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“Loser-Generated Content”
Welcome to Friday, futurists!
Today, we're excited to announce our latest offering in the Future Commerce+ ecosystem: The Word of Mouth Index, a groundbreaking collaboration with Fairing that quantifies commerce's most elusive metric—the power of personal recommendation.
Let’s face it — this industry lusts over clicks, impressions, and conversion rates. But time and time again a 2014 blog from McKinsey[1] kept creeping back to the front of our mind—word of mouth is the most important predictor of repeat purchase behavior.
So we partnered with our friends at Fairing, the world’s top in-moment attribution survey tool, to create a first-of-its-kind dashboard to measure what algorithms consistently fail to capture: the moment when genuine human enthusiasm translates into commercial action.
The Word of Mouth Index tracks the invisible currents of consumer-to-consumer influence, revealing patterns that transcend traditional attribution models.
Beginning next week, Future Commerce+ members will gain exclusive dashboard access to this proprietary dataset, allowing you to:
📊 Beginning next week, Future Commerce+ members will gain exclusive dashboard access to this proprietary dataset
📈 Each month, you'll receive curated briefings that contextualize these findings
💸 This significant enhancement comes with no adjustment to your membership investment
Each month, you'll receive curated briefings that contextualize these findings, transforming raw data into insights for your industry. We'll highlight a narrative underneath the numbers, connecting recommendation patterns to broader cultural events and currents with our typical editorial around emerging consumer behaviors.
The best part: Future Commerce+ remains at its established price point, continuing to deliver extraordinary value through its constellation of benefits:
🛍️ 15% merchandise discount at shop.futurecommerce.com
🎧 Ad-free podcast experiences
✨ Exclusive bonus episodes
📝 Member-only briefings and analysis
In an era where digital noise drowns out meaningful signals, the Word of Mouth Index offers clarity—a precise measure of commerce's most authentic form of validation. We invite you to explore this new dimension of consumer insight and discover what happens when the whispered becomes measurable.
Join the membership today before the official launch for just $10 for your first 30 days with the code WORDOFMOUTH and start using the Index.
— Phillip
Overheard at Etail. Some spicy nuggets were dropped this week at eTail. Future Commerce alum and Infinite Shelf podcast host Ingrid Cordy quipped “user generated content? I call it lower generated content because the quality has always been so bad. But it’s [slowly] getting better.” Another concerning insights was the insinuation from an Olly Vitamins VP on a panel that Spanish language DSPs on Amazon are performing well because hispanic customers are afraid to shop in public due the politically-charged environment.Phillip’s Gen Z panel didn’t disappoint, with Christopher Carl, US Head of Marketing, AliExpress unveiling research that showed Gen Z was more prone to self gifting than prior generations. WBR’s Lucy Rosenblum confirmed that her ritual for self-gifting leads to overindulgence if she staves off the urge for too long.
And You Thought Elon Had a Lot of Kids? A late capitalist TikTok influencer trend sees beaucoup ad spend going to influencers with a specific script: chopping vegetables with an ad read beginning with “my Dad was the highest paid nutritionist in the state of California and nobody believes me when I tell them this.” That’s a lot of kids with the same dad.
The campaign appears to be part of an undisclosed ad for Lemon Balm Tea, but is more concerning and dystopic than “mmm ice cream yum yum.”
MACH Zero. Commercetools, a pioneer in the headless commerce ecosystem, has laid off 10% of its of staff, dismissed its CFO and CRO, and is undergoing a ‘significant’ restructuring “Significant” restructuring in sales, HR, marketing, and finance. Former CTO Kelly Goetsch departed last year. The move comes as the company was gearing up for an IPO run, which now seems out of reach.
Our Take: The MACH Alliance now seems less and less allied than ever. The key players have been losing ground to Shopify for the past few years, ceding deals in the midmarket, while struggling to expand the offerings into omnichannel. With commercetools sidelined, a key champion of the alliance, it’s going to require more of the ecosystem to step into leadership roles. Bigcommerce has had similar challenges, with much of it in the rearview mirror. The road ahead could be tough for MACH.
Beast Mode Billions: Following his stunning loss of tens of millions of dollars on his Amazon Prime show, Beast Games, Gen Alpha pied piper MrBeast is seeking hundreds of millions in funding at an eye-watering $5 billion valuation, positioning his content-to-commerce enterprise to roll up his various endeavours—Feastables, Lunchly, and his YouTube business—into a cohesive unit to a modern challenger of traditional media conglomerates.
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