Ep. 12 - How Ai and Creative Automation are Redefining Omnichannel Merchandising with David Feinleib

The humble product page is turning into something far bigger: a living digital shelf that updates, learns, and travels across every channel your shoppers touch. I’m joined by David Feinleib, founder and CEO of It’s Rapid and host of the Beyond the Shelf Podcast, to unpack what’s changing in ecommerce content and why AI-driven creative automation is quickly becoming a must-have for consumer brands. 

We dig into the evolution of the Product Detail Page (PDP) from a simple image and a few fields into a dynamic system that can refresh with seasons, address shopper questions pulled from reviews, and stay aligned with brand voice and retailer requirements. David explains how AI can audit and analyze content quality, spot missing information, and help teams scale production across the expanding set of “surfaces” that make up modern retail discovery: retailer sites, D2C ecommerce, social commerce, video, and retail media networks. 

We also get practical about operations. You’ll hear why speed to market matters when retailers offer retail media placements on short notice, how the “content supply chain” connects PIM and DAM systems to item setup and campaign execution, and how global brands can localize creative with faster translation and market-specific adaptation. Finally, we talk about personalization and the guardrails brands need so real-time optimization improves the shopper experience without crossing trust lines. 

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Transcript

Welcome To The Digital Front Door

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Well, hello everyone, and welcome to the Digital Front Door. I'm Scott Benedict. Today we're going to talk about what I think is one of the more fundamental shifts happening across retail. And that's how the digital shelf is expanding to become, in my view, a truly omni-channel element of retail discovery for a consumer. It's now being increasingly powered by AI and automation capabilities that are really transforming how product and brand content and creative elements get to market. Joining me is David Feinleib. David is the founder and CEO of It's Rapid, and they're an AI-driven creative automation platform that helps consumer brands streamline content production for product pages, for retail media, and more. And David also hosts the Beyond the Shelf podcast, and uh where he explores the people, the processes, and the technologies that are shaping modding e-commerce. And David was kind enough to have me as a ho a guest on his podcast a while back. And so I'm excited to now have him join us here on the digital front door. And David, welcome uh to the program today. Scott, thanks for having me on. Great to be here. Yeah, see, as force we refer to this as a home and home series. Uh so I've been on yours, now you're on mine, and we're gonna talk about different things, but all related to I'm channel commerce. So I'm I'm excited to have you on.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Uh it's great to be here. The uh opportunity to have you on, you know, you're you've got so much knowledge about the space that I learned a ton having you on the show. And uh I appreciate the opportunity to talk a little about what we're what we're seeing in the market.

The PDP Becomes A Living Asset

SPEAKER_00 1:54

We're gonna ask you to return the favor and make us smarter uh uh based on work that you and your team are doing. So that probably sets up the the first thing I wanted to kind of ask you about. You've really been, in my view, at the forefront of digital shelf transformation. Uh and so I want to kind of start there and talk about how the digital shelf is is evolving from simply being a place where you know where a collection of product pages exist on a retailer's website, really becoming a more complex multi-channel ecosystem of that brands obviously have a role to play, retailers have a role to play in making that discovery for consumers uh even easier and and more helpful. Kind of from the from the view of you and your team, what what how's that evolving and and is it uh evolving as fast as we all think it is?

SPEAKER_01 2:50

It is evolving really fast, and I think that's exciting. It's challenging, obviously, for for all of us, but also keeps it really interesting. There's a few things going on in the space. First, if we take a step back and we think about the PDP back in the day, so to speak, we were all just happy to get an item live with uh an image. And often that image came, it was a kind of a thumbnail-sized thing, and it came from probably a MDM or supply chain system or something like that. And when it went live, we all went, whoo, glad we got that up. And uh there was kind of a sigh of relief from our friends at the retailers, from the brand, you know, everyone involved. Then you had kind of phase two, if you will, which was hey, you know, I could I could do more with that PDP. I could have multiple images, I could have videos, I could have content that answers questions for my my shoppers. So I could put all that together. And, you know, that's kind of the stage we've been in for some amount of time. And now we're in this new phase where the definition of the PDP is changing. And the PDP is really a living, breathing asset now. That I think is the big shift. It's not one and done. It's I've got content, it's gonna be changing, whether it's seasonal, whether it's because I'm learning about my shopper. Maybe I looked at the reviews and I learned something about something they want to know that isn't addressed in my images or my product copy. I could actually refresh the content to update that and address that at the outset rather than them, you know, waiting for them to tell me what their questions and issues are. And then so the page, the content is much more dynamic. And you can do a lot more with it. It's no longer just a product shot. You've got images with text, you've got lifestyles, you've got videos, and you've got this changing nature of it. So that's kind of one thing that's going on. The other thing is what is that PDP? And classically, we think about it as the page on the dot com website. But now when you think about the that digital shelf, it's the PDP, it's your D2C site, it's videos you have online, it's your TikTok shop, it's a whole set of content. It's blogs, it's corporate material, it's all these different things that are going on in the ecosystem that comprise sort of your digital presence for your product set. So you've got to be thinking about all of those surfaces, even retail media, right? So that all comes in. So you've got this very dynamic cadence on the content, and then you've got a very broad set of surfaces that you need to think about.

Why It’s Rapid Had To Exist

SPEAKER_00 5:49

Yeah. And you know, that that level of opportunity creates the level of complexity for brands because there's now much more to do to bring a brand or a product to life. And while it's an opportunity, it's also a challenge. I think that it kind of brings me to your company in what I perceive to be the reason you created it. Uh it's rapid helps brands with creative production. And as I understand it, you guys work on things from images to videos to product copy to add assets. And I'm kind of curious what inspired you to start the company? It sounds like we we would agree that there's certainly a need. And what problem were you seeing in the market that manual creative workflows were causing in you and the team kind of stepped forward and said, I think there's a way to fix that and make that better? I was I'm curious.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Yeah, it's a great question. I love talking about our origin story. When you're building these companies, once in a long while, you get really lucky and really fortunate. And in this case, we had uh uh some large CPGs reach out to us. Uh, we had worked with them at a previous company and had done some great work together. And that's always, of course, what you hope for in these partnerships. And so when we got that call, uh it took us about, I would say, at least one millisecond, Scott, to say yes, we'd love to work with you and understand this problem area better. And basically, what we heard from brands and retailers is hey, look, we've got a lot of content, but how do we understand what we have? How do we audit it? How do we know we're doing the right things to optimize for conversion? So that's kind of understand what we've got and optimize it. And then now, with some understanding, we want to scale our production and we want to refresh quickly. I think everyone's always aspired to do that, but help us with some workflows that are scalable, that are repeatable. And obviously for our larger organizations that can be audited and understood, and we can understand when things happen and what the changes were and things like that. So that opportunity in some ways really came to us, and it just so happened to align with all of this incredible technology we're seeing around AI.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

You know, one of the things I've noticed about uh product marketing people, and and this is coming from someone who's a merchant by training, and it's and it's going to be said with love, but it's it feels like that brand marketers are always concerned about, you know, the brand voice and quality of content and telling the story the way they they they want the story told for their product and for their brand. It feels like AI can really dramatically accelerate content creation and updates and maintenance and maybe seasonal uh uh updates to uh to a product storyline. How do you strike a balance uh from your perspective between automation and authenticity, ensuring that what the output ultimately comes away with or uh comes in front of a customer with it feels both on brand, but it's it's also customer relevant. It's uh it's answering the questions the customer's really uh interested in.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Yeah. Well, first of all, a shout out to all of the merchants because you know, you uh from a product perspective, we we come in, of course, we want to talk about our products and capabilities and all that. A merchant is seeing a set of needs across a whole set of partners and customers and so on. And in a couple sentences, just even as an offhand comment, might say to uh say to us, oh, I've been seeing such and such challenge uh with these brands. And you know, for us, that's that's gold, right? We go, oh my gosh, uh that that's a problem over here, but for us, that's uh we we might be able to help with that. So merchants just do that almost without thinking about it sometimes, and it's so helpful. So um thankful for that. This question of the intersection of brand, retailer, and shopper is really interesting and it's always sort of moving. Like you said, the brand has their brand guidelines, styles, voice, requirements, things like that. The retailer is concerned about the shopper experience, right? You know, we we want to use the surface in the right way, but we want the shopper to be able to navigate and find what they're looking for and all that. And the shopper wants to find the relevant products and get info and make decisions, and often they're on their mobile device. So, what AI lets us do with some workflow capabilities is put the intersection of those together. We can actually design a workflow and say, we're going to incorporate these brand requirements. We know on this retailer, it's these retailer specs, and we know we're thinking about this shopper audience who's really concerned about these aspects of products in this particular category. And the AI can pull all those together, and we might say strategically, here's how we need you to prioritize those, or here's what the balance is in those factors. But the AI can then do an analysis for us and say, based on these criteria, here's what I'm seeing in your content, or here's what I'm not seeing. You're missing some key imagery or some key answers to questions. And it can help us actually produce content now that's aligned with those three uh aspects that go into the content.

Making Content Work Across Channels

SPEAKER_00 11:51

That makes sense. And I think one of the things that you and I have agreed uh about uh for as long as we've known each other is that the best product content doesn't just sell online. It also informs how a brand shows up everywhere, including what a consumer is researching a purchase that they ultimately make in a physical store, also on retail media, also on in-stores displays. How do you see brands kind of integrating digital shelf content across channels to deliver maybe a more consistent omni-channel experience where so many of these things were done in silos? This is the digital team doing digital stuff. Yeah. The in-store team doing on the on the physical shelf stuff. And now that it feels very integrated, it feels like you guys probably play an important role in that, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Yeah, such an interesting area. And you've made the great point that, you know, how do you want to think about it? Maybe you want to even think about digital first. And what is where's my starting point when I'm putting this content together? So I think the biggest thing we're seeing is we have teams that were, let's say, uh thinking about the physical shelf first. Um, that's where the volume of their sales have been. But now in the same conversation, you'll see their thinking has changed. And they'll they'll ask, hey, how would this look on such and such website? Or they'll they'll pull out their phone, right? And say, let me take a look at that and see, see how that looks. Because they're shopping that way themselves, right? They're not, they're seeing that when they go make purchases. And so they know that's part of the decision process for themselves and for the uh for their shopper customers. So I think that is just part of people's thinking now. How do you get the orgs together? Uh, we're seeing that come together more and more. Again, to your point, we historically we would have seen retail media happening over there, digital shelves over here, stores over there. And uh those campaigns might not have even synced up. And so you could get an ad showing one thing, bringing a shopper to something completely different on the product detail page. Now those are much more in sync. I think these organizations are doing a great job pulling these together. And they have to because to run at the speed that the market's moving at right now, they really have to be in sync. They can't just be producing completely separate assets across those surfaces, they're doing it all together. Mobile is probably one of the biggest drivers in this because we all recognize and we're we're using it. How is this gonna look on my phone? Um, and so even if you're thinking about the physical product and you're building new product packaging, you still got in the back of your mind, oh, somebody's gonna look at this on a mobile device. And even if that doesn't change my packaging today, I want to be thinking ahead to what could I do to help my digital team then build out mobile ready assets, just as one example.

Retail Media Speed And Creative Testing

SPEAKER_00 15:00

Yeah. That's so interesting. And you know, we talk about the silos between physical and digital teams. I can recall a time where the silos between the desktop website team and the mobile team existed. Fortunately, those went away relatively quickly, but it's just like you got to think end-to-end uh because that's how the customer shops. I will tell you, David, it's probably would not be late-breaking news for us to say that retail media networks are now kind of central to how brands invest in visibility. So there will be no breaking news uh icon across the bottom of the page when I say that. How do you see AI-driven creative and content automation, the things that your team does changing the way brands approach retail media, not just because of the speed, but also in maybe testing and iteration and refinement and then measuring how impactful this creative is versus this creative in a retail media context.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Yeah, that's that's exactly it. I think what we're seeing, and and and it's rapid, we really do the content auditing and analysis, and we do qualitative analysis so we can look at messaging and alignment with brand and uh things like that, conversion, uh, all using AI. And then we do the automation. Hey, I built this and now I need to scale it across all these services. And I think the the big unlock is a brand can iterate on that now just at a speed that they couldn't do before. You know, we have a partnership with um a large retailer. We do a lot of their ad creative for their brands and advertisers that they work with. They will bring opportunities to the brand and say, hey, we need this creative a day from now, two days from now, next Monday. And before, that would have been a conversation where you'd hear about it after the fact. Someone would say, Oh man, we had this great opportunity, Scott. Uh, I wish we had had the creative to do it. It was such a great opportunity with our retailer partner. Uh, they were gonna match our dollars. They were doing a co-brand campaign. You know, these these are really great opportunities. But, you know, kind of like airplane seats, if you don't occupy them, they're gone, right? Um, uh back to school and and Halloween and so on, those those come and go. And so, but now brands with workflow tools like ours can turn on that creative, can run a few variations, produce it, do a quick analysis, get approval for it, right? That's a huge deal. And then get it over to the retailer really fast. And everyone feels good about it because it's gone through the right workflow. So, this speed to market, that's really the big unlock in this area.

Building The Content Supply Chain

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Uh that makes sense. And you know, it leads me to the to this next question. And it's interesting because both between some of the work that I've done as a consultant uh with a certain large retailer uh here in town uh about the item creation process for any new item, no matter how many stores or clubs it's going into, includes digital content as well as this is the pack size that comes in, and this is the UPC code, and this, you know, all that sort of stuff. And then when I when I think of myself in the seat of a brand, now that's that's one retailer, and I've got multiple retail clients. And so it kind of leads to this concept I think I've heard you talk about, which is the content supply chain, the supply chain of all these elements that are now part of the item creation process as well as the ongoing marketing of that product throughout its its life cycle. And I'm kind of curious, how do brands organize teams, the systems, the workflows to support this kind of this emerging flow of not even getting an item set up, but other than supporting it with content throughout its its life, through seasonal demand periods, uh through launches at different retailers. What does that look like now?

SPEAKER_01 19:17

Yeah, well, first credit where credit's due. I don't know who invented it, but I'm I'm I'm pr I'm guessing it was Doug Stratton, who's now at Bazaar Voice, who uh came up with this idea of the content supply chain. I'm sure many, many people may say, oh, I was, I thought of that one. Um but uh I know he put a lot of time and effort into it. And uh this idea that, like a real supply chain, a physical supply chain, I would have a number of components and they would go into building my finished product, so to speak. That's sort of what's going on here. And so, you know, you think of all the different pieces that have to go into a piece of content going live, whether that's a retail media ad, a video, an image. Uh now we have a lot more to work with when we're deciding what the creative is. So we've got information, what are what are shoppers searching for? What do they want to know about? What questions are they asking? But also our audience for that content is twofold. Right now it's both the shoppers, you and I, looking for a product, but it's also to some extent AI-based engines, whether that's uh on the dot com site or it's a generative engine. So we're building the content from that supply chain for two different consumers of the content, an algorithmic consumer and a and a human consumer. So I think the the big breakthrough is you can take a workflow tool like ours, put all these different pieces, you can connect to your in-house, dam, pym, et cetera, your desktop, wherever those assets are. Brands and retailers are often surprised to find that they actually have a lot of assets to work with. They're always worried when we meet with them. I don't know if I've got enough to work with here. And you know, oh no, don't worry, let's see what you have. Oh, gosh, we do have a lot of right, because they've done marketing and they had to do item setup and they actually had to do a lot of this. And so you can now apply AI to everything from item setup and populating data in the forms and the APIs it needs to go to through to the content that's going to go on the shelf and then to retail media where you're driving top of funnel demand. So it really plays a big role. And this idea of a supply chain is a great analogy on how I can think about the end-to-end workflow.

Localizing Creative At Global Scale

SPEAKER_00 21:46

Yeah. No, I think it makes sense. And it kind of leads into the the sex question. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on. I I had the opportunity during my Walmart career to spend four years in the international division, and what a wonderful. Wonderful learning experience that was for me personally. One of the things that I took away from it that I still think about today is how brands that operate across markets, how do they, how do they localize creative for the product that speaks to the individual market while still maintaining their brand image? That's part of their maybe multinational allure to a to a consumer. And I'm curious, I would imagine that automation and capabilities like what it's Rapid has are probably helping brands to personalize and globalize and do some of these things at a scale while still keeping the important elements of a brand image and of a product consistent where they should be consistent and doing all of that and doing it very efficiently. Is that among the things that you guys think about and do for your clients?

SPEAKER_01 22:57

Yeah, it's such a great use case. So we've got this auditing and qualitative analysis part. We've got content production. I need banners and images and copy and all that. And now I want to scale that globally, just like you're saying. And there's one example, it's a very large CPG we work with. They're in dozens and dozens of markets globally. The brand builds out the brand guidelines and also legal requirements and things like that here in the states. Um, you know, in this particular case for this brand. And just to your point, they want to enable the local users and regions to localize that content. And localize means translate it so it's in the right language, swap in the right product imagery, but also it's got to align with the creative that is relevant for that market. So they're trying to do three things, right? Have it in the right words and have it translated, swap in the right product images, and then have it sort of aligned with the shopper expectations for that market. And this tool, this automation and content creation tool, can do those three things. Really quick product swaps, built-in translation. Translation is something you used to write a whole brief for and you'd send it out, and a month later it would come back. No longer the case. Now you just press a button, it's translated. Um, so it's it's sort of magical in that way. We can connect to their PIM and DAM so they can swap in the right product images. And then we can use Gen AI to say, based on the market that this content is being produced for, I'm not expecting to produce finished assets necessarily with Gen AI, but visualize for me what this creative that was built here would look like if it were specifically designed for this market. And now instead of a five, 10-page brief that tries to explain this, as they say, a picture's worth a thousand words, everybody can now look at an image and go, oh, yeah, yeah. I would that's sort of what I was thinking, but I would do this or I would do that, or here's how that would align with our brand. So all of a sudden, this discussion, not just the tech, but the actual conversation around the creative can be much more efficient, much more data driven. And as we all know with creative, there's nothing like having something to look at. Uh, you know, because you say, oh yeah, that that's it. Um and so that capability set is something we're really excited about and just makes again speed to market um really, really efficient.

Personalization Guardrails And Responsible AI

SPEAKER_00 25:36

Yeah. So that leads me into the this last question. And and I'm gonna uh I'm gonna take a uh an example from another aspect of retail and then ask you to apply it to what you do. Uh in the area of pricing, obviously, technology enabled first dynamic pricing on websites, which caused the brands some, let's just call it consumer credibility issues. And then the the advent of electronic shelf labels and physical stores both enabled something that was uh broadly, I believe, intended for good, but it also created some angst about now is there are we're gonna have dynamic pricing uh uh in physical stores as well as online. You apply that that metaphor to your space. And I'm curious, as we look forward over the next few years, are we headed towards real-time content optimization uh or an era where perhaps uh AI enables uh uh you know changes, maybe it's to a particular time of day or season of the year or particular individual consumers' preferences. Do you think we're headed towards that? Or is it too early to tell where technology created problems in the pricing area of retail? Is it a blessing, curse, or somewhere in between as it relates to content and and automating and optimizing the development of content?

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Yeah, it's a very interesting question. I would say to some extent, we're already seeing personalization. We've all done a uh, you know, a search in a generative engine, and you type in one set of questions, I type in those same questions, and we're getting different recommendations, right, based on other questions we've asked before. So, this concept of memory, in a way, we're already seeing some level of personalization applied there. But I do think brands at least, you know, one thing we're seeing with analytics is brands will say, I've got these shopper demographics or audiences that I'm really trying to build this creative for. Their struggle in the past was I know what my audience is, I know the content I've got today, but but how do I adapt that content for this audience? I don't know if I'm doing the right thing, and then I need an easy way to adapt it. So the brands and the retailers are both taking the content, taking the audience, and then updating the content, the creative, and so on to be aligned with those different audiences. And now you'll see one brand that we work with produce five, 10, 20 different variations of that content align for a specific audience. So I think we're seeing personalization kind of at that level today. Will we see it at the individual level? I think we will see it to some extent, you know, in the question and answer nature of how we go about interacting with these generative engines. So it's exciting, uh, it's challenging. Uh, we're here to help. We're very excited about the space. But obviously, having the right workflow in place so you can scale it and you can think about it and you can, you can, you can operationalize it, that's obviously super key.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

Yes. That and uh I I think there's uh a quote from the original Jurassic Park just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something. Correct. It'll be important for all of us to be kind of responsible throughout the ecosystem of retail to say, okay, here's where this technology can be used in a responsible way that makes a product more compelling and feel more personalized to an individual consumer, but uh, we can't use it to deceive someone or or or or change it. And and I think the learnings and the pricing side uh have all given us appropriate scars to be thinking about.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

And uh thinking about is related content.

SPEAKER_00 29:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:44

And and that that's why you do have, you know, to your global example, for you know, for example, that's why you do have these systems, whether it's ours or or another tool, where you can say, yeah, these are the guardrails, and we're gonna operate within this framework that we've agreed is sort of the guardrails for what we want to do here. Now we can unlock a lot of flexibility and creative uh in that, you know, in that framework, but we've sort of defined how we're gonna operate. And so that I think is really important to do up front. Um, you know, we're seeing our partners do that. And then you got to revisit it as you're going because these these technologies are just iterating so quickly. So you're even the way you think about the framework, you've got to be, you know, keeping an eye on that.

Final Takeaways And How To Connect

SPEAKER_00 30:31

So it's a great point. Absolutely. David, it's been a been a fascinating conversation. It feels like we've explored ways in which AI and automation are transforming the digital shelf and how some of these operational elements, this this content supply chain topic that we talked about, how brands can use some of these wonderful tools that companies like uh yours are developing and and still try to maintain that that human touch and and and that voice of the brand. It feels like the shift from digital shelf to omni-channel shelf is is kind of unfolding. And it it appears to me that you and the team at It's Rapid are really one of the companies at the forefront of how this is evolving retail. So it was a wonderful opportunity to have you share your thoughts. And uh I'd love if we have you back at some point and see how things are progressing uh as the the industry unfolds.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Well, Scott, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Amazing discussion. And if any of your listeners would like us to take a look at their content and run an audit for them, of course, we're more than happy to do that. And uh it's so great being able to discuss these topics with you. Uh it's a great show you've got. Thanks again.

SPEAKER_00 31:46

As it turns out, podcast hosts make the perfect podcast. So there's there's something to be said about that. I will invite the audience that if they'd like to learn more about what Dave and his team at its Rapid AI are doing, uh, we'll put up on the screen. Uh link to their website. I'd also advocate uh Dave's podcast beyond the shelf. Uh again, I had the opportunity to appear, really enjoyed it, had listened to other episodes, and and and you really touch on a lot of really interesting uh things. So, David, thank you so much uh for for joining us and and had a great conversation.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

Thanks, Scott.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

All right. That's it for now for the digital front door. I'm Scott Benedict.