One of the big mega trends that I think particularly in fashion,
for example, has been things like TikTok that have led to
social influencers wearing something and then that content
or that product or that experience needing to be live on
a website within minutes. Hello and welcome back to the
Retail Podcast. We've got a special show for you
today. I'm joined by the CIO of NRF,
Jason Holzmer. Jason, welcome to the show.
Mark, welcome to the. Show great to see you.
Thank you. So today we're going to really
sort of get deep dive into a technical area and Jason, why
don't you sort of sets maybe give us some context.
Tell us about your what life is like, because this is like a
real under lifting the curtains back and seeing what's going on
at NRFI mean the the traffic you guys must have to deal with the
tech. I mean, just give us, give us
some insight. Yeah.
So our biggest challenge over the last several years has been
modernization. We've we've had legacy systems
in place for 15 to 20 years and they've not evolved as quickly
as we'd like them to. And so as AI is coming onto the
scene, as there are better models to be able to create and
deploy content, we've we architected our entire ecosystem
from our CMS system all the way through to the end user search
and platform with Storyblock. And so it's been a remarkable
journey and it's, it's, it is now they're on the other side of
of our, our launching our, our, our premier brand or our NRF,
our primary brand. It is what a change.
It's, it's, you know, to be able to track and see what we can see
these days. It is made and it's transformed
how we do things and how we're thinking about content.
Oh. Fantastic.
How long for context? How long have you been at NRF?
13 years. Wow.
OK, so you this is an area that content obviously is something
that has been part of the show and that's what shows are about.
South, tell me some of the pain, like let's go back to five years
when Storyblock went on the scene.
Tell me some of the challenges that you were having in terms of
what what you wanted and what you what was preventing you from
getting there? One of the major things that
they could have, two big areas for us were around content
creation. So we were on a trooper
platform. We had solar first search and
discovering content was was challenging.
And solar is if anyone has used it, it's enterprise grade, but
it is very can be very complicated in the right
context. So our sites when someone wanted
to create content and then try to do some types of
personalization, we couldn't do that very quickly.
It had to have the IT team come in with a developer group and be
able to, you know, address the, the a posting of a simple
carousel on a, on a, an event page or yeah, you know, creating
content and things like that. And so you Fast forward five
years and, and we have story block in place and we have a few
of the more modern tools. Content creation takes 1/4 of
the time that it used to, you know, instead of launching us
like in eight weeks, it takes us 3 weeks.
You know, it's, it's, it is much, much faster.
Content creators have greater control over that user
experience and they, they can develop and deploy things with,
with no IT intervention at all. So it is, it is transformed how
we conduct business for us. That's fantastic.
And in terms of when you, when you look to the future and the
demands on your business, because again, I just think the
number of partners, the number of content moments that you
have, what sort of how do you envision the future in, in, in
this world or around content? What?
What sort of ideas have you got in in what you were doing?
Well, we wanted to be able to reduce friction.
You know, the goal was less speed to market.
We wanted to be able to respond the industries changes so
quickly and with all of the new emerging technologies and just
even the, you know, the political landscape and
everything that we needed to engage with happens at
lightspeed and we couldn't keep up.
We would try to it would limiting our ability to to
respond and to address, you know, current affairs, things
that we needed to be be more proactive on.
And so with this deployment, what that gave us the ability to
do was was to act in near real time to address this stuff in 20
and a 24 hour cycle. And that was tremendous for us.
You know, we had our show in New York had the largest attendance
we've ever had. We had the best shows rating
scores we've we've ever had. People were able to to find the
content they were looking for and and engage with us in ways
that they've never done before. So it's it has expanded our
sphere of influence in a way that we just were not.
It was not possible before. And this is just out of personal
curiosity as a as an attendee, when you're talking about the,
the content on the on on the website, is that all the way for
example, from your agenda content, like is it the full
spectrum or is it only one, I don't know, is it only one
specific area? Yeah.
So when we started in our all the architecture, it was
literally you were on one URL and you couldn't cross pollinate
between the various different things that were going on within
our organisation. And now when you're on Big Show
and you can go to a piece of content there or you search on
nrf.com. Yeah.
The way that it's Federated is allows us to see content in one
place and be able to suggest something in another.
And so it it gives us gives us greater visibility into users
coming to our site, gave greater visibility into what was the
breadth of what we had. Yeah.
As an attempt, Cindy, I did notice a difference, especially
when I have to go back and look at content and match that
content to a speaker or to an event or to a partner.
I found I normally what you get is like a big book and you're
like, you got to search through the book and at some of the old
conferences, obviously they've digitised them now, but it's
still almost to me, all they've done is like taken photocopies
of those pages that you then it's still really awkward.
And I did notice this year that getting to things were so much
easier. And then, as you were saying,
like the cross colonisation from one platform to another, then to
maybe to go out to LinkedIn or to go out to, to, to somewhere
else was really good. Mark.
I mean, it must be fantastic to have a, a customer as so as big
as NRF and so such a powerhouse in the industry.
I'm just curious when CIOs like Jason are sort of thinking about
this journey with you, where do they start?
Where does this journey start? Yeah, it's a it's a good point.
And, you know, I I get to meet a lot of senior business leaders
like Jason who are in exactly the same situation in the retail
space. This challenge of getting
content live quickly has become an increasingly big issue.
And one of the big mega trends that I think particularly in
fashion, for example, has been things like TikTok that have led
to social influencers wearing something or, or seeing a new
product that they might be testing out.
And then that content or that product or that experience
needing to be live on a website within minutes.
And, and Jason's colleagues, the people who are responsible for
the content, as you, as you probably have heard, is they get
frustrated really by the inability to be able to
merchandise or get something up on their website very, very
quickly. Because they're often dependent
on a developer or a process to get content up on a website.
Whereas really what they want to be able to do have a, a
merchandiser or a product manager or a brand manager take
a tile that might be already available on the website and be
able to place in, oh, here's what Kim Kardashian was worth
wearing just a few moments ago. And here it is available for you
here and now. And unfortunately, retailers
have just been struggling to move at that pace that for
example, that certainly this mega trend of social influences
has has created. And so Jason is.
Being a social influencer myself.
But. Anyway, no, sorry to interrupt
your, your trade of thought there, but I'm, I'm just
curious, one of the challenges that I've seen is and is what
Jason was saying is this cross colonisation of content about
content, you being confident that some of the content doesn't
live in your world, it actually sits somewhere else.
How much, I mean, Jason, how much do you see when you were
as, as obviously a part of the the executive team, how much was
the business coming to you for that?
Yeah, so the content team we were getting requested, we just
couldn't meet. And so that created some
consternation within the organisation about, you know,
just knowing what they wanted to say, knowing how they wanted to
say it and what they wanted to include and not being not having
the capabilities to do so. And so that helped with buy in
and that helped with getting folks on board, because when you
talk about a digital transformation, that means so
many things to so many people. And if you're not in technology,
it means something very different likely.
And so it gave the, the, the real world examples that we, we
needed to be able to help push this forward.
And it was, it was the change that we asked the organisation
to go through was it was, you know, it was huge, monumental,
like it was something that you don't do every, every year.
And it's so in order to get that buy in, you know, we had to, we
had to bring it down to why should I care about this?
Like what, what would this do for me?
And so that's, that's what we, we ended up, you know, using
some of those examples where we couldn't take content from
other, other areas and we couldn't move fast enough to
help them understand and bring down to the level where they
need it and, and could buy into it.
And Mark, what's the secret source in terms of the, the
getting such a, a big system up and running?
I think last time we spoke you were telling her that the
actual, there's a misconception of how difficult this is to do
that you guys can actually the, the technology lends itself to
simpler integration. Is that right?
Yeah, so one of the when we start to actually talk to the
retail landscape, one of the things that we've certainly seen
is this, this increasing proliferation of screens.
In fact, just to give you an, a real life example of something I
went through recently, I wanted to, to purchase a new iPad.
It was, it was Christmas. I hey, you've got to treat
yourself. And then I was looking to
purchase this from one of the big large retailers here in the
department stores here in the UK.
And, and I noticed actually someone had a great offer.
And I thought, oh wow, they, they've actually got a store not
too far from me. I'll, I'll, I'll go and pick it
up. Incredibles that.
But what was interesting is that there was an experience that I
had at home, which is obviously one source of content.
There was a, a set of content that the person that I met the
Apple section within that department store.
Yeah. And she had a different price.
And then a lot of these technology products have a
little screen now in front of them to sort of describe how the
product works and essentially sell you and that had another
price as well. Oh wow.
And, and actually, and so there was a, there was a, a big
disparity between the content and the experience that was
happening. So anyhow, the, the, the, the
net net is that this, this new modern approach to content,
which is often referred to as a, a headless CMS.
It sounds like something from the 1600s in the UK with Henry
the Eighth. But what it's actually doing is
it's, it's essentially enabling or large retailers to have a
singular pool of content, but to serve that content up, whether
it be on a on a web browser at home for that retail experience,
a little display that might be adjacent a product for, for
merchandising that product. And now increasingly the little
digital displays that go alongside the product with
pricing information, for example.
So when you look at the look at the show, for example, we have,
you know, many systems feed that the content for that show.
We have our back end database system that handles exhibitors
and speakers and things like that.
And then we have other content like folks who are contributors
that can contribute content to the event.
And so we have to we have to be able to deploy very quickly.
And so it allows us very, you know, without a huge level of
effort to take four or five different sources and be able to
feed into these the blocks within the, within the site
that, that, you know, we also, you could do Dr experiences from
and, you know, and so if you have the single source of your
truth is from a source that can be controlled or validated, it
makes the content, you know, kind of in Marx example, less
likely to happen because you have systems that are actually
pulling from the same source, but may be presented differently
in different platforms. So it's, it's very powerful and
it allows us to be confident that what we're presenting is,
is accurate and timely. The other piece that we're
looking at is being able to create more personalised
experiences. So, you know, the dynamic home
page, being able to create and integrate search results with
someone's background information so that we can actually create a
page that's relevant and contextually imported or
necessary for whatever it is you're looking for.
And it's, that's massive. It's, it's going to change.
You know, people don't, they get bombarded every single day with
things that is not, they're not relevant and it's not important
to them. And so they disengage.
And so if you can provide people content that is targeted and
specific on the fly when somebody logs into your site
because of what you know about them, you can you can maintain
that relationship all you understand me and you can get to
place you get people to engage with you and the content.
More Yeah, the future of the future of retail is content.
And I'm not just saying that because of this to come to, but
it is from everything I've heard from conference CEO's, different
business leaders, everyone talking about the proliferation
of influences of all the different elements of digital
touch points, all of them are content moments.
And so therefore, I think to effectively do this to serve
content to users, you need to have some form of robust system
in place. Just coming into the final
couple of questions, Jason, in terms of words of wisdom, if I'm
coming to look at this and maybe if you cast your mind back to
where you were before you had this system, what's one thing I,
I need to be conscious of what, what's one thing that you, you
thought through this process you've learned that you would
pass on? You know, I didn't realise the
amount of effort that would be saved by, you know, deploying
story block. I think the, the piece for me,
when they told me what the, what the site would we would gain
back in productivity or hours of developer time, I didn't take
that. I thought that was the joke.
And you know, to be honest, because it was, I think it can't
possibly give me that much time back.
It's not realistic. And I wish I'd done it sooner is
kind of where I would go with it for the simple reason is, you
know, a site launching 8 weeks versus, you know, 3-3 weeks
versus 8 is massive. Like that is, is a big deal.
And so in giving the controller, the content creators in this
process, you know, going from a Drupal place with a platform
which was extremely manual to this, it was, that's something I
did not, was not aware of just the performance gains.
I thought that that was just marketing speak and it wasn't.
We're seeing those things today. That's fantastic.
Mark, final question, in terms of like the outcomes that Jason
has, is there anything that you feel that we've missed that is a
surprise to people? Because I think sometimes
because CMS obviously has been around since the dawn of what
people are doing, it's all overlooked as the the the
catalyst for a lot of transformation.
Yes. I'm just curious on your
thoughts. Yeah, I, I, I think coming back
to Jason's point, sometimes the, the biggest hindrance to making
progress is, Oh my God, how big a project is this going to be?
How big a change is this going to be?
Bearing in mind a lot of today's systems have been in place five,
maybe seven years. And so often what I I hear is,
Oh my God, OK, is this just going to be too big a step?
And, and will the effort involved actually reward the
fact that we're going to put all this effort in?
And it's great to hear and, and I hear it so many times that it
is worth going, making that big step.
And, and certainly we're starting to see very large
retailers with, you know, years of content and very complex
organisations have made that step and it's been a very, very
worthwhile for them. So and, and I think if you're an
organisation that is increasingly looking to connect
your digital online experience with the in store experience or
you're implementing technology like kiosks and so forth.
And so essentially multi screen digital environments where you
do want to offer up a consistent service, probably now's the time
to take the leap because it's those types of transformations
where this change can deliver the biggest advantage.
How? I mean, I know I said it's a
final question, but just listening to you both talk, it's
inspired me. It's the final, final question.
I promise. When you when it's an AI
question, you know, I'm, I'm just where, how far are we from
like AI being the mechanism to deliver the content, right?
That sort of layer of above, above the platform that then is
in. I mean, I'm just curious, you're
the experts in the field. What do you think?
I think we're, for us, you know, AI has become such, this an
important part of us, so many of our technology conversations.
And I think when we're looking at connecting topics and things
like that together, we're not there in terms of writing
content and, and being able to have these tools kind of
released and, and to, to, to develop content.
But if I understand who you are and what you might be coming to
the site for, there may be avenues of content that you
haven't explored that we could use AI to help provide some more
relevant contextual pieces that could create a more full picture
of something that you're looking for and potentially offer, you
know, make suggestions on offering things that you may not
see in our content offering or shows or other products.
How far away is that? I mean is that?
I that's very near. I believe that that's when we
reached the end of this process. We're already having
conversations today about how do we how do we integrate these
pieces into our content cycle That's.
Brilliant, Jason. I'm sorry, Mark.
Yeah, I and, and I would add to what Jason said, right, which
is, look, I don't think the robot or the bot is necessarily
going to take over from our, from our content creators, but I
do think it's helping them. And, and as Jason said,
understanding what performs well, what reads well.
We're definitely seeing a big take up there.
We're also seeing a big take up in, in translation actually.
So AI enabling us to take, you know, content that's on brand,
that that takes the, the brand personality and convey that in
different languages. We're definitely seeing AI take
advantage be taken advantage of of there.
But yeah, I think the human still has a an awful lot to play
in in the development of content, right.
And I and I, I know content a lot of content creators who are
very. Are rightly.
Very recipherous about that. But I do think AI can be a a
powerful enabler also in helping them to do their job.
So yes, lots of opportunity. That's wonderful, Mark.
Sorry, Jason, you want to? No, I, I just to echo those
points, I think that it is, I agree with that 100%.
I think there is a, there is a scenario and and those use cases
you described are some of what we're testing internally already
to be able to make sure that our content stays on brand, that the
translation pieces is exceptionally.
I think it's taken us further along than we've ever gone in,
in that area. And I think it those who are
consuming the content find it more contextually relevant and
and and the translations are getting much much better.
Yeah, I mean, look, NRF while I was in Japanese, Portuguese,
Spanish, French, I mean, like there there wasn't a language I
didn't hear while I was walking around NRF.
So I can imagine how that will be a major a major play in the
future. But Mark, Jason, thank you so
much for giving up your time and joining me on the show.
It's been, you know, hopefully we've unlifted the lid on, on
the art of the possible in this world.
Well, that as as is is going underneath or going through such
rapid transformation. Thanks, Al very much.
Thanks.