At Salsify’s 2025 Digital Shelf Summit (DSS) in New Orleans, ecommerce leaders from across the globe gathered to discuss keeping up with the ever-growing demands of the digital shelf.
One of the standout sessions featured three experts on the front lines of content automation: David Feinleib, founder and CEO of It'sRapid; Dawn Powell, manager of ecommerce at Kids2; and Kaitlyn Gullickson, ecommerce marketing manager at PepsiCo.
Together, they shared how their teams use automation to do more with less, including streamlining content creation across product detail pages (PDPs), retail media campaigns, and business-to-business (B2B) sales tools.
Today’s digital shelf is chaotic. Shoppers are scrolling quickly, retailers are demanding more content than ever, and brands are stuck trying to keep up with a seemingly endless list of requests: new image formats, custom copy for different retailers, localized assets in multiple languages … and can it all be done yesterday?
This pace isn’t slowing down. Retailers like Kroger, Amazon, and Instacart are raising the bar with specific content requirements, and if your product page doesn’t meet them, it won’t stand out (or worse, it might not even get listed properly).
This is a major problem when managing hundreds — or thousands — of SKUs across multiple markets.
But here’s the catch: The old way of creating content doesn’t cut it anymore. Manually designing hero images in Photoshop, hunting down product info in scattered spreadsheets, and rebuilding sell sheets every time a detail changes is time-consuming, costly, and frankly, not the best use of your team’s talents.
Powell from Kids2 put it perfectly during the Digital Shelf Summit: “I want my salespeople selling. I don't want them managing data.”
And that’s the crux of it. Content automation frees your teams from tedious tasks so they can focus on what they’re actually hired to do.
PepsiCo has a three-pronged approach to automating visual content.
If you’ve ever struggled to determine a snack or beverage’s flavor or size from a retailer’s thumbnails, you already know the importance of mobile-ready hero images.
As Gullickson from PepsiCo explained, traditional packaging often gets lost in the digital mix. These hero images solve that by clearly surfacing critical info, like flavor and pack size.
To meet retailer-specific image standards (like Kroger’s), PepsiCo now uses automated templates built in partnership with It’sRapid. Instead of spending five to 10 minutes manually editing each image in Photoshop, Gullickson’s team can upload a list of UPCs and generate hundreds of images in minutes.
Once they saw the impact of automating hero images, PepsiCo asked, “What else could we automate?”
Next on the list were ecommerce pack shots and nutrition panels, a.k.a assets bogging down graphic designers with repetitive tasks. By building templates for these common formats and connecting them to UPC data, the team automatically pulls in product packaging and generates consistent imagery, without needing Photoshop.
This approach is especially valuable when juggling multiple packaging refreshes at once. At any given moment, PepsiCo might have three or four brands updating packaging, which means hundreds of SKUs in flux.
Instead of recreating visuals from scratch each time, the team can quickly spin up new assets with automation.
Retail media campaigns also got an automation glow-up. With countless requests for seasonal banners, brand campaigns, and custom retailer ads, the creative team was stretched thin. Now, PepsiCo uses templates and automation to crank out digital ads quickly.
While PepsiCo focused on visual content for the digital shelf, Kids2 tackled a different beast: business-to-business (B2B) sell sheets.
With multiple brands, frequent product updates, and a global sales team to support, Powell knew they needed a smarter, faster way to generate accurate, up-to-date collateral.
Kids2 had a familiar pain point: Every time a product detail changed, like age range, availability, or shipping info, someone had to open a PowerPoint, update the sell sheet, save it, and email it around. That’s a lot of manual steps for something that happens constantly across thousands of products.
Now, with automation in place, Kids2 pulls content directly from Salsify into It’sRapid. The sell sheets are automatically updated with the latest product info.
“We took a look at the numbers and realized we were spending 50,000 hours a year on sell sheets,” Powell says. “Now, we’ve turned that into seconds.”
For sales teams, flexibility is everything. Kids2 now uses dynamic templates to generate editable PowerPoints that reps can tailor for specific retailers, as well as print-ready PDFs for more formal presentations. The templates even support multi-brand rollouts — something that used to take painful hours of manual assembly.
Kids2 operates globally, meaning their sales materials work across languages and regions.
Now, regional teams can create sales materials in their preferred language without waiting on a designer or translator — something Powell described as a “game-changer.”
If there’s one message to walk away with, it’s this: you don’t have to do it all manually anymore.
For brands juggling hundreds of SKUs, seasonal campaigns, retailer-specific content requirements, and global teams, content creation can feel like a never-ending game of catch-up.
But as PepsiCo and Kids2 have shown, automation is the secret weapon for reclaiming time, reducing headaches, and accelerating speed to market.
Here are four big takeaways to keep in mind.
If your team is stuck in Photoshop, making the same edits over and over, or rebuilding sell sheets every time a product changes, those are hours you can win back.
Pulling product info from a centralized platform helps reduce errors, keeps content consistent, and removes the back-and-forth of updating scattered spreadsheets or slide decks.
Even the best tools won’t succeed without internal buy-in. Prove return on investment (ROI) early, get leadership on board (yes, that includes the CFO), and give your teams hands-on time to see how it works.
Templates, language localization, and automated image generation let you scale content without scaling workload.
Ready to start? You don’t need to overhaul everything at once. Here’s a simple, strategic path forward.
What parts of your process feel repetitive? Where are your teams spending unnecessary time? Look at image creation, sell sheet updates, and retailer-specific content tasks for easy wins.
Where does your product data live? Make sure it's reliable and accessible so you can build automation around accurate, up-to-date content.
Integration is key. Whether you use Adobe, Salsify, SAP, or something else, find automation platforms that connect seamlessly and don’t require a total tech overhaul.
Choose one high-impact area, like mobile-ready hero images or sell sheets, and run a pilot. Prove the value, gather feedback, and build momentum before rolling it out more widely.
Track time savings, content velocity, error reduction, and even sales lift if you can. These metrics will help you justify further investment and get others on board.
Content automation isn’t just a trendy buzzword; it’s a real, proven strategy for driving speed, scale, and sales in an increasingly complex ecommerce world.
As PepsiCo and Kids2 have shown, when you combine creativity with smart automation, the results speak for themselves: faster time-to-market, more efficient teams, and content that actually converts.