Reviewing a video, searching for the key part of a makeup tutorial or skincare regimen, may soon become a thing of the past, thanks to the kind of artificial intelligence at the heart of Trendio Live, a new online shopping platform. videos for prestige beauty. which debuted on Roku and mobile TV streaming.
For Alex Pérez-Tenessa, a former beauty industry executive who went on to run Amazon Prime Video in the US, and his co-founder, tech start-up guru David Olmos, the app works like a serum. which fixes an annoying blemish on the face of the video. trading: the unpredictable frustration of adjusting a timeline to find the parts to skip or watch. Given the enormous influence of streaming product demos, tips and tricks, and similar visual media on beauty purchase decisions, it’s easy to believe that simplifying the whole thing could please viewers and even speed up the checkout process. It’s TikTok’s approach to building an audience, with data intelligence weaving together an endless and ultimately addictive feed of clips.
But for Trendio, filling feeds is only part of the equation. The system also reshapes actual content, programmatically editing videos to suit each user based on the person’s buying, browsing and viewing habits, to create an experience with singular appeal.
Pérez-Tenessa, now CEO of Trendio, explained in an exclusive interview: “We are leveraging video AI to automatically edit content so it will be more engaging for each individual customer, creating truly personalized video content. I don’t think anyone is doing that today.”
The premise aims to fill the gap between the physical cosmetics counter and the online store. The former offers focused advice and explanations, but is expensive. Volume-savvy e-commerce can fail to target, leading to customer churn.
Enter bespoke video as a tool for beauty trade, instruction, and even entertainment. Pérez-Tenessa believes her time has come because the concept would not have been possible three years ago. But after advances in video technology and the adoption of more devices paved the way, she “saw an opportunity to address this need for educated shopping in non-recurring categories, particularly beauty.”
Alex Perez-Tenessa, formerly of Amazon and CVS, now co-founder and CEO of Trendio
The experience is unified and cross-platform, and viewers can tune in to the iPhone or Android app on their smartphones, as well as the streaming TV app, also known as a “channel” in Roku parlance. While that’s not unusual for buying initiatives, the difference with Trendio is its approach to the video content itself. The more the system knows the consumer, the more you can fine-tune video editing.
“We track what they do at a very granular level, at a timestamp level, something [most or maybe none of the other] the players do. And then we are building and training the models so that they can automatically edit the videos so that what the customer sees actually matches what they are interested in for any given product,” said the CEO. People can view these TikTok-style edited clips on their phones or watch them with friends on TV as a form of entertainment in their own right. If they see something of particular interest, they can click through to see the longer version.
The concept seems like a rarity among tech and eCommerce solutions. Others apparently agree, with Perez-Tenessa and Olmos bringing in Amazon Live alumnus Julie Novak and former Glossier makeup category management director Leah Grubb to work on the platform. Armed with an initial round of funding from Madrona, a venture capital firm that backed Amazon from the start, Trendio assembled an advisory board that included former QVC board member Michael Zeisser, Amazon Live founder Munira Rahemtulla, and former chief executive officer. by Zulily, Jeff Yurcisin.
The app’s video AI personalizes the actual content, editing it based on user preferences and habits.
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According to Perez-Tenessa, many platforms can offer 30-second product roundups, but “we think if you find something that interests you at these prices, you’ll want to learn a little more.”
A longer format offers space to cover the finer points of offerings from Merit, Philosophy, Ursa Major, Nudestix, Kjaer Weis, Joanna Vargas, Coola, Avene, and others. Forty brands are available at launch, with each product vetted for high-quality ingredients and efficacy. In fact, pretty much everything on the platform was handpicked, including the creators. But not the content.
“Once they’re with us, we let them choose,” Perez-Tenessa said. The creators work on a commission linked to sales, so there are no incentives to promote one product or brand over another. “It’s very important to us that we don’t require that…we want to make sure that the products that they promote, they really love.”
Trendio’s social video pipeline calculation starts with 75 content creators at launch. They produce an average of five videos per day, totaling over 300 videos, with plans to increase to over 1,000 and maintain a new set of 1,000 to 3,000 videos on an ongoing basis. While that would show exponential growth, it’s modest for a video or social commerce platform, especially in light of today’s binge habits.
But like other things, the company seems less concerned with quantity than with quality.
Whether through video uploads or through live shopping events, creators who crave more flexibility and autonomy may find the proposition appealing. They choose the products to be featured and there is no pressure to pack a lot of information into a short clip. They are encouraged to delve into their favorite makeup or skincare (Trendio’s top two categories for now) in a variety of ways, from demonstrating tips and techniques to sharing what moved them about a founder’s story. The video AI then cuts and dices the footage, promising to highlight the best parts, whatever they are, for each viewer.
Perez-Tenessa promises entertaining and engaging content delivered by a vetted team of creators.
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The concept touches on the hotly debated topic of optimal social video length. For a time, the popularity of TikTok seemed to ensure victory for the short forms, prompting a series of clones. Instagram has been heavily promoting its short Reels videos and YouTube Shorts just hit a milestone in October of surpassing 15 billion global views. Even Amazon, Perez-Tenessa’s former employer, has been encouraging influencers and creators promoting their marketplace products to keep it short, calling less than a minute ideal.
Meanwhile, the controversial ByteDance-owned sensation that sparked the video sprints has been steadily extending its maximum length for TikTok videos, likely in the service of advancing its own buying initiative.
Although social media and e-commerce platforms remain obsessed with brevity, many support both formats. Just not in the same video.
Whether it ultimately makes much of a difference to the beauty consumer is an open and fair question. The Trendio CEO thinks so. Prior to his tenure as Amazon’s vice president in charge of its book and then US video divisions, Pérez-Tenessa was vice president in charge of beauty and personal care at the nation’s largest pharmaceutical company.
“When I was running Prime Video in the US, I was exposed to new video technologies and new changes in audience demands that opened up opportunities, and were related to what I had experienced as an executive leading the beauty business for CVS, which was that beauty is a complicated category,” she said.
“It’s a science-based category where you need to explain the product and the story behind the product, and demo the product so people understand why it’s worth the money and why they should buy one product over the other. . .”
Doing that in an attractive way is more difficult than it seems, but for beauty brands it is necessary. Because one of the gravest retail sins imaginable is committing an act of tedium. That’s especially true online, where fast and playful have long ruled, though perhaps not anymore.
Source: news.google.com