“The Britney Spears Guide to Semiconductor Physics”
Greetings from London, futurists.
If there’s anything that the seasonal snowbirds who migrate to Florida for the winter have taught me, it’s that you can… just decide to live in another climate. At-will. With nobody’s permission. “Snowbird” is a Floridian colloquialism for northeasterners
So this year my family is spending the hottest part of the South Florida summer in London.
I’m no stranger to London, but having a Mews flat in the posh Notting Hill neighborhood has further confirmed my perspective of the coexistence of “commerce and culture.” This past Saturday we walked along the Portobello Road Market (pictured above), amid a mass of people. Shops, street food vendors, antiquities dealers, souvenir shops, and buskers line the half-mile of road that stretches from Ladbroke Grove to Notting Hill Gate.
Our leisurely walk from Notting Hill to Kensington Palace was punctuated by brief stops at vendors’ stands—from the odd cafe to an ice cream truck—and we found ourselves buying things because we’re the “type of people who buy such things.” What we buy defines who we are. I’m not the type of person who would stop at the chip shop; I’m a pop-up paella-kind-of-person. What I buy is an extension of my identity.
“Other than to buy things, is there any other time when people come together like this?” I asked my thirteen-year-old daughter. “Concerts, maybe,” she shot back. Just a few hours west of here in Glastonbury, Coldplay performed to an historic crowd; a throng of humanity squeezed into uncomfortably close confines to have an experience.
Commerce is indeed culture, just like music, just like food. What we buy is who we become; and the way we buy it has never been a greater predictor of who we are: our tastes, our social status, etc.
Commerce draws us out into the light—if not to buy, then to belong.
Over the next five weeks we’ll feature some of my insights from spending time in one of the finer cities of commerce in the world. If you have recommendations, or you’d care to meet up, please respond to this email.
— Phillip
P.S. The media business is changing, and along with it, the narratives around content-and-commerce are changing, too. This week on the podcast we’re getting in-depth into conversation with the former Head of Commerce at Buzzfeed, Nilla Ali, as she unpacks the narrative violations that happened in the prior media era, and how the Substack explosion is creating a new type of media. Listen on Apple or Spotify podcasts, or watch on YouTube.
Are Celeb Deepfakes the Future of EdTech? Twitter user @afterveil has drawn attention to a deepfake STEM video explaining the fundamental theorem of calculus. The shortform vertical video features deepfakes of Kim Kardashian and Taylor Swift explaining the integral.
Youtube: ‘Multiplayer Mode’ is Vital for Gen Z. A new trends report from YouTube highlights the changes in multiplayer dynamics among Gen Z content creators and consumers. A consumer study of 1,000 YouTube content consumers found that 66% of Gen Z often spend more time watching content discussing something than the original content itself. In addition, 65% of Gen Z respondents consider themselves creators, while 8% of Gen Z describe themselves as professional fans earning money from creation. A surprising takeaway: the report suggests that fans now have an expectation to be able to remix and recreate content that builds on existing lore.
Our Take: This underscores the main point of the opening keynote from the VISIONS Summit: NYC by Future Commerce co-founder Phillip Jackson: “the headline isn’t the story, discourse is the story. Which is why the redesign of sites like YouTube and The Verge are directionally-correct: they make the social commentary and user contributions more important than the editorial.” This is a multiplayer dynamic, and we see evidence of it everywhere; media, fashion, and commerce.
Future Commerce Plus members get immediate access to all of the VISIONS Summit: NYC content, available now for $20/month, cancel anytime.
Rent-a-Macbook. A revision to Apple’s Macbook rental program now allows customers to pay as little as $36/month for a brand new Macbook Air every two years. Reporting in Cult of Mac positioned the offering as part of the “circular economy,” despite the subscription service being a financial product offered through 3rd party credit, Citizens Bank.
Chicken Soup for the Chapter 11 Woes. We were as surprised as you are to learn that the $1 movie rental vending machine brand Redbox is owned by the mid-nineties publisher Chicken Soup for the Soul. Even more surprising: they’ve amassed over $900M in debt, and are now seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. They’ll need a little more than chicken soup to sort out this predicament, sadly.
BBQ-Flavored Energy Drinks? The functional beverage trend has gone too far. 5-Hour Energy has partnered with The National Food Lab to create the first-ever caffeinated BBQ sauce. 5-Hour Energy isn’t content to let this partnership slow roast on the grill, so they’ve turned up the heat on the limited-edition summer offering by partnering with micro-celeb Brian Baumgartner, better-known as “Kevin from the Office.”
E.l.f. Launches “IRL Commerce” on Roblox. The second instance of the Roblox shopping experience otherwise known as ‘IRL Commerce’ is now live and active. E.l.f. Beauty partnered with Roblox in a revision to its “Up!” land, providing a limited-time shopping experience that closely mirrors all of the same trappings found in the Walmart Discovered project launched back in April.
No surprise there, though; e.l.f. Partnered with Walmart to manage the integrated eCom experience. All of the major points of integration found in the Walmart Discovered experience are also available in Up!—UGC creator activation, low-AOV products, over-13-only account delivery, and poor product knowledge and support by the community. Read more about our take on Walmart Discovered’s IRL Commerce activation on our recent longform review or this in-depth episode of the podcast.
Future Commerce regularly tracks the growth of brands activating on Roblox with this live tracker.
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