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The expo floor wasn’t lacking in robotics, virtual reality, and immersive digital screens. But beneath the glitz of buzzy tech, the most resonant moments were grounded in pragmatism. And across every theme in this Member Brief, a common throughline emerges: progress in commerce now requires subtraction as much as addition. Brands must unlearn inherited playbooks before new ones can take hold.
Here are three of our takeaways from the Big Show:
1. AI saturation ≠AI adoption
AI was everywhere at NRF. Yet when retail execs at an after-hours event were asked whether they had actually used AI to search for a product, nearly every hand stayed down. AI was ever-present on the Big Show floor, but the real story lives in the elephant-sized gap between AI hype and executives’ personal AI adoption (or lack thereof).
2. The brands that resonated used technology with restraint
The most compelling examples (like Taco Bell) didn’t try to automate the experience away. They used technology to protect brand heritage, deepen participation, and create moments their customers remember.
3. Cultural evolution is the real constraint in AI adoption
The ceiling for AI in commerce isn’t technical availability. Culture is what dictates success. Teams are still deciding where they want friction, where they want intimacy, and where they want machines to stay invisible. Discussions were not so much framed around possibilities, with executives waxing poetic about a big, bold future. Instead, brands ranging from LVMH to Ralph Lauren and Taco Bell took a more intentional approach, connecting AI to their fundamental reasons for being.
