Future Commerce

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Web3 Provides a Mechanism for Loyalty Aug 24, 2022

Show notes

In this episode, we dive into some of the best moments of the last year and a half of Future Commerce as it pertains to Web3. Tune in now!

Giving Consumers Control Over Their Identity

“Like everything else with new technology, the technology's awesome, but until you find creative people to use it in really interesting ways, it doesn't do a whole lot.” – Michael Janiak
Mags is someone who is thinking about the future of the startup ecosystem. She’s passionate about why and how people spend their time, money, and attention
“I don't think I'm a consumer brands investor. I don't think I'm a consumer tech investor. I'm a consumer needs investor..” – Magdalena Kala
The journey of NFTs is still early. In many ways, they’re very similar to DTC brands as they become easy to launch, and the early movers have made a lot of money
NFTs signal loyalty. They’re a way to assign value to what it means to be associated with a brand.
“Hype alone isn’t enough to build an enduring brand or community.”
There has to be a non-monetary reason that people are engaged in community — for sneakerheads this is the love of the culture and nostalgia that endures well past childhood. Sneakerheads come from many different backgrounds and walks of life. A digital goods community around sneakers may be much more durable than any other PFP (Picture for Proof) project.
NFT Project creators are doxxing themselves now to increase optionality. There’s a lot more to gain by having a trusted reputation as a person than there is as a cartoon avatar.
“I think of the community from which sneakers actually emanate. How can I make it so that anybody can be rewarded even for their participation, for their love of and the passion of whatever that community represents?” – Brandon Martinez
“Everything we're doing online has an offline analog. We're reinventing a lot of our everyday normal commerce experiences, but we're doing it in a digital realm. And this is what Web3 unlocks for us; there's nothing new under the sun.” –Phillip

Associated Links:

Infinite Shelf Season 1 Episode 8: WEB3 BTC DOA FUD WAGMI: WTF
Episode 240: “Magdalena Kala: "I'm a Consumer Needs and Wants Investor"
Episode 262: Building a Web3 Company After the NFT Crash
Episode 266: There’s Nothing New Under the Sun
Subscribe to Insiders and Senses to read more of our hot takes!
Download VISIONS 2022 NOW!
Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce
Check out Decoded, our newest limited series

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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“The Algorithm Made Him Do It” (Vibes Over Data ) Aug 19, 2022

Show notes

Vibe Shift, Say What?

Brian is live from Etail East, covering what’s going on, how it went, and how far conference season has come since last year.
We’re not talking about data anymore… we’re talking about vibes. We talk about them in The Senses, but the vibe shift is different for everything.
“The funniest thing about this idea of vibe shift is that everyone is having a really hard time defining what it is and where we're going.” – Brian
In the wise words of Brian Lange, “you can’t have a vibe if you’re not with somebody.”
Everyone is casting lots of their communal vibes into a pool, and a layer cake is happening of what the new vibe is. If the vibes are wrong, you go and find a new vibe.
People are going to follow the algorithm no matter what, it's just who we are.
“If the algorithm is the ultimate media, the message is humanity is unnecessary.” – Brian
The algorithm is taking over things that humanity can analyze, those being: what is, what could be, and what should be.
“This person's livelihood is at the mercy of the algorithm.” –Phillip
When you don’t update the algorithm soon enough, the crying selfie is what happens. Eventually, it leads to undesirable outcomes because everyone plays the game well.

Associated Links:

The Senses
Insiders #128: The Asynchronous Fiction
The Medium is the Massage from Marshall McLuhan
Episode 266: There’s Nothing New Under the Sun
Visions Episode 4: Our Sh*tty Robot Future
From the Atlantic: Why the Old Elite Spend So Much Time At Work
The Network State
Subscribe to Insiders and Senses to read more of our hot takes!
Download VISIONS 2022 NOW!
Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce
Check out Decoded, our newest limited series

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.

There’s Nothing New Under the Sun: IRL experiences are enabled digitally by web3 (feat. Seyi Taylor) Aug 12, 2022

Show notes

“Digital is gaining the experiences we’ve had all along IRL” — today we sit down with Seyi Taylor to chat about the online experiences we take for granted, the actual capabilities of web3, and how commerce gives us emotional resonance. Tune in now!

“Third-Party Cookies Be Damned”

The ability to have control is attractive to brands, and that's one thing web3-based loyalty platforms provide, which creates incentives for merchants and brands to be more experimental.
Regarding whether web3 is anything new or novel: “What it's actually enabling is more modalities to come into the digital space that we're accustomed to having in real life.” -Phillip
The way we use tokens right now isn’t going to stay this way. Right now tokens are all the hype, but soon they will become a way to get stuff done.
Pokemon Go is back on the craze, even though it's a blast from past of six years ago. The question is, will we get engrossed in AR examples that are layered over top of a reality we already cohabitate in?
“We've spent the last phase of the internet in this situation where people really didn't care as to where the data was, but we’ve started to see that shift of “where is my data?”’- Seyi
Regarding the growth of browser plugins and blockchain analysis: “Third-party cookies be damned. All the work is done for you because we can attribute anything, theoretically.” -Phillip
If the medium is the blockchain, what is the message? “The thing that's happened on the Internet is it's been a great access revolution without a lot of ownership.” -Seyi

Associated Links:

Learn more about Seyi Taylor and Shopthru
The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan
Pokemon Go Craze
Subscribe to Insiders and Senses to read more of our hot takes!
Download VISIONS 2022 NOW!
Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce
Check out Decoded, our newest limited series

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.

[VISIONS] Episode 4: Our Sh*itty Robot Future Jul 29, 2022

Show notes

We live in a world that doesn’t work all the way. Is the amount of automation and machine learning and AI and even robotics that we're implementing in the world, displacing people's jobs and having a human impact?

Show Notes

“It's creating some dynamics where a much smaller number of people can drive outcomes with a much larger number of dollars. If we're not really effective at promoting financial literacy and asking some big questions about what's different looking 20 years ahead from what the last 20 years were like, then there's going to be some collateral damage in the system that I think is really bad for everybody involved.” - Mike Lackman
“You can automate things to make them more efficient, but you have to know how to do it well in the first place with a certain level of agency and authority and getting your hands dirty with it.” - Michael Miraflor
How often are we designing the software stack before we even have a product and before we have even have addressed the customer’s problem?
“Just blatantly throwing software at problems to solve problems, thinking that it's the software that overcomes the deficiencies of an impractical product or business, I think is itself inherently a challenge that we're all facing in our industry.” - Phillip Jackson
What are some of those things that we're bringing into being or what we're building in the world that are laden with our biases?
“One of the most frustrating things about customer service is when you end up on the phone with a system that is trying to replicate that of a human voice, human interaction, or human way of answering questions... You don't have to try to trick me to think that you're a person because you're just not. I would rather hit a series of numbers…to get you to answer versus me interacting with this AI as if you were human.” - Michael Miraflor
“You have to get a gauge on what young people are thinking as expressed by what they're wearing and what they're doing. If you can't really get a sense of that, because the dominant form of social media is encouraging the proliferation of micro trends that really aren't a reflection, but they send a smoke signal, then you might have something that's a bit problematic on your hands.” - Michael Miraflor
“The interesting piece here is that when we talk about this dystopian sort of like, well, this AI future, we're all going to get pushed around this and that. The alternative to that has to be an institution with enough trust and credibility that we're willing to let them become tastemakers, editors of newspapers, curators of fashion, pairers of coffee, those kinds of things.” - Mike Lackman
“There was a dark side to those things that we do see as unifying, which is they tend to have some sort of pretty strong editorial, perhaps even tyrannical authority associated with them to be able to set those standards in place. And I guess my point of jousting with you on that when we think about AI, the counterpoint to letting the system just run the algorithm unchecked is that someone has to put guardrails on that.” - Mike Lackman
Will the outputs of AI technology like Dall-E applied to commercial uses be a good thing or a bad thing in the long run?
Michael Miraflor, Chief Brand Officer
Mike Lackman, CEO of Trade Coffee

Associated Links:

The Visions Report is a 100-page report with deep insights, created by 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!

Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at Hello@futurecommerce.fm or any of our social channels; 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.

“Content Isn’t Community” (Feat. Kendall Dickieson) Jul 29, 2022

Show notes

Today, Philip and Brian welcome back Kendall Dickieson to chat about the creator economy, how TikTok is changing the way for brands, digital pruning, and how creation affects community. Tune in now!

Balancing the Why

The Creator economy has begun to shift the DTC space and change the landscape, but there is still proof in the pudding.
“Platforms like TikTok have exposed the true analytics for the most part, but there's still things on the back end that we don't really know unless we ask the creator.” -Kendall
Digital pruning- where we should be watering and filtering our social channels, and tending to our gardens (accounts.)
There can be an over-pruning of social accounts and your community. Brands and creators should be watchful of these thresholds
“There's so much that brands need to do to exist on social from the content creation side to now, contracting out creators, to building out teams.” -Kendall
Phillip poses the question: Does the creation of a community become undermined by most people going to a social platform and getting them to move out of the entertainment box to the getting value box?
Great marketing and a great product equals amazing success

Associated Links:

Learn more about Kendall Dickieson
Listen to our other episode with Kendall!
Subscribe to Insiders and Senses to read more of our hot takes!
Download VISIONS 2022 NOW!
Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce
Check out Decoded, our newest limited series

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 Uncorkening” Jul 27, 2022

Show notes

In this episode, we call into question some of the factors that have led to the decline of DTC and how pent-up frustration with products that cost more without delivering on their promise will soon be a vestige of a bygone era. Listen now!

Revisiting DTC Groupthink and Brand Criticism

“The Uncorkening” is a latent criticism that was stymied by the loudest voices in an ecosystem who didn’t feel that they had permission to speak up, has now been unleashed
DTC models (particularly VC-backed IPO exits) have proven unsuccessful. The original promise was that DTC would remove middlemen and form a direct connection with the consumer; meanwhile, eCommerce is nothing but middlemen.
Many products don't live up to the hype. Another factor of The Uncorkening in DTC is that the loudest voices and advocates for DTC have often silenced criticism by playing a trump card — to critique a small brand is to criticize the founder behind the brand.
The loudest DTC voices have quieted. As capital outcomes wither for those who had built their reputations on the examination of the DTC space, the loudest voices were silenced. Due in large part to The Great Resignation and the inaccessibility of capital in the current state of the markets, many of the most visible DTC acolytes have moved on to new projects or industries.
What will The Uncorkening make us not want to buy next?

Associated Links:

Subscribe to Insiders and Senses to read more of our hot takes!
Download VISIONS 2022 NOW!
Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce
Check out Decoded, our newest limited series

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.

"Zuckerberg's Figma Mockups" (PLUS: A Grow NY Recap) Jul 25, 2022

Show notes

Phillip and Brian sit down to chat about GROW NY, YouTube Shopping, Instagram Local, and all the things in between. Listen now!

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

[Visions] Episode 3: Romanticism Jul 22, 2022

Show notes

Live from the Visions Summit in West Palm Beach, FL, the conversation in this episode is around what we call Brand Romanticism. We’ve seen such an amazing proliferation of brand. There's more choice than ever before. Some say that brands are our canvas and the products are these new pieces of art that are being brought to the world. Are brands artists and our products their canvas?

Show Notes

Are some brands fooling themselves thinking of their role as one of art when really their product is more about commodity and their role is really about commerce?
Have we romanticized brands more than what is due to it? “Brands have an opportunity to support art and not delude themselves into thinking that they are the creators of product.” - Grace Clarke
“Consumers are going to know if you're dressing up something that's basic and adding a couple of zeros to it because you've romanticized it by using some kind of art style to style it. But at the same time, I think it's important that brands understand where there might be adjacencies to their product.” - Miya Knights
“You can make an argument that the brand is not art, but the brand is an excellent curator of the culture that it is participating in. Are you co-opting something that exists in culture for marketing purposes or for promotional purposes? Or are you a participant?” - Michael Miraflor
“It seems like everyone who talks passionately about what they're working on automatically goes from 0 to 100 talking about getting venture-backed and shooting for a big exit, which is totally fine. I mean, that would be an amazing outcome. But I would love to see the story of more founders working hard on their projects regardless of that outcome.” - Michael Miraflor
“Art is something that I would rather companies, specifically founders who are perhaps at an earlier stage and they're still understanding who their customer is and how their brand can grow, maybe borrow the principles of what it is to be an artist rather than trying to see yourself as one.” - Grace Clarke
“Artists have to be true to themselves. A brand has to be true to its customers.” - Miya Knights
“We affix ourselves to certain products or brands because it helps us understand who we are, and it also helps us relate to other people in our own niche. It gives us this shorthand in this other language. We can find each other quickly. We can converse on Twitter with this other language. So that belonging is a huge part of brand identity for me. That romanticism of art and gathering is really about social sharing.” - Grace Clarke
“There are so many dynamics emerging that probably drag brands towards feeling that they should be more like art. But I think they have to be really clear on their purpose as a merchant and whether or not they have an artisanship or an artisanal story to tell.” - Miya Knights

Guests

Miya Knights, author and retail analyst
Michael Miraflor, Chief Brand Officer
Grace Clarke, brand and omnichannel strategist

Associated Links:

The Visions Report is a 100-page report with deep insights, created by 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.

[VISIONS] Episode 2: The Discourse Jul 15, 2022

Show notes

What makes people happy? Are brands capable of instilling happiness? In today's episode, we go live to the Visions Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida, to engage in a frank conversation about what motivates a consumer, and what power we truly have in fulfilling their needs and desires. Listen now.

Show Notes

Are we able to make customers happy? Is that our job? Brands may have given themselves a role in society that nobody asked them to fulfill.
There’s a value system change taking place where more is not better, it’s damaging to the consumer and to the brand. More products, more drops, more collabs. At some point it becomes mimetic and overwhelming.
“Utility” is an over-exercised phrase. In the philosophy of brands, to be utilitarian is to lack joy or purpose. But in web3 circles, utility has a different meaning — it means that it provides exceeding value. To be a utility means to be indispensable.
The lack of true “discourse” in the retail and eCom industries is that we’re not modeling that behavior between the brand and the customer, let alone between teams or competitors. True conversation between silos will help us to achieve mutual understanding and result in a better experience — for employees and customers alike.
“It doesn't matter what role you have in the company. Go to the CX team, sit down, plug in, and talk to three or four people a day. And I think we do get so worried about some things being anecdotal in a world where there is this burden of statistical significance that we've lost some of that.” — Mike Lackman
“So every company needs to build a culture of being curious in every single level of the business. And everybody has to be a behavioral psychologist. There's no way around it, no matter who your customer is. You have to understand, to everyone's point here, what it is that they want.” — Grace Clarke
“It's actually not necessarily about [products and brands making a consumer] happy. It's about peace. It's about feeling whole. And when you're just looking at a screen and you're scrolling through, that doesn't make you feel that.” — Brian Lange
“And I think where we've come from has been, particularly in terms of eCom, the opportunity to have endless scroll, endless aisle means I can have endless numbers of choices, but actually, that works in reverse for consumers. It actually destabilizes them, makes them feel insecure. Does that give them the security that they've walked away with a purchase that they're going to be happy with for a lifetime?” — Miya Knights
“We're moving towards more silos, I think, in terms of distribution, and more intermediaries vying for space, that valuable space between the brand and the customer and getting in between being able to collect that data and sell it back to the brand.” — Kiri Masters

Guests

Miya Knights, author and retail analyst
Kiri Masters, Head of Retail Marketplace Strategy at Acadia
Michael Miraflor, Chief Brand Officer
Grace Clarke, brand and omnichannel strategist
Mike Lackman, CEO of Trade Coffee

Associated Links:

The Visions Report is a 100-page report with deep insights, created by 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!

Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at hello@futurecommerce.com or any of our social channels; 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.

Building a Web3 Company After the NFT Crash (Feat. Brandon Martinez, SNKRHUD) Jul 11, 2022

Show notes

Joining the show today is Brandon Martinez, Founder of SNKRHUD. We discuss the dynamic of digital goods and NFTs during a downturn in the market, and how physical events and identities are becoming the norm in what was once thought to be an anonymous and online-only fandom. Listen now!

The End of the Good Times

“Hype alone isn’t enough to build an enduring brand or community.” There has to be a non-monetary reason that people are engaged in community — for sneakerheads this is the love of the culture and nostalgia that endures well past childhood. Sneakerheads come from many different backgrounds and walks of life, so a digital goods community around sneakers may be much more durable than any other PFP project.
“Collectors need investors. They’re intrinsically motivated, and inextricably connected.” — Phillip
NFT Project creators are doxxing themselves now in an effort to increase optionality. There’s a lot more to gain by having a trusted reputation as a person than there is as a cartoon avatar.
SNKRHUD is a collection of digital goods and an NFT-based playground for sneakerheads based in Earth-326, a post-apocalyptic world where sneakers rule. Sidekicks is a recent mint of a profile picture (PFP) asset, which is laying the foundation for future projects.
“I think of the community from which sneakers actually emanate. How can I make it so that anybody can be rewarded even for their participation, for their love of and the passion of whatever that community represents?” - Brandon
Brandon shares his perspective on NFT NYC 2022: "it was like most conferences, but it was happening in the heat of the downfall.”
“The buyer modality of attachment or nostalgia of a particular time or moment in your life is diffuse when it’s spread across 5 or 10 purchases. Souvenirs should be singular” — Phillip

Associated Links:

Learn more about Brandon Martinez and SNKRHUD
Insiders #077: So You Think You’re a Collector
Download VISIONS 2022 NOW!
Subscribe to Insiders and Senses to read more of our hot takes!
Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce
Check out Decoded, our newest limited series

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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Giving Consumers Control Over Their Identity

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Vibe Shift, Say What?

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“Third-Party Cookies Be Damned”

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Balancing the Why

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Revisiting DTC Groupthink and Brand Criticism

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Giving Consumers Control Over Their Identity

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Vibe Shift, Say What?

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“Third-Party Cookies Be Damned”

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Balancing the Why

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Revisiting DTC Groupthink and Brand Criticism

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The End of the Good Times

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