Future Commerce

Latest Episodes:

The Daring Creator Sep 20, 2023

Show notes

The Creator naturally tears down and rebuilds, moving toward positive change. A tenacious visionary and a dreamer who pursues their goals with unwavering dedication, confidence, and willingness to take risks. The Creator has a strong sense of vision, sometimes restructuring traditional forms.

When it comes to brands that exhibit this archetype, Só Dança is an easy choice. Helena Hines, Chief Operating Officer at Só Dança, shares what it's like to be a Creator in a space that's needed some restructuring for a very long time.

A Vision That Delivers

{00:04:32} “There was one sentence here in the definition, which is "a strong sense of vision and an ability to take ideas from nothing into reality." And I love to do that. Whenever an idea is dead, whenever a concept is dead or people consider it gone, I like to bring it back and say, "But is it? Can we challenge that? How can we bring it back?’" - Helena
{00:06:58} “Really understanding the tools you have to work with and who's in the room is something that maybe comes naturally to a Creator, to see what I have to work with here to make something.” - Kristen
{00:09:15} “From the beginning, we were innovators and we were creating things that made sense for the brand and made sense for the dance world, even if the dance world didn't even know it yet.” - Helena
{00:12:10} “{During the pandemic} I thought, "Is this the right move for us to continue to bet on ourselves?" because we don't know how long this will take. We don't know how long this will be. The whole time everybody in leadership said, "We move forward. We don't stop. We don't halt because we believe in our people and we believe in this company. And we know we need to be reliable. We need to invest in ourselves because when the consumer needs it, we need to be able to deliver.’" - Helena
{00:14:46} “It's about following through with who you say you are. Staying true to the message that you're sending out there for your internal team and external as well. Are you going to deliver what you said you're going to deliver through the good times, but most importantly through the hard times? And that takes vision.” - Helena

Associated Links:

Learn more about Helena Hines and Só Dança
Check out other Future Commerce podcasts
Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world!

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.

[DECODED] You Get What You Measure Sep 19, 2023

Show notes

This season on Decoded, brought to you by BigCommerce, we're going to break down the ways that winning brands build and launch new products, how decisions are made, how goals are set, and how an entire organization collaborates effectively to bring a new product to life.
We've all heard the idioms before. "You are what you eat." "You get what you pay for." Or "You reap what you sow." But when it comes to eCommerce, the idiom of choice might just be "You get what you measure." As eCommerce has grown, the world of analytics has become much more fragmented. Aside from measurement, the analysis of customer behavior has fallen into multiple camps of solutions, from attribution to segmentation and even intuition. In this episode, hear from industry experts Ingrid Milman Cordy, Sean Larkin, and Ian Leslie as they share their insights on this and more.

Context, Confidence, & Conviction

{00:01:56} - “Context is important when a brand is launching a new product or a new subbrand because it can be dangerous to not have a context and a goal when you're doing something new with your business.” - Aaron
{00:03:42} - “You need to be very careful about what you choose to measure because that changes the reality of your perception of your business and may change your product strategy depending on what you're measuring.” - Aaron
{00:08:28} - “There are always the big goals and then the smaller goals, those tend to be really clear and people understand them. It's the goals in the middle, the departmental goals that I think don't get as much air time as as needed.” - Ingrid
{00:15:17} - “The problem is merchants aren't collecting the data and they don't actually know how to operationalize it, and so as soon as I can pivot the conversation there with merchants, that's when things get exciting.” - Sean
{00:24:14} - “We're typically launching product for both sides of the company and then the few times that we are maybe a little bit more granular in where we think we're going with the product, it ends up being maybe even more popular on the other side anyway.” - Ian
{00:25:37} - “Having confidence in your plan requires a lot of conviction. And especially in the modern analytics and attribution software ecosystem, that's really all you have is confidence in attribution.” - Phillip
{00:29:06} - “If you are going to launch a product, assuming that there's going to be failure, budgeting it out to begin with so that you can test and experiment logically.” - Sean

Associated Links:

Learn more about Ingrid Milman Cordy and Nestlé Health Science
Learn more about Sean Larkin and Fueled
Learn more about Ian Leslie and Industry West
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.

Pizza Commerce for a Pizza World Sep 15, 2023

Show notes

The nature of the digital consumer and reaching them in their region and in their context where they are is not just taking something for granted as if all you have to do is put it out into the world and then people adopt it. You have to adapt it to market.

How can pizza shops and restaurants maximize the data collected by Slice to stay ahead of trends and competitors and build community where they are? We’re glad you asked. Matthew Kobach, CMO at Slice, gives us a glimpse into the ways Slice is using data to turn up the heat in the pizza industry and beyond.

Slice has Verticalized the Tech Stack for Pizza Commerce

{00:09:12} - “What you want to do is build a team that is optimized for the industry that you're in… One of the things that I'm currently doing right now is filling that cupboard with people who understand the space, either from the consumer side or the pizza shop side because they understand the pain points.” - Matthew
{00:10:07} - “I'm so big on messaging. It's one of those things that like ten Xs an ad. Once you can succinctly explain what you do or what your value prop is and it immediately sticks in someone's head, that's how you make an ad more impactful and how you make all your marketing more impactful.” - Matthew
{00:12:27} - “It's really interesting to think about how context impacts what your message is, even if you're selling the same product.” - Matthew
{00:15:35} - “I got your attention, and I understand I have only got it for half of a moment. What is the key information you need to remember there? You've got to figure out that way to stand out and deliver your message quickly.” - Matthew
{00:23:40} - “You can just manipulate data so easily to tell the story that you want. The people who are really, really good at looking at data are the ones who tell you there's no right or wrong way to look at data because they understand that anyone who says there's a right way, they have an agenda.” - Matthew
{00:31:52} - “There are foundational things you need to do in order to be successful, and then 50% of it, you've got to use your instinct or your gut or realize that your past experience, even if it's not 1 to 1, on how you're going to market this either specific product or to this specific cohort.” - Matthew
{00:42:08} “It's more about owning the data. It's this idea that you have all this data and you are throwing it away. And so to me, the future of commerce is shops that have not yet harnessed the power of data to do something really special with it and to figure out how to maximize the value of their customers.” - Matthew

Associated Links:

Learn more about Matthew Kobach and Slice
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.

Follow the Muse Sep 13, 2023

Show notes

How do you listen to the customer and make decisions about the customer without making decisions for the customer? How do we talk to customers better? And how, in the midst of storytelling as a brand, do we remember that our customers are human?

Daniel Hoffman, Creative Director at Five Below, shares that sees his customer as a muse and how following the muse helps Five Below create new and better things in different channels. Of course, digital creation and digital creative direction today really depend a lot on creator partnerships. Given his background and time at other prestigious brands, Daniel has incredible insights to share. Listen now!

The Brand Conversation

{00:10:25} - “When you have a healthy conversation about what's not being done and look elsewhere to what could be done then that's when companies can really innovate and hopefully stick out in the crowd and maybe solve problems for your customers, too.” - Daniel
{00:15:06} - “When I was a young designer, my directors would say, "Here are your guardrails. Play within that space." And I try to do that for my team. That way I know what they're doing is on brand and also they get to express their voice. They get to try things out and learn and grow and make mistakes and learn from them and do new things.” - Daniel
{00:21:51} - “The benefit of having a growing team is that there's always a new voice with a new perspective and life experience, and that's one of the benefits of having a diverse team as well. If you don't have a diversity of life experience, then you're going to miss something on the marketing side because your customers are likely a diverse group.” - Daniel
{00:25:38} - “We started in the early 2000s. At that point, the audience was one thing, but now a lot of those customers, if we did our job right, are still with us, and that audience looks different today.” - Daniel
{00:26:36} - “The way that brand becomes apparent is through a long-term relationship and established repeated opportunities to develop trust. That just takes time.” - Phillip
{00:27:25} - “There's a popular term of "brand storytelling," and I really prefer "brand conversation" because that then implies that on the brand side, we're listening to the customer, we're in dialog with them.” - Daniel
{00:32:45} “Does {AI} impact our customer? And if it's a positive impact, it's worth exploration. As a manager, I have to think about job satisfaction with my team. Is {implenting AI} a satisfying day-to-day for them? So I need to consider that.” - Daniel

Associated Links:

Learn more about Daniel Hoffman and Five Below
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.

Consumer Muses & Strategic Innovation Sep 08, 2023

Show notes

Phillip and Brian, AKA Clarks stan, are joined live at eTail in Boston with the Chief Marketing and Digital Officer at Clarks, Tara McRae, as she shares about what she believes the future of commerce is, what makes innovation truly meaningful, and how a company can stay relevant after 200 years.
And before that, the guys review a review of The Multiplayer Brand, complete with a couple of compelling pull quotes.

Bubbling Up

{00:12:46} - “For a brand that's been around for nearly 200 years, we're an extremely diverse brand and we serve a very diverse audience. So for us, that can get scattered if we're not consumer-centric, if we don't have very clear consumer muses and who we're going after and how we reach those consumers.” - Tara
{00:17:42} - “What's amazing about our brand is we do pull more than we push within these communities, which is exciting.” - Tara
{00:21:50} - “Our number one goal isn't to try to force people to be omnichannel because a lifetime value is higher. It is to deliver the best brand experience that we possibly can, no matter what channel they want to come through, and really service them that way.” - Tara
{00:28:57} - “We're really, really focused on how do we strategically embed innovation in everybody's life. It's the same thing I talk about with diversity, equity, and inclusion. You're not going to just give it to a department and go focus on that. It's baked into everybody's job description. That's how I look at innovation.” - Tara
{00:32:35} - “You're actually stepping into media and having a moment in a way that doesn't make sense to the millennial. Our shoe moments are in the office or some movie, but their media moments are in Roblox and they're in Fortnite.” - Brian
{00:33:53} - “I wonder sometimes if we abandon opportunities or we neglect opportunities that are inherently less measurable because the current crop of talent is so trained on focusing and doubling down on things that are measurable. But the future is not measurable because it doesn't exist yet. We can't quantify it yet.” - Phillip
{00:46:39} “You need to be in the market touching and feeling it, chatting with consumers, and seeing trends. So market travel is extremely important to us.” - Tara

Associated Links:

Learn more about Tara McRae and Clarks
Review of The Multiplayer Brand by Jess from FireTeam
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 Relatable Everyman Sep 07, 2023

Show notes

Everyman brands may have amazing stories, great products, and incredible people behind them, but they aren't trendy. We do tend to forget how important they are and how different life would be without them. The Everyman is always within reach, always there for us. But this wasn't everyone's favorite result when taking the Archetypes quiz.

Jesse Lazarus, Orchid Bertelsen, and Kris Gösser explain why their initial reaction to the Archetypes quiz result of “The Everyman” left them less than impressed and what they’ve come to think of themselves and brands in The Everyman category since then.

Not Just Ordinary

{00:04:18} “To find out that you are "ordinary," if you think about it in our society, it is frowned upon to be basic, but I think what it negates is the fact that there are some things that are so universally loved and useful that of course everybody gravitates towards it. It is the fabric on which communities are woven.” - Orchid
{00:06:19} “The Everyman can relate in some respect to everyone in the most basic human sense of what it means to be human, the basic necessities that we need to live, but also the basic things that we need in order to start to become more of ourselves in order to flourish.” - Orchid
{00:07:50} “Brands that want to scale, that want to have longevity, that want to address a large audience or a varying marketplace, the core of that build has to be from the largest applicable perspective, and that is going to be The Everyman concept. There's a time for trendiness, for innovation, for pushing the envelope, but at a certain point when you are proving to enough of a varied audience, that has to be one tool in the kit, not the only tool.” - Jesse
{00:10:32} “I've actually started to now think even more aggressively than I was prior about who are the actual people behind the brands that are building these things. And I think Archetypes overall has been interesting and helpful in that way. I've actually started to see more businesses that I think are The Everyman.” - Kris
{00:14:06} “Going to Safeway or the grocery store every week is essentially my weekly Everyman journey. And you can always depend on the prices. You can depend on the products, you can depend on them solving a need for you without ever really kind of grandstanding about it.” - Kris
{00:15:40} “One, if your name is synonymous with the category, that's a good indicator of an Everyman brand. And second, anything that you have on subscription because you simply cannot live without.” - Orchid
{00:17:23} “In the end, you couldn't do it only as an Everyman. You have to have a mix of all of those attitudes and approaches, and brands that can effectively inhabit a majority of those things I think are the most successful that are in the market.” - Jesse

Associated Links:

Learn more about Jesse Lazarus and Kravet
Learn more about Orchid Bertelsen and Common Thread Collective
Learn more about Kris Gösser and Shipium
Check out other Future Commerce podcasts
Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world!

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.

[DECODED] The Key Roles of Product Development Sep 06, 2023

Show notes

This season on Decoded, brought to you by BigCommerce, we're going to break down the ways that winning brands build and launch new products, how decisions are made, how goals are set, and how an entire organization collaborates effectively to bring a new product to life.
In this episode, Phillip and Aaron talk with Penny Porterfield and Kabeer Chopra about this idea of concept to cart and bringing a new product, a physical product, to life. The website, the eCommerce site, that channel is a product, too. That product is in constant management, constant revision, and constant evolution. How does a brand strike the balance of experimentation while also meeting goals for profitability and customer retention? Listen now for this and much more!

Progress Over Perfection

{00:05:48} - “One of the amazing privileges of having that perspective is seeing fads come and go and having seen things that become truth over long periods of time and the truisms that remain.” - Phillip
{00:08:05} - “You can spend a lot of money making mistakes. So if you're working with an expert, an agency, they have a lot of experience they bring to the table and can allow you to not only get the biggest value for your money but also do it properly.” - Penny
{00:24:29} - “If you are taking into account and regularly looking at your site and how it's performing and adjusting to how your customers are behaving, that's how you really build up the functionality, and then your costs are kind of contained a little bit and they're spread out over time and it allows you to kind of lean in hard, identify the critical stuff, but then grow over time as you see how customers are responding.” - Penny
{01:04:47} - “Timing is so important when it comes to launching products, especially when you're a young company. One of the best pieces of advice we received early on is if you are not embarrassed of the first product that you've put in the market, you're too late.” - Kabeer
{01:23:59} - “The payoff period may not be what you're expecting. Conditions in the market might be different. So one thing we've been very careful about is working with the right manufacturers whom we can place purchase orders with that allow us to take less risk, giving ourselves more breathing room and not investing everything into that one launch and hoping for success.” - Kabeer
{01:28:15} - “Obviously at a certain scale, it makes sense to have a central visualization tool which we do, but more of the investment is keeping on going into more ways of looking at the data from a pure slice and dice perspective or enriching it as opposed to fancier ways of looking at it visually.” - Kabeer
{01:32:26} - “The route we optimize often for removing the buyer friction, the end consumer friction for point of purchase. It's a conversion tactic. There's also removing the friction in making business decisions.” - Aaron

Associated Links:

Learn more about Penny Porterfield and ZaneRay
Learn more about Kabeer Chopra and Burrow
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.

HalloThanksMas is Upon Us Sep 01, 2023

Show notes

The holidays are upon us. Or are they? Well, the holiday merch is on display already in August. How has Black Friday/Cyber Monday evolved and what do vendors and merchants do to keep up and meet consumers where they are? The world has changed and so has the shopper experience and what they expect to experience. Listen now to hear Meghan Stabler, Senior Vice President of Marketing at BigCommerce, share key insights to how to navigate these changes and set up your brand for a winning strategy for this coming holiday season.

Tickle Me Elmo

{00:04:30} - “The world has changed. The shopper experience has changed. That linear thing that you talked about from an experience perspective has changed. That journey that customers go on has changed. The way that they interface, they search, they click, they like, they turn you into a buyer immediately has changed. So merchants have to change too. So now is the time, if you haven't already thought about is what is your strategy?” - Meghan
{00:15:24} - “eCommerce nowadays is the mentality of all of these things coming together: the infrastructure, the platform capabilities, and then what you want to do as an eCommerce brand manager that has to be seamless to capture me in that very emotional moment of buying.” - Meghan
{00:22:07} - “One of the things that I think is super important and it's not discussed too much in typical holiday shopping prep is you actually need to prep for other types of shoppers that you wouldn't normally deal with when you're typically running your promotional promos or your marketing or messaging campaigns. The type of buyer might be someone who's way outside of your ICP, but they're buying it for someone that they know is in your ICP.” - Brian
{00:41:47} - “Merchants have to think global at local as well and when they think about this is just a Thanksgiving Day sale, yeah, it may be but Thanksgiving is not celebrated overseas. But at the same time, your sales are celebrated and people are going to your site to think about things.” - Meghan
{00:44:08} - “Some retailers definitely have to lean more into promotion to have a clear out and to make room for inventory. And others are leaving money on the table. That's where you don't ever really get the demand curve perfectly. What I think we've seen most recently is that there were some missed forecasts and demand that have led to the industry having to lean more into promotion over the last 18 months.” - Phillip
{00:47:44} - “The future of commerce is where AI is going to lead us from where I sort of surrounded it on the data side and analytics and then getting into predictive analytics and then getting into predictive changes and then making individualized journey changes.” - Meghan

Associated Links:

Learn more about Meghan Stabler and BigCommerce.
Grab your copy of The Multiplayer Brand here
Meet us at eTail Boston 2023
Check out The Edge Summit from Bloomreach
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.

Dating, Dupes, and “Delulu:” Lovers and Outlaws Aug 25, 2023

Show notes

LARPing

{00:04:06} - “The first time I published a zine was in 2015 and I was at a point of my editorial life where I really wanted to have ownership over my work, and I wanted to publish articles that were long-form and a little bit more thought-provoking.” - Melissa
{00:06:21} - “Your way out of algo chasing was to do something on your own and do it printed. Physical format is the way to free yourself from the algo because no algo beats handing out your zine to people.” - Brian
{00:12:52} - “Lovers and Outlaws really explores how our relationship status is and how we buy things, consume things, and choose products are interconnected and really it gets into modern marketing and also the five stages of consumerism, which are need for recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision, and post-purchase evaluation.” - Melissa
{00:14:26} - “There are a lot of parallels between the way that we're shopping for products and how that informs the way that we shop for relationships today because they both come through the same device. And so the way you buy and the way that you consider purchases is very physically adjacent and maybe even mentally adjacent to the same device that you use to shop for and pursue a love interest as well.” - Phillip
{00:23:09} - “They say build products that you want to use and also build products that actually solve a problem. So being a writer for over ten years, I knew that there were outdated content management systems, there were outdated payment systems, and also outdated data storage. And I know that for a lot of writers, it's really hard to build a community, especially if you're freelancing and you don't really have the means to maybe start a newsletter list or continue to get recognition over your work. So I wanted to build a product that was totally decentralized for me as a writer.” - Melissa
{00:29:31} - “What I think we do differently at Future Commerce is we're reporting on our view of the world, and we have a lot of principles around that. I think that what you buy and where you buy it is shaped by who you are and who you're around. And I think you're exploring a totally different aspect of that through this concept of love, sex, dating.” - Phillip

Associated Links:

Learn more about Melissa Henderson and The Violet Verse
Grab your copy of The Multiplayer Brand here
Meet us at eTail Boston 2023
Check out The Edge Summit from Bloomreach
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 Lighthearted Jester Aug 23, 2023

Show notes

Brands that act as The Jester appeal not to the reason and logic center of our brains, but to the emotional center of our gut. In our personal lives and in business, we often need the reminder to not take things too seriously.

Denise Foley, Vice President of eCommerce and Direct to Consumer at The Bollman Hat Company, gives us her thoughts on the role of the Jester and why we could all use more of the levity the Jester brings.

Finding the Funny

{00:03:36 “Just because you're in the corporate world or have an important job, we spend way too much time working to not have fun. There needs to be some sense of levity and fun in the business and the work and it just makes it better, makes it easier to kind of see the humor in things and not take yourself so seriously.” - Denise
{00:05:29} “We're a manufacturer, so Bollman in and of itself, while we have a brand line under that is really the manufacturer and the umbrella brand. And we've been around for 155 years. Part of the levity we said was this was our second pandemic that we've gone through and survived and thrived through.” - Denise
{00:07:42} - “There's a lot of great history, not just about Bollman the brand and the company, but the people that have built it.” - Denise
{00:09:47} “One of the misconceptions I would hope that people would break from around The Jester is that having a sense of humor around the work you do or your brand doesn't mean that you're not serious about making it a success.” - Denise

Associated Links:

Learn more about Denise Foley and The Bollman Hat Company
Check out other Future Commerce podcasts
Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world!

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.

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