Fake Relatability

From discussions on leadership, brand strategy, pop culture moments, and unique takes on how it’s all intertwined, Ingrid and Orchid brought a meaningful and fun season together. In this last episode of the season, Phillip and Brian join Ingrid to share their favorite moments and what made Season 3 so insightful. 

Comrades in the Trenches

• {00:07:55} “Season 3 with Orchid came together in this way where we started talking about how everything is intertwined and everything is intermingled like subcultures and cultures and how commerce creates that, sustains that, kills that, like that whole life cycle. That is truly the core of retail planning, marketing, building a brand, and all of the things that we hope and wish to do through the analysis and the media and all the things that we're trying to learn.” - Ingrid
• {00:11:32} “Hearing your perspective on what not to do in an integration or what to buckle up for in an integration, I was able to bring my own perspective to it too. It's like, what are the four things that can ruin an integration with your brand? It felt very informative without being structured in a, "Okay, I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to give you a structure broken down and analyze this for you," which is something I'd never listened to, but instead it was people relating their actual life experience.” - Phillip
• {00:13:26} “You nailed it that fans have more power and more influence than ever before and those that ignore them are missing out on the largest opportunity that there is right now.” - Brian
• {00:24:28} “The whole idea is that the show talks about not just what we've been primarily focused on, which is consumers and brands and how do you grow and evolve and turn fans into customers. And all of that stuff is super relevant and I love talking about it, but that's 50% of what we talk about. The other 50% is how do we on the inside of organizations, how do we become good leaders.” - Ingrid
• {00:32:19} “A brand is not design and it's not a logo and it's not fonts and colors. A brand is something that has endured and stood the test of time, and that means many market cycles and that means longevity. And it's something that has, despite all the odds, somehow found a way to persist. I don't think you can do that without profitability.” - Phillip
• {00:46:36} “I'm the audience for this kind of conversational in the trenches, new insights, reframing things, highlighting things in a way that maybe I hadn't thought of myself. That is what I think I'm the most proud of with Season 3, all of our seasons, but particularly with this season, having weaved that in has been really great.” - Ingrid

Associated Links: 

• Follow Infinite Shelf on Instagram
• Want to hear more? Check out past episodes here
• Love your new co-host? Check her out on LinkedIn
• Check out other Future Commerce podcasts

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Ingrid and Orchid sit down to dish out their hot takes on what is happening in the news. Does Threads have what it takes to survive? Did Instant Pot “sh*t the bed” when it came to customer retention and repeat sales? Did Vanmoof invest too much money into a niche market? Tune in to find out.

Battle for Attention

• {00:11:32} “Whether or not Threads is going to be a place where legitimate discourse happens, based on pieces written by career journalists, or if it's just going to be an echo chamber all over again of people who have limited experience but tend to amplify each other, that's still to be seen.” - Orchid
• {00:18:18} “You have to have an interesting relationship with the platform itself so that if users use it for something that is entirely different from what you intended or maybe envisioned for yourself, you have to be okay with that.” - Orchid
• {00:20:27} “When you think about the cult of personality or when you think about innovation, most of the time folks lean into, "Oh, this thing has never existed before and now it exists." And if you look at the entire model in China, it is to copy and improve and optimize. And that is a type of innovation as well, which is to take one idea and apply it into another vertical or another industry, or to launch something that's a better version of X.” - Orchid
• {00:24:58} “I really like the idea of the people who make that neighborhood Twitter what it is, if they're not treated with respect and understood that there's going to be another alternative that will allow them to have the platform that they want that they use.” - Ingrid
• {00:40:58} “Instapot had this ability to be this cult product and lead this whole band of fans that they earned and they just didn't. And that to me is like, sorry, but whoever's like running marketing or community management there, you shit the bed.” - Ingrid
• {00:41:42} “The takeaway is do not ignore your fans. Ignite that flame. Facilitate the conversations. They're going to buy the new version. They're going to buy the air fryer. They're going to buy all the other stuff if you're facilitating the larger conversation.” - Ingrid

Associated Links: 

• Follow Infinite Shelf on Instagram
• Want to hear more? Check out past episodes here
• Love your new co-host? Check her out on LinkedIn
• Check out other Future Commerce podcasts

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Is it possible for a brand to actually change consumer perception? Are you thinking about your values before you hit the order button? Do influencers affect your purchasing habits? Erika Dyer, Producer at Future Commerce and Infinite Shelf, joins Ingrid and Orchid to offer a Gen Z perspective on what’s working and…what’s really not. 

A Little Sus

• {00:16:03} “We think about this all the time. Which age group influencer is the individual that we're trying to connect with whatever type of audience it is? We as marketers, maybe our egos get a little bit in the way of just allowing the consumers to make those determinations for themselves.” - Ingrid
• {00:18:29} “There is no perfect answer because the category in which you operate, I think the nascency of your brand as well, all of that will actually shape the type of influencers or people you want to hear from when it comes to whatever that product is or recommending that product.” - Orchid
• {00:21:16} “I think two things can be true at the same time. But I agree. What you're pointing out is that there is this inconsistency between language and actions.” - Orchid
• {00:23:27} “I don't necessarily think anything she's doing is groundbreaking. People just like to see a pretty girl on their feed and they're like, "Everything she touches is so pretty." She's rich. That's a lot of rich girls, and she knows how to act in front of a camera. And I think she's our reality star, but instead of seeing her on a big screen, we're seeing her every single day on our phones.” - Erika
• {00:35:27} “It's really, really difficult, in my view, to change a consumer perception of a brand, and a lot of brands I think have attempted to do it and spent absurd amounts of money and didn't probably get what they were expecting to get out of those investments. But there are some brands that are doing that.” - Ingrid
• {00:39:21} “That's another new marketing thing where it doesn't have to be that people are just buying the actual product, but they're literally marketing it for you. They're showing how aspirational your product is. They're telling that story on your behalf. It's gold.” - Ingrid
• {00:45:18} “I think Succession sort of debunked a lot of what the general public would have assumed a really, really wealthy family would dress like. They're not wearing the Chanel-branded sunglasses with the big CC on them.” - Ingrid

Associated Links: 

• Follow Infinite Shelf on Instagram
• Want to hear more? Check out past episodes here
• Love your new co-host? Check her out on LinkedIn
• Check out other Future Commerce podcasts

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Nothing is better than a great leader, but also nothing is worse than a poor leader. It takes humility and kindness to lead well, and a great leader must learn the importance of putting ego and insecurities aside for the greater good. Enter the million-dollar question: Are great leaders born to lead or can they be taught and rise to the occasion?

“Help Me Help You”

• {00:05:15} “How I think about leadership is that you can be a leader no matter your role or your rank or whatever it is. There are leadership qualities and then there are titles that indicate you're a leader of the company.” - Orchid
• {00:07:40} “There are leaders who only do things to further their own ego or further their own career. And then there are leaders who genuinely believe that you can only succeed if you work as a team.” - Orchid
• {00:10:20} “I have had a handful of leaders who were so insecure. I think, in hindsight, that's what it was. The ego thing is the surface level, so it comes across as ego, but really upon further reflection, it's insecurity at the foundation.” - Ingrid
• {00:12:13} “Leadership acknowledges the power that is within the leader who knows how to lead more people toward a better outcome.” - Ingrid
• {00:18:24} “You're not sitting there trying to draw blood from a stone. You are there to mold someone already somewhat capable but who maybe needs guidance and coaching and feedback.” - Ingrid
• {00:20:21} “What I learned was, "Oh, it's actually not about what I need. It's actually about what you need. It's about what you need to be able to do your best to support the team. And it is my job to get you what you need.’" - Orchid
• {00:33:36} “Everybody wants to be the people manager for the Dream Direct report, the person who anticipates your moves, who is so smart, so motivated, does all the things. But the reality is that that's not most people I know. And even those people that I just described, you need to help them with all these things that they're carrying.” - Orchid

Associated Links: 

• Follow Infinite Shelf on Instagram
• Want to hear more? Check out past episodes here
• Love your new co-host? Check her out on LinkedIn
• Check out other Future Commerce podcasts

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Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Get ready for an epic showdown as Ingrid and Orchid step into the ring to explore the ultimate cage match between profitability and growth! It's a no-holds-barred battle. Can both profitability and growth survive this ruthless brawl, or will one be forced to tap out? 

Brace yourself for bone-crushing trade-offs and discover the true costs of mismatched contenders. This year, every move is under the spotlight; so tune in for the fight of a lifetime!

One Leg At A Time

• {00:05:36} “Profitability is like a pant leg and then growth is like the other pant leg… In order to have one, you have to pull one leg up and kind of scrunch it and pull it a little bit and then switch to the other leg and pull it up a little bit. You can’t put both legs in and jump up and pull up the pants at the same time.” - Orchid
• {00:08:36} “It was just this very rinse and repeat playbook mixed with a really low acquisition rate that really did set a lot of these companies up for success that maybe in a different environment with different circumstances wouldn't have been accomplishable, but that doesn't mean that now that things aren't wildly easy, that the business model itself doesn't make sense.” - Ingrid
• {00:11:53} “When you make that pivot from a growth to a profitability play, now you're kind of doing a wild swing of the pendulum. How you operate in that environment is also extremely, extremely different.” - Orchid
• {00:14:33} “When you're in great weather, you're going to speed it up. When you're getting to a stormy place and some macro things happen or you need to buckle up for something, you make those adjustments while you're in flight and that is real leadership. And that's the piece that we don't always look at with such a holistic lens. At every level we tend to be really, really time-bound.” - Ingrid
• {00:24:31} “When there's a huge change in media and where people are spending their time and all of that, that's going to change marketing and how we connect to the people and get the eyeballs and the attention and the specific audiences that we want. And so the two places today that I feel are "the safest place" still are actual, really, really, really good creator and influencer marketing. And the channel in which that is the least expensive today is TikTok and potentially even still YouTube.” - Ingrid
• {00:28:17} “If you are not ever in growth mode and you're always in profitability mode, that is limiting. You're never going to be able to expand outside because you're always going to be looking at things that give you a 4X ROAS or a 7X ROAS or even a 2.5X ROAS because you're playing in a really safe, shallow pool and that's okay but know what the consequences of that are.” - Ingrid
• {00:31:33} “There's a reason why marketers have cared about engagement because it signifies that you're doing something right and you just need to do more of it to that same group in different ways.” - Ingrid

Associated Links: 

• Follow Infinite Shelf on Instagram
• Want to hear more? Check out past episodes here
• Love your new co-host? Check her out on LinkedIn
• Check out other Future Commerce podcasts

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Let’s be honest, we ALL have “internal hurdles” in our work life. Whether CEO or intern, problem-solving and effective communication can be a challenge. How can we overcome these issues…besides a weekly therapy session? Enter in: The Work Love Languages. We all know “The 5 Love Languages” to better understand your relationship and partner, but have you considered learning your work love language to understand yourself and your coworkers? Listen in as Ingrid and Orchid explore their work love language and “business astrology” results to glean insight into what they prefer in the workplace. Next, ask yourself…what’s my work love language?

Close the Loop

• {00:08:27} “How are we building {our “work love language”} into the way that we work with our teams and inform people above us, below us, and across the aisle? How do we make more of that now that we've identified that we need that?” - Ingrid
• {00:12:35} “Beyond seeing immediately what's in front of you, anticipate what are some other things that are going to happen or try to put yourself in the receiver's shoes and say, "Okay, if I were in their position…’" - Orchid
• {00:14:26} “As you go up, and whether you're the most junior person or the most senior person, I think it is always really beneficial to think about things more holistically. And I think that a quality that that really requires in a human being is empathy.” - Ingrid
• {00:19:03} “Based on my previous experiences and interactions with this person, what kind of decision are they trying to make and what kind of information can I provide them to best inform that decision?” - Orchid
• {00:22:52} “We're at this place where we need to create an environment organizationally, and we are now in the place of leadership that we can do that. And our generation is at that place of leadership that we can do that that I think will stop some of these previous stoic, unemotional, perfectionist, egotistical ways of working that I really do think is at the core of a lot of our hurdles.” - Ingrid
• {00:23:57} “A huge hurdle in the workplace today is about building relationships, is about properly communicating, and showing up prepared.” - Orchid

Associated Links: 

• Follow Infinite Shelf on Instagram
• Want to hear more? Check out past episodes here
• Love your new co-host? Check her out on LinkedIn
• Check out other Future Commerce podcasts

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

It’s Ask Me Anything Day here on the Pod and Orchid and Ingrid drop some great advice in today’s episode. Could Toys R Us have survived if they adapted? Is the Age of the Influencer coming to an end? Tune in to hear your questions answered and check out our Instagram @_infiniteshelf for a post-episode treat!

Get Your Sh*t Together

• {00:02:16} “A significant trend is that retailers know they have to rethink the in-store experience, but they're not quite sure how to do it. A prime example of a fail in this is Toys R Us.” - Orchid
• {00:09:32} “This is the modern iteration of what {a lifestyle brand} is: merging the in-store experience, using the retail, having online, having all of those things.” - Ingrid
• {00:12:29} “The new trend in maximizing your square footage is the services and the experience and the reason to go somewhere physically, which actually means quite the opposite of pack more sh*t in there. It actually means really, really curate things because people are completely overwhelmed with choice anyway.” - Ingrid
• {00:18:03} “I'm convinced that if you're brought into a Target and it's a pleasant experience with a Starbucks that you can get free refills on, you're going to spend more time there and increase that single transaction over going into a crowded Macy's where you can't find anything, you feel overwhelmed and then you just turn around and head out again.” - Orchid
• {00:22:10} “There is a healthy balance of a strong work ethic and knowing that you can succeed at something without putting so much pressure on yourself that you burn yourself out.” - Orchid
• {00:23:27} “There are seasons of your work life in the same way that there are seasons in every other aspect of your life.” - Ingrid
• {00:30:00} “The age of the influencer won’t end, but brands do need to activate more thoughtfully and stop spraying and praying with influencers the way that they once did with buying TV.” - Ingrid

Associated Links: 

• Follow Infinite Shelf on Instagram
• Want to hear more? Check out past episodes here
• Love your new co-host? Check her out on LinkedIn
• Check out other Future Commerce podcasts

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

There comes a time when every DTC company hits the pause button and asks, “What’s next?” Cue the Patrick Bateman and Kendall Roy mergers and acquisitions quotes. If acquisition does end up being an option, when you cede power as a founder, will you be happy with what the new parent company decides to do? Will your legacy live on?

Secret Sauce

• {00:11:11} “When we're talking about multinational corporations or larger corporations, usually you got to make sure that you've got a healthy business that you can just put your resources against in order to grow.” - Orchid
• {00:16:28} “There's a reason why acquisitions don't have the most fantastic reputation for succeeding post-acquisition. A lot of that is because too much emphasis is put on the acquirer to solve those problems after the fact. My advice is to have the founder or have the people who are running that DTC business think about what is that secret sauce of the company.” - Ingrid
• {00:17:53} “If you're a founder and you're selling, what you also have to be emotionally ready for is if the parent company starts to make strategic decisions about how to use the brand that you wouldn't necessarily agree with because it's not yours anymore. Post-acquisition is not yours anymore. That's why they paid you the money.” - Orchid
• {00:25:44} “With growth comes mass, more mass opportunities. You have to be more approachable, you have to be more accessible, unless you are a true luxury good.” - Orchid
• {00:32:03} “The people that you hire to help you be acquired, is another huge, important decision. They have to know your business and see the vision and see the purpose and be your champion just as much as the founders.” - Ingrid

Associated Links: 

• Follow Infinite Shelf on Instagram
• Want to hear more? Check out past episodes here
• Love your new co-host? Check her out on LinkedIn
• Check out other Future Commerce podcasts

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Have you ever seen an influencer trying to be relatable with their 20 step morning routine and just…immediately unfollowed? Welcome to the club! Join Ingrid and Orchid today as they talk fake relatability, aspirations, and understanding what your brand is fundamentally. Plus, stick around for an exclusive sneak peek into Orchid’s Tiktok for you page results!

Kudos Venn Diagram

• {00:09:56} “I think of all social media platforms as different neighborhoods, and knowing the neighborhood that you're in and knowing how to navigate it and who's there and what to expect is an important way to think about, as a brand, how you want to show up to your consumers.” - Ingrid
• {00:14:05} What if TikTok could have different pillars for you based on your mood for that session, or does it already get you into different moods just by nature of the algorithm? 
• {00:19:01} “I have found that TikToks where someone is actually giving a verbatim or like taking you through the product and how you use it, that's been a huge purchase intent driver for me personally.” - Orchid
• {00:22:18} “The idea of makeup and how we use it, culturally, has shifted as well. Makeup used to be about covering things. You wanted to look flawless because you wanted to cover certain "flaws" that you had. Whereas I do think that there's been a shift in the beauty conversation about a celebration of creativity.” - Orchid
• {00:25:50} “{The} definition of what's cool and what looks good and what feels good and is trendy has expanded infinitely, which is more of a result of the people who are creating input into the new generation and hopefully expanding out more in the diversity of thought and experience.” - Ingrid
• {00:28:22} “Going to market in the modern ecosystem, it's not rules, it's tools. So here are the boundaries, here are the guidelines to a certain extent, but then be you and turn that into your own content. That is the biggest differentiator between people who ran brands 20 years ago and people who will run modern brands.” - Ingrid

Associated Links: 

• Follow Infinite Shelf on Instagram
• Want to hear more? Check out past episodes here
• Love your new co-host? Check her out on LinkedIn
• Check out other Future Commerce podcasts

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

With so many recent changes in media, it’s important to remember that media does indeed change, but it doesn’t ever go away. Who is going to rule the new class of media, of brand development, of DTC? What is DTC today and how are we approaching it and what do we keep from the DTC heyday into its new evolution of growth? Listen now and join the discussion!

Tirade Against the Funnel

• {00:05:12} “There's a lot of user behavior that was adopted during COVID that was extremely digitally centric and digitally dominant, where the pendulum is swinging back a little bit. There are so many companies that you see out there that just hired wildly during COVID or scaled up, so I think there's a part of this that is a market contraction.” - Orchid
• {00:13:13} “There's going to be an aging out of how old media is consumed and how we look at journalism and how we look at journalism now. But with our generation and the generation even younger, even more so, it's so incredibly factioned off. It's very niche.” - Ingrid
• {00:17:09} “The fundamental way that marketers have been trained for decades is so broken now because there's just no way that you can get that level of awareness to then start to reduce down to the relevance of messages and audiences in order to make, finally, your way down to the conversion where you actually make money.” - Ingrid
• {00:26:28} “Ingrid: If you're fundamentally changing your go-to-market strategy, you have to document and organize the spaghetti that you're throwing at the wall so that when things stick, you know what, why, and where, and then you can replicate.” - Ingrid
• {00:28:17} “In order to make your media more efficient, you got to have better creative. If you have the right creative, the machine will make it more efficient.” - Orchid
• {00:34:38} “The question is how much novelty does your brand need to chase? Or is it just by nature of being on the platform with an interesting enough piece of creative that doesn't challenge the wackadoo creative or creators head-on but doesn't distract from it either?” - Orchid

Associated Links: 

• Follow Infinite Shelf on Instagram
• Want to hear more? Check out past episodes here
• Love your new co-host? Check her out on LinkedIn
• Check out other Future Commerce podcasts

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!