We are excited to welcome Juliana Vail, an industry veteran with over 20 years of experience in both the tech and fashion industries, to Creative Force.
Juliana joins us as the Managing Director of dreem.ai and will drive the development of our new AI solutions marketplace. dreem.ai aims to redefine the process of eCommerce content creation through the innovative power of artificial intelligence.
In her previous role, Juliana served as Director of Service Development & Innovation at FARFETCH, where she was responsible for leveraging technical solutions to tackle creative operations challenges and unlock the creative team's potential for greater efficiency.
We chatted with Juliana about her journey through the industry, what industry challenges dreem.ai aims to address, and how she is approaching her new role.
Be sure to also check out her podcast interview with our Chief Evangelist Daniel Jester: Dreem-ing with Juliana Vail.
What was your experience climbing the ladder through the content creation and eCommerce industry?
I started in the photo industry early on after receiving my degree in photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). My education really set me up to think about the technical, operational, and creative aspects of photography which has been a continuing theme throughout my career. I think the foundation of an arts degree helped me build the playful, curious, and explorational side of my personality.
Professionally, I worked for many years in the commercial food photography industry in New York City until I decided to shift my career into a more stable path. I joined Gilt Groupe (an early luxury flash sale site) in its start-up phase and eventually worked my way up as the organization grew. This was in the days before creative operations was even a field so we very much hacked our way to success, the way many teams do, with a thousand spreadsheets and documents and shared calendars.
Then you landed at FARFETCH where you ended up in this very cool role where you're asked to sit right at the intersection of tech and e-commerce content creation.
Correct! I started out overseeing FARFETCH teams in Los Angeles and Hong Kong before taking on a broader role supporting their larger platform strategy. In the beginning, this involved overseeing the creative operations for clients for their white-label ecommerce solution, Farfetch Platform Solutions.
I then transitioned to the role of Director of Service Development and Innovation where I managed, among other things, our innovation programs within creative operations. In that role, our team was tasked with supporting our platform clients by exploring emerging technologies and innovations—things like the Metaverse or virtual try-on—that were influencing how customers were going to shop in the future and identifying how we could leverage technical solutions in the studio to support those new customer experiences.
Often, the solutions we developed involved taking existing technologies from outside the industry and applying them to our workflows in the studio. As an example, at one point we needed to provide content in 18 different languages to serve customers across the globe. To achieve that, we integrated machine translations into our processes to open up the platform to new regions. Another example involved leveraging computer vision to automate the measuring process allowing us to feed sizing guides efficiently and improve customers’ decision-making.
What I loved about that role is that I was able to focus on the future looking trends in the market while also implementing some very practical solutions in our operations providing meaningful improvements to our customers’ experiences.
Let’s talk about dreem.ai. Can you provide a high-level overview of dreem.ai and the industry needs it aims to address?
It’s such an exciting and pivotal moment we’re living through. There is no doubt in my mind that AI is going to transform many industries and creative operations teams are no exception.
At dreem.ai, we believe that AI has the potential to solve some of the biggest challenges organizations currently face. We also know that the future of content creation is largely unknown and we want to navigate this journey together with creative teams and industry partners.
Dreem.ai aims to provide solutions that make the most of what these new technologies have to offer by acting as a marketplace for AI products developed specifically for the content creation industry of today and the future. The solutions we develop will be designed to integrate via simple APIs with the existing platforms that studios and brands are already using whether it be a tool like Creative Force, another workflow tool, a DAM, or different types of customer experience platforms.
Specifically, we believe that we can unblock some of the main challenges within creative teams, like the reliance on non-value-add tasks and administrative burdens. We will also work with organizations and technology partners to explore the future of customer experience (such as virtual try-on) and help prepare creative teams to deliver the types of content those new customer experiences will demand.
I’m really excited to develop an ecosystem of partners across our industry, end users, existing industry solutions, and exciting emerging technologies. The dreem.ai approach very much involves seeing the other creative operations solutions and platforms in the market as collaborators, not competitors. We will work with them to develop solutions that enable creative teams to leverage cutting-edge AI products available via the Dreem API at every step of the creative process.
What made Creative Force the right choice for the next stage of your career?
I’ve known the team at Creative Force for a long time and I’ve always appreciated how customer-oriented they are. That was important to me because when we think about these emerging technologies it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of all the different possibilities they enable. Working in an organization where everyone agrees that the priority is to develop practical solutions, address customer needs, and drive business results for our customers ensures we are all approaching decision-making and strategy in the same way.
I also reflected a lot on my previous role at FARFETCH. What I found most exciting about my role there was the opportunity for exploration. I loved thinking about exciting new customer experiences like gaming and virtual try-on and talking to other people about how these technologies might ultimately transform the way we work in our industry. I see my role at Creative Force leading dreem.ai as allowing me to dive even deeper into the explorative process. I’m excited to work with industry partners and customers to identify the biggest challenges facing content creation and how we can leverage AI to solve those problems.
Creatives often experience a spectrum of anxiety about AI, what is your perspective on the impact of AI on the work of studio creatives?
There is, understandably, a level of anxiety and excitement around all of these emerging technologies and I think we need to approach them with a level of sensitivity but also a level of maturity. I think it is fair to expect that many roles are going to shift and change, but, ultimately, I do think AI will be a net benefit in allowing everyone to work more efficiently and deliver a better product to our customers. But, in order to reap those benefits, every organization should begin preparing now for this shift and investing in their understanding of how this technology is going to affect the work they do and the people who do it.
I will say, I don't think sweeping change is going to come as quickly as we might think. There will be some areas where shifts will happen faster, but I think, in a year from now, when the hype cycle settles, we'll have a much more realistic view of the role this technology will play in our industry.
How do you approach the first three months of a new role like this one?
I’m focused on assessing the current state of the market and setting a vision for the future. That process starts with lots of conversations between end users and partners within the industry to understand the biggest opportunities to drive value. I’ll be talking with our internal industry experts and people who work with our customers every day, our customers directly, and current and potential partners to learn about where the industry is right now.
From those conversations, the dreem.ai team will determine how we want to prioritize our time. It’s important to understand and identify what solutions we believe we can build internally at dreem.ai and where we may want to partner with someone else to bring the best possible products to the market.
I’m really excited about the opportunity to be in exploration mode and meet with internal and external stakeholders to help craft a shared vision for the future of our industry.
Visit dreem.ai today to learn more and sign up for early access!
