake or partners in the world. There is multiple technology in any brand can bring into play. But our commerce strategy is very clear in terms of enabling the omni channel experience with data, with own channels, with third party channels as well. So all the own channels, we have retail website and IoT and third party channels, we have metaverse and marketplace and we bring all of that enabling in terms of the data analytics and also omni channel experience. As we heard from the panel about data is very important for us. Whether we have a data analytics team who does, the analysis across all the channels. So we are able to understand which channel is doing performing better and where do we need to enhance and ensure there is a seamless experience, doesn't have any impact in terms of showing one more layer of what is all this? How does this all being built in terms of the presentation layer or the frontend integration layer? So these are the exact just to show about how this experience pillars of the experience orchestration has been is been built behind the scenes. Even though there is a underlying, technology has a strong digital platform aspect of it. But still, at the end of the day, we want to ensure consumer doesn't care about what technology you use. At the end of the day, they need to have a seamless experience. So we as a business needs to partner with the right technology and right next track and understand whether this technology is enabling the customer success rather than, bringing some challenges. Technology should always help the brands like us to be successful and to provide the consumers what they would like to achieve. And also just to just to ask you on that, on that one on the previous slide, you know, how did you find the implementation of the omni channel, strategy? For Molton Brown, you know, with a complex tech stack, you know, and when did you engage with your internal stakeholders? If you did and your partners? And the second question just to follow on is, you know, you've recently gone, live with both Sinch and Emarsys. And how your experience with that has been so far. Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, in terms of bringing the omnichannel experience, having multiple partners, the biggest learnings from our partnership is with multiple SaaS partners or any big technology partners like SAP was a central example there has been immense value of collaboration and synergy right upfront what we wanted to achieve, and we bring all the partners together. We wanted to understand the strengths and resources from these, partners, and also to understand, what they can do for the business. Like us, when we can collectively, we can bring that innovation and achieve that growth that is very critical in terms of aligning with bringing the partners together and being sure the journey is working together as well. That is a key and it takes time in terms of to understand, to bring the right partner, for example, implementation partner or the business management needs to be aligned. So the key is align upfront, what is the business would like to achieve and how the technology can play a role and align upfront with that. In terms of Emarsys Go live. We recently went Emarsys go live, a couple of weeks ago. Now we are developing our process. It has been, a great experience in terms of driving Emarsys. We had a marketing cloud before. Now we would like to see in terms of Emarsys itself. We did connect with the email channel, web channel. And also we had some smart insights from retail and we did some integration of a couple of like on xCloud kickbox Sinch for example, and also commerce cloud integration. So we are now looking in terms of one step beyond is completed, what is the planned innovations from big companies like SAP or Emarsys. For example. So there is also artificial intelligence. Can we find a can we bring the AI product finder in terms of, Emarsys in commerce. Can it help us to bring the intuitive search for the brand's extensive product catalog? And this is an example. So we definitely are thinking from that direction, but we are still working hand in hand with the innovation. What is being planned and how can we bring value to Molton Brown business in terms of, populating more sales, subscription, for example Yeah. So you're saying basically it's key to engage all internal stakeholders and partners from the onset, as you did, with this project. So, you know, and hence why it's been a success. Absolutely. Yeah. It's a good question. Just to show the audience about our reference architecture level, we do have experience orchestration in business systems. This is a key. I mean, when you're defining a technology please know about what is that technology can bring an experience aspect. And what is the product process. How does it going to help the business processes as well? Because that's underlying technology that the business process and the experience orchestration is a key for enabling seamless experience. Also, in terms of ESG, ESG, something is very highly critical in terms of our KPI as well. And ESG is the top, KPI for our leadership team. And we are able to, whenever we start from the people or from the products or in terms of the call enables ESG as a number one strategy. So in how does whether we do technology strategy or products is all comes back to the yes, how sustainable we are in our choices, because it's important for us to also see how does our product, the product planning starts with the technology strategy as well. So we also launched a refillable solutions, in terms of eliminating all the plastics recently in 2023. And that has been a game changer to understand from the business and from the consumers as well, because as soon as we launched the refillable bottles, a form of brown so we can see there is a 22% average order volume has been, average order value has been increased. That means, as an ESG shopper, spend some average 22% per order compared to the customer not buying ESG related products. Customers these days come more around and say how sustainable, for example, in 2023. And then we understood that customers are not only just buying the products across the market, they also know want to know how sustainable it is. And also if you see the frequency of questions has been rapidly increased 38%, which was 1.7 tim es versus 1.3 times vs non-ESG customer. And also we have 68% of the customer value, which equates almost 120 pounds versus 50 or 60 pounds without the non ESG customer as well. So that is something we now focus also in terms of a future of ESG as well. So we have planned a variety of ESG initiatives to grow, our ESG presence even further with this particular ESG sustainability and refillable bottles. We also launched loyalty program. We have planned various ESG reward club points, promotion, etc. And we continue to focus on that and see how can we promote, consumers to use more refillable bottles and much more beneficial for the environment? And rewards club is helping. And also we opened subscription channel, we are going live in a couple of weeks in terms of can we have the consumers to get this particular subscription for the ESG customers as well? And also, customers also can have that complete lifecycle of motion round in terms of their campaign or promotions, what we do. So we are all connecting with Emarsys, commerce and our loyalty programs as well. Sorry. Just add another question there. So, on the ESG side, so it looks like, Molton Brown have really embraced, the ESG as part of their strategy. So would it seem that customers are factoring ESG in as part of their buying decision, with Molton Brown now? Yeah. So one of the key for us to better focus on sustainability strategy was strategic sales driver. Because, we first recognize the growing consumer demand, for the sustainable products and services by integrating sustainability into our core strategy. We have the competitive edge in terms of bringing the brand loyalty, etc. with that, connecting to the another block is about the seamless, seamless omnichannel experience, and the digital strategy is crucial in this effort, providing consistent customer experience across all touchpoints, leveraging data driven insights, and also to understand, how it can enhance the effectiveness of sustainability initiatives, is going to be a key point to understand. Aligning all these efforts, with the ESG goals has really ensured us to have a holistic approach and address the environmental, social and governance aspects and also bring transparency to the leadership team as well. So just to show the final show, we have one of the refillable bottles, which is, been very successful for us and which I wanted to show a snapshot of how it looks. And also I have one to show about the store which we have in Dubai, which is a flagship store which resonates our content strategy as well. Yeah, if I can just take a moment there. Thanks. And Naresh just to. I think it's worth just just wrapping up before we go to questions. So I think the three key takeaways, for the audience today are, businesses who are considering an omnichannel approach, in order to help with engagement, with their consumers. You know, it will help drive, sales and increase NPS scores as well as enhance the customer experience. You know, when businesses are looking to embark on an omnichannel journey, they need to engage both internal stakeholders as well as external partners, right from, the onset in order for it to be a success. And finally, consumers are now factoring in ESG as part of their buying decisions. You know, research is showing more and more consumers think, brands should be more transparent about their environmental impact of their products. So, yeah, that's our talk then. So, yeah. Over to any questions. Thank you. Thank you. Bill. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you to Naresh for everything you share. We're almost out of time, but I have got one question come into Naresh I'd like to put to you. What advice would you have for other marketers who are looking to expand their omni channel sophistication from from the standpoint of someone who has a very sophisticated omnichannel approach already and is only looking to make that more so. Yeah. Great question. So in terms for marketers looking to expand their omnichannel sophistication, it's crucial to start by understanding what the complete customer journey for that particular brand or product or for the company mapping out all the touchpoints, and personalizing interaction based on the customer data, can significantly enhance engagement and satisfaction. That is number one. And second one is leveraging data and analytics is a is a key driver. Integrating data from all channels to get a unified view of customer, will help the leadership team to understand where they need to drive that once analytics to derive actionable insights, and also can inform marketing strategies to improve overall customer experience. The third one is about technology investing in technology. The right technology is essential, because robust omnichannel platforms and automation tools, can streamline marketing efforts and also ensure consistent messaging across all channels. And the last one would be about the enhancing customer experience. Should be a top priority, providing a consistent and seamless experience across all channels. And setting a feedback loops to continuously gather customer feedback and help in making necessary adjustments. That's what we do. We get a customer feedback continuously, and we do our data analysis data every day. And to summarize that, finally collaborating between marketing, sales and customer service teams as well as building a strong partner ecosystem, can ensure, accuracy approach to omnichannel strategies. And that would be my advice. Thank you. That was extremely comprehensive. I think we should come back at you to write a blog on that, because that was great. I think that was a really good start. A starter for things you should be thinking about. And, and I think also, you did a great job of showing that while there's plenty of complexity, if you approach it and break it down and think it through and align to your customer, you will get to where you need to be in the end. Great. Wonderful. Well, in that case, I think we're up to time. So I would like to thank you. Naresh, Sunny, thank you so much again for your time and your contributions. I know they've been they were certainly valued by me and I'm sure they have been by the rest of the audience. For everybody, if their questions you didn't get a chance to answer or you just fancied, chatting 1 to 1 with either Naresh or Sunny, you can use, their LinkedIn details to get in touch with them. And the rest. I thank you again, and we look forward to seeing you back at a future masterclass.

We have set a tone for talking about amazing omnichannel stories today, and we're not going to stop, but we've been very much, we have been a bit focused, perhaps on the European side of the pond for the last half hour. We're now going to leapfrog ourselves over to the other side of that pond. But to talk about yet another household name and another great story about driving success with omnichannel personalization strategy. Home depot, which is a name I'm sure you all know. Their founders opened their first store in Atlanta back in 1979, and their vision was for a superstore that would offer a huge variety of merchandise with highly trained staff to offer customers personalized advice for their DIY needs. And thanks to its focus on supporting these customers, Home Depot has now grown to more than 2300 stores in three countries and has scaled its online presence to offer leading digital experiences for its customers. Now, I think this session and the topic is quite timely because around the world, marketers are gearing up for peak season, where, let's face it, a lot of the yearly revenue comes in, lots of acquisition of new customers, and people need to be nurtured through that process to keep them and keep them engaging and make sure they're customers after peak season. So as we're all thinking about this, I think you'll find it very helpful that Mauricio from Home Depot is going to take us through how he's transformed their approach to what Mexico calls their Hot Sales season. I love that term, and an opportunity to acquire new customers and collect really valuable customer data. So joining us to tell the story is Mauricio Gonzalez, the online experience manager from Home Depot. He's joining us from Monterrey, Mexico. Morris has been at Home Depot for ten years, so he has a wealth of experience, to bring to the conversation. He's currently focused on delivering Home Depot's customers the best possible online experience. That surprise, surprise sits their DIY needs back to their values and their focus as a company. He is going to be partnered by Stephanie Dymott, who's a product marketing manager of Emarsys and a member of my team who's here in London. She's been with us for a number of years now and has over ten years of product marketing, and has also her own perspective and a lot of knowledge to bring to this topic. So without further ado, can I hand over to Mauricio and to Steph? Thank you, Sarah, and thank you so much, Mauricio, for joining us today. Thank you Steph. Thank you for having me. Happy to be here. I've been watching Power to the Marketers sessions for several years now, but now I'm on the other side of the screen. You know, I'm a little nervous, but it's going to be fine. You're going to be great. I'm really excited about this session, because I think it's one that retailers around the world will be able to connect with. And I'm from Canada, so I know Home Depot well. But for those who are listening from outside North America, I was hoping you could first share a bit more about the company and your customers. Sure. So, you know, like Sarah mentioned and you mentioned Home Depot is well known. You know, it's a very iconic store in the American retail landscape. But what many people don't know is that Home Depot is actually located in Mexico as well. We've been operating there for over 20 years now and enjoying the same degree of success as in the United States. So the core value of Home Depot in Mexico is the same as the original version in America, which is, you know, get everything you need, all on the same roof for your home improvement needs with the best prices, best low prices every day. And you know, when Home Depot came into Mexico over 20 years ago, the market in Mexico was very fragmented. There were a lot of smaller stores all around the country, so nobody was offering quite that same concept as Home Depot. So that's why we've been able to have such great success over the years. And ten years ago we launched our e-commerce website that was fully transactional. So that was something that was not happening at the time for many retailers. So we were ahead of the curve, and I think that has helped us, has success over the years as well. Amazing. It's great to hear how quickly Home Depot has grown in the region. Most of those listening in today will be from outside Mexico. So next, I thought it would be nice to hear about Mexico's growing e-commerce market, how it's different from other regions, and specifically the sales event. Right. So something very cool that I, heard just a few days ago was that Mexico, in terms of e-commerce growth, has been the number one country in growth for ecommerce for the last two years in a row. So that was great to hear. And the other thing I was told was that Mexico is currently has 13% of the share of the e-commerce sales globally. So that's a huge number where ahead of emerging economies in e-commerce like Russia and Singapore. So that was great to hear that, you know, really drives the point that Mexico is a big player and we keep growing every year. You know, we've been growing every year double digits. And, you know, the pandemic was a huge part of that growth. But even just last year, which I would consider a post-pandemic kind of year, we had over 23% growth from the last year. So, you know, I believe it is just a very good success story, Mexican success story for us on e-commerce. And I think, you know, what's something that people don't often talk about is the Hot Sales season. So the hot sale was an event created by the Amvo which is a Mexican organization for e-commerce. They are, you know, focused on growing and developing e-commerce in Mexico. So they created this event over ten years ago to incentivize and make people buy online for the first time. There were a lot of buyers back then that were shopping in stores that were kind of afraid of buying online. Is it safe? Is it safe for me? Is it easy to shop online? Will I get the product? Those kind of concerns that people had over ten years ago. So the event was created just for that so that people could, you know, buy for the first time with super, super aggressive prices and promotions. And every year has been bigger than ever. Just one that came a few weeks ago was our biggest event yet. So I would attribute part of the success, of the e-commerce in Mexico to this event in particular. Amazing. I think a lot of marketers struggle to prepare for these events, whether it be Hot Sale, Black Friday, Singles Day or just these peak, sales seasons. So next, I thought you could walk us through your approach. Sure. So, you know, before you, I think what works for my team and I is that before you even start planning and making a strategy for this big event, you should look back, to what you did the previous year, what worked, what didn't, and then start from there, you know, capitalize on what worked. Integrate the things that you've learned along the way and just, you know, make the event the best possible way possible. So something that really has worked for us in terms of automation and personalization is, I would say it's three key points of three types of segments. So the first one is fairly common. Everybody uses it I know, which is you know, the categories that the customer browsed or clicked in the previous weeks. That's very normal. People use it all the time. But two things that we developed alongside the strategic services team at Emarsys, which, before I delve into that, I got to give a shout out to Ashley Boffo and Ashly Kennedy who helped me and my team, you know, get the most out of that program. So that's something that I'm super thankful for. I will talk about that a little bit more later on, but we created two types of automations and segments. The first one is, very immediate, which is we know that most customers when they're going to shop online for, you know, a big season, they already kind of know what they want. You know, most people know, hey, I'm going to buy a fridge or I'm going to buy a washing machine. That so even though they want to be surprised with the event and they might buy something else, they have that one big thing that they're looking for. So what we do on those kinds of situations is, on the landing pages and any other pages that we have on our website, we, you know, really straight up ask them through a sign-up form like "hey, what category are you interested in on this event, and I'll send you the latest info on the deals on the day one of the event." So that's something that just really worked for us. I'm going to show a little bit of that on the next slide. And then the other, segmentation and personalization that we've been doing is called progressive profiling. And what it's really all about is that we go beyond the categories. We try to go for something. I'm going to say timeless, I think, which is like, what are you interested in long term or what is your hobby with Home Depot? There's a lot of things that, you know, customers have a long-term interest in. For example, you know, if you are a person that likes to stay on top of t he latest decor trends, Home Depot has a lot to offer you, so you're probably going to be, even if you buy a flooring or you renovate your your kitchen, you're going to be interested in the the latest decor trends for the next years to come. Same thing for you know, I'm a cleaning freak myself, so I'm always going to be interested in buying the latest products for cleaning, even though you know you never stop cleaning your house. I'm always going to be interested in that. Same thing for people that own gardens. If you have a garden and tend to it constantly, you're interested in the latest products, the latest projects, the latest tips and content for your garden. So that's something that we're taking advantage of for this peak season and just in general. So how does it look? How do we capture it. It is basically it's really easy. And we try to make it as non-invasive as possible, which is like I mentioned on the landing page for the Hot Sales season, we ask them through a sign-up form, what category are you interested in? And then we store that in a database, and we send that information through an automation on the first day of the event. But the other one is a pop up that we develop with the strats team that, you know, basically visually asks you what category of concept you're interested in. So like I mentioned, you could be interested in technology, in gardening and cleaning and tools. And that's a very long term kind of interest. So we take advantage of immediate and long term interest. And then you might wonder, like, how does it look like? How does it come alive? So, you know, I have several pieces of content that I can show you. Obviously when you on the first day on the bury, I'm going to say it like at 7 a.m. in the morning. I'm not going to send it at 12 a.m., but at 7 a.m. the customer will receive, the email for the category or concept that we're interested in with the best promotions, the best prices, the best products for that type of, you know, concept. For example, I'm showing there that technology one and the gardening one. So depending on the interest or the category, we're going to send just that to the customer. But that doesn't stop just there. You know if you enter our website you're going to be seeing personalized banners and attraction heroes where you can see the latest content on gardening, the best deals. And then we also use for these kind of events, SMS messages with the people that obtain and then we send those messages to the customers. So if customers are interested in gardening, they're going to be receiving, hey, check out the latest promos on gardening at The Home Depot. So that's those are the things that we usually do to get the most out of our data, get the most out of our segments that we have. So that's something we're very proud of. And the engagement is through the roof. I'll be showing some of that on the next presentations. Amazing. I love that you're asking customers for data, but then immediately providing the evidence of the value they get in exchange. You also said that, a lot of these new customers coming to Home Depot in this time might have never shopped online before. So how do you ensure that they get a good experience, stay online and continue coming back? Yeah. So it's basically like I said, you know, Hot Sales season was created to get customers to buy online for the first time. And that is true for us. Over the years, we've noticed that over 50% of the customers that buy during this season are actually new customers. So we at Home Depot believe that you got gotta talk to these customers differently. They're not the same as a customer that buys online all the time. This customer, this new person that's buying from you, you know, they want to know more about you. They want to be, you know, immersed in what some people stand for. So once again, shout out to the strategic & services team because we created alongside with them, something we call welcome series, which is once you buy online with us for the first time, you're going to be receiving or you're gonna be entering an automated flow of content, three types of content that you'll receive during the, during the week. And the first content is some sort of introduction to Home Depot, which is, you know, what does Home Depot stand for? Our story, our brands, get to know us, but also get to know you. Like I mentioned, I, we use progressive profiling to ask the customers what is their hobbies? What do they like about Home Depot? What's their favorite room, and then we personalize of that. So this welcome series is all about just getting to know us, but getting to know you through these questions. And we're going to be using that data in the latest in later pieces. The second piece is education, which is we're going to be talking about, you know, the benefits of buying a Home Depot, the services that we offer, payment and credit options, our extended catalog, online-only catalog. So that's something we also want to share with our customers. And then the last piece, which is very important, is motivate you to get inspired. You know, what do we offer in terms of projects in terms of products, shuttle inspiration, top categories and promotions? So those three pieces of content, you know, inform a higher strategy of onboarding a new first time buyer customer into Home Depot and getting them to, you know, engage with us and get to know us. So that's something we do. But that doesn't stop there. Once the customer stops being on that automated flow, they enter another flow, which is the projects flow. And I remember I mentioned that we asked them questions on the welcome series. Well, those questions and that data, we use it for later segmentation and personalization. So for example, on these particular pieces that I'm showing, I send a general piece where I tell them, hey, what's your next project these are the promos. But if you mentioned that you're interested in technology or gardening, you're going to be getting that same content, but with different information regarding your interests. For example, you were to receive a content for gardening with the latest concepts for gardening promos, like projects and then technology you're going to be getting, hey, these are the latest things we have in technology, the latest gadgets, the latest tips for you. So depending on what kind of customer you are, you're going to be getting different content. And the content that's personalized to your hobby or needs gets better engagement than the one that seems very broad or general. So for example, I would say it's about eight times higher engagement in general when you get a personalized content from Home Depot. So that's something we worked on with the strats team and that was super successful and we're proud of that. Something we also do that doesn't stop there. That's, you know, pick up on the example for gardening. So if I go into more personalization for gardening, let's say you're a customer that likes tending to your garden. So we have different automations for that customer. If you buy a product that is a gardening product, you're going to get a post-purchase email or post-purchase landing page that we created the website for. What's the next project for the next products that you might compliment on your first purchase or original purchase? There's also the next project, which is if you bought a certain, you know, project from us for gardening, what is the next project for your garden that you could be using? For example, if you bought irrigation systems, but you could also be buying the grass or you could be getting fertilizer. So that's something that we also offer and we send that to the customer depending on where they at at the at the buying funnel. But something else we do is we curate specific emails depending on whether the latest trends at the moment. So something we do is we send a daily email to these customers with very specific content. So and that has very high engagement. The piece you see there, which is called Daily Email, is a piece based on urban vegetable patches, which is something that's very hot in Mexico right now. And that's so a click to rate of of over 400%, which is like huge, which I've never seen before. I've never seen that before. And which means that probably many customers open the piece, engage with it. And there's days later they open the piece again and saw it again because they there was a lot of relevant content for them. We're very proud of that and what we've been working on this kind of personalization. So that's something that I wanted to share, where, you know, tradition meets transformation. Okay, so hot sale ended in Mexico around two weeks ago. So next let's check out the results. So yeah, like I mentioned, you know we saw great results in this season. The engagement for personalization was eight times higher than average during the hot sales season. And our sales obviously increased in double digits. So that's, you know, aligned with the customer, with the market in general and aligned with our expectations. And the conversion rate kept increasing, even though we have a very good conversion rate with all of our Emarsys contents increased 5%, which is great to have during this high season. Something that I'm very happy to share is that we were the top six retailer in searches during the peak season, and that's huge for us because we're a specialty store. We're not, you know, general assortment kind of store, like for example, Amazon or Walmart. So to be up there is, you know, a very humbling kind of achievement. But we love that. We love to be up there and for people to, you know, like us, buy from us and consider us for their purchases. Thank you so much, Mauricio. I'm sure a lot of marketers will have found that helpful, especially as we approach the second half of the year. Next, I'd love to ask you a few questions. The first being like, what is the biggest piece of advice you would give a fellow marketer preparing for a high peak holiday season? Yeah. So what works for my team and I is. You got to look at what you've been doing on the previous events, like that's where it starts. So what did you do on the previous event that worked? What did you do that didn't work? What didn't work? Just cut it out. Have no mercy on that. But what did work? How do you capitalize on that? What have you learned over the, you know, months leading up to these events like Black Friday or, you know, Singles Day or Hot Sales for us and, you know, build on that. And if I would say like, you know, approach your Emarsys representative and see what else is out there that you could integrate into your marketing strategy for the hot sales season? I do that all the time with Diego. I hope he's watching because that's something that has really worked for us in the past and in the present. You also said that you worked with Emarsys's Strategic Services Team, so I also wanted to know what was it like working with them and what was your biggest takeaway or divergence from your previous thought process from that project? Yeah, right. So it was a fantastic process. I miss them. And hopefully we'll work again very soon. And something that I would say really, you know, was the best thing about the project itself. You know, besides that, all the things we worked on together that, you know, has seen great success, as I mentioned on the previous slide, is that, you know, you see your strategy from a different point of view. You know, you do things a certain way, you automate a certain way, you personalize a certain way. And this particular team is specialized in showing you the different ways you can, you know, increase your engagement, make things better, or even integrate things that you didn't know where possible before. So once you start doing that and you see the results, it's just fantastic. And so the biggest takeaway for me was just that, that it opens your mind to different kinds of ways of making marketing, automated marketing and personalization. So very happy to share that with you. Amazing. My last question is, you're doing so much already, but I want to know what's next. So what do you have planned for, end of 2024, or 2025? Of course. So this kind of success that we have with personalization and automation is just the tip of the iceberg. I think we gotta still continue to push that forward, refine and see what works and what doesn't. What other, you know, personalization, whether there's segments of hyper buyer personas we should be working on next, that's something that it never stops. You always have to be working on those types of refinements. So we'll keep on that. But also I think we have to start, you know, we use AI for a lot of things. But I think, you know, it should always be more there's so much that's going on right now. There's always the latest new trend, a latest new thing that you could be doing. So that's something that we're looking into from the perspective of production. We produce a lot of content, a lot of landing pages, a lot of, you know, texts that we could be working on AI better to get more done. And the last thing I want to say is that what's next for our marketing strategy is that we're working on a new app that should be launching in the next few months, and we're working alongside Emarsys to really bring that to life with, you know, the latest things you can do with an app, then the engagement tactics, that's going to be great. So that's something we're working on with you guys and you know, can't wait to share that next year. The success story of the app. Thank you very much Mauricio. And Steph that was a really fascinating session. I have to say first of all there's been comments in the chat. We love how you're on-brand with your apron, we think that's amazing. Yeah. Exactly, Fantastic. I was especially made for the session, so. Love it! That's a that is a that is a true marketer in my view. And thank you for making the amazing connection to our theme of tradition and transformation. That was I enjoyed that personally. So thank you for that. Before I let you escape, can I throw one more question at you then I will promise let you get back to the rest of your day. You've done an amazing job of making personalization utterly fundamental to everything you do, and you were showcasing that in so many ways. But many marketers want to do that. But I think they're a little overwhelmed by actually doing it. And then they struggle. You really seem to have found the secret sauce. Could you? Do you have any advice you could give to people who are really trying to do some of the interesting things that you're doing. Yeah, sure. I mean, it's true. It is a struggle, to, you know, get everything done, getting ready, tested. But I think the first thing you gotta do is, you know, make sure you're focused on the right things and the right coded messages and have your team, all the team marketing teams aligned. Because I'm not just, you know, I'm in charge of the website and the emailing SMS, but there's also social media team, there's the, overall marketing team, the TV team. All of them have to be aligned with the overall strategy. So the more you work, you work alongside all the other parallel teams, you're going to get the most out of your marketing strategies. So personalization, you know, can be hard. But as long as you have the right people along side with you and you know, you're very focused on what you want to do, I'm going to say that's the key core of the key to the success. You may want to do everything at the same time. I know I'm like that. But you know, as long as you know, hey, what are the main things I gotta do first before I head into so many other things. I think as long as you focus and you have the right people, the right teams and everybody aligned, you should be good to go. Yeah. Thank you. I think that will give a lot of encouragement to people out there who will be looking at what you're doing and really wanting to take it and apply, you know, the learnings into their own businesses. Well, Mauricio, thank you very much again for taking the time to be with us and to showcasing all the fantastic things you're doing. Congratulations on a hot sale. It clearly went exceptionally well and we will definitely have that. And we definitely want you back next time to talk about the app. So we will be looking forward to chapter two, at The Home Depot and be going back to Mexico. Me excellent. All right. Great, wonderful. Anybody who has any questions from retailer or staff, please do feel free to connect with them directly. I'm sure they'd be more than happy to share anything. They didn't have the opportunity to, in their session.

Which brings us. The day is flying past to the last session of our master class, and it won't surprise you to see that there's a personalization and omnichannel theme that continues with our next couple of presenters. Three decades ago, the John Frieda brand started as a salon on New Cavendish Street in London. Today, the vision of the brand really does reflect that salon heritage, delivering transformational products that target specific style problems for salon caliber results for their customers, and to take their customer engagement to the next level. John Frieda partnered with omnichannel marketing and operational partner Blue Wheel. In this session, we're going to understand how Blue Wheel and John Frieda have worked together on the cross-channel launch of the Ultra Filter Plus Thickening system, which, in case you're wondering, is haircare line for thinning hair, to drive sales, direct to consumer as well as across their retail partners like Walmart. We have two fantastic speakers that are joining us to tell this story. Our first is Lyla Holt. She's a digital marketing manager at Keio USA. As part of that, she leads a team that consists of worrying about 13 CPG brands within the Kayo set of brands, which here focuses on John Frieda. She's got 15 years of experience in digital marketing, paid media, e-commerce, DTC, and performance marketing space. So she's bringing a real set of expertise as she talks about what they're doing and where they're going. She's going to be joined by Lisa Wendland, director of lifecycle marketing at Blue Whale. Lisa launched and leads the lifecycle department at Blue Wheel, which is a company specializes in omnichannel marketing for digital commerce. Lisa herself is a seasoned digital marketing leader with over 15 years of experience driving growth, innovation and transformation for brands. So we have a fantastic pairing to take us through the story and share some of their insights. And with that, I'd like to hand it over to our guests today. Perfect. Thank you. It's so great to see so many people on the call today. Lisa and I will be rounding out day two of the conference, and we've actually been working together for over two and a half years, and we've been partnering on strategy and lifecycle marketing for nine of the consumer care brands. And our partnership also spans two markets. And one of them is, John Frieda within the US. So today we'll walk you through an overview of the situation and the goals for the John Frieda Ultra Thriller. Plus, launch the strategic steps and creative solutions we executed to develop buzz. So who is John Frieda or what is John Frieda? John Frieda is a beauty CPG brand that was founded more than three decades ago in a London salon. It's available in over 24 countries, and there's more than 88 products within its catalog. The brand strives to deliver transformational styling solutions. And they're committed to developing products which work for you, for society and also the planet. And at the end of 2023, John Frieda, US launched a new line of products called Ultra Filler Plus. So Ultra Thriller Plus leans heavily into that transformational pillar that we were just talking about. And it's very different than most volumizing lines, in the sense that most volumizing lines just thicken from the roots. Ultra filler plus thickens from the root to the end. And it's clinically proven to provide over 200% thicker, fuller hair in just one use. It's also very inclusive for all hair types and demographics, and it helps to strengthen hair to prevent future hair loss due to breakage. And throughout this launch, we've received a number of raving reviews. And one of my favorite ones is I can now style my hair however I want without limitations. It's a solution that's freeing customers who face the challenge of fine thin hair. So to drive awareness for the line before the brick and mortar launch, John Frieda drove awareness through lifecycle marketing and paid social. And they sent those users to their data site. And there were four main goals for the launch. 1- Identify the right audience for this new line. Educate customers on how the line is different from traditional volumizing products. Create buzz for the new line before the retail launch. And then also refined communication. So we're using the right message that resonates with our audience. And for lifecycle marketing, we wanted to provide personalized experiences to boost that conversion rate. Also develop segmentation strategies for improve retention and conversion. Implement automation triggers and nurturing current and future customers. Educate our existing audience and identify the customer needs for this new product line. And also, explore overlap between the existing volume products within the catalog and, the new ultra filler plus audience. And with that, I will hand it over to Lisa to cover how we brought the life cycle marketing strategies to life. Awesome. Sumi. Thank you. Lyla. The actions and creative for this. So, we really followed a systematic approach to implement our life cycle strategy. Our team began with a thorough audit of, the available assets and really work collaboratively with the core team to understand, what are all the things available for us with the product launch? And then, from there, we built out the campaigns and automations. After coding and set up, we, launched the messages. I'll go over what all we sent in this kickoff and then, we definitely spent a lot of time evaluating what worked and what didn't. And we're happy to share some insights with everyone here today. So with the tactics that we use, like Lila already mentioned, right. So we had an existing customer base and we were able to use our Emarsys list to push out the new product and, really just drive conversion, right? Get as many purchases as possible. And that would just help feed our learning so that we can better understand, like, who is the audience for this and are we really filling that need. Right. So we evaluated the existing John Frieda customer segments. And then, you know, one of the results we did, evaluate the overlap right between the volume left audience and the ultra filler plus audience. Prior to retail, you know, watching at Walmart, we really wanted to educate everyone, specifically showcasing like, you know, we're only going to have this on the call at first. And then during the months, before retail launch, like we had this opportunity to build buzz and awareness, before going live. So when it came to, launching that product, we really laid out our priorities looking at education, fostering greater interest in awareness, to help conversion and then drive repeat purchase because this is a replenished product, you would use it in somewhere between 30 to 45 days and then seamless execution, really leading up to retail. Right. So making sure that, we check everything off the list and our strategy. So in January, we had our initial launch email and then, we followed up with a comparison email, again, differentiating between the existing product all you lift and then ultra filler plus the new line and February we we sent a similar but different message. I'll talk about the differences and a little bit we had before and after content sent out in March, then our official launch at Walmart. That announcement fired, and then we had a review prompt for purchasers. You know, really exciting stuff. I love to share how, surveys go as well. So, when we get to that slide, we'll be sure to share to share some of that in April, we spent a lot of time digging into the metrics and understanding what worked well. And again, I'm happy to share that today. And then finally in May, so just last month, we launched our replenishment flow. And, that sort of speaks to that audience has already purchased and should be coming up on, a chance to repurchase. So when we're looking at creative, there's definitely some key components that are in effect of email design. We definitely see some of the same elements over and over in our inboxes. Right. And I get a lot of questions about what's most important, when you're building out a successful email. So, just going through the list real quick. So subject line, that's how we get people to open. Right? So outside of deliverability, our subject line is the main driver of whether or not someone's going to come in and actually see what's what. All, all the hard work you put into your email and then drive a conversion. So, once you've got that, we typically stick to, direct and valuable subject lines. We'll, share that, for each email in the upcoming slides, we really want to have a clear call to action. We don't want someone to be confused as to why they got this email or what. You know, what's in it for them. We've optimize our messages for conversion. So again, thinking about what's in it, how is it valuable and making sure that's above the fold. Right. So, they don't have to scroll too far to get the idea of of what this email has for them. The focus hero image is pretty critical. And in this particular stand, we focused on before and after, which you can see just stunning difference. We'll usually include supplemental or dynamic content, sometimes both. In this case we only have the supplemental where we have the one, two, three stats and then a standardized header and footer. So really thinking about you know we want to have consistency. So someone's not confused. Like is this really from John Frieda or whatever your brand is. You know, making sure it's consistent from email to email. Finally, I get a lot of questions about, navigation and emails. And so, like, when Leila and I were working on these together, we really think about, again, what's above the fold and where do we want them to go. So if you were to put a navigation in here, a lot of brands are doing this is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does push the content down. Right. And then, we do see a lot of clicks to the navigation. And then we don't necessarily know if anyone's getting to the bottom of the email. It's kind of distracting from getting the word out. Right. So we typically don't recommend including them. But there are some cases where it's valuable. So in this particular instance we did not have any navigation at the top. Awesome. So this is our first announcement email. And the subject line was 200% thicker hair. New John Frieda Ultra filler plus 17.5% conversion rate was excellent. We were really excited about this. We, just kind of covered the crater a little bit. We had the product launch information with the three steps. The drug content explains how it helps give the look and feel of thicker, fuller hair that before and after imagery shows the results. We really have a great opportunity when it comes to email because we can have a one on one communication with our audience, right? It's not, YouTube or Facebook or, you know, some ad on the side, like, we really have the opportunity to, like, understand and see whether or not someone's reacting. So that 16.4% open rate is outstanding and then 8.5% click rate, like, we know there, people were engaging with the content, which is exciting. The next email we sent out was, this testimonial. So customers can't stop raving about ultra filler. Plus the subject line. We had a 17.9% open rate, which was really exciting. So, like Lyla mentioned, we had just so many great reviews. If you go to the product page right now, you'll see just hundreds of great reviews. This one says, if I could give this six stars, I would, which is just wonderful, right? So here on the right, this actually, this hero was a GIF and it cycles through, multiple reviews that are short and sweet and, with social proof of customer satisfaction. Even in our survey results, I'll speak on people. Really? It really resonates. Right? So if you have an opportunity to use, quotes or UGC, like definitely do it. Definitely try it. With this too. This is another thing that Lyla and I spoke on the before and after having blond and brunette was, I thought was really valuable. A lot of the John Frieda products, if you're familiar, you probably see more of the blond products. And it's not just for blonds. So really exciting to, get more traction with our audience by including both in the product differentiation here. And we're striving to explain the differences. So Lyla mentioned, right, the difference of, you know, volume at the root versus, volume from root to end. And so in this message, you know, need more need volume in find here, check out our products. And so just a different way to provide that valuable content that we've already started to build on in that earlier messages. Excellent. So then that fourth email was a survey to purchasers. So we want to hear from you and give you $5 off. I really want to emphasize that there was a promotional offer with this line. I don't know if you want to speak on how the team kind of came to that decision to include it for a while. Yeah. So, we were very blown away by the survey results, and we actually went back and forth internally on if we should include an incentive or if we should include an incentive, to our audience. And then we did decide to include that incentive. And we truly believe that providing that incentive help to increase that conversion rate and that open rate as well. And this survey also, it wasn't just 1 or 2 questions that people were answering. It was almost 20 questions, which, completely blew us away, that so many people from our database opened, clicked through, answer the questions, provided their feedback. And I think it's also telling us that customers want to tell brands how they feel. So, we were yeah, I do think that the incentive helped. And I would recommend if you do a survey, for any of your brands to also include an incentive. Yeah. That's awesome. Thanks so much for sharing because I know it was it's tough to make that decision. Right. Because you don't want to necessarily, incentivize it if you don't need to. But yeah, just because of the length and depth, like I think it was fair and I think it worked out really well. Awesome. So with, the last email in the series, we launched on retail, right. So Lyla and I kind of laughed at this. There's some conversion here, which we don't really expect because we're telling you, go to Walmart. But people can click the link. At the top, there's some links in the footer that are chopped in the screenshot. But, the goal, right, was to inform them that they could use the store locator, they could shop on Walmart.com. And, so you know, we got the word out, we got a couple of sales and, and so we just really had a, overall very successful launch at retail. So, super excited about that. The, automations that we use, it was really cool to hear, how , the Home Depot team was able to bring out some automations for their follow ups. So we included, the new product in our welcome automation. So, 200% thicker hair, new John Frieda Ultra Field plus looks familiar because it is. We dropped this in to our welcome series. So someone that's new to the John Frieda brand. And then the email list would get this email as part of the series. So 15.8% conversion rate, which is outstanding, 14.6% open rate. So again, just getting the word out to people that are new to the brand that there's a new product, that might be the right solution for them. And then replenishment. So this launched, like I said, last month, within 24 hours of launch, we had a 9.84% conversion rate. This fires based on our expectation of when someone would use up the product. So the subject line for that first message is down to the last drop of ultra Filler plus. And again, just being strategically timed based on typical usage, we might go back and tweak it a little bit, but so far we're we're really happy with the results there. Cool. So here's some more numbers. Leading up to that retail launch, we really knocked out all our goals, right? So we educate our subscribers. We inform that was exclusive to the wall. And we looked at, all of the tools that we had available to us. Right. So before and after testimonials. We didn't show this today, but review collection. So getting some input from our customers there and then, upsell content in the retail launch support just knocked out all those guys. So we had a 4.2 x conversion rate compared to our average conversion, 1.6 click rate compared to average. And then four times more contacts reached through this multi-touch strategy. So we looked at how many people open just email one. Just email to just email three. Lyla and I spent a lot of time thinking about if we can't reach someone the first time, you know, does it. Let's think about day of the week. Let's think about time of day and and really just plan out strategic messages that are valuable regardless of whether or not you've opened one or all three. So we had quite a few people that opened two and three, emails out of the three part series. So we have some really loyal, loyal, engaged contacts on there. But, thinking about modern life, right? There may be a chance you get them once. And so, we definitely recommend a multi-touch strategy if you're launching a new product. It can't be a one and done, with a survey results. Excuse me. So 98% faced fine and thin hair issues. So nailed it. Right. That's the product for them. 38% said positive customer reviews impact their purchase decision making. So there's that social proof I spoke on that earlier. Definitely use it if you have it. The second email was the second most influential channel after social media informing respondents of the new product line. So when, we're sending out messages on this omni channel strategy, it's really helpful to get that kind of feedback in a survey. Because then, you have a better idea of, oh, maybe, you know, maybe they saw it somewhere else first, but email could drive it home. In just how these channels collaborate together, you know, we have the data, we can go dig in, but it doesn't give us the context where, you know, maybe these customers just felt like this was more impactful for them. And so the survey was really helpful for us to kind of learn that. Awesome. So, Lyla, I think I will go ahead and hand it over to you. Again, we just had so many great reviews. Smelled amazing. Saw results immediately. My hair was so thin and dull and after it looked so full and felt so soft. So it's just super exciting. I really loved working with the core team on this. Go for it. Lyla, over to you. So this launch not only had a huge impact on the success of the Ultra Filter Plus line, but it also helped to shape how we go to market with PDS in the future. So the Ultra Filter Plus line was the number one product line on the John Frieda DTC site during this ramp up period, which completely blew us away. We did not expect that at all. There was also A2X increase in click to open rate compared to another product line that launched with that did not necessarily deploy the same ramp up strategy as Ocean Filler Plus. So this ramp up strategy has proven successful. We reached 4x the contacts because we sent more than one email announcing the launch. So send more than one email communicating the announcement to your audience because your audience might have missed that first email. Kind of like what Lisa was just mentioning. 10% of the customers opened and completed that survey, which again completely blown away. And through the survey, we found out that, email is actually one of the top ways that people found out about this line. So send more than one email again. So you're getting and, keeping this product, this new product top of mind and, driving that awareness to your audience. And there were also over 4 follow up automations. There was a post-purchase follow up. There's a leave a review that triggered 14 days after somebody places an order. There's a replenishment, and then shortly we'll include a cross-sell upsell and also a win back. Also, we found it really interesting that over 88% of users who purchased an Ultra Filter Plus product, purchased two or more products within the line, which, as many of you probably know, is not always the case. So we were thrilled by those results. And there were a lot of learnings throughout this launch, which we will replicate and refine the strategy for all of our future NPD launches. Thank you both, Lisa and Lyla. That was wonderful. I'd like to I really appreciate and appreciate the detail that you share with us and the results, because I think they were so fundamental to that story really coming to life. As a marketer, there's nothing more fun than running a campaign. You're pleased about it and watching it just explode around you and discover that you can still, you can be that creative, but then also really have to deliver real business outcomes to what we've been talking about all day. So I think you really did an amazing job of telling that story. So thank you very much. Question for you. You've talked a lot. I really love the story. I think there's some other questions in the chat. People may want to direct you as well, but the survey is your first party data strategy to get to know your audience. I mean, particularly a survey at that like that, you got people to answer. What other initiatives would you recommend to a brand other than a survey, if you were looking to learn more specifics about your audience? Yeah, I think I can go ahead and take that question. So, we definitely. It's funny because there's some things that Lyla and I are working on right now. So I have some specific instances, but I would say, like in general, outside of a survey, you could work on a quiz. So, especially in the beauty space, we see a lot of, capabilities with segmentation in Emarsys where we can, depending on your ESP, can dive in based on quiz results, right, and create segments. So based on, what sort of solutions are you looking for. And it doesn't necessarily have to be beauty, but beauty is just so wonderful because you can get into, are you blond or brunet redhead like, go through that list. Is there something you're trying to solve for, are you looking for something like fresh and new, or do you want to, sort of stick to your routine? And how does this product plug in? So when you have those sorts of answers, you can definitely go that route in your automations and sort of follow up with recommendations. From there. And it definitely adds like a fun element, right? Where, to tell the brand like more about what you're looking for. Absolutely. I'm going to slide one in, one more in here. And then I will let you guys get on with your day. You showed a lot of the creative and you talked how impactful the imagery was. That was very clear. So how are you going to take those insights. And, what have you learned that's going to impact how you choose your email hero designs going forward? Yeah. Great question. I think there are some, next steps already in motion where we're looking at AB testing creative. Again, I kind of mentioned like the difference between like being known for the blind line and then some of these brunet products. So going a little bit deeper on that and seeing, if there's some segmentation and testing we can do in what's above the fold. Perfect. Wonderful. Well, again, thank you very much. The audience, if you have any questions for Lyla or Lisa, you didn't get a chance to ask. Please feel free to connect with them directly. I'm sure they would be happy to share more of it. Thank you both very much for sharing that campaign and congratulations on the success. It's always exciting when you have something like that to share, and we look forward to inviting you back to a masterclass again, to share some of the campaigns that come in the future. At a at our next event.

Thank you. And now I'm just going to dive right in. I think we've had a great introduction as to what tradition and transformation means by Sarah. And I'm going to invite Michael Chalhoub to come join me on the stage, for those of you who don't know, but I'm sure everyone in this room does. He's the president of strategy, growth, innovation, Investment and Joint Venture actually group. The company has a six decade history and is leading luxury in this region. So what better person to discuss transforming with relevance with. So you are the third generation correct. Enter the company. So I think you might know the saying that go is the first generation builds it, the second generation maintains it. And I'm not going to say what the third generation does, but you all know what that well, how would this one ends? But, have you heard it many times and you had a solid career outside the company you started in sports media, which I found really fascinating. And this is actually your second innings at the group. How important is it for someone who is coming in as a third generation to have all these experiences? Thank you Sujata. Thanks. Thanks to the organizers for having me here. Yeah. I'll try to answer all your questions on the, on the same order. So yes, I've heard that saying many times, but that saying is is good because it, allows you to be wary and, and, you know, I'm generally a little bit of a pessimist, which gives me the incentive to work a little bit harder to make sure that, you know, things happen in the right way. So I guess, you know, better safe than sorry. And so, trying to do my best to not let, you know, that saying produce itself, as we can hear it, but, no, listen, to be more precise, I started my career in finance and then consulting, and then I launched a sports media company that I then sold, seven years later. And I first joined the Chalhoub Group in 2017. It didn't really work out for a variety of reasons, but also in mainly because, you know, I didn't see exactly eye to eye on, you know, how exactly we should be going about the future. And so, you know, instead of, you know, letting that disrupt some very personal, family relationships, I decided to take a little bit of a step back, to go back to my first love and to go back to the sports media field. And then Covid hit, a few years later. And Covid kind of brings you back to what are the most important things in life, right. And so, I saw a father that was, you know, very stressed by what could happen or what was happening. And I was keen to help out as much as I could, you know, I'm not sure that if Covid hadn't hit, if I would have come back, to be very fair and honest, once you go or once you decide to do something, you're fully decided, and you take a very assertive step in or very assertive step out. So, that's what I had done two years earlier. And so in 2020, when I came back, you know, I knew that, you know, it was going to be my long term future and that I would be more than happy to help out. So, I asked Patrick, who probably even more people know in this room. I asked him a big question, which was what keeps you up at night? And he told me that, the joint venture side of the business was, preoccupying him. And so I told him, listen, let me, you know, take it from you a little bit to remove some of that weight, some of that pressure. As long as, you know, you helped me build a department, which is this strategy, growth, innovation and investment department, which I think was the right department to start building upon the future. What we want to be in the future to set up the strategy, the strategic blocks for the future, for some of our big business units, for some of our, you know, big group visions for 2033, for the three year, business plans that we were going to build, but also to start looking at new categories, new markets. And that's what we do with the growth department. And to start creating and building our own brands. And this is what we do with innovation. So I put in place a few departments that were very separate within the group. And we tried to together build, funnel for the future sustainability of the group. So, that's where I, where my two hats, one which I call the most important hat, which is our joint venture hat, and one which I call, you know, my passion. You know, favorite, sort of, love projects, which is the, the strategy, growth, innovation, investment department, which has been now there for about four years. And how do they both work hand in hand? And do you think they have to be together, the joint venture and the growth. No. Absolutely not. Actually they're quite different in their modus operandi. One is, you know, very much related to some of the brand partners that we have, to representing the minority shareholder with brands that, you know, do hundreds of millions, if not, billion dollar, revenues in the region. It's to help them accelerate their growth, and it's to help them, see how, you know, how best to support, that growth in the Middle East with some of our value added services. So all in all, a very sort of, traditional type of business model. And then, you have the other one, which is, basically a bunch of, consultants, brand creators, investment bankers that are looking after the long term future of the group and that have been working in ways that I think the Shalhoub group has, you know, not very much done so in the past, or at least with a much fewer number of people. And so, we're trying to do this, which, you know, some could call transformational. So, really the meeting point between the two is, is exactly, you know, the theme of the day that the tradition on the one side and the transformation on the other side. Your job title almost is this, what we're talking about today I guess. It's interesting to me that many larger retail players have decided that they want to launch multi-brand channels when it comes to the websites, and you have decided to make, doing omni channels for each brand your way forward. Why did you decide this and what are your omnichannel priorities for the rest of the 2020s? Yeah. Well, I mean, the reality is that with most of the brands that we represent, which are the ultra luxury brand, there is a customer experience which you want to control, right. And it's very hard to control that customer experience when you're in a multi-brand store, whether offline or online. And so, yes, we've launched ecom platforms for each of those brands. But we've launched them in an omnichannel way. So that means when we build an e-com channel, we build them with, some offline capabilities, the click and collect capability, the, in-store, booking of services capability. And the same way when we build a store, we try to make sure that it comes with, you know, the right online, capabilities as well. And so, we really now have a customer that throughout their journey will spend as much, not as much, but will spend time both online and offline. You have to realize that that customer probably looks at the ad online, goes to the store, tries the shoe on, goes back, ponders that with their partner, looks at the different prices, goes back to the store, and maybe makes the purchase online or offline. But that doesn't really matter as long as it's a seamless customer experience that goes omnichannel online and offline. And the acquisition of, Threads Styling is obviously something that gained a lot of international media attention I know. We also wrote about it in Vogue Business. You believe now investing in more brands and not just being a JV partner? And I think maybe shoe brands of particular interest, tell us about your strategy for this part of the business. Yeah. So that's the investment part of the business. And ideally we were looking at, an investment thesis that encompassed four big pillars, one which was, the new business models, business models like the Threads Styling business model, which is, you know, hyper personalization at scale, customer experience, actually, it's a new customer experience, both for our end customer, but also for our brand partners, which, you know, in some way have been our customers for a very long time at the Chalhoub group. So we're trying to offer them that new experience with Threads Styling. So back to what I was saying. Sorry, I digress. So new business models, retail technology so that we can, start becoming more and more, the retailer of the future or building the store of the future. We want to invest more and more into new geographies. So we've been investing in Latin America. We've been investing in Africa. And last but not least, we want to invest in brands for a very long time. We've been an agent for brands for a very long time. We've been an ambassador of brands for a very long time. We've been a preferred partner for brands, a thinking partner for brands, you know, a growth partner for brands. But right now we're at a point in our journey where we want to to be part of that brand, internationally, to be part of the top coat. And yes, you're right that we look more at shoe brands because, you know, we do believe that we have a fantastic shoe concept. And I know Elisa's speaking in 15 minutes, so. Yeah, I mean, we do have, the legitimacy, to say, we can accelerate your shoe brands not just in Dubai, but, you know, with all the new platforms that we're building for level shoes. Should we be watching this space and a shoe brand moment about to happen? Yeah, I think so. Okay, he's not going to give any more away. But you did introduce... You've just hiked the price up of my purchase. Sorry. Level shoes, as you said, is one of your big homegrown success stories. I mean it, what it's done. It's almost. You come to Dubai, you see Burj Khalifa, you go to level shoes. It's like a tourist destination. You introduced, re-Commerce last year. What are the digital opportunities here? Well, first, if I were to put my scientific sort of data hat, what we've figured out is that the re-commerce luxury market is about a $500 million market. And it's growing at double digit speed, obviously, but probably about to become an $800 million market in 2026. So in just three years time or two years time. So there is a huge opportunity there. And this is why, you know, we're trying new business models out to we're trying and testing with level. We've launched our pre-loved tab, which, you know, we buy and sell, some shoes, but not just some shoes and we help, you know, our re commerce, platform or re commerce customer to find what she's looking for. And then, you know, we've with Tanagra, for example, we've tried out the rental model where, you know, you can rent out, table pieces for, you know, let's call it 15 dinners a year. So this is where we, we we started as part of our innovation department. We started a new, sub department called the corporate Innovation Department, where we're helping out our GMs that are slightly, let's call it more traditional because they're looking after what grows their top line, what grows their bottom line. And those things don't make a huge difference on their P&Ls, let's be honest, at the beginning. So we help them, figure out what it is that they're, that they can innovate with. And we help, you know, we act as internal consultants of sorts that will perhaps build their re-commerce platform, build their rental platform, and help them build those, sort of new business models that might only weigh 1% or 2% of, of their revenues, but still, open up a new, category for us, open up a new, type of luxury buyer, luxury customer for us, that that is perhaps more apt to buy, some, secondhand, clothes or bags or shoes. And so we're definitely trying to open up new avenues for growth and with a bit of a, you know, trial and error type of ways. So, you know, we allow ourselves to fail fast if we have to fail fast and we allow ourselves to scale fast, if we can scale fast, because thankfully, you know, we have the means to do so. So that's what we try to do. And you also just before I think it was just before Covid, the Chalhoub group introduced muse, which is your loyalty program. How important has that program being and how is it changed, perhaps because you introduced it just before Covid and then you went through this whole transition? Yeah. Listen, it's been a it's been a journey. It's been a fun journey. But, at the end of the day, you know, what we know is we are in the field of hyper personalization. I think Sara was speaking about personalization, but I think today luxury is personalization, right? So, today we have, a lot of data points on our customers that we acquire thanks to the muse platform. And with those data points, we managed to create an experience for her that is perhaps more personalized experience, obviously, if you're on the higher echelons of the news. Do you want to just talk us through how you sort of personalize in the news. So you grow your, the same way you would with any points system. So, when you become an elite member, then, you actually have a room that's dedicated to you within some of the malls, where, you know, we personalize your shopping with personal stylists that will help you figure out your style. But on top of that, you get invited to a variety of different experiences, you know, concerts, meeting with the right, you know, the right people with some fun designers, with some, you know, artists. And so what we're trying to do is invest more and more in the experiential part of the business because, since Covid, I think everybody has realized that buying a product is something. But, you know, buying at a nice amount of time for yourself is the real luxury, right? So, yeah, that's what we try to do. Experience and time is a real luxury. You spoke about data, and, what I've always found fascinating as a journalist is how open Chalhoub Group is to share data compared to many other players in this market. Why do you feel it's so important for you to do, be so open with your data? Well, it's a big question, but the reality is that, we we unfortunately are in a region where, data is, is not very prominent, is very hard to get. Right. So, we've invested a lot of energy, time and money, into producing our own data, and we produce it thanks to the partnership of, a lot of our brand partners, but also a lot of our competitors. And we're really, really thankful for that. And so for us, it's our way to sort of give back to the community to be able to open up that data and to be able to build upon that data. So what we're trying to do is have data driven decision making that allow us to not just, you know, eat the pie from our competitors or whatever, but grow the pie together. And for us to do so, we have to act in a super transparent way. And it's so that's, you know, that's how our founders thought. That's how, you know, our president thinks and I think, you know, at least from my way of thinking, I think that's the best way. Right. Then I wanted to talk about the Greenhouse Initiative, because that's also something very unique to Chalhoub group and sits within your role. It's been a key strategy, but you're now taking it to Saudi. How are you taking it to Saudi? And is it is there any different to how the greenhouse as we know it here is and how it will be in Saudi? Well, the greenhouse, you know, as it was created has a number of different function, but probably its number one function was to foster an entrepreneurial mindset within our group. One of the three big values of our group was always the entrepreneurial spirit, and it still is. But sometimes, you know, when you get lost in a corporate of 15,000 people, you realize that it's really hard to keep that entrepreneurial spirit alive. So, the greenhouse has really serve that function, by helping our aspiring entrepreneur colleagues, to achieve their dreams by helping our ecosystem with, accelerators and incubators to help those startups work with our, you know, big corporate sort of non-to-agile, type of company. And so we do believe that we've, accomplished a few of those missions for the grander mission of fostering an entrepreneurial mindset. When we started focusing on Saudi Arabia for a variety of reasons, we felt that the entrepreneurial mindset wasn't fully there. We felt like, when we had built, Saudi Arabia or when we had built our presence in Saudi Arabia about 35 years ago. It was built with the right entrepreneurial mindset. But today, as Saudi is starting its entrepreneurial journey of its own country. We probably had, you know, managers and solid, you know, lieutenants, but perhaps not the full impact of an entrepreneurial mindset. And so we needed to hire entrepreneurial talents. We needed to engage with startups in the ecosystem that were starting to form, and this is where we decided, yes, let's take the green House to Saudi and so we're there since, Q4 last year. So, we're. Were just about to launch our first few startups from there with some of our entrepreneurs are colleagues that have entrepreneurial aspirations. And we're just about to launch, a fashion, incubator, a beauty incubator, and a retail tech accelerator the same way we do, in Dubai with our greenhouse team. Well, I look forward to hearing more about that later in the more about Saudi later in the year. You also mentioned that you're going into Latin America and Africa. How did you decide that these markets and other markets in the world to do group has its eyes on that? Well, let me start with the second answer and I'll say yes. But apart from that, I think that, initially, let's be honest, this came in a very opportunistic way. Right. We realized that, what we've brought to our brand partners is a little bit of stability in unstable markets, and, a lot of them didn't need us. If they are expanding into, Spain or South Africa or, China or, Canada. So those are mature markets where, they had their presence and they knew how to operate. However, in countries like the Latin countries in which we operate or, you know, sub-Saharan Africa bar South Africa, where we don't operate, with Elafrique, those are countries where we felt that our business model was, slightly similar. And without having a, a copy-paste approach, because you can't have that, you do reproduce, some things that are really important. So you choose, the most ethical partner, which is not a given. Right. And when we've spent a couple of years vetting the right partners or asking the current partner that we have to make sure that all of its trade is done in the most ethical, most shall hoop way, then our brand partners trust us. Right. So. So we've taken the business in countries like Nigeria, in countries like Colombia where, it's not a given to find, you know, the right ethics. It's not a given to, to find the right sort of loyalty to brand, to find the right long term vision. And we've brought that with the Shalhoub name. Right. And so that's what we're trying to do. We're probably going to look at other emerging markets. We're probably not going to go, you know, very far into the mature markets, except for, some of the brands that we might buy maybe one day. Right. But, you know, there's... A lot giving that away. There's a lot of interesting markets out there. I mean, you know, I can think of Muslim markets in the Southeast Asia. That could be interesting for us. So, there's a ton of markets where we have our eyes on, but, it's still a little bit farfetched for me to speak about it today. Perhaps as we're getting towards the end, I just wanted to know if you wanted to share one recent innovation from your company that makes you most proud that you've probably helmed since you've been there from 2020? Well, I'll talk to you about one of those startups that started with, one of our colleagues who used to sit, across from me when I first started at Shalhoub in 2017. She was a buyer for Max Mara, and now she owns, or she co-owns with us where that which a lot of you probably know about, which is, personalized, boxed, personal styling, concept where, you give your budget, you cooperate, you collaborate with a personal stylist to find your own style, and they send you a box with a variety of products that will probably cost twice your budget. And you can send back whatever you don't need. And you generally spend a little bit more than you should. But that's fine, because it allows us to fine tune our knowledge of our of the customer. And so the next time around, we'll know you better and we'll be able to. So where that has started its journey about five years ago now. It's had a tremendous growth. You know, double digit if not triple digit, year on year, for years and years now it's, you know, close to becoming, $10 million companies hopefully soon. And it's been doing fantastically well. And recently it just launched its own private label, which it called Serena, in reference to, I think the, the Siri, Gossip Girl and Yeah. And Serena's performing really well. It was nearly 20% of its sales right now. Wow. Okay. So we're going to come to a close now, but I'm going to play a little rapid fire with you. Just three phrases. Whatever comes to you head first AI role in retail. Hyper personalization. Tradition versus transformation. Interesting fireside discussions between my dad and I. Can we get a look into those, please? And future proofing. Being more involved in what the brand does and helping them grow wherever they are. Thank you so much, Michael. I think you've given us lots of insights and also made us want to really watch out as to what the group is up to in the next year and beyond that. But thank you so much for your time. I know you're very busy and I appreciate it.

And now I'm just going to move straight into our next panel, which is Amplifying brand reach: Strategies for success. We have four amazing panelists. I'm just going to call them up. Maya Azizi, Chief Brand Officer at The Luxury Closet. Just want to add that the founder of The Luxury Closet, Kunal, is one of our Vogue Business 100 innovators. Fahed Ghanim, CEO, Majid Al Futtaim Lifestyle, who is in every piece I write because he is so full of such great information. Elisa Bruno, CEO of Level Shoes and do look at those shoes! Apparently they were specially chosen for today. Correct? They're called the Josette shoes. And then we have Gaurav Mahajan, lLndmark Group CEO of Lifestyle Landmark Group, who I have known for many, many, many years. Our careers and probably go on side by side. Thank you all for taking time out. I know this is sort of pre-summer, post that storm that we've had. So it's a very busy time for all of you. So I really do appreciate it a lot. So I'm just going to dive straight in as I said. And I'm going to start with Gaurav. And the question I'm going to ask all of you, in what ways do you leverage technology and data analytics to better understand the market? Thank you. Good to start. Pleasure to be here Sujata. And good afternoon, everyone. Interesting question for an organization like ours built very intuitively. Visionary leaders, entrepreneurs who kind of built the organization from the gut. And also therefore created something that you would perhaps label as a traditional organization. And today, after 50 years of success, tremendous penetration, we are in the GCC. We are in India, and the Middle East. And also in the Southeast Asia. I think the need for technology in data analytics is actually paramount. It's not just an opportunity, but a need. Couple of things for the group, I think, which were perhaps pathbreaking. The group set up, almost about nine years back, something called, Data Labs. So there is an organization inside of Landmark called Data Labs Landmark. And this organization has actually been at the forefront of processing data, exploring all kinds of new frontiers in terms of technology and actually serves as a consulting organization to the rest of the group. So different businesses inside the Landmark Groups use Data Labs landmark as a support organization and Data Labs Landmark therefore, can position itself, structure itself, and develop itself as an organization which is totally centered around the use of technology, but not just the use of technology, but also developing means of being at the forefront of technology. Just another data point. Why I say that this is a need and an opportunity when the group has reached a level that it has, business more and more needs to come from existing customers. As you know, we have a loyalty program called Shukran. Shukran has 14 million members in the GCC. If you consider the population and the number of households, that's almost like an 80 to 90% penetration, and it's very evenly spread across the geography of GCC. So it's apparent to us, it's very clear to us that our growth is not so much from expansion of stores and the footprint. That growth will come from expansion of the engagement of our customer base. And that's right now, I would say a top priority. I could elaborate, but I think let's go around and I would love to give you some examples. Yeah, maybe I'll jump to Fahed now because, I know data analytics, something you look at a lot. And also doing reports and Majid Al Futtaims recently came out with the 2024 Beyond Shopping report, and it revealed that UAE and Saudi customers find it important for stores to offer interactive and engaging in-store experiences. How have you made sure your stores are interactive? And I know it's something you've worked on very closely, especially when it comes to creating both. Correct. So, today an organization without data is absolutely blind. And getting data and analytics is no longer a luxury. It's just basically leveling the field. So you're at par and see what other companies do just to have the right to play and to win. Now how can you turn that into a competitive advantage and build the right capabilities through the right capabilities, the right team and those investments and being able to understand your customer? I think it all comes down to having that right view of the customer and having the agility to deliver on that hyper fast and with a hyper personalization. So I think a lot what Sara talked about and what Michael talked about and what I think most of us is top of mind, what's keeping us up at night is are we doing enough and is it relevant to the consumer? Because peanuts is one thing. Having a good year is one thing, but is it sustainable growth and is it relevant? And in a way we apply that and I'm lucky to be working in the organization of Majim Al Futtaim because we work with data across the different topical. So the shopping malls on one hand is understanding consumer behaviors and collaborating with a lot of great groups. Many of you represented in the room. And then we have our hypermarket with Carrefour, but also to harvest data and then through Lifestyle but also to interact. Now, with the data capabilities, Digital Labs data scientist at multi levels of the organization and they collaborate together. And I was intrigued by a great presentation two weeks ago. The head of the department said we hired the team with empty CVs. So it's a team that HR said no to because they had literally empty CVs, but the product that they produced is beyond any expectations. So how they've utilized the power of AI to harness it and to bring relevance into a business like we could never imagine. Again, tradition-transformation, it's transformation. You have to continuously transform and build those capabilities and bring the relevance. So ... as an example very simply were able to provide those specific journeys that are relevant to the customers. A simple cafe showed us that the dwell time has increased and then the impulse buy as a result of just operating the cafe, which is a nonprofit that, has really leveraged and reduced the churn rate of our consumers because the journey of buying furniture is a long journey. You have to come, you need to sync, work with the budget, work with the designer, and at the same time you're tired. So you need to rest. You need to wait for a friend or for your husband or your significant other to come in and so on, and then building that omnichannel digital. So the consideration goes home, you review and then you decide whether you want to transact online and offline. That was quite important. At the same time we introduced AR so you can have the sofa and projected at the space of your home and see does it fit. So those tools have to be non gimmicky. So there is a lot of newness in the market, a lot of technologies that we presented day in and day out. But how can you choose non gimmicks, real value add to your consumers that brings relevance, makes the journey seamless and deliver on what your purpose is, which is in our case is creating great moments every time. So creating that brand love has to be genuine, has to be authentic, and it takes a lot of effort and challenging yourself that what work is not necessarily continues to be relevant. So bring that newness, growing new ideas, innovation, working with data and using it for the business. Elisa, since you've come at Level Shoes, I think is the Level Shoes shoe game has got stronger, but it's social media game is definitely much stronger. What proportions of sales are now driven by campaigns? I mean, your TikTok campaign helped me choose my bridal shoes is still something I think we all talk about. How much conversion have you seen from those kind of campaigns? Thank you. Thank you for the question. And hi guys. I mean, certainly data as well underpins every decision making we do. But I think in order to get a bit more active on social media and I'll get to your question very, very soon, we really need insights. And I think building good data and thank God the group can provide us a lot of data. And as Michael said, we have different perspectives that convey together and are shared internally and of course, even externally. That's the starting point. What we are now doing since a few years is really capture those insight, analyzing data through different angles that can allow us to have the opportunity to mirror shopping behaviors, even anticipate shopping behaviors, or making reference to what you just said, creating a campaign that can become a behavior. And that can only come obviously with intuition. A little bit. But certainly data and insights most importantly. So, we actually recently launched an even more powerful campaign for those of you who are samba lovers, you know what I'm talking about. We just had 165,000 views organically on a samba video of a few seconds, where three of our employees were just tiptoeing around the desk. Don't ask me about the algorithms there, but certainly the data and insight that we gathered throughout our platforms, our group, insights teams and the observation of the engagement rates gave us the opportunity to come up with something that hopefully would work. And it did work. And, yeah, from bridal to samba dancing, God knows what we're gonna have later. But certainly it's an area where we are investing resources, energies. We are relying on experts that can give us more understanding of the tools that are available to interpret the data. And, of course, we're looking at AI, very closely because ideally. There would be a point where we can rest our brain a little bit and rely on the AI insights that are certainly a bit more comprehensive. Maya, The Luxury Closet has really played a significant role in growing the resale market in this region. But like Elisa, you've taken a very sort of disruptive approach to social media. You've worked with not the normal influencers. You've almost created your own influencers. How has this worked? The two things on edge for us as a startup, we can't live without SEO reports. So thankfully for Chalboub for all the data is and the best example is last month we had realized that purple was a search and I'm like, why is purple trending in terms of search? Like sometimes it just doesn't make sense. Very on point. And it trending. And we did it CRM. So we did a collection Purple Collection CRM 'Shop Your Purple' right now. And it was the most successful SEO email that we had done in March. And then the second is our most celebrity closet. So that's an interesting topic because I come from New York and New York, you have a very high reality TV obsession, like you watched a Real Housewives, even at L'Oreal, we would watch Real Housewives as a homework because they have an influence of trend. And then here, there was Dubai Bling, which I know a lot of people have mixed feelings about, but we do have celebrity closets for them and they are sold out. So for example, LJ 100 items she gave us from her closet. And when we went to pick it up, I'm like, I don't even have 100 items in my entire closet, and you're selling 100 items to us. And it got sold out, which was really impressive. And on that point, imagine the celebrities that we worked with. We had an objective of 500 million USD in terms of value, like the value of their closet to reign. And one year later today we're at 3.2 million value of celebrities. So it's just do not underestimate the power of talent and really creating that community which has been transformed throughout. So thank you. And how do you approach sustainability and ethical practices in your digital strategies because it difficult to put them together sometimes? It connects back to social. And what shocked me is when I had seen an unboxing. Also so many people are proud to unbox, especially when they have a rare find or treasure. Because I always say The Luxury Closets a treasure. You guys have no idea how many Chanel bags we have and how much you have to dig through. So I saw an unboxing and there was way too much plastic. So it was shocking. I was like, I don't want people to perceive Luxury Closet as having all this packaging and all this paper, and we remove the plastic, put a beautiful Luxury Closet dust bag and reduced the paper as well. So really have to pay attention social because it's most likely your first interaction with the brand. So it's like your first point of discovery, it goes back to brand love. So it's really special how we did that. So if you think there's still too much plastic, send us a DM because that's traumatizing. Send you guys a DM okay. So you're very open to that. You had to be very open to customers. And then feedback. Elisa and Fahed, when it comes to digital transformation, what is something you've been prioritizing when it comes to clientele and concierge and CRM? All right. I just wanted to add something on unboxing. You were amazing in eliminating that part of the consumer's journey. And I think it's a great message to deliver. Unboxing is actually quite huge in this region. I know, I know, but I think players like us have a responsibility in a way to also initiate trends or divert slightly trends that are still very commercial, but can be leading towards a more sustainable commerce. Sorry, what was the question again? Digital transformation and client and concierge tools and CRM. Sorry. And before I answer, you know, I mean. Size you have a lot. That's fine. So yeah, just when it comes to digital transformation, what are you prioritizing when it specially when it comes to client and concierge tools? Several services. I think one of these is really rely the app that we've launched a few years ago where we obviously have powered the app with the latest technologies in order to allow us to be very personalized throughout the journey of the customer with push notifications and to track conversion, which is something very challenging to do with social media, for instance. Except there may be stories on Instagram or a few others that many of them are not shoppable here. So technologies and let's say latest innovation is certainly for us very much focused on the app experience and of course, the some of the try ons, that we have online, some of the engaging services or, experiments that we do to gain more momentum, across all the platforms. Fahed, do you have? On digital transformation, we're prioritizing culture and empowerment. So today you need to build out at scale. We're going through multiple transformation and a lot of newness coming in through technologies. So what do you prioritize? You want to make sure that that's not the responsibility of one department, but it's culture. And so the use cases is coming from all departments, whether it's HC, the frontline, finance. And we found out that there is a lot of great contribution coming from the least expected areas. So making sure that this is the right mindset to have across the group, and you're able to harness all those ideas and implement them, and then empowerment to make sure that you're able to execute very fast. It's quite important. To scale or to fail fast becomes easy, becomes the norm. And at scale you're able to implement hyper personalization. You're able to come up with great initiatives from the stores. There are customers. They interact with customers, more often than we do. And then making sure how can you get those insights rather than just be obsessed with collecting data? So less is more. Making sure that transformation and innovation is applied at scale, celebrated at scale. And precisely because it keeps changing. Every conference I go to, there's a new buzzword. It's metaverse. It's AI. It's seems like it's personalization right now. It's not really authentic just to talk about the buzzwords. You need to find what makes sense from an investment perspective, from a customer perspective. Gaurav, I wanted to talk to you about, the launch of SheGlam, which happened at Lifestyle Center Point. You became the first offline retailer to retail this, beauty brand of Shein, actually in brick and mortar. Tell us about how this happened and what was maybe one key challenge you had of this collaboration between a pure online and a brick and mortar giant. Thanks. So, it's interesting this example has a lot of relevance to the conversation, that we are having. But let me just get over some of the basics. SheGlam is the beauty brand of Shein. They've collaborated with us. We've been delighted to be the first retailer, offline retailer in the world to sell this brand, and it's been an amazing journey. And there are some insights which I'd love to share which segue very well into the conversation that's been going on and what Michael was talking about, because for them it was we have the physical presence and we have the logistical ability retail in the region, six countries, 165 stores. We have the largest must each beauty retailer. So we have considerable strength, but it is a brand which is very young. And that's the interesting thing about digital success stories. Most of them seem to be very new and young players. They don't seem to have baggage. And personally, it's bothered me a bit because sometimes the question that bothers you or hovers on your head is that is it the preserve of those who don't have any baggage, as they call it, or heritage or legacy as people who have it would call it. But I think this is a very interesting story. I would say, of where the two meet and enjoy success together. We launched the first store in December. So two-three things we did. And digital has so many dimensions. We're talking about social and social is a fuzzy science. It's a science nevertheless but it's still a fuzzy science. And I think the interesting thing that we are beginning to learn and experience working with somebody like SheGlam and Shein is that they are way ahead on their ability to crack the science. And the results that we are seeing when we are collaborating are putting our 14 million base. So when we launched, we did some exercises of putting the word out there. SheGlam has a very young audience. Our average customer for the Landmark Group is slightly older. And we were a little concerned about how do we reach this consumer. What's the difference between Landmark Group and SheGlam? Our primary customer for the retail format center point where we were bringing SheGlam is a young mother and given the fact that we are penetration is very high in the GCC, you know, it's the younger Arab mother. If I were to define one customer. SheGlam customers range from 12 to beyond. And you'll be surprised the amount of teenagers who are aware, not just aware, but extremely familiar with SheGlam even customers in this geography, despite the fact that the brand is only present online, they've managed to create visibility, awareness and a pull. But for us, what was interesting was that, we were able to collaborate. And as I was telling you that we were already on a journey where we were working customer backwards. We were not trying to think what is called traditionally, I'm opening so many stores. I'm going to increase area, decrease area, add categories, remove categories. And therefore this is my business thought process is customer backwards where you say that I'm going to get so many customers I'm going to increase frequency recency etc. from my customer base. And therefore this is what we're going to do. And what we're doing from there is slicing our 14 million base into cohorts and actually doing very targeted messaging to these cohorts. So we did, without going into the retail, we found some data from our database, identified cohorts who we believed, were relevant for younger audiences bases what they'd been purchasing and their purchase behavior. And we started communicating with them about the launch of SheGlam. The result was mind boggling. The response that we've seen, at an overall level, because we've launched the stores in the stores physically, but also specifically the response to these targeted micro campaigns has been absolutely phenomenal. It is, of course, partly fueled by the affinity to the brand but it's also a great credibility test for the experiments of micro-targeting consumer cohorts. And we've seen a phenomenal change. We're learning you've seen the use of influencers and we've seen results. We did a small event. We launched a hashtag called #lifestyleIntoSheGlam. We had some influencers putting post to me. They all looked similar. And I'm not a digital native. We had 11.1 million views in 20 days. We've not seen engagement of that nature. And it's way above average for anybody. And this is a new brand, and these are audiences which are very new to us. 20% of our customers today coming into the store and shop in SheGlam are customers who never shopped with us before. And I'm only I'm talking about lifetime. I'm not talking about those who moved away and coming back. So I think it's been a great journey. Challenges of course I think, because this is an organization which actually is based, you know, which very moves very fast. The world of online, fast fashion players is way faster than even fast fashion players who operate in the physical world. And I think trying to match speed, but also the online world and online selling allows you a lot. You can store small amounts of merchandise in a warehouse, and you can airship it anywhere. The minute you open 150 stores, you need to ensure that each location is properly stocked, and that changes the dynamic. Launches are not as rapid. So, we are in that journey of trying to reconcile but I think it's been quite a interesting, beautiful journey. And I think it's quite a case study for us and I think also for the industry. Sounds very interesting. Another launch that has just happened is Psycho Bunny. Congratulations on that, Fahed. As a franchise partner, how is it collaborating with various international brands? How does that push and pull work. Are there concerns that brands have about maintaining that authentic DNA. But yet you have to educate them about this region, because we are a region that is very, very we're very proud of our culture. Yeah. I mean, when it comes to partnership, it's very much like marriage. So you need to find the right partner. Just simply put because you need to find a common ground, you need to focus that you both have the same vision and you have the same values. Otherwise conflict will appear quite fast. And we're quite open about our intentions, about how do we approach business, how do we select. So we're very clear that we're not in the business of collecting brands. We're about being the partner of choice, but also taking brands to their full potential in the region. Now, for me to get the best out of any partner that takes a lot of work on both sides. You need to sit at the table as peers. Us as understanding the regions and the markets and the customers and having the right data, them as knowing the brands and the products and trying to unlock the true potential of those brands in the markets by listening to our consumer at then whatever you do, wherever you launch, I mean, you mentioned Psycho Bunny and that's a that's quite interesting. It's not a brand that came... It was not a brand that I would have thought of that's going to come to this region. It was a not brand that was selected by our growth and business development on nobody's radar. But then I had few locals in the company who said, Fahed, you need to check this brand out. It's called Psycho Bunny. All the locals are carrying bags back with them from L.A.. Okay. Fair enough. I was going to the States. I checked it out. It had a store right next to Apple and almost in all the top malls all around the US coast-to-coast. They were opening stores, they had the private jet, just to keep up with their growth. In Vegas, they are doing very well in New York and L.A. So, you know, it warranted a conversation. The minute we launched, a lot of customers walk into the store saying, okay, finally it's done. I can't tell you who, but I had like a really prominent businessman right in the store yesterday going on a shopping spree. And those are customers who have interacted with the brand. And it's a fun brand that we'd like to bring closer to the market. That's what we think our role is. It's finding either iconic or disruptive brands that can bring a bit of newness. There is a lot of fatigue in retail. A lot of the malls are the same, the same experience, the same product. So how can you make your stores exciting or experiential? So it's no longer about the product. It's about how do you make people feel? And people don't need another luxury bag or a luxury shoe or another Chanel. It depends on price. They need shoes. Price matters. They need more shoes. Right? And it's a moment, you know. You're gifting something. So it's that moment that you're assisting them in. So how can you create a great moment at every part of the journey from the welcome online or offline? So redesigning those journeys again for different customers at every point and bring that collaboration. Now we've been very successful with our brands to bring also personalization. Hollister had the first time that they've changed their logo globally to an Arabic logo. So we're the first in the market because they understood the importance of Ramadan in the region. Just launched the capsule. It was a huge success. With Lululemon, again, we engage with a lot of ambassadors in the region. So we personalize still maintaining what the brand stands for. Doing that throughout life and making it relevant in Saudi is different than how we bring it to life in Dubai or in Kuwait. And it has been extremely welcome. So we've seen huge growth in the brand, but only through that localization and elegance to the local markets while maintaining the brand DNA for sure. Elisa, you've done some amazing collaborations, whether it's Ravi Restaurant with the sneakers, and then you've done stuff... I have a pair. You are one of the lucky ones. I tried getting a pair and she told me she couldn't help me. So delicious collaboration. Iman. Also, there's so many. How does it work when you come to an international brand and say, I want to do a limited edition? There is no one recipe. There is no one size fits all answer to this question because it's really about the authenticity of the intention behind the collab. I think our clients are really smart. They will see some forced collab there, right? And with Adidas we did a few and I think... But I think the Ravi one was one that it was very disruptive and different. Yeah, it was disruptive in a way that matched a designer with a non designer with a restaurant. With a restaurant. And a community place. That is certainly something quite authentic. So that's one example. But the same brand, we did another collaboration with a designer from Saudi that is just a young designer starting off the line. So it really depends on how real that is. And then we embrace it and we embark on a journey that requires a lot of, using the right word, fatigue, because we need to coach through the journey. There are so many collabs and have now become new buzzword. And there is something still very true about this region, that people don't know a lot of the nuances of the region, and I think Dubai is the region. Of course, it's a it's so. Maybe one thing you think that international brands don't understand. We were with Miu Miu this morning and they were asking us very specific questions about the way customers really shop. And for brands like Miu Miu, that is all about the feeling or the outfit and and the whole lifestyle picture of it have been so successful with footwear with Level. It's quite a unique situation because, you know, they were born ready to wear and they're asking, what is driving this? What is the customer looking for? How can they just buy the shoes without the rest of the beautiful outfit? And we say this is actually our job. This is what we do for living. So we're not going to tell you exactly. Well, but we really listened to our clients and we bring them together in the right way, at the right time and hopefully with the right communication. And this is certainly driven by a lot of passion for the region, radars on with all the new trends that are coming up in this region, is very prolific in terms of trends. Very much ahead of the curves. Very much, very much. While in the past we were running behind. And brands will look at the region as a business opportunity. Now they're really looking at us as an engagement opportunity to then run a bigger business outside the region, which is fantastic and makes all of us very proud. And we need to continue that. And so when big brands and CEOs like this come and ask, what do you think a brand like ours would do not only to stay relevant in the Middle East because we love you, but also to diversify, across the region. But what can be taken out of this region as an exemplary detail on the collection or launch, etc., etc.? And of course, in the past we only thought about Ramadan, which is still quite important. But, if I look at what we've done in the last campaign of Ramadan, we just touched on the spirit of it. We call the campaign Come Together because it's all about that ultimately. And you can celebrate Ramadan or not, but coming together is the the message of that month. And also going back to, you know, all the previous points on technologies and how they drive engagement experiences and interest. We actually created the Ramadan packaging, which was in the usual gold, lovely, but usual. There was obviously, one of our core brand colors with sort of a screen of the moving water, which was a picture, actually. But if you were scanning it with your camera from your phone, that will direct you to our lenses on Snap on Instagram, and the water will start moving and sound like this underwater. So again, do we need that to sell? No. But do we need something which is to stay relevant and have fun with our client during the holy month. Right. So yeah. I want to agree for international brands, we're agreeing today. And these are because think about it, Dubai Mall probably has more people any given night than the whole of Fifth Avenue, New York, where the retail is. So I think the brands are definitely missing out. And, we see that. And then on topic of handbags, I will send you the girl math TikTok because I think she has not seen the girl math. And Fahed had mentioned, Saudi and I think Saudi's on everybody's mind in this region right now. It's sort of the current focus, but it's a very young market, it's very social media fluent. And I think literally Snapchat is really huge which is different perhaps to other markets. How do you today your strategies for each of the GCC countries? Okay, we're actually opening a warehouse in Saudi. So we're very proud for that because I think once to maximize pre-loved. They were worried that their special item would have to come all the way to Dubai. So that's really one huge thing that we're working on because the sustainability in Saudi, they go hand in hand. So that's going to be big news for the fall that if you're in Saudi, you can give your items and you will stay in Saudi and stay authenticated. So that's really fun. Yeah. Well on marketing, we convinced the brands to unlock for us TikTok and Snapchat because they don't use those channels. Yeah. And if you're not using those channels, you're missing all the youngsters. So I think we took them through our journey and just huge one from our marketing department to unlock that. That's one thing. But then also on that how you personalize the collections. So just through, inter stock transfers, we're able to unlock almost 20 million more of sales last year. So because, depending on the others, the collection will do better in Jeddah versus Riyadh. And, you know, your winter collection might not perform as much. How do you move the stock quite fast. How do you react to the weather changes or a trend or a color in if it's purple. And make sure you feel that maintain your inventory levels. Inventory is something top of mind on a lot of retailers. How do you managed to keep the right stock levels is quite also important. Saudi, I have to spend a lot of time fascinating market but equally complex as well because, you know, there's so much happening socially. You know, the share of wallet is under stress. Customers are not just spending their money in retail, but they have so many other avenues. But the interesting thing about Saudi is it's a much younger market. It is also a market because of the sheer size and spread of the geography. Online penetration is the highest for us. And I think for most people in geography, in the GCC. Also because it's a market which is opening up young people, women, they're coming into the consumer set very suddenly and in a kind of a revolutionary way. So they are expressing themselves harder. And I think that's opening up the Snapchats. There was a there was a comment on, you know, social media. We had a product which was launched by us. Nothing very special, that we launched a small product without any incentive. One of the staff picked it up and floated a small video. The video got 2 billion views in about two weeks. And that product has been selling for the last two years because and it's built such a momentum. But it came out of Saudi and there are many such stories. And I think the other thing about Saudi is not just the consumer end of Saudi, but also, there's a lot of innovation in the market. Every time I walk the market, I see some local Saudi brands pretty well done. A lot of research on the products, on the retail. And it's evolving. It's developing. I think it's going to be quite a hotbed. I think, and just like any buzzword, there is always a lot of heat. And then there is the substance, but the substance is substantial enough. I think it's going to be a very exciting market to watch over the next few years. Okay. I'm going to open it up now to the floor, because I'm sure all of you have questions for all four of them. So if any of you want to just tell me who has a question, and we have a mic sent to you so that you can ask your question, please just introduce yourself too. And if you want to point the question to one person on the panel, let us know. Any questions? What shoes are you wearing? What shoes are you wearing? Okay, I actually also know where their shoes are. Louboutin. I'm sorry I had to. I couldn't be on stage with Elisa I did not do it. Actually, everyone wants to know what is a pressure. What do I know? What are the Josette shoes? Sorry. What are your Josette? Any other questions? If we don't, we'll go straight to tea. I think. Shall we go straight to tea? Where you can ask some questions personally. So now we have a 20 minute tea where everyone can network, and then we'll come back. We have two more panels afterwards, and I think they'll be more based on AI and tech. But I think this has been great. I think the one thing we've all learned is personalization. Personalization, personalization. Thank you all for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. Pleasure to.

So now on to our second panel discussion of the day, focusing on artificial intelligence, which is at the forefront of everyone's future planning conversations. And the expansion of this technology represents a really important investment of both government and brand level. But the exciting possibilities of AI technology can still be hard to prioritize. So to join me in exploring what brand and marketing leaders can do today to reap the benefits of AI tomorrow, allow me to work with three fantastic speakers Michelle Walsh, Senior Director of Marketing and Communications for the shopping malls at Majid Al Futtaim, Anna Germanos, the Group director of CPG retail, e-commerce and luxury for Middle East, Africa and Turkey at Meta and Ahmad Abu Rabi, Director of Decision Analytics at Miral. Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today and taking time out of your busy schedules to be here. Before we begin, I'd just love if each of you give us a really quick introduction to your roles within your business. So it's just that our audience can get to know you a little bit better. Michelle, why don't we start with you? Hi, everyone. It's great to be here. My name is Michelle. I work for Majid Al Futtaim team, shopping mall division. I oversee marketing and communications. My head of comms told me to wear amazing shoes today, so I think Elisa, from Level Shoes would probably appreciate that comments. The problem was, I fell in. Thankfully, you just started because the traffic was heavy. But I prefer to fall out of these institutions instead of falling into the normally. But it's great to be here. Hi everyone. My name is Ahmad. I am leading the data analytics team in Miral group. With the 17 years of, data science, we try to convince marketing that we can help them always. And, we share our experience with you. Just make it easy then. Hi, everyone. Very happy to be here. So I'm Anna, I work for Meta, the mother company of, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger. I lead a number of verticals. So, basically working with the large advertiser and the consumer goods, retail, e-commerce and luxury to make the most out of their dollars spends on our platform. So making sure the return on ad spend is high and the ads are effective and efficient. Thanks so much, Anna. Well, on that note, why don't we start with you? Because I know that globally, Meta has been focused on several initiatives in this space, including things like, AI studio, Meta AI with Llama 3. Can you give us a really quick overview of Meta's key developments in AI and what it means for users in the Middle East? Sure, so, yeah, I mean, in all conferences, AI is the topic, of the now and, and, Meta has been heavily, heavily invested in AI and it's not new actually, it's been for the past ten years that we've been investing heavily in AI. The latest development on AI is something super exciting is our Meta AI assistant that is now available in all our apps. I actually have it on WhatsApp. I can show it to some of you, but this is not yet rolled out in the UAE. I have the privilege to be an internal employee and they test with us first. So I'm happy to show it to some of you. But it's one of the most powerful assistant. It's rolled out today in 14 countries. And it's being powered by Llama 3, which is our, newest open source, large language model. That fuels all the AI development and that is open source or available to anyone to build on it. Actually, ChatGPT has been built on Lla ma 2, which is the older version of Llama 3. So that's really the most recent announcement. But how do we practically use AI in our business in our day to day activities? It's mainly across many areas. One is, to fuel our discovery engine. Today, more than 20% of the content that you see on our apps, whether Instagram or Facebook, is suggested by AI, which makes it very personalized and very relevant. Second, it's helping a lot removing harmful content on our platform. More than 86 or 87% of hate speech is removed by automated systems, which helps a lot to read the content on the platform. Third, and this is very important for marketers, is fueling our, marketing solutions. Today we have a full new suite of, who called Advantage plus, solution that it's powered by AI, where we see 20% more conversion, at 30% less cost, so much more efficient, an effective ad solution. And as an anecdote, last year was it was sitting, you know, doing the annual review with one of the advertisers. And I'm like, you know, we should have seen more growth on the platform. And he was like, no, we managed to reach. Our target was, lower budgets because your solutions are becoming more efficient. And, of course, I said, you know, your targets were very conservative. You can push your targets for next year and then spend more on our platform. But we really see, it's, how AI is powering the solutions. It's also powering automating messages messaging with the AI bots on the messaging platforms. And finally, and I think this is very important, it's democratizing creativity today as marketers, especially in fashion and luxury. You have a catalog of product. But how do you make personalized ad. And going back to personalization is really sometimes changing the background, changing an image, a picture, etc.. And this is today available in our, generative AI studio, where any brand manager or anyone working on a campaign can change the creative and enhance it to make it more relevant and more personalized. So these are the areas where AI is, you really see from an end user. Some examples and use cases of AI in our day to day. I think that really links back to what Elisa was saying during the first panel about using AI to automate more mundane tasks and releasing people to actually maximize the power of their own creativity as well. Totally. But we just heard from Anna about, you know, what's happening at a very digital, a highly digital environment within the, matters ecosystem. Michelle I'd love to talk to you a little bit more about what that means in a more omnichannel environment. So thinking about a further about that investment. I know that over the last couple of years, Majid Malls has been investing significantly in upgrading the omnichannel experiences of its visitors. Can you tell us about some of these key developments and how that digital transformation is manifesting at an omnichannel retail environment? So, look, not much keeps me up at night, but there was one stat I saw or heard at a conference recently, and it kind of sticks in my mind as a way to, you know, approach transformation. 49% of people research online by offline, 51% of people research offline and buy online, right? So if you're thinking that way, that means you have to be all things to all people. And then it depends what their purposes, what's the occasion, who they're with. So it really throws the gauntlet down to all of us in retail and shopping malls is to how can we create amazing, omnipresent, customer experiences? So four years ago, we really embarked on figuring out, like, what's the purpose of a mall within a digital, shopping experience, right? You know, malls are a platform more than we are actual retail ourselves. So we bring people and brands together. So we're trying to work out. And it's a journey, right? What? You know, what we discover one year from research and insights, you know, is is highly is evolving at a rapid pace. So during obviously I hate to bring up that dirty C where it was Covid obviously, you know four years ago we were all kind of figuring out what changes we should expect moving forward. And we did have to obviously do a lot of, you know, quick adjustments to obviously digital experiences to allow for obviously a very challenging situation. But it began really a journey. I suppose it kind of got us on a journey quickly. Then probably as bricks and mortar, we probably would not have done. So I think it was good in that respect. It is hard to be a traditional bricks and mortar business trying to digitize. We were just saying that, you know, I have probably a lot more legacy systems to play with than you have. But what we have managed to do, and this is based on, obviously speaking to customers that are consumers that are coming to our mall. We landed on a, you know, a couple of key digital features that we feel will, enhance the pre discovery experience. So we have a, you know, in mall of the Emirates, we've created an e-commerce platform on one of the Emirates. So you can do a lot of discovery in advance and even purchase if you can't get there. We also have another a feature called Digital Concierge, where everything for the mall then is pretty much available to buy online. So you can get in touch with our WhatsApp channel, on one of the Emirates and tell us anything you want, and we'll deliver it within four hours. So we're starting to see a lot of take up in that area. And then we have other things like what can we do digitally to improve the physical experience. So we're we're adding, you know, more car parking, features to the app so you can reserve your car park in advance, which we know is a pain point or all over the world, not just our malls. And then obviously we have hands free shopping. If you're in the mall and you know your bags are too heavy, which I hope they are, you can get in touch with one of our runners who will come and either bring it to your car or again, delivered to your home within four hours. So I think we're in the direction in a few different areas, whether that be on a commerce side, on a chat side, and then improving the in mall experiences as well. Yeah, it's incredible to hear about how much is happening before they even visit the site, because that journey, that experience doesn't start when they enter the stores, enter a mall. It starts quite a long time before that, and I think that's really something for us to think about. When we think about the role of digital in that customer journey as well. And I know about Miral travel, you've also been implementing several AI powered developments that elevate the customer experience. Some things that come to mind. AI powered chat bots. You have a contact center that delivers highly personalized customer service. But interestingly, you've also been deploying these new developments in formats like email or SMS and live chat on your site. Can you tell us a little bit about how this works, and what's the effect of using them across all of these direct to consumer communication channels? Yes. Actually, we started the first phase, by, chatbot generative AI to help people when they contact our contact center to help them to answer to their questions first and then we shifted almost 10% of our customers who called call centers to this, generative AI. And we did see even better satisfaction. And we are serving our guests, we call it guest actually, we don't call them the customers. We served our guests much better. So now we are in the way where we have a lot of use cases, which we'll talk about, we have a transformation program called "Neue" where we have a lot of data science use cases, and we want to feed this generative AI to give the best experience to the customer. So when you interact with us, we will know, who are you? Are you a valuable customer? Are you a new customer? Do you have a family? And then we will give you the right advice, the right recommendation, so that you enjoy your experience in in the whole island? In. Yes. Island. So at the start, we really see, a good, benefit of it from, how we serve the customer and also for our team who is overloaded. And of course, this would reflect on the customer experience when you call and you wait long time and you just follow simple question. Now we are reducing this time and improving the customer experience. Like a lot of companies, we are investing a lot in AI. And, it is for us. It's only the start. It's a journey. There's a lot of, other touchpoints which we are, we will tackle, to improve the customer experience. So more to come then. I think about the development of social media. We've seen this space evolve from being a source of connection and inspiration to being an opportunity to convert sales. Do you find that fashion and luxury consumers are particularly active when it comes to social commerce, and why do you think that is particularly in this region? So today, luxury and fashion brands have the opportunity to measure, thanks to data and to having the right tech infrastructure to be able to measure sales and social platform to drive sales. So we see it. We see it every day with our partners. The recipe to actually driving scenes is having the right product. Serve it to the right consumer with the right message. It's saying it like this is very simple, right? To have the right product rely on the algorithm of the social platforms. Thanks to AI, and thanks to the power of the signals that are collected from all the consumers and the activity that they have on our platform, we have the discovery engine, which is of immense importance to category like fashion of luxury. Nobody will go and search for this black dress, but when you are on Instagram and I work for Instagram, so I'll highlight these platforms when you're on Instagram and you see this beautiful black dress, someone wearing it, and suddenly you click on it with two clicks and you go and buy it because you liked it. You didn't even needed this black dress. But then this product came and found me. And then I went and I actually bought it. So this is what we call discovery commerce. Thanks to this algorithm, they're surfacing products from your catalog to the relevant consumers. The second element of my equation is the targeting. Today you need to make sure that the targeting accuracy is very high. And thanks to again the algorithm, Meta has one of the highest match rates when it comes to actually really targeting people you want to target in your campaign. So having this right accuracy, it means that you're targeting the right consumers. The third element is the message. What are you saying to them? And then Fahed mentioned something about localization. In fashion, it's easy to do it when you have, you know, especially some of the brands are local. They know the consumers, they have very local examples. The more luxurious we go, the more difficult localization is. A lot of the branding and the messages come from the central members that where they don't really know the local consumers, the Middle Eastern consumers. But this is changing. We see more and more localization coming. Ramadan last Ramadan was a brilliant example of brands like Bulgari, Tiffany and a lot of luxurious brands today that are creating bespoke content with people, celebrities from the region to be relevant to the to the consumers. So when you have these three ingredients together on social media, then sales will happen and conversions will happen. So most of the advertising activity that we see are really targeting, especially in retail and in fashion and luxury, are targeted for performance. So to drive sales and more and more companies are being very, a lot there's a lot of scrutiny around the return on advertising spend. And thanks to the data, we're able to prove the impact of marketing, not only on online sales that is very easy to measure because you have the data and you have, if you're going directly to consumer, be able to measure the sales. But we're also in the world of luxury, where in-store is still very, very important. We're able, thanks to some sort of integration of online to offline integration, also measure the impact of your online activation on the sales that happen in stores. So having the right equation and the right, infrastructure to be able to measure this, is really helping brands to track the conversions and the sales that are happening. Here we've heard so much about personalization today, but I love that idea of a brand or a product discovering the consumer rather than the other way around, and really landing that message that it was made for them. And I think one of the key things I take from what you said, Anna, is how impactful social commerce is on incrementality, which is obviously a really important metric for success for all marketers. And you get that level of data in those kinds of environments in a way that maybe you don't get from from other channels. Maybe one thing to add on targeting. And this is back to the AI almost, always brands have and or brand marketeers have some, you know, preconceived ideas about their own target audience. Like, we want to target this audience because this is the core audience, which is, which is very true. But then with the new AI powered solution, we recommend to use audience liquidity, keep the audience open, because you might be very attractive to some consumers where you never knew that these were part of your audience. So as long as the conversion happened, let the algorithm optimize for you and you'll see that there are new pockets of consumers. This goes back to your incrementality point that you never tapped into because you were so constrained into your targeting. Let the system optimize. Let it find the audience that will, that's your brand will appeal to, and the conversion will happen. Were sold, Anna, I promise. As I said, the power of AI to, I guess, do a little bit of myth busting about who your core customer is as well. Michelle, I read that math is also working on enhancing its data strategy and its use of best of breed technologies as well. What does this mean in real terms? And also, how can brands benefit from better understanding of the customer data that you possess? Yeah. So, working on, It's probably the correct, two words in your question there. And, hopefully I'm consistent with what Fahed also mentioned on his side because we work in the same group. This is probably one of the hardest things that we work on. You know, we, as I said earlier, you know, we're a traditional company. We have a lot of legacy systems. We are a huge ec osystem at Majid Al Futtaim. And on the face of it, we do have a lot of information, what we're trying to and it's still a work in progress is how easy is that data to interpret? How easy is it to access? How usable is it for our teams, and then how is it actually driving value back to our business? So I would say we're at different stages in each of that. And, you know, new tools come on all the time. And then you have to, you know, consider, should we be changing to this? And it's a very agile thing with very complex systems. Right. So I think we've been fortunate in that we launched a loyalty program about four years ago, which is our share loyalty program. I'm sure some people will have heard of it. That's been able to give us a cross-POV of what's happening with our consumers. And I think that's where it gets really interesting. So it's not just me understanding one component of someone's experience. It's looking across a breadth of, occasions and times and behaviors and spend and stuff like that. So what we're now starting to do is speak to. So for me, it's about how do I. Give retailers value. Okay. So this is where we're sitting down and we're discussing, you know, segmentation on a very deep level right now. We we can sometimes cut out Meta in this scenario because I can do segmentation and then obviously send someone a targeted offer. And we can close the loop straight away. We will never get rid of Meta I promise. Don't worry. But I think we're starting to see a new dawn for us, which is I can close the loop, I have the information I can segment, I can send a communication to a retailer that I'm working with. We know when someone comes, we know what they're spending and we close the loop. So for me, I think that's an amazing opportunity that I think we're really going to take to the next level. So if any retailers are here, you know, please obviously reach out. We're already in touch with all of the brands that exist in, you know, in our in our malls to come up with these kind of I wouldn't even say use cases anymore. This is now a products that we're offering to our retailers and we can see value straight away from it. And you know what I'm sensing from what you just said and some of the conversations that have taken place earlier is there is such a culture of collaboration and a willingness to share learnings about what you're discovering about your customers, perhaps in a way that you don't see in some more mature markets where people are very like, defensive and protective of their customer data. And here people want to share. They want to have workable strategies that impact everyone and ultimately customers for the benefit of their experience as well. I'm just I have to mention a little bit about the development of the loyalty program at Majid malls. I know that's something that's also been evolving, within Miral. And when it comes to an industry like travel and tourism, obviously the experience is all that more important. You mentioned some of the developments that you've introduced at Yas Island, earlier, but I think you have a new program called Gas Connect. I believe that helps connect, visitors to different services and solutions such as Wi-Fi and nothing that preferences. What's the value of the data that you can get from these touchpoints and the new loyalty program? And how does that help to drive future loyalty as well? Yes. So, we talk about a lot of experiences in the Yas Island. We talk about the theme parks. We talk about, Ferrari World, about if you had arena where we do events, but the event is one customer. Right? So we need to know everything about these customers to be able to build the right experience with them. So that's why we have, which is my connect system, where we gather all the information as much as we can in my connect to know the customer, we can know, for example, in which hotel you came, did you come with a family? What you visited all this which was complying with the data privacy? Of course. So this will allow us to better hyper personalize the recommendation for the customer. And something really, really important is that I think we all agree on that is if we, hyper personalization is, is not an option to really, generate growth from data. However, if you don't do it correctly, we can create friction with the customer. So more information we have about the customers better we can sell them better we give them the, I mean, the best experience in the whole island and even in Abu Dhabi, as a destination. I just say on that subject of hyper personalization when it comes to recommendations, I read that you also implemented a new program called "Neue," that helps with automating those recommendations and creating a more, tailored experience. Can you tell us what the impact has been on customer satisfaction with automating this highly tailored experience for guest? Yes. Before even talking about the customer satisfaction, about knowledge, the transformation program which we, initated to become the first data driven company and the first company in terms of customer satisfaction. So what is most no risk? A set of data science and machine learning, use cases. We build, all the technology along this, when I joined Miral, about nine months ago, I looked at all these, and I realized there's one challenge, which is, not all these use cases, machine learning, very advanced, are used. And so this, for me was really a big issue and big challenge. So why they are not used. And we said let's automate this. Actually if you go to marketing team we tell them I'm building for you a machine learning tool. There was no way for them to say, what is that? No, but if we tell them that, we would help you to, however personalize you don't need to do anything. Actually, we will automate it. So the automation came on top of that. So automation meaning that we run a very complex algorithm to know what to recommend the best experience for each customer. And then we need to automate it to go out to the customer at the right time. So all this automation plus machine learning, it will drive us naturally to the recommendation engine and the AI. Yeah. So definitely this will also increase the customer satisfaction in everything we do. We measure the impact on the NPS. It is very important for us and we do see an impact. Sometime when we change the price, for example, we see a set of, customers who know the prices, then they are unhappy, etc.. But we do consider this, and the idea is to say this with the customer in the center of the business, what we are doing is good for the customer. Let's do it. If it is not, let's not because we know that long term the impact we can have a negative impact. So, new program is a great program, which we are we are just at the beginning of our journey, one year only, and the vision is five year program, which we, we released to the AI, which was also our data science and machine learning. You're wrong. We only run away from finance, not the data team. Well, I say one thing. You said that I think it's a really important reminder is, you know, we've heard about the use of AI, when it comes to personalized recommendations and optimizing services as well. But actually the timing of when content and messaging gets deployed is also really important because you can have the right product mix, you can have the right messages, but if it hits the customer at the wrong time, when that, then they're distracted and not in a mindset to engage with that content, then it won't have the desired effect. Yes. If I may, just one thing. One of challenges also was which channel we should contact the customer and how we have a data. We have a data platform, and we have a centralized data where we have all these, the communication for each customer. And we said, okay, if we don't want someone to send an SMS and a CRM, send an EDM. And there is a contradiction on this. So ere Emarsys came in the picture and everything now goes to the customer go through Emarsys which is connected directly with our customer database. This is a very important point to mention because when, we again, we don't want to create a friction with the customer. We want to use a centralized flow, to contact our customers. Thank you so much, Ahmad. I have a couple of questions for all of you. Now, just on some more general trends that we're seeing emerging in the market. So the first one is just about how luxury consumers in the Middle East are engaging with innovative technology like virtual reality or live streaming or even the acceptance of crypto, which I think is accelerating faster in this region than it is in other parts of the world. And I'll come to you first. Are there any unique behaviors or attitudes that you see in response to some of these trends here? I believe what we have seen, from, luxury and fashion, we've seen the, WhatsApp really gaining a lot of attraction. We seen it with the great example of Mall of Emirates with the WhatsApp concierge. Going back to personalization, this is the most personalized experience that you can have. It's one on one. It's by directional, it's private. So in that sense, we've seen especially in the Middle East, I don't know if it's something specific, but in our region, we love to chat. If we compare the Middle East to any other part of the world, we have one of the highest adaption of WhatsApp and chatting per capita in the world, with higher than the US. So from that perspective, I think there's a huge opportunity. Some brands are really starting to leverage, especially brands and marketers from our region that are being top the charts. And MAL, which creates, Mall of the Emirates is one example. And we have other examples, especially in the luxury segment, some luxury marketplaces, whether it's, you know, Chalhoub Group or, Al Tayer Group that are now leveraging WhatsApp, a lot of it is organic. It's paid messaging. So it doesn't feel like it's ad it's, intrusive. And they are creating more and more awareness that these channels exist today. When you see some ads like chat now, etc., to direct the traffic so that you can have this personalized experience. And from there, once on WhatsApp, you can automate a lot of it, when you have the scale, to make it more efficient and to be able to cater for the messages that comes through the channel. Thanks Anna. Michele, I imagine that technologies that have more of an experiential element, like VR or live streaming, are also really important to, business that blends that physical and digital experience. What kind of role do they play in the strategies at Majid malls? So we're seeing some interesting stuff particularly in China. In this area, it hasn't quite come here yet in as big a way. I still think, you know, going to shopping malls and just generally shopping is a national pastime here, right? Thankfully. And I know people say, you know, death of malls. We've been hearing about that for the last couple of weeks or years. I don't agree with that. I think bad malls and bad retail will go away, but great malls and great experiences will continue to prosper. What we're noticing is, and particularly within luxury, is there's a huge investment in emphasis going into what's happening in the boutiques. Okay. And people are appreciating that. I'm not saying we're at a ceiling as on the online, but we're definitely seeing that, you know, people are wanting to go back to that in mall experience and the in retailer experience. And then it's a case of, well, what does digital mean within the store experience as well? We're working with, you know, our retailers to figure that out together. We've tried a few things. We tried, you know, a solution called Hero Shopping, where you can directly speak to a sales associate. It was a couple of years ago. The take up wasn't there, but it was something that we wanted to try. I think that's the thing. We're not afraid to try things. And if it doesn't work, then, you know, we learned, you know, in obviously in great ways from that. I think we just need to be open minded moving forward. Try stuff. You know, Digital Concierge is working really well for us. It will never replace, but it's complementary. So it's finding the complementary technology solutions. That's where we're at right now. Thank you. Anything to add on it? Thank you. The only thing I would say is, transformation is a journey. There is no there is no, this is not easy. There's a lot of change and management on it and has to have a change of the culture of each company with its.

So you are locked in with me just for the next few minutes to go through this topic. And I think it's an important one because it has been so top of mind, as part of all the conversations that we've we've had on the panels and through the other speakers. So, the EU regulations that were released earlier in mid-March. There's some stuff up here. But I wanted to touch on how we think, what change is this going to bring for marketers, for consumers, for businesses like Emarsys as well. From our perspective, we do believe that these are going to be a positive thing for businesses. I think it's going to start to level the playing field a little bit and provide a bit of a framework for companies to work within and to make sure that we as a provider and as a company in this business, make sure that we really understood how people were feeling about this. We commissioned a study of just over 2000 marketers and consumers across Europe, and this is just some of the stats that we got from that. So 52% of EU consumers are confident in the data privacy laws that are surrounding A.I.. So we're finding that the majority of people agree with these regulations and they don't see it as the end of innovation, which I think is something that we're a little bit concerned about when we talk about this topic. 90% of marketers agree that this legislation is significant in a stop towards what we're calling responsible AI, and 91% think it will increase consumer trust in brands when they're using AI. Sounds pretty good to me. It's a lot of steps up here. I'm not going to take you through everyone, I promise. But I wanted to call out one from each side. So for me, from the consumer side of things, 62% believe that AI is going to have a positive impact on their retail experiences. And I think that's significant when you look at that same stat from last year, being at 28%, it's a little bit less scary now. People are starting to understand what it means, what impact it's going to have on them when they're engaging with their favourite brands. And on the marketer side, 96% agree that using AI saves them an hour or more on a typical campaign launch. And I think on our panel, we were talking about it right, Jan was talking about actually it's that efficiency. It's that time back that you then get to do something more creative and spend more time on. As many people are kind of worrying that it's going to lead to more formulaic marketing, every brand is going to sound the same. And there's a couple of things that we're looking to bring to the market that we can show how we can use it to really channel that. We want to revolutionize the marketing landscape and try and automate some of those more complex tasks, some of those more heavy lifting tasks, to give you the time to be more creative. I don't think anybody gets into marketing to be an admin person. That's not why you're here, right? You're creative thinkers, your strategic thinkers, and you want to have that time to spend on what is your go to market strategy? Listen to your customers, understand them a bit better. And what we're trying to do is empower you to have the time to do that. Our data shows that both marketers and consumers are really asking for this. So it's part of our ongoing commitment to make sure that we're bringing that to you as well. So we want to make sure it's more efficient, is giving you some more time, allow you to deliver those overall better customer experiences as part of your brand. So in our response to all of that, everything that we've been hearing, we're releasing two new features, which I'm very pleased to bring to you today. The first one is our AI Product Finder. This will enable intuitive search of those comprehensive product catalogs that everybody has and allow marketers to quickly and locate and incorporate the most suitable products within their campaigns. So it's going to be provided as an out of the box solution for any template based email, and it's going to be saving you that valuable time while allowing you to really use that as a channel, your product catalog to drive consumer engagement. According to our data, AI product powered product recommendations are in high demand, and a third of consumers are saying that it's already helping them to find the right products, and 23% say that it helps them to decide what it is that they want to buy. So that AI product finder is furthering that trend and putting the right products in front of the right customers. And the second one is our AI Subject Line Generator. According to all of the things that we hear, copywriting is the number one use case for AI in marketing. But I think when we also speak to marketers, it's the one that we know our brand voice, we know our customer, and we want to be controlling the content that we're putting out into the market. But when we talk about subject lines, actually it's something that we're seeing 84% of marketers telling us that actually AI written subject lines drives much better open rates and engagement than those written by a human. So it's these kind of use cases that we can really leverage it to be able to work for us. So given this demand, we have brought out a AI Subject Line Generator. So it uses natural language as the prompts and it's an input and helping you to create the subject line for your email marketing campaigns. It also uses Gen AI to analyze the content of your email and be able to understand the themes that you're talking about. And provide you with multiple contextually relevant options for you to choose from. So this is really designed to help you maximize those engagements. So I'm really excited about these. And I think we've got some customers in the room that I think are really going to help us to bring these to market. And I can't wait to have some of them up on the stage when we come back this time next year to talk about what they've been doing with it. I promised you short and sweet, right, guys, that's it! Thank you guys so much.

I'm Paul, Growth Consultant at Emarsys focused on the Dutch region, and I have the pleasure of introducing our next session, which is a panel tackling the next topic, which is customer-centric omnichannel strategies that drive customer lifetime value. We have three experts that are joining us and Andre, tell me if I'm pronouncing the Dutch names right, but we have Leonie Lammers again from Studio Anneloes. We also have Leonie Jonker, who is Senior Manager of Retention in Europe at Paula's Choice. And finally, we have Jan Van Der Harst, who is CRM Activation Specialist at New Balance. So please give them a warm welcome and invite them to the stage. Maybe we'll start off with a quick introduction to the panel. Hello, everyone. My name is Jan, I am a CRM Activation Specialist at New Balance. My background is actually also in marketing, technology and consultancy. But beginning this year, I made a switch to, well, the good side, the client side. And I've been, well, enjoying New Balance so far, very much working with Emarsys, lovely to be here. Thank you. Hi, I'm Leonie, I'm Senior Manager of Retention for Paula's Choice. Paula's Choice skincare brand, global skincare brand, founded in the US 29 years ago. And I am responsible, together with my team, for retaining our customers in Europe and since yesterday actually also South Africa. So we have a large customer base that we're trying to sell their best skin care of their life. I already introduced myself, right? Right. We're in your home. Nice. Well, maybe to kick things off, I start with you, Leonie Lammers, and maybe I'll say Leonie L or Leonie J, if that's okay. That's fine. Cool. So we've had some really great insights from Sanne and yourself on the past and present future of your CRM strategy. But what else do you bring into the fold at Studio Anneloes? I know that you just spoke about loyalty and we're all excited, myself included, to become a member in September. But tell us a bit more about your CX strategy. Yeah, I think we already talked a lot about the personalization and it's getting more and more important for the demanding customer that you really expect to get a personalized offer. And she really wants to feel special, treated special. And that's also why we are introducing our member program because then we can step up that game as well and take her to a journey and build a community with our consumers. And that's also what we really value is we don't only want to sell clothes, but we also want to inspire women and bringing women together. And we we believe we can create a platform with those women together and also learning a lot from their feedback. And that's something we really want to do, learn a lot from our customers because of course, your customers are your most valuable assets. So why don't you utilize them and ask them for feedback and also create the collections, listen to what they want. And sometimes we do this already because we have such a short lead time, which [is why] we can do it even better. Yeah, nice. Yeah. And we've spoken a lot about kind of community building, being a strong pillar for you as a business. And you also mentioned that you as a brand don't compromise margin and don't want to do discounts and things like that. How are you trying to create loyal experiences for your customers? Give us a little insight into what you're trying to do. Yes so our program is not about discounts because you can, of course, earn points, but you don't get discount with us. You can get perks or benefits. You can utilize your points to get a styling session at our head quarters, join events for inspiring each other or plant a tree or whatever you want, but no discounts. Good. Good. And does that resonate with anyone else on the panel in terms of trying to drive loyal experiences without harming margin and harming the brand identity? Yeah, well, it does with me. Same as Studio Anneloes. We're not big on discounting. New Balance. Yeah, I think what's most important is to be there across the journey, as you said in your brilliant presentation, to be there at the right time. And that's not only when they've already purchased something, but also prior to to a purchase into the decision phase, the awareness phase to create a brand and brand moments that resonate with the audience. And from a CRM perspective, then it's to get that deeper connection not only through the data side of things, but really understand what kind of consumer shopper do you have here and how can we, you know, surface or provide products to that person that resonate and fit their style and needs. Leonie J, I'm going to bring it bring it over to you. Tell us a bit about your role at Paula's Choice and some of the priorities for this year. Yeah, so I'm manager of the retention team. But yeah, you would think only retaining customers, but there's also a part of acquisition. So we're actually yeah, over the past few years collaborating more with other teams to become a bit more customer-centric, work more in customer journeys. Because yeah, for us, well we call members, our email subscribers are super important because they are well, we know that they're three times more likely to come back. So especially for our retention strategy, our members are super important to grow our our database and eventually grow our our revenue. But there's also a large share in our database that our people might have subscribed but they've never purchased. So how are you going to get them from. Yeah, being not a customer to their first purchase and the second purchase is very important for us in the in the whole journey because that's the most difficult one, if, if I may say so. Yeah. Getting a person from this one time acquisition offer to actually becoming a more loyal customer is something that we're working on every day and it's a large part of our strategy. Yeah. And we are, yeah. In the core of our brand is also a lot of education and guiding customers on skincare. Our founder was actually a writer of books actually reviewing other skincare brands. And yeah, from that position she developed her first skincare line. So that's why also education is super important in our brand and that's what we also try to do with our email marketing strategy to inform customers, not only push them for a next purchase, but also educate them on what's good for their skin. And does that education ever start pre-sale? Does it is it typically post-sale? It's both. So we develop, for example, E-courses. So it's it's kind of like a educational journey via email to inform people about a certain skin concern and what matches to that concern, but also post-purchase super important to tell them like how to use their products, what's goes best with the products that they purchase to enhance their results. So there's, you know, a whole journey. Yeah. Before and after to the actual skin care purchase. Leonie, is that something that yours and trying to do a Studio at all trying to educate customers before purchase as well as after purchase in terms of kind of the ethos that you spoke about at the beginning of the presentation in terms of who you are, what you are, then see us. Yeah, that's something we do. We did we just installed the after purchase mail Sanne told you about. And of course we need to tell her more about the products, how we use it. And we have done recently studies and that study showed that you wear a product two and a half times more than another product because of the terrific quality - it's really made to last. And you wear it also 130 times where a normal product you were like 60 times or something like that. And that's the story we have now. Data and data doesn't lie. So that's a story we really need to tell as well. Yeah. And I'm also wondering, because you said for us, the the second buy is the most difficult. We see now in our data and we have just started that the first buy is almost always a pant, a trouser. Do you also have a particular product they always buy for the first or second time. And what's then the road? Yeah. So we have a well, we're very known for our 2% BHA exfoliant. So it's a black bottle that's all over social media. And it's also our sort of travel size product is our main acquisition product. So a lot of people enter via this first Yeah, mini bottle of our best seller, but it's a very low hurdle because they can purchase it for like €13. But then the step to yeah, going to a full size purchase, Yeah, that can be like €20 in between. So yeah, getting this person from this one time exfoliant that they saw on TikTok or Instagram too, like a full skincare routine or their next product – that's quite a difficult step. So we're also testing a lot with our online marketing team. We're making more analysis now with our data scientists to try and find like, what are the logical next steps and yeah, what can we improve to actually make it, from a one time buyer to a skincare user of Paula's Choice. Jan, I'm going to come to you next for the next question, we haven't heard you for a couple of minutes so we'll come to you. So the theme of Power to the Marketer this year is tradition meeting transformation. And we're talking about heritage, quality, exceptional experiences remaining the hallmark of tradition. But in an age where we're in a bit of attention economy, it's how brands are not only competing for acquisition but loyalty, trust and advocacy. And what we're looking at in this question is really how can marketers make every moment more meaningful and culturally relevant? So at New Balance, which I think has gone through quite a transition, as being maybe one of the third or fourth or fifth kind of flagship brands, but now is beloved by everyone. A lot of people wearing their trainers, a lot of people wearing their gear. It's kind of now the flagship sports retailer. What does that mean for you? Well, I love it, of course. Yeah. It's great to be part of a brand that's doing so well currently. One of our C-level executives was quoted that we are not a heritage brand, we're a brand with heritage, which is a quote I really like. And I think like indeed what you say is that there's a lot of competition and a lot of short attention spans across the full digital journey, right? Keeping somebody focused on your brand and actually getting to know them better and no more and taken by the hand and taken to that full buying side repurchase cycle is a challenge and I think that's why we're actually all here as well. But what I think when you when you look at traditional marketing and how that's changed over the years, it's like new channels you can get so much value out of, on the brand side of things, but also on a CRM side of things, way more data available. People are more inclined to share their data if you do the right things with that. Data is becoming smarter on itself, you know, it can make decisions for you. So like as a as a CRM Activation Specialist, I work a lot with automation and I think where I'd like to see, you know, transformation go is, is to have dynamic, personalized and automated marketing campaigns that really resonate 1 to 1 with the person. Yeah, that's in the market for a potentially Studio Anneloes clothing, Paula's Choice or New Balance apparel. Yeah I guess one way which we see at Emarsys this coming to the to the forefront is is channel mix. So how do I communicate with with customers via SMS versus email versus web channel and so on and so forth. Kind of opening up the question to the to the rest of the of the panel, how are you guys currently using multiple channels to communicate with the varying customers, the different customers that you have within your database people. Maybe we'll start with you, at Paula's Choice. Yeah. So we we've been on Emarsys for two years now and while email marketing is still our main channel in the retention team, but what was really great about moving to this omnichannel platform was that we could incorporate all our marketing and the website in one customer journey. So in our automations we work with different channels. We lead a customer through maybe an email touchpoint, maybe they don't respond, then they go to the website, we can prompt a web channel asset. Show them like, "Hey, you've abandoned these things in your cart". Maybe after several days, so many days they haven't responded still, we pushed them to an audience that goes to Paid Social where they can see a really consistent journey where before we were more siloed and we could be, yeah, we're the same brand but a customer could see three different things on different platforms. So yeah, I think that really helps in being consistent and more customer-centric in that sense. Yeah, nice. And the Leonie Lammers, is there a way that you test out new channels because I guess there's an explosion of channels that we can be communicating with our customers on. Now, is there a way that you say, Hey, maybe how do I try out maybe Pinterest or how do I try out Tiktok for my brand? Is that something that you're currently doing as a business? Yeah, we are, but we are mainly focused on the Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook at the moment. We are just starting with Pinterest and it's already giving us a lot of insights and also maybe a different customer group so it's really interesting. I must say I'm very interested by your story because we're not that far yet, but we're getting there and we now just launched our app and that's something we're really proud of because we work a lot with the retailers because we don't have our own stores. So we have now incorporated the wishlist and if you have put something on your wishlist and you walk by a store, you get a push notification, "Hey look, it's inside". And that's yeah, that's also really really cool. But yeah, there's so much more to do. Yeah. Nice. And I want to just come back to you Leonie J just around some of the things you're talking about using channels to influence different elements of the customer journey. And I know for a lot of marketers working in siloed teams and trying to drive operational efficiency is a big focus now. We're being asked as digital leaders to do more with less. So I kind of wanted to ask a bit about how at Paula's Choice you're approaching, you're using a more holistic approach to help achieve more customer-centric marketing and what that means for you as a business. We've always had a lot of data. We've always been a DTC first brand. So yeah, that's, that's something. Yeah, you're sitting on a pile of gold, but then you come to the stage where you're like, okay, how are we going to unlock all this data? And being able to use that in a automated way, in a sense that it also makes sense for a customer and not have channels operate in their own silo and "oh I'm responsible for acquisition so I'll just focus on these acquisition promos that we're running". But then on the other hand, you get these new customers thrown at you at retention and you're supposed to retain them but maybe they've been acquired with a totally different set of communication. So that's something that we've been I think noticing more and more that we're supposed to look at the full picture. Okay - where do these customers come from? How do we communicate with them and how do we set the journey further for them and being able to segment that and yeah, be personal but not in a scary way. And that's, that's also very important. But yeah, that's something that we're making steps in but there's still quite a way to go of course. Yeah because we're also still on the other hand still mass mailing our base with our marketing calendar campaigns and yeah that's also the other side of the, of the brand but yeah my hope, my vision for the future is that we can be more customer-centric in a way that we can we can push people through their own automation to their own customer journey, put all our education in such a way that it's available whenever a person makes a certain purchase or and not when we think "oh, this is a good month for anti-ageing communication" because maybe half of your base purchases their anti-ageing products in the previous half year and then they, they miss out on this communication. So yeah I think that's part of what we're continuing to work on. Nice, good to hear. I wanted to take the conversation in a bit of a different direction and come towards customer loyalty. I think that's been a theme that we've been talking about for a good couple of months, if not years in terms of how we move customers from awareness to true loyalty and that is kind of the gold standard of personalization. A question for all three of you on this panel: What is the biggest obstacle to delivering true customer loyalty for your respective businesses? Maybe all starts off with New balance from a bit more of a global perspective. What are the what are some of the challenges? There's short attention spans everywhere now. People have a lot of different digital touchpoints that they can get influenced on on their next purchase. And also comes with there's always a lot of competition out there. The availability of everything like by the touch of a button on your phone. So I think like loyalty is fostered in a brand not only within marketing or CRM, it also comes from creating beautiful products, creating a brand that resonates. And again, then we as CRM marketers, we have to, you know, take them not from a first purchase or even we might have to take them to the first puchase because they only signed up. But to really look at the data and see, okay, what is the intent here? What are the interests here? And then start shaping that customer experience. And then the problem again is to keep their focus on you and not have them go looking around again in the ideal world. In an ideal world, everybody would just stay loyal to one brand and every brand could exist. But that's unfortunately not the case. And how do you coming to Paula's Choice and Studio Anneloes, how do you keep your attention on yourself from a customers perspective are their strategies that you use to overcome that? Or how, just in general, how are you trying to overcome the challenges to really driving truly loyal, loyal experiences for your customers? Well, I think as a brand, you really need to be authentic. You need to be transparent, and really stand for your own brand DNA. And don't look at all the others., "oh they're doing this, they're doing this". No, we are this brand and this is our strategy. And I think if you stay close to your own brand strategy then the customers stay loyal if they choose for you. I think that's also really important in this whole world of all opportunities. And what can we do? But you really need to stay at the brands. And that's also because, of course, with a loyalty program, you can have can give them discounts and of course, we had this conversation, but then we said, no, this is not suitable for our brand, this is not what our brand is. So let's state our DNA and just don't do it. Let's be different. And that's what we already are as a brand but let's keep it this way. Paula's Choice? Yeah well, customers will always tell you that they want a discount or they want more discount if you already give them a discount. So yeah, for us, well, we do give discounts but we tend to not go above like 20%. But then over the recent years we've been, so we've always been DTC first. Now we're also partnering with retailers. Of course they are larger, they are more able to discount or to attract people to their store. So we're kind of, in some way, creating our own competition in a sense. So yeah, on the short term, we also work with gifts and discounts to get to get people to our own site. But I think like the proof is in the in the eating so we try to put products in their hands to experience what it does for their skin and educate people and build a relationship with them. Trying to set up a dialog instead of like only pushing our communication. Yeah. Just thinking because I think with skincare, it's indeed what you say it's very important you experience product, like I don't use a lot of skincare, but still! We can talk after. All right, I'm just going to make, I think like physical stores where people can experience like testers and stuff. Yeah. How do you kind of transform that, that, that physical touchpoint to then later follow up with a digital touchpoint that resonates with that person? Yeah, that's, that's also a struggle that we have because we're not used to this, to this game. We've always been like very safe in our own digital world. And of course, also our partners, our retailers are not always willing to share all there data and things. So yeah, that's that's definitely something that we, a game that we have to learn. So yeah, that's still something we're, we're working on. Good. I'm conscious that we have brands from farther afield in different verticals in the audience. So I was wondering if anyone is comfortable to share about how they're trying to overcome some of the obstacles in driving customer loyalty experiences. If anyone has has a comment to make around that? I have a question because we're talking about sending and putting our effort in customer loyalty, but I know every online marketing, digital, any company has also returns. So if you're having online returns, how are you helping these clients to remain their client loyalty also and how do you connect that band with those customer? That's my question because it's all about sending and maintaining and customer intimacy. And I think, turning that point from a weakness into a strength is also like a really challenging thing as a company. Yeah. Yeah. I can comment. Luckily, we don't have that many returns. Of course they do happen - wrong sizes, maybe something that's defective, but that's bound to happen. We have a very good customer success or customer service team. But we it really also depends on what kind of return you're dealing with. Of course, if it's a wrong size, make it useful that they can actually get a new size quickly, get it pushed through fast, and then you still get that happy experience. If it's about a defective product, that's a different thing, that takes more personal touches. For us, that doesn't lie with CRM, to be honest. We have a whole team that kind of tackles those issues, they put their heart and soul into that. And yeah, so it's not really my expertise. But we do really tend to listen to, to the people that share their experiences. We captured that data through forums and such - and we try to improve. Yeah, we, so a couple of years ago, so we have several products that are quite high on ingredients so people can get a skin reaction if they start using it for the first time or overdo it. So well, luckily we also have a very good customer care team with skincare experts who kind of help our customers. But we, a couple of years ago, we also tried to turn it around a bit to reduce the returns on those kind of products with creating post-purchase emails where we take the person by the hand and explain them really well, "Okay, what do you do with this product? Please don't overdo it. Don't start combining it with everything that you have on your bathroom shelf". So that's one way that we can try to to make the experience a bit better for our customers. And we also work a lot with customer feedback in our email. So for example, in our new customer flow, after three weeks, we ask them a question like, "Hey, do your products meet your expectations?" From the responses that we collect, we are also able to see like, okay, positive and negative. The negative experiences, we work together with our customer care team to contact these people and try to give them a better experience. So yeah, that's a way that we try to work with with returns. Sort of the same for us. We really value, of course, the feedback from the customer. And we also have a tool when you want to buy a pant, for example, you fill in the tooling and then the tool says, okay, this is your size. And of course, if you filled in the tool and it's still not your size, it can happen of course, or there something with the product, we also get feedback from the customers adjust the tooling and yeah, for us as well, we ask a lot for feedback. We have Trustpilot incorporated [onsite] and also want to get it in the emails as well. And luckily our returns aren't as high. So for fashion brand, that's also good but yeah, feedback is always very valuable. Yes. Good. Well, it sounds like returns have been influenced really by brands that we're speaking about here being pretty bullish or intentional about the personalized experiences that they're trying to deliver. And from that, you're being rewarded with customers that are really interested in terms of your brand, what you have to offer and and loving and enjoying your product. So that's maybe a strategy that a lot of our audience can take back to that to their respective businesses. But the next question I wanted to talk about, which is probably the buzzword of the year: AI. AI. AI. AI! So you're all using AI for your customer segmentation to make customer experiences more relevant to the individual. How important is segmentation to your marketing strategy and how are you using AI? How has AI essentially changed the way that your teams and you guys are individually working? Jan, I'll come to you first. Yeah, indeed. Big buzzword, of course. Like for me AI what it essentially does it makes sense of big data sets and then you have different things that I can do. I use it the most to make decisions for me. We have a lot of contacts at New Balance, of course. We operate from Amsterdam the whole EMEA region. And for me, it's incredibly helpful to have a tool that actually can make decisions on when to fire what email to which audience. You can make things as complex and personalized as you want. But if you set everything up once and have a good decision engine that is powered with artificial intelligence behind that, it takes all the complexity away for you and all the manual work as well. So really being able to dynamically target the right audience at the right time with the right message, cross-sell, upsell, anything - that's for me, the biggest benefit. As for using generative AI in writing emails - New Balance has a pretty strong brand voice, so we're not really steering into that region. So for me, it's really on making sense of the data - dynamic segmentations, people flowing in and out of segments. So it's predictive AI to identify opportunities and generative AI to drive operational efficiencies. Is that kind of the same sort of sentiment for for Paula's choice and Studio as well? Yeah, definitely. And I think we cannot work without it any more. Makes our work so much efficient. Yeah. Yeah. And another thing that's always also good, it's that the AI keeps learning right? On a person's intent, interests, see buying patterns between the similar audiences to kind of get that recommendation engine to improve you know make it even more relevant what kind of products you are setting up in an email or on site. Good stuff! And onto our next question, Leonie J I was going to come to you. So you're doing some really great work with sentiment analysis to turn this channel into more of a two way conversation you were speaking a bit about that rather than just being more sales driven, how can we actually open up a channel or communication, a relationship with our customers? Can you tell us a little bit more about about that? Yeah. So well, as a skincare brand, we're kind of literally on the skin of our customers. But yeah, the only one and only person who can tell you what it's like to be a customer is the customer themselves. So email is of course a very big channel for us and it's a push channel. You throw your communication out in the world. But so a couple of years ago we decided also to work with customer feedback in our email. So every email people are able to tell us what they think. It's what we call sentiment score. So it gives us a layer of qualitative data upon like quantitative data. Like for example, when we started, we have one of our main automations, of course, our birthday automation, very common of course to have. Numbers were good: conversion, open rates, everything. But then we started adding sentiment score and we actually found that the sentiment on the birthday automation was very low. And if there's one thing that you want to achieve with a birthday email is that a person becomes happy. Also, luckily, people are able to give their remarks. We can filter it that and we found out that our offer was actually expiring too fast and making people unhappy. So made a couple of updates, changed the offer, changed the expiry and then the sentiment increased but also your conversion, everything is related to it. For us this sentiment score is very important to keep in check with our customers, our recipients and to see what makes them happy, what can we improve and what they think of what they receive. So it also gives them a very low hurdle to not have to call customer care or yeah. Makes them more friction-less. Yeah. So it's a, it's a very. I have a question about it because yes of course you get like hopefully you get a lot of response on that, hopefully mostly positive. But the negative stuff you can actually work with, which is very valuable. When do you say like, if a negative feedback point occurs x many times, when do you say, "okay, this is actually something that we need to work on"? Let's, you know, kind of the, the way to make it a priority. Yeah, well, we haven't really set rules around that. It's sometimes can be like super simple email has gone out and the links don't work. That's also what you get through the feedback system of course. But so then you have to act immediately, even if it's just like one person saying it. But yeah, so we kind of filter the things that we that we receive and see what we can, what are the main topics. And sometimes it's a few people saying it, sometimes a lot of people. So yeah it's, it depends a bit. Not not a set rule. Okay. Okay. And for Studio Anneloes? How are you measuring customer satisfaction and how you using that to drive your marketing strategies as a business? Well, at the moment we don't do like the sentiment meters in the emails. We are getting it, I heard, but it's very interesting. And we ask now reviews and also learn a lot from the reviews we get. And of course we also ask customers for feedback on our socials. Because we are so close to the market, we also can ask the customers, "okay, we see in the data people expect a coat, with Studio Anneloes. Can we make you a coat?" Then Anneloes walks outside with the umbrella, we make a video of her and then six weeks later we have the coat to sell. Then of course, as a customer you have the feeling "oh the brand's really listening to my wishes". That's something we do already. We also did it with sneakers last year. We saw a lot of people searching for sneakers. We made them, sold out within an hours so it was really cool of course. That's something we really want to do more, of course. Also for different customer groups. Yeah. And for now, feedback is so valuable. I don't I'm not really the target of Studio Anneloesl, I'm sorry, but you don't own stores, do you? No, we don't, no. So, and 20% is coming out of your e-commerce? Yeah. So that's the customer base that you have for yourself? Yeah. The other ones are, you don't know them? No. No. Is that a fact or are you are you working on strategies to get them on board? Well, we're really working on that. So with the profile enrichment Sanne talked about earlier, we really want to know her and also asking her favorite store and that's one touchpoint already if we know what's her favorite store and she's entering the store that we can see, with the app we have - if she has the app of course, she needs to have the app. Then we can even learn more about her. And of course, the future wish for us is to have her closets in the app or in an environment where we can see, okay, this is the style she's shopped within a retailer, this is a style that she shopped online. We know, "okay you bought a trouser with us, you bought a blouse with a retailer - you can make combinations and we will advise you." And how is your retail network reacting on that? Are they happy with that? Yeah, they're definitely happy. Yeah, because they see that they also sell more if they work? Yeah. If they also know the customer better, they can also advise her better. So you share your customer data with, with, with a with a retail network? No, we don't do that but we can help them, of course, with the data we have, get the customer to their stores as well and that's something we really push. Yeah. And we help them getting traffic to the stores. New Balance, same thing, I suppose? Yeah, we, we, we do, intend to take data from stores. We actually capture where a person signs up from a store and then we send relevant updates about drops that's happening in that particular store. Also at Zalando or something like that? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's really just to our contact database. Marketplace I cannot tell you that much about, to be honest. It's something that we justed start with. So yeah. So you focus on your own base? For like from a CRM perspective, yes, definitely. I think that's essentially where you can make the most meaningful interactions with between the customer and the brand. Jan, something that I wanted to speak to you about was, so your role as CRM activation specialist is new to new balance in the region and shows a focus on automations within the company. Why do you think that role has come to the fold? Why do you think building and optimizing automation is important for the success of brands? And tell us a bit more about what you're doing day to day. Yeah. So like I said, I kind of oversee all the automations that happen across all regions. And what I think that there's a bigger focus on these kind of projects or campaigns is that you're able now to do these things. The technology's there. The data is there to actually make it a relevant experience. And what I also must say, I think, a lot within marketing is that, like I said, I want to make sure to not make things too complex. And I think that as a brand, you also don't want to make things too complex in a relationship with your customer. And it goes from, from processes like marketing, all the way to a buying journey, of course. And automation plays a vital role in actually to set up stuff and let automated decisions and campaigns and dynamic content work for you. So in the ideal world, my job would become obsolete because I've automated everything. But that's like, that's still a long way to go, of course. But there's like, there's real value in reacting on certain intent. That's how you hold conversations normally. And there's real value in, in being able to, to, to trigger a message at a right moment. And that's all within automation. And I think, like everybody must agree, there's a lot of value within your abandoned cart, your abandoned browse, your post-purchase journeys. And not only to simply to push revenue, of course, but also to create a whole brand experience about that. Yeah. And I guess it depends on the brand as well. If I if I'm thinking if I'm buying a Philips toothbrush, then and I have an issue, I probably want to speak to someone personally about the issue out with my with my Sonic Healthcare. Whereas with other brands I'm probably more comfortable have a bit more of an automated experience. The question to the Leonies is, does that change? Does that differ the way that you approach automations based on kind of your brand identity and the sort of experiences you're trying to deliver? How does that look for your brands? If we start with Paula's Choice. Yeah, well, I don't think your job will ever become obsolete when you're automating everything, because there's also maintenance. So, yeah, we. It sounded really good. Good. Yeah, it's really good. Yeah. But I think it's also in not producing everything for a one off. So you're actually letting your assets and your data work for you on a continuous basis and bring in revenue, customer loyalty and a good customer experience. So yeah, I think that's one of the great powers of automating. Yeah. Being able to automate and work with the data on a very granular level, actually. Yeah, I think to add on, I think in the end every customer wants to feel special and that's why we do this. And of course that's where you're going for. And then you can keep them loyal. My team also works on our referral programs, on our in-package material. Well, in package materials – very offline – but if I think of our referral programs which are now connected with Emarsys so we can actually build customer journeys in automations where those data is connected and you can actually act on what a person does in the referral program with email or web channel. So that really helps us orchestrate like different areas where the customer's Present. To wrap up this session, I wanted to ask a final question to the three of you. How do you think the marketing landscape is going to change over the next 2 to 3 years? But of a broad question. Jan, you're smiling. Difficult question, of course. You didn't bring your crystal ball, right? No, no, unfortunately, not I left it at home. Sure that's absolutely fine. I think eventually, customers will even crave more personalized experiences. I think brands will have the data and technology available to provide these. Of course, regulations will be also sharpened. That happens every time. I think there's like, there's a lot of opportunities and challenges. Of course, I think the opportunities that brands can really get that 1 to 1 contact by using for, for instance, AI with their customer base. In the end, if everybody starts doing that so well, then, you know, there's too much maybe happening. I think for now, the way forward is leveraging personalization even further, getting to know your customer better, but keep building those real touchpoints, showing that you listen to them, which you do very well with creating complete lines by just asking for feedback, I think that's amazing! So yeah, I think brands and consumers will first move closer together. That's it. Yeah. I think the customers don't want to be fooled, so they get smarter. So yeah, you also need to get smarter and step up the game. Yeah. And is there anything you're doing even just more broader than that from a tech perspective? I know Studio Anneloes does amazing things, such as kind of the self-made talks and kind of building community beyond just the brand and some of the real values you have. Is there anything that maybe from a Paula's Choice perspective that you're doing beyond just celebrating products, but also kind of trying to create a bit of a culture around around the business? We are trying to work like, for example, with micro-influencers who create communities and be more close to the audience. I think for my area of expertise looking at retention, we also focus a lot on our members, our email program and on our brand advocates who are customer advocates. Because I think there's also a lot of potential in having your customers actually tell others about the brands instead of like us only sending like "this is good for your skin" or "this is good for your skin". But if a customer has a really good experience and we have a lot of customer love that, yeah, let's see how you can leverage that and spread that and make them tell others about it. And yeah, that's one of the things that we're also working on expanding and making it scalable because that's also one of the things that's also really important for us because we're expanding over the years with more countries, more markets, and we are the scalability is for us also very important. And I think in skincare as well, you kind of go with brands that friends or family have trusted before. There's a lot of inherent loyalty in the space. So celebrating and leveraging your brand advocacy is a massive win. Yeah, for sure. One thing that specific before I wrap up is is sustainability as well it's a topic that a lot of brands, not only just fashion but in other verticals are really looking to drive at the core of what they're doing. Does that play a part in any of what you're doing when you are looking at growth opportunities? Is there a sustainable kind of lens on stuff that you doing? Jan, maybe to you. I think in the education of your consumers that they start caring more and more about these sustainability topics. From a CRM perspective it's more about communicating how a whole brand is working towards a more sustainable way. And that goes throughout the supply chain. But also I don't know any/everything that's connected to it, education of the workforce, better working environments for everybody. It's increasingly important, of course, but probably like on a large scale as New Balance is operating, it's something that we're working on every day to make sure that we get it or become more sustainable. I know from a Studio Anneloes perspective, you just launched your second-hand platform. Maybe tell us a bit about that before we wrap up. Yeah. Yeah well, I think what I already said, like our product is really made to last, and that's also what we saw a lot of people selling it on Marktplaats, yeah, marketplaces ones like Marktplaats, Vinted those places where you can sell. And we saw that it still keeps its value. So we as a brand, we want to bring the people at our platform and let them share their second hand clothes, sell them to each other, build a community around it. But for us, sustainability is really in our DNA. And we've done like, research just yesterday as well with a lot of customers, scrolling through our website. And of course it's in our DNA and we all know here and also the retailers know. But we learned yesterday that we really need to tell more about it. Yeah. Really inform them. Yeah for us, it's also, like sustainability, social responsibility are in the pillars of our brand house. But yeah, it's also a long process and I think also because we are well, we were, we are a US founded brand. So in the US, sustainability is also a bit of a different topic than in Europe. And of course we're dependent like for example, for our product production from the US. So yeah, we are making small steps, but I think also in the, like the daily work that we do. Like for example, when you're segmenting your emails better, you're not blasting all those email volumes into the world and increasing your CO2 footprints that are already like small steps that you can do for sustainability and in daily work. Really interesting topic. I believe we're at time now. So I wanted to say thank you to our three panelists if you guys can give you a round of applause. Thank you so much.

Und jetzt freue ich mich, den ersten Gast des Tages begrüßen zu dürfen. Und zwar Michael Fichtner. Er ist CIO beim FC Bayern und wird uns jetzt einige Einblicke dazu geben, wie man die Kraft einer Heritage Lifestyle Marke, wie dem FC Bayern München verstärken kann. Großen Applaus für Michael. Dem FC Bayern war es seit jeher wichtig, einen direkten Draht zu seinen Fans zu haben, und persönlich mit ihnen in Kontakt zu treten. Und das soll in Zeiten der Digitalisierung genauso bleiben. Und dafür brauchen wir geeignete Softwarelösungen. SAP Emarsys ist so eine geeignete Softwarelösung. Um den FC Bayern, um unsere Marke weltweit zu unseren Fans transportieren zu können, ist eine moderne IT zwingend Voraussetzung. Ohne eine Infrastruktur auf IT-Ebene, die das ermöglicht, wären unsere Marketingziele nicht zu erreichen. Michael, bevor wir überhaupt mit unserem Talk starten - vielleicht kannst du dich kurz vorstellen und erzählen, was du beim FC Bayern genau machst. Ich verantworte bei uns im Haus die IT, ich bin CIO. Und meine Aufgabe ist es, die digitalen Ansätze, die aus den Fachbereichen kommen, letztendlich umzusetzen. Und die ganz spannende Herausforderung, die wir haben, ist, eine gemeinsame Basis zu finden. Jetzt ist es ja so, dass der FC Bayern schon auf eine sehr lange Geschichte zurückblickt. Ich habe nachgesehen ... 1900 - seit 1900 gibt es den FC Bayern schon. Korrekt. Wir feiern im nächsten Jahr unser 125-jähriges Jubiläum. Wahnsinn. Und ich würde sagen, er ist ja wirklich mehr als nur ein Fußballverein. Ich meine, es gibt ja so viele Levels. Vielleicht kannst du uns ein bisschen was über die Identität des FC Bayern erzählen, über seine Entwicklung und über die wichtigen Meilensteine. Ich meine ... 125 Jahre ...da ist einiges passiert. Ich denke, unsere Geschichte wird in unserem Museum sehr schön dargestellt. Wir haben ein vereinseigenes Museum - das größte Sportmuseum der Welt. Traditionell - und so nimmt man uns häufig auch wahr - sind wir ein "Herren-Fußballclub". Es ist auch unsere Aufgabe, zu zeigen, dass wir in diesem Jahr wahrscheinlich erfolgreicher Frauenfußball spielen, als Herrenfußball. Wir sind sehr weit, was die Deutsche Meisterschaft angeht. Wir sind im Pokalfinale ... das ist uns dieses Jahr bei den Herren nicht gelungen. Und wir spielen Basketball - auch dort sehr erfolgreich. Dort sind wir Pokalsieger dieses Jahr und hoffen natürlich auch dort auf die Deutsche Meisterschaft. Also, "Herrenfußball" - und man reduziert uns häufig sehr stark auf das, was man auf dem Platz sieht, was man gestern Abend gesehen hat. Aber ich glaube, ich bekomme die Chance, jetzt auch ein bisschen mehr über unser Unternehmen zu erzählen. Die Art und Weise, wie der FC Bayern Einnahmen generiert, unterscheidet sich ja auch deutlich von der eines typischen Handelsunternehmens. Vielleicht kannst du uns einen Blick hinter die Kulissen des Fußballgeschäfts gewähren. Also, wir sind ein Merchandising-Händler. Wir sehen uns auch als Handelsunternehmen, wir verkaufen Merchandising-Artikel. Das ist gut 20 % unseres Umsatzes, den wir machen. Aber wir sind sehr heterogen. Wenn wir uns mit einem Händler vergleichen: wir haben einen stationären Verkauf, wir haben einen Onlineshop, wir haben ein Callcenter. Wir verkaufen aber auch Tickets. Und der Verkauf von einem Fußball-Ticket ist nicht vergleichbar mit dem Verkauf von einem Basketball-Ticket ... und mit einem Museumsverkauf hat es auch nichts zu tun. Das heißt, wir haben sehr unterschiedliche Prozesse. Im Fußball sind wir überbucht. Da müssen wir uns keine Gedanken machen, dass wir die Arena voll bekommen. Da müssen wir verteilen. Da müssen wir möglichst fair verteilen, damit wir nicht nur "unique Publikum" haben, weil unique Publikum ist gesättigt. Das kauft nicht. Also schlecht für unser Merchandising. Beim Museumsverkauf haben wir Zeitscheiben, die wir verkaufen. Und da haben wir die Probleme in den Ferien. Die Peak-Phasen sind bei uns die Ferien. Also die Fans, die Richtung Süden fahren, die halten bei uns und da könnten wir eine größere Arena gebrauchen. Und beim Basketball: da bekommen wir den BMW-Park derzeit nicht ausgelastet. Also im Moment gibt uns der Erfolg wieder Unterstützung. Dort müssen wir verkaufen. Also wir haben ganz unterschiedliche Ansätze. Wir haben den Mitgliederbereich, wir haben den Kids Club-Bereich, und auch dort handeln wir im Prinzip mit Emotionen und beschäftigen uns mit dem Thema: Wie binden wir unsere Fans? Das bekomme ich immer mit, dass es wenig Tickets für die Fußballspiele gibt. Ich kenne hier jemanden im Publikum, der hätte gerne zwei Karten. Ich sage jetzt aber keinen Namen. Wie ich eben schon gesagt habe: Es gibt die Bayern einfach schon wahnsinnig lange und die Fans natürlich auch. Erklär uns doch mal: wie waren denn früher die Bayern-Fans und wie war es früher ein Bayern-Fan zu sein? Und wie ist es heute, ein Bayern-Fan zu sein? Was ist da der Unterschied? Hast du da irgendwelche Trends beobachtet? Ja, also mit dem Älterwerden des Klubs entstehen für uns ganz neue Herausforderungen. Unsere Fanbasis beginnt oft bei der Geburt. Das heißt, viele unserer Mitglieder werden wirklich bei der Geburt von ihren Eltern zu Mitgliedern gemacht. Und das heißt, wir müssen uns auch attraktiv zeigen für die Kinder, und sie auch an den Verein binden. Und wir haben natürlich auch Fans, die in hohem Alter sind. Und auch für die müssen wir attraktiv sein. Und wenn wir über Digitalisierung sprechen, wenn wir über Bindung der Fans sprechen, dann haben wir ein riesengroßes Spektrum, das wir abdecken müssen. Ja, mein Mann ist auch ein riesen Bayern-Fan. Und er ist die ganze Zeit in irgendwelchen Apps unterwegs... Also ihr seid wirklich sehr aktiv, was das ganze angeht. Und, sag mal, wie unterscheiden sich denn Bayern-Fans von den anderen Fans? Gibt es da auch Trends? Also zunächst mal sind unsere Fans natürlich, was die Erfolge angeht, verwöhnt. Das heißt, wenn wir ein Jahr wie das aktuelle nehmen, dann haben wir natürlich auch entsprechende Diskussionen. Wenn wir die Erwartungshaltung auch auf den digitalen Bereich übertragen, dann werden wir dort schon mit den Marktführern verglichen. Also ein großes Projekt, das ich begleitet habe, war beispielsweise: Wie bringen wir unsere Merchandising-Artikel schneller zum Fan? Wenn wir früher Zustellzeiten von fünf Tagen gehabt haben, dann war das für einen Fußballklub gut und eigentlich ausreichend. Man misst uns aber an Amazon. Das heißt, wir sind dann am Ende des Tages doch nicht nur der Fußballklub, sondern wir sind eine Marke, die weltweit bekannt ist. Und die Ansprüche, die unsere Fans stellen, im sportlichen Bereich, sind sehr, sehr hoch. Und im digitalen Bereich sind sie nicht minder. Wie schafft ihr es denn eigentlich, Berührungspunkte für Fans zwischen den Spielzeiten zu haben, bzw.: Wie hältst du sie am Ball? Indem wir in den Wettbewerben möglichst lang dabei sind, indem wir möglichst viele Spiele haben und die Zeiten dazwischen kleiner werden. Was wir tun, ist natürlich sehr stark mit dem Thema Fan-Bindung verknüpft. Und wir haben begleitende Maßnahmen ... z.B. Gewinnspiele, oder Content, den wir ausspielen. Wir haben mit dem FCB TV einen eigenen Fernsehsender, für den wir eigenen Content, "Unique Content" produzieren, den die Fans nur bei uns konsumieren können. Also, wir zeigen z. B.: Wie sieht es bei der Familie Kahn zu Hause aus? Was tut die Familie Kahn in ihrer Freizeit? Und das sind Inhalte, die können die Fans nur bei uns konsumieren. Und damit versuchen wir, Bindung aufzubauen. Und was ist deine Vision für das ultimative Fanerlebnis für FC Bayern-Fans weltweit? Ich glaube nicht, dass es die "eine" Strategie gibt. Die Anforderungen, die die Fachbereiche an uns stellen, sind folgende: der Content muss zunächst personalisiert sein. Wir müssen Relevanz ausstrahlen. Die größte Sorge, die wir haben, ist, dass unsere Fans abwandern. Also wir haben nicht die Sorge, dass unsere Fans kein rotes Trikot mehr kaufen, sondern ein gelbes. Das ist nicht unsere Sorge. Unsere Sorge ist: Es geht um die Freizeit, um das rare Gut Freizeit unserer Fans. Unsere Sorge ist - und unsere Aktivitäten gehen in diese Richtung - Wie schaffen wir es, dass wir bedeutsam bleiben für die Fans, dass sie ihre Freizeit nicht mit der NFL verbringen, oder mit Taylor Swift? Das sind unsere Wettbewerber. Und das sind die Themen, die uns wirklich beschäftigen. Die NFL wird sonntagabends in der Primetime im Free-TV übertragen. Sie haben aber nicht die Chance, Fußball zu konsumieren. Das sind die Themen, die uns beschäftigen. Also: Wie bleiben wir auch zukünftig für unsere Fans interessant? Und da gibt es nicht die "eine" Strategie, sondern es ist zielgruppenorientiert. Okay, und wie stellst du eigentlich sicher, dass dein Team die richtige Mischung aus Tradition und Wandel nutzt, um fanorientierte Entscheidungen zu treffen und die Loyalität der Fans zu stärken? Was ich eben versucht habe rüberzubringen: Loyalität ist nicht so das Thema, das uns beschäftigt. Aus einem Bayern München-Fan wird jetzt aufgrund der Tatsache, dass wir ein Jahr nicht ganz so erfolgreich sind, nicht gleich ein Fan von Borussia Dortmund. Das wird uns nicht passieren. Du hast es vorhin angesprochen, Philip: Die "User Experience", die dazu führt, dass abgewandert wird. Da ist die Ausgangssituation ein Stück anders bei uns. Wir müssen relevant bleiben und dafür müssen wir unsere Fans personalisiert ansprechen. Wir müssen die Fans begeistern, zu uns zu kommen. Und dahinter steckt im Prinzip die Strategie: Wenn ich einen Inhalt in Australien ausspiele, dann ist es nicht der gleiche Inhalt, der für einen Fan, derin Lateinamerika am Abend mobil den FC Bayern München besucht, relevant ist. Das heißt, wir beschäftigen uns sehr stark mit den Zielgruppen und versuchen hier individualisiert anzusprechen. Und wie bewertest du die Bedeutung von Daten und künstlicher Intelligenz bei der Transformation von Sport, Unterhaltung und der Fan-Bindung? Also wir haben weltweit ungefähr 1 Milliarde Fans und Sympathisanten. In unseren Systemen bilden wir im Moment knapp 10 Millionen Fans ab, die wir kennen, zu denen wir auch sehr viele Daten und Informationen sammeln. Die Hauptstrategie von uns ist, keine Hürden mehr zu haben, wenn unbekannte Besucher den FC Bayern online besuchen. Und wir möchten diese Besucher dann zu Fans konvertieren, die uns ihre Daten geben. Wir möchten die 10 Millionen ausbauen und dann darauf aufsetzend das Erlebnis personalisieren. Das Ganze ist aber nur über Massendaten und mit unterstützenden Instrumenten im Bereich der künstlichen Intelligenz möglich. Jetzt sind wir schon bei unserer Blitz-Fragerunde. Bist du bereit? Kommt auf die Fragen an. Jetzt kommt's: Was ist dein wichtigster Ratschlag für andere Marketingleiter? Wesentlich ist, dass man Entscheidungen trifft. Wir zögern Entscheidungen häufig zu lange hinaus. Wir versuchen immer zu drängen und zu sagen: "Trefft eine Entscheidung. Und lasst uns drüber nachdenken, wann wir abbrechen, wenn wir erkennen, dass etwas nicht geht." Der digitale Globus dreht sich einfach so schnell. Wenn ich lange diskutiere, dann ist die Ausgangssituation schlicht und ergreifend eine andere. Also wenn ich mit einer Entscheidung zu lange brauche, dann ist die Welt eine andere. Ich muss schnell sein. Da hast du Recht. Und deine Meinung zu KI? Also ich sehe das Ganze sehr kritisch. Wir hatten letztens bei uns im Unternehmen eine Präsentation. Da haben wir ein Fußballspiel gesehen, das bei der letzten Weltmeisterschaft stattgefunden hat - Frankreich hat eine andere Nationen sechs zu null geschlagen. Und wir sind ein Fußballclub. Und wir haben uns angeguckt und keiner von uns konnte sich an das Spiel erinnern. Und um die Geschichte kurz zu machen: das war ein Spiel, das mit künstlicher Intelligenz vorbereitet wurde ... und wir haben uns angeschaut und für uns erschien es real. Und das ist die Sorge, die mich ein Stück weit umtreibt. Ich glaube, wir brauchen die künstliche Intelligenz, um uns zu unterstützen und um uns schneller zu machen. Früher hieß es: Der Große frisst den Kleinen. Jetzt heißt es: der Schnelle frisst den Langsamen. Wir müssen schneller werden. Dafür brauchen wir künstliche Intelligenz. Aber ein Stück weit habe ich auch Sorge vor dem, was da kommt. Weil: Woran erkennen wir Real und Fake? Das ist auch meine große Sorge. Und jetzt erzähl doch mal: Was ist die Marke, die du außerhalb deiner Branche am meisten bewunderst? Und warum? Das ist Adidas. Wir haben Jemanden von Adidas hier. Es ist Adidas aus Überzeugung. Wir beschäftigen uns auch mit dem Thema - obwohl ich vorhin gesagt habe, dass Loyalität keine Herausforderung für uns ist. Aber wir beschäftigen uns dennoch mit dem Thema Loyalität. Und es ist der adiClub, der uns begeistert, der uns immer wieder zu Diskussionen führt. Und ich merke, dass ich dort mit Themen angesprochen werde, die mich interessieren. Und dadurch besuche ich den Shop häufiger, als ich ihn besuchen möchte und kaufe auch Dinge, die ich eigentlich nicht gekauft hätte. Die Ansprachen dort sind zielführend und treffen auf mich zu. Okay. Interessant, dass du Adidas nennst. Und jetzt noch eine schöne Frage: Was hält denn die Zukunft für den Sport bereit? Außer KI? Ja, also die Frage kann noch nicht mal unser Sportvorstand im Moment beantworten. Wenn Sie das auf uns beziehen. Ein Thema, das uns immer wieder beschäftigt, ist: Meine Generation, wir waren nach den Hausaufgaben und nach dem Mittagessen draußen und haben Fußball gespielt. Also Sport hat für uns in der Vergangenheit eine andere Bedeutung gehabt, als heute. Und ich glaube, wir müssen viel dafür tun, um die jungen Menschen an den Sport heranzuführen und sie dort auch zu halten. Und das ist eine Strategie, die wir als Bayern München verfolgen. Wir denken über eine eigene Schule nach, wir investieren sehr viel in den Nachwuchsbereich, das ist unser Kids Club-Bereich, wo wir uns um junge Menschen kümmern. Wir haben generell die Sorge, dass Sport nicht mehr die Relevanz haben wird, die er heute hat oder die er in der Vergangenheit hatte. Aber glaubst du wirklich, dass das passieren wird? Wir müssen uns ja alle bewegen. Glaubst du wirklich, dass der Sport nicht mehr so eine Relevanz haben wird? Ich bin von Hause aus Handballer. In meiner Jugend gab es in jeder Altersstufe zwei, drei Mannschaften. Heute müssen wir teilweise mit dem Nachbarort fusionieren, um überhaupt eine Jugendmannschaft aufzustellen. Ich bin fest davon überzeugt, dass das ein Problem ist, das wir im Sport haben werden, oder schon haben. Wahrscheinlich auch, weil wir viel mehr Zeit drinnen verbringen, und auch nicht mehr so viel rausgehen. Eigentlich hatten wir keine Publikumfragen geplant, aber wir haben noch so viel Zeit. Wir haben noch sechs Minuten, wir haben ganz schön schnell geredet. Aber wärst du denn offen dafür, dass vielleicht ein paar Fragen aus dem Publikum kommen? Gibt es denn ein paar Fragen aus dem Publikum? Wenn man schon mal die Chance hat, jemanden vom FC Bayern hier zu haben. Meine Frage wäre: Was genau wird gemacht, um das Interesse am Basketball für den FC Bayern weiter wachsen zu lassen? Es ist schon eine Herausforderung in Deutschland, außer Fußball andere Sportarten weiter nach oben zu bringen. In Amerika herrscht zum Beispiel das komplette Gegenteil. Die haben es sehr gut geschafft, andere Sportarten auch sehr relevant zu machen. - Sorry, ich habe einen Puls von 200. - Und ich wollte einfach wissen, was genau der Plan ist, um auch andere Sportarten weiter nach oben zu heben? Zunächst mal haben wir unseren ehemaligen Präsidenten, unseren jetzigen Ehrenpräsidenten, der ein großes Faible für den Basketball hat. Das war mit Sicherheit der Türöffner dafür, dass Basketball gefördert wird. Wir haben ja mehrere Sportabteilungen, wir haben Tischtennis, wir haben Schach, wir haben Handball. Insofern haben wir einen Unterstützer bei uns im Club für Basketball . Und deswegen ist es uns auch gelungen, dass wir in der ersten Bundesliga Fuß fassen können und dort auch erfolgreich agieren können. Basketball ist bei uns vollständig integriert. Das heißt, die Basketball-Abteilung kann auch von den Fan-Daten, die wir aus dem Fußball generieren, profitieren. Und wir unterstützen über die Ansprache sehr stark. Wir haben viele internationale Besucher an einem Spieltag. Der typische Fan, der uns am Spieltag besucht, reist 350 Kilometer im Schnitt an. In München gibt es ja noch einen anderen Fußballclub - bei den Ur-Münchnern ist es eher 1860, der da im Vordergrund steht. Unsere Fans kommen oft von weit außen, und auch darauf setzen wir und sagen: "Wenn du uns schon besuchst ... die Basketballer spielen auch!" Und da versuchen wir, Kombinationen zu machen. Was uns mit Sicherheit geholfen hat, ist die Weltmeisterschaft, die wir zum Ersten Mal im Basketball gewonnen haben - mit einigen Spielern auch von uns. Das hilft natürlich auch einer Sportart, um voranzukommen. Also alles, was wir im Bereich Marketing und Fan-Ansprache tun, zielt auch darauf ab, dass wir unseren "kleinen Bruder" immer versuchen mitzuziehen. In der Einleitung haben wir gehört, dass ein relativ hoher Prozentsatz an Unternehmen sehen, dass der Tech-Stack, oder der MarTech-Stack für die Mitarbeitenden, bzw. die User*innen zu groß und nicht überblickbar ist. Ist das bei euch auch ein Thema? Und wenn nein, wie habt ihr das geschafft? Bzw. ist das ein Prozess wo Ihr einfach sagt: Ihr setzt ganz stark auf Einzelsysteme, die alles abdecken, oder fahrt ihr einen Best-of-Breed-Ansatz, oder ähnliches? Die Frage ist generell schwierig zu beantworten. Wir waren sehr heterogen, und ich bin jetzt im 11. Jahr bei Bayern München in meiner Rolle. Wir haben zunächst damit begonnen, zu konsolidieren. Wenn ich das jetzt mal übertrage: Wir hatten fünf unterschiedliche Kassensysteme. Und aus einer IT heraus kann ich nicht fünf unterschiedliche Kassensysteme bedienen. Wenn ich aber sage: Der Point of Sale ist für mich ein ganz wesentlicher Punkt, an dem ich Daten generieren kann, dann kann ich hier eine Digitalstrategie nur umsetzen, wenn ich standardisiere. Heute haben wir "ein" Kassensystem. Wir waren der klassische Best-of-Breedler, aber wir haben erkannt, dass wir eiegntlich nur durch die Konsolidierung die Digitalisierung vernünftig unterstützen können. Das war der Weg, den wir in den letzten Jahren gegangen sind. Heute ist es aber so, dass wir sagen: Da, wo es Sinn ergibt, da müssen wir uns auch für Best-of-Breed öffnen. Wir dürfen kein Monolith sein. Ich hatte es vorhin schon gesagt: Die Schnelligkeit ist entscheidend. Und ich darf aufgrund der Konsolidierung, die ich über Jahre hinweg mit gutem Grund verfolgt habe, mein Business nicht daran hindern, dass ich schnell auf Marktrerfordernisse reagieren kann. Ja, Dankeschön. Vielen Dank, lieber Michael. Es war schön, mit dir zu sprechen. Was für ein toller Start für den Tag!

Als nächstes sprechen wir darüber, wie man mit Technologie transformiert und wie man die Tools nutzt, um Marken dabei zu unterstützen, ihre Strategien agil und authentisch zu transformieren. Zu diesem Thema begrüßen wir ganz herzlich Kim Teys Beavers, Silvia Schmucker, Antje Lindermann und Alice Buchbaum. Schön, dass ihr alle da seid. Bevor wir loslegen: könnt ihr euch alle kurz vorstellen und kurz erklären, was genau ihr eigentlich macht? Wollen wir mit dir anfangen? Können wir gerne machen. Mein Name ist Kim Beavers. Ich bin bei Chrono 24 Director of Brand. Chrono 24 ist ein Marktplatz, wo normalerweise das Thema "Marke" gar nicht so eine große Rolle spielt. Aber wir haben heute Morgen ja schon gehört, dass Customer Experience immer wichtiger wird, und dementsprechend definieren wir auch "Marke" ganz stark aus einer Kundenzentrierung heraus. Und das ist unsere Perspektive. Und du, Silvia? Mein Name ist Silvia Schmucker. Ich arbeite bei Swarovski und bin dort für Digital Commerce verantwortlich. Ich verantworte unser online Flaggschiff "Swarovski.com" und auch unser Third-Party Online Business, bei dem wir auf Third-Party-Anbietern, wie zum Beispiel Zalando oder Farfetch verkaufen. Ja, ich bin Antje Lindermann. Ich komme von "Lampenwelt". Lampenwelt ist Europas größter Onlineshop für Lampen und Leuchten. Ich bin dort verantwortlich für CRM und B2B-Marketing und das ist mit vielen Herausforderungen verbunden. Ich bin hier im Roswood am Standort München für Kommunikation und Marketing zuständig, und ab Juli machen wir auch in Fuschl auf. Das heißt, das Schloss Fuschl kommt auch noch dazu. Das heißt: Es sind diese zwei Standorte, die wir hier in der DACH-Region ganz neu am Markt haben und wir freuen uns sehr, dass wir auch dieses Event heute hier haben. Also danke auch an Vogue Business dafür, dass ihr euch für diese Location entschieden habt. Und jetzt freuen wir uns sehr, über alles zu sprechen, was Marketing, Kommunikation und Technologie anbelangt. Ja, super. Sehr schön, dass ihr alle da seid. Danke schon mal für die Einleitung. Silvia, ich werde mal mit dir starten, denn ich weiß, dass Swarovski im Rahmen seiner LUXignite-Stratgie sehr auf Omnichannel-Transformation fokussiert ist. Kannst du uns ein bisschen mehr über die digitalen Prioritäten innerhalb dieser Strategie erzählen? Sehr gern. Ganz oben auf unserer Prioritätenliste für Digital Commerce steht die Customer Experience. Für uns ist es besonders wichtig, dass wir ein schönes, gutes und luxuriöses Kauferlebnis für unsere Kunden anbieten können. Omnichannel spielt dabei eine entscheidende Rolle. Das beinhaltet die Verbindung von unseren Offline-Stores mit unserer Online-Welt, sodass unsere Kunden online einkaufen können, das Produkt in einem Store abholen können, aber das Produkt auch wiederum in einem Store retounieren können. Zudem nutzen wir auch unser Store-Netzwerk, um aus den Stores heraus direkt an unsere Kunden zu verschicken, d.h. "Ship from Store". Und zusätzlich rollen wir auch noch das Konzept "Endless Aisle" aus, sodass wir in unseren Stores, auch wenn ein Produkt nicht verfügbar ist, unser komplettes Sortiment den Kunden anbieten können. Der Kunde kann im Store über ein Tablet das gewünschte Produkt bestellen, es dann kaufen und dann entweder zu sich nach Hause schicken oder in den favorisierten Store schicken lassen. Also es geht darum, jeden Kundenwunsch erfüllen zu können. Und mit Omnichannel ist das auch möglich. Wahnsinn, wenn man sich überlegt, wie früher Einkaufen war und wie es heute ist... Lampenwelt hat ja auch im Zuge seiner digitalen Transformation in seine IT Infrastruktur investiert. Welche Auswirkungen hatte denn diese Investition bisher auf das CRM-System? Ja, wir haben in den letzten zwei Jahren jedes einzelne IT Tool einmal getauscht, das heißt, angefangen vom ERP-System, was ein bisschen wie eine Operation am offenen Herzen war, aber auch unser BI-Tool, unser PIM, also das "Produktinformation Management", das DAM, "Digital Asset Management". Das einzige, was übriggeblieben ist, war das CRM. Wir haben auch unsere Shops - das waren 18 im letzten Jahr - von einem Shopsystem auf das nächste umgestellt. Und natürlich war das auch im CRM die größte Herausforderung. Es war ein bisschen wie ein Neuanfang, weil wir alle Systeme neu anbinden mussten. Wir brauchten eine neue Anbindung an das BI-System, wir brauchten eine neue Anbindung an den Shop und sind praktisch wieder bei Null gestartet, und haben das aber relativ schnell geschafft. Wir haben jetzt Anfang diesen Jahres noch neun neue Länder mit hinzugenommen, also das Ganze auch in einer großen Geschwindigkeit gestaltet. Und es macht ja auch ein bisschen kreativ. Die Zeiten, in denen die Entwickler sehr stark mit Conversion-Optimierung und ähnlichem beschäftigt waren, haben wir dann genutzt, um neue Tools im CRM einzubinden, für die wir keine Entwickler brauchten - wie WhatsApp beispielsweise. Sehr schlau. Sehr ähnlich ist es auch bei der Rosewood Group. Die hat in ihr Digital Business und die Transformation stark investiert. Was sind denn die Prioritäten dieser Teams und wie geht das Unternehmen dabei vor, um das richtige Talent für diese neuen Anforderungen zu gewinnen? Ich glaube, das ist ähnlich wie bei Antje. Das ist natürlich für uns eine totale Herausforderungen. Wir sind das 35. Haus weltweit, aber das erste in Deutschland. Deswegen müssen wir natürlich ganz viel testen, weil wir auch Brandbuilding machen. "Rosewood" kennen schon viele - wir haben viele Geschichten von Leuten gehört, die gesagt haben: "Wir waren schon irgendwo auf der Welt - in New York oder Abu Dhabi, Hongkong, Paris, London - mal im Rosewood." Aber es ist noch nicht so eine Brand, bei der jeder sofort, wenn er das Wort "Rosewood" hört, sofort weiß: "Okay, das ist eine Luxury Hotel-Gruppe." Das heißt, wir haben verschiedenste Kanäle genutzt und nutzen sie auch weiter, um unsere Story, unser Produkt zu erzählen. Das ist Social Media, das ist die Website, das sind die digitalen Marketingkanäle, das ist auch CRM. Und da geht es natürlich auch viel um Talente und Menschen, mit denen wir zusammenarbeiten, auch Partner. Und hier bei uns im Team ist es so: Wir haben einerseits Leute, die ganz klassisch aus dem Hotelbereich, aus einer Hotelfachschule kommen ... aber wir suchen gerade im Marketing auch viele Leute, die eben nicht aus dem Hotelbereich kommen, weil ich glaube, es ist heutzutage total wichtig, dass man industrieübergreifend seine Kommunikation umsetzt und Marketing-Tools nutzt. Und ich finde, dass diese Brand-Partnerschaften total wichtig sind, weil man so Zielgruppen anders, besser, und interessanter erreichen kann und so auch Experiences schaffen kann. Was dann auch stärker in Erinnerung bleibt. Jetzt habt ihr ja schon von euren Metiers erzählt. Aber bei Luxus-Uhren ist es ja noch mal was ganz anderes. Denn da reicht es nicht aus, dass ihr die Uhren bequem verkauft, sondern es ist so, dass die Kunden mehr Sicherheit benötigen, wenn sie größere Budgets für hochpreisige Designs ausgeben. In welche digitalen Tools hat Euer Unternehmen denn investiert, um das Kundenvertrauen zu stärken? Vielleicht noch mal kurz zum Hintergrund, denn: Sicherheit oder Kaufabsicherung klingt ja rein "faktisch". Wenn man es sich aber mal überlegt: Es handelt sich um Liebhaberprodukte, die wirklich ganz viel Herzblut und Faszination in sich tragen. Also wenn der Hygienefaktor, der ja eigentlich "Kaufabsicherung" ist, nicht klappt, dann ist es ein Problem, denn dann geht es nicht nur um finanziellen Verlust, sondern dann ist die Liebe, oder die Leidenschaft oder das Vertrauen auf einer emotionalen Ebene weg. Deshalb ist da ein Investment besonders wichtig. Und Chrono 24 ist ja Marktführer, also global haben wir die höchsten Verkaufsvolumina. Und was wir versuchen, ist, an der Stelle über Algorithmen eine Grundabsicherung zu bieten, über ein Screening aller Listings und aller Postings. Aber wir müssen auch sagen, dass das Prompting noch nicht so gut ist, d.h. wir arbeiten noch sehr stark manuell. Wir haben ein Sicherheitsteam von 40 Personen, die sich wirklich alles haargenau anschauen. Wir haben dieses Woche ein Zertifizierungsprogramm gelauncht, in dem jede Uhr zertifiziert werden kann - auf Authentizität, auf die Echtheit und auch das Level der Echtheit. Also das ist wirklich ein Industriestandard. Und man merkt, dass man das immer noch braucht und das wahrscheinlich auch das Level immer größer wird. Denn man muss auch sagen, dass mit KI die größte Gefahr der Betrug ist. Also es sind nicht wir, die damit arbeiten, um Betrug zu verhindern, sondern die KI ist tatsächlich die Ermöglichung von Betrug und dessen muss man sich gewahr sein. Ich glaube, wir brauchen an der Stelle immer noch das "Human Brain" und das Mindset, das aus dem Bauch heraus entscheiden kann. Da sehe ich ehrlich gesagt einen Haken. Jetzt haben wir gerade über das "Human Brain" gesprochen ... jetzt ist Schmuck zum Beispiel auch noch ein sehr persönliches Produkt. Meine Frage an Silvia: Schmuck ist ja auch ein sehr persönliches Produkt, da es vom individuellen Geschmack abhängt. Und vor diesem Hintergrund ist die Personalisierung des Kunden-Erlebnisses auch ein wichtiger Schwerpunkt für Swarovski. Vor kurzem hat Swarovski neue Clienteling-Tools eingeführt, wie zum Beispiel seinen virtuellen Concierge-Service, um das Erlebnis für Online-Kunden zu verbessern. Wie genau funktioniert das eigentlich und welche Auswirkung hat es auf das Kundenengagement? Das ist ein sehr spannender Test, den wir aktuell mit dem Concierge-Service machen. Wir testen das aktuell in drei verschiedenen Ländern, um mehr darüber zu erfahren. Der Grund hierfür ist, dass wir das Beratungserlebnis, was der Kunde normalerweise im Store hat, auch online erfahrbar machen wollen - was normalerweise ja nicht der Fall ist. Hier ist das Concierge-Team via Livechat oder via Video entweder spontan - wenn der Kunde auf der Webseite ist und dann angesprochen wird - oder auch via Terminvereinbarung im direkten Austausch mit dem Kunden erreichbar, um ihm die Beratung entsprechend anzubieten. Das Team kann dabei auch sehen, was der Kunde sich ansieht, entsprechende Produktlinks teilen und ihm oder ihr so das Gefühl von einer direkten Beratung geben. Wir haben die ersten Zufriedenheitsraten von unseren Kunden erhalten - diese liegen konstant über 95 %, was sehr vielversprechend für uns ist. Und für ein Unternehmen wie Lampenwelt geht ja Produktinnovation Hand in Hand mit digitaler Innovation, vor allem bei Smart Homes. Das gibt es ja mittlerweile überall: smarte Beleuchtung, Smart Homes... Hat die Einführung smarter Produkte interessante Daten darüber geliefert, wie Kunden ihre Produkte nutzen oder welche Bedürfnisse sie haben? Und wie nutzt ihr eigentlich diese Daten, um Produkte und Dienstleistungen zu verbessern? Ja, das ist ein spannendes Thema. Und Smart Home ist erst mal was ganz Technisches. Und das ist auch das erste, was wir festgestellt haben, auch in unserer Kampagnenplanung, dass auch wir selber ganz viele Fragezeichen hatten. Und das wird unseren Kunden auch gar nicht anders gehen, weil es einfach ein sehr erklärsbedürftiges Produkt ist, weil es ganz viele verschiedene Systeme gibt, die auch nicht alle miteinander kompatibel sind. Wir haben auch Smart Home Beleuchtung, Smart Home Sicherheitssysteme und smarte Heizungsunterstützung im Angebot. Und alleine diese drei Themen sind schon für sich so, dass man da Journeys ohne Ende malen könnte, um ganz viele Ideen zu haben. Und deswegen haben wir ganz pragmatisch gesagt: Wie können wir den Mehrwert für unsere Kunden herausfinden? Und dann haben wir uns mit einem Kollegen zusammengesetzt, der wirklich Smart Home lebt und liebt und der so begeistert war, dass ich am Ende gesagt hab: "Okay, ich stelle mich jetzt mal als Versuchskaninchen zur Verfügung. Sag mir doch mal, wie ich anfangen soll und dann probiere ich das." Und dann haben wir das ein bisschen begleitet. Das heißt, wir haben mit einem Starter-Kit gestartet. Wir haben smarte Leuchtmittel bei uns zu Hause eingesetzt. Mein Sohn war dann Feuer und Flamme und sein ganzes Zimmer leuchtet immer blau und rot und mit der Musik und allem Möglichen... Wir haben dann den Garten mit einem anderen, kompatiblen System ausgestattet und haben das in ein paar Storys gepackt ... haben Newsletter dazu gemacht, in denen wir einen "smarten" Tagesablauf nachgespielt haben - von der smarten Steckdose, die morgens die Kaffeemaschine startet, bis abends zu der Leiste unterm Bett, die dann nachts den Weg zur Toilette weist, ohne dass der Partner aufwacht. Und so versuchen wir uns da heranzutasten. Und natürlich haben wir auch die Herausforderung, dass wir bei vielen Kunden nicht wissen, womit sie gestartet haben. Wir sehen, was sie gekauft haben und können darauf reagieren und können sozusagen Ansatzpunkte und Einstiege liefern. Wie fandest du es, in so einem Smart Home zu leben? Wie hat dir das gefallen? Ich bin im Winter ein totaler Fan davon, weil wir so früh aufstehen müssen, weil mein Sohn so früh zur Schule muss, weil der Bus fährt, dass wir morgens in ein beleuchtetes Wohn- und Esszimmer kommen und in eine Küche kommen. Und das ist einfach ein ganz anderes Gefühl, morgens damit zu starten, muss ich sagen. Und wahrscheinlich gibt es nicht diese Streitereien: "Jetzt mach doch mal das Licht aus!", und solche Sachen. Jetzt bleiben wir mal bei den Daten. Kim, Chrono 24 hat ja auch eine wirklich einzigartige Funktion "ChronoPulse" - die fast wie ein Aktienmarkt-Index für gebrauchte Uhren ist. Kannst du uns mehr über die Daten erzählen, die in diese Funktion einfließen, welche Auswirkungen sie auf den Verkauf und Marketing haben? Ja, ich glaube, der spannendste Aspekt an Data Mining ist der, dass wir die Daten Insights an die Öffentlichkeit zurückspiegeln. Wie kann ich mir das vorstellen? Also, mit ChronoPulse haben wir in Echtzeit transaktionale Daten. Wir wissen genau, welche Referenz zu welchem Preispunkt heute, gestern, vorgestern gehandelt wurde und können darüber natürlich auch schon Perspektiven ausmachen. Wir wissen auch, welche Uhren "trending" sind. Das Interessante ist, dass wir das aber gar nicht nutzen. Okay. Weil wir bislang entschieden haben, dass wir das erst mal nur als Branchenwissen veröffentlichen. Denn wir sehen uns auch ein Stück weit als "Community Booster". Also das ist für uns ein ganz starkes Element für Data Lab PR - also Reports rauszubringen, themenbezogen als auch in Innovationsgruppen darauf arbeiten zu lassen. Und ich glaube, dass dieses Data Mining oder dieser "Datenpool" natürlich bei uns das größte Kapital ist. Ich glaube, das es allen bewusst ist, dass man da an der Stelle natürlich viel Wissen über Luxussegmente und Zielgruppen generieren kann. Aber wie gesagt, das tun wir in dem Moment noch nicht, sondern wir arbeiten eigentlich nur mit den transaktionalen Daten. Und da hast du Recht: Das ist genauso wie ein Aktienkurs. Es sind ja Wertanlagen ... es geht rauf und runter. Momentan geht es ein bisschen runter. Jeder wartet auf den Sweetspot zum Verkaufen oder zum Kaufen. Und noch ein Beispiel: Dahinter steckt zum Beispiel auch die Chrome 24 Watch Collection - und da sind Uhren in einem Gesamtvolumen von 53 Milliarden € drin. Und das bedeutet, das sind 8 % der weltweit jemals produzierten Uhren, über die wir Daten besitzen. Und das ist natürlich ein Pfund. Wow. Daten sind eigentlich sowieso das Größte. Ja, absolut. Da stimmt Jeder zu. Antje, noch mal zu dir: Lampenwelt hat ja auch ein bedeutendes B2B-Geschäft. Und mir ist auf der Ecommerce-Website aufgefallen, dass es eine Pro-Shop-Funktion für Geschäftskunden gibt, um Ihnen bei der Verfolgung von Projektbedürfnissen zu helfen. Was müsst ihr eigentlich tun, um diese Geschäftskunden im Vergleich zu euren typischen Kunden beizubehalten und zu bedienen? Ja, also: Daten. Daten sind immer gut. Einer der größten Unterschiede - und weswegen wir auch dieses neue Modell der extra Plattform für die B2B-Kunden haben - ist, dass diese Kunden natürlich andere Anforderungen an ihre Einkaufsmöglichkeiten und Zyklen haben. Während der B2C-Kunde bei uns lange Kaufzyklen hat und eher bedarfsgetrieben einkauft - wenn er umzieht, beispielsweise, ist es im B2B-Business ganz anders. Und auch was die Kundengruppen angeht, ist es natürlich sehr unterschiedlich. Wir arbeiten viel mit Branchen, weil wir natürlich sehen, dass Architekten beispielsweise völlig andere Bedürfnisse haben, als ein Elektriker. Das heißt, das Produktsortiment muss so breit aufgestellt sein, dass es all diesen Bedürfnissen entspricht und dass wir aber auch diese besonderen Ansprüche der verschiedenen Branchen dabei berücksichtigen können. Also, ein Architekt beispielsweise, der vielleicht eher an Designer-Leuchten interessiert ist, der hat natürlich einen anderen Blick, als ein Elektriker. Ich habe gerade neu gelernt: Es gibt Leuchten, die heißen "Kniescheiben", weil das so diese typischen Treppenhausleuchten sind, die so leicht nach außen gwölbt sind, weswegen die wohl im Fachjargon so genannt werden. Jedenfalls haben wir deshalb gesagt, wir müssen einfach einen anderen Ansatz wählen. Das ist ein geschlossener Shop - unser B2C-Shop ist offen. Das heißt, man muss sich dort auch nicht als Kunde registrieren, eben aufgrund der langen Kaufzyklen. Für den B2B-Kunden ist es aber ganz wichtig, dass wir ein System haben, wo der Kunde sich immer wieder einloggen kann und ein Kundenkonto hat, wo er eine sehr einfache Übersicht über all seine Projekte und Bestellungen hat. Und das, was du mit den "Projektlisten" angesprochen hast , ist die Idee, dass man verschiedene Projekte, die normalerweise auch von den unterschiedlichen Handwerkern betreut werden, übersichtlich geordnet hat und auch für einzelne Projekte dann immer separate Warenkörbe hat und dann auch sehr leicht wieder bestellen kann. Jetzt reden wir noch mal über früher und heute. Tradition ist für Rosewood-Hotels sehr wichtig, insbesondere da viele eurer Immobilien historische Wahrzeichen sind, die sich von lokalen Geschichten, Architekturen und sogar Familien inspirieren lassen. Dennoch ist das Geschäft auf jeden Fall zeitgemäß. Wie schafft es denn Rosewood, dieses Gleichgewicht in sein Marketing und Storytelling umzusetzen und zu erreichen? Ich glaube, wir haben den totalen Luxus, dass wir in so ein prachtvolles Gebäude hier eingezogen sind. Ich glaube, es ist was anderes, wenn du quasi ein Hotel ganz neu baust, irgendwo auf der Wiese, dann hast du ein weißes, kahles Gebäude, und es ist viel schwieriger, eine Geschichte zu erzählen. Aber wir haben hier wirklich das Tolle, dass wir so viele Geschichten erzählen können, sowohl aus der Vergangenheit, aus der Geschichte des Hauses, das mal eine Bank gewesen ist, dass wir hier in diesem schönen Palais Neuhaus-Preysing auch drinnen sind. Gleichzeitig wurde aber auch alles kernsaniert und wir haben mit tollen Architekten, Interior Designern - mit der Caroline Depot und Tara Bernard - zusammengearbeitet, die dieses Haus in ein sehr zeitloses Gebäude umgebaut haben. Das heißt, wenn man reinkommt, hat man nicht das Gefühl, dass das Haus eigentlich ganz neu gebaut wurde. Wenn man die Bilder vom Architekten sieht, wo quasi nur die Außenmauern einmal gestanden haben, weiß man: "Hui, das war ganz schön viel Arbeit." Und das ist schön für uns, weil wir ganz viele Geschichten erzählen können. Wir können vom Haus die Geschichte erzählen, wir können von den Designern die Geschichten erzählen. Wir können auch von München die Geschichten erzählen, weil gerade im amerikanischen Markt München oft als "Oktoberfeststadt" bekannt ist. Aber es gibt noch 1000 andere Sachen, die man hier in München erzählen kann. Und ich finde, das gehört zum Marketingplan eines Hotels dazu, dass man nicht nur von sich selber spricht, sondern auch von der Location, wo man gerade ist. Und wir arbeiten sehr viel mit Tastemakern, mit verschiedenen Brands zusammen, damit wir in der Zukunft auch noch Geschichten erzählen können, die mit dem Hier und Jetzt zu tun haben. Und uns nicht nur auf den Lorbeeren ausruhen, zu sagen: ""Wir haben hier ein altes Haus und das ist unser USP." Sondern es gibt jeden Tag Neues zu entdecken. Und auch mit jedem Partner, mit dem wir zusammenarbeiten, gibt es noch neue Sachen zu entdecken oder zu sehen, die uns vielleicht selber noch gar nicht aufgefallen sind. Ich glaube, das ist der Mix den wir haben. Und um noch mal zurück zu kommen auf Schloss Fuschl - und auch in Wien sind wir in einer alten Bank - auch da ist es genau das gleiche: auch da haben wir die Geschichte des Hauses. Und das Schöne an Rosewood ist, dass sie gerade in Europa diese historischen Gebäude suchen. In Amsterdam ziehen wir in einen alten Justizpalast ein, in London - das ist unser zweites Haus - in die ehemalige amerikanische Botschaft. Also es sind wirklich ganz tolle Gebäude, die dann auch offen "for Public" sind und nicht einfach in langweilige Büros oder Wohneinheiten umgebaut werden, sondern da wird es immer wieder was Neues zu erzählen geben. Eine sehr dankbare Marke, würde ich sagen, ist das Rosewood. Jetzt ist Swarovski auch eine ähnlich traditionsreiche Marke ... 129 Jahre Geschichte. Stimmt das? Das ist richtig. Und das Unternehmen befindet sich immer noch im Familienbesitz. Auch das fand ich super spannend. Wie bindest du verschiedene Interessengruppen ein, um positive Veränderungen und die digitale Evolution voranzutreiben und gleichzeitig diese Merkmale des Erbes, also die DNA von Swarovski zu schützen? Kreativität und Innovation waren schon immer die Driving Force von Swarovski. Es hat angefangen mit der Vision von Daniel Swarovski 1895, der Gründer des Unternehmens, der einen Diamanten für jede Frau und jeden Mann erstellen wollte. Und das ist eigentlich die perfekte Ausgangslage, um auch die digitale Innovation weiter voranzutreiben. Wir haben gehört: Data ist wichtig. Wir arbeiten auch nach dem Prinzip "Lead by Data". Das hilft natürlich auch ungemein. Weil man digital alles messen kann, man kann alles testen und kann dann auch viel klarer sagen, was der potenzielle Impact von neuen Tools oder neuen Technologien ist, die man einsetzen möchte. Somit kann man auch seinen Stakeholdern viel besser erklären, was das für sie und für den Kunden für Nutzen hat. Und jetzt bei dir, Kim. Der Marktplatz für gebrauchte Luxusuhren ist ja dafür verantwortlich, Kunden über ihre Uhren und die Geschichte der Marken, die ihr führt, aufzuklären. Es handelt sich um eine sehr unterschiedliche Marken-Engagement-Umgebung im Vergleich zu den Marken-Geschäften der Luxushersteller. Wie schafft ihr es denn, dass die Leute bei euch kaufen und nicht direkt bei den Marken? Es gibt ja den sogenannten "Graumarkt". Ein ganz böses Wort. Die Maisons hassen uns dafür natürlich, denn lange Wartelisten steigern den Preis auf dem Graumarkt und deshalb kaufen bei uns ganz viele Leute. Aber es kaufen bei uns ja auch sehr viele Sammler, also tatsächlich "Sekundärmarkt". Und das ist eigentlich das Hauptgeschäftsfeld. Man muss aber auch sagen: Marktplatz-Modelle leben ja immer von Supply & Demand. Ein ganz einfaches Modell. Wenn der Supply da ist, dann ist auch der Demand da und dann stimmt der Preis und so weiter und so fort. Wir merken aber auch - und das hat ja Airbnb auch gemerkt - dass es dann ab irgendeinem Zeitpunkt doch zu einer Markenbildung kommen muss, denn ansonsten bleibt die Erfahrung, auch dann wenn es ein Marktplatz ist, austauschbar. Und dieses Brand Engagement, das versuchen wir gerade aufzubauen, ganz stark über Communityarbeit first. Also sprich wir kümmern uns wirklich um unsere Watch Experts, Blogger, Influencer usw, aber eben auch wirkliche Koryphäen und Autoren. Weil wir sehen, dass das für uns natürlich ein Resonanzkörper ist. Also jetzt nicht nur Social Media mäßig, sondern tatsächlich auch für die Reputation des Hauses. Und es ist auch wichtig zu verstehen, dass wir ja unabhängig sind. Sprich: wir besitzen die Uhren nicht, also nur ganz, ganz wenige davon. Wir haben kein Interesse, welche Uhr verkauft wird, sondern wir haben ein transaktionales Modell. Wir verdienen am Verkauf, aber es ist egal, an welcher Uhr. Und die Unabhängigkeit führt uns auch zu dem Punkt, dass wir viel journalistischer arbeiten können, also viel unabhängiger und zum Teil auch subjektiver. Also gerade wenn es um Meinungsbildung und Kommentierung von Novelties geht - was sehr ungewöhnlich für ein digitales Commerce-Unternehmen ist. Denn ich vergleiche uns immer ein stückweit mit den E-Retailern, wie "Mr Porter" - das ist natürlich das Ziel. Aber auf der anderen Seite merkt man dort auch: die sind natürlich viel transaktionaler, weil die wollen ihre Produkte verkaufen. Und bei uns ist es halt ein bisschen anders. Deshalb können wir viel mehr Hintergrund-Geschichten erzählen. Jetzt ist das Thema ja: Online und Offline Shopping. Silvia, bei euch ist ja das Handy zu einer wichtigen Zugangsform für Kunden geworden. Insbesondere, um die Lücke zwischen Online und Offline Shopping zu schließen. Ich weiß nicht, ob du noch was ergänzen möchtest. Wie hat sich denn die Rolle des mobilen Einkaufs und Swarovski Omnichannel-Strategien in den letzten Jahren entwickelt? Du meintest ja schon, dass es da so einiges gibt. Mobile ist schon seit langer Zeit sehr wichtig. Auch unser Mobile Traffic-Anteil ist seit vielen Jahren extrem hoch und wir arbeiten auch unter der Prämisse "Mobile First". Das heißt, was auch immer wir neu entwickeln oder anpassen, machen wir immer zuerst für Mobile und erst danach im Anschluss passen wir Desktop an. Der Kunde oder die Kunden nutzen Mobile, um neue Inspiration zu finden, sich über neue Kollektionen zu informieren, wenn sie unterwegs sind, auch den nächstgelegenen Store zu finden oder auch einen Termin über Mobile auszumachen, um dann in den Store zu gehen. Also ich glaube, Mobile ist - was auch jeder von sich selbst weiß - allgegenwärtig. Habt ihr denn aber das Gefühl, dass online viel mehr geshoppt wird als offline? Oder wie ist der Swarovski-Kunde da? Es gibt immer noch sehr viele Kunden, die gerne offline kaufen. Es ist ja auch ein ganz anderes Einkaufserlebnis als online. Es kommt immer auf den Kunden drauf an, was er gerade für ein Bedürfnis hat, ob es vielleicht auch ein spontaner Kauf ist. Wir haben auch sehr viele tolle neue Storekonzepte. Ich kann nur empfehlen, mal beim Marienplatz vorbeizugehen. Da ist einer davon, der ist wirklich wunderschön und das ist ein ganz anderes Erlebnis. Und viele Kunden, die auch einfach nur vorbeilaufen, gehen dann in den Store hinein und lassen sich dort inspirieren und kaufen dann auch was, obwohl sie es vielleicht gar nicht vorhatten. Online gehen sie vielleicht auch, weil sie die Marke schon kennen oder weil sie irgendwas gesehen haben, gucken sich das dort an, wollen es vielleicht vorher doch mal anprobieren im Store. Und es gibt auch die, die es dann online auch ausprobieren. Wir haben auch ein "Virtual Try-on" für Sonnenbrillen, was Kunden auch sehr gerne nutzen und kaufen das dann online. Beides ist wichtig und ich glaube, beides zusammen macht das noch stärker. Und bleiben wir doch bei 'Online und Handys'. Alice, einige der Immobilien im Rosewood-Portfolio haben ja ihre eigenen Apps, habe ich gelernt. Während andere soziale Medien wie WeChat benutzen. Auf welche Funktion konzentriert sich denn Rosewood bei der Entwicklung einer mobilen Erfahrung? Wie verbessert dies den Aufenthalt des Kunden? Warum weiß ich nichts von diesen mobilen Apps? Das wüsste ich gerne. Ich bin so oft hier.... Es gibt zwei Wege bei uns. Einerseits ist es das Interne, also wir haben eine interne App, die für alle Rosewood-Mitarbeiter zu verwenden ist. Und das finde ich ein tolles Tool, weil man dadurch sehr viel über die anderen Properties erfährt und auch erfährt, was die dort machen und planen. Ich finde, wir sind sehr eng mit unseren anderen Properties vernetzt. Das ist einerseits Online, aber geht dann auch wieder ins Offline ... weil durch diese Vernetzung, die wir durch diese App haben und durch die Geschichten, die dort erzählen werden, sind auch alle sehr reisewütig. Wir haben sehr viele Mitarbeiter aus den unterschiedlichen Properties, die zu uns kommen oder wir fahren zu ihnen. Das finde ich schön als Unternehmen, wie du durch eine App schaffst, dass sich Kollegen vernetzen, weil man sehr viel auch von anderen Ländern lernt. Und es ist heutzutage auch sehr wichtig, zu schauen, was sind die Best Cases, die es in anderen Ländern gibt? Was können wir nicht nur von anderen lernen, sondern wie können wir auch zusammenarbeiten? Gleichzeitig ist es natürlich hier auf dem deutschen Markt so, dass wir noch nicht alles ausspielen, was wir vielleicht am asiatischen Markt ausspielen. Es gibt ja auch regionale Unterschiede. Das heißt: hier ist es wirklich Instagram, was wir am allermeisten nutzen. Auch da haben wir zwei Instagramkanäle - einmal fürs Hotel und einmal für unsere Bar. Und das wirkt in Deutschland immer noch am stärksten: das man einerseits die Brand Awareness bekommt und gleichzeitig auch seine Geschichten erzählen kannst. Wir schauen aber auch darauf, was andere Brands machen. Wir schauen sehr viel darauf, was Fashion Brands machen, weil ich finde Fashion Brands sind da sehr innovativ und proaktiv. Wir schauen uns da an, was es für Möglichkeiten in der Zukunft auch für uns gibt. Es bleibt also spannend. So, jetzt habe ich noch eine Frage an euch alle - weil die Zeit läuft uns schon wieder weg. Und zwar könnte jetzt vielleicht jeder einzeln beantworten: Auf welche neuen Technologien oder Tools freut ihr euch eigentlich am meisten in der Zukunft? Vielleicht fangen wir mit dir wieder an, Kim? Ja, jetzt widerspreche ich mir, glaube ich selber, denn ich würde sagen, das ist KI. Aber aus anderen Gründen ... Das Mikrofon ist aus. Aber ich glaube, das wurde gehört. Also aus rein pragmatischen Gründen. Ich freue mich zum Beispiel darauf, dass wir - weil wir keine Property über Bilder haben - einfach Bilder generieren können. Das ist an der Stelle für viele Unternehmen wirklich viel einfacher und effizienter; also budget-effizient. Ich kann mich Kim nur anschließen. Generative AI ist das Topthema - es ist unglaublich spannend. Das entwickelt sich so unglaublich schnell. Und das heißt auch: was aktuell vielleicht noch nicht gut funktioniert, sieht in einem halben Jahr vielleicht schon ganz anders aus. Es wird uns helfen, ganz andere, neue Effizienzen zu gewinnen, und schneller zu sein. Wir haben auch die ersten Use Cases, bei denen wir es schon ausprobieren, zum Beispiel mit Übersetzungen. Wenn man in 25 Sprachen übersetzen muss, kann das mit AI die Zeit enorm verkürzen. Das macht einen enormen Unterschied. Wir haben verschiedene Use Cases und ich bin sehr gespannt, was dabei herauskommt. Davon kann ich jetzt tatsächlich ein Lied singen. Ich musste diesen ganzen Text von Englisch auf Deutsch übersetzen. Es hat sehr gut geklappt mit AI, weil sonst wäre ich drei Wochen damit beschäftigt gewesen. Aber es ist auch scary, weil man muss ja trotzdem gucken ... es ist keine 1:1-Übersetzung, manches ist nicht richtig. Und was mir Angst macht, ist, wenn man Images erstellt ... dann weiß man halt irgendwann nicht mehr, was Realität ist und was echt ist. Und davor habe ich so Angst ... dass ist ja auch das, was Michael vorhin angesprochen hatte. So, meine Liebe, kommen wir zu dir. Ja, ich kann mich eigentlich nur anschließen. Wir haben auch schon ein paar Experimente gerade mit Bildern gemacht, weil wir häufig auch einfach "Freisteller" haben, die dann mit AI in unterschiedliche Hintergründe gesetzt werden können. Was uns auch für die verschiedenen Zielgruppen sehr weiterhelfen würde, und auch für die verschiedenen Länder. Weil es kann ja auch sein, dass die Hintergründe oder die Bilder einfach komplett anders sein müssen. Wenn ich an Schweden und an Spanien denke, dann sehen allein die Häuser völlig anders aus. Und dann brauche ich das Ganze nur einmal aufzusetzen. Bei der Sprache ist es genauso. Wir haben ja auch 27 Länder, das heißt 27 Sprachen und die AI kann noch nicht alle. Also Polnisch beispielsweise ist eine Sprache, die noch gar nicht gut funktioniert, habe ich mir sagen lassen. Aber ich bin sehr gespannt. Wir haben einen internen Wettbewerb, das heißt: jede Abteilung darf Ideen einbringen, an welchen AI-Projekten intern weitergearbeitet werden soll. Und ich bin sehr gespannt, wer da das Rennen macht. Und bei dir, Alice? Ich habe leider auch nichts anderes. Es ist eben diese Herausforderung. Genauso, wie du gesagt hast, Rabea, es ist schon auch eine Angst mit dabei. Ich hoffe, dass in der Zukunft nicht alles mit AI generiert wird, sondern dass es immer noch persönliche Kontakte gibt und dass die menschliche Kreativität weiter gefördert wird und man sich nicht 100%ig auf irgendwelche AI-Tools verlassen kann und verlassen soll. Und gerade in der Luxuswelt zählen auch die persönlichen Erlebnissen, und die offline Erlebnisse. Deswegen hoffe ich, dass trotz all dem, was das Internet uns bietet, auch Printmagazine und Bücher erhalten bleiben. Weil ich finde, dass das auch zum Geschichtenerzählen dazu gehört. Und insgesamt: es bleibt spannend. Also es bleibt spannend, ob z.B. Instagram, oder WeChat die Tools sind, die sich auch die nächsten zehn Jahre halten werden, oder ob es da - ähnlich wie bei Facebook - auch in eine ganz andere Richtung geht. Was ich mich immer frage, ist, ob das nur ein Generationsding ist, weil wir, die wir hier sitzen ... wir kennen die Bücher und die Kassetten .... Aber die neue Generation wird ja gar nicht unterscheiden können, was etwa AI-generiert oder persönlich ist? Ich weiß gar nicht, ob es da diese Berührungspunkte noch so gibt. Also es bleibt wirklich spannend. Gerade beim Thema Musik. Das finde ich auch sehr scary, weil man im Endeffekt fast keinen Komponisten mehr braucht. Und dann kommt auch noch das Thema "Copyright" mit dazu. Aber da fehlt dann halt die menschliche Emotion. Und das ist wie beim Fußball. Ganz genau. Ich bedanke mich ganz herzlich für diesen spannenden und interessanten Talk. Ich habe mal wieder super viel gelernt. Danke, dass ihr euch die Zeit genommen habt.

Geht jetzt weiter mit unserem nächsten Talk. Und zwar geht es dabei um künstliche Intelligenz. Künstliche Intelligenz steht bei so vielen Markenunternehmen ganz oben auf der Agenda. Aber die spannen Möglichkeiten dieser Technologie können manchmal schwer zu priorisieren und verstehen sein. Um über die Vorteile von KI bei der Optimierung des mobilen Handels, der Freisetzung von Kreativität und der Förderung von Kundenbindung zu diskutieren, möchte ich jetzt gerne Manuela Stadelmann, Britta Domeier und Benjamin Messner begrüßen. Zuerst erstmal vielen, vielen Dank, dass ihr seit heute ganz spannende, tolle Gäste. Vielleicht könnt ihr einfach mal kurz erzählen, wer ihr seid und was genau ihr macht für unser Publikum hier? Hallo, ich bin Manuela. Ich bin ursprünglich aus der Schweiz, wohne aber seit einiger Zeit in London, wo ich für englische Mode und Beauty Häuser arbeite, zurzeit bei PhD. Das ist eine englische Luxusmarke im Parfüm Bereich und ich leite dort das Head of Produkt Marketing. Das und Customer Experience. Das ist einerseits Produktdesign von neuen Produkten, neue Düfte zu entwickeln und andererseits aber auch was für Services und Erlebnisse wir anbieten in unseren Boutiquen, in unseren Spaces. Und da kommen auch sehr viele von diesen neuen Entwicklungen zum Zug. Natürlich. Super. Hallo, ich bin. Ich bin Ben Benjamin Messer. Vielen Dank, dass ich dieses Jahr wieder dabei sein darf. Sehr schönes Event. Ich bin seit 2019 hier in München bei Bogner für den Bereich Digital verantwortlich. Das bedeutet eCommerce auf Einwohner, das Kommen von Marktplätzen, das bedeutet CRM und eben auch digitales Marketing. Ich bin die Mutter von mich, auch da zu sein. Ich leite das sogenannte Partner development Team innerhalb unseres Digital Holsalambillers in Adidas Europe. Das bedeutet, mein Team ist in ganz Europa verteilt und ist für das digitale Wachstum mit unseren wichtigsten Partnern europaweit verantwortlich. Das heißt also Salut Marketing Across ist das, wonach wir suchen mit den wichtigsten Partnern. Pure Player wie ein Zalando Audio in the Likes, aber auch Player, mit denen wir arbeiten. Auch spannend. Tolle Jobs auf jeden Fall und viel Kredit. Lieben wir diese? Fangen wir doch gleich mal mit dir an! Ich weiß, dass Adidas einige faszinierende Fortschritte in der künstlichen Intelligenz gemacht hat. Von KI generierten Avataren bis zu hin zum KI gesteuerten Produkte sein. Kannst du uns einen kurzen Überblick über einige der Höhepunkte geben, bei denen kein bei Adidas eine Rolle spielt? Mache ich gerne. Also im Endeffekt kann man ja so externe. Also ich entschuldige mich schon mal für ein furchtbares Denglisch. Es ist eine Katastrophe, aber da kann ich nichts dagegen machen bei den Begriffen, die wir verwenden. Es gibt natürlich konsumentenseitige Innovationen wie Du hast es angesprochen, vor allem im Gaming Bereich, was für den sie extrem wichtig ist und daher für uns auch. Vielleicht gehen wir da später noch mal kurz drauf ein. Und dann mehr Internetanwendungen. Und eigentlich, wenn wir jetzt wirklich über die einflussreichsten sprechen, würde ich sagen, sind die Internen, die in dem wir die größten Fortschritte und auch die größten Hebel eigentlich für uns als Unternehmen sehen. Und da kann man eigentlich KI Anwendungen entlang der ganzen Wertschöpfungskette anschauen. Also es geht von Produktdesign über Sourcing Planning, Procurement, Vertrieb, sehr, sehr viele Anwendungen und vielleicht um einfach mal drei oder vier hervorzuheben. Also ein sehr interngetriebener Ansatz ist natürlich der Copilot. Ich glaube, das kennt fast jeder hier. Viele Firmen arbeiten damit, aber verändert definitiv die Art, wie wir arbeiten miteinander ist eingefügt in alle Microsoftanwendungen, mit denen wir intern arbeiten und hat jetzt schon wirklich große Effizienzsteigerungen für uns in den Teams hervorgerufen. Andere Sachen sind beispielsweise, wenn wir uns das Produkt Design anschauen. Wir haben eine sogenannte AI Archivfunktion, wo unsere Designer Produkte designen können mithilfe von AI. Da geht es dann um historische Daten über 150.000 Sneaker Designs, mit denen das trainiert wurde. Und hier können wir innerhalb von Sekunden neue Produkt Designs generieren, wo es sonst wirklich viel, viel länger gedauert hat. Und das hilft unseren Designer immens. Andere Anwendungen und Silvia und Antje hatten es vorhin auch schon angesprochen das ganze Thema Produktcopy, wie wir es nennen. Also da geht es vor allem darum, wenn wir unsere sogenannten Salons haben mit unseren Hotel Kunden, wo die sehr früh jetzt beispielsweise gerade momentan für Spring Summer 2005 sind wir in den sogenannten Salons, wo unsere Kunden dann Produktbeschreibungen in vielen Sprachen brauchen, wo wir nur Samples bisher parat haben, wo natürlich die ganze Range ausgebaut wird. Und da müssen wir sehr, sehr schnell sehr viel Information zur Verfügung stellen. Und da können wir schon im Millionenbereich Produktionskosten sparen jährlich, in dem wir damit eh zusammenarbeiten. Und ein anderes Thema ist das sogenannte Re oder Augmentation. Etwas, wo wir bereits auch ohne KI mit historischen Daten unseren Kunden. Zur Verfügung stellen können. Die und die Produkte. Da habt ihr noch so und so viel in Stock. Das und das wurde so schnell abverkauft. Da stehen wir in der Saison, hier müsst ihr nachordern und da jetzt schon werden auch beispielsweise Google Trends mit einbezogen. Wir haben ein ganz aktuelles Beispiel des DFB Jersey, das pinke Hawaii Jersey Mega durch die Decke gegangen. Wir wissen, dass dieser Bedarf bei den Kunden noch Konsumenten noch andauern wird, wissen aber auch ganz genau da wird ein harter Cut off sein. Spätestens wenn Deutschland rausfliegt, wird das kein Mensch mehr kaufen wollen. Da ist es sehr klar Jetzt nachordern, aber dann ist Schluss. Aber was ist denn mit anderen Future Franchises zum Beispiel, wo wir gerne jetzt mehr in dieses Predictive Planning eingehen würden und sagen würden Woher erkennen wir denn, welche Trends uns ins Haus stehen und wie können wir denn da die Recommendations mehr nach vorne gerichtet auch an unsere großen Kunden stellen? Und das ist ein Riesending gerade für uns. Ich frage mich immer, wie war das denn früher, wo es so was nicht gab? Also wir haben extrem schlecht geplant. Super Manuela. Während KI oft als Backend betrachtet wird, hat man hat auch interessante KI gesteuerte Funktionen in der Kundenerfahrung implementiert, wie zum Beispiel das eines Dufterlebnis, das vor einigen Jahren eingeführt wurde. Kannst du uns etwas über die Rolle solcher Entdeckungswerkzeuge erklären? Also total spannend, auch sehr gerne. Um ein bisschen Background zu geben. Also eigentlich ist es für mich so, dass man, wenn man nach vier, fünf Düften, die man probiert ist eigentlich die menschliche Nase nicht mehr fähig, die Gerüche unterscheiden. Das heißt, alles riecht gleich selbst wie Kaffee. Das ist so die Schwelle, wo nachher alles gleich riecht. Und deshalb ist es eigentlich Für Marken wie bei uns, die über 50 verschiedene Parfüms haben, war das schon immer eine Kunst, dass vor allem früher der Kundenberater durch die richtigen Fragen erforscht, was genau für Duftpräferenzen man hat. Während der Pandemie musste man natürlich auch umsatteln, um das auch über digitale Kanäle zu ermöglichen. Und so ist eigentlich diese Technologie entstanden, die für Phons mir als matschigen Monocle gelauncht wurde. Das funktioniert eigentlich sowohl zu Hause online, aber auch in einem Store. Wenn man in den Store kommt, hat man einen Kurs Code und danach scannt man mit dem Mobilphone verschiedene Produkte, also die realen Flaschen von den Produkten. Und das generiert dann von einer riesigen Datenbank von Wissen zu diesen paar Filmen, was wir in kleinen Ingredienzen sind darin Was sind das für Duftfamilien, wozu dieses Parfüm gehört und zeigt einem gleichzeitig auch auf Was gibt es für ähnliche Parfüms, die vielleicht die gleichen Ingredienz haben? Man kann so verschiedene Parfümeure erkundigen, ohne sie eigentlich schon sprechen zu müssen. Und man es wird einem zum Beispiel auch aufgezeichnet, so wie man vorher von zu Hause, genau wie wir auf uns gehört haben. Es wird auch angezeigt, was gibt es für andere Produkte zum Beispiel, die vielleicht nicht ausgestellt sind, aber die man auf Lager hat und die man so auch als sogenannte Argumentation zugeführt bekommt. Und ich denke, was interessant ist, es sind wirklich diese Connected Stores. In China gibt es schon ganze Konzept Stores, wo man wirklich mit dem Handy eigentlich alles machen kann, von der Produkterforschung bis zu in den Warenkorb legen, Größen auszuwählen, zu bestellen, das nach Hause zu kommen. Alles eigentlich man selber durch den eigenen Customer Journey. Und ich denke, was sich wirklich hier entwickelt hat in den letzten Jahren, ist, dass es wirklich auf ein Kundenbedürfnis aufbaut und das eben auch durch all das eine Interaktion mit dem Kunden ist, was man für Präferenzen hat, wo man selber eigentlich diese Person dann ist dieses personalisierte Erlebnis innerhalb von einem Laden für sich selber kreieren kann. Das ist sicher sehr spannend für viele in Luxusmarken. Ja, spannend, weil ich glaube, heutzutage sind die Leute auch gar nicht mehr so kommunikativ, dass sie gerne in Laden gehen und mit Leuten reden, die angesprochen wird. Man ist ja auch wieder an seinem Handy und guckt für sich selbst, was man nicht braucht keine Hilfe. Ich mache das gerne selber, von daher muss ja eigentlich auch so sein. Ja, genau. Und ich glaube die KI, das Wissen oder die Daten, die man hier auch hat. Man weiß, wenn solche Apps funktional sind und einem selber was helfen, dann ist man gewillt die zu benutzen und auch die Daten auszugeben auszugeben. Es kommt immer darauf an, ist es fokussiert es auf einen Nutzen für den Kunden. Und genau Viele möchten auch gar nicht mehr unbedingt mit allen reden, sondern macht es selbst. Erforschen ist auch jeder seine eigene. Aber interessante Herausforderung mit Duft. Also habe ich genauso drüber nachgedacht. Benjamin oder Ben, Ich komme zu dir. Was bei Bogner an ist, hat KI bereits begonnen einige Grundlagen bei mir zu beeinflussen, wie zum Beispiel Preisgestaltung und Promotion. Jetzt kannst du uns ja vielleicht mal erklären, wie nutzt du KI bei Bogner, um einige dieser Funktionen zu optimieren? Ja, das ist sicher im Markt, so der ein oder mehrere der diese Einflussfaktoren wir wir sind eine kleine Firma. Wir versuchen aus Luxusmarke das Thema Preis sehr konsistent zu halten über alle Kanäle. Und da brauchen wir aktuell keine Energie, weil es ja immer Promotion sind und daran Kommunikation, sieht es deutlich anders aus. Da nutzen wir schon sehr viel, was die Software, die wir, die wir im Einsatz haben, zur Verfügung hat und versuchen da natürlich auch alles rauszuholen. Generell so vielleicht zum Zustand, wo wir da aktuell sind, sehe ich eher vor allem als als ein Appell, also eher generell als als Thema, wo wir auch unsere Teams heranführen müssen, dass sie die Technologien, die Prinzipien verstehen, weil auch diese ganzen vielen, vielen Tools. Also ich möchte gar nicht, dass wir jetzt spezifische Tools überall suchen. Die werden am Ende Features von SAP sein oder von einem Assist oder von anderen Produkten. Wir müssen verstehen, wie das funktioniert und was quasi die Prinzipien dahinter sind und auch die Teams ran führen, dass sie keine Angst vor haben, also einfach Experimente ermöglichen. Für uns heißt es momentan also konkret eher das Thema Skalierung von Content. Beruhigt das in dem Panel vorher? Diese Themen auch so genannt wurden und dass wir da jetzt sicher wie in einem komplett anderen Team arbeiten, in der Hinsicht aber einfach wir brauchen, eben um Personalisierung zu ermöglichen. Um Internationalisierung zu ermöglichen, brauchen wir einfach viel mehr Content in viel mehr Ausprägungen. Und da kann es natürlich helfen. Sowohl beim Text, bei Übersetzungen stehen haben wir auch Experten hier, gerade damit, wie wir, wie wir das eben deutlich effizienter hinkriegen. Aber natürlich auch bei Bildern wie zum Beispiel für für Marktplätze, auf denen wir aktiv sind, zum Beispiel bei Bräuninger, wird der Kopf abgeschnitten. Wir schneiden bei den Bildern den Kopf nicht ab und dann nutzen wir ein Tool, was uns, glaube ich auch sogar ein Bräuninger Spin off ist. Also Autoren hat inzwischen verkauft, aber das das Thema hilft uns dabei, eben diese Bilder nur einmal zu schießen und dann eben in allen Kanälen so auszuspielen, wie wir sie eben da brauchen. Das gibt die Anforderung. Das hat ja jetzt gehört bei euch, wenn die Köpfe abgeschnitten, so, so auf YouTube. Dazu reden wir nachher. Dritter Ich komme zu dir. Du hast die KI generierten Avatare vorhin schon mal angesprochen und wir haben gesehen, dass sich diese auf verschiedene Arten bei Adidas manifestiert hat. Zum Beispiel wurde ja vor ein paar Jahren sind sie gestern auch gesehen aus World gestartet. Viele Marken haben es schwer gefunden, die Metapher zu knacken und sind schnell dazu übergegangen, andere Funktionen zu priorisieren. Ist das eigentlich immer noch so relevant? Für Adidas ist es definitiv, ähm, weil es für genau sie nach wie vor relevant ist. Also im Endeffekt, wir haben einen ganz klaren Konsumenten Fokus, sagen wir mal 1998, Jahrgang und jünger. Also nicht wir sind wirklich die, für die es nach wie vor vor allem im gängigen Bereich extrem relevant ist. Und wir sind hier selektiv unterwegs und es ist absolut trial and error. Also das muss man auch ehrlicherweise sagen, aber haben beispielsweise momentan so, dass relevant ist für uns ist Blogs, wo wir eben viel machen, auch eine eigene oder mehrere Kollektionen haben Weekly Product Jobs haben also für all die, die nicht in dem Bereich sind, das ist eine riesen Plattform, wo Teilnehmer eigene Spiele kreieren können, miteinander dann in Austausch treten, mit ihren Avataren spielen, Dinge freischalten können und unter anderem eben auch Produkte kaufen können. Also es ist eine ganz eigene Welt und da haben wir auch wirklich im Shop in Shop also unsere eigene Adidas Welt für diese Spieler. Das sind über 220 Millionen Spieler weltweit, die da aktiv sind und 50 % davon sind unter 16 Jahre alt und das ist einfach. Da erreichst du halt eine Zielgruppe, die wir sonst auch wieder über unsere eigenen Ökosysteme noch über unsere Teller so gut erreichen können. Und da spielt es eine absolut große Rolle. Wir sehen aber auch gerade bei unseren Partnern, die sehr schnell im Meta etwas unterwegs waren. Also About You war so eine Firma, die ganz ganz früh so hype, wo er da auch gelauncht hat, passiert das aber jetzt genau aus dem Grund, weil es einfach nicht ganz klar ist, wo geht da die Reise hin, wie groß ist das Potenzial? Und da muss man eben auch so seine Battles sich aussuchen. Und für uns ist eben gerade dieser Gaming Bereich nach wie vor groß und sehr sehr wichtig. Aber sehen da auch ein sehr gemischtes Bild, auch mit unseren Partnern. Ja, es ist im Bett, aber es ist für mich ja auch ein Alien. Also es ist komplett so, ich verstehe es nicht. Warum geben da Leute Geld für Vereine, Kinder und ich mache immer wieder faszinierend So, es ist ja ähnlich bei Panel mit Kai. Er hat Panel mit Bildern experimentiert und die Geschichte von auch sehr spannend von William Penn und seiner viktorianischen Duftwerkstatt zum Leben zu erwecken. Kannst du uns etwas darüber erzählen, wie digitale Tools dabei helfen, die Marken Geschichte zum Leben zu erwecken? Ich sage Ich denke, hier gehen wir jetzt wirklich über zu Kreativkampagne nicht ran oder so, sondern wirklich kreativen Kampagnen. Und hier ist es für mich immer wichtig zu sehen, Man muss sich schon fragen, man ist ja immer noch in einer Experimentierphase mit vielen Marken Wird es funktionieren? Macht man das in Zukunft oder nicht? Und ich denke, da stellt sich die Frage für eine Marke was hat man eine Positionierung zu solchen Technologien und ist man da eher ein Early Adopter oder nicht? Ich denke in den Kampagnen sind die momentan eher die. Ja, doch das für die das wichtig für das Markenbildes wozu auch gehört und das macht für mich sehen, weil man ganz eine Kommunikations hat, die sehr fiktiv surreal ist, viele Collagen, Elemente, viele Animationen, Elemente verwendet. Wir benutzen. Wir haben nie reale Modelle, also nie Personen fotografiert, sondern eher zum Beispiel mit vielen Illustrationen gearbeitet. Und eine von diesen Exekutionen mit dieser letzten Kampagne für Oceans Collection war das. Anstatt eine Illustration von William Heiligen zu verwenden, war das ein. Und das macht für mich Sinn, weil das ich so ein bisschen der Stab von etwas, was man eigentlich schon verwendet hat, gleichermaßen. Für die Collagen wurden Bilder mit Ei generiert, weil wie gesagt, das kommt so von der viktorianischen Zeit. Das würde man sowieso irgendwie suchen. Normalerweise ein Mensch. Jetzt sucht es und generiert es einfach eh und ein Mensch bringt es aber in fünf Collagen wieder zusammen. Und ich glaube, hier sieht man so ein bisschen, dass das ein iterative Ansatz ist, der so ein bisschen eine Evolution der Markengeschichte ich glaube, was ja auch super interessant is oder sehr wichtig ist zu sagen, das hat nie den Ansatz real zu sein. Man merkt immer, das ist irgendwie surreal und eine fiktionale Story. Und deshalb glaube ich, funktioniert das für die Marke auch sehr gut. Ich denke, wir sind hier ein bisschen an einer Schwelle, wo sich das wechselt, wie die Kunden das sehen. Wenn ich denke, ich für mich, was so vor einem Jahr mit dieser Comics Kampagne von diesen großen Berg sie da durch die Pariser Straßen gefahren sind das ja noch CGI generated und das hat so ein bisschen angefangen, wo die Leute gedacht haben, ist es das echt oder nicht? Aber das war irgendwie noch lustig, weil das war ja auch so ein bisschen, ein paar Jahre Kampagne und man wusste immer nein, das ist, das ist nicht richtig. Und viele andere Marken haben das in vielen Städten kopiert. Jetzt, wenn ich Instagram öffne, sehe ich sehr viele Bilder von Epic Generated Content, die eigentlich reale Personen oder Orte suggerieren, wo ich dann wirklich auch nicht mehr weiß, wie wir vorhin vom Fußballspiel gehört haben. Also das ist das irgendwie so echt, dass irgendwie habe ich das Gefühl, es ist nicht, aber ich weiß es nicht. Und ich glaube, da kommt man zu einem Punkt, wo es auch um Transparenz und Vertrauen von den Kunden zu den Marken geht und viele Marken jetzt schon intern sich nicht so recht. Wie soll man das jetzt deklarieren oder nicht? Und ich glaube, wir sind da ein bisschen ein Zeitpunkt wie das früher bei Instagram mit denen bei uns ja Posts waren, wohl auch irgendwann mal ein Gesetz kommen wird, wo man als Marke das deklarieren muss, weil es sonst einfach so verwirrend für Konsumenten ist. Und ich glaube auch die Konsumenten das Vertrauen in diese Art von Advertising verlieren, wenn es da nicht gewisse Regeln gibt. Absolut keine Regeln gibt. Es sind total wichtig. Es war ja früher, auch wenn irgendwie keine Ahnung für Haare Werbung waren auf einmal die Frau wunderschöne dicke Haare stand und mit Extensions also ah okay dazu dann haben wir. Es gibt es momentan nicht keine Regeln und keine Gesellschaft. Ich dachte es müsste. Es würde auch eine. Regelung. Geben, dass man sagen muss wenn ein wenn er das er das noch nicht okay war. Also Ben, bei dir ist es ja so, dass bei Bogner derzeit ein beträchtliches Transformationsprogramm durchläuft. Kannst du uns etwas über die strategischen Prioritäten dieser Transformation und deren Auswirkung auf das E Commerce Geschäft erzählen? Ja, wir sind. Wir sind immer in Bewegung. Das ist. Das ist Bogner also auch von der Kultur her. Im Grunde würden sich also vielleicht auch die strategischen Prioritäten jetzt mal so rausgepickt. Habe sehr stark auf das Digitalgeschäft aus, weil wir natürlich das größte Schaufenster einmal sind, mit ein bisschen mehr als 7 Millionen Besuchern im Jahr. Wie gesagt, wir sind kleine Firma und andererseits sind wir natürlich auch ein relevanter Vertriebskanal, über den wir unsere Kunden bedienen wollen und eben auch die beste Kasse Mix für uns bieten wollen. Einmal ist es vielleicht das Thema Positionierung. Also wir sind jetzt auch sehr dabei, die Positionierung zu schärfen. Auf diesen Lifestyle ay Luxury haben wir es genannt, dass eben die Begeisterung für Sport und Mode ausdrücken soll und gleichzeitig auch so dieses Streben nach Innovation, nach höchster Qualität. Also die Bogen hat mal gesagt sportliche Qualität oder höchste Qualität, ein Sportlichkeit das das sind so die Prinzipien, die wir da auch sehen. Zum anderen sich das Thema Produktsortiment, was wir zum Beispiel tun oder kommen zeigen, muss das natürlich optimal widerspiegeln. Also wir fokussieren uns sehr stark auf die drei Gruppen, also Auto, Ware, Jacken und dann eben das das das zweite Strick und dann Sweet bzw Jersey und das, ja, das können wir gar nicht vermeiden, dass wir das da auch genauso präsentieren. Drittes ist einfach das Gewinnen von neuen Zielgruppen. Da sind wir vielleicht so bescheiden und zielen gar nicht auf die ganze, sondern auf die, sagen wir 35 bis 50 jährigen, die wir wirklich deutlich deutlich besser engagieren müssen und und bekommen müssen und in den Kontakt kommen müssen und dauerhaften Austausch, denen das richtige Produkt zu bieten und die einfach zu erreichen. Und da spielen natürlich digitale Markt Marketing Kanäle so die Hauptrolle und das ist auch mit Interesse am Ende. Und wenn wir das Feld anschauen Internationalisierung Neben unserem unserem Heimatmarkt Dach versuchen wir natürlich international auch stark zu wachsen. Und das findet natürlich auch vor allem digital statt, immer in Ergänzung zu dem, was wir, was wir eben auch im Holze tun. Aber auch da werden wir jetzt in den nächsten Wochen 24 Länder dazunehmen. Und brauchen wir wieder die, um den Content dafür zu bauen. Und zu übersetzen? Jetzt kommen wir mal zu dir. Jetzt hat Adidas ja auch ein bedeutendes Großhandelsgeschäft. Wie nutzen das Unternehmen Technologie, um Einblicke in die Kunden und deren Bedürfnisse in diesem Drittanbieter Multi Brand Umgebung zu gewinnen? Ja, also. Wenn ich jetzt unser Hotelgeschäft vergleiche mit unserem eigenen Kommen ist, gibt es zwei große Unterschiede. Zum einen natürlich unsere Dot Com Kollegen, die Konsumenten, die auf unsere eigenen Seiten gehen. Die wollen Adidas kaufen, ganz klar. Und wir holen die Consumer Journey, wie wir sagen. Also wir haben vollen Einblick in alles, was natürlich auf unseren Seiten passiert, wir jetzt wiederum im Geschäft. Wir haben eine extrem Wettbewerb mit anderen Marken, das heißt, wir müssen als Marke bestehen in diesem Wettbewerb, und wir müssen diejenigen Konsumenten für uns gewinnen, die entweder komplett im Brandagnostik shoppen oder am liebsten Nike tragen. Und wie ich gehört habe, keinen einzigen Adidas nicht zu Hause haben, die heute auch keine hätten tragen. Die eine Seite ist, wenn Smith waren zu schmutzig. Gerade wenn die Waschmaschine ist nicht empfohlen, aber kann man ja, und da müssen wir zum einen mit dem Holzfällerarbeiten und den Daten, die uns zur Verfügung gestellt werden. Also wir sind natürlich sehr stark davon abhängig, wie offen unsere Partner damit sind, welche Konsumentendaten und auch Consumer Journey sie mit uns teilen. Und zum anderen sind wir auch auf deren technologischen Fähigkeiten angewiesen, denn wir können natürlich auf unserer Seite alles testen, machen es noch und nöcher und können daraus einen Satz generieren. Und da müssen wir natürlich mit unseren Partnern zusammenarbeiten. Und was wir schon machen ist, wir übernehmen sehr viele Consumer jenseits von unseren Dot Com Kram. Ganz klar, weil wir natürlich davon ausgehen, dass die Konsumenten, die wir ansprechen wollen, auf denjenigen Partnerseiten natürlich auch sind. Sonst wären wir dort nicht präsent und müssen dann eben sehen, gewisse Analogien treffen. Zum einen und zum anderen haben wir gewisse digitale Self Solutions nennen wir, wo wir so KPI abrufen können und sehen können. Wie navigieren denn die Konsumenten auf den Seiten der Retailer? Und beispielsweise Eine riesen Erkenntnis für uns war, dass wir gesehen haben, dass die absolute Mehrheit der Konsumenten auf den wichtigsten Seiten direkt auf der Detailseite landen. Das heißt auf zu. Diese klassische Homepage wird gar nicht passiert, sondern sei es jetzt von Google Shopping oder über viele jetzt usw kommen die Leute direkt ganz ganz tief in den Channel rein und da müssen wir brillieren und da müssen wir Content liefern. Der erklärt, der gerade bei technisch schwierigen Produkten all die Informationen bietet, weil ich habe diese Interaktion nicht mit jemandem, der mir was erklären kann, sondern das muss selbsterklärend sein. Das muss ein Gate sein. Da müssen Videos dabei sein, einen Teil des Dabeisein, weil konvertieren muss dann da einfach passieren und das zu optimieren, darauf kommt es dann am Ende an und da versuchen wir eben auch von dort kommen, wie gesagt, technologische Lösungen auch reinzuholen und auszutesten. Also beispielsweise Virtual Trion. Wir haben es vorhin auch schon mal gehört, ist auch bei uns, also nicht nur bei Swarovski, bei der Sonnenbrillen, sondern bei uns auch ein großes Thema, vor allem im Bereich Future, wo ich mein Handy nehmen kann, um da eben sehr viel besser zu sehen. Wie steht mir denn jetzt eigentlich das Produkt? Und so versuchen wir quasi dieses Bild zusammenzusetzen. Aber wie gesagt, wir sind da natürlich in einem sehr großen Abhängigkeitsverhältnis mit den Partnern, was die können und was die machen wollen mit uns. Spannend. Jetzt heißt es eben hat schon mal angesprochen, man kann das Handy benutzen, um zu gucken, wie das aussieht. Oder man kann auch das Hände benutzen, um das zu personalisieren. Oder generell. Manuela, die wie schon gesagt, die Luxusindustrie lebt von ihrem Ruf für Personalisierung und Kundenservice. Das hat zu finden auch schon mal angesprochen. Wie siehst du denn die Veränderung der Interaktion von Luxusmarken mit ihren Kunden durch Kennen der Zukunft? Ich denke, dass im Luxusbereich immer diese persönliche. Dieser Human Touch wird immer zentral sein. Für mich ist es mehr zu sehen, Wie kann EY helfen, diese diese Kundenberater mehr Informationen und bessere Informationen zu zu Kunden zu geben und für ein besseres Erlebnis zu sorgen. Es ist für mich so ein bisschen wie man sagt die Wenn man Optimist sein will, sagt man so, das ist nicht die Kreativen killt, sondern die Kreativen kreativ macht. Und für mich ist das so ein bisschen das Gleiche, dass es eigentlich die Kundenberater hoffentlich noch bessere Kundenberater macht. Und einerseits gibt es ja ein Spektrum, diese Chatbots, die heute immer noch sehr amateurhaft in sehr roboterhaft sind. Aber ich glaube auch, da für gewisse Transaktionen wie Returns oder einfache Tracking so oder so denke ich, da ist eigentlich ein Kundenberater überqualifiziert, ein Mensch. Und ich denke, man wird da Entwicklungen haben, dass es auch auf ein Niveau kommt, wie wenn das seine persönliche Interaktion war wäre. Andererseits fand ich das Beispiel von Swarovski sehr spannend, weil ich auch glaube, dass es irgendwie da diese Balance gefunden werden muss zwischen Was kann AI machen auf einem Online Customer Journey und wo wird dann eine Person sozusagen getriggert? Also wo macht man einen gewissen Customer Journey Online, wo dann sozusagen AI an einen Kundenberater weiter sagen kann okay, diese Person sollte man als Lieferant einladen oder kann man jetzt irgendwie mit diesem Online System so wo finde dieser Übergang starten? Ich denke das wird da irgendwie. Man muss da die richtige Balance finden. Wenn man mehr zu Personen Personalisierung auf CRM Seite schaut, gebe ich. Wie schon von verschiedenen Personen gesagt wurde, gebe ich für Marken heutzutage. Man muss so viel Content produzieren und AI macht wie möglich, dass man verschiedene Farbkombinationen in verschiedenen Kontexten, verschiedene Personen mit verschiedenen Contents ansprechen kann auf verschiedenen Textvarianten. Was ich denke, ist hoch relevant und macht diese Kommunikation hoch relevanter. Ich mache das schon seit Jahren und habe deshalb auch eine sehr gute Relevanz mit Konsumenten. Was ich so ein bisschen aus dem Luxusbereich trotzdem denke, ist dieser Bereich. Und auch der Mensch lebt von auch eigener Kreativität, Individualität und da ist er immer generiert auf vergangen was in der Vergangenheit, was man da ein bestimmtes Parfüm, das ich gekauft habe. Das heisst aber nicht, dass ich es nur noch Content zu diesem Parfüm oder ähnlichen Parfüm haben will. Ich kann ja auch morgen entscheiden, dass ich jetzt jemand ganz anderes sein will, noch was ganz anderes tragen kann will. Und ich denke, das ist auch so ein bisschen die die Aufgabe oder die, die die Magie des Luxusbereiches, ein bisschen dieses Unerwartete und das Unmögliche. Oder erst mal, was man gar nicht wusste, dass man das überhaupt wollte, zu suggerieren. Und ich glaube, da muss man so ein bisschen aufpassen, dass das nicht sozusagen dieser Hype Personifikation kommt, die dann wirklich so spezifisch ist. Das ist so ein bisschen dieser Charme des Unbekannten oder das Unerwarteten oder der, der Trends sozusagen wegnimmt. Dass man mehr Geld ausgibt, als man eigentlich möchte. Wenn bei euch das ja so Ben Bogner verfolgt, eine internationale Expansion, dann hat er kürzlich auch sein erstes Geschäft in London eröffnet, weiter in New York und auch in LA. Wie integrierst du denn eigentlich die digitalen Erlebnisse wie Personalisierung und oder persönliches Einkaufen, während die aber weiterhin international expandiert? Ja, wir fokussieren uns schon auch weiter auf den Dachmarkt, weil es einfach unsere Heimat ist. Aber die Internationalisierung fokussiert sich eben auf viel mehr auf US und eben auf China. Für unsere, unsere eigenen Retail Stores lebt es erst mal sehr stark vom Thema CRM. Also da versuchen wir natürlich die Kunden zu registrieren, den Kunden Service zu bieten. Auch wenn man wenn der Reißverschluss nach nach fünf Jahren kaputt geht, werden wir den auch reparieren und da eben eine dauerhafte Kommunikation zu kommen. Ich meine, das klingt sehr, sehr basic, aber es ist natürlich auch relativ viel Arbeit, das eben auch international sicherzustellen. Und das zweite Thema neben neben CRM ist einfach auch das Sortiment, dass wir ihnen klar sagen, wer wir sind und das sich überall ausdrückt. Und das klar mit einem lokalen Touch. Also auch in China ist es noch mal wichtiger, dass man eben das Lokal wichtig macht. Aber dass wir trotzdem als Brand klar zeigen, wo wir sind. Und jetzt hat man ja auch in etablierten Rufen Wintersport natürlich und Skifahren und Skifahren und erweitert sich jedoch auf andere Autoaktivitäten wie Golfreisen und Bardem. Oder wie nutzt ihr eigentlich die digitalen Tools und Social? Kommt es, um die Marke 90er näher zu bringen? Das würde mich mal interessieren. Ja, also Wintersport ist diese DNA, da kommen wir her. Aber wir begleiten eigentlich die Konsumenten ja durchs ganze Jahr, durch alle Seasons. Also neben den sportlichen Aktivitäten haben wir ja auch noch ein relativ breites Ready to Use Programm. Und es geht natürlich stark darum, quasi die Kunden jetzt neu zu gewinnen und eben neue Kunden zu finden. Und auch da würde ich sagen erst mal relativ basic. Wir müssen die Kunden da erreichen, wo sie halt sind. Und das ist bei unserer Zielgruppe schon sehr stark. Instagram auch noch Facebook, muss man ehrlich gesagt sagen. Und da fokussieren wir eben sehr stark auf Social Media und eben auf Paid und Organic in einer sehr engen Kombination und wollen damit natürlich die Kunden erst mal erreichen und dann eben zu uns bringen und entwickeln mit unserer Custom Experience und Manuela. Ich habe noch eine Frage Unsere Zeit ist schon wieder noch eine Minute 50 übrigens, verstehe es überhaupt gar nicht. Wir reden so viel. Sowohl bei deiner Zeit als als auch bei uns hast du eine Reihe von Projekten geleitet, um neue Märkte und Kanäle zu bringen, insbesondere nach China. Was sind denn einige deiner Erkenntnisse bei der Erkundung neuer Marketinginstrumente, um neue Zielgruppen wie zum Beispiel China zu erreichen? Ja, ich denke, das wurde auch schon in der Opening Speech gesagt. Ich habe mir da rein, dass man bei solchen Märkten neuen Medien schnell sein muss, weil das, um relevant in diesen Märkten zu sein, ist das sehr wichtig. Und momentan ist da vor allem in China das Thema von Live Streaming und gerade bei Luxusmarken, da ist immer gleich billig und irgendwie nicht. Das ist nicht unter Kontrolle. Immer. Bei so neuen Medien ist es immer ein bisschen ein Aufschrei und man man hat sehr viele Reservationen und ich glaube aber wirklich, um in diesen Märkten zu gewinnen, ist es wichtig, sie diesen Technologien anzuwenden und den richtigen Weg für die Marke zu finden. Also zum Beispiel bei Livestreams. Das kann man auf ganz unterschiedliche Art machen und man kann das mit Influencern machen. Man kann das mit eigenen Kundenberatern machen, man kann das ganz public machen oder wie zum Beispiel uhrenmarken wie Breitling machen. Das sind so, man tut also so ein Ritual Born to an, kann es natürlich schon deshalb auch ein. Das Konzept von Sarah ist ja kein Luxus, aber sehr interessant, weil die haben einen Livestream gelauncht, der sehr konzeptuell war. Das war 19 Minuten lang, was ungewöhnlich ist für ein Livestream und wie eine Fashion Show eigentlich kreiert war, wo man dann aber auch Produkte shoppen konnte, die Designs etc.. Und ich glaube, das zeigt so neue Möglichkeiten auf. Das ist eigentlich. Man soll nicht Technologie der Technologie willen machen, aber man muss irgendwie die richtige Nische finden, die für die eigene Marke passt. Und ja, man muss. Man kann sich diesen Technologien nicht verweigern, sondern nur man muss sie passen machen. Für die, für die eigene Marke. Und ich denke auch gerade in China, das ist so ein spezieller Markt. Und es gibt so viele Agenturen und lokale Agenturen, die wirklich darauf spezialisiert sind und die wirklich diese Nischen Anwendungen für jede Marke in dem Sinn finden können. Und wenn es dann noch eine Frage für dich und wenn es um neue Produkt und Produktgestaltung geht, weil die das schon immer unglaublich cool kooperativen, hat Svenja auch angesprochen. Nicht nur mit Markendesignern, sondern auch mit seinen Kunden, indem es ihnen ermöglichte, mit Adidas unter Verwendung digitaler Tools zusammenzuarbeiten, wie zum Beispiel Yes, Customizing usw. Wie hast du denn die Erkenntnisse aus den eingereichten Designs genutzt, um die Produkt und Vertriebsstrategie bei Adidas zu optimieren? Ja, das ist ein ganz interessantes Feld, weil diese. Diese Personalisierung war ja vor ein paar Jahren das Ding, ich weiß noch 2016 oder was, wenn man seine EM und EMS personalisieren konnten. Wir waren auch 2016 in China unterwegs, haben uns die Produktionsseite angeschaut und da war in jeder größeren Produktionsstätte war auch so eine Personalisierung secke, wo ich keine Ahnung das Gekritzel von meinen Kindern mir selber auf meine Schuhe machen konnte. Wir haben festgestellt, die wenigsten wollen das, die wenigsten wollen ihre eigenen Designs sehen. Was die Leute sehen wollen, ist Kreation mit Influencer, mit Designern, mit und mit Künstlern im weitesten Sinne. Das heißt, eigentlich ist auf Produktseite das ein viel viel größerer Hebel. Was wir aber gesehen haben, ist der sogenannte User Generated Content, wo einfach diese Authentizität von Menschen, die sich ablichten mit Produkten von Adidas beispielsweise, aber in einem Umfeld, womit andere sich sehr stark wiederfinden und das zu nutzen auf Häuserseiten, auf unseren eigenen Kanälen. Das treibt Konversion, das das interessiert die Leute, also dieser Content, der kreiert wird. Ja, aber eben nicht auf Produktseite, so sehr, wie wir es gedacht haben, weil 90, also damals zumindest fast 90 % der Leute haben trotzdem die kiloweise bei schwarz und Weiß bestellt, kann das ja. Wahnsinn. Aber warum ist es dann die Angst davor? Oder haben die nicht? Also ich glaube, das ist wirklich dieses ich will nicht die einzige Person sein mit diesem einen Produkt, das Design, das ich gestaltet habe oder meinen Namen drauf. Ich möchte jetzt ganz klassisch den Stan Smith weiterhin drauf haben oder wie jetzt mit der Gucci Kollab oder wo dann einmal der der beste Original Schuh in Jahren war der Prada weiße Prada Schuh, wo Prada draufstand. Ja, das wollen die Leute sehen, dass das. Also wenn wir wirklich an Scale denken, ist es das, was was interessiert. Und dann eben in diesem authentischen User Generated Content. Ja, das definitiv. Und das nutzen wir sehr, sehr stark und kommt auch immer mehr. Aber Produkte nicht in der Masse interessant. Sondern das kann man auch schon an die Abschlussfrage und die würde ich gerne euch allen stellen. Wo seht ihr denn die größte Chance für KI oder AI, um in eurem Unternehmen einen Einfluss zu haben? Da mehr mit. Ja, also KI ist ein Mittel zum Zweck, kein Selbstzweck an sich. Deswegen glaube ich, dass das wirklich. Probleme, die wir heute mit den bestehenden Technologien schlechter lösen können, wird es uns ermöglichen, schneller und besser zu lösen. Und für mich ich habe es vorhin schon mal angesprochen, das so eine so eine Wunschvorstellung dieses Predictive Planning und vor allem dieses Trend Prediction. Also ich habe es vorhin gesagt, bei uns ist Ticktack natürlich nach wie vor der wichtigste Social Media Kanal für unsere Kernzielgruppe Und sobald. Und wir haben Taylor Swift heute gehört Wenn Taylor einen von unseren Schuhen anzieht, dann können wir aber darauf wetten, dass das durch die Decke geht und das einfach so ein Diamant auslöst, der unbeschreiblich ist. Und was wir momentan machen, ist versuchen schnell auf diese bestehenden Trends zu reagieren. Aber es gibt Frühindikatoren. Es Trends entwickeln sich nach bestimmten Mustern und diese Frühindikatoren zu nutzen über die AI, das dann zu projizieren in die Zukunft und zu sagen, welche Trends sehen wir denn voraus? Und das dann einfließen zu lassen in unsere Produkt und Volumenplanung Game Changer. Ich weiß, wenn man bei dem als zweiter Mann. Ja, ich kann es ja kurz halten, also wie kann es jetzt wirklich Skalierung, Skalierung und Effizienz jetzt erst mal wirklich konkret? Auch ich sehe das eher als als Tool. Und wir müssen definieren, was wir damit machen und auch wie mit Gefahren umgehen, Weil es gibt ein Content Overload und es wird schwierig zu erkennen, was ist echt? Aber es ist natürlich auch wieder eine Aufwertung von persönlicher Begegnung, von Experience, die man eben in einem Song machen kann. Manuela Also ich finde es einerseits interessant, weil ich kann mich, glaube ich, nur von dir. Da gehört so ein bisschen wie das organisatorisch. Organisationen in Unternehmen verändern wir, weil die AGB, also Sachen. Jeder kann es ja benutzen. Ich finde es spannend, dass diese Applikation eigentlich alles sehr partizipativ ist, ein bisschen wie Social Media das war was eigentlich Jeder kann daran teilnehmen, Was nicht heißt, dass jeder Anteil nehmen sollte. Aber ich bin ziemlich gespannt, wie das zum Beispiel wenn man neue Produkte, die keine Kampagne in die sein kann, ja jetzt eigentlich jeder da mit ein paar Promis irgendwie mal was kreieren in Vereinen oder wo auch immer. Und ich denke, das ist irgendwie ganz spannend, was das für die Zusammenarbeit eigentlich bei so Kreativprojekten heißt. Ich denke nicht, dass das unbedingt dann verwendet wird, aber ich glaube, das ist ganz interessant und mal auch schnell Ideen zu generieren, die schnell zu visualisieren, was man halt vorher nicht konnte, auch wenn man das noch nicht genau so umsetzt. Ich glaube, das ist irgendwie spannend, dass es mehr so die strukturelle, organisatorische Seite. Und wenn ich an die Parfümkategorie denke, dann gibt es immer noch das große Mysterium, das niemand gelöst hat, dass niemand online oder war ja mobil Düfte riechen kann. Also wenn er ja zum Beispiel da irgendwie rausfindet, dass wenn man gewisse Bilder sieht oder gewisse Texte und Musik, dass es dann im Hirn irgendwie die gleichen Muster projiziert wie ein Duft, dann wäre das eine geniale Erfindung. Keine Ahnung, ob das geht, aber wir werden sehen. Das bleibt auf jeden Fall spannend. Danke dafür. Jetzt wollte ich mal schauen, ob es noch Fragen aus dem Publikum. Ah, da hinten ist ja meine. Gibt es also schon belastbare. Daten, was jetzt AI angeht in den Unternehmen? Also ich kann mir. Schon vorstellen virtuelle. App runter oder auch bei Duft, wenn ich diese Consumer Journey mitgemacht habe. Bis zum Ende kaufe ich neu Produkt und ohne das es gerochen hat und auch kein Ritual. Also seht ihr schon ein Return on best bei dem Invest in diese Technologien oder sagt ihr nein ausgefeilt oder es ist eher die Pionierarbeit, die man jetzt leistet, als das man schon und wirtschaftlichen Erfolg hat. Also bei uns ist es so, dass all das, was Konsumenten facing ist, Sind wir noch in dieser Pilotphase, würde ich sagen, es gibt erste Anzeichen, definitiv. Aber auch da wäre es zu früh, um jetzt zu sagen, das ist jetzt schon skalierbar oder wirklich belastbar. Die Daten intern würde ich sagen definitiv. Also das, was ich am Anfang angesprochen habe mit diesen Produktdaten, das ist nicht das sexy Thema, aber ein ganz, ganz wichtiges. Und da sehen wir ja, dass die Kosten extrem runtergehen, weil die Effizienzsteigerung ist phänomenal und auch hin zum Kunden sehen wir, dass mehr Verständnis, mehr mehr Bereitschaft, vielleicht auch mehr mehr Mut für neue Produkte da ist, weil wir einfach in der Lage sind, früher bessere, umfassendere Informationen zur Verfügung zu stellen. Und das können wir definitiv jetzt schon sehen. Und viele Fragen stellen. Zu der ersten, die Wie glaubt sie, dass die Expertise, die die Leute an den Tisch bringen müssen, zum Beispiel den Job Interview in zehn Jahren empfehlen? Wir sagen wir uns anschauen, wie sich das ändern wird, weil vor zehn Jahren musste ich als Designer ein Portfolio vorzeigen. Kann unfassbar gut malen kann ich heutzutage, könnte ich in einer Studie sagen. Bei mir wird ein Schuh mit drei Seiten auf der Seite und ein Teddybär auf der Sohle. Ich würde das kreieren, Ich könnte das vorzeigen und ich würde den Schuh dann machen, der sich gut verkaufen will. Sich die Expertise von verschiedenen Dimensionen verändern. Ähm, gegen 1. Million $ quatschen? Wirklich? Also ich meine, du. Du hast es angesprochen. Ich glaube, und ich kann nur sagen, mehr So ein gut Feeling ist es auf jeden Fall. Ist Gary. Also es wird. Die Jobs, die wir alle wahrscheinlich hier in diesem Raum haben, gefährden. Zum gewissen Teil, Davon bin ich überzeugt, weil es eben wirklich um hochqualifizierte, auch kreative Jobs geht, die eh schon, ja sehr, sehr weit fortgeschritten sind, eben sehr komplexe Anwendungsfelder haben. Und da das ist keine Antwort auf die Frage. Aber ich glaube, ich will. Mich würde interessieren, ob jemand die Antwort hat. Wahrscheinlich nicht. Ich glaube, es gibt. Es wird sich extrem stark verändern, weil wie du sagst, AI ist jetzt ein Hilfsmittel für uns, um bestehende Anwendungsfelder bestehende Probleme besser zu lösen. Das wird es sicher auch in den nächsten Jahren sein, aber irgendwann wird es sicher Anwendungsfelder geben. Wo ich sag Brauche ich den Designer noch bei Adidas? Wirklich? Könnte passieren. Frage mich auch immer, wie das ist in der Schule. Man kann Aufsätze, man muss ja nichts mehr selber machen und sagt eigentlich muss es sein. Mehr mündliche Prüfung, weil das der einzige Ort, wo man nicht schummeln kann. Also eine mündliche Prüfung ist es eigentlich, wo du wirklich bestehst aus deinem wirklichen Können. Aber ansonsten kannst du ja Doktorarbeit bt. Guten Tag. Ich wollte nur noch hinzufügen Es ist eine sehr spannende Frage. Finde ich auch. Ich glaube heutzutage, ich weiß nicht, wie das bei Adidas ist, aber bei kleineren Marken sind all diese Funktionen immer noch Das machen externe Agenturen, die sind. Diese Skills existieren noch nicht in Unternehmen und ich glaube ein wichtiger Schritt wird sein das es. Ja, es wird ein Anforderungsprofil für Kreative sein, das genauso wie heutzutage. Ich habe vor zehn Jahren im Marketing angefangen, da musste man noch nicht Social Media können. Heute muss man das können. Ich glaube, das ist so eine einfach. Das ist ja, dass wir zu einer Anforderung kommen, dass man als kreative Person, dass das benutzen kann. Und ich bin optimistisch gesagt. Deshalb glaube ich so ein bisschen, wie ich gesagt habe, die Kreativen werden kreativer und so die Normalos, die werden ein bisschen kreativer. Also ich glaube, das ist so gut wie jeder kann jetzt ein bisschen kreativ sein, aber ich glaube, wie gesagt, wenn man nicht die richtigen Inputs gibt und nicht die Vision hat, die größere Vision, die steckt und die Kreativität, dann glaube ich, kann ich jetzt nicht plötzlich irgendwie der neue Modedesigner vor einer Gucci sein. Also ich glaube nicht, dass es so einfach ist. Also ich hoffe nicht. Ich weiß auch nicht. Dann würde ich sagen vielen, vielen lieben Dank, Britta, Manuela Und nun denn, unter großen Applaus. Ich habe auch schon ein weitergeben können, aber danke schön.

Mi persona, Pablo Cáceres, a sus órdenes, he trabajado con Emarsys más de diez años. Abrimos el mercado mexicano. Yo creo que nos conocemos con muchos de ustedes y la verdad es un privilegio y un honor estar aquí representando al equipo que represento. De nuevo, yo creo que las gracias, más gracias, vamos a dar tres gracias a los profesionales. Yo creo que la gente que trabaja en marketing, cada vez el trabajo es más complejo de realizar. Entonces, gracias por tomarse ese tiempo para estar acá con nosotros y compartir a nuestros clientes que obviamente hacen que esto sea posible, a nuestros socios comerciales y obviamente, a nuestros grandes speakers que tenemos preparados para la tarde de hoy. Ahora, vamos a hablar un poco del 2024. La verdad, un año con challenges, creo que para todos, con tratando de reinventarse cada vez más, especialmente en Latinoamérica y creo que es una constante el cambio. Yo creo que son tres cosas fundamentales que han pasado en estos últimos meses y estos últimos años no? Yo creo que los, en primer lugar es el empoderamiento que tienen los consumidores. Creo que la vara cada vez está más, más alta y ellos esperan mucho más de nosotros como marcas, como profesionales de marketing. Entonces, yo creo que lo importante acá es que ese trabajo ha sido cada vez más complejo para nosotros, con la explosión de canales que tenemos. Entonces, realmente es tener esa empatía con las personas que trabaja en marketing, que realmente no es un trabajo fácil y realmente tenemos que estar siempre ahí para los consumidores. Especialmente ahora que están más adelante del Buying Cycle que estaban antes, o sea que están realmente ya interactuando con nuestra marca. Realmente ellos ya han hecho mucho trabajo detrás. Entonces lo que tene eso hace que este trabajo sea muy, muy complicado. Además de eso, ellos quieren la personalización a través de todos los canales que nosotros manejamos y cada vez son más canales. Entonces, sigue siendo más y más complicada el trabajo y encima de eso tenemos que lidiar con la parte de la privacidad ahora. Yo creo que la privacidad de los datos ahora está muy, muy en boga y debería estarlo siempre. Yo quiero ver ahora con la parte de inteligencia artificial, estamos viendo que hay muchas cosas que pueden irse de las manos si no son manejadas de forma adecuada. Y para finalizar, la disrupción empresarial, siempre el constante cambio que estamos teniendo dentro del mercado, dentro de las empresas donde vimos un influjo de inversión después de los temas COVID para todo lo que era la transformación y la digitalización de las empresas pero ahora con el capital cada vez más costoso. Yo creo que de que hay un cambio y ahora es optimizar lo que tenemos, hacer más con menos, ser muy inteligentes en las inversiones que tenemos. Y esas son las conversaciones que estamos teniendo día a día aquí con nosotros, con ustedes, con nuestros partners, para ver exactamente cómo podemos ayudarles hacer más y mejor y realmente optimizar esos procesos. Y para ello, yo creo que el lema de nuestro de este año se llama transformación, tradición y transformación. Por qué eso es importante? Porque en primer lugar, la parte de tradición. Tradición hace, es el corazón de una empresa. Realmente el alma, que es lo que la gente ama realmente de esa empresa persé. Y la parte de la transformación, por otro lado, es cómo nosotros maximizamos esos procesos de marketing para poder ser mejores y nos transformamos constantemente. Entonces es el tema de este año dentro del Power to the marketer, porque realmente queremos tomar esa sinergia de estos dos mundos. Y vamos con el primer speaker que realmente es un gran amigo de Emarsys, es un gran amigo de la industria y yo creo que no necesita introducción. Pero bueno, Pierre, por favor acompáñanos. Muchas gracias por estar aquí. Gracias, Pablo. Te voy a robar el clicker. Muchísimas gracias a Emarsys por la invitación y un gusto ver que Emarsys está haciendo más en México ahorita. Entonces creo que tenemos mucho por hacer en conjunto. Una pequeña anécdota antes de empezar la presentación, que sepan que antes de crear la AMVO, diez años atrás, en julio de 2014, yo trabajé 15 años, como CMO, ok? Con distintos roles, pero siempre en el mundo del consumo masivo. En inglés, dicen Fast Moving Consumer Goods. Cuando llegué al mundo del comercio electrónico me di cuenta que Fast Moving no tenía el mismo sentido en el mundo digital que del mundo tradicional, ok? Esas cosas se mueven mucho más rápidamente. Entonces, la presentación de hoy vamos a platicar entonces de lo que está pasando en México y en América Latina, pues Game Over. El 52% de las empresas de Fortune 500 ya desaparecieron, ok? Las empresas que exigían 30 años atrás en esta lista ya no están. Y cuando aplicamos esto, eso es principalmente por un tema de transformación digital o falta de transformación digital. Cuando estamos mirando lo que está sucediendo en el Retail a nivel global, estamos viendo que este fenómeno también existe. Muchos hablamos del cierre de Blockbuster, por ejemplo, de otras tiendas, pero olvidamos ver el lado positivo de lo que está pasando. Específicamente, a nivel global, los diez Retailers más grandes en revenues, son empresas que no inician 20 años atrás. Estamos hablando obviamente de Amazon, estamos hablando de JD.com de China, de Alibaba, pero también de Pinduodua, que muchos conocemos por TEMU en México. Digo que se creó hace menos de diez años. Entonces, la tecnología está transformando nuestro mundo del Retail al nivel global, pero también en México. Y recuerdo que una empresa como Shein, que está hoy en el top cinco de los retailers más grandes, el IA en México solamente llegó a México en 2018. 2018, ya está en el top cinco. Imagínense. Y qué decir de TEMU que estamos viendo el número de descargas cada mes el lanzó hace dos años nada más en México. Entonces, bueno, se están revolucionando el mundo del retail. Dice Jeff Bezos dijo, no hay alternativa a la transformación digital. Las empresas con visión de futuro se forman nuevas opciones estratégicas, lo que no se adaptan, fracasarán. Yo tengo muchísimo optimismo pensando en América Latina en México, cuando estamos sabiendo todos los factores favorables que tenemos con nosotros para que crezca el retail y el retail digital, específicamente. El acceso a Internet lo vamos a platicar ahorita. Industrias tradicionales, el 80% de las industrias en México, en Latam, son industrias tradicionales. Estamos hablando de casi 300 millones de latinos que están comprando en línea ya el día de hoy. Estamos hablando de muchísima competencia, no solamente local, pero también regional, internacional y desde Asia. Hay muchísimo capital disponible, aunque estamos en un periodo de crisis. El año pasado, sin dárselos más de 15 mil millones de dólares en startups de la zona. Regulaciones y políticas públicas todavía ayudan bastante. En Brasil, en Chile, en Colombia, se desarrollan políticas para ayudar al crecimiento del comercio electrónico. La infraestructura tecnológica se está desarrollando. Hay cada día más talento. El año pasado se capacitaron más de 20 mil millones, 20 millones, perdón, de latinos en línea con temáticas de tecnología y cultura de innovación, la Ciudad de México, Santiago y San Pablo son tres ciudades de las más inovantes en el mundo. Si hablamos de la penetración de Internet, es brutal ver el crecimiento que hemos tenido a lo largo de los diez 15 últimos años. Yo llegué a México en 2009, con 30% de penetración de Internet. Ahorita estamos arriba del 70%. Podemos ver que en América Latina estamos ahorita muy cerca de los países desarrollados, como de Europa, por ejemplo. Específicamente tenemos a Argentina y a Colombia, que están en Chile, perdón, que están casi arriba de ellos. Entonces, la penetración Internet como muy interesante. Cuando estamos viendo el consumo de internet por persona, estamos arriba del promedio mundial. Por ejemplo, para Social Media y Messaging estamos en 3 horas y 31 y en América Latina hay 2 horas y 25 al nivel global. Estamos viendo que el uso de cualquier tipo de cosa relación con lo digital, estamos arriba del promedio mundial. Entonces hay algo interesante sucediendo en la región. Una cosa que pasó en América Latina que no sucedió en otros países, es que nosotros básicamente desarrollamos el acceso a Internet con el desarrollo de redes sociales. Y aquí cuando estamos haciendo las dos curvas está increíble ver como están relacionados los dos. Eso significa que muchos de nosotros, latinos, básicamente nos encontramos primero redes sociales, pero también el comercio electrónico como se vaya desarrollando en Internet, a diferencia de Europa, donde todo eso llegó mucho más tarde. Y hablando del comercio electrónico específicamente, como se puede ver, América Latina es la zona que tiene más crecimiento desde muchos años y aunque hay una desaceleración los últimos años, seguimos dejando el crecimiento global. Entonces, muchos aspectos muy positivos en la región que explican el crecimiento que estamos teniendo, pero también pensando al futuro, que explica el crecimiento que vamos a tener. México lo saben, es el país que crece más con 25% el año pasado, el primer semestre nuevamente crecimos arriba del 20% en valor excepcional. Somos el país número siete en porcentaje de las ventas en línea del total del canal minorista, así que realmente muy positivo, donde nos posicionamos. Creo que en diez años el valor del comercio electrónico en México se multiplicó por 12. Ahora les voy a platicar del consumidor. Como lo mencionó Pablo, hay un cambio dramático en el consumidor, no solamente en 2024. Cuando hablamos de símbolos, el triángulo es un símbolo que habla de conexiones, de equilibrio, de armonía, de creatividad también. Aquí, en este triángulo entre el consumidor, las marcas y los Retailers, teníamos una relación muy transaccional en el pasado y aquí tenemos un par de palabras claves que hablan de la relación que se tenían entre cada uno de los actores de este triángulo, valor de marca, fidelización, lealtad, feedback, cosas bastante básicas y muy transaccionales. Todos los cambios que estamos viendo el acceso al mundo digital está revolucionando, la relación que tenemos con el consumidor y está impactando de forma dramática la relación que tiene el consumidor con las marcas, el consumidor con los Retailers, los Retailers con las marcas, las marcas con los Retailers, etcétera. La conectividad permanente en América Latina el 80% de la gente tiene acceso a dispositivos móviles. La búsqueda de experiencias personalizadas, según Accenture, el 76 de los latinos esperan tener como experiencias que las empresas entienden mejor las necesidades y expectativas que tienen. Preferencias por la conveniencia y la eficiencia al 70%, según PwC, los consumidores de la región considera que la conveniencia es un factor clave en la decisión de compra. Y algo que estamos viendo cada día más, que es muy fuerte en Europa, que está llegando en América Latina, el 83% de los consumidores prefieren comprar marcas que tienen un compromiso con el medio ambiente. Más allá del medio ambiente, lo que les interesa son marcas que tienen un sentido, que tienen un compromiso, algo distinto que solamente un producto o un servicio que vender. Y así se ve impactado este triángulo mágico. Pasamos de un triángulo transaccional a una relación, a un ángulo relacional donde estamos viendo que estamos hablando de más interacciones, de contenido más personalizado, de ventas directas, de exclusividad, de reseñas, etcétera, etcétera. Las consecuencias para nosotros marcas retailers, es decir, basadas en datos, el consumidor se vuelve un socio, no solamente un consumidor, experiencias omnicanales, modelos de negocios innovadores, personalizaciones a gran escala, asociaciones estratégicas y plataformas tecnológicas integradas. Entonces, estamos viendo un par de estrategias ganadoras muy interesantes que les voy a presentar. Pero antes de todo les digo, no les voy a platicar de tecnología porque el equipo de Emarsys va a tener, nos va a compartir contenido muy interesante con los speakers. Después decidí tomar un ángulo totalmente distinto. Al final del día, la tecnología está aquí para apoyarnos a tener más éxito, pero algo importante que necesitamos con la tecnología son grandes ideas. Las ideas son el punto de partida para todos nosotros y la tecnología es una herramienta para ayudarnos. Y como dicen, las herramientas son tan buenas como las personas que las usan. Entonces, aquí hay un par de estrategias ganadoras y les voy a enseñar tres ejemplos que ganaron premios de creatividad este año en Cannes, hace menos de un mes, que demuestran de forma muy concreta como una marca usando la tecnología puede tener mucho impacto en sus negocios. Entonces, estamos hablando de diseñar experiencias memorables, innovar para impactar, dominar el arte de la comunicación de marca, construyendo marcas sostenibles, decodificando el dato y tener una cultura conectada. Pero al final del día son ustedes con sus ideas, sus estrategias que van a tener esos grandes resultados. No dependemos solamente de la tecnología como la vamos a usar. Les quiero platicar ahorita para cerrar un poquito esta introducción de porque nosotros somos muy optimistas siguiendo hacia el futuro. Vimos los crecimientos impresionantes que tenemos en México y en América Latina, pero hay mucho por venir todavía. El primero, lo más sencillo, lo más obvio es que en los cinco próximos años vamos a tener 14 millones de nuevos usuarios de Internet en México. Y escuchamos el discurso y los planes de la nueva presidenta electa, y básicamente el acceso a Internet es una de sus prioridades para todas zonas que no tiene acceso a día de hoy. Entonces, eso nos va a impactar de forma importante y vamos a seguir creciendo por esta razón. El segundo, es la clase media. Nosotros estimamos desde el ambo que el 47% de los compradores en línea en México, son gente de la clase media, CDE, que representan el 82% de la población en México. Entonces hay una oportunidad que no estamos aprovechando como marcas, como retailers, que es la clase media. Eso tiene muchas consecuencias pensando en logística, en oferta, en métodos de pago obviamente, la oportunidad de está y solamente atacamos la parte visible del iceberg. La inclusión financiera es algo relacionado con el punto anterior, pero para que sepan, nosotros trabajamos hace varios años con una grande empresa de consultoría. Analizamos en el mundo cuáles son los factores que más crecimiento, de mejor correlación con el comercio electrónico. Entonces, en otras palabras, que mejor impacto tiene en comercio electrónico. El primer factor es la inclusión financiera. En México solamente, bueno, el 95% de la gente prefiere pagar en efectivo. El 68% de la gente que tiene tarjetas de crédito y débito, prefiere pagar en efectivo. Y aquí tenemos una gran oportunidad para transformar a los consumidores tradicionales mexicanos que pagan en efectivo, en compradores en linea. La omnicanalidad, bueno, esta parte, tenemos 13% de las ventas del canal minorista en línea, pero en realidad mucha gente sigue comprando en las tiendas físicas. El 90% de los mexicanos interactúan entre los dos canales. Entonces, hay mucho que tenemos que hacer para fortalecer la colaboración entre los distintos canales. Lo que hemos visto en Estados Unidos, empresas como Target venden 50% más en su ticket omnicanal que en los tickets online o los ticket de tiendas físicas. Entonces, y además son tickets que son mucho más profitables. Las redes sociales, el 25% de los mexicanos declaran comprar a través de redes sociales. En China, el 50% está comprando a través de redes sociales. TikTok Shop está por llegar a México. Eso va a transformar de forma brutal nuestra forma de comprar y interactuar con los consumidores porque la gente va a querer, tener contexto, con contenido distinto, contenido video, por ejemplo, entre otras cosas. Entonces también tenemos que monitorear esto. En México, el cada día 70 millones de mexicanos se conectan a TikTok cada día. Es brutal. Entonces, tenemos que aprovechar esta tendencia. En las pymes, desafortunadamente representan menos del 10% de este ecosistema. Entonces tenemos una gran oportunidad aquí. Lo que hemos visto, por ejemplo en China, es que una gran parte de las ventas vienen de empresas más chiquitas. Tenemos que hacerles un espacio, ayudarles a crecer más. El comercio transfronterizo, afuera, Outbound, es una gran oportunidad todavía. 3% de las empresas que venden en línea exportan afuera de México. Era el principal beneficio de hace años atrás cuando estamos platicando de los beneficios del comercio electrónico con Retailers estaban diciendo, vas a poder tener un acceso global. Diez años más tarde, solamente el 3% venden, ok? En México, tenemos 66 millones de personas que compran en línea cada año. Afuera de México, hay diez veces más que compran afuera de sus países, que el mercado es diez veces más grande para nosotros que el mercado local. Y por fin, el B2B, el comercio entre empresas, el valor es cuatro veces más grande que el que el sector B2C y muy pocas empresas en México lo están aprovechando. Entonces, como lo pueden ver, hay muchos factores optimistas de crecimiento hacia el futuro. Ok? Tenemos la oportunidad como empresas tradicionales de aprovecharlo o no, pero regresando al punto de inicio, es un momento clave donde hay posiciones que se pueden tomar. Eso depende un poquito de ustedes, cómo quieren aprovechar esta tecnología para tener éxito o no. Les voy dejar solamente con una pregunta. Cuál es el papel que ustedes quieren tomar en la adopción estratégica de esas tecnologías para capitalizar esas oportunidades? Muchísimas gracias. Pues está súper interesante toda la data. No sé si alguna vez, en relación a nuestro nicho, que es el tema de aromas, iba muy dirigido a B2B ambientación y creación de espacios y momentos a través de aromas. No sé, si tú, dentro de todo este conocimiento, has visto relacionado al aroma algún dato interesante para potenciar redes sociales para B2B. Sinceramente no. No creo que no sepa, ok? Puedo solamente regresar al tema del B2B que está totalmente subdesarrollado en México. Apenas es un par de meses Amazon lanzó su plataforma Amazon Business. Estamos viendo el crecimiento fuerte de Alibaba, que es una plataforma B2B inicialmente. No, no Aliexpress, Alibaba. Sino me equivoco, ahora de eso es una plataforma, eso es número, no sé si es oficial, pero el segundo país después de Estados Unidos para Alibaba, México, ok? Números de compradores B2B. Entonces, hay un potencial tremendo para aromas, no sé. Pero te propongo investigar, quizás después. Ok, pero siendo oportunidad. Muchas gracias. Tú cómo podrías definir en un step by step el desarrollo de una idea creativa para sacarla al aire? El desarrollo de una idea como proceso creativo? El proceso de esa idea que comentabas que todo parte de ahí, cómo es ese proceso? Un step by step sencillo para poderla sacar a flote. Bueno, de mi vida anterior, entonces como un excelente brief que involucrando a todo tu empresa del área comercial, al área de logística para que todos estén onboard. Y desarrollar una red de agencias potente con expertos de cada área: in terms of performance marketing, la agencia de creatividad, etcétera. Trabajar con un grupo de agencias al mismo tiempo es muy poderoso, mejor que hacen muchas empresas es solamente con una agencia, ok? Y después buscar a los demás para cumplimentar. Nosotros trabajamos siempre con todas las agencias al mismo tiempo para alinear la idea creativa con su ejecución. No sé si te platiqué, si te contesté, pero lo más importante es tener una agencia creativa, estratégica que te ayude a bajar justamente tus objetivos de negocio a grandes ideas como las que vimos. Okay. Okay. Y por ejemplo, nada más rápido estas áreas que juntas en una misma reunión. Qué áreas son las principales o quienes están en esas juntas? Marketing, ventas específicamente. Marketing y ventas.

Buenas tardes a todos y bienvenidos de vuelta. Mi nombre es Camila Olaechea y yo soy la líder de Emarsys para Brasil. Tengo el placer de estar acompañándolos aquí hoy día en México en el evento y yo voy a liderar el panel con nuestros clientes Grupo AXO, Petco, Coppel. Vamos a conversar un poco sobre la experiencia omnicanal y cómo las marcas están evolucionando también con la digitalización del cliente. Entonces, sin más ni menos, voy a invitar a David, a Dulce y a Eduardo a subir al palco para comenzar las preguntas y la conversación, gracias. Bueno, comencemos contigo, David, cuéntanos, me gustaría que todos cuenten un poco su experiencia profesional, cómo llegaron a la posición a la que están y los desafíos en los que se encuentran hoy día en sus respectivas marcas. Bueno, pues yo soy un intruso aquí, yo no soy marketero, primera cosa que tengo que confesar. Yo vengo del mundo del riesgo de crédito del consumo basado en la analítica, no? Y bueno, caí en esto del CRM y de la personalización, porque se parece mucho, se parece mucho lo que es el riesgo de crédito al consumo con el CRM, en el sentido de que en el límite de crédito al consumo tú usas la analítica, usas la data para entender al cliente y para poder prevenir que caigan en mora. La variable objetivo es que el cliente se mantenga al corriente. En el caso del CRM, pues es que la variable objetivo pues que el cliente recompre básicamente no? Y en el mejor de los casos, el Customer Lifetime Value. Entonces así fue como fue mi transición del mundo del riesgo del crédito a el marketing y aquí estoy aprendiendo con mucho gusto y aprendiendo mucho de ustedes. Muchas gracias por invitarme. Gracias a ti, David. Hola, Qué tal? Yo soy dulce. Soy de Petco. Llevo seis años prácticamente en la empresa. Yo también voy a confesar que no soy marketera. Soy ingeniera matemática, entonces, pues se preguntarán que hago en marketing, no? Más que nada es el tema de que yo he aprendido mucho a través de los datos y sé lo poderosos que son, entonces, creo que no hay nadie que vaya mejora a comunicarle a los clientes, que debe de comprar sino alguien que los conoce, no? Algo que hablaba mi colega Guillermo, era el tema de la consistencia de la data. Y eso, es lo que me ha llevado a ir de ese lado, porque quería ver cómo impactaban los números con los clientes, no? Era como más directa la forma en la que nos corelacionamos con ellos y para mí eso fue lo que me llamó la atención a llegar de este lado, entonces así es como me convertí en dirían los panelistas pasados en un usuario de completamente de Emarsys, que auxilia a todas las demás áreas para la comunicación dentro de Petco. Gracias, Dulce. Muy bien, soy Eduardo, yo, por mi acento, parece que no soy mexicano, soy brasileño pero ya vivo hace siete años aquí en México. Bueno, mi escuela siempre fue, yo soy marketero de mi universidad, pero mi escuela siempre fue Analytics. Siempre mi pasión fue consumidor de datos, no? Este, pero grupo AXO es una empresa de Retail. Este puesto a cuatro años ahí es mi primera empresa en la parte de Retail, pero yo vengo de una escuela muy fuerte de números del mercado petroquímico. Otro mundo, no? Pero ahí fue donde tuve mi pasión por números. Después pasé por muchas empresas de CPG desde Kraft Foods, Modelez y ahí fue donde el momento que yo logré poder conectar un poco este tema de datos con consumidor. Yo creo que hoy mucho más efectivo que nunca empresa de Retail que logra ver los resultados y lo que aplica de lo que sacan los números y toda estrategia que construye de una forma muy rápida. Axo hace cuatro años de cuando yo empecé a trabajar ahí no llevaba nada con el tema de CRM que comentaron. Era sin estrategia, muchos clientes, muchas marcas, muy desestructurado. Entonces vengo con este mucho drive de tener visión de cliente, tener una visión consumer-centric y data-driven, no? Este comunicación personalizada no toma decisiones basado en lo que nuestro consumidor. Y esto se aplica mucho a dos etapas que es comunicación de adquisición y comunicación de retención. Gracias Eduardo. Yo creo que es super interesante comentar que cada uno tuvo caminos diferentes y hoy día los tres comentaron data y customer centric, no? Entonces pensando que cada una de las marcas que tienen ustedes venden productos diferentes Fashion, Pets, productos departamental. Cuál dirían o sea qué milestone, qué logro compartirían aquí con el público para contar, basado en que revolucionó la experiencia del cliente que ofrecen ustedes hoy día. Pues, si quieren empiezo yo. Yo creo que lo que más ha hecho el cambio dentro de Petco es que toda la comunicación se siente natural. Es decir, que todos nuestros clientes sienten que no tienen que explicarnos nada más, más que tienen un perrito o un gatito, como se llama y su edad. Nosotros nos encargamos de todo lo demás. Creo que el hecho de que hayamos tenido la visión de recopilar absolutamente todos estos datos, que prácticamente son como los nuevos hijos de hoy y que conozcamos cuáles son las necesidades de nuestras mascotas y cómo comunicárselas a nuestros clientes. Que prácticamente la idea es como un papá primerizo. No todos saben que se le debe de dar de alimento, no todos saben qué juguetes deben de tener sus mascotas o qué necesidades tienen que cubrir. y nosotros nos encargamos de decirles a nuestros usuarios cómo cuidar de su mascota sin que lo sientan como un regaño no? a nadie nos gusta que nos regañen. Entonces, a lo que me refiero con de forma natural es que la información fluye a través de todos los canales que tenemos, con Emarsys en cada canal respecto a la interacción que tienen con cada uno de ellos porque todos tenemos un canal favorito, no? Así como tenemos plataformas de streaming favoritas, aplica exactamente lo mismo para todo el tema de omnicanalidad. No es lo mismo ser multicanal a hacer, a tener omnicanalidad dentro de las plataformas, no? Entonces, creo que el reto de Petco cuando centralizó toda la información de nuestro CRM dentro de la plataforma de SAP, fue el mayor acierto porque toda la comunicación está homogénea. Entonces, todo fluye, como si los hubiéramos visto desde que adoptaron a su cachorrito hasta que se vuelve un perrito o un gatito senior. Bueno, desde el punto de vista de Coppel en la experiencia de Coppel, creo que esta detonado este hito por la formación del área de CRM que internamente le decimos G como gestión estratégica del cliente. Cada quien le pone lo que quiere, pero básicamente lo que tiene de diferencia es el enfoque en el cliente. En vez del enfoque en el producto entendido como que el enfoque en el producto, pues tú quieres vender lo más que puedes de todos los productos que tienes en el inventario, en el enfoque en el cliente, cambias la perspectiva y tú te enfocas a ver que analizas al cliente, entiendes qué es lo que quiere, lo que estaba comentando Guillermo hace rato también, no? Entiendes qué es lo que quiere el cliente y entonces le ofreces lo que quiere el cliente. Entonces eso representó un cambio fundamental de filosofía, de visión, de procesos, de estrategia, que de cara al cliente, en lo que se nota es que antes teníamos este 30 categorías comerciales, 12 categorías financieras, como saben, también tenemos bancos afuera, tenemos services financieros, préstamo personal, seguros, una serie de recursos financieros más lo departamental. Entonces, pues al cliente pues básicamente se le bombardeaba, no? Todo el tiempo con cualquier cantidad de mensajes y luego hasta presumíamos de los miles de millones de emails que mandábamos los ponemos como un KPI que lo que estábamos orgullosos y no. No o sea, no se trata de eso, sino al revés, ahora lo que tratamos, de lo que medimos es toda esta mensajería que estamos mandando al cliente, tiene que convertirse en mayor incremento del Customer Lifetime Value. Y este desde el punto de vista del cliente, pues ya deja de recibir tantos mensajes, empieza a recibir menos mensajes por canales más adecuados, mensajes más relevantes que lo invitan a este a permanecer con Coppel, no? Bueno, creo que en esos cuatro journeys que tenemos ahí yo veo se divide en dos fases. Una Change Management, porque si un negocio no entiende el valor de usar los datos del consumidor para toma de decisión, va a ser muy difícil avanzar en cualquier cosa, no? Porque KPI de business ventas, este margen, todo lo que estamos viendo esto toda empresa hace, no? Ahora, cuando los marketeros realmente empiezan a utilizar los datos de frecuencia de compra, recompra, ticket promedio de este cliente y empieza a entender mucho más quién es un perfil de cliente. Creo que esta parte del mensaje para mí es una primera fase que yo creo que logramos muy bien hacer y tiene mucho espacio todavía para mover, pero creo que avanzamos muy bien, no? Y yo creo que iba por una segunda fase, no? Que es una fase que ahí empezamos a implementar una estrategia de cómo tratar este cliente, sea que en nuestro caso utilizamos mucho estrategia de ciclo de vida de cliente para generar comunicación y entender este cliente y dentro de esa segunda fase tenga tecnología, no? Y ahí son las tecnologías que nos ayudan a centralizar datos como comentaron. Tienen una vista única de cliente, no me importa que canal y en el caso de grupo AXO como son muchas marcas, tiene una base de clientes de muchas marcas, porque al final en este momento que centralizamos sus datos personales, datos transaccionales y ahí sí podemos generar inteligencia de comunicación, lo que fuera para las estrategias que tenemos adoptadas. Pero yo creo que dividiría esta evolución que logramos en esas dos fases, Change Management y después más estratégico y como organización de resultados. Sí, ahí comentaron bastante, no? La importancia entender el cliente, entender la oferta de la marca y cómo acompañamos durante todo el Customer Journey del cliente con el mensaje correcto. Entonces, creo que aquí siempre, a veces cuando hablamos de omnicanalidad, como tú bien dijiste Dulce, realmente estamos hablando de multi channel y no de omnichannel. Cuando pensamos en el omnichannel, cuál fue la estrategia que ustedes tomaron para realmente traer una estrategia on y off que sea consistente? Bueno, principalmente creo que el tema de la centralización de la información de siempre ver más allá que a lo mejor de momento tú piensas solo ocupo A, B, y C. Y algo que hizo muy bien Petco, fue pensar en ABCDEFG y aunque no tuviera las herramientas para tratar toda esa información en ese momento. Entonces, hoy que ya somos una empresa más robusta, creo que podemos usar toda esa data que estuvimos recolectando durante todo este tiempo para darle al cliente una experiencia, pues 360, no? Porque al final un cliente que va a la tienda física va a recibir un correo de ayúdanos a calificar el producto que compraste en tienda aunque no hayas comprado en e-commerce y viceversa, no? A su vez, todo el tema de nosotros tenemos aproximadamente más de 40 automatizaciones que se alimentan de qué es lo que hace el cliente y a todos conocen el tema de diagramas de procesos de hace A, sigue B, sino hace B, hace C, etcétera. Entonces ya se imaginarán la cantidad de información que tenemos del cliente para tener tantos journeys y que seguimos implementando más. Y creo que el tema de la omnicanalidad, va de la mano con toda esta información y como bien mencionaba David, el tema de que no es cuánto le mandes en volumen, sino la calidad de lo que mandes, no? Entonces, el tema de omnicanalidad es eso, como saber qué mandar, en qué canal y en qué momento en específico le es funcional esa información al cliente. Porque no es lo mismo que hoy, que es un cachorro, le hables de la etapa senior, a cuando es un está en la transición de un cachorro a un adulto en donde necesita para morder, para desestresarse, etcétera. Entonces, tenemos que tener súper claro el customer journey en el que está en ese momento para hablarle de la manera correcta y que no caigamos en mandar por mandar porque al principio todos hemos pasado por eso de que no tenemos claro una estrategia y entonces, lo que nos exigen es vender y no importa si terminamos, digamos, erosionando esa base de contactos que tanto trabajo cuesta, no? Porque todos sabemos lo importante que es la data y cuánto trabajo cuesta obtenerla. Tan simple cuánto cuesta obtener un cliente en redes sociales y que no aprovechemos que él quiso tener ese primer contacto con todo el ecosistema de la omnicanalidad para lograr mantenerlo de principio a fin y que todavía le tenga tanto amor a quedarse con nosotros que decida adoptar, por ejemplo, después de que haya perdido a su mascota, no? Entonces creo que es importante todo el tema de omnicanalidad para que él sienta que le estamos hablando desde el lado del ojo de un experto. Y trajiste un punto importante que es la personalización, no? En toda la jornada omnicanal. Qué consejos compartirían aquí con todos para conseguir esa personalización? Sea personalización, porque estamos acompañándolo en el ciclo de vida, porque conocemos el producto correcto para el pet, para la familia, para la persona que le gusta la moda. Cómo hoy día logramos esa personalización de la forma más asertiva y por el canal también más relevante para el cliente? Bueno, a ver, aquí les voy a pasar unos tips que la competencia que anda por ahí. Ahí están. Bueno, en el caso de las tiendas departamentales es un reto bastante interesante porque, estaba diciendo Dulce del journey del perrito, no? Pues tú tienes, tú tienes a una persona, un cliente que está en un journey, en un ciclo de vida muy asociado a su mascota, no? Y lo puedes ir acompañando. En el caso de las tiendas departamentales, cuando tienes 30 categorías, cada vez que llega un cliente a comprar algo está en un journey diferente. El día que llega a comprar un asador, es porque pues está montando este en el journey de montar en su jardín, no? Que no es lo mismo cuando llega compre una carreola o cuando llega a comprar ropa. Son journey diferentes, lo que lo hace bastante complejo. En este entorno tan complejo y también más los servicios, las categorías financieras, lo que estamos tratando de hacer nosotros es, no tirar la hiper personalización entendida como que a cada cliente le voy a hablar diferente, sino entender los diferentes segmentos y los diferentes momentos de los clientes y diseñar casos de uso específicos para esos momentos y esos segmentos de los clientes, no? Y probar, probar, probar, probar. Esto es prueba y error. Entonces para eso sirve mucho que tengas tú un modelo operativo que incluya la data, que incluya tecnología, que incluya las mediciones, un proceso de retroalimentación eficiente que tú puedas ver. Oye, pues lancé mil campañas en X periodo. Cuáles de esas fueron este exitosas? Cuáles no? Y las que fueron exitosas? Por qué? Aprendes y vas ajustando, ajustando, Ajustando. Es un proceso iterativo, no? Entonces para poder hacer eso con la suficiente velocidad, necesitas un modelo operativo ágil, con sistemas, procesos, data, aprendizajes, no? Ese sería como mi consejo. No, no consejos en grandes cosas, sino como ir agarrando por este segmentos, momentos, probar casos de uso. Yo veo un paso antes. Todos quieren hacer personalización. Todos. Nadie quiere hacer hoy. Pero sin data, con calidad y sin data analizada, no va a lograr ser personalización. Olvide. Esto no va a pasar. Entonces tiene que hacer por etapas. Si quiere un consejo, es primero empiece como hacer recolección de datos de sus clientes de forma adecuada. Principalmente en el punto de venta. E-commerce, es muy fácil compartir sus datos. Tenemos ahí puede hacer uso de datos personales con transaccionales, pero punto de venta donde está un reto hoy de nosotros porque es difícil recolectar datos de punto de venta. Entonces, esta primera fase es cómo recolectamos y con calidad. La segunda fase es que sea platicamos data, centralizar, tener la data ahí si empieza a generar inteligencia, entender su consumidor para partir, para próxima fase que ya explicaron que personalización. Podemos hacer muchísimas basando el ciclo de vida, patrón de consumo por categoría, por género o qué podemos hiper personalizar por múltiples formas no? Pero si no tiene una data o data de sus clientes, dato centralizado y organizado, no va a lograr una personalización buena y no va a lograr los resultados que están buscando. Entonces, muchas empresas yo veo que van a buscar simple y directo para personalización, pero olvida del paso más importante que es realmente tener el dato adecuado para poder hacer la hiper personalización y después de un proceso evolutivo, no? Me falta esta información porque creo que ahora mostrar en ese nivel de hiper personalización y ahí voy agregando otros datos, otras informaciones, pero al final, yo creo que tiene que empezar por la base. Si no tiene esos datos no logra hiper personalización. Voy a dar un ejemplo y complementándolo con lo que dice Eduardo. Como les comentaba, yo llevo seis años en Petco. Entonces, me ha tocado ver de cómo se volvieron procesos manuales a automatizados, gracias a todos los journeys de Emarsys. Un ejemplo súper básico es el tema del cumpleaños de la mascota. Literalmente, todos los días nos pasaron una base de clientes que su mascota cumplía en esa semana o en ese día años. Entonces, pues imagínense hacer siete envíos, programar todas esas listas y esto no, pues no era funcional, nos llevaba muchísimo tiempo y el tema, como dice de siempre, ir escarbando un poquito más atrás. Teníamos la data, pero no teníamos, la herramienta para hacerlo de manera automática, no? Entonces, hoy en día ese cliente que su mascota cumple años le recibe su cumpleaños, el día en el que cumple el regalo, el cupón en su aplicación y además le felicitamos por mail, por Push y todos los canales que tenemos con Emarsys. Y obviamente la experiencia del cliente ha elevado cañón. No es lo mismo recibir un correo en la semana del cumpleaños de tu mascota decir hoy es su cumpleaños ve y recoge su regalo a la tienda, no? Entonces creo que es importante el tema de, como les decía, ver a futuro, que a lo mejor hoy no tengas la infraestructura para hacer más con esa información no quiere decir que más adelante no la vayas a necesitar. Yo creo que trajeron dos puntos importantes data y ejecución. Sabemos que tenemos millones de datos que tenemos que aprender a analizar y entender para segmentar de la forma correcta y para poder ejecutar. Y llegar a la ejecución, es un largo camino, porque al final tenemos que entender como ser más asertivos a la hora de hacer una inversión de la forma correcta. Entonces, mi pregunta para ustedes es cómo ustedes adoptaron la tecnología para ganar esa productividad, esa inteligencia a la hora de ejecutar? Toda la tecnología. Aquí fue un proceso. En el caso de Coppel bastante curioso porque querían mandar mails y compraron Emarsys, no? Entonces, resulta que sirve para más cosas, no? Entonces, ha sido un proceso. Pero en otra área había la necesidad de mandar otra cosa y comprar otra cosa. Y bueno, entonces ha sido un aproach, digamos un poquito caótico. Ahora, cómo estamos ahorita pasando la tecnología, estamos identificando, varios elementos tecnológicos que tienen que estar este en su lugar para poder operar eficientemente en un ecosistema como el de Coppel, como les digo, 30 categorías de retail, 12 categorías financieras, este, muchos millones de clientes, etcétera y entonces y hay muchos canales, o sea, estrictamente hablando tenemos hasta 11 canales y sub canales diferentes con los que podemos llegar directamente al cliente. Mensajes directos al cliente no? Entonces eso tiene una gran complejidad. Entonces lo partimos en tres grandes cachos. Una parte es lo que Eduardo ha insistido hoy todo el rato, que es fundamental de tener la data, de tener la tecnología y es la tecnología para la data, los para generar los modelos analíticos necesarios y poder definir audiencias. Entonces audiencias es una cosa y ahí estamos este buscando cuáles son las mejores herramientas para una definición de audiencias robusta. O sea que bueno, robusta suena como gordo, más bien este una eficiente, eficiente suficientemente ágil, no? Y productiva de los clientes rentables. La otra parte, es la parte de la generación de contenidos. Cuando estamos hablando de mail, Emarsys es campeón en poder consumir todas las imágenes que tienes del e-commerce, en poder ponerlas en un mail. Pero como estamos hablando y lo que platicaba con Fernando hace rato, no? Estamos hablando de que pérame, tengo más canales, tengo RSS, tengo WhatsApp y yo quiero mandar imágenes atractivas. No, le quiero mandar un texto, no? Y quiero y puedo mandar carruseles en WhatsApp. Yo puedo meter carruseles en RSS. Entonces, estamos ahora empezar a customizar todas esas imágenes, esos contenidos. Yo celebro que Emarsys esté metiendo la inteligencia artificial generativa porque necesitamos generar escala, no? La cantidad de diferentes contenidos que vas a distribuir no? Y finalmente la parte de la orquestación, no? También esto lo comentó Dulce, los journeys de Emarsys son una herramienta muy importante, no? El poder, definir a qué cliente, en qué momento, dado una un evento que estás leyendo del cliente, le vas a mandar. Qué mensaje? Por qué canal, no? Entonces son tres grandes como etapas, que tecnológicamente tienen sus retos diferentes, no? Audiencias, contenidos, orquestación, no? Entonces estamos tratando de encontrar lo mejor de todos los mundos ahí. Bueno, en el caso de grupo Axo, nosotros tenemos tres pilares también, todos están relacionados a tecnología, una, tenemos plataformas de CDC que es Customer Data Cloud que nos ayuda todo el proceso de recolección de datos y de op-in de clientes, no? Entonces comentaron a principio de la presentación ese tema de privacidad de clientes y llevamos muy en serio este tema, no? No contactamos clientes sin tener su opt-in formalizado. Segundo pilar CDC, centralizamos todos los datos de clientes y tenemos la vista única de cliente y esto ayuda empresas muy complejas como Axo que tiene en la plataforma h oy 19 diferentes marcas, 23 millones de clientes y siete sistemas de punto de venta y ecommerce. Entonces ayuda a centralizar todas esas fuentes diferentes de formatos diferentes de todo en una única arquitectura de datos. Y ahí vamos con Emarsys mi plataforma, mi juguete. Podemos hacer desde personalización, comunicación por canales diferentes, personalizar momentos de que comunica, donde comunica, que forma individual cada cliente va a recibir. No nos ayuda mucho con como comentó de audiencia que es super importante, audiencia lleva todas este conocimiento de clientes de audiencia para para optimizar sus inversiones en meta y Google también. Entonces veo hoy en grupo esos tres momentos con las tres plataformas tecnológicas que utilizamos. Y pensando en la tecnología, no? Que ya está habilitando bastante todo lo que es la ejecución de forma inteligente. Cómo ustedes se preparan, acabaron de tener un evento, un hot sale en México, no? Cómo se preparan para esos eventos? Cuéntenos un poco cómo es la experiencia, Coppel, Petco y Axo. Pues, en Petco, la verdad es que paramos todo, solamente para dedicarle tiempo a hot sale, desde altas de producto, descripciones y demás. Todo tiene que estar antes donde de un deadline para tener completamente la mente en Hot Sale. Entonces algo que nos ha ayudado un montón es el tema de la segmentación de clientes, del contenido, bien decía David, es importante que nuestros equipos de contenido se dediquen a ser creativos, como comentaban al inicio de la presentación en lugar de estar sistemáticamente haciendo materiales e información que a lo mejor, terminan de ser no tan atractivos porque no tienen tiempo para ser creativos y para poder hacer que nuestro cliente se enamore de lo que ve en lugar de solo avisarle, cierta información. Entonces, nosotros nos tomamos muy en serio toda esta parte e planificamos qué se va a mandar, a qué segmento se va a mandar, unos meses antes, estamos viendo cómo se comportan las audiencias que preparamos, qué audiencias vamos a usar, para qué canal y vamos midiendo la interacción de las mismas en cada uno. Revisamos objects de email, push, todo lo que vamos a comunicar en redes sociales mucho antes de que esto pase. Más que nada porque pues retail tiene bombazos, no? Entonces siempre hay cambios, pero tenemos que tener la estructura y la base pues al 100 antes de que todo esto suceda, no? Entonces creo que es importante tener comunicación entre todas las áreas y darle como pie a que todas las áreas estén involucradas en promoción, en títulos, en todo lo que se va a comunicar para que pues la información y todo lo que se comunique sea homogéneo. Entonces creo que es importante. Y cómo nos ayuda por ejemplo, la inteligencia artificial con todo este tema, ya están en temas de generación de imágenes y de que se vea bonito sin necesidad de que entren los creativos y que se dediquen realmente a ser creativos nuestros equipos. En especial de Petco, tenemos un área gigante de diseño porque estamos 100% comprados con la idea de que no solamente es mandar contenido por mandar contenido, sino contenido de calidad. Y aplica lo mismo para Hot Sales el buen fin, día del perro para nosotros, día del gato, día de las razas. Creo que el que le encantes el ojo al cliente es la clave para que ese cliente se convierta en un cliente de por vida. Y el AI cada vez te está ayudando más a ser más inteligente, más asertivo, como dijiste que el equipo se enfoque en lo que se tiene que enfocar. Se enfoque en ser más creativo, se enfoque en ser más inteligente, se enfoque a conseguir un mejor retorno de la ejecución que está haciendo. Hoy día en Axo, en Coppel, cómo están usando la inteligencia artificial o cómo planean usar la inteligencia artificial para ser más asertivos y generar un mejor impacto tanto internamente en la empresa como con los clientes? Antes, para hablar un poco de este tema de que esos eventos para nosotros es importante hacer analítica hoy para nosotros es tres grandes eventos: Hot Sales, Hot Fashion y buen fin, no? Entonces creo que plataformas como esta que nos ayuda en todo, estamos haciendo comunicación, inversión de marketing, que cualquier marketero humanista logramos sacar en cuanto n uestro envío impactó una comunicación nos ayuda entender si ese cliente compró o no, no me importa si es e-commerce o tienda, no? Entonces este tipo de valor de plataformas que nos ayuda entender, no? Y justificar que ayudan otros marketeros a justificar. Mira todo lo que yo estoy invirtiendo en marketing me está regresando en dinero, no? Y este tipo de plataforma nos ayuda muchísimo a nosotros, apoyarlos, a que sigan con esas inversiones, no? Porque creo que en cualquier empresa la gran pergunta es yo hoy tengo mis inversiones y marketing este, yo estoy teniendo un ROI sobre esto, no? Y ese tipo de plataforma de comunicación nos ayuda mucho. Cuando analizas esos datos, te ayuda a tomar mejores decisiones de ejecución antes de cualquier uno de estos eventos. En temas de inteligencia artificial, yo creo que Emarsys sí tiene algunas muy devoluciones muy buenas con temas de segmentación de clientes, esto nos ayuda a generar estas segmentaciones diferentes de lo que nosotros planeamos, porque muchas de esas segmentaciones son basadas en una demanda por marca o por marketing o porque algún científico de datos logró sacar un análisis. Pero, tener recomendaciones basado en segmentación basado en inteligencia artificial, que tal vez son cosas que no logramos sacar de una simple analítica. Yo creo que una cosa que estamos empezando a tomar, entender un poco más como funciona y tenemos este objetivo. Yo creo que la segmentación basado en esto nos va a apoyar mucho. Y también hoy ya usamos más plataformas de inteligencia también para entender cuál canal cada cliente debe recibir su comunicación, no? Y esto muy basado en analítica que tiene automatizada de cuantos de sus clientes recibieron en sus correos, o en SMS o se fue para Push Notification, para lo que fuere. Entonces, esto nos ayuda a construir estrategias también de los journeys de comunicación, por que canal de comunicación nos vamos comunicar con él y en qué momento vamos a comunicar con esto cliente. Ser más asertivos a través de la afinidad, más entendimiento de la afinidad. Bueno, nos quedan cuatro minutos y yo tenía una pregunta más para hacerles pero antes de hacerles la última pregunta, que realmente es cuál es el siguiente paso? Quería aprovechar y abrir al público a ver si alguien aquí quiere hacer una pregunta aprovechando que tenemos aquí a los líderes de CRM, E-commerce, Data Insights. Para el tema de e-commerce, yo tengo una duda que suele suceder, pues seguido el tema del bounce rate, cómo logran mitigar ese bounce rate a través de qué data siguen? Para poder entender hacia dónde va dirigida esa mitigación del problema que está ocasionando ese bounce rate tan alto? Pues, de este lado, nosotros tenemos como la filosofía de que solamente estamos recibiendo bloqueos, porque lo estamos hablando por el canal equivocado. Entonces, nosotros el tema de los bloqueos y demás los asimilamos como un cambio de canal, no? Cambio de canal o cambio de comunicación, nosotros normalmente excluimos a estos clientes de nuestras bases de envío como de eventos súper grandes, no los excluimos, pero del día a día, de un informativo, de algo que no podría ser tan relevante para el cliente en ese momento, intentamos no molestar a ese cliente en ese canal a menos de que creamos que puede regresar a ese canal por algún evento o algo que sea sumamente de su interés y para esto pues hay un análisis profundo de estos clientes que están rebotando en los diferentes canales, porque pues como sabemos, tenemos varios canales como redes sociales, WhatsApp, SMS, este web push, web channel. En el caso de nosotros que recibimos un montón de audiencia en nuestro sitio de clientes que realmente están interesados en novedades que a lo mejor no son clientes de e-commerce, pero son clientes de tienda que realmente no les estaría interesando demasiado el correo porque en su gran mayoría ve promociones o informativos y que a él realmente le gusta la experiencia de tienda y que no está mal porque, o sea parte de mi trabajo es que esos clientes sean pues omnicanal, es que estén en tienda física y en tienda online en debido de lo posible y para todo el tema de rebote, creo que es importante ver qué comunicación le vamos a dar, en qué canal, como ya lo hemos mencionado un montón de veces pero, hacer un análisis específico de los rebotes y en qué campaña fue para identificar qué es lo que está haciendo que nuestros clientes, decidan ya no querer estar comunicándose por ese canal a lo mejor les hablamos en un momento inadecuado, en un horario inadecuado, a lo mejor su mascota falleció en nuestro caso y que por eso ya no quisiera recibir información de nosotros, entonces, nosotros sí tenemos muy identificados como causas probables y utilizamos la herramienta también para ver temas de encuestas, de saber en qué canal le gustaría a esos clientes en específico que los contactaramos y o si de plano no quieren ser contactados, porque nuestros canales de comunicación que directamente pues nos lo hagan saber y nosotros vemos cómo contactar a ese cliente. Alguna otra pregunta? Bueno para esta es más aterrizar la parte de CRM aquí, en qué momento, bueno, sabemos que igual como en los demás canales, también para CRM, requiere un funnel en el que tienes que tener una estrategia de adquisición y de retención para el usuario. Cuál es la estrategia principal para que, por ejemplo, siempre vamos a tener, una base de datos robusta que a lo mejor en algún momento podemos atraer al cliente por una oferta, una recompensa inicial para hacerlo parte de, pero cómo haces ese click? Cómo retienes ese cliente o cuál es la mejor como sugerencia para hacer que ese cliente sea fiel, retenerlo y no nada más sea, digámoslo así, un cliente nuevo, no depender de una estrategia de nada más de adquisición, sino también de retención del cliente, hacerlo participativo, activo y no nada más como inicial en una etapa inicial o que nada más por un beneficio inicial dentro de la adquisición de pues si de clientes dentro de la base de CRM. No sé, esto muy bien tu pregunta, pero me trajo a la mente el caso de Liverpool este donde tienen el 10% de descuento en primera compra y son los campeones de la activación en tarjetas de crédito, no? Y mucha gente saca la tarjeta de crédito de Liverpool para hacer, comprar una sala y después la tira la guarda en el cajón, no? Creo que a eso te refieres más o menos ese fenómeno, cómo evitar que ese fenómeno suceda. Cómo se puede hacer que la estrategia de adquisición de clientes no dependa solo de eso, de un incentivo de nuevos usuarios y que no se queden ahí, sino que nada más sean activos, crear lealtad. Puede ser una respuesta muy corta, pero muy amplia en su concepto, que es agrégale valor al cliente, dale valor al cliente. O sea, si en el caso por ejemplo de Coppel no?, pues lo que estamos apostándole es oye, te voy a decir cosas que te sirvan, no? Y estamos bajando información del blog para que le sirva a los clientes. Queremos hacer este en relación al moto de mejora tu vida queremos realmente eso, entonces no te voy a estar dando premios ni te voy a estar dando incentivos todo el tiempo. De hecho, tenemos nada más una campaña al año donde damos este, dinero electrónico, nada más, una al año, no? Este y lo que estamos buscando es darle información relevante al cliente, que le sirva al cliente, que le llame la atención, no? Básicamente. Yo creo que lo más difícil hoy no es hacer adquisición, es hacer retención, no? Porque adquisición tú puedes hacer de múltiples formas, se hacen inversiones en medios pagos, puedes hacer una oferta de un descuento para él y ser un first Time buyer. Pero en el momento en que se transforma en un first Time buyer y después pasar para un growth Engage y después no dejar que salga del ciclo de vida, esto es para mí es la parte más difícil, mantener este cliente. Y al final, a mí me gusta mucho estrategia de ciclo de vida. Porque cada momento de ciclo de vida, un cliente tiene una necesidad diferente, no? Y el objetivo de todas las marcas de que él esté engage, no? Que compre con más frecuencia con ticket promedio alto, no? Y entonces yo creo que en el momento que tú empiezas a construir la estrategia de ciclo de vida y una comunicación personalizada para cada momento del ciclo de vida, te ayuda muchísimo a mantener, retener y hacer que él consuma más de un poco más en este formato de ciclo de vida que ayuda mucho en este proceso. Yo voy a complementar con algo bien simple. Creo que es algo que yo creo que todos van a entender, experiencia. Por qué regresas a un lugar? Por la experiencia. Puedes haber comprado solo un dulcecito, pero si te trataron bien y te consintieron y supieron que era lo que necesitabas en ese momento, vas a regresar. En este caso, yo voy a hacer mucho énfasis en el tema de experiencia, de cuidar. Nosotros cuidamos mucho a nuestros primeros clientes en que no tengan una mala experiencia dentro de su primera compra, no? En el caso de su entrega, en el caso de una tienda que si van por primera vez a grooming, no se lleven un mal sabor de boca que no tengan, no esperen más de lo que deben de esperar, que su cita toda sea perfecta en todos los aspectos. Pero además de eso, y creo que el la clave importante es crear la necesidad de la marca dentro del cliente. Y ya lo hiciste sentir bien, ya lo hiciste sentir a gusto contigo. Ahora, crea la necesidad de que algo más necesita de tu marca. En nuestro caso, es enseñarle como cuidar a tu mascota, es enseñarle que tiene necesidades en específico para cubrir de esa mascota. A lo mejor este, nosotros todo el tiempo estamos compitiendo con mejorar como persona y creo que en la mayoría estamos así. Entonces nosotros intentamos tener como un ranking de ah tiene cinco de seis necesidades cubiertas y qué va a pasar? Ese cliente va a querer cubrir todas las necesidades por el solo hecho de decir que tiene a la mejor mascota, mejor cuidada del mundo. Entonces, experiencia y creación de necesidad dentro de lo que tú puedes ofrecer dentro de tu marca. Muchas gracias. Gracias realmente por contarnos un poco de cada una de sus marcas, del negocio, de la experiencia, compartir las mejores prácticas que están haciendo, tanto de estrategia, cuanto de aplicar la tecnología alineada a la estrategia. Espero regresar otro día y poder contar más historias. Y qué más están haciendo con inteligencia artificial y bueno, gracias. Gracias a todos por participar hoy día.

Soy Fernando Pagani, jefe de Soluciones y Product Enablement para Emarsys. Qué hace mi equipo? Principalmente se dedica a alinear requerimientos de negocio con nuestra solución, sí? en primer lugar, el segundo, Product Enablement, se dedica a entrenar a todos los equipos de Emarsys en cómo funciona la plataforma y cómo puede darle valor a ustedes, nuestros clientes. Quería compartirles algo que creé como regalo por venir hoy al evento. Estimados directores de marketing y demás, sé que hay muchos roles. Ha llegado el momento de cerrar este día cargado de inspiración y conocimiento. Nos encontramos aún en el corazón de la Ciudad de México, donde cada calle y cada rincón guardan historias y sueños. Hoy ustedes han tejido una nueva historia en este lugar, una historia de innovación y conexión. Durante este día, hemos explorado juntos los vastos territorios del marketing y el customer engagement. Hemos compartido ideas, descubrimientos y visiones que ahora se entrelazan, como los hilos de un tapiz, creando un paisaje lleno de oportunidades. Así como las voces de Comala reverberan en el tiempo, queremos que las estrategias que han visto hoy resuenen en sus mentes y en sus corazones, guiándoles en sus próximos pasos. Agradecemos su presencia y participación en este evento, que el espíritu de la Ciudad de México, con su mezcla de tradición e innovación, les acompañe en su camino. Cuánto creen que me tomó generar este texto? El Spoiler alert, no era muy bueno en lengua castellano o español como lo llamen en México. No lo era. Miren, un promt de Chat GPT. No estoy orgulloso, pero sí quería compartirselos. Imaginen, el poder que tienen hoy. Tanto ustedes como sus consumidores a mano, para poder hacer algo que, sinceramente, yo no hubiera podido hacer jamás. Sí? No, quiero decir que era fantástico. Lo único que le dije es: créame un texto para saludar a cierta gente con el estilo de uno de los mejores escritores de la historia. Si, Juan Rulfo. Bien. Parece todo espectacular. Pero qué puede pasar también cuando utilizamos este tipo de herramientas? No todo es color de rosas. Jugando para crear esta presentación y porque me toca generar bastantes presentaciones a lo largo del mundo, dije bueno, traducime algunas de las cosas que he realizado. Empecemos por lo básico. Mi título profesional: Fernando Pagani, jefe de soluciones y habilitación de productos. No sé en México, pero les garantizo que por lo menos en Argentina y en otras latitudes de Latinoamérica, eso no tiene ningún tipo de sentido. Si? Una herramienta que es tan poderosa para crear un texto como el que creé antes, no quiero decir que sea el mejor ni mucho menos, ahora donde le pido el concepto más básico, comete un error. Eso sí, si sigo trabajando en el promt, voy a llegar a la respuesta que necesito. Pero necesito cierta intervención, creatividad humana, si? it doesn't makes sense in English. Le estaba hablando en ingles. Yo hablo a ChatGPT como si fuera mi amigo. Prácticamente, es un problema, pero no, no lo sé. Pero bueno, director de capacitación tiene un poco más de sentido, si, Director de facilitación, también tiene un poco más de sentido, si, con lo cual, si interrogamos a la herramienta de la forma adecuada, vamos a llegar a los resultados adecuados. Qué quiero decir con esto? Que tenemos un gran poder, pero una gran responsabilidad cuando trabajamos con este tipo de herramientas porque pueden cometer los errores más básicos. Cuando pensamos que está todo saliendo perfecto, puede cometer ese error y si ese error está incluido en la relación con el cliente final, puede ser bastante grave a nivel negocio si? Acá les quiero traer un poquito de la filosofía que tiene la compañía en lo que respecta a IA si? En el centro van a ver que para nosotros AI atraviesa hoy, como para muchas otras empresas, por supuesto, a toda la compañía y a todos los procesos y soluciones. El CEO de SAP anunció hace bastante poco una inversión de más de 1 billón de dólares en este tipo de tecnología que va desde el backend hasta el frontend como Emarsys y sus herramientas. Qué quiere decir esto? Nuestro equipo de producto recibió recursos adicionales para innovar con esta herramienta. Pero, primero que nada, y porque somos muy alemanes, lo tenemos que hacer bajo tres conceptos, que la información que salga de la herramienta generada por GenAI sea relevante para sus clientes, que sea confiable, que no diga jefe de habilitación de productos y muy importante, quizá el punto más importante, que sea responsable. Tenemos en nuestros manos la capacidad y el riesgo de transmitir información personal de nuestros clientes, que pueden ser ustedes y de sus clientes que son sus consumidores, alguna una red neuronal que quién sabe quién la va a agarrar. Sí? Con lo cual nos tomamos un buen año para garantizar que cualquiera cosa que haga SAP y por supuesto Emarsys, sea con información anónima de sus clientes. Sí? Ya creamos la fundación, pero bueno, una vez que creamos la fundación, hacia dónde vamos? Sí, y nos paramos principalmente en dos pilares: queremos que los equipos de marketing, no tengan que hacer tareas repetitivas, innecesariamente. Queremos que sean más eficientes cuando trabajan. Esas tareas repetitivas que toman horas, queremos que las hagan en minutos. Eso sí se puede automatizar. Sí? Entonces, cuando pensamos en desarrollo, vamos hacia ahí. Y por otro lado, y súper importante para todo lo que hablaron los panelistas, queremos entregar experiencias relevantes a escala. Explosión de canales, contenido, también hay explosión, tiene que ser relevante. Pero lo que les quería contar es que Emarsys no empezó a trabajar con este tipo de herramientas de IA solamente ahora, tiene una historia por detrás. Esto desde allá no debe tener sentido, pero déjeme que los lleve por el concepto. Allá por 2013 lanzamos un módulo que muchos de ustedes utilizan que se llama Smart Insights. Lo que tenía la plataforma es un módulo embebido de Customer Lifecycle. Sí? Uno de los desafíos más importantes de las marcas era, o que no lo tenían o que esa data no eran activable. Esa data vive dentro de la plataforma y se genera data activa que los equipos de marketing puede trabajar. Quienes son mis clientes Platinum? Quienes son inactivos y demás, modelo de recencia Frecuencia y valor monetario. Luego, más adelante, lanzamos un modelo de predicciones, productos, recomendaciones con diferentes lógicas atendiendo al punto de personalización. Luego, lanzamos nuestro módulo de Send Time Optimization. Enviar las comunicaciones en el momento adecuado para mejorar ciertas métricas, que es lo que todos queremos. Sí? Y hace aproximadamente cinco años generamos modelos predictivos para que no solo trabajen sobre el ciclo de vida del cliente, sino que entiendan la propensidad sus clientes a comprar propensidad de sus clientes a involucrarse a travésde ciertos canales propensidad de sus clientes a comprar con cierto valor en su carrito. Sí? Cosas que pudieran ayudar a ustedes hacer microsegmentación 1 a 1 en función de las cosas que los clientes podrían llegar a hacer a través de ciertas señales que nosotros repetíamos. Sí? Y ahora, este año ya estamos lanzando productos con Generative AI. Bien. Hablé de Advanced Calculation con el Lifecycle, hablé de Predictive AI. Empezamos a trabajar sobre Generative AI. Ya ahora en el último lanzamiento. Y acá es hacia donde vamos. Como compañía y como Emarsys. Queremos llegar a lo que nosotros denominamos Conversational AI. Qué quiere decir esto? Tener la posibilidad, de la misma manera que yo interrogo a ChatGPT y que ustedes puedan interrogar a la plataforma para llegar a los resultados deseados. Acá, un pequeño sample de hacia dónde vamos en cuanto a visión. Si? Queremos que la plataforma los ayude a ustedes, equipo de marketing, a descubrir oportunidades, insights, oportunidades únicas que quizá ustedes no pueden entender porque es muy difícil llegar a este tipo de métricas acá a la derecha, que seguramente no se ve nada porque está un poco borroso. Habla de debería revisar este segmento, no me parece el adecuado para este programa. Debería revisar esta pieza de contenido. No la tocaste desde que la generaste y estás trabajando con otro segmento. Insights y notificaciones para que ustedes revisen el trabajo y le pongan foco. No quiere decir que lo tengan que cambiar. Si? En segundo lugar, generar y distribuir contenido fácilmente. Una de las cosas que lanzamos en el último mes, fue la posibilidad de generar contenido de texto sobre la plataforma. Pero, no nos queremos quedar ahí. Queremos que puedan generar bloques de contenido, bloques de HTML solo con comandos de voz. En este ejemplo que hay acá, le estamos pidiendo a la plataforma que me genere un bloque que tenga un 15% de descuento. Sería bueno que luzca un poquito mejor porque ustedes son especialistas, pero esa es la filosofía por detrás. Y tercero, porque hablaron ustedes mucho de optimización y que la herramienta les va a dar muchas posibilidades de testear es que detecte anomalías automáticamente. Estoy enviando campañas. Si tengo campañas que no están performando en mi A/B tests, cuáles son? Si? Bien, este era un poco lo que les quería compartir de Emarsys y ahora quiero invitar a Cristian, que no lo veo. Ahí está, genio. Que nos visita, él trabaja para Advance Digital y es un absoluto privilegio compartir la grada con él, es uno de los mejores speakers de México, con lo cual absoluto placer. Gracias Fer. Primero que nada que muchas gracias, Fer. Muchas gracias a Santi y a Pablo, Cami, todo el equipo de Emarsys por la invitación. La verdad es que siempre es un placer y un honor tener la oportunidad de estar en este tipo de foros y compartir un poquito de lo aprendido a lo largo de los años y de las grandes regadas que hemos tenido a lo largo de nuestras carreras. Entonces encantado Fer. Muchas gracias. Muchas gracias por venir y participar. Qué pensás de GenAI y cómo ves el impacto en el negocio hoy? Pues de entrada, para empezar quiero desmitificar también un poquito la inteligencia artificial y quiero hacer el challenge de no es magia, no? Porque de repente, de un año y medio para acá, todo es powered AI, no? Vas caminando por la calle, casi, casi tamales powered by AI. Absolutamente todo tiene inteligencia artificial detrás. Entonces, la inteligencia artificial no es magia. Es tecnología sumamente poderosa y creo que es muy importante y nos va a ayudar para muchísimas cosas, pero detrás hay muchísima data, hay muchísimas horas de trabajo, hay muchísimas reglas de negocio y hay muchísima inteligencia humana para que entonces parezca que la inteligencia artificial es magia, no? Entonces yo empezaría por ahí Fer. Estoy completamente de acuerdo. Y qué pensás de esa gente que dice no hablo de los robots de Asimov ni mucho menos, pero sí de esa gente que dice que va a reemplazar la creatividad. Pues mira, también y quiero ser un call out importante, no? Creo que al final del día no hay verdades absolutas. Creo que todos hablamos desde nuestro punto de vista y lo enriquecedor de este foro es escuchar a gente como Dulce, como Diego o como Mario, o sea que compartan su visión de diferentes empresas, negocios, industrias y verticales. Dicho eso, me parece que no va a reemplazar nada. O sea, creo que lo que nos va a permitir, o es más, nos va a exigir ser mucho más creativos para pensar cómo utilizar la tecnología, no? Y es una realidad que a nivel creatividad ya lo decía Dulce, te puede permitir hacer diferentes imágenes sin que tenga que meterle mano a un diseñador o incluso te puede ayudar a optimizar tiempos y hacer un master graphic y que te haga 180 formatos para 180 campañas diferentes en 180 tamaños, no? Entonces creo que más allá que matar la creatividad, nos va a exigir ser más creativos en cómo trabajar. En eso estoy de acuerdo, porque también, no va a liberar a un montón de empresas. Y eso va a generar que tengamos que sobresalir incluso por fuera de los modelos. Porque si todos tenemos acceso a la misma información y estoy de acuerdo que necesitamos la data de forma estandarizada para poder sacarle jugo, o si no, no va a servir. Después nos va a exigir como marca diferenciarnos. Y cómo la ves de acá un par de años? El impacto en ustedes en el día a día. Yo creo, haber, es una pregunta que tiene muchas respuestas. Y creo que también depende mucho del tamaño de las empresas y de la madurez que tenga cada una de las empresas. No va a ser lo mismo que utilice inteligencia artificial, un grupo como Office Depot, como Petco, como Grupo Axo, a como lo utilice, a lo mejor una startup más pequeña o de una vertical a lo mejor de lujo, no? Creo que eso hay que entenderlo, que no hay reglas escritas y no hay verdades absolutas. Ahora, hacia dónde creo que va a ir? También uno de los mayores errores que cometemos cuando estamos en las sillas corporativas y vienen este tipo de tendencias y de booms tecnológicos es que ya queremos construir con inteligencia artificial un cohete que nos lleve a la luna, no? Sin empezar por los basics, sin entender que tenemos que usarla para cosas tan sencillas como crear en lugar de un A/B Testing, un abcdefghijklm testing, no? Y que puede entender y hablarle a 40 audiencias diferentes con diferentes copys para una misma campaña. Entonces creo que más bien es la adopción, o sea, la diferencia que va a haber de aquí a dos años es la adopción de la tecnología y cómo empecemos a implementarla en cosas básicas como subjects, como artes, como lo decía también Mario, es un tema de cómo utilizamos la tecnología para el negocio. No se nos tiene que olvidar, que son negocios y también muchas veces cometemos el error todos los que estamos en la industria digital, todos los que somos marketeros de estar en este tema cool trendy, pero al final es una unidad de negocio que por cada peso invertido tiene que traer por lo menos 1.5 pesos, no? Para que sea rentable. Entonces lo decía Mario, cómo haces para que la inteligencia artificial te haga algo tan básico como planear la demanda y evitar que generes o que te quede sin inventario? Porque de repente ponemos sobre la mesa, logré un sold out, excelente performance o hice un muy mal forecast y entonces dejé dinero en la mesa y la oportunidad no la maximicé. Entonces, creo que va hacia allá o desde mi punto de vista, hacia allá es a donde deberíamos de estar pensando en la adopción y utilización de inteligencia artificial. Justamente afuera estábamos hablando alguien que había conocido a nuestro fundador de Emarsys hace hace muchos años, el sueño del fundador de Emarsys, que ahora está retirado y viviendo la buena vida, por supuesto. Estaba su sueño era que los equipos de marketing pudieran apretar un botón, asunto resuelto. Me preguntaba: vos crees que en algún momento vamos a llegar a eso? O que pensás? Yo creo que vamos para allá pero hay mucho trabajo detrás para que podamos hacer eso, o sea que sea que se vea como magia. Pero sin lugar a dudas, va a haber un momento en donde lleguemos a eso. Bien. Y quiénes pensás que van a ser? Yo creo que va a haber ganadores y perdedores en este juego porque la tecnología muchas veces hace eso, que los que la utilizan bien, van a brillar y los que no tanto, bueno, es otro problema. Quiénes crees que van a ser los ganadores? Quizá en el corto plazo. Cómo jugamos en el corto plazo con esta maravilla? Qué difícil Fer responder eso porque es un tema de adopción. O sea, es un tema no tenerle miedo. O sea, el e-commerce hace 15 años, el marketing a los 15 años no era lo que es hoy, no? Yo recuerdo mis primeras transacciones, era un formulario de mail en donde el botón comprar realmente era una acción de enviar. Me llegaba el correo, le hablaba por teléfono a la persona, le decía gracias por tu compra. A qué hora paso a cobrarte a tu casa? Y llegaba con estas planchas de metal viejas en papel calca a cobrar. Entonces es un tema de adopción, es un tema de evangelización. Lo decía por ahí, me parece que David es no hay que tener miedo, pues al final del día hay que probar. Mario lo dijo también, nos vamos a equivocar muchas veces, pero de una de esas pruebas que la saques del estadio te vas al otro lado, no? Y vuelvo a lo mismo pensar en pequeñas acciones que nos permitan generar dinero. No se nos tiene que olvidar que es un negocio y muchas veces cometemos el error de estar pensando y de estar obsesionando por las ventas, en lugar de estar pensando en las pequeñas acciones que hagan que las ventas sea la consecuencia y no el objetivo. Entonces creo que va un poquito por ahí, Fer, mi manera de ver lo que está sucediendo con la inteligencia artificial. Total y yo me yo me voy a aventurar a dar una respuesta a mi propia pregunta, lo cual es un poco raro, pero yo creo que los grandes ganadores en el corto son los que ya hicieron un esfuerzo increíble de recolección de datos, como decías antes. Sí? El otro Pablo me contaba y después lo charlé con los chicos de Petco, 93% de sus compras identificadas es el sueño de todo retailer. Es una locura. El 7% es las personas que realmente no quisieron hacerlo. Esa capacidad de entender dónde me compra cada cliente si después le monto un modelo arriba es poderosísimo pero si yo tengo una parte de la película que no estoy viendo, tengo que hacer el esfuerzo primero para recolectarlos y eso me va a tomar tiempo. No es de un día para el otro. De acuerdo y quiero también hacer el challenge porque creo que al final del día esta industria que cambia tan rápido y que se mueve tan rápido, es imposible. Nunca terminas, no? Y quiero hacer el challenge de en qué momento dejamos de preocuparnos por recolectar datos? Porque de repente Big Data desde hace diez años viene sonando y Big Data, Big data, Big Data. Y de repente estamos nadando en un Data Lake y no tenemos ni idea de qué hacer con la data, no? Y entonces estamos haciendo análisis parálisis. Entonces, en qué momento nos volteamos a entender que ya fue suficiente data y que en lugar de querer traer otro medio millón de clientes con que le venda una vez al medio millón de base de datos que ya tengo, saco el número y soy rentable, entonces creo que más allá, y como dije al principio, no hay verdades absolutas pero, el challenge es creo que nosotros, y lo decía Pierre en su slide, cuál es nuestro rol como líderes digitales? Y creo que es estar constantemente cuestionándonos lo que estamos haciendo. Totalmente y me llevo también lo que dijo David de prueba y error, prueba y error a jugar. Si tenemos la información, tenemos las herramientas. Juguemos con ellas y veamos qué funciona y qué no funciona. Aprendamos de nuestros errores, porque la que la saca del estadio, ganaste. Bueno, es un poco cruel, stedes están de aquel lado pero acá tenemos un cartel en rojo que dice Time is up, sí? Así que bueno, de mi lado agradecerte nuevamente por la charla. Agradecerles a todos ustedes que vinieron a acompañar. Invirtieron su tiempo para hacerlo. Lo apreciamos muchísimo. Nada más, gracias.

Yo soy Pauline. Yo soy la especialista en adopción de Emarsys en especial para el territorio de LATAM. No solo acá en México, para también los demás países, incluyendo a Brasil. Y tengo yo hoy la oportunidad y en realidad el privilegio realmente de hablar con dos grandes profesionales que son de acá de México, en cómo han ellos trabajado en la adopción de la plataforma Emarsys y cómo han trabajado en conjunto. Y creo que lo más interesante también es que no son solamente de un área, no es solamente de marketing, no solamente de T.I. Pero le representan ambas áreas. Y vamos a hablar un poquito de los éxitos que han logrado con Emarsys y con la colaboración entre sus equipos. Hola buenas tardes a todos. Perfecto. Qué tal? Si, he me presentado a mí pero gustaría que ustedes le contasen un poquito a la audiencia acá quiénes son, lo que hacen? Y de qué empresa son? Adelante. Hola, yo soy Guillermo Prieto. Soy encargado de T.I. en Petco México y Chile. Estoy encargado de llevar todos los sistemas, hacer que la información fluya entre los equipos. Y al final, pues tratamos de que todo el negocio pase a través de nuestros sistemas. Hola Mario Carcaño, de este lado estoy como Chief Digital Officer dentro de o de más de una subsidiaria de grupo gigante que tiene varias marcas Office Depot, RadioShack, Casa Marchant, FESA, entre otros, con presencia en México, en Centroamérica y en Chile. Mucho gusto a todos. Muchísimas gracias chicos. Yo como hablé tengo un poquito de la oportunidad de trabajar con sus equipos y hablar un poco con ustedes, pero creo que lo que traen también acá es un vistazo muy especial de las marcas donde trabajan, de cómo está el mercado en Latinoamérica. Hoy vimos un poquito acá lo que nos compartió Pierre, en general, pero creo que es importante traer a México y aterrizar acá, no? Cómo está el estado de retail para ustedes y cómo lo ven? Y empiezo contigo, Mario. Sí, bueno, el estado del retail es un estado muy competido, no? Nos encontramos en una situación donde los pure commerce vienen a hacer disruptivos, a poner nuevos estándares de negocio y que se mueven mucho más rápido. Hacer empresas que son customer centric y pues nacen con la data en el centro. Pues nos llevan varias ventajas no? Varias ventajas en tiempo, en recursos, en movimientos. Entonces tenemos que obligarnos a actuar rápido, tenemos que obligarnos a que internamente hagamos que las cosas sucedan, que sucedan y sucedan rápido, que sucedan bien para qué, para estar en el estándar nuevo que hoy está dictando MercadoLibre, ya lo mencionaba Pierre, una Amazon en entregas Sunday Delivery, no? Entonces pues ya no es el mismo mercado que teníamos antes evidentemente. Viene nuevos jugadores muy fuertes que se van a meter a todas las categorías. Viene la digitalización de México muy fuerte también. Están todo el tema de Robby, todo el tema de digitalizar los changarros, donde pues todos los que tenemos una responsabilidad dentro de un click and brick, pues tenemos una amenaza fuerte ahí donde tenemos que conocer a nuestros clientes, conocer las necesidades y atacar fuerte en hacerles la vida fácil, no? Hacerle en un clic, una venta, una experiencia seamless y que pues quiera regresar y no por el precio producto necesariamente que siempre va a ser killer, siempre va a ser rey, ningún mexicano está peleado con su cartera. Pero, no va a regresar si la pasó mal, no? En experiencia. Entonces cuidando todos estos momentos con datos, con hiper personalización, pues podemos hacer una bonita experiencia para el cliente en todos los canales, no? Entonces creo que ahí estamos para hoy soy, un ambiente muy competitivo, este sumamente duro y que tenemos que tener mucha agilidad para lograr pues buenos resultados para las compañías. Lo que yo agregaría, a lo que dice Mario, es de que el cliente cada vez es más exigente con las marcas. Cada vez quiere una entrega más, más cercana. No lo hacen saber a través de nuestro NPS. El año pasado, hablamos de entrego el siguiente día y era toda una victoria. Ahora no pasa en el mismo día y tienes al cliente quejándose. Entonces, lo que yo les diría es el cliente es cada vez más exigente e está hambriento de experiencias omnicanal, o sea, quiere ver la misma experiencia que tienen en la tienda, que es muy fácil de darla porque tenemos un ejército en las tiendas, bien entrenado con con ciertas directivas. Eso trasladarlo al e-com, es todo un reto. Y como bien menciona Pierre o Mario también, pues cada vez se digitaliza más el mercado y cada vez hay más ventas en e-com. Entonces, siempre hay que fortalecer el e-com y tener la misma experiencia que tenemos en tienda. Y hablando un poquito de eso, no de utilizar la información los datos, utilizan la información que jalan de varias partes, no solo del e-com, pero también los diferentes canales. Cómo hacen ustedes para realmente potencializar el uso de la tecnología y de esos datos del análisis para lograr la estrategia de la marca? Y creo que es ahí donde es súper importante la colaboración entre sus dos áreas, no? No únicamente de TI, ni tampoco únicamente de marketing y de información digital. Tomo la palabra. Justo, yo creo que todas las empresas deberían de tomar decisiones en base a datos. Y los datos más importantes que puedes tener son los de tus clientes. Entonces, la estrategia de tu compañía, todo mundo dice que está centrado en el cliente, pero realmente qué tan centrados estamos si no los conocemos? Entonces el enfoque debería de ser conocer a tu cliente y en base a eso generar tu estrategia. Un ejemplo que les puedo dar es el armado de las tiendas en Petco. El armado de las tiendas en Petco está relacionado a los clientes que conocemos de esa zona. Imagínense que identificamos los clientes que son más propensos a perros o más propensos a gatos o más propensos a pequeños animales. Y la realidad es de que buscamos que el layout de la tienda esté relacionado a los clientes que conocemos de esa zona, no? Ese es un ejemplo, el abasto también tener que ver o sea, los compradores de Petco están siempre relacionados a qué es lo que mis clientes, mis buyer personas están buscando y en base a eso, tener su estrategia de compras. Quieres agregar algo? Sí, un poco, tocando este punto, pero de otra vertical, no? Nosotros designamos un equipo en Office Depot y Radio Shack hace apenas hace año y medio para gestionar las herramientas tecnológicas que tenemos. Es bien importante que no solo esté la parte de TI, de IT, de sistemas delegados, de arquitectura empresarial. Si no tenemos alguien que esté como heavy user de la herramienta, si no tenemos a alguien que se enamore de la herramienta del cliente, de los datos, reales que no va a pasar mucho, no? Este usando Emarsys justamente, lo llevamos usando muchos años, más de cinco años en o demás, pero apenas tenemos un resultado contundente, no? Pasamos de representar de la herramienta 7% de la venta de las tiendas online a un 25 en alguna marca y en 18.9 en otra marca, no? Por qué? Porque ya hay un equipo dedicado que está analizando la data, que va con el equipo comercial y se habla con el equipo comercial, que va con el Digital Officer y va y convence al digital para que sucedan las cosas. Entonces, la parte del equipo de la transformación en gente es tan relevante como tener la herramienta, no? Es lo que yo agregaría. Perfecto. Y en esta centralización de los datos, una pregunta que recibimos muchas veces es cómo lo hago? Dónde lo pongo? Cuando lo pongo los datos? Eso debe vivir en un data warehouse, de vivir en un CDP, de vivir fuera, on-premise, pero sé que ustedes sí traen una cierta estrategia de centralización de datos. Puede contarnos un poquito cómo llegaron a esta estrategia y dónde los tienen hoy? Ok, la estrategia de datos de Petco relacionada al cliente, por la herramienta de Emarsys, al final lo que buscamos es que todos nuestros sistemas hablen la misma verdad. Entonces, tanto el punto de venta como nuestro SAP Commerce Cloud, Emarsys por supuesto, nuestro CDP, incluso el ERP, tienen al mismo identificador de cliente. Entonces, eso hace muy sencillo hacia adelante, si tienes una buena estrategia digital, el poder consumir los datos. Sino te empieza a llenar de silos y pues el punto de venta habla una cosa, el e-commerce habla otro, el tema del ERP, etcétera. Entonces, una estrategia de datos correcta hace los cimientos para que tu crecimiento de transformación digital esté alineado con las expectativas de tus usuarios y las áreas estratégicas del negocio. Sí, hay que entender también en qué parte del journey empresarial estás, no? No es la misma la arquitectura que tiene Petco, que la que tiene Office Depot, que la que tiene RadioShack, que la que tienen sus empresas en general. Entendiendo en qué parte estas y qué tan fácil el acceso tienes a tus datos, datos de cliente, transaccionales, delegados de eventos de conocimiento general, podemos hacer una estrategia más robusta y adhoc al momento en que estés viviendo, no? Si primero es que ya saben todas las teorías, no vamos a inventar el hilo negro en esta plática, pero pues tienes que saber qué datos tienes y qué tan limpios están y hacer estrategias de recopilación de datos si no los tienes, no? Un ejemplo, Petco nos enseñó que el código postal dentro de los datos del cliente era elemental, que era valiosísimo. No lo teníamos en Office Depot y ya lo estamos recopilando, no? Hacer estas sinergias entre compañías hace muy valioso, copiar las buenas prácticas y hacer un delivery de lo que necesita el negocio en ese momento. No es lo mismo el ayer que el hoy que el que mañana. Entonces, tenemos que hacer una estrategia por pasos a cómo estamos hoy, a cómo vamos a querer estar mañana para poder ejecutar correctamente y que sucedan las cosas, porque los planes regularmente, el excel, el powerpoint aguantan todo, no? Pero ya que vienen a la ejecución y que bajamos a la estrategia y hay que hacer delivery de los pesos en la cartera, pues se rompe todo, no? Entonces, tomando accionables sobre estos puntos responsables y que exista un champion de cada una de las áreas que muera por el dato y que lo usen sus compañías, creo que es el camino correcto. Y viene en dos sentidos de la data hacia las áreas y de las áreas hacia la data, no? Es un bidireccional donde, por ejemplo, estábamos platicando ayer sobre un tema de de compradores ofertas y qué clientes vamos a querer atacar en un segmento específico de los que nos compraron en el Back to School del año pasado. Y la conversación fue precio producto que vendí donde la conversación debería ser por qué el cliente me compra una vez en el back to school y nunca vuelve? Qué no le estoy ofreciendo, qué me compró y qué no me compró, no? Entonces le llenas de insights al comprador para que vaya a negociar con el proveedor y tenga los productos que quiere el cliente que no te compró a ti le compró MercadoLibre, no? Entonces, es bidireccional, lo tienen que usar fuertemente toda la compañía. En mi opinión, no debería ser dependiente de ningún área, debería ser independiente y que le dé servicio al 100% de la compañía, no? Totalmente. Y hablando un poco de esta transformación y también de adopción de nuevas tecnologías, lo que voy a hacer ahorita es un poquito distinto, porque generalmente iba a preguntar directamente a marketing lo que hace, pero en dado caso de que traemos un una nueva tecnología o necesitamos agregar nuevos datos, voy a preguntar a ti, Guillermo. Cómo deberían los líderes de marketing llegar hacia a ti y pedirles apoyo? Cómo le gustaría que fuera esta relación entre los dos equipos? Afortunadamente, en Petco, tengo en el área de marketing que e-com, heavy users como menciona Mario, o sea la realidad es que como les mencioné, yo pongo los cimientos. Pero estos cimientos, son consumidos por las otras áreas del negocio, no? O sea, por ahí anda Marco, anda Dulce? La realidad es que son, de verdad, que heavy users y ellos te empujan porque saben de tu estrategia de datos y ellos ya tienen su estrategia de marketing. Entonces, qué es lo que hace? Pues se une al final del unir esta parte de marketing con IT. Pues en mi caso es es un bombón, no? Es un bombón porque ya el usuario viene con una estrategia bien definida, ya incluso muchas veces esa estrategia está basada en números, está basada en números porque tiene un data warehouse donde consultan y se acercan conmigo y me dicen sabes que es que los clientes que tienen raza, es que identificamos que son seniors, no están consumiendo tal o cual producto. Entonces tenemos que activar una campaña en CDP que vaya a través de Emarsys y que lleguen notificaciones push, no? Ese es el requerimiento que tengo hoy de mi área de marketing y yo creo que, soy muy afortunado en tener ese equipo. Es súper importante y creo que estamos hablando un poquito ahí afuera de la importancia de seren un poco entre comillas amigos, entre esas diferentes áreas porque generalmente si vamos a ellos y abrimos un ticket o le pedimos que hagan algo, pero tener esta charla anteriormente, entender los objetivos, es súper importante y creo que Petco ustedes son muy afortunados de tenerlo. Pero ahora te doy la chance de contestar. Mario, en tu perspectiva, cómo sería esta relación entre tu equipo de marketing cuando tienen ya la estrategia tienen toda la idea a como debería ser en tu opinión esta relación? Bueno, la relación debe ser de una comunicación bidireccional ya lo mencionaba. De inicio, este, tenemos que ver dónde estamos parados para que se tenga excelencia en la definición que le vamos a pasar al equipo de sistemas. Si está mal definido de inicio el alcance del proyecto, si está mal definido el alcance hacia las áreas, pues nos van a entregar algo que no está en el scope de su situación, no? Nos va a entregar algo que no va a ser benéfico para la compañía. Entonces, antes de hablar con IT, tenemos que buscar a todos los stakeholders del CDP, del CRM, de Emarsys en general para saber cuál es la necesidad de negocio, cómo lo necesita, con qué pantallas, con qué variables de la ecuación, para que una vez que tengas claridad de esto, vayamos con IT y la implementación, pues sea un tema simples en la ejecución de los fierros. Lo voy a decir de esta forma vulgar no? Pero si no tenemos esa claridad que normalmente no sucede, pues le pasamos un mes indicación al sistemas y la realidad es que vas y vienes varias veces no? Entonces yo pediría a la audiencia que sean claros en la estrategia, que sean detallistas en la definición y que todos los stakeholders que van a usar la herramienta y que van a ser heavy users participen en esta definición porque les van a dar una gran input de lo que se necesita a total negocio. Totalmente. Cambiando un poquito y hablando de experiencia en tienda, en experiencia en línea y cerrando la brecha de la experiencia del cliente, que sea la misma en cualquier canal que han hecho sus marcas y sus equipos para crear esa experiencia fluida entre el online y offline. Desde mi punto de vista, la mayor fortaleza que tiene Petco es su programa de lealtad. El programa de lealtad cubre el 93% de las transacciones y eso te hace conocer a prácticamente todos tus clientes. Eso hace muy fácil que la experiencia en la tienda sea muy similar a la que tienes en economía y viceversa. Y un ejemplo que yo les podría dar es el tema de cupones. Nuestros clientes ya están esperando su cupón al momento de la transacción. Ya saben que si abren la app, tienen cupones personalizados con promociones solo para ellos. Le estamos hablando 1 a 1 de nuestros clientes y eso lo llevamos a las tiendas que cabe mencionar que son de los que generan más puntos de interacción con nuestro CDP. Entonces imagínense llevar un cliente a grooming a su perro. Entonces yo ya sé, todo lo que tiene el perro. Tengo puntos de revisión como si fuera un taller mecánico. Así, tal cual. Y, por supuesto, sé quién es el papá o mamá de nuestro peludito, nuestro amiguito. Y al final del día, pues esa es una súper oportunidad para sacarle provecho a la experiencia en la tienda, pues con toda la información que tenemos. Entonces, eso lo logramos gracias a tener un punto de venta que está en en línea, o sea, está prácticamente en tiempo real, pasando información a los demás sistemas como los de marketing, como Emarsys, para poder pues crear esta experiencia en la tienda que tanto está buscando nuestro cliente que les menciono que cada vez más exigente. Hoy, les emociona que les avise el nuevo cupón, mañana eso va a ser cosa del pasado y te van a exigir cada vez más y más experiencia. Listo? Bueno, nosotros no estamos tan avanzados como Petco en esa situación y por eso les platicaba de en qué momentos está su empresa y qué tenemos que accionar. Hoy que está haciendo Office Depot y Radio Shack es esta limpieza de información, este llenado de toda la data transaccional y de clientes de los pisos de venta hacia CRM, hacia el CDP. Hoy estamos en esta unificación omnicanal donde primero tenemos que conocer qué tenemos en cuanto a data, dónde estamos parados, qué clientes están Omnicanal? Es que clientes no son omnicanales, cuál es la frecuencia de ellos, en qué categorías me compran, en cuáles no? Ahí estamos hoy y para ello vamos a implementar wallet de Emarsys justamente para poder cambiar el modelo de atribución. Hoy no sé si tocó al cliente digital y me va a comprar en la tienda física. Hoy es un assumption de un porcentual que todos los conocemos, no? Lo que sucede cuando tocas al cliente y luego vía geolocalización sabes que fue a tu tienda, no? Pero es un estimado, no es una atribución real tal vez, con esta herramienta pues vamos a poder tocar en cualquier medio al cliente y saber que está redimiendo lo que le mandé y en la categoría que él quiso no? Entonces ya nos vamos a volver omnicanal realmente en el tema marketero, en el tema de precios, producto, promociones, etcétera. Entonces hoy estamos en ese paso. Va a ser un un milestone dentro de la compañía, porque realmente llevamos años tratando de hacerlo, pero hasta que no limpiamos la data que hoy tenemos podíamos aventarnos a este segundo paso, garbaje in, garbage out. Acuérdense, no podemos ingresar a la herramienta con datos malos porque te va a mandar segmentos malos y herramientas malas, no? Entonces por eso estamos ahí y es un paso hacia adelante de lo que tenemos, que como estrategia. Perfecto. Y sabemos que tenemos determinadas compañías que están en determinadas etapas y realmente siguen creciendo. Y hablando de este crecimiento y de la transformación, la evolución de cada uno de sus equipos, cómo ustedes adoptan nuevas tecnologías y también nuevos canales de manera sostenible a lo que sea relacionada la operación con su equipo operativo, cómo hacen ustedes para que el proceso realmente sea sostenible, que no sea súper difícil para el equipo? Si hemos creado células de trabajo donde realmente la parte digital se mueve ajena, no ajena, pero en paralelo al todo el legado que tenemos en cuanto a sistemas. Teniendo esto en consideración, hacemos pruebas de concepto de lo que sucede en mundos digitales. Y ya que la prueba de concepto es aceptada, funcionó la traspolar al resto de la compañía no? Son ejemplos de lo que puede suceder en manera de materia ágil, de manera de células, porque al tener un brick and click que no nació digital, que no nació customer centric, que no nació data driven, pues tienes que acostumbrarte a que va a ir cambiando la operación, va a ir cambiando este elefante blanco que se mueve lento y se mueve a ritmos que el digital no. Entonces tienes que cambiar la estrategia y tienes que poder, pues acoplarla a lo que está pasando en este momento. Lo que yo podría agregar, por supuesto, tratamos de seguir ese Journey cada vez que lanzamos una estrategia. Pero yo creo que todo nace desde los objetivos de la empresa. En nuestro caso, en octubre, noviembre, estamos peleándonos todas las áreas. Por qué? Por presupuesto y ese presupuesto debe estar relacionado a las metas que tiene la empresa. Entonces, si está bien relacionada el objetivo comercial, el objetivo de e-com, el objetivo de marketing, la realidad es de que yo soy el que sigue la estrategia de la compañía y yo hago que esas ideas que tiene la compañía, las podamos llevar a buen puerto, las ejecutemos. Entonces yo agregaría lo que dice Mario, si planeas bien tu estrategia como compañía y te comprometes con ese plan, no digo que sea inamovible, pero no te debes de estar moviendo todo el tiempo, puedes lograr grandes resultados y al final del día, a la hora de corte, pues vas a obtener alcanzar el presupuesto que previste. Sí. Y hablando de presupuestos y de también de prioridad, además de la centralización de datos, hay alguna otra herramienta que en relación a ROE? Han ustedes invertido un montón y que ves que realmente han priorizado en los próximos meses o años? Si en Petco estamos priorizando el tema del abasto. Comprar el producto adecuado en la tienda adecuada para el cliente adecuado. Se dice fácil, pero es súper complicado tener el producto para el cliente que está esperando, pues ya te está exigiendo esa experiencia y puedas dar un ejemplo o sea, si tienes un un reptil y en la tienda no tienen, no tienen grillos, por ejemplo, no tienes alimento vivo y es lo que único que come tu cliente el alimento de la mascota de tu cliente, perdón, pues le estás fallando a tu cliente. Entonces le estamos dando mucha importancia al tema del abasto, estamos metiendo nuevas estrategias, nueva tecnología para qué? Para poder surtir las tiendas con el stock adecuado, estar previniendo este stock que utiliza el e-commerce, porque la mayoría de mis paquetes se entregan a través de las tiendas, entonces las tiendas fungen como esta mano de obra extra y más cerca del cliente? Y estamos logrando muy buenos resultados en e-com que al final del día incrementan el margen. Entonces, el abasto es súper importante. Hemos dedicado eso. Y regresando al tema de ROI, pues sí, en lo que les mencioné del presupuesto, pues cada estrategia tiene un resultado esperado. Entonces obviamente las que traen mejores resultados a la compañía, son las que ganan y pasa. Bueno, de este lado hay varias iniciativas en varias verticales dentro de la compañía. Una de ellas es Inventarios y abasto. Justamente estamos haciendo pruebas de inteligencia artificial para ser agnóstico. No diré la herramienta, pero te genera datos a partir de la operación. Es Operational Centric, donde el gerente de la tienda puede ver qué le va a faltar, cuánta venta le está perdiendo, que tiempo tiene su inventario, cuánta rotación tiene y en automático gestiona hacia abasto, hacia el área de abasto. Este las necesidades de la tienda particular, centraliza todas las necesidades de todas las tiendas. Y bueno, este empieza el tema con proveeduría forecast y compra y venta entonces. Esa es una, dentro de inventarios también tenemos bien una herramienta que estamos tocando que se llama Order Broker, una parte de OMS y de Order Administration, donde con inteligencia de negocio no, no es inteligencia artificial esta vez. Vamos a poder decir cuándo, de dónde va a salir la mercancía que le cueste más barato a la compañía y que le cumpla la promesa de entrega al cliente, no? Este muy relevante el tema de entregas, no? Es la nueva, es el nuevo estándar después del precio en la industria. Entrégame bien, entrégame rápido y dime dónde está mi pedido siempre no? Entonces ahí estamos poniendo el foco principal en el CDP Custumer Data Platform. Datos, datos, datos, cliente. Y evidentemente, la salida de estos datos tiene que tener una accionable puntual hacia el cliente, no? Que es todo lo que estamos haciendo con Emarsys. Perfecto y me das ahí justo una brecha para la última pregunta con Emarsys hablando de transformación digital y ejecución de sus estrategias. Cómo han ustedes visto transformación con Emarsys de que empezaron, hay alguna automatización que hicieron, algún proceso o datos que no existían antes que eran accionables a su equipo de marketing que hoy en día lo logran hacer? Lo que tratamos es llevar la mayor cantidad de información disponible a Emarsys para que el equipo de marketing sea totalmente, es difícil decir totalmente, pero que sea independiente de crear sus campañas, de crear sus estrategias, además de que la herramienta ya tiene por default ciertas estrategias, ciertos journeys ya predefinidos a los cuales por supuesto, le sacamos un jugo bárbaro. Un ejemplo que les puedo mencionar es una estrategia que tenemos que se llama Welcome to the family, que lo que hacemos es que identificamos productos. Imagínense que alguien va a productos o mascotas. Imagínense que alguien va a adoptar un perrito y en ese instante te llega los cupones a tu app donde te indica que y además te informa, qué es lo que necesita tu perrito para estar bien. Entonces ese cupón instantáneo que sucede cada vez que nosotros encontramos este patrón, para no hablar de números, es un número muy importante que incrementa la venta y pues son de las campañas que tenemos muchas, muchas, muchas. Pero la realidad es de que cada vez que hacemos este toque de puerta al cliente de manera estratégica, de manera personalizada, entre más personalizado lo hagas, mejor resultado tienes. Súper. Vale, de este lado hemos hecho un abismo contra año pasado. La realidad es que, primero nos aseguramos que estuviéramos usando la herramienta. Tengo una de las marcas lo usaba al 40% y la otra al 80%. La realidad es que va de nuevo gente que usa la herramienta, que se enamore de la herramienta y que la aproveche. Entonces un tema de usabilidad, pasamos al 100% de usabilidad y por eso los resultados que les mencionaba al inicio de la conversación. Y después vinieron nuevas capacidades también, no? Antes no teníamos push notifications, ahora los tenemos. Antes no teníamos wallet, ahora la vamos a tener. Todo lo de inteligencia artificial para subjects, para contenido lo vamos a usar. Y el KPI estimado, pues es mayores plantillas, mayores ejecuciones, mayores pruebas, iteraciones una a otra. Yo le digo al equipo no sé, no tengan miedo en equivocarse para probar. Prueben, monitoreen si funciona la herramienta y si funciona esa táctica, pues check, no? Seguimos, la hacemos más. Si no funciona, vas para atrás y reprobamos no? Entonces prácticamente es un tema de uso, un tema de adquirir la tecnología en tiempo. Y no solo eso. Capacitar a nuestra gente, no? Tú nos has ayudado un montón, Pauline. Muchas gracias, pero es parte de todo, no? Es parte del equipo y es parte de la ejecución. Sí, sí, pues creo que ahorita tenemos mucho que hablar y que gozaremos de la oportunidad de charlarla entre ustedes y también con los speakers, con nosotros de Emarsys, porque hay mucho, mucho que hacer, en especial cuando tienen la estrategia, tienen la amistad entre los dos equipos de TI, de marketing y tienen también hay una herramienta súper potente que les posiciona muy bien en lograr todos sus estrategias y todos sus objetivos. Entonces les agradezco chicos por todos que que compartieron acá por todo que están haciendo.

Our opening session is a fireside chat that looks at one brand's journey balancing tradition with transformation. This is the story of how a brand with rich heritage successfully transformed into a thriving omnichannel business with international reach. In the hot seat is Howell Wong, Regional Director, Transformation and Operations at SMCP, a digital native and commercially driven marketing professional with both in-house and agency experience. Howell has a proven track record in the development and implementation of business transformation programs, consumer insights-led business development projects and various brand lifting marketing campaigns. And guiding the conversation will be Christine Ah-Kang, Head of Strategic Projects at Emarsys. Howell, Christine, please come on stage. I'm so thrilled to be here in Hong Kong and welcome you to this first session on innovating tradition. Being in Hong Kong, we have such a rich heritage and this forward-thinking spirit. I couldn't think of a better backdrop to have this conversation with Howell. Howell, we have a room full of experts today and leaders, and we are very fortunate to have you on stage, one of them. You have more than 20 years of experience in marketing and also business transformation. To start us off, would you like to share a bit more about your background and journey so far? I can do so. Hello everyone. So my name is Howell. I think there is. So when you're looking at my title, I think a lot of people don't know that I used to be an engineer. I used to be working in UK mobile phone factory and doing soddering irons and lifting heavy equipments. You know, that's a lot of things that I... is a big transformation, you know, for, since I started as I engineer life. And then for the first half of my career is mainly transforming myself. I moved from engineer to aftersales to agency to... I have some of my ex-colleagues here in luxury and also FMCG and now the French fashion. So the first half is almost like transforming myself. My second half of my career is probably more about transforming companies. So including luxury, including FMCG. You know, I mentioned just now and right now I am in SMCP. I'm not only looking after the digital and transformation, but I'm also looking after the retail ops. the IT, and also supply chain as well. So, this is a bit of a transformation for for myself as well in that sense. So as you just said, you've brought this wealth of experience at SMCP. Who is SMCP in a few words? Yeah, SMCP, if you look at the word, I think my company always mistaken as another media company in Hong Kong. So SMCP actually stands for three brands. It's called Sandro, Maje, and Claudie Pierlot. In fact, we have the fourth brand we recently acquired. It's called Fursac as well. It's only available in France currently, but hopefully moving to Asia very soon. We are a... Our company vision is about spreading Parisian elegance to the world, and our mission is to be the leader of the accessible luxury. That's really what the company's all about. We have roughly about 1,700 touchpoints in the world covering 47 markets. Within this region, including China. We have roughly about 300 stores, and not including the online touchpoint as well. So so we are literally kind of everywhere. Yes. Certaintly international reach. And I can add as well as a client of SMCP that they truly understand their clients. Just talking to Howell on Zoom twice I think he was able to spot what product I would be drawn to. So speaking of understanding your clients, easier now the clients are becoming increasingly digital, right? So how do you see this evolving your brand, and what are some key projects and milestones that you have achieved? Yeah, I think, well, one of the key thing for consumer now there's this, one of the key observations is they are becoming, certainly becoming less brand loyal and too many touchpoint, too many options, too many messages, you know. So I think the the consumer kind of like in a very confused mode when they are going through their shopping journey nowadays. So we often ask ourselves, you know, what is that? You know, I always speak to my team is about the consumer jobs to be done. You know, what is the jobs to be done, you know, for our consumer. So just for a few example, right. It can be just simply look good. So how can, you know, I go out and buy something and make me look good. How can I buy a sustainable products? How can I, you know, get some, you know, personalized recommendation? How can I, you know, get my products very quickly or conveniently? I think that's kind of the jobs to be done that we always think about. So when I joined SMCP three years ago, I noticed there's one key problem is we don't actually have the structure or the infrastructure that to support that and also the compliance issue as well. So at that time, there's a lot of data privacy. There's a lot of, you know, new regulations just came out. So when I first started in SMCP, the first step that I did is to change the infrastructure. It was changing the program. So we deploy the new CDP CEP, we change the OMS, we deploy new channels messaging tools like WeCom, like WhatsApp Business. So we basically very busy on the foundation I started. And then I think for the last two years is probably more about okay how can I make use of those tools, and then deploying, you know, different omnichannel services. We changed the loyalty program into loyalty points program in China. So we've done quite a few things to basically reach out to the consumer more efficiently and effectively. That's certainly one thing that we did try. I think for the omnichannel services, I want to highlight that we, you know, is something that we simply... we'll give a quick example is the ship from store. So we are not only shipping from the warehouse nowadays, we are shipping directly from store. We are using the store inventory to ship to the customer if they place an online order. Only for that portion, it has already, you know, within the three months after we launch, it's already paid off the investment that we have done. So I think it was very encouraging. And then for the loyalty point program we recently just launched, I think early this year. For the redemption for the transaction with using the redemption voucher is up to €1,000,000 euros of value. So all this is actually takes time. You know, how can you think about, you know, the foundation and how to deploy? And then of course I mean for the next period or the next stage, we're still constantly optimizing the services and how to improve it and reach out to our consumer better. Well, congratulations on all of those milestones, first of all. I guess you just mentioned, right, how loyalty is key to acquiring this client, but also retaining them. And often we think about storytelling as a way of acquiring. It can also be key in driving loyalty and driving online to offline offering. So how do you use storytelling? If it's just to you? For example, I think we have a... Every season, we have roughly about 500 references, you know, on our clothes. And we have, if you say familiar references, roughly about 3,000 SKU that we have every season. So we have two seasons in a year. So it's roughly about 6,000 unique SKU that we have in store and online. So we're very, you know, we really want to make sure the consumer, you know, knowing them, and we can't tell each of the consumer about that 6,000 SKU. So how to do that is actually about personalization, is how can we really tailor made and tailor made, and understand the consumer and tailor made the message to them. So I think for the broader communication, we've been trying to use, you know, in-store livestreaming, say, for example, because we believe, well, we use our celebrity and as well, but very often we find sales at our shop is actually the best gatekeeper. They know the consumer best. So how can we use them to communicate about, you know, our products, our brand story to, you know, a one on one engagement or even, you know, food, a livestreaming channel. So that's something that we're really, really focusing. And also we've been, you know, using AIGC, say, for example, we using AIGC to, you know, craft our content better, the better the subject title better. And then we even, you know, exploring to use AIGC to create some of their content for our consumer. So in a way we are exploring our virtual fitting right now. So in a way, I can, you know, Christine, I actually I could use that yesterday for you. I can say that. Hey, Christine, can I have a picture of you? Can I have, you know, have your snapshot of you, and then I can just have a using AI to paste on the, you know, the suggested dress I recommended for you, and I can let you take a look. And then if you like it then I can just, you know, send you a payment link and then I can send it directly to your home. So that's something that we are we are currently exploring right now. So and on top of this, I guess AI also can help with generating the content of the message that you're sending. And we have so many channels nowadays, right, With the messenger apps. You mention WhatsApp, we have line. There are also social networks like TikTok. So for marketers who want to expand their reach, what cues would you have to choose the right channel and what can the channels bring to their strategy? Good question. Well, I think first of all, I think you need to, you know, I talk about consumer jobs to be done. Right. So I think we really have to understand, you know, the role of each of the channels first, I think, because I think right now nowadays we have so many different digital channels or even physical channels, we have franchise stores in there. So how are you going to define the role of each of the channels and ask yourself about the why, the, you know, I always say that the why, the how, and the what. Right? So the why we... Why the consumer should listen to you? You know, you need to give them a context, you know, and then how you're going to approach them and what is the, you know, what are you going to offer to the consumer? So every time. So I think, you know, we recently rolled out, I see my partners here, Avery here, Omnichat. So we recently roll our omnichat in Singapore, Malaysia. I think one of the key thing that I tell to the retail operation is we every time when we open the conversation with our consumer, it has to have some value. So what is the things that we want to offer to them? What is the things that we trying to talk to them? And they may, they find it interesting. They find it useful. So I think that's really important, you know, for that self communication and and retaining customers as well. And when we define the strategies you mentioned, the why and the what, then when I think about strategy, I always think as well about execution. I'm sure there are quite a few people here in the room, the head of marketing, CMO, and their counterpart as well on the technical side who want to make sure that it's as smooth as possible for their teams. So how do we actually ensure that this is the case? And that managing this change management and that we are not overwhelmed by execution. And the IT guy usually speak tech jargon. You know, we will often, you know, scare my boss with the tech chat, "oh, we need this because there's a compliance. We need to have this." So, but I think I think in a way is every single program is about change management as well. So how can we I think one key word is about stakeholder management, right? So how can you ensure your stakeholder is buy in to the things that you roll out? Simply put, you know, I mention about ship from store. So thing about that is very simple concept. I'm not only shipping from warehouse, but I'm shipping from my store and a warehouse to my online order. Very simple concept. But I can tell you that I have a huge war in a way with my finance team, with my retail team, with my online team. They were like, finance team were arguing, "Hey, you know, how can you reporting to different P&L." The retail team will say that, "Hey, you are using you're using my staff to fulfilling the online order." And then the online guys will say, "Well, why you are paying to the offline kind of commission?". My God, that's like a huge war going on. So I think it's important for us to understand the different stakeholder ping pong. How are you going to... I think it's almost like an internal marketing campaign in a way. So is how can you tell the story? How can you dumb it down? Make sure you know your top management understand the context, understand the ROI. I think this is why I think basically managing the stakeholder is absolutely key. Understand the ping pong, and then how can you roll out step by step as well? That's absolutely key for us. So on top of listening to the client, it's also listening and understanding the internal stakeholder as you just see and speaking their language, right? So you are deploying quite a lot of technology infrastructure, making sure that you have as a team and as well as experts who can help you and guide you on the technology. What are your next step then for SMCP? I think we keep listening or, well, we just keep listening and keep understanding the consumer behavior. I think that's the consumer. Even, I can tell you that even three years ago when I joined SMCP, and three years later, I think the consumer behavior is shifting already. Even before Covid and after Covid. So I think I think that's something that we keep listening to them and understand their needs and then how to constantly delight them as well. And that's something that we, I think my team is actively trying to do. Second is don't stop innovate. I know I think I don't know how many retail counterparts here. Retail is tough right now, especially in Hong Kong. But however, don't stop innovate. I think is, innovate sometimes, yes, it does cost money, but sometimes it doesn't cost money too. So how can you changing the ways of working junior to process changing the, you know, the just the normal ways you do things. I think it's keep changing and keep innovate and then keep building POC, keep building the proof of concept. So my last step is how can I copy the POC and expand it to other places? You know, like I mentioned, I think the, you know, the services or the success that we have done like the shift from store, the endless aisles, the loyalty point program, you know all these thing right, mainly happen in China right now because having three years go, most of my foundation is actually built in China because of the compliance issue I start. Now is about how am I going to copy that into rest of Asia? You know how do I copy this best practice into Hong Kong, into Singapore, Malaysia, and even Australia as well. So that, I rely on my partners like Emarsys and Omnichat. How can I, you know, rely on you guys to basically have that learning, build that innovation, proven, and then to copy it into other places. Of course, every market is different, even Hong Kong and Singapore is very different in terms of consumer behavior and touchpoint. So how can we, you know, adapt it in a way? That's also important as well. And exactly this is what we were discussing earlier, but using the power of data and the technology to scale but still keep this tradition and as a French operation chick, bring it and bringing, adapting it to the different markets where you're present. So, Howell, thank you so much thank you for your insight, your milestones, your learnings, and we are very pleased to have you, very lucky to have SMCP as a client, and we are looking forward to more success together.

And our next session is a discussion on the most effective ways to leverage technology for sustainable growth while overcoming challenges such as economic uncertainty, evolving customer behavior, and an ever-expanding area of marketing tools to choose from. On this panel, we have Avery Tang, Regional Vice President of Customer Success at Omnichat. Skilled in Digital Transformation, Marketing, Cloud, eCommerce, digital solutions and business development, Avery is an experienced leader with a demonstrated history of success in IT and services industry. We also have Jodi Wong, Group Manager, Digital Marketing at Regal Hotels. Jodi brings a proven track record of setting into action digital marketing and content strategies that set themselves apart from competitors while successfully navigating the new era. Joining Avery and Jodi is Matthew Lim, Director of Marketing, Digital at Swire Hotels, a business minded marketing professional with a broad consumer marketing background. Matthew's interest lies at the intersection of consumer tech, retail, and hospitality. And leading this session is Carole Martin, Senior Vice President of Service, APAC at Emarsysw. Let's welcome our panelists on stage. Good afternoon, everyone. We're pleased and pleased to be here in Hong Kong. I can feel the energy of the city. It's really a delight to be here and to be on this exceptional panel today with our very distinguished speakers. So I'm really honored to welcome Matthew and Jodi from prominent hotel groups in Hong Kong, as we've mentioned, and Avery, expert and leader in omnichannel conversational commerce. So thank you. And today we'll be talking about the strategic growth and how do we harness technology in the long term. Mainly, I think we'll really dive into the importance of integrating data, customer centricity to really look at driving top line growth, building relevant customer experiences. So we've got 35 minutes. So with no further ado, let's jump right in. And I'd like to start with a quick run of introductions. If you could tell us about your role, what your responsibilities are. Maybe we'll start with you, Matthew. Hi, everyone. My name is Matthew Lam. I'm the director of marketing at Swire Hotels. So for some of you who doesn't know about Swire Hotels, we have two brands, the House Collective, which is a premium luxury brand. And also we have EAST Hotels, which is our alternative luxury lifestyle brand. So in Hong Kong, we have Upper House and we have Upper House in multi and we also have EAST Hong Kong at Taikoo. Along with my team, our main responsibility is to drive all digital data and loyalty experience projects for the group. I personally come from a retail marketing background. It's my first year working in hospitality. So don't be too hard on me. That's it. Thank you. Thank you, Matthew. And hello, everyone. So my name is Jodi. As the digital marketing manager of our group, Regal Hotels International, we also have like three brands under the group, namely East Regal Hotels, Bigelow Hotels, and also iclub hotels. Just like Matthew, I am also the first year working in the hotel industry. There's lots of things to learned. So as for my traditional roles and responsibilities is resolve around like ensuring all digital initiative aligned with our business needs, of course. This encompasses site overseeing email marketing, enhancing website customer experience and journey, managing social media, digital advertising, and optimizing the business process for better effectiveness and efficiency. And of course my key KPI is to be im fact in the revenue growth. Right? So today is my pleasure to learn from both experts to see how to make our business to be elevated. Thank you. Thank you Jodi. My name is Avery. I'm been in marketing technology for last 14 years. I'm very passionate to talk to customers about digital transformation, how things work, how to change your digital, well, how to make your business better. Ominchat is mainly about digital channels like WhatsApp, Line, Facebook IG, inboxes. How to use the conversation messaging to discuss and communicate with client. We not only working with hospitality, we work in different kind of industry. Basically, if you think about all your day-to-day life, who is answering your WhatsApp? Which business is using WhatsApp? That was where we could help you. We could do retail, commerce with whole, travels, all different kind of industry. So hope that we'll have a very interesting discussion later on. Thank you, Avery. Thank you, Jodi and Matthew. So let's start a little bit by looking into the business outlook. I think we are all aware that, you know, businesses in Hong Kong and globally are navigating economic headwinds. But with the reopening of borders, where we're seeing steady recovery, and when it comes to hospitality, there's a gradual, gradual return of leisure and business travel. So in that context, maybe we can start with you, Jodi. How do you perceive the current state of the hospitality markets in your region? And, you know, what's your perspective on those trends specifically? Thank you, Carole. So as we know, the tourism growth in Hong Kong for 2024 has not met the expected levels, despite the days like significant increase in the visitor arrival, particularly for mainland China. But the overall growth rate has been lower than expected. So far, we welcome like 21 million visitors, which about like 64% of the growth from last year. But as Carole said is not fully recover. But from our perspective, we are still quite optimistic because there are like more and more cities in China, they are joining the individual travel scheme, and with this opportunities, we are also leveraging the China social media to capture the surging demands to the tourism to Hong Kong and also to convert them to stay with our hotels. Yeah. Thank you, Jodi. Matthew, how are you also looking into, you know, opportunities for growth in the current context? Like since the beginning of the year, the pacing is definitely has been very slow compared to last year. And I think, well, from a group level, we think that it's indicative that we are not able to bring alone the long haul high spending travelers from US and Europe into Hong Kong and could be reasons around air capacity. But also I think we have become more expensive, like Hong Kong in general has become more expensive. Hotel rates has been higher. So it makes the city becomes more expensive. And for the industry is good, for the hotel owners is good, but for the customers are not amazing because they have to pay a premium to fly over to Hong Kong. So as a leisure market for long haul travelers, Hong Kong is not a value option yet, but same as Jodi. We have to stay optimistic. Who doesn't? And we right now see that, you know, Hong Kong like 60% recovered. So there's opportunity for growth. And I think it takes the, not just the government but brands collectively across industries to work together to accelerate that growth. Yeah. Absolutely. So I think you said it, marketing investment are under tight scrutiny. There was a Gartner report in 2023 on CMO on surveying CMOs stating that, you know, 73% of CMO are really under the pressure, state that they're under pressure of doing more, doing less, more with less while maintaining growth. So from being in, operating in that context, how have your business priorities shifted, and where are you really driving your attention and your focus when it comes to driving revenue? Maybe, Jodi, if you want to jump on. Yeah, sure. So this is a question also for my boss as well. Yeah. So in hotel industry, even though I am quite new, but back in to a decade ago, I work in travel agency, and the first time I faced digital transformation for the travel agency is the popularity of travelers using OTA, online travel agency. Now I'm working in the hotel industry. I'm also facing the the same dilemma is like how can I shift my focus from finding our customer from the online travel agency to the, to our direct booking channels, which help us to gather like the sufficient customer base to offer personalized offers and also to get more chance to get them to upsell and cross-sell our products in so that we can do less and then we can generate more revenue. This is our first priority, and I think we can discuss more about like later, like how our lockstep on this priority. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, Jodi. So, Matthew, can you tell us a little bit, obviously you've been in hospitality for a year now, but you've also been in other, quite a few industries, fashion, lifestyle, sports industry. So from your perspective over the years, like how have you also shifted your priorities on what's making an impact? I think in Hong Kong in general, we um, just my personal view, we over rely on Chinese mainland visitors. But from a group level, we believe this is a strength for the market. Looking in the future, there's a prediction that seeing 80% of the luxury travelers will come from China. So there's a huge opportunity for, to exploit and to grow. But at the same point we are looking at to expand our international travel segment because there's a value of Hong Kong of bringing international travelers. So we're exploring markets like South Korea, Middle East, even Malaysia. There we see a lot of high spending travelers coming to Hong Kong. But looking at back to hotels, looking at our portfolio, occupancy rate has room for improvement. But we see the luxury average daily rate has been up since 2018 for like around 10%. So focusing on the rate will be our focus, will basically be more important than the occupancy because we see ample space for growth. Yes. Okay. Thank you, Matthew. Avery, curious as well on that topic. You know, with brands that you partner, leading brands that you partner with, what's your perspective as well on capturing these opportunities as well for growth? Yeah. I think you're right at the very beginning that there are lot of CMO have been very challenging like with less budget but higher target every year. And I think that was a pain for everyone here. But when we look into the transformation or actually how they looking into priority, they changing some of the business focus and business direction, especially when it comes to customer support. So I think in the old days, a lot of customer support were relying on phone call and call center, which, I mean, if everyone in Hong Kong, you know that like we now actually prefer more on chat. So I don't need to keep on the phone, listening to the awful music, pressing 1 and two and three and then another awful music, which the chat actually controlling your pace to talk to your customer and your customer controlling the pace to answer you as well. So when it come to that where, I mean, because of the nature of my business, right. So we talk a lot like, okay, not only because of supporting the chat have to be improved, is also how to convert a non-revenue generator chat support to something more revenue generated. Instead of the KPI is to closing the case so that you go away, the KPI is how can I drive you to the footfall? So that's where that the company looking into transforming something that existing running but make it more useful, driving extra revenue as a new channel or as a new way to engaging the channel. Thank you, Avery. So key topics here. Obviously it's all around, you know, how we are looking at delivering, enhancing the experiences for our customers, for our guests in the industry. Yet, you know, I think earlier we heard about innovating with with more or less investments. But it's all about also really understanding how each, you know, in the context of hospitality, each guest is unique, understanding their preferences and being able to act on that and personalize. So let's move on a little bit to the topic of, you know, integrating tech and data. And I'd be keen to sort of look into diving into how you'd leverage, you know, technology and data analytics really to inform your brand strategy and really to craft these unique experiences for your customers. So maybe we can start with you, Matthew, on this one. I think the transformation takes place from the increasing the demand level of customer experience and also operational efficiency. From a brand perspective, we obviously utilize a lot of consumer data to drive preferences and understand preferences. Our hotels, as I mentioned, one of our brand, our House Collective, very focus on personalized services, from F&B preferences, in-room service preferences. And we also get to a point that this is a story that I heard. I'm not sure if it's true, but... We would know which side of the bed that the that the guests would get off, and we would prepare a pair of slippers before they check in, on that side. So this data is not just used from a marketing perspective, but guest experiences. Even sales team would use our contextual and demographic data to create offers and packages. So I think it goes beyond just brand strategy. But I think it's a company level that if we look at the customer journey, how they, before they come into that hotel entrance, we started to engage with them from digital to in-room and then to post-day engagement. Thank you, Matthew. And Jodi, tell us more as well from how you are leveraging data-driven insights as well to really craft and design, you know, the end-to-end customer experience as well. We kind of like, to leveraging the data by the pre-trip experience. We more focus on that. Yeah, because like for in-room we have another another mechanism, but as a digital marketing manager. So we leverage the data like we collect from the advertising and also collect from the email marketing and also collect from the social media ecosystem to get, to crunch the data, to set the different profile for customer so that we are delivering the personalized offer or the message to the segment they are really interested in. For example, last month we have the first pilot for the dynamic content optimization with Google. So we have create like using the artificial intelligence solution to generate almost like more than like 1,000 creative assets across different segments, for example, business traveler, family travelers, and also like the leisure travelers, and also like the concert goers. Even as small as this kind of statement to have different creative assets to reach out to them to ensure that our offer is really tied with the customer list. And at the next stage for the seamless customer journey, then we also leverage the automation of our email marketing. So we try to like the, to, we target them with our email, with automation. That's for example, if you ever engage with our spa offers advertisement, then we will send you promotion email to try to convert you and also to make you like to re-engage with us in the website. Yeah. This kind of automation and the data we are using to enhance the conversion. Yeah. Can I just just add a comment? Yeah, of course. I think in general companies they don't have a good grasp of what an exceptional experience means to a customer. Not that the customers are subpar, I would say, but it just not remarkable because we have been talking about experience a lot, and the value of experience has become very commoditized. And I think we have, as a brand, have to try to elevate that the customer's sense of self instead of elevating customers' perception of how our product and services are. And I think that technology and data comes into to the game because while our customers are craving an understanding of themselves, we as brands have to understand them better and faster and they understand themselves. I think that's the, that will be the key point. Yeah. Absolutely. So it's really that, you know, shift from product to customer-centricity and really putting that front and center from a business perspective and really focusing on value and what does it mean from a different business perspective. And, Avery, what trends are you seeing in this area? I think when it comes to data, one thing is very obvious is when someone reach out to you in a conversation channel like Messenger, WhatsApp, they don't come to you for no reason. You can receive an email, but then you interact, you don't interact, you open, you click or not, it shows some interest. But the conversational part actually make a big difference. They come to ask you a question that means they are interested into one thing: either something that they want to buy or something that they want to get an answer. So we work with a lot of like CDP marketing automations to like Emarsys. How do we using first-party data from CDP as well as how we pushing back the conversation with data back to them? They ask a question, it's a very strong interest on particular items, particular categories. How that information back to CDP and driving all the conversation afterwards. In the conversation part, it also like depends on who is managing the discussion or the chat, right? If it's the salesperson talking to you like, "Hey, customer asked, what's this cloth make of," then a basic simple CS answer is like cotton. If it's a sales guy, then they would naturally answer like, "Hey, it's actually a very breathable cotton, is feeling nice, really smooth. Come down to the shop and try to touch it." All right. So this is where the difference that the conversation will be and all those data how to get in and out between the conversation channel, CDP, the rest of the world, how that become a meaningful insight engagement, then that's where that we talk a lot like okay, where are they going back? I want this data back. I want this conversation inside go back, and then this where we work with Emarsys on the CDP, the marketing automation part of it. Yeah. Thank you, Avery. So we talked through the importance, obviously, of, you know, unleashing the power of data, but and using technology and cutting-edge technology, for that matter, to really drive that forward. But I think companies, when it comes to, you know, a big word, which is digital transformation, I think everyone speaking to its top of mind about digital transformation. But businesses are at really different stages when it comes to, you know, looking at digital transformation. And there's different stages in this process. So I'm, you know, pragmatically also when it comes, when we talk about digital transformation, you know, in your in your area, like what are the key...? What are you really prioritizing? Because it's a journey. It's not something that happens, you know, overnight. And there's, it's a whole process. So what are your priorities in that domain? Well, mainly driven by, you know, customer experience and operational efficiency. And I think what we are currently doing right now is exploring technologies like auto check-in, check-out systems, keyless entry systems. And most recently, we have a big project that we're exploring is our guest experience on mobile apps. We're building a WeChat mini program, don't tell anyone, that will integrate guest experience features in it. Are you going to copy it? Just kidding. And then from a marketing perspective, obviously we have talked about it already, we're using data to do a lot of deep customer analysis for personalized recommendations. Broadly, we're also looking at AI and chat bots. But because our brand is not, it's not very relevant to our brand because we have this human touch element in our brand. So but that can obviously ease the efficiency in operations in our workload. Yeah. Thank you, Matthew. Jodi, I think when we were speaking about, you know, digital automation, you were really referring to like how you really see it as a key stone, you know. So tell us more. Speaking of the WeChat mini program, Matthew. So I can share some experience with you because we already are there. Yeah. So basically, I think hotel is quite complicated in terms of operations. I think, Matthew, you agree with me because like, we not only have to do with like the how do you say, revenue management. We have to deal with different business units like operations like F&B and also the front office. Recently, we are working on the WeChat mini program, which has really helped me to understand the whole hotel operation in two months. Yeah. It's like working in the hotel for ten years. Because when we are working in this kind of like let the customer to check in in the mini program, to check out in the mini program, and also to order the in-room service in the mini program, we have to be, we know how to influence our team to get to embrace the technology to be digitalization. In this regard, so I'm not trying to say like how to implement the tech aspect because there is an expert here, but from the, how do you say, how the state stakeholder management, I would say this is really important to share the understanding of the digital methodology because I see from the, for the digital transformation without the common ground, we are going to miscommunication and failing to tailor our services and product to meet the customer needs. As I said, when we when we try to think about the seamless customer journey, they are like many story behind operations. So we have to communicate with them to share the digital knowledge form step by step. For example, like we have to let them know, like the China social media ecosystem, how the travelers from mainland China, they get used to have their room service in China. And then we tell them like, what's the best practice across this kind of latest implementation? Yeah. So I would say the digital transformation begins with each one of us. And we have to make the one small step to make a lift in the future to drive significant result. Yeah. Thank you, Jodi. And Avery, to tech experts for it, said, what challenges and are you working partnering with the key brands when it comes to really helping them navigate digital transformation? Maybe I call a little bit. I feel like talking about in-stay experience. Recently we were talking to a lot of hotel groups on how to changing the in-stay experience to more digital and actually drive revenue as well. So one other thing is that we talk about is set of you have a very big book, the folder in the room having multiple pages talking about this is the F&B, this is the dine-in restaurant, and this is the in-room dining. How can we change that to a digitalized versions? So at the moment, you know, you check in or maybe you go into the room, you see the TV, there is a QR there that you can scan the whole booklet is actually within the WhatsApp already. Then the benefit of it is like, okay, actually I can directly click there to say, "Do you still have sit in your dine-in restaurant?" I can actually directly click on the F&B menu and see I know what is there. The idea is not only transforming the engagement digitally, it's also capturing the behavior. You click on a F&B restaurant. I know that you must be, haven't planned your dinner yet. That means I can have a time to cross-upsell you. For example, we know that like maybe the F&B, we are running low of booking, then all this information will become your first-party data to say, okay, let's find out this group of people, let's give them a discount, let's give them digital voucher. Come to join a buffet right now. Then these all become a meaningful and immediate in-stay experience data. The idea of the whole thing behind this digital transformation is like, how do they interact a book? You don't know. How do they interacting with WhatsApp? We can all capture, and therefore these data become your selling too. For example, they call, in the past, let's say if they call about, "I want to book a spa," I have to think about my time yet. I think in a prospective you don't dare to call them, "Hey, you still want to join, or are you still coming?" Right? But in a WhatsApp you could actually like, "Hey, we are running out of seats. We still have one slot. Do you want to take it?" And it's less intrusive. So the whole idea is how to converting that experience into more digitized, more data driven, more easy to follow up based on data. Thanks, Avery. So I'd like to speak a bit about how we're taking on new trends that are emerging, obviously without without drilling into the topic of AI. But just talking about Gen Z. You know, it's really the first digital native generation, and it's really forcing brands to really revolutionize, you know, their strategies. But how are you like generally approaching new trends in social media like TikTok to really prepare in advance, you know, for new channels and technology adoption without without really feeling overwhelmed, right, by what's coming our way. So, could you tell us a bit more on this, Matthew? First of all, God, Gen Z. If you understand it works for the business from work because it works for the customer, you won't feel overwhelmed. I think that's first of all, the main point. And I think looking at technology and how trends are evolving, I think in the beginning introduction, talking about being customer centric is already a very important aspect. And I personally, and I strongly believe is we always have to look at that whole customer journey. And I think in the opening speech, it talks about traditional, tradition versus transformation. And I think it's a key point because I come from retail marketing background and I think hospitality market, it's. Let's keep it with ourselves. It's very still very old school. I would say. Retail marketing is very fast paced, and it's really on trend. And I think when we look at traditional hospitality marketing, we always think that they the experience start after they arrive at the entrance of the hotel. But now, because of the customer journey, moving on to digital, we have to start looking at where they start doing the research, OTA platforms, social media, and we actually looking at that booking journey, that booking window, it becomes longer and longer because they have so much information to consume. So I think the key is to look at that whole customer journey and seeing how we can engage with them in each of the touchpoints. Be creative, attract, engage, retain them. I think that's a basic marketing tactic. But really, look at that whole customer journey. And I think that will apply not only to the Gen Z and to whatever generation as well. Yeah. Thank you. And yourself, Jodi, how are you looking into those shifted customer expectations? Yep. So basically, like Matthew already like talk about social media because once they said the Gen Z, they won't do any, like, information searching in the search engine anymore set to Google and Bing. So they'd start their search out the trip planning in the social media, like Xiaohongshu, TikTok, Instagram, and also YouTube videos. I'm not going to say too much because I think like Matthew already touched it, but I would like to say like one special trend for them is quite related to our hotel as well. So basically the Gen Z is quite different with other generation. Their purchasing decisions are increasing influenced by the brand's ethical consideration. So they prioritize brands that demonstrate environmental friendliness, responsibility, and other ethical consideration, just like what we heard in the fire chat that they care about, like what kind of content they are using, right? So in hotel as well. So basically we also try to focus on the importance of the ESG matrix and commit to like reduce our carbon footprint and minimizing the wastage across the properties. So in this regard, for example, one of our brands, iclub hotels, is the first basically the first carbon neutral hotel, which means that we basically calculate all the consumption of our electricity, water, and so on. And now we also pushing like some sustainability products and service to target the Gen Z, for example, the green dining menu, the green meeting packages, and also the ocean friendly menu, which mean, we don't offer like any soft things now to our like wedding banquet guests. Yeah. I think like, we're not doing this to just to align with their expectation, but it's more about like how we as a hotel to contribute, to make a positive impact to the planet and also to society as a whole. Yeah. So I think like the brand value is equally important. Yeah. For the charity. Yeah Thank you, Jodi. So I think we'll wrap a little bit around, obviously, we've touched the topic of sustainability, which is a key one, as we discussed as well. I like, we can wrap a little bit maybe if you have some key highlights that you like to put, you know, on the importance of the topic as well. And when we speak about longevity and how it's important to also integrate that into our marketing strategies. You spoke about it, Jodi. We'll maybe wrap as well. Maybe each one of you on what are the key highlights, key takeaways that you'd have for the audience today from this conversation? So thank you again, like, for having me here. And so for this panel discussion, basically we have like different expert from different area, and we have of like trying to or leveraging the advanced technology and the data because data is the new oil, to really understand our customer better and to promote like our our products in a more engaging way just like we use in conversation and hopefully we can start, re-start our conversation of liberation. Yeah. And also I learned from like Matthew like how the hotel operation can become like one of the experiences that provides seamless, personalized experience to elevate the whole customer journey. Yeah. And of course we will keep on advancing the technology to help to not only promote our hotel, but to promote our city to be a top destination for no matter the scope of traveler or try to up travelers to come to visit. Yeah. My personal motto is always, "Do what is right, not what is easy." Getting on the new trends is very easy. Using technology is going to be very, very easy. But I think we as brands, what is going to remain, and it's going to be very important and very challenging, is to remain customer centric. So that's my note. I think we can have long conversations and a number of conversations about technology and AI, but what works for the customers on this should be the most important question to answering. I think today I heard from Matthew, Jodi talk about in-stay experience actually I would also mention about how to create value when you're reaching out. Right? I think the experience is a very big keyword. Today I heard of multiple times like how your end customer experiencing your brand experience and your communication with AI, with marketing, automation, with conversation. I think that's where that like today I heard a lot, and I hope that these conversations continue after it that are how do we see experience enhancement from a end customer perspective.

In our next panel discussion, we'll explore how AI is empowering brands to make data-driven decisions to elevate the customer experience. On our panel, we have Michelle Chan, General Manager, Digital Business at DCH Motors. Michelle has more than 15 years of business management experience in technology-empowered industry transformation, including the telecom, financial, and automobile industries with extended exposure worldwide. Also joining us is Sumit Gupta, Director JAPAC at Emplifi. Among his many accomplishments, Sumit has extensive experience working with CMOs and marketing teams, helping them decide on their marketing automation strategy. Rounding out our panel, we have Wilson Wong, Marketing Director at Price.com. In addition to his three years managing marketing for Price.com, Wilson has extensive client and agency experience with companies, including the Asian General Chamber of New Retail, ESD Services X social group, PGD and OMD, Hong Kong. And here to keep the discussion sharp and lively, I'd like to welcome back Ginnie Lam to moderate this session. Let's give a warm welcome to our panelists. I'm so honored to be the moderator today. And so with the session of harnessing AI, leveraging brand potential and power. So today we are very honored to have our panelists here with rich experience who share about like how they used AI to elevate the brands and help the business grow. So shall we kick start with the roundtable of introduction, that everyone know who you are, where you're from, and then as well as your company and the key AI developments moving forward? So let's start with Wilson first. Hello everyone. My name's Wilson. I'm currently the Marketing Director of Price.com HK. Anyone research at Price.com HK people before doing shopping? Thank you very much. Anyone download our app? Thank you. Actually, we are a platform connecting to retailers and consumers. So actually currently my role is to... In charge of marketing and the e-commerce business. So in other words, we keep helping retailers to generate transactions including both online offline. So, and we did some AI, we did some have AI ideas, and we did, I mean we are still a primary student on AI application. But anyway, we had to start. So happy to see you guys today. Thank you. Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. This is a session post-coffee. I hope everyone is wide awake. I am Sumit, Sumit Gupta. I lead the sales practice for Emplifi. I'm not sure if you've heard about Emplifi slash Socialbakers. We run social. Right? So if you're seeing some really nice posts coming out of lot of brands, the chances are it's coming out to an Emplified platform. The chances are very big. I'm super happy to be in the wonderful city again. I love Hong Kong, I love being here again and again. I come with about 20 years of digital marketing experience, have worked right through organizations like IBM, SAP, Oracle, essentially helping marketers to see how they can really maximize potential of marketing, how... And I've seen marketing evolving as my career has grown, you know, starting from where it was and where it is. It's a big, big, massive jump, right? So essentially, I'm here to talk about it. I'm here talk about and understand, you know, more of what's happening in the region here and and how we can support. But that's essentially me, very happy to, you know, talk, discuss, reach out once, now and after the session as well. Thank you. Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. This is some Michelle from DCH Motor, responsible for the newly built digital business unit. So actually, the team is very new. So my responsibility mainly is to take care of the loyalty platform or within DCH motor or a little bit about CRM, but also a little bit about e-commerce. Apart from that, I'm also responsible for building the whole new business platform over a digital world to connect our customer, connect our ecosystem partner, as well as our different DCH Motor stakeholder together over the platform to set up to a whole new ecosystem. Thank you. So for the first question, maybe the follow-up question two Wilson first. So just now you mentioned that you're still primary level of AI. But I do believe like from our conversation that there is so much planning in place for Price.com. So could you share more about like what actually you're planning for and what do you think that these kind of AI initiative can enhance for a customer experience or add value? Sure. At least these are not confidential. So no worries. Actually, you know, our platform, we've got a lot of datas. We got the browsing data is from the consumers because you guys do price comparisons, and we've got the transaction datas, we've got your mobile phone, we've got your email address, we've got your transaction amount, we've got your lots of things. Actually, we've got a lot of datas, and also we have the in-house establish chat bot, so we have a instant messenger. So for consumers, you guys can do a conversation with the retailers so you can ask them whether the price is correct or not. Do I have my favorite color? So actually you guys can do chitchat with the sellers I mean the suppliers. So in order to make good use of these I mean datas, we do a lot of forecasting. So our IT, I mean our tech people than trying to do a lot of forecasting. So because we base on some datas from your browsing from your app usage, from your transaction, and so we try to forecast which segment you are. Maybe you search for television, maybe you also search for a air conditioners. So it seems that you are going to move your flat, or you're going to rent a new flat recently. So actually, sometimes we do a lot of labelings, so that's why we will do some audience targeting things. And also we will include some shopping tips. Just appear in the conversation. I mean, for the IM. So maybe when you ask something from the supplier, some key message theory coming out, but they are not inside your conversation but trying to add something shopping tips. So we trying to discover things. So I think we are doing in a, I mean big in a way, we have not yet cooperate with some outsider for this kind of things. But, you know, our parent company is a tech company, so that's why we have a lot of IT people, some some people in Hong Kong, some IT guy they are from and journalism. So that's why we try to do these kind of things, but we are still testing the effectiveness. You know, having AI, for me I think we have two directions. Once direction is saving cost to be honest, and the other direction is generating more revenue. I mean saving cost is more, I mean, more making sense or straight forward, but whether the AI application could really generating extra revenue or not,it is a key topic. We are still testing these revenue model. Thank you. I think this sounds very powerful. And to Michelle, I think the next question is, it's very, you know, your industry is very interesting industry. So for Hong Kong, actually it's, you know, we're a very small city and very easy to access with public transportation, but still a very high demand for the car. And there's lots of needs there. So what do you think? How do you implement AI to personalize the customer experience? Well, thanks for the question. Indeed. I have to clarify, our customer actually have two group, both internal or external, and then both 2B and 2C. So to answer your question, I can call some example. We have developed it last year, when I actually assume in another role within DCH Motor. We do have a fleet maintenance process automation system deployed, which is self-develop. Of course there is some AI element within, so we can actually enable a lot of automation and transform a very human-oriented car maintenance business into a little bit more automate and a little bit more digitalized business platform. That's a B2B, mainly for internal user and also a connection to between the DCH service maintenance team as well as to our subcontractor. And then an example about AI deployment into the motor industry instead of what you question about how we tailor the customer journey for our external customer. I guess it is something to boost the internal operation efficiency. It's about the body maintenance, sorry, car body maintenance skin. That is some sort of automation helping the surface repairing or staff to recognize some obvious problem of the car, how much or the end user actually might need to invest in order to do some actually quick fixing and some more sophisticated repairing. That's, again, some tools we have deployed. We have actually run several round of proof of concept or pilot internally to test whether or not we can actually deploy it into the market commercially. But that's mainly an internal process automation. Look forward. So the next question is to Sumit. So I think for Emplifi, it's from vendor perspective, you meet a lot of, you know, industry leaders. So how do you feel like AI transformation marketing strategy and enhanced customer engagement in this year to come? Thank you. Thanks for that question. So yeah, you're right. You know, I meet a lot of marketers and leaders in the practice. I've seen this evolving in the last 20 years, to be very honest. I remember days when marketers were super happy they got a toy called CRM, which could have all customer data in. There were like, "Well, now, now we can do a lot more," right? And then eventually that became like, everyone needs it, what's beyond? Then marketers start thinking about segment-based marketing, 1 to 1 marketing. And then it became a little bit more complex. Marketers started thinking about moving from a periodic marketing to a more realtime marketing, right? Things became even more interesting when there were too many channels to talk about. It was not about a simple email, you know, it became hundreds of channels to look at. Right. That is when things started evolving. And then marketers and technology companies realized it is not a simple rule-based mechanism that will work, right? You need things beyond, right. The last thing which really hit hard was massive amount of unstructured and social data getting generated. Today, if you have a problem with a brand, what do you do? Do you really go and call the brand? I don't, you know. First thing I'm going to do is I'll write on their social handle and get the best result. Right. And it's not just about if I have to buy a product, what do I do? I check what are others talking about it on social media and everywhere else I can write. So that's massive amount of data being generated every day. How do I make sense out of it? That is where marketers started thinking a lot more, and technology companies started supporting. So as you rightly said from a from a vendor point of view, what keeps me awake? What keeps me awake is essentially, how can we make it more easier and more meaningful for our customers? When we are talking about a lot of data, unstructured, on social, in multiple languages, and not even a language, you know, it could be singlish and multiple other lingo, right? Which people don't understand. How can technology make it easier? And that's where AI started evolving. And I can give you a lot of examples. You know, how do you simply make sense of a statement which is not pure English, but there are multiple languages in it? Is it a positive sentiment or a negative sentiment? Right. How do you make sense out of it? How do you respond to it? These are very simple use cases, right. As a marketer, what content will work on social channels? What will not work? Can you predict? And moving from predictive to prescriptive. Can I prescribe what will definitely work? That is where companies are evolving. That is where we are trying to take our customers to. Does it mean you don't need humans? You definitely need. Just that you're making them more intelligent, you're making their tasks more easier. You're giving them access to solutions which will give you the power of making marketing look simple but much more effective. You can predict outcomes. You can prescribe the right kind of content. This is essentially where we're trying to where we're seeing the industry going. And it's not just I mean, social is just one channel, right? And within social direct answer platforms, what does work? You know, probably your LinkedIn might not work in Hong Kong. It might work in Singapore. I don't know. But how do you know, right? Getting the right kind of datasets. So that's essentially where I see AI right now, already being very effective, but moving the next one here is going to explode. I can 100% guarantee, you know, it'll be very difficult to say what content is AI driven and what content is natural or real, what text is AI driven and what text is real? How are brands interacting with their customers? Is it AI or is it actually a human sitting behind? And that's the whole idea. You know, you want to make it look as seamless as possible. Right. As human as possible. So what I would probably conclude, and I don't want to really extend this long, but what I would really want to conclude is that, you know, it's... AI is not just an add on. It's is the way things will move going forward. And we are just just seeing a start. We will see things becoming more and more natural, more and more, you know embedded into all we do, all our interactions. It will just become more and more natural going forward. Yeah, I think right now in the room, even myself, is still the beginning of AI. So, well, right now there is a lot of people like talking about artificial intelligence, and it becomes the game changers to how brands interact with the customer. So I believe there are not just maybe like myself or maybe the brands, that will be, you know, possible to face a lot of hurdles or challenges. So maybe I think from Wilson first, you can start sharing like what do you see to potential challenge when you planning to implement your AI dream? And yeah, how were you planning to, you know, see overcome this or any blockers? Okay. There are too many blockers. First of all, I think we have three, personally, not on behalf of my company, we have three. Number one, we do not have enough, I mean, insufficient knowledge. Yup. To be fair on this as a marketer. As you know, we I mean, personally, I'm not a tech guy, so when we are talking about AI, so it seems that we can learn from those YouTubers, there are lots of applications. We can learn those from those videos. Image to image, image to videos. And you need to have a lot of prompts in order to get some, I mean, returns. It seems that it is learnable, I would say. But you know, for a company, or a brand or a platform, if you really want to initiate something with AI actually as a users because likely the business or marketer are that users. When we need to talk with I mean technology people... Actually marketers always, I mean, we do not have sufficient of tech knowledge. So I think the first difficulty is that. And the second one, it seems that in the market we cannot see a lot of showcase from the same industry, which is where proof that using AI could help you to make more money. If there are lots of examples that for marketers we can use it to propose to you to the measurement. You see how my competitors... anyone from Hong Kong TV Mall here? You see that, oh, example our top leaders, Hong Kong TV Mall, is the number one marketplace in Hong Kong. They are making good use of AI, then they they are in a loss. You see their financial report. You can see their, they highlight lots of things that AI is definitely the future as they follow us. I mean not the big players in the market we would definitely follow. It seems that not many successful example they can really show that using AI can really help you to make money in short term. So I think these two will be the main difficulties for my role at this moment. Okay. Okay. So maybe then Sumit. Well, I probably ask a small question, if you don't mind. You know, people of my age, I know I'm a little old, but if I have to find an answer, what do I do? I Google it right? What our Baby Boomers are doing. What are Millennials doing? Can you guess? Any guess? No. Sorry. I can't hear it. ChatGPT. Yes. So there are three important things that are happening, I'll tell you. First is, of course, they ask ChatGPT, which gives the same answer to everyone. One thing which is very important that's happening, they TikTok it. What does it mean? If I'm looking for an answer of how to make a pancake, I'll not Google it anymore. I'll do a TikTok. Right? What does it mean? It means that buying behaviors are changing. And when people ask questions of how do I make a pancake, to a TikTok. TikTok is not just telling them how to make a pancake. TikTok will sell 20 brands. Right. That is how I see engagements moving. And when TikTok does it, it's not just TikTok who'll do. Instagram will do the same thing. Google is doing the same thing, by the way. You try googling today, it'll give you videos, suggestions. This is how technology needs to evolve. It's not just technology. It's human behaviors that lead technology to evolve. Right? And that's, again, it's not, it sounds very simple, but again, AI plays a very critical role. Who are you? What are the type of questions to ask? What are you buying preferences? What time of the day it is? And based on multiple search algorithms, it'll suggest. And then it changes. You know, it is not one size fits all, you know. Auto brand will have a very different approach maybe videos work really well. For a Price.com it may not, maybe reels work really well. How do I know? He rightly said, you know, he doesn't have data. He doesn't have answers to all the questions. How will you? That is where technology comes. That is where AI comes and tries answering your questions in a more human way. It'll just prescribe until, you know what? When you're building a community, maybe you try a TikTok video, it works better. When you're trying to sell a product, maybe an Instagram store works better, or it could be a commerce store as well. No problem. Just that you need to have the right questions. Right. So what I would probably, you know, say that, what I'm seeing as a trend is that things are evolving faster than we thought. We don't know where things are with the brands who are trying to get the pulse of how market is moving will always have an upper hand. Right. And we you know, we as a brand, you know, as Emplifi, we evolve every month. We have got so many new updates happening every month. It used to be three months earlier, because we can't afford it to be three months anymore. Right. Things move so fast. Yeah. Michelle? To me, ah, the difficulty in using AI within a relatively traditional industry. Actually, on two sides, one actually is about the culture. How ready is the serve, how ready is our front line or back end staff actually willing to use the technology? How creative, how open? Or they be able to adapt to their new workflow from the AI enabled technology? Because I talk about a lot of automation we have done last year. We create the tool but then how we can nurture the culture about our client, our staff, and also our business partner also being able and open to use the new workflow over a new technology, which obviously, if they adapt to it, can actually help them to boost their productivity, but they have to be open at the very first step. So how to nurture such a culture is one thing we have to face, and that's why DCH Motor in the last six months actually do a lot of cultural education. We run a lot of workshop, a lot of training, a lot of sharing. We build a lot of internal communication channel. We try to share everybody of ours from HR to front line to even our digital team also share some of the article, some of the latest trend, how staff, how different industry can use the new technology to actually make impact into their own role, into their own business operation. So this is one side for how we tackle the cultural challenge about deploying new technology, including AI. But another very practical obstacle or challenge we are facing is about data, as Sumit has just mentioned, how we can gather data, prepare how we cleans the data to make sure it can be use, and train the AI. We build a lot of algorithim, but then how we fit the algorithm with the data and how ready, we can turn all those legacy data into digital ready to make it work on to the new system. So basically these are the two main challenge we have been face or in the last year at least when I joined DCH and when we are considering to roll out a new digital platform and also deploy more and more digital solution that we have to tackle at this moment. Thanks for sharing. So a follow up question to Sumit. So what, just now we mentioned what I mean, the panelists here sharing is about, you know, the challenge, the hurdles that we face in Hong Kong. So while you're also tap into JAPAC markets, So could you share more, you know, what's the differences you see, the challenge that between Hong Kong and other market? Yeah, it's surprisingly, you know, it's very different. You know, you cross the borders, just like, an hour of flight, and things are so different. And I'll give you a light example tonight. If you go to the Philippines, what works best? You know, our Weibo-based marketing works best. Cross over to Indonesia, whatsApp still works best. WhatsApp and Facebook are still ruling. Right? So every country has their own challenges. There are countries where language isn't obstacle. You know, it's just one language that has to be there, you know. And in other countries, it's about platforms. From a commerce point of view, from a sales and marketing perspective, I think the challenges become even more critical. Right? When you start looking at different organizations and different countries, marketers needs to adapt, not just within the country with best practices from outside the other countries as well. And they need to adapt in a very localized culture, which makes it even more interesting. For example, I don't know a lot about Hong Kong market, but it's a relatively smaller market, but very vibrant. Right? So how do you make sure you, of course, first what you're doing, you do it right, and how do you adapt best practices from a market which has done something similar five years back? Right. That is where marketers are trying to do right now. You know, learn from markets that are more mature have already done it, and how do you take your customers to that extent? I'll give you very simple examples. How much do you want to wait for a taxi in Hong Kong today? What is the time that you will give a taxi to arrive? Three minutes, two minutes, five max? Right? In Manila, it will probably take an hour. Right. And how does it drive customers' behavior? Because that is the speed of execution they're expecting everything. Right. Someone told me this, that the last best experience any customer had with a brand is the minimum they expect going forward. So customers are spoiled for choices, 100%. But in every countries very different. There are service-driven economies. You go to India, you know, your grocery delivery happens in ten minutes. It's a service-driven economy. You go to Singapore, it's smaller market, but it takes two hours, and customers are fine. Right. So every place will have a little bit of a different challenge. The whole idea is that how can take of course, an AI enabled, can support answering your questions which are required to give that treatment to your customers. How do you decide between a ten minute versus two hours, what is more optimal for me? Because of course it takes a lot of cost. But what is more optimal for you? How do you decide? That is where tech I would suggest comes in. Thank you. So the next question this to all the panelists, is this non-business related. So while POK CEO Jeeves mentioned that actually AI, they feel that they're against or they don't believe that they will implement the AI to their technology or to products because they feel like creative is created but not generated. So what do you think about AI impact for the marketer's creativities? So maybe we start from Wilson first. Okay. Actually it happens within our company. Actually, we've got like YouTube channels. So actually we got a teams of producers, videographers, editors, anchors. They keep making, I mean, producing videos so that you guys can subscribe to our Price.com HK YouTube channel. Actually, is about creativity, because they are content guy. So there are lot of professional, I mean professional videographers or designers, actually they are quite I mean against those AI application because you know that if you are really a professional in Adobe Premiere or Photoshop or a lot of Illustrator, so these are the things you are really... with your potential or your ability or capability to get there. But if you, if as a marketer, if I say that actually we outsider, but we can make good use of lots of AI applications, which we can easily use in the market to be a... I mean, we can we can also do design. We can also do video. We can also do a poster. So with less cost. It seems that it may sometime against their, I mean, interest of conflicts. So I would say that it depends. We have two sides, one half of our colleagues or maybe sometimes we think that for creativity we need to I mean, respect of those creative team. So we try not to use a lot of AI. But on the other side, as a marketing people, anyone you are marketers, you always need time. You need to wait time. I mean, wait a lot of time from another department to do some simple things for you guys. Just like a poster. Just a banner, re-size. I mean, these are the things that are quite easy. But for marketing, we always think that we have one button. We can easily, I mean, have a lot of output. So as say marketers, sometimes I would say that I would think that AI can improve that creativity, but for designer, they would think that we need to respect, I mean to, with creativity, try not to do AI. So that's my feeling. I mean, experience. Sumit. So one more story. We work with one of the largest e-commerce brand in Singapore. Same question asked, "Hey, what do you think when you are running social campaigns? Should we use the AI-based images, or should we use real images, you know, real people in the images? What works more?" You know, influencers. It could be anyone. You know what we export. And they eventually went with Ronaldo. That's a different story. I had no on answer. So I said, I don't know, right? No one knows it. But the good part is let's test it out, right? Let's run five campaigns, have different kind of creatives, some AI driven, some, you know, original, and let's see what works. Any ideas? Hands down the real image won. And time and again. And again, I'm not saying it'll happen for everyone, you know. I'm just giving an example for that brand, for the kind of campaigns they were running, the results were very different. Right. It may be completely opposite for your brand. But the point is, how do you know? Right. And then eventually move with, you know, bringing in Ronaldo and doing all that stuff. And they've been very, very successful in the market. Can you guess what works today for most of the brands? What wins hands down for most of the brands today? Let me answer that. One content which I'm hundred percent sure wins every time is authentic, user-generated content. When people talk about your brand, that's the max impactful campaign you can run. That drives their engagement. That drives the conversions. What do you want? You eventually want to have better results from your campaigns, right? Authentic user-generated campaigns has been the clear winner. Now, bringing back to your question on, you know, what I see happening in the future, I see this merging more and more. The line will get more blurred. You know, you will not be able to differentiate if it's AI-generated content or it's if it's a real content. That's where, you know, the industry's moving, good or bad is debatable, 100%. Right. But that's what's going to happen, you know, in the next very few, very short time, you will see things merging more and more to an extent where brands will have the flexibility to do it in the click of a button. Michelle. So I would take a actually more macro view about how the technology being deployed. So I echo what Wilson mentioned. It depends on how we deploy the technology. If we deploy it into or with an objective to boost productivity. And it could be something helpful to everybody working in the office. But if we actually put more focus on the creativity we acquired to create the use case for a technology deployment, then actually it help. And the ownership of creativity is still on humans's hand. It's still the marketer's decision, it is still our decision where to deploy the technology and how we deploy the technology so we be able to better work to our workflow, to the productivity and to the business and even to the customer journey. I think how this very important, how to use a technology to help your daily life to increase your product efficiency and and also like be save, more manpower in the future. So to wrapping up our conversation. So first of all, thank you for all the fruitful sharing and your insight. Could you maybe share some advise to all of us if maybe they are just start beginner of tapping into AI and what would be the next step and yeah, what is your advice so maybe Wilson first. Okay. To be honest, I am quite confused about AI because, it is very new. But I always think that, if one new things comes. Actually, as a youngster. Sorry to tell you that I'm 40, but as a still, I'm still young. I try my best to be on that. It is one opportunity for those youngsters to make good use of that new opportunities. For example, one example is that anyone bought Bitcoin before. Yep. It seems that ten years ago someone asked me to be the early adopter to buy, I mean to increase my knowledge on these kind of things. But I just trying to escape from this new trend. But I'm very reget now. Actually, so that's why AI is another new thing. No matter if you like it or not. Actually, I think the new generation I mean those youngsters, they... it is a really, really crazy weapon that they can make could good use to replace I mean comparatively old guys. So actually for marketers I think that the earlier we marketers can learn or can adopt, I mean the better productivity we can do. So try to really follow those YouTuber to try to try a lot of platforms to do a lots of AI things by your hand. Maybe I need to spend extra time. Actually, I force myself to maybe spend 15 minutes a day to watch those YouTubers to introduce those, I mean, AI applications. So at least it is just one little step, but at least it is towards the correct direction. So I hope marketers, everyone like us try to try to learn AI application earlier. Sumit. Just two things here. Challenge it. Right. If you don't think it's working out, challenge it as much as you can, and then embrace it. Right. I don't think there is any other way out. Right. The market will move towards AI, we like it or not. Right. What I would really suggest is, you know, have a problem statement, right? I want to do this. And it could be I want to design one of the best content in the world. Right. Or could be anything. I want to answer my question, customer's questions in the most efficient manner could be anything, right? Have a problem statement. And there are so many free tools available in the market right now. You don't even need to go through any paid subscription. There are so many free tools available which can do things for you. Start with that. See how it works for you. Challenge it, see what is not working for you, improvise. I'm telling you, you do it for six months, you'll be an expert already into it. You will start loving it. And I've done that in the last one year. That's why I'm telling you. You know, I think of a problem statement. I want to make sure that my photos look better, and I've been fairly successful. So really to me is a piece of technology. So the most important is about a mindset. Once the mindset is right, I think the rest can't be wrong.

Now we have one more session before letting you enjoy more networking and cocktails, and that is presentation showcasing how SAP Emarsys helps Hong Kong marketers launch effective omnichannel campaigns, leverage AI insights, and deliver personalized experiences to customers. Here to walk us through these innovations is Emarsys Chief Services Officer, Mo Awada. Mo is responsible for the overall client experience at Emarsys, from scoping and integration to taking clients through the digital transformation journey, in addition to providing ongoing digital production services and world-class technical support. So my name is Mo Awada. I'm the Chief Services Officer here at Emarsys. My team and I work with customers to help them unlock the full capability of the Emarsys solution. So I look after the consulting part of the business and the professional services part of the business. Talking about capabilities, I'm going to take you through a road map presentation today to speak about the Emarsys roadmap, the Emarsys strategy and vision on how we make decisions on developing our functionality and our innovation. Before I do so, just a little disclaimer that we are usually asked to put here. Please make any buying decisions based on what's currently available in the platform. I'm going to be making some forward-looking statements. I'm going to be showing some forward-looking innovations that could be in a planning phase or a discovery phase or development phase. So please make any buying decision over, on what's currently available in the platform. You've seen this earlier. And I just want to quickly reiterate on some of the challenges facing marketers today as an entry to talking about how Emarsys respond to these challenges. So as marketers, we are constantly trying to navigate our customers' expectations from one side and then our consumers', and then our business expectations from the other side, right? So we're walking on this tightrope at all times. And then some of these challenges is having to continuously support the empowered consumer. What does an empowered consumer mean? You saw our the panels earlier speaking about omnichannel and like the number of devices and the different generations and how they use technology. So your consumers are using somewhere between 3 to 5 devices every single day. If you multiply this by 6, which is the average number of channels that they use to engage with your content, that is a lot of content and a lot of information that is available for consumers. And then you have to offer this personalized experience to them. But at the same time, you have to manage their data. You have to manage their content across every channel and every device. You have to manage their their opt ins and their opt outs and their privacy. That is a lot to deal with as a marketer today. The other challenge and again, we've heard earlier some discussions around the economic downturn and the how some industries are more impacted than others. Right? So there is this like macro trend that is a combination of an economic downturn, but at the same time, there's an explosion in the number of tools and solutions that are available for us marketers. You all have today more than 11,000 applications to choose from when it comes to selecting your technology stack for omnichannel or for CX. Right? So that's a lot of choice that is available. What does this mean? It means that as a marketing team, you're having to deal with reduced marketing budgets, reduced headcount in some cases, reduced resources. And then at the same time, your IT team is having to consolidate tools and prioritize their tech stack, which leads to additional challenges that you have to deal with. And at the same time you're being asked to deliver profitable omnichannel marketing engagements. So just recapping on the challenges. Now, the good news is we know that consumers are happy to give us their data. We know that consumers are still happy to give us their contacts. But there's a caveat to this. What they're expecting back from us is full transparency in how we use this data. And they want us to deliver relevant communication back to them. And this is where Emarsys job comes in. Our job and our commitment to the marketing community is to make marketing effortless and to help you as as marketers to to have your role fulfilling as well. And this is where our mission and our vision comes in. So our vision is to make sure that you as marketers are able to deliver outcomes in what is a very challenging, yet an exciting landscape. Emarsys is all about helping you deliver outcomes, revenue results. Not necessarily more features and more volumes. It's about revenue, because if you are not successful, then we as a business cannot be successful. And our mission is to reimagine what's possible and infuse AI into our platform to help you, delight your customers, and deliver the outcomes. Now are we going to speak about in a bit more detail. I think there has been some really good discussions already. Setting the scene for what I'm going to present in a second. So let's summarize. What do marketers need? Marketers need three things today. Firstly, you need a solution that can help you deliver a consistent message across all these devices and channels that your consumers are using. Emarsys has the tools to help you unify personalization across all these devices and channels. Secondly, as a marketer, you need to be able to anticipate your consumer's next action and behavior. Emarsys gives you the reporting and the data that you need to make these smart data-led decisions. And thirdly, you're also expected as a marketer to always discover additional revenue streams, and Emarsys gives you the ability to take your marketing to the next level by expanding into additional brands, additional markets, and additional regions. And we will revisit later today on how we can help customers who are part of a group who wants to expand into additional brands or additional regions to scale their marketing easily with Emarsys. This takes us to the three innovation pillars. So I mentioned the three areas that marketers want. So I'm going to be talking about some of these innovation pillars. The first one is connected. The second one is is insightful, and the third one is adaptive. Remember the pillars, because we're going to go through them as we talk about the functionality and innovation and the roadmap connected relates to connecting across the entire experience and journey with your customers. Insightful means helping you make data decisions. And then adaptive is helping you to adapt to the market needs with speed and agility. And in Emarsys, if you look at the last year, we have been developing a lot of innovations and functionality across these three pillars. So from the connected side, we have been delivering new channels for our consumers. Earlier this year we delivered WhatsApp. We delivered TikTok. LinkedIn is coming soon as well. We continue increase increasing the channels but also optimizing the core functionality that we offer as part of our native channels. On the insightful side, we are investing in artificial intelligence, and we're investing in making our platform more intelligent. And that's an area, again, that we can talk about in a second. And then adaptive refers to making sure that that Emarsys is an extensible platform, and extensible means opening the ecosystem for further integrations with our partners. Such as, such as Sinch and multiple partners that we are working with today in the different CX areas. And that's something as well that we will be discussing. I'm just going to speak slightly about AI. It's been discussed today. And I want to talk about also our vision for AI and where are we investing in this area? First and foremost, we have three foundational principles for AI, and those foundational principles relate to the way we want customers to use AI. Emarsys believe that adoption is king, whether we are developing AI or not. Anything that we develop, if we don't make it easier for you to implement and adopt, then it's not relevant. And this is why the first principle for us is AI has to be relevant. It means has to be easily adoptable and it has to fit into your current workflow. It doesn't need to be that complex. It doesn't need to be that shiny thing. I don't think anyone should be in the primary school when it comes to AI. I think everyone should be able to quickly adopt it. And then secondly, it has to be reliable, which means it has to be built on a solid data foundation and then it has to be responsible. There's clearly a lot of fear from AI. So for us, responsible refers to making sure the AI adheres to the ethics and to the highest standards of ethics and privacy to you as our customers and for your consumers. And that's important for us. Now, a Emarsys has been delivering AI into the platform for many years. It's part of our DNA. This is not new for us. We delivered our first AI tool back in 2012 with Smart Insight, which is a customer intelligence module that works on RFM modeling to predict and improve across the whole customer lifecycle. A year later, we released Predict which is our recommendation engine that uses the wisdom of the Crowns module to also deliver a product recommendations. A year later, we also implemented additional functionality. We have AI segments that can help, that uses AI scoring to help you predict the customers that are most likely to buy or customers that are most likely to churn. We have send time optimization that is also based on Bayesian learning that can help you improve your open rates, and the list goes on. I'm not going to go through all the functionality that we have, but the point is Emarsys is already an AI-infused platform. But we want to take this to the next level and work with customers such as PUMA, who have been using Emarsys in more than ten markets. PUMA have already been using a lot of the AI functionalities that I showed you on the previous slide to drive their customer interaction. They're infusing it across every touchpoint in their journey, and they have been able to achieve or even increase the revenue share from email and web by five X only in a period of six months. And that's just through using our predictive segments, product recommendations, send time optimization. Right? So we know that it works today. But how do we take this to the next level? And this is where Gen AI and the large data models that we are using now will give us some much anticipated innovations and features that you will start seeing coming into the platform. There are three areas of investment for Emarsys when it comes to AI. The first area is to leverage AI to help you as our customers to uncover additional campaign opportunities. And this is where AI for us is an assistant that lives in our platform and assist you in doing your job better. It's very important that we reiterate on that. AI is an assistant. AI does not take your job. It assists you to get to to be able to do your job in a better way. And one of the areas that AI can assist you with is to help you uncover these additional opportunities. AI can tell you that you are missing out on not using certain tactics as part of your lifecycle, or other customers in your industry might be doing some some large campaigns that you're not using, and AI would recommend these campaigns to you. The second investment area for Emarsys is when it comes to content generation and propagating this content. And again, it has been spoken about earlier, but whether it's about selecting the right audience for your automation or campaign or selecting the content or generating the content or analyzing it, AI can play a massive role into this. And we already have some developments that are already going out into piloting into this area. And then last but not least, AI can help you to detect anomalies and optimize your your campaigns and your automations. You could already see an example on the screenshot here where AI, following the launch of a campaign, will be monitoring and coming in telling you if there is a campaign, for example, as in this case that have a highest unsubscribed percentage of customers than usual. AI will tell you you need to stop it or optimize it. Okay. So that's one example out of many. So we're going to go through now what has been Emarsys developing across the three pillars. Remember the three pillars? We're going to talk about the connective pillar, then the insightful pillar. So we will revisit AI when we get to insightful. And then the adaptive pillar. The first one in the, under the connected pillar is conversational conversational channels. And Emarsys started investing in it last year, and this year we released WhatsApp. We already have a lot of customers that are using WhatsApp to deliver transactional and broadcast messages to their consumers. As a next step we are now working on the two-way conversational because what we have today is a one way conversation, and we're now developing the two way conversation which will be released in early Q1 next year. The thing about WhatsApp and conversational and we already see it as we work with customers, it is really impressive. It's really impressive how we have a channel now that can help you to build this relationship with your customers via a dialog. It's like the type of relationship that you, you know, you probably have thought that you could only build in a face-to-face interaction, and that's why it's very much anticipated that conversational will be taking more space in your marketing strategy going forward. There is a special vibe to it. It's like, it's kind of like the, when you walk into a local coffee shop and you find the barista that knows your order on shift, it's this vibe. Right? Because customers are really able now to use it to at any point they need to come back and request information from you and we're able to build this two-way conversation. What makes it more interesting, and part of the reason all Emarsys is investing in it, is like everyone uses messaging apps. I bet you that everyone in this room have at least one or 2 or 3 or even four messaging apps. We use it every day. There are 3 billion users that are using these apps. WhatsApp on its own have 2 billion users. WeChat have 1.4 billion users, and then you have Line with 200 million users. And these numbers are massive. It's already adopted, right? You consumers have it. Why don't you use it to engage with them? And then it's also like if you look at the different industries, there's a lot of creative use cases that the different industries can do. And some of the most interesting ones are within the hospitality and hotel industry. We already see customers that are starting to initiate the journey pre-arrival by sending information to their consumers about the room and even sometimes offering them virtual check-in. And then when during the in-room stay, they're able to communicate promotions or nearby attractions or nearby restaurants to their consumers. And then they're using it for the post-stay communication to send a survey to collect feedback or in some cases deal with any negative experience on the spot directly. And this is where you could leverage a chat board or other like messaging apps, for example. So a lot can happen there. And this is an area that employers will continue investing in. WeChat is coming next for us in addition to two-way conversation for all these channels. And then Line will come after it. And then we are now considering Talk and Messenger to come after we have released, WeChat and Line. On the other connect innovation we have for digital ads, which remains one of the most popular channels for our customers. Emarsys has already given our customers the ability to use conversational for many years, including Meta and Google. And recently this year we we invested in TikTok. And TikTok has already been adopted by more than 300 customers. Right. So we know it's popular despite everything that's happening around cookie depreciation. A lot of customers who have switched to a first-party data strategy find it very, very useful. And we actually I was looking at a recent report from Gartner that shows that... It was it was a report that's targeting CMOs and looking at their digital spend. And on average, 30% of their digital spend was still going to social advertising. And this is why Emarsys will continue investing there. We have now released LinkedIn and Linkedin. If any one is in the B2B space, it's a no brainer that LinkedIn is considered. LinkedIn have 67, 67 million organizations that have a page on LinkedIn. And if you look at the stats around this, customers that are targeting our audience that's being targeted with a brand message on LinkedIn is six times more likely to buy. So impressive results with social ads being really, really properly leveraged with your first-party data strategy, it can definitely make a huge difference. We're looking at Microsoft Ads next, which is currently being developed, previously known as Bing ads. And then we have additional ads, networks that will be following this. Moving to the third channel, Mobile Wallet is one of the most exciting channels, simply because Mobile Wallet is probably the one that has the highest potential. It's not new technology, by the way, in any way. We all use Mobile Wallets, especially in travel. I don't actually remember the last time I had to print my boarding pass. You know, we check in. We download it. It's in our phone. We go to the airport. Airlines are using it. You know, you don't just use it to scan and go in, like. It's being used to update you on changes. Sometimes they are using it to to target you to sell you more ancillary revenue. So it is being used for many years. Apple released it in 2012. Back in the days they called it passbook and then they renamed the type of wallet. So the thing the interesting thing, it's not actually adopted in other industries. Right. So in retail, very low adoption. In every other industry, there's there's very low adoption. Emarsys believe that Mobile Wallet can be a game changer for all these industries, and that's why we are investing in it. We already have customers that are using it. And in the next developments, we are going to be enabling more pass types. So things like for issuing tickets, because today mostly customers are using it for promotional reasons. They can issue an QR code or a barcode. And it's really helping us to bridge this offline-to-online experience for retailers. But once we release the new pass types, we're releasing it for travel, for events, and we're also investing in an API that will allow you to be updating it in real time so you can leverage it for loyalty and also for any type of hospitality or travel use cases. And then the last one on the connect side is the omnichannel content block. This is not a new channel, but this is a very, very interesting functionality that is much needed by our customers. It was requested many times, and it's basically taking everything that has to do with content creation, management, and generation in our platform into one environment with a low code, no code environment. So this means that your production team working on your campaign content will be able to create the content, have it in a block, and your marketing team or the users are able to reuse it as they see fit across any campaign, across different channels and even across multiple accounts if you already have multiple accounts with Emarsys. I'm going to move to the insightful and we're going to go back to AI. AI Is dominating. So we have to spend more time on AI. Right. So what have we done this year already? The first innovations were released earlier this year with subject line generator and pre-header generator. Now, this is just the beginning. We already see a lot of customers are leveraging it to create catchy subject lines and pre headers. We know it's working. We know it's effective. But for us, this was just the beginning. What we have currently being piloted and probably some of the customers in the room are already accessing those is the Product Finder, the AI Product Finder, and the AI Product Finder actually works in a way where as you are building your campaign, the finder or the AI assistant will recommend the right products to use based on context taken from the campaign. So it can look at the HTML snippets, it can look at the content blocks, and we can, and it can suggest the products that you can use there. This was the first piloted product. The second one is implementing this with natural language. So you're able to actually request products as you're building the campaign. So if you're, for example, building a promotional campaign targeting some of your consumers within a certain age group to sell them sneakers or a trainer, you can go and say, "Hey, Emarsys, can you give me the top three selling products within the trainers category that have been purchased from consumers between the age of 25 and 40," as an example. So you know that you're actually getting your best selling products there for this campaign, as an example, and you know this is going to be a high-revenue generating campaign. So helping you make decisions. This is going to be the next part of the of the pilot. The second one is very close to what I mentioned, and it's the segment criteria generator. And again, this one will also mean that you can use natural language and talk to the assistant and ask the assistant to give you your segments. Think about a use case where you're at the end of the quarter and you're looking at the results of all the campaigns that you launched in the last three months. And you can go and just type and speak to this system and say, "Hey, assistant," or "Hey Emarsys, can you give me all the campaigns that are launched in the last three months that have an open rate of, let's say, below X percent or above X percent?" So that's also another way to to look at this. So the other one is the block content generation. So I'm now going to move to some of the other roadmap items. I spoke about the reusable content blocks. And this is simply and this is simply a functionality that will be integrated within the content block. And it means that I will generate the actual reusable content for you, right? So we spoke about how powerful Gen AI can be when it comes to generating content. And this will be coming next as one item on our roadmap. We also have the ESL generator. If anyone here is using the Emarsys scripting language. It's a very powerful language that we have in place for you to build advanced personalization, especially if you have relational data integrated as part of your Emarsys integration. It's very powerful. We know customers are using it, especially if you're an advanced user. The challenge with it today is there's a steep learning curve for some customers to learn it. So we're now leveraging AI to help you build the actual coding for you in the platform so you're able to create these personalization tokens using ESL. And then last but not least on the list, we're also leveraging for localization and from running professional services for a very long period of time. I know that customers who are working across multiple regions sometimes part of the reason campaigns are delayed is that they have to wait for the translation. So they are assistant translation means you have to build your one version. For example, you could build the English version and then the the AI assisted localization functionality will do the translation for the product, for the different content blocks that you have across the campaigns. And all you need to do go do is go check them and then launch your campaign. There's more that's coming. And part of what's coming also is leveraging AI to generate reports. As marketers, we love reports. I'm sure, like everyone have access to many reports and losses have like around ten reporting screens that are hardcoded. And a lot of markets still say, "Hey, but I want actually more reports. Can you give me more access to open data when I implement this with my BI tool?" So I know that you all love a lot of reporting, but sometimes you want something and you don't actually have maybe time to look for it or you don't have it in part of your reports. So again, this is about using natural language to request the type of report that you want, right? So you can request, you know, it could be that your manager would come and say, hey, can you give me the top performing campaigns? And again, you can. So in just say Emarsys, can you generate a report showing the top performing campaigns and send it to your manager? So it's all about, again, using this natural language, speak to the AI and ask them to do. A lot of tasks are operational today and as marketers, you can then just spend less time on all these tasks and really focus on what you want to do best, on focusing on strategy and driving revenue and delighting your customers. I hope this was clear around AI. AI as I mentioned a few times, is infused. It means it's actually across every core service that we offer, from the editor to the personalization service to the reporting service. It can be seen, it can be in a very seamless way infused across the platform. So we are actually also making sure that the adoption curve is very easy for everyone. I'm going to move to the last section and the last section is, as I mentioned earlier, it's about making it Emarsys extensible, but also making Emarsys more flexible. And this one is for our enterprise customers, or not always necessarily. When we say enterprise, we don't always necessarily need that you actually have to be an enterprise because you could actually be a one marketing team business, for example, but you have more complex requirements in terms of how you use the platform, in terms of how you want your users or your your agency partners to log in and what data you want them to see and what data you want them not to see and like how you distribute content. So Emarsys is heavily investing in this area, and we are now creating what is called as the single account enterprise functionality. So if you are a business of multiple brands or multiple regions, today, we typically ask you to create multiple accounts in Emarsys because you might want to segregate your data, or you might have a team in Europe that you don't want them to access your content in Asia-Pacific, etc. We're now bringing this to the same account. So you could have one account today, and you could add additional regions or additional brands and you will have all the rules around how users can access your assets and your data and everything. Basically that's available in the multi-account structure will be available in the single account structure, right, including asset tagging and asset distribution. Think about it where you have a services agency that logs in to create your templates or content, but you don't actually want them to see everything else, right? For copyright reasons, for any reasons you're able to start tagging these assets that they can see and hide everything else that you don't want them to see. Part of adaptive as well. So beyond the enterprise functionality is that we as a business, we work with a lot of companies that are large companies, smaller companies across different industries and retail and consumer products and travel and hospitality. And part of what we do is we bring the knowledge layer into the platform, right? So for those of you, again, who have used Emarsys, you have probably used our tactics, which were crowdsourced from a lot of customers and from industry experts to activate campaigns and automations in days as opposed to weeks. We're now investing in adding more and more tactics. So we have released tactics for... We have more than 100 tactics right now between retail, consumer products, utilities. And we have just released a lot of tactics for travel and hospitality, things around tactics for in-room, for example, experience, post-departure, pre-arrival rate, your ticket rate, your stay, rate your flight. So you could already start seeing these tactics available. And you're able to activate them in our platform. And as a next step now, we are currently developing these tactics for the sports and entertainment industry as well. Finally, on Adaptable, I just want to say one last thing, which is like as I mentioned earlier, like Emarsys is very invested in making Emarsys extensible, right? So we want to make sure that we are opening the power of omnichannel for you or marketers, because we also know that you're not only using Emarsys, you have other CX products, your other solutions. And this is why everything I went through today is very much around this area here at the bottom, right? So I spoke about how we are infusing AI across automation, across content, across reporting, across personalization. These are what we call as our core services. So we want to make sure they're all infused. On top of this. We have our channels, and Emarsys is one of the most omnichannel solutions. We have more native channels than any other platform out there, and we continue adding more channels, as I showed you earlier. On top of this, we have the integrations that you have access today with our partners, right? These are clickable integrations that you can easily access. However, we know we cannot go and build a connector for every CX solution out there. And this is where a lot of the investment that you will see coming as well will be within our AI, our open data connectors, our web hooks. If you look at our release cycles, you see that in every release cycle we are including new AI endpoints and new functionality to improve the extensibility of Emarsys. So that's it from my side. I couldn't obviously go through everything that we're doing today because we had limited time, but here's markets for you to scan. If you want to go and see the full roadmap or look at our upcoming releases, you're able to access the resources. They're all available online. And the last thing I'm going to say is thank you. Thank you for everyone here, for our customers, our partners, our employees, and the marketing community. You are the reason we continue innovating. And you inspire us to continue innovating and improving our roadmap. So thank you very much.

True Religion was founded more than two decades ago and made its name as a cult denim brand. It emerged from its second bankruptcy in 2020 and has staged a spectacular comeback. To tell us how, please welcome up it's CMO Kristin D'Arcy. Kristin, firstly, a huge welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. And thanks to the fans who clapped. I appreciate it. That was quite a welcome. So you joined True Religion last summer as its first chief marketing officer. Tell us a little bit about what your remit was. Sure. The remit was and remains three key things. One is new customer acquisition. Number two would be customer lifetime value and retention of those customers. And then number three would be brand love or brand engagement. And prior to True Religion, you worked for PacSun, American Eagle Outfitters, Oscar de la Renta, Ralph Lauren. And what were some of the key branding lessons you took from your career into that new role? Sure. So I have the very good fortune to work at those incredible brands, some of which are just my favorite as a girl growing up in the Midwest, really loving fashion, liking shopping a lot back then. And then, like I said, I was able to work for these incredible brands, most of which were in New York. So when I think about the lessons learned and I guess I'm going to reflect on two of these brands today versus when I was was there working with them. The first would be Ralph Lauren. Ralph Lauren is an incredible brand. It's been around for decades. I think they have withstood the test of time. And from a brand lesson perspective, they are consistent no matter where you experience that brand. You could walk into the mansion on Madison Avenue, you could go to Ralph's in the left bank in Paris. You go to Ralph's in Chicago, you could go to the cafe in New York, you could shop on Ralph lauren.com. The experience is so consistent with the brand. I think it's incredible. And they have come to be known for something. Of course, the lifestyle brand is one of them. But their cues by way of styling, lighting, the models they select, there's even commonality and consistency in the cues of the product itself. So as a marketer, if you took an if you took the logo off of a Ralph Lauren ad, as as marketers, I bet every single one of us could say that's a Ralph Lauren ad. But I believe the same is true with consumers as well. So their brand consistency again, across every single consumer touchpoint I think is literally second to none. I think the other branding lesson as I'm looking at American Eagle now from the outside, is they're doing two things. One, they're really leaning into collabs. So I do still pay a lot of attention to all of those those brands that I used to work for. And I saw American Eagle in particular this morning is launching a collab with Timberland, which I think is brilliant for a lot of reasons. Last year they did a collab with e.l.f Cosmetics company, so Cross-category B2B collab. I thought that was also really interesting. And then they launched a campaign about a month or two ago with athletes, and I saw that they did a product collab recently with one of those athletes, which is Coco Gauff. So there seems to be maybe they'll be more unveiled later, but seems to be one product, it's a denim jacket. Coco Gauff worked, according to their Instagram, worked in conjunction with their designers to develop this product. So I think that's really interesting. The reason being, could be surprise and delight for current customers or as I mentioned, my remit. One of the first ones, new customer acquisition collabs play a role in that too. The other thing I think that American Eagle that has been doing very well is they're leaning into culture. So they did a deal with one of the NBA video games. You could see some of their product on different players in the game. And then they also recently have been involved in TV show integration with their product. So the male focus and the female focus. And there, too, I think they're trying to figure out ways to connect with culture. And that's one such example. Yeah. So those would be my kind of brand lesson observations about both of them. So picking up on some of those brand lessons around leaning into culture, brand consistency and collaborations. Tell us about the first campaign that you delivered at True Religion and how that really helped to drive that mass brand awareness and reach new customers. So I guess on the one hand, I was lucky when I joined last summer, there was not a holiday campaign yet in the works, which meant we were going to sprint and and run, not walk towards that opportunity for sure. And so we started with the concept and it was rooted in consumer insights, which said, how do we stand for something during the holiday season when not only is that expensive to play in the media space during that period in Q4, but also it's just very, very, very cluttered. So we knew we wanted to stand for something and that was being a gift giving destination. Started with the concept. It was called style as a gift. We love the double entendre there. And then we started to think about talent, and that's where the cultural connection is really important. What we know about our consumers is they love rap and hip hop. They love sports, particularly the NBA and the NFL, and they look to people within those different genres for style cues and for inspiration. So we thought that the perfect people to represent this campaign were India Love and Quavo. Quavo is an incredible rapper with lots and lots of reach by way of social media, and we had seen both of them as we were doing our research on who would be the right, the right faces for the campaign. We had seen that both of them had worn true religion in the past. And the reason that is important is that we want to make sure the marketing is always authentic so we don't just pay people to sign up and rep the brand. We really want to make sure that they have a genuine and authentic love for the brand and the product. And so we're going to play a little video. We did not stage this. This is not fake. This is a real story. While Quavo is on set with us, I'm standing there. My team is standing there. We're trying to get behind the scenes content because we want to be digital first in our marketing and have content that varies based on the platform. And he just so happened to say this about true religion. I get my tax money, let me show you something, so I'm left handed. And when we were kids, we stole a tattoo gun and guess what? You didn't - you did this? True Religion, this and this, I was probably 14 or 15 years old. Wow. Yes. Some young kids out the trenches, reppin' True Religion. And now this is a dream come true because it's on me, its in the blood, this is for real. This is how we get up over here. Fresh pickle backs for the world. He did just say pickle backs for the world, which apparently is a thing thanks to my creative director. So that that was our holiday campaign. This, again, was one of my favorite clips because his genuine and real authentic love for the brand has been around for 15 years. Yeah. I mean, this is social media gold. You know, this was a spontaneous moment captured by the videographers. He has a true religion tattoo that he didn't even know about. Amazing. I didn't. Even know. And tell us about the impact of that campaign and what were some of the results that you saw? The impact was incredible. I mean, the woman that was just on stage before was talking about transformation and how it comes with technology. But then there is real storytelling and the people that helped bring all of this to life before technology even gets involved. And so here, over the course of the holiday season, all these numbers are relative to the previous year, same period, traffic was up 60%. New customer count up double digits, sales up double digits. Traffic to our own stores up double digits. Seeing if I'm missing anything here, 20% increase of followers on Instagram, a 98% increase in engagement rate on Instagram and an increase of almost 500% of followers on TikTok. So all of those metrics are incredibly important. As we think about your first question, what is the remit of marketing here? And these results cut across those three areas? I mean, you mention TikTok there. And to reach a more youthful audience, you've really been doubling down on some of those social media channels. But at the same time, you've turned your attention back to the stores. So talk us through true religion's omnichannel strategy. You know, where are the priority areas for you? Sure. So if you go to the next slide, what you can see, this was our second campaign in spring. It's called Go there. It stars, Saweetie. And so when you think about our stores, we bring to life these incredible campaigns and these truly remarkable artists, athletes, etc., both online through the different storytelling elements like you just saw with Quavo. And then also, of course, in our stores, we opened a few new stores last year. We're going to continue to do that this year, so we'll have about 50 in the fleet. And when we think about the customer experience from an omnichannel perspective, we're starting to lean into the stores to be places to have strategic marketing activations. So we did a new store opening in Cumberland, which is outside of Atlanta last year. We have a great partnership and did a collab with Moneybagg Yo, another rapper earlier this spring. He asked us, based on the love of the brand and the relationship that we have with him. If he could do a record label or a new album, drop at that same store in Cumberland. So we create an entire marketing activation around that. We invited him up. He, of course, was front and center, and then we invited VIPs, influencers. We created special merch for that particular event. So his signature and logo was on there. And so we're turning these stores, I think, into vehicles to bring our communities together. And I know we'll talk about that a little bit later with Team Tru. And then in addition, you know, what we see as a result from this is, number one, same store traffic in sales increasing, as you can imagine, as a halo effect to these events. And then we're also seeing just great social content that's coming out, which helps drive our social engagement rate, which hovers between 6 and 8% on average. The industry averages between 1 and 3%. So this adds storytelling, layers and diversity to our content. Leaning into what's happening that we're creating in the store. And that's really leaning in as well to culture and collaborations, which you were talking about earlier as well. Definitely. And talking about brand love, I know that you introduced a loyalty program for the first time last year. Can you tell us a little bit about the impact that had on customer retention and sales? Sure. So the loyalty program launched in Q1 of last year. It has almost half a million subscribers to the program, which is great because there's actually been fairly little marketing support. And I'll talk about why. But the reason that we believe in this loyalty program so much is even as it exists today, we're still seeing people that are members of the program spend 50% more than people who aren't. So we've been seeing lots of kind of richness there. We've been leaning into the data and we are rebooting the loyalty program. So the new program will launch in October and going back to your last question about omnichannel, it will be the first time that now our new program is connected to stores. So we'll have an omnichannel view of the customer between their shopping behavior and truereligion.com and our own stores through this vehicle. So we're really excited. I mentioned surprise and delights earlier with other brands. I think there's a lot of them in our new program. And what you'll see is those rewards lean into who we are as a brand, one that sits at the at the at the cross section of fashion, Sports and music. And so reward members, particularly when they hit hidden tiers. Yes. Those are coming. And we'll get access to the some of the things that makes this brand uniquely who it is. You mentioned that there wasn't marketing support for the loyalty program. What did you mean by that? So we launched it all of a sudden last year there there was a lot of people signing up and a lot of people interested. And then we wanted to make sure that we had the foundation correct and that we were really thinking through what is the long term strategy. So you might have seen it, but we there really was not a big marketing push or pushes at all around it. With this relaunch or reboot, you will see that and then you will also see ongoing support. So we had a collab launch with Chief Keef in June. If you are a loyalty member in the future, you might get early access to that. You might get exclusive products that you literally can't get anywhere else will be limited edition. A tiny, tiny drop. If you're a loyalty member and if you hit certain tiers, you will be rewarded even more for non transactional earn. So if you refer friends to the program and they they sign up and they start spending. If you're following us on Instagram, if you're creating product ratings and reviews, you will be rewarded in all those ways very differently than you are today. And then that's again when you'll see the marketing support following the reboot. Got it. And so the theme of the event today is tradition and transformation. It'd be great if you can give us an example of how true religion is really tapping into that kind of heritage and nostalgia that adding a sort of modern twist. Great question. So we did a campaign a couple of months ago. If you go to the next slide, you can see it. And this was called our Exaggerated Icons collection. We launched it for the celebration of our 22nd anniversary. And so what you'll see there from a product perspective is that our logos are really bold. They're huge. They're front and center. And we really wanted to lean into that tradition that makes us unique. You know, our product exists so that you can stand out and you can bring attention to yourself when you walk into a room. And so we decided to double down on that, as you can see from the product side of things. But then the refresh, as you have it, are two incredible artists. So Flo Milli, very, very well known, has done some great collabs with even bigger name female rap artists. And then we have NLE Choppa. We worked with him last year and saw, you know, great success actually with the sell through of the products for one of the campaigns that he wrapped. So that would be an example of both products and then creating something new you see in the backdrop. And I think it's cut off a little here, but the set featured huge horseshoe logos. We even created an animation that kind of showed the history of the The Horseshoe, the different colors that we've used over the past 22 years. So that would be an example of kind of old or current meets. New or newer. Yes. Earlier you mentioned Team True, which is something that you launched last month. Yes, beginning of August. Beginning of August. Can't even believe it. So tell us about that. What is it? How is it helping you reach your core community and build brand love? So Team True came about because we have different tiers of our influencer programs. You have people like Quavo, then you might have people like Flo Milli and NLE Choppa, for example. And then we've been leaning into micro or nano influencers as well. Great. All of that totally makes sense. But then we were having people come to us saying, How can I do more for the brand? How can I stay with you longer rather than just a one and done campaign? You know, we had a New York Giants player actually say to my CEO and I, I don't even need to get paid. I just want to be a part of what the brand is doing. And I love the product. And again, you know, for the 20 years I've been in this industry, I've literally never heard that at any brand that I've worked at. And so I thought, okay, we're on to something here and we need to kind of satisfy this need. So we created Team True. Team True is a program that exists of athletes, artists, people that are in fashion, stylists. We signed them up for six months terms. We send them product, they post about us, and then it's an affiliate model. So they'll get a rep share of anything that is sold through the links that they post. And generally speaking, that is it. It's a pretty simple program. So we launched that in early August. We have 25 people signed up and we wanted to test and learn and see how this went before we got too excited. And these people, by the way, are current NBA stars, NIL athletes. So there's a range of genders and ages you know within team true. So I would say as of a week ago when we pulled the data, what we saw is our Tik tok and the content is pushed everywhere. Let's just start with that. It is pushed everywhere from our website. We use it in paid advertising, it's in our emails, it's in our organic social channels. So it truly is kind of deployed absolutely everywhere. So within about a month of the program launching, we saw our Tik Tok engagement completion rate of videos went from 1%, which isn't good to begin with. But anyway, and now we see it at 15% on the Team True content. We're seeing the team true content Instagram engagement rate is between 10 and 12%, which even exceeds ours, which, as I told you earlier, is already very, very strong. But then from a sales perspective, the data that we really, really liked to see a month in is that if you're on a product detail page on our website, which means you're buying jeans, you're on the jeans page, you're about to put in the wash that you want and the size that you want. When we put a Team True piece of content, so one of our people in our genes that matched the jeans that you're buying. So UGC but team true UGC, you are more likely, 80% more likely to add to your cart because you see somebody from Team True wearing it specifically. And that outranks, you know, even our our other influencer programs that that have been going on. So we are really I mean we actually got goosebumps when we heard that and we said we are on to something and we want to scale this to be hundreds of people that are brand right. I think what's different about this program, too, is the personal connection that we have. So the football player will soon be put into the program. He changed teams. That's all I will tell you. But he'll soon be added to the program and we hand select every single person. So the team has a really good relationship with these people. And I know we're going to play the video in a minute and I will give you an example. Agencies are awesome, don't get me wrong. But what we found again is this genuine love for the brand also exists with this team that is tapped into culture and is building these one on one relationships. So we might have to add to that team if we're going to scale up to be hundreds of people in Team True. But like I said, we're really excited about the initial results. And so we want to just show you it's real quick, but just a little bit of the content that's been coming out over the last couple of weeks. Really quick. So that gentleman is Snoop Dogg' son. And when we talk about building relationships with Team True, he joined me on stage in New York last week for a discussion about this very program with another friend who is part of Team True, who, believe it or not, I went to high school with. Then he went to Duke and then he played in the NBA. So it was the three of us sitting up there. But I think these relationships have helped, you know, not only select the right people, but he's been this gentleman in particular, Cordell has been posting about us even before he was part of Team True. We had his wife and her sister into our offices for a great holiday, actually Valentine's Day campaign shoot. And the family wants to do more and more with us. So that is how we build really, really deep and meaningful relationships with with folks like this. So if only we'd have known, we'd have had Cordell up on stage with us. I think he's in Asia, if I'm not mistaken, but yes next time. And and just quickly, I know you've said before that marketing is maths and magic. So how do you create a culture that combines the two? Yeah, I mean, some things that might sound silly on the magic side before we get to math, but actually work for us really well. So we have a team meeting, a marketing team meeting every Tuesday morning and we started it with tea. And we talk about brand collabs that we're seeing in the marketplace. We talk about who's trending. I think I learned I learned about the very demure, very mindful trend, for example, during that that meeting. So the team is fantastic, but they are plugged in. And so that's how we start. And I think a lot of people get ideas from just starting the meeting in that way. It then quickly kind of pivots to the business results, of course. But it's a nice way for everybody to come in and share what they're seeing or what they're reading because everybody is reading different things. And I think the diversity of thought is what makes this team really unique, which is great. And then, of course, there's the map. So we have very aggressive KPIs tied to every campaign, every collab, every launch. And we're constantly trying to outdo ourselves by way of engagement and sales versus a year prior, of course. And then there's math when we select celebrities as well. So it's how many followers do you have? But also what's the engagement rate of those followers? If you have millions and nobody's ever commenting and nobody's ever sharing anything you post, you might not be as relevant as somebody with a slightly smaller following. But people who are really, really engaged and then we're always trying to value the price of a face against the volume that we have to drive from a sales perspective. And then we're hindsighting that and we're figuring out always how to be even better from an optimization standpoint. So I think every day, all day, it's magic and math. Almost equal parts. Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you. I'd love to turn to the audience now and to any of you have any questions, please just put up your hands and a microphone will come over to you. Don't be shy. My question really has to do with I'm going to bring up the magic word AI. So you're welcome, everyone. So obviously, you guys are on a massive transformation. So how are you thinking about blending in AI into into your marketing plans for 2025, either from a vision or an execution perspective? Right now we're using it actually for optimization. So email subject lines can be made better and better means by way of you're actually opening because you like the subject line through AI. We are using AI to optimize our audiences for both Email and SMS. And we do that because, A the targeting can be better, the results are better. But then I'll spend a day and a half, you know, working on audience segmentation for emails that are coming the following week. And it's just a lot of arduous and time consuming work. So we're kind of testing into in the way that I just described. But it's to improve performance results by way of sales, but also just to save time. Productivity gains? Exactly. Yeah. And we have a whole panel on AI later today where we will really delve into that subject. And Christine, what can we expect next in marketing from True Religion? So come hell or high water, we are shooting our holiday campaign in New York next week. So that is happening. Universe that is happening. And then more Team True. As I said, we really are given these very early results, trying to scale the program to the right people. And as many of those right people as possible. And then there might be some collabs of our own that are coming out next year.

We're going to explore where foreign leaders are spending their time and money to build communities, cultivate loyalty and supercharge sales. Please welcome up our three panelists. Katie Welch from Rare Beauty, Kjetil Njoten from Imax and Bianca Bolouri from Wella Company. So a huge welcome to all of you. Thank you so much for joining us today. And Katie, I would love to start with you. Rare Beauty, I'm sure we've all heard of the brand. It's a mission-driven brand founded by Selena Gomez. Donates 1% of each sale to the Rare Impact Fund to support mental health charities, with the goal of raising $100 million by 2030. And I'd love to know how you communicate that mission to your audience and what strategies have been most effective. Great. Big question. First, thank you so much for having me. So happy to be here. So when Selena decided to create Rare Beauty, she had an idea for a beauty brand. But really, she wanted to create something bigger than makeup, something that could help. She wanted to make a difference in the world, and she felt that by celebrating people's individuality, celebrating their uniqueness, as well as starting positive conversations around self-acceptance and mental health, that she could really make a difference. So that's sort of, that is our mission. So our mission is to do just that with rare beauty. And so we communicate that because we started with that at our core. In fact, we actually launched the Rare Impact Fund, Rare Impact and the Rare Impact Fund in July of 2020, where the brand launched, the first product was for sale in September of 2020. So we launched our mission first. So really underscoring the importance of the brand purpose. So it's built into everything that we do, whether it's, well, you could say a small as, but I think it's actually a big part the shade names. They're all positive. But then also in the work that we do, we do a lot of community, a lot of community engagement and community building and in listening to our community. We heard from them early on in early 2020 that they wanted trusted resources in mental health, that these conversations weren't happening in school or at home. And so we knew as a brand that that's a moment that we could make an impact. So could we create something that we call the Rare Beauty Mental Health Council. And it's comprised of members within mental health, within non-profits, within academia, all of whom advise us on our content strategy, on our mental health strategy, as well as any eventing that we do. So when we heard this from our community, we knew that we could create these trusted resources and point them in the direction of some people of the Rare Beauty Mental Health Council. So it's everything from the products that we name to activities that we do. There's a tonne, we do summits, but I'll let other people speak. But it really, truly is in the heart and the core of of all that we do. And I think that it speaks to the authenticity. It speaks to who Selena is and what her mission is and why she wants to make a difference. And I think it's why it's resonated because it's not just a marketing initiative. It's ingrained into every part of very much the way you communicate with people. Great so Kjetil I'd love to come to you and so Imax, the number one premium movie experience in the world with 50 million tickets sold each year. And from a marketing perspective, just talk us through how you engage with customers and what are some of the challenges and opportunities of that model. Yeah. Thank you. Imax is a little bit different to probably what most of you expect. We have 1800 theaters in 90 countries around the world. We don't own any of those theaters. We release over a hundred movies a year. We don't own any of those movies, apart from maybe 1 or 2 documentaries. And our studio partners who own the movies. Their marketing spend is probably 100 times what we do. Our exhibition partners outspend us significantly as well. So the challenge we have is we don't own our theaters. We don't own the movies. And our partners outspend us. But that's also a great opportunity. The opportunity is there. We can create great creative that stands out, get noticed and cuts through. We can get millions and millions of free earned media placements through our exhibition partners. A big part of what we do as well is if we can convince, if we can educate our studio partners on the value that Imax can unlock for them, we can get and put Imax front and center in their massive marketing campaigns. It doesn't just lift the Imax boat, they also lift all boats. A great example of that is Alien. I don't know if you saw the reason Alien movie that came out a few weeks ago. If you drive around L.A. on all the billboards. The Imax logo was three times the size of the Alien logo. Every single TV spot had burnt in Imax experience in Imax throughout the TV spots. And it really worked. Alien delivered $330 million at box office, which was probably $100 million more than they expected. And Imax on less than 1% of screens, delivered 12% of the box office, which is pretty phenomenal. So we're in a very privileged position. But it is a really interesting one where we play a game of influence a lot with our partners. Yeah. I mean, you touched on some of the opportunities and benefits of the model, but what about the challenges? I think the challenge is that, again, there are movie theaters that we license to people. So I think there is that challenge that we have to overcome that I think we have to overcome that with education, with information and really showing that this is not about making Imax winning. It's kind of how can we win together? And I think there's a lot of research that we have as well that shows that by leaning into Imax, we did some research on this and I said, if you put an Imax logo on a movie poster, people are 80% more likely to go and see that movie in a theater or that perception that this is a must see in theater event. So we know full well that, you know, a lot of people don't live near an Imax where we have most movies for 1 or 2 weeks. You might not get around to seeing it till week three. You might want to see the movie at seven. We can only play it at six. You might not want to pay the extra five bucks to go to see an Imax. There's a lot of reasons not to see it in Imax. But putting that logo there elevates the movie and makes people get off their sofa, get in that car and get to a theater. And that lifts not just the Imax boat, but it lifts all the other theaters in that multiplex as well. So I think that's kind of how we try and overcome that challenge. That logo is almost like the gold stamp. Yes. And Bianca, Wella company also has this very unique model in that it sells to different customer types. So retail partners like salons, direct to consumers, freelance stylists. And so how do you use data and technology to really reach those different customer segments in a kind of relevant, personalized way? Yeah. Well, I think the pro market, the B2B market that we're in is really interesting. I always say that pros are humans too, So in many ways it may not be the same DTC model or direct to consumer model, but we have to still make sure that we're building the same consumer insights and pro insights. But the way we do it is actually on a human level and then on a digital level. So the benefit of the B2B and the pro market is that it's still very hands on. At the end of the day, you can't cover somebody's hair through the Internet. And as a result, we actually get to engage daily, weekly, hourly with that community. And we're lucky our office has a beautiful salon. So we actually leverage every single touchpoint to fuel our marketing on the consumer side. So it may influence, for example, when you're talking about a product detail benefit that the pros are telling us that they're experiencing with a consumer in their stylesheet. We'll leverage that messaging and what we bring to alter or what we bring to our own websites. And so that allows us to get this really great 360 loop. And then we have the sort of digital side of it, which is a lot of tech stacks on every digital interface that we have so we can understand what they're engaging with. So that is really robust when it comes to this world of B2B because so much is education based. So you have to be extremely content rich and quite longform as well. And so the more you can put on your site and the tech that you can add to it to be able to decipher who's clicking on what. When do they jump ship? When do they stay around? We leverage that and what we then bring to the consumer side, but also then how we continue to fuel the engagement on the pro side. And what are some of the challenges that you face around capturing that data and curating the customer journey? Yeah. So I've spent most of my career on the consumer side. So you get put in the seat. And I think it was said earlier customer acquisition. So I just jump into like, we can do all these lead gen strategies, but that's really great from a consumer perspective. But a pro is just a human. He and she they're driving, they're on TikTok and Instagram. But the problem is that usually their email is actually not the same email from their business. And so you can't deploy the same strategies and assume you're going to capture them because I can upload a lookalike model, but it may not work in driving capture because turns out, you know, their Instagram is not their business handle. And so we have to go a couple of layers deeper. So partnerships and cross collaborations is extremely important and like minded, you know, culture moments and community moments. And also another one is partnering with more traditional infrastructures like Amex, because at least we have a shopping behavior and a cadence there that's really interesting, but it's complex and it's the biggest challenge I think we face. And the US market of professionals is extremely diverse and so it's unbelievably fragmented, you know, that you're used to, in the European model being major salons, and here it's a lot of independents. And so if you are renting a chair somewhere in the middle of California, I want you to know about my brand, but it's really hard to find you. Yeah. And coming on to that point. So you've talked about the niche-ification of culture. And so how are you using data insights to reach different kind of subsections of your audience and speak to them in an authentic way? Yeah. I mean, I think the niche-ification idea for me, I think is really profound and relevant. And I think it's, you know, Imax, like I said before, we are the number one premium network in the world, but Imax is absolutely a niche brand. You know, we only sell 3% of theater tickets, are Imax tickets. So we are a small brand. I do I think it's quite liberating to think of you that way. So that's a niche because if you're a niche like Kirstin was saying before, you have to be authentic to that niche they are serving and being in the niche. You can only be authentic if you understand 100% who you are, why you exist, what you are for and what you're against, and you kind of act as one of the niche that you're serving. And yet Imax, we very much do that in Imax. If you come to the office, we are filled to the brim with kind of super geeks and nerds and kind of gremlins, and it is really kind of tangible when you walk around there that people are there because they truly love film and movies and they care a disproportionate amount about our own little part of that process. In the same way that people like Nolan, who we work with, cares ridiculous amount about everything that he does. And I think that's really reflected in and I think that's really reflected in the marketing that we do, where we kind of everything we do comes from a place of fandom and love and passion and craft, and I think that allows us to be very kind of relevant and kind of cut through in that way and come across as a really kind of, I don't know, for lack of a better word, like a wholesome, genuine brand that people really kind of relate to and draws us back to us time and time again. Yeah. Katie, on that point around fandom and building a really passionate community, and I think Rare Beauty currently has 8 million followers on Instagram and 4 million followers on TikTok. And so what are some of your kind of top tips on building an authentic community? The community, first of all, we don't even think of them as fans or followers. We know our community. Like, I know that @UnwrittenRose's is Sydney Caplow. Sorry, Sydney. Like, we've gotten to know them and that's what we what we've done over the last four years is, we see them, we hear them, we value them. One of the things that we do in our community building, one of the things that we noticed was that our community is comprised of a large proportion of Latin individuals. And so we started creating Spanish language content, not just for Latin Heritage Month, which just started, but always on. And it's incredible. And it's not just that it's in Spanish, so it's not like we took a a traditional TikTok or an Instagram and translated it. But no, our first of all, our team, some of whom, it's the language that they speak at home. So they're in the community, in the culture already. And there are inside jokes. There are nods to the culture that really resonate with our community. So when we say they're seen, heard and valued, it's not just the rewards that you write on a PowerPoint slide. It's really truly walking the walk and talking the talk in that we're doing something that we launched just today and we're so proud of it is our rare consejo campaign and and consejo is Spanish for advice because we believe in beauty that beauty advice can be so much more than a product recommendation, so much more than, hey, this rare beauty mascara is great, which it is. But in fact, it could be a moment of connection, a moment of seeing someone, hearing them, valuing them. And so when you are recommending a beauty product, that advice has so many layers to it, so much dimension to it. And so a rare consejo that we discovered through one of our team members is a flower does not bloom alone. And so if you go to Rare Beauty's Instagram, you'll see the content and its content that we partner with Los Fotos, which is an L.A. based nonprofit organization which mentors young individuals in photography and and creative. And they shot this content. And it's people, both of our community, of our team and as well as in the Las Fotos and it's just beautiful and they're all under this theme of a flower does not bloom alone. So I think that is just one of my favorite, probably one of my favorite campaigns to date, although I will say every day, every time we launch something, I'm like, this is my favorite. But it it it really is a perfect example of, of listening to your community because there is still a thread of mental health with that. We're all about wanting to connect people, not let people feel alone. How do we provide the tools to feel less alone in the world? So celebrating this idea of community that a flower does not bloom alone, but doing it in their native language, in a Spanish language? Celebrating our Latin community. And then in the creative, I think it really visually communicates it so beautifully. It's just really special. It's really touching me. So I hope it resonates. I'm very proud of the team. I can proudly say I had nothing to do with it, that it literally was the entire team that took it and ran with it. And I'm proud. And Bianca. How are you building brand loyalty and really rewarding your community? So actually, we just, similar to True Religion, just relaunched our rewards program. So the interesting way that we took it and changed it was that we really made it for everybody. And so in the community of the stylists world, there's beauty schools, there's independents, there's salon owners. So we made sure that this loyalty program spoke to everybody. We also have a digital side of it. By launching an app, we have a lot more engagement on it. So we're able to see in real time how people are engaging because we have a lot of exclusive content education that comes on the app if you're registered. We also take points from no matter where you shop, because the reality of if you're an independent, you're not buying bulk orders from brands, you're picking out something on your way to cover someone's hair. And so as a result of that, we want to make sure that we can give you loyalty no matter what you want to do and where you choose to shop. So I think it's really interesting. But then also on the data side, we have a really clear understanding of how people shop and it gives us the opportunity to be more personalized in our approach. And the one thing that's really exciting about how we reward our community is actually through points, but in a way that you can use it for things that maybe added value to you. And so it's not just going to be a point for a dollar and maybe a point to earn cash back to help pay for your rental chair if you're an independent stylist. So I think in certain communities, we have to really think, and I think you said it best, on true religion is you have to think from the consumer insight first. So what are the struggles of your community? And if you're going to build a loyalty program, you have to at least be able to circumvent one of those things that they have either a positive reward or in a problem solving environment, especially when as a brand you're dealing with your competition and loyalty as a retailer and they have credit cards and they have the ability to build a basket. So the point system is so much more rewarding. And so I think for us, we have the uniqueness of being in these sort of like not non-endemic, but things that are outside of just a product reward or a dollar reward. Kjetil there's so much pressure on brands at the moment to really stand out to give something unusual, different and possibly divisive as well. And how are you creating a culture of kind of innovation and marketing excellence at Imax? It's a great question. I mean, I think it starts for me with, you know, I think what is great marketing and what's great creative. And I think and this is a very kind of stating the bloody obvious kind of answer. So don't kind of get too excited but great marketing, great creative, is essentially finding customer insights, match that with a product truth, executing that in a surprising way and target the right people. So super obvious. But I think we look at this as a soapbox. I'm very happy to kind of climb on. I do it frequently, so bear with me for a minute, but. If you look around, I would say that we live in a world of average. You know, go into any coffee shop, they all have the same, clothes and so many clothes look the same cars look the same, marketing looks the same. However, as human beings, instinctively we know the stuff that we notice is the stuff that stands out that is unusual, that is different. And there's also a ton of data on this. There's a UK research company called System One, and they did a great partnership with Eat Big Fish, and had a great report about the cost of dull advertising. And this report is available on Google. You can find you can download this, its 40 pages its brilliant. But they essentially say not only is more than 50% of ads dull, they also highlight how extraordinarily expensive dull advertising is, particularly when you compare it with advertising that isn't dull. So I think there's a lot of things we talk about where we have to do more with less, and that's true, but I'm not afraid of that. As a creative I'm really excited by that because the magic is great creativity. So if you have great ideas and great creative, you don't need big budgets because they're going to get noticed without having to spend a fortune to make it noticed. I think that's a big part of it. So for me, my creative mantra has always been, okay, is the enemy because, okay work is dull, it's instantly forgettable and no one's going to remember it's not going to do anything. You might as well just put the money in a wheelbarrow and light a fire to for the good it's going to do for you. I love this answer so much. To be creative that's the secret sauce and that's what we try and do. So I think it's just being bold, being brave and also trusting your gut and trusting the data and also understanding that, you know, we are so obsessed with data, but I think data is super important. But I think the most important thing isn't the data itself is the quality of analysis that we apply to it, you know, because we can use data for all sorts of crap, right? We love a dashboard and we can prove they create clicks and likes and whatever else. It may not move the needle, but we can prove it. So we use it. I think data exists to find true insights and then use that as a foundation to execute bravely and distinctively. And that's where kind of money and reward and fame sits. Yeah. So I feel like with data, you need curiosity. Okay Is the enemy. I want stickers. Let's brand that: mugs, T-shirts, stickers. We'll put it on our laptops. Well, so then when like, everyone's like, just do that. With or without my face on it. I mean, that's up to you. And the cost of dull advertising and Kjetil I know you said before you would rather create a campaign that people hate than a campaign that people forget. Absolutely. Okay is the enemy. So much data out there that I mean the biggest danger is now that people don't like what you do is that they don't know you're doing in the first place. You know, being obscure, obscurity is the biggest danger and being average is the most obvious way to be stuck, be stuck in obscurity. So is much better. People don't hate it because there's an lots of research that shows in living in the UK. I mean, Kate, you know this there was this god awful go compare ads, I remember them like 15 years ago. So they were the worst ads you have can ever imagine. It was hideous. However, they ran for like five years and those ads for some of the most effective ads they ran during that time as well. Because you hated it, but you remembered it. And Kate remembers it now. I could sing it to you right now. She could sing it, we could both sing it, we don't want to, but we can. And it proves to you, I think again, stand out. Everything should have sharp edges. Everything should like, you know, make it stand out from the crowd as the only thing that matters when you create something. You know, because everyone always says there's fatigue. I mean, there's proof that that then there's that if it works, it got people talking. Absolutely. I think, again, you've got to get noticed. Katie, how do you create a culture of extraordinary and innovation within beauty? Well, that's a big question. Okay. How do I create a culture. Well, it's a team, first of all, its not just me. I'm one of many. So I honestly think everyone in the team feels that they're making a difference. And that may sound like a B.S. answer, but it's truly the most collaborative, kindest group that I've ever worked with. Now, listen, it's still work. No job is perfect. It's still hard. The marketing is hard. But when we get to, today is a perfect example, seeing this. This campaign that launched today. Seeing the comments, seeing the DM's that I'm getting from the community and how truly happy people are to be seen, heard and valued. That is makes all the difference in the world. And when we do things like we have a yearly mental health summit, which sometimes I can't even believe that we were able to pull this off again. It's like one of those PowerPoint slides that you create and you're like, this just lives in PowerPoint and aerial font or whatever. But then four years later, three years later, we actually did it. We said, we're going to kick start positive conversations around mental health and self-acceptance. It's a great thing to write, but then when you get to actually do it and when I stood up on that stage, all I did was say I mean, I just said goodnight, Thank you, Goodbye. Thank you for joining us. But to do that and look out in this audience, I'm so sorry. I'm not being a good storyteller. We hosted a mental health summit where we had speakers from our Rare Beauty mental health council, our beauty community, our own community. Talk about mental health. Talk about connection. Really create connection. Bring our community together. We did it. We've done it both in Los Angeles and in New York. And then we did one virtually. It was of such a powerful day. And we said we wanted people to feel less alone in the world. We wanted to start these positive conversations and we did it. It was a full day of doing just that. And I looked out at the audience. That's what I was talking about, back to where I said my goodbye. Thank you for coming. I looked out in the audience and I saw so many beautiful faces, all of whom were unique and different in their own individual and uniquely rare, and many of whom had become friends with one another. They had made friends, and then they learned from us. We were able to provide these resources. So it wasn't just about selling a lipstick. The lipstick was the way they got there. The lipstick was the way they found out about the mental health summit or why they were one of 100,000 tuning in, live to the live stream. But what the brand was able to do was provide that moment of connection, make people feel less alone in the world. And I thought, my God, we did it. I cried because, as my colleague knows, the tears come a lot. That's just me because I'm my cancer. But I was so moved. And so I think that's an example of why when I feel like we've done it and we've created this feeling of impact, both literally and figuratively. And I believe my colleagues feel the same way when we get to do things like that. Yeah. Bianca how do you make sure your team is creating those moments of impact? How do you bring innovation, marketing excellence to your team? So I think on one side, like you said, it's how it's also your team, but it's how you recruit and the culture you build at the company. And so, I mean, I totally agree. You have to be in the pursuit of perfection because if not, it's so easy to let the world of mediocrity just take control. And it's what is the expression? It's better to get it done than to get it perfect, not something I fully agree with. And so I think that a lot of it is actually company culture. And I've worked with brands where it's okay, yeah get it out, let's do it. And I've worked for brands where you're maybe revising a subject line for an hour and it feels really silly, but that journey of the hour actually makes you sharper and sharper as a marketer. And so if you can instill that in the culture of getting to that level of dedication to what you're doing, I think you can have big impact. And I think it's how you recruit, right? And the experience of the people that you bring into the organization, whether it's their brands or their journey of life or their personal motivation. I think to find the people that we're talking about at Imax as they have a personal drive. And so I think that's a lot of what I try to create within my team and when I can at the company level. And then also I think the last thing is similar to what you do, at Rare we bring in people to our team who actually knows who are marketing to. And so again, when it gets to a B2B business, we have stylists and professionals who are marketers in our team and are e-comm leads and it's great because we're providing different careers, but there's a gut check in the room when you have a bunch of people making great PowerPoint slides and someone goes, Yeah, no, that doesn't work. And you're like, okay. And it creates a dialog. And so you have that strive for impact for your customers. They understand the audience exactly, because they have been the audience. That's it. And I would love to know from each of you as a marketing leader, what's your biggest opportunity right now and what's your biggest challenge? What's keeping you awake at night? Bianca. Well, what's keeping me awake at night, is my children mainly, no. Well, actually no she does, but it's actually acquisition. How can you capture and engage audience when there's a lot of competition around you? So that's one thing that's challenging. And then I have the complexity that I spoke about before. And then the question is, what's the challenge, opportunity? I think the opportunity is to provide more like edu-tainment because we're not short form in my field, there's no benefit test to jump on trends. And so we have to be extremely mindful about the content we're creating. And so finding that line where it's actually really useful for the person, there's a true benefit and it's not just an idea, but then also something that's entertaining because you have to putting yourself in the shoes of your customer, you're in the back door, you're coloring people's hair. You have to get home at night, but you may want to learn something. How can we do that for you in a way that's really interesting? So I think that's our biggest opportunity. Edu-tainment, love that. Katie. The biggest challenge, there's there's a lot. Attention, keeping, getting people's attention. I think that's what we think about all the time and that's attention is yeah, that is key. I mean that think about even yourself as a marketer. I think the most important thing is just think about what how do you or how are you convinced to do some sort of action to buy something, click something, whatever it is, think about your own attention and where that goes throughout the day and we do this for a living. But like so I think attention is the biggest challenge right now because there are so many things capturing just vying for your attention. And it's so easy to say, this is the way we've always done it. Do a big billboard, do this, do that, do a direct mail piece. And I don't know, maybe they're right. But the key is creative. I mean, that's the only way it gets back to what exactly what you were saying, that if you don't have creative that's going to break through, you're never going to get their attention. So I think about that a lot. And then how you get that attention. The biggest opportunity for us is continuing to grow our community. I think community marketing is key. I think every brand has the opportunity to grow a community. Every brand has an opportunity to create, to engage a subculture of some sort. I don't think you have to be a beauty brand. I don't even think you have to have purpose. I think if you're going to start to have a brand purpose markets and famously said purpose is purpose is purpose. If you do brand purpose, you got to do brand purpose, right and be meaningful about it. But community is different. I think you can be scrub daddy and engage with clean talk. I love scrub daddy. You know I love scrub daddy. So so I think community is is the biggest opportunity for everyone. Brands can make people feel like they belong and it doesn't have to be just rare beauty. Kjetil. I'm going to answer the question a little bit differently. I think, at Imax going into 2025. Our biggest challenge is the size of the opportunity, if that makes sense. So I'm going to kind of set this up a little bit. Imax is the original premium format. You know, 15 years ago, Imax was the only premium format. Now, that category is getting incredibly crowded. And, you know, the perception certainly amongst customers was, am I still the biggest and the best? The perception is that PLF premium, large formats are not that dissimilar for Imax. So what we found was that when people were aware that films were custom made for Imax, our indexing went through the roof. And again, Christopher Nolan is the most kind of obvious person in that. So 2021, three years ago, we launched this initiative called Film for Imax, which launched as a consumer facing proposition, which is a film is tailor made for Imax, either showed our film cameras or shot with certified cameras. The filmmaker will do a unique finishing on the Imax version. It will have more picture top and bottom to fill our screens, which means if you see a movie and if that's done for Imax in Imax, you're seeing more picture that if you see in a standard theater, you would not let you run see the full frame. So we've done that every year for the last three years. We've had about between 4 to 7 titles a year. And through that period, we have really kind of done a lot of work to educate customers that if a movie is film Promax, you really have to see it in Imax to get the full experience. That's the only place you can get directors full vision and it's really working. Two great examples of that the last 12 months or so is Oppenheimer and Dune Part two. Again on less than 1% of screens, we delivered 22% of the global box office on both of those titles, which is pretty ridiculous. And there's a reason why Emma thomas thanked Richard Gelfond who is the CEO of Imax in her best picture Oscar speech, which is pretty amazing. The biggest challenge we have for next year. We have 14 film for Imax titles, which means next year pretty much every single movie is filmed for Imax, which is amazing. But it's also a lot. It also means some of the stuff that we are used to doing with our exhibitor partners, getting those amazing placements. We can't ask them to do that 14 times in a year. It also means but it also means we have to think differently, think better, be smarter, be more creative, which is super exciting. But I think the challenge is that, you know, next year I was speaking to our CFO yesterday and she was like, Hey, it's just a case of like, you're going to break box office record. It's just how much. And I think that's the challenge for us as to how do we take advantage of this opportunity. And also from a brand perspective, how do we use that unique opportunity next year to elevate Imax into a category of its own amongst customers? It's a great challenge to have. Yeah, it really. Is a great challenge. It's first world problems for sure. And any questions from the audience? Hi, I'm Kaylah Bell, previously the head of talent at Savage x Fenty and now I'm at Rizos Curls. Obviously, a lot of the brands that I'm I've worked for are tied to community and cultural innovation. But my biggest challenge is always trying to get that budget behind those intentional community building moments. And so I'd really like to know the approach behind balancing your community and brand initiatives and also your performance marketing efforts. Is that for Katie? Yes. And whoever would like to answer that? And I should have said my challenges. Finance CFO. I think you can start, We started community building via Zoom. We did Zoom chats. We haven't launched the brand. Now, granted, we built the brand during when we were all quarantined in 2020. So we were working from Zoom anyway, and we knew we wanted to get to know our community. And so we created something called what became Rare Chats. And there were Zoom calls with our community. So I think what's great about relationship building and community building is that it it should be low fi, it should be loved, you know, high touch. But it doesn't need to be these big fancy productions. I mean, some of the community engagement things that we've done, are hikes with our community, we've done gratitude, journaling courses. We've invited our community to our office. So I would say it's more about that, that listening and learning from them and hearing from them. And I think once you start to see the engagement at your brand or wherever, whomever you want to engage, once you start to see that, you'll start to see the loyalty will will hopefully result in maybe your CFO wanting to give you more budget. But I do think community efforts don't have to be the most expensive things. I would much rather do, sorry to our digital marketers, I just personally love the community engagement more than performance marketing. But I do think it's a flywheel. Is that the corporate term I should use? That's right. Thank you. But they go hand in hand. I think you can't do the performance marketing on its own. You can't do the community marketing on its own. Go back to your own attention how you think of things. How what convinces you to do an action for a brand is all of the things it's, my God, that brand responded to my comment on Instagram. They sent me something. I saw that billboard. I got that direct mail piece when I saw that Instagram ad, so it is sort of and it has to be the creative and what are you telling the community. So I think when you think about the difference between performance and community, could you glean insights from your community marketing that could inform your performance marketing potentially, And I think that makes your community marketing then very valuable. There's nothing more valuable than understanding your target audience. I would also say micro events go a long way versus these I mean, I think it's challenges on the Instagram, everything looks like, my God, this brand did this huge event, like maybe seven people showed up and left after 20 minutes. A great Angle right. And it also was like, look, they had like ice cubes, the brand name inside. Like, who cares, right? Like, I've taken a group of influencers to like a spa five people for lymphatic massage, and everyone cried. And that was genuinely more impactful for the brand than it was any other bigger event. And now the challenge is space and time to do micro events. But at least that is a bitter pill for a finance person to swallow. Hey, I'm going to do something. It's going to cost about two grand. Then you're going to do another thing that's another two grand. Then maybe it's three. But then you've now built your case over time. So I think that goes a long way. You know, I was just going to kind of agree with these guys who were saying and also I was listen to a great podcast called CMO Uncensored and the CMO for e.l.f Beauty was on there and she said was the effect of those two things that are the secrets being e.l.f's success. And one of them is the shortness of distance between the community and the C-suite. And she was referencing, bit like Katie was talking about going from a Zoom call with e.l.f Customers, going into the CEO and say we need to make this new product. And the second success is the shortness of kind of insight to action, which also exists there, I think those two are very interlinked. I do think the value of that community is not a, it's not a cost center, it's essentially an R&D kind of insights, kind of incubator. Priceless.

Hi. Thank you so much, Chelsea and Sophia, for joining me. Sophia, I'd love to start with you as the Chief Digital and Marketing Officer at Fashionphile. Could you just talk us through some of the trends that you're seeing around AI adoption at the moment? Yes. Yes, of course. I would say if 2023 is the year entire world discovered Gen AI, ChatGPT, then 2024 is the year that all organization began, truly began using it and driving business value growth from the new technology. From the recent market research by McKinsey, the Global Survey on AI, very interesting. The adoption rate has been increased significantly to 65%. So the Global Survey study reached out to over 10,000 respondents and 65% of the respondents report that the organization has already adopted AI and 50% report that at least one function are using AI. And interesting, guess which function has the highest adoption rate of using AI transformation and really implement that and in their daily lives regularly? HR, Tech or Finance, Accounting? Marketing yes, marketing itself. We are early adopter. We really embrace new things and we pivot. We experiment and we try. So amount that 50% of organization marketing really adopt AI in there. Even content marketing by Gen AI or performance marketing or even use AI for doing cost lifetime value or customers egmentation. 42% of the organization report they see that revenue increase, and 33% reported that they see the cost saving or cost efficiency. So overall speaking, I think AI is really getting a trend, no doubt. However, it's not all the positive sides not overwrite future all the way yet, because a lot of organizations still been hesitant using AI and they still navigate through how we can avoid that pitfall. Where can I not mitigate the risk or not the concern? The number one risk, I guess if you are marketer, what AI are you? Really? Again, I hear this. In accuracy. That's the number one found global survey 10,000 responses that all they love AI. If any one thinks they really just hate, it's inaccuracy. So we still have the room to improve. And number two is the cybersecurity, that's a boring topic. And the number three is the data privacy. That was regulation compliances. So overall, I feel that AI is really a thing that surround us and we have embraced it. We use it and we pivot and we try again. So that's the overall trend. Besides that McKinsey research, that's the recent research, I also checked other research. Overall all reported over 50%, although not some research is over than McKinsey's report to 65%, but most of that report say adoption rate in all industry over 50%. You know why the 65% is nearly double from the metric we got last year at 2023, which was 33%. So just to show the year all the marketer, we embrace the new technology and all the the leaders and brand, we really just give these new technology a great opportunity to perform. And Chelsea, I'd love to come to you. So Sophia said, according to McKinsey Research, if 2023 was the year that companies were talking about AI, this is the year that been using it. I know that Now Optics is at the cutting edge of technology in the optical industry. So just talk us through how you've been using AI to really improve both the customer experience and efficiencies within the team? Yep. So for those of you who don't know Now Optics is an optical retailer specializing in eye exams, contacts and eyeglasses. What's really great about the company and where we're at is it's a telehealth technology that we use. So not only are we using AI in marketing, but as a brand. So you're able to go in, you do your normal eye care routine, you do your health check for your eyes, and then when you go in for your prescription, it's an actual virtual exam. So we are actually the leader in that and that's where we are using our AI learning on a daily basis. And then from marketing, we're using AI for our segmentation. Understanding who our customers are in each stage of the lifecycle. We are also using it with dynamic content, which is reducing the amount of time that our creative team is spending building these assets. You know, based off of customers behavior, based off the offers we want to serve them, that's changing. And every patient and customer has a unique email or SMS that's going out to them. And we are seeing that not only they enjoy it, but we also enjoy it because we can then spend our time putting more effort into strategy and coming up with different ideas. Yeah. And what about from the customer perspective? What kind of impact have you seen in terms of customer satisfaction? Our customers are happy and that's obviously really important. So our customers have given us feedback that they know it's a quick process with us. It's a quick exam. They don't have to schedule an appointment. They're happy with us. We are happy because we use content optimization Instead of sending out our emails at 7:00 every morning, it's going out based off the time that you're predicted to most likely open your email and engage with your email. So not only are we seeing our open rates go 5 to 10% higher, we're also seeing our click through rates go 0.1 to 2% higher, which is huge. The main goal of our CRM program is to have the customer book an appointment. Once you book that appointment, you know, the rest is done. So we're really happy with how AI is working for us and excited to continue to use it for every opportunity that comes our way. Great. And Sophia, can you talk us through how you are using AI within Fashionphile? Yeah, First of all, Fashionphile is a ultra-luxury recommerce. We do all the luxury brands from Hermes, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, doing watches and handbag accessories. So the core of our business really has the very robust, the authentication technology. So we want to have the 100% guarantee authentication guarantee to every customers so they can really raise the assurance they can sell to us and they can buy for us. So we are the key to B2C marketplaces. We get every single item from customer's closet and they sell to us and we process, we market it and list on the site, or have the store, we are omnichannel operation now. And then we sell to in-house with C2B2C marketplace. So we are using AI mostly on the two areas. So we commonly categorize AI into application Gen AI and Predictive AI. And Gen AI, both are using machine learning, deep learning just to really process massive data. So I have that data entering the algorithm the rules and then predictive AI using the analyze the data historic data OB data to find the pattern across time and come always prediction. And what is the positive outcome? Right. And the recommendation. So our performance marketing use predictive AI a lot, we work closely with Google for Google AI and they have, for some reason recently has the pilot project to test out the Seattle metrics, the conversion optimization metrics, conversion rate optimization, CRO metrics. So we use AI to set different A-B testing of different rules to test it out, predit how customer reacts with that ad and later on push PDP into PLP then convert or did not convert or bunks or abandon and the B group? What's the customer journey? That predictive AI really help us marketer to get the insight and the inference to detect which design and what's the CTA, our call to action will be really best the conversion rate, the performance wise. So performance marketing team use a lot of predictive AI and the biggest project we did two years ago was the customre lifetime value, the predictive CLV. We use CLV to really generate past 20 years customer data and also the deep learning machine learning train AI to realize how the frequency, the customer lifetime value for each individual customers. So if you Google analyze CLV is usually organizations use CLV by like value to date. Like total transition right divided to total years or times total years. That's your CLV lifetime value. But that's very limited. The real CLV can help marketers to generate a better performance or opportunity for more revenue is to predict use the data to predict how the customers will shut us again next time for the future. That's forward-looking. And only predictive AI can help us to do so. The usual data science team can calculate all the data very transactional. Like past 20 years, this customer ID 12345, Sophia has the total lifetime value for how much? 10,000. That's the lifetime value. But the lifetime value 1.0. I would say marketer please use predictive AI to get the customer value 2.0 or 3.0 is predictive CLV that really can unlock how future actually the lifetime, the value a customer can bring to your business. So that's predictive AI. And gen AI, my marketing team use that for setting meeting agenda, for the content copy. I just had the video auditing. We have our celebrity campaign this year. With panelist Emma Roberts. So that campaign we use a lot of AI to kind of handle the fake wrong editing and predict the because Emaa has 26 million Instagram fans and that massive DM, the message you feedback I love Emma or I like that bag. AI can help us to generate all that the DM, the messages. They predict the trend, what's the keyword is the hot buzz. Say this video this script will use those keywords to engage even higher engagement rate. One of the reel we generate 1.6 million views within an hour because AI help us. Wow yeah so generative AI versus predictive AI which ones having the biggest impact on your business? It's good questions. As a CMO, I'm always kind of in between brand marketing, which is hard to measure their performance and very like not last click. You can really ask the AI RoAS for performance marketing if you asked me that is the impact. I will say intangible impact for more long term will be gen AI in marketing. If for intent like tangible return, like intangible by marketing, but for tangible impact, definitely performance marketing create a critical revenue sales target with me. So I would say the best approach is to integrate both. Gen AI and predictive AI together, that will give us a more holistic approach to solve the business challenges or problem in performance marketing and brand marketing. We also have a company word called brand formers. So we believe brand marketing can do something to performance marketing. They should go hand in hand when the influencer marketing trend generate the impression, the view of an end of day, you will try to translate to traffic on a site and we have the chance to convert to be sells. So performance is the new approach for right now. I think all of the marketer should consider to see the happy medium between these two and I believe there's also happy medium in between Gen I and predictive AI. Chelsea, We've talked a bit about pivoting and experimenting and just trying things out and how do you create that culture within your team and also how do you get buy in from your senior leadership team? I would say it starts with leadership having a team that. He supports you is open to testing. Try new things. I think that I'm blessed right now actually to have a leadership team that is fully behind me, you know, encouraging me to try every pilot program that comes out. You know, the only way you will ever know is if you test and learn something. And I've always said that, you know, you can't fight numbers, you can't fight the data, you can't fight your results. So if you try something and it works, whether or not leadership doesn't like it or not, you know, a win is a win. So I really just always encourage you to educate the team. And I think that's a big part of it, too, is, you know, your CFO, your your CEO, they're not well-rounded with marketing. They don't understand everything. So if you truly explain it to them, educate them, tell them the benefits, I think that's a really helpful way of getting them on board. And show them the evidence and the result. Exactly. Yeah. And let's come on to some of those challenges. You mentioned inaccuracy. Chelsea, what are you seeing as some of the challenges that you're coming up against when it comes to AI? I think it's just the beginning part, the learning, nothing's perfect. We make mistakes and of course, the AI and technology is going to make mistakes. But again, I think it's all about growing. There's always going to be hurdles. There's always going to be struggles. But it's how you use what you have, your resources and you get through it. You know, I've failed many times, but it's how you kind of take it and go with it moving forward. But yeah. Failure is the data. Failure is a good data. So never really be afraid to make a mistake. Failure is a good data analyst. The data tell us what is not working. So just really to try and pivot and try again. Yeah. And Sophia, what are some of the other challenges that you're coming up against when it comes to A.I.? Yeah, I would say talent. Talent is the biggest challenge. You know, machine learning engineer is a very expensive data engineering professional. It's really hard to find. Not to mention martech analysis. So you want to find a person who has the marketing sense. Marketing knowledge also has the tech capability. So the martech professional is surely a key to execute or try AI and that like software engineer machine learning and data driven marketer. Data engineering knowledge in martech. Or at the very unicorn talent. Very, very hard to find. And I would say the foundation of AI is HI, human intelligence, right? We need to have the talent to really develop the tools and algorithm for human intelligent as HI to train AI. So goes to that deep learning iteration, the machine learning and the reach. After we train AI, AI can do the right job for us, that way we can mitigtate the accuracy. So HI is the foundation. We just need to have more talent. Has that martech, that balance and data driven, adapt that kind of mindset and capability. And together we use HI to develop AI. So that's my biggest challenge. I'm lucky. I'm so lucky. I have a good martech team because I used to work for a tech company so my marketing team just in DNA just know all the tech. I'm lucky but I feel it's still a high challenge like how we find the right talent and retain that talent and really foster a culture for all employees in the organizations to embrace AI. I think most of Fashionphile most of our employees still feel AI is kind of digital things is very hard and gorgeous. Whatever. But not nothing to do with me, that kind of things. If you ask shipping or HR specialists and it's like, well, AI. Well, yes, maybe i can get help by AI but not really can have the second sentence about what is AI. So one of the things that my company did I appreciate a lot is ervery QBR the quarterly business review, before closing remark, our CEO always asks each team leaders come to the stage to share the top three use case you using AI. For HR, for accounting and for shipping department for receiving for marketing, every department go to stage three present three use case you use AI in this quarter and definitely give them the heads up so they prepare. That also is top down approach, but it's very helpful to create the culture, the culture that we think AI could be everywhere can be very easy to help for your daily life. Try it and we are set for you. It's okay to be not okay. It's okay to be not knowing about how to use AI, it's okay to a failure because that's critical for a growth mindset. We don't want to have the fixed mindset. So what if we scored this? What if we scored that? So try it. So every department come to a stage, say we use HR specialists, we use AI to write JD every JD a day. Now you take an hour and definitely you need to train Ai, right? So we have a position and you develop rules in and all the keywords in training AI smarter and smarter. So now they can have JD written in the hour and accounting team, one of the think the accounting body use AI is to prepare meeting agenda for my one-on-one with my supervisor. That's so brilliant. So the accounting specialist like just very introvert and every week that one on one is a burden is pressure on her but after AI she found a lot of topics and she feel that relationship with the CFO, a company director and that made her life totally changed. So AI sometime can be a game changer if we use just a little bit small things. Yeah. Chelsea, how are you finding the right talent for your team, combining that technical knowledge and along with that creativity? Yeah, I. Think passion, when I speak to someone and they are invested in to marketing and truly want to continue to grow and push boundaries, to me, that's the type of team member that I want. To go back and forth and bounce ideas off of each other and really be more of a strategic partnership. That's super important to me. And it's kind of how my team is right now. So it may be a small, scrappy team, but we all are super passionate about what's next and really exploring what's out there. And so what is next in terms of where are you seeing the future uses of it within Now Optics? So we are using it for subject lines. We are using that for product recommendations, product finders, literally you name it, and we want to test it and try it out. You know, like I said, it's not always going to be perfect, but once we really start to understand it and continue to use it, it's just going to continue to get better. An interesting question for both of you. Would you like let AI write your brand's manifesto? We did. Chelsea. Chelsea, do you want to read it out? So I'm going to read it. Yeah. Okay. 2006, the year it all began. Vision for all. Simple, bold. Breaking barriers, changing lives. Affordable, always. Accessible everywhere. Quality never compromised. Innovation at our core. Technology meets care. Style meets function. Eyewear for everyone. From first glance to final fit. We believe in choice. We believe in confidence. We believe in you. More than glasses, more than a transaction, a transformation. Your vision, our passion. Expert care. Compassionate service. Eyewear that reflects who you are. Driven by values, powered by purpose. Now Optics, changing the way the world sees. One frame, one smile, one life at a time. Since 2006. Vision Reimagined. Wow. I wish I could say I wrote that. Is that going to be published on the website? I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. And how accurate was that? How much tweaking did you have to do? None. And I ran it through my CMO, and she loved it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I compared it to what we have on our website listed on our core values, and it's spot on. Yeah. So I think it's great. Also, my headshot, they needed one for this. I did not have one. AI. That's great. Sofia, would you let AI write your brand manifesto? Obviously no. I'm not trying to be party pooper. But this is why. I can justify. Because Fashionphile is in a relatively new industry. The ultra-luxury resell. If you ask ChatGPT what is Fashionphile, there will comes paragraph to paragraph we try. All these great sentences. No adjectiv.e No description about that one thing like flexible Fashionphile is blah blah blah. Consignment shop. That's the umm, right? And Fashionphile do a lot of luxury designer apparel. We don't do apparel. So because it's really new and we haven't been able train the gen AI because, you know, gen Ai is to generate all that information data on Internet, right? When you don't have the history, sufficient data information, all Internet, how you can expect that gen AI can generate that the true spirit and principle and the vision, ambition and your mission statement for your brand. So it's not easy, it's our industry still really new and we don't have that possibility to trend gen Ai yet because we want to keep those content authentic first 40 hours. For example, if you asked Chat GPT what's the difference between goat skin and lambskin? Chanel handbag has, Chanel 19, Chanel classifies goat skin and lamb skin. What's the difference between these two? ChatGPT will give you paragraph paragraph all sounds about right content that for professional I asked my authentication manager that's so wrong. Those nuances. Although a lot of people probably cannot really tell and really audiences really don't care but as a marketer, a brand marketer from brand marketing perspective, we don't want that confusion, right? We don't want our customers to think that Fashionphile is doing consignment. We are doing buyout, buyout is fine, but buyout with consignment, it's just not the customer facing term to argue about. And what's the apparel or category and what we try to revolutionize the entire resell. We only use luxury goods, a lot of things that we don't see the Internet has that information yet because we view ourself is as an industry innovator and pioneer. So we just cannot rely on AI to write the brand statement for us. Does that sound legitimate? But give it another five years and maybe AI will be writing your brand manifesto. Yeah, maybe two years. We will try again. One So any questions from the audience? Hello, my name is Wendy. I have a question for Fashionphile. As you mentioned, how your business use AI quite a bit, do you think it's going to be a reduction in your staff because of AI? Good questions. Honestly, that's really in our employees mind. For example, when we have that visual recognition, the technology AI implement in our procurement team, we have every day thousands of thousands items customers can easily to send me image, send me title to ask a quote. So we make customer easy to sell you a luxury item. Try it. At Fashionphile.com. So and customers cannot really. I'm a customer. thank you. Thank you. So customer cannot really that. Wow. A silky Chanel bag. So cute. Thank you. Yes my heart melted. Customers send me the bag so when you want to sell that back you know that's Chanel but I don't know the size, the the stle name right. It is Chanel tote. Chanel tote. I say two by fivey Chanel tote. We cannot expect every customer measurement of the luxury handbags. So when they saw me image and a title this very efficient information for our procurement team can define is this right item. How much we should pay for that because we do buyouts. Advice okay, we do buyout. So every single item you submit is for court means we promise we won't buy you back at how much and we guarantee that price even after you shipped either into our warehouse, we said, the condition is a little bit worse. There's a corner wear, there's the scratch. We still honor that price so the submission, the screening is very critical and we have used AI to price the partially automate the process. So visual recognition help us to identify this image by the chip point. It will feedback to the customers. Is this your bag right? Is Chanel tote black silver and 2-by-5 is size p/m and customer can say yes or no. If no then AI try again. So we do that. Can I improve the customer experience, the CX. However our procurement team was saying that my job in taking right? I used to process the hundred items. Now AI can process a thousand. Then why companies still want me. So we did a lot of communication into all the culture building in the trust building. So we have to guarantee and and confirm show our determination for employee. We truly embrace HI the value, and AI's automation that benefit. So we commit to do both. We won't AI to take your job because your job will be elevated to do even more important things with impact. So every hour costs our authentification team, it's a part of their work. You know every Hermes scarf there's a 17 check point. When I first day in orientation they show me this Hermes scarf has 17 checkpoints. I said no, no way 17? 1-7? A scarf? 1-7 to check is authentic or counterfeit. Yes. And they show me this one, two, three, four seven. 17 like my gosh. Right. That needs time to train AI, eventually we won't have AI to do the job and the HI can do even more important job. Right? So we really see that happy medium is definitely there and a lot of communication, culture building and trust building is happening at Fashionphile. Since I joined the company like I with company for 5 years, I really appreciate company never fail their partners. Chelsea, would you like to answer that question as well? Are you likely to see any reduction in staff because of AI. So the way I feel is that there's only so much that AI can do right now, right? Like they don't know the ins and outs of your brand, just like you were saying. You know, so I think it's like AI takes over the tedious work, the busywork, you know, and that leaves us marketers room to do more strategy. Think outside the box, you know, and apply our knowledge elsewhere. And we're still able to get just as much if not more work done because you have that help from AI. You know, writing in subject lines, finding products in the in emails, doing some type of automation program, right. Where you can kind of set it, forget it. And that's, I think we've all been in your situation where like, my God, is my job going to get taken over by robots? And, you know, as we've gotten more and more used to, AI, I've feel very confident that, no, that will never happen. We're just going to continue to elevate ourselves.

So our final speaker is the CEO of Reformation, a sustainable fashion brand aimed at making killer clothing without killing the environment. To tell us how she's building a thriving omnichannel business, please welcome Hali Borenstein. Hali, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Hi, everyone. How's everyone doing? It's called cold, it's chilly. You'll need a Reformation jacket to keep you warm. So you joined Reformation in 2014 as Director of Merchandizing. After working at Bain and Gymboree. And what is it that attracted you to Reformation? Tell us a little bit about your journey to the company. Sure. So actually, yesterday was my ten year anniversary at Reformation. It's been quite a journey, but for me it really was the opportunity to think outside the box to do something different. And so I came from consulting, most of my career at that point had been in consulting, looking and evaluating really large businesses that were great, but kind of more routine and typical ways of working. And I had this kind of itch to really push some boundaries. When I met the founder of Reformation, what was really clear was two things. One, the business model was new and that was different. And specifically, it was really focused on trying to revitalize an industry that in some ways has become or had become a bit stagnated. And then secondly, at that time, sustainability in fashion was not a hot topic. But since day one of Reformation, our mission was to bring sustainable fashion to everyone. And so the idea that we can both innovate on the business side, but also from a mission standpoint really intrigued me. So I moved down to Los Angeles and the rest is history. That was a decade ago. And then it was in 2020 that you took over as CEO, say, the midst of the pandemic. And that must have been a monumental challenge to take over the reins as CEO during that time. And tell us, you know, what were some of the challenges stepping up to the role at that time and how did you go about kind of rewriting the company's values? Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, I would recommend try not to run a fashion company during a pandemic. It's really not that fun. But I think what really hard times allow us to do is they give us an opportunity to to pull back and reset and think really critically about the the why and what we're doing. And so in taking on that role during a really difficult time in both the industry and our company is history. And I was given the opportunity to sit back and really reevaluate who we were as an organization and more importantly, where we were going. And so we spent I probably spent the first six months of the role meeting as many people as I could in the company, talking to everyone. And what we did is we actually reset our values and we recommitted to those values and then really, really strong a strong way that today those are still very true to who we are and how we operate. And I think in that moment, the ability to pull back and say, let's just really recommit as a as an organization, set the path and the tone for where we are going as we came out of 2020. Yeah. And so tell me a little bit about those commitments and that mission as a sustainable fashion brand, what are some of the policies and processes that you have in place right now? So Reformation has been sustainable since 2009, the day we were founded and we were founded really as an opportunity to do it different. The way we think about sustainability is really centered around two main commitments. The first commitment we have is about being carbon excuse me, climate positive. And what does that mean? Being climate positive means that we will admit less carbon. Then we will always get the way to say this is really confusing. We will remove more carbon from the atmosphere than we will emit, which no fashion brand of our size has done. Next year we will be the first company to do that, and that is a huge piece of work. It's a huge commitment that drives a lot of what we do, everything from the business practices, how we operate, our transportation goals, the electricity in all of our facilities to the materials that we use. The second big commitment we made and this was a little bit about three years ago, is more about circularity. And so our goal is to make 100% of our products to be recyclable. Today, about 40% are recyclable. And then we aim to use as little as possible of virgin materials. So, for example, if you buy one of our cashmere sweaters, they are 95% recycled cashmere. And between these two commitments, we believe that we can build a really big global business that has a much lower impact on the environment and is just a better way to operate. Yeah, and of course, you have your factory here in L.A. What percentage of items are made there? Our factory at this point when I first started, that was like 75%. Today it's about about 5%. And so we use our factory in L.A. to test new ideas and new trends where there's small runs of product, where another factory may not want to take that on or for something that is really, really we need it quickly. So I'll give you a fun story. When Bennifer got together three years ago, I know. So sad everyone. The story is now dated, but on their honeymoon. I guess it was two years ago, Jennifer was pictured wearing one of our dresses. It was called the Tagliatelle Dress. It was like the picture of the honeymoon in Saint-Tropez that went absolutely crazy. And so we have an incredible amount of new traffic to our site. And we were like, okay what we do. It's the end of the summer, it's August. We don't have any more of these linen dresses. So we were really fortunate. We have our own factory, we put the garment on preorder and we were able to then go to our factory team, take everything else off the sewing machines and just make this one dress for the next two weeks. We made thousands of units and everyone was happy and hopefully that is a piece of Bennifer that will live on forever. At least there's one thing left. And do you find there's a tension between purpose and profit and how do you balance the two? There's always a tension. And I think you have to consider purpose and profit, both from a short term and the long term point of view. So in the short term, there are a lot of decisions we can make that would be less expensive that would help us drive revenue very quickly. But in the long term, we believe that ultimately consumers do truly believe in buying from brands that have similar values. And so in the long term, because of sustainability and the data does support this, I'm in a room of marketers, so the data does clearly support that consumers stay with us longer as a result of our sustainable focus. And so that retention point of view has a business case around it, but there's clearly always trade offs. I'll give a good example. When we were in the pandemic, we did not sell activewear at that point we sold dresses. Everyone only really wanted activewear and so we were rushing to get back in to develop an active product that would be more suitable for what was going on around us. But the reality was we could either take a conventional, recycled poly that was kind of on the market and get back into and develop product in about 3 or 4. Months. Or we could wait and actually develop what we thought was a better material that had a lower fiber impact. But that was a nine month lead time. And so that was a really hard decision when, you know, we were down in terms of revenue at some point, most of our stores were closed. We wanted to just be able to sell product that people wanted, but ultimately we decided not to use the conventional material. We waited. We developed a brand new material that was a much lower footprint and for sure there was revenue loss. But I think consumers have great memories, and so hopefully they remember that we continue to live by our values, even when it was hard to do so. So, I mean, Reformation has sustainability really sewn into its DNA. And how do you position yourself as an agent of change and how do you communicate that mission to your audience, to your customers, particularly through partnerships and collaborations? So we'd like to say we've spent a lot of time thinking about our brand voice and who we are. I describe her all the time. Our brand is smart. It's funny, a bit snarky and provocative, sexy. A good way to describe the brand is it's kind of like the friend who might have one too many drinks at the party, but is also the most fun person and has the interesting thing to talk about. And so that complexity is what actually makes the brand so interesting. It's not just kind of flat and one note, there's constantly so many dimensions to it that make it really come alive. Yeah. And so because of that dimensionality, it gives us a lot of room to talk about whether it's a fashion item, whether it's a new trend we're excited about or a new sustainability commitment that we really believe in. Yeah. And so by being very focused on the brand personality, I think it gives us more room to have a broader message that we can then engage with with our customer. And talk us through some of your recent partnerships, say New York Ballet. This is a really fun one. New York City Ballet. Our business actually was founded in New York, so this was really a nod to where we came from. It also worked out well. Ballet core last year was really trending. So we actually designed a line of products for the dancers. And it also was very on trend. It was a great event at the actual ballet as well. So it was a really fun one. Yeah. You've Got The Power campaign. Monica Lewinsky. Everyone loves Monica. That's a big picture of Monica. So this is one of my favorites we've ever done. This was a campaign that we did with Monica that was all about voting. So as a mission based organization, having a voting platform is something we've done since day one. We encourage everyone, our team members as well as our customers, to vote. And Monica has a similar point of view. And she also has a really brave cause of her own. And she's been really a vocal advocate for anti-bullying. And we actually we saw her TedTalk. We were super inspired and we started talking to her about how we could work together. So this was a campaign that highlighted our professional workwear, which is a big growing part of our business, but also really had more dimension to it, just like our brand in terms of our mission and and what we were trying to get our customers to do. Yeah. And I think Kacey is your most recent campaign. Yes. Kacey Musgraves So this launched on Monday. This is our first campaign with a major musician. It's been incredibly successful. And so this campaign was really about trying to meet new audiences that may not know Reformation. Kasey has a really large audience, but her audience is in markets that are not very complementary to ours. And so she's also a huge fan of ours. We're huge fan of hers. So it's very organic. We've been working on this for about 12 months and I'm really glad in the way it came together. Actually, Big call out the person, one of the two people who really wanted this to happen is in the room and encouraged it. Yeah. So it really came from our team who are big fans of her and it worked out really well. You mentioned reaching new audiences. What are the most powerful channels for Reformation at the moment in terms of attracting these new customers? So when we think about new customers, I think going back to the brand piece, first and foremost, we keep our brand really tight and consistent. That brand voice doesn't change. But what we do like to do is how we share it. How we amplify it is kind of where we take risks and meet new customers. So we're constantly trying to share our brand and new digitally, whether it be new platforms or IRL activations. We've just started actually doing a little bit of direct mail, which was a new thing for us, and that's been a really great way to meet new customers. And then probably my personal favorite is retail. We have 49 retail stores all across the country and we find that the impact from a retail store is unlike anything else. Our brand awareness goes up 21 points within five miles of a retail store. So it is a billboard for us. It's incredibly powerful to get someone to walk in, get to know our brand story, and hopefully we get them to try the product as well. And you'll see those are really unique, actually. I know in I think it was 2017 you launched that Retail X concept. Can you tell us about that? Yeah. I guess. Show of hands. Has anyone been to a Reformation store? So you guys kind of know the technology part of it. So for those of you who haven't, we had three boutiques early on and we had a problem. It was a great problem, but it was kind of a mess. So we had so many people in our team had no time to really engage with our customers and get to know them. They were so busy just trying to find a size or check you out. And so it wasn't a great experience. And so we stopped opening stores for several years. And what we did was we spent about 18 months building this technology that really aimed at having a high end, high volume experience. So when you walk into one of our Reformation stores, there's two ways of shopping. You can walk around and you can pick a garment out from the racks. There's samples of every garment on the rack. There's an associate there with a handheld device, and they can add different pieces to your dressing room. Or we also have screens on the wall that have the full catalog of what's in store, and you can kind of build your own dressing room. So just think about like you're on a website and you're building your check out your cart or you're building your dressing room here. And when you're ready, you can push to buy, then go to the dressing room and magically the product will appear in your dress room. Like a secret wardrobe. And that's what we call our magic wardrobe. And then the other cool parts about it is our fitting rooms have devices in it so you can change your size, you can get sustainability information, or you can get styling information from the dressing room. And then you don't have to have that awkward them coming out of the dressing room your experience. We also have three settings for lighting. We can play your own music in some of the stores. So our dressing room experience is really elevated. And the reason we think that's really special is, one, you get to really have a moment getting to know the product. It's really fun and engaging. And as a result, about 60% of people who walk into a dressing room actually buy something. And so we have a lot of data that you wouldn't typically have in a retail experience. And how are you cultivating brand loyalty with those customers? So first and foremost, I think it's about product. I think it's about delivering consistently great products to our customers. Marketing is super important to get people in the door, but if you don't love the product, if you don't feel great in the product, I don't think you're coming back. And so something we measure and something I'm incredibly proud of is 82% of our customers say they feel confident in our product, which is kind of like a weird way for a brand to describe or be described by a customer. But that sense of confidence, of feeling great and powerful is a really important one that we keep emphasizing in everything we do, whether it be in our imagery, whether it be in the product development, in the colors we pick. It's all kind of top of mind for us. And you mentioned the importance of stores. I think you now have stores in the US, the UK, Canada. Yep. Tell us a little bit about your expansion plans both geographically and category expansion as well. So geographically today, about 20% of our business takes place outside the United States, and that is definitely our fastest growing part of our business. Europe is a huge focus for us. This year we actually launched a French website for the first time, so that has been really hard but really fun. And so we're very focused on bringing our product to the local markets and doing it in a way that is both true to who we are, but also recognizes the different cultures and how different consumers like to shop. Yes, we also have someone who's very focused on our international team here today who is calling out the team today, but very excited about our international growth. We have aspirations to bring sustainability globally and the message around sustainability resonates really, really well outside the U.S. in particular. So really we think both from a product and esthetic standpoint and from a value standpoint, there's a really good match here. Yes. And then the second lever you you mentioned, our main growth avenue is about product expansion. We every couple of years introduced new product categories. So we did shoes back in 2021, handbags in 2023. And then just last year we launched swim. And so we're constantly looking to introduce new categories. It takes us a bit longer at times because we like to get it really right from a design standpoint and from a sustainability supply chain standpoint. But every year or so, we we try to make sure we're both emphasizing our current categories as well as making space and time to talk about new ways in which we can outfit our customer. Can you tell us which category is coming next? There's a sneak or do you guys actually this is better is a customer base here. I'm going to do a survey. Okay. Let's do a survey. All right. Show of hands. Do you think we should do jewelry next? Okay. What about pajamas? Home? Okay. Men's? Sorry, guys. All right. So there you go. The audience might have the answer. Your customers have spoken. And speaking of which, I would love to get some questions from the audience. Hello. I'm Larissa from LaVon Consulting, where I study fashion data analytics as well as AI. I've really been interested in Reformation due to circularity. And I was really interested in maybe some of your opportunities or initiatives in circularity and how you might drive consumers to exchange the clothing, whether that could be drop ins or something similar to HOKA, how they did their swap initiatives. I was really interested in learning about that. Great question. It's a great question. Circularity in fashion, I think, is it's so critical, but it's really early on. So there's a couple of areas that we're focused on. The first thing is we are really committed to not overproducing. We sell 99.8% of the products we make because we have a really fast supply chain. We don't have to take these big bets. And that's the first thing is we need to slow down the overproduction that's happening in the industry. Once people do buy things and we are going to buy things, what do we do with it when you're done with it? So we're really focused on we have recycling our own recycling program. I said that earlier about 40% of our products are being recycled today. The usage of it is still lower than I'd like the adoption. And so the marketing around the program, the making it easy for our customers, those are all things we're very committed to right now of how do we make recycling in fashion more common for everyone. And then the second piece we're also really focused on is resale. So we have a partnership with Thredup. We actually will boost if you go and sell your your Reformation product on Thredup, we will boost with credit to Reformation to encourage you to do that and really keep it in the the kind of overall cycle versus just getting rid of it or throwing it out. So we think we decided not to do with ourselves but to rely on on partners because there are great companies out there doing it. But we really think we need to keep the ecosystem going as much as possible. Hi, Thank you so much for building such an incredible business and inspiring new business models and innovation. And definitely it was a great innovation what you created in the store and I wonder, with the try on in the fitting room, and I wonder if you were thinking about doing something similar and innovating on the e-commerce side and try on experience over there. I think for Reformation, the next generation is really going to be about how we combine the two channels a bit more. So right now our data and our backends are all in sync with one another, but the consumer doesn't necessarily feel that. So the way in which we really want to iterate on that experience and bring it to home is going to likely be through an app of some sort where you can imagine a world where you can look at all the product that's in your local store. You can build a dressing room, make an appointment and then walk in and it's ready for you to try on and really make it a lot easier. And it's a kind of a fun experience as well. So that's probably where we're headed. We're really thinking about mobile, bringing your own personal mobile device into the retail experience. That's the next iteration. Thank you. So, Hali, we have about two minutes left, so I would love to play a quick fire round with you. So in one sentence, tell us the brands you most admire outside of your industry and why. So I love Whole Foods. I think it's an incredible brand, especially. I remember when the first Wholefoods popped up in my neighborhood. They're not my neighborhood, but I grew up in Miami and Miami and everyone was like, What is this like a Dollar Apple? This is crazy. What is organic, right? Like, it was just so foreign. And today it's commonplace everywhere you go has organic. And I think what Wholefoods did to the agriculture in the grocery business is absolutely incredible in terms of bringing better quality food to a much broader audience and encouraging a different lifestyle for all of us. So Wholefoods had an incredible journey and I just think it is really, really inspiring to watch how they've built their. Do you think what Wholefoods has done for food you want to do for fashion? You said it. I often say that I actually think Wholefoods really when I think about the curves in a lot of ways, that's where adoption of sustainability in fashion is quite early. So that's where I hope to to help bring the industry. Another good example is Tesla for electric cars. It's incredible. Now everyone's talking about electric cars. When Tesla first came out, it was almost like an alien spaceship, right? And so I think the idea of having companies that are really willing to be brave and do something that may be expensive and you don't always get paid for it, but it can change an industry. It can change consumer behavior is really inspiring. What Reformation will look like in ten years time? I think Reformation will be, I hope, a really global business that services so much more of our customers' wardrobe, whether it be actually their home, whether it be through beauty, whether it be through, you know, your outfit in the different occasions. I'd love it to be a destination for all things that are sustainable and chic in your life. And that's on the global scale. Yeah. And finally, your most powerful piece of advice for other brand leaders. I think it's all about being able to think in the long term. Short term decisions often I think may feel good in the moment, but they have consequences that are much larger down the road. One of my mentors once said to me, If you're saying yes way more than you're saying no, you probably need to rethink that. You need to be really discerning with your time, with your brand, with all of the moments that you are sharing, you're communicating with your customer. And so that's something I think about a lot of being as long term minded and principled as possible and making decisions.

So our first speaker heads up Fortnum and Mason, a true British heritage brand known for its gourmet groceries and posh preserves. To tell us how he's leading the company into the future. Please welcome up Tom Athron. First of all Tom a huge welcome, thank you so much for your time today. It's lovely to have you here. Lovely to be here. Thanks, Kate. And so before joining Fortnum, you were CFO at Waitrose, Group Development Director at the John Lewis Partnership and CEO of Matches Fashion. Tell us a little bit about how those roles prepared you for the top job at Fortnum & Mason. So, so thank you for having me. It's lovely to be here - an amazing group of people, by the way. I guess the short answer to that would be that it's a combination of food and retailing and digital and luxury all coming together. So when the phone rang for that job offer, it felt a very natural thing for me for me to go and try. And I have to say, I spent a bit of time in fashion with Matches Fashion. I'm much prefer food, right? And I got a bit bored of walking into the office and people at matches and people going like this every day. They went in first. Like, I know it's Boden again, I'm really sorry. But I, it all obviously came together I guess it wasn't part of a big sort of masterplan or anything, but John Lewis partnership felt like it was an amazing business. In fact, it still is an amazing business and amazing business and it gave me opportunities that I probably would never have had anywhere else. If you were interested in having a career which sort of zigzagged your way through the business, the, I guess the whole organization, and you were up for being put into challenging spots and stretching roles in a way that, you know, in some instances the jobs that I was given up at the JLP were, you know, I was wholly unsuited to them, but they gave me an opportunity to, they just basically put you in a position where they would never let you fail. And that gave me a career for which I will always be forever thankful. I have to admit, I absolutely loved it. And of course I left with friends for life. Yeah. So I really enjoyed that. I then ended up I loved my time at Waitrose, which is a properly foodie business, you know. Yes, it's a grocer and yes, it occupies a certain certain position in that particular industry and goodness me, we had so much fun and we grew a lot and I learned a lot about brand and learned a lot about how to get things done in a business which, you know, is very, very large. And it sort of sometimes feels like you're steering a sort of an ocean going tanker rather than a sort of a nimble speedboat but but I learned a lot about food. And I think that that was just fantastic and instilled a real love for me, actually, which I very much bought into Fortnum. And then Matches was very modern, very digital, very luxury and completely different, hugely entrepreneurial. And again, I think the other thing that being at Matches that I would say is that it it sort of recalibrated me from being in a huge business to working in a very, very small one. And actually, what you realize is that it's just as hard to get things done in small businesses as it is big businesses. But the numbers have fewer naughts on and that's sort of pretty much it. So then when you took on that CEO position at Fornum & Mason, it was December 2020, so right in the midst of the pandemic. What were some of the biggest leadership lessons that you learned in that first year in the role? I'm so I think well, two things. I think on my first day, literally my first day we were going into I don't know if you remember all those tiered lockdowns where the world was sort of closing down quite slowly as we got closer and closer to Christmas. And actually I overlapped with my predecessor, who's done an amazing job for the for the previous seven years at Fortnum. And I actually took over in anger on the 1st of January. So just after Christmas and I walked in and my first day the guy who runs the Piccadilly store said to me, we're going to have to close. You know, we were allowed to be open because we were a food business serving the good people of Mayfair and St James's. And he said, "We're going to have to close because 60% of our team are either ill or self-isolating and we're not going be able to remain open." And I said, Well, you know, he said, "But what we'll do is we'll close for two weeks, everyone will get better and then we'll reopen again." And I remember thinking, I'm not sure that's the way it's going to work. And I could see the charts on the news every night, only going one direction. And if you remember, it was the beginning of that lockdown that started in January and basically lasted until June. And if you were a hospitality business, you won't open until June. And so I went upstairs and I phoned my old boss, actually from Waitrose, a guy called Mark Price, who I said I said to him, I need some advice. What would you do. Yes. Well he. He said, I thought you might call for some advice, but not before 9:00 on your first morning. And he said, It doesn't matter, just make a decision in ten minutes, which I thought was really good advice, actually. And so we ended up keeping open, and I'm really pleased that we did. So my first lesson, long answer to your question is there's something about decisiveness that really makes a difference to people that be really clear and decisive. And the truth is that if you can just get more decisions right than wrong, you'll probably do okay on balance. And just take action. Just take action. Yeah. It's so valuable to people, but don't dither. It's a complete nightmare. And then I suppose there are a couple of other things we I did really want Fortnum - my observation of Fortnum is when I joined was that we were we done an amazing job with the brand, but there was a gap that was beginning to open up between the experience of our customers and the strength of the brand. And that sort of worried me actually. And this was my pitch when I went for the job, I sort of described this gap. And so what I did and again, this wasn't sort of I didn't think too hard about this, but we had been in the paper in December for not delivering hampers on time. And I remember my mother called me, I'd only been there for about a week and my mother called and said, "You screwed it up already!" But she and basically what I did is I asked for the top ten things that customers were complaining about over the last six months and then we canceled the whole of the transformation program and we said, "Right, we're going to take each of those ten things and fix them at their roots. We're going to go right back to the root causes, not put sticky tape and plaster over them, but right back to that root causes and try and work out how we're going to fix them." And that was I have to say, that was an amazing thing. I'm so pleased I did it. I mean, it didn't feel quite so significant at the time. But I look back and it did a couple of things. First of all, it put customers right at the top of our agenda, which I don't think we'd had. I think we'd had brand at the top of our agenda. And secondly, it meant that the following Christmas we were able to trade much, much better. So I'm really pleased that we did that. And then the last thing I would say and again, this is very much with hindsight, is that we as a team try to answer some of those big existential questions about what we wanted Fortnums to be, because, of course, you know, I look around the world and department stores are dying. Food retail operates on incredibly thin margins. Luxury was going through a sort of a you know, you couldn't decide whether it was going brilliantly or not so brilliantly for people. You know, it was was it the end through the pandemic was at the end of physical retailing, which some people were saying and the whole world was going to go online. Big existential questions for us. And we basically decided – seems really simple now – that we just wanted to be all about extraordinary food and drink. So we started to look at everything through that lens. And then you begin to sort of say, Well, why are we in menswear? Why are we doing sort of the and I recognize that not everything can be extraordinary food and drink. But once you start to look at something through something through a are all your questions, all the big decisions you've got to make through a really single sort of simple, unifying thought, life becomes quite easy. And then we started to make changes. Yeah. And you had quite a strong sort of strategy and mission, which was to become more relevant to more people more often. So talk us through some of those ways that you have modernized Fortnums but while maintaining its rich heritage. So, more relevant to more people more often. And again, that was, that was something I inherited, but I really liked that it just sort of come into the vernacular over the course of the previous year or so. But I really liked it as a sort of a, I guess, the basis for our customer strategy as much as anything else. And the reason I really liked it was because I felt that we were a business that was not known for extraordinary food and drink. We were known for Christmas, and it basically meant that we were making all our money at Christmas and for the rest of the year didn't make any money at all. And I just felt that we were missing a massive trick there. Not only just becoming bigger and bigger at Christmas become operationally very challenging, but actually there was a whole load of things that we were doing brilliantly that customers just didn't know about. So we were trying to find a way – I really like this idea of relevance. Funnily enough, we talk about relevance and not modernity, so I never want for this to be modern, but I do want it to be contemporary and relevant and up to date and forward looking and and sort of like zeitgeisty, I suppose, as much anything else – of the moment. And, I didn't, I felt that we had work to do in that respect. So we did a number of things and we what we recognized was that our online business was a real source of growth. It was a real engine for growth, specifically customer acquisition actually, and specifically then for people who were who didn't have access to Piccadilly or any of our satellite shops, sort of every day. But we recognize that there's a story of, you know, there there are moments of joy and celebration all the way through the year, you don't wait for Christmas. And so we started to talk about the quality of our food. And and actually, this should be nothing stopping everyone in this room, by the way, drinking Fortnums tea. You really should be. It is fabulous or marmalade or our biscuits. Feel free. But. But the only way you can make that work is if you start talking about the quality of your food and to make it relevant at moments outside Christmas. So we started to really push that through our online business. And actually, again, the one thing that the pandemic did was push all of our business online. And what we've been able to do is hold on to the customers that we've acquired during that period and then and then serve them better. So just and then we've got a couple of other sort of ideas coming up over the next 12 months, which I think are going to reinforce that further. Yeah. Because in terms of online sales, I think it's about 30% of revenues come from online customers now compared to about 10% pre-pandemic. It was about seven, actually. But yes, so really significant change. And you said that's hugely important for new customers in acquisition. But what are you doing to retain those customers and really build loyalty with them? So some of the things that we do online, you'll see very directly tie back into store. So I never, you know we, what I really want customers to do is come to Piccadilly because it is amazing. It's a destination in itself isn't it? And it's unique. It's unique globally. And it really it's like a feast for the senses. I mean, you know, you walk in and you just can't help but smile. And we make decisions about our store fit out that you would never in a million years normally, you know, we have a velvet handrail that goes up a staircase. I mean, it's like no one would ever no one would ever do that. Yeah. And yet we did it. And it's just stunning. So every there's joy in not just in what you see or what you taste or what you smell or what it's everything you touch as well. And so what I really want people to do is come to is come to Fortnums. We got rid of menswear as I was, as I was saying earlier. And I'm really pleased we did that, actually and instead we've put in a food and drink studio, which is this space on our third floor, which is glassed off, which we there's a proper kitchen at one end. We have 100 chefs who work in our building, 100. And so this was an opportunity for them to come out from behind the walls, showcase what they're brilliant at. You know, people love – we got the idea from the chefs in the windows in Bon Marché in Paris. You know, when you walk past and they're piping macarons in their big toques. Yeah. We need to do that. So we do all mise en place the tea salon now in the food and drink studio so you can see people dipping choux and making scotch eggs and things. And then at lunchtime, we'll do this sort of thing we'll do in conversations with and masterclasses and then in the evenings we'll do supper clubs and dinner parties and chef's tables. There's a supper club two nights. Pierre Koffmann is coming to cook about, 40 people. People have bought tickets and it just brings the whole place to life. We've opened a gin still. We've got a we've got a cocktail bar which is made out of sugar up there, it's amazing. We've got the most amazing cooks, a cook shop offer, which is stunning, where nearly everything that's in there is made in the UK and half of it is made by individual craftsmen. So it's really trying to tell a story around food and that's what we've used the space for. And if you look at what we're trying to do online, a lot of that points back to the experience of Piccadilly. Yeah, because I know social media is very big for you now, and especially in terms of attracting a new generation of shoppers. And can you talk us through some recent initiatives? Well, yes. I mean, yes, social is really big for us. It's interesting because if you look at it through a I suspect there'll be a range of views in the room about this. But if you look at social media through sort of traditional marketing lenses in terms of cost of acquisition and conversion, all the rest of it, you could convince yourself very quickly that it's a complete waste of money. But it's much more nuanced than that. I think it taps you into a new audience, I agree with you. And I think, B, the value comes back to you in ways that you don't that you don't expect in the see, You sort of have to take a bit of a leap of faith. But what we like doing is talking about some of our amazing collaborations online. We on social, we there's an amazing baker in Leeds called Rich Myers, who has this bakery, well has this social brand called Get Baked. And we said we quite like that to put to the point about sort of tradition and modernity, that there's quite a lot of space, I think, in the Fortnum brand for a bit of tension, right? And so teaming up with people who are fundamentally unexpected is it works really well for us, we've really noticed that Get Baked is a really good example of very, very young, very sort of fanatical audience about these extraordinary cakes that he makes, which are 24 layers of sponge and ganache. Amazing, actually. They're extraordinary cakes. And we did a collaboration with him where we sell his cakes in slices. And you can buy the whole cake, actually £470 in London. And we had we don't open till ten in the morning and had a queue outside going all the way around to Jermyn Street at quarter to eight. It was extraordinary and it opened up a whole new audience for us. Supper clubs is a similar thing, actually. That brings in a whole new range of people who come in ones and twos and they want to talk about food and and we get, you know, a chef in and then we get someone from the food broadcasting community. So someone like Leyla Kazim or someone will come in and interview like a really cool chef who'll be like the latest big thing. And I remember one of the first ones we did, we did a Dan McGeorge came from up in the Lake District. He came from Rothay Manor, and his first course was a Korean chicken wing. And I can feel myself salivating as I think about it. It was unbelievable. And we had 100 people on our restaurant, the ground floor of Fortnums, all sub 30, all eating chicken with their fingers. And I remember thinking, this is what I want Fortnums to be wants to be. And the only reason it works is because it was extraordinary, not because it was average, but because it was totally extraordinary. And so this is the Get Baked thing, the supper club that's bringing a whole new audience in, which is working really well for us. Yeah, I love it's all about delighting people. Those unexpected, surprising partnerships and collaborations. You've talked a lot about the opportunities and where you're taking forms. What about the biggest challenges? What is it right now that's keeping you awake at night? So probably two things. I always worry about the quality of the food always. And the reason only say that because so you don't have to rather than because the quality isn't good enough. Just to be clear, it's that I it needs to be I always think I always think that Fortnum food needs to just needs to justify the label. In other words, you can never have a product where the label is justifying the food ever, it has to be the other way round. So it has to stand up to having the Fortnums name on the label. That's the way I think about it. So that I worry about that a lot. Fact, when I first joined, I was worried about then actually. And I, we, we bought on a buying and merchandising director for someone who does all our buying for food. And I sent him a hamper to say congratulations on well on for getting the job. And he instead of writing me a thank you letter, he wrote me a note saying that the short bread was overbaked and I remember thinking, That's exactly why you're coming. Yes. That's exactly why you're here. And so we put a lot of effort into into really improving the quality where it needs to be the best, like totally the best. And then I suppose the other thing of our that is growth. But what I but when I say that, I think what I mean is, you know, we're very lucky in the sense that there are lots of opportunities for our brand to grow, lots. And and the trick for us as a team is I think there are good growth opportunities and bad growth opportunities. In other words, you know, I could I could list Fortmums products on Ocado or Amazon and probably double the size of the business in about 18 months. But is it right for the business? It would be the wrong thing to do. Whereas so what I'm really looking for is the really high quality growth opportunities that that allow us to, you know, make the numbers that we need to sort of, you know, finance our own growth and spin off the cash that allows us to reinvest back into the proposition and all of those sorts of things. But what I want is those growth opportunities to strengthen the brand and not a not trade off that. I think that they're probably the two things I worry about. Great. Thank you, Tom. And any questions from the audience? So you talked a lot about the sort of multisensory aspects of the store, but obviously food is very multisensory, emotional and intimate. How do you put all of the senses, emotions and intimacy on the online channels so you can engross everyone in that beauty of the food in a fashion that you clearly have? It's really hard, it is really hard. You know, you'll see a lot of it in our copy, our production values when it comes to photography, which we use across everything that we do, whether it's Christmas brochures or whatever, you know, we use the best seafood photographers. And I pick out in particular David Loftus, who is just extraordinary and in fact world renowned. He does a lot of our food photography and I'm really pleased that he does. But it is a really hard it's a really hard thing to do. And the truth is, I don't think I don't think there are online offer should try to be ever like walking into Fortnums on Piccadilly. And I would say the same, by the way about our little shops. We've got one at Terminal five at Heathrow. We have one at St Pancras, we've got one in the Royal Exchange. And of course they're all gorgeous and beautiful and the people in there are wonderful. And we have a shop and a restaurant, Hong Kong. We have a number of shops in shops in Japan and in Korea, and we're available in a number of places in the US. But the way I get my head around it is that it's it never I'm it's like I don't bother trying to be like Piccadilly. What I really want all of those things to do is be a signpost. And so, yes, you can have access to the brand whether you're in the US or the EU or Korea or wherever. But when you come to London, you're like, I have to go to Piccadilly, I have to go to Fortnums. And so I, so that's the way I think about it. You know, we get asked a lot if I want to open a do we want to open a flagship shop on Fifth Avenue in New York? Right. And, you know, we could do, but it'll never be, t'll never, if it tries to be Piccadilly, it will fail. So we're better off giving people small, preferably financially viable, standalone sort of snapshots of the brand, but use them as a signpost back to our flagship. That's the way I think. I like that. That's the way we like to think about it.

So next up, we're going to be exploring where brand leaders are investing their time and money to build communities, cultivate loyalty and create sustainable business growth. Please welcome our three panelists, Catherine Newby Grant from Estee Lauder Companies, Jodie Harrison from Belstaff and Hanushka Toni from Sellier. Hi everyone, thank you so much for joining us today. Catherine, I would love to start with you. So one of Estee Lauder Company's values is, and I'm quoting this, to create prestige and luxury products that surprise and delight our consumers and then become beloved, trusted favorites. And I just want to pick up on those words, surprise and delight. Can you tell us a little bit about how you're doing that and how you're kind of evoking those emotional responses to the brand? Yeah. Firstly, big hello, everyone. And also huge kudos to Tom. I found the insights absolutely fascinating. I would start actually by sharing what I found was quite a sobering statistic, which is that 75% of brands could disappear overnight and consumers wouldn't care. And it's such a great reminder that it is absolutely essential for all of us to ensure that our brands are delighting consumers, that they're staying relevant, and that they really are lasting the test of time. And I'm hugely passionate about that. So at Estee Lauder Companies. Firstly, we have, similar to Tom, an unwavering commitment to product quality to packaging quality and to service. And we really invest a lot of time to understand consumers deeply, how the products resonate with them. We invest in in-house capabilities, research and development to really bring proprietary chemistry into our products, to really look at bespoke packaging and really ensure that that experience is really flawless for the consumer. Because once they try your products, if they love them, they will come back, they will automatically come back and you'll build loyalty that way. But then on top of that, secondly, we actually really invest in the high touch, personal experience. So that can be brought to life in CRM programs. Of course, that can be brought to life in personalization, be that gifting options or personalizing product tweaks. Our most important factor is actually our in-store consultants, the beauty consultants, the makeup artists, hair stylists, fragrance stylists. They give that human touch. There is nothing like an expert being able to really interact with a consumer, being able to understand their unique needs and being able to actually pick out the right products for them to give the experience just a much, much better feel. So good examples would be dermatological trained Clinique consultants who really understand skin. They can understand your skin personally and they'll give you the right regime, which will just help your skin be so much better than if you were maybe choosing it on your own. Or Bobbi Brown and MAC makeup artists that can just pick out that perfect shade that's just going to make you the very best you. And then thirdly, we really focus on each brand having different and distinctive, very immersive brand experiences which evoke that emotion. So I loved how Tom also talked about really immersing consumers in your brand. Not every consumer will want to do that. They may be happy on the shopping trip picking up your product, but the consumers that want to really giving them that chance to really deeply experience your brand. It can be through an immersive experience in-store. It might be having a fragrance service. It also could be having an amazing makeover. It could be visiting one of our mobile skin clinics where you really get that dermatological skin testing from Clinique with the best tools. It can be the supper clubs, it can be masterclasses, but feeling like you've lived and breathed every aspect of the brand. It allows you to really, really connect emotionally. And one thing we've learned is if you can evoke emotion, you are way, way more likely to be remembered, you're more likely to be loved, and you're definitely more likely to drive that repeat purchase. So we really focus on that. And if you can do those three things, we really feel you can futureproof your brand and ensure that you're really wowing and delighting consumers a lot. And just picking up on the question that came up earlier, in terms of some of those interactive experiences that you provide for consumers, are you able to do something like that online as well? We've brought to life the Jo Malone virtual townhouse. Jo Malone is founded in a townhouse. It's the history of the brand. And we did bring it to life in a virtual way. And we were allowed to bring consumers into rooms and they they could really experiencing online. We've also been able to bring virtual makeovers online and even MAC very recently was able to launch the first sign language makeover and interaction online. So we really do try. But I also think that humans love physical interactions. And I just do think that brands must remember that whilst you can bring a lot to life online and we do focus on how we do that, that human interaction, that human touch can really bring the magic. We do quite a lot of neuroscience research. There's amazing agencies you can partner with there's Kinda Studio for example. The one thing we learned was consumers never actually say what they think. They never do what they say. So a lot of research techniques are quite flawed, whereas the joy of neuroscience and you can really put the headsets on consumers and measure their emotions, you're really able, when they walk the store or they look through your website, will they interact with your product or they see your advertising, you can actually see and assess the emotions that they have. That was really quite mind blowing. That opened our eyes to what was leaving people fairly flat and what was really, really evoking that emotion and that engagement and drawing consumers in. Yeah, perfect thank you. Jodie, coming to you. So Belstaff, I think, celebrated its 100th birthday Still celebrating. Still celebrating. All year long celebration. Yeah. Yeah long, perfect. And what is the brand doing it as a heritage brand. What are you doing to attract new customers without diluting its core DNA? So I've been - hi, everyone. I'm Jodie, Chief Brand Officer at Belstaff. I've been at Belstaff now for three and a half years. That period has been really about transformation. When I joined the business, I think it's fair to say it was in a chapter of irrelevancy. You know, we had a core customer Belstaff's knowingly being owned by a lot of different people. It's passed through a lot of different hands. It's had a lot of different answers and visions to it. It was my job to sort of understand how to retain that core customer that obviously supported us through all of those changes and really saw Belstaff as their brand. You know, we've got a very loyal, very core customer. So segmenting the customers and figuring out how to access new customers was obviously a huge, hugely important part of that strategy. We started with a transformation project on the website. We replatformed everything, including all the social media. All of our emails were redesigned, rebuilt. I'm a huge fan of email, it's a big thing for me and really honed in on the product because I think the first thing that we really wanted to make sure was that we were introducing products that was relevant to younger customers. Our core products, you know, if everyone knows Belstaff, if you some people don't, it's one of those brands that you can do what you don't know. Leather jackets, wax jackets are really what we're about to put with a motorcycle angle, not like Barbour, it's more country. We're more of a motorcycle. It's a bit edgy, a bit more rock and roll. But we're really that's what we're fundamentally known for so it was about introducing new programs that spoke to younger customers and that included overshirts, nylons and more technical technical down. So we started with the product and then we built from the product up, layering on narratives, layering on brand pillars, all of that stuff that, again, like you were mentioning, build an emotional connection to a new customer through storytelling. My background is journalism. I started off at Condé Nast at GQ many moons ago, but I have always been a storyteller, and I understand the power and importance of stories to generate customers and to generate loyalty. So that's where we really founded founded our strategy. And you mentioned those kind of core customers that have been with you for many decades in some instances, and what are you doing to reward them? So our core customers, they're an interesting bunch. We did a huge amount of surveys when I first joined to really understand what they felt were intrinsic values of Belstaff that we needed to retain throughout the transformation phase. We ensured that we kept developing that core set of products, but evolving it so that they could they would keep buying into new leathers. Belstaff's one of those brands where men collect and women men collect it like they collect watches or cars like they'll go in each season, they'll buy a new leather jacket in a new style, in a new color so we wanted to make sure that we were honoring the authenticity and the roots of the brand first and foremost, for those customers who would absolutely call us out front and center if we were doing something that didn't feel authentic to Belstaff, that was really important. So that's that's really where we started. And then we layered on a loyalty program at the start of this year. We took us a while to build up to that. We called it Circuit Master because obviously Belstaff has a huge motoring history. You know, we've powered people to, you know, drive race cars, cross oceans. We used to work with the Navy in the 60s and 70s. The history of Belstaff is unbelievable and it was an absolute privilege to sort of work on that. And our loyalty program was really about giving them access to something that they couldn't get anywhere else. Belstaff is owned by Ineos. Ineos has a huge sports arm. So we get for our loyalty customers really incredible benefits like access to Formula One races, access to Manchester United games, things like really special things. So so we in place of more enhanced personalization, which is coming we do offer them only at Belstaff benefits. Well, and you mentioned that you launched that program earlier this. Year. In March. In March. Have you seen any particular results that you can share with us? We've seen great retention. We've we've actually seen a really high increase in repeat purchases from those customers. They are coming back 10% increase year on year in the same period, which is, you know, it's early stages. We've only launched in the UK and the US. We're rolling it out to the rest of the territories early next year. And our email database, you know, we have two tiers, so we have an entry tier where you can just sign up and you get immediate benefits such as 10% off your first order, all the usual stuff. But it's, I think it's just packaging something up, providing branding around it, providing reasons to be in it, providing a club mentality. I worked for Soho House before Belstaff, I understand the tribalism of being belonging and feeling like you're seen and that you're getting special benefits, that's hugely important. Specifically across our men's audience, I would say. Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful, thank you. Hanushka coming to you. We've talked a lot about transformation, and actually, Sellier started out as a bricks and mortar retailer in 2019 with no digital strategy. And how did the pandemic shift and change your business model? So first of all, hi, I'm Hanushka, I'm the CEO and founder of Sellier and thank you for having me. So you're quite right. Around six years ago, we started as a brick and mortar store in a teeny tiny shop in Knightsbridge, and the intention was to rely on the passing foot traffic and not have anything to do with the online world. Then Covid hit, and pretty much overnight we realized that we had to go digital. And what that really did for us was inform our identity of who we became as a resale business. At the time, there were a few companies dominating the space who had already scaled, so they were the eBay's, the RealReals, the Vestiaire Collectives, and we really thought deeply about who we wanted to be and how we would differentiate ourselves in that landscape. So for us, we had the idea that we almost wanted to be the Harrods or the Net-a-Porter of resale. What that meant in reality was a very tightly curated edit, so not hundreds of thousands of products, but a really good selection of super brands and the best in class of every super brand. Again, almost overnight, I used the skills of my second career in digital marketing to build a Shopify website myself, create some SEO landing pages again myself, and started doing Instagram stories to a really little, almost dead Instagram account. And within six months we started to go viral and it's been six years and here we are. And actually Sellier's huge on TikTok and Instagram now, I've watched some of your posts. They're fantastic. And what would you say is some of the most important channels for Sellier today? I mean, it's really, really interesting because two years ago I would have just said, Instagram is amazing. You pop a story up and then you see the scale of sales come through. But the interesting thing is the competitive landscape is becoming more and more complicated and obviously competitors are very agile because when they see a strategy that works, they're very quick to adopt it. I hate to use the dreaded word, but omnichannel is so important. So yes, we still have our Tiktok account where we do really fun, unserious tech talks designed to entertain. But those Tiktoks bring in 200 million views a year for our brand, which is huge. Then we have our Instagram presence and that's more about the immediate sell through so showcasing the stock, showing our audience what we have. So that really drives sales in a very immediate way. And then we also have to be laser focused on our e-comm. So how much time are our customers spending on the website? Do we have the right product? Are the collections goods? And finally, what we've really found in the last 18 months, and I think this has almost overturned the traditional dogma of the past few years that's been so focused on e-commerce, is that retail is so important. I mean, we've read so much about people coming back to the stores, but we are feeling it so much in our own business. So we now have stores in London, Monaco and key strategic partnerships with businesses like Flannels. So we're now in Belfast, Liverpool, Glasgow, Sheffield, an opening in the Leeds flagship. So if you take that all together, the strategy is working really, really nicely for us. But take any one part way and I wouldn't be able to say the same thing. So it's about being wherever your customer is. Exactly. Yeah. Katherine, we've talked about operating in such a sort of challenging competitive market. How do you maintain a culture of innovation and creativity at ELC? Well, I think innovation, as you touch on it, it's so crucial to staying relevant. So we talk about how do you ensure you're not in those 75% of brands that consumers don't care disappear and I do think innovation for any business in any brand is essential and driving that culture of innovation. We're lucky that it comes from our founder. So actually Estee Lauder herself had a pioneering spirit. She was probably an indie brand ahead of her time at the time. And so that culture has remained, which is fantastic but of course you bring new people in, we're now spread over many countries. So I would say we have a few things that help bring that to life. First is creating that environment of psychological safety. So it's really important that people understand failure is okay as long as you're learning and that in fact, failure is essential to learn. And we do quite a few talks to really instill that belief and that concept with people. We talk a lot about two way decisions. So that sort of sliding door. So if you can actually reverse a decision, well then why not try it? See if it's working, reverse it and pivot if it doesn't. But then equally, in a way, quite a large scale company. So creating and I hate to use the word processes, but frameworks that people feel they can innovate within. So if a few programs we have a program called pilot scale embed where people can think of an idea, if we can pilot it, we will. If it works, we scale it and then we embed in the business. We have the big breakthrough innovation challenge where we literally ask for ideas from anyone in the business. They put a case together and we always fund the winner. A fantastic example is actually MAC Lick Paint, a collaboration which came absolutely out of nowhere from a small team not even working on the MAC brand and in partnership with now Lick is fantastic way to to bring that brand back to life. And then other examples actually are we do a reverse mentor program through take the most junior in the organization and we ask them to mentor the most senior in the organization and they have to bring insight, innovation, things that they've seen and start training the most senior. Again fantastic way to keep the senior leaders more engaged and being more innovative. And finally, we have created what I think is really a joy. So about a year ago, we created what we call Internal Creators Network. And it started just as a tiny pilot with seven people. They were employees in the organization. They worked in finance, product supply, marketing, but they had this passion for content creation. And so we said, why not? You know, our brands really well, you're part of our company. We will let part of your job be creating content. We trained them - they already were pretty good at creating content and they went through quite a rigorous sort of process to become an internal creator. But we trained them with classes and immersive classes on how to make great content. They spent time with Tik Tok. We equipped them with obviously ring lights and tripods to be able to meet the great content and then we were able to reward and recognize them and build a community around them. But they created they spotted trends that became our trend spotter, they created content and then any content that was working would be put with paid media. And what we found is they were actually making far, far better content, sometimes some of our highest quality content that was actually going viral of itself, getting millions and millions of views. So we've then expanded the program, we now have 32 employees. They make content across all our brands. They receive briefs from the brands all the time. They also feed back to the brands. So they spotted a trend and they'll come to a brand and say, "Hey, this is a great idea, why did you think about doing that?" They've harnessed already now 60 million views. They've really, really driven a lot of earned media value, a lot of talkability. And it's really quite a pride piece of pride for them. But they, for us, I think of them as sort of our internal entrepreneurs really helping to sort of shape the culture and be those "go to" people for teams to think about how they do things differently. So it's one one example of a number of programs that we have going on, but an example of it that I really love. Yeah, perfect yhank you. Hanushka coming to you because I know you're an entrepreneur yourself. I'd love to talk to you about trends. So how do you balance staying on top of short term customer trends with building more long term brands? Well, trends are great, but at the same time, I think if you're a business who's super focused on following trends, you tend to become quite reactive. So if you take Balenciaga or Vetements as a case study at the time when they started doing the whole ironic luxury thing, that was really cool when they were at the forefront of it and really spurring customer appetite. And actually, when you become so defined by a trend, you run the risk of being trapped by it. So it's equally important to also look forward at who you want to be as a business. So who do you want to be and where do you want to be in one year? In five years? In ten years? And that should very much inform your messaging to your customer and your strategy going forward. Perfect, thank you. And Jodie, coming to you, we've talked about Belstaff celebrating its 100 year heritage. How have you communicated that to your customers? How are you celebrating it and how have you used that opportunity to reimagine some of your stores? Sure. So we started the plans for the centenary - obviously, it's every marketeers dream to work on a centenary celebration, might have been why I joined. So we started plans for about three years ago, actually right at the beginning of when I joined, because obviously one of the things that takes the longest in any fashion business is the product. Product roadmaps are incredibly long, particularly when you're working with European factories, things like that, or further afield. So we spent a long time planning out our collaborations calendar initially and how we would introduce centenary product that was very special and honored our roots while looking forward. I think Tom mentioned the need for tension in a heritage business. I think that really resonated with me. What we what we really have tried to do is make sure that the old informs new but doesn't control it. So one of our brand pillars it's called, old is good, and it's really about focusing on celebrating our age, but it not being something that cages us in, it's something that kind of spurs us on. So a lot of that thinking went into the centenary plans. It's like, how do you bring in the modernity of collaborating with a very cool streetwear brand, which we're launching in a couple of months time, which I can't mention, unfortunately who that is with, with something much more traditional, like Grenson, which we just launched a series of military inspired boots that launched last month. So the product was one thing. We then went to an events schedule. I'm a big believer that events are a fantastic way to allow customers to touch and feel and interact and get excited about a brand. So we planned a huge centenary exhibition up in our hometown of sunny Stoke on Trent, the destination that is Stoke on Trent. No, no offense to anyone who's from Stoke on Trent, I love Stoke on Trent, but it's a very obviously was a very glorious epicenter of craftsmanship in the UK. It's where all our pottery was made and it's where Belstaff was founded 100 years ago. So we took over a former pottery factory called Gladstone, which is absolutely stunning pottery, it last fired a kiln about 50 years ago and we installed an archive exhibition of more than 100 pieces. Belstaff's archive is incredible. It's mostly functional design history. It's mostly military history as well. We took out a lot of contracts in the 40s during the war. So we've got incredible pieces all the way through from 1924, which is an original motorcycling jacket all the way up to more modern pieces that we've done in collaboration with artists such as Corbin Shaw and people like that too, to reimagine what Belstaff is for the future. So the event itself, we took everybody up on the Pullman train. We took hundred and fifty guests. We had entertainment on the train. We took a lot of content makers, influencers, press Including your very own Vogue Business. So it was, you know, and we saw great results from that. You know, we got 30 million reach just on press pieces alone. It gave us a moment to talk about. It gave us a really fantastic interview, opportunities to talk about what we're doing with the brand and really also spotlighted the history, but the kind of future direction at the same time. Hanushka coming to you. In terms of really cultivating brand loyalty, particularly in the pre-loved space, how are you making sure that people come back to your platform? I think if you read any of the business literature that tells you how to keep customers very loyal, there's a real focus on knowing your. customer. What we've discovered quite recently is actually that's a very hard thing to achieve in this age of social media and instant discoverability. So pre-social media, your customer would have been a more obvious demographic of person. So we sell luxury bags, for example so a channel customer pre-social media might have lived in a big city next to a Chanel and had a very cosmopolitan set of friends. Today your Chanel or Hermès a customer might be living in rural Scotland, might have woken up that morning, seen some content from one of their favorite influencers at Ascot with a Birkin bag and decided that they wanted to add one to their collection. So for us, it's really important not to pigeonhole our customer into a particular type of person and to target everyone equally. Okay. So do you segment or not in terms of approach? We we try not to. And the importance for us is, again, pursuing that digital omnichannel strategy. Yeah. And I'd love to know from each of you what are the most important metrics other than revenues and profits? What are the most important metrics you're looking at the moment to measure your brand value and brand success? So great. It's a great question. And I have to say I definitely keep an eye on the value sales, also the unit sales. I think when you if we think about the most sustainable way to grow a business, you want to bring new consumers in. And unit sales is quite a good proxy actually, if you don't have any other kind of data. But I am quite obsessed with how our brand talkability is our ad awareness, our share of search. Just how in the minds of consumers are our brands, particularly in our business, that is really, really important to stay in their minds. I look at the growth drivers, so I really look at is my distribution, how is that doing? How is my engagement metrics and how how is my media each? And then equally, because I do think it's easy to have a very short term view, we've raised a lot of performance marketers in the industry and actually being able to step back and really focus on the brand and are you making the right decisions for the long term as well as the short term? It's really helpful to look at those longer term, longer term trends across a five year period. Covid sent the world a little bit nuts where we all thought everything, the whole world would go online and we realized actually not. So those longer term channel shifts, consumer shifts, even our sales can actually be really, really helpful so that you make those decisions that will both be good for the long term growth of your brand as well as sort of delivering those things shorter term so yeah, a range of metrics, but trying to shut out some of the noise that is in the multitude of data that you could get. Jodie, are there any particular metrics that you're obsessed with right now? Because we're in the centenary year and a lot of that activity has been top of the funnel brand awareness activity – not all of it, but a lot of it – traffic's a huge one for me. I'm looking at traffic really closely at the moment. Particularly our paid media traffic, if I'm being honest, to make sure, you know, as we all know, paid media now is incredibly expensive. It's become more and more expensive. You know, we're looking at new ways to make that spend more efficient using AI, make sure that we're targeting the right people who actually have real intent. So we are embracing tech in that way. So traffic, obviously with that comes conversion. Like I said, top of the funnel activity, you wouldn't expect conversion to be super high but it's something that I like to keep an eye on in terms of anything that we do in case there's learnings there that you suddenly like and actually that that's something that we could double down on and and do more of. And then we we did a big partnership at the beginning of the year with a media partner called called Hypebeast and they're delivering as a brand lift study. So brand lift, you know, understanding, like you were saying, that that we are becoming more of a considered brand to purchase that we're taking some of the market share away from our competitors in that regard. So those are the three metrics probably that I'm currently thinking about more and more. Yeah. Hanushka? For our business, sell through rate is number one. We pride ourselves on our positioning in the market as having one of the fastest sell through rates in the industry and as a single unit business with unique SKUs, that's hugely important. What we try and do is every product we get in, we maximize the amount of time that it sorry, minimize the amount of time it takes to get it sold. And in turn, that really secures those high net worth consignors who prefer to sell with us as opposed to another resale solution because it's so much faster. We have regularly consignors coming from abroad, from places like Dubai, Australia, bringing us suitcases full of amazing stock and after a few days will find them up and say, we have 25 / 30,000 pounds on account for you. Half of the pieces are already sold. So it's hugely important for us. How much quicker are you than your competitors? We're really quick. Okay. Wonderful. Thank you. Any questions from the audience? It was lovely to hear Jodie say how much you loved email. And I was wondering I'm one of those nerds that loves email I love email too! Don't try and steal my thunder! It's just nice to hear it because quite often you don't hear people talk about it. So obviously it's peak period coming up. Do you have any tips on what you would do on email over the next few months? So, email for me is a brilliant content platform, right? It's an amazing way to get relevant content to customer segments quickly and to really get metrics back from it immediately. I love how quick you can get results from email, so we are constantly looking at our modules. I'm a bit obsessed about email design. I want emails to look absolutely beautiful. I hope you sign up to Belstaff emails and think that they look beautiful. So making messages that are relevant. So we do huge brainstorms like an editorial team, word around what our email should be doing. I learned a huge amount about email marketing at Anthropology when I was VP of Content at Anthropology. Anthropology's database was 3.8 million people. It was it was big. Obviously Anthro's a big brand in the US. Working with a lot smaller numbers at Belstaff but the approach I take to it is as exactly the same. Adjust according to what's happening in the world. Make sure that you're nimble enough to react. Create a fantastic email plan every month that's a month out so that then you can be more reactive to what's happening in the world. You know, send a last minute Oasis email, for example, when the tickets were announced, was our best email of the month, things like that. So create a great plan so that you can be really reactive when you need to be. Such good advice. My build would be really think about the consumer versus sometimes what you want to say. You need to be of added value, otherwise you become noise in the clutter of their inbox. So how are you really adding value? Be that really can't get experiences that you'd never know you were hearing about or incredible, amazing offers that may be bespoke, personalized and unique to you. But I do, I'm passionate as well to avoid this of bash and blast just you know "I haven't quite hit the numbers let me just send out." I don't think that helps build your brand. I don't think that helps build a luxury consumer experience that consumers expect. And I do think it risks being being noise and annoyance in consumer consumer's busy lives. It should be something you look forward to opening right? Yes. We all get loads of emails every day. There's certain brands I love to open emails from. Vogue Business is one of them. Yes, thanks for the plus. Really plugging Vogue Business today for brownie points. But no, I think, you know, put the effort in that you would expect in order to take your time away to read something. You know, it's really important. And don't always pay it too safe. And don't shy away from slightly cheeky, subversive copy because the click through rate and the open rate of that is just unparalleled to boring old new drops. Being different and distinctive, if that's one thought I leave you. I love that Tom talked about the surprising collaborations. Creativity is just a 12 times multiplier. Being different and distinctive will really help elevate the brand in everything that you do.

In our next session, we're going to be taking a deep dive into the power and potential of AI. Please welcome our brand leaders, Susan Jones from Diageo and Aaron Bradley from Wella Company. Susans and Aaron, a huge welcome to you both, thank you for joining us. And Susan, I'd love to start with you. Tell us a little bit about how Diageo thinks about AI and some of the efficiencies that it's bringing to the business. Hi, everybody. We're thinking about AI in a couple of different ways. I'd say the first is productivity and how it can bring efficiency into the business. But increasingly, I think we're thinking about how it can inspire, how it can inspire innovation, how can help us drive insights at scale much faster and much more depth. And then we're really starting to lean into how we can use it to improve consumer experience. And that to me is sort of the next, you know, dimension for us to go into. And in terms of workplace productivity, how are you using AI within your teams and what are some of those results that you're seeing? The productivity within workplace, we have our version of ChatGPT that's within Diageo and more and more people are coming to rely on it and see how it can make our jobs easier every day. But a lot of the productivity we're doing is within our marketing practice, really just using pretty simple tools to do programmatic bidding at scale much faster, much more competitively developing tools that help us do the things that have been really difficult for us to scale. So as an example, we recently co-developed a tool that helps us with compliance to our marketing code. As you can imagine, in the spirits industry, our responsibility to our consumers and to marketing is a big task and it's complex. So training every marketer on the code and having confidence that they can interpret every part of it is is pretty difficult. But what we found is we can use AI. So we've developed this tool where marketers can upload the content and we've trained the AI based on the expert that we have in compliance and found that not only does it take a bit of a heavy lift to give people a little hint to say, "Hey, you may want to look at this, you may want to look at this aspect" but it's a great training tool. So when we first rolled it out and tested it, people agreed with the tools assessment about 50% of the time. So therefore they agreed with the expert assessment about 50% of the time. After using it for a couple of months, they agreed with the assessment 97% of the time. Wow. So we find time and again that's kind of the extra benefit that the AI's bringing, not just consistency of how we're performing, but as a bit of a learning and a training tool. And Aaron, how are you using AI as a sort of learning and training tool? Have you seen its impact on workplace productivity? Yeah, of course. Firstly, Hi, everyone. So, at Wella Company, we've run a number of different pilots and we've implemented workplace support tools and the areas that we're seeing a huge amount of efficiencies are the uses of AI, which enhances how you as an individual within the workplace operate. It's not a separate tool as such as we're using. It's how do you enhance or accelerate how someone's doing their work. So the areas that we're seeing already very quickly are the meeting arrangements, the transcripts, the automation in terms of sentiment analysis on some information that comes through, the summarization of a lot of those those those long emails everyone gets and people think, "I don't want to spend 20 minutes reading those", uou can you can summarize those very quickly. But the clever part of the AI tools is the next step, which is it makes recommendations on actual actions for those employees. So it will read, it will read through maybe some meeting notes it will read through the emails, and it will then make suggestions on setting up a meeting for this person. So for me, we're not using it so much in the training aspect, but we're really pushing it out for those every day sort of efficiencies which which we're seeing, we're seeing huge amounts of benefits of already and we're only scratching the, scratching the surface. So it's removing some of those more admin tasks that somebody would have to do. Yeah, I think one of, when we looked at and I'm sure we'll talk about this throughout the conversation. But when we looked at deploying AI, it really comes down to the the problem that we're trying to solve and the value that we're trying to add either to the individual, to the company or the customer and consumer. And for the workplace efficiencies, it's really about how do we open up more time so that they can do more creative things. And so one of the big areas that we found were the administration of everyone's day to day lives. But the other thing is the augmentation reporting of of data. And again, that's in multiple different ways but even just as an individual trying to gather information within the organization around basic pieces of content or data. So instead of having to go into the data team and asking for these things or searching for your folder system of 400 PowerPoint presentations, which you've been storing over the last few years, we're using AI to quickly find, augment and then provide that information to you. And I think that's what we're seeing a huge amount there. Yeah. And Susan, I know that you're also using AI within Diageo to really boost innovation and creativity and one of those areas is in packaging design. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, one of the really amazing programs that our breakthrough innovation team piloted was using AI in collaboration with an artist for Johnnie Walker. So if you're a consumer and you go to our Johnnie Walker experience in Edinburgh, which I highly recommend to everybody and buy and during the program, if you bought a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label, you could co-create the label with Scott Naismith, an artist. It guided consumers through choices to make and then crafted a bespoke label for the consumer. So, you know, just an example of, I think, AI bringing creativity to the consumer experience. And, you know, consumers tell us every day they want more personalized, more memorable experiences. And I can do that in a way that would be hard to replicate sort of conventionally. Yeah. Can you give us some examples of some of those other customer-facing initiatives that you're using to really create that sort of personalized experience through AI? Yes. One of the other experiences that we have started with a program called "What's Your Whiskey?". So, you know, consumers told us it's a little difficult to navigate the the many, many whiskeys that are out there. So we have our own system that guides consumers through their choices and asks them a series of questions about sort of common taste profiles of "Do you like lemon, do you like vanilla, do you like this? Do you like that?" and uses AI to then give recommendations. We've taken that system and now used it to other effect. So the more recent example is "What's your cocktail?" which helps people find the cocktail that would be perfect for their occasion, for their taste profile, etc.. And what we're finding is obviously it gives amazing recommendations. But also 45 million people have gone through it. And the wealth of data and information that that's bringing to us the insights on taste profiles, on food pairings, on everything is really valuable to us. Actually, I tried as part of my research, I tried the "What's your cocktail" website. What did you get? I got a Captain Morgan Mai Tai. Yeah, it's really fun. Everyone should have a go. And you mentioned about this wealth of data that you've got from from that sort of campaign. And have you seen any uplift in sales as a result of this? Yeah. I mean, what we see is every time we use consumer insights and append what we're doing with data to personalize it, we see better results. We see cost efficiencies. We see it driving more sales. It just works. Yeah. Great. And Aaron, how are you using or planning to use connected data and AI and to improve the customer experience? So Wella Company, the customer's always at the forefront of, what we do. So when we're looking at AI to increase and improve that experience, it touches on what Susan mentioned earlier around this personalization at scale. And what what we're trying to do is take that step further in terms of hyper - this is sort of hyper personalization. And that means treating individuals as individuals. Understanding them and using a huge amount of information to be able to provide them with the right services, the right products, the right tailored experience, which wasn't really possible before such a scale to so many people. So when we're looking at improving the experience for our customers, we have such a range of different customers from independent hair stylists up to big salons. And of course, we've got the consumer business as well. But one of the big things for Wella is we grow if you grow. So it's really important for us to connect to that customer and help them grow as a as a business in partnership with us. So we're using the information in the data. Can we provide more services for them as individuals, so the individual hair stylists or the salons? But then how can we use the data to provide insights which are going to be tangible, real value adds to those individuals? Of course, we've got the product recommendations andstuff like that, which we actually use with Emarsys as well. But it's that mass information of how how would you added an additional service? How do you improve that experience? Again, recognizing the individual and providing them the tailored experience. Yeah. And can you share any of the results that you've seen as a result of providing that hyper personalization? Yeah. So we've got I mean, we're in various stages, as, which part of that, but we've seen a significant uplift in, in using the, the AI product recommendations and things like that because it's actually, the clever element of it is showing and recommending products or services which aren't natural for us internally: to say X goes with Y. Actually using A to be able to identify opportunities for those individuals when there's product recommendations. Whether it's education courses, whether it's, you know, other services around that. So we do see a conversion uplift. Absolutely. I'd love to know from both of you what are some of the biggest challenges you face with integrating AI into your operations? I think what we've learned is you have to understand what you're trying to do with it at a fairly granular level, almost a hands on level first. When you put the technology first it and don't understand what you're trying to solve, it can lead you to some strange places. And I think, look, this is an area that it's changing so rapidly. We've had to rethink and build systems that are a bit more flexible so that we're open to when the next generation of technology comes in, we can connect it through and and not really be stuck to a technology that might be obsolete in a bit. Yeah. So it's also understanding the why you're using it, not just using it for the sake of AI. Yes, exactly. Aaron? So for us, it's an interesting one because the challenges of integration. And I'll make this point because actually positive and negative is that everyone is so keen to use AI, which is amazing, right? Because we've already bought, you know, they're already bought in the the challenge on there is to make sure that we're executing the right AI tools for the right reasons, and we focus on the ROI, on what those solutions are. And there's a real value to us as an organization and to our customers or consumers. There's no shortage of new tools which keep getting asked to be put in. But the I'd say operationally, the first challenge that we had to face was to actually have a data science strategy, because without that foundational data strategy, there everything above that, when it's executing using AI is restricted or slightly more difficult. So it's about the connectivity of of all the different systems, but it's about the foundational data strategy and it's about identifying the right tools for the right job and the real reasons why I'm focusing on the ROI because it gets lost sometimes when everyone's so excited about doing something new. And, you know, we need to make sure there's real tangible value. Yeah. I mean, you mentioned that everyone's so enthusiastic and excited about using AI. Is one of the challenges, finding the right talent and someone who blends that creativity with the technological knowhow? Yeah, it's definitely a different talent profile than we might have been looking for ten years ago. But I think it is about finding that blend because it is about the marketing know how, the knowhow about our business and then the curiosity to pursue new ways to to do that. I think one without the other all of the new without the context of why are we doing this? What does it mean to our business? Is not as valuable. Yeah. Yeah, I absolutely agree. And I think one of the things that is not a challenge, but an opportunity is to make sure that they, the marketers or the people around the business are embracing how the AI works and upskilling and doing the prompt training and making sure you know how to use it. Because it's very easy to say, "Well, we'll just get our agencies to use it", which is, you know, completely valid and that's fine. But what we want to do is ingrain the use of AI in the operations of how you do your job. So it's not this separate thing - "Well, we'll get AI to do that." Actually, it's"I'm using that part of AI as how I'm operating" and for that to happen, they need to upskill, they need to understand prompt training, of course, is so, so important as well as just understanding that the the whys and the ROI. Because I mean, alongside this explosion of AI tools and we've also seen a real growth around regulation as well, particularly recently we've had the EU AI Act coming into force. So what are you doing to make sure that your employees are using AI correctly? Aaron? And so is a really good question because the answer is something which isn't usually liked or appreciated by most and it's governance. It's the horrible governance which gets put in place, which people think is restrictive and no one likes. But it's really important that, as I said earlier, you've got that data strategy in place. But the layer above that is having a what we refer to as AI steering group, our AI governance. And what that means is it's not you can't do things, it's there's the right policies, procedures, there's right people there to support and doing it. But it's also building that list of vetted tools which have, you know, we know where the data's going, we know what the security controls are. And then it's about enabling people. And for that to be successful for us, we've needed to involve people around the whole organization. This isn't it's not an IT or a Digital or a Legal or Security or or a Marketing or HR Team. It's that having all of them around the table because for us to appropriately govern, there's so many different expertise actually around the table needed to make sure that we've ticked all the boxes but also we've done the right thing and we've got these, those these right tools. So we'veset up a governance structure with policies and processes, which again, sounds boring, but it's not because it's AI and it's really cool. So it's, so it works and I think that's it, I think it's important to try and, you know, have that agility for the future, even though I know governance doesn't sound agile, but it can be. Yeah AI governance can be cool. Susan. Yeah. We have set up cool AI governance as well. So much the same things. I think the thing I'd add is we started with sort of principles of how we believe we can ethically, legally use AI. And those governing principles, I think added with some more specifics, really help people to get into the right mindset to start the journey because it is complicated. And, you know, the regulatory requirements of not just knowing what you're doing, but understanding the models underneath it all – it's a lot. So we have, like you, brought together cross-functional teams to try to help people think through all the issues because, you know, we want to encourage that experimentation, we want to encourage people to find new uses, but we want to do it within the bounds of of our responsibility. And I think the education piece around it as well, because I think the intent is always really good. That, you know, marketeers in particular will, you know, they'll start to use a AI new tool and it will give really good results, which is amazing. But I mean, I didn't think originally where does that, where does that go? I just upload loads of creatives from our brand teams and they're going to help us generate some maybe some really cool, interesting content, but who owns the IP on that once it enters that system? Who else has got access to that? So it's that that whole governance and that education piece, actually, it's not because we you can't do it. We just want to make sure that either in it in the right way. Yeah. And Susan, you just touched on experimentation and finding new uses. I'd love to know what's exciting you about potential uses of AI within Diageo for the future. Yeah, I think the really exciting place is, is how we augment consumer experience. And, you know, our mission is to help people celebrate every day and we have great brands to do that. So connecting that mission to our brands and consumers is really exciting and we are thinking about what are the problems that consumers tell us they're having and how can we play a part in that? Whether it's, you know, organizing a party, you know, creating a more memorable experience. These are all areas that we're trying to hone in on, the consumer wants and needs and really develop new ways to solve those problems. Have you got anything coming up that you can tell us about? We have piloted and experimented with something that is a party planning tool, an at home party planning tool. As an example, you could put in prompts about this is a real prompt for someone, I didn't make this up off the top of my head. It was back when Barbie was the popular movie – "I would like a punk rock Barbie party." And it comes back with suggestions. Now, to me, the interesting thing was what it came back with, you could see how it got there. But it was really interesting as the suggestions came forward and then you continued to prompt it where it could lead you and how you could customize it. And in understanding like, "oh wow, why did it recommend that?" it actually led you to think about different ways to, you know, really achieve what you want. It was really interesting. So it's actually sparking further innovation? Yeah, absolutely. Aaron? And so for us and well, for me personally, there's a few there's a few really interesting areas. And the first one is being able to really analyze external information at such a scale that it can provide us with more insights as an organization, as a digital function, as a brand, as a brand functions to really understand the external knowledge and insights. So it's like CMI on steroids? Like, how did how do we how do we find out more so that we can better understand what the external conditions are and how we can tackle and support them and and how can we provide the right services and stuff. And then in turn, and then the more internal facing aspect of it is "how do we give more services to a customer?" as I mentioned earlier, around like hyper personalization. And I think that goes to even from ads and creation of content for ads like how do you create on a scale for 1 to 1 for every single person in this room to have a tailored piece of content, which is actually more attractive for you in terms of conversion, but relaying the correct message but you feel like this this is really for me and not just a segment of 20 or 20 million people or 20,000 people. And then the other area is these insights of peer to peer understanding and stuff. And I've spoken about this previously and in other talks about this knowledge of "how can our customer grow and how can we provide that 1 to 1 experience that we give from a business perspective we have set we have the most amazing (I'm biased) the best sales reps in the world, but they and they will spend so much time with customers, really understanding them. We have some sales reps who are now being with the same customer for so long that they go to., they, you know, they're invited to their children's weddings and stuff – these are real relationships. But how do we scale that same level of love, care and that essence of being part of the Wella family, as we call it, how do we scale that? And we can't do that without AI. So it's about how do we how do we really relay our culture and all our values, but on a more scale, because unfortunately we don't have a million employees to go around and spend time with everyone. But how do we how do we do that? Yeah. So that's both the opportunity and the challenge in many ways. Yeah. An interesting question for both of you, given how AI can really spark creativity and innovation and can take away some of those heavy admin tasks. Would you let AI write your brand's manifesto. Susan? I don't think we would. In thinking through how we use AI, I think we have a commitment to there are some things that we need to own, that need to be personal, that need to be created by our humans. And that feels like one of them. That feels like it goes a bit too far. Now we might use AI to get insights at scale to inform what that manifesto should be. But I think the actual creation act in this case should be people. Aaron? And for me whilst I completely, I completely agree. I did get AI to do it. Now, just to be clear, this isn't this isn't this is not the official company one. This isn't, and as a as a company, no, we would – like I agree with you – we would not get AI to build the values of our company. But what what I would do is and I think you mentioned this earlier, is you can use AI to spark information. You can use AI to support you in what that could look like and stuff of that. But I cannot and will not take away the amazing talent of my corporate, of the corporate agency and the amazing brand teams we've got. And they're not going to be replaced, the creativity that they've got is not going to be replaced. But in this instance, yes, I did ask it. Yes, so can we have a listen? Yeah. Yeah. So this is my Achilles heel... Does it say cool governance at any point? It was using our internal, fully governed AI tools. And but yeah, this is actually a childhood fear of mine to read in front of of people so this is a big milestone for me. Wella Company embodies a rich heritage of innovation and excellence in the beauty industry. The brand values, creativity, quality and sustainability, striving to empower individuals to express their unique beauty. Wella's personality is vibrant, sophisticated and inclusive, reflecting a commitment to diversity and self-expression with a focus on cutting edge technology and professional expertise. Wella inspires confidence and transformation, making every customer feel valued and beautiful. The brand's dedication to education and community support further enhances its reputation as a trusted and forward-thinking leader in the world of beauty. Pretty cool! It's, I thought it was actually quite good. Now, I have to say, we know that AI tools do crawl the internet and they do pull information from different areas. So I would actually say it's probably a summarized version of what we have on our corporate site. But that being said, it's not the same. It has amended it, it has shortened it and some of that. So do I think it's completely creativity there? No, I don't think it is. Yeah. But nonetheless it's a it was pretty good. Yeah. Brilliant, thank you for reading that out and any questions from the audience. So I run an independent creative agency and I would just love to know given on the conversation we just had, how has it changed what you are looking for from your creative partners? I think it's only sharpened what we need, which is amazing ideas and and true creativity that can really help us develop platforms for our brands. I will say I think some of the tasks will change of, you know, production tasks. We have, you know, divisions in every country in the world and we need to provide enough content for all of them. So we are going to use am I to adapt and trans create? So that is a function that I think could probably happen through AI, although with always having people involved. But I, I think it's almost sharpened what we need from agencies given the last thing you'd want is given it crawls the internet, everything would start to look the same. So I think if you don't have that originating creative, it just becomes all bland. Yeah, I agree. And where we've used is actually, we've used AI to help brief our creative agencies a lot stronger. And because there's one thing during the whole document of the brief but to really have a visualization which isn't complete but it helps a lot of the more visual and creative people actually really start to interpret what what we're asking for which I thought was an interesting way to actually use it. So we didn't use for the end result, we actually used it to try and communicate what we wanted more. And then similar to what Susan said, it's we're seeing the production element and the the transcreation, the reformatting of the creatives. And I think that's the bit which do we need to go to an agency and say can you convert this into like 6 or 7 different formats? Can you make sure that is optimized for, for mobile? Can you, can you make sure it's optimized for all of our E commerce and all media? I think I can see that taking a shift as well. And like Susan said, I don't think the creativity will be gone because we still need that that creativity. But these admin or operational bits, I think if we use AI to remove that, we can spend more time on the creativity. And I think that's that exciting because the more time we've got for creativity and thinking, who knows what we'll come up with. And I think that's how we see it changing with third parties. As a consumer psychologist, I will always look at what customers actually do. And the challenge with AI when we look at all the research is the customers will tell you that they really like the products that are co-created or driven by AI and that they will value it higher. But when you actually look at their behaviors or decisions, the product perception is actually devalued considerably and the conversion is reduced mostly due to reduced trustworthiness and emotional value. How do you manage that mixed mindset around the consumers, around AI and do you therefore choose to occasionally not communicate that AI has been used? First, we're always transparent about when we use it. Full stop. I think what we've tried to lean into is less about what consumers might say and more about what they do. And what AI's allowed us to do is harness the actual actions they're taking via search, via e-commerce, etc., etc. to understand that pathway that they're taking to interact with our brands. So I guess in summary, we tend to look at action versus only what they tell us. And I think that serves as a pretty good guide. Yeah and just I mean, the only things for me to add to that is I think authenticity is, is super important. And with the AI tools which exist now, there's no reason why, you know, a lot of companies could end up creating the same perception or the same types of creativity. And for us, we're a beauty company. and that authenticity of the output is so important. So if we're going to be using AI for anything like Susan said, there's no question you have to be fully transparent. But back to the authenticity, if we're selling something or providing something to you, it doesn't matter if we've got AI to create the best like a sales creative – if your hair doesn't look absolutely incredible when after you've used the products, then we've failed. And I think that's super, super important is the authenticity of the value that the customer or consumer gets at the end of the day. I have a question about the smart recommendation of drinks or beauty products. Do you think there would be a risk of narrowing the selection, therefore the brand's offering with providing highly precise, personalized offers? Because like when we were all buying CDs and listening to the entire album, sometimes I feel it helps you broaden your taste by listening to the sounds that you wouldn't proactively handpick for your own playlist, but by offering to customers exactly what they know they want, do you think it might affect the potential discovery of unexpected new favorites? Great question. It's a really good question. I think for now, what we're focused on is almost enhancing that discovery. Because, you know, for any occasion there are so many great drinks that you could have. And our portfolio is amazing and broad. So I think there's a lot of land to cover just in helping people discover what's right for the thing they're trying to do right now, which could be different from the thing they're doing tomorrow and the occasion they're in there. What we've seen so far is it actually leads to more discovery because it brings up things that people never would have thought of. And then there's a journey from there of like, "Oh that's really interesting" recommendation. What about this? What about that? And the prompting that AI involves allows for that. So I mean, for now, no, I haven't seen that is a big issue. But I think it is something to to consider as we move forward. Yeah, I'd agree. And there is an element of going way too far on some of these things, right? But I would say for us, being able to provide the insights on what we think you may, which may trigger a question, which may trigger a thought. And I think when it comes to style and things like and just to be clear, I am not an expert in fashion or beauty or anything just by working for Wella it's a different department. But but to be able to inspire and recommend and try to have something relevant for that person, even if it's wrong. Has it has it triggered a question? Have they considered something that they haven't before? And for us, because we want everyone to feel their best selves, it's we can't we can't make those recommendations unless we we really try to understand you as an individual. Is it going to be right all time? No. Great thing about AI is it's going to learn over time and maybe we'll get better. But in regards to the hyper personalization, I think this has been done by banks for that for many times, and that's offering a service which is best for you. And in their situation, it's like loans and stuff like that. But like for us, it's how do we make sure the trade terms possibly right, and things like that are actually built for you as a as a business because your business isn't exactly the same as someone else's. And when you've got hundreds of thousands of businesses that you're working with, it's not always easy to to do that.

I am delighted today to be moderating this very exciting panel, our first panel for today. We're going to be discussing the power of data and integration. And then I have with me today joining, firstly, our longstanding partner, Validity, who have been working with Emarsys for so many years, working with our customers and helping us to drive the success of our customers. I'm also delighted to be joined by two customers or two of our leading brands who are working all the time on unlocking sustainable growth by leveraging the Emarsys technology in what is a very challenging, yet an exciting market and exciting landscape. When I say challenging, I think you've all heard us this morning, Silvana and Lisa talking about the challenges and the unprecedented situation that as marketers we see ourselves in. And when I talk about the exciting landscape, I'm trying to look at the positive side of the story. Despite everything that we're mentioning, we know that our customers are still very happy to give us their data. As long as we are being very clear and very transparent about the way we use it. So we have a lot to unlock today. Without further ado, I would love to invite our customers and our partner over to stage. Please welcome Olivia, Jane and William. Thank you for being with us today. I know you all have to work around other commitments to join us and speak to all our partners, our customers and the community, the marketing community. I'd like to start maybe by just asking you maybe to introduce yourself and your roles. Maybe we could start with you, Olivia. My name is Olivia Sutherland. I'm the CMO of Krispy Kreme, Australia and New Zealand. I've been there about four years. What I love about my job is the variety. So I look after the design team and that's everything from store uniforms to shop for touts to packaging point of sale. I look after the product team and I'm a secret, not a secret. I'm a very open foodie, so when I get to go and they let me in the lab for the product team, I'm always trying to make my own donuts. I look up to the marketing comms team, which is fantastic, and we are now in retail, but we're also in Coles, Woolies, 7-Eleven, more channels to be opening up soon. So lots of different sort of comms and shopper missions to understand there. And I also look after ecommerce and shopper marketing, so a good variety in my role. Excellent, and Jane. Hi, I'm Jane Villeneuve. I am the Chief Growth Officer for Oroton. So the privilege that I have of having this role is that I get to help author the next chapter of this iconic Australian brand into the future of women's and men's in the future wardrobes around the country and hopefully internationally. I really look after everything from end to end on a customer journey from a brand and marketing through digital and of course everything is driven that we do by customer insights and data analytics. And yeah. Hi guys, my name is William and I'm Regional Director for Validity. If you're not familiar with us, Validity is a market leader in data management and the marketing efficiency optimization as well. Being with the company for 12 years now, hence the difference between the photo and the real person. I am 12 years older now. And I'm currently Regional Director for Validity. I'm responsible for the go-to-market strategy in the region and the business operation as well. It's an honor to be invited by our partner Emarsys to be in this panel. I'm looking forward to a great conversation with you guys. Thank you, William. Thank you, everyone. It's our honor to have you all joining us today. So this is going to be an interesting panel because we have two brands from two different industries and we have a vendor and I think we all heard this morning other thought leaders speaking about the state of the market. But I'd love to hear from you all about how do you see the current state of the market in Australia. So yeah, maybe we could start with you, Olivia. Yeah, no problem. I think we've touched on it today and I think my favorite word of the year is cozy living, cozy lives. It's definitely a tight discretionary spend market. Consumers don't have a lot of money and I think we've lived with that probably for a year and I think it will go into next year as well. There is a little bit of hope, I think, on the horizon. If you listen to the, you know, chief economists or the big banks, there is interest rate relief coming potentially next year. But I don't think consumers are going to bounce back and suddenly feel they've got lots of money. So I think whatever you're doing now to offer consumers that value, you're going to have to we are all going to have to keep doing it. And when I talk about value, I don't just mean price. And I think everyone in this room will know that it's quality, it's experience. And we lean heavily on experience at Krispy Kreme. You know, we talked I think Lisa talks about the emotional connection to your brand. Our brand is all about sharing celebrations, you know, it's your birthday, it's your baby shower, it's your key sporting moment. It's the end of your exams. So we really leaned into those sort of joyful sharing experiences and really try to sort of drive affinity with those occasions and offer sort of extra value in different ways. I mean, we see very similar things within retail, you know, thinking around clothing, footwear, apparel. It's a very mixed outlook at the moment. There's some brands that are doing very, very well and some brands who really are not. And it's you know, it depends on which part of the market you are in and the really the strength of your brand. Some of the things we're seeing, which I think are quite interesting, though, is is probably two things. One is consumers are being much more conscious. Rather than being price sensitive, they're cost conscious is the way I would describe it. They're very, very conscious around what they are spending and what they get for their money. So to your point of view, that value equation is really, really important. And so making sure you have a really great value proposition to your consumer is very important because they are making these decisions and they do have choice. And I think we have to remember that consumers have choice and they exercise their wallets with that choice. The other side, which for me and within Oroton and many other brands as well, which I see as a positive, is that cost consciousness applies to everything. But in some categories, luckily not as much in mine. Many people are actually looking at how they save money to spend money, so they are looking very specifically how do they save money on certain goods, utilities, etc. and not just to save it, but to actually reward themselves with these moments of joy. We've seen it with many people here. I know working within the travel industry, who would say, with the travel that is coming through our experiences, restaurants like a beautiful restaurant like this, rewarding yourself. And we see it very clearly through buying things like a beautiful bag as a reward or some clothing as well, like for an event or an occasion to make you feel great. So we do see this kind of dichotomy where there's very conscious on cost and what they're spending to make sure they get the right value for money and then rewarding themselves with these little moments and micro elements of joy. Just build on Olivia, what you said about definitely, there is a lot of nervousness in the market right now. We heard from Peter, I think from Bank of Queensland yesterday. The household disposable income has actually increased in the last couple of months moving into the right direction positively. Albeit, interest rates are very high, so customers are still basically sitting on their hand and to which way the wind blows. Another thing I want to point out is, you know, the ABS latest report shows a 0.3% decrease in month by months on household spending on goods and services as well. Another one to point out is from a global landscape point of view, the U.S. is, we are not alone right? U.S. is using a very similar market trend as well, especially given the upcoming November election. God knows what happens after that as well as I believe the U.K. government is about to release their new budget as well in couples weeks time. And there was a potential tax increase as well. So, again, it's a lot uncertainty in the market right now and they force consumers to see and wait and see what happens. Okay. I mean, very, very interesting, I think. Just a quick recap. We definitely consumers are more conscious. They're also more empowered. And obviously, with the rise of A.I. and technology, brands have the ability to go and like reach your consumers and you need to differentiate. And I guess I think what Olivia also said around going beyond the transaction and to building the emotional relationship is very valuable in such a challenging market. I'd like to maybe, you know, in a market, obviously when the market is shifting, priorities shift for brands. Right? So maybe staying with you, William, you work with brands and we see how customers or brands that we engage with are always shifting their priorities. So I'd love to hear your view on how do you see these priorities shifting over the last two years and how brands are focusing on continuing to drive the revenue growth? So we just talked about the consumer spending, but also business spending are decreasing months and months as well in the last 12 months, 18 to 12 months. So the impression I gather from a lot of the sales and customer conversation that I have with is as a tech vendor, we need work much harder now to win business and also return customer and in the past the martech decision was made, it was in the marketing department and CRM department. And nowadays the CFOs, even the CEOs are regularly involved into making those decisions, right? And we use it in the 5 to 10 times return on investment. Pretty good enough. But these days we need to be 10 to 15 times as bare minimum to even have a business case. So as a business, we definitely need to focus more on building a stronger and more robust ROI stories. So that's a good view. But maybe we could get the view from you, Olivia. So our business focus in the last couple of years has really been in the middle of the PNL. Coming out of Covid, rising labor costs. Yeah. Rising cost of goods, rising logistics, rising rents. So we've really doubled down and done a lot of productivity in the middle just to control those costs because, yes, we can pass costs on the consumer, but your brand is only worth so much. And I never liked to overuse the price. So we've deliberately focused on the middle of the PNL. But to drive revenue, we've also taken our product to more points of access. You know, we are a joyful, fun product. We've got really a cult like following for Krispy Kreme. Even now when we open a store, people sleep overnight and it still blows my mind. I'm like, Really? And you win a year's free supply of donuts, but really, like, that's crazy, right? So you've got this really, you know, amazing brand where people just seem to love it. So what we've really leaned into is making it more available. You know, we've only got 47 of our own stores, which is great, and we run them all ourselves. So, so much autonomy and flexibility and you can turn things on tomorrow. It's brilliant. But we're also now available in 700 7-Eleven, 780 actually 7-Elevens, 400 Woolworths, 200 Coles. You know, so actually just being more accessible has really helped us grow our revenue. Brilliant. Brilliant. I think the follower, you know, the obviously the volume of followers is very obviously obvious with a brand like Krispy Kreme and, you know, knowing your brand like, you know, the strength of your brand and able to actually capitalize on this by going and opening up the additional channels, increasing access. So that's really great. With Oroton. Jane? I feel like we're the anomaly here because we have a very clear focus. We have very clear focus to the last three years. And we continue that and we're doubling down on our focus. We are actually where people are cutting costs and reducing marketing. We're investing, we are increasing our spend. We are being smart about where we spend it and we're really focusing on our brands. One of the things that we do to focus one of our strategic principles is really around making sure that our product is the best possible product with the best possible price. So we invest a lot of time with our design team, really spends a lot of time in not only designing the right product, but looking at the quality and at the price and also how it makes a woman feel. So it's really, really important that it's to that emotional point that Lisa spoke to earlier, like how do you make your product can make people feel a certain way as well, not just your brand. It's one of those pieces, particularly in what we do. So how that makes a woman feel every day when she either picks up a bag or steps into a piece of our apparel is really important and we listen to consumers and we double down on this area. So where we're using different elements of data and analytics, it's really to drive greater opportunity and look at expansion. And so we're in a real growth set at the moment where many of our competitors are actually in decline. So we're taking advantage of that, of spending our way into a space where they're spending their way downwards and out of something. So a lot about expansion and additional channels, which takes me nicely into my next question. I'm going to stay with you, Jane, and ask you about you cannot expand with other use data and technology, so you need those insights. How do you leverage data and technology when it comes to continuing to build your brand strategy? So that's a really timely question. Goes right in the middle of looking at our brand strategy and revising it and evolving it for the future, which is why I said at the beginning that I'm really privileged to have this moment and opportunity to author the next chapter of our brand. So we're going through a process at the moment to really to that point, to really understand the emotional connection that we have with people are a lot deeper and we're doing a number of elements. So we started out actually first listening to our customers and really first with data. So we started looking at all of our data understanding and clustering our data into different segments and understanding their behavior. And then we went to those customers and we started to survey them to actually ask them about what their attitudes are. And we're moving into, we've moved into qual at the moment to really listen even further and deeper with our customers. But at each of these points as well, what we do is we triangulate it with different data points, whether it be things like NPS, actual data coming out and understanding customer movements within segments. Is it that we're attracting a lot of new time customers and if so, why? Let's go and ask those customers why they just come for the first time, or do we have a really great loyal base of customers? So we're using our data to navigate our way through and really connect all of our qual on quant work together and all of our analytics. And we will come through in a few months and actually just revise a little bit of the positioning and kind of re come back to market. Very smart. Olivia? I love what you said about triangulating your data. I always have kind of a stealth approach where I can take a bit from there, bit of kind of me bit of someone talked to me in the shop and I kind of create a story. And I think that's just so important because what I see a lot of people is just they're in the hard data. But I think you need the soft data too that sort of insight. And I'll give you an example. We have lots of light users 1 time, 1.2 times a year. They buy for birthdays. That's great. We've been marketing that for a long time, but I want them to buy another time, you know, another celebration in their life. And we were watching our traffic and we can understand thanks to Emarsys, we can understand a level of, you know, one time buyers. So like we need to unlock our win-back programs, which you've helped us with and, you know, talk to them on their birthday or talk to them on, you know, an anniversary or send them. Just haven't seen you for a while. How you going? Or it's Friday night movie night. And we've really seen success in using that the one time buyers but connecting it with hearing people in-store coming in and saying I just need a 12 pack for movie night or it's my son's final for cricket and I need 24 donuts. So just trying to marry that hard and soft data together to actually kind of create that second purchase and drive that frequency for the brand. I love the focus on the hard and soft data. And yeah, we've been doing a lot with Krispy Kreme around building these personalized experiences. So I have a question for you, William. You know, from a vendor to vendor, we are talking about implementations and data and technology. And one thing that always comes to mind is the relationship between marketing and IT. Whenever there's any sort of like project or any transformation. Okay. I see this is interesting for many people I can see everyone is engaging with this. So I'd love to know more about your experience. Obviously working with customers, especially like navigating the relationship between marketing and IT to complete a data project and integration. Love the equation. We all love IT, right? Okay. So in theory, people assume IT, marketing always love each other. What about closely magically? But in practice is not always the case, sometimes even opposite. And they tend to operate in very separate silos with very little communication. I'm speaking from a marketing point of view and with a full house of marketers today. A couple of things I have learned in the past. The first one is we need to make sure the marketers, that IT and marketing, both of them involve into a conversation much earlier in the presales conversation and the scoping conversation. So when we ask IT to do something it's not informing the last minute and the when this part become a critical obstacle. Certainly, we shouldn't assume that what we think is simple is actually the case. I won't bore you with too many technology term, but for example, we might say, we just need to update the DNS to implement Dmart. However, it's not as simple as that, right? In reality, it's a whole change control process. We need to make sure the resource will be secured beforehand and also we need to make sure the monitoring and testing will be carried out as well. And the lastly, I would suggest we need to make it a win win for both IT and the marketing. In other words, we need to make aware what we need also attractive to IT. So for example, if these days someone in IT might spend half a day to dealing with deliverability or data hygiene issue. If they can help us with what we asked it reduced to 15 minutes, then it's create that win-win scenario. And then also we have more collaboration between two functions. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you, William. So I'm going to go back to you, Olivia. We spoke about data and integration. You've got the data now, your heart, the hard data, the soft data. What role does data play in your decision making process? Yeah, like foundational. I'm very much a believer in stopping and thinking where are we now and how you develop your where you now is by looking at your data so hard and soft. So I'll give an example. We use Emarsys in our online delivery and we were seeing lots of people coming in, lots of good website traffic and then people just dropping out when they actually realized that they couldn't get their donuts today, they had to wait for tomorrow. Fair enough. It's quite an impulsive category, you know, Fancy a donut, You want it now? So we sort of looked at our cart drop out and we realized that we really had to open up on demand. So through the support we've had with Emarsys, we've now actually managed to trial on demand last week and it has blown the socks off the business case. Phew and we'll be going national with it next year, but we might try and speed it up. I want to speed it up, but marketiers are always in a hurry, right? But just having that sort of insight and that data to be able to actually create a strategy and then get results in about 12 weeks, I love it. It makes it exciting. You know, it's consumer centric. I think again, Lisa, you talked about consumer centric. Consumers do want their donuts now and no one wants to wait. So by having that tangible point on the shopping journey where consumers are dropping out, I could we can build a business case. So yeah, fundamental definitely. I'm definitely not waiting 24 hours to get my Krispy Kremes. Jane, do you see this differently? I think there are probably a lot of similar things. So I also think data is really foundational in decision making. I think that what it does is it creates objective conversations as well. So culturally within organizations, you can have more objective conversation. I nicknamed at a previous company I was at, I nicknamed it sample size of one when people give you an opinion. And I made it a bit of a mission to get rid of sample size of one. So that's my little trademark of why to use data. But I think that's really important because otherwise you have these very subjective conversations and it's very hard to align around decision. And often data can just make some of those conversations very, very simple and very easy. For example, we recently were looking at an online sale and we're looking at different ways that we might communicate in our messaging hierarchy. And it was getting very complicated. There was a members version, a non-members version, and I said, Well, do we understand how many people are actually, you know what, what's coming to our site? And if they have an aversion to actually signing in and becoming a member and if they have an aversion to it, then maybe, okay, we'll have a look at that sort of data and understand if there is a big problem there. Maybe we do need to have these multiple messages. And if not, why don't we just encourage people to simply sign in? So they can see the members price. And we found that .05 percent of people ever checked out as a guest and the decision was made. It was very, very simple. So really what we did was, you know, so data can really help to to be simple, to be focused and align people around simple decision making sometimes and take some of that subjectivity out of it and just create focus. Brilliant. I love the fact that data is usually perceived as like the more data, the more complex things are going to get, but like using it to actually really simplify what you do, It goes a long way. Let's talk about Emarsys and Validity. We've been working together for years. Can you maybe share a bit more about the power of Emarsys and Validity combined? Of course. I'm actually not surprised about how much the partnership has grown the last 3 or 4 years and how successful the partnership is right now between two companies. I view that as two market leaders join the force and provide durability, expertise and best in class service as well as anything that happy customer and the vendor relationship. And by providing the best in class email deliverability service as well as maximize the return on investment of our mutual customer. And the mutual Validity and Emarsys customer enjoy an average of about 99.2% average inbox rate. Well, the benchmark globally is about 85%. That also translate into better engagement, including open, click, and conversions as well. So and also Mo correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe globally we have about 70 mutual customers. Yeah, plenty of them in APAC in this region. So I want to highlight one of your customer who recently onboarded with Emarsys. Crossway, which is the online furniture store from Asia. Right. They have been a Validaty customer for a couple of years and they migrated to Emarsys from other email service providers. And you guys equip them with a dedicated IP address so they can apply a provisioned program and the email migration ramp up went really, really well and there was no issue with deliverability at all. And the customer was very happy with the result. So again, that's just one example of how the partnership can really help our joint customer to achieve the best in class email performance as well, maximize their return on investment. Thank you. Thank you for sharing this, William. We love working with you and definitely, you know, with a partner that understands the importance of data quality and delivery in executing on a successful marketing strategy. I've been told I have three minutes left, but I have one final question for each one of you. If you are given the power to change one thing about the industry, I'm going to start with you, Jane. What would it be? What would you change? I think it comes back to that idea of sample size of one. Like data is great, and I think it's really important, but it needs to be insightful. And I think that if you can't build an insight out of the data, it's actually quite meaningless and it often becomes weaponized within businesses. So it's really important to listen to the customer at the right moments and build those tools and then to actually take the time to yourself and with your teams to actually understand and train them how to find the insight. What is it telling us about that human behavior that we want to influence as marketers, as brand people, you know, across different categories. But we really want to influence different behavior and we need to listen and find the insight that is going to help us to change that behavior over time. And I think that's probably the key thing. I love this very powerful. Olivia. Absolutely love that response. I'm scrambling around now for something different, but no it's alright in the same vein, what I feel is I've been a marketing a long time. The types of data has changed. You know, I have a a chat bot on my customer care line that answers are top ten questions now. You know, there's many different social media channels that require different types of content. You know, technology has changed so much. But what I just hope is that we never lose the human connectivity. There's something very special about having a connection with another person and being in a community and feeling part of I'm definitely going to be in the arts and handbag community after this. But there's something very important in being in a community. And Krispy Kreme. And I just don't want that to get lost. So even it's as simple as when I order my Maccas through my Maccas as an app, I love when I go to pick it up and they say, Thanks, Olivia. You know, I just love that. I just don't want to lose that sort of human element as as the world continues to evolve with technology. Love it, William. Only one thing? For now. So, you know, you have to summarize in one thing. I wish the company can future approve the email program. So what I mean by that is, you know, ISP's or mailbox providers change the requirement all the time, right? We have Apple NPP a couple of years ago. We have the new Yahoo! Google sending requirement earlier this year and everyone's standard response was panic becuase they are belated to adopt all this requirement so it will be nice if company can proactively put themselves in the front foot and they're preparing themselves for the next big thing. I have ten next big thing but let's just say one. We talked about AI a lot today or in the last couple of days and AI. Apple, in their latest iOS18 they released something called Apple intelligence. So it is designed to be a personal intelligence assistant to help you to work to communicate and press yourself. But as part of that Apple intelligence will also try to as your email and put them into a different tab in their new Apple mail tab. Based on using AI technology and based on not just an email content but also your sending behavior, your customer engagement behavior as well as many of our other non email behavior as well. So personalization become more important than ever. It's not like we have to use A.I., it's AI forcing us to use more. So understand your customer, tailor your email content so it can be really will by your customer and a better result. One one is perfect. I think for now there seem to be more but we're going to have some drinks later on and talk about them. More AI or more human to human relationships. Would love to hear more when we come to the networking opportunities later on. Where you think of this. Definitely I think having and keeping a lot of what you all said around the understanding consumers and keeping the human to human relationship, you know, to keep this like a trust and authenticity when it comes to building these emotional relationships that we spoke about. So a really good topic to discuss later. We're going to end for now. And thank you very much again for being part of this panel. And thank you, everyone, for listening to us.

When I was trying to figure out the bio for Dan, I couldn't. And then he tried to explaining what he does, and I still didn't quite get it. But the coolest thing I did take from his bio is in 2009, he was a marketing assistant for Burton Snowboards. For everything else, he's you tell you what he does and he's going to do it. Talking about everything to do with growth. So please put your hands together for Dan Kriegstein. Yeah. Look, after 20 years, my wife still has absolutely no idea what I do. So let me let me try to boil it down. I run two independent divisions of News Corp, the growth distillery you may have heard of. That's our publicly facing research and advisory agency. The Growth Intelligence Center is a center that advises government, industry, policymakers, brands on how to get proximate to their customers. What's around the bend? I spend an ocean of time telling brands and businesses what is hiding in plain sight when it comes to their consumers. I appreciate Lisa stitching you up. We are going to go way more way than we did with Lisa. I'm a fast speaker. I apologize in advance, but we are going to talk about the forces shaping the business that you're in. I'm not a futurist. I don't buy into fear futurists. If you were to ask a futurist what the future of AI was three years ago, Chat GPT would have not been in their vernacular. I'm a presenter and what I find is 80% of what is on your minds is already playing out under the hood of your consumers. What you've heard today, I mean, from the panel to Lisa's wisdom, is absolutely true. What I'm going to hopefully share with you is the why behind the why, behind the why. I'm going to talk to you about stuff that is agnostic of industry. I'm going to talk to you about how to make what you already do more valuable to more Australians. And if I've done my job right, hopefully you're going to see a little bit of yourselves in what I'm talking about. So a quick word on what this isn't. This is not me forecasting anything. Everything I'm going to talk to you about is grounded in what is playing out in the consumer psychology realm, in behavioral science, in developmental psychology and anthropology right now. What I'm hoping this 30 minute session does beyond shatter some of your frames of reference is just help you recalibrate the graphic equalizer in your marketing mentality and your marketing mix in the way that you think about your consumers. This is the Trust Me slide. What I'm going to present to you in 30 minutes is a stitch work of over 65 programs that have involved not just my incredible research and big data teams, but some of the best global specialist organizations across the world. We also, on every single program that we look at, given that we have to support government and industry, speak to experts, we have had everyone from professors of developmental psychology through to anthropologists, all the way through to someone that specializes in how digital ecosystems are shaping how we form our identity. This is off the back of seven, just shy of 16TB of data. But most importantly in 12 months, 150,000 plus consumer conversations. We speak to people to draw out these insights and everything that I'm going to talk to you about. We've released in the last 12 months. All of it is freely available to you. Nothing is behind a paywall. You have access to absolutely everything that I'm going to talk about. And I have to start here. We're going to get into consumer psychology. I'm a strategist by trade. Yes, I'm formally trained as a marketer, but I'm a consumer strategist with a background in psychology and behavioral economics. And this is the most important thing. This is the foundational bedrock of what you're saying. Play out with your consumers the way that you are. All interrogating your decisions has fundamentally shifted and shifted due to one overarching environmental context. And three cultural will go into the three in a bit when we talk influence. But the biggest thing shaping your decisioning right now is choice. Are you familiar with system one, system two thinking the other side to Lisa's book recommendation. The long and the short of it is thinking fast and slow. System one and system two thinking we're wired as humans to use both. System one thinking is your reptilian brain. You're driving through the night, you see brake lights go on during the rain, on goes the foot. You've stopped the car before you've even had a chance to really cognitively think about that decision. System two thinking is what's the square root of 247 that face the face to go. But that's your system to brain struggling to get to an answer in the time that you think I've given you to answer that question. Why that's really important is because that shifts not just what we listen to, but how we're using behavioral shortcuts to get to the right decision. And as marketers, the magic trick at the center of customer centricity is customer proximity. We live in a world where there is more stimulus, where there is more choice. Your choices have more choices within them. Those choices change. You walk out the door with your new iPhone and guess what it is immediately last year's model. What happens is those choices also get disrupted more quickly. Interestingly, what then happens in this world of choice is our brains are experts at making us unhappy with our decisions. So I'm going to pick on you. I apologize in advance. But let's say Savannah walks into Kohl's because that's her preferred brand of choice. Lisa And she's going to buy some shampoo. She wants to buy shampoo. That does two things, makes a hair silky and smooth and smells pretty good, right? Really simple utilitarian criteria. But she goes in and there's 270 different types of shampoo. By some miraculous, you know, piece of judgment, she gets to the one that she uses, she goes home. It makes her hair smooth. And guess what? It smells great. What her brain does, what your brains do, regardless of age, gender culture is play off the 269 hypothetical decisions that she could have made, maybe one of those other 269 pieces, you know, shampoos would have made my hair that little bit silkier and that little bit smoother. What that means is that we are inherently unhappier with our decisions in a world of choice. This is not my phenomenon. This is a phenomenon that we have been studying as anthropologists for about 40 years. It's called The Paradox of Choice. Why this is the most important is because this will shape almost all of your consumers preference behavior. How they choose is going to have shifted because we have gone from an age where information was held scarce and privileged right by the church, by the government, to one where we have more computing power in the hands of a ten year old than JFK did during the Cuban missile crisis. You have access to more information as a five year old than what they have categorized as the entire Library of Alexandria. The next thing is this community trumps audience. You are all in the business of harnessing fandom. Look to sport. Look to gaming. We're going to talk about gaming for a bit. It used to be about reach, right? It used to be about getting to the largest scaled audience when in reality, in an age where everybody's got a platform and we are clamoring to filter our choices fast enough, where do we turn? We look for heuristics. We look for codes of culture. Communities are preexisting culture. Preexisting codes. And how do I know that one of which one of those 270 types of shampoo would work for me? Maybe a friend has recommended this because she uses it or he uses and it works brilliantly. The power we see is the power of word of mouth is actually just a fundamental shift in what drives our preference behavior and beyond community, Right. And finding the community and the best story, if you want to you want to understand the best story of the power of community looks to look to perhaps Blue Ribbon. It was a US brand, not a particularly good one, and they were sort of middle to lower sort of end of the echelon in terms of both brand preference and brand traction. But I have this new marketing director that came in and he was trying to figure out how to crack into the US market, particularly in my major Eastern seaboard cities. And he figured out that, you know, in New York, in Philly, in Chicago, there there was this community that really held huge cultural sway. The bike messengers. Yes, bike messengers are still a thing in big American cities. And every week there was this thing called king of the city, Right? For one week, you were the king. If you won this bike race around New York until next week, you were a nobody in the next person was king of the city. And so he starts walking up with cases of beer. Right. And, of course, you know, the standard cynic bike messenger goes, cool mate, will take your beer. But, you know, thanks and see you later. But he keeps coming back, right? Look, I'm just for you. I love what you're doing. I love that you power the city. Here, have some beer. We want this to be yours. It's for you. Move forward. Six months. These bike messengers who are going into the hipster bars in Lower East Side meatpackers are going up to the bartenders and going. Hey, have you guys got Pabst Blue Ribbon? That's our beer. All right. Think about the profound traction that you get within a you know, within the ecology of someone's mind when they think that you're theirs, when they're for you. Right? Beyond community, let's talk about this collaboration, co-creation and how ownership are now at the center of everything that you do. If you don't believe me, look to gaming. I'm not saying that you as brands should become gaming companies, but if you want to understand what the future of good consumer engagement looks like, look to gaming. If you're of my generation, gaming was was an amazing pastime, albeit one of the most prevalent today for two generations of people for 20 years at least of your consumer base, gaming is the most powerful cultural force that you will grapple with. Gaming companies ability to harness their user base to create value what we called virtuous value creation. We developed a whole brand canvas on this. You can access it freely as well, has been able to unlock not just growth pathways but diversification pathways. A great example of this is the unreal engine that is Epic Games physics engine. For those of you that don't game, the physics engine is the algorithm that makes the tree sway like this, that the water ripples like this. When something falls, that's how it falls. Epic Games Unreal Engine is now powering the Jet Propulsion labs used by Nestle. The Mandalorian done by Disney used the unreal engine to replace green screens. To give you an idea of the scale at which this is rewiring people's minds, and we know that it's not just shaping behavior. We've done studies across the world on how gaming is shaping decisioning and the anatomy of children's brains. If you think about it, gaming starts at two. When you give your kid the iPad and they press a button that makes a sound and you build those, you know, compulsion loops within our kids, gaming is fundamentally rewiring the anatomy of our children's brains, not just how they work, but there are areas of the brains that are more developed in Gen Z and Gen Alpha than in Millennials and Gen Xers. Why this is so important for navigating growth for the coming generations of your consumers is because that's what they think good brand engagement looks like. If you can do one little thing that lets them put a little bit of skin in the game, if you can do one little thing that lets them think that they have shaped the path and we'll talk about agency in a little bit, you have them. We see greater and we see meaningful increases in willingness to pay, meaningful increases in long term lifetime value and customer loyalty. And to give you an idea of the scale, I'll pick one game. So the number of years, 68 million years of time have been spent in Minecraft alone, 68 million years of time. That doesn't account for the 1.3 trillion minutes spent in Twitch watching people play the 68 million years of time in Minecraft. And so if there is one area where you should be keeping an eye on to understand how consumers, how your future consumers are going to want to engage in your brands, look to gaming, study it ravenously, understand how they are unlocking millions of hours of dev time from their users, right? They develop these engines through thousands upon thousands upon thousands of iterations, not by their devs that are owned f t A's, but by their user base who want to contribute to the betterment of the value creation that that company creates. The next stop on this very scenic journey. And I apologize in advance is this. We have spent an ocean of time studying the mental models of health, well-being, essential goods. I really loved what Jane and Olivia said on the last panel. They're absolutely right. We saw with we mapped Australia's view of essential goods. And what I can tell you is there are 26 million different types of what essential goods look like. But we saw families that were feeding their kids Maggi noodles, every mom every night. Not that there's anything wrong with that so that they could go on their twice a year holiday. We saw people giving up their gym memberships so that they could get there once a month. Arts and bag or they once a month a pair of kicks. We saw we saw parents, you know, sparking joy, really anchoring to the McDonald's fries on the weekend or so I'm told, with their two young children, because that's the moment. But matters, right? That serendipitous moment that builds your well-being. If nothing else, please take this for me. You are all in the business of your customers being well, right? I challenge you to find a brand that in some way, shape or form does not have to contribute to how well we believe we are. But what we've seen is a meaningful explosion in our mental model of wellbeing. We've seen a massive expansion in what wealth looks like right off the back of the pandemic. What we've fundamentally done is reappraised what matters most in our life. How much of my life do I want defined by my career? The only people that will remember that you work late all those nights are your children. And we finally recognize that. The other really interesting thing that we spent some time codifying was luxury. What are Australia's luxury codes? And there are new models of scarcity. Guess what's not scarce these days? Stuff, right? Stuff isn't scarce. The scarcest resource that your consumers have is the time that they choose to spend engaging with you. I fundamentally subscribed to what Lisa spoke about this morning. Corporate myopia is a wicked based drive. We think that consumers give us many shit. What we do is we do right. And as soon as you realize the role that your brand plays, there is a transcendent power in you playing a supporting role in the lives of your consumers. And the companies that get that right are already bearing the fruit of that. But fundamentally, everything that we think we know about our customers is starting to shift. We are walking as brands on quicksand. One of the areas that I think we're fundamentally getting it wrong is this We are all worshiping at the false altar of youth. We spent almost two years codifying youth. What is youthfulness? Right. And what I can tell you is a couple of things. The first is Australia's youth are the least youthful generation right now that's on us, right? We have stolen youthfulness from the youth. They are crippled with anxiety around a future that's not looking so great, right? There's a fundamental belief that the system is stacked against them. If I were to ask you how many of you have a Gen Z or a, you know, a youth customer engagement strategy? No one there. Right. I guarantee you that it's about 80% of you. How many of you have a prime of life and retirees engagement strategy other than you least the recommended 80 back? Right. We found that boomers and the greatest gen were by far the most youthful. We see this in terms of not just their ability to make time for brand switching and brand experimentation, but also they have discretionary income. We're focused on the wrong end of the spectrum, right? And it's going to take a good 20 years, right? Populations and generations move at glacial pace relative to what boards require of their chiefs and what chiefs require of their marketers. It is going to be an age before Gen Z, even Gen Y have the discretionary wealth and the time to engage in things that really delight them. On the other end of the spectrum, the largest cohort that is in growth from a consumer perspective are skiers, those that are spending the kid's inheritance. Right. But we but it's not sexy, right, to put someone in their 60s or their 70s in McCombs, you know, less than 10% of McCombs have people over the age of 60, yet they represent over 50% of the discretionary spend. Right. This is compounded by the fact that less than 5% of marketing practitioners are over the age of 65. Right. So be wary of the biases not just within ourselves, but within our teams of worshiping at false altars when it comes to finding prospects and value pools for meaningful growth right now. The next. As I mentioned, we looked at Australia's luxury codes, but this is something we do a lot of work with global maisons. And the biggest thing that we hear from the marketing teams that, you know, the Gucci, the LVMH, is that they struggle to convince head office that what works in Milan won't work here. There is a reason for that. Australia has very, very unique cultural codes. We also have a very, very unique national belief structure. We mapped Australia's beliefs. We have five universal beliefs and despite, you know, whether you're a first gen, second gen or an endemic Australian, we share these five beliefs, belief in our place, belief in our land, belief in our people, belief in ourselves and our belief in others. They are very, very, very unique to the Australian national psyche. When you compound that with very unique visions of success, that sort of recalibration of what mental, you know, the mental model of what wealth looks like, what is a life, a rich life. What that means is that there are greater needs for brand localization and the brands that have localized. Well, I mean, this is example this morning is absolutely a belter. Right. Like people want to tap into the the national psyche, the most successful, diverse, advanced economy globally. If I was to look at western Sydney of a 2 million person subset of Sydney as a city on its own, it would be the most diverse city in the world by a country mile more than New York, more than London, more than Toronto, more than Montreal. So how do you go about building a brand architecture that caters to the tastes and temperaments to what is about 120 to 150 different cultural backdrops? Well, where you start is recognizing this. And this is a this is this sounds like a motherhood statement. It is a profound shift in where you start as a brand. The first of the three big cultural shifts is a concerning rise in anti institutional ism and anti-intellectualism. I was talking to less about this this morning. The last bastion of this was the medical sector. But Covid threw that out the window when we started to weaponize our medical practitioners. Right? We were tuning into Fauci and he got weaponized in the US. We were tuning in not to Gladys, but to the numbers that were coming from the New South Wales chief medical Officer. In an age particularly the younger you go, the more prevalent. This is the baseline level of cynicism. We are fundamentally, as Australians, distrusting of our institutions, the government, the church, the media, the decisions that they make for us. Do they really have my interest at heart? Do they really have my wellbeing at the front of their priority? What that does is it means that you've got a very different starting point when you introduce yourself as a brand, right? Go back to sort of the Mad Men and glory days of marketing and people were really open, you know, on a brand for people like you, come, let's have a chat. Right? You go up to someone now you have a brand for people like you, they go get lost, not interested, right? There is a level of cynicism that fundamentally has to start a conversation that is different to if you are building trust off a base. And so if you think about how do you go about breaking cynicism, how do you convince someone that they're not what they think you are, rather than convincing them of what you are? Right? It sounds really nuanced, but it is a meaningful shift. And just integrating that, thinking into how you design your engagement strategy has huge difference as to where you end up when it comes to the messages that you think resonate with your consumers. Let's get into what I think some of the real magic tricks for growth are right now. And this one, I mean, you should see this in yourself, right? In an ever scarier world, what we are seeing play out across the world is pretty scary. But what happens geopolitically isn't mutually exclusive to what happens within our industry. So we often fund we really meaningfully, you know, discount and and devalue the interconnectedness of our decision making. What happens in the news cycle, what happens at home impacts what we choose, Right? We'll get to a really interesting one when it comes to the impact of technology on brand preference in a business. But in a world that is scary, giving your consumers agency is going to be your most valuable asset. We are drowning in doubt and anxiety around this lack of control. We see this more in younger audiences than in older, but at a baseline level we are all more anxious whether we like to be conscious of it or not. Anything that you can do to convince your consumers that they have made the right decision and it was their decision. It's what's called a psychological moonshot. It's my favorite phrase. There's some great phrases out there. The best example of this is your hairdresser, right? You go to a hairdresser and they finish their job and then they're about to pack up their tools and you're sorry one second and they snip that last little bit of hair. What they've done has absolutely nothing to do with the look. What that has done is it's convinced you that you've picked the right hairdresser because your hairdresser took that extra little bit of effort to make sure that there was that one hair that didn't look out of place. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that there was a hair out of place. What they have done is given you agency over your decision. Right. And what that does is it means that differentiation and distinction is now lying in different places from the core product itself. But before we get to that, I'm going to spend a bit of time on this. This is probably the largest program of work that we've done as the distillery, where we've looked to understand the new rules of influence. How are we being influenced as humans and how is that changing and what does that mean in terms of how we show up as brands? How do we compel people to vaccinate? How do you get people to invest more into their superannuation? How do you get people to address the stigmas of mental health, particularly in young women? And there are four ingredients of influence authority, traditional forms of authority information, the raw material community. We've spoken about that and affinity. Affinity is I'm looking to people who look like me, not just cosmetically, but look like me ideologically, look like me in terms of the life I'm looking to live aspirationally. And what I can tell you is that there has been a tectonic shift in what influences us. What has driven that is those first two proliferation of choice information and scarcity information overload. The second is anti institutional ism and anti-intellectual ism. We fundamentally are distrusting. And the third, interestingly, sits at the intersection of the two. We are being shaped by choice in a fundamentally different way than we thought. If you think about it. We cannot anchor to the codes of culture as we once did. If you go back. Think about masculinity. Think about country music. Right. If you go back 20, 30 years, our culture was pretty codified. Right. Move forward 20 years and you can show up like Lil Nas X in a red velvet suit. And that's country music that's also masculine. And for the most part, that is an amazing thing. As long as you're not marginalizing anyone, the sting in the tail of moving from culture codes to a cordless culture is that our brains don't have those mental shortcuts. But if I'm part of community X or if I'm part of community Y, historically they were much more geo proximate. Now I can have a community of people across the globe. You know that the pandemic accelerated about ten years of that. But I don't have these things. I don't have these shortcuts to grapple with and to anchor to. So what do I do? I look for people who look like me. This is why we see mommy bloggers holding as much weight as an emeritus professor who's been studying toddler sleep for decades and decades and decades. It's why we see travel bloggers holding as much weight as people that have spent their time understanding the amazing power of being part of Qantas's, you know, frequent flier program. And we see this bifurcation of authority versus relate ability and affinity happening across every single sector from financial advice, right? What would a, you know, a professor of personal finance know? I'm going to follow John and Jane Doe's Instagram because they've got two kids like I've got two kids. They seem to be proximate to me. There is an incredible power in signaling your relate ability to your consumers now because power distance is deeply allergic to most consumers right now. And what all of this means is that differentiation and distinction lies beyond your product. This is playing out most interestingly for me. I'm a petrolhead in automotive, right? There are more new entrants in the automotive sector in the last six months that there have been in the last 60 odd years. With my back, I'm looking at my car over here. At the same time, we have unshackled ourselves from brand stigmas. I'd never buy a train car. I never buy a car with a German car's head and shoulders above. In terms of build quality, all that's gone out the window, right. When you couple this explosion of choice with what I would call the leapfrogging of utility. Right. The best example of utility leapfrogging is eight KTVU. Wow. Amazing technology. Guess what? Your eyes don't see past 4K. Half of us don't see 4K. Right. But our need to innovate as companies has leapfrogged the utility that our consumers get from the products that we provide them with. And we've got to sell them something new. We can't go to the board and say, What's your strategy this year? We're going to hold a call and keep things going, right? We're going to double down on what we did last year. Now it's got to have new news, right? And so more and more, the things that provide, a transcendent value, other things that sit around the product, which is why we're seeing huge growth in post service engagement, huge growth in sort of the book clubs. It's a great I love the book club idea, right? These things that sit around the products itself have huge value to us, right? Because that's what differentiates. We cannot get to the one page, you know, the one choice of shampoo fast enough because it looks like a sea of sameness to the layperson. No one studies our categories as much as we do. They don't know the differences. You know, you go and buy a washer dryer. Dry is a great example. We did a whole piece on large appliances in the home, and no one knows the difference between a heat pump dryer or a conventional. I just want something that dries my bloody clothes, right? And then every brand is doing all of them. Same in automotive. You used to have automotive manufacturers that played in the utility vehicle space and then there was 2 or 3 that had the seven person people movers. Then you had a couple that had the roadsters, but now all brands play in or places. So have a think about what you wrap around your products because that's the stuff that's going to separate the wheat from the chaff. Before we get into the world to air on digital, because it would be remiss for me not to give you a very unconventional perspective on all of that. Simplicity is going to be your most powerful competitive advantage in an age of choice where your consumers cannot filter fast enough. Getting to that choice, simplicity of decision is going to be your most powerful competitive advantage. And I will leave you with this. As your consumers shift digitally, you risk knowing less about them, not more. Our digital fingerprints are but a keyhole of the behavior that we like to show online. Staying proximate to your customers is going to be incredibly important. And in a world where generative AI takes that fingerprint further afield, when I can go as a travel consumer and go, Hey, Chat GPT develop me an itinerary to the Maldives for a family of four under $10,000, and not only does it generate it for me, but I can then book it. That's the conversation that we as marketers should be having about the impact of generative AI on our consumers and on our industry. Yes, there's efficiencies to be made, but the 80% that's going to shape the way that you do your business and what makes your customers valuable to you is going to be how gen AI shapes their behavior, not yours.

I have the pleasure of running the last panel today. I would like to ask a quick question. Actually, on behalf of the entire panel who has AI fatigue. Okay. So what we thought we'd do is end the day on AI. To help me do that, I would like to introduce Jon from Pet Circle and Maria from Unilever. Why don't we do a little bit of a round of introductions, maybe your name, where you're from and a little bit about, you know, where you've been in your career, if that's okay. Jon, we'll start with you. So just testing. Okay. I am Jon. I'm the Chief Growth and Marketing Officer at Pet Circle. I've been in digital marketing for longer than I care to admit, but for the last five years I've been working at Pet Circle, we're probably the largest e-com player that you've never heard of, I think we're the third largest by revenue. You know, we service almost a million customers annually. And what we're really trying to do is we're trying to create an experience where we can map the right product to every kind of pet species breed need. And so we're really trying to map the customer to the infinite amount of choice that exists out there. And of course, because we're an online, I can carry a lot more range than perhaps the brick and mortar competitors. And actually, the reason I ended up in digital is because 20 years ago I figured this thing called Google and Internet was going to be have a profound impact on marketing, I think AI is going to have even more of an effect. I think you can take AI, mobile and every other major societal event in the last 30 years, and A.I. is going to have that kind of impact. And maybe leave you with this intro. I think you got to have two mindsets when you're thinking about AI. First is you got to flip the narrative. So this is not the end of creativity. It's the start of infinite, more creative possibilities. Now, this is not the end of my teams. It's actually how you're going to actually enablement, empower them to do more. So I think you've got to really have a mindset that changes. This is going to enable a ton of stuff. And then, you know, I think the you know, the other so the other sort of key thing is you've got to start simple. It's really complex. So get out there And do I mean, I think I mean, one of the points made is you got to keep things simple because it's all about execution, you know, So and then I think actually the third I will add a third one is you got to educate yourself. There's a lot of information, a lot of misinformation. You know, I'm going back to school. I'm trying to learn as much about A.I. as I possibly can because it's complex and it's difficult to know where to start. So go out there and, you know, there's plenty of good, plenty of information and find out as much as you possibly can. Thanks, Jon. Maria, can we hear from you? Hard to come out like I'm after this big introduction, but I'll do my best. I'm Maria. I lead the digital marketing and data team for Unilever and I also lead the AI acceleration team for our ANZ business. I am not from Australia. I'm from Argentina. So I came to this country four years ago with my company with Unilever, and I been working at Unilever for the past five years here and in Latin America, and I do all of my career across marketing, digital marketing, data, a bit of sales and now dipping my toes into the retail media space and also the innovation across AI. I agree with Jon. I feel like we are living in this amazing era to increase our digital literacy, our AI literacy. So I'm really excited on everything that is happening and how we can use AI to do good things, to keep on doing good business and to keep on delivering on sustainable growth for our market. I think the first thing to acknowledge is that AI is not new. Silvana started today by acknowledging actually SAP Emarsys' has had AI in the platform since 2012. What I think a lot of us are really thinking about now is Generative AI, which is really the next iteration. And I'm going to steal a chain from Oroton's term, which I loved about being the author of the next chapter. Right. And Jon, as you just said, removing the ego and really thinking and being very intentional about what it means for your business and actually learning about the capability and the posture is super important. So my first real question is how is your business approaching AI top-down, bottom-up. How are you thinking about it and the approaches that you're putting in place? So I'll to acknowledge the first question I think it's got to be top-down. We tried initially trying to seed AI projects into the teams and through for many reasons. We just could not we could not get traction. I mean, there's the mindset. One, you know, if I adopt AI, I'm going to have a small team. There's a complexity piece. You know, there's so much information and then, you know, a day job. And so what we've done is we've made a top-down, we've got measures. We have a P1 system is one of my P1s. So I've actually got metrics and goals to get to drive AI into my areas. So that's one critical piece. I think the other piece is data. I mean, you've got to get your data right. It's been a lot. That's where you've got to spend a lot of time. In my business, we've got, we think about three tranches of data. And we have this debate. Who's our customer? Is it the person who buys the pet food and the pet stuff or is it the pet? Actually, we think it's the pet. So the most critical piece of the data. Three things I need to know. I really need to know two things plus one. It's nice. Need to know the breed, need to know how old it is. And ideally, I'd like to know the name so that we can start talking them personally. With those three things, I can make great recommendations. I can allow our customers to make great choices. The next piece is product information data. We go through this really laborious task now of re-tagging everything so that we can then eventually we can map these two things together. Right? So if I know you've got a Labrador, we know that I have joint issues. We also know that glucosamine is really good for joint issues. So I can then recommend food that has it. If I've done my tagging and my structures correctly so I can infer... I would actually, before you start getting into Generative AI and all this stuff, get your data right, think about how you're going to use it and get it right. And then the third, the least important piece of data is actually the person buying stuff, you know? But we need to know who they are. We need to know where they are, the demographics and all that stuff. But for me, the map of the pet with the product is really, really critical. Maria huge organization globally. I'm sure there's not a consumer that you haven't touched in terms of the product reach. How are you thinking about AI and the approach and the structure that you're thinking in a business? So in Unilever globally there's so much AI going on, it's probably we have a lot of fatigue for sure. There are over 500 initiatives running on AI across a multiplicity of the disciplines that we touch on. The approach is basically like two fold. We have sort of like a deep approach in innovation. So everything that AI can facilitate to provide a competitive advantage about the bandage. So projects that are like more IP protected, that are changing the way that we operate within our business, and then we have sort of like a more broad implementation that is what are the actual tools that everyone can use and we can sort of make available, train our teams, generate information towards that. But we have a very high ethical mindset on how we use AI and what is the data that we put in place. So of course putting our data together and making everything accessible, organized taxonomies and all of that, it's in place. So that's sort of like evergreen really, and basics. We go very like strict in how we sort of create and name our data sets. And then there is different approach around like specific implementations of tools. So yeah, like basic use of tools for productivity, for marketing, for data implementation. And then there is a massive work on innovation. And I think that in our cases, both like top-down and bottom-up, we have a page where we can sort of pitch for budgets and ideas and like new initiatives that we might want to use. And then there is a massive top-down from our global CEO on like embracing AI for productivity basis. So we are in kind of this like nice moment where everyone is sort of like getting excited and the people that is a bit afraid is getting trained to like sort of prevent that space. I think it's okay to be afraid. Yeah. And it's okay to normalize that. It's getting to another level of practicality than you said, starting to implement some some specific things. So in the lens of because AI can imagine a lot of different things. So worker productivity versus actual marketing. So in the context of today, what are some of the actual use cases and things that you're implementing now and the areas of focus? Yeah. So for me, everything that is happening on the digital commerce space is super important. Like how do you make sure that our omnichannel assets are created? Well, that's something that used to be very expensive and very complex for a company that has thousands of SKUs in market. Now we are using a lot of tools and AI to like gen AI on images to ensure that we have sort of like omnichannel coverage like perfectly done. We have a lot of productivity, of course, I feel like everyone is using Copilot or yeah, we are using Copilot like on our day to day basis to do like things that used to take me hours because I'm not from here and I'm hesitating my language a lot. Now copilot help me to do it better. And then we are working a lot on specifics of our campaign. So we have a very strong commitment to sort of expand the AI literacy into our consumers. So, for example, we have we just did a campaign that had a playbook to better promptings or real beauty prompting that is a tool that we are sharing in general, trying to educate everyone It's in there to avoid being bias and stereotype or preventing bad use. So yeah, lots lots going on from a marketing perspective. Lots going on. Jon same question. What are some of the sort of practical use cases or areas of focus that you're looking at? Yeah, the way that the top-down framework, we sort of split out the application into five areas that's content, customer service, productivity, personalization and analytics. So we've got owners for each of those areas. So to break down what we're doing. In our customer service as an example, keeping things simple. We we're going to just focus on the use case of where's my order when we get it wrong. It really, really pissed customers. Like now we've participated this unconditional bond between pet and pet parent. It's great, but when you get it wrong, who, they let you know about it. So instead of taking the whole of suggesting how do you push that all through AI? We going to take that use case. I was speaking to a colleague in an online business. They're at 60% now all their customer service is on AI and they're getting better NPS, better stickiness, better revenue, every metric you can possibly think everything's everything is better. And we often think about ourselves. We want to create the experience that niche little pet store when you go in with your pet that the sawstore owner knows exactly what you need. They know. They know exactly. They're really tactile with what you do. We want to really try and recreate that experience. But you think about CS agents, we train them constantly, but I think we're up to now five hours a month, which is apparently quite a lot of training. But it all gets lost. You know, they go, they lose within an day. AI model, it's retained, it's retained and it improved. So you know huge applications I think there. Content I'm going to get 50% of our content out is AI generative. So of course product reviews, images, the whole gamut. That loads of applications there. I think personalization is work is actually the area I get really excited. I think we've talked about personalization as an industry for 20 years, like the mobile, you know, talk about it forever and ever. And when the iPhone came in it happened I think AI is going to be personalization at scale. That really gets me excited I think there are applications there that are just going to blow people away. And you know what's interesting is we talked about the issue of it not being human, I think AI is actually going to be the opposite. I think it's going to create really human interactions, really personal interactions. And at the moment, I'm still blasting a whole bunch of stuff out to people. I'm going to go do stuff maybe where I've got your image of your pet is actually, you know, laced through through your email with very specific personal recommendations of products and needs for that specific breed and age pet. So, you know, I'm really excited about that particular use case. You know, productivity loads. But I think actually with productivity we're finding start small like we got note taker and Google. Now every meeting has to have had note taken through Google. Great. You know, because you're allowing people to just start using the product or sort of seeing the value of AI. So I think that's important in analytics. We're starting to experiment with our own sort of analytics. So you know what, we're ourselves in margin last week or whatnot, etc., etc. so that you know, you've all sat there and tried to work your way through a hundred different tableau boards or in our case, Looker. I think that's very quickly going to be, you know, very specific LLM queries and you're going to get the data straight back. Just out of curiosity then, so you have a KPI to have 50% of images that would be gen AI or generated by AI, sorry. What timeline is that like I'm so curious. You've actually got some hard, hard metrics on this. June next year. June next year. All right. We're worried about most of our product reviews now go through AI. Most of our vet content. What happens is that vets write content and push it through generative AI. So we've thought about 10 or 15% now, but I think we'll get to I'm pretty confident we'll get to 50. I'm someone who absolutely has an unconditional bond with their dog. His name is Jett. He's a mini schnauzer. There's a couple of K that way. How you you know, you can't have my the name of my dog and the image of my dog without my consent and my permission. So AI and the large language models that we look at is only so good as the data that we're inputting. So what is your approach to zero party first party data? How are you capturing that and how are you leveraging Emarsys to do that? Fortunately, people love talking about their pets. So guilty. Yeah. So we haven't even started and 45% of customers are happy giving us that information. We've done a couple of tests like it's going to cost me maybe five bucks coupon to get to 100 really quickly with an image. So, I mean, honestly, I think it's so good. I think the mapping of that with the PIM data, the product information data will be our competitive moat. So if it'll cost me more, I'll do it because that to me everything else commoditized your web infrastructure, delivery networks, all that stuff it's ultimately commoditize. The marriage of those two pieces and if you get it right where I can make that almost like that local pet store recommendation is going to be a competitive moat and for me is that and that will be personalization of scale. And Maria, sort of similar question. I mean, we heard from Lisa Ronson earlier today. She used to be head of Coles. I walk into a Coles and buy Unilever product. I don't buy it from you. So how do you get data on your customer and how are you then feeding that into these models? Yeah, multiple touchpoints. I would say in the retail space that's a collaboration is something that we work quite a lot at scale. That's a collaboration with partners like Call 360, like Everyday Rewards and that sort of retail media space. That's something that we are developing. But yeah, of course we don't have such a reach that like sets us as a direct to consumer business. And we've been, but we've been testing with images on our retailer partners not as advance as you were saying but, and we've seen some rejection when you see a human that is not actually a human and it's generated through AI. So that's an interesting space that we are tapping into. So for example, we don't use hands that are not human hands. We just use AI to generate backgrounds, you do some specific things on products, but not leverage to everything and to everyone just yet because we're seeing a bit of backlash from our consumers. And we talked earlier about the touch point. Right. Where does AI end and the human touch remain? And my story from this is that we heard recently from a zero beer company. They were trying to understand how they promote zero beer in pubs. Right. Because it turns out when they spent time in the bars and asked bartenders, what are people asking for when they're not drinking when they're designated driver, it's just give me a water. It's fine. So their campaign was say no to water because that's actually who they're competing with, not other products and other drinks. But you don't really get that insight without spending time in the pubs. The data may not have surfaced. That right. So where's the break point, Jon, between the AI and trusting the data and getting the scale that we need to be a successful business versus that human impact? I mean, there's a great business quote that says, you know, we don't trust the data, look at the anecdotes. And so we spend a lot of time looking at CS interactions, for example, with customers. So very qualitative sort of data packets, if you like. Honestly, I mean, I've got to call out a little bit. I actually think that, as I said, I think we'll be able to do a better job of that in-store local pet store than than they will very quickly. So and I think that if you've got a pet, for example, what's your pet's name? Jed. Okay, Jed, let's talk about it. What what kind of breed is Jed? He's a black mini schnauzer. See how easy it is to get the information. What other zero party data do you want? I'm actually jealous, like, it's so easy. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about schnauzers. But anyway. But my point being is that let's say his joint issues are a problem, right? And glucose is really important. And your food doesn't have that. You're probably buying it very expensive premium diet. I suspect. So we will be able to say hey, actually Jed would benefit more from product D with glucose to me and so to me that's a really very personal insight that brings real value to you as a pet parent. So I actually think if you do this right this will be tactile and human in its delivery. Actually I'll rephrase that it needs to be tactile and human in its delivery. So you need to find that way that you're not. Gosh they just kind of made this stuff up and it's just all automated and it just needs to feel like it really is personal, really is about you and Jed. I think also the fail like it's unlikely to fail like if I go into a local pet store to give you an example and it's someone who I don't usually, you know shop from and he doesn't know that pet and the needs that's a breakpoint, right? So the data helps you kind of not fail that when I'm trying to buy a product that's not relevant for him. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and you think about a store like say big box store is that they train their agents really thoroughly, but it breaks all the time, right? Like maybe you haven't had that training unit, so you're never going to get that kind of vast amounts of knowledge all stored into a singular interaction that you can through sort of an AI delivered solution. So, Maria, like where where are you seeing the break point? You know, where does the sort of creativity come in? Some of your products are fairly personal to people's needs. And so I'm sure there's also a high empathy radar on that, how are you guys thinking about this? Yes. The way that we think it's AI allow us to the volume like allow us to produce creative at scale allow us to deploy sort of like better digital marketing campaigns that may have like thousands of assets that we need to deploy. So AI provides that sort of like easiness and mass production adaptation of assets, creating copy by doing all of that. But the role of the marketers is, in my opinion, more than ever we really switch on with culture. So we are adopting an approach of like cultural first. So that's and that's the role of that we need to take us humans like direct AI to do things that like that can do and can do great. But taking the insights, understanding culture, like looking into trends, putting our brands in the front of society, like running our brands in the way that we want to run, that's probably the most important thing that my teams are doing at the moment, like immersing themselves in culture because all of the rest we have got are we have amazing tools that can facilitate. We have a suite of things that we can do but actually like building what our brands means. What are the roles in like our consumers life? That is not something that AI can do, at least in the short term. And I also think you rely on vendors capability, right? So how are we showing up to the party and producing a roadmap that allows you to be more bleeding edge in what you're doing? There's obviously multiple products in the market that are available but you want to double down on your existing partnerships as well to get there. I want to get some inspiration around impacts and results. So Maria, where are you seeing or what can you share that has really moved the needle in actually executing some of these campaigns using AI? Yeah, I think that we live across like a multiplicity of of categories. We have very good results on our shelf execution. For example, when you say AI but my favorite one, it's what we did with Dove recently we launched it's a 20 anniversary of the Dove selfie, the self-esteem campaign. And this year we went like really strong on what AI is actually doing on new generations and how they are sort of like interacting with that. It's really aligned with our sort of like Unilever view of the world of sustainable grow and leaving the planet better than we actually did. And we launched a toolkit for parents and for consumers. It's available in our website that educates the general public to be less biased, more like diverse in the way they prompt when they are prompting AI tools. And that was something when that was presented to me as a marketer, I was like, no one is going to understand this. Like, this is way too complex. Who's doing this? I mean, journey or interactivity, like who's actually doing this? But we decided to launch it anyways, and I was extremely surprised on the amount of parents calls consumers in general that downloaded that playbook to be less of a stereotype when generating A.I. images. So that's probably what I think that when we do well, when we think forward, when we think progressively, we see interaction and we see like good feedback on that. So that's something that's an initiative that really makes me proud from Unilever. That's excellent. And Jon, you're an Emarsys customer. You're using some of our features. So there high plug, is it a genuine use case? So we're using the omni channel personalization tool. We're still starting small and we've obviously got the name, but we also added now the image of the breed and we're testing out doubles the revenue percent. And again I'm looking we're scratching the surface on that. It could eventually be Jed, for example with very specific recommendations. So just through changing the imagery to map to the breed of the customer, that doubled the revenue percent. I think that scratches the surface of possibility. So, you know, excited to see. For me then the challenge is how do you take that? Because you still get to sort of create email. How do you create that and generate 66 breeds, you know, and so on. But I believe it will be possible. You know, I feel that I actually think in the personalization space, the notion of the campaign will go and you'll have segments on one side, objectives on the other, and then the machine sitting in the middle that will determine things like the images, you know, the coupons or the offer, you know, the channel like I think channels will go as a concept. I think you'll have it'll determine whether it should be, you know, Facebook, text, push email, whatever. So I think you know, that's scary for some people because my team spend most of the time building campaigns. But imagine then I go, I imagine this. Imagine if they thought about the customer segment and the outcomes and optimize to that. That's going to make them way more effective than sitting there building campaigns, it's like paying the Harbour Bridge, you know, start of the week, finish the end of the week, start again. And they don't really think about the customer. They don't really think about the results as such. So for me, this area gets me, it gets me super excited. I think that you know, the name of this global festival that Emarsys puts on is Power to the Marketer. And it's very intentional. We did an IDC report a year ago looking at customers that use the platform and it freed up 35% of marketers time that used the platform and also 53% quicker to get campaigns out, right? So that's pretty basic AI doing a lot of the heavy lifting that marketing teams do spend a lot of time on. And I think you just mentioned impacts, revenue. And I know Logan from Nighttime Bikes is somewhere here in the room. We just launched a case study with him last week. In the first 90 days of using the platform, they have seen an 8% increase in revenue. Right. So I think AI and the topic that we have just discussed today is important, but it also has to have an impact either on your people, your profit or, you know, really the customer experience, which then contributes to both of those things.