On Wednesday 13 March, Julie Towns, VP Product Marketing, and Olivier Oullier, Neuroscientist and founder of Inclusive Brain, gave an exclusive keynote on the shopping experience and Artificial Intelligence. A concrete and instructive talk on the buying behaviour of Gen Z.

Julie Towns, VP marketing and product at Pinterest, identifies 3 disruptive forces that need to be combined:

  • The loss of signals and the end of cookies
  • Artificial intelligence, which is evolving even further than previously thought Generation Z
  • Users come to Pinterest for fashion, decoration or recipes.

They curate products together. Gen Z is a huge fan of Pinterest, with 20% growth over the past year. "They represent 40% of our monthly users. They save their content three times more than other target groups.

1. Niche is the norm, there is no longer mainstream pop culture but subcultures, which Pinterest labels as follows: Vintage jewellery Head scarf vibe Tomato girl aesthetic, Eclectic grand pa aesthetic. This generation defines its own style, and AI will create hyper-customisation. Six months pregnant, Julie has been labelled by Pinterest as a "zen industrialist" based on her searches and mood boards. "Pinterest can recommend products that suit me and, in the future, brands". A product included in a moodboard is 7 times more likely to be purchased than another.

2. Curation is the new consumerism. Pinterest has introduced a new technology called Collage, inspired by our kindergarten years. It allows you to mix products together and create a world for your student bedroom, for example. These Collages are "shoppable".Gen Z "does the marketing for you".Pinterest asked the University of Berkeley to measure the mental impact of consuming its content.The result: 10 minutes on Pinterest is stress-free.

3. Default inclusion with Body Type Ranges. Pinterest offers its visitors the chance to choose their body type: "thinking about all body types or physiques leads to growth and sales". This battle is all the more important now that artificial intelligence is amplifying diversity bias. Pinterest invited neuroscientist Olivier Oullier, CEO of Inclusive Brain. For him, "the trend with generation Z is that there is no trend. It's no longer a question of guessing, but of listening to a generation that knows how to say what it wants and how it wants to be addressed". In his previous company, Olivier Oullier conducted an experiment with YSL fragrances (part of the L'Oréal group) in which people had to breathe in 5 scents, and a unique fragrance was created based on the brain's reactions. Today, 'brain sensing' is set to become mainstream, as it will become a function of wireless headphones. "The headphones, the smartphone's camera and the connected watch's sensor are all tools for achieving the hyper-personalisation expected by a generation that looks like no other. We can use the billions of data points and data from sensors, and combine it with AI and we'll have a measure of what people say and what they do and what they think and what their body perceives".

Brave new world...

Geneviève Petit

To find out more, meet Pinterest at Forum 1, stand E6