Launching thousands of new products on its e-commerce site every year, PUMA is using Imagen on Vertex AI to create customized product imagery and improve time-to-market of campaigns

HERZOGENAURACH, Germany and SUNNYVALE, Calif., Sept. 24, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Sports company PUMA and Google Cloud today announced an expanded partnership that is enhancing the digital shopping experience for millions of PUMA consumers worldwide using generative AI (gen AI). PUMA was the first in its industry to use AI imagery in its online shop at scale. Using Imagen 2 on Vertex AI, PUMA can now create dynamic and personalized product imagery that is improving click-through rates and accelerating the time-to-market for PUMA's digital campaigns globally.

Using Imagen 2 on Vertex AI, PUMA has the ability to generate relevant imagery, such as new background images that are tailored to the product, customer, and region. While the technology is available globally, Imagen on Vertex AI empowers marketers in individual PUMA regions to tailor content to their specific market needs. For example, while shopping online, customers from Japan may see a lifestyle shoe worn on the streets of Ginza or a trail running shoe on the foothills of Mt. Fuji. Beyond image generation, Imagen on Vertex AI also becomes a powerful tool for image editing, aiding PUMA content editors with time-consuming editing tasks, such as shadowing, composition and color accuracy, resolution, and product positioning.

Since migrating its e-commerce ecosystem, including PUMA.com, to Google Cloud earlier this year, PUMA has experienced significant benefits across its online shopping portfolio. In addition to increasing average order value (AOV) thanks to better personalized content with Google Cloud's data and AI tools, PUMA's retail teams have also drastically reduced the time needed to take products to market – enabling teams to make products shoppable the moment they reach the warehouse.

"At PUMA, all product creations always starts with the consumer first in mind and we have the ambition to be as personal as possible in each interaction with our consumers. Google Cloud's generative AI has allowed us to create an immersive experience that is tailored to each consumer, and we are already seeing the benefits," said Arne Freundt, CEO of PUMA.

PUMA will soon explore Imagen 3, Google Cloud's latest and highest quality text-to-image model, as it continues to advance and scale campaign creation in the future. The sports company also plans to expand the implementation of Google Cloud's Vertex AI Search for Retail to more subsidiaries to further improve AOV and overall shopper conversion rate.

"Google Cloud is helping companies in every industry improve the customer experience with gen AI-powered agents, and our partnership with PUMA is an excellent example of this. The creative agent Puma has built with our leading Imagen technology is taking personalization to a new level - and driving real business results," said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud.

About PUMA
PUMA is one of the world's leading sports brands, designing, developing, selling and marketing footwear, apparel and accessories. For more than 75 years, PUMA has relentlessly pushed sport and culture forward by creating fast products for the world's fastest athletes. PUMA offers performance and sport-inspired lifestyle products in categories such as Football, Running and Training, Basketball, Golf, and Motorsports. It collaborates with renowned designers and brands to bring sport influences into street culture and fashion. The PUMA Group owns the brands PUMA, Cobra Golf and stichd. The company distributes its products in more than 120 countries, employs about 20,000 people worldwide, and is headquartered in Herzogenaurach/Germany.

About Google Cloud
Google Cloud is the new way to the cloud, providing AI, infrastructure, developer, data, security, and collaboration tools built for today and tomorrow. Google Cloud offers a powerful, fully integrated and optimized AI stack with its own planet-scale infrastructure, custom-built chips, generative AI models and development platform, as well as AI-powered applications, to help organizations transform. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted technology partner.

SOURCE Google Cloud