EP349 - Personalization's Big Moment with Google Shopping's Nicole Netland
Recorded live from the Retail Club AI Festival in Huntington Beach, Jason and Scot sit down with Nicole Netland, head of design and research at Google Shopping, fresh off her main-stage session. Nicole brings a rare vantage point: years of retail experience at Amazon, Target, and Best Buy, and now a team that designs shopping experiences across Search, AI Mode, Gemini, and YouTube.
The conversation starts with personalization, a topic Nicole admits had been "a little bit sleepy" until now. Context changes everything: AI Mode queries are three times longer than traditional search, and shoppers can now connect Gmail, Photos, and Calendar for results tailored to them. From there, the three dig into Universal Cart and why a cart is also a wish list, how AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Gemini fit together, and why Google believes the consumer pull is real this time after years of shopping experiments.
They also get into how AI is transforming the practice of UX research and design itself, and where multimodal shopping is headed as voice, text, images, and video blend into one experience. And yes, product data still matters. A lot.
Enjoy the show.
Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of ReFiBuy.AI and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.
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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, 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 your host, Jason Retail Geek Goldberg,
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And as usual, I'm here with your co-host, scot Wingo.
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Hey, Jason, and welcome back. Jason and scot at Show to Listeners.
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We are coming to you live from the Retail Club AI Festival in beautiful and
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sunny and not windy, thank goodness, because yesterday was hurricane gales, which was really rough.
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Which audio engineers do not love. No, these air things, wind-resistant things
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work, but not at past 30 miles an hour. Did you know they call them dead cats?
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I did not know they were called dead cats. Okay, thanks.
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You can always count on Jason for some fun, useless... Corverous facts. Yes.
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We have a special guest with us today. We have Nicole Netland.
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She is the head of design and research at Google Shopping. Nicole, welcome on the show.
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Super happy to be here. We're always excited to have Googlers on the show. So it's awesome.
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You're fresh off the main stage. Yeah. You like literally shot over here after
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your session, which we really appreciate.
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Yeah, it was really, it's really fun. I mean, how can you not love to sit on
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the beach and talk about shopping?
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I know. It's better. We're like, hmm, Vegas or Huntington Beach.
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Huntington Beach it is. Yeah. How often do you get beach sand in your shoes
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at a work event? I mean, I had to have a whole different type of a fit selection
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here for this conference. So it's pressing my limits. Yeah, yeah.
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I get to wear shorts, so it's awesome for me.
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Let's talk a little bit, give us a little bit of your background,
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how long you've been at Google, and what does the head of design and research
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at Google Shopping, what's that entail?
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I have been at Google about three and a half years. Our team has sort of a unique
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vantage point, and we get to work across many of the Google products.
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So we do research and design products that are part of CoreSearch,
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are part of Search AI Mode, Gemini.
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We have touch points with YouTube, et cetera. So we have this interesting sort
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of horizontal vantage point.
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Before my time at Google, I have a long stretch inside of retail,
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so really fun to be here. I was at Amazon, Target, Best Buy.
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So it's been really fun to sort of bring it all together. You always worked
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on that consumer research and how the consumer is using the product.
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Always on the design and research side, yep.
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And then so at, you know, I imagine doing this at Google Shopping,
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you're working with the team to figure out how are the products displayed?
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I call them product cards. I don't know if you guys call them that.
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How do the product cards display? How many? What happens when you go to the offer card?
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You kind of figure out, you and your team figure out where are all the pixels,
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what shows up when and that kind of thing.
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Yeah. And hopefully we're doing even a little bit more than that.
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Right. Hopefully we're fueling the team with the right insights around what
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should we be building? Like, what do customers want? What is what are some of
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those durable needs that we know are always true in retail? What are some of
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the new and emerging needs that we see?
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And how do we really build an experience that sort of meets them where they
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are in this pretty ever changing landscape?
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Hey, I just I just want to acknowledge because I work for a big advertising
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agency and 99 percent of what I talk about, like 10 people will ever see in the world. Right.
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But very rarely I'll be involved in something that like shows up in a national
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TV campaign or a Super Bowl ad. And you're like, oh, my God, that was cool. Yeah.
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You work for a bunch of retailers that had a lot of use. And like you probably
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got to tell your family, oh, I helped do that.
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But now at Google, it's a whole nother level. Like I think about like how many
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people use everything you do. It's a lot of pressure to make it right.
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Does that stress you out?
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You know, I don't want to think about the stress. I think, you know,
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one billion people come to us every day to do some sort of shopping.
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That is a lot of people. And so I think there's a you know, there's a certain
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responsibility you feel for sure. And to get that right, it's an opportunity,
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of course, in this moment. Like part of why I came here was to sort of,
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how do we shape this opportunity in a really unique way?
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So how does, I'm a software guy, how does it work?
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Like you guys run like software releases, like there's version 1000 of Google
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or you're always, I imagine at this point it's like what you could call continuous
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innovation where you're always,
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or is there like a project-based type of a way of this thing?
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Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it's a big place.
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You know, there's many different ways in which it can work. With a lot of cafeterias.
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With a lot of cafeterias. We love the food. They're very good cafeterias.
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Super thankful for that.
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You know, but I think, you know, there's many different types of work streams.
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So, of course, we have part of the job right now is we have,
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you know, a core part of our business is that just needs to continue to work
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and do great things, core search, right? And there's also many different work
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streams that are highly innovative, that are trying to look many chapters ahead.
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And so I think in terms of what the work looks like, it really depends on the
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type of product and focus that we're working on.
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But like most product teams, we work deeply with engineers. We work deeply with
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product managers and data science is a whole slew of people that helps bring
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to bear kind of the future of where we think things are headed.
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So you just gave a talk, walked us through some of the, unfortunately,
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we had a podcast, so we were not able to make it, but we're fresh.
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Yeah. So you have a fresh audience. I love it. I love it. What were some of
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the big points that you were hitting on on the main stage?
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I mean, I think it was funny because we talked about personalization,
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which, and I think in the opening sort of had this exchange in which I think
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I shared, like, it's been a little bit of a sleepy topic.
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I would say up until now, I feel like personalization is having the moment that
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we all wanted it to have. And sort of it's starting to finally being able to,
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you can see the beginnings of where it's really going to provide some value.
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And that comes down to the word you hear a lot right now, today,
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context, right? And sort of how are we providing that context?
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And so we think of, you know, it's coming in two different ways.
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One is quite familiar because there's been a lot of discussion about it,
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but just the context that people are naturally giving us, given the nature of
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the tools, they can just provide us more.
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In fact, in AI mode, we see three times longer queries than we do on traditional search.
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Keywords moving to sort of problem statements, if you will.
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But the second type, which is probably a little bit more emerging,
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is this ability for shoppers to be able to connect to other Google apps that
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they already trust and use, such as Gmail, Photos, Calendar.
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And that sort of rich context can provide, you know, a really frictionless way
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to sort of provide tailored experiences. So I shared on stage one of my favorite
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examples of that. Personally, I like to bike.
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I live in San Francisco. I needed a new bike rack for my car.
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Are we doing Mountain Street Hybrid? What are we doing? Gravel.
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Ooh, gravel. gravel, right? Very specifically gravel. Okay.
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So I went context, important context. It is actually important context.
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I, I went into AI mode and you know, I said, Hey, recommend a bike rack that would fit my car.
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And the response came back. I have chosen to connect to my other Google apps.
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It came back and it was incredibly tailored. It understood and reflected the
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make and model of my car that quickly narrowed the set of results that would fit.
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I mean, I've been in retail a long time. That would have been a many multi-step
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journey to figure out one. I don't remember the make and model my car, nor the year.
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I would have pulled out my insurance app to remind myself. I would have then
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typed it in. And I am many, many clicks and steps away from having a set of
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beginning recommendations.
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That's the type of sort of frictionless context that I'm pretty excited about.
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So personalization in Google, you said earlier, a billion people come every
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day to shop. Are there a billion different Googles that they experience?
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How personalized is everyone's Google slash Google shopping experience?
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It's a really good question. I think, you know, we think of personalization
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on both on top of the core personalization and the context that they're providing.
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So what do they need in that moment behaviorally?
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Hopefully we're meeting the mark of just understanding you well enough to get
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you the right level of personalization to match you with the product.
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Like that old matchmaker kind of statement of like, our job is to match people
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or shoppers with the perfect product for them.
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I'd be curious to get your read. So personalization is a double-edged sword
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for me. So I live in a world where people have been discussing it for a long
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time and it's been the promised future.
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And I tended to be annoyed.
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Because I'm too good looking for the camera. I don't think we're going to be
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able to. That's why I thought.
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I come from a world where like people are like, oh, man, the future is personalization.
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Do you know who the best example of personalization is?
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It was this e-commerce retailer. This is other people talking.
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This e-commerce retailer called Zulily.
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And the reason that they got cited was because we generate a million unique
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landing pages a day. Every landing page is unique. Right.
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But like it was superficial. It was like the personalization was I put scot's
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name at the corner of the homepage and now it's personalized.
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Right. And so I used to always kind of pivot and say, hey, we do need personalization.
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But the reason we need it is to be relevant.
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And so if that personalization means it's more relevant, then it's a win.
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If it's just unique for unique sake, it's not necessarily a win.
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Right. And I think what is super exciting to me about all the the AI driven
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personalization is it tends to be way more about like actual relevancy.
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Yeah, I think I think that's exactly right. And I think if you if you think
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of my example. That could be a short clip. Yep.
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Just cut it there. No more context. Jason was exactly right.
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You know, to maybe address a few things that you said, like if you think about
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the example I just provided, the bike example, I didn't expect an entirely new
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layout because you know who I am. I expected just an incredibly relevant response
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based on what you know about me.
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And I think that's really the key to sort of making this feel valuable.
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Like it turns personalization from being a sort of a term into something we're
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actually truly feeling and the experience that we're having in these products.
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Let's go from the Discovery to the Checkout, one of my favorites.
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So you guys have famously at NRF, you guys made a really big announcement about
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UCP, really embraced the NRF audience, and then since then have been just like
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on a tear releasing things.
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And the Universal Cart is I'm particularly excited about. I kind of stumbled
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upon it one day, and that was fun to go through that. And it's really interesting.
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It's very nuanced because, A, it works great, first of all.
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And then, B, it's like more than a cart. It's kind of a wish list,
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which is really neat. So it kind of like embodies a lot of things that used
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to be separate concepts that like like an Amazon, Amazon, you have your wish
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list over here in your cart.
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Some people it's funny, I find people that actually use the Amazon cart and
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maybe you had some insight from that, like a wish list. They'll just throw a
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lot of stuff in the cart. It hangs out there.
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I call it downtown. Yep. And then, you know, you propagate it up when you get to where you want it.
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Walk through, like, how do you guys end up at that? Like, were there certain
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consumer insights or where are we on the cart adoption at this particular moment?
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Okay, I'll start with the consumer insights.
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That, you know, one, those are the things that when you get them right and they're
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durable, you can sort of innovate on top of them for quite some time.
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And so I think the cart does come from that. And so one of the statements I
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made earlier in the session was, you know, shopping can be messy.
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We know that shopping is happening over many different places,
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over many different sessions.
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And one of the things we hear, that classic problem of I have 10 browser windows
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open. I'm trying to collect some things that I'm buying.
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One of my personal examples is my daughter for a period of time was just texting
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me products and I couldn't figure out why.
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And just like a stream of products. And I said, what are you doing?
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She's like, you're my wish list. Like essentially, she didn't want me to buy
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them. She wanted them to be used as a place to save.
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And so I think the durable insight is that carts have been many things over
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the years. One of the things they do is they help you collect things, right?
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And then they help you make some decisions about those things,
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final decisions, et cetera. And so I think that is one of the things we're quite
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excited about is, one, the base understanding of how do you help people organize their shopping?
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How do you then help them make decisions about that? That's sort of the extra
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layer of intelligence we've been talking about, sort of on top of that.
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Because I don't think it's, you know, we want the extra layer of intelligence
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to be what's pretty interesting in bringing this forward.
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And so I think that is where we're excited to go, regardless of where someone
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chooses to check out. Like there's a ton of value in helping them sort of organize
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and provide intelligence. Got it.
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I was glad to see you stumbled upon it. That was really fun.
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It was fun to watch the free user session.
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Also glad you liked it. Please keep sending feedback. But we,
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you know, so it's testing.
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We're out there. We're working to get it right. Of course, as you know,
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there's a bunch of complexities in that space. And so, you know,
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one of the things that we're looking forward to is having more people try it
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out as we come closer to the holidays and send me your feedback.
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I get a lot of questions, and I actually don't know the answer to this, so I'm glad you're here.
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Some people come to me and they say, Google announced that everyone's default
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is AI mode, but I'm pretty sure that's not true.
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Where are we in the adoption of AI mode? Oh, in terms of consumer mindset?
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No, like when I go, you know, a consumer goes to Google, you know,
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some people tell me they're defaulted into it. Is that just fake news and they
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don't realize they clicked on it or something?
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That is not one I'm familiar with. Me either. So, you know, you land on search,
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you may, depending on what you're looking for, get a AI overview,
00:13:10.470 --> 00:13:13.633
which to some people may feel like AI mode. Maybe they're confused in the...
00:13:13.990 --> 00:13:18.780
You know, when you have follow-up questions about that, you are then led into AI mode, right?
00:13:18.780 --> 00:13:22.220
Sort of, again, help the customer get to the bottom of whatever it is they're
00:13:22.220 --> 00:13:26.420
trying to find out. Maybe that's what they're kind of conflating is AI overviews,
00:13:26.420 --> 00:13:29.060
like, gives you a quick gateway in. That's exactly right. Whereas before you
00:13:29.060 --> 00:13:31.050
had to kind of like click yourself into it. Yeah. Okay.
00:13:32.360 --> 00:13:35.330
I do think it's fair. Like there's at least three AI surfaces at Google,
00:13:35.330 --> 00:13:41.520
right? So there's that AI overviews, which is one snippet amongst other search results.
00:13:42.590 --> 00:13:50.689
There's AI mode, which is a complete agentic response. And then there's a separate tool, Gemini.
00:13:50.919 --> 00:13:56.120
And I think it's fair to say the branding could have been better or more clear.
00:13:56.780 --> 00:13:58.450
Yeah. I mean, no comment on the branding.
00:13:59.690 --> 00:14:02.480
I'm not saying you picked it. Yeah. Yeah, but doing a lot of experiments and
00:14:02.480 --> 00:14:04.410
getting a lot of data, a lot of experiments, getting a lot of data.
00:14:04.670 --> 00:14:08.939
No, I think, look, we it's a it's a very unique position to be able to experiment
00:14:08.939 --> 00:14:10.009
in all these different ways.
00:14:10.009 --> 00:14:13.410
And I think that's what you see us doing. And I think there's there's there's
00:14:13.410 --> 00:14:17.349
things that people come to that are really greatly suited to get a search answer
00:14:17.349 --> 00:14:20.829
to very quickly and then continue to pull on that thread that leads them to I mode.
00:14:20.829 --> 00:14:24.909
So I think, you know, using the different tools and just sort of product experiences
00:14:24.909 --> 00:14:26.769
to meet the customer, whatever their need is.
00:14:27.129 --> 00:14:33.270
Yeah. And I'm assuming the the decision, the internal decisions that the Google
00:14:33.270 --> 00:14:39.259
robots make to decide what when to trigger those those more agentic answers
00:14:39.649 --> 00:14:41.129
are way smarter than we realize.
00:14:41.129 --> 00:14:46.249
Because, like, when it's a query that would best be solved by traditional search.
00:14:46.929 --> 00:14:51.000
Let's not use all the compute and take out the rainforest to to do that.
00:14:51.000 --> 00:14:54.610
But when it's something that the robot can do better, like, yeah,
00:14:54.610 --> 00:14:56.810
we want it. Exactly. That's exactly right. Thank you.
00:14:57.329 --> 00:15:00.079
One of the, so there's a reporter, Jason Delray at the aisle.
00:15:00.079 --> 00:15:03.839
He sadly isn't here. So he's the second best Jason. The sad booth is used.
00:15:03.839 --> 00:15:05.959
It's just got a trash can in it. It's kind of sad back there.
00:15:06.570 --> 00:15:10.930
And the, he kind of, he branded me an agentic commerce maximalist.
00:15:10.930 --> 00:15:14.140
And I kind of made the mistake of putting that on my LinkedIn.
00:15:14.260 --> 00:15:18.590
So all the naysayers come at me pretty hard. And obviously I post a lot of videos
00:15:18.590 --> 00:15:19.940
about what you guys are doing.
00:15:20.099 --> 00:15:25.819
And so the naysayer take is Google has tried this like 600 times before.
00:15:25.899 --> 00:15:28.610
And I've actually lived through them at ChannelVisor every one of those times.
00:15:28.610 --> 00:15:30.632
Got shopped all 600. Yes.
00:15:30.910 --> 00:15:36.830
And I got to ask Ashish at Google kind of on the merchant side of what y'all are doing.
00:15:37.133 --> 00:15:41.149
And his answer was, yes, we've tried this many times, but we've never seen the
00:15:41.149 --> 00:15:43.059
pull. The consumer pull is there.
00:15:44.279 --> 00:15:46.959
So it's a great opportunity now that I have you in the hot seat.
00:15:47.279 --> 00:15:50.549
What can you tell us about that pull? Like what gets you, what are you seeing?
00:15:50.549 --> 00:15:54.339
Like people must be engaging with this in a way that we haven't seen before.
00:15:54.589 --> 00:15:57.349
Yeah, I mean, I think, I guess my take on the we've done this before,
00:15:57.349 --> 00:16:01.559
which is kind of a classic refrain on many things, is that, like,
00:16:01.719 --> 00:16:03.019
there are things that need to change.
00:16:03.019 --> 00:16:05.689
The environment needs to change. The customer mental model needs to change.
00:16:05.689 --> 00:16:09.089
The technology needs to change for those things to sort of crack open in a different
00:16:09.089 --> 00:16:10.169
way than they were before.
00:16:10.629 --> 00:16:12.939
And I think that's what we're starting to see. So, obviously,
00:16:12.939 --> 00:16:14.129
the technology has changed.
00:16:14.589 --> 00:16:18.469
I think we see an interest in, we see shoppers shopping in many different forms
00:16:18.469 --> 00:16:22.839
on many different places. They become much more familiar shopping outside of
00:16:22.839 --> 00:16:26.169
core, I would say, core commerce sites. I think that's not unique to us.
00:16:26.169 --> 00:16:28.449
That is actually a behavior that's happening elsewhere.
00:16:28.989 --> 00:16:35.439
And so I think with that opening of consumer behavior shifting to many places, I think for us,
00:16:35.779 --> 00:16:39.779
the ability to sort of build on top of trusted signals like GPay,
00:16:39.979 --> 00:16:43.489
there's a bunch of familiarity that can come in these places that sort of lends
00:16:43.489 --> 00:16:47.609
itself to be, I think, way more, you know, probably interesting than it was before.
00:16:47.889 --> 00:16:51.230
I'm potentially taking us in another direction. One of the things that's super
00:16:51.230 --> 00:16:52.490
interesting to me about your role,
00:16:53.569 --> 00:16:58.859
AI is also influencing the tools that we have as UX practitioners to do this,
00:16:58.859 --> 00:17:02.570
right? And, you know, super common tool, probably when you and I,
00:17:02.570 --> 00:17:04.830
certainly when I started my career, like split path testing.
00:17:05.690 --> 00:17:10.500
And now we have the robots in split path testing to do many more variants for
00:17:10.500 --> 00:17:13.070
us. And we have synthetic audiences and digital twins.
00:17:13.490 --> 00:17:17.150
Like, I don't know, but I imagine that you guys are on the bleeding edge of
00:17:17.150 --> 00:17:21.620
all these cool research methodologies for improving UX.
00:17:21.950 --> 00:17:26.829
I mean, that is a great question. And we, you know, we are this year has been
00:17:26.829 --> 00:17:30.989
a rampant, like absolutely amazing change in the practice of work.
00:17:30.989 --> 00:17:35.609
So, yes, the job is both transforming the products and the practice itself.
00:17:36.039 --> 00:17:40.299
And so whether it comes to how we develop, if you know, how we develop sort
00:17:40.299 --> 00:17:44.169
of what was UI copy before to how it's developed and generated today and how
00:17:44.169 --> 00:17:47.059
you evaluate whether that's good to how you research things,
00:17:47.059 --> 00:17:50.279
all of it has frankly changed across the full stack.
00:17:50.279 --> 00:17:54.749
And so it's been a year of experimentation, both with how we go about it,
00:17:55.066 --> 00:17:58.680
getting people the right sort of tools to sort of experiment in their practice
00:17:58.680 --> 00:17:59.950
and then learning from it.
00:17:59.950 --> 00:18:04.180
So still very early, but the rate of adoption inside from a tool perspective
00:18:04.180 --> 00:18:06.110
or from a people perspective has been great.
00:18:06.660 --> 00:18:09.550
Yeah. Do you find yourself overwhelmed with all the data you have access to
00:18:09.550 --> 00:18:12.650
now or do the tools kind of keep up and chop it down for you?
00:18:13.050 --> 00:18:17.200
You know, I think all of us are sort of feeling this, like we're in this really
00:18:17.200 --> 00:18:20.070
unique moment. You want to take advantage of it. People are hungry.
00:18:20.070 --> 00:18:23.760
They're curious in terms of how we want to use all that data.
00:18:24.080 --> 00:18:27.330
But I think we also know we have to make use of it in a great way.
00:18:27.330 --> 00:18:31.290
I like, you can just smell the number of like UX research ports that get scanned
00:18:31.290 --> 00:18:34.090
like that. You know, you need to be able to make sure you're getting still the
00:18:34.090 --> 00:18:38.060
quality insights. Humans are still important for discerning and understanding
00:18:38.060 --> 00:18:39.980
what is key in sort of these insights. Yeah.
00:18:40.420 --> 00:18:43.630
What's the most surprising consumer thing that you've, you know,
00:18:43.630 --> 00:18:46.470
maybe in your career that you've kind of stumbled on as you've looked at all
00:18:46.470 --> 00:18:48.300
this data? Anything like.
00:18:49.430 --> 00:18:52.550
One thing I've learned is you cannot, it's foolish to make assumptions about
00:18:52.550 --> 00:18:54.900
how you do things versus the average consumer.
00:18:55.100 --> 00:19:00.290
Yeah, I mean, 100%. I think it's one of the reasons still sitting and listening
00:19:00.290 --> 00:19:03.780
to consumers, regardless of whatever we can do with fancy tools.
00:19:04.480 --> 00:19:08.470
And like still, the human voice is still actually more important than ever.
00:19:08.470 --> 00:19:12.240
And I think keeping really kind of focused on that, keeping our leaders attached
00:19:12.240 --> 00:19:17.480
to that, we just, you know, bringing our leaders into research sessions with
00:19:17.480 --> 00:19:21.180
live humans. All of that is still very true and really important.
00:19:21.180 --> 00:19:22.960
So I guess that's not a surprise.
00:19:23.319 --> 00:19:26.999
But I think, you know, I think we will continue to see trying to figure out
00:19:26.999 --> 00:19:29.920
where the right place is to pull in, you know, our unique insights.
00:19:30.320 --> 00:19:33.209
Very cool. I know you're tight for time. Was there anything else on the stage
00:19:33.209 --> 00:19:35.769
you wanted to hit on before we let you go?
00:19:35.769 --> 00:19:39.669
You know, I think the other theme we talked about, which maybe you've talked
00:19:39.669 --> 00:19:42.519
about elsewhere, it certainly relates to sort of how you think it from a design
00:19:42.519 --> 00:19:47.569
perspective, is the multimodal nature is, you know, really interesting.
00:19:47.569 --> 00:19:50.699
And I think from if you think about sort of an interaction paradigm,
00:19:51.099 --> 00:19:54.969
you know, this goes way beyond, you know, adding a photo upload.
00:19:54.969 --> 00:19:59.079
This goes beyond my fluid sort of transition between voice and text.
00:19:59.329 --> 00:20:01.739
And, hey, I'm in the kitchen and I want to move hands free.
00:20:02.069 --> 00:20:05.299
And, hey, I actually want to show you a room because I have some questions that
00:20:05.299 --> 00:20:09.529
I want you to use that context. That amount of rich context is not only interesting
00:20:09.529 --> 00:20:13.966
in itself, but I think how we can seamlessly bring it together in the experience.
00:20:14.190 --> 00:20:16.900
I don't think we all imagine we're going to have a chat over here and a thing
00:20:16.900 --> 00:20:21.290
over here. Like, I think that sort of space is super ripe for innovation.
00:20:21.430 --> 00:20:25.090
If I ask a follow up question, one of the other things that's really interesting
00:20:25.090 --> 00:20:30.689
to me about your corner of the world right now is I feel like the consumer conventions
00:20:30.689 --> 00:20:32.589
are are rapidly evolving.
00:20:32.589 --> 00:20:38.650
Yes. And so like dictation, Google's had voice transcription in search for a long time.
00:20:38.870 --> 00:20:42.390
And I'm sure it was helpful to a certain cohort of users, but most people weren't
00:20:42.390 --> 00:20:43.460
shopping with their voice.
00:20:43.710 --> 00:20:47.320
And you've had Google Lens for a long time, and people weren't really doing
00:20:47.570 --> 00:20:49.610
a ton of multimodal searching for search.
00:20:50.330 --> 00:20:53.590
We're at this inflection point where people are now thinking about it different
00:20:53.590 --> 00:20:56.910
and trying different things and they have new tools that come on their phone.
00:20:56.910 --> 00:21:01.760
And now it feels much more normal when I was only typing three words.
00:21:01.760 --> 00:21:05.030
It didn't make sense to use voice. But now that I'm typing 28 words,
00:21:05.380 --> 00:21:09.670
I want to dictate it. A hundred percent. And I think there's another generational piece to that. Right.
00:21:09.970 --> 00:21:14.499
You know, you watch younger generations. I was telling an example of watching my daughter do a recipe.
00:21:14.860 --> 00:21:18.170
Right. She has maybe started with a text, question about recipe,
00:21:18.170 --> 00:21:21.420
gets some responses, goes into voice mode because her hands are busy.
00:21:21.700 --> 00:21:25.240
Then she holds up a bunch of ingredients and says it, you know,
00:21:25.240 --> 00:21:29.940
adjust it like that. She has boundless expectations of what these things can do.
00:21:30.280 --> 00:21:35.240
And I think that is, talk about what's new and shapes kind of behavior change.
00:21:35.550 --> 00:21:38.110
That is pretty new, like that boundless expectation.
00:21:38.920 --> 00:21:44.160
Yeah, I noticed you guys did a blog post last week, and you now are asking merchants
00:21:44.160 --> 00:21:46.520
to put video into the data feed.
00:21:46.800 --> 00:21:51.080
Is that because this modality on a whole other side, it's kind of like maybe
00:21:51.080 --> 00:21:53.080
the user doesn't want to see a static product card.
00:21:53.080 --> 00:21:56.800
Maybe they want to see a video integrated into that. Yeah, I think we were just
00:21:56.800 --> 00:22:00.440
talking about multimodal from an input perspective, but multimodal from an output
00:22:00.440 --> 00:22:03.099
perspective on all those dimensions, super critical, right?
00:22:03.099 --> 00:22:06.200
That is both the merchant giving us more context about how this thing might
00:22:06.200 --> 00:22:10.650
be relevant to the customer. Again, back, how are we the best matchmaker?
00:22:11.040 --> 00:22:15.510
That type of context is really helpful. Would you say product data is somewhat
00:22:15.510 --> 00:22:18.230
important, extremely important, not important at all?
00:22:19.349 --> 00:22:22.130
I know you well enough to know, say, extremely important. Also,
00:22:22.130 --> 00:22:24.720
I've been in retail enough to know that's the truth. Okay. All right.
00:22:24.720 --> 00:22:27.690
Good answer. That's our clip. You're saying it has the advantage of it, too.
00:22:29.599 --> 00:22:33.830
Nicole, I really appreciate you coming on. Special shout out to Google PR lady,
00:22:33.950 --> 00:22:36.349
Molly, who's amazing. We love working with her.
00:22:36.590 --> 00:22:41.259
She's the nicest person in PR, but she gets stuff done. I agree.
00:22:41.259 --> 00:22:43.249
scot generally has a no PR person rule.
00:22:44.129 --> 00:22:47.059
What's the credit for getting on the show? You can't be represented by a PR
00:22:47.059 --> 00:22:49.299
person. Unless your name's Molly. Then you're good to go.
00:22:49.866 --> 00:22:53.360
That does open the door to multiple Mollies, but so far, there's only one.
00:22:53.900 --> 00:22:56.880
I agree with you. Thank you so much. Thanks, Nicole. Really appreciate it.
00:22:57.410 --> 00:22:59.690
And until next time, happy commercing.
00:23:01.090 --> 00:23:05.460
You've been listening to The Jason and scot Show. For all the latest news and
00:23:05.460 --> 00:23:12.520
trends on e-commerce and shopper marketing, subscribe to us on iTunes or visit JasonandScot.com.
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