Marketing is experiencing an AI reckoning

0:02Melissa Daniels:Join us for the Modern Retail Marketing Summit taking place April 20th through 22nd in Huntington Beach, California. Brand leaders from Thrive Market, Coterie, PacSun, and many others will dive into how they're navigating a marketing landscape that's changing quicker than ever. This annual summit will equip you with the knowledge, strategies, and connections you need through our one-on-one meetings, working groups, casual networking, and more. Don't wait. We're offering$200 off with the promo code SUMMIT2026, no spaces. Again, that's SUMMIT2026, no spaces. Go to modernretail.co slash marketing summit to learn more and secure your pass.

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1:03Melissa Daniels:Hello and welcome to the Modern Retail Podcast, our show that covers the ways the retail industry is changing and modernizing. I'm Special Projects Editor Melissa Daniels. Today, I'm joined by Gabby Barco and Anna Hensel. How's it going?

1:18Gabriela Barkho:Good. Excited to be back on the podcast. Yeah, welcome back. I'm excited.

1:23Melissa Daniels:Yes, we have our original trio is back in action. So behind the scenes at Modern Retail, our team has been preparing a lot for our upcoming Modern Retail Marketing Summit. And one thing that's emerging and that we're diving deep into is this challenge that marketers are facing today around how AI is changing the discovery journey. People are finding new ways to use AI to figure out what their products are, and it's kind of disrupting a lot of traditional practices. Basically, one of my biggest takeaways is that AI is forcing marketers to adapt, but the level at which they do it can really vary.

2:04Melissa Daniels:And there's sort of a cost associated with some of these changes. So the first thing I wanted to get into from both of your perspectives is just some of the ways that you're seeing marketers use AI. right now? You know, is this more of a behind-the-scenes workflow thing for creative uses? What are some of the common themes you're seeing? Ana, let's start with some of what you've seen.

2:28Gabriela Barkho:Yeah. So I think the first point that I would make is I think pretty much every marketer today is using AI in some sense, mostly because these big tech companies like Meta and Google have built a lot of AI features into their existing tools. So if you are a marketer who is running ads on Facebook, like you're using some of Meta's AI capabilities, whether you explicitly opt in or not. So that's the first point I would make. And I think that it's just, you know, how are marketers using AI? Everybody's kind of in a state right now where they're trying to figure it out. You know, I talk to some marketers who are in like group chats or discords or slacks where they're talking to other CMOs about here's this new tool I tried.

3:24Gabriela Barkho:Here's what I liked. Here's what I didn't like. So everybody's trying to figure it out. And I think that it's everybody is just trying to figure out what is right for their brand, which we will get into later in the segment. So as part of my prep for this Modern Retail Marketing Summit, I've been asking a lot of our speakers, what are you really focused on in 2026? What are the big challenges you feel like marketers face right now? And so there's this one quote that I got from Kristen Brophy, who is SVP head of marketing at ThredUp. And here's how they're thinking about AI in 2026. She said, we're committed to an AI augmented creative workflow.

4:07Gabriela Barkho:So what that means is using technology to handle the heavy lifting of retouching and production, which then frees up our creative team to focus on high level brand strategy. So that's just one example of how one company is thinking about using AI.

4:24Anna Hensel:Yeah, I think to me, a big through line is still, you know, sort of visibility on the AI search engines, or I guess, GEO is really what it's becoming. I think for brands that spent years or even decades building out their websites, their social organic channels, to kind of have to go and really comb through every word and number, whatever it might be, to make sure this is the right info that is being fed into a lot of these engines. is, it's almost like starting over a little bit for some of them. But yeah, that's a big one. And then of course, sort of just like daily administrative tasks being relegated to AI, whether it's note-taking or yeah, any sort of handoffs, like that kind of thing with your team could be done a lot more efficiently with a lot of these new tools that are popping up.

5:26Gabriela Barkho:Yeah, that's a great point, because I think when people think of using AI for marketing, they think of maybe like the sexier stuff of like using it for creative, but marketers still have to take notes. They still have to do a lot of back end stuff. And that's also where we're seeing a lot of AI usage.

5:44Anna Hensel:Yeah, I mean, even just like on sexy things, like you said, Ana, where it's like you have to write up these weekly reports of your performance or your KPIs and you don't have to kind of go back and redo it every week. It can, you know, there's tools. I'm not tech savvy enough, but some marketers have mentioned, like, for example, Notebook on part of G Suite does it like it just lets you kind of pick back up from where you left off last week. that saves you a lot of time that I'm sure like maybe interns were doing that in the past. That's a different topic though.

6:21Melissa Daniels:Yeah. Gabby, I really like this idea you brought up of how brands are priming their websites for discovery. I feel like that was one of the sort of first themes that emerged when AI really became kind of table stakes across the industry. But when you think about just how many iterations of a product or a launch or a campaign that a brand might have on their website, and even if it's not linked, it still might be live being crawled somewhere. And all that then is like potential for misinformation or outdated information being surfaced as accurate, which, you know, from a user perspective is one of the biggest problems with AI, right, is the potential for being incorrectly informed.

7:06Melissa Daniels:And it just makes me think that for every time we think there's a step toward, you know, progress, or this makes things easier, this makes things more efficient, there might be like a million things you have to do on the back end to make sure that what is still coming through is accurate and ready. None of this is instantaneous as it sounds. Yeah.

7:29Anna Hensel:Yeah. A good example is at Digiday, we just had our AI strategies event. here in New York. And we had a lot of different retail brands that did panels throughout the day. And beauty brands specifically deal with this a lot because they have a lot of content about ingredients and clinical efficacy and reformulations over the years. Sometimes a product has gone through maybe three, four different packaging over the decades. And sometimes there's, you know, outdated info or imagery that is being shuffled over. So yeah, we had Hillary Hutchison, who's the CMO of Rock Skin Care, which is this legacy drugstore brand that's been around for a really long time.

8:15Anna Hensel:They are really trying to sort of go back and optimize their website by using AI tools to like test and refine their product detail pages. She said, you know, we're leveraging partners that help us A, B test everything from BDP images to media performance. Yeah, the biggest thing is sort of ensuring that all of that product data is as accurate and has an authoritative voice and visibility when it is being sort of surfaced on chat GPT or Gemini or whatnot. Because that could really, you know, reroute or redirect that person to a completely different page if it's not, let's say, the ingredient that they're looking for.

9:01Gabriela Barkho:Yeah, it's such a fascinating challenge. There is so much info that goes into feeding these AI algorithms, and there's no one right answer in terms of how to approach it as a brand. But I feel like everyone is just focused on feeding as much information as possible and accurate information about their product.

9:23Melissa Daniels:Right, right. I want to return to something that Anna mentioned at the top of this conversation. And that's this idea that there are platforms like Meta and Google that are embedding AI tools into, you know, the ad suites that we've all grown up knowing and loving, right? Or knowing and loathing in some cases. And I almost feel like that's important to pay attention to because you almost can't avoid it then. Like if you want to advertise on Meta, you will be presented with these tools. And so I almost wonder if it's a situation where some marketers feel like they're kind of being like forced into learning the new ways that these technologies are going to be used in their day-to-day processes.

10:09Melissa Daniels:Do you have any more insights on what folks said about how those AI tools are working for them right now?

10:14Gabriela Barkho:So years ago, Meta started releasing these tools under this umbrella of Meta Advantage Plus. And basically, they're these AI-powered tools that might automate who an ad is served to. It will make suggestions in terms of how you can improve a campaign. and a lot of marketers I've talked to have seen success with those tools and now it's just kind of part of the process of running ads on Meta. And Meta and Google and all these other companies have now started to roll out AI tools designed to generate creative. That gets a little more dicey. I think not all brands are using those yet. But yeah, by and large, when we talk about, I don't know, what things keeps marketers up at night related to AI, I actually would say it doesn't really have anything to do with Meta and Google.

11:17Gabriela Barkho:They might have other issues with them about other things, but nothing really about AI that I've heard recently.

11:22Melissa Daniels:I think the context there is interesting because it reminds me that a lot of this sort of predictive technology has been around longer than, you know, AI and agentic AI and LLM and all these new buzzwords and jargon were in our vernacular, right? A lot of this stuff was already sort of happening. And now we're just kind of using it at a different scale and more openly and seeing it implemented across a lot of different parts. Staying with that point of using AI and creative, I'm curious if either of you have talked to brands that have done this successfully or, you know, could speak to how and where brands decide to use AI in their creative.

12:02Melissa Daniels:Because from my perspective, it's kind of quite controversial.

12:08Gabriela Barkho:Yeah, I thought, Gabby, again, at this AI strategies event you went to, I know that you listened in on a keynote where I thought that brand had a pretty interesting perspective on how they use AI. I think it was a betting brand, Bullen Branch.

12:24Anna Hensel:Yes. So they are. And yes, I agree, Melissa. I feel like it's still sort of a touchy or polarizing topic, whether you should be generating creatives or campaigns with with AI. But I think one sort of maybe sweet spot I'm seeing kind of emerge is like using it to almost like get the ball rolling or start to ideate, you know, let's say a design or a campaign. For example, like mocking up an image before you assign it to a designer or before you like book an entire photo shoot just to see what it maybe will have an idea of what it will look like. Like one thing that Ball and Branch does, which I think, you know, I feel like we hear a lot about AI slop.

13:12Anna Hensel:So I thought this was a good take on it, which is like they use AI generated imagery when it's like very obviously these like surrealist, like it's almost like Tim Burton-esque imagery. You know, like, you know that like these shopping bags or, you know, big flowers, like oversized flowers are pretty much fake or they're not grounded in reality. So like, that's kind of a fun way to maybe pad out your creatives. But then when it comes to like, a real family that's like gathering or jumping on the bed, like those are influencers or like real people that they actually have a photo shoot with. So I think there's a way to kind of balance that.

13:52Anna Hensel:But yeah, it's definitely controversial because it's so easy to just use it for a shortcut and save a lot of money on, you know, these creatives.

14:02Gabriela Barkho:Yeah, one other example I bring up, which isn't quite about using AI creative in ads, but it's more about how do you talk about AI to your customers? Um, so ThredUp has released a lot of AI tools over the past, um, year or so, you know, and it's things like, okay, if you have, if you want to find, like, a fall outfit, maybe you talk to ThredUp's AI bot to kind of narrow down, um, or to help you find things that kind of fit the look that you're looking for, right? So Kristen from ThredUp said, you know, kind of one of the key things they're thinking about is that we need to show customers that our new AI tools make finding exactly what they want or inspiring them to try something new, effortless and fun.

14:57Gabriela Barkho:So basically, like, we need to help customers understand that these AI tools are fun because I feel like there is a lot of fear of AI out there right now.

15:07Anna Hensel:Yeah, one of like the ones that's become almost a classic at this point is using it to help out your CX team or your customer service team, which is like using the, and if you've shopped anywhere the last few years, you know, there's chatbots popping up when you're shopping on a website. And so, you know, you can kind of debate how, you know, how effective they are. But the idea is that they kind of act like a triage system to kind of filter through things to your customer service team. And they can also act like sort of, you know, a data collection hub for customer inquiries, right? For example, if you're a skincare brand and right now everyone's being asked about peptides and you're getting that a lot before somebody gets to the customer service team, then that might be something to look at.

15:57Anna Hensel:And then maybe tweak your language, for example, to better reflect that.

16:02Melissa Daniels:Yeah, the chatbot part is interesting. And I think there's sort of two schools of thought on that where people just want to get answers as quickly as possible. And in general, an AI chatbot can do that because people are going to commonly have some of the same questions around sizing or return processes or when something's going to launch or discounts or whatever. And the AI can handle like the vast majority of those on its own. But on the flip side of that, like you kind of know when you're talking to a bot and it can be a little demoralizing from a customer experience standpoint. But from a brand standpoint, I totally understand why you would want to handle inquiries that way, right?

16:47Melissa Daniels:Because you're handling the most amount of customer inquiries as efficiently as possible. There's a company I talked to recently called Camp Snap that make these lovely screen-free cameras meant for kids, but anybody who wants to take photos without having, you know, apps and notifications dinging off when you're trying to do photography. And they have a team of just five people, and they're able to stay really slim operationally because they have AI doing a lot of that front-end customer service stuff. And then they have about one and a half, you know, roles devoted to customer service for higher level inquiries.

17:25They also told me that they did a lot of AI for their marketing from kind of like a campaign preparation, you know, figuring out where to run ads, when to run ads, who to target.

17:38Melissa Daniels:Some of the things we touched on that's available in the meta and Google tools and the way that's been able to help them just be way more efficient and just save time.

17:49Gabriela Barkho:Yeah, that's really interesting. And yeah, I think that AI presents a lot of opportunities for companies to build leaner teams than they maybe have in the past, which is going to it's going to be really interesting to follow how like new brands grow in this AI era. Totally. But one thing I wanted to bring up, again, this is related to like, as I'm asking marketers, what do you feel like is the biggest challenge marketers face today? A lot of the things that they're thinking about related to AI, I feel like are more almost philosophical and like, what is the role of a marketer in the AI era, which I think is super interesting.

18:31Gabriela Barkho:Um, so again, in talking to some people as we're planning this summit, one thing that different, multiple different people brought up is that like, it's almost harder to build trust with customers in this AI era. And like, what do we mean by that? I feel like it actually exacerbates challenges that have been existing for a long time, which is just that there's more competition on the market than ever before. Customers are doing more research, especially while inflation is still high, to make sure that they're buying the right product. And so there's been this obsession over the past few years, which should be like standard retail practice, but just like in staying close to the customer, making sure that you really understand your customer.

19:21Gabriela Barkho:And I feel like a lot of companies are thinking right now about like, how do you keep that North Star, especially as you outsource more things to AI? Because like you can just trust AI to, you know, automate your ad campaigns or like look to AI to decide what creative to use for an ad campaign. But if you're not talking to your customers about what actually convinces them to buy, then I feel like you're losing a lot of key insight. So yeah, there were just a couple of quotes I had from people I talked to recently who I feel like do an interesting job of explaining this problem. Um, so Amina Pasha, who is the chief marketing officer at Thrive Market, she says, we're at an inflection point with AI platforms like ChatGPT and communities like Reddit are reshaping how trust is built and how decisions are made.

20:16Gabriela Barkho:The consumer bar has never been higher. Our job is to ensure that every interaction across products, content, service, and technology not only meets member expectations, but consistently exceeds them and builds trust. And then Lauren Sherman, who's the chief marketing officer at Ruggable, her perspective is that today's marketers have to learn AI inside and out. We need to understand how it can automate processes, remove friction, reduce costs, and help teams move faster and smarter. but at the same time, we need to remain the heartbeat of the company. Our guidance as marketers must also allow for a brand to stand in its humanity, showcase its taste and unique point of view so we can resonate and relate with our human consumer.

21:02Gabriela Barkho:So it's just a very interesting problem that marketers face right now. Like there's no one right answer, but I feel like when I talk to marketers, like they want to talk to other marketers about how are you approaching this problem?