Wendy 00:09

Hello, everyone. I'm Wendy Liebmann, CEO and chief shopper at WSL Strategic Retail, starting to lose my voice today, but I'm fine, because my partner in crime in all things, cloud chat fills in the gaps without any trouble. Justin Honaman, Amazon Web Service, welcome again to our partnership conversation.

Justin H. 00:31

I always look forward to these and we should do them more often, and thank you for scheduling today's conversation.

Wendy 00:40

Well, it's we would I would love to do them more often. Between both our travel schedules, yours is even worse than mine. I we have to bump into each other at an airport or something. But anyway, today, I'm in New York, he's in Seattle. I will be in Seattle. Tomorrow, he will be in Atlanta.

Justin H. 00:55

I know. I'm hoping maybe we can coordinate, you know, and make something happen.

Wendy 01:00

Yeah, so before we begin today, as I've been doing the last few podcasts, you know, we really appreciate all of you listening. It's wonderful to have you here. I would love it. Love it, love it. If you would just hit subscribe button when you go on to wherever you download your podcast or listen to your podcast, whether it's Spotify, whether it's apple, whether it's wherever you are, including our website. Please do that, because it lets us know you're officially there and helps us with the lack APR, don't forget to do that. That would be great. Thanks. Now let's get on with my conversation with Justin. Anyway. Lovely to have you here. Now, am I correct in in surmising that you actually got a broader responsibility? I always say you're sort of king of the world.

Justin H. 01:41

See, I've been at Amazon for close to five years. So when I, when I joined, I was leading food and beverage within AWS, and then expanded into retail and consumer goods. And then this year, it's not that my role necessarily expanded, it's just that our team, our industry team, we were brought in restaurants or QSR as part of that. So, you know, you think about that, that segment that now sits with retail and consumer goods, and we've just built out an incredible, not only competency around those industries, but, I mean, just a really great team. So that's, that's really what you may have read or seen, as far as kind of our our structure,

Wendy 02:19

And it seems logical. I think about all the retailers who have restaurants, right, and all the food and beverage people who are in the QSR. So the topic at hand always is what's going on in the cloud space, in the digital space, in the AI space. And, you know, struck me since we've talked last, which was sort of as we were all coming out of NRF and FMI and CES talk about all the acronyms. It feels like, in the last few weeks, that AI, the topic at hand is, is coming in, at least in my world, into real life. All of a sudden, I'm seeing what you would call use case examples. I saw an example of woman walking down a shopping aisle in a in a in a physical retail space, using her phone with AI in it that was able to help her make decisions in this complicated section of the store, which was turned out to be analgesics, and she was trying to figure out what was right for her child. And so really using AI, and, I guess, generative AI, to say, well, this is, these are all the qualifications. What should I pick here? And I was like, Okay, interesting use case. That was one. The second was reading about, we were down at, I think I mentioned to you, at Walmart, we co-hosted a big event called the Future of Commerce 2030 with our friends from the Emerson Group and MMR publication. And, you know, of course, Doug McMillan talks a lot about, people led, digitally supported, but also talking about like, how Walmart had saved 4 million programming hours. using AI, you know, those, these sort of examples now where the numbers or the proof is in the pudding. What are you seeing there? In use case? Are the numbers showing up now? And people are saying, Oh, it's not just a shiny widget. It's actually something that can make my life business. Whatever more efficient. Is that the case?

Justin H. 04:16

Yeah. I mean, we are in so for those that haven't joined one of these in the past, we've talked about this topic significantly, and I'll do a quick rehash, and then talk about where some of this is today. But AI, is not new. It's been around since the 50s. So for those that have heard of artificial intelligence and machine learning, you've experienced it like in Amazon. If you shop on Amazon, like our product recommendation engine, you know, managing fraud for ecommerce on many direct to consumer sites, doing image analysis, forecasting like that's kind of traditional use cases on our app here, you can see it right here. You'll notice now, like, if you look at some products, the reviews are being summarized. So that's an example of generative AI. Or on the bottom here, there's this thing called Rufus, this conversation. Shopping powered by generative AI. The top, you see that little icon. That's a camera you can take a picture of f example, I am drinking a Coke Zero. Yes, I love Pepsi products and Coke products. But in this example, I have the Coke Zero. It's

Wendy 05:14

so political. And look, I mean, watch, look at that.

Justin H. 05:19

It brought it up. So, like, these are great Gen AI use cases. So the last two and a half years, and in many of you who know this, like this, whole idea of generative AI has exploded, and in that world now you're starting to see the use cases come to life in things like you mentioned already, the coding space. I mean, that's these models are really good at coding, QA and code. A second area would be, if you all watching or listening, have your own direct to consumer site or a e commerce platform, the titles, the AdWords, the descriptions, those, like 101, now, images are incredible, and there's some debate about when and how to use images, but The quality of what these models can create is incredible. And this year, you're gonna see short form video. Some of our customers are already in it, creating short form video without any agency, any photo shoot. Like, incredible quality. So like, and the answer to your question is, yeah, the we're kind of in this third, second or third year of this generative AI energy and excitement, and yes, there's so many great use cases, and some are small, and some are more significant, but hopefully that gives you a sense for some of the big things that are happening around the space.

Wendy 06:30

Yeah. The other thing that struck me was I was even sort of, I was laughing today and yesterday, reading the New York Times. That wasn't why I was my laughing, because there's very little to laugh about in the news these days. Let's not go there, but Kevin Roose, who writes the digital column. The tech column was talking about how he was using AI to design his own software for some programs. And it was like, maybe I could try that anyway. So, you know, again, it just feels like it's much more actionable in all this space at the moment. Yeah, I'll

Justin H. 06:59

Yeah, I'll give you a couple other examples you made me think of, you know, one of the big retailers they work with are a shoe company, major retailer, and they're using generative AI to be top of funnel and innovation, so the new shoe designs based on customer insights, and then moving those into, like, the valuation part of the innovation funnel, which is pretty cool. They're also using it for, like, the employee handbook. Like, instead of go to handbook, go find page, like, you can easily put a model against the handbook and make it accessible to employees. So you're seeing small examples like that one, and then larger ones, like around innovation and marketing and media and whatnot, yeah.

Wendy 07:39

yeah. Oh, you just gave me a great idea, and it was just talking to the HR people today about updating the handbook. Oh, my God, whoever thought of this? Okay, thank you for that. Always useful to talk to you. How did I not think about that? I can see it now, not just hear it, or just use chat. Or we, as I think I said to you previously, we have just done a new How America Shops® study. And we were like, ah, what should we call it? You know, one of these things. And so we, that's what we did. We went, well, we didn't. We refined it somewhat. But just for you all to know, a new study is called Decoding the Digital Titans, winners and losers, where we compare Amazon and a premium, Walmart.

Justin H. 08:19

I've said in the past, like at Scott Emerson's event, I'll never forget I was like, you some just be willing to list, like, put a step forward and lean in on this. If you're in the business and you think this is an IT thing, you are missing out. But like, this thing is moving fast, and it's also integrating. It's being integrated into all the tech platforms you use. So if you use Zoom, it's part of that. Now use Salesforce part of that. So you're going to see more of that. Yeah, it's great.

Wendy 08:43

The other thing we haven't really spoken about, I mean, all the conferences we've been to, you and I passed each other in the night at the Consumer Electronics Show, I was with one of our retail clients who was showcasing some of their retail media, and they wanted the sort of shopper expert in the room, so it wasn't just transactional. So my role was to, you know, walk the stores, look at some of the media they were showcasing, and sort of be the bridge between the potential client and the retailer. But there was a lot going on at CES. What stood out for you there that made you go, like, you know, new stuff. So same stuff again.

Justin H. 09:18

We'll reframe this for people Consumer Electronics Show CES it really used to be. It kind of still is, in many ways, you know, electronics, but also autos, but like, so to your point, I think one thing that surprised me this year, it's also a great place to go just to get ideas and, like, be get out of the box. So a lot of companies go there for just that big thinking. But I was surprised at the number of retailer executives there, and the number of consumer goods brands there, more than I've ever seen before, and to the point where they were bringing their teams, so whether there's one person and to walk the show floor to get ideas, but then it was just a great way to engage. And I was part of a panel there that that we focused on live streaming. I was just surprised. Is at the number of people in leaning in on retail tech and retail technology and retail interest. So I think that's going to continue to grow. And so that show could be interesting to watch. Yeah,

Wendy 10:10

Yeah, and I do think that, you know, one of the things that we've been nagging people about for ages, you know that we cannot any longer use the work from home post COVID excuse of not getting out and this whole frustration, if you've got to get away from your desk, you've got to get away from your aisle, physical, digital, you've got to see what's going on. And what I, too, found interesting about the show. And again, I've said for one of my flyby moments was even in one of the these events that we did with this, one of the retailers, retail media teams was, there was the for all the media people from the from the brand company, the CPG company, but their global CEO, right, who's based out in Europe, all of a sudden she's there, and I'm like, hello, what are you doing here? And she said, Well, I really felt I needed to make the trip to see what's going on, to understand for myself the broader scale, scope of things. And then I think when we all think about where we spend our time, I know there's a huge amount of pressure, financial pressure, economic pressure on our businesses at the moment, but we are not going to move ahead unless we really think about, you know what, what the future looks like, and it is right here, nibbling at our knees while all the practical issues are making us all know.

Justin H. 11:25

For those of you that attend industry events, I mean, you go to meet people and connect with leaders and kind of be where they are, right and build your network and but also, it's a great opportunity to, you know, connect with many leaders in one place, but there aren't many places to go to get inspiration, or new new not only new tech, but just new ways of operating, new ways of thinking about it like and if you think about the major industry events, and we could list them off, most of them are, you know, they're good meeting opportunities, good engagement opportunities, but there's not a lot of new thinking or new innovation at them. And so that's what I think that that event does well,

Wendy 12:01

yeah, I agree. I mean, we all show up, at least you and I do, and a few others show up. 1000s of our best friends show up at, you know, retail industry, channel driven events. And you're right. It's about networking. It's about, you know, getting a chance more intimately, rather than in a transactional space. But to look beyond that. I mean, we are doing more and more retail innovation work. You know, our Retail Safari® is because we can get to people can get to see things that they wouldn't normally see. We've just built out a program for one of our retail clients, a CPA and CPG clients separately, where, basically they've said, here are the places we're going to be. What should we see? Lead us if you're in the neighborhood, if you don't lead us, give us what we call our Retail Safari® in a Box. You know, we literally say, here and go and do it. Because it doesn't have to be a place with, you know, 30,000 people or 1000 people. It can be something where, you know, wherever you are, there is some really amazing learning going on and outside your industries. And I, you and I, you know, we stand on our soap boxes about this,

Justin H. 13:07

but one thing to what I've done personally around that is we have a customer advisory board that's made up of for both retail and consumer goods. And that group meets. They each meet quarterly, and it's all about bringing what's new in the industry from analysts that that these companies don't get access to or don't have time to go find, and then also what's new and what's coming, what's innovative from Amazon. And it's just a magic formula. And then what it does is it creates an conversation amongst that group around new ideas and new thinking, and, you know, they walk away with some value add, and can go and and do something about it. And I think that that is really, it's not, it's been a good formula, and it's, it's what we thought most of our customers are craving that. They want the market insight, and they want thinking around innovation, and it's just not many places to go to get that

Wendy 14:03

we actually are about to reinstate. So before COVID, we always had what we called the hive. That was The Hive, because we have a lot of queen bees in our company, myself included, where we would bring together a disparate group of, you know, clients, what I would call for friends and family in a small group, where we could literally sit around the dinner table and talk about issues that are on our minds, not competitive, and share exactly what you said. And obviously COVID came and we shut it down, but for ourselves, it's important. You know, we are curious folks at WSL, Strategic Retail and but also our clients were craving for it, and said, Are you going to do that again? So that's exactly what we're going to do, too. I think it's really powerful, and we've got so many great connections between all of us that to create those things, it's not a big deal. It's just making time to do it. And I think all those things become really important. The other thing I was thinking about, which I know you're pretty passionate about too, is, how do we think about the culture and the structure of our organizations moving forward? So here we are, 2030, of the Walmart the topics we included at Walmart was, was this concept of culture at scale. How do you bring the culture of a company, whether you're as big as they are, as you are, or the size of, you know, mid-sized company, small company, whatever, how do you embed that, and how do you have the right people for the future? So that was the other thing that I know you're pretty passionate about, too. What, what are the skill set that we need for the future.

Justin H. 15:42

I'm here in Seattle, at our exec we have an Executive Briefing Center here, so we host customers having what's called culture of innovation element to what we do here, to explain how we innovate, how we operate. So that's interesting, right? And that's one thing I think is so cool about Amazon. You just can't get stale or status quo, or you won't be here and so and and we get and our customers are like, how do we take that and use it? So that's one thing I just I was pulling together for a major sporting goods brand that's here with me. Um, pulled together some market insights this week. So, like, you know, what are we seeing from consumer shoppers? And then, just in general, the market, one of the reports I pulled, and anybody out there can go search for this. It's the World Economic Forum, Future of Job survey, and it just came out last couple weeks. So you guys go check it out. But it's a, I wish I could, I won't share my screen here, but like, there's a quadrant, a four quadrant box that shows, like, what are the core skills in 2030 okay, it's a couple years from now, about too far out. And let me read them. And this is not an IT report. So for all of you thunder in the business, let me just read these. Okay, AI and big data, technology, literacy, resilience, flexibility and agility, analytic thinking, leadership and social influence, talent management, curiosity and lifelong learning, creative thinking, systems thinking, motivation, self awareness and empathy. Okay, half of those, if not more than half, have something to do with data, digital or technology, and time to lean in this market, and the skill sets needed to drive it now and in the future is moving faster than ever, and these are important skill sets. So I would just throw that out as an interesting thing to think about when you're for companies out there that are looking to innovate and evolve. Yeah,

Wendy 17:26

As you were describing, that curiosity is when we're hiring people where, if you're not, curious, doesn't fit with our culture, if you're not, you know, free standing, able to stand on your own, you know, self motivated. You know, all of these sort of things, the digital piece, you know, what struck me, companies of our scale, smaller companies, I remember the day, haven't been around long enough when you know, you always wanted somebody who still had their library card from university, from college, because if you needed to do any research on anything, you said, go over to the NYU library. Go up to Columbia research this topic. Right then came Susan expression Google, and we were like, Oh, look at that. We could be as good as anybody else. We could pull this data. Now I feel like we're at this next big leap. I mean, the internet created this massive opportunity for companies of all sizes. You don't have to own it. You can use it. You now can create it. I look at the work we've done over literally 30 years of all our How America Shops® research, and I'm constantly and all our imagery from and I'm constantly saying, and we're just working on this ourselves. Reveal is, how do we use technology? How do we use AI to actually look at all of that, and I answer the questions that we've got on our minds today. How do we think about that, and how does our team use it in ways that really supports clients and supports their culture and educates them, in terms of the shopper landscape, the retail landscape, all of those things. So I agree that's fascinating. And as we sort of wore in this up and doing some strategic planning, and looking at the membership, and thinking about, what are the things we have to offer, both the emerging talent as well as the, you know, established CEO C suite, thinking about how the organization will help support that through learning, creating the appropriate cultures, All of that. And so I think that's just a massive opportunity when we think about innovating our workforce as well as our organizations at large. Yeah, one

Justin H. 19:30

one other example, and I know we're getting tight on time, but like the a great if you're in consumer goods, in the in the CPG industry or grocery you know, where this has played out interestingly is like the new the new food and beverage startups think of like a Poppi or an Olipop or Just Ice Tea, you know, good on the list for you, undercover snacks like these brands found a niche. They did their homework on the consumer. They made a product that, you know, the big brands. Weren't paying attention to that category. They come in, and they've made a big splash, right? And so, and they've, they use technology, and they've been flexible about flavors. They're in and out of flavors, if they're working or not. They're all in Cloud. They're using social and platforms like Instagram and Tiktok to build following influence. And they get into retail stores, you know, like a Whole Foods, and they're growing on amazon.com, like, you know, you see this simple. And there are some really good examples of some of the major brands, and I won't mention them now, that kind of got blindsided because they were too slow, an example of digital meeting product in a way that serves a consumer and customer, yeah.

Wendy 20:38

And I think, as a last thought on that, I think it's across so many industries we think about, right? I think just, you know, again, beauty, health, where big, the really big companies either aren't moving fast enough they see, you know, talking about one of our healthcare clients in the skincare space, actually not paying attention, you know, to up and comers who were same way, looking at data, looking at, you know, search, thinking about where the gaps were, creating something, quickly, refining it, testing it, you know, running a playing with it on Amazon, seeing how it reacted, looking at, no, absolutely Amazon, you know, so often is the test market for so much of this. And then, okay, now we're building a use case. Now we can go and, you know, refine it, pricing, packaging, all of the above. So I just think, you know, for all of us, it is, I mean, hugely exciting. I can't tell you how excited I am today. That's probably why I'm losing my voice. You know

Justin H. 21:33

you know that the sporty goods manufacturer sitting here this morning and they said, Hey, we want to put more technology in the store with the associate to make their job easier, better connect with the customer in a new and differentiated way, not to rush the transaction, but actually develop a better relationship with the actual shopper. And I thought that was fascinating, you know, and a good use of tech, and thinking about, like you said, I think the interaction piece and the one-to-one piece, and how important that is. And we found the same thing with a very with a very high-end retailer two weeks ago that, you know, they were like, their stores are all about relationships to sell very expensive products, and the the associates are like, well, it's, you know, I have to go to this site for this and then if they ask this question after this other site. So they're focused on, again, simplifying the tech to give just what's needed for the associate to sell and develop that relationship. So it's just interesting to see how innovation plays out in store. And

Wendy 22:32

I think, as a last thought on that, you know, you think about the challenges of pharmacy and drug stores, you know, the street on the store, on the corner, where so many margin pressures, so many issues of reimbursement, and so much volume going through, and the need to automate some of the some, or many of the functions, so that there's a conversation going on about, you know, somebody sick and how to help them, all of those sorts of things, so you just see the value it brings. And we didn't even really jump into retail media in any major way except to skirt it. That will be our next one, our perfect way to end as always. I look forward to seeing you in New York so we can, we can continue this conversation and get ready for our next cloud chat in a very short time, because there'll be so much to talk about as always. Thank you.

Wendy 23:17

you know, always, with Justin, it's just a great riff on where the state of digital is, what's going on in the cloud. We really have been talking a lot about generative AI, I don't know why. All of a sudden, this time, this week, this month, it hit me that this is not just a conversation. It's not just behind the scenes. We've now seen people in the aisles, shoppers, whether they know it or not, they're using it. We've seen the largest retailer in the world talk about their cost savings around it and how they're deploying resources. You know, I'm now ready to be my own software designer, because I read something the New York Times about the tech guy, Kevin, talking about designing a program. You know, all of these things now are really active in our lives, making our lives and our companies more affordable, more actionable and more futuristic, or, let's just say, more relevant for the future. So as always, glad you joined the conversation. There's a lot to think about here. See you in the future. Cheers for now. You.