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The Future of Retail: Harnessing UGC, AI & Sustainability · The Retail Podcast

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  76% of American literally say they consider a company's
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  commitment to sustainability and ethical practises is really
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  believe it or not. And so it's important that
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  brands are transparent about really their sourcing and their
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  manufacturing practises and and accurately promote the
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  authenticity of that to their customers.
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  Hello and welcome to the Retail Podcast.
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  I had the opportunity to sit down with their CEO, Mr Keith
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  Nealon. Is that right?
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  That's correct, yeah. Thank God, if you ever watch any
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  of these episodes, that's the first little stumble for myself
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  is to make sure I've got the right name, the right person at
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  the right time. So Keith, before, before I sort
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  of dive into some of the questions that I have for you, I
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  was just wondering, would you mind giving us a 5 minute like
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  helicopter view of yourself, how you came to bizarre voice and
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  your, your focus as CEO right now?
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  Sure. Well, if you're a connoisseur of
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  accents like your own, I'm not from the US, I'm originally from
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  Ireland, but I, I moved to the US about 20 years ago.
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  And in that time I've been an executive in many SAS or cloud
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  software companies, all with a passion for helping executive
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  teams and their organisations. Dr business success in different
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  industries, my favourite being in the marketing space, so
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  Bizarre Voice. So again, in many companies five
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  years ago, I joined Bizarre Voice as their CEO and it's been
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  a fantastic ride. And essentially what Bizarre
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  Voice does is we, we help literally over 14,000 brands
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  help about 2 1/2 billion consumers a month, literally
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  discover, research and find their next product purchase.
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  And we, we do that with software and what we call a content
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  supply chain that helps marketers with their their
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  consumers journey from the discovery of their product,
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  which might be on a social platform to the purchase of
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  their product, which might be on a retailer's e-commerce site.
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  And that entire journey in whatever way the consumer wants
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  to travel that journey. And in a, in a chief marketing
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  officers ideal world, their consumers do the talking for
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  them. So because we are leaders in
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  ratings and reviews and user generated content, which is the
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  voice of the customer, we harness that voice of the
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  customer and promote that voice in all of those marketing and
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  content assets across our customers platforms so that they
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  can accelerate their success by literally letting the customer,
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  their customers do the talking for them.
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  That sounds incredible. So you must have an immense
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  access or a wealth of consumer data that probably you're seeing
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  little signals for as it goes through your platform.
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  I'm just wondering in, in the wake of all the changing
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  dynamics and everything that's going on, you know, whether it's
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  cost of living, inflation or what, what are you seeing in
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  terms of how this relates to retail acceleration or how your
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  customers partners can use this data to accelerate or what are
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  the things you're seeing? Yeah, it's, it's true.
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  We have a tonne of consumer data as you'd imagine.
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  And so we leverage our consumers and our community several times
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  a year to not just we gather gait automatically, but we
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  survey them. And we released 2 main reports
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  this year and detailing shifting consumer behaviours under a
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  number of factors. So pandemic recovery was one,
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  macroeconomics was another and just that sort of surge in
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  digital first social shopping. And so the first of those
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  reports was, is called the Shopper Experience Index and
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  it's available on our website where it said about 73% of
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  consumers we surveyed reported adjustments in their spending
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  because of the current economic conditions and thus their quest
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  for value. And so more than 2/3, literally
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  70% said they're open to exploring alternative brands for
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  products that they regularly purchase largely for, you know,
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  value for money. So we saw that 34% actively seek
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  out private label goods from retailers because they offer
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  great value for money and and are increasingly in their view,
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  the consumer view an incredible, a credible alternative
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  alternative to national brands. So that was one thing in our
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  shopper preference report as more workplaces adopt hybrid
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  working models and about 2/3 of US consumers have returned to a
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  physical office for at least part of the work week, Therefore
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  consumers are recalibrating spending habits associated with
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  that, right. So we saw that now 30% of
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  consumers prefer to spend online, 41% favour in store
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  spending and 29% fine online and in store spending to be in terms
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  of their division very soon. But we're seeing a shift more to
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  digital because folks are busier and then Gen Z, you know, just
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  as a demographic what we're noticing with their purchase
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  behaviours, they have the, it's not unique to them, but they
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  have the highest preference for watching online videos about
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  products and online creator content to help purchase
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  decisions. OK, so that, that's interesting.
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  I mean, you, you can laugh at this.
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  I, I remember reading how for UGC, I'm smiling because I don't
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  know if it's embarrassing to admit to or not, but there's a
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  lack of men in my demographic and age group creating UGC
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  content. So I was like, oh, I wonder if
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  that's something to, to get into as well as the podcast and
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  insight. Well, but obviously UGC or user
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  generated content is, is my understanding is core to your
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  arm offering, but it is a minefield and, and I think
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  there's been some great examples of why it's a minefield.
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  But what advice would you have for retailers that help them
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  navigate the UGC minefield to to build trust to to build drive in
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  in growing sales and obviously becoming more competitive online
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  in general? Sure.
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  Yeah. I mean it's not just core as you
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  say UGC or user generated concepts who are offering.
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  It's the very essence of what we do.
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  There's two types. Am I right just to interrupt
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  you? Is that is it?
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  Is it right that there is a lack of men in their in their upper
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  echelons? I like that upper echelons like
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  myself maybe. You should be Crane.
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  You should see Gaza. Inherent like is sort of gut
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  feel. I want to say yes, but one of
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  our products, Vibe has such an amazing AI search engine that if
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  we said, you know, give me Irish and British guys right from,
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  from that part of the world that are in their 50s plus that are
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  experts on fly fishing and, and specifically XYZ fish.
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  You can literally pull out whatever that number is 55 Yeah,
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  yeah. So we have a great engine for
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  navigating that challenging vibe.
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  But to your to your question, really there's two types of
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  content, right? Most marketers are very used to
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  and comfortable with creating brand owned content, right?
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  Using their their teams, their agencies to create brand owned
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  clouds. Very important.
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  It's what does, what is this product?
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  What does it do? User generated content is really
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  the voice of the customer, right?
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  What are consumed in his name. It's far more powerful than
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  brand marketing to the consumer because 85, 4% of consumers are
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  more likely to trust brands, a brand's marketing campaign if it
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  features UGC and 77% are more likely to buy the product they
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  found through UGC. And we see that in our data.
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  So in terms of building trust, which you talked about, you
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  consumers simply trust other consumers more than they trust
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  brands. It's a deeply rooted
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  psychological thing. And so UGC content shows how
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  actual people are using products in real world settings.
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  That creates an authenticity for brands and allows them to
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  promote products without being sort of overly salesy.
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  And you know about it's amazing stat, 85% of consumers say
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  they'll turn to visual UGC rather than branded content when
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  making purchasing decisions. So you see this imbalance where
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  there's more budget for branded content, but the consumer
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  preferences for user generated content.
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  So #1 it really helps drive trust.
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  The second is it drives sales. So when you look at our data
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  from, as I said, 1314 thousand brands, 2 1/2 billion consumers
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  a month, on average, we see 144% lift in conversion rate when
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  shoppers engage with UGC and 162% lift in revenue per
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  visitor. And so for brands, does you
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  really, if they don't already start developing A use UGC
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  marketing strategy that will help them search, curate and
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  publish the most effective voice of customer UGC for their brand?
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  And that's where we can help. So I mentioned Vibe already,
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  right? It's one of our new product
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  launches. It's designed to help marketers
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  source, amplify and optimise everyday shopper and creator
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  content across all channels where a brand may want consumers
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  to discover or purchase their product all from one place.
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  And and as I said earlier, right, given the preference for
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  UGC, as one CMO said recently, you know, the Nirvana is when
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  the consumer can do the talking for you.
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  So as a brand, if you can relinquish control of all that
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  branded content and allow your consumer to do more of the
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  content creation, there's usually far more content from
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  them you can create at scale that drives this trust and
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  sales. And so we help brands achieve
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  that Nirvana of leveraging the voice of customer to do the
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  talking for you. I'm.
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  Just thinking about, you mentioned about AI earlier on in
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  terms of how your product uses AI to sort of navigate the, the,
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  the route to finding the, that, that specific UGC person that's
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  relevant to your brand. I'm just thinking about the role
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  of AI and as a, as a leader, as the CEO of your business.
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  How do you see the role of AI in terms of helping your customers
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  or you as a business leader using AI for your business?
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  I'm just curious if you had any thoughts on that.
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  Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, we've been leveraging AI
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  for years and more recently generative AI, you know,
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  obviously with the the launch of Jenna and Jenna in the last
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  couple of years. So we, we generally though, even
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  though we have our own ideas, we partner closely with our brands
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  to keep a pulse on consumer behaviour that helps inform
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  where are we may take innovations with AI.
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  And so the, you know, we have a a engine within our platform
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  called Harmony AI, which is the broad engine of AI at, but
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  within that there are several components.
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  So for example, content coach is one of those components.
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  And we saw in our research 67% of consumers expressed interest
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  in having e-commerce sites that offer AI powered coaching tools
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  to assist them and leaving high quality product reviews.
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  Think about it, right? Like if you or I bought
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  mayonnaise, Yeah, what do you say about mayonnaise?
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  Right. And, and so for me to say tastes
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  great isn't necessarily a helpful review.
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  So by understanding the voice of customer and what people are
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  saying, we can say, oh, you know, what would be helpful is
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  if you talk about taste, smell, texture, things like that.
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  And therefore it's, you're not telling someone what to write,
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  but you're giving them ideas of themes that might make sense
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  versus for a clothing item, it's fit to size and other things,
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  right colours or whatever. So we use the AI engine to help
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  folks think about what they might want to use in her view to
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  be helpful. Another thing, for example, we
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  have like literally is this about more than 10 billion
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  pieces of UGC and counting. And we leverage all of that data
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  every month as we're, so as we're creating hundreds of
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  millions of pieces of new content, how can we help our
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  brands and therefore their customers do more?
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  So content coach is one example, another is just product
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  matching. So yes, you're, you're talking
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  about a review to do with Hellman's mayonnaise, right?
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  But Hellman's mayonnaise has got to be sold at, you know,
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  hundreds of retailers around the world.
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  So you've got a match that that Hellman's, you know, 50 oz jar,
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  these the same 50 oz jar at Walgreens, at Target, etcetera,
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  etcetera, etcetera on the world at Sainsbury's etcetera.
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  So sometimes the matching of those what we call G10 numbers
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  is out of sync between brands and retailers.
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  So we are able to use AI by looking at what the product is,
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  the image and everything to do better product matching.
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  So there's no orphaning of products and thus that those
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  reviews get matched to the right product and they get out to the
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  right it retailers as fast as possible.
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  We also use AI, for example, if you're if you're going to be a
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  shopper like that's posting about, you know, really cool,
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  cool pair of jeans, let's say they're Levi's jeans.
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  Our AI can can actually tell if your your images and you posted
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  in tag Levi's is on brand for what style Levi's likes likes.
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  So we'll surface that into our bizarre voice vibe platform for
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  the Levi's team to leverage and say this is a really cool UGC
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  image that we could leverage for product discovery or product
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  purchase. The other thing there's many of
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  these things we do is if you think about like you could have
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  hundreds of thousands of the customers writing reviews about
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  your products. If you're a large enough
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  business, you can't read all those reviews.
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  So we use AI for sentiment analysis.
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  So we'll tell you what are the top positive things that a
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  consumers are saying at scale about your product and what are
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  the top challenging or negative things.
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  And you might want to say, OK, for the top positive things we
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  want might want to turn or leverage the consumers voice in
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  our marketing, right. So for example, we saw consumers
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  in the camera space talking about rugged cameras and one of
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  our clients didn't ever use the term rugged.
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  So they start rewriting their their brand content with the
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  term rugged. And between our content and
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  theirs they did better for SEO ranking in Google for rugged
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  cameras. You have found that that drove
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  sales for the negative comments or challenging it might be about
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  the product. You can feed those to your R&D
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  organisation to produce and next Rev 2 right of that product and
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  it stimulates product and innovation.
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  And then we do a lot of things around workflow to help our
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  brands be more efficient by automatically suggesting
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  captions for new products and photos based on The Voice of the
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  customer, intelligently offering answers to consumer questions
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  based on the database of previously compiled answers to
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  similar questions, all in ways to just help our clients become
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  more effective. So a whole range of things, a
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  range of things under that that Harmony AI engine umbrella.
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  Well, I, I've got to be honest, I wasn't expecting that in terms
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  of, and I'm hoping this is, I've got the right term.
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  It's like social listening on steroids, right?
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  You, you, you are absolutely bringing that invisible
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  narrative that's going to allow me to execute faster and, and
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  more effectively with my dollars that I'm spending to make sure
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  that I'm getting a return on that.
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  I've got 2 questions that I'd like to ask you.
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  And because of time, I'll let let you decide which one you
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  answer or if you want to answer both of them.
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  I just want to be respectful to your time.
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  The first one is about sustainability and ethical
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  consumerism. I don't know how much of A Gen
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  Z, Gen X thing that is or it's a societal thing, but I'll be
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  curious in your opinion. And the thing that I'd really
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  like to know is about the future of where you see the industry of
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  this marketplace, where it's going.
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  So they're the two questions. OK, she's true.
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  Let me start with the sustainability question.
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  I, I think, I mean, everybody cares more now than ever before.
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  76% of American literally say they consider a company's
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  commitment to sustainability and ethical practises is really
• 16:28
  believe it or not. And so it's important that
• 16:30
  brands are transparent about really their sourcing and their
• 16:33
  manufacturing practises and, and accurately promote the
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  authenticity of that to their customers.
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  So how can we help like ratings and reviews actually help reduce
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  return rates, for example, which is incredibly unsustainable,
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  right? Because you're making, you're
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  helping a shopper make a more confident and informed purchase
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  in the 1st place. Through sentiment analysis,
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  which I mentioned, we could pick up any thoughts consumers offer
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  you on sustainability and suggest those either for your
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  marketing or for product improvement.
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  And through Content Coach, as I mentioned, we can help consumers
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  write reviews where we nudge the consumer to talk if it's
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  important and relevant about sustainability practises, not in
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  terms of what to say, but just that that might be a category of
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  what they will offer in the review.
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  Maybe, you know, talking about, say, biodegradable packaging or
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  something like that. So, So definitely important,
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  probably more important. Yeah, we're seeing in Gen Z, but
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  really important to the majority of say, folks in the US where we
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  not just going to surprise me the world terms of the future of
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  the industry. I mean, you know, you'll see
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  shopping for our customers is becoming more complicated,
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  right? It used used to be you went to
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  Google, you search for a product, you went to the
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  retailer's website or the brand's website and you made a
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  purchase. Now there are more and more
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  places to discover products from social media platforms to
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  commerce clouds to your brand side to the retailer side, to
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  new technology marketplaces, not just like say Walmart's
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  marketplace, but like DoorDash, for example, sells products now
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  doesn't just deliver food. So the amount of places where
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  you have people discovering and buying your product is vastly
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  more diversified and complicated and marketers have to try and
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  manage all of that and and it will increase.
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  But in order to succeed, you have to be where prop where
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  consumers are aggregating and and looking to discover
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  products. So we see that and we're really,
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  really building a platform for the future where the puck is
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  going, which is a more social shopping world.
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  I love it Keith, this is actually been a really for me, a
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  fascinating and eye opening interview into the world of UGC
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  and how you know you can actually do social listening
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  almost to find that needle in a haystack, which is very
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  difficult to do. Thank you so much for giving up
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  your time and being with us today.
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  It's been a great pleasure, Alex.
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  Thanks so much.