An Introduction to Passive Commerce

Phillip: [00:00:16] Welcome to Future Commerce, the podcast about cutting edge and next generation commerce. I'm Phillip.

Brian: [00:00:27] And I'm Brian.

Phillip: [00:00:28] And today we're talking about passive commerce.

Brian: [00:00:32] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:00:33] And so I'm super excited for the show. We are catching a stride. This is Episode 4. And so we really want you to help us. Like we've been saying, we want you to help us make this show what you want it to be. We want to hear how you're using future technologies for digital or even traditional commerce and revolutionizing. I want to hear how you are disrupting commerce. Terrible word.

Brian: [00:00:58] Or what you wish you could be doing. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:01:00] Yes. Oh, yeah. We were just saying at the top of the, in the pre show, we were just saying commerce or Future Commerce: the things that everybody talks about doing, but nobody actually does.

Brian: [00:01:14] Yeah. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:01:15] But anyway, we want you to give... We want to get your feedback about today's show. So please leave us some feedback. If you're listening on FutureCommerce.fm right now, scroll down to the bottom. There's a Disqus box. We want to hear your feedback about this show. You can also subscribe on iTunes or the Google Play store, or you can listen right from your Amazon Echo with TuneIn radio with the phrase, "Alexa, play Future Commerce." And so we want you to plug in, get ready. We got a great show for you today.

Brian: [00:01:44] Yeah. Yes, we do.

Phillip: [00:01:46] We do.

Brian: [00:01:47] How are you today, Phillip, anyway?

Phillip: [00:01:49] I am good. We are you know, we are sort of in the middle of conference season. There's a lot of conferences that are just wrapped up. I think we're in the middle of summer. And so I'm hoping that things sort of settle in. You know, now is the time when merchants are starting to think about their end of year plans. You know, we just, today is when as we're recording this July 1st, you know, today is basically the first day of the last half of the year. And so, you know, if you're going to start a new eCommerce build, which is my bread and butter, it's what I do for a living, then you're probably starting today.

Brian: [00:02:32] Today. Yeah. And if you haven't started, you're not going to make it in time. {laughter} Definitely. In fact, it's usually good to start before today.

Phillip: [00:02:45] Yup. Precisely.

Brian: [00:02:46] Yeah. Side note, Phillip and I both work in the same industry.

Phillip: [00:02:49] Yeah. And so what are you saying right now? How are things on your side?

Brian: [00:02:55] Yeah, it's kind of the same. We did wrap up kind of are relatively hectic conference season. Got some good ones in there. ShopTalk was particularly interesting.

Phillip: [00:03:10] Yeah, actually, I'd love to get like a little informal review of ShopTalk. ShopTalk is a relatively new conference. I don't think...

Brian: [00:03:18] First year. First year.

Phillip: [00:03:19] OK, and if ShopTalk had the world's biggest booth at IRCE... It was a lounge with like thirty five bean bags and a bunch of couches.

Brian: [00:03:30] Which is kind of crazy given that they're kind of competitors.

Phillip: [00:03:35] It's a different conference. It's a completely different conference.

Brian: [00:03:38] Know it's different, but I mean, yes, they're different. Are they going after the same set of people to be at the conferences? Absolutely.

Phillip: [00:03:48] Yes. I think if you were... First of all, it's in March, I think, in 2017, so it's a little ways out, and I guess the one that just took place was in April.

Brian: [00:04:02] That's right.

Phillip: [00:04:04] Maybe I am not sure. We should probably vet that before...

Brian: [00:04:07] No, it wasn't in April. It was in May. I was there. {laughter} Should know.

Phillip: [00:04:10] Ok, yeah. So you were there. Yeah. So it'll be in March in 2017 at the ARIA in Las Vegas. I don't know that you would make a decision either as a merchant or as a member of NRF, The National Retail Federation. Right? Foundation? Federation.

Brian: [00:04:30] Federation. It is Federation, man.

Phillip: [00:04:32] It's Federation. But I don't want to say federation because it sounds like...

Brian: [00:04:36] Star Trek?

Phillip: [00:04:37] Star Trek.

Brian: [00:04:38] Yeah. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:04:39] So, no, no, it's interesting because if if you're a merchant, you're with NRF, you're probably not making a decision of its either/or. IRCE is in June typically. And it's in...

Brian: [00:04:52] I don't know, man. It's getting crowded though. Like there is a lot.

Phillip: [00:04:56] There are too many industry events. There's too many.

Brian: [00:04:59] There's retail ones. There's B2B ones. There's industry specific conferences. And I mean, at some point you kind of get to make a decision about like which of the major commerce shows you're going to go to. And so, yeah, you're right.

Phillip: [00:05:19] There's a big contrast, though. Like at IRCE, which we were both at, there's nothing in the way of talking about the future of commerce. They've been saying the same things over and over at IRCE for ten years.

Brian: [00:05:34] Yeah. No joke.

Phillip: [00:05:34] I feel like it's all the same vendors. It's all the same talks. Every now and then...

Brian: [00:05:39] Well even if it's not the same vendors, I feel like the stuff that's like the new players are actually just more of the same.

Phillip: [00:05:45] It's just more of the same. Right.

Brian: [00:05:46] I agree with that.

Phillip: [00:05:47] So every now and then you'll see, like the keynote will be Kofi Annan. And that's the only thing that changed this year. So it's interesting, but ShopTalk is not like that.

Brian: [00:05:59] No.

Phillip: [00:06:00] Tell me about ShopTalk.

Brian: [00:06:00] Yeah, ShopTalk was really interesting. They were kind of more like five tracks that you can get on and learn about, you know, relatively different topics on those tracks.

Phillip: [00:06:13] What track did you sit through or did you?

Brian: [00:06:15] I didn't quite get to sit through a full track. I mean, we didn't send out a very large contingent to ShopTalk since it was a first year event. And so we had a booth there. And so I think I spent a little more time in the booth than I did in sessions. I did get to catch the Facebook session on Messenger, and that was obviously mind blowing. We've already talked about that quite a bit. And I think in our next episode we might dive into some more stuff about Facebook Messenger.

Phillip: [00:06:47] Absolutely.

Brian: [00:06:49] I think there were some really cool things. I talked to some people who were like, "This is mind blowing. There's so much. I don't even know what to do with it all." I talked to somebody else who was like, "Yeah, I've heard a lot of this stuff before. I still feel like it hasn't gone into the point where I can really leverage it yet."

Phillip: [00:07:14] Right.

Brian: [00:07:14] I think it was definitely... My personal take on it was the concept was definitely, I think, more interesting than other shows that I've been at.

Phillip: [00:07:28] Well, so the concept is it's all next generation, right?

Brian: [00:07:32] Right. It's all next Gen. Exactly.

Phillip: [00:07:33] Which is perfectly suited for why we have, you know, a podcast about this now.

Brian: [00:07:38] Yeah, it was unbelievably interesting to me. And I think that there were a lot of merchants that were also in that same boat. Like the stuff that was talked about was what we all wanted to hear. So everything from like body data and Magic Mirrors to, you know...

Phillip: [00:08:02] Yeah, yeah.

Brian: [00:08:03] Like really cool startup stories and new ways of of thinking about commerce, and there was a lot of like though the omnichannel thing happening. Of course, I think a lot of people are now, you know, sort of blackballing the word.

Phillip: [00:08:21] I mean before that was multichannel.

Brian: [00:08:23] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:08:23] I mean, could we possibly come up with yet another word.

Brian: [00:08:27] Yet another word. Exactly. But they all still talked about the same stuff, which was traditionally pure play, Internet businesses are now moving towards having physical stores, which were super interesting. And like Bonobos. They're sort of test stores, if you will, where you could go try stuff on. Really cool concept. And actually, I mean, this is something I've been thinking about for a long time. Inventory in the retail outlets is kind of ridiculous to some degree. I'm not saying that you shouldn't be able to buy something on the spot, but it makes a lot of sense that you could be shopping in a store and then order it and have shipped to your house instead of carrying around a bunch of bags with you. It doesn't make any sense to me.

Phillip: [00:09:20] So you're getting into the show already?

Brian: [00:09:23] I am getting into this show already.

Phillip: [00:09:24] That is a form of passive commerce.

Brian: [00:09:27] It is. Yes. We'll get to passive commerce.

Phillip: [00:09:28] This is not an advertisement, by the way, for ShopTalk. We've not received any money from them, although we would happily accept it.

Brian: [00:09:34] Yes, certainly.

Phillip: [00:09:36] Oh, yeah. So ShopTalk. Great speakers. Great lineup. If you're interested in next generation eCommerce, then their call for speakers is already live. You can, you know, apply to be a speaker. If you don't think that there's any room for you to speak at a conference like this, they had three hundred and twenty speakers and five tracks last year.

Brian: [00:09:57] Which was, again, like that was a lot. Like it was a lot to digest.

Phillip: [00:10:01] Most of the conferences that I go to, you'd be lucky to have three hundred and twenty people show up to so... {laughter} Not all of them. Some of them.

Brian: [00:10:08] Well and the crazy thing too is all of those speakers were relatively interesting people and none of them were...

Phillip: [00:10:15] Oh yeah. I mean, like Michael Dubin from Dollar Shave Club.

Brian: [00:10:19] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:10:19] Lionel Richie.

Brian: [00:10:21] I saw him. He was funny.

Phillip: [00:10:22] Yeah.

Brian: [00:10:22] I enjoyed that.

Phillip: [00:10:22] I mean, you know, everybody from, you know, Airbnb, Rebecca Minkoff, Casper, The Honest Company, Westfield Corp, you know, Target, Birchbox. It's yeah, yeah, yeah. You really can't get much better than than that.

Brian: [00:10:36] And on top of that, I think one of ShopTalk's big, one of the things that they really tout... That's probably the wrong word for that, but...

Phillip: [00:10:47] I like that word. Tout

Brian: [00:10:50] {laughter} I think I might have used out of context right there, but is that they don't allow paid content. It is 100 percent unpaid.

Phillip: [00:11:01] I see.

Brian: [00:11:02] Yes, so all the content...

Phillip: [00:11:06] So their sponsors are only exhibiters?

Brian: [00:11:08] That's correct. Which is very, very unique and really cool. I think it resulted in some really interesting sessions.

Phillip: [00:11:16] Yeah, I like that. Anyway, let's move on.

Brian: [00:11:19] All right. Past ShopTalk.

Phillip: [00:11:21] Yeah, yeah. Oh, so a little bit of housekeeping right off the top 30 minutes into the show.

Brian: [00:11:26] Oh, yeah. Quick.

Phillip: [00:11:27] Yeah, please tell us.

Brian: [00:11:29] Yes.

Phillip: [00:11:29] We missed something pretty big.

Brian: [00:11:30] We missed our skill the day. The hot skill of the day.

Phillip: [00:11:35] Yeah. My goodness. We teased it the entire episode.

Brian: [00:11:38] We did. We did.

Phillip: [00:11:39] Somehow we forgot.

Brian: [00:11:40] We mentioned that at least once, at least once.

Phillip: [00:11:43] Maybe two or three times. Possibly.

Brian: [00:11:45] Maybe two or three times. Yes. And so ok. Skill of the day. So it was announced the day our last show, which is why we were so excited to talk about it. So Lyft now has a skill.

Phillip: [00:11:59] Which is interesting because one of the launch skills was an Uber skill.

Brian: [00:12:04] Yes.

Phillip: [00:12:05] For again, this is for the Amazon Echo. You know, Alexa family of devices.

Brian: [00:12:11] Right. Yes. Skills are Alexa third party abilities.

Phillip: [00:12:18] Right.

Brian: [00:12:19] Yeah. So essentially... Well, so Phillip, I realized something. I'm going to kind of put you on the spot here because you said that in the skill section of our show, I'm going to be the one that picks the skill and you're going to be the one that tries it.

Phillip: [00:12:38] Yeah and has to use it.

Brian: [00:12:39] I think what I'm going to do, every show that we record is do a little check up on you and make sure that you followed up on the skill that we talked about the last time.

Phillip: [00:12:50] I like it. Well, it makes it much easier now because, again, you know, you can now install skills just from voice activation.

Brian: [00:12:56] Very good point. Yes.

Phillip: [00:12:57] So actually, this is as I'm going to take us in a weird direction...

Brian: [00:13:03] Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, don't escape. We should go in the right direction. Just give me one second. Did you do the seven minute workout skill that we talked about last night?

Phillip: [00:13:13] Ok, listen to me.

Brian: [00:13:15] Ok.

Phillip: [00:13:15] Listen to me. I started it. I started it.

Brian: [00:13:18] {laughter}

Phillip: [00:13:18] Ok. {laughter} If you know me, I'm great at a lot of things. Physical fitness has not been one of them for a long time.

Brian: [00:13:28] {laughter}.

Phillip: [00:13:30] I started it. I'll tell you what. That thing kicked my butt.

Brian: [00:13:34] Dude, it kicked my butt.

Phillip: [00:13:35] In all of thirty seconds, to be honest with you. So, yes, I did, I did try it out. I started it, you know, what would be amazing is if we just had video content of this kind of stuff. That would be phenomenal.

Brian: [00:13:44] I think we should. Maybe we should actually just use skills that we can try out on the show from now on and then we have to try them live. Although that one...

Phillip: [00:13:54] It would be great is to have a little bit of listener engagement. Listener engagement where they could try out the skills that we're suggesting. That'd be kind of interesting.

Brian: [00:14:03] I love that idea. I actually I was thinking about that, too. We should definitely have some cool...

Phillip: [00:14:06] These skills are not brought to you by the Mormon Church, by the way. So that'll be my running joke.

Brian: [00:14:12] Unless you're Mormon, and then we can do one for you.

Phillip: [00:14:14] Yeah. We would love to hear your Latter Day Skill. The Church of Latter Day Skills. Ok, so we're... {laughter} That's so wrong. I digress. So interesting news article about something I had never even considered, and this just landed in the last couple of days. A lot of really strange and interesting conversations are starting to crop up in social media about the lawfulness or the legality of the Amazon Echo and devices like it, like the Google Home devices that are forthcoming, always on always listening devices which are Internet connected may theoretically and technically be unlawfully violating child privacy laws. There are a lot of laws both at the state and federal level in the United States and certainly in the EU that are very... And one of them in particular is the Child Online Privacy Protection Rule, which was passed back in 1998. And one of those is basically you have to be 13 years or older to be able to consent to using any website which may collect personal data from the end point of the user. So if a site uses cookies... Like my children use... So if a site uses cookies and data is being mined and data is being aggregated, you have to be 13 years or older or in the supervision of a consenting adult to legally be able to use that data. And the fact is, is that we both said in the very first episode of Future Commerce. Both of our children are using the Amazon Echo every day. So this is an interesting debate and it kind of brings up some of the challenges that we're going to come across in forging new ground and blazing trails in...

Brian: [00:16:27] Yeah, I mean, absolutely. In fact, this is a little bit off topic, but Microsoft just released sort of their rules of what they consider important to consider or like kind of rules that when building an AI.

Phillip: [00:16:45] Yeah. Oh, this was phenomenal, by the way.

Brian: [00:16:47] Yeah, I know. It was really good. Like, I feel like they were really thoughtful about it. And that's definitely something to go check out. Just I think you could just put in like ten. I think it was ten rules or maybe six rules. I can't remember. Actually I think one article that I read sort of found 10 rules within the article. But in the actual article itself, I only saw six bullet points. So something like that anyway.

Phillip: [00:17:14] Right, right. Right, right, right.

Brian: [00:17:16] Anyway, not to take away from where you're going. I think that was a really interesting part of this, because...

Phillip: [00:17:21] Well I just want to hit one pull quote from the article. It was on the Consumerist. You can find it in the show notes. But essentially all of the marketing for the Amazon Echo and the Google Home, or some of the marketing. All is not the right word. But some of the marketing has included showing children and families using the device collectively, as a family unit. And apparently there are other laws which govern advertising to children. And basically you advertise and market a product to children or parents with children that also enacts other legalities. So, you know, and then the whole conversation of whether they're collecting personal data, how it's being used, you know, it's a very interesting subject and not a new one. You know, this came up three or four years ago when Microsoft, like you just brought up Microsoft. Microsoft has been forging ground here for a long time, like Microsoft usually does. And their first product out of the gate isn't necessarily the one that becomes...

Brian: [00:18:34] It's so true. I feel like they do that all the time when they come out with something. And it's like, man, if they had just done this a little bit better and waited maybe just a few years, they would have killed it. It would have absolutely taken the market by storm.

Phillip: [00:18:50] Yeah. Well, I think a lot of people may have seen the potential in something like the Kinect. So the Microsoft Kinect, to my knowledge, I might be wrong about this because there's always like one of those, "They were doing this at CERN in 1972." There's always one of those...

Brian: [00:19:04] You could say in minimum, widely adopted.

Phillip: [00:19:06] Yeah. So I but the first consumer device that I can think of that operated this way was the the Kinect for the Xbox 360. And the Kinect was a camera and microphone combo platform that allowed you to have that sort of... It was the answer to the Nintendo Wii, where you put yourself into the games, you know, it read you. So there was a lot of conversation about, "Is the camera always on? Can the camera record you?" You know, video games are very traditionally marketed to children. There's a lot of issues there. But I think the killer feature that everybody loved about the Kinect was it was voice activated, you could say, "Xbox on," and it would just do it. Right?

Brian: [00:19:52] Right.

Phillip: [00:19:52] And so that virtual assistant summon word was a thing pioneered by Microsoft. And they've been trying to forge ground for this for a long time.

Brian: [00:20:02] And they have actually. Voice searches on desktop. They were the first ones to do that.

Phillip: [00:20:07] Yeah. Oh, and now it's like, you know, that is the big killer app coming in the new OSX update. Oh, sorry. It's called Mac OS now, which, by the way, is so much nicer to say. {laughter}

Brian: [00:20:18] It's true. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:20:21] Microsoft went so far as to actually have a setup step with the Kinect that you actually associate ages with each of the user accounts and platforms in the platform. So if you have a user account for your child and they are under the age of 12, it wouldn't allow them to use the Kinect. So these are all interesting things that I think may come into play. Something to keep an eye on. But yeah, check the show notes for a little bit more. You can kind of read up on that a bit.

Brian: [00:20:55] Good, good, good bunny trail there. I think definitely worth talking about.

Phillip: [00:21:00] Sure, sure. Sure. Let's... You want to get into this? Let's get into the show.

Brian: [00:21:05] Let's get into the actual show now that we've made it through what should have been last show and then some nice little asides there.

Phillip: [00:21:13] Yeah, this will become a regular thing where we think we only have fifteen minutes of content, and then we prattle on for forty five minutes plus.

Brian: [00:21:24] Yeah. No, it's actually me being like, "Phillip, are you sure we have enough to talk about here?" And he's always like, "Yeah man we're good. Let's just roll."

Phillip: [00:21:32] {laughter}

Brian: [00:21:32] But OK, let's do it. I think you're probably right.

Phillip: [00:21:36] So I wanted us to sort of focus on different types of emerging commerce trends or emerging commerce channels or verticals or what would you even call this?

Brian: [00:21:48] Let's just call it what it is. Passive commerce. Yeah.

Phillip: [00:21:51] Yeah. And so this is passive commerce, so our episode today is about passive commerce, which is we've talked about conversational commerce at length here on the show. And we'll talk about other forms of Future Commerce like ambient commerce, cognitive commerce, on-demand commerce. These are all, you know, interesting new trends in commerce. So today, passive commerce. Brian, can you give us, for those are not initiated, we don't really explainify too much on the show. Because if you're listening to the show, you're probably plugged in. But for those who are not initiated and may have not heard the term, could you explain in a nutshell what passive commerce is?

Brian: [00:22:32] Yeah, actually. So let me just point people to an article really quickly, if they haven't read it already. Jason L Baptiste has done a fantastic job, sort of really delving into what passive commerce is.

Phillip: [00:22:46] Yep.

Brian: [00:22:47] And his website is JasonLBaptiste.com. It has some great content on that. Specifically, there is an article called "Passive Commerce is the Big Opportunity to Fill the Space Between Pinterest and Amazon."

Phillip: [00:23:05] Those are the two keywords here, Pinterest and Amazon.

Brian: [00:23:08] Yes, correct. And so essentially passive commerce is when you're browsing for an item that you already know you're going to buy or there's already a lot of built up sort of awareness of that item, and then something triggers that purchase where you weren't necessarily expecting it. You kind of expected it, but you kind of didn't.

Phillip: [00:23:43] The opportunity was presented to you and you took it.

Brian: [00:23:46] Exactly. Sometimes that could be something like a good deal that's just too good to pass up.

Phillip: [00:23:53] Right.

Brian: [00:23:54] It could be a specific variant of that product that's something that you won't be able to get anywhere else. Or you get to a point where the proposed solution to whatever it is that you need to get, it's such an overwhelming value prop that you don't think that your existing solution will work anymore.

Phillip: [00:24:14] I think a really good example and one that I think will in the future become the canonical example, or at least that sort of hello world first step as an example, passive commerce is essentially lead back advertising on Google. Lead back campaigns, which you've already seen a product. I know you see this on with Amazon ads all the time, because I know I do. I will look at a product on Amazon and five minutes later I'm on Facebook and there's an ad for it in the sidebar.

Brian: [00:24:47] Totally.

Phillip: [00:24:47] Or I'll be on some other website of some kind, and I will see a buy button with it's a shoppable ad with a buy button that's ready for me whenever I decide that I want that. Now, it already knows that I looked at it. It already has the understanding that at some point I have some demand for this. It wants to be there at the ready for when it's ready for me to make that purchase decision. And I think the interesting thing, and this is why we're even talking about it, is that it gets outside of the walls and the confines of the traditional places where we do commerce.

Brian: [00:25:22] Right. Exactly.

Phillip: [00:25:23] And so that's kind of what we're going to get into today. So there's actually a few really good examples of this that are already live and in the wild.

Brian: [00:25:33] Yeah, absolutely, I mean, you've got Pinterest with pins. That's a really great example of how passive commerce could work.

Phillip: [00:25:44] Right. And Pinterest was a social platform.

Brian: [00:25:47] Right. It's sort of built for this. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:25:49] Right.

Brian: [00:25:51] Or I shouldn't say built for this, but it's such a natural...

Phillip: [00:25:54] It's a natural progression for Pinterest,

Brian: [00:25:56] Obviously. Instagram, another good example of where this could happen. Facebook shoppable ads. Twitter buyable tweets, although I think you've got a few comments on that. {laughter} Yeah. And you know, Twitter buyable tweets... I think that there's going to be a lot more ahead with those. Right now if you're on Shopify, you can create buyable tweets.

Phillip: [00:26:23] That's what they say. We'll get into that.

Brian: [00:26:25] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:26:26] We'll get into that the challenges section. So first of all, for Facebook shoppable  ads have been around for a little while. In fact, ads by their very nature are usually... Most people don't buy an ad that doesn't have a call to action that leads you to spending money online.

Brian: [00:26:43] Sure. I mean, as old as Google search ads. Yeah.

Phillip: [00:26:47] Yeah. It is the thing that made Google one of the most profitable companies in the history of ever. So Facebook having ads is not a new thing. The ad itself is not necessarily the passive commerce opportunity. It's the ability for a merchant to be able to have you not need to leave Facebook to complete that purchase.

Brian: [00:27:12] Right.

Phillip: [00:27:12] And so it's giving the purchase context inside of a different, inside of a context that wasn't necessarily one that you were making a decision, a purchase decision...

Brian: [00:27:21] Right. You weren't necessarily intending to go to that place to make a purchase decision, but there was a buying opportunity within that channel. Well, within that context.

Phillip: [00:27:32] Yeah.

Brian: [00:27:32] That you wouldn't necessarily have expected, but enables you to buy.

Phillip: [00:27:38] You know, actually, if you go back to that article that you sort of referred everyone to at Jason L Baptiste's blog, he has a great pull quote here, and it's the one I sort of use in my talk. I have a talk that I've given a number of times at different industry events called "The Shopping Cart is Dead." And one of the... Which I think is one of the reasons why I'm so excited about having started this podcast, because I get to talk about this all the time now. But essentially he explains it as "Passive commerce falls somewhere in between goods that are a necessity and goods that are purchased via disposable income."

Phillip: [00:28:23] Yeah.

Brian: [00:28:23] Some of the items may be a necessity, but some of the items may be things that you'd like to get one day. You just need the right incentive. And so there's you know, he gives a bunch of examples. He goes on to basically say that passive commerce exists at the space between intent generation and intent harvesting. And that's basically in English, you know you already want the product, but you have no immediacy to buy it. And passive commerce accelerates that step into basically making you make that decision to buy it. So here's the thing. Facebook having an ad to purchase something, I don't know that that's intriguing to me. I think it's more intriguing when it becomes a federated product that can exist anywhere. And that's why I think Pinterest buy buttons are the more intriguing example for me, because Facebook has become the old person sounding platform for why they don't like, you know, this politician. Fill in the blank. Facebook is not the place where people exchange social currency around goods. Pinterest is literally that is its mission statement is exchanging social currency around what people's likes and dislikes are. People create boards just to prove or to show off their tastes.

Brian: [00:29:55] Yup.

Phillip: [00:29:56] And people are famous because of their tastes on Pinterest. They become famous for not having created anything. But having said, "I like this group of things." {laughter}

Brian: [00:30:07] It's unbelievable. Like Maria Seale is a really interesting example of someone who...

Phillip: [00:30:13] I'm not familiar. Who is that?

Brian: [00:30:15] Oh, she's she's just one of the top Pinterest people out there. And she's recently kind of jumped into commerce. Like she's got her own website now. But she was just incredibly influential in terms of how many people followed her on Pinterest. Crazy stuff.

Phillip: [00:30:37] And Pinterest... So have you been to a birthday party for a three year old in the last year and a half? Two years?

Brian: [00:30:46] How many?

Phillip: [00:30:48] More than one? You have likely been to a three year old's birthday party that was more well thought out and planned and color coordinated and cupcakes and, you know, and party platters. And you have seen Pinterest in action at three year olds birthday parties. I guarantee it. Because this is a place where people get ideas from their friends and they sort of one up each other on all of the Pinterest projects that they put into place for the events that take place in their life.

Brian: [00:31:24] Exactly. And that's what passive commerce makes so much sense here.

Phillip: [00:31:29] Yes.

Brian: [00:31:29] Because now look, you know, people look and, you know, and whatever it is like, whether it be a room design or like even like, I don't know, I'm not a huge Pinterest guy, but...

Phillip: [00:31:44] Neither am I. But let's pretend like we are for a moment.

Brian: [00:31:45] Like a project of some sort that looks really cool to them. And they're like, "Oh, man, my version of this is not what it needs to be. Oh, look, I can actually even buy all the things that I need. And then I can build it all myself for half the price that would it cost to go buy it at Restoration Hardware or whatever."

Phillip: [00:32:01] Exactly. So my sister had a birthday party for my niece recently. She just turned three and... I'm so sorry. I take it back. It was for my nephew who just turned one.

Brian: [00:32:15] {laughter}

Phillip: [00:32:15] And there was a whole theme, whole party theme that she found on Pinterest. And it started with the cupcake, and the cupcake had an arrow on it. And wouldn't you know, you could buy, like, little cupcake topper, little sugar ornament things that you could stick on top of cupcakes from that person, from a Pinterest pin. And then that person on their website had a PDF you could buy and download to print out on card stock and cut out shapes and cut out the kid's name in various letters. And it became this whole digital exchange of goods that was all predicated purely on somebody else in her social network basically pressed "like" on something.

Brian: [00:33:08] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:33:09] And this is what Facebook has been completely unable to do, is to turn people into shoppers and that is essentially...

Brian: [00:33:16] Well, different kind of shopping. Different kind of shopping, I think.

Phillip: [00:33:20] Right.

Brian: [00:33:20] I think, you know, brand awareness on Facebook. Now, that's been incredible.

Phillip: [00:33:26] Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's OK. Yeah, that's true. I guess the call to actions that turn straight in to commerce.

Brian: [00:33:32] The immediate purchases.

Phillip: [00:33:34] Right.

Brian: [00:33:35] Yes, totally. Yeah, I agree. I think that definitely Pinterest falls into this category a lot better than Facebook even like purchases, like shoppable ads on Facebook.

Phillip: [00:33:47] And that's so I think Pinterest is the juggernaut here. I think they are doing it well. But Pinterest is getting greedy. Let's take a little aside there, because people made their living on Pinterest. A lot of people made a lot of really good money on Pinterest by just hosting affiliate links.

Brian: [00:34:07] Right. True.

Phillip: [00:34:08] So you could run very successful Pinterest boards that are heavily trafficked, picked up by people like Kim Kardashian. And all of a sudden you're making tens of thousands of dollars based entirely on affiliate commissions, which, you know, admittedly is a form of commerce for them. But when Pinterest decided that they were going to bring the purchase ability into their own platform, they removed and have now in their terms of service, they strip affiliate links from every link. So you can't run an affiliate channel anymore through Pinterest. But what you can do is sell on Pinterest. And this requires people to have the ability to manage inventory, manage an integration with Pinterest, which I hear from certain people in the industry, is lacking in some regard. And then beyond that, they've shut everyone beyond that for common links to common sites like Amazon. Pinterest is rewriting the affiliate links to their own affiliate link.

Brian: [00:35:20] Oh, OK. That is... You're right. Maybe they're taking too much of the pie.

Phillip: [00:35:28] So it's interesting. But I do think, you know, buying on Pinterest is the best example I can come up of passive commerce in action today.

Brian: [00:35:37] Yeah, and I think that you could say that Instagram is really somewhere that something that people haven't really... I feel like that businesses all know they need to do this and there's some interesting companies out there that sort of dedicated to selling on Instagram, but not just Instagram, like Olympic come to mind, but visual commerce in general... Now we're kind of jumping outside.

Phillip: [00:36:06] Yeah. You're going to jump.

Brian: [00:36:09] I should pull back here. I should pull back. No, it's just I think, you know, any time that there is an opportunity for browsable content.

Phillip: [00:36:23] Yeah. Visual collections of content. Right.

Brian: [00:36:26] People are just going to browse because they enjoy it or they're interested in it or, you know, whatever it is, that's going to be an opportunity for passive commerce. And so for merchants who are listening, you very well actually may be participating in passive commerce right now. You may or may not have formed a strategy around it.

Phillip: [00:36:48] Correct, correct.

Brian: [00:36:49] And that's something that's going to be really important. I think that's one of the reasons why we're kind of drawing attention to this right now, is because when you think about it from this perspective where it's like cars are kind of falling into this category right now these days where it's kind of a necessity. But it's also something that's kind of...

Phillip: [00:37:12] There's a luxury to it.

Brian: [00:37:13] Yeah, right. Then if you start thinking about it from sort of that perspective, from that balancing point, I think you can start to form some new strategies about going after your markets.

Phillip: [00:37:31] Well, I think that car showrooms are kind of a good example. I don't know if I'm hitting on this, but I'm going to riff a little bit. Car showrooms are a really good example of a really well polished and thought out sales strategy in action. For instance, there is no better time to buy a car than when you are completely in loathe and hate of the one that you're driving. And so, you know, taking a service department and turning that into... A service department visit in and turning that into a sales opportunity is genius.

Brian: [00:38:08] Yes.

Phillip: [00:38:09] But not necessarily. I wouldn't necessarily call that passive because it still becomes a destination.

Brian: [00:38:14] Right.

Phillip: [00:38:14] But I think the act in and of itself is the exact same perfect parallel.

Brian: [00:38:20] Yes.

Phillip: [00:38:21] So I would differ a bit from Jason L Baptiste's there. But I do like... There are so many other examples, like digital pop or I'm sorry, pop up stores and digital pop ups which bring brands that you may be familiar with, like Warby Parker, to places that you may already be, but not necessarily be shopping for that particular product.

Brian: [00:38:45] Absolutely.

Phillip: [00:38:45] Warby Parker, I think, is the perfect example because they were the first to have now they, of course, they have brick and mortars now. But they do sunglass and eyeglass retail in a very different manner now because, you know, Warby Parker, you don't necessarily buy the glasses there and they're made on the spot and you take them home, you buy them and they're shipped to you later. So they sort of pioneered the the food truck of eyeglasses and they would kind of just drive around Manhattan and tweet where they were going to be and some people would go in search of. But most people that approached Warby Parker as a brand approached them from the novelty that they happen to be there on the street corner and they weren't expecting it to be there. And we're seeing a lot of these types of digital pop ups,

Brian: [00:39:30] Food carts. That's kind of a good example.

Phillip: [00:39:32] Yeah.

Brian: [00:39:33] Like it's almost kind of a good example. I mean, it's not passive commerce like we're talking about it.

Phillip: [00:39:38] Yeah.

Brian: [00:39:38] But it's like showing up at the place where people are going to be because they're going to be there, and so you're popping up where they're at.

Phillip: [00:39:49] Precisely. And it's the exact reason why I didn't know I was going to eat Vietnamese food when I was in New York the last time. I didn't go in search of it. But it happen to be there and I'm like, oh, man, I could totally do some Vietnamese food.

Brian: [00:40:00] I love Vietnamese food, dude. I'm all about it.

Phillip: [00:40:02] It's one of those things that I think that is a great example of I may be engaged with Warby Parker as a brand. I might be engaged with... Oh, shoot. There's another great example here. And I'm going to draw a blank. But, you know, I might be engaged with a brand. And I want to see and I want to touch the products, but I don't necessarily need to bring the products home with me that day.

Brian: [00:40:31] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:40:32] And in some cases I may not even need to or be able to. For Warby Parker's case there's a little bit of manufacturing that goes into creating eyeglasses.

Brian: [00:40:40] Totally. Yeah, again, that gets back to kind of what we were talking about before, about stock and Bonobos and sort of the next iterations of traditional and pure play.

Phillip: [00:40:55] I'm getting a little bit of microphone noise on your side.

Brian: [00:41:01] Oh sorry.

Phillip: [00:41:01] So I'm not familiar with but Bonobos story. Clue me in a little bit.

Brian: [00:41:05] Oh, so they launched these really cool basically demo stores where you can go and try on their clothes and then purchase like and then purchase them and then they'll be shipped to your house. And so it's not like they're running a giant stock, or you can get fitted. I think actually that's what it is.

Phillip: [00:41:29] It's like a fitting...

Brian: [00:41:30] It's a fitting room, basically, that they put into high end shopping malls. And so it's not like you're ever taking home a product with you right there, then and there. You're picking things out and then they're going to make their custom clothes for you and ship them to your house.

Phillip: [00:41:50] So it's so interesting to me because...

Brian: [00:41:53] I think we're off of passive commerce right now, by the way.

Phillip: [00:41:56] Yeah, well, no because I think I think pop up stores are a form of passive commerce, but I don't know that just a...

Brian: [00:42:04] It depends on where they're popping up.

Phillip: [00:42:06] Yeah.

Brian: [00:42:06] Yeah. I think if they're popping up somewhere because they know that's where people are going to be that would be inclined to purchase their products but aren't necessarily originally there to make that purchase then I would consider that like a passive move.

Phillip: [00:42:22] Yeah.

Brian: [00:42:23] But if they kind of create pop up shop as a destination, which does happen.

Phillip: [00:42:28] Yeah, that does happen.

Brian: [00:42:29] Yeah. I wouldn't consider that...

Phillip: [00:42:30] Those are people... Right. Correct. And yeah, that would be like a just a different form of destination commerce. I think people are when they are already so engaged in a brand there are people that will always seek. The people that will be in search of. But yeah, in this case I'm speaking more to providing people the ability to engage with a product or make a purchase decision when they weren't necessarily expecting to.

Brian: [00:42:55] Yeah, totally. I think that it's interesting. I think Macy's and Nordstroms did some really interesting pop up shops for specific designers, and obviously you're going to Macy's and Nordstroms and shop for clothes. But I think, you know, these particular pop up shops were the things that you wouldn't be able to get anywhere else, any other time. And so it was sort of like that exclusive factor. I would consider that a form of passive commerce as well. Oh, hey, this is kind of an interesting... I mean, this is more complementary commerce and like cross-selling kind of, but it's also kind of passive commerce. Did you hear that...and maybe this did go through or didn't go through? I don't remember if I read it was confirmed or not that Tesla was going to sell cars at Nordstrom.

Phillip: [00:43:49] I did not hear this. Is that true?

Brian: [00:43:51] I think it is. I feel like we might need to look this up on the spot because that's crazy stuff.

Phillip: [00:43:57] Yeah, you need to confirm that. That would blow my mind.

Brian: [00:43:59] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:44:01] So if that's true, could it possibly be? Is it possible...

Brian: [00:44:09] Yes, the Tesla Gallery at Nordstrom.

Phillip: [00:44:12] Oh, my gosh. Crying out loud. So this embodies, I think, passive commerce. There will be people that wind up buying a Tesla that went to Nordstrom and they did. They had no plan of buying a Tesla.

Brian: [00:44:25] And I have a feeling that Tesla actually recognized that. Like, I feel like they probably recognize this as a passive commerce strategy when they made the move.

Phillip: [00:44:32] Oh, for sure. Right. It's a genius strategy. It's by the way, Nordstrom is the right brand to partner with. Number one, they have the ubiquity. It's not Saks Fifth Avenue. There's a lot of Nordstroms, but Nordstrom is extremely high end, right?

Brian: [00:44:50] Well, yes, they are. They kind of they might be losing their brand a little bit. Well, anyway...

Phillip: [00:44:58] Well, time they are a changing. {laughter}

Brian: [00:44:59] Neiman Marcus is... I can see Tesla at Neiman as well, although Nordstrom, if they were smart, probably worked out some sort of exclusivity.

Phillip: [00:45:07] Well, so I think of Nordstrom as having access to the ultra lux, but having accessibility to some of the brands that you may already be familiar with so that you can shop there aspirationally. When you go to Neiman Marcus, you're probably just going there to buy a cookie at the shop and then look around at stuff you'll never buy.

Brian: [00:45:25] Well, you are. And I am. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:45:31] {laughter} I'm going to tell a little story which is so completely off base, but I have to tell the story. I have owned approximately 700 wallets in my lifetime.

Brian: [00:45:45] What?  

Phillip: [00:45:45] Wallets. I don't know what it is. Me and wallets. I just cannot... I don't know what it is. I beat wallets to heck. It's not from overuse. God knows that. But it's I don't know what it is. There is something wrong with me I guess.

Brian: [00:45:58] Front pocket or back pocket?

Phillip: [00:46:02] I'm front pocket.

Brian: [00:46:03] Oh me, too. And actually I beat my wallets up.

Phillip: [00:46:06] Maybe there's something there, you know, maybe it's something there about it. So the last wallet that I had that I was really in love with was a wallet that was made by a company that makes ballistic nylon. So not like Tumi, but like a company in the space. But they were an instrument, like an instrument case company. And I thought if anybody can make something that won't fall apart, it's a company that makes instrument cases. That's genius, right?

Brian: [00:46:35] Oh I love it.

Phillip: [00:46:36] And it wasn't a cheap wallet. It was fifty or sixty bucks for nylon. I guess it's, listen, it's not a three dollar, you know, Velcro wallet, which by the way, I don't buy. And I don't like money clips, so don't even send me any hate mail about money clips, ok? Don't even try it.

Brian: [00:46:54] But no. Ok, so it's a step up from your standard twenty to thirty dollar leather wallet.

Phillip: [00:46:59] Well pleather wallet. But yes.

Brian: [00:47:00] Pleather wallet I should say.

Phillip: [00:47:01] Yes, which I've had plenty of, and I've beaten those to death. And somehow eventually...

Brian: [00:47:06] Maybe you should just get a leather wallet.

Phillip: [00:47:06] I've had multiple wallets that... We are so far off topic. I've had multiple wallets that have fallen out of the car, and I didn't know it like it was in the side door of the car and it fell out of the car and then it rained. I'm talking three or four wallets that have like sat in the rain and then it like all of anyway, whatever. So for my birthday last year, I said to my wife, Jaci, I said, "I want a wallet for my birthday." She goes, "Ok, I can handle that." I said, "No, no, no. You don't understand. I want the wallet that I will be buried with when I die. I want a wallet that like when my dad had a wallet..." My dad had the same wallet for like 20 years. "I want a wallet that will be the wallet I have for the rest of my life. And so we looked everywhere, eventually decided you're going to have to spend a lot of money on a wallet that you keep forever. And I looked around and I was settling, I think, on a Montblanc, which were extremely expensive, but they're perfect, like perfect leather wallets, a little bigger than I'd like, but a very nice wallet. We're talking three hundred dollars for a wallet, certainly something that I was not anticipating spending that kind of money on. We looked everywhere. We went to Nordstrom. We went to Macy's. We could not find something that was high end and something I felt comfortable that I wanted to keep this for the rest of my life, not only just the way it looked, but, you know, such a high quality.

Brian: [00:48:34] When see people as in this show, they're going to, like, tell you their favorite wallet.

Phillip: [00:48:38] Yes, and I welcome that. I want that from you.

Brian: [00:48:43] If you've got the wallet then you don't want that.

Phillip: [00:48:48] Oh, that's possibly true. But I always love to debate these sorts...

Brian: [00:48:51] Ok. Fair enough.

Phillip: [00:48:51] But it'd be wonderful if also right here in the context of you listening in iTunes, you could just click a button and buy the wallet that I'm going to recommend.

Brian: [00:48:59] Ooh. Yeah.

Phillip: [00:48:59] But anyway, I fell in love with the wallet at Neiman Marcus. That's where the story ties in. We went to Neiman Marcus because I could not think of another place where I would spend any more money than at Neiman Marcus here in West Palm Beach, other than going to like fifteen designer stores. So there's a strip in Palm Beach called Worth Avenue. And I would have to go to fifteen. I'd have to go to Gucci. I'd have to go to Prada. I'd have to go to Salvatore Ferragamo. I'd have to literally walk into every one of those stores to look at what they have. But that's not what I want. I want to see all billfolds with a separated bill pocket and like no more than four credit card slots, you know what I mean?

Brian: [00:49:46] Totally agree with you.

Phillip: [00:49:47] For me to get a selection, I have to go to a place that's like a marketplace. And so I went to Neiman Marcus, and I found this gorgeous Ballies black leather, handmade, gorgeous, bonded like this incredible leather that's just hand finished all the way around. Genuine leather, red leather on the inside. I fell in love with it. That thing was like a three hundred and fifty dollar wallet. I will die with this wallet.

Brian: [00:50:12] {laughter} It's going to be in your hand. In your pocket.

Phillip: [00:50:12] I swear I will kill somebody if I lose this wallet. But the whole point was when I knew that I was looking for something that was high end in the market, I knew where to go because their brand has some cachet. I feel like Nordstrom having a Tesla is not the same experience. Nobody's going to Nordstrom saying I need to buy a Tesla. People are going to Nordstrom to find a mid-range wallet. Probably. Although, you know, I didn't find a very high end wallet at Nordstrom. But I don't know. I feel like the only Tesla that would probably be successful at Nordstrom... This is a crazy thing to say, it's probably the model three.

Brian: [00:50:57] Maybe I don't know. I don't know if I agree with that.

Phillip: [00:51:00] Ok.

Brian: [00:51:01] I think that they've still got plenty of the market that would buy any of the models.

Phillip: [00:51:06] By the way, I'm just going to go back and cut that whole stupid wall story out. That was an unbelievable amount of time to spend on that. But I'm passionate about aspirational luxury and destinations. I love talking about this sort of stuff.

Brian: [00:51:13] Yeah, totally.

Phillip: [00:51:20] And the fact that we're talking about passive commerce and Nordström and Tesla are basically pioneering that. That's a great, phenomenal example.

Brian: [00:51:30] It is a phenomenal example. And I mean, I think Nordström, or at least in Bellevue Mall here nearby where I live, they've got their own charging stations in the mall by Nordstrom.

Phillip: [00:51:42] Yes. Genius. So genius.

Brian: [00:51:44] Right. It's genius. I mean, the people are primed and ready. They're walking into Nordstrom. They're seeing a Tesla charging station with with the big logo. And they get in and they're like, man, I think those are the coolest. And they get there and they're looking for what they want to buy. And out of the corner of their eye they see that they can purchase at Tesla right there. Like some people are at Nordstrom, dare I say once a week. You get hit by that over and over and over and it's the type of life that you want to live. You're going to buy a Tesla.

Phillip: [00:52:25] So yeah, that's pretty interesting. I like that. I like that partnership. I do think kind of getting to the back half of what I wanted to talk about with this is that there are some certain challenges that we're seeing.

Brian: [00:52:38] Definitely.

Phillip: [00:52:38] It's not working for everybody right now. Twitter announced at the end of May that they'll be pulling back on all of their, you know, their buy button technology that they had sort of announced and they've pioneered. You mentioned, you know, they're Shopify integration. They're sort of scaling back on that saying that was, you know, of a bygone...

Brian: [00:52:59] Are they actually going to pull the Shopify integration, though? That's the question that I do have.

Phillip: [00:53:03] I don't know. I can't find anything that would support that. I don't know, I just don't know. I've not seen a buy button on a tweet myself.

Brian: [00:53:16] Me neither. Or I think I saw them when they first came out, when that Stripe integration first came out. I think I saw like one.

Phillip: [00:53:25] And this puts a lot of people in a really interesting position. I mean, obviously, Twitter in an interesting position, but Twitter seems to be doing pretty well with its advertising business. Its advertising business is finally kind of maturing a bit. They have a whole video advertising platform. They signed some really interesting video agreements recently with the NFL.

Brian: [00:53:48] That's right. I saw that.

Phillip: [00:53:48] The 2018 season is going to have like ten games that will be able to be like instant streamed from Twitter.

Brian: [00:53:57] It's not going to lie. I'm kind of stoked about that.

Phillip: [00:53:59] I am, too. I think, again, it's not really passive commerce, but it's the on-demand economy. Being able to kind of watch a game in context from wherever you are. I'm kind of tired. If you're a sports fan and you're on Twitter, most of my friends are sharing their reactions in real time to things that are happening in sports anyway.

Brian: [00:54:23] I'm actually really I cannot believe that sports has not like and sports...

Phillip: [00:54:30] Sports ball. Yeah.

Brian: [00:54:31] Yeah. I can't believe I feel like, you know, for all of the engagement they have online and all of like... Everything. There's so much content, there's so much cool stuff out there, there's so much engagement, and yet the actual watching experience kind of sucks.

Phillip: [00:54:52] Right.

Brian: [00:54:52] At least that's been my experience.

Phillip: [00:54:56] So yeah, you're right. You're totally right, I think that's because Twitter kind of sucks that a lot of things.

Brian: [00:55:04] It's not just Twitter. I mean across the board.

Phillip: [00:55:06] Yeah, fine. Yeah. I think Twitter doesn't really understand its own audience. And it made a lot of missteps. You know, they keep kind of mucking about with a lot of weird things like changing from stars to hearts for favorites. Like a lot of things that nobody really cares about, continue to bump up the 140 character limit. It makes sense I guess.

Brian: [00:55:26] I wonder how much time and planning they spent on that.

Phillip: [00:55:30] Oh, I mean, a tremendous amount. They had to.

Brian: [00:55:33] It must have been because it was a pretty risky move.

Phillip: [00:55:37] Oh, I mean, it was pretty well... By the way, there's a wonderful discussion, wonderful talk about how they made that. It is a very engaging and very satisfying thing. When you when you click the heart, it is a 60 frames per second animation that is like in retina that's gorgeous. And so there's some interesting engineering things that they did. But I don't know, it's just it's such a silly thing to have to worry about. And by the way, don't get me started on Feminist Twitter, which has a field day with the discussion of what a heart means because, you know, that's already a problem. Hashtag rape culture. Listen, so Twitter laid off eight percent of its workforce, you know, back in October. And part of that was very quietly. It seems like they're stifling their continued efforts on sort of expanding Twitter buy buttons. That puts their partner stripe in a really bad position.

Brian: [00:56:40] Yes.

Phillip: [00:56:41] And Stripe, at one point it was like the preferred payments vendor for developers. So the Twitter partnership made a lot of sense.

Brian: [00:56:50] They're still doing some cool stuff, by the way. The whole is the Atlas thing. Did you see that?

Phillip: [00:56:55] I don't know about that. What is that?

Brian: [00:56:57] Oh, dude. It's like it makes it really, really, really easy. And I hope that I'm not misquoting what like this whole effort by them. But it makes it unbelievable, unbelievably easy for anyone, anywhere in the world to set up a business and get selling. It gives them all of the tools that they need.

Phillip: [00:57:17] What?

Brian: [00:57:18] They can easily incorporate is as a US company, set up a US bank account, and start accepting payments with Stripe.

Phillip: [00:57:24] Are you kidding?

Brian: [00:57:24] So cool. Yeah.

Phillip: [00:57:27] So it's like a concierge service. It's like legal zoom, but...

Brian: [00:57:31] Kind of. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But it's like the full process for anyone in the world to start selling in the US quickly.

Phillip: [00:57:40] Interesting. So Marketplace Money did a really great... They had a podcast about setting up a business overseas, like creating a shell corporation in the Caymans. And it's interesting because that's what Stripe Atlas sounds like to me. There's like these companies that you can call that are set up in other regions, not necessarily in the Caymans, but you would call like a company in Argentina. You would wire them some money. They would set up an account for you in the Caymans. And then Bob's your uncle, and you have a business, you know, in headquartered in in Argentina, but, you know, with banking in the Cayman Islands. Very interesting thing that this is kind of coming the other way. It's legitimizing that sort of a business, which is like, you know, being able to legitimately set up a corporation in the United States of America and have payments and banking kind of just all work. Very cool.

Brian: [00:58:37] Yeah. Very cool stuff.

Phillip: [00:58:39] Well, while they may be innovating, Stripe might be innovating, I think it's hard to argue that three hundred and fifty million daily active users, that's a terribly attractive market for someone to partner and to be able to provide payments for

Brian: [00:58:57] And then to add that...

Phillip: [00:58:58] And now, you know, it's kind of getting yanked from them. That's got to hurt a little bit.

Brian: [00:59:03] I agree.

Phillip: [00:59:04] Conversational... I'm sorry. Passive commerce definitely has its challenges, and I think it's really relegated to where people are. So eyeballs are more important than ever. You know, people's physical presence is more important than ever. And I think for passive commerce in the omnichannel sphere of a business trying to capture people's purchase decisions, passive commerce is a relatively small piece of that puzzle.

Brian: [00:59:37] It is, yeah. But something that you should definitely have a strategy around.

Phillip: [00:59:42] I think so.

Brian: [00:59:44] If you live in that world. If you live in the world where you're sort of between a necessary item and a discretionary purchase, then you should be paying attention to ways that you can do this.

Phillip: [00:59:59] Yeah, and I think the fact is, is that, you know, Amazon is doing this today. Amazon is already...

Brian: [01:00:06] Well, what is Amazon doing? {laughter}

Phillip: [01:00:11] So true. I mean, actually, that goes along with something that I heard that was really great, is that if you've ever wondered, will Amazon ever enter X market? Well Amazon is now making their own diapers. So the answer is yes, they will.

Brian: [01:00:26] Yes.

Phillip: [01:00:27] Amazon. You know, I bought I did Subscribe and Save for diapers, you know, for Pampers and for years with my kids. I don't know if you've done the same.

Brian: [01:00:38] No. I didn't do Subscribe to Save. I'm a pretty loyal Costco member.

Phillip: [01:00:43] Oh, gosh. We need to talk about that on the next episode.

Brian: [01:00:45] We do need to talk about that.

Phillip: [01:00:47] The American Express changeover.

Brian: [01:00:50] Oh, my gosh. Yes, that's crazy stuff.

Phillip: [01:00:52] So I you know, it's interesting. I think, you know, Amazon provides really good examples of this. You know, I think shoppable ads. The thing is that Amazon will always take you back to the Amazon context because Amazon does a great job of doing what they do on their site. I think the next iteration would be Amazon starting to put its payments out on other sites and maybe at some point in the future, we see people being able to check out on Amazon from other catalogs or other shopping experiences. But the whole content to commerce play, the whole ability to shop a catalog has never been done well. It's a beautiful experience when it works. But we're just not seeing a huge amount of market penetration.

Brian: [01:01:37] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good show, man.

Phillip: [01:01:42] That was really great.

Brian: [01:01:42] We went pretty deep in on passive commerce. Of course, like you said, we had more than fifteen minutes of content actually to talk about, by a long shot.

Phillip: [01:01:51] By a long way. Well over an hour.

Brian: [01:01:52] A ten minute story about a wallet. So I think...

Phillip: [01:01:54] Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry about that. I had immediate regret because it sounds like I'm bragging. I should not have ever spent that kind of money. But it was my birthday. Come on. Well, and we continue to talk about it.

Brian: [01:02:08] Well and it will last you the rest of your life, no doubt. I mean.

Phillip: [01:02:11] All right.

Brian: [01:02:12] Don't Castanza your wallet, ok?

Phillip: [01:02:14] I may Castanza my wallet. It may happen.

Brian: [01:02:17] {laughter}

Phillip: [01:02:17] Well, thank you for listening to Future Commerce. We want you guys to give us feedback about today's show. So please leave us some feedback in the Disqus comment box below, if you're listening on FutureCommerce.fm. If you are subscribed on iTunes, please give us a five star review. That helps us get the show out and make it available to more people because iTunes, we want them to trust us. So give us a five star.

Brian: [01:02:39] Also makes us feel good.

Phillip: [01:02:40] Yeah, it does. You can subscribe to and listen to future episodes of Future Commerce on iTunes and Google Play, or you can listen right from your Amazon Echo with the phrase, "Alexa, play Future Commerce," from TuneIn radio. So thank you so much for listening. Brian, you have any parting words? Any sage words of wisdom?

Brian: [01:02:59] Keep doing the things that you want to do.

Phillip: [01:03:03] Ooh.

Brian: [01:03:04] Yeah.

Phillip: [01:03:04] I like that.

Brian: [01:03:05] Back to the beginning of the show. That's right.

Phillip: [01:03:06] I love it. All right. Thank you for listening. And we'll catch you next week.

Brian: [01:03:10] Bye.

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