Future Commerce

A perfect rating isn’t perfect. Who knew? Validation on the web has been undermined by farms and bots, and trust is harder to build than ever before. Technology can solve for some of the challenges in building trust with your customers. In this episode we dive into the the complexity of building trust, and the paradox of how running an Amazon Prime operation can help you get better at delivering in DTC. Listen now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com

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🎶Let’s get personal, personal...🎶 But seriously, we have this bad habit in eCommerce to turn customers into segments and numbers and forget that they’re people. Ben Parr, President and Co-Founder of Octane AI and Jason Wong, of Doe Lashes & Wonghaus Ventures join the show to talk about making segments personal, organic, and engaging for the customer. Listen Now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com

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Consumers want instant gratification from their purchases and sometimes it can feel really intimidating to even try to attempt matching the expectation of 2-day shipping. But what if we told you that you can get your products to every customer in 2 days or Less? Babs King, CEO at Fleo and George Wojciechowski join the show to talk about building the process and technology to meet customer expectations. Listen Now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com

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Product returns can be a total pain. But what if brands used their returns to actually strengthen customer loyalty? In this episode of Step by Step, David Sobie, CEO and Co-Founder of Happy Returns and Zach Goldstein, CEO and Founder of Public Rec join the pod to chat about how returns can actually be painless for the brand and a good experience for the customer, driving their loyalty to your brand. Listen now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com

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94 percent of customers will blame the retailer if the delivery of their purchase goes poorly. In this episode, Adam Gardner, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Route reveals how Route gives customers peace of mind and your brand protection in case of a shipment gone awry. Listen Now!

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

Thank you for being with us for 200 episodes of the Future Commerce podcast. In this episode, we look back on how we grew up from a podcast into a retail media research startup, and how building a show in 2016 led to personal and professional growth. Listen now!

2016 to Present

• We launched in 2016. Our first guest was Scott Emmons and we talked about the online to offline blur in retail businesses. 
• Every episode has been transcribed at FutureCommerce.fm. Everything we have said is searchable. 
• “Technology adoption is always slower than you want it to be. You see potentials, you see opportunity, but it’s not really about the technology. It’s about people adopting the technology and how people use [it].” - Brian Lange
• In 2018, we picked up on the coming boom in secondhand retail or “secondhand commerce.”
• Through 2016-2018, we had a trajectory of doing live events - eTail West, NRF, Shoptalk.
• On Ingrid Milman Cordy’s impact on Future Commerce: “Prior to 2019, we didn’t have consistent other voices, specifically women’s voices or younger perspectives to help us understand what other people’s points of view are and what their challenges [were].”
• This fed into our listener study in which we realized the future we wanted to create, a future with more equal representation: “How do we tell different stories through other people’s perspectives?” 
• On Earth Day in 2019, we joined the Climate Neutral program and we’ve maintained the commitment for the past three years. 
• “Most of the future of commerce is just getting data right, understanding how to interpret it, understanding when and where to surface it, understanding if it’s clean or it’s not, understanding how to get it to the point where it’s usable and actionable and has a reason to exist that is meaningful.” - Brian Lange
• Our most listened to episode ever (Episode 124 with Nick and Emmett from Pattern Brands) was in a pivotal moment - realizing that it’s “not just about creating things in the world, but about being able to create the world that you want to live in.” - Phillip Jackson
• It was this pivot that it clicked for us that commerce has the power to change the world because it touches just about everything.
• In 2019, we partnered with Shopify to create a new series, Step by Step, in walking through what’s needed to know to launch and grow successful retail businesses. 
• In 2020, we put out four reports, forty eight essays, started Stairway to CEO, and launched two newsletters.
• “If you had asked me in 2016 what Future Commerce was, I would have said a podcast. If you ask me in 2021 what Future commerce is, I would say we’re a media business that covers retail. We believe that we have the power with our voice to exert influence on the way that commerce is done in the world and that commerce can change the world.” - Phillip Jackson

Past Episodes

• (7:44) Episode 53: “If god is consumerism, malls were certainly our temples. Our religion is now changing where our temple is now the internet.”
• (9:56) Episode 49 with Danny Sepulveda: “There is no differentiator between what we used to call the Internet economy and the regular economy. It’s just the digital economy.”
• (16:04) Episode 63: Deep Fakes
• (18:48) Episode 70: “These products take on a sort of life of their own and amplify the brand in secondary markets more than the brand could do on its own in direct to consumer.”
• (21:52) Episode 95 with Ingrid Milman Cordy: “Don’t buy a Lamborghini if you haven’t built the road yet.”
• (28:28) Episode 103 with Rachel Swanson: “You want people to feel obviously the content is relevant, but four out of five actually said that Future Commerce introduces them to new concepts and platforms that [they] wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.” 
• (37:17) Episode 124 with Nick & Emmett from Pattern Brands: “I don’t think we’re selling a product. I think we’re selling a way to use your time.” - Nicholas Ling
• (41:50) Episode 132 with Matt Taylor
• (45:12) Season 1 of Step by Step
• (47:08) Episode 138 with Audrey McLoghlin: “I wanted to be able to launch a brand that speaks to what’s going on today and speaks to the customer that we would want to speak to.” 
• (49:24) Stairway to CEO with Lee Greene

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!

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This week, Ingrid joins Phillip & Brain to talk about her impressive baby registry, different mommy personas, and how monoculture is affecting their kids.

Instacart for CMOs and Podcasts

• Ingrid helped contribute to Kiri’s new book: “The power that Instacart unlocks has never really been in the hands of retailers or brands. In the year 2020, it has gotten significantly more advanced in the ways we’re able to actually market to a new consumer.” - Ingrid 
• “I think to stand out in podcasting is the same challenge to stand out in the brand world… it’s all suffering from the same challenge, which is there’s too much of it.” - Phillip Jackson
• “Discoverability is so hard that having this one kitschy thing is a way to stand out. I don’t know if it’s the way to stand out forever and be durable, but it certainly grabs people’s attention.” - Phillip Jackson

Pandemic Pregnancy and the Enthusiast Economy 

• Ingrid is pregnant and has dug into research and registries. 
• “[Being pregnant] is sort of the ultimate enthusiast economy because once you have your baby, there’s no going back. You become an enthusiast.” - Brian
• Ingrid goes into different types of moms: the sustainable minimalist eco mom, the boujee mom, and the Target mom - all of which have marketing geared towards them.
• Ingrid explains her own choice anxiety, giving the differences between her detailed registry versus a friend’s simplified, non-brand specific registry. 
• Monoculture has died. In reference to children: “The only things that are relevant are the things that are influencing them at this exact moment.” - Phillip Jackson

Links

• Check out Kiri Master’s new book Instacart for CMOs on Amazon and listen to our latest episode with Kiri. 
• Check out our newest report, Vision 2021. 

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!

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

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!

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

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 & how brands can leverage Instacart as a marketing strategy. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com

for information about our collection and use of personal data for

advertising.