"Your Tool, Your Sword, Your Treasure": Corporate Leadership in the post-Trump era

Jan 8, 2021

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Today, Brian and Phillip talk about the extension of 2020 into 2021, corporate leadership, and personal data.

Anything related to Donald Trump is effectively not what Shopify wants to promote. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat have all suspended Donald Trump’s account across their services. This brings to question businesses and their corporate leadership stepping forward.
Elon Musk has surpassed Jeff Bezos as the world’s richest man. Musk found ways of implementing what the future could be—compared to Bezos, who just found the most efficient way to do things.
eCommerce, being all around us, is in a unique position. Comparing it to the time when viruses weren’t on Macs because they were less popular than PCs, Shopify has seen an amount of stores as fraudulent/risky. Just as Macs were on the rise and were ripe for fraud, so is the world of e-Commerce.
In 2020, you’re responsible for managing your own data—with whom and what your data is used for.
Many retailers are becoming advertisers in and of themselves using this data—like Amazon, who brought in more ad revenue in 2020 through its own ad network than Twitter has brought in revenue in its entire existence.

“Every brand is either a marketplace today or will have to adapt to become one.” - Phillip Jackson
As marketplaces (or curators), brands all interweave and interact with other brands and their stories.
Bottega Veneta deleted all of its social accounts—a deliberate move to build their brand identity of luxury. In a noise-filled world, silent spaces (like flying first class) can feel more luxurious.
From the GQ article on Bottega Veneta: “[The move] is the ultimate act of stealth luxury. It will now be a brand that travels strictly by word of mouth.”
Tied into this, Parade Underwear has taken a new spin on influencer marketing, in delivering free underwear to Instagram users with fewer than a thousand followers in exchange for posting.
There’s a separation in the market for luxuries vs price-centered items. Amazon and other marketplaces are saturated with knockoff brands so Brian predicts that the brands that are going to see the most success in the 2020s are brands that are marketed for broad markets and brands that are extreme luxury. The middle ground of “premium mediocre” brands is thinning.