The Dystopic Future of Social Commerce

Phillip: Is this where we have to acquire the license to "It's The End of The World As We Know It," Brian? The song?

Brian: {laughter} It's too rich for our blood. It's more than 5 figures, that's for sure.

Phillip: Did the kids know that song?

Brian: I don't think so.

Phillip: I don't think the kids know that song.

Brian: R.E.M. You realize R.E.M. was the biggest band in the world for six months.

Phillip: They still play that song. That song gets played.

Brian: Yeah. It's a good song.

Phillip: For six months. Just for six months. The first time I ever heard that song... I'm dating myself right now. The first time I ever heard that song was when it played during an episode of Beverly Hills 90210.

Brian: I think the first time I heard that song, was it on Independence Day? I feel like it was on the Independence Day movie.

Phillip: Oh, it had to have been. Independence Day soundtrack. Alright. I have to call on producer Sarah. Do you remember this song?

Sarah: It's The End of The World As We Know It.

Phillip: Yeah.

Brian: Mhmm.

Sarah: Is it like, {singing} "It's the end of the world..."

Brian: Yep.

Phillip: That's the one.

Sarah: Yep. But I couldn't tell you who sings it or where it's from.

Phillip: R.E.M. sings it. It's from a very old bygone era before the Internet.

Sarah: Mmm. Before my time.

Brian: The Internet was but a twinkle in Bill Gates' eye or Al Gore's eye. {laughter}

Phillip: Al Gore's eye. Alright. Well, today, it is the end of the world. Today, we're gonna talk about a bunch of stuff that signals and portends at least two of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. We have a collagen brand who is, I think, probably going to bring upon us at least some form of regulation in AI and advertising, if not their own FTC can of whoop ass at some point. We'll talk about what Obvi is doing to make everybody angry, if not possibly end the world as we know it. We're gonna have that a little later on in the show. But also meanwhile, on TikTok Shop, Brian, that platform is really ruining what used to be a really cool social platform for a lot of creators. Really dystopic stuff happening on TikTok shop. We'll cover that in just a little bit.

Brian: How much would you sell your soul for?

Phillip: For at least one packet of lemon balm tea.

Brian: At least 5 figures.

Phillip: I'll do some of that, and then we'll cover some of that. I don't know if you know this, Brian, but my dad was the highest paid nutritionist of all of California, and no one believes me when I tell them that. The next thing you need to buy is your very own copy of our brand new book. It's called Lore. I need to clean my desk. Holy cow. It's called Lore. It's our newest journal from Future Commerce Press. And this is a beautiful 280 page journal. I'm gonna zoom in here so you don't see my desk. Look at this thing. 280 pages. Gorgeous. Brian, you and I put this together with the entire team. It's taken us... It's an incredible labor of love.

Brian: Team effort. Total team effort.

Phillip: Over a year. Look at this thing. With our friends. Fourteen months, fourteen authors. That's no coincidence. One month per author. No. And it is probably the most incredible piece of prose that's ever been put together. I'll come up to the main camera here on our YouTube. And I think this clocks in this year at almost a hundred thousand words, eighty ish thousand, ninety ish thousand. This is covering everything that is legend, lore, myth, mythology, the things that are the real underpinnings of what makes a brand and what makes commerce, not just the infrastructure, but the actual abstract forms behind the world as we know it. The world as we know it. Lore.

Brian: It's a masterpiece.

Phillip: It is a masterpiece, and it deserves a place on your coffee table. How I've been saying it is in a world of ones and zeros that expire and get archived in your inbox or maybe live in tab like Brian Lange for months on end and never get looked at ever again.

Brian: Whole worlds live in that.

Phillip: {laughter} Entire worlds go missing in tabs in Brian Lange's Google Chrome. In that world, why not have something that lives on your coffee table forever? You can get it for $75 right now at Future Commerce Press, futurecommerce.com/Lore. Go get it. And that will help you to see the world a little differently. And I'd love for you to go get that shipping today worldwide, 200 countries, maybe even Qatar. I don't actually I don't know if they allow such a thing to that country. We'll get there. There's something to talk about later in the show. Also later in the show, we're gonna talk about our time at eTail.

Brian: Oh, yeah.

Phillip: Speaking of deserts, we went out to the desert, had a little time in the trade show industry, had a great time, actually,

Brian: Brian. This is the best eTail there's ever been. It was the biggest and the best, I would say.

Phillip: Yeah. We'll do a little bit of that. Did you see this video that made the rounds? Steph Lou, ecommerce queen on TikTok. She had this sort of like compilation video. I'm going to roll here in just a second. I'll set it up for everybody. TikTok Shop. The way TikTok Shop works for everybody who should know in the ecommerce industry, but for those unaffiliated, you as a brand can sign up for TikTok Shop. You can incentivize creators with an offer to receive product and to become paid as an affiliate. And part of that affiliate deal includes sometimes a script that you can read and some instructions that go along with that script. And sometimes the offer is too good to pass up, and then you wind up with way too many creators doing too much of the same exact thing. And this is what Steph caught on her For You page. Sarah, roll the clip.

TikTok Shop Clip 1: "My dad is one of the highest paid nutritionists..."

TikTok Shop Clip 2: "My dad is one of the highest paid nutritionists in..."

TikTok Shop Clip 3: "...in California. Yet no one believes him when he says these things."

TikTok Shop Clip 4: "My dad is the highest..."

TikTok Shop Clip 5: "My dad is one of the highest paying nutritionists, yet nobody believes him when he says these things."

TikTok Shop Clip 6: "Paid nutritionist..."

TikTok Shop Clip 7: "My dad was the highest paid nutritionist..."

Phillip: Okay. This person's dad is either Elon Musk. {laughter} This dad has a lot of children.

Brian: Either that or somebody has a lot of different voices that they can do.

Phillip: Yeah. So the conceit of the video is giving quasi health advice via a fictitious dad while chopping vegetables.

Brian: It is so weird. It is creepy. It is a creepy, creepy thing that there's so many videos of this. I know it's an ad, obviously. It's just, like, so dystopic. These people have sold their soul. They'll say anything. They will say anything. Whatever their sponsors tell them to say, they will say it.

Phillip: It's really weird seeing it all. When you see it out of context, any one person doing it, you're like, "Okay. This person's preparing a meal, and they're giving you a bunch of weird life advice and health advice." And then they drop some random thing about, you know, there's some weird non sequitur always about you have to do all these things like ancient Chinese medicine and techniques that will change your life. And then some of them will mention the product, not all of them. One person in particular kind of hints that "Nobody ever asks me. If only they would ask me what to do." And then the comments blow up. "What's the product? Tell me the product." It's like, "Oh, it's lemon balm tea." And I'm like, "Aha!"

Brian: There's the ad.

Phillip: There's the ad. I know exactly what the issue is. You've seen this before. There's a kind of a product, Brian, where you know the label. You've seen it in Whole Foods. Right? Or you've seen it in the grocery aisle. But you may not, like, brand name wise, you may not connect it. Lemon balm tea is one of them.

Brian: Yep. I 100% have seen lemon balm tea at the grocery store before, and I will never buy it ever again

Phillip: Because they poorly executed an influencer campaign, it turns you off?

Brian: Yeah. It's just like the grossest part of marketing. It's the grossest way to market. I choose not to be involved in that. I don't want it for that. I'm sure I have bought a product where people have used in scrupulous ways of marketing before, but this is... Or scrupulous. Scrupulous? Ways of marketing.

Phillip: Scrupulous? Unscrupulous?

Brian: Scrupulous.

Phillip: Rescrupulous. {laughter}

Brian: {laughter} Extra scrupulous.

Phillip: Yeah. I think what's really sad about this is you don't really realize the scale of influencer economy dynamics until you see so much of the exact same creative in context. This is not abnormal. This happens every day.

Brian: Totally. This is why people should not be paying attention to social. Social is bought in, paid for, and sold, and you should get off of it altogether. That's my 2¢. The broader social platforms. I mean, there's hardly any real people on Twitter. There's hardly any real people on TikTok. Even if they're real people, they're being bought and paid for. In fact, I would argue that there are more real people. This is how bad it is. There are more real people on Twitter than there are on TikTok, which is saying something because Twitter's kind of a nightmare right now.

Phillip: I don't know that I agree with that. I understand the sentiment of it. My Twitter is 99% bots, which I think it has always been 99% bots, but it's pretty it's pretty egregious LinkedIn. LinkedIn comments are wildly Chat GPT and a very specific type of Chat GPT now.

Brian: Yes.

Phillip: Like an overly verbose, weirdly...

Brian: The thing is those are real people posting those. That's the funny thing.

Phillip: Do you think so? I don't know about that.

Brian: I actually believe this. People are just clicking the AI like, people are extending themselves on LinkedIn now. They're just like comment, comment, comment, because it's so easy to add a little comment and it boosts your engagement and people are following the algorithm. So they it's way too easy to just add comments to people's new job posts or whatever conference recap posts they have.

Phillip: "This is such an amazing insight. It's always great to learn from people in their industries of how they can connect and deepen each other's relationships."

Brian: Yes.

Phillip: "People strengthen each other when they connect more deeply. #learningfromeachother #marketingwisdom" That's how I type everyday. {laughter}

Brian: If this is the world... If this is the world, I choose not to vote. I choose not to run.

Phillip: I don't wanna live in this world anymore.

Brian: No.

Phillip: I don't mean that in like a dark way.

Brian: No.

Phillip: I just want this all to change very badly.

Brian: The thing is you can just turn social off, but guess what? I guess you won't have a career.

Phillip: I don't know that that's true.

Brian: Unfortunately, for some reason, we believe in our society if you don't have a social presence, at least in certain industries, it's hardly... Yep. Oh, man. No. Think about this. When people go apply for jobs, you're either getting sorted out by an AI or you're getting reviewed by your social presence. You're screwed if you don't have some sort of visible presence that people can point to and say, "This looks interesting."

Phillip: I don't know. This is the old man yells at cloud section of the podcast. Getting back to TikTok Shop.

Brian: I don't think I'm being an old man here. I'm saying you have to have...

Phillip: I'm saying we're both collectively being old men.

Brian: Oh, okay. That's fair. I don't know. I saw producer, Sarah, there nodding her head as I was talking.

Sarah: Well, okay. If I can jump in.

Phillip: Please.

Sarah: There are gyms in LA that don't let you in if you don't have a certain number of followers on Instagram. So if not in the job space, I think we're seeing it more and more in like day to day. It's the nosedive thing that we talked about.

Phillip: Yeah. Yeah. Those are called places that I never wanted to be anyway.

Brian: Well, I'll say this.

Phillip: I'm with you.

Brian: Definitely would love a Sine Qua Non allocation, but you get on their list, you sit there for ten years, and the only way they're gonna pick you is if they see you both think about Sine Qua Non or other incredible wines. So I don't know, man. I just feel like it's not... I don't think it's this old man yell at the world. I think this is literally like if you don't have some sort of visible presence online, getting a job is hard unless you have some sort of insane personal network.

Phillip: I'm jumping in here. Hold on. Because now I wanna fight about this. Hold on.

Brian: Fight. Let's go.

Phillip: How does that have anything to do with the influencer economy dynamic of TikTok Shop? What does that have anything? Because that seems like a different... That's a different dynamic all together.

Brian: We were saying just opt out. Just opt out. And the answer is you can't just opt out if you wanna be involved.

Phillip: You can opt out of this lemon balm tea. You can opt out of this dynamic right here because I think the earnings...

Brian: If you wanna use the For You page on Twitter right now, you cannot opt out of being bombarded by bots.

Phillip: Bots and marketing messages. Right. Right.

Brian: Yes. And we even pay for it. We have the paid version.

Phillip: By the way, and my gripe about that is the paid version of Twitter was supposed to extend your reach, and my reach has never been worse.

Brian: Yeah.

Phillip: The greatest reach that I have had in, I'd say, three years on Twitter was that I commented a benign comment on Kieran Culkin's Oscar speech. Was it his Oscar speech yesterday? And I was basically front page of Twitter. They say never be the main character. I was dangerously close to being the main character on Twitter yesterday. We might even throw it up. We might even throw it up. The funniest meme response I have ever seen in my entire life. I responded to somebody who was talking about a shift of pronatalism because Kieran Culkin gets up and he said, like, we might even roll the clip. This would be great. Let's roll the clip.

Kieran Culkin Clip: Oh my god. That's crazy. I don't even know Mr Downey, sir. Thanks for handing this to me. This means a lot coming from you. Thank you. He's right. By the way, Jeremy, you're amazing in The Apprentice. I'm not supposed to single anyone out in his favoritism. Anyway, but you were great. And I've already lost whatever speech I prepared, twenty seconds or whatever. I have no idea how I got here. I've just acting my whole life. It's just been a part of what I do. So this is I felt like this is never my trajectory. But however I got here, I know that Emily Gerson Sainz, my manager of thirty years, it's because of you. Thank you for being there and I lean on you for everything. So please don't go anywhere. I'd be completely lost without you. I love you. And the movie, Jesse Eisenberg. Thank you for this movie. You're a genius. I would never say that to your face. I'm never saying it again, so soak it up. Thank you for this movie. Thank you, Searchlight, Topic Studios, and Dave and Alley at Fruit Tree. I'm gonna speed this up because I don't want Lithgow to get disappointed and give it a look. You look fine right now. I should oh, I should thank my mom and Steve for trying to raise me. You're really good people. You gave it your best shot. I love you, Mom. I wanna really... I love you, Jazz. This is I have to thank my wife, Jazz, for absolutely everything, for giving my favorite people in the world. This is please don't play the music because I wanna tell a really quick story about Jazz. About a year ago, I was on a stage like this, and I very stupidly publicly said that I won a third kid from her because she said if I won the award, she would give me the kid. It turns out she said that because she didn't think I was gonna win. But after and people came up to her and were like, you know, really annoying her. Think I think it got to her. But anyway, after the show, we're walking through a parking lot. She's holding... We were trying to find her car. Emily, you were there, so you're a witness. And she said, "Oh god. I did say that. I guess I owe you a third kid." And I turned to her and I said, "Really I want four." And she turned to me. I swear to god this happened. It was just over a year ago. She said, "I will give you four when you win an Oscar." I held my hand out. She shook it, and I have not brought it up once until just now. You remember that, honey? You do? Okay. Then I just have this to say to you, Jazz. Love of my life, ye of little faith. No pressure. I love you. I'm really sorry I did this again. And let's get cracking on those kids. What do you say?

Phillip: Because I don't mind putting myself out there. Like, I was very dangerously close to getting roasted. And by the way, me celebrating having 30 replies should tell you everything you need to know about what a hell site Twitter is right now because there's, like, no reach for anyone on Twitter anymore ever.

Brian: Only...reach.

Phillip: Yeah. Let me set this up real quick. Kieran Culkin gets up there, basically says, "This is such an honor. I'm so glad. Hey, honey. Can we have more babies now?" Basically.

Brian: "You owe me another child."

Phillip: Yeah, basically. And what I can only presume, I don't follow the person who actually posted this, but basically was like, "Hey, what a turnabout." Because, you know, we've seen many people in the past basically praise their career for only having the career because of the abortion movement. So this seems like a dramatic shift. And I my comment, which I felt like was very benign, was basically, you know, "Wow. This is a sign of a culture shift." And the funniest response I've ever seen, it's like the funniest SpongeBob meme. And it's Patrick, and his face is, like, totally dripped up like {noise} and it's basically recoating back to me what I just said.

Brian: From Patrick's viewpoint.

Phillip: Yeah. "Signs of a culture shift." I thought that was the funniest thing.

Brian: See, this is why X is still cranking because there are some real people still there.

Phillip: That had to be human. No bot could do that.

Brian: Yeah. Totally.

Phillip: Mad respect to whoever did that. Dangerously close to being main character.

Brian: You just made my point. TikTok, fewer real people. I mean, there might be real people, but they're literally just mouthpieces for things that are not real.

Phillip: This is why I really believe that our thesis that commerce is culture is correct because the fact is that cultural production is downstream of commercial means and commercial output today. Because at scale, cultural production is in the hands of the crowd. It's multiplayer, and most cultural production happens online. And most of that is dictated by dollars that go from companies like Lemon Balm Tea. And most of the social discourse around it.

Brian: Well you're talking about large scale global village type stuff. But I also think it applies... I think it also applies within micro economies as well. So regardless if you're like, we're talking about mass production or micro production...

Phillip: For sure. Yeah.

Brian: I think both.

Phillip: Yeah. For sure.

Brian: It applies to both.

Phillip: Oh yeah. Okay. I mean, listen. Shout me down in the comments. It's more engagement. Tell me how wrong I am. I'm happy for you to do that too. I've heard it all. There's nothing that can hurt me at this point. I've had everything said to me in the comments. I've heard Dollar Store John Krasinski.

Brian: You're gonna get a comment on that hat. If people are gonna comment on anything in the video stream right now, it's this hat.

Phillip: If anything, I've been told I'm a mix between Hank Green and John Krasinski, which I'm... That sounds awesome. That sounds like Five Below John Krasinski. I'll take that.

Brian: You know what is funny?

Phillip: Comments on my looks are highly appreciated and always welcome. Thank you.

Brian: That's really all people wanna comment about. I think I told you my theory about engagement. Basically, there's only two ways that people pay attention to things.

Phillip: Mhmm.

Brian: That's if they're funny or if they're hot. And that's it. Those are the only two at this point, I look around and I'm like, that's the only thing that people are paying attention to. It doesn't matter what people are saying.

Phillip: And we're both. {laughter} Speaking of funny and hot, we are hot off the release of our brand new release over at Future Commerce Plus. Our newest benefit just landed for Future Commerce Plus members. We have our paid membership. You can join the membership at futurecommerce.com/plus. But what do you get? We just added a brand new benefit for any paid member. Any paid member. We have never raised the price on our Plus benefit, but we continue to add value every day. Future commerce Plus benefits now include this thing called the word-of-mouth index. And this is specifically for people that are in the ecommerce or retail industry. What we have done is partnered with our friends over at Fairing. Fairing is the number one Shopify and ecommerce post purchase retail survey app that helps retailers to understand sentiment for attribution for where customers came from. Basically, it asks people at least one question, "How did you hear about us?" And what they found is over the five or six years that they've been in business and the over 5,000 top Shopify stores and many other enterprises that they work with is that over and over and over again, the number one predictor for repeat purchase and the number one predictor for satisfaction in that purchase, including things like propensity to keep the product and not return it. And greatest predictor across all industries for not just repeat purchase, but propensity to convert to subscription is word-of-mouth. If you are referred by a friend or a family to the brand by word-of-mouth, that is the greatest predictor for the success of the brand. And so we have partnered with them to give a full blown dashboard into their data for the very first time, and that is available right now for any subscriber of Future Commerce Plus. And this is really powerful. I almost can't believe that this is available to all members right now. You can get it if you log in to your Future Commerce Plus dashboard. And I'm really proud of the work that Matt has done, our friend there for a very long time, six, seven years. We go back to the old days of the ecommerce industry, working together in this industry. But seeing what he's built over at Faring is really, really interesting. Also, they do much more than post purchase surveys these days, but seeing this data come to life, we'll throw up a little bit of a demo on the YouTube if you wanna see what it looks like, but you can also see it right now. We've revised the Future Commerce Plus page, by the time this video comes out, futurecommerce.com/plus. And you can see that page in action. It shows you a little bit about what those dashboards look like. Very, very cool. It's updated every month with brand new data at that month's data, and we also put out a briefing every month for members only on what happened that month in word-of-mouth data, and that'll come from us and Fairing. So it'll continue to get better every month.

Brian: My dad is the highest paid nutritionist in Seattle, and he has said that Future Commerce Plus is the thing that keeps him the fittest.

Phillip: {laughter} Yeah. No one believes him when he says that either.

Brian: Nobody believes him when he says that Future Commerce Plus keeps him fit. Yeah.

Phillip: We'd love for you to go join. Just a few other things that you probably already heard it. I'm not sure if there's an ad that rolls. If you did hear it, it's because you're not a member of FutureCommerce Plus and you're not on the ad free version of the podcast. We do have an ad free feed for people that are members of Future Commerce Plus. But you get lots of other things like discount on print and merch like the book Lore. You could have gotten a discount on that when it hits broad distribution outside of presales. You're gonna get discounts on everything. Priority invites...

Brian: Saves you money. Saves you time. Saves your brain, or it saves you attention.

Phillip: Yeah. And by the way, we have our VISIONS June event. Our summit is coming up. You're gonna get in the door first. Lots of things coming up. Anyway, all the, all the, all that is available at futurecommerce.com/plus. Really excited for Word of Mouth. Go check out the Word of Mouth Index. Little update...

Brian: By the way, I have been, if you've been watching the feed, taking sips of Suja, and I paid for my Suja. They did not pay me.

Phillip: You're not an influencer? You're gonna be really jealous, actually. I spoke at EEE this past Friday. And they had the Head of Ecommerce Retail at Suja, and the whole family of brands was there. I met her.

Brian: What?

Phillip: Yeah. She's a wonderful person.

Brian: I wish I could've come. I should've come.

Phillip: You should've come. Come to Miami.

Brian: I've never been to EEE, actually, and that makes me sad. Our friends over at Absolute Web do a great job.

Phillip: They do an amazing job, actually. You should have been there, but it was just off the heels of our eTail event. We were large, we had a very large presence at eTail. Maybe let's run down just a brief recap because I'd love to...

Brian: Well, Future Commerce had seven sessions at eTail, which is...

Phillip: Which is I think I heard of. Yeah.

Brian: I think well, I think we had seven or eight sessions at eTail Boston last year as well.

Phillip: Wild.

Brian: But this time it was mostly main stage content. And you had an incredible keynote where you actually talked about some things that you hadn't really, like, put into a cohesive talk about or a talk around before.

Phillip: It definitely hasn't been cohesive to this point. {laughter}

Brian: It was definitely more cohesive in your chat, and I thought it was great. You talked about time capsules and what they represent in culture and the sort of importance of commerce in how we preserve our society and how we want people to view us into the future, which I think is a really incredible concept.

Phillip: Thank you. Thank you. And you yourself actually, multiple members of the team all participated. Our New Director of Marketing, Elizabeth Schmidt. She sat with the Head of Commerce or the VP of Commerce at Faherty to talk about the work that they're doing at Faherty these days, which is, by the way, Faherty... Very big in physical retail and scaling in physical retail.

Brian: Super smart.

Phillip: Yeah. Very, very large way, and wonderful to see that happening. But, like, give me a little rundown on some of the stuff that you did at eTail, because I know you were really busy.

Brian: I was really busy. I feel like I ran around the whole time with no breaks, which was great. Actually, I loved it. Mostly, it was just chatting with people. I felt like I couldn't walk from one side of the JW to the other without being stopped.

Phillip: That's true.

Brian: Getting the meetings on time was really hard because there were just so many people that to chat with that I know from the years of having been there.

Phillip: You ever do that move where you put your cell phone, like fake cell phone up to your face...

Brian: Pull a Leo or whatever? Who got called out on that?

Phillip: Was that Leo? Is that a thing you can do? I feel like that's a social contract. Even if people know that you're doing that, like you're faking it, people should just understand that you're doing that because you're in a hurry.

Brian: Oooh. I don't know. I would recommend calling somebody for real.

Phillip: Not doing that?

Brian: Like, just call someone so you can be on the phone with them at minimum. Make it real.

Phillip: Call someone. Hey. You should just call your wife. "Hey, honey. I just need to be on the phone because I can't make it through the JW Marriott lobby without being stopped." {laughter}

Brian: {laughter} Oh my gosh.

Phillip: "Love you too, honey."

Brian: This is a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode.

Phillip: That would be a great... That's a great plot, actually.

Brian: It is a good plot. Totally. He's trying to get from one side of the room to the other.

Phillip: What were some of your sessions though?

Brian: So yeah. I had a great session on the cutting edge of retail experiences. That was with Jeremy Lowenstein from Milani Cosmetics and we just jammed. It was a great chat. I had someone come up to me afterwards because I actually closed out the whole show with three sessions in a row.

Phillip: Wow.

Brian: So I just stayed on the stage for the final three... What was it? Two hours of eTail or whatever it was. No, maybe not that long.

Phillip: How do you do that?

Brian: It was interesting.

Phillip: You're a beast.

Brian: I swung back and forth between topics wildly because my next session was with a couple of venture capitalists about funding and then sustainability to finish the whole thing off. So it was like a bit of a seesaw. A little bit of I got whipped around on topics. Talking about the multiplayer brand then dry powder then sustainable practices of commerce.

Phillip: Wow.

Brian: Good times. Good times were had by all. It was a fun. And you know what's actually probably my favorite thing of the whole event? My favorite chat was the one we did with Aman at our fireside chat at the official eTail after party with Adobe.

Phillip: Let's... Yeah. Unpack that a little bit. What all did we do?

Brian: That was such a fun time.

Phillip: We've never done anything like that before.

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this was a Future Commerce Plus and VIP exclusive event that we did. And we did a little fireside chat, literally by a fire in the desert. It was gas. Don't worry.

Phillip: How novel. No one's ever done such a thing.

Brian: But we had this incredible... It was like you and I kinda just chatted with Aman in front of like 20 people, but we opened up the floor for people to just jump in and say something and comment, raise their hand, and be involved. And what happened was super cool because I feel like it was an engaged conversation where people kinda we were spurring the conversation but people were adding their bits along the way, and we were we're able to respond to them in the moment. And, like, it felt kind of how the multiplayer brand should operate almost. You bring a narrative, but you open up space for people to be involved, that wanna be involved. And then they might have some incredible things that you've never thought of before. And we had comments from super cool brands, Head of DTC over at Stanley was there.

Phillip: Yeah.

Brian: We had Ingrid Cordy who's CMO at Higher Dose and has been the cohost of our Infinite Shelf podcast for many years. We had just a really interesting... And Asher...threw in some comments and Scott Osman who's a another podcaster. He jumped in there. Just super cool brands, friends that we've had in the industry that were ready to engage and add something and we all learned and we're better for it by the end of the night. And it was super fun.

Phillip: I agree. And also some folks from Olly the vitamin company.

Brian: Yeah. A lot of Seattle people in this crowd, actually. Every single person we've mentioned has been from Seattle.

Phillip: {playing mocking noises} I've heard, and file this under the "Overheard at eTail." I mentioned this on The Senses, which are are biweekly. Well, sorry, twice weekly newsletter. A couple things that I heard from the stage I thought were interesting/maybe concerning. A lot of concern around tariffs, you know, as to be expected. We're recording this on March 4.

Brian: I mean, today. Yeah.

Phillip: The day the trade war officially kicked off. There you go. So a lot of concern around that. Which I think, to be honest with you, that's a tremendous amount of conversation around what are brands doing, how are we feeling? A lot of, like, feelings check-in. Feel like we've been doing that for a number of years in the ecommerce ecosystem with at every single event. "How are we feeling?"

Brian: Yeah.

Phillip: I think a lot of people were really waiting to see Target earnings. Walmart had its earnings contemporaneous to the event, and the Walmart earnings were stellar but gave soft guidance going forward. And that was a thing that I think kind of was concerning for a lot of folks.

Brian: A little bit. Yeah.

Phillip: But Target's earnings just came out, and we're gonna... February is a bad... February is not good. And that has nothing to do with tariffs. Or very little to do with tariffs, I should say. So consumers weakening. I think there's a lot of stuff that's looking a little concerning for a lot of folks in the sector. So that's something we heard a lot at eTail.

Brian: Hey. Costco's opening a bunch of new stores this year.

Phillip: That's true. VP over at Olly, not the person who attended our event, but another person on stage, kinda had an offhanded comment just in passing. It was not the topic of one of the sessions. Something that I noted, and was a subject of conversation at our event, at our fireside chat event, something that kinda kept coming up over and over again, was that they are seeing a rise in purchasing from Hispanic customers that were inbound from Amazon DSPs, which are basically Spanish display ads on Amazon. And the thesis is, this is like the working thesis, is that there's fear among the Hispanic community to leave their homes so they're doing more shopping online. And so there's a lot of folks in the ecommerce ecosystem who are sort of wrestling with, is this an opportunity to move into more Spanish language ad inventory or to test that? And this is one of those weird... This is one of those challenges in the ecosystem. Is that an opportunity? Right? Is that an opportunity?

Brian: Calling that an opportunity feels gross.

Phillip: Exactly.

Brian: Yeah.

Phillip: Yeah. So that was a topic of conversation at eTail. And then probably the greatest, Brian, one liner I've heard in a long time came from Ingrid.

Brian: Yes. It was. That was funny.

Phillip: Were you there for that? You remember?

Brian: Yeah. Oh, I was there for that. You know, it's funny. She came up with that a long time ago. I've heard this one before.

Phillip: I haven't. I hadn't heard it before and it was fantastic. You wanna set it up?

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. So she was talking about sort of using user generated content and like what its role is now today. And she's like, "Yeah. Back in the day, I used to call it loser generated content because the fidelity was so bad and the quality was so low." Loser generated content. I think everybody lost their minds when she said that.

Phillip: I've never heard that before, but I love it. Loser generated content, not user generated content. And that is our eTail wrap up, but it's a phenomenal segue. Loser generated content, I think, takes us right to...

Brian: Great segue.

Phillip: Takes us right to the end of the world as we know it. Loser generated content is the end of, I think, decency in ecommerce advertising because AI is allowing the losers to generate content at scale. Here's an ad that we ran across that's making the viral rounds. It's creating more division. It's always a Saturday. It's always a Saturday where this crap goes viral on DTC Twitter.

Brian: That's why I miss it. I'm out.

Phillip: Because you're not online Saturday.

Brian: I full Luddite it on the weekend.

Phillip: I'm busy making landing pages for our Word of Mouth Index page. So I've got nothing better to do than be on Twitter. Let's play... How long is this thing?

Brian: Not long.

Phillip: It's like a minute?

Brian: Forty seconds. Forty five seconds.

Phillip: Hang in for the whole thing because you gotta get... You gotta have the whole experience. Let's roll the whole ad. Why not?

Brian: It gives you space to throw up.

Phillip: Yep. Play it.

Obvi Ad Clip: I spent five years as the hidden mistress of a Qatar Prince. The rules I had to follow still make me question everything. I was required to do facial massages every night to sculpt my cheekbones and jawline. He said natural beauty should always be refined. I had to have my nails painted every four days even if I never left the house. He believed a woman's hands should always look soft and elegant. Before every public event, a team of stylists flew in to perfect my hair and makeup. He said a woman of his should never be seen without perfection. I wasn't allowed to wear jewelry that wasn't custom made me. He said a woman like me should never wear something another could own. My hair was washed with pearl infused shampoos made exclusively for me. He said beauty should never come from the same bottles as everyone else. He said no one is jealous of chubby women, so he gifted me Obvi Collagenic Elite so I could lose weight effortlessly. I lost 13 pounds without working out. And now when I walk into a room, every woman stares in envy while men can't look away from me. Do you think this was worth it?

Phillip: {laughter} Wow.

Brian: Can I?

Phillip: Does Obvi think that the lawsuit's worth it?

Brian: Ugh. Well, is there a lawsuit yet?

Phillip: Not yet.

Brian: This does not feel good.

Phillip: Barry Hott posted on X, one of the last real people on the platform, sort of coming out against this and a number of folks.

Brian: You keep saying that. There's a lot of real people left.

Phillip: No. There's no one left.

Brian: Just don't go to the For You page. That's all there is to it.

Phillip: He posted... We'll link this in the show notes, and I'll basically read his take. I really like this, and I'll read a couple of the comments because that's content in 2025 is me reading tweets to you. Here we go.

Brian: Now we're talking old man here.

Phillip: Basically, he says, "This is how to deceive consumers, violate FTC laws, and get sued like crazy with one TikTok. Everything is illegal. The fake story from a fake AI person, the misleading claims, and the undisclosed affiliate link. This thirty second lawsuit magnet took fifteen minutes to make and could generate 10,000,000 plus misled consumers, a minimum 6 figures in fines, $50,000 in FTC fines per violation, class action lawsuits for misled buyers, 6 figures in legal fees trying to explain why it's, "just a joke." If you're really lucky, maybe even a federal wire fraud charge if the DOJ decides to make an example out of you and up to twenty years in prison. I hope that, "5 figure revenue" was worth it because your 6 or 7 figures of fines and legal bills are coming fast." Now, this is all due to this comes back to the source of this video, which was a brag post from the AI ad creation platform, Arcads. Now Arcads made the rounds last year. So let's give credit where credit's due because Obvi did not post this video bragging about their ad. Arcads, the AI video creation platform that does sort of fake AI influencer ads, which if you've seen them before, then you recognize this fake AI influencer, both the face and the voice.

Brian: It's like all the ads everywhere now.

Phillip: All of them. You've seen them before. And the one that made the rounds last year that went, like, mega viral was a woman in her car. And we covered that extensively, I think, both on the podcast and on the newsletter as sort of like the tip of the spear that was also generated by Arcads. This was a brag post about the efficacy of a 14,000,000 view TikTok that generated 5 figures of revenue from one post. So that is how we got here. Okay? And Barry Hott is an independent performance media agency consultant who deals with these sorts of legalities and issues all the time, and he has nothing to do with either of them. He's commentating on something that's happening in the space, and I support him speaking out against both the brand Obvi and the AI platform, Arcads, and this whole hubbub. I think all of it's very gross and ick, but also the sign of the times and probably the future of everything, and that's why I hate it here. Brian.

Brian: Yeah. 14,000,000 views. 5 figures of revenue. Hold the phone.

Phillip: That's kind of everything. That's how everything goes nowadays.

Brian: So basically, if you see mass attention on something, you know it's probably bots because the conversion rate on this is so low. It's the lowest I've ever heard. It's terrible.

Phillip: It's an organic, but this is not an affiliate post. This is an organic post that did 5 figures of revenue.

Brian: That we know of.

Phillip: $30 AOV product. That's not... It takes "fifteen minutes" to produce. Here's the issue. There's a lot of things that we're... This is a brave new world.

Brian: Mhmm.

Phillip: And AI cannot give a product review because they never bought anything. Right? There's no disclaimer or disclosure.

Brian: Oh, it's a disaster. And I think that there are rules about this now regarding reviews.

Phillip: Yeah.

Brian: They've just passed this past year. We covered it, I believe, the podcast. But I think this is the problem. This is the gray hat area between scamming and I mean, it's a scam actually. You know what? This isn't gray hat. This is just full on black hat behavior. Whether it's by the AI company, Arcads, or it's by Obvi and they've Obvi paid them to make this. It doesn't matter. Someone's done something illegal here.

Phillip: I think the implication here is that Obvi made the ad using Arcads. And by the way, I've seen lots of Obvi ads. Obvi makes a lot of AI ads that position themselves against Ozempic a lot. And they use a lot of fear tactics. They use a lot of like, generally, their marketing in general is fear based and icky. This crosses a big line for me, in a lot of ways that I think I shouldn't even have to explain.

Brian: Can we move on?

Phillip: I shouldn't even have to explain it. And by the way, Rob Freund, friend of the podcast, gives a legal basis for this by the FTC endorsement guidelines. He says, "It's illegal to use endorsements and advertising that do not reflect the actual experience of the person making the endorsement. This is related to compliance with section five of the FTC act and the FTC endorsement guidelines. If my doctor friend recommends a skin cream, and if I say that my doctor friend recommends a skin cream that I haven't actually used, then there are multiple problems with that piece of sponsored content from the jump, and brands get in trouble for this all the time. And the law does not distinguish between real people and AI creators in this context. So AI creators can't truthfully convey experiences with a product." And that hasn't actually been tried yet, but I have to believe that that's gonna... We'll see that any day. I don't know. Maybe in this administration that's just launched an AI scam, or a crypto scam. Maybe that doesn't happen. And maybe it's the end of the world as we know it.

Brian: Just sits out there and nothing happens about it?

Phillip: Maybe.

Brian: Yeah. I mean, this to me feels very much in line with "my dad is the highest paid nutritionist" content. Even though it's not actually, one's AI and one's not AI, it's deception. It's deception. I think both instances should be illegal.

Phillip: If you wanna know...

Brian: This is content that we see on Twitter now. This is all that we have on TikTok. It has taken over the For Yous of all of our feeds. All of the stuff that's being fed to us algorithmically is all trash.

Phillip: Well... It doesn't have to be that way. I think we can curate the algorithm a little bit better. I think that the social feed can be curated for a different kind of content. I think inherently...

Brian: You put a lot of time into curating your algorithmic feeds. A lot.

Phillip: Yeah. But...

Brian: More care than most.

Phillip: I have a really great, like, my Reddit's really great. My Instagram's really great. Twitter is a hell site. Okay. Enough of that. You know who has a really great take on this that has a really existential dread quality to it, but I think actually is directionally correct, is our friend Alex Greifeld. She wrote a piece about this called "The End of Outside" that you should read. It conveniently is on Future Commerce, and it is totally free to read. You should read it because it tells you why an ad like this will become more commonplace, and this is a taste of what's to come in the future. She had an amazing take on this in particular. She said, "This ad," this is what she's referring to, "is why I prefer to think of marketing as a long term multi round game because if you choose to think of it as a short term one round game, then you're competing against people who are willing to lie and break the law." And if you think of business and if you think of marketing in particular as having to last for a really long time, right, then eventually, you can outlast people who will probably go to jail.

Brian: Which means you're going to not be able to capture all the demand. You're gonna take them on chin sometimes.

Phillip: That's right.

Brian: Someone like this is gonna step in, capture five figures in a moment, and you're gonna capture way more if you don't play the games that are being played. I love Alex's take. I love, you know, not chasing quarterly results. Play the long game and build a brand that's made for the next fifty years and don't just chase the the fads of the moment.

Phillip: That means that certain capital models are not accessible for certain kinds of brands at certain pieces of time. That's saying a lot, Brian. That's kinda it for the show. I'd love to know what you guys think about this whole hubbub. Is this the end of the world as we know it? Let us know. I think it is, but I wanna know what you think because maybe you have a better take, but I'd love for you to lend your voice to the conversation. Thanks for watching this episode of Future Commerce. If you're not subscribed, please do so. It takes very little time to do so. You can get more episodes of this podcast and all Future Commerce properties at futurecommerce.com. And if this conversation sparks something for you, like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, including YouTube. Go subscribe. We're building a community on YouTube. Get engaged over there. When you do subscribe, it helps more people join the conversation. And if you want to bring Future Commerce into your world, do that with our brand new book. It's called Lore. Check out our print shop at futurecommerce.com, and you can get everything that is fit for print at shop.futurecommerce.com. It's where commerce meets culture and our beautifully crafted zines, journals, and other collectibles like T shirts and merch. And remember, commerce shapes the future because commerce is culture. We'll see you next time.

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