Paula Bobbett

Thanks for the shout out Iain Finlayson - the cheque’s in the post. It’s sometimes difficult to prove ROI in mystery shopping due to other variables that may be at play, so it was especially rewarding to work with yourself and the team at Liverpool ONE on this project. We could clearly see the improvements in customer experience while conducting fieldwork wave-on-wave, but to be able to align that with an 8% sales increase - 4 %pts directly attributable to improved sales through service - was super exciting. With heavy reliance on tech becoming commonplace, brands would do well to remember the importance of the human touch. It’s still the frontline who have the most important role to play in increasing footfall and market share 🚀📊📈📉💥 #salesthroughservice #mysteryshopping

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The worry on the latest Kantar is that spending on deals is nearly 30%. After getting off that drug post COVID with a focus on EDLP (lowest was 22%?) we are now heading back to hi/lo territory in some retailers. The results themselves were much of a muchness; Tesco leading the way, Sainsbury's not far behind them and Asda still down, but deflating. Morrisons just above flat and Aldi UK still stuttering versus Lidl GB, although new space flatters the picture too. The Coop were also down, whilst convenience stores seem an obvious trade opportunity as customers switch to spending little and often to spread budgets and reduce food waste, the market is so competitive. It's hard to see past either JS or Tesco, M&S also growing strongly. Asda have a plan and will execute on it, but range reductions and their plan will take time to execute and deliver growth, no one operates in a vacuum after all. It's a tough market out there and for anyone shopping, inflation feels far higher than 5%. #retail #inflation #kantar

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After 12 consecutive months of declining high street sales, e-commerce teams will be under increasing strain to deliver sales growth in the months approaching Black Friday and Christmas. Particularly those teams in omnichannel retailers where online sales will need to make up for the shortfall in bricks and mortar stores. The good news? Customer intent to transact in online channels is almost always higher than conversion rate - the opportunity lies in identifying what's stops customers from buying; the causes of failure and abandonment. In most cases it is challenges finding and engaging with products that cause customers to abandon, rarely is it an inability to transact. Organisations that expand their experimentation efforts beyond simple conversion rate optimisation and into maximising user engagement and product discovery will be the ones that succeed in what may be a very competitive end to 2025...

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Today culminates weeks’ worth of exploration of Face Mesh and ML experimentation. In this iteration I asked a question, “can AI backed by ML recognise human emotions in live time?” and “Can customer be rewarded with discount code on site based on their emotional state?” So to explore,  I built a full end-to-end prototype that: ·        tracks dense facial landmarks in real time using Face Mesh ·        extracts geometry-based facial features (eyes, brows, mouth) and normalises them for distance/scale robustness ·        integrates a Kaggle facial-expression dataset (~8,000 images spanning basic emotions) to train an emotion classifier ·        trains a Random Forest model to map facial features to emotion labels ·        runs live camera inference so the AI estimates emotion in real time with an on-screen confidence readout with labels: ['DISGUST', 'NEUTRAL', 'SAD', 'SHY', 'SURPRISE', 'HAPPY'] and applies discount code based on identified emotion in real time A big shout out to Amine Goumri for helping me overcome a few tricky integration issues along the way — particularly around environment setup and getting the full pipeline working smoothly from dataset → model → real-time inference. This progression has been a great way to see the contrast between: ·        classical computer vision (hand-crafted features, cascades, ROIs), and ·        modern ML-driven approaches that provide dense, structured facial representations that you can build on very quickly. Looking forward to continuing to build, iterate, and deepen both my technical capability with Multiverse as I progress through the programme. #MachineLearning #ComputerVision #MediaPipe #FaceMesh #OpenCV #AI #Multiverse #AIML #LearningByDoing #EthicalAI #TechCareers #THG #THGBeauty #THGIngenuity

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Honoured to contribute to research now published in Harvard Business Review The hardest part of AI adoption was never the technology. It was the human reality underneath it — anxiety, conflicting expectations, and the weight of asking people to change with no finish line in sight. Deploying AI across 100+ markets taught me that building trust in uncertainty isn't a gap to close. It's the work. Thanks to Will Marien, Jazz Croft, PhD and team at Positive, and my friend Lily Cheng for asking me to contribute. Full article 👇 https://lnkd.in/ecdntqDW #Leadership #AI #AIAdoption

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There is effectiveness sense in nonsense. This was one of the insights that Ipsos in the UK's Eleanor Thornton-Firkin and Samira Brophy shared to close out MAD//FEST North from the new MISFITS Stories publication. Drawing on a dataset of 15,000 ads evaluated with sales validated metrics, we have identified that humour delivers a x2.7 higher effectiveness lift when framed in the illogical and unexpected. This finding speaks to how the audience of advertising wants to be played with, wants their expectations subverted, their assumptions to be denied, because they're typically looking for escapism and entertainment, not an ad. If you'd like to find out more about the findings in MISFITS Stories you can access it for free in the link in the comments. Follow me for data and insights in creative effectiveness. We are Ipsos #CreativeExcellence and we support the world's leading advertisers to harness creativity in their ads to spark brand growth.

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End-of-Week Reflections from my mandatory jet lag run: On International Growth This and next week we’re on the road and in the air with three varied consumer/retail players: a global high-end brand, a value-focused retailer with broad own-brand assortments, and a premium beverage company. They all operate in 30+ markets, where one has grown organically in all markets and now must diversify its go-to-market model to fit local needs; another is leapfrogging to win one big city after another; the latter explores franchising to accelerate international growth while balancing risk and investment without compromising brand DNA. The one project sits in Scandinavia, the next in Germany with a European pilot and the latter in the US. The task for all being to shift from a single global GTM to a locally resonant strategy without harming brand integrity, how to accelerate growth while preserving local relevance and margins and an exploration of franchising as a path to international growth, balancing risk and preserving brand equity. The 3 key themes we are watching to develop an international growth strategy are: A. How do you balance localized GTM with global consistency to protect brand integrity while tailoring channels and messaging? B. What mix of speed to market and capital discipline—organic growth vs. selective partners (franchise, wholesale, alliances)—best preserves ROI and value? C. How do you diversify risk across geographies to manage volatility, supply chain resilience, and currency exposure? —————————————————— From there we explore the international growth opportunity from different angles to increase your likelihood of success in the international expansion. So, consider these questions: 1) Which market and customer dynamics require adaptation of your business model without losing its core value? 2) How does your company’s DNA align with local DNA while safeguarding intrinsic brand advantages? 3) How should you localize value propositions and GTM to fit local demand without eroding scale economies? 4) How can data-driven localization inform channel mix, pricing, and promotions, and who owns decisions? 5) How should we design channel governance to minimize conflicts and ensure consistent pricing? 6) What would a franchise viability framework look like for with metrics and playbooks? 7) How can we phase brand-owned flagship hubs to anchor credibility as franchising scales? 8) How can sustainability and purpose be embedded in GTM choices to boost resilience and appeal to conscious consumers? If you’re navigating similar crossroads—localizing a global brand, rapid city-by-city expansion, or franchising for international growth—I’d be glad to share a concise framework and tailor a playbook to your context. Reach out and let’s schedule a quick strategy call. Wishing you a great weekend as our teams stays on the road for another week. #growth #strategy #retail #implementconsultinggroup

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In a post earlier this week, we discussed how value is created and sustained on factors wider than price. It is interesting to visualize this via data. The diagram below shows the position of retailers with at least something of a focus on price. Their consumer rated scores for price are on the x axis. The further to the right, the better the score. The y axis shows each retailer’s top non-price strength - design for IKEA, style for Primark, convenience for Walmart and Amazon, and so on. Higher is better rated. There are some interesting positions on the chart. The strongest area is the upper right. These retailers are highly regarded on price and are also great at delivering something else alongside. This makes their value proposition incredibly strong. The weakest area is the lower left. Here, retailers like Family Dollar and Big Lots have lackluster price scores - a big problem as this is supposed to be their point of differentiation. They don't score well on other factors either. Note, that these scores are from last year so before Big Lots went bankrupt. It’s fine to be middling on price if you excel elsewhere. Amazon and Costco are in this bucket: they're competitive, but they don’t solely focus on the lowest possible prices; however, they really deliver on other factors. TJX's brands are also present: by design, they offer great bargains, which is a little different to low prices. The bottom right, where Shein and Temu are placed, is interesting. Both are really strong on price but are relatively weak on secondary factors. This creates very one-dimensional loyalty, which is an issue now their low-price operating model has been disrupted. I have not included every retailer on this chart and there is a bit more noise in some of the data. But the creation of a thoughtful and differentiated value proposition, aligned to consumer desires, is one of the most critical things in retail. #retail #retailnews #value #price #retailers #strategy #consumers

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dunnhumby is arguably known as the Big Granddaddy of retail analytics. Clive Humby OBE and Edwina Dunn OBE looked at transaction data and thought - you can understand a customer from this…….   Fast forward a good few decades, and dunnhumby, and all its offspring (of which TruRating is arguably one) are part of a $100bn+ market in retail analytics…. which is predicted to at least double over the next decade or so.     Simon Hay was Clive and Edwina’s first hire and then went on to become Global CEO of dunnhumby. He is now Chair of Synerise and very much at the evolving cusp of retail and AI.     He has seen a thing or two in his time at the forefront of retail, CPG and data. From ‘big data’ being an Excel spreadsheet to some of today’s Chief Data Officers not having to understand how to create a data query or pivot table.   To sit down with him for 30 minutes to talk through what he’d be advising retailers to focus on today, the risks and gains lurking within AI tools, and the beauty of a back-to-basics retail strategy (this is echoed by so many CEOs I speak to today) - was an absolute delight. You can listen to the whole conversation tomorrow at 12 PM EDT / 4 PM GMT, live on LinkedIn. Just sign up using the link in my comments, where you can also playback the webinar on demand. #retail #customerdata #AI #customerexperience

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The latest #retailermarketshare data out today 👉 https://lnkd.in/eN7k_Jzc? Tesco won more market share than any other grocer in the 12 weeks to 7 September 2025, now accounting for 28.4% of all sales, up 0.8 percentage points compared to a year ago. Britain’s largest grocer saw growth across all channels, with spending up 7.7% - its highest rate since December 2023. Ocado Retail was once again the fastest growing retailer, with sales rising by 11.9%. It outpaced the wider online market which was up by 8.2% over the 12 weeks. Spending through the tills at Sainsbury's increased by 5.4%, taking its portion of the market up to 15.1%. Lidl GB was the fastest growing bricks and mortar retailer with sales up 11.0%, moving its share to 8.2% from 7.8% in 2024. Fellow discounter Aldi UK held its 10.7% share with an uplift in spending of 4.7%. Worldpanel #retail #grocery #fmcg

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Conversation with the customer is at the centre of this AI innovation. 3 adjoining thoughts- 1. ‘Physical Only’ thinking that continues to plague traditional retailers’ thinking that ‘customers who want to buy products will discover us themselves’ are ignoring the fact that product discovery now starts in chat. 2. Manual product content is a primary contributor to lack of singularity. Boring, undifferentiated, generic descriptions lead to shallow engagement which in turn leads to unclear brand identity in the mind of the consumer. 3. Usage tracking and nudges- Without this, brands are handicapped to engage only within the purchase window which is a tiny part of the user journey.

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"Team, please can you make a killer chart with this customer data?" I know I look self-obsessed with this one, but it was too funny not to share 🤣. Now the back story. I was so scared when we launched into Tesco back in November 2024. All of the wisdom I'd heard was that we were a bit early. The sensible thing was to build up in retail gradually. Start with independent stores, then build to larger and larger stores... A retail shelf is a pretty brutal environment for a challenger brand that's mostly been online. 🧃 A small rectangle of pack for "Storytelling" vs. a 30-second ad and a whole website 👛 Side-by-side price comparison vs. a landing page perfected over the years to drive conversion 🛒 A busy customer with a long shopping list vs. someone kicking back on their sofa with time to kill 📣 A sea of messages/ logos/ promotions/ aisle fins vs. a clean website page with few products to sell We got really lucky, the Tesco teams took a risk on us 🙏, and we did too, because the stakes were so high if it didn't work out. Our latest data has shown us the true power of retail. We acquired 3x as many unique customers in January as we did last January, and people are discovering us for the first time in those shopping aisles. So all hail retail, the channel where the rubber really hits the road and where we still have so much still to learn 🏋️ 

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Thrilled to see how #DrMartens is evolving its global strategy by blending “maths” (#DataAnalytics, #SupplyChain, #Engineering) with “magic” (creativity, brand soul) through its new Global Capability Centre in Bengaluru, India. This centre is not just a support hub — it’s a core engine for digital transformation, global operations, and customer-centric innovation. A great example of how strategic talent ecosystems can power iconic brands into the future! 🚀 Ije Nwokorie | Giles Wilson | Graham Calder | Partha Sarathy Kidambi CII-SCAPro | Amrita Shivkumar #Innovation #GlobalStrategy #TechInIndia #DrMartens #Bengaluru

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