What makes people happy? Are brands capable of instilling happiness? In today's episode, we go live to the Visions Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida, to engage in a frank conversation about what motivates a consumer, and what power we truly have in fulfilling their needs and desires. Listen now.

Show Notes

• Are we able to make customers happy? Is that our job? Brands may have given themselves a role in society that nobody asked them to fulfill.
• There’s a value system change taking place where more is not better, it’s damaging to the consumer and to the brand. More products, more drops, more collabs. At some point it becomes mimetic and overwhelming.
• “Utility” is an over-exercised phrase. In the philosophy of brands, to be utilitarian is to lack joy or purpose. But in web3 circles, utility has a different meaning — it means that it provides exceeding value. To be a utility means to be indispensable.
• The lack of true “discourse” in the retail and eCom industries is that we’re not modeling that behavior between the brand and the customer, let alone between teams or competitors. True conversation between silos will help us to achieve mutual understanding and result in a better experience — for employees and customers alike.
• “It doesn't matter what role you have in the company. Go to the CX team, sit down, plug in, and talk to three or four people a day. And I think we do get so worried about some things being anecdotal in a world where there is this burden of statistical significance that we've lost some of that.” — Mike Lackman
• “So every company needs to build a culture of being curious in every single level of the business. And everybody has to be a behavioral psychologist. There's no way around it, no matter who your customer is. You have to understand, to everyone's point here, what it is that they want.” — Grace Clarke
• “It's actually not necessarily about [products and brands making a consumer] happy. It's about peace. It's about feeling whole. And when you're just looking at a screen and you're scrolling through, that doesn't make you feel that.” — Brian Lange
• “And I think where we've come from has been, particularly in terms of eCom, the opportunity to have endless scroll, endless aisle means I can have endless numbers of choices, but actually, that works in reverse for consumers. It actually destabilizes them, makes them feel insecure. Does that give them the security that they've walked away with a purchase that they're going to be happy with for a lifetime?” — Miya Knights
• “We're moving towards more silos, I think, in terms of distribution, and more intermediaries vying for space, that valuable space between the brand and the customer and getting in between being able to collect that data and sell it back to the brand.” — Kiri Masters

Guests

• Miya Knights, author and retail analyst
• Kiri Masters, Head of Retail Marketplace Strategy at Acadia
• Michael Miraflor, Chief Brand Officer
• Grace Clarke, brand and omnichannel strategist
• Mike Lackman, CEO of Trade Coffee

Associated Links:

• The Visions Report is a 100-page report with deep insights, created by Future Commerce.

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