What I Learned at Shoptalk

My takeaways from Shoptalk ? All things Gen Z and AI.

Craig Brommers summed up Gen Z pretty well: they want to be unique, but also the same. (How exactly does that work?!). As chief marketing officer for American Eagle Outfitters Inc. , he has a bird’s eye view into how this generation ticks. They’re all in on social and streaming, and AEO is too, finding shoppable TV success with teen-friendly shows like “The Summer I Turned Pretty” on Prime Video & Amazon MGM Studios and “My Summer with the Walter Boys” on Netflix . Viewers can click right through to a curated AEO fashion store inspired by the shows while they’re watching, and purchase right at the point of inspiration. I’m not sure if Craig is even joking when he says AEO isn’t just in the retail business, it’s in the entertainment business.

Forget your catalog mailer or Times Square billboard (except for That Calvin Klein ad)—Gen Z looks to the culture, especially social media, for cues about fashion and lifestyle. The Z Suite members Niki Maragos, MA and Olivia Meyer say TikTok is their go-to for new fashion tips and beauty ideas while Reddit, Inc. is the front door to menswear trends for Clay Lute . It’s amazing to hear that 22-year-olds automatically start their search on TikTok the way Gen X and the rest of us default to (what else?) Google. But even though Olivia might find an interesting red lipstick on TikTok, she'll still go check it out in store to make sure the shade is just right.

You already know that AI is the retail theme of 2024. Jenn Volk of H&M believes AI will help the retailer test, learn and react even faster, finally delivering on the personalization promise the industry has been talking about for years. Williams-Sonoma, Inc. ’s Sameer Hassan says we’re still in the very early innings of seeing what Gen AI can do, but pair that with robotics, machine learning and NLP (natural language processing) and we’ll see the real magic of generative artificial intelligence.

An informal audience poll at our jam-packed press breakfast powered by Meta and hosted by Karin Tracy shows that most people think Gen AI isn’t overhyped or underhyped. The hype is right where it should be, and this industry is already putting it to work. How? Using it to identify fraud, take the grunt work out of tasks like image resizing, enhance analytics, and make commerce feel more like a one-to-one interaction. Gen AI is a force multiplier if you use it properly. 

But AI isn’t perfect. Niki mentioned that she appreciates how brands are trying to increase diverse representation with more skin tones and body shapes by using AI-generated digital models online. The downside to this?: stealing jobs from flesh-and-blood models. 

We’ve got some work to do before we figure out how to get the best from AI without doing some harm along the way. Let's keep this conversation going at the next Shoptalk - see you there!