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Future Commerce

Phillip Jackson, Brian Lange

Future Commerce is the culture magazine for Commerce. Hosts Phillip Jackson and Brian Lange help brand and digital marketing leaders see around the next corner by exploring the intersection of Culture and Commerce.

Trusted by the world's most recognizable brands to deliver the most insightful, entertaining, and informative weekly podcasts, Future Commerce is the leading new media brand for eCommerce merchants and retail operators.

Each week, we explore the cultural implications of what it means to sell or buy products and how commerce and media impact the culture and the world around us, through unique insights and engaging interviews with a dash of futurism.

Weekly essays, full transcripts, and quarterly market research reports are available at https://www.futurecommerce.com/plus

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  • 28 episodes
  • weekly
  • Avg 31 min
  • English

Episodes 28

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  • #487
    Today · 24 min

    40% Won’t Settle for A Substitute: What DoorDash’s Data Tells Us About Loyalty

    DoorDash shoppers come to the app with a need, not a shopping list, and that makes them unusually loyal and unusually open to discovery. Katie Daleo, General Manager of CPG Ads at DoorDash, joins Phillip and Alicia to talk about how brands can plan for moments instead of audiences, why DoorDash pursued Alliance for Audited Media incrementality certification, and what changes when commerce media is measured on orders and intent instead of impressions. Plus, we dig into the newly launched Brand C

  • #487
    Friday · 40 min

    We Traded Family Dinners for Haunted Houses: Halloween Spending Data Shows Shoppers Want to Escape

    Halloween is now America’s second-largest consumer holiday, surpassing Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day in total spend, especially in categories like home decor. From the high street, the UK is catching up fast due to the rise of community-driven events, third spaces, and niche internet communities. Melissa Minkow, Global Director of Retail Strategy & Insights at CI&T, joins Phillip and Alicia from London to share what Halloween looks like on the other side of the Atlantic. Melissa explains why

  • Friday · 3 min

    *TEASER* You Can See Everything, If You Speak Fielder

    Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s You Can See Everything is a documentary about Elizabeth Holmes that turns out to be about every documentary, and every screen we’ve ever trusted. In this After Dark, Phillip and Brian dig up why no one in the film is a reliable narrator — not Holmes, not Billy Evans, not even Fielder — and why that makes it the most memeable movie of the year. What happens when anyone’s story can be told, and sold, faster than the truth catches up?

  • #485
    October 21 · 23 min

    Deloitte Predicts A $1.7 Trillion Holiday Season

    Stretched wallets are still spending. Deloitte projects up to 4.8% growth in holiday spending this year, driven mostly by price of goods rather than volume of sales. Shoppers say they feel stretched, yet they keep spending. Brian McCarthy, a principal in Deloitte’s strategy and analytics practice, joins Phillip and Alicia to forecast this year’s holiday spending. Brian explains why behavior outweighs sentiment, how AI shopping agents are changing the way people find products, and why physical

  • #484
    October 14 · 29 min

    Aubrey Horowitz of Home Depot: "We Plan Halloween 3 Years in Advance"

    Aubrey Horowitz, Merchant of Decorative Holiday at The Home Depot, is on the show to talk about the viral skeleton that set the Halloween decor bar 12 feet high. Aubrey shares a behind-the-curtain look at how Home Depot designs its seasonal assortment for America’s front lawns, shaped by a vocal community of haunters who shop earlier and earlier each year.  Plus, we walk through Skelly’s ground-up development with suppliers, the future of app-controlled animatronics, the moving target of nostal

  • #483
    October 7 · 42 min

    Former Commerce Secretary Gutierrez on Leadership, AI, and America’s Role In the World

    Phillip and Brian sit down with Carlos Gutierrez, former U.S. Secretary of Commerce and former chairman and CEO of Kellogg, ahead of the release of his memoir, Sheer Will. Carlos explains how the Commerce Department became one of the most powerful seats in Washington, why America should out-innovate China in the AI race, and why he thinks Americans are reluctant capitalists.

  • #482
    September 30 · 36 min

    Memorable Over Measurable: Retail’s Lost Wonders

    Taste can’t be manufactured, so brands are hiring the people who have it. Writer and gr8 collab founder Emma Apple Chozick returns to talk with Phillip about her creative process (sans content calendar), building ShopMy’s Signals Substack on proprietary data, and what the long-gone BEST Products showrooms can teach us about designing retail spaces worth remembering.

  • #481
    September 23 · 1 hr 48 min

    Rewind: Everything, Everywhere, All at Once

    Welcome to Future Commerce Rewind, where we revisit our deepest and most enduring conversations. This week, we're playing back our April 2025 conversation with Andrew McLuhan, grandson of Marshall McLuhan and director of The McLuhan Institute. Andrew joins Phillip and Brian to explain why his grandfather's ideas still hold up: the side effects of a technology tend to become its main effects, and the Global Village was never as idyllic as it sounds. AI has become a companion, an advisor and a sho

  • #480
    September 16 · 43 min

    Separating Real Signals from the Noise

    Phillip and Alicia welcome Merciv co-founder and CEO Shaia Erlbaum to the show to talk about how brands can read signals in real time, and verify their relevancy. Shaia argues that data itself is commoditizing, but verification is not. The most honest consumer signal lives too deep for surveys to reach, which is why our Signal Reports are looking deeper than stated behaviors and are telling completely new kinds of retail and culture stories.

  • #479
    September 11 · 22 min

    Cartographies of Meaning

    A replay from VISIONS Summit: NYC feat. Nikita Walia and Elliot Vredenburg of U.N.N.A.M.E.D. Studios. Nikita Walia and Elliot Vredenburg of U.N.N.A.M.E.D. Studios took to the VISIONS stage at MoMA last year to enlighten a room of retail executives and brand marketers about the realities of worldbuilding. Their theory: a brand’s final form is decided by the public—and the strategist's job is to navigate that story, not control it. And they use Mercator, Buckminster Fuller, Guy Debord, free public

  • September 10 · 1 min

    *TEASER* The Oreogate Lady Is NOT Real!

    Can anyone tell the staged from the real anymore? On today’s After Dark: We’re growing increasingly certain that everything is fake now. Amazon drones delivering your package to the deep end of your backyard pool? Curiosity bait. A bunch of Kindergarten moms actually keeping up in a group thread? A Suno commercial. That behind-the-scenes footage? AI-generated – but you watched it, didn’t you? PLUS: The minds of Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim have converged to craft what’s anticipated to be o

  • #478
    September 2 · 39 min

    Retail Media In Your Ears: Inside Dollar General's 21,000-Store Audio Network

    The next big advertising opportunity is here. The audio systems in Dollar General’s 21,000 stores connect shoppers with advertisers and drive loyalty. Austin Leonard, VP and GM of Dollar General Media Network (DGMN), sits down with Phillip and Alicia to explain why the retailer has doubled down on audio and the role that non-endemic advertisers play in his long-term vision.

  • #477
    August 26 · 27 min

    2026 Signals We’re Tracking: Commerce Evolves (Again), the Monoculture is Back, and Celebrity Prevails?

    Phillip sits solo to unpack conflicting economic signals: Shopify's monster quarter against a Census report showing eCommerce eating share while retail overall slows. What does this mean for brick-and-mortar? Although stores still make up most retail sales, their mission and value have shifted. The good has become secondary to the experience of acquiring it. Plus, he breaks down why the monoculture returned in a summer of shared events, and what's on the FC docket through November 3rd.

  • #476
    August 19 · 51 min

    Shopify Earnings Go Wild, and American Retail is OVER.

    Phillip and Alicia open the back-to-school season with a modern dichotomy: NRF data shows shoppers playing chicken, while Shopify posts a quarter where agentic traffic tripled. PLUS: After a summer abroad in London, Phillip reflects on behaviors unique to U.S. shoppers.

  • #475
    August 12 · 28 min

    Enter Through the Gift Shop: Inside MoMA's Retail Journey

    MoMA welcomes three million people to its Midtown campus in a good year. But the beloved cultural institution now has the power to reach multiples of that through a hoodie, a Lego set, and a chicken-shaped cutting board. Chief Retail Officer, Jesse Goldstine, joins the show to explain how MoMA inverted the museum retail model, how every product in the store thoughtfully ties back to MoMA’s art, and where the design institution draws the line between rolling out AI partnerships while protecting h

  • #474
    August 5 · 43 min

    Commerce Media's Day Two: The Agentic Shelf and the Measurement Reckoning

    Retail media is now a $100 billion industry. Collin Colburn, VP of Commerce and Retail Media at the IAB, says we’ve entered commerce media's "day two" –  the era where operational integration, interoperable measurement, and the arrival of the agentic shelf matter more than launching another network. We unpack why brands started calling retail media a tax, why Collin says we should blow attribution up, and whether an ad-supported agent can stay trustworthy.

  • July 30 · 1 min

    *TEASER* The Dire State of Consumer Trust In 2026

    It's a birthday After Dark! On this episode, Phillip and Brian work through the current state of consumer trust (it's not looking good). PLUS: Everyone's a critic! The reviews of The Odyssey are in, and Brian thinks Tarantino would have done it better. Air Bud's also making a triumphant(?) return, rocking, some Air Jordans, appropriately. This episode is exclusive to Future Commerce Plus members. Subscribe to listen at www.futurecommerce.com/plus

  • #473
    July 29 · 43 min

    Bedfellows: How Boll & Branch Keeps Humans and AI in the Same Sheets

    Boll & Branch spent 12 years doing the unfashionable thing: perfecting the product first and figuring out distribution second. Chief Commercial Officer Katia Unlu joins Phillip and Brian on today’s episode to discuss Boll & Branch’s store expansion strategy, an AI-generated damage claim that went viral, and the case for stimulation over substitution.

  • #472
    July 22 · 50 min

    VC Partner Predicts the Next Billion-Dollar Brand

    Maveron partner Natalie Dillon joins Brian and Alicia to challenge the consumer-collapse narrative: sentiment sits at post-9/11 lows while spending breaks records. Natalie sheds light on truths of today’s consumer, who is skeptical but continually shopping amid a cultural undertow where AI adoption stays surprisingly shallow, Gen Z turns skeptical, and analog living re-emerges as status. PLUS: Are cults the new future of commerce?

  • #471
    July 17 · 34 min

    Content, Communities and the Future of Publishing

    Ben Dietz convenes Casey Lewis (After School), Daisy Alioto (Dirt), and Erica Chen (Media Futures Group, WPP) on the collapse of the wall between editorial and commerce. Publishers are shipping perfume, brands are hiring writers, and the relationship forming in your inbox isn’t human-to-human anymore.

Showing 1–20 of 28 episodes