By Sydney Donovan, EGC’s Director of Public Relations Our Suade team spent four days in Nashville immersed in all things modern retail, and we’re eager to share what we learned. Shoptalk Fall in Nashville hosted many conferences and trade shows that featured keynote speakers and presentations. Additionally, the conference promised and delivered candid peer-to-peer conversations and networking opportunities that felt more like casual conversation than non-stop sales pitching. As in every other industry, AI was a constant conversation. One of the most refreshing themes was the admission that there’s no secret sauce to how to implement AI. Even massive brands and retailers are still experimenting, taking risks, and relying on their consumer to steer their next innovation. There’s No Universal AI Playbook Wayfair highlighted how it gave its teams the autonomy to find and prioritize their own AI opportunities instead of leaving every call to seniority. Many other brands admitted they’re mostly using AI to explain reporting and campaign performance, and nothing massively flashy. This was perhaps the clearest pattern that was observed across the show: every company is using AI differently. Continuing to share ways in which the technology works, and almost more importantly, ways it failed, is key to helping the entire retail industry move forward. Humans Remain at the Center of All Great Ideas A cautionary tale was shared on a panel which detailed an automated pricing that ran across roughly one million SKUs—and missed empty margin cells in the data. Items priced at $400 sold for $50, and thousands of orders went unfilled. Automation makes data inputting faster, but not always safer. In the midst of “eye-patch gate” (if you’re not aware, read this Marie Claire article), Glow Recipe tested AI-generated customer responses and quickly dropped them because the systems couldn’t match the wit, tone and judgment that sensitive conversations require. A panel of teen and Gen Alpha shoppers went further, calling overtly AI-generated visuals repetitive and distasteful. The Humans and the Machines Recognize Your PR Strategy. On the agentic commerce panel, speakers described GEO as an extension of good product information and third-party citations, noting that editorial coverage and “best of” lists can determine whether a retailer shows up when shoppers search a category without naming a brand. Favorite Daughter’s founders told a story about a partner relying on Claude to summarize their brand and getting back the wrong origin story entirely. Brands need to control what’s written about them, including how large language models (LLMs) discover and recommend them. If you’re not proactive about shaping your story, a model will summarize whatever it finds and call it “fact.” Where Suade Landed… The brands getting it right are the ones keeping people at the center, both behind the wheel and on the receiving end. And those people are mastering their own way of leveraging AI to exceed their goals. Performance Public Relations is more critical than ever. Find a team that can prioritize both your core audience and the LLMs they rely on. Visit EGC’s Suade page.
