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Virtual Conference Recap BY Katie Chambers | November 11, 2025

Building a Borderless Workforce With Creativity, Culture, and AI

Marketing and advertising firm Ogilvy is careful never to refer to itself as a “legacy” organization, despite its storied history. “It feels a little stodgy,” Maria O'Keeffe, global chief people officer, Ogilvy, said during a fireside chat at From Day One’s October virtual conference.  “We are a founder culture. There was one individual [David Ogilvy] who created Ogilvy. We believe in being a legendary brand.” The organization’s legendary status is rooted in its work's ability to transcend geography and culture. And it does this not only through its products, but within its corporate culture as well. During the session moderated by Nicole Smith, editorial audience director at Harvard Business Review, O’Keeffe shared how the firm builds a borderless workforce by integrating talent across regions while honoring local identities. Borderless Creativity Ogilvy’s workforce is spread across 120 offices in 90 countries, with major clients including the Coca-Cola Company, IBM, Nestle, Unilever, and PWC, to name just a few. “We have breadth and depth pretty much in every corner of the world that you can possibly imagine,” O’Keeffe said.The organization’s “borderless creativity”" approach shapes its business. “It defines both how we work and what our end product should look like,” she said. The client’s ad campaign is always the priority, then internal talent is matched to it regardless of their location. And the end product is just as “borderless” as the talent that creates it. “We want to ensure that our campaigns are multifaceted and not single output, so they can be interpreted culturally very differently from market to market,” O’Keeffe said. Nicole Smith of Harvard Business Review interviewed Maria O'Keeffe of Ogilvy during the fireside chat (photo by From Day One)One of Ogilvy’s most iconic examples of this approach, O’Keeffe says, is its work for longtime global client Dove. Ogilvy’s “borderless creativity” has kept Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign alive and relevant for decades across diverse markets. For example, Ogilvy is helping Dove get the Crown Act passed in the United States, to help combat racial discrimination against Black women in the workplace due to cultural hair styles. Meanwhile in London, Ogilvy and Dove launched the “Turn Your Back” campaign, encouraging young women not to use filters on social media to alter their true appearance, but instead to turn their back to the camera. While the elements of both campaigns are country-specific, the themes and goals are universal. “Those are examples of [how] we try to find the issue in the local market and then create a campaign that can be borderless and applicable across the board,” O’Keeffe said. Building Culture Across BordersDespite its global spread, Ogilvy maintains a cohesive culture among all its employees from the moment they join the team. “Every single new employee goes through a global onboarding that is consistent in every market. We have it translated into multiple languages to make it something that people truly understand,” O’Keeffe said. “Our values are global, and we don’t deviate from those values. Those are disseminated, they’re on walls, they’re on documents, they’re in communications.” But the organization also recognizes that naturally, there will be cultural differences from office to office and country to country, and that diversity should be embraced. “There’s certain tenets of the agency, like borderless creativity, that drill down into every single employee's experience,” she said. “But from there, we recognize that every region and every market has different cultures, and so we rely upon the leaders and team members in those markets to create a culture that is complementary to the global one, but very personal to the local one.” This is accomplished by having the company’s inclusion and impact teams create employee resources groups that respect the needs of each market. “Our expectation is that we meet people where they are through local leadership and regional leadership.” Technology is the key to building this culture quickly and effectively, O’Keeffe says. Ogilvy broadcasts local, regional, and global town halls to encourage ongoing and open communications that feel “conversational.” Employee surveys can help drive data, but rather than a cold email detailing the results, O’Keeffe and her team will create a video sharing the stats to make it more personal.  Quick and efficient communications have also been integral in tackling recent political turmoil that can affect employees. The changes to H1B visas, which now cost $100K as opposed to the previous cost of just a few thousand dollars, “impact the decisions that you make around your workforce globally [including] talent acquisition and workforce planning,” said Smith. For HR, O’Keeffe says, knowledge is power. Stay on top of the latest news, find out how other organizations are navigating the changes, and rely on partnerships with governments and agencies to help you understand best practices. Tackling Changing TechnologiesAdvancements in AI are changing the way employees do business at Ogilvy. But it’s also inspiring some trepidation in workers who fear being replaced by machines. O’Keeffe and her team have stayed on top of the messaging and encouraged early adoption. “We pride ourselves on the human brain, and the creative product that comes out of that,” she said. Employees are encouraged to use Ogilvy’s proprietary AI tool WPP Open each day. “It gives us AI as a creative partner. It helps us mock-up ideas quickly,” she said. AI can also provide feedback on cultural nuance, letting employees know whether an idea that works in one region could have a negative connotation in another. And workers in administrative roles use AI to create outlines and summarize meetings, saving them time and boosting efficiency.  Organizations must embrace AI to stay relevant, O’Keeffe says. “I don’t know a company that will survive without doing that.” AI adoption hasn’t been formally written into the organization’s strategy and KPI’s yet, she says, because “we wanted it to be a voluntary, comfortable, safe space for people.” For now, Ogilvy is monitoring AI usage on employee laptops to better understand how it’s used, whether it’s effective, and if additional training is needed. O’Keeffe says Ogilvy embraces a notion of “divine discontent.” “We never want to be too comfortable. This is an industry that is made up of diverse perspectives and diverse ideas, and so ‘divine discontent’ for us means hearing different perspectives in uncomfortable ways. We debate and we disagree and we poke holes in the work deliberately, because it’s important that the work that we do is culturally relevant,” she said. All of this comes down to a willingness to learn and grow, which has been a core tenet of O’Keeffe’s own career. She encourages anyone working in HR who wants to move into a global position to adopt an inquisitive attitude. Earlier in her career, she actively sought out opportunities that allowed her to travel and meet workers from around the world, far outside her home base of Chicago, and has now been in global leadership positions for nearly 10 years. “You have to be curious. You have to be open to new experiences, new ways of doing things, new points of view,” she said. “Listen. Ask a lot of questions. Be uncomfortable. Raise your hand for the things that you’ve never done before with people you’ve never done it with.”Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Top Think, and several printed essay collections, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.(Photo by Noko LTD/iStock)

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Feature BY Lisa Lacy | October 08, 2025

Meet the AI Shopping Agents That Are Rewriting Retail Marketing

As the world waited with bated breath for Apple to release details about its 17th iPhone, the New York Times posed an intriguing question: What comes after the smartphone?Spoiler alert: The answer varies, but it could be smart glasses or a smart watch or maybe an ambient computer in another form.At the center of this shift are AI agents, the next generation of virtual assistants, which some of the best and brightest minds in tech believe will know us better than we know ourselves. Eventually.They’re already starting to emerge from the retailers and tech companies we already know with a focus on shopping. And the potential is far greater, which signals big shifts for consumers, brands and retailers. First, the players in this space will have to overcome fairly massive skepticism. But, once they do, and experts think they will, they will become the target of all future brand messaging.Here’s what you need to know about them now:What is an AI shopping agent?Amazon users can ask Rufus questions about products and services (image via Amazon)AI shopping agents are virtual assistants that help consumers find, compare and purchase products or services.According to a report from software company Salesforce, agents can also add items to carts and assist with checkout, although it’s still very early days for this functionality.Depending who you ask, examples include Amazon’s Rufus and Walmart’s Sparky, as well as generative AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.What’s the latest with shopping agents?A July 2025 study from market research firm YouGov found 43% of respondents had heard of AI shopping agents, but only 14% had used one. Among those who have tried them out, 44% said they asked product questions, while 41% used them to find products and 34% sought help with pricing.But there are signs of consumer interest: 22% said they’re willing to give AI shopping assistants a shot—mostly for finding the best deals (67%), comparing similar products (56%) and getting product information (55%).What problems do shopping agents solve?In traditional e-commerce, consumers type in queries and are served product results and ads. But on a site like Amazon, which has 600 million listings by some estimates, results can go on and on. This infinite shelf space is a double-edged sword. Yes, it enables shoppers to hunt for the exact right item at any given moment. But they have to do a lot of scrolling and research first. And this is amplified with each additional site included in the shopping journey.The main pitch for shopping agents is this: They do the research for you—and return a handful of carefully curated options.That’s according to Melissa Bridgeford, CEO of Wizard, a startup building an AI shopping agent slated to launch in then first quarter of 2026, who called the experience “kind of like the anti-search.”Here, the agent does the heavy lifting in the discovery phase, researching factors like prices, shipping speed and reviews, and it can do so a lot faster than human shoppers. “It can aggregate so much more information from a wider variety of sources than we might be able to aggregate ourselves,” added Kiri Masters, an analyst and podcaster focused on retail media. Plus, fraudulent and counterfeit goods have become an increasing problem for online marketplaces. Amazon disclosed it removed 15 million counterfeit products in 2024 alone—and that’s just one example. Shopping agents can at least theoretically cut through this noise and help consumers make more confident purchases.“Consumers fear getting things wrong. A bad fit, a waste of money, fake reviews, all that stuff,” said Jason Alan Snyder, chief AI officer at advertising giant IPG and co-founder of AI data startup SuperTruth. “[An agent] promises certainty across references, reviews, product data, content and your past preferences.” What is driving this shift?At the International Consumer Electronics Show in 2016, appliance brand Whirlpool teamed up with Amazon to announce a smart washing machine that could reorder laundry supplies when they were running low. It reportedly came with a price tag of $1,399, or about $1,900 today, according to an inflation calculator from the U.S. Department of Labor.Cost may have been a contributing factor as to why smart appliances like this did not take off in 2016. But it’s also true Americans were simply not yet ready to hand over purchasing decisions to inanimate objects. They’re closer now. Ordering groceries, food delivery or even car rides with strangers are much more common following the pandemic—and related consumer behavior changes. Five years after the pandemic, e-commerce is still growing. According to a recent report, U.S. e-commerce sales hit $1.19 trillion in 2024, which means they have more than doubled since 2019.Shopping agents are also getting a boost thanks to the quick adoption of generative AI. A 2024 Harvard study found more than 39% of Americans between 18 and 64 had used gen AI in the two years following ChatGPT’s launch. By comparison, just 20% had used the internet two years after its debut and it took the same number of people in the U.S. a full three years to give PCs a shot.“The adoption rate on [conversational interfaces] is so steep,” Bridgeford said. “And that really creates tailwinds around the adoption of the entire agent experience.”What challenges exist with shopping agents?According to Salesforce, shopping agents provide personalized responses and recommendations, which yield a better experience, as well as increased conversion rates and higher average order value. Yet YouGov found 56% of Americans have no interest in using them—and 41% don’t trust them. Like the early days of e-commerce, Masters noted consumers are still wary of handing over their payment information to agents.Another big and growing problem is fraud. “These AI tools in general allow fraudsters to do everything better, faster, cheaper than they already do. So, identity theft, return fraud–all the permutations of fraud that we have available–can scale much faster,” Masters said. But YouGov remains optimistic. Per the report, the key to driving adoption is proving agents add value, like finding the best price and offering trustworthy information about the products in question.How will shopping agents evolve?As time goes on, agents will get to know you and your shopping habits better and will become more proactive.“It’s the agent that knows you better than you know yourself, that remembers things for you, that’s able to suggest things,” Bridgeford said. “It knows the brands you like. It knows the price points you feel comfortable with. It knows the size of your household, so when you’re in small New York apartments, it’s not suggesting some massive coffeemaker.”And, of course, shopping is only the beginning. Booking flights, hotels and restaurants is a natural extension. So is recommending credit cards, loans and investments or even helping you choose the lab tests, supplements and wearables most relevant to your biomarker data, Snyder said. “What’s really cool with agents is they can negotiate,” he said. “So you can have your shopping agent bargain with a seller’s agent. Everything becomes like a Moroccan marketplace.”Think: negotiating better credit terms on your behalf—or even weeding through potential matches on dating apps. “You could have matches based on circadian rhythm compatibility,” Snyder said. “That sounds crazy, but that’s a morning person or that’s a night owl.”What should marketers know about shopping assistants?That negotiation component has profound implications for brands and marketers.When agents become the intermediary between consumers and brands/retailers, advertising as we know it won’t work anymore. For Snyder, that means eventually agents will only allow brands to reach you if they pay a fair price for your attention and data.“It’s future-proofing yourself against manipulation,” he said. “Right now, ads and algorithms are constantly pushing products at you, but an agent would act for you and would filter out all that manipulative content.”Ultimately, brands will have to adjust messaging to appeal to agents as their recommendations will become the new sponsored search results. “Brands need to optimize for machine readability and agent trust,” Snyder added. “That means structured data provenance, ethical sourcing, health compatibility, ethical compatibility, all of those things.”This shift to agents has huge implications for online marketing more broadly, too.“My big existential question for retailers is if human eyeballs are not going to your website or app anymore because an agent is doing it for them, what happens to retail media? What happens to onsite sponsored product ads?” Masters asked. “You’re not going to see those ads. So that whole onsite retail media business model is threatened and, to some degree, what's called offsite retail media is threatened as well.”Her advice to retailers is to really think about what distinguishes them from their competitors—and to invest in loyalty programs as a “moat.”For Snyder, it will be the end of the marketing funnel, but consumer experience remains. That means brands and marketers will be wise to focus on brand communities, content ecosystems, and live events.Lisa Lacy is a freelance writer based in Atlanta. She was formerly ADWEEK's commerce editor, focusing on retail and the growing reach of Amazon. She has covered marketing and technology for more than a decade for publications like TechCrunch, CMO.com, VentureBeat, The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires, ClickZ and Search Engine Watch.(Photo by guoya/iStock)

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What Our Attendees are Saying

Jordan Baker(Attendee) profile picture

“The panels were phenomenal. The breakout sessions were incredibly insightful. I got the opportunity to speak with countless HR leaders who are dedicated to improving people’s lives. I walked away feeling excited about my own future in the business world, knowing that many of today’s people leaders are striving for a more diverse, engaged, and inclusive workforce.”

– Jordan Baker, Emplify
Desiree Booker(Attendee) profile picture

“Thank you, From Day One, for such an important conversation on diversity and inclusion, employee engagement and social impact.”

– Desiree Booker, ColorVizion Lab
Kim Vu(Attendee) profile picture

“Timely and much needed convo about the importance of removing the stigma and providing accessible mental health resources for all employees.”

– Kim Vu, Remitly
Florangela Davila(Attendee) profile picture

“Great discussion about leadership, accountability, transparency and equity. Thanks for having me, From Day One.”

– Florangela Davila, KNKX 88.5 FM
Cory Hewett(Attendee) profile picture

“De-stigmatizing mental health illnesses, engaging stakeholders, arriving at mutually defined definitions for equity, and preventing burnout—these are important topics that I’m delighted are being discussed at the From Day One conference.”

– Cory Hewett, Gimme Vending Inc.
Trisha Stezzi(Attendee) profile picture

“Thank you for bringing speakers and influencers into one space so we can all continue our work scaling up the impact we make in our organizations and in the world!”

– Trisha Stezzi, Significance LLC
Vivian Greentree(Attendee) profile picture

“From Day One provided a full day of phenomenal learning opportunities and best practices in creating & nurturing corporate values while building purposeful relationships with employees, clients, & communities.”

– Vivian Greentree, Fiserv
Chip Maxwell(Attendee) profile picture

“We always enjoy and are impressed by your events, and this was no exception.”

– Chip Maxwell, Emplify
Katy Romero(Attendee) profile picture

“We really enjoyed the event yesterday— such an engaged group of attendees and the content was excellent. I'm feeling great about our decision to partner with FD1 this year.”

– Katy Romero, One Medical
Kayleen Perkins(Attendee) profile picture

“The From Day One Conference in Seattle was filled with people who want to make a positive impact in their company, and build an inclusive culture around diversity and inclusion. Thank you to all the panelists and speakers for sharing their expertise and insights. I'm looking forward to next year's event!”

– Kayleen Perkins, Seattle Children's
Michaela Ayers(Attendee) profile picture

“I had the pleasure of attending From Day One. My favorite session, Getting Bias Out of Our Systems, was such a powerful conversation between local thought leaders.”

– Michaela Ayers, Nourish Events
Sarah J. Rodehorst(Attendee) profile picture

“Inspiring speakers and powerful conversations. Loved meeting so many talented people driving change in their organizations. Thank you From Day One! I look forward to next year’s event!”

– Sarah J. Rodehorst, ePerkz
Angela Prater(Attendee) profile picture

“I had the distinct pleasure of attending From Day One Seattle. The Getting Bias Out of Our Systems discussion was inspirational and eye-opening.”

– Angela Prater, Confluence Health
Joel Stupka(Attendee) profile picture

“From Day One did an amazing job of providing an exceptional experience for both the attendees and vendors. I mean, we had whale sharks and giant manta rays gracefully swimming by on the other side of the hall from our booth!”

– Joel Stupka, SkillCycle
Alexis Hauk(Attendee) profile picture

“Last week I had the honor of moderating a panel on healthy work environments at the From Day One conference in Atlanta. I was so inspired by what these experts had to say about the timely and important topics of mental health in the workplace and the value of nurturing a culture of psychological safety.”

– Alexis Hauk, Emory University