Future Commerce

In this episode, we explore the dynamic interplay between traditional and new media with insights from retail analyst Heetha Herzog and culture writer Kate Lindsay live from VISIONS Summit: NYC. Moderated by Phillip, this conversation covers how media consumption shapes our reality, the influence of monocultural events, and the generational shifts in media platforms. We examine the evolving roles of traditional and new media, the impact of AI on marketing, and the rising significance of authenticity and community in consumer behavior. Listen now!

“Media Matters”

Key takeaways:

• [03:03] Kate Lindsay: "The barometer for when something has hit monoculture is when Twitter is just unusable if it's something you don't want to talk about."
• [05:00] Heetha Herzog: "There's a whole part of the population that still watches nightly news. They might be older, but they still consume that and watch it."
• [11:08] Phillip: "You also don't need someone's permission to post a TikTok, but there's still some prestige around the permission-gate kept media."
• [19:55] Kate Lindsay: "With tools like TikTok and Substack and Twitter, where you're seeing everyone talking at once, trends are really more what these gatekeepers pick up on and decide to elevate."
• Events like the Trump trial and Taylor Swift's album release dominate media, creating unavoidable online conversations.
• Younger generations gravitate towards platforms like TikTok, while older generations remain loyal to traditional media, indicating a shift in how content is consumed and trusted.
• The desire for luxury items and the rise of "dupe culture" reflect deeper psychological needs for identity and community, influencing consumer behavior.
• The prestige of traditional media is challenged by the authenticity of new media influencers, reshaping how trust is built and maintained in the digital age.

Associated Links:

Links & Resources:

• Check out Future Commerce on YouTube
• Check out Future Commerce+ for exclusive content and save on merch and print
• Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world
• Listen to our other episodes of 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!

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.” - Rabah

Associated Links:

• Learn more about Rabah Rahil and FERMÀT
• Have 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

In this episode, we talk about marketplaces, subscription services, the K-Shaped economy recovery, and more.

“The Future of Every Brand is a Marketplace”

• In Future Commerce #041, Sucharita Mulpuru said that marketplaces are where businesses are going to thrive.
• “Consumers want more in their online shopping experience and they want to be able to transact more often with the brands that they know and love in products that aren’t just the core.” - Phillip Jackson
• Moving towards a marketplace strategy has a lot of moving factors—operations, partnerships, capabilities. “Implementing and managing a marketplace is not just about technology. It’s about strategy.” - Phillip Jackson
• Marketplace is becoming more normalized for eCommerce brands, in the same way that AR and VR have taken time to normalize and implement.

K-Shaped Recovery

• Marketplace shipping times haven’t been trusted recently and there’s a movement back into stores due to poor customer service in the rise in eCommerce during the spring.
• There’s an expectation of a 25-35% increase in eCommerce sales for the holidays, compared to 1-1.5% increase in retail. This is going to cause problems in supply/delivery chains for eCommerce and in social distancing and capacity limitations in retail.
• Customer service will be the most important thing for eCommerce during the holidays. With shipping delays and product supply challenges, merchants will need to proactively communicate with their shoppers.

Walmart+

• 11% of Americans have subscribed to Walmart+, Walmart’s subscription service for free deliveries and other benefits.
• Walmart+ is a direct competitor to Amazon Prime and Walmart has spent a lot of time strategically trying to “catch up to” Amazon. Different services have different appeals (for example: Walmart with fuel and groceries, Amazon with Prime Video) and Walmart is trying to see what sticks.

Twilio/Segment Acquisition

• Twilio acquired Segment, a standalone CRM tool for eCommerce. Bundling and integrating the subscriber information from Twilio with a CRM like Segment is notable and could be powerful.
• Tanay Jaipuria, via Twitter: “Surprised Segment didn’t go public - could’ve been worth $5-7B in this market.”
• “[Segment is] doing 150-200 million in revenue... how much more powerful are [Twilio and Segment] together to have that much actual information on huge segments of the population?” - Phillip Jackson

Dollar General Launches Pop Shelf

• Dollar General is launching a five dollar chain that’s in competition with Five Below.
• Target market is millennials and individuals with up to $130,000 income. This has potential to tap into a “Woke” section - like organics and fair trade.
• Due to inflation, the buying power of a single dollar has gone down 20% over the past 10 years. Due to this and competition with eCommerce and the digital transition of retail businesses, Pop Shelf is stepping into the next tier and growing there with the current market.

Links

• Check out Sucharita Mulpuru on Future Commerce #041: “Technology, for Technology’s Sake”
• Insiders #057: “The DIY Economy”
• Insiders #046: “The New Formal”
• Check out our new report: “The New DIY: Retail Opportunity in the Passion Economy” and subscribe to Future Commerce Insiders
• On K-Shaped Recovery: Deloitte’s report “A Tale of Two Holiday Seasons”
• Tanay Jaipuria on Twitter

If you have any comments or questions about this episode, you can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels. We love hearing from our listeners!

The Instacart Paradox can easily confuse brands and advertisers. Instacart is part marketplace, part last-mile delivery, part advertising space, and yet not fully any of these all at the same time. Kiri Masters joins the pod to explain Instacart and how brands can leverage Instacart as a marketing strategy.

Instacart for CMOs

• Kiri just wrote a new book called “Instacart for CMOs.”
• “There wasn’t as much written about Instacart as there was about other retail marketplaces and there’s a huge thirst for information from brands.” - Kiri Masters
• This book is a comprehensive guide on how to approach Instacart and how to understand it for your business.

Fulfillment and ROI

• “[Instacart] doesn’t quite fit the definition of a delivery app and it doesn't quite fit the definition of a marketplace.” - Kiri Masters
• Instacart isn’t a traditional two-party marketplace, but a four-sided marketplace—the retailer, the in-store shopper, the delivery gig-worker, and the brands that advertise via Instacart.
• Delivery is a complex issue for businesses in making them profitable. Kiri suggests that fulfillment as a service is a new business model and Amazon is way ahead. Other retailers need their own infrastructure, but are far behind.
• Instacart is better positioned for the long-term because grocers, for example, are in the grocery business—not the innovation, technology, logistics, and fulfillment business.
• 10 out of the 10 clients assessed for the book said that Instacart is their highest ROI on ad auctions.
• Repurchasing is 20-25 percent of shopping activity and Instacart helps drive this by setting up its UI to recommend previously ordered product to its customers again and again.

The Instacart Paradox and the Complexity of Ad Networks

• Instacart offers great ROI for an advertiser and the demand is there. However, there’s a lack of control over the availability, the content, and the pricing.
• For example, if a certain geography is out of a certain product because of a retailer’s inventory, a competitor could win those advertising bids.
• Ad investments are fractionalized across many platforms, so in order for brands to build their own infrastructure, a lot of work would have to be done to bring in-house skill and capabilities to the table.

Links

• Find Kiri’s new book Instacart for CMOs, written with Stefan Jordev.

If you have any comments or questions about this episode, you can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels. We love hearing from our listeners!

These show notes were written at a time before LLMs were available to the public, if that's any indication of

In this episode from 2017, we covered:

WILL WALMART BE COOL AGAIN?

• Lord and Taylor started selling on walmart.com with their own special homepage.
• Also, remember how Walmart acquired Bonobos and Modcloth? The world has changed, people.

THE DIGITAL DIVIDE:

• Walmart's upmarket aspirations clashed with the working-class market. Perhaps this is still true?
• Brian's unfailing optimism about the future of technology and the working class, with technology enabling efficiency and providing better products and better services.
• 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.

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.
• Reuters reported that a son used data to recreate his dad as a chatbot.