Mark Mansour: You become inventory in someone else's platform. And when you're inventory in someone else's platform, all of that hard earned investment in brand diminishes. Brands and retailers want to be remembered and when you're remembered, you build a relationship. You've got to be ambitious about the destination, but be pragmatic about the journey.
Nathan Bush: When an AI agent does the shopping, your brand can end up as inventory. Just one more line in someone else's platform, whether that be Claude or ChatGPT. It's easy just to have your data show up there. But today's guest, Mark Mansoor, raises an interesting point. Retailers are now having to decide whether they're being chosen by a machine and putting all their efforts into that, or they're trying to be remembered by a person. Mark has done a little bit of everything in e commerce, which makes him a great guest for us. He he's done payments at MasterCard and PayPal, marketplaces at eBay, then seven years at Woolworths Group, he was one of the first people in the door at Cartology, the group's retail media business. He went on to lead its Marketplace strategy and launch Everyday Market and Everyday Rewards shop. And most recently he ran Woolworths Market plus as managing director. Now I've known Mark for 13 years and he's always been a step ahead where all of this stuff is going in retail, E commerce, payments, marketplace and more. And the timing on this episode is pretty special. On this day, the episode goes live. It is Mark's first day in a brand new role at Cusick. They're a pretty incredible story. They're the Australian founded in store audio retail media business that is changing the way of how we hear audio in stores all over the world. So yes, we get the scoop on what this is and why it is so exciting to entice Mark out of Woolworths after seven amazing years. In this chat we get into the coffee subscription store that Mark built on Magento while he was still at PayPal as a way to learn what his clients were going through and to empathize with them a bit. Mark can't code, but he's also built his own chief of staff with Claude Codex and Devon to satisfy his AI curiosities. And we also get into why he thinks that stores matter more as agents take over. And from a leadership perspective, he gives us lots of great insights on how to move fast within a big organization such as Woolworths without leaving everyone behind and to actually keep innovating, which is something that I know A lot of us are struggling with who are ahead in the AI game. Mark and I went everywhere on this one. Agents, loyalty, stores, leadership. And if you want the cheat sheet for all of this conversation to get the best bits out of it, sign up to the newsletter@add to cart.com. it lands on the morning that every episode goes live. And I only get to speak to the best people in E commerce and retail in Australia because of our partners, Shopify and Klaviyo. So thank you to both of them, as always, for making the show possible. Now, here's Mark Mansoor today, literally first date at Cusic and formerly leader at Woolworths. Mark Mansour, welcome to ADD to cart.
Mark Mansour: Thanks for having me. I've been waiting for the invite for. How long have you been doing this podcast? Like, 15 years.
Nathan Bush: Not 15 years.
Mark Mansour: Weren't you the first podcaster in Australia?
Nathan Bush: I was the first podcaster in the world. I actually invented podcasts.
Mark Mansour: I knew it.
Nathan Bush: Yeah,
Mark Mansour: I knew it. Voice Notes were the original podcasts.
Nathan Bush: That's true, that's true. But we've known each other and we were having this conversation earlier for 13 years. I've been running this podcast for seven years. And then we have the odd conversation here and there to keep in touch, and then I send you a LinkedIn message. A couple of weeks ago, I was like, hey, mate, I don't know, like, this might be out of the blue, but would you ever be interested in joining me on Add to cart? And I think I offended you.
Mark Mansour: I was only offended just because of the history of our relationship and the fact that it took you seven years. But I see that as you honing the skills.
Nathan Bush: That's right.
Mark Mansour: In preparation for the chaos that we're going to run through today.
Nathan Bush: It's all led to this moment. I'm shutting the podcast down after this. This is it. This is the last podcast ever.
Mark Mansour: The rumor is, is that you're the Prof. G Slash Joe Rogan of Australia. So I'm excited.
Nathan Bush: I'm
Mark Mansour: excited. Yeah. I mean, you've got the hair.
Nathan Bush: I've got
Mark Mansour: the
Nathan Bush: hair. Yeah.
Mark Mansour: They'll
Nathan Bush: never have that. They might have millions of dollars, but they'll never have hair. Actually, they could. They could just buy hair. But anyway, let's get into you because you have timed this to perfection because we booked in this and then you call me and you go, I've got some news and I believe we have a scoop. So spill the beans. Let's not keep the people waiting. What is going on in your world, Mr. Mansoor?
Mark Mansour: Well, I've been in a fortunate position to work for one of the greatest Australian retailers in Woolworths Group, and I was there for seven years. It was an incredible experience and I'm sure we'll touch on some things through the conversation. But as this podcast comes out, I would have joined a new business called qsic.
Nathan Bush: Yep. Qsic.
Mark Mansour: Qsic. Correct.
Nathan Bush: Okay. And so there's a lot to unpack there. I want to know why you've done this, but first let's roll back a little bit so people get to know you as well as I've got to know you. We met when I was a super retail group and I think it was
Mark Mansour: trying to sell you stuff.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, you're very good at selling stuff, so. Which explains a lot about your career. But you were definitely on the precipice of E commerce in Australia in your time at PayPal and eBay. What made you see the writing on the wall for digital commerce? Early on,
Mark Mansour: the writing on the wall happened pre PayPal. I was working for a business that was acquired by MasterCard and it was called Access Prepaid. It was like a travel debit money card where you would travel abroad and you'd be able to load currencies like, you know, they exist today. And I just remember there was a colleague that was running the E comm function and it was fairly nascent and the transaction between a customer and the platform was via a bank transfer. And I just thought that was so interesting that people would buy a card and then transfer to a large payment processing FX business via bank transfer to load money onto their card so they could travel abroad. Or the traditional way that they were doing it was install at travelex location or at a bank. And it just piqued my interest the way that the process worked and I became very interested. And that was I guess, the genesis for me going, actually, I want to be in this. This is becoming increasingly more. It was like. It was fairly nascent, like e commerce wasn't as it is today. In my early 20s, I lived in the UK and I remember buying some books off Amazon. Ebay existed, but it wasn't in the same context that there is today. And I guess that was the kind of path that took me on the journey that I've been on in my career. So
Nathan Bush: would you say you're a naturally curious person? Because even doing my research on you today, you're ahead of the game. I see your stuff on LinkedIn, but then I found your substack and you're like publishing your Thoughts on agentic commerce and where we're going. Is that natural for you just to stay one step ahead of the game?
Mark Mansour: I don't think it's about staying one step ahead of the game. I guess it's just a part of my personality. I am a naturally curious guy. I love to learn. And I think, you know, having that posture, that appetite, to kind of be curious to learn. I think it's been a tailwind in my life in all aspects, not just about E commerce. You know, kind of learning and growth covers every touch point of your life. And so, yeah, I'll characterize myself as a naturally curious person. I've got a kid, she told me, plug her in the podcast. Her name's Amalia. And this might not make the cut, but if it does, like, there's one thing that I always say to Marlee, and it's one of the most important things in life, is to be curious.
Nathan Bush: Yes.
Mark Mansour: You know, to be curious, to work hard, and to be kind. And I guess that's my philosophy, and that's what I. I try and teach her as well.
Nathan Bush: It's actually really interesting because I get a lot of this of, like, I'm in traditional media buying, or I've been over here, I'm a merchant. I want to get into E. Com. What course can I do to learn? And I always go back and I go, like, there are no courses yet. Like, the best way is to shadow someone or to pick up a tool, ask a client for a random job, and just get into it and try and do it.
Mark Mansour: I've got a very strong perspective on that. When I joined PayPal, I was managing, you know, some of the biggest E. Com platforms in the country. Not just commerce, but just marketplaces. And the way that I learned was I set up a Magento store and I tried to pedal coffee. It was a massive fail. I think my biggest month was like three grand in sales, and I was doing like, a coffee subscription, and I was selling plungers and Aeropresses and. But I learned. I learned how hard it is to attract customers. I learned how hard it is to retain them. And just that insight made me way more thoughtful in the way that I was engaging my client portfolio. I manage clients like Kogan and Jetstar, and these were digital platforms processing millions and millions of dollars a week with PayPal. And I had a very minuscule understanding, but it just gave me context and a little tiny bit of credibility in the room that I knew the complexity in operating a business, but also operating something in the Digital sphere.
Nathan Bush: Is there any part of you now that goes, oh, I wish I just. Forgive the pun, Ground that out and like continued with that coffee business with everything that I know today. I could have been retired on a beach somewhere.
Mark Mansour: Nah, I never think about that. I was horrible at it. Look, I thought it was an interesting concept at the time, but I mean, Bush, you remember back in the day, like the whole thing was about like, there's been so many fads in e commerce and retail. The whole fat around, you know, dollar shave, club and subscription businesses and you know, some things have velocity and are enduring and some things are a moment in time.
Nathan Bush: I think they've turned that now, haven't they? Millennial D2C brands and I saw an article about Bellroy around. It's a miracle that they've survived the millennial D2C curse. I'm like, oh, I feel old now because that felt like a real moment in time. I remember I did a similar thing actually. I. When I was a super retail group, we were putting Salesforce in and you'd know more than me. It's like you're dealing with big, huge systems, erps, multiple teams, legals, et cetera. I'm like, I could see this world of E commerce that's happening so quickly and I was like, I've got to actually understand that. So we built a company called Running Duds, which was running shorts. Really colorful. We sold about it was me and two other friends. We sold about 50 grands worth of shorts on Shopify.
Mark Mansour: That's huge.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. When it was really new. But we choose the stupidest category. Like shorts, the hardest thing to fit online athletic apparel. But it was cool. We got to the point where we'd be out running on trails and we'd see other people in duds and we'd be like, yeah, thumbs up. Like it was a bit of a community feel.
Mark Mansour: But like if you sit back and you reflect on that now, like the whole running craze, like now would probably be the best time. I mean there's lots of competition and
Nathan Bush: yes,
Mark Mansour: lskd, they're amazing. Great business, you know, great digital experience. Love their in store experience as well. But there's just so much competition in the space. But now is the time of the runner.
Nathan Bush: I agree, I agree. And also community, because a big part of ours was spotting people with these. They were colorful, they were crazy patterns that were like anything but boring black and gray shorts. And you kind of had that moment of connection with other people out on the trail. And I feel like that combination of that category plus community is something there, but hey, that's a world away.
Mark Mansour: Well, retail is all about community.
Nathan Bush: Yes,
Mark Mansour: like I've got a very strong view on that. And it's multidimensional. You know, the kind of utopian idea of community is everyone coming together, Kumbaya. But really community is about, you know, how people connect with your proposition, how they're able to have a two way dialogue with you as a brand or a retailer. How you take community insight to inform your roadmap or your customer experience or community isn't a linear thing. And so the idea of community, we talk about it a lot in retail and there are some brands that do it extremely well and there are others that are wrestling with it because it's hard. How do you do it in a genuine way that actually brings value to both sides of the equation, to the brand and the retailer and to that community.
Nathan Bush: How did you think about that at Woolworths? You know, it might not be in a direct correlation to your roles there, but obviously Woolworths, biggest retailer in Australia, everyone knows them. People have strong opinions. Yay or nay? How do you approach community when you're not an lskd, where you have a segment who just loves you and are drawn to you, but you're kind of for everyone. How would you approach that?
Mark Mansour: Well, I'm working at Woolworths has definitely been one of the greatest experiences in my career. And I've never worked anywhere that where an organization has been more obsessed about doing right for the customer.
Nathan Bush: Okay.
Mark Mansour: And so community is a downstream consequence of that. I don't know if that's the right word, but like when you manically, obsessively focus. I remember my first month in Woolworths. I was sitting in meetings and we're talking about. I had joined Cartology as the kind of one of the founding team members. I was the second employee in the business and we were navigating the big system and going to these meetings, talking about retail media and, you know, how we can grow and what the opportunities were. And I just remember sitting in these meetings and people saying, but what about the customer? And I was like, is this bravado or is this genuine? But it just happened so many times that it was blatantly clear that it wasn't bravado, that it was genuine interest in the customer. If you do right by your customers, they do right by you. If you're not servicing your customer, someone else is. I mean, these are core retail principles that I think Woolworths they see themselves in a privileged position that they get to serve many, many customers. They do not take that for granted. And you know, as of today, I'm no, no longer working at Woolworths. But I, I believe that it's not Kool Aid, it's observation of someone who has been in the hallways, has seen how they operate in the best of times and when there's complexity. And I've never worked anywhere where there's been more focus on customer delivering for customers, servicing customers, doing right by customers, meeting their needs where they are. And I feel eternally grateful that I had the opportunity to learn that at the largest scale ever. Like, that is something that I'll take with me for the rest of my career.
Nathan Bush: I'm a bit disappointed because I thought you were going to, you know, finish up awards and then just let rip on this podcast, but you're still in the love bubble.
Mark Mansour: No, no, I think it's a bubble of pragmatism.
Nathan Bush: That's the episode title, A Bubble
Mark Mansour: of
Nathan Bush: Pragmatism. Yeah. Like, is there an example that comes to mind for you where there was a decision being made for the business and we'll unpack some of your roles that you've had there. But was there a time where you were making a decision and then that someone put their hand up to say, hey, think of the customer and you had to change your approach to make it more customer centric?
Mark Mansour: I think customer centricity is a core value. And I mean, like, not perfectly answering your question, but I'll kind of just talk about, you know, the early days in Cartology. So for context for your listeners, Cartology is Woolworths Group's retail media arm. And the team is an incredible team. It's a juggernaut. You know, they connect brands with millions of customers every single day. Like, you know, my view is best case, best practice example, you know, locally, but up there globally as well.
Nathan Bush: And to set the scene, when you started retail media, wasn't the retail media that we've all come to know as it is now? It was very early, right?
Mark Mansour: It was very early. It was more trade driven and, you know, suppliers were accustomed to trade investment. And we were introducing a new concept of making it more measurable. And like, I think the opportunity around customer centricity and making decisions, it was about if you do right by customers and you're articulating and you're giving brands the opportunity to communicate their proposition, it's good for the brand and it's good for the customers. And I'd say that's probably the most virtuous example that I can think of because you could have a retail media model where you paint the aisle hot pink for a brand, but when you're obsessed with customers, you put the customer first and everything else is downstream. And so that's probably the biggest example that I can think of.
Nathan Bush: What would you do if you had 80% of your time back? Sleep, obviously. Well, that's roughly what Pillow Talk's marketing team got back. The Aussie betting institution with 73 stores and nearly 50 years of history was burning hours every single week, just building segments and reports. It was a job that took multiple people across disconnected channels. Tools, nightmare stuff. So they moved everything into Klaviyo. Suddenly, tasks that took an hour and three people takes a few minutes and a single person. That's an 80% cut in time spent on segmentation and reporting, freeing the team up to actually build relationships instead of wrestling spreadsheets. And the results are anything but dozy. With Klaviyo attributed revenue up 120% year on year last quarter for a betting brand, those results, they'd give you a decent night's sleep. Head to klaviyo.com au and see how brands like Pillow Talk are doing it. What did you learn about what loyalty actually is in retail? Because obviously you've created there a brilliant system of rewards which is obviously incentivizing people to come back time after time. Do you still consider that structured loyalty program to be loyalty?
Mark Mansour: Well, firstly, I never created Everyday Rewards. I would love to take credit for that, but I was in the rewards team. I reported into an incredible leader, Hannah Ross. At the time when I joined, she was the managing director for every day. And within that there was loyalty, there was telco products and then there was marketplace. And that's where marketplace within the Woolworths group and initially sat. And then in that it evolved, we launched a loyalty store. I think about Everyday Rewards is a really important mechanism to communicate to customers about the value within, within the group. And, you know, points have an emotional value beyond that kind of monetary value. And I think recognizing customers for their frequency and their loyalty and choosing the brand and giving them the opportunity to accumulate so that they can redeem for value. I think it has utility. In fact, I was speaking to someone on the phone yesterday, someone that comes from a traditional media background and they're going, I'm thinking about getting into loyalty. Do you think it becomes more important in an agentic future? And I'm like, absolutely. Loyalty is the flywheel for business. It helps you understand who your customer is. It allows you as a brand to communicate offers that are relevant. It powers your data and insight, which then enables you to connect brands with those customers with a shopping intent. And you know, the program brings it all together. It's a flywheel. It creates this virtuous, reciprocated relationship.
Nathan Bush: So are you thinking about loyalty as a way in an agentic world in the future? Not even in the future. It's kind of here
Mark Mansour: today.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Is loyalty one of the big levers to keep people shopping directly with you rather than being open to the market every time?
Mark Mansour: I think it's one of the levers, I think it's a big lever. But there are other big levers that form part of that pool to ensure customers choose your platform over others. It's a fragmented market. Retail is one of the most competitive industries in the world. And creating connection with customers. And sometimes that connection has a valuing points. And I would say that I'm an irrational Qantas frequent flyer. I always choose Qantas because I'm a part of that program. When I know sometimes I'm paying a little bit more and whatnot. But it draws me in and in my mind it has utility. Whether I'm right or wrong is another question. But as you go through that loyalty program and they stack the benefits, then you start seeing the value. And I think it's the same in retail. It's not just about accumulating points, it's about everything else. A part of that end to end retail experience.
Nathan Bush: And you wouldn't want to give up your chairman's lounge pass anytime
Mark Mansour: soon? Well, I mean, it's because you give me your companion pass once a year. So
Nathan Bush: on the agentic commerce piece, if you're sitting in a retailer's chair, do you care if customers never come to your site anymore? If you're still getting the sales,
Mark Mansour: you care? Absolutely.
Nathan Bush: Why?
Mark Mansour: I would characterize myself as a bit of a marketplace guy, and I love marketplaces. But in an agentic future, if you don't have the mechanism or the draw for a customer to choose you, your relationship with that customer is disintermediated and you become infantry in someone else's platform. And when you're inventory in someone else's platform, all of that hard earned investment in brand diminishes. And so I don't think it's a overly sophisticated hypothesis, but I think the role of stores, I know this is add to cart, but there are carts in stores bushy
Nathan Bush: we're all in stores, we're all right with them.
Mark Mansour: Like, I think the role of stores increasingly becomes more, more critical in that. How do you build relationships with customers? I know you, you kind of plugged my substack earlier. You know, I've written a couple of things about utility versus discovery. Utility, in my view, is an agentic customer experience. And that is where you're outsourcing kind of lower funnel decisions, already made programmatic decisions to a machine. Utility is about being chosen as a, as a retailer, as a brand or as a product. Discovery is about being remembered. And so agents and machines are optimizing to the brands that are posturing to be chosen. Brands and retailers want to be remembered. And when you're remembered, you build a relationship. I love that
Nathan Bush: differentiation between the two because we put this into, I think it was into our add to cart community last week and we said, you know, at the moment, can pretty much have Agentic shop on all Shopify sites. And there comes a point in the checkout where the user has to go, yep, I authorize this, but other than that, you can go all the way through. And I asked if there's anyone else who's shopped all the way through Agentic and just let it take the wheel and someone came back and they're like, yeah, I've literally just let it buy me an umbrella. And to your point, that's fine, doesn't matter, Blue, navy, whatever, big enough, great. Probably not that much to discover. But then if I'm shopping for my wife's birthday present, for example, and I give that task to a bot, it's not so much that they'll get it wrong, but it's like I don't get a chance to be inspired or to think or to be creative or think about what else could be out there. So I think there's always going to be that role where the, the user needs to be inspired. And whether platforms like Instagram and TikTok shop can do that enough without websites is maybe a question to be asked.
Mark Mansour: Well, I mean, everyone's waiting with bated breath for TikTok shop to launch in Australia. Like, I've probably had two phone calls this week where people have pinged me to say, do I have any insight? Like, I have none. But I think that, you know, for some people shopping is a task and for others it's a joyous experience. And so having the same playbook for both types of shopping mindsets, like, I think might not be correct. And I think you need different Playbooks for different customer journeys and experiences. And you know, I think that to be remembered, you need to build a connection. And to build a connection you need a really great retail experience, whether it's a digital retail experience, whether it's in store retail experience. And we know the tip of the iceberg is the transaction. The retail experience doesn't stop at the add to cart. Right? The retail experience is all the way to your delivery, your post transaction experience, whether you've got an issue and how you have that issue, service or how you're servicing that issue. If you're a brand or a retailer, it's all encompassing. And so these are things that I think about all the time.
Nathan Bush: When you are thinking about utility versus discovery, was it discovery?
Mark Mansour: It was utility versus discovery. I think that's probably the best way to say
Nathan Bush: no, I'm going with your theory here. Utility versus discovery. When you're thinking about that as a retailer, are you thinking about it as in the customer and their journey? So for me, buying. So if we take the umbrella for example, I'm keen to understand whether you're thinking about as customer journeys or you're thinking about as differentiating products between the groups. So you know, are you going actually product, an umbrella is always going to be utility. Like, let's just make that as easy it is to purchase and get out there. Or are you thinking about different customer types to go, yeah, Nathan, we'll just do this. Nathan's type of customer will do this. Whereas we've got some fashionistas over here who will have to like worry about every aspect of the umbrella and be really picky about it. So an umbrella isn't an umbrella for them. How are you thinking about product first customer?
Mark Mansour: To be honest, I've never looked at it from a product dimension, but I think it's an interesting insight. And as I think about it now, there are some products that lean more towards a utility type product. I'd say it'd be things that are fairly commoditized and repeatable that you buy frequently. You know, buying a TV is more nuanced and you, you'd probably spend more time like, as I kind of play this out in my mind, I wonder if the value of the product moves something towards, you know, discovery versus utility. Like if something's $3, are you checking every spec? If something's $3,000, I suspect that you are. But I think about it in the context of the customer. Always start with the customer and you want to meet the customer where they are. There'll be customers that will know exactly what they want, make the transaction as seamless. And you know, remember back in the day, there were four steps to a checkout and then it went to a one page checkout in eecom. We thought it was revolutionary.
Nathan Bush: Take me back. That was easy.
Mark Mansour: But do you remember that it was like you fill in your details and you go next and then you'd put in your payments and then you'd go next and then you'd have your shipping address and then you'd go next and then there'd be where you'd put your payment details and then it became compacted into a one page checkout and everyone was rolling it out on Magento and Shopify and all these platforms. And so when I think about utility, it's about make it easy as possible. Give me one click, I know what I want. Take me through the conversion. When I think about discovery, I think about inspire me, make it a joyous experience, educate me, show me how other people are using this product. Let me see ratings and reviews inform me. And so I just think that they're different mindsets. And I think in AgentIQ, I think that machines will still support discovery, but what they'll do is they'll go, here are multiple options and then the decisioning will land on your lap. Whereas in utility you might allow the machine to buy the umbrella because it's commoditized or it's not a thoughtful gift or it's more transactional. So, you know, maybe it's not buying the gift for your partner or your wife.
Nathan Bush: I think there's probably a lot of insights that we can already have from how we use marketplaces such as Woolworths. But if we think about probably our own experiences too is Amazon if we've got prime memberships. There are things that you just buy on Amazon prime, you go straight to Amazon because you've got a Prime membership and you just put them through and it takes you three seconds to make a decision and get it through checkout because it is that utility. There's other things you will shop around for before you make a decision. So we're kind of living that out at the moment, working through what is a utility purchase first. What needs more consideration and discovery in terms of marketplaces. You spend a lot of time leading market plus at Woolworths. The marketplace in Australia has gone through a few transitions, I'd say in the last few years where everyone was trying to bolt on marketplaces into their retail experience for some good and bad experiences. And then We've also had international marketplaces like T Machine and Amazon come in and disrupt, especially for those D2C brands, those millennial D2C brands that we talked about. How do you think brand owners should be thinking about marketplaces in terms of getting their product out into market? Are they friendly or are they competitors?
Mark Mansour: Well, I'm going to steal a quote from the famous Paul Greenberg, and it was something he said to me when I was working at PayPal. And it's a very simple insight, but it's something that I've carried with me for most of my career as I work at these different platforms and whatnot. He said to me, you've got to fish where the fish are. And so that can mean, you know, one fishing rod in one pond or five fishing rods in five different ponds. And so such a silly analogy to say that you need to be where the customer is and you need to meet them there. If you're not operating on a marketplace and your competitors are, then they're buying your product. If you've got a strong brand and you've got a very compass proposition and they come to your platform and you're not, you know, 60% of your transactions are coming through paid and you're getting organic and it's growing and you're making money, maybe you won't be on every marketplace, maybe you'll be on 5 or on 3 or on 2. And so I think you've always got to start with the customer, not the channel. And then you've got to realize that people are already discovering and buying in that category on these other platforms. It's like a mall. You know, do you want to have a store in a Westfield, or do you want a store on the high street next to the fish and chip shop? Of course, retailers want to be where customers are. And that's why traditional physical stores kind of are still the bulk of commerce in Australia.
Nathan Bush: And we're seeing a lot of digital brands go into stores. So, for example, I went into my local Westfield the other day and they were building a new, new luxury escapes. They're building a new Princess Polly next to the lskd store. And these are all those, you know, DSC brands who are now finding that real world presence.
Mark Mansour: There's a luxury escapes, like I live in Sydney in Bondi, and there's a luxury escapes at Bondi Junction. I've gone in there and I've booked a trip. It started off, you know, back in the day, you'd go to a travel agent anytime you would Book something and then skyscanner and all these marketplaces for travel. And it was just like you've got spectrum of value and, you know, the paradox of choice and you've got all of these things. Like you feel like you're in control. And then the marketplace just got bigger and bigger and bigger. And I thought, hey, let's test out luxury escapes. And it was an amazing experience. You know, they had a barista and they made me a coffee and I bought a holiday and you know, the follow up was great
Nathan Bush: job. Bought a holiday
Mark Mansour: for a holiday. Like, it was great. And I mean, like, I know we kind of touched on where I'm going or where I am now. Like a big part of my decision to kind of join Cusic was, you know, my belief that in store experience becomes a much more critical driver of how you engage and build thoughtful relationships between customers and brands and making it accountable. All of the goodness that you get from digital, you know, I'm working at a platform that has built the technology to attribute hearing in store audio to a transaction at the till. And that's something that excites me because I think as agentic becomes more prolific in digital and brands and retailers become inventory in someone else's system, the asset that you've built over hundreds and hundreds of years, maybe not hundreds and hundreds, but you know, some retailers have been around for 100 years now that asset, that brand becomes more valuable as customers. Valuable customers walk into your store. How do you make that experience as good as possible?
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Nathan Bush: So tell us. Spill the beans. I mean, when we go live, this will be day one of your role at Q6. I don't expect you to give us the history of everything, but can you share what Q6 does? And you gave us a hint to what excites you about it. But I'm keen to just unpack. What does it actually do?
Mark Mansour: Well, look, the first Thing is, I mean, the reason why like I joined the business is I've met so many people in tech over the years and what really attracted me to Cusic was the people like everyone that I've met has been exceptional. They're passionate, commercially focused. And I think what I loved is that, you know, in the conversations that I've had, they're like genuinely interested in helping their retailers and brands that they partner with grow. And the tech, like, the tech is amazingly impressive. Cusic, the way that I would characterize them is that they've built probably world's the best in class in store retail media proposition. So it's a combination of hardware and it's a combination of technology and the technology is underpinned by AI. So you have the ability to create velocity and AI generated moments for customers at scale with no limit. And I think what underpins that is their tech and the ability to go, hey, someone was exposed to this and we're able to determine whether it changed that customer behavior. And so I'm just excited to be a part of the team and to leverage my experience working in retail, working in retail media, understanding digital and in store, and partnering with retailers, not just in Australia, but in APAC on how they can kind of take some of that goodness and deliver that to their propositions as they evolve their retail media.
Nathan Bush: So is it audio only retail media or is it visual as well?
Mark Mansour: It's audio and it is measurement as well.
Nathan Bush: Okay, okay. So what role does AI play? And forgive me, it's day one for you, pre day one for you. What role does AI have in generating audio that connects to customers?
Mark Mansour: Well, I think one of the things that I got to see during the interview process was, you know, we ran a synthetic campaign. So an example of that is we chose a retail partner. And you know, this was a part of the demo and that retail partner, you know, had thousands of locations and it was a prompt into the QC platform to say, you know, we want to promote this product. And within seconds it had produced an ad, which was a audio ad, synthetic ad, but like human sounding like it was impeccable in that kind of radio announcer, you know, moniker that you would ordinarily hear when you hear an ad, whether it be on traditional radio or in the kind of studio created ad, like within seconds. And the great thing about the platform is that you can create infinite iterations of that same content so that it's hyper focused on the location or the customer cohort
Nathan Bush: or
Mark Mansour: the time of day. And so AI, I mean, it's an agentic organization, so everything is powered by AI with bright engineers and product folks supporting it. But the solution is AI driven. So the ability to collapse that time for production into seconds versus days, weeks in the brand voice, with the brand architecture, with the right approval and rigor in place, just means that you can operate in the same way that a digital platform can operate and turn something around instantly in store. It's a lot harder, but Cusic democratizes that for their retail partners and enables brands to capitalize on the opportunity in real time if there's an opportunity for them to do it.
Nathan Bush: That's really interesting because, you know, it would unlock a lot of creativity that you usually get one chance at recording this in a studio and then that you have to live with it for six months or whatever it is. Obviously you've got locality, you've got time of day and all these different variations. But does it then become almost a performance media? Because it can be changed so often. So if you need to change up a message to promote a new product or actually sales aren't going so well in this category, let's put more emphasis on them in this part of Australia. It can be really reactive.
Mark Mansour: Absolutely. That's the power of the Cusic platform.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Oh, that's exciting. I can see why you're excited and I can see why they're excited about having you on board. Given your experience across all of Woolworths, from retail media to loyalty to marketplace, it seems like the perfect culmination of skills. Are you a builder or an operator? Feels like there's a bit of a thread in everything that you've taken on in your career that you are a builder, you love establishing things and setting them up for success and then finding a new adventure.
Mark Mansour: I mean, there's so many dimensions to that question. But I would categorize myself as a builder. And, you know, in Woolworths, I had two amazing opportunities to build things within a large traditional retail business. The first was Cartology and being a founding team member there and creating the proposition and building it so that it, you know, added value to the organization, to customers, to brands and suppliers that we partnered with and then in marketplaces. Yeah, I do love building governance and, you know, steos. And I think when something's operating at a steady state for me, probably less exciting, but when there's this, I've just got this desire when there's a window of opportunity, like I'm the type of person that wants to run and capture the value quickly and I just think it's, you know, like, it was my experience at ebay and it's been my experience at Woolworths and I know, you know, working at a scale up like qc, I think that experience will also be there as well. We've got this opportunity, there's a shift in how customers are engaging. Retail media is an important part. And my mindset is we've got to operate with purpose, we've got to build value for our clients, we've got to prove it out and we've got to go quick. I just think it's in my DNA.
Nathan Bush: What advice would you have for people listening? What advice would you have for them to be able to build quickly within the parameters of the organization you're working in?
Mark Mansour: Can we just put a disclaimer to say that, you know, I have made many, many mistakes and, you know, take this advice with a grain of salt. However, like, I love to learn and I love to reflect and a lot of learning comes in hindsight. When you think back at the decisions that you made and the trajectory that you're on and the things you could have done better. There are a million things just, you know, reach out to anyone that was ever in my team and they'll give you lots of feedback on a thousand things that I could do better and ways that I could improve. And actually, like, I yearn for that feedback. And so I always want to improve and grow and have more impact, not just in outcomes, but in how I connect with people. But I think about, you know, your question and I go, transformation is about people, it's not about technology. And, you know, like, we're at this nexus now where we've got the greatest equalizer in the history of our careers. Like, if you think about our careers, it was E commerce and then it was mobile commerce and then it was one click checkout and it was deliver tomorrow and social content and
Nathan Bush: yeah,
Mark Mansour: but now we've got the greatest equalizer, which is infinite computation at your fingertips and your ability to something that was an idea in a notebook to actually create and build with velocity. And so when I think about that in my own experience, I think, you know, technology enables change, but the real transformation and real leadership, you know, comes from like changing how people think and how people make decisions and how we work together. And so I hate to use these kind of motherhood statements, but you've got to bring people on the journey. And the hardest part is often how you help smart people or successful people rethink something that was tried and tested that made them Successful in the first place to a new opportunity. And so if I characterized it in one or two things, I'd go clarity of direction, freedom in execution. And so at Woolworths, you know, we had a internal mantra which was freedom within the framework. And to me, I took that as a little bit of diplomatic immunity. And it was like, well, there's freedom within the framework, and we're just going to do things that maybe we haven't done before. And so you have latitude to do that if you're clear about your ambition and what success looks like and why it matters. And then you've just got to surround yourself with brilliant people. Like, the thing that I loved about working at Woolworths and why I'm so excited about working at Cusic is that I'm going to be surrounding myself with people that are materially better than me. And if you give them ownership and you give them the freedom to work out how to get it done. Leadership isn't through change, isn't about having all the answers. And then I'd say, this is probably the clearest thing about me. It's always progress over perfection.
Nathan Bush: You
Mark Mansour: can't compromise the ambition that is manical for me. Progress over perfection. And like, if I think about another thing through change, you know, it can be a benefit and it can be a burden. But I'm always curious and I'm always constructive with my challenge. Always. You know, like, I think someone had sent me, like a farewell note and it was like, I'll always appreciate the constructive feedback. And I've always got a desire like, can we make it a little bit better? And it's not to stall progress. It's always to just challenge the trajectory and to always think about more and to hold ourselves to a very, very high standard. And I think if you can do that as a leader, and there's this monumental opportunity to change the nature of your business, how you engage customers, the way you work, your operating rhythm, the value that you can bring to customers. You have to swim against the stream, you have to swim against the flow. You've just got to be someone that is clear on the ambition and has great people to be able to do it.
Nathan Bush: How do you balance those two? Progress over perfection, which I get, I can understand how hard that is, especially in a large organization, versus holding yourself to a very high standard, because those two concepts are kind of counterintuitive to some point. At what point do you decide, actually, this is good enough, this is progress? And which do you go? Actually, no, I'm Going to hammer in on this because I think there's more juice to be squeezed.
Mark Mansour: What a brilliant question because there's a juxtaposition between the two. But like, maybe I think about it a little bit differently. I think you've got to be ambitious about the destination, but be pragmatic about the journey.
Nathan Bush: Love it. Love it. Well, I think that's a really great way of saying it. I was reflecting back as you were speaking on if someone asked me that question around from a corporate perspective, especially, what's the trick to getting, getting people on the journey if you're a builder? And when you said that I've made lots of mistakes, I was like, oh my goodness, I've made a hell of a lot of mistakes. I was a lot younger and I think if I added anything to yours, I would be run towards the dissenters, the confused, everyone who's making noise. Instead, as a builder, I was like, well, I'm going to avoid them and I'm going to go over here and try and build as quickly as possible and then get shot in the foot later. And to me, that's served me well in my consulting now because it's just about listening. Because normally what you hear first, you hear it as someone who just doesn't like what you're saying or doesn't agree with your ideas. There's actually a deeper and often a simpler reason that they're putting up a barrier. And for me, that was my lesson that I learned is actually just take the time and listen. Like, you don't have to even say anything, just understand first. All right, cool. And while we're on the builder and I know we're over time now,
Mark Mansour: isn't this like a four hour podcast?
Nathan Bush: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a Joe Rogan. So we are four hours. We're
Mark Mansour: going all the way, mate.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I love it. I love it. As a builder, you've built your own chief of staff. Did I read that right? Did I do my research correctly?
Mark Mansour: Yeah, look, I have built my own chief of staff platform and it's like an operating system. Like, I've used a combination of Claude Codex and Devin. And I think, you know my comment earlier, like an idea that was in the notebook is now something that you can manifest. And so I think building things to learn as a leader, it's critical and it just comes down to my curious nature. And so what I did was I built a platform to help me visualize my network and I've pulled a LinkedIn extract and I'm able To visualize it and figure out when I connected with someone and, you know, add notes. And I've built in that kind of inter relationship. This person's connected with that person. It's kind of like, you know, in the movies when they're tracking down a serial killer and there's all the red strings. It's kind of a little bit like that.
Nathan Bush: You're an AI serial killer.
Mark Mansour: I wouldn't go that far. But you know, it's about learning. Like, I built an app this week and so I was having lunch with a friend yesterday and we're talking about, I think in five years time, maybe 10, maybe less, like apps won't exist and maybe the front end of that app won't exist, but the back end is something that you'll leverage if there's a trust layer in between. And you'll be creating your own experiences. I've created my own experiences. I'm doing a 30 day challenge. I didn't love the digital experience, so I created my own. And I've got it on my mobile device and I'm using it and I'm, I'm following the program, but I'm following it in a way that's intuitive to how I think.
Nathan Bush: Okay, so if we follow that thread then around what E commerce and retail looks like in five years time, I'm going to assume that you're going to say the customer is still in the middle of everything. Am I correct there?
Mark Mansour: I think customers are who you serve, but you could be serving them in someone else's marketplace.
Nathan Bush: Okay.
Mark Mansour: Or you could be serving them directly.
Nathan Bush: And so what do you think? If you're talking to a Shopify brand who might be doing $10 million today, what do you think are some of the most important things that they can do to set themselves up for success for where E commerce might be in five years time?
Mark Mansour: Look, there's overarching principle, and that is deliver value to your customers. And value comes in multiple dimensions. Just remember, your objective is to serve those customers. Serving the customer is about where you meet them. Serving the customer is also in how you evolve and improve your proposition entirely. From a digital perspective, serving your customers is that in store experience. Serving your customers is the roadmap in terms of the products that you bring to them. And if you can serve that customer, they'll continue choosing you. And so I don't think that our entire history of commerce from when people were buying loaves of bread and, you know, whatever back in thousands of years ago is going to change. If you Welcome a customer in and you deliver a great experience, whether it's in an agentic layer or whether it's in store or whether it's online and you obsess over doing right by your customers, then you know customers will continue choosing you. I've rationalized it, but things are going to change so quickly. And so making sure that you're at the arrowhead, that you're curious, that you're learning, that you're making lots of small bets and that you're evolving your proposition. And the evolving of your proposition could be I want to build deeper connections or I want to increase my distribution or I want to improve my profitability or I want to change the entire experience in store so that it's more creative or it's more inspirational or it's, you know, I heard someone use the word retailment where they're coming in and there's community. I think baby bunting. Well, I think baby bunting do a great job.
Nathan Bush: You
Mark Mansour: know, you go in there and there's rooms for mothers and you know, it's tactile and I mean that's just the beginning. How's it going to change over the next five to 10 years? It's up for grabs,
Nathan Bush: but it's a great guiding light. And I think what you saying there is around. Let's follow changing customer behavior and expectations, not necessarily the tech roadmap. See what customers are expecting and adopting and be prepared to change your business model and be where they are in order to stay relevant.
Mark Mansour: Well, you start with the customer, not the channel. Focus on how you can service those customers and then all of the other things relating to your business, you know, how do you drive growth and how are your margins changing and what's the cost to acquire a customer and like all of these things, their hygiene. But starting with the customer first can only put you in the best possible position.
Nathan Bush: Love it. Mark, I'm so glad we had this chat. That was fun. I mean we'd covered absolutely nothing of the questions that we. Yeah,
Mark Mansour: I was going to say when are you going to ask the question questions,
Nathan Bush: but that was a lot more fun. I think we covered a lot there. Well, good luck on day one. I am so pumped for what you're going to build with the team at Cusick. If you ever need an AI voice for your read overs, whatever, like, I'm here, like clone me, I'm ready to go.
Mark Mansour: Like, I've heard people refer to you as the Morgan Freeman of Australia actually. So you know, those dulcet Tones, you know, welcome.
Nathan Bush: Get me in the stores. Thank you very much mate. Well, good luck on day one and like I said, we're excited for what you're going to do there. Taking Cusick to the world. And thank you for finally agreeing to come onto ADD to Cart after all these years of me just bang down your door saying why aren't you joining me? I'm glad you finally did it.
Mark Mansour: Thanks for having me. I genuinely really enjoyed it.
Nathan Bush: I know we joked about it being a four hour podcast, but I literally could have made that four hours and unpacked all of Mark's thoughts around where the future of retail and e commerce is going. He let us in on some little gems in there that I want to pull out for us right now. Or at least the three that I got the most out of. The first is that
Speaker C: the best way to learn is by doing. I strongly, strongly agree with Mark on this one. Do not wait for someone to hand you the information you need in e commerce. Now you
Nathan Bush: need to
Speaker C: go out
Nathan Bush: and get
Speaker C: it
Nathan Bush: yourself. When Mark was managing some of PayPal's
Speaker C: biggest
Nathan Bush: clients
Speaker C: clients, he'd set
Nathan Bush: up his own Magento store selling coffee, subscriptions, plungers,
Speaker C: aeropresses, everything that comes with it. His best month was about three grand and by comparison of other e commerce
Nathan Bush: stores it was a flop. But it was a success in Mark size because it helped him learn how hard it is to win a customer and to keep them. That gave him credibility with clients like Kogan and Jetstar. He's doing exactly the the same thing with AI now and building his own tools to see how they work. So if you feel like you are falling behind or that you've got a lot to learn in e commerce, don't wait for the perfect course to come along. Which is kind of counterintuitive because we are going to launch courses soon. But you
Speaker C: need
Nathan Bush: to go out there and start using the tools and getting hands on because not only will you learn yourself, you'll end up picking up new skills that you can teach others. The second lesson is that every purchase is either utility or discovery. This is Mark's theory and I agree with it. They both need very different playbooks. Utility is about being chosen. It's the umbrella
Speaker C: that you actually let an agent buy for you. Because an umbrella is an umbrella. Make it fast. One click, no friction. However, discovery is about being remembered. You're it's the birthday present for your partner where people want to be inspired. They want to see reviews, they want to learn how others use it they want to know what else is out there they haven't even thought of that they could never even write a prompt for. Mark's warning is that if you give customers no reason to choose you directly, you
Nathan Bush: just become inventory in someone else's platform. So look across your range and your customers and work out where your purchases sit and where your product sit and stop running the same playbook for both. You might be able to find those products that are very utilitarian versus those that need discovery and maybe experiment with slightly different customer journeys for each. The third lesson is to be ambitious about the destination and pragmatic
Speaker C: about the journey. That came out of Mark's tongue so smoothly and so effortlessly. But it was a little bit of gold. As we learnt, Mark is a builder. He was one of the first people in the door at Cartology when retail media was still really new and was mostly a trade spend. His approach to moving fast in a big business is clear direction, then freedom in how people get there. Progress over perfection, but never lower the ambition. If you're the one pushing for change but getting frustrated with the pace of change, you need to make sure that you are crystal clear on where you're going, why, and you're communicating that clearly. Then back the smart people around you to work out the how. Don't try and do it all. All right. A massive thank you to our partners Shopify and Klaviyo for backing Add to Cart. We really love being able to bring you episodes with leaders like Mark and if you'd like to keep the conversation going on anything that you've heard today, even if you disagree, agree with Mark. We would love you to raise some of those questions and those thoughts and those ideas in the Add to Cart community. It is free to join. We have over 800 people in the community ready to have those conversations come in and see who's buying what, including if it is just an umbrella, we'd love to have you in there. Add to cart.com. come and join up and join the conversation. All right, until next time, I'll see you on Add to Cart Ra.
