Last week I had the privilege of speaking at the Commerce Roundtable conference in Austin. My talk was focused on separating myth vs fact when it comes to AI applications for marketing.
In this issue I'm going to recap some major themes and learnings from the conference, and talk about how they do and don't apply to fashion brands.
Before we get into it, I want to thank this week's sponsor: Cluster. Cluster's CRO AI agents find your revenue leaks, build the tests, and auto-deploys winners. Brands see up to 15 percent conversion lift in 4 weeks, no developers or designers required.
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The State Of AI In Marketing
AI capabilities in photography, video and copywriting have progressed exponentially in the past five years.
Some of the brands attending the conference had ads libraries where over half the assets were AI-generated. One brand was scaling with 90% AI-generated ads.
Sometimes these ads are obviously AI–cartoon fruits or kittens giving a monologue about the root cause of back pain. In other cases, the ads portray "testimonials" from people who never existed.
Because fashion brands scale based on "see it, like it, buy it" ads, the applicable use cases for AI are more limited.
Some brands/teams are able to produce accurate product photography with AI, but not at the same scale as the direct response marketer churning out "claymation" videos.
The risks of misrepresenting the product and alienating the consumer are higher. Some products, like minimalist metal jewelry, are easier to execute than others.
For fashion brands, AI has been more useful in the pure creative process–iterating concepts for ad campaigns, testing out and refining art direction styles, creating supplementary assets for IRL shoots and (sometimes) producing the whole shoot virtually.
But–fair warning–fashion consumers seem to be especially sensitive to the use of AI, especially when it is not disclosed up front.
Jamey Gannon does a lot of this type of work–follow her on X and stalk her post history for some great examples.
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My Take: proceed with caution, especially if your brand is higher priced or pursuing more "elevated" positioning. You'll get more value if you apply AI on the ops side to streamline the arduous workload that comes with a bigger, more variable product catalog.
If you're going to use AI in ad creative, either make it obvious or disclose it.
One of the most interesting AI applications shared in the conference was real time leadership coaching.
The CEO of Heart & Soil built an agent that monitored and reviewed his emails and meeting recordings and identified the reason(s) why projects were getting backed up.
The agent translated these input into feedback–he had to do a better job transitioning from discussing problems to locking in on/actioning on solutions–and a system for staying accountable.
The Rise Of TikTok Shop
TikTok shop and organic short form have become major growth engines for many brands.
But you won't experience top 1% results on these platforms unless you learn the unwritten rules and engineer your product/business model to suit them (just like Meta ads).
Brock Mammoser, the cofounder of FrostBuddy, walked the group through his strategy for building an army of TikTok shop affiliates.
To stand out on this crowded platform–where the best affiliates make six and seven figures per month, while the majority struggle to crack $1k in sales–Brock did something that few other brands are willing to do:
He spent a full year posting 4-6x per day on TikTok as a creator, figuring out which formats and messages would go viral organically.
Once he nailed these formulas, he could train creators with zero experience to go viral. He wasn't competing with established brands for the best talent on the market, he was creating his own talent pool.
Producing engaging short form video content that goes viral organically and drives sales is a marketable (and very in-demand) skill.
Many brands and marketers underestimate this, because they've never tried. Part of the "art" is making it look easy.
But when the crowd at Commerce Roundtable heard about FrostBuddy's sales growth, they immediately jumped to tactical questions: "How do I recruit affiliates?", "How should I structure commissions?", etc.
My Take: There are some apparel brands moving volume on TikTok shop, but there are nuances of the platform that make it more challenging for the fashion category.
One aspect of TikTok Shop that is well suited to fashion: new product drops and limited editions drive engagement.
But there are also some downsides: the platform can be very promotion-driven, and products with an easy visual demonstration of how they work tend to dominate.
If you want me to loop in a TTS expert and do a fashion-specific deep dive on the platform, reply to this email and I'll get it going.
Why "Brand" Is More Important Than Ever
One of the most thought-provoking talks of the conference came from Sarah Levinger.
If everyone can spam Meta with AI generated ads and make the same exaggerated claims, then what sets brands apart? And how do consumers know who to trust?
To answer this question, Sarah brought the crowd back to the invention of the printing press, which had the same disruptive impact on the flow of information.
When anyone could spam a printed pamphlet (the viral TikTok of the time), formal authority became irrelevant and information overwhelm caused people to tune out entirely.
The pamphleteers who broke through the noise offered sympathy along with their proposed solutions.
Sarah recommended that today's brands do the same–break away from the direct response treadmill, create recurring "brand characters" and engage in world building that make the brand feel more human.
She cited Vacation Inc. as a good example of this strategy.
The irony is that fashion brands have been dealing with this same problem for the past two decades, if not since the development of "ready to wear".
The barriers to entry in fashion have always been lower than in CPG, supplements, etc. and the IP has always been less defensible.
The fashion industry has pioneered the art of world building and brand development as a moat against knockoffs.
My Take: Fashion shows us where CPG and supplements will land 10+ years into the AI-powered future:
"Brand building" is not a particularly strong moat, and the brands that survive at scale are able to position themselves as mass status symbols while maintaining a sharp price to value equation.
Coach and Ralph Lauren are succeeding right now because they excel at striking this delicate balance. But it's hard to maintain that balance over multiple decades.
European luxury brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton are slipping because they've gotten high off the economics of mass aspiration, despite the fact that it damages their core brand proposition.
In fashion, there are "riches in niches", but sustaining nine+ figures in annual sales requires constant evolution based on consumer tastes and cultural evolution.
Brands in other categories were able to avoid this churn by plugging into big box distribution and its significant barriers to entry. Now those barriers are slowly eroding.