Latest news with #JenniferWilson
Forbes
09-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
How Lowe's Brings AI To DIY
In the competitive area of home improvement retail, Lowe's has been doubling down on new uses for AI, creating apps for both customers and employees, and automatically targeting campaigns based on the weather. I talked to Lowe's CMO Jennifer Wilson about the retailer's applications of AI and its successful loyalty program. This conversation has been edited for length, clarity and continuity. It was excerpted in the Forbes CMO newsletter. Tell me about how you've been using AI as a tool for marketing at Lowe's, especially with the new Mylow feature. Wilson: The way that we've thought about AI as an organization was to think about how we can use AI to drive improved service and support for our customers, in addition to productivity for our associates. Mylow is a tool that is in service of what I just described. It's helping consumers be able to get to the answers faster in what is a very complex space, because it's not as easy as going to the store and saying, 'What aisle can I find X, Y, Z cleaning products in?' Projects are far more complex, and we know that, and we have a ton of insights that drive us to what consumers are looking for, which in the case of this space, it's help. But importantly on the other side, as we think about helping to provide better customer service in our stores, arming [associates] with a similar companion tool allows them to be able to use it in-aisle to be able to help customers more quickly understand how to tackle a leaky faucet, or which grill is best for big families, or how to think about what burners are best for searing a steak. Lowe's CMO Jennifer Wilson. Tell me about how AI tools have evolved at Lowe's, starting with Style Your Space. One of the big insights that came through was that customers have a hard time envisioning their space. That was really the impetus for Style Your Space, which allows customers to upload a photo, and then AI is able to detect and then generate different styles based off of that, then serve up personalized product recommendations. That was our first foray into a more consumer-facing AI product. As we staged for what is now Mylow, we first went into a beta test with our associates. We wanted to get feedback with our associates, understanding how helpful was the tool? Where did we need to make tweaks? How did they feel that this was best arming them? We have other tools cooking, some of them internal-facing. You can think about how AI is going to help us from a planning perspective as it relates to supply chain within marketing. AI is helping us with generating creative as we're building faster and thinking about personalization. And we use AI in our day-to-day as it relates to weather-triggered response—both in terms of how we think about programmatic display and streaming audio. AI is looking for temperatures that are hitting certain thresholds across the country, and then it triggers our advertising campaign. Style Your Space has been out for a while. What kind of a reaction have you gotten? Our engagement levels continue to grow. We have heard that consumers love that the product that we're serving up they can buy in real time. We've been pleased with some of the early sales results as well. For us, our primary KPI is engagement. A significant amount of app users who are coming in and finding the tool are spending more time with that product than what we'd anticipated. We expected maybe one-to-two minute sessions. It's leading to longer sessions and higher engagement, which is thrilling for us. It's almost the way that consumers interact with Pinterest. I think that there's this notion of coming into an experience, like Style Your Space, that's a little bit more zen-like than social media. Rather than going down this rabbit hole of reels and getting sucked into what historically would be that social media cycle, we've heard in our research that consumers really want a little bit more of this kind of relaxing space to be able to envision and look at products on their own time. And that tracks as you think about the time that consumers are spending in the tool. What are the KPIs you're looking at for Mylow? First and foremost, engagement is really critical for us. We want to understand how often are users coming in and engaging with the tool. We're also leveraging a lot of the analytics off of what they're asking to be able to fuel future content, get to faster answers, but ultimately have a halo to things like boosting our SEO on our site. The beauty of something like Mylow is that you're helping associates and customers at the same time. You're learning more and more about what is of interest to them so that you can serve up more personalized content in real time to them. And you have these halo effect KPIs, like better SEO value for the site. We look at it in three buckets as it relates to engagement of the tool: Helpfulness to both associates and customers: Is the content right? Are we teeing up the right products? How do we need to keep refining that? And then those halo KPIs. You mentioned weather and marketing as one of your AI use cases. Could you tell me about that? [This is] one of our primary leaders of our AI technology: We developed different key focus areas, we call them internally 'lighthouses,' where we wanted to focus our first big tranches in AI. As you think about business problems, one big business problem for Lowe's and how we serve our customers and communities is weather. You never know how the weather is going to strike. As much as you want to be planful and ready for spring, Mother Nature, as we know, has her own mindset. When there are things that are uncontrollable for you, but you want to have a better ability to control it, it naturally makes sense that we would say: Let's go problem-solve with AI and see how that may be able to help advance the way that we respond to business challenges like weather. In the case of marketing, we have a partnership with AccuWeather. We have thresholds of varying degrees. For example, one of the settings [might be] a 65-degree day, consecutive for three days, with a climbing temperature of five degrees over each day. You can stretch your confinements earlier or later in the season, and be able to serve up advertising based off of that. Similarly, in the inventory space, we pump in some of [AccuWeather's] temperature data. We can help understand where might we want to allocate inventory based off of where the demand is either bigger, like if spring is already springing in Miami and Tampa, but not quite yet in Charlotte. That technology is helping us to plan on a quicker basis versus manual hands-on keyboard. What kinds of reactions are you getting to AI-powered marketing? I've been tracking our social media posts on Mylow because I think that it's important to understand how consumers feel about AI, and are we finding the balance between wanting to be helpful versus intrusive. That's very important to our brand. The comments have so far been very encouraging. A lot of them are like: Okay, I see you. This is going to be so helpful because it's positioned in a way that's not intrusive. We're trying to help you get to the answer faster and serve you up exactly what you need, versus you having to scroll. Imagine if your refrigerator breaks in a duress situation and you are like: All my food is going to spoil. I can keep it on ice until tomorrow. Hey Mylow, what are the top-rated refrigerators that I can get delivered tomorrow? And answers pop up, and you don't have to scroll and filter. You've just saved time so you can move on to your next thing. That's really how we're thinking about AI. It's not to be intrusive. It's to help support you and make your life better. Lowe's has a successful loyalty program, while many retailers are finding theirs flagging. How do you keep that population engaged? I think you've got to have the right core value proposition. What we're finding is that our MyLowe's Rewards benefits is really appealing—and this was our design target—particularly to Millennials. They love a point system. They love money back. They love that it's easy and they can just toggle on their app, or soon-to-be right at the register, apply their MyLowe's money. Free shipping is critical because, as we all know, that's the cost of doing business today with retail. Member-only deals or perks is something that we heard resoundingly from consumers that they wanted. The build to the continued engagement is the way that we're looking at our longer term pipeline. One initiative is our kids' clinics, and the way that we engage with how-to workshops for members' children. They can come in every single month, take a free how-to class. We did a Play-Doh build class at Christmas. In the middle of the summer season, as we were exploiting our partnership with [Lionel] Messi, we did watch parties, and had kids come and play soccer in the parking lot and watch soccer games. There's a lot of fandom and engagement that we're trying to create, because that generation in particular—and also Gen Z—love this idea of in real life. If they're consumed with social media, they really want to get out with their kids, get them off of devices and get them doing things that are hands-on. Finally, we have a free gift program. There are very few retailers out there today doing a free gift as a part of their loyalty. You'll see lines out the door on free gift day, and that's exactly what we create. We have more than four times a year planned for 2025 because it's been so successful. In the spring, a free plant. We've got something kind of cooking around our Spring Fest event, which is our four-week biggest selling event of the year. At Black Friday the first 25 members at the door received $150 value of stuff in a big Lowe's bucket. We had lines out the door, nationwide. That's the type of engineering that we're putting into our roadmap. What's next? Is it giving members the first look at cool and different products? Is it giving them the ability to do pre-selling so that they can be the first in on whatever's happening first at Lowe's. We've been seeing a ton of energy behind the program because of that. What advice would you give to marketers that are trying to figure out how to make AI work for their brand? My advice would be twofold. One: How is AI in support of your brand ambitions? Are you thinking about what you want your brand to stand for and how AI can help serve that or accelerate that? And then two: How does it impact your customer base? Brand and customer are so deeply connected and the two places that I think about as a CMO of looking at every single day. Will this serve my customer and make their life better? And will this serve our brand and prop it up in the way that we want to be positioned? Look through the lens of how is your brand positioned and what matters most to your customer.
Yahoo
08-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Sixth Night to Shine event held at South Ridge Church
FAIRMONT, (WBOY) — The annual Night to Shine celebration, sponsored by the Tim Tebow Foundation, took place at South Ridge Church in Fairmont Friday night where those with disabilities were given the star treatment. Now in its sixth year, South Ridge Church has hosted Night to Shine, a one-of-a-kind prom night experience celebrated globally. Church officials said they were thrilled to be part of this inspiring event, aiming to transform how cultures embrace individuals with disabilities and encourage local communities to honor those with special needs. This year's Night to Shine at South Ridge welcomed more than 100 guests from across the Mountain State and was supported by more than 400 volunteers. Marion County Celebrates National Wear Red Day with Heart Health Luncheon 'So, this particular Night to Shine is one of, our biggest, we have actually brought in ten guests more than we usually did. We had over 50 guests sign up in the first three days of registration this year. So, every year we get more and more guests, more and more people who want to be part of it. And so, we just keep growing and growing,' the Night to Shine at South Ridge Church Coordinator Jennifer Wilson said. Each guest of Night to Shine is welcomed on the red carpet by friendly crowds and paparazzi. Guests receive royal treatment, including hair and makeup stations, shoe shining areas, limousine rides, corsages and boutonnieres, a catered dinner, karaoke, and prom favors. At the end of the night, all guests are crowned kings and queens of the prom. 'This means the world to me. A part of my community service initiative is about the Ronald McDonald House and my family's experience and my little cousin who was born with very severe Spina Bifida. So, getting to be part of something that is so near and dear to my heart and getting to experience it here is so important and I'm so excited to be here,' Miss West Virginia Teen 2024 Demi Breeden said. Night to Shine began in 2015 with 44 host churches and 15,000 volunteers, celebrating over 7,000 prom kings and queens. 'I really didn't know what to expect here, but it was really a great time being able to go walk down with everybody down the red carpet, being able to interact with everyone and seeing how they wanted me to walk them down, some of them did and just seeing that really brightened up the day, that's for sure,' the Alternate WVU Mountaineer Mascot Justin Waybright said. 2025 marks the 11th anniversary of Night to Shine, with thousands of churches across around 50 countries hosting events that have given more than half a million guests a prom-like experience. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
