S2 E10: Ger Keohane & Gordon Newman - The Black Box Is Not a Silver Bullet

In this season finale, Ger and Gordon look back on Season 2 and discuss the highlights and key learnings.

Together they explore the wealth of knowledge that was so generously given by our guests over the past nine episodes.

No stone is left unturned. Proposition, branding, storytelling, product launch, entering new markets, marketing, customer experience, customer trust, customer loyalty, the democratisation of e-commerce tech... it's all here. 

In short, this episode is a formidable exploration of successful e-commerce, drawing on the thinking of some of the keenest practitioners today — and Ger and Gordon.

If you only ever listen to one episode of Functional & Fabulous, make sure it's this one.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
This is Functional & Fabulous, the omnichannel podcast where we unbox tales of online retail and digital transformation.
In this season finale retrospective episode, there is controversy...
We'll have an ecommerce podcast, Gordon, which controversially does not loop into Amazon.

(00:22):
And there is philosophy...
Now, if we want to go get philosophical, in the philosophy of science, you have to have -
I'm going to get this entirely wrong.
There is also bullishness...
I'm very, very bullish on...
Is that the right word?
I'm bullish?
I am bullish.
Are you bullish?
I am.
Some things are left unsaid...
Actually, I don't know if you can say that because...

(00:43):
We won't say that.
We won't say that because that's really bad.
And the black box is not a silver bullet...
The black box is not a silver bullet.
The coffee cup is not full.
This episode of Functional & Fabulous is brought to you with pride by StudioForty9, retail ecommerce experts, omnichannel growth consultants, and cut-through performance marketing specialists.

(01:14):
StudioForty9, where your digital retail success is built.
Hello, and you're very welcome to Functional & Fabulous.
Unbelievably, we've now wound our way to the very end of our second season, and we thought it would be a marvellous opportunity to sit back and reflect on what we've learned in 2024.
But we've covered so much this year, Gordon, I'm frankly deeply concerned about how to make sense of everything and put it in some sort of order.

(01:40):
I mean, I want a considered, well-reasoned, yet sweeping survey of the ecommerce landscape as it has been sketched by our marvellous, experienced, and actually numerous guests that we've had this year.
After all, whether you're thinking about launching an ecommerce business or transforming an existing one, we've covered the full spectrum of topics.

(02:01):
The themes running through our episodes this year have spanned from product and proposition, brand and brilliant basics, location, territory, channel, experience design, technology, marketing, advertising and performance marketing.
And don't forget loyalty.
Don't forget loyalty, clienteling, customer experience.

(02:22):
Where to start?
That is quite a lot, isn't it?
It is.
It is.
It is a lot.
It is a lot.
It's a broad range.
It's a very broad range.
It's a broad range.
So I guess, like, you know, if we start at the place at the beginning, you know, when you're thinking about the product, I guess you come back to product, you come back to proposition.

(02:43):
We had a couple of interesting guests this year.
Some that come to mind immediately when we're thinking about product and proposition would be Paul from gloveglu and Shane from Raylo, where the businesses are in two different kinds of stages.
I guess Raylo was in the startup area of things, and maybe it's safe to say gloveglu is in a situation where they want to be a category king or they are a category king.

(03:08):
But in both cases, being incredibly sharp on your proposition is incredibly important at that stage.
I think what we heard this season from pretty much everybody was that you need to start with the proposition.
I think you're right, Shane and Paul both had really great stories.

(03:30):
So when we're thinking about proposition, what are we actually saying?
Where are we actually starting?
And we're asking a few questions.
Are you solving a customer problem?
Are we addressing customers' physical or emotional needs?
Are we addressing a product gap?
What is the job that we are starting to do?

(03:52):
So it's not even delving into ecommerce.
This is a bit more kind of...
Foundational, really...
I was going to say ethereal, but we'll go with foundational.
I think foundational sounds a bit more solid than ethereal, which sounds, like, a little bit woolly.
Far be it from me to say something woolly.
But if we look at that problem that Raylo was solving, I think it was really interesting to hear from Shane about where that came from.

(04:20):
Yeah, so it was Carl, our CEO.
I think he was straddled with a drawer full of devices, as most people have.
Like, literally most people in the UK have a drawer full of devices.
And he couldn't get it out of his head that there must be so much value worth of devices sitting in these drawers.

(04:43):
And the residual value is a core part of what drives our pricing engine.
So our pricing engine really is driven by a circular economy of really maximising the residual value and maximising the use of a device.
What does that actually mean?
That means that our devices get used by multiple consumers for the maximum useful life of the device.

(05:08):
We then pass those savings back to the consumer.
And as I mentioned earlier, the ability to get a new iPhone 15, say, for 50 per cent of the retail price, that's all driven by utilising this residual device model.
So haven't we all got a drawer full of devices?

(05:29):
And swinging from one origin story to another origin story, Paul told us a little bit about how his business came to being and the problem that he was trying to solve.
And one of my core clients was a German goalkeeping brand called Uhlsport.

(05:49):
I worked with those guys for 10, 11 years.
I got to know the goalkeeping world really, really well, from pro-level, apprenticeship keepers, et cetera, et cetera, right down to kind of grassroots.
And one of the discussions that we always had in the global product meetings were all about making latex grippy.
So the palms of goalkeeping gloves are made of latex.

(06:10):
And kind of the super innovation is all about, can you create the grippiest latex?
And that was always the chat, which is all well and good.
But the reality is, if you spend even up to £150 on a pair of goalkeeping gloves, then the latex is super grippy, but it's really, really soft.
If you spend £10, then the latex really isn't very grippy at all, but it's super hard and lasts a long time.

(06:31):
So the brainwave of the idea was, and I was with a friend of mine in the car, I can tell exactly where it was.
It's not far from here.
It's a place called Wick Hill between Stowe-on-the-Wold and Burton-on-the-Wolds, sorry, Burford.
Where all good ideas are born, I understand.
Literally, it was a light bulb moment.
And I turned to Glenn and said, because we were just talking about goalkeeping products.

(06:54):
And I said, you know what?
Like, everybody talks about latex.
Like, imagine if there was a product that you could apply to any level of goalkeeping gloves to make them grippy.
So if you bought a £40 pair of gloves that weren't very grippy, but you could make them grippy, wouldn't that be cool?
Or the other thing is, because the latex is soft in more expensive gloves, it wears away.

(07:16):
So you lose the grip.
So wouldn't it be cool if there was something you could apply to your goalkeeping gloves to make them grippy?
So that was the seed of the idea in 2011.
And I suppose it's not always a physical problem that people are solving.
Think about some of the other people that we've spoken to.

(07:36):
Like Jess, when she was talking to us about what they're doing at Snapfish and Shutterfly. I think she defines it as they're actually helping people to, well, they bring joy, but they're helping people to be a bit more creative.
So they're kind of empowering the customer as the hero of that story.

(07:59):
And the best part is, what we wake up and do at Shutterfly every day is we try to bring people joy, right?
And give them ways to relive these memories that they took in their photos.
And so the things that we'll get back from customers, they'll say things like, oh my gosh, I cried twice.
I cried the first time when I opened this book for the first time.

(08:21):
And I cried the second time when I gave it to XYZ person.
Like, I gave it to my mom for Mother's Day, or I gave it to my daughter as her graduation gift, or I gave it to my friend whose dog passed away and we wanted to commemorate him.
So it's just lots of heartwarming testimonials where people just say this service has changed their life in a way because they never felt like they could do a photo book.

(08:47):
They never felt creative, but we helped them in a way that they didn't expect.
So that's the best part at the end of the day.
So we've heard a couple of different types of product and we've got the physical, we've got the emotional, we've got, let's say, people who are trying to find a solution for problems that they have in their lives.

(09:08):
That's all well and good.
How do you get clarity on the proposition?
What even does that mean?
Do you not think that sometimes people get a little bit lost?
Definitely.
I feel a little bit lost.
It's all right, let me guide the way.
Guide, shine the light, shine the light.
But when you look at certain businesses, you can see that they're not maybe sure about who they are or what is the problem that they're trying to solve.

(09:40):
And you can see that coming across in some of their marketing activity or some of the other things that they're doing.
They just don't have that clarity.
And I think the first step that brands would need to take is to have absolute clarity on what their overall proposition is.
And that's hugely, hugely helpful in defining what else they're going to do from a broader digital, and actually a broader trading strategy perspective.

(10:10):
Yeah.
I was talking with Vinnie O'Brien, actually, just to name check the good and bauld Vinnie recently.
And he was remarking how it was the case that he often finds people in business don't have a strategy at all.
And even the idea that a strategy could be had was nearly somewhat novel.

(10:32):
You know, you can totally sit down and work with a couple of people in the business to try to develop a strategy.
All you're really doing is trying to get a clarity on the direction that you want to take the business in.
It doesn't have to be forever.
It doesn't have to be nailed to a wall necessarily, and yourself nailed next to it if you don't actually manage it.

(10:54):
It doesn't have to be a 4,000-page document either.
Yeah.
So in terms of the product proposition, I presume, for me anyway, I think the product proposition, what it comes back to is how you're solving a problem, who the product is actually for in the first place.
And that gets you a certain distance, right?
Yeah.
If you start with, who am I solving a problem...?

(11:17):
Actually, start with what problem am I solving?
Or what am I providing?
And to whom am I providing it?
That then gives you a really strong direction about what your next step is going to be.
And then you can start moving on beyond clarity of proposition into what you're going to build your brand around or what you're going to build the experience around.

(11:39):
And talk about the brand a small bit because obviously there's, it's one thing to know what a product does, who it's for and what kind of itch.
How important is the brand then, do you feel?
Where does that sit in the whole thing, like, as our guests have spoken about this?
Well, every single person that we have spoken to has a very strong opinion that the brand is what people are buying into.

(12:03):
Not necessarily the product itself.
Yeah.
And what that brand means to people.
Yeah.
So a brand really can invoke strong feelings for customers.
And what your brand actually stands for is hugely important, both in the eyes of the customer and the eyes of the team that are responsible for selling it.

(12:27):
What was interesting when we were speaking with Jess, they have, the business that she works in, owns both the Snapfish and Shutterfly brands.
And in a way, you know, from the outside, those two businesses do effectively similar things.
They are, the products are similar products.

(12:47):
They're kind of provided in similar ways.
But the brands are different and distinct because they serve different customer groups and markets and to a degree, different territories.
But what was interesting was the idea that if one of the brands wasn't able to attract a particular customer, it could be the case that the next brand is the one that would attract that customer.

(13:10):
So it was almost like, it was a recognition, I suppose, that while the product could potentially be a very similar product, the brands can be distinct enough and they're bought into by the customer well enough that you have different customer groups purchasing a particular product just because of the brand.
That sounds probably, I guess, a little bit like, well, that's obvious, you know?

(13:32):
Is it that obvious, though?
I mean, like, I think the Snapfish, Shutterfly example is really interesting because it has, as you say, the product range, the product experience is very, very similar.
They do cater for very different types of customer.
And I think what they've done there is answer the question of who really well.

(13:54):
Of who is this service for?
It's very important to be clear on what you are and equally as important to be clear on what you are not.
One of our other guests had something very interesting to say about this and used the example that none of us really like to use because he said they were exceptional.

(14:20):
We all think they're exceptional and they're very unusual.
But he did reference Steve Jobs and Apple.
You might remember that Gavin talked about this a little bit.
The best talk I ever went to, and he was a very, very incredible guy, he worked with Steve Jobs.
And as much as none of us like using Apple as an example of stuff because they're an exceptionally unique business.

(14:42):
But he was talking about when they launched the iPod and the whole focus was on three things.
That was all it was going to be, right?
It was about the battery life, so how long that battery would last, the amount of songs that you could have in your pocket and the speed it takes you to get to those songs, right?
So they said if we get all that right, what an amazingly brilliant proposition that will be.

(15:05):
And they have that into their board.
So all the ideas that came in, they would judge against those three things.
And he would say brilliant ideas came in and really obvious things, like someone said, we can put an FM transmitter radio here.
No problem.
They're so tiny now.
It won't compromise design, won't drain battery.
Let's just put one of those in.
And they had the courage to say, no, that's not what this is.

(15:27):
This is an iPod and it does these three things.
If you start overloading it with features, it's going to become something different.
Most of us don't do that, do we?
Most of us go, oh, great.
You can fit it in.
Yeah, brilliant.
No extra costs.
Oh yeah, let's whack it in then.
And I think it's that type of decision-making that, it's not as common as it probably should be, right?
It's just to be absolutely central to our proposition.

(15:49):
The other thing I took from Gavin's podcast, or the episode that we did with Gavin Williams of Creed Fragrance, was that whole razor-sharp focus on if it's on the skin, we win.
And I think that's actually really, really useful.
I'd say even a tactic, I suppose, which is no matter what we do, we have to think about how we get the product to the customer, into their hands so they get a chance to try it out.

(16:15):
Because we're confident that once they try it out, we're going to make a sale.
So it is really useful.
I mean, if you think about it, so we're talking about kind of like very large terms.
You used the word ephemeral earlier on, or ethereal, was it?
Ethereal, ephemeral...
And these are quite large topics and a little bit like, you know, up there with strategy, you know, what is it, really?

(16:38):
Everybody would have a different opinion on it.
15,000 books have been written and yet nobody can define the type stuff.
It's true.
It is true, yeah.
And so there's, but one of the things that I think kind of feels a little bit genius is when somebody can boil the whole thing down into, if it's on the skin, we win.

(16:58):
Therefore, what we need to do is get it to the customer somehow so that they can try it on.
How do we do that?
And the beauty of that is in its simplicity.
So rewinding everything, it's who is it for?
What problem are we solving?
Or what need are we meeting?

(17:20):
And what at the very essence is it that we need to do?
And you could apply that to pretty much any ecommerce business if you stand back and look at that in those rather distant terms of what, of who, what are we fixing?
And what then is the main thing that we need to do?

(17:44):
And if you think about that in the terms of even a department store, what is the job of a department store?
And it comes back to a curated collection for the customer that they have.
It was interesting, we did speak with Ntola and she mentioned, or she talked about the importance of curating collections, and I suppose how, at a certain point, still is the case maybe today, the ecommerce became a race to produce Argos catalogues online.

(18:17):
You know, like the Argos catalogue model is you know what you want, you go into Argos, you pull out the catalogue, you look at the index in the back of it, you find where the item is, you look at the item, you look at the price, you convince yourself or you're happy, there's not much persuasion going on.
You already knew what you wanted when you went in there, you're just picking from three or four different products.

(18:39):
You pick the product, you write it on your piece of paper, you go up and you pay for it.
It's incredibly close to what most ecommerce websites are.
You know, you use your navigation, your filtering system, your search to find a product
in the first place... you land into a page which is just entirely telling you about this particular product and a couple of other products.
Here's the prices, do you want it?

(19:00):
And you write it down on your piece of paper, you add it to the cart and off you go, you exit.
So for years, I think the ecommerce has been around building these catalogue sites.
Very functional.
Very functional, not very fabulous.
Not very fabulous.
And I do think that

(19:20):
as we look at ecommerce
now in the next couple of years,
and we see the competition
that we've spoken a lot about,
the Amazon competition and amazon.ie.
As we see that kind of competition
rolling into Ireland,
it will become more important
to focus on the customer
and as part of focusing on the customer,
focusing on the curation,

(19:41):
and also as part of focusing
on the curation,
focusing on the customer,
trying to understand what it is
uniquely you can bring
to the table for the customer.
What are the problems that the customer has?
Questions that they're asking that you can uniquely solve.
And I know that we've spoken to a number of retailers over the years and the key thing that always sticks out in my mind is that when we look at these businesses, we are trying to boil things down, sometimes, you know, rightly or wrongly, but we are trying to boil things down to a sentence that is effectively that idea of, if it's on the skin, we win.

(20:21):
It gives people an anchor in the business to understand how to even approach the market, how to advertise into the market, where our customer is.
Another area that Ntola spoke about was when we were talking about territories, locations and channels.
And you might remember when she mentioned how to pick a territory.

(20:44):
Blank canvas, let's say you've got no traction, whether it's in the US, Europe or China, is looking at similar products in the market.
Is there someone else who is doing something similar?
And a bit of research on them would help to find out where they are, where they're selling.
And then America, for example, is massive.

(21:04):
You know, Asia, China is massive.
Europe is massive.
You have to pick one area, whether it's one country or one territory.
So if we're talking about the US, you can't go after the whole US.
It's just not possible.
You have to pick a territory.
Is it East Coast, West Coast?
Is it a particular state?
And if that is where similar products are being sold, that should be your focus to then get into that area, that specific market, that customer, that department store, that marketplace.

(21:38):
You have to start and build from that point.
And then obviously that halo effect as you grow allows you to expand into different... because it's very costly going into new territories.
There is a considerable investment required.
So whether it's from distribution or marketing or influences or social, there is a cost.

(21:58):
And that needs to be very clear when you're in that business, pulling your numbers together, P&L should be your best friend.
You know, that profit and loss statement to say, hey, I know no business who's gone into a new territory who's broken even in the first year.
You're looking at three years at least.
And unless you've gone viral and for some reason you've come in over the other end, there needs to be that realistic,

(22:23):
it's a long-term investment and we're doing it because we want to increase market share.
We see this as a territory where the business can grow and mature over time.
And what I find interesting about that is that we started with, let's say the globe, where are we going to go?
And then we chose a continent and then we chose a region.

(22:45):
Sometimes we chose a seaboard.
Are we going east or west?
Then we chose maybe a state.
Sometimes we ended up choosing a city.
And the idea is that when we have this level of focus, we know we can boil things down to just the one thing that we're trying to do so that we can get from zero to one.
So that we can get that initial customer reaching into their wallet and pulling out their credit card and putting it into the website to buy the product that you're going to send to them, that they trust that you're going to send to them.

(23:15):
And you need to get over that hump and then start to broaden the horizon from that point.
There's a lot to unpack.
So let's think about that.
Okay.
So we've got...
We're clear about our proposition.
We mentioned Amazon.

(23:36):
So we might loop back in on Amazon again in a second.
We'll have an ecommerce podcast, Gordon, which controversially does not loop into...
Does not loop into Amazon.
Yes.
But we touched on shopping experience.
So shopping...
When ecommerce first became a bit of a thing, the novelty was that you could buy things online and have that Argos-like experience.

(23:59):
Argos is getting a good couple of name checks here.
And this podcast is not sponsored by Argos, but maybe it should be.
No, Argos are gone as well.
It doesn't matter.
Come back, Argos.
Sponsor our podcast.
Come back and pay for the podcast.
So you're not going to out-Amazon Amazon, which is the ultimate mission-driven shop.
And trying to do that, I think you're definitely going to fail.

(24:23):
But what can you do that Amazon don't do well?
And that's where you can find your competitive advantage, because we come back to proposition.
And what need are you able to meet that Amazon is unable to do?
And I think in the case of going beyond general merchandise and that mission-driven shop, it could be if you've got lots of options, a curated set of options.

(24:51):
If you've got one option, it's selling that option and using maybe Amazon as a channel and leveraging that.
So that then is a route that you can take.
And also, you've got the points that Ntola was raising around how do you choose from a world of 7 billion people?

(25:14):
How do you choose which continent, which country, which state, which city to go into?
So, and then once you're in that city, how are you going to sell within that city?
And is that in a store?
Is that online?
Is that through somebody like Amazon?
There's an awful lot to go at there.
There's a lot to go at, but I definitely feel there's over the years, I've noticed when you come at things in a very, very general sense, it's easy to not be wrong.

(25:47):
And if it's easy to not be wrong, it is hard sometimes to be right.
Well, this is deeply philosophical now.
Do explain?
What I mean by that is, you know, if you're saying something that's incredibly general, you can't really be, nobody can poke something at you and say, no, that's wrong.

(26:10):
Why is it wrong?
Well, I've said something so general, it's very hard to be wrong about it.
And I think what I mean by this is, what I've seen people do over the years is they've had a really, really good idea.
They want to make the idea, you know, flesh.
And then you ask, well, how are you going to do it?
And they say, well, you know, we're going to do it in France.

(26:31):
And you think, okay, well, we're in Ireland.
Why will you do it in France?
France is a big population.
Yes, it is a big population.
But why would you do it in France?
Do you know anybody in France?
No.
Do you speak French?
No, we don't speak French.
I was like, well, why don't you try doing it in Limerick?
And the answer I get is, sure, they wouldn't like it in Limerick.
It's like, okay, but, you know, you know Limerick.
And if they don't like it in Limerick, why do you think they're going to like it in Paris?

(26:53):
You know, necessarily, you know, what is the thing that you could be wrong about?
Now, if we want to go get philosophical, in the philosophy of science, you have to have - I'm going to get this entirely wrong - but you have to have, or put forward a thesis that can be proven, as in tested, and can be proven to be wrong.

(27:14):
And I think that's where I'm trying to get to, is when something is incredibly general, you can't prove it to be wrong that easily.
But when you're specific, you can prove it to be wrong, and it can be proven to be wrong fast.
You can fail fast, you can get over it fast, but equally, you can also get it right.
And if you get that little one thing, piece right, you can move on from that little piece to the next piece along.

(27:36):
And that's why I think I mentioned the zero to one, and that whole idea of, I'm always fascinated when you bring a new product to market, and you're selling that product.
The very first person who pulls out their wallet.
I'm fascinated by that little, you know, that spark of, the thing comes into existence.
The first person brings out their wallet, and pays with their credit card for the item that you're trying to sell.

(27:57):
How does that actually happen?
It's nearly magical.
Because you have succeeded in identifying something that somebody might want to buy.
Okay.
You have made it.
Yeah.
So you have bought that product into existence, usually at huge cost.
Yeah.

(28:18):
Huge amounts of time.
Or you've just gone and seen it in a catalogue.
But when it's that small, when it's down to that level, you know, that's exactly the point where, you know, what we're talking about in some ways about being specific and being very, very clear at the proposition.
If you can get down as far as what it is that made that one person move from, I'm not interested in your product, to actually, I'll buy it and here's my money.

(28:45):
And if you think about, let's say, we had a bit of an interesting conversation with Shane and Raylo, when they, I thought about the fear and trepidation they must have had, what was it, like 18 months after they sold the first iPhone, or they got the first iPhone leased.
And their whole bet was that people would be interested in coming back and buying the next version of the thing from them, so that they could unlock that residual value in the iPhone.

(29:11):
So it was critical that the customers, 18 to 24 months later, whatever it was, would come back and get the next product from Raylo.
And they must have been shitting bricks.
Like a year and a half, two years.
18 months of waiting.
18 months of waiting, and you're waiting then to see.
And that is the most provable piece.
Like, if that didn't work, that was, you know, so they're taking that risk.

(29:35):
If that didn't work, they knew it.
Like, it was very easy to tell what their proposition was and how to test it.
Yeah, and that must have been...
horrific.
I can only imagine what it must have felt like for 18 months.
Yeah, I think they were honing their conversion rate the whole time.
It's a £30 million business now, so I think they're pretty proven.

(29:59):
They got past one.
The other side of that, and we were touching on it, and I suppose, like, okay, let's have the chat about Amazon.
Like, we've had a couple of different pieces.
Like, let's hear a little bit from Jamie Roller talking about their evolution and how Amazon was folded into it.
It's a very interesting question, and it's something that's evolved over the course of our history as a brand.

(30:20):
We were founded in 2013 and we started as a DTC first brand, and we had a lot of success building our business DTC first.
We were very, you know, very successful in our paid media and growth marketing online.
And then Amazon kind of came alongside that for us, and it became a natural offshoot of what we were doing online for DTC.

(30:46):
There's an obvious halo effect when you're advertising on Meta, when you're advertising on Google.
Customers naturally will go to Amazon and search for your brand, so it makes sense for you to be there.
But, you know, we've evolved.
At Dr. Squatch, we've evolved into a different era for the brand, and I think over the last few years, we've expanded very rapidly in retail and bricks-and-mortar retail and to Walmart stores, Target stores, et cetera.

(31:12):
And I think, you know, that's seen a huge shift for us as a brand and how we think about how we present ourselves in an omnichannel way.
And now, you know, Amazon plays a different role.
So for us, it's like, well, it's really like the convenience channel for customers.
So customers want to be able to, they might discover our brand in a Walmart, and then maybe they're sitting at home on a Sunday night and they think, hey, I need some more soap, so they might go to Amazon and we also want to be available there.

(31:43):
So it's like it's evolved from the place where maybe a customer searches for your product because they see an ad to actually a place where we want to be able to deliver the product to the customer for convenience sake.
And actually, just, like, it fills the gaps between anywhere else in the customer's experience.
So I think we really want to make sure we're available wherever the customer shops and deliver that customer the kind of ultimate convenience.

(32:07):
So what Jamie's really telling us there is that you need to be where the customer is and meet them on their terms.
And sometimes their terms is on Amazon.
Yeah.
And we have heard a lot of conversation.
It hasn't even launched yet, Amazon Ireland, and everybody is terrified.
But people have already been shopping on Amazon already.

(32:29):
Oh, for years.
It does not signal the death of retail as we know it.
It signals an opportunity for those businesses that are able to capitalise on us.
I think it signals challenges to those businesses that have been resting on their laurels somewhat.

(32:51):
They're now going to have to up their game, do a bit more work on their proposition.
And I think it will be a really interesting addition to the retail landscape.
It will be an interesting addition.
I think it will be a challenge for retailers.
So I disagree with that.
I mean, it's very, very much in that whole kind of, you know, wry,

(33:11):
oh well, it's an opportunity.
You know, it's not a threat,
it's an opportunity.
So it is a threat.
It's going to be a challenge.
But interestingly, I do.
I also agree.
It's also coming, whether you like it or not.
Absolutely.
But I also agree that it will focus people's minds on proposition.

(33:31):
Now, for brands, for merchants, for people who are selling product, it is an opportunity because for them, they can get the opportunity to be where the customers are, because the customers are going to be on Amazon.
And as Jamie said, on a Sunday night, somebody's thinking about buying something and they're not going to be able to pop down to the shop.
They know they can just go onto Amazon and buy it there and it'll be grand and handy.

(33:54):
It'll probably be with them the next morning.
Fabulous.
For everything else, for the retailers, who will be challenged, what it will be for, I think at least, it will be back to that customer curation, the curated catalogue and the clarity of proposition.
And I remember years ago, we did a little bit of work on product images.

(34:16):
And we had, it was a pair of Levi's jeans and it was a pair of Levi's jeans photographed for three different websites.
One of the websites was ASOS.
One was Urban Outfitters, I think it was.
And then there was a third one I can't remember offhand.
Each of the photographs, it's the same pair of jeans, but each of the photographs gave a completely different feeling, a different experience.

(34:38):
It would have kindled different aspirations when people were looking at these photographs.
Because the models were different, they looked different.
You know, the accessories and so on were different in each.
The ASOS, you know, you're seeing midriff, you're seeing like really cool chick.
The Urban Outfitters was more of a hippie kind of a thing and she was wearing, she had like, you know, woolens and things like this.

(34:58):
But it was the exact same product.
That is the essence of understanding the customer and merchandising the product for the customer and curating the product for the customer, for your customer.
So we're back to what retail is really about, which is understanding the customer incredibly well and getting the right product for the right customer and therefore being in the right place to sell to that customer because they're buying from you.

(35:24):
And allowing, and allowing, crucially, allowing the customer to be in charge of the decision on where they shop and letting them make that decision on their terms.
Yeah.
And I think that's much easier to do if you are the owner of a brand than if you are reselling other people's brands.

(35:46):
I know, Gordon, we said briefly in the segue that we would be very positive and upbeat for a little minute about Amazon.
However, however, however, while we briefly agreed that it was good for the brand and the manufacturer and so on and so forth, didn't Rick have something else to say, which, which was, I think, interesting for this conversation?

(36:09):
Well, let's hear from him.
Amazon without Prime is nothing.
Completely nothing.
I firmly believe that.
It's their moat because you have a yearly subscription of Prime.
It's where you're going to go to shop.
Amazon is not failing you.
And the fact that you have easy returns, I mean, every, it's not a week that goes by that we don't make a decision in our household about where to buy from.

(36:35):
Do we buy it from the brand or do we buy it from Amazon?
And look, if there's something unique to the brand or special about it, great.
But if we don't know the brand, and we're not sure about it, and we're unsure if we might have to return it, we're, 100 per cent we're going to buy it from Amazon because we know we're not going to have a hassle returning it.

(37:00):
Even though Amazon's made returns, like, slightly more difficult than before, we know we're going to get it, be able to get it, do a return versus going to the brand.
You're just not, this uncertainty creates doubt and doubt creates friction, like consumer friction in their purchase experience.
What we've heard there, I suppose, from a brand's perspective is that it can actually be quite difficult now to hold on to the customer because customer trusts Amazon far more than they trust anybody else.

(37:28):
They're going to give their business to Amazon first in the United States and that, in actual fact, it could be a bit of a challenge to bring your own customer onto your own website so you can develop a relationship and deliver them an experience.
Yeah, so Amazon's can be a threat if you're trying to stand up a direct-to-consumer business.
And I think that's about finding balance and creating value so that a customer will choose to shop with you directly rather than choose to shop your brand on Amazon.

(37:58):
And there's a number of ways that that can be created.
You can do that through exclusive offers, not necessarily discounts, but added value and actually building the customer's trust over time.
It comes down, like we're talking about customer a lot, there is the whole concept, obviously, of customer experience and customer experience by design and we have heard, especially from Paul Rogers at the very outset of season two, we've heard how brands such as Represent in the UK and some other brands of that nature have tried to build up a customer experience platform.

(38:36):
Yeah, I think a lot of the best examples of loyalty programs have, like, its own brands.
So, like, Represent I've been using a lot as an example recently just because they're quite present at the moment and a lot of people talk about their community.
But yes, they've got prestige and so many of their customers, you know, will talk about prestige without even mentioning Represent.

(38:57):
And I think that goes a long way.
But to be honest, because of this first-party data shift, that kind of membership route I mentioned as well, like, both loyalty and the membership piece, like, all the biggest brands in the world are doing right now.
Like, you look at Nike, you look at Adidas, you've got Addy Club, I forgot what the Nike one's called.
Yeah, Salomon is S/PLUS.

(39:17):
But yeah, so Represent is a really good example.
They released their app a little while ago, so maybe like three, four months ago.
And it's been, yeah, they've seen decent incremental growth of the, I was talking to Liverpool Football Club recently, they were talking about their app that's now transactional and they've seen incremental benefit.
And yeah, everyone that I've spoke to that has done it properly.

(39:39):
And like you say, had a reason beyond just, yeah, transacting
has pretty much always found it to be an effective channel for re-engaging customers.
But I do think it is a retention channel or a re-engagement channel, not a new customer acquisition channel.
It's something that a customer can kind of buy into more.

(40:00):
It's something that will resonate more with them.
I personally think if you do a native app, you have to invest in something that engages the customer semi-regularly and gives them a reason to have that native app experience, be that editorial, loyalty, a game, like whatever, something that isn't transactional.
Can I put a controversial, maybe a controversial, maybe not a controversial statement out there?

(40:25):
I like, I'm very, very bullish on, is that the right word?
I'm bullish.
I am bullish.
Are you bullish?
I am.
I'm very bullish on a customer, getting the customer proposition right, getting the customer experience right.
We've heard a little bit about that from Paul Rogers.
Catering to the customer.
Individualising the experience for the customer.

(40:47):
Could I be entirely wrong?
Well, I heard recently...
Well, the reason I have to ask it is because people haven't done it yet, really.
I mean, there have been, Paul has made some good points about different businesses who've done it well in the UK.

(41:08):
How many have done it in Ireland?
I'm not 100 per cent sure.
The Argus catalogue is working out for a lot of people.
You know, in ecommerce.
Well...
Disabuse me, come on.
Well, we're not going to fall out over this, but I do think you reach a law of diminishing returns quite quickly.

(41:28):
Yeah.
So do you really need segments of one?
No.
Are customers really, really that different?
Do you know what?
Like, a segment to start with would be good, you know, in some cases.
You know, like, and I think there is an awful, there has been in there for, as long as I've been an ecommerce, there has been so much talk about personalisation.

(41:51):
We got to the point where we realised, actually, you know what?
Personalisation may not be the Holy Grail.
Let's call it individualisation instead.
So now we've moved away from personalisation to individualisation.
What is individualisation?
Is this up there with sharding?
No, no.
Sharding is a technical term.
No, this is more of a spin, you know, spin doctoring.

(42:12):
I think personalisation has a bad, has had a bad name.
So we're going to, like, personalise for the customers as they arrive on the site, maybe with the clickstream, watch what they're doing, relate to what other people did, what was the outcome, and, you know, how do we optimise for this particular person who's arrived on the site?
Personalisation.
That was kind of treating people as if they were a statistical, you know, algorithmical piece of data.

(42:38):
People aren't that logical, though.
Sure.
So then we go into individualisation.
And individualisation was more about recognising that these people, in a very Gen Z kind of way, or Gen Zee, whichever, recognising that these people are individuals and not pieces of data and all the rest of us, and we were going to provide a customer experience individual to that particular customer.

(43:00):
Is that not just saying the same thing?
Yeah, pretty much, pretty much.
I told you, it's what I said.
It's a spin, it's a spin.
Okay.
Anyway, all that aside, I guess, like, I've been thinking and working my way through to this customer proposition and spending quite a bit of time thinking about it and haven't quite gotten there yet.

(43:22):
And I'm just wondering, right, will there come a day when we'll pull back the curtains in the Wizard of Oz's big fat throne and find the guy just, you know, holding, yanking on the chains?
Or is this customer curation idea?
Are we definitely right here?

(43:43):
You know, Amazon are doing pretty well.
Amazon are doing pretty well, but Amazon are doing pretty well because they lead in, they lead in scale.
Like, if you want something, if you want a widget, if you want a pair of headphones, if you want a TV, if you want a fridge, if you want, I don't know, whatever you want.
Yeah, yeah.
But I think that you know the thing that you know that you want.

(44:06):
Yeah.
You go to Amazon because Amazon will probably have it and that's where they lead.
Yeah.
So unless you're going to out-Amazon Amazon, you're not going to win there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So if actually building a curated set of products that maybe Amazon don't have access to...

(44:28):
Now remember that Amazon sell a vast quantity of clothing, like, vast quantities of clothing.
They're not very good at selling fashion because that's, that's not the, that's not the experience that they've created.
Yeah.
And that there is a difference there.
And certainly they don't, they don't sell, like, premium to luxury.

(44:49):
That's, that's not where Amazon play at all.
And then if you look at other people that are emerging, and I particularly love this from Rick, is that there are other experiences that you can create that are different.
If you go shop at Amazon, you're like, I want this marker.

(45:13):
You go to the page with the marker, you click it and it's in your house tomorrow.
You go to Temu... imagine you walk into the front door of a Temu store, they'll hand you a drink, they'll sit you down and they'll show you things.
A guy who comes up with a jacket and he'll open his jacket.
It's like, do you want watches?
Do you want coats?

(45:33):
Do you want knives?
Do you want...
They're trying to learn about you so that they can later target you.
They have almost no interest in selling you something very quickly and having you walk away.
Well, we've talked about proposition at length.
We've talked about brand, product, customers.
How about we talk a little bit about technology?

(45:54):
We can talk a little bit about technology.
Only a little bit, don't worry.
But only a little bit...
Only a little bit.
What I'd love to explore a little bit more is this idea that Rick shared with us that pretty much anything that you want to do from an ecommerce perspective now, you can buy off the shelf.

(46:20):
And technical leadership does not necessarily give you the advantage that it maybe did 15 years ago.
Yeah.
And it's, let's say, it's a parallel thing, I guess, with this whole idea of the democratisation of tech, which simply means that everything that used to be expensive and hard is now reasonably cheap and easy.

(46:45):
It's effectively what we're talking about.
Not unlike myself.
So we have a situation, I suppose, many years ago where we had open-source technology, monolithic platforms that had to be hosted on clustered environments in some cases.
Usually it required an awful lot of maintenance and management.

(47:06):
It also involved a fair amount of downtime at the most frustrating points and cost a lot.
And we've gone from that position to where you can literally, for £30 a month, set yourself up with almost the exact same level of technical capability as would have cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions in some cases, only 20 years ago.

(47:29):
Isn't that brilliant?
It's brilliant.
So we've got this democratisation of tech.
And what that means is that it gives retailers, merchants and everybody else the opportunity to pick off of the shelf rather than always customise.
Exactly.
And what is interesting is that even though that's the case, there are still businesses that insist on incredibly customised solutions.

(47:52):
Well, there's a couple of things driving that.
Legacy.
If you have very complex processes, if you have very complex, multiple backend systems across multiple territories, then yeah, that can get quite difficult.
But, or in the case of some of the guests that we've had, if you look at, say, again, look at Snapfish, they've got quite a complex product offering that probably can't be serviced 100 per cent off the shelf.

(48:24):
No, it can't.
It can't.
And not only is that the case,
it would now also be,
even if you customise it,
it would be very difficult
to customise it again
because what you have there
is decades of engineering,
of thinking, of scoping,
of decision making, of testing,
of everything that goes into

(48:45):
building products like that,
which means basically you've got,
you've arrived at a situation
where you've got an incredibly complex
custom piece of software
that has been built
more or less specifically
for your requirements.
It's not going to be possible to pick that up off of the shelf, but it's actually equally not possible to build it in a really custom way either.
It would take an awful lot of work regardless to move on from that.
You couldn't spin it up in six months.

(49:06):
No, definitely not.
So swinging away from that, though, now what you've got is this vast landscape of platforms and then apps that just plug and play into the platform.
You haven't got a vast landscape of platforms and we all know who the few remaining platforms are that have scale.

(49:30):
But then you have this vast array of apps and plugins and things that are designed to work with these platforms.
For example, if you want to spin up an affiliate program, integrating your affiliate program used to take, like, you know, that would be a three- or four-month project.
It wouldn't be massively onerous, but it would still be a three- or four-month project.

(49:50):
And now you can choose your network, click, click, click and you're done.
It's a three- or four-minute process.
So you've got all of these things to choose from.
So now it's up to you as a brand, or as a retailer, to choose from that capability as you're putting your curated catalogue together.

(50:12):
Yeah, it's kind of, it's interesting.
I often say that the technology has outstripped our ability to use it.
I mean, you know, there are, it can be so easy that we don't even know in some cases what to do with ourselves.
But what I do like is that the key thing is that it is possible to experiment and innovate reasonably cheaply.

(50:37):
It's quite cheap to dip your toe in the water.
It's a bit like, you know when you're in a restaurant?
Yeah, you want a bit of everything.
And you look at the menu and you order and then somebody else's dinner comes and you get, like, total food envy.
Or is this just me?
No, it's a lot of people.
I get complete food envy.
Yeah.
Well, you can also just order that other dish that looked very similar to the dish that you were having.

(51:00):
Swap it out.
Certainly when you're looking at, I'm vastly oversimplifying that there.
But the cost of trying something is a lot lower than the cost of trying something would have been even five years ago.
Oh, 100 per cent.
I suppose when we were in the Magento years, if you wanted, yeah.
But in the Magento years, in the glory days of Magento...

(51:22):
When I were a lad...
When I were a lad.
And Magento was a thing...
If you wanted to test anything, it would cost you €1000.
Straight away.
Just even thinking about it.
Even if there was a module available for Magento.
Installing the module, you had to install it on your development site first, on your staging site.
See what broke.
Turn it on.
Probably get an engineer to fix a couple of bits.

(51:44):
Then put it into your production site.
See what broke.
Turn it on.
Would you be emotionally able now?
You couldn't do it.
Like, well...
So anyway.
But the thing was, it was regardless of what you were starting at such, it was expensive straight away.
Now you can turn things on.
And I guess the importance of it is,
let's turn, let's turn more stuff on.
Let's turn more things.
Let's turn more stuff on.

(52:05):
And also, while we're turning all those things on,
remember the customisation part now can be just tweaking.
It can be enhancements.
We can, we can get that thing working exactly how we want it to work for our own business.
But let's not forget to turn things on.
Again.
And if it doesn't work, turn it on and off.
Turn it on and off.
Okay.
No, but do edit and curate.

(52:27):
Yeah.
So we've got our website.
We've got our proposition.
We've decided where we're going to be operating on what channels.
So now we've got to go and think about how we're going to talk to customers.
And one of the areas that has seen the biggest set of change, I think, post-pandemic, has been in the area of performance marketing.

(52:52):
No longer is it spray-and-pray.
It now has to be very, very carefully and very tightly managed.
And we have lots of products from the large media owners, of which there are increasingly less that are designed to help alleviate us of our performance marketing budget.

(53:15):
And I think these have to be used pretty carefully.
Mike had a lot of good stuff to say on this topic.
Yeah, there was a lot in there and it took me a couple of listens to properly unpack it.
In particular, I like this following segment.
In the past, these shopping campaigns worked at a...

(53:39):
You could really optimise down to a pretty granular level.
But in Performance Max, you need to have a more consolidated account structure.
You want to have these larger pools of data and campaigns.
You don't want to split it up too much.
And what I like to do, I basically think of these campaigns...
Typically, someone's going to make a product type campaign or a brand campaign.

(54:00):
Like they'll have a campaign for ski jackets, for example, or for a given ski jacket brand, let's say.
But what I think is more instructive is to take these campaigns and view them as just like an empty vessel or a vehicle and be agnostic to what's in there.
Because the thing about the campaign is that you can set a budget and you can set an efficiency target.

(54:26):
And those are the two main things that you can do to pace yourself on Google Ads.
The budget needs to be there to spend and the efficiency target will determine the aggression level.
So what happens then, if you make some of these buckets with different budget levels, different efficiency targets, you have these different pods or vehicles that are going to push products more or less aggressively.

(54:51):
And then it's a matter of making sure that products are in that right campaign, that they're getting the right promotional intensity, basically.
So what we like to do is basically create a product score that is going to look at a product on any number of dimensions, however many are important to you.
And products could end up in different of these buckets, these campaigns for different reasons.

(55:16):
For example, one product, it might be important to you to promote because it's behind sales plan.
And another product might be important to promote because the margin is high.
Similarly, you could have kind of a bestseller, something that's flying off the shelf.
And you might actually want to dampen that because Google is going to see that it's performed well and it's going to keep juicing it.

(55:38):
But you might actually want to dampen that because actually you have plenty of organic volume on that and you feel like you're cannibalizing that.
Or it's selling fast and well, but it's actually not your highest margin product.
There could be any number of reasons why.
You know, you know your backorder status or your on order status.
It's just about thinking about these things and making sure that Google is pacing the right products.

(56:00):
So like, imagine, right?
You spend all that time, all that effort, all that money acquiring your customers.
You've got to look after them.
And rewinding back to episode one.
I think Paul gave us some brilliant insight into how to capture data about your customers so that you can feed that back into your overall experience design and your proposition.

(56:27):
So I think the way the world's going, everyone is trying to capture as much first-party data as possible.
And also with all of the privacy changes, there's a lot of benefits from a tracking perspective, amongst other things, from a customer building an account and having a logged-in experience so that you can track against a customer.
And also you can do more kind of within the theme and whatever else.

(56:51):
So I think the first thing for me that loads of our clients are doing right now, and it's by far the number one item on all of the roadmaps that we have is basically building a proper account proposition.
And I can't remember the name of the brand that was used with your Epic solution earlier, but that's a really good example.

(57:12):
And another one that I use regularly is Salomon, the footwear brand.
And if you go on their site, they've got the notification icon, which was also cited.
And then they've built, like, what is essentially a loyalty program, but the foundation level is just an account essentially.
And they've got, you get free shipping and free returns as a result of building an account.

(57:33):
And then as part of that process, they're capturing more data.
So things like gender, interest, et cetera.
And then that will all be pushed into a CRM or a CDP.
And J.Lindberg is another really good example.
And they capture things like sizing as well.
And then the next phase could then be to, like, surface out on site as you're shopping, as you're presenting product to the customer, et cetera.

(57:57):
But essentially building an account, you have to have an account in almost all instances and in Shopify in order to opt into a loyalty program.
So I think it's an app, and obviously you have the first-party data benefit and the tracking benefits.
I think it's a no-brainer to really, like, push that kind of new account proposition, new account experience and try and increase the percentage of users that, essentially you know who they are and you know what they're doing.

(58:24):
And then also it gives you an opportunity to, like, present different options through the experience and just collect more and more data, and yet know as much as you need to around your customers.
I think Paul also opened up a bit of a conversation on things that people may not have been thinking about, which is the amount of data, first-party data, customer data, well, you know, data in general, Shopify actually has now.

(58:49):
And what Shopify might be intending to do with the data, not necessarily nefarious or anything like that obviously, but more just like the opportunity that Shopify has to connect retailers together, to connect shops together, or to connect customers to shops and retailers through the shop app and so on.

(59:10):
Which I thought was an interesting aside, more because of the reception it had amongst the audience, who largely hadn't kind of thought about that.
I mean, most of the customer data that a lot of retailers have now in its best form is inside in the Shopify platform.

(59:30):
It is.
It's no longer, most retailers now, because as Paul also rightly said, Google Analytics 4 is atrocious, GA4, nobody likes it.
People have started using Shopify as their reporting platform.
Shopify Analytics is really good.
Yeah, it's not bad, exactly.
And you know, there are things, there are areas where it could improve, et cetera.

(59:51):
But it still comes back to the, some of the best data that you have available to you about your customers is inside in Shopify.
I think you need to take control
of your customer information.
So that you understand more about your customer than anybody else does.

(01:00:12):
That's a concern for me that there are an increasingly, can you be an increasingly smaller?
There's a very small number of businesses now that control a huge amount of insight on the internet.
You could even say it was a decreasingly large number.

(01:00:34):
A decreasingly large and increasingly small.
Whichever way you want to cut it.
Yeah.
Between Shopify, Amazon, Google and Meta.
Okay, yeah, but let's say...
I don't think that's the point you're making, though, is it?
No, it's not the point.
I mean, like, leaving the, like, the conspiracy to one side,
it does, it does actually offer an opportunity, and a genuine opportunity, in that the customer data that we have now in Shopify can be enriched.

(01:01:02):
You can store additional attributes about your customers.
Though the customers can self-assign those attributes.
You can learn about your customers reasonably easily as they move through your Shopify store.
Paul mentioned as well the Salomon site, where as the customer is using the faceted navigation and the wayfinders,

(01:01:24):
so they're looking for a pair of runners, a trail, for trail running, for trail running long distances, we'll say...
As the customer is using that navigation, it can store that, it's storing that information.
It's starting to learn against the customer by far.
And it's learning against the customer as they're using it.
Now it's storing that information in and using that information then to segment the customer - for the purposes of better serving the customer and to get to that customer proposition piece that we were talking about.

(01:01:47):
My point, really, is that the data is now available, and is available in what is nearly a democratised way.
When we mentioned democratisation of technology, one of the things that's been democratised for us without even really us noticing is that we now have really good access to a really high-quality source of our own customer data.
Shopify have been improving the customer data.

(01:02:09):
Over the years, your customer addresses have never been in better condition.
The information that you have in terms of the accuracy in order to deliver to your customers has never been better.
And now you can also store information against the customers.
They've just released Shopify Forms, which allows you to incredibly easily set up a form to put questions to your customer.
And when they answer those questions, the answers are stored against the customer profile and you can later segment against that customer information.

(01:02:35):
So if your customer, for example, you're a pet store and you want to know if the customer has a dog or a cat, very simple, pop-up questionnaire.
Do you like dogs?
Do you like cats?
You choose cats.
That information is then stored against the customer going forwards and you're going to be able to segment against that customer.
It opens a door now for me to a lot of things that you can do, and the querying of that information has also been democratised.

(01:02:58):
Shopify produced a Shopify query language that you can use to filter and segment customer data and store segments of, easily store and create segments of customers.
That's the functional bit.
How do you make that fabulous?
And if you can find additional first-party data out of your customer, out about your customers, you can then use that to build experiences, to develop your proposition, to change your curation, to tailor it for customers that fit within those broad interest groups.

(01:03:35):
That's got to be a good thing.
I still hold my concern about too few platforms having too much data.
Look, too few platforms, exactly.
It is the case, but we're also a small island nation and there are certain concerns that we can't really get ourselves.
Look, it is what it is.
I think you have two choices.
You either decide that that's not what you want to do and you don't partake, or you find a way to work with it.

(01:04:03):
And if you do want to work with it, like certain things that we've been looking at in recent times, we've been looking at trying to understand what the customer's brand space might be.
So most of the retailers we work with are multi-brand retailers.
They have customers who purchase across multiple different brands.
Sometimes customers buy from a particular brand that they're loyal to.
But as a retailer, you might want to cross-pollinate them into other brands or get them to buy from other brands.

(01:04:28):
Or based on the information about the brands that they've bought from, you might know something about those brands that you know that the customer would like.
An alternative, very different brand or a complementary brand and so on.
It is possible and fairly straightforward now to start storing the information about the brands that the customers have purchased from in order to individualise their experience.
We're back to that word.

(01:04:49):
Individualise the customer's experience.
So the customer can have a better experience while they're on the website.
So I think my overall point here, really, is that it is now possible to do a lot of this from a functional perspective...
It's up to you to make it fabulous.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think we learned quite a lot this season, didn't we?

(01:05:09):
We learned too much.
My head is exploding with information.
What a time to be in ecommerce.
Yeah.
I think there's more change on the horizon.
I'm really keen to see what happens over the next couple of years as social commerce develops.
Very interested and we haven't touched on it.

(01:05:30):
We didn't touch on it in the season about how TikTok have really started to get social commerce to fly in a way that Meta are unable to do.
That will be very interesting as it unfolds.
Shopify's next few moves will be hugely interesting.

(01:05:50):
Will a new platform appear in the same way that we had the Magento-Demandware wars?
Will there be a new war and a new emerging platform champion?
There's a lot on the cusp.
I don't know if there will be...
In terms of new platforms, we didn't really cover this at all, obviously, but there are a limited number of platforms that are coming to the market.

(01:06:17):
The platforms that are remaining are trying to identify their own specific niche in many cases and trying to prove why they own that particular niche.
Occasionally, almost too niched.
From our point of view, we need a platform that is generally useful and it's not useful for us to have a platform that's very specific.

(01:06:38):
But for certain brands, it's going to be useful to look at those platforms.
Do you know what we didn't talk about throughout the whole season?
I think it came up a couple of times and we haven't discussed it.
Is AI.
Well, I'm glad we didn't talk about it...
I'm not saying it's the new Metaverse, but certainly the changes that AI will bring about in the next few years are going to be undeniably huge.

(01:07:11):
For me, the realisation of the magnitude of this change is only really beginning to sink in as I'm starting to see all kinds of really quite awesome AI experiences being created.

(01:07:31):
From let's use Gen AI to edit images and write a bit of SEO text, to actually AI is now becoming capable of performing dynamic actions based on a customer request.
That's really, really interesting and what does that mean and how worried should we be about it versus how excited should we be about it because of what it's going to enable us to spend our time doing?

(01:07:58):
I think what's going to be interesting about AI is that there was, it's a little bit hard to explain, but there was a contraction of creativity in ecommerce and in web development in general.
Over the last, let's say 10 or so years, and anybody who's been in web development for a while, especially in the delivery of front-end experiences will remember Flash.

(01:08:23):
And when we had Flash, Flash was an enormous toolbox that didn't prescribe how you used it necessarily and therefore allowed you to be entirely creative, in some cases in an almost insane way.
But you could do, you could do, if you could imagine it, you could achieve it type of a thing.

(01:08:43):
When Flash was taken off the market, from our point of view, which basically was actually funnily enough Steve Jobs who put the nail in the coffin there, what we ended up with was a front-end that became incredibly homogenised.
And that to a large degree was important.
I mean, it was important for the growth of ecommerce and the web that people knew how to use websites.

(01:09:07):
Everybody knows how to use a website now.
Everybody knows that the, you know, the search bar is in the middle or in the top right, the logo's in the top left, my account section is on the top right.
If I want to find the phone number, the contact form is going to be in the bottom.
Like, that kind of vocabulary and shared understanding of how websites operate was probably important for the growth of internet in general.

(01:09:28):
And I think where we are now, we're kind of at a contraction of, you know, let's say of creativity online.
But AI is going to be the thing that allows us to get back into this ginormous toolbox of you could do whatever you want as long as you can come up with it type solutions.
I don't know whether or not we're going to see the same kind of a thing that we've, like the Me Too type, everybody using the same kind of tooling.

(01:09:54):
You know, like, if you look at a tech stack nowadays, there's nearly pride in how the tech stacks are all the same.
You know, like - and this is not pejorative in any way, shape or form - but you know, you look at Shopify tech stack, you have Shopify, you've got Klaviyo for email marketing, you have Gorgias for customer support.
You know, there's a set, a set kind of tooling that people use.
Everybody's using more or less the same thing.

(01:10:15):
And that's also the same in other ecommerce platforms, you know.
Which is democratised...
Which is, well, it's been democratised, it's been simplified.
Everybody has access to the same kind of a thing, which means that from a creative perspective, it looks reasonably the same.
And that's useful because everybody knows how to use it and so on and so forth.
But I think that AI is bringing this, like, almost like a chaos agent into it.

(01:10:39):
Now again, where all of a sudden, it's actually only going to be bound by your ability to imagine and create, which is from your own personality.
And it's your own personality that when you impose your own personality on this creative element, and how you may creatively use AI going forward, are the things that AI will allow you to do.
They'll allow you to express some of the creativity that will actually, I think, contrary to what a lot of people feel, I think will allow creativity again.

(01:11:07):
And I think that's why it's hard for us to think about AI because AI is so enormous, so huge.
It's like trying to get your head around all of the, all of what anybody might ever do.
You know, it's easy to think about web now at the moment because you're bringing it back down to Square pages.
Do you remember Flash, right?
You do, right?
Yeah, I was...
It wasn't about Square pages.

(01:11:29):
It was a universe.
You were able to nearly dig into it and dive into a universe through your screen.
I have a brilliant book, I think it was published by Taschen, and there was a series of them about Flash sites.
There's one Flash stores, Flash music sites.
And the whole site was, like, in the shape of a record that you...

(01:11:53):
I suppose, yeah, we could see that happening again.
I hope we don't in some ways because some of those Flash sites were pretty rotten.
But I do miss waiting for a page to load and having a little game where you could get, like, a goldfish...
Look, there will be, I remember, was that the red goldfish?

(01:12:13):
Yeah, that was a fabulous website.
But yeah, we built, years ago, built the Cork - was it the Cork Fringe Film Festival?
It was a reel of film.
So the reel of film went tktktk as you loaded up the site, and then you scrolled through the film reel and you were able to click into the films...
You know, I mean, it was that kind of thing.

(01:12:34):
So sorry, I think I went off on a tangent of a tangent.
We just went off on like nostalgia for Flash then.
Yeah, but also what is coming down the line?
I think the way that Flash was a chaos agent, AI is a little bit like that as well.
And I think that's going to be interesting because it will allow the creative aspect of, and that speaks to the curation, it speaks to the whole customer, the customer experience and how you treat and understand your customer, because all of that is individual.

(01:13:01):
And we've homogenised a lot of that in the last 10 years.
And I think some of these new technologies, and AI in particular, will allow us to bring back in that creative touch again.
And that's probably quite a controversial...
It's quite a controversial take.
Yeah, I think we should pick it up next season.
Very good.

(01:13:21):
Right.
On that note, Elaine, it's been imaginary.
Thank you very much.
Elaine is back with us.
We missed you, Elaine.
Did you miss us?
And so thanks very much to our sound engineer, Elaine Smith, and also to our fabulous producer, who I have no doubt is going to make an exceptional, an exceptionally compelling episode out of what has been the ramblings of two eejits for the last two hours.

(01:13:49):
Thanks very much, Roger Overall.
You've been listening to Functional & Fabulous, with Ger Keohane and Gordon Newman. If you'd like to know more about the podcast, or about StudioForty9 and Omnichannel Stories, please go to functionalandfabulous.ie. Our sound engineer was Elaine Smith, and the show was produced by Roger Overall.

(01:14:16):
So the black box is not a silver bullet.

(01:14:36):
The black box is not a silver bullet.
The coffee cup is not full.

(01:14:57):
Well no, the black box... [Incoherent giggling]