Make People the Center of AI Transformation, with Jason O’Toole, Head of Connected Commerce & Media at Gildan

Transcript

Our transcripts are generated by AI. Please excuse any typos and if you have any specific questions please email info@digitalshelfinstitute.org.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (00:00):
Welcome to Unpacking the Digital Shelf, where industry leaders share insights, strategies, and stories to help brands win in the ever-changing world of commerce.

Peter Crosby (00:22):
Hey everyone, Peter Crosby here from the Digital Shelf Institute. The apparel industry is super competitive, complex, and constantly in flux. No more than in how dramatically AI is transforming that industry and the way people work. Jason O'Toole, head of Connected Commerce and Media, Gildan, has a saying that has served him throughout his experiences at brands like Spanx, Zenya, and his current role. When the game changes, you had better change with the game and as soon as possible. He focuses this sense of urgency and opportunity on what it means to the humans at the center of Gildan's mission, the shopper. His team supercharges their digital experiences by empowering them to use AI to drive impactful outcomes. Jason explained it all to us. Welcome to the podcast, Jason. We are so excited to have you on. Thank you so much.

Jason O'Toole (01:16):
Thank you, Peter and Lauren for having me today.

Peter Crosby (01:19):
So your resume, do we call them that anymore? I don't know. Your range of experience from e-commerce to D2C to retail media, you've really been through the whole digital world and being in the apparel industry in your brand in particular has a lot of ASINs going on. There's just child and parent hierarchies, all of that kind of stuff. So you really know actually what it is to manage the chaos of the digital shelf and now the Agentic shelf. So part of what you've done recently is you changed your roles into a connected commerce team, which I think is super interesting. So could we just start there and talk about your role and your team and what your responsibilities are at Gilden?

Jason O'Toole (02:04):
Sure. My name is Jason O'Toole and I lead connected commerce and media for Gildan. About a year ago, we realized with the emergence of social commerce and Agentic commerce shortly thereafter that new channels of commerce are going to continue to pop up. And so instead of just continuing to prop up a channel by channel solution, we found that it was best to build a capability that was really all encompassing, that we could speak to across the aisle and across walled gardens to different channel owners so that we can really build synergies and learnings faster. So we stood up a new capability called Connected Commerce. Initially, Connected Commerce encompassed just media across both brand and commerce media. So within commerce media, lived retail media, social commerce, DTC media, and Agentic commerce. Since then, we've expanded the remit to also include digital shelf. So now all organic and paid live under a single COE.

(03:15):
In the last 12 months, we've seen this come to life pretty well actually, leaning on each channel to really learn more and faster about consumer behaviors and how they're changing and ultimately how we can apply this capability beyond what is now and really what's coming next.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (03:35):
And Jason, I have a question. How do you get all of those people in sync? That's multiple different functions who have different priorities and it's great that they're now all under the same roof of connected commerce, but how do you keep the cadence of communication and measurement? How do you keep everyone going towards the same thing?

Jason O'Toole (03:52):
It's certainly not easy. So we had to build really an operational framework around this to support it. So we think of this framework distilled into three sections, people, process and technology. Now we find that this is the holistic approach with proper checks and balances to ensure we're moving the organization forward. So people in my mind is the most critical and I'm ecstatic about the team that we have in place and where AI enters and different advancements and syndication come in, we hire the right talent to support that growth. But that's really the core of our framework modeling. From there, it's process. And this is where AI Agentic has really come in to help with different workflows. But process is incredibly important, especially at an organization like Gildan, where we have multiple brands across multiple categories. There are competing priorities across departments. Oh,

Peter Crosby (04:55):
Really?

Jason O'Toole (04:56):
There are, Peter. There are. I can't

Peter Crosby (04:58):
Imagine. Yes.

Jason O'Toole (05:00):
And then we have internal and external components too. We have external media agencies and creator and influencer agencies as well. So all of those things we try to capture as best we can within this capability and within the process piece. And then finally, technology. And so technology is just something I'm personally ecstatic about and the opportunity to continue to test new technologies to ultimately drive better synergies in the business. We have technology across project management solutions, across syndication, obviously with solutions like Salsify. And then technologies that live within channel excellence, whether it's media or within the digital shelf to help us better monitor, measure, and track performance. So again, it's still messy times, Lauren, but we are very excited about the progress that we've made thus far. And again, distilling it into those kind of three pillars helps us keep our focus and stay organized to the ultimate objective.

Peter Crosby (06:08):
And Jason, was this transformation, was it inspired from below and then decided on by above or where did the energy to take this on and really shift? Where did that come from?

Jason O'Toole (06:21):
Yeah, it's a great question, Peter. So I mean, it was born out of an e-commerce org. And so with e-commerce, we are focused on share sales and equity growth. So it's certainly a balance of both above the line and below the line objectives. I would say that within e-commerce, we are hyper-focused on POS growth first. And so we did have to build our plans, whether it's digital shelf or retail media from the bottom up. That's really where we found the most success. I love the adage of sales overnight brand over time and I think that's critically important in this era as well With Digital Shelf really being at the core of that. I think the momentum in the industry right now is really around media first, but I think soon the pendulum will shift back into being a very content first focus because we think back even a few short years ago, everyone's content was kind of the same and good enough was good enough, but now we have new competition.

(07:27):
We have the emergence of AEO and GEO excellence. So there's a lot of things that are competing for consumer's attention. And so the need to focus back on the digital shelf and core organic content becomes all that more important.

Peter Crosby (07:45):
And you're in the apparel industry, as we mentioned, and Gildan is a massive portfolio company with brands like Hanes and Maidenform, Bali, Playtex, Gildan, of course, and Goldtow, et cetera. So it's a massive catalog, but can you tell us a little bit about what that means then in driving the competitive advantage and all the things that you want to do when you're working inside of the apparel industry because it's complicated.

Jason O'Toole (08:13):
It's a great question, Peter, and many don't know this. They obviously shop the category often, but apparel is the single most SKU intensive category sold online and it is within the top three GMV categories online as well. So as we think about the uniqueness of the category, let's take the digital shelf. On a single PDP, we can have more than a hundred UPCs sitting on it. Let's take a category like bras. Within a bra, you have cup and band size and then you also have colors. That alone gets you over a hundred UPCs or SKUs on a single product page, much different than other categories like CPG where you live and die by a single child asin, for instance. Now the other challenge we have in apparel is that you can't patent a T-shirt or underwear. So it's a category that is prone to a massive 3P footprint and SKU proliferation.

(09:15):
So on Amazon, in fact, more than half of all aparel sales are done by 3P sellers. So inherently there are these unique challenges that we face in apparel that do not exist in other categories. So it's always something that we have to be mindful of beyond just what other category leaders think through.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (09:37):
I know there was a time where looking for dupes on Amazon was a big challenge in the apparel industry. Do you still see a challenge around that and do you have a strategy to think about it or is that kind of an old trend?

Jason O'Toole (09:51):
I think it's massive and I think it's become structural, Lord. I mean, as the consumer is shopping more value-based and more price conscious, this democratization of product innovation is here to stay in my opinion. I think that's really how marketplaces, other than your core everyday items, when consumers are shopping in discretionary categories, these are the types of wins that marketplaces allow for. And so we have to be mindful of that, continuing to be mindful of creating innovation but doing it in a value affordable way so that we do not get overtaken or conquested by these emerging 3P brands.

Peter Crosby (10:35):
You mentioned brand earlier, brand over time. In this kind of environment where that is true, where there are third parties all over the world manufacturing and shipping, what is the importance of brand to win that argument in the apparel industry? Does it still have the power it once had or is that a constant reinvention or how does that work?

Jason O'Toole (11:02):
I think it's incredibly important. Haynes, for instance, turns 125 years old this year and we do not necessarily have the same budgets that these three Ps who are not constricted to profit goals and are obviously publicly traded. And so there are considerations that we have to take that others do not. So much of, I think, the prominence that we continue to have in the marketplace is really from drafting off of decades of brand equity building across Michael Jordan campaigns and other things that have really permeated the market. I think in commerce environments, it has become very shortsighted when the sale, win the day kind of momentum, but I do think that the leaders that in this space that are really focused on long-term equity building understand that the pendulum is probably overcorrected towards commerce and we need to find that balance point between equity and brand building and commerce objectives.

(12:15):
And so I'm actually very passionate about continuing to drive our brand messaging forward. And I think it is something where in a world where attention is harder and harder to get, we look at our reach and frequency data all the time and it just takes more views for a consumer to pay attention and actually convert. I think an advantage like known brand equity is something that is very critical to winning this next decade.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (12:47):
I love that you were talking about Michael Jordan, because when I think of Haynes, it's exactly what I think of. So great job with brand building there. Absolutely. So with so many SKUs and ASINs and just a lot of products, I'm assuming that AI can potentially help because you have to create a lot of content, there's a lot of seasonality. How are you thinking about using AI with your team and on the digital shelf?

Jason O'Toole (13:11):
With the capability of connected commerce established, and we just talked about the operational framework across people, process, and technology, I think the eventual state of AI is that it becomes our orchestration layer connecting our efforts together. I think in today's environment, AI has been very over romanticized as the silver bullet to solve all problems when in actuality it really becomes a partnership with the human side of the organization. I shared on the Digital Shelf Summit stage that I believe AI will actually force us to become more human. In many ways, there are actually parallels, I think, to AI and the digital shelf space as I think a lot of leaders that aren't in it are confused why we can't simply take an image and put it up on a PDP or why syndication doesn't just work flawlessly. So I think both are at this kind of iceberg moment where people can only tolerate what's above C level without understanding what the work that's sitting below it is.

(14:17):
I would say for our organization, and my team specifically, we're really very much in the middle of the beginning of our implementation with AI. And part of this is due to our own data and system complexities. Part of it is also the technology side. So as more companies adopt MCPs, Salsify, we will be able to build more comprehensive workflows that will streamline many of the more rote tasks that we still have to do manually today. Last thing I'll say here is that, and this should be the most obvious, but it's important to clarify, I think people adoption is critical here. We are all at different learning levels with technology and AI. So I continue to evangelize to my team that there's such important work ahead of us and that we want to eliminate the simple, repeatable tasks and automate that so we can focus on the more meaningful work.

(15:19):
My call to action for digital shelf practitioners listening is to understand how much farther along I believe our industry could be with the adoption of AI workflows. I actually envision a world where PDPs are as compelling as national brand campaigns, even within walled garden constraints of retailer sites. So there's so many more human inspiring things I think we can be focusing on that we're not currently because of the manual workload that we've had to face unfortunately in this industry up until the point of AI adoption.

Peter Crosby (16:02):
In the white paper that Rob and I wrote recently, we talk about it as working at machine speed, like the ability to be able to transfer 80% of the drudgery over to these machines, if one can imagine what that would free you up to do that would be driving top line and bottom line growth with greater focus and greater specificity for higher conversion, et cetera, you just think of that optimization loop that's possible when you can work at machine speed and it's super exciting. And I think we're already starting to see some of that in these early days, which is very exciting.

Jason O'Toole (16:44):
Yo bring up a good point, Peter, on the people part. I think on interesting thing that has allowed me to adopt is to actually see with my own eyes different work streams and use cases. And I think the publications and the media has, it's all AI, AI, but there's not enough working use cases, I think. And I think that as more people say, "Oh, you actually do this, then this, then this, and it creates this level of output." That's really where the magic is. And I think adoption will form around that quickly, but I think we just don't have enough in- market use cases to really get a good grasp on what AI can do and how it can semi-automate or fully automate different workflows.

Peter Crosby (17:37):
So when you think of the sort of oncoming flow of agentic commerce, and one, I'd love for you to define it for us because everyone seems to have a slightly different sense of what that might mean to them. And so for you, what is agentic commerce and how through the changing consumer behavior based on that, how do you think about your strategy to play in that area?

Jason O'Toole (18:06):
Yeah, it's a great question. And this is where we all have to be thoughtful business people. When the game changes, you better change with the game and the sooner, the better, especially brands that lead market share with new categories, your ability to excel in this new format is critical for survival. More agile startups have nothing to lose and they spend all day testing and learning rather than spending time in meetings. So this is exactly why we wanted to create a connected commerce capability so that we can test and learn more. We can fail faster and ultimately figure out how consumers are engaging with this new technology, this new experience. So this also extends into conversational AI on retailer sites. There's a lot happening in this space. Amazon just rebranded from Rufus to Alexa shopping, building out that equity. And I'm reading more articles about how lead retailers are looking to extend that equity beyond just their O&O properties into the broader open internet.

(19:14):
So it's a very interesting time, interesting space. I think that referral site traffic is still low in terms of conversion and how it connects directly, but it's only a matter of time before that becomes easier and more accurate of a tool and it ultimately eclipse the search bar. So I'm fascinated by it. I have dabbled with it myself. I don't think it's perfect, but I do think that there is some unique draw that the consumer has to agents and LLM platforms where trust is higher than I've ever seen it before. And that's interesting. And so where attention and trust flow, you've got to also position yourself to be ready to be at the forefront of

Lauren Livak Gilbert (20:05):
That. Well, I think it eases the decision-making. It kind of quiets the noise for consumers and gives a direction. If I'm looking for this type of product, it recommends it and it can pull up questions that you never really thought of. And so the psychology behind it, I completely understand as a consumer myself, who wants 7,000 tabs open doing the research, but it will really be interesting to see how the evolution of shopping versus buying really works together. Jared Zogby, who is a very large speaker around this, just wrote an article around the difference between shopping and buying. And the shopping piece, I see a lot of adoption. The buying piece doesn't really kind of exist yet today. So I'm curious, Jason, as you think about your strategy around agent to commerce and just AI in general in your buckets of people, process and technology, are you adding people specifically for AI?

(21:01):
Are you thinking about capabilities differently, budgeting differently? How are you incorporating an into your existing strategy?

Jason O'Toole (21:07):
It's great. I think we are doing the thinking on that now and figuring out what talent evolution looks like and the team that we have in place. I think there are a few process and technology changes that will enlighten us and open that up considerably, Lauren. But then there are, again, back to the AEO/GEO thing, there are new rules to the game as well. So there's an education that needs to take place. Going back to your earlier comment though, I do think it's very fascinating this discussion of experience versus convenience because retailers, their lifeblood is experience. It is convenience too, but same thing for brands. And really that's the joy of shopping is I came in for this, didn't realize this thing existed, so I bought this as well. That's a win-win-win for everybody. It's a win for the retailer, the brand and the consumer.

(22:10):
And so as Agenttic becomes this decision engine versus a discovery or search engine, I think it's going to be really interesting. At what point do we take our hands off the wheel or are we past the point of no return from a retailer or brand perspective and say, this is what the consumer wants and we can't fight it, we can't stop it and blend that together with how do we also show them product to product three, product four? Because they may want it. It's not just a basket building thing for the sake of commerce and growth. I mean, it's really in service of the consumer. So I'm fascinated to see how this conversation continues to evolve.

Peter Crosby (22:56):
I know your point earlier about content and I know it's not an either or, but the content over retail media in terms of content becoming in this environment, content is such a powerful weapon in the hands of the brand. They have so little control over the shopping process in the Agentic environment. All you really do have control over is retail media in that environment, how that's going to work and how is that going to show up and what will be the opportunities there? And then the rest of it is, is my brand story, is my content story across more personas, more use cases available to the agent? And then once the agent learns that, are you also backed up by what somebody says on Reddit or YouTube or whatever? That's sort of that expansion of where your brand is represented and your need to influence it and or control it is both an opportunity and a sort of a challenge of new processes it seems like.

(24:03):
I think we're

Jason O'Toole (24:04):
In an age where there's a lot of shiny objects to look at and so we have got to maintain a hyper focus on what matters most and that is the consumer. Ultimately, if we continue to honor the consumer, we continue to show up for them, we build innovative product, we market and allow them to find new choice, they're going to reward us. They'll reward us with growth, with loyalty, relevancy, and we will continue to be the brand we've always been. So I think it's where a lot of brands, a lot of practitioners will get caught up and lost. And so it's my job and my team's job to stay very focused on the true objective, the true goal.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (24:50):
And Jason, you mentioned growth. I mean, growth is on the mindset of every single brand right now. There's a lot of different levers that you can pull. There's a lot of different ways to get to growth. You just went through a massive acquisition, a lot of changes there. Can you talk a litle bit about the benefits of that and how that can be a lever for growth?

Jason O'Toole (25:07):
Yeah, it's a great question. Well, first is we have had a very supportive executive leadership team that I think has believed in our vision from day one when we initially met with them. So without ELTC support, really the capability that we're building can only go so far. And the second is we picked up some really strong people. I think that's probably the easy win right there was that we had an incredibly complimentary integration thus far. We've had smart people from both sides come together and think about the framework, think about our people, process and technology approach in different ways. And we ultimately have gotten sharper and more well-rounded for it. But ultimately, back to my point, I think that my thesis statement throughout my career has been that the single most important thing is honoring the consumer. The consumer is really what matters most. And if we continue to listen to them and build products that create solutions in their lives, then we will continue to be rewarded by that.

Peter Crosby (26:11):
Well, I think that importance of focus and making sure you have the right people and that I loved you talking early about the need for education and training to make sure that people can use these tools in the right context and towards the right ends and grow that together as a company, I think is a really exciting mission. And Lauren and I, of course, just want to thank you so much for deciding to share it with our community, because I think it's inspirational to hear people that are working through the process in a very thoughtful and organized way, and that's just what you've represented today, Jay. So we're really grateful for it. Thank you so much.

Jason O'Toole (26:51):
Absolutely. Thanks for having me today.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (26:53):
Thanks so much, Jason.

Peter Crosby (26:56):
Thanks again to Jason for sharing his people- centered AI strategy with us. When you have a minute, please come on over and become a member at the DSI or refer a friend. They will appreciate it. Thanks for being part of our community.