Future Commerce

Phillip sat down with Deana Burke for the 100th episode of the Boys Club pod. They talk the Multiplayer Brand and some of the Future Commerce thinking about what makes eCommerce special and how brand operators are trying to tune out the noise and think bigger than tactics. We're moving up out of strategy into vision and how company leaders are looking at new channels to grow digital outside of just websites. One of those channels, of course, is metaverse.

• {00:11:02} - “There is a percentage of people that wanna participate in building a brand, for sure, just like there's a percentage of people who want to make TikTok videos, but there's a much larger percentage of people who want to just passively consume TikTok videos, and they don't wanna actually be creators. And I think that will always be true. There are these different types of consumer behaviors and not everyone wants to participate.” - Deana
• {00:11:59} - “Any strength overextended is a weakness. So you can be too multiplayer, for instance.” - Phillip
• {00:28:55} - “There's probably one way that capital can accelerate and lose your soul. I think there's another way that having a long, long, long, long-term outlook on preserving the history and the future of the brand can restore a soul as well.” - Phillip
• {00:32:27} - “Gaming as an industry eclipses any other form of media when combined. You know, you put the movie industry and newspapers and television together, and it comes nowhere close to the amount of daily active eyeballs, and time that's spent in these communal experiences.” - Phillip
• {00:38:28} - “There's something really powerful about Costco is not actually the thing, but it's the connective tissue in between the things that are life. And the trips to the store actually make a really big impact on you and your behavior both as a consumer and as a person.” - Phillip
• {00:42:51} - “Innovation is at the heart of being and finding the muse in our modern era. And commerce has a role to play in the way people find personal inspiration and fulfillment.” - Phillip

• Learn more about Deana Burke and Boys Club
• Grab your copy of The Multiplayer Brand for just $20 with free shipping in the U.S.
• Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?
• 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!

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The holidays are a time for giving and receiving gifts and sharing in schlocky Hallmark-style TV movies. Walmart's 23-part series, "Add to Heart" capitalizes on this trend by turning RomCom into RomCommerce! 

• Sign up for BundleIQ to start your own private GPT and searchable data for your eCommerce business.
• Add to Heart on Youtube.
• The Walmart Corporate press release for Add to Heart RomCommerce
• Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?
• 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!

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TEASER for After Dark Episode 4.

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The shift towards low-code platforms like ServiceNow has changed the landscape for service agencies, requiring them to adapt their approach and focus on specific solutions. Phillip and Brian sit down with friend and mentor Jon Klonsky to discuss his new venture, which will specialize in implementing and rescuing failed implementations of the ServiceNow platform.

• {00:12:55} “Only organic growth, as opposed to purchased growth, can be a better line to run so that you don't get ahead of your skis.” - Brian
• {00:13:59} - “So many people, especially if you talk to the investor community, are like, "eCommerce is done. Let's move on to the next thing. AI," which is also important. I don't wanna take away from that, but I think eCommerce is still growing and probably gonna continue to grow and change and do incredible things, and we're just at the tip of the iceberg now with some of the new technologies that are coming into the space.” - Jon
• {00:19:47} - “You have to have a strategy that you can stick to and sustain because, you know you're going to build a team in a culture that has to be simplified for them. I think you have to be really smart and definitive about what you're gonna be doing.” - Jon
• {00:37:25} - “A strength is knowing when to spend your first few dollars. We know to be patient and not get ahead of {our} skis. ” - Jon
• {00:48:55} “It is about focus, but my focus to start is gonna be on the solution and the technology. I'm casting a wider net across some verticals because, frankly, I don't know where all the business is gonna come from yet. So cast a wider net and then I will start to narrow or we will start to narrow as we evolve as a company.” - Jon
• {00:50:36} - “I've learned mostly through my failures, but I now think that that's a strength of mine. Being able to hire and retain great teams.” - Jon

• Learn more about Jon Klonsky and Halokinetic LLC
• Grab your copy of The Multiplayer Brand for just $20 with free shipping in the U.S.
• Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?
• 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!

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**TEASER for After Dark Episode 3.**

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Phillip and Brian sit down with Natasha and Deana, Co-Founders of Boys Club and mavens in the web3 and crypto world. They discuss what place legacy brands have in web3, what the challenges are for adoption, who’s helping, and who’s hurting. But what will it take to get there? 

• {00:20:20} - “A big part of the value set of web3 is this idea of shared and distributed ownership, and governance, but ownership being a big part of that. And I think if you're a global corporate brand, that's gonna be at odds with shareholder values.” - Deana
• {00:41:03} - “As more and more fake news, deep fakes, weird AI content is put into the world, we're gonna want to know what is human-generated and what isn't. And decentralized, trustless, open, permissionless blockchain is a great way to do that. I think that we're quite a far ways off from what that user experience is for that set of tooling and how that comes to life in the apps that we're all using every day.” - Deana
• {00:43:48} - “web3 and crypto, we've always had the perspective that it is just a mirror to your interests and the things that you care about.” - Natasha
• {00:47:41} - “It's only a matter of time until brands like that do see wallets as a new type of acquisition channel for them. Now today, there's probably not enough data, not enough wallets for it to be worth it to them, but I would invite them to experiment, and I know no better place to do that than Boys Club World.” - Deana
• {00:52:07} - “We have found that you have to have a really strong vision and a vehicle for people to come in and play in. And that multiplayer mode has to be in the parameter of a game that we all set together or that a few people set and then a lot of people get to join in and have fun with.” - Natasha
• {00:54:03} - “To do anything in multiplayer mode, you have to be a really good listener and hear the other person and what they're saying and what their vision is and what they want. Many people aren't very good at that, so we've over indexed to this. “Let's co-create. Let's do all these things together,” and we're all just talking over each other. And it's really ineffective and inefficient, and nothing ends up happening.” - Natasha

• Learn more about Natasha Hoskins and Deana Burke and Boys Club
• Grab your copy of The Multiplayer Brand for just $20 with free shipping in the U.S.
• Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?
• 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!

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**TEASER for After Dark Episode 2.**

Get the full recording at https://futurecommerce.com/plus

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The boys are back for a round of musings on the impact of Ozempic and Kim K’s marketing genius! And then, Brian sits for a live interview at Retail Summits with Mike Beckham, CEO and Co-Founder of Simple Modern, who shares how he has built a team that has been built on generosity and relationships and making a real difference in the world around us.

• {00:07:51} - “Manufacturing virality is not so difficult in 2023. SKIMS leaned into a really smart product launch that created a halo around the thing they really needed to draw attention to, and it completely reoriented the brand at a time when they were being both hyper-feminine and hyper-masculine.” - Phillip
• {00:10:21} - “‘Your enemies are your best PR." {Marshall McLuhan} The critics are almost always the ones that provide the most value. And you're right. This is right out of the multiplayer brand. This is critique at work and in an aged, art form. It's something that was purely utility at its start, and now it's an art form that deserves critique or needs critique.” - Brian
• {00:16:10} - “The problem with tactics is that they work until they don't. If we want to build strong companies, we want to build resilient companies, you've got to build on a strategy that's going to work in a bunch of different climates, and that's not tactic dependent.” - Mike Beckham
• {00:19:55} - “I love the idea of building employees who understand the strategy, who are flexible enough and adaptable enough to understand that tactics have an end date. And, yes, you do have to apply them, but it's because of these bigger strategies that you make those changes.” - Brian
• {00:21:46} - “If you're trying to create profit, then giving money away works against your primary goal of being able to make money, but I had this theory that, no, that's not actually true. What actually happens with generosity is when we give, it turns out, and I don't know why this is, I mean, some of it's reciprocity. Maybe it transforms us in a way, but it just tends to be that people want to repay that and people want to give back, and you end up getting more than you started with in the beginning.” - Mike
• {00:24:41} - “We tend to build teams, as these highly, disinfected, like, you bring these skill sets, I bring these skill sets, like a puzzle. We're just trying to match up all the skill sets. But the reality is great teams have chemistry. And chemistry comes from affinity and trust and affection, and that gets built through relationships.” - Mike
• {00:32:26} - “This generation, there are things that they're gonna need to grow in, and there are things that they're strong in. One of the things they're strong in is that they are particularly focused on that gap that I talked about between the world that is and the world that can't be, and they care intensely about that gap.” - Mike
• {00:39:59} - “People don't leave because they got a better offer from somebody close, and I'm not convinced that that's because we're a perfect company. It's more just that we're thinking intentionally around how are we creating high quality of life.” - Mike

• Learn more about Mike Bekham and Simple Modern
• FC Insiders #113: Brinkmanship
• Grab your copy of The Multiplayer Brand for just $20 with free shipping in the U.S.
• Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?
• 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!

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This season on "Decoded," presented by BigCommerce, we'll delve into the intricate processes behind successful brands. Discover how they conceptualize and debut new products, set their objectives, make pivotal decisions, and foster seamless collaboration across their teams to breathe life into a new product.

Our guest on our 5th episode of Decoded Season 2 is none other than Brian Schmitt. He is the Co-Founder at surefoot, which is a conversion rate optimization testing company. He has 20 years of experience in delivering optimization. And by his account, testing hasn't really changed all that much in these 20 years, and maybe the shopping cart and the nature of the shopping cart really haven't changed all that much either. 

• {00:08:02} - “A lot of those sites just don't have the traffic to support testing in the proper way. And they're making decisions then on bad data, and that's where people get frustrated with A/B testing.” - Brian
• {00:09:05} - “There are opportunities for a timer to actually improve conversion rate, but I would say, in general, no, a timer is a bad thing, creating a dark pattern of false urgency for your customer, and they trust you less over time.” - Brian
• {00:24:49} - “We've certainly had clients where the longer that quiz is, the more bought in the customer becomes by the end of the quiz because they really feel like it's been optimized to them and what products they're seeing. And if you make that too short, too easy, and you have too broad of answers at the end, people don't believe to quiz, and so they're less likely to trust the answers that come out at the end of it.” - Brian
• {00:33:34} - “I think the practice of optimization is not a specific treatment of a website. It is the practice of trying things and measuring the difference, of the new thing versus the old thing. That is it.” - Brian
• {00:40:52} - “The leaders that excel in businesses that are generational, like the Nordstroms of the world, that can continue to stay culturally relevant over time, they have high conviction and high intuition because they are in tune both with what the brand delivers and what their customer expects of the brand, and that has to come through in the eCommerce channel today more than ever before.” - Phillip
• {00:41:95} - “If they haven't really dug in and detailed out customer desire, behavior, life stage, priorities and if they're not really able to articulate that, the rest of the whole thing is gonna be garbage. You've got to get to a pretty significant and specific level of detail to develop product. And if you're not able to develop that level or have that level of knowledge, your product isn't gonna be good enough because you don't even understand what you're going up against.” - Loretta Soffe

• Learn more about Brian Schmitt and surefoot
• Grab your copy of The Multiplayer Brand here
• Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?
• 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!

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.