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Berlin marketers talk building content, communities & fandoms. By Dianna Dilworth September 30, 2026 While Zalando is No. 5 in Digital Commerce 360's top Europe 500 retailers, the company does not just think of itself as a retailer. It is also a publishing platform. During the first six months of 2026, Zalando published 4,000 pieces of editorial content. They have more than 10 million daily active users consuming content on Zalando. "That's a completely different surface for audience interactivity," said James Rothwell, senior vice president of marketing & content at Zalando, during the Brand Innovators German launch at Zalando's office in Berlin. "We learn a lot more about our audiences in terms of demand signals, preferences, and taste. And that allows us to play a big role in their lives and then ultimately build a bigger role in culture." Rothwell said that the role of marketing fundamentally shifts when selling things people want versus what they need. "When you're trying to sell a fashion product, a sports product, an entertainment product, you have to create demand and that requires a very different creative approach and also a different media approach," he said. "You need more of a platform for storytelling, because it's something that you have to convince someone to want and to love." "Our core role is to help Europe get dressed," he added. "It helps us to show up authentically, and it helps us to build a role in culture." That philosophy informs how Zalando approaches content, particularly around moments when fashion, sports and culture intersect. During the World Cup, Zalando launched 90+ Show, an exclusive behind-the-scenes get-ready-with-me video series that highlighted athletes preparing for the summer football tournament. These rituals are key moments for audiences. "Everyone asks themselves, what do I wear today? Whether you're going out to the pitch as a professional athlete or showing up to the match as a fan or getting in your PJs at home and watching it night and night because the World Cup is in North America and the time difference is insane," said Joey Bernier, head of social media at Zalando. This week, Bernier was at the finish line of the Berlin Marathon creating content where he captured the looks of diverse groups of runners. "What was really great is how much effort people put into what they put on their bodies ahead of the marathon," said Bernier. "We had people in head-to-toe matching looks. We had some people in ridiculous outfits...self-expression and fashion and what people put on their bodies is becoming more and more important in the sports space, and we want to celebrate that. We want to tell those stories." Sports has become a year-round cultural conversation. Sports from running to football to basketball continue to attract consumers, making it an increasingly important space for marketers to play. When it comes to sports marketing, most panelists on stage agreed that slapping a logo on an event is fairly meaningless. Instead it is about finding creative ways to lock into the community that extends beyond the game. "Most people think of sport as the moment, the match, the run, the whatever, but actually, 85% of what happens and that people engage is actually pre or post that moment," said James Ricker, vice president of marketing & product innovation at EA Sports App. "And that's where a lot of the consumption happens. It's where a lot of the communities are built. It's where a lot of the celebration happens." Women's sports is one of the fastest growing categories, offering brands an opportunity to lean into working with female athletes. "Fans of women's sports are three times as likely to buy from a woman athlete compared to another influencer. They're more likely to buy from a woman athlete than a male athlete. They get higher social media engagement," said Taylor Gobar, director of marketing at HelloFresh. Don't treat creators transactionally Zalando works with creators to help with its storytelling. Natalina Manni, director of creator and content partnerships at Zalando said the best way to work with creators is to understand what they want to build and work symbiotically in their world. "If they have an affinity with us and they build that into their world, we become symbiotic with their world," said Manni. "They are following their community and trust their brand so they trust our brand on top of it." Building trust is crucial to connecting with consumers and creators can help brands with legitimacy. It's important to work with creators that make sense for the brand and not see it as a transaction. Saruul Karuse-Jentsch, head of podcasts at Spotify advises brands to play where they belong and to make it a two-way partnership. For example, work with creators that reach the community that are interested in your brand and think about how you can help that community. "If you really want to be part of the community, take the community seriously and then don't be greedy and take the quick transaction," she said. "Really thinking about how can I give back to this community and how can I maybe leave something also in this community. For example, when you do an activation, can you maybe leave the recording studio there?" The LGBTQIA+ community is very important to Tinder, because this is a community that has been with the brand from the start. "A big part of this community comes out on Tinder before they come out to their family," said Silke Lakeit, senior director of marketing at Tinder. "So this is a community we always consider, we always want to give back to and we also push forward when it comes to policy, to regulatory decisions, right? So it's beyond marketing." "If brands look at communities as groups or circles of people sharing the same values, and they want to be part of that, they kind of need to adapt those values," she continued. Community is big for Netflix who is heavily focused on fandoms. "There is only one marketing objective that we have at Netflix, and that is conversation," said Mirja Tavra, brand creative studio lead DACH at Netflix. "That's really all there is. We don't measure anything else because we really believe that getting people to talk about something they love is ultimately going to drive relevance." Netflix measures the success of the shows by how many people watch it but they also track fan love. "We don't treat our members just as paying subscribers," said Tavra. "There's a big understanding at Netflix that they, first and foremost, are really fans." The Netflix effect - seen in examples like the Wednesday dance, the tracksuits from Squid Game or the dresses in Bridgerton - happens when the conversation becomes bigger than the actual show itself. "People don't passively watch," said Tavra. "What's on screen really spills over into the lives of people and really means a lot to them and they engage in a big way." It's not something the company can always predict. "It's definitely an idea at the moment when the shows and films are being created," said Tavra. "But sometimes there's surprises like K-pop Demon Hunters. Nobody at Netflix thought that it would be this global phenomenon that it became." AI may be changing how marketers create, but speakers argued that it shouldn't erase the human role in creativity. "There is what AI can do and what you still want to have human beings do," said Alexandra Brandt, head of brand and marketing at Back Market. "You can cook with a machine but you also might like to cook your vegetables yourself." "There might be some stuff that we're super happy to do with AI," she continued. "And there might be the content, the discussion that you still want to keep human...it's a cultural discussion right now about what role do we want as a society to give AI." Carola Seybold, head of global partnerships at Pantone said people are shifting from makers to orchestrators. "Generation of content can be done by AI but to position it needs to remain human," she said. "People want to feel emotions." She said the digital world lacks - emotion, empathy, an instinctive sense of play. The essence of being human is imperfection and the brand has named this the trend of 2028. "To remain human is to choose presence, responsibility, and authorship," said Seybold. "AI might extend our reach, but it does not replace our thinking. We don't design as humans, we design from what makes us human."

The AI revolution in fashion: Zalando's blueprint for a post-catalog era. Rifan Muazin September 27, 2026 6 minutes read The landscape of global fashion retail is undergoing a metamorphosis that rivals the shift from brick-and-mortar stores to the dawn of the internet. Last week, in the industrial heart of Berlin, German e-commerce titan Zalando hosted its annual "Partner Day," an event that served as a high-level summit for the world's most influential brands. With approximately 750 senior executives from industry giants - including Nike, Adidas, Levi's, Calvin Klein, and Lacoste - in attendance, the focus was singular: the total integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the DNA of the modern shopping experience. While AI has been a buzzword for years, the narrative at Zalando's Partner Day shifted from speculative potential to concrete, profit-driven implementation. As Zalando co-founder David Schneider opened the event, he framed the transformation in stark terms: "AI is changing everything we do. The rise of mobile technology changed customer behavior, but the rise of AI is much deeper - a fundamental change." The anatomy of the event: A chronology of change. Zalando has been curating this partner ecosystem since 2014, but the 2026 iteration marked a distinct departure from previous years. The day was structured around a series of keynote addresses, technical workshops, and panel discussions that aimed to demystify the "black box" of algorithmic commerce. The event began with Tarek Mueller, the managing director of About You - a key e-tailer acquired by Zalando in July 2025 - setting the stage by posing the industry's most pressing questions: "Does AI help create awareness for my online shop? Does it help me convert traffic into orders? Does it help me improve margins?" Throughout the day, participants moved from plenary sessions on the "future of the funnel" to granular workshops on "generative visual production." By the afternoon, the focus turned toward the logistics of "micro-trend" identification, showcasing how real-time social media data is now being funneled directly into marketing pipelines. The event concluded with a look toward the horizon, specifically the limitations of current AI shopping assistants and the long-term potential for hyper-personalized consumer journeys. Supporting data: the efficiency paradox. While AI is often heralded as a magic bullet for traffic acquisition, the reality presented at the conference was more nuanced. Mueller provided a sobering assessment of the current state of Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Claude. Despite the hype surrounding these tools, they currently drive less than 0.5 percent of total traffic to online fashion retailers. For now, the dominance of legacy gatekeepers - Google and Meta - remains unchallenged. However, the financial impact of AI is undeniably profound in the realm of content production. For decades, fashion retail was tethered to the physical constraints of the photo studio: hiring models, booking stylists, coordinating logistics, and spending thousands of hours on post-production. Zalando and About You have effectively dismantled this model. By shifting to generative AI for product detail pages and marketing campaigns, these retailers have realized a staggering 90 percent reduction in photography-related expenditures. Mueller revealed that for About You, this transition saved roughly 6 million euros from a 7 million euro budget, proving that AI's primary value proposition today is not in traffic generation, but in operational cost-efficiency and agility. Official Responses and the "Human-in-the-Loop" The shift toward AI-generated imagery has inevitably raised questions regarding workforce displacement. Matthias Haase, Zalando's vice president for content solutions, addressed this directly during his seminar. When the company closed its dedicated product studio, 90 positions were impacted. Haase noted that through proactive internal retraining and reallocation, the company successfully transitioned 60 of those employees into new roles within the firm. Haase also emphasized that, for all its computational power, AI lacks the subjective "taste" required for high-end fashion retail. "Maybe the AI selects an image that fits the trend and the style, but it just doesn't look good," Haase explained. "That's where the human comes in and says, 'out, out, out.'" This philosophy of "human-in-the-loop" was echoed by others at the conference, who argued that while AI can replicate, it cannot yet innovate on the level of a creative director. Real-life talent, such as Zalando's brand ambassador, actress Lily Collins, remain central to the platform's brand identity, as AI is not yet used to replace high-profile human endorsements where emotional resonance is the primary goal. The new frontier: micro-trends and predictive analytics. One of the most compelling insights shared at the conference was the use of "AI agents" to detect and capitalize on micro-trends. Haase described a process where an AI agent monitors social media signals every morning at 7 a.m. to identify emerging aesthetic shifts. A prime example cited was the recent Met Gala in New York. The AI agent identified a surge in interest for "arty fashion." By the following morning, Zalando had already launched a targeted campaign, resulting in a measurable spike in wish-list additions and brand engagement. Previously, a campaign turnaround of six to eight weeks was considered best-in-class; today, AI allows for near-instantaneous responses to the fleeting nature of internet culture. Implications for the future: the triad of transformation. Looking forward, the industry consensus - as distilled by Tarek Mueller - is that the future of fashion retail will be built on three pillars: 1. The "magazine-ecommerce" Hybrid. Retailers are moving toward a content-first model. By leveraging AI to generate lifestyle imagery, platforms are transforming from static catalogs into dynamic, magazine-like experiences that provide inspiration alongside the ability to purchase. 2. Hyper-Personalization. The era of the "one-size-fits-all" homepage is ending. Algorithms are becoming increasingly sophisticated, moving beyond simple product recommendations to suggest styling that aligns with a consumer's unique preferences. In the near future, shoppers may see products styled on models that reflect their own body type or aesthetic, creating a bespoke shopping environment. 3. Frictionless logistics. The final pillar involves the back-end of the business: delivery and returns. AI is being deployed to optimize supply chains, ensuring that the movement of goods is faster, more reliable, and less prone to the friction that has historically plagued e-commerce. The limits of the AI Assistant. Despite the optimism, there was a healthy dose of skepticism regarding the "AI Shopping Assistant." Both Mueller and other industry experts noted that while AI is adept at transactional tasks - such as booking a flight - fashion is fundamentally different. It is an industry built on discovery and emotional desire. Mueller argues that the vast majority of fashion spending is not a "job to be done" but a "journey of inspiration." Consequently, he believes that while AI-driven assistants will improve, they may never replace the curated, human-led experience of browsing for inspiration. Conclusion: A new era for fashion retail. As the 2026 Partner Day drew to a close, the takeaway was clear: the fashion industry is no longer waiting for the AI future - it is building it in real-time. By automating the mundane, accelerating the reactive, and personalizing the inspirational, Zalando is positioning itself to lead in an era where data and creativity intersect. For brands, the message is simple: adapt to this AI-augmented reality, or risk being sidelined by those who have already mastered the algorithm. The transformation is deep, it is fundamental, and according to the leaders in Berlin, it is only just beginning. Administrator