Q&A: Google’s retail MD explains why retailers should take advantage of ‘fake Friday’

Sophie Neary has been at Google for nearly a year, following successful stints at retailers including Boots and Tesco.

She says her extensive retail experience has helped in her new role, as she can now support retailers growing their businesses through Google search and advertising on YouTube.

We sat down with Neary to find out more about the power of search, new innovations, and the all-important golden quarter.

What role does Google search play in predicting retail trends and understanding customers?

“What’s interesting this year is comparison queries across retail are up 15%, meaning customers are looking for more deals and looking to compare prices. Along with that, we’ve seen an exponential rise in what we call generic queries where someone searches something without a brand name such as ‘black mascara’. Branded category searches are in decline, which goes hand-in-hand with people needing more value.

“Across Google trends, we have the ability to look into about 200 different categories and subcategories to understand the overall consumer sentiment, but also for retailers to think about how they range and merchandise their products and discover trends.”

What trends is Google seeing across retail ahead of Black Friday and Christmas?

“This is the first time in five years that Cyber Monday has fallen in December, meaning retailers have a much tighter window to get into the December trade. We’re going to see a lot of sales condensed between when Cyber Monday falls and Christmas Eve, so as a result, retailers should prepare for increased consumer searches in December.

“We’ve also been seeing a rise in the phenomenon of ‘fake Friday’, which is very unique to the UK because we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving and never know exactly when Black Friday is going to be. Fake Friday is the week before Black Friday, and last year we saw 87% of the Black Friday volume of people also searching for deals on the fake Friday.

“Retailers need to have really tight trading and commercial plans for both weekends because on fake Friday customers are going to be looking for deals. You need to have time-bound offers, weekend-only exclusives and run fake Friday just like you would run Black Friday. As there’s less competition on fake Friday, clicks are actually cheaper, so you have the opportunity to be more profitable than on Black Friday weekend.”

Which type of innovations is Google making for retail?

“Everything we do with Google search and YouTube is powered by AI and without it you cannot achieve personalisation at any kind of scale. By powering AI we can help retailers find customers at multiple touchpoints being influenced by different things, and identify customers they may not have even known were in the market.

“I think for retail, the most exciting innovation is around searching what you see through Google lens. With the Google app I can take a photo of a mug and say ‘search this picture’ and then we’ll get Google results of all of the retailers that stock that mug. We now see over 20 billion lens searches every single month with one in four looking to buy something. 

“We also haven’t talked about YouTube, and what’s really exciting is it’s amazing at getting people to come into your shops and getting people to come back. YouTube has such a huge audience, retailers have the opportunity to build demand and awareness of products, and we can use search to harvest that demand they have built. So, one of the priorities we’ve got is helping retailers understand how to build their brand and customer awareness in a world that’s never been more competitive.”

Are enough retailers utilising the power of Google and AI?

“What we see in some retailers is an appetite to lean in and try different things. You’re not competing with AI, you’re competing with someone who’s using AI better than you are. I’d also say it’s not always a tiger in the jungle that kills you, sometimes it’s the mosquitoes. It’s much easier for smaller startups to be really nimble in how to adapt and use AI, because they don’t have the scale of teams that some of the larger retailers do. 

“My challenge to the industry is to have the confidence to experiment because the tools and the capabilities are already there. We already see the likes of Shein and Temu accelerating all of this technology. If you don’t adopt this technology, someone else is going to come in and take those customers.”