Is AI the Next Frontier for Macy’s New CMO?

Macy’s has named a new chief marketing officer, tapping Sharon Otterman for the role. Otterman will be spearheading the company’s strategic marketing, brand activations, content planning, visual merchandising, media strategy, and more.

While Macy’s doesn’t name artificial intelligence within its ongoing marketing efforts, the No. 1 Department Store by market share has been experimenting with “the intersection of fashion and technology,” according to Dave Torres, VP of interactive marketing at Macy’s in an earlier statement.

It’s safe to say that it’s only a matter of time before artificial intelligence-powered marketing makes its debut at Macy’s, and new research from IHL Group shows the retailer is poised to rake in $7.5 billion in additional business gains through 2029 due to its AI readiness.

The increased growth is a sum of up to $3.8 billion in increased sales and $2.1 billion in improved gross margins as a result of lower production costs, optimized pricing, and improvements across the supply chain. IHL also expects these AI efforts could reduce about $1.7 billion in sales and generative admin costs through 2029.

IHL isn’t discounting human-led progress, however. Rather than cutting back on headcount, the company sees these benefits as ancillary through supportive technologies like generative AI, traditional AI, and machine learning, which can lower expenses.

While IHL predicts this overall growth as an enterprise-wide investment, touching all areas of business including merchandising, sales and marketing, infrastructure, store systems, and more, the marketing function is especially ripe for AI-powered innovation.

Adidas and Traeger Grills, for example, are tapping into generative AI to open up capabilities related to content creation, data visualization, and complex calculations — simplifying data so that executives can better transform insights into actionable strategies.

Also, Tapestry (parent company to such brands as Kate Spade and Coach) is bolstering its marketing efforts by leveraging generative AI tech to automate online personalization.

According to Gartner, the top potential use cases for generative AI are “generating novel, diverse, and personalized copy content, audio, video, and images at speed and scale; and saving time and cost for audiences in different languages spread across other geographical boundaries.”

For sales and marketing at Macy’s, specifically, IHL reports that of its potential AI-driven growth, promotions management could make up $132.3 million, CRM for retail $128.6 million, price management and optimization $107 million, call center $67.3 million, and digital content creation $63.1 million.

Source: RIS News