Future Commerce

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"Add to Heart": Parts 1-6 of Walmart's New RomCommerce Series Dec 05, 2023

Show notes

The holidays are a time for giving and receiving gifts and sharing in schlocky Hallmark-style TV movies. Walmart's 23-part series, "Add to Heart" capitalizes on this trend by turning RomCom into RomCommerce!

ASSOCIATED LINKS:

Sign up for BundleIQto start your own private GPT and searchable data for your eCommerce business.
Add to Hearton Youtube.
The Walmart Corporate press release for Add to Heart RomCommerce
Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?
Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world
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Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

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*Teaser* Cuts vs. Minted, Pricing Conspiracy Theories Dec 04, 2023

Show notes

TEASER for After Dark Episode 4.

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https://futurecommerce.com/plus

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The Rise of Workflow Automation: The ServiceNow Agency Opportunity in the Enterprise Dec 01, 2023

Show notes

The shift towards low-code platforms like ServiceNow has changed the landscape for service agencies, requiring them to adapt their approach and focus on specific solutions. Phillip and Brian sit down with friend and mentor Jon Klonsky to discuss his new venture, which will specialize in implementing and rescuing failed implementations of the ServiceNow platform.

“Measure twice, cut once, and test often”

{00:12:55} “Only organic growth, as opposed to purchased growth, can be a better line to run so that you don't get ahead of your skis.” - Brian
{00:13:59} - “So many people, especially if you talk to the investor community, are like, "eCommerce is done. Let's move on to the next thing. AI," which is also important. I don't wanna take away from that, but I think eCommerce is still growing and probably gonna continue to grow and change and do incredible things, and we're just at the tip of the iceberg now with some of the new technologies that are coming into the space.” - Jon
{00:19:47} - “You have to have a strategy that you can stick to and sustain because, you know you're going to build a team in a culture that has to be simplified for them. I think you have to be really smart and definitive about what you're gonna be doing.” - Jon
{00:37:25} - “A strength is knowing when to spend your first few dollars. We know to be patient and not get ahead of {our} skis. ” - Jon
{00:48:55} “It is about focus, but my focus to start is gonna be on the solution and the technology. I'm casting a wider net across some verticals because, frankly, I don't know where all the business is gonna come from yet. So cast a wider net and then I will start to narrow or we will start to narrow as we evolve as a company.” - Jon
{00:50:36} - “I've learned mostly through my failures, but I now think that that's a strength of mine. Being able to hire and retain great teams.” - Jon

Associated Links:

Learn more about Jon Klonsky and Halokinetic LLC
Grab your copy of The Multiplayer Brand for just $20 with free shipping in the U.S.
Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?
Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world
Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

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*TEASER* Goat Yoga, Telfar Sells Out (Literally), Cults Nov 27, 2023

Show notes

**TEASER for After Dark Episode 3.**

Get ad-free episodes and bonus content, including the full recording of this podcast, by joining Future Commerce Plus:

https://futurecommerce.com/plus

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Boys Club v. Future Commerce Nov 24, 2023

Show notes

Phillip and Brian sit down with Natasha and Deana, Co-Founders of Boys Club and mavens in the web3 and crypto world. They discuss what place legacy brands have in web3, what the challenges are for adoption, who’s helping, and who’s hurting. But what will it take to get there?

A Well-Governed Potluck

{00:20:20} - “A big part of the value set of web3 is this idea of shared and distributed ownership, and governance, but ownership being a big part of that. And I think if you're a global corporate brand, that's gonna be at odds with shareholder values.” - Deana
{00:41:03} - “As more and more fake news, deep fakes, weird AI content is put into the world, we're gonna want to know what is human-generated and what isn't. And decentralized, trustless, open, permissionless blockchain is a great way to do that. I think that we're quite a far ways off from what that user experience is for that set of tooling and how that comes to life in the apps that we're all using every day.” - Deana
{00:43:48} - “web3 and crypto, we've always had the perspective that it is just a mirror to your interests and the things that you care about.” - Natasha
{00:47:41} - “It's only a matter of time until brands like that do see wallets as a new type of acquisition channel for them. Now today, there's probably not enough data, not enough wallets for it to be worth it to them, but I would invite them to experiment, and I know no better place to do that than Boys Club World.” - Deana
{00:52:07} - “We have found that you have to have a really strong vision and a vehicle for people to come in and play in. And that multiplayer mode has to be in the parameter of a game that we all set together or that a few people set and then a lot of people get to join in and have fun with.” - Natasha
{00:54:03} - “To do anything in multiplayer mode, you have to be a really good listener and hear the other person and what they're saying and what their vision is and what they want. Many people aren't very good at that, so we've over indexed to this. “Let's co-create. Let's do all these things together,” and we're all just talking over each other. And it's really ineffective and inefficient, and nothing ends up happening.” - Natasha

Associated Links:

Learn more about Natasha Hoskins and Deana Burke and Boys Club
Grab your copy of The Multiplayer Brand for just $20 with free shipping in the U.S.
Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?
Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world
Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

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*TEASER* C.A.R.O.L., Media Consumption Guilt, Tipping Robots Nov 20, 2023

Show notes

**TEASER for After Dark Episode 2.**

Get the full recording at https://futurecommerce.com/plus

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The Power of Generosity in Commerce Nov 17, 2023

Show notes

The boys are back for a round of musings on the impact of Ozempic and Kim K’s marketing genius! And then, Brian sits for a live interview at Retail Summits with Mike Beckham, CEO and Co-Founder of Simple Modern, who shares how he has built a team that has been built on generosity and relationships and making a real difference in the world around us.

The SKIMS

{00:07:51} - “Manufacturing virality is not so difficult in 2023. SKIMS leaned into a really smart product launch that created a halo around the thing they really needed to draw attention to, and it completely reoriented the brand at a time when they were being both hyper-feminine and hyper-masculine.” - Phillip
{00:10:21} - “‘Your enemies are your best PR." {Marshall McLuhan} The critics are almost always the ones that provide the most value. And you're right. This is right out of the multiplayer brand. This is critique at work and in an aged, art form. It's something that was purely utility at its start, and now it's an art form that deserves critique or needs critique.” - Brian
{00:16:10} - “The problem with tactics is that they work until they don't. If we want to build strong companies, we want to build resilient companies, you've got to build on a strategy that's going to work in a bunch of different climates, and that's not tactic dependent.” - Mike Beckham
{00:19:55} - “I love the idea of building employees who understand the strategy, who are flexible enough and adaptable enough to understand that tactics have an end date. And, yes, you do have to apply them, but it's because of these bigger strategies that you make those changes.” - Brian
{00:21:46} - “If you're trying to create profit, then giving money away works against your primary goal of being able to make money, but I had this theory that, no, that's not actually true. What actually happens with generosity is when we give, it turns out, and I don't know why this is, I mean, some of it's reciprocity. Maybe it transforms us in a way, but it just tends to be that people want to repay that and people want to give back, and you end up getting more than you started with in the beginning.” - Mike
{00:24:41} - “We tend to build teams, as these highly, disinfected, like, you bring these skill sets, I bring these skill sets, like a puzzle. We're just trying to match up all the skill sets. But the reality is great teams have chemistry. And chemistry comes from affinity and trust and affection, and that gets built through relationships.” - Mike
{00:32:26} - “This generation, there are things that they're gonna need to grow in, and there are things that they're strong in. One of the things they're strong in is that they are particularly focused on that gap that I talked about between the world that is and the world that can't be, and they care intensely about that gap.” - Mike
{00:39:59} - “People don't leave because they got a better offer from somebody close, and I'm not convinced that that's because we're a perfect company. It's more just that we're thinking intentionally around how are we creating high quality of life.” - Mike

Associated Links:

Learn more about Mike Bekham and Simple Modern
FC Insiders #113: Brinkmanship
Grab your copy of The Multiplayer Brand for just $20 with free shipping in the U.S.
Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?
Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world
Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

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After Dark: LinkedIn Genealogies, The Toilet Bible, Costco Connection Magazine, and the “Golden Age of Discipline” Nov 10, 2023

Show notes

This free preview of After Dark is brought to you by the paying members of Future Commerce+!

Join today and receive access to ad-free and bonus content from Future Commerce. futurecommerce.com/plus

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[DECODED] Additive to the Cart: CRO Decoded Nov 07, 2023

Show notes

This season on "Decoded," presented by BigCommerce, we'll delve into the intricate processes behind successful brands. Discover how they conceptualize and debut new products, set their objectives, make pivotal decisions, and foster seamless collaboration across their teams to breathe life into a new product.

Our guest on our 5th episode of Decoded Season 2 is none other than Brian Schmitt. He is the Co-Founder at surefoot, which is a conversion rate optimization testing company. He has 20 years of experience in delivering optimization. And by his account, testing hasn't really changed all that much in these 20 years, and maybe the shopping cart and the nature of the shopping cart really haven't changed all that much either.

“Lies, damn lies, and statistics."

{00:08:02} - “A lot of those sites just don't have the traffic to support testing in the proper way. And they're making decisions then on bad data, and that's where people get frustrated with A/B testing.” - Brian
{00:09:05} - “There are opportunities for a timer to actually improve conversion rate, but I would say, in general, no, a timer is a bad thing, creating a dark pattern of false urgency for your customer, and they trust you less over time.” - Brian
{00:24:49} - “We've certainly had clients where the longer that quiz is, the more bought in the customer becomes by the end of the quiz because they really feel like it's been optimized to them and what products they're seeing. And if you make that too short, too easy, and you have too broad of answers at the end, people don't believe to quiz, and so they're less likely to trust the answers that come out at the end of it.” - Brian
{00:33:34} - “I think the practice of optimization is not a specific treatment of a website. It is the practice of trying things and measuring the difference, of the new thing versus the old thing. That is it.” - Brian
{00:40:52} - “The leaders that excel in businesses that are generational, like the Nordstroms of the world, that can continue to stay culturally relevant over time, they have high conviction and high intuition because they are in tune both with what the brand delivers and what their customer expects of the brand, and that has to come through in the eCommerce channel today more than ever before.” - Phillip
{00:41:95} - “If they haven't really dug in and detailed out customer desire, behavior, life stage, priorities and if they're not really able to articulate that, the rest of the whole thing is gonna be garbage. You've got to get to a pretty significant and specific level of detail to develop product. And if you're not able to develop that level or have that level of knowledge, your product isn't gonna be good enough because you don't even understand what you're going up against.” - Loretta Soffe

Associated Links:

Learn more about Brian Schmitt and surefoot
Grab your copy of The Multiplayer Brand here
Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?
Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world
Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Collapse of Convoy Nov 03, 2023

Show notes

"Everything's dopamine-centric" and today we explore how the industry of logistics and eCommerce are no different. PLUS: Kris Gösser join us to discuss the rise and fall of Convoy. Listen now!

We Need More Daring

{00:17:03} - “Everything's very dopamine-centric. And it is, it is preying on your like, "I'm going to gamble a little bit. I'm going to spend a little money and see if this is worth it." And sometimes the thing that is worth having spent the time is the dopamine and not the product that you got at the end.” - Phillip
{00:28:34} - “I think Shein is the most multiplayer brand because they only produce the things that customers tell them they want. Their just in time manufacturing, their operating model is specifically designed in the same way that software engineering created an operating model around scrum and sprints where you have an agile process that allows you to only make a certain set of features at a time and only focus on those and then move on to the next thing. This is a new operating model for a certain type of a retail business that is fundamentally multiplayer.” - Phillip
{00:30:55} - “Overcorrection in design breeds a lot of innovation and copycats come along and then that becomes the trend. And that is, I think, what we're seeing, and what we hope to see actually in a lot of design, especially in website design.” - Phillip
{00:44:20} - “Tech-enabled logistics was a fun party while the party was happening. But really this is a story of the fed. And when rates were increased and you saw every industry from banking to telecoms to consumer electronics to whatever, whatever, whatever, that impact is so foundational and central that it shook through every system out there.” - Kris
{00:47:37} - “The capital costs just didn't have enough time to pay off. Basically you have all this heavy investment in tech and then when the market's cratered and the market wasn't there anymore, they had all these high costs.” - Brian
{00:54:23} - “What's going to happen is you're going to see this kind of knock on effect of the innovations Convoy had, the innovations Flexport has had, the innovations 3PLs are doing, whether it's Shipium or other companies that are software-centric are now going to be able to help improve the industry with a lot of their ideas, a lot of their concepts and just in general help achieve maybe over the next five years, the impact on the industry that a lot of the tech-enabled logistics companies are trying to do.” - Kris
{01:03:53} - If someone's not looking at the business holistically, or at least with a modern lens of how technology is actually going to affect the business at every touch point, then it's going to get really hard to focus on the things that will make a meaningful difference.” - Brian

Associated Links:

Live stream video mayhem mentioned at 24:24
FC Insiders #113: Brinkmanship
Grab your copy of The Multiplayer Brand for just $20 with free shipping in the U.S.
Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?
Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world
Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.