Phillip and Brian get deep on a week when everything felt a little unhinged: Shopify's AI sidekick started building custom apps, Iran allegedly took out AWS data centers mid-Claude-outage, and the McDonald's CEO went mega-viral just days after Phillip prophesied it. Underneath the chaos, a throughline emerges: the things we've used to measure value (view counts, credit card rewards, third-party apps, and AI contracts) are quietly expiring. Culture is first. Then comes commerce.

• Shopify Sidekick can now build one-off apps on demand, raising real questions about the future of third-party SaaS.
• AI geopolitics is here: data centers are now strategic infrastructure, and the "human in the loop" question has military stakes.
• Meta's move to invoicing ends years of free credit card rewards for brands running paid social, — and that party's been winding down anyway.
• MrBeast's long-form view counts are down 50% YoY, even with heavy paid promotion; the algorithm has shifted to interest-based, not subscriber-based.
• Media buyers optimizing for CPMs are chasing non-real traffic. — Rrecovering a sense of propriety is the only way back.

• How MrBeast Dominated 2025 Using Advertising
• Phillip’s Big Arch burger virality prediction
• Get on the list for the Future Commerce x Shoptalk After Party

• Check out Future Commerce on YouTube
• Check out Future Commerce Plus 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!

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As ChatGPT pulls back on native in-app checkout, malls becomemainstream again. Is agentic commerce ready for primetime, or are consumers seeking more analog experiences? PLUS: Dick's Sporting Goods' loyalty loop that turns steps into spending power, and a dystopian new platform that rents out humans for AI agents that can't operate in the physical world. Everything old is new again.

• ChatGPT is stepping back from native in-app checkout, but the commerce protocol it built with Stripe lives on
• 77% of shoppers prefer clicking through to a website over buying directly via AI
• The mall remains a societal favorite third space, even as stores become shoppable content studios (just ask John Lewis)
• Dick's Sporting Goods' movement-linked rewards program is quietly building one of retail's stickiest loyalty ecosystems, making it a viable competitor to AI apps
• "Rent-a-Human" platforms signal a strange new frontier: AI agents outsourcing tasks to people in “meatspace”

• How 2,000 consumers used AI to shop
• Gen Z Is Going to the Mall Again — WSJ
• Rent-a-Human
• Join us at Shoptalk Spring 2026!

• Check out Future Commerce on YouTube
• Check out Future Commerce Plus 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!

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Jonathan Cohen, CMO of Onyx Global Group (Pure Daily Care & Aquasonic), joins Phillip and Alicia to trace the arc from Amazon-first launches to TikTok Shop dominance. This week, we unpack the unmeasurable and explore what it actually means to cede your marketing playbook to a creator economy that doesn't need your permission.

• Creators are the new CMOs. Brands don't cascade strategy; creators build their own.
• Amazon reviews are still currency. Early investment in social proof compounds over the years.
• Sampling is a long game. Expect results two to three months out, not just the week of Black Friday.
• TikTok Live provides free focus groups. Real-time customer feedback can greenlight a new product line and unlock new growth opportunities.
• You can't dashboard everything. The brands with staying power are building habits, not just conversions.
• "The creators are our mini CMOs. They build their own marketing plans, their own talking points, their own strategies to sell our products." — Jonathan Cohen [00:22:08]
• "We have cut checks for tens of thousands of dollars to creators we've never spoken to before." — Jonathan Cohen [00:22:07]
• "If you brush your teeth, you're an Aquasonic potential customer." — Jonathan Cohen [00:45:28]
• "You're building habits. And there's no better investment in brand than that — because those habits stick with them a lot longer than the ad dollar you spent to get them there." — Phillip Jackson [00:47:50]

• Check out Future Commerce on YouTube
• Check out Future Commerce Plus 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!

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We’re live and poolside at the close of eTail Palm Springs. This year’s conference brought less theory and more proof, from agentic platforms doing actual operational work to the quiet rise of go-to-market tooling among merchants. One thing is clear: AI stopped talking and started shipping. Brian and Phillip break down the sessions, hallway conversations, and briefings that mattered most, and dive into their marathon week of discussions with companies including CommerceIQ, Attentive, Resolve AI, Decile, Modem, and more.

• Agentic AI is operational now. Platforms like CommerceIQ are replacing FTE-style workflows, running around the clock, and proactively surfacing insights.
• Context is everything… and most native AI tools don't have it. In-tool AI using synthetic or siloed data is producing unreliable outputs. The winning stack integrates across all data sources.
• CRM is mainstream; go-to-market tooling is emerging. Merchants are now using tools like Clay, a tool built for B2B sales prospecting, to find creators, influencers, and strategic partners.
• Clienteling looks different when repurchase cycles are a decade long. Brands like Ernesta (custom rugs) and GHD (hairstyling tools) are rethinking loyalty and relationship-building without the luxury of frequent transactions.
• "Consolidation is power." Whoever consolidates information, tasks, and systems the best will hold the advantage, both in business and in AI.

Quotes:

• [00:20:15] "The marketing agent is looking for a segmentation issue... high CAC and low LTV. Those are things that, as an organization, you'd have to surface, invest in, create segments, create a dashboard — and then bother to look at." — Phillip
• [00:37:38] "The job of the RFP responder is the same as the code developer. They become a shepherd and a reviewer rather than a writer." — Brian
• [00:48:03] "What do we lose when we eliminate the mundane?" — Brian
• [00:51:09] "In the next six months, AI is going to own entire workflows without any human intervention." — George Davis, CMO of Cozy Earth (as quoted by Phillip)

• Listen to Kristin Flor Perret’s episode on Future Commerce
• Get on the list for our ShopTalk Spring After Party

• Check out Future Commerce on YouTube
• Check out Future Commerce Plus 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!

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In just one year, Daily Harvest was acquired by Chobani, dropped its subscription requirement, and launched a campaign calling out the wellness hype machine. CEO Ricky Silver joins us to talk about the facts in an industry dominated by fiction.

• The wellness hype machine is exhausting consumers. Daily Harvest's "Eat Food, Not Fiction" is its counter-punch.
• Subscription was a business convenience, not a consumer demand, and removing the gate unlocked growth.
• Consumer sovereignty and business autonomy are in tension with one another. The brands that resolve it will win.
• LLMs are the new discovery layer. Brands must build authoritative, trusted ecosystems to surface in AI answers.
• Fixing the food system requires collectivism, even with rivals.
• "Some of our best consumers were the ones who engaged with the skipping function. Active management meant they were finding the right cadence for them." — Ricky Silver
• "Connection is a motive. It is not tech-driven — even if technology is the thing bringing us together." — Ricky Silver

• Learn more about Daily Harvest
• Catch up on Future Commerce’s 2026 predictions
• Check out Future Commerce on YouTube
• Check out Future Commerce Plus 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!

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LIVE from Manifest 2026: Shipium CEO Jason Murray reveals why AI transformation isn't about making old processes faster but fundamentally rethinking workflows. From turning three-day analytics tasks into minutes with Orca to exploring adjacent areas such as auditing and consulting, Phillip, Brian, and Jason unpack how domain-specific AI creates competitive moats in an era when traditional advantages are dissolving.

• AI works when you rethink workflows, not optimize existing ones
• Domain-specific AI beats general LLMs through context and reduced hallucinations
• Speed of experimentation matters more than prediction accuracy alone
• Adjacent spaces, like auditing, are now accessible through AI-powered digital twins
• Traditional moats are dissolving; data and ecosystem relationships become key

• Learn more about Shipium
• Learn more about Manifest

• Check out Future Commerce on YouTube
• Check out Future Commerce Plus 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!

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Most Super Bowl ads failed before they aired. Dr. Marcus Collins explains why. We break down the Super Bowl as a cultural spectacle: the ads, the Bad Bunny halftime show, and the Levi's strategy that no one is talking about.

• Why Marcus felt bad for every marketer who ran a Super Bowl ad this year
• The Lay's ad was beautiful. Marcus saw a father handing his daughter a lifetime of debt.
• How Levi's turned a 30-second spot, a stadium, a popup, and a halftime show into one integrated play
• "This is not a 32-second ad. This is a constellation of nodes that together tell the story only Levi's could."
• What Anthropic understood about the group chat that OpenAI and Google missed
• Bad Bunny performed for 120 million viewers at home, not the 70,000 in the stadium, and that was the point

• Catch our Super Bowl ad analysis in our Things We're Overthinking newsletter.
• Follow From the Culture, hosted by Dr. Marcus Collins and Amanda Slavin
• Buy For the Culture on Amazon
• Check out Future Commerce on YouTube
• Check out Future Commerce Plus 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!

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Andrew McLuhan (The McLuhan Institute) and Paulo Ferreira (co-founder, Baroes Brand Publishing) join us to dissect the seismic shift from persuasion to publication. As institutions crumble and audiences demand transparency, brands are discovering they don't need platforms—they need publishing strategies. From Brazil's brand publishing revolution to venture capital as the ultimate gamble, this conversation explores how commerce and culture collapse into a single, trust-driven narrative where every brand becomes its own campfire.

• Brands must shift from persuasive advertising to informational publishing
• Brand publishing empowers direct audience relationships, cutting out middlemen
• Context and transparency build trust, but objectivity is increasingly seen as a myth
• Well-informed consumers strengthen brands, while fear of knowledge signals weakness
• Storytelling is the new sales department and remixability drives cultural power

"A good brand doesn't fear a well-informed client. A good brand wants a well-informed client." — Paulo Ferreira [00:58:52]

"With our new media, people have the freedom to find it themselves. Brands are becoming their own campfires, allowing people to crowd around and exchange stories." — Andrew McLuhan [00:10:11]

"‘The medium is the message’ was telling radio people to calm down about TV. Being obsolete doesn't mean death, it means rebirth." — Andrew McLuhan [00:23:53]

"Trust is built through transparency. The scroll is infinite now. The stakes have never been higher for laying our cards on the table." — Andrew McLuhan [01:00:22]

• Learn more about The McLuhan Institute
• Learn more about Baroes Brand Publishing
• Check out Future Commerce on YouTube
• Check out Future Commerce Plus 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!

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