Future Commerce

Spooky Commerce finishes with an epic finale as we explore the mysterious history of Seattle's iconic Pike Place Market. Phillip, Brian, and Sarah share tales of ghost sightings, haunted (coffee) grounds, and the rich lore behind one of the oldest continuously operating markets in the U.S. PLUS: Phillip and Brian debrief a tragedy involving AI-to-human relationships and discuss the challenges parents face as children gain unrestricted access to AI tools. The Roast With the GhostTW: This week’s episode discusses sensitive subject matter, including suicide.Key Takeaways:AI taking on a life of its own: Children have unrestricted access to increasingly lifelike AI tools. Pike Place Market is home to more than just vendors: It's rumored to house spirits from Seattle’s early days.Kells yeah: Kells Irish Pub sits on a former mortuary and a former indigenous burial site – and is one of Seattle’s most haunted locations. [00:09:30] “​​The thing is, the difference between what you were doing and what an AI is doing is you are interacting with real people. Message boards were human-to-human communication. It was just instantaneous. This is like, getting sucked into a video game that has no end.” – Brian[00:18:00] "This thing (AI) has escaped containment." – Phillip[00:25:22] “Brian’s developed a palate that's sophisticated enough to taste the ghost in Pike Place roast.” – Phillip[00:03:35] "The building that Kells Pub exists in is the Butterworth and Sons building, which was not only a former mortuary, but it was also built on top of tribal burial grounds.” – Sarah[00:40:00] “There's just there's so many elements here that would actually enable this sort of storytelling around the place.” – BrianAssociated Links:Check 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 Commerce

This week we unpack multisensory commerce, the economical ebb and flow of re-commerce, and reflect on Phillip’s keynote at the Motion Creative Strategy Summit. PLUS: Spooky Commerce is back. Phillip, Brian, and Sarah journey to a haunted 1980’s Bay Area Toys R Us.The Duality of RecommerceKey takeaways:Tactile interactions produce profound experiences – something digital media cannot replicate. Phillip’s keynote presentation at the Motion Creative Strategy Summit highlighted the polymathic inspiration of tactile creativity.[00:09:30] “Things that you consider to be highly immersive aren't as immersive as you think they are. The sphere is very immersive, but it is not as tactile as Meow Wolf's Omega mart.” – Phillip[00:21:15 ] “I step into that Waymo and I get, you know, a technology rush. It feels like, finally. Oh, finally. It's here. All the things that we've all dreamed of. And I think it's because the imagination has already moved on.” – Brian[00:33:30 ] "Sylvia Brown herself came in, so this brought a lot of coverage to the story…they did this whole televised seance moment, and she discovered that the ghost's name is Johnny Johnson." – Sarah[00:34:15] "What a weird fate for him. You know? First of all, tragic death. Second of all, like, a toy store gets built over, like, this beautiful ranch where he was supposed to live this life, and then he gets to haunt toys." – BrianAssociated Links:Check 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!

From dead-and-undead-again crypto cycles to eBay’s paranormal side, we explore the range of the paranormal in this week’s installment of Spooky Commerce. Listen now!Crypt-O-Currency, Panic Buying and Paranormal DucksKey takeaways:eCommerce giants like Pinduoduo (Temu’s parent company) are contributing to deflation in China by flooding the market with cheap goods.Disaster alerts compete with the attention economy. In our daily flurry of push notifications, we might also be alerted of an impending natural disaster.Despite repeated crashes, the cryptocurrency market continues to revive itself.{00:03:55} "The visual language of a hurricane is lines at retail or empty shelves having been bought out. It’s part of the cultural act of a disaster... commerce is so disrupted in a moment of disaster." – Phillip{00:19:10} "I don't know which is worse, this horrific porcelain doll I'm looking at called the 'Haunted Effanbee Doll' from the 1930s, or the fact that it's listed at $12,000." – Phillip{00:27:20} “I am not clicking that link. Oh, it’s a duck? Okay, link me that one.” – Brian{00:31:00} “There's a lot of stuff that's sold on the Internet that's actually really hard to validate whether it can do what it says that it does. And I bet there are reviews of this duck that make it sound like people had paranormal experiences with it… Individual experiences are what we use to validate whether something is trustworthy to purchase.” – Brian{00:33:00} "Do the delivery drivers know they’re transporting haunted relics?" – SarahAssociated Links:Check 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!

Is the world of copyright infringement getting weirder? We catch up on the latest (and tastiest) brand battles. PLUS: October-exclusive segment, Spooky Commerce, where we take a look at an interesting urban legend that will make you say, “Holy matrimony!” Seattle Suits and LawsuitsMore from Shoptoberfest: Brian, Mike Wattier and Jeremy Noonan dive deeper into our latest report, “The Honest Truth.”Key takeaways:The lines separating brands’ identities are blurrier and blurrier as markets become more trend-saturated. Enter: Muddy Bites suing The Best Part, and Smuckers suing Chubby.Our latest report found that 77% of retailers trust their agency, but only 1 in 5 brands or retailers actually end up using their agency account manager to help them make a decision about what software they pick. {00:14:39} “Identity is actually going to be a necessity, not just for keeping your identity unique, but also to keep yourself from being copied, or to also make sure that you're not copying anybody else…The only way to protect yourself is to be extremely different.” - Brian{00:15:40} “It could help to be more creative. I do think that if copyright lawsuits were this prevalent during the early age of the Internet, we wouldn't have the Internet we have today.” - Phillip{00: 34:00} “We take the bull by the horns on that one. We want to drive that process because oftentimes, the people that are developing these products, they're not in the trenches doing the implementation, so they're not always fully aligned.” - Jeremy Noonan{00:39:52} “Speed equals money, how fast do you want to go? Leadership doesn't understand the intricacies of the actual work itself. They're not getting that unvarnished truth about how to fill the gaps properly.” - Mike WattierAssociated Links:Check 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!

If buying software were a cage match, the RFP would be a royal rumble. Dive into the weird world of software buying and the flawed nature of RFPs with Philipp Krueger and Jason Nyhus, as we explore insights from the latest Future Commerce report, "The Honest Truth."Lies, Damned Lies, and RFPsKey takeaways:“The Honest Truth” report reveals that 81% of merchants expect software implementation to differ from their original RFP expectations.Companies value both speed to market and customization, but these priorities are often at odds. Integrating AI into software selection processes can free up time to develop more tailored solutions.{00:26:56} “[The RFP process] is flawed to the bone. You're reduced to feature lists. And you just tick off boxes; ‘Can we do that? Can we do that?’ ” - Philipp Krueger{00:29:17} “I think AI is going to completely revolutionize the way that we capture requirements, the way that we qualify what's being said in an RFP, and how we do agency and software selection.” - Phillip Jackson{00: 30:19} “RFP processes, I think they started in the late 19th century if I remember correctly. So today, we're still running this antiquated process of trying to figure out what vendors can we work with, which is 100 years old…maybe this is the moment that AI changes it.” - Jason Nhuys{00:52:10} “I don’t think you should rely on a classic RFP process because all vendors will give you their, quote, unquote, ‘honest truth.’” - Jason NhuysAssociated Links:Check 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!

Phillip and Brian debrief this year’s All-In Summit, which touched on coming societal changes due to AI. From the impact of automation to the power of data, they talk through these technological advancements that are reshaping the way we shop, work, and interact.PLUS: An exciting sneak peek of the upcoming VISIONS Summit in LA!Stealthily Building an InstitutionKey takeaways:VISIONS Summit LA is October 10, and your first look at our speaker lineup is finally here.This year’s All-In Summit explored AI’s expanding role in commerce – and our day-to-day lives.{00:22:21} - “Once the hype cycle leaves a conversation, that's when the quiet building begins.” - Phillip{00:36:36} - “Digital security is probably the biggest concern, and all of the benefits of a lot of the tech that's being released right now could just be completely washed out until there's a way through with security.” - Brian{00:45:57} - “Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, says their AI models are going to be at PhD level reasoning eventually…meaning the model can now pretend to be a human. And my response to that was, will my AI agents also incorrectly tag deals, fake follow ups, forget to set their out of office, argue over deal attribution, and insist that a deal is "close," and "We will definitely close by end of quarter," only to kick it out to fiscal '25 on the last day of Q3? …Because that's how they've been trained, and that's the data they've been trained on.” - Phillip{01:18:16} - “[When] we're building abstraction…the intelligence layer of the world that we're building currently, an agent for Phillip would understand all of that stuff and imbue all of my interactions with every system as being purpose-built for me. I bring my personhood to it. It's not being personalized to me. It's the other way around.” - Phillip{01:22:53} - “The whole craze around NFTs was a thirst for a connection to a verified world where digital and physical are tied together through something that is easily authenticatable. That's going to extend to all aspects of our lives, including our bodies.” - BrianAssociated Links:Join us at VISIONS LA on October 10!Video of Marc Benioff interview at All-InCheck 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!

Recorded live from BigSummit, Phillip and Brian join John Affourtit (Senior Director of Strategic Sales at Attentive) and Melissa Dixon (Senior Director of Content Marketing at BigCommerce) to share expert insights on the future of consumer behavior. Dig into the newest Future Commerce & BigCommerce report: New Modes, Redefining Personalization In the Age of AI and learn how brands can stay ahead of ecommerce’s rapidly evolving landscape – from the rise of “omnimodal” shopping to AI’s growing role in personalization. Listen now!The New Consumer JourneyKey takeaways:{00:09:30} "Consumers are shifting from an omnichannel shopping journey to an omnimodal shopping journey." – Phillip Jackson{00:17:30} “One of the things that we found that was super interesting is that the scroll set, which is the youngest generation, is that their mode of shopping is highly influenced by how they feel. And this is a challenge because right now, context is collapsing.” – Brian Lange{00:19:15} "If a brand’s website is hard to use, they think less of the brand itself." – Brian Lange{00:28:45} "What I'm most excited about is kind of realizing some of the promises of personalization that we've heard about for so long, specific to things like segmentation and identity and all of the promise of 1-1 communications. AI actually enables us to do that, which is pretty spectacular.” – John AffourtitAssociated Links:Read our latest report, New Modes: Redefining Personalization in the Age of AI.Learn more about our partners BigCommerce at bigcommerce.com. Check 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!

“Get it in their hands” is Kristin Flor Perret’s (Sur La Table, Saucy) secret sauce to blending cutting-edge tech with genuine human connection. Learn how Sur La Table is futureproofing their business and blending education and connection with in-store and digital commerce on Amazon and beyond. Listen now!Dishing on Commerce and ConnectionKey takeaways:As automation increases, businesses will need to focus on offering unique, human-centric experiences that machines can’t replicateLeaders need to manage immediate operational tasks while also allocating time for strategic long-term planning to ensure future successLeaders today need to be adaptable and ready to handle change, balancing immediate business needs with long-term strategic thinking.{00:02:46} "To be a really good marketer, you have to want to understand people and why we do what we do." – Kristin Perret {00:06:17} "AI can help shortcut research, but it’s still the responsibility of humans to understand the why behind the data." – Kristin Perret {00:07:04} "We cannot replace humans with technology, and we cannot replace technology with humans." – Kristin PerretAssociated Links:Learn more about Kristin Perret, Saucy, and Sur La TableCheck 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!

What an incredible eight years it has been here at Future Commerce, but wait until you see what’s coming next. There is a lot ahead that you won’t want to miss. In this episode Phillip gives you a little taste of what is to come and how you can make sure you stay in the know (because you’re really going to want to stay in the know). Buckle UpKey takeaways:[00:03:52]: "We have a quiz on archetypesjournal.com where you could find out what your archetype is. But it's about shaping or adopting a specific voice in your role within an ecosystem. Your perception and someone else's perception of you could be markedly different. And that's really powerful stuff when you think about it because we are all part of a story.” - Phillip[00:06:08}: This Fall, we're bringing in a new set of editorial voices and some new programming to Future Commerce, including Maya Knights, Mike Millazo, and Sammy Cole. You won’t want to miss their incredible insights![00:10:30]: “We have three new reports coming up, and the first up is called New Modes, Redefining Personalization, the Age of AI. Yes. Another AI report. But this one has a totally different perspective, one you should be paying attention to because we did this deep consumer research, and the insights are really fascinating.” - Phillip[00:13:54]: On September 17th, we're dropping a report on how businesses choose software. And we're specifically asking the question, is the RFP dead? You're gonna have to read it to find out.[00:16:06]: “We will be at the Edge Summit at the beginning of October. So if you are a leader in adopting AI or putting AI to work in your business, if you're an operator that's trying to make use of tools that have built-in AI functionalities, this could be a really great opportunity for you.” - Phillip[00:18:27]: October 10th, Los Angeles for VISIONS Summit LA. Tickets are already on sale. This is the crown jewel of our Fall calendar, October 10th, VISIONS Summit LA, and you can get an early bird ticket right now if you're listening to this over the Labor Day weekend. Associated Links:Learn more about Check 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!

Justin Breton, Head of Brand Marketing and Innovation at Walmart, shares insights on how Walmart is redefining retail in a digital age. He discusses the brand's innovative approaches within immersive commerce and platforms like Roblox. Breton highlights the importance of engaging younger consumers with experiences that blend shopping and entertainment. He emphasizes the need for new metrics to gauge consumer interaction, leveraging technology to foster deeper connections with shoppers and redefining the future of e-commerce.