The E-commerce Content Creation Podcast

Summary

Raphael Ruz is the Photographic Operations Manager at Hogarth Australia and imaging technologist, researching and testing emerging technologies and how they might impact or influence the creative production industry. In this episode, big surprise, we’re talking about AI. But more specifically, we spend some time talking about how creative ops teams today should be thinking about a future implementation of some iteration of these tools, and how leadership has a responsibility to their team to have a plan when these tools may impact roles.

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Reminder to use code ECCP to get your first month of PhotoRoom Pro for free! Thanks to the PhotoRoom team for the generous offer. 

Credits
Produced by: Creative Force - creativeforce.io
Edited by: Calvin Lanz Sound - clsound.net
Hosted by: Daniel Jester - danieltjester.com

Summary

Creative production for e-commerce is a relatively young industry, and that means that we’re learning as we go when it comes to the growth and development of our creative and operations team members. In this episode we are highlighting one journey, Scott McLean, manager of studio operations at Arc’Teryx. Scott shares with us how his interest in learning about roles and processes adjacent to his gave him important perspective that has helped develop his approach to managing studio teams. 

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Reminder to use code ECCP to get your first month of PhotoRoom Pro for free! Thanks to the PhotoRoom team for the generous offer. 

Credits
Produced by: Creative Force - creativeforce.io
Edited by: Calvin Lanz Sound - clsound.net
Hosted by: Daniel Jester - danieltjester.com

Summary

As we move into 2023, we’ve watched as economic uncertainty has triggered waves off layoffs. While they mostly have been hitting the tech sector, in the couple of week leading up to our 100th episode, we’ve now seen the wave hit many friends and colleagues in content production and Creative Operations.

A very fun fact we recently learned about this podcast is some past guests have use their appearances on here during the interview process for a new role. So for our 100th episode we are going to support our community and give a couple of people an open interview of sorts. 

Key Takeaways

• Valerie Fox
  • Interested in photographer and photography leader roles
  • Loves working big, long lasting campaigns
  • Creative at heart and knowledgable at building and scaling a process
• Suzy Weber
  • Interested in Creative Director type roles
  • Takes a collaborative approach to her campaigns
  • Would love to work with on a brand of project that needs an overhaul

Thanks to all of our listeners for being there with us on our 100th episode. 

Discount Code

Reminder to use code ECCP to get your first month of PhotoRoom Pro for free! Thanks to the PhotoRoom team for the generous offer. 

Credits
Produced by: Creative Force - creativeforce.io
Edited by: Calvin Lanz Sound - clsound.net
Hosted by: Daniel Jester - danieltjester.com

Summary

We have a tendency to focus on visual content on this podcast but that isn’t the only content you need to be able to sell your products online. Copywriting is another critical element to a telling your products story, and just like photography, it’s a process that needs to be managed, with controls and guardrails in place to make sure you’re saying the right things to the right people in the right places. Joining Daniel for this episode is Brian Hennessy, co-founder and CEO at Talkoot, an AI powered copywriting platform with elements of PIM systems and a lot of cool features to make sure you’re not just telling a story, but telling the right story. 

Key Takeaways

• Talkoot is more than simply a place to store product data, but that is part of it. In order to manage all the written content requirements for your brand, you need to know that you are working with a single source of truth.
• Customer segmentation is great, and there is room for a lot of nuance. Sometimes the segment is who the customers are, and sometimes it's where they shop.
• The need to change, update, or evolve how you talk to your customer with copy isn't limited to commodity e-commerce, many brands in other spaces have found value in Talkoot in order to seasonally change their copy.
• AI is already playing a significant role in copywriting for e-commerce. Talkoot includes useful AI tools and was an early adherent to AI copywriting. Using consumer facing tools cannot truly be scaled for enterprise orgs, you cannot train that AI to speak in YOUR brand voice.
• AI is a powerful tool for copywriting but absolutely requires some curation and controls.

Discount Code

Reminder to use code ECCP to get your first month of PhotoRoom Pro for free! Thanks to the PhotoRoom team for the generous offer. 

Credits
Produced by: Creative Force - creativeforce.io
Edited by: Calvin Lanz Sound - clsound.net
Hosted by: Daniel Jester - danieltjester.com

Summary

Continuing our theme exploring near future tech in e-commerce content production, my guest today is Sergey Arkhangelskiy of Wanna. Wanna creates 3D experiences for brands that are intended to help customers make more informed decisions, but interestingly, that decision isn’t always simply to purchase.

Key Takeaways

• Wanna offers 3D try on capabilities and  works with many luxury brands to bring virtual try on for items like watches and shoes.
• Some luxury brands see this as an investment in the younger more connected, digital native generations.
• Brand or retail outcomes aren't always about driving conversion. Sometimes its about brand trust, sometimes it's to be digitally present to younger generations, sometimes it's about driving traffic into brick and mortar stores.
• Apparel try-on has challenges that are far greater than shoes or watches, body shape is very complicated for full body, tracking is more difficult. It could 5 years or more before we see a useable apparel try on that has meaningful amount of adoption in e-commerce.
• A big barrier to entry on 3D try on is the cost involved in digitizing your catalog.
• In Sergey's view, 3D doesn't compete with imagery or video, its more matter of showing the customer the object, not simply an image.

Discount Code

Reminder to use code ECCP to get your first month of PhotoRoom Pro for free! Thanks to the PhotoRoom team for the generous offer. 

Credits
Produced by: Creative Force - creativeforce.io
Edited by: Calvin Lanz Sound - clsound.net
Hosted by: Daniel Jester - danieltjester.com

Summary

Just about a year ago, Mark Milstein of vAIsual joined Daniel to discuss what he referred to as the future of image creation. He described the synthographer, some might now call a prompt engineer. An individual who inputs the correct set of instructions to an AI tool that produces photorealistic images. Flash forward to the second half of 2022, when these tools made a huge splash in creative and marketing circles as they were released to the public, sparking tons of conversations about the future of content creation as well as the legality and ethics of it all.

Mark joins Daniel again today for this episode to give an update on the legal side of the AI conversation, make some predictions on commercial use of AI tools, and share with us forthcoming tool that could accelerate an already quick moving technology

Key Takeaways

• Mark was on this podcast in a previous episode and described a process where a user would enter keywords and an AI based tool would generate photorealistic images. In the second half of 2022, generative AI tools like Dall-e and midjourney burst onto the scene and got creative and marketing professionals everywhere buzzing
• There are still many ethical and legal concerns that need to be cleared up before we can see true adoption of these tools at the enterprise level. Currently there are some lawsuits on the horizon that will clarify and cement some of these things. Between the the recording of this episode and it's release, new lawsuits have been filed that should answer some of these lingering questions around the legality of data sets used to train.
• It's possible that some larger organizations with huge image libraries will be able to train their own licensed and un-trained version of one of these tools, overcoming that legality issue around copyright ownership.
• Sinfusion is a new training algorithm that will allow these tools to create imagery that is very realistic using much smaller data sets then past tools. Mark calls this earth shattering.
• Regarding Daniel's prediction that a brand may generate a campaign this year using AI, Mark feels that it's indeed possible. The building blocks exist including vAIsual's Dataset Shop which has image datasets are available which are totally released and free for use in this capacity.
• Mark predicts that legally and ethically viable generative AI tools will be commercially available by the end of summer 2023.

Discount Code

Reminder to use code ECCP to get your first month of PhotoRoom Pro for free! Thanks to the PhotoRoom team for the generous offer. 

Credits
Produced by: Creative Force - creativeforce.io
Edited by: Calvin Lanz Sound - clsound.net
Hosted by: Daniel Jester - danieltjester.com

Summary

Daniel has been pretty vocal in his skepticism of NFTs, Crypto and by extension, the blockchain, but the guest today, David Iscove, director of technology consulting at Cella has cautioned him against throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

As David describes this technology and what value it has beyond the applications that most casual observers are familiar with, it becomes pretty clear that there may be some interesting applications in the e-commerce content creation space. 

Key Takeaways

• While it's most commonly associated with crypto currency and NFT's, blockchain technology is essentially a decentralized log that no one entity controls, and by it's nature it can be used to validate all sorts of transactions, including image creation and manipulation. 
• Some of the less publicized use cases of blockchain tech that occur today include archiving important events with imagery and verify the validity of those events with blockchain ledger entries. 
• Adobe is looking at blockchain tech to aid in archiving and authenticating image creation of all types, but its mostly manifesting itself in photojournalism today. 
• Starling Labs is also looking at ways to use blockchain to archive human stories in a way that consumers of this media can be assured that it is authentic. 
• How will this effective e-commerce? Blockchain could become an integral part of how we secure our assets. DAM systems may find a way to use or at least verify blockchain entries and this possibly becomes the new metadata so to speak. 
• Third party selling platforms could use blockchain entries to ensure that sellers are actually entitled to use the assets they are attempting an upload. 

Discount Code

Reminder to use code ECCP to get your first month of PhotoRoom Pro for free! Thanks to the PhotoRoom team for the generous offer. 

Credits
Produced by: Creative Force - creativeforce.io
Edited by: Calvin Lanz Sound - clsound.net
Hosted by: Daniel Jester - danieltjester.com

Summary

Kicking off 2023 for the E-commerce Content Creation Podcast, our first guest of the year is David Jonkers, CEO and co-founder of Bright River. Bright River provides image editing services for studios large and small, and works to find ways to make things easier, faster, and cheaper for their customers. David joins Daniel for this episode to talk about Pos3d, a service that enables the creation of on-model assets, without the need for a model. 

Key Takeaways

• Pos3d helps enable decentralized content production, easing the burden presented by COVID and other forms of business disruption.
• Another significant use case for Pos3d, it enables model photography for product categories where model photography is difficult or not an option due to resources.
• Technology like Pos3d also enables producing small sets of assets in different style for things like A/B testing, selling up to the C-suite, etc.
• An interesting anecdote that David shared is that a Pos3d customer found that having the model looking toward the add to cart button has an impact on conversion (!!!)
• Perhaps one of the most beneficial features of Pos3d is being able to test anything and everything under the sun in a much more cost effective way.
• In 2023, studios will almost certainly HAVE to adopt some new tech to meet the demands of the business, whether it's automation, CGI, AI or otherwise.
• We expect content needs to only increase as everything gets harder to compete.

Discount Code

Reminder to use code ECCP to get your first month of PhotoRoom Pro for free! Thanks to the PhotoRoom team for the generous offer. 

Credits
Produced by: Creative Force - creativeforce.io
Edited by: Calvin Lanz Sound - clsound.net
Hosted by: Daniel Jester - danieltjester.com

Summary

Happy new year from us at the E-commerce Content Creation Podcast! Last week we had a clip show episode that focused on some near future state technology that we had the opportunity to explore in 2022. In this episode Daniel is going out on a limb to make some predictions about 2023 on some of those same topics. What could happen this year in generative AI, video production, 3d rendering and other types of 3d content and automation. Let's get out our crystal ball, and see what exciting ways we can be wrong about what’s going to happen in e-commerce creative production in 2023. 

Discount Code

Reminder to use code ECCP to get your first month of PhotoRoom Pro for free! Thanks to the PhotoRoom team for the generous offer. 

Credits
Produced by: Creative Force - creativeforce.io
Edited by: Calvin Lanz Sound - clsound.net
Hosted by: Daniel Jester - danieltjester.com

Summary

The last few months has brought some near future technology into the spotlight, in particular generative AI for image creation, copywriting and more. Over the last year on this podcast we’ve had the opportunity to speak to several companies that provide services that we would call future tech for creative production, and so as we get ready to close out 2022 we’ve put together this clip show, our future tech round up. You’ll hear from Ajay Bam of Vyrill, Mark Milstein of Vaisual, Ben Conway of VNTANA, Mark Duhaime of Orbitvu, Patrik Bluhme of ProFoto. Let’s take a look back over some of 2022’s episodes focusing on the technology supporting the future of e-commerce. 

Key Takeaways

• Ajay Bam - Ep 45
  • One of the most interesting things for me is that Vyrill has created a tool that allows you to leverage user videos of your products. Customers are already watching these videos, you can help point your customers to the most helpful content for them personally.
  • Measuring ROI of creative can already be challenging, but one such measure is almost certainly engagement, and Vyrill also helps you understand engagement on YOUR videos, but other creators videos that feature your product. 
  • We only touched on sentiment analysis and other insights capabilities that Vyrill offers, but if we think about this in the context of localization, you can really start to see some value in that.
• Ben Conway of VNTANA - Ep 85
  • When we talk about 3D I think many people jump to thinking about the end customer, but as Ben pointed out, many VNTANA customers have found a lot of value in B2B situations. Designers working with 3D models to help sell a product before any samples have gone into production. I don’t think it's a big leap to make at all that these 3D design renders become the starting point for fully rendered product imagery. Could we see product imagery creation become a part of the merchandising process, before any sample is ever cut or sewn?
  • The second part of that clip illustrates how powerful AR has the potential to be for categories of product that customers have a hard time understanding in e-commerce. In this anecdote we’re talking about handbags and the relative size of handbag has been a perpetually challenging thing to indicate to customers in traditional e-commerce interactions. The numbers are powerful here, very real improvements in return rates.
• Mark Duhaime of Orbitvu - Ep 78
  • One of the big concerns about automation is always flexibility, I think many photography professionals are really hyper aware of this. We learned from Photoshop Automations how badly things can go wrong if your automation interprets your instructions in a way you didn’t intend. But what systems like orbitvu are really automating is a bunch of non-value add steps that a photographer has to do manually today, with a lot of smart ways to avoid unintended consequences. The studio is still in control, but with more time to focus on producing and improving imagery. 
  • While an automated device might ot be right for every production type (today at least) I think almost any studio has space for one. Even the most high touch on figure studio often still has to shoot a box full of accessories that could be dealt with quickly and easily with an automated device. 
• Patrik Bluhme of Profoto - Ep 69
  • This was pretty big news in the industry, profoto is one of the leading brands of studio lighting and has been present in every studio I’ve ever worked in, and maybe even set foot in. They see the value in supporting workflows for many of their customers, and StyleShoots gives them a product they can bring to a studio and show them how automation can change their workflows. 
  • I really think automation for a lot of product photography is going to be big, if not in 2023 then beyond, and part of that is because we have a LOT of things creative production professionals need to focus their time on, and product photos on white maybe doesn’t need to be one of them. 
• Mark Milstein of Vaisual - Ep 45
  • This is obviously a topic that is front and center right now. As various generative AI tools have started becoming publicly available, there have been a lot of questions about how they work, what protections for artists should be in place, and how does this impact the human beings doing these jobs using traditional tools today. I think it will have an impact. But not overnight. We’ve spent 15 years building our ecommerce creative production processes to what they are today and just like any new technology, generative AI will have to be evaluated and adapted into workflows and processes that can keep this all organized. One of the things that Mark said that I found really striking is that he feels that this technology will make traditional art methods MORE valuable in the long run. I think there may be something to that. In the same way that we still value vinyl records after digitization of music, I think the photographer, painter, poet and sculptor will see the public’s value perception of their work go up. 

Discount Code

Reminder to use code ECCP to get your first month of PhotoRoom Pro for free! Thanks to the PhotoRoom team for the generous offer. 

Credits
Produced by: Creative Force - creativeforce.io
Edited by: Calvin Lanz Sound - clsound.net
Hosted by: Daniel Jester - danieltjester.com