Ep. 100: Interview - From Clarks to Costco with Phillip Jackson, co-founder of Future Commerce. Retail, brand and consumer behavior trends and forecasting.

[00:02] Welcome to Boys Club Interviews. This is a show where we bring on people much smarter than us to talk about the new internet. I'm Natasha Hoskins. I'm Dina Burke. And this is Boys Club. Wait, is it just Boys Club? It's just Boys Club. The Boys Club podcast? No. Just Boys Club. [00:19] So this is our 100th episode. [00:22] Oh, really? Yeah. [00:26] how does that make you feel [00:28] I thought we were going to do something different for our 100th episode. So I'm surprised. I know. We, in true Boys Club passion, didn't really look at the calendar and how everything was going to be lining up. Honestly, it's so fucking on brand. I can't even handle it. [00:45] It's going to be like 106th episode, special episode. Anyway. So yes, the reason I think you might be feeling that way is because this is an interview episode. And also it was just me on this interview. So it's a real outlier in terms of how this podcast usually shows up. In the hundred episodes we've done, there's been one other episode that you've done. So anyway, but that's [01:15] I was cosplaying as a court reporter still. So I was not attending, unfortunately. I was actually very, very sad to miss the interview because I want to meet this guy. We had a great time. So Philip Jackson, who is the co-founder of Future Commerce, all I can say about Future Commerce is

[01:36] indie media bracket that boys club does as well and i think that others like dirt and snack shot and his [01:46] particular editorial perspective is around the intersection of retail and commerce and shopping and technology and trends. And so it's kind of like one part trends forecasting around like retail and shopping and consumer behavior and [02:03] um, [02:04] Well, I guess it's all parts that. [02:08] And anyway, our conversation was really fun. It had range, the conversation. We went from Ryanair... [02:15] in Roblox where people are like volunteering for like [02:19] Ryanair in the metaverse. I don't know. You just got to listen to it to find out. Whoa. I can't think of anything I would have wanted to do less than what you just described. One flying Ryanair IRL, and then deciding that you're going to do that in the metaverse. In the metaverse, volunteering, sort of. So that to... Volunteering even. Wow. Okay. [02:41] And then we also talked about Costco, which I love. And that was really fun. So it was a great [02:49] to listen. Hey, Natasha, what is crypto to you? Crypto is so much more than charts and gains. It's a whole new financial system, entirely new technological rails to enable creativity, ownership, wealth building, and more. Free of credit scores and spending habits, Kraken is your easy to use, newbie friendly bridge to this whole new world. Everything can be better, so why not finance? To get started, go to kraken.com backslash boys club, sign up in just a few minutes

[03:19] On today's show, we have Philip Jackson. Philip is the founder of Future Commerce, which is reporting on the intersection of culture and commerce. [03:40] Welcome to the show. Thank you. Wow, this is like a huge moment for me. And my co founder is going to be listening. So if I don't correct you and say co founder, he gets a little No, I'm just kidding. Let me let me redo it. This is funny. If we leave it, though. It's really funny, because then it puts me and him against each other. We used to be competitors at two different digital agencies. So I like still putting us against each other. Great full circle moment. Well, excited to have you fill up an admirer of your work and your thinking. So excited to infuse [04:10] world. [04:10] Thank you. And I'm an admirer of what you're building as well. You know, first of all, you said we are reporting at the intersection of culture and commerce. And I think what our biggest takeaway was that commerce connects a lot of people, connects everybody together. It is a thing we all have to engage in. So I find it really fascinating. And I think that we're having an impact. We have a lot of folks who are saying that they're realizing that commerce plays a bigger role in their life than they realized. [04:40] in commerce. And that's what we're bringing our own perspective to. And we are newsletter podcast [04:46] research and events. And we have a big event coming up at Art Basel. Great. You jumped my next question there, which is what is Future Commerce? I think similarly to how we describe Voice Club, which is that it's one part media company that produces works of cultural commentary, as you described. And I also think it's one part community. I get the sense that there's a lot of people sort of in and around the Future Commerce orbit who are all sort of thinking about things in similar ways that like to connect with one another. Would you say

[05:16] I would say it's true. I also think that what we have right now is a lot of technologists who've become profoundly discouraged in their work. And I have realized... [05:30] over the last few years of building future commerce with purpose, because we had a podcast and sort of grew up out of a podcast. When I realized that when we started talking to our community, [05:41] beyond just having like a broadcast stream once a week, is that everybody feels the same sense of like, [05:48] purposelessness and or maybe even to say it a different way is like there's an eventuality with the way that we use technology that it has to result in some sort of soulish transaction. So how do we bring the life back into [06:03] role of the marketer or how do we bring the life back into and the excitement back into the role of being artful in the way that we create brands that have an impact on the world? And why is it that the brands that we know and love have such deep emotional resonance versus the ones that we're building, which feel like sort of taxing and extractive with the consumer? So what we're finding is we're meeting more people that are like, they feel unfulfilled in the work. [06:33] find the art back in [06:34] the work that they're doing, specifically working in retailers or in brands and marketplaces. But even more important is... [06:41] There's so many of them that are actually artists. And that was a big unlock for me is how many of them have MFAs or BFAs that are underutilized or have a degree in the humanities. They care very deeply about sociology and philosophy and psychology, but they've stopped using that in their work and they've trusted only the Excel spreadsheets and the analytics tools. So how do we bring back the human side of it? And that's what we're trying to do.

[07:05] On that note, your work has range, I'd say. We have titles here called algorithm identity, multiplayer brand. We're going to touch on a lot of them in this chat. But what would you say your central thesis is to future commerce that kind of weaves throughout all of these different pieces that you're going to do? [07:25] your publishing that really go into a lot of different categories. It might have been different if you'd asked me a couple years ago. Today, the thesis is that the future is multiplayer. So if you look at where everything is going, not just design tools, sure, Figma, or not just Gdocs. Now, these are all things that I think we've all had to use sort of either in our school work or professionally. All of these tools are becoming collaborative. Mm-hmm. [07:51] That is how our whole economy is shaping up. There's a media theorist, Henry Jenkins, who talks about the emergence of the participatory culture. And this idea of a participatory economy is one where the barriers to entry for participation are so low that anybody and everybody can raise their hand saying, I want to be involved. And so the big idea is that the future of everything is multiplayer. There are tools that are consumer tools as much as they are business tools that are creating and breeding this desire right now. [08:21] and that is pervasive and it's in everything, then what does multiplayer commerce look like? So we put out this zine called The Multiplayer Brand. And The Multiplayer Brand sort of sets up the idea that participation in e-commerce started out as being a means of critique. So we had these people that emerged that started saying, this brand's good, that brand's bad. This packaging is great. That packaging sucks. And then that moved into your e-commerce site

[08:51] And eventually that participation has turned into collaborative brand building. Of course, I could go on. It's the mid-journey and AI of it all gives consumers tools to imagine brands to be more creative than brands are by nature. And the wisdom of the crowd may prevail there. And certainly we've seen that in media. You saw the Balenciaga Harry Potter mashup, right? Or Wes Anderson send-ups of what Wes Anderson's take on a given piece of media might look like. So we're right at the beginning of this multiplayer future. [09:21] to be the central driving message, that means that we have to understand how people behave. [09:26] in order to deliver the right technology to the right people at the right time. So if you don't understand the culture of it all, if you don't understand not just internet culture, but culture in particular, like who you serve, then retailers and brands are missing this huge shift in opportunity to be the thing that their customers are begging them to be. I want to stay on this idea of multiplayer brand for a moment. I... [09:48] have a few hot takes when it comes to this topic. Please. And that maybe feels a little contrarian, especially given my role helping to build Boys Club, which is arguably a multiplayer platform. [10:00] brand. So I was in tech and marketing about 10 years ago when [10:07] I don't know if you remember this movement when like fab labs and maker studios and 3d printing was like all the rage and the conversation around sort of part [10:16] participation in consumerism was really taking foot with the rise of this category of fab labs, maker labs, 3d printing. And I would say that that never really materialized. And my thesis for why that never really materialized is because I think that there is a percentage of people that want to 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

[10:46] and they don't want to actually be creators. And I think that will always be true. [10:52] that there's these different types of consumer behaviors and not everyone wants to participate. And I think that Web3 in particular, we haven't talked about Web3 at all yet, but I think that Web3 in particular has over-indexed on this idea of participation. Oh, I agree with that. When I think that I'm just not quite sure that that's what everyone wants to do. And so over-designing for that feels like maybe it's missing... [11:14] caring for a certain type of person who just like wants really great [11:19] content or just wants really great shoes or a really great bookcase that's really well curated. So I'm curious what your response to that would be. So I agree, actually, with everything you just said. I think that any strength overextended is a weakness. So you can be too multiplayer, for instance. And we saw that in the early days of Dallas, for instance, right? Too many people's opinions result in inaction. I do think that the multiplayer nature and sort of the participatory [11:49] Everybody must participate because I would say even in democracy or whatever it is that we have these days in the United States, the participation rate in voting is somewhere around 32, 33 percent. So it's actually a small. [12:03] part of the voting populace makes up the the republic that we all have to live in here in the United States right so you have a small number of people that are participating in a democracy and an even smaller number as those like

[12:17] pace layers move down the chain. So like regional elections, my homeowners association for whatever it's worth, I, there's five people that show up to the homeowners meeting once a month, you know, there's 1500 houses here in my community. So, and in South Florida. So we tend to look at the idea of this multiplayer future as being a really grandiose ideal where everybody's participating, [12:47] It is the change.org petition that has 100,000 signatures on it that brings back a manufacturing process that's been long dead and Kellogg's now has cereal straws. It is... [12:59] the wild right-wing fascists that somehow bully, you know, Star Wars into a specific type of a campaign. It is [13:09] the small vocal minority that does have a larger than life voice and and forcing function on a brand today. What I believe we're going to see are brands that emerge that solely depend on that for their future guidance. And I would even say that maybe one way to explain this even further is to say, [13:30] Well... [13:31] you as a brand leader are [13:34] probably inspired most by what comes across algorithmic feeds, which is itself a multiplayer function. So your taste is being guided by others' behavior. So whether it's one person that sits at the head, becomes a curator of really interesting things, they have to tend to their own algorithmic curation to arrive at something really interesting and unique, which is itself a function of other people's behavior. So it depends on how literal you really want to take this. But I don't see that

[14:04] real impact in this multiplayer future. What are your [14:08] feelings on [14:10] Web3 and how... [14:13] it's all gone down so far and where you think we're headed next [14:17] - Oh, well, let me first, [14:20] Say, I believe that Web3 has a bright future because I believe in open ecosystems and I believe that fundamentally protocols pave the way for products. So if you just have a product and you're trying to give somebody an end consumer experience, if there isn't an underlying protocol that's new and different, then the only thing that you really have to stand on is sort of brand. [14:50] space. So there's other analogs there in my experience that make me believe that there's something really, truly different and fundamentally interesting about Web3. I think Web3 has a brand problem, and that's a whole other set of topics that I'm probably not too, too versed to talk about. But I do think that there are things that can be solved. Identity management, right? Giving me control over my data and who gets to see it. The things we solve are, [15:13] through these walled garden ecosystems that can be solved other ways in, in the web three ecosystem that also makes me feel, uh, [15:20] quite positive about the future of Web3. So for one, the way that we acquire customers today happen in these large data mart ecosystems. It's through Meta, right? It's through Amazon. And they have this huge amount of data around a consumer that is the product of pre-GDPR era tracking policies and privacy policies that you're opting into whether you know it or not.

[15:50] So all of this behavior is sort of being weaponized against you. I mean, that's probably a charged term, but your behavior is being used against you to put you into segments based on your likes or other people's behavior that might [16:04] be similar to your own. Well, we also in a public blockchain have very similar mechanisms to be able to find people who have this behavior or purchasing behavior or potentially ownership around certain types of products that might look very similar to the type of customer that we're looking to attract or the type of customer we're trying to incentivize. Shea Taylor is a longtime subscriber of Future Commerce and is building Shop Through. And I think Shea is onto something really interesting [16:34] but doesn't say web three, doesn't use the word token, doesn't use the word blockchain in it, in that, how do you find better customers? [16:41] Well, we're trying to do that every day through forms of advertising. But what if that form of advertising wasn't just an ad auction that happens just in time that's delivered to somebody in an experience, but it's happening because we have this [16:54] open ledger to be able to look for customers that are signaling to the world based on their behavior that they are a customer that might be right for my brand. Now, again, I think it's so early, it's really hard to say how retailers or direct-to-consumer brands might be able to use that. But it gives me a lot of hope that what is happening right now in the web has an alternative in the future. Because the current state of the web, as closed as it's becoming, and as fragmented

[17:24] of these privacy regulations. We need an alternative. And I think that there will be a group of people who actually decide that they want to experience a different type of web and shopping experience in the future. And what that looks like today, I think will be very, very different to what it looks like in the future. I just want to give a quick shout out. If anyone who is listening is interested in that intersection of advertising, customer acquisition, public blockchains, OpenLedger, Steph Alinsic from Vessel. Yeah. [17:51] is doing a lot of interesting work there. So should definitely check her out. So what's your community's temperature read on on Web3, or maybe crypto more broadly? [18:02] Are folks over it? Are they... Is it a toxic word? It's unfortunate. I think they're over it, but not because of the reason that you may think. Are there issues around the monkey JPEGs of it all? I think everybody has a hot take on that. Yeah. I think that... [18:20] What is more disappointing than anything is the way that the large brands that have had Web3 roadmaps have treated their projects. Starbucks has been an unbelievably disappointing type of a project. I think .Swoosh is an unbelievably disappointing project despite all of the public comms that they tried to do on the Nike side to say this is different. Despite their buying into the ecosystem and their acquisition of Artifact. [18:50] probably the most disappointing of it all is seeing how large brands have done Web3 a disservice through their thin veneer of participation in selling of NFTs. On the positive side, I do think that there are new brands that are emerging that are more community centric and hospitality and luxury centric that are

[19:15] these Web3 First communities that actually are really important pockets of consumers, that are, that probably tend toward people that have more curated tastes [19:27] that will become more important as time goes on. They are the pool suites of the world, right? They are the communities, I think that like your own, that I think have, they've tried really hard to manage their membership rosters. And they've tried really hard to create a brand that always keeps you guessing and is always excited and hungry for more, as opposed to some of the cash grabs that we've seen from the larger enterprises. It's [19:53] ironic in many ways because the big brands coming to Web3 was what was heralded as the thing that would save us all. They bring scale, they bring reach, they bring quote-unquote adoption. But I [20:08] irreparable damage done as a result of their sort of fleeting interest in [20:13] continuing to experiment, I think, in Crypto Web 3. Okay, let's move on. You wrote about this thing called soul delay, modern brands moving too fast, leaving consumers with the form of jet lag. I'd love to hear more about that. [20:27] idea. So this is actually really interesting. The thing that I say that future commerce would would do that nobody else ever would. This is what I think makes us a little different. Soul delay. So soul delays become sort of a colloquialism for this idea of jet lag. I'm not sure if you've experienced jet lag before, but William Gibson had this like sort of short story as part of a collected work that said, effectively, like your soul can't

[20:57] soul delay. I've taken that particular reference, and I'm overlaying it on this anthropomorphization of brand. So what we have done is we've said that brands or corporations act as if they're people with agency, and we've given them souls. We talk about them like they make independent decisions for themselves. So we've anthropomorphized brand. And so I'm therefore saying, well, if we're going [21:27] making decisions for themselves, even though we know that's not actually how it works, but it's how we relate to them. And that's how they talk to us. It's how they want us to have a relationship with them. Then what other sociological or psychological philosophical implications are there? One might be maybe brands can experience a form of jet lag too. By moving too quickly, they lose their soul in the process. And it takes a long time for the soul of a brand to catch up. [21:57] and relating to the way that e-commerce or brands or retail exists in the world is taking these larger, more esoteric topics, maybe like lit crit, and overlaying it over top of this idea of like, well, if you make one presupposition about a brand, then let's use that same presupposition to overlay another topic.

[22:28] Dunbar's numbers is what it's referred to as well. How many... [22:32] Of those relationships, can you maintain or are we evolutionarily adapted to maintain in our lives? And do brands now take up some number of those? Right. So what is Dunbar's number for relationships? And does that extend only to people? Does that now also extend to the number of brand relationships that we can have and how many human relationships are displaced by our having subscribed to the witty, you know, shit posting brand on Twitter? [23:02] It's really a backwards way and sort of backdoor way into having a different type of a conversation about the way that we think of the nature of commerce and the way that brands are trying to be all of our best friends. And how many of those can we really... [23:16] withstand. This really interesting data point is that Shopify, just Shopify, which is by far the most successful e-commerce platform by number of stores launched, they have 3 million stores. And by means of comparison, there's 1 million physical retail stores in the United States. And many analysts say that we're physically over-retailed in the United States per capita [23:46] the United States than the next highest, which is Australia. So we have [23:50] two times as many physical retail stores as we need in the United States per capita. And we have three times as many e-commerce stores available.

[23:59] by one e-commerce vendor in the world than that. And that is how pervasive this, I call it a Cambrian explosion of brand, has become. We have so many of these things vying for our attention now. And it just makes sense that after some period of time, especially with infinite amount of money in a ZERP era, zero interest rate policy era, that some of them would move so fast that they would lose their soul along the way. [24:29] you know, lifeless husk. So that's how we sort of analyze certain things. And I think it's a more artful way of having a deeper conversation about the nature of brand than, you know, what font Nordstrom Rack is using these days. What's an example of a brand you think has moved or moved too fast? Oh, gosh, this is this sort of gets into the critique of it all. I would say, [24:49] Almost every single, you know, pandemic era brand that has raised capital and certainly maybe the ones before I think Glossier certainly moved too fast for a little while. And maybe like if I were given enough time here, I could defend myself about just critiquing girl bosses because I certainly wouldn't want to do that. But I do think that they're the ones that have been set up, become punching bags in the Twitter era. But yeah, there's there's there's a number of them. [25:19] into a bunch of categories that haven't really been very successful for them. They beat their own drum around the virtues of world travel and how it makes you a better person because you'll see middle America differently if you had a different perspective on the world. And that's because they can afford a New York Times full page ad, not because that is the soul of the brand. I think it all comes back down to the capital incentives and the capital models of these pre-pandemic era VC backed brands. They're probably the ones most guilty of it.

[25:49] As a contrast, look at generational brands. One that really actually is very interesting to me is a footwear brand called Clarks. It doesn't have a lot of brand heat, doesn't get a lot of love. You've definitely seen Clarks shoes in the world. You're probably like the mall brand, Clarks. They really do some really interesting things that they're about to celebrate their 200th anniversary. And yeah, they've been around for 200 years. [26:19] other cultures to sort of co-opt and adapt the brand. And so part of their story is like the 1960s and 1970s Rastas in Jamaica were taking the brand and taking some of their shoes and silhouettes and styling them completely different that became very specific to that moment in that culture that was then, you know, was part of a subculture that became a culture that was very widely adopted. And you've definitely seen the look. There's these, you know, ad campaigns of barrels of Levi's [26:49] with these historic silhouettes of these, what were workers' boots for working people in the 1800s. To live through 200 years of a brand's history, you have to become a historian of the brand, and you have to steward the brand really well. You can't make drastic moves, but you also have to be experimental for the future to last for another 200 years. And Tara McRae, who's the chief marketing officer over there, who is a key interview and feature of our new Muses journal

[27:19] she is also betting on the metaverse. And she thinks that, you know, that having a dipping a toe in the future of where multiplayer engagement is happening, one of which is in Roblox, and having the brand experience on Roblox, future proofs the brand for a new generation, because that's where they are spending their time. I sort of spun that into, well, there's probably one way that capital can accelerate in losing your soul. I think there's another way that, [27:49] preserving the history and the future of the brand can restore a soul as well. Wow. Well, shout out to Clark's. I had no idea. I'll be wearing Clark's to Art Basel. I don't know. Okay. So you mentioned Glossier and then you touched on Roblox, which brings me to my next point here, which is about, [28:09] the idea of communal experiences. I think Glossier... [28:13] Had has one of the best retail communal experiences. And of course, Roblox, I think is, I don't know, the category Goliath in a communal experience. This idea of a third or fourth place, whether it's IRL, like a Glossier or online, like a Roblox is, I think, an increasingly important, both expression for the brand and also a community where we find our humanity. [28:43] Roblox example, then Glossier. I know that you have some thinking on this. I'd love to give you some space to muse on it a bit.

[28:50] Yeah, uh [28:51] Well, I do think that these communal experiences, I mean, I'm... [28:56] I am an old guy in the space now. I do remember the time before the internet was pervasive. I was born in the 80s. I have very fond, vivid memories of being in an AIM chat room, for whatever that's worth. Like I... Same. Age, sex, location. [29:26] terrorists back then to some degree too. But I think that the roadblocks of it all as one [29:33] example is just the modern form of that. I think that we were doing that 25, 30 years ago too. So [29:43] Humanity finds each other and we find our people it's easier now than it's ever been back to Henry Jenkins point So the barrier entry is very very low also. It's multi device and multi-platform now, right? You know you you can participate in this In an all in all different kinds of ways you know my kids on their Nintendo switch can pop into Minecraft and talk with their cousins while it doesn't have the same kind of heat that we see in the in [30:08] in sort of like mainstream media's coverage of it. 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. But there is a level of immersion specifically in Roblox that I find

[30:38] or part of a year now. I don't know if you've seen this, but there's Ryanair decided that they would set up a virtual airport. And then they asked, [30:47] people on roadblocks to staff it. And organizational structures have emerged where there are people who clock in and work at the airport. They fly the planes, they manage the itineraries, they... [31:00] They cosplay as as flight attendants. And that is one interesting behavior where people are actually putting their time in as if they're working. And they're not alone, by the way. Chipotle has a virtual recruiting center where you can work a virtual burrito line as a backline. What is that? What is that behavior? What's the motivation there? [31:20] I believe that this is like an approximation for a type of work that people want the community experience of, but they don't want the actual physical experience of. Like Charlie D'Amelio cosplaying as a Walmart? As a Walmart employee? Maybe. As a photo op, yes. I think it did. She do it for eight hours, I think would be the next question. And also that would be very novel for her. There are people that are doing this because that's where they found a community. I don't know. [31:50] 17, 18 years old. And I was like, [31:52] bagging groceries, which I don't know how many people actually bag groceries anymore, but I was bagging groceries or I was working my parents' bakery. And the best part of bagging groceries was [32:02] was cutting it up with your friends or screwing around. The work happened in between. And so maybe that communal experience is just giving you a reason.

[32:12] you know, having something, you know, semi ironic to do that can be shared as well. Also, this is a really interesting effect and something that we also look at at Future Commerce is the Hawthorne effect, which is a concept in psychology of your behavior becomes altered when you perceive you're being watched. It comes from a really famous experiment done in sort of, it's taught in business school of this, I think it was an auto manufacturing plant in like Hawthorne, Indiana, [32:42] I'm probably getting the state wrong. But they were way more productive when there were people watching the manufacturer [32:50] teams on the line working because they were on their best behavior. We have that now through Twitch, right? There's a whole generation of people who are voyeuristic and watching other people's behavior. There's people that are performative and being that expressive, always-on character for those people that are paying attention. And they just happen to be using this layer of meta-modernist irony and making social critique about people that might work at Chipotle [33:20] Okay. [33:20] But brands are eating this up, right? So if you're looking to recruit at Chipotle, who would you rather reach for, um... [33:29] I think the question is, can you take that online behavior and translate it to offline behavior? And I don't think that there's been a brand that solved that in any way, not even in shopping just yet. So maybe it's a completely new behavior that we haven't really seen the effects or the economic effects yet of it. But it's certainly one that brands like Clark's and others are making big investments in. You remind me there, Natasha and I had a concept for a show earlier.

[33:58] called Work. [33:59] And it was a Twitch streaming show where we're just streaming for eight hours a day. And it's just our screens of like what we're like responding to emails and like doing weird. So I don't know, maybe now that I'm hearing you talk about virtual Chipotle employees, I'm like, maybe there's maybe there's something there. There is definitely something there and there would be an audience for it. The world's a very large place. [34:23] OK, amazing. Well, this has been such a fun chat. [34:29] excited about in terms, I understand thematically, but like specific brands or projects that you think are doing excellent work that are maybe [34:41] underrated or [34:42] Maybe appropriately rated, but yeah, we'd love to hear. Man. Oh, well, this is always the hardest... [34:48] question to answer. There's certainly brands and brand leaders that are like, you know, super fans of future commerce that come to mind, and folks that I think are experimenting, and they're trying to find, you know, that future of commerce. If you really needed like a couple examples, there are brands that Brian and I are like, Brian's probably the world's biggest Costco fan. I think Costco does all of these things that we're talking about, and they do them extraordinarily [35:18] really well and they pay them a living wage. So they have that going for them. Huge shout out to Costco. I love Costco. Have you listened to the Acquired episode of [35:26] Yes, of course. It's incredible. It's canon. It's unbelievable. They also are pushing the boundaries of what you believe Costco to be in the modern era. As Brian, my co-host and co-founder, would say, he wrote this article called Dissociating at Costco.

[35:43] The piece is actually about his experience of dealing with loss and how his dad connected to Costco and how that became sort of a generational thing for him and his family. So he remembered going to Costco with his dad. His dad made friends with the wine buyer at Costco. And Brian, in his footsteps, has a penchant for wine and has become friends with the wine buyer at Costco. Now his kids are watching him in that behavior. [36:13] 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. I also think that's what's a really interesting retail experience is five below. [36:35] So the creative director at Five Below which is a discounter you may not have heard of they have a [36:40] hundreds and hundreds of stores, but they're not as one of them. I have two kids under the age of seven. So, yes. So, you know, you know, five below. Not everybody may know five below. [36:49] I think Five Below and maybe the non-transactional video game equivalents, you know, Roblox might be a good example of it. They are so important. [37:00] in a growth as a consumer, because they give you autonomy as a consumer [37:06] as a child to have to like sort of, [37:10] have this approximation of the feeling of being able to shop the way that you see your parents shop. So you can walk into Five Below with $10 and walk out with a bunch of stuff, or you can shop sort of wantonly, or your parents might let you make less considered decisions that, you know, the purchasing power goes a little further. It feels like you have greater agency and more spending power than you actually do, but it's not the dollar store. And I think those are really important.

[37:40] this stuff I watch how they shop in Animal Crossing and [37:43] right? Or I watch how they shop in, in Roblox. And I think to myself, [37:48] This is the future consumer and this is where they're learning how to be consumers and they are learning it for the first time and [37:55] but they're trying to find ways of expressing that in their own way. So I think that, um, [38:01] Having known some of the people that build those experiences, Dan Hoffman, for instance, creative director at Five Below, and he's one of these guys who's got a BFA, who's a sculpturist, who, you know... [38:12] found work as a motion designer and then as a creative director, but feels sort of like fundamentally unfulfilled in his in his fine art pursuit. But he has to find the creative outlet in his work. And [38:26] thinking about how he thinks of a consumer as a muse and how that changes over time and how you grow into these generational behaviors and how deeply he and his team think about things like that, it's really hard for me to not bring up [38:39] those types of brands because I think that they are actually [38:44] They have a lot of depth to them. It's not just the tech talk of it all. Really hard for me to source like a DTC brand that is doing something on that level because I don't think that they're there yet. Well, Philip, thank you. You've given me the opportunity to do my favorite thing ever, which is to plug the Costco episode on acquired.

[39:07] Okay, let's do a quick plug for your event in Miami in December. Tell us what's going on there. Yeah, sure. So I have this, you know, as somebody who likes to try to predict the future. I think that Art Basel Miami Beach is the next great, you know, techno cultural event in in the world. So we saw what happened to Cannes, we saw what happened to South by, I think the same thing is happening and maybe to a lesser degree, like, [39:33] I don't know, Sundance. But we have these cultural events where people that would be future commerce subscribers are gathering, but they're not doing it under the guise of work. And that's an opportunity for us. Because when you go to a work event, right, or a trade show, you get booked up with meetings, you have to do a lot of things, you get to do few things. And we want to be more places where people look at a future commerce event as something they get [40:03] you know, they have to fit five things onto their dance card for work. So this year, we're coming back for three days. We like to theme things. I, you know, I like to put the creative director hat on, like create brands. So that's what we've done. And so I would invite everybody to come to Muses, which is an exploration of the way that we see the modern muse. So the [40:33] exploration. But I think that innovation is at the heart of finding the muse in our modern era. And I think that commerce has a role to play in the way that people find personal inspiration and fulfillment. And we're going to explore that in our launch of our 200-page journal and a three-day event December 6th, 7th, and 8th at Art Basel. And we're right on Lincoln Road. We have an incredible

[41:03] with an incredible art exhibition. Tam Gren is a renowned curator who's come alongside us to put together the modern version of the muses through 10 amazing artists. And we'll have... [41:16] the e-commerce and retail ecosystem come out for what I think is going to be a mind-blowing three days. [41:22] Amazing. Well, I can't wait to stop by. Boys Club will be there. We're doing our own event. So and I will be in attendance. So can't wait to come by. And thank you. Philip, thank you so much. This is wonderful. Oh, my gosh. Thank you to Boys Club. I got all the shout outs when I got the tweet drop a couple. I got the mention a couple weeks ago. Thank you so much for having me on the show. [41:42] When you're first getting started with crypto, it can be scary. Am I doing this right? Is this just like my bank or trading app? How is it new and different? Well, that's why we love Kraken. They have a 24-7, 365 customer support team that's there to hold your hand all along the way. This isn't a 9-to-5, Monday-to-Friday bank. This is crypto. It's all the time. Anyone's welcome. Open-door policy. Come one, come all. Try something new at kraken.com backslash boys club. [42:12] are provided to U.S. and U.S. territory customers by Payward Ventures Incorporated, PVI, DBA, Kraken. Hi. Hey. Draft tweets? Yeah, man, I have a lot. You do? I have a lot. Oh my gosh, what are you holding out? Of draft tweets right now. Okay, let's hear it. [42:30] Okay, there's a TikTok video that came across my feed. Came across your desk. Came across my desk. And it's a video that says...

[42:41] what my husband eats in a day. [42:43] Okay. And it's I'm going to show you and it's like this guy and she's like making food for him. Okay. And basically, my take is that this is exactly the opposite of the type of content that I would ever want to see. I want to see ever. And it's like such a hard pass. Like I had like the hard pass turned around the world. I had like Olympic speed swipe up. Like I've been workshopping a lot of different things, but like, Oh, it's hard to follow though. Run me over with a bus first. [43:13] It is a lot to follow. So nothing ended up getting posted, but that's what I'm workshopping currently. I really love that. That's very funny and very weird that your algorithm... [43:23] would put that in front of you i know it almost makes me think they know that you would hate it and it's like engagement farming well it worked it totally worked um okay i have two things i would like to discuss around tweets twitter one is that i had a great tweet yesterday but the wording was just a little off and so it didn't perform and that's really upsetting happens to all of us and it was oh your favorite season is fall question mark mine's jacob allerdy on [43:53] were. [43:54] So funny. But there's something just not quite right. It's something isn't hitting, but like he's so hot. And I want exclusively content of him on his press tour. Obsessed with all of the content that's comparing him to Austin Butler and how seriously he took it. And...

[44:14] How? [44:15] Unserious Jacob is about it. And I just want all of that content all the time. That's what I want exclusively on my feed. And so that's, I'm asking the cause. Um, so that's one, but it didn't perform. It didn't hit. I should maybe give it another go, delete it and give it another try. The other tweet idea I had, I do not know how to put this draft this together, but there's a really funny tweet [44:39] somewhere in saying something along the lines of like, yeah, I'm not super liquid right now. [44:45] And then in parentheses, [44:48] like something about like my sky miles like oh you're not even laughing well i i don't understand it yet [44:57] I don't understand it. [45:00] Because you don't have enough SkyMiles points? No. Like, the idea that all of my... [45:05] like assets are just like sky miles points oh okay okay like this weekend i'm going to nashville next week and i was like scouring all of my various like uh-huh like various uh sky mile accounts to see where i had some liquidity to be able to get to nashville that's funny that's funny okay tough to find there tough to find how to land that plane but i like it in theory thank you [45:35] It just needs to be, it needs to be drafted and workshopped. I also have another one. I just want to say quickly, I had actually posted this one on Warpcaster.

[45:44] Oh, it's not a draft tweet, but. [45:46] I felt like it needed some more love. I'm all in, parentheses, bought Costco kimchi. [45:54] That's funny. That's that.