The ENDCAPS: Celebrating Best-in-Class Digital Merchandising and PDP Activation

Transcript

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

Peter Crosby (00:00):

Welcome to unpacking the Digital Shelf where we explore brand manufacturing in the digital age. Hey everyone. Peter Crosby here from the Digital Shelf Institute. The best part of being in the digital commerce community is how we are all continuously sharing with and learning from each other. It's especially helpful when an independent, unbiased organization, like say, firstmovr, creates an opportunity to find the best and turn it into best practices, and then shares freely. That's why firstmovr’s Chief Learning Officer Chris Perry is here with Lauren Livak Gilbert and me to share the results of the first ever End Caps awards. They celebrate and elevate brands for best in class digital merchandising and PDP activation. Then they explain how you can turn it into action and maybe join next year's honorees. Chris Perry, welcome back to the podcast. We are so delighted to have you.

Chris Perry (01:08):

Thank you for having me. I can't believe it's a whole new year.

Peter Crosby (01:11):

Oh my goodness, yes. Here we go, 2025 buckle up. We're talking about something really important and exciting today, which is the new End Cap awards that you kicked off in 2024, which are, as I understand it, the first ever industry awards for PDPs.

Chris Perry (01:32):

Indeed,

Peter Crosby (01:34):

If I had a sound engineer, I would insert applause right here.

Chris Perry (01:38):

Well definitely applause for all of those amazing PDP award winners and finalists out there.

Peter Crosby (01:45):

PDPs really represent the, I don't know, the home base of today's consumer journey, and it's connected and feeds so many channels and so much of the results that drive traffic and drive conversion, they've really become critical to the growth that people are trying to achieve and to also understanding what's connecting with the consumer and what's not. So they're pretty powerful. And so I think this award series that you kicked off I think is really exciting. And so tell us what the end caps are and why you started this.

Chris Perry (02:27):

So I think there were a number of prompts for this. I think having been an early e-commerce nerd and volunteered as tribute into this space now 15 years ago, I can get to those decade and a half mark now that we're in 2025, where we were actually using Photoshop and PowerPoint to make images for our PDPs when we didn't have agencies that knew what we were asking them to do, even just to get complete content. There's been 15 plus years of blood, sweat, and tears, if not cheers. Also, that have gone into this very important process, this practice of the digital shelf, right? Not a one and done, but an ongoing optimization effort, a journey, if you will, that hasn't really been recognized in any formal way by the industry. I don't mean that people, shoppers or industry professionals don't visit a page and go, dang, that's a really awesome page.

(03:26):

I should be doing that too. Or, wow, I bought that. Why did I buy that? I wasn't even planning to shop that category today. Something about that compelled me to be influenced to buy online or in store, but there wasn't necessarily something formal out there that was establishing what table stakes and next level benchmarks were. I mean, there's a lot of awesome education out there. It just hadn't been corralled together in an independent and unbiased way. And we really felt at first mover as upskills in the space along with all of you out there that are helping take all of our industry to that next level, that there could be an unbiased independent industry effort at establishing benchmarks and education around those benchmarks. Not just saying, Hey, great job for that, but actually saying, great job for doing this and this and this, which then educates them to do more of that, if not better than that.

(04:17):

That sets the bar even a little higher and then helps other brands outside of obviously proprietary strategies and insights and content that they may have stuff that everyone could be doing in applying to their business. But we really wanted this at first mover not to be a first mover only thing. We wanted this to be an industry thing because while we try to be unbiased and independent, there's always that shadow of, oh, it's their initiative. No, it's your initiative. It's your PDPs. We want your PDPs the best to be the best that they can be. And so we were very excited to kick this off in 2024 at the end of the year, knowing that it was going to roll into 2025. And we just saw this as a chance to a, create something that hadn't been created before for digital merchandising, which includes PDPs brand stores, a number of different things in between on that spectrum.

(05:04):

There are a lot of awards out there for advertising, creative media, shopper marketing, nothing yet on that digital merchandising side. So to add a piece there that's very critical and ultimately, hopefully that'll help this get recognized maybe in some of those other areas as that's part of the full funnel activation too. But this is again, really to award those who are doing well today, but then spotlight how they're doing well today in a way that everyone else can borrow with pride and take their pages to the next level. Because hoping in a year that what the winners are doing today is table stakes of tomorrow, and we'll already be worried about the next. And honestly, our challenge should be how do we score the thing of tomorrow because it's something completely new and different that isn't being, I would say, methodologically captured in any way by a tool or a data source at that point. So we want to keep breaking our methodology and taking this to the next level. But we were very pumped if you can't already tell from our passion here, we are very excited to have Lauren as one of our judges and partners of this, again, as an industry effort. And we look to be adding partners and judges from all sides of the table going forward. So we keep that objective view on what best in class looks like.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (06:19):

And Chris, I have to say

Peter Crosby (06:21):

This would be the part where I insert applause again just for

Lauren Livak Gilbert (06:26):

Thank you, Peter. I was just going to say, Chris, your comment about volunteering is tribute for e-commerce resonates so well because I was kind of given it on a platter and it was like here, and that's how I learned. But it's been really incredible to be on this journey because I think that to your point, PDPs are so fundamental to not just the digital shelf, to retail media, to your broader omnichannel campaign and having people recognize for the work that they're doing, just the excitement from the brands who nominated or were nominated or were top 10 or winners. It was just so incredible to see the enthusiasm behind it and to be able to highlight such great work that is really at the pinnacle of success for commerce and not recognized. So thank you for bringing that and having me be a part of it. It's been really incredible to watch.

Chris Perry (07:19):

Thank you. And thank you all who are listening for all the work you've done. It doesn't go unnoticed. It just may not have had a formal recognition yet, but you've probably been gotten accolades internally. We wanted to give you accolades externally, and there are a lot of brands out there too that didn't get recognized who potentially just didn't submit their page. We couldn't see every one of the millions of PDPs out there all at one time. So that just is an onus on everyone to submit, to be considered. It took a few minutes. It's free. It's intended to be really low barrier to get engaged, but then the rewards are priceless to make your parents proud and show it all off on LinkedIn and in every arena that you enter longterm. But yeah, no, we are very excited about this. I really, honestly, even to date, with all the trainings we do on digital shelf from 1 0 1 to 4 0 1 or whatnot, we get, there's still this kind of like, oh, content insert eye roll here.

(08:13):

Why are we eye-rolling that, oh, it's so basic. Are you doing it well? Well, no, then it's not basic, right? I'm not saying that to be, I'd be humble too, right? I'm always having to improve too. But please don't roll your eyes at something you're not doing because you're not doing it. Now, there are a couple of brands out there that were doing it so they can roll their eyes if they'd like, but only for a while because then the bar got set higher and then what they're rolling their eyes out is something they're not yet doing. So this really, I think should be that little fire that's lit under all of us achievers, all of us first movers out there around continuous improvement. You're never done until you decide you're done, and there's no shame in being done, but none of us are done yet. So we volunteer as, and we're here to fight. So the Hunger Games. So we got to

Lauren Livak Gilbert (08:58):

Be, yes, and especially in commerce. So the first category, Chris, that was launched was grocery. And it was really exciting because there are a lot of varying different types of products that we reviewed for the submission. So what were some of the key learnings from the category in terms of grocery For PDPs?

Chris Perry (09:17):

Yes, and for anybody who doesn't know, the way we structured the end caps was to feature a different mega category, grocery, healthcare, household, and baby pet beauty Bev out every two months. So the idea is that each one is getting its own spotlight, but then the end caps is an annual repetitive annual cycle of recognition throughout the year. So we started with grocery kicking off actually at grocery shop. We announced the open call for PDPs, and that was natural. Having had a lot of experience in food and beverage myself, there were a lot of players out there hungry with all puns intended for this recognition. But what was really interesting, and I go back to this, I don't say this. I did better when I was in the same trenches at that moment outside of it many years later, hindsight's 2020. I could have done it all perfectly in the future if I went back in the past.

(10:06):

But what was really interesting, I think the best way to sum it up was many brands were leveraging some of the best practices. No brands were leveraging most of the best practices, and a lot of the best practices weren't some kind of secret thing you couldn't fathom doing. It was like, oh, I didn't know about this tool. No one's ever heard of before. That would just put me up at the top of search overnight. It was all things that are intuitive that almost seem basic, but obviously do take a lot of strategery and thought and insight and understanding your category and your competitive set and your retailers. So I mean, that's the part which is nice with this looming AI to replace us all. The human is still really important here because someone has to have thought through how those basics come to life in a way that doesn't seem so basic to the consumer or the shopper, but converts them.

(10:58):

So I think that was my first key learning was there were so many awesome things, and the winners, the finalists, and the best in class winners all had amazing drop the mic pages. I mean, easily, I want your product, and I didn't even need your product, but I still was like, we could spend an hour or two with each of those brands ideating some simple ways they could take theirs to what would win next year or this year when we have grocery again later in 2025. So I think that was a core learning. I think, and this is actually one of the things, Lauren, that I know that when you had asked for keywords for this year, it was a big one for me. Someone had actually asked, we talk a lot about leading and lagging metrics, and the digital shelf has a lot of leading metrics we have influence over that gets us to sales and share and the lagging metric outcomes we want.

(11:50):

But someone was like, what's the most important leading metric? And if you ask, you could actually go beyond traffic and conversion and share of search and search rank and conversion rate and all these different metrics that matter. It's not that I could do all of those one time. It's how consistently over time I can do those things. So I would argue that there's probably quite a few most important leading metrics, but consistency is really the opportunity here. Because to be fair, some of those winners might've just updated their pages for the first time, and maybe they weren't as amazing three months ago. We didn't go back in time to see how consistent they had been. But the goal would be, are you consistently continuously improving over time? And I think that's going to be the, it's not just responding to change, as Darwin said, we all need to do, but responding to change is a consistency effort as well. It's not a respond one time. It's respond many times.

Peter Crosby (12:45):

And that's one of the sort of hopes of the AI future, which is that these best practices can be automagically scaled to extend across every touchpoint. I just did air quotes for those of you at home, and that will uncover growth that you would not have been able to realize without that assistance. And so I'm looking forward to that. We'll see how that goes in 2025 and 2026 and beyond.

Chris Perry (13:16):

And I would say, Peter, to your point, I already, I mean, I'm sure some of you who are testing AI for yourselves, hopefully not doing all of your homework with chat, GPT as my wife who works in a school has found many students trying to figure out how to do carefully. But I find myself, it's not that chat, GPT or some of these tools is doing all my work. It's prompting an idea like, Hey, I am trying to do this and here's six of my ideas. Am I missing something? Is there a gap? So I think that's the part of, and it's not that AI necessarily had the perfect seventh or eighth answer. It's that it's like, Ooh, I hadn't thought about it on that one little angle. And actually I do have a response to that or an angle myself, but I thought I was really comprehensive.

(14:00):

And so it prompts, it flags gaps, it prompts ideas, lets me build on that and teaches me a little bit of where my own weaknesses or where my POV ended. And so I'm still doing the work, and I always try to pride myself on doing my own work, but as a professional. But I don't feel bad about using that as a tool in building our strategies, building our content. And I think the same thing would go for tools and just the planning for content, using that to help fill gaps, spark ideas, use it as a challenger most boardrooms, most meetings don't have a lot of people challenging each other. What if chat GBT was the unbiased, unemotional challenger, right? You're missing this and this and this. They're not doing it to be mean unless you added a weird personality to them. They're just trying to help you. So to your point, Peter, I think we always have to go back. AI is going to help people do their job better, not replace the people unless those people don't know how to use AI to enhance their roles. I think that's the key,

Peter Crosby (15:06):

Right? Right. So our episode time clock is just ticking away. So I want to get from the best practices to the best actions that people can take. So in the submissions and the winners, where did you see the opportunities for folks to dig in grocery?

Chris Perry (15:23):

So we scored on six different criteria. We will add and morph the criteria over time as benchmarks and table stakes change. We did score, we had literally hundreds of different data points. Some were pulled through automation tools. Some were actually manually reviewed for the presence of this content in this order, the density of keywords, all these different things depending on the criteria. So the two kind of table stakes criteria were what we call content completeness and SEO optimization. Now, from that perspective, it was do they have all the elements they're supposed to have on the Amazon, Walmart, and Target page? Not necessarily the way Target and Walmart would score A PDP, but just in general, do they have the core body parts within the anatomy of the PDP? We don't know if it's accurate to their source of truth because we weren't necessarily tying it back to Salsify or their catalog, but we were assuming at least in iteration one, that if it was complete, that it was correct with what they planned to put out there.

(16:29):

The SEO part is obviously also a process, but where we saw brands that had included top keywords for the specific categories and subcategories. So there's always going to be room to enhance that methodology, but that was to get the table stakes in place. Then I think where the rubber met the road on who started to become finalists or best in class players were the other four areas of judging criteria, shopper centricity, mobile ready content, social and user-generated content integration, and then growth, incrementality design. And so most of these are pretty straightforward, but shopper centricity was really, is this telling a story in a logical flow using a rubric around what is this product? Is it for me? Does it work? What else should I know about this product to make me want to buy it? And these are the same questions shoppers use in milliseconds to convert to a product online or in store.

(17:24):

So speaking to that in visual content, textual content and enhanced content becomes really critical. Mobile ready content included both mobile hero images and how they, even within the restrictions by retailer, how they designed mobile hero images, carousel images, text, and enhance content to be more easily legible and engageable on a smartphone device or on a tablet. Social UGC integration was how did they, not only do they have the reviews, the basic ratings and reviews that we would generally want to see, but had they integrated that into their content, whether it be through video imagery, calling out a review, whether they baked that in as part of the claims or the other story. And then growth incrementality really goes to some things that we've talked about in our past episodes on omni-channel category management. Did they design it to drive new shoppers, lap shoppers coming back bigger baskets or more trips, right?

(18:22):

Really looking at household penetration and buy rate. And we were able to do that. All of this was able to be scored in a very quantitative way so that it was very objective. Is it there or is it not? And then the judges looked at the finalist and then scored those based on how well brands met with their PDPs met those criteria. And it was nice. We had such a nice diverse group of experts that everybody was coming at it from different angles. So you really did get a really nice fabric view of how each PDP performed against one another.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (18:53):

And there were a couple of things going through the judging process that were really interesting and stood out to me. I actually bought one product that I'd never heard of before because the PDP was so good. And the PDP was so good because it told a story. It was pasta, and it told a story about when you would use the pasta, why you would choose this pasta. It had a lower carb rate in terms of nutrition, and they had a picture of a family, and it showed you how you cooked it and how long it took to cook. It was just a beautiful story of how you could use that in your real life. And I use that an example in whenever we talk about the end caping in the grocery category, because I wasn't shopping for pasta, but I went to this PDP and the order of the imagery was perfect.

(19:43):

It answered all the questions that I had about it. It told me why I would use it, where I would use it, why it's different than the competitor. So the story element was really strong for me when it came to grocery. And another one of the winners was in the baby category. And I only have a furry child, but I can imagine if I had a baby, I would want to know every single ingredient and every single fact about the nutrition. And they had every single fact. So a lot of the winners were actually telling stories with their PDP versus checking a box of, I have a lifestyle image, I have a ratings and review image. And the order of the imagery was really important how they displayed it on the PD P. So there were so many of those elements that I think to Chris's point, we've moved from check the box, here's what you need to put on the PD P to, is it telling a story? Is it in the right order? And is it compelling enough for someone to randomly go buy your product even if they weren't looking for it? So to me, those were some of the big things that really stuck out in terms of the winners of the PDPs.

Peter Crosby (20:53):

And I would imagine that sometimes those things feel at odds having a page that tells a story, but yet also I will use the forbidden term, but keyword stuffing to win the SEO battle. And I'm just wondering how you saw those being. Were they able to be combined in an elegant and useful way? Chris, I dunno

Lauren Livak Gilbert (21:13):

If you, you know your consumer, oh, sorry. Sorry. I was going to answer that Chris

Peter Crosby (21:17):

Question. No, go ahead. Go ahead.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (21:18):

Please answer as well. I was just going to say, if you know your consumer well enough or the questions that anyone would ask about the product, it doesn't become necessarily keyword stuffing because you're answering the questions that they're going to be asking. So I'm just thinking about the pasta example for this one. It was one of my favorites. I wasn't looking about at pasta, but what are the typical things that you ask? How long does it take to cook? What's the consistency like? What's the nutritional information? Why is this different than any other pasta I've ever bought before tasted? And all those questions were answered for me, I didn't even have to look or dig. And they use that by putting those keywords in the images and in the bullets and in the title. So for me, that's how I think they match together. But Chris, I would love your thoughts.

Chris Perry (22:04):

No, no. And to your point, what is nice at least about today's PDP, and we've got to always again, respond to change as things will change on the PD DP long-term, but are the different pieces of body parts of this anatomy. Some are going to be more engaged by a shopper and some more by the search algorithm. So to your point, Peter, it's not like the bullet points in the descriptions and the titles, yes, they're being looked at by humans need to be designed for the potential human to read and not feel like they're reading a keyword stuffed bullet point. But those are less likely to be read in full and engaged as the enhanced imagery, the carousel or the enhanced product page down below the fold, if you will,

Lauren Livak Gilbert (22:46):

People like pictures,

Chris Perry (22:48):

Right? A picture is worth a thousand words. So you do have to have the keywords that shoppers need to see. Again, if I'm looking for gluten-free or I'm looking for low sugar, or I'm looking for a specific use state or a product that meets that mission, I've got gifting. I might be looking for some great for gifting or whatever they might've put in the title or in the bullet point, I'm going to be looking for that, but I don't need it to have the 50 variations of the gifting keyword term phrasing in my visual content because you've already sold me. You got me. But the search engine had to know to pull it up when I typed in those specific keywords. So I think there's a way to balance that. I also, this actually fell into our mobile readiness, but there are a lot of brands that do a nice job, even in the bullet points of having a short bullet and then the longer bullet.

(23:35):

So whether it's in capital letters or not, it's easy to use dash, I'm just making this up and then explains it. So the longer explanation has more keywords. The short one is the one that people actually, when you heat map people's eyes, they only look at the first three or four words of a bullet. So you don't have to stuff the keywords in the first part of the bullet. You can put them in the main content and still hit the shopper in a way that still flows in a story. So there are some ways to balance them.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (24:04):

So Chris, tell us the winners. Who were they and what stood out about them?

Chris Perry (24:10):

Well, we had a lot of amazing winners. And again, we had 30 finalists. We had 10 from each of our different retailers that we've been auditing since. They all have similar capabilities on the digital shelf. So we have Amazon, Walmart, and Target in the US today. We may be adding others in the future and other markets because we had a lot of interest. And then we selected the best in class overall, three or four. We had a tie on one of them overall, but we had some amazing winners at each of these players. Wreck it as a whole within the baby nutrition category one, a best in class at every one of those retailers. Shouldn't surprise anyone if you're employing them in one place, you might be employing those best practices elsewhere too. But that wasn't always true. So that was another learning is I might actually be the best in class on one retailer, and I'm not for whatever the reason is, there might be a real reason I didn't share those best practices across my other accounts.

(25:12):

Maybe it's a silo structure, maybe it was resources. I mean, it could have been a number of things that are real, but you already are best in class, be best in class everywhere, at least at your key retailers. But Recit did really well. I know the example that Lauren was mentioning was Car Diem, which is a challenger brand within the General Mills portfolio. They did a fantastic job. We had Bloom, which is another challenger brand under the Keurig Dr. Pepper portfolio. We had, let's see, we had Keurig. Keurig Coffee does phenomenally well. They have an amazing team of specialists that work on their digital shelf all the time. It may also come from their D two C expertise selling online themselves. We had Ferrero's Butterfinger, which makes me hungry already. We had crusties baking batter, and actually that was kind of an up and coming smaller brand that emerged with an amazing story that they told that might not have been top of mind, told a lot of the big CPGs, but did really wonderfully.

(26:15):

And then I want to make sure I didn't miss any. We had Danon had Oikos Pro also making me now thirsty with their yogurt drink. And then we had ConAgra Brands, Angie's Boom, Chicka Pop Popcorn product. So we had 10 best in class in this first round of the grocery awards. By all means, the finalists were very close seconds. That's why we didn't make this gold and silver because we didn't want the silver medalist to feel like they've lost out in the Olympics. You are amazing. It was just in this iteration, these players found their way up with the highest scores among all the judges using our objective rubric. But I mean, honestly, you're very close to you best in class in our book. And honestly, you have a very easy chance to be best in class on the next round this later this year.

(27:03):

And a lot of these best practices from these best in class PDPs are not only unique and relevant to grocery brands because a healthcare brand whose awards are running right now, the call for PDP nominations could learn from grocery. Grocery could learn from beauty. I always like to learn from categories that are ahead of me or have more restrictions. Actually, Bev out does some of the most creative things on the digital shelf because they can't pay retailers for any service or any value. So they can provide value directly or indirectly because of their three tier system, so in the us. So they actually have to be really creative and they do some things that no brands are doing. So we'll highlight them later in the year when we do the bev out category too. But everyone can learn from everyone. But we did want to highlight unique things or nuances for each of these mega categories every few months.

Peter Crosby (27:52):

Chris, this is amazing, the amount of effort that you all are putting into this. You have a staff of 50 running this program, I'm presuming?

Chris Perry (28:01):

Oh, definitely. Yes. 50 AI chat team. No, we are very lucky at first mover. We have a growing team on our side of real human beings that continue to make things possible. But we also we're very, again, honored to have Lauren and other amazing judges and partners to help launch this off the ground. And honestly, I think, I don't want to take credit away from the work to structure this program, but honestly, to Lauren's point earlier, the passion in the industry that feels like it got unleashed when someone said, I'd like to recognize you for all you've done for the last decade of your career just flooded out. And so there was a lot of momentum created just from all of those amazing first mover leaders out there of all seniority levels and functional levels who've been a part of the digital shelf. And so our hats off to everyone else. This is what inspires us to keep doing this.

Peter Crosby (28:56):

Well, I mean, my experience in the last decade of being in this now 15 year span is the generosity of folks. So they want to be celebrated, but it does take a little bit to put yourself out there and then for your company to let you put yourself out there. You were talking a bit before, so for people to be generous and wanting to give back and share what they've learned is just one of the hallmarks. And Lauren, I'm sorry, you have more to say and I keep cutting you off. I apologize.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (29:30):

No, no, that's totally fine. I was just going to say, I think there's also a lot of passion around how can we do better, which I really respected. So I had people reach out to me and say, we didn't win, but why didn't we win? Can we talk about it? Where is there opportunity? And all of the winners, to Chris's point, they all did a lot of things well, but there was always an opportunity area. And I just wanted to quickly call out two things on some of the winners that I thought were really impactful. So the boom chicka pop, I personally eat Boom Chick about, and I love it. But the PDP was great because it showed the size of the bag, and it was one of the only PDPs, if I recall, that had UGC. So it actually showed a bunch of women who were eating popcorn watching a movie, and you could see the size of the bag and where they were eating it, and again, kind of telling that story.

(30:21):

So that was really great. And I think the other theme across almost all of the winners was they were branded from head to toe, PDP, above the fold, below the fold. I mean, colors, fonts, just the images themselves. You could tell they were all consistent. The Butterfinger example specifically, I mean, everything was yellow and blue, and they had great backgrounds. And that was in below the fold. It was in the video, it was in the enhanced imagery. So it was just really strong branding, which I think is something that was lost a bit in the past because it was checking a box or figuring these things out. And brands are really going back to doing what they're really, really good at, and that's branding their products and pulling that through every channel. So for anybody who is nominating for healthcare or working on PDPs, just some things to think about that really stood out to all of the judges as we were thinking through the scoring too.

Chris Perry (31:17):

Lauren, one analogy that came to my head is we don't own the retailer site or app as a brand community. We don't. But I think a lot of brands historically, and some of this again, was budget, resources, time prioritization, how they're being measured, all these different things. So I realize there are real reasons for the barriers here, but I feel like people were treating these PDPs as rooms to rent as opposed to condos to own, right? You don't really own the building, but you do own your real estate. And if you owned your real estate, you decorate it differently, right? Because you'd make it yours. When I walk into your condo, it's yours, not your neighbor's, it's yours. But if I'm just a transient renter who, and I'm not knocking that I've rented before and had to leave, but I didn't treat it like I was going to be there for a long time.

(32:05):

So to your point, I'm a brand marketer first. So I love the fact that brands actually try to almost make it like the brand website that maybe their shoppers never actually go to on their own.com sites. They may only ever see the PDP, treat it like that at a product level, not just, you don't want to only do your brand marketing and not get down to the product merchandising, but the brand can be a part of that story. Treat it like you own it even though you don't. But treat it like that because that's going to come across to the shopper. And then you're going to own the shopper, if you will, at least for that purchase. Hopefully you can keep them loyal longterm.

Peter Crosby (32:41):

That's a great analogy, Chris. I love that. So all of this will come to life when you all who are listening, go to end caps.org where all of this is all of the visuals. You can see what we're actually talking about and what was brought to life there. So n caps.org. I'm also presuming Chris, they can go and sign up for whatever next awards are running right now. There's a signup for health

Chris Perry (33:10):

NB.

Peter Crosby (33:11):

Yes,

Chris Perry (33:11):

N caps.org has all of the six categories. There are the grocery one is open, but it's passed. Obviously it'll return later this year. But you can get the winners, the playbook, the recording, all for free. Nominations will open again for every category as each awards program opens. Healthcare is open right now and the summit, the awards summit and kind of the playbook best practice summit is later this month in January. Then we'll have household and baby in March, beauty in May, PET in the summer, grocery again in October around grocery shop and then Bev and the holidays. So we've got something for everyone. And there are some categories out there and markets out there who are, I want to say maybe very passionate is probably the best word, that they hadn't been included. And so we might try to find ways to include them as quickly as possible since there's such interest. So there may be more categories and maybe more markets beyond the US to add in the near term, but we obviously have to hope our generous judges will spare their time to judge a few more PDPs for recognition. Just a few.

Peter Crosby (34:14):

Happy to. Lauren's always there to help. So I've been wondering how long will these awards really last? I mean, when AI agents eat the world, PDPs are dead, right?

Chris Perry (34:27):

Well, that's a really good question. So there is always, in the multiverse, there is always a universe out there where that happens where true black and white extremes, where there's no more PDP, I just think what I want, and the AI agent figured it out by mining the data that was available in bringing me the thing that they predicted I would want the most or that I would settle for whatever, depending on how high involved I am in that category. But I almost feel like we're equating this because there's still been this question, is the store dead right? Is the physical store dead? No. There are retailers who have physical stores that have died and that will die. Sadly, there are retailers with physical stores who will close those stores or some of them or will, but most of them are changing those stores to operate in an omnichannel environment.

(35:18):

And maybe they're going from profit centers to cost centers, and they're using them as discovery centers and engagement and community centers. I mean, there's so many ways that the store can be used. So the PDPI don't think is ever going to be dead. But again, to your point, Peter, if a lot more share of visits to a page or to is by an AI agent, then we're going to have to start measuring on the A IO, right? The AI SEO of that content. And that's going to require some innovation on the judging part on how do we score that, right? But some of that will also come to who is winning. We are looking at adding performance based data as well to see, it's not just that I controlled the leading metrics, but I actually saw the ROI too. So that'll come as well. But these are the things that keep us up at night.

(36:06):

But it's a problem I want to have because if we're around when the PD P could be dead, that means we did a really good job at elevating PDPs while they weren't dead. And arguably at some point the AI agent still has to go to something to pull a recommendation. So we still have to design for someone, and the AI agent will be human-like in what it's looking for, the story it's reading to decide if that story is Chris's story or Lauren's story or Peter's story. So all the things that we set up today with these best practices will help us lay a meaningful foundation for whatever a IO pages we need in the future.

Peter Crosby (36:45):

Well, thank you Chris and Lauren, judge Lauren, your Honor, for putting these awards together, for doing them at such a scale and a thoughtfulness to help the industry out. And we certainly look forward to the next iterations. So keep us posted.

Chris Perry (37:08):

Will do.

Peter Crosby (37:10):

Again, that's endcaps.org, like endcaps in those stores,

Chris Perry (37:17):

Right? We're bridging this omnichannel reality,

Peter Crosby (37:18):

Those things

Chris Perry (37:19):

Called

Peter Crosby (37:19):

Stores. I was worried that that was actually an acronym for something. Sometimes you do that.

Chris Perry (37:25):

I do. I like to throw some weird boomerangs in there, but we had a lot of names for this, but in caps felt like a nice way to start thinking about this as an MOM award because it is influencing in-store purchases as well, and in caps are the head of the category right at the front of the category. So

Peter Crosby (37:41):

I love it. Well, thank you again, Chris Perry, and thanks for contributing back to the industry. It's really valuable.

Chris Perry (37:47):

Thank you both.

Peter Crosby (37:49):

Thanks again to Chris for sharing the best for the betterment of everyone. If you want to learn from the best in person, be sure and register for the Digital Shelf Summit in April in New Orleans. More info and registration at digitalshelfsummit.com. Thanks for being part of our community.