The future of retail and consumer brands.

Department stores. Catalogs. Big box. E-commerce. The printing press, radio, television, search, social. Every one of them was a jetpack, and every one followed the same cycle: the incumbents used the new channel to do the old thing, the challengers used it to do something new, and the gap between them became the decade's biggest transfer of value.

Generative AI is the current one, and it is the first channel that makes the creative itself. Generated influencers with real followings. Product photography with no product. Campaigns produced in minutes. Recommendation engines that shape demand rather than serve it.

The question isn't whether the machine can produce. It's what an audience will trust when production is free. The brands that steer this will own the next decade of consumer attention.

In this keynote, Sam Rad shows retail leaders the cycle every big change follows, why the new tools aren't paying off yet, and the four moves that turn the corner. The pattern has repeated for five thousand years, which is why it lands with any room in this industry.

The four moves

See the pattern. Let go of the old way. Lead the jetpack. Take it off. The arc underneath: recognition, reassurance, challenge, agency, practice, hope.

We don't have an adoption problem. We have a reinvention problem. The returns happen after you redesign.