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Future Commerce

Phillip Jackson, Brian Lange

Future Commerce is the culture magazine for Commerce. Hosts Phillip Jackson and Brian Lange help brand and digital marketing leaders see around the next corner by exploring the intersection of Culture and Commerce.

Trusted by the world's most recognizable brands to deliver the most insightful, entertaining, and informative weekly podcasts, Future Commerce is the leading new media brand for eCommerce merchants and retail operators.

Each week, we explore the cultural implications of what it means to sell or buy products and how commerce and media impact the culture and the world around us, through unique insights and engaging interviews with a dash of futurism.

Weekly essays, full transcripts, and quarterly market research reports are available at https://www.futurecommerce.com/plus

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  • 20 episodes
  • weekly
  • Avg 28 min
  • English

Episodes 20

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  • #480
    Wednesday · 43 min

    Separating Real Signals from the Noise

    Phillip and Alicia welcome Merciv co-founder and CEO Shaia Erlbaum to the show to talk about how brands can read signals in real time, and verify their relevancy. Shaia argues that data itself is commoditizing, but verification is not. The most honest consumer signal lives too deep for surveys to reach, which is why our Signal Reports are looking deeper than stated behaviors and are telling completely new kinds of retail and culture stories.

  • #479
    September 11 · 22 min

    Cartographies of Meaning

    A replay from VISIONS Summit: NYC feat. Nikita Walia and Elliot Vredenburg of U.N.N.A.M.E.D. Studios. Nikita Walia and Elliot Vredenburg of U.N.N.A.M.E.D. Studios took to the VISIONS stage at MoMA last year to enlighten a room of retail executives and brand marketers about the realities of worldbuilding. Their theory: a brand’s final form is decided by the public—and the strategist's job is to navigate that story, not control it. And they use Mercator, Buckminster Fuller, Guy Debord, free public

  • September 10 · 1 min

    *TEASER* The Oreogate Lady Is NOT Real!

    Can anyone tell the staged from the real anymore? On today’s After Dark: We’re growing increasingly certain that everything is fake now. Amazon drones delivering your package to the deep end of your backyard pool? Curiosity bait. A bunch of Kindergarten moms actually keeping up in a group thread? A Suno commercial. That behind-the-scenes footage? AI-generated – but you watched it, didn’t you? PLUS: The minds of Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim have converged to craft what’s anticipated to be o

  • #478
    September 2 · 39 min

    Retail Media In Your Ears: Inside Dollar General's 21,000-Store Audio Network

    The next big advertising opportunity is here. The audio systems in Dollar General’s 21,000 stores connect shoppers with advertisers and drive loyalty. Austin Leonard, VP and GM of Dollar General Media Network (DGMN), sits down with Phillip and Alicia to explain why the retailer has doubled down on audio and the role that non-endemic advertisers play in his long-term vision.

  • #477
    August 26 · 27 min

    2026 Signals We’re Tracking: Commerce Evolves (Again), the Monoculture is Back, and Celebrity Prevails?

    Phillip sits solo to unpack conflicting economic signals: Shopify's monster quarter against a Census report showing eCommerce eating share while retail overall slows. What does this mean for brick-and-mortar? Although stores still make up most retail sales, their mission and value have shifted. The good has become secondary to the experience of acquiring it. Plus, he breaks down why the monoculture returned in a summer of shared events, and what's on the FC docket through November 3rd.

  • #476
    August 19 · 51 min

    Shopify Earnings Go Wild, and American Retail is OVER.

    Phillip and Alicia open the back-to-school season with a modern dichotomy: NRF data shows shoppers playing chicken, while Shopify posts a quarter where agentic traffic tripled. PLUS: After a summer abroad in London, Phillip reflects on behaviors unique to U.S. shoppers.

  • #475
    August 12 · 28 min

    Enter Through the Gift Shop: Inside MoMA's Retail Journey

    MoMA welcomes three million people to its Midtown campus in a good year. But the beloved cultural institution now has the power to reach multiples of that through a hoodie, a Lego set, and a chicken-shaped cutting board. Chief Retail Officer, Jesse Goldstine, joins the show to explain how MoMA inverted the museum retail model, how every product in the store thoughtfully ties back to MoMA’s art, and where the design institution draws the line between rolling out AI partnerships while protecting h

  • #474
    August 5 · 43 min

    Commerce Media's Day Two: The Agentic Shelf and the Measurement Reckoning

    Retail media is now a $100 billion industry. Collin Colburn, VP of Commerce and Retail Media at the IAB, says we’ve entered commerce media's "day two" –  the era where operational integration, interoperable measurement, and the arrival of the agentic shelf matter more than launching another network. We unpack why brands started calling retail media a tax, why Collin says we should blow attribution up, and whether an ad-supported agent can stay trustworthy.

  • July 30 · 1 min

    *TEASER* The Dire State of Consumer Trust In 2026

    It's a birthday After Dark! On this episode, Phillip and Brian work through the current state of consumer trust (it's not looking good). PLUS: Everyone's a critic! The reviews of The Odyssey are in, and Brian thinks Tarantino would have done it better. Air Bud's also making a triumphant(?) return, rocking, some Air Jordans, appropriately. This episode is exclusive to Future Commerce Plus members. Subscribe to listen at www.futurecommerce.com/plus

  • #473
    July 29 · 43 min

    Bedfellows: How Boll & Branch Keeps Humans and AI in the Same Sheets

    Boll & Branch spent 12 years doing the unfashionable thing: perfecting the product first and figuring out distribution second. Chief Commercial Officer Katia Unlu joins Phillip and Brian on today’s episode to discuss Boll & Branch’s store expansion strategy, an AI-generated damage claim that went viral, and the case for stimulation over substitution.

  • #472
    July 22 · 50 min

    VC Partner Predicts the Next Billion-Dollar Brand

    Maveron partner Natalie Dillon joins Brian and Alicia to challenge the consumer-collapse narrative: sentiment sits at post-9/11 lows while spending breaks records. Natalie sheds light on truths of today’s consumer, who is skeptical but continually shopping amid a cultural undertow where AI adoption stays surprisingly shallow, Gen Z turns skeptical, and analog living re-emerges as status. PLUS: Are cults the new future of commerce?

  • #471
    July 17 · 34 min

    Content, Communities and the Future of Publishing

    Ben Dietz convenes Casey Lewis (After School), Daisy Alioto (Dirt), and Erica Chen (Media Futures Group, WPP) on the collapse of the wall between editorial and commerce. Publishers are shipping perfume, brands are hiring writers, and the relationship forming in your inbox isn’t human-to-human anymore.

  • July 10 · 26 min

    The Future of the Funnel

    The funnel most marketers grew up on – see the ad, click, browse, add to cart, buy – did not gradually erode. It came apart almost overnight, as shoppers got comfortable discovering, deciding, and buying inside social feeds and LLMs, often in a single moment.

  • July 9 · 25 min

    Service Is the New Storefront

    You are a VIP customer, and the bot still asks for your email. Klaviyo's Kelly Thacker on why "service is the new storefront" is finally more than a slogan.

  • July 7 · 17 min

    Owning the Social Moment

    Social is where discovery happens now, but it is rented land. You can build an audience of hundreds of thousands and still not own the relationship, because the algorithm decides who sees you and the landlord keeps raising the rent. Recorded live at K:LDN 2026 in London, this conversation is about turning borrowed reach into something a brand actually owns. It pairs the person building the tooling with the person living the problem every day.

  • July 6 · 24 min

    Memory Is the New Competitive Moat

    Jake Cohen, VP of Insights at Klaviyo, and Tim Martin-Harvey, Head of eCommerce at The Bottle Club, sit down with Phillip Jackson at K:LDN to discuss why memory is the new durable advantage. Tim shares how The Bottle Club collected checkout context to better understand unique customer needs and bheavioral nuances to create more impactful campaigns. And Jake unpacks how other brands can apply the same discipline, interpreting engagement (not total spend) as a loyalty measure.

  • #470
    July 3 · 19 min

    K:LDN 2026: The Architecture of Meaningful Connection

    K:LDN 2026 opened to more than a thousand merchants and set a clear vision with several key product announcements: Klaviyo’s expanding toolset has become powerful enough to let a brand of any size operate at a scale that once required a full team. The promise of personalization, long marketed but rarely delivered, has finally become something all brands can ship. Phillip Jackson sits down live with Klaviyo CMO Jamie Domenici and IDC research director Roger Beharry Lall to break down the trends

  • June 29 · 2 min

    *TEASER* Was E.T. Slimy or Dry?

    On this edition of After Dark: Spielberg's flop(?), GLP-1s are melting nightlife, Midjourney's health pivot, and why this is the Bad Place. this episode is exclusive to Future Commerce Plus members – sign up now at futurecommerce.com/plus.

  • #469
    June 24 · 56 min

    Korean 'Dopamine Sites' Let You Shop Without Shopping

    Phillip and Brian run the docket: why "proof of work" is the new luxury signal, what the AI export-control fight shares with a brand guarding its trade secrets, and how AI is flooding the patent office while quietly favoring incumbents. But perhaps the most profound part of the conversation lies in two trends taking internet culture by storm. "Tasteslop" and Korea's "dopamine sites" appear as distinct ideas, but they’re actually two faces of the same impulse: consumption stripped down to pure

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