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Creativity Reinvented: What Meta, Sephora, and Toys R Us Taught Us About Storytelling in 2025

Creativity Reinvented: What Meta, Sephora, and Toys R Us Taught Us About Storytelling in 2025

At Shoptalk 2025, Meta, Sephora, and Toys R Us redefined what creativity means in retail. From Hulu docuseries and TikTok mascots to AI-led measurement innovation, the message was clear: storytelling now sits at the intersection of creators, culture, and performance.

George Looker
March 26, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

At Shoptalk, three powerhouse brands revealed the new equation: storytelling × creators × measurement = results.

If storytelling has always been the heart of brand building, it now has a new nervous system: performance. That was the through-line in one of Shoptalk 2025’s most anticipated keynotes—Creativity Reinvented: The Leading Edge of Storytelling—featuring leaders from Meta, Sephora, and Toys R Us.

Each speaker showed a different approach: Sephora’s culture-first content, Toys R Us’s transformation into an entertainment IP machine, and Meta’s platform innovations that turn creative variation into measurable lift. But all agreed on one thing: the way brands create, measure, and scale storytelling has fundamentally changed.

Meta’s Take: Creativity Is the New Targeting and Measurement is the Enabler

Karin Tracy, Group Lead for Retail & Ecommerce at Meta, outlined how storytelling is evolving on platform—powered by creative diversity, large language models, and AI-driven delivery. “We’re in a moment where one big TV anthem isn’t enough,” she said. “You need to diversify how you show up—by audience, by format, by culture.”

For Tracy, performance and creativity aren’t separate—they’re symbiotic. She revealed that one of the biggest unlocks came when Meta noticed that campaigns optimized for website conversions were driving a significant halo effect in physical retail. The outcome led Meta to develop its new omnichannel optimization product, now in open beta, which is already showing a 21% lift in offline conversions.

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“Measurement has to be the underpinning of all of this,” she said. “But it’s rarely just one answer. Most retailers are using a constellation of sources—conversion data, in-house signals, MMM—to triangulate results and act quickly on what’s working.”

That resonated with Fospha CEO Sam Carter, who echoed the growing urgency for fair, full funnel measurement at scale. “What’s clear from sessions like this is that top brands are no longer treating measurement as a back-end report—they’re using it as a front-line decision tool,” he said. “With $3bn in media spend under management, we’ve seen that brands embracing full-funnel, omni-channel measurement—especially on platforms like Meta—are moving faster, reaching and resonating with new customers more efficiently, and driving real business outcomes in real time.”

From Story to Strategy: Culture Isn’t a Backdrop, It’s the Brief

Sephora’s Celessa Baker spotlighted how storytelling has evolved from product to purpose. Recent initiatives like a docuseries with Hulu gave creators full control over their beauty stories—going beyond product placements to explore identity, self-expression, and cultural relevance.

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“We weren’t trying to sell the lipstick,” said Baker. “We wanted to amplify creators’ voices in a way that felt real, emotional, and expansive.”

Toys R Us Goes from Brand to Studio

Kim Miller, Global CMO at Toys R Us, showed how a heritage brand can reinvent itself through play, IP, and yes—AI. Under her leadership, the company launched Toys R Us Studios, debuted an AI-generated branded video using OpenAI’s Sora, and turned mascot Jeffrey the Giraffe into a TikTok-native celebrity with over 1M followers.

The pivot was about more than content—it was about reclaiming cultural relevance and redefining what it means to be a retailer in the entertainment age.

Creators at the Core—and at Scale

Whether it was Baker’s Sephora Squad, Miller’s Toys R Us Studios, or Tracy’s advocacy for creator-led content diversification, one trend was inescapable: creators aren’t just part of the storytelling process—they are the story.

Meta’s Partnership Ads, creator discovery tools, and content recommender features now allow brands to turn high-performing organic creator content into scaled paid campaigns—while dynamically optimizing for performance across both brand and influencer audiences.

What This Keynote Signals for Retail

📍 Creativity is now the performance lever, not just the polish
📍 Measurement must move from reporting to real-time decision-making
📍 Brands can no longer wait to act on in-store + digital insights—they must close the loop
📍 Creator partnerships must be culturally relevant and emotionally resonant
📍 Legacy brands have room to reinvent—if they think like IP owners, not marketers

Shoptalk made one thing clear: creativity hasn’t been replaced by AI or performance pressure—it’s been redefined. And the brands winning today are those who treat storytelling as a full-funnel, full-stack capability.