EP346 - Victoria's Secret & Co. EVP Digital, Brian Seewald

WEBVTT

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Yeah, that idea of the assistant, we debate a lot. There's been a lot of implementations,

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of AI shopping assistants around retail, and we love them,

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but we think we want to put it in the right place within the experience where

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the intent is not just AI for AI's sake, AI to solve a problem in real time

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that the customer would have on that place in their experience.

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And so that's our UX leaders all the time, like preaching, like we don't want

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a solution looking for a problem. Like we really need to make sure we put this

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in all the right places because it's also expensive.

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And so we need to be mindful. Like I want it to be in the place where you need

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it and it's going to drive the right result for us.

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And it's not going to be upside down economically for us.

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Welcome to the Jason and scot show. Your source for the latest news and trends

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in the e-commerce industry.

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Featuring host Jason Retail Geek Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer of

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Publicis and scot Wingo.

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Co-founder and CEO of ReFiBuy.

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Here are Jason and scot.

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Welcome to the Jason and scot Show. I'm Jason Retail Geek Goldberg,

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and I'm here with our co-host, scot Wingo.

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Hey, Jason, and welcome back. Jason and scot Show listeners and viewers.

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We have an exciting show. Both of you, yes, all of them. We appreciate you watching,

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the super fans watching on both formats to make sure you get,

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it's kind of like IMAX versus normal with Odyssey kind of a vibe.

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We're recording live at NRF Nexus. Jason has a audio curse. We are next to the

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elevator room. So usually we're near a train station, audio room.

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Let's see, we've been near jackhammers. That's always a favorite when we're

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in New York. We always get the jackhammers.

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But this time, Mr. Murphy dealt up the elevator room. So yeah.

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So that's the production qualities

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we shoot for here, trying to keep it as professional as possible.

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We should have had this episode sponsored by the Otis company.

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Oh, yeah. Otis, if you're listening or watching, we're available. Yeah, absolutely.

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Joining us today is Brian Seewald. He is the EVP of digital at Victoria's Secret & Co.

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Brian, thanks for taking time out of the show to come chat with us today. Yeah, thank you guys.

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Long, long time listener to

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the pod and sort of bucket listener for me to be asked to be a part of it.

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I don't know what that says about my overall bucket list. You have a very long

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bucket list. We're like number 200 on the bucket list. Seriously,

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super grateful to be here. Thanks, guys. Thanks. Thanks for coming. We appreciate it.

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The pleasure is all ours. I'm picturing your bucket is shaped like a funnel

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with some very trivial bucket items at the top, like us, and then some really

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aspirational stuff at the bottom.

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Yeah, we've got like, you know, I still need to run a marathon.

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I still need to climb Malcolm Majaro because I just met somebody this morning with that already.

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So you've got some things on there that, you know, we're looking for aspirations later.

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Yeah, fair enough. So Brian, as you well know, we always start out our shows with guests by kind of.

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Introducing the audience to your background. In your case, Victoria's Secret

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is in the retail capital of the world in Columbus, Ohio, and you have had the

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opportunity to be involved in several historic brands from the Columbus area.

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So can you kind of walk us through how you got here?

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Yeah, sure thing. So I am a lifelong retailer at this point.

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I came out of college, shout out to Penn State, my Nittany Lions,

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with all intents of being in finance. That was my goal.

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And I interned in finance when I was in college and that did not resonate with

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me and I didn't know what I was going to do.

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And so I just started going to information sessions and I went to one for a

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company, which is no longer with us.

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But, and they were explaining their training program. You got to be part of

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a buying office and you essentially, the way they sold it was you were running

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your own business without the risk of running your own business.

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You got to be part of everything, picking the product, helping with pricing

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strategies, what got advertised, walk down to the selling floor and work with

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the customer directly. and,

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It was, it appealed to me immediately. And so I joined Coffin's department stores

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in Pittsburgh. That was my first job.

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Met my girlfriend, then fiance, now my wife, there. And then we moved to Columbus,

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Ohio shortly thereafter to work for Abercrombie & Pitch.

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The first half of my career was all in the merchandising and planning side.

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And I joke about it, but it's somewhat serious. I was not a good merchant.

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No one should have ever allowed me to be selecting a product.

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That is not my skill set when i moved into the merchandise planning side i found

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my footing definitely more so

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times in the finance piece so you kind of like get both yeah a little bit yeah

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and then you fast forward like 15 years it was 2007 2008 and the limited

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had just launched a website with a really small skeleton crew sort of off in

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the corner getting the work done and they were like well now we need someone

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to run this business brian do you want to take a shot at it,

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And I went home and I talked to my wife and I was like, oh, I don't know.

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I don't know what I was thinking. I was like, oh, I don't know if this internet

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thing is going to work in 2007, 2008, of course.

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And ultimately I took that and it was the best decision of my entire career.

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Like I fell in love with this space immediately.

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The ability to see customer behavior in real time.

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I think for me, the retail drug is every day I get to look at sales.

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And then every day I get to change something.

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To make it a better experience, to sell more, whatever the, whatever the goal

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is of that, of that next day.

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And I can't think of another business where you get a report card every day left. Yeah.

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So then you go into digital. And it's actionable. Like you can actually just

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change stuff. Yeah. And stores changing something has got the,

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you know, if you're lucky six month.

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Yeah. And then it's like, there's so many things you've changed.

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It's hard to pick the variable out. And what's incredible in digital is you can see it.

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Now I can see it. It's the minute I can, And we can understand what's happening

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in a given day and make a change if we need to. We try not to do that every day.

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But that was what got me when I started in retail. And it's what keeps me in it every day.

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That's the thing that I love the most. And so I started in digital at the limited

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and then just progressively moved through, you know.

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Increasing areas of responsibility in digital at a couple of different companies,

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bringing me to BS and co for the last two and a half years.

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It's an incredibly exciting time to be at VS & Co.

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Hilary, who's our CEO, always says, the world is ready for us to unapologetically be us again.

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And so if you're following our brand, looking at our marketing and seeing what

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we're doing, you'll see that we are definitely embracing the brands and what makes the brands great.

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And I think our goal, we always say it is about.

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Celebrating sexy about sparking joy and about inspiring confidence and try to

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remind ourselves every day, are we doing those things?

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And it has been, it's been a wild ride. It's been super fun and watching our

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customers react to what we're doing.

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In addition to the fact that the business has been strong and everything,

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if you're following our earnings releases, you see that, but just watching the

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customer reaction to what we're doing has been just really, really enjoyable.

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Yeah, I'm a CNBC junkie, and they've been calling you guys out as really pulling

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away from the pack of kind of that same size retailer. Here lately,

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you've just been really supersizing the growth, and so the customers are responding to it. Yeah.

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My boss, who's Elizabeth Price, our chief marketing officer,

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she always says, think monumental, not incremental.

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And so we're trying to take bigger swings, do bigger things.

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I think our fashion show is a great example of that. I don't know all of what's

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in store for our fashion show this year, but what I do know is bigger.

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Everything's going to be bigger, scale, more exciting, and we're really jazzed about that.

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So, A, every time I see those earnings calls, my main thought is,

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thank God you negotiated such a big equity position as part of your compensation. Of course, yeah.

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Being a friend of Brian is my main retirement strategy. So I'm excited about that.

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I'm also imagining the very beginning of your career, I'm laughing because I

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feel like a week before you took that job at Limited, I guarantee you there

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was a board meeting at The Limited where someone's like, no one's ever going to buy clothes online.

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Well, and I remember because I launched my first mobile site at The Limited,

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and my wife, who's usually somewhat forward thinking, looked at me and said,

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Brian, no one's ever going to shop for clothes on their phone.

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And so I sit here now with 90% of our traffic being through mobile and sometimes

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higher. and I'm like, yeah.

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She gets a lot right if she got that one wrong. It was hard to envision before

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the smartphone that it could happen.

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Yeah. And even with the iPhone 1, it was kind of like, oh, this screen is so small.

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It's come such a long way. Yeah. As everyone knows, like, I'm old and miss every

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trend. But, like, I launched my first mobile site.

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It was a thing at the time called a WAP browser. So it actually wasn't graphical.

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It was a pure text-based browser. And I, like, that was the hill I was going

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to die on is the world's going to start shopping on these mobile devices.

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And everyone thought I was silly and they were universally correct because no

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one ever did shop on a WAP browser.

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So I do think predicting the future is important, but the timing is also important

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because I unfortunately wasted a lot of my employer's money building this WAP

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e-commerce experience.

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Well, there are hits and misses, right? So like voice commerce,

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when Alexa first came out, everyone's going to shop through voice.

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And I remember at the time saying to my executive I said, I don't think so.

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I don't think people are going to be walking around with their phone yelling

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things into it while they're in a store environment, like trying to find the

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thing that they bought on, that they wanted, that they saw online.

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So we built a voice interface in our app at the time.

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And when we looked at the analytics, I think there were like 80 uses of it.

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And I think I was probably like 77 of it.

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And so that was like the one that did, one of the ones that didn't happen.

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So within your role tell us so i understand evp you report to the cmo and then the digital so

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what all what all is in your role what are some of the things that aren't your

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role and do you cut across victoria's secret has a bunch of brands that's the

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and co so there's pink and then i'm sure there's a bunch i don't know about

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what what are all the brands and and how do you cut across this yeah so first

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of all it's really it's victoria's secret

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it's pink and then it's beauty so each one of those as their own distinct brand

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president and leadership team.

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But then I, my role is, spans across all of them.

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And so I'm trying to provide the best digital customer experience across all

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of the brands. So it's kind of an agency type model.

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Each brand can have some nuances. Victoria's Secret may want something a little different.

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We're definitely trying to differentiate pink, irreverent, youthful,

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fun versus Victoria's which is a bit more sophisticated.

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And then Pewdie is really more of a deep integration into each brand. We think.

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We find we have the best success when you're going to find the beauty while

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you're shopping with the other things and sort of integrating the whole experience.

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So the brands, Victoria's Secret and Pink, are distinct.

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We do find there's quite a lot of shopping overlap, which is something that we talk a lot about.

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In terms of the functions I'm responsible for, we have digital merchandising,

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which is really content strategy.

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Everything from content strategy and that engagement strategy all the way to

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how the products on our pages are sequenced to maximize for conversion and the

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best shopping experience.

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We have digital operations and analytics, which is very near and dear to my heart.

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We talk a lot about the foundation that we have built, where there are gaps

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and how we build the future of everything that is happening around us.

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And I'm sure we'll get into all the AI things and all of that,

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but data and how we manage data, it becomes more important every day.

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And then we have digital product, user experience. One of my colleagues is here

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with me this week at Nexus from our, who leads our product team, and then customer care.

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So those are the areas I have direct responsibility for.

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But I collaborate deeply across the organization with merchandise planning and

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merchandising, of course, because.

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At the end of the day, our job, above and beyond everything else,

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is to take the assortment strategy and the product strategy that our brand presidents,

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through their merchandising teams, devise and bring back to life online.

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That's it. Like, in its simplest form, it's all we're trying to do is represent

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the brand the best we can.

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We want to sell a lot of stuff. But I'm also cognizant that the website and

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the app are the biggest marketing vehicles in the company.

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It's not just about the sales. It's about the pre-shopping experience for stores.

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It's about elevating the brand.

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And so we think about all of those things too. So I have deep collaboration

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with merchandising, with merchandise planning.

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Then of course with creative digital marketing, I wouldn't live without digital

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marketing partners that are driving traffic and they do that splendidly.

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So like that's a huge partnership we have. So I've gotten used to it.

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Like over the years, I think digital is structured a little differently every different company.

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But the one thing that's always been true is you have to collaborate across

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the entire organization to get stuff done.

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And we don't do things like you'll remember, like in your early days,

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put in a new search engine or do this or do that, like things that you did on

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the website. I didn't really need to bring in partners from all over the organization.

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Those days were over. Like everything we do impacts everybody.

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And so it's a much more complex world we live in.

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I want to go back to one of the earlier things you said about the cadence and,

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one of the things that you mentioned appealed to you that I totally agree is

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sort of the real-time nature, that you can get a quick snapshot of results and

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then you can make quick corrections.

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But I do find in every organization I go into, there kind of is a different

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cadence, right? So pre-digital, it was like a monthly cadence.

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Walmart was an outlier, they had a weekly meeting.

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Because it was hard to get data for last week's performance.

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And then of course it took a long time to act on that data.

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So I'm kind of curious, what is

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the, like is it truly a daily cadence and does it have to change at all?

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Like I could imagine around holiday or around the fashion show,

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or you know, there could be some tent poles where your cadence might change.

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And I'm just curious, like what's a regular week at FBS and company?

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It really ebbs and flows.

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We do not touch everything every day, but we have big launch moments.

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So yesterday was a very sexy launch for our Victoria's Secret brand.

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And so that entails the activation of tons of new product and a lot of content

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around that product, which manifests itself on our site, on our app,

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but also in social, in marketing, in our stores.

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It's a very coordinated effort.

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Those probably, you know, we have those across the brands. Those are a few of those moments a month.

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Outside of those moments, obviously there's tactical adjustments that you're making.

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I don't think we change things every day, but we certainly discuss what we're

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seeing in the business every day so that we can be aware and make changes if we need to.

00:15:09.890 --> 00:15:15.510
But we optimize the site, we have teams that are optimizing the site in a very

00:15:15.510 --> 00:15:18.000
normal routine way every day.

00:15:18.230 --> 00:15:22.280
Every day we are looking at the sequencing of our pages. Every day we are making

00:15:22.280 --> 00:15:25.370
sure that if certain face outs are sold out, the work placing those are things

00:15:25.370 --> 00:15:28.270
that we are still in stock in. Like nuts and bolts stuff.

00:15:28.630 --> 00:15:32.580
And we and the team are merchandising, our operations teams,

00:15:32.580 --> 00:15:36.340
our execution teams are extremely good at that part of the business. Yeah.

00:15:36.960 --> 00:15:41.920
And are there a subset of like KPIs or metrics that you think are most valuable?

00:15:41.920 --> 00:15:46.210
Like are there, like what, what are the, the, your two or three favorite metrics

00:15:46.210 --> 00:15:52.840
that you like to? Yeah, I mean, it's a bit mundane, but I live and breathe conversion.

00:15:53.360 --> 00:15:58.580
And so what's interesting about that in the new world we live in now,

00:15:58.740 --> 00:16:03.050
where traffic is coming from so many different places, where for us,

00:16:03.560 --> 00:16:07.000
new customer acquisition is such a huge priority.

00:16:07.000 --> 00:16:09.820
We are in the midst of turning around these brands.

00:16:10.220 --> 00:16:14.230
Getting to know new customers is a huge piece of that. And there was a time

00:16:14.510 --> 00:16:19.600
when one out of every three bras bought in the United States was bought through

00:16:19.600 --> 00:16:21.830
Victoria's Secret. That is like domination.

00:16:23.310 --> 00:16:27.730
That's what we want to get back to. And so conversion is probably the metric

00:16:27.730 --> 00:16:31.450
I pay attention to the most. But now that we are doing all of these things to

00:16:31.450 --> 00:16:34.610
drive more new customers, you have to cut that up way differently.

00:16:35.170 --> 00:16:39.260
I have an expectation of app conversion that is very high because the app is

00:16:39.260 --> 00:16:40.730
where most of our loyal customers are.

00:16:41.450 --> 00:16:44.790
And once you've downloaded our app and you're actually willing to devote phone

00:16:44.790 --> 00:16:48.800
space to it, you're invested. And so I have a certain expectation there.

00:16:49.160 --> 00:16:51.540
Mobile web, that's a lower conversion

00:16:51.540 --> 00:16:54.540
rate. That's where we're getting the looky-loos and the new customers.

00:16:55.820 --> 00:16:59.600
What our analytics team calls our single page slackers. People that come to

00:16:59.600 --> 00:17:03.390
the site and they bounce. They got curious, something they saw on Instagram

00:17:03.390 --> 00:17:04.740
or on TikTok and they came in.

00:17:05.099 --> 00:17:09.460
And so our expectations for conversion in a world where you're throwing traffic

00:17:09.460 --> 00:17:12.330
so differently all the time is now different.

00:17:12.440 --> 00:17:16.980
And so I have to sort of, each week we discuss like, what was our traffic level?

00:17:16.980 --> 00:17:19.050
What was the quality of that traffic?

00:17:19.330 --> 00:17:22.040
What does that mean for conversion? Are we happy? Are we sad?

00:17:22.700 --> 00:17:26.460
Where are the opportunities to make it better? So those things I would say are

00:17:26.460 --> 00:17:31.420
the most important things. I think the sneaky API we don't talk enough about

00:17:31.420 --> 00:17:32.690
is just our average order value.

00:17:33.010 --> 00:17:39.140
Because there are times when that helps or hurts the overall economics of the operation.

00:17:39.460 --> 00:17:41.670
And that's probably one we need to focus more on.

00:17:42.140 --> 00:17:45.440
Yeah, I love that. And it's funny, we're here at Interim Nexus this week.

00:17:45.440 --> 00:17:48.840
And it's actually, I've been involved in several hallway conversations around

00:17:48.840 --> 00:17:51.720
conversion rate, right? Because obviously, super important metric.

00:17:51.720 --> 00:17:54.540
Everyone wants to benchmark themselves on conversion rate.

00:17:54.960 --> 00:18:00.020
And the dilemma for your point is like there was a world in which digital was

00:18:00.020 --> 00:18:03.849
a small silo within a big organization and only certain kind of people came

00:18:03.849 --> 00:18:04.970
through the digital funnel.

00:18:05.619 --> 00:18:10.750
Today, it probably influences 100% of purchases in your company. Right.

00:18:11.030 --> 00:18:16.390
And so not everyone comes into our digital ecosystem at the same place in the

00:18:16.390 --> 00:18:20.250
purchase cycle. They don't all have the same purchase intent.

00:18:20.520 --> 00:18:26.840
And so the super basic definition of conversion rate, like orders over traffic.

00:18:27.940 --> 00:18:31.900
Kind of can obfuscate a lot of what's going on.

00:18:32.240 --> 00:18:35.680
That traffic that you get direct from TikTok may have very different buying

00:18:35.680 --> 00:18:39.700
intent than the minuscule amount of traffic you get direct from the bots.

00:18:40.359 --> 00:18:44.710
I like to needle scot with the agentic traffic, which I'm sure we'll get to.

00:18:45.810 --> 00:18:51.710
And that might be very different than the conversion rate you might expect from your app, right?

00:18:51.710 --> 00:18:54.160
And so I actually have run into a couple of people on the show that talk about

00:18:54.160 --> 00:18:56.849
how, oh, internally, we have a different metric.

00:18:56.849 --> 00:19:02.320
We have what we call real conversion rate, where they try to normalize for some,

00:19:02.320 --> 00:19:06.700
like, you know, focus on the conversion rate of people they think actually are

00:19:06.700 --> 00:19:09.130
at the bottom of funnel versus top of funnel.

00:19:09.130 --> 00:19:13.040
And I'm curious, like, do you guys, the problem with that real conversion rate

00:19:13.040 --> 00:19:16.450
is then when eMarketer publishes a benchmark, your boss comes to you and goes,

00:19:16.740 --> 00:19:19.880
how come our conversion rate is so much different than the industry standard?

00:19:19.880 --> 00:19:22.810
So I'm curious, like, do you guys go through any of that? We do.

00:19:22.810 --> 00:19:28.599
We do. We have, I mean, as we should, we have tons of conversations on this topic specifically.

00:19:29.240 --> 00:19:32.369
And that's where this concept that our analytics team worked up of having like

00:19:32.369 --> 00:19:34.619
a traffic quality index came to life.

00:19:35.090 --> 00:19:38.010
Because the problem they were trying to solve was...

00:19:39.020 --> 00:19:42.859
Basically validating that the conversion was expected or not expected.

00:19:42.859 --> 00:19:45.619
Like what, what, what ebbs and flows did we see and why?

00:19:45.619 --> 00:19:48.770
I mean, I've talked to a couple of colleagues here and you'll ask that question

00:19:48.770 --> 00:19:52.800
and they'll say, well, what does conversion even mean anymore in this new world?

00:19:52.800 --> 00:19:56.550
And I was like, well, I'm not there yet. I still think it's an important metric

00:19:56.550 --> 00:20:00.340
that we have to track all the time, but I do think you can't,

00:20:00.730 --> 00:20:03.740
you can't track it accurately unless you get on the covers and look at how it's

00:20:03.740 --> 00:20:07.310
so like, we look at it by every marketing channel, paid social versus organic

00:20:07.310 --> 00:20:09.609
social versus direct app traffic, etc, etc.

00:20:10.690 --> 00:20:13.450
And we have different expectations for each of those things.

00:20:13.670 --> 00:20:18.570
Our promotional cadence, not surprisingly, has a massive impact on conversion.

00:20:18.910 --> 00:20:23.119
We ran a flash sale a couple weeks ago. The conversion rate for those six hours

00:20:23.540 --> 00:20:25.109
is understandably incredible.

00:20:25.240 --> 00:20:28.690
You move back to a completely full price moment, that conversion rate.

00:20:28.690 --> 00:20:32.230
So we have different expectations for every different part of the business.

00:20:32.480 --> 00:20:37.310
I don't see us ever not talking about conversion, but I do think that we're

00:20:37.310 --> 00:20:39.619
going to continue to get more granular in how we're looking at it.

00:20:40.300 --> 00:20:45.300
And my job is to just, you know, be able to best explain it to all of my partners,

00:20:45.609 --> 00:20:50.090
because in a world where traffic is, you know, always up, which is luckily what

00:20:50.090 --> 00:20:51.500
we are. I'm knocking on wood for you.

00:20:51.690 --> 00:20:55.710
And where conversion is therefore down a little, you've got to,

00:20:56.010 --> 00:20:57.330
you've got to talk about that. Yeah.

00:20:57.490 --> 00:21:00.410
I wouldn't want to see that if I were an executive at a company.

00:21:00.410 --> 00:21:06.330
So my job is partly to optimize it, but also partly to help educate all of our

00:21:06.330 --> 00:21:08.010
teams in terms of what's happening. Yeah.

00:21:08.150 --> 00:21:12.450
I love that idea of looking at conversion rate through the lens of traffic quality.

00:21:13.770 --> 00:21:18.480
Humorously, I'll get invited to a lot of companies for a short-term initiative.

00:21:18.720 --> 00:21:21.010
Jason, we've got a conversion rate problem. You've got to help us improve our

00:21:21.010 --> 00:21:24.310
conversion rate. And my universal answer is great news.

00:21:24.480 --> 00:21:28.220
I absolutely know how to improve your conversion rate. We just have to cut your traffic way down.

00:21:29.119 --> 00:21:34.130
Yeah, exactly. You've never wanted to do that. Or you can add a 70% off promotion.

00:21:34.310 --> 00:21:35.740
I'll get your conversion rate up.

00:21:36.920 --> 00:21:41.520
My go-to is I only allow people who have purchased eight times in the last month

00:21:41.520 --> 00:21:45.010
onto the site because they turn out to be quite loyal.

00:21:45.340 --> 00:21:48.710
But the loyalty thing brings me to another super interesting thing where I feel

00:21:48.710 --> 00:21:52.780
like you guys are sort of bucking the trend or leading the market.

00:21:53.180 --> 00:21:56.630
You alluded to your app and the high engagement you have on your app.

00:21:57.000 --> 00:22:02.349
And I want to learn from people that are in a vertical brand that have high

00:22:02.349 --> 00:22:06.240
engagement on the app. Because my general advice is I feel like us as an industry,

00:22:06.869 --> 00:22:11.980
over focus on the apps because they're lovely, but they're really hard.

00:22:12.210 --> 00:22:17.760
Like the real estate on the phone is super competitive and the overall industry

00:22:17.760 --> 00:22:19.359
statistics on apps are daunting.

00:22:19.359 --> 00:22:24.000
Like, you know, the vast majority of apps that get downloaded get abandoned

00:22:24.000 --> 00:22:27.440
in the first 30 days and you have like a 95% mortality rate.

00:22:27.440 --> 00:22:30.140
And so you're running lots of companies where it's a vanity thing.

00:22:30.140 --> 00:22:32.970
And they spent a bunch of money on the app, high-fived themselves,

00:22:32.970 --> 00:22:36.470
and maybe their success criteria is downloads of the app, which again,

00:22:36.470 --> 00:22:40.000
doesn't help you with 95%, never use it after the first month.

00:22:40.950 --> 00:22:44.720
And so I'm always, you know, I always encourage people, the app is a valuable

00:22:44.720 --> 00:22:48.990
part of the ecosystem, but it's a loyalty play. It's a tool for the customers

00:22:48.990 --> 00:22:50.460
that most already love you.

00:22:50.740 --> 00:22:53.690
It's not a customer acquisition strategy.

00:22:54.349 --> 00:22:56.660
I'm not going to be surprised if you tell me that in your case,

00:22:56.660 --> 00:22:58.240
I'm at least partially wrong.

00:22:58.900 --> 00:23:04.940
It is. I am often surprised at the amount of newish customers that download

00:23:04.940 --> 00:23:07.609
the app as fast as they do. That is unexpected.

00:23:08.410 --> 00:23:12.750
And we've had, and you're right. Like we, we, we look at our app downloads every

00:23:12.750 --> 00:23:19.210
week, last year, we had a huge initiative to essentially like the rally and

00:23:19.210 --> 00:23:21.040
cry was we're going to double our app downloads.

00:23:21.330 --> 00:23:23.950
And when you say something like that, you might not double it,

00:23:23.950 --> 00:23:26.140
but we certainly got a huge increase in them.

00:23:26.550 --> 00:23:32.790
The magic of that is app push notifications, which is like what included, not free, right?

00:23:33.000 --> 00:23:36.050
Like it's, but it's a great way to communicate to our customers.

00:23:36.290 --> 00:23:38.109
We run app exclusive events.

00:23:38.430 --> 00:23:40.820
We run app exclusive product. We

00:23:40.820 --> 00:23:45.369
do early access on the pink app and the Victoria's Secret app or product.

00:23:45.369 --> 00:23:49.359
So, you know, if we do a certain drop of pre-fashion, your pre-fashion show

00:23:49.510 --> 00:23:54.220
product drops available on the app first. So there's a reason the loyalty program

00:23:54.220 --> 00:23:57.280
is one reason to have the app. It's the best manifestation of the program.

00:23:57.810 --> 00:24:01.030
The other is you're going to get access to things that other people aren't.

00:24:01.300 --> 00:24:06.730
And so that the growth of our app has been, I think, you know.

00:24:07.550 --> 00:24:09.560
We definitely supercharged it by,

00:24:10.190 --> 00:24:14.430
these strategies. Um, I mean, we had our, our head of pink merchandising,

00:24:14.430 --> 00:24:18.140
um, you know, it's like everything takes a village. Our analytics team observed

00:24:18.140 --> 00:24:23.160
that one of our competitors was getting huge traffic spikes with drops on a certain item.

00:24:23.420 --> 00:24:27.660
Our pink president was like, well, pink VP of merchandising was like, we should try that.

00:24:28.270 --> 00:24:32.369
Thus was born this thing we call pink when they drops. And it,

00:24:32.369 --> 00:24:35.950
it sometime, and it's, it's that that's available on the site and the app,

00:24:35.950 --> 00:24:39.690
but again, you're going to get notified first in the app. You're going to get to know about it more.

00:24:40.160 --> 00:24:43.970
And that started as this tiny little hack where like, we're trying to figure

00:24:43.970 --> 00:24:47.780
out how to pull forward product to becoming like a huge part of our business.

00:24:48.400 --> 00:24:52.060
I, what I love is that entrepreneurial mentality of like, start small,

00:24:52.460 --> 00:24:54.980
blow something up into a real part of your business. But again,

00:24:54.980 --> 00:24:56.250
it's just another reason why

00:24:56.250 --> 00:25:01.260
I think this idea of having our app gives you real utility. I love that.

00:25:01.619 --> 00:25:04.820
And I, right before the show started, scot mentioned that, that the Wednesday

00:25:04.820 --> 00:25:07.820
drops were what brought him into the pink app back up. So that,

00:25:08.380 --> 00:25:09.580
that, that makes total sense.

00:25:09.770 --> 00:25:12.330
The one cautionary thing I would say in that story is you got to be careful

00:25:12.330 --> 00:25:16.150
about letting those business users know that their ideas were smart and really

00:25:16.150 --> 00:25:18.460
worked because you're kind of empowering them.

00:25:18.680 --> 00:25:24.080
Absolutely. Danger. Danger. Yeah. This is how Jason got so many words in this title. Yeah.

00:25:25.780 --> 00:25:30.030
Yeah. Not complimenting his colleagues. Yeah. scot's jumping into the bit to get to AI.

00:25:30.030 --> 00:25:34.380
I want to make him wait one more topic because digital is awesome.

00:25:34.380 --> 00:25:37.690
Obviously we're all sort of digital first people, I think at this point,

00:25:38.480 --> 00:25:43.440
you still have a huge asset in the stores.

00:25:44.020 --> 00:25:48.620
And the thing I'm really interested in is all of those customers that in my

00:25:48.620 --> 00:25:52.360
mind are now digital first and that app is the homepage is the front of their

00:25:52.360 --> 00:25:58.020
experience, not that store have higher expectations when they go into the store.

00:25:58.020 --> 00:26:03.370
And so I'm always curious how you think about digital in store or how you think about.

00:26:04.600 --> 00:26:07.910
Making those customers happy that have gotten used to the cool amenities you

00:26:07.910 --> 00:26:11.690
have in store. And I'm even curious, is that in your scope?

00:26:12.010 --> 00:26:16.220
Because in a lot of organizations, that's still kind of silent. Yeah, it is.

00:26:16.890 --> 00:26:21.070
The omni-channel experiences, buy and pick up in store, as an example,

00:26:21.070 --> 00:26:22.570
are within our scope. Yeah.

00:26:22.850 --> 00:26:28.440
I would say, you had said earlier, like 100% of transactions in store are probably

00:26:28.440 --> 00:26:31.280
influenced by digital. We always use 80% or whatever. Sure. You're right,

00:26:31.280 --> 00:26:34.080
though. It's probably 100% at this point. The partnership between Becky,

00:26:34.080 --> 00:26:37.590
who heads our stores, and me is incredibly strong. Right hand, left hand.

00:26:37.800 --> 00:26:42.960
And we are always sort of trying to make sure that one channel is backing up the other channel.

00:26:43.280 --> 00:26:47.800
I know every time we have a new big floor set going on and a new launch that

00:26:47.800 --> 00:26:51.290
is coordinated on the site as well, I like to go to the store and I stand in

00:26:51.290 --> 00:26:54.250
front and I look at the app and I look at the mobile web and I say like,

00:26:54.530 --> 00:26:57.830
if I walked in the store and I was, are we telling the same story?

00:26:57.830 --> 00:27:02.120
Is it consistent? If I was a customer, does it feel like one brand,

00:27:02.350 --> 00:27:04.960
not a digital brand and a different store brand?

00:27:05.380 --> 00:27:08.250
And most of the time I would give us pretty good marks on that,

00:27:08.250 --> 00:27:12.250
on that consistency. I think it's critical. I think customers have to feel that

00:27:12.250 --> 00:27:13.210
when they walk into the store.

00:27:13.570 --> 00:27:19.090
Our associates are adept at helping serve customers that can't find their size

00:27:19.090 --> 00:27:20.500
in a store and having it shipped to them.

00:27:20.820 --> 00:27:22.690
They have embraced that skill.

00:27:23.620 --> 00:27:26.740
You hear a lot about companies. This was probably more than the early days of

00:27:26.740 --> 00:27:29.730
Omnichannel where there was a bit of friction between the store teams,

00:27:29.730 --> 00:27:32.010
the digital teams, as these capabilities were being built out.

00:27:32.630 --> 00:27:36.410
It's a tribute to Becky's leadership of that store's organization. We don't have that.

00:27:36.710 --> 00:27:39.930
Our stores embrace digital, we embrace the stores.

00:27:40.150 --> 00:27:45.540
And I think that for us to succeed, that has to happen. The magic of our business,

00:27:46.210 --> 00:27:49.750
is in a bra fitting experience, specifically in our stores.

00:27:51.200 --> 00:27:56.050
Trust me when I tell you that we have tried everything to recreate that experience digitally.

00:27:56.430 --> 00:28:00.200
We have done the quizzes, we have done the body scanning tools,

00:28:00.480 --> 00:28:02.360
we have done all of these things.

00:28:02.560 --> 00:28:05.990
You can't replace the idea of being able to talk to somebody,

00:28:06.290 --> 00:28:09.320
you know, I just, I am on the DLP one, I lost all this weight,

00:28:09.700 --> 00:28:14.340
I just had a kid, I've put on weight and I'm not happy about it, but I need a new bra.

00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:18.500
That experience is magical when someone can give you confidence in person.

00:28:19.160 --> 00:28:22.960
I think, you know, we can talk about AI all you want. I still don't think you

00:28:22.960 --> 00:28:26.320
can recreate the magic of the store experience completely online.

00:28:26.320 --> 00:28:30.710
We're going to get as close as we can, but that store experience will always

00:28:30.710 --> 00:28:33.100
be incredibly important as these brands move forward.

00:28:33.390 --> 00:28:35.990
That's super interesting because I'm curious, like, do you think...

00:28:37.110 --> 00:28:41.600
The state of the tech just isn't there yet? Or do you think it's something more,

00:28:42.240 --> 00:28:50.190
innate in humans that there's a trust symbol in having that live expert in front of you give you advice?

00:28:50.190 --> 00:28:54.220
And even if you got the exact same advice from a robot, it wouldn't land in

00:28:54.220 --> 00:28:57.770
the same way. I think it's both of those things. I think using the body scanning

00:28:57.770 --> 00:29:02.660
tool as an example, you have to put your phone at a certain angle and point

00:29:02.660 --> 00:29:04.230
it a certain way at yourself.

00:29:04.930 --> 00:29:07.930
Any experience that has the words in it and now take your shirt off,

00:29:08.410 --> 00:29:13.080
i'm out like i'm not doing that so it's a pretty high threshold to like yeah

00:29:13.080 --> 00:29:16.430
standing in front of a camera in your underwear yeah like that so they're just

00:29:16.430 --> 00:29:19.750
there hasn't yet been and then there's like the virtual try-on option which

00:29:20.180 --> 00:29:21.760
i've seen a bunch of those those are cool,

00:29:22.200 --> 00:29:25.130
ish but again our product,

00:29:25.760 --> 00:29:28.980
fits right up against your skin it's the thing you're wearing closest to you

00:29:28.980 --> 00:29:32.360
i i don't think that the virtual we'll try on stuff has come to a place yet,

00:29:33.050 --> 00:29:36.720
generative AI presents some interesting options in terms of being able to say,

00:29:36.720 --> 00:29:39.880
well, I want to see the skin tone and this body shape and this fresh shape and

00:29:40.110 --> 00:29:42.240
show me like what might look like me.

00:29:42.240 --> 00:29:45.230
So we've tossed those things around. We haven't acted on that yet.

00:29:45.490 --> 00:29:49.880
So I think, I think we may get there eventually, but I still don't think it's

00:29:49.880 --> 00:29:52.430
the same thing as our store experience. And I still think that,

00:29:53.040 --> 00:29:57.840
For us, that will always be incredibly important. The good news is once they

00:29:57.840 --> 00:30:00.170
do it, it's in the app, and then they can just reorder online.

00:30:00.440 --> 00:30:04.170
Yeah, well, the beautiful thing of going to our store and ordering,

00:30:04.170 --> 00:30:10.420
and now you know that you're a 34C, then we can replenish you all day long online.

00:30:10.420 --> 00:30:14.930
And then that's the beautiful way in which our stores and our digital work together.

00:30:15.280 --> 00:30:20.000
Sometimes we have people on the show where their digital and their store inventory

00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:23.270
is very close to each other. And then other times they blow out the digital

00:30:23.270 --> 00:30:28.030
shelf, looking at styles, not worrying about sizes, where I'm sure you've got a lot.

00:30:29.300 --> 00:30:32.180
The shelf is probably very powerful for the size dimensions.

00:30:33.060 --> 00:30:35.210
How much delta do you guys have between the store and online?

00:30:35.620 --> 00:30:38.680
Right now, I'd say not a ton.

00:30:38.680 --> 00:30:43.940
We have some online exclusives. That is an area where all three of our brand

00:30:43.940 --> 00:30:49.100
presidents are now exploring and driving forward. And so we are going to start

00:30:49.100 --> 00:30:52.180
having more online explosives in the future than what we have today.

00:30:53.780 --> 00:30:58.000
It will not be like an endless item. It will not just be assortment for assortment's

00:30:58.000 --> 00:30:59.160
sake. It will be targeted.

00:30:59.460 --> 00:31:04.350
So for example, in Victoria's Secret, we love our pink and white heritage stripe.

00:31:04.810 --> 00:31:08.710
All day long online, I would do more of that. I know that in pink,

00:31:08.710 --> 00:31:10.570
it's going to be a lot about apparel.

00:31:10.900 --> 00:31:16.310
I think in beauty, we have an opportunity in terms of bringing back an archive

00:31:16.310 --> 00:31:20.120
sense, to things our customers loved, you know, 10, 15 years ago.

00:31:20.430 --> 00:31:24.540
I also am not smart enough to know how hard all that is.

00:31:25.700 --> 00:31:29.510
And so I think there are opportunities, but we have to make sure that they also

00:31:29.510 --> 00:31:32.870
make sense. There are minimums, there are lead times that I,

00:31:32.870 --> 00:31:36.510
you know, I am vaguely aware of, but not really good at that stuff.

00:31:36.810 --> 00:31:41.800
And so I think our merchant teams are doing everything they can in a targeted

00:31:41.800 --> 00:31:44.280
way to make our assortments more effective online.

00:31:45.300 --> 00:31:49.040
So that's a good framing of what you do and all the different pieces that you

00:31:49.040 --> 00:31:53.010
touch. What are some of the big initiatives that you're looking at probably going into?

00:31:53.330 --> 00:31:56.830
Do you guys think much about holiday or are you already more thinking about Valentine's Day?

00:31:57.400 --> 00:32:01.190
We're all over. Which is a bigger holiday? We are literally always talking about

00:32:01.190 --> 00:32:06.010
all four seasons at once. The context switching that comes with the day-to-day job.

00:32:06.470 --> 00:32:11.340
I would say right now I am absolutely 1,000% fashion show obsessed.

00:32:11.640 --> 00:32:15.140
I want to make sure we execute it.

00:32:15.600 --> 00:32:18.830
Two years in a row, I have been, and I tell this story all the time,

00:32:18.830 --> 00:32:22.480
2024 was the first time we brought the fashion show back.

00:32:22.630 --> 00:32:25.790
And I remember, I'm lucky in that I got to attend the show.

00:32:26.710 --> 00:32:32.610
And I was so incredibly proud of the digital experience and the shopping experience

00:32:32.610 --> 00:32:37.470
that we built to go with the show, this whole shop the show experience and literally

00:32:37.470 --> 00:32:39.920
watch the sales. And this is why I love what I do.

00:32:40.560 --> 00:32:44.020
You literally like the show ended and like everyone's hugging and congratulating.

00:32:44.020 --> 00:32:46.920
I'm sitting there on my phone. And I'm like looking at numbers because I'm so

00:32:46.920 --> 00:32:48.540
curious. I'm like, what was the tracking?

00:32:48.920 --> 00:32:51.770
It's like they sell huge traffic and people are buying. And I was like,

00:32:51.770 --> 00:32:54.260
oh my God, this is amazing. So fast forward to 2025.

00:32:54.780 --> 00:32:57.720
And I was like, oh, we got to do that again. And we did. And so there's a lot

00:32:57.720 --> 00:33:01.630
of pressure on it, but also like I'm really excited about it.

00:33:01.630 --> 00:33:05.820
And then you add the element this year of TikTok shop, which is new for us.

00:33:05.820 --> 00:33:09.600
And so I think that could be a really unique fashion show moment as well,

00:33:09.600 --> 00:33:14.300
depending on how we, how we decide to handle all of that. So I think fashion

00:33:14.300 --> 00:33:18.480
show is very, very much top of mind in terms of like overall initiatives.

00:33:18.860 --> 00:33:23.040
You know, we try very, very hard to make sure everything we do ladders up to

00:33:23.040 --> 00:33:26.240
this path to potential, which is something we talk about in all of our earnings calls.

00:33:26.610 --> 00:33:30.220
That's our corporate strategy. It really is. It's about supercharging bras.

00:33:30.590 --> 00:33:35.250
When we win in bras, we win like full stop. It is about recommitting to the

00:33:35.250 --> 00:33:38.480
growth of pink and the way I think about that is, you

00:33:38.880 --> 00:33:42.020
how we make sure that they feel like distinct experiences online.

00:33:42.020 --> 00:33:44.740
We have tabs, we have one website, we have one checkout.

00:33:45.330 --> 00:33:48.710
And yet I want to make sure when you're on pink, it really feels like pink.

00:33:48.710 --> 00:33:52.040
And when you're on VS, it really feels like VS. And we have more we can do there.

00:33:52.820 --> 00:33:56.280
Fueling growth in our beauty business, of course, is a priority and how we integrate

00:33:56.280 --> 00:33:57.240
that with everything else.

00:33:57.700 --> 00:34:02.440
And then the last one is like evolving how we go to market. I always interpret

00:34:02.440 --> 00:34:04.540
that as how do I continue to elevate these brands?

00:34:05.100 --> 00:34:09.610
So if you transfer that to like what's important digitally, we've sort of translated

00:34:09.610 --> 00:34:14.170
it into you know our digital speak so the first thing is really about what we

00:34:14.170 --> 00:34:15.449
call shopkeeper mentality,

00:34:15.940 --> 00:34:20.910
optimize that site and that app all the time embrace all the paths potential

00:34:20.910 --> 00:34:24.670
pieces so like bras gets extra attention it has a there's a there's a product

00:34:24.670 --> 00:34:29.180
page ai driven assistant on bras no other category has that on the site right now

00:34:29.580 --> 00:34:34.880
we tested our personalization model for sequencing in bras and in panties like so,

00:34:35.520 --> 00:34:39.180
we try and give that category we actually love as much as we can.

00:34:39.780 --> 00:34:44.050
Emotion over promotion is something we talk about consistently.

00:34:45.210 --> 00:34:50.210
That goes back to evolving how we go to market. We need to personalize more.

00:34:50.210 --> 00:34:53.560
Jason, you and I, I feel like we've been talking about this for years and years

00:34:53.560 --> 00:34:55.280
and years, the whole industry has. Sure.

00:34:55.440 --> 00:34:58.560
We're very good at personalizing product recommendations.

00:34:58.710 --> 00:35:02.699
We're very good. We're getting good at personalizing the sequencing on the pages,

00:35:03.010 --> 00:35:05.550
using models for that and AI for that.

00:35:06.370 --> 00:35:10.160
We're not as good at personalizing around offers and discounts and we need to

00:35:10.160 --> 00:35:11.840
reduce our reliance on those tools.

00:35:12.150 --> 00:35:15.449
I think every retailer wants to do that. We know it's a multi-year journey.

00:35:15.650 --> 00:35:18.340
We know it's going to require a lot of technology advances.

00:35:18.770 --> 00:35:24.160
Super, super excited about the idea of being able to pull that off in the next couple of years.

00:35:24.480 --> 00:35:27.530
As a joint digital marketing team, like there's a ton of passion around that.

00:35:28.330 --> 00:35:32.480
Maybe one of the newer things, be where our customer is and that is TikTok shop,

00:35:32.480 --> 00:35:38.640
which I'm very bullish on. That is Gentic AI. So Google UCP is something we're working on.

00:35:39.290 --> 00:35:43.610
We would have been working on OpenAI, but that was a bit of a false start, as we all know.

00:35:44.430 --> 00:35:48.620
But I also think about discoverability piece, like we're going to be in all

00:35:48.620 --> 00:35:51.480
of these places and we're going to try and do it faster than Victoria's Secret

00:35:51.480 --> 00:35:52.910
Company traditionally did.

00:35:53.190 --> 00:35:56.660
Not because I think there's some avalanche sales coming from these places,

00:35:57.199 --> 00:36:00.030
but because we have to be where the customers are.

00:36:00.260 --> 00:36:04.420
And I think the discoverability piece is massive, massive for us.

00:36:04.680 --> 00:36:09.400
And that traffic while still small, growing fast, but still small in absolute

00:36:09.400 --> 00:36:10.739
terms, that's what's coming.

00:36:10.739 --> 00:36:15.670
Uh, and so being where our customer is is something we talk a ton about,

00:36:15.670 --> 00:36:21.460
and then this one is, it may sound boring, but strengthening our foundation,

00:36:21.670 --> 00:36:25.360
product information management, modernizing our content processes.

00:36:25.360 --> 00:36:31.410
We are about to be flooded with content, whether it's TikTok or all of our other marketing programs.

00:36:31.719 --> 00:36:35.590
The amount of content in this new creator economy that's available to us is huge.

00:36:35.969 --> 00:36:39.330
And how we manage that content. We have to have better processes,

00:36:39.330 --> 00:36:41.230
systems, tools, all of that stuff.

00:36:41.610 --> 00:36:47.190
So those are the things that in digital are the most near-end rewards right now.

00:36:47.350 --> 00:36:50.910
Yeah, the product thing's smart because people are under-investing in it.

00:36:51.010 --> 00:36:54.550
And it feels like you kind of talked about it as a little bit of a silo,

00:36:54.550 --> 00:36:57.150
but it will impact your AI stuff more than anything.

00:36:58.699 --> 00:37:03.140
Even your on-site bra AI will get smarter when you do that PIM piece.

00:37:03.460 --> 00:37:06.600
Because someone's asking it, which bra did this celebrity wear?

00:37:07.000 --> 00:37:10.380
And right now it may not know that because the PIM doesn't know that.

00:37:10.380 --> 00:37:15.620
Yeah, product information management for us is, again, it flies a little on the radar.

00:37:15.949 --> 00:37:21.239
Like I'm probably the most engaged leader because we know how important it is. You're right.

00:37:21.989 --> 00:37:25.640
It's going to enable so many of the experiences that we need to enable forward.

00:37:26.770 --> 00:37:30.280
I think it's super interesting because when people think about these AI discovery

00:37:30.280 --> 00:37:33.610
experiences, you want to quickly go to the chopper context.

00:37:34.290 --> 00:37:38.190
What's all the nuances about that chopper that are going to influence what product

00:37:38.190 --> 00:37:39.449
is best going to meet our needs?

00:37:39.980 --> 00:37:43.699
But we do forget the other side of that coin is we need way more context about

00:37:43.699 --> 00:37:45.580
the product than we traditionally have.

00:37:45.580 --> 00:37:49.380
And in your case, you're mostly vertically integrated. So you make a lot of

00:37:49.380 --> 00:37:51.080
the products you sell and so

00:37:51.510 --> 00:37:56.390
you are absolutely the canonical source of truth for how many ounces this garment

00:37:56.390 --> 00:38:01.040
weighs and how many millimeters this strap is and all of these things that,

00:38:01.510 --> 00:38:05.780
we would have never needed in a traditional brick and mortar merchandising system,

00:38:05.780 --> 00:38:08.030
but are very useful for the robot.

00:38:08.500 --> 00:38:12.090
Yeah. And when you, yeah, and we think about bra as like some of our competitors

00:38:12.090 --> 00:38:15.760
do the most incredible job of this. And we have an area of opportunity around

00:38:15.760 --> 00:38:17.180
overall content articles.

00:38:17.500 --> 00:38:22.760
They're not not because we think customer wants to read a ton of articles on our site but because,

00:38:23.320 --> 00:38:26.410
all the LLMs need to pick up that concept and a couple of our competitors have

00:38:26.410 --> 00:38:31.000
hundreds of articles on their site in their educational sections and we need

00:38:31.300 --> 00:38:34.910
we have a major initiative to get there we're just starting to like get get our,

00:38:35.430 --> 00:38:39.600
ducks in a row on like it's early days but we know that's shortcoming so we've

00:38:39.600 --> 00:38:43.500
got some of this like inventory feed blocking and tackling done now and now it's like,

00:38:44.030 --> 00:38:47.540
a laundry list of like a hundred things There isn't like.

00:38:48.150 --> 00:38:51.600
Well, the inventory feed was a little bit of a silver bullet and I don't get,

00:38:51.600 --> 00:38:55.280
you don't encounter a lot of those where I'm like, oh wow, that made a big difference right away.

00:38:55.280 --> 00:38:58.980
But the rest of these things is like little things, a million little things

00:38:58.980 --> 00:39:02.120
that we need to do to make sure that we are like, we're the number,

00:39:02.120 --> 00:39:04.320
we're number one in market share. We should be number one in this film.

00:39:04.320 --> 00:39:07.140
Like that is, my boss reminds me of that all the time. She's right.

00:39:07.489 --> 00:39:09.500
And we need to make sure that's happening.

00:39:10.630 --> 00:39:15.449
How about, can you say, my intuition is your pink brand would be getting a lot

00:39:15.449 --> 00:39:20.080
more agentic traffic because the Zillennials are adopting things a little bit

00:39:20.080 --> 00:39:24.330
ahead of the other groups and they're way more comfortable buying within the,

00:39:24.730 --> 00:39:28.280
at least discovering and not quite to the buy part of agentic commerce.

00:39:28.699 --> 00:39:30.940
Is that something you see? I would say...

00:39:32.960 --> 00:39:38.170
I'm not actually sure, but I would say our, I'll bet it's beauty actually.

00:39:38.170 --> 00:39:39.219
Yeah. Beauty is like way up.

00:39:39.320 --> 00:39:44.440
Probably getting the most of that traffic is absolutely dominating in the TikTok space,

00:39:44.730 --> 00:39:48.650
dominating in terms of ourselves, not dominating the TikTok landscape yet,

00:39:48.940 --> 00:39:54.350
but that is, I think beauty is the, is the area where we're going to see the most of that early days.

00:39:54.670 --> 00:39:58.699
I'm super curious about, about what we'll see from a TikTok perspective.

00:39:58.699 --> 00:40:02.500
Yes. Versus pink, but we've been so focused on the beauty piece of it right now.

00:40:02.719 --> 00:40:06.280
That we haven't gotten there. And now in the agentic piece, it would make sense

00:40:06.280 --> 00:40:09.830
to me that that younger consumer would be more comfortable shopping that way.

00:40:09.830 --> 00:40:13.980
Yeah, and you probably don't know this or can't say it, but we have within our

00:40:13.980 --> 00:40:17.790
customer base, and it's interesting, Adobe reports it converts traffic referral

00:40:17.790 --> 00:40:22.690
from Chachapiti and Gemini primarily, converts at 40% more. We see orders of

00:40:22.690 --> 00:40:23.739
magnitude higher than that.

00:40:24.930 --> 00:40:29.000
It's pretty interesting that to Jason's point, it is small, but it punches way

00:40:29.000 --> 00:40:31.739
above its weight if you were to rank channels by conversion.

00:40:31.930 --> 00:40:37.790
Yeah, I mean, I would concur. I would say like, it's a smaller level of traffic.

00:40:38.040 --> 00:40:40.380
We're very happy with how it converts to see it. It's high intent.

00:40:41.320 --> 00:40:47.400
And so that doesn't surprise us. And I know that that avalanche of traffic will

00:40:47.400 --> 00:40:51.320
come because this is how people, that's the new discovery. Yeah.

00:40:52.230 --> 00:40:56.360
The one reservation I always have about that, you guys are unquestionably right,

00:40:56.699 --> 00:41:01.930
but when I look at data from panels of users where we've instrumented users' whole digital life,

00:41:02.449 --> 00:41:08.870
what I've learned is we have no idea how big our agentic traffic already is, right?

00:41:08.870 --> 00:41:16.390
Because the happy path is not you use the robot, you click on a link, you go to a VS URL.

00:41:16.800 --> 00:41:18.810
The happy path is you use the robot.

00:41:19.510 --> 00:41:26.340
And you type one of the threads from the robot into Google and then cut like,

00:41:26.340 --> 00:41:31.150
and that is not attributed to the robot, but, you know. It's even worse than

00:41:31.150 --> 00:41:33.780
that. A lot of the direct traffic is not attributed either. Oh, 100%.

00:41:33.790 --> 00:41:36.590
Yeah. So if it comes from a mobile app or a desktop app right now,

00:41:36.989 --> 00:41:39.930
it's stripping off the UTM and the referrals.

00:41:39.930 --> 00:41:45.650
Yeah. At the moment, I feel like we have such poor understanding of those flows

00:41:45.650 --> 00:41:46.980
and it's so difficult to measure.

00:41:46.980 --> 00:41:53.080
Like, I encourage people not to get too laser focused on any of those individual

00:41:53.080 --> 00:41:55.949
signals because they're directional at best.

00:41:56.330 --> 00:41:59.989
We do suspect there is some muddiness in terms of traffic source right now.

00:41:59.989 --> 00:42:01.340
Like, I don't think I have.

00:42:01.640 --> 00:42:06.230
I have LRED, and I'm happy with what I can see, but I've always suspected that

00:42:06.420 --> 00:42:09.630
what I can see may not be 100% accurate right now. Yeah, if you have,

00:42:09.630 --> 00:42:14.760
depends on your analytics platform, but in GA4, we've helped people look for this pattern.

00:42:15.330 --> 00:42:19.449
And the way we detect it is a benchmark against a prior period.

00:42:19.449 --> 00:42:24.020
So we look at like January 25, and the signal is people that went right to a

00:42:24.020 --> 00:42:28.610
PDP and didn't pass through any of your website, which is very unusual.

00:42:28.610 --> 00:42:31.489
Like certainly maybe some of your customers bookmark something and go there,

00:42:31.489 --> 00:42:33.920
but we would catch that in the historic data.

00:42:34.160 --> 00:42:37.670
So if you look back in time and then compare today, the chart's up and to the

00:42:37.670 --> 00:42:41.250
right. And that's that dark, I call it dark agenteic commerce traffic,

00:42:41.250 --> 00:42:45.370
where they've gone all the way through and they're clicking and we're missing

00:42:45.370 --> 00:42:48.370
it, or to your point, they're circling back through somewhere else.

00:42:48.780 --> 00:42:51.050
It's always funny that we're in a world now where.

00:42:51.790 --> 00:42:57.610
My product person said this today, because he was using AI to generate articles

00:42:58.040 --> 00:43:01.860
that we could put on this site to get more traffic from AI.

00:43:01.860 --> 00:43:05.210
And he was like, it's not lost on me, the irony of this process that we are

00:43:05.210 --> 00:43:10.600
locked in. Like, it's just, there's a crazy fast pace of how we are trying to

00:43:10.600 --> 00:43:14.090
do all this. And if you really think about it, we're working for the AIs. Yes.

00:43:16.110 --> 00:43:19.210
And I welcome that robotic overworld that you're watching, yeah.

00:43:20.239 --> 00:43:25.580
It's super interesting. But even non-digital attribution, like I'll tell you

00:43:25.580 --> 00:43:27.940
a use case that I guarantee is happening in your world, right?

00:43:27.940 --> 00:43:33.900
They're girl dads, but there's some subset of families where the dad has to

00:43:33.900 --> 00:43:38.989
help his daughter pick her first bra and has no expertise, right?

00:43:38.989 --> 00:43:43.580
So they're going to have a much higher propensity to ask the robot for advice,

00:43:44.050 --> 00:43:46.540
and they're going to take that advice and then they're going to walk into a

00:43:46.540 --> 00:43:50.600
store, right? And we're at the moment we don't see that.

00:43:51.719 --> 00:43:56.640
To me, that's agentic commerce. That robot helped that dad figure out that he

00:43:56.640 --> 00:44:00.719
needed to go to Victoria's Secret when he otherwise would not have.

00:44:00.840 --> 00:44:07.190
Yeah, and that is always my internal battle. I've got the person on one shoulder

00:44:07.190 --> 00:44:13.230
saying, like, AI, go after it, agentic experiences, the agent's going to buy things for you.

00:44:13.690 --> 00:44:17.530
And then on the other shoulder is my wife sitting there who always says,

00:44:18.080 --> 00:44:20.910
have fun at work today, please don't ruin shopping.

00:44:21.600 --> 00:44:28.469
And so I am reminded almost daily that shopping is still an emotional experience

00:44:28.469 --> 00:44:33.100
it can very much be a social experience and for us like,

00:44:33.790 --> 00:44:37.730
I'm just I'm beyond curious about where this all goes and is somebody gonna

00:44:37.730 --> 00:44:43.160
need a you know a black bra for a dress for their honeymoon and get on chat GBT,

00:44:43.860 --> 00:44:46.690
and buy the first one that gets served up I don't think so yeah I think they're

00:44:46.690 --> 00:44:48.410
gonna They're gonna be like, oh, that's great.

00:44:48.920 --> 00:44:53.160
Let me go to victoriasecret.com and see what other options they have.

00:44:53.160 --> 00:44:57.000
I remember back at NRF Big Show, there were those that were like looking way

00:44:57.000 --> 00:45:01.250
forward and saying agents are gonna replace your websites and your apps.

00:45:02.969 --> 00:45:06.230
I, I don't want to sound contrarian or not forward-looking. I just don't see

00:45:06.230 --> 00:45:08.800
it at least not in the first next few years.

00:45:09.199 --> 00:45:12.520
And I think that there's a, there's a thrill of the hunt.

00:45:12.850 --> 00:45:17.550
There's a adrenaline thing from shopping and buying all the things that you

00:45:17.550 --> 00:45:22.590
want that, that I think will, will last and we'll still be there.

00:45:22.590 --> 00:45:26.270
Even when AI takes over a portion of this. Now you're making tacos. Great.

00:45:27.090 --> 00:45:32.010
Cat GPT or Google Gemini all day. I get it. But for clothing and fashion and

00:45:32.010 --> 00:45:33.239
things like that, I think they're still up.

00:45:33.690 --> 00:45:37.190
Yeah, I think there's a spectrum and there's highly considered purchases and

00:45:37.190 --> 00:45:40.570
there's new consideration and categories and all these things where the robot

00:45:40.570 --> 00:45:44.780
might be an assistant, but it's not going to be the front of stage.

00:45:44.780 --> 00:45:47.160
And then there's auto replenishment. Right.

00:45:47.310 --> 00:45:53.510
And so, yeah, you know, you probably are on the more discovery and and reconsideration

00:45:53.510 --> 00:45:58.360
than you are on the on the replenishment side. Yeah, that idea of the assistant, we debate a lot.

00:45:58.510 --> 00:46:02.460
There's been a lot of implementations of AI shopping assistants,

00:46:02.710 --> 00:46:07.199
you know, around retail. And we love them, but we think we want to put it in

00:46:07.199 --> 00:46:12.410
the right place within the experience where the intent is there. Sure. Not just like...

00:46:13.930 --> 00:46:17.760
Not AI for AI's sake, AI to solve a problem in real time the customer would

00:46:17.760 --> 00:46:19.570
have on that place in their experience.

00:46:19.840 --> 00:46:24.610
And so that's our UX leaders all the time, like preaching, like we don't want

00:46:24.610 --> 00:46:28.000
a solution looking for a problem. Like we really need to make sure we put this

00:46:28.000 --> 00:46:29.930
in all the right places because it's also expensive.

00:46:30.810 --> 00:46:34.210
And so we need to be mindful. Like I want it to be in the place where you need

00:46:34.210 --> 00:46:38.780
it and it's going to drive the right result for us and it's not gonna be upside

00:46:38.780 --> 00:46:40.140
down economically for us.

00:46:40.360 --> 00:46:43.850
Yeah, well, it's certainly working for you because you guys are on a great run.

00:46:43.850 --> 00:46:45.630
You're way outperforming the market.

00:46:46.010 --> 00:46:48.680
And we're coming to the end of our a lot of time. But, Brian,

00:46:48.680 --> 00:46:52.900
super grateful for you coming and sitting down with us and sharing some of your

00:46:52.900 --> 00:46:56.670
insights with our listeners and our two viewers.

00:46:56.820 --> 00:46:58.930
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for taking time out of the conference.

00:46:59.640 --> 00:47:03.110
I've seen you post on LinkedIn. Is that the best place for folks to follow kind

00:47:03.110 --> 00:47:05.610
of your tho ught leadership in this space? Yeah, absolutely.

00:47:06.090 --> 00:47:09.030
I should post more than I do. You're busy. You've got some things going on.

00:47:09.050 --> 00:47:12.510
Typically a lot of like when I want to congratulate teams on something or celebrate

00:47:12.510 --> 00:47:14.280
a win, that's the place that I go.

00:47:14.620 --> 00:47:17.570
But yeah, that's a great place to follow me. Absolutely. And thank you guys

00:47:17.570 --> 00:47:21.690
for allowing me the time to chat and to be a part of this. I really appreciate

00:47:21.690 --> 00:47:25.960
it. Absolutely. Yeah, we're thrilled to have you. And until next time, happy commercing.

00:47:27.760 --> 00:47:32.130
You've been listening to The Jason and scot Show. For all the latest news and

00:47:32.130 --> 00:47:37.360
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00:47:37.360 --> 00:47:39.180
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