For ecommerce leaders trying to work out where to place their bets as AI reshapes customer discovery, this episode offers something rarer than a technology playbook: a clear-eyed account of what is actually happening right now, at a real brand, with a small team. Leticia Pérez Muñoz of TOMS argues that the most important response to AI-generated content proliferation is not to produce more of it, but to go the other way -- doubling down on authenticity, real people, and genuine brand values. The conversation covers GEO, attribution, team culture, and the critical thinking skills that matter more than any individual tool. Key themes AI as a new channel to track, not yet to depend on. TOMS began tracking ChatGPT and Claude sessions in 2026. Traffic is minimal but real, and organic search is showing a small corresponding decline. Leticia's view is measured: meaningful revenue from AI discovery channels is still years away, but the monitoring infrastructure needs to be in place now.Authenticity as a competitive response to AI content. Leticia observes that consumers are increasingly able to identify AI-generated content, and that this is accelerating rather than stabilising. TOMS's response is to move toward real people, real environments (a recent campaign shot on the streets of London), and minimal AI involvement in content creation -- using the brand's own values as a quality filter.PDP enrichment as GEO preparation. TOMS is investing in richer product page content and editorial blogs to bring the in-store human conversation online -- providing the depth and context that AI agents need to recommend confidently. This is framed as serving both the human reader and the AI intermediary.Small team, high curiosity. The TOMS EMEA ecommerce team is small, young, and uses AI as additional capacity rather than a threat. Applications span email marketing, analytics, paid media, and content creation. The operating principle is selective: identify a genuine capacity problem first, then assess whether AI can address it.Critical thinking as the core skill. Leticia argues that the most important thing AI demands from practitioners is not technical fluency but stronger critical thinking -- the ability to interrogate outputs, apply brand context, and reject what is generic. She frames this as a muscle to train rather than a curriculum to follow, and suggests AI itself can help junior team members practise asking challenging questions safely.DTC as the risk-taking laboratory. TOMS's direct-to-consumer operation is positioned as the fastest-moving unit in the business -- the place to test new launches, new product lines, and new approaches before rolling learnings out to distributors and marketplace partners. Speed and risk appetite are the DTC team's distinctive contribution. ⠀ What you'll learn Why tracking AI referral traffic matters now, even when the numbers are small.How a purpose-driven brand uses its values as a practical content filter when AI makes everything easier to produce.What a problem-first approach to AI adoption looks like inside a lean ecommerce team.Why critical thinking -- not prompt engineering -- is the skill worth developing in your team.How to position DTC as a structured learning engine for the wider business.Why consumers' growing ability to detect AI-generated content is a commercial consideration, not just a brand one. ⠀ Chapter structure ~00:00 Introductions: Leticia Pérez Muñoz, TOMS, and the 20th anniversary~02:00 The One for One model: its origins, evolution, and the "Better Tomorrows" giving model~04:00 One-third of profits and $200m in grants: TOMS as a B-Corp with commercial purpose~05:00 AI in the hands of the customer: tracking ChatGPT and Claude as discovery channels~06:30 Authenticity as strategy: why TOMS is moving toward real people, not more AI content~08:00 PDP enrichment and GEO: adding depth, education, and in-store-quality content for AI-mediated discovery~09:30 New channel or accelerant: is AI genuinely new or does it raise the bar across everything?~11:00 Attribution and measurement: tracking session shifts from organic to AI referral~13:00 AI inside the TOMS team: Claude, email, analytics, paid media, and content~15:00 Cross-team alignment: early stage, building a shared approach across ecom, marketing, finance, and operations~17:00 Leticia's personal learning journey: prompting, source verification, spotting unreviewed AI output~19:00 Education and hiring: why critical thinking is the skill that matters most~22:00 Building critical thinking in the team: AI as a safe space to ask hard questions~24:00 The DTC-first strategy: testing, learning, and sharing with distributors and marketplace partners ⠀ About the guest Leticia Pérez Muñoz is EMEA eCommerce Manager at TOMS, based in Amsterdam, where she has worked for two and a half years leading direct-to-consumer and pure-play ecommerce across European markets. Originally from Mexico, she has worked across France and the luxury fashion sector before joining TOMS. Her academic background spans a business degree and a master's in digital marketing and data science. She brings a measured, evidence-based perspective to AI adoption, shaped by the experience of managing a lean, multi-market team where selectivity and critical thinking matter as much as technical capability. Quotes "We want to appear every time someone's having a conversation with ChatGPT -- but we also want to be there as the impact-driven brand with the best espadrilles." "The consumer has been more prone to identify when something is not authentic. So that's something we actually want to move more into -- our authenticity, creating impact, going back to our roots." "We are not trying to jump into every trend. We try to be very critical: do we have the capacity, and is this actually solving a problem?" "Critical thinking is a muscle you need to be training. AI itself can help you be more comfortable asking the hard questions -- taking away the fear of being seen as challenging." "We really want to take the lead on DTC, take those risks first, and once the learnings are capitalised, help our distributors and marketplaces with what we've learned."
