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NRF 24 Day 1 AI Revolution: Transforming Retail's Tomorrow · The Retail Podcast

• 0:05
  Hello and welcome you live from NRF to the Special Retail
• 0:09
  Podcast and E Tab Day One recap. I'm joined by Simon, Head of
• 0:16
  Sales for the UK. Yep, Mr Head of Marketing for
• 0:20
  etab Global, ETAP Central. Then what do you call it?
• 0:25
  Ethan Brick. That's it.
• 0:26
  And I and. You and.
• 0:27
  I'm. I'm.
• 0:28
  Looking for? Ohh.
• 0:31
  Yeah, perfect. So what we're gonna do, we're
• 0:34
  gonna spend the next 15 minutes going through what we took away
• 0:37
  today. What was the sort of highlights
• 0:40
  for us? We, I know we had, Simon, I
• 0:42
  think you were looking at innovation, right?
• 0:44
  You were looking for key innovations and what you saw.
• 0:47
  Yeah, I was. I was looking for innovation,
• 0:48
  but also looking around what I thought the key trends were and
• 0:52
  how things would translate into the needs of retailers.
• 0:54
  Fantastic. And Emma, what was just, I'm
• 0:56
  interest, what was your focus? Was there anything that you were
• 0:59
  sort of keeping an eye on as you were going through the talks?
• 1:02
  Yeah, I were focusing on the innovation and grocery mainly,
• 1:06
  OK. And the AI parts of all of it
• 1:09
  that the personalization and of course very interesting for me
• 1:12
  as a marketeer is the marketing is very much in focus, Yeah, now
• 1:15
  so. Yeah, I mean it it it was
• 1:18
  incredible. I think the scale you can see
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  behind me, we're on level 1 mezzanine, basically the, the,
• 1:26
  the. To give you some context of the
• 1:28
  depth of of how big this event is, the building behind the
• 1:33
  camera is where the main. Talks are.
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  Behind me there are three to five ex rivals, depending on how
• 1:40
  you split it on three different levels, again depending on how
• 1:43
  you split it And innovation and food innovation, which is new
• 1:47
  for this year so let's get straight into assignment.
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  I'd love to know. You know, innovation trends.
• 1:54
  What what did you? Come away with like, I guess
• 1:56
  just mirroring what you say, The scale of the scale of the show
• 1:59
  is incredible. There's what, 6000 booths to
• 2:02
  look out. So finding innovation is easy
• 2:05
  and really difficult of finding that gold.
• 2:07
  But I think for me, if you take the Innovation zone, other than
• 2:11
  a a 3D mannequin and a robot, everything else was AI.
• 2:15
  Every single stand has the word AI in.
• 2:18
  And and also one of the trends that I see here is that there's
• 2:21
  lots of startups that have something really interesting,
• 2:24
  but can't quite explain what that is.
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  Yeah. So when they, when they describe
• 2:28
  it on their stand versus the conversation that you have
• 2:31
  versus how I would describe it for the needs of retailers is
• 2:34
  quite different. So I've found that AI is a
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  theme. I've learned some new words.
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  I've learned about composable AI.
• 2:42
  That's the thing, apparently. And also deep, you mean you
• 2:47
  don't know. So composable AI is about how
• 2:50
  the connectivity of different things together, so connecting
• 2:53
  different parts of AI together into a single thing.
• 2:56
  And generative AI is mentioned quite a lot.
• 2:59
  And again I had to ask what do you mean by that and and that's
• 3:02
  about AI that can generative. Yeah.
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  And it's about being able to then create images or text as as
• 3:10
  a base of AI which is quite interesting.
• 3:12
  So I think that I've found lots and lots of stands that have
• 3:16
  tried to elevate was talking about AI to try and add a few
• 3:19
  more words to to to add a little bit more value to it.
• 3:22
  However I think well I have found is that the use of AI is
• 3:27
  covering so many different things.
• 3:29
  It's not all capturing consumer behaviour, but whether it's
• 3:32
  stock forecasting, replenishment behaviour in store, footfall,
• 3:37
  tracking, all about data. Everything I've seen today has a
• 3:41
  dashboard and there's dashboard for everything and I think that
• 3:45
  the clever thing is being able to take the use of that data but
• 3:48
  being able to take it back into something that's actionable.
• 3:50
  Insight, which I think will be quite tricky, but but definitely
• 3:54
  a I is the theme of for the day for sure.
• 3:56
  Yeah, I I 100% it's interesting. Is it, is it do you think is it
• 4:00
  because there's a lot of technology startups who think
• 4:03
  ohh, I'm gonna go and start selling to retailers and that's
• 4:06
  why when you sort of say give me a use case then they're like ohh
• 4:08
  well you know we can do stuff with pledge.
• 4:10
  Tell me about that. And they're like it's all.
• 4:12
  It's that. It's a fact.
• 4:13
  I found it a lot. People explain something really
• 4:16
  well. And you ask, how does that
• 4:17
  change consumer behaviour? Yeah.
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  And that's when it starts to crumble a little bit, because
• 4:22
  they're not quite yet. Sure.
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  And and I think there's a whole lot of people that have invented
• 4:25
  something really cool. Yeah.
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  And whether that really cool is something that translates into
• 4:30
  something that a retailer can use or something that just
• 4:33
  becomes a flagship that's really quite interesting.
• 4:36
  I'll probably do one. It is, there's a fine balance
• 4:39
  between those things at the moment.
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  But yeah, it's AI recurring theme, but not necessarily.
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  It's not necessarily all about AI changing the world, but how
• 4:51
  AI can complement some of the things that already happened.
• 4:53
  Understood, everyone. How about for you, what was like
• 4:55
  the the main part from a I, you know but I guess the AI themes
• 5:00
  we can't say apart from me because people watching this.
• 5:03
  Yeah. I'll probably thinking about how
• 5:05
  do I use these Yeah. So what?
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  What was it for you? For me it was like you need to
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  have the base first. You need to have the digital
• 5:13
  ground pillars like the CRM system, your data warehouse,
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  your data management. You need to have everything in
• 5:20
  place first and then you can go further and have the customer
• 5:24
  experience in the centre of all of it.
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  Yeah, yeah, you need to think through, OK, where can I do
• 5:31
  efficiency with a where can I do stuff less dependent on the
• 5:36
  staffing itself, Yeah. So you can focus on the customer
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  experience instead of doing this repetitive task that we can use
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  AI4. So that was very interesting.
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  A lot of talks were focusing about how can we improve the
• 5:51
  customer experience and how can we automate with AI so we can
• 5:56
  have time to do the stuff that we are good at as humans.
• 5:59
  Not that a I do. Yeah.
• 6:01
  So that was very interesting. I think efficiency driven out of
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  tasks being automated is 100%. But the the key thing is, and
• 6:10
  this is depending on who you speak, you need to have a base
• 6:13
  to build on, right? You need your data to be there.
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  You need to have had the, I don't know, your supply chain
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  needs to be in some shape of water or your front of house
• 6:21
  loyalty programme needs to have that data.
• 6:23
  Yeah. So I'm.
• 6:24
  I'm curious Emma, did you have any talks on loss today?
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  Did you see anything about loss? Yeah, I did it.
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  There are of course still a big trend with a loss prevention or
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  trend maybe a threat to all retailers that we have this loss
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  prevention issues. We yeah, but and they are also
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  new names for it. So they say terms.
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  So it's now that. Actor.
• 6:46
  Yeah, Bad actor. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
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  Remember first I said, well, what are you saying about it
• 6:52
  anyway? Yeah.
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  Yeah, there's so many buzzwords right now about loss
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  preventions. You need to collect all of these
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  and write them down to be on top of mind of these loss prevention
• 7:02
  solutions. Is there anything as a market
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  here that you're thinking when I get back home, there's something
• 7:07
  I want to experiment with? Is there something that I've
• 7:10
  inspired you? From the whole show, yeah.
• 7:13
  From from today because there was an inspiration from today.
• 7:16
  Yeah, actually it was that the retail media part, OK, Like a
• 7:20
  lot. Of the big trend?
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  No. Retail media?
• 7:22
  Yes. Yeah, Yeah.
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  And that the marketeers lead the way based on their analysis and
• 7:28
  their data-driven campaigns, data-driven work through like
• 7:33
  Google Analytics. We haven't done that for a
• 7:35
  while. We've been marketing and now
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  it's time for retail to step into that because of all these
• 7:41
  AI possibilities. Now you can be, we have sensors,
• 7:45
  we have the smart way of measure things.
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  We can measure things based on all these AI smartness that we
• 7:52
  have. Now.
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  Yeah, that I've been doing for a while.
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  So now I think that OK, what I know based on my work, I can
• 7:59
  apply on this retail thing. Yeah.
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  And we can do basically think that the store could be like a
• 8:05
  website. Yeah, so.
• 8:08
  Take, which has been the the the thing that I've been saying for
• 8:10
  years. Make the invisible visible,
• 8:12
  right, And that's how you make your store operations and
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  everything that you can't see become always.
• 8:17
  I think Marc Benioff in the Walmart final keynote sort of
• 8:21
  summarised there when he sort of asked the audience, does anyone
• 8:23
  remember Minority Report right in terms at the moment when he
• 8:27
  goes into the Gap and, you know, he's recognised.
• 8:30
  He's. I I think for me, the one thing
• 8:32
  that I noticed on a few of the analysis, trends, panelling,
• 8:36
  trend talks that I went to is the fact that people who are
• 8:40
  already in your customer base want more and a bigger
• 8:44
  acceleration of customisation, that threat to my privacy.
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  I'm already there. I'm already bought into you as a
• 8:51
  retailer. Yeah, I want you to know me.
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  I want you to offer that service to me.
• 8:56
  Yeah, I think that was one of the big sort of stats for the
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  day that that's coming up. OK, final thoughts, Final
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  thoughts on. As much as today's been great, I
• 9:05
  think the thing that I was expecting see more of that
• 9:08
  happen is around sustainability. Yes, I I thought he would be one
• 9:13
  of the big themes that I would see today.
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  And there's a there's a sustainability corner, yeah.
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  But there isn't really the level of messaging that I would say
• 9:21
  about helping retailers be more sustainable.
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  I hope that's that's been something that's somewhat of a
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  surprise to me saying OK. And that.
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  And I will bring the personalisation.
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  I think, yeah, that we in the future will be so well known by
• 9:35
  the stores that when I walk in they will already know what I
• 9:39
  will order. Yeah.
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  So that's a really cool thing that I'm looking forward to.
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  OK Can they read my mind? Kind of with AI when I walk in
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  and they already have picked out the really nice theme of clothes
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  and I can just choose and walk out that would.
• 9:56
  Be very cool, Yeah, I think. I think retailers are are
• 10:00
  definitely challenged with understanding all of these
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  themes. Let's look at what day two
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  brings. We'll be back again tomorrow.
• 10:08
  Yes, tomorrow to to provide. So thank you so much for tuning
• 10:12
  into this LinkedIn live. Look forward to meeting with you
• 10:16
  tomorrow if you have any questions.
• 10:18
  If you if there's something on top of mind, reach out to your
• 10:20
  local I tab or TAB team Ohh, message us directly.
• 10:25
  We're here to answer your questions, so if there's
• 10:27
  anything else that you need to know, just let us know and we'll
• 10:29
  do our best to go hunt and bring it to you.
• 10:32
  Thank you so much.