As summer draws to a close and September begins, the holiday buzz is already in full swing. Retailers are gearing up for the busiest shopping season of the year — a golden opportunity to capture attention and drive impact.

💡 This year, with a shorter shopping season and reports highlighting a growing number of customers starting their holiday shopping as early as July, launching early with a well-crafted strategy is more crucial than ever. And, as customer budgets tighten and competition intensifies, delivering personalized content will be key to standing out and strengthening customer relationships.

Integrating Generative and Predictive AI into the creative workflow is revolutionizing this process, enabling retailers to efficiently produce and fine-tune content at scale and in real-time. Gone are the days of endless manual tweaks—AI enables the effortless production of customized content, even for large product catalogs, while personalizing for every customer segment, including those previously overlooked. This all happens quickly and cost-effectively, reducing both production time and expenses.

As the holiday season rolls in, let’s see a few ways that AI can step in to boost this year’s retailers’ content strategy. 

Capture consumers’ interests and needs, in real-time 

Customers shop at different times and for different reasons, and the content they encounter should reflect that. Leveraging context data and Generative AI, retailers can easily identify their specific needs and tailor the content accordingly, on the fly. For example, a product could be presented with cozy, homey visuals during rainy weather or with vibrant, outdoor scenes during the weekends, with Gen AI doing the heavy lifting of generating relevant scenarios at scale. Experimentation plays a crucial role here, with Predictive AI completing the process by analyzing user behavior and optimizing content delivery in real-time, ensuring constant relevancy. 

Make the most of the data you already have 

Retailers have a goldmine of first-party data at their fingertips—purchase history, browsing habits, and more. By integrating it into the creative process, Generative AI can harness this treasure trove to uncover patterns and deliver highly personalized visuals, messaging and promotions. Reports show, for example, that 73% of consumers want brands to suggest products that complement items they’ve already bought. In the midst of the holiday rush, delivering the right message to the right person at just the right moment is what can truly make a difference. 

Seize key holiday moments, effortlessly 

The road to December is marked by key dates: retail events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, as well as seasonal festivities like Halloween—each offering crucial opportunities to drive sales. With Generative AI, retailers can swiftly adapt their content to reflect these high-stakes events, seamlessly producing fresh new messaging and visuals to capture festive interest and decrease time-to-market. 

Start planning now 

This holiday season, AI will no longer be just an experiment. Fully integrating Generative and Predictive AI into the creative workflow will be critical to the success of your content strategy, enabling unprecedented levels of personalization across all digital channels – social, paid media, websites, Apps, and more. Start planning now to leverage the full potential of AI and make this holiday season your most successful yet. 

Get in touch to learn more about how Connected-Stories can help!

Sources

Forbes, The Holiday 2024 Shopping Season Will Be Unlike Any Other
Think with Google, The Insighter: The holiday consumer mindset  
Google Ads, Think Retail on Air Live 2024