In this episode of Retaili$tic, Patrick Sobral shares his journey from Brazil to Portugal, highlighting his experiences in the beauty industry and consulting. He discusses the challenges of transitioning to consulting, the importance of innovation in large corporations, and offers valuable advice for startups looking to collaborate with corporates. The conversation delves into the evolving consumer journey, particularly in the beauty sector, and the role of AI in enhancing consumer education. Patrick emphasizes the need for organizations to adapt to the fast-paced innovation landscape and the importance of creating memorable experiences in consulting. The discussion concludes with a lightning round of quick insights and reflections.
Video version of this episode is here
Takeaways
Patrick Sobral's journey reflects the importance of connections in professional growth.
Transitioning to consulting offers unique challenges and opportunities.
Innovation should be a collective effort within organizations.
Startups must be patient and strategic when working with larger companies.
Foresight methodologies are essential for navigating uncertainty in business.
The consumer journey has evolved significantly with the rise of AI.
Education is crucial for consumers navigating product choices.
Managing information overload is a challenge in the age of AI.
Creating memorable experiences is key to successful consulting.
Continuous learning and sharing knowledge are vital for professional development.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Patrick Sobral's Journey
04:01 Transitioning to Consulting: A New Perspective
06:29 Overcoming Innovation Silos in Corporates
09:10 Advice for Startups Collaborating with Corporates
11:34 Navigating the Innovation Landscape
14:07 Upskilling in a Rapidly Changing Environment
16:46 The Evolving Consumer Journey in Beauty and Beyond
29:40 Memorable Experiences in Consulting
32:40 The Importance of Community and Conversations
33:56 Mindfulness in Professional Interactions
36:32 Insights Beyond Data
39:17 Embracing Uncertainty and Future Thinking
41:00 Rapid Fire Insights
47:29 Advice for Knowledge Sharing and Learning
Philip Moore (00:00)
Welcome to Retaili$tic, the official podcast of Coresight Research for November 4th, 2025. This week, CEO Deborah Weinswig welcomes strategic foresight and innovation consultant Patrick Sobral. Patrick travels the world, helping companies to develop strategies to make the most of new technology advances, particularly in the areas of generative and agentic AI.
But before we dive into this fascinating conversation, let's review some of the exciting research publishing this week on Coresight.com.
Our featured report this week is Gen.ai to Agentic.ai from Pilot to Powerhouse, a playbook for upgrading your AI game.
We're releasing our retail media innovator matrix where we'll introduce you to the top new players and analyze their differences.
In this week's CEO Brief, our head of technology research reveals the latest functionality in intelligent inventory systems.
Our series on third quarter earnings insights continues, and we're tracking consumer holiday plans and purchase behavior. Now let's join Deborah and Patrick.
Deborah Weinswig (01:17)
So excited to have you on show. Maybe you just start by telling the audience, I mean, I know you from your deep knowledge of the beauty industry, but my understanding is it goes far beyond that. Maybe if you can let our listeners know a little bit more about your background.
Patrick Sobral (01:32)
Thank you so much for the invitation. My name is Patrick. I'm originally from Brazil, now based in Portugal, in Europe. I graduated as a chemical engineer, but during their graduation I had the opportunity to live abroad for a year. I lived in South Korea. For my first time I met people from different perspectives, different culture, and I saw that I was somebody who was moved for connections, networks.
That's why we met, I guess we became friends so fast in the first event we met, right? And when I fly back to Brazil, I thought that's like, well, I wanted to have a position that could allow me to having those connections more and more. That's why I started working with consumer goods and retail since my chemical engineering graduation. So I've been working with...
I worked with Pharmaceutical, GSK, then later moved to trade marketing at Heineken, worked for two years at Philippe Morales in Brazil and now my last passage was four years at Grupo Boticário doing innovation, consumer journey mapping and also like mapping how the AI will shape the beauty care in Brazil in the next years. Yeah, so we been working with lots of categories and now I'm doing my first move
in consulting here in Europe as well.
Deborah Weinswig (03:01)
How have you found the move to consulting and as somebody who probably used to consume in your either your rollout group of others information from consultants and potential next steps, how do you see it being on the other side?
Patrick Sobral (03:14)
It's been fun actually because when you are when you are the client you are working in the big corp and you are in-house consulting you focus more in doing the stakeholder management so like the research part for me would be like one or two weeks maximum and then like two or three months of stakeholder management to make sure I'm telling the right story that
that everybody agrees and is comfortable When you're working in consulting, you have to think more about the client experience, right? Mainly now, I talk about small consulting and I think like the advantage of a small consulting like the bakery or course site is that you can provide
different experience for the clients that the big ones like BCG, McKinsey can do it. So we much more about how the client will perceive the experience and then like how we will proportionate that experience for the client. And the whole operational work that will involve that with usually very short time frames. So for me it's been fun because like from the
Day
one, lots of work, lots of ideas going on and you give the idea and you are executing it right next. While like when you work in a big company for example, this process is a little bit slower because the stakeholder management is more complex.
Deborah Weinswig (04:46)
so interesting because if I look your background and as I think about clients of ours that are similar, in many legacy consumer goods companies, digital innovation is often in a silo or treated as nice to have. What structural changes have you found essential to shift from pilot mode to full-scale innovation or rollout, or is that still a challenge?
Patrick Sobral (04:58)
Uh-huh.
think that's still a challenge because I guess the silos tend to ⁓ exist in very big companies always, right? You always have the microculture and when you ⁓ work in a big company as well, I think people will always have some thoughts about innovation areas, like how come only they can innovate?
we are not innovating, we are innovating too, right? So like ⁓ you always need to make sure that you have an alignment with everybody who is innovating inside the company, even those who are not official innovation areas. And I think that ⁓ balance is something that we will always be going, we'll always be searching because there is no end point. Sometimes like...
area will have more budget and a good time to innovate and then that will change according to the company's strategy. example, Boticário, we used to work in the innovation lab and then the innovation lab existed for more than seven years. However, then the company decided to adopt the strategy internalizing the digital core products. So the whole thing of like
testing and prototyping with the startups and then later rolling out, we saw that was not working well. So then we kind of pivoted into a foresight area for digital products to make sure we were generating insights for all the product management and helping them with the long-term vision of the product. But of course, when you talk about a retail company and consumer goods company,
and in of BOTCAR it's a D2C company as well. You need to also think about the innovation of the products, people who are looking for how people you use the products in the future, what are the new categories we are entering so then we can prioritize for example the new digital experience we want to create. So in the end of the day I guess it's always like it goes back to
stakeholder management, right? Make sure you are putting everybody in the same boards and show them that you are not innovating to them, you are innovating with them, that innovation is a job for everybody, everybody's job. However, you have people doing different activities depending on the area.
Deborah Weinswig (07:46)
You said it so well. When I was at Lianfeng, we had kind of three, if you will, different think tanks and I led one of them. we were introducing a lot of startups to the organization. And ultimately, how we had success was, like you said, you were kind of working with the executive as opposed to trying take on
what you thought was the right thing to do and ultimately you probably got to the same place. It's just that working of more together, we tended to have success. And I think insight around the challenges sometimes of working with a lot of startups because they're so different in many cases than the corporate environment, especially depending on how early they are, that can be difficult and that pivot makes sense.
What advice do you have for earlier stage companies who want to work with larger corporates and what's the best kind of path for them to drive success?
Patrick Sobral (08:43)
Well.
I guess the main one is to be patient and plan very well your cash flow because I mean of course when you work with big companies you will close bigger deals but they will take longer to close try to person who is working with you with how the big company
to be somebody from the open innovation startup area or maybe you're with the business straight with somebody the business in marketing or sales you need to understand very well like that profile because sometimes that that area haven't even worked with a startup for example so they don't know how to work with startup maybe you need to educate them
them
on that, for example, saying that the startup is small company that doesn't have such a cash to spare, to wait for what ⁓ ifs, for example, and then help that to also help you with the making, going through the steps like procurement, the NDA assignment.
Deborah Weinswig (09:43)
Yeah.
Patrick Sobral (10:00)
all the legal part of it make sure you are helping them remove the blocks that he or she will have it because I was aware I have been not just like in the last position not so at Pochicario but before at Philip Morris has to startups as well and of all the companies I've never seen % smooth procurement process mainly when it's
comes to startups that you need like faster hiring process, you want test and learn fast, you don't need so much due diligence and then like the person in the innovation area needs to educate all those people on that whole journey but if sometimes you're not dealing with the innovation area you're dealing with like business trade-off
then even that person probably won't know this whole... won't have this mindset, right? So I guess it's like all about be patient and trying to educate the person and help them to remove the blocks that they will have trying to run innovation inside big corporate. Usually I think it would be very good if you are a startup, you have somebody who is coming from that
that background because there are, in depending of the industry I guess, there are many things, many problems who are very common to it and like somebody who is experienced on that I really can predict those timelines and those problems that can come, right?
Deborah Weinswig (11:35)
That makes so much sense. I do remember we had created like this startup park. It was amazing. In Hong Kong, we had 12 startups. They were truly from around the world. And I ended up walking and we gave each of them like a room and I walked with a of the executives and I literally printed out like a list of questions to ask them. And I remember one of the executives was like, well, in how many countries do you operate in? And the guy looked at me and I said, I said, you most startups right there like.
know, kind of focusing on one geography and their talents in one geo at the earlier stages. it was interesting kind of how, right, when you look at kind of a large multinational and early stage startup, right, like the differences in culture and just kind of how to work together. And like you said, right, these guys are burning cash, so they need to kind of close clients quickly. And that's a really, I think, important thing for people to know.
Patrick, as you look at the innovation landscape right now, mean, it's, I would say at least in my career, it's changing faster than we've ever seen it. How do you stay on top of what's important? How do you kind of tune out the noise? And how do you kind of help not only the companies you're working with, but how do you help others kind of drive success?
Patrick Sobral (12:46)
⁓ I've been that's like have been one of the years I've been thinking more about like what's the future of my career like what we need to study how is like innovation looks like In the future because yes as I said, it's very Complicated to say like in a big copyright the innovation where area while indeed everybody's innovating and now it's way it's More and more easy to innovate with AI we can even like
like
find innovate inside and outside the company, right? Since you can easily have like one night job, vibe coding, whatever what's your mind. So what's the future of the innovation area and all that? And I don't know the answer yet, but what I've been studying more and more is foresight methodologies because in the end of the day, foresight is about exploring their certainty and have in
upgrading your systemical thinking skills. And when you see that very famous matrix of the World Economic Forum about the future of work that everybody was posting on LinkedIn from January until now, when you see like the top quadrant, basically all the insights that are there, creative thinking, systemical thinking, they are
Four sides they are the core skills of four side methodologies So i'm trying to learn to learn how can I help companies? build those run scenario planning sessions Navigate the uncertainty and then turn that into a strategy and do that fast and Continuously not like one very cool power point that we're gonna use for five five years That doesn't exist you do a run scenario planning and that
maybe like in three months something big would have happened that all the scenario planning could have already gone away and maybe we need to run again so I that's what I'm investing a lot not just in like the methodology but how can I develop those skills as a to improve my decision-making process in my daily life, right?
you
Deborah Weinswig (15:01)
Yeah, I mean, I think that in many cases, corporates want to kind of, if you will, slow down sometimes to speed up, right? So they they want to take time to crunch all the different ways to move forward. And then once they make the decision, we find right, they want to move very quickly because a lot of it, like you referred to, is is kind of getting to the decision. And so help like
not only upskilling yourself, but along the way kind of upskilling your client, right? That's, even if you're in a corporate, you have different clients internally. And so I would say we've found been difficult everyone in the organization to have the same level of intelligence when it comes to gen AI. And it's, the thing is, right, mean,
It's a daily education process, I find. And so, I've said to people, if you really want, it's like 90 minutes a day that you really need to allocate, but so many people don't have 90 minutes a day. So without that, how do you keep your team, your leadership, how do you bring them along that journey and what advice do you have?
Patrick Sobral (16:06)
I think like beyond only the genin, only upskilling on geni, I guess it's also about upskilling of dealing with uncertainty as a whole because like I think one of the book I was reading actually for ⁓ written by one of the the ex-CEO of the consulting I'm working now she calls last forecast
more foresight because like forecast is what has been running the whole big business now, right? You do run forecast to say, okay, that's how much you're going to grow in three years and then you do a three-year plan based on those forecasts until like, I don't know, some years ago, don't forecast that they have been pretty accurate but now who could have forecast the tariffs?
Deborah Weinswig (16:49)
Thank
Patrick Sobral (16:58)
For who could have forecast before that the pandemics or the advance of the gene AI? like it's, ⁓ think it's we need to of course we won't throw away the whole of the models or everything that's been working so far, but we need to do that and keep also ⁓ exploring the new, trying things that we don't know
it's going to work or not and that when it comes to us like ⁓ teams as professional I guess it's always putting something on your your backlog your to-do list that you don't know if it's going to work like a calculated risk like maybe I will try I think if I have a task and I think it's boring or could be do better let me try at least for an hour
Deborah Weinswig (17:29)
Bye.
Thank
Patrick Sobral (17:50)
with ⁓ an AI, chat tpt and if it works let me share with the team what I have learned so then I encourage them to do the same and then we keep sharing the learnings because the thing about AI is that even though I believe we do have experts because we have the people who are building it everybody's learning how to implement in our own project
Deborah Weinswig (18:06)
Thank you.
Patrick Sobral (18:17)
in our business, in our daily life. So I guess one of the best ways to learn it is keep sharing, keep discussing what you did, what went wrong, what went right. And that's basically just ⁓ the innovation process, It's like defining a clear hypothesis, run the test, see if it works or not, if it works, why it worked, if it not, why it didn't work, share the learning. Keep doing that.
Deborah Weinswig (18:36)
Okay.
Patrick Sobral (18:45)
be more tolerant to error because, well, when everybody is learning and you have such a high level of uncertainty there will be things you won't predict and then that's the future right now, right?
Deborah Weinswig (18:59)
No, I mean, it's it's what I found the most interesting and we've actually written an unbelievable amount about beauty at core site in the past six months because, right, we're we're blessed that we get to move where it's interesting. And that I mean, we just saw the whole carrying L'Oreal deal like that was kind of ⁓ a big deal. Right. And and what we've started to find is that while beauty product discovery kind of happens everywhere, purchases stay in a fairly narrow
you know, let's say platforms, retailers, et cetera. And I think that's one of the things we found to be the most interesting because you may think you're getting the sale, you may think you're getting the conversion, and this obviously extends beyond beauty. But as you start to think about consumer journey mapping, how do you think the consumer journey has changed? And then going back to because when we started down this path of research, I was like, wow, right. People can discover product in so many places.
because people like convenience, they'll just hit the buy button, but that's actually not what's happening, right? They're going back to kind of the trusted platforms or retailers. How do you think about the customer journey now? And then as we think about, you know, of gen AI commerce, how does that change things?
Patrick Sobral (20:07)
Yeah, for me it was very interesting because I joined WatchCard in 2021. it was a bridge, an AI area. Everybody was talking about only digital and how can we do recommendations. So lots of quizzes, quizzes, It was to help the consumer. And right now, I guess everybody has its own AI consumer.
consultant and basically like I think the main consumer pain points is what's good for me in such a bigger and bigger portfolios all the cosmetic brands are building right so they go that they can talk to the AI asked how many questions they want get the information and then go to the
store to discuss that with the specialist. So I think that's the thing that changed more the journey. Because before you would only look for reviews, go to the brand's blog, ask your friend. Now you can do like very, basically like a skincare consultation
the AI and then you go to the store with another level of knowledge that you wouldn't have before. So like the sales team they need to be prepared for that because when you talk about multi brands for example you have say the sales team selling makeup, skincare, perfumery nobody's expert in all that. how is that team, will that team be prepared?
to also answer all those questions and make the consumer sure that the product he or she is buying is actually good for him. And the journey doesn't stop there because after he or she buys it, then, for example, if I talk about a skincare product, if I promise, ⁓ if the brand promise results in seven days, the consumer will take a picture of it and maybe put on
and then ask if it's actually working or not. Well, you can put a chat tpt on your own brand's digital product, skincare recommendation, it's up what brand is providing or not, the search for information won't stop after the purchase. They will keep testing and looking
Deborah Weinswig (22:27)
Thank
Patrick Sobral (22:38)
for answers even after so then the second repurchase can come or not so i think that's it like all about education the whole consumers they were looking for education about what product is good for their their own routine now they can find the information but that they will be looking for that information during all
the consumer journey cycle, not only the path to purchase. And that's also very interesting that that's not only for cosmetics. I've been studying lots of health care now and basically the journey is more or less the same. People, they have a disease, they feel a symptom, they look for chattie PT, they already have a lot of answers. Then they go to the doctor with lots of assumptions that
Deborah Weinswig (23:19)
Yeah.
Patrick Sobral (23:33)
Sometimes are wrong and they that can even ⁓ give a hard time to the doctor because sometimes the consumer will trust even more the patient now will trust even more the doctors than the the AI did the doctor which can be a problem in the journey the patient will run the exam a blood test or something like that and before going to the doctor to see the results he or she will ask the AI what are the results and sometimes what I depend
what they are saying they won't even go back to the doctor because all they are said and fine I'm not dying so why should I pay for a second appointment with the doctor which could be wrong as well so yeah I guess we need to
That's what's changing most of the consumer journey through all the categories, right? The look for the... The way you can find access to information that's so easy.
Deborah Weinswig (24:28)
Yeah, I mean, think
There was a lot of concern that employees who had been, you know, let's just say more of the older millennials, Gen X, there was a lot of concern around people losing their jobs. But instead what we found, and it's interesting, is that because there's so much nonsense that comes out of these different large language models, that you have to almost have a certain amount of time in your career to either know that it's baloney or not.
to ask better questions or more questions. And I think you brought up something that we've seen too, right? Everybody has their own like AI consultant. I hey, might be an agent you built, but right, like everybody's got somebody telling them different information. And so I think, I don't know if you, I like it was, I was at this conference last week, it was a board meeting. And I talked to a few people because I had gotten a call from a client actually, and he was like,
It was very personal. like, I think I'm like losing my mind. He's like, I can't remember anything. And I said, like, let's take a deep breath. I appreciate you calling me. It was like one those like eight or nine o'clock at night. And I said, let's talk about how you spend your day. Right. I said, you you get up in the morning, right, like the whole like your breakfast or not, whatever. And what we figured out is that his consumption of right video, audio, the amount of time he's spending on like large language models.
that has grown significantly over the past six months. And so I said, your memory, right? Like it's like a hard drive, right? There's only so much storage. And I said, especially right with a lot of video content, right? It's just, it gets full really fast. And so I said, try, right? No video, no audio read. And so he called me today and he's like, I already, he's like, I'm already remembering things so much better. And so.
I don't know if you found, because we've had some others, people are like, oh, they didn't follow up with us. I don't think they intentionally didn't follow up. I think they just have like a million things going on and it's becoming increasingly difficult for people to remember. Right? That's why even like during our call, if you saw I'm like writing down, like if you say something interesting, because I want to make sure I remember it. And I find for at least myself, if I touch kind of like pencil to paper, it's much easier for me. And I don't watch TV or that's, you know, I'm not huge on social media.
But I do think that one of the things that's becoming increasingly challenging is how you work with clients because when you're doing a readout or when you're doing a presentation, right, you may have said some of this before and you're like, our team was like, do we mention that we said it before? Do they remember that we talked about it before? And then how do you introduce new information to build on? Okay, A, we've got to remind you what we taught you. Now I have to teach you something new.
How much can people kind of consume? And then what do we do about it? So we've got the old information, new information, and now we have to take action steps. That's a lot of parts on top of an individual who's already overwhelmed by information. how, mean, Patrick, one of the things that has always attracted me to you as like a brilliant individual is you remember all of our conversations.
And you remember what we talked about and then you're able to build in each case on those prior conversations. How do you kind of protect your own kind of gray matter? And how do you think about from what you've learned about yourself, how do you help other people take the new information they're getting and take action?
Patrick Sobral (27:49)
Mm-hmm.
Yes, yes, I feel I've been feeling that too about ⁓ the AI is very tricky because it can make you feel that you are learning a lot but actually you are not because like you spend like doing like two hours doing lots of interactions and then you went very far in the galaxy like with a mega trends and lots of new information but then like two hours later you don't remember anything that you were
Because you didn't even have the time to download, That's why I think and I also tried like a couple of months ago using only like the Note takers instead of writing on my notebook. It was a total disaster because at least for me that my notebook writing thing is not that I will look at it learning after
is that so I make sure I'm paying attention and I'm memorizing what I'm discussing, the key points. So I guess like when you do a research on AI, for example, you need to think of a moment, you need to think of strategies for doing that. Like rather deep research with Chattptool, cool, but then take a moment to actually read, write what are the key points that you
Deborah Weinswig (29:13)
Thank
Patrick Sobral (29:14)
You want to remember and that you want people to remember Good strategy also is like read using that ⁓ if you think that the content is good trying to Go through that content in different formats and that even the AI can help right you can upload a deep research on Notebook LM and then create a podcast that you will hear everything again with a different tone, but while you
are at the gym. I guess that's one of the best way to filter the the signal from the noise. If you find a signal and you think it's a signal make sure you memorize that signal. So read it again, write, listen the podcast and I guess one of also the best way to actually internalize it is share it with people. So discussing with either internally or with
Deborah Weinswig (29:46)
Thank
Patrick Sobral (30:10)
trends or in conferences that you're what you've been what you've learned and that's why I and that's also one of the most important parts because in the end of the day if you spend I don't know 50 % of your day with chat tpt talking lots of things the The time you spend with people talking like at the sessions I have with you Deborah every month talking about the trends and what we are discussing Those are the most
Deborah Weinswig (30:23)
you.
Patrick Sobral (30:40)
memorable times in the end of the day and that makes your I think it's easier for your brain to to memorize so when you talk about When going back to consulting that's why I think now creating memorable experiences for the client is more important than ever because I mean they know that like Part of the job that you did to get that information was using AI
Deborah Weinswig (30:53)
you
Mm.
Patrick Sobral (31:09)
he could have done that as well using AI. So why is he there talking to you instead of doing the research themselves? Because you are providing them a memorable experience that he will get out with something that he remembers and he wants to share. And then if he shares it with other people, well, first it's good that he will actually
remember and it's good for you maybe as a consultant or internal consulting that you get referrals and then referrals then later become other projects as well right and even in-house consulting or innovation area we are always looking for people who wants to work with us right
Deborah Weinswig (31:53)
Yeah,
no, I mean, I think you bring up something that isn't isn't talked about enough, but we're definitely seeing the trends, right? This idea around community and, you know, experiences, because I think that maybe what we realized during the pandemic is that how we attach information is to a conversation with somebody is to an event is to an experience. And now, like you said, there's days where I'm like, I'm
I'm thinking about something, me kind of do research. And I do find it starts to get very repetitive. I'm using large language models and more and more I'm like, we've been designated as a developer for most of the larger tech companies to have access to a lot of research. And when I'm reading a white paper, I find that...
It could just be how the information is structured. It could be just how it looks on a page versus I'm just reading like what looks like a blog. But I do find that it's easier for me to kind of imprint some of those. And so, right, at CoreSight, right, we're still kind of publishing two to three pieces of proprietary research a day. Some of it, it's interesting, some of it is in more of a traditional like report format and some of it is more kind of like HTML bloggy. And I do think that people remember the reports more.
Patrick Sobral (33:08)
Mm-hmm.
Deborah Weinswig (33:08)
It's,
I hadn't thought about that until this conversation, why these are so good. I hadn't thought about it until this conversation, but I do find when I see people like, I read that report and they're attaching something to something that looks like a traditional report, right, with infographics and whatnot that they can easily kind of like recall. And so, you know, as you think about how people are learning, how they're retaining information, how you're doing it as well, as you start to think about,
a lot of the changes that are occurring in the industry, how do you figure out where to spend your time?
how does your personal life influence your professional life? And then, right, from your professional life, how do you kind of figure out what information to share with people at what time? Because there's just so much kind of coming in and so much that's new every day.
Patrick Sobral (33:44)
Okay.
think nowadays I think I try to prioritize the time I have with people and prior and actually be there 100 % so it's more I think I guess of a mindfulness thing of like if I'm in a meeting I won't be out tabbing because I guess like this the meeting is the moment that I will have
the connection. I will have something that is not the gigantic flow of information, of texts and all the key, the bullet points, the reading that the AI for example is providing. So I guess like I to make sure I talk to people who will
Deborah Weinswig (34:43)
Okay.
Patrick Sobral (34:47)
stimulate my ideas and who will bring different perspectives either in my personal life or in either in my professional life and in those moments I try to be really there I guess that's like where I've been that's what I've been prioritizing my focus because yeah
when ⁓ the flow of information like textual mainly videos etc is infinite and it's never going to stop so like I guess the moments that we have to share and to learn from the others and get the others perspective so then it actually fits in your in your head all those insights they become more and more important like go back for example to
consulting example, I guess like the whole desk research, the whole actually looking for information part, searching for information part, it's first it got faster and faster, like you do that in a whole week, you become a specialist in any segment, but anybody could do that, the clients, like the business area, what's different, what can you deliver that
Deborah Weinswig (35:57)
you
Patrick Sobral (36:05)
nobody can find on the chat tpT or the deep research. Insights that you generate talking to people. Then you run like 20 interviews, you go talk to your colleagues internally, you go to an event. All those insights are the things that are the insights that won't be in a deep research that will help you write the create the experience and
Deborah Weinswig (36:29)
Thank you.
Patrick Sobral (36:32)
writes the good storytelling, a memorable story that will stay on people's minds even with this whole flow of ⁓ information, right? And also...
I it needs to be simple, right? I think that's been true for even before the AI mainly we're talking to executives and that's one of the cool things about me working in innovation areas since I graduated because you need to toughen up that to talk with executives since you just graduated and be ready to receive no's and to be very sharp on
your information because that person will have 20 minutes with you and then a bunch of other meetings so why why that person should remember that 20 minutes he or she has with you well it needs to be simple it needs to be interesting for them I guess
Deborah Weinswig (37:31)
Well, I think you bring, mean, I think you bring up why infographics are so important. And it's something that we've really leaned into because right, if we write like a 20 page report and then we can summarize it with one image and then, and if the image, right, we know if it resonates, especially if there's like letters, right? If it's, have like a best framework and we have a, you know, a core framework and whatnot, an encore. And so I think that if people can then attach
Patrick Sobral (37:44)
Mm-hmm.
Deborah Weinswig (37:58)
all of this information to one image and then they can keep on kind of going once they understand it right they can keep and going back to I think simple is important not over complicating if they can then take new information and attach it to this infographic if you will which is ultimately a report which is ultimately a theory or hypothesis I I think that that makes an unbelievable amount of sense and then one of the things I've found that I've you know
Patrick Sobral (38:07)
Mm-hmm.
Deborah Weinswig (38:24)
very much valued is these like closed door conversations like our AI council because having a group of people that you trust to talk about your wins and your challenges, we'll put it. But those who can say like, had the same thing or wow, that hasn't happened to us at our company, tell us like, what did you do and how did you end up there so that people can save time and money? And
I think that as people are kind of moving forward, they're, and it goes back to I think your, you've had a whole career of innovation. I mean, now you're innovating. I think is so interesting, Patrick, about this kind of pivot is you're not only innovating yourself, you're innovating others as well. And so all that time you're investing in yourself, you're getting back 10 X, don't you feel?
Patrick Sobral (39:11)
Yes, definitely! like, that's something that I see comes even to my personal life, right? Because...
feel that I'm always helping people to think about the future and sometimes people don't like to think about the future so much. They just go in with the flow and find which is fine, it can work for some people but I think we shouldn't be afraid to look at the future and to look for the uncertainty and to actually, I guess it can even help us.
to be less anxious about it because we see that actually
Nobody knows what's happening, everybody is testing and learning. Sometimes people it one attempt and in second it won't work. And if we keep sharing those learnings, those ideas of the future, we build the future we want to build together. guess if you just
If you don't look for the future and just do things as you were doing, as you have been doing until before the pandemics, then it doesn't matter what your professional, your company, your role, you will get outdated because everything is moving very fast. So you need to keep trying new things and be aware that when you try new things, lots of them will fail.
It's
fine, everybody is failing as well as everybody is also failing and also collecting the benefits of doing the... How do you say in English? Write things? So I guess that's it, like not... Always find opportunities to look for the future together, share and have fun, right?
Deborah Weinswig (40:54)
I love it.
All right, so we're getting to our lightning round. So I'm going to ask you five questions rapid fire and just kind of say what comes first. So number one, Brazil versus Portugal.
Patrick Sobral (41:00)
Okay.
Brazil, right? I mean, I love Portugal but I would always... I would say I didn't leave Brazil because I wasn't happy there. I left Brazil because... Well, I've lived there for 27 years already and the world is too big. So I need to know other cultures. That's why I went to Korea. Then I went back to Brazil, lived there for more than years and then I said, okay, cool.
what's going on outside that's why I'm in Portugal now but my heart will always be in Brazil and like when I'm outside Brazil I guess persona is the Brazilian and first thing to introduce yourself I'm Patrick from Rio de Janeiro Brazil land of carnival
Deborah Weinswig (41:49)
Alright, number two, since you've spent a lot of time in beauty and now you're doing a bit more in healthcare, where do you think we are on the spectrum of the impact of GLP-1 and what do you think is ahead?
Patrick Sobral (42:01)
I think we...
still don't know the long-term consequences, the good and bad of the GLP-1, right? Because, well, I see that Brazil is one of the countries that is adopting it the more you have like a good consumer acceptance, but you already have a really lots of short-term consumer behaviors that are changing, right? You have people looking for
specific diets, eating Lots of consumer products like snacks, candies, but also looking for example skincare specifically for those kinds of products. But I think we are just in the beginning of what in innovation we call wicked problems, right? Every problem that we have, most of the problems that we have now they were created
by a solution that we created to solve a problem before. So before the cars, we didn't have car accidents and now we have it and we try to solve them with robotic cars. So ⁓ GLP is ⁓ solving some consumer problems but will definitely create other problems in the future and those problems can be good
Deborah Weinswig (42:59)
Thank
Patrick Sobral (43:15)
can be opportunities for new business models, not just actually exactly threats. It always depends about how you frame them. That's why I think developing foresight skills is essential for an organization and an individual.
Deborah Weinswig (43:33)
No, we've talked about this idea around kind of, know, foresight with frugality, right? So that you're not spending, you know, kind of just to innovate, but really to have foresight. So I agree with you. All right. Number three, know, beauty and cosmetics, right? That's obviously very close to the consumer, highly experiential, filled with emotion. How does technology enhance or transform that category? Because
Patrick Sobral (43:46)
Mm-hmm.
Deborah Weinswig (43:59)
I would say that many startups we work with, beauty is their first stop on the map.
Patrick Sobral (44:04)
I guess like beauty is beauty and fashion are two of the
Deborah Weinswig (44:08)
Thank
Patrick Sobral (44:09)
coolest segments to work with technology in retail because you have a clear consumer pain points that I guess it always exists is that will that be good for me? Will that skin care actually be good for my routine? Will that perfume smell good on my skin? The outfit will that fits me? Is it going to match my skin mainly when they are buying it online?
and although we do have technology solving that problem as technologies evolve there will always be a better way to do it and that the consumer expectations will rise and then the technology will need to come after it for example perfumes I still haven't seen a solution that helps me smell a perfume online I still need to go to the store but at some point I guess people will find
So yeah, we will have a clear consumer pain point of technology always try to Coming up after it
Deborah Weinswig (45:13)
I can't
believe you said that thing about the perfume. We actually have an intern who has developed something and he's like, do you think there's something here? I'm like, I haven't seen anything else, which kind of tells me that there is. I'm connect the two of you because I think that, you know, it's something he's obviously put a lot of hard work into and really looking for kind of, you know, kind of market fit. So that's great. All right.
Patrick Sobral (45:33)
I think that is a very big
market face on that idea.
Deborah Weinswig (45:36)
Yeah, no,
mean it's huge. Alright, number four. What do you think is going to have the biggest impact on the top line and the bottom line in the next three years?
Patrick Sobral (45:45)
I guess it's shopper agents.
I do think this is still a very underhyped technology, very underhyped trend. People still don't ⁓ realize the impact that having a consumer buying straight from the LLM will generate, like how they expect to see the information, how that purchase will happen, because the brands, will need
to make sure they are pleasing the consumer but also the agent and the agent can be different it will be different because there will be the LLMs which we already have a range of like ChatTPT, JamieNi, etc. everybody can use their favorite plus the other ⁓ agents that will be implemented in
Deborah Weinswig (46:30)
Thank
Patrick Sobral (46:38)
interfaces like Siri. So that whole agent stack is going to be very difficult for the Martech to manage because the Martech teams have to manage the whole agents behind the stack and the corporate part of it, Salesforce and all corporate applications. But all those applications
Deborah Weinswig (46:51)
Yeah.
Thank
Patrick Sobral (47:05)
they
will need to deal with different setups of agents that will go from different consumer purchase journeys and I don't think we still can visualize the impact on that in the long term.
Deborah Weinswig (47:18)
Yeah, no, I think you're right. And I also think it can help reduce returns, right? If you if you know, especially in anything of size or color. And so that could have like a huge impact on the bottom line, too. All right. Number five. As you kind of reflect back on your time with us today, what is your kind of one piece of advice for people who are trying to become more knowledgeable about Gen. I?
Patrick Sobral (47:30)
Mm-hmm.
Deborah Weinswig (47:42)
not only in terms of how they can use it personally, but also professionally.
Patrick Sobral (47:45)
I guess,
find places where you can share what you've been learning with people. Not just go to the keynotes. Of course, we can have very insightful 20-30 minutes keynotes, but the flow of information is so big. We are always impacted by so many videos and texts and audios and podcasts.
the information what you are actually learning is sharing and actually teaching when you go to the knowledge parent is one of the best learn something so go there study, practice, share what you learn and remember nobody % expert on everything
everything that AI can do because infinite possibilities and everything is moving so fast, so don't be afraid commit mistakes, right?
Deborah Weinswig (48:44)
But I always thought about it, like, it changes daily. If somebody slept longer than I did, I know more, right? Like this whole kind of environment, right, that we've truly never seen. And so, Patrick, thank you. I've never had time go so quickly, and I always learn so much from you, and ⁓ thanks so much. I look forward to having you back again soon.
Patrick Sobral (49:02)
Thank you so much for the invitation, Debra, it was super fun!
Philip Moore (49:05)
Thanks Patrick, and thank you for joining us this week. Core Site Research serves our members with cutting edge research, leadership communities, data resources, strategic advisory services, and more. Visit us at coresite.com your success.
Have a wonderful day, and we'll see you next week.