

Future Commerce
Phillip Jackson, Brian Lange
Future Commerce is the culture magazine for Commerce. Hosts Phillip Jackson and Brian Lange help brand and digital marketing leaders see around the next corner by exploring the intersection of Culture and Commerce.
Trusted by the world's most recognizable brands to deliver the most insightful, entertaining, and informative weekly podcasts, Future Commerce is the leading new media brand for eCommerce merchants and retail operators.
Each week, we explore the cultural implications of what it means to sell or buy products and how commerce and media impact the culture and the world around us, through unique insights and engaging interviews with a dash of futurism.
Weekly essays, full transcripts, and quarterly market research reports are available at https://www.futurecommerce.com/plus
Trusted by the world's most recognizable brands to deliver the most insightful, entertaining, and informative weekly podcasts, Future Commerce is the leading new media brand for eCommerce merchants and retail operators.
Each week, we explore the cultural implications of what it means to sell or buy products and how commerce and media impact the culture and the world around us, through unique insights and engaging interviews with a dash of futurism.
Weekly essays, full transcripts, and quarterly market research reports are available at https://www.futurecommerce.com/plus
Episodes
Mentioned books

May 31, 2024 • 31min
The Future of B2B Innovation
Recorded Live at B2B Online ChicagoPhilips has done a great job setting up a center of excellence for commerce, essential for larger conglomerates and companies with multiple divisions. Antonio Espinoza, Head of Digital Engagement and Strategy at Philips shares his insights in this interview with Brian at B2B Online Chicago. Listen now!Purchasing is Person to PersonKey takeaways:{00:15:17} - “The experience we were providing was not one that the average consumer today expects. Amazon is this gold standard. And so when we thought about the structure we had to have, the enablement we had to provide to our businesses and to the regions, we had to be thinking about things like that and really trying to understand customer first what had to evolve.” - Antonio{00:22:06} - “There is a difference on how these things are being deployed. Is it just being slapped on to a solution, or is there a meaningful use case? And B2B actually might be the place where you're going to see more benefits upfront of using AI before consumer starts to.” - Brian{00:22:55} - “No matter how you and your organization decide to leverage or not leverage it, being close to really understanding what it is, how it is being used, the upsides and the downsides or the places to kind of look out for is just so critically important.” - Antonio{00:28:17} - “Save humans for things that are better done by humans and let the systems handle things that are better handled by systems.” - Brian{00:29:36} - “Gone are the days where we should be interrogating and asking a 100 questions of what kind of experience do they want. We need to better leverage the data and the understanding that we have of them already to deliver these automated tailored experiences to allow them to get more of their time back to do the higher order things that they need to do.” - AntonioAssociated Links:Learn more about Antonio Espinoza and PhilipsStep by Step episode The Consumerization of B2B, Feat. Kirsten GreenCheck out Future Commerce on YouTubeCheck out Future Commerce+ for exclusive content and save on merch and printSubscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce worldListen to our other episodes of Future CommerceHave 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!

May 29, 2024 • 35min
[DECODED] Frictionless Falsehoods
Funnels can change in the same way that ad creative is more personalized and targeted, and it's really hard to reproduce what ad creative looks like for you and for me because we are fundamentally different people. What if the funnel was also something that was truly dynamic and related more to who the person is or what the ad creative was that brought you there? That's what FERMÀT Commerce does. In this last episode of Season 3 of Decoded, Phillip sits with Rishabh Jain and Rabah Rahil from FERMÀT, live at South by Southwest, to discuss what the future of ecommerce can look like now that FERMÀT is a part of it. “People buy through content.”{00:11:59} - “A lot of times what we think about when we think about data associated with the person, we think about things that are immutable. But candidly, you and I have different expectations, and we want different things depending on the context that we're in. And so you're going to have to have the data on all of that context and actually meet the person in that context.” - Rishabh{00:19:57} - “We need the right friction in the right place so that people actually use their brains. When people don't use their brains, then all kinds of weird things happen, like chargebacks or nasty reviews. We have buyer's remorse. There are things that happen when it's too slippery. Need a little bit of friction. The right kind.” - Phillip{0025:08}} - “If you're really happy with your brand, where you are, what you're doing, don't play around in the main house. Go party again with these constellation sites and don't mess around with returning customer revenue, with your brand equity. Go explore in these other ways that are really value-generative, but really derisk the things that you want to because a redesign is almost always going to lower your conversion rate.” - Rabah{00:22:45} - “When you're in the middle, you have to be able to send value to everybody in the ecosystem. And that's how, as a company, you end up growing. And that's also sort of like I mean, it's a more fun way to build business also, just to be totally candid.” - RishabhAssociated Links:Learn more about FERMÀTHave you checked out our YouTube channel yet?Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in commerce.Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

May 24, 2024 • 47min
Creating Credible Content and Community-Building Collabs
Today on the pod, Emma Apple Chozick joins us and is an incredible guest who we've known for a couple of years now, and with whom we did a great collab, if you will, with her former employer Thingtesting. These days she is breaking down the world of cultural events and brand partnerships and also a little bit of the explainer content that's out there and providing consulting and the opportunity for collaborations that build partnerships and community that make sense for everyone involved.Trifecta of OpportunityKey takeaways:{00:15:54} - “There's a short term opportunity that we all have in business and in brand building where you can quickly and probably pretty effectively monetize some opportunity. But if you think long term, the question that really begins to make itself apparent is do we have a viable strategy? Over the long term, how do I grow a very trustworthy audience? How do I have a relationship with an audience if my entire relationship with them from the very get go is based on some commercial nature?” - Phillip{00:20:13} - “I think about partnerships as people to people, brands to people, and brands to investors. All of these different moments in which you're bringing in new people into the conversation and they can bring their community, you can bring your community, and let's make something big and exciting and thoughtful here.” - Emma{00:24:43} - “I do think that people still need to be thoughtful in the collaborations they're doing. And sometimes you look at a collab and you're like, okay, this feels a little bit of someone trying to reach for press, and that's not really how I look at collaborations. I think they genuinely need to make sense.” - Emma{00:39:36} - “You have to think about who you're getting in front of and why you want to get in front of those people because if that audience demographic is not going to resonate with you as a brand or your product or whatever the mishmash of the two products is, then it's not really worth anyone's time to invest in creating that partnership. I think the best partnerships happen when the audiences are aligned on something.” - EmmaAssociated Links:Learn more about Emma Apple Chozick and gr8 collab. Check out Future Commerce on YouTubeCheck out Future Commerce+ for exclusive content and save on merch and printThe MUSES Journal is here! Grab your copy of our latest annual journal today at musesjournal.comSubscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce worldListen to our other episodes of Future CommerceHave 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!

May 23, 2024 • 5min
*Teaser* Microplastics in my WHAT?
Get ad-free episodes and bonus content, including the full recording of this podcast, by joining Future Commerce+ at futurecommerce.com/plusSave 15% on Future Commerce print journals and merchPrivate GPT access with BundleIQExclusive invites to physical events, dinners, and priority invites to industry events (SXSW, Art Basel, VISIONS)Ad-free episodes and bonus content!

May 21, 2024 • 42min
[DECODED] Wisdom and Witticisms
In the world of marketing, much like gambling, we take calculated risks. We strategize, we forecast, and we adjust. Today on Decoded, we'll look beyond numbers and wagers through Blaise Pascal, whose thoughts, often poetic and deeply personal, remind us that at the core of all of our strategies lies a human touch. “Good ideas don’t matter. Good people do.”{00:07:11} - “A lot of magic happens when you allow yourself to be bored. I actually think that's when really interesting things come about.” - Rabah{00:11:05} - “When people ask me how much I should post on social media, that's not the right question. The question is, how many times can I post while generating value?” - Rabah{00:18:02}} - “In investing, you actually would rather be right once or twice really heavy. Whereas in marketing, it's the opposite. I want to figure out where I'm right and use it almost more of as experimentation to palpitate the elephant. And then when I do find a really awesome well to dig, then I'm going to put more rigs on that land and then keep doing that.” - Rabah{00:22:45} - “Having intersectional knowledge gets really, really interesting. That's when you can really find some big unlocks.” - RabahAssociated Links:Learn more about Rabah Rahil and FERMÀTHave you checked out our YouTube channel yet?Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in commerce.Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

May 17, 2024 • 1h 13min
Building Culturally Intelligent Brands
Phillip and Brian sit down and have an enlightening conversation with the author of Cultural Intelligence for Marketers: Building an Inclusive Marketing Strategy, Anastasia Kārkliņa Gabriel. This book is the “How It's Made” for building culture-shaping brands, providing more understanding of how boardrooms, researchers, and foresight professionals think about their work. Listen now and join the conversation!Not a burden of some, but a responsibility of allKey takeaways:{00:07:39} - “When we think about resonance, naturally, I think we ought to ask, "Well, how do we actually shift our attention on the customer, understand their experience in regards to issues of equity, or just generally their unique lived experience within the category in relation to the product?" And start there rather than start with the question of how to make the brand appear more inclusive or more culturally fluent.” - Anastasia{00:18:22} - “It all starts with research. If we cannot understand the cultural landscape fully and comprehensively and the role that the brand plays at the intersection of category and culture, then it becomes challenging to actually execute strategy that is attuned to those realities and to execute effectively.” - Anastasia{00:27:10} - “When we think about what is driving consumers at a deeper emotional level, I think we can often move away from some of those biased perceptions of what people care about based on how they look or what they read like on paper.” - Anastasia{00:34:58} - “The way that I propose to think about culture is really it invites us to think about culture as a set of practices, a set of values, as a set of beliefs that are guiding us to determine what is normal, what is common sense, what is acceptable, what is desired, what is valued in a culture.” - Anastasia{00:42:03} - “I have a more positive outlook on the intersection of commerce and culture because it seems that they're kind of inseparable, and people speak in public and exchange ideas in the same spaces where they shop and pick up products and discover brands.” - AnastasiaAssociated Links:Learn more about Anastasia Kārkliņa Gabriel and Cultural Intelligence for MarketersCheck out Future Commerce on YouTubeCheck out Future Commerce+ for exclusive content and save on merch and printThe MUSES Journal is here! Grab your copy of our latest annual journal today at musesjournal.comSubscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce worldListen to our other episodes of Future CommerceHave 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!

May 14, 2024 • 41min
[DECODED] Polymaths and Philosophers
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was much more than Isaac Newton's rival. He was a polymath who dabbled in everything from music to metaphysics and embodied the spirit of true deep generalism. Modern marketers can connect the dots, even if you didn't know they exist, by studying continual change: from calculus or clicks."Absorb what's useful, reject what's useless."{00:10:04} - “A lot of people think that there are these tried and true tactics for this and that and the other thing. And there's just so much nuance to our businesses, and then there's so much nuance to the scale that you're at. There's so much nuance to the context of the company.” - Rabah{00:19:38} - “Every part of a digital experience, perhaps your website, every product recommendation, every marketing message, could be tailored in the future to reflect the unique needs and desires and the context of the individual consumer. What Leibniz teaches us through monadology is about our interconnectedness: to a brand, to a purchase, to a product, and each other.” - Phillip{00:34:27} - “The way I define or bifurcate marketing from sales is marketing is selling one to many. Sales is selling one-to-one. And now you're seeing a blurring of the lines with technology. Now I can market almost one to one, not in the actual literal sense, but in that persona, jobs to be done, where that person is on their customer journey, and what I know about them.” - RabahAssociated Links:Learn more about Rabah Rahil and FERMÀTHave you checked out our YouTube channel yet?Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in commerce.Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

May 10, 2024 • 47min
Are we Post-“Point-Solution” in eCom?
Ro Trivedi joins the show to discuss founding Pietra, a modern infrastructure platform that helps entrepreneurs start and operate eCommerce businesses more profitably. Listen now!Nobody Wants to Tinker on a CommodityKey takeaways:The ability to build billion-dollar businesses with small teams is within reach, thanks to technological advancements and the reallocation of resources toward high-value activities.The future of commerce lies in quickly bringing concepts to market, allowing businesses to design and manufacture products in a matter of weeks.The integration of AI-driven marketplaces will revolutionize the process of finding the best suppliers and factories, simplifying negotiations and streamlining production.The future will see businesses effortlessly selling on multiple sales channels, seamlessly connecting websites, social media platforms, and marketplaces for global reach.Efficiency and automation will become paramount for eCommerce businesses, enabling entrepreneurs to focus on differentiation and storytelling rather than spending unnecessary time on operations.{00:36:28} “So I think the future looks a lot like [integrated services]. Pull in data from the market, figure out the trends, and start designing great products very quickly.” - Ro{00:24:06} “Everyone's just running a business at the base level. And then very quickly, a creator who might have a really awesome handle on content marketing meets a counterpart who's excellent at paid ads. And when you zoom out over a 12-month period, guess what? They are the same business” - RoAssociated Links:Book a call directly with Ro Trivedi from Pietra to learn more!Check out Future Commerce on YouTubeCheck out Future Commerce+ for exclusive content and save on merch and printThe MUSES Journal is here! Grab your copy of our latest annual journal today at musesjournal.comSubscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce worldListen to our other episodes of Future CommerceHave 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!

May 8, 2024 • 53min
[STEP BY STEP] Data-Centric Decisions for Culturally-Relevant Brands
Experts Andy Judd and Liz Mayer discuss data-driven strategies for omnichannel marketing, emphasizing cultural relevance in eCommerce. Key topics include aligning growth ambitions with sales strategies, balancing technical expertise and creativity, and empowering employees for data-driven success.

May 7, 2024 • 35min
[STEP BY STEP] Exploring Channel Diversification for DTC Brands: How to Expand and Not Explode
Hear about Curology’s evolution from acne solutions to anti-aging and hair loss products and its retail ventures, featuring critical insights for DTC brands aiming to elevate their brands. Listen now!Category Expansion and Channel DiversityHear about Curology’s evolution from acne solutions to anti-aging and hair loss products and its retail ventures, featuring critical insights for DTC brands aiming to elevate their brands. Listen now!{00:20:39} “It's all about buyers. If you don't have people coming in the door, then nothing else matters. “ - Steve{00:21:41} “If you love a brand or if you love a a service provider, you should be rooting for them to be making money because them staying in business is the, key to your happiness.” - Phillip{00:32:34} “What I would say for DTC companies that are earlier in that journey is do what you're doing, you know, really, really well, but then start to have those conversations around diversifying channels both in terms of how and where you sell, but also how you reach consumers. You will you will not go wrong.” - SteveKey TakeawaysCurology has leveraged its knowledge in acne treatment to expand into other areas like anti-aging and hair loss.Curology focuses on diversifying channels and products to reach more customers and build its brand.Keen Decision Systems has helped Curology make more precise marketing decisions and diversify its investments.Associated Links:Learn more about Steve Siegal and CurologyListen to more Step by Step episodes.Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more of what we are witnessing in the commerce world!Listen to our other episodes of Future CommerceHave 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!