You’re falling behind if you aren’t constantly seeking new ways to innovate.

That was the message on the first day of Retail’s Big Show, the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) annual conference and expo, which is being held in New York City this week.  

Running from January 12-14, the conference drew 40,000 global retail executives and other industry professionals, including suppliers and media, all clamoring to discover the hot topics in the world of shopping and consumers. 

Big players like Target CEO Brian Cornell, Macy’s Inc chairman and CEO Tony Spring and Walmart vice president of creative David Hartman, gave recommendations on how brands can avoid falling behind in the race that is the retail industry. 

How to create content at peak capacity

During a fireside-style chat, Walmart’s Hartman and Adobe’s director of industry strategy and marketing Marta Frattini and VP of business and new venture incubation Hannah Elsakr discussed how generative AI enables truly personalized, on-brand content at scale. 

Hartman explained that Walmart’s 400-plus Creative Studio team and its in-house production facility, which opened last March, are an essential part of its plan to remain competitive via content.

The production facility is approximately 80,000 square feet and includes a 4300-foot soundstage, a daylight studio, a social production studio, multiple edit suites and more.  

By investing in its own studio, Walmart has ownership over every step of the content creation process, from concept all the way through to execution and delivery of assets, so it doesn’t get slowed down or have costs added on by ​​external agencies. 

However, for those businesses that cannot afford to build and run their own studios, other methods and tools can be used to optimise the creative content production cycle, such as generative AI.

Adobe’s Elsakr, who is also the founder of the company’s generative AI-powered content creation platform, Firefly, said creative and marketing teams face two main problems: volume and time.

While creative content teams are being asked to do five times the amount of work they are already producing, Elsakr noted the reality is that less than one-third of the work is devoted to the actual creation of content, and the rest is largely spent brainstorming. 

By integrating generative AI into the process, Elsakr explained that retailers can more easily localize, refresh and personalize their content. 

Culture’s influence on fueling long-term growth

Target’s CEO Brian Cornell and its group VP Abubakarr Bangura joined Michael Bush, CEO of Great Place to Work, a global company that specializes in evaluating and recognizing organizations with exceptional workplace cultures, to discuss the critical role of team and culture in navigating and growing in today’s fast-evolving environment. 

“How do you develop the workforce of tomorrow?” Bush inquired of the longtime Target executives. 

Few individuals understand the power of cultivating talent quite like Cornell, who has been CEO of the big-box retailer for over a decade, and Bangura, who has been a part of the Target team for over 21 years since his initial start as an intern.

They both spoke about the importance of employee-centered initiatives that teach capable Target teammates how to level up in their careers to become store directors.

Bangura emphasized the importance of a program developed by store directors for store directors. 

Cornell agreed, saying that the key to building a productive and happy team is a “willingness to listen”.

“We spend a lot of time with our frontline teams, asking questions, listening to them, understanding their needs, how we can make the job more impactful for them, how we can grow their careers,” Cornell stated. 

Target has an impressive 70 per cent of employees reporting that they feel cared for by the retailer.

When asked how leaders can guide employees through rapid industry change, such as those brought on by AI, Bangura emphasized the importance of two things, tech skills and continuous learning.

With initiatives like Dream 2 Be, a debt-free education assistance benefit that allows team members access to tuition-free undergraduate and associate degrees, certificates and boot camp programs, employees can be trained in how to work and grow seamlessly with this rapidly developing tech.  

“With this changing landscape, we’ve got to make sure we have a competitive edge, to ensure our leaders are continuously learning and growing,” Bangura emphasized. 

Delving into Macy’s Inc’s bold new chapter

“Three brands, one growth strategy: The power of Macy’s Inc’s Bold New Chapter” was one of the best-attended panels of day one at NRF and for good reason. 

Macy’s Inc chairman and CEO Tony Spring, Bloomingdale’s CEO Olivier Bron and Bluemercury CEO Maly Bernstein participated in a joint interview led by CNBC senior retail reporter Courtney Reagan as they discussed their tactics for the legacy retailer’s Bold New Chapter.  

Spring emphasized the importance of a legacy retailer ensuring that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. 

Without the strength of Bloomingdale’s as an aspirational brand working to ensure a luxury experience, or Bluemercury, a leader within the beauty space, Macy’s Inc would not have the power to ensure the strength of the retailer’s Bold New Chapter, the CEO said. 

He added that there is a question of what is actually right for the overall marketing of the company.

“We continue to believe that there are synergies that are leveraged between the three brands [Macy’s, Bloomingdales and Bluemercury]. Between warehousing, legal, finance, back-end operations, and joint brand negotiation, there’s just so much opportunity for us to leverage the scale of the portfolio,” Spring commented.

“If you look at other companies deciding they don’t want to be in the public market, or they want to join together with others because they need to be bigger to be successful, we also need that strength of combined value,” he said. 

He concluded that retailers need to remember, they’re in the retail therapy business.

“Essentially we have folks that want to come in and try to escape their everyday life in some way, shape or form,” he said. 

“They’ve had a difficult breakup, they’ve had a fight with a significant other, they just had children who were running wild around the house. We are there to try to create the kind of retail experience that people truly enjoy. 

“It’s why I was never a believer from the onset of the pandemic, that it was going to be a digital-only business. It was going to be a digital and a physical business where the two actually talk to one another and give the choice back to the consumer about what is best for them.”

Inside Retail’s coverage of the 2025 Big Show is brought to you by Adobe.