Marcy ZelmarFounder, Curie Motion

I love building great digital consumer experiences.

That means strategy, build and operations. I join during transformative times. For 20+ years that meant a new web site platform, a rebuilt organization, a scaled business, a first mobile site.

Now it means AI. That is the consulting I do. The job is the same one it has always been: understand what you are trying to build, who it is for, and which business or customer need it serves. AI is the technology that brings it to life. It is not the reason to start.

The Golden Gate Bridge from the San Francisco shore

How I work

A lot of my job right now is being a bridge

AI is a technology, but understanding how to lead people and process through the change is almost more important. AI is not magic. It does not fix what is not working.

The biggest mistake I see is treating AI as a technology problem. It is really about people and cultural transformation. That is the whole ballgame. The teams that make progress are the ones willing to work across their usual lines, put something imperfect out into the world, and adjust as they learn.

I am an operator, so I am in it with you. I lead the work rather than advise on it, and I stay until it ships. Most engagements run a few months, heavy through the build, lighter once the thing is running, and the goal is that your team owns it by the end.

Nobody has ten years of experience in AI search. What I have is more than twenty years of leading digital at consumer brands through exactly this kind of moment. Rebuilding the product organization at Alo Yoga. Replatforming ecommerce at Dolls Kill and taking it to the board. Owning the direct channel at Tatcha. Scaling a product team from five people to fifty at Sephora. Helping found product management at Gap Inc. and launching the very first Old Navy website.

Shelves and framed prints inside an independent shop

Recent work

Answer engine optimization / national apparel brand

Leading a cross-functional team into a new way to get the brand found

A brand moving into AI search for the first time, using video as the way in. Answer engine optimization is the work of making a brand usable by AI assistants that answer questions directly instead of returning a list of links. The work cut across digital marketing, brand marketing and the platform partner. I was brought in to help align and lead them into one approach instead of three running in parallel, to bridge the decisions and ground the metrics in citation data rather than opinion, and we ran a test that settled how the scripts should be written.

Custom AI tools / premium fitness and lifestyle operator

Building AI tools a marketing team keeps using after the consultant leaves

Real interest in AI, and a need for someone to lead it, starting with where it would help. I worked with the marketing, creative, CRM and email leads to find the tasks that were slow and genuinely theirs to change, then built assistants for briefing, email and copy with the people who would run them. They are in daily use and owned in house.

Client names and materials are not published here. Client work is kept confidential.

About

Marcy Zelmar

I am a product leader, a builder and a transformer. My career has been the same move repeated: join a consumer brand on a steep growth or change curve, figure out how to get the thing built, deliver it, and build the team that keeps it growing.

I have done that at Sephora, Alo Yoga, Tatcha, Dolls Kill, Rodan + Fields and Gap Inc. New commerce platforms. New organizations. New channels. The pattern was always a company at a digital inflection point that needed leaders who could carry it forward.

There are really two phases to it. First enterprise, where I learned retail, brought digital to life, and found out what it takes to run a business at that scale. Then the C-suite at smaller companies, where I could be a broader leader: owning a P&L, running a digital business, learning supply chain and customer service.

All of it points at what I am doing now. Every consumer brand is trying to work AI out, and the hard part has never been the technology.

I work with consumer brands, most often in beauty, apparel and wellness, and at both enterprise scale and early stage. The common thread is that they are already great storytellers. That is what makes a new channel worth the effort.

Whether it is working with the C-suite or partnering with the people on the team, the job is the same, and it is the part I enjoy most. Hear what is actually in their way, develop a strategy and an approach, then solve it.

Previously

VP Digital Product and UX, Alo Yoga
Chief Product Officer, Dolls Kill
Chief Digital Officer, Tatcha
VP Digital Experience, Rodan + Fields
VP Digital Innovation, Sephora
Product Management, Gap Inc. Founding team, and the first Old Navy website

Curie Motion is based in San Francisco.

Marcy advises Hue, an AI-powered shoppable video platform. Where Hue appears in client work, that relationship is disclosed up front.

Contact

marcyz@curiemotion.com

If your team is trying to find its way through AI right now, reach out. It would be great to learn from each other.

Curie Motion LLC, San Francisco LinkedIn