← The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#754: Robin Ross on what happens to retail when your best customers are AI agents
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- [00:01]
Greg Kilstrom
The Agile Brand.
- [00:10]
Podcast Host / Narrator
Welcome to season seven of the Agile Brand where we discuss the trends and topics marketing leaders need to know. Stay curious, stay agile and join the top enterprise brands and martech platforms as we explore marketing, technology, AI, e commerce, and whatever's next for the omnichannel customer experience. Together, we'll discover what it takes to create an agile brand built for today and tomorrow and built for customers, employees and continued business growth. I'm your host, Greg Kilstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on martech, AI and marketing operations. The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world application. For more information, go to teksystems.com to make sure you always get the latest episodes, please hit subscribe on the app you listen to podcasts on and leave us a rating so others can find us as well. Now onto the show.
- [01:08]
Greg Kilstrom
What if your perfectly crafted brand message, your multimillion dollar ad campaign, and your carefully designed user experience are completely ignored by your next customer because your next customer is a machine? Agility requires not just adapting to changing customer behaviors, but completely rethinking the very definition of a customer interaction. It means building the technical and strategic flexibility to engage with autonomous agents as effectively as we do with people. Today we are here at meacon, the Marketing AI conference in Cleveland, Ohio, and we're going to talk about a concept that's moving from science fiction to strategic planning pretty quickly. Agentic commerce. This is the world where AI agents don't just help us, they act for us. On one hand, brands are using internal agents to optimize their own operations. But the more disruptive side, and our main focus today is when consumers deploy their own AI agents to research, negotiate and purchase on their behalf. This shift could fundamentally change everything from marketing and branding to the very nature of E commerce. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Robin Ross, digital analytics and loyalty executive at Activate Insight. Robin, welcome to the show.
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Robin Ross
Hey, Greg, how are you?
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Co-host / Producer
Good, good.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah. Good to be here in person and on video. The whole shebang here. Yeah, so I'm used to my little webcam recording this.
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Robin Ross
Me too. Or looking screen or just hearing. Yeah, yeah, this is cool.
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Co-host / Producer
Yeah, yeah.
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Greg Kilstrom
And, and you know, great to be here at this, at this conference. A lot of. We're in day two of the. Of the. Or day three, I guess, in the. Of the conference. So, you know, great to.
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Robin Ross
It's been a great conference.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah, definitely. They put on a good show before we Dive into the topic. Why don't you give a little background on, on yourself and your focus areas?
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Robin Ross
Yeah, great to be here. So my focus area in my career has really been around loyalty and it's been shifting lately now to really what's coming with AI. So I've kind of seen this puck coming for a couple of years, probably not, I wouldn't call myself a first mover but definitely seeing the adoption, the implementation and I think what are going to be significant changes to what business has been. So I've been in the traditional product pretty much retail marketing business for the longest time and I think things are going to be disruptive. So I see things coming.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah. So I want to just kind of dive right in with this idea of, you know, agents as customers. And so, you know, when a consumer's AI agent shows up at a, you know, at a brand's front door, so to speak, you know, how should we view it? You know, is it a, is it a new type of customer? Is it a new channel? Is it, you know, just a proxy for the human behind it? You know, what, how do we even start talking or classifying this?
- [03:58]
Robin Ross
And I think the right answer is tbd, right? Because I think everybody's really maybe let me take a step back. I don't think enough people are thinking about this yet. So you've maybe heard the term Egyptic commerce, you've heard the term agent and it's probably an overused term and can mean like a thousand different things but in my mind the automations and really the removal of friction that we're going to get from agents is going to rapidly put us in a place where we want to adopt that a little bit more. And we think as humans we want to go and do the lowest friction possible to complete a task. And the whole idea that an agent now could maybe act on your behalf is really something that kind of caught my attention to kind of go, wow, I don't have to remember all those things or I only have to count on my own kind of knowledge set to kind of go in. And just in my experiences in using AI and watching the reasoning model kind of go in is somebody, somebody can think beyond what I'm thinking and I can just kind of set up a task to kind of go really I'm focused on the outcome and if my agent can kind of do that on behalf and bring me back the number of options and I don't have to do the heavy lifting on that, that sounds like something I want to sign up For Right. Where I can kind of invest my time a little bit differently. So I see where we're going to work. This is my theory. Where we're going to end up is really this, is there going to be. I don't think it's going to be replacing what we do, but I think it's a new channel that we need to contend with and we need to contemplate that Businesses I don't think are ready for today.
- [05:38]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah. I mean I spend so much time thinking about automating and stuff in my work life. But you know, I was literally talking about this at dinner last night with somebody. I don't really use ChatGPT for personal stuff and maybe once in a while at most. And so you know, this whole idea of I think, I mean I definitely agree with what you're saying which is it's not going to replace. Well, I'm the consumer, it's not going to replace me, but it will. There's so much just like planning a trip, doing all those things. There's so much just like repetitive stuff or just waiting that can be replaced by automation and stuff. I mean one fear that doesn't necessarily need to come true, but one fear might just be okay. Now we've got machines talking to machines. Is it literally just going to be a race to the bottom on price or something like that where it's a very technical conversation between two bots and aesthetics and subjective experience and stuff doesn't really come into play. So what can they can optimize on numbers? Right. So you know what, what helps us avoid just kind of that circling the, the drain on price kind of thing.
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Robin Ross
I think what's been fun about thinking about this is just really that whole concept of human in the loop. Right?
- [06:56]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah.
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Robin Ross
And at what point do I come back in? At what point does, does the machine or the agent kind of do the work on my behalf? And I think what it is, is where, where can I add value as, as the human in the loop where, where that agent is. Certainly you hear about these Things like CO CEOs or your digital twin or those kind of things where you could build an agent essentially in the near future, really probably today that kind of gets 80% of the things that you want to do. And let's say you're planning a trip and you've got all these different things you want to do. You've maybe done the example that I'm going to Greece and I want to do 10 non obvious things that people don't do. When they go to Greece and imagine the time that would have taken you to kind of go through and find the site and go here. And the resources that AI has got access to is infinite. Right. And the resources that I have access to is really kind of what can I find on Google, right? And then once I find it, then I got to dig into it and is it garbage and is it really helpful? And that whole idea that this could be curated for me, that it comes back into a place where then I can kind of decide, that kind of lights me up that that's going to be a different experience for people, where they're going to enjoy it more, where I can do a lot of stuff on my own behalf. But what does that mean? So somebody's got it. Is that going to be a personal agent doing that? Is that going to be me interacting with something like Expedia where they have an agent? And I really think at some point it's going to be this agent to agent stuff that get through the heavy lifting. And then at some point the human comes back in the loop to say, look at all these cool things I found. Let's, let's make a plan. Let's figure out how this is going to go.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah. And I think to that, to that end, I mean the human in the loop part, that does mean that there isn't just one way to optimize. You know, in theory and again we're, this is not commonplace today, you know, probably in a year from now will be, you know, whole different conversation. But it can optimize or it should optimize for what I want it to optimize for as the consumer.
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Robin Ross
And how's it going to learn, right? I just, I always kind of think about when people thought that E Commerce was going to replace our retail. But guess what? People still love to shop in store. But we've had to really manage the existence of E Comm and that's a new channel. So I think really Omnichannel is just being redefined. And now agent is going to be a new place in this omnichannel that we need to be thinking about, right. And planning for. And I think it becomes an interesting business opportunity. The thing I've been thinking about is people and businesses have been talking about agents for so long and I've been playing with the idea, well, how many sites are even agent ready, right? Like who? So we've worked for so long to protect our site from bots. And so bots are bad, but all of a sudden there's this good bot, right. And there's this bot that wants to do all these things on my behalf. And we've probably for two decades have done everything we can to lock that out. So is there a new type of architecture that's going to be, do we design for humans and for bots? Is there going to be a whole different ecosystem that exists that eventually I'm going to get the outcomes that I want and some. Somebody's going to choose how they want to do it? Maybe I want to. I. You, you read on a Kindle and you read on the paper, right? So it's just going to be one more option that I think we need to be thinking about.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, I mean it's, you know, the analogy would be, you know, direct mail is still a very, very effective way of marketing. And you know, how many times did people say print is dead or whatever?
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Robin Ross
It's exactly the thing. Because really what's interesting in being in marketing for so long, every vendor came to me to say print is going away and then the digital guys are saying digital is going to be good. And then the print guys want to all print. But really it's the combination that's the secret sauce. Right. It's just how do I curate digital and print? Right. And then you think in this new environment, how do I curate agent and in person or agent and personal interaction? I think that's just going to be a new puzzle to solve for us, which is pretty exciting I think, when you think about where things are going.
- [11:23]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah. I mean, so it sounds like, you know, because to go back to your point about readiness, it's like, you know, some of this is more of the same of just like we don't reduce the number of channels that we reach customers on, we only expand. Apparently, you know, based on again my experience too, there will be, you know, there's going to be agent to agent protocols and you know, those very technical things. But really, I mean it sounds like flexibility and you know, dare I say agility, you know, is, is more the name of the game because what comes after that or what hybrid agent something, you know, comes after that. It's, it's really, you know, to be prepared for this. What do brands, what should be brand? What should brands be thinking about?
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Robin Ross
Well, I, I think it starts with a. How, how accessible is your site? Right. So if you just look at, at beginning architecture, are, are you set up now? And the two, two things I've been thinking about, do you even know how much agent traffic you're Getting today. Right. Like, I bet you that is not a metric that is shared internally. It's not anything that, that, that somebody's thinking about. But in the statistics I've been seeing over the last couple of months of the last couple of conferences I've been to, it's increasing and it's invisible. Right. This whole idea how search is changing. Right. And how many people are going and are you visible in AI, It's. It's this invisible ground swell. I'm not saying I know exactly where this is going at all, but I think it deserves people's attention to start thinking through. Like, how do you want to make this experience for people? Right. And what makes this better for humans is where I want to kind of put my focus on these kind of things. And then how do you create a new, interesting, better outcome for me as the consumer? Right. And is that an agent acting on my behalf or is that your agent kind of curating? What I want to be is that our agents talking to each other to figure some stuff out. And I think it's just, it's a very exciting kind of space that. That's gonna really kind of reveal itself to us in the next kind of 12 to 24 months.
- [13:38]
Greg Kilstrom
Maybe. Let's talk about what does stay the same as well, which is, you know, I think with the. You mentioned SEO and, you know, whatever you call it, GEO or. I'm sure there's eio. Yeah, there's like a friend.
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Robin Ross
Will Reynolds called it eieio.
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Greg Kilstrom
Correct.
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Robin Ross
Yeah.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, right. You know, to me, the commonality there and among a lot of these things is just, you know, good content has been important no matter, you know, it trumps everything.
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Podcast Host / Narrator
Right?
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Co-host / Producer
Right.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah. So it's like, what else stays the same no matter what? You know, because we can get distracted. You know, we're, you know, in marketing, we get. We love our buzzwords and we love our trends and everything. And, you know, this stuff is fun. But what shouldn't we be distracted by or, you know, what should we kind of keep our eyes on?
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Robin Ross
I think two things I focus on is that digital just amplifies what's right. If you got a bad business, digital just makes that worse. Right. If. If you've got a message to, to you, don't change things by. By making them digital. You got to go back to the fundamental to ensure that you've got a good business place that is going to go there. But the other thing I like to think about is people enjoy buying, but they don't be. They don't enjoy being sold. Right. So really kind of getting back to that human emotion about what, what is the really goal of me purchasing? This is usually around some kind of an emotional, some kind of like utility add value. That so you. I think what is interesting about this digital is how can you get to that a little bit sooner for somebody even though people love the discovery and the shopping and the, and the thing. But if you can, you can get through more of that and then actually dig into some things that you maybe didn't consider before. And I think that that's really the, the excitement about what AI is. It can reveal stuff that you weren't considering. Right. And it learns from what you've done before and similar to, to the Googles and the searches and those kind of things where it kind of learns your, your preferences. But will this be in more of a white hat way to kind of bring you more of what's going to add value to you rather than just trying to drown you out with an algorithm? Right. Like so we, in what we've been known to do in most digital channels is ruin them. Right. So what did we do with email? We spammed. Right. What did we do with sms? Like now we're looking at a phone. We don't know if that's a real call or not real call. So I worry about that in, in this kind of AI environment and I'm hopeful that we're going to be more disciplined in that. I'm not optimistic though. Right. Like I really think there's, there's going to be companies that mission is to try and monetize the channel and I'm hopeful we can be more protective of what that's going to be. But wait, wait to see.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, I mean, yeah, to your point, every time something becomes easier to do, there's someone that, you know there's good and then there's the not so good.
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Robin Ross
Ways of capitalizing on what's your motivation. Right. And that to me kind of goes back to that whole idea. If you're a good business first, this is just a tool that kind of helps you achieve that as well. If you got bad intentions, it will also be a tool that will probably kind of get you to that place too. So it's just, but, but I'm more in the, in the good business camp, right? Like yeah, exactly.
- [16:57]
Greg Kilstrom
Then we're going to need the anti spam agents. The, you know, it's like an arms race.
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Robin Ross
So it's like my agent that protects me from the agent that I Don't like and, and then it's the new Space Invaders, right?
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Greg Kilstrom
Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit then on the, you know, on the internal, you know, from the marketers perspective and you know, certainly, you know, lots of changes afoot already there. But you know, taking this a step further, where we are in this agent to agent kind of commerce space, what's the best part of the role for the marketer to play and you know, what should they be focused on in that when, when you know, admittedly some of their job is technically being done?
- [17:35]
Robin Ross
Well, I think it's too full because this, this doesn't replace good content, right. I think it repackages it a little bit because your customer has changed. Because originally when we're designing sites or digital experiences today our customer journey is based on a human interacting and going through and I think in this new environment you don't have to impress a bot visually. Right. But it's content that is going to help it get there. So really when I think about what AI is going to do for people, what makes AI effective is the training data and I think that's a mindset that we're going to have to think about our businesses in the future. Is like is my site information experience available in a way that a bot can ingest it, get what my business kind of value prop is and then convey that or somehow package that to the end user who is still a consumer who's making the buying decision. Right. I don't know if we're in a place yet where those agents we'll be making buying decisions on our half but I think that's coming. Right. I've seen what the credit cards companies are thinking about like and they're solving for agent commerce. Like this is something that companies are making big bets on now and we've seen it already more in kind of the SaaS space where they're trying to make it productivity but now it's getting closer to the consumer. Right. And just some interesting reading I've been doing. I don't know if you've. It was the acquired podcast that had the four hour Google AI episode, right. So definitely not a one sitting kind of.
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Greg Kilstrom
Right.
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Robin Ross
Kind of. Listen. But the, the original ideas of, of AI were around if, if I'm remembering correctly they thought it was going to be all B2B right? Like that was the whole thing and the whole idea of putting a chapter chat box together for that was to make it consumer available. But that's what blew up. Right. It was so it's those consumers who, who jumped in and it went to B2C very quickly and that was not what the, the developers thought it was going to be. And I thought that was kind of a cool. Like there's we, we can be predictive but again it's the consumer that decides.
- [19:54]
Greg Kilstrom
Right? Right. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And, and I mean, I think, you know, a couple last thoughts as we wrap up here. You know, I think we've been an agent as a proxy for a consumer. Like I think, you know, to kind of go back to similar similarities as well. Like we've been marketing to proxy consumers for a while in the sense of SEO even. And, and prior to that. So you know, in, in that I guess, you know what, what's different about Agentic to you in that as opposed to these things that we've again, we've always been talking through some medium to a consumer.
- [20:34]
Robin Ross
I think what's interesting, in the past, most of this was accomplished through significant development teams where small to medium sized business struggled to build these types of environments. And the whole idea that AI can now be a bit of a leapfrog for some of these businesses where they can compete. Right. So the idea that AI is going to close some gaps I think should be a bit of a wake up call for bigger businesses that had the talent that paid for this, that they could kind of protect what that experience is. So I think the race is going to get. It's kind of the new incubator in the garage kind of thing. Right. That's the guy you're worried about in your business. And I think we, we've got a lot more garages where people can go from ideation to market very quickly. And AI is a tool and then agent as a tool is, is going to change that game for a lot of people. So I think it's something that, that you can't ignore.
- [21:38]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah. So you know, as I mentioned, we're here recording live at Macon. You know, definitely it's been amazing to see this show grow over the last few years just with the, with the industry and stuff. What's been a highlight for you of the show?
- [21:52]
Robin Ross
Couple really good sessions. So this is my second mekon. I'm a big fan of Paul and Mike, follow the podcast and certainly they influence a lot of my thinking about what's going on with AI. Just thinking back to some of the keynotes today. So I would recommend if folks would get a hold of the book AI Driven Leadership by Jeff Woods. He was one of the keynote speakers here and what I love, it's a very business friendly approach to AI. It's a non technical. He describes himself as a guy driving AI and he doesn't care about AI. And I just love that framing to kind of say the technology should be in the background. Right. And it's really what are the business problems that we're solving. And he's another guy that's really influenced how I think about this and I'm just very excited to see all the different companies really trying to kind of solve some really core problems. I just sat through a session with Lisa Adams who is a. I believe she's a fractional cmo and just how she's helping businesses close the gap very quickly. Right. Just through the use of custom GPTs and GPT chaining and, and just this whole thought of improving your AI literacy is paramount and an interesting stat. I didn't know that she shared there today. She goes, did you know that 60% of the jobs that exist today did not exist in 1940? So this whole idea of our jobs are going to go away is some jobs are going to go away, but some jobs are going to change. And I think we can kind of see what the performance of the people or the companies and support that we've seen with the vendors here. Things are changing and that's a good thing. I think it's healthy and I think there's innovation.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, absolutely. I always use the example of my second job out of college was as a webmaster, which was as a job that didn't exist when I was in high school.
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Robin Ross
Exactly.
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Greg Kilstrom
So hey, there are things that are going to change in a negative way, but there's also a lot that's going to grow and happen that we just can't see right now.
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Robin Ross
I think at the end of the day the most important thing that exists is your domain expertise. Right. Like if you can focus on where you add value and then you find the tools to amplify that, that's where you're going to survive. If you're trying to develop that, I think AI can help you develop that expertise, but it doesn't replace the experience. Right. Like, so I don't think I could jump in and be a webmaster tomorrow kind of thing. But I don't think anybody could jump in to understand loyalty like I understand it as well or that that's just not hanging out on Claude or ChatGPT for a half hour to figure that out. There's deep thinking and just the fact that you can use that tool to enhance what's already existing. That's the part that I think is pretty exciting where people with domain expertise can really position themselves to really add value in the near future.
- [25:04]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Robin, always great to talk with you and have you back on the show. One last question before we wrap up here. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
- [25:14]
Robin Ross
What do I do? So I love really the idea of maintaining a growth mindset. So when I've been in marketing and retail for 30 plus years now and what has been interesting, people think retail sometimes is just selling cans of soup, which it is. Right. But the whole fact that that like nobody anticipated that this would be shifting. So speaking to like minded people, spending time at conferences like Macon and really kind of connecting folks that are, that are also motivated to kind of move the ball forward, that that really excites me and that that's the kind of thing I enjoy doing and inspires me to to do more. I think we need to be careful not to be kind of complacent and too attached to the old model because that's the way of other companies have gone. Right. I think you need to be disciplined but I think you said flexible, right. And then the whole idea, agility is more important than ever because what is certainly different today is not just change but it's the speed of change. Right. And if you can't keep up with the speed of change, you, you could be irrelevant very quickly. So heads down, work hard but, but take a look up every while, get perspective, see what's going and then have have a good understanding of how you need to be positioning and exploring in the future as well. Yeah.
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Podcast Host / Narrator
Love it.
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Co-host / Producer
Love it.
- [26:46]
Greg Kilstrom
Well again I'd like to thank Robin Ross, digital analytics and loyalty executive at Activate Insight for joining the show. You can learn more about Robin and Activate Insight as well as Meyacon by following the links in the show notes.
- [27:01]
Podcast Host / Narrator
Thanks again for listening to the Agile brand brought to you by Tech Systems. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to subscribe and leave us a rating so that others can find the show as well. You can access more episodes of the show@theagilebrand.com that's theagile brand.com and contact me if you're interested in consulting or advisory services or are looking for a speaker for your next event, go to www.gregkillstrom.com that's G R E G K I H L S t r o m.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.
- [27:54]
Greg Kilstrom
The Agile Brand.
- [27:59]
Co-host / Producer
Before we continue, I wanted to share a key strategic resource that a majority of the Fortune 500 are already aware of. Finding the best technology, business and talent solutions is not easy. With business demands and competitive pressures mounting, you need to be able to design, deployment, deploy, and optimize your technology to provide leading customer experiences while driving business growth. Those of you that have been listening to this show for a while know that this podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, a global provider of technology, business and talent solutions for more than 80% of the Fortune 500. Tech Systems accelerates business transformation for their customers. Whether you're looking to maximize your technology roi, drive business growth, or elevate customer experiences, Tech Systems enables enterprises to capitalize on change. Learn more@techsystems.com. that's teksystems.com. now let's get back to the show.