Infinite Shelf - An Omnichannel Podcast by Future Commerce

Is it possible for a brand to actually change consumer perception? Are you thinking about your values before you hit the order button? Do influencers affect your purchasing habits? Erika Dyer, Producer at Future Commerce and Infinite Shelf, joins Ingrid and Orchid to offer a Gen Z perspective on what’s working and...what’s really not.

A Little Sus

• {00:16:03} “We think about this all the time. Which age group influencer is the individual that we're trying to connect with whatever type of audience it is? We as marketers, maybe our egos get a little bit in the way of just allowing the consumers to make those determinations for themselves.” - Ingrid
• {00:18:29} “There is no perfect answer because the category in which you operate, I think the nascency of your brand as well, all of that will actually shape the type of influencers or people you want to hear from when it comes to whatever that product is or recommending that product.” - Orchid
• {00:21:16} “I think two things can be true at the same time. But I agree. What you're pointing out is that there is this inconsistency between language and actions.” - Orchid
• {00:23:27} “I don't necessarily think anything she's doing is groundbreaking. People just like to see a pretty girl on their feed and they're like, "Everything she touches is so pretty." She's rich. That's a lot of rich girls, and she knows how to act in front of a camera. And I think she's our reality star, but instead of seeing her on a big screen, we're seeing her every single day on our phones.” - Erika
• {00:35:27} “It's really, really difficult, in my view, to change a consumer perception of a brand, and a lot of brands I think have attempted to do it and spent absurd amounts of money and didn't probably get what they were expecting to get out of those investments. But there are some brands that are doing that.” - Ingrid
• {00:39:21} “That's another new marketing thing where it doesn't have to be that people are just buying the actual product, but they're literally marketing it for you. They're showing how aspirational your product is. They're telling that story on your behalf. It's gold.” - Ingrid
• {00:45:18} “I think Succession sort of debunked a lot of what the general public would have assumed a really, really wealthy family would dress like. They're not wearing the Chanel-branded sunglasses with the big CC on them.” - Ingrid

Associated Links:

• Follow Infinite Shelf on Instagram
• Want to hear more? Check out past episodes here
• Love your new co-host? Check her out on LinkedIn
• Check out other Future Commerce podcasts

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!

Ingrid and Orchid sit down to dish out their hot takes on what is happening in the news. Does Threads have what it takes to survive? Did Instant Pot “sh*t the bed” when it came to customer retention and repeat sales? Did Vanmoof invest too much money into a niche market? Tune in to find out.

Battle for Attention

• {00:11:32} “Whether or not Threads is going to be a place where legitimate discourse happens, based on pieces written by career journalists, or if it's just going to be an echo chamber all over again of people who have limited experience but tend to amplify each other, that's still to be seen.” - Orchid
• {00:18:18} “You have to have an interesting relationship with the platform itself so that if users use it for something that is entirely different from what you intended or maybe envisioned for yourself, you have to be okay with that.” - Orchid
• {00:20:27} “When you think about the cult of personality or when you think about innovation, most of the time folks lean into, "Oh, this thing has never existed before and now it exists." And if you look at the entire model in China, it is to copy and improve and optimize. And that is a type of innovation as well, which is to take one idea and apply it into another vertical or another industry, or to launch something that's a better version of X.” - Orchid
• {00:24:58} “I really like the idea of the people who make that neighborhood Twitter what it is, if they're not treated with respect and understood that there's going to be another alternative that will allow them to have the platform that they want that they use.” - Ingrid
• {00:40:58} “Instapot had this ability to be this cult product and lead this whole band of fans that they earned and they just didn't. And that to me is like, sorry, but whoever's like running marketing or community management there, you shit the bed.” - Ingrid
• {00:41:42} “The takeaway is do not ignore your fans. Ignite that flame. Facilitate the conversations. They're going to buy the new version. They're going to buy the air fryer. They're going to buy all the other stuff if you're facilitating the larger conversation.” - Ingrid

Associated Links:

• Follow Infinite Shelf on Instagram
• Want to hear more? Check out past episodes here
• Love your new co-host? Check her out on LinkedIn
• Check out other Future Commerce podcasts

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!

At some point, we all find ourselves stuck in our mission to accomplish a goal. We're unable to move forward, solve the problem, or convince people to see things in a new way. We just get frustrated. These are moments where the connections that we make with the humans around us make a huge difference. Michelle Bacharach, Founder/CEO of FindMine joins Ingrid today to chat about empowering our teams in this mission. Listen now!

Building Successful Innovation Teams

• {00:02:41} “So most brands and retailers have more products than they can produce high quality content for.” - Michelle
• {00:07:36} “Because a lot of innovation teams don't have budget, and then they either expect a free pilot, which sometimes that works for the startups business model. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you just can't give away a free pilot.” - Michelle
• {00:16:55} “Oh, the second one is really about kind of organizational structure in terms of like breaking down silos because we're a small company, we don't have this problem, and so it's very easy to stand on my pedestal and say ‘You shouldn't have silos in your organization,’...” - Michelle
• {00:20:03} “And so you have to set up your organization in order to be where the customer is. And the customer frankly, is just everywhere, especially in this post-COVID world.” - Ingrid
• {00:28:03} “Yeah, I think that the difference is organizations that view tech as a means to an end and then organizations who treat them like they're the end in of itself.” - Michelle
• {00:32:33} “So you're going to still have to go to marketing, you're still going to have to go to retail, you're still going to have to go to the email teams and the eCom teams and the merchants all kind of separate. And the innovation team members know those people really well. They understand the organization. They know who the power players are.” - Michelle
• {00:35:39} “So it's really important to just keep them in mind that how someone's relationship with their boss can make or break whether they want to use your software in their day to day. And I think so often software sales teams forget about that that it all comes back to human behavior at the end of the day.” - Michelle

Associated Links:

• Check out Michelle on LinkedIn
• Visit the FindMine website
• Love your new host? Check her out on LinkedIn
• Check out other Future Commerce podcasts

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

It’s Ask Me Anything Day here on the Pod and Orchid and Ingrid drop some great advice in today’s episode. Could Toys R Us have survived if they adapted? Is the Age of the Influencer coming to an end? Tune in to hear your questions answered and check out our Instagram @_infiniteshelf for a post-episode treat!

Get Your Sh*t Together

• {00:02:16} “A significant trend is that retailers know they have to rethink the in-store experience, but they're not quite sure how to do it. A prime example of a fail in this is Toys R Us.” - Orchid
• {00:09:32} “This is the modern iteration of what {a lifestyle brand} is: merging the in-store experience, using the retail, having online, having all of those things.” - Ingrid
• {00:12:29} “The new trend in maximizing your square footage is the services and the experience and the reason to go somewhere physically, which actually means quite the opposite of pack more sh*t in there. It actually means really, really curate things because people are completely overwhelmed with choice anyway.” - Ingrid
• {00:18:03} “I'm convinced that if you're brought into a Target and it's a pleasant experience with a Starbucks that you can get free refills on, you're going to spend more time there and increase that single transaction over going into a crowded Macy's where you can't find anything, you feel overwhelmed and then you just turn around and head out again.” - Orchid
• {00:22:10} “There is a healthy balance of a strong work ethic and knowing that you can succeed at something without putting so much pressure on yourself that you burn yourself out.” - Orchid
• {00:23:27} “There are seasons of your work life in the same way that there are seasons in every other aspect of your life.” - Ingrid
• {00:30:00} “The age of the influencer won’t end, but brands do need to activate more thoughtfully and stop spraying and praying with influencers the way that they once did with buying TV.” - Ingrid

Associated Links:

• Follow Infinite Shelf on Instagram
• Want to hear more? Check out past episodes here
• Love your new co-host? Check her out on LinkedIn
• Check out other Future Commerce podcasts

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!

Workshopping for the Future

• Joe Fisch is the CEO of Wine Access, a web platform that makes it easy to discover wines through expert curation and their satisfaction guarantee.
• Wine Access is all about curation, content, and customer service. Joe believes that these three things are the core to Wine Access and everything else builds around it
• “Any time I'm meeting with anyone on my team, I always ask how they see the world? Is it through numbers? Is it through sounds? Is it through words? Is it through feelings? And have always tried to guide people in that way.” -Joe
• How they took a fast approach to scaling, and the appropriate steps they chose to follow from where they were going top line, how many bodies they would need, and how looking at a variable method could sometimes damage the infrastructure.
• “We said, OK, if we keep beating the drum and we hit the same core things of curation, content, and customer service, and we hit those over and over again, we can be a really successful company.” -Joe
• Joe and the Wine Access team are looking at the future on how to continue scaling and working with a new structure, so it’s time to workshop!
• To begin workshopping, it's important to look at the organization rationally, taking out the names of people in the positions, and just looking at the position
• When looking at each role independently, you can start to see the gaps in where an employee might need more help, or where they can create a separate new role in a different position, and bring on another strategic employee to fill the gaps
• “As your company grows and as your priorities change, it's really important on both sides, the employer and the employee, to take an honest look and determine whether what the company is doing is serving both parties.” -Ingrid

Associated Links:

• Learn more about Joe Fisch and Wine Access
• Think Again by Adam Grant

Stay in the loop with Infinite Shelf! Let us know your thoughts on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn or Facebook. We love hearing from our listeners!