Head of Content James Mulvey joins the show to discuss Motion’s latest creative trends report, which analyzed over $100M+ in ad spend across platforms to extract top creative insights. Listen now to catch the highlights and learn how breakthrough ads are getting faster, funnier, and uglier.

Read Motion’s 2025 Creative Trends Report at Motionapp.com/creative-trends.

• Motion curated a report of the seven top creative trends to keep up with in 2025, finding that ads are getting funnier, running longer, and embracing low-fi aesthetics.
• 71% of advertisers plan to increase their use of AI in the coming year.
• 68% of advertisers plan to increase their use of UGC in the coming year.
• POV storytelling is on the rise – from entertainment to advertising.
• [00:15:10] “Authenticity and humor can be very difficult to marry.” – Brian
• [00:15:15] “–Especially if you’re not funny.” – James
• [00:21:30] “Popular media drives creator notions.” – Phillip
• [00:33:50] “The native platform experts are absorbing the source code, and then they're bringing that into the creative team…we all doomscroll to try to stay relevant, but it’d be awesome to have someone who’s job is to do this.” – James

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This week, we’re live-reacting to battles across culture. It’s DeepSeek vs. OpenAI, Millennials vs. Gen X, and Starbucks vs. Sharpies (Sharpies won). PLUS: The Flappy Bird effect drives an aftermarket of devices with TikTok access, yuppie culture booms, and Waymo strikes again.

• DeepSeek’s Disruption – A powerful, cheap, open-source AI from China that is sending shockwaves through the industry, challenging Nvidia’s dominance and raising economic concerns.
• The Death of Loss Leaders? – AI optimization could make it easier for consumers to game retail pricing, forcing businesses to rethink discounts and marketing tactics.
• Tech Arms Race – The U.S.-China AI competition is accelerating, with implications for policy, economy, and innovation.
• The Generational Cycle – Are Millennials the new Boomers? Phillip and Brian discuss how attitudes shift over time.
• TikTok Bans and Black Markets – The aftermarket for phones with TikTok pre-installed mirrors the Flappy Bird phenomenon.
• “If someone was able to optimize their life so that friction was removed, it would break the system.” – Phillip
• “This is ground zero of something huge. The AI game just changed overnight.” – Phillip
• “The best defense is to flood the zone. The moment you try to contain something, you lose control.” – Brian
• “The return of yuppies proves that history doesn’t just repeat itself—it evolves.” – Phillip
• “Technology enabled back.” – Brian

• In-show mention: The Cruel Kids Table, New York Magazine
• In-show mention: TimesNowNews: Phones with TikTok Pre-Installed Selling for $25,000
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This episode of Future Commerce is brought to you by Future Commerce Plus and our sponsors Omnisend and MotionApp.

“There is nothing but micro trends these days. Sometimes, things bubble up, and they capture the imagination of pop culture…but then they last for a really short time. In that environment, how do you really set yourself up to influence culture?”

In this week’s episode, Ana Andjelic graces our show with breakthrough advice from her latest book, Hitmakers: How Brands Influence Culture. Discover the secrets of updating heritage brands, keys to transporting customers into imaginative worlds, and how to amplify microtrends to position your brand within cornerstone cultural narratives.

• Reverse-Engineering Hits: The concept of "hit-making" is about creating micro-trends and amplifying them through culture to align with the zeitgeist and resonate with a brand’s audience.
• Capturing Connection: Modern brands are focusing on attention and engagement as measures of success, recognizing that loyalty stems from deeper interactions beyond purchases.
• Brands as Cultural Contributors: Successful brands become part of a larger cultural narrative, contributing to concepts like happiness (Coca-Cola) or creativity (Apple).
• [00:6:34] - “As human beings, we never make decisions in isolation. We are always influenced by what we read, see, listen to, and each other. So in a sense, all of those interactions are narratives or they're fibers of the narrative.” - Ana
• [00:29:27] - “You have to be both sensitive to the zeitgeist and cultures, but also stay true to that innovativeness of those brands because all those founders did create something that didn't exist before.” - Ana
• [00:31:01] - “There's actually a transforming, so taking one form and putting it into a new context, which is how myth begins. It's actually at the moment of transformation.” - Brian
• [00:35:00] - “There is time and place for everything. Performance marketing works really well with brand marketing, but demand is created by brand marketing. Demand is harvested by performance marketing.” - Ana

• Buy Hitmakers on Amazon
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We're covering the first 100 Days of the New Commerce Department: what trade and tariff policies are up Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's sleeve? PLUS: We dig into TikTok's dizzying fake-out, Doji's mystifying deepfake try-on tech, and the long-awaited launch of the 2025 Future Commerce Annual Journal, LORE.

• Preorder LORE
• Explore Doji: Doji App
• Watch the Head and Shoulders video from Veritasium we geeked out about

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In this landmark discussion from NRF 2025, we lay out our theory of commerce's next evolutionary leap: the necessary fusion of human and artificial intelligence in digital spaces. As today's retailers hastily construct separate domains for silicon and carbon-based shoppers, we explore why this well-intentioned bifurcation may be precisely the wrong approach. From Salesforce's stumbling first steps with Agent Force to NVIDIA's more integrated vision, we examine how commerce might pioneer a symbiotic digital future. PLUS: Our 2025 journal, LORE, makes its debut!

• The Evolution of Digital Agency: Tracing the path from simple chatbots to truly agentic AI, and why the distinction matters.
• Biological Precedent as Digital Prophecy: How the coexistence of early human species might inform our approach to human-AI integration.
• The Attention Arbitrage: Why AI agents represent not just tools, but extensions of human cognitive capacity.
• Beyond the ‘Agentic Ghetto’: The case for unified digital architectures that serve both silicon and carbon-based users.
• The Memory Migration: How technology has already transformed human cognition, from oral histories to cloud storage.

• {00:23:00} "When we've talked about agents and bots and how you're gonna have your own assistance, we're talking about consumers... [The industry is] thinking about it from a very different angle than the people that are trying to sell the software right now." - Brian
• {00:25:31} "This is kind of like homo sapien and Neanderthal having to coexist... one advanced form and one less advanced form actually having functional tools and functional societies and functional coexistence together." - Phillip
• {00:28:55} "Written language allowed us to move from having to memorize things and be able to recall them from ourselves to having them available to quote. We actually exported our brains into books." - Brian
• {00:31:44} "The last thing we want on planet earth is to create a non-visual [space] in the ether for it to go purchase that isn't a thing that a human could actually go... The functional web needs to stay functional for humans and for bots to coexist in." - Phillip

This episode challenges conventional wisdom about AI integration, suggesting that our current trajectory toward segregated experiences misses a crucial evolutionary opportunity. Through the lens of NRF 2025's innovations and stumbles, we explore how commerce might pioneer a more symbiotic digital future—one where the distinction between human and artificial intelligence becomes not a wall, but a bridge.

• Order LORE on Metalabel
• The Attention Economy (August 2, 2019)
• Your Body Is A Dataland (August 1, 2017)
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This week, we’re unpacking Adobe’s holiday shopping report, the AI bot takeover, and the dead internet theory. As 2025 kicks off with powerful demand for both in-person experiences and AI-driven, frictionless online shopping, we’re peering into the future of the tension. PLUS: Phillip the Time Capsule Guy takes us back in time, and 5,000 years into the future.

• [00:14:30] “Black Friday shopping is one of the most isolating things you can do now. It used to be a team sport, something you'd all go out and do…you get up early, you get the coffee and the hot chocolate in your warm coats, and you go out and you have a good time together amid consumerism madness.” – Brian
• [00:20:24] “I think the return to physical connection and this loneliness epidemic is driving people back to real-life connection.” – Phillip
• [00:46:55] “We are going to be building from this point forward websites or ecommerce experiences, channels, APIs. Anything that we build in ecommerce from henceforth will be done thoughtfully to assist both humans and agents to be able to seamlessly purchase from a brand.” – Phillip
• [00:58:04] "Time capsules by Westinghouse and Panasonic might be humanity’s greatest contributions to cultural preservation." – Phillip
• [01:01:20] “This is part of Mythopoeia. This is how you build a myth that extends into the future. You do stuff like this that's an extension of the story. And Westinghouse may be revived 5000 years in the future because of these time capsules.” – Brian

• Future Commerce Upcoming Events
• The Future Now: January 28th, 2025. Immerse yourself in a collaborative and visionary roundtable experience with retail executives. Register here
• Your Body is a Dataland: Insiders #66
• Adobe Holiday Shopping Report
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In our biggest episode of the year, we explore seismic shifts coming in 2025: from the return of Gen X leadership to a new wave of American counterculture. We revisit our eerily accurate 2024 predictions while laying out bold forecasts for retail consolidation, AI evolution, and the changing media landscape. Plus, we dive deep into why Google might be poised for a massive comeback and how Walmart is transforming into a media empire.

• On Taste & Truth (13:12) - "I believe that taste is the unique ability to recognize objective truth in situations where subjectivity reigns supreme." - Brian
• The Future of Retail (34:50) - "In the retail sector, we will see larger holdcos start to downsize by breaking off individual pieces into smaller entities so they can reorganize and pass regulatory muster when selling divisions later." - Phillip
• Hardware Renaissance (54:41) - "The excitement around content actually represents a deeper desire within people for well-designed, bespoke hardware technology." - Brian
• Urban Transport Evolution (1:39:14) - "eVTOL will be a huge tech winner in 2025, creating a paradigm shift in urban transport - starting as the luxury option Uber envisioned in 2017." - Phillip
• Political Realignment (1:59:00) - "There's something latent here around realignment in how people think about the political spectrum post-second Trump presidency. Many political orphans, both right and left, don't know where they fit." - Brian
• The Innovation Paradox (2:18:43) - "When solving problems, we inevitably miss the new problems our solutions will create. It's easy to walk into dystopia thinking you're walking into utopia." - Brian

• Heading to NRF? Come celebrate the launch of our 2025 print journal, LORE with us on Tuesday, January 14! Register here.
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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!