Future Commerce

"You just went super future on me, man, and I love it." We do predictions as only Future Commerce can - with honest insight into what the retail year ahead in 2018 may hold. Buckle up - it's a fast and furious ride! Let us know your predictions for 2018! Who knows, maybe we'll share them on the show. Go super future on us, we'll love it. Applause, Applause: Congratulation Google 5 Home Mini winners! Thanks, and congratulations to all the winners. Remember to sign up for our FC Insiders for more weekly content and giveaways. LEGITIMATE PREDICTIONS EPISODE We reserve the right to predict more things as the year goes on. A wise person once said: "How can you achieve your 10 year plan in the next 6 months?" Round 1 Rolling thunder round: retail consolidation: More retailers that don't belong in the landscape will go out of business. We'll continue to see retailers coming together that belong together And we'll continue to see a weeding out of retailers that belong in the landscape. Invest in tech. If you can't invest in tech, you're marching toward bankruptcy. We'll see more services like Westfield's OneMarket: retailers sharing data and tech to provide high end experiences for their customers. Physical space is no longer at a premium. The premium space will be experiences in, and access to, tech and data. Philip's challenge: if you can only come up with technology for technology's tech, then you're in for some woes in your business. Round 2 Flagship retail will move to true showroom: We'll see more stores without any merchandise because they're: Easier to stand up. Easier to roll into markets. Require less commitment. They'll give digital consumers the ability to have the tactile experience We'll have more experiential retail. Delayed gratification can work in a retailer's favor: 48 hours for a product is a trained expectation, and an experiential showroom can leverage this expectation in your favor. Round 3 Hyper-personalization: Glossier is already pointing in this direction. We'll see more and more 1 to 1 personalization at a product level. Retailers will be able to have more customizable products based on your data.   Imagine perfectly fitted hammers for your little hands: do it soon, hammer companies. Future plug: R Riveter is coming on the show to talk about innovation in their manufacturing process soon. Brian Says: "Expect to see improvements in manufacturing that result in hyper personalization in products and even services." Change in supply chain and manufacturing will allow for more personalized products. A company called ubiome has a product called smart gut: probiotics tailored to you. Whether you like that with that is irrelevant, we're going to see more and more of this type of specialization. Round 4 More instability in marketplace security: Yet another Fortune 500 will succumb to a massive data breach like Uber's data breach that it kept under wraps for 14 months or so. These data breaches are just following the economics of where people happen to be and be shopping. Recently, Starbucks access points in Argentina were compromised for bitcoin mining. It's not that retail is under attack, it's that all the eyeballs are heading there. Macs serve as an example: they were insulated for so many years not because they were so secure, but because they had less market share. These insecurities will become a fact of life. FUTURE POLICY Ecommerce and job disruption: When deciding policy, you bring in experts who can bring data to the conversation. Nobody really knows what the impact will really be. But you do have analogs to look at to predict future possibilities.   If robotics in automation just affect specific companies in specific places, then the idea that we should let things be is correct. If automation is economically structural, then we have a communal responsibility to deal with this structurally. Think globalization and trade: the same conversations happened on both sides.   There are free and open market debates vs. we should close off our borders and insure our jobs stay as they are vs. the middle ground where we believe there's a net/net good outcome, but we ought to provide assistant for workers whose jobs are lost. The problem is it worked in a geographically lopsided way. It worked in California, but not in coal mining regions. It's the same problem with retail: there are more ecommerce jobs being created than local retail jobs being lost. But you have a geography problem again. The distribution of ecommerce goods is concentrated. And that causes huge disruptions in areas where people are losing their jobs. The next part of the challenge is republicans and democrats coming together and dealing with what we could and should do about this emerging lopsided job problem. Round 5 Identity management and persistent login and single sign on will advance: Amazon will really push on this. It's already available, but marketed poorly. More control over single sign on. Amazon will lead. Payments companies can move into log on beyond just payments. Brian says, "I would rather run my life through Amazon." Google has made single sign on really convenient in their ecosystem. Brendan Eich recently started a nonprofit called Brave that values privacy over all else. There's a growing trend of heightened consciousness of security and identity management and more tools to manage them coming in 2018. Round 6 AR proliferation - of the Merchant-enablement variety: It's not ubiquitous yet, but a lot of companies are investing in it. A lot of interesting "AR lite" experiences already. Amazon is testing AR to let you see furniture in your own rooms. Target has a lego display that uses their app for AR experiences in store. Ultimately, we'll see ad tech advancements in this field. A lot more AR but specifically around tool enablement and Ad Tech for commerce. You don't need tech to create an experience, instead AR is a tech to help retailers, not a gimmick for experiences. Round 7 Brian's biggest prediction of the year: personal big data: The New York Times explored mining your own personal data back in 2012 using your own email. In 2018 the digital data we have is massive. Each person is their own set of big data: body, health, financial, purchasing, relationship and social, personality, location, time, usage, efficiency data, and reading history, browsing history,  search history, chat and voice history. There's a great Ted Talk by Talithia Williams on owning your own body's data. But the trend is restarting a general market idea about people leveraging their own data to make better decisions and have better lives. Merchants: help your customers use their data. We're not all about converging on the spot, we're about lifetime customer value. The best way to make a repeat customer is to help them make better decisions with their data. Look for tools to help customers understand their own patterns and trends. Give them the ability to do what they should do or want to do with that data.   Businesses and merchants have the opportunity to be transparent about how data is used and can really allow customers to use it in the same way that businesses do it. Round 8 Two-part prediction: AI and American decline in tech supremacy: First: Businesses are battling market fatigue around machine learning and artificial intelligence. Much like watson has become a brand, AI terms are becoming brand terms. Example - Shopify Hatchful: they launched an actual branding assistant that didn't do anything that couldn't be human curated. It was nothing more than a brand term. At the same time, China is starting to grow leaps and bounds ahead of the US in artificial intelligence. Eric Schmidt said that the US needs to get its act together in AI competition with China. It's not going to bode well for us is a more stringent globalization economic policy in the us with a more astringent guidelines around immigration will create a brain drain in the US Therefore: Market fatigue and overuse of term AI will lead to stagnation and apathy and we'll lose the global race to artificial intelligence dominance which will lead to jobs overseas, which might then lead to new and interesting products that are actually in markets outside the US first. We'll then have to experience something that we haven't had to yet: that other markets are more competitive than us, and products won't be English language first, and maybe not US dollar based. All of these technologies will become part of a larger whole. The thing that emerges from the ashes of those sorts of tech terms will be brand. Brand affinity and inspiration from brands is powered from how they fit into your life and the things you identify with and integrate into your life. You heard it hear first on FutureCommerce. Let us know your predictions for 2018 on futurecommerce.fm. Who knows, maybe we'll share them on the show. Go super future on us, we'll love it. Credits Transcription - Mallory Triana Editing - Christopher Harry / Podsherpa Theme Music - Spectral Wolf Transcript Coming soon! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From the Gutenberg Press to Twitter - how tech innovation gives legitimacy to our words. Phillip gets down and dirty with AI and warns retailers of marketing confusion. Also - what exactly is Deep Learning? Show Notes Vibe notice: if the vibe is different, it's because this is the first in-person episode with Phillip and Brian and they're having way too much fun with no imbibing of ethyl alcohol before recording. For more information about the evolution of media and journalism check out Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan, a fascinating read covering the evolution of media in the Western World. Shoutout to Kiri Masters: We're sorry we forgot to mention your great podcast on episode 52. We're sorry; we're the worst. Come on the show to talk about building a brand! In the meantime, folks, go listen to Kiri Masters' Ecommerce BrainTrust. Our Inaugural NPS: Very first NPS went really well. It was fun to hear from our listeners. The FutureCommerce's copywriter's job is in jeopary: thanks NPS commenter. The Big Think Segment What can HAM radio teach us about decency in the social Age? Evolution of the written word: the Gutenberg Press gave authority to printed material due to the medium in which it was distributed. When something is in print, it carries weight and authority. Journalistic practices evolved out the necessity for us to bring ethics to the printed medium. Fast forward and Facebook and Twitter over the last 5 years have become the authoritative choice for disseminating news. Riley Florence tweeted parallels between Twitter and HAM radio's early toxicity of the medium. Early adopters had to come up with a set of guidelines to root out rampant toxicity. Retail Prophet Retail Prophet Doug Stevens first podcast says the future of commerce is social. Implications for retail: if some of our greatest thinkers say social is the next frontier for retailers, and social is a toxic place, then we need to know how to behave ourselves as retailers and consumers in the social medium. New mediums create paradigms that require getting used to and understanding. Facebook Messenger Kids What you think it is vs. what it actually is: What you probably think it is: we don't need another product to help our kids get on chat. There's an Inherent creepiness to marketing chat to kids. A real fear that creepy people can subvert the platform for dangerous purposes. What it actually is: a way to control and keep your kids safe when chatting online. It gives parents the tools to keep your kids safe when using a chat platform. It's like kik or snapchat with parental controls. It's, "I as a parent get to moderate who gets to talk to you." Which is smart and healthy. Important to shepherd and teach our children that these can be mediums for both good and bad. Future Policy with Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Daniel Sepulveda: Episode 51's conversation about the Digital Divide serves as a good frame for the policy conversations we're going to have. It's exactly how the legislative process works: a conversation between 2 people from either side of the aisle hashing out problems and solutions. Together they come up with a zone of agreement and bring it to their bosses and the bosses talk to each other, and then bring it to their colleagues and they take it to their colleagues, and eventually a solution is proposed. Brian took the course of free market economics and the rise of innovation as the natural course of economics, so net net it will be a positive. Phillip worries that we have responsibilities to each other and and have communal responsibilities for those who are going to lose out that aren't being discussed. They each held two different points of view, each listened to each other and have a natural respect for one another and were able to have a respectful conversation. / What's missing today is the ability to come together with mutual respect and listen and examine the question to eventually come to a solution That's what Danny hopes we would do as we talk about future issues going forward. Machine Learning and AI and Marketing Confusion: Google Brain's auto machine learning (Auto ML) created its own Artificial Intelligence. The researchers at Google Brain announced the creation of autoML, an AI that is capable of creating its own AI. The babies are having babies. It created something called NASnet that recognizes objects in video at real time and has an 82.9% success rate. Brian wants you to watch Person of Interest. AI term and the Machine Learning terms are being abused because people don't understand the difference. See episode 14 for an overview of this with Jonathan Epstein from Sentient Technologies. Retailers: caveat emptor! Be highly skeptical of any technology provider telling you they're using deep learning or AI. It's only been recently that Google and Amazon have productized deep learning. Explanation of Machine Learning Machine learning is trying to find the best fit algorithm. Think of a scatter plot in Microsoft Excel You can make a best fit straight line with a particular slope that will try to hit an average or median between all of the points on your scatter plot Imagine what that looks like. You'll see that the straight line is really far off the mark from most of those points because it's an average. That means there are major outliers. The difference of machine learning is the straight line. The deep learning continues to perform refinements to the line to get it closer to all of those data points. That's called gradient descent. It's not just 2D it's a multidimensional scatter plot. It's still just trying to find a better fit line, and n finding that better line, it can begin to make predictions about where a particular data point may fall along that line. What most people are selling you is the straight line. They're selling you a really average product. It's the difference between A/B testing and 1 to 1 personalization. Most are doing A/B testing and calling it 1 to 1 because they don't have the means to do it. Retailers: if you're being sold that you have to bake AI into something, or every single product has AI branded on it, don't be fooled. If they are not using Google, IBM, Amazon, Microsoft or Sentient technology, it's probably not legitimate. If you're listening to this right now in 2017, be skeptical. Future AI/ML In a while it may become so simple any founder can use: think Amazon Rekognition and Google Poly. Think of them like the Gutenberg Press: at first it was a highly skilled profession that only a few could use, and now any numbskull can start a tumblr and share their thoughts. Amazon Sumerian for example: anyone can make 3D now. Microsoft Paint for VR. Wrap it Up! Bitcoin Edition: We're making  a commitment to getting a Bitcoin expert on our show! It's doubling again: 16K as we speak. Two news reports have come out. One: Bank of America won a patent for cryptocurrency. Two: JP Morgan put out a buy rating for Bitcoin for 15K. Buy at 15K. We know nothing about bitcoin, so we need to get an expert on with us. Finally: Our 2018 prediction show is coming up! Subscribe to our podcast anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts and sign up for FC INSIDERS for exclusive content. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

"If consumerism is our religion, then malls were our temples. Our temple now is the internet." Episode 53 is all about how Amazon owned Black Friday and while our heads were spinning they decided to take over Augmented Reality as well. Did You Recover from the Holiday Shopping Blitz? Brian favorite deal: buy a Google Home for $29 and link it up with your Google Express accounts to get a $25 credit for walmart.com. Phillip's favorite: Timbuk2 had a 70% off sale on cyber monday. Brian is unimpressed. Voice is Big in the News this Week: Amazon's top selling item for Black Friday was the Amazon Echo Dot. Conversational commerce is here. Even our giveaway was a voice device, because the price was so ludicrous. Voysis' exclusive report shows that 50% of retailers are investing in voice. They reference Mary Meeker's 2016 report that 75% of all content consumption will happen via mobile by 2017. The pull quote: "voice is not the future it's the present." Retailer Challenge: go to your top search terms, or your long tail of search from 2 years ago, and compare those results to today. You'll see more verbose and natural language formatted searches because people are speaking into your websites. Check it out, the data will prove it out. Toaster.co has an article called "Giving Brands a Voice," discussing how to modify your brand in a UI-less conversational interface and what the growth of Voice First devices could do to your brand. If you have thought to yourself "why should I, as a brand, care," then read that article. Market Equilibrium Watch: Data and colo center competition is causing a surplus of space in their centers. Because of that, price points are dropping. So we're seeing price competitive options for people to build out impressive private clouds for very little money, bringing some degree of equilibrium back to the market. The Most Impressive Thing Brian Has Ever Seen: Amazon Sumerian, "the fastest and easiest way to create AR, VR, and 3D experiences." Lets you create all of the above quickly and easily without any specialized expertise. Did they just win? We think Amazon just won. They're aiming to educate the marketplace on how to create these environments. Brian let's Philip know that he's going to build out a FutureCommerce HQ in VR. Merry Christmas, Philip. Retailers: it's still going to be difficult to create experiences in AR and VR in retail if you don't have accurate models of the products you're selling. You might be able to create spaces for the products to live, but the hardest part is getting your models in there. The amount of data you have to maintain is next level difficult. Check with your brands to see if they have models of their products. Amazon Sumerian Hosts: You can create a digital narrator to narrate a scene you create. This is a clear use case for their acquisition of body labs. There's a lot a lot of personalized interaction options ahead with this technology. Reminder: it's still in preview, and it's a novel concept, and of course we've seen a lot of things sunset that seemed novel and unique at the time. Google Poly Program: Google just announced the Google Poly Program. A way to address the difficulty of modeling your products for 3D. Working backwards from the endpoint you can see Google in this space for decades. 3D generation has been part of google's masterplan for a while and follows very similarly their Voice plan. They build on prior success working towards an end goal. They have a vision that helps guide their product roadmap. Black Friday? Black November. Brian's been a nerd about Black Friday for years. Thanksgiving day sales were up by 18% online. They kicked off their sales the morning of Thanksgiving this year. Philip wonders if it's a response to companies responding to REI and others distancing themselves from Black Friday. Brian thinks it's just about cold hard cash. The businesses looking to capitalize on Black Friday madness will find any angle they can to make more sales. If the numbers say start sales earlier, then start them earlier. And now with online sales, it doesn't even matter if you open your store. Holy Cow! Digital commerce 360 said that early numbers point to more than 46% of revenue coming from mobile sales. Web sales were 18% higher than last year. 61% of visits to retail site were mobile, and 46% of the sales came from mobile Have we solved the gap that we keep hearing about in ecommerce that people don't want to purchase on mobile? Brian's theory: A two year old flagship phone can still do a lot of shopping. Those phones are now in the hands of a broader market of people. So a larger percentage of people are equipped to purchase items easily on mobile. 2 Black Friday Takeaways: The idea that mobile doesn't convert is getting debunked. It doesn't just have to be the small device they don't want to convert on, it seems many people are motivated to purchase. If you look across the brands we manage professionally, the numbers are up for all of November. It's not just black Friday. Black Friday is dispersing throughout the year and creating a lower margin for business. Brick and Mortar Brick and mortar sales were only down by 1.5%. Last year they were flat. There's a certain person that loves that (Brian! Cough, cough.) There's an excitement and buzz to be a part of a very specific American ritual. If our god is consumerism, then the malls were certainly our temple. Our temple is now the internet. Final Thoughts: We're slowly moving away from aggregate portals for search and starting to become brand loyalists when searching for goods and services. See Episode 40 and our conversation with Richard Kestenbaum for a in-depth look at this from a passive commerce perspective. All of this is subject to change and nothing is fixed, but this upward trajectory is going to continue in the short term but is ripe for disruption in the future. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Technology can help you take your next step in retail - so we review the current landscape of retail-tech-focused podcasts, provide critique and offer insight into our favorite resources for keeping up to date on retail news. Show Notes Retail Tech Podcast Roundup Jason and Scot | The Jason and Scot Show Retail Geek https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasongoldberg/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Andrew Younderain eCommerce Fuel Private community Podcast https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-youderian-ba74a623/ Jose Chan and Todd Harris, Brick and Data LOVE this show AR goes BOOM https://www.linkedin.com/in/jos%C3%A9-p-chan-b4a73446/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddjharris/ Leyton and Trent Kling Retail Focus https://www.linkedin.com/in/trent-kling/ Melissa Campanelli and Joe Keenan Total Retail Talks https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissacampanelli/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/16365/ NRF/Bill Thorne/Jessica - Retail Gets Real https://nrf.com/blog/neiman-marcus-ceo-karen-katz-putting-digital-first eCommerce Masterplan - Chloe Thomas https://www.linkedin.com/in/chloethomasecommerce/ No audio clips Brandon Moskwa eCommerce All Stars Andrea Wasserman Captain Customer Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

BONUS EPISODE! We're giving away FIVE GOOGLE HOME MINIS! Sign up for FC INSIDERS newsletter before December 1st to receive one of FIVE Google Home Minis! PLUS - A quick shout out to Deborah Weinswig and a preview of Episode 52 of Future Commerce Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Digital Divide and New Classism This week we've entered The Odd Couple territory. Brian's relentless optimism and hope for harnessing technology for a bright future contrast with Phillip's expressed skepticism that advancements in AI and automation will benefit the working class without regulatory oversight. Get out your Xanax and buckle up! Making Walmart cool again Lord and Taylor will start selling on walmart.com with their own special homepage. It seems to Phillip that they've transformed from a prestige based brand to a value shopping brand. Why does Lord and Taylor make this move? Walmart's official press release gives us the answer. To reach a larger market and increase their digital presence. And this advances Walmart's own upmarket brand strategy. The Digital Divide: Many Americans are in a lower market tier based in cash only transactions, and companies like Walmart are trying to enable these customers to purchase digitally. But how do Walmart's upmarket aspirations affect the working class market? Brian thinks Walmart's just appealing to all markets, not just moving up. The middle class is a new opportunity, and they have the scale to expand. Brian's optimistic about the future of technology and the working class:  "maybe there will be more people in the lower class, but the lower class won't suck as much." He thinks technology is enabling us to be more efficient and provide better products, better services, and better life for the working class. Counterpoint: Only the top 1% of earners will benefit from AI and machine learning: Robby Berman posits that AI will serve and make life better for humans, but only the top 1% of humans. A Princeton study on bias in bots explores how AI has the problematic ability to target people for committing potential crimes based off the bias and prejudice of the bot creators. Walmart has a litigious history of negative workforce practices partly due to their workforce scheduling algorithm.   Brian sees the problem as cultural. He wants business leadership to create ethical algorithms and let the responsibility rest on individual business leaders making ethical decisions. Retail Apocalypse: Bloomberg's collaborative article explores the reasons behind the "retail apocalypse." It's not just about how many people have real estate and retail debt but about the number of people delinquent per capita in certain markets. The consumers in debt don't have the income and opportunity to pay it back due to lack of employment in retail. "You can be as rosy as you want about the corporate ethics, if there are no jobs, then it doesn't matter what how ethical the corporation is." Brian thinks we can create better jobs and pay better wages, and maybe it's ok that retail jobs shrink over time. He considers Amazon's warehouse workforce. And Brian takes comfort in the employment rate being at an all time high. AI enabling job elimination: Chris Gardner from Forrester predicts that automation will eliminate 9% of jobs in 2018. "These jobs are not low end jobs, they're white collar jobs being replaced." Brian is again optimistic: a whole new host of jobs will be created for creating and servicing AI. Bank of Amazon:   Internal rumblings that Amazon might also become a bank. Some regulators are willing to explore this option. Brian's optimist view: As Amazon has a view into our finances, they're going to start to help us like mint does by keeping track of our purchases and how they relate to other items. They might even create living type packages. Amazon will aggregate your financial data and help you craft a livable and economically responsible lifestyle. Phillip feels like the foxes are guarding the hen house in that scenario. When you rely on a few companies that do way too many things so that they become ingrained in society, then when that company fails, a disproportionate amount of the population is negatively affected. AI and Permanence: Reuters reported that a son used data to recreate his dad as a chatbot. Listen to this week's FC INSIDERS Exclusive Content on the possibilities of body data and machine learning. Download Transcript Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A Day of Days to Toot Our Horns! Future Commerce hit some amazing achievements over this year:  In just a year's time, you our listeners, have propelled us into thought leadership. It all started with a podcast partnership with the Jason and Scot show.  Accolades for the humble: Forbes listed us as one of the 6 tech podcasts worth your time. Rated one of the 5 best retail podcasts for consumer brands. Brian takes award for most things predicted: Called Amazon's Whole Foods acquisition.  And called Amazon's Body Data acquisition.  The ghosts of future past: 50 episodes ago there was no:   Snap spectacles.  Snap stock, whole foods acquisition.  Google home.  Pokemon go.  Introducing Passive Commerce to you:  Wouldn't you know it: Study released claims passive commerce is the means of marketing consumer packaged goods. Actual data is proving theories we've had for many years. All Amazon all the time:  Brian keeps the dream alive: maybe swole Jeff Bezos is listening to this show acting on Brian's suggestions?  Conversational Commerce: Scott Emmons, one of our first guests, called conversational commerce a fad.   If it's not a fad, at least it's overhyped.  Like VR, the enthusiasm outstrips the reality of the technology. Wait on it, it'll come back.  Remember drake bot?  Thank you to our far flung listeners:  We're going worldwide: Japan, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, India, Pakistan, Iran, Spain, UK, the Nordic countries, Iceland, and even one lonely listener logging in from Mongolia. You're a world wide audience engaged in making strategic decisions about the future retail technology you're going to use.  And you're using futurecommerce to make those decisions: thank you! Our most popular guest: Nick Vu, Adidas: Nick Vu explained how you need to tailor your approach to bringing innovation into your organization based on culture and size.  Amanda Manna from Lowe's Innovation lab: Explained how Lowe's uses story telling to advance rapid innovation.  The answer is super powers. No really, Iron Man-like exo-suits. They use them.  Temper that with Sucharita Mulpuru's advice: Don't do technology just for the sake of technology Retailers can embrace basic ideas such as putting a marketplace on their website.  But Saku Panditharatne gives a more urgent view of technological adoption:  Tech is central to everything, so can't skimp out on it.  ##Fang Cheng from Linc discusses practical transparency in bot customer service: Unrealistic to expect bots to be able to do everything we can do on day one.  Be open and transparent with your customers when they are conversing with a bot or human. ##Brian Roemmele humorously tells us that we're making the decisions of our own destruction:  "Everyone who thinks they have job security, they don't. Nobody has job security any longer. Everybody is going to be out of a job." ##Jason Baptiste talks voice interfaces and how to harness "fun": "A big problem I have with Silicon valley is that it's dry and not fun. Snapchat was smart to go into L.A. and do things that are fun."  How to get customers to interact with your products:  Products have to be fun and engaging and make our lives better. Another Brian prediction? 2018 is going to be the year of entertainment.  Customers want to enjoy and be entertained by an experience. Dazzle your customers. See episode 22 and our discussion with Amber Armstrong.  But don't knock TJ Maxx, man. The hunt is the most dangerous game.  Sears, on the other hand, that's the death of retail. Stand out episode: Body Labs. Using innovative technology to disrupt verticals: Episode 29: Body labs approach using their products and applying them in new and unexpected ways. "If you could easily provide businesses with the 3D shape of that consumer...you could unlock this whole other realm of both shape based analytics and size recommendations." Stand out episode: the last word goes to Caleb Light of Power Practical: Episode 42: "You're not taking a pot and making electricity with every product... sometimes those super innovative products don't sell that well as something like an LED strip that you thrown on the back of your television." "Even if you don't have super heavy tech products, you can still think of ways of bundling it or packaging it so you can make it a clean experience so that someone wants to come back to your brand to buy whatever's new." Caleb embodies what future commerce is all about: Taking the tools available to him and maximizing them for his success in business. We're living in the new retail:  Things that used to work aren't going to work anymore. The new retail means constantly poking and prodding and finding new ways of doing things.  Find people that can interpret different data, and smaller sets of data, and come up with meaningful insights that direct your business.  You can become the new retail. Join FC Insiders: you can expect more of the same in the future.  Expect more thoughtful insights, great interviews, and thought leadership. Together we're going to build a community of retail futurists to help us bring tomorrow into today.  Remember: "The future is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster." Download Transcript Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This week we dive deep into the public policy that reflects the challenging relationship between commerce, the internet, tech giants, domestic and international policy, fair treatment of employees, and the future of our economy. With the help of Daniel Sepulveda, Phillip and Brian tease out the threads and agree that “we’re going to have to make a communal decision to involve everyone in the modern digital economy or we’ll have a bifurcated society” that falls prey to the wolves of populism. Daniel Sepulveda, "ambassador of the internet": Involved in commercial technology and policy for 20 years. Politically appointed ambassador on issues of technology and telecommunications. Appointed by President Obama and John Kerry. There is no differentiator between the internet economy and the regular economy. "if you're business doesn't understand that, then you're not long for this world." On what we take for granted when using the internet: The internet is an amazing act of voluntary human engagement. There is no law that says communications firms have to accept internet protocol. It's a handshake agreement among technologists, engineers and developers who use voluntarily agreed upon rules for the operation of the internet.  A brief summary of ICANN: what it is and how it functions Before there was ICANN there was Jon Postel, and he personally managed IPAs.  ICANN is a huge nonprofit multinational organization acting as an internet yellow pages. Changing US net neutrality policy:  Tim Wu was the original thinker around network neutrality. The point of net neutrality is to keep networks from having a gatekeeper function. Ajit Pai, and as an extension, republicans do not believe net neutrality should be a legal mandate.  They think companies should manage access as they see fit as a function of commerce.  Compromise: Republicans agree that companies cannot block you from access content, attaching a legal device to that content, or charge you on discriminatory terms. Daniel's Take on net neutrality:  The point is to have democratic access for users. No one should come between the creator and participant's interaction online.  Ajit Pai's view: letting companies manage their networks as they want could create revenue and regulatory flexibility to build networks out to underserved areas.  Consider a compromise for a non-neutral behavior with a large public welfare benefit.  Concern: last mile service is still a concentrated market that needs regulation to protect against consumer abuse.  Avoiding internet policy pitfalls: Promote public policies and incentives to maximize public good of tech innovation.  Construct public policies to discourage any technology out of fear is a bad idea.  Find solutions from tech outcomes rather than create regulatory structures to deny tech innovation.  Otherwise we'll have a real political populist problem.  On universal basic income:  A primarily gig economy is a challenge: the law and public benefit systems are built for a society in which employers have a responsibility to workers, we have responsibility to each other, and entities have consumer protection responsibilities.  We'd need a wholesale revisiting of everything from labor law to education and back to public welfare law if we have a society that is mostly self-employed.  How to develop a modern workforce:  Skill development is the cop-out answer. It needs to be much more than that.  It didn't work for steel workers or coal miners. They neither relocated to find work, nor gained new skills for different professions.  We need to "develop entrepreneurship for people in place, people within geography to create and build community."  Communities and cities are embarrassing themselves for the next amazon headquarters. Take that energy and communal cash and use it for an entrepreneurial community. Brian's 2 Takeaways to building a modern workforce: 1: Invest in your employees. Teach them to be entrepreneurs or at least intrapreneurs. 2: Some of you need to go start a business. Don't hide behind the walls of a corporation. Daniel agrees: as a matter of public policy we have to reward that. We should encourage and reward the risk-taking of investing in your own company.  Phillip's 3rd cynical takeaway: The current administration is not going to be very friendly to these ideals.  It likely gets worse before it gets better.  Get politically involved to put the right people into office who have the desire to see those policies carried out, or it won't happen. People have to actually be in office to shape public policy.  Amazon and US trade policy:  Amazon is the most interesting and strongest company in America. Jeff Bezos is a genius. He's in everything.  They have some of the most talented people in the game. They understand the need to spread value to consumers and employees better than most companies. But there is a basic need in competition law, antitrust law, and societal function to understand the degree to which Amazon becomes the Walmart of the internet.  Not having a public dialogue on that issue would be a failure of duty for public officials.  Daniel's 5 year snapshot:  We risk an overcorrection in dealing with technology.  We haven't had a proactive mechanism for working with silicon valley and undeniably giant companies.  With no conversation about their practices, there'll be an overcorrection because people are afraid of how big these companies are becoming.  The hope is for a positive and inclusive dialogue that creates reasonable guardrails and authority for consumers and workers relative to tech operators and owners for the assets in their lives: personal identification data and labor.  We need a conversation about how our system better and more democratically distributes wealth. We're going to have to make a communal decision to involve everyone in the modern digital economy or we'll have a bifurcated society. Photo credit: Getty/Politico, 2015 Download Transcript Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Healthcare is no game, but try telling insurance carriers that. Phillip gets manipulated into buying a denim jacket, innovation in fitness and fashion, Adobe "reinvents" fintech, and the guys go deep (real deep) on healthcare and insurance. "LOL, jean jackets are still a thing" Phillip got a new jean jacket Moral of the story: even when you know what's happening to you, even when you know you're being manipulated but digital marketing, you still buy the product.  Brian suggests the inception theory of jean jacket marketing (perhaps Phillip watched Stranger Things 2?). Pricing elasticity on an individual basis as an untapped area of potential Minority Report Policing in Dubai Dubai International Airport plans a new face scanning virtual aquarium. They are legitimately there to just track your face and scan you and make sure you're not a terrorist of some kind. A prediction: at some point facial scanning is going to drive advertising to you.  Amazon's Inadvertent Market Contraction?  Microsoft partners are getting lifts in azure deployments ever since Amazon acquired Whole Foods. It seems that retail is really shaken up about Amazon kind of owning the world.  Keep an eye on it: Amazon needs large brands and enterprise partners to continue using AWS: a large exodus might cause business contraction.  Something to keep an eye on: maybe the contraction in this space may have a negative effect overall on amazon's business because Amazon needs the large enterprise partners and brands to still use AWS. They can't all jump ship for Azure.  Amazon's Athleisure Adventures Amazon is in talks with two manufactures to create its own sportswear brand.  Both Taiwanese companies already make clothing for the Gap, Uniqlo, Kohl's, Lululemon, Nike, and Under Armour.  Brian predicts "make" will be more important than "brand." See episode 8 for reference. Brian and Phillip meet Michael from Best Made Company, an upscale lifestyle clothing and gear company recently acquired by silicon valley startup, Bolt Threads to pilot a new type of spider silk.  We no longer need a consumer marketing campaign for people to accept nylon or to buy more cotton (Phillip reminisces about "the touch, the feel of cotton.") Shout out to Kniterate, and Bolt Threads, to potentially disrupting the textile industry.  Apple's New Retail Stores: If It Works, Double Down Apple's new Town Square store just opened in Chicago.  Shocker: it's just a big giant Apple store. Retail spaces are more than just about purchasing at this point: this is Starbucks 2.0.  A new discovery: the Apple store and the play area at the mall are the exact same thing, we just don't call the play area a town hall.  Mark it: Brian saliently wins Phillip over to his Apple optimism at 27:47: why wouldn't Apple invest in this more? Why not? Go ahead and make it bigger, make it nicer.  Adobe and Banks Team up to "Reinvent" fintech Adobe is working with banks to merge physical branches with digital experiences.  Brian's having a hard time getting excited for Adobe teaming up with banks to merge physical branches with digital experiences.  Adobe's "sensei" uses artificial intelligence to automatically reformat content on a bank's website to fit a screen inside the bank.  It sounds a lot like they just used AI to build a responsive webpage. What's new?  One interesting point: using a customer's geographic location to trigger a notification on a smartphone once they enter a branch: bank geofencing.  Loyalty Programs and the FBI REI and the FBI worked together to catch a suspected airport bomber by using an REI bag they found in the woods and tracing the purchase back to the loyalty card of the suspected bomber.   We finally found a real use for loyalty programs in this country.  Body Dataaaaa! John Hancock partners with Apple to offer $25 Apple Watches.  The catch: you have to exercise regularly for 2 years with it, or pay it all back.  Insurance getting involved in body devices might herald a move to the gamification of healthcare.  A move to "push" healthcare rather than "pull." Push customers to healthy living rather than wait for them to come to the doctor.  Potential hazards: what if your provider has access to your purchase data? Do you really want them to see how often you ate at Taco Bell last month?  Brian goes a "little bit future" and suggests free preventative care for every American to save the country a ton of money.  Silicon Valley has the chance to make healthcare a game and transform its role.  We have legitimate technology that can help save your life.  In fact, it helped save James T. Green's life.  Puerto Rico and Tesla Grid Update Tesla is continuing to invest in Puerto Rico.  can Tesla adopt their work on a larger scale?  Is it smart for Puerto Rico to privatize their energy grid with Tesla's help? Should we allow the privitization of a fundamental human need in 2017? Tesla's and Google's work in Puerto Rico is a silver lining in an ongoing humanitarian crisis. Cryptocurrency Russia considering it's own cryptocurrency, which goes against the fundamental tenant of cryptocurrency: decentralization.  Bubble watch: Bitcoin is approaching 6,000 to 1 US dollars.  Mastercard announces its own blockchain service. A reversal of their previous anti-Bitcoin position.  Cryptocurrency Domain squatting: everyone is trying to stake lay claim to a name or brand while other markets go crazy.  Bitcoin is still the wild west The Hack Back Bill A new bill introduced in the House of Representatives let's people hack back. It's called the AC/DC act. Metal. Legislation as a defense of people who have to do something technically illegal to stop viruses and malware, perhaps?  An attempt of the the government to get a handle on new threats in a digital world.   Snapchat Vandalized in AR Snapchat partnered with Jeff Koons to add AR elements to his artwork.  It was vandalized.  But was it really? Someone used a separate app, recreated the exact model, and added virtual spraypaint vandalism.  Brian, breaking with his usual optimism, thinks we're seeing a new norm: subversive acts built on AR in different spaces, layered one on top of the other. Lenses uon lenses, with little to no regulation or enforcement.   That bleak note leads us to the SEC announcing investigations into blockchain. Download Transcript Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This week’s episode arc: the future is a nuclear hellscape full of zombies to the future filled with sustainable food, vibrant public transit systems, voice ux assistants for non sighted developers, and a technologically innovative rebuilt Puerto Rico. Sometimes you need the dark to see the light. Google Home vs. Amazon Game over? Target partners with Google for voice enabled online shopping, joining Walmart to give Google two huge retailers. Amazon, what happened? You had a two year head start. Brian reminds Phillip: Amazon doesn’t need to partner with Walmart or Target. Amazon’s Alexa is trying to be branded the same way, but at some point, is it a blender, too? Its definitely a fridge. Amazon’s been blowing their lead to Google Google Missteps Google be creepin Google Fi accidentally throttled half a million subscribers. Does that mean they’re going to renege their promise not to throttle users ever? Amazon Acquires Body Labs Amazon Acquires Future Commerce podcast alum Body Labs for $70MM Brian called it, and he’s excited; confirms that Jeff Bezos listens to Future Commerce. Body Labs is a body modeling software that takes a 2D picture of your body and turns it into a 3D representation. Ramifications for: private label brands, custom clothing, new sizes, sporting goods, and even video game avatars. Uber eVTOL Phillip got an Uber survey; subject: rockets. Specifically, eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing). 100 questions almost entirely on eVTOL, e.g. does it need a pilot for you to feel safe, or can it be autonomous? Show title idea: “I’m running a little late, my eVTOL crashed.” Phillip peers into the future and sees only two options: eVTOLs, or scrap metal fortified shelters protecting the huddling remnants of humanity from zombies and nuclear apocalypse. Facebook Facebook Announces it’s own food delivery service Definitely not on brand: “Of all the things they could go invest in, this is not the thing I’d expect” Oculus Go: VR for the common folk Exciting development, Facebook announces Oculus Go. Affordable entry point, stand alone, embedded audio, “near high VR experience.” Phillip says, “it doesn’t sound good to me, that’s like saying ‘it’s not diarrhea, it’s near diarrhea.’” A clear upgrade in the affordable VR realm: this is not pseudo-experience that feels like a phone hack. Not only visual VR, but spatial audio as well. Hugo Barra, Zuckerberg, if you’re listening, send the guys over for a demo. VR still kitsch: it’s not clear how it makes life better for consumers. Magic Leap gets some serious Series D funding 1 billion dollars of Series D funding. That’s a lot of money, especially for an unknown product. Prediction: Magic Leap is the Solyndra of 2017 Exceptional at fundraising, but nothing else? Or maybe the CEO of Magic Leap is just Killgrave from Jessica Jones. Technology for good in the public sphere Brent Toderian, tweets Enrique Penalosa, Mayor of Bogota’s, inspiring quote: “A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich ride public transportation.” Real disruption comes when convenience outweighs other factors: need innovation in public transit. “The whole world depends on disrupting food delivery and public transit systems.” Shoutout to Jason L Baptiste and his new company, Studio Live. Google’s Project Loon connects Puerto Rico to wifi using hot air balloons. Mark Zuckerberg uses Puerto Rico to shill for his new Facebook feature. Download Transcript Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.